Recently, Rebecca solicited all editors, past and present, of Fence to write essays about their editing practices. Though I began the writing process thinking I would write a lot about audience - and more specifically, how coterie is fetishized in the writing community in a way that reminds me of the developmental theories around masochism first articulated by D. W. Winnicott, I ended up writing, much more boring, about “operations” - all the things we do here at Fence to produce the material object of the magazine itself. I focused in particular on our response times - how long it takes us to let someone know we are interested (or not) in their piece. I suggested, in this essay, that if we could guarantee submitters that we would get back to them one way or another within a month, we could improve the overall quality of our slush-pile because people would submit to us first, knowing they weren’t risking the sort of 6 month or year-long wait they look forward to from most publications. When this issue was brought up in an editorial meeting a couple of months later, someone pointed out that we accept simultaneous submissions, so it shouldn’t matter how long we take to get back to a person, since we’re not asking for exclusivity in the first place. I argued that there was a psychology to the notion of rapid response time - it’s not just that people would feel they weren’t losing time waiting around for a slow editorial board, but also that they would generally think of Fence as organized, together, and engaged… Curious what all your blog-readers (if you exist) think about these highly operational considerations…

So I tried to lose my blogging virginity - I mean, I _did_ lose it - last night, but the post didn’t stick… not sure what that means technically (vis my virginity vis blogging - ie perhaps I’m still a virgin), but here we go again…

I am here now blogging from my office job - joining the infamous ranks of the poets and other disgruntleds who do that sort of thing every day… Office job is ending soon, though (9/1 will be my final day after six long years of sitting at a very big black desk)… as will my use of this fancy computer.

Thinking today about taste. A friend of mine sent me the following Rumi poem after she and I had had a heavy conversation. I liked the Rumi poem - very much - which made me worry for my little dark avant-garde heart….

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

– Jelaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

Mary Oliver, who also taps into the New Age or more touchy feelie poetry market sells really well… in general, those most disposed toward reading poetry in our current cultural climate seem also to be those most interested in things like yoga and praying and hiking in the great outdoors. Fence, obviously, does not cater to this crowd… publishes a lot of anti-Rumis/Mary Olivers… and I wonder if this is just a reaction - a high-brow, snobbish reaction to the “natural” poetry instinct (contemplative, mystic, religious) - or if it is something else…

Friday at the book factory.Brilliant.

I finally received a parcel from Albany; contents include: several Fence Books (Unspoiled Air, 19 Names for Our Band, and Rogue Hemlocks) as well as the last two Fence issues. BTW, Carl Martin’s book is an ass-kicker.  

Anyway, opening the parcel reminded me of the Eat, Shit, and Die episode a few months back. Reviewing all the comments, I was reminded of the fragile poet stereotype…you know, all sensitive and shit.

This got me thinking about George Hitchcock and kayak and all those awesome rejection slips they used to send out. I wonder how today’s poets would react? 

Most of today’s 666,000 literary journals have some variation of: accept, decline (but send more stuff), decline (good but not for us), and decline (WTF?). Impersonal, yes, though given some journals’ slush volume, one cannot expect anything more than that. Of course, there are editors who give personal responses (feedback, praise, flirtations)…we in the industry like to call them “saints.” 

Fence’s current online submission process, though more “green,” manages to make the submission process even more impersonal with drop-down menus and boilerplate. I know Rebecca will shoot this down, but I thought, given everyone’s love of LOLcats, we should  attempt to inject some levity into this relationship of rejector/rejected.

The following is a proposal for graphic rejections. 

Decline #1: 

This image says: umm, you almost had me, but your trite ending really killed it for me.

Decline #2: 

Harsh, I know. 

Then I got to thinking: you know, Charles, some people just cannot stand cats (cough, cough, Andy Mister). But everyone loves Creeley. For reals. Even my old boss with fake nails and shoulder pads loved Creeley.

Decline #1a:

For failed attempts at projective verse, we can use

Decline #1b:

 or how about

Decline #1C:

What’s with Olson showing off his six pack all the time? Dude was a bear.

Decline #2: 

To stroke the poet’s ego, we can use a little LZ

Decline #3:

Of course, for the 1% of slush that gets taken we can celebrate with

Accept #1:

This concludes my proposal as well as my week as guest blogger.

Thank you.

xcv  

So my friend Kathy flew in from LA this past weekend. A typical NY visit complete with the dreaded Times Square clusterfuck. 

Thankfully, she spared me the misery of: circle line, Empire State building, Statue of Liberty, shopping in SOHO, etc. Working above Penn Station, I always wonder what tourists must think of this place. It’s horrible…being a tourist. You get gouged, you’re constantly exhausted, and you’re treated as a cultural consumer–expected to wait in absurd lines, point & shoot, and pay for souvenirs. We did touristy things of course: waiting an hour for a table at Joe’s Shanghai (good as always), waiting an hour for a table at Grimaldi’s (thumbs down), and then the museums…the Met, the Whitney, MOMA…

It’s absurd, really.  And yet, there are expectations to be met. Things of beauty that surprise. The unknown. The unfamiliar. The uncanny.

The most pleasant surprise appeared at the Battery Maritime Building, where David Byrne’s sound installation, Playing the Building, resides.  

