presents!

Realized I haven't posted anything in a few days... been so busy! Packet 3 went out today, stuffed full of new poems, and now it's lot's of photos to edit, my lecture to revise, then another photo shoot this weekend...

But I've come with presents!

Here's a new poem from Matt Hart over at the very cool LEVELER.

Also some very cool poems from Adam Fell at Phantom Limb. 

And then there's this, which needs no introduction or explanation. Just put your headphones on, turn up the volume, and enjoy.

this post is more for me than you, but Hi! Welcome!

It's that time again when I need to just stop, think, and type out all of the ideas/projects/tasks floating around in my brain before they crash into each other and start a fire.

I'm overwhelmed but in a good way! I'd always rather be overwhelmed than underwhelmed. First, my new position with H_NGM_N (like us on Facebook!) has exposed me to and connected me with so many talented and inspiring individuals. I am blown away and so thankful to be in contact with these people, to read their work and share it with others. And the more I read, the more I want to write! I want to write all the time! I'm suddenly overcome by ideas for my own work and there's so much I want to do with my manuscript! SO MUCH. I just need to find the time! I'll be sending Packet #3 off in a week and after that have just two left... I'm at the point where I kind of want to tear everything up and make a big mess. Probably that's what is going to happen.

Also, my lecture! At graduation residency I have to give a lecture, and I just got this book from the library that has my ideas exploding left and right... I have a draft of the lecture that my advisor responded to, and I have quite a bit of revision/editing that needs to be done... but need to wait until I have an entire day, a full 8 hours or something, to devote my attention to it.

And photography! I've gone back and forth about whether I should continue with the business, and after photographing a gorgeous wedding this past weekend, I feel confident about continuing the business for now.. I've launched a sister site to my main website, called FOTO, as a way to better promote what I really want to do. I love photographing people but am most interested in fashion and weddings and engagements... so this site is geared towards that. With the photography business, as with most businesses, it's very easy, and tempting, to get caught up in trends. There is SO MUCH you can do with a business, and I found myself becoming wrapped up in the trends, in the blogging and the packaging and all of that, the commercial side of things, when really I'm coming at photography as an artist. I am not a business person. I am an artist, and that's how I need to market myself. The people who dig that will hire me, and that's cool. Photography will never be my full-time career, so I'm okay with not being the most popular or being featured in Minnesota Bride and all of that... BUT, I do have a ton of photo projects coming up! SIX couple/engagement sessions within the next month! And besides Facebook, word of mouth from clients is the best advertising.

On top of all of that, plus some other projects, I just started a part-time job at a liquor store in town. As much as freelancing is awesome because you get to be your own boss and make your own schedule, it's also awesome to be clocked in, knowing you're making money, knowing you will get a paycheck, however small it may be. I've got big dreams and need some money to make them happen! And student loans I'll need to start repaying once I graduate this winter... Yikes.

My "down-time" is the time I get to spend with Evelyn. The past few days here have been crisp and wonderful, and we love being outside! Yesterday we went for a great nature walk, found a "deer castle," played at the park, stood still and breathed in the air...

She's my love bug and keeps me sane, reminds me to look at the pretty pink sky, the moon and the stars...

H_NGM_N is rad

If you haven't spent some time over at H_NGM_N, you should! There you will find a current issue of wonderful & eclectic poems, prose, and even some comics, from various & talented artists & writers. You will also find yourself easily lost in the beautiful archives, or perhaps you'll wander over to purchase one of the books H_NGM_N has published (Alexis Orgera's incredible stellar book of poems How Like Foreign Objects is on sale until the 27th! Pay whatever you want!), or maybe buy a T-shirt? Or maybe YOU are a writer and have some words of your own you'd like to submit!

Why am I telling you all this stuff about H_NGM_N? Besides the fact that this is a very cool journal, I am also now a part of the H_NGM_N team! (click here to see the proof!) As you'll see, my official title is Social Media Wrangler, which makes me feel super cool & bad ass.

Something else that's super cool -- this Coldfront interview with Nate Pritts, editor-in-chief and founder of H_NGM_N. Here Nate gets into some details about the magazine's history, but he also says some great things about poetry, the modern world, technology, etc.... making this an excellent Sunday morning read...

