Favorite Things Of 2012

OMG. I just realized 2012 might've been the best year of my life--socially, writing-wise, happiness levels, etc. 

In no particular order, here are a bunch of the coolest things of my year:

Big Big Mess Reading in Akron with Layne, Christopher, and our country-sensation/hype woman Ashley. Started some of the most interesting and solid friendships of the year.

AWP Chicago, especially the Lit Party.

Over The Top Reading Tour. Again, solidified/kick-started some stellar friendships.

My summer road trip, pretty much everything about it, but especially: 

• Megabus trips to Chicago/ATL
• Having a bald eagle fly over me as I was kayaking Lake Monroe
• Hang-time in Tuscaloosa, including hoola-hoops, group writing time, and juggling
• Seeing the Katy Perry movie with Laura
• The Vouched ATL birthday bash
• King of the Hill night with Michael Straub
• Walks with Pinky
• Getting a tattoo in Akron with Ashley
• Reading in Kleinberg's basement/opening for a metal band
• Bro time with my actual brother
• Being at the final day of the World Disc Golf Championships in Charlotte
• A week at the beach with Layne 
• Seeing Japandroids in Chicago with Kleinberg

Favorite album of the year: Celebration Rock by Japandroids

Other favorite albums: Now Here's My Plan by Bonnie Prince Billy, Baptist Girls by Bro. Stephen, Savages by Bonesetters (Okay it was late 2011), Attack on Memory by Cloud Nothings 

Favorite book of the year: Bender by Dean Young

Other top books: The Collected Works Vol. 1 by Scott McClanahan, Sermons and Lectures Both Blank And Relentless by Matt Hart, Madness Rack and Honey by Mary Ruefle, the two chapbooks by Nick Sturm, The Map of the System of Human Knowledge by James Tadd Adcox, I Take Back The Sponge Cake by Loren Erdrich & Sierra Nelson, What Is Amazing by Heather Christle

Check out my list of my favorite small press stuff at Vouched

Regular e-mail chats with Ashley Farmer, Mike Young, A.T. Grant, and several more.

Regular poems dropping in my inbox from Zach Arnett, Nick Sturm, Wendy Xu and more.

Seasons 2 and 3 of The Voice

Taking over as Associate Editor for Magic Helicopter

My first Ace!

Reading at the Forklift, Ohio Pool Party

Weekly Elwood Disc Golf League

Playing in my first PDGA sanctioned disc golf event

Winning the Pank 2012 1000 Awesome Words contest, judged by Michael Martone

Having Tiny Hardcore Press publish my chapbook, Goodness Is A Fine Thing To Chase

Layne becoming my girlfriend!

Moving out of my parents house!

Let Me Call You Maybe

It's almost a new year and every new year begins in a blur of holiday gunk, weirdo weather, and hope for this year to be even better than the last. What better way to start a new year than with the rejuvenating force of poetry?

Here's the deal--

Send me a FB message, Twitter DM (tlgobble), or email at gobble(dot)tyler(at)gmail(dot)com with your phone number (if I don't have it already) and any other nice chatter, and I'll call you between January 1st and January 7th to read you a poem and blahblah a little (last part optional). You can choose the poet/poem (doesn't have to be one of mine is what I'm trying to say, though it can be if you'd like) or the topic/theme, or I'll select one for you. 

STOKED

Constant Versus

Someone amongst us invented anger. Reaction to evil vs. cause of evil. Wait, when did my hand learn to do that? Periodically, I forget that I've always known. The child shakes. The shiver vs. the hands twitching. We walk around, thinking of new ways to use our mouths. Later, the hands cup the face, the face so full of blood. Beat red from the anger. The fury swells vs. the fury pours onto you. Where do we go now? I don't know. Someone amongst us created disc golf. Time's scissor-step. One goes further and further into the woods. A tree goes down. Of course, you hear it. Fallen vs. forced down. Time never compromised with you. Even the calmest person I know has a moment. Inside vs. outside. I believe in a calm space. Time never comprised you. Today, I don't have much to say, but there's always a chance it can go in the basket.

Journey Through Ice And Irritation

In Loving Memory Of Layne Ransom

The snow, it was falling. In the distance, a polar bear with maddening teeth. In another distance, a pack of angry elves sharpening their swords. But the worst danger, the jaggedest point poking at my very existence, was in my own throat.

In this throat, for all my centuries of beating heart and pulsing rhythms, a great thirst besqueeched me. Yes, it is true, I've been alive for many generations, dodging cannibals and dinosaurs, slaying dragons and radical feminists. Yet today, I go on my greatest journey of all: to find a gift for myself to thwart this terrible burden.

I began to trudge out of my cave, long time dwelling inside Mt Rushmore. Before the presidents even hatched their wombs, I was there, shoveling the slopes, defending my new frontier. I hopped on my sled, adorned with ancient accoutrements. Soaring through the icy hills of my life, I was off to find my quencher. Past the dreadful savages and around the predators I went. 

But it seemed like a wicked god's labyrinth, all my progress and stealth turned resulting in nothing. The throbbing in my throat heightened. Also a board in my sled turned into a snake and slithered into the darkness with one of my deepest secrets.

But lo, my years of yearning, of learning, of burning esophagus dashed me forward. And finally I came to the Mystic Michael and his flickering flame castle. I answered the riddle of his winged snow buffalo guard--What is not afraid of a single snowflake of Mystic Michael's breath? The answer of course was a fool!

And I am no fool! I plodded with caution, bowing to his presence hovering above his kingdom like the ghost of the blizzard's latest victim stalks the hillside that toppled him. I came to The Mystic, offered him what I had--the sled, the painting of last night's sunset I had made while waiting in line, three magical acorns.

And he gave me a GPS tracker set toward a magical potion Mystic Michael himself had conjured for everlasting folks of my predicament.

Back into the storm I scurried. Following the arrow, the flashing lights of alleviating possibility, until I came to a golden tomb with the words agua quencheritis etched into the front wall. As The Mystic had instructed I slid two fig leaves, MAGIC FIG LEAVES, under the door and it opened. A great song rang out. A three-headed penguin nuzzled me forward. And there it was, the treasure I'd been seeking, the peak of my thirstful struggles, the loving hand to push me down the slope of comfort: a bottle of water, chilled.

"my thoughts grow mouths and swallow each other"

My dearest Laura Straub's Field Guide to Blake Butler, one of my favorite fiction ppl.

Why didn't anyone tell me about Jim Nutt?

Cool argument for Poetry getting more of the Painting treatment. 

But mostly what I envy painters for is art galleries. Just walking into an art gallery gives me a feeling of uplift. I love libraries too, but the feeling in a library is that you will paw around ferretting out information, whereas in a gallery the feeling is that enlightenment will come to you. You don’t have to know anything when you get there. You just check your coat, mash the clip-on tag to your collar, and trust that whatever you need to know will be explained as you go along.

This is why I propose that the best way to make contemporary poetry accessible to a wider public would be to put it in museums. To trot out an old saw: “Ut pictura poesis,” Horace wrote in the first century BC. “As is painting so is poetry.” This idea has been bandied about so much that scholars refer to it as u.p.p., and the question of whether poetry and painting do or should resemble each other has preoccupied artists from Titian to Wallace Stevens. These discussions, however, have primarily focused on artistic practice. What I mean isn’t that poetry should have more visual elements or become more abstract or more representational or otherwise do what visual art does. What I mean is that I think people would like poetry better if there were somewhere they could go to look at it that had high ceilings and good lighting and curatorial text to explain things about the poems that might not be obvious.