photo credit: Chase Jarvis
STUFF I LIKE/STUFF I DON'T
WORLD BOOK NIGHT - A REMINDER
Hey, folks, The Absolutely True Dairy of a Part-Time Indian is one of the books chosen for World Book Night. Go over to their site and sign up to give out free copies of True Diary or books by Stephen King, Octavia Butler, Tim O'Brien, and 27 others. It's way cool. Do it, do it, do it!
TAXES DANCERS
Romney doesn't evade paying taxes but, like all those other anti-tax crusaders, he evades the truth about the payment of taxes. The rich don't pay more taxes than the middle-class; they pay less. I'm a self-employed and proudly successful writer-a Native American rags-to-riches story, a Horatio Algier with more Melanin, a fuckin' patriotic stereotype-who pays twice the actual tax rate as Romney.
THE LINEMEN FOR THE COUNTY
So how do the capitalistic Republicans of Kansas feel about Big Business now that Boeing is abandoning Wichita? I would have thought they'd say something like, "The Boeing corporation is a citizen who has the full right to conduct his business wherever he likes." In any case, I'm sad for the hundreds of workers who are now out of jobs.
BROTHERS WITH BIG ARMS
I'd read that Warrior is a great movie, but I was completely surprised by exactly how great it is. It should have been as successful as Rocky. It should have been a cultural event. Yeah, it's violent, but it will make you weep with joy and loss. And it's a sports movie, yes, but it's a love story. It's about modern gladiators. As my son said: "Dad, it has beaten-up, bloody guys hugging each other and crying. It's the best movie ever."
GAME CHANGE
I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about the HBO Sarah Palin/McCain flick. I have high hopes it will be good. In the trailer, that look of terror on Woody's face as the convention crowd starts chanting, "Sarah, Sarah" is great. He's like Dr. Frankenstein.
OCCUPY THIS!
I'm thinking there is not an Occupy movement going on here. How many liberals do you think live in this country? A few dozen? Why would they live there? I'm curious about the phenomena of liberals living in decidedly conservative cities, and vice versa. I suppose it comes down to conservatives taking advantage of a liberal city's arts scene; or it's liberals taking advantage of a conservative city's outdoor life. Yep, there are Republicans who love Alternative Rock and Democrats who love skiing. Weird bastards.
TWO DECADES
When I read about academic panels like this, I feel flattered and horrified at the same time. And I laugh, too, because I think of a panel called Twenty Years of Sherman Alexie that features my wife, sons, siblings, mother, and best friends. My sons would share an essay called "Lying Down Anywhere: the Egalitarian Naps of Our Father." My wife's would be "Arguing with My Husband, One of the So-Called 'Lyric Voices of our Time.'" My mother's would be "Assimilation: Like Every Other American Male of Any Ethnicity, My Son Doesn't Call Me Enough."
SMART ASS POET
The wonderfully bitter Jim Behrle goes all Occupy on the Poetry Establishment Elite. Did you know there was such a thing as the Poetry Establishment Elite? Yes, there is. And it's also a bunch of white guys, albeit white guys who are mostly semi-liberal. "Liberal," as in Votes for Democrats; "semi," as in Pretty Much Hangs Exclusively with Other Semi-Liberal White Guys.
FEELING IRRATIONALLY FESTIVE TODAY
So I've been watching videos of various musicians covering classic Christmas songs. Here's one I enjoy for his straightforwardness:
POETRY & RACE
A very interesting essay on race and poetry by Jaswinder Bolina. It reminds me a question I used to get asked in nearly every interview: "Are you ever going to write about more that Indians?"
LANGUAGE AS INFECTION
A strange and frightening movie: Pontypool. And if you do watch it, make sure you watch and listen all through the end credits.
THE TOUGHEST MAMMAL?
Here's a surprising story.
WE NEED THE INTERNET AND PRINT MEDIA
Dorli Rainey, the elderly woman who was pepper-sprayed by the Seattle Police Department during an Occupy protest, speaks wisely and, yes, hilariously, about our current political situation. A key point: We need free Internet access and a thriving print media.
HOOPS & WRITIN'
So I'm playing in a charity basketball game at the University of Idaho on November to help establish a Native American scholarship in the MFA writing program. Here's the press release.
YES, THEY'RE JUST SOCKS, BUT THEY ARE PRETTY, PRETTY SOCKS
Just bought two pairs of Stance socks. I'm wearing a mismatched set right now and I'm feeling very happy.
