Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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Hugh
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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by Hugh »

Sammy wrote:
Thu Apr 23, 2020 7:26 am
That sounds more like observation than poetry, not that I'm an expert in poetry.
Back in the 1960's a debate went on, mostly through magazines called "the littles," about what poetry was and wasn't. Today, the Wikipedia entry on "poetry" goes on for pages. I remember seeing a definition of poetry many years ago (maybe in a dictionary?) and it gave me a definition that I use today: "written narrative in verse form."

That might be an oversimplification. But using my poem above as an example, if I wanted to write simply my observation of what happened, it would be written in paragraphs offering my impressions and it would have regressions to contrast what else might be the reality if my impressions were wrong. For instance, in an essay I would have written, "a young man who may have been homeless." In my poem I wrote about the bits of leaves and dried grass clinging to the back of his shirt.

Bukowski once said he was rejected by an editor who told him, "This is good, but it's not a poem." Bukowski also said he was happy to have the establishment criticize his poems that way, because he thought their's was a bunch of unreadable gibberish. Some people think that for a poem to be a poem it has to rhyme. Some people even believe that it should be difficult to read, i.e. post-modernism. Neither of those are requirements, although they can be if that's what the reader wants. Some people regard John Ashberry as one of America's greatest poets. I read his collection Which Way Shall I Wonder and I can say without any reservation whatsoever that it was absolute crap. It was literally unreadable. Needless to say, many educated people disagree with that. So I say that if a person scribbles something down and calls it a poem, then that's what it is. He may call it a scroncvallk, or a turd, or a cat. Whatever he wants to call it is what it is. Of course, many may disregard it.

It's also interesting to note that some critic, or some academic, or some writer somewhere classified Bukowski's style of poetry as meat poetry, probably to contrast it with beat poetry which was popular at the time. Bukowski, William Wantling and Steve Richmond were classified as meat poets. Poetry that didn't rhyme or have meter.

When I was a kid, I used to try to copy the rhyming style of Emily Dickinson. It made my poems sound childish. I once wrote a rhyming poem that was supposed to reveal how angry I was about something. I wanted it to sound like words being shot from a cannon. But when I finished it and read it out loud, it sounded like a Dr. Seuss rhyme. I gave up trying to copy Emily Dickinson.

BTW, I've noticed that in the magazine Rattle, one of the leading poetry magazines, there have been more rhyming poems showing up lately. I wonder if that's how poetry is trending now. I sure hope not.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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Editors aren't what they used to be. They used to correct errors. Now they just cut and paste. I was wondering why my last poem wasn't getting a lot of reactions. It turns out I left out a "the" when I submitted it. What really upsets me about it is that I read it over a couple of times before submitting it, and never noticed it until the ezine posted it. https://theabyssmag.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... anton.html

This is the ezine where the editor invited me to submit, telling me how much he liked my stuff. When I found their Facebook page, I noticed they only had 38 likes. So I invited four of my Facebook friends to like it, and three of them did. Later that day, their Facebook page had almost 70 likes. I wonder if the editor will notice that the jump in likes came after he published my poem.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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Thanks for the clarification Huge. As I said, I don't know shit about poetry and a man can't learn if he isn't willing to admit what he doesn't know.

Maybe I should try this type of poetry. I've tried to write poetry before but I've always been saddled with this notion that it has to be in some sort of form, so it always came out as shit. Maybe I will try it again to see how it sounds by doing it like you do.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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My german and english teachers would torture us with gay ass poems. That`s how I learned to hate them, well done teachers
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Hugh
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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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One of my short stories posted earlier this week at The Abyss: https://theabyssmag.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... anton.html

I had planned to celebrate with a bottle of Knob Creek, but when I read the story after it posted I noticed a grammar error that slipped by me when I proofread it. So no Knob Creek for me today. Bah.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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Hugh wrote:
Fri May 08, 2020 4:03 pm
One of my short stories posted earlier this week at The Abyss: https://theabyssmag.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... anton.html

I had planned to celebrate with a bottle of Knob Creek, but when I read the story after it posted I noticed a grammar error that slipped by me when I proofread it. So no Knob Creek for me today. Bah.
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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by RIPT2.0 »

Drop and hold you fucking asshole
Fuck you and your mask mine is better
Because it's real and I will KILL you
So step the fuck off

And I mean it.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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^^^^ Very good anger poem.

