Litkicks
My Dinner With Briony
by Levi Asher on Thursday, December 20, 2007 01:25 am1. I went to see Atonement, the film based on Ian McEwan's great novel. It wasn't nearly as bad as I was worried it would be.
I was most impressed by director Joe Wright's treatment of the book's first sequence, the chaotic and ultimately disastrous dinner party at the Tallis household. The film follows the book closely in these early scenes (the actress playing Briony Tallis even looks exactly like the girl on the paperback cover), but embellishes the story with lush photography and languid summery pacing. The younger actors aren't great (it actually is possible for a child actor to cry realistically; just watch Little Miss Sunshine), but the male and female romantic leads James McAvoy and Keira Knightley are quite good, and the sexual chemistry between them is palpable.
The Dunkirk battle scenes and London hospital scenes are captivating and well-intentioned, though they draw short of capturing the full wartime horror depicted by Ian McEwan in the book. The story's big finish is then completely blown off, inexcusably, by this film version. Vanessa Redgrave is fine enough, but what Hollywood lunkhead made the decision to replace that great family party with a cold, mechanical television interview? The family party ending certainly struck the better note. Still, every movie is allowed to make some mistakes, and overall I'll happily recommend Atonement to anybody who either has or has not read Ian McEwan's novel. Please let me know what you think if you've seen it.
2. On a far, far, far less refined front, the innovative comic writer Jonathan Ames is premiering a Showtime series, What's Not To Love? (based on this book and other writings).
The first episode seems to aim for a Larry David/Sarah Silverman kind of vibe -- quirky through the roof, sexually outrageous -- and actually Jonathan Ames seems to have a good shot at following in Curb Your Enthusiasm's wake and finding an enthusiastic audience for this series. I won't judge the show based on the first episode (which involved a "mangina" and a boxing match) except to say that I didn't like it as much as Wake Up, Sir!. But the television screen presents Ames's unique rodent-like visage to memorable effect, and I have a feeling future episodes of this show will grow on me.
3. Ed Champion, easily one of the best litbloggers on this planet, is closing up shop. I trust that this is more of a rethinking than a retreat. I think it's a good idea to shake things up every once in a while, so I applaud Ed's resolve to seek his muse to the fullest here, and I eagerly await his next moves, whatever they turn out to be.
4. A revival of Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming, a tense, puzzling and deeply discomforting look at family and sexual politics, is getting rave reviews.
5. The first phase of the return of Action Poetry on LitKicks is about to begin! I'll be putting up a review of all the poems published on LitKicks in 2007 in the next couple of days. New poems will be accepted again shortly after New Years Day.
I was most impressed by director Joe Wright's treatment of the book's first sequence, the chaotic and ultimately disastrous dinner party at the Tallis household. The film follows the book closely in these early scenes (the actress playing Briony Tallis even looks exactly like the girl on the paperback cover), but embellishes the story with lush photography and languid summery pacing. The younger actors aren't great (it actually is possible for a child actor to cry realistically; just watch Little Miss Sunshine), but the male and female romantic leads James McAvoy and Keira Knightley are quite good, and the sexual chemistry between them is palpable.
The Dunkirk battle scenes and London hospital scenes are captivating and well-intentioned, though they draw short of capturing the full wartime horror depicted by Ian McEwan in the book. The story's big finish is then completely blown off, inexcusably, by this film version. Vanessa Redgrave is fine enough, but what Hollywood lunkhead made the decision to replace that great family party with a cold, mechanical television interview? The family party ending certainly struck the better note. Still, every movie is allowed to make some mistakes, and overall I'll happily recommend Atonement to anybody who either has or has not read Ian McEwan's novel. Please let me know what you think if you've seen it.
2. On a far, far, far less refined front, the innovative comic writer Jonathan Ames is premiering a Showtime series, What's Not To Love? (based on this book and other writings).
The first episode seems to aim for a Larry David/Sarah Silverman kind of vibe -- quirky through the roof, sexually outrageous -- and actually Jonathan Ames seems to have a good shot at following in Curb Your Enthusiasm's wake and finding an enthusiastic audience for this series. I won't judge the show based on the first episode (which involved a "mangina" and a boxing match) except to say that I didn't like it as much as Wake Up, Sir!. But the television screen presents Ames's unique rodent-like visage to memorable effect, and I have a feeling future episodes of this show will grow on me.
