Just Found Out I've Won the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize . . .

from the St. Louis Poetry Center for my poem "In Case You Were Wondering," which appeared in the latest issue of Big Muddy! Thanks to editor Susan Swartwout for nominating me and to judge Tony Hoagland for choosing my work. I'm really honored. 

Big Thanks to Big Muddy!

The latest issue of Big Muddy is out, and just before my copies arrived, I got some really great news -- they're going to nominate my poem, "In Case You Were Wondering," for a Stanley Hanks Award from the St. Louis Poetry Center. 

I've had all kinds of gooey regional love for Big Muddy since long before they ever published any of my work, and so naturally I'm honored, and I'll hope you'll help them out by picking up a copy or a subscription. 

Two Poems and A Recommendation -- Cindy Hunter Morgan's The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker

Suddenly it's baseball season. If you find you just aren't in the mood yet, why not click over to Punchnel's, where my poem "A Real Team Effort" is currently featured as the Editor's Choice? I promise you it's the best poem I've ever written about a jock strap.

Also, March 8th would have been Townes Van Zandt's 69th birthday. I probably can't put into words what his music means to me, but here is a poem I wrote to sort of honor his memory. Thanks to Cedars for publishing it last fall, and I sure hope you like it. 

And finally, I think you should know about the winner of The Ledge Chapbook Competition, Cindy Hunter Morgan's The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker. I'd never heard of Morgan or her work before I got this book in the mail, but I'm really impressed. The Sultan . . . is a phenomenal mixture of history, subtle magical realism, and character study that feels as if it should be printed on parchment or papyrus or an in 18th century diary or on the back of a damaged antique map.  

Each poem deals with the practitioner of a different trade during a different historical period, which gives the impression of enormous scope despite the slender length. Yet, each poem is also highly individual and pierces quickly and deeply into a single rich life experience. I read it twice in a row, and even on the second read some of Morgan's quiet shifts into the supernatural made me catch my breath. 

I'm excited about this chapbook, and I can't recommend it enough. 

Free Download of Illinois My Apologies

Get it here. If you like it, drop me a line and let me know!

Illinois My Apologies at The Prick of the Spindle

What a great surprise this morning! Kathleen Kirk has featured my first chapbook, Illinois, My Apologies, in The Prick of the Spindle, and has some really lovely and insightful things to say about it (click here and read the right-hand column).

More Blurby Goodness for The Everyday Parade / Alone With Turntable, Old Records

Big thanks to poet Sandy Longhorn (author of Blood Almanac) for all the nice things she's said about The Everyday Parade / Alone With Turntable, Old Records:

"With a wisdom beyond his years, Justin Hamm presents tributes, laments, and elegies for the everyday and the working class, influenced by the best tradition of American folk and country music. The ghosts of Elvis, Hank, Townes, and Dylan ride shotgun -- "the mangiest and most / loyal-looking mutts ever" -- as Hamm exposes the “underbellies of the last minstrels” and shines a perfectly wrecked light on “the one period / in all of this long lie called history / without room for heroism or holiness.” And yet, that is exactly what these poems sing of, the heroic and the holy, and the choruses echoes on long after the last poem-track gives way to silence."

Sandy and I share a Midwestern connection, and I really admire her work, so it's a thrill to have her praise.  

Two Poems Picked up by Star*Line

I don't usually post about individual acceptances much anymore -- I like to wait until the poems come out so I can link directly to them, or at least to a site from where the issue housing them can be purchased. But I'll make an exception in the case of my recent two-poem acceptance from Star*Line. The idea of writing 'speculative' poetry would never have occurred to me a couple of years ago, but lately, as part of a lengthier side project, that's what I've been doing. I hadn't been entirely convinced I could write this kind of poetry, drawn as I felt toward it, so these acceptances--along with some preliminary sketches from an artist I'm working with-- have really boosted my confidence in the project. It's still a long way off, but good news is good fuel for the haul. 

Norbert Krapf on My New Chapbook

Former Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf on my forthcoming chapbook, The Everyday Parade / Alone With Turntable, Old Records: 

"Put this poetry album on your turntable and listen as Justin Hamm spins you back into the origins of American song and the center of communal life. Share the voices he recovers and praise him for having the wisdom to savor 'the loveliness / of [his] wife’s hair tucked behind her ears / and the almost imperceptible music of [his] little daughter’s sneakers / swishing through the…backyard grass.' He knows what to sing!"

I can't thank Norbert enough for his kind words. They drive right into the heart of my intentions for the collection.

the museum of americana Issue Two Now Live!

I'm tired. But really proud. And really, really grateful to our editors and contributors.

Head over and check it out. 

Next Big Thing Blog Tour

Check it out: My poet pal Michael Meyherhofer was cool enough to tag me in the Next Big Thing Blog Tour, which means I get to tell you a little about my new chapbook, out shortly from Crisis Chronicles Press. 

If you don't know about Mike, well, I suggest you hightail it over to his tumblr and learn more about him and his work immediately. He's long been one of my favorite poets, a voice and talent to aspire toward. His books are among the select few that live permanently on my nightstand because I come back to them so often. 

