why book reviews, politics, sociology, and everything else is interminable to me

i am going to review the human war, by noah cicero

the human war, by noah cicero

i want to review it

but i don't know how to review a book

how do you review a book if you don't want to have preconceptions or exclude any information that exists

not having preconceptions and not excluding information that exists means i can't say 'good,' 'bad,' 'important,' 'problem'

i don't want to exclude any information if it exists, in the universe

you can't use the words 'important,' 'good,' 'bad,' or 'best' without having context

in the universe, the context is the universe

the universe has things in it that i don't know about

and i don't know how far it goes

therefore there is no context

context is impossible if you do not exclude information

even if you have context it is still strange to use the words 'good,' 'bad,' etc.

if i were reviewing a book and the context was a house then i'd have excluded everything outside the house

and if in the house were a hamster and a bear and the book was pro-bear

then i could say, 'this book is good for bears'

i still couldn't say, 'this book is good'

i couldn't unless i added 'for bears'

(humans always assume 'for humans'

people dislike george bush because, in the view of these people, bush is causing pain and suffering for humans

but what about dolphins, rocks, and, like, the sun, or the oort cloud

here is where people think i'm immature

it's immature to not have preconception

i agree

children have less preconceptions

as a child i protected my stuffed animals and put band-aids on them)

if the book were about scorpions then i could say 'this book is not important to the bear or the hamster because it is about scorpions'

i couldn't just say, 'this book isn't important'

i think what i want to say is that when a book is reviewed the universe is almost always reduced to 'earth,' 'the blogosphere,' or something like, 'the americas,' or 'the human race,' or else 'the human race plus all animals' or 'the human race plus all animals that look cute'

also

when a book is reviewed the reviewer shows that the reviewer is delusional, has delusions, thinks in contexts that exclude a lot of information, and has many preconceptions

and usually all i hear all the time is how 'art' is against 'excluding information,' 'easy answers,' 'narrow-mindedness'

reviewing a book is like being a publicly owned company

a publicly owned company must make more profits each year

that is it's goal

(both these things deny information, give a context, and deny meaninglessness; both have goals, and therefore both can use the words 'good,' 'bad,' and 'important')

the person who reviews a book has a goal, supposedly

you can't say 'good' or 'important' unless you have a goal

this is obvious

who can argue with that

no one can

this is inescapable

to have a 'goal'

for most people their 'goal' is to be happy or to avoid pain and suffering

if you don't have a 'goal' anymore then i don't know what happens

people sometimes temporary don't have a 'goal'

this happens to me a lot

i want to say one more thing

people who hate capitalism

if you hate capitalism then maybe you shouldn't buy things from any company that is publicly owned

these companies must make more profits each year, and a lot more, like 20% more, and profits, not gross sales, or else they are fucked; if amazon does not make more profits this year than last year their stock price will go down

they can't just make the same amount each year, they must keep making more

what does this do to people

this kind of thinking

there is no end to it

it can't be satisfied

and it's not focused on humans

it's focused on abstractions, like 'value,' 'profits,' etc.

so if you hate capitalism or talk about how you hate materialism or anything like that then if you want to stop all that then you should just only spend money from places that are not publicly owned

'democrats' and 'conservatives' both support the system that will maintain the existence of publically owned companies, i think

so if you are voting democrat next time instead of conservative, think about what you are really voting for

but

still

this has context

(what i just typed above)

it has the context of your life and the lives of other human beings who are not happy with civilization

this excludes the information that there are hamsters, dolphins, moose, happy businessmen, thousands of happy middle-class families buying amazon stock and making a lot of money; alien people on other planets, rocks, moss; live moss, atoms; and germs; and abstractions (is it too immature too assume that ideas deserve rights, that ideas have feelings?)

it even excludes the idea of 'time'

'time' is supposedly infinite, it will go on forever

and sometime that goes on forever has already happened, pretty much

no one knows what effect george bush has on people who are alive 10,000 years from now

the same with say john kerry, or ralph nader

voting for ralph nader could mean that 100,000,000,000 people will suffer horrible pain 10,000,000 years from now when 100,000,000,000,000 exist in the world

while voting for george bush could mean that 100,000,000,000 people will not suffer in the future because there will be no people

you can move those names and numbers around

(and all those people exist; time is just a preconception, probably; so they already exist, they're there, in the future, walking around, blogging; our actions effect them)

no one knows

no one knows what to do in the world to not cause pain and suffering

(fernando pessoa talks about this; he says this is why he is never kind or mean, as how does he know that giving money to a person is kind, or if being friendly to someone will actually be 'good' for the world, to anyone; he simply exists, trying very hard not to influence anything in the world)

but even that excludes information

it excludes the knowledge of 'cause and effect'

