The Daily Undertaker
Angel of Death
I am someone who wakes up every morning and touches my own face, shocked and in awe of my simple aliveness. Why me? Why do I get to be alive? The answer to that question doesn’t matter, the awe does. I am so happy for my short time on this planet and constantly aware that – poof- it will be over. So my gratitude and joy live side by side with death. I am, like most of us, death haunted.
Patrick McNally’s blog, The Daily Undertaker, presents all sorts of different ways of thinking and dealing with death. He takes things from his experience as a funeral director in Wisconsin, but also mixes it up with the personal and the literary. There are posts quoting Charles Bukowski (linked here) as well as fascinating discussions on new techniques of burial, the most notable to me being promession (linked here), in which the body of the deceased is prepared for the earth in a way that enables it to compost properly as opposed to just rot. There are some lighthearted moments as well, as in this post where he discusses some of the more eccentric ways in which people can handle the remains of loved ones:
Italo Calvino’s “Under the Jaguar Sun”: Cannibalism and All Consuming Love
“Under the Jaguar Sun” is a story in a small eponymous collection, a collection which Calvino had slowly been putting together before he died in 1985. He was writing a book that would discuss each of the human senses and completed taste, hearing and smell. “Under the Jaguar Sun” uses the concept of, and focus on, taste, and more specifically, cannibalism, to illuminate the primal, the mundane, the sensual, our obsession with death and all consuming love.
Calvino and Olivia are traveling through Mexico, and their love, while strong for each other, has become chaste. The story begins with a description of a painting:
that portrayed a young nun and an old priest standing side by side; their hands, slightly apart from their sides, almost touched…The painting had the somewhat crude grace of colonial art, but it conveyed a distressing sensation, like an ache of contained suffering.The lower part of the painting was filled by a long caption…The words devoutly celebrated the life and death of the two characters, who had been chaplain and abbess of the convent…The reason for them being painted together was the extraordinary love (this word in the pious, Spanish prose, appeared charged with ultra-terrestrial yearning- that had bound the abbess and her confessor for thirty years, a love so great (the word in its spiritual sense sublimated but did not erase physical emotion) that when the priest came to die, the abbess, twenty years younger, in the space of a single day fell ill and literally expired of love…”
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January 27th, 2009 / 5:42 pm
January 27th, 2009 / 5:42 pm
Mean Monday: The Barcelona Review (again, half-assed mean, cause I like their stuff!!!)
This Woman Has Her Nose in the Air
I really like the short stories and book reviews that Jill Adams publishes at The Barcelona Review. And so it is with some mixed feelings that I speak of her literary journal on Mean Monday. But then I did some thinking: she doesn’t give a rat’s ass what I think of her! Nor should she! I posted my ass on the internet! So- whooosh, letting the bitterness flow, people. Bitterness is a huge embarrassment, to say the least, but here it goes.
They do not accept simultaneous submissions and that is fine, in my opinion, if your turnover time is in the three month range. The last submission I sent them (and yes, I did not send it to anyone else), was there for ONE YEAR. I then withdrew it.
Also, I feel they publish an unnecessarily generous amount of “reprints”. Here are three of the many: a Benjamin Percy story from the Paris Review (oh, thanks Jill! I would have never read the Paris Review myself!), Douglas Coupland and Irvine Welsh. READ MORE >
Shampoo Poetry and Anne Babson
Htmlgiant's Mike Young Has A Poem Here
As you may have noted from earlier posts like this one, I sometimes believe in God and it makes me feel sort of crazy. I talked to my shrink about it recently and he reminded me that most people believe in God. That made me feel less crazy. Then I asked him, but do other people see “signs”? I think he said yes. I don’t remember. I am hungover and watching hockey. Years ago, I went to a reading in a bar in the East Village. The poet Anne Babson read a very long poem that dealt with her belief in a Christian God and miracles and basically, getting your prayers answered and I think, angels. I was moved at the time (but also thought she was crazy at the time, but now I don’t know if I think she is crazy) and went and walked up to her and bought her book called Counterterrorist Poems (Pudding House Publications). She also has a poem in Shampoo Poetry as does Mike Young. Here is an excerpt from the rather long poem she read that night:
Winter in Maine on Route 113 by Denis Dunn
Here's Some Snow For You
snow bent birches
bow down low
to log laden
trucksthe mountains maturely
hold onto acres of snow
like a 19th century bodice…can the child of spring
be far from birth?
Tennis Poem By Edward de Vere
This Man Did Not Write This Poem, But He Does Play Tennis
Whenas the heart at tennis plays (Love compared to a tennis-play)
Whenas the heart at tennis plays, and men to gaming fall,
Love is the court, hope is the house, and favour serves the ball.
The ball itself is true desert; the line ,which measure shows,
Is reason, whereon judgment looks how players win or lose.
The jetty is deceitful guile; the stopper, jealousy,
Which hath Sir Argus’ hundred eyes wherewith to watch and pry.
The fault, wherewith fifteen is lost, is want of wit and sense,
And he that brings the racket in is double diligence.
And lo, the racket is freewill, which makes the ball rebound;
And noble beauty is the chase, of every game the ground.
But rashness strikes the ball awry, and where is oversight?
and quote; A bandy ho,and quote; the people cry, and so the ball takes flight.
Now, in the end, good-liking proves content the game and gain.
Thus, in a tennis, knit I love, a pleasure mixed with pain.
This is my husband. I wrote this poem about our love.
Mary Miller
As a subscriber to Hobart, I recieved a litte gift package, which included matches (thanks, I have yet to open up that box of nicotine patches I bought in September), a cute little coaster, and a “special sneak-peek chap for subscribers” of Big World by Mary Miller. Big World will be out this year by Hobart’s Book Division, Short Flight/Long Drive Books. The mini-chapbook has two stories in it: “Fast Trains” and “Even The Interstate Is Pretty“. The stories are very good. Very, very good. They also happen to be very much to my taste, as well as what I often try to do as a writer. After reading them, I went online and read most everything I could find of hers there. I loved her flash works on Storyglossia, which you can read here, or here.
Mean Monday: Again, Not Really Mean. But Where Are You, Land-Grant College Review?
Again, I am not really being mean here, but where are you people? Your issue number 4 (2007), which I own, is so great. Amazing work by Christine Schutt, Nicholas Montemarano and Kevin Wilson. Actually, all of the stories were rock solid and pushed the limits of what is allowed. And then?? And then -where are you people? Here is a fantastic bit from a deeply disturbing, amazing story called “The Lucky Ones Get to Be People” by Rachel Haley Himmelheber:
Michael Madsen is a Writer I’d Like to Fuck
I know what you all are thinking: Michael Madsen is not a writer! He is a movie star! That is cheating! Right? You think I am cheating. I am not cheating. Madsen has written more books of poetry (that you can check out here on his fabulous website) than Viggo Mortenson (and he doesn’t show his anus and ballsack, like Viggo did in that Cronenburg movie, and like, made me feel less hot for Viggo, seeing that. I do like Viggo. Maybe that will be another post.)
Now, again, you are not going to really believe me here, but I don’t actually really LIKE movies stars, as a general rule. Firstly, I watch very few movies, because hockey doesn’t take place in them often enough. Secondly, once I saw this thing on TV about Russell Crowe and they were showing this “behind the scenes” thing and he was pretending (acting) all tough, and then they said “cut!” and he stopped acting ,and they came and fixed his hair. Like he was some girl, getting his hair fixed. Not sexy to me, acting.
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