Au Weh.

So many good ideas that I have read in this batch of papers, just poor, poor execution. Such a sad tragedy to read an opportunity wasted.

Hello.

Hello vast internet and its readers. Forgive me, for we have not spoken for awhile; nevertheless, my pen still meets with paper.  Today I begin a personal social experiment, a self-diagnostic.  At the very least, it will be many hours of answers to questions asked during therapy sessions all compacted neatly into one little notebook.

Meanwhile, I recommend reading the following for male and female, young and old readers alike:

A Tale of Pike Place

From my blog at AngeLingo:

For my first blog post on our newly redesigned site, I find it perfectly fitting to tell you the tale of my maiden voyage to THE ORIGINAL STARBUCKS. Perhaps I did not emphasize that enough.

The Original Starbucks

 

My tale begins with three college students piling into my roommate(Leigh!)’s car at the wee, early hour of 9:00am. After many miles of sleeping traveling, from city to city and climate to climate, the three students arrive at Berkeley (read: sssssssss) for room and board–specifically couches and the most amazing bread from a small restaurant named La Note.

P.S. I’m just kidding about the sssssssss thing. Between football seasons, I ♥ Berkeley.

Two days of glorious fun in San Francisco pass, of which include miniature tales of dinosaurs, skulls, middle-of-nowhere-sushi, bar hopping, drinking, Saint Patty’s Day celebrations, Leigh purposefully provoking a debate with Brandice so she does not freak out that she is under millions of tons of water in a NON-WATERPROOF tram-thing, and much much more.

Alas, after many more miles of traveling and mountainous driving, the three students arrive in Seattle, which is where our real tale begins…

The first scheduled tourist destination is Pike Place, which for all of those unfamiliar with Seattle, really just means PIKE PLACE STARBUCKS, AKA:

The Original Starbucks

 

Well, maybe it is the Farmer’s Market of Seattle… but Pike Place is the home of the very first Starbucks EVER. And really this post is just an excuse venue for me to post pictures and brag because anybody who knows me will name my Starbucks addiction as one of my most defining qualities.

As we are walking through the quirky Pike Place, which smells of fish and fish, I see it. There. Without being told this is the original Starbucks (because I am retarded and failed to correlate Pike Place Roast with PIKE PLACE BEING THE HOME OF THE ORIGINAL STARBUCKS), I know. I know this Starbucks must be the first, the original. I walk near the intimidating yet welcoming entrance, one foot slowly following the other, and then stand in awe below the historic ugly siren. (←Must read link to your left)

 

 

Immediately upon stepping within the store’s handsomely aged walls, my nostrils fill with the sublime and heavenly smell of… well, STARBUCKS COFFEE. (Geez, what did you expect?) I approach the counter and, with my heart fluttering, order my usual–yet it is completely unusual and intoxicating.  Then magically from across the store my drink appears. 

 

 

A Grande Peppermint Mocha Frappuccino just for me. With a beautiful covering of mocha drizzle, also just for me. The first sip, as it moves from cup to straw to tongue, tastes of complete delight. The frappuccino’s pure magic elicits this behavior:

 

 

The End.

Manic about Manic D Press

I do not think my poetry is for everyone. I do not think that my poetry belongs in most, and especially not traditional, publishing houses. But I certainly do with every fragment of my soul believe that my poetry + Manic D Press = just right. Save for the fact that the small press does not necessarily inform authors that their works have been trashed.  Perhaps I am too demanding, but I find this a bit rude and inconsiderate:

Please do not call or email regarding your submission. We’ll be in touch if we’re going to publish your work.

Yeah, mail is lost quite rarely, but it does happen.

If I close my eyes, stick my head in the ground ostrich-style, and pretend the above quote never happened, I feel at home among the Manic D Press Books.  I like the authors. I like their works. I like the cover art. The fonts. EVERYTHING seems right and equivalent to how I would like to see my works enter the print world.

Just for kicks, here is my submission letter, lovingly formed and apparently not appreciated:

To Jennifer Joseph and Manic D Press,

I cannot tolerate suck-ups.  So it bothers me slightly that the following letter of submission might be misconstrued as a shiny red apple.   Let me assure you, it is not.  If anything, consider this an olive.  Bold, flavorful, and quite literally an hors d’oeuvre, this letter’s purpose serves to market my poetry for publishing; nevertheless, in doing so, I must first tell you that when reading about and digging around Manic D Press, I have never felt more at home in a literary sense.

In regard to the Manic D Press publication that I chose to address in this letter (Matt Cook’s The Unreasonable Slug), I must reply that, in addition to specific thoughts on the author’s work, my most striking observation is the book itself.  More than half of my hand-written comments were made before I even read a single line of poetry.  I oohed and aahed over the simplicity and sophistic integrity of the overall piece.  From the subtlety of the colors and the aesthetically pleasing cover art to the understated fonts and layout, the overall book rested in my hand an individual work of accomplished art.  All of this (I swear) I noted before even reading your (Joseph’s) quote:

“It’s not just the writing itself but it’s the whole: it’s the cover, it’s the way the book feels in your hand. It’s a whole experience…a book is the proper place for words to live.”

As for Matt Cook and his poetry in general, I appreciate his phrasing, diction, and voice as in the line “probably suffered from poor packaging” on page fifteen.  His poetry offers idiosyncratic and bizarre observations of ordinary topics that would otherwise fall beneath average examination, or would at least be addressed with detached language and phrasing.  Yet he revisits the menial parts of life with comically dry and cynical interest, caring masked by “not” caring.  Rhythmically Cook’s collective work seamlessly flows from one poem to the next, creating harmony among his words.