BRILLIANCE
I love, love, love the conceit of this little literary magazine. So funny, so terrestrial and Internetty at the same time. And 30 words! I'm addicted to writing and reading tiny stories. So I'm all jazzed about this magazine. Let's turn it into a national project. Write this dude and tell him you'll wear the stories on your clothes.
BLOOD AND BIRDS
Hey, I've got two new poems online at poemeleon, a wonderful poetry emag. And you should really check out Kim Bridgford in the same issue. She's written a ton of sonnets, and published a few books of sonnets, that take new looks at eccentric, contemporary culture. She's great.
CLASS WAR
Through recent personal circumstances, I've been intensely made aware of how much privilege I enjoy. And while I certainly appreciate how that privilege is helping me, and am grateful for my long slog up the economic mountain, I am also reminded of how many folks do not have even a sliver of that privilege. As I read the coverage of last night's Republican Presidential debate, I am nauseated by how completely they've abandoned and vilified all middle and lower-class folks. And I'm even more nauseated to know that a majority of those middle and lower-class citizens will vote for the top Republican maniac in 2012.
ONE THOUSAND WAYS TO SAY, "SHIT."
This is a dire, dire prediction. I hope it doesn't come true. And I curse about it, privately and publicly. At my worst, I think, "I don't even want to work in a business that doesn't include real books." At my best, I think, "The same 100,000 readers who compulsively buy literary novels will give birth to around 100,000 more compulsive literary novel readers. And it's those 100,000 who, generation by generation, will continue to buy paper-and-glue books." Yeah, I'll make my books available for download, and I'll download a few myself, but I think I'll start a secret-handshake club for those for us who, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, refuse to whimper our way into that good night and will rage, rage against the dying of the light, i.e., all of the libertarian enemas who are destroying bookstores.
GENIUS
One of my very favorite poets, A.E. Stallings, has won a 2011 McArthur Genius Fellowship. Yep, a poet has just won a huge bucket of cash with no restrictions whatsoever. A temporarily upper-class poet! Hooray! Alicia Stallings is brilliant and her poems are formal and passionate and crazy-smart, and invoke more literary references and classical education than I understand, but she does it in such a plain-language, contemporary way that she ends up feeling like the greatest lit teacher I never had. In any case, congratulations to Ms. Stallings. I am doing my happy dance for her.
AN HONOR DANCE FOR ALL OF YOU
Four years after its initial publication, The True Diary of a Part-Time Indian continues to find fans. It's #2 on the NY Times list this week. After 4 years, it's still going crazy. Thank you, dear readers, thank you.
TO VOUCHER OR NOT TO VOUCHER
I fled my terrible reservation school for a far better one off the rez. Yeah, it was sort of voucher-like. So when I think about school vouchers, and all of the negative implications, I also think of how well it worked out for me. And, now, as the country turns increasingly libertarian, and already-collapsing public schools are turning into anti-matter, I'm afraid of what's going to happen. Well, we all know what's going to happen: rich get richer; poor get poorer. And the poor will get desperate. And they will be punished. And remember: you support libertarianism when you buy from libertarian retailers. I wonder how many of those Wall Street demonstrators have flourishing Amazon.com accounts?
EVOLUTION
I used to play ball like Robby Benson but now my game is more like the other dude:
YES, THE ZOMBIE THING IS GETTING OLD
But AMC's The Walking Dead is exceptional. Season 1 was great. And Season 2 is soon to begin. Here's the trailer for Season 2. And, yes, you'll have to watch the ad, but remember the ads sometimes pay for the art.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Anybody still want to argue this country is equal with ours?
UM, NO
So I'm guessing the noon game with the GQ Magazine staff must be pretty lame if they think Wesley Snipes makes for a convincing basketball player. His shot is a slow-motion skipping-stone and he's continually in danger of dribbling the ball out of bounds (and this after much editing). Snipes makes an awesome vampire killer and hijack stopper, but hoopster, not so much. So, GQ, where the hell is Jimmy Chitwood?
RADIO, RADIO
Two radio interviews I did in Baltimore. Thirteen minutes with Tom Hall. And an hour with Mark Steiner.
PATRIOTISM
Mark Cuban again being honest about money and taxes and patriotism. April 15th (or in my case, the extended deadline of October 15th) is the most patriotic day of the year. Yep, here's a billionaire saying he wants to make tons of money and pay tons of taxes. They are not mutually exclusive ideas.
