It seems the poetry world, in the past couple of years, has been interested in the cross-over between it and the music world...including Pshares' own Kathy Rooney in her Contemporary Poetry Review piece "Sell Outs and Stanzas" and another good friend Dara Cerv in her Redivider essay "Rock Out With Your Cock Out."
But recently I've been less interested in poet/rockstars than songs about poetry. Lately I've been listening to The National's song "Abel" and can't help but wonder, when the phrase "My mind's not right!" is repeated over and over, if Matt Berninger is a Lowell fan. Joanna Newsom, in her album Milk-Eyed Mender, sings about a "bedraggled ghost of a sonnet" and "a page of Camus." And on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy sings a phrase we all sing: "I wonder why we listen to poets when nobody gives a fuck." But perhaps most interesting to me is when, on the same album, Tweedy says, "the singer you love so much he takes all his words from the books that you don't read anyway."
The subject matter of poetry in music seems pretty peculiar (I'm not talking about Robert Plant's hobbit phase), and yet three albums in my heavy rotation over the past few years engage it, and one even discusses lyric-making and poetry's effect on it. Is this a tradition in contemporary music that I've just simply missed somehow? Are there songs you listen to in which poetry is a subject, and more specifically, poetry-influenced lyric-making?
August 31, 2007
Songwriter Readers
August 29, 2007
Unlawful Casual Knowledge
There is no guilt like the professional guilt of the writer who makes an incisive remark on a text that remains unopened by said writer, as Bayard deconstructs. He even has a taxonomy:
“livres inconnus” (books one is unfamiliar with)
“livres parcourus” (books glanced at)
“livres dont j’ai entendu parler” (books one has heard discussed)
“les livres que j’ai oubliés” (books one has read but forgotten)
All in all, this covers a huge swath of my cranial space. They’re kind of like evil imaginary friends, the tomes whom you have pretended to have digested. They whisper to you at parties, and track mud all over the floor of your gestalt, saying, “That remark would have been so much funnier if you actually read about the seizure in Chapter 12” and “Of course, I made fun of the motif you said I revered in the epilogue to Crepuscular Tuscany, but you wouldn’t know that, would you?” So what should be as important and primal to a writer as the cave paintings in Lascaux are to an artist end up being mere graffiti: “Call Hester for a brazenly good time.”
Here are my heavies:
Moby Dick
War and Peace
Ulysses
Underworld
The Magic Mountain
Remembrance of Things Past
Gravity’s Rainbow (started 4 times)
Madame Bovary
Brothers Karamazov
Anna Karenina
Native Son
Their Eyes were Watching God
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
As I Lay Dying
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Hopscotch
The Tin Drum
The Sorrows of Youth Werther
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dead Souls
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Brave New World
The Rainbow
The Man in the High Castle
A Farewell to Arms
Tropic of Cancer
Bonfire of the Vanities
Catch 22
And let’s be honest. Wikipedia is not making things any easier. There goes 60% of the conversation of literature majors, whom I notice tend to specialize in off-hand remarks. I suppose that the printing press caused all sorts of resentment also (“I paid an extravagant sum of money for this book and your damned pamphlet cost you a shilling!”). Blogging too, of course. I have this mental image of a publisher’s nightmare, where they look up from compositing type and fearfully ask the blogger lurking in the shadows what his name is. From the darkness comes the sepulchral reply, “OMG! Legion! For we are many.”
August 26, 2007
absent magazine issue two now online
absent magazine * issue two
featuring poetry by Jasper Bernes, Charles Bernstein, Regis Bonvicino, Jack Boettcher, Tim Botta, Julia Cohen, Shanna Compton, John Cotter, Shafer Hall, Lisa Jarnot, Pierre Joris, Joan Kane, Noelle Kocot, Jason Labbe, Kathleen Ossip, The Pines, Matthew Rohrer, Kate Schapira, Mathias Svalina, Kathryn Tabb, Allison Titus and Betsy Wheeler.
in translation with Sergei Kitov and Octavo Paz.
musical work by Aaron Einbond.
prose by Joe Amato, Peter Ciccariello, Simon DeDeo, Adam Golaski, Kent Johnson, Amy Newman, Davis Schneiderman and Tyler Williams.
edited by Elisa Gabbert and Simon DeDeo; with great gratitude to Irwin Chen and his class at Parsons School of Design in New York City.
August 22, 2007
Quickie Interview # 25: Pia Z. Ehrhardt
Pia Z. Ehrhardt's debut story collection, Famous Fathers, was published by MacAdam/Cage this year. The title story won the Narrative Prize, and her work has been presented at Symphony Space in New York City and been awarded a fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her fiction has been published in Norton’s 2006 Sudden Fiction anthology, McSweeney’s, Mississippi Review, and Narrative Magazine, among others. Pia also is a contributing editor at Narrative.
