More Music - Factory Girl at Fifty Degrees

The Indian Indiana Summer keeps a moving a long here in Bloomington. It was a spry 50 degrees and sunny here today while rumours of late week snow keep building. After editing a older short story of mine set in Halifax and starting some risotto (Kombucha and greens mmmm ... ), I suddenly found myself listening to old Stones records (remember the large black shiny things?). I needed to post this video to honour this beautiful day. After coming back from the factory city (former I suppose now) of Detroit/Windsor I couldn't think of a more suitable one.

Tall Uncut - Haunting Montana Writer

I can across this collection of short fiction, The Tall Uncut by Peter Fromm in doing some research for my longer novel a couple of weeks back. For anyone interested in short fiction with the American West in mind and most notably written in the "western" mindset, this could be a pretty notable book for you. Fromm captures that silence of character one often sees when living in places under the big sky. He does it well often (not always perfect, but well) and manages to play out the interiority of characters through their rich landscape.

There are stories of fishing, poaching, rabbit farming, and duck hunting in this collection that allow to see the world and the very basis of the human experience through their frameworks. Sometimes Fromm leaves the reader hanging with lack of closure. But this might also be attributed to the fact that both sport and life rarely conclude in neat little packages. Sometimes the isolation of the individual is so haunting that it remains with you for days afterward.

The collection is relatively short (the copy I read was in the upper one hundreds for page length), and the language both approachible and often times memorable. It's a great way to spend some time reading away and pining after moments under the big sky.

Factography - A Hypertexter

Admittedly, I've been killing time on a Saturday night waiting for the late night radio show Coast to Coast AM fire up. But at least I can say I was killing that time while looking around at some on-line literary journals. Very recently a couple of my fellow MFAers and I were talking about hypertext novels, something none of us really seemed to know much about. I stumbled across this particular one, Factography, through the New River Journal. The New River seems to use a lot of the newer technologically delivered/driven works. It's pretty cool and innovated. As well as nicely put together. Anyways, Factography was linked via these guys. It's a really great way to read and good piece to look at.

Epistrophy at you

Here's a little T.Monk just get you through the boxing day blues. 'Tis true I still in the great white north. I particularly like this Oslo '66 version. Monk is the man:


Monk - Epistrophy live in Oslo '66.

Christmas, Virginnia Woolf and other Generic Goodness.

After weathering the blizzards and other weather madness that the metro Detroit area has thrown at us over this short break from Bloomington, I figured it of note to post a few goodies. First and foremost is the little snippet of recording that Dr. Danell Jones has posted on her publisher's website. The clip here is regarding her recent publication of the Virginnia Woolf Writing Workshop and deals in large part with the delicate mixing artists often have to balance as academic and artist. I had the pleasure of taking a few literature classes from Dr. Jones at Montana State and found her feedback on my creative works quite helpful. I often have thought that best way to learn how to write is to learn from those that have done well before us. Woolf is one of those writers and Jones is one of those few that seem capible of giving voice to the deceased. It is a pretty cool read.

Secondly, I'll be getting my first poem published in an upcoming issue of Zaum Magazine out of Sonoma State University. "Misplaced Nashville Skyline" has recently made the cut. They are a pretty cool publication out of the landscape around Northern California's Wine Country. More details to follow.

Time for Sake: Chapbook Finished

It took a little over a week to edit and assemble, but I've managed to finish and put together my first chapbook of poetry. "The Warmth of Asphalt," is obviously a self-published affair and will be given out (as many self-published poetry chapbooks often are) to friends and selected family members for the holidays. All in all it's about 16 pages long and more or less is comprised of poems conceived or reworked in this first semester of my MFA. The Campbell McGrath masterclass/workshop really comes out in them as I often found myself using his theory regarding lyric consciousness. The pieces range from Windsor/Detroit to Montana and even Bloomington and Florida. It might be small in stature, but its a major mental step just seeing your work in book(let) form and wholely readible by the mass public. Well, perhaps not mass right, but public nonetheless. I'm tempted to submit it around, just to see what if, but the sake needs to come out a little bit now. The first (and possibly only run) will be about 10-12 chapbooks.

