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.
It’s up to you, Reader!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 _____.
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.
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?
Adverting once more my continued gathering of recent works, poems I call them: Simple Theories.
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.
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’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?
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.
According to Wikipedia, Vanna White’s 54th birthday occurs next Friday. That would make her 108 in tv hostess years. She played Venus, Goddess of Love, in a tv movie in 1988. That is all.
Super Bowl? Naw, we watched Plan 9. I am not anti-sport. I find the SB oppressive, however, and am against the tawdry idea of looking forward to commercials. That’s playing into their hands far too easily.
So Plan 9, which I’ve seen a number of times. I used to own it, but I guess it went out on permanent loan. Every time I watch it I feel compelled to defend it against the charge of worst movie ever. The worst movie ever cannot be this entertaining and this fascinating.
I will not say that Ed Wood was especially sound technically, but neither did he have money to throw at his problems. James Cameron had the GNP of I don’t know which country to throw at Avatar and came up with a derivative pile of hokum saved—barely—by the tra la of 3-D. He took the path of least resistance. You watch Plan 9 for the first time, you don’t know where it’s going, but it is always portentous.
The movie begins ominously with the prophetic flakiness of Criswell. His professional snake oil took some interesting turns I hear but I haven’t bothered to study his place in loony history. Suffice to say that once he starts talking, I am hooked. What the hell is he talking about?
Okay, he does explain that the story concerns—cue the music—GRAVEROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE. I do not how I would have reacted if this movie crawled onto the tv screen when I was a kid. I would not have regarded the movie ironically, that’s for sure.
The prose style of the voiceover explaining the plot bears a dreamlike disjointedness, plus flowery language. We see poor Bela Lugosi taking his job seriously. He was always a stage actor, never fit his acting to the little camera. He displays what his character is supposed to be feeling. This produces an odd dissonance in the movie. He creates a booming vortex of concern that the movie never intends to enter. And then his character dies. So does he, it turns out.
Next comes the encounter by our hero (of sorts), the pilot of an airliner, with a UFO. Then we meet the aliens themselves, as they go over the next few plot points. We have clearly landed in something primordially baffling. The three aliens enjoy a superb incongruity together. The leader of the aliens—called the Ruler at one point—is this tired looking guy who can no doubt boast that he never took an acting lesson. His flourish and demeanour reminds me of Truman Capote, perhaps with the addition of ‘ludes. At one point, and I am not sure why, he rolls his eyes. NOT because of disdain for the act in which he’s engaged, but for some subtler manifestation that I cannot identify. It is a rewarding moment in the movie.
The other two are shipmates on the UFO. They are, we learn, hard at work putting Plan 9 into motion. The Ruler had to check a piece of paper to see the exact nature of Plan 9. Oh yes, bringing the dead of earth to life so that they can, um, convince earthlings to, um… you know. Apparently Plans 1-8 lacked the scope and power to accomplish what Plan 9 could. The final aim, then, of Plan 9 may be too subtle for my earthling mind, but at least I understand that the aliens want to raise the dead. That, my friends, is some scary plan.
The two aliens are male and female, at least they look so. The male, whose name I think is Eros (God help us!), possesses the poise and firmness of a gameshow host. The female is a sort of Vanna White (you young uns check Wikipedia, I’m sure Vanna’s out to pasture by now, replaced by some willowy freshet of femininity). I do not remember the female alien’s name but at least she gets a speaking part, subservient tho she be. The two assure the Ruler that they will continue with Plan 9.
I guess I missed explaining the part where the two gravediggers for Bela’s grave were killed by a stoned looking woman in black with claw like nails and an extremely scant waist. We are not witness to how she manages to slaughter the two victims, nor given a clue why they could not outrun this stutter stepping lady in the too tight dress (a stoned Morticia).
Investigating this heinous crime is Inspector Clay, a large cup of police work. He too falls prey to the lady in black. And I haven’t even mentioned the pilot at home with his lovely wife, steaming that he is enjoined against telling anyone about the airliner’s encounter with the unknown. Holy Gosh!
I fear I give too much plot away. Let me just explain that the hotsy totsy woman in black is the wife of Bela Lugosi, brought to life by the fell aliens. Maybe you were expecting someone in a flower print dress and sensible shoes. She and Inspector Clay are now minions of Plan 9. Oh yes, we see Clay emerging from his freshly dug grave, a vision that will return to me every time I pass a graveyard at midnight, with an owl hooting chillingly nearby.
