Super Goat Man by Jonathan Lethem, etc

Barnes & Noble offers 9 free audiobooks here. One of the offerings is Super Goat Man by Jonathan Lethem, which I recently listened to. I've read Lethem's Fortress of Solitude and his essay collection, oh, and some while ago I also read another Lethem novel. Problematic.

There is something alluring about Lethem's work, and something disappointing. In saying disappointing, I mean that he fails to satisfy some expectation that I have. My expectation is not something that an author must fulfill, but I think Lethem gives evidence of what I should expect.

Super Goat Man is probably a novella (I always loved the distinctions: short story, novel, novella, novelette), about 40 minutes long. Lethem reads the story and does so excellently: clear and patient.

Like in FOS, there is a comics undercurrent (or overcurrent). The title character is indeed presented as a comic book hero, albeit one with no evident power or accomplishment. The narrator, as a boy, meets SGM, who lives in a hippie commune near to the narrator in Brooklyn (whence comes Lethem). SGM is a fallen hero, fallen mainly because he just wasn't interesting. He is also presented as an actual comic book character. The narrator's father collects comics and tries to interest the narrator in the genre.

SGM is just a mysterious connection for the narrator. The narrator evinces some dull fascination towards SGM, as likewise the narrator's father. There is intimation that there may have been dalliance between SGM and the narrator's mother. Tempus fugit.

The narrator goes to college and finds that SGM is a professor there. No strong tie occurs but the vague sense of connection and fascination remains. Then occurs the dramatic apex, in which some drunk students climb the clock tower and call out SGM, disgraced superhero, who attempts to save one of them who teetered on the brink, but fails. SGM seems superpowered, tho this remains unclear.

As a lengthy act 5 we are given the facts of the still young narrator's marriage to a student, then meeting SGM in SGM's decrepitude. In this presumably last meeting, it becomes clear that the narrator's wife, before they were married, had had an affair with SGM. And there we are.

I apologize for recounting the narrative, it sounds so plangent. On a sentence level, a level that I think is important, Lethem writes well. His words flow with generative connection. The plot, tho, seems too contrived, loaded.

What gets me, and this came thru when I read FOS, is how the essays reveal Lethem's interests, the seeds of his fiction. The straightforward essays offer a much more compelling sensibility than the contrivance of his novels. SGM raced to a conclusion that was, in iffy fashion, a surprise. The narrator's issues with parents and wife are jarringly turned towards the failed superhero. The end.

I am bothered by how narrative overwhelms the living parts of fiction. One notes that Lethem resides in the narrator, in the interests presented, not to delve into this as autobiographical resource. Okay. Yet reading on, one wants the superheroes to live within the context of the narrative world, instead of being daydreamy adjuncts.

Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann intrigued me simply by the title and whiff of plot. It is about a special world that intersects 'this' one. The story is more mundane than that, finally, tho not fully removed from that initial impression. Lethem's work has that same feeling of reality intersected by fantasy. Lethem's essays, in their straightforward acceptance of the importance of Jack Kirby and comics, etc, betray a greater sense of imaginative marvel than do the novels. Guess what: plot gets in the way.

The novels that I admire are willing to minimize plot. Plot compulsion becomes a muddling agent as the author feels required to stick to the inherited mathematics. I say let the magic begin.

Lenin, Stalin, Whee!

I got an urge to read some of Lenin's work, tho my sense of political expediency resides in the personal more than the united plunge into utility. I mean by that only that I am suspicious of the group effect, tho I recognize a need for teamwork, yo. So I got a few books from the library. One was a collection of Lenin's writing's on, as it was called, the women's issue. Wherein there are a lot of declarations that would fit perfectly in the Constitution. Lenin's self-consciousness and sense of effect, the need for that, deflates the vigour of his assertions for me, but I think he is worth reading, if for no other reason than to let his actual assertions bear the weight, rather than the straw dogs that 2nd hand pundits might have erected. This is a poetics of words speaking for themselves rather than as launchings of interested predicative. Or whatever...

