I have, over the last few months, given up on being a regular blogger because my carpal tunnel has been inflamed pretty much all of the time.  Which is, I guess, OK, since it forces me to limit the amount of time I spend on the computer.  It got a good two-week rest just recently, which is why I’m feeling good enough to poke into this blog and provide you with this list of potential topics for conversation.  Should you see me on the street, in a bar, or in a local department store, these topics would make for spirited chat, if you’re interested in chatting mostly about me.

List of Potential Topics for Conversation, Based Upon My Whereabouts and Interesting Experiences From the Past Few Months

• Warren Wilson MFA July 2009 graduation (subtopics here include: Matthew Olzmann who is cooler than you are, things Tua’s students say to her, joining Mike Puican’s family for an afternoon)
• Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference 2009 (subtopics here include: waiting tables, my reaction to a NYT kill piece, Bread Loaf brain loss, workshop leader Arthur Sze and fellow Stephanie Brown, some of the best poems about pigs I have ever read, BLARS, my visit to the laundry room, Voltron and my love of the scholars, Kara Candito’s Taste of Cherry, Brigit Pegeen Kelly giving a reading that may actually have killed someone because it was so good, the Dank Tank, Weather Walrus, my roommate Matthew Olzmann who is cooler than you are)
• NC state budget crisis
• Warren Wilson MFA Alumni Residency at Mount Holyoke College (potential subtopics include: panel on subject matter with Robin Black and Tracy Winn, an amazing welcome, staying in a dorm that is waaaaay nicer than my home, a future motion picture)
• the night Chelsea showed up on our porch
• El Bandito’s new cat and its potential names (potential subtopics include: the pros & cons of “Maurice,” my temptation to bring forward the name “Matthew Olzmann”)
• recent and upcoming publications (potential subtopics include: magazines listed on the “About” page of this web site which has been recently updated)
• arm removal (partial)
• going to Los Angeles (potential subtopics include: Dodgers, Angels, Frank Lloyd Wright, convergences of friends)
• new book from Bull City Press — State Street by Katie Bowler
• editorial changes at Inch, including exciting upcoming guest editors

Also, a reminder: if you’re still coming to this page, one of the following is true: I love you dearly, you are a spam robot, or it’s OK to stalk me from afar but please do not come to my home.

I kind of wish my name was Buddy. Then, whenever anyone addressed me, they’d be saying something really friendly like “Hey, Buddy.”

Started reading comics again this weekend, beginning Mike Carey’s Lucifer. I’m not yet through the first trade paperback (I have the first ten on my shelf), and I’m underwhelmed. It’s a little too intentionally oblique and arcane for me… Lucifer seems to just be able to do whatever he wants when he wants to. Which is cool, y’know, since he’s supernatural, but not too exciting for the reader. The joy of Superman or Batman is that the readers know their limits and can then enjoy how they persevere or get creative in tough situations. Lucifer doesn’t seem to have limits at the outset… so, it’s kind of blah thus far.

All my peeps are up at residency. How lucky for them. Still, being graduated has its benefits; for example, when I came home from work, I played Xbox for an hour and a half. This was not possible during grad school. I like to think that each head that I shoot is a poem I could have written. Take that!

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that Robin Black was in this month’s One Story (which, as you know, is the greatest magazine being published today, and I say that knowing full-well that I am, as a result, admitting that the little magazine I publish, Inch, is not the greatest magazine being published today, though I am certain we are still in the top seven).  It looks like I wasn’t the only one to take notice– Robin gets a shout-out from Esquire this month for her story.

I hadn’t looked at Esquire in… well, maybe ever… but finding that link also led me to Esquire’s napkin fiction, in which authors send contributions on a napkin.  (Good stuff, but hardly a match for Michael McFee’s The Napkin Manuscripts.)  That, in turn, to this beautiful piece on last lines by another writer whose name crops up in this space every so often: Sarah Manguso.  Read.  Perhaps you will be left breathless.

