Tuesday, December 30, 2008
End of year self-evaluation
I have a knack for projecting my own neuroses (limping along)--borne of the restless depression that has provided a certain bleak solace for as long as I can remember--onto those I love and toward whom I wish no harm. In the words of David Byrne, "God laughs at people like us."
Monday, November 03, 2008
I just had an MRI
It was sort of like being stuffed into a coffin full of jackhammers and hummingbirds.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Should all blurbs be positive?
I don't think so. I think a blurb should pique one's interest in a book. Or offer a perspective that differs from the usual fluff that hails the poet as the next coming of Koch or Christ or whoever-you-think-is-the-big-shit.
This is why I was somewhat delighted (no, not insulted--I value candor--though I wish he'd say how he really feels) by Professor Mayhew's non-review of my little by-now-forgotten "book" on his superior blog:
Thank you sir.
This is why I was somewhat delighted (no, not insulted--I value candor--though I wish he'd say how he really feels) by Professor Mayhew's non-review of my little by-now-forgotten "book" on his superior blog:
*Anthony Robinson. Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision. 2006.
I was supposed to write a blurb for this book at one point, but the first line is "i don't need your praise! i have self-loathing to work on!" So I felt it didn't really need my praise. Many of the poems take place during the AWP convention in Austin a few years back, at which I was also in attendance.
The book still doesn't need my praise.
Thank you sir.
Friday, October 24, 2008
a thought
y'know, I think I'm just going to sit here and wait for someone to ask me for a book of poesy. Yeah. That's the ticket.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
dissertation countdown
Deadline: August 30th. Ack.
*
So Zach "Mansuit" Schomburg lives in PDX now? Hmm...
*
Gummi Bears
*
So Zach "Mansuit" Schomburg lives in PDX now? Hmm...
*
Gummi Bears
Friday, June 06, 2008
I wasn't tagged, but it's Friday morning and there is very little work to do at work, ya dig?
What were you doing five years ago?
1.) Living in Eugene in a huge 2 bedroom apartment with a great kitchen.
2.) Studying for my PhD oral exam.
3.) Housesitting in Portland for newlywed friends who were away in Hawaii.
4.) Growing a gigantic beard.
5.) Writing poems to Kristin / receiving poems from Kristin.
What are five things (in no particular order) on your to-do list for today?
1.) Make sure that check from the part-time gig got direct deposited.
2.) Give award to graduating student at the end-of-year open house at my job.
3.) Clean the mildew off the bathroom ceiling.
4.) Organize my home office.
5.) Send negative vibes Phil Jackson's way.
What are five snacks you enjoy?
1.) Jelly Beans
2.) Cheese w/ Crackers
3.) Beer
4.) Red Vines
5.) Flank Steak
What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?
1.) Pay off all debt, buy the folks a new house, buy the self a new house.
2.) Travel the world, in coach.
3.) Promote poetry and other arts.
4.) Set up a lifetime stipend for Joe Massey.
5.) Finally, finally, finally learn how to dress properly and buy some new threads.
What are five of your bad habits?
1.) Procrastination.
2.) Overly aggressive consumption of malt beverages.
3.) Starting books and not finishing them. Or finishing them a year later.
4.) Cooking too much food to actually eat.
5.) Leaving a large carbon footprint everywhere I go.
What are five places you have lived?
1.) Oakridge, Oregon
2.) Meridian, Mississippi
3.) San Diego, California
4.) Lemoore, California
5.) Eugene, Oregon
What are five jobs you have had?
1.) US Navy Admin Clerk (YN2, y'all!)
2.) Assistant to an antique book seller
3.) Newspaper circulation desk customer service rep
4.) Writing Instructor-Academic Advisor (current job)
5.) Maker of wooden seats in a furniture mill
Which five people do you want to tag?
1.) Anybody (are there 5 of you?) who happens to be reading this blog.
2.) My mom
3.) My dad
4.) My gramma
5.) Jonathan Mayhew
1.) Living in Eugene in a huge 2 bedroom apartment with a great kitchen.
2.) Studying for my PhD oral exam.
3.) Housesitting in Portland for newlywed friends who were away in Hawaii.
4.) Growing a gigantic beard.
5.) Writing poems to Kristin / receiving poems from Kristin.
What are five things (in no particular order) on your to-do list for today?
1.) Make sure that check from the part-time gig got direct deposited.
2.) Give award to graduating student at the end-of-year open house at my job.
3.) Clean the mildew off the bathroom ceiling.
4.) Organize my home office.
5.) Send negative vibes Phil Jackson's way.
What are five snacks you enjoy?
1.) Jelly Beans
2.) Cheese w/ Crackers
3.) Beer
4.) Red Vines
5.) Flank Steak
What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?
1.) Pay off all debt, buy the folks a new house, buy the self a new house.
2.) Travel the world, in coach.
3.) Promote poetry and other arts.
4.) Set up a lifetime stipend for Joe Massey.
