#interview with poetry editor

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

The situation in Lebanon today is bleak. Carved out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire and subjected to years of colonialism-lite administration by France, its economy and infrastructure have been devastated by a long civil war, overlapping occupations by Syria and Israel, and corruption on a massive scale. Since 2019, Lebanon has been in the midst of a severe financial crisis, with widespread unemployment and hyperinflation. Now 80% of the population is poor and Lebanon is on the brink of becoming a failed state.

And yet, JD Harlock, Poetry Editor at Solarpunk Magazine, who lives in Beirut, believes in solarpunk. Join us for this episode to find out how that can be and what day to day life is like in Beirut right now.

You can find JD on X and Instagram at @JD_Harlock.

[rigberts]

i had an idea for such a cliche Hallmark like gentan au but it haunts me

[queerism1969]

Notable transgender people from history

Here's the list I put together for when people on non-trans subreddits claim we didn't exist until recently:

Ashurbanipal (669-631BCE) - King of the Neo-Assryian empire, who according to Diodorus Siculus is reported to have dressed, behaved, and socialized as a woman.

Elagabalus (204-222) - Roman Emperor who preferred to be called a lady and not a lord, presented as a woman, called herself her lover's queen and wife, and offered vast sums of money to any doctor able to make her anatomically female.

Kalonymus ben Kalonymus (1286-1328) - French Jewish philosopher who wrote poetry about longing to be a woman.

Eleanor Rykener (14th century) - trans woman in London who was questioned under charges of sex work

[Thomas(ine) Hall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas(ine)_Hall) - (1603-unknown) - English servant in colonial Virginia who alternated between presenting as a woman and presenting as a man, before a court ruled that they were both a man and a woman simultaneously, and were required to wear both men's and women's clothing simultaneously.

Chevalier d'Eon (1728-1810) - French diplomat, spy, freemason, and soldier who fought in the Seven Years' War, who transitioned at the age of 49 and lived the remaining 33 years of her life as a woman.

Public Universal Friend (1752-1819) - Quaker religious leader in revolutionary era America who identified and lived as androgynous and genderless.

Surgeon James Barry (1789-1865) - Trans man and military surgeon in the British army.

Berel - a Jewish trans man who transitioned in a shtetel in Ukraine in the 1800's, and whose story was shared with the Jewish Daily Forward in a 1930 letter to the editor by Yeshaye Kotofsky, a Jewish immigrant in Brooklyn who knew Berel

Mary Jones (1803-unknown) - trans woman in New York whose 1836 trial for stealing a man's wallet received much public attention

Albert Cashier (1843-1915) - Trans man who served in the US Civil War.

Harry Allen (1882-1922) - Trans man who was the subject of sensationalistic newspaper coverage for his string of petty crimes.

Lucy Hicks Anderson (1886–1954) - socialite, chef and hostess in Oxnard California, whose family and doctors supported her transition at a young age.

Lili Elbe (1882-1931) - Trans woman who underwent surgery in 1930 with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who ran one of the first dedicated medical facilities for trans patients.

Karl M. Baer (1885-1956) - Trans man who underwent reconstructive surgery (the details of which are not known) in 1906, and was legally recognized as male in Germany in 1907.

Dr. Alan Hart (1890-1962) - Groundbreaking radiologist who pioneered the use of x-ray photography in tuberculosis detection, and in 1917 he became one of the first trans men to undergo hysterectomy and gonadectomy in the US.

[Louise Lawrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Lawrence_(activist)) (1912–1976) - trans activist, artist, writer and lecturer, who transitioned in the early 1940's. She struck up a correspondence with the groundbreaking sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey as he worked to understand sex and gender in a more expansive way. She wrote up life histories of her acquaintances for Kinsey, encouraged peers to do interviews with him, and sent him a collection of newspaper clippings, photographs, personal correspondences, etc.

Dr. Michael Dillon (1915-1962) - British physician who updated his birth certificate to Male in the early 1940's, and in 1946 became the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty.

Reed Erickson (1917-1992) - trans man whose philanthropic work contributed millions of dollars to the early LGBTQ rights movement

Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax (1916-1992) - early 20th century gospel quartet singer.

Peter Alexander (unknown, interview 1937) - trans man from New Zealand, discusses his transition in this interview from 1937

Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989) - The first widely known trans woman in the US in 1952, after her surgery attracted media attention.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (1940-present) - Feminist, trans rights and gay rights activist who came out and started transition in the late 1950's. She was at Stonewall, was injured and taken into custody, and had her jaw broken by police while in custody. She was the first Executive Director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, which works to end human rights abuses against trans/intersex/GNC people in the prison system.

Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer and community worker in NYC; co-founded STAR, a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women

Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer; co-founded STAR with Sylvia Rivera

[gatheringbones]

[“Once, Joan took up the microphone for a solo performance that fills up an entire B side. She was sick. Her head hurt too much to write. Doctors couldn’t diagnose her. She worried she was coming to the end of her life and wanted to leave a final message. “I want to tell tales of a lesbian life,” she says, her voice high and self-conscious where Mabel’s is deep and restless. “I want to talk about the wonderful women I’ve known, and I want to talk about what it’s meant to be a lesbian and how it was at the core of all I think that was best in me.”

When Joan sat down to record this tape, she had already begun to collect tales of the wonderful women and lesbians she had known. In 1974, she cofounded the Lesbian Herstory Archives with Mabel Hampton and two other women dedicated to preserving lesbian culture before it disappeared. A year later, the budding collection of letters, magazines, cassettes, photographs, and books took up residence at Joan’s Upper West Side apartment, where it would continue to grow for the next fifteen years, until the organization raised enough money to purchase a permanent home, a brownstone in Park Slope. Mabel was a fixture at the archives, regaling volunteers with stories of the Harlem Renaissance as they opened the mail.

Joan lived. She went on to record dozens more interviews with Mabel for the archive. Their relationship marked a fundamental shift in how lesbian history was set down and passed along. Until Joan and Mabel, the amateur sexologists who edited Mary Casal’s memoir, the police who arrested women in male garb and the courts who put them on trial, and the newspaper editors who reduced their stories to lurid headlines filtered lesbian stories through the gaze of authority.

Sheer accident preserved much of what we know, what I can know, about the lesbians who lived at the turn of the century. Their personal letters and pages of poetry left a record so riddled with holes it leaves room to either imagine lesbian stories or discount them entirely. “]

amelia possanza, from lesbian love story: a memoir in archives, 2023

[fiercynn]

palestinian poets: tariq luthun

tariq luthun is a detroit-born, dearborn-raised community organizer, data consultant, and emmy award-winning poet. the son of palestinian muslim immigrants from gaza, he is a kresge arts in detroit fellow that earned his MFA from the program for writers at warren wilson college. he has been recognized as a best of the net poet and has earned fellowships from kundiman, the watering hole, and the kresge foundation. his work has appeared in vinyl poetry, lit hub, mizna, winter tangerine, and button poetry, among others. luthun currently serves as a board member of the offing literary magazine. his first collection of poetry, How the Water Holds Me, was published by bull city press in 2020. the press named the book an editors' selection.

luthun spends most of his time hosting events, working with youth, and facilitating marginalized communities for growth through expression and action. he is a deep dish pizza evangelist, and can best be described as the end-result of a less problematic drake falsetto-rapping edward said's orientalism.

luthun was also recently interviewed by national public radio about the current escalation in genocidal violence by israel against palestine. as of ten days ago, his family in gaza was all okay.

IF YOU READ JUST ONE POEM BY TARIQ LUTHUN, MAKE IT THIS ONE

OTHER POEMS ONLINE THAT I LOVE BY TARIQ LUTHUN

We Already Know This at literary hub

Al-Bahr at tariq's website

Portrait of My Father Drowning, originally published at crab orchard review

Fruit at up the staircase

Dance at winter tangerine

The Summer My Cousin Went Missing (read aloud) at tariq's website

Whisp at the offing

Mismarked (live performance) recorded by button poetry

Museums at voicemail poems

New Rule at the offing

[u-mspcoll]

Finding Aid Friday: Jim Cohn Papers

Notebook of “Purple Mountain” in Sli Chorea Dhuibhne (The Dingle Way), 1999.  Jim Cohn Papers, Box 15, folder 3. University of Michigan Library, Special Collections Research Center. 

On this #FindingAidFriday, we are highlighting the recently processed papers of Jim Cohn, poet, writer, recording artist, editor, publisher, and curator of the online Museum of American Poetics. The Jim Cohn Papers (1953-2019) were donated in 2019 and encompass approximately fifteen linear feet of material documenting Cohn’s work across his several vocations through correspondence, research files and drafts, interviews by and of Cohn, published essays and poetry, journals, photographs, and audiovisual materials.

Read more!

