A Beginner's Guide to the AWP Conference

(This was going to be a breakdown of my experience of AWP and then it turned into a primer for new attendees. Maybe it will be useful to people google searching AWP.)

If you haven’t been to AWP, it’s probably for a few reasons.

1)   You’re a regular person who doesn’t concern themselves with strange hyper-cultures.

2)   You’re not a Creative Writing Grad Student, English Professor, Lit Journal Editor, Small Press Owner/Manager, Poet, Novelist, Memoirist, Satirist, Essayist, Slam Poet, Genre Junkie, Agent, Publisher, etc.

3)   You exist in the real world where famous people are movie stars and rock stars not authors and poets.

So if you’re not any of these, then you don’t know what AWP (The Association of Writers and Writers Programs) is all about, where it is taking place every year, and why you would be interested in this meeting of 11,000 lit nerds.  Your life may be less.  Or it may be better.

It’s a scene.  For a writer, it is simultaneously inspiring and depressing.  To be in a place where Fiction and Poetry and Essay is the center of the universe is amazing and makes you feel at home.  That you can talk to anyone, to thousands of You, just waiting to gush over the absolute cultural importance of books is something.  That everyone understands why you’d rather be lost in a fake world than found in the real world is refreshing and worth exploring.

But to be a writer among thousands of other writers sometimes diminishes your uniqueness.  It makes you feel like one of the pack, all fighting for a little sliver of immortality.  It’s easy to lose your sense of camaraderie.  A usual AWP conference is a bipolar rollercoaster of importance and obscurity.

The panels range from stuff as broad as “How to Land an Agent” to crazy specific stuff like “Gender Studies of Uzbekistani Poetry Written By Survivors of the Frog Plague of 1936”.  One of those panels was real and one of them you wish was real.

I have to recommend balance.  You can’t go to every panel.  You have to ditch.  You have to eat lunch and hang out in the bookfair and get a sense of the city and just not let yourself get sucked in completely.  Because if you don’t detach here and there, it’s dangerous.  Your ego is at stake.  Either it will swell with the headiness of writerly importance or it will deflate rapidly and leave you charging your iPhone in a corner, tweeting about how these hacks will one day fall at your feet and worship the meager words you let them sup on.

Eat an expensive meal while you’re there.  Get jazzed about something else for an hour at least.

Lastly, there’s the Bookfair.  This is a whole different animal.  It’s giant rooms filled with tables of journals and MFA programs and small presses and sometimes some weirdo just hawking his own book.  Stay away from that weirdo.  Everyone else is normal.

The MFA programs are interesting because as a graduate of an MFA program, it’s like driving by a bunch of car dealerships after you bought your car.  So they must be for a younger crowd.  I barely even knew about AWP before grad school so it seems weird that undergrad students are so up on it that they know to go to it and scout schools.

The journal and small press tables are where you should spend most of your time.  They’re friendly and most of them are students that were given a free pass to AWP if they sat at the table and hawked some books.  The students look bored and are frequently dying to speak to someone to pass the time. 

The presses are interesting but it’s a like a mobile bookstore where you’re looking at the owner of the bookstore and trying to figure out how to escape.  You may buy something sometime but you’re not a high roller and you can’t just shell out for any random book no matter how much the publisher or the author put their whole soul into it.

Here’s the deal.  AWP is great.  If you’re the right person.  If you can immerse yourself, cool.  If you have friends to go with, friends to meet, even better.  The excitement of the world revolving around your craft for three days is good for the soul.  You should leave thinking:  I can’t wait to get home and write!  If you go home and never write again, well, that’s one less person for them to compete with. Success either way.

October 15th: What that Means for Me and You

Back in January, a poet and editor named Tyler Chadwick contacted me about an anthology.  He said that he was collecting an anthology of Mormon Poets.

I wrote back, "There's Mormon Poets?"

I didn't know about many.  I definitely didn't believe that I was the only one.  I had met Lance Larsen when he read at BYU-Idaho.  My friend Aaron Allen writes poetry and he studied under Kimberly Johnson, author of "Leviathan with a Hook". A fantastic read.

Of course, I knew some of my professors at BYU-I were poets.  I had taken classes from Mark Bennion, Matt Babcock, Jim Richards, Jim Papworth, and Scott Samuelson.  They were all influences on my beginning work.  I met Russ Moorehead at the church I attend in Brooklyn. I read about Neil Aitken and met him at the Writer's Conference. And in a strange coincidence I read with Timothy Liu at a reading this summer.  I have other friends from BYU-I who write poetry, have gone to school for it.

So, I wasn't exactly being facetious.  But I truthfully imagined the Mormon poetry world to be much smaller than it is.  Apparently, I'm not an island. This list, published in March, told me otherwise.

The book comes out today.  You can order it here. I have five poems in it.

I say buy it.  For some of you, when's the last time you've purchased a book of poetry? You've never purchased one, you say?! Well then, you haven't lived!

And you can support a small press publisher.  That'll make you feel good.  Small presses are some of the last bastions of good literature. Go ahead. Help a little guy.

NOW, YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP READING AFTER THIS.  YOU CAN BE HAPPY ABOUT ME BEING IN THE ANTHOLOGY AND LEAVE.  GIVE ME  A VIRTUAL PAT ON THE BACK.  I'M JUST GOING TO RAMBLE ABOUT A FEW THINGS.

