Fool's Errand

Episodes: 3

2011-02-06T22:57:00.007-06:00

Palm trees in the triangle of green space outside Eastwood Public Library, literally hundreds of red/green streaks of sound--rainbow lorikeets--darting among the fronds, curved shrieking paths testament to the otherwise hidden profusion of life tucked up under those thick green leaves. Inside the library free internet access, thirty minutes a day, reservations necessary unless you're willing to brave the queue, first come, first served. A corner to the left of the lobby door houses two electric typewriters--in ten short years, & in spite of memory enough to house five double-spaced pages, acquiring nearly the same patina as an Underwood--where the queue is shorter. Cross the threshold of the inner doors & one is plunged into a world separated from that outside in three immediately notable aspects: the unrelenting light damped behind tinted glass, a fifteen-degree Celsius drop in temperature, & the sudden silencing of what cannot possibly be less than a thousand rainbow lorikeets infesting each of the thousands of palm trees outside. Change enough to make a bibliophile out of the most entrenched illiterate.

Lorikeets everywhere. Also everywhere: Acacia longifolia--widely cultivated in subtropical regions, useful in preventing soil erosion, yellow and green dyes, as foodstuff, for wood. Bark of limited utility in tanning sheepskin. Referred to as "wattle," a sprig is traditionally worn on the first day of spring in Australia. It is widely believed to trigger allergies--common belief cites up to fifty percent of the population being adversely affected. Medical literature cites a far lower percentage--five percent--far lower than allergies caused by grasses.

Whatever the cause, after a full year's toughing it out here, I've fallen into a dangerous space in which the lorikeet is defined less by its plumage than by its voice. Pleasure is no longer pleasure, but the far more dubious form of pleasure defined, primarily, by the cessation of pain. The pleasure of dropping a heavy backpack after a long hike. Of elevating your feet after standing for a full eight-hour shift. Coupled with hope, itself an intense form of pleasure--the rich blue of the sky as seen by a prisoner upon release--but rendered far less vivid should the element of hope be absent. The certain knowledge that one must return to one's cell squelches that vibrant blue into the dullest of grays.

The word godforsaken is a bitter word that suffers in its utility for being both superstitious & lacking in charity, but in a land where over half of my energy is spent attempting to battle back headaches that are barely less than crippling, I find myself swallowing this word as regularly as I do ibuprofen. It goes down less smoothly, and its rough surface is prone to catching on the walls of my intestines--it does not pass easily, would, perhaps, serve me better if spoken. It defines the cycle I'm trying to break, in which the context I work in determines the shades of the world around me, which in turn determine the context in which I work. Impossible to extricate: are these headaches symptomatic of my unhappiness, or my unhappiness the result of my headaches? The two are locked in an embrace as intractable and unrelenting as time itself, and no amount of theorizing about the elasticity of perception serves to unbind them from each other.

I am not, today, within the confines of the library, but in the brief triangle of green just outside. My daughter, now in her third year of existence, is busily traversing the jungle gym there provided for citizens going about their daily chores. Making her careful way up the ladder, waiting at the top of a plastic slide for my hands, hands she trusts implicitly, to position themselves near the bottom to be ready to catch her should she falter in her joyous descent, or perched on one of two wooden ledges the height of my chest, bending clumsily at her knees, still slightly dimpled with baby fat, laughing & calling me to help her across the chasm between the two ledges. She grips a small triangular bar affixed to a sliding track, &, holding her around her recently undiapered waist, I pull her across, where she turns & awaits my aid once more. Her eyes suggest nothing of tediousness in this exercise, nor does she evince the least annoyance at the birds that screech & squawk above.

We attract attention for our oddity: our accents indistinguishable to the local ear from those promulgated by Hollywood fare, our identities careening off the contours of Americans before us, myself wedged into that sliver of the male population that might be found, midday on a work day, trusted aid to a toddler's regular odyssey through & around the local park. I cannot say I lack for human contact: on the contrary, there are days I find it difficult to handle the groceries precisely b/c I fear that contact. But the contact is brief, general, unquestioning. There is no Chris, no one person who would commit to those late-night, drunken, heady explorations of the central language we use to describe our minds, our selves, perhaps even our souls. All social, no intimacy. I could not even imagine explaining, much less actually explain, to any of these neighbors how, in my worst moments, even as I am handling my daughter, the phrase "murderous fathers", culled years before from some volume by Kerouac, reverberates within the confines of my uncertain mind. How each time I catch my infant daughter at the bottom of the slide, my primal & civilized selves wrestle with each other. How, each time I walk her back to the ladder to repeat this exercise, I have to both nod to the civilized & deeply question the validity of that nod. I believe I am a good father because I have more restraint than a supplicant to those bestial forefathers who, we imagined, would devour their children on a whim. The dizzying thinness of my self-esteem enough to send another pulse of pain ratcheting through my skull. If I'd birthed the child myself, if I'd been physically subjected to that set of chemicals, I'd feel less indulgent in my trolls through medical literature about the matter. As it is, I've spoken to no one, vaguely fearing ridicule, & daily weighing that fear against much less present, much more menacing concerns.

Those eyes. How to even begin to communicate those adoring eyes, the god-worship there, the startling absence of any question of my reliability I encounter there. How to begin to communicate to anyone, much less this one, where I've arrived from, what my own journey to the foot of my gods revealed. How to nurture that first essential question without shattering that trust. How to direct the point of that question towards myself at a time when I do not trust my strength enough to withstand its barb. Here, the din of Lorikeets, bright plumage rendered the brown of vermin in my pain-dulled mind, punctuating the blinding air that surrounds my daughter as she reaches the top of the slide's ladder, turns her head slightly to look at me over her left shoulder, and says, "Papa, catch me."

In the course of one day, how many times does the average human swallow? I swallow now, walk the ten feet to the foot of the slide, & wait, there, for my daughter to come hurtling down.

Episodes: 2

2011-02-06T16:35:00.009-06:00

"You clearly don't want to work with us today."

"No, I just don't want to work with you."

Big hands, la-la lolling away from the man, being me, being the suit that hangs off me like the dead-alive bureaucrat I always feared becoming, pulling a 35% average if I don't count zeros, and there are plenty of zeros I could record in the gradebook under your name. No. No, I don't know the details of what you have to live with, only the details of the life I bring to this role. & maybe I know the difference better than you, but to fully entertain this reality, I'm asking that you imagine you don't care what I know.

Could be that's not much of a stretch. I keep trying to remember the name of the man who played this role for me, the man who guided & guarded the half-year that was sixth grade for me, & I keep failing. I can tell you what he looked like. He had good hair. Short hair, but a full head, unlike mine, shorn clean so I get the jokes about polishing. Young to my middle-aged. Wore a tie every day, same as me now. Handsome. He got me for the second half of the year, the first half taken up, over a thousand miles away, by an extended truancy brought on by necessity, & although I can claim no knowledge of the specifics he received about his new charge, my guess is he didn't know much more than that he had another student. I'm curious, because I have no way--short time-intensive & ultimately unreliable reflection--of knowing, if I ever gave him cause to clench his lips, as I do now, against a tide of remembrance, knowing that I was not ready for the lesson he felt prepared to give.

I admire, grudgingly, your intelligence, the laser point of your instinctual grasp of what will best bring on those minute tremblings of rage, & the self-castigation that a forty-year-old should feel at being reduced to mute anger by a twelve-year-old. I submit b/c I know my culture well enough to know that this is the barest beginning of a long tragi-comedic journey, half Falstaff, half Prospero, one hundred percent Grandpa Simpson. Should I have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? All unspoken. Also unspoken: among the many things the poets were wrong about, this habit of erecting monuments to self contains nothing of discipline. It is among the most basic of instincts. It occurs far too naturally, & while I may be new to the context particular to our exchange, I have taught long enough to know that the skill of disappearing, of stepping out of the path of learning, of not only claiming no credit, but actively denying that it was the product of anything but diligence on the part of the student, is a skill crucial to success. Really. Where will you aim your laser should your teacher have stealth enough to simply vanish?

You're laughing. I couldn't be more serious. Which is precisely why you are right to laugh. My reaction to your pointed words is proof enough that I've yet to master my own lesson. & I would presume to teach you?

I honestly can't remember his name. It wasn't a priority then. By the time I thought it important, his name was so buried away in events that I couldn't retrieve it. Nor, really, can I remember anything--anything--he taught me in that half year. I can, however, tell you the name of the boy who sat next to me. His name was William. He had black, unkempt hair, usually greasy. No friends. A steady stream of jokes, pop references to shows and music that I, fed a steady Mormon diet of country, gospel, & Elvis, had yet to encounter. Mr. Bill. Cheech and Chong. Came in every Monday with a news spoof, probably much more aligned to Weekend Update than I could possibly have known, having been forbidden from watching SNL. Ever, as my mother had it. "Funny news brought to you by funny cigarettes." Naive first peeks into a world I'd soon be fully immersed in, within two years a ward of the state, shuttled through juvie and the box of Zane Grey's they maintained for just such an event. At Risk. In Transit. There's a potential home in Taylorsville, but we haven't confirmed yet. "What's a funny cigarette?"

I remember both the surname & given name of the student who won the 6th grade spelling bee. Andy Draper, clean cut, crisp, ironed clothes, future elder of the church. Would fly into a blind rage when we teased him by calling him Andy Paper, from Puff the Magic Dragon. Even remember the exact word that made him champion.

Ptarmigan. P-t-a-r-m-i-g-a-n. Ptarmigan. As indelible in my mind as chiseled rock. I will likely utter it breathlessly, cryptically, on my deathbed.

But I cannot, no matter how much I point my mind toward it, remember my teacher's name.

The only thing I remember is this: that nameless man maintained, in his classroom, a store of paper, heavier stock than mere copy paper, cut into neat halves to approximate the right size, upon which we were to write our own books. I wrote three in the course of half a year. Highly derivative, all: an admixture of the sci-fi fare then popular, blending Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars. A trilogy. Premise: a deadly plague has broken out on the planet Earth, endangering not only humans, but all life, & threatening to render Earth uninhabitable. Fortunately, the American government, with unprecedented foresight, had built a giant spaceship, capable of housing half of the world's population. The first book was devoted to The Trauma of Deciding Who Got Left Behind. The second, A Chronicle of the Perils Our Pioneers Encounter in Deep Space. The third, The Discovery & Establishment of a New Home. In short, space dreck. But space dreck that was beloved not only by myself, but by a man who took those penciled pages home, punched careful holes in the left-hand margin, and bound those books together with brass brads.

His name? No clue. Did I follow procedures? Did I raise my hand for permission to speak? Did I ask permission to leave my desk? Did I refrain from eating in the classroom?

I don't know.

I will, in remembrance of him, shoulder this disrespect--is it disrespect? But in light of your deft amendment to my original statement, may I offer, silently, my own amendment to yours?

You just don't want to work with me today.

Episodes: 1

2011-02-06T15:11:00.001-06:00

"I put people on the map that never seen a map" M.I.A.

Crunch time, bafflement, Chicago we cooked & ate & would have been happy as characters in someone else's story, Bulls' first three-peat still in the future but underway, books beginning to collect the dust of relics & the barest sense of fundamental change looming, still clinging to a romantic notion of what it meant to write our own stories. Impoverished bon vivants, really, taking up work in kitchens both for the work & access to prime cuts we wouldn't have been able to afford any other way. Time at home on homemade pasta, sauce, bread. Chris, tongue rolling around a mouthful of stolen red, "The trick to good black-eyed peas is molasses." Nobody made Thanksgiving sing like Chris, chestnut stuffing, gravies 40 hours in the preparation, mashed pots unpeeled w/ roasted garlic, but he couldn't bake a loaf of bread to save his life. 3 a.m., the rest of the party dismissed to their quarters dotted around the city, north-siders, Wrigleyville, Bucktown, Wicker Park, our flat 3 city blocks from the Belmont stop, walks to transport dotted with broadsides & tabloids, their readership a clear gauge on the splinters of the city's population, burrito joints wedged into the tangle of iron under the El station advertising "Burritos tan grande como tu cabeza," interiors brown with framed Spanish gastronomic jokes involving flatulence & a cork, Chris & I talking about choice, is it fundamental to being human or illusion, or both, as we try to decide if we're going to make the final slide into dawn cracking the last remaining bottle of wine, both cognizant, inebriatedly disciplined against the temptation to give into the maudlin, of time-sick days to come when we will refer to these slow pre-dawn hours, dusted over with the sepia of memory, as our glory days.

They will make fun of my ampersands, my abbreviations & run-ons, but I'm finished caring. Yes to those old tomes, yes to Wolfean inventories of grandmother's pantry, yes to Kerouacian name-dropping, to the glittering shards of beat poems smashed against the spaghetti of concrete we've erected, marked like cats, named, yes to Dostoyevski's innumerable Russian nicknames, Hamsun's hunger, Algren's court reports filled with broad-nosed Poles given to drink, the ignominy of not enough money an antidote to beat nostalgia for slums, yes to admiring ridicule at Hemingway's file clerk ways & to the picaresque in this age of plane travel. What's been offered as replacement is speed, fragmented, like the channels on TV, 150 where 4 once did, that sliver of the human population that makes any sense of this burnt out ignored b/c to really reflect & amplify that gestalt requires a mental state indistinguishable from schizophrenia. The post-mods should be having a field day, an absence/presence with no center, the only accurate representation of which must be pastiche. Bricolage my ass: I miss my electric typewriter and the dog-eared, highlighted to hell pages of my copy of "Visions of Cody," and that's all.

"The trouble you have here," Chris tells me, "is that you hold onto your ghosts. I never did. I only got into writing for one reason: I had something to say. That's why I don't write any more. I said what I had to say. But, I think, you're doing this for some other reason. I'm switching media. I'm moving to cooking, because it's an art that understands its own transience. It's meant to be consumed."

Glass raised. There is no beginning but the beginning we choose.

TFA

2009-10-26T05:49:00.005-06:00

A word on confidentiality: being a writer and keeping good confidences are goals that are not entirely incompatible, but which are very difficult to reconcile. Take, for example, my final days in Germany, which happen to coincide with the beginning signs of neglect of this blog. I was working at a start-up restaurant in Munich, and watching it gradually fail. There was no shortage of stories during that period, but I didn't write them. On a different front, I now work for an English hagwon, and while it is far from failing, there is no shortage of stories to tell...but I don't. I don't because it's important not to betray confidences, but, as a writer, good story-telling involves not shrinking away from the truth, and this may have some little to do with why I don't just churn out work the way I used to. I have to think, sometimes deeply, about what I'm going to say, and I often find that central parts of the story must be left out for reasons of confidentiality. Similar thing this last weekend: I actually flew back to the US for a total of two days to interview for Teach For America, and while the trip and the interview process were fascinating, there's a lot I need to keep out of the story. Suffice to say, as with the CELTA earlier this year, regardless of the outcome, the process was enlightening. I feel I did my best, and made a lot of decisions that should make me an attractive candidate, but I've read too many blogs in which people talked about the process, felt certain they did well, then later updated the blog to report that they'd not been selected. Fact is, I've been thinking a lot about my responses during the interview, and I can think of fifteen reasons why I think I did well, and another fifteen reasons why they'll eventually say no. Most of those reasons, on both sides, probably have to do with styles of leadership. At the end of the process, I simply do not know enough about TFA's preferred style of leadership to even begin to guess as to how they'll ultimately decide. I'll know on November 10th, though, and that's not terribly long to wait.

As to the trip: if the travel arrangements themselves were used as a measure of how well I did in the interview, I should come out great--things couldn't have gone more to plan than they did: all flights on time, all luggage accounted for, all connections made, everything. Plus some extras: on the way to LA, was seated beside an elderly couple who struck up conversation largely because they needed a hand now and again, and I was courteous in giving them one. Turns out, the man is 84 years old, holds a PhD in mechanical engineering, and was born in Shanghai. Think about that. He was born in Shanghai in 1925. Actually moved to Taiwan shortly after WWII, then America seven years later. Landed in Stillwater, OK for college, and then moved to Chicago (this is in '57). At one point, after we'd discovered we'd both spent some time in Oklahoma, the man says, "I'm sorry if this offends you, but a lot of people in Oklahoma weren't very friendly to outsiders back then. Sometimes when I greeted them they'd pretend they hadn't heard anything. The fellow who lived in the dormitory next to mine was like that...when I said "hi" he'd just walk on by. Then there was this one night when I heard a knock on my dormitory door. So I answer it, and he's standing there with a book in his hand, and he says "Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to know anything about calculus, would you?" So I looked at the problem, and of course, it was very simple for me, so I showed him the answer, and after that, he was so nice..."

Beijing--as much as I would have liked to explore--I only got to see the inside of the airport, but already got the sense that China'd be a hard place to adjust to. Often guidebooks will tell you how conservative South Korea is, but I think if a Chinese woman is standing side-to-side with a South Korean woman, the difference is very clear, very quickly. South Korea seems a bastion of liberal thought in comparison. Mind you, I only saw airport workers and a few airplane passengers, but...well, for example, there was an H1N1 PSA on heavy rotation in the Beijing airport that I felt caught a lot of the spirit of the place (I especially appreciated the line "Social morality!"), and might fairly be offered up, in comparison, to a parody of a recently popular South Korean song, also addressing H1N1, as one touchstone of the differences between the two societies. I'm certainly not anti-collectivist, and often think we could benefit, as a species, from a little less adherence to individualist dogma, but I can also see how even someone with an open mind about the matter might find it hard to make the adjustment from one to the other.

In LA...well, first you should probably know that I have a mortal terror of LA. I think it's because when I first get to know a place, I prefer to learn about it by walking around in it, and LA makes that very hard to do. I really wasn't there to check out the sites. For the most part, I did the interview and did some shopping for the girls. Other than that, it was TV, eating, and trying to regulate my sleep schedule so I wasn't too whipped when I got back to Gangneung (well done...it's about 40 minutes from my usual bedtime now, and I'm fading...). Spent more time at the airport than most probably would have, just because I really didn't want to go see the Getty museum or Universal Studios or really anything. While waiting to check in, I ended up nursing a beer at one of the airport bars and watching college football (USC v. Oregon State, I think...) with one eye, and watching a very flirty woman fall in love with the young bartender with the other. The woman was older, maybe late thirties to mid forties, and the bartender mid to late 20's. The bartender was making friendly chat, but the woman...well, it was clear that the woman would have been very happy to have taken the bartender home. As often happens, it became clearer as time went on. The bartender's co-workers were, of course, mildly ribbing him about the situation, but at some point, the whole process came to a head--for whatever legitimate or trumped up reason, the bartender ended up excusing himself from bar duties and going into the kitchen, and the woman, becoming aware of his absence, suddenly stood up from the bar with this terrible lost look on her face. The staff, at her insistence, guided her to where the bartender was, and she issued apologies and kisses and whatnot before taking off. The look on her face was absolutely heartwrenching, and seeing that moment of realization actually triggered in me a real need to record the incident--to write--which I resisted as best I could (you'll note this description has not veered toward the violet end of the spectrum, nor has it toyed with the idea of looking at the situation from either the barkeep or the woman's p.o.v...), and was made the more so for the fact that the woman could not have been gone from the scene for more than thirty seconds, tops, before all the guys central to the drama: the barkeep, the customers at the bar, the two waiters, and the manager, were having some pretty pointed laughs about the whole situation. Not that there wasn't humor in the situation--there certainly was--but I couldn't help thinking that the woman was probably still close enough to hear that laughter, and maybe close enough to see them laughing, and that she was already in bad emotional shape prior to this moment.

Other notes as well. Being away for the weekend, got to slip into that anonymous skin and just watch for a while...once I was done with the interview. Which, to get back to the point I made about confidentiality at the beginning of this post, I cannot talk about. I can, however, say that I did my level best on the work they presented me with, and that this passage Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, will likely be a factor in the decision that's ultimately made.

Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, "If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master--to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now," said he, "if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy." These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty--to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.

How so? Can't say. But regardless of the outcome, I'm grateful for the application process' having reminded me of this passage, which, I found quite recently, I've held quite close for many years now. Wish me luck...and until next time--tchitch

더 발칙한 한국학

2009-10-20T07:19:00.004-06:00

It's been a hella long time since I wrote on this thing, and while some of that has to do with time, it's also had to do with motivation and with really, really needing a sense of something worth saying. These days, there are a few things afoot that may be worth saying...I'll know a lot more in a couple of weeks, and right now, I'm still pretty swamped in meatspace (I'm actually going to be on a flight to LA in about 36 hours...will explain more about that when I'm not pressed to be doing about 15 other things first), but suffice to say, with a little luck, and a lot of effort, there may be a major shift in life direction in the near future. Or decidedly not. We'll see. Suffice to say, after about 4 years of planning, I'm soon going to see if recent efforts are ready to bear fruit, or still need a year or two's worth of nurturing to get there.

Right now, it's still life in Korea--in my third year in the same hagwon, have good relations with my director and because of this, haven't moved on to more lucrative or prestigious jobs as yet, though I've been trying to get things together so that I can keep developing my own teaching skills with an eye toward positions that may be more satisfying than my current one. I enjoy my work, especially the kids I teach, but I also very much feel that I could be doing more, and I've been rapidly coming to the conclusion that I very much enjoy teaching. Also been working with this friend and that friend making something approaching music, and trying my best not to regret the fact that I didn't pick up a drum in earnest much earlier in my life. And Korean studies, and regular classes in Hapkido (not at black belt yet...but with luck, before I leave Korea...), so I keep busy.

One point of business that I did not mention was a Korean publication--mention of it did show up in a blog comment, but I never really mentioned it. If you remember, during my first year in South Korea, I was fortunate enough to not only encounter a particularly fun, particularly irreverent book on Korean culture (as seen very much with a oegugin eye) by one J. Scott Burgeson entitled "Korea Bug", but also to enjoy a long e-mail exchange with the editor that culminated in an interview over at Triplopia. We ended up meeting later at the Buddha's Birthday celebration--a fine night in which I was treated to Scott in all his grumpy glory: he was then living in a flat and had rooftop access to a view of the Buddhist temple where all the floats were going, and while everyone else was busy celebrating Buddhism in general, Scott was facing down a temple that had been constructing near his apartment, the staff of which he'd had enough confrontations with over the noise that he was essentially persona non grata on the temple grounds. He invited me and one of my friends--who was interested in getting some photos from above the blanket of colored lanterns hanging from the trees above--to come up to the rooftop, but my young friends were so busy playing on the temple grounds that they seemed pretty much oblivious to Scott's discomfort while I nervously hovered between those friends I had daily dealings with and Scott, and the temple staff loomed ever closer. The whole night was one of those marvelous instances of complete social awkwardness that seem always to signal that something really special is going on...and so it was. Scott eventually waited too long, was quietly but pointedly followed off the grounds, I ended up going with him, signaling to my young friend with the camera that he really needed to follow us, Scott consulted with his landlord about having a couple of guests up to the rooftop (a suggestion to which the landlord was clearly opposed) and then Scott snuck us in anyway. The view was a fine one, but, to top the whole thing off, my friend's photos came out poorly, and he ended up dumping them. Aside from a very odd evening's memories, I also came away from the meeting with a set of copies of the original Bug zines to fill out my incomplete collection. Then I served my year and was out, and Scott's books were decidedly among my trophies.

When, as circumstances dictated, I came back 9 months later, Scott approached me about contributing to a new project, a book with the working title of "Incredibly Strange Foreigners." I wasn't in a writing mood, to be honest, but it did feel like something I wanted to contribute to, so, after passing deadline after deadline, and finally being given a final date, I snuck a story in to Scott, and yes, was published in a slim volume with a stark black cover and the title (in white) of "Outlanders: Tales of Korea." I'm not sure where it can be purchased. In fact, I'm not sure if Outlanders was ever actually for sale--although I did get 10 copies for contributing.

Anyway, to cut a long wind-up short, I got a personal e-mail from Scott recently describing his most recent project, along with a link to a video that's actually pretty hilarious if you've ever spent any time seeing Korea from a "foreign" perspective. It's a land of fascinating, often outrageously humorous paradoxes, and the inward realities that are masked by the outward forms of Korean society are fascinating both for the fact that they are hidden and for the relief into which those outward forms thrusts them. You can get depressed about it, you can try to analyze it, or, you can just acknowledge your outsider status and poke gentle fun at it all in the hopes that it will serve as one small chink in the armor of tradition for tradition's sake. For your sanity, that last banner is the best to fly under, and that's where Scott's books land. His most recent book, 더 발칙한 한국학 (yes, in Korean) appears to be making precisely the kind of change described above: a tiny linguistic shift that may, given time, actually serve to break down some of the near impenetrable barriers between Korea's expat community and Koreans themselves.

Scott closes his previous book, "Korea Bug," with a (to my mind) fascinating piece entitled "Outside Country People," in which he uses material from an internet exchange on life in Korea from the point of view of foreigners. The piece is in turns (depending on who is speaking) starkly cynical and heartbreaking in its hopefulness. Scott explains his choice of title as follows:

In English, a oeguk saram (or oegugin) could be described as a "foreigner" "expatriate" or "alien." But none of these translations really fits. The term alien is both narrowly legalistic and suggestive of extraterrestrial difference; "expatriate," reverses and thus glosses over the oppositional nuance of oeguk saram, since the "ex-" prefix defines the individual as simply outside of their own home country, rather than the host nation; as for "foreigner," it is the most commonly used, but also the vaguest, since it fails to convey the essential Koreanness of oeguk saram (for native Korean speakers, "oeguk" implicitly and invariably means "not Korea," which is why, for example, it is technically correct when Koreans abroad refer to locals as oeguk sarams, since they are, indeed, "outside Korea people"). And so I prefer the literal translation "outside country people," because it best preserves the flavor and spirit of the original term, and because it is not a bad example of localized English or Konglish--cute, clunky, familiar and weird all at the same time.

...and "outside country people" is pretty much what I've heard when I hear "oegugin" ever since. But the term "oegugin" is somewhat of a sticky point for English teachers in Korea--many of the countries from which those "oegugin" come have adopted a brand of English that would look very poorly indeed upon any institution that referred to a native teacher of Korean as, not a "Korean teacher," but as a "foreign teacher." Suffice to say, on the ground in South Korea, there are zero qualms about so designating teachers from another country.

This is the chink that Scott aims his weaponry at, and it appears to be gaining a little--just a little--traction. His most recent book has shot up to the 11th spot in Kyobo's Politics and Society section. The book, comprised of Scott's work and of others, includes Scott's note about the preference, amongst those who are not tourists, at least, for the term "expat." And in its quiet way, it's working, as a number of reviews--published in Korean, aimed at a Korean reading public--often make note of this point. It all makes me wish my Korean skills were considerably better than they are, so I could have a good crack at the book. They're getting there, but they've a ways to go. It does suggest itself as a potential suggestion to adult students of English, as it might provide them with an interesting look at their own culture from the eyes of foreigners that are sympathetic, but not uncritical.

Anyway, always happy to hear of the continued success of Triplopia contributors, and, as I'm still on the ground, especially happy to hear of Scott's most recent successes. In language, it's always the small victories that are the most important and the most lasting, even if they're rarely won in a single lifetime.

All right...wrote way later than I meant to, but the good news is, for the first time in a while, it actually felt good to do so. We'll see how I'm feeling in a few weeks, but something tells me that just now, I'm getting tired of sitting in my room clutching my ball, and getting really antsy to get busy playing the game again. Now all I gotta do is find time enough to follow that impulse.

Right. Sleep. Be well, folks. --tchitch

13 Ways of Skinning a Cat

2009-04-20T20:00:00.001-06:00

Apropos of nothing:

Thirteen Ways of Skinning a Cat

(apologies to Mr. Stevens)

I
Among twenty deserted farmhouses,
The only moving thing
Was the whetstone of a redneck.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a boy
With a cat and a Swiss Army Knife.

III
The cat’s carcass twisting in the autumn wind,
Delicate sinews suspended from a meathook.

IV
A cat and a farmer
Are one.
A cat and a farmer and a machete
Are one.

V
I do not know which I prefer,
The sharp tang of heavy spices
Or the mellow coat of cream,
Cat Vindaloo
Or Cat Korma.

VI
Kittens filled the farmer’s house
With incessant mewling.
The shadow of their mother
Crossed them, to and fro.
The mood
Festooned the stale air
With the inevitable conclusion.

VII
O fat men of Georgia,
Why do you imagine obedient cats?
Do you not feel how the cat
Digs its claws into your skin
As you raise it to the butcher’s block?

VIII
I know feline contours
And troublesome sharp bones;
But I know, too,
That the cat will have its measure of skin
Before it yields.

IX
When the cat slinks into shadow,
Its fur is no softer,
But it will do for mittens.

X
At the sight of cats
Moving in great slinking herds,
Even the Texas ranch hands
Would flee in terror.

XI
He rode over Wyoming
In a checkered cab.
Once, a fear prowled through him,
In that he mistook
The local militia
For ASPCA agents.

XII
I’ve opened a can of tuna.
The cat will be by, shortly.

XIII
It was morning all night.
The cat was glowering
And it was going to glower.
It doesn’t know
About my revolver.

Vids: You suck

2009-04-12T09:37:00.002-06:00

I see Whitney's been busy on Youtube: these from last night's show, which was a blast to play and to witness.

Still no Clash/MIA mesh on vid...dang it.

Hmmm...

2009-03-28T10:13:00.002-06:00

Got a new post in the works, but right in the middle of monthly lesson plans (done) and student evaluations (not done), along with a whole slew of other activities, including a hapkido belt test today...think I did well, should know by Wednesday...and the recent news that my application for the CELTA course at the Seoul British Council was successful--I'd promise to blog the experience, but I'm not 100% sure I'll have the time. We'll see. However...