I have not even mentioned the lineup of cops, who are sort of comic relief, whether they know it or not. The lieutenant, fairly level headed, looks like Howard Hughes. Thru out the movie he uses his pistol to scratch his head or gesture. Whoa, hey, watch it!
Okay so Lugosi dies during the 7 or so hours of filming, but his character is still needed. Yes, Ed Wood’s chiropractor fills in. It has already been established that the old man wears a cape. The chiropractor, a head taller than Lugosi, keeps the cape pulled over his face. This is called making do. I do not hold it against Wood: art as creative problem solving. I know that there was a Spanish movie in which two actresses with little physically in common are randomly exchanged in scenes. Tres avant garde.
The old man (of the Undead) attempts to kidnap the pilot’s wife, but fails. Inspector Clay of the Undead does not. The cops and the pilot stumble onto the spaceship and confront the aliens. This allows Eros to explain what the hell. It seems that these advanced aliens harbour a righteous concern that humanity will discover the mega ultimate power of I forget the six syllables worth of awesome power that the alien said. Igniting this bomb, which we are in the process of discovering, in an evolution of self-destruction, would result in the sun igniting. Something about the sun’s light sort of catching fire and, like flames to gasoline, the destructive power would follow the light all the way to the sun. Oppenheimer had a similar vision, as it happens, before the atom bomb was detonated.
So we learn that the movie carries a nuclear warning. Some ill-advised words by Eros concerning the stupidity of earthlings riles the pilot, who launches a haymaker at Eros, and the two set to. The alien looks like no match for the beefy pilot but they battle evenly for a while, breaking a lot of what looks like expensive alien electronics. A fire starts, the cops and the pilot’s wife skedaddle, and the female alien frets about the fire as she attempts to launch the saucer. In the end, a good old fashioned right hook, American style, deposits the alien guy to the mat, and the pilot hustles away. Meanwhile the female, in a tizzy, gets the saucer into the air. Alas, it explodes. Criswell intones some prophetic sounds and the movie ends.
Yes, you can see strings attached to saucers, yes the the crypt that implausibly holds 5 or more people looks like the box for a washing machine, yes when someone brushes against a gravestone, it flops around like cardboard. This sort of thing is normal on the stage. Those are not real cops, real flying saucers, real rayguns in the movie, btw. The imagination gets to do a little work, you know.
In sum, no point in the movie drags. The exposition occurs briskly and unobtrusively. Wood sincerely wanted to entertain you. He held to some disjointed metronome broke freely from the familiar. Any declarations of intent that one might discover in the movie seems incomplete. This is art, my friends. Surprise is not here manufactured, it is inherent. Wood did not allow overthinking to cloud over the energy of his making. This is art, my friends.
I used to ramble, mentally peregrinate, on this blog, but I think readers want more topic in their blogs, so I have taken to being more topic orientated. So three things in mind now, and I will muster a course thru them…
First, or, to give it an 11 on style, firstly, our car got slammed by a truck. Beth parked in front of the UPS store. While Beth prepared her package, the proprietor said, That truck just hit that car. And Beth thought, Oh no! And so this adventure: a tanker at the gas station next door was being guided by two guys from the station. Only, they weren’t doing the job. The truckdriver backed into our car not once but twice, to the vast enjoyment of the supposed guides. The car sustained a fender dent. On later inspection, it looked like the wheel had been pushed to a cant. On the way to our mechanic we heard an inscrutable and unusual high pitched whistle or whine. Which made us think something really uh oh. On the lift, nothing looked obviously bad, and of course the mechanic didn’t hear any whine when he took it for a drive. It is probably out of alignment, and that will be on the list when the insurance claim is made. What a wearisome and tense morning that was.
After the calming effects of a Costco run we went to an art opening at a gallery we get mailings from. It’s a suburban gallery, in Acton (where Creeley grew up). Not edgy in any way, yet art is so beguiling that pleasures abound even from the merely technically competent. To me, poetry is a total drag unless done well. There are no guilty pleasures in poetry.
The gallery used to be in a strip mall done the road. Now it sits in an old house across from another strip mall. The town of Acton decided to become the capital of strip malls, all along the main road thru town. The house is a rambling farmhouse, much renovated. It’s a nice setting for art but may be a millstone round the neck of the owner. It must’ve cost a peach and a pear to buy then renovate, and this was done just as we swung into the downturn. Anyway.
