"Noir, #28" in the Current Issue of Measure

The latest issue of Measure: a Review of Formal Poetry is out, featuring the finalists in the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Competition, of which my SP sonnet, "Noir, #28," is one. I didn't make the cover, but that's okay...there's still time. :)

I read the rest of the finalists, of course, and I can only say I'm honored to be among them. I've had fiction published in anthologies and magazines before where I read the other authors and thought, "Jeez, I wouldn't have published that!" but in this case I'm feeling the opposite, like there must have been some mistake that enabled me to slip through the door and hang out with all these awesome, amazing other poems. But there I am, on pg. 88 (eight has always been my "lucky number"--it's true), a published poet at last.

So if you're collecting the entire published works of Scott Standridge, be sure and order a copy from Measure's website. Autographs and inscriptions for a nominal fee--or a beer. Or, you know, we could work something out. *waggles eyebrows*

God, I'm such a nerd.

Happy Birthday to the Sonnet Project!

Just realized today is the two-year anniversary of the beginning of the Sonnet Project. Which means yesterday was the one-year anniversary of its completion. Happy birthday to us!

And Will Shakespeare too! (Belatedly...)

The post where it all began...

Post-Pub or Perish Report

I slayed 'em.

Click here for the full story.

Click here for the set list (scroll down till the poems start.)

Pub or Perish 2008! It's a Barroom Blitz!

Wow. I've never had this much press in my life. Check it out:

I'm FEATURED!

Yep, that's me in the photo from PoP 2 years ago, at the Peabody Hotel. But this year I'm one of the mentioned names, which is more pressure but also immeasurably cool. See details one post below, and come out this weekend! I need the support!

(Also, if you're in LR, check the inside cover of this week's Times. I'm thinking of getting the ad tattooed on my back.)

UPDATE: NEW START TIME! According to the Times ad, the PoP 2008 festivities will start at 6:30pm instead of 7:00pm. If I read it right it's for "pre-show appetizers," but like I say I don't know when my reading slot will be, so just be aware. And please come!

Sonnet Boy Reads His Poetry THIS WEEKEND! Don't Miss It!

If you're in Little Rock and looking for a good time this weekend, drop on by the Arkansas Literary Festival in the River Market district for some literary fun and frolic. And once you've worked up a thirst for beer and poetry, come to the Arkansas Times' annual Pub or Perish fiction/poetry/essay reading, to be held this year at Sticky Fingerz bar & grill and featuring yours truly!

I'll likely be reading some more of my sonnets, and maybe some free verse and a limerick or two just to mix things up. Festivities start at 7:00 pm and go on till 9:00 pm or sometime thereafter, depending on how conscientious the readers are about staying within their allotted time. I have no way of knowing when my time will come up till I get there, so if you want to be a member of the Sonnet Boy Groupie Brigade, best get there early!

Beer, Buffalo wings, and sonnets. What could possibly be better than that? :)

Good Times

A nice little notice for yours truly in this week's Arkansas Times:

Success in the world of poetry and a $5 bill will buy you a cheap hamburger, but bragging rights and publication in a well-regarded journal might at least make the hunger pangs easier to bear. Scott Standridge, a Little Rock writer who programs computers to pay the bills, was a finalist for the 2007 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award...

Standridge's entry, “Noir, #28,” clothes classically Shakespearean themes in a Humphrey Bogart trenchcoat, describing a man's sensual but deadly encounter with a femme fatale.

It's a publicity blitz! Actually, it's just the fact that I know people.

People who do tings.

Tings like joynalism.

So, Can I Claim This Blog in My Publication Credits?

As my friends and readers know (if there are any of you still checking this blog), I've been kicking it into high gear lately trying to publish some of the sonnets from the Project, and meeting with some success. However, lately as I look at guidelines for possible markets, again and again I'm seeing this:

As far as online publication goes, we do consider something published if, before or during our issue currency, substantially the same work appears (or has appeared) on a publicly accessible website — and that includes personal sites and blogs as well as ezines.

That's from the guidelines for the excellent sonnet-centric e-zine 14x14, which I had hoped would consider some of my stuff--but apparently because I blogged the project while it was going on, I'm shit-out-of-luck. And they're not the only ones.

I have to say, I don't really understand this reasoning. I mean, if I put it in a notebook, and left that notebook sitting out on my coffee table for friends and visitors to read, would they consider THAT published? I know the internet is different, but still, it's not like I'm running a magazine here. And further, if I may be so bold, it's not like most of these places are offering cash payment.

I just wonder if I can now list The Sonnet Project as a publication credit when I write to other magazines--or if they would poo-poo because it's not a real publication (a point of view with which I would agree).

Anyway, it saddens me a little, b/c I think I've got at least a few good pieces here that I'd like to get considered by zines like 14x14 and others, and I feel I'm being punished for keeping a blog record of my poetry. What do you think? Anyone?

Not Rejected After All...