Here's my digression on exclusivity in art.  Just a few thoughts.  You can still turn back.

I'm not a fan of art being exclusive.  I'm not bold enough or vain enough to ever try to give a definition of art but I will say that one of my primary goals in art is to communicate.  Before this I never sought out Mormon poets for a few reasons:

First, I don't really care what your background is when it comes to being an artist.  I never read something and wonder to myself, "Are they Catholic?" "Are they from the Midwest?" "Did they come from an abusive home?" "They sound like an only child. Are they an only child?"  "I wonder if their parents were rich."

This is not because I abhor background info.  That I somehow divorce the artist completely from the art.  But I don't need it to decide whether or not I like the piece.  Whether what has been accomplished is worthwhile to me.

There are many groups. Religious, anti-religious, intellectual, anti-intellectual, gay, straight, women, men, different cultures, different races.  Sometimes it's hard to get outside yourself.  My Midwestern blue collar single parent upbringing influences my writing.  It colors it.  I won't be able to shake it.  And neither do I want to.  But it probably won't appeal to everyone.  I will probably unknowingly and sometimes knowingly reference Midwestern Blue Collar Single Parent experience that people aren't going to 'get'.  Or like.

I'm also Mormon.  I grew up Mormon in a state where most people didn't know what a Mormon was.  It also defined me.  But it's all part of my make-up.  I don't divorce myself from it.  Neither do I write to a group of Mormon Midwestern Blue Collar Single Parent readers.  Frankly, I don't know any.

Second, I think labeling artists limits them.  I hate how music is labeled in music stores.  How they're always trying to fit a band into some category.  I think it makes us more comfortable to say: "Oh, he can write about the Holocaust because he's a Jew".  "Oh, this book is by a woman.  It's Women's Fiction."

Authenticity and experience is a whole other discussion for another day.  But when we label an artist, we make them fit our expectations.  And then we judge them on those expectations.  Do we feel Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is less believable as a man because he was written by a woman?  Because when Jane Eyre came out, it was under a man's pseudonym and a female critic of the time thought that women were ill written.

I don't want anyone to spend too much time reading this.  It's a blog after all.  You have facebook to check. Emails to write.  Movie trailers to watch.

My point is thus.  When I first heard "Mormon Writer" or "Mormon Poet" I immediately assumed, falsely, that I was going to read some Mormon culture poems.  Something about pioneers or church or family or temples or Utah. Or lame generic stuff about God and Christ.*  And I'm not completely wrong.  There are a fair amount of people who write this stuff.

But I was guilty of labeling as well.  I've met serious and deft poets who write about a variety of subjects.  None of it is restricted to preconceived notions of what "Mormon Poets" write about.  I tried to keep myself above them or away from them but I'm flattered to be in such good company.  I can be a Mormon Poet as much as I can be any other kind of poet.

*Yeah, that's right. I have a footnote.  It's about religious art.  I like it.  I am moved and in awe of many religious works.  But just like any work of art, it has to be inspired and original.  It has to have something.  Just because someone says God or Jesus or Mary or Allah or Buddha or whatever in their poem, doesn't mean it's good.  I've read a lot of generic suckfests that I'm sure came from a real feeling of religious devotion. And I HATE when someone says something like 'well, that really happened' or 'that's how I feel.' That's what journals are for.  If you don't want something to be judged, keep it to yourself.

Thank You Notes to Me

So yes, we are having a baby. (Thank you Craig for getting this onesie for me. It is epic.) This blog is not going to turn into a baby blog showcasing every angle of my genetic inheritor.  So get ready to keep hearing about me, Valerie, and sometimes Baby.  Oh, she'll show up.  Like a guest star.  But is she writing the blog?  No.  Because she has no idea what QWERTY is.  And because most of her thoughts will be: "Hungry." and "Not Hungry."

I'm sure she'll be great.  I'm excited.  But I spend a lot of time in my head. But eventually when she can talk and reason and type I'm sure she'll have a few things to say about how I shaped her into the cool person she will become.  So here are some thank you notes to me.  From her.

ABOUT MUSIC

Dear D(that stands for Dad, abbreviations are huge in the future),

Thank you for introducing me to depressing rock music. Nirvana and Elliott Smith has given my otherwise happy life that bleak underlining it needed. While you and M showered me with love and affection, in the background was a soundtrack teaching me that despair and loneliness howled at the windows.  Thank you for leveling me out with some real bummers.  Sure I look super smiley in all those baby pictures.  But if you look in my eyes, you can see I know that life is not all mashed up fruit and snuggles.  It's deep pain and full of Courtney Loves.

ABOUT SUPERHEROES

Dear D,

Even though M totally rolled her eyes whenever you tried to explain the deep intricacies of comic book superheroes, I was listening.  Superman is an exploration of a god like being on Planet Earth dealing with issues of agency, death, and tragedy when he has the power to stop them.  It is a fascinating idea.  And you're not a huge nerd.  You're a supercool guy who just likes lots of things.  And you told me that enough times that I actually believe it.  Now when are we going to the 5th reboot of Spiderman?

