Stir Up Trouble... Who Me?

And so here it is, June 30th. I put together my contest mailing and made a b-line to the post office and watched the postman dutifully hand cancel the postage with the June 30 postmark and once again, just ahead of the buzzer my work is off to the judges. ::heavy sigh::

If you want to see a yet another mouthpiece in the thickening gravy that has been served up to cover the great debate over Poetry Magazine, I would encourage you to read the John Casteen peace in the Virginia Quarterly Review that can be found here.

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Oh Fuck!!! I only got a PG-13

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

suck (3x) drugs (2x) gun (1x)

Found the like from Kelli (who got an R Rating) Damn!

Friday...

The week has been peeled back and exposed-- The nakedness is what it is, and is for you to make what you will of it.

Well deserved acknowledgement of talent

I suppose one could call it poetic justice.... Maxwell Corydon Wheat is installed as people's poet laureate after all.

A Certifiable Contest Head Case

I am not a big contest person. I have entered a few, but they have not been a compelling force in my work. On the other hand, I am fairly good about submitting work to literary venues.

When I do submit to a contest, I usually know well in advance that I am doing it and for some reason, I find myself always scrambling to get the entry off in the final couple of days before the deadline. Such is the case again this month. Here is a contest I’ve known about since, well the last time I entered it a year ago. I’m not waiting to write something new at the last minute. I will send a couple of pieces already written. It is a matter printing out clean copies and doing all the correct cover letters, etc.

I’m not sure what it is about contests that seem unique from other submissions. I’m sure there must be something very psychosomatic about the whole thing. Meanwhile, I have a few poems to pull together and get to the post office…

Ah HA! That's it!

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Art is knowing which ones to keep.

~Scott Adams

Tuesday Misc News...

Poetry fans gather for Ted Hughes's festival.

On a sad note: The poet Rahim al-Maliki wrote about his dreams of Iraqi unity in a place where such appeals are drowned out by daily bombings. One of them took his life on Monday.

NPR feature / More on Guantanamo Poetry. Plus more on the book of poems from Nafeesa Syeed here.

Dick Cheneny fails at American Civics.

Senator Richare Lugar changes tune on Iraq. Lugar called on Bush to "downsize" the U.S. military's role in Iraq and place more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options

Andrew Ervin reviews The Age of Huts (compleat) - By Ron Silliman

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