This morning has been a disorderly approach to reading time. Eventually, though, I settled on reading the premier volume of a new online journal: Vinyl Poetry. I believe that I linked to this journal through either Adrian Matejka or Kristy Bowen’s blogs, as both are poets I admire and both have poems in the issue.

Cover Art by Allie Kelley (alliekelley.com)

I have to admit that the cover art whetted my appetite. The pluck and joy of the that little bluebird with its worm (an early bird, perhaps?) made me smile and want to click through, even though I already intended to do so. I’ve since also gone to the artist’s website, listed above, and you should too, if the work moves you as it did me.

Here’s a list of poets making an appearance in Volume 1:

WOW! That’s quite a list, and after reading through the issues, I’m pleased to say that the whole thing stands up quite well. Also, kudos to the designers of the site for making the navigation between poets simple.

My favorite poems from the mix include:
Adrian Matejka’s “Cocaine Blues” (a Johnny Cash poem, exquisitely wrought)
Anne Marie Rooney’s “Alice, leaving the Caterpillar” (always hard to add to a legend like Alice’s, but this one works)
Kristy Bowen’s “how to re-imagine your life through mythological characters” (wonderful weaving of allusions and new additions to our mythology)
Sasha Fletcher’s “all the tired horses” (a prose poem of bewilderment laced with darkness)

There are three other writers in the issue who, when asked by the editors to submit a handwritten grocery list, each moved in an entirely different direction from each other. Check out the results from Julianna Baggott, Jeff Mann, and Bob Hicok.

This is definitely a journal I’ll return to for Volume 2. Also, hats off to the editors, Gregory Sherl and K.M.A. Sullivan for their submission policy. I’ll let you discover that one on your own, Dear Reader, click here.

Yesterday, my mom emailed to let me know that Mrs. Chambers, my fourth and fifth grade English/Math teacher had passed away.  This morning I found her obituary online.  Her first name was Melvina, something I’d never known; she had two children, something else I didn’t know, reminders that teachers have personal identities beyond the classroom. 

What I did know about Mrs. Chambers are these things:

She had been widowed for almost 30 years by the time I met her, losing her husband in an Air Force training accident.
She was missing the tip of her middle finger on one hand and would tell us she lost it in a paper-cutter accident.
She taught me the phrase “close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades.”
She had a beautiful laugh.
She eased us through the transition from grade school to middle school.
She made me love math as much as I loved English, at least for a time.
She made boys on the verge of adolescence cry…but in the best way…with literature.  She read books to us, and if anyone would argue that this is a waste of time in the classroom, that it doesn’t move the students closer to passing those all-important tests, I’m here to tell you that hearing those stories come to life in her voice made me want to be a writer.  That and watching those boys put their heads down on their arms and weep for the boy and his dogs in Where the Red Fern Grows. The power she held in her voice, the power she shared with us through that book, was nothing short of magic.

Rest in Peace, Mrs. Chambers, you touched so many lives.

Ah, Dear Readers, I am troubled.  I continue to mull over my thoughts about David Shields’ book Reality Hunger and his thoughts on an artist’s ownership of his or her works.  If you missed the discussion, you can catch up here and here, where I comment after checking out the book itself.  Today, I’ve been reading another essay by Shields that was published in Volume 3, Issue 1 of The Normal School, one of my newest favorite lit mags.  I’ve read Shields’ essay there and have scribbled all over the margins, but I’m holding off on commenting just yet.  The essay is followed by another by a different writer in conversation with Shields and I want to digest that too.

So why bring it up, you ask.  Well, thanks to some long lingering doubts and Marie Gauthier’s blog, I couldn’t leave it alone today. 

First the doubts.  While thinking about Shields’ argument for the right to mish-mash the words of other writers without having to attribute the copyright, I had this vision of how this might apply in the art world.  According to Shields’ premise, he would be fine with me copying the paintings of great artists and then having a show of my own in which I placed these pieces of art “in conversation” without adding the typical tag next to the art that gives the who and when for the piece.  Really?  That just rankles me…in this scenario, I would not be an artist, but a copyist.  Yes, there is value in putting pieces of art, fragments of dialogue, bits of music “in conversation,” but to act as if they are my original works, as Shields does in his book, I just can’t get my Midwestern ethics around that.

***I do know that Shields expects his readers to pick up on the fact that he’s quoting from others, and when the quotes are obvious, I did; however, when it turned out that the majority of his book was made of copied paragraphs, I had serious doubts about his work.  Much more on this later.

Here’s an image I did capture myself at school last week that sums up how my brain feels right now.

As some of you know, I’ve taken to creating collage cards, mixing images and text that I’ve cut out from magazines, junk mail, and any other material I can get my hands on.  I make these cards as inspiration for poems and also as personal cards that I send to friends and family.  When I started doing this, I talked with an artist friend of mine about the rights of the artist.  After all, I was chopping up their work and had no way of attributing it, as many of the photographers weren’t listed on the junk mail or in the ads of magazines.  However, there were some images with credits.  Talking with my artist friend, we talked about collage and fair use and how I wasn’t using the entire photograph and calling it my own.  I was cutting it up and making something new.  She said that was okay and that artists had been doing it for quite a long time. 

Then, today, I was blog reading and Marie Gauthier provided a link to photographer Steve McCurry’s blog.  Marie’s link was to the most recent post of images of people reading, which is really cool.  However, I caught the title for the previous post and had to click it:  Pirating and Plagiarizing.  In this post, McCurry gives examples of people using his images without seeking permission or rights.  In fact, he talks about one woman submitting his photographs as her own and getting them published.  ACK!  Of course, I’m on his side!  This is exactly my problem with David Shields’ non-quotation marked, embedded quotes (what his book is mostly made of).  And yet, now I wonder, have I done the same thing with my cards.  No, I do not sell them, no I do not publish them as “art.”  I do not claim the images as my own.  They are private, and no one who sees them would believe the images to be my original work.  Have I crossed a line?  Should I stop?

I did do a quick Google of “fair use in art” and “collage copyright,” and it seems that artists are being warned against collage that uses other people’s images.  If I don’t claim to be an artist, is what I’m doing okay?  Because I use images from popular magazines and advertisements, is that different from using images from photos that are fine art?  Who owes what to whom?

I’m troubled, Dear Reader, because I get such joy and such a creative charge from creating these cards.  Must I stop?

Whew!  I just completed my round of August submissions.  I now have work out at 26 journals, which is huge, considering I only had 2 submissions still out there from Spring 2010.  Clearly, I believe in simultaneous submissions, although I like to think I’ve gotten smarter about the whole submission process.  I used to be a “carpet-bomber submitter,” tossing packets at journals that would never accept my work.  In my defense, I read as many journals as I could, but it took me years to learn the different aesthetics at even a small fraction of the journals that are out there.  Add in the fact that many journals are edited by grad students and aesthetics at these journals can change every couple of years.  Even now, when I feel like I have the tiniest of toeholds of a reputation in the poetry world, I still feel like much of my submitting is hit or miss.  I have narrowed my journal pool considerably and limited the number of journals a given poem can go out to.  Live and learn.

Envelopes available at De Milo Design, click for link

Many poets build their reputations as I’ve done, by placing individual poems in lit mags on the way to publishing full-length collection.  Given that I’m doing the same thing with book #2, I thought it appropriate that I put my money where my mouth is.  Therefore, I’m having a special promotion on copies of Blood Almanac.  If you purchase a subscription to a lit mag between now and October 1, you will qualify for a 50% discount on my book. 

Email me at sandy dot 40 dot longhorn AT gmail dot com for details.