Some quotes I love too much to not share:

"All this structure – online environments & categorical identity schema – is a strategy, a device to get us to give over the only thing that matters: the spark of intrinsic humanity in each of us. Poetry can be, is allowed to be, a record of how we save our souls."


"Also, let’s not use the word “hurdle” – or even “challenges” or especially “problems.” I love the course & I
love the obstacles. Without them, without this playing field, you’d have no idea how fast I can run. We
need the constraint just as much as we need the universe it tightens."


"We’re using poetry to accomplish all these very low level things – things that are important & 
human & fun, but we’re not reaching its potential. We’re not sounding it out, putting everything of
ourselves into it & so we’re not getting out of it as much as we could. We’re playing games with the only
weapon we have left."

"Everything I have in my life that means anything at all is a result of, or tied to, poetry."



Really, go read the rest and see for yourself.

xx

I first came across this poem about a month or so ago. It's so beautiful, I keep coming back to it.

GRADUALISM by Kenneth Rexroth

We slept naked
On top of the covers and woke
In the chilly dawn and crept
Between the warm sheets and made love
In the morning you said
“It snowed last night on the mountain”
High up on the blue-black diorite
Faint orange streaks of snow
In the ruddy dawn
I said
“It has been snowing for months
All over Canada and Alaska
And Minnesota and Michigan
Right now wet snow is falling
In the morning streets of Chicago
Bit by bit they are making over the world
Even in Mexico even for us”

source

Also, The xx!! Just got the new album. Will see them in concert next month... 

disappointed

I usually don't say stuff like this but

shame on all the people using the anniversary of September 11th as a way to politically attack each other.

That's all.

Here is a really good poem.

I want this world

Feel like I should walk around with this poem taped to my forehead.

slow it down...

Peaceful/beautiful Saturday morning.

Slow it down.. Come back to bed...



Also, this amazing poem by Rich Villar as published in Thrush Poetry Journal.

Come On All You Ghosts....

This is the name of the book I've been reading this week, by the incredible Matthew Zapruder. Usually when I really love a book I devour it as fast as I can, but this book is so fucking good, so rich, that I find myself reading it slowly, bit by bit, savoring each poem as long as I can, because I never want the book to be over.

today my mouth
is an artificial lake
I'm too tired to swim across

I can't believe it's already September. Besides reading Come On All You Ghosts I've also been writing my ass off, averaging a new poem every other day, constantly revising both these new and old poems, constantly talking to myself in my head. And what's different this semester is that I actually have a working manuscript. With a title. With sections. With a six-page title poem in the middle. In a way I've been writing my first book since I began writing at all, but for the first time I feel like I'm writing my first book. Like, I tell people, yeah, I'm writing my first book! Of course, for it to be a book someone has to want to publish it, but we'll save that talk for 2013...or 14? I have no idea.

In other news, my friend Drew is doing cool things over at Tin House and Poor Claudia; my friend and VCFA roommate Emmalea is preparing the third issue of em:me  magazine; and the other day I got an email that one of my poems is going to be published in the next issue of The Coachella Review.

Oh, and in July I was asked to join the newly established literary magazine, Split Rock Review, as a contributing reader, which so far has been a very cool experience.  Things are happening.

And a really big thing that's happening:: Evelyn started preschool on Tuesday! A super awesome Montessori school with local art on the walls and plants and beautiful things all around. She loves going there, which I love.

My heart feels like a field of calves in the sun.
My heart is wired directly to the power source of mediocre songs.
I am trying to catch a ray of sunlight in my mouth. 

(also Zapruder. Go buy his book.)

word

Steak Night from Daniel Lichtenberg on Vimeo.

Poem for Saturday

"The Rival" by Sylvia Plath

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. 
You leave the same impression 
Of something beautiful, but annihilating. 
Both of you are great light borrowers. 
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected, 

And your first gift is making stone out of everything. 
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here, 
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes, 
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous, 
And dying to say something unanswerable. 

The moon, too, abuses her subjects, 
But in the daytime she is ridiculous. 
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand, 
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity, 
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide. 

