The Trivedi Chronicles

Again, In Absence of a Real Post

2009-07-06T22:17:00.003-05:00

Michael Penn's solo album March is quite fantastic. The main single off of it, "No Myth" was a pretty decent hit for Sean Penn's brother and it's a shame he's never quite had the same level of success again. "No Myth" though, has that excellent pop sensibility and a fantastic hook.

I admit the song is a bit schmaltzy, but I don't feel like it has aged much. In fact, a lot of the alternative movement of the 90s seems to be in this vein. And he's playing a 12 string. Can't beat it.

Lily Allen

2009-07-05T14:35:00.001-05:00

Jennifer said this song/video reminded her of my poems.

Thanks, I think?

Poems by Aziz Shakir-Tash in eXchanges

2009-06-26T20:03:00.002-05:00

Some poems I helped with back in Fall of 2007.

Notes

2009-06-04T12:00:00.002-05:00

1. That Andy Richter is back with Conan O'Brien as he begins hosting The Tonight Show is fantastic. I miss the old days and was very glad to see them do a new version of "In the Year 2000," retitled as (you guessed it) "In the Year 3000." I was laughing so hard I was crying, and a little weepy too at the prospect of both guy being back together. If you haven't seen Conan yet, he's quite good and not "Late Night" Conan. He's prepared to take on the middle-aged people that used to watch Leno, who, of course, is much less funny than Conan.

2. If you're so inclined, pick up or download (which you can do legally) The Decemberists' new album, The Hazards of Love. It's a concept album, but more than that, it's really goddamn good. It's a bit rough in patches in terms of theme, but if that bothers you, I'm not sure how to help you. Like all concept albums, there are songs that have been hammered into the round hole, but the more I listen to the songs, the more I feel like they are together.

3. Moving preparations are coming along. I'm so excited about starting school that I can hardly express it in any available form.

Old/New Link

2009-05-26T16:15:00.003-05:00

A link I should have added a while back:

Blake Butler's blog has fascinated me for a while and I kept meaning to add it but never got around to it. Blake not only is from Atlanta, but one of his high school friends is one of my college friends. Small world, really.

I think I recall Blake's foot from a photo on Bo's wall.

Anyways, check out Blake's blog in this post and over to the left.

Note

2009-05-23T21:47:00.004-05:00

I'm alive, just have nothing terribly good to write about of late. Still working on "Sound/Chest." Planning a move to Providence at the end of July. Took a trip there last week and had a blast.

Oh, and Jennifer's a Mets fan. I feel betrayed, but at least she's kind of getting into baseball.

My fantasy team sucks again.

Sold a bunch of books and bought pants.

Thinking about buying some cheap guitar pedals from Danelectro- like $12 a pop. They seem to sound good and I don't do a lot of "stomping."

Our place in Providence is out of our price range but happily worth it. It's beautiful and the landlord is a classy guy, much like our current landlord, Kermit. We've had some luck, to say the least.

Jennifer's sister Annie is graduating from high school this coming week. She's heading to Syracuse. My wife and I will be within 5 hours of each of her sisters. And Cooperstown. And Waterbury, VT, home of Ben and Jerry's. There's a factory tour.

I'm thinking about writing a poem for an event. It's a good choice in terms of "events," but I feel strange that my mind is wandering towards it. Fortunately, when asked initially, I said I wouldn't write something, but rather find something to read. It will be a happy surprise for the event planners, no doubt.

I'm happy that Keith Waldrop is teaching the first workshop next Fall. It was an incredible honor meeting him and his wife of so many years, Rosmarie. She spent a lot of time with us at a reading while in Providence and she was so kind.

The other class I'm thinking of taking is on Modernism in the English department. It's being taught by Mutlu Blasing and I've read some great essays from her. She has a book on form and politics in poetry. Sounds right up the alley I was heading in the Nowak essay.

My last day of work at Media Services is July 16.

I've been in a Leonard Cohen mood lately, not quite a "Leonard Cohen afterworld," though.

Mark Nowak's Iowa City/Lucas Iowa Visits

2009-04-20T18:25:00.001-05:00

If you're a local person, Mark Nowak is reading at Prairie Lights on Friday night at 7pm and if you're a slightly less local person, he'll be in Lucas, Iowa at the Coal Mining Labor Museum on Saturday.

Should be a fun time for all.

Ten Years Since

2009-04-20T07:00:00.002-05:00

It's strange to think that it has already been ten years since the Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999. I was in high school then, and there was a wave of panic that swept through the school. Mostly because this guy, Zach, and his friends, also wore trench coats, a recognized fashion aesthetic at the time as a result of Harris and Klebold's rampage.

