The NFL Playoffs . . .

So, no Bears. I really thought they had a legit shot at the title this year, but you can't win NFL games without a quarterback--which leaves me without a rooting interest for the playoffs.

But it's no fun to watch without a rooting interest, so I'm going to let my intense, almost irrational hatred for Brett Favre guide me this year and I'm going to root for the Pack. Why not? I'm a die-hard Cubs fan, and yet, after the way the Cardinals played this year, I found myself rooting hard for the them in the World Series in spite of myself. Here's the way I see it: if Aaron Rodgers wins another Super Bowl, that's just another smear on Favre's legacy. And that's something I can pumped up about.

For maximum drama, I'm hoping to see a Saints/Packers matchup in the NFC Championship Game and a snowy New England/Pittsburgh showdown in the AFC. Oh, and if the Lions and Broncos just happen to get embarrassed along the way, I wouldn't mind that at all.

2012: The Year of Woody Guthrie

As I mentioned just before the new year, I've been excited about the resurgence in Woody Guthrie interest as we find ourselves in a new world of protest, fighting social justice battles that should already have been won. This year will be Guthrie's centennial, and it looks like there's quite a bit of fanfare planned. Here's hoping the attention will move a generation of new songwriters to take up the cause of social justice and leave the future a powerful musical record of what it meant to be an American in this age.

Christmas Presents and Book Recommendations

No Christmas sweaters or fruitcakes for me this year. My friends and family are far too cool and tuned in for that. Instead, I got retro Super NES games, a Blaze Foley record, a Nook, some Game of Thrones comics, and subscriptions to two of my favorite literary magazines, River Styx and Natural Bridge. Then, just because I was in the mood, I decided to supplement the haul by ordering a handful of books/chapbooks by my online writer friends. I’ll be mentioning them as they arrive in the mail and I get the chance to read them.

Before Christmas, I talked about music I loved from the past year. Now I want to point out books worth passing on. Again, I don’t really do the ranking thing. Figure it this way: if I mention it, I’m saying I believe it’s worth your time.

Let me begin with The Samaritan by Fred Venturini. Fred and I were two of maybe five or six majors in the tiny English department at MacMurray College, and more than a decade later, I can still remember in detail one fairly brutal and disturbing short story he wrote about a school shooting that pointed to exactly what sort of storyteller he would be. The writing in that early piece was like a horrible car accident, and I mean that as the highest compliment. I'm saying it was a little raw, over-the-top, almost perversely grotesque, and for all that, you just couldn’t stop reading it. And somehow, in the middle of all the horror, the story even managed to make you feel something, too. Fred had talent.

I remember thinking, If anybody here is going to write a book I’ll want to read, it’s going to be this guy.

Well, he did it. Like that first short story I remember so well, The Samaritan is somehow both a painful read (in a good way) and page turner at the same time. Here’s a story of a social outcast, kicked around by life, who finds he has a supernatural ability to regenerate limbs and organs. But of course he can find no peace or happiness in his power because he cannot regenerate what really matters to him, the people he once loved who were cruelly taken from him.

Where others might look at certain plot elements or combinations and say, Naw, this is just too crazy--it’ll never work, Venturini is flat-out unafraid of any move, his wicked imagination unfettered by wimpy conventions. He sets his book in both small-town Illinois and Hollywood. He mixes satire of the reality-TV culture we’ve become into a novel that at the same time appeals directly to that culture by killing and maiming at will. And it works.

The Samaritan's a wild book--definitely different--and worthy of a read, for sure.

Here are some other books that were memorable for me in 2011.

Fiction

*George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons (and the rest of the A Song of Ice and Fire series)

I picked this series up in 2011 not because of the HBO show, which I hadn’t even connected up with Martin in my mind, but because of a student who tried to get me to read the series three or four years ago. He did an author report on Martin, and I remember politely explaining to him that I didn’t really enjoy "fantasy." It was all I could do to not roll my eyes.

I came to my senses in October, read A Game of Thrones over a single weekend, spent the last two months of the year reading the other four books. What can I say that hasn’t already been said about A Song of Ice and Fire? I’m an idiot for letting snobbery keep me from reading Martin sooner, and one of my goals for 2012 is to make up for my sore lack of reading in the fantasy genre.

*Dead Souls by Nicolai Gogol

Dead Souls was my favorite classic of 2011. It lacks what you would call a proper ending, but what’s there is bizarre comic genius. I want this to be on record: If the Cohen brothers end up making this one into a movie someday, you heard me suggest it first. Dead Souls was made for their sensibilities.

Poetry

Good Poems, American Places edited by Garrison Keillor

This is the perfect book of poetry for summer; it was made to pack along on road trips and vacations. And for me, a self-consciously regional poet, it has been a lesson in how other poets celebrate place. The poems aren’t obscure or remote. They engage the reader with warmth. When my friends tell me they don’t like poetry, this is one of the books I pull out. It’s like a book of contemporary folk songs, some funny, some sad, some revealing—rather than Greil Marcus’s old, weird America—the new, weird America that surrounds us today.

I’d also like to mention Northerners by Seth Abramson, Songs of Unreason by Jim Harrison, Here and Now by Stephen Dunn, and Fall Higher by Dean Young—fantastic 2011 poetry collections that entertained and educated me, all of them.

Nonfiction

*Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey

Humphrey’s book tries to explain consciousness through the lens of natural selection, arriving at the somewhat disheartening conclusion that it’s all a big magic trick our body puts on because it confers a survival advantage: namely, the desire for life. He finds this to be no less a “miracle” (in its own way) than the existence of a soul. I didn’t necessarily buy into all of his conclusions, but the idea that distinctly human consciousness could be a survival advantage opened up a lot of philosophical ideas for me about the practical value of art. Humphrey seems to be of the opinion that the purpose of consciousness is to allow us to love life, and art seems fairly important in that context.

I appreciate the depths Humphrey goes to contextualize his "discovery" for the reader, and I appreciate that he supplied me with what feels like a genuinely new idea about how my world works. This is a book that isn't George R.R. Martin to read, but it isn't overly thick and it will leave you with plenty to chew over while having a few beers with friends.