[natjennie]

no shut up bc there are so many beautiful lines in iwtv, the poetry Louis and Lestat speak to each other, the unnerving comedic naive bluntness of Claudia's diaries, but one of my ABSOLUTE favorites is when Louis is reading from Daniel's other book, something like "I'm watching my daughter in her car seat through the rearview window of my Buick. my editor reminds me it's seven years until car seats are mandatory. my ex-wife reminds me I've never owned a Buick." I LOVE the simplicity of that and how immediately it conveys everything necessary about the conceit of the interviews at all. an odyssey of recollection. my editor reminds me it's seven years until car seats are mandatory. my ex-wife reminds me I never owned a Buick. do you get it.

[justforbooks]

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to 64-year-old Norwegian author Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”. His works include the Septology series of novels, Aliss at the Fire, Melancholy and A Shining.

“His huge oeuvre, spanning a variety of genres, comprises about 40 plays and a wealth of novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee for literature. “Fosse blends a rootedness in the language and nature of his Norwegian background with artistic techniques in the wake of modernism.”

“I am overwhelmed, and somewhat frightened. I see this as an award to the literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations,” Fosse said in a statement.

He also told the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that he was “surprised but also not” to have won. “I’ve been part of the discussion for 10 years and have more and less tentatively prepared myself that this could happen,” he said.

Jacques Testard, Fosse’s fiction publisher, said on hearing the news: “He is an exceptional writer, who has managed to find a totally unique way of writing fiction. As his Norwegian editor Cecilie Seiness put it recently in an interview: if you open any book by Jon and read a couple of lines, it couldn’t be written by anyone else.

“His fiction is incantatory, mystical, and rooted in the landscape of the western fjords where he grew up,” Testard added. “It’s very important to remember that he writes in Nynorsk or New Norwegian, a minority language in Norway, a political act in itself. He’s also an exceptional playwright and poet. He’s an incredible mind, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.”

The Norwegian writer’s English translator Damion Searls said he is thrilled Fosse’s work will now find an even wider audience. “I first brought Fosse’s fiction into English almost 20 years ago. I read Melancholy in German and immediately felt that the work was brilliant and needed to be translated. I found an American publisher and a co-translator, and started learning Norwegian”, he told the Guardian. “I have since translated around 10 books of his, depending on how you count them, including a libretto, a play and a forthcoming children’s book.”

Though the author and translator mostly communicate via email and hadn’t met in person until the 2022 International Booker prize events in London, Searls considers Fosse a friend. “He is the same kind, wise, modest, friendly, supportive person over email as you would expect from his novels, and corresponding with him has always brought me the same kind of peace and serenity his novels so magically impart.”

Born in 1959 in Haugesund on the west coast of Norway, Fosse grew up in Strandebarm. Aged seven, he nearly died in an accident, which he said was “the most important experience” of his childhood and one that “created” him as an artist. In his adolescence, he aspired to be a rock guitarist, before turning his ambitions to writing.

His debut novel, Raudt, svart (Red, Black), was published in 1983. His first play to be performed, Og aldri skal vi skiljast (And Never Shall We Part), was staged at the National Theater in Bergen in 1994. Yet, the first play he wrote, Nokon kjem til å komme (Someone Is Going to Come), would lead to his breakthrough in 1999 when French director Claude Régy staged it in Nanterre.

Fosse went on to become the most-performed Norwegian playwright after Henrik Ibsen. He has written more than 30 plays, including Namnet (The Name), Vinter (Winter) and Ein sommars dag (A Summer’s Day). His longer works include the Septology trilogy, the third volume of which was shortlisted for the international Booker prize in 2022.

Septology, which Fosse started during a pause from playwriting and after converting to Catholicism in 2013, is about an ageing painter, Asle, living alone on the south-west coast of Norway and reflecting on his life. There in Bjørgvin lives another Asle, who is also a painter but struggles with alcohol. The doppelgangers are consumed by the same existential questions about death, faith and love.

In 1989, the same year that Fosse’s novel Naustet (“Boathouse”) came out, the writer taught the fellow Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård, who was a student at the Academy of Writing in Hordaland. “Fosse’s voice is unmistakable in whatever he writes, and is never anything if not present,” wrote Knausgård in 2019.

Fosse’s UK publisher is Fitzcarraldo Editions, which also publishes Annie Ernaux, the winner of the 2022 Nobel prize in literature. Fosse’s win marks the London-based independent publisher’s third win in five years: Olga Tokarczuk was made laureate in 2018. The prize was postponed and awarded in 2019 instead due to a sexual assault scandal involving the husband of one of the academy’s former members which led to several members resigning.