Anyway, I also got a book by Stalin, a collection of his writings. It was edited by Bruce Franklin, in 1972. Franklin, who I do not know, adverts a familiar shrillness as a declared Communist. You know, university professor cum anti-war protester, cum professor without tenure. His assertions necessarily are tinged by the need to propagandize, which is unfortunate. Many years ago, my friend and I were wandering in Cambridge, aka the People's Republic. We noticed a Communist bookstore, and my friend had to investigate. It proved to be a rather spacious store front. Books and tracts were available, as I recall, but there really was much more room in the place than the offerings required. A copy of London calling by The Clash was available. The proprietor said that he took it in trade, but was dismissive of such commodity. I think my friend entered into discussion with the proprietor of the place, that would be like my friend. I kept quiet, being less schooled in historical matters as I should have been. On the wall were portraits of Communist heroes: Marx, Engels, Mao, Lenin, and, surprisingly to me, Stalin. I did not feel well prepared for debate then but I was able to speak one word to the proprietor: pogrom. The guy admitted that there were errors made by Stalin. Errors just does not seem to cover what Stalin did, does it? And not only that, Stalin was not even a comrade, he was an overlord. And irony just does not exist. I have not read Stalin's words yet, but Franklin clearly is in the same camp as the store proprietor, more intent on making a safe house for his theories than examining the actions of his hero. The drawing on the book cover (published by Doubleday, not some commie publishing inflection) shows Stalin in declarative action. He is at a podium. Left hand rests on some papers. His right hand reaches out to the audience. He has a benign expression. Despite the brown uniform that he wears, he looks like he is selling produce, Ey, try my fresh-picked apples. I think he owned many dachas, certainly wrested mucho power, ice ax to the head a-many opponents and otherwise scoffed the words he efforted to define. We do that in Americay, too. It is not just about inflection, but extension of words into action, and how action is the root of words. As in, how does one's words act. Poetry wants words in their naked selfhood. Not pleadings but stances in the mire, fought for. NotRobert's rules of order, but ambiance of meaning.

Great Gatsby, OMG!

I have been listening to a recording of The Great Gatsby. ever hear of the book??? well yeah, it is a warhorse. I 1st read it in high school, 9th grade. and I liked it, I think. that it is as ubiquitous a cultural item as, say, Vivaldi's Four Seasons should not take away from the pleasure of the book. Fitzgerald had a magnificent ease with his writing. edit that, his best writing was honey smooth. I dutifully read Tender is the Night and it was pretty much of a botch. too much effort following thought out strictures rather than allowing the story to find itself. the plot of Gatsby is meticulous to the point of being burdensome. it is wonderful to see the intricate play of elements but that ends up seeming like gimcrack. the interwoven relationships work, but they derive from that basic novelistic falsity that does not draw me in much. I am taken with how Scott's satiric edge merges with his fascination. he belongs to the world of which he writes yet also stands aside. the tension of those 2 viewpoints holds the story together. I saw the movies after having read Gatsby at least a couple of times, and the look of the movie (I mean the version with Robert Redford) informs how I imagine the characters and look of the book. Redford's crisp woodenness seems perfect for Gatsby, and just seeing all that white flannel and those airy mansions evokes a milieu and an era. Scott's description of the social interactions between people is Proustian in its presence. certainly Scott was not attempting the depth charge that Proust committed to, but the prickling light bouncing off the social surfaces in Gatsby are pretty vivid. the scene in which Tom Buchanan dismally honks about the need for racial purity, and the women prattle about his great intellect, is clustered unknowing fatuousness. and there's the library of uncut books, and that ridiculous drunken car crash at the first Gatsby party that Nick attends. oh, and I love the litany of attendees to Gatsby's party, with the goofy names and desperate invocation of importance as in the society page of the newspaper. about which I wonder, whither goest? as newspapers conk out, will there be a venue for those pictures of Dr and Mrs Whosis at the charity ball? I mean, would a website serve so lusciously? a brave new world is nigh. anyway, Scott's short stories, which Gatsby extends from, are flush with a humoured embrace of present giddy particulars. Tender represents the artist's attempt to create weight. the result is something that cannot bear its own weight. I think of Truman Capote's Answered Prayers, which is his attempt to find value in the tacky social network he teased himself into. Capote had Proust and probably Fitzgerald clanking in his head as he tattled about his friends and acquaintances. he missed the boat entirely. everyone had the clef to his roman, probably because he had gossiped it all right along. and these elite are not so fascinating, of themselves, as he believes. Lee Radziwill? Babe Paley? Fitzgerald was not just fascinated by the milieu of America's rich explosion. Gatsby ends, almost jarringly, with a reminder that the main players in the drama were Midwesterners. the implication of the American turbine may not be drawn out enough but it is a node of interest and relevancy in the book. I do not entirely trust Fitzgerald or, in fact, many of the most interesting 20th Century American novelists. Hemingway interests me almost not at all, but Wolfe and Dos Passos have their moments, and I really like immersing in Faulkner, but there is something that I do not trust about them, all of them. it is something about these United States that scars or misshapens the work. dare I say that the pure products of America go crazy? there is something to that, tho I recognize that a curveball exists in the word pure.

