Wednesday, June 13, 2012
to get us started
I ganked this from Debra Gwartney, who got it from somewhere else. Now I'm putting it here. Thanks Debra and other guy.
Monday, June 11, 2012
A few more thoughts in response to AD Jameson's latest inquiry into sincerity.
I am again having trouble posting comments on HTML Giant, so I'm posting them here where nobody will read them.
*
Some Bits
1) I'll buy the Steve Roggenbuck connection, but I don't think Massey would buy it. You'll have to ask him.
2) If you examine the texts produced by Massey/Mister/Robinson as well as the Second Wave NS practitioners (Hart, Pritts, Lasky, et al), one thing becomes apparent. Massey's work seems the square peg here. That is, the tradition he is working in is decidedly different from where Andy and I situated ourselves. And even though I've made an effort to distance myself from the 2nd Wave, I'll admit that Andy and my work has more in common with these than Massey's even. Curiously, when talk of NS comes up, Massey is usually quoted--both his manifesto and his poetry. Joe is a good friend, and I say this not to cast aspersions but to point out the rather strange impression this gives of the poetry and the general thinking of the NS '05 as a whole.
3) Joe and I (and I'm guessing Andy) were weaned on Donald Allen's "New American Poetry" of 1960, and Paul Hoover's 1990 Norton Anthology of Post-Modern American Poetry. Far from rejecting Language or other "experimental" modes, I'd say we absorbed them, used them, learned from them. The objections we had toward the poetry zeitgeist of the mid-2000s was not simply the emphasis on artifice or experiment or text-as-text. It was against something harder to pin down--what we felt was a lack of feeling, of soul, behind the text.
4) I find the aleatory stylings of John Cage much more soulful than (insert name of mid-career 30-40something poet here). It's not the tools or the materials. It's the animating force behind them.
5) It's hard to quantify, to pin down "feeling" in a text. This poses a problem for the academic, who, trapped in a post-new criticism hangover that will not go away, focuses on the text itself to the exclusion of the context in which it exists or existed.
*
Some Bits
1) I'll buy the Steve Roggenbuck connection, but I don't think Massey would buy it. You'll have to ask him.
2) If you examine the texts produced by Massey/Mister/Robinson as well as the Second Wave NS practitioners (Hart, Pritts, Lasky, et al), one thing becomes apparent. Massey's work seems the square peg here. That is, the tradition he is working in is decidedly different from where Andy and I situated ourselves. And even though I've made an effort to distance myself from the 2nd Wave, I'll admit that Andy and my work has more in common with these than Massey's even. Curiously, when talk of NS comes up, Massey is usually quoted--both his manifesto and his poetry. Joe is a good friend, and I say this not to cast aspersions but to point out the rather strange impression this gives of the poetry and the general thinking of the NS '05 as a whole.
3) Joe and I (and I'm guessing Andy) were weaned on Donald Allen's "New American Poetry" of 1960, and Paul Hoover's 1990 Norton Anthology of Post-Modern American Poetry. Far from rejecting Language or other "experimental" modes, I'd say we absorbed them, used them, learned from them. The objections we had toward the poetry zeitgeist of the mid-2000s was not simply the emphasis on artifice or experiment or text-as-text. It was against something harder to pin down--what we felt was a lack of feeling, of soul, behind the text.
4) I find the aleatory stylings of John Cage much more soulful than (insert name of mid-career 30-40something poet here). It's not the tools or the materials. It's the animating force behind them.
5) It's hard to quantify, to pin down "feeling" in a text. This poses a problem for the academic, who, trapped in a post-new criticism hangover that will not go away, focuses on the text itself to the exclusion of the context in which it exists or existed.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
The Office
I'm sitting in the Junk Room, so called because it's full of junk. While Skyping with my daughter today, I carried the laptop upstairs and announced we were entering the junk room. This seemed to interest her enough to ask me to rotate 360 degrees and adjust the angle of the screen so she could see the piles of junk. Three feet to the left of me are several cardboard boxes filled with old LPs. Behind the boxes is a broken La-Z-Boy recliner piled high with dusty blankets, pillows, half-crocheted things. Against the wall in front of me is a makeshift bookhelf--cinderblock and unidentifiable wood-slab construction--housing a few dozen mass-market paperbacks, mostly genre stuff: sci-fi and fantasy that I must have read sometime two and a half decades ago when this was my bedroom. Did I mention I'm living in my folks' house? I'm rapidly approaching 40 and have come full-circle. I kept my room tidier than this, though.
On the top shelf, above the books, there's a haphazard collection of pint glasses, wicker baskets, and wreaths woven from twigs and such. I also spy a small can of butane and a cardboard box containing collector drinking glasses signed by Clyde Drexler and other early 90s era Trailblazers. I don't know or remember where these came from. I don't remember being an NBA fan back then. I don't remember a lot of things.
I've dedicated this room as a temporary office chiefly because it has limited distractions. Basically this means no television. No cookies. No window to peer out. Here is where I will get "work" done, whatever that may be. Tonight it's writing on a topic I know nothing about for a few bucks that I'll toss in the fund to get back east.
In two weeks it will be a year since I last saw my daughter. Things are different now. She reads books and espouses opinions and happily discourses on her dog's diet, the habits of crocodiles and other reptiles, and the general unsuitability of raw tomatoes for human consumption. She likes to show me her henna tattoo. I'm still "daddy" to her but I'm not sure how much longer that will last. I've come to notice that recently, in the past few weeks, her mother has been referring to me not as "daddy" but as "Tony." Tonight E. asked me if I would read her another story and then she turned and said, "Mama, can Daddy read me another story?" Her mother responded, "That's between you and Tony."
"Tony? Can you read me another story?"
