Among The Jumbled Heap

On becoming a famous poet…

Want to know how to become the most important poet in America over night? Jim Behrle has the answer: How you can become the most important poet in America overnight. Here's a snippet: There are many paths through the art. Having enough money to sit in a log cabin all day watching foxes make out, with berries on one’s breath. Having an entire university beneath one’s command. Ability to drag friends in for a little merlot and sloppy sex with students. This is perhaps my favorite part: ...

Also Read…

My good friend the Hamster unwittingly helped launch this blog.  He was visiting Arkansas and we were sitting together at a chicken shack sharing a pipe and talking about books.  "You read all these books, but how much time to do you spend thinking about 'em?"  His challenge was that I write a blurb about each book I read.  Thus, the blog was born. Unfortunately, I read books faster than I can write about 'em.  My desk is littered with books that are awaiting a blog post. In an effort to clea...

The Yankee South

American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell I was born in Flint, Michigan. My parents still live there. My grandparents have lived or still live there. Flint is the quintessential Northern factory town. It is a city that General Motors built, and when I grew up nearly everyone I knew was connected in some way to the auto industry. Yet despite being a distinctly Northern town, Flint was mostly populated with Southern transplants, folks who came North to find a better life. These Southern Yankee...

If a body see a body…

Salinger, J.D. (Jerome David) 1919-2010 J.D. Salinger and I go way back.  It was he who stuck "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a poor sinner" into my little brain.  Yep, this is that damned Jesus Prayer that drives Franny Glass bonkers in Franny and Zooey. As much as I hate the man for giving me that ear worm, i'm sad to see him gone. My good friend The Hamster has the best remembrance of the man I've read.  Go check it out http://wheresmyhockeymask.blogspot.com/2010/01/...

Poetry makes nothing happen…

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. -W.H. Auden, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" I've been thinking a lot about poetry and politics. This is one of those recurring themes in my thought...

Blanching at Blanche

Senator Blanch Lincoln has royally pissed me off. Yesterday Senator Lincoln announced that she would be a cosponsor of the Murkowski resolution that prevents the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. (Read the news here.) I do not normally wade into politics on the blog.  Most of my political opinions I reserve for friends over a few frosty brews.  I do, however, keep up with the political fray and there are some issues that I care about passionately.  Climate Change is one of those ...

Bring Out Your Dead

R.I.P. Donald and E. Lynn I am the database jockey for a medium sized library. My title is Technical Services Supervisor, and my tasks are legion, but one of my primary jobs is to attend to the library's catalog. A library catalog is a giant relational database that connects information about authors, books, and ultimately people like you and me who use the library. In this role of database jockey, every year I have the gruesome honor of tallying up all the dead authors and entering the...

The Last Twelve Years

I'm a two pack a day man, smoke like a fiend Like a burned out bearing in a bad machine I cayn't breath in the mornin' till I get myself a cigarette lit Say, Daaaa aaaad Blame, anyways a man cayn't quit. --Roger Miller I did not meet her as a teenager, as so many others do. True, I saw her often, flirting with the gutter punks and metal heads, men, women, she was indiscriminate, flirty bitch, and I was not attracted to her. I was NOT. Paul introduced us. He had not known her very long...

Pamela Ryder – Correction of Drift

The Best Book You're Not Reading Pamela Ryder is a writer's writer. A quick Google blog search proves the point. Every writer-blogger has something good to say about Ryder. Ryder's story collection Correction of Drift also finds its place on many a young writer's short list of recent and influential books. Lydia Peele, whose story collection is a similar tour de force, mentions Ryder's book in a NYTimes interview and says the book "defies definition either as a story collection or a no...

Two by Amy Koppelman

Confession: I troll the internet for youngish writers that I've never heard of. My Google Reader is chalk full of contemporary fiction blogs. One of my favorites is the NYTimes Papercuts Blog, and I particularly like their semi-weekly segment Living With Music. Here they give a writer the chance to list his or her top ten songs, usually stuff that's had some affect on their writing. Most of the writers are young novelists from NYC. This is how I came to Amy Koppelman. Koppelman--look ...