Best Blurb Ever in the History of Blurbs

Jason Cook, editor of the terrific literary journal Ampersand, wrote this blurb for the back of my forthcoming book, Heart With a Dirty Windshield: "Howie Good's poetry punches you in the face and steals your wallet. It sleeps with your wife and hides the remote control. Howie Good's poetry, the reader suspects, works for the Yakuza."

Academia

If my department were a country, it would be Haiti.

Sleeping With the Lights On

Apparently Propaganda Press will be bringing out in early spring my newest poems in a chapbook titled Sleeping With the Lights Out.

Ha Ha

I've tried my hand at a couple of humorous poems. They're not ha-ha funny -- more wry. I'm generally considered a very funny guy (all my brothers are -- we grew up trying to top each other in competing rabidly for attention), but humorous poetry isn't exactly my forte. Oddly, my education essays, when they're not slashingly angry, are often quite funny. At least a couple of readers have told me so. (Crap, I'm rambling. I'm also reading proofs for three chaps -- Love Surrounds You Like a Posse in Bulletproof Vests, Music for Pieces of Wood, and Anomalies. I never thought the last would be published. The publisher, MC of FootHills, has had all kinds of health issues at home. I can't believe he's -- we've -- persevered.)

Avant-Garde

"Avant-Garde" was accepted by Frank Hinton at Metazen (along with a prose poem, "Exit Visa"). Also Coop Renner at elimae took "Half-Life," a 10-part experimental sequence of associational free verse. Not bad for a day that started with two rejections!

A Short History of Surrealism

Andre Breton, the pope of Surrealism, once said the ultimate surrealist act would be to fire at random into a crowd in the street until the bullets ran out. Today, of course, that isn't surrealism; it's the news. (Where does that leave us as writers? What avenues are left open to shock, startle, and dismay?)I have tried to make a poem of this situation. It's called AVANT-GARDE; it's short; it brings in a remark by filmmaker Jean-Luc Goddard as well; and it's been submitted to a few publications.

Philosophical Speculation

To take refuge in an image is to take refuge from reality. It’s to avoid or evade confronting what is there to actually be seen and described. If this is so, then the true incendiary would abandon poetry for journalism or the writing of contemporary history. The imagination is free, but man is not.