I have an idea that requires memes, lots of memes. If you have one of those “tag” memes, like the Four Things meme Dan Izzo sent me this week, can you post a link to it in the comments section here in the blog? I would be forever grateful.

I like this photo. It doesn’t look like a photo, all the way, but it is. It’s the first one off of my cameraphone that I actually think came out well– namely because the picture quality not being perfect helps the shot, rather than hurting it.

The bobblehead that is the subject of the photograph can barely stand on its own any more because the head is a little askew and weighs him down.

You should click on it and make it larger, though.

In a quick note to an instrucional design friend, I sort of crapped out this idea, which should become standard nomenclature so you know what you’re dealing with when you talk to writers, who are notoriously egotistical bastards. Yes, I’m a writer.

I’m in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College, and yep, I’m a poet. Well, a student of poetry, more than anything. I write quite a bit but always feel uneasy laying claim to the title “poet,” I guess because that would put me in the same class as some of the writers I adore, and I don’t know that I could feel good about claiming that. Not at all! There should be some line of demarcation, where those folks are poets and the rest of the poetry writers out there are poetlings or something. I’d feel pretty confident describing myself as a poetling. I guess we’d have to use the very imperfect system of publications to determine what “class” of poet.

Unpublished = cryptopoet
1-5 journal publications = poetite
6 journal publications – 3 books = poetling
4+ books = poet
poet widely regarded as canonical = poetarch
person who would fall into one of these categories, but all publications are self-published = poo-et

Several other rules that should be enforced for poets:

• You can be cool but don’t be excessively cool. You love words, for Christ’s sake.
• Don’t be a goth. But if you have to, do it all the way. Please. Don’t half-ass.
• If you’ve made a career of poetry, don’t get all self-righteous about it. You should be thankful that people care enough about words to read.