Many simultaneous things, the way I seem to work best.
My new book: I'm pretty sure about the title, but not quite ready to say yet. (I just want to live with it some more. I say it to myself while brushing my teeth, etc. Mental beta testing.)
Sections I and III are complete, if not quite final. II should be complete this weekend. Then next Friday we leave for vacation, during which I plan to finish section IV and give all four sections another typewriter polishing. I'll give it to my reader-editors when I get back on the 15th. Got a cover idea.
I owe everyone I love an email, at minimum.
I read from I and III last week at the Flarf deal (tho they're not technically all that flarfy). By the way, that was fun. Article in Comedy Beat.
I'm working extra this week, which is kind of a bummer since I'd rather do Jen's and my stuff. But weekend starts tonight at 6:00, whew! Her book is done, we're proofing and tweaking the design. I think I can order test copies before I go.
The tour now looks like this, for which you can lay blame on Jen and me hitting happy hour last week:
Pittsburgh 9/8: looking for something
Milwaukee 9/9: working on something
Minneapolis 9/10-11: working "
Chicago 9/12: working "
Champaign 9/13: booked
Muncie 9/14: booked
Nashville 9/15: booked
Atlanta 9/16: booked
Tallahassee 9/17: working "
(Open date) 9/18: thinking
Washington DC 9/19: booked
Baltimore 9/20: working "
Philadelphia 9/21: booked
Ewing 9/22: working "
NYC 9/23: attending Best American Poetry launch
Brooklyn 9/24: booked
NYC 9/25: booked (2 events, one for Pete, one for Jen)
Details on all will go on the Bloof events page real soon.
Oh, but first!
Wednesday, Aug 4 (next week)
Chloe Cooper Jones, James Yeh + me
Four Faced Liar
165 W 4th
NYC
6:30 PM
Free
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Speaking of comments
...I just realized my comments are only showing on the main page, not on the posts individually. I don't have time to try to fix that right now. Not intentional. Comments are still available.
Oh, look, it's kinda like old-school blogging.
Respondents who say "just don't look" or "just go elsewhere" not only are lacking in basic reading comprehension skills (she says she has, and interviewed others who have, done both), but they are typically missing the point.
If we can agree that, at some point in the last X number of years, the internet became, for whatever % of the poetry-writing population, their primary location of interaction with their peers on whatever level (critical exchange, professional networking, or plain old silly socializing, usually in some combo), and we can now say that some of those people, who found the promise of the internet exciting and enriching in any of these ways, have now become re-isolated, in a pre-poetry-on-the-internet fashion, thanks to tons and tons and tons and tons of bad behavior, what is the then that follows?
We're not making this up. Contemporary sociologists and grad students galore are writing about Internet Disinhibition Disorders and Cyberbullying and etc. There will be work in these fields to follow about this other side of the coin, this re-inhibition of, well, whatever is the complement (not to say opposite) of the CFB.
Yeah, OK, we agree that poetry is not the only niche to suffer here. That is a duh point. And yes, the Huffington Post or Eschaton or Drudge or fill-in-your-blank daily newspaper may indeed be "worse." But what's your point there? I am not counting on political spatting on the internet for making culture. I am not counting on that for anything. (The internet and social networking are politically relevant and were instrumental in getting Obama elected (for instance); but it wasn't the snarky bullshit parts that did that; the CFBs and other toxic BS do nothing but exacerbate fatigue and wear out the good-faith participants.)
It remains interesting (and I'd also say important) to consider, though, who "just doesn't look" and where they can go when they "just go elsewhere."
I know some of these answers, personally. So do you.
If we can agree that, at some point in the last X number of years, the internet became, for whatever % of the poetry-writing population, their primary location of interaction with their peers on whatever level (critical exchange, professional networking, or plain old silly socializing, usually in some combo), and we can now say that some of those people, who found the promise of the internet exciting and enriching in any of these ways, have now become re-isolated, in a pre-poetry-on-the-internet fashion, thanks to tons and tons and tons and tons of bad behavior, what is the then that follows?
We're not making this up. Contemporary sociologists and grad students galore are writing about Internet Disinhibition Disorders and Cyberbullying and etc. There will be work in these fields to follow about this other side of the coin, this re-inhibition of, well, whatever is the complement (not to say opposite) of the CFB.
Yeah, OK, we agree that poetry is not the only niche to suffer here. That is a duh point. And yes, the Huffington Post or Eschaton or Drudge or fill-in-your-blank daily newspaper may indeed be "worse." But what's your point there? I am not counting on political spatting on the internet for making culture. I am not counting on that for anything. (The internet and social networking are politically relevant and were instrumental in getting Obama elected (for instance); but it wasn't the snarky bullshit parts that did that; the CFBs and other toxic BS do nothing but exacerbate fatigue and wear out the good-faith participants.)
It remains interesting (and I'd also say important) to consider, though, who "just doesn't look" and where they can go when they "just go elsewhere."
I know some of these answers, personally. So do you.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
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