The manny is a finalist somewheres. But I mustn't say wheres. Don't want to jinx it. Maybe this is jinxing it. I'll stop.

Linh Dinh tells me that Octopus was mentioned on BBC Vietnamese for publishing one of Vietnam's revered poets, Thanh Thao. He tells me billions and trillions of impressionable Vietnamese citizens have now been exposed to Octopus. I just wish I spoke Vietnamese.

A and I went to Bat Boy: The Musical last night. I give it a thumbs up: blood, camp, sex, peculiarity, and they managed to squeeze in a legitimate lesson. It was much better than Cats.

Things I bought yesterday: jeans, a smoothie, and The Red House Painters Songs for a Blue Guitar. My RHP collection is now complete ah ah ah ah.

Some online mags I've recently added a link to at Octopus: H_ngm_n, Fifth Street Review, and Mustachioed.

Got a haircut today. It was long overdue. Heres a picture of it. I'm pleased, in general, though looking at this pic I'm beginning to wonder if I'm growing a bit thin. I also encountered some haircut pet peeves: 1. Don't talk to me while you're cutting my hair. Concentrate. You don't want to hear what I did today and I don't want to tell you. 2. When you're cutting the right side of my hair cut, you should be standing on the right side of my body, and vice versa. Don't try to reach all the way over there. Swivel me. Swivel me!

Worst Mixed Tape

My apartment neighbor immediately downstairs from me plays her music loudly. This isn't the problem, necessarily: her taste in music is impossibly poor. Here's the set list so far this morning:

1. Lady Marmalade by I don't care
2. Get your Freak On by Missy Elliot
3. If You Wanna Be My Lover by Spice Girls
4. Always on Time by Ja Rule
5. Dust on the Bottle by I'm not sure
6. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Lynn Anderson?
7. Mickey You're so Fine by I'm guessing you know
8. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper

Is she kidding?

I haven't written a poem in weeks. Weeks! And this whole being solicited for mags has got me baffled. It's new to me. I just can't pull the trigger. I need to write more poems. Maybe I will. Here I go:

It's getting late and I'm still stuck here in this amazing headlock...

M and J have left and I'm pretty sad about it. I don't have too many friends. Some things we did, in no particular order:

1. Soaked in Boiling River, which sits exactly halfway between the North Pole and the equator.
2. Ate sushi.
3. Drank wine at wine bar, beer at home.
4. Played board games such as Taboo, Trivial Pursuit 90's edition, and Rumikub.
5. Watched America's Funniest Home Videos
6. Danced with buffalo.
7. Hiked up a mountain.
8. Went to a pow wow.

Here are some pictures:

M and J in front of what we geologists like to call a dormant geyser cone near the north entrance of Yellowstone. Backchannel me for more info on dormant geyser cones. 

M and J trying sushi for the first time. M liked it. J did not. 

We really indulged in several different cultures on this particular day. It seemed only natural that just before we eat sushi that we go to a pow wow. Too bad it was indoors--still pretty cool though.  

M and J halfway up the Bridgers, taking a well-deserved break. 

M and J are here. Last night we celebrated J and I's birthdays by baking and eating a white rainbow chip cake. Today we hike, go to a real live pow wow, eat sushi, drink wine, then play Trivial Pursuit 90's edition.

Also: I got accepted into Cutbank. Brandon Shimoda promises me it's a newer hipper Cutbank.

Open Call for Tony Tost's upcoming Fascicle. This is something I recommend you keep your eye on in the coming months/years.

Also, Octo-fivers Matthew Thorburn and Craig Teicher have bouncing baby blogs.

Great feedback for issue #5. Makes me feel like I'm on the right track. Good. The next one is going to be an extra special issue--more on that later.

Sent The Man Suit to the New California Reading Series today. Yesterday got a big fat no from Futurepoem. Damnit.

Our great great friends M and J are coming into town from Ohio for a little visit. I'm so very excited to see them. I must clean the toilet.

