Reading in Olympia

Lohmann Poetry Prize Reading

Three winners have been announced for the 7th annual Jeanne Lohmann Poetry prize sponsored and judged by Jeanne’s poetry friends in California, and facilitated by OPN. The winners (with their hometowns and poems) are Brian Desmond (University Place, Bicycles), Trina Burke (Seattle, Confinement in a Strange Hour), and Casey Fuller (Olympia, Why Are You People So Nice?). Also, contest sponsor Valerie Berry, will be in town "to say a word or two about each winning poem..., what caught the eye/ear/imagination." Jeanne Lohmann is scheduled to read as well. June 16, 2010, 6:30 PM at Traditions Fair Trade Cafe & World Folk Art, Olympia WA

Someone at work alerted me to this crazypants new fangled program available on the interwebs called Mendeley. It allows you to cross reference and log academic articles and generate citations. Thought you should know.

If Spam Email was a Freshman Composition Essay, What Would I Say?

I sincerely ask for forgiveness for I know this may seem like a complete intrusion to your privacy but right about now this is my best option of communication. This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it as frivolous could come into your mind; but please consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility.

Dear L. Y.,

Your introduction demonstrates strong pathos, appealing directly to the reader with emotional language. Good job here. However, in revision please direct your attention to eliminating redundancy and consider leading with more concrete information. What is the purpose for you writing to your audience? Could you perhaps lead with a narrative; tell us a little story about where you came from, where you’re going. How am I involved, exactly?

This letter must surprise you because we have never meet before neither in person nor by correspondence, but I believe that it takes just one day to meet or know someone either physically or through correspondence.

I’m sorry—say what? Are you coming on to me? Know thy audience and write accordingly.

I got your contact through my personal search, you were revealed as being quite astute in private entrepreneurship, and one has no doubt in your ability to handle a financial business transaction.

While your audience will no doubt appreciate the lengths you went to personally investigate their background and interests (long walks on the beach, curling up with a fine book), you are rambling and I am suspicious something is up. By now, I don’t plan on listening to you because you’ve spent so much time seeking my trust and hoping I have some blind faith to throw around. I’m on to you!

I am L.Y. a transfer supervisor operations in investment section in Bank of China Ltd. Secretariat of the BOCHK Charitable Foundation 13/F. Bank of China Tower , 1 Garden Road , Hong Kong I have an obscured business suggestion for you.

Wait—did you just say “obscured business suggestion”? You don’t mean “obscure” by any chance, do you? Nevertheless, I like that the suggestion is obscured. That is, you’re finally admitting that what you’ll be asking me is no damn good and I’d be a fool to continue. Go on.

Before the U.S and Iraqi war our client General Mohammed Jassim Ali who work with the Iraqi forces and also business man made a numbered fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of (I will disclose amount upon your reply) in my branch.

Weigh the pros and cons of taunting your reader with teasers. Will you release this information later in your email? If you introduce a gun to act I, will it go off by act III? You risk alienating your reader (again, mind you) by asking them to follow through to learn more information. Is this assignment not to be informative rather than coy?

Upon maturity several notices was sent to him, even early in the war, again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him, We later find out that General Mohammed Jassim Ali and his family had been killed during the war in a bomb blast that hit their home.

After further investigation it was also discovered that General Mohammed Jassim Ali did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank. So, (I will disclose amount upon your reply) is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me most is that, according to the to the laws of my country at the expiration 3 years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the funds.

Against this backdrop, my suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to General Mohammed Jassim Ali so that you will be able to receive his funds. I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful.
I have contacted an attorney who will prepare the legal documents that will back you up as the next of kin to General Mohammed Jassim Ali, all what is required from you at this stage is for you to provide me with your Full Names, private phone number and Address so that the attorney can commence his job.

Could I give you my public phone number (?) and we can call it a day?

After you have been made the next of kin, the attorney will also fill in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favor for the transfer of the funds to an account that will be provided by you with my guidance. There is no risk involved at all in the matter as we are going adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents.

Please consider opting for a topic change and re-writing your persuasive essay all together to fit the requirements of the genre. You mention a legalized method. This makes me think of the often touched upon subject of marijuana legalization, legalization of drinking for 18 year olds, legalized driving when you’re 11, things of that nature. Pursue any of the above topics in favor of the current one, please.

Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue. Once the funds have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall discuss the percentage issue on your reply.

Believe me, there’s nothing nomination worthy about my bank account. Know thy audience. Have I said that already?

If you are interested please send me your full names and current residential address, and I will prefer you to reach me on my private and secure email address below and finally after that I shall provide you with more details of this operation.

If you tweet: poems

From the most recent Lost Roads newsletter:

Lost Roads' Editor, Susan Scarlata, is in the midst of "Tweeting" an entire book of poems. This experiment with dissemination started in January and will continue until the entire manuscript has been posted and sent out in to the world. If you are interested in following search SusanScarlata on Twitter and get a few lines of poetry added to your day, and an entire poem every three to four. This manuscript, entitled "Reaching Here," considers potential confluences of ancient rituals and current technologies.

Laura Palmer's Mom Writes Poetry

Who knew?