3. Ed Champion, easily one of the best litbloggers on this planet, is closing up shop. I trust that this is more of a rethinking than a retreat. I think it's a good idea to shake things up every once in a while, so I applaud Ed's resolve to seek his muse to the fullest here, and I eagerly await his next moves, whatever they turn out to be.
4. A revival of Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming, a tense, puzzling and deeply discomforting look at family and sexual politics, is getting rave reviews.
5. The first phase of the return of Action Poetry on LitKicks is about to begin! I'll be putting up a review of all the poems published on LitKicks in 2007 in the next couple of days. New poems will be accepted again shortly after New Years Day.
Everything Happens on Klickitat Street
by Levi Asher on Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:12 am
1. The above artwork is from a book called Uncovered by an artist named Thomas Allen who carves printed characters off the covers of pulp novels and arranges them in three dimensions (via Boing.)
2. I've had a strange urge to write about music lately. That's why I wrote this review of Led Zeppelin's re-release of the classic 1976 movie/album The Song Remains the Same. I didn't get to see the reunion in London, but I did have fun writing this article.
3. More about music writing: I love it when authors or critics I discuss in my weekly review of the New York Times Book Review contact me with gripes or other reactions. I recently mocked a Beatles book (because I am a mocker) called Can't Buy Me Love based on a reviewer's comments, and author Jonathan Gould emailed me to ask why I would criticize a book I hadn't seen. This is a fair question, so I requested a review copy and have now read the book.
Jonathan Gould is correct: All You Need is Love is a very satisfying Beatles biography, written with authority and taste. Gould's best skill is in the deconstruction of individual songs like "Eleanor Rigby" or "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". He discerns meaning in each detail (for instance, the background vocals in songs like "We Can Work It Out" indicate that the band members are communicating well, whereas the lack of complex background vocals on The White Album means the opposite). I could read Jonathan Gould's song breakdowns all day, though I was less interested in the historical treatments, maybe just because I've read it all before (" ... as the jet taxied towards the terminal packed with screaming fans at the newly named JFK Airport ...").
I also have some problems with Gould's harsh judgement of Yoko Ono, who couldn't possibly have done the good work she's done if she were the artistic phony he portrays. He's also improbably dismissive of the wonderful skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan, who he must be the only person in the world to dislike. Still, small quibbles aside ... Can't Buy Me Love is a solid and well-written Beatles book.
4. Everything happens on Klickitat Street. Here's Denise Hamilton in the Los Angeles Times visiting the hometown of Beverly Cleary, where it all took place. "Which house was Henry's? Where was the vacant lot where the kids found discarded boxes of bubble gum to sell at school? Could that mutt be Ribsy's great-great grandson?"
Minor correction, though: Denise Hamilton asks why Ralph Mouse is the only Beverly Cleary work to ever make it to television. But Ramona was once a series on PBS (though not a very good one).
5. Some poets have been asking me when Action Poetry (our ongoing subterranean creative writing activity here on this site, to which you are invited) will be back on LitKicks. The answer is: soon. I am working on some exciting new software that will make it better than ever. But it's going to take a little more time, and when it's ready I'll be rolling it out in stages. I'm guessing we'll be back in full swing by mid-January of next year (if everything works correctly, which is a big "if").
6. I've been tagged for a meme by fellow blogger Ed Champion (who, by the way, is running for National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors). The idea here is that you have to list the first sentence of the first blog post of the first day of this month for every month of the past year. I've done this below, and here are my main findings: I'm obviously having a rough winter; I'm pretty grumpy; I can write some really long-ass sentences. Hmm, and all this time I thought I was a minimalist. Anyway, here's my twelve:
December 2007: "We're having some tech problems here in the Land of Literary Kicks."
November 2007: "I'm taking a sanity break today; I'll be back to review the Book Review next weekend."
October 2007: "Philip Roth's Shakespeherian-titled Exit Ghost has certainly been kicking up the chatter."
September 2007: "Bravo to Jim Lewis for an enthusiastic and bracing New York Times Book Review front cover piece that begins like this: Good morning and please listen to me: Denis Johnson is a true American artist, and Tree of Smoke is a tremendous book ..."
