Tuesday, October 01, 2024
morning in the witch house
Sunday, September 29, 2024
the paper boat sails again
https://open.substack.com/pub/kristybowen/p/october-paper-boat
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
confronting past selves
Last night, we got to see the wild ride that is THE SUBSTANCE, a grotesque take on beauty and youth standards in which an aging TV aerobics instructor is promised an alternative, cloned youthful version of herself two weeks out of the month with very specific directions. Whatever could go wrong? All the rules of course are eventually broken and delightful chaos ensues in a bloody, gory, mess of a movie that may be one of the best things I've seen all year.
The hilarious thing was we thought we might pair it with Aubrey Plaza's newest. MY OLD ASS, in which a psychedelic mushroom experience winds up with a teen girl confronting a nearly 40 year old version of herself. Sort of a flip on the SUBSTANCE, but side by side, the first looks like a Disney movie, it was so wholesome and earnest--the message being to enjoy your youth and your family because you will never be in that place again.
The movies feel like a weird distorted flipped upside down version of each other, though I am glad we saw the much calmer one first and the crazy one second. In one, the younger gets a chance to talk to her older self with all the warnings and wisdom but in the second, that younger version becomes the monster that destroys the middle age version wholly and completely. Bit by bit, and then all at once.
I keep stumbling across articles on middle age and invisibility, and maybe its just that, as a Gen Xer, we've all just been invisible for decades, but I can't say that I feel any more or less invisible than I ever did. Of course, I am not exactly fitting in the beauty standards that women, like Demi Moore's character in the film, whose paycheck depended on perkiness, thinness and smooth skin. I always used to feel like my physical self was just a vehicle, a container for what was going on in my head .My teens were a whole lot of diets and disordered eating, while my twenties was just floating in the world as a disembodied brain through college and grad school and first jobs. I've gotten better at living as a physical being in later years, but really only in my 30s and 40s.
I guess I eventually embraced my curves and learned to maximize the "assets". But even using that word is a nod to currency, of the body, of the male gaze. In certain arenas there was attention, like on dates or at parties, but mostly I coasted in a lot of spaces under the radar thankfully. (really, I don't think I would have wanted as much attention as some women get just existing.) Even if under other circumstances I would have been interested, male attention in places where I wasn't looking for it (stores, the bus, the sidewalk outside the library) really just made me angry and annoyed. There is comfort in invisibility. I have a few more shadows and lines on my face, but I am otherwise the same. I worry less about the cosmetics of aging, and more the health issues that sometimes accompany it. Not really that I am losing my beauty. Unless I am specifically thinking about the passage of time or trying to see small print in dim lighting (my one very noticeable physical change in the last decade--something I used to be able to do) I don't think about my age much at all.
The lesson of date night last night was that confronting your 18 year old version could be a great way to pass on wisdom and change your destiny. Or your 18 year old self could try to kill you. Be prepared for either.
Sunday, September 22, 2024
notes & things / 9/22/2024
The fall equinox, and despite the weather, I feel the change. Several times over the last two days I have looked out at the sky and thought the light was so odd. Not really different, and not really summer or fall, just clear blue sky or maybe a few straggly clouds, but it hits the buildings and bounces in a way I've not noticed as much. For many years, these were hours spent in the windowless florescent glow of the library, so the courtyard still has ways of surprising me. The bedroom A/C was on the fritz, so we removed it for the year last week and it currently sits in the middle of the living room until I can make a space for it somewhere else until we get it fixed. I do like sleeping with the window open and the fan on for the first time in a while. We thought maybe summer was, in fact, on its last days, but this week has been close to 80 or above each day, so I still sit here with the dining room unit buzzing away at my back writing once again surreally about Christmas things while J makes canna butter cookies in the kitchen with the oven on.
When I got paid this week, we procured more theater tickets for the rest of the plays and musicals we plan to see before year's end. Wednesday found us at the Goodman for Inherit the Wind, whose premise, though it was written in the 1950s still feels relevant today as the Christian right tries to enforce its authority in red states and who knows what will happen, despite best efforts, in November. This week we get to see Henry V at Chicago Shakespeare, which should be good. I am not as acquainted with the histories as I am with the tragedies (my favorites) or the comedies/romances (of which I took a seminar devoted to as an undergrad), so I only know bits and pieces of the plot. Me and my sister saw a lot of Shakespeare every fall in the 90s at the community college theater in Rockford, including an outdoor Shakespeare festival in 99 that acquainted me with the bloody awesomeness of Titus Andronicus, one of my favorites.
Fall, as always, brings lots of retrospection. I found myself thinking that my sophomore year at RC was 20 years ago, when, with horror, I realized that it was, in fact, a decade more. I was 20 and barely remember myself then. I know that was the semester I started working backstage on shows and in the scene shop. That I had a lot of reading heavy lit courses that fall, mostly novels and plays. Otherwise, I would have to check my journals to fill in the details it was so long ago. Twenty years, I was 30, and that fall working on the very first DGP chapbook that wasn't my own, getting ready to release it in November with not a clue what I was doing. I was also white knuckling it through my MFA classes (it would get better the next spring) and working on the last poems that would go into my first book even as my style was changing a little in what would go on to be my second. That poet, for all her bitching and complaining, seems very far away. 10 years ago, I was 40 and dealing with romantic situationship drama and pinched nerve drama and drowning in the usual chaos of too much happening and not enough hours in the day. So 50, at least, feels quite calm despite occasional ripples on the water and the sink into my best season (October), but also my worst (November).