I plan to use these a final project samples for the 200-level flash fiction course I'll be teaching in a little over a year. Chapbooks are little more rewarding than simple "portfolio"s. It's all about creating agency, right? Well chapbook equals agency. Next up, fiction. More aptly the completion of this novella enterprise.

Chapbook of Coolness - Murphy's "The Memphis Sun."

While I was away at the BGSU Winter Wheat extravaganza, my poet buddy (Zen Master Dauro) pointed out a series of well printed, very impressive chapbooks at one of the tables. The Wick Series chapbook put out by Kent State University were very cool looking and contained some pretty awesome pieces. All of the works, I believe, are done by Ohio based writers. I'm fairly sure it works on the contest level with as far as I can tell, most of the works centering on poetry. The books were well edited with a strong sense of physical and tactile beauty. So much so that I bought three of them and have finally found sometime working through the first of them.

Jim Murphy's "The Memphis Sun" is great little collection. Murphy pulls the reader through the American social and physical landscape using references to rockabilly musicians, blues' men, and negro league baseball gods. It's an older book in the series, but it a fantastic collection to snap up. The look and feel of the chapbook really help to pull the poems along. Easy one of the most beautiful poems in the collection is "Junk Travel Through West Memphis." The piece starts with "Woman with a starshell light behind her eyes/turns slowly on the sugar of a ride cymbal,/and moves her hands towards the Pleiades/" and just gyrates into expansive/microcosmic explorations of scene. No sense in talking too much about it. You should check it out. All the chapbooks are available on Amazon from between $4.50 to $6 or through Kent State Press.

Cruising into Colison with Turkey Day

The great day of overeating and preparing mentally for shopping is nearly upon all of us. This has very little relevance to anything, but just figured it was worth posting. Saying the most obvious things are occasionally the most enjoyable. Bloomington is emptying out for another great American migration to points distant and I now find myself with a little respite to do some writing and relaxing.

The BGSU Winter Wheat Festival was pretty awesome and is definitely worth checking out some time for those that might not be down with it yet. Ohio in general seems to have a great writing culture and Winter Wheat really pushes that culture into a highly visible sphere. The students and writers (sometimes both) that we met all seemed top notch and really into doing some pretty cool stuff. The NEOMFA through those northern universities in Ohio just seems like it could be a pretty cool thing to get hooked up with. All in all Karen Craigo and company made the IU crew feel quite comfortable on our northern expedition.

Back to work on the Novella after sometime off. Tentatively title "The Bastion of Industrial Decline," (still) it should be completed sometime in the next two months. Time permitting of course. Additionally, I've almost finished a poetry chapbook and will be putting it out in the next couple of months either by publisher (one can always dream) or by self-publishing. I've gotten a solid body of works from poetry workshop and the McGrath master class here at IU.

I need to get back to posting poetry. So for autumn, I figured a little Gary Snyder. I've been reading him a tonne lately and it always worthwhile to post whats been on your mind. Enjoy the bird.

Four Poems for Robin

by Gary Snyder

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

I slept under rhododendron

All night blossoms fell

Shivering on a sheet of cardboard

Feet stuck in my pack

Hands deep in my pockets

Barely able to sleep.

I remembered when we were in school

Sleeping together in a big warm bed

We were the youngest lovers

When we broke up we were still nineteen.

Now our friends are married

You teach school back east

I dont mind living this way

Green hills the long blue beach

But sometimes sleeping in the open

I think back when I had you.

A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May

We walked under cherry blossoms

At night in an orchard in Oregon.

All that I wanted then

Is forgotten now, but you.

Here in the night

In a garden of the old capital

I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao

I remember your cool body

Naked under a summer cotton dress.

An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,

Breath smoking in the moonlight,

Bitter memory like vomit

Choked my throat.

I unrolled a sleeping bag

On mats on the porch

Under thick autumn stars.

In dream you appeared

(Three times in nine years)

Wild, cold, and accusing.

I woke shamed and angry:

The pointless wars of the heart.

Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.

The first time I have

Ever seen them close.

December at Yase

You said, that October,

In the tall dry grass by the orchard

When you chose to be free,

“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you

One time. You were strange.

And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have

Gone by: I’ve always known

where you were—

I might have gone to you

Hoping to win your love back.

You still are single.

I didn’t.

I thought I must make it alone. I

Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,

Does the grave, awed intensity

Of our young love

Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others

All crave and seek for;

We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had

Lived many lives.

And may never now know

If I am a fool

Or have done what my

karma demands.

Pretty Cool, worth checking out

Anyone who knows me at all, knows that I'm such a fan/proponent of Detroit that it is almost maddening to those around me. I just recently came across this new(ish) music video for the Sam Roberts Band tune Detroit '67. There are things I like about and thing I don't, but the tune is catchy and the production of higher calibre. The film noir aspect is fun and slightly problematic in that it leaves out much of the city's present inhabitants. Makes me want to grab my camera, head north for a few hours and grab some of the other pictures. Be up that way soon. Anyways, suspend the politics for a few minutes, watch the video, and hopefully enjoy it.


Detroit '67 by The Sam Roberts Band

Woolf Speaking about Writing

I actually just received this link from another AI here at IU and figured it worth posting. I became a fan of Virginia Woolf while at Montana State and studying literature of place with poet and Woolf scholar Danell Jones. The quick two minute clip has Woolf talking about writing (big surprise right?), but what's really quite cool is the fact that the recording is the only known recording of her voice. To read the words of someone is always such a different experience from hearing them speak. The clip is worth a listening if only to hear one of the greatest writers of all-time finally speak beyond the page.

Virginia Woolf from the British Library Collection

Postmodernist Fiction and Poetics: A Trip to BGSU

I've been busy preparing for a session I'll be leading at the upcoming Winter Wheat Festival at BGSU in just a few weeks' time. Heading up north to that fantastic orange and brown campus on the fringes of metro Detroit to give my first ever conference session on creative writing. I'll be working with the idea of hybridity and post-modernism in the composition of fiction that straddles the lies critics give it. It is important to think about fiction in new ways and see form and its various consituents as vital aspects to message and communication in the craft of writing. I haven't heard about the exact session time as of yet (the schedule has yet to be updated), but this nonetheless very exciting in terms of experience. I've really enjoyed teaching craft to my students in W103 and see Winter Wheat as a nice extension of these experiences so far. I'll post my notes from the session at a later date, just in case there is any interest out there about the subject matter.

Here's a link to conference webpage. It's definitely worth checking out if you're in the region:
http://www.bgsu.edu/studentlife/organizations/midamericanreview/index2.html

Additionally, my buddy and fellow MFAer Mike Dauro will be leading a session on poetry. I've heard his lectures at IU. It should be a good-one.

Book of Note: Immortal Sofa

I just finished Maura Stanton's more recent collection of poetry, Immortal Sofa, and must definitely urge it for consideration on anyone's reading list. The poems are easily approachable, fun, and definitely full of life that only an experienced and gifted writer could give them. Stanton has good number of publications out, most of which I'm unfamiliar with. She is a graduate from Iowa's storied MFA program and does well in mixing form poetry together with story narrative sense. Stanton places the private world of domestic life into the forefront of this very public text. The collection is worth just for "Ode to Pokeweed" and the longer historical piece "The Tale of Herman Goertz." The later explores the life of the former WWII German Spy in an Irish police station. It's a fairly quick read, available from the Illinois University Press.

Novellas, Chapbooks, October Goodness.

When one is in a MFA program one runs out of time faster than one realizes. Hence the tardiness of posting. Back to it again. I've really been into the whole poetry thing for a period with both a poetry workshop and a Master Class with Campbell McGrath on the subject. I've just started a new sequence of poems about my time in Montana (with a few prose poems), and should be able to have a nice Chapbook of Goodness by semester's end. It's not my focus, but it is warranting some attention. I've gathered in the importance of notebooks to the creative process and have been drawing from them and creating them at an equally heavy pace. Images banks and raw word banks help. Consider a Cento to launch a new idea. Nothing like theft to help propell you to a new place.

