Fool's Errand

From Lee Upton's interview over at Here Comes Everybody:

How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old?

"I have my own seven-year-old. When I asked her to tell me what poetry is, she said, “It doesn’t have to be true. It can be something like, ‘The lamb cried Help!’ It’s words kind of like what God uses. And there’s detail.”"

Beauty...

Hoo. Busy week. Response to the new issue has been damned near overwhelming, and we've only just entered the reading period. So, some news, such as it is...

First, a big heads up to anyone accessing this from the Trip: the contest is for PROSE poems, and the judge is someone I've had contact with for quite some time, and has been known to get very cranky when h/s feels like h/h time has been wasted. So if you've submitted a poem-poem, here's a heads up--re-submit a prose-poem. We'll be gracious, and unsubmit the first entry. The good news is that the response to the contest has yet to get really heavy, and while we will be re-advertising, right now, the chances for anyone who submits the proper genre are very good.

Second--unlike the contest, the actual subs have been near overwhelming. We went to press 11 days ago, finally finished the adverts only 6 days ago, and we're already staring at over 35 submissions, many of which are of extremely high quality. The competition to get into this next issue looks to be intense. Add to that 5 books for possible review, and about 7 people I'm supposed to be checking out for the Spotlight slot...mucho thanks to Ren Powell for her work, already, on this front. There is one frontrunner, but that person has yet to accept...though, should they do so, I'm gonna be getting very excited.

Third--we just received news yesterday of a major poet (well-known enough to be listed over at The Academy of American Poets) who has agreed to be interviewed for the summer issue. This person is well enough known to be causing yours truly to experience some serious butterflies in the stomach--it's exciting, but intimidating as well. And, as some might know, Tara and I have been discussing 5 year plans, with the intent to get sound files of poets up on the site by that time, and perhaps even a CD for purchase--this poet will probably push that plan ahead. So far, we've had to adjust our expectations of ourselves upwards on every front, and this will just be the latest adjustment. We've lots of work to do before July 15th.

So...exciting times at the Trip--very busy times for the same reasons. And I have to get my head around Time--a subject that inspires some of the most fascinating and absurd of theses, and which proves nigh on unfathomable should one rely solely on Google, where the phrase "the nature of time" only produces about 31 million results. Something tells me I'll be relying heavily on Google Scholar this time around (there being but 1.25 million hits on that engine...). If anyone has suggestions as to good books to read, or good writers to get firmly into this subject, I'd be most appreciative...though, it goes without saying, I'm gonna be much more receptive to logical argument than I am someone's religious thesis on the subject. Mostly, and most fundamentally, I want to get my head firmly wrapped around the logic by which philosophers and scientists alike have concluded time to be subjective in nature...so basic texts are in order. I seem to remember first encountering arguments for time's subjective nature in Kant--though maybe I'm wrong about that? Anyone out there that can give me a helpful nudge?

Anyway, shit is happening fast, and I'm of course loving it...though I have no idea where I'm to get the time to do all this. Always do, though, and the fact that I now spend my time online working, instead of trolling on poetry boards or being slowly brainwashed by politicians, is a big plus. That's half the fun of the net--the potential is there for all of us to be producers, not just consumers.

I'll sign off there--it's early, I'm not at my most sparkling, and I just wanted to pass on news, even though I have to be vague on the details. Before I do, though, a heads up: keep your eye on the sidebar, where I hope to be slotting in some new resources to bolster the ones I already have over there.

To work, again, and best to anyone reading--tchitch

Scads of new resources, which over the coming few days I hope to bung into the sidebar...no personal notes today, just alerting anyone who comes by of the existence of PENNsound, where you can pick up free poetry mp3's, all as legit as it gets.