I've been telling my friends that I have not written any plague poems during this whole lockdown. But I got a reject yesterday from a place I submitted to about a month or so ago and one of the poems was about lockdown. I had completely forgotten it. I must have written and submitted it while blackout drunk.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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A new poem up at Drunk Monkeys: https://www.drunkmonkeys.us/2017-posts/ ... gh-blanton

When I submitted it to them, they said I would be paid $5 when it published, and that they would Paypal it to me. I messaged them back saying I didn't have Paypal, and asked if they could just deposit it my bank. They didn't answer. A few months later I did set up a Paypal, or it was set up for me somehow when I made a payment to another place, so I messaged Drunk Monkeys and told them that I finally have a Paypal, but still no answer. Anyway, they didn't pay me, but that's all right. It's just a token payment anyway. But it would have been the first time anybody ever paid me cash money for something I've written. (At least I think so. There are hazy memories from my high school days where some band paid me for writing song lyrics for them. Maybe they paid me in weed.)

My poem was the first thing from that issue they posted on their Facebook page and it got more likes than the other poems they posted from other issues. However, when I posted it to my own Facebook page, I only got one like, and that was from a friend who gives me thumbs up on everything I post. Bah.

Gonna drink and write all night tonight. A short story I was on the verge of abandoning is turning out to be okay. It took an unexpected turn that allows me to rage against all you middle class normal people.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by Rye and Coke »

Hugh wrote:
Fri May 22, 2020 3:44 pm
A new poem up at Drunk Monkeys: https://www.drunkmonkeys.us/2017-posts/ ... gh-blanton

When I submitted it to them, they said I would be paid $5 when it published, and that they would Paypal it to me. I messaged them back saying I didn't have Paypal, and asked if they could just deposit it my bank. They didn't answer. A few months later I did set up a Paypal, or it was set up for me somehow when I made a payment to another place, so I messaged Drunk Monkeys and told them that I finally have a Paypal, but still no answer. Anyway, they didn't pay me, but that's all right. It's just a token payment anyway. But it would have been the first time anybody ever paid me cash money for something I've written. (At least I think so. There are hazy memories from my high school days where some band paid me for writing song lyrics for them. Maybe they paid me in weed.)

My poem was the first thing from that issue they posted on their Facebook page and it got more likes than the other poems they posted from other issues. However, when I posted it to my own Facebook page, I only got one like, and that was from a friend who gives me thumbs up on everything I post. Bah.

Gonna drink and write all night tonight. A short story I was on the verge of abandoning is turning out to be okay. It took an unexpected turn that allows me to rage against all you middle class normal people.
I've found that friends aren't always the best judges of your work, when you're an artist. They're always biased and will never give you straight commentary.

When I used to post poetry regularly, I only cared about the criticisms. I felt I got better that way.

You're inspiring me. Despite how you tell it, you actually have a pretty thriving writing career; albeit not the most financially successful, but fuck it. That's not what it's about, right?

I've been editing this goddamn short story/novella for weeks now. I'm going to finish it this weekend and send it some place.

The game of "Catch up to Hugh" has begun...
"They told me to see the glass half full cause some see it as half empty
I chose to see the glass twice the size it needed to be" - Pharoahe Monch, 'Broken Again'

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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A couple of weeks ago I was reading a book of poetry by Karl Shapiro. He writes much about his Jewishness. In one of his poems he writes about another poet who is not a Jew. He called the other poet a "Boston Brahmin," a term used for upper class WASPs from the New England area. Shapiro said that this Boston Brahmin "stank of poetry." That intrigued me enough to look up this Boston Brahmin and see if his books were still available on Amazon. In fact, they are. Since I'm of Anglo descent myself (my last name is Blanton - one of those "-ton" names that come from old England) I wanted to see how if my writing bore any similarities to this Boston Brahmin. The Brahmin's name was Robert Lowell, he died in 1977, and he won two Pulitzers. I was excited to read his writing to see how I could apply it to my own impoverished poetry. Do we have any similarities despite our different backgrounds? Does our writing sound alike in any fashion?