Zach, of course, was a perfectly normal high school student who everyone knew was a good guy who was demonized by the school administration and his fellow students for being in the "Trench Coat Mafia." We know now, of course, that Harris and Klebold weren't just dudes in trench coats or in a mafia or gang, but simply two unstable students who took what they believed to be revenge on their fellow students and teachers. If their plan had worked out, apparently parents and service workers arriving at the school would have been met by bombs set in Harris and Klebold's cars. Fortunately, it seems as though Harris' bomb-making skills were terrible, which is really no consolation at all.

It's strange to think back now- ten years on- that Columbine is still a pretty crucial moment in the lives of anyone around my age. 9/11 obviously had it's impact, but to be in high school at the time another high school went through something like that was more personal and had a deeper impact, and to some extent, still does. Perhaps it's that 9/11 became such a Right wing clusterf**k that we were somehow desensitized to the images, but still the idea of two students roaming through their cafeteria chills me.

There are, and already were, other school shootings before April 20, 1999, and I have no doubt that those had an impact on people as strongly as Columbine. But there's something interesting in our generation, I feel: people our age were responsible not only for that massacre, but the other major massacre at Virginia Tech back in April of 2007. April isn't the cruelest month for nothing, it seems, and yet somehow I feel odd that there's such a stigma on my violent generation- it's daunting really.

And what Harris, Klebold, and Cho seem to have in common is some desire to see pain in others for the pain they themselves felt, a pain which seems to have either gone ignored or was so far buried that there was no chance to help out. In Harris' case, it seems he had sociopathic tendencies that were unknown at the time. He was apparently charming- something he could turn on and off. Something he could control within himself to pass as "normal," it turns out.

There was such a rush of panic that went through my high school, my county, and my age. Everybody was suspect. Everybody tried to be nice to everybody else because if you weren't, that person could show up the next day with a gun and blow their school away. If you wore a trench coat, you were apparently a part of a nationwide gang bent on destruction and watching the world burn. If you seemed like you weren't popular, you were about to kill everyone.

Of course most of this is untrue. Zach, as far as I'm aware, is alive and well and never harmed anyone other than the things we generally do to each other in terms of break up and break downs. We as Americans are quite reactionary and quick to find blame and fault, which is exactly what we have done after every single Fox News bulletin and CNN Breaking News signal. Somehow, I feel it is this reaction that leads to more violence than the video games and music that everyone blamed right after Columbine.

I don't know. It's an odd thing to think back on, at least.

My First Inkling of Liking Anything by Robert Frost

2009-04-16T15:28:00.006-05:00

I've pretty much ignored Robert Frost since I first read the standard "The Road Not Taken" back in middle and high schools. For years now, I thought it was because Robert Frost sucked- he had some old school vision of poetry (which he might still) and it was all landscapes and personal freedom crap. Some kind of American lifestyle that was exemplified in his poetry that has led him to being so revered by the pezzonovante.

There is something I still find kind of old school in his style and use of language- there's little attempt, at least in my initial reading, of trying to do anything different with poems and language. It's the same crap- David even says they read it in a Romanticism class so they could talk about HOW to read a poem- can you imagine??

But today- perhaps somewhere in the last few days, really, I heard something that has stuck with me. And while I realized it was Frost, I, as always, ignored it. However, like some kind of parasite, it has been on my mind all day, which is why I'm writing this post.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep

The words and rhythm struck me in a way that I generally don't take note of. I generally find rhythm is yet another construct and a method by which to sort of fit language into a space, rather than allowing language to expand of its own volition. There's a burst at each iamb:

The WOODS are LOVE-ly, DARK and DEEP

Shakespeare's iambs don't burst for me- and as I said, I normally would ignore such a thing, but today, the rhythm of this line has been dragging me along with it. I'm caught on each stressed syllable in a way that's quite new to me.

And then the text itself: there's something deliciously morbid and, I would argue, grotesque about it. "The woods are lovely"- ok, yeah- trees and nature are nice (something that's bothered me about Frost anyways...) "dark and deep"- whoa! These aren't just pretty woods that seem to extend beyond sight- there is something sinister afoot. I've read some things today on this line and suicide, and I am totally buying it: there's something enticing about the darkness of these woods- something that is engaging and tempting in them that is beyond a general enjoyment of nature. There's something lonely out there, almost- a morbid wood, really.

What really gets me about the rhythm and the words is that it fall apart to me in the next line:

But I have promises to keep

"Promises" kills the rhythm dead- breaks it into pieces. It seems impossible to read the line without the rhythm falling apart before your eyes and suddenly clearing the dream-like vision of suicide out: the narrator has responsibilities to get back to, and as lovely as death sounds for him, he knows now is not the time.