The Novella "The Bastion of Industrial Decline" is starting to come together nicely. The setting is Windsor/Detroit and will help to start breaking up some deadlocks about writing stories in that neck of the world. Lean heavily on what you know and what you remember. Again, the first draft should be close to down by the end of this semester. Cobble them together and then polish them with editing. The craft of writing is key here.

Lastly, I changed up the title section to resemble the world of Bloomington, Indiana. I do mean world, this town is a nice little enclave against the rest of the very different state around us. Fall is encroaching with the colours coming out in Midwestern splendour. It's the time of cafes at night. The drinking days are perhaps way past me by now. Bloomington is also home to the largest number of scooter/mopeds I've seen in America. It's pretty cool all in all. No news about recent submissins, at least that's good news.

Quick Update: Hurricane bits, McGrath, and the Bastion of Industrial Decline

Hurricane Ike, or at least his remainants, blew through town yesterday. It almost felt like Livingston, MT with all the wind gusts. All I could think about was Greg Keeler's "Hotel Livingston, MT" parody. It gave me a full day inside. Left to reading and writing I got a fair amount of work done the "Bastion of Industrial Decline" novella I've started for workshop. Set in present day Windsor, ON and Detroit, MI, it allows for a small microcosm for the lives being lived under the collapse of North American manufacturing. More importantly though, I started Campbell McGrath's "Seven Notebooks" collection. It's a fantastic read thus far. Highly influenced by the landscapes of Florida (ohh ... childhood memories) and by his time as an instructor of Creative Writing, it is simply put, beautifully written. I also finished up David Berman's "Actual Air" collection. Yeah, he's the lead singer of the "Silver Jews" and that undoubtedly helped get this book published. But, as writers we all have to milk whatever advantages we can. All in all, Berman's book was entertaining. Not life changing, but entertaining. I'll post "New York, New York" shortly here.
Lastly, I'll be giving my first reading on October 10th here in Bloomington. Myself and the rest of the first year MFA's will be hosting readings at the Pourhouse Cafe on Kirkwood. Time is 7 pm and the readings go on both the 10th and 11th.

Notes For Creative Writing Pedagogy

First class out of the way of the semester, and I'm starting to feel a real and solid affinity for this whole instruction of the creative word. Let's face it, most of us have had very poor experiences with those so called able to construct and lead writing workshops. Then again, we've all had issues with those individuals who have told us they can lead. However, in the terms of running a workshop I'm finding that some one needs to play the role of leader. Simply put, there is clear need to have the person charge have the ability to show their expanded knowledge of craft to be able to flex some muscle. There are good writers and bad writers. Most of it has to do with craft, although let's face some people may just not be able to writer (In much the same way I'm unable to say play golf worth a damn).
The whole point here is that 1960s-70s model of the instructor that becomes part of the members of the workshop and fails to show either guidance or strong criticism, is failing his students. How can you progress as a writer if you aren't told your doing something wrong? Yes confidence places a role in the matter, but individual confidence will only improve with individual success. How can a writer achieve individual success without improving their craft? Bottomline here is that teachers should do what their suppose to do: teach. Give good grades, but also give bad ones too. Not everyone deserves an A. They all should work for it and prove their merits in the craft. Oh, and read Stephen Minot's Creative Teaching for Creative Writers

Weekend for Labor and the start of Fall.

Standing on the edge of the new semester, watching the mass move-ins here in Bloomington, and the opening of college football all equate to the grand openning of the fall of 2008. Easily the best time of year it is this weekend that seems to cast the long endless shadow of unending possibilities. Fall is also the time of resplendent and endless color. Especially here in the midwest. Yes, I will miss the aspens of the northern Rockies. But its the maples, the oaks, and chestnuts that seem to know color so well. Here in Indiana, that might be months away, but you can at least feel it in the air. Regardless, with the anxious wait for fall over, this time seems to be the best to simply relax and enjoy the endless possibilities.
The snapshot today is a touched up, filtered exploration of the old chicken coup in our backyard. Labor day is about slowing down and enjoying the beauty of mundane things around you. Be it the changing of the leaves, the brightness of a pumpkin blossom, or the texture of 70 year old wood, the small of the universe is what matters most.
A day such as today offers a chance to post a little Carl Sandburg. The fine labor guy as well as skilled exhibiter of the natural world of North American needs a little illustration. Enjoy the weekend, the grilling, and approaching season.

Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn
by Carl Sandburg (taken from Cornhuskers)

SMOKE of autumn is on it all. The streamers loosen and travel. The red west is stopped with a gray haze. They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks, They make a long-tailed rider 5 In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star. . . . Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River. There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol routes west. Around each slippery padding rat, a fan of ripples; in the silence of dusk a faint wash of ripples, the padding of the rats going west, in a dark and shivering river gold. (A newspaper in my pocket says the Germans pierce the Italian line; I have letters from poets and sculptors in Greenwich Village; I have letters from an ambulance man in France and an I. W. W. man in Vladivostok.) 10 I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan of ripples on a sheet of river gold. . . . Better the blue silence and the gray west, The autumn mist on the river, And not any hate and not any love, And not anything at all of the keen and the deep: 15 Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor, And the new corn shoveled in bushels And the pumpkins brought from the corn rows, Umber lights of the dark, Umber lanterns of the loam dark. 20 Here a dog head dreams. Not any hate, not any love. Not anything but dreams. Brother of dusk and umber.

I'm Back Baby - Greetings from Bloomington

To quote the great Costanza, "I'm back bab-y!" (of course without food poisoning soldiers), I've fired the site up again. Well settled in south central Indiana, I'm about to embark on the study of prose fiction for my MFA. The race for publication has begun a new as has the always entertaining life of a graduate student. I've traded the Big Sky for the Big Ten, and mountains for glacial hills. But writing and photography continue to abound in this very different personal and public space.
After a summer of watching Ken Burns, baseball, and Anthony Bourdain (oh, and little thing called marriage) the need to push energy out in the form of stories and pictures is growing elephant in the room. In honour of my triumphant return to the midwest, I believe a little well placed Allen Ginsberg is required. Please do check back more often now. I'll be posting more writing and photography more often. I'll try to keep the editoralizing down, but that's a hard thing to do when one writes.


Rising over Night-blackened Detroit Streets
by Allen Ginsberg

brilliant network-lights tentacle dim suburbs
Michigan waters canalled glittering thru city building
blocks
Throne-brain lamps strung downtown, green signals'
concentrate brightness blinking metal prayers & bright
Hare Krishnas
telepathic to Heavenly darkness whence I stare down and
adore O beautiful!
Mankind maker of such contemplate machine! Come
gentle brainwaves
delicate-soft heart-throbs tender as belly butterflies,
light as Sexual charm-penumbras be, of radiant-eyed
boys & girls black-faced & bond that Born believe
Earth-death at hand, or Eden regenerate millennial Green
their destiny under your Human Police Will, O
Masters, fathers, mayors, Senators, Presidents, Bankers &
workers
sweating & weeping ignorant on your own plastic-pain
Maya planet ...
february 15, 1969

Poem of the Week: Tax Week 2008

Hey, just figured I needed to brighten this page up. Here's my selection for Poem of the week. It really expresses my longing for a little more city life. There are fewer love poems as beautiful.



Steps
FRANK O’HARA

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

Notes from the First Hot Day in Bozeman

At work again and avoiding the usual important things I should be doing to close out the semester's end. Just figured I'd post some thoughts concerning the final academic paper of my undergraduate life. We must be getting close to the end, what 20 days left or so? Anyhow, the final paper is dealing with the duality of the America Literary Canon. I'm working with trauma theory and looking specifically at the master-slave dichotomony in the American experience. After looking at a book like Bloom's Western Canon and coming from a place like metro-Detroit you have to start realizing that there is fundamentally something amiss in conservative academic programs. Programs like the one here at Montana State University. Realistically, I've only studied about three writings by African Americans here: Ellison, Morrisson, and Kaufman. This is incredibly problematic at best. I've come to wonder if this is the norm across the educational board in this country. Thus the paper topic. 20 days to read and talk about all those voices left out in the canon. I'll keep the word informed as to my writings.

