Hey Small Press!
I’m excited about Hey Small Press! an organization focused on getting small press books into libraries. They are the next thing in the new literary movement, which is focused not on publishing a journal or a book, but on providing a useful and specific service to the literature that is already being produced.
Hey Small Press! was founded by Don Antenen, a library employee in Kentucky, and Kate Hensley, a literature student at Harvard (and, er, editor of her own beautiful-looking Monolith Magazine). Together, they will select ten new books every month and send their curated list to libraries across the country, with info and ordering instructions. Here’s some copy from their press release:
Year after year, independent presses publish the most exciting books but lack the marketing budgets to get noticed by public libraries. The lack of marketing leads to under-representation on library shelves and lack of access for readers. HSP! exists to pick up the publicity slack and push hard to get these books noticed. Every month. Free of charge. Because amazing books should be available to everyone.
Negative Reviews
It is always, always in bad form to respond to a negative review because your writing is personal and the reviewer, generally, is simply doing their job. Over at the website Big Al’s Books and Pals, the novel The Greek Seaman by Jacqueline Howett, was reviewed, rather negatively. The writer proceeded to have a complete meltdown in the comments. Every writer should carry a Post-It note at all times that reads, DO NOT RESPOND TO A NEGATIVE REVEW. In the past few months, I’ve seen writers who should know better responding to reviews trying to “clarify” their intentions or taking issue with some aspect of the review and it only ends up making the writer look bad. When you receive a bad review it is natural to respond emotionally. That’s what your friends are for. They’ll tell you the reviewer was wrong and explain, in detail, how and why. They will let you ramble incoherently. They will buy you drinks. They will keep you from responding and making a fool of yourself. The moral of the story is this: if you are a writer, it is good to have friends because friends don’t let friends respond to bad reviews.
THIS IS WHAT REJECTION LOOKS LIKE
I just logged into the Brown application website to try to view my MFA rejection letter. It’s no longer there. I am wondering where it went. My status is simply “submitted” and no longer rejected. Could my rejection have been revoked? No, probably not. There is probably a demon in their system affording me this glimmer of false hope—like dreaming of your crush putting the moves on you. The first thing I actually thought was, “What am I going to tell my parents?” They are used to me always being “the best” and are far more invested in my success than I am. I told them not to get their hopes up. I put together a typo-filled portfolio the night before it was due because I was visiting my mom who was in the hospital from a suicide attempt and applying to grad school was the last thing on my mind. But I had an application waiver, so I sent it off with a statement that basically said, “I’m sorry this is bad. My life is a wreck right now.”
Luckily, I copy and pasted the rejection letter into my long poem before it disappeared:
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Approaching an Ideology of Art
In order to sit down and establish any sort of ideology1 that guides my life, I really have only a single point to consider: art2 is, without a doubt, what is most important to me. Out of everything. I say this without a hint of irony, with a complete presence of sincerity: everything that has ever been important to me has been mediated by art, to some degree.
Perhaps this is easy for me to say because I equate art with pleasure. Or the idea that art is beauty (as a definition from dictionary.com would like to suggest). If this were true then I wouldn’t have anything to say here. But, the unfortunate thing is that there is a lot of bad art that makes me furrow my brow and launch into hyperbolic rhetoric or a complete insincerity (read: irony). The other negation to the aforementioned declarations heeds itself to my own ideas in an appreciation of affect over visual aesthetic: i.e., something ugly, terrifying, and evil can bring pleasure.
I am not an overly-depressed person. I am (fairly) high functioning in a pretty normal way. I have no desire to be constantly escaping from reality. Kneeling at the temple of Art is not about escapism for me, and I think that’s why I inherently hate the idea of mediating an experience of art (exclusively) through empathy (this is why I will always champion modes of art that lie outside of representation3).
I occasionally feel like when I make this declaration, I am widening a divide between myself & the general public. I say this without elitism. The problem is making a statement like this seems to establish binary opposition: if I don’t like representation, I must like crazy non-narrative abstract shit. Right? I mean, that binary presupposes the person who is contrasting her or his own approach to art with mine is able to conceive of an approach to art that is outside of representation (and this is part of why my mother has no idea in regards to what I am interested in and what I am doing when it comes to “art”).
But here’s the thing: I love narrative. I have no desire to escape narrative. Of course, throughout my experiences with art I have grown mostly tired of archetypal narrative arcs, neatly wrapped up stories, etc etc. But that’s not the point. What I look for in art, what I aim for in art, ultimately, as I’ve said many noted many times in comment threads, is affect.