Recommendations -- Music

A week ago, maybe two, a friend of mine asked me to recommend a few books he might find interesting. He’s a smart reader with wide tastes and an appreciation for the unconventional, and I figured he might dig Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, but a couple days after I loaned it to him, he brought it back to me, said it just wasn’t working for him. I was more disappointed than I had any right to be. It isn’t that I want people to like the same art I like; it’s just that I take requests for recommendations pretty seriously. There’s something deeply gratifying about considering a friend’s personality and trying to match that friend with art they’ll fall in love with. I’d say it’s probably the same gratification matchmakers are after when they set up dates between single friends. And when the match doesn’t turn out so hot, there’s disappointment. It's only natural.

In this case, I gave my friend Sixty Stories and Forty Stories by Don Barthelme, and he told me he stayed up late into the night reading them, so it looks like I redeemed myself—or, rather, Don B. redeemed me.

I wish I could spend the same effort to make individual recommendations for all of my friends, and I vow to do just that for more of my face-to-face friends in the new year, but what I’d like to do over the next week or so here on my website is a little more general. I’d like to talk about some of the music, literature, film, and other art that has moved me this year. I won’t do a numerically organized “best” list because I am utterly incapable of rating one thing I loved at the expense of another thing I loved. So instead, I’ll just talk about what I liked in various mediums, and briefly say why, and hope you find something here that will keep you up late into the night.

I'll begin with music. I’m not the sort of music fan who knows exactly what albums are coming out in a given year and then goes out and buys or immediately downloads them the day they’re release. I dig old music and roots/blues/Americana influenced music the most, and there’s so much of it out there already that I don’t have to worry about getting the newest thing; there’s always something waiting to be discovered. But there were a couple of albums released in 2011 that I’d been jazzed up about since I’d heard they were in the making. The first is Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes. This was, apparently, a fitful album to make and record, but you wouldn’t know it by the finished product. I like that it represents a progression—it’s a little funkier and more philosophical than Fleet Foxes—but doesn’t turn away from the sound and strengths that make Fleet Foxes distinct.

The other record I couldn’t wait to get my hands on was the Gillian Welch/Dave Rawlings album The Harrow and the Harvest. The Harrow and the Harvest is the best kind of music—-acoustic folk—-written and performed at the highest level. Gillian—-for some reason, I just have to use her first name when referencing her—-brings up Bob Dylan’s The Basement Tapes in a recent interview with Acoustic Guitar Magazine, and I think that’s an interesting connection to draw, lyrically at least. Maybe the The Harrow and the Harvest doesn’t contain the same alchemy of noise that Dylan and The Band cooked up at Big Pink, but like The Basement Tapes, its lyrics work on their own terms and seem to take place not in our world but in some long lost folk world that calls out to our world from across the great reality divide. And Rawlings’s distinctive guitar is that world’s atmosphere.

I was also fortunate enough to run into some good bootlegs this year, but one really stood out. Fans of Neutral Milk Hotel will already know this, but Jeff Mangum decided to come back from the dead in 2011, and he brought live versions of his awesome songs with him. For those who don't know much about Mangum, imagine Kurt Cobain defied mortality and managed to give a handful of shows in 2011. Mangum isn't as well known, but he's every bit as important a songwriter.

The Live in Toronto bootleg gives an idea of what his tour has been like and makes me hope that there's some kind of new record in the works.

And finally, because I spend so much time listening to old music, I couldn't let any talk of what I loved this year pass without mentioning a discovery from the past--a record I'd maybe overlooked, undervalued, or flat out missed. Junior Kimbrough's Most Things Haven't Worked Out is one of those records. It's full of broiling, hypnotic summer blues that all bleeds together into a single 48-minute mood piece. It's amazing music for long solo drives and digging deep into your own head.

Also, I want to give a shout out to Woody Guthrie here. I can't say I really rediscovered him since I've never really stopped listening to him or loving him, but this year, the year of the protest, the whole world seems to be resdiscovering his music and his ideas. Songs like "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "Jesus Christ" and "Do-Re-Mi" are as relevant now as ever.

Tomorrow, or maybe Tuesday, I'll talk books.

Three Things . . .

One thing: You may have noticed, if you are/were a friend of mine on Facebook, that I've disappeared. That's by design. I've also emptied the feeds in my Google reader. Those are my two biggest time wasters on the internet, and so, for a time, at least, I'm going to see what life is like without them. I'm always amazed and grateful that I'm able to write at all--being an artist at any level of recognition is a blessing--but this year is the first in three or four that I've honestly felt I could/should have written more. I wrote a poem a day for a good little stretch early this fall; I want to get closer to that year round.

Another thing: You should read George R.R. Martin. You really should. You should also buy local and American-made stuff. And you should send some real hard-copy letters through the USPS this year.

And a third and final thing: Atticus Review was kind enough to nominate my poem "The Everyday Parade" for a Pushcart. It's always an honor when a publication believes your work ranks with the best they've received. And especially one like Atticus Review, which is doing really cool and interesting work.

The Scrapper Poet on Illinois, My Apologies

Blue-collar poet Karen J. Weyant posted her thoughts on Illinois, My Apologies on her blog The Scrapper Poet the other day. Among other kind words, she had this to say about my chapbook:

All in all, Hamm’s collection is more than just a thoughtful volume that explores an American place. His poems are full of barfight sweat, churning rivers, industries that stand stark and ugly on horizons. Such descriptions may make a reader wonder how a speaker would even want to try to love such bleak landscapes. But I can guarantee that any one who reads this collection will gain new appreciation for the Midwest and the people, especially men, who toil there.

You can read the rest of her review here.

Thanksgiving Day Playlist

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

Distance From a Subject Frees the Imagination

I've been asked on more than one occasion how moving away from where I grew up has affected the way I write about that place in my poetry, and I've always answered that for some reason the distance allowed me to feel comfortable letting that setting reveal itself metaphorically in ways that interacting with it on a mundane, day-to-day basis seemed to discourage.

Now I see there's actually evidence that this is how our brains work. Interesting.

From an article in 99% called "The Cure for Creative Blocks? Leave Your Desk." by Jocelyn K. Glei.

As Jonah Lehrer writes in a recent Guardian piece, “Several new science papers suggest that getting away – and it doesn't even matter where you're going – is an essential habit of effective thinking.” Certainly, we’ve all experienced the feeling that work concerns are just less important the farther away we get from the office. Now there’s proof to back up the classic “out of sight, out of mind” expression.

