Ugh--I am freaked out by the job-search process; CVs, asking for recs, it all freaks me out; I wish I could see myself as a professional not, perpetually, a student; of course, being a perpetual student is good, but I need some explici8t confidence!  I want to teach poetry workshops!  Comp really is a good gig, but some variety wld be awesome.  In a few minutes I'm going to join AWP so I can look at their joblist!  It's terribly late in the year for this, but I guess I need to start anyways!  I don't want to rot in Vegas

Ok, good news: my book, For Days, will be out shortly from BlazeVox.  I hope someone decides to formally review it or post a note on their blog!

Other news: I havn't written a poem for a while--over a week; I get that this is not a big gap, but for me it vaguely is.  Sometimes feeling stressed makes me write lots and lots; but not this time!  And what I should be attempting is popular fiction--in my mind/dreams it makes sooooooooo much sense for me to do this; and then, ugh, I get too PC for popular fiction.  Or am I all wrong and a manuscript centered around designer names and which stilletos to wear is ripe for deepness!  I feel like any fiction attempt I make will just whether or not I want it to get academic/academic feminist.  Ugh, I need to purge this pointless fear and just crash out a hundred pages and try and write my way to Robertson Boulevard, valet parking, insane creditcard bills!  Agh but then, back to academia, I get stressed that writing abhout rich girls shopping is just the height of not expanding gender representation--which of course is true and apt, as since when is popular fiction expanding representation (hopefully I'm very wrong 'bout this!).  If I was eager to write parody things might be easier; but, yikes, that's not my dream! 

Ok, I wish I am the type to write really long blog entries, to just go and go and go, and be personable not clipped.  I wish prose felt natural to me; I wish delving into the minutae of my freaked-out life seemed like actual fodder for paragraphs. 

How is one supposed to negotiate feeling pathetic and egotistical;  I embody the combo but it's not a sweet run.  Some "prestigious" acceptances wld maybe do wonders: a poem taken by the Chicago Review, for example.  Or Conjunctions.  Or the Denver Quarterly.  For years I've been good about relentlessly submitting poems; and, alas, I'm getting burnt-out; it's sorta sad to do the whole SASE chore and know that a few months later I'll get a rejection-slip.  Wow yah if anyone wants to hiss at me oh blogger why do you care 'bout prestige publications.  And, not funny, the answer is because I guess it might make me marketable.

Note: it's not that I've not been published in some plum places--I totally have; I'm just greedy and want more!  More! 

APR--please take one of the poems I sent you all yesterday!  Ditto Pleiades!

Ok this may be the most self-centered gripey blogpost I've yet spewed; hopefully I'll get better at this mode!

From a Montevidayo blogbox comment by Kent Johnson:

"Conceptualism is fine, but that Dworkin (though in this case it’s safe to say the act is by a whole group) would go so far as to put my name on something I haven’t written is really a bit too much. I don’t care what he says “the next frontier of propriety” will be. This crosses a line"

Honestly I find myself a touch surprised--or maybe dissapointed--by KJ's stance: his interest in challenging conventional notions of authorship seems to align with Dworkin's move.  Or maybe not because Yasusada traffics in a wholly fake author, whereas this BlazeVox book brings the mess of messing with authoprhsip into the very moment.  At any rate, this development feels to me like a logical extension.

[Oops, not sure what happened but the post posted prior to arrival at an "end"]...Anyways I'm very pro Petrarch.  The JG piece reminds me some of H Mullen which I very much dig, and I also think R Silliman except I think that's not something other than a hazy thought--likely just a matter of seeing largish chunks of prosepoem.  I need to get back into The Alphabet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I like how the pieces are I guess one could say kaleidoscopic and also loosely narrative/faux diaristic.  Mostly, and this gets strayt back to HM, I love how the text majorly seems generated by puns and other play.  It's hard to believe it was written "with a hardon."  MM, or maybe it's got some of the semenic drive A Burgess says narrative needs--I might be making up the AB paraphrase; wow I feel like so much of my "knowledge" is that which I've made up rather than verified.

I like this--from Typo 4: JOHANNES GÖRANSSON

My only quip is the Petrarch digs--poor Petrarch, has he had any friendly words ever since Pound decided a smackdown was necessary?  I presumably exagerate, but only to express my very pro

Art-trash

On Chelsey Minnis and CAConrad

Joyelle McSweeney

I have only actually read the CM part of the review, and skimmed the second part, but I overall rather enjoy what I have actually read: so few reviews "close read" enough for my taste so it's nice to see it when it occurs.  I particularly dig JM's point that the punctuation of Minnis misses the mark: so punny/clever/fun/pleasing.

I Love Discursing With Women

I also notice I tend to fare better when Montevidayo is in its populated by women stages--the blog is multiauthor and of course the roster for the blogcommentbox has regulars but of course some regulars go on hiatuses)--and I don't know if this is solely a quirk of mine or if--as some of me suspects--smart women are inevitably gonna make for the best discursive atmosphere: I guess I'm working from the assumption that (and again this is from my own experience and that sample is too small for macro-conclusions) it seems (can seem and the word assumption seam?) women may be less likely to display an aura of dismissiveness--or at-least the Montevidayo women.  And this ain't to say I've never seen women dismiss at this site, but even the dismisiveness tends towards engagement.

Note: although I erased it, initially I posited this may link to overall trends in female socialization; and this does not make me comfortable as I lean towards thinking much female socialization is awful/damaging.

Note: I don't mean to imply I am pro conversations with women because of some general or innate docility: no-no-no, not-at-all!  It's precisely for the fact of multifoliate arguing that I often find my arguments--or conversations or discursive xchanges or whathaveyou--so delightful and impressive.  For those who want names, Danielle Pafunda and Ariel Greenburg and Kate Zambreno and Kate Durbin (apologies if I've botched spellings) come to mind.

Ugh, I need to wean myself off Montevidayo--the blog not the city.  I keep non meaning to do this and then keep on failing.  And this makes sense in many ways; although it's by leaps and bounds more stressful to participate in than, for example, The French Exit or Nothing To Say and Saying It, it's also full of lovely sparks and has been great for the poetry writing me: I could be wrong--influence can be difficult to pin down--but I believe that many poems of my past year would not have been written were it not for my Montevidayo exposure.  I assume this is why I continually fail to cut the cord: the cord stresses but also feeds much nutrition.