Poetry Scene WTF—Boston mass reading

I got a last minute invite to read this weekend (today) at whatever the sequel to last year’s Boston Poet Tea Party is called. I accepted. Work then precluded my participation. Oh well.

Should I have accepted the last minute invitation? Yes, I would like to read, and be among those who take poetry seriously. But at the late date, I hadn’t time to prepare. Just digging around for something I felt comfortable reading would take time. I needed to practice reading the work, too. It’s always uncomfortable when poets read as if they haven’t seen the work before or cannot find something in their book or sheaf of papers. Myself me, I don’t fuss with (look at) my poems much, once written, I await that MacArthur check to accomplish that. I could not, then, have read except in hurried awkward mode, and I want to be more serious than that.

Furthermore, I felt my nose slipping out of joint to discover on the Boston Poetry Blog an entry in May, two months a-gone, announcing the event. The roster included a list of those already accepted. Presumably Poet X could not attend and my name came up in the replacement lottery. It feels too much like attention desperation to accept those terms. Having to work allowed me to think this thru beyond the context of paragraph 2, sentence 2.

I grant the issue here seems so whatish but it plops on concerns both local and of wider broadcast. Basically, who runs this ship, and why is it being run?

Boston’s ‘scene’ is scattered and unfocused. This may owe partly to the competing gravities of our many schools. It also owes to NYC’s seductive gravity, which draws the local fresh effort to the greater shine. It takes a former local, Jim Behrle, to scare up a reading such as this. It works because everyone wants their seven minutes in the sun.

But it is just summary cliques comporting. So far as I know, I am the only one to write a report of last year’s event (here). I believe that lack from others is telling. The poetry scene here is construed entirely as a social context. Nothing wrong with that except what it does to the poetry. The insolence of reflection is pushed aside for the greater good of conviviality. Or something like that. Not that there wasn’t varied and wonderful poetry at the event last year, and to come this year, as well. But the guffaws and the enfolding freshets of applause are trained towards the arbiting influence.

Now, if I said I don’t believe I deserve to be included willy nilly, I would say the same of Robert Creeley—and him all dusty from the grave—and anyone else. I’m saying it is not a matter of hierarchy, influence, and the top percentile. It is a matter of bringing something. Okay, Creeley risen from the grave constitutes bringing something. Part of the something that I mean is poetry, but anyone can write poetry. Anyone can also offer the generosity of critical balance and earnest appreciation, too. Yes, Creeley would have brought all that. I see that lacking in the current association, however. Instead, a snarky inbred club has gotten the best seats up there on Parnassus top. Bringing something carries greater import for me than knowing someone.

I see on the updated slate for today (here) that Henry Gould and I would have read in the same grouping. Henry and I read together lo these many. For me, it was the first time I’d read publicly since Robert Grenier facilitated some readings at Franconia. It was poorly attended but it felt like glory. Henry’s an outlier, and I guess so am I. And I further guess—because who knows these things?—that we should all be outliers. The restrictive emblems of this group thing is a loss. It will go on, tho, because people like importance.

Tom Swift Jr.

The kind of wonderful malarkey that we feed our young! I love reading this sort of motivated fashioning of subconscious response. The author—in this case, not a person but entirely a function—performs transcendental states of normalcy with his characters that requires a redefinition of normal. Excuse me, I should mench that I speak of the book TOM SWIFT and the Visitor from Planet X, by the noted pseudonym Victor Appleton II. And away we go.

Victor Appleton II, Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene, are the stage names for the gathering of hacks who cranked out these cheesy literary franchises (Tom Swift, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, if those authorial names don’t ring a familiar bell) They all seem like willing Rorschach tests amplifying our tenderest expectations. Hello, mirror to our innermost goofball!

So anyway, the Tom Swift Jr. series presents the 2nd generation of Swift. TS Sr. was essentially the same thing, boy scientific genius saving the world, circa the 30s. The telling theme, tho, is how Jr surpasses poor dadsville. Sr was brilliant but no patch on Jr. Jr’s taller than the dad, lankier, and his shit don’t stink. Jr works as equal with dad in Swift Enterprises, that world famous rocketship invention company, but we know who has the mojo. Jr has had plenty of adventures by the date of this visit from Planet X, and he’s a long in the tooth 18.

The back cover of this luminous text shows three people in SPACE SUITS flying around, along with a ROCKETSHIP powered, seemingly, by a fanning array of funnels on the forward part of the ship. The blurb keeps things clear: “For today's science minded boys! The Tom Swift Jr. Adventures in Science and Space.” Sorry girls. It would be crude to suggest that the adventures reside in calling this science, so I will refrain. The list of available titles consists mostly of specific inventions of young Swift, à la Tom Swift and his:

1. Flying Car
2. Jet Marine
3. Rocket Ship
4. Giant Robot
5. Atomic Earth Blaster
6. Outpost in Space
7. Diving Seacopter
8. Ultrasonic Cycoplane
9. Deepsea Hydrodome
10. Space Solartron
11. Electronic Retroscope (shows I Love Lucy repeats!)
12. Spectromarine Selector
13. Electronic Hydrolung
14. Triphibian Atomcar
15. Megascope Space Prober (sounds fun!)

Wowzer! Live Writer’s spellchecker, completely unaware of the future, had quite a time dealing with that list! Are you even ready for the front cover, in 3 rich colours: Tom and his friend Bud Barclay in some sort of physical contest with a mechanical thing that may be very electronic in nature. As it happens, without giving the plot away, the robotic is a container for some extra-terrestrial brain energy. No kidding!

The cast looks like your basic 50s tv sitcom. Tom’s pal Bud Barclay is an 18 year old test pilot for Swift Enterprises. Of course he cannot keep up with Tom in heroism, but for the normals he’s no slug. Tom’s blonde, blue-eyed sister is Bud’s girlfriend. Sandy’s best friend Phyllis”Phyl”Newton is Tom’s girlfriend. Phyl’s the daughter of longtime friend and business associate, “Uncle Ned” Newton. Uncle in quotes always seems creepy, doesn’t it? I’m sure there’s a lot of partner switching that don’t get talked about here, the parts fit so well together. The mom is just a mom, tho Oedipal conflagrations, along with incestuous wildfires, burn widely here.

Action? The book begins immediately with an earthquake at Faber Electronics Company. Tom’s trying to fix Faber’s gyro-stabilizer. “If anyone can get the bugs out of your new invention, genius boy here will do it,” says Bud. Except aforesaid earthquake interrupts matters. The plant suffers devastation and many are seriously injured, tho not Tom or Bud. Good scouts that they are, they busy themselves with rescue work. Then home to a worried family and a hot meal by mom specified in the narration as delicious!

Something hincty about the earthquake, tho, being so localized. Hmm.

Next day Tom’s on his way to work in his sports car when a hitchhiker jumps in front of the car and takes Tom hostage. OMG! The hitchhiker has an accent!!! Fortunately Chow Winkler, former chuck wagon cook now head chef for Swift Enterprises—you read that correctly—doing his best Slim Pickens impersonation, helps Tom overwhelm the man with the accent. The Victor Appleton II Machine does not want to leave you guessing about this character. Not only does this person have an accent, his name is Samson Narko. No one on the up and up would have such a name. No, this guy is from Brungaria. You know, the country full of spies who favour world domination.

I never read Tom Swift when I was of age, more’s the pity. Hardy Boys, oh yes, Danny Dunn, The Happy Hollisters, but not Nancy Drew (for girls). I wish I could better reconstruct what I did read then. I was a steady reader, if not voracious like the sort that ploughs thru all the Waverley novels at age 7. But let’s don’t get distracted from Tom Swift and the Visitor.

The endpapers depict young Tom in maybe his own rocketship, but maybe it is his lab. He gazes out a large window at a nifty stealth bomber zipping happily by. He wears a striped t-shirt. He has a headset on, perhaps communicating with the stealth bomber. No lack of science stuff to soothe his science mind: dials on the wall, microscope, beakers, a breaker box, blueprints, models of various rocketships and submarines. Honestly, what more could a boy want? He looks pretty dreamy, having the world set up the way he likes it.

This series references a sense of science that remains strong even now, 50 years later. It lodges in the newest gizmos. Science serving humanity by giving us televisions, electric knives, electronic toothbrushes and all the other servile conveniences. The future designed by Steve Jobs, that is. Science just keeps the economic turbine spinning with unappointed flash. The Oppenheimer vision of the atom has no application here unless it could be merchandised.

I will not give away the exciting conclusion to this science-minded tale of good and evil but suffice to say Golden Boy proves central to all positive actions, and Chow Winkler gets to exclaim this lifelike gem of Texas talk: “Brand my rattlesnake stew!”

NEWS FLASH!

Tributary is now officially better than Ron Silliman’s blog. The data don’t lie.

Homer’s Iliad, Hollywood’s Troy

Watched Troy again the other night. I am truly a sucker for the invitation of this movie. I recall being fed the trailer whilst awaiting some other cinematic marvel, and the sight of those thousand ships viewed panoramically from above proved enough to make me want to see the movie. I rarely get riled this way, and currently have nothing riling me. Troy aint great, but moments it has.

The first scene starts off right. We see opposing armies closing on each other on a wide plain. Agamemnon and the king of Thessaly meet, I suppose to discuss rebroadcast rights. I would have to wikipediate the cast to name the actor, but whoever played Agamemnon was a pisser. Beefy, bluff, arrogant, and all the appropriately awesome attributes by which we hand over sovereignty. They arrange to send their respective champions to settle the affray.