Octopus #5 is alive! It features:

New POETRY from Jean Valentine, Stan Mir, Craig Morgan Teicher, Wayne Chambliss, Dara Wier, Louis Armand, Paul Muldoon, Aaron Kunin, Standard Schaefer, Jennifer Knox, Kate Greenstreet, Matthew Thorburn, Daniel Coudriet, Shafer Hall, Bob Hicok, Joe Wenderoth, Barry Schwabsky, Christopher Janke, Jen Tynes, Rob Stanton, Paul Foster Johnson, Carolina Maugeri, Joshua Beckman & Matthew Rohrer, Jennifer Moxley, Chris Glomski, Shane McCrae, Dobby Gibson, Nathan Parker, Maureen Thorson, Lawrence Raab, and TRANSLATIONS of Daniil Kharms by Matvei Yankelevich and of Thanh Thao by Linh Dinh.

REVIEWS of Eric Baus’ The To Sound by Monica Fambrough, John Witte’s The Hurtling by Gina Myers, Matthew Thorburn’s Subject to Change by Richard Scheiwe, Noah Eli Gordon’s The Area of Sound Called the Subtone by Thomas Fink, Sarah Manguso (ed.) and Jordan Davis’ (ed.) Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books by Travis Nichols, and Peter Gizzi’s Periplum and Other Poems by Julie Misso.

ESSAYS including the first volume of The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! by Matvei Yankelevich, a series of field notes on Russian-American poets and the question of bilingual poetry. This volume includes notes on Philip Nikolayev, Eugene Ostashevsky, Ilya Bernstein, and Genya Turovskaya. And including some thoughts on James Tate’s “Same Tits” by Ian Ganassi.

RECOVERY PROJECTS on William Heyen’s Lord Dragonfly: Five Sequences by Matthew Henriksen, and Kamau Brathwaite’s Ancestors by Joyelle McSweeney.

I hope you enjoy. As always, feedback is welcome.

Yrs,

Zachary Schomburg, editor
Octopus

editor@octopusmagazine.com

You'll never meet a better sister-in-law than my own sister-in-law, M, who lives in San Fransisco with P. She's #1. She's been trying to get a hold of me to ask me what I want for my birthday but I have not had the chance yet to call her back. She reads the blog, so M, one of the two following gifts would be lovely, or any other gift of your choosing would, of course, do the trick:

1. A tuxedo t-shirt. The kind with the tuxedo front printed on the tee. Preferably a vintage and authentic worn thin tee, but I won't be pushy.

2. Any old Merle Haggard record. Or any old Tammy Wynette record. Or Talking Heads. These are some very shameful holes in my record collection.

I miss M.

For those of you waiting on #5, it should be up by this weekend. This ain't easy. I miss Tony.

And speaking of: looks like Spaceship Tumblers is back in the game, at least a little. Check out Tony's moving reading of a Robert Creeley interview.

If you're not doing anything, you should check out Brandon Shimoda's Dutch Apple over at No Tell Motel. If you like these, you should ask him about buying a beautiful book of poetry he and Phil Cordelli have put together called The Pines.

Note: On this date in 1977, I was given birth to. Thanks Mom.

Also note: I am 1 day younger that Charles Jensen.

Post AWP briefing

I've now had a day to recover from Vancouver. It was incredible. It'll be difficult to wrap my little brain around all of the info it has taken in within the past week. I imagine I'll be digesting for weeks.

The road trip itself was a big success. Great conversation with the MFAers from Montana who were kind enough to save me a seat in their caravan and save me some organic munchies. We were able to stay in Seattle on Tuesday night and visit the art museum the following morn. There was another few of us, excluding myself, who pumped quarters in a machine to look at naked ladies. I ate a sandwich with Stephen and Liz.