A lot of work has local appeal, using, particularly, the charms of Concord as subject. Those charms include river scenes, Great Meadows, Walden, and grand houses of Colonial and Victorian vintage. Landscapes from elsewhere also abound. For the most part, well done. These images sanctify something that we recognize as impossible, yet remain earnest claims. Sunsets, autumnal visions, marsh quietude. I love it. Sometimes, the painters amp the colour, and you see the trick they play. For some reason, titles to the work seem largely to lack vigour, especially attempts at whimsy.
A couple of exquisite watercolours were technically exacting, to the degree that you look and look at the subject, as subject. This is when blatancy is withheld, and colours are musical notes, not promulgations.
I thought a lot of work owed Cezanne something. The sense of planes and colour fields brought forward. This is an autistic sort of vision, positively so.
A large painting of a cottage struck me. Beth recognized the cottage from Bramhall family pictures, the cottages on Corn Hill in Truro, Cape Cod. My family used to rent one of those cottages when I was young. Corn Hill is a 100 foot bluff maybe 40 yards from the sea. The family rode out a hurricane there when I was a toddler. Images bring drafts of memory.
Some abstract prints were really nifty, but that aint what sells. A ridiculously large painting of a concert cello player, dark and Degasesque. Even in a grand scale room, it would be oppressive. $18,000 worth of oppressive. On the other hand, some of the spritely whimsy to be seen was as good as Christmas cards. Now be honest.
After all that, what else but the movie The Vikings. I loved this movie when I was young. Broad vistas of fjords and castles. It really looks good.
My first encounter with the movie I did not remark upon the cast, it was the action and landscape that caught me. Later viewings, the Hollywoodiness comes thru. Yes, that’s Ernest Borgnine, McHale, as the Viking king. No missing Kirk Douglas. Both account themselves credibly. Douglas is so bluff yet tightly wired. And being a Viking, likewise Ernie, he’s all lusty and loud. Great fun.
Tony Curtis with his New Yorkish accent kinda sticks out. You know box office appeal made his selection. The same for ingenue Janet Leigh.
The story: in a raid, McHale kills the English king and rapes the queen. That’s assuming there really was an England of any clearcut political verity. Well anyway, the king’s cousin usurps the throne. He’s the epitome of all the King Johns in all versions of Robin Hood, and he has the sniveling goatee to prove it.
Okay, the queen gives birth, and this would be the rightful heir. Bairn is spirited away before the king can prevent. Years later, it’s Curtis. He’s a slave. An English lord recognizes him as the queen’s son. At the same time, Curtis and Douglas develop a rivalry. Then add the beautiful Leigh. Who will she choose? Well the English king is supposed to marry Leigh, so Curtis and Douglas effect a Viking raid on the castle. When the English are mopped up, D & C must throw down the gloves and finish things. At the last moment D hesitates, realizing that C is his brother. C finishes him. Time for a Viking funeral.
The battle scenes lack the zest you might see now, and those axes and swords never drip with blood. There are a lot of scenes of villagers running. To welcome returning Vikings, to flee attacking Vikings. It produces a comic effect. I cannot vouch for historical accuracy here.
The full title of this is: The Complete Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus, published by Bootstrap Press (2008). Bootstrap’s website is currently under construction. I choose not to bury the lead: this is a worthy translation of a fascinating poet.
Ryan Gallagher is one of the founder’s of the press, which is located in Lowell. Chugging away in Lowell. I was given this book a couple years ago, and wrote about it here at Tributary. This book deserves greater notice.
Catullus wrote with such vigour that his writing retains great energy despite the centuries passed. What if Ted Berrigan were born in 84 BCE…? Or Wieners…?
I had a translation years ago that I found dreadful because of the translator’s attempt to sound contemporary. Alas, it merely sounded anachronistic. The slang, which, like with Villon, is part of the richness of the writing, was not that of the translator’s day (the 60s, I think), but more like the 20s and 30s. Anachronistic anachronisms, a layered misplay. Needless to say, I discarded the book and forgot the translator’s name.
The mistake is not in trying to capture the vitality of Catullus’ language, but that the translator used essentially another foreign language to bring Catullus to modern readers. It didn’t work. Perhaps for no reason, I am reminded of a book reviewed by Poe. The book was written in English but the footnotes (by the author) were unaccountably in French. It is a curious extra effort, and it seems like that translator likewise sweated more than necessary.
