Link Plop

My skull is kinda whimpy so Im gonna start plopping online goodness I like here, for me, for memory, for maybe others if that is what they are into.

Mary Ruefle on Fear

Fear is the greatest motivator of all time. Conflict born of fear is behind our every action, driving us forward like the cogs of a clock. Fear is desire’s dark dress, its doppelgänger. “Love and dread are brothers,” says Julian of Norwich. As desire is wanting and fear is not-wanting, they become inexorably linked; just as desire can be destructive (the desire for power), fear can be constructive (fear of hurting another); fear of poverty becomes desire for wealth. Collective actions are not exempt from these double powers

Lovelace notes on revision

7.     How do you think the backside of a mirror feels? Think about how lonely that is, to be the backside of a mirror. Or maybe not at all. Maybe it’s a relief. It must be such pressure to be the front of a mirror.

Wayne Koestenbaum, Matt Rohrer, Rachel Zucker In Conversation regarding the domestic 

Chris Higgs with a list of 50 Best Instant Movies 

 Awesome poem by Mark Neely

For M & K

I regret to inform you
To inform you I regret
I can’t make your wedding
Your wedding I can’t make
but good news: you still can.
But me, I can’t bear it.
I’m not a bear, you see,
I’m the fog in the forest.
My skin is like the paper
your marriage is typed on.
There’s two lines to say, I’m worn
thin. Then again, I’m the earth
folded in half. I’d hate to suck
you in. Truth is: I’m a divorce
not finalized. Maybe, you can’t
understand because you’re a week
from dancing nuptials, from smiling
church pews. I’ve been there, I know.
But me, yes me again, I designed
my shit poorly, my bad, whoops.
Can I be selfish for a moment?
Since when do I need permission?
Three months of shaking myself
awake, drinking myself to sleep,
the thought of another church
and our family with their white
dentures and white perms and
K, you with your white dress,
I’m a storm no one wants to chase.
Hide the dinnerware, hide my slice
of cake because right now I’m all fury.
I’d like to be sorry, so here’s a song:
Oh joy to those lovebirds flutter fly
but my bird got the flu, I need to lie down.
Whoops. Can’t even make it two lines
without ME ME ME. The poem
I’ve been writing all day says
MY HEART STILL WORKS
but I didn’t write that, so
hey hey don’t let me steal
your spotlight. I’m gonna go lie down.

Hey check out the ass on that guy

I'm feeling absurd, but that's okay, it's National Poetry Month. I love Jennifer L. Knox. People say funny, I say okay but how about brave and feisty and go-getting. Like vroom. Hot Ass Poem is a poem that says LANGUAGE IS ABSURD SEXUALITY IS ABSURD HUMANS ARE ABSURD. I'm gonna agree.

OH YES YOU CAN YOU CAN DO IT

Elysia Smith and her Chicklitz palz will be reading tonight and guess what IT'S NATIONAL POETRY MONTH. How nice of a combo! I think it'll calm something in me. Or at least, I'll stand in the back, clap appreciatively, and not act like an idiot.

RECOVERY

OH YOU TRIED TO GET ME. But National Poetry Month goes on. In the hospital last night, I read The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg. FOUR YEARS IT TOOK ME WHY? I open up and the first poem goes uggggggggggggghhhhh here's something. I was churning inside and I churned inside. I re-read this first poem then I laid the bed back and fell asleep finally.

The Monster Hour
by Zachary Schomburg

On the Monster Hour, there was this monster that used to come out and try to kill everybody in the audience. No one expected it, not even the producers who were told by the monster he would play a few blues tunes on the piano. The monster apologized after each show and asked for another chance. I'm planning on telling a few jokes this time he would say. But time after time he'd break his word and try to kill everybody. The producers finally replaced him with a gorilla in people clothes that came out and played a Wurlitzer, but they never changed the name of the show. It was always the Monster Hour. I don't think anybody understood then what a monster really was.

Es muy divertido.