Lehrer goes on, “The reason such travels are mentally useful involves a quirk of cognition, in which problems that feel ‘close’ – and the closeness can be physical, temporal or even emotional – get contemplated in a more concrete manner. As a result, when we think about things that are nearby, our thoughts are constricted, bound by a more limited set of associations. While this habit can be helpful – it allows us to focus on the facts at hand – it also inhibits our imagination.”

Going even further, another study sparked by the productivity of expats like Nabokov, Hemingway, Yeats, Picasso, Gaugin, and Handel showed that not just traveling but living abroad for an extended period of time can improve our capacities for problem solving and creative thinking.

Anybody out there want to bankroll a four or five-year adventure to Europe for the family and me?

A "poem i love": Evan Kennedy's "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I Go Mine"

Sometimes other concerns get in the way of poetry for a little while and the break is refreshing. The solutions to all the poems I'm trying to write seem to have arrived during the hiatus, so that the reunion with my notebook is intense. Other times--and this is hard to admit--the break leaves me sluggish and unmotivated. I feel frustrated by poetry's small audience and dubious about the importance of art at all in a world full of so much injustice, in need of so much direct action. I even begin to doubt that anything about my life is really that different just because I didn't write any new poems.

For these occasions I have a Word file on my desktop titled "poems i love." And that's just what it is. If I read a literary magazine, or a new collection, or an anthology, and a poem sticks with me or compels me to read more than once, I'll type it into this document. Then, when I begin to question why I would want to spend so much time writing poetry, I scroll through the poems I've collected, randomly stopping and reading.

I found myself needing to visit "poems i love" this morning. And there I found Evan Kennedy's "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I Go Mine." It appeared in The Captain's Tower anthology --published in honor of Bob Dylan's 70th birthday--that I was lucky enough to place a poem in earlier this year. "Most Likely You Go . . ." was immediately my favorite poem in the anthology. I like it because it is about Bob Dylan, of course, and I like it for a hundred little reasons that might only make sense to other Dylan obsessives--the perfect rendering of the Chaplinesqueness of the character "Bob Dylan" in the poem, for instance. But the main reason I like it, the main reason it is among the poems I turn to for reassurance as a poet, is the playfulness. It reminds me that writing a poem can be a hell of a lot of fun.

I don't know anything about Evan Kennedy, but I'm pretty sure he must have had a hell of a lot of fun writing this one.

I'm never sure what's appropriate to excerpt from a single poem, but since Kennedy's is a long one--it contains five sections--and since excerpting it is in the spirit of promoting his work, I don't think the following is too much.

4

Bob Dylan pulls up a chair at the only bar
he has never been to

Its lamps please Bob Dylan’s eyes
so much he is prepared to comment
until he realizes his thoughts of the lamps
in another bar
a bar he frequents quite a bit
are influencing his current impressions

So much for the lamps he thinks
The bartender mistakes Bob Dylan
for Reggie Jackson
greatest New York Yankee
ever to play right field

What’s your poison Mr. October he says
though it is clear to the patrons of this bar
that this man is not Reggie Jackson
but rather Emma Goldman
greatest American anarchist
ever to play right field

Bob Dylan does not correct him
but instead asks for a bowl of grapes
to which the bartender replies
that this is not a fruit stand
but a bar and that no grapes can be sold

Thinking he was not understood
that perhaps the bartender is new
Bob Dylan requests a second time
the bowl of grapes
to which the bartender replies that if
there is a third request for the grapes
he will nail Bob Dylan’s beak to the bar floor
and roast him
The bartender is clearly mistaking this patron
for a duck that waddled in

Bob Dylan waddles out of the bar
only to return the next night and request
from the bartender surely the same bartender
a bowl of grapes

Yankee or not
the bartender replies
this is not the establishment
to serve you a bowl of grapes
as he reaches into a dark cabinet
a cabinet good for storing a hammer and nails
to which Bob Dylan gets off the barstool
and leaves
not quite offended

Show Opening in Carbondale

Read about the opening of "Past to Present: Poetry and Platinotypes from the Great Midwest," a photography show/poetry collaboration that I did with my buddy Mike Chervinko, in the Southern Illinoisan.

Autumn

What My Record Collection Taught Me About Chapbooks

At a reading a few weeks ago, an undergraduate creative writing major who had been turning my chapbook over in his hands for about five minutes came over and asked me about the format. He wanted to know if "[the poems in a chapbook] all have to be connected together like this." I told him what I'd read while researching to submit manuscripts and what I'd learned from reading chapbooks myself: they don't have to be, but a lot of presses like when they are. And that made me think about why I like the chapbook format so much. I'm a big fan of the music album as a work of art, and while I don't necessarily think an album has to have a 'concept,' like, say, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, to be great, I do think it has to have some kind of thematic and aesthetic cohesion. I think about this a lot. I listen to an enormous amount of music, and I'm always constructing playlists, organizing by different themes or motifs, thinking about how songs play off of one another to create a larger effect.

To me, the chapbook is the poetic equivalent of an album. Sit down and read a chapbook aloud all the way through. The approximate read time is probably similar to (or maybe just a bit shorter than) the run time of an album. So it makes sense that the chapbook could be structured in the same way as an album, and when I was arranging the poems in Illinois, My Apologies, the point at which I finally figured out a cohesive arrangement was the same point that I began thinking in terms of albums and playlists.

Fast forward to the last couple of months. I've been tweaking a new chapbook manuscript for fall submissions (and soliciting the opinions of a few generous souls along the way). Structure has again been a battle. But as I was thinking about what I told that student, and about how chapbooks operate so much like albums, the answer sort of jumped out at me. This new chapbook wants to be an album. Every poem references music or sound in one way or another and it is deeply indepted to my love of music and musicians.

Only problem is I can't sing. Or play anything, besides "Hey, Jude," badly, on the harmonica. Then I remembered a copy of American Poetry Journal that was published face-to-face with The National Poetry Review, and it dawned on me. There's no reason the chapbook couldn't recreate the physical act of listening to a record. So I've structured it with a Side One and a Side Two, just as an album would have a Side One and a Side Two. Each side is organized the way albums used to be, when the artist had to consider the fact the listener would be flipping the record (or maybe just stopping after one side), meaning the opening, closing, and cohesion of each side had to be carefully considered in addition to how it fit into the whole record.

