In a brief interview up now at Word Riot, brilliant author Dawn Raffel plugs my chapbook, Poolsaid. I’m grateful to her. It’s quite easy for these things to be forgotten amid the continual flood of new writing published online.
If anyone would like to review Poolsaid please let me know. I’ll help find a home for your review.
Two pieces of good news. The first is: I’m no longer seeking representation for UNO CHE, as it has been kindly extended to me by Erin Hosier of Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. Erin is as savvy as she is smart, and I’m certain she’ll find a great home for my first novel.
The second piece of good news involves ITAI, which now officially has an ISBN, listed along with other titles to be published next year by Noemi. I’m doubly honored to be the first in a new series they are pursuing called Lines of Flight, which the editor has explained to me thus:
“Your book will inaugurate our LINES OF FLIGHT SERIES, a nod to Deleuze’s theory of the “line of flight” or “line of escape” referring to the deterritorialization of a multiplicity. In the case of ITAI and future genre-conflating or genre-bending or genre-less works we publish, we’ll appropriate it as series title to designate works involving a movement of escape or flight from traditional generic categorization.”
Today is a good day.
I’ve found a publisher for “In This Alone Impulse.” I woke up this morning to a lovely note from Noemi editor Evan Lavender-Smith (great name), saying that he’d like to include ITAI among the first four full-length works his until-next-year chapbook press would publish. I’m ecstatic. I mean: I’m ecstatic!
The book will come out at the end of ‘09, but I’m sure I’ll have updates regarding the process of getting to that point, including editing, book format and cover design, etc.
I’d have never guessed that my first published book would be poetry. Or rather, prose poetry. Or micro-fiction. Or whatever.
Here’s a link to Noemi Press. They put very handsome books out into the world, each of them compelling, challenging and energizing.
Hip hip!
This cover** makes sense in a number of ways–which ways will only make sense if you read the book–but it’s a striking cover nonetheless, I think. It was designed by my dear friend Matty Harper, who you can find here.
*No, I haven’t sold the book. This was a personal gift done out of love and, I think, inspiration.
**Click the image for a larger version.
A couple of years ago, I was at work, copywriting my little heart out, when a coworker named Matt Daniels asked me, out of the blue, if I’d be interested in writing a script for a short film contest. I said I’d never written a screenplay. He said I had two weeks. I said sure. In the following two weeks, I squeezed a screenplay out of the book I was then writing, Forecast, which, though still unfinished, contained some stuff I thought would work well visually. I had to make some pretty significant changes, and try to round out an end that wasn’t in any way part of the book, but with Matt’s great feedback and patience I turned out something that actually made our little project one of four finalists.
Point is, Matt and some of his friends put together a little teaser video to show during the final round of judging as a kind of proof of concept. They made it in a single afternoon. We didn’t end up winning–largely because the judges thought the thing was overly ambitious, and the person who’d won the year before had embarrassed everyone involved by dropping the ball on a similarly ambitious plan–but the promo video is actually really neat. You can see it here.
I’m looking for representation for Uno Che–a novel set on the Arizona/Mexico border in the year 2112 about smuggling Che Guevara’s clone into the United States using as cover a theme park devoted to illegal border crossing. It is a tale of Love, Fatherhood, and Redemption. An excerpt of it was awarded the 2008 John Hawkes Award in Fiction. And it has already won further accolades. My father, for instance, has said about Uno Che, “Sure, I’ll read it.” Ka-ching!
In preparation for the short story collection I’m sketching out, I’ll be reading as many collections as I can. I’ve recently finished Honored Guest, by Joy Williams. I’m currently reading The Emigrants, by W.G. Sebald. Coming in the mail is I Sailed with Magellan, by Stuart Dybek. Also on order is a selection of Chekhof’s stories, edited by Richard Ford. As you can see, there is no real structure to my investigation. I will simply read what occurs to me to read, likely in order of occurrence.
That said, I’m very open to suggestions. Is there something I absolutely can’t do without? I may have already read it, but I might like to revisit some collections. Jesus’ Son, for instance, I’ll no doubt re-read for the umpteenth time.
It’s finally up. My chapbook, Poolsaid, is available for free at the Literary Review web site as a downloadable pdf.
Selections from it are also in the print issue itself, though I actually don’t know which pieces they chose to print. I’m pretty happy. Thanks again to all those people involved in making this happen.
I’m currently sitting in a trailer beside a rustic cabin in rural Maine. The crickets are a distant, high-pitched sound above the tinkle of my dog’s tags as she noses around, unearthing bones buried by an older, wiser dog.
Last night I finished the first draft of Uno Che. At roughly 55k words, it’s significantly shorter than Interference, which itself was significantly shorter than Forecast. The first book I actually completed, coming in at a now-astounding-sounding 475 pages, was the longest by far, but I only add that in for Megan. I prefer not to be reminded of it.
Perhaps the next novel I write will be a short story.
Or a poem.
Anyway, I’m not overly concerned with its humble length. Even many books I greatly admire, as with many great films, feel much too long. Hopefully this just means I kept to what was essential. My plan is now to put the manuscript aside for a couple of weeks before returning to it. I read recently–I think it was in an essay by Zadie Smith–that one ought to leave a completed manuscript alone for as long as one feels able. I think this makes sense. However, as I’m hoping to sell it and quit my job, that will have to be shorter than would be ideal.
Like other things I can think of.
Jeez, it was last summer, I think, when Opium Magazine invited me to read at an event celebrating small presses in the New York Public Library. Though most of the magazines involved were represented by a member of their respective editorial departments, Todd Zuniga–never one for following the rules–sent me in to read my own work. There, I happened to sit beside a very unassuming, pleasant man named Raymond Hammond who, I learned, was the editor of none other than The New York Quarterly. Because he spoke about his fondness for W.D. Snodgrass–hardly a poet known for experimentation–Raymond surprised me after my reading by explaining how he was always on the lookout for good prose poetry, and that he’d been impressed by what I’d read: excerpts from a book-length work called “In This Alone Impulse.” Now almost a year later, the first in three consecutive issues slotted to contain poems from the manuscript has appeared: Issue 64. I’ll no doubt post when issues 65 and 66 appear, and perhaps without the obnoxious, self-important preamble.
Shit, who am I kidding?
Anyway, the New York Quarterly follows an interesting policy of only publishing one poem from each author featured. The result is a veritable kaleidoscope of contemporary work, and its a testament to Raymond’s role not only as editor, but as a kind of curator, that he makes the combinations and juxtapositions throughout often surprising and insightful. I encourage you to get yourself a copy.