Thessaly's champ is a tall and a half hunk of prime steroidal man meat. For the Achaeans, the name is Achilles. Played by Brad Pitt, he’s proud to the point of hubris, grim, and grim some more. Pitt’s been buffed up to Hollywood’s greasy standards—de rigueur, of course—to the point of manly hairlessness, but he fills the part really well. He sneers at Agamemnon before racing to join with El Gigante.

Oh man!

There’s a similar sense here as when Aragorn races into the final battle with Mordor. That citadel clearly has no chance. Pitt dodges a couple of spears, closes, then performs a quick Michael Jordan feint and leap, to plunge his sword into the poor giant’s neck. Breaking a few Hollywood rules there to let such a scene run so quickly and efficiently, but it’s what made the film for me.

I guess we then meet Hektor and Paris, in peace conference at Menelaus’ house. Accord has been reached, what could go wrong? Oh yes, a tryst between Helen and Paris. Orlando Bloom plays Paris, bravely assaying Paris as a candy-ass. Eric Bana, unknown to me prior to this flick, played Hektor. Bloom’s not bad in thankless snivel, and Bana is just about perfect: thoughtful, noble, heroic. The ingénue who played Helen did nothing wrong, but I dunno how to turn the role into anything other than pretty lady on a stick. Helen is way too archetypal to put human shoes on.

So okay, Helen flees loutish Menelaus in the company of Hektor and Paris. Menelaus whimpers to his brother, who sees political possibilities in tipping spears with Troy. The scene is set.

The movie takes some seemingly random swerves from the stories of Troy that we know. The movie credits Homer for inspiration, certainly didn’t follow Homer closely. Odysseus (played by Sean Bean, Boromir in LOTR) visits Achilles to convince him to join the Greeks in avenging the dishonour. Not that he wants to help Agamemnon but Achilles relents. So too his cousin Patroklus. This seems like an overly dainty and unnecessary escape from Patroklus as friend or lover. The cousin resembles Pitt, younger and and more freshly eager.

Finally, we get to see those 1000 ship. Troy itself is well-evoked, at a seaside setting in Mexico, as it turns out. Achilles’ one ship leads the way to the beachhead. He’s furious to get killing, which seems to be his only drive.

Finally, we get some battle scenes. As soon as the Greek ships were sighted, the Trojan archers notched their arrows. Standing for the next hour, with arrows notched… Movies can be funny, sometimes.

So Achilles and his 50 Myrmidons make their D-Day landing far ahead of the rest of the Greeks. They turtle up with their shields (the survivors of the rain of arrows, that is), altho I gather this tactic may be more likely amongst Rome’s soldiery circa a millennium or more later. The action’s a little blurred (not like the balletic confrontations by Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans), but Pitt accounts himself well., killing everyone in sight. Reaching the temple to Apollo, he performs the highest insult, chopping the head off the statue of the god. Hektor and his cavalry come riding, and just to show incredibleness, Pitt takes a spear and guns it seemingly half a mile to pick a horseman off the saddle. Hektor thinks, Wowzer!

The movie eschews the gods mostly. No scenes of them atop Olympus, working the chess pieces. Maybe a bad cess on Achilles for impudence towards the gods, but nothing directly attributable to gods and goddesses in togas.

Pitt’s a bit Marlon Brando-y in signaling his grim philosophical despair but it’s Hollywood, after all.

Okay, so it comes that Paris is willing to meet Menelaus man to man to settle this. Here Bloom really has to snivel. For someone who has looked convincing with sword in previous movies, it must’ve been hard to feign utility infielder skills. Honestly, I admired a confirmed heartthrob to look so weak kneed. In one of the big left turns from Homer and the tradition, Hektor kills Menelaus to protect his succour-seeking brother.

And further stuff happens. Briseis, here, is a cousin of the royal Trojan family. When Agamemnon claims her, Achilles sulks. Okay, that sounds like Homer. And into battle goes Patroklus, wearing Achilles’ armour. And death do come. Yes yes yes.

The central dual atwixt Achilles and Hektor proceeds with sullen destiny. Peter O’Toole as Priam begs for and receives the body. Odysseus and Agamemnon dream up and assert the Trojan Horse. Achilles joins the attack, just to save Briseis. Here the movie falls apart. Hektor, the moral strength of the movie, is gone, and Achilles turned to Hollywood. As the Greeks burn the city, he drives singularly to find and save Briseis. Mush! Paris sends one arrow to the namesake tendon, which was stress enough, but another arrow to the chest, to avoid too much magical, finishes him.

Of course Homer does not supply our only version of the story. I pretend no scholarship but I have read how many versions of The Iliad? Pope’s, Fitzgerald’s, Rouse’s, and Fagel’s. Plus the Little Iliad, I think it is called, and whatever else. I am reading Fagel’s again, because of the movie. We can snottily say Homer was way modern, even if he didn’t actually write. As Pound says, the injuries that Homer describes are medically accurate. We do not expect such thought in movies. The fantastic nowadays is often merely ridiculous, unencumbered by rational plausibility. Homer understood limits which, as Olson says, we’re each of us inside of.

Movies are the Michelle Bachman of the arts. If you cannot access the manifesting depths of the discourse, you harrumph on the level of practical stupidity. This is a shameful slackness on the humanest level. I enjoy this movie but consciously I ignore the big chunks of portable poopoo. But after all, this is entertainment. The political impedance of Michelle Bachman, and the united et als, features too much glory in stupidhood. Homer had a bead on such things whereas Hollywood gave Brad a depilatory for his chest hairs. Too many depilatories in the political world is my final word.

Days Poem, the Blurb

Looking today at the blurb to Days Poem (the book is available here), which I wrote (both the book and the blurb), I thought I would write about it—the blurb, and therefore the book. Apologia or explanation, who cares? Just thought I would push the validity of the statements, as I see them. The italicized sentences that follow come from the blurb, in original sequence. Won’t this be exciting!

Begun casually, the writing of  Days Poem quickly grew into a necessity, even to plug onward. Beginning casually would be the norm for me. I sit down and I write. That does not indicate lack of seriousness, but that writing is an exercise performed with gradient consistency. One does not just wait for inspiration. Inspiration is a bogey anyway. One sees writers, Ginsberg and Whitman come quickly to mind, who endeavour the inspiration, usually a fail. The necessity arrived when I realized that I had to keep diligently filling the pages, id est:anyone can write half a poem. I would often type my way to the next page, just for the sake of the push.

In this way, it resembles a journal or novel, tho it claims neither genre as its own. Well, simply enough, I was aware that I was building something in a linear fashion, the daily accumulation. I can also see dates and events that occurred during the writing, and the reader might notice a change of seasons, as reported. I did not follow a calendar or narrative, however; the days just made their mark.

It started with an idea of writing large and embracing extent. Jim Leftwich’s Doubt, a 500 page poem published by Potes & Poets Press truly influenced me. Just the idea of such a long poem gave me a tingle of possibility. The dense, contrite prose of his book, with lavish, singular sentences, drew my interest. The early pages of Days Poem reflect my reading of his book at the time.

It settled (and unsettled) itself within the compelling philosophical argument that it is what it is. Not to commandeer Bill Belichick’s Stoic practicality, but confidence purposed me to accept the peregrinations that the writing took, even to the obsessive reverberations of bears, hobos, Tarzan & Jane, and Fu Manchu.

The thrill of relentlessness and perseverance pushed it until, you know, it came to an end. Each of the 412 sections represents the writing of a day. Only a handful of days saw no writing. I kept no goal for ending it, by date or by section or page count. I wrote on my wedding day, on Christmas, for the 9 days Erin was in the hospital, during my father’s hospital stay, and travelling hither and yon (Utah, Idaho, West Virginia, and New Hampshire). And then one day, I found that I was done.

I wanted to play with hobos and bears, and Tarzan & Jane, and Walden Pond, and all the words between. I guess play is central here. I played with an anachronistic yet meaningful vision of hobos, and saw bears, Tarzan, Jane, and Walden in vivid unlikeliness.

I wanted a little amazement in every day. That is what writing is for me. Days Poem could be styled my La Vita Nuova, as it grew and prospered in my new life with Beth and Erin. Thus the dedication, which cannot say enough.

Father’s Day and the X-Men

Well yes, I was feted today by Erin:  movie and dinner. First round was a visit to Barnes and Noble. Not there to buy, and held true to that. Spent a lot of time looking at books on PHP, HTML5 and such like. Perfunctory visit to the poetry section. I would say 3/4 of the selection are classic. The rest is pure random. Some memo went out saying, We support Mary Oliver, or some other maven of the Post-Interesting Poetry (original typo: Posetry) Era. And the patron think: This is what I’m supposed to get. To enter the spirit of the upcoming movie, I scanned the comix available. These items gleam as compared to the comix renderings back when I littered the floor with my reading. Still doing the same stuff, really.

So then to the nearby theatre. The upcoming treats look less savory than the last bunch that I saw. Harry Pothead looks overly exploded, dire and franchisey. I’ve seen at least 2 of the movies complete, bits of others, and am sated. I have not read the books except three sentences of the first which, along with the illustrations, suggested that I was not the target audience. The look of the movies satisfies, at least.

Something I am not ready for is a Hugh Jackman vehicle, basically Rocky meets Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. Kid you not. The Jackman is a post prime prize fighter who trains a boxing robot. Well really, that’s what the plot is. I did not like the sympathy being encouraged even in the snippets for the down and out robot. Just not up for that. I remember as a kid feeling like Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots were the most fantastically wonderful of toys, tho I nor any friend had them. In sooth, I cannot imagine any kid playing with them for more than 10 minutes without figuring out an interesting way to break them. But any, no thanks.

