pr

Swim Poem

for Barry

for Barry

 
The Nude Swim
by Anne Sexton

On the southwest side of Capri
we found a little unknown grotto
where no people were and we
entered it completely
and let our bodies lose all
their loneliness.

All the fish in us
had escaped for a minute.
The real fish did not mind.
We did not disturb their personal life.
We calmly trailed over them
and under them, shedding
air bubbles, little white
balloons that drifted up
into the sun by the boat
where the Italian boatman slept
with his hat over his face.

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Excerpts / 28 Comments
January 10th, 2009 / 2:15 pm

NERVE: THE FIRST TEN YEARS- Vote Now (or Later)! And an HTMLGIANT Contest!

Hey Cutie!

Hey Cutie!

Nerve is coming out with a best of the first ten years book, called Nerve: The First Ten Years. Vote for your favorite stories (and photographs) and make a writer happy. Also, I ate a very greasy re-heated grilled cheese sandwich and my stomach sort of hurts, (I’ve had a mild hangover  today, too.) And for some wierd reason, looking at this photograph  makes my stomach hurt a little bit more (but also makes me feel celebratory in the magic that is the internet sort of way). Someone post more stuff -quick! Oh wait! It’s Friday! You’all are out.

Wait! A Haiku contest- the best haiku about this picture gets a package of indie press books from me!  Bring it on.

Uncategorized / 59 Comments
January 9th, 2009 / 7:42 pm

First City Review

 

First City Review

First City Review is a new print journal edited by the wonderful Michael Pollock, an old college friend of mine and a passionate editor.  I have a photo  of Michael wearing lipstick and sporting an ironic perm, kissing a mirror. I wish I could somehow get that photo up here, so you could understand how fantastic Pollock is, but I can’t because I don’t have the negative, and it is from a ye-olden times camera, if you can believe that. Pollock and I both worked (but at different times) for Fiction Magazine with the awesome Mark Mirsky and I believe his new journal reflects the integrity and brilliance of Fiction Magazine while also being very much its own animal. First City Review features a diverse array of writing, mixing up narrative fiction with experimental and meta-fictional work. The first issue includes the cerebral, wry work of Johannah Rodgers alongside the hilarious Thaddeus Rutkowski’s contribution. In other words, everyone should submit and subscribe, because there is something in First City Review for everyone. You can submit electronically or by mail, because Michael is really nice.

Uncategorized / 6 Comments
January 9th, 2009 / 3:19 pm

TriQuarterly and the Poet Jana Harris

Yesterday, I actually left my house and went to the bookstore to try to buy a 2009 calendar (my choices, since most were gone, were between Harry Potter and one with a 3D skateboard on the cover).  I also bought TriQuarterly, which I pick up from time to time, but not with any regularity, and NPlusOne, which I think I get a bit more regularly. Then I skimmed them both. Then I settled deeply into Jana Harris’s poems, (she teaches at University of Washington online),  in TriQuarterly. They are gorgeous things. Here is the beginning of “Feeding My New Son With An Eyedropper, I Remember Coming to This Country with My Parents, One Trunk, and Seven Words of English”:

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Author News & Presses / 19 Comments
January 7th, 2009 / 5:03 pm

Mean Monday on Tuesday: 42 Opus, Are you OK?

I am not this frustrated

I am not this frustrated

Dear 42 Opus,

I like your journal. I have read some good poems and short stories at your literary magazine. I submitted something to you, using your great submission manager, in December of 2007. I have checked up repeatedly on your fantabulous submission tracker thing and I have read that two editors have read my thingy. One editor thing says this: January 2008 and then underneath, July 2008. The other editor thing says, January 2008 and then- nothing! And then there is your category- “final decision”. Nothing! Nothing in the final decision category!

 

Anyway, I am not totally being mean here. Because, you accept simultaneous submissions and so therefore you can hold onto it for a good long while, in my book. But I feel the need to give you a tiny bit of a hard time for taking OVER A YEAR. Also, I very politely queried you in November, at the 11 month mark. (I think, although maybe it was October, at the 10 month mark? You say in your submission guidelines that you welcome queries if we haven’t heard from you after five months). I have had no response to my query. Anyway, you slightly bug me that you have not gotten back to me. I still recognize that you are a quality literary journal. But, I am slightly irritated with you because of your no response thing. Maybe you are not well? If so, I hope you get better.