That identifies the charm of Gallagher’s versions. He doesn’t seem to be sweating it. He’s a poet, schooled at Naropa. He brings to mind Brian in Life of Brian, versus the centurion. The centurion (as you will recall) catches Brian writing inflammatory graffiti. The stern representative of Rome chastises Brian for poor declensions, forget Brian’s anti-imperialist message. One would think that Pound’s admonishments a century ago would have cleared things up in the world of translation, but too many ‘scholarly’ translations redeem themselves like a stick in the mud. They fail to transmit the energy.
The poems are coarse and lively and not fit for work. They are really fun to read. They breathe quite well in English. Gallagher clearly enjoys Catullus, didn’t just grab the first Latin poet handy.
I wish the Latin originals were set facing the translation just to see better what Gallagher translated from. One always wants to piece what one can from the original.
Gallagher devotes 40 pages to essays written on various aspects of Catullus. His review of previous translations—he does not seem to include the clunky one I first met Catullus with—not only gives a good sense of the field, but also clarifies Gallagher’s own attitude towards the poet and towards translation. This is a particularly fresh and useful document.
I wonder if this work did not spring from some college project, a masters thesis or such. Gallagher is curiously modest with this work. His name remains small on the cover and the title page. Not that he is meek, but he seems like an island of one against the continent of entrenched scholarship. He’s not satisfying some university press here, nor acting out of publish or die. His glowingest words go to the translation by the Zukofskys, which, tho well scholarshipped, as I understand, is certainly a wild experiment,.
You know the wisecrack: if you can’t play, coach. No less true, it seems: if you can’t write, translate. Gallagher cracks that one. This book is pissa, verging on wicked pissa.
Over the past while I have been more formal in my blog posting. What’s a blog posting? the children ask. Blogs are places where writing can go. A posting is just an attempt to make use of the Internet. Okay.
I turned to formality, as well as formality and I can suit each other, with the intention of upping the ante for the format. I do not begrudge my own loose wheels—blogs of yesteryear—and was entertained by the loose wheels of others, but since we have Facebook and Twitter to collect our junky side, I might as well just use the blog space to stretch my writing muscles. It is just a website.
So anyway, my review yesterday of Silk Egg by Eileen Tabios reveals something I might as well admit: It’s all about me. In the reviews that I have done, which have appeared either here or at Galatea Resurrects, I find myself declaring my own sense of poetry and the making. I think I have been kind enough not to play the Boolean card, this versus that, especially not undermining the reviewed work so that I could overmine my own. But the reviewed fairly can wonder of whom and what I write. The connections are mine, certainly.
When I first began reading poetry, I did so out of duty. I held strong resistance towards the poetry that I had met, the received wisdom of generations of bored English teachers. All poetry was magically mysterious to me in a disagreeable way. Mallarme or Norman Mailer (the poet) caused me equal consternation, in that I could not fathom the function or interest in poetry.
After much study involving the nature of my own resistance and a sense of possibility in my own work, I developed enough critical acumen to give me what I need. When I resist, I know I have to look at that. So my reviews are naught but peeks thru portals, that sort of thing.
Regarding Jason Bourne, watched his Ultimatum last night. I saw an earlier one, tho I cannot tell you which. Beth has read the books, which probably make more sense. Movie making often focuses on its strength, the blur of action. How plot and character might go together sometimes gets left behind.
Ultimatum seems like the same thing as the previous one I saw. Bourne races around, chasing and chased, and engages in blurry hand-to-hand. In the 1st Tim Burton Batman, Joker speaks of fighting mano against mano. But anyway.
Matt Damon’s efficiency in all things spy is fun to watch. He always has the drop on his enemy. The fight scenes explode in quick cut agitation. Apparently the camera operator gets a few licks in too. Bones should be breaking and arteries bursting but until Damon’s opponent wears down, it’s WWE. Damon ends up with a cut over his eye and a sore pinkie.