August 2007: "Yeah, I'm unpleased with the choice of Charles Simic for United States Poet Laureate."
July 2007: "I'm reviewing today's New York Times Book Review from a peaceful backyard in rural Indiana, as bullfrogs croak, hummingbirds buzz around my head (did you know that a hummingbird likes to eat half its weight in sugar every day?) and maple trees tower above."
June 2007: "Walking the vast hangars of Book Expo America 2007, I pause to consider what we can learn from this amazing display of publishing ingenuity."
May 2007: "I forgot, in yesterday's post, to post my own response to the question many interesting folks from Richard Ford to Lawrence Ferlinghetti have been answering: why are book reviewers important?"
April 2007: "I can't complain (and you know I like to complain) about a New York Times Book Review whose cover article informs me about a literary patron and publisher I'd never heard of, jazz-age ocean-liner heiress Nancy Cunard, who apparently published Samuel Beckett, anthologized W. E. B. DuBois, made love with T. S. Eliot and took her political idealism to such an insane extreme that she ultimately lost all her wealth and most of her friends."
March 2007: "I checked out Shelfari, a new book-oriented social networking site that's getting some buzz based on Amazon.com buying a stake."
February 2007: "Okay, so I'm way way way behind on all the review copies various nice people have been sending me."
January 2007: "As promised last week, I've begun rereading the only known novel featuring late President Gerald Ford in the title, John Updike's Memories of the Ford Administration, originally published sixteen years after the end of Ford's presidency."
I'll pass this meme on to, hmmm, let's see ... Caryn, Jamelah, Christian Crumlish, Eric Rosenfield and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In Transit
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 11:46 pmLitKicks is moving to a new software platform. Because our old server was having a lot of trouble keeping up with demand, we were forced to begin this transition before the new site was complete. We will be reassembling the entire site over the next few weeks, and offering some exciting improvements when we do -- please be patient and don't give up on us!
Tech Problems at LitKicks
by Levi Asher on Monday, November 19, 2007 10:29 pmWe're having some tech problems here in the Land of Literary Kicks. I'm experimenting with some new software that will hopefully solve the problem. In the meantime, I'll try to keep up with regular posting (many new books to talk about) as I work on this.
If you're a poet trying to contribute a brilliant poem to Action Poetry, you may want to hold off a day or two while I kick the antenna a few times.
Hang in there, and the site will most assuredly be back, better than ever, very soon.
If you're a poet trying to contribute a brilliant poem to Action Poetry, you may want to hold off a day or two while I kick the antenna a few times.
Hang in there, and the site will most assuredly be back, better than ever, very soon.
Adventures in Internet Literature
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 10:21 pmI can't hold back an amused smile when I hear about new online writing projects like Penguin's A Million Penguins, in which a large number of people are attempting to compose a collaborative novel using Wiki software (there's also a side blog to keep things moving and provide structure). At this point, the Million Penguins blog is somewhat readable, while the main wiki-novel is a fast-changing mass of incomprehensible notions apparently involving whales, bananas and a guy named Artie. Maybe tomorrow it'll be literature, but today it's whales, bananas and a guy named Artie.
Yet I commend Penguin for attempting this, and for continuing to see this adventure through. Even though nobody's figured out how to make collaborative online writing fly just yet, many brave souls keep trying. Take Dennis Cooper, for instance, editor of an Akashic Books anthology called Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground (an excellent editor's introduction helps explain the project's goals). This is a smart collection of short fiction, most of it transgressive or confessional in nature. Every single piece feels strong, but as I hold the thick book in my hand I feel somehow alienated from the social community that created this book, and this makes it difficult for me to enjoy the book.
This is an inherent problem with books created online: it is very difficult to transmit the strong sense of connection that permeates an online community to a book reader who isn't there. Reading Userlands, I meet one fascinating voice after another, but it all flashes by like a party where I know I won't be staying long, and where everybody but me knows everybody else.
