4.18.03

This just in: my wife's first novel, A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That, is in the midst of a mini-bidding war between three publishing houses! We're bouncing around here at the Hernandez/Glatt headquarters like two coffee junkies on E-Z Bouncers.

More to come soon, but the champagne is definitely chilling in the fridge.

 

4.15.03

Watching Hussein's statue come down last week was one of those moments I know I'll remember exactly where I was, like the OJ verdict (college, etching class, cheap radio) and the first shuttle tragedy (high school, gym class, locker television). A surreal moment added to a long list of surreal moments this war has brought to the screen. For instance, the phosphorescent green footage of US troops parachuting down at night. I should've been horrified, but it looked like jellyfish sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor, not soldiers putting their lives in danger. Some of the photographs coming out of Iraq have been dreamlike as well, like these.

Two stunning albums were recently released. Unfortunately, one will overshadow the other on the airwaves: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks' Pig Lib, which is a shame because this album, to my ears, is the more stunning of the two. Not since Pavement's legendary Slanted & Enchanted has SM made a record so glorious. Infectious melodies and great lyrics throughout, like this one: "I hope you got there early and I hope you brought your date / I hope she traveled Chicago, second class not freight." And SM's guitar wizardry has never been demonstrated so superbly than in the epic track "1% of One." The other album you should pick up if indie rock's in your bloodstream is The White Stripes' Elephant. Damn, Jack White is the best rock guitarist since...since…well, you'd really have to go way back. He could trade licks with Richards and Page and still keep his head high. And he's a talented songwriter to boot, with twenty funny bones in his frame: "We named him 'Baby' / He had a toothache / He started crying / It sound like an earthquake / It didn't last long / Because I stopped it / I grabbed a rag doll / And stuck some little pins in it."

I'll leave you with a poem I wrote this past weekend.

 

4.1.03

One of the earliest influences of my poems, Charles Simic, has just come out with a new collection, The Voice at 3:00 A.M: Selected Late and New Poems. It didn't matter that I have every book culled from the "Selected Late" section or had read/photocopied poems from the New Poems--I'm a Simic junkie. He's got a tremendous gift: he can paint an entire surreal landscape with razor-edged imagery, infuse it with humor and horror, in only 16 lines. It's not easy. At least it wasn't for me when I first began to seriously write poems about 7-8 years ago and thought I could copy Charles' style. Boy, was I naive.

My good friend Ernie was kind enough to take some photographs of those paintings I mentioned from my last journal entry, so here they are: "A Brief History of Antidepressants" and "Telepathy Woman".

As I write this, I'm being pulled by the TV, to click on CNN and see what's going on in Iraq. When this war began I was sitting on the fence, but after reading various articles, interviews, and essays about the war, after watching hours of reporting on CNN and reading what Thomas Friedman and Paul Berman (two extremely bright political thinkers) had to say about Saddam and the bloody history of the Baath party, it's safe to say that I'm leaning towards one side of the fence. I believe there are some really tough questions to ask and answer, like the ones raised by this piece which appeared on Salon.com a few days ago (if you're not a subscriber to Salon.com, just click on the Free Day Pass access--the third option--to read the entire article). I just hope that the US accomplishes its objective and cleans up its mess instead of turning its back like we've done in the past.

And before you accuse me of being a Republican, here's my short animated commentary on Bush.

Sorry for any of you who weren't able to access my website this morning, but it wasn't my fault. The error message looked like this. Truth is, the error wasn't due to any of the three reasons that Go Daddy provided. No, the error message should've looked like this.

 

3.17.03

The writing has been slow for me for the past couple of weeks, so I’ve been painting with acrylics instead. The first painting I did is 36" x 48" and is titled “A Brief History of Antidepressants.” The last one is much smaller (“Telepathy Woman”) and looks like a Lichtenstein that’s been vandalized by Basquait. If I had a digital camera I’d show you both, but since I only have my trusty Canon scanner I can just show you a detail of the painting.

Wouldn’t you know it, there’s a horse named Rebel’s Advocate. According to this website, the young colt “has personality plus, good looks and wonderful conformation.” Sounds like a winner to me. Beware: the website contains elevator music. I bet Rebel’s Advocate isn’t too happy about it.

I'm sick, so I'm going to cut this journal entry short. *cough, cough*

 

3.5.03

I'm roughly halfway through Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and it's true what every reviewer is saying about this astonishing book. A literary novel that's also a page-turner. Imagine that. One beautiful sentence stacked on top of another, like this one: "It looked like a new bike, sugary red, its chrome parts bright as mirrors and its tires glossy and stubbled."

Exciting things are happening with Swink as I write this, but I can't disclose any of it just yet. In the mean time, here's the ad which will appear in Open City, Fence, Poets & Writers, and The Writer's Chronicle.

