Poetry Hut Blog

This blog is 5 years old today. Heck, here’s a video:

link: Anniversary Song on You Tube

Thanks for visiting

I may pop up here and there.

I’ve enjoyed it. Maybe I’ll be back in a few months.

ABOUT
Baltimore Is Reads is an Outdoor Poetry journal founded by Publishing Genius in 2006. Today it functions in partnership with Nashville Is Reads, curated by Keyhole Publications.

The Outdoor Journals feature poetry broadsides posted in various locations around Baltimore and Nashville. Typical spots to find a page include light posts, abandoned buildings, shopping carts, bus benches, bulletin boards, public restrooms, and so on. It is the contention of the Outdoor Journal that being read outside changes the experience — confuses the reading and makes it deliberate.

http://www.nashvilleisreads.com/

Poetry News:

1. — Publish and Perish —
2. — What did it mean to buck the tide and take women writers’ works and lives seriously? [link found here thank you] —
3. — From Abolition to Dickinson, Rev. Higginson made his mark —
4. — His seminal poems, “The Neo-HooDoo Manifesto” and “The Neo-HooDoo Aesthetic,” delve even deeper into this artistic practice to demonstrate its vitality as an international, multicultural aesthetic that embraces spiritual creativity I guess this is safe for work… (?) —
5. — Blogging - is it worth it? —
6. — The coming economic giant also has a proud tradition of poetry that is being restored to its central position in the country’s culture —
7. — St. Louis cast mysterious spell on poet T.S. Eliot —
8. — That is where X is the length of lines, for Y = X – 2, Y ~ Poisson (lambda) —
9. — A new (to me) blog. —

Strange, because:

a.) Cher was in Nashville. (?)
b.) Nashvillians generally really don’t even acknowledge celebrities in public. That’s part of the reason why a lot of even non-musician celebs have moved here.
c.) There’s a “roped-off area” at Tootsies (no apostrophe) Orchid Lounge now???

ps no news this weekend — I’m getting over the stomach flu or bad tomato or something.

Go somewhere you haven’t been yet.

Poetry News:

1. — When Hank Williams died on New Year’s day in 1953, he left behind a legacy of honky tonk hits as well as an extended family that would grow to include a son, daughters and grandchildren. Milo Miles reviews an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame called, “Family Tradition: The Williams Family Legacy.” —
2. — alt.NPR: Poetry Off the Shelf Podcast, Linh Dinh catalogues the myriad grades of Vietnamese chuckles. [MP3] —
3. — John Ingram, Chairman of the Ingram Content Companies, announced last Thursday that the company would fold the leading print-on-demand publisher, Lightning Source, Inc. into its main book business to create Ingram Lightning Group. —
4. — One of the failings of our education system is that we are educating people out of creativity. —
5. — That era of the poetry readings was also the folk era. So our intermission would be a folk singer, usually playing the auto harp. —
6. — Author of new book discusses his work linking corporate values with the decline of the tenure-track position, especially in the humanities. —
7. — His latest collection, The Late Show, includes “Gloss of the Past,” composed entirely of the names of lip glosses —
8. — ‘Paradise Lost’ poet turns 400 —
9. — Poetry, our national art, has never been so neglected or unloved. —

The magnitude of circadian advantage influences the outcome of Major League Baseball games in that teams with greater circadian advantage are more likely to win. Crossing multiple time zones further reduces the probability of success for traveling teams.

Hi — an announcement

My first book of poetry, Trouble And Honey, is available for purchase at Lulu.com for a special recession-rate of $7.77. And if you live overseas, why not take advantage of the crappy fiat US dollar hahaha?

The book is also available as a PDF file, for free. This is an experiment. (My baseball poems free chapbook PDF has been downloaded just over 2,500 times so far, BTW. I’m sure that has everything to do with the subject matter.) The PDF of Trouble And Honey is genuinely free without any Read the rest of this entry »

Hey

I’ll be back around May 1st. Since my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome diagnosis :/ my body has been somewhat falling apart haha. I don’t know if it is some weird psychosomatic shock, or this is a slide into physical disability or this is a temporary musculoskeletal freakout or ?.

The geneticist offered to refer me to a pain clinic when I was diagnosed but I said nah when she asked, although I have changed my mind haha and am waiting for a referral.