Maybe we need to adjust our expectations when we explore these territories. Walter Kirn is another adventurer in internet-based literature, having recently completed The Unbinding, an online serial novel that ran at Slate and has just been published in an attractive paperback edition. This is a funny and thought-provoking fable about an employee of an advanced satellite personal security system who begins to get too deeply involved in "the grid". Walter Kirn wrote the book "on the grid" too, and he explains in an introductory essay that when he began this online writing project he expected to become captivated by the ability to use hyperlinks freely in his fiction. But, Kirn says, once the project began he quickly realized that it was the real-time aspect of online writing -- the immediacy of the exchange between writer and readers -- that made the most difference, while hyperlinks turned out to be a creative dead end.
Kirn is smart to let the project find its own way, and if you're planning to attempt your own online literary project I'd suggest you adopt the same posture. Provide as much structure as you can in advance, and then just let it go and hope for the best.
I speak about this with some authority because, well, it happens your friendly webmaster here has paid his dues on the online literary front. Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web, a book I co-edited with Christian Crumlish in 1997, was verifiably the first anthology of web-based fiction and poetry published in book form. We even got respectable (but small) reviews in the Los Angeles Times Book Review and the Washington Post Book World (we got ignored -- hah-- by the New York Times Book Review).
The book is now out of print and copies are hard to find, though it's pretty clear that Cory Doctorow's book designer owns a copy. Was Coffeehouse a good book? Looking back, I have to admit that I think Christian and I blew it. We had some great pieces -- some of my favorites were by Joseph Squier, Mia Lipner, Jamie Fristrom, Ben Cohen, Janan Platt, E. Stephen Mack, Walter Miller, Carl Steadman, Greg Knauss, Martha Conway, Jason Snell, Lee Ranaldo, Mike Watt, Robert Hunter, quite a collection -- but, like Dennis Cooper with Userlands, we failed to provide a compelling and unified product that readers instinctively wanted to own.
I think LitKicks did a better job with Action Poetry in 2004, though this book didn't fly off any bookshelves either. But we're getting somewhere! And so is Dennis Cooper, and so is Walter Kirn.
As for Artie with the bananas and the whales and the penguins, I guess he's getting somewhere too, but he's got a ways to go.
Yet I commend Penguin for attempting this, and for continuing to see this adventure through. Even though nobody's figured out how to make collaborative online writing fly just yet, many brave souls keep trying. Take Dennis Cooper, for instance, editor of an Akashic Books anthology called Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground (an excellent editor's introduction helps explain the project's goals). This is a smart collection of short fiction, most of it transgressive or confessional in nature. Every single piece feels strong, but as I hold the thick book in my hand I feel somehow alienated from the social community that created this book, and this makes it difficult for me to enjoy the book.
This is an inherent problem with books created online: it is very difficult to transmit the strong sense of connection that permeates an online community to a book reader who isn't there. Reading Userlands, I meet one fascinating voice after another, but it all flashes by like a party where I know I won't be staying long, and where everybody but me knows everybody else.
Maybe we need to adjust our expectations when we explore these territories. Walter Kirn is another adventurer in internet-based literature, having recently completed The Unbinding, an online serial novel that ran at Slate and has just been published in an attractive paperback edition. This is a funny and thought-provoking fable about an employee of an advanced satellite personal security system who begins to get too deeply involved in "the grid". Walter Kirn wrote the book "on the grid" too, and he explains in an introductory essay that when he began this online writing project he expected to become captivated by the ability to use hyperlinks freely in his fiction. But, Kirn says, once the project began he quickly realized that it was the real-time aspect of online writing -- the immediacy of the exchange between writer and readers -- that made the most difference, while hyperlinks turned out to be a creative dead end.
Kirn is smart to let the project find its own way, and if you're planning to attempt your own online literary project I'd suggest you adopt the same posture. Provide as much structure as you can in advance, and then just let it go and hope for the best.
I speak about this with some authority because, well, it happens your friendly webmaster here has paid his dues on the online literary front. Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web, a book I co-edited with Christian Crumlish in 1997, was verifiably the first anthology of web-based fiction and poetry published in book form. We even got respectable (but small) reviews in the Los Angeles Times Book Review and the Washington Post Book World (we got ignored -- hah-- by the New York Times Book Review).
