Lines Scribbled on the Gate of Hell

Two poems of mine are up at the Hell Gate Review. One is entitled "When the Rain Comes" and the other is called "The Millennials," a shout-out of sorts for today's generation of which I am a part. I prefer that term to Generation (or Gen) Y, unless you want to say Generation Why? But that's not much better. The "Millennials" has much more of a, well, millennialist tone to it.

A Poem in Physiognomy in Letters

Hello there, thanks to all who came to the GWIAF fundraiser last night. We raised $27, so the arts festival event in June is going to have mad toothpicks with countries' flags on them! Anyways, read a poem of mine in the latest issue of Physiognomy in Letters, page 27.

GWIAF FUNDRAISER @ DA BIBLIOTECA

Come one! Come all! Please, somebody come,

Date:	Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Time:	18:00 - 20:30
Location:	Arlington County Central Library
Street:	1015 North Quincy Street
Town/City:	Arlington, VA

The GWIAF is the Great Washington "Indie" Arts Festival

Hear Me Read a Poem Here

I have a poem up at Poetspeak, which is devoted to presenting poets reading their work. Enjoy.

My Last Year Begins on Page 14

I'm in this collection issued by the South Jersey Underground that is composed of their contributors reflecting on the end of the month/year/decade/aughts. I hope you enjoy it. Like the title says, my epic, MMIX, is on page 14 and goes until page 15.

Quite Possibly the Last Word on SEP from Me

Or more accurately, from the Summer Enrichment Program itself:

Are you a college student looking for a fun and rewarding summer job? The Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) at the University of Virginia is looking for motivated, creative students who love working with kids. SEP is a world-renowned summer camp for academically gifted 5th-11th graders.

Some of the perks of the job include:

• being adored by hundreds of campers
• working with really cool people
• having a tremendous amount of fun
• getting paid to have a tremendous amount of fun
  

So come join us!

For more information and an application go to our website: curry.edschool.virginia.edu/sep
Application deadline: Jan 25, 2010

Also, check check out our Facebook group: facebook.com/group.php?gid=202565997365

My Freestyle Vision

These past couple of months you may have noticed that I have been posting poems on the website Freestyle Vision. Nothing big but I've decided to link to my page on the website here in case any of you want to view all I've put up on there. The story behind the picture? I was hot and sweaty from sitting in front of a grill at a BBQ in Koreatown, Manhattan. They laughed at me for accidentally eating a condiment by itself. The important thing was that it was for free. Ah, the good ole' food floor at Broome Street residence hall.

Lesson of the Month

Don't name your child after someone who is famous but still living, case in point. At least think of their future Wikipedia page! Do you want them to be buried under disambiguation?

You Won't Get Immunity From This Virus!

All of you looking for a little break from the incessant coverage of a certain golfer's problems, can check out issue #5 of Media Virus Magazine, not to be confused with the book. My featured work is the poem "Insomnia As a Material Condition." While we are on viral themes, here's a random line generator for all you who think language itself is a virus.

Poems from an Allegedly 23 Year-Old Poet

Hello all, I have two poems in the latest issue of MungBeing. The theme of this issue is "expectations," namely how our dreams of the future have played out so far, as seen in this piece from Tim Hatch. My poems are called "A Problem with Mechanisms" and "The Hour Badly Spent." Read them and enjoy!

Wine Girl

In the winter issue (#3) of the journal SparkBright I have a poem entitled "Wine Girl." It is based on the good old days of visiting the Trader Joe's Wine Store at Union Square in New York. If you download the issue and go to page 17, you will see it at the bottom, I guess they saved the best for last!

Ink in My Blood

I have a poem appearing in this book, entitled "Ink in My Blood." It is on page 169, which is the old number of my gym locker at Swanson Middle School. Go Anchors! Or Admirals! Or Rudders! I can't remember what we were called.

Thoughts on "The Idiot"

No, I'm not talking about our former commander-in-chimp, but about Dostoevsky's novel instead. It was my reading for the past few months: August, September, October, and halfway through November. Before that I finished the complete works of Shakespeare, and let me tell you, that was a much easier read. Yes, as you can imagine, The Idiot is a dense book, even for a Russian novel. My version clocked in at 565 pages in a hardcover version put out by Barnes and Noble.

I am a fan of Russian literature, so I knew what to expect. Heady discussions, plenty of characters, occasional smatterings of French, intense religious scenes, and aristocratic foibles. But I found The Idiot to be hindered by these usual tropes, rather than helped. Compared to Crime and Punishment or Notes from Underground, the work lacks the philosophical depth and near-surreal quality that make Dostoevsky worth the read. The story is told in too conventional a manner for point that Dostoevsky is trying to make: to show life of a Christ-like figure living in (his) contemporary times.

It is an interesting idea, of course, and there are several interesting scenes and characters in the novel. The problem is they tend to appear every fifty or so pages. If the Gospels had been written to read like The Idiot, they would have vast stretches of irrelevant conversation, details about the lives of the priestly class, and the bureaucratic work faced by Pontius Pilate. The miracles and parables would show up, eventually, but only as part of dinner conversations where instead of French, Greek phrases might perhaps be dropped in between to dazzle by those other guests incapable of turning water into wine.

The problem is that Prince Myshkin, the hero and protagonist of the novel, is not really like Christ at all. It casts doubts on whether Dostoevsky had any real idea who Jesus was and how he behaved according to the Bible. Myshkin is naive and innocent and this simply sets him up to be a victim of the high society around him. It was probably the author's intent to make him a martyr instead, but this would have required giving Myshkin an actual awareness of his situation and what was going on around him, which he sorely lacks. I did not feel all that sorry for him by the end of the novel. If he were more generous and charismatic, I would have felt his downfall to be a tragedy, the loss of a genuinely interesting and inspiring person.

The novel also has many problems stylistically. The author's voice changes and there are bracketed asides to the reader which are distracting. Dostoevsky seems unable to decide if he is writing a parable, a satire, a romance, a realistic novel, or a philosophical one. He could have pulled off any of these, but he should have made the choice earlier on and stuck with it. Conversely, combining the elements might have worked, but such an ambitious project needed to be thought through more on his part. Another stylistic problem is that by the end of the novel, claims of ignorance on behalf of the writer begin to appear. A scene will be followed by a statement along the lines of "We do not know what happened next." In a standard first-person narrative this is more than permissible. A narrator who has so far been omnipotent, however, cannot do it without looking foolish or sloppy. Why don't we know what happened? And why is it WE and not the I of the narrator?

This could all be the fault of Constance Garnett, the translator, since she had a tendency to make the works of Russian Literature that she worked on sound the same. She was one of the first to translate Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and others into English and did a good service, but since I have not read the Idiot in any other version, my judgment is, I confess, limited. Still, although words choices might be different in different translations, the general plot and characters would remain the same. So I recommend the book only to die hard Dostoevsky fans. There is nothing in The Idiot that could not be gleaned from his other well-known works.

We Were Like Rats in Eclectomatic Ezine

Issue #2 of Eclectomatic Ezine is out and a poem of mine, We Were Like Rats, is in it. The verse was inspired by my days on the New York Subways and as a tutor. Anyways, this literary opus appears in an actual ezine, pretty nifty, eh? Scroll through to page 18 to read my work and enjoy what appears in between and after.

A Poem in Type AB Positive!

Happy November to all of you, and no, I'm not participating in No-Shave November. Every month for me now is Movember anyways. Today's announcement is that I have a poem up in the journal Type AB Positive. Anybody who comes to me with autobiographical questions will get punched in the nose!