Author Archive
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Funny on Paper
As someone who isn’t very funny — I have a good sense of humor and laugh often, but lack the social skills to tell a good joke — I’m always amazed at how easy it is to be funny on stage (at least when the situation doesn’t demand it). I was at a poetry reading [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in on poetry by Tim
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Audience Participation
Every time I send out a mass email soliciting subscriptions — which is only twice a year at most — I receive a handful of responses similar to the following: I could not help but be perplexed by an editor rejecting my work for their magazine and then pleading with me to take a subscription. [...]
25 Comments » - Posted in on publishing by Tim
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
The Democratization of Literature
If you look at the Greek plays, they’re really good. And there’s just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that’s the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there’s going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in on poetry by Tim
Monday, November 16th, 2009
Twitter & the History of Poetic Utility
A few years ago I was driving to a softball tournament with a pair of microbiologists who didn’t like my taste in music (folk, for the record — and no, this isn’t the beginning of a bad joke about cell division). Shuffling through my CD case, they came across a burned disc with “To Tim, [...]
7 Comments » - Posted in on poetry by Tim
Friday, November 6th, 2009
The Importance of Poetry
When I was a freshman in college I took my first poetry class, and my father started referring to me as “the poet,” like an epithet. Even then I had no interest in being a poet — I had a passing interest in writing fiction, mostly as a hobby, and thought I’d minor in creative [...]