Previously, he had a woman with him, much different in the book. She’s outside the spy network, till she meets Bourne. She dies, perhaps in an episode that I missed. A woman briefly appears in this one, inside the network. She helps him a bit, tho not much in one of the fisticuffs. She doesn’t look like the one who died but seemed to be a ghost thereof. She is swept out of he story after much rooftop running by Bourne to save her. At the end, it looks like Bourne has been killed, tho at least the devious CIA black ops have been revelated. We see the second woman hearing the news, and smirking at the idea of Bourne dying. And then we discover that Jason has not drownded in the river after a 10-story fall. So maybe Bourne’s More Than Ultimatum awaits. It’s a fun action movie, relentless. Beth says the books are great.
And just to note, I’ve been reading William Manchester’s book about the Krupp family, the arms dealers. It is a lengthy and detailed book. For at least four generations, the company was run by one man each generation. The eldest heir got full control of the company. Brother, it’s a family of single-minded monomaniacs.
Alfred took the faltering steel company into the arms industry. This brought him in contact with Kaiser Wilhelm I. He wrote reams of letters, about steel, about weapons, about the business, and about nothing else.
Fritz was a better business person, and Krupp grew and grew. A scandal in Capri came to light, wild times with young men. I’m amazed that his monomania allowed him the time off. This was an Oscar Wildean situation. Fritz’s estranged wife went to the Kaiser, to get him to stop this embarrassment. The Kaiser threatened to lock her up in an asylum, because the arms supplier was that important. The scandal grew and Fritz killed himself. Like I say, I am amazed that a Krupp found time to do anything but study steel and build armament.
Fritz’s heirs were daughters, which would not do, so the eldest was married to Gustav von something, and thru legerdemain by Kaiser II, he legally inherited the business. And did so just like the previous two. Arms for both sides of WWI.
The company survived the interbellum period by utilizing its astonishing assets. Gustav attached to the Nazi movement. Once Germany began occupying countries, Gustav would race in and take over businesses. The story of Robert Rothschild shook me. Legalities, at this early stage of the war, were being observed, sort of. Rothschild tried to get his company into non-Jewish hands, but that legal trick was swept aside. He lost the company, but Gustav kept them pressing. Robert was chased down, and placed on a train to Auschwitz.
Gustav’s son Alfried became second in command as his father reached dotage. Slave labour, child labour, and Alfried as aristocratic as can be. It is an amazing story that is difficult to entail. It’s history, it’s a story, but it is too much.
available at Shearman Books
Context as framework has received attention lo these many post-modern years. I submit that we have found holes in objectivity. Call objectivity an admirable quality, but do not expect to see much of it.
Silk Egg by Eileen Tabios immerses in subjective context. Subtitled Collected Novels, the book supplies a stuttering array of contexts. Basically, the book is all contexts, and little plot. On to something here.
I shall now jabber away about other authors (while remaining within my context, I hope). This is where Eileen will be muttering, Back to me! Back to me! Sorry Eileen, but I think supplying a context (given that it is my subjective one) may prove helpful in speaking of Silk Egg.
I start with Henry James. His novels curiously please me, even tho the balance between action and rumination leans heavily towards the talky side. Yes, he chaws more than he bites off. How he envelopes his stiff, proper characters with subjective musings, however, generates a caroming interest for me. The thingness of his words becomes so central to the experience of his art that one accepts the long wind, even relishes it.
Henry James shares rare loquacious presence in his work. James comes to mind as I read Silk Egg, tho Silk Egg has none of his loquacity. Silk Egg offers contexts for some story or stories that Eileen does not fully deliver. Turn of the Screw, James’ premium page turner, balances on context. The there story pressures the idea of reliability. It does so with shaky context, who to trust? So there you are, a context for the context of Silk Egg.
Charles Baudelaire’s Poèmes en Prose, aka Paris Spleen comes to me, as well. Some of his curtales are hilarious, sardonic observations, others are captive, word-involved shiny things. Brevity, or perhaps the implications of brevity, seems key. Likewise in Eileen’s novels.
Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein also jumps to mind as I read. Her descriptive dalliances offset the need to make linear sense. She can go all around the subject because she does not know it as a subject. She understands words as singularities as well as union workers. The jostle of episodes in Silk Egg lurch around the unfinalized ‘story’ of Silk Egg.
Eileen herself claims some debt to Borges on the back cover of the book. Here, friends, I step back: I have not read Borges. Antecedents, real or imagined, aren’t the point anyway. I intend my references to help describe the matter here.
Now let me piece this all together.
Silk Egg involves 100 plus pages in which 12 novels—she calls them that, so that’s what they are— are unrolled, chapter by chapter. Each chapter owns a page and consists of no more than, I’m guessing, seven sentences.