Our alternate movie choice was Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds. Guess who stars in a movie with what’s his name Bateman? The premise entails polar opposite friends switching bodies. This premise was in the top right drawer marked Worked Well the Previous Times. I sighed but honestly, there appeared some winning chemistry between the stars.

Least but last, an entertainment concerning a chimpanzee given smart drug. I initially thought this was Flowers for Algernon, ape division, but finally we discover that it is Planet of the Apes, the prequel’s prequel. Looked lame, at least if a sack of shit is lame.

Now the X-Men. They were one of my more favourite Marvels, back in the day. I hazard to say I’m talking the original X-Men, but I do not know my comics history well enough to be sure there were no versions previous. I know there was an overhaul in which the costumes changed and maybe personnel as well.

The movie starts gruesomely at a Nazi concentration camp. The gruesomeness engages in the meeting of real historical horror with Stan Lee’s candygrams. The self-centered puerilities of comics look disgraceful situated near the actualities of human lives. I do not want Magneto’s pain equated with the victims of Auschwitz.  Same with Captain America versus the Nazis.

Anyway [stepping from the pulpit], a boy is separated from his parents on entering a camp. In the separation, he reveals astonishing magnetic power. This is observed by someone in the camp. The boy is brought to this person, who proves to be Kevin Bacon and a further expansion of Bacon’s 6 degrees. He wants the boy to reveal his power. The boy tries but cannot replicate the power. To inspire the boy, his mother is brought in, and Bacon aims a gun at her. The boy still cannot work his magnetism, and Bacon shoots her. The boy erupts in magnetic horror, causing the helmets of the guards to crumple most head-breakingly. Tra la, change of scene.

In a Westchester mansion, a boy (still 1944) arises in the night and discovers his mom in the kitchen. Only he knows, thru psychic power, that it aint her. This chameleon reveals her true shape, a blue, scaly female the boy’s age. They confirm simpatico in their mutual mutantness. Elle s’appelle Raven.

Years pass, and the boy becomes a somewhat poncy English professor. I mean he’s Oxfordy, but his field is human mutation. His sister mutant maintains a blonde normalcy, hottie division.

Since plot is something they add at the end of filming—why make sense when you don’t need to?—we then meet a female CIA operative who is keeping tabs on some bad international action. Guess what, the plot centers on the Cuban missile crisis! In the course of her investigation, she witnesses some mutant action. She immediately seeks out Charles Xavier, the aforementioned poncy English guy and mutant expert. Xavier was played by James McAvoy, and was one of the few memorable people in the film. I thought he might’ve been one of the children in Chronicles of Narnia but in fact, he played Tunmus.

Here’s the deal: Kevin Bacon and other bad mutants are working to overthrow the world, and the good mutants, in concert with the friendly folks of the CIA, are out to thwart.

The bad mutants include Azazel, a devilish red character with instant speed and savage violence, a well-dressed bartender-looking guy who controls whirlwind, and a blonde telepath who can turn into diamond… or something… None of this is developed, it just hangs there.

To thwart, Charles X gathers some mutants of his own. The initial boy, who on his lonesome adult quest hunted out some Nazi miscreants, to effect death knell. Kevin Bacon was one of the target miscreants, hence his (Magneto’s) joining X. X’s so-called sister, and a brainy fellow with chimp feet, fill out the roster. Using Scientific Instruments, X implausibly scours the world for more mutants. He finds a handful, including, I think, Wolverine, who tells them to fuck off. Ha ha.

This boring bunch of kids are trained by X and Magneto.The kids remind me of the Substitute Justice League of America, or however it was called. This was one plot I remember from youth. I should be able to tell you the issue number but alas. Applicants whose super powers failed to meet the high standards of the JLA decided to form their own group of crimefighters. I still remember the list. Polar Boy emitted a freeze ray that froze things. As powers go, this didn’t seem bad. Might’ve been a similar one with fire. Chlorophyll Kid could make plants grow extremely fast. Night Girl had Superboy type powers, but only at, um, night. My favourite was Stone Boy. He could turn to stone. In the exciting climax, the Substitutes parachute in to rescue the JLA. Polar Boy barks out orders. To Stone Boy he says, Stone Boy, turn to stone! You can almost feel the exclamation point, can’t you?

Back to movie. This mutant bunch is a load of so what. Angel, who in the original vision was a guy, had silly pixie wings and could puke fireballs. Shrug. Another had some sort of violent power. Another had a scream like that ridiculous yell in the movie Dune. Of course there was the chameleon power’s of X’s ersatz sister. An all too boring selection of cinematic stars.

Bacon wastes no time attacking these kids. Azazel was especially slaughterous. He could move instantly. He would grab people, fly high, then drop, plus he wielded long knives. Unusually vicious violence, you ask me. Oh, I neglected to mention the mutant Darwin, among the good mutants, who could sprout gills and protective scales. The movie played the beat of mutants as second class citizens. Bacon gave a speech on those lines, trying to recruit the kids.  Angel shifts sides, as does Darwin. Darwin’s just fakin’. The good mutants attack Bacon while Darwin shields Angel. Bacon calmly absorbs the attack. He then kills Darwin. Sorry, no franchise for you.

Further stuff definitely happens. It culminates in the US and Russia sending fleets to disagree about missiles in Cuba. X does his psychic thing, which means pressing fingers to temple to read the minds of others. Except for Bacon and McAvoy, the actors are so wanly forgetable, I do not see how a franchise can survive. The translation of these preposterous powers, initially extravagant strokes of pencil on paper, to real life results in real strain. Angel’s pixie wings, dragonfly, really, do not suggest speed. And the fireball barf is a leftfield extravagance. The sonic guy flies according to some physical law that hasn’t approached me. It’s a tricky balance to maintain a reality. How does he survive being dropped from a fighter jet (that seems to be an anachronistic cross between a stealth fighter and that jet with the vacuum cleaner underneath to allow it to hover) into the sea? I think it is part of the human condition to think a little bit, one cannot help it. What I say is, suspension of belief has limits.

Furthermore, and again, the insinuation of this video game minded historical element is so Sarah Palinish as to be repulsive. Gradient up, my friends. Something really did happen back then, however absurd it seems now. Morose self-centric “mutants” in schoolyard mode have nothing to do with actual human processes involving social interactions and grave mishap. I am serious. This is Sarah Palin’s Hallmark card understanding of Paul Revere. The surface is thin but adamant, it would seem.

Little in the movie suggests that anyone ever heard of 1962. Okay, news clips of Jack Kennedy saying Cuber, but miniskirts and anything but an evocation of an era. It seems like the basic homework to account for these things. It also seems like the mindset one should have with a movie such as this is: I’m pretty ignorant, I should like this movie. Yep, and adulate the keen mindset of Palin. And stupid out.

Which is not to say this was not a great day for me, with Erin, who performed several popcorn-“buttered” forehead smacks during the movie. Comix and movies, both, make or break on the surface. Depth is never more than an underling. Reasonableness founders as depth is attempted. We had Thai food at the nearby mall, then wandered thru the cathedral of commerce. Envy is a chunk of merchandise from Apple, sensitive communication pressed thru the official orifices of big business. Such is the current legerdemain. All this opinion is flop sweat compared to the time together. Thank you to my son and friend, Erin, for a great day!

Excellent Movie Idea

Excellent Movie Idea!

The Glowing Green Osprey

Dear Hollywood, Please remit $10 million dollars for can't miss movie idea.

Adolescent boy (Max) and girl (Sam) rescue a strangely glowing green osprey from a flock of marauding crows that were harrying it. Both Max and Sam wear glasses but neither is fat or anything bad like that. The glowing osprey has an injured wing, which Max and Sam fixed by stealing bandages from their parents. Everyone makes fun of the children because of their affection for this glowing green bird.

The three become inseparable. The bird follows them around on foot, even to school. In a telling scene, the town bully picks on the children and threatens the green osprey. Luckily, the osprey somehow manages to thwart the bully, who ends up soaking wet. All the school children cheer. The angry and disgraced bully says, “Aw, take your dumb green osprey and get outta here.”

Later, the children discover that the town's bank has foreclosed on the town's nice old grumpy man's ranchland because it turns out that someone—a pirate most likely—buried pirate treasure on the land. The children want to save the town's nice old grumpy man, Old Man MacGillicuddy, and also the very interesting historical artifacts that would bolster their town's economy by putting the town on the map. Luckily, the glowing green osprey—a CPA, as it turns out—points out certain accounting discrepancies. The bank's mean manager fiddled with the books to set up the foreclosure. The bank manager, who is the father of the town bully, is arrested, and both him and his son somehow end up soaking wet. As the sheriff leads the mean bank manager away, the bank manager says, “If it wasn't for that darned green osprey, I'd be rich beyond belief.” The osprey gives a typical osprey cry and everyone laughs.

The End

“Oh Well”, Various Artists

I curiouslied Norman Greenbaum, “Spirit in the Sky”, on Wiki-Impedia, just because it is a perfection from somewhere (bluesy version). This led me, Youtube-wise, to “OhWell”, the Peter Green/Fleetwood Mac version. Just because.

It turns out a bunch have recorded “Oh Well”. Hence this blog post. This is very important.

