Take a Chance on E.

I'd like to paraphrase ABBA, as well as interrupt my usual self-promotion, to put in a word for a friend and colleague.

That is one Eric Hendrixson, whom I've known for about a decade from DC-area events including The Batcave and the Iota Poetry series. I've read and endorse his Bizarro Fiction novel with the highly improbable but strangely apt title Bucket of Face. Published by Eraserhead Press of Portland, Oregon as part of its New Bizarro Authors series last October, this novel features a noir sensibility and a MacGuffin-driven plot and has a cast of characters including various sentient fruits and vegetables, most notably a "hit tomato" whose softer side involves Michael Jackson fandom.


No, I am not making this up. Eric is.


But in these days of constrained resources and limited advertising budgets, Bucket of Face has not yet found all the readers it deserves. As noted in a piece on the book in the Washington City Paper, books in the New Bizarro Authors series must sell 200 copies before an author's second book is considered. Right now Eric's book is just a little over halfway there, which means that lots of people have not treated themselves to a story that will make you laugh out loud, challenge your sensibilities and, when you least expect it, deliver an emotional gut-punch.


You could spend bigger money on smaller thrills, but why bother when you can read Bucket of Face?

On Not Being a Poetry Star

As you may very well know at this point, we are deep in the throes of National Poetry Month. If you were trying to forget about that, please accept my apologies.


As in most previous National Poetry Months, I am haunted by an all-pervasive question. To wit, "Where's my cut?"

To paraphrase the words of Nils Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap, "The answer is nowhere. Nowhere is my cut."


This is because, while National Poetry Month affords much-needed exposure to an art form that is all too easily overshadowed and shouted out in an era of spectacle, the exposure and such perks as exist go to those who are already poetry stars. In this instance, it must be said, "star" is a highly relative term. Even the best and most established poets in the United States, the ones with multiple prestigious publications and an impression collection of grants, are fortunate to have a book sell five thousand copies. Few have literary agents, and none of them needs a bodyguard or entourage. All are blessedly immune to the prospect of a reality television role.


Still, poetry stars get a few expenses-paid readings and maybe some extra sales this time of year, as well as the attention noted above. And the last time I checked, I am not one of them.


It might be a wise marketing move, a way of making a virtue of necessity, to say that such poetry stardom as exists probably isn't all that great, or that the poetry world is completely corrupt and toally composed of the "phonies" that Salinger's Holden Caulfield denounced in The Catcher in the Rye.

I can't honestly say those things, however. The fox in Aesop's fable may have consoled himself with the thought that the grapes he couldn't reach were probably sour grapes anyway, but I suspect that the grapes of poetry stardom (however few or small they may be) are actually kind of tasty. Put me down for two bunches, please.

Moreover, the poetry world is only partially corrupt and only partially composed of phonies, which in this instance means handing out scarce prizes and publication slots to friends, students or family. Sorting out which poets are and aren't inspires no small number of off-the-record debates.


Worrying a great deal about one's status in poetry, an oxymonoric phrase to be sure, is a decidedly First World problem. Doing so betrays both vanity and envy, at various times called character flaws or besetting sins. I am comfortable with either term, if not the reality it names.

One question that arises from this morass of self-involvement is, in short, "Why am I not a poetry star?" By extension, why aren't many others?

A variety of answers come to mind.

1. Inadequate achievement. Poets are not the best judges of how their work stacks up. Maybe my work to date doesn't deserve poetry stardom, or doesn't show signs of doing so any time soon, if ever. Maybe my best poems are far ahead of me or, heaven forfend, behind. The truth can hurt. We'll see how things shake out.


2. Inadequte achievement. See Item 1.


3. Insufficient charisma. As noted in Pulp Fiction, personality goes a long way. Some people command attention simply by being present, and all other things being equal that will help them to find audiences and sell books. Some of the rest of us are more retiring by nature and don't electrify a room by walking in.


4. Insufficient connections. In the prestige economy of poetry, connections are a kind of currency. One can inherit them by being born into a literary family or acquire them by attending certain schools, whether Ivy League stalwarts or better-known creative writing programs. I have more connections than some and fewer than others, and no amount of connections will help a poet whose work doesn't attain some theoretical minimum degree of quality.


5. Being insufficiently "beautiful" in a conventional sense and/or insufficiently photogenic. People gravitate toward good-looking and photogenic/telegenic people, especially those who are charismatic. It just works like that. If Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt start writing good poetry, or even average poetry, many of us poets are in trouble. As it is, poetry careers sometimes benefits from the poet's good looks. The same could be said for this as for Items 3 and 4: we play the cards we're dealt, and who wouldn't use the advantages they have?