'cause and effect' is the opposite of 'free will,' sort of

so there's the question of

how can it be that humans are conscious but also do not have free will

even that question excludes information

if you don't exclude information you are not dead and you are not alive

you are enlightened

and you are something that can't be explained with words

and this is impossible, probably

typing about it excludes information

thinking is a preconception

this is what book reviewing is like

book reviewing sustains a kind of reality that though is not very truthful will keep you going, keep you busy and meaningful, until you die

if you are a book reviewer you will not fear the horrible meaninglessness of life

people create distractions

if you go to school everything you learn will be a preconception that will help distract you until you die

if you read david foster wallace you will have many distractions to think about

politics, sociology

those are two major distractions, two major delusions

this post is also a major distraction, philosophy

maybe it isn't a distraction, maybe it's engaging with what i'm typing about

i don't know

it's too hard to think

i just know that book reviewers usually cannot function if they feel the horrible meaninglessness of life

because when you feel it you know that nothing matters, that 'good' or 'bad do not exist, etc.

but i just want to read stories and poems by people who fear the horrible meaninglessness of life

and if a book reviewer reads a book that fears the horrible meaninglessness of life then something strange might happen; the book reviewer might change

but probably not

the book reviewer will probably just say, 'this book is not life-affirming'

or, 'this book is narcisistic, solipsistic, cynical, immature'

(i have never understood 95% of what anyone says; i have never understood the word 'cynical,' have always thought that it obvious that people act in service of themselves, even selflessness is in service of the self, to get away from guilt or discomfort, etc.)

the book reviewer will say something about 'angst' and maybe 'catcher in the rye' or 'teenagers'

or they might ignore the passages on the horrible meaninglessness of life and talk about how minimalism has destroyed america

now people reading this post will want me to give them answers

'you complain so much but you just sit there complaining'

yeah, that's about right

i have no answers

answers are preconceptions

facts are also preconceptions

but answers are preconceptions gotten from facts

'once-removed' preconceptions

i just have all these observations

i could easily refute every sentence i typed here with another sentence

and then do another sentence refuting both sentences

here is the review for noah cicero's the human war:

i liked it

it had humans petting other humans

it had a thing about a dolphin

here was my blurb for it:

"Noah Cicero's The Human War talks about meaninglessness, the stupidity of human beings, the worthlessness and dumbassedness of human beings; while reading it I felt happy, excited, and motivated; after reading it it was 3 a.m. and I wanted to go to the library to email Noah so I went outside and it was snowing and I got to the train and I sat in the train for thirty-minutes and it did not move so I went back to my room and went to sleep."

i'm going to try something

anyone i've interviewed before on this site

if you want to blurb my book email me

this probably won't work

i don't want to email anyone and put pressure on them

it will destroy the relationship if i email people and put pressure on them and they are polite to get rid of me and then don't read the book

you don't have to be famous or write poetry

it doesn't matter

nothing matters

and the blurbs don't have to be good

you can say, like, 'i read tao lin's book and put it down; i ate mashed potatoes'

i just want to get a lot of blurbs

around fifty blurbs

it will be fun to have like eighty blurbs i think

if your name is maud newton please email me

it would be great if every literary blogger linked to this post and i got around a thousand blurbs

earlier i said fifty blurbs

i'm changing

i want at least four hundred blurbs

every blurb will be posted on a site

it will be funny to have four hundred blurbs

and sell about two hundred books

i feel like this post can keep going

it doesn't have to stop

i want a blurb that says, 'i read tao lin's book and went into the living room; in the living room i felt confused'

in the center of that red chaos

in the center of that red chaos, by karen ashburner

it is time to advertise my story-collection, BED, on this site

this is the right time because the village voice put me there; soon i will be blogging about james frey's uncle's toad collection

if you are an editor, please read my query letter; this is my query letter for my story-collection, BED:

BED is nine stories, eight of which have been published or are forthcoming in the Cincinnati Review, the Mississippi Review, Other Voices, Opium Print, Bullfight Review (nominated for the next Pushcart), Spork, Dirt Press, and the Portland Review; and one of which won One Story's Annual Short Story Contest (2004), judged by novelist Joanna Hershon, and New York University's undergraduate creative writing award (Seth Barkas Prize, 2004/2005).