The book is now out of print and copies are hard to find, though it's pretty clear that Cory Doctorow's book designer owns a copy. Was Coffeehouse a good book? Looking back, I have to admit that I think Christian and I blew it. We had some great pieces -- some of my favorites were by Joseph Squier, Mia Lipner, Jamie Fristrom, Ben Cohen, Janan Platt, E. Stephen Mack, Walter Miller, Carl Steadman, Greg Knauss, Martha Conway, Jason Snell, Lee Ranaldo, Mike Watt, Robert Hunter, quite a collection -- but, like Dennis Cooper with Userlands, we failed to provide a compelling and unified product that readers instinctively wanted to own.
I think LitKicks did a better job with Action Poetry in 2004, though this book didn't fly off any bookshelves either. But we're getting somewhere! And so is Dennis Cooper, and so is Walter Kirn.
As for Artie with the bananas and the whales and the penguins, I guess he's getting somewhere too, but he's got a ways to go.
Reviewing the Review: August 20 2006
by Levi Asher on Saturday, August 19, 2006 10:59 pmI don't think Robert Macfarlane, fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, likes Irvine Welsh's new novel, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs.
Nor is this what George Orwell fondly called good bad writing. This is bad bad writing. There are tautologies (offices that are "unobtrusively tucked away"). There are mixed metaphors (the "bull of a man" whose frame was "going to seed"). There are mistakes -- the use of the word "diligently" where "carefully" is meant. And there are unfortunate ambiguities, as when Welsh describes Kibby's erection as "poking through the material of his trousers." We must assume either that Welsh means "showing through," or that Kibby has an unusually sharp phallus.
Ouch, Welsh, and from a fellow Scot too. That must hurt like a beer glass breaking on your head in a bar.
Don Fante, son of legendary John Fante, gets nicer treatment from John Wranovics for his new Short Dog: Cab Driver Stories from the L. A. Streets in today's New York Times Book Review, and I think Meghan Daum is possibly a little too generous to Eliza Minot's The Brambles, because the book as she describes it sounds rather flat but, Daum says:
The novel is imperfect in a way that leaves you marveling at the many things it does right and looking forward to the author's next move.
If that's all a novel does for a reviewer, I'd just as soon wait for the author's next move and skip this one.
Dave Itzkoff does a good job with Julie Phillips' new biography of Alice B. Sheldon, aka James Tiptree, Jr. I've never heard of Tiptree/Sheldon before, but this article makes me want to start catching up. I'm particularly intrigued by one point Itzkoff brushes over: author Sheldon killed her ailing, aging husband and then killed herself. That puts her in an exclusive (and sorry) club, along with William S. Burroughs, of writers who have committed murder.
Field Maloney provides a nice introduction to New Orleans-based Poppy Z. Brite's Soul Kitchen, which sounds quite intriguing. Poetry critic David Kirby's review of Maggie Dietz's Perennial Fall is a pleasure to read.
This weekend's only dull note is (no big surprise) the endpaper by Rachel Donadio, which takes us inside exclusive writers' colonies like Yaddo and MacDowell. Donadio's article is too chirpy in tone, and it fails to draw any surprising conclusions. I also can't imagine why the article lists several novels that contain scenes depicting workshops like Yaddo or MacDowell but fails to mention Jonathan Ames' Wake Up Sir!, a truly original comic novel that takes place almost entirely at a colony based on Yaddo.
* * * * *
I'm on vacation starting right this second, and the delightful Jamelah Earle is going to be holding this place down all week.
Jamelah has been with LitKicks since the days when sock puppets roamed the world, and I'm also glad to report that she will be contributing more often to LitKicks in the future. I've been overloaded lately (NOTE TO SELF: if you join the Litblog Co-op you are going to start getting five times as many review books in the mail ...) and so I've asked Jamelah if she can pitch in occasionally with her own takes on the literary topics of the day. Be nice to her this week -- I'll be on the beach! Have fun.
Nor is this what George Orwell fondly called good bad writing. This is bad bad writing. There are tautologies (offices that are "unobtrusively tucked away"). There are mixed metaphors (the "bull of a man" whose frame was "going to seed"). There are mistakes -- the use of the word "diligently" where "carefully" is meant. And there are unfortunate ambiguities, as when Welsh describes Kibby's erection as "poking through the material of his trousers." We must assume either that Welsh means "showing through," or that Kibby has an unusually sharp phallus.
Ouch, Welsh, and from a fellow Scot too. That must hurt like a beer glass breaking on your head in a bar.