Saturday, September 21, 2024
filles a la cassette
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
poetry and narrative
I've been thinking a lot about narrative and purpose when it comes to the writing I do, whether it is more prose or verse-like in formatting and appearance. So often narrative seems to be talked about as either/or. Either your verse poetry has a narrative line, or your prose has a poeticness to it, but no one really talks about the kind of thing I like to do, which is narrative, but prose, but also fragmented and written with "poetic" things in mind. The result is it's harder to find people who write the same kinds of things or are doing similar work, who have the same goals in common. One foot in one sphere and the other in another. But then again, as someone who also uses visual art, it's a feeling I am used to, though the boundaries seem much clearer (though with book arts, text installations, etc, maybe it's similarly brackish water.)
I am a story writer more and more, but I use poetry as that vehicle instead of prose. But the poems rarely look poem-ish or maybe even work the same way the poets I see around me do. They do not have a consistent sense of voice or structure. They are serpentine, unreliable, fragmented. They would like frustrate the casual fiction writer, as well as the poet who expects poetry to be other things entirely. And yet I feel I have more in common with fiction writers than I ever have with poets somehow, a fact that becomes more and more clear to me every year. The good thing is in feeling a little isolated I've also been granted a better view of the science and alchemy that goes into how and why I am writing, which is something. (though it makes it harder to find readers, perhaps, in a field where they are already in short supply.)
There is also the frustration of finally having that vision and being really happy with what I am creating and yet feeling like there is less and less of an audience for it-be it everyone being fixed on the flaming dumpster fire of the world or other shinier, flashier things. When I was a baby poet, the things like acceptances and approval sustained me, but take that away, whether it's being ignored by them or choosing to not pursue them, you wander around in the darkness for awhile. That has been how everything so far this decade has felt, like a dark room bumping into things. I once blamed the poetry, but I've learned to be kinder to both the writing and myself. To feel out the darkness by touch. Occasionally you fall down a flight of stairs or wake up with bruises on your shins. But still, you continue.
Monday, September 16, 2024
pretty dead things
fauxtography, 2024 |
As I've had an eye toward finishing up the short series of MARIANA prose poems, I've been flirting with something new for the next month or so's writing endeavors after I saw a mention of French girls who were brought over during the 19th century from France to the New Orleans who were rumored to be vampires (a confusion perhaps in their name "casquette" girls who carried all their belongings and dowries in trunks, but also involvement with mysterious happenings at a convent after they arrived to marriages that did not go so well, most of them being between 14 and 17 years old and all alone in a new country). It being about one of my favorite cities and to boot, about the supernatural, it caught my imagination completely and I've been furiously doing research and scribbling notes the past week or so. NOLA has such rich vampire lore that goes far beyond even Anne Rice. My favorite bookstore in the French quarter is devoted entirely to vampire books and goods. It seems a very appropriate project be starting as we near Halloween, and if all goes well, I would love to show it off as part of this years #31daysofHalloween offerings, which I already have many things coming down the pipeline, including a couple collage zines that I was working on last fall that are finally ready to share.. Also, perhaps a physical artist book in a tiny edition I will be putting in the shop. I will also be making some new spooky art things, video poems, some recordings of both new and old poems, and other Halloween and horror related content I've been saving up for October, including a couple pieces here on the blog, so keep an eye out for those...
Thursday, September 12, 2024
notes & things | 9/12/2024
fauxtography experiment, 2024 |
I have been otherwise keeping my head down and working furiously in writing and editing things when I'm at home--less creative stuff like decorating and DIY pieces, but with occasional snippets for the mariana series. I have also turned my thoughts to getting a final draft assembled for RUINPORN to begin combing through and getting ready for proofing and design, but am waiting to finish a few more delayed DGP chaps before really digging in toward the end of the month. I also have some fun ideas for new journals and paper things over in the shop I would love to launch this fall.
We were out Tuesday nigh, but caught a recording of the debate later in lieu of our usual late night streaming (we are a little ways into Breaking Bad, which I am watching for the first time.) It went about as suspected, with a whole bunch of WTF moments and both Harris and the mods having to keep things on the rails. It is alarming that many do believe the nonsense from the far right wholeheartedly, though I think its becoming less and less whatever your political leanings. Or at least I hope so.
Sunday, September 01, 2024
broken places
Friday, August 30, 2024
books and seasons
Earlier, I wrote a draft of a general post that encapsulated the past week, but I lost it when blogger glitched out on me before saving. In it, here were awesomely disturbing movies, new tattoos, and the usual ramblings about weather. But I don't want to write it all out again, so instead I thought I'd write about books and seasons. How mariana feels like the perfect project to be working on now, with all its sea and salt-drenched monsters. How my final ediits on ruinporn, which will be coming as soon as September arrives, is a very fall project filled with decay and crumbling houses, just as much as the carnival poems I just finished earlier this month felt very summery and swampy.