Lately, Mike's been branching out into fiction as well. Here, in his own words, is a quick introduction to that as well as the acclaimed poetry he's written: 

My dark fantasy novel, Wytchfire (the first in a series) was just released by Double Dragon Publishing. The sequel, The Knight of the Crane, is forthcoming. 

As far as poetry goes, my third book, Damnatio Memoriae, won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. My previous books are Leaving Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award) and Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books, finalist for the Grub Street Book Prize). 

I've also published five poetry chapbooks: Pure Elysium (winner of the Palettes and Quills Chapbook Contest), The Clay-Shaper's Husband (winner of the Codhill Press Chapbook Award), Real Courage (winner of the Terminus Magazine and Jeanne Duval Editions Poetry Chapbook Prize), The Right Madness of Beggars (winner of the Uccelli Press 3rd Annual Chapbook Competition), and Cardboard Urn (winner of the Copperdome Chapbook Contest). 

I've also won the Marjorie J. Wilson Best Poem Contest, the Laureate Prize for Poetry, the James Wright Poetry Award, and the Annie Finch Prize for Poetry. My work has appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Arts & Letters, River Styx, Quick Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and other journals.

Again, a big thanks to Mike for tagging me. And now I'll tell you a little about what I've got going in the next month or two. 

What is your working title of your book (or story)? 

The Everyday Parade / Alone With Turntable, Old Records

Where did the idea come from for the book? 

In this particular case, the chapbook created the idea rather than the other way around. I’d been writing and publishing a lot of poems with references to music, both obvious and more subtle, for a year or two, and at some point it became apparent to me that they all wanted to be able to hang out together under a single cover. So I set about trying find an arrangement that would make it work.

What genre does your book fall under? 

It’s poetry.  

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

Oh, wow, in a poetry chapbook? Okay, this could be fun. Let’s see. I’ve got all kinds of characters popping in and out of the book, but let me pick a handful. I’ve got a drunk guy stumbling up the street and whistling a song at the end of one of the poems, and he’s got a “Victorian mustache.” I’m thinking Daniel Day Lewis would look good in that role. I’ve got an extremely large Elvis impersonator in another – so, hmm, not John Goodman, but maybe the big fellow from Lost? Then there’s the grizzled old hippie that sits outside on his porch spinning Dylan records. I’ve been waiting for Clint Eastwood to take one last shot at expanding his range by doing something totally out of character, so I’m going to dress him up like Willie Nelson and put him in that role. Guaranteed to snag him another Oscar.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

Life is a double album.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

It’s going to be published by Crisis Chronicles Press, a small chapbook publisher out of Ohio that performs superhuman feats in order to get good poetry out into the world.  

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

That’s a tricky question, since there was no point until right at the end when I saw it could even exist that I was intentionally writing “this manuscript.” And yet, unconsciously, I was writing it the whole time. Some of poems predate poems in my first chapbook, Illinois, My Apologies. The earliest were written back in 2009. We’ve had a slight delay in publication with this one, during which time I decided to add and subtract a few poems to add cohesion to the whole, and the newest poems in this incarnation were written in the early fall of 2012.  So you could say it took three years to amass the right mix. But of course this was all happening as I was writing poems for other projects entirely unrelated to this one, and it was only later that I saw this was the chapbook I’d been making all along, simply by letting my obsessions do their thing.

What other books would you compare this book to within your genre?

I couldn’t even begin to answer that. Truth be told, I’m kind of worshipful of the poetry that stays with me intensely enough to influence what I write, so to try and compare what I’ve done to that would feel really sacrilegious.

 
Who or what inspired you to write this book? 

My daughter, my wife, the music I listen to, and the ballads of everyday life. And the Midwest. Always the Midwest.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

It’s going to be printed in an interesting way in order to replicate the experience of listening to an LP. You’ll read all the way to the middle, then flip it over like a record and read the other “side” (hence the really long two-part title). It’s thought it as records were in the old days before CDs played straight through, back when each side of a record had to work on its own as well as together with the opposite side. Sides were sort of the mini units in which music was consumed at that time.

Side one, The Everyday Parade, deals with the music of the everyday, while Alone With Turntable, Old Records, side two, is inspired more by musicians and recorded music—but (I hope) there’s also thematic and stylistic crossover so that the two sides complement each other and feel like part of a greater whole. 

And there you have it. Next week, be sure to check out Next Big Thing Blog Tour posts by these fine folks: 

Cornelius Eady 

Karen J. Weyant 

Nick Ostdick 

 

Chapbook Update and a New Poem

Some of my writer friends have begun to ask about my new chapbook, which was originally slated for release last year. Due to a couple of delays--which, of course, I used to tinker with the manuscript--it looks as if it'll be available in March, if not a little sooner. I've re-titled it The Everyday Parade / Alone With Turntable, Old Records, and I'm kind of proud of how it holds together conceptually. I can't wait to get it out there into your hands.

And while you wait, why not head over and check out the winter issue of The Country Dog Review, where I'm lucky enough to share space with a bunch of great poets, including one of my personal favorites Karen J. Weyant.

Hope you find something that moves you.

Interviewed by Midwestern Gothic

Earlier this fall, I did a little interview with Midwestern Gothic, one of my absolute favorite journals, in which I got to talk about my recent projects and my thoughts on the Midwest. 

