In the latest Poets & Writers, Kevin Larimer writes about “the x-factor: the percentage of submissions received that are…far off the mark” as something that all publications have to deal with. Larimer suggests that these submissions should be removed from a publication’s total submission tally, “because knowing it, one could calculate the number of misfires, subtract it from the total number of submissions received, and get a truer sense of the scale of the playing field.”

Generally I leap right into any discussion that involves crunching numbers on submissions, because we have fourteen months of really rich data, a result of our gradual transition to an electronic submission system. On this matter, though, I’ve got nothin’; we simply have no record of what’s rejected for being totally and utterly wrong for us. Frankly, though, it’s a good idea — we may need to get in the habit. After all, we certainly get more than our fair share of bizarrely inappropriate submissions from authors who have clearly never read VQR. We get everything from science fiction to plays, and a good number of what might best be described as “rants.”

VQR’s circulation manager once worked at a literary magazine that employed a clever process for rooting out totally inappropriate work. They informed a mass market writing guide that their submission address should now specify “Drawer Q,” as it was subsequently listed in future market listings. All submissions originating from that guide could thus be identified and become a part of the x-factor. Perhaps an online equivalent would help Larimer put his finger on that number.

(Via WhimsyLand)

For the second year running, VQR is a finalist for the Independent Press Award for Best Writing. Given annually by Utne magazine, the awards “honor the efforts of small, sometimes unnoticed publications that provide innovative, thought-provoking perspectives often ignored or overlooked by mass media.” We got beat out last year by wunderkind upstart n+1, but they’re not nominated this year (thankfully); in fact, it’s virtually a new slate of nominees—except for us and Canadian uber-mag Maisonneuve—but a formidable list of new arrivals it is: The Believer, Geist, L.A. Weekly, The New Republic, The Sun, and The Wilson Quarterly. With a group like this, let me be the first to speak the cliché: It’s an honor to be nominated. It is really is. But until they announce the winners in the January/February 2008 issue of Utne, we’re still keeping our fingers crossed…

We’ve juiced up the web version of one of the features from our Fall 2007 issue, and we’ve just got to brag about it.

“Urban Virgins” shows a series of paintings by Ana de Orbegoso paired with poems by Odi Gonzales. De Orbegoso has created 5′ tall wearable Spanish paintings of saints and virgins that have been mashed up with photographs of contemporary Peruvian women. Then she has people walk around Cusco, Peru in these costumes, bringing art to the streets.

Cusco poet Odi Gonzales has written a poem in response to each of these paintings, attempting to tell the story of each saint and virgin. True to the purpose of de Orbegoso’s art, Gonzales wrote the poems in Quechua, also translating them into Spanish and English.

In the magazine, each poem is printed in English, paired with its image. But online, we’re able to present them in Spanish and Quechua. Better still, we provide audio of Gonzales reading each poem in all three languages, allowing listeners to appreciate them in their original agglutinative, tri-vowelled, plosive-sprinkled language. This sort of enhancement of a printed work is perhaps a small touch, but hopefully it’s the sort of thing that will make poetry — and Quechua — more accessible.

VQR editor Ted Genoways was a guest on Charlottesville radio show “Charlottesville–Right Now” last Friday talking about our Fall issue. The interview is seventeen minutes long. Listen at the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.

Smithsonian magazine has just released a special issue of thirty-seven of “America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences.” It’s a fascinating list and an issue well worth checking out. But what really caught my eye was a cover thumbnail picture of Daniel Alarcón, who co-edited our new special issue on South America, and the excellent profile of Daniel inside. Best of all, page 85 of the print issue has a nearly life-size head shot of Daniel, so if you were still undecided about which of your favorite writers to be on Halloween, the Daniel Alarcón option is totally taken care of. In the meantime, may we humbly suggest reading Daniel’s latest nonfiction contribution to VQR or his fiction contributions here and here. Or you can read his blog entry on the new Brazilian film “Tropa de Elite.”

