Reader Meet Author: Mike Young

Whether it is his press, his literary journal, his writing, or through his other creative endeavors, Mike Young is always involved with something. It's ambition, it's talent, it's the ability to constantly be connected, and as he gets more involved the possibilities become more plentiful. He's had a great 2009, but I have a feeling that he has some big plans for 2010.

Recently, Mike Young was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): Next year We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough will be published by Publishing Genius. What can you tell us about your book and what has it been like working with Publishing Genius?
Mike Young (MY): Thanks for asking about the book! My book is a book of poems. Most of them are pretty talky. They're like the things you'd say if death involved sitting in a hot tub on a space shuttle, getting wet in the post-death gravity, hashing out the things you wish you'd said to people walking away. Another way to put this is from a new thing about singing, which is not in the book: "Singing may also be catalogued as Christmas underwater
 / and hiking slowly along the railroad ties with the best candy bar / but no home." I wish I could co-dream with people, but I can't, so I write these poems. There's a quote from Martin Buber in the front: "When they sang of what they had thus named, they still meant You." The other day, I was talking to myself in the shower, and I concluded by saying "a sublime cooperative knowing-of-absurdity that manifests as mutually blissful co-ignorance of that absurdity's terms." It's nice to take showers with a lot of people at once, but if you're not doing that right now, you could read poems instead. Here are some things that are in We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough's poems: scout ants; peanut butter knees; a scarecrow with a lantern in his chest; a mattress factory; someone saying "I want to sell the notions of May on eBay" to a friend he hasn't seen in a while; pissing on a cell phone charger; old man socks; hicks on condors; God's wheelchair; amateur opera singers; FDR's diary; carrier pigeons; huckleberries and hyperthyroids; coconut milk and rhetorical questions; a comparison of the new bewilderment and the old bewilderment; each happy person ever; an essay about money; a kitten in a cedar; dandruff teeth; and the alphabetization of home movies by flashlight.

Publishing Genius is terrific and exciting and feels like the Grove Press of the early 21st century. I am tremendously lucky to be working with Adam Robinson and his Baltimore crew. This summer, my book is coming out from PGP at the same time as Rachel B Glaser's book of stories, Pee On Water. I am going to be touring the East and West coast with Rachel, whose book is generating lots of well-deserved anticipatory brain sweat. Details to emerge.

OA: I'm not going to ask you about time management because I find myself unable to answer those types of questions, but I will ask you if you ever feel overwhelmed? From writing to your work with Noo Journal to Magic Helicopter, do you ever take a break?
MY: It's funny, even though I suppose I do get a lot done—in the scheme of things—it feels like I'm always taking a break. And that produces anxiety, which leads me to work even harder. It's not so funny, I mean. This is kind of duh. It's the common malady of people who "work too much." One nice thing about working too much is that what's work and what's not collapses. Like today, I went with my friends Jack and Chris to get a bumper for Jack's car. We pulled into the junkyard and saw a little boy in the driveway of the garage. He had a deflated basketball, and he kept pumping it with a bicycle pump, even though there was a huge hole in one side. He stared at us and pumped. I turned to Chris and said "That could go in any one of ours." And he said "What? Oh." Then he laughed, because he knew I meant "stories" or "poems" or whatever. The downside to this sort of attention is that it's a lustful attention—it's a greedy attention. What I mean by that is in Ray Carver's story "Intimacy." Sometimes you're thinking about work and you ask somebody "And then what happened?" And you don't care the same way a cup of hot chocolate cares. There's listening and then there's taking notes, and writers who work too much turn pale from the wrong light. But my landlord, well, he paints a lot, and seems to own only one ladder. He seems to drive that ladder all over town, lonely, smoking cigarettes in a way that seems sneaky and sad.

OA: How are things going with Magic Helicopter?
MY: Terrific! We just put our first full-length: Daniel Bailey's Drunk Sonnets. It's doing great. It's in the green! You can find that book here. More important than green, people are writing really thoughtful things. Erin McNellis's great essay about The Drunk Sonnets and contemporary poetic sincerity got linked by Ron Silliman, which is cool. Next year, we're putting out a chapbook by Evelyn Hampton, a book of crazy "writing prompts" from many writers with artwork by Evah Fan, and two full lengths: Ofelia Hunt's novel and Jason Bredle's third book of poems. Both of which I'm wild excited about. Bredle is a master and Hunt's novel is mindblowing. I'm saving the titles for the official press release, which will come in early January, along with a re-printing of Mary Miller's popular chapbook Less Shiny.

OA: What does the future hold for Noo Journal? Did you think it would last four years? Are there only going to be 15 Issues?
MY: I guess I never thought about whether NOÖ would last four years or not. We've always taken it "one step at a time," which is kind of an annoying thing to say, but I think when people mean it honestly, they mean they're sort of walking along and they realize they're about to step on a patch of black ice, but they realize it too late, so they sort of stumble around a little and manage—somehow—not to fall or drop their puppy. That's what I mean, anyway, by "one step at a time." Right now I'm working with Ryan Call, who's terrific. He caught us up on submissions, which we'll open again in January. Also early next year will come NOÖ 11, which I'm so stoked about. We're doing a lot more with presenting/reviewing small press books/chapbooks/magazines/projects. That's cool too. I'm not sure if we'll be financially able to continue putting out the free print edition, but then again, I'm never sure about that, and we always somehow find a way. The RAD poetry fundraiser (http://noojournal.com/radpoetry.htm), which is quietly ongoing, was terrific in its main stage, and I'm trying to get all post-due RAD Poetry videos up by Christmas. There will be at least fifteen issues, yeah. More? Well, I hope so. I think so.

OA: Do you see Noo as a print journal or an on-line journal? Is there any importance do the distinction between the two?
MY: I see NOÖ as both. Online is there so long as you paid the power bill. Usually it's there for people in the know or the want-to-know. Print is at a different there, a there both dustier and tastier (weird but not a paradox), and a better there for people to stumble across or cherish. We need both. We'll have both. I'm not worried.

OA: What's next for Mike Young?
MY: I'm starting a secret project with my favorite girl, the immensely talented writer Carolyn Zaikowski. It will be an online multimedia journal of things that are a little ridiculous. Our ruling aesthetic involves both dinosaurs and bees. Usually aesthetics involve only one or the other, so you can see how far we've come already.

Bonus Questions:
OA: If you could sit down to coffee with anyone (alive or dead) who would it be?
MY: Leonard Cohen, Hannah Weiner, Martin Buber, Dale Earnhardt, Emily Dickinson, Gordon Lish.

OA: What type of music do you enjoy and who are a few of your favorites?
MY: Um, I am a sucker for train music. I am a sucker for ironic mint flavoring. I am a sucker for the glass you drop from dancing on the floor a song just mopped. If you gurgle with bluebirds, I'm there. If you've ever ecstatically complimented somebody's ass, I will probably enjoy listening to your music. Here are some random musics I like: Antarctica Takes It, Billie The Vision And The Dancers, Christopher Denny, Dave Dondero, Ella Fitzgerald, The Felice Brothers, Hello Saferide, and Jerry Lee Lewis's country stuff. That's like the first 5/13 of the alphabet. I have a hard time flirting when there's a song on I like too much. Luckily, I have an easy time singing when I'm with a person I like too much. Sometimes they want me to stop. But I try to go for the ones who want to sing along.

For more information on Mike Young please visit his website or check out his blog.