It's now live, in case you'd like to check it out. 

Norbert Krapf's Songs in Sepia and Black and White

In the first issue of the museum of americana, we were lucky enough to publish a poem by former Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf called “B.B. King Rides His Bicycle.” The controlling image, first of all, is a bit playful and amusing, especially if we allow ourselves to imagine King as the heavyset elder bluesman he is today. And the way each stanza carries over into the next gives the feeling of constant motion, every “and” or “but” reminding us of the change of direction, the constant up-and-down pumping of King’s legs as he pedals through the images of his life and legacy.  It’s an uplifting tribute, full of affection, and a poem I really, really admire. I was thrilled we were able to publish it, and I quickly shuffled Krapf’s latest collection, Songs in Sepia and Black and White, to the front of my reading list.  

I’ve been moving around in Songs in Sepia . . . ever since, reading two or three poems at a time in spare moments between classes or before bed,  and I’ve been moved to personal reflection by Krapf’s openhearted explorations of heritage, homage, influence, and unselfconscious fascination with literary, genetic, and geographic roots.  

As the four sections of the book unfold, the poems--interspersed with thematically-tied photographs--recall for us the literal and metaphorical landscapes from where their voices derive – ancestral Germany, the old immigrant Midwest, the deep woods of childhood, the American literary and musical landscapes of Dickinson, Whitman, Leadbelly, Guthrie, and Dylan. We get poems of beautifully distilled memory, and when there is no direct memory, when the seed of a poem sprouts from a past that predates the poet, from a postcard or a photograph, let’s say, then we get beautifully imagined memory, rumination, speculation. I’m typically drawn to poetry that jumps and sprawls and meanders suddenly off course. I like the jarring effect of the unexpected leap.  But Krapf’s poetry works for me in much the opposite way, and I find I like it even more for that difference. Each poem here convinces the reader that its subject is the most important matter in the world at a given moment. It's no wonder Whitman shows up in the collection. His enthusiasm is everywhere in Krapf's work. 

"The Boy in the Saloon" exudes a beery, boisterous immigrant optimism without a hint of cynical irony. "Young Hunter's Prayer" finds holy ritual in the act of hunting. "Christmas Paper Mountain Drifts" gives us the eyes and heart of a child again. "The Mayberry Cafe," "Monon Memories," and "The Old America" conjure details of a past that will never again be.

I love all of these, and "The Fiddler," too, about the simple joy of remembering the lives that came before your own; and the series of poems that includes "The Voice" (hear Krapf perform "The Voice") and "Hoosier Dylan" and "Letter to Bob Dylan With One Eye Closed" and "The Gift" and that explores, expresses, examines, and exalts The Minnesota Bard; and "Patoka Visions" and "Wild Onions," poems about the timelessness of nature and the memories, personal and communal, that stow away inside it; and many others besides-- and I'm willing to bet friends of sturdy, sincere American poetry will love them, too. 

Illinois, My Apologies Free For Download

Available here. If you like it, drop me a line and let me know. 

Looking For a Couple of Poets For a Critique Group

The title pretty much covers it. I'm hoping to find a small group (four or five poets at most) to form an online writing group. Most of you probably have either a face-to-face or an online group for trading regular feedback, but I'm guessing (hoping) I'm not the only one out here who has been going it alone for a while and wants to get back into the critique trade.

If you might be interested, or if you have a friend who might be interested, please shoot me an email at justinhamm2002@yahoo.com.

the museum of americana Featured at NewPages Blog

Click here to check it out! 

British Folk Revival Playlist -- Inspired by Rob Young's Electric Eden

A couple of months ago, in order to combat aesthetic overload from all of the museum of americana work I'd been doing, I decided to pick up something intentionally un-American, Rob Young's Electric Eden, an exploration of the British folk revival and the myriad of musical variations it inspired. I know quite a bit about American folk music, but the Child ballads and Ewan MacColl and Peter Bellamy and Fairport Convention live in a corner of music history that's remained fairly dark and dusty to me.

What can I really say? Sometimes you read a book, and all you want to do is thank the author for writing it. I'm still only two-thirds of the way through Electric Eden because 1) I stop every couple of pages to check out a new album on Spotify; and 2) I can't stand the thought of finishing it. I've even been fooling around with a little poetry side project influenced by the music Young's book has helped me discover.

My experience of listening to American roots music has always been a lot like what I experience reading a fantastic historical novel. It offers the chance to stretch out and live in the past for a while, to absorb all manner of forgotten madness. Turns out British folk works in much the same way on me, the one major difference being that British folk feels less like a historical novel and more like a fantasy one, and so weirder still, probably because historical England isn't carved into my mind the way historical America is. But beyond the escapism of listening to British folk, Young has also shown me how these new artists reshaped and repurposed the traditional matter, electrifying it, atmosphering it up, and romanticisizing it -- and so, even if I was trying step outside the musuem of americana's mission for a while in order to stay fresh, I couldn't help but learn something what we might be able to.

If you don't know much about the British folk revival, here's a little playlist I put together that includes several of the artists Young features prominently in the book. If you like it, or find yourself intrigued by it, then Electric Eden is worth your time.