Those chapters are poetic in formulation. Cheat or trick, Eileen inscribed my copy with the words “…the prose poem masquerading as ‘novel’, mischievously”. It could be novel masquerading as “prose poem”, I daresay.
In the stories, an omni-narrator conveys the details that want a context. The lazy reader will infer biographical connection. Some is actual, from what I know of the public Eileen Tabios. I think Silk Egg offers a different expanse than just the facts, ma’am. The story here is more human than novels like to allow. Most novels monger malarkey, tho at times the entertainment is worth it. The malarkey generates from pieces fitting neatly, conclusions coming right at the end, and other unlikely happenstances.
I do not know Eileen’s method of production but it does not seem to be cut up. Reckon Ashbery’s fun with the form: he shook the bejesus out of the ordinary. And remember from Three Poems, how Ashbery contemplates whether to leave everything in or take it out? Eileen has made some choices here.
In Silk Egg, the thing not there delivers the firm yet encouraging blow to the solar plexus. I mean that more in the sense of collecting your attention than tussling with Bob Fitzsimmons (wikipediate the name: he was a boxer of yore). The details that Eileen does present furnish thingness, and I mean thingness in just that complex wallop that Heidegger saucily served us. Leave it to a philosopher to make a mess out of words.
And leave it to a poet to trust partial notes, glimmers, and glimpses. Negative Capability. Context is what we know right now, via physics, via Buddha, via Jung, via our subjective cases. Poetry is the engine that directs us thru these partial causalities, fever, and fret. It is the poets who freed the novel, returned it to the Imagination. I am glad to see Eileen Tabios in that space, reckoning the possibilities of our words.
I have made a map here, for you, Gentle Reader. Eileen shares insights from the Penetralium of mystery, which is cool. The details seem highly personal from the Author’s side. With Silk Egg, you the Reader invade the notion of context, not the life of the Author.
Eileen Tabios sent me a packet of little books called Hay(na)ku for Haiti. She offered them as payment for contributing to Galatea Resurrects. I already feel more than recompensed by the review copies (which you can get yourself, if you are willing to provide engagement. Check out the website.). But I’ll take them.
Hay(na)ku for Haiti is, if you bothered not to follow the wonderful link that I provided at no little effort, a charitable project: proceeds go to Haitian relief efforts. So you have that reason to pay attention. Literary interest also exists. Upon that shall I write a few words.
Sheets of pink 8x11 paper form the books (I have 16 of them). Folded, the sheet becomes a book with 6 internal pages, roughly 3 1/2x2. Book art! This is a diy project. Such are always to be supported. You can do it, too! If you have access to Microsoft Publisher, you can print a text in the appropriate format so that it all works out in nice book form. If you haven’t such access, wing it. Don’t wait for the gatekeeper’s approval.
Anyway, if you would please just follow the link above (don’t be a dick!), you will see the list of authors. Some I have met before, some are new to me. They took a challenge.
Each writer fit their effort into three constraints.
That last point presents the real fandango. The mastering idea, I think, consists in engaging that human situation in Haiti. Engagement is the province of poetry. Anyone and everyone understands that the destruction from the earthquake is bad, and that something must be done. We don’t need poetry to say that: we have prose in orderly logic to commit that testament. No, the poetry to be written in this earnest position is much more personal than that. It is also more far-reaching.
In these books, we have numerous approaches to the very problem, the one problem. How do we find language for the things we see, hear, feel, touch, and smell? Poets twirl around the problem continually. Just randomly picking one book: Nicole Mauro personifies the quake (Mrs Quake). Eileen finds a poetics. I will quote in full. Nota bene: Imagine one stanza per pink page. Also imagine that stupidhead Live Writer didn’t put extra space between lines.
On a Pyre: An Ars Poetica
Flame
eating my
body hotter than
fire
for the
poetry in burning
books
ravage more
than a drought-stricken
forest’s
revenge for
the creation of
paper
so flimsy
against non-metaphysical needs--
I love the dash at the end, which I choose to believe nods towards my friend Emily Dickinson. Such is one approach. Tom Beckett’s pared repetition is another. And so on, the spectrum of 16 (so far) little books. Many things to think of here. You can buy the books individually, but I think you want to maintain the sense of that spectrum. Plus the tactile handful: reminds me of Grenier’s Sentences.