How long did it take you to complete Famous Fathers?
What’s the book tour been like?
When people show up, it’s pretty great. When they don’t, it’s sad. The reading series’ have built-in audiences, and they’re usually held in bars, so they’re relaxed, fun, and people listen. Same with libraries. And it’s great to get out and meet the independent bookstores–-bless them--because the people who work in there often have read your book! It’s also tiring, and I get homesick, but, hey, this is what I asked for: To write in public.
You’ve published a lot of fiction in online magazines. What are the particular benefits of publishing in online journals?
The gratification’s quick. You submit, they accept, and the piece is up. You’re linkable and readers write you. Your father’s new wife finds your veiled stories when she’s Googling her own name. Not a bad thing. It’s a community of readers and writers that’s bolstered my courage. And the links that don’t ever go away, well, I published it then and I claim it still.
What are your favorite online journals at the moment?
The list is long, so I’ll stick to lit mags that only publish online. Elimae--exquisite short fiction; Failbetter and Mississippi Review-always smart and brilliantly edited; Narrative Magazine--a trove of established and emerging writers.
What was your favorite book and band in high school?
Book? To Kill A Mockingbird, even moreso after I moved from
Which crowd did you hang out with in high school?
The alienated-by-the-Southern-belle-cheerleader-perfect-skin-and-hair-virgins-who-fuck crowd.
Favorite book now?
Why Did I Ever? by Mary Robison
What's new on your iPod or CD player?
The National. I can’t stop listening to that deep-voiced guy. The song Fake Empire woke me out of a sound sleep (they were on Letterman), and they’ve been my crush ever since.
What's the best DVD you've rented of late?
City of
What are you working on these days?
An after-Katrina story that’s growing into a short (I hope) novel. I’m supposed to be finishing another novel I started pre-Katrina that’s set in New Orleans, but it has me uncomfortable because the city’s hurting. To re-set it after August 2005 is going to change everything.
What are you reading that’s fun?
Gary Lutz’s new chapbook from Future Tense Books. I’d need a compass if I wasn’t so enjoying getting tangled up in his sentences.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
Tell us what’s wrong. Stop protecting your characters and yourself. Open your coat.
What are some of your guilty pleasures?
Cheez-Its, fashion magazines, macaroni & cheese of any kind, tanned feet, Cool Whip on red jello, kids meals from McDonald’s, Sting. Lots of Sting.
Favorite recipe? (the more specificity the better, so someone could make it if they wanted)
Chicken cacciatore. Brown boneless thighs (or breasts or both) in olive oil with onion and chopped garlic. Dump in one or two giant cans of plum tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes with a sharp knife so the juice squirts out. Add potatoes if you want. Cover and simmer until everything’s cooked through. Serve with bread. Lots of crusty buttered Italian bread.
What's on your desk at the moment?
Austin Powers action figure ("Do I Make You Horny, Baby, Do I?”); Narrative mug that says “Tell me a story;” a potion that makes your lips bigger by burning them with clove; stack of CDs--Brahms, Mahler, Strauss (Richard); a pen that looks like a loaf of bread; photo of my nephew, Stephen in his soccer uniform; calendar; Rhodia orange notepad; fleur de lis glass paperweight; portable hard drive with my iPod music backed up; reading glasses; a stack of books--A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews, Don’t Make Me Stop Now, Michael Parker, Robero Bolano, Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor, The Sleeping Father, Matthew Sharpe, The Difference Between Women and Men, Bret Lott, Carrying the Torch, Brock Clarke, The Girl in the Fall Away Dress, Michelle Richmond, Bad News Of the Heart, Douglas Glover; coupon for a massage; fava bean; silver cast pea pod; ring-sizer thingies; speakers for my laptop; Gel pens (pink and orange); a stack of Gail Godwin novels; Halls cough drops.
Stones or Beatles?
Beatles. Beatles.
Hemingway or Fitzgerald?
Fitzgerald.
Porn name (first pet's name +
Orpheus Orchard.
August 21, 2007
Gitmo Poets: Pentagon-selected mouthpieces or just bad writers?
University of Iowa Press recently released Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, a short book of poetry written by prisoners being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba. Reviews seem to suggest that the poems, though moving for having been composed under such unjust circumstances, are not particularly strong from a literary perspective. The Wall Street Journal reports that one of the translators, lawyer Marc Faloff explains that, "The strict security arrangements governing anything written by Guantanamo Bay inmates meant that Mr. Falkoff had to use linguists with secret-level security clearances rather than translators who specialize in poetry. The resulting translations, Mr. Falkoff writes in the book, 'cannot do justice to the subtlety and cadences of the originals.'"