Introducing HTMLGiant’s Official Mascot: Annette!
I received the following email last fall in my campus inbox, and ever since I’ve wanted to launch a guerilla mascot campaign of my own.
Dear Students and Campus Colleagues,
I wanted to send everyone a quick email to respond to questions regarding the appearance of a man with a white Scottish terrier on campus recently and their presence on social media as well.
Xxxx Xxxxxxxx is the president of the Scottish Terrier Club of Greater Xxxxxxx and he reached out to several offices over the summer to express interest in collaborative measures between the club and our college due to our shared interest in the “Scottie” dog. A meeting was scheduled for September 8 to discuss opportunities for the Club’s participation in several upcoming college events where the presence of a group of Scottie dogs would be welcomed.
Before this meeting could occur and any campus officials be consulted, Mr. Xxxxxxxx went forward with plans that the college had not reviewed or approved. Although we appreciate the club’s interest and their president’s obvious enthusiasm, the decision to have a real “mascot” belongs to Xxxxx Xxxxx not an outside group.
His dog named “Hayley” has a Facebook page with misinformation about her status as “mascot” and her relationship with the college. We have requested that he make corrections to the site.
Please be assured that we are working to resolve these issues in a manner that is in the best interest of our students and the college.
If any students or other community members have questions or want to share their feedback, please contact me in the Alumnae Office at (XXX) XXX-XXXX or xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.edu.
Thank you.
Xxx
Xxx Xxxxxxx ‘XX
Director of Alumnae Relations
So, here is Annette, bichon frise, age 5. I searched coast to coast for a dog whose physiognomy reflected Blake, Ryan, and Gene’s combined physiologies. It was a tiring process, with a lot of heartbreak along the way, but finally I settled on Annette. She is also my own dog. Bichon frise means “frizzy pampered,” and the breed once traveled with Mediterranean sailors, who employed them as “friendly ambassadors” when they hit land. They later became favorites in the court of Henry III.
I recognize that declaring Annette to be the HTMLGiant mascot is not as bold as “Hayley’s” claim of being the mascot of a college with which she is in no way affiliated. But I still anticipate backlash, and if we get through that, I’m prepared to make her the mascot of the internet.
A little more on Annette: today, she helped me amend soil. “Soil amendment” is apparently not a euphemism for genocide; it is something that must be done if you want the right kind of flowers to populate your front yard.
Please welcome Annette!
An open letter to Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob) about silence and writing-as-shitting
Dear Kevin Smith,
You have a fucking radio show? That’s kind of hilarious because you were always the silent one. You were Silent Bob. You went from being pure body to pure voice. Why’d you do it, man? There was something philosophical about your silence, they way you were so expressive without saying anything. We all liked to imagine what you were thinking, how you were perceiving everything that was going on around you. There was a profound quality to your sparse interjections (because you never spoke, because of the scarcity of your words). The law of economics says that when demand exceeds supply, value increases. Maybe I should shut up. Maybe I should retreat into silence like you once did. Maybe then—only then—will people give a shit about any of this. Any of these words.
When you did speak, we felt lucky to be graced by your wise words. Because you never spoke, we felt like you were enlightened, like you were beyond language, like language was something the petty people did, and you did not need it. You were above all that, the way spiritual gurus are above food, the way they no longer need to satiate those earthly desires. You didn’t need to feed the part of the body that longs for recognition. You were a watcher, an observer. Everyone around you was always blabbering on and on, but you didn’t feel the need to fill up space in the same way. You know, most people feel anxious about silence. It’s the hardest thing, to live in silence. You can’t just “be” next to someone. It makes you totally nuts to feel like you don’t know what they’re thinking. Maybe their silence means hatred. Maybe I’m fucking boring. So we talk on and on because we are afraid, because we need to know where the other person is at, because silence can mean anything and we need our interactions to be anchored in certainty.
On Fandom and Aliens Remaking the World
I am interested in the concept of fandom. Do you have a “fan” kind of relationship with the things you love? I feel like I have a very fan kind of relationship with the things I like, even if the people who make them are “nobodies” to society. I am a fan of random people, people who make beautiful things, people that have what I call the 6th sense—which is a special kind of perception, a special way of seeing or knowing. For example, Bhanu Kapil. I have a list of suspected “aliens”—passionate people that possess certain qualities. Bhanu is on it. Eileen Myles is on it too—I could listen to her talk all day because it’s always like wandering through a very fascinating and specific brain. I guess I don’t understand casual people—people that get enough sleep, people that are regular (as in consistent), people that find it easy to make new friends….