BED is set in post-9/11 New York City and suburban Florida; the World Trade Center attacks and the subsequent War on Terror are featured in two of the stories, the first and the fifth, and in the others there's the feeling of them—a tone and mood of recent and drastic change, doom, and uncertainty. The characters in BED are mostly in their early twenties, college students or recent graduates—disillusioned, lonely, playful, and in constant but passive yearning for love, a better sort of love, or something better than love. The stories are told in the third-person and the narrator is the same throughout—amused, wry, bored, and sympathetic.

Other stories (and poems) of mine—not included in BED—have been published or are forthcoming in print in Punk Planet Magazine, Kitchen Sink Magazine, Pindeldyboz, and Hobart; and online at 42opus, Elimae, Eyeshot, Monkeybicycle, Surgery of Modern Warfare, and more than two dozen other sites and magazines; and will be collected in a chapbook by Kevin Sampsell for Future Tense Books in 2006, Summer.

Also I was the winner of Action Books' first poetry contest, and they will publish my collection, You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am, in 2006, Fall.

I graduated this past May from New York University with a B.A. in journalism.

My parents were born in Taiwan; I was born in Virginia, in 1983, and now live in New York City.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

email me at reader.of.depressing.books [at] gmail.com

if you are worried that you will lose money if you take a chance on this, don't worry; you will make money and get a promotion; your publisher will love you

severe depression

i look badly depressed and like i have liver disease in this photo

this is good

i'm going to create a facade of terrible depression

oprah will invite me on her show

we will talk solemnly about the horrors of clinical depression

in the end there will be cheering as i take an anti-depressant

someone will come out from in back to hug me

i will be confused

'who are you?' i will say

'just kidding!' i will say

(a side bar on your tv screen will say that i am able to joke because of the anti-depressant)

because it will be my mom or something

my book will be sold at wal-mart, k-mart, and toys 'r us

'thank you oprah,' i will say to a stuffed animal

because i will be insane by now

oprah will adopt me

she will marry me

and people will dislike her like woody allen

i need help

list in the comments section of this post poetry journals that respond fast and that will print my poems in books and pay me

this is an interview with noah cicero about hamsters and bears

noah also interviewed me and click this sentence to go read it

it's about a maud newton and a gangbang and a christopher walken

i think today is maud newton's birthday

If you were a literary dolphin what would you do?

I would be Michael Allen, I would have a blog that stood up for the new comers, talked shit about people who deserve it, and gave weirdos a chance.

What would win in a fight, a dolphin tied to a bear with rope or a moose with ten hamsters taped on it with masking tape?

The moose. One hamster is unstoppable, ten hamsters is like if Rommel and Patton joined forces to fight one common enemy. Viva La Hamster!

Jean Rhys meets Maud Newton for tea, write the scene.

Jean Rhys is drunk, she is sitting on a chair. Her head stares looks down at her shoes. Maud Newton is looking off into the horizon trying to think.

Maud Newton says, "What do you think of Chabon?"

Jean Rhys takes a big gulp and hits her cigarette, coughs, and says, "All Wonder Boys is is Prefontaine with writers. He is a scenerio writer. He takes a scenerio from pop books and movies, and makes the characters upper class artists, I think I just died, am I still here?"

"Oh, Jean, you're so funny. I was thinking about myself today, and I think I am awesome."

"Oh, Maud, I was a prostitute, I would suck dick, me and kathy acker, we would suck dick for money, somedays the dicks were clean and nice, somedays they weren't. We write better than Woolf and Plath, I kill you."

"Oh, Jean, you silly woman. I'm a lawyer you know, I helped O.J. get off."

"On your head," said Jean Rhys while drinking and trying to smile.

"See, there's like myself, and myself, and people who win awards."

"I won no awards. I have nothing, Ford Madox Ford Madox Ford Ford Ford Madox fucked me over."

"You won no awards, I must go, there are places to be, and not such with the likes of you."

"I am not human," Jean Rhys said.

Jean Rhys is chosen for Oprah's book club, write the dialogue.

Oprah: Good Morning Midnight is so beautiful? There's so much soul?