NB: Rereading it now, I might be wrong on this point and "pro/mi/ses" may function like the rest of the poem- but I like my reading better :)

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is luring you in along with the narrator- the rhythm relatively consistent up until the "promises" line (or beyond, I guess...) and I believe the interesting thing about the poem is just how it does that and how it turns what seems like into an natural aesthetic piece and creates a nearly 90s Goth tone.

Reading the U Illinois Modern American Poetry page, Jeffrey Myers notes three of the poems lines are "transformations" of lines from other folks. The "woods" line is a transformation of Thomas Lovell Beddoes' (who??) "The Phantom Wooer": "Our bed is lovely, dark, and sweet." There is something sexual here in the original, and something that leads us over to death in Frost. The bed as luring as death is intriguing to say the least and I think that Frost is even attempting an objectification of death to some extent. To sexualize death would be nothing new, but this seems to be going on here as well.

Myers, actually, makes my point in the next paragraph (which is kind of disappoint AND comforting):

The theme of "Stopping by Woods"--despite Frost's disclaimer--is the temptation of death, even suicide, symbolized by the woods that are filling up with snow on the darkest evening of the year. The speaker is powerfully drawn to these woods and--like Hans Castorp in the "Snow' chapter of Mann's Magic Mountain--wants to lie down and let the snow cover and bury him. The third quatrain, with its drowsy, dream-like line: "Of easy wind and downy flake," opposes the horse's instinctive urge for home with the man's subconscious desire for death in the dark, snowy woods. The speaker says, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," but he resists their morbid attraction.

I don't know about all the horse stuff, but certainly the lure of death is Frost's primary theme and the horse's feelings are clearly intended to be a juxaposition to that.

There's something about poems about nature that are dull to me- like it's been done to death and so I just tune out. I'm not saying it's a positive quality, and obviously the very nature of nature is change, but something struck me today about the layers in the one line of "Stopping."

Fayetteville, AR

2009-04-14T12:51:00.003-05:00

So, if you exclude the Vox Reading Series of Athens, GA, which is run by the grad students in the Creative Writing program at Georgia, Matt and Katy Henriksen were the first folks to invite me to read at their first Burning Chair reading in Fayetteville, AR. They had been running the series before in Brooklyn, but last year moved to Fayetteville.

If this is what this gig is, where do I sign up for more?

I had such a blast, even though I made the trip an incredibly quick one- driving down on Friday and back on Saturday, spending a total of 35 hours away from the house, 14 of which were in Fayetteville, roughly.

Everyone who read was simply amazing and not just as poets- as we hung out before and after the reading, I found Joe, MC, and Keith (who came back to Matt and Katy's after the reading) to be really cool folks. Kate Pringle was incredible kind as well, though I didn't get to spend much time with her. Carolyn I didn't have a chance to meet, but perhaps I'll correct that in the future.

It's clear that what's necessary- and what's been lacking for me in Iowa City, to an extent- is this community: we talked about all sorts of topics, swirling around poetry and poets, for hours. Joe had to leave and I had to get to bed, but other than that, I'm certain we could have been at it into the morning.

It was really cool to hang out with similar folks and really cool to feel included!

Parts of Episode III You Weren't Expecting To See So Soon

2009-04-01T18:14:00.004-05:00

Other selections from Episode III in Which Mr. Wyndham's Cat Kills the Milkman at Seven Corners.

Speaking of David...

2009-03-31T16:23:00.003-05:00

David talks about his run in with Neil Boortz when we were in high school so many years ago.

David does not mention that:

a) it was AP European history
b) we were watching a video (Kenneth Clark's 'Civilisation')
c) we and many others were asleep
d) I bet David a penny that year that he would not read an entire book of 1000+ pages that we didn't have to read. He swore he would. I won the penny easily.
e) D has nothing to do with the story other than me winning a bet.
f) we both did incredibly well on our AP exams, despite Neil Boortz and his attempts at ruining David's life. And despite sleeping a lot in that class.

Atlanta: Yesterday's City of Today

2009-03-31T16:16:00.003-05:00

Sent by David Smith, currently of Norway, but former enemy of one Neil Boortz:

Why You Keep Going

2009-03-30T09:35:00.001-05:00

"Here, and on my own blog, we've all be following the success of a poet in his fourth year of applying to programs who got into Brown! These stories are real, these people are real, and if you continue to show courage--which being a writer will require of you your whole life, anyway--you will end up where it is you've dreamed of being, I promise you!"

