A PUBLICATION PLAN

Time sure disappears. Last entry in this writer's blog was June 22. I'm more than 4/5 done on 6th? 10th? rewrite of my novel The Porn Writer. I'm reworking poetry constantly as they straggle home bedraggled and d(r)ejected from the fields of literature.

The August issue of Better 

Than Starbucks is here, 

online or ready to be bought 

and printed at Lulu. My poem Afterthought sits inside, a lüshi in the 8 line form of Chinese poet Hanshan.

Read the other day, the "publication plan" of a fellow writer. He said his goal was to get 100 rejections next year. Do you know how hard it is to get 100 rejections? I'm lucky to get 2 or 3 a month.

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" from a Ronald Reagan campaign speech, 1980. And we wonder why the Republican Party has deteriorated so badly.

 

BEATNIK BEATS ON AFTER NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

Photoprapher find here

Watching the Super Bowl half-heartedly. Fell into a creative funk for a couple of weeks after DAW rejected Ghoul World, and my poetry manuscript about prostate cancer experience also fell short in two prestigious contests. Of course, those contests were filled with many excellent manuscripts by well known poets. I shouldn't feel so bad, but I thought my writing days were done. Nothing was issuing from my inner sanctum except the sound of silence, but this week, a couple of poems were handed out through the sanctum doors into my conscious brain, and I began to write a memoir for the umpteenth time. I've got some interesting psychological thoughts and insights to share, but I have to deal with the old grouch synaptic self that undermines me at every turn. "What makes you think you've got anything worthwhile to say?" I sent Ghoul World limping out again. Hell, it's only been rejected about 20 times. What's that in the scheme of things? Nothing. And two eight line poems slipped into view from the synaptic self. I really love the eight line form and Hanshan's temperament that I fell in love with. Somewhere in my unconscious self, there exists a hermit in the Chinese mountains.

COLD MOUNTAIN/OLD GRAYHOUSE, COMPARE AND CONTRAST

What can I say about my tardiness in making entries in this blog? I have no excuse except the writing of lüshis is carrying me away, and I hesitate to keep using that as an excuse. I think constantly about rewriting Ghoul World, but the creative juices that flow as I write these 8 line poems can't be resisted at this time. As any writer knows, you can't stop one project to start another without totally destroying the state of mind that is driving the first project. My aim is to put together a ms of 100 lüshis before I stop, but if my drive cools down before I reach 100, then, of course, I'll stop. Not more than a few months back, I thought all creative juices had dried up for this 80 year old, but Hanshan's poetry is serving as a springboard for my own work. I've reached a stage where I use Red Pine's translations of Hanshan's work as my starting point. I see some of Hanshan's work as being that of a reclusive and sometime moralizing ancient poet in a rural landscape whereas I'm a modern poet in an urban landscape. Thus I use Hanshan's work as sometimes a contrasting force for my lüshis and sometimes as a comparative force. I'd give you and example, but I'm seeing repeatedly that many literary marketplaces don't want to see submissions of anything that's been published in blogs so I'm mute at this time.

THE SAME OLD ME WHEREVER

A pretty photo for your entertainment...

This will be a short one. The book American Poetry: twentieth century, Vol I is a marvelous and all inclusive accomplishment. Musicians are included and folk poetry, more black poets and women poets than probably few other collections of 20th Century poets have included, though I can't be certain of that fact, but it certainly represents a wide range of poetic forms and poets too. 

In my mind, my new bucket list includes the follow item — "to write as many good and true poems as I can in my 80s."  Today I finished another rewrite of the poetry ms of lüshi [a Chinese form of 8 line poetry employed by my current poet hero, Hanshan]. Here's one of them. The idea certainly isn't new, but it's my expression of the idea "wherever you go, there you find yourself."

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION

After all my early tramping, Hanshan, you’d think I’d recall,

But the urge to get away always got in the way.

I’d hope a new hat rack might hold everything the old could not.

Off I’d go on a wing and a prayer, wearing my chapeau at a jaunty angle.

To hell with everything I left behind — wife, kids, the rental payment.

In those days, I never could afford a mortgage to nail my feet.

Of course the new hat rack functioned very much like the old,

And I’d find myself again, the same old me in the mirror behind the bar.