If I'm going to be slowly erased, this room full of junk, abandoned memories, manufactured memories, and just plain weird anti-nostalgia, is as good a place as any, I suppose.
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?"
On the top shelf, above the books, there's a haphazard collection of pint glasses, wicker baskets, and wreaths woven from twigs and such. I also spy a small can of butane and a cardboard box containing collector drinking glasses signed by Clyde Drexler and other early 90s era Trailblazers. I don't know or remember where these came from. I don't remember being an NBA fan back then. I don't remember a lot of things.
I've dedicated this room as a temporary office chiefly because it has limited distractions. Basically this means no television. No cookies. No window to peer out. Here is where I will get "work" done, whatever that may be. Tonight it's writing on a topic I know nothing about for a few bucks that I'll toss in the fund to get back east.
In two weeks it will be a year since I last saw my daughter. Things are different now. She reads books and espouses opinions and happily discourses on her dog's diet, the habits of crocodiles and other reptiles, and the general unsuitability of raw tomatoes for human consumption. She likes to show me her henna tattoo. I'm still "daddy" to her but I'm not sure how much longer that will last. I've come to notice that recently, in the past few weeks, her mother has been referring to me not as "daddy" but as "Tony." Tonight E. asked me if I would read her another story and then she turned and said, "Mama, can Daddy read me another story?" Her mother responded, "That's between you and Tony."
"Tony? Can you read me another story?"
If I'm going to be slowly erased, this room full of junk, abandoned memories, manufactured memories, and just plain weird anti-nostalgia, is as good a place as any, I suppose.
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?"
Monday, June 4, 2012
More of that Old Sincerity: The Origin Myth
From the archives of Geneva Convention, August 2005.
* * *
Some More Notes on the NS
We're here, some of us are queer, and we aren't going anywhere.
The New Sincerity had its genesis in December of 2004. It began when I met Andrew Mister in San Francisco's Tenderloin district and proceeded to drink him under the table. He lost concentration during our last couple of rounds as he was trying to chat up a girl at the bar. I maintained focus on drinking my beer and whiskey. A photo-documentary of this event lives in the archives. After drinking, I had Thai food at a nearby all-night eatery. I left Andrew at the bar.
We talked a lot of shit about poetry we didn't like between drinks. We also sang David Bowie's "Life on Mars," though we couldn't remember all the lyrics. We watched a drag show. We almost broke a table. We also talked about what we wanted in contemporary poetry. Frank O'Hara said that only a few poets were more interesting than the movies. We believe that only a few poets are more interesting than David Bowie. At least right now. We're hoping to pull a few more New Sincerists out of the closet, those who are afraid of losing post-avant cred, or appearing too sentimental. Sentimental means "relating to sentiment." Sentiment means "feeling." We feel, dig?
Before our drinking battle, we exchanged manuscripts. The next morning, hung over and sipping Emergen-C, we read the poems and discovered that each of us was the other's favorite new poet. We seemed to see eye to eye on matters poetical. We wrote the sorts of poems that we wanted to read. We continued our correspondence and friendship. We began to notice other poets who seemed to want the same things from contemporary poetry--Joseph Massey, Charlie Jensen, Reb Livingston, Gina Myers, Laurel Snyder. Jeff Bahr, though not a New Sincerist, photoshopped a NS teeshirt on himself. Josh Hanson criticized us. Lots of other people just don't care. So it goes.
The New Sincerity went public in the late spring and early summer of 2005. I began writing little blips about it on my blog. In early July of 2005, Joe Massey wrote a controversial manifesto. Since then, not a day in the blogosphere goes by without a mention of the NS. I like this. It means people are paying attention. Not everyone agrees with us and that is okay. There are a number of skeptics. That too is okay.
We are not going anywhere. But we promise not to take over your town.
* * *
Some More Notes on the NS
We're here, some of us are queer, and we aren't going anywhere.
The New Sincerity had its genesis in December of 2004. It began when I met Andrew Mister in San Francisco's Tenderloin district and proceeded to drink him under the table. He lost concentration during our last couple of rounds as he was trying to chat up a girl at the bar. I maintained focus on drinking my beer and whiskey. A photo-documentary of this event lives in the archives. After drinking, I had Thai food at a nearby all-night eatery. I left Andrew at the bar.
We talked a lot of shit about poetry we didn't like between drinks. We also sang David Bowie's "Life on Mars," though we couldn't remember all the lyrics. We watched a drag show. We almost broke a table. We also talked about what we wanted in contemporary poetry. Frank O'Hara said that only a few poets were more interesting than the movies. We believe that only a few poets are more interesting than David Bowie. At least right now. We're hoping to pull a few more New Sincerists out of the closet, those who are afraid of losing post-avant cred, or appearing too sentimental. Sentimental means "relating to sentiment." Sentiment means "feeling." We feel, dig?
Before our drinking battle, we exchanged manuscripts. The next morning, hung over and sipping Emergen-C, we read the poems and discovered that each of us was the other's favorite new poet. We seemed to see eye to eye on matters poetical. We wrote the sorts of poems that we wanted to read. We continued our correspondence and friendship. We began to notice other poets who seemed to want the same things from contemporary poetry--Joseph Massey, Charlie Jensen, Reb Livingston, Gina Myers, Laurel Snyder. Jeff Bahr, though not a New Sincerist, photoshopped a NS teeshirt on himself. Josh Hanson criticized us. Lots of other people just don't care. So it goes.
The New Sincerity went public in the late spring and early summer of 2005. I began writing little blips about it on my blog. In early July of 2005, Joe Massey wrote a controversial manifesto. Since then, not a day in the blogosphere goes by without a mention of the NS. I like this. It means people are paying attention. Not everyone agrees with us and that is okay. There are a number of skeptics. That too is okay.