Don Fante, son of legendary John Fante, gets nicer treatment from John Wranovics for his new Short Dog: Cab Driver Stories from the L. A. Streets in today's New York Times Book Review, and I think Meghan Daum is possibly a little too generous to Eliza Minot's The Brambles, because the book as she describes it sounds rather flat but, Daum says:
The novel is imperfect in a way that leaves you marveling at the many things it does right and looking forward to the author's next move.
If that's all a novel does for a reviewer, I'd just as soon wait for the author's next move and skip this one.
Dave Itzkoff does a good job with Julie Phillips' new biography of Alice B. Sheldon, aka James Tiptree, Jr. I've never heard of Tiptree/Sheldon before, but this article makes me want to start catching up. I'm particularly intrigued by one point Itzkoff brushes over: author Sheldon killed her ailing, aging husband and then killed herself. That puts her in an exclusive (and sorry) club, along with William S. Burroughs, of writers who have committed murder.
Field Maloney provides a nice introduction to New Orleans-based Poppy Z. Brite's Soul Kitchen, which sounds quite intriguing. Poetry critic David Kirby's review of Maggie Dietz's Perennial Fall is a pleasure to read.
This weekend's only dull note is (no big surprise) the endpaper by Rachel Donadio, which takes us inside exclusive writers' colonies like Yaddo and MacDowell. Donadio's article is too chirpy in tone, and it fails to draw any surprising conclusions. I also can't imagine why the article lists several novels that contain scenes depicting workshops like Yaddo or MacDowell but fails to mention Jonathan Ames' Wake Up Sir!, a truly original comic novel that takes place almost entirely at a colony based on Yaddo.
I'm on vacation starting right this second, and the delightful Jamelah Earle is going to be holding this place down all week.
Jamelah has been with LitKicks since the days when sock puppets roamed the world, and I'm also glad to report that she will be contributing more often to LitKicks in the future. I've been overloaded lately (NOTE TO SELF: if you join the Litblog Co-op you are going to start getting five times as many review books in the mail ...) and so I've asked Jamelah if she can pitch in occasionally with her own takes on the literary topics of the day. Be nice to her this week -- I'll be on the beach! Have fun.
Action Poetry User’s Manual
by Levi Asher on Thursday, June 1, 2006 07:49 amWe'll be rolling out some software upgrades on this site in the next few weeks, starting with some changes in progress to the Action Poetry page. The page looks mostly the same, but it now automatically rolls over and creates an archive page at the beginning of each month, and the selection of featured poems in the middle right panel of every LitKicks page will now be updated continually instead of a few times a month. Today is the first of June, so the current Action Poetry page is now a blank slate (check last month's page to see what it will look like once it gets moving).
It's occurred to me that many people visit LitKicks regularly but never post on our poetry forum because they don't know what it's all about. Action Poetry is a free-form showcase for amateur or professional poets or writers. You can post an original piece, or you can write a response to another writer's poem. We try to maintain a zen atmosphere on this page -- each poem simply exists for the sake of existing, and may or may not get a response. There is no "official voice", and we never interrupt the flow to make announcements or provide structure of any kind. You may never know whether anybody liked your poem or not, and that's how Action Poetry works.
Any format, style or subject matter is okay, as long as you are sincerely trying to write well. We ask only a few things: check your spelling and formatting before you post, post only original work, and keep it short (this is not the place to upload your unpublished novel).
You can use Action Poetry as therapy, or you can use it to express secrets that won't fit on a postcard, or you can use it to show off your poetic skills. If you've never posted on Action Poetry before, all you have to do is create a LitKicks member name and you're all set.
Whoever you are, please consider writing us a poem soon.
It's occurred to me that many people visit LitKicks regularly but never post on our poetry forum because they don't know what it's all about. Action Poetry is a free-form showcase for amateur or professional poets or writers. You can post an original piece, or you can write a response to another writer's poem. We try to maintain a zen atmosphere on this page -- each poem simply exists for the sake of existing, and may or may not get a response. There is no "official voice", and we never interrupt the flow to make announcements or provide structure of any kind. You may never know whether anybody liked your poem or not, and that's how Action Poetry works.