I've spent the last two nights reading Powell's poetry and I think there actually might be some similarities in our style, but it's hard to tell. He bores the fuck out of me with his poems about his trips to the cemetery with his dad to rake the leaves off the graves of his forebears. He goes on and on about the Civil War. (The USA had a big war back in 1861 where the north and the south fought it out.) He even wrote a poem denigrating the homosexuality of Hart Crane, a contemporary poet. In other words, Robert Lowell is the quintessential American man. If we met, I'm sure he would not like me, probably outright hate me. But he writes a clear line, just like I do, but we tell very different tales. In this imaginary meeting I have with him, it's late at night and we're both a little drunk, he tells me, "Stop acting like a low life. Earn some money and respect. Honor your Anglo heritage. Stop being a faggot." I'm not sure how I respond to that imaginary statement. I live and write the way I want to (although I definitely do not have as much money as I'd like), so, how could I tell him he's wrong? I guess I would have to tell him he hasn't really lived life, or has not experienced as much of it as he could have if he'd taken a road trip like Jack Kerouac or Charles Bukowski. He could have broken away from his aristocratic family like Burroughs did and develop a heroin habit and commit murder. That would have been better than his blueblood life, as far as I'm concerned.

But anyway, one of the reasons I read poetry is to find stuff to steal. Robert Lowell doesn't have anything worth stealing.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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Hugh wrote:
Sat May 23, 2020 8:15 pm
He could have broken away from his aristocratic family like Burroughs did and develop a heroin habit and commit murder.
That made me laugh. Let`s all do that!
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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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Got four new poems up in the latest edition of Scarlet Leaf Review: https://www.scarletleafreview.com/poems ... gh-blanton

They've got 1800 Facebook followers - pretty good for a lit site. One of my poems, A Home to Crouch In, is my own favorite of all the thousands of poems I've written over the years. It's been rejected many times over the last couple of years, even by editors who otherwise liked my stuff. I would always look the poem over after a fresh reject, trying to figure out why editors didn't like it. I usually gave it minor tweaks before sending it out again, but I kept it mostly the same. It gave me quite a lift when I got the acceptance notice. I was drunk in the middle of the night and let out a happy whoop. Fortunately none of my neighbors came over to see what the ruckus was about. It's happened before.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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Got a new story up at The Ramingo's Porch: https://ramingoblog.wordpress.com/2020/ ... h-blanton/

I had another story published earlier this week, but it came out so fucked up I won't post it here. It was a story about a young man fresh out of the army going on a cross country road trip and learning a few life lessons from a guy older than him. When the editor accepted the story, he asked if he could do a little editing because the dialogue was clunky. I told him to edit it however he pleased. The thing is, these online e-zines do not accept cut-n-pastes very well (the tab key and hard returns can get screwed up) and it made the lines look fucked up when he uploaded it. Not really a *big* deal I guess, but when I posted the story on my Facebook page, I mentioned the editor and the screwy lines. He saw my Facebook post, and sent me an email asking me to remove the part of my post that mentioned his editing, saying that it made him look bad. The tone of his email was a little angry, but I did as he asked without replying to the email. The next day, one of my Facebook friends defriended me. It was someone who is an editor of about a dozen or so ezines, and someone who once told me he liked my writing and has asked me to submit stuff to him in the past. I've obviously pissed some people off here. But the thing is, my Facebook post wasn't vindictive, and it did not make the editor look bad. I simply pointed out that the lines were screwed up as a warning to anybody who might actually click on it and try to read it.

But now I'm wondering if I'm banned. Those two editors communicate with each other, they are in fact co-editors of many of the same ezines. I've checked their ezines a couple of times today to see if they've taken any of my poems or stories down, but so far they haven't. Maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of it than it really is, but if so, why did the one guy defriend me?

Anyway, the story in question was not just fucked up by the ezine formatting. I read it later that night after I got home from work and found a couple of my own writing errors that were so bad they practically ruin the story anyway. It angered me because I always read my stories out loud before I submit them, trying to make sure they are perfect. I don't understand how I keep making/missing these errors.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by oettinger »

Hugh wrote:
Thu Jul 16, 2020 10:35 pm
I don't understand how I keep making/missing these errors.
Similar things happen to journalists. You never find your own errors. It`s a fact
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