Rollin’ Thunder: The One-Stop Poetry Shop

It seems that I am not the only one to have noticed the turn blogs have taken toward literature. I figured there had to be some poetry blogs out there, and just as I was getting around to trying to find them, along comes an email from one ‘cafe rg’ who operates a blog called ‘Rollin’ Thunder’ that’s essentially a clearinghouse for poetry and discussion about same.

The entries are a mix of notices (‘Hire a Free Poet!’), poetry challenges, quotes (many of them about poetry: ‘You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick… You’re back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps… so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. ~Dylan Thomas’), and discussions about poetry (‘Does Technology “make us” more creative?’).

There are also links to other cafe rg sites like ‘SplashHall Poetry”, a BBS specifically for poets, and the ‘Poet’s Cafe’, which features live poetry readings as well as chat boards, workshops, even an electronic chapbook. If I were a poet–which I’m not, I admit–this is obviously the place I’d hang out. It’s like an online version of City Lights–the only thing missing is the coffee. And Ferlinghetti, of course. Otherwise, it looks lively and fun.

Writing for Blogs

A reader named ‘Tammi’ posed a comment to the cross-post of ‘Sgt Missick’s Rebuttal’ that nicely phrases some real concern about the whole idea of ‘reviewing’ blogs and asks what criteria I use. Because I think her questions probably reflect a fairly general attitude toward writing blogs, specifically, I thought this was the appropriate place to answer them. I’m not going to reprint her whole comment, but I’d like to suggest you click the link above and read it for yourself before you read the rest of my reply. It’s thought-provoking, and well worth reading for its own sake.

Here’s my issue – and please, if I’m off base I will apologize up front. This has nothing to do with politics, religion or anything. It’s actually just a question.

You’re not off-base at all. They’re perfectly legitimate questions and you have a right to know the answers. In fact, I figured when I started LitBlogs that at some point I needed to lay out what the criteria were so people knew where I was coming from and could judge whether or not my opinions had any relevancy for them. Your comment gives me the opportunity to do that.

And I want to state again for the record that my reviews have nothing whatever to do with politics or religion, either, except in so far as the blogs themselves deal with it, and then my concern is how well they express themselves, not how ‘correct’ their positions are. The purpose of the reviews is to give people some idea where to go and what they’ll find when they get there. Finally, what I pick is what I like. Fortunately, I like a lot of different things for a lot of different reasons, so my choices tend to range along a fairly wide spectrum.

Sgt Missick’s Rebuttal

On Sunday, I reviewed three blogs by soldiers from Iraq, including one written by a Sgt Chris Missick called A Line in the Sand which I suspected wasn’t legitimate because of the way it read. It would seem I have done Sgt Missick a gross injustice.

Much of the following was written tongue in cheek.1. To address Mr. Arren’s fist fallacious statement, that I am “a PR flack for the military,” I have this to say: I am a 31 Romeo, a multi-channel systems transmission operator/maintainer. I am currently working with Army phone and internet networks, administrating them to ensure they run properly. Unfortunately I can not go too much further into my daily job descriptions because of something the military refers to OPSEC, Operational Security, and I can not breach that trust. I have never admitted to being on the frontlines on a daily basis and have always made quite clear that I am simply proud to be a cog in the wheel that is the machine of the US Army. Mr. Arren, you may just be receiving a confirmation from my lieutenant after he reads this, he’s a good man and can verify that my word is good. I do have PR experience in my civilian career, but when I am in uniform, I simply a soldier with a blogging hobby.

That isn’t necessary, Sgt Missick. I believe you. That was Charge No 1. Charge dismissed.

Iraq Journals: A Little Writing Advice for Bloggers

In a comment to the previous post, reader Kayz alerted me to a page she keeps that’s devoted to promoting blogs by soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a number of civilian blogs by Iraqis (and one Saudi, which looks interesting). I spent yesterday afternoon reading through most of the soldier-blogs and reviewed three of them at Omnium. I’ll be getting to the others over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully.

I didn’t include them here not because they’re without interest but because they’re not, for the most part, very well-written. Certainly nothing I’ve seen so far comes up to the standard set by MY WAR, and the problem with almost all of them is a simple one often made by new writers: they’re trying to Write with a capital W. They seem to think that writing is about adjectives. One of them (not yet reviewed) was so full of ponderous layers of pseudo-profound adverb/adjective combinations piled on top of each other like compost that it was almost impossible to wade through.