The epic poem that I wrote recently was about trying to find the lost aliens of planet earth, crisscrossing the country on foot in search of the other alien beings. Actually, most of the poem is about obsessively trying to escape through a crack in the sky until I am told by Tupac, who lives in the kingdom in the sky, that I should not try to ascend but should focus on my world—on “this worldliness.” That’s when I start trying to find the lost ones. I chose Tupac because my brothers and I were such big fans as children, and still to this day I think of him as a dynamic figure—tough and sensitive with radical and intellectual tendencies. So Tupac tells me I’ve got it all wrong. He encourages me to redirect my vision. I listened. I stumble upon a mysterious post office in Wyoming that has rows and rows of open postal boxes and I leave letters in the mailboxes knowing that the lost aliens of planet earth are the ones who will reply. We find each other and sing a note real loud and blast all of the beings that are ready to make the new world into the sky. As I am ascending Bjork is below me wearing a big dress while looking at me with tears in her eyes because she is so moved (I was a very big fan of Bjork growing up). One by one, we cross over into a crack that opens in the sky.
How I Got Here
Becoming is weird. I have theories: how I got here, what lead me, what pushed me out of one interest and into the next. I don’t get too high on rethinking and visiting my quick past, which, if I had to guess, is a big reason why I’m happy most of the time. I’m not that interested in my past, not as reportage, not as history. But consider this an essay in its primordial meaning: an attempt at a history. That black space with the electricity below it right above, that’s it.
When I was little I frequently made stuff. Stories, goofs. I was really into drawing, and applied to one of those mail-order Drawing Schools (to prove my might I had to draw a weird turtle boy’s face and include some mom money). My mom and dad, ever the best ever, obliged and encouraged me. Always. Throughout this entire post, remember that thread of encouragement. I’ve never lacked it from those close to me. If I’m not lucky I’m not anything else. Art class in school fed me, kept me wanting. I remember getting into a shoving match in second grade — was the kid’s name Kurt? — over who had drawn the better Star Wars TIE fighter. I fake hyperventilated when the teacher came to break it up, feigning something bodily urgent, and was made to stand against a wall and breathe slow. Kurt got punished, maybe spanked. I don’t know. It was Texas.
Some Thoughts Re Muumuu House
'nylon': 2009 Nylon article re Muumuu House
[Ed. note: A month or two ago, Jordan Castro wrote me an email containing a review he’d written for Matthew Savoca’s long love poem with descriptive title. The review was less a review and more a personal reflection on Jordan’s part, referring to things about the book pertaining to himself: what he did while reading it, how it made him feel, etc. In fact, the review ended: “I really only thought about myself. Again.” I felt interested, or at least curious, as to why this kind of review, and really, this kind of relating to things by one’s self rather than the thing itself, compelled not only Jordan, but also a kind of group with which Jordan has been grouped, i.e. Tao Lin and Muumuu House, writers of an often readily identifiable, and sometimes ire inducing, style, that pertains often mostly to feelings, incidental observations, and what might could be called “absurdist emo” (I just made that up). Instead of the book review, then, I asked Jordan to write about these associations; what fuels them, why the self-focus, maybe even what is kind of going on? Jordan’s thoughtful, and I think generous, and probably in more than one way controversial, reply follows below. -BB]
INTRODUCTION
Throughout the history of literature – or the history of anything, rather – people have found other people like them and they’ve “stuck with” those people for a period of time, supporting them, “hanging out” with them, etc.
This is what people do. They communicate. They form relationships. They do things to alleviate the monotony of their existences.
Muumuu House (est. 2009) [http://muumuuhouse.com], a publisher of poetry, fiction, Twitter selections and Gmail chats, seems, to me, to “simply” be those patterns of humanity “in action” – a group of socially alienated individuals who chose literature as their means of alleviating monotony and who, as a result of that and other things, inadvertently (invariably?) “united.”
In other words, I feel like Muumuu House – or “the Muumuu House group of writers” – are a group of people who like similar things, like any other group of people.
If this essay exists to “say anything,” it exists, I think, “simply” to explore my own thoughts about Muumuu House and a certain type of writer/person.