- Seth Abramson on the MFA Blog's April Mailbag

A follower of the MFA Blog, Peachy, correctly pointed out that the "poet in his fourth year of applying" is yours truly. Imagine how hard I laughed when a) I saw that there was some other poor loser who had waited four years and would be heading to Brown and b) I realized it was me!

Yes, I first applied to M.F.A. programs beginning in the Fall of 2004, hoping to start in the Fall of 2005. I was naive: I thought that since I did pretty well in Johannes Goransson's workshop in the Spring of 2004 and then went on to do well in Brian Henry's Spring 2005 workshop, I figured I was a shoe-in.

I was also an idiot.

Who knew the process was so hard? Who would guess that there were THOUSANDS of other people just like me across the country and even the world, who were "doing well" as undergrads in their workshops?

There are plenty of folks who get in their first time, I know, but I felt the first rejection year was incredibly humbling, thought perhaps not humbling enough. When we moved to Iowa City, Jennifer having been accepted to the Ph.D. program in Anthropology, I felt like I was even more of a shoe-in to get into the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Clearly still naive, I applied for a second time during the 2005-06 application season. Because we were living in Iowa City at that point, I only applied to Iowa, which was kind of a silly thing to do, in retrospect. And it was certainly a silly thing to do again in 2007!

Thinking about it now, Iowa and I just aren't a good fit. It's about where you fit in, I think- the place that's going to be somewhere you can work and where the environment is solid for you. And while Iowa City has been a great fit in many ways for almost four years now, it's exciting to think that there are a few places that I do seem to fit in.

Johannes was right. G.C. was right. Seth is certainly right as well: apply to as many programs as you can afford to apply to- to as many programs you can bare doing the work for. You're not going to run the table- even the most "qualified" folks don't do that- but you do increase your chances of getting in.

Now, that won't guarantee you anything, especially considering that the whole process really is a crap shoot to some extent. There are so many variables (who's reading, for example) and there is really no way to gauge your writing to decide where you're going to fit in- you kind of have to trust that some program somewhere will like you.

And that's why, if you really enjoy writing, you keep at it. Even if it doesn't work out right away, certainly it CAN work out if you keep trying and never get bogged down. Perseverance is pretty much one of the most difficult qualities to work towards. It's easy to give up, and I think to an extent, we're set to give up. And there are limits, too, but you have to decide that for yourself.

It hasn't been easy, certainly. Many times did I think "f*** it! I'll just work some crappy job forever and write poems when I feel like it." But I knew, even when I was down, that that would never make me happy. And fortunately, beyond my own desire and ambition, I have a fantastic support network, including my wife, my family, my friends, as well as other folks who just were pulling for me all along (Seth included). People want you to be happy, after all, and they can normally tell that you're not on some basic level. I guess folks can just tell that there's some place you'd rather be than where you are.

So I haven't done it alone, certainly, but from within, you have to pull some kind of desire and strength to keep at it. You have to manage to figure out why you're doing it, beyond just wanting to do it for it's own sake. It can't be about some perceived prestige or desire to simply get a degree. Any degree should be about more than a title or a series of letters.

It's hasn't been an easy few years, and it's really quite strange to think that this period of my life is over and that I'm finally getting back on the track I began. Now, however, I know why this is the path I wanted to go on and I kind of have a feeling why I'm here.

And that's been worth the frustration over the last few years, most definitely.

Fashion Poetics IV Addendum

2009-03-26T20:20:00.003-05:00

Poets.org's list of "Most Popular Contemporary Poets" for 2008:

1. Billy Collins
2. Gwendolyn Brooks
3. Charles Simic
4. Nikki Giovanni
5. Gary Soto
6. Allen Ginsberg
7. Kay Ryan
8. Rita Dove
9. Adrienne Rich
10. Naomi Shihab Nye
11. Mary Oliver
12. John Ashbery
13. Donald Hall
14. Louise Glück
15. Lucille Clifton
16. Sharon Olds
17. Yusef Komunyakaa
18. Sonia Sanchez
19. Jane Kenyon
20. Mark Strand

Sweet Jesus. Ginsberg? I love the guy, but he's not Contemporary. "Contemporary to what?" I suppose is the question.

Actually, let's take this a step further (from Dictionary.reference.com):

con⋅tem⋅po⋅rar⋅y /kənˈtɛmpəˌrɛri/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kuhn-tem-puh-rer-ee] Show IPA adjective, noun, plural -rar⋅ies.
–adjective 1. existing, occurring, or living at the same time; belonging to the same time: Newton's discovery of the calculus was contemporary with that of Leibniz.
2. of about the same age or date: a Georgian table with a contemporary wig stand.
3. of the present time; modern: a lecture on the contemporary novel.