So, for what it’s worth, a few words of advice to aspiring bloggers on how to make your writing more interesting.

MY WAR – Fear And Loathing In Iraq

This is, as far as I know, one of a kind. Not only is it a blog written by a soldier now serving in Iraq, it’s written by a soldier who can write. His grammar isn’t great, his spelling is OK, his punctuation is horrible. All of that is beside the point. Like Emmett, he can communicate a sense of time and place so clearly that it’s almost physical–you can hear it, you can see it, you can almost reach out and touch it. In a post called ‘Cleaning Up the Streets of Mosul’, he describes going on an IED Sweep.

We had an IED Sweep for a mission this after noon. An IED (Improvised Exploding Device) Sweep is when we drive around town for hours until we hit an IED speed bump, or until one of us visually finds an IED along the road. No lie, that’s how we find IEDs on IED Sweeps out here, we drive around until one literally blows up on us or if one of us visually finds one. Today was a successful sweep, we found 3 rocket launchers, two of them with rockets in them. We found them right there next to the road, not even hidden, in front of a playground. We stopped our vehicles and pulled 360 security around the area and had our demo guys blow em up with some explosives. You have to be careful in situations like this, whenever UXO is placed blatantly in plain view like that, it could be a possible ambush. Example, one time we found a bunch of artillary rounds by the traffic circle in the middle of Mosul, just sitting there, and we went to secure the area for the Demo guys to show up and blow it up, and we got hit with an RPG, or like this one time in Sammara, I had a demo guy tell me that the terrorists placed some UXO (Un-Exploded Ordinance) along the side of the road (Artillery Rounds) that was totally visible for them to see, and they booby trapped it with a solar powered calculator. They placed the solar powered calculator under the ground, and when the demo guys came and picked up the UXO, it shifted the dirt off the solar panels on the calculator, which turned the calculator ON, and thus set off the UXO, which was actually an IED. Lost some guys from that.

His voice, like most combat infantrymen’s, is flat. He doesn’t embellish, he doesn’t try to make it pretty or boost the horror or milk the pathos; he’s just telling it like it is.

LitBlogs Update

# The latest entry at LumpenBlog, ‘Mickey Snaketail’, has Nefertiti Snorkjutt in Maui attempting to rescue Lola from the clutches of Bruce–who Lola rescued Nef from after Nef rescued Lola from… You know, this could go on forever. Cut to the chase: Bruce wins.

At last I have a chance to report on my search for the misogynist Bruce and the, well, intrepid Lola. Lola rescued me from Bruce’s clutches, only to be taken by him to Maui, where I tracked them to a popular nude beach called Baby Makena.I decided to perform what I believe the, well, gendarmes call a “stake-out.” I thought that I had come rather well-prepared to look inconspicuous, but on the very first day a presumptuous woman with nipples that point straight up walked past me and said, “Can you sweat through leather?” So I decided to sacrifice my last, well, what you might call shred of modesty and remove all of my clothes, save for the plastic strap holding my binoculars.

And if you can resist reading the rest of that, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

# At The Mermaid Tavern, the philosofairy encounters creatures in the shower drain and gets a best-selling book idea out of it. Would that it were that easy for me.

Early this morning, as she stepped into the sparkling freshness of her shower, the philosofairy came up with a surefire bestseller Book Concept.But before she tells you about this surefire bestseller Book Concept, you need to know something. The philosofairy is a lover of nature. She has immense respect for all creatures big and small, including those alligators that live in underground New York City sewers and that take their breakfast straight from the homeless person’s box. She is an advocate to the animals, and does not endorse harming any living thing (note: an exception would be made for Ashton Kutcher).

I won’t give it away but it includes references to hairy eight-legged things and The Da Vinci Code, not necessarily in that order.

# Emmett at Maine Line has written a rather unsettling post called ‘Father’s Day’. It was hard for me to read, not because it’s badly written–in fact it may be the best writing he’s done so far–but because it details the kind of horrific family nightmare we all dread: skeletons escaping from their closets. The day starts well and ends…badly. Here’s a piece of it from just before the shit hits the fan. After a decent day when ‘Nobody started a fight or picked on anybody else or went off and sulked in a corner or called anybody else vile names or gave them the finger’, they go in the house to play cribbage.

