Writing

Stuff that I have written.

The Sunday Poem: Guernica

 Posted by (Visited 8462 times)  The Sunday Poem
Oct 302005
 

A separation of pigments: my point of view is not where I look

I can only filter events through newsprint
Picasso’s grey immanence pervades and defines

Where is the gradual nervousness?
The regime pilot’s eye as he drops the bomb?
Staring at the elongated frame that focusses
straining at the edge of canvas:

The hoarse of a scream
is dirt driven deep under fingernails
The scream of a horse is scrabbling
Guernica:
how terrifying to be told where to think
how to think
the shape of thinking
how peaceful

The Sunday Poem

 Posted by (Visited 11730 times)  The Sunday Poem, Writing
Oct 302005
 

In another life, I was a poet. If it’s possible to stop being a poet. Or if one’s life has intermediate lives. Or something. Quite likely, the most useless piece of paper I own is the one that actually certifies me as a poet. A truly ludicrous idea. Of course, this particular certificate, which comes in the form of a diploma giving me an MFA in creative writing, is nonetheless carefully kept in a leather binder at the bottom of a closet, because to do otherwise would be to admit something unpleasant about how I spent multiple years of my life.

Most poems sit in drawers never to be read, and that is a good fate for most poems, really, because most poems aren’t really written for others to read. I think the certificate means that the poems I wrote are supposed to actually get read. But currently they do not get read; they instead sit in a virtual drawer on my hard drive.

I have an audience these days; depending on where I write, it can be quite a large audience. On here, not so much, but heck, if I post on certain game websites, I get audiences in the tens of thousands. At times, within certain games, I have had audiences in the hundreds of thousands. Most poets have audiences that are rather small.

Odds are you could care less about poetry. I once cared passionately about it, but as with many past passions, it is difficult to remember the why of it. It’s a fact that is there, but that is difficult to understand anymore, like a lapsed religion or a forgotten mania for collecting something.

But since you are my small audience, and these poems will never be sent to the New Yorker because I no longer have the passion, and because I suspect that there’s more people willing to read poems on the Internet than there are total people reading the New Yorker, I am going to post the poems I was once passionate about here on this website. One every Sunday, and they shall be called “The Sunday Poem.” They will have their own category, and people who are interested in poetry can click on just that category and read them, and people who could care less can skip them.

What’s more, they will have comments open, and I will actually answer questions and comments. You never got to do that with Emily Dickinson or Poe or Milton, so you can look upon this as your chance for revenge if you dislike poetry.

Many of these poems have stories behind them. I may post those too.

I rarely write new poems these days. But I have many many older ones.

If I miss a Sunday, be sure to beat me up.

David Jaffe read AToF!

 Posted by (Visited 4550 times)  Writing
Oct 212005
 

Thanks for the kind words, David Jaffe! Your blog post is now on the Press page… 🙂

And he said:

“…it’s the best game design book I have ever read. There was this pretty deceptive sample download going around the net 6 months back that made the whole book look like a bunch of cartoons that you could read in like 5 minutes….but the book is SO MUCH MORE than that…and SO MUCH BETTER. I think any and everyone who designs games (and aspires to) should read this book…it explains alot of stuff I have never thought about and articulates alot of the stuff I’ve always thought about but have never taken the time (or had the skillz) to put into words… such a good fucking book… please read it.”

Training Fall

 Posted by (Visited 6912 times)  Writing
Oct 192005
 

First slide of I did the Training Fall 2005 keynote yesterday. Getting to Long Beach was a nightmare–the rain was torrential at times, and traffic moved incredibly slowly, even when I took the toll road. I had allotted 3 hours to get there, but I barely made it. As I drive around trying to find parking for the convention center, it’s already 10am, and the talk was starting at 10:30. I was supposed to already be in the hall doing a sound check! I ended up having to pay $20 for a $5 parking spot because I didn’t have any smaller bills on me, and I snuck into the conference through the loading dock, thanks to a helpful maintenance guy and an understanding security guard.

But in the end, it went swimmingly, and my hosts were incredibly gracious. The presentation is now hosted on the AToF site. Enjoy!

Next stop, the Austin Game Conference next week…

Dr. Richard Bartle, First Penguin of online worlds, has written a very flattering review–it’s up on the Press page.

Almost forgot–the second printing of the book is out. It has a bunch of reader reactions in the back, plus the two factual errors that have been found (Mussorgsky/Ravel and Deathrace 2000) have both been fixed.