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. 

on becoming a poet

Maybe I am just feeling introspective and wise after officially hitting what is somehow middle age for real for real, but I got to thinking about what advice I might have for a younger me. Not really personal (that would be another list altogether and totally name names..lol...) but things that might be able to help a fledgling poet. None of it is terrible novel or revolutionary, but offers something to think about and are things for sure I really wish someone had told me when I was staring out.

 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 fan 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.)

#authorfashion | yes to the dress

NOTE & UPDATE:

Apparently I spoke too soon and alas, this may not be the dress. It appears to have been delivered before 7am over the weekend (when the office and package room were closed), which meant it was probably left in the vestibule and stolen by a neighbor or passer-bye.  I can get a refund I believe, but since it was the last one available, I may still be on the hunt for either this dress secondhand or another similar one. Alas, I was heartbroken and possibly had my first bridezilla rage moment, but onward...the tragedy is that they decided to steal that instead of the other packages that day that included paper and ink cartridges. 

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As we have been making wedding plans for next summer, of course my first thoughts, perhaps even more than elopement and party plans have been about the dress. Tea length seemed obvious, since we will be doing it at the height of summer on the solstice, which is usually pretty hot, plus I don't want to be weighed down with a full-length dress downtown, where the odds of dragging it through dirt, getting caught in doors, and all manner of clothing tragedies may befall it. I wanted something vintage-ey, but  not any particular decade. A little wispy and romantic, but also a little boho, but not exageratedly so.  Lace probably, either ivory or champagne. Informal more than formal since it is a City Hall ceremony and dinner, but nice enough for pictures. Bridal, but not TOO bridal, like a girl on top of a wedding cake. Something with a nod to the styles of dresses I wear all the time (and ideally a piece could potentially wear again) in the $100-300 range. Also, it has to be available in a plus size range of sizes, and good quality, soft fabric, especially if its lace. 

I've been pinning like a madwoman since April, dresses of all sizes and price points for inspiration, as well as some actual buyable options. One longer one was lovely, but felt like a little much for a downtown elopement and low cut enough that I didn't want to be adjusting my bodice all day lest I spill out. Another, a cute dress with cap sleeves and a beige underlay was a contender at a nice knee length, but the top felt a little too high. Another, I liked but the sleeves were longer and I worried it was just too much fabric for summer. I often thought I wished I could Frankenstein together the perfect dress. This hemline. These sleeves. This lace. This exact color.

Of course once you are googling anything about weddings, all you see are weddings. The dresses that would crop up in ads on social media were not for me, but I occasionally caught sight of a contender. Sundress style with adjustable sleeves. White lace over a beige underlay. With tiers like a peasant dress, but more subdued and fitted at the top. Very soft and swishy, with panels of lace woven spaced with chiffon. Romantic, but also casual and totally wearable again in a more casual context. It was the perfect solution, but when I clicked it kept taking me to a dead page to my disappointment. Weeks passed and I forgot about it, but then there it was again. This time on both on the Nordstrom site for around $150 and steeply on sale at the manufacturer's website. The latter had the dress at a steal, but only in a couple small sizes. Nordstrom had a single dress in my exact size saying there was one left. But then I was a week from getting paid and didn't want to spend the dregs of my bank account on a dress I won't need for a year. 

I worried though that someone would buy it out from under me, and checked in daily the past two weeks to make sure it was still there, each time thinking I would have missed out and would have to find something else. Today, I finally had enough in my account and lo and behold, it was still available so I bought the damn thing in all its perfection. Granted, brides get all coy about revealing their dresses and whether the groom should see it before. (he actually won't--not being a big reader of this blog.) Also that most brides spend hours in try-ons and fittings (though I have gotten really good at going by measurements and knowing the cuts that look best on me, the benefits/challenges of being plus sized.) . But I also could not wait to share..

winged things

 

see more HERE...

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.)