As [the game] went on dad kept getting up and leaving the room for a minute and then coming back, and he was doing this every couple minutes and I was starting to get worried, thinking he was out in the kitchen nipping off his stash on the sly. Which is just what he was doing, it turns out. Howie and me were just about to slam them with double when I put down a card that let dad hit 21 for extra points. “That was a bonehead move,” he says. I didn’t say anything but I must have looked it because Cyn jumped in and started telling a funny story about one time when she got Ma to play poker (which she didn’t know how to play) and this one hand she leaned over to Cyn and showed her her cards and whispered, “Is this any good?” and Cyn said, “Ma, you got a full house!” and Ma said, “Don’t be silly. We’ve had twice this many people over. There’s plenty of room.” Even Gary laughed at that one but then dad said, out of nowhere, “She was one stupid bitch, that woman. Don’t know why I put up with her all those years.”I froze.

What comes next is the recounting of a previous incident that left me a bit shaken, and a more or less predictable end to the day. I have never, thank god or whatever, been in that position but I know way too many people who have, and they didn’t handle it any better than Emmett. There is no good way to handle an alcoholic parent, and Emmett is honest enough to admit his wasn’t the best. If you have an alcoholic parent or are close to someone who does, read it. It won’t be easy but you’ll be glad you did. I think.

# Finally, there is a new story at Snake Tales, ‘belinda c and fergus the leprechaun plan an uprising’, the title of which pretty much says it all.

she was prepared for a rat. she was prepared for a kid swiping her tomatoes, dry, shriveled things that they were. she was even prepared for a burglar, though what he might have hoped to steal in a neighborhood like this would bear explaining. of all the things belinda c was not prepared for, at the top of the list was what she actually saw–a leprechaun perched on her chickenwire fence, munching on a lettuce leaf and talking to himself. or maybe that was singing.”shoo”, she said. “shoo. shoo.”

the leprechaun–if that’s what it was and what else could it have been?–looked up at her with mild amusement in his tiny hazel eyes. “i’m not a housefly,” he said. “or a timid field mouse with his racing shoes on at the slightest crack of twig. i’m not that easy to get rid of, if that’s what you’re hoping. why don’t you sit down in that old stuffed chair you threw out last year, and we’ll have a talk.”

Fergus has a favor to ask that involves pixies, a city construction project, and–he promises solemnly–no dragons at all. (They all moved to Cleveland.)

Enjoy.

(cross-posted at Omnium)

Maine Line: A Journal We Can Relate To

Maine Line (I know, bad title) is brand new–only a month or so old–and written by a guy in north-central Maine named Emmett who says it’s a summer project for his creative writing class. It’s a public blog, though, either because he didn’t know how to make it private or because he didn’t give a damn if it was or not. I’m guessing the latter because that’s what kind of guy he is.

Emmett is in his 30’s and just decided to go back to school (an inheritance made it possible).

See, Aunt Flo allowed for 5 years to get my degree (she knew how slow I am, she used to say, “Emmett–” that’s my name– “Emmett, you got a mouth like a rusty gate hinge, always swingin’ back and forth, back and forth, despite all efforts to keep it shut, but for all the yappin’ you do, you ain’t got a helluva lot to say that’s worth stayin’ awake long enough to hear it. You got a underdeveloped mind, boy, like a green tomato, and while green tomatoes is good for cannin’ piccalilli, it’s useless on a growed man.” She talked like that, my Aunt Flo did, and I’m not saying she was wrong. She was a smart old fart, my Aunt Flo)….

In true Maine style, since the inheritance allowed $15K/yr for school tuition, he signed up with an online university (he doesn’t say which one) for $5K/yr and he’s living off the rest as a sort of semi-permanent paid vacation, though it seems he has to buy books for his classes. Here he is on re-reading The Great Gatsby for his English class.

I had to read The Great Gatsby in school and I thought that had to be just about one of the dumbest books I ever read in my life, and what was the big deal with the damn lamp on the dock? Hell, every dock has some kinda light because otherwise you’ll smack your boat right into the damn thing at night because you can’t see what you’re doing. I was kinda literal when I was in high school, I guess, like them people in church who think Jonah actually got swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it. I’ve seen whales, brother, up close, and if that ain’t the grandaddy of all fish stories, I don’t know what is. You go down a whale’s gullet, you’re gonna last about long enough to think, “Damn, I’m in a whale’s gullet,” and that’ll be it for you, pal. But this time, I don’t know, it made more sense to me. Like the light meant more than it was just a light. Something. I wasn’t sure what but it seemed like that light stood in for everything he ever wanted, everything he ever dreamed about when he was hustling the streets for the mooch to buy his way into “society”. I know about that dream, we all have it when we’re young, and the poorer you are the bigger that dream gets.