Well, I wouldn’t know it if I wasn’t so vain as to google myself regularly, but apparently one of my sonnets was published online by Modern Drunkard magazine:

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/md_poetry.htm

It’s “Whiskey Wisdom, #113,” and it’s sitting at the bottom of the page, about to disappear forever the next time they post new material. Yay, another pub(lication) credit! It would have been nice if the editors had emailed me to let me know it’d been accepted. I assumed weeks ago it was a no-go.

They probably meant to e-mail me, but they were too drunk. :)

My Poem is Up at Aberrant Dreams!

Click here to read it! (Scroll down to mine).

And feel free to read the other content as well. ;)

Not as Single Spies...

But in battalions! Or at least in duos.

I learned last night that my sonnet "Langham's Pond" (#225, from December 4, 2006) will be published in the next issue of the speculative fiction/poetry publication Aberrant Dreams. Not only that, but they're paying me a dollar a line for it! Paid poetry--nothing to sneeze at, you know.

If I read them right the poetry only appears in the webzine version of the mag (with an option for print, though it doesn't sound like they typically do that), so I'll post a link here when it's up, which should be at the end of January or early February. Of course I like having a paper-bound copy to hold in my grubby paws, but still--fourteen bucks! :)

Two poetry publications, and not even through the first month of the year. I hope it's an omen. Guess I'd better send some more stuff out!

And Now for Some Good News...

Success! This weekend I learned that one of my sonnets, "Noir, #28" (from May 21, 2006) was selected as a finalist in The Formalist's 2007 Howard Nemerov Annual Sonnet Competition! Though it did not win the grand prize (which was literally a grand--$1000), as a finalist it will be published in the 2008 issue of Measure: an Annual Review of Formal Poetry. The Formalist and Measure have previously published poetry by such luminaries as Seamus Heaney, Richard Wilbur, Miller Williams, X. J. Kennedy, and Sonnet Boy poetry-hero Jack Butler. So it's kind of a big deal.

The issue containing my poem will be out in late spring or early summer, according to my acceptance letter. I'm not sure what stores carry it, but I am sure it'll be available through their website. Oh, and I took the sonnet down from The Sonnet Project when I entered it in the contest. So look for it in print!

Unsplendid Indeed

Well, I finally received my rejection from Unsplendid today. Guess I'm not unsplendid enough. :)

#s 111, 168, 205, 236, and 241 were the not-good-enough ones. In case you're interested.

Only a couple more batches still out.

Now this is getting ridiculous...

First Modern Drunkard rejects me by omission (see below) and now this--I entered three poems in the SonnetWriters.com annual contest some weeks ago. The deadline was October 15, and the guidelines said winners would be announced no later than November 30. But no word yet, nothing on the website even referring to the contest.

I have to ask: is it me?

Is there something about me that just makes people not want to respond? Is the cold shoulder always preferable to communication where I and my sonnets are involved? I don't know, but it's starting to make me self-conscious.

Anyway, as soon as I hear anything, I'll post it here. I just hope I don't have some kind of voodoo curse that's causing everything I touch to go dead. If I do, sorry Modern Drunkard and SonnetWriters--I know not what I do.

UPDATE: The SonnetWriters 2007 Annual Contest was canceled. Good to know.

What's better: rejection or no answer?

Rejection, of course, because at least then you know.

A couple months back I sent 6 poems to Modern Drunkard Magazine--some of my drinking songs, natch. Their guidelines say that if you haven't heard in 2 months, assume you weren't chosen. So that's my assumption.

But I do still have some poems out to different places and contests, so I'll be updating on that. Also I haven't given up my horror poem chapbook idea. I'm toying with the idea of even trying to illustrate some of the poems myself...but we'll see when we see.

Oh, and today is my son's birthday. Click here to read the poem I wrote him last year on this date. Happy birthday, Will!

Lost

Maybe out there somewhere
there lies a path
overgrown now, weed-choked, stopped
by debris--a fallen log
astir with insect life, 
its loosely clinging bark
atwitch
   like skin--
where once a person might
have turned aside and found
down rootbound valleys
hidden there among 
the shadow leaves (whose negatives
are sunbeams)
              something
else.

The woods hide gold that is and isn't
sunshine,
show rending claws that are and
are not bears.
Some things are food and poison, some rain 
and dew and blood.

Maybe there was a way 
through then, although it didn't
seem so. A poke,
a prod might have revealed--what?
Dog-run, deer-trail, some parted sea
of weeds revealing tracks
beyond my understanding,
patterns I had not the skill
to name?

And maybe after miles, after bright orbs
of white and yellow dazzled me like
swamp gas, will-o-wisps, 
for who knows what the cycles,
then
     or now, or when, or
soon, 
I might have turned and recognized
a flower, called its name,
rhododendron, devil's trumpet, trillium,
felt suddenly unlost and therefore safe;

or else, aswim in plants evermore
strangers to me, no path, abandoned
by taxonomy, I sprint 
a barefoot madman through clasping leaves--
green twigs caught in my hair, bugs crawling through
the dirty thatch of my gray hermit's beard,
be so unmade and deliriously free, I would
to joy and to oblivion
succumb.