Looking back, the fever almanac, though it was published in the fall was always a summer book, while in the bird museum was very winterish. girl show and major characters... were definitely summer, but shared properties...was more spring. salvage, with all its mermaids was summer, while sex & violence and little apocalypse were definitely autumnal. In newer titles I would say dark country, collapsologies, and granata are pure summer, while feed, automagic and animal, vegetable, monster are definitely winter or fall.
Sometimes its about subject matter and imagery (Victorian inspired books def have a colder weather vibe while things like the Persephone book are more sunlit and Mediterranean.) It doesn't necessarily have to do with when it was written, but I suppose timing also may have some impact, since I tend to like to work on summer-ish projects during warm weather months. This fall, I have plans for a couple things that may be winterish in nature, so will probably wait til November to start them.
Sunday, August 25, 2024
in which the poet returns to the sea
I've been fiddling away with the mariana fragments this past week since my rather auspicious start last weekend and am liking them so far. I initially thought they might be footnote-ish in style, but they are feeling more whole. As a writer who has probably written a hundred mermaid poems in her lifetime (including shipwrecks of lake michigan, which was a more modern interpretation of the lore, plus the entire segments of siren poems in GRANATA (though they were the winged, non-tailed, version of the original myths) it's a subject I return to often, despite living many, many miles from any sea beyond the vast expanse of Lake Michigan at my doorstep.
I was recently telling J about my fascination with sea creatures that initially spawned my desire to study marine bio when I was 17--a complicated mix of low-key peer pressure, charismatic AP bio teachers, a desire to save the world, and endless environmental editorials in my high school newspaper. I quickly learned I was not cut out for science due to what I suspect, in hindsight, is a serious learning disability when it comes to math and numbers, However, I lived briefly along the Carolina coast taking marine science classes and loved it. Science's loss was ultimately poetry's gain.
This project is, of course, a little different. Inspired by that series of images I generated just on a lark, but now, as I progress through text fragments, is becoming an eerie story of a cursed seaside town whose houses keep collapsing into the surf and whose women become monstrous hybrids--not mermaids at all, but slimy, slithery, darker things.. If I manage to progress smoothly, I may even have it done in time to share during the lead-up to Halloween, when I have quite a few other surprises in store both here, IG, and in the shop.
Saturday, August 24, 2024
bird girls and bloodshed
We decided to invest in another theater monthly subscriber program in addition to Alamo, which has most new things we want to see (and lots of older stuff) , but not everything, particularly as we move into the high horror season of September and October and one-off tickets are very pricey these days. We can see 3 movies a week if we like for just slightly more than the cost of a single ticket each month.(we probably won't but even 1 a week is a steal) Thus, we found ourselves christening our first A-List tickets with this movie, which we had seen previews for this summer, but weren't sure what to expect. This was exactly the best kind of indie horror, in that it starts off with a mystery, but then slow builds, with lots of violence and body-horror, to a disturbing and relevatory conclusion, touching on themes of scientific ethics, experimentation, and fertility while also just being a good spooky romp though the disarmingly beautiful German Alps. Another case where you ask how can someplace so beautiful harbor such horror?
The setting itself, much like a French film we saw months back where people started inexplicably turning into animals. The monstrousness of the human/creature hybrid as well as the way such creatures fit into, or don't fit into, society. It also reminded me of one of my favorite horror films of recent years, which involves similar themes of motherhood and transformations. There was also a lot of disorientation, for both the characters and the audience.
It was particularly good intellectual fodder, both for the current project I am working on with mariana, a new series/story about a cursed seaside community sliding into the Atlantic that features a lot of sea creatures and monsters, and for something that may be on the horizon for the winged things images I generated a month or so back. I will be starting to share some pieces form the former after the first of Sept. so keep an eye out for those on IG.
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
emergelings
I go through cycles of hopelessness when it comes to writing. Well, at least writing creatively (I am pretty content with the how and what of the writing I do to pull in a paycheck.) But poetry is slippery, and sometimes feels not like poetry at all, especially when buried in more prose-centric projects,. I often say I am a fiction writer trapped in the body of a poet., meaning my mouth and my hands work out what is happening in my brain, but they don't always work together well. And poetry, specifically, as I see the publishing community, often leaves a distaste I cannot always describe. I used to be much more enthusiastic and enjoyed certain things I no longer enjoy at all. But the poems, they still want to be born somehow.
A couple weeks back, I stumbled on this Brenda Hillman piece and laughed out at the mention of a poets audience, the five people and one of them a tree. I have no idea how many people read or are interested in my work, and its probably better I do not know the smallness or the largeness of it. What frustrates me perhaps more is that as I feel I've gotten better at the art of it, that my skills have gotten keener, it feels like the world's interest in poetry in general, and of course interest in my own work, has gotten narrower and narrower and smaller and smaller. Claustrophobically so.
So I started the year, wanting nothing from the work but its own rewards--aside from audience or sharing or readership, however small. Whatever dime I am dropping into the ocean of work being produced at any given moment. It's a kinder place, but far lonelier sometimes. I try to go back to when I was just starting. When I was 19 and writing terrible slender poems and submitting them to vanity anthologies in the back of Writers Digest,. Or later, when I was moving in on something like good writing and sending out work to publishers. That girl would be grateful that anyone was interested enough to want to read or publish her work at all. But that girl also want to play the game, which had nothing at all to do with the poetry itself. the awards, the book deals, the acceptances. I played for a very long time with minimal results (but then even those results would have astounded baby poet me. )When you take those things away, there is just the work and trying to share it.
