To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

That seems to be the question I'm being forced to ask myself.
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer yet another techie, time-eating attempt at book promotion
Or to take arms 'gainst a sea of silliness and by going offline, end it.

In the last few days (my apologies if you were hoping for more mangled Shakespeare), I've read in if not a horde of blogs and articles, at least a plethora of them, that Twittering (or is the verb always Tweeting?) is an indispensable tool for a writer. Somehow, telling the world your pithy, little thoughts in 140 characters will sell books. I just don't get it. The tweeter doth protest too much, methinks.

I suppose, for some writers, there could be something to it all. If one is posting actually interesting and relevant messages, as opposed to "I think I'll eat a sandwich now" and "omg, wtf? lol."

Robert Lee Brewer at Writer's Digest offers some good tips to make it more effective. ... I'm sometimes tempted to give it a go. It might prove useful. Maybe. Possibly.

But then I think, it's most likely merely yet another way to avoid working on this new novel. Which is what I should be doing right now instead of writing this blog. I read once in a book I've forgotten, "Writer's write. Everyone else makes excuses." -- Which would make a great Tweet (or is it Twit?).

So please, anyone reading this, let me know what you think. Do you use Twitter? Do you follow others? Can it help build readership, etc. or is it just another fun thing to do with your thumbs? Convince me: should I become a Twit?

Mickey Z. Wants Your Revolutionary Poetry

Here's something that showed up in my inbox recently:

Calling all feminists, wizards, Queer theorists, ex-Black Panthers,
Christians, Green activists, avant-gardists, Kabbalists, vegans, Hawaiian
nationalists, kickboxers, Punks, Hip Hop evangelists, New New Leftists,
pink-haired emo warriors, organic gardeners -- submit your work for "The Big
Book of Revolutionary Poetry," edited by Sparrow and Mickey Z. Send up to 3
poems to: sparrow44@juno.com or info@mickeyz.net

Also, please forward this announcement far and wide, post it on your website
or blog or Facebook page, and tweet it if you must. Thanks...

P.S. Please don't reply to find out what we mean by "revolutionary." As they
say, if you have to ask...

The Last Autumn

Lying on the couch with a fever raging through me, I watch leaves dropping from the cottonwood outside my window. I have one hand on a speaker so I can feel this violin sonata of Mozart. Sometimes hearing just isn't enough. In my fever, with the gently-refracted light through the streaked glass, I can't be sure if it's leaves or little birds that are falling; pine siskins perhaps, or mountain bluebirds.

Suddenly, it's the last autumn. The final fall. All the birds fall silently from the trees like yellowed leaves. The bears prepare for a hibernation without end. The last of the green bleeds from the earth like the color from our faces when we hear the news. Our skin grows numb and we lose control of our hands. No amount of Mozart can save us now.

The grey of the sky is an iron door continually slamming shut. The mountainsides are crimson with dead trees: the warming brought the beetles and the pines can't climb any higher to escape. I don't remember voting for this. I don't remember choosing profits for oil companies in favor of life. Wasn't there a moment, some time in the recent past, that we could have said, "No"?

Submit your Poetry to Poet's Basement on CounterPunch

So here's some news: I'm now the poetry editor for CounterPunch's weekly installment of "Poet's Basement." CounterPunch is the internationally renowned political newsletter edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. "Poet's Basement" has published work by Robert Creeley, Harold Pinter, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Patti Smith, as well as many talented new and upcoming writers. We generally publish three poems per week: Fridays at CounterPunch.org. Here's details:

Editorial Statement:
For Poet’s Basement, we seek work from the leading edge of the poetic dialogue. Have something to say, and say it with precision, music and electricity. In the words of Miscellaneous Jones, “If you’re going to kill a tree just to write something on it, you’d better have something damn good to say.” … Show us creation, not imitation. Passion, not romance. Blood, not tears. Give us thorns without the crown. … Make us think. … Make us stop thinking. … Amaze us.

Submission Guidelines:
We are open to all genres and styles, although the painfully sentimental and dogmatically religious would have more luck elsewhere. Simultaneous submissions and previously published work are accepted (provided that you retain the rights to any published pieces). Works published on Poet’s Basement remain the property of the author. At this time, no monetary payment is possible.

