ZYZZYVASPEAKS

Nike Deal

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:23:00 +0000

Celebrating ZYZZYVA's 25th tomorrow night at the JCC, should be fun.

Meanwhile, the editor ventures further into the storm. [click on image to enlarge]

He is willing to try anything short of compromising the ZYZZYVA brand to get through the rainy day of the Great Recession.

How about a Nike deal?

A promotion with Aquascutum?

NB: He's wearing allegedly waterproof (paint-stained) New Balance walkers in a style that has unfortunately been discontinued.

Halloween Narrative

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:09:00 +0000

Last Saturday afternoon, in the Pet Cemetery underneath the approach [click on images to enlarge]
to the Golden Gate Bridge, some young people had gathered as if to party. But
they had a larger purpose: dividing themselves into groups they strove to devise narratives
to tell each other in the gloaming.

It was a delightful interlude—who would have thought that storytelling would be such a fun party game—as I headed up the hill toward home through the militarily precise cemetery in the Presidio.

Now They Tell Me

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:10:00 +0000

It's easy to publish a litmag, just click here.

I especially like the "rewards" available to litmag publishers "and editors," especially the "inadvertent" ones:

Publishing literary journals is an art. As publishers and editors, they have the potential to change peoples way of thinking, bring interesting viewpoints to their audience, inadvertently launch new writers, meet fascinating people in the literary world, and so much more.

The Caducity of Life

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:25:00 +0000

Dan Chiasson begins his examination of autobiography in American poetry, One Kind of Everything, with a passage from "Experience," the essay Emerson wrote after the death of his son:

...this calamity...does not touch me: something which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar. It was caducous.

Caducous, which I looked up: from the Latin, cadere, to fall, hence, falling off easily or early.

Two pages later, Chiasson repeats the passage: "...falls off from me and leaves no scar. It was caduceus."

Perhaps he (and the proofreader) felt the two words were interchangeable. Or that the trope was, in essence, medical.

Perhaps they didn't notice at all.

(A search for "caducous" on Bing delivers "caduceus" and asks if you really truly wanted "caducous.")

Ah, the caducity of life.

China Update

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:22:00 +0000

zyzzyva seems to be vigorous in China.

And my personal correspondent in China recently send this linguistic update:

hexie (和谐), hu jintao's favorite word: "harmonious," as in "harmonious society" (和谐社会)

hexie (河蟹), nearly homophonous, favorite word of sarcastic chinese bloggers: "river crab"

in protest of online censorship, chinese bloggers have developed an effective system of code words, often homophones, that differ slightly from the "sensitive" word but nonetheless can easily be recognized by those in the know.

hexie is one such word, allowing bloggers to make endless and profane fun of poor river crabs.

the river crab has even become a popular cartoon, as has the "grass-mud horse" (caonima, nearly homophonous with the words for "fuck your mother," which would be censored if written online).

hexie has even become a verb: when someone runs afoul of the government and disappears or mysteriously loses interest in expressing his opinions online, he has been "river crabbed."

PS: Perhaps you already knew this: your blog is blocked in China. Nothing personal, I think it applies to all of blogspot. We're able to get to it using a proxy server, a not-too-technical loophole that the benevolent govt has allowed to remain open. YouTube's been blocked since they included a video of a Tibetan getting the shit kicked out of him, and for some reason they have also blocked Facebook. Go figure.

JCC next Monday

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:29:00 +0000

The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco hosts an event for us next Monday: "ZYZZYVA Turns 25: Celebrating with Howard Junker"

...among the writers whose first story in print appeared in its pages are Po Bronson, Chitra Divakaruni, Haruki Murakami, and F.X. “Million Dollar Baby” Toole.

With writers Drew Cushing, Robin Ekiss, Chris Mittelstaedt, Samantha Schoech, Simone Spearman, and Christine Lee Zilka.

Monday, November 9
8:00 pm

Free of charge, although you should make a reservation at 292.1233 or www.jccsf.org/arts

Southern Review Cuts Back

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Another old-school litmag has been devastated by the Depression.

