Sean Lovelace

http://www.seanlovelace.com

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.

june 19

is the 170th day of the year-io and 170 year-ios ago Ambrose Bierce is begetted, a man so like a book, both celebrated and ignored (like a book) and so (like a book) smelling of glue or music or a mattress and heavily into time manipulation, its expansion, compression, irrelevance of, etc. and 170 year-ios ago we get poet Sidney Lanier (go Lanier High, go ‘the castle,” the graduates of said high school, the alumni/alumna officially known not as graduates but as “Poets” [factoid!]; for example, Bart Starr [a man so square as to once fine a Green Bay Packer defensive end $1,000 for munching a fucking hotdog on the bench during an exhibition game] or Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, a horrible driver [she would tell people that she “deintestined” cars while wrecking them] and great beauty [always a subjective term, though scientific studies have pretty much shown we animals find symmetry aesthetically pleasing {Scientists say that the preference for symmetry is a highly evolved trait seen in many different animals. For both men and women, greater symmetry predicted a larger number of past sex partners.

Female swallows, for example, prefer males with longer and more symmetric tails, while female zebra finches mate with males with symmetrically colored leg bands.}] who, when at high school age in sultry [and fire-ant fucked!] Montgomery, Alabama, was known to be addicted to something called “a dope,” a mixture of Coca Cola spiked with an aromatic mixture of ammonia [oddly, these days the same ingredients can be used in a not dissimilar way to manipulate a whole other type of “coke”], which made her loopy and hungry and eventually a quick trip to Chris’s for a hotdog [legendary hangout of a very drunk Hank Williams], etc.) PIG, n. An animal (Porcus omnivorus) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite. IN’ARDS, n. The stomach, heart, soul and other bowels. INDIGESTION, n. A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind (all definitions via The Devil’s Dictionary). Burp.

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June 19th, 2012 / 3:24 pm

Prose Poetry etc

‘All which is not prose is verse; and all which is not verse is prose.’ (Molliere)

‘The prose poem has the unusual distinction of being regarded with suspicion not only by the usual haters of poetry, but also by many poets themselves.’ (Charles Simic)

‘From the reader’s view, a poem is more demanding than prose.’ (Mark Strand)

‘My own formal literary education has not accorded much regard to what in English are referred to as ‘prose poems,’ and I am not at all sure what the genre is supposed to entail.’ (W.S. Merwin)

‘However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can’t be much to it.’ (James Schuyler)

‘There is a shorter distance from the unconscious to the Prose Poem than from the unconscious to most poems in verse.’ (Michael Benedikt)

‘I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose=words in their best order; poetry=the best words in the best order.’ (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

‘A poetry freed from the definition of poetry, and a prose free of the necessities of fiction.’ (Russell Edson)

‘The prose poem is a useless whore.’ (Aoody Wallen)

‘I had long since given up, however, on the notion of reading a long and complex prose poem.’ (Mark Roberts)

‘But I look upon my ultimate form as being a poetic prose. When you read it, it appears to be prose, but within the prose you have embedded the techniques of poetry.’ (Story Musgrave)

‘The prose poem as a lantern, an illuminated container, casting images and phrases needed but barely understood.’ (Martha Kinney)

‘Marriage – a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.’ (Beverly Nichols)

‘I’ve been writing a lot of prose poems. And I probably have a dozen I can live with. Many of them are comic; there are several that are serious. The first one I ever wrote was in Amsterdam. It was a long time ago, I would say thirty years ago. My wife had gone off with a friend, and my kids had gone off to get stoned, and I had time. There was a park named Vondelpark, named after a poet, and I went there. I’m a guy who writes a lot. I enjoy writing; I feel I should be writing, keep my hand in it. So I started writing something, and I wrote a little piece about a Dutch doctor that I knew and loved. And it was the first good prose poem I ever wrote. And then I wrote a couple more, and they weren’t any good (I published them, but they stunk).’ (Philip Levine)

‘It has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip.’ (Eugenio Montale)

‘When prose gets too stylized and out of control–and Stein is sometimes a good example–when you don’t know what the hell is going on, then it’s kind of boring.’ (Rick Moody)

‘The last few months I’ve been obsessed with taking photographs of miniatures inside of ice cubes.’ (Matthea Harvey)

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June 15th, 2012 / 3:23 pm

a typical tuesday

http://youtu.be/kBX4vYiuAIE

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June 1st, 2012 / 6:14 pm

Customer Reviews on Writing

This is an awesome pen.

We carry one of these pens on our belts every day, everywhere.

Best thing about this pen is, it’s 100% legal to carry anywhere.

OK, you’re going through airport security – the clip has a giant “Smith & Wesson” on it, and the end cap has “military police” and the S&W logo. Kiss it goodbye.

