First Musings from Comma Splice
When I first pitched the idea of my involvement with the Specter Magazine blog as “Perez Hilton goes lit scholar,” I was kidding. But the more I dwelled on it, the more I thought hey, I can do that! But probably with less pink, fewer OMG’s, LOL’s, and Z’s on the ends of words that require pluralization. Though I can’t promise that. One never knows what will happen when one gets excited.
A few days ago I started reading a biography of Dorothy Parker and felt immediate jealousy. She had a troupe of friends (smart friends!) who met everyday for lunch, who sparred verbally, exchanged ideas, and backed each other up. Robert Sherwood even quit his job at Vanity Fair when Parker and their good friend Robert Benchley were let go, probably due to their fancy antics around the workplace. In short, she had a literary family.
That’s why I was jealous. Or at least, a big part of why I became jealous. I envied her literary family. I thought, Why can’t I have that? Shouldn’t the internet be able to close gaps and bring us together? And today I found a blog post that strangely, almost creepily reiterated these thoughts I was having. How interesting, too, that it was written by Thomas DeMary, whom I had been unknowingly bantering with on Twitter for a day or two.
I have been prowling the literary web, as Thomas puts it, for some years now, and while I’m not a black writer, I am a woman writer, and a little bit weird, so I understand the feeling of not having a place among these established circles of word consumers. I even had an episode in graduate school with a teacher who essentially told me that my writing wasn’t poetry, and that if she picked up a book and read my poems, she would “throw it across the room.”
I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe after all these years, I finally, accidentally fell into a circle of people with whom I might be able to spar with and back up, if that makes any sense. It started with PANK Magazine and has led me now to other great homes, like Specter.
Maybe poetry is changing, and some people may not be happy about that. Some people might want to throw this website across the room when they read it. But I’m happy to be welcomed into Specter with open arms and burlap bags full of regards and esteem marked with money signs on the outside. I’m proud to be blogging for Specter, and excited for smart, weird, forgotten, or marginalized writers to find a home here with us.
Come back soon and often to find what I expect will be an exciting blog full of lit gossip, funny anecdotes, rejection woes, declarations, weird tutorial videos, probably a cat picture or two, and a place to share your thoughts and ideas.
I feel somewhat obligated to reply…my name is all over the place in this article.
I was going back and forth with another PANK acolyte. He asked an awesome question, “Do you see Specter as an offshoot of PANK?” It’s hard to unpack that question with 140 characters, but I can do it here and say a little about Brett’s sentiments, of which I share.
I’ve written for PANK for over a year now. It all happened out of the blue, but that’s life. My writing…my literary tastes, maybe…have been influenced by PANK: its editors, its contributors, the writers PANK publish online and in print. So, there will be some PANKish influences here. It can’t be helped.
We’re different lit mags (I think…I’m not entirely sure yet), but I think both camps strive to provide outlets for those who might be considered “weird” or “boring.” I might see “weird,” but not “boring”…writers like Brett thrill me. And really, that was the crux of my essay…I wanted to be around people like me. We at Specter saw an opportunity to fill a gap…a nameless space…that PANK unearthed by doing their good works. In that space, we hope to provide a home.
I really do hope this is a literary home for you, Brett. As you know, I understand completely the need to have one.