It's National Poetry Month, but I still studied enough to get a B on my Spanish test. WOOO. One time, I tried to buy a Neruda book online and it said it was both the English/Spanish, but it was just the Spanish. I stare at it and go, uhhh if only. Robin Robertson translated this Neruda poem. Neruda wrote this Neruda poem. It's good.

Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market
BY PABLO NERUDA
TRANSLATED BY ROBIN ROBERTSON

Here,
among the market vegetables,
this torpedo
from the ocean
depths,
a missile
that swam,
now
lying in front of me
dead.

Surrounded
by the earth's green froth
—these lettuces,
bunches of carrots—
only you
lived through
the sea's truth, survived
the unknown, the
unfathomable
darkness, the depths
of the sea,
the great
abyss,
le grand abîme,
only you:
varnished
black-pitched
witness
to that deepest night.

Only you:
dark bullet
barreled
from the depths,
carrying
only
your
one wound,
but resurgent,
always renewed,
locked into the current,
fins fletched
like wings
in the torrent,
in the coursing
of
the
underwater
dark,
like a grieving arrow,
sea-javelin, a nerveless
oiled harpoon.

Dead
in front of me,
catafalqued king
of my own ocean;
once
sappy as a sprung fir
in the green turmoil,
once seed
to sea-quake,
tidal wave, now
simply
dead remains;
in the whole market
yours
was the only shape left
with purpose or direction
in this
jumbled ruin
of nature;
you are
a solitary man of war
among these frail vegetables,
your flanks and prow
black
and slippery
as if you were still
a well-oiled ship of the wind,
the only
true
machine
of the sea: unflawed,
undefiled,
navigating now
the waters of death.

IF YOU DIED RIGHT NOW....

I need a job, but really who needs a job when you have National Poetry Month? Heaven is a place where there are no jobs and lots of poetry and singing and the Internet. Mairead Byrne posts poems on her blog, Heaven. I AM GOING THERE. This poem is called "Heaven" and it makes me giggle and feel nice.

Heaven
by Mairead Byrne

I'm in heaven
&God springs
a surprise
party:
it's John Lennon,
Bob Dylan,
& Bob Marley.
Someone says
Hey God
Dylan's not dead
& God says
Hey man
this is Heaven.

I have been to the happiest place on Earth and it rained.

It is raining again and I kinda just wanna sleep, but National Poetry Month moves on. It's cool when friends write poem. It's cooler when the poem is good and fun and makes me go AHHHH. My buddy Cody Sean Davis just posted this poem on his blog. Keep going, keep going.

I’m certain that the beer I’m now drinking is for you.

Last night was beautiful and I shouted poems, not alone. Poetry sucks when you do it alone. WHERE ARE YOU RIGHT NOW? Nate Pritts + Matt Hart. As conversation. As togetherness. And You + Me. PrittsHartatTheCollagist.

*

Bonus: Electron Face by Matt Hart recording. YIKES SHAKING MY HEART.

*


MATT HART HAS A NEW BOOK AND IT LOOKS EXCELLENT

I slept in too long, but HEY IT'S NATIONAL POETRY MONTH. Something about this poem makes me love my dad more. Something about this poem makes me want to go outside and never come in. Something about this poem makes me want to care again.

The Fish
by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Your Trouble Is Ballooning

My hand hurts, but it's still National Poetry Month. Started Your Trouble Is Ballooning by Amber Nelson today on the bus. People look funny at little books like THAT'S NOT THE DA VINCI CODE. I know, thanks. I met Amber in Alabama. She was nice. Publishing Genius just released this book (split with A. Minetta Gould). Publishing Genius makes me swoon litlove. Here is a poem from the book, first appearing in H_NGM_N 7. NICE.

1.4

I travel to Caligari

the mistakes, who teased

our bony cherries

in this playground?



To ease

we only reinvent absorption.



I am Married and Insubstantial



as a stain

to this field,



a skirmish and flyswatter

made buxom.

