An Update on Stephen Tully Dierk’s Magic Ride

                “Soon a magic wagon pulled up.”

                I think that sentence couldn’t have less to do with Mr. Dierks. But if Stephen ever bought a station wagon he’d figure out how to make it magical through prose power. What has this young, talented artist been up to since we last saw him? My last encounter with him was eating pizza bites while he performed satanic yoga with Steve Roggenbuck. Obviously I wasn’t there in real life, sometimes the internet is just as good if not better, since life doesn’t always have delicious pizza bites for me to consume nor proximity to a microwave. 

                Stephen is a fellow traveler through this wild and wacky blog-o-sphere. Pop Serial may be the only blog which is updated so regularly I can set my watch to it. All it offers is the most reliable updates on writers I enjoy and will never meet. I consider Stephen to be something of the daily news of internet literature news alongside the pillars of Alt Lit Gossip and HTML Giant. Unlike Frank Hinton, I know what Stephen looks like. And unlike Blake Butler, I don’t get horrible nightmares from his work. 

                There’s been a lot going on in Stephen’s life. He has a roommate. One of his new projects includes a Tumblr consisting only of a half-naked Jacob Steinberg with a book. A picture is posted every day. People have stated due to the scarcity of half-naked Jacob Steinberg photos with books the Tumblr may only be able to last for fifteen or so years, depending on future events of Jacob Steinberg chilling half naked with some book. 

                I WANT TO READ THAT JUAN RULFO YOU LOVE, THE BURNING PLAIN is Stephen’s latest gift to the world. You can find it in the latest issue of Red Lightbulbs, a sweet little literary magazine located in America’s heartland, not its soul-less life-sucking coasts, you know, where I live. Anyway the poem is quite endearing. The speaker wants to not speak with us. It feels nice to me. I can count on one hand the number of people I can have comfortable silences with, whole chunks of time that can pass me by without having to say anything remotely interesting or entertaining. Yep I can watch entire states go by and say absolutely nothing. That’s what Stephen’s poem reminded me of, of long car trips going to under populated regions of the United States for no particularly good reason. Part of me also wishes I was my thoughts, since in my imagination I’m a little bit happier and the radio plays better music there. But having an imagination allows me to appreciate the truly great aspects of slowly walking on a sunny autumn day and no dream can accurately replicate the smell or feel. 

                Overall I’m proud of Stephen. Glad he is out there doing his thing, earning his keep, re-blogging the blogs, and writing sweet poetry too. To me Stephen is truly, in the words of Steve Roggenbuck “Living his life”.