On the upside of things, I just found this great concert posted on CBC radio two's website. I encourage everyone to check out the show. It's free and if you like Afro-Soul, jazz, or R&B you should enjoy it. Her name is Melissa Laveaux and she now lives in gay ole' Paris:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/concerts/20080229melis

Ahh ... Montana Politics

I'm still a little muddled down in the fall out, but I just figured we had a little gathering here at MSU on Saturday night. Obscured somewhere behind the monster truck rally at the Brickbreden, we had our local chapter of the Republican party bring in David Horowtiz to give a little lecture to rich white folk out here. My jaw dropped suddenly when I showed up to work the next day to find his hate literature on my work desk. It's great to see that he deflect his ignorance temporarily away from America's educated and educators and onto the totality of Arab-American students. I wasn't aware (but thanks to the pamphlets I've now become acquainted with the fact) that some of the best brightest at MSU are secretly planning a Jihad. He stopped short of claiming they had sneaked the WMDs out of Iraq before coming to Bozeman, MT.
The really scarely thing wasn't just the propaganda left at the desk. Rather it was the non-chalantness that the all of the local media outlets have portrayed his visit as. Some might even say that were quite pleased with themselves in landing such a "fantastic" speaker. Our local State Representative (Mr. Rehberg) was even kind enough to attend the event. Yep, all of this dim shadow of ignorance stamping out any sort of light on the hill beacon that our school is suppose to play to the community. Nothing like selling fear, intolerance, and misunderstanding on a major public University grounds. Is this the great promise America is holding up for the world to see? I've contacted those that I should have. We'll see if anything
comes of it.

Quick Updates after a Prolonged Absence

This blog is now in line for a couple of important information updates. First and foremost is the pending move from the high alpine valley of Bozeman, Montana to the rolling lowlands of Bloomington, Indiana. My fiance and I will be moving there in May as I will begining my MFA in prose Fiction at IU this fall. This is, of course, a very cool thing. The Buddhist connection to Bloomington is pretty massive as is the quality of the people and program at IU. I'll be keeping the world informed as to any upcoming readings i may have.

Secondly, I recently achieved the cover shot on the Winter 2008 MacGuffin. Check it out at New Pages: http://www.newpages.com/magazineguide/newmags/newmags.htm. Full colour, it's pretty snazzy. I'm thinking the issue is available at bookstores around Michigan

Thanks I needed that

I just heard back this week that I've been accepted to present a selection of my poetry and a paper of mine on Jack Kerouac's prose structure and bebop at the Sigma Tau Delta conference in Louisville, KY. I needed that. All this waiting around for graduate program info has been starting to whittle away at my confidence and general sense of well being. Between this period and the GRE, I am really starting to wonder why anyone bothers with graduate school. I guess you really have to want to go. Regardless, I'm looking forward to heading off to Louisville in March and hope to get more out of this conference than I did last year's in Pittsburgh. Now, I just have to find the money ...

Basketbrawl of the Wild - One Last Time

I believe that twelfth night served as a perfect final Cat-Griz game for me last night. The Cat's embarrassed the "all-so-mighty" University of Montana Grizzlies in the second half of the match last night. I don't think I've seen defense as tight the Bobcats played in the second half since the 1989-90 Detroit Pistons. It was a fantastic light to see my final installment of this cross-state rivalry in. I will always have a special attachment to the athletics department out here, mainly because I spend a lot of time covering them over my two year tenure as a sports writer for the old Exponent. It is still very important to point out the differences between the two Exponents, primarily because the "New" ASMSU Exponent is one of the worst disgraces to student journalism I've seen. It's pretty bad when the English department distances itself from it. But I digress. Congrads Bobcats on a long deserved victory last night.