Unlike cicadas, our emerging isn't an identifiable thing with a start and end date and life cycle. We are emerging all the time...
Saturday, August 17, 2024
beginnings...
Yesterday I was up unusually early at 9am and decided to embark on a new writing project, having pulled the carnival series to something like a comfortable close the latter half of this week. It was a rare few extra hours before I had to turn my attention to a lengthy Thanksgiving decor article, so I seized it. an, in a rare frenzy, wrote about 9 fragments I was happy with for some bits to accompany the fauxtographs below I am newly obsessed with (we will forget there are other writing and art projects in the queue, some for a couple years, but this new shiny is working, so lets do this. )
It also was a reminder of how difficult putting the first few words down on the page are for a new project. It's a moment in which it feels like all the weight of the world rests on the pin of that first sentence, which is totally not true at all, but FEELS like it is. This is probably true for all kinds of writing, though I give myself a little more leeway and just dive in on other things. That initial sentence can always be cut or replaced or rewritten once you know where you're going. But so often it feels like taking that first step out the door for a long journey. You are excited, but also a little dreading it.
I've talked before about endings, about when a project feels like its complete and whole. I was aiming for something around 40 in that last series, but with some of the poems/prose fragments I've cut along the way, it wound up more like 30, but it did feel like the last couple pieces put a lid on it. I've been working on it over the course of the summer, so I suppose August is as good a time to wrap it up as necessary. There will still need to be some edits when I return to it, probably later in the fall, but probably not any major trimming by then.
Starting out, there is always the excitement of not really knowing the destination, even if you think you do. But even then, that is part of the fear. The worry that he horses will tire or the engine will run out of gas, and maybe you'll abandon the project by the side of the road. A road that is, in fact, dotted with a number of half-conceived manuscripts and zine projects that go back more than a decade. I think only once have I been successful in picking something up once it idled for too long. And that project (unusual creatures) had many elements, the written text, but also collages and an installation piece at the library, all of which occurred over a decade before the written segments were wrapped up. I really only finished it because I needed those poems for a longer project manuscript that was coming to a close where they were too perfect NOT to include.
Monday, August 12, 2024
Sunday, August 11, 2024
notes & things | 8/11/2024
It seems fitting that my very first seasonal piece dropped for HD this morning. The same morning, in fact, that we woke up to milder, cooler weather outside the windows, less humidity, and that certain slant of light that foretells autumn. We have a few more weeks of summer obviously, but I feel it every August, that slight shift. Other Halloween specific content is already up from the last few weeks (here and here) so we might as well call these final days of summer a farewell. Call it a wrap on the slowness of early August as it turns the bend and heads briskly toward September.
I have been taking a few more walks on cooler evenings before the sun goes down since the past week has been rather home laden, taking photos of flowers and bushes I encounter along the way. The Loyola students come back this week, which means the streets around me are about to get a lot more crowded amid move-ins and classes starting.
Today, I made blueberry cake and coffee and worked a little on some carnival pieces before diving into the very last of the delayed dgp layouts from last season. A rare day where I do not have to be writing other things and am not pressing up against a deadline. I also turned my attention to a a new set of generated images based on a conversation J and I had as we drifted off to sleep high on edibles and groggy about creepy Chthulian-inspired houses rising out of the sea (and which I'll be sharing soon.)
Monday, August 05, 2024
spill
Sometime back in the spring, my image generating experiments led me to pull together a fun little series of Alice in Wonderland inspired fauxtographs. At the time, I intended they be just that, some fun visuals I could share on IG and the blog. While I was never that into the Dineyfied version of Alice, and came to the Lewis Carrol original as an adult, not a child, I was fascinated by the actual Alice Liddel and the world that Carrol created for her. I did a deeper dive a couple years back for a lesson I was writing and made notes for a project that took quite a while to happen and kept getting shoved aside for more pressing things.
This April, as NAPOWRIMO dawned, I decided to finally take my notes and scribbles and see if I could shake out some Alice pieces to go with the images for a zine. At first it was harder, then it was easier, and while I did not devote the entire month to writing them (another series took my attention the latter half of the month) but I wound up with 15 or so pieces I was happy with and have spent the past couple months tweaking them and working on a version for this latest zine.
It was serendipitous that we were planning on seeing another Alice adaptation on stage at the end of July, so I held off on the final design to see if that inspired me further, and it no doubt did. In that case, Alice is a teen caught in the middle of war who sees Carrol's strange world as a refuge from adulthood and reality. My version moves back and forth and back again from child to adult Alice echoing themes that are true to the original and superimposing other themes like body image and domesticity on top of them, with a slightly more macabre take on magical world.
While this was intended to be the July zine, I've been a little tardy since I was slammed with freelance stuff and then out of town for a couple days over J's birthday festivities, which means we get not one, but two zines this month (watch later this month for BROKEN PLACES before we move into full-on spooky for fall.)
You can real my little Alice project , SPILL, here...