Fosse resides between Austria and Norway. He will receive the prize at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December. He will receive 11m SEK (£821,209), up from 10m SEK awarded last year.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[eleonkraken]

Sprizzy Rec List

Here, take this rec list dedicated to my current favorite brain squatters. For such a small pairing there's a crazy amount of really good fic to read.

This list mainly includes 10k+ fics but there are a couple 5k+ ones in there as well. All of them are complete unless I say otherwise.

I could have included a lot more but I've already been working on this list for too long and I want to post it for you guys.

Please mind tags and warnings before you read.

Canon Era

Comprehension by MaggieMay His stance hasn't changed - he'd still sooner keelhaul his own bollocks than do Izzy Hands a favour, but an idea is already taking shape in his head - one that he's certain will have absolutely hilarious consequences in either direction, and for all it might get his throat slit, the odds still work out in favour of, for want of a better phrase, fuckery. If Izzy wants to read, Lucius can teach him.

OR: Lucius' personal approach to 'fuckery' involves lewd gay poetry, and one oblivious and feral first mate.

I'm (Not) Just a Notch in Your Bedpost, You're (Not) Just a Line in a Song by Ennaess It starts with a hand on a sleeve. None of the other crewmembers would have minded--would have thought much of the gesture at all--but no one touches Izzy. Lucius, quite accidently, realizes he would very, very, very much like to touch Izzy. Intimately.

Head and heart on fire by RustyTheTrain Everyone is back together on the Revenge, and things are fine. Until Lucius helps patch up Izzy after he gets hurt on a raid, and then can't stop thinking about him without his shirt on. It is quite annoying. And inconvenient. The last thing Lucius needs is a crush on the angry, asshole first mate Israel Hands.

by any other name by sugarybowl & wishingonalightningbolt Once upon a time, Izzy Hands had a steamy weekend with a pirate called Francis Spriggs. A few years later, he boards the Revenge and meets Spriggs' younger brother, Lucius.

Portrait of a Man on Ire by sweatervest “Yes. To sketching,” Izzy growls. “But on one condition.”Lucius lifts an eyebrow. “And what would that be?”“I sketch you.”

Modern AU

beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth by sugarybowl & wishingonalightningbolt Ed, Izzy, Fang, and Ivan make up the London-based rock band Kraken, which rocketed to fame in the 1990s. When ballad singer Stede Bonnet reaches out about a collaboration, Izzy has to work with Bonnet's songwriter, an overeager composer named Lucius, to write something that aging rockstar Ed and new-on-the-scene Stede can perform together. What's worse is that Lucius is utterly obsessed with a mysterious songwriter called Basilica, a faceless, genderless musician—and he has no idea that Izzy and Basilica are the same person.

and a silver sixpence in his shoe by CyborgShepard Izzy likes lines, likes rules. Likes to know where things start and where they finish, definite and resolved. But where the fuck does getting off to Luce begin, and how does sitting on the bridal table at Ed’s wedding with Lucius end?

Or: The one where Izzy is Ed's best man, Stede wants the most lavish wedding possible, and the person in charge of planning it is the camboy Izzy's been subscribed to for the better part of a year.

under the ashes, i'm on fire by izzyxhands Izzy's having a miserable night at Bonnet's stupid party playing nanny for Ed. Until, that is, Lucius finds him on the balcony and introduces himself. Trans!Izzy modern au.

Work in Progress by sweatervest After a disastrous interview, crime novelist Israel Hands abruptly retired, leaving his popular Detective Leyendecker series one book short of finished. For the last 10 years, he's been content to work as an editor at Edward Teach's small press. But now Ed's working on a merger with Stede Bonnet's press, and Izzy's expected to work with their star author: romance novelist L. Steele.

L. Steele turns out to be Lucius Spriggs, twenty years younger than Izzy and flirts like it's breathing. Worst of all, Lucius recognizes Izzy as Israel Hands.

Money Can(t) Buy Happiness by Blackforestfire [series] Sugar Daddy alternate universe. Lucius and Izzy have an arrangement with strict, specific rules to follow. Each installment in the series shows them drifting farther and farther away from the safety of those rules as feelings and personal growth change their dynamic.

take this sinking boat and point it home by sugarybowl & wishingonalightningbolt [part of series, you can read the Stede/Ed work for context but it's not totally necessary] Izzy supposes he gets used to having the assistant around. That doesn’t mean Izzy likes him. He’s rude, for one thing, completely fucking bitchy. He talks back, rolls his eyes, treats Izzy—treats him the way he treats authority. Dismissively, without a care in the world, as if he could take it or leave it. The most fucking annoying thing about the stupid fucking assistant is his stupid fucking dating life.

