Rest my head in
hand near the table
where a small black
radio plays an
instrumental I
have never heard but
know it… know its
emotional
audio content.
Notes plucked
from guitar strings
weave and release
a story that
resonates deep
within my soul
and makes me want
to cry and hope.
The announcer
says his name is
Ottmar Liebert
but does not share
the name… the name
of the song that
makes me want to cry.
Copies finally arrived. Actually, they arrived more than a week ago, but I’ve been rather busy and I am just getting around to posting about its arrival.
The Hunger CD design was completed months ago. The design process was completed via teleconference (Vanessa Boyd living in New York City) and digital transfer (i.e. emailing art/corrections/finals via high-speed internet). It’s nice to see the final manufactured product. Click on the image to see the inside and back of the package design on my Flickr photostream.
It has been awhile since mentioning a comic strip I’ve written and illustrated. The Indie has published the series since December. It is called Strange Familiar Place and features a magazine A & E editor (at least in the first two strips) and the main character Hudson Stillwater, a graphic designer.
Strange Familiar Place also features Heather (Hudson’s wife) and presents a slice-of-life drama of living and working (and losing a job) in a cultural creative urban mountain city (or at least a city that looks a lot like Asheville).
Published in The Indie, March 1, 2007
Published in The Indie, March 16, 2007Beginning in mid to late April, Strange Familiar Place will be illustrated by someone else. I’ll still be the principal writer, but I hired an illustrator that I am confident will present the visual narrative with a higher quality of art.
For some reason the term “economics” really spooks writers into silence. Why?
Weekly I post something on Write Stuff about writing or the craft of writing or anything relating to the writing process. I began a series on why writing contests are bad business for both writers and publishers. Here’s part one, two, and three.
The premise is this: economics is the study of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. Poets and writers produce literature that is distributed via publishers and booksellers to readers, book buyers, librarians.
I began the series of posts as a way to study what I do and why I am continually disappointed in writing contests and the works that win writing contests. For example, the Walt Whitman Award, presented by the Academy of American Poets (of which I am a member), is considered a prestigious contest. The Academy has published many fine poets. However, much of what wins and is published is considered informal personal narrative. That’s fine. It is a dominant form in America. But, as I discussed with a fellow poet at the Flood Fine Art Center poetry reading last week, it isn’t new–it’s the same tired narrative lyric every other professional poet is turning out. It’s like poetry in America is stuck in a rut and it can’t get out. Tony Tost’s Invisible Bride is one Walt Whitman Award winner that I recall in recent times that really pushed the vehicle of poetry in a new direction. But I’ll explore that more in this week’s Write Stuff post.
I’m not sure (because I’ve received minimal comments on the topic) if I’ve either struck a nerve with the folks at Write Stuff (they run a writing contest) or I’m being completely obtuse. What do you think?
The Flood Fine Art Center poetry reading series Friday night inspired me. Four talented poets read their work to a very supportive audience.
Stephen Kirbach
Shad Marsh
Jennifer Callahan
Lynette JamesSunday afternoon offered a Writers at Home Series at Malaprop’s Cafe & Bookstore. Patrick Finn and Michael McFee read from their work.
Michael McFee
FRI Mar. 16, 8:30pm
Poetry reading series features:
Stephen Kirbach, Shad Marsh, Jennifer Callahan & Lynette James.
Flood Fine Art Center located in the
Phil Mechanic Studios
UNC Asheville’s 2006-07 Writers at Home Series continues with readings by local writers Patrick Finn and Michael McFee at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 18, at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café, 55 Haywood St., downtown Asheville. Writers at Home is part of the Great Smokies Writing Program, a consortium of Western North Carolina writers and UNC Asheville. The event is free and open to the public.
Finn’s fiction has appeared in many literary publications, including “Quarterly West,” “Ploughshares,” “The Richmond Review,” “Third Coast,” “Punk Planet” and the Houghton Mifflin collection “Best American Mystery Stories 2004.” He received a Distinguished Story Citation in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and is currently working on a novel set in a bowling alley in the California desert. Finn teaches writing at UNC Asheville.
McFee has published nine volumes of poetry, most recently “Shinemaster” and “The Smallest Talk,” a collection of one-line poems. His first book of prose, “The Napkin Manuscripts,” was released in 2006. Finn is editor of “The Language They Speak is Things to Eat” and “This is Where We Live,” both anthologies of contemporary North Carolina poems and short stories. He has received numerous awards, including the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association, the UNC Chapel Hill Students’ Undergraduate Teaching Award and Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association. An Asheville native, McFee teaches poetry writing and North Carolina literature at UNC Chapel Hill.