I open my mouth

Abraham Smith teaches at Alabama and I saw him and I was nervous and I didn't say hi and I think that was lame of me and he seems a 10 on the INTERESTING DUDE GOTTA KNOW YOU chart and yeah I keep that chart and these poems all called DEAR WEIRDO are holycow and this video maybe the best reading I've ever seen and YIKES TO WRITE WITH SUCH GOGOGUSTO.

And the best thing one could do was get arrested.

I'm almost out of groceries, but somehow National Poetry Month pushes forward. Today, Todd McKinney leaves to be a visiting writer at El Paso Community College. Larry Levis is like his fav poet. I dig Levis for sure. Today's poem is In 1967 by Larry Levis. Safe travels, Todd.

OH MY GOSH IT IS RAINING A LOT. IT MUST BE NATIONAL POETRY MONTH.

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich: Huge metaphors like this are tricky, but Rich pulls it off. This poem provides me a sense of comfort in my current situation. I really appreciate the sense of purpose Rich has bestowed upon her speaker.

What Matters, Revised.

Frottage By Dean Young

How goofy and horrible is life. Just
look into the faces of the lovers
as they near their drastic destinations,
the horses lathered and fagged. Just
look at them handling the vase
priced beyond the rational beneath
the sign stating the store’s breakage
policy, and what is the rational but
a thing we must always break? I am not
the only one composed of fractious murmurs.
From the point of view of the clouds,
it is all inevitable and dispersed—
they vanish over the lands to reconstitute
over the seas, themselves again
but no longer themselves, what they wanted
they no longer want, daylight fidgets
across the frothy waves. Most days
you can’t even rub a piece of charcoal
across paper laid on some rough wood
without a lion appearing, a fish’s umbrella
skeleton. Once we believed it told us
something of ourselves. Once we even believed
in the diagnostic power of ants. Upon
the eyelids of the touched and suffering,
they’d exchange their secretive packets
like notes folded smaller than chemicals.
They told us nearly nothing, which
may have been enough now that we know
so much more. From the point of view
of the ant, the entire planet is a dream
quivering beneath an eyelid, and who’s to say
the planet isn’t. From the point of view
of the sufferer, it seems everything will
be taken from us except the sensation
of being crawled over. I believe everything
will be taken from us. Then given back
when it’s no longer what we want. We
are clouds, and terrible things happen
in clouds. The wolf’s mouth is full
of strawberries, the morning’s a phantom
hum of glories, morning glories.

This Clumsy Living + The New Collagist + Bloomington + WUZZZZZ EMOTIONZ

I want to respond to This Clumsy Living by Bob Hicok, the last book I successfully read in my Spring Break challenge (OKAY I TOOK ME TWO DAYS). However, I'm not sparkling or gushing or HELLYEAHING to life in general. I'm saying: I'm not sure I could do my honest feelings to this book goodstuffjustice.

But before I forget, I wanna say a few quick okay things about the book. Several of these poems struck me as drier than normal Hicok or perhaps just clashing with my expectations and because of my mood/life right now, I couldn't deal with it. However, this book contains some real gems, like "In Michael Robin's Class Minus One" and "My New Neighbor." These poems (HEY HE READ THOSE ALOUD DID THAT INFLUENCE MY READING OF THEM?) strike with the looseness called humor shaken into deep emotions, wrapped up in imagination and language play that make me go YEAHYEAHICOK.

I think a better response would be this poem I wrote and edited once after seeing Hicok:

I expected Hicok as a floating head
perhaps trailed by a heart on a string
like a nice kite. I expected Hicok to shout
not the way my Uncles shout when someone
leans against their truck, their emotions
kicking out exhaust, spiraling out in exhaustion
from all the years of back up. No, I expected
the poet who helped teach me that you can be
funny and caring to be both funny and caring
in a room full of people who felt the same way.
Imagine my shock when he stepped to the podium
read a dozen poems, with hardly a comment,
with hardly a smile, with hardly a breath.
Instead one big sigh, instead forty minutes
of words bending like a mouth into its various
shapes. I scribbled in my notebook the questions
to ask in the Q&A, the stories to tell in the meet
and greet, but I came up with talking about myself,
how I yearn to study with him at his school. And he said
what you gonna do in your year off? I said, find a shitty job
that’ll make me want to get to you even faster. I said, Sorry
for being weird. He said, Don’t tell them that when you apply.
I felt my body sway side to side like a wave goodbye.
When I got into the car, I saw the book was signed
Good luck getting into a school. He was laughing,
he was smiling, he was feeling the whole time.