The whole blog is like that, a mix of intentional–and unintentional–jokes and the first stirrings of legitimate thought.

The Mermaid Tavern: Benchley Re-Born?

‘indiejade’ of The Mermaid Tavern (Born Feb ‘04) is helping to redefine the blog by exploring its creative possibilities. Forsaking the standard socio-politico-cultural-personal rant/analysis format in favor of humorous or satiric monologues and set-pieces on the vagaries and anomalies of everyday existence, she uses her own life as a launching pad for exploring all the stuff we only notice when it drives us nuts. In the process, she dedicates herself to providing potential solutions to problems or answers to complex and difficult questions like ‘What’s the deal with shampoo?’ Asked by a supposed reader, ‘Do you believe the “repeat” part of the directions is a ploy by the shampoo companies to sell more shampoo?’, she answers:

Congratulations on bursting the bubble. You have inadvertently destroyed $1.4 trillion dollars worth of potential profit for the shampoo companies with your discovery. And now it is time for the truth to come out.The first part of the truth is that the shampoo companies are actually fronts for the National Committee of Librarians against Harry Potter.

The National Committee of Librarians against Harry Potter believes that there is a direct linkage between the number of bottles of shampoo sold and the amount of sorcery that occurs at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This linkage has actually been prove[n] in a complex algorithm that nearly shut down the Internet and mysteriously caused the pine tree needles of the world to stand on end. The algorithm has since disappeared.

The second part of the truth is that the shampoo companies have been deceiving consumers for years. Most people do not know that shampoo is simply a by-product of a chemical called “air” that has the amazing ability to purge itself of toxicity.

Or trying to explain one of THOSE days:

*the sky turns dark and thunder crashes*Do you know what I mean? THOSE days are days that you wish you hadn’t gotten out of bed. THOSE days are days when absolutely nothing goes your way. In the morning, you burn your bagel, pour orange juice into your coffee (instead of milk), and accidentially lose your keys. Later you realize, halfway through the day, that you are wearing your shirt inside out. Your shoes keep coming untied. You cannot remember where you parked your car. The deli has run out of smoked turkey breast, when, that’s all you really feel like eating. Rush hour traffic is at a standstill (ironic that they call it “rush hour” while everyone is stuck going nowhere, eh?). Your dog has had a heyday while you were away — taking every single pair of underpants you own and decorating the living room.

So yeah, it’s been one of THOSE days.

Or commenting on a recent scorpion outbreak in Seattle:

Recently in Seattle (motto: “You smell like a two-day fish”), residents reported an outbreak of scorpions. Perhaps you think there are no scorpions in Seattle. Perhaps you are an idiot.As the French say, au contraire (literally: “Yo momma’s so fat that when she stands on the scale, it says: TO BE CONTINUED!”). I have here on my desk a copy of an Associated Press article sent in by alert reader Ziggy, whose name can be rearranged to spell “ZYIGG”, although that is not my main point. “Ziggy”, by the way, only has the letters “iy” in in common with “Monica Lewinsky,” so there is no other reason to mention Monica Lewinsky in this article.

But her glory is showcased in a 2-part piece titled ‘The Hangover Monster’. It’s a hilarious send-up not just of hangovers and what they feel like, but of why we tell ourselves we do them: ‘Somebody made me.’ The evening starts out reasonably enough–

It was to be a simple gathering with friends . . . well, okay, I lie. It was to be a simple gathering of burned-out college students who may or may not know each other, all gathered in the name of social drinking. The simple gathering of college students milled about, chatting “small talk” while the water cooler bubbled moodily in the background #. The vibrant notes of Erasure pulsed out of the speakers.The philosofairy was proud of herself, for a moment, as she surveyed the scene. She’d actually dragged herself away from the house and attended . . . dum da dum . . . a Social Gathering!

(Please hold the applause)

–but with the arival of ‘Beatrice’ (‘names have been changed to protect identities, affiliates and potential lawsuits’), things start to slide downhill. Mud-slide, actually.

