WhimsyLand

While I was drinking my Blue Monster, I was dreaming of a breakfast like that pictured on Robert's blog:  fried egg, grilled tomatoes, Canadian bacon, sausage.  Add sour-dough toast and a cup of coffee and you have heaven on a plate.  The post is not about morning people, of which I am one, but morning poets, those whom you can read with pleasure before noon.  I don't read much poetry in the morning, unless I happen to have been reading a book the prior evening and it's sitting on the breakfast table.  This morning it was GC Waldrep's Disclamor, which seems to be excellent at any time of day.

Didi has added Jim Zola to her Men of the Web.  Jim is one of those people whom I feel like I've known forever.  He's one of the gaggle of online poets whom I've run into at various online poetry boards, dating back to the time before blogs.  There are dozens of people for whom I have this fondness.  Some I've emailed a zillion times, some I've chatted on the phone for hours.  In some cases, like Sweet Junie, Wem, Frank and Ally, I've met in realspace and found them exactly as I expected.  Others, like Claudia and Tricia, I've spoken with on the phone, exchanged birthday presents, and done everything but actually meet them.  There is a large group of people that I'm sure I've met (Suzanne, Rebecca, Seth and RJ), but when I think about it, well, I haven't.  I should rent an SUV, fill it with poetry books, drive to Eau Claire to pick up Junie, and make a long trip around the US visiting my poet friends.  Maybe next year, or the year after, or shortly after winning a lottery.

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Googling around let me to a blog entry by Jonathan in 2002 (how did that happen?):

I learned a new verb today: to "rilk" is to respond to something in an exaggeratedly sensitive way (Koch, Hotel Lambosa). It works in Spanish too: ¡Déjate ya de rilkear! Stop rilking around already. What would other poets names mean, as verbs? "That poet from the 1950s is certainly worth sillimanning" (rescuing from literary oblivion in great, painstaking detail?). "He schuylered my house." What would that mean? I'm not sure. It's worth thinking about.

I've often thought about poets in strange contexts:  poets on baseball cards, poets as animals, poets as vegetables.  I rather like this idea of poets as verbs, and would perhaps even extend the notion to include modifiers ("That poem was ashberly understandable").  I can imagine there is some value to being Vendlered (not strictly a poet, I suppose).  Others come to mind:  "I thought it was a little wordy, so I simicized it".  "In spreading himself around between publishing, speaking and advising, he's eshlemandered the field". Of course, it gets a little confusing with poets who already have names with grammatical import ("The verse seem rather young").

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A loved one is entertaining the idea of ghostwriting.  I have a brother-in-law who does very well for himself in this line of work, but that's really all I know about it.  Apparently, top ghostwriters can make mid 6-figure salaries if engaged by top novelists or famous people bent on getting their memoirs in print. Wikipedia states that ghostwriters are used in music composition, which seems really odd to me (examples include everything from classical to hip-hop).  Apparently some CEOs even use ghostwriters to keep up on their "personal blog".  I don't suppose there is much money in ghostwriting poetry, but I actually think I'd be pretty good at it.  I've written dozens of poems in the style of other poets for practice (Graham, Merwin, Collins, WCW).  I think some poets would be very difficult to ghostwrite for, though, either because their work is blandish or because it's wildly innovative (e.g, Dean Young). 

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More news from The Futility Review:  The staff have exchanged emails and decided to accept only simultaneous submissions − if nobody else wants it, why would we?   We have also extended our submission methods beyond e-submission and snailmail to include singing telegram.  Dr. Grinnell, our poetry editor, informed us yesterday that she has rejected several works by Rilke and is currently reviewing Celan for rejection candidates.  Ms. Lockwood is busy reviewing a small handful of books that have not been written, but should be.  This includes a collection of paradelles by Cole Swensen, and a small volume of verse by Casey Stengel.  Ms. Meath is working on our entry for Poet's Market, which will include the phrase "we receive approximately 3,000 submission a year and accept none of them".  Ms. Carroll is currently engaged in copyediting whitespace.