----------------

The new issue of The Collagist is up. I'm so stoked to read that excerpt from Blake Butler's new novel when I get a little more free time. ANOTHER STELLAR ISSUE.

Speaking of The Collagist, I have a new interview with Christian Anton Gerard up at the blog.

-----------------

TYLER FIELDS AND I TORE DOWN BLOOMINGTON I HOPE YOU DONT LIVE THERE IT IS TORN DOWN

But really, I was stoked to show him my favorite spots, introduce him to some of my Bloomington pals, and just be cool together.

Spots:
Caveat Emptor Bookstore (Little Star by Mark Halliday (YEAH I KNOW RIGHT?) and The New Year of Yellow by Matthew Lippman)
Boxcar Books (THE WAILINGCOOL SINGER/BASSIST FROM GOOD LUCK WAS WORKING THERE WUZZZ; Elegy by Larry Levis and Fire to Fire by Mark Doty)
TD's (didn't have the Sleeping Bag cassette like I wanted, but cooldude Jared Cheek was working)
Landlocked Music (No Singles by Japandroids)
Dat's
That crappy church disc golf course
Laughing Planet
Soma

People:
Super host and awesome pal Darrin
CoolCara
Kailee and a wacky adventure to a mountain bike course
Zack and Naughty Dog (Bloomington's finest hot dogs)

It was a pleasure, relief, reboot, comfort.

--------------------

Right now, I feel like someone stole all my discs, burned my books, and made me sit in a tree ALONE.

IMPATIENT POETS?! NO WAY?!

Poem
by Frank O’Hara

The eager note on my door said “Call me,
call when you get in!” so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and

headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!

Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was

there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.

In the first section of “Conventions Of Wonder,” Pinsky takes to task the descriptive styles of Louise Bogan and Frank O’Hara. More specifically, the two poems, one from each, seem to do a flip-flop of typical modes of description, as Pinsky says, “both avoid the convention of words telling-about a physical reality…each deflects our feelings…away from wonder, and towards impatience.” Bogan’s poem “Simple Autumnal,” as her poems often do for me, strike as flat because of their method of putting themselves on a pedestal of sorts before attempting to reach back down to the reader, so to speak. O’Hara’s poem, to me, does a much better job accomplishing what Pinsky says both do, in a way that is accessible, purposeful, and poignant.

Sure, the emotion is less defined by words, as Bogan uses words like “sorrow,” but O’Hara puts himself on the page in other ways: with the action, with the speaker, with the voice. While Bogan’s undoubtedly has those elements, O’Hara’s uses are, for me, more aligned with an aesthetic of approachability and engagement. Where Pinsky claims that this poem “quarrels with our sense of how poetry treats experience,” I certainly agree, but I’ll also point to that quality as one of the major contributors for the engaging quality of the poem, as in much of O’Hara’s writing.

Such a trait, I might add, could be one of the reasons O’Hara continues in popularity with my generation of writers and poetry readers. As Pinksy does so well to point out, O’Hara uses phrases and specifics that “insist upon the unique, unpredictable character of experience…warning the reader that his generalities and expectations are likely to prove irrelevant to these irreducible particulars.” In this quote and in O’Hara’s poem, I see a point about my developing view of poetry that at once points at my extreme preference of O’Hara over Bogan and my deep affinity with indie/small press lit.