The idea is that if a chapbook press picks this thing up, they'll print Side One going from page one to page 11 one way and Side Two going from page one to page 13 going the other. So the reader will have to "flip" the chapbook over to start a fresh side. The break between sides (hopefully) reinforces the thematic cohesion within each side without downplaying the fact that both sides are of a whole.

I'm sure this is how the chapbook was meant to be done. But my fear is that an editor or contest judge is going to read my note on how the assembly/printing/presentation and think I'm an idiot. Which I may well be, but I'd rather it not get around.

Poetry in Photo Exhibit Collaboration

Just wanted to get the advance notice out about a little collaborative project I'm doing with my buddy, photographer Mike Chervinko. He has a showing of his platinotypes, or platinum prints, at Fern Fair Gallery in Carbondale, Illinois, beginning in early November, and he's been kind enough to ask me to pair about a half a dozen of my poems to hang with his photographs.

To give you an idea of the nature of some of these photo/poem pairings, check out "Window Jamb" and "Rebekah Just When the Drought Was Ending" below. If you're anywhere near Carbondale while the show is hanging, I hope you'll stop in and check it out. More details when they become available.


Window Jamb





















Rebekah Just When the Drought Was Ending

But the best thing about Rebekah
was the way she floated always
beneath the scent of woodburn
and dusty Middle America,
her keen ranch-queen convictions
slicing deep and deeper into
the tiniest of daily miseries
with skepticism, demanding always
some proof before she'd concede
this life He pieced together for us
cell by cell with ever shakier Godfingers
contained even one malignancy.

Every bow-legged young bull rider,
every sunburnt farmer of someday
who stopped by to mend a fence
or just to offer genteel salutations
would see her backlit by sunset,
dream her into his own mother
and pray to the essence of the prairie
to do what old bones could not.
And it worked. She survived well enough
to give of herself four more seasons
among luckless kinfolk who every one
drank greedily the blood she squeezed
and felt the cracked lips of dry times less.

As long as there was some great need
into which she could empty herself
she could will the heart to continue
and none of the rules of dying applied,
but she must've seen that the new rain
wasn't baptismal or meant for her restoration.
When those stormclouds finally swelled
and burst into fat miracle drumbeats
she must've felt the change was coming on.
Why else open the windows so wide
with no thought for the evening chill?
Why else cut a hundred wildflowers
and arrange them into fiery clusters
but pour no water into their vases?


---from Illinois, My Apologies (first appeared in Nimrod)

A Big Thanks to Referential Magazine

Just want to send Jessie Carty and Referential Magazine a big thanks for nominating "Small Town" for this year's Best of the Net anthology. If you don't know about Referential yet, then you should. It's built on a clever concept that exemplifies the idea of a cooperative literary "community." Every piece published in Referential refers from another piece in the magazine. It encourages contributors to not only read the work in Referential but find in that work the inspiration to create something new.

Last Week's Reading

As I mentioned here prior to the event, last Thursday afternoon, I had the opportunity to read with local writer Daren Dean (Mercury in Retrograde) at William Woods University. Daren and I read from a naturally-lit corner of a dank, moody former campus pub called Woody’s. Scorsese would love this basement dive, with its teal flooring and the dark wood surfaces, which were, well, everywhere you looked. Listeners who weren’t early enough to grab one of the vinyl-upholstered retro sofas or armchairs were seated in dark wood booths, on dark wood barstools beside dark wood tables, or on a dark wood bench directly in front of the reading area. Definitely a distinct atmosphere, and highly preferable to an academic setting, in my opinion.

As for the reading itself: I opened with a few newer poems, including this one and this one, and few older ones, like those found here and here, none of which were included in my chapbook, for thematic reasons. I finished up with a handful of selections from Illinois, My Apologies. Then Daren put on his glasses and proceeded to read a fabulously bizarre gothic piece that included, among other things, the theft of a baby in a jar of formaldehyde and teenage boys obsessing over the term “homo erectus.”

So, a good time, for sure, and much thanks goes out to English Professor Matt Dube, our host at "The Woods," for organizing the event.

Reading September 22 at William Woods University

If you're in the neighborhood, drop by William Woods University at 4:30 PM on Thursday, September 22 to hear me read with local writer Daren Dean. I'll be reading a mix of newer work and poems from my chapbook, Illinois, My Apologies. The reading will be held at Woody's, on the lower level of Tucker Dining Hall. Hope to see you there.

Blogger's Sense of Humor and A Couple of Announcements

Well, friends, I just spent an hour and a half crafting a little personal essay for you about this new notebook I bought and how I recently began writing stuff down that nobody would see for the first time in my life--trying to get my values and beliefs together.

And . . . nobody is going to see that post, since when I clicked "save" it didn't save and I don't have the time or energy at the moment to recreate my train of thought.

So instead, I'll just smile and mention that I have poems forthcoming shortly in Atticus Review and Emprise Review, that Red Lion Sq. will record a couple of my poems for a fall episode, and that I'll be reading at William Woods University in mid-to-late September, in case you're local and want to check it out.

More details when they're available.

Some Photos I've Shot Recently

Changing Classic Book Covers

I was browsing aimlessly through Barnes and Noble yesterday and stumbled on a paperback copy of one of the most indispensable books I own, Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son.  It has apparently been redesigned since the last time I saw it, probably for marketing reasons after Johnson won The National Book Award back in 2007for Tree of Smoke.   

The only copy I'd seen for the last five or six years is the last one I purchased--my fourth copy overall, three of which were loaned out to friends and never recovered. Jesus' Son is just one of those books people "forget" they borrowed. (In fact, the first copy I owned was one I borrowed and never returned). 

The cover of the copy I own has the title in a yellow handwritten font that looks like chalk on a chalkboard. "Stories by Denis Johnson" appears in thin, purple font below that. The bottom half of the cover appears to be a torn away scrap of paper with a handful of discernible words--a paragraph from the book's opening story "Car Crash While Hitchhiking"--in gray, typewriter-style font. Much as that story sets a tone for how we read all the stories after it, the words we're able to make out on the cover do the same: fed me pill[s] . . . veins feel scrap[ed] . . . new every raindr[op]. 

There's certainly a gritty look to the cover--the design, purple and yellow and black and torn and messy, has the same aesthetic that personifies The Joker in the The Dark Knight--but there is also, in those last three words at the bottom, softer than the words that come before them, a hint of (admittedly chemical) transcendence.

In short, I've always thought it was the perfect cover for the book.