6. Writing poems that may not find favor with current factions and fashions. Poems and poets can fall between the cracks that separate different schools, styles and publications. Falling between the cracks can happen to a good or very good poet, but it also happens to plenty of mediocre or worse poems.


7. See Items 1 and 2.

I may attain some level of poetry stardom, or maybe not. That's largely for others to decide. In the meantime, to paraphrase Allen Ginsberg, I will put my slight shoulder to the wheel.

Open Mic Bingo

Since April is National Poetry Month, even non-poets may find themselves attending a reading or two. While many events include only featured readers, some events also include, or consist entirely of, an open mic segment in which all comers can sign up and perform for a certain length of time or text.

Like other gatherings, the open mic includes a variety of features and rituals. For the edification of newcomers, and for a variety of uses by experienced attendees, I present above a card for Open Mic Bingo (click to enlarge). Prompted by a conversation with my wife, this card also has antecedents in Meeting Bingo and the recent AWP Bingo card by Daniel Nester. Others may have done this previously and/or better, but this is the first attempt I know of. If I can observe enough by watching, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, I hope eventually to provide a second card for the ambitious or experienced player.

For now, game on!

This Book Is Priced to Move!

If you've read this blog more than a time or two, you may have noticed the occasional reference to my second collection, Settling for Beauty.


Perhaps you thought about purchasing a copy but held off because you needed to save money.


Now you can do both--have my book and save money.


"How can that be?" you might ask.


That is a very good question, and I just happen to have an answer.


Right now Settling for Beauty is priced to move at one of the leading online booksellers. Yes, that one. You can have a 76-page book of accessible free verse for less than you might spend on a burrito.


If you have any remaining doubt as to whether you should purchase a copy of Settling for Beauty, this might help. Should you buy the book and not like it, I will refund the sale price of the book to the first five individuals who state that they do not like it and can provide proof of purchase.


Obviously, this works on the honor system. Anyone who likes the book but would lie to get a small refund has to live with himself, and I still won't be out much money.


If you are still on the fence, here is one more to chance to check out the link.

The Nervous Breakdown

In spite of the recent and ongoing disaster in Japan, and a wide range of other national and global developments, the subject line does not describe my mental condition. Yet.

In this instance, The Nervous Breakdown (TNB) means a Los Angeles-based online journal whose home page sometimes bears the slogan "Fighting the power since 2006," so its age in Internet years is approximately a whole lot.

As it turns out, Poetry Editor Uche Ogbuji graciously gave me space for not one but two pieces earlier this month.

The first is my poem "In an Atrium". This short free verse poem may not be ripped from the headlines, as they say, but it is based on real events and home furnishings.

The second is a self-interview, which proved more challenging than I expected. Knowing the answers is one thing, but coming up with the questions is quite another.

Whatever you think of my work, you may want to poke around TNB's poetry archives, which include poems and self-interviews by poets including Mihaela Moscaluic, Kathleen Rooney and the legendary Lewis Turco. Also featured is work by Timothy Steele, with whom I've had the great good fortune of studying at the West Chester University Poetry Conference.

You'll find plenty else to like in the fiction, non-fiction and review sections, among others.

Work in The Lineup: Poems on Crime

The other anthology shoe has dropped, in a good way.


My poem "From a Deposition" is one among many by more than two dozen poets in Issue #4 of The Lineup: Poems on Crime, edited by Gerald So.


I am grateful and amazed to see my own work in the volume as poems by far better-known writers such as crime novelists Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman, and poets Randall Watson and Charles Harper Webb.


If you're trying to convince someone that poetry touches on real life and real people, you may want to share this collection. It includes vice, theft, muggings, murder and post-traumatic stress disorder, all in language that is moving as well as accessible.


As a man once said to me while he was trying to sell me a possibly gold chain in Chicago, "Don't cheat yourself, treat yourself."

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

I should have known. Tom Petty had this figured out a long time ago.


Today is February 18, and Dowsing and Science will be released on March 1. In any long view, that is the blink of an eye, an instant. Right now, though, that period of anticipation seems like an eternity.


My author's copies will arrive any day now, and then the reality will start to sink in. My publisher is graciously sending out review copies, a great weight off my shoulders, and I can move on to the business of hoping and fearing what reviewers might say.


Publicity arrangements so far include a blog tour with four stops scheduled in the next couple of months. Anyone who would like to extend that tour is welcome to get in touch.


Barring anything disastrous, there will be a Washington, DC launch event at some point in the spring. One venue that seemed promising for that purpose is closing at the end of this month, so event planning begins all over again.


Now there are readings and talks to schedule, and invitations are more than welcome. Fortunate are the writers who have agents and speakers' bureaus, and it would delight me to become one of them.


But for now there is the waiting. So close, and so far away, is the publication of Dowsing and Science.