I always like to keep a pen in my car, and have always felt better having something that can be used for self-defense in my car as well, especially when I find myself playing shows with my band in questionable areas. Writes well.

If you aren’t prepared to take it out and `insert’ it in the right spot with ½ to ¾ seconds, don’t even bother to take it out.

It has the glass breaker tip, which really is strong enough to break glass (I tried it).

Absolutely superb writing utensil.

Thank god their guns are not quitters like these pens, otherwise imagine how many would die, shooting 2 or 3 times and then nothing, and having to ask the other guy to wait a little bit, so you could shake the gun to keep on shooting?

WILL put a nasty dent in an assailant’s noggin and WILL collect a chunk of DNA, in the process.

Too heavy, as a pen … makes my heaviest shirt-pockets sag badly…

i must admit they are pretty cool.

The cap is on tight, but it wobbles. This means you have a weapon that is moving and turning in your hands at the point of impact. This is unacceptable.

I’ve read that some buyers had problems with the pen “quitting” after only a little bit of writing, but it was my choice not believing.

Whenever I take out this pen in meetings, all the other guys give it a double take and the resulting tactical pen demonstration disrupts the meeting.

I was thrilled to finally get this little number in my hands. I had delusions of a 50 caliber spike I could take anywhere with me. Ah Huh! NOT going to happen.

Finally a pen that won’t do you wrong.

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May 30th, 2012 / 6:09 pm

14 tattled rocks of bean-nut putters

1.

The end result, depending on where you stand in the ongoing debate about appropriation and erasure, is either inspired or provocative-to-the-point-of-insulting to the original (which, in this instance, is one of the most revered photography books of the 20th century).

14. Grab your Orlistat and breast tape, folks. xTx wants you to join the Super Model summer!  Submit, Beotch.

5. Talk about overdue for serious consideration. Anyone checked out the new Brautigan biography? Is this finally a real one?

7. John Lennon’s most famous book is up for sale.

Lithographs of Lennon and Yoko, on Honeymoon, done and signed by Lennon, as you can see below:

11. Yo, yo, any of you Midwest motherfuckers (or just visiting for the flatness and the mayonnaise?). Check this out. Need to find freedom in poetic restraint? Join Kathleen Rooney at the Midwest Writers Workshop.

12. At page 355 I just gave myself permission to stop reading Homicide by David Simon. Why do I keep buying books with a ton of positive Amazon reviews? Because I’m an idiot. What? Because I am an idiot. What? Oh, never mind.

13. You into food and poetry? Poetry about food? Go right ahead and submit:

13. Flashback Tom Bissell: Grand Theft Auto and cocaine. Sort of makes one want to play. Play.

4. Another link in “leaving Facebook” trend. I’ve thought of it many times myself. Who here hasn’t?

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May 24th, 2012 / 5:08 pm

Kevin Na on Writing

It was a little fishy because there was a water bottle next to my ball.  That was a little fishy there.  But whatever.

I don’t know where I’m going, I swear to God.

His shadow was in the way.

I can’t blame my whole year on one week. It was a pretty rotten year all around.

Just bear with me.

Snoop Dogg is my neighbor.

And I’m not being nice to myself, trust me. I’m ripping myself. As ugly as it is and painful as it is, believe me, it’s really tough for me, and I’m trying.

It was a pretty big tree, and I asked for any volunteers to climb up the tree, but nobody spoke up.

There’s this timing, and if I miss that timing, then I have to start over.

As crazy as it sounds, I really don’t know.

The rest you saw. I don’t really want to go through it again.

It hit me in the inner thigh.

I’m going to try to take out the whole waggle, no waggle.

Honestly, it’s going to be a battle.

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May 14th, 2012 / 2:14 pm

Let’s talk about James Merrill

James Merrill died in Tucson. Tucson is a city where men walk around with Rottweilers and wheelbarrows. Sometimes inside the wheelbarrow will rest a console television. These men do not wear shirts.

Some writers were afraid of James Merrill. It’s like that time Dick Cavett interviewed Marlon Brando. (Go to 5:45 for some inspiring tension) Cavett was shaking. He was addled and rattled. He was overwhelmed by the Hugeness of this Thing, Brando.

Factoid: People think Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. is all that, but James Merrill was the first to sing, “Come dusk lime juice and gin.”

Remember to remember!

James Merrill’s most famous quote is obviously, “Life is fiction in disguise.” I’m trying to decide if John Gardner would approve. Oh, fuck Gardner, man. I just realized Hemingway is always talking about how he doesn’t like to talk about writing, and even saying that is talking about writing and anyway Hemingway actually wrote and talked about writing all of the time. But I digress. Better quotes from Merrill would be, “I’ve watered the geraniums, the pot of basil + the pot of pot” or “If nobody ever wrote a book, do you imagine it would be possible to catch up?”

