Reading, Reading

I don't go to enough readings. I was hit with this profoundly obvious revelation while attending Elbowing Off the Stage at Manhattan's last night. To plug this little series: the few times I've been, it's been a joy. Beer+Unpretentious Poet-Crowd+Poetry=Greatness. The next one is Dec. 14th, if you're in the hood, and it will be a stunner, trust.

Also! I'll (yes, little old me!) be reading this Saturday at Mess Hall in Rogers Park - 6932 N. Glenwood (right off the Morse el) - 7pm. Thanks to the Requited crew for that one! Tell your peeps.

Cory Doctorow's /Makers/

I've been a simpering quietly gushing fan of BoingBoing blogger Cory Doctorow's for some time now, but I can't stay quiet for this one. By all means, check this out. This, my friends, is the future of fiction. If, unlike me, you've got some pennies to spare, kick a few into his coffer as well.

The Auto Tune Meme, with Weird Al

PERSEVERE

I WILL persevere, fear not, my little chippies!

In fact, I am in the process of applying to library school. Me? Librarian? In the immortal words of Marty Feldman:


Wait, I meant: It! Could! Work!

I've been drumming my fingers over this possibility for a while now and most of what has kept me from pursuing it more seriously was the prospect of having to quit a full-time, well-paying, benefits-laden job in order to go back to school, quite possibly incurring even more substantial student loan debt. But debt is debt, kids. It will always be there, it will always be huge, and if you let it, it will control you. So, now that I am jobless and gazing into the black hole of job websites and contemplating the wallet-sized picture of Jesus on the counter of the unemployment office (legal?), there's nothing keeping me from it. I must do something meaningful, and I can't honestly think of many other professional pursuits that could be more meaningful to me right now.

3 YEARS LATER

I have been called a "ninja of satire" by writers so famous you have never heard of them.

I have been simultaneously the most mind-numbingly bored, under-utilized, under appreciated and wildly creative administrative assistant in the Western Hemisphere.

I came, I saw, I put everyone on notice.

I am. The Most Unemployed Woman in the World.
____

Thanks for bearing my self-involvement, y'all. This too shall pass.

In the meantime, if anyone hears of any opportunities for gainful (or gainless) employment within the reach of my crippled savior, the CTA, don't be shy.

Since You Asked

Cary Tennis strikes again!

Sir, I hereby notify you, in this semi-public space, before these semi-trusted colleagues, that I disagree with you on every matter under the sun.

Also, for the sake of posterity and because it was an unlikely moment of political wit on my part (these moments be so rare), I will reiterate:

Mr. Stephen King, you need to give your state what-for. They're beating you at horror.

Right now, I am reading (and liking) Mark Bibbins and Patricia Fargnoli. I am writing poems (and sending them off) and contemplating a whole! new! manuscript! Too bad I didn't do anything with that first one.

I also caved and started another novel for NaNoWriMo. It's shaping up to be a pretty smarmy murder mystery that is a loosely anachronistic modernization of Agatha Christie's Ordeal By Innocence, which is to say, I stole the plot but the whimsical suckness is mine all mine.

It's been rather quiet in the world of meat-centric art lately, unless you count PW. It's just not one of those SFW-Googling sub-genres, you know?

P.S. - Is it narcissistic of me to have blockquoted myself? It was originally published in Facebook, if that makes it any more prestigious.

Those Saw Movies Just Will NOT Go Away

I am a little too pleased to see the same annoying argument about lyricism infecting the prosists of the world. Of course, I'm also fatigued at hearing the same lyric (as though it were some great monolith of the elite intelligentsia) v. narrative/pacing/humor(??)/whatever crap. Can we just say that great writing requires many of these "technologies" (because a novel with beautiful language and a shitty plot pisses me off as much as a great story horribly written? The same principle can easily be transmuted to poesy.) And, for humility's sake people, none of these things are particularly subversive (no, not even the lyric!)?

Though, I must echo Ms. Drane's sentiment, [w]hen and how did it become elitist to pay attention?

But then she goes for the jugg'lar by shouting "HEY NERUDA IS TOTALLY ACCESSIBLE AND LYRIC AT THE SAME TIME!!!" I mean, I dig, but she's playing into the very idea she decries - namely, that the cerebral, complicated, complex twistings and turnings of lyricism are undemocratic, as Neruda is very much a poster boy of Democratic (read: newspaper ready) poesy.* I understand she's coming from the prosist POV, so it's great that poetry even enters into the conversation, but the reason most great poets fly under the radar is because they're mentioned in theory alone. Why not Amy Gerstler instead, or someone else a little less ubiquitous (and also alive)?

See, there I go, punishing myself with my beside-the-point idealism when I could be relishing these silly little retorts on HuffPo. I think I just want to not have to pretend I also write prose in order to gain props from random people who have no business judging me on my artistic predilections. But, I have that dreadful novel, you know.