I did find the following news item of interest enough to want to share it with anyone dropping by this blog--especially other South Korean teachers: Foreign Teacher Renews Visa With No Health Check

Seems like a news item worth keeping our eye on.

Busy Friends

2009-03-15T02:17:00.003-06:00

Anyone who likes music of an experimental nature should drop by Jochen's website--he's been a busy guy with his band, Hinterlandt. I remember him for his two boys--among the first children I ever cared for, back in Australia. Neil, his oldest, is responsible for giving me some early, hands-on insight into how kids work through second languages: I cared for him for a year, and he wouldn't even consider using English (his first language was German), and then, one day, in the course of a typical post-nap craft session at the Parents' Co-op, he just sat down with me at a craft table, picked up some paper and a pair of scissors, and proceeded to carry on a conversation with me in full English sentences. He'd been absorbing the whole time. Hinterlandt also has a Youtube channel, if the website doesn't do enough for you.

Comedy: an old friend, Eric Rasmussen whose blog, I think, only exists on MySpace (and is hilarious, so go check it out), has been regularly producing a web-show entitled The Retributioners. Eric I know from high school, when we were both battling the constraints of the town we found ourselves forced to inhabit by virtue of our status as minors. Eric now lives in New York, and I live anywhere that isn't our hometown. Go figure. I especially recommend Oklahoma XMAS Smackdown, which I think a little too accurate in its depiction of those Norman Rockwell holiday dinners we all enjoy in the heartland.

More music: Hugh, co-conspirator from Munich days and subject of at least one post on this blog, is, in addition to celebrating his son's half birthday, working the cello with a group calledThe Balkanics. Some music to be had on myspace, and you can look them up on Facebook, as well. They also have a few videos on Youtube.

And I'm poking through old files on the computer. Can you tell? Best.

Warning: Navel Gazing Initial Post

2009-03-09T09:33:00.003-06:00

Initial post? I know I've not been one for celebrating birthdays/post numbers that end in a run of zeros on this blog, but initial post? I suppose I never went for the birthday because my first "blog" was a journal kept at DeviantArt (yes, I'm sure I could still log in to that account...) and this one was basically started up because I found the DeviantArt setup to be less than optimal. That was how long ago? How many goddamn accounts does one man need in one lifetime, anyway? However, the fact is, there's been a lot afoot, even if much of it has been time rather dragging on in that particular way time can when one is struggling with self-pity/self-deception/self-loathing of a far reaching kind. But here's the trick: why would I subject someone else to that crap? The blog format first appealed to me as a potential literary medium, and I understood it to be a public document (no matter how little the audience), and chose my words accordingly. Instead, I've chosen some (I hope) well spent silence. After all, if you're down on yourself, you're not likely to be much more charitable with anyone else, and you've very probably got a thing or two to learn, so maybe it's a good strategy to shut up and find out what you can.

But...while the monsters may not be entirely put to rest--and why would one want them to be?--there have simply been stirrings of the old familiar feelings that first drove me toward writing in the first place. That's due, no doubt, to the patient words--and the occasional swift kick in the ass-- administered by both old friends and new, but it's also just the hard-earned lessons that come with a severe self-appraisal. I mean digging shit up by the roots appraisal. I mean looking at it all and wondering what the hell I was ever thinking. I'm not at all convinced I know even now, but if past experience is any guide, sometimes, the only answer you can give to an unanswerable question is to adapt a strategy of deferral. And in the meantime, I feel like the old writing muscles...whatever they were worth to begin with...have atrophied somewhat. Perhaps the monsters just need their own little corner, but I suspect just writing will help them express themselves well...which is important to me.

So here's to a little naval gazing, to that process--always longer than it seems like it should need to be--of calculating the distance between the basics you started out with and the life-clutter that invariably seems to occlude them. Because when you're part of a species that is fundamentally social, sometimes it just necessary to sit down and explain why you couldn't bring yourself to say hi when you saw that old friend out at the pub. Which is maybe what I'm trying to do, without getting stupid and dark about it all.

I have this drum...it's a good drum, I like it. I got it for my birthday. Before that, I started playing around with a mouth harp, a couple of spoons, a soju bottle with a handful of garbanzo beans in it, a couple of sticks, and finally, a friend's djembe. I enjoyed all the handmade stuff, and still play around with it from time to time, but the djembe felt right. Maybe it's just lack of skill, but so far, I haven't really taken to sticks. I like to slap the top of that drum, and a good session is when I walk away from it with both my hands stinging from the blood that's been drawn right up to the surface. Anyway, my friend's drum was all right, but it was a small djembe--really had to whack that thing to get the kind of sound out of it that I was looking for--and one night, I was out at one of the local pubs, and there was this girl band in from Seoul, some old friends of a couple of the pub proprietors here in town. They had a full sized djembe, and after they'd played a few songs, and we'd all got acquainted, and a little drunk, they let me sit in on their rendition of the old Bob Marley classic "Get Up, Stand Up." It'd been a few years since I'd enjoyed that song on anything even approaching the level of my enjoyment that night...that full-sized djembe made all the difference. It seemed like all I had to do was brush that drum to get the noises I wanted out of it. Well...the next morning, I was hungover, and the band had moved on, and I still didn't have a djembe. I went out a few weeks later and bought a big old bass thing--Korean traditional--from a local music shop, but this thing is huge--hard to hold, but more to the point, hard to contain--it just straight up dominates unless everyone you're playing with is playing just as loud. Plus I wasn't thrilled with the range...and, although it was possible to play with the hands, sticks were much the better strategy. I still hope one day I can find a way to love that drum, but so far, we haven't connected the way we need to if we're going to make some serious music. Anyway, I puttered around with that one for a while, but never really got into it, and then, on my birthday--this past November, and one of those milestone birthdays that has the capacity to put one into a deep funk if they're not careful to check all that "youth is the end-all be-all" conditioning we're all subjected to in just about every even marginally popular lyric ever written in the past half century--my wife presented me with a djembe that wasn't full-sized, but was bigger than my friends. It suffices, and I can wait until I'm a little more sedentary before I pop for the full sized sucker.

I know...anyone who's reading this is probably wondering what the hell all this has to do with navel-gazing. Believe me, it's all connected, so bear with the stream of conch delivery (right now, I'm thinking it's the only way this blog ever gets regularly updated, because that blank page has been screwing me over for a good two years now...).

So, maybe it wouldn't be completely unreasonable to ask, err, well, on a blog that at one point served basically to a) supplement an online poetry zine that, while still online, is working on 3 years of silence, b) hopefully track down some relevant literary links in (what I would consider) a time of significant political distress, and c) occasionally serve as a promotion point for whatever open mic project I was involved with at the time, what's up with the drums? I mean, the connection between rhythm and poetry seems clear enough, but why all this nonsense about learning to love a drum? Pretty simple, really, though it'll take a little explaining. Basically, through the good efforts of one Dylan--a long-time denizen of Gangneung whose mug, I believe, could be found on this blog's pages if one were predisposed to searching the archives for it--a band, originally conceived as a punk band, but one that has gone, perhaps, in other, quite different directions, was formed. In fact, this is what started the whole exploration for me. I've always loved music, always had my favorites, and have been known to act like a wild man on a dance floor--some nights with more grace than others. But I could count the notes I'd played on my twenty digits, and I really didn't see what I could offer this enterprise of Dylan's. It's entirely possible that my contribution, to this day, is quite negligible. But, Dylan insisted, mostly, I think, because he thought me capable of writing lyrics. That has, to date, not panned out. And for a very simple reason. I had nothing I wanted to say. My mind, my whole outlook, was a nasty tangle of dark emotion, resentment, self-pity, perhaps--I don't know, but I think very probably toward some--hatred, all mixed up into a foul, ropy stew. I struggle with periods like this, because I genuinely feel that hatred, resentment, and self-pity are all absolutely wasteful emotions, and that time spent on them is basically time spent dying. And I suppose, for some, that would be perfectly fertile soil from which to harvest some seriously good lyrics, but it doesn't work for me. I don't feel like what I want from words has to be unrelentingly sunny, but there is that part of me that would like to believe there's at least the possibility of redemption somewhere in there. Perhaps that's delusionary, too. But if it isn't there, I really can't understand the point of writing words at all. In any case, what I started out with, last summer, was a mouth harp--loaned me by the same friend who loaned me the small djembe--and a couple of kitchen spoons. And what I loved about them was that what they said didn't insist on meaning anything. Unlike lyrics. And that was what I needed, right then, right there. So, for the band, I pretty much gravitated toward finding a basic, workable beat, and trying, to whatever level my ability would allow, to work outwards from that point. I can't claim to have learned much, but I feel that bit more confident than when I started...and you know what? The beat still does not demand to mean anything. And I love it for precisely that reason.

But maybe it's time to mean something again. Maybe I've worked far enough around those demons to be able to persuade, conspire, and narrate again. Because what I'm finding, in that drum, is the same sense for foundational things that drew me first to words...because my choice--to pursue words--was initially driven by precisely the same impulse that drew me to the drum: they're fundamental. And it doesn't matter how long I stay away from words on the creative front--I teach them, and I study them, and there's really no better way to get me to talk your ear off than to start probing underneath the surface of words. If I've learned nothing else from this silence, I've learned that I do seek out precisely these fundamentals--that they're crucial to who I understand myself to be. So, maybe, with that understanding in place, I can handle them a little better this time around.

In any case, as my good friend Chris H. once said: "Here goes nothing."

Hollow men

2008-12-26T11:37:00.002-06:00

Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw...

Okay, it's not particularly necessary to further discredit Rush Limbaugh, and I know that, but I just want to make sure I have this one saved somewhere so I can use it later.

By the way, Obama -- I didn't know this. He's left-handed. Did you know that? At least he plays golf left-handed. I think he writes left-handed. I'm not sure. All I know is that people who are left-handed, there's a reason for it. You know how left-handedness happens? Have you ever studied this, because I have. It's the result of poor potty training in the formative years. (interruption) No, it has been proven. I learned this at a pig-iron convention in Kansas City, Missouri, when I lived there, when I was working for the Kansas City Royals.

I'm being told here by someone who cares deeply that Abraham Lincoln was left-handed. That may well be, but that was in the days of outhouses and there wasn't any potty training back in those days. You can't say Lincoln's left-handedness is the result of poor potty training. There weren't any potties. I appreciate all this assistance from my buddies out there.

Seriously?

All I know is I will now be actively on the lookout for the first opportunity that presents itself to say, "No, it has been proven. I learned this at a pig-iron convention in Kansas City, Missouri, when I lived there."

Can't argue with that. No, I mean, you really can't argue with that.

All things ceased; I went out from myself

2008-12-25T04:01:00.015-06:00

So, for the past year and a half, at least, I have been, I think, navigating the dark night of the soul--at least, so far as anyone who has committed themselves to an honest, secular approach to the complex of questions that arise around the assertion of an integral self, much less soul, can be said to experience such things. Given the recent celebration of the completion of my fortieth year in this particular bag of flesh, it seems probable, in this age of clinical definition and neurochemical solutions, that I might seem less an anachronism were I to refer to the same as a midlife crisis, but what little poetic lint I have managed to accrue over those forty years just finds it more pleasant to attach those feelings to the metaphor of night. I can say this: for multiple reasons, some alluded to on this blog, and others I've yet to find adequate means to express (or, in some cases, motivation, really, to do so...), I've found more than adequate cause for reassessment. I seem to be clinging to the conviction that the capacity for reflection is one of humankind's more valuable traits, in spite of enormous pressure from just about every form of media at our disposal to think otherwise. Regrets? Perhaps that's not the right word. But there have been those few moments in the last couple of years when I might have caught a glimpse of the horrifying and paralyzing burden Nietzsche perceived in the notion of "ewige Wiederkunft" :

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'

This quote was once offered to me, by one Chris Holderman, as a sort of primary directive...that one should lead one's life in such a fashion as to be able to gladly face that demon, and be joyous at the thought of this life...every minute of it...being your eternity. As moral directives go, it makes a lot more sense to me than the first five books of the Bible. That said, it's not an easy directive to live up to, especially during those long, dark nights. As the facts stand, and without hashing through a bunch of events in my personal life that essentially boil down to an unpleasant gruel of only half-deserved resentments, circumstances have been such that of late I have felt, not so much silenced, as irrelevant. My skills in most areas are middling, and despite overly confident assertions--from all human disciplines, really--of the inherent value of every precious subjective on the face of the planet (all 6,749,392,469 (and counting) of them...), I'm not yet convinced that this particular subjective is really going to contribute all that much by throwing its bucketful into the ocean that is humanity. Not that that's stopped me before, but the point is, for whatever reason, and however well-or-ill founded that reason may be, there's some part of me that can't quite accept the rather thin justification of "Well, you aren't hurting anything, and everyone else is doing it, and if you don't, you won't be heard at all." No, the point was, and still is, I think, to somehow improve something, and if that "dark night of the soul" entails profound doubt, then perhaps the focus of that doubt is my ability--or lack thereof--to do so. So far, about the best I've come up with is that doing so makes me a--dare we say better?--person than not doing so, and thus improves, incrementally, the quality of the world as a whole.

In truth, this is a set of doubts that have always been with me, especially when considering the value of writing. The same sort of crisis occurred when I left university--that cocoon where most students are regularly aided and abetted in their attempts to convince themselves and others that their efforts are somehow much more central than they actually are--to find myself employing both my analytical and creative skills (neither of which, by the standard measures used within the university context, were substandard) in a childcare center. It wasn't that the skills weren't relevant to the work at hand--in all honesty, I can think of few fields where they are more relevant--it was just that they weren't about to be recognized, and I knew that. And I fell silent. For years. I worked through that, and I grew because of it, but I can't say it wasn't painful. The next time I felt that monstrous silence creeping up on me--this time due to a political atmosphere I truly believed to be poisonous--I managed to plow on, due largely to my decision to take refuge in the comedic--to the point that the comedic became almost a form of religion. After all, if you can get a room full of people to laugh, surely you've lessened the suffering in the world by some measure. It's possible that the fact that it was almost a religion is precisely what led to that strategy's failure...or failure, at least, in regards to what I felt I wanted from the words. Whatever the reason, and in spite of several abortive attempts to wrestle my way back to that space I generally refer to as poetry by taking recourse to the strategy of emphasizing the comedy inherent in all human efforts, the strategy hasn't proven effective during this last bout with the demons. Instead, it's been necessary to enter a prolonged silence, the better, I suppose, to figure out just what it is I want from words.

This is, in part, an apology, and in part, an explanation, I suppose, especially to all those who have supported me, in any number of capacities, in the pursuit of this particular fool's errand, but it's also a prelude to a recent event that I found...not compelling...but interesting in its own small way. As most of the people who are likely to read this blog know, I spent five years co-editing an online literary mag, which entailed putting together one interview and one editorial (usually very freewheeling in style) every 3 months. The archives are on the sidebar...given the thesis I'm working with here, there's probably no particularly compelling reason to link to these works in this post. During that five years, and with the help of this blog and any number of forum postings, I made myself enough of a nuisance to get top billing for my name on the standard Google search. I also--and this is important--got my name included on Ron Silliman's blog. Only as one name in the lengthy list that is his blogroll, one that I can imagine a younger and more optimistic Silliman expected to be able to maintain and thus create a definitive resource of working poets the world over, but...enough notice from that quarter to actually be included in that long list. Personally, I highly suspect that if that blogroll were regularly maintained, the last year and a half would have found this blog removed. Fortunately for me, the list is cumbersome, so, although I've yet to make it into one of Silliman's postings--and at this point in my life, suspect myself of being sufficiently unprolific, uninspiring and at odds with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry in general and Silliman's "School of Quietude" thesis in particular to never make one of those posts--this blog remains there, in spite of a very lengthy silence and only peripheral relevance to anything Silliman is doing, not unlike a distended tick hanging from the testicles of the cur that is contemporary poetry.

Believe me, the snarls are all for myself...I've plenty of respect for Silliman's undertaking, even where I find myself disagreeing, and it's one of the resources I regularly cite to any person who somehow, through my activities, takes interest in the state of contemporary poetry long enough for me to burden them with a url or two. But for all that, being on that blogroll rather seemed an affirmation of precisely that thesis I was advancing when, as a young participant of off-off-Green Mill poetry slams I penned the no doubt monumental lines I am bent / under the weight / of my ancestry, / & I cannot make myself be heard / through this sea of flesh. / I am drowning in it. Angst, sure, but perhaps in the resilience of my age at that time, there was a certain glory, a certain trickster euphoria that came from smashing monuments and flinging open the gates to the great unwashed, even if it was only verbally. There was a small part of me that rather exalted in the process of anonymity, to the point that, to my mind, there was no greater work of art than the one that went unsigned. Amongst my greatest wishes were that they would never find out who wrote Primary Colors, that Thomas Pynchon would be buried in an unmarked grave in an unknown location, and that somewhere in the Bahamas, after having made some astute investments with his initial capital,D. B. Cooper is living a quiet life with no concern for current events. Of those three scenarios, at present, the one that is most likely is also the one that is most blatantly criminal.

That is, in large part, why I found the Issue 1 hoax interesting. An incredible project, really, if you're impressed by big numbers: 3,785 pages of previously unpublished poetry, featuring 3,164 poets. Most contemporary. Some a little more familiar. Some very dead. Silliman made the cut. So did Yoko Ono. So did William Shakespeare. So did a few of the poets from the pages of that lit mag I helped edit. And...so did yours truly. Which was odd...because even given the sheer heft of the volume--almost a guarantee that an anthology, especially of contemporary poetry, is going to be crap--I couldn't quite see myself sharing pages with some of the names on the list of contributors. Moreover, I couldn't remember submitting...which, for me, is odd, as I've submitted about four times, to anything, in the last year and a half, although to be perfectly fair, five days after Issue 1 came out, a submission that I had wholly forgotten I'd made was published. But in this case, there was a simple reason I couldn't remember submitting. I hadn't. Nor, apparently, had anyone else--though a sizeable number of the other contributors noticed their inclusion long before I did. Silliman noticed, and called the anthology "an act of anarcho-flarf vandalism". Others were similarly outraged. Others thought it clever. Others wondered what they should think/feel. The folks at forgodot issued a "polite clarification", and, in an incredibly timely reminder of just how fast word spreads these days, by early December, pretty much everyone had their say on the matter. Short perhaps one or two bloggers who had fallen off the face of the earth and were refusing to check their e-mail with any real consistency.

For me...reactions. First, I was incredibly surprised to be in the anthology at all, even if it was a hoax. Then, I was bemused by the fact that five years of hard work on an online zine had netted both the zine I worked for and myself precisely zero mentions on any page at the Poetry Foundation or on Silliman's blog, but one online hoax found us mentioned on both. There's something troubling about that fact, because, while I'm sure it took some time to put together the algorithm that generated the poems in issue one, not to mention grabbing all those names, cutting and pasting them to the various poems, and formatting it for .pdf, some quiet part of me wants to believe that the interviews and the editorials and the countless e-mails I sent out to the poets and essayists we both accepted and rejected were all considerably more aligned to what many would like to believe poetry can still be. Mind you, I was at no point in this process pissed off with the people who had put this massive display of reverse plagiarism together--in a way, I was pleased to have gained a poem, even if it didn't sound like me (russet? rondeau? I don't think so...). I even read it at one of the local open mics--why not? It's mine, apparently. I can say, however, that it was not as warmly received as that of Fulson, a teenage acquaintance of mine, in his incredibly touching paean to the products of his excretory functions. You can take that assessment for whatever it's worth.

After my initial reaction, other issues rose up to the surface. For example, had my name been attached in similar fashion to hate speech, I probably wouldn't have had so tepid a reaction. So what does that say about the poetry in Issue 1? To me, it says that if there is artistry at work here, it's not at the level of the individual poem--it's both before and after that. If it lies anywhere, it lies first at the level of the algorithm itself...let's face it, folks, it's not a bad bet that more than half of the general population could be presented with this work and not identify it as having been written by a computer, and it's still pretty safe to bet that many of them wouldn't be able to distinguish this work from that of a lot of contemporary poets. Fair enough to argue that this is not due to any failing on the part of contemporary poets, but the fact is, most of those people who couldn't distinguish this from human generated poetry probably have a job to get to, and don't really have time to obsess over Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, no matter how good they are. That's first. If a computer program is capable of replacing you in the eyes of the general public, then, whether you view the development negatively or positively, whether you think the fault/credit lies with either the poets or the audience, something in our aesthetic sense has shifted, fundamentally. It suggests either a seriously good computer program, or a serious disconnection between a lot of poets and a lot of readers.

The Issue 1 project can also be understood as art on the level of the anthology as a whole. It's true--individual poets reacted to "their" poems, so on that sense, the poems got assessed on that level, but in an extremely unsystematic way. I'm not academic enough to slog through 3,785 pages of computer generated poetry in search of some guiding aesthetic principle on the level of the individual poems, and I certainly wouldn't wish that on anyone else (okay...I wouldn't wish it on anyone except for any of the members of the administration of the outgoing United States executive branch of government...), but the point remains: the reaction thus far has been, by and large, driven not by the individual poems--which are, from what I've seen so far, bland--rather, they're driven by the idea of the anthology. Your name, along with 3,163 other poets, bloggers, and writers, is now attached, however whimsically, to a set of words you didn't write. Nothing was stolen from any of you--something was attributed to you. That's not a benign act, by any means, although without further value being given to the act, it could be either positive or negative in effect. Your spouse's friend can tell your spouse that you spend those Saturday afternoons you insist on having to yourself a) at the local soup kitchen, or b) with the lover you've never mentioned, and both assertions could be patently false, but if your spouse believes it, one of those assertions is much more likely to get you divorced than the other one is. The question is, what's really at stake with Issue 1's assertion that you wrote these words? How believable is that assertion, and how likely is that assertion to damage your good standing in the world of poetry? Given the paper thin facade this hoax came wrapped in, the answer to the first part of that question seems to be a pretty solid "not very," and I guess the second part of the question depends largely on just how good your standing is. There are those who have invested so much in this particular brand of illusion-making that, by all appearances, it matters barely less than, say, nuclear security in Georgia. Then again, there are others to whom it matters not one whit.

I'm interested in this project, first, because I'm interested in hoaxes generally--after all, if the greatest work of art goes unsigned, entirely divorced from the individual ego, then an undiscovered hoax would be prime material--and second, because it raises some interesting questions in its presentation. To be honest, though, the most compelling part of the whole project, for me was that title page, with all those microprinted names. Make no mistake--a fair few of those names are attached to poets who are writing today. That's just poems. That title page clears up the whole question of what it means to publish on the web, for anyone who was harboring any illusions: you are, in effect, at the world's largest poetry reading, only the poets are not taking turns. They're all reading their work at the same time. And the only audience, aside from those other poets, are either indulgent friends who have agreed to come to this monstrosity for your sake, or poor hapless souls who wandered through the wrong door and haven't managed to get out yet.

I don't know about any of you, but I'm thinking I should just take up drums, and have done with this nonsense. But hey...maybe that's just the remnants of that long, dark night of the soul clinging to me.

Peace, guys. Hope to post more often soon.

--tchitch

A wish for safe passage

2008-09-13T22:26:00.003-06:00

Quote pulled from Gawker:

[L]earning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

David Foster Wallace, February 21, 1962 - September 12, 2008.

"She had the kind of body that made a man want to have sex with her."

2008-08-16T19:20:00.002-06:00

Yes, that's right...it's time to read the results of most everyone's favorite literary contest, the annual Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, in which aspiring wordsmiths vie with each other to see who can produce the most malodorous opening line for a novel. Personally, I like the unadorned directness of Barry J. Drucker's offering, which also serves as the title of this entry.

Enjoy!

Sometimes I forget

2008-08-01T08:48:00.002-06:00

...why I feel like giving up on talking to anyone, and especially on talking to anyone over the internet. And then, an article like this comes along and reminds me:

Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?

There are whole months when I can't see past the sense of impending doom. We are screwed. We are sick. Our brains have taken us to a place we may actually not have the capacity to understand. And there is nothing--nothing--a feeble art like poetry can do about it.

Believe it or not, the writing's been jogging loose in the past couple of months. But...in a spiral notebook.

New Poetry and Notes on Being Blocked

2008-04-05T04:42:00.004-06:00

Casting about for a sense of audience. Semi-permanently funked. Folks, the next time a writer type tells you they're blocked but they're still writing, call bullshit. Block means that you don't know what to write or why you were writing. Block means that you do not understand the underpinnings of writing itself. From inside, it feels permanent, and if you're really invested at all, it affects everything you do. The world changes.

But enough about that. The good news is this: I've had four poems picked up in the last few months--three at poeticdiversity, where my cohort Marie Lecrivain has hosted work by yours truly before (to access, look at the sidebar of the Fool's Errand blog under Heading "Work," subheading "Online Publications". For the month of April 2008, she's picked up the poems The Far Shore , All We Can Do, and Tonto Shrugs it Off. In addition to those, another poem...one I'm particularly pleased with, as it has the right feeling for those poems in which the composition truly touches something essential in myself...is being hosted in the current issue of Babel Fruit. The poem being hosted there, The Giftbearers, is the product of a very specific event, and is very much associated with my current place of residence, Gangneung, South Korea. There is a real story behind this one...one that continues to resonate with myself, and that I hope you find some pleasure in as well.

So, some newly published work. Still working on how to generate some NEW work...but newly published is some sort of start, I suppose.

How 'bout y'all? How's the hope/inspiration gig treating you these days?

Enjoy--tchitch

Generation Gap

2007-12-28T08:53:00.000-06:00

Given that I only have about 26 years left before I face the same milestone, I probably shouldn't laugh too hard at this--but you know what? I just can't help myself.

Worth wasting some time over

2007-12-19T01:44:00.000-06:00

Strange Maps: a blog.

In defense of the Facebook "is":

2007-12-02T00:52:00.000-06:00

Love it. And agree, wholeheartedly.

Facebook drops "is" status updates, poetry dies

Making Heads or Tails out of an Animalistic Situation

2007-11-13T09:40:00.000-06:00

I mistrust found poems. They seem too easy, most of the time. But sometimes, one just walks purring into your lap...and what can you do, really, at that point, but pet it?

I teach English. Or I try to. Sometimes, the text gets in the way. I teach at ECC. The prescribed text for teaching children who are just beginning to study English is a series of books called Wake Up!--a series of books, I remain convinced, that constitutes an elaborate and monstrous hoax upon the Korean people.

I submit, for your consideration, the following found poem, comprised entirely of lines gleaned--and presented here, in their unretouched glory--from the teacher's guide to this set of books.

Making Heads or Tails out of an Animalistic Situation
or
55 Reasons Why My Primary English Text is not Adequate.

1. Making heads or tails out of an animalistic situation.
2. Stop crying, baby!
3. Do you know what you are?
4. Rome was not built in a day.
5. Let’s act out!
6. The younger, the faster.
7. Monty, what’s behind the curtain?
8. Black eyes and fat lips.
9. I know what they’re saying.
10. Randy is between the police officers.
11. We share the same brain.
12. I wash my hands of you.
13. Roman Polanski presents.
14. I want some Academy awards.
15. The new deal paid off.
16. Even the nights are better.
17. The student is under the fire engine.
18. Randy is writing on the boat.
19. Look what’s become of me.
20. Give me my legs.
21. Zen and the art of sandwich making.
22. Colonel, some dessert please.
23. The walls of fruit are closing in on me.
24. Holy roller
25. Matisse’s madness.
26. Watermelon balloons in strawberry fields.
27. Onion rings are flying through the sky.
28. I want your pizza.
29. I could wallpaper my bathroom with these rejection notices.
30. I did that on purpose.
31. Look ma, no warts!
32. Want to see my robot?
33. Mine is fast.
34. Guess what, boy or girl?
35. Find my body part.
36. Move along, son.
37. Carmichael, I love what you’ve done to the place.
38. Sandy is in the closet.
39. Don’t throw garbage in my yard!
40. The Maytag guy does get lonely.
41. Baby, you can drive my car.
42. Kitchen rhymes with chicken.
43. Farmer’s roulette.
44. The duck is laughing.
45. Showdown at some flipped-out corral.
46. What are the animals doing?
47. Love is blind, but favourites are blindfolded.
48. It’s my house, designs are my choice.
49. Who has the bomb?
50. The raincoat is quicker than the eye.
51. I want a new job.
52. Another spinster?
53. Who’s the man?
54. These are my marbles. Those are my balls.
55. Forcefeed the fat boy!

An Open Letter to my Younger Brother

2007-10-21T09:29:00.000-06:00

Rueben,

In the course of juggling the dual tasks of editing a zine and maintaining a blog over the past three years, I fear I've become somewhat cagey. Believing that were I to write my real feelings about some of the events that I have witnessed over the last two years, some of the people close to me might feel attacked, exposed, and quite possibly betrayed, I've opted for discretion. There's something to be said for doing so, but the fact is, of late, I've come to a greater awareness of just how much my voice has been reined in as a result. I often feel like I am not at liberty to speak my true mind. As a father, and a teacher, and yes, even a friend, I do believe there is a time for a certain politic silence to be maintained. With that, however, comes a time for plain words. I have to confess, with the direction my ramblings have taken over the past few months, I was a little surprised to read your words of encouragement regarding recent topics I've broached...they are close to your heart, as mine, and I have to confess, I worried that my words would be seen as attacks on both people and institutions that are probably much closer to both of our hearts than either of us would typically admit. I've learned that I can be quite acid in my observations, and believe it or not, I wish no harm or ill will upon any human being, and take special pains not to wish such harm on those who have wished it upon me. Life's too short to be wasting one's energies on such things. But I do try to temper my feelings so as to take others' feelings into account, where possible.

