The Mumpsimus

Mike Allen is probably best known within the science fiction/fantasy/horror field for his energetic promotion of SF poetry, both as a writer and an an editor/publisher. He is currently the president of The Science Fiction Poetry Association and the founding publisher and editor of Mythic Delirium . His own poetry and fiction have appeared in Asimov's , Interzone , and Strange Horizons , among many other places. He has won the SFPA's Rhysling Award , co-edited the Rhysling showcase anthology Alchemy of Stars , and also participated in the Speculative Poetry Symposium I moderated for Strange Horizons earlier this year. Mike's latest books are both published by Prime: Disturbing Muses and Strange Wisdoms of the Dead (forthcoming). He lives in Roanoke, Virginia with his wife, Anita, and works as a reporter for a Roanoke newspaper. When did you begin writing poetry? Why SF poetry? I never made a conscious choice to write sf poetry. It's what I write naturally. I d...

Whenever I have a lot to do, I do other things. This, of course, causes stress and anxiety and lateness and all sorts of other maladies, but it also leads to the discovery of things that I might not ever discover. I currently have an entire book to read before a class tomorrow, but am I reading it? No. Instead, I have been looking for fun stuff on the web, because that's why the web is there, isn't it? To provide me with fun stuff. Here, then, is what I have found by doing everything other than what I should be doing: A great backup program for Macs: SuperDuper MacGems , a weblog I'm sure everybody out there who uses a Mac already knows about, but which was a revelation to me. Via the above, I discovered pearLyrics , a freeware program that searches for lyrics to songs in iTunes and then adds them to the file. The Dashboard widget is great. (I've never really bothered with the Dashboard in OS X.4 before, but, you know, when you've got a lot of other things t...

Writing too much about books full of pictures is probably some sort of crime with its own circle of hell, but two art/graphic/comic/something books I've read/looked at recently have held my attention: First & Fifteenth: Pop Art Short Stories by Steve Powers and 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden. Powers's "pop art short stories" aren't exactly stories -- they're more like incidents, moments, glances, jokes. First & Fifteenth looks and feels and even smells like an art book, and it is an art book, but it's more than that, too -- it's a subtle bit of fun, a way to take a couple kicks at some of the assumptions of what a story can be and do. It's not profound, but since when did anybody go to pop art for profundity -- pop is the province of weasels and corn: it can sneak up on you, and plant roots. 99 Ways to Tell a Story is a more substantial book, and a more ambitious one. It's an attempt to do to the graph...

It's Monday, so it must be time to purge the bookmarks. First, I keep forgotting to link to the various discussions going on at the LitBlog Co-op about the various books that were nominees for the Read This selection this quarter. There's been some pretty interesting stuff, though, including A few words from Kirby Gann , author of the book I nominated, Our Napoleon in Rags ; another nominee and its author ; and the final nominee . Ambition and genre (via Collected Miscellany ) 'It is nice," said John Banville on Monday night, "to see a work of art win the Booker prize." The winner was Banville's own book, The Sea . When he doesn't write art, he uses another name . Thoughtful of him to help us distinguish between the two, don't you think? A Booker judge speaks out . Bullcrit "Signposts for a Naturalist Criticism" (via The Valve ) One-star Amazon reviews (via Emerald City ) "The Truth About the Colleges" The Movie Quote...

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been alluding to a plot to reconfigure the entire economic, cultural, and political face of the world, and now I am ready to reveal it: A new award. The Award Yes, indeed, the world needs another award. Therefore, I have created a top-secret selection committee composed entirely of myself, and have a specific set of vague criteria to determine a recipient. The recipient must be an exceptionally creative individual, preferably a writer, preferably one whose work I've read show significant promise for interesting future work, preferably writing The award will therefore provide a qualified individual selected by the committee with the following prize: One $5 bill A coffee mug made by Rick Elkin of Rising Moon Studios, a member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen The goal of the award is to provide the recipient with enough money for at least one cup of coffee, plus a cup for that coffee. The 2005 Award The recipient of the 2005 Mumpsimus ...

According to the Washington Post , Tom DeLay has extraordinary powers: Former House majority leader turns himself into sheriff's office in carefully planned appearance -R. Jeffrey Smith 5:42 p.m. ET If anyone has photos, please let me know -- the Post only has pictures of DeLay as a human, but I bet he makes a pretty handsome sheriff's office.

American writing, its roots in Poe, Twain, Melville, and extended through Faulkner and, for gawd's sake, everyone else -- is encompassing, courageous, omnivorous. It gobbles contradiction, keeps its eyes open, engages with the culture at every possible level. But boundaries being crossed make the inhabitants of the increasingly isolated castle of the status quo all the more anxious. If we're free to use these methods, allowed to talk about everything we know, if we are allowed to describe the world of advertising, the world of capitalism, the world of pop culture, the actual world where the elements described as of high- and low-brow are in a constant inextricable mingling -- if we let down our guard, where will our status emblems be? What credentials will we burnish? How will we know we are different from the rabble outside the gates? Again, it's sheerly class anxiety that is expressed in these attacks. And, as well, a fundamental discomfort with the creative act, with the...