Fiction Excerpts: As you, reader, may well be aware, I’m enthusiastic about the post-Napster age of media exchange. In order to inculcate good will, I am happy to give away freely much of my work; I’m always thrilled when my favorite artists are willing to do the same. Art is, after all, about communication, commiseration, interiority. And in the end, I’m twice as likely to buy from such artists because they’ve made plain our relationship: yes, its primary end is communion, enlightenment, entertainment, interiority; but as artist and audience, we are also in an implicit business relationship which is, usually, considered a vulgar thing best kept hidden. This wasn’t always the way.
Michelangelo, DaVinci, had patrons with whom they shook hands. Popular mythology requires all artists to toil in obscurity and poverty, pensive and soul-tortured—curiously, something it no longer demands of its evangelists and ministers. But the artists who have fully accepted the reality of the file-sharing age are willing to admit openly that, as you rely on them for entertainment, condolence, or insight, they rely on you as patron. And contrary to popular belief, this is not unethical.
As such, I too admit this.
Thus, in the other sections under the “Writing” header, you’ll find oodles of free content. I want nothing more than for you, reader, to enjoy this. To comment on it perhaps; to make the artistic experience a dialogue instead of just a lengthy monological rambling. But under this sub-header, “Fiction Excerpts,” you will find few full texts. Why? I admit it: because I rely on you to fund my endeavors. Because, in order to continue, I need someone—several someones—to support the artist. In this case, me. So, examine the samples. And if you find yourself intrigued, you know what to do.
Essays: The essays in this section are of the lyric variety. What some might messily call “creative nonfiction.” Occasionally, they’re just poetically phrased musings on a given subject (the humanity of the semicolon; the inanity of apologies); but more often they’re of the genus memoir. Regarding those memoiresqe texts, I offer this caveat: the documents are written oddly; making copious use/abuse of the footnote to very specific ends. And it might help to know in advance what those ends are.
Firstly, I strive, in writing, to tell a story the same way it would be told in polite and fun company: rife with digression, sidebar insights, or semi-connected jibes—just thrown in for shits and giggles. Economy of language is not a guiding principle; nor is, strictly, “getting to the fucking point.” The point of telling stories to your pub or patio cronies isn’t conveyance of information so much as it is commiseration. Half the time, in such situations, you already know, narratively speaking, where you’re going to end up—you’ve heard the story a dozen times. The good time is to be had on the ride.
Secondly, I’m completely enthralled by a Scheherazadian function of the internet for which, I don’t think, a neologism yet exists. But it’s an experience with which every ‘net surfer is familiar. You, surfer, begin on a pedestrian webpage—a news story about a new Edward Norton movie, for instance. Within that story, there is a link which takes you to a fan’s site devoted to Uhls’ adaptation of Palahniuk’s Fight Club. Within that site, there is a link that connects you to a listing of the film’s best quotes, including, “Bob had bitch tits.” “Bitch tits” is underlined, and when clicked, takes you to the Wikipedia entry for gynecomastia. At the bottom of that page, references are listed. You click one. And somehow, when next you set an eye on the clock, it’s an hour after you first skimmed that Yahoo.com blurb about Norton’s newest, and you’re on a male bodybuilding website reading about the American epidemic of chronic dehydration, and calculating—based on height, weight, and activity level—how many fluid ounces of water you need to daily imbibe. You should be annoyed, but you aren’t. Instead, you’re slightly delighted. You’ve gone down the rabbit hole and seen how deep it goes—at least, how deep it can go before you notice the slippery slope. For this reason, I encourage readers of these memoir texts to interrupt their stream of consciousness while reading, scroll to the bottom of the page, and take the footnote tangent wherever it may lead. Is it an unnecessarily baroque flourish? Yes. But so is whipped cream. And no one would deny that desserts are often better for its presence.
Articles: This section isn’t by any means a dumping ground, but I suppose it must be considered a place for strays. The Articles section is here to collect the sporadic rants and other compositions written specifically for sesquipedalism.com, and which I’d be saddened to see go by the wayside when they fall off the news ticker. You shouldn’t expect to find here collected announcements about publications or book sale issues, but instead the occasional Best of the Year list, album or book review, polemic against organized religion, or other vitriolic reactions to the events of the world—both great and small. Also scattered about are a few critical academic works because, well, to have slaved over them and then allow them to waste away in RAM seems insensible of me and cruel to the work itself. I pity such neglected essays the same way I pity the U.S.S. Enterprise holodeck’s Moriarty, who—poor soul—sensed the seemingly endless passage of time while stored in secured memory. (Note: the previous sentence should only have been read by nerds.) But such creatures are the minority here.
Poetry: I quit writing poetry, for the most part, long ago. Nevertheless, my adoration and admiration of poetry remains. The poet has at his or her disposal an array of tricks which are either unavailable to or often unused by prose writers. Poets, owing to the concision their form necessitates, have to pay close attention to precision of language. Sometimes this means unearthing arcane and abstruse words possessed of the necessary specificity—a hobby close to my heart. Many prose writers, in service of plot or “story,” seem almost willfully negligent of the ability to string together poetic sentences in service of projects other than poems. Novelist Colson Whitehead writes the sexiest sentences I’ve ever seen penned. Why? Because he cleaves to poetic sensibilities.
But the line break is a trick the prose-writer cannot steal for his or her own devices—not without dangerously obsessive attention to typesetting. The line break complicates a poem’s meaning in ways prose can never hope to replicate. Properly executed, every line in a dense and excellent poem may be saying two or more things at once—perhaps emphatic of one another, perhaps contradictory. A well-enjambed line allows two sentences to give secret birth to a third which elaborates upon and elucidates both its parents. This essay on the subject, by poet Tony Leuzzi, changed the way I read poetry, and the way I wrote it, way back when I still tried to.
The poems linked under this tab comprise what remains of a once immense body of work. What happened to the rest of that corpus? There is an explanation.