I wish I could find the words necessary to convey precisely what I learned on my last stay in the United States. Perhaps one day I will. I always seem to be just short of really communicating it, though. What I will say is that my criticism, though it may at times be misguided (and what person doesn't have a thing or two left to learn?), is never motivated by ill will. Rather, it's been my experience that, as a rule, human beings abhor change of any kind--even change that is beneficial to them. So when bad habits are pointed out to them, rather than understanding the messenger to be someone who wishes to bring about positive change, that person is often seen to be the real problem. I'm sure, with your experience in leading construction crews, you've seen this phenomenon yourself. Correcting someone's technique is rarely seen as a gift--rather, when the boss does it, it's usually understood as a petty attempt to assert one's limited power. The person being corrected regards it as meddlesome, and comes to resent the suggestion, with the end result being that the technique remains unfixed out of sheer spite. I could tell you stories...as I'm sure you could tell me...but I'll limit it to one: a certain mutual acquaintance of ours has, during the entire course of their life, always found it difficult to bake good homemade biscuits. As you may know, early in my working life, I did a considerable amount of time in a commercial bakery. This gave me the necessary knowledge to immediately pinpoint the problem: the person in question, out of a desire to simplify the process, ignored the recipe's call for solid fat, and substituted cooking oil. I do not expect everyone to know why this will result in poor biscuits (it has to do with the fact that the rising process is aided by the steam produced when the solid fat is melted), but I fear that when I encounter a human being who refuses to change their technique when this information is conveyed to them, my hope for the continued viability of the human species takes an incremental tick downward.

Sometimes, those incremental ticks build up to a serious downturn, and I'm afraid my recent return to the states--after a seven and a half year absence, during which America suffered a number of traumas that--horribly--appear to have bruised her psyche beyond recognition (this, itself, not exactly a testament to the continued resilience of the sense of nation "shared" by her citizens), has left me rather reeling. The primary feelings I have battled, over the last year--and especially since my--I have only one viable word for it--escape from my hometown, have been resentment, bitterness, and anger. None of these are particularly noble emotions, and so I have found myself desperately trying to think around them, trying to find my way back to expressing what I really feel. I was aware, upon leaving, that this process would take some time: as we left my best friend in that town--who cried upon our departure--I said as much to Kari, "It's likely to be two solid months before I even manage to figure out what the hell that was about." Well, it's been four, and typing this letter is as close as I've come to actually expressing my understanding of those events. All I can say about the mythical ignorance and laziness of the typical American is that I am one, and I don't regard myself to be either. If experience is any source of knowledge on the matter, I expect they're working you like a dog in your current occupation. They certainly did me. And as far as I can see, the better portion of the mechanisms of that particular system of economics are designed to keep those who have money rich, and those who don't poor. I've had to put myself into a very nearly unworkable position to obtain what education I have, and there's every likelihood that I will spend the rest of my life trying to dig myself out from under that particular burden. That is, short the new American dream: a lottery win, or, perhaps more realistically, a multi-million dollar lawsuit settlement. I think the present system conspires, wittingly or no, to lull most humans into a state of laziness and ignorance. Those in power want you that way. If you don't know, and don't want to do anything about it, you're easier to govern. Excellence is reserved for those who can afford a top notch publicity agent. That or the dead, who are the easiest of all to govern. Look what they've done to Jesus, after all.

You can see, my turn of mind reaches for the nearest icon, and tends to think the best cleanser a healthy dose of sulphuric acid. I don't wish to let myself go off on a rant, however, as I'd like to offer at least a tentative identification of a root problem. When I was very young, in the year and a half I lived in New Orleans, I remember once being approached by a middle aged woman while I stood outside the T-shirt shop where I was working, and the woman saying that I looked bored out of my mind, and giving me her business card and asking me to come see her about a possible business opportunity. I did. I took a chance, visited her, and it was one of the oddest encounters I've ever had in my life. The business end of her proposal was that she had some resort properties, and she was looking for a young manager, and asking if I would be interested. The trouble was, my own instincts suggested that there was far more than business afoot--at some point in the conversation, she asked if I'd ever brought a woman to climax...not exactly business school fodder, and highly suggestive of very different motivations on her part. I walked away from that. It's but one of many of my encounters that have left me wondering, occasionally, where my life might have gone had I made a different decision. I do remember one thing she said as I left, though, "You Americans are all suspicious to the bone. If someone offers you free food, you think it's poisoned."

Perhaps, on that occasion, I was right to suspect. However--and this especially after this latest visit to my hometown--I also suspect that for most Americans, she was absolutely right. My entire time in the United States was marked by nothing so much as a sense of deep suspicion, on the part of all but three people--all close friends--regarding my motives. There was nothing I could do to in any way allay this suspicion. Nobody but those good friends trusted me in any way, shape or form. So I bent myself to the task of keeping my word where others did not. And I think for the most part I did so. But the message was lost in the noise--I wasn't a victim, and therefore, I wasn't worthy of attention. I'm certain I would have done much better just to have developed a limp and complained about how I'd been wronged. This is true not only on the home front, but also in every dealing I had with job interviewers, every attempt at a business conversation. Obviously, I was up to something, and it wasn't likely to be anything good.

I'm told, by friends who watch this from the outside, that I'm not the only one who feels this. Multiply that by over 325 million citizens, and you begin to see the bare scope of the problem. Paranoia is the watchword. Freedom is absolute security. The very dirt we walk on is lethal. We have nothing to fear but everything we come in contact with. And as for this dreamer, who once not only hoped, but actively preached hope, the situation is beyond any hope of redemption. When everyone is looking out for number one, and convinced that number two through six billion has a gun pointed at their head, there's not a chance in hell we're gonna pull through this one.

I'd just like to say a couple of things about living abroad: first, the college degree helps--it gives one an immediate leg up, so if you've ever the mind to, you might think about that. Second, getting jobs is easier when you get one before you leave. You're not likely to get one on the ground...unless you're gunning for a job teaching English in Asia, and even then, maybe better to do at least some forward planning. My guess is there are ways, but moving around generally entails convincing the border guards that you're at least nominally financially viable. Living outside of one's nation of birth is not for every one, and certainly not for every American--it requires a level of flexibility, and the ability to admit that some things--even in the question of government--may be better managed in other nations, that not all humans possess. And in a place like Korea, it helps if your different colored skin is quite thick when it comes to racial stereotypes. All that said, I will say that seeing the beast from outside is very helpful in noting its identifying markings. Short living somewhere else, there's always the option of visiting, oh, say, a close relative with a couch and a good sense of direction that's on the ground when you come. How else are you going to spend your vacation? Fixing your Myspace profile?

Anyway, I don't know if that clarifies anything to you, but your comment was reason for me reflecting upon my recent thoughts and writing (which amount to a hill of shite, anyway...), and I'd like to thank you for that. I'm hard pressed for focal points right now, fearing, at times, that the only possible source of comfort left us is to admit that the bastards have beaten us, and to commence planning how best to inhabit the peace that's been thrust upon us. I'm cool. I've weathered far worse than this. I'm just getting old enough that it takes me that little bit longer to recuperate. But I think being given the opportunity to express myself on the matter--and actually acting upon it--may do a little to help speed the process along.

Stay well, kid, and I seriously hope that one day, we'll have the opportunity to get shitfaced on soju together.

--your bro--g

Standard Myths

2007-10-18T08:44:00.000-06:00

Filed in the "anyone can grow up to be president" file:

"The fee to be considered for the Democratic ballot is $2,500, while it’s a hefty $35,000 to gain admittance into the Republican primary."

More here. Go Stephen, go.

Meanwhile, on the question of writing--this, to a friend, in regards to recent crises on the writing front, I mentioned, among other concerns, that I had a strong suspicion that writers were accidentally "teaching our tyrants how better to swindle us and make us like it." To which he responded, "THEY'VE WON ALREADY! Jazus..that's no reason not to do something."

It may be exactly that--reaching for that nasty comfort that comes with realizing the struggle's been well and truly lost. I mean, obviously, our tyrants don't know much about handling peace. At least, not if we accept the labels they stick on things--wherein we've been at peace for a solid three years now. There's something to declaring the war over, and letting them call themselves winners. But it does seem cold comfort.

Regardless. I gotta find a way to get writing, again. I'm starting to bug the living shit out of myself at this point.

With that in mind...

--tchitch.

The game's afoot.

2007-10-05T11:15:00.000-06:00

Big announcement...for me, anyway...forthcoming. In the meantime, another show in Gangneung. Come if you can.

Who the hell are you, kid?

2007-09-16T10:04:00.000-06:00

Still nursing the cultural hangover, still trying to figure out what it is I'm doing. And Dave Smith's poem,The Roundhouse Voices, still rocks. Looking to pair it up with the music of Delerium, as was done oh so many years ago during the stint at KSUA. Funny thing, the pairing was an off-the-cuff accident that just happened to work. I was in the production studios, still trying to stumble my way through a Session 8 system--god it seemed flash...and probably was, given the year--well, there was lots of room for playing around, but this one just presented itself to us, holus bolus--we played the music, I read the poem, and they simply meshed. I think I had to make two tiny edits on a poem that reads, straight through, at around five minutes, and a song that tops 8 minutes. So now, I'm listening to the music, and reading the poem, and trying to intentionally achieve the same effect. Somehow, I remember it being easier the first time around.

Live on Friday. Come if you're in the vicinity.

Untranquil Reflections

2007-08-26T20:35:00.000-06:00

Quietly working things out, though at a pace much slower than I'd hoped. I did say, as we drove out of my hometown, that I expected it to take at least two months for me to process what had gone on there. It's been a little over that, and I've of course had to process my semi-new surroundings, as well. Never mind the interior landscape, which is a bit of a shambles. I think I'm accepting, more than ever, the limited sphere I'm able to exert any influence over whatsoever.

I have shunned using this blog, which, no matter how few come by to read it, remains a public forum, to comment too thoroughly on the more negative aspects of my experiences over the last few years. Besides, there's been plenty of value during those years as well, and focusing on what could have gone better is a very good way to lose sight of what could have gone much worse. That said, I feel the need to address some recent developments, from a personal vantage point, and though I'm not about to name names, what I have to say is germaine to some local events. So.

First and foremost, however, I think the central observation, of late, is that in writing, I need to concede the fact that the primary motivational force, from a personal perspective, is simply a love for and fascination with language. I remain convinced, as science gains a stronger foothold on many areas until recently left to the humanities, that if human consciousness ever proves to be thoroughly explainable with statements that are objectively arrived at, it will be through the thorough and systematic exploration of the medium of language. The infinite variations language is capable of, and the complexity couched in even so simple a sentence as "I don't think I've ever seen anything like it"--the latter thoroughly hammered home in the course of teaching English as a second language and getting a real feel for just how many months it takes to work up to the above sentence--seem to me to present the cognitive sciences with a puzzle that is more complex than chess by several orders of magnitude...and they're still working on chess. Further, my own readings lead me to believe that our "reality" is thoroughly saturated with the limitations and potentials of that language we use to describe it, and may in fact be, in large part, determined by those limitations and potentials, and how thoroughly we bend to the former, or reach for the latter.

That said, see premise one of this post. I'm aware that all of this is contingent, but the "truth," or lack thereof, is not the point--rather, the point, from my perspective, is that for whatever reason, this particular aspect of being human is of endless fascination to me. Further, that this is the only point to continuing. This is a shift, if not in fact, in having become conscious of the fact--in the past, the ostensible focus of the work was to reach out, to engage in dialogue, on the premise that dialogue is itself a good, particularly in respect to the founding principles behind democracy and self-governance. But this premise is no longer sufficient. While my own belief in those principles may still be strong, my belief in the ability for those principles to function in the present context--in which a certain key resignation, while welcome, rings hollow in the realization that, as with every other member of our fundamentally corrupt ruling class, this is quite likely the full extent of the punishment that will be meted out for a series of crimes I regard to be deserving of much, much more punitive measures. We've seen this before, again and again. When a member of this class falls on their own sword, they must be rewarded, not punished. The only thing that's going to suffer under this schematic is the very democracy all of the above men claimed to serve and to love. And it's suffered plenty, and I've seen nobody--least of all myself--much able to turn that tide. And while I could spend the next few years deluding myself into believing that I'm copping out by not taking up that particular banner, I think maybe I could do more, and better, by simply acknowledging that the reason I continue to write is because I love language. And that's all.

So. About two weeks ago, we held the first of (hopefully) a series of open mics, organized, by and large, by Dylan, who finds himself having to function as point man for the venture because...well, because of a lot of things, though I do try to help out where I can. That show went well enough, and there are those, locally, who appreciate the efforts behind it and seem to genuinely enjoy the chance to gather for something other than just a night out on the piss. Dylan anchored the show brilliantly, and I got some excellent feedback on a poem I've been trying to puzzle my way through for the past few weeks, so that's all to the good. We've made plans for a second, and while I'm looking forward to it, I have to admit, after this last weekend, the wind in my sails has died down to a very gentle breeze that's likely to carry me with a little less haste toward that destination. Mostly, I think, second guessing amongst what is, of necessity, a fairly closed society of waeguks, who, for reasons of their own, are a little fearful of what might be said at such open mics. Fair enough. I've no good grounds upon which to project my own relatively high insensitivity to criticism upon others, and plenty of past experience to tell me that even well-meant criticism often wounds far deeper than the object of that criticism lets on. I have my own take on all that, but it's not really central to my concerns. What is central, however, is the fact that I was told (for the second time by the same person, interestingly enough) that I'm not aware enough of the particulars behind local waeguk politics to have a valuable opinion on the matter.

I admit, I'm not aware of those particulars. Further, I hereby admit that I'm not interested in becoming aware of them. What is striking, however, is that every time I go out, I hear of bad blood passing between another two humans, both of which I respect--at the very least, as humans--and I'm not sure how to operate under such conditions. I know, again, from my own experience, that there are those amongst us humans who are opposed to "unity"--under any banner--on principle, and I can't say I find those principles completely lacking in persuasiveness (though the actual principle is rarely enough communicated, in explicit fashion, as to make it almost unassailable for the fact that the bearer often refuses to acknowledge that it is even held). But the level of fractiousness I encounter, in the common course of any given day, closes up an already bleak vista in which no triumph seems great enough to be called progress. I fear for this future. I don't relish biding another forty odd years celebrating every small step that appears to make things "less bad," and trying to convince myself that those steps really are a way forward. I think we've been thoroughly hornswaggled, as a people, as a species, into believing that our selves are of such high value that we should commit them to no cause, no ideal, no love that might entail the sacrifice of even the smallest scrap of that self. Our leaders have divided us by convincing us that division is a virtue, when it's as likely that we're all blind dust groping in a vast universe that will one day swallow all our works and ways like so much detritus down a bottom-feeder's gullet. It's as stark as that, and the funny thing is, if all us little turds got together with a purpose, we could thoroughly kick ass.

Then again, in the immortal words of Steve Martin, "Naaaaah".

As for myself, I'll keep on not giving up, but I have to admit, I'm getting a thorough sense of just why it was that my younger self understood writing to be an endurance sport. It ain't easy, and let's face it, cynicism pays better. But cynicism's the man's game, and anyone who doesn't believe in the man after the last 6 years of American politics would be doing us a great service if they crawled the rest of the way up their colon and disappeared entirely up there.

Yeah. It's that dark in here. I'm still receptive to the light, but I'm gonna be hell to convince from this point forward.

Taking Stock

2007-08-12T20:05:00.000-06:00

Hm.

My thoughts run this way: in the past few months, I've dealt with a nasty piece of reverse culture shock that may very well have left me permanently embittered toward a hometown that I already had a tenuous relationship with, and, by extension, I have to look somewhat askance at the nation that houses such a place--and will not only tolerate, but actively defend the actions of an administration that has made it a public policy to a) torture, b) spy on its own people, and c) base government employment on political affiliation rather than merit or ability. For a few years I've found myself engaged in multiple conversations defending this nation against charges that it is in serious and pretty much irreversible decline, and doing so against arguments that frankly, I found more than a little convincing. While I generally tend to defer in such matters, I will say I'm past defending it. From a personal vantage point, I find myself battling the sense of being a colonial French teacher at just about that point in history when la lengua franca was being supplanted by the universal language. The pay isn't bad, but I feel a bit of an anachronism, on several fronts. Of late, my main concern is to wrestle back my mojo as a poet, but even that's feeling somewhat difficult for the fact that so much of my work has been toward either community or online literature, and I'm feeling more than usually antisocial and technophobic. I watch the division into schools, of an art that, even were it to present a unified front, appears to most to be an antiquated mode of expression that is rarely relevant, generally ineffective, and equated, for the most part, with lace tatting. My sole consolation in this last regard is that I think it obsolete for reasons that have to do with a poorly educated public's capacity for reasoned discourse, the sound bite having supplanted substantive thinking in most realms some decades ago. What I do not understand, however, is why poets insist upon what I can only regard as glorified sissy-fights as their misguided means to promoting the arts.

A friend from the Munich days once put it to me this way, after a show: "I like poetry--I studied it, like everyone, in school, and always enjoyed it--but I hate poets."

Maybe so. Maybe that's where I need to be, as well. All I know is that I desperately need, not things to write about, but reasons to write about them.

We're back

2007-08-08T20:58:00.000-06:00

...in the saddle again. Join if you can. Anyone got a digicam for video?

Far from shocked

2007-08-07T20:12:00.001-06:00

Ganked from Books, Inq.:

Which Author's Fiction are You?

William Faulkner wrote you. Yes, you're a genius, you drunken old coot.
Take this quiz!

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Language

2007-08-05T07:36:00.000-06:00

...it's a virus:

"One of Ms. Kenneally’s most intriguing scientists, Simon Kirby, a linguist at the University of Edinburgh who works with computer models, has proposed the idea that language might be a self-evolving phenomenon. Somewhat like a computer virus, it changes and adapts to survive."

Read the whole thing here.

Meanwhile, ya think?

Untitled exile

2007-08-04T20:14:00.001-06:00

ALSO the mind, and that land, easement of
   borders, fluid conjuring cubes from
   meandering streams, dream of stilling
river, rock, cloud, rain, cliff, grain, human, child,
our words puzzle through time, one or more steps
   behind, always. We only dream form/We
   dream only form/Only we dream form, BUT
we are most insistent in our dreams. So,
the old minds have it, with judicious
   application of limits, we may ground
   perfection on perfection's given, abandon
all our senses may offer, this tumult
   of living, and seek instead our unities
   in separate dreams that war with time.

Rage Within the Machine

2007-08-03T19:54:00.000-06:00

As it appeared, originally, a couple of years ago in Volume 6 of Marlow Peerse Weaver's "In Our Own Words" series (which, by all appearances, the website has gone down since, though you can still, ostensibly, order the book through Amazon.com ('tis no great shakes, literarily, though it's documentary function provides something at least mildly interesting.)) As it was published, but as I doubt many who stumble across this blog--or did, anyway, before I went silent--have read it, and as my contractual obligation not to republish has expired, I'm parking it here, as much for myself as for anyone.

Rage Within the Machine

We all know, in our own particular, stubborn way, that any attempt at exchange between humans inevitably entails stripping the matter down—-simplifying what does not merit simplification—-that between any event and the representation of same lies a space so saturated with the vagaries of our senses as to make of any claim to truth a laughable pretense. Saturation being the word for our particular times, feeling the pressure of ten billion plus human feet upon our Earth, hearing the familiar rumbling of those machines, the way we extend ourselves into our world.

It is June 5th, 1989, and even in this middling Oklahoma town, innocence is not a virtue to be pursued. We seek the death of our own innocence consciously, not through the fault of any system, but as a result of our own humanity, the natural expression of an unbounded and unbindable curiosity. The celebration of our own coming of age—a sudden shift from one age to the next marked by a single day on the calendar—one single, sleepy instant in which we both breech and acknowledge those boundaries under which we thrive, not merely a matter of shattering illusions, but also of choosing which ones we will continue to believe in. The End of an Era. The End of Communism. The End of History, discarded in the offhand flourish of a four-word headline.

Now you see it. Now you don’t.

It is not my birthday, but were I to put a definitive date on my own passage into adulthood, this would be the day. Behind me, the eighties, the cultural unit used to describe my coming of age, another illusion, upon which the curtain falls six months too fast for the calendar. WarGames, the Atari 2600, MTV grown from cutting edge to mass-marketing dinosaur in the space of just eight years. Even now, in some far removed point of space, marketing agents are wrestling toward the one phrase that will encapsulate "my generation," the phrase that will fit into the tidy edges of commercials for carbonated beverages, tennis shoes, candy bars.

I don’t know it yet, but I’m preparing for my future, engaged, as I am, in a proto-typical version of multi-tasking as I read Crime and Punishment during commercials. My reading is obsessional, dredging the tributaries of literature for corpora gleaned from casual adjectives, Kesey to Tom Wolfe to Kerouac, the present volume chosen on the basis of Kerouac’s use of the adjective "Dostoyevskian." An unofficial education, associative in nature, again unwittingly preparing myself for a hyper-linked future I’ve yet to envision. I feel, in preferring Raskolnikov’s justification for murder over adverts for mutual funds and products to staunch the odious by-products of being human, more distance between myself and twentieth-century Madison Avenue than I do between myself and late ninteenth-century Russia, the words before me speaking directly to my own awakening desire for greatness: "In my opinion, if the discoveries of Kepler or Newton, by some combination of circumstances, could not have become known to the world in any other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people, who might have hampered or in some way been obstacles in the path of those discoveries, then Newton would have had the right, or might even have been under an obligation…to remove those ten or a hundred people, so that his discoveries might be revealed to all mankind."

The television is tuned to CNN Headline News. Real News. Real Fast. The world condensed to thirty minutes of breaking news, distant lands bleeding into my living room via satellite. For the last seven weeks, beginning with the mid-April death of Hu Yaobang, who served, until his ouster in 1987, as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the drama has been building to a slow climax. The spark provided by this death, the death of a prominent man who may well have shared a common logic with Raskolnikov, ignites a gathering flame, now the conflagration of a million Chinese citizens standing in Tiananmen Square, demanding nothing short of Democracy. Guiding light of our century. Every bit as elusive, in practice, as were the more admirable aims expressed in the writings of Marx. Yesterday, that demand was met by the awesome force of the Chinese army. Today, I sit here, half a world removed from the events keeping me riveted to the screen, months shy of my own arbitrary passage into adulthood, watching as a different vision of greatness is played out in my living room: one man, daily shopping in hand, confronting a long line of tanks, bringing the machine to a halt with his demand to know what they are doing in his city.

Here is the reason we mourn, again and again, the loss of innocence: it is simpler. Easier by far to take our first, visceral reaction as truth. Easier to pretend that this moment extends no further than this present, simple, immediately digestible image of power; one human, armed with courage, making a difference. Easier to just believe. By the time my majority is recognized, the Berlin Wall will have fallen. In two years, the word "Balkanization" will enter the common lexicon. Within five, the word "internet." Download, storage capacity, planned obsolescence—entire paradigms framing politics, economics, human cognition discarded like a locust’s exoskeleton. Future shock is now. We have left our homelands, and in our absence they have ceased to exist.

Easier to believe in the strength of one human voice bringing the machine to a final, glorious halt. Easier to divide along the lines of human virtue and machine malevolence. Easier, by far, to forget where these machines came from—their dark, metallic lines every bit as balanced, as carefully executed, as a line of poetry, the composite parts of their engines working within the same framework of tension and release informing our philosophies. Easier still to measure the distance between our selves and our machines by opposing spirit to matter—-and here, the image truly begins to break down, for it is an image, filmed by a machine, transmitted by a machine, received and translated by the machine I now watch. One human’s courage in the face of an awesome machine, a machine explicitly designed to control and destroy, carries no meaning if not communicated. In my very ability to see this one instant, this one human finding the courage to transcend his self and communicate, through action, the collective desires of a million other humans, there remains in myself a less innocent strain, in which the eye guiding the camera demands recognition.

Tension. Release. Both contained in hard matter formed to our specifications, driving the engine forward, bent to our will. Any question framed in the self-limiting terms of morality—-right and wrong, vice, victor and victim—-recognized as an ongoing inquiry into whose will this individual machine is serving. And we all build machines.

It is June 5th, 1989 and it doesn’t matter, really, that Crime and Punishment lies not in my lap, but on my bookshelf, having been read some months previously. Simplicity’s the thing, and the twinned visions of greatness, one Raskolnikov’s deadly hypothesis, the other an anonymous Chinese citizen’s actions, are both straining under the weight of the present moment. Doesn’t matter, really, that I—-a bookish, Okie kid, bone-weary from another nine hour shift feeding the metal components of a machine I will never see into other machines I do not understand—-know already that tomorrow I will return to my work, and will make no inquiry into the nature of the machine I am building. Doesn’t matter, finally, that I understand, in this silence, my own desire to build my own machine. Machines of words. To truly understand a machine, you must build that machine. Few of us have access to a foundry, but we all have access to our voice, and for one voice to alter our world is less a result of the quality of that voice than it is the result of the compressed explosion of that voice within a charged context.

Tension. Release. Can we get along here? Can we all get along?

Arms sticky with the lubricants used in the factories to keep one machine from destroying itself as it fashions parts for another machine, the air of the room petroleum-heavy, charged, compressed, pressurized, waiting for a spark. Context weighs on every atom we breathe, summer flaring from the hard mirror of steel rails as the machine of history slips its well-laid tracks, and what will do I attribute to our collective machine, that language we use to set boundaries, to collaborate, to conspire, to oppose? It is June 5th, 1989, and I don’t know it yet, but I will never know what happens to one man in China, will never know if he knows what I have seen, do not know now what eyes, what wills, what cameras are recording what words and works, pushing back against the heft of history as it presses hard upon our need to speak.

We are but sparks.

Ha.

2007-08-03T18:51:00.000-06:00

Laughter is the last refuge of the wounded.

Following

2007-08-03T01:11:00.000-06:00

...the extremity of premise three, that only the present experience exists, self is thus a mental construction by which experience through time is interpreted as belonging to a cohesive whole. Hobbes' clock, striking twelve. Absent this sense, whether this sense is illusory or no, the self, when defined in communicable terms, fragments.

Language--of whatever form--being a primary form of thus communicating a possibly illusory sense of a cohesive whole by which experience through time is seen as continuous--thus exposes itself as inadequate to the task: any single name for what one is, at the moment of any given experience, is insufficient to describe the experience.

Anecdotally, I am at some moments a teacher, at some a father, at others husband, at others, possibly a poet. At still others, my actions and/or perception of events is such that I feel compelled to claim many of these names at once. For the purposes of the present inquiry, I am interested in claiming the name of poet, but there are moments--indeed, the majority of moments--in which I am neither acting or perceiving as my understanding of a poet would direct me to.

I perceive myself, however, at all times, as a player upon the stage of language.

(BTW, as these individual thoughts may pertain to something larger, you could do worse than to give a squiz to Sven Birkerts' piece, "Lost in the Blogosphere," over at boston.com. Can't say I'm 100% in agreement, but the piece does identify most of the really salient points, and reinforces my own feeling that the greatest danger a poet--and co-incidentally/co-respondingly any form of "culture" that is at all reflective--faces today is the danger of distraction. Take that as a thought from someone who wrestled hard with the religion of Hope and took great joy at the democratizing potential offered by internet-based forms of publication. One day, perhaps, I'll again be able to write that last sentence in the present tense.)

Inspecting the foundation

2007-08-02T10:58:00.000-06:00

Premise one: Any inquiry into the nature or purpose of consciousness is highly susceptible, by virtue of the nature of the inquiry, to yield conclusions that are received, wishful, or both.

Caveat: this does not necessarily make such inquiries unprofitable. Any evidence I might cite to the contrary, no matter how uniform a body of evidence that might comprise, is purely anecdotal. My own personal experiences in this regard do not preclude the possibility of such an inquiry furthering the body of human knowledge.

Premise two: Regardless of the nature or purpose of consciousness, whether it be guided or no, whether it be a form of physical reality or wholly illusory, it remains an organizing principle that is difficult to dispense with. I think I think, therefore I think I am.

Premise three: There is, thus far, no solid, reliable evidence that any experience outside of the present consciousness I employ to organize those things I sense is likely to be forthcoming or to have preceded the present one. Taken to the extreme, this can be interpreted to take time into consideration: only the present experience exists. All others are conjecture, predicated on the uniformity of both time and self.

Accepting the above, with room for revision should it prove necessary: is happiness a choice? A viable one?

To add to Chomsky's status as "the most quoted author on the Earth" (and I'm not even going to use a particularly good quote): "Suppose that you felt that there's 99 percent of a probability that human civilization is going to be destroyed in the next hundred years, but one percent chance that it won't be, and that one percent offers some opportunities to do something. Well you commit yourself to that one percent." Take those percentages out of the realm of supposition: if you knew those were the odds, would you feel at all duty bound to commit to that one percent chance? If so, upon what grounds?

Note to self...

2007-08-01T10:07:00.000-06:00

What's needed here is a vehicle by which despair and anger can be made palatable to any but the person feeling them.

Never have I felt so challenged in this respect.

A friend, in my hometown, said, "You can't be an atheist in this town." Although I understood his meaning--it is difficult to make any kind of living in so small and so Christian a town if it is known you do not subscribe to the Judeo-Christian big daddy, never mind if you are actively opposed to people organizing their life around magical thinking--I challenged him. "Of course you can. I know at least two, and I'm agnostic." "Yes, but my point is that you can't talk about it."

