Friday, June 04, 2004

 

So, I was going to read some THEORY last night, but could not do so, as that would mean taking a break from reading the Tale of Genji. I cannot stop reading the Tale of Genji, and very nearly missed my subway stop last night, so absorbing do I find it. I first heard of Genji in reading Kimiko Hahn's "Earshot," where she takes an aggressive stance in opposing and coming to terms with the mysogynistic culture described in the work, and in fact, in some of the root symbols of the very kanji characters in which it's written. But I hadn't really experienced the book itself; just someone else's reaction to it. Now that I'm reading it (although at the hands of a translator), I can tell easily that this book was written by a woman. I mean, sixty-plus years have gone by in this family saga of manners, and as far as I can tell, there hasn't been a single war, political assassination, or even a tidal wave to disrupt a life which consists entirely of having impossible affairs and admiring the wisteria. Honestly, what with the incredibly rigid constraints on male/female relations, they probably were too tired at the end of the day to do anything more than admire wisteria, and quote poetry on the emphemeral quality of life. At least, before the guys set out to do a chambermaid and the women retired behind their curtains to weep. And like I said, I've been reading a description of sixty years of this behavior. And yet I cannot stop.

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Batman? Pirates and Ninjas? Okay, how about superheroes vs. supergorillas? When evolution goes terribly wrong, I'm totally putting my money on King Kong.

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Thursday, June 03, 2004

 

The Confluence of Pirates. So, recently I heard that Painted Bride Quarterly is planning a "pirate" theme issue. And then last Sunday everyone in the Four Faced Liar got into an argument about who would win in a fight: pirates or ninjas. I'm such a lawyer: I reserved judgment until I had more information -- like are the pirates already at sea and the ninjas have to get out there? Or do the ninjas just wait for the pirates to come to port, get really drunk, and then just off them one by one?

So, anyway: pirates or ninjas? And can you make a poem about it? If so, you might want to send it to Painted Bride Quarterly.

UPDATE: Tony wrote a ninja/pirate poem! Finally, proof that someone reads this blog! Or that my telepathic powers are increasing! Hooray!

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

I think, tonight, I shall read some THEORY. I've had a book of THEORY lying around for about four months now, but the first essay is by Jerome Rothenberg, and he uses all these dashes, and my eyes start to cross after the first few lines.

The only other books of THEORY I have, other than this recalcitrant one, are Wallace Stevens' "The Necessary Angel" and Pound's "ABCs of Reading." The latter, of course, is hilarious, if only because Pound was so wonderfully full of himself. He goes in the Triumvirate of the Mystic Persona Poets, the asshole partner to Whitman and Ginsberg, who were also larger than life poets of America and Everything. Pound was an ass, but he was an ass unto himself, and lived however he did please. Even in St. Elizabeth's, which probably should have been renamed Ezra's Bordello while he was in residence.

Pound's a testy-making subject these days, but I want to know, apart from whether you should or shouldn't read Pound, do you? I've only read some fairly heavily anthologized work, and the ABCs. I was under the impression that the majority of the Cantos were incomprehensible, and that the best thing you could do was look at Homage to Sextus Propertius, and call it a night. But what do I know? Charles Simic had a bit to say about Pound in the NY Review of Books last year. I'm pretty under-read as a whole, but I've never felt keenly the lack of Pound. Perhaps I just don't know what I'm missing. Or not. Or what.

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

 

My Batman poem, in progress. Haven't been inspired to write anything in a while, so this makes me happy. Besides which, it cracks me up.


The Superman Bitch Session Poems

One

It's BS, all that Caped Crusader, Dark Knight stuff. Hello, other people's parents are dead. And hey, guess what? My whole planet's gone, too. And the powers, oh yeah, he doesn't have any real powers; that makes him so cool. Newsflash: he's got the only power that matters on this pissant blue marble: money. Up the wazzoo. He's just Lex Luthor, but with less laughs. And seriously: the guy needs a tan.