Dan Chiasson suspects that the poems might be so poor because of a Pentagon-led conspiracy. "A better subtitle," he writes in the New York Times Book Review last weekend, "might have been “The Detainees Do Not Speak” or perhaps “The Detainees Are Not Allowed to Speak.” But the best subtitle, I fear, would have been “The Pentagon Speaks.” To be sure, it’s hard to imagine a straightforward propagandistic use for the lines “America sucks, America chills, / While d’ blood of d’ Muslims is forever getting spilled”; but you can’t help suspecting that this entire production is some kind of public relations psych-out, “proof” that dissent thrives even in the cells of Guantánamo. (Does that sound paranoid? Can you think of another good reason the Pentagon would have selected these lines out of thousands for publication?)"
What do you think? Is the apparent suckiness of the Gitmo poets a result of a military-industrial scheme, or is it just that the authors of these poems are amateurs, or is it that political poetry is usually not very good, or that the stories of the detainees might be better rendered in prose or other formats? Or what?
August 17, 2007
New Skin for the Old Argument
Over at B92, new poet laureate Charles Simic was asked about current politics and its affect on his poetry:
B92: To what extent are you as a poet affected by the radical social changes we face, at least by the changes occurring for the last two decades? How these changes reflect in your poetry?
Charles Simic: Immensely. I have always paid attention to what goes on in the world, but now with the Internet, I read a dozen newspapers and magazines every morning.
All that I read affects me. I’m not one of those poets who write about birds singing and their feelings as the night comes down without once mentioned that innocents are being slaughtered.
I've always had a gag reflex reaction to the idea that if a poet ignores political injustice he or she is being somehow irresponsible. Which is not to say that I don't feel guilty about it.
Is it enough to take solace in the sentiment that writing poetry is a political act in and of itself? Or does a poem need a political subject in order to be socially responsible? Should we put our boot heels to the throat of our own lyrics in order to champion boiled water a la Mayakovsky ? Or are pure aesthetics enough of a political statement? Stevens comes to mind. But should he?
August 15, 2007
Moral Kombat
Keerist. This makes you wonder why anyone ever trusts a damn thing writers say. Poor form to publicly argue with your own work. While being pissed off and dissatisfied with whatever obsession drove you to write something in the past, one tends to look like a idiot if you become wrathful at the mere suggestion that a novel about burning books might be distantly linked to censorship. (Though I suppose arguing with the textual equivalent of your imaginary friend is preferable to actually beating the hell out of your critics... to prove... what, exactly?) Then there are those writers who seem to deliberately piss off the people who venerated them. I suppose that’s one way of solving the problem of the demands of the audience. But don’t all those arguments play much better on the page than in performance art press releases, open letters to your ex-lover’s cat, and David Blaine-style feats of conspicuous but mute suffering, and naked aggression in the guise of philosophy or sociology? Kind of makes me sad to think of all that psychic energy poured fruitlessly out onto the airwaves and newsprint, being sopped up like water splashed onto dry ground. Especially when such interrogations could be generating stuff like Italo Calvino’s ultimate perpetual textual motion machine, If on a winter’s night a traveler (the best example of reader surveillance anywhere), or the cross-referenced lunacy of Milroad Pavic’s The Dictionary of the Khazars. All I can say is that J.D. Salinger better be making Hunter S. Thompson look like Mother Theresa inside that silent compound.
August 13, 2007
Vitality at all costs
Lit critic James Wood is leaving the The New Republic (he previously worked at The Guardian) to become a staff writer at The New Yorker. I've always liked James Wood's semi-caustic wit and the term of his coinage, hysterical realism, used to describe certain contemporary authors like David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith. I love some of the authors he condemns, but I think he's dead on about Smith.
Check out this parody of a passage of "irrelevant intensity" (excerpted from a review of The Autograph Man in the London Review of Books) -- fiction that values "comedy of culture" over "comedy of character," "obsession with pop-culture trivia," a "need to capture as much of 'the madness of the times' as possible," etc.:
The minibar was one of that weird genre that tells you that as soon as you move anything in it, anything at all, you will be automatically billed. Brian wondered about this: how would they -- they being the Loews Hotel accountants who worked out of a large and famously hideous building in Newark, though probably in fact the information was logged somewhere like Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur -- how would they know that you had moved, say, the tiny bottle of Johnnie Walker to where the tiny bottle of Smirnoff was standing? Like, thought Brian, would an alarm go off? He plucked a bottle of Budweiser. Nothing happened. The strange pathos of cold beer bottles in lonely hotel rooms!
August 9, 2007
It’s That Time Again....