Writing and Over Writing: The Hemmingway Hangover

Ok, so my bias should be be quite obviously stated here. That much of the "writing" world in America has been far too influenced by the prose style of Hemmingway. It almost seems to be a shield that many people hold up in lieu of having any semblence of real talent. I speak more out of conversations with a English department that on the overall. lacks any talent or insight into teaching the craft of writing. There are a small number of very gifted writers in the faculty of the department but their voices and influence seem muted in face of the prevailing guard in power. Small rant, sorry.
In terms of Hemmingway the man was brilliant in pushing meaning into compact sentences. Yes, it is a difficult style to replicate. But it is simply a style. And style is a personal matter. Writing at its heart in an individual's voice, and as such we must consider multiple ways of expression. Hemmingway's style was brilliant, but we must not lean exclusively on it. As a writer, I often look towards Hemmingway's craft for inspiration. But inspiration and style are two different things. As much as my style is from his or anyone elses.
So the question still stands: Do I overwrite? I've heard it once or twice in regards to some of my prose writing. But I've learned my style from listening to the richly textured structures of jazz. I'm very sure that I'm not the only writer to hear "You should dumb down what you're doing, write more like Hemmingway." Statements such as this always worry because it illustrates fundamental flaws in writing and understanding. Writing like Hemmingway is not dumbing one's work done, nor is it better one's style. Writing under such premises creates a mimic rather a true voice in the discourse of literature. Is that what we as a society and teachers should be pushing for?
So, returning again to the question of do I overwrite. I'm still not sure. This is more of a rambling dialogue about the process of writing and the occasional stiflling effect of close minded instruction.

Some thoughts on Hockey and the Great Eastern Life

Watching the Winter Classic on the first day of the new year, I was quickly reminded of my more youthful days back in Michigan. The sport of hockey has always been a fairly important facet of my life. It filled many evenings of fall, winter, and spring back then. I used to travel around just to watch junior hockey and experienced some of my more memoriable experiences during, before and after those games. It was actually during a trip on my 25 birthday weekend that I decided to move to the US. It was a 3 games in 4 night trip with stops in East Lansing, MI, Erie, PA and Brampton, ON. I know I needed a change and this movement across the American landscape provided me with the first insight into an idea of a different type of lifestyle. Hockey was critical to my movements then and it is something that I found myself longing for out here in Bozeman.
When I first moved out here we had the Icedogs. They were a lower level hockey franchise coached by the brother of American hockey great Pat LaFontaine. After just one year as a season ticket holder the owner sold the arena to a beer distribution company. The Valley Ice Gardens now serves as a warehouse to tasteless malted beverages from St. Louis. Since then, there has been a clear hole opened in my experience. Without a team here (and mind you now there is a Junior C franchise playing in an old horse barn) I feel there is little in the way of connection to the valley. I miss the real Icedogs in Bozeman and fundamentally believe that their absence has been a real detriment in my forging a bond with my temporary home.
We are heading East again in a few months. The change is exciting, clearly. And heading back towards the land of Oglethorpe and ole tyme hockey things will change, connections will be forged, and life will move on.

Ramblings on New Year's Eve 2008

Winter has been a snowy one thus far in the great mountain of Bozeman. It somehow seems very appropriate from my final winter beneath the Bridgers and Hyalites and will undoubtedly help to cast a fuzzy warm glow on my memories of this place. The break has thus far been a fairly mundane affair. I can say that I'm quite pleased to be done with the vast majority of my graduate school applications. This basically means I now have the opportunity to work more on my novel project. I'm only about 12,000 words into writing it. But at least I can say the tentatively titled work, "The Gates of Limestone" has been a fun way to incorporate my ideas of jazz, the American Dream, and movement into one work. In the end I think it may be a good way to incorporate all the things I've learned out here with all the experiences I have had since moving to the US. I still have two other ideas for novels on the backburner: 1) about the life of Andre Lapine (Canadian Painter) and 2)Sci-Fi novel based upon Beowulf and the works of HST. However, admist the boomsticks and fireworks of Gallatin Valley I believe it is time to retire to my chamber for some well needed rest. To all of you, good luck in this newest of years, 2008.