Any format, style or subject matter is okay, as long as you are sincerely trying to write well. We ask only a few things: check your spelling and formatting before you post, post only original work, and keep it short (this is not the place to upload your unpublished novel).
You can use Action Poetry as therapy, or you can use it to express secrets that won't fit on a postcard, or you can use it to show off your poetic skills. If you've never posted on Action Poetry before, all you have to do is create a LitKicks member name and you're all set.
Whoever you are, please consider writing us a poem soon.
Plugging
by Levi Asher on Thursday, March 9, 2006 11:59 pmThe LitKicks book Action Poetry: Literary Tribes for the Internet Age was chosen as one of five finalists for the Lulu Blooker Prize in the fiction category.
I'd like to thank the contest's esteemed judges for making this decision, and I'd also like to thank the great LitKicks writing community for making the book happen. More than anything else, I want to brag about the fact that I totally called this one, Babe-Ruth style, back in December over at Metaxu Cafe. I knew we'd at least make it to the final round, because the writing in this book is that good.
Will we go all the way? Well, some of the other finalists look pretty good, so I'm going to refrain from calling it a second time (even the Bambino knew better than to push his luck). If our book doesn't win, the book I'd most like to get beaten by is Keith Thompson's novel Gus Openshaw's Whale Killing Journal, an appealingly bizarre sendup of Moby Dick featuring a white whale with a scar in the shape of a double letter 'B' on his forehead, which his hunters believe stands for 'blubbery bastard'.
We didn't have the budget for any big whales or other special effects when we published Action Poetry in 2004, but we hope we still have a chance.
I'd like to thank the contest's esteemed judges for making this decision, and I'd also like to thank the great LitKicks writing community for making the book happen. More than anything else, I want to brag about the fact that I totally called this one, Babe-Ruth style, back in December over at Metaxu Cafe. I knew we'd at least make it to the final round, because the writing in this book is that good.
Will we go all the way? Well, some of the other finalists look pretty good, so I'm going to refrain from calling it a second time (even the Bambino knew better than to push his luck). If our book doesn't win, the book I'd most like to get beaten by is Keith Thompson's novel Gus Openshaw's Whale Killing Journal, an appealingly bizarre sendup of Moby Dick featuring a white whale with a scar in the shape of a double letter 'B' on his forehead, which his hunters believe stands for 'blubbery bastard'.
We didn't have the budget for any big whales or other special effects when we published Action Poetry in 2004, but we hope we still have a chance.
Shortlisted for the Man Blooker
by Levi Asher on Thursday, December 22, 2005 02:27 pmOkay, so it's not the Man Blooker prize ... it's just the Blooker Prize, a new annual award for blog-based books, and LitKicks' Action Poetry: Literary Tribes for the Internet Age is in the running.
In fact, through the happy accident of alphabetism, our book is at the very top of the list, and we like the way that feels. We believe we should win this award, and in a vain attempt to drum up a huge groundswell of popular support I'd like to talk about what this book is and how it came about.
In fact, through the happy accident of alphabetism, our book is at the very top of the list, and we like the way that feels. We believe we should win this award, and in a vain attempt to drum up a huge groundswell of popular support I'd like to talk about what this book is and how it came about.
The Days
by Levi Asher on Monday, November 28, 2005 10:51 pmA couple of weeks ago we were reprimanded by a friend of LitKicks for neglecting to mention Kurt Vonnegut's birthday. I tried to weasel out of this by claiming that we boycott birthdays at LitKicks, but the truth is we just forgot.
If you also sometimes miss an important literary birthday or anniversary, we have the answer for you. If you'll please scan your eyes a few pixels to the right, you'll notice a new daily feature, Today In Literature. We hope this will inspire people to visit LitKicks each and every day, not only because a good litblog really is an important part of a balanced breakfast, but also because you can now find out what significant literary events -- fictional, biographical or otherwise -- happened each day.
If you also sometimes miss an important literary birthday or anniversary, we have the answer for you. If you'll please scan your eyes a few pixels to the right, you'll notice a new daily feature, Today In Literature. We hope this will inspire people to visit LitKicks each and every day, not only because a good litblog really is an important part of a balanced breakfast, but also because you can now find out what significant literary events -- fictional, biographical or otherwise -- happened each day.