Freedom: After pointedly not ogling the bare breasts and dancing madly to the drum circle in the Englisher Garten in Munich, it is more than a little ironic to hear this value being bandied about in a place where meth labs run rampant, but if you round up six of your friends to go play the guitar in a local park, you stand a very good chance of being put in jail, at least for the night.

What's at issue here is that there is very real pressure for anyone who legitimately dissents--at a time when dissent is necessary--to keep their heads very low. The pressure takes many forms, and not all of it is society wide: I have yet to speak of my last employment in Munich, largely because I am afraid that if I got started, I would say things I would later regret--that's not society, that's just me trying to be humane about the whole thing. But the pressure that is most disturbing IS society wide. Telling someone who wishes to become a poet that they must keep silent is hell to that person. The functionality of stoicism is not without limits.

I need words rich to the senses and to the mind. I need human words, that mean on a human level.

How to say...

2007-07-30T21:36:00.000-06:00

Just re-surfacing, cleaned up the sidebar, there's a new (or rather, newly published) poem of mine in the current issue of Poemeleon--this issue dedicated to "form." A couple of projects on the burners. Missed the fifth anniversary issue of Triplopia because...well, where to start? But with plans and resources enough to get it back on track for the fall issue. Saddens me immensely that we missed that milestone, but the main thing is to get back in the fray and get it back up.

BTW: if you missed it, my tour of the United States lasted all of nine months. In the past, I have alluded to issues with the current direction of my country of birth. I wanted to believe I'd exaggerated things, and it probably wasn't wise of me to try to re-enter via my hometown. I've struggled to keep the more venomous edge of my tongue tempered on this subject, but suffice it to say that I don't ever want to take up residence in that particular part of the United States again. In fact, if/when we return, it will probably be to some area far on the periphery. My family and I are thinking Alaska, but that's at least a year away. For now, I am back in Gangneung, back teaching Korean children English, and I have to say, thoroughly enjoying my job, which I think suits me well. I don't quite know what makes me unsuitable for such work in the USA. It's a continuing puzzle to me, and a source of some personal hurt. Well, as an old poet friend once said from the stage, "We all got problems, baby."

For now, I'll leave you with a promise to post here more frequently, as I have the time and the computer to do so, once again, and also with this brain teaser: Why is it that in a town less than 500 kilometers from where Kim Jong Il reigns, the paranoia level is lower than in Middletown, Oklahoma? Fear, baby. Whatever the reason, I'm thinking a culture that is grounded in this value is fundamentally untenable. The Koreans and Japanese have a name for this: LBH. Loser Back Home. But when you're a lone pawn against an opponent with a complete arsenal at their disposal, you come to understand that there's nothing dishonorable about losing in a game you can't possibly win.

Well. In the meantime, just a note to say I'm among the living, and will be posting more frequently once I tend to a few other long neglected tasks.

--tchitch

Very Cool Vid

2007-02-11T12:14:00.000-06:00

Via Silliman's Blog.

One From the Vaults

2006-12-18T11:14:00.000-06:00

Dusting off some old CDs, getting some poetry into some semblance of order in the hopes I can get something going in the next 6 months or so (I'm talking to someone about getting a book out, and maybe seeing about a road trip to do some perf po if I can swing it), I came across this one--always enjoyed this one, just for the way it clangs against the original, though to be honest, I suspect it benefited from its original context--which was as a response to a particularly virulent flame war on the old boards, where I first met Tara, my co-collaborator for the past five years, whom I've yet to meet in meatspace. Those boards, once incredibly vital, have been dead for longer than is really acceptable, though I do get the sense that it could have some little to do with general forum dynamics and the group in question's commitment to exploring poetry together. I know a few of the old contributors are still active on forums or elsewhere (all four of the current Trip editors have put in their time over at the boards linked to, but years ago...and tchitch here found it to be one of a couple of boards I was erased from entirely...that's a whole nother story, and not really an interesting one). In any case, the following "poem" was a response to a flame war on those boards that had gotten out of hand, and I wanted to park it here both for ease of access and just for shits 'n' giggles. Hopefully, it doesn't lose all of its punch in translation.

I'm looking at 43 pages of material, with a fair amount of thematic coherence, right this minute...and I actually got a poem into fair shape last night...with a little luck, I'll find the energy to extend my current work for a few weeks. Lord knows I need to.

Hope the holidays are shaping up to be SAD-free for all of you. --tchitch

The Mellow Hen

Mistah Keats--he dead

"Everybody is so full of shit..." Jane's Addiction

I

We are the starving hens,
We are the sated hens,
Clucking together
Pecking at keyboards. Alas!
Our resonant clucks, when
We Bock Bock B-Gawk!
Are resonant and meaningless
As bells in a steeple
Or fingers over inert keyboards
Of our dry computers

Form? There's no form. Meaning? No meaning.
Just the recollection of communication to teach and entertain in tranquility...

Those who have crossed,
With crossed eyes, our furious paths,
Have felt--if at all--the burning coals
Of our derision, but only
As the starving hens,
The sated hens.

II.

Hens I dare not meet in dreams
Upon computer screens
These do not appear:
There, the hens are
Blustery as a winter wind
There, is a skyscraper singing
And cluckings are
In the sunlight's eating
More earnest and more serious
Than a strutting rooster.

Let me be no nearer,
Upon computer screens
Let me also wear
No presumptuous disguises
Teacher, Anti-hero, Scarecrow
In a field
Blowing in the wind
No nearer--

Not that taught veneer
Of untrained jadedness.

III.
This is the message board
This is the pecking ground
Here our clucked images
Are raised, here they receive
Empty praises, meaningless "nice"s, or else
Critique from which we glean
Is it like this,
On the computer screen
Waking to hens
At the hour when we are
Vulnerable to words
Lips that would sing
Form empty rails against form.

IV.

The beaks are not here
There are no beaks here
In this valley of dying words
In this starving valley
This rolling eye of our lost poetry

In this last of pecking grounds
We grope each other
And avoid poems
Gathered on this chicken wire encaged dirt floor

Tongueless, unless
The beaks reappear
As the perpetual word
Bane and boon of us all
Upon computer screens
The hope only
of starving hens.

V.
Here we go round the floppy disk
Floppy disk, floppy disk
Here we go round the floppy disk
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the "reality"
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the henhouse

For Thine is the barnyard

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the henhouse

AOL is very bad

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the henhouse

For Thine is the barnyard

For Thine is
AOL is
For Thine is the

This is the way the argument ends
This is the way the argument ends
This is the way the argument ends
Not with a post but a silence.

All Your Life is Time Magazine

2006-12-16T19:46:00.000-06:00

...I read it, too.
What does it mean?

Yeah, yeah. I don't usually go in for that rag. But I picked up this story from the The Huffington Post, and I almost get the sense that they're finally getting it...

Meanwhile, placed a review in Get Underground, if you're interested. It's a 500 worder, which doesn't give one a lot of space in which to work, but I've been asked to release the director's cut in a couple of months...I'll keep you posted here.

Busy times. I'll have to find an extra 12 hours or so to catch up on the blog sometime soon...much afoot. As always.

Happy Holidays, y'all.

--tchitch

When you call yourself an editor

2006-12-04T21:07:00.000-06:00

...you get all kinds of special privileges. Like receiving the following message in your e-mail. To the person who sent this: best of luck.

Dear Sir/madam,
I'm ______________. I wrote a wonderful book about God and the nature of God and creation mystery. My book is ready for publishing. My book has about 46000words (about 130 pages) and it is a good book for any person that can read English books and want to know about God.
My book title is:
What is the nature of God?
My book subtitles are:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Why God should be existed in the world?
Chapter 3: What is the nature of God?

Chapter 4: Why God create this world?
Chapter 5: What is the reason of future life?
Chapter 6: Why prophets are sent?

Chapter 7: What does the soul, intelligent and human understanding?
Chapter 8: Why do we worship God?
Chapter 9: What is faith?

Chapter10: What are human feelings?
Chapter 11: How is the science of God?
Chapter 12: What is the predestination?

Chapter 13: conclusion.

It think that it is better that my book publish as black and white and my book has not any photos, images or graphs and I need to your publish, sales, distribution and promotion services. You can use of soft or hard cover and my manuscript is in English, my book is ready for publish.

I think that this book is a new revolution in the religion and philosophy books and public books too and whole of peoples in the world need to read it.
I think that whole of peoples that can read English books and want to know about God need to buy this book for understanding about nature of God and secret creation.
Although my book is about God and secret creation but I think that it is a public book.

I think that there is not any book similar my book in the world and knowing about God and nature of God and secret creation is very interest for all of peoples.

I expect that you have a good offer for publishing my book.

I trust that a good publisher can public and sell at least 100000 copies of my book in the first step.

I trust that publishing my book will shake the world and I hope that receive a wonderful offer from your side very soon and I send a copy of chapter 1 of my book for you in this E-mail and expect that you read it carefully.

Watching Patton last night...

2006-12-01T21:09:00.000-06:00

...didn't quite know what to make of this exchange, but it seemed quite relevant to whatever I've been thinking over of late.

PATTON: Rommel's out there somewhere, waiting for me.

JENSON: Yes, sir.

PATTON: You know, if I had my way, I'd send that genius son of a bitch an engraved invitation in iambic pentameter: A challenge in two stanzas to meet me alone in the desert.

JENSON: I'll deliver it.

PATTON: Rommel in his tank and me in mine. We'd stop about ten paces. We'd get out, we'd shake hands, then we'd button up and do battle, just the two of us. That battle would decide the outcome of the war.

JENSON: It's too bad jousting's gone out of style. It's like your poetry, general. It isn't part of the 20th century.

PATTON: You're right, Dick. The world grew up. Hell of a shame. Dick, I want a 24-hour guard put around this area. lf we don't, the Arabs will dig them up for their clothes.

JENSON: Yes, sir.

PATTON: Our graves aren't gonna disappear like everybody else's who fought here. The Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians. God, how I hate the 20th century.

The Continuing Crisis

2006-11-30T11:23:00.000-06:00

So, this e-mail, from some clown named papa_geno who is wasting time he would better spend on writing over at foetry.com:

"I'm growing weary of the many, many people who continue to insist that there is no comtemporary poetry that touches the lives of anyone outside of the narrow confines of those who have the luxury of making this arcane art the subject of their lives' efforts. What continues to be ignored is that it is not contemporary poetry that is in crisis, but a very specific form of contemporary poetry, one which has chosen a path that is exclusive and elitist, and which seems to be based on the central tenet that poetry can only arise from some pure abstraction eschewing the engagement of any media other than the written word. In truth, excellence in poetry, and in prose, is flourishing, but those artists that flourish, in the public sphere, have taken inventions such as the light bulb and the phonograph into account when shaping their work. If the crisis is real, it is real because there is a subset of artists that continue to insist that poetry must remain unmuddled by anything not tasting of candlelight and quill and ink.

"I think it's true enough to suggest that the general public is probably unfamiliar with contemporary poetry, as defined by work that remains planted firmly on the page, and that there are many who would like to engage the craft that are wholly unfamiliar with any poem--in this sense--more recent than Ginsberg's "Howl". If, however, a broader definition is accepted, one that understands that much contemporary poetry is disseminated not via the page, but the CD--and similarly, that much prose is disseminated not via the page, but DVDs--I think it reasonable to say that there are several poets that the average audience is very familiar with. While I am aware that many will argue the point, I respectfully submit the following non-exclusive list of 40 poems, in no particular order, all of which are younger than "Howl," and all of which would be recognizable to an audience unfamiliar with contemporary poetry as defined by those who continue to insist that contemporary poetry is in crisis, as evidence for the above points."

On a tear, he then goes on to list the following 40 "poems":

1. "Peace Frogs"
2. "Ball and Chain"
3. "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"
4. "Sweet Jane"
5. "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars"
6. "Lust for Life"
7. "Anarchy in the U.K."
8. "Gloria"
9. "Once in a Lifetime"
10. "Hallelujah"
11. "Graceland"
12. "The Passenger"
13. "Here Comes Your Man"
14. "London Calling"
15. "Orange Crush"
16. "Heroin"
17. "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
18. "Black"
19. "Ruby Vroom"
20. "Big Science"
21. "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"
22. "Fight the Power"
23. "Chocolate City"
24. "Bohemian Rhapsody"
25. "Ground Control to Major Tom"
26. "Man on the Moon"
27. "Atomic Dog"
28. "Ripple"
29. "Redemption Song"
30. "Sweet Virginia"
31. "Exile In Guyville"
32. "Disarm"
33. "The Stars of Track and Field"
34. "Solsbury Hill"
35. "Bone Machine"
36. "Swamp"
37. "Clandestino"
38. "First We Take Manhattan"
39. "Sympathy for the Devil"
40. "Fast Car"

I'm thinking there must be others...but I'd like to open the question to anyone who wishes to contribute other poets, or poems, within the last 50 years, with which the average non-English major might be familiar.

The Great Thing About Being Willie Wonka

2006-11-05T10:39:00.000-06:00

...is that kids recognize you, and parents don't. As mentioned in previous posts and various e-mails, since the move back to the states, my wife, with the PhD in Geophysics, has been rediscovering her inner domestic goddess. And she is one hell of a seamstress. I suspect she'd be happy to take orders, if anyone's got a costume they need made (hats and shoes will have to be purchased elsewhere). In fact, I'm not joking at all when I tell her she needs to find some traveling theatre group in need of a costume goddess to get us back into that loop. But why talk about it, when I have pictures?

First, there's the girls:

These are the lovely ladies whose company I have been denied, until very recently, for approximately a year, whilst doing the Korean ESL gig. In the front, my girl Che, as Warrior Princess, and in the background, my wife, catching a quick smoke before entering the fray of downtown Enid's "Scare on the Square" (already skirting the whole worship of the dark one thang a bit too closely for this township's comfort)...suffice it to say that those who bothered to ask my wife what she was were confused when she replied "I'm a Bollywood Diva." What's Bollywood? And yes, these costumes are handmade.

Then, to the boys. My workmate and longtime friend Andy, who's pretty keen on the whole Wide Open Sea thing, decided he'd like to be a Pirate, while I basically got told what I was going to be. Not that I minded--at all.

...or, I didn't mind until Andy--my mate from very young days and current workmate and mentor in all things carpenterian, showed up with a proper sword to complete his costume, and, as we started posing for pictures, I found occasion to object to his choice of positioning of said sword. Can't say I'm particularly focused on fears of castration, but when the possibility presents itself, I, like all reasonable men, take steps to defend my sense of manhood.

In case any of you should find yourselves in similar situations, let me assure you, a good sturdy umbrella will suffice as an instrument of personal defense against a neglected sword, at least when said sword is wielded by a pirate that's only marginally committed to the "No Quarter" being signalled by his scarrrlet headpiece. Fortunately, the comraderie of chocolate won the day, and, after a couple of beers, and a diplomatic division of the swag, we confirmed each other's esteem yet again.

To the lasting disappointment of all within our party, however, the local skating rink, while offering free admission on Halloween night, billed the event as an UN-Halloween party and played Christian rock instead. Pity, because I really could have gone for donning both a Willie Wonka suit AND rollerskates, and zooming around to the dulcet strains of Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown". We did manage to have quite a bit of fun, though, and the girls netted 3 and 1/2 pounds of Halloween swag for the night, while Andy and I followed them around everywhere, passing out dubloons and chocolate to everyone that would take them.

Right. I've got a posting on anthems that is loooong overdue...and with that, I'm gonna check out until after I watch the Stewart/Colbert presntation of election results this Tuesday. I'm unreasonably hopeful, as usual, but I do have a few friends around who manage to check that. I wish I knew where the hell I could find a copy online, but there's an old "Life in Hell" strip that pretty much sums that mess up for me, in which Binky's response to every election he's ever vote in is shown...with the Repub wins resulting in head in hands and a groan, and a Dem win resulting in waving a tiny American flag and saying "yay." What're you gonna do when everyone seems convinced that there are only two alternatives, and both pretty much suck? But Stewart/Colbert? I can watch that, because they'll make fun of all sides, which is pretty much what it deserves, anyway.

Did I mention I had a grand time on Halloween?

All's good, and more soon. --tchitch

As Always

2006-10-24T19:46:00.000-06:00

There are about three hundred things I probably ought to be doing at precisely this moment, but of course, one of the great thing about blogs is that one is able to type up a little summary for anyone who does want regular news from you--my e-mail is in its usual perilous state, and I get the sense that if, by some miracle, I were able to sit down and do nothing but write for the next four years, I might catch up with most of what I really need to get done. This is all complicated at present by semi-limited internet access (I do have it in my "home," but the computer is shared by--potentially--5 other people, although one of those is not at all into the computer, and two others are limited to 30 minutes a day. That leaves myself, my wife, and my father, who spends far too long doing nothing better with the computer than playing Free Cell. Mind you, I like Free Cell a lot, and I've been known to while away the spare 2 or 3 hours playing it, but we're talking epic proportions here. We're talking the makings of Greek Tragedy here. And this isn't just my own selfish desire to get on and write speaking--we are talking hours and hours on end. It's scary.

As many of my friends know, this last week was a busy one for me--we--meaning my wife, my daughter, my half-sister Angel and her daughter, Aria (who spends a fair amount of time at my father's home--enough so that she's the sixth potential user, limted, as is my daughter, to 30 minutes a day on the machine), and my father and step-mother--took the journey from Oklahoma to Lacon, Illinois to attend my littlest sis's wedding. Lacon is close to Peoria, and the drive is doable in a day, though a day is not my preference for that amount of mileage (I prefer the highways to the interstates, and friends' homes--or, when possible, a tent--to hotels), now was it at all feasible with two pre-teenage children and two adults above fifty who do not have full health points to their advantage. My family, like many others, is dysfunctional, sometimes extremely so, and there were indeed some stressful moments on the road, though as I understand it, it was all relatively smooth. And once we got to my little sis's--and got my dad parked in front of a computer to spend the good majority of his visit playing Free Cell--things got more pleasant, because my little sis and my littlest brother--who currently lives with her--are the two siblings I have historically gotten along best with, and this trip was no exception. It doesn't hurt at all that they're quite aware and honest about some of the screwed-uppedness of our family. That said...

Smack in the middle of the trip, I was due to be at a writer's conference--Binghamton University's "Writing by Degrees" graduate conference, where, due to an invitation extended by Deborah Poe, I was to speak as a member of a panel of online journal editors, including one representative from Blackbird, Ravi Shankar of Drunken Boat, Nate Pritts of H_NGM_N, and George Wallace of Poetry Bay. Unfortunately, due to my faulty memory and her absence on the Editorial Staff page, I don't know the name of the representative of Blackbird, though I have very much admired that journal for some time. I hear they're about to publish a previously unpublished poem by Sylvia Plath, which is pretty exciting news for an online journal. And I did go, and I did speak, and it probably couldn't have been a better choice for my first go at a conference: friendly, not too big, very forgiving of my sometimes fumbling way of making a point, and all in all a very hospitable bunch. Especially appreciated was J.J. Schutz (I think that's how her name is spelled), who provided me with space on her couch and a curling iron--in lieu of a clothing iron--to press my shirt with, but also gave me a little peek into how the slam community is making use of YouTube and MySpace--among other tools--to share and coordinate work. It very much reminded me of that sense of potential that I entered Triplopia with, and it spoke directly to one of the questions the online editor panel fielded the next day: one of those in attendance asked if we were concerned that things like YouTube might supplant what we're doing, and to my mind, the point is that it doesn't supplant anything--it augments it. It gives us one more tool to work through. The point isn't to take it over--the point is to use what's there to create a space that's suitable for those who wish to take in what we have to offer.

On arrival, however, I was also treated to a panel of poets that included Paul Nelson, of Global Voices Radio, who was, in the past, kind enough to allow Triplopia to publish his essay on American Sentences. My favorite of his: "Three days after the split I revert to a diet of cake & meat." Also realized that my favorite graffito--and the most sincere prayer I've ever heard in my life--takes the same form: "Oh Lord, please let me be the kind of person that my dog thinks I am." In any case, we had occasion to get acquainted, drank a couple of Magic Hat Beers (my first exposure to same), sought out a Starbucks that was "just" down the road --just meaning, apparently, some five or six miles--a bit more arduous on foot, especially when it's raining, hard--and hung out in the service department of a car dealership for about 20 minutes waiting for a cab to take us back to civilization. My last hour at the conference was spent participating in a spontaneous open mic--badly, I'm afraid: like a dork, I brought NO poetry with me and tried to read "Abbie Hoffman" from memory--and while I did manage to get through it, I dropped a LOT of the words. But it was a grand way to spend the waning moments of my stay there, because I had to leave the conference early, and thus was unable to attend the official open mic. In any case, it was a pick-up, and many thanks to the organizers for inviting us.

My flight back was a bit dodgy, though not terribly--halfway down the runway, a ice warning sensor was acting up, and the pilot, erring on the side of caution, aborted the takeoff, which lead to a nearly two hour delay--not a fuss, except that my connecting flight, in Detroit, was the last flight to Chicago until morning, at which point my brother would have been picking me up from the airport on the morning of the wedding. Fortunately, the Chicago flight was also delayed, and, though late, I managed to get back to my sister's house late Friday night. The wedding--and especially the reception--were of course grand, even though my wife and I did find ourselves in the role of designated driver--returning my little sister's car to her house--and thus drank nothing. We did dance a lot, though, and I got to unveil the Willie Wonka suit my wife made for me. Don't worry. There will be pictures soon. Probably shortly after Halloween.

There's lots afoot, as always, and I'll try to drop by this space a bit more often with updates...though I really want to get back to the Anthemic Reflection piece, because there's still a lot being thought about on that subject. And, as life calms down a little--it's been over a month since I got back, so things are starting to smooth out toward something approaching normalcy--I can stop with the mass e-mails and maybe get something a bit more of substance up in this top entry. In the meantime, the new Triplopia is up, and that means a new Spotlight (not entirely unconnected to the subject of anthems, as it happens) and a new Yawp. Enjoy, y'all, and I'll be back soon--and with any luck, I'll be bringing some yummy pictures.

--tchitch

Got a lot on my plate

2006-10-03T10:14:00.000-06:00

...so this is just to post a song I was recently introduced to by Andrew, very old friend and fellow who is teaching me some carpentry chops at present. One day I'll have to post more on the fellow, though he does figure into a previous Yawp. There's a number of versions on the web...and apparently one done by the Dead...and my not knowing that may be construed as a signal of my lack of allegiance in that direction...not that I nurture the same antipathy my wife does in this direction, but...in any case, here 'tis--this the closest to the version Andy was singing the other day on the job, and still not exactly the same. The nature of traditional lyrics, I suppose. I think there are far worse fates for a poem than to undergo alteration in this manner...but then, I'm not sold on attributing primacy to the author...certainly not over the poem itself, which, IMHO, should live its own life.

Maybe I can convince Andyman to work it up for the digicam. If so, posting to follow. But who knows?

I like it, though, and thought I'd share. More later.

A Horse Named Bill

I had a horse, his name was Bill
And when he ran, he couldn't stand still
He ran away, one day And also, I ran with him

He ran so hard he couldn't stop
He ran into a barber's shop
He fell exhausted, with his teeth In the barber's left shoulder

Oh I went out into the woods last year
To hunt for beer and not for deer
I am, I ain't A great, sharp shooter

At shooting birds, I am a beaut
There is no bird I cannot shoot
In the eye, in the ear, in the finger

In Frisco Bay there lives a whale
And she eats porkchops by the bale
By the hatbox, by the pillbox, by the hogshead, by the schooner

Her name is Lena, she is a peach
But don't leave food within her reach
Or babies, or nursemaids, or chocolate ice cream sodas

She loves to laugh and when she smiles
You just see teeth for miles and miles
And tonsils, and spareribs, and things too fierce to mention

She knows no games so when she plays
She rolls her eyes for days and days
She vibrates, she yodels, and breaks the ten commandments

Oh wheat can you do in a case like that
Oh what can you do but stamp on your hat
Or on an eggshell, or a toothbrush, or anything that's helpless

Super Schnell

2006-10-01T20:21:00.000-06:00

...because I have about 150 things I should be doing right now...in the meantime, I've made the transition back into Planet America. Carpentering. Building walls, hanging doors, ripping up and laying down floors. Tomorrow, it's a roof. In the meantime, it's transition from the wilds of Gangneung to this:

Many more pics, too. It's interesting, to say the least, to leave Oklahoma for about two decades and then come back to it with very different eyes.

Time with the girls, too. And a new Trip zooming up at me.

Another vid of die tochter, as well. There are others. I'll be sharing more when I get some breathing room...which looks to be in about a month...though I'll try to zoom by with tidbits sometime before then.

Hi to all, and thanks for dropping in to check on me. To the Kangsters...hope you're all well. Thanks for all the notes...I will get them back to you when I'm able. Meanwhile, you are very much in my thoughts.

Later, foax--tchitch

Monkey Toes

2006-09-02T16:26:00.001-06:00

Ladies and gennumen, I proudly present...my daughter.

Kangster boys

2006-08-27T07:33:00.000-06:00

...are sexy boys. Check it.

Anthemic Reflections: Homeward Bound--Part 1

2006-08-24T21:29:00.000-06:00

Note: the following entry was originally conceived as a single entry, but it's grown to such a length that I think I may be better off breaking it up into two, maybe even three sections. I'd even considered drafting it for this space, then fishing it out as an article, but I get the sense that if it ever takes article form, it will have to be heavily edited. Consider it a draft. At present, it is incomplete--there will be more to come in the next few days.

...as my thoughts turn homeward:

This will be a long post. There is much to cover. I left the United States to accompany my wife in her pursuit of a PhD in Geophysics in Sydney, Australia, on February 25, 1999. In September, very close to the fifth anniversary of September 11th, I will return to the United States of America. In the ensuing time, I have spent all of two weeks on American soil, when I returned to act as best man for my close friend, John Arnold. A lot has occurred in those seven and a half years. The first major news story I vividly remember from Australia is Columbine. The news has rarely, if ever, looked so benign since that day. I could say lots, but I think many who come to this blog are already quite familiar with my political point of view, so I'm hoping, in this post, to focus a few of those thoughts as I think about what it means to return to the United States. I need to do this, because I need to think seriously on what it means to be a poet within the United States in these times.

I want to make something clear, before I move on: I am a pacifist in principle, though perfectly willing to concede that there have been wars that may well have been unavoidable in the pursuit of human liberty. I freely admit my weaknesses in the area of forensics, and am regularly known to put the debate in these terms: war, when phrased in terms of aggregate numbers and poorly defined ideology, makes no sense to me. If the basis for a war is ideological, I distrust it, and if the justification for same treats those human lives lost in the course of that war as means to an unrealized end, I have difficulty comprehending the foundational arguments for that war. On the other hand, I respond well to practical measures, to measurable ends, and to real worth being assigned individual life--no matter of what nationality. I could, on this basis, delve a bit into the rationale behind opposition to the current conflicts in the Middle East, but truth be told, I feel like the arguments against these wars are more than adequately represented online, and I suspect any argument I could make along those lines would suffer somewhat from my disinterest in military matters, and would thus suffer in comparison to those who are better informed in those areas. In other words, I'm not out to convince with this post: I merely wish to collect my own thoughts, in the hopes that I might better understand my own individual path forward, in a time and a place in which I feel it necessary to give voice to these issues. And a voice--one in over six billion--is all I really feel I have to offer this debate--so it is around voice that I feel it necessary to focus these thoughts.

At the core of this debate, as I see it, is a necessary engagement of the one human capacity I most trust--though that trust has, in recent years, suffered some serious challenges--and that capacity is communication. This same capacity, not coincidentally, lies at the center of my own sense of the aesthetic: those artifacts that fail to convey some message--no matter of what nature--to the recipient are, in my view, quite simply put, failed artifacts. They may well explore some important aspect of the medium being used, thus proving inaccessible to a recipient who is not well versed in the medium under scrutiny, and they may better communicate at some future point in time, when "common" understanding of that medium is more thorough, but insofar as an aesthetic takes into account the volatile element of context, they fail. There's a good chance that much of what I have written fails. I'm not adverse to that, and I feel it a risk all communication must take in order to advance our common dialogue, but as a member of the audience, if an artifact does not somehow "speak" to me, I cannot make an argument for its beauty.

I can, and do, accept that the fault may lie in me, but the point is that my sense of beauty is intimately tied up with my sense of the communicable. Beauty communicates itself. It is a message. There is a sender, and a receiver. It must engage a medium, and it must be conveyed through a channel. Absent any of those elements, it fails, because it does not communicate. Understand, this is not about some universal sense of beauty: there is no grasping after an artifact that speaks to all people in the same way involved in these assertions. I am simply stating my own sense that beauty is inextricable from the manner and means by which it communicates itself. I suppose, at base, this really isn't so different from the assertion that, in attempting to separate form and content, we lose something central to the artifact under scrutiny.

In the last twenty-four hours, I have received two such artifacts--videos--that I think address some of my central concerns regarding current events, both decidedly "pop" in strategy and aim. The first--and, I think, the more "manipulative" (in as value-neutral a sense as that word is capable of at this point in its history)--is a video sent to me by my wife: Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends. The second is a short segment from The Daily Show, with particular emphasis on the material beginning at the 3:45 mark. Both of these videos contain highly politically charged material, but they do so in quite different fashions. In the interests of getting at a core central concern regarding my primary focus, I'd like to devote a couple of paragraphs to an admittedly superficial expurgation of these two videos, from which base I hope to illustrate my primary points.

