Wave

Ron Silliman points out that back in the mid-seventies an earthquake in China claimed four or five times the number of people killed by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, yet he can't recall ever having heard about it at the time. Given that it was China in the days before 24/7 cable news, it is reasonable to assume that most people westward never knew about it either. What I've been thinking about these past few days is how

1) the constant flood of visuals, and
2) the fact that several hard-hit locations are tropical paradises (at least those we're being shown)

affect both our feelings about and responses to such disasters and where the media points the cameras. For a comprehensive list of known disasters, many of which dwarf this tsunami in numbers killed, go here.

poem

After Years Abroad

The traffic’s increase, easing up Main.
The fullness of the pines that line the park.
The stark newness of the architecture.
Impermanence is, in fact, just

another name for perfection.
Still it all seems too quickly over
whelmed, the world relentlessly
arriving, a wave that does not reminisce

or dream. And back at the old school,
its rust-red brick intact (the sheer
fact of it!) they’ve automated the bell.

I spend most days now at the harbor,
among gulls, the smell of gas, the familiar
sag of that rope against the bare spar.

Holidays

Posts will be sporadic, at best, until the New Year. I'll be driving south from Illinois to Florida to see the folks, with a couple days in Macon, GA on the way. Happy Holidays.

Tost

Well, all I really have to say about Invisible Bride is that it's a very enjoyable book and especially strong for a first book - and I don't mean just better than average with a handful of gems sprinkled throughout. Every page is a pleasure or at the very least contains one, usually more than one.

Fence

I realized later that the Third Factory thing is a few years old now. Still it's an interesting thread, and I think the issues it raises are still relevant. At the center of this - it seems to me - is the acknowledgment that the old heirarchies of validation for writers - these mags, those presses, etc. - are no longer there. While established journals still carry some clout and will look good on an acknowledgments page, many new magazines have appeared in the past decade or so, even in the few years since this TF conversation, that have gained respect and a readership quickly.

Underlying the criticism of Fence (and APR and others), I think, is an anxiety that comes from not knowing "who to trust" when it comes to taste-making. Which magazine will give my work more credibility? Is it Fence? Is it Shiny? Is it No:? Is it a mag I haven't heard of? I doubt anyone would admit to feeling this anxiety, because it's admitting that we really want a heirarchy of publishers (or heirarchies), that we are more comfortable with a center. This decentered free-for-all that we seem to have now is exactly what a lot of writers had been wanting for decades, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to be enjoying this?

In any case, a magazine that publishes both Joyelle McSweeney and Alicia Ostriker is going to get knocked for something. Add to that the fact that the magazine seems to be doing well and people are going to whine. For the record, my work has appeared in both Fence and APR. It has also appeared in the now defunct O-blek as well as The Laurel Review. Is that significant?

Them's Feudin' Words

Thanks to Tony Tost for turning me on to the exchange going on at Third Factory about Fence, or what Fence seems to represent, or not represent. Depending on who you ask.

And the day of the week.

I read Joan Houlihan's Boston Comment (?) essay of a year or so ago, I-N-C-O-H-E-R-E-N-C-E, in which she faulted Fence for publishing what she felt was, well, what her essay's title implies. That essay touched off one of those more or less predictable debates about "the state of the art." The conversation at TF has raised some different things, and I'll talk more about that in a post tomorrow. For now I'll just say that I wish TF would use a larger font-size. It's a real drag reading the longer posts.

just a poem

Busy figuring final grades and such.


---


The Past

I didn’t fully understand the word
DISINTEGRATION, but I saw TREASON,
IGNITE, RIOTS, and I beat them all
whose lists ended with EAT, EAR, TIN.

You have the artist’s selective memory.
I won a poetry contest in third grade.
See? And fourth. And fifth? I left that school.
The first of many. Now, tell the truth.

I knew IVY (“I told you so.”),
COPPERHEAD (“Get in the house.”),
MOON (“What on earth is the matter
with you, child?”). It’s following me.

Invisible Bride

Tony Tost's Invisible Bride showed up on the porch late yesterday. I'll be dipping into it throughout the day as students fail to show up for conferences. Things I immediately like: no table of contents, and no three-section structure (that needs to be outlawed). And leave it to Heff to work food into his blurbs. I miss his soups.