And then there's the matter of format.. This edition of Jesus' Son is smaller than the standard paperback, which compresses each line and forces line breaks so that it reads just a little bit more like poetry--which of course fits since the stories in the book work so much like poems.

And then we have the cover Jesus' Son is being sold under these days:

This edition is a full-sized paperback, which eliminates the compression of lines, and while it still promises something off-kilter, which is accurate, it's lost some of the grit. It changes the book for me is what I'm saying, and I don't like it. This is a book I'll probably read twenty or thirty more times in my life; I hope I never have to own a copy that looks like this.

So here's what I'm interested to know: what book covers do you have powerful attachments to, and for what reasons?

Illinois Poetry Vacation -- Part I: Edgar Lee Masters

Happy summer, everybody. Just thought I'd drop by to tell you a little about how we've been spending our busy vacation time in the Hamm family.

After the madness of refinishing our basement in June--the upshot of which is that I'm typing this out in my brand new office--Mel, Abbey, and I spent the first ten days of July back in Illinois, relaxing and celebrating with our families. We do this summer trip every year, drive from Missouri through central Illinois all the way up until we're nearly in Wisconsin, and every year it turns out to be important in that it reconnects me visually and emotionally with the places that have moved me to make my best poetry. This year's trip was especially meaningful from a creative standpoint, since I decided last minute to make it all about digging into the roots of Illinois poets.

We started with Edgar Lee Masters. I first read Masters in middle school and didn't love him, or any poetry, at the time. But what he was doing, characterizing the people of the small towns in my little part of the world, did have a real effect on my conception of what an Illinois or Midwestern poem should do, and when I reread Spoon River Anthology years later, I formed an attachment to it the way a New Englander might form a special attachment to North of Boston. 

Our first day back in state, we drove over from my hometown, Bloomington, to Petersburg, where we saw the house the poet lived in as a child and his grave near those of his grandparents in the local cemetery. Masters had a deep love and respect for his grandparents, which is evident from the way he personifies them--they're Lucinda and Davis Matlock in the book.

From Petersburg we drove just a couple of miles to New Salem to trace the history of another Illinois poet who also happened to be President of the United States.

You probably didn't know Abraham Lincoln wrote poetry; I didn't, at least not until I read some of his verse reprinted in an issue of Spoon River Poetry Review that one of my poems appeared in back in 2009.

We stayed in New Salem a few hours, long enough to get a sunburn and see a few cabins and listen to a fellow visitor--he seemed like a retiree who'd dedicated his post-work life to reading and thinking about the Civil War--deliver an impromptu lecture on the mindsets of Northern and Southern soldiers. The temperature was well over 90 degrees, and what the man was saying wasn't that interesting, but there was something in his eyes that said he really felt his words were important. When somebody has that look, I just can't walk away, no matter how much I might want to.  

Finally, before heading back to Bloomington, we drove forty-five minutes up to Lewistown, crossing the Spoon River itself, which was pretty flooded at the time. Lewistown is where Masters lived as a teen; it's also the home of Oak Hill Cemetery, model for the most famous cemetery in American literature (although the cemetery in Petersburg was certainly an influence, too).
At Oak Hill I got out to take some pictures and see if I could get a hold on what it was that might have made such an impression on a teenaged poet to be. I don't know if I found that, but I did find myself scribbling down a poem about the visit on the drive back home.

Below are some more of my favorites from Spoon River Anthology. Read them in order to get the interplay between them.

"The Hill"  (By the way, the pictures of Oak Hill Cemetery are taken of or on "The Hill")

"Benjamin Pantier"

"Mrs. Benjamin Pantier"

"Reuben Pantier"

"Emily Sparks"

"Minerva Jones"

"Doctor Meyers"

"Mrs. Meyers"

"Trainor, the Druggist"

"Nancy Knapp"

"Barry Holden"

Collaboration

I'm reading a book about Coleridge and Wordsworth, and as I learn more about how the two of them existed and composed together, I'm struck by the similarities between their relationship and that of another famous writing duo. Consider the following description:

'Kubla Kahn' was anomalous in being written in isolation. Most of Wordsworth and Coleridge's poems dating from this period were composed by one poet under the critical eye of the other. Once can only surmise at the extent of their co-operation from the odd anecdote, and from influences scholars have detected in the texts themselves . . . A single anecdote exemplifies the kind of co-operation that must surely have happened in other, unrecorded cases. Wordsworth's 'We are Seven' was largely composed while he was walking to and fro 'in the grove' at Alfoxden, and many years later he gave an account of how it was completed.

When it was all but finished, I came in and recited it to Mr. Coleridge and my Sister, and said, 'A prefatory stanza must be added, and I should sit down to our little tea-meal with greater pleasure if my task was finished.'
I mentioned in substance what I wished to be expressed and Coleridge immediately threw off the stanza . . .

                                                         from The Friendship: Coleridge and Wordsworth by Adam Sisman

Now compare the above description to what Wikipedia has to say about the Lennon-McCartney songwriting relationship:

Although Lennon and McCartney often wrote independently — and many Beatles songs are primarily the work of one or the other — it was rare that a song would be completed without some input from both writers. In many instances, one writer would sketch an idea or a song fragment and take it to the other to finish or improve; in some cases, two incomplete songs or song ideas that each had worked on individually would be combined into a complete song . . .

As time went on, the songs increasingly became the work of one writer or the other, often with the partner offering up only a few words or an alternate chord. "A Day in the Life" is a notable and well-known example of a later Beatles song that includes substantial contributions by both Lennon and McCartney, where a separate song fragment by McCartney ("Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head...") was used to flesh out the middle of Lennon's composition ("I read the news today, oh boy..."). "Hey Jude" is another example of a later Paul McCartney song that had input from Lennon: while auditioning the song for Lennon, when McCartney came to the lyric "the movement you need is on your shoulder," McCartney assured Lennon that he would change the line — which McCartney felt was nonsensical — as soon as he could come up with a better lyric. Lennon advised McCartney to leave that line alone, saying it was one of the strongest in the song.[7]

Clearing Out the Cobwebs

From late February through late May, I'm a baseball coach, and that along with the English teacher's late-year grading load keeps me from writing anything for the three months leading up to summer. Like a lot of teacher/poets, I romanticize summertime, when the living's easy and there's more than enough time to read and write. The reality, of course, is that it's summertime. There are just so many other things to do:

Plus, when you take three months off from writing, there are bound to be some cobwebs to clear out, and that's where I am right now.  I'm lucky in that I was productive in the first couple of months of 2011, which means I've got about twenty poems that are ready to make the rounds, and I'm slowly starting to get them out there to face the inevitable judgment.

