Check out Pismire

Wanted to alert you all to an up and coming online publication, edited by an up and coming poet:

Ezekiel Black is asking for submissions for Pismire.

Submit:

Before you submit a poem, please read the manifesto because it describes Pismire's aesthetic. A poem, regardless of quality, that does not require a recitation to function is best suited for another journal. If you believe your poem does meet the conditions, though, follow these instructions:

1. Call (404) 939-1350.
2. After the beep, recite your poem. Hang up.
3. Email your poem and biographical note to pismirepoetry(at)gmail(dot)com.

Fair enough? Go!

The Screaming Trees

Might as well post about this here, since I'm quite certain its impact on the poetry community as a whole will be so massive in ten years that everyone will feel stupid not having written about it already.

Ron will claim to have always been a fan, though he won't even post the link.

Despite all that, a piece I'm pretty proud of, The Screaming Trees is out now on Conjunctions' website.

Please have a look.

Ultimately, I'm a Federalist (Draft)

The battle has been the same in American politics since the very beginning: do individual states deserve power, or should the Federal government be the ultimate arbiter of what goes on in this country? Historically speaking, Federalism has always won out, and, I believe, led this nation to be among the best (at least in terms of technology, quality of life, etc.).

When the first government of the United States was formed under the Articles of Confederation, it was discovered rather quickly that having a weak central government was not in the best interest of the nation. Later on, it has been the direction of the federal government that has led to our greater achievements as a nation: a coast to coast, border to border highway system (which we take for granted, but try driving across Southeast Asia or Africa); a relatively stable political system, which so far hasn't led to too much upheaval (check out, well, EVERYWHERE else); etc. The Federal government led the way in these things. The Federal government took us into space, which has led to many of the advancements of the modern era.

It's been the Supreme Court that has been at the forefront of the changes to American life. Desegregation generally would not have occurred had it not been for Brown V. Board, and then later, leaders calling on Federal troops to enforce these changes. Many, of course, will say that the Federal government had no right to enter a state battle, however, this is still ONE country, and in that country, there must be certain standards.

I believe this in no way conflicts with what the Founders had in mind. I don't think Health care or highways or any of that conflicts with what this nation was founded on, which was the ability of each person, regardless of who they are, to succeed. In fact, I would, and have argued that something like Universal health care allows for greater prosperity.

And so what if it does conflict with what Thomas Jefferson wanted America to be? We treat the founders of this nation with some kind of religious fervor, as if they were not only perfect people, but God himself guided Jefferson's drunken hand to write out the Declaration of Independence.

Times change. Things change. America has evolved, the world has evolved. We should have a system that continually moves with these changes.

And we do. We have a document that allows for it's very core to be changed and interpreted. There is literally nothing in the Constitution that is supposed to remain untouched. If we as a nation agree on a course that requires a change to the Constitution, we have the ability to change or add to it. And I don't imagine James Madison or George Washington would be too upset over it.

See, they knew they were building a system which would have to adapt. Heck, they themselves rarely got along, why would they expect us to get along? They didn't: they knew we'd have disagreements and want to go in different directions. And so the system made in Philadelphia in 1787 was meant to be malleable.

So what's my point? My point is that it is because of a historically strong central government that America has progressed. In fact, I would say that states acting under their own power has traditionally set us back as a people. I cannot think of a single act by a lone state which has not ended in trouble. Obviously each state has it's own laws on certain things, but I would mostly say that any law that was less progressive than a national average has led that state to suffer, generally in terms of health care and education.

(To be continued...)

An Open Letter to John Edwards

Note: I refer you to this post.