  

from technogrotesque

 

read more HERE...

the bone palace

 

See more HERE...

notes on process

Occasionally, I will be working on a poem and the words do not even feel like my own. Maybe some communication from the ether or the netherworld that channels itself through my hand, down into the keys and onto the screen. Other times, the lines are hard wrought and feel more like sowing something, planting something in a dark little garden that may hopefully bloom by the end of the poem. Or other times like a machine that clicks and winds and begins to purr. I never know which of these things will happen in a given piece of writing. Or if any will. Or, if I am really lucky, all of them at once. 

Different things have taken precedence at different times in my career as a poet. The early poems were so hard and so fretted over. I barely knew what I was doing. I slogged along and each line felt like pulling something out of my body. I knew what I wanted and went hunting for it. Later, I would jumble the words and images and spangled contents in a bag and shake them out onto the page, much in the way I would make a collage. While this was not as difficult as the first few years of writing anything worth reading, it was still hard to have them fall into line in a way that made sense. That seemed like I wasn't just randomly making word salad.

There was a shift slowly over the last decade toward poems being more sound generated than image-or content generated. Like if I could just get the first few lines rolling, the poem would almost unwittingly write itself--that tiny machine--that hopefully would get me to the end point. Unlike the order of the early poems, or the chaos of the later ones, these poems somehow assemble themselves according to their own logic and feel much smoother going. So much so, I never quite trust them. 

There was a time when I was an undergrad that I loved rhyming. I call it my Emily Dickinson phase, since I was doing that ballad format end-rhyme shit that is kind of terrible, but I was very good at rhyming. While I moved thankfully past end-rhyming by the time I got to grad school,  I am still a girl who loves internal rhyme and slant rhyme and repeating sounds. Consonance, assonance, anaphora and all those other tasty poet treats. 

The other night, I was working on a piece from CARNIVAL GAMES and relished the particularly delicious combo of "strangle" and "mangroves," that scratched a nice little part of my brain and it was one of those moments I have occasionally, despite log days writing other things, of thinking and pining over writing other things, of feeling frustrated that poetry has such a small audience, that being a poet feels exactly right. 

technogrotesque

 

At the very close of the month, June's zine offering is fresh off the virtual presses. Check it out HERE:

https://issuu.com/aestheticsofresearch/docs/technogrotesquezine

notes & things | 6/27/2024

Summertime likes to swallow the weeks. It's already Thursday and so far mostly what I have to show for it are some decor articles, a couple poems, and a new tattoo (this time some adorable mushrooms to round out the backside of my patchwork sleeve. ) The hum of the a/c is a strange beast. I am so used to hearing birdsong and passing traffic in the alley around the side. It's been quieter since they felled the tree in the courtyard (MY tree as I like to call it bitterly.) but still the shut windows feel like something I am getting used to, though I have to admit sleeping in the coolness is a delight, as is the ability to actually run the oven for anything but shorts bursts during summer, and in which now I am cooking a pork roast as I finish up the days assignments and sit down to write this blog as the sun dwindles to nothing. 

Otherwise, we caught a couple movies--this which was a delight and then the late night Logan screening of possibly the most LGBTQ-coded horror movie in existence. A few years ago, I sat at a horror conference and listened the keynote speaker, its producer, talk about how they had no idea they were making such a queer film, which is why its on the docket for Pride month. At home, we were working our way through the first season of House of the Dragon (J's first, my second) and plunged into the second season's first couple of episodes which we'll be watching weekly henceforth. It was a little surreal to watch again the death of the king, which I watched just weeks before losing my own father in fall 2022, so close in fact that I kept telling myself that horrible last day in the hospital that if Rhaenyra could lose her father, give birth to stillborn by singlehandedly pulling it out herself, be crowned queen, have the title unfairly stolen, and lose her second child to the jaws of a giant dragon, my situation was not quite so dire or difficult as all that.