watched Pineapple Express last night. I now have 2 Apatow/Rogen movies under the belt. it had its moments, and some limitations. Seth Rogen is a likeable presence, everyman lug and wise ass. in this movie he is a process server, which is only relevant for the first few minutes, during which he serves subpoenas and smokes dope. this is Rogen at his most comfortable, and he is funny to watch. the plot shifts to his girlfriend, who is still in high school. which is played for laughs but we are still supposed to take the relationship seriously. it is just awkward, and is largely left behind for the rest of the film. the plot begins in earnest when Rogen goes to buy more pot. his source is James Franco, total stoner. I know Franco only from Spiderman, where he has to be overwrought, but goodlooking. he and Rogen are great together, even to the uncomfortable point of you thinking you knew these guys in college. after Rogen leaves he witnesses a murder by a drug lord. in his distress Rogen leaves a joint at the scene, which the drug lord easily identifies (it is the rare weed pineapple express), so Rogen and Franco go on the run. here things get stupid, and a little tone deaf. there is a Tarrentino mix of murder and mirth that does not settle well with stoner contentment. the humour is slapstick but, well, I must bring up the Three Stooges. the slapstick of the Stooges was stylized in a way that detached the mayhem from gross consequence. in this movie, the violence looks painful, and characters die. so the humour gets quashed. our stoner heroes are joined by another stoner, who is hilarious. the cast is solid, tho Ed begley and Nora dunn are wasted as the girlfriend's parents. when they appeared, it seemed like the movie might be perched on absurdity, but they ended up just fulminating. ApaRogen movies seem improvisational. I imagine that the story is whipped up over a weekend, the script over the following week, then they take a week or so to film, and it is all fun and games. that is how it seems. it works because the cast is solid but I think this sort of production eventually wears thin. I find that I do not want to see another trailer for a Will Ferrell movies, because they are blurring together, and I suspect that Rogen and Apatow may be doing the same thing.

Jack Kimball writes well of the current temperature of the poetry world and its subsistence blogs, here. the zest seems to have passed, drained elsewhere. as in Facebook, Twitter, I don't know. the Poetics list, and others, too, were lively, in their day. lo 10 years ago or so, I came on board this internet, greeted by a network of forces that I had been abstracted from. there was contact with other poets, that is, and it grew my own work immeasurably. I was vitalized by the Poetics list then, and Subpoetics, and some few other lists. they were places of energy. the old neighbourhoods have changed and right now, it feels like nothing has replaced what there was. I guess there's a whiff of nostalgia here. I do not think that blogs have lost their utility, as singular fronts and as community nodes. my own usage has skidded some recently. I always consider this blog a Poetry blog, even tho my posts are often 'off topic'. I associate everything that I write here with poetics, and if you have a moment (make that a few moments), I could explain. not right now, tho. my reading has not been poetry overmuch of late, tho I have just brought down John Milton from the shelf (Paradise Lost, perhaps), having read a Cromwell bio. and I am reading Carl Sauer's 17th Century North America, and been listening to Olson lectures, namely the Vancouver reading (remember when poetry could be exciting???). if we really are a community, then we need to kick out the jams. we are drifting, right now.