A word on Green Day: I'm old enough, and have listened to enough music, to have lost track of the many times I've chalked some song up to the "one-hit wonder" category: Beck's Loser and The Beastie Boys' Fight for your Right are but two examples of how very wrong I've been in the past, and Basket Case is a third. I was the wrong age to be seriously taken by this band, and when I first saw the video, what I saw was a hybrid of The Pistols and The Femmes, which left me giving them high marks for shared taste, low marks for originality. And while I have to admit I have a knee-jerk positive reaction to a lot of what Billie Joe Armstrong has to say about politics, I'd class it, pretty much, in the "Stupid White Men" category of political commentary--that is, unnecessarily simplistic and given to much the same tendency toward that form of reverse discrimination that tends to ennoble anything that's not part of a core power structure. If it's criticism I want, I'm much more likely to gravitate toward people like Noam Chomskey, Susan Sontag and Seymour Hersh for analysis of what's presently going on. You can fault those sources--and perhaps you'd be right to do so--but making a strong case against them requires a bit more brainpower than does debunking Billie Joe Armstrong or Michael Moore.

That said...

If appreciating the aesthetic qualities of Green Day's output is at all analogous to appreciating a Michael Moore film, i.e., at some point inseperable from the politics that drive the piece, I suppose at base I'm one of their ilk. But I don't think the two inseperable. I very much appreciated "Bowling for Columbine" as an aesthetic object, though I found much to fault with its presentation of "facts" and its underlying thesis: primarily, the film brought out that undergraduate love for all things post-modern, and--as I did upon watching Fahrenheit 911 (a film I did not enjoy) after it--mostly I wondered why it was that Moore was never able to take that final step that would propel much of his work past "effective" and into the realm of "great," namely, turning his questions upon his own work. In "Bowling," this could perhaps have taken the form of applying his central thesis--that much of what is wrong with contemporary American culture is the product of unnecessary fear-mongering, to the point of straight out paranoia, by mainstream media outlets--to his own work. Moore, too, partakes of this fear-mongering, and "Bowling for Columbine" is a prime example of precisely that, but Moore either doesn't have the chops or the guts to point that spotlight back upon his own work. If he did so, the work might be less immediately persuasive, but, I think, would be considerably more worthy as an aesthetic object. These reflections lie entirely outside of my own opinion that mainstream media does function upon unnecessary fear mongering, an opinion fueled, no doubt, by my experience as a teenager in a perfectly ordinary town in Oklahoma, listening as the adults around me hatched bizarre theories about how the Crips and the Bloods would swoop down on our fair city every year during the Tri-State Music Festival to replenish their numbers by recruiting new members from marching bands and young Oklahomans mostly just grateful for one time out of the year when there was something to do other than watching the stock car races at the local speedway. Paranoia's an ugly thing, and it deserves to be criticized--I just didn't think Moore went far enough.

In this respect, Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends benefits from the virtue of brevity, as well as the wise decision, in both the lyrics and the video, to keep things open-ended. In fact, the song, which Armstrong originally intended as a memorial for his father, has enjoyed much the same fate as The Time of Your Life in its versatility: it has been used as a tribute to the victims of September 11, Hurricane Katrina, and Joey Ramone. No doubt, in less public ways, it has served as tribute to many others. The video, however, makes a pretty pointed effort at casting the song in the light of Armstrong's well known anti-war stance, and it's not particularly subtle about how it goes about doing it. The lyrics of the song itself are not particularly high poetry--but then, Green Day never was about high poetry--but they are a paragon of restraint when compared to the story line of the video. Both are painted in the broad, sweeping strokes we've come to expect from our popular fare: the lyrics in their equation of summer with "innocence" and rain with pain, and the video in its simplified representation of the motivations behind love and war. There's a classical shorthand at work here, one that I find vaguely irritating on an aesthetic level, but the video greatly benefits from a number of sound decisions regarding narrative tension: the long opening sequence is an open question, with the boy's words, right down to his response to the girl's profession of love--"I know"--being as applicable as a prelude to a break-up as they are to what actually transpires within the video, and the decision, in the second dramatic sequence, to withhold the nature of the boy's actions--on first viewing, it's not at all unlikely that one might interpret the girl's distress as being the result of his having been unfaithful--propels the viewer forward to the realization of what he has, in fact, done. I can't help but suspect that the underlying equation made between infidelity and betrayal, on the one hand, and the boy's decision to enlist on the other, is not entirely coincidental. That said, in my own viewing, if such an equation was intended, I was not given the sense that infidelity was directly attributable to the boy. There's a larger villain here, and this video is a clear reaction to that villain. What is most compelling, however, and what I think fuels much of the popularity of this piece, is how the video serves to frame the song, and how both are framed by the times in which they occur. Logic can serve any master, and with the right set of statistics, you can argue either for or against the decision to invade Iraq, but most people are not making either decision based solely upon logic. Nor, would I argue, should they. Emotions are not always--or even usually--the best possible foundation for the political stances one takes, but they are far from irrelevant, both by virtue of their being the foundation that the vast majority of humans do use, and by virtue of the fact that they are not entirely dispensible as analytical tools. This video speaks to that fact: real lives are being destroyed by these decisions, on all sides, and real consequences will be felt as a result. This video points out some of the negatives, and as contrived as the narrative sequence may be, I don't think it entirely removed from the everyday reality many face.

My reaction to this video speaks directly to what I regard to be my first "failing" in any analysis of the current war: those who argue for it tend to be armed with timelines and casualty figures (remarkably vague, always, on the number of Iraqis who have fallen in this war), and the fall-back position is almost inevitably ends-based utilitarianism: there is much citing of the number of victims that "would have resulted" had we decided not to invade, and comparison of highly disputable casualty figures within Iraq, and the numbers are always such that the hypothetical "had we not invaded" number of casualties is higher than the one currently being suffered. Maybe so. I don't claim to know. What I claim, rather, is that when I read the story of Aya al-Astal, a 9-year-old Palestinian girl who was shot to death when she wandered too close to the border between Israel and the Gaza strip, I think of the terror I would feel were my own 9-year-old daughter to suffer a similar fate, and I cannot help but find myself sharing the grief of her parents. Is this any basis for policy decisions? Of course not. And of course, only the most craven among the hawkish members of our society would argue that she in any way deserved that fate, though I've no doubt that someone, somewhere, has already made much of the fact that Aya's mother voted for Hamas. This is the sort of terror we are meant to think around and accept as necessary by those--again, on both sides--who insist that war is inevitable. And it is precisely this sort of story that finds this pacifist in solidarity with the speaker of Bruce Cockburn's most well-known song, through a fervent wish, contradictorally enough, for possession of a rocket launcher for just long enough to right some long-suffered wrongs. The only thing that quells that sickening sense of a need for retaliation is a deep sense of the futility of so reacting.

All of which is to say I understand that desire for retaliation...understand it better than I'm capable of effectively relating, actually, but that I have made a decision not to act solely on that basis. Nor to justify those actions I undertake on that basis through appeal to a hypothetical scenario, dressed up as logic and masquerading as a utilitarian argument.

Next: Anthems and Virality

I don't know what to make of this

2006-08-21T22:45:00.000-06:00

Perhaps I'm just slow. I have such difficulty with the snarking that goes on re: poetry so often on Jim Behrle's blog (which I'd link to, but he's always bloody moving it...dunno why), but then he goes and posts a link to this review, which I think pretty much gets at my own understanding of poetry.

I think poetry would benefit enormously if more people understood it in the same sense we understand soccer (or, as it's called pretty much everywhere else in the world, football): there are pros, there are coaches for those who wish to become pros, there are those who are more capable in a pick-up game than others, and then there are those who just play because they like playing. Nobody thinks much of a pro who walks in on a pick-up game and starts complaining because the quality of play isn't up to a professional standard, nor do pro players (that I know of) ever suggest that the sheer glut of games being played is contributing to the downfall of soccer. In fact, it's quite the contrary: that pick-up games ARE played is a sign of the continuing vitality of the sport. Nor, finally, does one think much of a pro player who trashes another pro player on the basis of some weakness in their game. When it occurs, it's understood to fall under the heading of trash talk, and it does nothing to improve the game--or the public perception of same--of the one who is offering said trash talk. Nobody claims ownership of the game, and the goat on one day can be the hero of the next: it's judged on specific play, and while a career of good plays does contribute to a lasting legacy, excellent plays also merit their place in the spotlight.

What's so hard to understand about this? Poetry doesn't have a final score, but a good play is a good play, no matter who is making it. And anyone who wants to play can find a field on which they will be welcomed.

We're doin' it again!

2006-08-19T01:36:00.000-06:00

...with after party at either Anmok or Gyeongpo with beloved bartender Gyeong-Sup in tow (or so I've been told). Here's the flyer, inspired by the folks at this site. Be there or be quadratic.

These strike me as wise words:

2006-08-17T11:09:00.000-06:00

"Do not jump to conclusions, do not rush to judgment, do not speculate, let the justice system take its course.”

Of course, our near complete inability to heed them, however, is one source for a certain lack of hope that's been plaguing this bent liberal pacifist of late. Also makes it tough to either read the news or champion the blogosphere, as well.

I'm really not of one opinion or the other, but I do feel MUCH need to reserve judgment in the present case. Thankfully, I'm not entirely without company...and some of the folks that are suggesting a more cautious approach to this story happen to be journos and editors...for whatever that's worth to you.

Personally, I can't wait until the rapture's been taken care of and we can all get back down to serious work. Until then, it seems likely we'll mostly be running around like headless chooks.

I should go to bed, I think. Grr. Tchitch

The Results Are in

2006-08-15T21:51:00.000-06:00

...at Winning Writers, for the 2006 Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest--in my opinion, the healthiest and most effective response to dodgy contests I have so far encountered on the web.

Read and enjoy.

An Open Letter

2006-08-15T16:46:00.000-06:00

...to those who see fit to plague indy zines with DOS spam attacks:

Do you really feel so secure in your own sense of poetics that you think yourself worthy to mete out these potentially destructive attacks? You should spend more time writing and studying poetry, and less trying to take down sites that you disagree with, for whatever reason. Your actions are reminiscent of nothing so much as a spurned lover, and no, they don't make your work any more palatable to anyone.

Your misguided actions are the reason that this editor disagrees so thoroughly with those who are arrogant enough to think themselves qualified for the job of "cleaning up poetry." It is a destructive proposition, one that bases itself on the proposition that the one undertaking said task is in any way qualified to issue a definitive statement regarding what is poetry and what is not. You, like the rest of us, suffer somewhat from the lack of perspective that results from being within the "mess," and is compounded by your arrogance in believing yourself to be in possession of the "truth."

You actions also, incidentally, point up the necessity for anyone undertaking the task of establishing a venue for poetry to be fairly well versed not only in matters poetic, but also in having a fair grasp on technological issues.

You are correct in your assessment that such actions will turn our attention your way, but that attention is hardly of such a nature as to in any way improve your chances of publishing your work.

You are part of the problem, not the solution.

Gavin!

2006-08-09T06:14:00.000-06:00

"There was this kid..."

I love Kids in the Hall.

Bug in the ear...

2006-08-08T04:32:00.000-06:00

Well, I actually have a lot to post, many pictures, much news. Trip: a number of mentions, of late, including Site of the Month for June at InTheFray magazine, a line in the "news" section of the homepage for Oberlin College Press,and an invitation to speak as part of a panel of online editors at Binghamton University's Writing By Degrees conference--an opportunity I'm still scrambling to find a way to take advantage of, as travel expenses need to be met by yours truly and I am, as always, strapped for the cash. After checking cheap flights, I came to the conclusion that a car--even a rental car, and even with gas prices as they are--would be cheaper than flights, as I am due in Springfield, Illinois that Saturday to attend my youngest sister's wedding, thus a three legged flight to a couple of somewhat out of the way destinations, cheapest, not counting transport from the 'nearby' airports to the venues in questions, going at approximately $400. Unfortunately, car rental agencies in Oklahoma only offer unlimited mileage for OK and bordering states at best, and it gets pretty pricey outside of that area. So tonight I'm checking on Tulsa rental agencies--it's still in OK, but I've been given reason to believe they may be an exception to the general rule, though it's nothing certain. Failing that, I need to call up my good friend Andy and see if there isn't some other car arrangements that could be made, or find someone with some frequent flier points who would be willing to help us out in attending the conference. I'd welcome the opportunity, not only to hobnob & exchange ideas, but also just to get some of my own thoughts on online publishing organized. Anyone who has been dropping in here regularly knows I don't lack for them, though the stuff posted here has never been really organized into a solid draft. I have until the 15th, at which point this is sorted or not. If anyone has ideas, don't hesitate to contact me.

Finally, and oddly enough, for this editor, probably one of the more exciting developments, the National English Literary Museum of Southern Africa recently wrote requesting that they be given the names of the authors of Triplopia's interview with Lindsey Collen, so it could be included in their database of primary and secondary material published by, and on, southern African authors. Why excited about being included in a bibliography? Well, for what it's worth, the interviews, especially, were an aspect of Triplopia that I had hoped might, in time, hold some significant literary and historic worth, and respectable citations help immensely with that. Not to mention that I thoroughly enjoyed the process of interviewing Collen, and take great pride in what that interview accomplishes. That, and I highly suspect that, MFA reject or no, there's a closet academic inside of me. Or maybe not so closet. Dunno.

That, and pictures, musings, and reviews of some recent experiences that I think just might be of interest to a few folks out there.

Speaking of pictures, Penny Rowstron, another local Aussie--who by the way gave me what I think is an exellent title for a book of poems when describing the way I dance--sends these, from Friday night:

Here's the poster, as it appears in the window of Bumpin' Bar, one of the go-to spots for anyone who's searching for Waeguks in Gangneung. It's a cozy place, lots of old wood inside, and cluttered. Funny thing, it caught my eye on my third day in town, though it wasn't for another good three weeks before I actually went in, and only then worked up the nerve when a posting at Dave's ESL Cafe netted me a response that suggested this was one of two places to go if it was English conversation I was looking for. Believe me, after three weeks of speaking v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y t-o e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e I m-e-t, I needed it. When, after being given the name, I sought it out, I recognized it immediately from my first trounce through the Shi-nae (Downtown), and kind of wondered if there isn't just some sort of second sense, in many people, of where like languaged people are likely to congregate. It's a cool bar, and only gets trumped some nights by the Warehouse (just down Munhwa-agoli, which translates into "culture street") by the fact that the latter has a) draft beer, and b) a pool table. If Bumpin had these two things, I suspect most of my nights out would have been spent in the cozy confines of Mr. Lee's fine establishment.

Dylan reading from his self-published book of poems, "Arcadian Squalor," post-kerfuffle, the stage having been more than adequately calibrated for the upcoming acts. I used to be able to throw rocks at Dylan's bathroom window from my living room/bedroom. That was before the vacant lot outside the only window in my apartment became a construction site (something I very much anticipated upon moving in and seeing the view--and the rapid way in which Gangneung seems to be expanding).

Michael Hutley, termed by Carlos--another Gangneung regular, and in attendance Friday night--as "one for the housewives" in our makeshift "band". We figured with the glasses, Dylan was deffo the keyboardist, leaving me and Dave (the two baldies) to fight over bass and drums. Personally, I'm torn between Keith Moon and Sid Vicious, though, as always, if I have to be someone else, I'd prefer it was Iggy.

Yours truly. I think Penny caught me in mid cheer, as I use and abuse my muse.

Melvin, sun-worshipper whose blog is, during these summer months, dominated by beach pictures. Of course, he's had the last week off, and it's been a little hotter than lovely outside, so he's probably got more than his usual number of late.

Dave anchors the show from behind the bar. After giving it some thought, I decided that it was neither acoustics nor lighting that prompted him to make this decision, but proximity to liquor. Dave's blog was very active during the World Cup, his being a soccer freak--though not a particularly good prognosticator: I think he made like five correct picks throughout the entire tournament. Or to quote the man himself in assessing his abilities as footie predictor: I couldn’t have fared worse in analysing and predicting matches if I’d sat out in a pasture, surrounded by mounds of bovine dung and overseen by football-ignorant constellations, and simulated each of the 64 matches in this World Cup using dung beetles as players, frozen feces as the football, and LSD-induced hallucinations to choose my formation and formulate my strategies. Believe me, it was bad.

The show, though, was good, and on the ground response has been thoroughly gratifying: it's been so long since I had the opportunities to flex my poetic muscles on such a stage, and Friday night just served to remind me of how much I enjoy doing so. I used to do it monthly in Munich, so it's been missed a lot during my stay in Gangneung. Which brings me to my final point: Dylan and I have talked it over, and we're going to try to sneak one in before I leave (that date is quickly approaching)--we approach Gyeong Sup this weekend about a possible date. If Friday's show--and the feedback we've received since--is anything to gauge the matter by, there is definitely sufficient demand for fare such as this to merit its being a much more regular event.

I'll keep you posted on developments here.

--tchitch

Verse Libromancy

2006-08-06T09:10:00.000-06:00

Over on the sidebar, you'll see a new button right at the top, with the label "Verse Libromancy". This is a cool little java program featured--and I think? put together--by the fellow over at Bud Bloom Poetry: Hit it, and it will take you to one of 554 different venues for online poetry, including (incidentally), Triplopia. What's more, if you want one for your own blog, Bud Bloom has made it simple for you.

For my money, it seems a much better use of one's online time than is encountered in some quarters--more on that point later. Meanwhile, enjoy, and thanks Bud!

In light of Friday night

2006-08-05T22:03:00.000-06:00

...upon which occasion the waeguk crowd in Gangneung were treated to something of a departure from the usual Friday night fare, i.e., a poetry reading at Bumpin' Bar, I've been asked to make the text of "In Praise of Disorganized Minds" available, I'm linking to the original draft. This has undergone some modifications in the course of three performances, but it's there in substance. Thanks to everyone who expressed appreciation for the live version.

Some notes on the performance: the bulk of the time was given over to the four men whose pictures "grace" the show's flyer: James Dylan Butler, who deserves all props for getting the show to actually happen, Michael Hutley, who, if he maintains a web presence, I haven't yet encountered it, myself, and Dave Marshall, in that order. Once festivities were underway, two other performers joined in--Melvin, with a haiku, and Bryce, truly the king of Gangneung Waeguk open mic, as he maintains a weekly show at Uncle 29, another bar in the downtown area, where he plays a regular set of the kind of indy rock it's rare to encounter in any Korean pub. I've been given to understand that there was one more person who, at least at the onset, wished to perform, but did not, whether because she felt unwelcome or just timid I don't know, though I very much hope it was the latter, and not the former, and hope, should there be another such performance (and there's been some expression of interest in that happening), will consider herself very much welcomed to join in on shaping the stage.

Breakdown of the show: Dylan kicked us off and acted as compere, graciously taking the traditional dive that the first slot almost always represents. It's a truism in open mic circles that the first slot is always the worst (though the last slot can be equally as daunting), because the poet who takes that slot is basically in charge of getting the audience ready for the coming show. Dylan did indeed find himself filling precisely that function, and he did so with a grace that is very much to be commended. His act included reading a promotional sticker from the side of a wastebasket--surprisingly poetic copy written, no doubt, by a bored office worker somewhere in the bowels of the home furnishings industry, and--as with all copy--without a name to attribute the piece to. This was followed by Dylan's tribute to Ian Hamilton Finley (who passed away in March). Dylan set Finley's poetry to music, and spent the necessary time to memorize the poem and to synch it to the music, which did much to pull a highly image-driven piece into a form suitable to live performance, but it was in this piece that Dylan took the dive for the team--not for any fault in his delivery, but for the fact that there were two middle-aged Korean men who took exception to the sudden encroachment (well enough advertised, but not surprisingly offensive to some) of the waeguk community on the space they'd chosen for a traditional night of heavy drinking (and probably, business chatter). Bumpin' Bar is a "cosy" pub--cosy enough that microphones, while they would have helped, were not necessary for a poetry reading--and there's really not a stage area in the place, so, to simplify matters, Gyeong Sup (Mr. Lee, the proprietor of the bar (in accompanying pirate-y picture along with yours truly)) had the front door locked--to provide us with a makeshift stage--knowing that those who were interested in the show would know to come through the back door. Well, after some pretty vocal objections (nothing aggressive, just unappreciative), the two men in question made the decision to move their business elsewhere, but upon attempting to exit, found the door locked, and were too drunk to unlock it. Thus, not only was Dylan working against their complaints, and their moving past him as he performed the piece, but the backdrop of a good portion of his piece were these two men, joined by the barstaff, struggling to get the front door open. They finally got out, and after that, the show was pretty much smooth sailing. Dylan rounded his set off with a pair of his own poems, including a well appreciated piece on soju, a vicious (not viscous) liquid that is very nearly impossible for the visitor to avoid entirely, as it is the traditional drink with most meat dishes--and especially Sam Gyeop Sal, a staple amongst cash-strapped folks such as myself. I don't know how much planning Dylan put into the sequencing of work, but he couldn't have planned better: the tribute, with its distractions, was well balanced by the musical background, and once those distractions were dealt with, he was given a clear stage (and the appreciation of the rest of the audience) upon which to perform his own work.

Dylan was followed by Michael Hutley, an Australian and like Dylan and Dave, one of the old hands locally (I think Dylan, with 4+ years here, may be the 'youngest' hand among them, with me being--literally--the baby of the crowd). Michael's father was a performance poet in Australia, though, as with Michael, I can't find any resources concerning his work online. Michael, though he's done considerable work in poetry, left much of his work in Australia, and when he was invited to participate in this show, found himself without material, so has spent the last couple of weeks drafting new work--and enjoying the excuse to produce new work. We sat down together shortly before the show, and, after expressing his surprise on learning that I'd been working with poetry for so long, spent some time talking about how much he appreciated the nudge to get back to work. To my mind, this is the real function of open mics: it gets people thinking in terms of what they can do on the stage, and it gives them a reason to put something new together, and that's really always been a good enough reason, to my mind, to promote such shows. Michael performed admirably, and to the great delight of the crowd, who were especially appreciative of his description of a sub-human romantic encounter with a Social Science type.

That took us to the break, and I was slated to open up the second half of the show. I'd shown Dylan the piece, just to clue him in, as host, on what to expect. The piece I performed is specifically tailored to performance, doesn't really translate in its entirety to paper, as it relies upon stage conventions to get the whole effect of the piece. What's interesting about the piece is that pre-show jitters (which are not entirely feigned: I do get quite nervous before such a show, no matter how well I think I have the material down) actually help the piece along. Well, ten minutes before performance time, I'm generally engaged in a quiet process of working up said jitters to a peak, again, half of this in deference to the piece, half very real. But the piece came off without a hitch, and afterwards, I received many comments to the effect that those in the audience wanted more. That's always a good sign, I think. One note: generally, after performing a piece, I have a real tendency to flee the stage, and to get as far away from it as I can to recover. I attempted this fleeing act but, due to space (the bar was pretty packed--it's a small place, and had there been half as many people in attendance as there were, it would have looked crowded) and Taylor having parked himself smack in the middle of the only escape route to get pictures (I'm sure those pics will go up sometime in the next 5 years, as he's yet to get his pictures from his extended Korean vacation--taken more than a few months ago--up on his blog--nudge, nudge), I was totally unable to get away from the stage for, I dunno, 30 seconds or so--but it felt like much longer. I did eventually manage to get clear of Dylan, who introduced Melvin, a total sun-worshipper who delivered a haiku in praise of summer. By the time he'd presented his piece, I was safely ensconced in the back of the room, and spent the better portion of the remainder of the show shaking. As I will.

Dave anchored the show, and delivered his work from behind the bar. This was partially in deference to the lack of microphones, which made hearing in the rear of the bar somewhat difficult (though audience noise was minimal), but also, I suspect, partially due to the fact that the reading light, which was in place for Michael's slot, had burned out. I have to admit, I'm usually not wholly attentive after my own work, mostly due to nerves, but I did recognize one offering that's up on his blog: Entitlement. I'm sure a hunt through his archives will yield others (BIG hint: go to Dave's complete profile if you've a mind to read more). To my distress, I haven't spoken to Dave since I was on the stage, and I would have liked to have had an idea of how he felt about the show as a whole. The anchoring slot is always tough, and if the dancing and celebrations that followed the show--as well as the many suggestions, from many quarters, that another such show be performed--are any gauge of the show's success, we all acquitted ourselves well.

After the poetry, Bryce rounded the whole out with a set of songs from his ever-expanding repertoire: I get the sense, of late, that his weekly gig, and the regularity with which he is called upon to play guitar at other social gatherings, are starting to do their magic, and that his guitar work is smoothing out, and his repertoire of lyrics are starting to solidify. One of his favorites, and a good indicator of the kind of music he graces us with, is Neutral Milk Hotel's Two-Headed Boy, a catchy tune that I suspect I will always associate with Gangneung in general and Bryce specifically. He's also been known to bust out with some Elliot Smith, and that's always welcome musical fare in my book.

It was a good night. I treasure such nights, really, I do, and it was made all the more memorable for my sitting up on Gyeong-po beach, watching the sun rise over the East Sea, with two of my closest friends in this city, Taylor and Tania. May others continue to blaze the trail Dylan and Bryce are carving out in the local waeguk scene.

Friday Night's all right

2006-08-01T00:54:00.000-06:00

...for poetry.

All right, all right, woohoo...if you're in Gangneung, come see it.

--more soon. Much movement, only a few weeks left of Korea, looking forward to returning to my girls...and, in an odd way, returning to the States, a changed man, I think.

This really is taking things a bit too far...

2006-07-16T13:00:00.000-06:00

What kind of pirate am I?

Apparently, the female kind. Who knew?

You scored as Mary Read. You are very unconventional, you defy the rules as often as you can and like to take as many risks as possible. You will probably end up living happily under a bridge somewhere laughing at all the unsavory deeds you once instigated.

Captain James T. Hook

100%

Mary Read

100%

Captain Jack Sparrow

100%

Dread Pirate Roberts

75%

Black Beard

67%

Sinbad

58%

Captain Barbosa

58%

Will Turner

42%

Morgan Adams

42%

Long John Silvers

33%

What kind of Pirate are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

ganked from Alala

Been a while...

2006-07-15T22:57:00.000-06:00

Been very busy, but gonna post more soon. In the meantime, Triplopia is fresh off the virtual presses, though without photos (our photo man celebrated turning in his last term paper for his Masters Degree a bit too thoroughly, and will be doing those tomorrow), and I'm still in the proofing process. I do invite you to check out Shakes on a Plane, the latest Yawp, which was a joy to write, and hopefully a joy to read, as well.

In the meantime, be vewy vewy quiet: I'm hunting typos.

Calling all editors

2006-06-20T21:11:00.000-06:00

...of online zines:

Opened up my most recent digest from Wom-Po, and found, among other offerings, notification of a Best of the Net anthology, in the works, and being organized by Erin Elizabeth Smith, founder and editor-in-chief at Stirring, which has been around since 1999. Yes, it's an online anthology. But it seems one well worth engaging.

Don't forget to follow the guidelines. Of course.

Have I mentioned how much I value Wom-Po? Really not flashy, the core of it is a basic list-serv, but very much a go-to source for information on poetry.

Good luck to all in their submissions--tchitch

It's Just Possible

2006-06-06T09:50:00.000-06:00

...that the following stats may be of interest only to me, but as I'm considering writing up a blog entry detailing my experiences from the inside of an independently run literary contest, I thought I'd offer this little tidbit from inside Triplopia's Best of the Best contest: as of the deadline of midnight, Pago Pago time, May 31, we received a grand total of 81 entries. This for a contest that purposely did not stipulate what constituted a previous first place win in a literary contest as a prerequisite. Grand prize, $100, no entry fee charged. What's compelling about these 81 entries, however, is that if a strict reading of the contest guidelines is adhered to, 37 would be eliminated without being read.

We're being more generous about that. This time around.

This is why I enjoy working on the zine. That's about as clear a case as I have ever encountered for following the guidelines when seeking publication, and the hands-on nature of the lesson is something that I respond to strongly. In the hands of a more well-positioned editor, nearly half of the contest submissions would be eliminated without having even been read. That means by reading the rules, and structuring your entry to fit them, there's a good chance that you've already moved into the top 50% of the entries.

That's well worth considering when you're putting your next submission package together, whether it's a contest or not. Time doesn't permit me to make the same observation about general submissions, but I highly suspect that the numbers aren't all that different from what they are in a contest.

I'll write more about the process once we're a bit closer to completion.

Piss Midget

2006-05-31T18:30:00.000-06:00

Another YouTube link, and yes, I can relate.

Shamelessly lifted from Miss Snark, whose blog is a source of regular entertainment, and not just a little solid information.

Poems

2006-05-28T09:29:00.000-06:00

...at the Muse Apprentice Guild, for your perusal. Tania VS (co-conspirator who puts Trip Picks together) is in there as well.

Hope you enjoy--and hope you feel like commenting, whether you do or not. Either way, feedback is always welcome.

The evolution of dance

2006-05-28T08:10:00.000-06:00

From Alexis, who is a Kangster but doesn't have a blog (that I know of), I receive another YouTube offering, The Evolution of Dance.

Me, I don't dance. Ever.

Breaking News

2006-05-25T11:20:00.000-06:00

...from the self-publishing crowd, which probably scams more people than all the contests on foetry.com put together: Absolute Write is gone due to the mechanations of Barbara Bauer and, according to Making Light, a naive, panicky PublishAmerica author who happened to own the web host upon which Absolute Write was housed. The story has been picked up by Miss Snark, as well, which means Miss Bauer looks to be receiving more attention for this than she could ever have prayed for. That said, I've done a brief search, and cannot confirm that Stephanie Cordray is in fact a PublishAmerica author...it's not showing up on the PublishAmerica search engine.