ABOUT SCIENCE

Dear D,

I'm so glad you took over all my science projects and helped me build scale models of particle accelerators and binary star systems.  I am a little sad that you suck so much at building things that all my models looked nothing like what we intended.  I wish we lived closer to Uncle Andy and Uncle Sam because they don't handle tools like they're pythons.  But I think it's cool we live on the International Space Station and you're the Ambassador to Space.

ABOUT POETRY

Dear D,

I know that only a small percentage of the earth enjoys poetry.  Thank you for making me part of that percentage.  Because now I know I'm better than most people.  And that's the kind of self worth every kid needs.  Thank you both for making me part of the literary intelligentsia.  And thank you M for teaching me an eye roll that can make my teachers quiver in anger.  I'm going to ride this poetry rocket right to Stanford or Harvard or Yale or the International Space Station University if you really want me to stay close to home.

Things are Changing

I don't know what it is, there's something in the air, isn't there. Change is coming. From now on, no more separate blogs. It's JamesandValerie from here on out. Otherwise, how can we record our epic love?

In other news, James is quitting poetry and going into hedge funds.

Love,

ValerieandJames

Why Do You Anthropomorphize Everything? - Valerie 3/27/11

Yes, she asked me this. Yes, I do. I ascribe too much to the inanimate. I feel sorry for discarded umbrellas looking like black squids smeared on the sidewalks. I want to rescue furniture and books from the street. Valerie doesn't want me bringing disease into our household. I tell her love will counter any disease.

She's skeptical.

I did a study of a poem about a bell. Yeah, that's right. A bell. Bells are awesome apparently. So I decided to pick an object and write about it. This is what I came up with.


The Whisk

In the drawer, the whisk exists
among her sisters, the mixing
spoons, the spatulas and peelers,
her uncles, garlic press and cork
and her rough distant cousin,
the tenderizer.

Who else turns into themselves
like this? A monochrome rainbow.
She can never hold what she grasps,
she is brisk with all strangers, never
mixes in. To the whisk, the world
is to be stirred.

Without the hand, the whisk is
settled. The invisible heavy
of air sifts through the filaments,
finding no center to contend with.
The drawer is dark and waiting
for the hand.

Later, the cake it makes delivered
by her brother the fork. Laughter
can be the result, even a song
to reward her efforts. In the sink,
lying among the remains of her work,
the remains of joy.

Haiku for a Spring Snow Storm

Yes, there's a cold front blowing through New York. Places like Fargo, North Dakota and Iron Mountain, Michigan are getting snow. And somehow so is New York City. Boo to you, Jack Frost. These are not all weather related I guess but inspired by its mood.


we are drunk on night
the bridge holds, fastened to rivets
white hot in the sky

please, cold suns of streets
if you keep me, light me home
I’ll keep the day watch

the overplush couch
an impromptu deathbed
an open casket

the moon is deaf
now to night made promises
the sound of breaking

I am only hurry
I am the flint of my bed
where a pretty stone cools

static is called snow
so let’s not watch that channel
turn on the covers

new ice will turn black
if it finds cold reception
a lonelier road

Russian Don't Get You Anywhere Faster

At the end of February, I took stock of my poetry manuscript and realized I may need another month. I was still unhappy with about 15 poems. Five were scrappable if they didn't shape up and become something soon and 10 more were sent to the Orphanage of Unrealized Thought. It's a sad place. Full of little bastards (literal) that talk in stuttering phrases about their parents Muse and Time and wonder who neglected them more.

So I've given myself another month. It means I missed a few poetry manuscript contests I wanted to send out for but as these things go, I may have another chance next year when this doesn't get picked up. So I keep slugging away at my naughty children, dressing them up in newer clothes (line breaks), comb their hair (smooth out the rhythmic snags), and try to cram them full of good manners (new phrases, words, lines, fancy stuff!) before shipping them off to their mean aunts and uncles (the wonderful judges of first book contests).

Here's something with lines reappropriated from another poem. The feeling is still the same. The ending and especially the beginning are different.

The Secrets That We Keep

Last night there was a dream in our bed,
either yours or mine, where the avenues
filled with water, all of New York suddenly
Venetian, and the cabs went gondola,
trolling the river roads with the posts of old signs.
And you and I were at the window, wondering
at our new world, if the city would validate us
our defunct subway passes, and I asked,
“Do we love each other better now?”
To which you oracled back: The moon is
only the sun’s, the waves the moon’s,
the sky the waves’. For all, to all, jealousy
is king. Be jealous for me and I’ll never
let the earth claim you, from bones to words.
And then you resheathed yourself in sheets
and I climbed in next to you, bought a ticket
for the same destination, a place we are
whole and parts. Singing back towards real
morning. Where one of us will share this
dream and both will believe it.

If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Haiku

For non-Brooklynites, these take a little intro. The BQE is an elevated highway, hideous and inspiring running like a gray ribbon between those boroughs. Sufjan Stevens wrote a whole symphony about it. It's an eyesore and frustrating to drive on and your only option and wonderful and unique to Brooklyn.

The Gowanus Canal is the filthiest piece of water in America. It's a national health hazard and the EPA has stepped in. The bottom is covered with shopping carts and rusting iron. The top is floating with grease and algae that has living samples of gonorrhea in it. That's right. You could get an STD from swimming in it. Also a baby whale got stuck in it once and was cut apart by the metal maze in the water. Very sad.

