Maximum Go in the Resulting Hogshead

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Alright. Here I Go Again.

Let's see if I can get back in the habit of blogging again. I'm sure nobody's reading this blog anymore, but it's worth a shot. Maybe having no readers will be good for me. That's assuming I ever had readers, of course. I don't know. I haven't looked at my stats in a long time.

So, yeah, let's see.

I received two pictures in my email today from my friend Dustin, who is in Korea for some reason he has yet to tell me. He also sends along the words, "lovely doggerel, provincial amid concrete, kindness and funny English." He always writes me emails with line breaks, which I guess I do appreciate. It's good to read some poetry in my email.

But here are the pictures:

In other news, I've been working in Special Collections in the UCSD library. I catalog books -- poetry books mostly, when I have my pick.

I've lately been cataloging the Belladonna books, from 2000 to the present -- pretty much the whole series, minus a couple titles (actually about 3 times as many titles as are listed in their catalog). I've enjoyed reading them as I've cataloged them. I think it's been good for me. It seems like it's probably a great reading series. On the down side, the exercise has taught me to be suspicious of SUNY Buffalo. They've cataloged these books as well, and they've been very inconsistent about it. I'm fixing records left and right. But that's boring cataloging nonsense, and I can't believe I even care.

I've cataloged books by quite a few of the people on my blogroll, actually. I won't name names. But I'm happy to have been the first to assign call numbers to a few of you. I might never get my book published, but if I do I'll know how to catalog it!

Anyway. Other than this, I've still been working on my science and religion research project. I've found some really interesting speeches that Urey (the guy I study) delivered back in the 50s, in which he argues that you can't do science without the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. Good stuff. The next step is writing an article about it and getting it published. Science and religion is supposedly a hot topic these days, so we'll see what happens.

Oh. And I've figured out what I need to do for my next book -- sort of. I've decided that my next book needs to be more spiritual (I almost put spiritual in quotation marks, but I don't actually think that would be right). I want to write a book of worshipful poems. What that means, I have yet to find out. It means no easy outs though, I can tell you that. And no self-destructive poems. I loved poems that imploded when I wrote the first manuscript. But there were also some poems that moved subtly out from themselves. This is what I want to focus on in the new book. Poems that glow. Poems that sing in church.

And I think I'll bring Isabgol back to maneuver through the poems. I think he'd like to sing some himself.

: Name: Matthew Shindell; Location: San Diego, California, United States

Matthew Shindell used to live and write in Phoenix, Arizona. He now lives and writes in La Jolla, California.

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The Poetry Postcard Project:

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Go to the Poetry Postcard Project website to see the project and find out how to participate.

My Vocabulary Radio Show:

Find out about My Vocabulary, the weekly poetry radio show hosted by Matthew Shindell and James Meetze.

Where are my poems?

Read a PDF of my chapbook, Were something to happen it would be both funny and interesting. Copies of this limited edition chapbook are no longer available.

American Letters and Commentary (Coming Soon) - "Hoo Ta Ta, Hoo Ta"

American Poetry Review July/August 2004 - "It sounds like a saxophone tugging across a field"

Black Warrior Review v30n2 - "Sidekick"

FENCE v6n2 - "Drinking with the Ventriloquist's Dummy" & "Parable of the Boy inside the Deer"

Hayden's Ferry Review #25 - "The Willow"

Hayden's Ferry Review #35 - "The Monkey's Skull: Where Do Good Newsmen Come From?" & "Made Easy"

Jubilat 7 - "But Emerson Says, 'The body is a metre. The eye appreciates finer differences than art can expose."

The Melic Review - "In Short, a Pleasant Day :: The Man Arrives, Hooray!" "The Same Words :: Order of Harpoons," & "A Birdâs Head Rolls Into Two Baskets :: Walkie-Talkie"

No Tell Motel - "Order of Harpoons :: Digitalia :: Dobre Vecher" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Read my discussion of the poem here.

Northwest Review - "Clink" & "Bear-Caught"

Octopus 4 - "About the Author," "Four Star General" &
"The Day :: Born :: The Red Door"

Pleiades 24:2 - "Speech of Artificio, a Character in My New Play" & "Inc."

Tarpaulin Sky v2n2&3 -
"Two Jokes About Bears"

Unpleasant Event Schedule - "He Called Her Forest (or was it Forest?)" & "The Brain Full of Bourbon (concerning the doctor and the simulation of Switzerland)"

Read my online poetic project, Jubilee's Daughters, the ongoing and evolving tale of Isabgol in Ronomok.

Listen to my Pandora station? Why not?

Online Poetry Magazines

B A L A K L A V A
Can we have our ball back?
Castagraf
Conjunctions
Double Change
Drunken Boat
Ducky
Failbetter
Gut Cult
HOW2
H_NGM_N
Jacket
La Petite Zine
LVNG
Mark(s)
Moria
No Tell Motel
Octopus
Piplit
PomPom
Puppyflowers
Shampoo
Slope
Tarpaulin Sky
The Canary
Typo
Unpleasant Event Schedule
Word For/ Word

Alright. Here I Go Again.

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