New Pop Lit Speaks

Attention All Writers!

Especially if you live in the Detroit area. New Pop Lit editors Karl Wenclas and Kathleen Crane will be doing a presentation for NaNoWriMo at the Troy Public Library on 11/17. Details at our News page here.

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ALSO, we’re still promoting our Fun Pop Poetry feature. We have several cat poems coming up and we’re shy at least one good cat photo. Send your candidates in .jpg format to funpoppoetry@gmail.com. Thanks!

(Cat photo c/o Scott Cannon– same cat to be featured in a new poem.)

Poetry Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Announcement

We’re serious about moving in a strong way into the genre of poetry. The classic art has been marginalized by the academy; kept alive by hip-hop and open mics. As always, we aim for a fusion of the two types.

POETRY YESTERDAY

October 17 is the birthday of Sylvia Plath, whose dark vision in its mix of craft and passion in the last years of her life was a high point of American poetry. After her death, the form abandoned its sense of music and euphony.

An exception to this abandonment happened in Liverpool, England in the early 1960’s. We’ve discovered a pop poetry movement centered in that industrial city– at the same time a group of moptop musicians began making waves with a unique brand of pop music. We’ll have a report on this, upcoming.

POETRY TODAY

At our News blog, we take an entertaining glance at the five poets named last week as finalists for the National Book Award for Poetry. In fact, we grade them.

What’s our reaction to the Nobel Prize for Literature award to Bob Dylan? To us, it shows the failure of today’s poets to connect meaningfully with the general public– creating a vacuum which has been filled the past fifty years by popular troubadors like Bob Dylan. We say, give us not Bob Dylan but another Dylan Thomas!

POETRY TOMORROW

Our fledgling Fun Pop Poetry feature is a beginning, only that, to a true poetry revival– making the art accessible to everybody.

For a more serious version of pop poetry, in one week we’ll feature several poems from one of the best young poets we’ve seen– proving to us the future of poetry is very bright. Stay tuned to this literary station!

“Make It New!”

Announcement

A RANT

One of our discoveries in reading Lesley M.M. Blume’s book about Ernest Hemingway, Everybody Behaves Badly, is that Ezra Pound’s favorite expression was “Make it new.” Which has been our philosophy from the beginning of this ambitious project.

(We’ve labeled ourselves “The New New.”)

Being new involves connecting with the best new writers in America– particularly those unconnected to the embalmed established lit game, or who reject most of the moldy doctrines of institutional writing factories. Let’s face it, New York and its appendages produces not the New, but the Same-Old Same-Old.

Examination of last weekend’s establishment flagship the New York Times Book Review shows the editors still mired in postmodernism– which is a fine game to play in the obsolete academy but generates ZERO interest among the general population. Mainly because pomo literary works are often posturing nonsense and are almost always unreadable. (See Infinite Jest, which NYTBR was caught raving about for the 5,005th time. Showing their cred, I guess, among the hopelessly pretentious.)

We offer credibility of a different sort, as our editors come not from an ivory tower or the conglomerate machine– but from the gritty factories and clubs of Detroit.

We’ve lived in a tough world of intense energy far removed from faculty lounges and teacups. We know literature at its best is a visceral emotional experience for the reader. We aim to present new writing which connects emotionally to YOU every bit as much as any pop/punk/rock/rap song ever conceived.

This week we focus on our search, our quest– and on our backlog of necessary reading. We’re busy putting together a foundation to go new places as a literary experience. If you also seek to change literature, and thereby change the world: join us.

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By the way, we’ve asked one of our favorite young writers to review the Blume book. Why? Because we’re out to recapture the Fitzgerald/Hemingway literary excitement of 1925/26 which sustained American literature for decades, until the rise of pomo fakirs.

We’ll create that excitement in a 2016 way.

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Be sure to check out our new Fun Pop Poetry feature. Due to arrive next week– a nationally-renowned rhyming-and-witty poet.

We Want Pop Poetry!

Announcement

As readers know, we’ve published some but not a lot of poetry. Some of the poetry we’ve run has been good underground-style writing. Some of it has been semi-pop. We now seek to go into full pop poetry mode.

What’s pop poetry?

We’re not certain, because it largely doesn’t exist yet! We can imagine what true pop poetry would look like.

Pop poetry would be:

.-Readable.

-Colorful.

-Sometimes witty.

-Fun.

-Not banal.

-As visible and “there” as a painting.

-Have rhythm and rhyme someplace. Maybe standard AA BB or AB AB etc. work. Maybe off beat. Maybe in the middle of lines. Think innovatively!

Or: We’ll know pop poetry when we see it. If we present just what everyone else is presenting– what’s the point?

Start writing!

A Month of Hemingway!

Announcement

That’s what we have planned for the month of July anyway. Toward that end, New Pop Lit‘s editors drive up this weekend to Petoskey and environs in northern Michigan, looking for the ghost of Nick Adams. Searching for the elusive roots of “Papa” and his literary art.

Why Hemingway, you ask?

Because Ernest Hemingway was American literature’s greatest pop icon– the last writer whose persona was huge enough to overshadow other pop celebrities of his time– from movie actors to sports figures to pop singers. Sinatra, Gable, Dempsey, DiMaggio– Hemingway was a bigger cultural figure than any of them.

What do we have planned?

-Photos and descriptions of our Petoskey excursion.

-Answers to our second Big Lit Question, which concerns Ernest the Hem. See this.

-New work from two talented young writers, Samuel Stevens and Jess Mize, which if not completely Hemingway themed, is Hemingway inspired.

