Yes indeedy, our long hiatus is over. Big Game is back, with a new website, accessible either through the old URL (http://www.reenhead.com/biggame/biggame.html) or through a new and shiny URL (http://www.big-game-books.com).
Either way, the press is now accepting queries for full-length manuscripts.
Huzzah!
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In honor of Snowmageddon. Speaking of which, the Federal Government is closed. Which means I get to work from home today. Yay!
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I have a little piece up at Open Letters Monthly, as part of their "Bad Books, Good Hooks" feature. Takeaway: I didn't like Caroline Knox's Quaker Guns (actually, I wanted to throw it against the wall, repeatedly), but I find it weirdly compelling anyway.
The fruits of the 3rd Dusie Kollektiv are now available online, including my chapbook Twenty Questions for the Drunken Sailor. Hie thee hence, and revel in its nauticality.
Also -- I've already started receiving emails from people interested in this year's NaPoWriMo! If you're up for the challenge, head over to napowrimo.net and/or email me at napowrimo2010 At gmail Dot com.
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So the DC metro area is in the opening stages of the storm of the century. Snow rhetoric has reached apocalyptic levels -- the grocery stores resemble something out of an anti-communist film and the federal government closed at one o'clock, even though it was basically only raining at that point. Fueling all this?
Weather reports like this. Seriously, I am just relieved this guy didn't pop a vein.
(Of course, glib as I am now, when I wake up tomorrow with three feet of snow on the ground, I will just roll into a ball and gibber for the duration).
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NaPoWriMo 2010 is a ways off yet, but given how large the project has gotten over the past few years, I thought I would try to set up a dedicated website for it, instead of just posting links and information on my blog. So, behold! -- NaPoWriMo.net!
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Here's a question for you, poet folk! Do you more commonly (a) come up with a title to your poem first, and write the poem using the title as a guide or sort of mascot, even though you may later change the title, or (b) write the poem, and only after it is finished, come up with a title?
I used to always title first. I found my thoughts too disjointed unless I gave them a capstone. The titles were the springboard from which I launched.
Then I read an essay by Barbara Guest in which she specifically cautioned against the practice of titling before writing, and very consciously I abandoned initial titles. This made writing harder for me. It forced me to come up with new modes of motivation/direction, and enthusiasm. I also thought my titles were better!
Now, I'm not so sure. Mostly, I leave titles until after I write, but I still sometimes write from the title. What do you do? And what do you think it does for you?
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The Constant Critic is back! Huzzah, I have missed their reviews.
Tarpaulin Sky did an interview with Jessica Smith about Foursquare, in which Jessica mentions Big Game Books. And what is happening with Big Game? Tweaking the new website...there should be a whole new look and announcements in February.
Jessica also has an interesting post up about trying to get work from female poets, and getting bios in particular. I find self-promotion of any kind excruciating, and I'm an f'ing lawyer! I shouldn't have trouble being a loudmouth (but look at that...why is saying to the world, "hello I have some poems I think are good and am hopeful you would enjoy" being a loudmouth?). But I leave it up to Jeff to annoy me into doing even the least bit of "hey I got your poems right here!"-type stuff. I end up having to make the calculus of which is more uncomfortable, self-promotion or living with someone who is hounding you about your self-promotion. Maybe there should be grants to give all female poets secretaries (in the very very old fashioned sense of "some bright young gentleperson who thinks you are great and does nothing but see to your correspondence and will probably go on to hold a seat in parliament")...the presence of such a sprightly familiar might lessen the overwhelming and oppressive feelings that accompany putting yourself and your work out there.
Finally, I got a God Damsel in the mail! It is strange to see all the poems together: I have been reading individual poems from the series for a long time, particularly whenever Reb would put selections on her blog, but now the whole arc is apparent. I still am sad about the death of Woe-Dodo, though. I know I shouldn't be, but still.
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Dan Brady of Barrelhouse came by the In Your Ear reading on Sunday, and recorded the readings using his magical Flip camera. You, the internet-based public, can now experience readings by Chris Mason and Matvei Yankelevich, via that wondrous platform, YouTube. Dan hopes to record future In Your Ear readings, and make them available on YouTube as well. Huzzah!
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Tomorrow! The In Your Ear reading series will proudly present:
CHRIS MASON
&
MATVEI YANKELEVICH
@ District of Columbia Arts Center
at 3 p.m.
Admission is $5.00.
District of Columbia Arts Center is located at 2438 18th Street NW in Adams
Morgan, Washington, DC, between the Dupont Circle and Woodley Park metro
stations. For directions, see the DCAC web site at
http://www.dcartscenter.org/plan_location.htm
Be there or be a regularly sided parallelogram.
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This is one of my grandmother's favorite phrases, and I found it nearly as confusing as a child as my dad's constant refrain of "You make a better door than a window." (Growing up in a home with sliding glass doors made that phrase perfectly incomprehensible...our doors were windows).
But yesterday I received my contributor's copy of the second issue of Handsome, the journal of Black Ocean Press, and well, it is handsome indeed! And now available to all and sundry. Hie thee hence and discover the veritable treasure trove of poems that awaits!
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Jeff's birthday is Sunday, and in his honor, I have fulfilled one of his lexicographical dreams: ownership of the 20-volume OED.
Behold!
The two-volume shorter OED just wasn't cutting it anymore. The new, bigger version arrived on Wednesday, and we spent that evening carefully prizing the volumes out of six separate boxes, freeing them from shinkwrap, and finding out that, say, the definition of the word "open" runs to 25 pages, and that the phrase "to ride a horse foaled of an acorn" means to be hanged from a gallows. Also that the definition of the word "pastrami" is illustrated by a letter from Groucho Marx in which he refers to someone as "the demon pastrami prince."
Yesterday, we went to the Hoyas-Seton Hall basketballgame, and as soon we got home, Jeff was already busily engaged in looking up more words in the OED. I left him snapping glamor shots of it, such as the one that adorns this post.
It is the gift that keeps on giving.
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From the Dep't of General Awesomeness, Jessica Smith and a collaborator, Jeannie Hoag, have created a digital archive of the first two volumes of Foursquare. This is something I need to do with the tinysides (first, I need a scanner. And maybe an intern).
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