The 2007 Booker long list, which The Guardian called “one of the most low-key in many years,” has been announced. Apart from perennial Booker favorite Ian McEwan, for On Chesil Beach, and the well-known Peter Ho Davies, for The Welsh Girl, the list is somewhat esoteric and includes four first-time novelists—which I think is pretty great. Stay tuned for the announcements of the short list on September 6th and the winner on October 16th.
August 8, 2007
Fitness classes, massage services, ski trips. . .book signings?
Book signings seem to be moving out of universities and bookstores and into corporate campuses. Yahoo even has an employee whose title is "party princess" whose duties include overseeing "high-profile book events."
Of what horrible trend in contemporary culture is this illustrative? Like maybe is it all well and good for books and authors, but maybe not so much for employees insofar as it represents the creeping professionalization of every aspect of their lives? Should "health, well being and community" be "sought outside work" or is that, like, so last century?
August 3, 2007
As the Literary World Turns or Like Emails Through the Ether, So Are the Days of Our Lives
So apparently Gawker got hold of a Robert Olen Butler email that outlines why his wife, author Elizabeth Dewberry, is leaving him for media mogul Ted Turner.
Here's the email.
Here's the Washington Post's take on the email.
Here's Robert Olen Butler's take on Gawker.
Am I a bad person for thinking that the email wasn't THAT insane? Or rather, as INSANE as Gawker made it out to be? Don't get me wrong, it was ill-advised for sure. But it seemed level-headed and honest and in-line with Butler and Dewberry's "thing." I know I'm a bad person for secretly becoming a new Ted Turner fan as a result, so I won't even ask.
August 2, 2007
Smart chickens, rickety world.
Charles "Dark Imagery w/ Ironic Humor" Simic is the new poet laureate, whatever that means. See ya, Donald Hall. (Wouldn't wanna be ya, etc.)
Says Simic, the role of the poet is to "remind people of their own humanity." I hate when that happens.
A poem:
PARADISE MOTEL
Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.
I stayed in my room. The President
Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.
My eyes were opened in astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.
I lived well, but life was awful.
There were so many soldiers that day,
So many refugees crowding the roads.
Naturally, they all vanished
With a touch of the hand.
History licked the corners of its bloody mouth.
On the pay channel, a man and a woman
Were trading hungry kisses and tearing off
Each other's clothes while I looked on
With the sound off and the room dark
Except for the screen where the color
Had too much red in it, too much pink.
August 1, 2007
Abortions for some, tiny American flags for others!
Robert Heinlein would have been 100 years old this year, if he'd had better cryogenic luck. Brian Doherty pens a cogent appreciation of the crusty one himself here. I thought I would celebrate by taking out the audiobook of Have Spacesuit--Will Travel from the library, only to recoil when the voice of youthful americana that they selected for the narrator was totally without pizazz. It was unlike anything I imagined when I read them in the fusty confines of my middle school library. The voice needed to be corn-fed, knowing, wry, charmingly pragmatic, not callow. I won't say that it made me feel patriotic to read him, but certainly he is one of the few writers (Daniel Keys Moran and Stephen Vincent Benet being the other ones who spring immediately to mind) who could convey a beguiling sense of what it means to be American. This impulse was in somewhat short supply for me growing up during the Reagan years. But Heinlein was also attractive because he was cranky, licentious, and (even to an unsophisticated sixth grader) clearly notorious. So my barely pubescent radical socialist self could cozy up to a rabidly anti-commmunist writer who advocated suffrage for veterans only. (When the pneumatically-endowed actors of Starship Troopers waddled onto movie screens, someone gave Heinlein the faintest of faint praises, saying that he was okay, as long as "he could keep the fascism in check." I winced.
But for me, he was part of that personal pantheon of transgressive adolescent literature (such Piers Anthony and Frank Herbert), who could mix pontification and somewhat more openly frank appreciations of adult shenanigans. Sure, Dune had something serious to say about desert religions, tribalism, and messianism (which, y'know, might by slightly apropos in our current situation), but it also had doe-eyed virgins who got off on prophency. (And enough machincations and intrigue to make Danielle Steele blush, which was a bit intoxicating, as my middle school self would have killed to manage even the tiniest iota of intrigue). Similarly, Piers Anthony had some comments on social superstructures and an unblinking assessment of how human needs played out on a macro and micro scale, but... well, there was an entire book whose title was based on the hue of the undergarments of a female character, so it wasn't all keen sociological insight. There was something for Plath's "the peanut-crunching crowd." But there are worse things to be than a provocateur (even if you could be provisionally claimed by the hippies, Barry Goldwater, or the Manson family). Plus, you have to give him credit for getting more outrageous as he got older. I'd say that being a crank isn't such a bad retirement plan.
