no negative reviews? no problem. call them what they are.

Many a critic has complained about critics – you know, the way we never write bad reviews except of books by people we loathe and fear. It’s mutually-assured destruction out there: you pan my book, I pan yours (hold fingers together and move hand back and forth). And, of course, we tend to review books and journals by people we like.

This all seems perfectly natural to me. I mean, what are ya, Alexander Pope or something? And then there’s Wilde’s dictum about not prejudicing oneself. (In How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, Pierre Bayard has an hilarious riff along these lines, vis-à-vis Paul Valéry – indeed, the whole book is hilarious – & also more serious than it sounds).

Anyway, how about this: how about instead of calling them “book reviews,” we call them “book descriptions.” I’m not talking Cliff Notes or Cartoon Classics here – no siree. But more detail than a mere blurb. I mean people who are good readers giving an overall impression of a book or journal that you’re probably not going to read anyway. Or – if it’s something that’s up your alley, maybe you will, if the description is detailed and vivid.

So, shazam – I just invented a new genre. Isn’t that wonderful? The world doesn’t have enough genres, does it? And we better make sure that no writing goes un-genred. You’re welcome!

Tomorrow: Joe describes journals that publish his stuff . . .

Loden v. (or qua?) Nixon

OK, I’m a little intimidated talking about Rachel Loden’s new book, Dick of the Dead (Ahsahta Press, 2009). I could say it’s bigger and (even) better than Hotel Imperium, but that’s pretty shallow, so I won’t. But I do want to let you all know that you should get it and read it.

As in H.I., Loden [OK - Rachel - hi, Rachel!] lets her inner formalist come out to play. A lot of these poems are almost already on the verge of rhyming – or they are rhyming, but you can’t figure out how – which is the mark of a fine musician. But often the playground seems like the political unconscious. Or cultural shadowland. Or something. (She’s a lot more eloquent than I am, anyway).

Anyway, the Dick of the title is the dead Dick Nixon, of course; he is the (oh shitse! there is some latin or French term for this) you know, - well, Nixon is to this book what Tiresias is to the Waste Land, let’s just leave it at that. But I get the impression that “Nixon” isn’t always the biographical disaster who was president from 1969-1974. Rather, that name is a composite persona – a very dark shade – a kind of Henry Bones or shadow Maximus. And, of course, there’s Dick Cheney, too, and Belial (fine distinction, I know). And Betsey Ross, I think. Et alia.

Now, if this were a real review, this would be the place where I quote sections of poems. And this is deerintheheadlights time – how does one choose. Granted, I like some more than others, but really. Well, some of these poems are rewritings (redactions? travesties?) of other poems. For instance, Wallace Stevens’ “Rabbit as King of the Ghosts” ends with:

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

In Loden’s “Milhous as King of the Ghosts,” the creepy bunny becomes the CREeP-y president:

I become an empire that fills the oleaginous pipelines
Of the earth. The bitch is still yapping
By gravestone-light and I am whipped high, whipped

Up, sculpted higher and higher, cool as a sphinx –
I sit with my head like a Rushmore in space
And the scrofulous hound smelling blood on my wings.

[google “Nixon AND Checkers,” kids] So, likewise, “I Knew a Man” becomes “I Knew a Brand” (the Jaguar XKR, as it turns out).

But there’s a lot more right-brain stuff going on in this book: that is, there are poems that may or may not be polished to a lapidary sheen, but that seem straight from the Martians (or the psychic Plumbers). Like that “Belial” poem:

Have you tasted me yet with the black hairs of your feet?

You lay your tiny, lilliput eggs in a basket: Easter fungi. . . .

Shall I compare your intentions to a giant cod which when split open, reveals a severed head?

They say your smegma is a delicacy in some countries, so give us a wet kiss –

Your fruiting body with its lacy gills, your stinger with its sweet paralysis.

Yeow. Or the “Richard Nixon Snow Globe” (which, apparently doesn’t really exist anywhere in the wide world’s web, despite an exhaustive search) made by a man who had to, “So he could see Dick’s head inside a dome/ While hoodoo snow is falling/ On the baby bush tricked out with lights/ In his rancho home sweet ovum.” Further deponent sayeth not.

Loden is one of the few poets around who can pull off addressing “big” issues in the res publica in a serious way – deftly, making traditional forms her own, at that – without sounding sententious. I think that’s b/c it’s too weird. Her stuff seems at least as close to Andre Breton as to “public poetry” in the US of the late 40s. And that’s the reason to read, not for me but for yourselves, o daughters of Sargon!

"Music Listened to So Far Today": A Classic Blog Post

Isn't that what blogs are for? At least, they used to be. That is, conveying every boring detail of life to all your friends, and then hectoring them for not wanting to read about it. Oh, sure, people started using blogs to report from Iraq, and shit like that. But that's a revisionist application. The true purists will still write about washing their cars.

So - a friend of mine (huh!) recently went on an all-night whiskey bender, followed (predictably) by an all-day hangover. Nonetheless, she said, she could still see having "one mint julep" (a concoction I sometimes make, this time of year).

