Rad Infinitum

What Spanbauer and My Dog Taught Me About Cliches

Tom Spanbauer calls cliched words and imagery received text. I know this because of a great essay Chuck Palahniuk wrote about Amy Hempel and minimalism. I try to be very aware of received text (including dying metaphors) in my work and when I’m asked to read or edit others’. Sometimes this obsession spills over into daily life.

One time on a walk, my dog uncharacteristically opted for a fire…

Remembering that the pandemic is not a writing retreat, I do find myself coming across new-to-me journals and venues a little more often right now.

Reflex Fiction and The Poetry Blogging Network are two new bookmarks.

Please consider commenting with links to your discoveries (or journals you edit or are published in).

If you have the time, resources, energy (or general privilege) for self-improvement during the pandemic, you may be looking to get some writing done. You may be looking to get some writing submitted. You may be looking for some new journals to read and reach out to.

Creativity may be an essential way you interact with the world, and you may be frustrated because there’s not a lot of time…

Eleven days ago, I wrote about what made the prophets of the Jewish and Christian traditions prophetic. I said that you don’t have to believe they had literal visions of the future to understand their work. They understood what oppression, injustice, and empire to do people, families, communities, and the planet. The horsemen John wrote about from Patmos bear the gifts of broken, unjust systems:…

Revelation in a Time of Coronavirus and Late Capitalism

The book of Revelation is, among other things, a sociological allegory for life among oppressed peoples (specifically, Christians) in the Roman Empire in the first century of the common era. It’s apocalyptic, not merely because of its prophetic tropes, but because Roman society was, itself, apocalyptic. I don’t mean that apocalyptic visions dominated the social, artistic, philosophic, or…

Art and Communication, Modernity and Mass Media: Some Thoughts from Milan Kundera

I’m reading The Art of the Novelby Milan Kundera. The first section, “The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes,” is pretty brilliant. Kundera’s thesis is that in the wake of the Scientific Revolution, the novel emerged as the fundamental plumb-line of the inner life. Art, with its vagaries, and not Bacon’s empiricism (which left even its mater out in the cold) emerges as the way in which people (at…

Ten Albums, No Context

The Crying of Lot 49 (No Post on Sundays)

Right you are, Harry!

As you may know (I pretend there are people following along), I have been reading The Crying of Lot 49. The post horn is a central image. Yesterday, I reported backthat an extraterrestrial encounter with Billy Joel has made me question what Pynchon makes of the modern world. So much terrible, lying media (the muting of truth), and so much inconsequential media (the…

In Dreams (The Crying of Lot 49)

I’ve been looking forward to finishing The Crying of Lot 49.

I’m not someone who cares very much about being hooked by intriguing plots. One of my favorite books, The Sun Also Rises, is mostly about people going to cafes.

The Crying of Lot 49 spends four chapters piquing my interest in a potentially sensational plot, but chapter 5 is a slog. Shame on me.

The chapter is partly a dream…

In May, Another Easter

Somehow, it is May 16, 2019.

May 16 already.

Ten days ago, my cousin would have turned 38. His beagle, who is now my beagle, is whining in his crate. Beagles, if you don’t know, are beautiful and complicated and a little bit of mess. Beagles are like people when it all comes right down to it.

Last week I had a dream about my cousin. We were driving and catching up. We both knew…

We Belong Among the Wildflowers

I planted wildflowers in my yard.

I know that sounds stupid. Wildflowers are supposed to be wild.

I don’t check them everyday, even though I know that botany, or whatever it is I’m doing, is not like physics. Plants don’t mind being observed, they don’t hide their position or speed. But still, there’s uncertainty. It shouldn’t feel so much like luck; it is, after all, some kind of science.

Why I’m Leaving Facebook, or, Weaning off The Feed (and Watching Finches)

I have been weaning off of social media. Yesterday, I deleted my Twitter account entirely. I’ve decided to be far less active on Facebook, except for sharing things with people who might be interested.

The Feed is was gets me. It’s too much. It’s too much all at once. I gave it a shot. I gave it ten years. I told it everything I liked and everything I didn’t. After ten years, it was all at…

The Thing is Persistence

Dear editors,

Please find attached a salty poem about being frustrated in bookstores (but never with lit mags).

Thank you for your consideration,

Chris Cocca

The Best Songs About Rain

It has been raining for a near-biblical period of time in Pennsylvania. Maybe not forty days, but certainly six.

This morning the sun is shining and it looks again like May. Today I will mow the lawn and pull some weeds. If I have (make) time, I’ll do some writing and revising, which is also like pulling weeds. There’s something very satisfying about these actions.

In honor of the…

One of the hardest things about writing poetry is not being too precious about it.

I try to strike all the preciousness away. And then I read the newest mags and journals or html broadsides, and find amazing work, and many precious lines I’d probably strike.

The word amazing is, itself, a little precious. A little over-used by adults.

The only people who really know what it means are…

How to Submit to Literary Journals

One of the harder things about writing (the business, not the craft) is all the time it takes to research all the markets that might want your work. Finding them, reading them, formatting your submission just so (every time). This takes time. Depending on where you’re at in your creative arcs and cycles, that might be time away from writing and revision.

I tend not to start submitting until…