Though not of the caliber of some forums I have encountered, Absolute Write was one of the stronger indy forums, for information regarding several self-publishing schemes and calls for subs ranging from poetry to greeting cards. No high profile academics involved, that I know of, but probably very wide repercussions for the general writing public with this one. I'm given to understand that there has been a loss of many posts, though one can only hope that the forums will be restored, in some form, in the near future.

Click the links to learn more.

(thanks to Books, Inq. for helping to get the word out.)

Addendum: going through the comment field at Making Light, it appears that the folks at Absolute Write are on the case, and that the forums will soon be returning to us. I think this one is worth watching just to see what's rumor, and what holds up as fact. But the comment field is an education unto itself.

Stay Hungry

2006-05-21T01:18:00.000-06:00

Frank Wilson's write-up on internet poetry is now online. Kudos to Wilson for taking it on, and many thanks to him for getting a little wedge in there in the print world.

On a less positive note, I am rather disappointed that the trolls and the glut of poor offerings got a mention, at the expense of more on how the channel of the internet may affect the medium of poetry, itself. Perhaps such considerations are outside the realm of what the average book section reader wants to engage. However, and given that my comments were not used elsewhere, I'm posting my own private response to Frank's call for information here, just in case anyone's interested in knowing what sort of material didn't make the cut (great: he's offering rejected material...whatever next...and people say blogs aren't worth monitoring...).

Hi Gene,
You asked me to get in touch - and so I have. Why don't you fill me on what you think an article about poetry online should touch upon. Bear in mind that I am only going to be able to scratch the surface...

Best,
Frank Wilson
Book Review Editor
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Hi, Frank,

I'm really pleased that you've decided to write an article on internet poetry--it's a subject that's been neglected, in my estimation, for some time, probably largely due to the fact that the most visible and vocal among poets tend to be those who troll and criticize (a la foetry.com and Poetry Snark, the former a 'high profile' case that I can't help thinking could have been executed differently to better effect), and one does face a significant task getting to the good stuff behind a lot of dross. As regards your current project, I was fortunate enough to be made aware of it via a thread started on the Poets and Writers Speakeasy forums by Rus Bowden, who is well known for his work on the Poetry and Poets in Rags newsletter. That newsletter is in turn associated with one of the oldest and best established poetry competitions on the web, the InterBoard Poetry Competition, or IBPC. I know Tara Elliott, co-editor and co-founder of Triplopia, has at least one second place win in that competition to her credit, in September of 2002, for her poem "Crabbing on the Cheasapeake". I think I 'knew' her for about 2 years at that point, and we'd started Triplopia about 2 months previous. We originally met via a much less well known poetry board, where we were fortunate enough to enjoy, at the time, a fairly active membership, and at some point, I proposed putting a zine together, wrote up a mission statement and workshopped that (a single sentence remains of about a page and a half--it's on the front page of Triplopia), and about a year went by until Tara announced that she'd put a team together with the tech chops to get the computer work done, thus calling my bluff. We've come much further than either of us really had any right to expect (Tara calculated 2 years, I was shooting for 3), and suffice it to say, the only problem I would have with a thousand word article would be LIMITING it to that amount. But I can be long-winded, and it's well known.

In the interests of keeping things short, then, I think the response you've received is pretty indicative of the breadth of issues surrounding the publication of poetry via the net. There is, in the first instance, the need to distinguish between forums, listservs, blogs, and zines, though as pertainst to 'publication' of a poem, many journals don't. I have received notification, at times, that my having workshopped a poem on a public forum constitutes 'publication,' and thus makes work inelegible for certain venues. On the other hand, those same journals probably wouldn't look especially highly upon someone who listed forum postings as 'publication'--it's an odd double standard that the folks on the internet are pretty familiar with, to the extent that a lot of poetry forums have gone private to deal with the issue. They're usually meant, in theory, as online workshops, though there are certainly community members who treat them as if they were publishing work. Blogs are a different creature, as well, and zines are edited, though how well is a matter of some concern to anyone who is at all discerning about where their words are seen. The main point behind all this is that these are actually very different senses of the word 'publication,' and it's taken a fair while to get the more traditional poetry community to take any notice of what the net is offering the larger poetry community.

Then there is the matter of anonymity (which I think largely an illusion, anyway), the matter of design, issues surrounding multi-media, questions surrounding how the online experience actually encroaches upon the poetry writing process as well--that little response field frames more than some writers are aware of, I think, starting with the fact that we can so easily cut and paste where our not so distant predecessors might have been a little less hasty on the keyboard, and moving forward from there. I think, in the interests of keeping it somewhat succinct, I'd point in the direction of how design and content help or hinder each other. At Triplopia, we have been very fortunate in that our web designer has provided very high quality work--work that usually fetches him a fair paycheck--on a pro bono basis, because he happens to enjoy both designing and literature. That's not all we've been fortunate about, but the fact is, the site takes up a very large proportion of the time I don't spend earning a crust, and in real life, I pretty much steer anyone who will engage the subject of poetry with me to the site. There are a fair number of those people who are not at all interested in literary content, but they consistently comment on how the site looks, so all credit to our web designer. Thing is, design shouldn't carry the day if it's the words that matter, but I don't think it should be neglected, and I think in some quarters it is. And I think it's especially important when trying to convince poetry readers--many of whom do have traditional streaks--to stick around long enough to read some of our articles. It has to be easy on the eye. So where I could easily comment on forum behavior, on technology's effect on the writing process, on the potential offered by new media features such as hyperlinks, audio files, video feeds, really, on any number of issues, I'd just like to offer a couple of comments on the reasons why our undertaking has made some of the decisions it has, and beyond that, just say that I'm open to any questions you might have.

In my own opinion, the greatest peril a poet faces in approaching the internet as a possible venue for either publication or workshopping is distraction--and I think that level of distraction is, if anything, greater than it has been in the past. There's just so much on offer out there that's easier, and the fact that one can be 'published,' and their off-the-cuff opinion disseminated so widely via a forum posting or a blog comment is one of the greatest distractions of all. I suspect there's a lot of writing--some of my own, included--that would have benefitted greatly by being allowed time to age a bit, and in terms of a full body of work, that's not necessarily a good development. So when it comes time to create a zine, I share a commitment with Tara, my co-editor and co-founder, to keep those distractions as minimal as possible, while still closely engaging the channel of the internet. There is, for instance, no advertising done on Triplopia: there are reviews, certainly, and there are links to places where one may buy books, but we don't even subscribe to the Amazon.com affiliates program, so none of those links provide a source of revenue for us. This is possible because Internet publication is about as free of overhead as it is possible for publication to be. We do receive donations: our current contest is the result of one such donation, and we don't have to pay for a service provider because of another, so basically we're looking at domain registration (which goes at about 50 USD per year for two domains, .com and .org) and a whole lot of time both fielding and soliciting writing. We don't even have to pay postage--though I have had to foot the bill for a long-distance phone call from time to time. Time, however, is by far the greater investment. We also don't include pictures of our contributors, even though some of them are well known indeed. Steve Kowit was our first brush with fame, followed by Bob Holman (a personal hero of mine for his work on the United States of Poetry series on PBS back in the 90's), Joy Harjo, and Lindsey Collen (who has twice won the Commonwealth Prize for Africa)--and those are just the better known among our contributors. We also provide links, within the contributor bios, to other journals where our contributors' work can be found, but rather than linking the bios to the individual contributor's work, we link to the journal's homepage. These decisions are followed because I think we share a common aesthetic, in the Triplopia editing 'offices,' of keeping the focus on the words. On the other hand, we do make extensive use of hyperlinks: if an interview subject references a writer, we can provide a link by which the reader can follow up on that information, and learn more. Additionally, if it isn't glaringly obvious, the section entitled Yawp is my own undertaking, usually penned in the mad period between nailing down the last of the interview questions and going live, and essentially serves as an unquiet editorial on the issue at hand. It, too, can get quite link heavy, as it's just too sweet a temptation to go ahead and link to Aristotle's Poetics if it happens to come up during the course of that rant. It's online, it's free to access, and it probably provides greater insight into the discipline than anything I've ever written, so why not? So there's a balancing act being attempted here--to greater and lesser success--between trying to create a quiet space on the 'net where the words can do what they're meant to do, but still make a real effort to engage the realities of the Internet as a whole. Personally, I'd love to provide sound files--that's the performance poet in me, no doubt--but we haven't reached that point as yet. Maybe someday.

As long as the above paragraph is, it's the briefest glimpse into some of the issues surrounding poetry on the net as a whole, as it only focuses on the design decisions of a single e-zine, and there's quite fertile ground to be explored in forums and blogs, as well. I will say, in closing, that I don't frequent forums any more, as I find they're really not that helpful to me, personally, as a writer. That said, Triplopia started because of my participation on one such forum, and the first issue, for which we had to solicit every single piece of work included (and which strikes me as woefully amateurish in retrospect), is entirely made up of contributors from that single forum. I have to say, there were those who imagined the undertaking to be pretty much focused on that forum, and probably no few who were disappointed that we elected not to go in that direction. That's a decision I think any zine that proposes to make any difference whatsoever has to make, and it's not as easy as some might imagine. For me, though, that sense of community is something that I highly value in internet poetry: I've been put in contact with people I would never have imagined myself exchanging words with when this project started, and I find, for the most part, that the exchanges that result are nothing short of exhilarating. There's a whole other can of worms in those exchanges, because the fact that there are so many people out there not just reading, but writing, and editing, is far from a bad thing in my estimation. Whether the product is top shelf or not, the fact that those people are engaging the written word enough to create such spaces is one of my greatest sources for hope. When you find out what's behind the production of even the simplest such zine, you earn a greater respect for those who have had to go much further, and spend much more, in the past. That has to be a good thing.

I've definitely broached the 1,000 word mark in this e-mail, so, although I could certainly go on, or elaborate on the above, I'd probably be better off closing at this point. I did want to alert you to a couple of resources that you may or may not have been told of, however. First, the go-to blog is Silliman's Blog. He's consistently entertaining, and often right on the money. I don't particularly like L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, but I think his blog a great resource. That's on your blogroll, though, I think. There are also links to UBUweb and PENNsound on his blog, if you haven't checked them out already, they certainly deserve a mention. Finally, a newer one, not a zine or a blog, but a database of journals with some very interesting features, over at Duotrope--at present, this bills itself as a "Digest of Fiction Fields," and there's no option for poetry in the drop-down menu under 'Genre,' but there are a fair few publications in its database that do take poetry, and it provides some very relevant information regarding the publication, and does so in an easily navigable fashion. You might find it of some interest.

Frank, I hope some of the above is of use to you: I'm excited to see what you end up writing. I'll be following the link carnival closely. On a side note, as prompted by your linking to us on the blog proper: you might be interested to know that, although our zine is named after a vision problem that Tara suffers from, the editors regularly refer to it as "the Trip" in private correspondences.

Hoping yours continues to be a pleasant one--

Gene

For what it's worth. And, as I'm currently working my way through the next mountain of subs (the submission period just ended today for Trip), I'm off to labor in obscurity once again. Before I do, though, these words for Marc, who last night had a brief exchange with me over dinner re: the definition of poetry (my primary response being that I'd like to know for what purposes it's being defined...), I include something that hasn't yet forced itself on me enough to become a poem, but seems like it might one day. This was, initially, my first response to one of those ubiquitous posts, pretty much a standard for any internet poetry forum, entitled "What is poetry?":

All definitions are dangerous. It is

words sculpted into a shape so tense a mere whisper might well shatter it.

rocket fuel to prose's gasoline, white lightning to beer.

the whole being concentrated on saying the one thing words won't hold.

dialogue with creation, pragmatic inquiry into the mind of the creator, and the relationship between creator and created.

less statement than opening.

the expression of the mind's receptiveness when wonder at the simple, miraculous fact of awareness gives way to an unconditional commitment to being.

what you feel when you fall deeply enough in love with a complete stranger to place your very life at risk to consummate that love.

holy surrender in spite of the good likelihood that what you are worshiping does not exist.

Go over and give the resulting article a read, and keep an eye on the sidebar of Frank's blog: it's an evolving thing.

Tschuss--tchitch

Drumming for bears

2006-05-14T06:05:00.000-06:00

Via Wom-po, where a discussion centered on the reticence, on the part of many poets, to call themselves poets in some social settings prompted me to break my general silence long enough to explain why I prefer the title 'student of poetry'. Granted, in the context of Wom-po, which boasts a large number of published poets, I very much AM the student, but I prefer the 'student of poetry' title in pretty much all contexts--at least when I'm the one saying it. Anyway, the discussion has been going on for I think about a week now, and following the multiple tributaries of the exchange is fascinating, BUT, one of my contributions to the discussion prompted another member of the list to post this:

"Language is a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes to make the bears dance, when what we long for is to move the stars to pity." - Gustave Flaubert

Some kettles having larger cracks than others, to be sure, as my holding my own up to Flaubert's too readily demonstrates. This, I think, is one of those quotes that'll be with me for a while.

(A bow of gratitude to Alyssa Harad and Susan Elbe for making me aware that these words exist.)

Paradise is exactly like

2006-05-10T07:36:00.000-06:00

...where you are right now,

only
much
much
better

I love YouTube. Haven't gone on a serious explore yet to see what poets are doing with it, but it's on my to do list.

(Thanks to Wind Meals, Deborah Poe's online home, for alerting me to the existence of these. I've listened to Laurie for years, have never seen a video until this evening.)

Words Don't Matter

2006-05-07T03:45:00.000-06:00

Desperately trying to avoid political comment, mostly because I find it enormously depressing to even engage the subject, in times that I believe are truly taking a turn toward the desperate, but were you aware that we are currently almost five years into World War III?

In reply to a statement by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in Flight 93, and who described those events in the Wall Street Journal as "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war, World War III," I give you the words of our president:

"I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III."

Kinda puts the whole thing in perspective to think that you can be five years into a World War and not even be aware of it. Either that, or I'm just dense. Always a possibility. It would certainly explain a few things.

Moving this mountain...

2006-05-06T01:00:00.000-06:00

All right...it's been nearly a month since I posted, and the real fuss right now is the fact that there has been no shortage of material I should be posting here...which means, now I'm playing catch up. So, for the present, just an alert as to changes on the sidebar due to recent events: The new Triplopia is up, thus the addition of a new Spotlight and a new Yawp. Also, if you're a writer type, take note of our most recent contest. There's no fee for entering, the top prize is $100, and the only catch is that the poem has to have won a contest previously. Slots are filling up fast, so send your work quickly if you want to get in.

Trip's been the bulk of my work. There is the issue, but there is also letting people know the issue exists. For those who don't know, the core editorial staff stands, at present, at 4, with past contributor and new editor Tracy Koretsky coming on board just in time for our 4th anniversary celebrations--this summer! That's 16 Spotlights, 16 Yawps, and believe me, between those two alone, that's a LOT of Word Document pages (I'd conservatively estimate 320 pages of 12 point font--but it's more than that, and I know it). We're still going strong, in fact, stronger than ever, and just recently, have had a few people take note of us that had not before. Among them, the steady hand of Rus Bowdin, who has been 'personing' the helm of the Poetry and Poets in Rags newsletter for almost as long as there's been a Triplopia: many who read here do know, but if you don't, the IBPC and WebdelSol are among the venerable grandparents of online poetry. Triplopia's yet to get a mention on those pages (and even less yet to get a mention on Silliman's Blog), but hey, you can't blame a guy for trying, and in the meantime, I keep checking in because these are good sources of info. There are others. If you submit regularly, go check out a place called Duotrope, which I think has very real potential to become another go-to resource for poets and writers who are using the web to access and distribute the good words. Triplopia is among the magazines you can get information about on their pages, by the way.

Another source of attention, of late, is a blog Rus Bowden clued me in on, is Books, Inq., the online home of Frank Wilson, book review editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Frank recently posted a call for information about online poetry on his blog, and I think he's a little overwhelmed by the response: there's lots of good info for him, some comments that may be a little too closely informed by some of the internectine nonsense that goes in within the context of any particular poetry forum, but some interesting areas of discussion being proposed by those in the comments field. In any case, Frank's going ahead with the article, proposing a Carnival of Online Poetry and accompanying article slated for May 21. Watch for the update.

Also, if you like your poetry to be backed up with stats, go check out Ron Silliman's entries for April 23-May 4th: breakdowns of recent surveys by Terrain.org and PoetryFoundation.org (Yes, that is the contemporary face of Harriet Monroe's Poetry magazine, and the public results, so far, of Ruth Lilly's $100 million dollar bequest to that venerable magazine. Let 'em know how you think they're doing spending the money.)

In other words, a LOT of news JUST on the poetry front here, and even more, on the ground, that I need to get to...but if I try to get to all of it in one post, it's going to overwhelm anyone who might be interested in reading it. So, one more note: in addition to my usual work at Trip, I also agreed to serve as guest poetry editor at poeticdiversity for their May 2006 issue. Two new pieces by yours truly on those pages: a review of the work of Norman Ball, and (gasp!) a poem. That particular piece is about 12 years old, and it's what remains of a piece about 3 times as long. After over a decade of it's steeping and being rearranged, I think I decided it was time to cut that one loose. There are more coming, this summer. Really--poems, and not just me blathering on about whatever comes to mind.

Okay, I'm gonna tweak the sidebar a bit, but wanted to alert you to just a little sliver of the stuff I've been fielding for the past couple of weeks. It's raining, and the countdown to home is, I think, officially commencing. I have 3 months and 20 days left.

More soon--tchitch

Straight shot

2006-04-10T09:59:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, in the course of working on something totally unrelated, you come across a poem that just hits you right in the gut, and that's that. Sometimes, as I slog through 300-350 poems (never mind prose), I feel like I might be getting jaded, and far too early. Then, you're working on an interview, and someone drops a name, and in the course of routine research, you look it up, and come across something that just sticks there. And resonates.

Such was the case, this Sunday, when I came across the famed "Bubble Lady" of Berkeley, Julia Vinograd's offering, Ginsberg.

And you remember what the hell you're doing all this for.

I have a barroom analogy for lit: prose is the beer. When you want to get serious, you ask for the stuff behind the bar. That's poetry. This one delivered a gut punch like I haven't received in a loooong time. Good on ya, Julia.

There is a word for this kind of activity...

2006-04-06T10:28:00.000-06:00

and it starts with "t" and rhymes with "reason."

We have been played. Okay, truth be told, not all of us were played. But let's just assume that for the past few elections, the majority of Americans have voted with their eyes open, and their votes have been counted. It's my opinion that, as a people, we should have seen through this story well before November 2004, but hey, let's just assume that's some rabid lefty loonie talking, and that the evidence was not there at that point. I want to know, how much more will it take before more people come to the conclusion that this information is a little more important than cranking up the old TiVo?

Coming home, and soon. I don't intend on being quiet. I don't think my conscience would allow me to be. It's time--well past time--our nation woke up.

Damn it. This news story is going to do me no damn good at this point in my journey. I've felt like I've been riding the storm out for damn near a decade. I want to believe--I do believe--that humans are better than this, just because the alternative is disheartening to a point I don't think I can come back from.

For the past 8 months, more than ever, I have found myself battling with the very notion of hope: I feel like I should be its unreserved advocate, and I try to be. But human events make that very hard to maintain, and I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't be better served if I could just give it up, and accept the notion that justice is a fool's dream that leads the more humane members of our species to a certain and ignoble doom. It doesn't sell, because it isn't about selling. It isn't 'practical' because ideals are never practical--they are to be striven for, even in the near certain knowledge that they cannot be defined and will not be reached. All the practical progress in the world is rendered meaningless without such an aim. It isn't about whether the ideal is real or not: it's about our accepting our capacity to both conceive of and realize it. But when our ideals reach no further into humanity than our own selfish comforts, we are left with an ideal that is not worth having.

Are we willing to accept this as our legacy?

Are we capable of nothing better?

And this story...this story is nothing. And we know it. We only pretend otherwise.

How can you separate the interviewer from the interview?

2006-03-26T10:39:00.000-06:00

Egregiously slack on this front, and I know it. And I don't have a proper blog entry, though maybe some who visit this page will find the following of some interest. Recently, I received an e-mail from an undergraduate student fielding responses to a set of questions regarding poetry on the internet for material for their thesis. So, sure, because I can talk about this stuff, much to some people's annoyance (my wife primary among them, I suspect...), but I asked, would it be okay if I posted my responses to my blog. No problem. So, if you want some sense of the thoughts of someone who kind of has "a foot in both camps," do read on. It's lengthy. It's my favorite subject. But hopefully, there's a few things in there worth reading. At least, I hope his thesis chair thinks so.

--tchitch

What (if any) do you think are the advantages of publishing poetry on the internet as opposed to print?

What are the disadvantages?

These two kind of go together, and can probably be summed up, at least in part, by saying 'Ease of access.' That's both an advantage and a disadvantage, because on the one hand, there are a lot of voices out there we probably wouldn't have ever heard from if they'd been forced through the usual avenues of print publication, but on the other, there are a lot of voices out there that we would probably be as well off without. It's about editorial standards, and an important aspect of any online publication's task is to establish some sense of credibility around their efforts. On a deeper level, I think online interaction differs significantly from the kind of interaction one encounters in other, more traditional media, and I don't think it's always for the better--though I do hold out some hope that some of the voices I think worth listening to will serve to better define what internet interaction has the potential to be. I have to admit, even as the editor of an online magazine, I still very much work with a prejudice for print publication--it has an air of respectability about it that is seductive to me--though I am also excited about what I think online writing can be. But when poetry is presented online, it is, in many ways, trying to compete in an environment that is more receptive to narrative presented in the form of a computer game than it is to straightforward presentation of text that is noteworthy for it's condensation of language. Poets are working against some pretty heavy odds when the reader knows that music and video are just as readily available, and are probably less taxing to engage. That's true in the real world, as well, but I think online, it hits critical mass. Sometimes it really does feel a bit like trying to read passages from Milton in a video arcade: it just gets drowned in noise, and it seems to be rather a fool's errand. But I think that's the appeal for many writers, as well. It's a challenge, and anyone who succeeds in making it work in that environment stands to reap some pretty serious accolades from others interested in seeing it happen. In terms of advantages, also, there is the bare fact that there is much more information made readily available to one. Anyone who is studying poetry these days has, in the internet, access to a pretty serious library, and that's a BIG advantage. But the advantages of that library are countered, somewhat, by the fact that there are no set of standards for including a book within that library. That means there are treasures, and then there's a whole lot of really random material, and while there are ways to filter out the noise, it takes a while to figure out the filing system well enough to know where to look for the good stuff.

How is a group of poets sharing poetry on an internet forum or publishing in the same zines similar and dissimilar to a traditional community of poets?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'a traditional community of poets,' but I think the most obvious difference between what goes on in an internet forum and what would have gone on, in the past, in a gathering of poets is, again, ease of access. Time and space are annihilated by the web, and my own experiences, as an editor of a web-zine, are such that this has readily borne itself out. The zine was founded by myself and a poet who I had worked with, but never met (still haven't, after 3 1/2 years of work on the same project), and I have had the pleasure of talking to poets that I would have had a much more difficult time accessing without the web. There's another aspect of your question that I feel might benefit from a clearer definition as well, and that's the term "internet forum," because there are almost as many different KINDS of internet forums as there are forums themselves. Variables such as "local" personalities (which can dominate a forum as readily as they can a room), extent of moderation (ranging from a completely hands-off approach to downright intrusive), quality of moderation (the mods being human, and all), nature of the forum's mission (with some being devoted to much thinner wedges of the larger term 'poetry,' and aligning themselves in terms of theme, gender, geographic location, 'schools' of poetry, and so on), all have an effect on the particular experience one has when engaging a forum. Also, I would make a big distinction between poets as they engage each other's works on a forum and poets who publish in the same zines. In the case of the forum, the primary aim is to craft their work, and to solicit the feedback of a community of poets they've (one hopes) come to trust. That's quite different from attempting to publish one's work, even if it is 'only' in an online zine. It's a distinction many beginning posters, in forums, fail to make, and it's usually to their detriment that they don't make it. Some print publications argue that a public forum IS publication, which is probably one development that has contributed to the move, on the part of many of the better forums, to more privacy. But I think for most poets, the forum is used primarily for constructive feedback, with the aim being to improve the piece. Publishing in a zine suggests that one considers a piece 'finished,' to whatever extent that description ever fits a poem. An important difference.

How (if at all) do you think the internet as a venue for poetry affects the work itself?

In many ways, some of which we've probably not even realized, yet. I think it basic enough that I often argue for a view that regards writing for the page and writing for the internet to be different media altogether--in much the same sense that writing poetry that is meant to be read from the stage and writing poetry that is designed for the page might be viewed as different media. There is no doubt, to my mind, at least, that a poet who is crafting work with the stage in mind will approach that work in a very different manner than will a poet who is primarily interested in being read. I think there's a similar distinction to be made between print and online publication, simply because there is such enormous potential for experimentation online: linearity can and has certainly been played with in ways that simply are not possible on the page; hyperlinks have been used to great effect to enhance poetry (though the primary examples I have encountered involve 'footnoting' poems by providing links to further information behind allusions within a given work--I know this has been done with "The Wasteland" and some of Browning's work, and there is probably much left for me to discover along these lines)--and there is great potential, I think, for an able mind to further use hyperlinks to break down some of the barriers between author and reader. Along those same lines, there is the simple matter of interactivity, something that I feel some posters, on the less regulated poetry forums, do make use of, though it usually just ends up in online shenanegins. But there is that quiet part of me that hopes one day to read quality work that makes fuller use of the particular form of exchange characteristic of online forums to somehow incorporate a sort of hyper version of the old 'call and response' form. Aside from these considerations, there is also the matter of context that I brought up earlier. In an important sense, poetry seems terribly out of place on the web, but that hasn't stopped it from spawning a breathtaking number of forums, zines, and blogs dedicated to exploring it. Unfortunately, at least so far as I've been able to read it to date, it seems this gathering has done more to expose the fragmented nature of the discipline than to pull poets together. But I think your question reads differently depending upon whether one has a single poem in mind, or the more general 'poetry'.

How significant do you think the internet is as a venue for new poetry?

I still very much think of it in terms of potential. I don't think anyone's cracked the nut to the extent necessary to really make use of everything at one's disposal, though there are many who are engaged in exploring the possibilities. I also don't think the internet is any panacea by which the giants of po-biz are going to be unseated. Put simply, maintaining a website takes a lot of one's time, and it's easier to draw premium talent if you can provide them with a means to earn a daily crust. Poetry is an undertaking that attracts its fair share of devotees, many of whom do understand that the hourly wage of even the most successful among our poets tends to be somewhat less than they could earn extending far less effort in an office cubicle, so there are plenty of people out there who will continue to work on venues out of love of the art itself. But when you take questions like staffing, server space, web design, and ball that all up and ask yourself how much effort goes into a well-presented forum or zine, you know the giants like Poetry magazine, or Poets and Writers, or the Academy of American Poets, are still going to be able to offer more, in terms of resources and well executed design, than most. Take into further consideration the fact that many who engage poetry ARE concerned with how the venue affects the work itself, and advertising--another source of revenue--either has to be targeted to a much smaller set of potential buyers, or disappears altogether. The prize of course goes to that poet--or that venue--that can find the right way forward to either counter the distractions that surround them, or better, to my mind, incorporate them in such a way as to draw attention to the work itself. I don't think I have the answer to that puzzle, yet. I don't think anyone does.

It strikes me, though, that there is a second set of considerations, as regards the question, that spring from considering, not 'new poetry', but individual voices that have yet to be heard. In this respect, I think some inroads have already been made, but those voices are struggling, in terms of a sense of 'credentials', against an enormous prejudice toward the printed page. I have this prejudice, and I'm engaged enough by online poetry to devote the better portion of my free time to it. In those few publications I have been able to secure, I know that there's just something enormously satisfying in seeing your work on a page, something that just isn't there when you see it go up on a website. Both are exciting, but the book form is solid: it sits there, in your hand, like a tool--like something that has potential to physically alter one's surroundings. In a more outrageous mood, I might suggest that the difference is basically the same difference as exists between sex and cyber-sex. But that could change. Especially if one were to find a way to make use of some of the features available, via the internet, to bring MORE focus on the words, rather than simply having to craft them in such a way as to try to be heard, somehow, over the sound of virtual gunfire. Again, I think there's enormous potential, and I think some poets will eventually work their way into the popular imagination via the internet, but I think, for the present, if that happens, the person's arrival will be heralded by a book release, not by a new website. And that says something about the regard in which most poetry readers still hold the physical book. Maybe that changes in the future. It certainly will if we ever produce a poet whose work proves to be untranslatable to the traditional page.

Finally, on a much shorter, but no less important note, it should be said that the significance of the internet as a venue for poetry is partially contingent upon how universal internet access is in the future. In well developed countries, that access is pretty wide. In terms of global population, the vast majority of humans will probably never see your work, even in a medium as accessible as the internet. It strikes me that, at base, within the discipline of poetry, significance is probably not best measured by how big your audience is, but by how well your poetry communicates (and yes, I'm traditionalist enough to think poetry does--and (horrors) should--communicate). But communication involves, besides the message and the channel, a sender and a receiver, and if either sender and receiver is incapable of making some form of sense of the message, the message isn't going to get through. In the end, it's as much about the audience as it is about the poet. It doesn't matter how clear the signal is, if it doesn't mean anything to the person for whom it's intended, it isn't going to be significant at all. And when you're publishing on the internet, you're making a decision about who you see your audience as. You just have to ask yourself if that's really the audience you want to be engaging, and how receptive that audience is likely to be to what you have to say. Considering what else is on offer on the internet, it's probably safe to say that internet poetry is aimed at a relatively thin slice of the online community--which is, in its turn, a relatively thin slice of human life as a whole.