Budget cuts have forced the Southern Review (and the LSU Press) to retrench. See the Poets & Writers report here.

SR will cut back on travel, advertising, and office supplies.

Will reduce page count from 2oo (or 220) to 180.

Cancel some readings and other events planned to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the magazine and convert others from free to "fund-raising opportunities."

"Everything except the bare bones is being cut," declares SR editor Jeanne Leiby. "We'd like to do a mail campaign to raise money, but we can't because it's too expensive."

As P&W sees it, "Perhaps most poignant of all, the annual editor's awards for the best poetry, nonfiction, and fiction published in the magazine each year—named for [Robert Penn] Warren, [Cleanth] Brooks [Brooks & Warren were the founding managing editors], and Eudora Welty, respectively—are being discontinued in their present form because the magazine can't afford the $1,500 prize each of the winners usually receives. Instead, Leiby is considering turning the awards into a contest with a $25 entry fee."

In an unrelated story, P&W lists the litmags associated with MFA programs.

There are 27 of those litmags on the West Coast.

Remembering PC

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:08:00 +0000

To revisit the great days of political correctness, click here. It's a Scarry story.

[click on images to enlarge; scroll over images to read comments; use magnifying glass above images]

Gratitude

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Halloween teaches kids that the world will feed them.

All they have to do is go begging door to door.

Since this lesson is somewhat optimistic, it is phrased: Threaten the bourgeoisie and it will pay you off.

Halloween, in the nonprofit world, marks the height of the giving season:

We will continue to give you treats, if you share just a tiny bit of your harvest.

Since this message is somewhat optimistic, it's phrased: Spare a dime and cheat the tax man.

In the hopes that my coffers will be filled up, I have been reading The Psychology of Gratitude, edited by Robert A. Emmons & Michael E. McCullough (Oxford U Press, 2004).

I thought I might at least learn how to help make thank-you notes more grateful-sounding.

Not that I have any trouble being grateful—how extraordinarily generous the world has been!

But it's tough thinking up new ways to acknowledge charitable contributions.

Imagine my delight upon reading that "It is also possible that gratitude increases happiness by increasing the actual number of benefits in a person's life.

"In particular, gratitude could increase happiness by enhancing a person's social benefits...the quality of one's friendships in life...."

How terrific. Bring it on. Thanks.

Subscribe, subscribe

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:38:00 +0000

I am indebted to the Poetry Foundation's new Poetry Learning Lab, for pointing me toward Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and its catalog of literary fools:

A fool quite angry is quite innocent;

Alas! 'tis ten times worse when they repent.

One dedicates in high heroic prose,

And ridicules beyond a hundred foes;

One from all Grub Street will my fame defend,

And, more abusive, calls himself my friend.

This prints my Letters, that expects a bribe,

And others roar aloud, "Subscribe, subscribe."

[To subscribe to ZYZZYVA, click here.]
[ O what a fool am I.]

Top Three Baseball Facts

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:23:00 +0000

The Top Three Baseball Facts I learned recently in The Glory of Their Times, an oral history of old-time baseball:

In 1902, the Pirates won the pennant by 27 1/2 games, a record. Their big hitter, Wee Tommy Leach, led the league in homers with 6, not one of which was hit out of the park.
When the spitball was outlawed after the 1919 season as part of the post-Black Sox scandal clean-up, 17 pitchers were allowed to keep throwing it, including future Hall of Famer Stan Coveleski, who once threw seven innings without throwing a ball.
Rogers Hornsby, the greatest right-handed hitter of all time, broke into organized ball with the almost-all-girl Bloomer Girls team, passing as a girl, which was not as difficult as it might seem because the team wore "regular" baseball uniforms, not bloomers.

3-D Painting

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:36:00 +0000

Can't make it to the Palazzo Strozzi to see the trompe l'oeil show?

Click here.

As exemplary as it is to look at the work not the wall texts, I would have appreciated captions.

PS: The de Young has a terrific room full of American trompers: Peto, Harnett, Haberle, Decker...