5.) Finally, finally, finally learn how to dress properly and buy some new threads.
What are five of your bad habits?
1.) Procrastination.
2.) Overly aggressive consumption of malt beverages.
3.) Starting books and not finishing them. Or finishing them a year later.
4.) Cooking too much food to actually eat.
5.) Leaving a large carbon footprint everywhere I go.
What are five places you have lived?
1.) Oakridge, Oregon
2.) Meridian, Mississippi
3.) San Diego, California
4.) Lemoore, California
5.) Eugene, Oregon
What are five jobs you have had?
1.) US Navy Admin Clerk (YN2, y'all!)
2.) Assistant to an antique book seller
3.) Newspaper circulation desk customer service rep
4.) Writing Instructor-Academic Advisor (current job)
5.) Maker of wooden seats in a furniture mill
Which five people do you want to tag?
1.) Anybody (are there 5 of you?) who happens to be reading this blog.
2.) My mom
3.) My dad
4.) My gramma
5.) Jonathan Mayhew
Friday, May 23, 2008
on a false spring
This is ridiculous. One week ago today it was 95 degrees fahrenheit. Today, it's 45, grey, and drizzling.
Monday, May 05, 2008
a non-blogger returns briefly to the blog
I spent most of Friday night watching Youtube video of Husker Du and Billy Bragg. Or was it Saturday afternoon? I don't remember. Weekends are like that these days--distinctly non-distinct. It was pretty odd for me to go from a .5 appointment at my job to about a 1.2 practically overnight. I work 8 to 5 Tuesday - Friday, and 9 am to 9 pm on Mondays. Sometimes, I come in on Sunday. Between the regular job(s) and the freelance stuff, I feel like I never have time to breathe, and Friday evening through Sunday bedtime seems like the same day. Not that it's a bad day--there's usually some cooking, some drinking, some reading, some video-viewing, some time with my lady, but...well, all of this is to say I'm really looking forward to summer.
*
I have a 9-month contract, but there is likely going to be funds enough for me to come in 1 or 2 days a week for the first 8 weeks of summer. This is good. If I'm lucky, they'll let me teach the UO Football Composition Bootcamp course again this September, which was taxing but enjoyable last year.
*
I note that 2 bloggers today (or I've noted today, I don't remember when the posts were written) have blogged about longing, or as one says, Sehnsucht. It occurs to me that I haven't had this feeling in a very long time. And I haven't been writing. And I'm sure the two must be connected. And it's not a matter of being in or out of or between love--I've experienced this emotion in all phases of relationshipness. It's not specific to a physical desire or desires. It's more of an emotional void that one knows is unfillable and simultaneously strives to fill. That part of me is gone. I don't know where it went. And so I should be content, right? But oddly, I'm not. Maybe that longing somehow defined me in a way that it no longer can. I still get depressed, still have huge waves of sadness, but no Sehnsucht.
*
There is dog sleeping under my desk. He looks simultaneously comfortable and put-out.
*
I have a 9-month contract, but there is likely going to be funds enough for me to come in 1 or 2 days a week for the first 8 weeks of summer. This is good. If I'm lucky, they'll let me teach the UO Football Composition Bootcamp course again this September, which was taxing but enjoyable last year.
*
I note that 2 bloggers today (or I've noted today, I don't remember when the posts were written) have blogged about longing, or as one says, Sehnsucht. It occurs to me that I haven't had this feeling in a very long time. And I haven't been writing. And I'm sure the two must be connected. And it's not a matter of being in or out of or between love--I've experienced this emotion in all phases of relationshipness. It's not specific to a physical desire or desires. It's more of an emotional void that one knows is unfillable and simultaneously strives to fill. That part of me is gone. I don't know where it went. And so I should be content, right? But oddly, I'm not. Maybe that longing somehow defined me in a way that it no longer can. I still get depressed, still have huge waves of sadness, but no Sehnsucht.
*
There is dog sleeping under my desk. He looks simultaneously comfortable and put-out.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Friday, May 02, 2008
फ्रिदय surprise
Three people I know, 2 from Eugene, 1 with whom I've read, another I've published, and another who is my boss, are all finalists for the 2008 Tupelo Press Snowbound (snow-something?) chapbook award.
Not that I'm all about the contests all of a sudden, but it was sorta cool to see the harmonic convergence.
Not that I'm all about the contests all of a sudden, but it was sorta cool to see the harmonic convergence.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
NaPoMoJoPo #1
EQUATION
for JMM
Pastrami
on rye
2 hours ago
& this
blue pad:
an algebra,
of sorts
*
It hit
the spot
& now
it hits
the spot
for JMM
Pastrami
on rye
2 hours ago
& this
blue pad:
an algebra,
of sorts
*
It hit
the spot
& now
it hits
the spot
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Slow Readings
Have a gander at the Canarium books website and check out their new "Slow Readings" feature. You'll find some familiar names there, and once name missing--
Jordan Davis begins his reading of Michael Morse's poem with "A divorce is..." and my absence from Canary-land feels not so much like a divorce but...more like the spouse who steps out to buy cigarettes and doesn't come back. Though, no, not nearly as abrupt as that. One day I noticed that The Canary was no longer and Canarium sprung up in its place with a new masthead. I wish them well and look forward to the books they'll publish this year. Of course I don't know WHO they're publishing, but I'm sure it will be good, interesting work.