I'm also finally finding the time to celebrate some of the publications that have carried my work this spring. The contributor's copies and links have been piling up--Nimrod, Sugar House Review, Willow Review, Eclectica, The Captain's Tower: Seventy Poets Celebrate Bob Dylan at 70, The Village Pariah--and I haven't had a chance to even acknowledge or announce them, much less delve into the rest of the fine work they contain. I plan to do that soon, and I'll let you know what I find.

I'll also keep you posted on what happens as I face the blank notebook again. Wish me luck!

Happy 100th Birthday, Robert Johnson

In honor of Robert Johnson's 100th birthday, here's something I wrote some time ago about the King of the Delta Bluesman and Townes Van Zandt, their similarities, and their influence on my poetry.
--

What the Troubadours Teach Me

A typical midsummer night: It’s late, after midnight even, and the wife and baby are both sleeping the heavy, carefree sleep that only the true innocents of this world can sleep. I am not sleeping this sleep; instead, I’m down in the office, pounding away at a keyboard, trying to tune up a set of poems. But my mind wanders. I know what I want out of them, the atmosphere, the tone, but the problem is, I’m not feeling these elements myself anymore. It’s been four or five weeks since the original date of composition for these particular poems, and I can’t rework them from the perspective I have at this exact moment. I sigh. I need to find a way to get back to the emotional place I was in when I first wrote them.

When I first wrote them I was thinking about the hard lives people live, people I've known and deeply loved—and I was especially thinking about the kinds of things these people would do to themselves even when they knew better. I want to get inside their minds and portray the justifications they invent, the emotions they feel.

So I put on Townes Van Zandt and wait to be instructed on how to proceed. Van Zandt was the master of this kind of thing.

Listen: if you don't already know about Townes Van Zandt, you must find out about him immediately. Van Zandt was a blues-inspired country singer whose career spanned from the mid-sixties to the mid-nineties, when the four decades of almost superhuman substance abuse finally did him in. I'll give it to you straight: Van Zandt was one tortured dude. For more on this, check out the excellent documentary about him called Be Here to Love Me. You’ll learn that in addition to the myriad of addictions he battled, Van Zandt was clinically depressed and even underwent electroshock therapy at one point. Later in life he drank a pint of vodka every day and admitted to hearing musical voices in his head. His demons probably had demons.

But the man channeled this pain into some of the most heart wrenching music I've ever heard. In his best songs, he put hard, clear, often discomforting human emotions out there for the listener to--not enjoy, that isn't the word for it--but cope with is I suppose the best way to say it.

But for a long time, not many people choose to cope with it. Van Zandt's albums, all excellent, have often been out of print, and he was considered only an underground celebrity, despite constant touring and the fact that hugely successful mainstream acts like Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris had recorded his songs. For his part, Van Zandt seemed to like it that way, seemed to be personally opposed to the idea of becoming too popular. I wonder if it worried him that he'd have to behave himself if people came to know who he was.

On the night I started to tell you about, the song I'm listening to is called "Waiting Around to Die."



The characters in this song--the narrator and the people around him—are, like Van Zandt himself was, constantly on the move. They drink and gamble and steal and even kill, but most of all they keep on moving. The reason they keep on moving--indeed, the reason they act at all in the song--is that it's "easier than just waiting around to die." This is the perfect phrase to describe what motivates both Van Zandt's characters and many of my own. They engage in self-destructive behavior out of a sense of hopelessness. Then they flee because they are human and irrational and therefore continue to hold out hope even in the face of hopelessness. If they run, at least they aren’t dead.

But if they remain fixed in one place for too long, they're liable to be overtaken the Reaper for any number of reasons, some of them justifiable. "Waiting Around to Die" makes you feel that death is an ever present stalker, that its cold breath is always imminent regardless of where you may be, what life you might be living. It makes you feel that the only way to dodge this menacing stalker is to ramble on and on and on--otherwise you're a sitting target and you'll spend the rest of your days on edge, always expecting the hard luck to send you kicking and screaming into the nevermore at any given moment.

Thematically, the song reminds me a lot of Robert Johnson's "Hellhound on My Trail," in which the greatest Delta bluesman of them all sings, "I got to keep moving/I got to keep moving/blues fallin' down like hail/blues fallin' down like hail . . . hellhound on my trail."



Now I'm listening to Johnson. His narrator, too, is stalked by some evil doom shadow that threatens to overtake him if he slows down for even an instant. We may or may not assume that the narrator brought this "hellhound" on himself, just as Van Zandt's characters usually bring their troubles on themselves.

Both songs make me feel panicky when I listen to them closely. It's the same kind of panicky I feel when the tornado sirens go off in town on a stormy day. In fact, that's what both songs remind me of: warning sirens. They remind me of warning sirens to the human race.

I'd like to figure out how to render this feeling of dread in the poems I’ve written. I, too, would like to write warning sirens to the human race.

Publication News

If you have a minute or two, check out the latest issue of Eclectica Magazine. Among other goodies in the issue, you'll find a micro fiction piece of mine called "Home Again."

Also, the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum's literary magazine, The Village Pariah, will soon be publishing a poem of mine called "The Whiskey Kids." You should subscribe. Not only will you be getting great work to read, you'll also be supporting an important historical landmark.

Easter Weekend Adventure -- Southern Illinois Petroglyphs

While we were down in Carbondale for Easter weekend, I had the chance to spend some time with my good friend Mike Chervinko, who is beginning to get some recognition for his photographs of Southern Illinois petroglyphs. In fact, some of these photographs will be appear in a show at Longbranch in Carbondale from May 18th to June 27th.

If you're local, you should definitely check it out. Mike works entirely in film with old cameras, some antique, and he painstakingly creates his own prints, too. The effort certainly shows in the detail, the texture, and the tone of the final product. He does exceptional work to honor the little-known and the forgotten art of his home region.

Here's Mike's photostream, so you can check out what he does. And below are a few pictures I took of Mike and one of his cameras as he worked his magic.