We are not going anywhere. But we promise not to take over your town.
Response to Adam Jameson and commenters.
Over at HTML Giant, A D Jameson continues his discussion of the old New Sincerity. Or, more properly, his discussion of 2nd Wave "New Sincerity" as exemplified by Tao Lin, Matt Hart, etc.
I tried to post a comment to the thread, but my internet is hamster wheel-powered so sometimes things don't work. So I'll try posting it here. To read the original piece, go to HTML Giant.
Andy, Joe, and I didn't invent the term. Its origins are in music, architecture, and some other shit I don't remember. And it wasn't leading anything--I think when Andy first suggested the term (to me, over beers, and not in any prescriptive way) he was talking about Joshua Beckman's book, the one with the poem "Block Island."
I tried to post a comment to the thread, but my internet is hamster wheel-powered so sometimes things don't work. So I'll try posting it here. To read the original piece, go to HTML Giant.
Andy, Joe, and I didn't invent the term. Its origins are in music, architecture, and some other shit I don't remember. And it wasn't leading anything--I think when Andy first suggested the term (to me, over beers, and not in any prescriptive way) he was talking about Joshua Beckman's book, the one with the poem "Block Island."
Here's what happened. In the summer of 2005, I was complaining on my blog about the poetic Latino Mafia that wanted me to write more poems about tortillas. I was also involved in a cross-blog conversation with Jonathan Mayhew concerning "period styles" of contemporary poetry. In a dashed-off post one afternoon I briefly talked about a few period styles, and joked that I should start or become part of The Tortilla School. Then, as an afterthought I mentioned that Andy used the term "New Sincerity" to describe the sort of poetry we thought we were writing or that we admired in others.
(He and I had just begun work on a series of poems that would be published as a chapbook by Boku Books in late 2005, called finally, "Here's To You" but at that point had the working title "Don't Get Me Started." It no longer exists, as far as I know--I guess poems there could be seen as early examples of this particular strain of "New Sincerity." We were clearly guided by Ted Berrigan, as the poems state. And I have the pills and Pepsi to prove it.)
Part of what I was interested in at the time was using the "innovations" of the past generation(s) to write poetry that was more than irony or distrust of language. There was of course, more to it, but that was where I had staked my little plot of ground.
A few posts followed my initial posts (mostly as responses to comment box comments). Then in early July, Joe emailed me his Manifesto (which I believe he also posted on his Livejournal at the time). We had a good laugh and thought that was it.
I continued to blog about the newly minted "New Sincerity" throughout the summer, and Joe did the same from time to time in his live journal. Andy didn't have a blog at the time. But he was still writing poems then--we all were.
Here's an important point. The main reason the NS became anything at all is that in 2005, poets read blogs. Blogging was the main source of online poetry community. Facebook, I think, really killed all that. Without the blogging culture of the time, this wouldn't be an issue.
Finally, as I ramble, I'd like to refer back to the last sentence of the paragraph before the paragraph before this one. The manifestos, the blog posts, all of that were, as you've noted, pretty ephemeral. I'd like to think that if folks want to talk about the "NS" they'd look to the poems at the center of all the talk. So far, that's not been done much--or, in my opinion, at least not enough.
Tony Robinson
**
Update @ 7:00 pm PDT: Aaron Belz tweets:
@bluecanaryruth It does too still exist. Nice piece, Tony. twitter.com/aaronbelz/stat…
— aaron belz (@aaronbelz) June 5, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
post-Sincerity poetics found here
I have resisted making this a poetry blog mainly because nobody reads poetry blogs anymore. They are like PDAs and pagers and 64 oz. bottles of malt liquor.
A dodo bird with a pager and half-gallon of Olde English? Priceless.
*
But, I had this to say about this thing I saw:
In this paper, Jennifer Ashton, Professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, makes the common error of characterizing the New Sincerity (the short-lived "movement"--you decide if it's "fake" or not) as a reaction against Language Poetry. Of course it's nothing of the sort and a little research would have corrected this. It also would have complicated it, I suppose.
Thanks to Adam D. Adam D Jameson for directing me to this.
You know, they say the proof is in the pudding or something, and one thing I've noticed is that in the many papers that have been written about or that include the New Sincerity, the actual poetry of the originators is rarely invoked. Instead, the poet-critic invariably focuses on the work of what I'll term here (for the first time, I believe) Second Wave Sincerists. While the critic is free to do as he or she pleases, it seems that any serious study would want to examine all the documents available to them rather than cherry pick a few blog posts as an intro to talk about something else...
A dodo bird with a pager and half-gallon of Olde English? Priceless.
*
But, I had this to say about this thing I saw:
In this paper, Jennifer Ashton, Professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, makes the common error of characterizing the New Sincerity (the short-lived "movement"--you decide if it's "fake" or not) as a reaction against Language Poetry. Of course it's nothing of the sort and a little research would have corrected this. It also would have complicated it, I suppose.
Thanks to Adam D. Adam D Jameson for directing me to this.
You know, they say the proof is in the pudding or something, and one thing I've noticed is that in the many papers that have been written about or that include the New Sincerity, the actual poetry of the originators is rarely invoked. Instead, the poet-critic invariably focuses on the work of what I'll term here (for the first time, I believe) Second Wave Sincerists. While the critic is free to do as he or she pleases, it seems that any serious study would want to examine all the documents available to them rather than cherry pick a few blog posts as an intro to talk about something else...
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The Old New Sincerity
Over at HTML Giant, A D Jameson talks a bit about "The New Sincerity."
