Once I became a poet I could not be taught to be a poet…

Thanks Mere for this link to Ron Silliman’s blog, which is just about the most lukewarm review of Chelsey Minnis’ Bad Bad that I’ve yet to stumble over on the internet. It’s to be expected that Ron Silliman would say that thinking about writing purposely bad poetry is better than actually writing it. But even then, his argument comes off kind of unfeeling. 

Anyways, I’m in Chicago, just got back from Iowa City where I put a deposit on my new apartment. I was starting to have doubts about the U. of Iowa, but now that I’ve been there I’m really excited to be going to school there. Pictures/etc to follow, of the flood and of the city, once I get back to New York. 

christian bestsellers

This headline on the New York Times website made me chuckle: Christian Novel Is Surprise Best Seller

food for poemz

My brother played a hip-hop show in Brooklyn at a club called Sputnik last night. Taryn (left) and I (right) were the danciest girls there. Besides Mere, of course. But she’s not pictured. Now my legs hurt.

Anyway. I’m writing a sweet poem about taking a dead squirrel for a walk, or rather, a drag. Next show July 16th. illlllll

This might also be old news, but you can download Girl Talk’s new album here (stolen from Helen). 

“You don’t blog about me like you used to” -WJD

Books I’ve Ordered:

I’m also reading Tarpaulin Sky Issue #13/ Print Issue #1 Fall/Winter 2007. The cover, I think, reflects the feminine, spiritual nature of the poems (to categorize them reductively). I don’t “agree” with a lot of the subject matter, but every so often I’ll read a poem that, even if I lack agreement, I will concede to its master of craft. 

I liked Annie Guthrie, specifically her poem “*Weather’d:”

The world unwound shut down.

Thunder, and a newly reckoned darkness.

The light out made birds sound otherwise.

 

I feared the place inside I never visited.

Was out now, a flushed out dark would up in sky

crossed by lightning–

I recognize myself out there in those pockets
of darkness between flashes:

I can hold the reigns of the visible.

The visible: a tyrant over taste & smells and bird calls
and other calls.

The thunder unseams a silent sky,
and my wonder.

How a mind makes shapes of gathering clouds.

(I feel,) I say,
I feel designed. 

I like Guthrie’s bookends to the poem: “The world unwound shut down.” and “(I feel,), I say,/ I feel designed.” It is that sort of word and sound play that turned me on to her poetry in the magazine. Typing the poem out was a good exercise because I became hyperaware of her use of line breaks, which are varied in a way that I didn’t pick up on when I read it. 

Some other notable poets in the magazine: Karla Kelsey, Bethany Wright, John Deming. But I’m not done reading yet.

Also, those of you who are in the NYC/Chicago/LA/etc areas, y’all poets are broke and need to check out MyOpenBar. It’s a website that lists all the open bars in whatever area you’re in. The catch? It’s usually open because the bar is promoting a new kind of alcohol, which is the only thing they’ll serve free. I checked it out with my friend WJD in Manhattan on Monday and we drank free bourbon from 6-8 pm. You can’t beat that. 

 

Fence, GC Waldrep, Language Poetry

I finally got my copy of Fence Magazine V11 N1 via their In Rainbows-esque offer in April. I haven’t been excited by much of the poetry in it so far (although Stacey Richter’s… poem(?) “Yes or No,” a list of Yes, Nos and Maybes of writing was funny: “YES: Characteres with novel methods of getting themselves excused from gym class. Staring at the sun, chugging Windex, bug inserted in ear. NO: No use of the word “orb.”)

But, in an excerpt from Sarah Rosenthal’s anthology called A Community Writing Itself: Conversations With Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area there is a definition of Language Poetry that I thought really hit the nail on the head in terms of its conciseness, understandability, and literary jargonlessness: 

“The Language poets viewed the coherent ego as a mental construct rather than an absolute truth. Further, they felt that this construct could serve as a kind of narcotic. By focusing the poem on personal matters of the psyche, poet and reader could collude to avoid the urgent problems of the world and their own implications in those problems.”

Also, I finished GC Waldrep’s chapbook of poetry called One Way No Exit, published by Tarpaulin Sky. The book is unique because its bound together by metal screws instead of thread, but the poetry itself didn‘t interest me because of its ekphrastic nature: they’re based on photographs by Peter Rathmann and the narrative constantly reminds the reader of it. For me, this drew me out of the book.

There were, though, a couple of lines that really struck me and drove me to respect the poems even though it isn’t my preferred “genre” of poetry:

From “XXII: Snow Hill, Maryland 1989:”

Art about buildings & food is always really about music.
Say you’re driving along the Eastern Shore with the radio blaring
and suddenly you’re hungry and it’s summer and ahead of you
at the edge of the four-lane mirage
you spy a drive-in–THICK SHAKES! GOOD FOOD!–
and being American you try very hard not to thing of words like architecture
so as to concentrate more completely on your hunger, on the Buick you drive… 
but really it’s the music you hear
and it’s the music you keep hearing when at last you pull off the macadam
only to discover that the place is closed and looks as if it has been
for what passes in these parts for a long time. 

One Way No Exit does not generally use complex language, but reads like a directive through Rathmann’s photography without physical cues, only Waldrep’s verbal ones. I would have liked the book better if this awareness of an outside source had been removed.

What Happens When Kids Break Into Robert Frost’s House

From bad to verse: Vandals get classroom penance

Poems as punishment, can’t say I don’t like it.

“The Young Hate Us”

“‘Subversive’ makes the poem a pipe-bomb.’” -Donato Mancini

A rather nifty quote, I’d say.

The Kindle

For now a link about the Kindle. I have to say I’m buzzed & that I’ve been typing the notes for a sweet & entertaining review of Tao Lin’s CBT (poetry) but in my move from PA to NY I misplaced the book so some of the quotes like “heart feels like a medium-erect penis” taken out of context seem like it might actually have some worth, if only comical. 

Anyway, I’ve been thinking & discussing with friends about how terrible it is that the Kindle not only has a name that is so akin to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and also claims to be a (distant) cousin of Apple products (whether it’s true or not). The Kindle is for old people, clearly.

But then why is it so paradoxical that when I see old family members born before the 80s try to operate a Nintendo Wii that I start reevaluating my ideas/opinions about the Kindle and its total sacrilege to the book? I.e.: if this thing is for old people, why are my somewhat-not-old-but-rooted-in-familiarity-yet-totally-unaccepting-of technology-(-)retarded-old-people opinions preventing me from accepting this device? 

Vested interest in books? Maybe. Intelligence? Perhaps (but usually doubtful). The fact that its probably a bonafide marketing scheme to make $$$ while simultaneously threatening book reading as I know it? 

Hm….