10.02.2006
Spork!
When you say the title of this blog post in your mind, I want you to make the Spork sharp and crisp. Spork! Like a little Kentucky fried chicken bock. Spork Spork Spork Sp-GAWK! Yeah. Just like that.
My Spork finally came. There it is, isn't it pretty? I know some of you ordered copies, too, so I'm hoping you got yours this weekend, too.
But you know, it's funny. Funny in a sad kind of way. I wrote to Lauri not too long ago that I had this silly conviction that once this major work of mine got published. In print. In a cutting-edge journal. For all the world to see*, that my life would change. Maybe I'd feel more writerly. But I knew that people would see my opus and suddenly offers would be POURING in. People would ask me for readings. Suddenly everyone would know how brilliant I really am. I would be famous! This blog would be the site of greatness! And I would owe it all to Spork.
That's a huge burden I put on poor Spork. I'm sorry, Spork, I didn't mean to be unrealistic. I won't do it again.
The sad part is that they got rushed at the end and asked for my help formatting my stuff for publication. But I didn't know what I was doing, and it came out wrong, and I didn't know until I got my hard copy. The margins are all messed up. Whole sections are indented to the right that should be left-justified. I mean, there's no reason for those sections to be indented, but there they are. Indented. It undermines my (everywhere else) careful line-breaks and spacing. Instead of looking brilliant, I look like a young poet who doesn't understand the power of the indent. I'd like to think that it looks like a mistake and people will be able to tell that the poem isn't supposed to look like that... but mistakes like that don't get made, unless, of course, I do the final formatting.
It's just frustrating. I self-sabotage all the time, but I didn't think I was this time. I thought for once I was going to let something wonderful happen to me, and I screwed it up again. I was going to send copies of this book to important people in the valley in order to start making my presence in the artistic community known. But now I'm embarrassed. Especially since all the other pieces in the book are wonderful and amazing, and beautiful on the page.
If you didn't buy the book, you still can. Like I said, the other pieces included are amazing. But, if you didn't, but you'd still like to see a sample of my published piece, you can go to Spork's website and see it:
By clicking on the following link you agree that upon learning Trista's full name you will not stalk her, harass her, or otherwise impose upon her private life unless you are very, very hot, or want to give her lots of money.
I agree, I'm rich and sexy and I want to share! Let me in!
I don't agree. I am neither hot nor rich, and yet I still intend on stalking her. Let me at her!
*if, by all the world, you mean approximately 300 people many of which are past or present contributors and their family and friends, a couple-dozen people who are too cool for me even to LOOK AT, and with the rest being (probably) a bunch of creative-writer-types who like to sit around in coffeehouses and basements talking about how the world just doesn't get it, man! This stuff is so, like, real and important, and the drones just go about their tired, corporate lives, oblivious to all this beauty in the ugliness of change, man! Whoa, can you pass me the bong?
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Argh, that sucks about the screw up. As a former editor who screwed things up all the time and thought of ways to rationalize the badness. Here are a few you can use: a)it doesn't look that different without line breaks. b)poetry needs to breathe--so much that a few lines left off at the end just open the poem up. c)Does a title really change the meaning of the poem? By leaving it off, I've let the poem do all the work a poem, not a title, is supposed to do d) it's the poet's (in your case editor's) fault for not emailing me the document in the right format.
I've done only a couple of the above. Really.
Think of it this way (if you'd like another rationalization)--people will read it and think either, cool, this is very Sporky (which it is) b) huh, why these indents? or c) I'm reading what?
In any case, you get to say 12 pages or so of publication. That's almost enough to apply for an NEA.
And really, from what I saw, it looks just beautiful.
ouch! fuck! it probably looks worse to you, though. also, i question your self-sabotage theory...i think you are being SUPER hard on yourself (shocking), and mayhaps you just made a mistake?