I was toggling back and forth between two writing projects last week, but have dug a bit more deeply into the carnival series. I'm thinking I may submit some of them, at least once, to some of my favorite journals, so am only posting snippets over on IG for those. This means I will probably move forward with the midnight garden later on. I was doing most of my drafting in the earlier part of my day (I don't dare say morning, since my mornings are usually happening around noon.)  I've had a lot of new freelance work this week I am eager to get started with, so am writing in the dark of midnight more and more and always wonder if it makes much of a difference--those early day poems or the late night ones. If there is something different in the way my brain works or processes depending on how full or empty it is.

Next week, on the docket are a musical version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil at the Goodman, then a short trip to Rockford for some 4th of July grilling action. We all know that the summer moves even swifter once the 4th passes, so we'll be holding on as fierce as we can. 

the long journey

Today I was packing up some new orders for copies of GRANATA and marveling the two years it took to get from project inception to finished book. Or nearly two years, those very first poems in the series written during my first summer of freedom in 2022 and finished before fall. Or the collages that started coming hard and fast just last summer that form a good portion of the book. While I love all my books in their own way, this is the first full-length project that fully integrates text and image in the same way my zines have done in the past and it turned out lovely, the printed images far better than I can do on my little home printer. While it was costlier, both for the full-color images inside and the irregular shape of the book (similar to DARK COUNTRY in its larger, squarish-ness) it was more than worth it. While I initially toyed with making it hardcover, I settled on paper since that would have added several additional dollars to the bottom line and nearly erased any profit. I may however use it for future projects or special editions in the future. 

In early 2022, I was doing a lot of lesson writing work about the Greeks and Romans with epics like The Odyssey and The Aeneid. There was so much talk of the hero's journey and formats and centering of the male experience even while the stories of the women, both goddesses and mortals, were so much more interesting. I started thinking, what does a female epic look like? It's structure and tone? Episodes and trajectories? I'd written about mythology before, poems about figures like Cassandra and Daphne and Calypso. Or the modern re-imagining of the minotaur myth set in the midwest in my Taurus series, which coincidentally bore the same name as the now lost and thankfully forgotten first book I ever pulled together in the late 90s, not specifically about myths, but full of them at a time where I had very little to write about the world in my own experience at only 25. 

The road was both swift and long over those two years. First there was actually writing the poems, which I remember penning with an intent for a longer project, though in the end, the project felt finished a little below standard length for a full-length. With only the text portions, I thought I might just have a chapbook on my hands, but once the images, over 20 were in the mix, the book was much larger and was possibly worth doing a full-length format for. The title, the Italian word for "grenade" came from a line in one of the early pieces, 

"A girl is a grenade, is a garden full of bramble and weeds."

The cover was initially a collage using a classical Persephone image, but in one of my first forays into playing with image generators, I reproduced a similar image, which I then combined with other clips and stock images to get the cover we see today. At that point, the square format seemed to be best for that cover design, so I went forward with plans for that.

When it comes to self-publication, whatever your genre, there are some tried and trues. While I am not the best editor for my work, those years of terrible workshops have made me hesitant to ask for advice on the writing itself, but do always at least try to get a second set of eyes on the mss. before I start laying it out to get rid of typos and punctuation eras. This was true with traditionally published books that involved editors. Each new pass, whether it was the pre-pub version or the final galleys, inevitably leads to more pesky error discoveries. I've learned to accept, months later, I will discover something else that made it though many sets of eyes, whether the publisher's or my own. The great thing about ordering books in small batches is I can adjust for future printings.

Marketing a self-published volumes is perhaps the most difficult part, though there are times when I would say the margin adjustments are the things that are killing me. Like with chapbooks, I get the hang a little more with each go. However, the formatting for a perfect bound is a little trickier with gutters that are deeper and require more care. While publishers deal with things like advance promo, review copies, distribution, all of these things fall on the author, though they too grow easier with each new book. There is something lovely to making significantly more on every book than conventional royalties allow and having complete control over details and timelines that my brain likes particularly and now, while I love my past publishers, the ones that still exist,  I am not sure I will go back to traditional publishing unless its a project in a wholly different genre that I think would benefit by having a much wider scope than I can provide, like essays or memoir or fiction. Poetry feels like such a small thing, and I love being able to sell signed copies directly and exclusively. I also get to include bonuses like postcards and prints that fit each book. 