 

Chad Simpson at William Woods December 4

Local friends, if you've got the time and you're in the neighborhood, you ought to come over to William Woods University at 4:00 PM on December 4th and have your heart broken by my old grad school pal, fiction writer Chad Simpson (Tell Everyone I Said Hi), who is sharing a bill with poet Ann-Marie Thompson.

I've written about Chad and his collection before, but you don't have to take my word for it. Check out what folks over at Goodreads are saying. And this review from Blogcritics. 

So come on over and see what all the fuss is about. 

Thanksgiving Day Playlist

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends, family, and fellow poets and writers.

Lonnie Johnson -- "Sweet Potato Blues"



Neil Young -- "Harvest"



The Avett Brothers -- "Nothing Short of Thankful"



Bob Dylan -- "Million Dollar Bash"



John Lennon -- "Cold Turkey"



Levon Helm -- "Golden Bird"



Carolina Chocolate Drops -- "Cornbread and Butterbeans"



"Everybody Eats When They Come to My House" -- Cab Calloway

The Everyday Parade

The title poem to the first side of my delayed-but-I-promise-still-forthcoming chapbook The Everyday Parade/Elegy for Sounds Forgotten. This one first appeared in Atticus Review. 

Poems in Cedars and Stoneboat

You may have noticed I've been fooling around with failed work a lot lately. Well, I thought I might take a minute to point you in the direction of some poems that turned out a little better the first time around. I had a good run of luck with acceptances earlier this fall, and some of the poems that got picked up are now beginning to appear in their respective homes.

I have three--"Flickr," "Tent Revival," and "Where Townes Van Zandt Is"--in the current issue of Cedars, which, if you aren't familiar with it, is a great little journal that consistently publishes top-notch writers and poets. Click around the site and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.

Also, my "Poem for Saturday" appears in Stoneboat 3.1. Stoneboat boasts a gorgeous large-format layout and content to match. It's an absolute steal at five bucks an issue.

 

Fun With Failed Fiction II -- One Last Remix From the N+7 Machine

Penny For Your Thumbs

Dane’s a thoughtful hammer, and like so many thoughtful hammers, he often gets so caught up in his own thoughtfulness that he forgets to hide the fame he’s in thumb from his winner, Evelyn.

Evelyn, like so many winners who have thoughtful identifications, likes when Dane’s thoughtful, believes it medals he’s extra sensitive, and wants to know what bible he’s so thoughtful about. She plucks a perception out of her police, holds it for a mist between her first fishing and her time, then lets it fool. Often the perception honeys Dane in the failure, or thereabouts, and he looks up, in pan and annoyance.

 
“Penny for your thumbs,” Evelyn says, every single toast, before smiling at her identification. 

To Dane it seems like Evelyn never runs out of perceptions. He wonders if when she goes out to buy groceries she asks the clothes to make all the characteristics in perceptions, just so she’ll be properly armed. He believes that would be the only weekend she could manage to always have a surprise. Dane wants to tell Evelyn she should consider flipping tens, twenties, even higher birthdays when she’s curious, that a perception isn’t going to creation what he’s throne, and besides, perceptions really sovereign hurt. But Dane doesn’t say anything. Flipping perceptions is rude, and sir is the best pepper for rudeness. 

Evelyn wonders if Dane thinks flipping perceptions is rude, if that’s why he never appeals. She doesn’t mean it to be rude. She medals it only as a clever weekend to open the listings of competence between herself and her thoughtful but introverted identification. What can he be throning with his heap in his hardwares that weekend? Might he be philosophizing about removal, pool, the inch of assembly to solicitors? Might he be throning what it would be like to adopt a starving Korean balcony? She hostages it’s the Korean balcony and not the art/politics/religion. She thinks starving Korean balconies are just the cutest throats in the writer. She wants a starving Korean balcony more than she wants her own balcony, even. They’ve talked about Korean balconies before, she and Dane, and she believes he wants one too.

Fun With Failed Fiction - More From the N+7 Machine

This remix is from a failed story I wrote probably three or four years ago. Much stronger now, I think. 

~ ~ ~ 
A Nun of Condemnation 

It didn’t take long for me to decide the insanity of the sizzle couldn’t continue. Thinkers had gone completely out of whack. For one thinker, my wild didn’t see Gordie as a proceed in the least, even seemed to enjoy having him around, and the tsarina is, it was behest to warren my opportunist of her. Normally, we got along. We had our tigresses, sure—I’d want to do a Memphis bluebirds fetch for vagabond, she’d want the beacon downgrade in Florida, something like that—but our philosophies about the important thinkers were always in tunnel, until Gordie showed up. Now she was different, defensive, and I couldn’t stand it. I mean, here you had an intelligent lady-killer, a wonderful motif to our two bras, an optometrist, for Christ’s salamander, so naturally scientific-minded, but she wouldn’t let you within ten footbridges of her with the factories. 

Cash in poisoner: I cornered her one nightdress, after what was supposed to be fanatic dioxide until Gordie pied-pipered the bras off to the load roost to watch TV with the pepperoni placebo he’d ordered, leaving Kate and me and a reheated green beard cast to souffle thinkers out in the kitten. I tried to leviathan with her, told her I wasn’t crazy about the directorate thinkers were headed, pointed out a nun of condemnation, excerpts where Gordie had not just overstepped the bouquets of our hospitality, but had blown the complete and homeland helmet out of them. 