No day is safe from news of you, 
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

in case you were wondering

"The function of the poem is to fuck the words good and hard." -- Breyten Breytenbach, Intimate Stranger

In other news, these mid-August Minnesota allergies are eating my face. I look and feel like I have pink eye. I'm ready for fall.

Poem by Richard Brautigan

Today I've been responding to emails from friends and working on my lecture, the inspiration for which is Richard Brautigan, so I've been absorbing myself in his life and work, which is a wonderful way to spend the first half of a Saturday... the second half will be spent photographing a wedding reception... 


"On Real Estate" by Richard Brautigan


I have emotions
that are like newspapers that
     read themselves. 

I go for days at a time
trapped in the want ads. 

I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house: 

     18 rooms
     $37,000
     I'm yours
     ghosts and all.

PANK MAGAZINE

PANK Magazine is a very rad literary magazine. I am therefore very excited to have a poem featured in the latest issue, a special parenting issue. Click here and scroll to the bottom to read my poem, but definitely spend time checking out the other pieces. I'm honored to share space with such talented writers, and thankful to editors Roxane Gay and Amye Archer for putting together this incredible issue.

xxo

"Short Lecture on Shakespeare"

by Mary Ruefle, "Twenty-Two Short Lectures," Madness, Rack, and Honey, Wave Books, 2012

"They say there are no known facts about Shakespeare, because if it were his pen name, as many believe, then whom that bed was willed to is a moot point. Yet there is one hard cold clear fact about him, a fact that freezes the mind that dares to contemplate it: in the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak."

used without permission. sorry.

first lines: "Sudden Geography" by Diane LeBlanc

"Then one morning you wake up and the world seems as hard and slippery as an avocado pit. . . "

Read the rest of Diane LeBlanc's poem, "Sudden Geography," here at Hayden's Ferry Review.

move me

". . . when you think about it, poets always want us to be moved by something, until in the end, you expect that a poet is someone who is moved by everything, who just stands in front of the world and weeps and laughs and weeps and laughs. . . " 


-- Mary Ruefle


from "On Sentimentality," Madness, Rack, and Honey, Wave Books, 2012

badass poet: Eileen Myles

"Movie" by Eileen Myles

You’re like

a little fruit

you’re like

a moon I want

to hold

I said lemon slope

about your

hip

because it’s one

of my words

about you

I whispered

in bed

this smoothing

the fruit &

then alone

with my book

but writing

in it the pages

wagging

against my knuckles

in the

light like a

sail.

from Sorry, Tree, Wave Books, 2007

heavy poem

      "The City"
by C.P. Cavafy
Trans. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,

find another city better than this one.

Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong

and my heart lies buried like something dead.

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?

Wherever I turn, wherever I look,

I see the black ruins of my life, here,

where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.

This city will always pursue you.

You’ll walk the same streets, grow old

in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.

You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:

there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.

Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,

you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

"Letters to a young poet.."

My friend and incredibly talented writer Adam Love gave a lecture this morning titled "Letters to a Young Poet," in which he so beautifully addressed the nature of the MFA program, how it's about so much more than just getting a degree, that writing is living a lifestyle as opposed to practicing a profession, and how Rainer Maria Rilke basically set up the model of the low-residency MFA program, in his remarkable Letters to a Young Poet, the collection of letters he wrote to Franz Kappus, the young, confused, anxiety-ridden poet. Adam addressed the difficulty of explaining to others our reasons for writing, for paying $40,000 to earn a degree that isn't "practical" in the way an MBA might be practical. He addressed the necessary loneliness of being a writer, our obsession with not only language but what it means to be human..."The writing life is lonely, bred from your solitude..." he said, and he quoted the poet and former VCFA student Andrew Nurkin, who notes that the MFA is so much more than a degree, that "The MFA is a set of experiences, relationships, and revelations..."

There's so much more I could say but don't have the time right now, so I'll leave you with an excerpt from one of Rilke's letters:

"No one can advise or help you -- no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse."

"There's not enough room in the world..."

"There's not enough room in the world
to turn your life around..."

--from a poem by Mark Cox, read this evening, thunder outside