Nevertheless, I see similarities between his works and mine.  The vague, sometimes misleading, yet intriguing titles.  His free-form style rather than following traditional rhyme schemes and parameters.  His use of repetition as a literary device.

However, despite these similarities, my poetry and prose contrast his observational style by speaking with a more confrontational, poignant voice.  My words are personal and strong.  I often describe my poetic execution as the mating of Nicole Blackman’s voice with the tone of a Kafka-Poe hybrid, perhaps with a few contemporary references in reminiscence of T. S. Elliot.  Like Blackman, I command the audience’s attention by speaking directly to the reader, placing the reader in the position of one of my characters.  Sometimes I assault the reader; in other instances I toy with the audience by offering multiple innuendoes and hinting toward the darker side of words’ connotations.  My poetry is not one-sided.  I write to challenge the audience, to evoke a response so that the written word becomes a dialogue rather than a monologue.   

After trying my poetry for publication within several literary journals and magazines—to no avail—I have realized that I would rather my poetry exist as a whole, its own publication standing on a shelf in its own right.  It has become my dream to work with a small, quirky press dedicated to progress and quality, so that the aesthetics and feel of the overall final product may embrace my poetic content and truly represent me as an author and a person.  A book, I feel, is the proper place for my words to live, and I also believe that Manic D Press is the rightful place for my book to come to life.

Thus, I present to you a sampling of seven poems representative of my proposed book, Sunnyside Up, written under the pseudonym Mersedes Bach, which I have also used to construct my blog, Scant.

Sincerely,

 

And here lies the tentative cover art that will not be born from Manic D Press:

How to Write a Paper of Collegiate Quality: The Diagnostic Essay

How to Write a Paper of Collegiate Quality: The Diagnostic Essay

 

The first molecule of knowledge, in regard to writing, ingrained into the grey matter of my brain dictates that the use of first person should rarely occur, and the use of second person results in certain death, unless the purpose of the written piece is to directly violate such mandates.  Therefore, within the very first sentence of my essay I have broken two god-given writing 140 rules: do not use the first person and do not use a passive voice or the word “is.”  I might even have rebelled against the academic tendency to discredit the use of dry, sarcastic humor within a metaphorical, creative writing tone, syntax, and diction in an academic paper or context.  Oh well…

 

For the complete text, visit my page “The Diagnostic Essay”

From the Desk of an Invalid

I have come to realize that I very much take for granted the small things.  Like the ability to chew without thinking about chewing.  Or eating whatever I prefer.  Or the choice to toss and turn and sleep on my stomach with my face buried into the pillow if my subconscious so chooses.  As a newly rendered invalid due to the removal of four impacted wisdom teeth, I am feeling somewhat less wise, grossly unsettled, and agitated as hell.  Thus, if I was not fighting a borderline precarious state already, I am now blatantly and hopelessly stuck in the middle of a horrible funk.  Everything is too much effort, and life tastes as foul as the blood in my mouth.

I have been here before; no doubt this is anything but uncharted territory, but the external and environmental stressors certainly do not help when coupled with the pre-existing internal tumult.  I am up.  I am down.  Every moment is a struggle between a good day and a bad.  The only constant factor remains my lack of belief in myself.  I even view this blog as a failure.  As demonstrated by the calendar, much time has passed since my last post.  Each time I attempt to write, as my pen meets with paper, my words fall flat, and I am forced with the realization that they are unimportant, insignificant.  No one cares.  And if no one cares, why bother to record the monologue?

Wing’d Muse Murder Most Foul

Rain falls
Seas of droplets
Across my blank pages
A crime scene

 Vacant
A baron wasteland
Of forgotten metaphors
Artistic license expunged
A Candyland of imagery
Erased
To make way for my new logically sound mind

 Rationality
Clarity
Boring-plainness-pain-in-the-ass-concreteness
A coercion of writing
Without my bouquets of abstract-gushing words
A murder most foul

 My fountain dried up
Biological clock, ticked
My hand, forced
My muse, murdered
Its wings ripped
Heart pierced
By logical barriers’ arrow

Childplay

Spinning, turning
All topsy-turvy
The merry-goes-round until you puke
Faster, faster!
Don’t look to the ground
Nausea
Look down and you’ll surely fail
Depression looks with avid eyes
Paste on a smile
Sooner or later the top has to slow
Then the top topples over
And crashing down you will go

The Revolving Door

Again, reincarnated
Reborn from the dead
My sick mind’s own samsara
Recycling your soul
My brokenness
Piercing, gutting pain
Peel the flesh away
Reveal the scars
Wounded tissues, never healed

Bitch
A perpetual her
One more
Queue in the endless shells of
The notorious female

My heart
I leave it lying
To be broken at your will

 

 

The Art of Lying

I possessed no positive words for the evil institution that held me captive and subjected me to IQ-sucking dealings, if it may be privileged with such a description. Ideally I would have been allowed to terminate my association with the school and town entirely at the first possible moment; however, because of various pressures my engagement with a microphone and the devil himself could not be avoided. Though I truly would have preferred to abstain from the entire graduation ceremony proceedings, I regret not delivering a speech of truth to the thousands of eyes whose audience I maintained for a precious indefinite interval of time, for I could have revealed to the naive the corrupt and inhibiting environment of which they refer to as a legitimate educational system. Instead I, as a coward, ironically yet hollowly relayed The Art of War, Sun Tzu’s message of victory and principle, for a mere three and a half minutes…

For the complete text, visit my page “The Art of Lying”
http://scanties.wordpress.com/the-art-of-lying/