I’m trying an anti-inflammatory diet, exercise, I’m learning reiki, going to the chiropractor, etc. I bet I start PT again too. Mostly I am still, like, WTF? and as the primary breadwinner of the family (i.e. I pay the mortgage, have the job with health insurance, etc.) I am fighting a tendency to play catch with various scenarios in my head, all of which involve wrack and ruin WRACK! AND! RUIN!, hahaha. Plus there is the underlying fear of “am I going to be in this much pain - or worse - for the rest of my life?” And I have a weirdly high pain tolerance. Not that I enjoy pain. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that haha.)

I’m lucky though, from what I have read, a lot of people with EDS go years or decades without a diagnosis (it’s a rare condition) and/or a diagnosis of “it is all in your head.” Evidently, somatoform disorder is the new “hysteria.”

If you are looking for a orthopedic doctor in Nashville, I can recommend Dr. William B. Kurtz at Tennessee Orthopedic Alliance. He’s the smarty pants who noticed the EDS symptoms. The Division of Medical Genetics at Vanderbilt confirmed it, during a very thorough 3+ hour office visit.

Anyway, this is the last time I’ll probably blog about this so much; this whole thing is a drag. I know that readers come here for poetry news. I’m going to blog EDS stuff at Bad Glue — there’s a placeholder there now.

I’ll be back in the beginning of May, I think.

I posted some links last week regarding Amazon.com’s attempt to force publishers to use Amazon’s BookSurge print-on-demand service. Or the book won’t be available for sale on Amazon. I think Amazon took some non-BookSurge POD book’s “buy” buttons off, too. Is that still the case? My friend Scott’s book is only available through the used book interface now.

Evidently, most (all?) print-on-demand services (other than BookSurge) use Lightning Source to actually print the book. Lightning Source is a subsidiary of Ingram Book Group, which is a local (to me) Nashville company. (The printing biz is big in Nashville.)

I find it strange that I haven’t seen any local media stories about this, since Ingram is such a large local company (and the family is so prominent in the community). Unless I missed any mainstream media articles about this, the only local attention this has gotten is from some well-respected local bloggers — Rex Hammock & Newscoma. I guess POD is small potatoes in the business world.

POD & the WWW are 2 of the main reasons that I think that, for American poetry, this is one of the most exciting periods of time, ever. OK, I understand that hardly anyone buys poetry books these days, but for those of us who do, whoo boy, is there a groaning table.

An overview of why this sucks so much for small publishers.

A more detailed analysis of how this would affect a small poetry publisher.

And in the “first they came for POD” department: Newspapers, magazines, press syndicates, not just e-book and POD publishers, should beware of Amazon’s lock-ins.

So what can you do about it? Here are some ideas:

There are contact addresses here, so you can tell Amazon to quit bogarting POD distribution.

Boycott them & quit generating revenue for Amazon.com via your websites.

The Authors Guild is seeking input that will help them move forward with legal plans because of Amazon’s possible violation of antitrust laws.

This article suggests that the California Attorney General would be most interested in Amazon’s business practices.

(I still plan on using Lulu.com to publish my poetry manuscript this year.)

yummy yum yum

I hadn’t been there in a while & cayenne is supposed to be good for pain, so I ate that for dinner yesterday.

No news today.

hahahaha.

(I love Prince’s Hot Chicken.)

(not a draft but I fear I will be adding to it)

Poem by an American

I.
Read the rest of this entry »

Women writers from lower and working class backgrounds will gather for the 2008 Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series Spring Symposium to share their experiences and work with readers and each other.

Beyond Our Beginnings – Women Writers from Lower and Working Class Backgrounds will be held March 25-27 on the Vanderbilt campus. The discussions and readings are free and open to the public.

[more]

Tennessee State University Cultural Affairs Committee and Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy Present

The Ringing Ear National Book Tour

An evening of poetry showcasing readings from contributing authors

Earl S. Braggs
Stephanie Pruitt
Frank X. Walker
Treasure Williams

Thursday, February 28, 7 pm
Tennessee State University, Performing Arts Center
The event is free and open to the public

SPECIAL THANKS TO
Cave Canem Foundation
AND
Lovenoise

[email me if you plan to attend & I can help with parking etc.]