Mean Monday: Acclaim for New Delta Review
Because I like to punish myself, I put aside this book review I’m working on to check out once again the Literary Rejections on Display blog and found this post about New Delta Review. Apparently, NDR uses this form letter:
For those with bad eyes, the rejection says:
Thank you for submitting. Unfortunately, the work you sent us is quite terrible. Please forgive the form rejection, but it would take too much of my time to tell you exactly how terrible it was. So again, sorry for the form letter.
Please let this be real. Please. I want this to be real so badly.
Already, someone in the comments section has advised NDR to hire a security guard, because someone might spray-paint their office and take a baseball bat to their car(s).
I have emailed the staff at NDR for confirmation of the form rejection.
*UPDATE*
Here are the emails I exchanged with the editor:
Hey Editors,
I just read somewhere online that you have a rejection form letter that says something like this:
“Thank you for submitting. Unfortunately, the work you sent us is quite terrible. Please forgive the form rejection, but it would take too much of my time to tell you exactly how terrible it was. So again, sorry for the form letter.”
Can you confirm this? I’d rather not waste my or your time submitting something to be rejected just to find out. But I really like the form letter, if this is true. It is funny.
Is it true?
Good work, everyone. Really. I don’t mean this sarcastically.
Thanks,
Ryan
And NDR‘s response:
Ryan,
I responded on the blog to the inquiry. Yes, the rejection in real, in that it came off of our computer and follows the basic template of our form rejection (and was sent out by a particularly wise-ass editor on our staff), but it is not our usual rejection. However, if I received that rejection, I would totally frame it. People take this business way too seriously – rejections are handed out for a million reasons, the first 900,000 of them being personal taste. But you know all this. Glad it gave you a laugh! Submit your work anyway!-Benjamin S. LowenkronEditor-in-Chief
So it is true, but halfway. It’s not their standard form rejection.
*UPDATE UPDATE*
The current editor and then the ‘assmunch’ who originally perpetrated this crime have both posted comments at LROD to explain the situation.
Let the feeding frenzy begin.
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October 20th, 2008 / 12:57 pm
October 20th, 2008 / 12:57 pm
Mean Monday: Bukowski dick
God, Bukowski. Did that guy really ever have to exist? I think it was funny and ‘connective’ as a 17 year old seeing books with titles like ‘sometimes you get so alone it just makes sense’ or whatever permutation of that title was on that book cover. But like Nirvana to rock music, an ‘innovator’ who makes a whole previously quieter genre big bucks famous, Bukowski is probably more responsible for boring, retarded writing than, well, anybody maybe, except for Thoreau?
Nah, it’s Bukowski.
Case in Point: this dude on 3:am. 3AM is confusing in that they seem split between interesting, weird writing (mostly culled by Ellen and Tao) and the UK grime / ‘Brutalist’ garbage, which is often like the ULA junior.
I think about the time I was offered coke at college and replied that I wasn’t thirsty. When a taxi-driver asked if I liked ‘bud’ and I thought he meant Budweiser.
I think I wrote something a joke like this when I was 17, before I’d tried beer.
This set of ‘poems’ newly published on 3AM, I’m really not sure who thought this would be interesting, maybe they know their market or something, but ruminations on reality TV, cokeheads, and bad parents, well, hrm, those are all things that are hard to talk about well probably, and especially not in the manner of Dr. B.
Add that the 3:AM dude looks like Billy Corgan on meth, and yip. But that’s below the belt.
One day they will publish a selected works of Bukowski that will be worth buying, as 1 in 18 of his poems will sometimes knock you on your ass, but otherwise, well bub, thanks a lot.
Dennis Cooper presents: The day love co-signs 10 poems from the so-called New York School
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October 20th, 2008 / 9:53 am
October 20th, 2008 / 9:53 am
Bateau Press
Bateau Press has just launched a new version of their website, with way more access to info than they’d had before, including contents of their current issue, info chapbooks and current submission and contest guidelines.
They are currently running their 3rd annual chapbook contest, which has electronic submissions, nice:
OPEN TO ALL WRITERS
Winner receives $500 and copies of the winning chapbook.
Manuscripts will be read anonymously by staff of Bateau.
Please, no submissions from students or close friends of the editors.
Age and previous book publication are not considerations for eligibility.
Check out the site for more info, Bateau is really doing something cool. I like the handmade style of Bateau and the book object style they represent, there should be more places like this, even more than there currently are.
Interviews
I asked Ryan Manning why he was interviewing so many people and he said “I don’t know” which is classic Ryan Manning.
His new blog/site is called THUNK and it’s a nice big chunk of interviews with people like Tao Lin, Zach German, Kendra Malone, and lots lots more.
I especially enjoyed the response Ryan got from Marc Mez:
“man your questions really suck, nevermind it’s a big waste of my time, but thanks.”
It’s not a waste of time. Check it out here.