I wanted to write some romantic verse about them.

Haiku for the Gowanus and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Winter 2011

1
Brooklyn winter breaks
slow as iron in water
hide me Gowanus

2
night traffic mezzo
headlights point home, cars yawning
circling for some sleep

3
the moon on dimmer
how needy the limbs of night
caught in wan spotlight

4
canal full of eyes
bodies adrift in freezeless sleep
I will find you all

5
great grey artery
if I cut you, would you spill
all your red riders

6
whale catcher, release
or clench, keep your dinner tight
be jealous of now

7
canal means lost vein
the moon said it could mean much
the moon is bloodless

Sharon Olds, You Still Have Lots to Teach Me

I'm at the tail end of my manuscript. I'm cutting myself off on edits in one week. I have a whole list of poems in black and red.

Black = Good Enough
Red = Trouble

The red list is getting smaller. But I'm down to a few problem children. Basically, the loud mouthy kid in class who I hate but really sort of love. But I can't present him in front of the school as a model poem. Because he needs some serious one on one. And the work involved is so daunting. How long can I keep this analogy going?

Sooooo sometimes it is just easier to get a new class. (I could extend an analogy all day. Don't try me.) So I started writing new poems.

I don't know how people write anything without reading. Especially poetry. I have to read before I write. I need rhythms. For the last few days, I've been reading Sharon Olds. Sometimes when I'm writing I get scared to just say it. I want to poeticize it. Beautify it. But Sharon just puts it out there. Her narrator says what she's feeling and there are no apologies.

Not to say her poetry isn't beautiful. It's breathtaking. But she tricks you with simple words, things you know. I've always wanted to write like that. I like to take the bag of regular human language, mix those words up, and surprise people. Sharon does that. I sit at her feet and learn yet again.

I had Sharon two semesters as a teacher. And I still go back to her books over and over. Here's something inspired by her. Well, and this thing I remember from high school.

Wrecks

It was our first death the whole high school shared.
He had a fast car. He had scholarships coming.
He derailed a train in a quiet part of town.
And suddenly, we all knew Andy. His sideways smile,
his hiccup laugh, his favorite teams and beers.
Regret is a fever. It burned through the ranks.
We didn’t question his decision, only that he was alone
and we’d left him. Who were we without Andy?
What was an Andy to us? Why us? Why consequences?
Andy became a space for us to ponder. Andy was our own name.
I didn’t know Andy. His death caused no flutter in me.
So many found a well of feeling, enough hands for everyone.
In the halls of clamor, speeches, guidance counselors dealing
guidance, I held a stillness that worried me.
We were told by announcement. A girl broke down, gave up
her whole body to another girl. Homeroom erupted
into sudden mothers and daughters. Windows opened
to expand the world of the room. Two boys who knew him
asked to be excused and they were. This scene over
and over in other classrooms. And I was silence.
A page opened up in us, and I read myself. I title
that chapter What Broken Andy Did For All of Us.
There was a kegger in his honor. Irony wasn’t invited.
The Latin teacher came to show support. He told me
we had to be a collective. To mourn was to do. He said it in Latin.
English was harder. Seemed no one could grapple the tense
shift of Andy. And the language broke down further,
all conversation was an examination of the word okay.
Everyone had a toast about Andy. The dark was aclink
with bottles. I drank nothing in Andy’s honor. I just wandered.
Sometimes people would close up on me, say things like,
“Man. Andy. Right?” And I would say, “Right.”
Like a play rehearsal, I knew the line, I just didn’t know my character.
A girl I’d made out with before, wanted “to feel better”. I tried
to give that to her. I know one guy carpe diemed a girl right
out of her virginity. Everyone knew that later I guess.
I told someone I respected Andy for winning at chicken.
That someone tried to punch me. I took the hit like Andy.
And then two days later was the Big Day. All went.
The superintendent excused the school. A field trip to the museum
of hard lessons. I didn’t attend. I spent the day in study hall.
Our assignment: write how we feel today. The teacher had a tone
like hands holding an egg yolk. I turned in a Venn diagram starring Me
and Andy and the Train. Each circle rushing to meet each other.

Editing Your Life

I was at a poetry/Russian translation reading last night. I asked friends who had published books to give me some advice on what to do here at the final touches of my manuscript. A friend of mine asked me to explain what my book is about. Not for him. But for myself. That I should be able to articulate what some of my reasons for writing it is.

So here it is:

There is a certain power in writing through your own life. It means you get say-so on history. I've never believed in non-fiction so I have no moral problem with pushing or pulling things to my liking. We do it anyway. A story is one way to one set of eyeballs. Memory is faulty. I have no allegiance to the past or anyone else's version of it.

So I keep rewriting and reinventing my life. A little here or there. Until it becomes less my story and a parallel universe cruising next to me. A looking glass of altered reality, better or worse with my telling. The Allen and Craig and Candace of my poems are not my siblings. But have echoes in them. The Mom is not my Mom. But is James's mom, the James of this place I create. He is angry at points when I'm not angry. He will not forgive where I have let go. The James in my created world is a man/boy looking for the sky to fall down on him. Is sure that doom is around the corner from him and he's right. I have doom coming for him.