*Disclosure: I do actually like Neruda (in small doses) and find a lot of his poetry to be deceptive in its surficial simplicity (the best kind of simplicity.) But, I also often find him annoying and chauvinistic and generally over-rated, so there you go.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Bring You MORE MEAT

Collage artist Nicolas Lampert via Neatorama

Which brings me to an actual point. About meat, and critical distance.

Being that poets are not really lionized as cultural soothsayers these days (though ever we have been in eras past!), it strikes me that the poetry I find myself enjoying most on a visceral (if not critical) level is such that the poets take on a carefully controlled Poetic [Anti-]Authority and that these poets are 9 out 10 times of the male persuasion. Mark Bibbins comes as the most immediate example (I bit the hype from HTMLGIANT, I admit, though it was well worth it.) Also Ben Lerner - mostly his first book. These are poets who write poems of Importance precisely because they are Not At All Important (But Really They Are, But Who Cares, Britney Spears Reference.) I like some hipsters for the same reason, but take very little of what they say seriously and listen even less to Deerhunter. Physically incapable of liking that band. Anyway, poets such as these are poets I read furtively (well, not anymore I guess) and sort of chuckle to myself at their cleverness, but the instant I try reading them out loud to someone to share in the revelation of poetry that can also be entertaining (!), the joke has already smothered itself in its Diablo Cody-esque lingo of self-love.

Perhaps I need to work harder at my reading. I've always believed that poetry that's worth a hill of beans should be enamel-tough - it can be viscerally pleasing, of course - but there has to be a lot more depth to plumb and a lot less plain hipper-than-thou-ness.

SO, back to the mines. Will report back.

And All the Hills Echo-ed

via BoingBoing: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PARIS RECORDS.

A great article chronicling the doings of this most "inexplicably" (agreed) obscure recording project. I was most impressed by the exquisite recording of Allen Ginsburg singing William Blake's "Nurse's Song." Do check it out! Also, I regret talking so much smack about Texas, as I keep finding lovely little things there lately.

Happy Friday!

You Had Me At "Paintings of Meat"

Victoria Reynolds! My vision! Muse! She paints meat wonderful neat:

This one is called Reindeer Vivification.

[Link] (via Neatorama via MAKE)

Perilously Close

I've already begun chipping away at my back-to-school submissions frenzy. I don't like to spam submit. I don't like to submit to journals or zines I have not read and I don't do these things as a general rule. I must admit that I once did, but it did not result in my being published by any of those places, so I quit it. Still, in spite of the narrowing effect these standards have on my sub habits, I've been sending to quite a few places and am proud of my progress. I had a poem accepted over at Barrelhouse recently, which I'm pretty much totally geeked about. Should I be shouting louder about that? It's an honor to be published anywhere, though often it feels like a tiny victory compared to the inevitable stack of form rejections and the precious few oh-so-close editor's notes (I typically turnaround another submission to those places at a rather alarming speed, BTW, unless they say explicitly that they don't like that. I do actually eat and sleep in front of my computer as well as stare into it all the livelong day.)

I suppose this is the way I reach out - submitting and blogging about submitting. Is it just a coincidence that we call it submitting? Perhaps I am too too safe and modest. Having finished Poetry as Survival, I am on to Ostriker's Stealing the Language. So, naturally, I am feeling like a bad feminist. It's a cycle, really: feel inadequate, feel inadequately feminist for feeling inadequate, and so forth. I've only read the first chapter and a little of the Ostriker, but the introduction alone was revelatory, at least as regards why it feels so wonderful to be called and to call myself "subversive," to engage in Dickensonian doubleness. Also, why I am reticent to seek the company of other poets or to really claim poetry in a way that means I am an active participant therein. I fear being ignored more than anything, but a close second is being laughed at and discarded as the pretender I will inevitably reveal myself to be. The long and winding road to a nebulous goal. The reaching out is in itself a goal, but once one has extended a little, one realizes that reaching toward is so much more satisfying.

That said, my original intent in posting was to wonder aloud about whether I should embark on another NaNoWriMo novel. What say you, vacant vast surrounding? Filament? Filament? Or f*&k fiction? I feel like I've got the poetry mojo going right now, though you never know what November could bring. Perhaps I should make it National Manuscript Ordering Month. NaManOrdMo? Hrm.

Underemployed MFAs FTW

This Lady is a riot and also correct. Take a moment and read for yourself.

I, however, would argue that there IS a leper colony for MFAs. It is called the service industry.

...

On an unrelated (or perhaps intimately related) note, I just finished my first reading of Gregory Orr's Poetry As Survival after a week of restless commuting, staved somewhat by the Anodyne of words. I have to say, I like it - yes. But I also found Orr's too-neat compartmentalizing of the Romantic and Enlightenment ethos..es? ethoi? mindsets to be grating. He goes after my boy Pope and gives naught but one (arguably sarcastic) stanza as evidence. Sloppy scholarship, that.* And he writes Eliot off as a boy-toy of the Overculture** because of his later zeal for the Anglican Church. I'm no fan of the Church these days, but to say that Christianity = Overculture is a bit short-sighted. The CHURCH, often; CHRISTIANITY? Is actually about as subversive as any eye-battingly enthralled adherent of Commiepinko Romanticism could dream. Namely - minus the reinterpretation of politcally and misogynistically-motivated nancy pope boys.