It's Lunner

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:46:00 +0000

@Dom, also known as Dom Sagolla, helped create Twitter.

To explain it all, he wrote 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form.

But he doesn't get it:

that the midafternoon meal is "lunner," which I [thought I had] officially christened in May of last year.

[Google doesn't find my post until its eighth page; turns out there's a Norwegian town by that name, etc.]

@Dom persists in calling it dinch, dunch, lupper.

PS: The Urban Dictionary credits "lunner" to Meowy Meowster in May 2004 (70 thumbs up, 10 down).

Merriam-Webster OnLine offers three usuages, the earliest from 3/22/06.

On 9/2/05, Tink Nation complained that 7/11 [sic] was advertising a non-healthy lunner.

On July 14, 2007, Mentabolism had dinch/lunner at Applebee's (at "1700 hours"; cost for two: 14,000 KD).

That September 24, Lisa Fink reported on introducing "lunner" in Mongolia as a Fullbright Fellow [scroll down].

Last March 1st, chacey's cat buki sang about lunner on YouTube (mine was the 99th view).

May 22nd, Louie Yan had lunner in Carmel.

June 4th, red.pump.shoes had "lunner=lunch dinner" at Mr. Pancake in Jakarta.

June 9th, Jhnlee reported on a seafood lunner in Pagsanjan, Philippines.

July 7th, maxie, a 23-year-old West Virginian, suggested you can eat whatever the fuck you want for Lunner [sic: she caps it].

Which drew 43 comments, including one from Malnurtured Snay, who proposed "brinner," when you have breakfast for dinner.

For lunner with an umlaut, I recommend the Hotel Raitelberg in Wustenrot, Germany.

Looking ahead, TPHoliday is contemplating a brunch menu and a cocktail/lunner menu for her 5/23/10 wedding.

The Zyzzyva is Back

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:45:00 +0000

The Zyzzyva is back down under, returning last night or yesterday or whenever it was in Australia.

Download their latest (below the image in small type); it opens with static, continues with silliness, but, hey, it's The Zyzzyva and it's back.

Decor

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:22:00 +0000

The Booksmith is redecorating. (And Melissa Mytinger, longtime marketing director at Cody's, is the new events manager.)

Meanwhile, on the way to catch the last day of Mitzi Pedersen (she was in the Whitney Biennial last year) at Ratio 3, it was reassuring to see that the Stevenson St. street people are eating organic. [click on image to enlarge]

The new ZYZZYVA office on 14th St. still needs some work.
Around the corner on Valencia, Mina Dresden was prepping her walls.
And then, beneath the pipes at Conduit, I ate some delicious walu.

Zyzzyva the mixed media

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:07:00 +0000

We are pleased to take note, at long last, of Zyzzyva, 2002, mixed media on paper, 30 x 22 inches, by the Anglo-Floridian artist John Bailly .

Dr. Fiction

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:51:00 +0000

Andrea Pitzer, who edits "Narrative Digest" for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, points to some exemplary medical narratives.

You might also want to check out Telling True Stories, the Foundation's anthology, which goes for $5.61 new on Amazon.

Gleeson Library

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I dropped by yesterday afternoon to pick up some books I had requested at USF's' Gleeson Library, which has been my mainstay for 30 years, ever since I worked on my Master's in Private School Administration

(most of my classmates were nuns preparing to run parochial schools; they never talked back to our instructors, which I had been trained to do).

Oh, said the work/study librarian, you're going to be doing an event at the JCC on Nov. 9.

Yes, I said, too bad you have a term paper due the next day.

She laughed.

I had needed an ego-boost because I had just come from The Booksmith and discovered they had no ZYZZYVAs on the rack. (Maybe they had sold out.)

