Gabriel Gudding is like Jonathan Swift. He is nothing like Bilbo Baggins, save the hair on his feet. The Yahoos shit on Gulliver’s head, you’ll recall.

*

When I was in my early twenties my two favorite writers were Raymond Carver and Vladimir Nabokov. I have written, in my short life, two “mature” short stories; one was a Carver rip-off, the other a Nabokovian exercise in style. The Carver rip-off won $1500 in a contest for undergraduate writers at my school. The Nabokov rip-off is partially published on the web somewhere. Soon after, I discovered that poetry was shorter, and therefore more satisfying to write. I plan on returning to fiction on my 50th birthday, assuming I live that long.

*

Kent is sending me the Alice B. Toklas cookbook. Many thanks in advance, Kent. I plan on cooking the famously fussy recipes contained therein and posting photographs and post-meal analyses on this very site. Stay tuned.

*

I was confused when I first encountered Carver’s stories. I mean—nothing happened! Now I see them as little lyric poems in prose. They each illuminate a tiny aspect of the human condition, pared down to its essential isness. Or maybe Gordon Lish did that part.

*

The epic (and all narrative) unfolds across spatial and temporal axes. Odysseus travels a long distance; many years pass. The lyric exists where the X and Y axes intersect. At a single point. Bugs trapped in amber, we are.

*

I spent all morning writing about the Black Arts movement, particularly the poetry and politics of Haki R. Madhubuti/Don L. Lee and Elisabeth Frost’s book, The Feminist Avant-Garde. My brain hurts just a little.