–noun 4. a person belonging to the same time or period with another or others.
5. a person of the same age as another.

Let's go with #3, "of present time." This list is a Barnes and Noble list of poets and people that people have heard of. Brooks? Love her stuff. Dead. Not contemporary, I'm sorry to say.

I suppose this actually has little to do with the issue of 'difficult' poetry, other than having come directly from the previous posting's thoughts on canon. I suppose the only real point I could make here is that these are the people that end up in textbooks and in high school heads and ears. OK, so very few of these people are in textbooks, but the mentality is there. And I think the only reason some folks are on this list is because there are people who vote them up with no real interest in moving beyond a canon. They're interested in perpetuating the same group of people they've been thinking about and hearing about for the last 30 years.

Fashion Poetics IV: "I Don't Get This Kind of Fashion"

2009-03-26T12:24:00.004-05:00

Jennifer got back from Santa Fe, New Mexico on Monday. Getting back into our normal schedule of TV watching, last night I happened to watch a few minutes of that Bravo show "Make Me a Supermodel." Now, I tried watching a few episodes last season, and I hated it. I also don't like it much now, but I don't mind hanging out with my wife while she's working on her comprehensive exam question(s).

Last night though, I did catch something she said, and catch something on the screen at the same time: people dressed in strange wire type outfits (maybe it was a repeat? who knows). What caught my attention was Jennifer's statement: "I don't get this kind of fashion."

It made me think again about my on going thoughts on poetry and what fashion can teach us about poetry and what people generally seem to understand and not understand. This, again, comes down to the word "difficult": the wire outfits are no doubt difficult for myself and I imagine what must be the Bravo audience (guys waiting for baseball season to begin, maybe?).

A quick search of "most popular poet" (which I assumed would yield your Romantics) brought up a poll of Top 10 Poems, as polled by the Classic Poetry Aloud website. Be shocked that everyone but Kipling was dead before 1900 (Kipling dying in 1936) and that with the exception of a Shakespeare sonnet, everything else is 19th century (and the Kipling poem I suppose is 1910).

It seems strange to say this, but for most people, it seems poetry stopped existing as soon as they saw Prufrock or something! As if there was a collective throwing up of hands and shouting "I'm out!" and since that point, new poetry has existed as a counter-public, with the exceptions of your Collins's and Pinskies, who seem to be read as an example of what's out there currently. Otherwise, poetry exists in a little vacuum: we read, write, and publish for each other- our own incestous bubble. Contemporary poetry has been cast out of the main stream, it seems

I want to mention here that I don't think that's a problem with poetry or poets: it's the way we teach poetry in schools and beyond. We test kids to death on "sinews of the heart" from Blake, but exclude, until you're in a creative writing or contemporary poetry class at University level, anything particularly new. If you're lucky, you *might* get Plath or Ginsberg in high school text books. Of course you never get to it since teachers are busy with all sorts of other issues, including standardized tests, which make sure you're up on your Keats and Shelley.

So back to "getting it": it seems simple that the main issue is this idea that poetry and everything else ought to be understood and be able to be absorbed within the first reading. If we like, we can call this the "Soundbyte Effect" in which everything should be able to be ascertained within 3 to 5 seconds and the rest can be discarded for YouTube.

Poetry should function the same way, it seems. There ought to be understandable words and language. There ought to be a theme that's understandable immediately, hence the popularlity of love and war and death. There ought to be rhythm and meter because if there's not, why not write an essay? Lines ought to rhyme (slant rhymes acceptable).

Of course, this is all stupid: death is boring and so is love. Can you define love? How about defining a sandwich?

We've seen an evolved path in the 20th century (ok- so there are folks that were doing it before, but I mean a concrete "system") where in poetry is allowed to move beyond the restrictions of previous generations, and yet, it is this that seems to be enjoyed by a public who find "comfort" in Romanticism.

"Getting" poetry isn't necessarily something that's good: poetry, I feel, ought to be something you have to work out and yes, if you're looking for pleasure in poetry, perhaps you'd be better off sticking with people incredibly dead (not the recent folks, of course). If poetry should or ought to be relaxing to you, perhaps it's best to avoid modern poetry.

However, I believe writing and reading modern poetry is a challenge and ought to be challenging. There's a lot going on and life too is complex. Poetry ought to meet the complexities of modern life and the complexities of modern language and its usage.

So yeah, it sucks not "getting" a certain type of fashion. But maybe we're not supposed to "get" it. The goal is individualized and removed from objective measurement, though for some reason Make Me a Super Model seems to be running a show of objectivity.