 

Yours Truly,

pr

Mean / 45 Comments
January 6th, 2009 / 12:23 pm

Excerpt: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore

 

 

I just finished reading this tragedy by an Irish writer (with a Catholic background, of course, for those who know my obsessions). It was recommended to me, but I can’t remember by whom. It was brilliant and relentlessly bleak. Here is a section where the protaganist begins to lose her faith:

Was there nothing to pray to? Was the confession she had just made a form, something you went through to ease your conscience? If it was, then how easy it was to explain all the miseries, the follies, all the useless novenas, the prayers that never got an answer. And if it was true, then all the priests, all the bishops, all the cardinals, are wrong. Deluded men, believing they are being helped by a God who is not there. An unhelpful God. Why does he make men suffer?…

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Excerpts / 9 Comments
January 5th, 2009 / 5:30 pm

An Excerpt from Conversations with Angels: What Swedenborg Heard In Heaven

The Devil

The Devil

  There still exist people who follow the work of Emanuel Swedenborg in this world. He was a Christian mystic (who influenced the likes of William Blake, a favorite of mine, as well as Borges and Jung and Helen Keller) whose work sometimes intimidates me, because he saw so much that I sometimes feel he really hallucinated all the time after a certain point in his life. And that scares me and breaks my heart. Then again, he was a man who had found salvation and inspired a new Christian religion. Maybe he was truly blessed. I guess we’ll never know for sure. That said, he knew for sure. His books are published by the Swedenborg Foundation. Here’s a funny bit about running into some devils:

 

 

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Excerpts / 32 Comments
January 2nd, 2009 / 2:28 pm

Benjamin Percy is a Writer I’d Like to Fuck

Bejamin Percy is Fucking Hot

Bejamin Percy is Fucking Hot

 

Benjamin Percy begs the question, do I have to like a writer’s writing to want to fuck him? Alas, I think the answer would be yes, but I would make an exception for Percy if I were to not like his writing. He’s that hot. Now, as it is, I really REALLY like his writing! So, the question is really moot. But, my point is, how smoking HOT is he? (I’ll get to his fiction in a minute). Here’s a bit from an interview in Bookslut that exemplifies one of the reasons I’d like to fuck him:

 Some writers go for walks when they’re trying to work something out in their head. I go to the gym. Sometimes you need to get away from the keyboard and feel the blood flowing through your stiff limbs before the next idea comes hurtling toward you. So I pick up large pieces of metal and put them back down again.

 

 The man has PIPES! As does his prose. Percy is an unabashedly masculine writer. A rich manliness oozes from not only his subject matter- war, guns, all sorts of men stuff–but also his prose style. I wouldn’t call him a “plain” writer; indeed, he can be very stylized, with an acute attention to the music of language. But his fiction feels honest and hard, like a dick in my hand should feel.

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Author Spotlight / 31 Comments
December 30th, 2008 / 7:13 pm

Mean Monday: I Am A Pussy But I Don’t Like Everything I Read

PUSSY

PUSSY

I am too much of a pussy to post really truly mean shit. In fact, recently I profusely apologized to someone here for making them angry. That said, if you fuck with me, in real life, I will NEVER forgive you. I hate that about myself. I am a terrible grudge holder. I often find people like me who are huge grudge holders are conversely very loyal friends. Makes sense, though, right?  OK! Here are some books I thought were not very good for various reasons:

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? By Lorrie MooreI read this book in manuscript form when it came out. I loved her stories at the time. After reading this book, I was very angry and had indigestion. It made me hate big publishers. Maybe if I read it now,  I would like it. Really. ( I suck at being mean?) Someone tell me you thought this book was ass, too. Also, no question marks are allowed in book titles. It’s the law.

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Mean / 81 Comments
December 29th, 2008 / 9:09 pm

Letter From Austria: Peter Handke’s Sorrow and My Own

 

 

(The New York Review of Books publishes books that belong in print, but have fallen out of it. Yes, this is a highbrow small press, but they are doing excellent things. Check them out. Peter Handke’s A Sorrow Beyond Dreams was first published in translation in 1974 by FSG.)

 

I am deep in the Austrian Alps of Carinthia, near the borders of Italy and Slovenia, in a province largely full of people who never leave it, a six hour train ride from Vienna, staring out my hotel window to enormous mountains and yards and yards of snow, pine trees, and quaint houses that have not changed in structure for hundreds of years. Handke is from Carinthia, from a town not far from here. My parents and I  see each other once a year because they live in Vienna and we live in New York. Once, I looked out at all the beauty and thought; “All this beauty. Too bad it is full of Austrians.” Other times I look out and try to be happy and grateful. (There are things I like about Austria. I like the food, the Frittatensuppe, the Topfen, the Semmeln, the delicious Austrian pastries, as good as any Italian pastry. I have a weird fetish for the traditional clothes, the Dirndls, the Lederhosen, the felted wool in general. (I grew up wearing that stuff.))

 

Peter Handke’s mother killed herself by taking an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of fifty-one. He writes:

 

My mother has been dead for almost seven weeks; I had better get to work before the need to write about her, which I felt so strongly at her funeral, dies away and I fall back into the dull speechlessness with which I reacted to the news of her suicide.

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Author Spotlight & Presses / 17 Comments
December 26th, 2008 / 4:35 am