The best thing about Parallel James is he gets insight where I did not. He synthesizes his life immediately within 20 to 40 lines (my average poem length). He is master of the past and present all at once. He is the recipient of all my hindsight and sometimes teaches me. Sometimes I try out an idea on James, see how it works. He is a camera I look through. I use him to focus on one moment of life at a time. Instead of living it again, I dissect it. Examine it like a god.

Here's another edited poem from this morning:

File This Under: Things You Should Have Seen Coming

What we left when we moved:
a button, the wheel and hose and nozzle,
the dirt in our treads, a wild side garden,
the holes of the nails, a watch battery, a lie,
stove and pipes and cabinetry,
the dust of our skin, and the sounds of us,
shoe scuffs and creaks we caused,
ideas of permanency, the anxious dream quit,
the skeletons of poisoned mice catacombed in walls,
the tire swing about to give, the tree we gentled into the earth,
friends, an address, a phone number, him—

We left a giant letter A painted on the garage,
not by us but a family previous,
for which we harbored a kids hope
it meant something nefarious like Assassins or A-Bomb,
but assumed it stood for Anderson or Adams
We know now. It meant what it always meant.
We learned the word foreshadowing long after we left.

Drafts and Drafts

A new draft of this. Rough but nearer. Nearest. Vicinityish.

I'm going to take a break and write funnier stuff today. Because I need a dose of that. Maybe I will begin my correspondence with Jack Howington, courtesy of Rod Wolfbike - Samurai/Big Brother Program rebel. That's overdue.

It's something that I wrote a while ago, totally hated and rewrote over this last week.


Missing Person Report

You buy two of everything,
have extra at meals.
The echo of your voice seems too much
like an answer.
Your childhood bed was the top half
of a bunk and below, you knew
was unrealized space.
You call him Camera 2.
Sometimes when you travel in groups,
you ask if anyone is missing
because it feels like that.
It’s not even a sadness you can sound.
You didn’t know him.
Literally, you were just roommates,
dorming together in a cramped red tent.
You both moved out on the same day,
and only one of you cried.
But why yesterday,
did you keep the park bench open,
did you tell the stranger:
I’m waiting for someone.
You’ve listened to the heart of another,
with your wrist to your other ear.
There’s some home in that.
It is silly to miss anyone you didn’t know,
even blood. But what a chance.
To have a parallel you, to have two minds,
to never have to say Do you understand?
Because both of you do. Because you can’t
help being each other.
In the mornings, you cross your eyes in the mirror,
see how it could have been.

Are the Kids Calling it Doobies These Days?

I need to get this poetry manuscript done because it starts to feel like the culmination of my life. Five years is a lot I suppose.

I mark five years because about five years ago I stopped throwing all my writing away. Or burying it where I wouldn't be embarrassed of it. Of hundreds of undergrad poems written, I have kept: 2. Their names are:

Our First Home Has Forgotten Us

and

Expiration Dates

They are like childhood friends that I haven't yet found enough fault with to let go for my more sophisticated grad school friends.

The number of grad school written poems I'm keeping is negligible. Could be half my manuscript. Maybe a little more. I spend my days editing everything. I have a list of 50-60 poems that I've winnowed down. And I feel only about 20 of them need work still.

Improvement. Here's something new. Sometimes the best way to get into editing is write something new. Will any of these new poems make it into the manuscript? Not sure. They need to simmer.

This is a study on a Gary Jackson poem. A poet I heard at AWP. He just won the Cave Canem poetry prize. Wrote a whole book of poems about superheroes. Awesome. And cool guy too.

I used the name of a kid I knew growing up but it's not really about him.

A Poem for Josh Dixon

-dedicated to Josh Dixon

If Josh Dixon wrote a poem for Josh Dixon, the letters would be brands,
no unnecessary words, and when he was done with a thought,
well…

In Josh Dixon’s poem, there would be a weed cellar,
where he’d feel like a true botanist, between his fingers
he’d roll a seed, and feel the universe contained.
But he wouldn’t say it like that. Not in his poem.
He’d whisper, “Dammmmmnnnnnnnn…”
A word to hold all words.

When Josh Dixon writes this poem, he’s gonna write it on zigzag,
he’s gonna write it in the driveway of his Mom’s house,
which is his house, but not for long, not for long.
He’s got plans, an abandoned field to grow enough herb,
he’s got a mind that people underestimate.
That’s word for word from his poem.

Josh Dixon don’t have time for poems usually, he’s got a baby,
and some of these words he’ll scribe on the outside of diapers.
When he’s doing his duty, so his lady can make cash.
But this poem by Josh Dixon has dreams in it. And he won’t let me
tell you them. Because this is Josh Dixon’s poem.
It will beat you with a pipe if it catches you behind the airport.
Looking for his secret field. Searching out his dreams.

If Josh Dixon wrote this poem, it’d sound like a gun
sliding against denim. He would dedicate it to himself.
Josh Dixon is fine. His future life is growing in the dark
ready to break out. One day, when he’s rolling in it,
he’ll light that field on fire. Get the whole town stoned.
And he’ll be king of something for once.

Dancing and laughing down Main.