HAPPINESS
Hey, I'm very proud that my poem, "Valediction," originally published in Cave Wall, is part of Best American Poetry 2011. as edited by Kevin Young and David Lehman. I'm lucky enough to get chosen about once a decade, so I'll see you back here in 2021 or so! Many thanks to Kevin, David, and especially to Rhett at Cave Wall.
COACHES MAKE MILLIONS
An important piece on the economics of college sports. In short, college athletes should be paid. And paid well. Back in college, I lived in a dorm across the hall from a D1 college hoopster who bummed food off me. Yeah, I was the poor reservation Indian kid struggling to make it on tiny scholarships, but I still had more money for Top Ramen than an amazing college athlete (who was a white guy from the Seattle area, by the way).
ELEVATION
Isn't it funny what one can learn about his city? Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood has 120 stairways (the outdoor kind), many unknown and rather hidden. You can buy a map that lists all of them. There's got to be a movie in that, right? A love story set on stairs.
B.D. WONG IS KING OF THE UNIVERSE
I've always been a huge fan of B.D. Wong (look for his small but impressive performance in The Freshman), so I was overjoyed when Symphony Space asked him to read one of my short stories for Selected Shorts. And now, yes, you can purchase a CD or MP3 download of the performance, along with three others stories by Aleksandar Hemon, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (it occurs to me that this mini-anthology features names that would make spell check go crazy). Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
SOON, IT WILL ALL BE VANITY PUBLISHING
Today, I am a pessimist about the future of publishing.
MONSTERS APPLAUDING THE DEATHS OF MONSTERS
SERENITY
Definitely one of my favorite movies. If you haven't seen it, then you should right now. Leave work, skip school, ignore your loved ones, and watch it. Please.
RANT, RANT, RANT
My grandmother was babysat by Chief Joseph. Yes, THAT Chief Joseph. And she lived long enough to vote for Reagan. An epic life. But I still think she'd be utterly amazed by the iPad. But you know what kills me? People who give apps bad reviews simply because they cost more than 99 cents. Some of these apps are the work of geniuses. Geniuses! And these apps make life, or parts of life, much better. They are friggin' miracles of human accomplishment but a bunch of privileged assholes think $4.99 is too much to pay. Man, talk about First World problems.
IF A POEM FALLS IN THE FOREST...
I've got two new poems, "Yes" and "Spring Cleaning," in Issue #8 of The Lumberyard, a gorgeous letterpress journal. This is easily one of the most beautiful magazines I've been a part of. Go buy it now!
ALGORITHMS CAN BE OUR FRIENDS, RIGHT?
An interesting article on the efficiency and inefficiency of airplane boarding practices. There is a better way to do it. A side note: I've flown over a million miles in my life and only once has my luggage gone missing. And the airlines had it delivered to my hotel room three hours later. Lucky man, I guess, and now I've jinxed myself.
COVERED
Okay, I love, love, love cover songs, and I'm discovered there is a website devoted to cover songs. I love the Internet! Pod person! Pod person! Pod person!
PAWNED
My short story, "What You Pawn, I Will Redeem," published a few years back in the New Yorker, has been highlighted on Longreads.com, a cool aggregator of long form online writing. Did I just write "cool aggregator"? Argggghhhhhhh! I am being replaced by a pod person....
COOKIE MONSTER
Somewhere in the bowels of these giant corporations, formerly radical hackers are being paid millions of dollars to kick consumer ass.
RALEIGH REVIEW
The Raleigh Review has chosen my poem, "The Eternal K-mart Layaway Odyssey," as their Fortnightly Poem. I'm not sure that I've ever been fortnightly.
POSTCARDS FROM POETS
A bunch of postcards from poets sent to the Academy of American Poets. I'm one of the poets, along with many others. Henri Cole's postcard is lovely.
NEW POEM
Hey, my poem, "Sonnet, Without Salmon," in now available to read online in the latest issue of Orion Magazine.
THE CIVIL WAR ENDED?
Via Andrew Sullivan's recommendation, a must-read piece on the demographic soul of the Tea Party movement.