I've been thinking a bit about these things as I begin prep work for RUINPORN, for which I already have the manuscript ready for a round of editing and a prelim cover design. Depending on how that process goes, it could be out before the end of the year. While I like a little more spacing between longer project releases, they are beginning to fell like they are piling up again, with another couple of projects nearing completion as we speak, so we will see. 

fauxtography outtakes

Every once in a while I wind up with some images that don't quite fit my current project, but I want to save and hang onto for whatever reason These were a few of the bit more nightmarish ones (for a decidedly creepy, but non-monster laden project that were worth sharing to prove that AI image generators may in fact be more cursed than we thought.)  

from the midnight garden

 

notes & things | 6/18/2024

Here on the cusp of midsummer, the days are groggy and in the 90s with no cool evenings the past couple of nights. While most summers, I've been content to white knuckle it through hot weather (smaller electric bills and I love open windows) J procured us a couple A/C units that are making their way to us as we speak, his tolerance much less than my own. As such, I've been doing low effort things like making sausages and wings in the crockpot and lots of cold salads for dinner (macaroni, potato).  Its rare, this long a spate of 90s this earlier in the summer, which does not bode well for July/August, though Chicago is, if anything, highly unpredictable in climate.  

Spurred by this movie, this morning found me postponing my poem work in favor of generating some fun little fairies, some of which are definitely more insect-alicious than humanoid. Last night, the heat made it hard to get to sleep, so this afternoon found me napping for a little while between writing tasks. The kind of summertime nap as the sky lingered toward sundown, where, if outdoors, you could snatched away by the fae so very easily. 

Thursday, we'll be catching the director's cut of Midsommar on the big screen as a special A24 showing. They did it last year as well, though it was in October and just an extended cut, but not the full shebang. It inevitably leads to a long disagreed plot point over whether its a happy ending for the protagonist or a bad one, of which i am leaning more toward the former, J to the latter. It might be gender or general outlook, I am not sure. Nevertheless, it's a movie I've seen three times previously, twice in the theater where those sunny landscapes and surreal scenes are heightened, and one via streaming. It quickly became one of my favorite horror films.

from carnival games

 

The past few days have brought new poems for a couple different projects, one spawned by the carnival-themed fauxtography experiments, another from a different visual project that is more story-centric (as opposed to these, that are more mood-centric, I suppose.)  Some days, I am even getting two poems rattled out of my head in the first few hours of the day before I turn to press and writing work. I don't know how long the momentum will sustain, but I hope it does. 

wallflowers and writers / part 3

 

As expected, I spent tonight devouring the remaining episodes of this season of Bridgerton and it only occurred to me in the very last episode what I had not realized about how this season differed from the previous, both of which followed pretty standard romance novel tropes. The fake relationship of season 1. The enemies-to-lovers of season 2.. While on the surface of season 3, you might have mistaken this for a friends-to-lovers trope, how the season was structured seemed to bely this, which may have been the reason I was thinking all along that the pacing was off.  Because yes, we do finally get a Penelope/Colin match-up everyone was waiting for, but I don't feel that was the crux of this season--or where the characters were heading, or at least not merely so. 

Once it seemed pretty obvious they would end up happily together, the finale episode was far more about Pen claiming her identity as Lady Whistledown and, as a result, her claiming a future as an author. No small feat in a world where women are designed to be sold off to the highest bidder each season. To forge no identity of their own outside the patriarchy. And perhaps that is the true love story of season 3. Penelope and her alter ego, which she sheds at the end in favor of writing more openly as herself.