Books and U-Boats

I know it sounds like it, but putting together a poetry manuscript is less fun than you would think. It's like compressing the ups and downs of the writing process every half hour. This is what my usual writing process looks like.

1. Sit at desk.

-open notebook

-think of something to write, nothing comes

-free write, decide it's crap

-surf internet

2. Get serious.

-get frustrated with myself, turn off internet

-start writing again, feel something bite

-continue on vein, write more, got it!

-write twenty, thirty lines, variations in notebook

-open Word, transfer from notebook

-compose and finish poem about half an hour to an hour later

3. Read it.

-oh crap, this is not that good

-think about what poets I'm writing like

-consult poets, read similar poems, get ideas

-revise a little, start new stanzas

-decide whether to continue or set my computer on fire

4a. I like it!

- let's read it to someone, probably Valerie!

- put it up on my blog!

- eat some ice cream or baked good as reward!

- declare myself Poet Laureate of My Apartment

4b. I hates it!

- decide I suck at this poetry crap

- ask myself: Who am I fooling? I write sentimental tripe.

- think of other poems I wrote that I hate

- question everything, go watch something mindless, play some video games, pout

5. Revise.

- uh oh, this poem is just a baby, it needs to get growed up

- uh oh, this poem needs some major surgery

- uh oh, I was dead wrong, this poem sucks

- uh oh, Dr. Frankenstein, watch out, I am the master re-animator!

This is my process. And now I'm just on this rollercoaster feeling every old poem I dig up. I wrote something new today instead of just editing. So there. And I don't know yet what I think about it. We'll see if it's 4a or 4b.

Because I Have Nothing to Comfort You, I Talk of U-Boats

How the ocean is just another sky,
and every school of fish is a cloud.
I say those Germans launched a thousand subs,
blind sharks sniffing for British blood.
I know what you want me to say,
but I don’t have it to say.
We have to break bread for the service,
your family is on the brink,
I can’t give you words I never found for mine.
Let’s talk of sailors. Of ships breaking like whales,
how pointless to try to read the water
but how so many did. How small a destroyer felt.
You can’t know me, kid.
My easy smile and wide shoulders are not confidence
but weapons. I have no beatitudes.
The flesh of Christ as familiar as paper in your fingers,
why don’t you ask Him why
you’re sixteen and riding trains beneath the water
to get here alone to save strangers?
We’re not even to the blood
when I skirt the real question again,
tell you how the Eastern seaboard dreamed together
of iron ghosts ringing their shores,
finding the water betrayed them by being so passable,
neither fear, nor loyalty, no kind of strength building
a barrier between them and the inevitable.
Our contingency was to escape to the interior,
lose a little to be more defensible.

Not Everyday is a Birches Day

This is what Valerie has said to me three times over three days. I've been writing poems. I've been knocking my head on the wall over this one. FOR THREE DAYS. And we're talking hours. 4 to 6 hours a day for 3 days.

I become obsessed sometimes. Even when I know it's not going well. Even when I know that the piece is going to turn out just par. It's something I read about Sylvia Plath. How she would just keeping work on a piece until completion. No matter how sucked it was.

Also, I've been obsessed with literary terms. So every break I took had me skipping from one term to the next.

Epizeuxis - when a word is repeated for emphasis such as: "No, no, no!" Or "The Horror, the Horror, the Horror."

Catachresis - when a mixed metaphor is introduced knowingly and on purpose to produce an effect

And the actual word I've been trying to find for three days:

Antimeria - when a noun is used as a verb

Alright, so here's the poem. It is what it is. I've trimmed it down. Rewritten, restructured. Written way too long to get this par piece of nonsense. On to other things.

Oh, and the reason Valerie says that to me is thus:

My favorite poem is "Birches" by Robert Frost. I think it's brilliant. It's all the things I want in my poems. Extended metaphors, human involvement, real feeling, childhood, innocence, spirituality, death, and humor.

I told Valerie that one day I want to write my "Birches". Of course, I'll probably never know when I wrote it. But I want to write something that good.

She's been telling me to lower my expectations for the day with this phrase. Every time she sees me pulling at my hair at my computer.

Is this done? No. Should there be an extra step before the ending and preceding stanza? Yes. Am I sick of this poem for now? Absolutely.

The Wayback

Somewhere in Iowa, the corn closed in
so close we high fived it from our windows
until our hands were mittened in tassels.

It was June. We called ourselves Vacationeers.
The rhythm of summer was a seamed highway.

If I had my choice, I opted for the Wayback.
That unique seat particular to the American station wagon.
A happy blip for our family.
We rode it right out of style.

I was a child. And children understand rules.
Handed down rules. Game rules.
Fingers in an L are a gun
you can point at other cars. Safely.
They don’t have to play. It’s the rules.
You can pretend to die. Bang is a magic word.
Magic words shouted outside guarantee your place.
Shotgun! Back! Wayback!
Choose your perspective.

I want to leave one time unbroken.
A little childhood clean. Sacrosanct.

If I say I saw the clouds in the Blue Mountains,
dropping around us like weary balloonists.
Believe me. Because I believe me.
If am the same age in these memories,
I am sure I was.

I get stuck in that seat.
Never a destination in view. Showing up last to anywhere.
You can get used to the past. This can become your window.