To submit to Poet’s Basement, send an e-mail to counterpunchpoetry@gmail.com with your name, the titles being submitted, a short bio, and your website url or e-mail address (if you’d like this to appear with your work). Also indicate whether or not your poems have been previously published and where. Attach up to 5 poems as a single Word document· Where poems cross to a new page, indicate whether or not there is a stanza break. Expect a response within 3 weeks.

Prestidigitatious Verse: Enjoying the Trip of David Blaine’s ANTISOCIAL

(Published by OW Press, 2009. www.OutsiderWriters.org)

The author’s bio at the end of this book notes that this is not the magician of the same name. Yet, David Blaine, the poet, plays with words the way I imagine the other David Blaine plays with cards or silk scarves. His agile manipulations nearly defy physics and the results are surprising, mystifying, and sometimes downright magical.

Blaine revels in the double entendre: In “Guns and Butter” he describes a love affair with oil, the “hydrocarbon medusa,” as a “crude relationship.” In “Child” he says, “the remainder of you perhaps buried / as dust motes drift into a dune / across the top of some deserted windowsill” and we might not even notice the sleight of hand that connects “dune” with the desert of the “deserted windowsill.”

Extended references lurk around the corners of lines like rabbits made to disappear, yet you know they’re still there, somewhere. In “Allen and Jack,” Blaine has Kerouac reincarnated as Willie Nelson (“On the Road … Again”), then later sneaks in a line from “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

But these pages are not merely games and verbal dexterity. You can feel the depth of thought and passion flowing below the surface of most every poem. Blaine takes on issues from the social, political, religious and environmental front-lines. Never beating you over the head, his attack is more subtle and fun to watch – like a blade eased gently through the slot in the brightly-painted box he’s put you. In “The Usual Suspects,” we hear of hands that “sign the orders,” “pull the trigger,” “deal in currency,” “swing the hammer,” “place the nails,” and perform a host of other heinous crimes. We then are given the revelation that all of these hands are ours. And with that, we are successfully sawn in half.

There’s much in the poems of Antisocial that describe an entire world sawn in half. Dead soldiers, starving children, drunks, prostitutes, saints who’ve lost their goodness, Judas’ pointing finger, Dick Cheney’s lies and vitriol, and “a thin man [who] cries so people won’t notice it’s raining.” However true all of this is, we can take comfort in the stoically existentialist wisdom of Blaine’s “Terminal”:

I have this suspicious feeling
that in the end,
at the pearly gates,
it’s all going to turn out
to be fake, worn
and shabby.
But still,
I’m trying to enjoy the trip.

And what a trip it is.

– Marc Beaudin, September 2009

ANTISOCIAL by David Blaine

New from Outsider Writers Collective:

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26

... Perhaps this is too many. Maybe our poetry would be stronger with less to choose from.

As Jim Harrison says, "The earth's proper scripture could be carried on a three by five card if we weren't drunk on our own blood."

Of course, he uses 20 just for those two lines.

Ecopoetics vs. Nature Poetry

A recent invitation to a conference on "Ecocriticism" has me thinking about some definitions.

I've always been uncomfortable with the term "nature poetry." It seems to instantly conjure up images of some effete versifier with a quill pen regaling us with adjective-laden descriptions of flowers and sunsets. The problem with this, is that singing of the beauty and inspiration of nature often ignores the fact of our destruction of it. Bad nature poetry uses the natural world for its own selfish end, much as a mining operation or lumber corporation does. When it comes to the natural world (or any world for that matter) mere "observation" or "appreciation" offend me. The Subject/Object fallacy lies about the seer and insults the seen. You need to get your hands dirty, revel in the muck, risk losing your domesticality. In other words, don't talk "about" nature; be nature. Connect.

I think that's what Ecopoetics does; what separates it from nature poetry. In this sense, I think writers like Roethke, Gary Snyder, and Jim Harrison are absolutely not nature poets. And I hope that my work puts be in the same category (not in terms of ability, but of method).

Poetry Clearance Sale at Alt-Current

The great folks over at Alternating Current are practically giving away books of poetry. Get 'em quick before they're all gone.