I feel like I should have read the book a few years ago intellectually, but emotionally, I'm glad to have found it now. I'm on the outs with the Church. I'm on the outs as far as my involvement with poetry as an external happening (which is to assume that I ever was on the ins, which I was not). Namely, the bulk of my writerly growth comes from introspection. This book, of course, reminded me that that's sort of, you know, the POINT. That the processing and writing I do in my most isolated moments, in my most intense lonlinesses, is in and of itself a reaching out. IT (not the publishing, not the hobnobbing, not the oh-god-let-someone-publish-my-crap MSS., not even the academic-political-whatsit-whinefest listserv conversation) is an end in itself.

I'm okay, you're okay, let's all quietly change the world.

...

* Note: I am a blogger, not a scholar, and thus am not beholden to the laws and ethics of scholarship, nor the rules of basic grammar or decency.

** To my understanding, "Overculture" is the super sci-fi-ish notion of the hoi polloi. It would include figures such as Alexander Pope, the Pope, Cute Overload and Roman Polanski.

Googly sonnets

via HTMLGIANT, The Internet Is an English Sonnet randomly generates an - you guessed it - English sonnet based on your word selection and its fancypants search engine stylings. It's a great way to kill a few minutes, then you can say that you've actually written something today, because you *sort of* have. Here's mine - I call it "Child Beauty Pageant Contestant." Enjoy.

Wow factor? That he bought the nautilus
the stratosphere. Directory. Allow
one size determined heart at what. Unless...
for greater joy, maria, told. Below
that met a fusion energy produced
that government before full score, acquired
by taking him enhanced with such; reduced
up manning. Dealing. Meter: peg. Required
to thinking. Animated dead, attend
this summer issue everyone? Repeat
by arson. Following me right again
on economic crisis through. Indeed
the anecdotal evidence, japan
the furnace as nutrition or martine.

You Will Buy Me This T-Shirt Now

C'mon, it's only $25.99.

Rejections ARE hard, and I would like to share that fact with the world, thus dissipating the cloud of unknowing which inevitably forces them to cough up their souls and buy ridiculous automobiles.

Basterds, Inglorious and Otherwise (Spoiler Alert)

NOTE: If you've not seen Inglorious Basterds and care about having it spoiled a little bit by a shitty non-reviewer, you can skip this one.

I'm usually shy of commenting on film. This is mostly due to the fact that I don't have much of a memory for quipping or quoting, especially from movies. But that's not the substance of film - this much I know. I won't get that far into the movie v. film issue here, but as far as I can tell, a movie is akin to beach reading, while a film meets some mysterious, perhaps even academic standard of quality, as does canonical literature. Of course there's more depth to that conversation than I could rightly provide here and in my illimitable laze. But since there's more substance suggested by the term "film," it will be my term of choice, since I am an elitist.

I don't see many movies OR films on the big screen. In the past six months or so, I've made an exception for two: the new Harry Potter flick (which was everything I dreamed it would be, all shiny and full of the teenage awkwardness I found so endearing in the later books of the series - so many people get all annoyed at that, but I find it delightful) and Inglorious Basterds.

Amanda Marcotte has a very fine review you should read (yes, it too contains spoilers). I do dig Mr. Tarantino's work, if not his personality, per se and find Marcotte's post-modern assessment of his oeuvre to be a good fit. I think she gives him maybe a WEE bit too much credit in the feminist dept., but I'm fussy. I think Shoshanna could have been sussed out even more and Marcotte seems to find the femme fatale trope to be a novel device. A bit puzzling, that. But the film (yes, I am brave enough to lend it that distinction) got me thinking more about how war movies figure propagandistically in our culture more than feminism. In fact, it is Shoshanna herself who uses propagandistic indocrination against her Nazi adversaries, in the end quite literally subverting their own film to serve her revenge against them.

In this really clever bit of irony, Tarantino showed us all these thoroughly indoctrinated Nazi propaganda film-types whooping it up to little more than enemy carnage on screen get blown up themselves. But then, aren't we similarly whooping, or at least grinning and hissing yes! to ourselves at that moment and many others throughout the film? Perspective alone makes that acceptable, which in addition to the constant ratcheting up of tension, makes one quite squirmy through the whole thing. I recall the buzz around the film's initial release billing it as a sort of pornographically violent rewriting of history, or how we shoulda done it. And while that is no less true, I think the fact that he employs it to turn the focus back on audience is why I find Tarantino's use of violence compelling and not pornographic. He's pointing to the nature of the author/audience relationship, how that relationship is couched in and nurtured by culture.

Sometimes it's all too meta for me to parse, but very cool nonetheless. Probably one of the best moviefilms I've seen in a long time. Though I still have a soft spot for Harry Potter.