I like that he more or less correctly describes (if in very abbreviated form) the genesis of this short-lived poetry movement, and gives credit where credit is due.
*
I have been away for awhile but will hereafter endeavor to post more frequently even though I'm well aware that nobody is reading this blog.
The Buggles noted that video killed the radio star. Well, as we all know, "social media" like Facebook and Twitter has killed the blogger. Poetry blogger and oncologist C. Dale Young recently closed shop at his long-running blog and in doing so, lamented the disappearance of what was once a thriving blogging community, chiefly among poets. I was a part of that for awhile. Now everyone just uses Facebook or tweets or texts their friends.
And alas, the center did not hold.
*
I'll stick around for awhile whether you like me or not.
I like that he more or less correctly describes (if in very abbreviated form) the genesis of this short-lived poetry movement, and gives credit where credit is due.
*
I have been away for awhile but will hereafter endeavor to post more frequently even though I'm well aware that nobody is reading this blog.
The Buggles noted that video killed the radio star. Well, as we all know, "social media" like Facebook and Twitter has killed the blogger. Poetry blogger and oncologist C. Dale Young recently closed shop at his long-running blog and in doing so, lamented the disappearance of what was once a thriving blogging community, chiefly among poets. I was a part of that for awhile. Now everyone just uses Facebook or tweets or texts their friends.
And alas, the center did not hold.
*
I'll stick around for awhile whether you like me or not.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Statement
An impulse toward poetry is an impulse toward friendship; it's a drive toward and away from complication and complexity.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Blogroll
Welcome Suzi Steffen to the blogroll, blogging on art, culture, food, and so forth in Eugene.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Socio-economics of Poesy, Pt. 1
About a dozen years ago, I ran into a now-famous poet in the poetry aisle of our local used bookstore. Or rather, he ran into me. I was paging through a copy of James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover when the fellow turned to me and began making small talk. After a couple of moments he glanced down at the book in my hand and said, "Huh. James Merrill. I won't read him. He was a millionaire. What does a millionaire know about life?"
*
Are there any poets you won't read because external details of the poet's life turn you off? Besides Ezra Pound.
*
Are there any poets you won't read because external details of the poet's life turn you off? Besides Ezra Pound.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Still Here
I've been away for ten days for no reason in particular--all 3 of you who read this blog may have noticed. Or maybe not.
*
Still working my through George R. R. Martin's Clash of Kings. I'm almost finished and look forward to discussing it with Bennet.
*
It's been a pretty bleak week and a half here--a lot of slushy snow and rain. We're in the midst of that long winter stretch that always brings on the doldrums. That and my daughter's third birthday this past weekend have made for not a lot on my plate aside from brooding and too much sleeping.
*
All that said, I hope to get back to my Dream Songs discussion with Bennet over the next few days. One of us is supposed to pick a poem to discuss next, though I'm not sure we are any further along in the process of setting down any actual "rules" than we were a week or ten days ago. If I have time this evening--or rather, inclination, I may attempt a look at Dream Song #28, one of the relatively few with an "actual" title: "Snow Line." Watch this space for it.
In the meantime, you can read my responses to Bennet's initial two posts in his comment boxes.
*
*
Still working my through George R. R. Martin's Clash of Kings. I'm almost finished and look forward to discussing it with Bennet.
*
It's been a pretty bleak week and a half here--a lot of slushy snow and rain. We're in the midst of that long winter stretch that always brings on the doldrums. That and my daughter's third birthday this past weekend have made for not a lot on my plate aside from brooding and too much sleeping.
*
All that said, I hope to get back to my Dream Songs discussion with Bennet over the next few days. One of us is supposed to pick a poem to discuss next, though I'm not sure we are any further along in the process of setting down any actual "rules" than we were a week or ten days ago. If I have time this evening--or rather, inclination, I may attempt a look at Dream Song #28, one of the relatively few with an "actual" title: "Snow Line." Watch this space for it.
In the meantime, you can read my responses to Bennet's initial two posts in his comment boxes.
*
Monday, February 20, 2012
Blogroll
I added a couple of links to the blogroll, including Portland's Michael Donnelly blogging about music and life in "Williamsburg on the Willamette."
Also up: links to two of my "old" blogs--archives of Geneva Convention for talk on poetry and food from 2004 to 2008, and my occasional photo blog, Recycled Photocopies, which had a short run but may return if people are interested in seeing new pictures of things.
Also up: links to two of my "old" blogs--archives of Geneva Convention for talk on poetry and food from 2004 to 2008, and my occasional photo blog, Recycled Photocopies, which had a short run but may return if people are interested in seeing new pictures of things.
The Dream Songs Dialogue #1
Over at An Hind, Bennet begins our informal discussion of John Berryman's The Dream Songs with a few questions about how to approach them as a more-or-less first-time reader.
I tried to make a few suggests in his comment box, some of which I'll reproduce below, but then I'd like to offer up a couple of observations borne from last night's foray into revisiting The Dream Songs, from the beginning, for the first time in quite a few years. It turns out that a few things I thought I knew about the project as a whole are not entirely correct, or my understanding of them is at best, incomplete.
*
First, in response to Bennet's preliminary questions: 1) what is the relationship between Henry and Berryman; does it matter?; does JB's prefatory note to the "collected" Dream Songs fundamentally alter how we, the readers, approach the poems? Should it? Why the minstrelsy? Who is Mr.Bones?
These aren't Bennet's questions verbatim, but my brief recounting of concerns we both share. I counseled Bennet that we should take Berryman's note with a heavy dusting of salt. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Berryman's actual biography will recognize the poet-as-Henry-the-protagonist here. Furthermore, Berryman has to know that we, the readers, know this and we're not buying his denial. My suggestion is that, yes, we are supposed to read these poems as biography.