saw two more movies over the weekend, Signs and Contact. both of which we own, and have seen before. Signs simply hits me. its atmosphere is claustrophobic and scary. visually it is gratifying. it is not a flashy exercise, it just feels well filmed. Mel Gibson is pretty well tainted at this point, it is hard to forget all the weirdness attached to him now. I am, that is to say, leery of him, even films that appeared before he weirded out. despite this prejudice in which I find myself, he comes across well. the cast is really good. a pall hangs over Gibson and family. Gibson's wife died before the action of the movie. the older child is a morose boy, the younger a quirky girl. and there is Gibson's brother, played by Joachim Phoenix. the relationship of these 4 is funny, human, and convincing. so I have named many of the positives in the film. Gibson's denial of God because his wife died, and his ultimate renovation, is too pat. art is interesting when it doesn't explain. the movie is basically Childhood's End meets Dawn of the Dead meets War of the World's. the freshness of the humour, the compelling atmosphere, and the realness of the relationship of the 4 of them, as family members and as actors, is what distinguishes this movie. I have seen it 3 times and still enter it wide eyed. Contact has a similar underlying wistfulness as Signs. Jodie Foster is ambitious researcher who lost her father at a young age. like in Twister, as it happens. that loss informs her actions thru out. the SETI project is a big I don't know for me. collateral discoveries and advancements aside, I wonder if it is getting very far. it is in the movie but... well anyway, Jodie has a 2001 moment, which is upbeat in that odd heroic way of Carl Sagan. Tom Skerritt and James Woods are nefarious in a pat way, but that doesn't matter. the focus is on Foster's trip, if I can please use that word. which brings me to Foster herself. she is a good actor, very intelligent yet lively, but even when she is giddy, there is a coolness about her. we're not used to smart actors, I mean really smart ones. Hollywood is full of knuckleheads so it must be hard for her. anyway, Foster brings forth that preternatural faith in science that Sagan brought.

the reading fare at the supermarket has presented what I believe is an inordinate amount of material concerning Jennifer Aniston. I have nothing against her, and admit to having watched Friends for a time. sure, she had the one hit on tv, and smartly did not hustle another one (so far as I know). she did a few modest movies that look to be extensions of Rachel, tho I have not seen them. and there you are, tho I should not forget Leprechaun. the drama with Brad and Angelina, woohoo! plenty acridity there. and I thought she had already broke from John Mayer (loved him with the Bluesbreakers) when I learn that Jen dumped him just now because Mayer claimed he was unavailable to her but was publicly tweeting (probably to Eric Clapton and Peter Green). so look, here's an FAQ (my 1st!) to give you some sense of the real Jennifer Aniston.

1. Does Jennifer have the power of flight? of course she does. sadly, she just doesn't have the time to indulge this passion of hers. she is a sight to behold as she flaps her arms and glides thru the tepid Southern California sky.
2. so what's up with that expensive hairstylist that she used for the Academy Awards? yes, a lot of money was paid so that Jen and her stylist could work together to make her hair the most beautiful on the planet (Earth) on that magical night. her stylist removes each hair from the follicle, cleans, dries, and perms it separately, and reattaches. such expertise and care does not come cheaply.


3. was Jennifer shining shoes at train stations when she met Brad? yes.
4. what is the longest that she has stood outside the Branjolina residence, staring grimly? 17 days. it ruined the gown she was wearing.

watched 40 Year Old Virgin yestreen. and it is indeed what the title indicates. this may be my 1st and only Judd Apatow movie. he seems to be the John Hughes of this generation. at least so I infer, judging by the murmur that I hear. and is Seth Rogen the new Molly Ringwald? the movie opens with a very familiar set up, with Steve Carel as 40YOV, and all these risible details of said character acted out as the opening credits roll. Get Smart began the same way. Carel is quite likeable, being nerdy yet with a modest loopy aggression that sparks the humour. he and Colbert bear similarities, tho obviously they took different routes away from The Daily Show. the idea is that Carel's putative friends help him to get, as they say, laid. it is the sort of plot that so many teen comedies of the 80s wore down, tho it is cast with older tho no less puerile characters. the ensemble is good, with Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, and I do not know the other guy's name tho he looks familiar. the situations are stupid but the throwaway lines are great. yes, it is so much like a John Hughes movie, before he really crapped out. there's an improvisational feel to all the actors, which makes one wish that the press of narrative could have been detoured more. it ends with Carel singing Aquarius and everyone dancing Hair-style, which went off really well. I think I could bear watching 2 more Apatow movies, then I know they'd just bear on me as the limited entertainments they aimed to be.

