Rough Drafts

Silicon Valley has a race problem. You don’t need a Twitter fight to tell you that. And, while it’s great that CNN has made waves with previews of its upcoming show on the subject, you don’t need cable TV to tell you that, either. (For two smart views on the controversy, read Hank Williams and […]

Poet and publisher Dave Bonta spoke to me on the phone awhile back for his “Woodrat” podcast. He got me to talk about everything from how I handle submissions to tinywords, what my publishing philosophy is, why haiku is important, and what I learned from studying poetry with Louise Glück. We also ta

This essay is forthcoming as a broadsheet from Cross+Roads Press, and is based on an interview published on Basho’s Road in December, 2009. For me, poetry is language under compression. And there’s no more compressed form than the very short poem. Skillfully done, a tiny poem can speak volumes — it

one petalfrom the princess treeclings to the windshield—I drive awaylooking in the mirror un pétalede l’arbre impérials’accroche au pare-briseje démarreen regardant dans le rétroviseur published in 25 Canadian Tanka Poets in French and English : Atlas Poetica, May, 2010. French translation by Mike M

The haiku and micropoetry journal I edit, tinywords, got 875 submissions in the course of 2 weeks for our upcoming summer issue. Since I expect I’ll be able to publish about 50 or 60 poems in this issue, that means the acceptance rate is going to be significantly less than 10%. It also means I […]

Apple announced the iPad Wednesday, and with it added e-books to the menu of content it’s selling via iTunes. But I can’t believe that Steve Jobs is going to stop there. Brian X. Chen and I predicted on Tuesday evening that Apple’s big announcement would go beyond the iPad, and include the announcem

Ten years ago today, I was in the middle of trying to get a content syndication startup off the ground. I’d just left InfoWorld, where I had a cushy gig as a columnist and content development editor. In six months, the startup would be dead and I’d be back to journalism, this time as a […]

From my own experience, and the experience of friends who had spent months to years to a lifetime devoted to little magazines and small presses, I knew in my bones that tinywords had become overwhelming. This stuff eats you alive. But I also knew, it’s damn hard to let go once you made your mark. […

A couple of weeks ago I took part in a discussion about press embargoes, with Tom Foremski, Damon Darlin and Mark Glaser, skillfully moderated by Sam Whitmore. Also in the audience, and contributing worthy comments, were Rafe Needleman, Paul Boutin, and other members of the press and PR corps. I kic

The collective intelligence poured into inventing new portable games over the past several centuries is equivalent, scientists estimate, to the outpouring of genius from a whole year’s worth of Nobel prize winners. Except instead of curing cancer, we’re making toys for kids who have trouble paying a

I’ll admit it: I got into journalism for the money. Columbia Journalism School dean Nicholas Lemann has said: “I’ve never met a single person in 35 years who went into journalism out of pure economic reason.” He never met me. While my motivation wasn’t purely financial, I’d be lying if I said that w