Sunday, August 04, 2024
notes & things | 8/4/2024
Things have slipped down the rabbit hole since my last post, with more freelance work (including some more spooky fun pre-Halloween content and a mammoth article on world-famous paintings that should be dropping this week.) I've also put the finishing touches on and created all my promo bits for SPILL, which, though tardier than I like, will be out tomorrow. The last few days have a been a whirl in the best way. We went out to McHenry for a drive-in visit (the movies, the latest Deadpool and Twisters, kinda meh, but watching them fun) and then stayed a couple days at the Waterfront, visited friends for dinner and a round of D&D, and then spent last night at karaoke for J's birthday celebration, in which I met some of his friends, many for the first time since we officially decided to get hitched. I still feel socially awkward like I crawled out from under a rock since covid (which is unfair, I've always been awkward, just its more acute now.) But it was still fun and lasted late into the night, after which we secured all-night Mexican and crawled into bed at dawn. So it's been a slow afternoon filling orders and making poetry stuff on the one day I do not have any writing obligations afoot before diving back into the breach tomorrow.
And somehow, its August, which still, even after a couple years out of the academic cycle I was part of my whole life, feels odd to not be preparing and gearing up, either as a student or librarian, for the fall semester. You would think I would have been used to it by now, but no. I certainly don't miss those rises and swelling in workloads and routines, but they are embedded bodily somehow. August also feels so much like the end of summer, even with plenty more summer days, although having run around in the heat more this past week, I am longing for September this time of year, when everything feels sort of straggly and overgrown.
This month brings some throwback movies I'm excited to see on the big screen, musical version of Back to the Future, and a tattoo appointment for some more butterflies at the end of the month. I am hoping to finish the carnival poems if possible and get a working version of RUINPORN printed out to begin book prep for November, when it will be making its way into the world most likely if all goes well. I have a lot of fun things planned zine-wise for fall, though, as well of the spooky and horror-ish nature, including zine releases for both morning in the witch house and ghost box.
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
devils and daughters
Last week, we took in a double feature of two of this summer's ample horror offerings--awesome in a season when you you usually can expect really only to find the latest Marvel/DC/Disney schlock and big shoot em' up action flicks. There is much more to come from the previews I am seeing before movies this summer and I am here for it--coming from all corners, including a lot of indie films that look not only spooky, but artfully done.
I had high expectations going into Maxxxine--to be expected considering how much I have been waiting for this last installment of the trilogy every since buzz started circulating around the time I was writing horror content for Game Rant. Especially since seeing Pearl which may be a horror movie unlike anything I've ever seen with its cheery 40's musical aesthetic, ample gore, and Mia Goth, who plays things perpetually with just enough vulnerability and batshit craziness in every movie she graces. This new one did not disappoint in any of these things, and added a swirl of 80's cocaine-infused magic set in the shadow of the Hollywood sign...complete with killer cults, sleazy sex clubs, and a menacing creepiness lingering under the film slick facade of LA. The villain, of course, turns out to be closer to home, in the form of Maxine's estranged preacher father, who has been hunting his daughter for years and now has started a crusade against motion pictures and the pornos where she got her start--the evil and seductive allure of showbusiness and Hollywood being the center of his obsession.
The second film., Longlegs, we saw at another cinema amidst stormy weather and tornado alerts on a night with over 20 funnels spotted in the city's environs (and on the way home encountered limbs down and furniture from a beachside cafe blown onto LSD. ) This one had some really disturbing trailers and teasers popping up since early this year. People have described it as a satanic take on Silence of the Lambs, and it definitely has a similar feel. It might have been the presence of lead Maika Monroe, but it also visually had a feeling not unlike It Follows in terms of camera shots and mood--a movie I adore. This film is a slow creep toward revelation, with Nicholas Cage in perhaps his most unhinged performance (and that is saying a lot.) Also terrifying enchanted girl-sized dolls that serve as vessels for evil spirits.While the main character, an FBI agent pursuing a bunch of strange murder/suicides in this one is not the daughter biologically of the villain (at least not the main villain), But because of her mother's involvement in the crimes (done to save her own daughter), the villain does become a de-facto father-figure to the heroine and she has to face off with the evil (though not in the way you might expect.)
This similarity of the two films, the dynamics of daughters and fathers/mothers, good and evil, made the films oddly a serendipitous par to see the same night, even though we didn't know it going in. In the first, Maxine is lost and struggling adrift and under threat, a threat that comes from her own family. Ditto with Longlegs, where the threat is something in your own home. One a deflection and prevention of "evil," used as a justification for crimes, the other evil incarnate already in the homes of its victims.
