My poem "The Pond" @ Right Hand Pointing today

I have another poem published in Right Hand Pointing. It's called "The Pond" and it's the first poetry I've had at RHP since way back in 2010 when they published a poem of mine called "Phantom Limb" and also named that issue (issue 34) after the poem, a true honor. So follow the links and have a look.

Others with work in this issue include the incomparable Howie Good, along with Kathy Douglas, David Gale, Mark Seidl, John L. Stanizzi, Josh Wetjen, Joanne Jackson Yelenik, and Mark Young.

Lantern Lit Vol. 4 Has a Cover Design

In January, Dog On a Chain Press will release Lantern Lit Vol. 4, a collaborative chapbook of poetry that includes work from William Graham, Mat Gould, and myself. Yesterday publisher and writer Beasley Barrenton sent a wrap design for the book that is just beautiful. It's the handywork of Ryan W. Bradley. Ryan is a good friend of mine and has designed two of my four book covers over the years so I was mighty pleased to find he had put his unique touch on this. Beasley said the chapbook will likely be published in mid-January.

New Reading Plan for 2018, or Proust is Insanely Boring

Here's the situation: Proust writes beautifully but he writes too much. And it's super class heavy. Like middle class and upper class and generally topics I don't care one twit about. Occasionally he writes about art and writing itself and so on, but it's in between. In between parties and who knows who and how much this person needs to be invited to this person's house.

It's boring.

And it's a paragraph that consists of 7,219 words when 25 words would have said the same thing.

I can't take another second of it. Not one more sentence. I read half of the second volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time and the entirety of the first volume and now I'm effing done. I just cannot read this stuff, the classics. The boredom is overwhelming. It's a thickness that suffocates. It's a dagger pulled from the muscle slooooowly.

What I'm beginning to sense is that there is too much good writing of bad stories. I had been sensing this for a good long time but only got confirmation after Etgar Keret said basically the same exact thing. He said:

"In America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile. It looks beautiful, but soulless. So I warn them that, often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say. Sometimes you have, like, New Yorker stories—there’s a couple, they’re on a cruise, he’s becoming senile, he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, when the woman mentions it to him, he becomes really angry, but in the end he admits it and they sit on the deck, she closes her eyes. And you say, “It’s so well-written, but who gives a fuck?” For certain, the guy who wrote it doesn’t give a fuck. It’s not something that has to do with his life; it’s just something well-written and illuminating, and writing is not about that. The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about. Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship—it’s totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws. Why do we have to keep playing this strange game?"

Dude makes scary sense.

So I'm ditching reading the boring stories and I'm going to go with good stories, even if the writing is bad.

The 10 Best Books I Read in 2017

Alright it's time for end-of-the-year reading reflection.

I don't much dig long preambles before giving top books lists so here's the ten best books I read this past year in no particular order.

(-)


Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson

I'm going to read anything Adam Johnson writes ever. He's some kind of literary savant and I didn't even know that was a thing. Read his work (especially this book) and you'll see why. One of three short story collections on the list.










Homesick for Another World by  Ottessa Moshfegh

If I'll read anything Adam Johnson writes ever, then I will actively try to get inside Ottessa Moshfegh's mind and try to read words she intends to write before she ever writes them always. This is her short story collection but I also read her novel Eileen this year. This collection is so so much better but got a lot less attention. I mean it got a lot of attention, but a lot less than Eileen, which won some little award called the MAN BOOKER PRIZE.








Nothing but the Dead and Dying by Ryan W. Bradley

This was a re-read but it's going on the list because I didn't have a list last year. Ryan opened his chest and pulled parts of his heart muscle out and placed them on paper in this collection of stories. Each one is as hard and honest as the Alaska he writes about it in them.









Alien vs. Predator by Michael Robbins

The only poetry collection on the list. Michael Robbins is a genius, and the only poet I've ever been both able and compelled to quote. Most often quoted line: "I feel ya Ophelia, I said to my nuts."










Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi


Comic book? Graphic short story collection? It's something but all of that's labels and doesn't matter because of that. This was a beautifully bleak and strange and exotic reading experience. I didn't put these in order but if I had this one would have been really in the running for top of the list.









Gisela by Marcus Speh

Marcus Speh was huge in the indie lit community for a long time and then he kind of went dark zero for a bit. And it was completely worth it. Among many other projects of which I'm sure we'll soon be able to enjoy, Marcus wrote during this time this addictive mosaic novel of historical fiction. It's rich and complex but wonderfully accessible. Based on the historical figure Gisela of Bavaria (ca. 985-1065 A.D.)









2666 by Roberto Bolano

Bolano is one of my favorite writers and I'd read a few other books of his but I knew this opus was lingering in the shadows. This year I took advantage of a one free book giveaway when I signed up for Audible and got 2666. It felt a little like cheating but, unlike when I read The Savage Detectives, I feel like I got this full experience listening to this being read. It's got a lot of murder and death and dead women but there's so much that Bolano is doing with that and then he's also a full-blown literary genius. Read it. Stop putting it off. Listen if you got to. There's no shame in it.





Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck: Rejection Letters from the Eyeshot Outbox by Lee Klein

One of two books by Lee I read this year. His other, a novel based on the Jersey Devil, was good, but this one is great. It's a collection of some of his intensive rejection letters from his time editing Eyeshot, one of the earliest online journals. I'm not sure there's anybody with more craft knowledge than Lee. His rejection letters read like writing workshop lectures from Iowa Writer's Workshop (which Lee is a graduate of, no surprise there). One of the best books on writing you'll ever read.





Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy

This one maybe shouldn't be on the list because it's only 57 pages long which puts it officially in the realm of short story but I'm putting it on the list because it feels like a novel. It should definitely be placed in the realm of novella because of this. But enough defending. This story is why Tolstoy, for my money, is to be remembered for all time as a genius (this word keeps popping up but it should in this kind of list). Now I've not read his great books and I'm going to remedy that this year but this story, wow, this story makes me want to be a better writer or just quit.





Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story on a Postcard by Michael Kimball

Michael Kimball has cropped up on my best of lists many times. The first time was back in 2014 when I was blown away by his book Galaga. This book was one I'd heard about and heard about (along with Big Ray) and had really needed to get my hands on. I finally did and it was great. It ran the risk of being gimmicky but in Michael's hands there's never a worry of slipping into that kind of thing. It is his tribute to fellow writers and weirdos and it is beautiful.

The Reading Plan for 2018

This year I'll be doing less writing and more reading. My total for books read this past year (as of today, Dec. 17) is 90. I've read 90 books and that's great. But I always sort of torture myself by wondering if I'm reading the right books. You know what I mean, the idea that there are core books that everyone should read at some point. My issue becomes that I really prefer contemporary literature, books written by my peers, etc. But how much am I expanding myself by reading mostly new work? This is a question that sticks around in my mind a good bit.

So all that is to say that I've decided what can it hurt to devote one full year of reading to the classics. It's just one year and it'll be interesting to see how much ground I can cover in 365 days.

I'm going to start with Within a Budding Grove...

Wait a minute...I just realized that it'll probably take me all year to read this one book. I won't be covering much ground probably, now that I think of it. But I'm still doing it.

So yep, Within a Budding Grove. And here are some others already on my shelf that I hope to get to this coming year (but probably won't be able to because I read slower than anybody I've ever met).


* Dante's Divine Comedy

* Crime and Punishment

* The Metamorphosis (yep I haven't read it I just realized this week)

* Don Quioxte


I doubt I'll get to even one of these others because DQ will probably take the entire year. But that's my list for now.

The Airgonaut - 2018 Best Small Fictions & Pushcart Prize Nominees

I nearly forgot I had nominations to make before signing off from The Airgonaut entirely. My last act as editor gets to be about the most rewarding thing an editor of an online indie journal can do - sling some love.

So the nominations are in and are as follows (with links to stories chosen):



BEST SMALL FICTIONS NOMINEES

Nina Sudhakar - Memento Arbori

Andrew Davie - Excerpt From the Diary of Ingmar Bergman

Donora A. Rihn - The Astronaut

Howie Good - Violent Dreams Can Be a Warning Sign

Geordie Flantz - Serengeti

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES

Julia Patt - The Girl in the Deer

Michael Díaz Feito - Pentecost

Lynn Mundell - The Story of Three Metals

Santino Prinzi - These Are the Rules of Our Canopy Shyness and Life

Matthew Lyons - Metastasis

Robert Boucheron - Honalee



A hearty good luck to all nominees. I would sincerely love for each of these stories to be chosen and included in the 2018 installment of both of these series.

And a word about the selection process: It was well beyond difficult to narrow favorites down to only six choices for the Pushcart and a mere five choices for BSF. I can truly say that each story I published at The Airgonaut this past year was, in my heart, as good as any published this past year at any journal.

New story published today @ Vestal Review

I'm awfully happy to have a story called "The House in the Northwest Corner" in Issue 52 of Vestal Review.

It's the longest running journal of flash fiction and has been the home of numerous great writers including Steve Almond, Aimee Bender, Sam Lipsyte, Stuart Dybek, Robert Olen Butler, Pamela Painter, and many more.

Mark Budman has edited the journal for an outstanding 17 years.

Relax, It's a Lit Roundup 5

It's been awhile since I've shared some cool stuff from the lit world. As usual, I'm going to get out of the way and go ahead and start the list.


* Vol. 1 Brooklyn has a pretty good preview of books coming out this month.

* Kevin Sampsell has a fine short story called "Out of Nowhere" at Tin House.

* I only recently jumped in and read Bob Schofield's first two books. Really cool and dreamy material. With that in mind, you should know you can preorder his new book The Burning Person. It has a release date set for December 15 from 2FAST2HOUSE.

* For a few months now I've meant to get on here and drop some love for Robert York, writer and curator of The Dreadful Point. His work is hard to categorize or pin down, which, of course, makes it brilliant. Head over and spend some time reading.

* I interviewed writer Fin Sorrel over at Enclave not to long ago. Now I'm reading his new story collection Caramel Floods. You should, too.


So link it up and check these out as soon as you can. And take a minute or two to find a way to let the writers know what you think. Most of us ain't making money doing this so hearing from readers goes a long way.

Books I'm Reading Now

1. The Cosmos Trilogy by Frederick Seidel

2. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

3. Journals by Kurt Cobain

4. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

5. JRZDVLZ by Lee Klein

6. Caramel Floods by Fin Sorrel