I also noted that "Mr. Bones" is intended to be a sort of "nickname" for Henry/Berryman, uttered by his unnamed interlocutor. Many readers, it seems, consider them to be different characters. Now, if we're not to trust Berryman regarding his claims about biography, then how are we to trust that Bones and Henry are one and the same? Good question--one that I think our readings of the poems in the coming days should illuminate.
*
Now in a rather artless segue, I read the first 40 songs last night. Concerns/thoughts which may or may not be obvious:
1. While the poems generally follow a form: 18 lines divided into 3 stanzas of 6 lines of varying length, sometimes rhymed and sometimes not, in the first 40 JB deviates from this form, usually by adding lines in 3 or 4 of the poems.
2. In the note I discussed above, JB tells us that Henry is "sometimes in blackface." A quick reading of the actual poems makes this claim confusing in that at least part of the time, it's Henry's sidekick who seems to be speaking in a minstrel dialect--in that he interrupts / addresses Henry / Bones and what follows is often in this dialect. Some of the poems are written almost entirely in dialect with no interruptions from a second speaker, so my first assumption is that this could be Henry, "in blackface," but we also have to consider the possibility that his sidekick assumes this mask as well. Why did JB leave this seemingly important detail out of the preface?
3. It's a good idea to read these poems quickly at first, just to "take it all in" as it were. I was struck by how many of them I did not remember, and of those, how many I really didn't understand on this re-reading. Best not to linger over that for now, methinks.
4. These poems, this sequence, is mostly about death. But we knew that already. Sometimes a reminder is a good thing. Another way to look at the project: one long suicide note, over a dozen years in the making.
5. While we are aware of Henry / Bones as aspects of the speaker, there are other assumed personas here, some of which are quite amusing and / or affecting. My favorite on this read, so far, is the lonely sheep that narrates #28. "I wish the barker would come."
*
That should be enough to get us started. More later.
I tried to make a few suggests in his comment box, some of which I'll reproduce below, but then I'd like to offer up a couple of observations borne from last night's foray into revisiting The Dream Songs, from the beginning, for the first time in quite a few years. It turns out that a few things I thought I knew about the project as a whole are not entirely correct, or my understanding of them is at best, incomplete.
*
First, in response to Bennet's preliminary questions: 1) what is the relationship between Henry and Berryman; does it matter?; does JB's prefatory note to the "collected" Dream Songs fundamentally alter how we, the readers, approach the poems? Should it? Why the minstrelsy? Who is Mr.Bones?
These aren't Bennet's questions verbatim, but my brief recounting of concerns we both share. I counseled Bennet that we should take Berryman's note with a heavy dusting of salt. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Berryman's actual biography will recognize the poet-as-Henry-the-protagonist here. Furthermore, Berryman has to know that we, the readers, know this and we're not buying his denial. My suggestion is that, yes, we are supposed to read these poems as biography.
I also noted that "Mr. Bones" is intended to be a sort of "nickname" for Henry/Berryman, uttered by his unnamed interlocutor. Many readers, it seems, consider them to be different characters. Now, if we're not to trust Berryman regarding his claims about biography, then how are we to trust that Bones and Henry are one and the same? Good question--one that I think our readings of the poems in the coming days should illuminate.
*
Now in a rather artless segue, I read the first 40 songs last night. Concerns/thoughts which may or may not be obvious:
1. While the poems generally follow a form: 18 lines divided into 3 stanzas of 6 lines of varying length, sometimes rhymed and sometimes not, in the first 40 JB deviates from this form, usually by adding lines in 3 or 4 of the poems.
2. In the note I discussed above, JB tells us that Henry is "sometimes in blackface." A quick reading of the actual poems makes this claim confusing in that at least part of the time, it's Henry's sidekick who seems to be speaking in a minstrel dialect--in that he interrupts / addresses Henry / Bones and what follows is often in this dialect. Some of the poems are written almost entirely in dialect with no interruptions from a second speaker, so my first assumption is that this could be Henry, "in blackface," but we also have to consider the possibility that his sidekick assumes this mask as well. Why did JB leave this seemingly important detail out of the preface?
3. It's a good idea to read these poems quickly at first, just to "take it all in" as it were. I was struck by how many of them I did not remember, and of those, how many I really didn't understand on this re-reading. Best not to linger over that for now, methinks.
4. These poems, this sequence, is mostly about death. But we knew that already. Sometimes a reminder is a good thing. Another way to look at the project: one long suicide note, over a dozen years in the making.
5. While we are aware of Henry / Bones as aspects of the speaker, there are other assumed personas here, some of which are quite amusing and / or affecting. My favorite on this read, so far, is the lonely sheep that narrates #28. "I wish the barker would come."
*
That should be enough to get us started. More later.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
David Antin, Brief Weather, The "Writing Life" or Lack Thereof
I stumbled upon (and I urge you to take this figure of speech literally--if you could see my apartment at the time, you'd understand--400 square feet, two small bookshelves and over a thousand books makes literally stumbling over books a frequent occurrence) Conversation with David Antin, by David Antin and Charles Bernstein somewhere at the end of 2006 or beginning of 2007. I had just finished something of a milestone year--both poetically and personally. I didn't know when I picked it up that it would play a role in fundamentally altering my own "writing life."
I spent the spring of 2006 writing the poems that would eventually be collected in Brief Weather and I Guess A Sort of Vision; I began in March at the request of Betsy Wheeler, who accosted me at the Garden Party in Austin and asked to publish a book of mine. Christ! I guess I had to write a book.