Sunday, July 21, 2024
on becoming a poet
1. Community is Everything but Also Doesn’t Really Exist
Community in the writing and art world is important. But at the same time, there is no such thing as "THE poetry community" or the "THE writing community." More like there are multitudes of communities and groups of practitioners that dot the lit world like tiny constellations, some connected by style lines or people or publications, others just existing all on their own. .It can be divided by genre. By location. By types of poems you love and write. Maybe even by subject matter. By aesthetics and MFA schools and bars or bookstores you like to read and hang out in. When I first moved to Chicago, I felt like I was simultaneously part of three different communities, none of which overlapped even the slightest. There were the web poets, who were popping up everywhere in the new bloom of online journals and poetry blogs. There was the more open-mic centric community of local poets in Chicago, who were also distinguishable from other groups of local poets like poetry slammers, who read more competitively at places like the Green Mill. Even the local community was subdivided with some poets, like me, who crossed back and forth depending on style. More traditional poets and more experimental poets who each had favorite reading venues and journals/presses of their own. And then there were the MFA program poets and instructors I encountered in grad school, who had entirely different sets of idols and publishers and journals they were trying to get into. Some people, like me, moved back and forth between these groups, or straddled one or two, but mostly they were distinct. There were entire groups of poets I only found out about later writing very similar work but that were more insular. Entire pockets of Chicago poets I had no contact with until years later. Poets I shared a city with who I had never met even though their work and styles were actually very similar.
2. Leap First, Figure it Out as You Go
There is one school of thought that you should, as an artist, make sure everything is perfect before you do things like sharing work publicly, like via open mics or publications. That you should take certain steps and measures before undertaking things like submitting work, compiling books, applying to programs and awards and residencies. There is another, one I espouse regularly, that says just fucking do it. Want to start a poetry journal or small press? Figure out how to make it happen and do it. Want to start submitting your book to presses or indie publishers.? Do it. Want to start a reading series or a writing group? Go for it. Sometimes, things get stuck in the planning stages or the preparation stages and never get out of it. Never wait until you're "ready" or you'll be waiting forever. If you wait for permission or someone to tell you you’re ready, you may never get it. Figure out the best way to start and roll with it. My worst ideas have sometimes turned out to be my best ones. Everyone warns against the writer who publishes too early, when the work is green, but I am a poet who feels that way even about my more experienced work sometimes, But then it changes / is always changing.. All the work is a document to the time and era of you as a creator, so honor it and stop worrying about achieving some imagined perfection before you start taking your work and writing career seriously.
3. Don't Get Distracted by Goal Posts and Miss the Ball
I write this knowing full well I was once guilty of this in spades, and maybe, even occasionally still. It's a slippery slope when you are just starting. At first you want that initial publication if you haven't yet gotten it. Then you want more--bigger name journals and harder mountains to climb. Then you want chapbooks and books and prizes. Teaching gigs and fellowships and residencies. You want to be taken seriously. You want “legitimacy.” These things are all nice to have and fun to pursue, but they should just be frosting on the cake of what you are doing as an artist. Certainly not requisite and not the focus of how you get your work to readers. If you wait for that big goal--that premium journals or big prize, you may be waiting forever to feel like you have arrived. You have arrived the minute you put serious efforts into getting words on the page and finding readers (and for some people, maybe even that second part is superfluous depending on your goals.) As you go, the goal posts get harder and further apart and so many poets I know sort of float in between them. It leads to dissatisfaction and sometimes, stopping the writing altogether.
4. Be Careful with Mentorships
Great creative friends and mentors can be invaluable when you find the right ones. Even if they are just the people you can talk projects and shop with. There was a trend on FB among younger women writers I knew from around 2009 onward, though it started in blogs much earlier, who kept looking for guidance and mentorship with male poets, who were usually older. They had in common that they were usually claiming to hold some magical key to the poetry world or the publishing community. Inevitably, even in the best scenaroio, these led to weird dynamics and terrible relationships/marriages and sometimes outright harassment, stalking. and sexual assault. I don’t think men experience this quite as much, but I do know it's possible. I've also seen and experienced writers as gatekeepers or teachers who view other new poets as rivals in some fucked up way and then proceed to just give really bad advice and shit talk behind their backs the poets they have taken under their wings. Be careful of these relationships. Your friends and cohort will often be your best cheerleaders and your best critics, as will the things you read and poets you admire from afar..
5. Promo is a Bitch, but Make it Fun
There is an almost unspoken requirement, in both indie and traditional publishing, that you are responsible for promoting your work in a time when agents and publicists and other people who used to be responsible for these things have fallen by the wayside or are not really attainable for most poets. Many poets feel like social media promo is ever at odds with time they spend writing, especially if that time is also limited by day jobs and families and caregiving. Like it's some other thing that doesn't ever yield enough for the time that you put into it. And this may be entirely true, but so much changed for me when I started looking at the endeavor of sharing and promoting work as its own kind of creative outlet. Over the years I have, in the interest of poetry, taught myself web design and graphic design and video making, all things I otherwise would probably not have delved into. They are a kind of creative fun that is not necessarily separate from my writing and artmaking. Now they are kind of second nature.
