Medusa's Head

I recently started reviewing books and chapbooks for the HFR blog, one done so far and several to go! As I was reading Roy Seeger's chapbook, A Garden of Improbable Birds , I was struck by how much I enjoyed his poems featuring John Travolta and Lon Cheney. These were not comic poems, the pop icons were translated into symbols in the poems that really opened up something for the speaker. It was pretty cool. I had recently run into another Kalamazoo guy at AWP, Cody Todd, who also has a chapbook out, To Frankenstein, My Father . And another fellow Western Michigan Prague Summer Program attendee, was featured in HFR #42 for a poem entitled, "Gorbechev's Houseboat." Maybe that's not a very significant trend, but I've got my eye on these guys. So my question is, what is useful about pop icons? Dracula, Chocula, Lou Ferrigno, Billy Joel, Tanya Harding, Kelly Clarkson, Miley (sigh for contributing in any way to the continuation of her name in the metasphere) Cyrus?...

I'm back from AWP and then a short baby hiatus! The little guy is napping on his Boppy on my lap, so I'm going to catch up with some notes I made at AWP. I ran into an old friend at the book fair, Alex Lumans, graduating soon from his MFA program. When we were in an undergrad poetry class together, he wrote a cool poem using the word portmanteau , which I'd never encountered before. It's actually a pretty common occurrance, a portmanteau is two words smushed together to make a new one that has some of the old meaning of the two words combined. Think Bennifer or Brangelina but with more linguistic substance. Here's a cool site with a bunch of examples: http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/portmant.htm I'm especially intriqued by the Dormobile . I was disapointed to find out that this is a type of car/truck/van, not a mobile dorm, which would suck so bad that I love the idea. Would you have to find it every day when you come home from class? Imagine the di...

Happily, I came back from AWP to a PO Box full of rejection slips, my new Indiana Review (yes!), and an acceptance from Slipstream for my poem, "Women Like Me," appearing in issue #29, Spring 2009. To order, visit: http://www.slipstreampress.org/ It's a pretty classic definitional list poem: x=y, x=c, x=q. For example: Blue birds are blue birds. Blue birds are birds that think they are the sky. Blue birds are feathers glued onto bone by a child who wants to shoot the sky with his bb gun. Blue birds are hot blue formica tiles cut up and soldered into something resembling flight intersecting black tarmac. Blue birds shit and fight and chase off gold finches. What I like about the formula is that the farther along you go, the more interesting your definitions get as you come up with new insights, new language, new things to say. I think I'm going to do this thing again, for real though, not for blue birds, and this time list definitions for 'grotesque' in thank...

I want to take a second to suggest to everyone that they send some work out. Since I've had some time off from working, I've been on a major rampage submitting to journals and book contests. This has led to a lot of rejection, and I'm happy to share with you, some success! Thanks to Cider Press Review , Puerto del Sol , and Gulf Coast , and Pebble Lake Review for my recent acceptances. Thanks also to the Cider Press Review Book Award for naming my manuscript, Mystery School , a finalist in their 2008 Book Prize. To read the poems, here's a link to the magazines. http://www.puertodelsol.org/current.html Look for "Trojan Horse," in Spring 2009. http://www.ciderpressreview.com/archive/volume9/index.php Look for "Love Poem," and "Museum," in Volume 10, Spring 2009. http://www.gulfcoastmag.org/index.php?n=2 Look for "Apocalypse," in Fall 2009. http://pebblelakereview.com/ Look for "Pescadita," in the Health and Illness is...

I'm not generally a huge fan of occasional poems, but I had fun with the Diwali poem I wrote for the HFR Blog Contest a while back, and speaking of keeping track of time and the passage of time, occasional and seasonal poems are pretty useful. I'm going on blog hiatus while I'm at AWP and visiting my in-laws, so I'll miss Valentine's Day. You would think that Valentine's would be too super cheesy to even approach. I disagree! Wikipedia has some crazy interesting stuff, history of Valentine's and connected customs, including a gallery of beautiful vintage valentines. There's plenty of opportunity for dramatic poems, narrative poems, poems taking an interesting obscure fact or custom as a jumping off point, or ekphrastic poems using the cards. I'm especially interested in the ones that look like vintage tattoos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day And that's not even getting into the personal/lyric poems that could come of out comparing ...

I have a pretty big deadline coming in up in less than two months, and to honor it, I've begun a new poetry project! Finally. It helps me a little bit to think of the shape and content and big ideas in the project when I'm thinking about new poems to write. In this one I want to pursue a couple of ideas 1. Time and 2. The Domestic. That's pretty much my life right now, and whereas for the past few months I haven't been thrilled about it, I've finally come around that bend in the country road where everything illuminates and you realize you're in the right place. So my next blogs will focus on ways/forms to help shape and show the passage of time, and forms that duplicate the domestic. Project the First: Rag Rug. I'm totally in love with the rag rug I've been making for my second spare room.The rag rug is an old-timey thing they still make a L.L. Bean, we had one in our family room growing up. It's made out of long strips of fabric crocheted together ...

In most writing classrooms as well as on most rejection slips, you'll get a suggestion from teachers and editors that you read a literary journal before submitting to it (or read any literary journal before submitting to another one) in order to get an idea of what they might like. There are a few problems with this advice. 1)Time: Many working poets find they don't have the time to read EVERY journal they'd like to submit to. OR 2)Money: They might skim over them at the AWP bookfair, look into their wallets, and sigh. There just isn't enough money, or usually a well-enough stocked library nearby for poets (or writers) to read every journal they'd like to. $20 bucks a pop doesn't get you very far on what most people have to spend. I know my subscription/ conference registration/ contest entry fee money comes out of a small grant I was lucky to get and have just about used up :( Which is why I've spent a little bit of time lately going over journals I've ...