This element of broken expectations and approachability adds energy and emotional movement to O’Hara’s poem that I don’t find in Bogan’s. Additionally, my favorite pieces of indie literature ride on similar mechanisms. I’m reminded of Daniel Bailey’s Drunk Sonnet 14 because of it’s refusal to be anything expected or emotionally worded:

Drunk Sonnet 14
BY DANIEL BAILEY

IF ANYONE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON EVER THEN HEY
I AM HERE IT WOULD BE NICE TO TALK SOMETIME
INFOMERCIALS HAVE STARTED AND I KIND OF WANT TO DIE
I’M PRETTY SURE THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY FOR A MORGUE

OK SO ACTUALLY IT’S FOR THE BIBLE OR SOMETHING
SO IT’S A COMMERICAL FOR TRYING TO BE HAPPY OR SOMETHING
BUT I AM NOT HAPPY TONIGHT NO I AM NOT JUST HERE
IF HAPPINESS EVER WORKED THEN HOW—I DON’T KNOW

HAPPINESS IS A LIZARD IN THE SUNLIGHT GETTING WARM
AND THEN IN THE NIGHT BENEATH A ROCK EATING FLIES
AND SWALLLOWING THE MEAT OF THE TRASH OF THE DIRT

AH, SO TONIGHT IS A LITTLE DRUNK AND OK OK OK
THAT IS GOOD SO LET ME BE—THERE IS NO LOVE TONIGHT
GOD IS LIKE BONO—SOME DICKWAD NO ONE WILL EVER MEET OR LIKE

While it uses words like “happiness,” this poem takes that abstract word and other emotions and puts them onto the page, a page that steamrolls over itself. That third stanza is a great example of this. The poem starts with the speaker, the situation, the direct address of the openness. Then, boom, the turn in the third stanza pulls the poem, and more importantly the feeling, into description, but beyond that it busies its way through the image. The ending, for me, seems like a fuck-you to this whole discussion, going from “THERE IS NO LOVE TONIGHT” immediately to the last line, a seemingly unrelated commentary on both God and Bono. This last part is a good example of both this poem as a even more modern example of Pinsky’s thoughts on description going beyond wonder to impatience and the idea that my favorite kind of poems don’t hide behind their language but reach out for the reader and their true selves.

Revised Poem

Below is a newer version of This Is So Romantic, which I talked about in the previous post. You can find the originally published version of This Is So Romantic here.

This Is So Romantic

Ride bikes with me!
Our helmets protect our heads
soft from the fossil fuel burgers:
we go fast through the suburbs
on the edge of our town,
dotted with daisies and driveway
cookouts already in April.
Our apartment building
behind us stands like the asylum
I visited with my girlfriend before you
when her Mom swallowed
12 pills that started with an E.
The ride there the last time
I felt comfortable in a car.
I saw a shirt once,
stick figures holding hands,
hearts around their heads,
lop-sided circles empty
besides two eye dots,
and the caption This Is So Romantic.
You ride closer as the sun inches below
the houses with their gold doorknockers
and gold Hummers parked out front.
A young boy hits a wiffleball
ahead of us. We swerve,
and you say, Yeah it is,
without opening your mouth.

Influence Vs. Imitation Vs. Showing Off

For my Independent study with Todd, I'll be reading a series of poetry books that have won awards early in writers' careers, are first books, or are early books on presses I dig, along with the Robert Pinsky criticism collection, The Situation of Poetry. We have decided to begin the semester with the Pinsky collection, using different elements of craft and style discussed in the book as possible conversation points for the poetry collections and my own poems. After reading each book or section, I'll blog in some manner about my reaction, my application, or something else about it.