• Fleetwood Mac/ Peter Green: As I understand, Peter Green formed Fleetwood Mac having left John Mayall. Green basically replaced Eric Clapton in Mayall’s group, tho I think someone was in between. Green named the group after the rhythm section for apparently not wanting to be too shiny. HE wrote the song. If you consult Youtube (and I invite you to), you will see  that the flashy guitar stuff is handled by another guitarist, Jeremy Slade er um Spencer (good rock music name, Slade, that is), kinda like how Duane Allman played the flash while Derek Domino sang “Layla”. The guy with the maracas, Danny Kirwan, was a solid guitarist as well. The good old days.
• Fleetwood Mac 2: Mac changed a bunch without those 3 guitarists. Buckingham pulled his weight, but Stevie Nicks merely added hers. I like Christine McVey but the new found land differs greatly from Green’s. OK. Buckingham fills the bill here.
• Tom Petty: Mike Campbell gets his hands on that nervy guitar line. As with FM2, lack of second guitarist duel, and the rock star implement of standing there for a gasping audience, dulls the edge, but a credible honoring.
• Black Crows with Jimmy Page. Rich Robinson handles the central guitar line, Page gets the flash. A third guitarist also slashes in. Which one is Page? Okay, Jimmy is old, so you can pick him out. The stance of male figure with Gibson guitar, left hand low on the guitar neck, enforcing the virtues of the electric sound, has been learned. Credible, but Page blows the solo.
• Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Je suis out to lunch: I admit it. I guess I have heard the name. Is he the singer or the guitarist? Another easy channeling of the original.
• The Rockets: Dunno them either, which is not their fault. They pull the song into an almost polka tempo. I do not speak against that, but their results are a trifle lugubrious. The song is rather anxious, textually.
• Joe Jackson: What??? Well, he has the basic flex  of the song. You take a risk when a song bases itself on zowie guitar, and you don’t supply that.  It is a creative test, especially for musicians, whether to simulate or agitate elsewhere. Think of “Satisfaction” by Devo. ‘Taint no ways close to the Stone’s version, or Redding’s, Franklin’s, etc. And Yet.
• The Look: Sludgy rhythm section, 1…2…3…4…

So what’s the upshot here? Influence-wise, what does one do with the excitements one meets? Shift dynamically away or homage? No wrong answer except in the satisfaction gained 1st by artist, 2nd by audience. The original included part 2, “classical” in its way: acoustic, strings, piano.  Memory says both Green and Jeremy Slade (but really Spencer) flipped out from lsd usage. Add them to the long list (Skip Spence..). If you Youtubed, as I admittedly did, all the above, you have things to learn. I can’t teach you this. There is even a used-up-rag version by old and worn out fat Peter Green with no voice left and and and we do not hold our powers forever. This is a blog post on creative learning.

Silliman’s Blog

The vote’s in that posting videos on his blog that are easily sourced is a two-wheeled trike. I know he must weary from his years of perspicacity, blogwise, but mining Penn Sound and Youtube does not require handholding.

To Be by Lynn Behrendt

Thanks to Ron Silliman’s link collection, this collage by I saw her read last summer: go here. My laptop serves it up poorly, and I am thinking it works better as a physical object than a virtual one, but tra la, take what you get. I love the engravings, and the old postage stamps. Do I detect Monty Python’s vole up near the beginning? I’m not sure the words do much. As I said, impact is lost on the small field of my laptop, but the intruding words do not seem to match the visual impact. I mean, the visuals are so stately, historical, and important, and the words seem like jottings. Not that that collision isn’t interesting, but the words are overmatched.

Flarf Flarf

Nobody ever writes about Flarf but this child means to…

Receiving a copy of Ben Friedlander’s book, Citizen Cain (available from Salt Publishing), occasions this determination. I will review the book, but anon. I’ve decided—trying something wild here—to read it beforehand, so I won’t have to make up so much about it. Seriously, I look forward to reading it because Ben (can I call you Ben?) is both an able poet and scholar. No blister, he.

The Acknowledgments of Ben’s book surprised me because I am among those he acknowledges. I think as perspicacious scholar—he swam thru the papers of Charles Olson: think of those tides!—he felt obliged to leave no stone unturned. I earned my acknowledgment by being a member of the Flarf email list. I never really got the hang of making Flarf, tho I tried (and still, for fun, try). As a methodology if not as a promotional device, Flarf’s interesting. Tally ho with my inquest!

Flarf’s radicalism always had the force of people saying it had force. That is, the talk about Flarf seemed to center largely on the talk about Flarf. A note of mischief haunts the method, which seems how it differs from others who have trawled the queasy conclave of voices of the Internet. Flarf is funny. It hauls disembodied declarations ashore in unwashed context. This is found thing, and the Internet is nutty.

The invention of Flarf kinda lays heavily on a sense of legend that I do not find compelling. Critic as someone who likes a good story. It also depends on the slack critical ploy of lumping together. And of not lumping together. Those who did Flarfy methods prior to Flarf do not count? To some extent, yes, just as those who say they do, do. They all seem to disguise the act of reading behind a series of symbols that say ‘In’ or ‘Out’. I weary.

At one time, Impressionist labeled 6 specific people—Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Morisot, and Sisley—and not necessarily kindly. Nowadays, it means anyone who paints with blurry colours.  Critical acts  are  ignored in favour of association. Flarf got balled up in who was on what side, as if circles have sides. I’m getting steamed just thinking about this. A poem is the thing you read, not hear about.

Now, I have made Flarf poems, if you will accept my definition of a Flarf poem. Here is one I did yesterday.

They Said it on the Show Last Night

High rapture provides increased opportunities to mate with high rapture partners. This increases distant survival potential and social contributions of your other children distant same age. Distant child is said to have short rapture achieved level status. Rapture is an agile business evidence of rapture reduction in studies since 1984. Scott Lang distant second Ant-Man attracted to teammate Iron Lad (Nathaniel Richards), who soon left distant group, adopted distant codename "Rapture" and assisted distant Young Avengers against proportionate short rapture conditions. Distant Rapture of Anton Chekhov occupies relatively a central position in distant anthropometric research estimation of rapture of and individual from distant amputated Rapture of Things in Russian Thought. Distant focus of my work involved distant prediction of adult (age 18) rapture in children. What is distant rapture of limitations for felonies in Michigan? They don't have distant rapture to do it.

I collected phrases by searching on a term. For some reason, the word rapture came to mind. Actually, I searched on another term that, embarrassingly, I cannot remember. I then did Find & Replace to put rapture where my search term was. That was my method. If you want, as people sometimes do want in reference to Flarf, you can say that I did not write this poem because I did not make up the words. Remember Guy Davenport reporting someone asking him: “Is that a poem or did you just make it up?” What ev.

I’ve done worse. Sometimes I will run spellcheck over my sloppy typing and randomly accept choices. Sometimes I will ram the text thru Babelfish until something interesting appears. It’s fun if not always edifying. That’s what I know of Flarfian methods. Method, my friends, is red herring.

So when I do read Ben’s book, and try to come to terms with it, I will start  with the poem before me. I will look at the words, see their connections, and go from there. I will only reference Ben’s recent embroglio with Lady Gaga as it elates to specific poems. Kirk out.

Gil Ott and Impermanence

Scanning and perusing the bookshelf, natch I find books and authors I haven’t read in a while. Such is Gil Ott, and The Yellow Floor (Sun & Moon Press). He was editor of Singing Horse Press, fine enough accomplishment, but I think his poetry is wonderful, too.

I thought he died rather recently, but in fact, he died in 2004. Tempus fugit, and we can hardly keep score. I take it that he filled a vital space in the Philadelphia poetry scene.  I cannot think of a Boston figure who fills or recently filled such a role. Beyond our starchy educational edifices, that is, and who wants to listen to that resistance?

Ott’s poetry is short-lined, curt (in its way), yet lyrical. He seems less agonized in expression than Creeley but tunes to a similar measure. A poet, finally, that we should be talking about.

But there, I see a rub. We, readers, no longer seem capable to keep up with the past. That is, we see so many writers who we must read, who are contemporaries, friends, people in reports. Keeping up with the current stream, we ignore or lose touch with the past. I say this not accusingly but just to note how the structure has changed.

Myself, I get few contemporary poetry books nowadays, surely not like I used to. Not because the work I see does not match my impeccable standards, but that I know my limit. There is just too much. And that does not even consider earlier writers who I have missed in my peregrinations.

One feels almost like railing against those that made the cut, Creeley, Ginsberg, and the rest of that short list. Why do they remain ‘important’ while other corpses lie a-mould’ring’? Because of the same limits that I claim. Still, I think the idea that poetry is news that stays news is a valid pronouncement. Our friends and all their chapbooks: is that really the news? If yes, then we should hold on, study, discuss, and grow with those seeds. If not, recognize that fact.

I see little useful validation concerning contemporary poetry in the teeming oceans of the Internet. I mean beyond that X is awesome, and Y rocks. With all the possible outlets, there would seem to be plenty of critical matter floating in the aether, but I am not seeing it. Instead, the production line continues to produce the latest model. Like it or not. Yet poetry, and art generally, seems only partially made without discussion. In this instant, I recommend (because he is what turned up in my shelf scan), a reading of Gil Ott. End of sermon.

Thor, the Movie

Marvel finally got around to committing Thor to the silver screen. I guess I saw an ad recently, and it seemed attractive. Not to sound overly eager. Erin and I saw the matinee today.

Robin Hood may have been the last cinema feature that I saw, and I recall the dreary lineup of trailers. This time the upcoming goods seem at least palatable, given that I don’t want to see anything too heartwarming or sensitive. So my highly superficial run down of summer blockbusters consists of the following:

• Cowboys and Aliens. A finely tuned blend of cowboys and aliens. See, there’s cowboys, and there are aliens. Together! Somehow the particular flash and rumble of this trailer kinda drew me in. That does not mean I would vote for Sarah Palin. Daniel Craig (or whatever the latest James Bond actor is called), looking really rawboned, stars, and Harrison Ford.
• Captain America. I never really liked Captain A. I think the original, during WW2, was well outside my taste range. He carried a gun then, and this evocation does, as well. I suppose Captain America really was the product of eugenics in htge early comic, but placing him in contradistinction to Nazi eugenics does not work. That’s knucklehead talking. Or in other words, fitting tea party philosophy.
• Pirates of the Caribbean 4, the Death Knell. I HATE THIS CRAP. Number 2 was bad, number 3 angered me, and this, it seems, is the vital concoction of Hollywood as hell. Now we have Blackbeard in the role of Depp’s ghost pirate plaything. Blackbeard, the guy who tied lit fuses into his beard when he went into battle: he needs application of this sort of hokum? This has got to stop! Orlando, Keira, and the other familiar faces have been denied star access to this trek into merchandizing, presumably because they are charting further routes to the pot of gold.

So Thor. I rather liked the comic, in the day, but mainly because I’ve always found Norse mythology appealing. From what I can tell, the writers have eschewed most of the comic’s talking points. I believe they learned their mythology from some computer game, but my expertise does not extend to knowing which one.

The story begins in left field, with some scientists studying some local astrological (rewriting note: folks, I really did type astrological when I meant astronomical) wonders. The scientists consist of an older man, a younger woman, who I eventually recognized as Natalie Portman, and a research student. We learn later that the research student is a snarky poli sci student who was the only one to volunteer for service. Some funny back and forth occurs between the three, with the student prime with rolling eyes and youthful ennui. And then their vehicle runs into someone…

Flashback. Hey, we’re in Asgard, learning about the battle between the Norse gods and the Frost Giants. Anthony Hopkins overplays Odin some. It is called acting. Thor and his brother Loki are seen as children, then as adults. Just before Thor is made King of the Gods, or whatever, the Frost Giants attack. They are thwarted but Thor in headstrong mode heads off with his handful of friends to kick Frost Giant ass. Here’s a big weakness.

Thor’s merry band are perfectly boring and undefined. They do not look convincing as warriors whatsoever. There’s a ridiculous battle that substitutes blur for action.  I guess I neglected to mench that we saw the 3d version. More on the wonders of 3d later.

Odin shows up to save the band. He banishes Thor to Earth because of Thor’s impetuosity. Banishment from Asgard is no different from travel in a Star Gate, it so happens. Thor lands on Earth in time to get struck by the scientists’ vehicle. So we get some stranger in a strange land stuff.

The four of them are funny together. Thor, who played Captain Kirk’s da in STrek, is a big hunk of manly yum. Portman spends much of the movie in a fluttery drool. Thor’s hammer lands on Earth, which intrigues A Government Agency. Oh yes, that plotline.

From there, trust me, Loki overacts while betraying his sibling (turns out he’s a Frost Giant whelp, oh oh, no spoiler alert). The Boring Band show up ineffectually, Thor gets cured of hubris, and…

Visually, the movie was a shriek. It was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who blithered Frankenstein into some histrionic mélange of excited numbness. People seem to take him seriously, and I do not get that.

There were some mindlessly wonderful shots of Asgard, kinda trippy, kinda scifi. There was scale, flash, and bang.

The 3d is simply a pox. I will give props to Avatar, otherwise a piece of flattened crap, insofar as the environment felt more convincing than in Thor. Too much of Thor’s effect flouted focus. It seemed like Branagh blew opportunities to rev up the wow factor that 3d allows. And I got to say, the movie made my eyes see funny.

In the end, Loki gets ‘killed’ and whatever. The comic, with Thor switching between being a god and a doctor with a limp, had a nice bit that the movie ignored. Oh well. I got a phone call and missed the lead in to the next episode, but Erin was revved enough to have some excitement for it. Frankly, if someone made a movie of the myth rather than the comic, I’d get a thrill.

Fu Manchu

I think I have carried the thrill of Fu Manchu since high school. Back then, I simply responded to the charged atmosphere of adventure, similar to what Raiders of the Lost Ark aimed at. I have since become more enthralled in the meta cloud surrounding Fu Manchu, tho admittedly I have been satisfied to leave deep cogitations on the subject alone. I will not get deep here, either.

To a clear extent, Fu Manchu = Sherlock Holmes, but on the dark side. He’s more about megalomania than monomania, but in both cases, there’s a perplexingly weird and involved attachment to some goal that those words cannot satisfy. The bee in each of their bonnets, the weed up each of their asses, is enormous.

So okay. Holmes is for Good and Fu Manchu for Evil, but that’s as may be. They’re really out there for a good tussle. Here we discover a particular difference between the two. Holmes matches against an evil twin in Moriarty, as well as other felons of considerable device. Fu Manchu battles a minor lamp in the British Empire’s brilliant beam, Sir Denis Nayland-Smith. It don’t seem fair, but Fu Manchu always gets thwarted.

Read Nayland-Smith as an early version of James Bond. He’s crisp and focused, yet it’s always his good luck, and Fu Manchu’s bad, that British civilization isn’t overrun by Chinese hordes. Yes racism is a player here, more anon.

Unlike the invention of the Sherlock Holmes stories, with Fu Manchu, only one plot appears thru out the series, so far as I know. I have read a number of the books—not all, surely—and cannot differentiate them. That’s okay. P. G. Wodehouse made do with one plot, i.e.: upper class twit (Bertie Wooster, or a clone) must perform some ridiculous antic like steal a hat to avoid marrying someone. Butler ex machina, aka Jeeves, saves the day at the last minute. Fu Manchu tries his darnedest to overthrow Western civilization but Nayland-Smith somehow always throw the appropriate monkey wrench into the works. You come to the end of the book and wonder how that happened. British pluck, inherent, is the answer.

Like Holmes, Nayland-Smith has a helpmeet in his adventures, and a doctor to boot: Dr Petrie. He’s the one carrying the torch (i.e. flashlight) and revolver. Petrie’s peppier than Watson, and in a cunning twist, somewhere along the line even marries Fu Manchu’s daughter.

I mentioned plot, and here it is:

In a charged atmosphere of intrigue (and I am not kidding about that) Nayland-Smith breathlessly appears to British government officials and Dr Petrie with information gathered from arcane sources that Dr Fu Manchu is on the move. The death of some ambassador, or whatever, indicates this. Rare poisons are used and that can mean only one thing. Mysterious appearances of Asian factotums also indicate that Fu Manchu is at work. Sir Denis and the Doctor then proceed to the chase, which always ends up in some wet place, a sewer or waterside warehouse, where Fu Manchu has set up his headquarters. Minions are captured and killed but Fu Manchu absquatulates, but not before a grunt of respect between the two nemeses. Whew!

I have gotten this far without mentioning the name of the author of the Fu Manchu stories. It is Sax Rohmer, born Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward. I only know what Wikipedia tells me.  Note the possibly real connection to arcane knowledge. I love the picture there, Sax Rohmer wearing a silk robe, smoking a pipe. Ah the enchanting mysteries!

The racism here is full throttle, albeit “normal’. Descriptions of Asians, including Fu Manchu himself, obsess on physical features considered ugly or strange. The stories basically report the jolt of Other. Fu Manchu and Asians generally are simply too strange to understand. Their motivations seem thoughtlessly biological. This would seem like the racism of an ignorant day but the death of Osama Bin Laden shows that that day lies close still. Bin Laden himself, ‘as we know him’ (thru media exhortations), is Fu Manchu, plotting and hiding. Never the twain shall meet is not merely an observation, but somehow a right.

In the world of Fu Manchu, Good and Evil teeter in Manichean balance, with just enough sway towards Good to keep us happy. In the real world, such a balance cannot be blessed to remain. Little of substance holds the partisanship together. Yet factions are seen as bulwarks.

Well, I’ve managed to overthink this. I respond to the intrinsic hilarity of these characters. I don’t know if it is still done, but it used to be that in pro wrestling, a playful racism engaged the viewer. It involved evil characters, representing cultural or racial groups, attempting to take over the world of wrestling, after which falls the country and the world. Fu Manchu’s involved plots bear the same nature. And we have an officious and tightly wound Bertie Wooster to save us… I guess at this point I should ask who you are voting for for president next year.

Get Their Books (Prior & Weiner)

Humour me. Innocently encouraging these two writers that someone someday will read their books, with all the false hope that that entails, I now present urls by which dear Reader can purchase these books, both of which carry my seal of approval.

1. David Prior: The Yoke of the Horde 
2. Steve Weiner: Tom's House

It’s up to you, Reader!

Novels: David Prior & Stephen Weiner

Both David Prior and Stephen Weiner gave me their diy books to read. I finally have done so, and will speak of these works. I feel duty-bound, because they gave me the books in earnest. Furthermore, I really encourage the do-it-yourself initiative that computers have fostered. Be your own gatekeeper, sez I.

I at least somewhat know both writers. David I met at a poetry reading. After the reading, folks repaired to a bar, where David bought Michael and me a Guinness. In the later course of things, he sent me his book. That was several years ago, I have to admit. Stephen I have known since I was teenage. Both have non-writing careers. Not sure what David does but Stephen is a librarian. He has published several books on comics, and is regarded as an authority on the subject.

So anyway.

The Yoke of the Horde. David’s novel is a husky effort. It begins in media res, which means in the middle of res. We soon glean that a woman converses one-sidedly with someone she just met at a store. The person with whom she speaks never says a word, never has a chance. That this person never intrudes supplies the woman with the idea of sympathy. She brings this man home with her, to meet, well, the situation there.

The situation there consists of her husband, who just returned from trying to save Tibet, as he puts it. He is nominally the hero of this farce. Additionally, the woman’s boyfriend shares the apartment. She took up with the boyfriend while her husband was away and presumed dead. Now they have a very uneasy ménage-a-trois. The boyfriend is a loutish bully, the husband bullied and outraged, and the woman content within the vision of an idyllic structure. And there we are. Everyone projects their ideas upon the silent man in a tussle of personal viewpoints.

Of course my description of all this sucks. It is really quite funny, as is Prior himself. We see the silent man at work, as well, where he likewise is seen as wise and resourceful, just for not interfering with other people’s viewpoints. The CEO of the company where he works takes the silent man, Tommy, under his wing as an assistant. He gives Tommy the project of improving the little putting green in his office. Tommy proceeds to create a living golf course in the office, with grass, water hazards, and wildlife. Absurdity upon absurdity.

Meanwhile, the ménage grows, with a scholarly couple who are attempting to contact Immanuel Kant via séance. At least according to them, Kant is part of the ménage. Other characters appear, and situations develop.

Like I say, my description of the plot sucks. I thought of William Gaddis (as in: the author of JR) for how intricate relationships perform subtle machinations. Flann O’Brien, to whose name should be attached the great., also comes to mind for the vivid invention of plot and character. Some slightly apocalyptic events occur in the plot. The story almost becomes unwieldy, but David reins it in, and his humour really resonates.

David sets the story in the Boston area, with local references, including a skewed take on our local tv weather guy legend. Thru out the book, and providing a great energy for it, are humourously flaky observations, genuinely funny. This rollicking invention shows what I mean by Flann O’Brien’s influence. I have no idea if David has partaken of O’Brien’s genius, but his eager excitement in the language and plot makes it likely.

I feel the book could be edited. Gatekeepers do provide a service, I will admit. Horde bears the standard mark of diy:typos. For the most part, the wildness of David’s invention works, but an outside eye might excise some sentences. I’ve read enough contemporary novels to declare that this book is far less effluvial than most, but still, a honing can’t hurt.

I know that self-publish still equates with amateur for most people, but this is not amateur work. David’s really at ease in the writing, and disavows the usual map.

Tom’s House. Tom’s House differs from Horde in many ways. Categorize it as a novella, novelette, noveletto, novelini or whatever word sufficient to say that it is shorter than most novels. I admire any novel that can get its work done efficiently. I mean, even as I love the great long novels, the Stephen King sort of affliction that drives stories on and on tires me. Novels should be exactly as long as needed, no longer, no shorter. Please!

Tom’s House presents a teenage boy whose mother has decided to separate from her husband. Tom has a brother, but he’s away in college, so Tom’s alone in the awkwardness between his parents.

Stephen locates this story in our home town, so I identify with that. He actually changes the map some, for the heck of it, I guess. That’s not important, the place is real in the story. The personal warmth of remembrance makes a lively strength here. Stephen lets memory run its course without placing interpretive weight on events. The story is clearly cathartic for the writer, but not tiresomely so for the reader. Stephen manages this by somehow not investing in the character. Very, very often, authors root for their characters, thereby delivering deus ex machina hokum. That’s a bad thing.

Tom feels the expected emotions: anger, betrayal, and confusion. His mother earnestly tries to explain and support her painful decision while his father remains unsatisfyingly reserved. One expects this awkward stoic to disappear by the end of the story.

A second plot point concerns a bully out to get Tom. Tom tries to evade the fight that the bully wants. This is just one more thing for Tom.

Stephen does not exploit these situations but instead handles them with deft ordinariness. He evokes a clean picture of school, friends, homework, and stuff. I easily saw the town where I grew up.

The story pressed towards two big conclusions, as I read. I delight that neither conclusion actually occurs.

I expected, and you would too, that Tom’s mother would decide to work it out with Tom’s father, and Tom would beat the bully. Instead, Tom ineffectually fights and loses to the bully, and mother goes away. Oops, forgot to signal spoiler alert. You know, if a story can be beat by a spoiler, it aint much of a story.

Thru out the book, we see the mother coaxing Tom to accept her viewpoint. We feel him teeter. The denouement, tho, differs from expectation. Tom not only chooses not to accompany his mother to wherever she plans to go, he locks her out of the house. It is a nearly creepy but wholly human scene in which Tom lets phone and doorbell ring, until his mother gives up. He remains with his father, despite the blandishments of his mother.

The father, who relents not to pressure his son, reveals, finally, greater depth that we presumed. Stephen manages to forestall judgmental overplay. We aren’t urged to think anyone made a right or wrong decision, just human ones.

Now the downside of diy. David’s book claims publication by bONGO hEAD pRESS, with a price tag of $12. Honest: you should buy it. If only you could. There’s at least an isbn number, but no address, no copyright, no nuthin’. Facebook David and ask what up.

Stephen’s book can be purchased thru Xlibris here. Sample pages can be read. Obviously, the promotional mechanism lies entirely with the author of diy books. We should support such efforts. Or sit back and let accountants dictate our reading matter.

Review of Days Poem by Nicholas T. Spatafora

I was surprised to learn that Days Poem received a review. This is the third review of Days Poem to appear in Galatea Resurrects, or anywhere. Anny Ballardini and Jeff Harrison reviewed previously. Them I know. I know Nicholas Spatafora strictly from his bio.

And what to make of this?

I have sighed and exhaled welladay that critical consideration has become so secondary to the push of getting more stuff out there. What I mean is, we all overproduce, but the stern eye of critical evaluation hasn’t kept up. Nowadays, appearance in a Books Received list constitutes a review. Am I right?

That is why Eileen Tabios’ effort to get books reviewed carries such weight. It means a current of thought swirls around the tonnage of work appearing now. It’s nice to see those review copies get reviewed. Better than finding them at used bookstores.

So just getting reviewed feels good. And Nicholas Spatafora gives every evidence that he read the whole damn thing, 1000 premium pages. Kudos!

As to what he writes of Days Poem, that brings up another matter, one of some essence. NOT my agreement or disagreement with what he propounds concerning the work but what I, as a writer, expect the reader to ‘get’. Do I expect anything?

So far as I can see, poetry does not contest ideas. That is, I do not try to prove points. Keats of course noted Wordsworth’s tendency to sway the reader, and that was a bad thing. I agree.

The reader, however, can do whatever he/she/it wants. Readers are simply going to do that, no matter what the ‘rules’ are. The reader still must cite chapter and verse to back up any proposal of meaning, we must be scientific at least that much in the critical process. Which only means that we can say shut up, stupidhead to anyone who cannot provide something in a work to back up propositions.

Still, what do I expect as response from readers? I mean beyond a warm reaction, or any reaction at all. I do not really have an answer. As eagerly as we all do write, I think we all trip on that one.

Review of Doggy Doo at Galatea Resurrrects

It pleases me to announce the publication of my review in Galatea Resurrects of Doggy Doo, by Bob BrueckL and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen. Just the thought of reviewing Doggy Doo is a tickle, haha. In addition, the authors each are doing unique and driven stuff. The collaboration provides further testament to that.

Dream Songs by John Berryman, and plus toos

I picked up another book whilst roaming the personal library. Dream Songs, Berryman’s master work. You probably read on it, you college-educated poet type.

Berryman’s suicide makes everything prior more serious, which isn’t fair, but, natheless, there’s some truthable qualities to that reaction. He untied the Gordian knot Alexander-style, but poetry along the way.

Berryman twiddled with syntax, but did so, you ask me, like Milton did, within a motored arrangement of language. Preciously reversed word order.

His blackface is officially awful. We gotta get outta this place. This spectacle of other is emboldened by college-trained spree. It is really dispiriting to read, at this ‘late date’.

There is one misstep.

Berryman implemented a protective coating called Henry, etc, which is fine. No one’s a hero in emotional terms.

Berryman lets leering and snipe flow in the same impulse as was rendering him drunken boat.

That  is another misstep.

He lets fuss take a major place. He harps on horny minutes, or times of disregard. We have those, all of us. He stops there, tho, unthrilled by the continuum. He lugs the weight of the prior suicide, his dad, Exhibit A. Exhibit A is a poor name for the squandered and sad reduction of possibility in one life. College-training seems to condition taxonomy, what goes where.

The poetry is utmost of most of importance. What else could he do? The poetry is not wonderful because, but that’s where the fire got the idea.

Dream Songs lies stuck in official, but even so. Berryman enters, and in moments of embrace, the poetry resurrects. The work as a whole reeks of an effort, and a grandeur making, but, you know, we’re human, weak as that. Skipping over that telltale, do you see something sprawling humanly? I do. We have to get rid of the biography, life is not poetry. Berryman scored the rock, and those scratches bloom outwardly. Read on, the message says.

Three Poems by John Ashbery

I happened to pull this one off the shelf, and remembered its influence and challenge. Hard to believe that a major publisher could publish such a book. Granted Ashbery represents a cash cow, poetry division (7 bucks in the black?). But 3P is a difficult book, at least in terms of what the heck it’s about.

I found the book difficult because it abounds in indefinite pronouns. You don’t know to what he, the poet, refers. Ashbery’s poetry depends on the inferences that you make. When I first came upon his work, I did not know what to do with such license.

Add to that the sense of distance in the voice, of shyness. I met him at Franconia College (close encounter of the 3rdest kind) around the time of the book’s appearance. He was brought to read at the school by Robert Grenier. He was friendly and gracious, in this visit to a certified non New York outpost. At dinner, he grew something like animated at the discovery of so many Leos like himself, including moi-meme, Grenier, and at least one other person. He mentioned O’Hara and the simpatico between Leos and Cancers. Of course it was later discovered that O'Hara’s June birth was in sooth 3 months earlier.  And so I rattle on, about my moments with les tres fameux.

His reading that evening was a qualified failure. The room in which he read was too large and non-intimate. He read without much inflection, in an introspective way that failed the venue. I have the same amplitude, so I can commiserate. Memory swears that he read “The Skaters” and parts of A Nest of  Ninnies (I don’t think I had read it at the time, a perversely influential book for me, somehow). I felt I had to thank him at the end, just to reassure him.

But this book here, what of that? The prose is simple enough. He pulls the rug occasionally, syntax-wise, but mostly the sentences read straightforwardly. Straight to what looms less clearly. Implicative, suggestive, and mysterious.

Ashbery writes within a social formality both restrictive and personal. The poem “Europe”, from Tennis Court Oaths, is probably my first venture into cut up, tho I did not know this when I first read it. I just saw the push of formal engagement fringed with idiosyncratic diversions. 3P more firmly stalks the precincts of ordinariness, radiating from the clammy news of everyday events. I wonder if there isn’t a there I am that can make this approach a bestseller (poetry division). One gets whence he writes, if not what up.

This is interesting news, don’t you think? And his poems are New Yorkerified, displacing the committed blither of experiential enumerators with something skewed from the atlas. She has funny cars, as Jefferson Airplane said, with Spencer Dryden on drums.

Later books of Ashbery kinda blur, and I have read nothing recent by him, not for years. God, don’t let Bramhall besmirch the Ashmeister! Well, I am not! I read Flow Chart with impulsed interest. I’m unsure what the quell and not quell are in Ashbery, speaking in terms of the effective career, but I’ve had my eye on him right along.

John Ashbery is the veritable postcard from an era, one with poetry almost on the front page. I’m thinking without saturation that Samuel Beckett, for one, also posited a similar trick of integration into the nervy naysaying mass of readership. I need not pose an inflation for Ashbery, just accept this occupied space as declaration.

If I have to have a poetry dad to replace the real man, Olson would be. I know, however, or let us say admit, that Ashbery posed questions and spectacles for the slow learning child here. Here I am, as ‘Poet”, pressing prose into poems.

The New Yorker, and all those brands, flick cigarette ash on the chance that poetry will emphasize non-failure in the communicative enterprise. Poetry, you are a possible ointment, without pictures.

Poetry is kinda throwoutable nowadays, don’t you think? It declares itself some barnstorming increment of developing inquiry, pressed into service. I don’t mean to push the snark button, but the lampreys of dialectical obviousness are making poetry a trick of the educated class. It’s rather exciting to see Ashbery enumerate the seconds and millisecs when he paid attention. Buddhist thinking presses on the idea of continuum. We don’t, as brilliant animals, really regard time as continuous. We cannot easily hold consecutive events in active streaming. Ashbery’s net seems especially attentive to the straying and unregulated. He quandaries the non-emphasized. Which is cool.

I would suggest, dear Reader, that a good way to genuinely explode would be to hunt out 3P, and see if the mine still offers _____.

Poetry Knopfified

Eileen Tabios remarks on how Knopf finally got a book reviewed in Galatea Resurrects. Why would Knopf need reviews? In all ways, Knopf poetry books look the same. I saw one once.

Knopf’s containerization of this intellectual property into middle class normalcy makes me tune out. I mean, I go to the library or bookstore, and by offchance lift a Knopf to curious eyes and all sense of curiosity vanishes. The authors are either professors with the calm satisfaction of tenure, or artist types somehow living in Provincetown. That’s the impression I get, sans satire.

The books themselves seem to be worked from recipes. Lots of blank endpapers, credit to the minor league affiliates who published the poems in magazine form, a font of studied hauteur, and a page count ranging from 79 to 80. This is effing why I avoided poetry till I could no longer (I started writing it) when I was 16. This implement of culture, this caulking of the foundation of official taste, this scam fostered by Knopf and the educational industry.

Poetry need not be elevated feelings about yourself.

Poetry need not include sanctions.

Poetry need not be specialized, balkanized, segregated, or synthetic.

Poetry need not Knopf.

Dropkick Murphys in Lowell

Erin and I saw Dropkick Murphys last night at Tsongas Arena in Lowell. Tickets were general admission, which I was leery of, especially as we didn’t leave home betimes like we might’ve. I thought finding seats might be an issue.

A ladies line and a separate gents line to accommodate pat down. Luckily the guy missed my gun, my pills, and my picture of Obama. Lots of people milling around everywhere, like the point was not to go into the arena and watch stuff on the stage. Stuff in fact was in process there. We found seats up high. Erin luckily got an aisle seat, so he was only half-cramped, big as he is. I found myself feeling too crammed with the guy next to me but luckily he felt so too and so he and his girlfriend slid over.

Onstage were three young looking fellows playing very loud and at top speed. I later learned that they were 13. I don’t know where the Murphys got them. Not to reveal my ignorance fully, but I would typify their music as speed punk. The guitarist had the backwards cap and drilled thru the chords. He and the bassist shared vocals. The bassist especially took lead on all screaming. The drummer, with his green Mohawk, was pretty good. Gosh, they mike the bass and toms in such a way, it’s like a gunshot. A couple of times he pounded the beat on the floor tom, and it made me want to jump.

They took zero break between songs, not merge into the next but stop on a dime then hit the gas. The inherent anger of their music seems learned. That’s an aspect that I question of all cathartic sorts of music. You’re onstage, after all, and you have a setlist. Performing anger is still performing. And I wonder if the anger they display isn’t invented. Because the locus and provenance of their anger, from the songs, is social and political, not personal. It’s intellectual, in the end. The anger, then, seems like the chords, something you learn.

Anyway, I’m overthinking. It was fun to watch these kids but I tired of the one speed.

The next group, after a brief set, might have been called I Want To Smash Them All. Indeed, Google tells me that this is so. Maybe you will find more similarly recorded clips of the group from last night. Many had their phones working hard to capture.

IWTSTA consisted of four guys, adults: 2 guitars, bass and drums. They were more varied than the previous group but again, the music depended on 3 chords at top speed. And a shitload of posturing. Maybe they stay up late taking notes on Youtube vids. Holding the guitar low like Jimmy Page or whatever. The fake part of rock has always bothered me. I equate it with Vegas and see no need for it within the pure energy realm that I take rock to be.

The bassist immediately got on my bad side by gesturing to get us hyped up. No, I will get excited when you actually excite me. The singer also bugged me. He was more singerly than the previous and had a certain amount of charisma but I don’t guess his message is so important to warrant the pained look as he sang. You’re just entertaining us, my friend.

The drummer was a wild man. He kept a bullet fast heavy beat with fully committed fills. He sang along frequently, tho he wasn’t miked, and his eyes rolled. The bassist had a mike but didn’t always choose to use it as he sang. Once again, I tired of the same beat thru much of their set. Also, I noted that there was little dancing or movement on the floor.

Speaking of bass, all 3 were uninspired in my book. The sort of bass work that just goes blumblumblum, even if its a speedy blumblumblum, fulfill no interest for me. It’s just a low register noise, and hardly calls feet to dance. The seats vibrate,  and that’s really how you absorbed the bass.

I rather liked the other guitarist, who took a more lead approach. He started most songs. Every song stopped on a dime, and he would immediately begin the next. One time it looked like he caught the other guitarist off guard by somehow starting even faster than usual. The drummer’s high hat fell apart during one song and a roadie came out to fix it. Luckily he got it fixed before the guitarist jumped into the next song, because I did not get the feeling that he would be spared if the drummer needed the high hat.

After them was a bathroom  break. A woman commandeered a stall, which inspired a lot of hooting. She yelled that she had balls, and continued replying to good-natured (I guess) taunts all the while she remained sequestered. Beer, btw, was served, Guinness even. Plenty of guys brought their cups with them.

When I came back, the screens showed a timer counting down from 20 minutes. I never saw that before. Effective, I guess. As the timer neared zero, excitement mounted. At zero, some chords crashed. It was “The Boys Are Back in Town”. Unfortunately, it was Thin Lizzy doing it. The boys lost a chance for an effective opening by blowing the clock.

I didn’t mench that the camera opened up backstage briefly, to show the Murphys with Lowell’s own Mickey Ward.

Finally the curtain drew back and Dropkick Murphys, et al., fired up. The et al. consisted of, blimey, some 6 bagpipers, 3 fiddlers, a cello and what all. Back in 1863, I think, when I was young, I saw Irish folk group De Danann tour with a cello player. Pretty damn cool, because she supplied a nice bottom to their sound which, with fiddle and bouzouki, favoured the high register. Given that folk bands don’t make a lot of dough, bringing a cello along represented some commitment.

Anyhoo, the aural assault was a wonder. Heaven knows that the whistle player must feel weird competing with the deadly guitars. Tin whistles are lovely but even fiddles can overwhelm them. The guitars even crushed the bagpipes. We sat across from the speakers. The sound might’ve been less percussive had we sat elsewhere. As it is, my ears still ring.

DKM has a dedicated following, so the energy was really good. In front of the stage was a pool of testosterone pumping fists, crowd surfing and making weak attempts to get onstage. The singer particularly gave his attention to them. The band does not seem as guy-minded as that testosterone pool would suggest.

The vocals, you know, are an acquired taste. Certes given the working class anger of some of the songs, the hoarse yelling worked well.