“Yeah,” says Beatrice*, finishing her drink. (Imagine ravenous gulps of alcoholic beverage consumption followed by insane laughter and punctuated by the slam of an empty glass on the counter) “I’ve just been workin’. Goin’ to school. . . .. Girl, you look great! Hey, you need a drink? You look like you need a drink.”"I don’t really –”

But by then it’s too late. The philosofairy has a coconut mudslide in her hand.

---

Fast forward one hour, and the philosofairy is suddenly taking generous shots of tequila, sipping (something) and drinking some more of (something) which is 49.2 percent alcohol, but, for legal purposes, has been spiked with (something) that contains 110 percent alcohol.

In Part II, the predictable results of this behaviour are described with ruthless precision:

Sunday: 10:20 a.m.When she finally has the courage to open her eyes, the philosofairy realizes that the scientists have been right all along. There really are things called “molecules” and “sound waves” swimming in the air around people. Trillions and trillions of molecules and sound waves. The philosofairy knows this because she can feel every individual molecule and sound wave assaulting her poor, bedraggled body. If she closes her eyes and concentrates very carefully, she can feel every molecule and sound wave bounce off her body at speeds of perhaps three hundred thousand miles per hour. She is especially aware of the sensation on her left foot because her left foot has somehow become sockless in the course of the night. She is also aware of the sensation acutely in temples.

It’s a molecular homicide, of sorts, wherein the molecules of the earth have, sometime during the night, conspired with the sound wave of the earth to create a cacophonous symphony of discord. The philosofairy winces when the symphony reaches its crescendo. All she can do is utter a groan which, when she thinks about it, sounds something like a water buffalo giving birth.

And which of us hasn’t been there?

The Mermaid Tavern is Robert Benchley translated for a modern audience, and the good news is: when she’s on her game, indiejade writes every bit as well as Benchley, sometimes better. But even when she’s off, she’s still one of the funniest and most human reads on the net. If she’s not as flat-out funny as Fafblog!, that’s because it’s a deeper kind of funny, the kind of rueful, ‘O jeez, I did that?’ funny that comes with recognition and self-awareness of your own foibles, flaws and weaknesses. You know the ones: those little ones you think nobody notices. indiejade knows all about them and is exposing them for all of us, god bless her.

So read and enjoy. Pretend she’s not talking about you if you have to, but understand this: we know who she’s talking about….

Literary Blogs & LumpenBlog Review

A new wave of bloggers is starting to turn the blog into an art form of its own. What was once reserved for political and social commentary, personal diaries, and self-indulgent rants has begun to attract people with real talent who are using the blog as a creative device.

The first of these I noticed (and still, to my mind, the best of them) was indiejade’s The Mermaid Tavern. What attracted me about it, besides the fact that it was hysterically funny, was that indiejade had taken the personal blog to a different level by inventing a character of sorts–’the philosofairy’–and translating the small observations and events of–presumably–her life into Benchley-esque stories that reached out to connect indiejade’s everyday reality to everybody’s everyday reality. I’d never read anything quite like it and it opened my mind to new possibilities for the way blogs could be used.

Shortly after that I ran into Dan Roentsch’s Lumpen Blog, a much more straightforward, almost old style fictive invention shoe-horned into a blog format. Dan took the concept of the group blog and created a cast of characters for his bloggers: there are three of them and they all work as professors at the entirely (one hopes) imaginary Belverton University as well as being the editorial staff of the university publishing house, the BelvU Press.

LumpenBlog may be the earliest example of this fictive use of the blog format–he started his in January ‘03 and I haven’t been able to find one older–and thus Roentsch its inventor–but he’s no longer the only one. LumpenBlog seems to have spawned a few spin-offs. Or maybe there was something in the air and everybody got similar ideas at the same time.

However it happened, something brand new has been added to blogging–a whole genre devoted to what I must call (“I must! I must!” [Cleavon Little, Blazing Saddles]) blog-fiction, or, more pretentiously, the literary blog. This site will be devoted to finding, reviewing, and spreading the word on this new literary field. We’re going to start gathering a collection of these lit-blogs in one convenient place especially for fans of fiction and good wrting. If we find good journal sites which are non-fiction but well-written and we think would be interesting to a wider audience than the blogger’s immediate friends and family, we’ll include those, too. We may even re-print a particularly well-written essay from a political or cultural blog from time-to-time.

In other words, the emphasis here is on good writing.