I have pretty much failed Twitter, and am not overly sad about that, because it is just one more thing, but still, it is a gooey mass of (self) interest, if you will. for instance, Christopher Walken tosses off flakes of moments that are quite... something something... evidence at this link... the deal is, poetry could be found or made in this context. that I have accomplished little of either is not the point.

saw As You Like It by roughly the same troupe as was involved with the home school coop. the person in charge of the production today was the initial force, and director, behind the previous productions (most of which I wrote about here in Tributary Land). I think we can say that creative differences caused her to leave the aegis of the coop behind. and so...

the venue was the grange building in Groton, MA. grange!!! not a great place for a play, but that difficulty is something of a funky plus. the audience has a different involvement when performances are other than slick.

the largish room on the 1st floor was the dressing room. upstairs was a similarly-sized room, with a small stage at the end. the stage size certainly proved a logistical problem.

probably more than half of the cast had formerly been involved with the homeschool coop. Rosalind was played by the girl who played Juliet a couple of years ago. she did a great job in that. for this production she was music director and composer and was a dance coordinator. she wants to be a classicist (Latin and Greek), and is a member of a sword dancing team. zowie! she handled Ganymede's dazzling wit delightfully. her Romeo from the previous production played Orlando. he has a slapsticky presence (he is almost as tall as Erin) and likes to ham it up, but he is strong in dramatic roles, as well.

I do not want to critique the acting too much because I am impressed by all the actors. they all get their lines capably, and some few, like the above, put dimension in the lines.

there was quite a bit of music in the production, all played live. I was struck that a girl of 4 or 5 was given 2 solos. I would not have asked it of her but she did a good job with those quirky melodies and rhythms (I do not believe that the songs were composed by the Rosalind actress, probably adapted).

there was a stairway from the dressing room to the side of the stage. one can both come on stage or enter the hall. near the end of the play a girl came thru the door into the hall and marched in front of the stage and sat down in the front row. it seemed at first that she had just used the bathroom but did come up the other staircase, as we were told to do. the adult she sat next to tried to hold her in the seat but she got up and moved. then she stood at the front of the stage. then she went on stage. by this time it was clear that she was autistic. and as it happens, a member of the cast, tho not of this specific production (two full productions are run). I do not remember which character it was took the girl (9 years old) by the hand and kept her out of the way. nobody panicked or got upset, which is nice. perhaps the girl should've been dressed in her costume even tho she was not in the day's production. when the characters danced and sang together, the girl joined in.

autism and Alzheimer's are 2 shocking human revelations. engaged in the idea of normalcy, we see people who are tuned to some key that we cannot hear. and how difficult it is for us to accept that difference. we lodge in the difficulties that we see, very real difficulties. we labour with these differences. we stand stunned in front of these differences. we expect people to understand the world in the way we understand it. I think that we can take from Shakespeare the idea that we do not know what other people's role is, nor even our own, on this stage.

my reading of Shakespeare is not exhaustive, perhaps half of the plays. it is a lovely thing to see productions, e'en such amateur ones as this. his work has life, still. this life may muchly owe to his rep, the cultural ok that he has. imagine the Mermaid Tavern, and Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson, plus whoever else (no scholarship talking here), talking brilliant whatnot. they were not gods. and remember the Monty Python skit in which Whistler and Wilde exchange bon mots, which devolves to mere vitriol. maybe the brilliance of Shakespeare is the same as is evinced in Lost, or whatever other hot tv show that I have not seen. Shakespeare seems supercharged now but there were cheap seats then as now. I cannnot answer any of that, but these plays are mighty instigations, for sure.