Her speech at the ball was very in line with what I talked about regarding writers as passive observers, and it made me think of a conversation last week at a karaoke bar, in which, despite J's urging that we should do a duet at the mic, I had reminded him that I always have much more fun not as the center of attention. More as an observer that blends in and sees all. And I like karaoke, but its more that I like watching and listening to it (well, not all of it, but some, this being mostly a good group of theater people with fine voices.) I am not a performer, which is something I have always known, even despite a love of theater (and probably why I pretty much only was on stage in high school and spent many years after backstage and in the booth.)

It was a conversation we picked up later at the wedding downstate, where I expressed relief that our wedding plans as they currently stand are very small and informal, especially since I am not sure I can could stand such a hug focus on me and actually enjoy myself at a traditional wedding. It sounds terrible and exhausting, which might negate some of the fun of what is supposed to be one of the best days of your life. When I was graduating high school, I remember my mother threw a giant party in a tent and invited everyone she knew, including co-workers and people I may have not seen since I was a baby. I remember I had a mini anxiety melt-down right before it and a desire to hide during it, my little introvert heart not comfortable with all that attention and conversation with little escape. A few years later, my college party was just family and very informal like any other occasion and it was so much more my vibe. 

This feels like it may also be a factor in my relationship to doing readings. I haven't done an in-person reading since before the pandemic--the last one at the Field Museum in October of 2019, then a few virtual readings over the subsequent years,  but over that time I've come to accept that I actually do not enjoy reading my work (live anyway) in front of an audience as much as I may have had to convince myself of before. Granted it was a little better in group readings where I was one of many, but a whole event focused on me was apt to give me hives and a racing heart rate. I hate that when I tell people about this, the reaction is often to have more confidence, which of course is kind of insulting since I have plenty of faith in my abilities. I am just more comfortable being an observer. A listener. This is perhaps why I always volunteered to go first, since after I read, I was much calmer and could actually listen and enjoy what came after.  I did it because I do like sharing work, and socializing with other writers, but there are many other ways to do that that don't emotionally exhaust me, so perhaps I am leaning into those a little more. 

the collection

 

freelance life milestones

Today, I was updating some stuff in my portfolio over at Contently and realized that the number of entries I had had recently crested over 1,000, which was crazy to me, since it seems only a moment ago it was the summer of 2021 and I was in the final throes of thinking of throwing in the towel at the library and deeply unhappy with what I saw continuing to happen there. To have somehow in three years not only left that job far behind, but amassed quite a large portfolio of writing for actual money still astounds me when I really think about it. 

That was the summer things were slowly starting to get back to normal after covid, which meant more ILL traffic, more library traffic in general. More expectations in programming and exhibits, which had mostly been mostly online during the pandemic. We had gone into covid times with a short staffing situation of 2 people in a department that was once 6 or 7, and while one of the positions had been restored post-lockdowns, the important one that I was filling in for since 2018 had not. This meant, in addition to my actual job and the things we did just out interest and fun, had to be balanced with continual, more dragging kinds of work I thought would be temporary at the start, but as the years stretched on, it was most definitely not. Amid more obligations, my supervisors did their best with the provost office to try to secure a raise, not just for me, but for everyone in the department doing double and triple duty, but no go.  With half the staff still offsite and gross inequities in workflows and pay, I had been determined to stick it out, but by fall, just couldn't. 

It seemed things would not be changing anytime soon, so when I had any way of making a living elsewhere (thank god for online learning and the humanities lessons I took on) I peaced out and said my goodbyes. .Last week, news came through that they had just laid off several staff members (some more useful than others) and around 70 other people in the college, which is apparently in a nose dive of debt and dwindling enrollment. Talking to someone still there, it occurred to me that had I stayed, while my job would probably have been safe since we keep the library, ya know, OPEN, it would still be all the same bullshit. 

