The Center for Writers Loses Barthelme; Rick Magazine Is Born
Frederick Barthelme will soon leave The Center for Writers and the Mississippi Review, and it seems that he’s taking the Mississippi Review Online editorial staff and vision with him in order to create a new online magazine.
A few weeks ago, The Hattiesburg American ran this article about Frederick Barthelme’s leaving The Center for Writers and the Mississippi Review. There was a little bit of a spat in the comments section of that article, then Brevity picked up the news, as did the MFA blog, but that’s about all the coverage the story received (that I could tell from briefly clicking around yesterday). Then, several days ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story about how Barthelme’s departure will directly affect the status of the Mississippi Review:
The Chronicle asked Barthelme via email what’s going to happen with the Review. “At present, then, there is no staff at all, and there is no one here who has actually run a magazine previously,” he responded. “The interim department chair has been talking to other English faculty (non-creative writing) about taking over the magazine. He is also talking to the remaining CW faculty about the same thing, and it’s unclear which way the tree will fall.”
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July 22nd, 2010 / 10:52 am
July 22nd, 2010 / 10:52 am
Popsickle: A poetry event
This weekend in Brooklyn:
POPSICKLE 2010 is two-day festival of readings, performances and screenings that will take place at Market Hotel in Brooklyn, 1142 Myrtle Ave, Bushwick.
SATURDAY | July 24
3:00 – 4:00 PM WHAT’S UP + Brandon Downing—video
3:45 – 4:15 PM Parker Phillips & Jesse Gold
4:15 – 5:00 PM Lauren Russell, Marc Nasdor
5:00 – 6:00 PM Brett Price & Dani Levanthal—video, Nicole Trigg, Alaina Stamatis, Jamie Peck
6:00 – 7:00 PM Michael Barron, Eddie Hopely, Anna Fitzgerald, Jordan Michael Iannucci
7:00 – 8:00 PM Jarrod Shanahan, Gina Abelkop, Timothy Donelly
SUNDAY | July 25
1:00 – 2:00 PM Evan Burton, Carter Edwards, Paige Taggart
2:00 – 3:00 PM Ben Fama, Natalie Lyalin, Emily Pettit, James Copeland
3:00 – 4:00 PM RAFFLE + SNACK TIME
4:00 – 5:00 PM Dan Magers, Leigh Stein, Joshua Mehigan
D-Nice
The greatest second act career in hip-hop history? I’d go with middle of the pack Boogie Down Productions rapper and DJ D-Nice, who for the last few years has been directing a series of sit-down interviews with golden age hip-hop artists like Big Daddy Kane, Masta Ace, Sadat X, Special Ed, Monie Love, and more. Note that not only are the short True Hip-Hop Stories fun and kind of informative—Monie’s behind the scenes story of Big Daddy Kane’s play for her affection, Special Ed’s sweet and sort of sad insistence on his contemporary relevance—but the pieces are really beautifully shot and edited.
READ MORE >
We Know What We Are by Mary Hamilton
This gorgeous book is now available for pre-order by Rose Metal Press.
In We Know What We Are, worlds are made, torn apart, drowned. The stories go small: a girl ties a ribbon on a present. The stories go big: a war is raged against the evening sky. The characters in these thirteen short short fictions find themselves in less-than-desirable circumstances. They know their plights. They acknowledge their situations. They give in. They overcome. They daydream a world where everything will be all right.
“The concise stories in this dynamic collection are bursting with moments of stark urgency and unexpected humor, with imagery that moves seamlessly from the bizarre to the oddly familiar, and situations that shift from the ludicrous to the undeniably sad.
Mary Hamilton’s fiction is dream-like, precise, fresh, unexpected, cumulative, delightful, and at times, incantatory. She is a tenacious writer, working each word, each sentence, each image, the way a carver works the stone. It is fun, and fascinating, to see where she goes next.”
—Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire
Touch Me How I Want to Be Touched
@grahamfoust responds like a human being to the Paris Review retroactive rejection on twitter: “I’m actually not that upset–they’re giving me fries with my kill fee, and the poems were all just shit I took from Google anyway.”
@ the Observer, Christian Lorentzen gives the most evenhanded coverage of the thing in full: Dead Poem Society.
But really, if we’re going to talk about this, which I guess people insist upon, here’s a question: as a writer do you feel entitled to careful handling?
Is this handling different, say, than the care you’d receive at McDonald’s? If it is different, how is it different? Because McDonald’s is a service you are buying, and selling writing is a service you are offering, shouldn’t the quality control be more on the McDonald’s end than the other?
If kill fees are common in all other art, including journalism, why should poems carry different weight? Even outside of art, why more than any other object? If I buy a table from Crate & Barrel, then decide I can’t use the table, for whatever reason, I take the table back no questions asked.