I only know I arrived when I leave.

The Kentucky of our minds rarely holds up.
Shotgun was where you could wear adultness.
Drink an extra coke, count the silver coins for tolls.
If your Mom was moodstruck, she would tell something
about your Dad, described with could of and was.
His face. Books. Your likenesses.
If you drove through his state, you’d never stop.

Why does every other here feel like vacation?
I am somehow still waiting for that wagon.
To honk the horn, tell me to call my place again.

California Rainy Day

We are in California and it is raining again. Now I know this is nothing compared to the blizzard we missed in New York but it is sort of a strange experience for me. California-wise. This place is the place of No Weather, of Endless Sun, and Clouds Are Scared To Show weather.

I can't remember the last time I've been able to just sit, write, and post. To rain outside. I think I could do a writer's retreat somewhere rainy. Be forced to stay indoors. Write my brains out all day. I actually have my days here sectioned out by projects.

SUNDAY, MONDAY, TUESDAY - Niagara Falls Project

-this is a graphic novel that Tyson and I are working on about the barrel riders of Niagara Falls, it should be pretty cool. His friend Maris is illustrating it and his style is fascinating and deeply cool.

WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY - Poetry Book

-in August I went to Canada to organize my first book of poetry. Aaron Allen was gracious and awesome to let me crash at his sweet cabin in Waterton. I had blog posts about it a while ago. Anyway, I've been editing and adding ever since. My tentative plan is to start sending out to first book contests in January.

SATURDAY, SUNDAY, MONDAY - Scripts/Film Projects

-I have a bunch of scripts I'm backed up on. Three web series, one cartoon web series, and two scripts for festival shorts. Besides the short we already shot that is being edited by our editor, Ed.

But I need to finish my original pilot script. My friend, Nick, keeps telling me if I want to get an agent that's key. So I'm going to just focus on that for a while. I can't tell you what it's about though. I'm superstitious that way.

So here's something I wrote today. Aaron encouraged to write further poems in this vein. As always, this is a first draft. Happy New Year! Here's some death!

Generic Obituary for Anyone #2

She had a name for herself
and it was a sound many made.
She lived in the place she lived.
A lover of food, she would eat it
often, even three times a day.
If there was weather, she noticed.
She is gone but her weight on earth remains.
She had plans for herself, unshared
formulated during long looks into the distance.
Her habit was to enter rooms
and switch all lights to ON.
The world is indeed darker with her gone.
She had a quiet reserve of hopes and dreams.
For those of you who knew her, we send condolences.
For those who didn’t,
we can’t speak enough on what you missed.
Somedays for her were enough to live.
Otherdays she was capable and indomitable.
There will be a service in a place at a time.
When it is finished, we will pull the earth over her.
She will look like she is sleeping.
And that she will not dispute.
She is survived by all of us.

Publishment and Other News

I've been meaning to talk about this for a while but it's been sort of a whirlwind month for me. The show I was working on wrapped and then I moved onto another show.

This new show may involve penguins.

TV/Film is weird. If you're not part of the creative process, you're moving from show to show. They just need bodies mainly. Once you become integral to a show, you stay and they pay you to stick around.

In the middle of all that, I wrote something for VH1.

One day I'll be holding creative reins. Not yet. I'm just a body for now. For two months and then on to another tv show.

But I've been writing lots of stuff lately and doing some little videos on Xtranormal that I'll post up here.

So Joe Griffin, friend and superfriend, approached me a while ago about publishing poems in OxMag from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. A friend of his was revamping the magazine and he wanted to know if he could use something I wrote for the startup.

I was very flattered and this is the result.

OXMAG

Sometimes Val and I talk about what a blog is. And why it is used. I guess mine is just to check in. Get out of my brainspace. Say hey and tell you what I'm so occupied with.

Also, I want to talk about our film shoot we just finished. It was awesome. And cold. Yet awesome.

Decisions and Other Bad Words

Once again, I did not finish my 30 day project. This was by design.

I have way too much on my plate.

This is what I fear to be: Jack of all Trades, Master of None.

I actually have this phrase consistently stuck in my head. I find myself trying to do too much. Take on too many types of artistic endeavors.

Sometimes I get too involved with improv. And I think, "Yeah, this is what I want to do. Improv." But then I read a book of poetry and realize how much I miss it.

Then I'll act in something and think about that. Then I'll think about being a teacher only or I'll think about only writing plays or whatever. Sometimes I'm a goldfish.

I was going to list goals for the rest of this year. Things that I'm trying to accomplish but they sound so pretentious. So big.

I'll keep them to myself for now. Maybe I'll post them when I finish them.

Sometimes you just need some time.

Day 8 - Zuihitsu Day 2

I keep on keeping on. I think I'm a day behind now. I will post two poems tomorrow. Make up. Because I want to post during the day. But I've been getting home late. Because I'm so popular. Among poplars. I hang out with trees. I'm tired. I have weird jokes this late.

Here's another part of my zuihitsu. It's a journal essentially. Which is a thing i don't really keep. But then I fill up tons of moleskines with writing so what I am doing? I was thinking about this as I was writing this.