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October 19th, 2008 / 3:28 pm
October 19th, 2008 / 3:28 pm
barry graham’s “not a speck of light is showing” just beat me up and i am on the ground trying to put my teeth back in my mouth using the tip of my tongue
i just read barry graham’s chapbook “not a speck of light is showing” and halfway through reading it i found myself motioning with both hands upwards, as if attempting to raise the roof from a lower altitude to one much higher. i suspect that was consequent to barry graham locking his chapbook in the basement and forcefeeding it awesomeness. i am being serious. it costs four dollars. buy it. you will laugh and feel a little sickened. when i was done reading it, i felt like barry graham was mr. miyagi and i was daniel-san and i was lying on my back and he was showing me how “paint the fence” could help deflect the shit that barry graham was shitting into my mouth. and i kept trying to swat the shit away, but at a certain point, i just stopped and lay motionless, eyes and mouth open, and there was no light.
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October 18th, 2008 / 7:28 pm
October 18th, 2008 / 7:28 pm
Opium Literary Death Match #9 Grand Laser Finale
As much fun as this is to watch, it was even more fun to watch live.
Mean Week vs Puppies and Rainbows Week
Darby Larson has posted about Mean Week over at his blog. I like Darby. He is good at arguing things, and he thinks hard about things. Many of his comments on blogs are very thoughtful, and I usually read them and think I should make my brain smarter in order to respond to them.
Darby on Mean Week:
I don’t think mean week has been mean, by my definition of it. The problem is that if it were mean, then there would be consequences. Friendships would end, would have to be mended over time, would depend on a puppies and rainbows week just to heal.
Maybe we could learn a thing or too from Gridskipper, a travel blog, that had its own Mean Week back in 2007. Apparently, they traveled places and were mean to babies.
Where is everyone?
Remember When VQR Did This?
That is the first picture to come up if you Google image ‘fuck VQR.’
I have no idea if this is a dumb post or not. And I have no reason to post this, really, except that I like the idea that it will be out there on the internet as a record of VQR‘s momentary stupidity/craziness/awesomeness(?). I stole the information from the guy who runs Literary Rejections on Display, a blog that makes me feel weird.
Ok, so near the end of April, VQR made public on its blog a series of comments that submissions readers had made about certain awful stories, poems, essays in the to-read pile. Then people got mad. Feelings were hurt. Passionate speeches were made. And VQR took down the ‘hurtful’ things and replaced them with kind things. Well, the bandage didn’t work very well, so VQR took those kind things down and replaced them with a letter of apology (sort of?) from editor Ted Genoways.
This is what was originally posted on the blog:
Since I often get a laugh out of reading through some of the notes that our beleaguered readers provide for these particularly unfortunate submissions, it seems worthwhile to share them. Here are some of my favorites:
- The emotional problems of clipping fingernails. Actually the best of his submissions.
- OK, I’m just going to say it. This writing is plain ugly.
- “Soon he fitted his body into mine like a puzzle piece.” NONONONONONONONONO!
- Planet of the Apes fan-fiction! Have we no standards?
- Why does the speaker’s wife only want babies from Chinese shacks? This is the craziest poem. And the scariest. I feel like we should the call the cops on this guy. (There should be a category called “Inappropriate to Humanity.”)
- Unpublished Faulkner. Should remain unpublished.
- I can’t enumerate all the ways in which this is horrible
- This guy has either the best or the worst cover letter ever. As for the poem, barf-o.
The problem with these reader comments is that they aren’t mean enough. And they aren’t that funny, to me anyhow. The fact that VQR posted them is funny, I think.
Okay, the fingernail one makes me laugh a little. I want to read that poem/story.
I know I’m supposed to talk about small presses and online indie stuff. And it is still technically Mean Week, I guess, so I should be mean to VQR somehow. But I am bad at mean. All I really wish is that VQR would do something like this again, so hits rise. Then maybe more people would know about them, like Gawker:
And, finally: What the fuck is The Virginia Quarterly Review?
That is all.
Uncategorized / 8 Comments
October 17th, 2008 / 6:47 pm
October 17th, 2008 / 6:47 pm
elimae’s tits
Without Google, it would be impossible to bring Boob Friday and Indie Lit—two rather arbitrary associations—together, which is what I’ve done.
If one were to google “tits elimae,” one would find this and this. (Incidentally, Blake’s blog is the third domain result.)
This first one, Untitled by Aaron Winslow, concerns saying pick-up lines under the influence. It’s a gem: funny, unexpected, and a little sad:
last nite i had a dream that i was all liquored up and i was walking around this bar saying things to women like, “is your father a thief? ‘cuz i’d like to jizz all over your tits.” and “do you wash your clothes in windex? ‘cuz i want to put my thumb up your ass.” and then i would laugh and laugh. and the best part was that the ladies thought it was funny too. those are the only two that i remember, but i think i said a bunch of them.
The second one, Military Courtesan by Mark Yakich, is a strange poem I do not understand. I only know it fills me up with experiences that feel lived, which is why I think I read:
In the world of small arms,
She offers a pair of tits. And you
Put them on like epaulets.She offers milk with vodka.
She offers you Eve without
Ivy, and a red in tender
That doesn’t mean raw.
I chose elimae for two reasons: 1) they are one of my favorite journals, and 2) I knew the pieces wouldn’t be too long.
Speaking of things not being too long, everyday is Dick Friday for me.
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October 17th, 2008 / 5:33 pm
October 17th, 2008 / 5:33 pm