The Burning Chair Readings at Fayetteville Underground

2009-03-24T08:31:00.002-05:00

The Burning Chair Readings
at Fayetteville Underground
present a night w/ Cannibal Books
featuring poetry from

Carolyn Guinzio
Kevin Holden
M.C. Hyland
Keith Newton
kathryn l. pringle
Amish Trivedi
Joseph P. Wood

Friday, April 10, 6:30-8 pm
Fayetteville Underground
East Square Plaza
1 East Center Street
fayettevilleunderground.com
$5 suggested donation

Handmade & other books available at a discount, w/ refreshments, gallery tours, & social hour following the reading.

Cannibal Books publishes hand-sewn literary journals and chapbooks which focus on divergent and emerging poetics. While our products fit into the category of book arts, the focus is entirely on presenting daring work from a broad range of styles. An aesthetic definition cannot define the hunger. Founded in Brooklyn, NY in 2004, Cannibal Books currently nests in Fayetteville, AR.

Visit flesheatingpoems.blogspot.com or query flesheatingpoems AT gmail DOT com.

Author Bios
Carolyn Guinzio is the author of Untitled Wave from Cannibal Books, Quarry (Parlor Press) and West Pullman (Bordighera). Her work has appeared in many journals including Blackbird, Colorado Review, and New American Writing. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Read two poems in Typo.

Kevin Holden is the author of Identity from Cannibal Books. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Colorado Review, Ecopoetics, The Harvard Advocate, The Liberal, Parcel and Typo. He is from Rhode Island and lives and teaches in Iowa.
Read an excerpt from Identity in Typo.

MC Hyland is the author of four chapbooks: Residential As In (Blue Hour Press, 2009), The Hesitations (a collaboration with Friedrich Kerksieck and Kate Lorenz, Small Fires Press, 2006), Incantations (reject sheep press, 2006), and Lost Gospels (Ponkapoag Press, 2005). She currently lives in Minneapolis, where she teaches creative writing and letterpress through local nonprofits, and runs DoubleCross Press.
Read “Epistolary” in H_NGM_N.

Keith Newton’s chapbook Sent Forth to Die in a Happy City was published this winter by Cannibal Books. His poems and translations have appeared recently in Harvard Review, Saltgrass, and Open Letters. He lives in Brooklyn, where edits the online magazine Harp & Altar.
Read “Materialization in a Black Sea” in Typo.

kathryn l. pringle is the author of Right New Biology, just out from Factory School/Heretical Text Series. She is the author of The Stills (Duration Press) and Temper & Felicity are Lovers (TAXT). She is an editor at the literary magazine minor/american, and the co-founder of the minor american reading series. She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.
Read The Stills at Duration Press (requires Adobe Acrobat).

Amish Trivedi’s electronic chapbooks include Selections from Episode III (Beard of Bees), The Ink Sessions (Scantily Clad), and The Breakers (Absent Magazine). His poems appear in La Petite Zine, Cannibal, Word For/Word, and Backwards City Review. He lives in Iowa City.
Read The Ink Sessions at Scantily Clad Press.

Joseph P. Wood’s first full book of poems, I & We, will be published by CustomWords in 2010. He is also the author of two chapbooks: Travel Writing (Scantily Clad Press) and In What I Have Done & What I Have Failed to Do (Elixir Press). He lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Read “Anatomy of a Bullet Wound” in Typo.

Mark Nowak's Blog

2009-03-17T13:24:00.002-05:00

Happy to mention Mark Nowak's new blog, Coal Mountain's Blog, a compliment, I would say, to Mark's new book, Coal Mountain Elementary.

Check both of them out, certainly.

Brown University

2009-03-14T00:56:00.003-05:00

After a phone call today from Brown University, I immediately said yes, agreeing to come to school there this Fall. I'll be working towards an M.F.A. in poetry in their Literary Arts program.

I was holding out on Brown, but honestly I had wonderful offers Notre Dame's M.F.A. and Illinois State's MA program, for which I was offered a wonderful fellowship.

As readers of this blog will note, this hasn't been without a lot of hard work over the last years, and a great part of that is the patience of friends and family, and especially my wife, Jennifer. She has been through a lot with me, with a lot more crap to sludge through, I'm sure.

I must also thank Johannes, G.C. and Joyelle for what I imagine must have been wonderful letters of recommendation. It's so strange to have one part of your file that you have absolutely no idea about, but that could have made a huge difference. That these three were willing to take a chance on me four years into my Iowan exile truly means the world to me. I'll never be able to thank them enough.

We'll be moving there this August, and while we're really going to miss Iowa City, I think it's the perfect time for me to start school and get on with my life. Jennifer is coming with of course, though she'll be heading off to do Ph.D. field work for her Anthropology degree. We'll be apart some, but again, this is the time to do it.

