Jim McGrath has Moved

You can find lit-related blog things over at So Fake It's Real.

New poems are being released into the wwwild over at NO NEW YORKER.

Other Projects: Robert Frost on Twitter

Apparently the New Year will not be bringing many new cut-ups to this page, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

In other news, I have been playing the part of Robert Frost's Twitter executor for the last few months. The Straddler, an online literary journal, has a sampling of the poet's updates in its latest edition.

into

my word "home"

my movie that doesn't make
small talk my five words

my approach that pounded harder and harder
my drowned-out
end

my woman
who is not
my bad times

my
performance
that collapsed

(source text)

Links: Poetry at our mercy; ego management

"Are you Christmas blogging?" my brother Brian just asked. Yes. Yes I am.

My friend Ben recently wrote an excellent examination of the state of Poetry (the magazine, not the, um, "form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning"). It's over at Luna Park, a new-ish online journal (one that's apparently turning into a new-ish blog in the coming weeks).

This site will hopefully be updated more frequently in the coming weeks: my duties as a grad student (for which I am actually paid) have been getting in the way over the last month or so. The poems may look a bit different if all goes according to plan. Some may even be readable.

Now that the obligatory self-deprecation is out of the way, I may as well link to some old coverage of this here site. Back when I was more diligent (and not working), a few people wrote some very nice things about the page. Deirdre Fulton (not, in fact, the mysterious Sharon Steel) over at The Boston Phoenix interviewed me for Word Up, the paper's lit blog. If you know me, I've probably already shoved said interview under your nose, but my ego hopes that strangers check in on this page from time to time. And yes, that's my mom and one of my uncles in the "Comments" section below the feature. Secondly (and lastly), Miriam Rosenberg at The Wave, a Rockaway newspaper, checked in with me after I made a poem out of an article describing the tragic death of Patrick Hernandez. Thanks again, Deirdre and Miriam! Thanks also to Jason B. Jones over at Bookslut, who linked to the site back when it was a bit more active and was also nice. You are all good people.

Look for more activity emerging from this dark corner of the web in the coming weeks. And thanks for reading!

I write you.

The usual typos – jealousy,
detachment, hopes – were enough.
You entertained inadequacies in darkness
like a bishop: They were concrete; they
were not mentioned.

(source text)

Guidelines for Priests

Avoid the cost of a stable
Identity; look for apples.

(source text)

beat

sometimes their defense of drowned art
led to death embellished, weeks of
drunken lunch, murder
unconsummated, a regard for autopsy
over cynicism, conflicted
shoelaces

a buried name
where a better life had been
stowed away.

(source text)