How do you predict the internet will change as a venue for poetry in the next decade?

Based on what's happened so far, I think zines will come to understand that design is much more central to poetry than some would like to admit. I think forums will probably eventually give up the notion that an absolutely unregulated exchange of ideas is a good in itself, with, hopefully, an attendant commitment to thoughtful moderation. I think it's inevitable that sooner or later, a poet who got their start on the internet will publish a book that soars to the 'heights' of the print poetry publication world, and that the attention they receive as a result will be, at the very least, an enormous distraction from the work itself. I also expect there will be even more attention given to multi-media capabilities, with the incorporation (already present, in some venues) of audio and video files. I think there's a reasonable chance that spoken word poetry will begin to look even more legitimate for what it has to offer to ventures of this sort, and I think there may be a re-consideration, to come, of the commitment to the rather modernist principle of keeping the poet and the poem separate, in light of our present ability to record the poet. Print publication shook this up in the past: audio and video publication is in the process of shaking it up again, and given the real possibility of airing 'poetry radio' or even 'poetry television' via the net, I think it's pretty much a given that these principles will have to be rethought in future assessments of contemporary poetry. From a purist's perspective, that may not be good for poetry, but it is the environment we're working in, and the words that manage to crack the big media picture far enough apart to enter the popular imagination in any enduring way will have to engage that environment. I'm not unqualifiedly optimistic, by any means, because I think this means significant shifts in what we call 'poetry', and I'm not convinced all those changes are good ones, but I also think there's wiggle room enough in that big picture to allow for quality poetry to sneak in under the radar.

What do you feel is the affect of relative anonymity on poetry? How do people write and review poems differently knowing that they will likely never meet the writer or reader?

I don't think this is all that different from the conditions of the past, because I am, in the broader sense, much MORE likely to 'meet' the writer or the reader than I would have been in the past. It's a matter of how much emphasis you put on that flesh and bone meeting. And anonymity is a myth, basically. It's more the perception of anonymity, but most people are readily trackable if they're on the net. Having said that, I am rather amazed, sometimes amused, sometimes affronted, by some of the things that get done as a result of that perception of anonymity. In terms of forums, I used to be a very regular user, and poster, and find that, of late, my time's generally better spent lurking. There's too much of the trickster, in most who are engaged in any art that takes language as its medium, to allow for any completely unregulated venue to really function--the temptation is just too great, for many, to try on different persona, to test the boundaries of the community at hand. Additionally, I think the idea of poetry is probably better conveyed by pluralizing it--poetries--given the fact that most discussions of it as a monolithic 'thing' are generally most noteworthy for the wide disagreement that almost invariably results. And every proponent of every view seems to not only hold those views with the passion they deem fitting a poet, but can amass countless links that appear to back up their views, thus, to many minds, legitimizing what they have to say. That's all fine, if the discussion aims to build, but in most of my online wanderings, I find such discussions tend more to devolve into free-for-alls in which everyone seeks to triumph, as if it were a debate that could be 'won' in that sense. That perceived sense of anonymity, that idea that one will never meet their interlocutor, further creates an atmosphere in which things--often remarkably personal things--get said that would not be said if those engaged in the debate were sitting at the same bar. In terms of those discussions, I find that the primary value I've taken from engaging them has to do with being able to get what I think down in words--it's a form of writing that is transferred, easily enough, into other forms of writing. That's a good thing, so far as it goes, but if that's the real thrust of the individual contributor's efforts, one has to wonder if anyone is doing any listening. There are of course better and worse discussions, but I think some of the bad ones have placed me, certainly, and probably many others, in a position where they get really selective with the venues they're willing to engage--sometimes to the point of ignoring forums altogether. I'm sure it's like everything else that contributes to one's poetry: it works for some, and not for others. It just doesn't work particularly well for me. Having said that, my pet project, an online zine, was the result of participation on a forum, so I'm hardly in a position where I'd feel comfortable saying that all forum exchanges are necessarily negative.

In terms of anonymity, aside from the fact that forum members are in fact readily trackable (and many are quite upfront in leaving footprints by which they can be traced), I find that most forums do tend to assume a culture, over time, and that there will be heirarchies within that culture. It is, perhaps, feasible that a high-profile poet might post to a forum and receive feedback at wide variance from that received when in their more public persona, and that would certainly be an interesting development. I'm guessing, though, that the deep prejudice around online publication, and the fact that many journals do consider a poem posted on a blog or in a public forum to be published, pretty much precludes this from happening. And for the most part, I think the notion that one's poetry is being critiqued or read in any objective sense is pretty much fallacious from the onset. Poetry reading is a very human activity, it's a very subjective human activity, and I'm not even sure objectivity is to be desired. In practical terms, participation in a forum is voluntary--the poet chooses it, and no doubt takes several cues from the design, the layout, the tone of criticism, etc. in making the decision to contribute to one forum over another. Then, having made that decision, there is a natural enough heirarchy between veterans and newcomers, and among the veterans there arises a culture specific to that forum. The whole process is far from anonymous, even given that an individual can't be traced. In fact, I'd argue that my work as an editor comes far closer to being an 'anonymous' process than any of my contributions to poetry forums ever have been, simply because I have to engage all the poetry that comes my way, and I have to make a decision regarding what gets included, and what doesn't. Yes, there are attached bios, and I'm of the mind that those bios are not irrelevant in decision making (though I think often in ways at wide variance from what was intended by the contributor), but when push comes to shove, the work either stands up well enough on its own to make the cut, or it doesn't. And there's not a whole lot of room for apologies in deciding to include one poet, and exclude another. By comparison, forums can be downright incestuous. Though, as with all such venues, there are those that offend more, and those that offend less.

How does one read a poem by an unkown author on the internet differently from a poem by a new poet in print?

I'd argue that the level of 'knownness' is actually pretty irrelevant, in the above cases, as they're both new to me. More important are issues of context--the environment in which the poem occurs, a set of considerations that entails assessing questions of design, presentation, relative merit of surrounding material, etc., plus the aforementioned issues surrounding poetry on the internet in general--and form, specifically, how the work takes advantage of the particular medium it is working with and the particular venue in which it occurs. Then there's the abovementioned prejudice toward books, and that's either just a symptom of age, or a question of how well internet presentation serves as an effective medium for the written word. Having said that, I have a couple of books less than 10 feet away from me that occupy a distant--we're talking parsecs, here--second to any number of sites I have ready access to via the web. It's not all about having a page between one's fingers. Good writing is good writing. It's more a matter of reaching the right audience, and the fact that I'm online, and that most of my time online is spent engaging poetry, suggests that there are a LOT of other people online engaged in much the same work. In fact, I know there are. So there's room for it amidst the bells and whistles. Having said that, I also know how readily one can succumb to the distractions available online, and something makes me think I'm not the only one who has ever succumbed to them. I mean, Comedy Central gets more hits than my zine does from somewhere.

Words of advice

2006-02-28T21:03:00.000-06:00

...to anyone who decides to come to Korea to teach English:

It's
ALL
about
the
Noraebang

Civil Disagreement

2006-02-19T14:50:00.000-06:00

Just in case you should ever find yourself in serious disagreement with the content of this site, I extend my most cordial invitation to you to visit this site, where you will find a wide array of options by which you may give free rein to your spleen.

Viel Spaß

--tchitch

IMVHO

2006-02-18T05:23:00.000-06:00

I have heard
the word
"disingenuous"
in forums

and wondered
how such a long word
invades
public discourse

Forgive me
it is suspicious
so easy
and so vague.

(In other news, I finally got to the end! I was starting to wonder if I would ever manage to finish it.)

I've got mail

2006-02-14T21:13:00.000-06:00

So, Dagmar, of the English Comedy Club in Munich--the only Comedy venue, that I'm aware of, with enough cultural savvy to link to Triplopia (love the description, Dags...) was kind enough to send me a whole bunch of photos from our going away gathering in Munich, and now it's overcast and I'm kinda homesick. But I wanted to share here. Some background: the English Comedy Club was a monthly highlight of my life in Munich--I first came into contact with Dagmar through the Absolute Beginners show, and she'd yet to launch the club. She's a German citizen who spent some time in London and fell in love with the comedy scene there, and came up with a workable way to get prime English talent over to Munich once a month. She launched the club in Autumn, 2004, and I was fortunate enough to be at the first show, helping by collecting audience information so she could establish a mailing list, all the start-up work that goes with getting a venue like this off the ground. After that, I helped every month, and in exchange, I got free admission into the show, and often got to hang out with the comedians afterwards, usually trying to engage them in something like intelligent conversation to do my small part to save them from well-meaning audience members who thought it a good idea to trot out their best material to a comedian while drunk and the comedian fresh off the stage. I don't know how well I did at that, or if it was even seen as a real responsibility of mine, but I did get some interesting conversation in the process. Well, this week, Dagmar writes me that Ivor Dembina, the comedian who first graced Dagmar's stage, is returning to her stage next month, and I have to admit to being a little sad that I can't be there to see Ivor at work again--he puts on a fairly brilliant show, a fair few cuts above the standard one-liner material you generally encounter in comedy venues--he's got a well-developed narrative to back the jokes up--more, to support and enhance those jokes--and he doesn't flinch when dealing with some pretty heavy material. I'd love to see him at work again. Anyway, I had to write back to let Dagmar know how much I'd like to be in attendance, and Dagmar, gorgeous soul that she is, sent me a whole bunch of photos from our quiet going away gathering, taken about two weeks before I departed for sunny South Korea. And I thought I'd share those pics to give you a few faces to go with the names of the folks that peopled our life there.

First things first, then: the venue--

This is the sign for the Turkenhof, the most undersung pub in Munich. It's not an ex-pat gathering place, but it was my regular watering hole, because I fell in love with it the first time I went. On that night, I'd attended a showing of Bowling for Columbine with Hugh, a crazy Brit who was a regular contributor to the Absolute Beginners, along with Christoph. Hugh plays cello, likes Brass Eye, and Christoph is a guitar player, along with their work in Geophysics, and I spent many evenings in their home, smoking hookahs (tobacco, of course, folks) and trying to think of crazy ideas to hit the stage we'd created. At one point, someone gave Hugh and Christoph a couple of Syrian flutes, and we decided it would be a great idea to scream the lyrics to Captain Beefheart's China Pig through a megaphone while Hugh and Christoph played said flutes. Audience reaction was mixed, but it was a blast doing. In any case, on the night in question, I barely knew Hugh--had played a few games of chess with him--and knew Christoph not at all, but Bowling for Columbine resulted in a very interesting discussion of politics, and we ended up going for afters to the Turkenhof. At some point in the evening, the bartender announced that someone wanted to sing a song, and out trots the cook of the place, who then commences to singing two opera arias, and singing them well. I think this was the point at which I knew I'd be falling in love with this city, and the Turkenhof became a favorite gathering place as a result. I even have--courtesy of my wife--a t-shirt from the place, and it will be one of my first stops any time I find myself fortunate enough to be in Munich again. Only fitting, then, that the going away gathering take place there

This is a photo of myself, with Dagmar. Dagmar, aside from letting me help with the show, giving me free admission for so doing, letting me talk to premium British comedy talent, and generally being an excellent person to talk to, also directed locals who wanted to be the opening act for her show to my show, where they could perform for Dagmar in front of an audience, and allow her to assess their ability to handle the bigger stage. Result: Dagmar has a way to field talent, and I get acts. And she lets me into her show for free? People like this make me feel like I'm one of the luckiest humans alive.

This is Asher, and his girlfriend, Anushka (sorry if I've spelled that wrong, Anushka). Asher the go-to consultant for this piece. Can I just say how incredibly cool it is to have a friend who is willing to sit around drinking until 3 am talking about poetry and explaining physics to me? Aside from his work as a physicist, Asher is also a fair hand at martial arts, and on more than one occasion filled gaps in acts at our show by going on stage and trotting out the demonstrations. He did this, the first time, while standing on a pool table. Of course, the fact that he regularly attended allowed us to describe him as not only a performer, but the resident bouncer, with the joke being that not only does he know about martial arts, but he also knows about quantum physics, so he is quite capable of seriously fucking you up. A more peaceful person you will not encounter, however, and, on the one occasion upon which his bouncing skills were required, he left the target not only unharmed, but considerably happier for having been reined in by the bouncer. In fact, I still carry a piece of paper in my wallet with the target's words, scrawled through a haze of beer and schizophrenia, "I am happy." Anushka's an English teacher, and a playmate of my daughter's (something to do with spiders, I believe...)

This is Josep, who is Spanish and the squeeze of Agnieszka, from Poland, who is sitting next to him, as well as Erika, who is Canadian. Agnieszka and Erika are also two of my three "gorgons" in my blog's profile pic. (I hesitate to say "bitches" even though it would be funnier, simply because I know the power these women possess, and don't want to fuck with it.) Close friends, steady companions, and excellent people to be with. Also a condensed sense of the cosmopolitan nature of our existence in Munich.

This is me, with Judders and Bubble Gum. Judders and Bubble Gum are notorious, in ex-pat Munich, for their inability to handle alcohol--at one point, they made an event of seeing which of them could drink more than the other. I think Judders won, but if so, it was by a very slim margin, as he didn't even get through 2 standard Munich beers (that'd be a full litre). Bubble Gum was the DJ for the later Absolute Beginners shows, and very capable in that role--and the addition of her talents did a lot to smooth the show out. Judders, on the other hand, he's a dancer, and a good one, and on slow nights, he was sometimes convinced to trot his skills up onto our stage. My daughter and her friend, a 12-year old boy named Sterling, were sometimes in attendance, and found Judders' moves fascinating enough to try them out on their own--though never in front of him. That would be taking things a bit too far. Next to them is Wolfgang, a local, a cook, and as fine a man as exists--his patience with all of us is legendary, and he has helped us out of more scrapes than I can count. I hope to be in his company again in the future.

A pic of the lovely couple without the imposition of yours truly upon the image. Many happy years their way.

Myself, dining with my lovely and incredibly supportive wife, the third gorgon in the profile picture. Powerful woman, she is.

And the evidence of our combined power--my daughter, described by one person in Munich as "the only perfect child in the universe". Well...I wasn't going to say it, but...

Some goofiness on Daggy's part.

Erika, a crazy Canadian who is my daughter's best friend above the age of about 10, and according to my daughter, still a child. I don't know what Erika thinks of that, but I'd take it as a compliment. Erika is a very capable singer who needs to give herself the freedom to develop that part of herself. She was also the most regular visitor to our home in the last months of our stay in Munich, and was reknowned for coming over and being sent into truly debilitating fits of giggles with our jokes and observations about our less than ideal situation during those months. Send her your best--she's still in Munich, last I heard, but may be on her way out of it.

No trip to the Turkenhof is complete without a game or 15 of what Americans call 'foosball' and Germans call 'kicker.' My daughter is an absolute fiend for this game. My team, when I played, was 'la basura.' Never disappointed in defeat that way.

This is the man, the legend himself, Eruin, the cook and opera singer at the Turkenhof. This is the man who dominated the first year of Absolute Beginners, regularly beating just about all the other competition with his arias. If you are in Munich, go to The Turkenhof, try to be there around 10:30-12, ask if he's working. The kitchen closes at 11, and if you're lucky, you may just get to hear him sing. The lovely thing about his appearances in our show was that here he was, in a dress jacket, a t-shirt, and leather pants, singing Puccinni. Life does not get sweeter than this. And women are on the verge of swooning in this man's presence when he is singing. Gotta be the voice, man.

Eruin behind the bar, Singing. For my going away. I am honored.

The audience looks on.

And Eruin's response.

There is nothing for it but to close with Eruin. The existence of this man, his participation in my show, his decision to honor my leaving with his singing, all of this says so much about what I see when I think of Munich. In a world that is consistently absurd beyond my ability to reckon with it, it is truly heartening to know that people like these exist--that they are the reality the headlines never bother with.

Man, I miss the place. Hope you enjoyed the pics. --tchitch

I just have to say

2006-02-13T11:26:00.000-06:00

...that it makes me irrationally happy to know that, should one type my full name and the word 'fool' into Google, and hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky,' this is where they'll end up.

Makes it all worthwhile. I can die a happy man, now.

Pictures

2006-02-12T04:09:00.000-06:00

...because now that I've managed to get firefox on my laptop, I can...

On top of Birobong, Odaesan, eating food provided by one of my adult students, Chung-gun.

Chung-gun and I, at the marker at the top of Birobong, posing for the obligatory monument shot.

Here, we're joined by Chung-gun's friend, Seung-gyu.

You can't really see it, but on the way down from the peak (with background noise provided by a nearby Buddhist temple, whose loudspeakers made the woods reverbrate with chants), we watched a squirrel locate--and promptly go to work on--a discarded lollypop.

This one has nothing to do with Korea, but I love it. Caption: "When you're in really deep shit, keep your mouth shut and act like you know what you're doing." Wise words.

While I'm trotting out the sophomoric humor anyway, might I point you to my favorite online comic strip? Dig deep into the archives...many good laughs to be had there. Also, in case you missed this one: Brokeback to the Future. Wrong on sooo many levels, but damn if it doesn't work.

I'll post a real entry soon. --tchitch

Just dropping by

2006-01-29T00:45:00.000-06:00

With a couple of goodies before I get stuck into work on Triplopia--which is intense right now. Also I think I may have an organizational framework for the novel I've been kicking around in my head for the past 2 years. If I can manage to execute what I've got in mind, it should be sweet. Lots going on with the writing, of late.

On the promised reviews: I'm about half way through In Our Own Words. It's an interesting book. Have lots to say about it, but generally speaking, I'm finding it a good book to be in. Three Triplopia poets in it as well.

BUT: couple things sent my way I thought I'd share. First, on the ground, Taylor has recently updated his photo blog to include the trip we took to the Tae Beck San Snow Festival--go take a squiz. Second, Tania (the voice behind Trip Picks and co-conspirator on the ground in Munich with whom I had the distinct pleasure to have many excellent conversations consistently heavier on digressions than on central points--said conversations being an important source of inspiration for this oldie but goodie) sends me a .pdf from UbuWeb entitled Some Differences Between Poetry and Stand-up. The link goes directly to the .pdf, just so's ya know. And finally, I highly suspect that I should not find this as amusing as I do...but I do. There's more like it on their main site, if you feel like wasting 5 minutes.

I'll write with real news soon.

I've been tagged

2006-01-21T23:38:00.000-06:00

...by alala, who I recognize from Toytown Munich, unqualifiedly the best possible resource any English speaker venturing into the wilds of Munich Germany could possibly hope to encounter (and heaven forfend my giving out my username on that forum, in the fears that those who do swing by this site might learn of some of the shenanegins I get up to on that forum...those who need to know, do...). Alala, let me say first that I much appreciate the tag, as thanks to a certain internet service provider deciding to charge for their service, I no longer have any clue how often this page gets hit, and it's always good to know that someone's reading. I also appreciate the out, which I'm going to take, though not for fear of exposing myself, but for my serious doubts that I could rustle 5 people up to tag in turn that would not look a bit askance at my asking them. That's probably an unfounded doubt, as, in the worst case, it would probably just go unremarked upon, but given the sheer level of correspondence I find myself dealing with when online (to the point that there are many, many people who are sorely neglected on that front), I'm gonna pass by just saying that, much to my detriment, I recently discovered peanut butter Oreos. Not good. But, the tag did what it was intended to do, which was to prompt me to make a post over here.

So, first thing first. Let me tell you about Tuesday. On Tuesday, after much effort, I woke up to the new Triplopia, our fifteenth. Can I just say, first, that this project has taken me into territory that I have only dreamed of for many, many years? The conversations I have had, and the material I have generated, over the last 3 1/2 years quite frankly leave me gobsmacked at times. I sometimes suspect I'm not worthy...that there's something fraudulent to it all that will one day be horribly exposed for all to see. I know, if for no other reason than by virtue of the real effort that has gone into that project, that those conversations, and that material, are deserved, it's just sometimes hard to believe. But whether I feel deserving or no, there it was, on Tuesday, just waiting for me to push through the final proofs (completed mere hours ago), then to tell everyone about it...the task I will be taking steps toward as soon as I finish the indulgence that is this post. So I went to my work, at the hagwon, feeling particularly light--something that in these dark winter days, and at the distance I am currently working from, is not a given. Plus, I was happy with my most recent Yawp, which, for anyone who is tracking my less than sterling descriptions of life in South Korea (my god...on Wednesday it will be 5 months...almost halfway done!), will provide one small, lightly fictionalized slice of my time here thus far. It's got particular appeal to the language hounds out there, but hopefully there are a few sentences that appeal to other folks as well. And the biggest selection of prose, and a selection of poets that, in my opinion, has precisely zero weak links to compromise the issue as a whole. Etc. Those who have been reading know what to expect over at the Trip, and I don't think they'll be disappointed by this latest offering.

...but that's not all!

At present, work at the hagwon is a bit more demanding, as the children are currently in the middle of winter break, which necessitates daytime work (in the past, my earliest start was 1 p.m.) and split shifts. What this means is that right now, I'm not working any more than I ever have, but I spend more time at the school. On the plus side, I am getting more reading done. In any case, I go to work, work through lunch (graciously provided me by my director--and consisting of quite simple, but always delicious, Korean fare--the food here rocks. It really does), teach the first hour after class, come back to my desk to find not one, but two pieces of mail. Both of which contain books with writing by yours truly between covers. They're anthologies, which means my contribution is limited to a single piece, but that hardly matters to someone who has been working toward this moment for approximately 2 decades. I have, yes, been published before, both in print and online, though I have yet to crack one of those premium venues symbolized by my dear wife's continued conviction that I should pursue publication in The New Yorker (to be perfectly frank, my own choice of icon to represent this moment would probably be something along the lines of The Paris Review, so long as we're dreaming...). But never before a book. And here are two of them on my desk. And me in faraway South Korea, with the only friends in close enough proximity to actually relay the news to face-to-face being but five-month old acquaintances among the foreign teacher community. As are so many other moments of achievement, it's an odd mix of elation and dissatisfaction, but you know what? I'll take it.

There is, as well, the matter of the venue in which these writings occur. Now, give me a few minutes, I want to explain something. I think part of the reason I have not published more than I have, to date, has to do with a mixture of caution and quiet arrogance on my part. I've collected enough rejections, at this point, to know that what words I produce do not yet properly fit into the category of literature. I'm still learning, in that respect, and I'm very much aware of that fact. It's the reason that, much to my financial detriment, I have applied to as many grad schools as I have. (And to clear that up completely--no, I have no applications out for 2006. One can only be so masochistic before taking stock of where one's strengths actually lie, and the fact is, I've had far more 'success,' as it were, in independent ventures than I have trying to go through that particular system. I've no doubt I could learn much, but if opening those doors requires I amass even greater amounts of debt, well, then I assume it's a gentleman's pursuit, and I was not born a gentleman...). So I don't expect instant success from every submission. But I do feel my work strong enough to merit something a bit more legitimate than vanity publishing, and have no interest in publishing in that manner. Point being, when submitting, and when measuring the particular weight of an acceptance upon one's CV, the question of where the damned thing was published does come into play. So, on top of all other considerations, I'm looking at these books as I would a stage: how big is the audience? How does the work fit within the context of the other pieces? What is the level of presentation? Etc. It may be that 3 1/2 years worth of editing work may have some bearing on my own perception of my work as it shows up in the public eye, at this point. All that said, I'm proud of these two. Especially as they are the first two. The books they appear in boast no giants: I'm not appearing on pages alongside Stanley Kunitz or being interviewed by Bill Moyers or anything like that, but of course, that's something one works up to. And the books, while I could fault them, are presentable enough, and are valued for the fact that they're taking a chance with my work.

So I'm gonna do something a bit different, here. Once I've looked at these books more closely, I'm gonna try to offer an honest assessment of the book itself. To look around at the stage upon which I find myself performing. I need to give them attention to do this properly, as it's about two steps removed from self-criticism, and as I think becomes readily apparent in Nietzsche's 1886 preface to "The Birth of Tragedy", self-criticism, when published, in whatever venue, is a form that is truly fraught with peril. That is to say absolutely nothing for the political nature of the task, as it would be ungrateful of me to slam the books, and dishonest should I heap praise on them solely by virtue of their having included me. I'd like this to be as honest an assessment of the book, as a whole, as is possible, given this set of circumstances. And will post that, in the near future. I am, as always, mad with correspondence, have about 27 projects that need to get fired up within the next week, a 30 hour work week to tend to, and actually have to read the books (a task I have begun) before I can do this...but it is forthcoming. In the meantime, for anyone interested, the books in question are Literary Angles: the second year of poeticdiversity, and In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself, Vol. 6. The two pieces are very different in nature, and I'll leave the commentary on them to others, but you are of course invited--nay, encouraged--to go ahead and pop for the volumes in question if you are able. Although the only thing I receive by your so doing is knowledge that you are sharing my words, it is support in another way: you're supporting a small press that supports my work. And while I do understand that there are far more noble causes upon which to spend one's money, and would respect any decision to take the same money and spend it on something more worthwhile, all's I can say is, if I'm ever in a position to start handing out copies for free, I'll very much be targeting those who gave it all support early on.

Enough natter. Self-promotion nauseates me, and it probably comes off as clumsy anyway. If nothing else...do go check out that Yawp. That's free. And it has some bearing on life here in Korea. With any luck, it's fun, as well.

And...alala...once again, thanks for the heads up. Good luck with the others that've been tagged.

annyeonghi gasayo--tchitch.

Six degrees

2005-12-29T06:54:00.000-06:00

How odd that I would have this conversation with the upcoming Spotlight poet at precisely that moment when I find myself working on two pieces dealing with the concept of alienation.

Gene: A quick thank you for your discussion of your work with 'The Flight of the Mind'--I know Ursula K. Le Guin is a writer often identified with Portland, and I've read a fair bit of her work (even got her autograph, way back in the day, when I saw her present a piece on the beauty of the conceit of the 'crone' at a writer's conference one year)--she's quite accessible, and not just to readers interested in feminism. I very much enjoy her work.

Spotlight Poet: Ursula is one of our closest friends. We will be spending New Year's Eve at her house with various members of her family and some of our mutual friends, playing silly games ("dictionary" is our favorite).

Gene: Please do pass on greetings from an old admirer of her work. That said, my admiration for her work pales when compared with that my wife feels for her. When my wife published her PhD thesis (in geophysics), she included one of Ursula's poems at the beginning. I do not have the thesis to hand, so do not know the exact title, but a central element of the poem was a discussion between the speaker and a friend re: the difference between "rocks" and "stones". She's a much loved writer in my household, and though I'm sure she gets far too many such comments already, I'd be quite pleased should you find opportunity to let her know how that her words have been important to the growth of a female scholar in a sometimes intimidatingly male discipline within the sciences.

Spotlight Poet: Gene: That friend was me! The poem came out of a conversation Ursula and I had walking the beach in Port Townsend during the writers' conference when we were both teaching there.

The richness one gains from such human connections should be valued more than our money, methinks. They certainly do us more good.

Waiting for glee...

2005-12-15T23:02:00.000-06:00

Or whatever emotion comes with receiving one's contributor's copy of a volume of work in which one's own words appear. In any case, the volume in question is now available at amazon.com. I've been waiting for my own copy since they were mailed out sometime in the first half of November, and I'll probably post my own assessment of the volume as a whole once I've had a chance to read it for myself. In the meantime, if you're daring enough, or just a rabid fan of yours truly, you know where to get a copy.

And today's one more day that I walk into work wondering if my copy will be sitting on my desk when I arrive. I suspect this is half the fun.

Glam

2005-12-13T21:52:00.000-06:00

Gotta admit to being into his music enough to know which answers to pick to get this result--and holding my breath that I'd done so (yeah, I know. Go ahead and call me a dork). All hail Quarblotz, from whose live journal I ripped this one.

You are Iggy Pop, and you snap, crackle, and pop
like fireworks. You have boundless energy, and
you're invincible. You should be dead by now,
you know that, right? You survive everything,
and never get fat. You're spastic, and a great
dancer...you probably could be a contortionist
if you wanted to. You love to shock, and rock,
and do so better than anyone else. Sometimes
your irresponsiblity drives your friends nuts,
and your drug habits can be annoying, but you
are an excellent performer nonetheless and
probably like metallic pants. You never sound
insincere.

Which rad old school 70's glam icon are you? (with pics)
brought to you by Quizilla

A beauty...

2005-12-12T10:00:00.000-06:00

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

--James D. Nicoll

Gotta love it. Go on, giv'us a kiss...

A Highly Ambiguous Transaction

2005-12-11T01:25:00.000-06:00

A heads up from good friend, colleague in past perf-po exploits, and Trip Picks editor Tania van Schalkwyk nets me Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech. As I've often stated my belief mind that the root of a lot of the nonsense we're subjected to in the daily news these days can be traced directly back to the Iran/Contra affair, there's probably no particularly compelling reason for me to expand any further than Pinter does in his speech. And, as I'm misguided enough to be able to fully sympathize with Sartre's decision to decline the Nobel prize, there's probably little enough for me to learn by discussing the question of how "appropriate" it is for the literature laureate to use the acceptance speech as an opportunity to make a political statement. I do, after all, think all such speeches are political statements. However, on the off chance that you have not yet encountered Pinter's words, I did want to pass them on.

I've been working quietly on the sidebar, and tending to a lot of other cyber-tasks, will be on again in the near future for a more personal update. In the meantime, I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts re: Pinter's words, if you're at all inclined to share them here.