Anyways, we're so excited- today has been an incredible Friday the 13th, certainly- and there's just so much to think about and look forward to. There will be some things to stress out about, but for now, I'm going to enjoy it.

Setting Part II

2009-03-12T13:00:00.003-05:00

Natasa, who ran the translation workshop I was allowed to sit in on, sent me an email with a link regarding setting. I hope she doesn't mind my posting the email and link here (she wanted to post it herself, but didn't want to sign up for anything else new- for her, I'm removing the login issues, BUT I'm going to begin moderating so as to cut the ads out).

"Also, I'm here attaching the link I wanted to post as a comment to your funny "the writers-who- fetishize- their mise-en-scene where- the-good-stuff-will- happen" blogpost on The T-vedi Chronicles..."

http://iwp.uiowa.edu/91st/vol5_n2/postcard/index.html
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The argument I'm trying to make is that setting isn't an issue of choice. I don't believe it is possible to create the proper environment for writing or any other artistic activity. This is what I suppose I mean by the fetishization of locale. There's a desire to set a desk in a proper place or sit in a certain type of chair, I suppose, but I think the desire to have THAT be somehow be necessary towards writing is ridiculous.

There's a desire for the mountains around you or the beach to serve as "inspiration." While I don't believe talent is something you're born with, I do believe that the desire to act is something you ought to have and not something you should expect to come out of the environment. I say this, of course, knowing full well that many rely on this. Joseph Ceravolo's introduction to Transmigration Solo is an example of how the location can be inspiring, but I suppose what interests me is that Ceravolo wasn't suddenly wanting to write as a result of being in Mexico: he was already writing and happened to be in Mexico where he was taken by the setting. Now, I argue partially in my Recovery Project piece on him in the Octopus #9, that Mexico is an influence on Ceravolo, but there's something to be said for feeling that the poems aren't about Mexico. I suppose my point to is that of expectation and anticipation: I don't believe Ceravolo expected to be inspired to write by where he was going. I think it just happened.

Writing, I believe, lacks a certain agency: there ought to be inner desire and external design on the work, rather than the whims of the setting.

Setting

2009-03-01T12:51:00.002-06:00

I'm kind of weirded out of late by people talking about "where" they write: what kind of lighting they use. What music they listen to. Do they use candles? Is there a mountain outside or a lake? Maybe it's snowing and there's something inspirational about the snow.

Maybe music sounds interesting. Johannes always suggested throwing on Godard's "Pierrot le fou" in the back ground. I recall him getting in some hot water over his regular exercise at the time: showing Un Chien Andalou and having the class write while it was going on in the background. I'm quite certain I got some cool poems from that exercise, but my "hot water" comment clearly shows that I'm one of the few who thought the practice was great. Apparently for others, it was a reason to complain that they weren't "being taught to write."

I'm bothered that someone writing is a Romantic or ritualistic practice, like somehow you'll just have pages of words flowing as soon as you get the perfect mise en scene down. It reminds me of people that go and by special notebooks and pens and expect that these are the things that create good poems or stories or whatever.

I guess I'm just over it. I don't know if I can write anywhere or whatever, and I'm not saying that a location isn't important. I'm just saying a location isn't going to make you better or worse or make you more or less creative. If you're inspired by the snow or mountains, perhaps you ought examine what you're really doing.

For another thing: can anyone teach you to write? I don't think that's the goal of the workshop or the MFA, for that matter. I think the best anyone can do for you is give you the space to write and time to do it. The workshop, at its best, is a place for feedback and learning to think critically about yourself and others.

Anyways, spaces and places, lights and sights. What good are these things if your poems suck anyways?

Selections From Episode III, a Beard of Bees E-Chap

2009-02-28T23:43:00.004-06:00

I'm really proud of these poems. Maybe the first significant set I started working on after I moved to Iowa City.

The poems were initially meant to be funny and vulgar, and here in the selected set, Eric Elshtain's done a fantastic job of picking some of the best of the entire set, which is actually 37 poems long. They're all short-ish.

Johannes calls them my "Parland poems," and they are that: poems that attempt to extract the silliness out of the random situations we find ourselves in. I remember Johannes really loving a great majority of these poems, and if anything, these are dedicated to him, and of course, Henry Parland.

Parland really touched upon something with language and thematically, in terms of the banality of things that happen to all of us, even if Parland didn't live long enough to see the technological marvels of the 20th century. You could probably show someone Parland's poems right now and they would wonder who wrote these very modern, very new poems. It's my opinion that anyone reading Parland in 2109 will feel the same way: for dying at 22, Parland fits every era.