Here’s a milestone passed:  On Monday night, I mailed in my final packet for my MFA program.  I’m not done yet, oh no, but the deadlines I still have in front of me will start falling like dominoes: evaluation next week, thesis the following week, writing a class and doing thesis reviews in June, residency (including class and thesis interviews) in July.  But I’m basically done with reading and writing for school.  Now I’m reading and writing for the rest of my life.  That’s kind of cool.  I have yet to select the first book I will read solely for my own enjoyment.

I spent some of the weekend working on some entries for Lauren Turner’s bestiary– check out some of her collages. She’ll have her wares (whoa, easy there, perv-man, not those wares) for sale Sunday at RebusFest (301 N. Kinsey St. in Raleigh).  Go.  Check out the art.  Here’s a sample:

Matthea Harvey, in her Poetry Foundation interview with Jeannine Hall Gailey, pretty much summed up why I love working on Inch:

When something is tiny, maybe the little arrows of heartbreak penetrate more easily—slip in through a tear duct or a pore.

Harvey has always seemed the poetic equivalent of Matthew Barney– you can see the mechanical and pop-cultural influences roiling beneath the surface but the finished product is an otherwordly beauty that cannot be captured simply in (or on) those terms.

This from a friend today. Sarah Dessen is terrific; if you’re in the area, this is worth going to.

*Sarah Dessen*, author of young adult books, will be the featured presenter at the 2008 Steinfirst Lecture on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Hosted by the School of Information and Library Science, the lecture will take place on Saturday, Apr. 5, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. at the Hanes Art Auditorium. A book signing and reception will follow the lecture. For more information about the event go to http://sils.unc.edu/news/releases/2007/12_steinfirst.htm

Dessen is a popular author of young adult books such as: Just Listen, Dreamland and Someone Like You. Several of her novels are award winning, and Just Listen was on the New York Times Bestseller List for 17 weeks.

Sarah Dessen grew up in Chapel Hill, NC and attended UNC at Chapel Hill, graduating with highest honors in Creative Writing. She is the author of several novels, including Someone Like You and The Truth About Forever. A motion picture based on her first two books, entitled How to Deal, was released in 2003. For more information about the author, go to her Web site at: www.sarahdessen.com

I’m so unfaithful to you, book.  I lay around with you all night, nowhere to go, nothing else which needed doing.  I took you in the bathtub and then dragged you back to bed, barely able to towel myself off before I opened you again.  I could barely keep myself in the moment of each page, so eager to discover everything about you.  I practically had my mouth around your syntax, saying it with you, until finally I reached the last page, and lingered only a moment before putting you down.  You’re still on the pillow but I’m up, walking around: a drink of water, a stretch, a walk around the house, feeding the cats.  I’ll think about you the rest of the night, sleep with the memory of you, but tomorrow, I will open up the next book and begin reading.  We spend a week together, maybe two, and then I move on to the next thing, not in spite of you, dear book, never in spite of you: because reading you brought such pleasure, and later served only to remind me that there are so many books I’ve yet to read.

I troll Metafilter every so often, looking for content for Instructify. Today’s been a neat day, because it seems more people than normal are looking for stories and poems they remember. Take a look.

• What’s the name of this story about a president beheading his ministers? It might have been in Spanish.
• Can you help me find a poem, published in the NY Times Book Review 20 years ago, about a baseball pitcher?
• Looking for a poem I read about a domestic frustration and a housewife snapping after toiling away in quiet desperation.
• Please help me locate a collection of Russian/Eastern Bloc short stories. One concerns a snowman and the other is a reflection on life while falling out of a window to one’s death.

The following bullet points consist of links you should follow and the context for following them.

• A parody of “The Office,” created to make you miss the striking writers even more. My friend Charlie directs, my friend Anthony stars.
• My little magazine gets a mention in the News & Observer’s holiday gift guide.
• I called American Gangster “fair.” Creighton liked it a lot better. Metacritic says 76. (Creighton, notice that Michael Collins got the higher ranking.)
• Pinksy gives some love to Van Jordan’s terrific Quantum Lyrics.
• My 14-year-old brother is now allowing me to stalk him via Twitter.
• I felt the need to end this short list with a lolcat.

Have you seen Reign Over Me? Most of the sniping I heard about this movie revolved around Adam Sandler in a dramatic role, blah blah. What I couldn’t figure out was how anyone could possibly write a script in which a supposedly-competent psychiatrists acts the way Liv Tyler’s character does. Good Lord, Hollywood.