Why should art be given special treatment? Should it?
Am I wrong to return a book I don’t like to Borders after reading part of it? What if I read the whole thing? Have I consumed?
Furthermore, why are the most popular blog posts online always about topics such as rejection, submission, balance, all things that pertain wholly to the self? Are we a consolidation of 8 year olds, looking for fingerpainting time? Where is fanfare needed more?
Aquarius Rising by Ben Fama
Now available from Ugly Duckling Presse comes Ben Fama’s Aquarius Rising…
“how much do you rely on planets? Ben Fama poses this question in his astounding astrological sequence of poems, Aquarius Rising. He doesn’t depend on planets: he sees signs in all that’s around him — sky, sea, sequins. A poetic horoscopist, he knows that there is nothing more difficult or fun than attempting to make sense of the present. For Fama, the present presages another present, and then another; and he reads it with wit and wonderment and wily smarts. I take his words to heart. Fama is the future.”
-DEREK MCCORMACK, author of The Haunted Hillbilly and The Show That Smells.
“If you love someone you might want to call her and leave Ben Fama’s poems as messages on her voicemail. The messages would be informative and casual and glowing. They would be a big deal—a glamorous shrug from the heart!”
-HEATHER CHRISTLE, author of A Difficult Farm
Two Things I Recently Read and Loved
I am not a fan of the outdoors, camping, nature, or the wilderness even though for the past five years I lived, basically, in a forested wilderness and now I live, literally, in a cornfield. It was with a bit of trepidation that I approached Hobart 11: The Great Outdoors for no reason other than that because I don’t love the outdoors, I am not likely to want to read about the outdoors. Then a trusted friend said you have to read this story, “Evitative” and so I found renewed enthusiasm for the issue, which, conveniently, happened to be next on my To Read list. I’m glad she gave me a kick in the ass because Hobart 11: The Great Outdoors issue is so damn good. (So is the movie starring John Candy.) I never cease to be impressed by how meticulously Hobart is edited.
Evitative by B.C. Edwards is a post-apocalyptic story that isn’t annoying as such stories are sometimes wont to be. There’s a man (JoJo) and a woman living in the trees and the man has lost his words and she has lost her food memories and they are being menaced by men in canoes and she’s pregnant and there is a whole lot going on in this dense and incredible story. What I found even more interesting than the story was how the narrative voice felt very true to the circumstances and made everything that much more believable. Throughout the story there is a yearning for a different life, for food, for normalcy that is tangible.
16 Comments
July 21st, 2010 / 11:00 am
July 21st, 2010 / 11:00 am
Justin Taylor—
Here’s a big ole FYI for y’all. There’s not a thing in this world that would keep me from this event, save for the fact of my being on the other side of said world until mid-August. Take it away, Joanna Yas of Open City:
David Berman will be making a very rare appearance in New York on Sunday, July 25, 6pm, for a reading and discussion at the NYU Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street (btw 5th & 6th).
This event is part of the the Open City Summer Writing Workshop, but we have a very limited number of seats available for the public for $15.
Tickets are available here (tickets will not be sold at the door)
http://www.opencity.org/ocsummerberman.html
Enough is Enough: The Slushpile is Not the Enemy
First I read this and then I read this, and then as we know there is the Tin House thing and Brevity is considering a reading fee to help fund honorariums and, perhaps, dissuade inappropriate submissions, which is certainly their right and I do understand where they are coming from, and finally, I read this. I’m frustrated. I can’t speak for the big fancy magazines, but for the smaller magazines such as PANK, we live and die by the slushpile. With no slushpile we would have no magazine and frankly, it would take way more time and effort to solicit writers for twelve monthly issues and a 240 page annual than it does to read submissions. Save for a handful of writers, literally, a handful, we have published the magazine exclusively via work from the slushpile or as we simply call it, the submission queue. Let me go on record as stating that even on the most frustrating days, I love reading submissions. It is what I get to do to relax and step out of my “real” life. I actually feel fucking lucky to be able to co-edit a magazine. Even when I’m reading something terrible I think, “well this is just awesomely bad,” and I feel a little thrill. I literally feel a thrill. When I stop feeling that thrill, I will take a break.
The slushpile fatigue being lamented here and there and everywhere tires me. It bores me. Please, let’s just shut up about it already. If you don’t want to deal with the slushpile, don’t have open reading periods. It really is that simple. Listening to your dissatisfaction with having to deal with the bad writers and new writers and mediocre writers who dare to submit to your magazine that is willfully accepting unsolicited submissions is about as interesting as listening to someone talk about their diet. I don’t care what you had for breakfast.