Not that it was all roses, and was actually very scary in the beginning. There was also a lot of work to gain some footing and stability and figure out what worked and did not work as a freelancer. Even now, sometimes deadlines and word count expectations collide and it gets a little harrowing with very long days (though admittedly things are much less harrowing in your comfy clothes with no commute.) I have done some really cool and interesting things as well, and written about all manner of things. Still, hands down it may have been on one of the best choices I have ever made. 

summertime poeting

Summer always feels like it should be a time for writing things. When I was a freshman in college, freshly sprung from my semester at the community college and starting RC in the fall, I spent those days poring over issues of Writer's Digest checked out from the library. Typing my way though drafts of slender, terrible poems on paper thin typing paper rattled with correction fluid. Every afternoon would find me waiting til after lunch, when the mail delivery crept past, to run, usually shoeless and cutting though the grassy field, down to the boxes at the end of the driveway waiting for those thin or thick envelopes back in the day when many publications still returned your drafts to you with a polite no. The "no"s were plentiful, as they should have been. But occasional vanity-esque anthologies bit (the kind of places that published in the back of WD.) Paperback anthologies that would publish you, but you had to pay for your copies, which usually contained many poems jammed on a single page. 

I feel those anthologies were a necessary step, though they are often poo-pood by "legitimate" writers. They were terrible, good god, but they satisfied my baby poet desire to feel like a writer. One, called "Living Jewels" was technically my first such publication, and included a tiny poem about television static and political angst. Somewhere it's still on my shelf. A year or so later, I would place another poem in a college lit mag. Then more anthologies, then finally, in grad school, my first non-anthology journal. It was summer again, when working at the library, I started publishing pretty widely in internet journals at a time when "print" writers were still on high horses about them. I often wonder where those writers are publishing now that so many print journals and presses are gone. Probably the web. More likely, not at all.

There was the summer I spent before my final year of college, still typing poems on that typewriter and mailing them off. The summer I worked at my parent's dining table and recorded every new piece to get to a feel for the sound on a tiny boombox.  I was getting better, freed from my tendency to want to rhyme a year earlier, and on the verge of snagging a couple poetry prizes around graduation with the pieces written that summer. Other summers I spent, not writing maybe, but definitely reading and journaling in those Mead notebooks I kept at the time. 

Another summer, 2005,  I spent ripping my first book down to the bare bones after a two years of submitting a couple different versions of it here and there to contests. That summer found me often escaping the heat and distraction at home in the air conditioned interior of a Barnes & Noble cafe downtown, going poem by poem, page by page, and reconstructing the house. Other summertime projects over the years like the exquisite damage poems and overlook. Two summers ago when I took a deep dive into the Persephone series that makes up my latest book. Or the summer I spent a portion of wandering around the Field Museum, writing extinction event. 

There is always a renewed seriousness in the fall, with big projects and plans, but summer always feels like stolen time, particularly when I was entrenched in an academic calendar, which meant a lighter load of obligatory work June-August, and even still now. This morning I wrapped up the final piece in the series I was working on and am set to move onto something else, which I may choose tomorrow morning when I sit down to draft the first piece, there being a list of potential directions and paths. One of which I will just choose and start off into the woods. 

notes & things | 6/12/2024

We are back from a weekend down in the southern Illinois hinterlands for a family wedding that included lots of woodland charm, sparklers, good food, and much revelry, plus a 5 hour road trip journey each direction, so I have spent today regrouping and lining up my tasks for the week. Whenever I leave the city, it takes a couple minutes to acclimate myself back to general dailyness, so I have been taking today slow, answering some press emails, mailing out some packages, and working through articles on birthday parties and which table scraps you can safely feed birds. (in other words, the usual.) This week is much slower than last week, which also brought cocktails with a friend I don't see nearly enough and a karaoke birthday party for one of J's friends.  I need a couple of these long, lingering summer days to get some poetry things done, so am looking forward to that. As I returned, all the technology I touched seemed to want to break, so I will be replacing my phone and one of the printers later this week as well, alas. 