John Edwards for President,
~~~~~~

Dear John,

My wife and I were proud to support you during the 2008 Democratic primary. We caucused for you in the state of Iowa, in Iowa City. We both moved on to the second level of the process, even though you had dropped out by that time. I was elected to go forward to the state convention but was unable to make it. In January 2007, you visited Iowa City and spoke at the University’s student union. We were honored to hear you speak and meet you after.

The reason I’m writing you today has nothing to do with the money we donated to your campaign. In fact, the pecan pie recipe we purchased was totally worth it and we’ve used it several times. Thank you for that.

No, I’m writing you because on that day in January 2007, my wife, our friend Susie, and I gave you a MoonPie.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a MoonPie in Iowa?

We brought it with us from Georgia (where we’re from) and we gave it to you because we adored you and we trusted that you would probably enjoy it, being a fellow Southerner. You said thanks, gave us your autograph (which we still have) and you handed the MoonPie to your handler. We figured it was a security issue and that you would eat it later, when you had the chance.

Do you even like MoonPies? I have no idea now- you seemed so excited at the time, but honestly, I have no clue anymore if you were genuinely excited or just lying to us, as it seems you’ve been doing.

Anyways, I don’t want money back. Heck, I don’t even want an apology. I just want a MoonPie.

It can be single decker and of any flavor, though the original chocolate is preferable. You’re welcome to send us a box, as they’re only about $4, but that’s up to you.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. Whatever you may think, I do wish you well and hope that things turn around for you.

All Best,

Amish

Dreams of an Ideal Life

Poetry was kind of the last stop on the line for me. Well, it's been a round trip. The first anything that was "out there" by me were two plays- one I directed (under admittedly false pretenses) and the other directed by the fantastic Dan Guyton.

I think that, in a way, fiction that derives from the biographical has the amazing opportunity to correct the moments in our lives that we might regret, or that didn't go the way we were planning. Writing allows for a kind of consummation that life does not.

I write a lot, I've noticed, about permutations. Mathematically, a permutation is a rearrangement- all the possible arrangements that make up a series of numbers, etc. I believe we do the same thing with memory, forcing ourselves to reenact, at least in our minds, the many ways in which any given situation could go.

And this has the ability to become compulsion- to become reenacted in thought so often that there are only a few outlets: insanity, of course; violence (which isn't all together dissimilar than insanity); and creative reconstruction.

I think creative- and perhaps more exactly- biographical reconstruction is a necessity of the human condition. I know other animals are capable of memory, but humans alone, as far as I know, have the ability to recall that memory and manipulate it. Again, this can be compulsion, but I believe that in the process of recalling is itself compulsory. The true shame, of course, is that as humans, we must eventually suffer from memory-loss, it seems.

In recalling and in manipulating is where I believe there is some desire to achieve an ideal, a version of the situation that best fits our perfect vision of it. This is, of course, entirely subjective, especially considering that different ideals permeate every person and every person in a single moment, and the way a moment plays out is a reflection of those ideals, by either meeting expectations or denying them.

The two plays of mine I'm referring to are certainly idealizations of moments that turned out less than perfect. This isn't a fault-based thing, of course, but rather a situational reflection: certain things just could not go the way I would have wanted, so as a result of recalling those memories, I constructed a creative method of dealing with the issues. And I'm certainly not alone.

Email Interview for Cousins Reading Series with Darcie Dennigan

People rarely ask me questions beyond "What did you say?" and "What's wrong with you?!" but Darcie Dennigan sent me some questions and I answered them to the best of my ability.

Email Night Email Chat with Amish Trivedi

My Problems with the Long Poem as Documentary Project

Rarely is this blog a place to discuss my own personal aesthetics or problems, but tonight, I feel inclined to spill/dish.

I never thought I would work on a real documentary project. Mostly, the idea just never appealed to me. However, I'm taking a class with CD Wright in which I am to work on a documentary project.

Well, I was searching around in the dark for a while when, one morning, I heard the phrase "public history". I don't know why I had never heard it before, or maybe I had, and it finally hit me in a specific way. Either way, I was intrigued. That, and I saw a press having a chapbook competition. I started thinking "What is a 'public history'?" and decided it would make for an excellent poem. Or two. Or maybe a long poem. Either way, I was going to have something for workshop with Forrest, that was for sure.

One morning, after I'd written section I and workshopped it, and I was working on sections II and III, it occurred to me that yes, I am working on a documentary project. I didn't even know it. Suddenly the way through become clear.

Unfortunately, I've hit a snag. I've finished I and am mostly finished with II and III, but four has really got me stuck. I don't even know where to start. Section IV is going to be called "A Loser's History of the United States" and I want it to focus on a narrative of American history that isn't just the oddball stuff, but about the people on the losing side of the issues we know so well. Because there is a very clear progression through American history: guerrilla warriors win fighting guys in redcoats in the forests, and loyalists worry about whether or not they'll be hanged in a new country. Paul Revere rode about 20 miles from Boston to Concord, but Israel Bissle rode from Boston to Philadelphia- but of course, we all know who Paul Revere is. Bissle is one of the many losers in American history.