6. Teaching is Not Always the Best Way to Make a Living
I get it. We love books and words and teaching feels like one of the best ways to make a living and still be immersed in it.I have two kinds of writer friends who teach, One are the adjuncts who spend a great amount of time working underpaid and part-time with no benefits at multiple institutions and barely have time to write. The others are tenured and established, but spend so much time devoted to students and advising committee work and administrative things like department chairing that they also bemoan never having time to write. Many have turned to other lines of work entirely. Some are very dedicated teachers and are really good at what they do, and by all means, see teaching as a passion and calling, Others are just hoping to make the rent and really want to focus on their writing instead of wrangling undergrads into writing essays they don’t want to have to grade. We all have to have jobs usually, unless blessed by well-paid spouses or trust funds, but teaching is often proposed as the first line of inquiry when making a living (and academic institutions sell this by employing grad students to do the dirty work for little to no money, locking them into the system.) I had a grad school teacher at DePaul who warned me that she saw on the horizon for the college/university teaching track in the next couple of decades. In my case, the subject was literature,, not writing, but it still holds true across the arts and humanities. She did not see it getting better and warned me I should know what I was in for as I pondered getting my Ph.D.. It was 1999. It did not.get better but far, far worse. And yet there are a wealth of skills that use writing and poetic abilities, even outside more obvious flight plans like freelance writing and editing. Libraries are great places to work as are non-profits. PR and marketing are something that fit nicely. If you love academia, while my experience was underpaid and overworked, there are administrative and support jobs that are more stable and have a fixed work week. Look for something that doesn't deplete your soul but fills your bank account and you will be fine, even if that means writing in the in-betweens.
7. Find a Way to Engage the Community and Give Back
Whatever you feel is your community, your people, find a way not just to take, but also put something back in. Not everyone wants to or can start journals or presses, but in that case, talk other people's books up, write reviews, teach community workshops or start a reading series. So often I meet poets who seem to expect that the world is just waiting for them and their work to show up and be awesome. When actually, you're creating / are responsible for creating the community that you want to be a part of. Otherwise it doesn’t exist. Not everyone has bandwidth for larger work loads, but everyone can do just a little something to help their lit community along, even if it's just boosting a social media post or writing an Amazon review.
8. Write and Read A Lot
I often encounter discussions of productivity and how to still feel like an artist or writer in those following periods. Fallow periods are good for growing and planting, even if the harvest is small. But even if you are a slower writer, and take a longer time being happy with your results, you need to keep going and feeding the creative machine. It doesn't always look like we think it should, writing entire poems or stories or publishing, More often it looks like living and thinking creatively, reading and observing, thinking out loud. You don’t have to be churning out poems on the hour or daily, but don't’ put aside your work entirely for months or years at a time. Keep it close, ponder it, go over it, stay connected. Because life is crazy and forging out that time to really focus is so rare, it is easy to lose track of your creative mojo so easily and lose momentum. Even if it doesn't mean getting words on the page, foster and feed your creativity every day by reading or doing other kinds of art or journaling.
9. There is No One Way to be a Poet
When I was in my late 20s I watched carefully and intently the poets I knew who had begun to do the things I wanted to do. who seems to have it all together. Getting those high tier publications, landing book deals, winning prizes, and garnering rave reviews. Everyone else was wondering when it was going to happen for them. Were worried that they weren't on the right timeline for success or that they started too late or had been playing the game so very long with limited wins. There seemed to be a traditional path, especially among MFA poets–the ones I was reading, the ones I knew and studied with. You waited for someone to notice you and lift you up and maybe some people did, but even that was no guarantee you'd stay there. Second and third books could be harder to place. Writing trends go in and out of fashion. So many mid-career poets are wondering what happened to the energy and enthusiasm they perceived around them in their early days. But then again, if you looked around there always poets who did not seem to be on that particular track, or maybe picked some aspects but disregarded others, Who cherry picked the best parts of the poetry world and business, or others who eschewed it altogether. These poets were often as worthy of emulation as the ones you were looking to. Some had much better and happier relationships with their career. Watch those people too. There is not one way of being a poet and also no one way of "making it" whatever that means.
10. Don't Be an Asshole
This one should go without saying, but just don't. Don't berate editors in lengthy response e-mails who didn't take your work for their publication. Don't use people for what they can give you and then discard them. Don't approach poetry as a transactional thing, like you publish me, I'll publish you. In over twenty years at this things, the worst cringe-worthy moments were watching people beg, barter, crawl, and trample their way to a top that doesn’t even really exist.
notes & things | 7/21/2024
I've been working on an actual writing related post for this space, but somehow the week has involved gasping for breath amid freelance doings and press doings and a lot of things falling due all at once. In between, however, there have been cinema outings (a double feature of Maxxine and Longlegs--both of which I highly recommend and may write more about later this coming week.) There have been luxe croissants for breakfast and frozen custard in bed after 1 a.m. in delicious flavors like peach and lemon. Summer feels slow and fast all at once and its strange to be moving in on August. My mother always said summer might as well be gone as soon as you hit the Fourth of July, even despite efforts to hang onto it. Soon, I'll be longing for fall, maybe less this year since we have actually have A/C now and the dog days less dogged, but it will inevitably happen.
Work continues on CARNIVAL GAMES, a project which continues to grow both visually and textually. There are others that flit around my mind that make little bits and starts even while my head is down on this one. I have managed to establish some equilibrium again between paid (ie. the writing I do for others) and unpaid creative work (the work I do as an editor and writer/artist) and that means my days feel far saner, though packed tight with good things. I've been drafting at least one poem a day again, though now its in the afternoon during my informal lunch break in instead of mornings over coffee (or well, my morning, anyways, that starts around noon.) Art things still tend to happen in the dead of night after a usually late dinner.