Or

Then I addressed to a closed door a little speech about how the Great Ideas, far from being the achievement of men of genius (or look what happens when they are—Nietzsche + Hitler, Einstein + Hiroshima), are the work of thousands of anonymous generations, and take the form of those brain-coral reefs, slow myths + taboos, which keep the shark from the shallows our children swim in, and now if you don’t mind I have taken a pill and must try to get some sleep.

One time James Merrill made a concrete poem in the shape of a Christmas tree. I find concrete poetry as sort of airbrush T-shirt level of entertainment.

Champagne. Mythology. Technical mastery. Memory. Atomic science. The big bang and black holes. Quatrains. Environmental degradation. Key West. AIDS. Neckties. Similes. Flashlights. Elizabeth Bishop. Small mirrors. The Piano. Good outdoor lighting (example, Peru). Waving through windows at people. O’Keeffe paintings. Dogs. A well-considered title.

I don’t like titles that applaud the author’s seriousness or whatever, titles like “Necessities of Life” or even, forgive me, “Responsibilities.”

Many lovers.

Sometimes, while rereading Changing Light at Sandover, the irony keeps me at a distance, but then again it might just be something I ate.

Factoid: You can say what you want about Dick Cavett, but in 1969 Jefferson Airplane sang on his show and it was the first time the word “fuck” was uttered on live television.

We’re going to spend a lot of our life alone in rooms.

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May 3rd, 2012 / 10:46 am

What is the most overrated book in the world?

Predatory by Glenn Shaheen

Well, the dog needs bossing, also the baseball practice (batting balls) and the plumber on the copper pipes (he looks like a man who enjoys a good banging) and the general lack of cheese, shredded. Suddenly there is a rash of either lost cell phones beneath couch cushions or fleeing blackbirds on wing and car doors slamming all around our block and I think to myself this is it, they are coming to take me away. I hold my breath waiting for my garage door to rattle open, loose teeth of nuts and bolts falling, wondering how I am going to get at my toothbrush now that my illicit lover has locked herself into the bathroom (they do this, eventually). But then the government truck farts and rumbles off, there must have been another opportunity at the Walmart across the road. I want to be arrested so that I can read books of poetry, right through from the beginning to the end.

Example, Predatory, by Glenn Shaheen. (It had another more melodramatic title, Shaheen told me, but I forget the exact. It was a beery evening. [I think])

This book is paranoid. Or maybe just ill that way with perception.

All night, a howl

outside the window. All night an animal

is sick.

(Feral Cats)

READ MORE >

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April 23rd, 2012 / 12:54 pm

Book + Beer: Tom Wolfe and St. Sebastiaan Belgian Ale

The rain stopped. At that point the guy (knobby head like an asteroid) from the repair shop comes out to tell me that my baby-baby scooter (sweet ride, ODI grips, Kelsey throttle, a desperation of chrome) needs another ninety-four bucks’ worth of repairs, even though they just got finished fixing it, or saying they fixed it, and he says what do you want to do? And I say I don’t want to do anything, Mr. ASS (teroid), you owe me a scooter I can drive away from this crime scene after the last two hundred bucks I spent here, and he says it’s not their fault, it’s a piece-of-shit scooter that hasn’t been properly maintained, and I say hey, I am not paying another cent for repairs that don’t repair, and he says okay, fine, they’ll junk it, and I say okay, fine, junk it then, it’s junk now anyway since you guys mangled it, and he stomps off, so there I am, up a creek and scooterless. So anyway I call my brother, sit down, and finish reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Get in my brother’s car (a brown turd Kia) and he hands me a beer and sees the pink/yellow/retina-detachment bus of a book cover and prowls the title and says, “Is that the kind of shit people who drive scooters read?”

The bottle is ceramic. It has an oatmeal look. I thought, “Oatmeal.” Oatmeal is an OK word to have conked in your kettle while drinking Belgium ale. Has a slight bottled taste to it and that makes some sense. The finish was bitter. I like bitter finishes, I do. I like gas station coffee and going to bed after a big, crazy fight. I find it comforting. One time I took my car for a tire change and afterwards I felt taller. I’m not kidding. I felt taller. My car was purring along. Then about eight minutes later I crashed into a deer committing suicide on highway 69, Indiana. This deer just leapt into its moment. I wanted to take the poor doe home for dinner but they said I’d have to contact the local game ranger and get a special permit and who wants to deal with yet another guy in uniform? Ah, bitter finish, this slouched gray bag of bones, I felt, as I watched my thunked car towed away into the cornshine. There are some peppery notes, too.

What my brother really meant was, “You should have already read that book, like when you were 20.”

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April 14th, 2012 / 12:10 pm