With a week of relative inactivity on this blog, it seems like a good time to use the patented Scott Jennings Bullet-Point Update. (A link is provided in every bullet point because Jennings once fussed at me for linking too damn much.)

• I’ve got three poems up at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature– I have been remiss in not mentioning this earlier, not because my work is superlative, but because poetry editor Helen Losse has worked really hard to find a series of representative Southern voices that’s broad and varied. Jilly Dybka and Jessie Carty are also in this issue, as is Evie Shockley, whose book a half-red sea I just picked up.
• Ladybug and I spent a couple days in Denver for Thanksgiving. On the return flight, I became enthralled by Daniel Wallace’s new novel, Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician. I’m a sucker for novels about magic. I’m a sucker for Daniel Wallace novels. You can see how I might have had trouble putting this book down.
• Looks like UNC’s turn at Festival of the Book is not going to happen. That’s a let-down.
• Worksheets are here for the winter residency at Warren Wilson. I like the anticipation before the residency– reading the faculty introductory statements, making charts and graphs of how much I would pay (over and above the cost of tuition) to work with each faculty member were bribes acceptable, volunteering to be a buddy for a new student, devouring the assigned bookshop reading and then procrastinating on the annotation.
• I’ve crossed over to the dark side for the bookshop this residency– my first choice was Hemingway’s In Our Time. My right side feels all tingly with guilt, since I’m entering my last semester in the program and this is no way to get focused on the task at hand. My left side feels all tingly with glee, hopeful that I’ll get to hear the fictionistas dissect my favorite Hemingway story (or this PDF’ed one, or this one, or”The Battler,” which I can’t easily find online). I’m not planning to devote any significant portion of my life to fiction but this should be a three-day crash course in awesome short fiction, should I ever make new plans.
• I bought a book by Jenny Factor because I liked the author’s name and the cover. I recently reactivated my City of Heroes account to play around for a couple weeks before I go back to school, so the super-hero-ness of the name struck me. As it turns out , the few poems I’ve read so far are quite good. Score!

Iron Scav 10 was a rousing success… with only one minor complication. Team What the Junk won by a tight margin against Team Don’t Tase Me Bro, who took home the trophy for most immoral picture. Team FAT took the honors for best pic, which was Marielle in a freezer, an astonishing shot…

40 lines tonight… well more than the 15 or 16 I usually crap out at during po-grind months. Plus, Andie MacDowell makes an appearance in tonight’s poem. You know it’s good when Andie MacDowell is in it.

Oh, wait, that’s not true.

Tomorrow, planning for Iron Scav 10 (why haven’t you formed a team yet?), writing poem #3 (or #34, depending on how you look at it), and nighttime goofing off with Bryan King. I’m motivated to read some more of David Allen’s Getting Things Done; I can see why there are cults around this book. I feel myself becoming a cultist. I’ll probably also begin re-reading In Our Time for bookshop. I did the unspeakable… I crossed over to fiction for a bookshop. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to discuss the book that has my favorite story in it. (Hilarious: there’s a SparkNotes page for “A Very Short Story,” which is almost as long as the story itself.)

Harry Potter books spawned cults, too. I wonder how many people were David Allen for Halloween?

Andie MacDowell was in Hudson Hawk. It was one of the few movies that was made better by her presence. (It’s this mack truck of awful which somehow veers across four lanes of suck, crashes through the median, and ends up on the really enjoyable side of the highway.) I wonder how many people were Andie MacDowell for Halloween?

Someone broke into Ladybug’s car last night. Well, not broke in so much as went in, since she left it unlocked. They opened the glove box and tossed some stuff around, and then opened the trunk. But they didn’t take anything, since there wasn’t much of value. It’s hard to whine when nothing’s missing and nothing’s damaged, but it’s just never fun to wake up to a reminder that your world just isn’t as safe as you would like to believe.