The Introduction to Pinsky's book sets the stage for the rest of the book by explaining his usage of "Modern" and "Contemporary" in regards to the poetry in point. The main sketch he makes is about influence, with the primary example being two excerpts, one from Stevens and one from Moore, as examples of presenting metaphor and images in a direct, sincere way, a trend that came into being, Pinsky says, in the Modernist era. Furthermore, he uses images/metaphors from a poem by Robert Bly and another by Mary Swenson to discuss what he calls an "exhibitionist" approach to such poetic devices, how he contends that "the aggressive yoking of unlike things can sometimes amount to little more than showing off." To the first by Bly, he labels it "a kind of gaud or badge" the writer employs to establish oneself as a writer, exploiting "an inherited mannerism without full understanding it." To the second, it sees it as a sort of begging for admiration "of the writing for its own sake", void of a solid subject.

To me, Pinsky, already, makes several valid points, at least valuable to think about in my own writing. For instance, where in my aesthetic does the practice of images/metaphors fall, and with what methods/style? I'm of the mind that one thing writing needs is an excited audience, one who wants to read more, wants to buy books, wants to talk about the writing, wants to let the writing be purposeful and helpful in some way in their lives. While I see many approaches to do this, the importance of metaphors/images, certainly a large part of our current society's everyday life, seems a valuable avenue (I'm thinking of TV in particular). Pinsky admits that the way Bly and Swenson use these devices does not necessarily need to be a forbidden practice, but one acknowledged. It is often easily "identifiable when least assimilated," and holds importance and familiarity in contemporary poetry writing, which helps point to influence.

For my own writing, my main way of attempting to get people excited about writing is to capitalize on the elements that my readers find most engaging and thought-provoking. Today's reader, or at least the ones I see my poetry most fit to connect with, are flooded with poems, not to mention all of the other, likely higher-prioritized, means of interaction with the world. The poems I've been writing lately seem to be finding the balance between attention-grabbing, often startling or thought-provoking, and tightness, in terms of language use and "point." In this way, I believe my influences will be intact and honored, while still assimilated in a manner that adds to the complexity and excitability of the piece.

After reading this intro, I sat down to do some writing, and one poem in particular struck me as in need of some serious editing, though I do feel like it is worthy of being included in this project, if I work hard enough on it. It's the poem "This Is So Romantic," which appeared late last year in Novelletum, in an admittedly less-tight and sometimes superfluous version. The part that startled me, as it threw up the Pinsky flag, was the beginning of original published version:

Ride bikes with me
with our helmets like oyster shells
protecting our pearl heads
with our feet hugging metal pedals:

After not reading this poem for awhile, coupled with Pinsky's poignant discussion, the metaphors and images jumped out as over-the-top and useless, especially in the context of the rest of the poem. The use of "like oyster shells" and "pearl heads" was weightless, lacking the purposefulness, like what does this say about the characters/speakers/the situation?, and irrelevant, as it's talking about riding bikes in the suburbs. The last excerpted line seemed way to dramatic, an attempt perhaps, with the affection theme, to get "hugging" into the poem. I felt that the beginning lacked the directness and relevancy to push the poem to the point of connecting with the reader, an valuable part of a good opening.

After tinkering around with it, the newer draft, though certainly no final draft now, appears as such:

Ride bikes with me!
Our helmets protect our heads
soft from the fossil fuel burgers:

I made the decision to cut the metaphor about our helmets/heads to a more direct line, complemented by the (hopefully) weightier and more poignant "soft from the fossil fuel burgers," a line that is not nearly as direct but also holds some connotations, with the bike riding, the suburbs, and other images that have been reworked or added into the poem. This change, I hope, starts the poem off on a different foot, adding to the focus and hopefully impact the rest of the poem shapes into being. While I certainly think the type of images/metaphors Pinsky describe Bly's and Swenson's as have their place and purpose, the biggest thing I take from this introduction is to be more careful and considerate of my image/metaphor usage.

GOIN' MAD

So this cool thing called Mad Swirl has this system where they post your poems to a forum and they kind of disappear, but if you get accepted three times, then boo-yeah, you get a page and all three poems reappear and such. Well, last night, they took my poem "Other People's Problems," in addition to "The Future Storytellers of the World" and "Pedophile Redefined" from previous acceptances. Now, I have a page. WOAH.