Thursday morning's panel went smoothly. I was nervous about it, but once we started things got easier. Nearly 40 people showed up, from my unofficial count, and the great Ander Monson from Diagram filled in for the absent Matt Henriksen. We had a lot to say, Jake York, Dan Albergotti, Adam Clay, Ander and I, and we even had to leave things unsaid. We had good questions from the crowd, and answered them satisfactorally.

I spent most of my time with Adam Clay and his girlfriend, Kim Phillips. They are great people and I really hope to get the chance to spend much more time with them in the near future. I feel like I clicked with them pretty quickly. We ate together a healthy handful of times, drank together, attended readings and panels together, went to the Vancouver Aquarium together and learned about dolphins, beluga whales, and sea urchins. Adam gave me his manuscript, The Wash. I read straight through on the ride back to Bozeman. If I had press, I wouldn't be crazy enough to pass up on it.

I didn't spend as much time with my Fairmont roomie, Anthony Robinson, as I had hoped. We did spend some quality hours in the room talking po-biz. And had a great night in a Thai restuarant eating about 5 plates of appetizers, again talking po-biz, women, and food. I'd like another crack at the man--surely as future famous poets, our paths will intermingle.

The highlight for me was the Fence/Verse/Swink reading Friday night. Joe Wenderoth and Matt Zapruder sang a few songs together: Merle Haggard and Hank Williams Jr most notably. Wenderoth read a terrific poem--pulled off the word "poopy" most beautifully. Lots of drinking that night, and on an empty stomach.

People I was lucky enough to meet/conversate with (in no particular order):
Anthony Robinson, Matthew Zapruder, Lori Shine, Josh Beckman, Brian Teare, Joshua Corey, Joe Wenderoth, Adam Clay, Kim Dennis, Brandon Shimoda, Stephen Cromrine, Jill Beauchesne, Keisha Lewellyn, Walker Hunter, Greta Van Susteren (can't remember her actual last name--my sincerest apologies to Greta, who I shared a booth, a beer, and good conversation with at Malones for a while), George Washington Carver, Dan Machlin, Matvei Yankelevich, Anna Moschovakis, Joyelle McSweeney (not enough time spent with Joyelle--though she might be someone I would always feel that way about), Alex Lemon, Ander Monson, Jake Adam York, Dan Albergotti, Chris Deweese, Richard Greenfield, Hilda Raz, Grace Bauer, Kevin Larimer, Cate Marvin, Craig Morgan Teicher, Karen Craigo, Charles Jensen. And there are, I'm sure, much more with names that escape me.

Things I came home with:
Adam Clay's manuscript The Wash, The Book of Funnels by Christian Hawley, The External Combustion Engine by Michael Ives, The Making of a Matriot by Frances Payne Adler, The Owning Stone by Jim Peterson, The Opening Question by Prageeta Sharma, The Commandarine and Other Poems by Joyelle McSweeney (signed), Your Time Has Come by Joshua Beckman (signed), The Future or Optimism, an Epic by Anna Moschovakis (signed), The Present Work by Matvei Yankelevich (signed), The Unpublished Writers issue of Mid American Review, The Pines Volume 1 by Brandon Shimoda and Phil Cordelli (signed), a trolley car magnet that says Vancouver on it.

When I came home, I shaved my beard off.

Here are some selected pictures:

The talented Brandon Shimoda in the back seat of Jill Beauchesne's Jeep Cherokee with me. He was one of my traveling buddies. There was lots of reading and lots of rain.  

Wednesday morning in Stephen Crumrine's sister's house in Seattle. Everyone is reading. Everyone is an MFA student at Montana. This was my ride to Vancouver. From left to right on the couches: Walker Hunter, Jill Beauchesne, Greta Van Susteren. In the foreground is Keisha Lewellyn and way in the back is Brandon.

This is Adam Clay and his lovely woman, Kim Dennis. I was lucky enough to spend some quality time with this pair.

Me at the Vancouver Aquarium on Saturday with a famous Beluga whale. 

Adam and I with Vancouver at our backs.