Please call Elaine Fox@828/ 232-5122 with any questions you may have.
01. The neighborhood is haunted by a family of large, loud crows.
02. I had a flat tire on the way to work this morning. Providentially (or serendipitously), I noticed it within an mile of Expert Tires (an establishment that I frequent for car maintenance) where they had me back on the road in under 45 minutes with a new, free tire (because the one that blew had a warranty).
03. For bedtime stories, I read T.S. Eliot to my children.
04. I am reading a biography General George E. Pickett and noticed the other day, as I looked into a mirror, that with my hair parted on the left there is a curious resemblance. This is amusing for I’ve been told I resemble the actor Matthew Broderick when he starred in the film Glory.
On March 16, 2007, Flood Fine Arts Gallery will host its monthly poetry reading at 8:30pm, featuring the following poets:
Stephen Kirbach’s work can be found in Apocryphal Text, Shampoo, and Word for Word. He teaches Humanities at UNC–Asheville, and organizes the web-based writers’ forum, Wire Sandwich. Kirbach also hosts “Stunt-Cipher-Mayhem,” a radio show on WPVM that explores experimental music and sound.
Shad Marsh has published fiction in the flash fiction anthology Blink, and his poetry has appeared in Artvoice, Ghoti, Light, The Muse, The Pebble Lake Review, Vox, and Wire Sandwich. Marsh serves as the poetry editor for the E-zine Edifice Wrecked. He lives in Asheville, NC with his wife and son.
Jennifer Callahan studied creative writing at Austin Peay State University, and attended graduate school at Washington University. Her poetry has been printed in Zone 3. In 2004, Callahan participated in Words of War, an exhibit featuring writers’ and artists’ works about their personal experiences with war. Her photography has been displayed at Maryville College of Art and Design, Studio 101, and Untitled Nashville. Callahan currently lives in WNC, and works as a wedding photographer.
Lynette James will be the fourth poet. Her bio was unavailable at the time of this release.
Flood Gallery Fine Arts Center is located at 109 Roberts Street in the River Arts District of Asheville North Carolina. For more information, please contact Mark Prudowsky at info@floodgallery.org or call 828-776-8438.
Yesterday afternoon I heard Sebastian Matthews read from his new collection of poems, We Generous. The first time I heard him read was from his memoir, In My Father’s Footsteps.
As stated last week, this is a bit controversial: writing contests are bad business for both writers and publishers… why is this bad business for publishers? read more »
01. I totally blew it; regarding giving up beer and coffee for Lent.
02. But that last bottle of beer looked really lonely…
03. so I drank it down on the first day of Lent…
04. and followed it by a cup of coffee the next morning (second day of Lent).
05. For almost an entire week no ale nor coffee was consumed…
06. then last Thursday I had a coffee before a meeting…
07. and three cups of coffee the following Saturday morning with friends I hadn’t seen in almost three years…
08. and I stopped half way through a second cup of coffee this afternoon.
09. Oh, bother, Lent reminds me of how weak I really am.
10. I guess that’s the point.
The first in of a series titled “The Economics of Writing” appears here on Write Stuff. Let’s face it, every writer wants to be #1 on the NYT bestseller list. No writer wants to find copies of their beloved manuscript on the $1 rack at Barnes and Noble. Which means every writer wants to succeed. In order to succeed one needs a plan. I began writing this piece as a way to re-examine my writing/publishing strategy.
Awhile ago this essay was published in an obscure local paper. I didn’t think it made much of a difference in anyone’s life. Then one day a blogger emailed a reply that included these encouraging words:
“You are very right when you say we don’t have to have it all figured out and ourselves all neatly put together.”
A month later another reader emailed me these kind words:
“I appreciate what you wrote… it is encouraging to know that this is not an abnormal way to feel…”
It is nice to know a couple people were moved enough to respond to something I wrote–a blessing indeed. Then I came across a link to my essay from a blog that promotes a book titled Get Up Off Your Knees. One of the books editors, Beth Maynard, writes that
“it’s a nice piece of writing…”
And this encourages me to finish an essay I don’t want to write in a paper that many people overlook and I wonder why I should keep writing–why keep typing late into the night with the glow of the laptop screen guiding me to explore inner thoughts, doubts, questions of reality and spirituality and ritual.
01. Friday night’s poetry reading was fantastic…
02. it was the first time I read a blues poem…
03. it seemed well received.
04. Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout is a new favorite of mine… though I completely missed the duck-rabbit diagram philosophical overtones where its name originates.
05. My feet are still cold…
06. I’m dreaming of Wisconsin woodlands.
07. A consultant shouted at me in a business meeting…
08. but I suspect the consultant was a wee bit over-caffeinated.
09. I woke up at 5:40 AM.
10. I’m reading three business books: The Forward-Focused Organization, Rules for Revolutionaries, Kotler on Marketing (opps, four titles: How to become CEO).
Okay, my wife called this morning and said they mentioned my name on the local NPR radio station–WCQS. It is in regards to the Arts & Events Calendar–specifically the poetry reading at the Flood Fine Arts Center. I will be reading 6 to 10 poems with other poets–read press release.
So I had my three seconds of NPR fame. Back to your regular activities. But don’t forget–Friday night, 7PM, Flood Fine Art Center.
(Now if I can get Garrison Keillor to promote this gig…)
So, there’s this poetry reading Friday night and you’re all invited. And I think there’s drinks and food available. So, like, I guess I’ll see you there.
This week’s contribution to Write Stuff is a Valintine’s Day Card.
Flood Fine Art Center, Asheville, NC
Asheville, NC (January 31, 2007) – On February 16, 2007, Flood Fine Arts Gallery will host its monthly poetry reading at 7:00 PM, featuring the following poets:
Britt Kaufmann lives in Burnsville with her husband and three pre-school aged children. She hosts a local women’s open-mic at Blue Moon Books and serves on the steering committee for the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. Her work has appeared in The Pedestal, Literary Mama, Rapid River, WNC Woman, SouthLit.com, and The Mennonite.
Matthew Mulder is a senior contributor to an independent monthly newsmagazine, The Indie, a weekly contributor to Write Stuff (a Web log about writing), and had been published in ISM Quarterly, The Blotter Magazine, Rapid River, and other small press publications. His poetry chapbook, “Late Night Writing”, is available from Wasteland Press and Amazon.com. He lives with his wife and children in Asheville.
Brian Sneeden has lived and worked in Asheville for three years. His one-act play, Act of Kindness, is currently in rehearsal for a mid-March world-premier. Brian’s work has been found in Wander, Headwaters, and Eye for an Iris, as well as the spoken word compilation CD, Objects in Mirror. Brian is a recent recipient of the UNC-A Undergraduate Research Grant for Playwriting, and his first manuscript of poetry, Antlers, was completed earlier this year.
Barbara Gravelle spent many years of her writing life in San Francisco’s North Beach poetry scene. There she completed North Beach Women of the Fifties, a series of interviews and discourse with women integral to the Beat movement. Archangel Books published her first full-length poetry book, Dancing the Naked Dance of Love, in 1976. Gravelle is currently active in the local writers’ group, Women on Words, and is completing a new manuscript, The Woman on the Roof.
01. I did not watch the Super Bowl.
02. I am working at Biltmore Coffee Traders via their WiFi.
03. I find it ironic that Al Gore is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Inconvenient Truth when most of the US is experiencing record cold temperatures…
04. and I find it truly ironic that Rush Limbaugh is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize–it must be the dawn of a new ice age.
05. My feet are really cold…
06. and my office is so cold, like 50 degrees, that I am forced to migrate between Asheville’s WiFi hotspots…
07. and I rather enjoy the life of a WiFi nomad and may never return to the 10×10 windowless office…
08. and a French lady from Wisconsin called to tell me it is snowing and would I like to buy a house.
09. I think I need another coffee.
10. Sorry I didn’t say hi, EM, I was meeting with a client.
Check out four new poems published over at the Southern Cross Review. I don’t know what I like more–being published at SCR or being sandwiched between and W. H. Auden and a Rubens painting (visit the link to see what I mean).
One of my favorite paintings is Rubens’s painting “The Allegory of Peace and War.” In fact I wrote a lengthy paper about that painting during the university years. Though I am more familiar with W. H. Auden’s poem “As I Walked Out One Evening,” I enjoy the gravity of “The Unknown Citizen” and feel a bit comfortably out of place between two great artists.
Saturday morning’s beauty provided a wonderful backdrop to listen to Eleanor Wilner’s lecture about the conception of poems: “Like a piece of ice on a hot stove,
a poem must ride on its own melting….” (Frost)
Poems referenced included Robert Frost’s “The Woodpile” and Louise Glück’s “The Wild Iris.” I recall Denise Levertov mentioned, but I don’t recall the title of the work. I didn’t have access to the handouts that everyone seemed to be reading from.