The Indignity of a Tender Touch by CloudsPassMeBy Izzy has been doing ballet for so long and he will never, never shit where he eats but he likes Lucius so fucking much.

if love is the answer (you hold on) by CloudsPassMeBy [F/F cisswap] Izzy is dragged kicking and screaming out of retirement to become Lucius’s partner. They may not be able to enter the Olympics as a same sex couple but they’re going to do their fucking best to win Worlds.

Edge of Heaven by RustyTheTrain The job wasn’t supposed to a forever kind of job, more of a until he got his shit together job. Something to keep him going and earn him a paycheck while he worked on his portfolio, freelanced, applied for internships, did what he had to get a foot through the door to the design and illustration world. So far, he hadn’t actually gotten anywhere with his plans, but he now worked five nights a week at the Revenge instead of three, lived in a shitty little apartment in a crappy part of town, spent all his money on rent, books, clothes, take away food and art supplies, and didn’t save anything. He’d be turning 30 that year and figured there was still time to change things. If he wanted to.

lucius Artpopping his pussy for izzy by CyborgShepard [series] [I can't believe I'm having to rec this title] Izzy's always glaring, always coming in here every couple of weeks to sit and brood. He doesn’t even tip, just takes up a table in the back and pretends like he’s not positively vibrating with awkward sexual frustration as he watches Lucius’ shows. And it is always Lucius’ shows he comes to watch. It’d be flattering, Lucius thinks, if Izzy wasn’t so fucking weird about it all.

in the middle of fucking nowhere by bitchlesss Lucius gets stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere with his annoying coworker. Izzy thinks about the past. Until he's too busy to do so.

Special mention

Leda House and the Kraken 'Verse by Vera_DragonMuse [series - different works in the series have different pairings, it's best to read from the beginning but there are several works that focus on Sprizzy] A modern AU that follows the entire staff of the drag bar named Revenge as well as their partners. Features drag shows, late in life coming out stories, romance in many forms, and as much found family as you could ask for.

[aaknopf]

Today, former New Yorker poetry editor and Elizabeth Bishop scholar Alice Quinn (also the editor of our 2020 anthology of pandemic poetry) offers her pick from the Knopf backlist: a poem by Marie Ponsot (1919-2019). Alice writes: “Elements of Ponsot’s classic style–her purity of diction, her fierce and tender feeling–are abundantly on view in this poem evoking her mother, her childhood, and the journey of her spirit. A word in the poem is key, too, in an interview she gave describing the artistic discipline she established in her life of immense parental responsibility, raising seven children on her own after divorce, years in which she also taught at Queens College: ‘I wrote ten minutes a day. I did it as if it were Commandment No. 1. . . . Anyone can write a line of poetry. Try. That’s my word: try.’ ”

As Is

Objects new to this place, I receive you. It was I who sent for each of you. The house of my mother is empty. I have emptied it of all her things. The house of my mother is sold with All its trees and their usual tall music. I have sold it to the stranger, The architect with three young children.

Things of the house of my mother, You are many. My house is Poor compared to yours and hers. My poor house welcomes you. Come to rest here. Be at home. Please Do not be frantic do not Fly whistling up out of your places. You, floor- and wall-coverings, be Faithful in flatness; lie still; Try. By light or by dark There is no going back. You, crystal bowls, electrical appliances, Velvet chair and walnut chair, You know your uses; I wish you well. My mother instructed me in your behalf. I have made room for you. Most of you Knew me as a child; you can tell We need not be afraid of each other.

And you, old hopes of the house of my mother, Farewell.

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Springing and other books by Marie Ponsot.

Learn about Together In a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Panemic, edited by Alice Quinn.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[bettsfic]

Hi Beth! I’ve tried to get a couple essays/poems published in literary magazines, but it is always so painful to get rejected, and I’m wondering if it is even worth it to continue pursuing publication. Do people even read the stuff that comes out in literary magazines anymore? There are a few that I read occasionally, but honestly, it feels like a waste of time and emotional energy to read and submit to magazines that in the long term won’t really change anything for me.