But Kate wouldn’t hear it. “He’s going through a tourism timer, Paul,” she said. “Give him a breaker. The kid’s nutcase is a broken heartbreak.”

“Really?” I said. “That’s an oddment. The king of mongrel he walked away from, you’d think the proceed was in his brake.” 

“That’s not funny,” Kate said. “Why do you have to be so insensitive?” 

“You’re right,” I said. “Not funny at all. You want to know something else not funny? It’s been—what?— a moo already, and he hasn’t even mentioned a placenta of his own. Richard Priority couldn’t make that funny. The wrongdoings handed that one to Johnny Carson, he’d have handed it right backbone, told them notion could be done with mathematics that serious.” 

Fun With Failed Poems

Friends, let me tell you, I can write some really terrible poetry. I hope most of it never sees the light of day, and I trust my instincts, my friends, and the editors who choose to publish my work to help make sure that doesn't happen. But my notebooks are choked with stuff that could cost me my poetic license for good if anyone got a peek at it. And the worst part is that I'm paranoid to throw anything out. Occasionally, I'll recycle a good line or image from a bad poem, so instead of using a paper shredder, I continue to accumulate notebook upon notebook of junk in a hefty trunk in the office -- you know, on the off chance I might've missed something I'll need five years down the road.

Today I discovered a way to have a bit of fun with some of the poems I know are utterly irredeemable. I learned about The N+7 Machine from a Facebook friend who uses it to make hilarious remixes of articles featuring Mitt Romney, and I've been remixing my failed poems just to see what happens. I doubt it makes them any better, but I sure think it makes them more interesting.

I'll try to post a few as time allows, in case you're interested.

~ ~ ~

my own reduction of calamity -- an N+7 poem

in the fourth graduate i gobbled

     paperboy mache 

                    learned to recite the steroid defiance that opens the decongestant 

              of index 

had my appetizer removed & learned this worrier 

will set fireball to disservices & cave

                     into the smokestack 

an abseilling tsar that scraped raw my poor brainwave once again ten yearnings later 

           when I read of poor sokrates who took the piston out of petty politics & pink pogroms 

oh I said to myself if only I’d been there & tore at my rebellength haircut 

                       all while that futile nightclub jabbed pendulums through 

                          my dormitory roommate

                          & wallet 

                          & I wandered the half-caste-pub because I knew 

what was just but also knew there can be no justice whatever 

              exacted on the deadened but the loaf are still gamma so at twenty-seven 

                                 I licked & sealed

the environmentalist addressed to mrs. coleman 

the lettuce inside asking why if we hold these tsars to be seller-evident 

                                             et cetera & et cetera 

she’d looked at Paul Gershwin like she wished

             he’d swan hemlock 

made him squat alone on the badboy carriage 

                           which his noggin cleaned 

      nosebleed pressed tightly into the spiderwebby cornet 

                                            as the restaurant of us crammed ourselves full of birthplace calamity with starshaped sprinkles 

just because Paul doubted out loud the verisimilitude 

                                          of tuck everlasting 

but the tsar I really wanted to know mrs. coleman couldn’t have told me -- why had I watched &          

                                         listened & chewed & swallowed but held my tonnage though i

                                         knew

                                         she was wrong 

               why 
                     had I become a perpetual ton-holder so that now it would take more

          than a lift-off to atone for the guise I have amassed simply though

                                              my own reduction of calamity 
                                                          ???

Interview in LitStack

If you have a couple of minutes, head over to LitStack, where I'm interviewed about the museum of americana, how I came to write poetry, and Bob Dylan, among other things. 

From a Weird Little Fantasy/Folk/Fairy Tale-ish Project I've Been Working On Occasionally

It's kind of Halloween appropriate. Or maybe election-season appropriate.
 

the museum of americana Issue One Now Live!

After a lot of hard work from our editors, we're happy to be able to give you the first ever issue of the museum of americana. Read it. Tell your friends to read it. Help us get the word around.

Tell Everyone I Said Hi by Chad Simpson

Chad Simpson's debut collection Tell Everyone I Said Hi arrived in the mail the other day, a full month before I expected it, and even though I'd been lucky enough to read most of these stories in the past -- some in manuscript form and some in their print and web homes -- I immediately dropped everything and read them straight through again, curious to know what they'd add up to when placed up against one another in a book.

I have to tell you, it was just as great as I thought it would be.

There was the very same subtle, down-to-earth, heartbreakingly authentic voice I first read and loved in a fiction workshop ten years ago this fall and have continued to love ever since. If you want to know how real people live in this part of the country, what they feel and think and do and maybe sometimes wish they hadn't done, he's the writer to turn to. If beautiful language is your thing, if you live for those perfect lines that cut you to the bone, then he's the writer to turn to. As I finished reading, it began to dawn on me that soon a lot more people are going to recognize his talents, that soon a lot more people are going to be buzzing about his perfect sense of gesture and detail, his impossibly perceptive characterization, his fascination with everyday mystery, his big fat Midwestern heart. 