Enjoy--Tchitch

Awright, gonna treat myself to a proper blog entry today...the sun is shining, the music's good, and I'm in the mood to fly...times have been busy, I've been working hard on Triplopia, and of course working at the pub, and trying to take care of all sorts of persistent paperwork in my ongoing efforts to remain ex-patriat. The Trip was tougher than usual this go round, in spite of the fact that the quality of subs has been consistently going up--word's getting out, as it will when the contributors are pleased to find themselves in your pages. Most of the challenges this time around, however, were computer related--we generally organize subs and editing work in a forum, and the forum we were using was attacked by two worms in the last quarter...after the first, the administrator expressed his disinclination to continue the work involved in maintaining the forum, and the second, which was considerably more damaging, put him over the edge, so we found ourselves unable to access the work we had done to that point--this was mid-December, and the second worm hit just 2 days before I took off for Christmas and New Years in Vigo, Spain, with my good friend Alfonso...a two week trip, during which I had limited access to the net, dial-up, and while there the computer I was using was disabled by a virus. Fortunately, we did have most of the files tucked away in other corners of the net and on disk, but the second worm entailed a mad crunch to get all files into one place, and, as I am generally a very fortunate man, I was able to impose upon the Great Tone to provide us with a couple of rooms on his already existing forum. Without his help, this last issue might have been finished on time, but it would have been one helluva lot harder--faced, as I was, with a 9 day crunch period immediately upon returning to Munich. The issue went up at 00:18 on Sunday, the 16th, so we missed our deadline by just 18 minutes. We're still making tweaks, but the issue is pretty complete...and if I do say so myself, there's some righteous work to be found there.

For those who have been engaging the ongoing discussion on all things evolutionary over at Robin's place,, and for that matter, everyone else, I most heartily invite you to not only read the Yawp, and to tell him exactly why he's full of shit, so to speak, with his Gastrocentric Theory of Cultural Evolution.

Excuses and promotions aside, I'm walking on air this morning because not only did we crunch the issue out (a significant accomplishment in itself), but on the very next day--last night, in other words--I had another session of Absolute Beginners to host--we'd been on hiatus for 5 months, had an abysmal meeting in January, in which two poets and two audience members showed up, and I really wasn't at all sure how well it would go this time around, but upon launching the promo material, I started receiving help almost immediately. One person stepped up to tweak my flyer, which needed it, because my graphics chops are VERY limited, another said she'd come, and I noted she was a DJ and asked her if she would come out and smooth the whole show over with before, after, and intermission music. She did, after a little convincing, and a damned nice crowd came out to play--nice in the sense of decent size, but also in the sense of well-behaved. We kept waiting for them to start acting like rowdy Bohemians, but, truth be told, they were much, much better behaved than a lot of other, more "respectable" crowds we've worked with. Guitarists-bloody good guitarists-poets, comedians, and the whole thing wrapped up with an impromptu sing-along that was, technically speaking, pretty horrible...until they started really getting into the song they were singing, and having fun on the stage, at which point most of the audience started providing the percussion. Excellent...and always good to end a show on such a note. And the service was damned near flawless.

So, this morning I'm in afterglow, dreaming, as I do after a good showing, of what I could do next...this process is so warming, and so--and this is gonna maybe sound strange, but it's true--heartbreaking...just being someone out there who encourages what is creative in those humans I can touch, to watch them through the initial shyness, and to take real pride when they reach past those limits they've convinced themselves they have. To simply see those limits expand is almost enough to give one hope, in spite of every crap thing that's going on in the world. And on mornings like this, I'm almost able to convince myself that the energy generated by that whole process could actually make a difference.

In any case, it's just about the only way I know how to contribute to the good of this world, so I kind of have to stick with it if I'm to think I have a purpose at all. All good--and mornings like this morning, I suspect, are precisely why I keep at it, no matter what.

Do hope your own morning is as bright as mine, and I'll post again soon.

Tschuss--tchitch

Sneak Preview for those who swing by here...Trip is in the works, should be up in a few hours...the Yawp, on the other hand, already has an online home.

If ya wanna. Most welcoming of rebuttals...preferrably ones that are every bit as absurd as the Yawp himself.

With that, still got some work to get the issue out on time. Hope you enjoy.

--tchitch

Ich finde das sehr lustig.

Had to share. tchitch out.

...evolving, thinking...

"...this morning I was so rash as to read some of the public newspapers; suddenly, an indolence weighing twenty atmospheres fell upon me, and I stopped, faced by the appalling uselessness of explaining anything whatever to anyone whatever.”

Amen, Baudelaire.

Rational hope means trying to accomplish anything in the face of clear evidence suggesting that the goal you are striving for will not be realized, and furthermore, continuing to do so without recourse to prayer.

We continue. We dance, and the only thing to do is to bring joy where it is most needed, and to cause discomfort where it is deserved.

May we deliver ourselves from these idealogues who persist in placing their own interests before that of their fellow human. May we do so with reasonable haste, so that our common vision is not permanently rendered subject to theirs.

Ack. Kick the blues by playing them. Hi to anyone reading. Go glory in the beauty of the marvelous machinations of Rube Goldberg. Tchitch, over and out.