La parola da casa, Serena Piccoli

for years, i've been part of the diy publishing/literary movement, starting a journal, co-founding a press, working at innovations in e-book/pod publishing, and starting a literary series, and i know how time consuming and financially expensive of a process it can be. since that's what i love doing, i focus on doing it, and most of the time i love trying to promote other writers. sometimes, however, the arts structure in the u.s. just gets to me. this morning, for example, after i wrapped up an independent study talking about emerson, i came home to find that i'd been rejected by a regional governmental grant because i don't do enough to support the local literary scene. i don't usually complain about not getting a grant or not getting funding from traditional literary sources (that's often part of being "experimental"), but the reason i was presented with for being rejected just seems like an insult. i mean . . . i'm in the middle of co-editing an anthology of regional writing, regional writers are sleeping on my futon to read in the series i run, i've given several readings in the area recently, and i'm discussing and having local writers visit my classroom this semester. what else can i do? if i start writing like jorie graham or sharon olds, would that give me a better chance? do i have to sleep with someone to get the measly twenty dollars a month used to house moria?

sorry for the rant. i just needed to let off some steam.

on a more positive note, i listened today to clayton eshleman discuss translating vallejo. he was fascinating.