Clean Part #4: Saturday, May 13. 7pm

Today is the last day of April. It turns out the mountain of manuscripts is actually a volcano. I can hear it rumbling.

Procrastinated a little more last night because Born Into This came via Netflix. Eh. Not a bad doc-po-mentary, but I must say I'm over it/him now. I moved on a while back, but now officially.

Ok. I'm coming up for a bit of air. A busy week. Then after next Tuesday, I must put on the teacher hat and grade a pile of essays. Then it is summertime.

I want to tell you I am in first place in my fantasy baseball league. Today might be the only day I get to say that, so I didn't want to miss the chance.

I got my free first issue of Practice yesterday. I've been flipping through it the past few days and I even ate a peanut butter sandwich on my front porch with it yesterday. I haven't been this impressed with a new print-issue poetry journal since, um, Canary or Spork or ______ or ____. Its beautiful and smart and well-funded. Watch out.

The last week of PhD school at UNL is this week and I have a load of academic hulabaloo to crap out. But it was too nice out today for that. Too nice for post-colonial poetics. Too nice for Eastern European avant-gardes. So I did yardwork. This is my first spring as a homeowner. It was really fun. I spent way too much money at Earl May this morning. Then spent the entire morning and afternoon getting my thumbs green. And I got to listen to the Cubs lose while doing it (damn you Derek Lee). Look at those perfectly arranged day lillies. Look at those geraniums in the flower boxes. Look at that golden mulch.

At some point yesterday, all of the following things happened: 1. Lost four pages of my longish paper on current avant-gardes as off-shoots of the found poem, just a few hours before I was to turn it in and present it to the class. 2. Got off the bus to arrive at my car to discover I left my keys on campus. 3. Walked back to campus while 60 blocks away at a different campus my class sits and waits for me to show up. 4 Got on the wrong bus. 5. My peanut butter and jelly sandwich was very stale.

This weekend marks the beginning of the end of the semester. 30 pages or so left to write. I'm writing really good poems right now though. I'm sneaking them between term paper paragraphs. In two weeks or so: I retire to the corn and read lots of chap mannines for #8. Aaah.

Reading my poetry for five minutes tomorrow at the very special No Name. I'm going to see how many short poems I can read in that amount of time. I'm bringing a stop watch, or something with an alarm. And I'm reading for five minutes again the following Thursday for the department. It'll be thrilling. 10 total minutes of awesome.

I've been keeping my eye on this bear parade. I'm fasinated by it--it's web of curious links and Tao Lin and whatnot. Anyway, it has come time for you to look at it if you haven't already. Michael Earl Craig is one of my favs, hands down. I will touch his omelet if he tells me to.

It has been February since we've last thrown a Clean Part. So, I'm happy to tell you we've booked two for the coming months. Dora Malech and Joshua Edwards on May 13. Juliet Patterson, Paula Cisewski, and Sarah Fox for June 17. Mark your calendars. Plan you summer vacations around them.

I took my very first poetry class at C of O my sophomore year with a few cool people (see pic below for two of them). I knew nothing of poetry before then. Maybe a little Frost or something. But I'm telling you, I just wasn't interested. I was into journalism or something. Then Professor Paul Gianoli showed us a few Russell Edson poems. I had no idea what poetry was or could be. I had no idea it could be fun to write. This was my gateway drug into an entire new world, new life, etc. I bought The Tunnel, and from there I have not looked back.

So, I want to thank Mathias, who gave me this rare chapbook of Edson poems for my birthday. I'm not sure M knew Edson was the first poet I had ever really read, but he knew I was a fan. And that Mr. Edson has ignored about 20 emails from Octopus. Anyway, that's not the story I wanted to tell.

This book, Edson's Mentality, was published in the year I was born. It was a special edition issue of an old mag called Oink! You jealous?