But where to start? Maybe talk about how the "Earth is flat" story from the Columbus voyage is completely untrue? In fact, people had known the world was round for centuries.

Recently, my parents sent me my notes from Mr. Sneed's 10th grade history class. Sneed, by the way, is the central figure in section III, coincidently titled "Talk Like Larry Sneed Day". My goal is to form a narrative of those fantastic stories he told us, but I'm worried about whether or not I can do it. I have been intimidated by the stack of papers my parents sent me because there is so much in there. And it's from another time for me as well: a relatively quiet 10th grader who was into Latin and playing guitar. Perhaps I'm afraid of myself in this too.

Not too say it should be too difficult a project. It should have been pretty easy. But the task isn't all that simple, I suppose: take our consensus history that has created a national identity and break it down. Even though many seem to have done it so far, I feel no one has done it poetically per se.

Locationality: The Ezra Pound Break Down

OK, so location CAN be important. It can be especially important if, say, you were arrested (probably rightly so) and put in an outdoor holding pen in which you had a few books, the view of a mountain, and a bunch of free time.

As Ezra Pound wrote the Pisan Cantos, these were his conditions. On top of being locked up, he lived every moment with the fear that, at any moment, he could be dead. I would imagine location would become very important.

But this still leads to my previous argument: Pound did not CHOOSE this location. This location was thrust upon him. Sure, he was in Italy, but to be locked up outside was not by choice. Obviously his choices led to the situation, but there was no direct agency.

The discussion can, in a way, come down to luxury: Pound did not have the luxury of bringing with him terribly specific items. He didn't have his desk or his chair or his fuzzy slippers. What he had in there was minimal, and he made it through more due to luck than anything else. He simply did not have the luxury of choosing to write. He wrote because it might have been the last thing he ever did.

Locationality

Last week, I was sitting in our department lounge with a classmate and a professor. The classmate mentioned she was heading to her "second home" in a sort of vacationy spot. She writes better there, she says.

I have never felt that way, and said so. I have never felt beholden to any location or space for the sake of writing. Not even the desk I purchased for writing has of any kind of special sensory relationship for me. I could write there, but I can also write on a board on the couch or put a series of notes into my cellphone while waiting in line. No place has special meaning for me in that way.

This kind of gets back to these posts (Setting I and II) where I was inspired by photos on the International Writing Programs webpage where they showed the spaces some writers worked in. I felt completely detached from that photo piece.

I'm not sure the cause, really. "It's like the opposite of nostalgia," I said: I long to long for a place, it seems. I want to feel attached to a spot, but perhaps it's a good thing to feel nomadic and unattached. Perhaps it's lending something to my writing that I don't see. Or maybe it doesn't. I have no idea.

I say in Setting II that

setting isn't an issue of choice. I don't believe it is possible to create the proper environment for writing or any other artistic activity. This is what I suppose I mean by the fetishization of locale.

Don't get me wrong: I don't fault my colleague for her attachment to a space. I wish I had that, in a way. Perhaps it's an avoidance of the hyperstability that marked my life prior to moving to college. My parents still live in the same house I was born in and I should say, I hardly feel attached to my hometown anymore, besides the Atlanta Braves and people.

Location can be important though, and I acknowledge that. It's just not important to me.

Jhumpa Lahiri's "Hell-Heaven"

My brother and I were born to Indian parents, but raised in the United States. My brother was born in India, but a year and a half after his birth, our Mother brought him on a plane to the United States, where he would meet our Father for the first time.

I never really thought about my experience, or my brother's experience, as particularly "Indian," though I know it must have been. Certainly language is a huge one, but there are many cultural things I'm slowly becoming more aware of. I'm not complaining, mind you, just saying that it was different than any kind of "norm." I never thought about how that deviation from the "norm" was related to my first generation upbringing until I heard Jhumpa Lahiri read the first half of her story, "Hell-Heaven."

Reading the whole thing (printed in the New Yorker) and thinking again about her reading I felt an immediate connection not necessarily to the plot of the story, but to the moods and tones surrounding her characters. Something about the looks the characters share sounds so familiar to me that I immediately attempt to find characters in my life that are the same as these. There must be some kind of mirror that I'm just not seeing.

"Museum of Vandals" from Cannibal Books

Museum of Vandals
by Amish Trivedi
Accordion-style Mini-chapbook
Boundless Books Series #1
Limited Edition of 150
$5

OR

Order Both Shane Jones and Amish Trivedi



The Nightmare Filled You with Scary
by Shane Jones
(hand-sewn chapbook)

&

Museum of Vandals
by Amish Trivedi
(accordion-style mini-chabook)

$10

W00t