Jean R: You rich bitch, give me some money!

Oprah: You have spirit Jean, You speak to the souls of women.

Jean R: I hate women!

Oprah: What kind of blender do you have one?

Jean R: I don't like people Oprah, but fuck, you really really hate them, what the fuck happened to you when you were little?

Oprah: You don't wanna know.

Jean R: I hope I never find out, I hate you.

Jean R runs into the audience and blows her self up taking five overweight middle class white women with her.

I know some people who are fucked. But most of the time I forget them and don't think about them. Then I write about them. Maud Newton's blog thwarts this kind of behavior by talking about the nobel prize all the time. What would a bear do with the nobel prize?

A bear would refuse to take it like Sartre did on the grounds that the nobel prize is funded by the bourgeoisie, and therefore protects the interests of the bourgeoisie which is to find the cheapest labor possible at all times.

interview with: dennis diclaudio, shya scanlon, todd zuniga

dennis diclaudio wrote the hypochondriac's pocket guide to horrible diseases you probably already have, used to edit but then quit editing (parenthetical note) and now edits (but will probably quit soon) ducky; he wrote this poem, this story, and this profile of himself

shya scanlon used to edit monkeybicycle; today he writes things like this, complains about one story on his blog, whose name is a derivative of this site's name, even if it might be 'satire,' or whatever, and writes non-fiction things like this; he is also writing a novel, though who isn't writing a novel, and who cares

todd zuniga edits opium magazine and wrote all this, and was twice a finalist for this, and is in print in this; he has written a novel and i think is currently editing it; and he hosts this reading series, which happens at the happy ending lounge and bar in chinatown; one time i read there and shya scanlon heckled me

the things that are questions in this interview are bolded; i am tao lin and i asked all the questions; the answers are blocked in the middle and the name of the person who typed them are there before them like this: [A HAMSTER]

You wrote a book that describes terrible diseases and it's funny. I laughed when I read it. I laughed at the pain and suffering of other people. Are you afraid people with terrible diseases will punch you in the face at readings?

[DENNIS DICLAUDIO]

I'm less afraid that people with diseases are going to punch me in the face than that the family members of people with diseases are going to punch me in the face. Or that they won't actually punch me in the face but stand up while I'm reading and tell me that I'm a bad person. I think I'd prefer getting punched in the face. Maybe because I've never actually been punched in the face but I have been told that I'm a bad person, so I can kind of understand what it will feel like.

I did a lot of worrying while writing this book, mostly because I'm really good at worrying, and it's nice to do things you excel at, especially while you're in the middle of doing things that you're not so sure you're good at. Almost all the way through my writing of this book, very few people were reading it, with the exception of my editor. And I lost track of where I was and what I was doing. All I knew was that I needed to research and write about five more diseases by Friday or I was afraid my editor would call me a bad person. Every once in a while I'd take a break from either writing or worrying and I'd think about what I was doing. I was writing a humor book about real diseases that real people get. And I would think, "Is this a really fucked up thing?" I never answered that question successfully, but what I did do was try to direct the humor toward the absurdity of how badly our bodies can fail us instead of at the victims of the diseases.

In emails someone was talking about fucking famous people and Todd Zuniga said you could put your own dick in your own ass and then you'd have fucked a famous person, and he was talking to you, Dennis DiClaudio. Please draw a photo using letters and symbols found on your keyboard depicting you fucking your own ass.

[DENNIS DICLAUDIO]

I am confused. Are you implying that I am a famous person? Or implying that Todd thinks I'm a famous person? I don't think that Todd thinks I'm a famous person, does he? I certainly don't feel like a famous person. Are famous people supposed to be this poor and insecure? Do you think I'm a famous person, Tao? Do you think that you are a famous person? You just won a big poetry contest and you're going to have your book published? Does that make you a famous person? If so, can I have sex with you instead? I think it might be a lot easier than putting my own dick in my own ass.

That said, here is a short pictorial narrative [blogger wouldn't format these; dennis spent a lot of time on the drawings, though, so we should feel empathy for that] about how I would probably fuck myself...

\ /
_____\/______
[ ]
[ 0 ]
[ ===ii=== ]
[ ii ]
[ //\\ ]
[ // \\ ]
[_// \\_]

fig 2a: Dennis in his time machine. (Please note the antenna on top. This is vital for transmitting matter across the fourth dimension.)

