Rauan Klassnik
http://rauanklassnik.blogspot.com
author of three collections: Sky Rat (Spork, 2014), The Moon's Jaw (Black Ocean, 2013) and Holy Land (Black Ocean, 2008) ... ----- @klassnik ------
Russell Bennetts: Why Shld I Read YOUR Book ??
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR “ENHANCED” VERSION !!
ok, Russell, so why should we read YOUR book ???
You should read MY book because it’s the official (offal) sequel (squeak) to Cynthia, how spells your name?. The difference is seeding.
Cynthia was about all the feelings I didn’t feel while playing an online match of Call of Duty. I didn’t feel angry; I didn’t feel fanous; I didn’t feel frozen.
Look, for example at what Daniel Bosch has to say in praise of my groundpounding efforts:
Russell Bennetts’ lab coat is pristine. In his “Reflections on Taboo-breakng” he has constructed a totem which inscribes precisely, syllogistically, that form of wildness to which we obsessional neurotics feel we are most entitled. Bennetts knows well the savage truth that poems — even “Untitled” poems — have both titles and bodies. He knows that a title personifies that body — it’s a poem’s name — and that the use and abuse of any poem’s name may be pyscho-emotionally freighted. Bennetts knows how often we over-rationalize and abuse poems’ names in transactions that cheapen the energy which animates their bodies — that poems’ titles must be subject to the strictures of taboo.
and if that’s not enough for you American raisin heads then how about:
If Bennetts’ “Reflections on Taboo-breaking,” were not the quintessential poem of the long 20thcentury, we might reduce it to a belated Oulipoesis, the holding of a mirror to the blank page which has discovers it as an ideal form: the lipogram in A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y and Z. But his poem’s suppression of the entire alphabet is neither incomprehensible savagery nor empty post-modern gesture. In its silence and stillness, Bennett’s poem stands at the edge of taboo — as we all must — and does not go there.
Those doors, it opened opens where Cynthia opened in its closing scenes. Fanously, Taylor Swift has legs and knows how to use them.
Cynthia dived into the pool feeling 22. Twenty-two years later she (mights) finds herself living in a block of expensive flats. Read on to discover as to the soulless rating of the block of expensive flats.
(Russell Ron Bennetts, Kentish Town 10/2014)
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October 7th, 2014 / 10:32 am
October 7th, 2014 / 10:32 am
Lydia Swartz : Why Shld I Read YOUR Book ??
ok, Lydia, so why should we read YOUR book ???
Reasons to read Shufflepoems, forthcoming from Minor Arcana Press. Shuffle & read them in any order:
It’s not a book. It’s a deck of poems. Which you shuffle, so.
It’s the same temperature as your flesh, unless you’re a zombie.
If I go back to writing about pain, you will be sorry.
Can you follow a recipe? Does that necessarily mean you have to?
You’re blocked up like a constipated rooster. Pull a card. Then write/paint/dance about it.
Sometimes you read sitting down. Sometimes you read standing up or lying down. Sometimes you read walking. Or in the tub. Or in a moving vehicle.
Have you checked out the Minor Arcana Press staff? Cuu-uuuute!
I know where you live, possibly.
My ass was never my fortune, but my tits aren’t bad. READ MORE >
Rauan Klassnik—
art should be nice, polite– and help you across the street ………………………………………………………. #arpoetica
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JUDSON HAMILTON: Why Shld I Read YOUR Book ??
ok, Judson, so why should we read YOUR book ???
Let me answer your question by way of analogy, I had a dream recently, in which I asked Ashbery to look after my two kids and when I came back they were parked in front of the TV in the living room, seemingly unharmed. I looked around and found Ashbery clad only in a pair of tidy whities rolling around laughing on the bed, deep in conversation with a woman in her 70s, an old friend apparently. They were lost in reminiscence, they’re faces lit up with the joy of nostalgia, and I didn’t have the heart to be angry with him.
The Sugar Numbers (by Judson Hamilton)
Then he jumped up and joyfully began to pop lock, like in some shitty kid’s video,with electric cutout arms blinking blue, red, yellow and that pretty much sums up how I feel about this book. It’s surprising, delightful and absurd.
To answer your question by way of digression, about 6/7 years ago I started receiving emails that looked as though somebody had fed the better portion of the western canon through a shredder and then affixed it to emails, I assume to bypass the spam filter. I liked some of the initial juxtapositions that turned up and began playing around with the text, and while I was doing that, a narrative emerged from the depths in the form of: a Speed-hearing Judge, his brother the Duke of Marmalade and, Morel and Valentine, the two servants trying to overthrow them.
Look, I know Syria’s been forgotten and the Congo’s a mess and let’s be honest who needs another book-length absurdist narrative on their bookshelf, am I right? But we’re all doing what we can and together we can right this ship…. that and the e-book version shouldn’t cost you more than a trip to the taco truck, so what’ve you got to lose?
(Judson Hamilton 9/2014, Poland)
Rauan Klassnik—
Maine is not just a place to grab obscene amounts of lobster. Or George H W Bush socks. (Even though those are pretty good reasons to join the hordes of gaudy tourists). It is also the home of Citydrift in Portland this weekend.
Citydrift is a “three-day meta-event” seething with all sorts of Art, Writing and Performance “drifts.”