PS: The book I picked up:

Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge
Colum McCann, Everything in this Country Must
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite
Jayne Anne Phillips, Machine Dreams
Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead
Gao Xingjian, The Case For Literature

From the new-book shelf:

Emmons McCullough, The Psychology of Gratitude
Philip Lopate, Notes on Sontag

PPS: I hope the option of going online to request books to be pulled out of the stacks and delivered at the front desk doesn't mutate ever so gradually into closing the stacks and moving the books to off-campus storage, thus freeing up valuable "study space."

Lit Spec

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:19:00 +0000

If you have a copy of ZYZZYVA Spring '04, you might be richer than you think.

It is currently being offered on Amazon UK for $48.78

Internet Archive

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:16:00 +0000

If you look closely at the album on the right [click on image to enlarge], you'll see a much-loved local comic in happier days.
I saw this display last night at the Internet Archive which has moved to sumptuous new quarters on Clement, once the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist,

at an open house to introduce A Future for Books: BookServer.
I skipped the lecture
having piggedout on the spread.
NY Times Science writer John Markoff, who recently celebrated his 60th, altho the official date is the 29th, commented that it was just like '99, except everyone was ten years older.

Arundhati Roy

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:23:00 +0000

Arundhati Roy, who wrote 1997's heartbreakingly beautiful The God of Small Things (you can sample it here), has seemingly left fiction behind to become a 24/7 activist.

But you can't take the girl out of the lovely language: her new collection of essays, Field Notes on Democracy, is subtitled "Listening to Grasshoppers."

Exactly.

Which is the title of a 27-page essay subtitled: "Genocide, Denial, and Celebration."

Which was delivered as a lecture in Istanbul in January 2008 on the first anniversary of the assassination of an Armenian journalist.

In the course of saying all the right things in lovely language, Roy referenced the perilous situation of democracy in India; she spared her audience (and us) no detail about, for example, Hindu nationalism:

...Vidya Bharati is the largest educational organization in the nongovernmental sector. It has thirteen thousand educational institutes, including the Saraswati Vidya Mandir schools with seventy thousand teachers and more than 1.7 million students. It has organizations working with tribals (Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram), literature (Akhil Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad), intellectuals (Pragya Bharati, Deendayal Research Institute), historians (Bharatiya Itihaas Sankalan Yojanalaya), language (Sanskrit Bharti), slum dwellers (Seva Bharati, Hindu Seva Prathishtan), health (Swami Vivekanand Medical Mission, National Medicos Organization), leprosy patients....The list goes on and on. [sic]

PS: Despite Partition, India has 160 million Muslims, almost as many as Pakistan's 174 million, more than Bangladesh's 130 million. (Indonesia has the most: 210 million.)

Occupation is a Crime

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:35:00 +0000

Occupation is a Crime. Bring the Troops Home. [click on images to enlarge]

I missed the protest itelf yesterday, but picked up a discarded sign from the sidewalk and carried it home with me, protesting a bit at the Hosfelt Gallery, which was empty,

but keeping my peace next door at Braunstein/Quay, which was packed with a retro for Bean and Alan Finneran.

I got a ride part of the way home, then hopped a bus to grab a pizza at Little Star. Diviz looks like it's being turned into Park Avenue.
On McAllister, WorkshopSF, which has a really fun curriculum, also has a fab chandelier.
A few doors west, the Kefe Studio has a hearty window.
Even farther west, hangers on...

The New Literacy

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:42:00 +0000

If your javin truble reading this, you might seek help here. [run your cursor over the image to go to next or previous image]

Karen Carissimo

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:31:00 +0000

As part of LitQuake, ZYZZYVA board member Karen Carissimo will read tomorrow night at 8:30 at Cafe QueTal, 1005 Guerrero,

for the International Poetry Library of San Francisco,

which is a non-profit library for working poets and poetry enthusiasts that provides online and on-site poetry resources to browse, rent, or purchase.

Also reading: Bruce Smith, Rebecca Foust, Leticia Hernández, Jules Gibbs, Tomás Riley.

Our 25th

editor@zyzzyva.org (ZYZZYVA) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:37:00 +0000

The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco will help us celebrate our 25th on Monday, 9 November, at 8 p.m.

It's free, but advance reservations are required.