049: Mayhem? I Don't Know, CANhem?
First, Tha NEWS.
It's that time: the clocks have changed, the snow is starting to melt, it's time for Persephone to make her way north for planting season. I'm taking the train up to North Dakota this week. I can't wait to see my peeps and my dog and plant the garden and spend many, many hours mowing the farmyard.
But very early on in the proceedings is the release for THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT! As I mentioned in the last newsletter, this book is being released alongside a visual art collection by Elle Billing, my partner on the podcast (and life!) and so I'm thrilled to be working parallel to her. The paintings and collages are coming together so well, I can't wait to see them in person and watch them find new homes. She's been steadily releasing behind-the-scenes and work-in-progress shots through her newsletter and Instagram.
March 21st! That's only a week and a half!! There may be other shenanigans related to the release, but we haven't exactly figured that out yet. Keep your eyes open.
You know what's kind of hilarious? I spend like a week percolating on these newsletters, but never write anything down about them, so all the good ideas I have evaporate before I actually sit down to write. Some professional I turned out to be.
I would like to mention some things I have coming down the pipe, though. There's the 22 CARDS project I've mentioned before, which people seem to be having a wonderful response to at readings and such. I resolved on the day David Lynch died that I'm going to revise my MFA thesis, HYDROLOGY, into something new, something weirder. While there's moments of brilliance in it, some of the poems are too staid for the way my work has evolved in the intervening six years. (Yes, I've been trying off and on to get that book picked up for six years and I'm at the point that I'm just going to release it on my own.) I also have a chapbook entitled AFTER AND AFTER JACK that I'll probably getting out there pretty soon.
There's one last thing that I'm planning on doing, and it's at least partially inspired by my friend Libby Walkup's most recent missive about Using Shit Up. For the longest time I've had a folder in my files called, rather unceremoniously and what I thought was unseriously, "Horrible Garbage." That's where all the stuff that I know is bad right off the bat ends up. Any writer is going to have a file like this (some of them use the ubiquitous File 13 for it...), and the thing is that it actually has a lot of useful information in it, especially as a poet. As a poet, a lot of my work can be fragmentary, built off of pieces or salient lines. And that's the goal with the next one, which is still germinating to the point that it's not even getting a project name yet. (HORRIBLE GARBAGE is compelling for a placeholder title, though. It won't sell a single copy with a title like that, though.) Unrelated, but I think it's interesting how my brain focuses on poetry at the project/conceit level, and not random individual poems. I think it's the structuralist part of me. I blame Kieron Gillen (as usual.)
Second, INTERLUDE.
Third, CONSUMPTION.
Lady Gaga's Mayhem was released this past Friday. While I don't think it quite lives up to its title, it's easily her best album since Born This Way (I'm not including her standards/Tony Bennett collabs in this--haven't heard em.) She said there's an intentional metal and industrial influence on the album, and I can hear it. But also, like, she samples David Bowie's "Fame," which is decidedly not either of those things. I like it. I'm going to go more in depth at the Patreon, so you can hop over there if you'd like access to that (and all my other poetry, notes, and writing that I post there!)
Kieron Gillen, that renowned brainbox, has released a zine-sized RPG titled How Do Aliens Do "It"? and it's almost exactly what it sounds like. The group is roleplaying a group of alien teenagers trying to figure out how their species does the deed through the half-whispers they've absorbed over time. Available at itch.io for pay-what-you-want.
Rewatched season one of Our Flag Means Death and I'm hoping I can get the second one in before I get on the train. We'll see. Season two is definitely the heavier of the two (despite the rush of the back half), so I'll definitely have to be in the right mood for the arcs of Buttons (Ewan Bremner) and Izzy (a dreamy Con O'Neil.)
Books I'll be taking with me this year: Vol. 2 of Alan Moore's Jerusalem, Jack Spicer's be brave to things. The former continues one of the most dense but rewarding works I've ever read. Everything referential goes over my head, but I try. The text itself is plenty interesting to my nodes-and-paths obsessed brain. The latter is Jack's uncollected poetry and plays. I am honestly not sure what to expect here. But I'm interested because I'd mentioned to my friend a few weeks ago that I've never written a play before, because I struggle with narrative. Maybe I'll figure out a way to do something weird enough through Jack that the medium starts to make sense to me.
Fourth, HUSTLE.
First and foremost is my most recent book, confessions from a drainage ditch, which was released on Sept 1st through Amazon, and is available in ebook and paperback formats. If you haven't picked it up, it's a great introduction to my more concrete and mainstream work. currently almost 50% off!
If you're looking for something weirder, you can check out A Void and Cloudless Sky, a chapbook, which is also available from Amazon, as well as most other retailers. By being a subscriber to this newsletter, you're also entitled to a free PDF version, which you can get here.
If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. There are lots of little benefits you can get there, from poems written to your specifications to subscriber-only limited-edition chapbooks.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
When Amazon gets done with its processing and verification on your submitted book, you have the option to get up to five author proofs, ostensibly to check the print quality and such. While four copies are spoken for, one is left over. So what I'm going to do is give one away over on Bluesky. All you have to do is Like the post I make over there, and on the 19th, I'll randomly draw one of the people who Liked it to win an author proof, personally annotated by me with notes, doodles, citations, clues, or whatever else I feel like scribbling in there. Think of it as a commentary track in addition to the behind-the-scenes vignette that is the Back Matter. A copy for free and a lil more? Neat! (I think it's neat, anyway.) Good luck!