The origins of that slim collection involve an airplane, my then-girlfriend Laura, and a book of sudoku puzzles. There was also the now infamous make-out party in the Austin Hilton lobby, complete with stolen wine (I won't reveal what now-famous children's book author stole the wine by insisting on using me as a pack mule because I happened to be wandering around the Hilton with a backpack--but you can probably guess. It's okay--I don't feel guilty, as we were robbing the Poetry Foundation, at a "private party" that we just crashed). There was the kindness of James Hall, who chauffered Laura and I around a bit. There was the squalid apartment we spent four days in among piles of dirty beer cans, garbage, and a bathroom with one towel, one wet towel There was the Nordic Venezuelan named Virgilio who spent the entire weekend locked away in a back room, drinking gallon jugs of Carlo Rossi and watching extreme sports videos. There was The Princess Bride and the still-awful Star Wars Episode 1. There was also the dissolution of my romantic relationship of the past year. Yeah, that thing.
As soon as I returned to Oregon, I began writing every day, sometimes just a few lines; other days I'd knock out two or three drafts. My method of working was very deliberate--each poem was made of nine lines, and they were assembled consecutively. That is, I wrote each poem one line at a time, and line 2 always followed line 1. There was no line re-shuffling allowed. I'd often stop mid-poem to walk down the street for coffee, a journey that almost always involved being dive-bombed by starlings who resented my taking up residence in what was obviously their apartment.
I finished a batch of about 40 poems in around 6 weeks' time. I sent them off to Betsy that summer, and she responded with extremely generous commentary, all handwritten and beautifully understated yet enthusiastic. She focused her editorial chops into honing my 40 poems into a 27-poem machine. This was expected, as the numerology of the project required 27 poems, no more no less. I published 8 of these poems prior to that in Court Green, under the dubious title "Aviary Evacuation Plan." Betsy re-titled my collection Brief Weather..., which was a stroke of minor genius. I had, at this point, ditched the bird title, and was leaning toward Cold Front which strikes me today as a terrible name for my little book.
The book came out in November. I gave a single reading in Portland attended by very few people. I don't think a single person bought a book that night. I lost my camera. I remember drinking a lot of wine. Then I don't remember.
*
What I'm building toward here is the 3 year gap in my writing life that began soon after the book's publication and soon after I picked up Antin and Bernstein's book-length conversation. By March of 2007, exactly one year after I'd begun the project, I had completed the FULL 81 poems--actually, there are a few stragglers in there...so closer to 90, but if it ever sees the light of publication, I will of course trim away nine of those bad boys.
And then I stopped. I can't pinpoint when and how it all went down or why. I just remember reading the give and take between Antin and Bernsteinn, and being thrown a bit for a not-unpleasant but still somewhat jarring loop. Antin's talk-poems and his discussion of his poetics and practice are all a bit dream-like in their logic but fiercely intelligent. I got to the point where I began to think that if David Antin is a poet, I don't know if I want to be a poet. I didn't know if I could be a poet any longer.
And then the vagaries of a life ill-lived invaded, happened. Suddenly I had new priorities, a new relationship, a series of episodes (fits? brief respites from sanity?) of mental and emotional self-reckoning and evaluation. Not only did I stop writing but I also quite reading poetry mostly (save the weekly editorial meetings at the NWR that were then, unbeknownst to most of us poetry editors, in their final days). I quit sending poems out to editors. I shut down. And I was strangely okay with that.
Life came on full-strength and I was, for a time, a very destructive force. (Wallace Stevens in his odd little poem, wrote that Poetry is a Destructive Force--he had a point. It had turned me into a bitter, often resentful little person.) I hurt a lot of people, made a lot of mistakes, and then, inexplicably, was blessed with a beautiful daughter amidst all the madness, the general ickiness I had made my life.
That daughter, now almost three years old, is the reason I returned to writing. I'm still in the nascent stages of my "re-arrival" onto whatever "scene" it is I have wandered into. Trying to figure it all out by writing through the pain and mess that still lingers, and yes, also the joy. Especially the joy.
I never quite manage to end where I began, but I try. Here's David Antin:
poet i don't want to be a poet if robert frost was
poet i don't want to be a poet if socrates was a poet
ill consider it"
I spent the spring of 2006 writing the poems that would eventually be collected in Brief Weather and I Guess A Sort of Vision; I began in March at the request of Betsy Wheeler, who accosted me at the Garden Party in Austin and asked to publish a book of mine. Christ! I guess I had to write a book.
The origins of that slim collection involve an airplane, my then-girlfriend Laura, and a book of sudoku puzzles. There was also the now infamous make-out party in the Austin Hilton lobby, complete with stolen wine (I won't reveal what now-famous children's book author stole the wine by insisting on using me as a pack mule because I happened to be wandering around the Hilton with a backpack--but you can probably guess. It's okay--I don't feel guilty, as we were robbing the Poetry Foundation, at a "private party" that we just crashed). There was the kindness of James Hall, who chauffered Laura and I around a bit. There was the squalid apartment we spent four days in among piles of dirty beer cans, garbage, and a bathroom with one towel, one wet towel There was the Nordic Venezuelan named Virgilio who spent the entire weekend locked away in a back room, drinking gallon jugs of Carlo Rossi and watching extreme sports videos. There was The Princess Bride and the still-awful Star Wars Episode 1. There was also the dissolution of my romantic relationship of the past year. Yeah, that thing.
As soon as I returned to Oregon, I began writing every day, sometimes just a few lines; other days I'd knock out two or three drafts. My method of working was very deliberate--each poem was made of nine lines, and they were assembled consecutively. That is, I wrote each poem one line at a time, and line 2 always followed line 1. There was no line re-shuffling allowed. I'd often stop mid-poem to walk down the street for coffee, a journey that almost always involved being dive-bombed by starlings who resented my taking up residence in what was obviously their apartment.