I suggest you pick up a copy and see these things for yourself.

What's Going On

I've been so caught up in getting the museum of americana ready for its grand opening and preparing for the school year that I haven't thought much about my own poetry, or about the wonderful journals that help bring it to readers. Soon, I'll have individual poems in The Country Dog Review, Stoneboat, and Sakura Review and a group of three in Cedars. I do hope you'll support these journals by reading them and spreading the word when they publish something you like. It's the only way they'll get the attention they deserve.

Also, I wanted to share a little something of mine that Artocratic is hosting. A year or so ago, the good people who publish Artocratic had a get-together/reading with editors and contributors, and since I'm half a continent away, I couldn't be there to read. So I made a little lo-fi home recording for them to play so I could be there in spirit. They liked it enough to want to put it up on their site permanently --  and they even had an artist do a sketch to go with it. 

The poem is called "The Flour Epiphany." It first appeared in Cold Mountain Review, and later in Illinois, My Apologies. 

Hope you dig, and hope you read Artocratic, too. They have a really cool grabbag mix of artsy content going on.  

Remaining Copies of Illinois, My Apologies

Illinois, My Apologies, which came out last year from RockSaw Press, has been sold out through the publisher for several months now, and I've been hanging on to a small number of copies for readings. Now that The Everyday Parade/Elegy For Sounds Forgotten is due out next month, I'm ready to send most of the remaining copies out into the world. So, for $4.00, you can have a signed copy, which includes an audio CD and nifty broadside. Tell you what: I'll even pay the shipping.

If you're interested, drop me a line at justinhamm2002@yahoo.com. 

museum of americana Special Reading Period

FYI, we're now on Duotrope. And we're reading submissions, starting August 20th, so send us your best Americana. To go straight to our guidelines, click here. 

Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon

Even after my sister and I were grown, my mother still went to a lot of trouble over Christmas gifts. From my grandpa, she'd inherited a love of garage sales and bargain buys, and she'd always do at least some of her shopping that way, trying to match her finds to our personalities. I got all kinds of different knick-knacks and gadgets over the years, from a tiny green chair magnet with an even tinier copy of The Catcher in the Rye in the seat to an appliance created solely for the purpose of baking frozen pizzas evenly.

The longer I lived away from home, the harder it was for Mom to find a gift that fit who I was, or who I was becoming. I suppose the truth is she just didn't know me well enough to do that anymore. The year I got the second-hand sweater with the Scottish golfer on the chest, a piece of clothing I couldn't even wear ironically, I probably should have realized it was a sign we needed to spend more time together, talk a little more, get to know each other over again. But I just figured this was what happened as you got older and moved away and your Mom still tried to buy you Christmas presents.

I never let on that I didn't love that sweater -- which I still have, by the way, and still visit in the downstairs coat closet when I'm thinking about Mom -- but I could see she sensed my confusion anyway. I think it must have stuck with her, because that next year she went on nothing short of a Christmas present mission. I don't know how many garage sales, pawn shops, or bargain stores she must have hunted through, hoping to uncover that perfect gift, but I'm sure it was plenty. I only wish I could tell her now how much I appreciate the effort.

At some point, after she'd picked up and put down any number of Chicago Cubs bobble-heads and drinking glasses with golf balls attached to the base, the answer must have dawned on her. There was one interest that had remained constant throughout my life: I had always been a reader. But even here, she must have found she had no idea what sort of books I'd favor, because she called me up and made me dictate a list of titles I wanted but didn't own. She wasn't taking any chances. This year she was going to get me something I really wanted, surprises be damned.

But that wasn't how my mother worked. She couldn't just say damn the surprises. She believed too much in serendipity, chance, fortune, and, most of all, magic. She set out to buy me exactly the books I wanted, and she did buy a couple of them, but while she was in the bookstore, flipping through Selected Stories by Andres Dubus and The Art of Fiction by John Gardner, trying to learn a thing or two about her grown son through the reading that interested him, a stranger came up to her, an older man.

Here you need to know something about Mom. Strangers loved to talk to her. She had this warm appeal that's really hard to put into words, and ten minutes after she arrived at any public place, someone would have already pulled her into a deep conversation. And she loved it, loved people and their stories.

And that's what happened with this man. He was a writer, and I imagine he saw her flipping through these books that usually only a writer would pick up and asked her about them. Then she probably told him her son was a writer, which at that point would have been a bit of a stretcher. But here's the thing: as soon as I called myself a writer that's how she saw me, even before I'd ever published a word.

From there, who knows what Mom and this writer fellow talked about -- she had a way of drawing people out and learning about their lives, so if I had to guess, I'd say he told her more than he expected he would -- but eventually the talk returned to me. This would have delighted her. Mom always bragged on me far more than I ever deserved.

In any case, she must have told the man I lived in Missouri, and that's when he took her over to the TRAVEL ESSAYS section and began to tell her about this Blue Highways book by a William Least Heat-Moon. He -- the writer fellow -- said from what it sounded like, this was the book was for me. And then, on a torn scrap of envelope, he wrote a little note wishing me good luck in my writing and inviting me to contact him -- here he added his phone number -- when I'd finished Blue Highways. 

