I was not feeling very good today, so I stayed home from work and slept a little bit more. I stayed groggy for most of the rest of the afternoon, and it wasn’t until I picked up Tony Hoagland’s Hard Rain that I really woke up.I love Tony Hoagland’s work. It’s often built around the simplest formula: the opening, which defines the occasion of the poem, cedes to the lyric moment; the lyric moment, often built around clever wordplay, expands the poem into a far broader context; some level of nostalgia enters the poem (but may be obscured); the wordplay of the lyric moment is twisted until we arrive back at the occasion of the poem from a different perspective. Yet, despite the formula, which appears relentlessly in Hard Rain, Hoagland always makes the poem feel somewhat dangerous. I think it’s because there’s always a tension between the narrative and lyric moments, and always some question as to which is in service of the other one.

A huge thanks to everyone who has posted a link to the Bull City Press or Inch websites. So far, I’ve had a lot of inquiries and the first few submissions have begun to roll in. I’ve posted a link on the Bull City Press site to the Bull City Press store, which is basically a response to a fellow poet joking with me that she wanted the t-shirts immediately. Ten minutes later, the store was up. There’s not much of a markup, so don’t feel like you need to purchase swag to support the press… I’d far rather see you subscribe to Inch or purchase the chapbooks as they’re released. (If, however, you cannot bear the thought of another day without Barry the Bull gracing your chest, well, then, purchase away.) And if you were wondering, Barry the Bull got a facelift today, and is now in his final incarnation for a while. He’s a little less fuzzy than he was, and a little less likely to incur the wrath of the copyright police. Yep, he’s now hand-drawn, with some airburshing in Photoshop. And, from here on in, he’s named Barry. That may be news to Bill and Jeremy, who didn’t get cleared on that business decision.

I spent a little time today thinking about the poems of William Meredith. I was leisurely thumbing through Effort at Speech, thinking about the historical placement of those poems. Meredith’s first book was published in 1944, and you can almost trace the second World War developing through the course of the poems. (Effort at Speech is a new and selected, so I didn’t have every poem in the book.) It occurs to me that we can see, in the work of many of his contemporaries, a growing understanding of the severity of the escalating conflict in Europe and how it would scar the world forever.

I wonder if poetry today is reflecting the deepening sense of foreboding that many of us have about our world. I don’t feel like I see it when I read through many poetry journals being published right now. But I suppose that when we look back, fifty years from now, at the poetry that has remained important, we’ll probably see that quite a bit in the early 21st century.

It feels like the time for pretty trees has passed. Forever.

…or until your poetry does!

For all who were wondering, I have begun my pig-birth poem. I’m eager to see if everyone in the Warren Wilson Pig Posse will produce a poem or story that revolves around pigs being born.

Oddly, death metal has been conducive to the process so far.

Stupid firewall. All this time, I have been having trouble syncing the Windows Mobile machine to the home PC, and it turns out that Zone Alarm was blocking the home PC– it read the remote device just fine. Bah!

Reception to the announcement about the press has been awesome since I started sending stuff out about it a few days ago. That’s awesome… I hope people will jump on board.

Inch is a quarterly magazine devoted to tiny poems and tiny fiction. We believe that good things come in small packages, so we focus our eight pages on poems of one to nine lines, or fiction of 750 words or less.

Submission Guidelines

Poetry: We are looking for smart, complete poems one to nine lines in length. Don’t send us a good line or three– send us a complete poem that bites, resonates, or sleeps with giants. Submit one to five poems with a cover letter. You may include more than one poem per page provided that you insert ample space in between. We do not accept previously published work or simultaneous submissions. Submit your work to Inch because it belongs in our magazine, not because you’re desperate to place it somewhere. All rights revert to the author upon publication, though we will occasionally ask if we may reprint poems in our double-sized spectacular issues. Pays three copies. Submissions that include poems longer than nine lines in length will be read and ignored.

Fiction: Flash fiction. Microfiction. Call it what you will; Inch publishes the finest stories of 750 words or less. Submit one to three stories for consideration. Include a cover letter. All rights revert to the author upon publication, though we will occasionally ask if we may reprint fiction in our microfiction bonanza issues. Pays three copies.

Submissions should be addressed to the fiction or poetry editor’s attention. Mail submissions to:

Inch / Bull City Press
1217 Odyssey Dr.
Durham, NC 27713

E-mail submissions are not accepted.

http://inch.bullcitypress.com/

Staring down a future at LEARN NC without Jess here to do the heavy lifting is really, really frightening. I think August might kill me.

This dread– this is the best case against a low-residency MFA. You have to come back from it.

No promises that this blog is coming back, but:

I love Warren Wilson. My residency was transcendent. Again.

Ben called last night and asked if he and Andi could drop by. I got off the phone and thought he must be engaged. I told Ladybug they were coming by. She thought they must be engaged. We chilled champagne. They came by. They were engaged. We drank the champagne. Fucking awesome.

Went to Henry’s Friday night with Ladybug and Capps. This was as much Henry action as I got all of last semester. I liked it. We played badminton. I was horrible. How I yearn for the ping-pong table with Chi by my side.

Ladybug and I have seen V for Vendetta, X-Men 3, and Clerks 2 in the last few months. We’re thinking of seeing Snakes on a Plane. All of this in the theater. This is unheard of. All this time together, it’s like we’re married. I like it. I also like Rosario Dawson. Should I mention that in the same paragraph? It seems salient, since I’m talking about Clerks 2. Kevin Smith is fucking awesome, even if he loves his characters too much to hurt them.

All of my writer friends need blogs and instant messenger. This MySpace shit will not suffice.

I want to do amazing things. Big things. I should finish my assigned vacuuming before thinking about that, though.

Listening to that dog. makes me happy.