I finished a batch of about 40 poems in around 6 weeks' time. I sent them off to Betsy that summer, and she responded with extremely generous commentary, all handwritten and beautifully understated yet enthusiastic. She focused her editorial chops into honing my 40 poems into a 27-poem machine. This was expected, as the numerology of the project required 27 poems, no more no less. I published 8 of these poems prior to that in Court Green, under the dubious title "Aviary Evacuation Plan." Betsy re-titled my collection Brief Weather..., which was a stroke of minor genius. I had, at this point, ditched the bird title, and was leaning toward Cold Front which strikes me today as a terrible name for my little book.
The book came out in November. I gave a single reading in Portland attended by very few people. I don't think a single person bought a book that night. I lost my camera. I remember drinking a lot of wine. Then I don't remember.
*
What I'm building toward here is the 3 year gap in my writing life that began soon after the book's publication and soon after I picked up Antin and Bernstein's book-length conversation. By March of 2007, exactly one year after I'd begun the project, I had completed the FULL 81 poems--actually, there are a few stragglers in there...so closer to 90, but if it ever sees the light of publication, I will of course trim away nine of those bad boys.
And then I stopped. I can't pinpoint when and how it all went down or why. I just remember reading the give and take between Antin and Bernsteinn, and being thrown a bit for a not-unpleasant but still somewhat jarring loop. Antin's talk-poems and his discussion of his poetics and practice are all a bit dream-like in their logic but fiercely intelligent. I got to the point where I began to think that if David Antin is a poet, I don't know if I want to be a poet. I didn't know if I could be a poet any longer.
And then the vagaries of a life ill-lived invaded, happened. Suddenly I had new priorities, a new relationship, a series of episodes (fits? brief respites from sanity?) of mental and emotional self-reckoning and evaluation. Not only did I stop writing but I also quite reading poetry mostly (save the weekly editorial meetings at the NWR that were then, unbeknownst to most of us poetry editors, in their final days). I quit sending poems out to editors. I shut down. And I was strangely okay with that.
Life came on full-strength and I was, for a time, a very destructive force. (Wallace Stevens in his odd little poem, wrote that Poetry is a Destructive Force--he had a point. It had turned me into a bitter, often resentful little person.) I hurt a lot of people, made a lot of mistakes, and then, inexplicably, was blessed with a beautiful daughter amidst all the madness, the general ickiness I had made my life.
That daughter, now almost three years old, is the reason I returned to writing. I'm still in the nascent stages of my "re-arrival" onto whatever "scene" it is I have wandered into. Trying to figure it all out by writing through the pain and mess that still lingers, and yes, also the joy. Especially the joy.
I never quite manage to end where I began, but I try. Here's David Antin:
. . . i had always had mixed feelingsabout being considered a poet "if robert lowell is a
poet i don't want to be a poet if robert frost was
poet i don't want to be a poet if socrates was a poet
ill consider it"
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Welcome to the Blogroll...
Bennet Smith, who so far is blogging about Thomas Wyatt, George R.R. Martin, and I'm sure, soon, other stuff, at An Hind.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Day of Hate -- Idiot Yelp! Reviewers
For Day of Hate here on Horizon.Point, first up: another reason to hate Yelp, or more specifically Yelpers.
From a review posted today: (I'm paraphrasing so as not to uh, y'know, steal anyone's words away)
From a review posted today: (I'm paraphrasing so as not to uh, y'know, steal anyone's words away)
This Vietnamese Place has a lot of good things going for it: friendly owners and staff, clean place, large and varied selection.
Now--about their pho. I've eaten pho here a dozen times in the past and liked it. But today I ordered my usual, beef w/tendon, and where was the beef? I could only find two pieces of beef in my pho! And I guess they were out of the Thai basil they usually put in because there was no Thai basil! Why didn't they at least add extra cilantro? One Star.Here's a hint: when you post a review to Yelp! you are posting a general review of the business. If you've only been there once, and it was bad, okay, I can understand the one star. (Though, personally, I try to sample a place at least three times before reviewing it at all--if I do post a review after one visit, I make this clear in the review and take it into consideration when assigning stars.) This customer, though, liked everything about the place--including the last 12 bowls of pho he ate. So one bad experience out of at least 13 results in an extremely low rating? That's rude. You're an asshole.
Monday, February 13, 2012
pseudo-chapbook
I'm assembling most of the small poems I've written over the past year into a small collection. And I'm posting some of them here.
So here's one.
*
SETTLERS
The world keeps opening and falling over,
spilling through something I can't identify,
can't countenance and yet cling to
because love has taken over my chest.
It's hard to breathe here but breathe we must
mon frere. And you're not really my brother
but I don't think that's the point. The point
is this: we can take it with us.
Conventional wisdom is conventional because
frankly, it's stupid. God laughs at people
like us. Probably because we're not all
that smart. Neither is she. Probably.
If you were Neil Young and I were David Bowie
perhaps we'd make love in an alley, or fuck
on a pile of trash. I think in this, we would
be at our most beautiful.
I was going to make this a sonnet but I'm way
over the line limit. A piece of paper that
has been shot through with these words cannot,
in any way, make sense to the commoner.
We are not common. We are dumb little people.
We've spent our collective life smiling
at other people less fortunate, if only because
we can. I'll take a taxi cab to the next state.
Please don't follow me. I'll only hurt you
and fuck your friends. Don't worry: I'll only
be dead as long as it takes for the ferry
to reach the next island. Then: trees, grain.
So here's one.
*
SETTLERS
The world keeps opening and falling over,
spilling through something I can't identify,
can't countenance and yet cling to
because love has taken over my chest.