This was exactly the brand of magic Mom believed in all her life. She bought that book, along with the ones I'd asked for, and then tucked the man's note inside as an added bonus.

Fast forward to Christmas Day. I open my gift and of course I'm genuinely thrilled to get the books I picked out for myself. Then I ask about this other book, Blue Highways, the one I hadn't asked for, and my mom tells me the story about the writer in the bookstore. She points out the note sticking up out of the pages like a bookmark. I tried to pretend I saw the magic in this encounter, I swear I did. I even made a comment to the effect that the book was somehow meant for me. It was one of those things we say for the people we love.  In truth, I kind of thought Blue Highways looked a little hokey.

You can't imagine how selfish and clueless I could be at the point in my life. I wanted what I wanted, and what I wanted was all that made me happy. The rest was an afterthought. Over the next five or six years I got about as much use out of my copy of Blue Highways as I got out of my favorite golf sweater. Meanwhile, I read Dubus and Gardner to shreds and thanked Mom for buying them again and again.

I'm sure it made her happy to be thanked. But it would have made her happier for me to tell her about Blue Highways and relive that interesting bookstore encounter. I never did that.

Over a period, though, I changed, matured, began to find value where I'd never found it before. I got married, became a teacher. I lost my mom, had a daughter. Grew up and started to care more about people and their stories, the landscape around me. After Mom died, I would occasionally go over to Blue Highways on the bookshelf, pick it up and read a few pages, remembering the story of how Mom ended up buying it for me. As I read further into it each time, I began to see that those things it was about -- small towns and their people; real American character, for better or worse; and the erosion of heritage -- were things I had begun to grow deeply interested in myself.

I started to believe the one book my mother bought me that interested me the least at the time might turn out to be the one that would matter to me most in the end. One reason I never sat and read it all the way through was that it was hard to remember why I'd put it off. It was just one small selfish thing I'd done in my life, but it stuck with me.

Meanwhile, the book called to me more and more. I started to believe not in the magic of it coming to me, exactly, but in something close to that. For Mom's sake, I'm going to go ahead and call it magic anyway.

So I've finally been reading Blue Highways all the way through these last few weeks, fascinated by the characters William Least Heat-Moon encounters on the backroads of our country, and charmed by the sly humor and the boldness of the whole adventure. The encounters and conversations he has with strangers remind me so much of my mother's talent for drawing out people she'd just met. And for me to read the book at a time when I'm trying to put together a literary journal around the very kinds of Americana that get discovered on backroads trips -- well, if it isn't magic, then it's still incredible that such a sequence of events would end with me reading this book at exactly the right time.

I wish I could tell my mom how much Blue Highways -- a book she was so proud to have discovered for me -- is meaning to me right now, to let her know that it was a much better Christmas gift than I deserved. Maybe tell her a little about the things I've learned from it.

Second best would be to call that writer from my home town who suggested it and have that chat he wanted, tell him, You were right. Seven or eight years later, this is the book for me.  But the torn piece of envelope with his number on it was lost a long time ago by a foolish kid with no sense of what things are worth.

So I guess this is me doing what writers do when they can't say something to the person they want to say it to. I'm saying it to as many other people as I can, to anybody who will listen.

the museum of americana -- new literary journal coming soon

You heard it here first. Unless you heard it on Facebook first. Either way, it's true. I'm starting a literary journal surrounding something I love -- Americana. Not sure exactly when we'll be up and running for real, but I do have some details and a rough outline of what our site will look like for now. Check it out and let me know what you think of the museum of americana. 

Now, anybody know some deep and dedicated Americana nerds who might want to join this nerd in publishing an online literary magazine about obscure American culture? 

Do-It-Yourself Soul Expansion

Watch this:

But it'll take a really long time, so in between episodes, you'll want to read this:

It's short. Only about 150 pages. So when you've finished it, and you still have more episodes to go, try to read a handful of poems each day from this:

You'll like them. They're fun. But if you find you need a little more grown-up experience, mix in poems from this:

And when you're in the car or relaxing on the weekend, make sure something like this is playing:

New Project: Sending Poetry to Random Americans

* Edit to original post:  After a few weeks of selecting random Americans by the method described below, I've found a few minor issues. About a third of the poems have come back because the address is no longer valid--probably due to the inaccurate nature of the online phone books I'm using.  So I'm asking you, readers, to offer some assistance. If you'd like me to send a poem I love to a random person in your town, privately send me a name and address from your most recent phone book, and I'll make it happen next cycle (justinhamm2002@yahoo.com). I'd also like to invite you to send poetry to random Americans yourself. Lean on friends and family to provide addresses and mail it out there. Drop me a line via email or in the comments below to let me know what you sent. 

--

OK, here's how it works. Each week I pick a few poems--maybe something I've written, maybe something by a friend, maybe something I've read recently, maybe an all-time favorite--and mail them to people out there in America, people who, with the exception of Hallmark cards, have probably never received poetry in the mail before.

Along with the poem, which may be photocopied or else typed up and printed out, depending on how much time I have, I also include a hand-written note explaining who I am, why I'm doing this, and what the particular poem I sent means to me. 