On my bike ride home, I saw the Pier 35 waterfall running. Absurd and beautiful. And walking around earlier tonight by the swedish meatball outlet, we were treated to the new Erie Basin park– decorative cranes and all. Uncanny indeed. 

 Now that the NBA finals are over, I guess it’s time for tacos, banh mis, bbqs, and beaches. Congrats to KG.  

Last Friday at the New Design HS we went to see the Rooftop Films premiere of this: 

Packed with portraits of LES scenesters (from drag queens to squatters to all those hardcore dudes), Captured spans time from Clayton Patterson’s arrival in 1979 to 2007. Despite issues with pacing, the film succeeds in presenting the panoply of characters that made 80s LES seductive and dangerous. (Edgy. Interesting. All those nostalgic terms bandied by old timers.) The immediacy of Patterson’s photos and videos captures (haha) the energy of the period from the Pyramid Club shows to the streets– culminating to the Tompkins Square riots. Community. Community. Funny how that word gets tossed around. Whose streets? Whose park? Whose poetry? Whose latte?

 Funny, too, during the Q&A how the crowd applauded the resistance. But who are all these clean cut hipsters?

clapping in a rooftop cage with subsidized graffiti, in an IFC-sponsored event.

Seems everyone was too busy yapping about community, fighting the cops, who are the arms of the banks…but that was their New York. 

I’m sure there is some clean binary to relate their gentrification to our gentrification. 

At least we have swedish meatballs to look forward to…maybe a new Billy to fill with chapbooks and literary journals.

TESTES

TESTES

I have two of them

*

Charles, here, blogging for the week. I was looking for an image of Sammy doing his big balls dance in a Celts uni, but I guess he would have to make a big shot.

Funny seeing big-ears Farmar attack Bologna face

*

Speaking of big balls, Silliman offers some silly reductions concerning Flarf and Conceptual Poetry. The comments are lively as usual. I like how Brent takes him to task, but he’s too nice as usual. Brent should give beat downs. Dude is huge. Funny, too, how Kasey gets to play Olson.

This is a perfect example of why I can’t talk about poetry to my non-poet friends. Trying to explain Flarf/Conceptual Poetry/School of Quietude/Post Avant/New Brutalism/New Sincerity/BlahBlahBlah/ and post bLAHbLAHbLAH to non-poets would be more embarrassing than trying to explain 17th level mages and low level wizards.

strength: suck

dexterity: 1/2

constitution: 6

Intelligence: 6

Wisdom: 6

Charisma: -3.14159265

Wow, how banal is it that I keep talking about how old I am? I’m 40. But I used to be 30, and before that I was 20. The other night I went to see Ariana Reines, beloved 20-something, in the completely post-feminist context of the Poetry Brothel, at which she was the “new girl.” This in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where I had never been before though I grew up on 21st Street, in Chelsea. And the next day found me in deepest Greenpoint, at the East Coast Aliens venue for all-day poetry. I was really struck, over my whole weekend in Brooklyn, at how different things are nowadays in NYC; it’s not just that “everyone lives in Brooklyn,” as back in the days when I was starting Fence (when I was 30) and everyone lived in Brooklyn but parties and events still took place in Manhattan, with everyone trundling back to the boroughs afterward. Now it’s really like people LIVE in Brooklyn, and eat and drink and read and go out in Brooklyn. Maybe this happened five years ago and everyone knows it already. Also striking was how, at the Poetry Brothel event, everyone looked like a recent arrival from the Soviet Bloc, and danced with great earnestness and unselfconsciousness and freedom to the Jazz Age music served up by the band whose name I can’t find the name of but who featured two female lead singers who were channeling Bessie Smith with great success. Kids were literally jitterbugging and doing the Charleston.

But come one, come all to our party in Manhattan to celebrate the release of Jibade-Khalil Huffman’s 19 Names For Our Band:

short readings
+
Free Booze
+
cheap books

plus old soul records played by Xaviera Simmons

Fence 19 is in our office, shining neatly in two cardboard boxes. 

The cover image has been declared “a plumber’s nightmare” by the heating/cooling man (who sweetly obliges to visit with thermometer when we’re freezing, and invariably tells us it’s 70 degrees and warm enough).

 Y’all have ONLY TONIGHT to sign on for Fence In Rainbows.  Our blessings on those who took advantage, at whatever sum. 

Today and tomorrow we’re handing out free copies of Issue 18 on the fountain-laden campus of the University at Albany.  It rains, a bit, and so our intern Diana has to work extra-hard for attention and to keep her body temperature up.  Abutting tables sponsor dance troups and fraternities, environmental clubs, the girl scouts (and their cookies)….  Who will pay attention to Fence, even with a mountain of dum-dums, and FREE signs practically scotch-taped to our chests?

In truth, a large proportion (more than 90%, I’d wager) of the student population here at the U of A have no idea that Fence exists.  Our offices comprise a corner of a sparsely-traveled floor in a lovely new library thankfully attached to the campus center, which grants a shorter distance to coffee and sbparro’s.  This Thursday we’ll launch the second issue compiled and edited here in Albany, and will host our third on-campus event.  If you’re nearby, and you’ve heard or over-heard of Fence, be reminded:

Issue 19 Launch Reading / / May 1, 8 pm / / Standish Room, 3rd floor, Science Library

Readers: Michael Comstock, Karen Garthe, Vivian Heller, and Douglas A. Martin