dashlarkin

[dashlarkin]

Some kind of return

I don’t think I have any followers here. If I do, I’m sure they long ago forgot about old Dash. 

Here’s what I’m not going to do:

1. I’m not going to try to be funny just to be funny. 

2. I hate how everyone strives to be extra funny and witty and whatever the fuck else you can think of, as long as it falls under the category of funny.

More than a decade ago I started writing on a blog of mine. No one was listening. It made me feel bad but then I got followers and then I got some attention and then it went to shit. You wouldn’t believe all the buttfuckery that followed. 

The sum of that buttfuckery was that sometimes communities can lightning bolt your ass into a dark cosmos that is the exact opposite of what you thought was good and wholesome as Iowa corn.

It occurs to me that I’m Vaguebooking. Apologies, but I’m not going to talk specifics. In fact, I’m going to stop talking about this entirely now. We’ll be moving right along.

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If this specimen had been any more interesting, interesting would need to be redefined, like in a Webster way. 

Joey Ramone

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Ah What Kind of Horseshit is This? It’s the Regular Horseshit.

Ah yeah submissions. You send out a little story or poem you know is tight. I mean you’ve been writing for more than twenty years, so you know when something’s tight. It’s not really a matter of opinion, let’s be honest. It’s a matter of taste, maybe. But not opinion. So it’s tight. You send it out to several online journals. Because online journals are better than The New Yorker, who takes five-hundred and eighty-three days to send you your form rejection. You send it because of this. Because online journals aren’t like that. They are populated by fierce volunteers who do what they’re doing because they really want to be doing it. They read submissions late into the night and try to write something personal when they can.

No, that’s so ten years ago.

Lee Klein editors of online journals are not anymore. Not Lee by a stretch. Not the guy who wrote pages-long responses to pieces he was rejecting, talking with the author who wanted to be published in Eyeshot for as long as he could about why, exactly why, they were not going to be published in Eyeshot.

No, that’s not happening anymore.

It just ain’t folks. Nowadays the only way you’re going to hear back in a decent amount of time with occasional, personal touches is if you send to the new new new online journals. The ones that have been up and going about two months. These are the indie journals now. And that’s great. But there are still some who are confused and sending to the really solidly established online journals and waiting eighteen-hundred and fifty-three days to hear back in the most generic form letter to learn of their rejection. Oh, and at least the New Yorker pays thousands of dollars to the six or seven writers they do accept. So there’s that at least. If you happen to get into the big name online journal of your dreams, there’s not going to be a single penny going in your bank account. You will be rewarded with exposure. Indie writers need exposure like they need big, gaping holes in the tops of their heads. And indie writer is always going to be indie. She is not going to get that call from an agent or have her stories solicited by Crazyhorse. That’s what being indie is.

Let me be clear, being indie means staying indie. It means knowing and owning and being okay with never seeing a story in Tin House. It means never so much as being in a room with a literary agent. It means being INDEPENDENT of that shit.

So why complain? Well, there is the little thing about why in the hell it should take eight months to read and respond to the submissions in your inbox. Do you not like reading stories and poems, editors? Do you procrastinate high-school style or something? Do you simply expect writers to continue having the patience of Job for the rest of their lives? Well, you really shouldn’t. Because there are other places to send stories and poems that are real indie online journals, journals that are not trying to be The New Yorker in a digital tiny pond give or take a few oceans. Here are some journals dying to see your work, folks, and you won’t see two birthdays come and go while you’re waiting to hear back. Oh, and they’re edgy and indie and fast and loose and risky. Remember all those great things? Yeah, they’re those things. Here they are:

Fluland

Vending Machine Press

The Cabal

Occulum

RASPUTIN

gobbet

I’m too lazy to put links in for these so, you know, just Google them and go to the website and all that shit. There’s a few others I’m not thinking of right off hand, but these are a good start. Reality Beach is another. And Chris James at Jellyfish Review is a good guy. Publishes good stuff.

Also, I didn’t proofread any of this so the mistakes are owned and not cared about, so you know. It’s a Tumblr not, you guessed it, The New Yorker.

Also, I don’t have a witty or interesting closing paragraph.

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A Lot Of People Are Going To Think I’m Drinking Again. I Am Not. I Am Just On A Permanent Bad Trip

Used to be when I got on some kind of social media, AKA The Fucking Devil Tech, and sort of starting saying what was on my mind, I was drunk. I’ve been funny drunk, violent drunk, stupid drunk, mad drunk, vicious drunk, brutal drunk. I’ve been all the drunks. And I’ve been all of them on The Fucking Devil Tech at one time or another. That’s not the case today. I’m just on a permanent bad trip. I’m sober as a judge in every way and on a really bad trip. The trip of life. When it’s all said and done and I’m dead, if it’s not all total darkness and the nothingness of dreamless sleep (which I really really suspect it is) then I’ll only have one question to the great giant alien turtles who rule the afterlife. I’ll say this to them…I’ll say this right here. I’ll say, “You made it too hard.”

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(726)

And don’t forget it.

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RK: One of the criticisms that I’ve seen on Twitter is that you’re just holding up examples of “bad” poetry by well-known poets (well-known at least in the Indie Poetry Community–Schomburg, Laskey, Limon, Abramson, etc)– ie, you say stuff’s bad but you don’t say why. you don’t offer any real thought or critique. how about, then, taking one of the examples you’ve posted and breaking its “badness” down for us ???

WNP: Well, the short and simple answer to the “no critique” approach that we’ve taken is that Twitter doesn’t allow for much wiggle room. We often find ourselves struggling to fit the quoted poem excerpt with a link (or the name of the poet/journal) in 140 characters. And considering that this was a spontaneous venture, we haven’t yet looked into moving the format to a website platform, though that is an option.

The reason why we tend to poke at “established” writers is because they have more than likely accomplished some very special things, whether that means publishing a (or many) high-quality book(s), attending/graduating from prestigious writing programs, publishing in impressive journals/magazines, etc. And we believe, in the instances we’re pointing out, that they are not working to their full potential, which we think is unfortunate. Also, we think they can probably take a punch from some anonymous Twitter profile. Their careers will not suffer because we took a screenshot of their latest poem in X journal.

READ MORE

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Circa.

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One word after another word in perfect order. All the rest - popularity, prestige, success, influence, belonging - should mean less than nothing to the true poet.

My reminder at the beginning of each writing session

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Here's a review of my friend's book by my other friend at this really cool online journal edited by our mutual friend who is a contributor with all my other friends at my best friend's online culture community lit mag.

A friend whose debut novel is now out from FSG

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You’re goddamn ocean food son

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The Collapsar is my goddamn jam.

People in The Collapsar fan club

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Let’s play a game. How many of you want to see my creative spices? My witchcraft? My mojo? My everything? How many of you who might come across this would like to see my light show?