THREE NEW POEMS
I've got three new poems about fancy dancers, thistles, and obsessive-compulsive disorder printed in the Summer 2011 print edition of the Colorado Review. You can buy the mag for ten bucks. In the print issue is a sadly funny poem, "My Mom, D. 1994," by Craig Morgan Teicher, that begins with, "My wife is not my mom. My mom is not/my mom." At the website, you can read the featured story from the issue, Caroline Arden's tragic, tragic story, "Yolo County."
I ALWAYS THOUGHT THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT WOULD BE REPUBLICAN
Obama and the Democratic (cough, cough) leadership are surrendering.
MISSING
I've got a new poem, "The Lost Colony of Roanoke, 1587," in the latest issue of Guernica, a wonderful online magazine. You should also check out the essay on teenage Christianity, pop music, and the market value of religion by Meghan O'Gieblyn.
TWO-HEADED SALMON
I've got three new poems in the Summer 2011 issue of OVS Magazine. You can download the digital version for five bucks. Or mail-order the terrestrial version for eighteen bucks. Or do both. My poems are about radioactive salmon, Jimmy Durante and Hell, and Winston Churchill's depression.
NEW POEMS
I've got two new poems online in the latest issue of disquieting muse quarterly.
THE GRAY LADY'S LEFT HOOK
Some interesting news, written by Seth Mnookin, about the New York Time's digital paywall. Choice quote: "When they were released last week, the company’s second-quarter financial results showed an overall loss largely owing to the write-down of some regional papers, but they also contained a much more important piece of data: The digital-subscription plan—the famous “paywall”—was working better than anyone had dared to hope." So, even on the Internet, people will pay for premium services, right? Right? Right?
UM...
Via NETTED BY THE WEBBYS, I learned of this project. It's a cute idea, I guess, but instead of having somebody handwrite a letter for you, perhaps you could, you know, write the damn thing yourself. Has anybody proposed marriage on Twitter yet? I could start a service! But I'm so behind the times, it's probably already been done. One could probably perform the whole ceremony by Tweets. Or by Skype. Sorry. But I'm still trying to figure out why you'd want somebody else to handwrite a letter for you. If it were for charity, then I could say, "Well, it is for charity." Okay, I'm done. Now let me do my defeated Charlie Brown walk to the breakfast table.
YES!
HORSES ARE COUSINS TO RHINOS
Here from the Indiana Review archives is me reading my poem, "A Short History of Arm-Horses." I recall that we recorded this at a restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana, with ten or twelve MFA students watching and listening. I felt very self-conscious in front of such a small audience and I think you can tell from all of my mistakes.
SUMMER LOVIN'
Hey, I'm part of a fun article on The Daily Beast about favorite summer reads. Question: which writers are being honest and which are practicing revisionist history?
BEQ
And now, a moment for the beauty of the Internet. I can work on crossword puzzles by Brendan Emmett Quigley every day of my life. Glory! Glory!
REGARDING NETFLIX
I am amused by the furious reaction to Netflix's dramatic price increase. Perhaps consumer outrage will force Netflix to readjust their price plans. But is anybody really shocked that a company is now taking advantage of its market domination? That's what companies do, dude. When it comes to the Internet, we've all become utterly dependent on a handful of companies. And we're used to getting things free and cheap. But it's a supply and demand world. And we Internet consumers, having radically empowered a handful of companies, are soon going to get our asses handed to us by those same companies. Hopefully, this will cause millions of folks to turn back to more independent stores. Ah, that's the bright future, isn't it? Instead of giving our money to giant Internet conglomerates, we'll be shopping at the local mom-and-pop Internet shop. Maybe we're all too lazy to get out of our houses and shop on Main Street, but isn't there a lefty genius out there who will figure out how to bring Main Street into our houses? Imagine Internet service provided by a human and not by an algorithm.
(And, of course, I realize that YouTube is one of those dominant companies. They've got me trapped in their digital web, too.)
BAD FOR ALL
Dennis Johnson at Melville House Publishing with a great take on the myths and meanings of the Borders bankruptcy. Here's a quote: "...this is a story that has become about some desired and sometimes advertiser-driven trend, and not the more complex reality — which is that what’s happened is not good for either print or digital books." Johnson reminds me that I can become too fundamental in this argument. So let me make it clear: I am excited about the artistic possibilities inherent in digital literature, but I am appalled by the business ethics of many digital retailers and publishers. The Digital Revolution is really just another Oklahoma Land Rush. And you know what happened to the Indians during that mess. But you know what? This time, all of us are Indian. Okay, wait, I think I veered back toward fundamentalism...dang...