love this little story about Clayton Eshleman that Jack Kimball found. Jack demurs on the suggestion that Eshleman may be the next John Keats with this perfect encapsulation: "Yes, if Keats had worked out more on the poetry-is-applied-dabbling-raised-to-revelation side of things." I like Eshleman for Sulfur, which delivered an exhaustive amount of work (I have more than 40 issues of the journal), as well as his own weird historical modernism. Jack has posted several times perceptivesly on Eshleman readings, if you would like to peek in the pantaloons.

reading at Furtherance by J H Prynne (The Figures). I say reading at because I have not read thru, which I do not usually do anyway with poetry books. it is a collection of 4 tiny publications (the whole is slightly more than 100pp). well, I just want to say that it is quite lovely. Prynne tickled my interest because of an Olsonian connection, I think (hazily) that Olson bespoke Prynne. what ev, Allen: what of the POETRY? ok, given the critical standards of the day, I might asseverate that Prynne totally rocks, using ESPECIALLY emphatic italics there. there is something post-Olson about Prynne, where the methodological study of Olson has been transformed into a capable and common usage. by which I mean Olson's self-conscious quest has been transformed into a general tool. reading these poems, I think of the 3rd Maximus volume, where Olson returns to a more straightforward narrative and even a lyrical integer. there is a LANGUAGEy sort of intuition in Prynne, but free of the self-referential inscape of academic promulgation. I mean, isn't there a touch of conscious academic outreach in the LANGUAGE parlance? as I entered the LANGUAGE realm, in discovery mode, I was dismayed by the clanking vocabulary of the critical matter. I got the loopy satire of, say, Bruce Andrews, and appreciated the cogency of Silliman and Susan Howe, and I trusted, having some 1st hand experience (hoka hey! I am Facebooked among former Franconians (Franconia College, just to be clear), tho Grenier is not as yet among that number), Grenier's wired interest. but beyond some few, I discerned in LANGcrit a rattled academic barf of big words meant to look big, and fit the academy's need. which I did not see in Olson, tho he talked over my head so often. Prynne pragmatically takes a LANGUAGE sort of involvement, and an intellectual embrace, and presses that verbal activity into a diurnal sort of squeeze of process and margin. please nod if you catch my drift. I am also confronted with how English in the UK sounds different from that of the American states, as furthermore does the poetry of Canada sound in slightly different, slightly unfamiliar, tones. vive la difference, fer sure, tho I might struggle with unfamiliarity.

Carl Annarummo published my recent chapbook, but beyond that evidence of percipience, he makes really nifty books. look at what he has produced. I recommend all of his work.
unrelated, but another wonder worker, Donna Kuhn and ferlies of visual and word.

taking a moment to feed my blog, on a springy, daylight saved day in southern New England... I downloaded a word processor called Jarte (and you can too). it is a simple word processor without a lot of extras. writers do not necessarily need all those extras as offered by Word and OpenOffice, both of which I regularly use. it occurred to me that I get the same jolt from getting a new word processor as I do a new pen or notebook. just as a new pen or notebook seems to open possibilities, likewise different word processors. just the difference of the interface, I guess. changing where I write has always seemed to come thru in the writing. watched portions of 3 movies yesterday, while doing other things.

1. that movie by the Farrelly Brothers about Siamese twins, starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear. clearly a South Parkian willingness to risk bad taste. Damon and Kinnear are connected at the waist, they share a liver. while their condition is occasionally awkward it is never disabling. it helps that they can switch sides at times, which is not explained and is barely pointed to. it is a surprisingly goodhearted movie. playing somewhat against type, Kinnear is the confident one and Damon is tremulous.
2. that smoking industry movie starring Aaron Eckert. his character is a lot like his role in Dark Knight. his character is a crisply accomplished and efficient lawyer defending the tobacco industry. he is pretty charismatic.
3. Troy. seeing the trailer at the theatre had me, specifically the shot from above of the 1000 face-launched ships headed towards Troy. I have seen it several times and enjoy it, tho it has its weaknesses. the gods have been excluded from the story, which is okay. Zeus and the gang would distract from the human story. the movie opens with a nice evocation of a battlefield, with Agamemnon's army about to face that of Thessaly. it is hard to conceive of the hand to hand clash of such armies. the battle of Cannae, Hannibal's greatest victory over Rome, saw an army of at least 50,000 Romans destroyed. some of those were made slaves but most were slaughtered slaughtered slaughtered. having a visual rendering of something like that, I mean a representation of two large armies meeting, is fascinating to me. whoever played Agamemnon was perfect. he is beefy and blustering and pompous as I imagine Agamemnon to have been. Brad Pitt as Achilles is good despite an overarching Brad Pittiness. you cannot forget that it is Pitt there, the guy married to the goddess Angelina (and not to that pale hamadryad Jennifer). Pitt is convincing vis-à-vis the physical prowess. early on he goes up against a steroid giant, whom he efficiently dispatches with a Michael Jordan sort of leaping feint. when Achilles and the Myrmidons hit the Normandy shore, Achilles is blurry ferocity. this ferocity brings to mind John Cleese's Lancelot in Holy Grail. the movie presents a lot of great shots of Troy and the battleground, a lot of presence. Eric Bana as Hector is terrific. he clearly hath not th'advantages of Achilles but proceeds nobly natheless. Orlando Bloom, despite all the great swordplay in Pirates and Rings, is stuck being a washout as Paris. it is a thankless role. there are plenty of changes in what we know of the Troy story, some of which seem gratuitous. Patroclus is the nephew of Achilles, brash due to youth rather than hubris, and Achilles can focus his attention on Briseis. the movie fizzles out after Hector dies, mainly because that love story is tired.

Steve Tills comments on my reaction to Elizabeth Willis' intro to Lisa Robertson, below. I should say that when I make bold statements, I imply, and you should infer, a question mark. as in, in this instance, is Willis' intro as disturbing as I think it is? that would require you (Dear Reader) to go to iTunes and download the podcast. I have read Willis' poetry, and like it, but I wonder why poetry should be transmuted into an academic quandary of code. poetry itself is a code, but the key is, poetry's code is immediacy. words in poetry are leaping life. Emerson was right enough that every word was, initially, a poem, an exalted expression of the world's experience. trapping poetry in a dialectic of segregated meaning is distressing. I wish others would listen to Willis and tell me how far off the mark I may be. as I said earlier, what she says is not meaningless. her words just seemed to have a push away, as if poetry were an Arcanum. it may be. when pressed, I have told people that I wrote poetry, which often seems to amount to admitting that I do weird, if not quite criminal, things. that is a sad encroachment. Robert Grenier did not speak in an involved haze, in the classes I took with him, but in the realm of personal (his) experience. school should not change that. but maybe I am prickly on this point, and unfair to Elizabeth Willis. does poetry need to be an isolation? maybe so, that is largely my experience. I gravitated to writing poetry because the field was open. I did not know what poetry was, so I could make up the necessities. the necessities flowed in and out. writing is a directive, and impetus toward confirmation. sorry if I compelled sleepiness with that sentence. one writes as an act of discovery. that would imply a personal language. the stutter of writers like Olson or Creeley, or Dickinson--look at her work--is instructive, a revelation in speech. speech is active. poetry is an active moment in language. it will not be rightly described by stalled words. I acknowledge my ignorance and my resistance in these matters, because poetry is not, after all, not easy or easily quantifiable.

In Podcasting News...

1. listening to a podcast called Jordan Jesse Go, which is 2 guys talking, mostly. they are funny, often unexpectedly so. in the most recent episode they mention a teacher they had at UC Santa Clara, or whatever it is exactly called. said teacher was Kasey Mohammad, whom they describe as strange but interesting. hey, I almost know Kasey, beyond rep, from being on the Flarf list... in a similar vein, Stephen King mentions Creeley and Olson in his novels. the world of poetry is so small...


2. in another podcast, from iTunes U, actually, is a reading given by Lisa Robertson. I have not read much of her work so that is fine. thing is, Elizabeth Willis gave an atrocious intro. the atrocity of which I speak concerns the stodgy academic talkspeak she employus. it is not gibberish that she speaks, but a stultifying overlay. is poetry indeed such a code of segregation? the4 lecture by Harold Bloom that I have mentioned here was a pleasure to me because he revealed his pleasure in the works of poetry. Willis' intro had the makings of a bad lecture, a congestion of words around but somehow not in a subject. let's not do that sort of thing, k?