Citydrift/Portland participants will include Portland-area artists, performers, poets, musicians, printers, dancers, writers, gallerists, curators, choreographers, and more, as well as participants and drifters from across the US and the world.
and it’s going on this weekend (Sept 19-21).
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Colum McCann: Why Should I Read YOUR Book ????
ok, Colum, so why should we read YOUR book ???
I’m going to answer this question, Rauan, because
1) you come well recommended
2) I am assuming, here, that you are behaving in good faith
&
3) I’m assuming this interview will get better
But, that being said:
You should read my book because it’s masterful and absorbing. Have you read the insightful blurbs on the handsome back? Or how about the glowing reviews and testimonials that precede the brilliant text? Quotes excerpted from places, you know, like the New York Times, Time Magazine and Bookslut.
Also, do you realize I’ve been translated into over 75 languages and that my books are available in airports and minimarts all across the world? Even in America I’m adored by the young, the old and the handicapped. And on top of that my books have been described as “page turners,” “psychologically immaculate,” and “structurally, marvels of audacity rivaling Clare and Spenser.” My books, you might know, have garnered tens of thousands of favourable ratings on Goodreads. (Aren’t you even a little jealous, Rauan? I just checked you out on Goodreads. ha. ha.)
My prose stylings, anyways, to be sure, are the joy of book clubs everywhere and have been heralded “as smooth as butter. . .and just as important.” But I’ve always been a low-key kinda guy and rather than trot out, spin, dazzle and spout all sorts of garbage and vanity I’ll finish you, and my answer, off with this anecdote the meaning of which I think’s crystal clear—
The other day I was lunching in The Village with Kishi Bashi, Junot Diaz and Dan Brown. The food was some kind of casual, fusion Thai, I believe, and the conversation was light and amiable. You might even say “breezy.”
Kishi mused, I think, about repotting what he called a “really aggressive avocado.” Junot
told about some glitzy navel ring he couldn’t keep his eyes off one night at AWP in a sordid bedroom with a married woman, trying to unleash nearly a decade’s worth of seething, organic frustration. O, it was a gorgeous day! Junot was insatiably tweeting merrily away (I think he’s “Ted Hash-Berryman”), while Dan, on the other hand, just stared off into thrilling space– and we drank (and we drank!) so much cheap, slippery wine and the selfies with the buff young waiter were like an astonished adjective, timeless, incandescent, but fringed also with a kind of predatory nimbus head. And I’m not sure exactly how it happened (O, the Braille of our dreamy lives!!) but suddenly we were talking about the “the relevancy and future of Wisdom Literature in the Western World.”
Junot claimed he could describe “Wisdom Literature” in less than five words. And with no hesitation Kishi claimed he could it under four!! The atmosphere was electric, like a a tiny red umbrella. Or a candle. I could hear violins. I even thought I detected a tired old code in Brown’s stone eyes. They all looked at me. A long silence ensued. I dabbed at the corner of my mouth with a temple-and-elephant embroidered serviette, then stood up, made a small bow, and began:
“Gents, when I was a mere wee lad lurching about on the streets of Killarney I was hijacked once by a dusty, old lad who dragged me into an alleyway, grabbed my crotch and whispered:
FUCK YOU, RAUAN! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!!
I think Kishi paid the bill that day. with a grin like a neon, rotating skull.
(Rauan Klassnik, 9/2014, Kirkland, WA)
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September 16th, 2014 / 9:00 am
September 16th, 2014 / 9:00 am
Cambodia’s Visceral Landscape: Drugs, Sex, Writers, Etc
Rauan: Why did you come back ???
Greg: I won’t have an answer to that question that I’ll like, at least not until I find some stability back here. Cambodia’s beautiful, warm, welcoming, collective, community-driven, adventurous, and so on. There are many magnets of ideas pulling you to stay, and you meet so many people who have stayed and after talking to them and hearing their story, you know, it makes sense. “Why go back to THAT?!” they say, referencing that capitalist hyper-consumerist society they once knew. One truthful reason I pulled away from the Kingdom of Wonder was to feel that reverse culture shock everybody talks about. That’s the selfish end. I also wanted to graduate from UW in person rather than digitally (we need to harness our tangible humanity when we can, no?), and I wanted to see friends and family, both in Maine and in Seattle, who I missed dearly. And Ethiopian food. There’s always that.
RK: You told me, in person, that it’s a great place for Westerners to visit. And then you mentioned Sex, Drugs and Food. So, let’s start with Sex. Can you please tell us about the sex culture and your personal experiences therewith?? (plz be as thorough as you can. gay/straight/trans. animals??)
my friend Greg Bem (poet, photographer, performance artist) spent about 9 months in Cambodia. He came back I guess for the adventure. And that’s why, I suppose, he’ll return. Also, we had Indian Buffet recently: Goat curry (which seems terribly mundane, in a way, though I can’t begin to tell you how crazy good it tasted), Tandoori Chicken and a bunch of desserts: Kheer, Kheer, Kheer !!!
me w/ desert / regaled w/ Cambodia
GB: There are a lot of stereotypes about Cambodia–Phnom Penh in particular–born from the even wilder situation in the ’90s. Certain things, like laws, for example, have been created to narrow down the dirtiest, nastiest side of the wild, but you can still find the wild in all the dark recesses. I found myself following in the shadow of Burroughs and Bowles and other brutal, masculine READ MORE >