The Tornado is Not a Surrealist

Just some random shit:

1. Apparently I’m seeing Philip Glass for free in Prospect Park tonight.

2. After a couple weeks worth of waiting, The Tornado Is Not a Surrealist, a chapbook by Brian Foley, came in the mail. I’d stumbled upon Foley’s blog and liked the cover & title so I bought it on a whim. Read a couple poems, they are prosey, but remind me a lot more of flash fiction than prose poems. I think it’s because of his sentence-to-sentence pacing and the storytellish narrative quality. The things he writes about are always interesting in a formulaic kind of way, as in he chooses interesting nouns, but I kept getting stopped up by their and-then and-then fictiony quality. Here is a poem that I liked but will probably show you what I’m talking about:

 

Woodpecker

A sick tree had puked leaves on a man’s lawn. It was that time of year, said his wife. He had heard this said before. No one had ever told him what it meant. He instead took the tree for a rogue and the next morning sought revenge. He battled the bark with a pair of metal scissors. He came at it from several different angles–sideways, over the hedge. They did little damage. He couldn’t understand it. He tried the scissors on his own skin, cutting off his thumb. They still had their magic. But now he was in tremendous pain. From the upper levels of teh tree, a dry knocking sound. The tree, laughing at him.

See what I mean? Conceptually interesting, a tree “puking” leaves, but I think his rhythm and flow because of its prosody is chopping and difficult, especially with all the little sentences at the end (i.e.: “They still had their magic. But now he was in tremendous pain” could have been separated by a comma to allow more of a flow). I wonder how Foley fairs with linear form, I haven’t read much more of the book but I noticed a couple poems with line breaks, and for the most part I kept wondering if the poems would be less stuffy if he tried injecting more space. Otherwise, like I said, borderline flash-fictiony, and then the fiction people might complain his work doesn’t resolve enough.

3. One W. Jordan Dion, a friend of mine, invited me to a Nigeria vs. Ghana party in Brooklyn tomorrow night. One of his roommates, Kingsley, is a huge Nigerian and invited Jordan to this party-battle of freshness. I have plans to go to a party further east on the island, but there is something about me and WJD, white as snow, fresh as we can be, amidst such debauchery. Hope I can hack tonight,

 

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