<3
0 0
===ii=== ===ii===
ii ii
//\\ //\\
// \\ // \\
_// \\_ _// \\_

fig 2b: One day earlier, Dennis runs into himself on the street. It is love at first sight.

{
0 0 {
ii===ii==={
ii ii {
//===>\\ {
// \\ {
//_ \\_{

fig 2c: Overcome with desire, Dennis fucks himself against a stucco wall right there on the street.

Your site, Parenthetical Note, has not been updated in forever. How can anyone trust you with anything else you are doing? For example, you have a literary site called Ducky. Why would I submit to Ducky if I already know you are just going to quit Ducky soon and not care anymore? Why should anyone talk to you if they know you are just going to quit them pretty soon?

[DENNIS DICLAUDIO]

I would encourage people to not talk to me.

Anyway, it's true that (parenthetical note) has not been updated in a long time. I actually feel really shitty about that, but, you know, not so shitty that I'm moved to getting going again right now. I would like to get it going again, but only after I'm certain that we (Mike Ewing and I) have the time and energy to keep it going. There's a bunch of reasons we let it go to fallows for so long, but the biggest was that we were losing our vision of what we wanted it to be. It was initially conceived as journal that would experiment with breaking down the line between that divides fiction and non-fiction. But that's a really big tent, and when really good writers are sending you really good stories, it's hard not justify a reason that it fits your obscure mold. I mean, just about any piece of fiction has its roots in fact, and any piece of non-fiction is fictionalized to some degree. So, the more we opened up our guidelines, the less we understood what we were trying to do. At the time, there were just next to a trillion other web journals publishing stuff that we really liked, stuff that (pnote) was publishing. So we didn't know what our specific purpose was. Now, before we bring it back to life, we have to take a hard line and decide what we want: stay strict to our original intent, go all non-fiction, or just open the gates and be content with publishing the best whatever we can find.

You published [deleted] on your site. That is my favorite story I have read on the internet pretty much, probably, or one of. Do you feel ashamed because you quit Parenthetical Note and now less people are going to read [deleted]'s story? In a way, you have fucked-over [deleted]. Do you feel ashamed? If you don't feel ashamed, please explain your rationalization for blocking out other people's emotions.

[DENNIS DICLAUDIO]

I do feel ashamed about that. I think that everybody should read that [deleted] story. I think that everybody should read all the [deleted] stories we published on (pnote). For a while, she was just sending us an incredible amount of stuff, and I was actually starting to feel guilty about how much of her stuff we were publishing, but they were all so good that we couldn't not publish them. There's actually a whole bunch of stuff that I wish people would read more. Heather Kelley had a couple great stories in there. Susannah Breslin had a fantastic one, as did Pitchaya Sudbanthad. Chris Monks had a great celebrity obituary column. We started Tony DiGerolamo's 'Ask the DM' column that I think is (thankfully) going to get picked up elsewhere. I'm just going from memory right now; if I went through the archives, I'm sure I could list a few dozen more "favorites."

One story that I feel particularly bad about was by Will Layman. After I asked him to send in a story, he did, and I went so far as to put it up on the site for his approval, but somehow it never got moved to the table of contents, so it never officially went "live." And then we unofficially went into hiatus. That's really shameful of me. I've since apologized to Will through email and over the phone, but I really need to buy that guy a drink one day. I still feel really bad about it.

I feel really good about the stuff we put up on (pnote), and I do want to get it going again, because one of my favorite things in the world is introducing people to writers that excite me. But I don't want to do it half-assed. This is not a slight against the writers; this is a slight against me. I'm tired of doing things half-assed. I want the whole ass on (parenthetical note) when it rejoins the e-world. Until then, though, I'm just hoping that maybe someday some self-rightous blog writing person will give me the opportunity to highlight a few stories through another means.

Shya, you derided my web site because you are jealous that I was interviewing Dennis Diclaudio and not you and because you used to edit Monkeybicycle but you quit that and now you don't do anything except send people links to Diane Williams stories. You also talk about syntax a lot. I don't know what this question is about. Just say something.