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Here are some real numbers about Borders' collapse. Publishers are going to lose tens of millions of dollars. If things continue this way, I hope you all realize that Amazon will be publishing and selling a majority of our books.
TOO MANY PAGES
Often over the years, folks have asked me very detailed questions about my books, and I often don't know the answers. For instance, I wrote Reservation Blues from 1993 through 1994. Nearly twenty years ago. So don't expect me to remember much of it. A good friend of mine uses a quote from Rez Blues as an epigram for one of his books, but I don't remember writing "God could be an armadillo. I have no idea." I haven't read Rez Blues in its entirety since I wrote the thing. And I haven't read a single word of it since I worked on a screenplay based on the book (that was in 1999). In any case, this is a roundabout way of presenting you a poem, published in a literary journal, that I do not remember writing. Really. I don't recall the damn thing at all. I'm boggled by this situation. Do other writers experience this? Anyway, here's the poem.
BORDERS
Borders is dead. And certain folks (those pesky digital utopians again) are celebrating. Borders was ill-run, certainly, and was inferior to Barnes & Noble or any independent store. But what kind of perverted, cynical asshole celebrates the death of a bookstore?
SAD NEWS
The University of California poetry series has become all dust and bones. I'm sure the digital utopians/poetry fans (a very small group...) will offer the usual blah blah blah blah blah e-book blah blah blah Guttenberg blah blah blah print is dead blah blah blah. Don't get me wrong. I'm delighted that small and micro presses are finding new life on the Internet, and through electronic literature, but that's all about fiction. Poetry can look great on a computer screen, but is absolutely dreadful on an e-reader. As in nightmare. Poetry depends on the exact placement of words and lines and stanzas, and so far, the e-readers make a mess of that with just the slightest change in screen size or in font size or style. Poetry also makes much use of white space-the tundra of the actual physical page. And e-readers simply can't replicate that (though the tablets do present some wonderful and largely unexplored possibilities). Of course, as certain folks are doing, one can write poetry specifically designed to present well on, and take advantage of, e-book technology, but I've only seen a bit of that work. Here's the funny thing: e-book technology, so current and amazing, can't yet properly present an ancient art form like poetry. And considering that poetry is a zero-profit game, it will up to the poets to figure out how to make it work. So I mourn the death of the UC Poetry Series, but I hope they do indeed reincarnate, and find new and avant-garde ways of presenting poetry in an electronic medium.
EMILY BLOG POST
A nice little article on Internet manners and how, yes, you can actually have them. You know, readers-who-happen-to-be-aspiring-writers, there is a book on this whole topic just waiting to be written. Just grab a tattered copy of Emily Post's manners book and readjust it for the digital age. You'll probably make dozens of dollars.
MORE CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES
So the Richland School Board has reversed its decision to ban True Diary from the entire district. It is now available to be read and taught for and by all. Cool. It's funny, and very narcissistic, to honor the Richland School Board for changing their minds about, er, my book's awesomeness. But it's primarily a victory for much larger principles than one writer's work. This is a validation of the book screening process, a repudiation of fundamentalist parents seeking to control the education of everybody else's children, and a recognition that young folks (to requote myself requoting David Bowie) "know what it is they're going through." And there's something even larger to think about, too. It's tough to publicly change one's mind in this Internet culture. A change of mind (of heart, of soul) is too often interpreted as hypocritical weakness or inconsistency. People are vilified more for admitting they were wrong than for actually being wrong. As a sometimes public figure who has often been amazingly wrong-headed in print, onstage, on radio, and on television, I respect the Richland School Board for admitting to being, you know, human. So, cheers, Richland, from a man who has been wrong approximately 196,562 times in the last twenty years (though I'm not wrong about the whole book-banning thing, damn it).
ME AND SASQUATCH HANGIN' OUT IN THE SCHOOLYARD
Hey, I've got three new and very short poems online in the Backstage Area of Narrative Magazine. You have to pay $4 to read my poems, or $50 for a full year's subscription to the entire place. It's an incredible magazine. If you've got the dough, you should invest in them. Also in this issue is a brilliant use of the Internet when it comes to poetry editing and revision and friendship.
YOU-LOOP
I've posted this link before, but I reiterate. Folks, pop your filter bubbles!
ELBOWS
I've got a very short poem about old man basketball online at the Raleigh Review.