Vigorously Lazy

I know almost nothing about Flatmancrooked’s latest release, We’re Getting On, but the prospect of the Zero Emission Book Project is inspiring. If you live on the west coast you should read up on James Kaelan and go see him when he comes to a city near you. And if you don’t live on the dream coast, head on over to Flatmancrooked and pre-order Jame’s book to send him off right!

Thanks to everyone who came out last week. It was a strange and beautiful night.

Rose was a dear and helped out with the shadow play.

Did I mention we adapted “Oneida, Ophelia, Ornella” from Matt Bell’s “Three Cataclysm Babies” appearing in Annalemma Issue Six? Well, we did and it was the sickness. At least, that’s how everyone at the party felt. Video coming soon.

People getting purple-ized.

Natalie’s commitment to the show is a force to be reckoned with.

Some guy drew this portrait of me on a matchbook cover. I was upset to see my hair looked the way it did.

“Hello everyone!”

Actor Michael Barringer read an excerpt from Ravi Mangla’s story “Bred in Captivity” appearing in Annalemma Issue Six.

The people crammed themselves into this tiny room to watch the shadow play. The love I feel for the people in the picture…

…sometimes makes it hard to speak.

That I have friends, that I have friends who love the things that I do enough to come out on a Monday night and enjoy the hell out of themselves, these things mean a lot to me. Thank you so much to everyone who came out. Your faces and brains make my heart swell.

Check out our facebook page to see the unblurry, properly lit photos!

***UPDATE: CONTEST OVER! CONGRATS TO CHRISTOPHER NEWGENT!***

Are you a fan of Annalemma on Facebook? Would you like to be? Would you care to try your hand at winning a free copy of Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice? Did you just say “Hellz yeah!” to all these questions?

If so, enter our Facebook contest.

The rules:

1) Become a fan of Annalemma Magazine.

2) Comment on this status update asking “What would you be willing to give up for a free copy of Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice?”

3) Don’t be dirty, as in, “I’d give middle boob for a copy.” My mom is a fan and frowns upon such things.

4) Try to impress me. The best comment wins a free copy of Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice!

Contest ends Sunday at midnight. Enter as often as you like. Let the quips ensue!

Do get tripped out, in a good way, by Matthew Simmons’s forearm tattoo.

Don’t be a weirdo when you meet Matt Bell for the first time outside the Mercury Lounge. Yes, it’s strange when meeting internet friends i.r.l. for the first time. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a sociable human being.

Do enjoy the shit out of everyone reading at Vermin on the Mount, especially Amelia Gray. Favorite line of the night: “Speak softly and marry a big dick.”

Don’t be scared of this man even though he’s scowling at you from a hundred feet up.

Don’t tell everyone that you caught the early flight out so you could be there for the reading. It makes you sound like an obsessive nerd.

Do feel okay about this and realize that you are an obsessive nerd in a sea of obsessive nerds

Don’t feel bad when Aaron gets his whiskey taken away. He’d been warned.

Do form a band called The Crucible of Science and have this as album cover artwork.

Don’t be scared of Zach Dodson’s mustache. It’s a perfectly natural thing.

Do meet up with old friends.

Don’t try to understand this. There is nothing to understand.

Do learn that Peter Cole, Matt Bell, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Roxane Gay, Ken Bauman, Adam Robinson, Erin Fitzgerald, Jim Ruland, Lauren Becker, Alex Coates and everyone else you’ve met for the first time in real life turn out to be super rad people.

Don’t be depressed about the smallness of this world within which you dwell. If you wanted to make money you’d be at a real estate convention. If you wanted to be famous you’d be in LA.

Do realize that you do not want to be famous.

Don’t question yourself as to whether or not it was worth it.

Do realize that it was worth it just to meet people whom you respect and admire for the words that come out of their heads. It was worth it to feel the buzz of kinship that is diluted over fiber optic cable.

The following is a correspondence that took place between the editor of this magazine and an ex-proof reader of this magazine. To read the piece in question, click here to purchase Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice.

On Apr 5, 2010, at 7:09 PM, Afton Carraway wrote:

Dear Chris – I thought you hated poetry?  If that is the case, what is Illusions [N2] doing in the new edition of Annalemma?  That alleged “story” wreaks of poetry.  Literary devices, rythms, cadence – all it is missing is lines and stanzas and, in fact, all you have to do is reformat the page slightly and you’ve got lines and stanzas…LINES AND STANZAS, I tell you!  This is a poem, no prose…where is the plot?  This is not how people speak, no matter how eccentric one chooses to be – POEM.  This is a poem – ADMIT IT!

Sorry.  I don’t mean to get worked over this.  And I do hope that I am not offending any one with my accusations, but I’m calling poem on that entry.  POEM!

I’m REALLY enjyoing reading this issue.  Poems included.

Thanks for another great one 🙂

I hope you’re well and happy and doing lots of good stuff.  Your party is the weekend of my birthday and I’m LETTING you have Jenifer for it.  You owe me one.

*wink* – Afton

———-

On Apr 6, 2010, at 2:08 PM, Chris Heavener wrote:

Hey Afton!

Glad you’ve been enjoying the magazine and it has had a visceral effect on you. Here’s my counter-argument:

It’s a gross misconception that I hate poetry. On the contrary. I’ve read poems that have really pumped my nads in the past,  and, in some cases, pumped them up more than most stories. What I have a problem with is bad poetry. My level of tolerance for bad fiction is pretty low. My tolerance for bad poetry is even lower. Close to nil. I can’t even be in the same room with it without wanting end my life if it means I no longer have to listen to or read it. And, like bad fiction, there’s a whole lot more bad poetry out there than there is good poetry. And I’ve pretty much dedicated my life to stories, finding them, publishing them and writing them. So it’s hard for me to pull focus from that and put it into sifting through the dearth of truly awful writing. It makes me feel like I’m wasting my time.

