Sean Lovelace is running right now, far. Other times he teaches at Ball State University. HOW SOME PEOPLE LIKE THEIR EGGS is his flash fiction collection by Rose Metal Press. His works have appeared in Crazyhorse, Diagram, Sonora Review, Willow Springs, and so on.
Done went 50+ poets in three days Alabama, something. Reading (s) questions/notes:
1. What to do with hands?
1. How long do you think about what you are going to wear?
2. Introductions longer than poems.
44. Risky: reading in southern accent because you are in The South.
11. Poetry readings in bars make the bartenders almost mime-like, hushed ordering, pouring of drinks, a reverent tinkling of glass, silent smiles. Quite lovely.
[Brandi Wells reading at The Green Bar. The can of beer in right corner low is Abe Smith‘s beer. It is a Good People IPA.]
3. POETRY (profound, hushed voice…book in hand) versus “Uh, these are some poems.” (crinkly paper in hand)
3. Read first or read last or read middle or refuse to read?
3. Inside jokes to friends during reading to larger audience as never effective?
3. Flask/no flask?
3. Revelation: I am beginning to prefer undergraduate or other poets who have not read live very often.
3. I honestly thank/congrat one poet and he blows me off. He ‘cut’ me as Hemingway used to say. A poet. It costs him one book sale and some bad word of mouth later at a beer trough. So what? Respect or hater? A tad of both, I suppose. I still dig his poetry.
4. Do you prefer podium or some physical thing to psychologically shield you from audience?
6. Moon, muses, gossamer. Three words possibly enfeebled/faded, or possibly a challenge to prove otherwise?
4. Best intro line I heard since it could be innocuous or an absolute rip-shot across bow or simply authentic or really smart-ass: “Hey ya’ll, I’m not really a poet. I wish I was, I’d be real smart.”
3. Eagerness is interesting.
1. Strange Maps does Twin Peaks.
Ultimately, however, the series’ exact location is incidental, even obstructive to its narrative.
1. Excellent Redmond O’Hanlon profile here.
He likes to stack up around himself everything he has ever valued, as if he fears it’ll all be taken away: stuffed animals, skulls, a giant pelican, a mummified frog, hundreds of photographs of pygmies, a pair of buffalo horns and lots of cabinets – for beetles, butterflies, birds’ eggs and an alarming spider.
2. Oh eyeballs! Interview with Tony Rauch about Bizarro Fiction.
If you think about it, there’s nothing strange about a giant vegetable who lives up in your attic without you knowing about it.
4. Mike Smith writes poems that are all anagrams of each other. Then he chooses poems by sixteen well-known American poets and writes anagrams of some of their poems. WTF?
7. Speaking of reviews, I like when people say a story is “Slight.” That is code for thin, as in brief in all universe, as in shallow, as in SUCK. What are other words in reviews that say one thing and mean another?
Mainstream. University. Small press. Your own self. Where do you want your book to be born and why?
Last week fucked around and got a triple double
1. Ice Cube rapped this. It is a way to make good art. “Fuck around” and you might stumble into a triple double. The lack of intent opens up the writer to odd directions. I think Perec “fucked around” into triple doubles. A triple double helps yourself and a larger idea. This is an admirable goal for words. I would like my writing to be like pick-up basketball, not a day at the office. Also I would like to dunk on Joyce Carol Oates.
2. Dude is a doctor and a writer and just won a $100,000 prize. That’s a good day.
2. The belief that the short story is a poor relation of the novel persists.
2. Nox versus Next in the quarterfinals.
2. Burnside Review chapbook contest is now open.
137. What book (s) are in the floorboards of you car right now? (I have Big World, Hitler’s Mustache, and an anthology of re-told fairy tales)
1. Cathy Day said, “Why not write in the classroom and workshop outside the classroom?” (It’s about time to write a traditional-workshop-structure-is-dead post, but not now. Later.)
1. After 130 years they dig up a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. (No, Tess Gallagher did not find it in a sock drawer.) Stevenson abandoned it. So people ‘finish’ it for the dead author, publish it. Same old story.
1. Best books on Nuclear accidents/fears/history.
1. Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East.
11. Visual artists rarely feel the need to explain the artifact. Writers often do. Why is that?
Do you have a respectable suit you could trust me with?
Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed.
I am sorry Yeats is dead.
A dog among the fairies.
I cycled home in the dark without a lamp of any kind.
Fourteen pints is par.
I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.
Our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all.
Then hang a ram rose over the rags.
I am not a country man. I stand for the evening pub.
WOWELS.
Or a lotion of invisibility.
Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.
9. New Tony Kushner podcast.
8. Riveting: the day Reagan was shot.
9. When I was in grad school the elderly would oft phone the English department and ask if a grad student “would write my life story.” Anyway, none of us did that I know of, though one student did write porn under a pen-name to make some beer money. Anyway, fascinating article on ghost writing here.
People just seem to be really surprised that the name on the book is not always the name of the person who wrote it.
9. Children e-books? Orwellian. Blue phosphorescence on the face. Worst at bedtime. The smell of blankets and ozone and despair.
I am breaking spring and have finally decided, like many others, the morning is the capital time to write:
1. Mind is wire-scrubbed clean or the opposite, LSD-like dreams. (I recently awoke at the foot of the bed, on the floor, wrapped in residue of twisted thoughts/a past nursing school instructor squawking me down/sweaty blankets). Both states of mind are useful.
2. Stomach is empty. A full stomach makes for naps, not crisp writing. Breakfast is bullshit, as we know.
3. 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine nudges the nerve impulses with a knife and goes Kelly Clarkson on your dopamine. 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine is caffeine. Coffee is morning. Like with running or mint-thinning or higher math, caffeine can assist you.
11. Unless you are Marguerite Duras, you are probably not drunk (though possibly hungover, an odd state not always detrimental to writing).
4. Birds cough. Much better chance of seeing coyotes.
4. Due to tidal friction, nutation, and polar motion, the internet doesn’t work well in the early morning hours. This is a good thing.
11. Yo, sonny, there is a new Diagram out.
10. The Business Insider offers 33 unusual tips to being a better writer. They seem obvious, stupid, sometimes smart, rarely unusual. OK, this was unusual:
Take a huge bowel movement every day. And you won’t see that on any other list on how to be a better writer. If your body doesn’t flow then your brain won’t flow. Eat more fruit if you have to.
8. The Decemberists ripped off all of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic.