The Maynard

Three poems in the newest issue of The Maynard.  These are from my current manuscript-in-progress, and I’m very happy to see them in a really fine journal (along with some other really terrific pieces).

bad poetry jokes

Hat tip to Ron Siliman, from Free Space Comix:

Sylvia Plath walks into a bar. The bartender says,” What’s cookin’, good lookin’”?

Alfred Tennyson crosses a bar. He is never seen again.

Gertrude Stein walks into a bar, thinking it was a bar. But it was a bar.

 

one more from Slavoj

Taken from the same talk as referenced the other day.  While discussing what he sees as the rise of “cultural capitalism,” in which altruistic charity is tied directly to capitalist consumption, he says:

this is why I really hate, like take this personally, I really hate Starbucks Coffee.  They are it.   You know, you cannot even, it, you know – the only moment when I was really tempted to become a brutal consumerist was when I entered Starbucks Coffee and you get the message, which is “Ok, we cost a little more but, when you buy a cup of coffee,” as they repeat to you again, “You are not just buying a cappuccino, you are buying with it an ethics of community, you meet friends there, we support rainforests, we support starving children in Guatemala.”

And now I’m almost tempted to say, “No, I want a cup of coffee.”  I don’t, don’t want those –   Screw children in Guatemala, and so on.  Don’t mess with that.

But you see the operation, that the act of consumerism is, at it were, it’s own opposite.  You know, this is the ideological profit that you are paying . . . this ideological satisfaction, you see.  “I’m not just buying something, I’m doing something.  I’m helping rainforest, I’m all that, all that.

In this way, even Che Guevara became the icon signifying all and nothing . . . but as usual, harmless beatification is mixed with its opposite – obscene commodification.  Recently, a friend from Australia sent me a publicity model of an Australian company which put on the market a CHErry Guevara ice cream, focusing its promotion on the eating experience, of course.  Here is the description, “The revolutionary struggle of the cherries was squashed as they were trapped between two layers of chocolate.  May their memory live in your mouth.”  And so on and so on.

 

Zizek on Fox

Speaking at Cooper Union, and giving examples of multiple forms of ideology, Zizek mentions cable news:

apropo the health care debate you have now, and I am the first to enjoy them, I love them, Sarah Palin style – I’m dangerous here, I warn you – the only television station I watch here is FoxNews: the only funny one.

What I mean, all this madness of Obama already preparing death panels which will decide who dies or not, or even nicer – my favorite one, it really gives me some kind of intellectual orgasm – is, I read somewhere that Obama is already secretly constructing 3000 small concentration camps around the United States, then on a certain night, all the patriotic Americans will be arrested there.  And I read even a further point, which I like, that Obama knows that American police force is too patriotic to be confided with this task of guarding patriots there, so he is secretly importing policemen with [Hugo] Chavez . . . these are jokes.

This comes about 21 minutes into the video.  Let me tell you, transcribing Zizek is no simple task.

Akron Art Museum

A week or so ago I visited the Akron Art Museum, and I’ve been meaning to write about it since.   I went to see the current show of Chuck Close portraits.  I am pretty familiar with much of his work (one of my high school art teachers was a big fan).

However, I did not go straight in to the Close rooms, instead opting for a leisurly walk through the permanent collection.  This lead me to a secondary show which, let me tell you, absolutely blew away the Chuck Close exhibit and reinvigorated my love of the museum experience.  “The Legend of John Brown,” a series of prints by Jacob Lawrence.

This fall marks 150 years since Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and subsequent execution.  That I knew (thanks to the invaluable blog Read Red).  What I didn’t know was that John Brown was a resident of Akron, OH.  There are events going on all season to commemorate the man and his work!

Anyways, the Jacob Lawrence prints.  Wow.  I was completely unfamiliar with him, so seeing the series was a real treat.  (And the museum set out a book about him and his printmaking, which I sat and read for an hour.)  His images were vivid and stark, telling the narrative through long, explanatory titles.  (For some reason, the museum did not include several images, making the overall narrative just a teensy bit clunky.)  The prints reminded me of some Mexican art stylistically, which helped move Brown’s story into a larger global context.  The pictures were filled with guns and crosses, swords and bayonets.  Shapes repeated from wall to wall, similar yet different.  It was a very moving exhibit (made moreso by a few photos and historical ephemera connecting Brown to Akron).

There was a bit of a downer, however, when an older white couple came through and commented how Brown’s goal was correct, but he was a “lunatic,” I believe was the word she used.

Somewhere I have a biograpghy on John Brown that has yet to be read.  His life gets more and more fascinating the further I move away from the “lunatic” narrative.  Incidentally, the same is true for the tune “John Brown’s Body,” if you know it.  I did a research paper on the song a few months ago.  Maybe I’ll have to post what I learned.

Unpublished material

My parents have been cleaning out their basement, and they came across a large pile of school papers of mine from the first grade.  Apparently I had trouble being neat.  Teacher’s notes noted my handwriting wasn’t neat, my coloring wasn’t neat, and my cutting and pasting wasn’t neat.

First grade for me was the 1990-1991 school year, so I also came across a list of supplies my school was collecting for “Operation Desert Storm.”   Also, my  Weekly Reader  from September 21, 1990, shows me a full page photo of President Bush . . . visiting schoolchildren.  How dare he!!!  (The wonderful text explains, “He read to students, then told them, ‘If you want to be President, learn to read.’”  Low standards like that allowed his son to become president.)

Anyways, I found a few things I wrote in first grade.  They are masterpieces.  Here’s an untitled treasure dated Oct 22, 1990.  I will preserve the clever line breaks and idiosyncratic spacing, evidence of a young e.e. cummings at work.

I go trick or treating.

Iget candy.

Igo home.I eat my candy.

I carve a pumpkin.

 

The Searchers

A handy WordPress feature allows me to see what search terms bring potential readers to this blog. Special thanks goes to the owner of the phrase “court in act of masterbaiting by my mom.” I performed my own Google search for the term, and yes, this blog pops up in position three. Weird.

Quick Links

Got back last night from two poetry-filled days in Toledo.  Got to meet lovely poet and even lovelier human being Rane Arroyo.  Seriously.  One of the nice people I have ever met.  (Since this is a poetry blog, not an OMG Celebrity! blog, here are some of his recent poems.)

And now, some links stolen from Siliman’s Blog:

Discussions of pro-feminist male poetics

Shakespeare’s sonnets turned into Morse Code

A chapbook contest will decide winner via racquetball tounament

and Slavoj Žižek calls Billy Collins a genius

Zygotes

Two poems in the current issue of Zygote in My Coffee.    Two more coming later in the year, in their annual print edition.

More from Roseanne

Conservatives are really smart people, and like P. T. Barnum, have gotten rich by never overestimating the intelligence of the American people. I think conservatives are basically assholes. Of you watch them closely for a minute or two, you will be able to recognize that they are the same kids in elementary school who ate their boogers, and I bet most of them still do, too. Can’t you just imagine George Bush, Pat Robertson, Reagan, Nixon, et al., hiding behind their respective school buildings sort of removed from the group, chewing on a you know what, enviously eyeing the children who could actually make friends, and then, with their weak chins aquiver, they would screw up their faces and scream, “I’m telling!” as they conjure up all the tight-lipped Protestant rage they are capable of mustering? What we need is a Woman, a mother for President, and I’m going to run someday, and my campaign motto will be “Let’s vote for Rosie, and put some new blood in the White House – every twenty-eight days.”

My Life as a Woman, 1989, pg 117