Our objective in presenting these two striking talents is to recreate some of the excitement that occurred when young Hemingway himself began writing, in his twenties, in the 1920’s– likely the most exciting American literary decade.

-Plus any and all other Hemingway ideas and stuff we can come up with and implement in coming weeks.

You will not want to miss ANY of it!

Spring Preview

Announcement

Spring is here! Time for a fresh start, a new attitude.

What’s coming at New Pop Lit?

A lot! A mix of prose, poetry, and hype profiles.

First: stories. You want stories? We have stories! By some of the best short story writers in the English-speaking world, if not the entire universe. This includes tales by James Guthrie and Joshua Isard. It includes terrific new work by Anne Leigh Parrish and Scott Cannon, who’ve both appeared here before. Their talent is off the boards. We’re amazed we’re still able to obtain work from them– in different ways they exemplify a dawning new golden age of the American short story art. Would that these writers become as recognized as Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald– but that’s our job!

Toward that end, we have a hype interview planned for Ms. Parrish– not before we post a profile of Jessie Lynn McMains and an interview with Samuel Stevens.

Finally, there’s poetry. We don’t publish a lot of poetry, but we received striking work from two very different poets, John Grochalski and Erin Knowles Chapman. Their work was too good to ignore.

If we get a chance to squeeze in another “Question of the Month,” we’ll do so. The first one was spectacularly successful.

Thanks for staying up on us. Our readers are all.

-K.W.

Lit Question of the Month

Announcement

We want no complacency– even among our own readers.

We need to be dynamic. Always changing. Nothing static.

Unpredictable? That’s our tactic.

Toward that end we’re doing a “Lit Question of the Month.”

See the question.

A score of answers have been received– most in response to our emails– including from several “name” writers. We’ve sought a variety of voices. We don’t play the monothink game. Answers will be posted at our Interactive blog soon, perhaps within the next two days.

In our quest to be an intellectual leader among literary sites, we also have an Opinion essay upcoming– to be announced here before the end of the week.

In the meantime, be sure to read our latest “Hype” feature– a terrific interview with Scott Cannon of “Lucid Dreamer.” And our recent hyper-edgy story Valentine’s Day.

Thanks!

A Big Sale– and Other Things

Announcement

WE NOTICE as we circle around town in our Poplitmobile that there are sales everywhere. No business is NOT having a sale. Far be it from us to miss a trend– PLUS, we exist to compete. Not solely with other literary people. Therefore, we introduce to the world our first

MID-WINTER SALE

offering 25% off (you heard it right) everything in our New Pop Lit shop. That is, if you use the correct promo code, which for the moment is

POPLIT16

See our shop, accessible via this link:

http://www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com/2015/12/new-pop-lit-1-is-on-sale.html

The sale may last a few weeks. It may last a day– so order your exclusive NEW POP LIT books or “Aloha from Detroit” t-shirts immediately.

OTHER FRONTS

On other fronts, we will be doing much more to hype our writers– in every possible way. The foundation of this new P.T. Barnum noise will be our “HYPE” page. We are going to turn writers into rock stars– so stay up to date on everything we’re doing. Thanks!

Year-End Report

Announcement

Hello! Our main accomplishment in 2015 was surviving– given that half of our modest team left halfway through the year. We’d already taken on more than we could reasonably handle.

Not to worry! We had a few coups in our pursuit of literary notability.

Among them: two terrific interviews with establishment writers– who were candid with us as they NEVER could be in a status quo publication. See our talks with

–John Colapinto

–Tom LeClair

We also continued to present terrific new writing, which is what we’re about. Our coup on that front was publishing the first story in English by renowned Belarus author Andrei Dichenko.

–“Energy”

In all things, our mission is to showcase reader-friendly writing– including from writers too quirky, edgy, different, or real for the literary “mainstream.” We aim to expand the bounds of what’s considered good writing.

Finally, we struggled out our first print issue– available, along with other NEW POP LIT products, at our Detroit blog.

What lies ahead?

-An improved web site.

-Other books.

-Perhaps, an expanded team.

-And, at this location– exciting pop-lit writing of a kind not found anyplace else. Those writers to be featured after the New Year include: Tom Ray, Ron Singer, Joe Wilson, Jess Mize, Scott Cannon, Ian Lahey, Dave Petraglia, Kathleen Crane, among others.

PLUS, maybe a surprise or two. We have on our drawing board, in the NEW POP LIT design shop, a way to reinvent the short story– giving the public a model faster and more powerful than what’s been done.

Stay tuned! Exciting happenings are ahead.

(Image artist: Larisa Koshkina.)

Buy New Pop Lit!

Announcement

We’ve published some terrific fiction, poems, interviews, and essays on this site this year– in overall ideas, innovation and quality matching any other lit site anyplace. We’ll be making improvements to this site in coming weeks, to make it the ultimate reading experience.

But we want more! Our long-term goal is to be a publishing entity taking on the big guys– competing with the moldering “Big Five” Manhattan-based book giants. NO ONE in the entire lit scene today has more indy credibility– or is better positioned with DIY background and ideas to be at the forefront of the change which is shaking up the book industry.

So, we’ve introduced our first title, NEW POP LIT #1, a collection of new writing.

IF you want to glimpse what literary change looks like, and you’re eager to support that change, you’ll be eager to purchase a copy. For now we have our NEW POP LIT shop linked at our Detroit blog. Soon we’ll be selling the issue at other places. This project’s editor was once very able at obtaining attention for lit projects– and will do so with this one.

This is an opportunity to step on board the pop lit train as it’s leaving the station– perhaps literature’s most exciting new happening. We’re only beginning. Watch what we do in 2016! Thanks.