The pipers and fiddlers filed in and out as required. Mickey Ward was brought out briefly. Some girls, teenage and younger, came out to stepdance. Which was barely plausible, because the tempo did not conduce to what dancing humans can accomplish. Not that the dancers attempted to keep up. It was more an interjection. Folk musician Alan Stivall did a reel on one recording. It begins with a fast fiddle, then his bagpipes enter. Electric instruments enter, and it is not too jarring. As the tune proceeds to its highest instigation, an electric lead guitar enters. For a while it sounds like two radio stations simultaneously, then you comprise it all, and it’s a nervy gem. So bring on the dancing girls in their sequined stepdancing champion outfits.

The Murphys even brought out the first group. The bassist screamed with the singer, the drummer shared DKM’s drums, and the guitarist matched up with one of the guitarists. That was a nice moment to see.

At one point, the bassist bemoaned that they could no longer allow folks onstage like they did in the old days because someone might get hurt, so he told the crowd to give him space and he went in during a song. He was lost not just to me but to the camera, but a spotlight followed this mass of people in which he sang, presumably. His speech was belied later when during the encore people were invited to fill the stage. One guy stood next to the singer, with his phone in front of him, documenting the experience.

They left the stage prior to the encore. The backstage cam showed the bassist writing down song titles for the encore. “Sweet Caroline” and some other unlikely tune, which he crossed out. Then he wrote “Shipping Off to Boston”, which made the audience shout, and he waved a friendly middle finger.

Previously, the crowd had been satisfied that the band played “Dirty Water”. I saw Phish do “Roadrunner” by Jonathan Richman, an equally satisfying moment of acknowledgement of place.

The band came out to play an energetic “Shipping Off”. I don’t mind admitting that I shouted along. The energy level  and connection soared. The song’s inescapable for them, and they will have to find ways just to get thru it, but for the audience, it’s the secret of fire.

The encore also included AC/DC’s “TNT” and “Charlie on the MTA”, 2 great choices. No kidding, tho, DKM know their marketing. I mean okay, you’re from Boston. It’s canny, yup, but I also like that aspect.

Erin and I left the arena in a daze. What? What?

Simple Theories

Adverting once more my continued gathering of recent works, poems I call them: Simple Theories.

Antic View #151, and to Continue

Oh, hello.  Just to say, I like what I write, having developed a kinship with that which flows thru me. Further, I like Jeff Harrison’s writing, the other and strange. With that up front, I hereby advert yet another installment of Antic View.

Basil Bunting

My copy of Basil Bunting’s Collected Poems found its way into my attention span recently. I have the Moyer Bell edition, © 1985. I presume later editions have been released.

Bunting represents one more hole in my reading—or more accurately, my grasp—to go along with the likes of John Wieners, Joanne Kyger, and more. I mean that I have given these writers a bum shift, insofar as I came to them late and/or read them poorly. It happens, whether I lacked access to their work or simply lacked receptivity. I mean, I have tried to ease the error of my ways. One can only read so much.

With Bunting, Pound’s august authority put him on the map for me. I mean august seriously, at least within the range of Pound’s poetic antenna. For all his disagreeable parts, he did know, and support, poetry.

So I knew Bunting as a poet to reckon with. I found, however, that I stumbled on his locution. His English, from those islands over there, comports strangely to this child of normal television. He drops verbs and shifts word order some. He alludes thickly. These fail as excuses, I only effort to make clear the pebbles I tripped on.

On the plus side, he plays a sternly joyful music. He can make a better case that April’s the cruelest month than Eliot. This aspect of nature poet resounds with him, in a way that I would liken to John Clare. Both carry a down to earth sense and sensitivity to nature. They strip the metaphors away and look directly. Thoreau, when he’s journaling, does the same thing. It is a temperate sort of honesty, one willing to hold back the gush. I’m sure Bunting was a frolicsome weirdo, but he kept his measure, never strayed from the beat.

This video of him reading carries the oracular thunder of Pound himself, and the look in Bunting’s eye can only be called bardic. I feel very open to this writing now.

Mark Twain’s Autobiographical Program (The Inception of Post-Maudlinism)

Mark’s Twain’s effort to produce an autobiography brings a number of ideas to mind for me.  He provides a hint of post-modern potential. By post-modern, I think I mean post-maudlin. And that means (or perhaps just suggests) something at least straying from the sentimental.

In Boswell’s Life of Johnson (can we say that the diary of Samuel Pepys is the life of his johnson? Okay, moving on), we repeatedly hear Johnson speak of the fine sentiments of certain great works (Oliver Goldsmith et al.), as if enunciation of a good program were the heart of literature. No slander on the author of “The Deserted Village, 20 pages of observation and social concern. The fine sentiments and instigation,—viz., for further instance, Shelley’s rollicking “The Mask of Anarachy”—can certainly be the field of poetry.  It just cannot describe the whole of poetry’s possibilities. We have found, have we not, that dickheads and ding dongs produce fine literature too. I mean, allow that our modernist anti-Semites did, despite their scuzz, create nerve endings of interest. Artists are like people, and they vary and disappoint at times.

And so I have taken a round trip to my point, if indeed it is sharp enough to be so called. Twain’s autobiography, the so far  of which can be found here (2 more volumes await the light of day), illustrates post-maudlin attitude, I think.

For some 40 years, Mark Twain laboured with the idea of autobiography. He clearly envisioned a work putting “it all” in, like he was channeling John Ashbery. He aimed  for “complete honesty”, like the woebegone incorporated of the so called Confessionals. His seriousness in this exercise shows in his willingness to wait a century before full publication of whatever he produced. Libel laws might be an influence, of course, but still.

He enjoyed enough clarity to forswear chronology.  He wanted to retail memories and episodes strictly as they came to him, disorderly and important. Isn’t that the practice of many of our post-modern stepping stones?

Twain’s accumulation of autobiography slogged thru assorted ideas of attack. The newfangled typewriter tempted him, not so much for composition as for the logistical labour relief. Dictation became a tool, because he wanted that flighty garrulity of memory and occasion. He even utilized Thomas Edison’s invention, declaiming his stories to a phonograph. Not a great success, but look how open he was to the new.

His project endured numerous false starts. Call what we receive via the Mark Twain Project a false finish, since (like Charles Olson’s 3rd volume of Maximus), the author did not live to see the final version. Not, really, to say what I am reading now accepts the mantle of finality. It consists of what a bunch of editorial myrmidons collated into a functional army for the relief of I dunno what poor franchise.

The big ass post-modern markers like The Cantos, Maximus, and name your poison, shine with inclusion. Not a new idea. Virginia Woolf wrote about moments and moments and moments, gravely endured and noted. Henry James pushed plot aside to envelope the words between the actions. And so on. Proust, we know, had a life to live as he relived the life. Melville interlarded Moby Dick, and the rest of his oeuvre, with telltale importations from his curiosity. My list of examples stands far from complete. Hello, Montaigne, DonQuixote, Tristram Shandy,  and so on.

What Twain wrote does not read strange, if maybe neatniks may squawk about structure.  He recounts, for instance, how he garnered the rights to Ulysses Grant’s memoir, Grant dying as he wrote. Twain writes of being skinned by an inventor of a typography machine.  I actually have not gotten to the part officially designated the autobiography: I still reside in the introductory front matter. I see not the shape but the functional approach. I like it. I will keep reading.

Poetry, you see, clambers towards some opening. What, we wonder as we read, could be within that opening?

Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Beth’s mother, colluding with Beth, gave me volume 1 of Autobiography of Mark Twain. Two more volumes await publication. The Mark Twain Project prepared the book. And I’m like, wow!

The Mark Twain Project, if you don’t follow the link, dedicates itself to producing scholarly work on Twain’s apparently abundant oeuvre, and to put most if not all of it online. This scholarly dedication fascinates me.

I like Twain, tho I cannot declare to be well-read in his work. Huckleberry Finn certainly rates as a classic, Tom Sawyer’s ok, Life on the Mississippi has some beautiful passages. And of course as a humourist/satirst ,Twain’s stature stands high. This book & project excites me because of its attempt to embrace the totality of scholarship.

The thing is, every writer/artist could be so embraced, so we can see juvenilia, sketches, marginalia, alternate and early versions. So we can learn the context of the artist. These things catch my interest. Practically speaking, one cannot delve so deeply into too many artists unless you are, professionally speaking, a scholar. I do not become a scholar by reading this book, but I get a taste of the enterprise.

I should mention that this book weighs in at a hefty 700+ pages of small print. Those pages break down interestingly. The introduction and such front matter entail the first 200 pages. Explanatory notes begin on page 469. Appendices, chronology, index, and sources flesh out the back matter. Two hundred pages of actual autobiography, the rest is meta to the meta meta degree.

Even tho the cadre of editors seek to produce something authoritative, it is an editorial work (editoreality, if you will). They construct an idea of what Twain wanted from whatever evidence before them. The author is just one voice in this.

The business end of this reveals itself. Someone controls the project (necessarily, of course). Or several someones. So the work must bend to not just scholarly necessity, but to, oh, the editor’s career and interest. Furthermore, family or whoever was entrusted with the ‘ownership’ of the work will have goals outside whatever pure vision we want to imagine.

I used to love the diligence and clarification that George Butterick put into Charles Olson’s work. I now realize, and accept, that he did it his way. Olson left a mess, and Butterick interpreted it. It is collaboration where we cannot easily, if at all, define who did what. So it goes. I still respect the work that Butterick did, but recognize that he shaped the mass of papers that he worked with.

I do not expect to blast thru this autobiography, but I shall enjoy my reading. And plus also: Twain is after all officially hilarious.