Oddly enough, I had terrible trouble going to sleep last night; I kept hearing the cats rumble about and thinking that someone was in the house. I would wake up every couple minutes before I drifted off for good, convinced that when I opened my eyes, I was going to see a human form in the doorway. I am not sure what a panic attack feels like, but I’m guessing that’s pretty close. (My pulse has been well above normal for about two weeks straight, I think due to stress.) I had nightmares most of the night that were based on that initial paranoia…

After Ladybug roused me in the morning and I drifted back to sleep, I continued to have nightmares, but these were actually based on the lowest form of po-gossip. It was still sort of terrifying… people were physically threatening me about keeping their secrets and giving up others. And it was all the juvenile who-kissed-who kind of stuff that makes for interesting conversation but isn’t useful or important in any way. I woke up fairly convinced that I don’t want to know anything about anyone ever again.

Still, it’s nice to go from night terrors to po-terrors, the latter of which is the lesser. I did feel like my mental load was lighter for much of the day. Whatever was bothering me, I think (I hope) it worked itself out of my system.

DHL tried to deliver a package today. I’m guessing it was a packet. So, I’ve signed. Maybe it will be waiting when I come home tomorrow.

Tonight, I have treated myself to luxurious sloth, downloading some songs from music blogs (to give you an idea of the quality, the best was Kix’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes”… for serious) and shredding months worth of bills and bank statements and stuff.I had the shredder on for a good half-hour solid.

One Story arrived today and I still hadn’t read the last one. I’ll remedy that before the end of the night.

Again? Furreals?

Cortazar’s Cronopios y Famas was a terrific, odd read. Sadly, my sixth edition from New Directions has page 69 reprinted on page 71, and so I’m missing a page that begins one of the stories in the baffling third section.

If you don’t have this book, get it and read the second chapter. Immediately. “The Tiger Lodgers” is brilliant, and the final story in “Unusual Occupations” is flat-out genius.

This sounds like hyperbole.

Bedtime. Hyperbolic dreams await.

(I won’t get a day off to write part of my essay tomorrow after all. Maybe Thursday. Boo.)

I know, you often think to yourself: “what is in Ross White’s mailbox today?” Well, I can answer that question for you.

First up, the new record by They Might Be Giants, entitled The Else. I ordered it off of their web site a few days ago, because they sent a note saying that there was a limited-edition EP included with the album. kept buying things from their web site is a Catch-22; the prices are affordable, but the shipping is extreme. Did I really need for this album to arrive from UPS? Not really. I would’ve been just as happy had it arrived in five to nine business days.

Next, two books from Amazon. One is entitled Poetic Closure: a Study of How Poems End by Barbara Herrnstein Smith. in particular looking for to the chapter on repetition. The other book is full of what looks like micro fiction — Julio Cortazar, Cronopios y Famas. All I really want to you about that book is that saying it into my voice recognition software has made me decide that I will never want to speak Spanish words to this program again.

Horse Less Press was good enough to send me Abraham Lincoln’s Death Scene, a chapbook by Zachary Schomburg. Granted, I sent them five dollars to do so, but still, it was good of them to send it. I finished reading about half of this book, and the verdict is still out. kept or is the phrase, “the jury is still out”? I can never remember. Something is still out there. It is an opinion.

Extras and Weeds? All in the same night? Heavenly!

I’m in Asheville today, staying in the same hotel that Ladybug and I like to stay in when she comes to visit me at Warren Wilson. The one with the whirlpool tub, yes. I’m planning to head to campus tomorrow or Wednesday to poke through the library, yes I am. I just sent a long e-mail in response to some questions from my new buddy, who, as near as I can tell from e-mail and our one live meeting, is cooler than your new buddy, blog readers.

This follows a busy weekend in which I spent more time traveling than not traveling, and did not actually get any reading done. I did, however, listen to John Hodgman’s audiobook The Areas of My Expertise. I had never listened to an audiobook before. I found the experience pleasant enough, but I do not wish to listen to further audiobooks, unless they are read by John Hodgman. I think To Kill a Mockingbird would sound very good in his voice. Or Love in the Time of Cholera. But not Dracula.

This installation came to UNC’s Ackland Art Museum in 2003 or 2004, and it moved me in the most severe way. I couldn’t tell you why, but it did. I think about it all the time.

Which makes this all the more tempting.