Below are photos I took of the petroglyphs on the site we visited over Easter weekend. The first is my favorite. In its own way it has a Renaissance-fresco feel to it. I also like the deer in the last one a lot. It's much larger than it appears here. The life-sized prints that Mike makes give a much better idea of the scope. 

Photos from Last Sunday's Reading

I'm a little behind on posting, but I wanted to make sure a couple of these pictures were up on the front page before I move them over to the "EVENTS" section. Last Sunday, I read and signed books for local supporters of Illinois, My Apologies in the banquet room at Coach's Pizza World here in Mexico, Missouri. The room has this great coffeehouse vibe to it, and I was digging that, and all the attendees really seemed to enjoy the poetry, plus I made a handful of talented new friends -- so I'd have to say the event was a success. Big thanks to everyone who came out to participate in this gathering, and also to my little sis for snapping these pictures.

NewPages Reviews Illinois, My Apologies

A review of Illinois, My Apologies is among the latest from NewPages. It's highly favorable, and naturally, I'm pumped about it. Hope you'll check it out.

Happy National Poetry Month Part Two

A couple of months ago, I saw the movie Howl. Not long after that, an older gentlemen who was a dead ringer for Allen Ginsberg began working at the local Wal-Mart, and I took the convergence of the two events to mean I ought to finally learn something about him, so I got lost in his biography and his poetry for several weeks.  I also wrote a beat-style poem about seeing his doppelgänger. It's called "A Wal-Mart in Mexico, Missouri" after his "A Supermarket in California," which is one of my favorite poems from Howl.  

Sooner or later I'll get around to sending that one out. In the meantime, here's "A Supermarket in California," read by Ginsberg himself.

Happy National Poetry Month

When I have a chance, I'll try to pop in and share some of my favorite poetry-related videos to celebrate National Poetry Month. Here's one I found while preparing to teach Whitman to my American Literature classes. I love the way the reader is frank about his experience with poetry and how he feels when he's read and understood a poem he's "accomplished something."

Join Me Sunday, April 17th

Anna Clark Interviews Me for Isak

I recently did an interview for writer Anna Clark, whose website Isak is a grab bag of interesting items on writing and the arts. I hope you'll check it out. She has some really wonderful things to say about "Illinois, My Apologies," too.

Fiction in Eclectica; I, MA at Left Bank Books; April Reading/Signing/Reader Appreciation

Just popping in to make a few small announcements. First of all, since the first of the year, in addition to poems, I've been trying my hand at flash fiction for the first time. The pages keep piling up, and for the first time in a long time, I haven't been in any real hurry to get new work into the hands of editors. My patience has never been higher. That said, I did send out three flash pieces to a handful of places, and I recently learned that Eclectica is going use one of them, "Home Again," in their next issue, due out April 15.

I owe my buddy and flashmaster Chad Simpson a thank you for suggesting a single line edit that made a huge impact on how the piece hits the ear.

Speaking of Mr. Simpson, he also introduced me to one of the coolest independent bookstores around, Left Bank Books in St. Louis. If you happen to be in St. Louis sometime soon, stop in and check out their excellent selection of chapbooks. Illinois, My Apologies is now among the titles they carry.

Other news regarding Illinois, My Apologies: on April 17th I'm going to be having a reading/signing/reader appreciation gathering in the banquet room at Coach's Pizza World here in Mexico. I'll be sending invites to everybody who's purchased the book. The plan is to have some free pizza and poetry to say thanks to the people who have already supported I, MA -- and to give all the procrastinators a chance to pick up a signed copy, too.  It's a cozy venue, the food'll be good, and so I really hope you can make it out to celebrate with me.

More on this as details are finalized.

Happy Saint Patty's Day!

I'll never tire of this poem. Happy Saint Patty's Day, and enjoy!

Interview in greatest lakes review

greatest lakes review recently asked me a few questions about being a Midwestern writer. Click here to read what I had to say. And while you're over there, read some of the poetry and fiction, too, in support of a publication that wants to draw attention to good Midwestern literature.

My Poetry in The Captain's Tower: Poems for Bob Dylan at 70 Anthology

On the coolness scale, this one has to top the list of acceptances. My poem "Blonde on Blonde" is going to appear in the anthology The Captain's Tower: Poems for Bob Dylan at 70, the proceeds from which will go to Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, which Dylan himself supported with the sales of Christmas in the Heart. My poem will appear alongside the work of several generations, from original Beats like Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and McClure to contemporaries likeTony Hoagland. The best part? I'm Johnny Cash's replacement. My humble poem snuck in when the rights to Cash's work couldn't be secured.

The Captain's Tower releases in May. Hope you'll check it out.

The Tree

I see this tree every day when I drive home from work. Every day I think, I should take a picture of this tree. So one day I do. I like this tree a lot. It's a stoic tree. It's been mistreated and it doesn't care. It wears its scars without shame.

It's a rough tree but a good tree, know what I mean? ]

I think I'll take another picture of it sometime and post that, too.

Wuthering Expectations Talks Illinois, My Apologies

Before I started writing poetry seriously, and after I experienced a post-MFA creativity block, I thought for a time I would go back and do a Ph.D in literature, and in preparation for that, I spent a couple of years trying to fill in the gaps in my reading. I used my readings in classic literature as entry points into a couple hundred pages of what I now refer to as messays--sloppy but sincere reactions to great books with personal reflections thrown in from time to time. Some of those messays eventually morphed into ideas for poems, and some of those poems eventually appeared in Illinois, My Apologies.

But the best part of that experience wasn't the writing I produced or even the books I got to read, though I wouldn't be writing now if not for both; instead, the best part of that experience was the dialogue that I had with other bloggers who were seriously taking on great books--not professors or writers but readers, a species I'd once thought to be entirely extinct. Dig this: here were actual people, operating outside of academia, who thought literature mattered enough to dedicate some part of their lives to it.

Which is why I'm so pleased that one of those readers, the author of the outstanding 19th Century literature blog "Wuthering Expecations," took a couple of days to talk about my modest chapbook. You can the first entry here and the second entry here. I'm flattered and a little embarassed every time someone mentions having read my work, but in this case I'm doubly so, since this fellow put down the Tolstoy, set aside the Hugo, and bookmarked the Austen for a few days in order to spend some time with my poems.

I hope you'll check out what he has to say--both about my book and about the classics. It's a blog worth following.