I've been in talks with another publisher to put out the whole set, but until that happens, I'm very thankful for Eric's help in getting these out.

Hope you all find them as much fun!

Selections from Episode III from Beard of Bees.

New RealPoetik

2009-02-16T23:40:00.000-06:00

Featuring yours truly.

http://realpoetik.blogspot.com/2009/02/amish-trivedi.html

This is Fantastic

2009-02-13T16:33:00.003-06:00

The Memory of Hank Aaron

Happy Poetry Day!

2009-02-13T08:30:00.002-06:00

Since we've been living in Iowa City, which puts us at 3 1/2 years as of February 1st, I've been working from noon until 9pm, Sunday through Thursday, most of the time. The exceptions are school breaks and the occasional Friday to make up time.

With a Friday/Saturday weekend, my social life has been strange to say the least: people are rarely free on the workday of Friday, but I am never free for any of the fun things people want to do on a lazy Sunday. I've missed Easter dinners and Super Bowls, afternoons in the park and all sorts of other activities. Working until late has it's disadvantages too: never being able to make it to readings without taking vacation time (in 3.5 years in Iowa City, I've made it to Matt Hart, Forrest Gander, Johannes and Joyelle, Lyn Hejinian and Dean Young- that's all- It's Iowa City- we get amazing readings!)

One thing I have had though, is an advantage: considering everyone, including Jennifer, has been busy most Fridays, I have spent this time as wisely as possible. Yeah, sometimes I end up playing video games or watching TV. Sometimes I end up going to the mall and sometimes I can't tell where my Friday went!

Mostly though, Friday has been my Poetry Day: the day I sit down to read thoroughly, take notes, and catch up on my own writing ideas that I've been scribbling down all week. I read blogs all week, certainly, but it is on Friday that I try to really get into what has been going on in the online poetry community we seem to be a part of (as Johannes say, "glorified thing "The Blog Writer""). I take Friday as my day that I am not an employee, but someone whose primary interest in life is an art form and everything that goes on around it.

This has taken great dedication, especially considering that I took part in the International Writing Program's Translation Workshop on Friday afternoons for the last two Fall semesters. And by the end of those semesters, I felt like I was dragging and behind and unable to comprehend what had been going on while I had been in class. I wrote during odd hours, especially at work or late at night. I read poetry only when I needed to (like reading poets at schools I applied to). I kept up with blogs and blogging, but if you look back over my posts from the last 8 months or so, the frequency is inconsistent, to say the least.

To know now, that in some small way, this has paid off, I am happy:

Last Friday, I was called by one of the MFA programs I had applied to an offered admission for next Fall. After four years of applying, most of which was to the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop, since they're in my back yard and all, it has been a truly gratifying experience to know that giving one solid day to my "hobby" was a good idea.

But it's not a hobby as much as it used to be. The idea that everyday can be this way to some extent (minus teaching or other work related to surviving through an MFA) is such a wonderful feeling, and maybe a bit scary too. That I have at least one place saying that my faith in myself as a poet and as a person whose intellectual curiousity has led to considering language and all its trappings as the basic underpinning of our relationships and culture as a whole has been such a fantastic feeling this last week.

I'm not done though: of the 13 schools I applied to, this has been the only one I have heard from so far. I am going to do my best to keep my head straight through this process and hopefully I'll be able to pick the right school for me at this point. This is assuming I have an option, but if I don't, I have nothing but positive feelings about my one acceptance and would be honored to matriculate there this Fall.
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Poetry Day for me has been an escape to some extent, a double-life as someone who hasn't been doing what he's been wanting to do. Fridays are a way of pretending that I'm someone I am not, but hope to be. Fridays have been a way for me to distance myself from my forty hour week and keep myself from giving in to the feeling that I'd never get out of it. I had been desperate, certainly, to move on "career"-wise (assuming anything like that still exists for today's MFA graduate). But even getting into school is a wonderful step in the direction I want to go and it's a lovely feeling.
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It occurred to me last night that what had been a "hobby" for the last decade of my life, minus a few stints in creative writing classes while at Georgia, is now a "job" of sorts. This is great news! While in Johannes and Brian Henry's classes, one in Spring of 04 and the other in Spring of 05, I thrived under the pressure of needing to have something to present on certain weeks. I recall especially while in Johannes' class that my output was quite high, though obviously not all of it was stellar. I'm really looking forward to having to write, as right now, it's something I do because I want to, so, Poetry Day or not, I have to make myself do it. External pressure will make this great.
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For those keeping score, that's 1 acceptance, and 12 undecideds. I hope to hear something soon from the others.