I am working slowly on TECHNOGROTESQUE, the June zine offering, as well as some other little content bits for here and there. These poems feel like they were written a lifetime ago, but I realize it was only last April during NAPOWRIMO. So much has happened since, and time is doing that strange stretchy thing, where some things seem like they happened yesterday and others feel like forever ago. A lot has happened since last spring, including J moving in, quitting his terrible job, finally being able to go out on the regular (previously prevented by both my work schedule and later, even when I was freer, by his.)

Another development that seems to have occurred this weekend was that we finally let it slip to a few more people about our own wedding plans for next summer, which were under wraps to everyone but J's mom, who we told a couple weeks back. The original proposal and subsequent discussions started about two years ago, but were waylaid by schedules and money (the latter is still a consideration, so a small budget is key.) Only a few weeks ago did we say, okay lets do this next June which will be our 10 year anniversary so it seems fitting. Current plans include a City Hall ceremony and lunch or dinner for a smaller group of family and close friends, then a larger barbecue-style picnic gathering for a larger group somewhere between the city and the Rockford/Southern Wisconsin region where most of my family live.  As the girl who said she was never getting married, these developments seem strange and unusual even to me. But I think we mostly have spent many of the last few years of this decade thinking "Why the hell get married?" til the question eventually became "Why the hell not get married?" I do admit I already have my eye on a 1920s style art deco engagement ring with tiny diamonds and a 1930s-inspired dress that I worry will be slightly too warm for June. I have become one of those women who has a wedding Pinterest board and I am okay with that. 

carnival games | part 3

 

see more HERE....

bits and bots

On Threads, which I can only take in measured doses, I've been idly following some of the discussions around AI (the actual discussions, not the handwringing and moral posturing about what is "real art," which still make up the bulk of most criticisms.) More the ethics of image scraping. At this point, with over 20 years of making things that could be called art in various mediums(and sometimes probably more on the "design" side of things than great works of genius) I mostly roll my eyes at those who question the authenticity or skills of people who use AI image generation, or embed it inside other creative work. Whether they are "real artists" or "posers" playing with a new toy. Granted some people are just having fun, as they should be able to in a world as messy and chaotic as this one. Others have more specific outcomes they are looking for. I've often, however, gotten the most interesting results entirely by accident.  

Sometimes, I am just running prompts and tweaking them to get exactly what I want, which sometimes turns out awesome maybe 10 percent of the time, 90 percent not so much. I wouldn't say its hard, which I feel like some people distinguishes "real art" from "fake." It feels more akin to creating a website or using found graphics for book covers. Or maybe even more like curation, running and changing the prompts and then choosing what I want to use. It takes a little bit of knowledge of terminologies like camera types and processing, but even here I only have a little bit. More it takes having some sort vision and direction for what you want to produce. Or having that elusive thing, a "good eye."

Again, much more "design" than "ART."

The handwringers will tell you that AI will be soon eliminate all artists, which doesn't seem possible. I'm not sure anyone who fears being replaced by some code is actually creating from a place that is all that genuine in the first place. You still have creativity and vision. Nothing can really take that from you. Still want to express what you were put here to express. The discussions feel a lot like painters worrying that photography would eliminate them.  Or that film would eliminate photography. Of course, it all comes from a scarcity mindset rather than an abundance one. While image generators are far more sophisticated than other LLM's (the results of bots writing poems are about what you would expect from high schoolers who've not read much poetry beyond the 19th century.) The one field where the fear may be genuine and concerning would be non-creative types of writing can be bolstered by AI's tendency to just get things wrong, make shit up, and just in general sound weird (or bad at best.) Not that they are replacing "real writers" who will always be necessary for any sense of voice or vision, but more the rampant spread of misinformation it may create in their absence. Still, I don't blame the AI, I blame how people may misuse it for deception.