I herewith advert 2 pieces that I myself wrote:

1. Some Songs. I wrote this oh 8-9 years ago, a translation (if you do not notice) of the 1st 3 Duino Elegies. I took a Project Gutenberg translation of Rilke's work and just changed a lot of words. what I like here is how something of the original (twice translated) remains. I posted it some time ago on my crappy website, the one with all the pop ups, but here I clean it up a tad and you avoid the pop ups.
2. On Education. this is another college paper, written within that stricture. even so, I think it is fresh enough in looking at how my work evolved. a great impetus in a writer, in the arts, in many endeavours, is the urge to do it. added to that, tho, is the urge to understand how to do it, and why. we make much of our bi-cameral brains but it is all one brain after all. anyway, I hope this paper is not seen as mere indulgence. to me, it seems bright-eyed.

reading Nota Bene Eiswein, but I shan't review it at this time (might as well read it before review it, tho I do not wish to set unattainable goals). I am, however, inspired to write a few general words about Eileen Tabios' work. a byproduct of reading her work, for me anyway, is that I want to write. I always want to write but I mean try something different. Eileen's hallmark is adventure, in the sense of setting a challenge for herself, and enjoying the ride (mixed metaphors are the best metaphors). I think of Virginia Woolf, who, at least in the handful of her novels that I have read, seems to have given herself experiments to perform. the relentless wave action of The Waves, the focused quest of To the Lighthouse, the shifting POV of Mrs Dalloway. she sets herself challenges beyond the creation of a story, technical challenges. with Eileen, one sees different methodologies applied with each work. she attaches context to local effort, or the local context is understood as informative of the whole, the whole being Her Work. Nota Bene largely eschews the prose that she often writes in, instead she uses hay(na)ku and similar short lines forms. what she does not eschew with this book is notes and such, which she supplies with every book of hers that I have seen. I love notes and afterwords and all that stuff. Black Sparrow Books were always good for extra matter, which I enjoy. Eileen frequently uses other works of art, as well as historical or personal narratives, as seeds to riff from or with. in the case of NBE, there is an extensive use of the work of Christian Hawkey, whose work I am unfamiliar with. one thing that interests me with Charles Olson: his poetry, his prose, his lectures and interviews, all of it has the same voice. I mean the bold rush and stutter, assertions and questions. Eileen's work, including many blogs and even her place and placement in the Poetry Republic (as writer, editor, instigator), is an embrace of the many in one. all my life I heard one makes many. this is inspirational. it is simply fun to discover what is next with Eileen. when I say fun, I mean including books that embrace her father's death, or the painful nexus of her heritage, as well as the immersion into criticism of her work she allowed with The Blind Chatelaine's Keys (which see). these few words for now...

1. Nota Bene Eiswein by Eileen Tabios is in hand, product of Ahadada Books. I have not read it yet but it boasts cover art (collage) by Eileen Herself. the work is not in prose, unlike much of her work, but instead owes form to hay(na)ku and other means of counting, short lines. it is always worth reading the work of someone who pays me royalties (check is in hand).


2. Anny Ballardini sent a note to Wryting, and presumably elsewhere, adverting her new book, Ghost Dance in 33 Movements, available from Mark Young's excellent publishing adventure Otoliths. Anny's work receives of many tributaries, without formailized attachment. she also presents a wonderful generosity. her blog, par exemple, points to many works not her own. both Anny and Mark do good work. our challenge, should we accept it, is to support their support. this is part of what we can call community, if u willin.

for those who might be interested, I added numerous texts to my writing portfolio site, yclept Allen Bramhall Writing Portfolio. included in this array is the catalogue for the art show that I did 2 years ago, “Conversations and reactions”. the catalogue is part of my thesis project. I still need to scan in the images. that is a project, and beyond that, many of the pictures exceed, size-wise, the capabilities of my scanner. I wrote the catalogue descriptively, but it would be better with the images. selah, until such time as I can do better. I am hopeful that links, of which there are many, work, and apologize now for whatever glitch I have yet to fix. I will keep nurturing this thing. if you have any involvement with what I write, please let me know.