[SHYA SCANLON]

There are currently no consistently readable literary journals. Name a literary journal you think is consistently worth reading, and I will randomly open an issue of it, begin reading, and within 3 sentences be completely bored. This goes for everything from Monkeybicycle (or any young journal with a similarly pathetic print run) to The Paris Review, which two journals, despite the popularly held perspective, have much more in common than they'd like to believe. Neither journal publishes authors who provide the reader with interesting, unique insight or unfamiliar characters. And worse, said authors are not writing these second rate, regurgitated narratives with any pizzazz. I could bear reading something that was essentially worthless, so long as it was written in a compelling way. You mention that I have spoken about syntax. Yes. I wonder how many people reading this right now feel confident giving an explicit definition of "syntax" without having to consult dictionary.com. Which is fine, if you're a stock broker. But not if you're a writer. Syntax is one of many things that could be used to make writing more interesting. How about a little playfulness? Or maybe for starters, how about giving it one second of your thought. As a writer. Actually using one of the basic building blocks in some intentional way. Most writing today is like Express Mail. Get that meaning to the readers' door! In any manner possible! The faster the better! Pay on receipt! This is an acceptable (though by no means exclusive) approach if you're trying to say something important or original. But oops, see above. I think the first thing writers have to do is play a little mind game with themselves: pretend that you have nothing interesting to say (this is the truth, of course, but most people don't believe it, so it will feel like a "mind game"), and then pretend your goal is to hold someone's attention (again, the truth, but this doesn't seem to enter the mind of most authors these days, as if what they're writing were interesting simply by nature of it having come out of their heads.) If writers played this simple "mind game," almost overnight we'd see a change for the better. We'd almost certainly see the end of lines like: "When you walk down to the beach, you can be alone with the crash of water, the cry of gulls, the feel of cold sand under your toes." (The Arrival, by Robin Romm, from One Story, Issue Number 67) This is perhaps the most insipid, uninspired line imaginable. And the story is filled with them! And One Story is filled with stories filled with these lines! And the market is filled with literary journals like One Story! Where did we go wrong? It's as if we pumped out twice too many mechanical engineers sometime back in the early nineties, and had to find something for all these capable but completely unimaginative working stiffs to do with their time. "Why not turn them into fiction writers?" someone said from the back of the auditorium. The rest is history.

You said my novel blog was stupid because I only posted one sentence a day. Make a list of links to three stories on the internet that you like reading. Write one sentence talking-shit about the stories in my voice.

[SHYA SCANLON]

michael kimball

brian evenson

dawn raffel

Tao said, "these stories make me sad, but not in a good way."

Todd, you have organized a reading on February 4th for Opium Magazine's fifth anniversary and for Opium Magazine's second print issue and I am reading. But I am not in the magazine itself because you rejected my stories. You read them on a plane. You also never read the other story I sent you because it was too long. Now that story will be published by Dirt Press. My question is... I don't know. You also just say something.

[TODD ZUNIGA]

The Opium All-Star Gala on the 4th of February is pretty much a celebration of the essence of Opium (which is why we've got Jonathan Ames, Diane Williams, Jonathan Baumbach, Amanda Filipacchi, Dennis DiClaudio, Shya Scanlon, you, and me reading at it). When you read poems, people pretty much want to tear their skin away from the meat of themselves. Your poems are that good. And create that much joy in the room. It's really quite something.

But your longlonglong stories make me want to tear my skin away from the meat of myself in a completely different way. A very bad way. I thought your story in Opium's first print was amazing, but it was too long, and you didn't take any of my editing suggestions. So not reading your long story was a big fuck you to the world that doesn't take every suggestion I suggest. It's all your fault, and now everyone's paying for it, but mostly you're paying for it, because you were the only one rejected. I accepted EVERY OTHER STORY submitted. Kidding. You know I'm kidding, right? Well, I mean, I'm only kidding about the last part. Plus, you didn't submit a shorter story to Opium that was as good as your poems, which pained me. Because there's this one story, this specific story that I wanted you to submit (you know the one), but you didn't think it was good enough yet. WRONG. It's excellent and beyond. Way to blow it.

Oh, and Shya, as far as literary journals go, two things: Open both of Opium's print issues. Read the opening pages. Apologize.

you are a little bit happier than i am

won a contest

and will be published fall 2006

it is the saddest book of poetry i have read and i wrote it

(it can be talked about here for now; later i will put titles of each poem there and each poem can be talked about)

fall 2006 is a long time

by then i'll have finished a novel

so i'll have a poetry collection, a story collection, a chapbook, and a novel and there will be nothing left to do except give interviews and shit-talk other writers and actually i look forward to that so good

story

zombies