It's hard to breathe here but breathe we must
mon frere. And you're not really my brother
but I don't think that's the point. The point
is this: we can take it with us.
Conventional wisdom is conventional because
frankly, it's stupid. God laughs at people
like us. Probably because we're not all
that smart. Neither is she. Probably.
If you were Neil Young and I were David Bowie
perhaps we'd make love in an alley, or fuck
on a pile of trash. I think in this, we would
be at our most beautiful.
I was going to make this a sonnet but I'm way
over the line limit. A piece of paper that
has been shot through with these words cannot,
in any way, make sense to the commoner.
We are not common. We are dumb little people.
We've spent our collective life smiling
at other people less fortunate, if only because
we can. I'll take a taxi cab to the next state.
Please don't follow me. I'll only hurt you
and fuck your friends. Don't worry: I'll only
be dead as long as it takes for the ferry
to reach the next island. Then: trees, grain.
fIREHOSE, Live Music, & Me
Lately, in several blog posts, Facebook statuses, and in private conversations with friends and acquaintances, I've mentioned the music of Mike Watt, particularly the work in fIREHOSE and the Minutemen, as reminding me of high school. That's not entirely true. I didn't listen to either band until I was in the Navy, a couple years removed from 12th grade. I suppose I think of high school because both bands were on SST, a label that meant a lot to me--Black Flag, Descendents, Bad Brains, etc. Why I never heard Watt and Co. before, I'll never know.
I do remember that the Red Hot Chili Peppers, before the great fame, before Rick Rubin, before the sensitive ballads, name-dropped fIREHOSE in "Good Time Boys," the lead-off track of their 1989 record, Mother's Milk. It wasn't until I saw the video for "Down With The Bass" from Flyin' the Flannel in 1991 on MTV's 120 Minutes, that I actually went out and bought a fIREHOSE album. It was only a matter of weeks before I had the whole collection, and most of the Minutemen stuff too. Something about Ed Crawford's addition of traditional melody and classic rock and folk sensibility to the already potent mix of Hurley and Watt's drums and bass cemented fIREHOSE in my mind and heart as THE Mike Watt band. I know I'm in the minority here, as most fans consider the later a band a pale imitation / deviation from The Minutemen.
I however, do not.
There's something about a three-piece. Husker Du. Minutemen. fIREHOSE.
When i saw fIREHOSE live, in 1993 shortly before they broke up, the opened with "In My Mind" and closed 90 minutes later with Superchunk's "Slack Motherfucker." I just remember a lot of bodies, many shirtless, furious, joyous, bouncing off one another in the tiny venue. These were the days of "moshing" and mosh we did. Anybody hearing fIREHOSE's music for the first time today might have a hard time imagining how we moshed to that.
I never saw Husker Du live. I can tell you this: I like the sound of a guitar plugged directly into an amp. A guitar with no fancy effects. This is what Bob Mould has done at the solo shows I've seen. Bob, one guitar, an amp, and his voice. If he needs to quiet it down, he picks up an acoustic. Simple. A good song can survive, and thrive, with minimal gear.
fIREHOSE and Matthew Sweet, of all people, took a similar approach. While playing with full bands, they more or less just plugged straight in. You'd think the guitar would sound the same throughout, smooth out the dynamics allowed by a few pedals, or a few different guitars. Instead, though, it showcases a dynamic that can only be brought out with fingers and heart. Was it jarring to hear the delicate "In My Mind" with semi-fuzzy guitar, way too loud? At first...but it all makes sense.
fIREHOSE is playing here live for the first time in 19 years on April 10th. I'm going.
I do remember that the Red Hot Chili Peppers, before the great fame, before Rick Rubin, before the sensitive ballads, name-dropped fIREHOSE in "Good Time Boys," the lead-off track of their 1989 record, Mother's Milk. It wasn't until I saw the video for "Down With The Bass" from Flyin' the Flannel in 1991 on MTV's 120 Minutes, that I actually went out and bought a fIREHOSE album. It was only a matter of weeks before I had the whole collection, and most of the Minutemen stuff too. Something about Ed Crawford's addition of traditional melody and classic rock and folk sensibility to the already potent mix of Hurley and Watt's drums and bass cemented fIREHOSE in my mind and heart as THE Mike Watt band. I know I'm in the minority here, as most fans consider the later a band a pale imitation / deviation from The Minutemen.
I however, do not.
There's something about a three-piece. Husker Du. Minutemen. fIREHOSE.
When i saw fIREHOSE live, in 1993 shortly before they broke up, the opened with "In My Mind" and closed 90 minutes later with Superchunk's "Slack Motherfucker." I just remember a lot of bodies, many shirtless, furious, joyous, bouncing off one another in the tiny venue. These were the days of "moshing" and mosh we did. Anybody hearing fIREHOSE's music for the first time today might have a hard time imagining how we moshed to that.
I never saw Husker Du live. I can tell you this: I like the sound of a guitar plugged directly into an amp. A guitar with no fancy effects. This is what Bob Mould has done at the solo shows I've seen. Bob, one guitar, an amp, and his voice. If he needs to quiet it down, he picks up an acoustic. Simple. A good song can survive, and thrive, with minimal gear.
fIREHOSE and Matthew Sweet, of all people, took a similar approach. While playing with full bands, they more or less just plugged straight in. You'd think the guitar would sound the same throughout, smooth out the dynamics allowed by a few pedals, or a few different guitars. Instead, though, it showcases a dynamic that can only be brought out with fingers and heart. Was it jarring to hear the delicate "In My Mind" with semi-fuzzy guitar, way too loud? At first...but it all makes sense.
fIREHOSE is playing here live for the first time in 19 years on April 10th. I'm going.
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