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.