Dylan, et cetera, at the Grammys

Follow-up to yesterday's post on Maggie's Farm. Below is the video. Mumford and Sons just rose in my esteem. The Avett Brothers were awesome, as usual, but they might have chosen a faster song. And Bob Dylan--well, I love Bob Dylan no matter what he does.


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Dylan, Avett Brothers, Mumford and Sons Playing Grammys Tonight

To be honest, the Grammys don't usually do anything for me. Tonight's ceremony, however, is one I'm really excited about. My current favorite band, The Avett Brothers, will be performing--which in itself would be enough to convince me to tune in for the first time in several years. But they aren't just performing--they're performing with Bob Dylan. Those who know me well and have had the, ahem, pleasure of listening to me hold forth for hours on the topic of Dylan's role in American music can guess how excited I was to find out about the serendipitous union.

Reports are in from the rehearsals, and it looks like Dylan, backed by the Avetts and Mumford and Sons, will do "Maggie's Farm." So I thought I'd gather together a few videos to lend context this interesting collaboration. I apologize that the html won't let me put the videos right next to the commentary, so you'll have to scroll down after you read each description.

The segment in which the three artists will appear together is billed as a tribute to acoustic music. So it makes sense to give you "Down on Penny's Farm," which appears on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and from which "Maggie's Farm" seems to be descended. As you'll discover from that first video below, when Scott Avett and Winston Marshall strap on their banjos, they'll be taking Dylan's classic of defiance closer to where it came from.

Another reason for Dylan to choose this particular song: the late soul singer Solomon Burke will be honored at tonight's ceremony by Mick Jagger. Burke once covered "Maggie's Farm" on record (second video below).

Like any good trickster, Dylan loves irony. Which is a third reason I love that he'll belt out "Maggie's Farm" in front of such a huge audience in a tribute to acoustic music. The song is forever linked with one of the great legends of his career: going electric at the Newport Folk Festival. So Dylan will be going acoustic with the song best remembered for when he "went electric" (third video).

Of course, this won't be the first re-imagining of the song. Dylan is well-known for changing his presentation and delivery on classics. The fourth video is one the best takes on "Maggie's Farm" from back in the Rolling Thunder days.

Others have noted that the song speaks to the recent events in Egypt and the spirit of protest. I also think there's a bit of a torch passing to another generation of folk-fed musicians. "Maggie's Farm" reinforces what bands like the Avetts and Mumford and Sons are doing by using the folk tradition but creating something new. Plus, let's be honest--many in the general audience are going to be put off by Dylan's grizzled voice, and perhaps there will even be more articles by this one in The Wall Street Journal calling for him to stop playing music. What better way to respond?

This is a complex and interesting song choice in so many ways.

And just in case you aren't a fan and don't know why The Avett Brothers might have been asked to take part in a tribute to acoustic music, the last video ought to show you everything you need to know.

Maggie's Farm -- Dylan, Avett Brothers, Mumford and Sons Tonight on the Grammys

To be honest, the Grammys don't usually do anything for me. Tonight's ceremony, however, is one I'm really excited about. My current favorite band, The Avett Brothers, will be performing--which in itself would be enough to convince me to tune in for the first time in several years. But they aren't just performing--they're performing with Bob Dylan. Those who know me well and have had the, ahem, pleasure of listening to me hold forth for hours on the topic of Dylan's role in American music can guess how excited I was to find out about the serendipitous union.

Reports are in from the rehearsals, and it looks like Dylan, backed by the Avetts and Mumford and Sons, will do "Maggie's Farm." So I thought I'd gather together a few videos to lend context this interesting collaboration.

The segment in which the three artists will appear together is billed as a tribute to acoustic music. So it makes sense first to give you "Down on Penny's Farm," which appears on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and from which "Maggie's Farm" seems to be descended. As you'll see, when Scott Avett and Winston Marshall strap on their banjos, they'll be taking Dylan's classic of defiance closer to where it came from.

Thoughts on Ginsberg

Just finished I Celebrate Myself, an exceptionally detailed year-by-year biography of Allen Ginsberg that likewise turns out to be an excellent biography of the Beat movement, too.  What's great about the book is that it places Ginsberg's poems in context by listing in a sidebar exactly what he wrote while the events described were unfolding, so I also ended up reading or re-reading a large sampling of Ginsberg's poetry as I followed his life, and it was an informative way to encounter his work.

My renewed interest in Ginsberg started a couple of months ago, when an older gentleman who was a dead ringer for the poet in his old age began working at the local Wal-Mart (which, I know, is just begging for a poem in the style of "A Supermarket in California," isn't it?). Then I saw the James Franco movie about Howl and decided to find out how accurate the portrayal was.

I'll admit that I never knew what to make of Ginsberg in the past. I knew a little about his life from various content about Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue and a few short, generalized introductions to the Beat genereation. I'd also read Howl before and found the language and the feculent counterculture dreamworld intoxicating for the same reasons I find Jesus' Son intoxicating. But some of Ginsberg's other work seemed underdeveloped and didn't really move me. And a lot of it just seemed dirty for no good reason. Apparently this was a result of the high demand for Ginsberg; later in his life he was too busy to revise properly, and coupled with the fact that he could publish anything he scribbled down, this meant he put a lot of sub-par work into print.

But I was able to use I Celebrate Myself as a guide to the strongest work. The contextual support opened up the really good poems even further for me, and while there's still  Ginsberg I don't much care for, there's also Ginsberg that I'm in love with.

That's how I feel about the man himself after reading this book, too. His generosity, his loyalty, and his perseverance were saintlike. His narcissism, his obsessions, and his lifestyle could be really troubling.

I always know a biography is good when I'm left with strong opinions both in favor of and against its subject. It means the biography has confronted us with a real human being, and as in real life, we have to decide whether to accept the person, flaws and all, or reject them.

I've decided I like Ginsberg, for the best of his poetry, for his support of so many artists I love, and for never hiding anything but remaining open and honest and real.

"America"



"The Ballad of the Skeletons"

Photos at Midwestern Gothic

Midwestern Gothic is a new print journal interested in publishing "work about or inspired by the Midwest." In other words, a journal after my own heart. You should check them out, and when they release their first issue, you should buy it and read it. Especially if you are from the Midwest. I hate to resort to guilt, but there you go.

And in the meantime, you should check out the website, where a handful of my photos can be found. Scroll over them to see the photo credits and click on them to see them full size. Mine are the last two in the third row and all four in the fourth row.