However…

The more I get involved with writing and the writing community, with other writers and other publications, both print and online, the more I become exposed to writers who are doing some exciting experimentation with language and form, straddling that line between poetry and fiction. J.A. Tyler is one of those writers. I feel “Illusions [n2]” is an dark piece that flat out rejects the traditional format of narrative voice and conventional storytelling. And that’s one of the styles that I’m into as a writer and an editor these days.

So I hope that’s a satisfactory answer to your argument. And I hope you enjoyed the STORY.

thanks,

Chris Heavener

——–

On Apr 7, 2010, at 1:54 PM, Afton Carraway wrote:

Dearest Mr. Heavener –

My yoga guru has a saying:  “If you have a foot in two different boats, you’ll end up splitting your ass.”

With that in mind, indeed, I enjoyed Illusions [n2] in your most recent edition of Annalemma, however confused and/or worked it up it did make me.  Perhaps that is precisely why I enjoyed it. Perhaps that is the only reason I enjoyed it.  Nonetheless, the “story” certainly stuck out to me.

Now, call me traditional or mundane or whatever you will, but – despite your eloquent explanation as to why you decided to include such a piece of work in your literary publication – I cannot wrap my head around Illusions [n2] as anything other than a poem.  Poetry, being mostly void of complete sentences, is chock-full of individual words put together in a collage to create the sense of a larger image.  In poetry, one uses as little words as possible in order to get across a greater picture.  Whether a poem tells a story or not, they need no plot, they need no format – its just image after image after image with no explanation, no justification – only ideas and pictures.  It’s like a piece of artwork hung on a wall (and, yes, most of it sucks).  You can interpret and reinterpret that artwork however you want with whatever background information, time line, relationship there may be.  The final and big picture, however, is always there.

To me, that is precisely what Illusions [n2] did.

Perhaps I will go back in read it again to see if I can find some sort of “story” in there.  But don’t worry – I won’t bother you with anymore of my banal literary criticism 🙂  I know that I am nobody to accuse a writer of faulty or mislabeled genres.  Of course you know that if you ever would like a pedestrian’s point of view on this stuff I’m happy to oblige my humble opinions.  I really do love reading your magazine, it inspires me to get my hands on more things to read.

Take care,

Afton

To read the piece that’s sparking such hot debate, click here to purchase Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice.

Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice officially ships today. Apologies for the delay, shipping software was being a fickle pickle. Click here to order. But first, please observe this primer:

A couple of homo sapiens are walking around in the forest, hunting for some wily beasts to fill the bellies of their women and children. They stumble upon a boar foraging for mushrooms, oblivious. They take aim with their bows and arrows shaped from twigs and tendons and kill it. They hoot and holler around the dead body of the boar. The hooting and hollering subsides and they stand above the boar, silent. They experience the emotion of guilt. Once back at the village, they proclaim to the women and children that they’ve murdered a living creature in order to live another day and that they must offer the creature up to the gods as a token of thanks, lest the gods think the villagers ungrateful and find reason smite them upside the head. And thus, the notion of taking a loss for the greater good, the notion of sacrifice itself, was born.

It’s hard to say that the human race has changed all that much since the concept was created. The last decade began with an act of martyrdom so primitive and barbarous that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything less than an offering of sentient life to an angry god. But the term has also taken on a new definition. Nowadays survival hinges not on the appeasement of deities, but on working an extra 20 hours a week without health insurance. Sacrifice pervades our lives, whether we’re the ones reaping the benefit or remitting the payment. Acts of selflessness and altruism evoke powerful feelings within us. We tend to raise up individuals with purpose beyond achieving personal gain. It’s with these thoughts that we put out the call for stories of sacrifice for our sixth issue.

Artists are a conflicted group when it comes to the theme of sacrifice. On the one hand they’re used to giving up comfort and happiness in the pursuit of a larger ideal. On the flipside, sitting alone in a room working on a story or a painting is one of the most self-indulgent activities one can engage in outside of downright masturbation. Contradictory as artists may seem, they’re experts on the subject.

Two questions kept surfacing in these stories: What are you willing to give up for your loved ones? What are you not willing to give up? We all like to think that we’d give up everything for our spouses, our siblings, our parents. But unless you’re forced to make that decision, you can’t ever really know. The answers to those questions offer quick insight to what a person’s really made of. It’s our hope that through these fictions you might find what your own answers to these questions could be and discover something about what makes you human.

Click here to order your copy.

Did you know this is the only thing happening in the borough of Brooklyn tonight? Come be entertained, listen to and watch beautiful people performing music, drink alcohol that is surprisingly good for being free and pick up your copy of Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice.

Thanks to Jeff Hamada for big upping Issue Six at Booooooom!

And don’t forget: If you’re in Denver, come visit us at table P5 in the AWP book fair

If you’re a Denverite and you follow this blog (according to Google analytics there’s approximately 9 of you) then come visit us today and tomorrow at the Colorado Convention Center where we’ll be slingin’ books, talkin’ shop, crackin’ jokes and tellin’ lies a.k.a. AWP 2010 in Denver.

Introducing the Annalemma postcard collection, featuring words and images from Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice.

Click on over to our print store where you can purchase all five of these handsome art pieces printed on recycled matte stock for $5.00 plus s&h.

Got a college student you haven’t heard from in a couple semesters?

Or perhaps a long distance significant other who swoons with every mention of your name?

Or maybe you’ve got an estranged sibling that lives in remote part of the country.

Or maybe you want to impress guests with all of the international contacts you have by displaying fake correspondences with people you just made up.

Many reasons to buy, no excuse not to.

p.s. the entire set comes free with purchase of Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrifice, while supplies last!