Montana Represents at Dancing Girl Press

The DGP 2010 lineup of chapbooks is out and the Montana kids are out in force.

Huzzah to Brandon Shimoda for "Ship-On-Land," written with Julia Cohen!

Mazel tov to Lindsay Bland, throwing down "Between the Devil and the Deep" in the Spring!

...and then, in the fall, there's "Great America" by yours truly.

2010, I love you already!

Slush: Not A Pleasing Fruity Drink

The Wall Street Journal released this article about how getting read (nevermind published) from the slushpile has reached astronomically difficult proportions. For example, The Paris Review, publishes one solicited story a year, making the odds .o08%. So, do we draw up the noose, pile up the back issues, and jump?

By way of response, I would like to say that even today, in this supposed dearth, new writers get noticed. Who ever said writing was easy? People seem to cling to these glory days when the short story market paid the bills. And when was that? And how long, in the grand scheme of writing and publishing, did that era last?

Technology has made multiple submissions easy for the writer. Writers don't have to painstakingly type manuscripts, and then wait for their return. Now they can fire multiple copies off and carpet bomb if they like. Editors, lest they wind up drowned in sheafs of paper, have had to create lines of multiple defense. Having read for a lit mag, I don't blame them.

No, you can't mail your newly minted book off to Random House and expect a response, but if you are writing and submitting good work, publication is not dreaming the impossible dream. In the past three years Montana MFAers (as in, my fellow classmates) have cracked some tough markets, including The Colorado Review, The North American Review, The Black Warrior Review, The Boston Review, McSweeney's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Mid-American Review, and The Gettysburg Review. Books by former grads (that seems to take a few more years) have been published.

A quick look at The Paris Review told me this pub is not for the emerging artist. This month's issue (for example) has work by Robert Haas and Aimee Bender. Furthermore, I don't believe it's the responsibility of every lit mag to focus on emerging writers. It's not as if Aimee Bender and Robert Haas are spamming American.

Still, I'm glad for the lit mags that give us newbies a chance. Allow me to say, thanks. And if you are an emerging writer, consider supporting a mag that supports us.

Kim Addonizio at Benaroya Hall

Thanks to po-friend Maggie, I got a free ticket to see Kim Addonizio and Gary Lilley read last night at Benaroya Hall here in Seattle.

She played harmonica. I found this video on YouTube that features one of the pieces she played last night. The video itself is from a reading at the Folger Library in D.C. Of note, her rad jacket in the video is the same one she wore last night. I covet.

P is for Publication!

I have a book review in the latest edition of Brevity. For those unfamiliar, Brevity is an online lit mag dedicated to "concise nonfiction," meaning less than 750 words. "Over the past year Brevity has averaged 6,000 visitors per month, or 24,000 visitors per issue," (from the website). And it's free!

So get with it. Here's a link to my favorite from this issue.

Nanos

On images

While I attempt to reconcile my day job--working in the department of chemistry at a research university--with wanting to write, I find artful endeavors in unlikely places. So, naturally, I have to pause what I'm doing and savor. Then blog about it.

Nanotechnology is all the rage in the material sciences right about now. Chemists enjoy working on a scale undetectable by just a human being. Equipment--marvels of technology, sure-- have removed the hands of a person away from the medium of the human body and made the humans' hands useful for knobs and computers to control the equipment. These people use bright & shiny equipment, and end up working at the cellular level with contrast agents & other cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. I get to see the equipment and see the writing in proposals. The narratives surrounding cancer research is a little awe-inspiring and a lot confusing.

In this image library, you can see these neat-o images. While looking at these images without the research background to understand can be unnerving--can I really know the exact significance and effort poured into making these by the aid of a giant microscope?--it makes a new kind of art gallery.

On language

In animal testing parlance to euthanize a rodent is to "sacrifice" it.

On text

If you can find anyone more concerned for formatting than the federal government, I'd like to know.

Does cancer research and being caught up in this department make me feel a little of this lazy bastardism? Yes, I fear, sometimes. Then this means I'm not trying hard enough.

Dispatch from Ohio

• It's winter quarter, and I'm taking nonfiction workshop which is the most awesomest workshop ever. (Hi Dinty!) Here's a link to a fun Gmap inspired essay by my prof.
  
• Professor Dinty Moore, two other nonfiction cohorts and I are also developing a 19th Century American Essay course. This has been interesting, as nonfiction had yet to be formally invented. Perhaps this creation of a specialty qualifies us to be academics. Lesson One: all this past decade fracas over honesty in nonfiction would have been considered a non-issue back in the day.
  
• I'm trying out a new strict persona as comp instructor this term. I make students read the textbook. I lecture from the textbook. Texting = Death. I don't take late work. DO WHAT I SAY YOUNGUNS. I wear black-rimmed glasses even though I have 20/20 vision and have affixed extra cat hair to my cableknit L.L. Bean cardigan.
  
• OU is hiring a Nonfiction professor, and all the interviewees are coming to visit over the next few weeks. I will not be gossiping online about this process, however, as that would be unprofessional (Hi Dinty!). The important thing to remember is that there will be luncheons and colloquia. At last, Latin.
  

Exposition is a very windexed window.

This is why poetry is not exposition.