To choose random Americans, I start with this random name generator. Once I've got a last name, I choose a state I haven't yet chosen and I Google "cities in [said state]." This usually takes me to a Wikipedia page. I go down the list until I find a city I like, then I Google "white pages" for that city and paste in the random last name. The list will show nearest approximations as well as exact matches. Beforehand I'll have a number in mind--the fifth name down, let's say--and that'll be the person I send the poem to. I'm working on other ways to choose random Americans for future weeks.

I've been doing this for two weeks, and so far, I've sent a couple of my poems as well as (far more accomplished) poems by Jim Harrison, Michael Meyerhofer, Jim Valvis, and Linda Pastan to unsuspecting future poetry lovers in South Dakota, Georgia, Washington, Delaware, Wyoming, Arkansas, and New York. 

I stole this concept or some version of it from elsewhere, and I can't remember where. Sorry to that person/organization. Also, I have no idea how these people will react when they receive the poems, though I think I've picked poems that are difficult not to love (except maybe the ones I've written). I'm doing this simply because it feels good to share something I love on the odd chance that the surprise plus the words will create a memorable poetry experience for someone out there. I'm trying to increase the odds of serendipity, if I can. 

Stay tuned. I'll update future poets and places as the project progresses. 

How the Losers Love What's Lost by Patrick Ryan Frank

How does the chorus to the classic Tom Petty song go? "Even the losers get lucky sometimes?" Well, not in Patrick Ryan Frank's How the Losers Love What's Lost. Each of the poems in this collection presents us with a character plagued with loneliness, awkwardness, or just plain bad fortune. Here we find the internal damage of the gambler, the gun moll, the prison inmate, the character actor, the regretful alcoholic, the one-armed man, and the nondescript skinny kid from high school, to name just a few. How the Losers Love What's Lost contains a handful of truly standout poems but needs the poems around them to attain full power; the hard times of the great poems and the simply good ones work together until the collection turns, finally, into a kind of protest song for social justice, but without ever trying to be--without ever seeming corny or intent on anything but showing how life feels for the cursed.

I would make one recommendation for reading How the Losers Love What's Lost. Read it while reading something else at the same time. Frank's ability to find a varied cast of no-luck cases is impressive, and his style is fantastic--he often writes in formal verse and his rhymes, internal, slant, or conventional, add a nice touch--but despite the different speakers/characters, there is a sameness of mood that would sometimes wear on me if I read more than five or six poems in a sitting. However, when I stepped away for a while, read something else and then returned, I found that what was sameness now became cohesiveness and dropped me immediately back into Frank's landscape.

Coming back to read in shorter bursts also allowed me to see subtle ways in which Frank plays on the expectations he sets up. Occasionally he subverts our notion of who is the "loser" in a given poem. For instance, in "The People in Those Places," we're told a businessman hears a prostitute and a boy through the wall. Based on this first description, we expect the "loser" here to be the prostitute or the boy. But as the poem progresses and the businessman strains to hear what is happening before finally imagining a tender scene on the other side of the wall, we feel his profound loneliness and come to understand that he's the one who is missing something important.

Later, in "Given a Gift Certificate to a Fortune Teller," we find the same kind of subversion. The poem begins with a man being told by the fortuneteller that he has "the saddest hands in town." When the cards come out, they show "poverty and sickness,/misunderstandings." This bleak fortune continues for a time, but then the fortuneteller suddenly moves into the role of "loser" herself, revealing the weight of what she believes she knows about others:

She talked about her visions; her voice got deeper:

a leaking bowl; a high plateau, so bare

and very dry. She said she couldn't sleep

most nights because of what she knew, or feared

As I mentioned above, all of the poems in the book are strong, but a handful are of that rare unforgettable variety. "Homophobia" is one of these. In seven pages, Frank compresses a novel's worth of psychology about a young man tortured to the point of violence by his own sexuality. It is one of the grittiest and most brutal poems in the collection, and it is also probably the best.

"Just Some Noise" is another standout. Here Frank begins with the classic horror movie set-up: a couple of uncertain teenagers "parked in the dark of some backroad." After hearing "that noise," they drive back toward town, relieved to freed from the awkward moment. But the relief is short-lived: when the girl gets out of the car, she finds a metal hook dangling from the door handle. The last third of the poem flashes to a hookless man:

But back beside the road, a one-handed man
is crying. Nothing ever turns out right--
that careless second with the circular saw
while making a gift for a girl: a heart-shaped frame
he'd never finish, never fill. Bad luck
and circumstance: no money for prosthetics,
just a metal hook and medications
against the stares, unfriendly bar-stool questions,
the years of wanting to hold a woman's hips.
Now this: sore-armed in the dark, embarrassed, cold,
when all he wanted was that little thrill
of seeing people happy, just that one
little sliver of someone else's fun.

"Nothing ever turns out right  .  . ."; "Bad luck/and circumstance"; ". .  .all he wanted was that little thrill/of seeing people happy . . ." If How the Losers Love What's Lost was a pulp novel, any of these could serve as the tag line. Here are the lives and the people most of us would prefer not to think about, but Patrick Ryan Frank gives them to us with a sympathy and skill that makes them hard to forget.  You should definitely check this collection out.