She claimed she had never heard "One Mint Julep" by the Clovers, so I played it for her - on Napster, from an Atlantic Records R&B compilation album.

Which made me want to hear Prof. Longhair doing "Tipatina," which I did.

Earlier, I listened to my current favorite e.p., the eponymous The Happy Problem. Their FB page recently reported that they were introduced by some LA dj as "The Happy People" - which, in LA, is a fine distinction. But still a problem.

Of course, not all Classic Blog Posts are this short. Maybe there should be a compilation album.

Myself, in _Hotel Amerika_ and _Fact-Simile_

I just got my copy of the "TransGenre" issue of Hotel Amerika, 7:2 (spring 2009), that contains an excerpt from my book, Things Come On (an amneoir). H.A. is big and glossy, like the magazines in the art library. I like it. I am looking forward to reading it, as it looks like there are a lot of innovative texts that make use of all the options for layout, typeface, pictures, etc. that god has given us. And all the literary and non-literary genres.

The most recent issue of Fact-Simile, 2:1 (spring/summer 2009), has a "diptych" ("What did you call me?!") that I wrote. But more importantly, it has a superb interview with Kristen Prevallet, on mourning and literature, that I highly commend to your attention. In fact, like her book I, Afterlife, the interview helps me to make sense of what I'm doing in Things Come On. Thanks, Kristen and JenMarie.

All of this, and the fact that Craig Santos Perez is reading in KC on the 17th (see above) makes me lit-happy.

On the Long (Boring) Poem

Does anybody else think a lot of contemporary poems are too damn long? I'm not talking about the book-length poem - I'm talking about the overlong lyric. It seems like there are a lot of poems that are a densely-packed page or two of long lines (or prose) that basically keeps doing the same thing. It may be doing interesting things with language, even. At first. Like the poet is just so inherently fascinating that s/he can't think of depriving you of more cleverness? As in: OK, I GET IT! hahaha, already.

Lyn Hejinian, in the intro to her Best American Poetry volume, spoke of a "sustained engagement with negativity." I'd like to think that Adorno in heaven is smiling on me as I read one of these poems. But that doesn't keep me from getting bored, helas. I have the same problem with an avant-garde poem that is too long to sustain my interest that I did with E. Alexander's inaugural poem, which also bored me to tears. Frank O'Hara said poetry should be as good as the movies, and Jack Spicer upped the ante by saying it should be as fun as TV. Let's hear it for short attention spans.

And God bless Uche Nduka! [if you don't know his stuff, google him] He says something, and then stops. That's a poem. They're kind of "poemlets," a lot of them - not haiku or anything, just v. short lyric poems, often untitled. I can keep reading a lot of these for a very long time, when I'd have given up on a more prolix (and self-indulgent) writer.

So, if "What's good for General Motors is good for the country," then . . .

Chris Joss

Also: check out Chris Joss' instrumental psychedelia. He's what the Grateful Dead might have been, had they not gone all flaccid and quaaludey after their first album.

Lily Allen

Have you discovered Lily Allen? If not, please do. Lily Allen: pop music = Anne Boyer: poetry.

Flarf and Kitsch

I did a couple of class sessions at the end of the (now blessedly concluded) semester on K. Silem Mohammad's work, and Flarf more generally; it dawned on me (duh) that the way to understand much of Flarf is as Deliberate Kitsch. So, yes, it is the poetic equivalent of Jeff Koons (my answer to the quiz, btw, was "all of the above"). Or maybe Kasey should trademark the epithet "Poet of Light." I don't know.

But I went to the OED for help explaining kitsch to my students. "To affect with sentimentality and vulgarity" - good. Then a bit from the Observer, 1958: "What is so extraordinary about some of these kitsch masterpieces is the way they can be enjoyed on two planes, both as themselves and as their own parodies." Uh-hhhhhhh.

Or this, from This Magazine (which magazine? . . . never heard of it), 1994: "She's playing with a look that is so out it's in, revelling in the kitschiness of the way some people, other people, dress. This isn't a case of fashion nostalgia. This is fashion slumming."

"A Note of Appreciation from the Rich"

From the good folks at Scroogle (home of the "Scroogle Scraper" - All the results - with none of the cookies!):

"Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery. On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it — you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!

As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.

Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us — and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.

Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!

You also probably don't have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you're also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to "break out of the mold."

Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against.... We continually push your wages down by invoking "foreign competition," "the law of supply and demand," "national security," or "the bloated federal deficit." We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as "elections." Happily, you haven't a clue as to what's really happening — instead, you blame "Aliens," "Tree-hugging Environmentalists," "N[-----]s," "Jews," Welfare Queens," and countless others for your troubled situation.

We're also very pleased that many of you still embrace the "work ethic," even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don't know much about work, but we're sure glad you do!

Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don't know that. In fact, you can't even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that's probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system — robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself. So we'd truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for "knowing your place" — without even knowing it!"