Two:

At least I've got Metropolis sewn up. It's always sunny here; we've got a way better climate than Gotham, and I work for a living. I can be proud. But when I catch Lois sneaking a peak at the Gotham News and making noise about a transfer, not even my X-ray vision can calm me down.

Three

Went home to Smallville for a break. I can always count on mom and dad, honest farm folk. They put things in perspective. But this morning, mom said maybe I should think about wearing something darker: the primary colors are just a little too . . . well, flashy, don't you think, Clark? This season is all about a more sophisticated look, something sleeker, more urban. I asked her where all these ideas were coming from, and you know what? Trading Spaces, my ass.

Four

He never shows up. Can't even bother to be civil. Thinks a night off for champagne and a little canoodling with Wonder Woman is frivolity. If he thinks the annual awards show is so uncool, I wonder why he bothers always writing such a lengthy freaking RSVP-and-you-guys-can-blow-me message.

Five

If I send a PayPal donation to the Joker's legal defense fund, does that make me a terrorist?

Six

Scratch that last one. Sometimes I don't know what I'm thinking. Case in point: used superspeed to turn the earth back, reversing the course of time to six p.m. last Sunday, just before 60 Minutes' broadcast of its profile of MC Broodypants. And sort of, you know, caused a nationwide power outage. What can you do, really? I'm starting to see where Lex is coming from and that wigs me. I need to calm down, get back on track. Time for a trip to the Fortress of Solitude: I mean, that's kind of cool, right? Fortress of Solitude? Cool holograms from a destroyed planet? Interplanetary zoo? He totally doesn't have an interplanetary zoo. I own that one. Yeah.

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Psssttt...Shanna and I are writing Batman poems. You can write one, too! See Laurel Snyder's Scarlet Witch poem for inspiration.

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Has John Kerry sealed up the "poet vote" by taking a campaign slogan from a Langston Hughes poem?

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

 

Poetry as imagined act of meanness.

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Hmm...California court to hear threatening poetry case. I think people need to really revise what their definition of threat is. "I'm going to kill you" -- that's a threat. "I could kill you" appears to simply be a declarative statement that anyone could make, inasmuch as anyone has access to guns, knives, poisons, pianos which can be dropped from great heights, etc.

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Not having anything of actual import to convey, I instead give you a poem by Rick, the People's Poet.


oh god,
why
am I so much more sensitive than everybody else ?
why
do I feel things so much more acutely than them,
and understand so much more.
I bet I'm the first person who's ever felt as rotten as this.
could it be
that I'm going to grow up
to be a great poet and thinker, and all those other wankers in my
class are going to have to work in factories or go on the dole?
yes, I think it could.

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Mark was in town this weekend, and we saw such pleasurable things as walruses and airbrushed renderings of muscle cars with teeth. We went off to the Four Faced Liar on Sunday and played trivial pursuit with Shafer. All the poetry this weekend was provided by Mark, who just speaks in poetry. I'm working on a new chapbook that will be divided into three sections, and each section will begin with a poem that just happens to be some random thing Mark said. He accused me of dating him only for the inspiration. "I am a font!" he declared. "A font of poetry!"

Going to work this week on getting out some new submissions. Now that I have two (count 'em, two) actual, real-world acceptances under my belt, I feel better about the whole submission game. I also feel, though, that maybe I should leave my poems to set a bit longer before submitting them: the ones getting accepted are also the ones that were oldest at the time I sent them off. They were fully cooled and formed at the time of sending. But, oh, well. Hasn't really been long enough for me to see if the newer poems will garner similar acceptances. We'll wait another month or so and see what my success rate is with those.

At Shafer's invitation, I'll also be hawking copies of Novelty Act at the Frequency Series this next Sunday. Strangely, I am a diffident and shy presence in the legal community, but I'm perfectly prepared to be a schmoozer and marketer extraordinaire among poets. Ha!

posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -