Big Bang Poetry

Reinventing the Life of a Poet in the Modern World

Month: January 2014 (Page 1 of 2)

Essays in Nov/Dec 2013 APR

January 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

EssI’m really behind on my poetry periodicals but I want to mention that there are a lot of good essays in the American Poetry Review (Nov/Dec 2013).

They published a controversial essay by Joy Katz on sentimentalism and the absurd lengths we’ve been trying to avoid it. At least that's how I took the piece. I heard through another writer-friend that Alicia Ostriker (who’s book Stealing the Language practically changed my life), was upset by how the essay used her as an example, thinking she was being criticized for sentimentalism. This is not how I interpreted the essay at all. Joy Katz really drags you through the drama of sentimental-avoidance in efforts to please current avant-guarde practitioners; and I can’t see why she would do this if not in defense of sentimentality ultimately as a choice.

Katz re-enacts the writing of a poem where a baby appears:

“A baby turns up in a poem I am writing…Oh no… A baby has turned up in a poem I am writing. Fear the world enclosing it: too easy to inhabit, too pretty, too comfy, too female, too married, too straight. A poem with a baby in it is automatically possibly all of these things, no matter what I am in my life as a person…

A baby has appeared. Fear loss of world, loss of danger, loss of trash, loss of anger, loss of war, loss of surprise, loss of mattering, loss of dirt, loss of wildness, loss of scale, loss of geologic time, loss of continents, loss of rivers, loss of knives, loss of meanness. Lost: the chance to go somewhere that scares me…I am writing a poem about. A cloud of aboutness hovers over my draft….  

(True story: In Paris recently, I read several poems with my young son in them. The work evinced a range of strategies, from fragments to collage to narrative to a lyric. An editor I was talking with afterward said, about the poems, “I’m not interested in content. Do you know what I mean?”)…Fear of loss of credibility…

Can you not see the irony here? If the editor (or the avant-guard, for that matter) isn’t interested in content, what difference does content (the baby) make? It should be irrelevant; but it’s not. Here "I'm not interested in content" means "I'm interested in content."

“(Fact: When a male poet writes about a baby, he is not accused of being “overwhelmed by biology.”[1] Fact: One of my teachers told me and a couple of other women that we should never write about our kids. I later realized he wrote about his kids.)”

Katz's essay is both aesthetic and political and yet understated, unsentimental. It dosen't draw absolute conclusions but it raises doubts. Maybe this is how it could be misconstrued.

In this APR there is also an email conversation between Gerry LaFemina and Stephen Dunn on the topic of irony that goes into length debating whether irony exists in the Tom Lux poem “Refrigerator 1957,” a debate I enjoyed very much because Lux was my “don” at Sarah Lawrence College. We all heard him read that poem about ten times while there. We even used to impersonate his performances of it just like we impersonated Marie Howe saying “the plumber I have not yet called” from her very serious poem “What the Living Do.”

Kids having fun in the 1990s.

There's also an essay by Jane Hirshfield, an amazing piece about (in defense of?)  the power of lyric poetry, speaking to “the inexhaustibility of existence itself” and therefore the inexhaustibility of the lyric.  She even takes on Theodor Adorno.  You go, girl!

There’s also a conversation with Philip Levine. Levine was the first famous poet I ever saw in the flesh, when he arrived one night for a reading in Slonim House at Sarah Lawrence College. I’ve been starstruk since. In today’s political climate, I’m developing a deeper taste for Levine just as I am for songwriter Billy Bragg.

By the way, for some amazing out-of-the-box poetry, I would recommend the 1998 album of Wilco/Billy Bragg taking unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics from Guthrie's family archive. Two nights ago, Monsieur Big Bang and I watched the documentary on the making of the album.

I also enjoyed poems in APR by Joe Wenderoth. And of course I loved the three Stephen Dobyns poems in the issue because I always love Stephen Dobyns poems a bit shamelessly. His poem “Sincerity” was particularly good in light of our ongoing debates about lyric poetry and writing from the "self."

    

Movies with Poetry: John Keats & Marlon Riggs (2009/1989)

January 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

BsBright Star (2009) is another BBC Films movie focusing on the 1818 love story between John Keats, (played like a heartthrob by Ben Whishaw), and Fannie Brawne, (played by Abbie Cornish), with screenplay and direction by Jane Campion.

This was another winner with great depictions of the following:

– the pompous, insufferable poet who has no sense of humor about himself or anything else, played by Paul Schneider as Keats’ friend Mr. Brown

– sequestering yourself to get writing done

– poor reviews and poor sales

– choosing a life of poetry even though this entails poverty

– really good friends who are actually not very good friends whenever they provide blind, tragic generosity.

Just as she did in The Piano, director Campion makes another unhurried, particular movie. She is a master of shooting the outdoors, the outside lawns and forests of Hampstead Village, full of butterflies and the sounds of the woods. Campion is also good at including adorable little girls in her pictures, girls who run around the heath and steal the movie.

Here, Campion sets up a parallel of craft between Brawne’s labors over stitching and sewing her fashions and the labor of Keats' writing. There is a scene midway that is a remarkable bit of visual poetry itself: Brawne laying in her bed in the first thoes of love as her window curtain floats across the room toward her.

Campion also does a few studies in the ruffles of “almost-silence” (with interesting foley sound effects) and visually in a look at love’s madness (with a succession of butterfly scenes that begin with beauty and end in depression—hey, we’ve all been there).

Brawne suffers trying to relate to Keats, declaring, “poems are a strain to work out” before she asks Keats to teach her how to read a poem. Keats describes reading poetry to her as similar to swimming in a lake. The point is not to rush over to the other side but to enjoy floating in the middle of it.

Many of Keats' most famous poems are recited. You also get to feel the exhilarating joy and tactility of receiving hand-written letters.

But warning: this movie is not for those with a “delicate constitution” as the film requires a steady crying jag that lasts practically the full final half.

TuTongues Untied is one of the documentaries listed in the documentary about 50 documentaries you should see before you die. The movie is both a collage of experiment and a personal statement by Marlon Riggs about his experiences as a black gay man. Between narratives, the movie weaves in spoken-word poetry, popular music and dance.

At the time of its release, the movie was labeled pornographic and used as an example in the attack against national funding for the arts. Looking back, that response looks shamefully puritan.

Beautiful performance poetry on issues of race and sexuality. Not for those who are squeamish about frank discussions and depictions of race and sexuality. Highly recommended otherwise.

  

   

A Book About Fathers

January 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

MkWhile I was working at the Institute of American Indian Arts, I would occassionally come across copies of a book by Maurice Kenny called Connotations all around campus. Last week I finally finished one of the multiple copies found in my own office.

The poems in the book are primarily about Kenny's father but also stories farther back into his ancestry, stories of his childhood and how his experiences then concern him now as he faces a future idea of his death.

The first section contains musings on paintings of male nudes. I found this section to be a bit repetitive and vague.

The poems in the second section are much more particular and literal vs. figurative (we leave that to the first section…pun intended.). I didn’t really love these poems either at first but they have stuck with me. They depict his complicated relationship with his father and they work to give you a cumulative sort of rendering of his father that is strong in the sum of its parts (which are the individual poems).

The poem “Strange Love” about his sisters reconciliation with her father during a Christmas exchange of presents is indicative of the section's theme:

“His protection beat scars/on her legs and arms.”

The poem “Complicated” does this as well:

His knife drew blood/that his hand wiped off.”

Kenny struggles to understand his father who both protects and harms in visceral ways. You can take the whole of this book as a metaphor for the struggles many have dealing with parents who also harm on their way to help.

  

Tourist Poem Written After an Execution

January 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Poem-ft-smithFirst of all, it's amazing where you come across poetry in your travels. Second, it's always moving to find a poem serving as an appeal to the afterlife.

On our way home from Pennsylvania after Christmas, Monsieur Big Bang wanted to stop in Fort Smith in order to do some research on Belle and Pearl Starr for his consulting project with the show Quick Draw.

At the Fort Smith historic site, I came across this poem called "My Dream" written by Rufus Buck on the backside of a photograph of his mother. It was found in his cell after his execution for rape on July 1, 1896.

I've cleaned it up…there's a piece of punctuation after practically every word…blame his fragile state of mind…and I've fixed the spelling.

 

 

 

 

The poem reads,

I dreamt I was in heavenamong the angels fair;
I'd ne'er seen none so handsome
that, twine in golden hair.
They looked so neat and sang so sweet
and played the golden harp.
I was about to pick an angel out
and take her to my heart
but the moment I began to plea
I thought of you, my love.
There was none I'd seen so beautiful
on earth or heaven above.

Goodbye my dear wife and mother,
also my sisters.
Rufus Buck,
Yours truly.

1 Day of July
in the year of
1896

Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Virtue, Resurrection
Remember me Rock of Ages

    

January 2014 Poetry News

January 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Dipping my feet back into the scene this month, I am very sad to see we've lost a three-some of poets recently:

  • Amiri Baraka died on January 9 as reported by CNN – I saw him read once in the mid-to-late 1990s at one of the Dodge Poetry Festivals I attended in New Jersey with a gang from Sarah Lawrence College. Baraka was even mentioned in the snarky piece my fiction-writing friend Julie and I wrote for our zine, Ape Culture, called "How To Tell If You Are At Ozzfest Or Dodge Poetry Fest."
  • Wanda Coleman died late last year on November 2013 as reported in the Los Angeles Times. I saw Los Angeles poet Wanda Coleman speak many, many times at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the poetry panels where she was a staple panelist every year. She was outspoken and thoughtful and I always thought I would be seeing her again at the next bookfest I attended. Truly sorry she is gone.
  • Argentine poet Juan Gelman died on January 14 as reported in the Los Angeles Times.

In other news, former US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan is recovering after a crash with a car while riding her bike.

   

Pop Culture, Art Culture, Value & Camille Paglia

January 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

BadartBecause last year Cher was mired in an interview scandal over comments she made about Miley Cyrus' controversial performance on the Video Music Awards, my friend Christopher, fellow-poet and pop-culture aficionado, sent me an editorial on the topic by controversial critic and pop-culture academic, Camille Paglia. I blogged about it yesterday on I Found Some Blog. I don't always agree with Paglia (politically) but I felt her comments hit a target about Miley Cyrus and the vapid sexuality of pop performances today, not to mention the corresponding vapid rebelliousness of the avant garde's stunt art…

"…the real scandal was how atrocious Cyrus' performance was in artistic terms. She was clumsy, flat-footed, and cringingly unsexy, and effect heightened by her manic grin.

How could American pop have gotten this bad? Sex has been a crucial component of the entertainment industry since the seductive vamps of silent film and the bawdy big mamas of roadhouse blues. Elvis Presley, James Brown and Mick Jagger brought sizzling heat to rock, soul and funk music, which in turn spawned the controversial raw explicitness of urban hip-hop.

The Cyrus fiasco, however, is symptomatic of the still heavy influence of Madonna, who sprang to world fame in the 1980s with sophisticated videos that were suffused with a daring European art-film eroticism and that were arguably among the best artworks of the decade. Madonna’s provocations were smolderingly sexy because she had a good Catholic girl’s keen sense of transgression. Subversion requires limits to violate.

…

But more important, Madonna, a trained modern dancer, was originally inspired by work of tremendous quality — above all, Marlene Dietrich’s glamorous movie roles as a bisexual blond dominatrix and Bob Fosse’s stunningly forceful strip-club choreography for the 1972 film Cabaret, set in decadent Weimar-era Berlin. Today’s aspiring singers, teethed on frenetically edited small-screen videos, rarely have direct contact with those superb precursors and are simply aping feeble imitations of Madonna at 10th remove.

Pop is suffering from the same malady as the art world, which is stuck on the tired old rubric that shock automatically confers value. But those once powerful avant-garde gestures have lost their relevance in our diffuse and technology-saturated era, when there is no longer an ossified high-culture establishment to rebel against. On the contrary, the fine arts are alarmingly distant or marginal to most young people today.

…

Pop is an artistic tradition that deserves as much respect as any other. Its lineage stretches back to 17th century Appalachian folk songs and African-American blues, all of which can still be heard vibrating in the lyrics and chord structure of contemporary music. But our most visible young performers, consumed with packaging and attitude, seem to have little sense of that thrilling continuity and therefore no confidence in how it can define and sustain their artistic identities over the course of a career.

What was perhaps most embarrassing about Miley Cyrus’ dismal gig was its cutesy toys — a giant teddy bear from which she popped to cavort with a dance troupe in fuzzy bear drag. Intended to satirize her Disney past, it signaled instead the childishness of Cyrus’ notion of sexuality, which has become simply a cartoonish gimmick to disguise a lack of professional focus. Sex isn’t just exposed flesh and crude gestures. The greatest performers, like Madonna in a canonical video such as “Vogue,” know how to use suggestion and mystery to project the magic of sexual allure. Miley, go back to school!

Read the full piece: http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/27/pops-drop-from-madonna-to-miley/

After taking my MOOC class on contemporary poetry last year (which I loved, by the way), I think there is room to pause at this statement, "avant-garde gestures have lost their relevance in our diffuse and technology-saturated era, when there is no longer an ossified high-culture establishment to rebel against." After all, even Madonna needed a church to subvert against. Avant guarde artists have run the irritant gamut. And I think this is why it feels like rebelling when we take up kitsch and bad art, hence the popularity of MOBA, the Museum of Bad Art in Boston.

Don't get me wrong, I love MOBA on many levels: ironically (the whole museum is ironic) and literally (I have a soft spot for participatory attempts beyond one's skill). More on this later, but I do believe we can actually conflate gestures of loving something both ironically and literally. One level I don't love MOBA on is the level of the rebellious, avant-garde. To me that reads like a cynical, take-over gesture by artists who have run out of any other ideas. It's like robbing the innocents of their playroom in order to fashion your own school of thought. This wouldn't necessarily include language poets,  Dada poets, John Cage-inspired poetics or found poetics (which are healthy experiments, I think), but might include any overt celebration of the bad as a suspicously rebellious way to question value-systems. It's not fair to those who spend hours crafting and its not fair to those who are beginners. It's bad karma and it's a dead end.

   

A Book For Beginning Poets: Ordinary Genius

January 12, 2014 / / 0 Comments

GeniusIt was not just good for clearing the palate, but after taking the intense and challenging Modern Poetry MOOC online class last fall, it was good for me to go back to the beginning and read Kim Addonizio’s new book on poetry craft this holiday break. Ordinary Genius is intended for beginners; it's a book for Addonizio's students. But clearing your mind of everything you know is not only good for Zen Buddhist practitioners; it’s good for experienced poets, too.

But going back to the beginning is not only an intellectual challenge, allowing yourself to become an open vessel is also a spiritual challenge. Restarting is actually hard, just as hard as keeping up with the most difficult, esoteric essays in poetry theory. It’s difficult because you constantly fight the urge to say I know this already.

 I like how Addonizio teaches by forcing her students to read poems. This book is full of recommendations for individual poems and I made of list of the ones I need to look up.

Then, after many I known this already moments, I found something I needed to hear in the last ten pages. You find messages for yourself in places you least expect. Don't forsake beginning again.

    

Sunday’s Moment of Craft: Keep Up the Curiosity

January 12, 2014 / / 0 Comments

CuriosityPoetry is just as much about exploring as driving across the country is. My husband and I took our two dogs on a cross-country road trip this holiday season from New Mexico to Pennsylvania in order to visit my parents in Lancaster County. On the way we listened to music, discussed history and pop culture and came up with a list of things we planned to look up when we got home.

Now our list of questions isn't earth-shattering but I think the important thing to keep in mind is that you should always have a list of some kind, always be looking to learn about random things, always have silly questions you need answering.

Here was our final list. I don’t know how our it ended up so gay-centric, but it did:

  1. Is Chris Daughtry still married? (Monsieur Big Bang had doubts but he is.)
  2. What did Peter Allen die of? (AIDs-related throat cancer. We love the song "Tenterfield Saddler.")
  3. How did Robert Palmer die? Was it onstage? (I was wrong; he died in his hotel room, not onstage, from a heart attack.)
  4. Are The Gossip Girls (the band) gay? (The kickass lead singer is out but I never found out about the others.)  
  5. How did Robert Reed (of the Brady Bunch) die? (AIDs-related colon cancer.)
  6. What is the kid from Deliverance doing now? (He’s a working actor and quite normal-looking, actually. Special effects were used to make him look so creepy.)
  7. What do people do for a living in El Reno, Oklahoma? (Never figured this one out but the town is unusually big. We got lost there looking for gas.)
  8. Who is singing with Miles Davis in the song “Blue Christmas.” (Turns out this is Bob Dorough, the composer and singer of the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons.)
  9. Whatever happened to producer David E. Kelly? (He married Michelle Pfeiffer and is now the producer of that awful-looking Robin Williams sitcom.)
  10. What hotel did Liberace play in? (The Hilton. We just watched Behind the Candelabra)
  11. Did Eric Clapton play lead on the Beatles song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (I thought so but wanted to be sure. He is.)
  12. What was the Mason-Dixon line created for? (It settled a dispute between the colonies and the British in 1767. Later it was used to divide the North and South during the Civil War.)
  13. Why do we yawn? (They still don’t know! But there are many theories.)
  14. Do birds yawn? (Yes.)
  15. Is it me or does Zee Avi sound like Zooey Duchamel? Who sings the song in the movie Elf? (Zooey sings in the movie and there are many others who are confused by by this issue.)

   

Movies with Poetry: Sylvia Plath (2003)

January 12, 2014 / / 0 Comments

SylviaWhen I moved to Albuquerque, I discontinued my Netflix for a few months. Now they insist I buy the streaming before I can get my DVD plan back as well. All my Netflix streaming friends and relatives tell me I don’t need the DVD plan anymore because streaming is so great; but I do not find this to be the case. Of the 33 movies I have listed in my Netflix que for DVDs, only four are available on streaming. Four!! To get access to these movies I would have to pay over 15 dollars a month. So I cancelled my Netflix and signed on with a company called Green Cine. They have more of the older, independent movies and documentaries I want. They don’t have as many as the Netflix DVD library had but they have many more than streaming did and they charge me per movie or a monthly charge of less than $10 a month.

Sylvia (2003)

The first movie I rented was the BBC Film Sylvia (2003) with Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath and Daniel Craig as Ted Hughes.  

I’d recommend this movie for these reasons:

  • It seems to be a balanced account of their relationship. No black and white good/bad guy.
  • You see Paltrow handle the character arc of Plath, from manic and effervescent to morose and difficult. She’s shown as an imperfect character.
  • It’s amusing to see a muscle-set Craig play Ted Hughes. He’s actually very good and brings out the ambivalence of the character.  Hughes is in love alright but a rather pathetic and unhelpful partner, especially when the seas get rough.
  • Blythe Danner plays Sylvia Plath’s mom, (some fun meta-movie making as Danner is Paltrow’s actual mom).
  • The bad guy (Professor Moriarty) from the second 2011 Sherlock Holmes movie is in it: Jared Harris.
  • The movie shows Sylvia actually working and her labor in writing, reciting, teaching, grading, getting burned out. You see her typing up manuscripts. The movie covers the frustrations of not only her house-wife-ing but her writing. You see how competitive it was even then to get any sort of book review.
  • Lots of poetry gets recited. There are also lots of books in Plath’s house.
  • Plath and Hughes listen to vinyl recordings of another poet at a dinner party.
  • The movie is visually interesting, both drab and colorful in parts, depending on Plath’s mood. Plenty of good, detail-driven shots, haunting setups and interesting visual themes.

   

Margaret Atwood Forsakes Book Blurbs

January 12, 2014 / / 0 Comments

AtwoodA poet friend of mine from Sarah Lawrence College (now living in Los Angeles) recently sent me an envelope full of newspaper clippings and I’m enjoying reading and discussing them with him via email. One he sent me was the following piece from the LA Times, “No, Margaret Atwood Will Not Blurb Your Book”

I really wanted to like this article when at first I assumed she would be forsaking blurbs on her own books; but the article was only about how she was refusing to give out anymore helpful blurbs to other authors.

A more revolutionary act would be for her to eschew blurbs on her own book covers. I mean, is she taking and refusing to give (just because she’s so busy)?

I get it that published authors are unbelievably busy and can’t keep up with these requests. I even respect Ringo Starr for recently notifying the fans of the world that he won't be signing autographs anymore. Totally acceptable because he’s not out there asking anybody for autographs. If you can't keep up with requests, then silently not keep up with requests. That's all you need to do. Why make a grandiose statement about it?

Blurbs are cliquish, overblown statements of meaningless PR, part of anyone’s book marketing plan; and we’ve been conditioned to believe we need them on our books and to convince us that a book is worthy of reading. If Atwood’s career was helped in any way by book blurbs (and it's hard to believe it wasn’t), it doesn't mean much to me that she's now refusing to give out blurbs. It’s just uncharitable and bad vibes. Speak out against the system at least while you're at it.

My friend told me it would take courage as an author to go blurb free. And yes it would.

Irked as I am with Atwood, I did add her to my Pinterst board of poets with sexy hair.

 

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