Should I just keep writing and posting stuff to my own social media/blogs instead?

that's a great question! the answer depends on your goals.

if you want to get into an MFA program...

lit mag publishing is helpful but not necessary to get into a good program. moreover, part of what you'll be doing in the MFA is learning about publishing, so you'll be doing that work there anyway. the MFA is also for exploration, so if you don't really have your own aesthetic defined yet, it makes sense to wait and focus on your writing sample for your grad application.

if you want to become a creative writing professor...

hands down, if you want to be in academia, you need to be well published. submitting is more or less a part-time job. rack up those CV lines.

(for this you'll also need an MFA, so that's the first step regardless.)

if you want to get an agent and publish a book...

lit mag publications can be helpful when querying agents, and once you sign an agent, those publications will help them pitch your book to editors. it shows that you've been through a formal editorial process on a smaller scale before venturing to one on a bigger scale. in some ways, if it helps, you can see lit mag publishing as practice for book publishing.

if you want to be read...

write fanfic.

what i mean is, you're right, other than like The New Yorker and Granta and whatnot, lit mags don't tend to have a wide distribution. if you have a greater readership and more meaningful interaction on social media, then it makes sense to share your work with the audience you've already built.

however, if you get published in an online magazine, you can have the best of both worlds: it's a formal publication *and* your existing readership will have access to it. also, if you're publishing poetry, a lot of my poet friends screencap the poem from the publication and share it on social media. but i'm not a poet, so i'm not sure what exactly the etiquette there is.

if you want to make money...

hard stop, you won't make significant money publishing in lit mags. you could make significant money pitching articles to news outlets and regular magazines, though. a lot of writers make a career on that.

if you want to live the writing life...

what i mean by "the writing life" is the big picture of things. it's not about publishing, it's about everything. when you choose the writing life, you're choosing to put your writing above all other things (professionally, i mean. lots of writers have families and a social life).

the writing life is a gamut: you get an MFA, you maybe get a PhD, you teach, you publish, you edit, you apply to grants, you keep up your CV, you get some awards, you go to residencies, and so on. and once you get a book out, you get ARCs, you blurb, you mentor, you do readings, you go on book tours, you do interviews.

and if that's your goal, lit mag publishing becomes occasional but eternal. you're settled in for the long con and so you don't have to push so hard. for me anyway, i only submit when i come across a magazine i like. i spend most of my submission and rejection energy on residencies and grants.

i went to a talk by Mary Gaitskill once and someone asked her if publishing ever gets easier. she said that book publishing gets easier because you can become established and gain an audience, but lit mag publishing is always hard. she's one of the most lauded living American writers, and she said she still gets lit mag rejections.

if you've finished something you're proud of and want to find a home for it...

this is why most writers publish, i think. it's less about clout and prestige and whatever else, and more about putting your work on a shelf and being able to say, "this belongs somewhere that it can be seen and appreciated." i have a folder in my drive called "homeless stories" and it's full of pieces that i either tried to publish and gave up on, or stories that i didn't feel like sending out. i have probably 10x more original work that hasn't seen the light of day than work that has.

if you hate the idea of sitting on a story or a poem, then keep looking for a home for it.

if you want to avoid rejections...

there's no way to avoid rejections. they're inherent in any pursuit where your work has to go through a gate of approval. but i promise you, rejections are meaningless. your favorite author has received a thousand of them. a rejection means your work didn't suit the taste of the editor, and when you receive a rejection, it's helpful to remind yourself that their taste probably sucks. a rejection means your work met a slush reader who had a headache that day and wasn't reading closely enough. a rejection means a magazine got hundreds of submissions and maybe you made it to the longlist or the shortlist but you'll never know because not all mags tell you that. a rejection means that maybe one of the editors fought hard for your piece and lost.

handling rejection gets easier as you accumulate acceptances. every acceptance you get means some editor somewhere read your piece and vibed with it, and values the work you're doing.

in short:

stop submitting if you feel like you're not ready to publish, or

keep submitting if you're ready to and you're in it for the long con

and in closing, i'll tell you what every professor and mentor i've ever had has told me (and which i hated to hear): publishing will always be there for you. there's no hurry.

[dk-thrive]

That's what interests me in poetry. That withholding, that white space, the pressure.

Maybe twice in my life, if I were lucky, have I wept from a poem. Get me near music and I can be bent into tears. It holds my heart and manipulates me more than poetry. Language itself, though, is at the top. Real speech: what people say and what’s withheld from being said is of the essence to me. In real speech, that which is withheld hurts. On the page, that which is withheld is the most pure form of speech. 