1. I've been sleeping with Sleeping with the Dictionary. We'll be discussing it in Post-Colonial Poetics today along with Oulipo, Black Arts Movement, black aesthetics, etc. Should be 2.5 solid hours of mind-blowing po-nerd conversation. This is what I quit dispatching for.

2. At mid-month, the chap mannies have piled up pretty high for #8. I'm not sure we knew what numbers to expect, but it has been quite the trial to not rip them open and devour them too soon. I can not wait to read these things of yours.

3. I got that corn job I was talking about earlier. I'll be getting dirt in my fingernails under the hot sun in the fields all day, then coming home and reading your poetry manuscripts at night. This sounds like a good dream to me.

4. Also, if you didn't know already, there's this, with an Octopus nod and a few quotes from me in it. Read it first, then read this, this, this, and a defense. I have only linked here the boy-bloggers who have weighed in on this issue. I'll let you link around to find some women blogger comments on this topic in the dark underbelly of the female blogosphere.

I was nosing through Tony's flikr account and stumbled across this beaut of myself, Tony and Riley (circa 1998?) back during our C of O days in Tony's south-of-Branson trailer. I have never before seen this picture. What are we drinking? What am I wearing? I look so athletic. Man Alive. I look so young and tan and virile. I was such a stud.

Our good neighbors, P and L, had a baby boy today. We went to the hospital tonight to see little J. Its amazing really. It is pretty rare that I ever hold a newborn in my arms. I can think of only two or three. It just seems so strange--this person was born today, a few hours ago. It reminded me that there was an exact beginning to this long ride. Anyway, a real honor. You caught me in a mood.

Friday night. Denny's show went swimmingly. Lots of people showed up. They were all touching Denny's arms and saying congratulatory things to him. This pic was taken before they showed up. Denny made the wallpaper.
















Then we went to the show at Tugboat. A and I were pretty fascinated with paintings by this guy named Nolan. Here is A in awe.















Here are other people in awe.

Had a lovely b-day dinner with A and the 'rents and my sister. Got a few more presents (revolutionary shaving cream now that I'm shaving my face again, and a small rubber girl with bat wings). Then tonight A and I will got rocked by Eagle-Seagull at Denny's thesis show. Tomorrow maybe a little Huskers vs Mizzou baseball. Then after that, I must buckle down and write some papers. It's academic crunch time for the next two weeks. I need to write papers on Marisol Limon Martinez's After You Dearest Language, Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary, a longer one discussing the politics of found poetry, and a really long one on the internet's hand in shaping/unshaping post-colonial poetics/theory.

But instead I wrote a review on Chris Tonelli's short poem chapbook, Wide Tree. Maybe you should not do your homework and read it.

I'm 29!

Corn Job

I think I may have secured myself a job in a cornfield for this summer. I'll find out on Friday for sure. Planting. Maintaining. Spreading chemical stuff. Cross-pollinating the crop by hand. I'll be helping out a team of agronomists on several corn experiments, like for yield and whatnot.

I've always wanted to work long hot days in a cornfield. Check.

Do you think I'm joking? Because I'm not.

I'm turning 29 this week and I got an early birthday present from A, P&C, and N&B. They went in together to buy an iPod. I'm hip now, like the kids. And just in time too. I'll probably be mowing lawns or working in some dirt in some field somewhere this summer, and an iPod will make perfect company. I spent all day yesterday putting about half of my catalog onto this thing. I've revisited some stuff I forgot I had. Some stuff that should never be forgotten: Yo La Tengo, The Rentals, older Hayden, the Clean, Kissing Book, Kleenex Girl Wonder, Sportsguitar, etc.

Thank you thank you APCNB.

Also: Mathias is knocking out some amazing creation myths this month.

Denny's show, Universal Remote, starts this week.

Go Baseball.

Last night we went to a fish fry in Omaha with our neighbors, drank too much, didn't eat any fish. This weekend we're tackling taxes, yardwork, housework, homework, and MLB opening day. It is a beautiful day here in Nebraska. I want to go climb a tree and eat a sandwich in it.