I sat next to an open door of the Fellowship Hall and wrote a page full of notes, but as I reread them I realize my mind must have drifted a bit off topic. Maybe I was a bit distracted by the two young hipster students who brought their ceramic bowls full of crunchy cereal to the lecture and sat on the floor behind me and proceeded to consume it during the first portion of the lecture. Come on already! If you are to attend a morning lecture on poetry don’t bring crunchy granola feed and eat like cows, suck down some espresso and drag on cigarettes like true bohemians. What is wrong with the young people nowadays?
One point I noted with clarity is how the modernist poets, according to Wilner, fought the institution of formal meter of their predecessors and how the following generations of poets take for granted free verse and blank verse; poets of the 70s and 80s are blurry photocopied reproductions of the original modernist movement.
The latest volume of The American Poetry Review arrived in my mailbox Friday afternoon. So I tucked under my arm and drove off into the rain to the Fellowship Hall feeling very smart and silly at the same time. I don’t consider myself academic. So the act of trying to look smart in a room full of academics is a foolish charade on my part. Nevertheless, I did read the first few selections while waiting for the reading to begin. I’m still not sure what I think of Mary Kinzie’s poem.
Anyway, Jennifer Grotz, a poet, began the evening by reading two translations by a French poet. She reads slowly, deliberately pronouncing each word as if reading role call for a high school home room or like the Economics Teacher in the movie Ferris Bueller: “Bueller?… Bueller?… Bueller?” She bridged each poem with a bubbly, conversational introduction which the audience seemed to appreciate. Maybe her poems are better read on paper. Her work just didn’t resonate with me at all.
Danzy Senna, a novelist, read from her novel Autobody and read with drama; shifting narrator voice to character voices. She has a subtle lisp when pronouncing “innocence” and “success” and “stare.” Her narrative is captivating and populated with warm approachable characters and full of tense lines like: “the conversation went from ironic to earnest.” I really enjoyed her reading.
Brooks Haxton, poet, began with a humoristic, absurd, controversial (you had to be there to enjoy it) poem about the planning of a large mall in Syracuse. That poem pleased the audience greatly and they responded to all the right lines with loud laughter. Haxton presents his work as recitations, more or less, with the expert use of eye contact; makes one feel like each poem is a conversation or gift to listeners. I like this approach. He delivers the poems to the listener, not the pages on the lecturn.
Kevin McIlvoy read a delightful short fiction monologue from the point of view of a kid playing little league baseball. His animated presentation, complete with humming, singing, raising his left hand to catch a ball, revealed his master storytelling ability.
A quick review of last night’s Warren Wilson College public reading at the Fellowship Hall behind the Chapel. I arrived early and chatted with a local poet who is enrolled in the MFA program. He let me read some of his poems as we discussed future Flood Fine Art Center poetry readings–more on that later.
I don’t remember the first reader. She is a novelist and, with all due respect, I couldn’t really get into her prose. It didn’t interest me in the least. I’m sure she is a good writer, but her story just didn’t engage me at all.
The highlight of the evening for me was Mark Jarman’s reading. He read from a forth coming book titled “Epistles” that evoked such lines as: “to some, bliss is when the body becomes words…” and “God has committed you to memory…” Jarman read each line as if delivering a homily; consistent, calculating the gravity of each word, line, poem. This is my first exposure to Mark Jarman so I don’t know if he always reads in that manner or not. But he reminded me of the way a clergyman reads a creed or prayer or scriptures. He doesn’t look up from his text until he is done. And in that case it is a quick glance to where his chair is located. I’m drawn to his new material and look forward to reading his book when it is made available.
I anticipated hearing Stephen Dobyns but there was a change in schedule. I notice Mr. Dobyns isn’t reading at all. I hope he is still doing his lecture on “The Nature of Metaphor.”
Anyway, it was a pleasure to listen to Percival Everett read from a new manuscript–a non sequential novel. Mr. Everett displays a keen wit with ideas and words and reads through his work rather quickly–almost in a manner that suggests he is reading it more for himself that the audience–that sometimes I felt like I missed essential parts of his story. So it was profound when he stumbled over a word, paused for an long silence, and announced “sorry, I just found a typo and I don’t have a pencil to correct it.” He laughed and continued reading at the same pace as before the discovery of a typo. I’ve only recently been introduced to his work and am interested in reading more of it.
Coffeehouse Junkie 