That’s what interests me in poetry. That withholding, that white space, the pressure, and my long-term faith in violent concision, is still with me. When I feel most powerful, as a writer, is not in the art of composition. I feel I am at the mercy of the hour, the moment, or the eccentricities of my own circuitry. As an editor of my own work and others’, that is where I feel at my most powerful. I am Edward Scissorhands. For something—an image or a phrase to get to live in a poem, it has to be a big deal. Earned.

— Lucie Brock-Broido, in an interview with Ricardo Maldonado titled “Doing Wicked Things” in Guernica, November 1, 2013 (via Last Tambourine)

[herrlindemann]

Rockstyle - March 1998 - Interview with Paul

Ramstein, a German group, was in France on November 24 and 25 for only two dates in France. Rockstyle was there. For several reasons, first of all to follow this unavoidable phenomenon which, after two albums, has already sold more than two million records worldwide. Then their music, as well as the whole concept developed on disc, and on stage has a very strong meaning that has already seduced more than one editor. Ahh, the scene precisely, let's talk about it. Debauchery of sound, pyrotechnic effects, fire, flames, symbols, homo references, body worship... There was enough to ask a lot of questions, and enough to indulge in many digressions. By looking at this group, several elements put us, we believed, on the right direction. Indeed Rammstein, takes its name from a German city, Ramstein, a martyr city with a large Turkish population which was set on fire by some far-right group. Ah. Not only was it starting to get interesting, letting us go even more to our interpretations, just to make sense of it all, but it all had a smell of sulfur making the aura of the band even more mysterious. Our metaphysical wanderings (all these years of philosophy have to be for something, huh?) were going well: so, finally, Rammstein, it's just a group of bodybuilder neo-Nazi homos, as some press clippings suggested, or is there a simpler, rational, and less disturbing explanation? Meeting these people was going to be really important. Certain live photos, certain live images in addition to the concert reports and associated with what we already knew, namely the Manichean poetry and the lyricism of the texts, hinted at something else. On stage, wouldn't the fire be a tribute to the victims of the massacre? Would the group's answers to our questions quench our thirst for knowledge? Was fire for them a symbol of redemption? Was this simple religious Manichaeism between the angels and the demon hiding something more complex? What does this masochistic suffering represent for them? What about sex in all this?... So many questions to which we hoped to find the answer we were expecting, of course... But our hopes were far from being fulfilled, and our interview with Paul, one of the two guitarists, was going to reserve our batch of surprises.

Paul, you seem much more relaxed than yesterday, the concert tonight (Elysée-Montmarte) don't worry you too much for now?

Yes, everything is fine, and yet I only slept four hours... And I don't have stage fright. But I've been walking around Paris for four hours playing the tourist, maybe that's why I don't feel any pressure.

The romantic poetry of the texts gives us a clue to Rammstein's message?

Everyone must find their own answer. And when we translate these texts, we lose meaning and precision. 'Du hast' is a very good example, because there are two meanings to the phrase 'du hast mich', it means 'you own me', but also 'you hate me'. The whole song is based on this ambivalence of the verb 'haben' and its ambiguity. So when you translate this text it no longer makes sense, it no longer means anything. And generally in all our songs, we try to associate a necrophiliac, morbid side with another full of humor, fun...

The purpose of the texts is only that, to be funny, or is it hiding something else?

If what we are saying was funny, then yes, it would be funny, but we are not able to do that… I like texts that have an impact, that make people think. They even shock them. The effect is even greater with these comic effects, finally I think it would be more appropriate to speak of grating, very dark humor.

And where does the desire to make people think about these particular themes come from?

80% of the texts are composed by Till, the singer, and for the rest it is a group work, work which is largely inspired by the music... What is interesting is that everyone in the group listens to different things, one listens to blues, the other doesn't listen to music at all, one listens to pop, like Abba, the other industrial… We really have eclectic tastes. We just come together to make music, and we never worked to be a successful band, we have, that's good, great, but we never asked why it worked! We are all different and we complement each other, and our common goal is to make music together, that's all. We wanted to do that, we wanted there to be lots of pretty girls in the front row, and that's it! There are never pretty girls usually at metal concerts, maybe we wanted to fill this gap! Besides, it wouldn't make sense to do the same things as all these metal bands again, we're trying to move forward, to offer something else. The story is to try to stand out, it's for example to wear beige velvet pants when everyone is wearing blue jeans... There, it's you we're going to look at. Some will like it, some will hate it, but the important thing is that you got noticed. Besides, it's very easy to get hated! (Laughs)

In your videos, you develop a strong homage to films by Lynch or Tarantino, moreover you appear on the soundtrack of 'Lost Highway' with the title 'Rammstein', it's just a way to spread your passions, or you think this aesthetic is close to your vision of music?