Last week I found myself wearing a borrowed suit jacket and striped shirt at the gala premiere of a new Brazilian movie called “Tropa de Elite.” I’d heard it was the best movie of the Rio Film Festival, and getting in felt like some sort of accomplishment. There was a red carpet and mobs of people outside with cell phone cameras taking pictures of the stars. I’ll admit I found all this sort of charming and new, since I’ve been to very few events in my life with even a whiff of this glamor. There was a brief opening ceremony, then the lights dimmed, and the film began. I feel compelled to write something about this movie, if only because I have a feeling it is going to be big—and not just in Brazil, where it has been widely available on pirated DVD for more than three months, and is already a hit. It’s very likely going to be big in the US, where it will surely be marketed as the newest version of “City of God,” and add to the list of films that paint a bleak picture of life in the slums of the developing world. For the record, I thought “City of God” was a work of art: yes, it was a drug-filled, hyper-violent story of the favelas of Rio, but it had humanity. This new film is very similar, though without the art, minus the elegant narrative structure, with a jerkier camera style, and a much higher body count. But that’s not my problem with the movie either. Violence in film is fine, often necessary, but “Tropa de Elite” is something else: an apologia for torture. It is Abu Ghraib set in Rio, Guantánamo in the favelas. And it’s coming soon to a theater near you: Harvey Weinstein is distributing this film in the US, and he must be very much behind this project, because he flew to Rio to be at the premiere. I watched one of Hollywood’s most important players mingle with the Brazilian glitterati, collecting their congratulations. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The film is about a Captain Beto Nascimento, a stressed-out father-to-be, and member of an anti-narcotics task force called BOPE. BOPE’s thankless task in the crime-ridden city is not only to confront the drug dealers who control the favelas, but also the corrupt police officers who abet their trade. Ah, an anti-corruption program—we can all get behind that, can’t we? They accomplish this work with heavy weaponry, ready trigger-fingers, and investigative techniques that include savage beatings, simulated drownings with plastic bags, and threatened sodomy, among others. Not only does the movie have you rooting for this sort of hyper-violence, BOPE NEVER TORTURES OR KILLS ANYONE WHO ISN’T GUILTY. That’s right. In the entire movie, in two hours worth of summary executions and deafening gun battles, not one innocent is killed by BOPE, and their tactics are consistently justified. Sure, and everyone at Guantánamo is Al-Qaeda. This movie will be sold in the US as a window into some crude Latin American reality, but if the script included aliens and a boy wizard with a magic wand, “Tropa de Elite” couldn’t be more fantastical. And while BOPE tortures, intimidates, and murders a vast array of unequivocally ruthless sociopaths, those who question police violence are ridiculed—they are portrayed throughout the film as out of touch with reality, as a bunch of pothead, bleeding-heart rich kids. There isn’t a single legitimate voice raised against BOPE or its tactics, and the squad itself is represented as being able to police itself, to rein in its violent tendencies when necessary. In one scene, as BOPE goes door to door looking for Baiano, a local drug dealer who has made the mistake of killing one their men, they roust a sleeping man from his humble, dirt-floor room, guns drawn, and then politely ask if they may search his home. The director plays the man’s obvious terror—and the audience’s expectation of explosive violence—for a laugh. More nauseating is the training camp that Nascimento leads: School of the Americas 2.0, a barbaric series of humiliations effected upon would-be recruits, men who emerge desensitized killers, all, of course, completely justified in the context of the film. Fighting crime, the film says, isn’t pretty. It’s alright to kill poor people, according to “Tropa de Elite,” because they’re probably guilty of something.

Imagine if the Caviles of Guatemala, that frightening death squad responsible for the deaths of thousands, that terrifying heavily-armed, blood-thirsty faction of a narco-state—imagine if they had a recruiting film that was going to be shown in American theaters. Or Haiti’s Ton-Ton Macoute, or Colombia’s paramilitaries, or . . . Imagine if all the horrors of Abu Ghraib were given a slick Hollywood treatment—Fox’s “24” but far bloodier, the same crooked ethics of George W. Bush’s war on terror transposed to an exotic tropical locale. This is “Tropa de Elite,” and it’s coming soon.

The film was shown at two locations simultaneously—the Hollywood style premiere that I attended, and down the street at an overflow theater set up for regular folks. Reports said that there a portion of the audience began shouting, “Reactionaries!” at the screen and stormed out. I wish I had.

John Casteen and Jennifer Chang, two poets whose first books are forthcoming in the newly launched VQR Poetry Series, will read at 7:30 p.m., this Wednesday, October 3, in the Wailes Lounge at the Florence Elston Inn and Conference Center at Sweet Briar College (driving directions here) as part of the “First Wednesdays” Reading Series.

If you’re not already familiar with their work, you should check it out. You’ll find poems by Casteen here, here, and here. And some by Chang here, here, and here. I hope to see you there; it’s going to be good.