I spent the latter half of the week considering reviving my now-slumbering Patreon, and had some really good ideas for subscriber perks like bonus video poems, deluxe hardcover editions, special book art projects, but in the end rather like offering things up a little more freely. Don't get me wrong, income from creative work is amazing what little of it comes the way of poets, but nevertheless, the decision of what to put behind the paywall and what to put in front of it, would likely just be too annoying to have to make every month. I like sharing work--whatever it is--and will continue to make things available at no cost beyond the things you can purchase in the shop. I feel like adjusting my attitude last year about what I am doing al this for has made it much more enjoyable. Instead of the push to promote, promote, promote, I've started looking at it more like my weird little inner museum you can totally visit for free, but if you want a souvenir (a book, a piece of art, some postcards or a journal), the gift shop is to the left. Not always to be looking at times of slow sales or comparing a new book's figures to the last one (whether in a good way or a bad way) or wondering why sales are slow (and worry if its the economy, attention spans, social algorithms or, good god, do I just suck?..lol...) So for now, the Patreon will continue to slumber, as will the Paper Boat, my newsletter, which went underwater when Tiny Letter closed up, but which I still would eventually like to revive. A Substack feels redundant since I already have a happily homed blog here (which will somehow be celebrating its 20 year anniversary next spring.) but maybe something else.
I did spot a new flip book platform through another writer who had posted an e-version of her book there. Issuu was charging me $30 a month and pestering me constantly to upgrade to a higher tier (and still putting ads in) so this is a much better option for e-zines at only around $50 for a whole year (and its so much easier to read without constantly having to zoom.) I spent last night uploading everything there and changing links over on my website. I was even able to upload a few that were previously just pdfs hosted on the dgp site like eleanor and the machines and ghost landscapes. A couple weeks back I was filling an order and realized I was completely out of honey machine copies, my Plath cento chapbook, so it seems a good time later this year to release an e-version of that, maybe around Plath's birthday in October. (though you can also find those poems without the collages in SEX & VIOLENCE too.)
Tuesday, July 09, 2024
Monday, July 08, 2024
notes & things | 7/8/2024
While there does not seem to be much to celebrate about being an American these days anyway, our plans for cookout fun out of town were thwarted by automotive issues and vet visits for J's mom's cat. Still there was karaoke on Saturday, which I went with to take photos for his impending website/social media, but afterward wound up at the emergency vet til well past dawn yesterday with a very sick feline, who the jury is still out on the prognosis. Which means we slept the rest of the day away yesterday and accomplished nothing of note. I also may be getting a cold though it could be a/c-induced dryness. I am staying in the next few days regardless just in case its the vid, which is apparently running rapid this summer. So far just some throat weirdness and no fever or achiness that indicates anything serious. Which means we've also postponed our plans to see Maxxine until next week, which is fine since I am on the broker side of brokeness this weekend til I get paid again anyway.
Today, J is making me soup with matzah balls & beef pierogi (after he unfairly got me addicted to kreplach and its harder to find unless you go to a deli.) I once took pride in my chicken soup recipe, but have learned I would much rather have his version. Since I am home, I still do most of the cooking for us, which I would be doing for myself anyway, but he is always much fancier and gourmet than me (I am a fan of many, many shortcuts, including frozen microwaveable mashed potatoes and pre-made sides.) For the holiday, I made ribs and sweet corn in the oven, which is not quite the huge fried chicken picnics we had before my mom and aunt were gone, but still tasty.
Outside the karaoke bar near on the river walk, the city was pretty lively on Saturday night and the crowd inside large, though at some point after he was packing up equipment, I looked around at a pretty huge group of people, all of whom were silently signing to each other (likely a convention or gathering on one of the hotels downtown.) Since we were fielding phone calls about the cat after a few hours of loud music and singing, it was a relief. When I am out in crowds, I often realize how much I am profoundly uncomfortable and unable to think with too much stimulus happening all at once. I kept escaping outside to sit by the river in the quieter night as the late tour and party boats passed by.
Midweek, we did get to see the musical version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a movie and book I was mostly unfamiliar with. As a musical, like some of the ones I've seen on stage and screen lately (Mean Girls, The Color Purple, Death Becomes Her,)it lacked a cohesive musical thread, but was still enjoyable for the plot and performances. Plus we scored inexpensive box seats that even still had pretty good views off to the side. We've been trying to plan for a theater night at least once a month, though fall is piling up with options and we may wind up with many more. Goodman and Chicago Shakespeare are the more cost friendly options, as well as the storefronts and academic venues, though there is some cool stuff coming through Broadway in Chicago--including Les Miz in December which we are definitely springing for since I haven't seen it in over 30 years. Having occasional nights free and clear is not even one of the best things about working for myself, but after two decades of second-shift alone, is definitely a bonus. Costly though, even high in the balcony, especially the musicals with redonculous and unavoidable Ticketmaster fees.. Any mad, non-essentials money, is currently competing between new tattoo plans and and wedding savings, so it likely means we won't be able to do everything on the tentative list.
Today, I am writing, writing, writing, and working on some chapbook assemblies that need to go out this week. J was up early for another round with the cat at the vet, so I slept in and just rolled out out bed and made coffee in time to start working the rest of the day. In addition to articles on DIYs and antiques, I'm hammering away on the carnival pieces, and experimenting with some new ideas in the image generator I'll be sharing soon (see above for a peek.)