As usual the record company didn't have a clear idea of the video we should do for 'Engel', so we decided to take a passage from the film with Tarantino, 'A Night in Hell' , and adapt it to our sauce. We had lots of ideas for special effects, morphing, and unfortunately not enough money so we made do with the means at hand. For the title 'Du hast' we chose to re-pump on 'Reservoir Dogs', and there the result turned out to be closer, 90%, let's say, to our original idea.

Between these videos and your show on stage, there are quite interesting parallels, and certain symbols keep coming back, Good, Evil, fire, explosions… All this gives a rather Biblical vision. When Till catches fire at the start of 'Rammstein', what does that mean? A rebirth?

Ah! I like it... But I don't really want to explain all these things... Too many people who aren't very smart don't understand what we're doing, and give us rather tendentious comments and desires, so... I think that to understand what we do you have to let go of your sensitivity and your intelligence… Let's say it's just provocation… The fact that Till uses pyrotechnic effects on stage is purely anecdotal. In fact he is very shy, and when he does not bite the guitarists he can even be rather diplomatic! Anyway, at first he mumbled in his corner, and since he doesn't play an instrument, he had trouble having an ease or a natural attitude when he wasn't singing, he even seemed rather stuck because he didn't didn't know what to do! So we had the idea of playing with fire. It is sure that at the beginning with just a lighter, the result was not terrible! (Laughs) Then we decided to develop all this visual aspect, with explosions, flamethrowers… Till has a diploma in fireworks, and he is the only one who knows and has the right to use all that. You really have to be careful because it's very dangerous, but with him, there's really nothing to worry about.

There seems to be a very Teutonic rigor in everything you do: the concerts are ruled like clockwork (sic), there is no dead time, everything seems to be written like a script of a movie. Do you still leave room for spontaneity and improvisation?

Yes, everything is straight, symmetrical, we like this rigor, but we are not the slaves of our machines, and everything is not done as for playback, we are organized, that's clear, but we let a certain room for freedom, even if, to be honest, we don't really like to let ourselves go to long stretches of improvisation on stage, we try sometimes, but we realize that it doesn't go with the music we make, quite simply...

Do you think Rammstein represents an evolution, or an emergence of a new metal?

We don't do metal. I don't really like metal, because I think it's a style that not only has never been able to renew itself, but also that is stuck in reverse. It's like a car, there are five gears, and if they used them, then they would see that it goes! Some are very good musicians, very good technicians, some even have the sound, have very good riffs. The problem is that they should only use one riff instead of seven, eight, because they play so fast that the music doesn't have time to settle. We, with a song of the genre we make seven! And it is much more efficient, like AC/DC, for example. It's more power pop than metal...

[definedbydaylight]

“Show Me Your Love”

A Matty Healy x OC Instagram AU

OC: Harper Flux Introduction⋆｡°✩

Harper Eve Flux||Writer and Artist

Harper Flux is an up and coming poetry writer who started posting small blurbs and poetry on Tumblr in high school and gained a small cult following.

She was born on April 20th 1996 in Rutland, Vermont.

She grew up loving music, books and art more than anything, alongside being an author, she’s an avid painter and a skilled pianist.

In school she participated in theatre, choir, and was an all honors student. She received multiple scholarship awards and decided to attend the University of Birmingham, in 2017 she graduated with a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing.

After living in England for 3 years she fell in love with the country and decided to plant her seed there and make it a place to call home, after spending a year back at home to save up money while she waited for her Visa approval, during this time she did multiple online interviews with publishing houses in the UK to secure a job for a future work visa, she was hired by Galley Beggar Press as a low level editor

In 2018 just a few weeks after her 22nd birthday she and her mother Heather packed up her whole life and flew to London, after spending a week with her daughter to help her settle in Harper’s mother returned to their family home in Vermont.

After 2 years of living in London she feels like she’s really made a place for herself, she lives in a small two bedroom flat with her cat; Boots.

We pick up with her here in this story! :)

FC: Luca Hollestelle!

Disclaimer:

Posts will probably be slow and not on a schedule also most of the photos I’ll be using for the AU probably won’t line up in chronological order of the real world but I’m going to ignore that cause I’m just lazy enough to not care :P

PLEASE ENJOY!!!

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Thursday, August 8

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