Friday, October 10, 2008
What did I write?
Recently a few thousand of us poets whose names are on the web (I'm guessing we're the poets on Ron Silliman's blogroll,* since that seems like the easiest way to get a ready-made collection of names this large) appeared on a list of contributors to Issue 1 of what would seem to be an unnamed journal or project that we had no idea was being put together. Before it was posted, none of us knew what poems of ours were going to be included or how they'd gotten permission to publish them. Now that it's out, it seems that the project is called Principal Hand and that the editors have actually gone into the future (or some permutation of it in which we all write in the same basic style -- maybe we've become a hive mind?) and brought back samples of our work. I've never seen my anthologized poem before in my life, and yet I must have written it because my name is attached to it. It is mine. Hive or no hive.
So, my friends, here is my latest (or maybe my last) poem. Perhaps it was written via telepathy from a cryogenic freezer somewhere. It reads as though it may have been.
Turning surrender into progress
The trader is rather purple;
the queer thunder instructs our progress
And the triumphant colleagues turn the
voices of personages upon your
nerve
We become
Between these prints and
those prints
Matthew Shindell
I do enjoy a good semicolon. That can't be mere coincidence.
Thanks to Stephen McLaughlin and Jim Carpenter for whatever corpse handling they had to do. I hope you wore gloves, boys.
*Now that I look at Ron's page, I realize that my name is no longer on his blogroll. I hope it's not because he doesn't like my future poetics. Hopefully it's just because I've changed my blog address. I'll know for sure if he unfriends me on Facebook.
Labels: cold dead eyes, cryogenic telepathy, hive mind, Jim Carpenter, Principal Hand, Ron Silliman, semicolon cleansing, Stephen McLaughlin, the future
About Me
- 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.
The Poetry Postcard Project:
Stay tuned to this blog for updates on the status of the Poetry Postcard Project.
Go to the Poetry Postcard Project website to see the project and find out how to participate.
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 Issue 17 - "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 Bird’s 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)"
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