It could be so.

For now, as lost here in these words
as any child forsaken in the wood,
gone feral, wolf-raised out of sheer neglect,
I find just tangled thoughts, a knotted string
around my hand, so difficult to trust.
What have I snared? What is it tugs and leads
me on around the next 
leaf-shaded bend? Whose hand?
Or is it my own dumb animal soul
now bound here by some hidden hunter, 
Time?

So many knots, and spoken promises
once breathed, that can no longer
be revised.

Walk far enough, and nothing will make sense.

A poke.
A prod.

Maybe it lies there still.

Epigram

"This can't go on!" the rebel said.
But oh, it could. And so it did.

The Awful Uncertainty of the Artist

Maybe this is it:

the depression/mental illness
that will finally make my work (and life)
meaningful
     saleable
          interesting.

But,
(oh God)

               ...what if it's not?

Learning to Say Yes

Just tell them I accept. I'm getting tired
of blowing up balloons that sink like stones.
I'm ready now to loose those trailing strings
and watch their multicolored orbs disperse
to fall, sperm-like, out of a barren sky
toward who knows what airless lack of fruition.

I'm ready to accept, accept it all. I'll take
their golden chains, I'll gladly put them on. I'll wear
quite willingly the yoke, I'll pull the plow until
it sinks, until it wedges in the cracks where lack
of rain has broken, even here, the earth's own skin.
My hooves will throw up clouds of yellow smoke, the dust
made ghostly, powdered, like a broken shell.

I'll put on vestments like a village priest 
who can't remember now when he believed,
when God flowed through his brain like liquid light
and haloed all creation through his eyes.
I'll stand up at the altar, say the words;
I'll swing the censer and cough on the scent,
Say prayers, baptize and bless, and listen while
the rain rattles the roof, the windows crack;
inside then, safe, I'll snuggle in my bed
all tired and drunk on sacramental wine.
I'll do it, I accept. Go tell them now.

I'll take it now, I will. I'll take the years,
impotent, yes, but sheltered, weak but safe.
I'll black the stars with ink until no light
can filter through, till all those colored dots
have disappeared. I cannot be accused.

I won't be shamed. I'll sow those borrowed fields
whose crops will feed me better than my own
however bitter they may be to reap.
I'll eat and give my thanks, although the grains
of sand wear down my teeth and make them blunt.

I'll swallow bitter bread and sour wine,
approximating ecstasy for show. I'll raise my voice
until, quavered by age and use, it will not
answer more. And even then I'll make the signs,
and croak the words of near-forgotten prayers
to children, widows, new-deflowered brides,
so strongly no one would ever suspect.
All of it, I accept. It would not do
to give those yet faithful a cause for doubt.

So tell them to prepare it. Let them spin 
like hypnotists their gold watch on its chain
before my nose. I'll follow, I'll walk straight
for years--this I can do.
And will. 

          I'll track it like the Magi's star
until that day when, palsied at the edge
of all, I miss my step--

and falling, 
flailing,
snatch it from their hands.

Sonnet Project Reject: Whatever's Wrong with Me

(Alternate entry for April 19, 2007)

Whatever's wrong with me today's been wrong
for years and years and years. It isn't new.
These insecurities were formed so long
ago, there's nothing much now I can do.

Like how I think I'm never good enough
for those I love, hard-wired in the brain;
the way a carved word when the wood is rough
and green will scar, emblazoned on the grain.

And so these trials we suffer in our youth
in many ways are never overcome;
though years convince us of our fears' untruth,
a sound, a sight, a word will strike us dumb

and drag us back to dungeons we well know,
though we thought we'd escaped them long ago.

Sonnet Project Rejects

As my loyal readers know, the key rule of the now-complete Project was that I had to write a new, original sonnet every day. I couldn't store them up, I couldn't write five one day and take a week off, and whatever I completed that day as my project representative, I had to post on this blog. And I managed to do that, for better or worse, 365 days straight--a fact I'm still pretty proud of.

But here's a little secret for you--I did, in fact, write MORE than 365 sonnets last year. It's true.


Every now and then I would write two sonnets a day. Then I would have to pick one to post, and let the other languish in the notebook. Sometimes this happened because I was just inspired, and liked one result better than the other. Sometimes it was because my first attempt struck me as so bad that I had to write something else to keep from embarrassing myself posting that drivel. Either way, I had to pick one, and the other just got left behind.

Reading over some of these rejects recently, I got to thinking that they weren't all that bad after all--at least most of them were on a level with the rest of the crap I published here. So I figured what the hell--why not put them online and let history and the internet be the judge of their quality. So that's what I'm fixing to do. Starting today, with the post above this one. Enjoy.