So, Christmas is coming up.
Last night I dreamt I accidentally showed up to AWP a week early, but there were all these booths set up anyway. Real dorky guys selling crappy made-at-home comic books. I bought a new outfit and was wearing really classy stuff, guys. Really classy. And I had to meet dorky make-your-own comic book guys instead of, you know, AWPeople. 
The summer is wrapping up and I have tons of news to report. The school year is beginning, which means I'm starting to work with kids again, teaching them how to be awesome, i.e. teaching them how to read. I've spent this week in a preparatory class for kindergarten, working with five-year-old spitfires who are gearing up for the ol' grindstone. A surprising true fact: two almost-kindergarteners agreed by head nod that a unicycle should actually be called "finger wheel."
Another little piece of news is that September 1 marks the anniversary of One Year, One Hundred Rejections, which I've talked about here and elsewhere. After September 1, I'll make sure to give you a grand total of rejections, maybe along with a little list of the acceptances I've gotten.
ng the Yahoo! search engine. I hope that he also still logs into ICQ to chat with his buds.
"Dear internet users in the year 2011:
My name is Dr. Daniel Roberts and I am a psychologist from the year 2048. I have sent you this email from the future (Gmail is quite advanced in our time) in hopes to prevent a pandemic which I believe has the potential to destroy our precious human society. Around the year 2025, my colleagues and I noticed a trend in many of our young patients: many of our youth were displaying symptoms of apathy, boredom, and anhedonia. At first we believed we had simply discovered a new mood disorder that had not yet been classified. As the disorder which came to be known as “Global Yawning” became an accepted diagnosis, we noticed the rate of incidence was rising rapidly--too rapidly to be explained by the increased rate of testing. As the graph below clearly indicates, Global Yawning's rate of incidence is increasing exponentially, (probably the beginning of a logistic growth pattern, a pattern we expect to see from pandemics).
Persons suffering from GY erroneously believe that the world around them is boring. Yawners typically avoid any emotional or intellectual stimulation, as such activities which cause them to become confused. For instance, if my history is correct, youth of your time enjoy listening to rock and hip-hop music, watching action and comedy movies, and reading fiction thrillers. All of these activities have died out in 2048. For example, in our time, Webster's Dictionary is the most bought and read book. The most recent box office success was unedited security footage from a parking garage. The TV guide channel (which, of course, only lists itself) is the only show left on television. Recent college graduates seek jobs only in data entry or mail sorting. Interestingly, the musician John Mayer is still quite popular. The cruel nature of this disorder renders patients unwilling or unable to conceive of any more exciting forms of stimulation. People in 2048 are not actually entertained by these activities; they simply believe, despite our pleadings, that nothing more exciting actually exists.
We believe that Global Yawning could result in a complete breakdown in human culture: no great works of literature or art and no triumphs of engineering or design (for instance, space travel is far too exciting for Yawners). Thankfully, I believe I have discovered a cure.
We currently believe that Global Yawning is a result of decades of boredom, caused by boring books, boring movies, boring jobs, and boring hobbies. I thought that if past generations had found more excitement in the world around them, the desensitization that leads to GY might have been stopped. My colleagues and I looked for the most exciting things that were happening in the year 2011 and I discovered Brett Elizabeth Jenkins' poetry, which we find to be extraordinarily stimulating and the perfect antidote to Global Yawning.
Therefore, I, Dr. Daniel Roberts, implore you to read the poetry of Bejjie (as she is known our time). The future of the human race depends upon it!"
cent of the week, it smelled like hickory smoked bacon. Eighty percent of the people I knew there were under the age of five. AND, there were no lakes in Austin. In the land of 10,000 lakes, I picked the one county that didn't have one.
about the sun. Every morning was a tiny, terrible reminder that we are hanging onto a rock that is floating in an enormous universe, kept warm by a gigantic fire burning itself up in the sky.
into me being the Lit Blogger for Specter, essentially, as the editor puts it, "taking the news and current events in literature & firing out great content." No pressure. "Perez Hilton goes lit scholar," I joked in my first post. But really. Since then I've posted a few things: some writing tips from my files as a PANK reader, and a Venn diagram comparing me with Charles Bukowski. Who doesn't want to know how Hank and I match up? I think about it all the time.
"I first met Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Braun when she had a different name. If you think about that for a minute, it should blow your mind. YOUR MIND! This woman went by a different 
name. I was called Huel if that is any indication of how crazy that is. And to top it all off, we did not work at a sex club. This review could not have started any better!
I say these things because they are important and vital and need to be said. Like that one quote from that one movie that you loved as a child. Think of that quote. It was important, right? It made you who you are today. You would be someone different, like Ralph Macchio, were it not for that very important quote, right?
Here is something else that needs to be said: Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Braun has too many names. Also, she is brilliant at things you are not. She is brilliant at extracting whole landfills of emotional refuse from a single line or word or frase. Yeah, I spelled that with an "f." PAY ATTENTION!
Some people never get to that point. They strive and strurve and work and yolk until they can't feel their fingers because for some reason they've gone batty and have slammed them between two hard things. Like a hotplate and a giant inflatable hammer filled with pennies. Why would someone do that?!? To FEEL something, dammit. This is so obvious I don't even know why I have to say it. Just forget it.
Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Bra
un or Braun Jenkins or what was your camp name again? Zipline? Quadrangle? Argyle? It doesn't matter now. What matters is words. And how you string them together, like spaghetti squash, which, let's face it, while very fun to look at, does not taste like real spaghetti. We all know that. But the idea of it is awesome. Please let's make this about ideas! And beautiful slogans of pain and regret and pencil bites and I love you and surprised by joy. I would borrow your words if I could, and let them flow from my mouth like gorgeous waves of glory and surrender. I would lay down my sword before the towering inferno that is Brett Elizabeth, and crown her with glory and honor and power forever and ever amen. And I don't mean that in a weird way.
e responses for each question. The questions were relatively simple questions like "Name an amendment" (which I understand is not a question), "Who was one of our founding fathers" and things of that nature. The girls won because we could think like freshmen. The number two answer for "Who was one of our founding fathers" was "Abraham Lincoln." I don't think this reflects poorly on my university in particular, but probably just on eighteen-year-olds everywhere.
the brand new Specter Magazine, which will launch its maiden issue this fall. You guys, go and submit awesome things there so that you can help make the internet a magical place.
The boring tediums of the day. Adjusting to the new thing that gmail is doing. Getting the mail right after it's delivered, even though I don't want to open any of it. Making lists of things I must do, and making sure I put at least one thing on there I've already completed.
I meant to post this several days ago, as it is an excellent Strange Review; however, Will and I just returned home this afternoon from a 24-hour car trip from Florida up to Minnesota. Our apartment is a grillion degrees, we bought an expensive air conditioner that we may not be able to actually use, and there's sweat coming out of my body like a faucet. I've been busy. But this review cheers me up."Brett Jenkins is not fit to be your Prom Queen of interrogative words. She is nowhere close to being the Drag Queen of prepositional phrases. She is, however, a soon to be ex-wife of this reviewer.
When I read the words she has written in poetic forms, I wonder aloud to myself and anyone else at the bus stop: “What kind of sandwich did the author eat while writing? And...what kind of bread was it on? Instinctively, I always answer: a chicken salad sandwich with walnuts, 
cranberries, and relish on a nine grain baguette. I usually find that the beverage of choice would be an ice cold whisky sour in the left hand and a vodka tonic in the right hand. I then tend to discover I am not at a bus stop at all but rather in a furniture store, farting on all the fine leather chairs.
What I am trying to get across to you here is the following: Brett's poems are very quick to give the reader a few moments to reflect on their own existence in the company of strangers but there are not nearly enough crotch shots or upskirt moments for my taste. As a matter of fact, I am generally appalled at the lack of toothless grins featured in your magazine. For shame! When will America learn that we aren't all as beautiful as Brett is when she wears her best pant suit and frolics around at the rest home on Tuesday afternoons at 4pm. We could learn much from this former Saltan of Western Indiana."
Scott Smith
Writer, Cherry Pie Enthusiast, Tuxedo T-Shirt Guy
"Les Revues étranges, by Jean-Marc Pétard, is 
a nonpareil classic of French poetic criticism. First published in 1975, it initially went unnoticed by American critics, despite being adroitly translated into English by Herbert Wolters-Reader the subsequent year. By and large, this oversight was due to the massive attention directed at De la grammatologie and its translation, Of Grammatology, which was only then being published in the United States.
It was not until 2010, with the publication of a new translation by Ralph Butts and Simon Gass, that Les Revues étranges began to gain traction in American academic circles. The new translation contained an appendix by Pétard, adapted from an address he gave at Harvard University regarding the developments in Western poetry during the thirty-five years since he first wrote Les Revues étranges. Among the poets addressed therein, we find this assessment of Brett Elizabeth Jenkins:
Ce que m’interesse chez la poésie de Mlle Jenkins c’est les images. On y a des images d’une pureté qu’on ne trouve pas chez aucun poète contemporain, ni chez Bukowski, ni chez Graham. Les images qu’on découvre chez “Hello Moon” et “Message I Left Myself on the Phone” sont telles qu’on ne peut faire que les mettre avec les mieux de Charles Baudelaire. Sûrement, on ne trouve pas ailleurs leurs pareilles, cette clarté frénetique qui se délecte des choses immondes.
What interests me about Ms. Jenkins’s poetry is her images. She has such pure images in her poetry. You can’t find such pure images in the works of any other contemporary poet, neither in Bukowksi nor in Graham. The images you find in “Hello Moon” and “Message I Left to Myself on the Phone” are so great that you have to place them among Baudelaire’s best. Certainly, you don’t find their equal elsewhere; that clear frenzy that delights in disgusting things (trans. Butts & Gass).
It is a telling assessment, one that surely marks a poetic talent worth watching.
up in several online journals.
I am up for hire.
I will write whatever you need me to: lists, manifestos, jokes, song lyrics, break-up letters, kids books, directions to a made up place, campy dialogue for a satirical film, poems, post-it love notes, rants/raves, declarations, eulogies, essays, commencement addresses, one act plays, grant proposals, tankas, blurbs, blog posts, re-imagined bible verses, test questions, explanations of paintings you have not painted yet, acrostics, sermons, your course syllabus, screenplays, obituaries, speeches, you get the idea.
Prices negotiable.
Can this be a job please.
P.S. I’m totally serious.
