Rants of the Rejected
Bradley Sands of Bust Down The Door And Eat All The Chickens just tweeted this link to an old letter he received from a disgruntled, rejected author in 2008. It seemed like a useful thing to repost for Mean Week. Here’s the beginning (wtf?):
Dear Bradley,
Where are my stories? What did I do wrong to deserve such a cold shoulder during The Mark Chapman Generation, Twin Towers, “Malvo”, academic massacre, Amish massacre, etc? Is that it, then, Bradley, you’re just going to leave me dangling? Ok, if that’s the way you feel. I’ve never seen 1 magazine in 40 years of doing this live more than a few years after being treated so shitty as you have treated me.
Any fun rants out there? Either ones you’ve received from authors or ones you’ve sent to editors?
This was the first time I had heard about my great stupidity. And I was quite surprised, as it had not occurred to me. But certainly it did account for many things. And it always followed a pummeling, when the world blurred into gray edges and my ears throbbed and darted inside. I would wander without destination often, in the wake of beatings. I would believe I was a floating shadow riding on puffs of air, my toes barely skimming the ground.
-from My Happy Life by Lydia Millet
Grammar Lesson: Mom, I’ve decided to get a MFA!
Chris Higgs’ post schooled me on the proper use of the apostrophe after singular nouns that end in ‘s’ to show possession, so I figured I’d post my own grammar lesson.
From The OWL@Purdue:
Note: The choice of article is actually based upon the phonetic (sound) quality of the first letter in a word, not on the orthographic (written) representation of the letter. If the first letter makes a vowel-type sound, you use “an”; if the first letter would make a consonant-type sound, you use “a.” So, if you consider the rule from a phonetic perspective, there aren’t any exceptions. Since the ‘h’ hasn’t any phonetic representation, no audible sound, in the first exception, the sound that follows the article is a vowel; consequently, ‘an’ is used. In the second exception, the word-initial ‘y’ sound (unicorn) is actually a glide [j] phonetically, which has consonantal properties; consequently, it is treated as a consonant, requiring ‘a’.
Folks, please do not write the article ‘a’ before the acronym ‘MFA.’ If you do that, then I will think you went to a low-ranked MFA program. Not your fault, though; you didn’t know any better. If you’d rather not worry about the a/an thing, you’re perfectly welcome to write out in full that you received a Master of Fine Arts, as I will do when I apply for a job at Half Price Books this Spring once my contract is up at the university.
Or you can just skip over the whole confusing mess and either a) study writing on your own and save yourself lots of money/stress or b) get a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing, thus making all MFAers on the job market collectively shit themselves. Phhhhddddd.
Ryan Call—
Imagine if their logo had been a picture of a bumblebee. A rabid bat. A great white shark: chomp chomp.
(via MobyLives)
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Ryan Call—
Paul Zukofsky doesn’t like people quoting his parents, especially ‘innocent grad students.’ Anyone want to help me type out Louis Zukofsky’s collected fiction?
(via Poetry Foundation)
Ryan Call—
I can haz canon? Has the LOL internet meme gone too far? Or not far enough?
(via @asfmag)
Ryan Call—
Stacey Harwood wrote a letter to Poets&Writers in response to the MFA program rankings they published.
(via @notell)
Call for Submissions: Love Rise Up
From Steve Fellner comes this call for submissions:
Hi,
Phil Young and I have been asked to co-edit an anthology for Benu Press; its working title is Love Rise Up.
We both have been invested in the literary world for some time. I wrote and published a book of poems entitled Blind Date with Cavafy (Marsh Hawk Press, 2007) and a memoir entitled All Screwed Up (Benu Press, 2009); Phil has published in literary magazines such as Antioch Review.
The editor who commissioned this project asked that we focus on contemporary poets and poems that succeed on the following levels:
- The poem deals with social justice, not simply a social issue. In other words there has to be some action or suggestion of resistance or dealing with a social issue, not just having a social issue somewhere in the background.
- The poem offers an element of hope. This hope can be somewhat ambiguous, but at least some level of hope has to be detectable to the average reader. Think “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes.
- The poem is an “accessible narrative or lyric that contains elements of genuine drama or comedy.”
4.) If the poem were a movie, it would have to receive somewhere between a G and PG-13 rating.
We would really like to include a poem of yours in Love Rise Up. If interested, please send us a poem(s) for us to look at as a Word document.
We’d happily look at new work or previously published. My co-editor and I are responsible for paying all fees, so I would appreciate a waiver, if at all possible.
Contributors will include Martin Espada, Denise Duhamel, Rigoberto Gonzalez, David Kirby, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Barbara Hamby, Cheryl Dumesnil, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Fady Joudah, Rebecca Livingston, Alison Joseph, Laura Kasischke, Idra Novey, Eliot Khalil Wilson, Martha Collins, among others.
When the anthology appears (in Fall 2010, tentatively), all contributors will receive one copy. Please call 585-395-5040 or e-mail sfellner@brockport.edu and pyoung@brockport.edu if you have any questions.If you know that you will be offering us something, we’d be indebted if you let us know by November 15.
Feel free to send this to anyone who you think may be interested. In fact, we’d be, once again, be so grateful if you did.
Thanks,
Steve and Phil
Uncategorized / 24 Comments
October 23rd, 2009 / 5:22 pm
October 23rd, 2009 / 5:22 pm
Ryan Call—
Yesterday, my composition students brought up something called ‘writer’s block’ and shared with me different ways they try to overcome it. Some said they liked to eat a snack. Another girl said she liked to take a nap. Another girl said she liked to return to her research and read more. I said that during the summer of 2007, if I felt stuck on something, I took a shower. This led to my taking several long showers each day. I ceased this practice once my wife showed me the utility bill. What do you do to overcome ‘writer’s block’?