There's going to be a Tupelo Press Book Party on April 25th at the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art in New York City. Swing by if you're in the area. The launch party is for my collection and for Aimee Nezhukumatathil's Miracle Fruit. In case you're wondering how to pronounce that, it's

If you live in Manhattan and could recommend a stellar restaurant, let me know.

 

2.18.03

When I'm writing, I'm also reading something or another. When I can't write, I read a great deal, hoping something will spark. Here's what's stacked on my nightstand now: Michael Chabon's A Model World, Jason Brown's Driving the Heart, latest issues of Epoch, The Iowa Review, The Georgia Review, The Saint Ann's Review (a great magazine that's been around for only four years now), and at the top of the stack is David Wojahn's Late Empire, which I'm rereading again. Simply genius. And haunting. The kind of collection which makes me realize that I still have a lot to learn.

There's a new literary magazine that's going to debut sometime this year. The magazine's called Swink and I'm going to be the Poetry Editor. Keep an eye out for their Editors' Awards for Emerging Writers ad in upcoming issues of Open City, Fence, Poets & Writers, and The Writer's Chronicle. The judges will be Steven Barthelme (fiction) and Kim Addonizio (poetry). Click here to check out the nifty Swink logo.

So I got this rejection slip from Zoetrope for a story I sent them called "Crow." The note begins: "Thank you for sharing 'Crow'..." Thank you for sharing? What is this, show and tell?

 

2.4.03

Some exciting news came my way this morning: one of my poems that was published in Indiana Review is going to be featured in Poetry Daily on February 22nd. I'm so jazzed. I'd do a back flip if I could, but I dropped out of Acrobatics 101. Thank you David J. Daniels (Editor at IR) for accepting my poem for publication in the first place. I'm so grateful that I've decided to take his first name.

Not too long ago I read Beckian Fritz Goldberg's wonderful collection Never Be the Horse. Her voice is original, and her imagination blooms on page after page. Among my favorites is a poem entitled "The Gulf". Some sample lines: "On the shore, the oily birds / stagger like rubber knives, and deep / boots of wine. And a carp floats / like just the lung of a young girl." If you love the music of language, the magic of metaphors, you need this book.

Guess who's teaching an online poetry class for UCLA Extension? The course starts in April. I'm really excited about it. Great benefits as well: since I'll be teaching from home using my computer, it won't matter if I'm unshowered or in my pajamas. Like I am now.

My galley for my first book of poems came in the mail. It looks like this.

If you haven't noticed, I finally got my own .com the other day. Yes, my middle name starts with the letter A. The first person who guesses it and sends me an email (and who doesn't already know my middle name) will receive a free copy of my last chapbook, Donating the Heart. Hint: it's not Archimedes.

 

1.22.03

The big news around here at the Hernandez/Glatt household was a telephone call from Frederick Barthelme informing my wife that she had won the 2002/2003 Mississippi Review Prize for fiction. Pretty damn impressive, don't you think? I'm impressed. And proud. And lucky. This issue of Mississippi Review won't be out until March. Be sure to check out Lisa's story "Geography of the Mall". It's a about a girl who works at a yogurt shop and her affair with the shoe salesman across the way.

A couple days ago I stumbled upon Found Magazine. Based out of Ann Arbor, MI, they post found photographs and letters from around the globe, ranging from the hysterical to the heartbreaking. Here are a few of my favorites.

As some of you might've noticed, I've been updating my website over the past few weeks. New poems, new mugshot, a sketchbook on the art page (with 15 added drawings), and a page announcing the poetry workshop I'll be kicking off this summer.

That's it for now. No, wait, one more thing.

 

1.7.03

I've been completely engrossed the past few days reading Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters. Her letters are lengthy and heartfelt and unflinchingly honest. She has no reservations about revealing to writers and editors her battle with mental illness. In one letter to W. D. Snodgrass in 1959, she writes: "A week ago at this time I was in 'the summer hotel' (local institution for nervous breakdowns)...I just sat in there and cried. For 3 days. I didn't eat or sleep...for 3 days it cost me $92.00!!! Pretty expensive tears I would say." Yes, her humor comes through once and awhile, a characteristic trait one might not attribute to Anne Sexton. But there it is, as well as her deep love for poetry, which she says throughout A Self-Portrait in Letters "it has saved my life." If it only it could have.

This is going to sound like I'm joking, but here it goes...I was recently invited to be a part of a swimsuit issue calendar of LA Poets and Beyond. Yep, it's true. There is such a project in the works. A number of poets have already agreed to be a part of it, including David St. John, Carol Muske-Dukes, Charles Webb, Cecilia Woloch, and Billy Collins. Imagine that: the Poet Laureate in swim trunks. Am I going to do it? Hell no. If I'm going to make a fool of myself, I'd rather do it here on my website.

 

Previous Journal Entries
9/24/02 - 12/24/02