*
Canary involvement for me began in the Spring of 2002--what became/was my watershed poetry year for a number of reasons--when I received and email from a man I didn't know, a man who was in Honduras, or Nicaragua, a man who was starting a literary journal, a literary journal that was to showcase, in its first issue, local writers. How he got my name or pegged me as a "local writer," I don't know. I never asked. I suggested we meet for coffee--and so we did some weeks later. It was at Espresso Roma, less than two blocks from where I sit and type this, that I first met Josh Edwards. We both had beards. He was wearing a trucker hat and I don't think he was being ironic. He showed me the nearly finished manuscript of what would become The Canary River Review (the one and only number under that guise). He also showed me a manuscript of his own work. That spring I fell in love in a weird impossible sort of way--that's in there too. That summer I wrote most of what would become my first (and still unpublished) book. I was writing every day, reading poems for the Canary, (what would become the Canary), exchanging feverish emails with a person half a continent away. I don't remember anything about graduate school at that time, though I certainly was there--I think I finished my MA that summer. My hair was long then. My beard was long. I was fat. And it was a good year.
Fast-forward to the summer of 2005. Was it really three years ago? I guess my poetry years are spaced three years apart. If that's so, 2008 should be a dandy.
Jordan Davis begins his reading of Michael Morse's poem with "A divorce is..." and my absence from Canary-land feels not so much like a divorce but...more like the spouse who steps out to buy cigarettes and doesn't come back. Though, no, not nearly as abrupt as that. One day I noticed that The Canary was no longer and Canarium sprung up in its place with a new masthead. I wish them well and look forward to the books they'll publish this year. Of course I don't know WHO they're publishing, but I'm sure it will be good, interesting work.
*
Canary involvement for me began in the Spring of 2002--what became/was my watershed poetry year for a number of reasons--when I received and email from a man I didn't know, a man who was in Honduras, or Nicaragua, a man who was starting a literary journal, a literary journal that was to showcase, in its first issue, local writers. How he got my name or pegged me as a "local writer," I don't know. I never asked. I suggested we meet for coffee--and so we did some weeks later. It was at Espresso Roma, less than two blocks from where I sit and type this, that I first met Josh Edwards. We both had beards. He was wearing a trucker hat and I don't think he was being ironic. He showed me the nearly finished manuscript of what would become The Canary River Review (the one and only number under that guise). He also showed me a manuscript of his own work. That spring I fell in love in a weird impossible sort of way--that's in there too. That summer I wrote most of what would become my first (and still unpublished) book. I was writing every day, reading poems for the Canary, (what would become the Canary), exchanging feverish emails with a person half a continent away. I don't remember anything about graduate school at that time, though I certainly was there--I think I finished my MA that summer. My hair was long then. My beard was long. I was fat. And it was a good year.
Fast-forward to the summer of 2005. Was it really three years ago? I guess my poetry years are spaced three years apart. If that's so, 2008 should be a dandy.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
from Salon.com
Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war.
-- Sen. John McCain, March 26, 2008
I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.
It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks.
-- President George W. Bush, March 13, 2008
-- Sen. John McCain, March 26, 2008
I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.
It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks.
-- President George W. Bush, March 13, 2008
Lots of poetry these days: Vitiello, Morrison, Maxwell, Patterson, Ammons (as always). Thanks Ahsahta!
*
Jenn with two Ns, if you're reading this, please drop me a proper line and let me know what you're up to these days--long time!
*
Latest culinary obsession: Ethiopian. It's really hard, though, to cook Ethiopian food for several days in a row and not smell like Ethiopian food for several days in a row.
*
Some of the most recent penis-enlargement Spam I've received is obtuse enough as to obscure its "message." This just in: "Summer is near--get the desired proportions." Um, okay.
*
Oh, I almost forgot. I'm live this week over at Linebreak. Check it out. I somehow get the feeling that Z. Schomburg doesn't know much about metal. BTW, Dave Mustaine really did change my life.
*
Jenn with two Ns, if you're reading this, please drop me a proper line and let me know what you're up to these days--long time!
*
Latest culinary obsession: Ethiopian. It's really hard, though, to cook Ethiopian food for several days in a row and not smell like Ethiopian food for several days in a row.
*
Some of the most recent penis-enlargement Spam I've received is obtuse enough as to obscure its "message." This just in: "Summer is near--get the desired proportions." Um, okay.
*
Oh, I almost forgot. I'm live this week over at Linebreak. Check it out. I somehow get the feeling that Z. Schomburg doesn't know much about metal. BTW, Dave Mustaine really did change my life.
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