I understand a bit more the artists who are angry that venues like Google and Meta are using their work to train their models, but really, I've long suspected that everything anyone ever posts on the internet, while it may remain yours by basic copyright, becomes part of the internet consciousness and therefore moves a bit beyond your control. It's kind of already in the terms when you join many sites. Someone I saw today that this actually a good thing for culture in general, that the internet collective should be vast and varied and a stew of everything happening. That its a little cool to be part of that collective (since I too have images everywhere online that are part of that dataset.) No one should steal your work and pass it off as their own, obviously, but everything is influence and very little is new under the sun. Sometimes I will glance at the most ardent naysayers and they are totally violating trademarks by drawing like Pokeman fan art or some other big IP, so I kind of take their arguments with a grain of salt when they talk about "stealing" and "theft."

I think a lot of discussions lack a certain nuance and understanding how LLM's work to create images. It's not like collage, where I quite regularly work with appropriated graphics and images. I try to stick to public domain and stock imagery to not step on toes and honor copyright, but everything else is fair game for collage fodder. The only exception often being physical collages, whose materials I sometimes lift from magazines and books willy nilly without attribution, as generations of collage artists have done before me. And really, most of my sources and materials are vintage anyway and not even related to contemporary artists. 

Generators like Midjourney, of course, produce things based on the language of the prompt and the AI's understanding of what something looks like. So if I issue a prompt for a woman in a white dress, the algorithm of the AI creates an image based on its understanding of what this is supposed to look like. It's not pulling from any one or even 100 artists, but a collective understanding of what constitutes "woman" and "white dress." And its sometimes just wrong or weird about images, especially when you start adding in stylistic prompts and types of photo. The woman and the dress don't exist elsewhere, but they exist now based on those parameters and understandings.  It's not another artists work, but they did potentially provide the dataset that helped create it. Many feel they should be compensated as such, and this would be awesome, but I don't really think that will ever happen. Because capitalism and all. Most actual  "theft" is intentional, done by unscrupulous rival artists and corporate greediness, not the result of 1000 monkeys typing Shakespeare 

totally real photo of the Jersey Devil...

I may be alone in thinking this all makes AI a great tool for world building and story generation, where you have greater control and diversity in what you can use without violating copyrights for mimicking other artists. And, since most of my work exists a bit in unreality, I actually appreciate what some people criticize as the uncanny effect of most AI art. I want it to look artificial, and it does most of the time. But then so does  a lot of painting and other mediums. Some things look very real, so it's actually things like deep fakes and public manipulation we should be worried about rather than some AI artists funny "hedgehog in space" image. Of course, I am also a little artistically mischievous, so immediately did things like make faux cabinet cards of cryptids..lol..One of my favorite art exhibits we ever did  at the library was about hoaxes, including an exhibit that staged a full alien autopsy down to newspaper clippings, so I think there is room in art for it as long as you're not trying to, ya know, overthrow democracy or slander people. 

There are also discussion of copyright when it comes to the generated images, having been created by a machine, do the generators have a claim on them. Probably not.  I would not consider my AI experiments to be "mine" anymore than using a clip of a public domain video in a videopoem is mine. But I can make it into something else. Add context and purpose and create world or a story. While some of my AI generations are just for fun and inspo (see image above), some may eventually, like any stock image, become paired with text and poems (The Alice project is something that uses AI generated images that mostly, outside of some editing things and removing extra fingers, are as the bots intended.) Other pieces, like the Poe tarot cards, use a mix of found graphics and AI elements arranged digitally. Today for a book cover design, I simply needed a basic unicorn illustration with specific colors in its mane. I initially did it crudely with found graphics and it would have worked fine. But then put it in the hands of the bots and loved what they generated, but then inserted it in the design that I composed originally.  It's much less creation, more collaboration with a bodiless artist who always agrees with me and with much better Photoshop and rendering skills.  I can live with that.