No World But This – Zuihitsu Day 2

If I never feared mortality,
if I never feared man or war
I could be a mountain, moving alive
time would spin away from me
all persons becoming cut flowers

~*~

I could sleep a century
I could keep a century alive
I could keep a country life
I could sleep a country’s life

~*~
I remember being young
saying things I thought were new,
as if I had peered into the world
and found a new vein of silver
thought that no one else had plumbed
I told a girlfriend that “Hate was not the opposite of Love,
but Indifference is.”
I was so impressed with myself
I told this to her Mom as well
and she nodded, a mother’s nod
to a toddler holding up an object
and saying, “red”, “ball”, “play”

later, I learned I was not new
I was walking in deep ruts of thought
I have not said anything original
yet

~*~
this mash? this bog of pulp and ink?
in Sunday School they told us to journal
but I chronicle nothing here, no day, no significance
I only write poetry and half poetry and bad awfulness
I will not ever call poetry
and sometimes dialogue between a fictional person or three
maybe a comedy bit I’m working out,
but a journal? can’t be

who would read this?
progeny? (I haven’t made any)
peers? I’d be mortified to show them

~*~
I’ve forgotten how to edit
my poems emerge as big as my life
1:1 scale
as I walk, sometimes I write I walk
uglier words hang on
like love handles, plantar’s warts, eczema
things I should treat, freeze off
but I get too caught up in sunsets
stare off and forget the form
between my hands
Or I’m busy digging for winter signs,
a raw November, where I will not rake again
this white page will snow over my mistakes
the rustling clauses beneath, of thoughts
broke off but wrote
but rote
but written
but rid of
I am sorry there is so much
for you to get through
sometimes I just keep castling
on top of this swamp
as deep as the walls are tall

Day 7 - Zuihitsu

I got home too late for this one. I thought about cheating and changing the time zone but whatever.

So this form I'm going to attempt over the next few days is a zuihitsu. Now it's not really broken into days but I have not the time nor attention this week to sit down for the hours needed to accomplish this.

This is the definition a la wikipedia.

Zuihitsu (随筆^?) is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings. The name is derived from two Kanji meaning "to follow" and "brush", and thus works of the genre should be considered not as traditionally planned literary pieces but rather as casual or random jottings down of thought by their authors.

So it's an excuse to be a little random I suppose, but it's also a very exciting form that I learned from my teacher and friend Kimiko Hahn. The Narrow Road to the Interior is a breathtaking book.

No World But This – Zuihitsu Day 1

Dear Parallel You,
have we ever agreed again
when you split from me, or maybe I from you
did we leave like lovers cold
was there a moment when in your mirror
we perhaps, were both at a breakfast table
and a spoon held at the same time
felt like a tuning fork, felt strung to something
and if you looked over toward
a somewhere, a felt direction
because I was

~*~

I’m wearing a pair of jeans Valerie washed for me and in the left pocket is a mess of washed paper
that I’m trying to decipher, that seems to me like a memory I need. But the metaphor seems so easy, I chuck it all. Start over every day.

~*~
my boss told me he doesn’t feel himself
because he has no hat on today
and his hair is wild as a fire
he said his dog ate it
ripped all around the Yankee N and Y
had the bill in his teeth when he woke up
it started right when he came in
the dog just kept barking
he suspects it was the smell of his sickness
he has a cold, wasn’t feeling himself
he keeps saying that
as if you is a feeling
you can lose like sight

~*~
Sometimes I wake up sure I’ve drowned.
When I do, Valerie is there
to talk me into the air again.

Day 6 - Other Worlds

Many Worlds. Many Worlds. I'm obsessed with physics. I tell Valerie that I'm a freelance scientist. She tells me there's no such thing.

I'm going to write another blog post today about projects. My mind is in so many camps right now. I'm going to take a night off tomorrow night and just play some mindless videogames or watch a movie.

Fiction

I keep a book of fiction hid,
illustrated in almosts and coulds.
Sometimes I will open, read a lost story.
Here is my mother, still in Virginia,
never returned, her hair as long as her will.
She makes none of us. She lives a different happy.
This is my brother with his twin alive.
His twin has a name. It is not Craig
and now there is no Craig. We never know him.
Here is my Aunt Connie. She never teaches me the C word.
Here is the rabbit I lawnmowed. Whole.
Here we are rich. Here we never lived.
Here we are just altered a few different choices.
Here I am without a star to steer by.
Here I am never born and nothing changes that much.
My grandma is a socialite in one world, her husband stoic and handsome.
There’s our trees back with no tornado.
There’s our house carved through.
Here is Craig teaching me something.
Here is Craig without an easy smile.
There is a story of my grandpa keeping his bike shop,
he never finds religion, his rides get longer and longer.
One day he is found twisted around his bike.
He never married anyone to miss him.
There goes my uncle, a lawyer in this dream.
In this version, my sister has no mirrors.
In this one, my wife marries another man.
We are too happy with each other at parties.
I am jealous and she never knows.
In another, she has everything and I am not part.
In three of these, I suffer from ideas of eyes within eyes.
In sixteen realities, my mother has no doctors.
In seventy two, Allen and Craig never become my brothers
and I never read those.
In fact, there are four thousand eight hundred and ten stories
which I never open and never will.
And there is one tale, a bit like this,
which I keep a bookmark in. I never read ahead.
I never want to know the ending.