typical media rant.

Preface: Kirk Douglas was once quoted as saying "I don't care if the review is good or bad as long as you spell my name right"

I faxxed EJ the article from this morning's local newspaper, the one I joke always seems to ignore me...they mentioned me today (I figured they'd have to, I'm scheduled as part of the ipcoming Arts on the River Festival...I was just seeing how they pulled it off).

Yep, on page 3-c, in the next to last paragraph about the artists from the Appalachian Education Initiative's "Art&Soul", after profiling the country singer who will be speaking on the first night, they say "also appearing will be Morgantown poet William DeVault".

Yeah, I know...now I'm demoted from Yahoo's "Romantic Poet of the Internet" and one of the fathers of the Digital Renaissance to "Morgantown poet" and they somehow misplaced my middle initial. Not like my name appears correct anywhere else except for three times in the last year in the WVU newspaper, the Daily Athenaeum, each time in articles specifically about me, including one on the cover...and the web, where even websites in India, Australia, Irleand, Japan and Norway seem to get it right. Oh and the Fairmont newspaper, the Times West-Virginian, last Spring.

EJ and I got a good laugh...and I won ten bucks on a bet we'd made. He actually thought this would be their chance to not underwhelm me. He tried to wiggle out of the bet by claiming their mere mention of me (the first time in 3 years my name has appeared in their pages) was a step up. Sorry, kid, I'll take a check, but it better not bounce.

Okay, media primer for this week: (pay attention, Dominion Post, particularly)

* William F. DeVault (note the "F", it's been there all my life, and is on the covers of all my books, all websites about me (there are several) and on all written works of mine...getting it wrong means you have not seen any of my works, any of my books or done any research, which does not diminish me, it diminishes you)
* 8 books, including The Morgantown Suite Poems (all proceeds going to Arts Monongahela)
* Selected to the Edinburgh International Internet Festival of the Arts (one of the first American poets named such)
* Called "the future of the Digital Renaissance" in Poetry Now! (British poetry magazine)
* Named The Romantic Poet of the Internet by Yahoo
* I've only been back in Morgantown about a year, after a quarter century in DC and California. I love this place as home, and it is where my famiy resides, but "Morgantown poet"...that's like saying someone's your girlfriend because you saw her in the halls during your Sophomore year.

Put the arguments "poet" "morgantown" and "William DeVault" in google and you get 37 hits.
Put back the initial and you get 187 hits.
Remove "Morgantown" and you get 883 hits. hmmmmmmmmmm.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Sheesh, and people wonder why, when LA calls, I actually listen to the keening.
(300 times the dating pool, and local high schools teach me as a contemporary poet of note. Here...well, let's just say I am not scorched by the warmth of the embrace, thus far.)

In other news, I began last night planning the cover for next Spring's book. Strap in, kids, it shall be a more than fitting follow up to THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. I'll drop the title in my talk on the 17th...aside from that, assuage your hungers and thirsts with the other eight books (what? there's only seven now? and you didn't get a copy of "PanthEon" while it was out? like that's my problem? just wait until next spring, when they seven becomes five becomes six...bwahahahahaha)