Ground Level Korea

2005-11-26T01:42:00.000-06:00

All Reet, some more stuff.

The last month has been a rather impoverished one, and for the last couple of weeks, I've been mostly hunkered at home, saving Won, and NOT writing. It's pretty horrible, but I'm just trying to weather it during a time when I really, really need to be writing more. I'm starting to get pissed off at myself about it, actually. But, in the last couple of days, I do seem to be hammering out a few words here and there, a trend I desperately hope continues. I suspect this is all a result of the lag between actually moving away from my wife and daughter, and into a very new environment, and actually coming to the realization that I've done so. But, there are some encouraging signs in that respect: I've made a few friends, done a few things, settled, as much as is possible, into work, am starting to actually pick up phrases in Korean (though that, too, might fall under the description of impoverished), and am in the process of figuring out the order of the alphabet. This is a little bit of a slog, because the alphabet is divided into vowels and consonants, which means I need to learn the order of two separate parts of the alphabet to get the whole thing done. As usual, the consonants are easier. The vowels still give me lots of trouble, though I have made some headway in that direction, recently. Mostly, whenever I see a word I don't know, I look it up in the dictionary, and am gradually starting to understand the order as a whole. Practical measures such as this tend to work better for me than rote.

And some fine moments in class. I seem to always have one class that gives me fits. Right now, it's one evening class, starts at 7 pm, entirely populated by humans in the 11-13 age range, who clearly enough aren't too keen to be there. In fact, most of my really troublesome classes are at 7 pm, the last hour of work with the school aged children (I have an adult class afterwards 3 nights a week, but that's actually quite fun). I do think the lateness of the hour might be a contributing factor. But, two moments of late stick out: one with my 'Worldview' class, which is the most advanced textbook short of the adult class, in which one student, a boy, who has taken the English name Jennifer (he's lately requested that be changed to Silver), asked me what the German word 'Einzwei' meant. It took two explanations before he twigged to the fact that it's two words, and, laughing at himself afterwards when he found out they were numbers, said "If I went to Germany, I'd be a two year old again." Well, I can relate. The other moment happened in my Adult class, when, reviewing past and present perfect tenses, I reached that point at which I ask the class if they understand, at which point one of my students, Chung-Geun, reflected for a good half a minute, clearly struggling to say what he needed to say, and finally answered, "I don't know what I don't know." The language student's koan, I suspect.

This weekend, I'm off to see a traditional Korean wedding with my Korean teacher, and, as usual, feel like I haven't studied enough. For better or worse, however, I should have something to report regarding Korean wedding customs. And the next, I'm treating myself to my first ever trip to Seoul (at least, if you don't count that first fly-by on my way to Gangneung), where I'll be visiting Bonghwai-Lee (I think that's inverted in deference to my Western-ness, especially as he insists on my calling him 'David') and Eun-ju, whose daughter I taught waaay back when I was doing the pre-school gig in Sydney. I've made contact with the mind behind Korean Bug, who says he's 'in monk mode,' so I may or may not get to meet the fellow on this trip, but it's still a possibility. He's also put me in contact with Zane Ivy, who, apparently, has his ear to the ground re: spoken word venues in Seoul. He's got a fair web presence for both writing and art if you google him. With a little luck, I might have something to report here, or elsewhere, re: the spoken word scene as it exists in Korea. In the meantime, I have J. Scott Burgeson's book, "Korea Bug," to get stuck into. I'm in the intro, which is basically a chronicle of the ex-pat newspaper and zine scene in Korea since the early 1900's. Already fairly fascinating reading, not just because of my interest in the subject (which, yes, does help), but also for the sneaky way it gets at those odder quirks of Korean culture most likely to put Americans off. I related immediately when he cited an article in a 1970's rag that worked under the title "The Noodle" that comments on the sometimes disconcerting closeness one may encounter when dealing with Koreans who are members of the same sex: it is much, much more uncommon to see a man and a woman holding hands in public than it is to see two women, or two men, doing the same. Put the two men into army fatigues (military service is compulsory for young men, here), and the effect gets odder. But, in personal relationships, figuring out where the hell such boundaries are can be frustrating and can lead to misunderstandings. I did get a very big kick out of this excerpt, however, in which an American and his male Korean friend discuss an evening they had together in the past:

Dubois: John, remember when we went to hear Billy Graham speak?
Kim: Yes, it was a beautiful evening, as I remember we held hands most of the way home that night.
Dubois: You know, that's a strange custom you Koreans have. Actually, I stopped holding your hand because I thought people would think I was a Homosexual. Isn't that funny?
Kim: Yes, it is. I thought you stopped holding my hand that night because you were.

Spot fucking on, let me tell you. I've been having some quiet difficulties with my friend Seung-gil on precisely this front, and I thoroughly dig the commentary provided in the above exchange. I think I'm gonna like this book lots.

Anyway, as always, lots to do, lots I should write, lots I should do to the sidebar, etc., and about 500 other long-neglected tasks knocking at my virtual door, as always. I will have a few new experiences to post up in the near future, though. Just wish I had more time to type them up...or made better use of the time I do have. But if you're patient, and check back every now and again, I promise I'll do the same.

Ok, tonight I have a going-away party to go to, should fix myself up some dinner so I don't succumb to the temptation to eat out, and time's starting to become a factor, so I'll end it there...but with promises to check back wichall soon.

--tchitch

Your mission

2005-11-15T22:30:00.000-06:00

...should you choose to accept it, courtesy of The Ministry of Reshelving

(Thanks to Cosmopoetica for the heads up.)

Futzin'

2005-11-14T20:57:00.000-06:00

Well, shee-it, I just spent the better portion of the last hour trying to figure out how to post images on this thing...I had Flickr and Picasa all set up in Germany, nothing easier, so I figured I'd download those things (it gave me the option to put the program into one of the emptier hard drives) and get going, but then, I couldn't figure out how to configure the whole thing, so I ended up in Blogspot help and it tells me that there should be a toolbar at the top of the screen where I edit posts, and on that, an icon that allows me to upload images directly from my computer. Only guess what? I'm there, no such toolbar. I'm wondering if this doesn't all have to do with my location, as I've also been futzing around trying to figure out how to italicize and bold (if that's ever a really pressing issue, I do know how to look up the appropriate codes, so it's not such a big deal, though a bit of a pain...), and that was on the toolbar as well. I remember, in Germany, having the option also to use a wysiwig version of the post editor, and I can't find that, either. I'm guessing there's one button somewhere I need to push, (one that, with luck, won't completely screw the current formatting), but I have no idea where to find that button. Ain't technology grand? In any case, the photos will have to wait for another day, because I've given up on it for this morning, having decided, after having slept in much later than I meant to, and then wasting pretty much the first two hours of my day, that I don't have any more time to devote to it this morning. Plus, I can always ask Taylor, whose primary purpose for blogging is to share photos, how to go about it. The irony of all this is that he was asking me for advice just yesterday after Korean class. Ah, well.

So, with the time remaining to me, thought I'd post a quick update, as I'm getting ready to knuckle down on a lot of tasks that I've left unattended for a bit too long, including much neglected correspondence, both personal and Trip related, and really getting busy on the Korean so I can try to take it to the level of sentences, instead of wandering around like a three-year old who is just delighted to be able to name things. And images are seeping in for writing--not for the writing I was hoping to do (a longer project with one of the coolest working titles I've ever had the privilege to stumble upon), but still large, and actually something I've been working toward for many years. As, last week, I was approached by an editor for work, it's probably high time I started getting even more serious about amassing a body of creative work. I have probably 50 poems that are workable, but at many different levels of development (I work very slowly, being a bit of a perfectionist on that front...I'd calculate, on a good day, that for the two decades I've been writing at all seriously, I've produced approximately one poem a year that I'd actually be brazen enough to call a poem). It's time to pump that up. I fucking bleed experience. It's time to communicate it. But, I think, at a distance. Hit some of the stuff I tried to convey, with varying levels of success, when I was younger, but was too close to for getting it down in an effective way.

It's all about metal, and how different metals react to being tooled. Brass splinters. Aluminum comes off in long, razor-sharp ribbons. Duct curls around itself and forms small cylinders the size of rabbit feed. That's as much as I can say, right now.

On the ground, three hikes so far, not counting my many recon missions throughout Gangneung, which I'm starting to get quite familiar with. The first two found us in Odaesan National Park, which is but a fifty minute, 1,500 Won (about a buck fifty) trip from downtown Gangneung, thus a popular spot for day trippers. The Eastern trail, Sogeumgang especially so, as it is chokka with waterfalls, and a VERY short hike from the bus' terminal stop. The Southern end of the park is moderately more difficult to access, boasts two large Buddhist temples, Woljeong-sa and Sangwon-sa, the latter of which has a trail behind it leading to a 1,563 meter high peak named Birobong (not at all an unusual name, though, and I assume it means something fairly generic, like, highest peak in the area), along which there are Buddhist inner sanctums (yes, I should have a Korean name for this, but don't, right at present), plenty of steps, and even a pay-phone about a third of the way up. Hiking in Korea is not the same as hiking in the North American sense of the word. Sometimes, you even have to queue.

Now, I'm not jumping to any conclusions about my worth as a traveling companion just yet, but so far, I've yet to take on two hikes with the same companion. I think this is just time pressure, etc., along with money pressures and the like, all of which sometimes conspire to get in the way of a good trip. In fact, all three ended with what were, by all appearances, sincere hopes to do something similar in the near future. That said, the first trip, which was relatively light, was undertaken by my Korean friend, Seung-gil, who is trying to establish his own hagwan here in Gangneung, and his two nephews, aged 5 and 8. Having the boys along was a real blast, and a comfort, as most of my relations with children, right now, is as teacher, and it was good to just go out and have fun. The youngest, who chose the western name 'Jade', was particularly receptive to me, held my hand for a good portion of the trip, and taught me a fair few Korean words (this before I read, at all). The second trip I took with Chung-gun, my adult student, and his friend, Sang-eul (which, he jokes, makes his English name 'Thank you'), and culminated in an evening of Sam Gyeop Sal, a very yum Korean dish consisting of pork fried at the table and wrapped, with various sauces, Gim-chee, garlic and onions, in a lettuce leaf, and, should you happen to be out with two university aged Korean men, copious helpings of Soju, the local brew, a strong rice wine (about 21% alcohol) that's best served ice cold. As we finished off our third bottle of the evening, after having worked up a serious appetite, the boys informed me that it was Korean tradition to have two bottles each, at which point I stopped the 'when in Rome' routine. I was pretty toasty after one bottle. But, a good night, and rather amazing how much the boys' English loosened up under the influence of soju.

...and, it occurs to me, having looked up at the clock, and seeing that work is coming my direction very rapidly, that I have to cut it short to get the most recent news in here...there's lots of on the ground notes I'd like to post, both re: teaching and just living, as well as some notes on the latest trip with Taylor, BUT, as you are no doubt aware, last Friday was the 11th day of the 11th month, which in Korea, makes it Pepero Day. This is, according to one who at moments has been known to describe himself as the bastard spawn of Diogenes, clearly a brazen commercial ploy on the part of Pepero's manufacturers, Lotte. Peperos are basically sweet, hard bread sticks covered in a thin layer of chocolate, and on Pepero day, you're meant to give them out to just about anyone you hold in any sort of regard whatsoever. Well, before last Friday, this was something I did not know about, but I certainly did once Friday was over. As a (not quite) teacher, I got loads. I spent my entire shift pushing the things on my students, and got rid of quite a few of them, but still went home with 4 boxes, as well as a good dozen larger, individually wrapped Peperos as well. So. You live, you learn.

Much on the ground, but the time picture has now passed critical, so I'll just have to commit an hour or two on Saturday to laying down a few more notes. Til then--tchitch.

Well...

2005-11-13T11:09:00.000-06:00

Lots I should post, but it's 2 in the morning here and I have an early appointment with a Korean teacher who also wants to celebrate my birthday (today) in Korean style...with cold noodle soup (shudders, but only slightly)...at least it isn't wiggling octopus tentacles. BTW, one of my gifts today was provided by my Korean friend Seung-Gil, who spent a few hours exploring the local seafood market with me, and tried to teach me new Korean words along the way. The one that stuck was octopus--Mun-au--which, directly translated, means 'door fish'. I don't have any idea about the logic behind this, but it is the sort of quirky word that tends to glue itself to my linguistically challenged mind.

There are actually many Korean words that use 'door,' including the words for window (clear enough), newspaper, and culture. I'm trying not to overgeneralize about these things, but I do tend to learn quicker when I spot patterns.

Good news is, I can read Hangul. Can't always understand it, but I know what the sounds are supposed to be, and can manage a reasonable facsimile, though at a painfully slow pace, when called upon to do so. Kinda kicky.

In any case, wouldn't have made the post, but one of the local English teacher, a young whipper-snapper by the name of Taylor, posted a few pics of our recent hiking expedition over at his blog, and I thought I'd share. I have a few other pics floating around on my hard drive, and should probably see if I can't upload those in the near future...warning, my computer's a bit out of date, has plenty of space but compartmentalized drives, and the drive it wants to decompress new programs in is the one that's pretty much constantly full. I'm trying to work with folks to get this figured out. I've been told switching to Microsoft 2000 is one option, but not one that a novice (and I'm not quite up to that level) should probably undertake solo on their first try. In any case, if I can get them up, I will.

(EDIT: Just checked the link to those pics, and see that it's only showing the first four of many...go to Taylor's main blog page and scroll down to heading "Tae Baek San" to get the full collection.)

Hiking's pretty much my leisure activity of choice...and Gangneung is very, very well located for that. However, if I don't get to bed very soon, I'll be here reporting for far too long...cuz stuff, as always, is afoot.

One last note, though: I found a book I want. It's called Korean Bug, and is a collection of the first (I think) five issues of a zine operating out of Seoul. You can read excerpts on the web. Hint: click on the little purple glowing thing in the right hand corner to get to the meat. I'da provided a direct link, but figure you need to be exposed to the song featured in the introduction. Anyway, my Korean teacher spotted this book in a bookshop on Friday night, and at first glance, I knew it was one of the things I MUST carry out of here with me. Plus, now I got a mission when I make that trip to Seoul (probably before year's end).

I do so need to get on here and write down some of the madness I've been encountering. I promise, I will, soon. Right now, if I don't get to bed, I'm not gonna get any sleep before work tomorrow, and as they're to be celebrating my birthday as well, that would be a very unwise thing to do.

Right, then...tchitch

Ripped

2005-11-09T08:38:00.000-06:00

...from Steve's House of Love, and we share the same result. No wonder he didn't select me for his anthology.

You are a Theory Slut. The true elite of the
postmodernists, you collect avant-garde
Indonesian hiphop compilations and eat journal
articles for breakfast. You positively live
for theory. It really doesn't matter what
kind, as long as the words are big and the
paragraph breaks few and far between.

What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

...not surprised, really.

Checkin' in

2005-10-31T20:08:00.000-06:00

Well, the Gangneung experience is proving to be somewhat emotionally taxing, especially with my wife's birthday just passed, and my girls flying back to the US tomorrow, perhaps in preparation for a move back there on a more permanent basis. We're still awaiting word re: my wife's proposal in Australia, and while I know that those who do not receive notification until near deadline at Triplopia can pretty much rest assured they're in the running (an early rejection means you didn't even come close), I'm not entirely sure that's the way it works when it comes to research proposals. Still, we hold out hope, because the fact is, I always kinda liked the idea of being based in Perth. It's just far out enough to appeal to me, but still wildly connected, and I've heard a couple of Perth bands I thought rocked. Plus we've already made some quiet connections with some of the lit-minded folks there, and it'd be great to solidify those and maybe even establish a quiet nest perched at what seems, from here, to be the end of the world. Korea, so far, provides an enormous challenge for anyone who likes to get away from humans every now and again, and while I had hopes to chronicle the goings on here a bit better than I have so far, pressures have been such that I've not been able to even check in on this poor, neglected blog, and don't look to particularly ease up in the near future. That's because there is a lot of work to be done at Trip: we are, I think, in the process of taking the project to the next level, and it means I need to get my head around a whole new set of considerations. Right now, I'm looking at a backlist of about 6 interviews, due to the fact that we went through 3 before we finally landed one for our latest issue, which, yes, went up on time on October 15th, and in the scurry to land said interview asked about 5 poets if they'd be willing to be interviewed. Four said yes, and we already had two others in the works. Good news is, if I tend to business as I ought, I will finally have the backlog I've been working for over the last 2 years, which will make the Spotlight section a bit less hair-raising overall. The last issue, we began the interview process about 9 days before press time, and the final went in about 2 days before--a much more truncated process than I'd ever before experienced, and kudos to our spotlight poet, Lillian Baker Kennedy, for being a sport through that process. More than a sport, actually. She's also a lawyer, and she surprised me with a list of 5 questions once I'd finished giving her the third degree (no doubt due to her sense of a right to cross-examine...), good, thought-provoking questions that few think to ask me. And the interview is quite interesting, I think.

In fact, Lillian's questions were very much appreciated, because aside from editorial duties, I'd also promised another editor, Marie Lecrivain, over at Poetic Diversity, an article on the craft of writing by the 20th, a mere 5 days after launch date. When, on the morning of the 19th, I found myself with plenty of ideas, but nothing solid to center them around, I turned back to my answers to Lillian's questions, and the central metaphor was right there for me to pick up and use. I banged the piece in question out in about 4 hours, found a couple of typos and inconsistencies (thanks, partially, to my co-editor, Tara A. Elliott, who spotted a couple of small details I completely missed) over the next 24 hours, and bang, Rules of Engagement: What the Chinese Shuffle Teaches us about Poetry was born. There's another, older, more creatively focused prose piece entitled Lash in the current issue as well, but that's been on hold for about 6 months now.

On a less positive note, I didn't make the cut for Steve Mueske's Digerati anthology, and I'd really hoped to do that. But of course, the odds have to be taken into consideration, and I now have about 15 poems that are once again free to be submitted. And again, on the plus side, Volume 6 of A Generation Defining Ourselves: In Our Own Words is just about due to be released, and it will include a prose piece by myself, entitled "Rage Within the Machine". This one I've been waiting about 1 year over, but I do suspect, when I receive that contributor's copy, and see my words not only published in print, but published in book form (a first for me, so exciting), I'm gonna be one happy man.

So I started thinking about some of this late last night as I lie in bed, trying not to think too hard on my girls' upcoming plane trip, and, no doubt, attendant reverse culture shock, and started distracting myself with an assessment of it all. I remember that on Jaunary 1, 2004, I received two e-mails, one of which was a request that I be a judge for a poetry contest (I eventually declined, citing concerns re: appearances of propriety), and one of which informed me that I was a prose contest winner. There is, of course, that old New Year's Day superstition that whatever that day finds you doing, you'll be doing for the rest of the year, so I entered that year with a real sense of optimism. I did not end that year with the same sense of optimism, as a brief review of the chronicle provided by this blog will attest, though it was certainly a year of much writing, and not a little progress into the world I've always seen as central to my sense of being. Well, 2005 had no such portents to draw from: I disagreed with my nation, my wife had just taken a severe cut in pay at her job, and I was deeply involved in a restaurant project that never really had the necessary resources to do what it aimed to do. From there, surgery, and eventually the need to go, on my own, to South Korea in an attempt to keep my family at least somewhat financially solvent (& that's a relative term for us at all times...). But there have been many, many high points this year in the writing, and a vast enough network being cultivated to rather boggle my mind. I don't know that any of these undertakings will ever provide anything approaching 'a living'--and highly suspect they won't--but, truth be told, that's absolutely not what this gig is about. It just helps. In the meantime, I do get the occasional (and increasingly less occasional) free book/CD of poetry, and am even due a 10 USD stipend for some work I did on an anthology recently. Not much, but as big a paycheck as I've received in some years doing this work.

Rather than dwindle off into nothingness, as this is primarily a post to update folks on my recent state of mind, I'll just relate this, and close: My wife has, of course, over the last 2 months, been faced with the enormous chore of packing up and securing storage for what has become, between the two of us, a rather vast set of files. I am a total packrat when it comes to words--I do not discard letters, and still have some from at least 18 years back. These, along with undergraduate philosophy and political science papers, my wife regards as superfluous, and has said as much, on multiple occasions, over the course of the last couple of months. She's promised me a scanner on the condition that I take all of this paper and convert it to computer files for ease of transport in the future. I'm game, though it's a rather daunting task. In any case, my wife also informed me that my daughter absolutely forbade her to throw any of my writing away, and apparently my daughter worded same with enough force for it to save many files from being tossed in the recycle bin. Upon receiving this news, I had only one real observation to offer: "Smart girl. She knows that if there is ever anything in the way of financial remuneration on that front, it's quite likely to come her direction, rather than ours."

Well, one can dream. Happy reading, y'all. I'm likely to be quite busy over the next month, which is, after all, NaNoWriMo, so it may be a while before I update again, but I will, when there is both time and inclination available to do so.

Until then, as the locals say, annyeonghi gaseyo. Tchitch

Banquet of Shame

2005-09-26T16:21:00.000-06:00

Thanks to the folks who've written me re: the New Orleans entry...yeah, I know. I should write a book or something. To that end, I've signed up for some online thingy, class, etc., to try to get jump started in time for NaNoWriMo, and while the subject may not be New Orleans, I do hope to have my 50,000 words by the end of November, to go under the first edit shortly after. But first I gotta get this next Trip under control, and it's proving to be tougher than I'd expected. I'd give details, but I already feel guilty about not tending to physical descriptions of where I am, so I'll save it, try to get a bigger entry re: Gangneung on here before next Monday, etc. Good to have some goals.

However, I did want to post this story, which is clearly enough aligned with the general slant and direction this blog has taken to date: Sharon Olds details why she is unable to accept Laura Bush's kind invitation to present at the National Book Festival.

Obviously, I sympathize, though I seem to be at a point where I don't quite see what difference it could possibly make. Though, I suppose, it might make more difference than swallowing your principles and going...or just issuing a simple no. Dunno. I think we're all so spin-weary, and even if someone went out there and presented the world with a gesture that was thoroughly from their own center, and, assuming there is such a beast, thoroughly free from any ulterior motive, it wouldn't matter, because there'd be some horse's arse waiting and ready to explain why the gesture was in fact a callow media ploy. To the extent that nobody seems to have any idea about the truth of any matter. I'm quite certain Olds has done this solely for the benefit of her own career. Playing politics, as usual, and making use of dead bodies to increase her notoriety. And all that. Or, at least that's quite likely one of the stories we'll be hearing soon.

How does one move in such a world? I mean, it was probably always like this, and it's a literary trick of light that makes it seem, at moments, that it might have been better at some point before (probably our own personal narratives, and a sense of ease at an earlier date, that feeds into all that), but really, was it always this bad? The very possibility that one might utter a sincere word, ever, seems laughable in the context of our times. And of course, anyone who insists that they are being sincere is most subject to suspicions to the contrary. Better to just shut up about your own motives, I suppose, and just do what you need to do. But as a writer, when the very tools and material of your blood's work consist of linguistic tricks, and are thus even more likely to be viewed as suspicious, how does one go about making progress?

Dunno. And while I can usually just suspend judgment on that long enough to bang out an assignment, I also get the sense that it is precisely that question that finds me doing less than I'd like to.

Ay. Go read it. --tchitch

Silvia Brandon Perez

2005-09-15T21:50:00.000-06:00

Hey, folks, three day weekend coming up, in celebration of the Korean version of thanksgiving, which I'll post and link more about when I've got more than 10 minutes before I need to blast to work. However, checking Trip's little used hotmail account this morning, was alerted to one of the poets published in Trip and editor for the Spanish edition of Poems Niederngasse, Silvia a Brandon Perez, spent her summer vacation in the company of the folks at Camp Casey, and was among those first responding to the crisis in New Orleans. She's got a journal of the experience over at Pocono Progressives. Go check it out.

Okay, me work.

Sub call

2005-09-12T07:01:00.000-06:00

I'll post something of my own soon...last night came face to face with a serious bout of homesickness for my girls, my friends, and Munich...rough enough to enforce a long walk at about 10pm...I'd rather forgotten how oppressive those walls can get. In any case, it doesn't seem the sort of thing I should blather on about for too long, because no matter how universal, it can be quite tedious to sit through. Instead, let it ripen, let it ferment, so something better can be made of it.

BUT...

I did want to post the following, just in case there was anyone out there who was predisposed to sending something in. More soon--tchitch

The Making of Peace: A Poetry Broadside Series

"Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour
goes into the making of bread."
~ Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) from Confieso Que He Vivido: Memorias, 1974

Project:

The Making of Peace Poetry Broadside Series is a response from poets who are working towards peace and goodwill in the world and want to see an end to the war in Iraq.

This project will produce a series of finely designed broadsides to be displayed in independent bookstores, libraries, and museums across the US during National Poetry Month 2006. Each broadside will be 4.5" x 5.5" and printed on environmentally-friendly paper.

Along with the displayed broadsides, a limited edition of broadsides will be produced and distributed to the public during literary and non-literary events. The total number of broadsides printed in limited edition will represent the number of US soldiers that have been killed during the war in Iraq; each broadside will represent the life of a soldier. We are estimating there will be between 75-300 of each limited edition broadside printed depending on the number of poems selected and the number of US casualties at the time of printing.

Each poet chosen to be part of the broadside series will receive ten copies of his/her broadside along with a full set of the broadside series.

How and What to Submit:

Submit 1-3 poems, unpublished or previously published poems with the theme of peace, hope, and/or humanity. Poems should be 30 lines or less. Please include cover letter, short bio, and SASE.

We are looking for well-crafted poems on any subject matter that are inspired or focused on the theme of peace, hope, humanity, and/or the idea of a world family. We are open to work that encompasses a specific response or offer a larger vision of our world. Poems do not have to be a direct response to the war, but can be.

Deadline: Submissions should be postmarked by November 30th, 2005.

All submissions should be original work and mailed to:

The Making of Peace: Poetry Broadside Series
c/o Kelli Russell Agodon
P.O. Box 1524
Kingston, WA 98346

Note to Poets Living Outside the USA: Poets living outside of the United States may submit via email. Please include your cover letter, bio, mailing address, and poems in the text of your email. No attachments please. Send email submissions to: TheMakingofPeace AT excite.com

Questions or comments about the project can be sent to: modpoet AT excite.com

Spin, spin, sugar

2005-09-10T17:59:00.000-06:00

...and of course, we would have to watch the way things are represented. I assume, at this point in my lifetime, that things were never quite as they appeared, and that I can pretty much rest assured that whatever the history books say, it falls a fair distance from the truth of the matter. (I'm sure some of you would be taken aback at my naivete, but I keep trying to find a way to avoid excessive cynicism in an age that seems to call for it.)

We are watching something of great beauty and potential crumble, I think. I'd probably get slammed by both sides for even saying such a thing, if anyone felt too much like slamming me...because one side wants to say it wasn't beautiful to begin with, and the other wants to deny that it is crumbling. It was beautiful, and it is crumbling.

This is all terribly abstract.

Here's how it is: politicization of NOLA has taken place on both sides, and the call not to talk about politics is, in fact, a politicization of the event. If we're at all honest, we know this. In any case, some folks are out there doing something, while others are finding any spin whatsoever to put on matters. I recently viewed an interview with Pelosi, on CNN, and while my natural political sympathies do lie with Pelosi, I picked it up at a left-wing blog/cum information clearinghouse, and they represented the interview as being a smackdown between Pelosi and a CNN reporter who was defending Bush. I watched the clip, and saw nothing of the sort. What I saw was a reporter who was asking what in the bloody hell a commission to investigate could possibly do to actually change the way we deal with the issues that came terribly to the fore as a result of Katrina's hitting NOLA. Personally, I couldn't agree with the reporter more. The last thing we really need to do is to give the bureaucrats a reason to stay on the payroll for yet another year. We need to chuck all of 'em out, and get people who know what they're doing into office. People who have expertise. People who are smart in ways other than manipulating people's perception of events.

It's all enough to make me go apolitical, because I really can't stand either side--and 'either side' is said only by agreeing with the rather thick assumption, as most voting Americans seem to have done, that there are only two sides to any body politic...especially one as huge as the United States of America. Only guess what? Going apolitical isn't even a possibility, really, even ignoring ethical considerations.

And for anyone who wants to smirk at the spin offered by the left, I picked up an excellent gallery of pics from my go-to right wing source, the one I check in times like these to see what sort of asinine arguments I'm likely to counter (my most recent flyby netted me one poster who sees NOLA as being a 'left-wing utopia'...Huh?). This gallery was described as telling a story a bit different from what the media has. Funny, it doesn't seem to diverge from that story much at all...unless, of course, you accept the experience one might have had living in the French Quarter--the highest land in the area, and the most protected, and not exactly a 'poor' section by NOLA standards--as being in any real way indicative of how most people in New Orleans lives. Still, some good pics.

BTW, while on the subject of New Orleans resources, if you haven't happened upon it already, The Interdictor comes highly recommended. It's the livejournal of a crisis manager working for a data center in downtown New Orleans throughout the hurricane and the aftermath that got slammed by the virtual Katrina...and survived. An interesting read, especially if you follow along chronologically, using the calendar view.

But you know what? I think these guys might be my faves. Coolest neighborhood in New Orleans, and think what you want to of 'em for not evacuating, that's real N'awlins. Stubborn 'cajun fuckers.

But ya gotta love 'em if you love New Orleans, because if it's gonna survive this, it'll be because of people just like this.

Something tells me

2005-09-10T09:49:00.000-06:00

...that I shouldn't like this sort of thing

(...but I do, anyway).

(Thanks to Marie over at Poetic Diversity for the link)