This Week's Writing 5/25/24

Jolene, fascist insurrectionist Alito...and big poetry failures.

So, not a great week here for me in the old writing career. I had a publisher who was interested in my second (!) poetry collection of weird broken sonnets. I was thrilled! I got blurbs; there was cool cover art. All was well!

Then the editor explained that he needed to make my lines fit to the formatting because he hates hanging indents when the line goes past the margin (?!) and his solution was to change my line breaks at random so that the sonnets were no longer sonnets (?!?!?!) and also to just occasionally take out words so the lines fit.

Also he made many of these changes without marking them (?!?!?!?!) So I said, “that’s…that’s not going to work; you have to tell me when you change stuff. and you can’t take out words to make the margins fit!” And then they said they weren’t going to work with me.

So! That was disheartening. If you feel like striking a blow for the honor of poetry and want to give me the sense that someone cares, you can preorder my first collection of poetry with a different press that does not suck. Or you can get my chapbook from another press that does not suck. Or! you can support this very blog!

Anyway; here’s hoping next week is somewhat less bitter. Here’s what I published this week:

If you read one thing by me this week, read:

On all the Jolenes. (EIH)

Politics

Illinois needs public defender reform. (Prism)

Trump isn’t joking about serving 3 or more terms. (Public Notice)

Sam Alito is a fascist insurrectionist. (EIH)

Force Alito to appear at Senate hearings, ffs. (EIH)

Cultural Criticism

What Furiosa gets right about the climate crisis. (CNN)

25 best albums of the 2010s. (EIH)

Women directors should get Oscars for mediocrity just like men do. (Splice Today)

John Krasinski’s IF is just terrible. (Chicago Review)

In the Fade is an almost-great film about white nationalism in contemporary Germany. (Chicago Reader)

Poetry

My wife laughed out loud at this. (Gabby & Min’s Literary Journal)

True Love

with apologies to Maja Vidmar

When you fall in love with love
your heart pumps itself through its own heart valve
up through your heart tubes to your brain.
You see stars dripping blood and pumping like a heart.

And through the stars your wife comes walking,
and she says, “What’s wrong with you?”
She pulls your heart out of your nose. She shreds it into tiny pieces
and shakes it on her Doritos.
“This is just what I wanted!” she says.
“I love this.”

You love her too.

Self-conscious poem. (Five Fleas)

A bird doesn't know it's a bird.
A stone doesn't know it's a stone.
Like them, I know who I am.

Ambitious poem. (Five Fleas)

I think I could be happy
if only I had no ambitions.
But here too I have failed.