1) Django Unchained is a “better” movie than 12 Years a Slave.

2) Harold Blood, Samuel L. Jackson (Stephen), and Brad Pitt (Bass): these three form the bedrock of the most original part of my argument. Force of character. Force of personality. (I’ll talk more about this later on).

3) The next part of my argument resides in “excitement”. In aesthetic pleasure. Yes, there’s something pleasing and thrilling about Tarantino’s excesses and indulgences, his operatic screams. And there’s something pleasing, immensely pleasing, about his success in creating a Western (a spaghetti Western) within a Slavery landscape because, well, that’s no easy task.

(and, plz, here let me point out that “Best Picture” does not mean “Most Necessary Picture”)

4) And the most important part of my argument is that 12 Years a Slave, though flawed, has become a kind of Sacred Cow and, thus, tends to get a free pass since it is so “necessary” (which it is, since “Americans tend to have amnesia about historical events*” and in the case of Slavery and all its horrors the amnesia is compounded by “deep trauma*”). So, because the movie is a valuable and needed wake-up call we can and need to kind of sweep its problems under the rug:

12 Years a Slave has some of the awkwardness and inauthenticity of a foreign-made film about the United States. The dialogue of the Washington, D.C., slave traders sounds as if it were written for “Lord of the Rings.” White plantation workers speak in standard redneck cliches. And yet the ways in which this film is true are much more important than the ways it’s false. (Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle)

Henry Louis Gates Jr

5) The quotes starred (*) above are from a TIME interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr. This interview’s a decent quick-bite read, but much more valuable and meaty is Gates’ interview with Tarantino (you can find it here on The Root) which is a wonderful series of insights into Tarantino’s intentions as well as Gates’ opinion of Tarantino’s accomplishments in what Gates calls “the best postmodern take on Slavery*.”

(* this last quote, again, is from the Time interview in which Gates also hails 12 Years a Slave as “the most realistic account of Slavery”).

6) An important and necessary movie, again, of course, isn’t necessarily the best movie, but here are some quotes from Anthony Stokes’ “On How 12 Years a Slave Succeeded where Django Unchained failed”

“with a matter as serious as slavery you should have more respect.”

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Danielle Pafunda resists the day’s terms even as she’s complicit in and bound to them, to carry them out. The children are calling that Playmobil cop Uncle Shootser, again. She’s taking unflattering pictures, no, she means just actual pictures of her navel while she reads Elisabeth Bronfen.

Your Conscript

by Danielle Pafunda

Get the fuck away from me. I’m sick and free.
I’ve puked my heart out and also my other organs.

My liver spills, my kidneys spilled, my blood
turns the color of a nuclear sunset and hums across

the spoiled garden path. I’ve been at these stones
with a shotgun. I’ve been nailing the doors shut.

In any event, I drowned your book in the river.
At the river, two large men grabbed my arms

and pinned me against a shipping container.
They tore your words out of my throat and held them

in the pink arc cast by a security light. Give him up
they told me, and I did. Over and over again

retching into their outstretched sack, retching
money and grief and the look of your hair

plastered down by an oily rain.

When I first ate that rat after I first regurgitated that rat (see Johannes) and wouldn’t you know that rat was high on cocaine and babies (see Scientific American January 2006) I had the tongue of a songbird stitched into my tongue (see Chelsea Biondolillo, see Katrina Van Gouw, see Philomela). A blank spot on my tongue. A salt scar on my tongue. I only speak English. I make a high-pitched whinny at which babies coo (see babies). I can identify tone. You have your search terms.

note: I’ve started this feature up as a kind of homage and alternative (a companion series, if you will) to the incredible work Alex Dimitrov and the rest of the team at the The Academy of American Poets are doing. I mean it’s astonishing how they are able to get masterpieces of such stature out to the masses on an almost daily basis. But, some poems, though formidable in their own right, aren’t quite right for that pantheon. And, so I’m planning on bridging the gap. A kind of complementary series. Enjoy!

Rauan: When we chatted in person you mentioned that a big part of your outrageous onstage persona is a pushback against over-serious readers (performers of their own poetry, I mean) who, as you said, have absolute “no sense of humor.” Can you talk a bit more about these “serious” readers and your more “fun” and outrageous style then as a kind of antidote?

Evan: Poets are often outrageously arrogant and self-important, blaming readers if they don’t enjoy the work. What a cop-out. That grave delivery of words from a podium: is it any wonder most people don’t read poetry? I prefer poetic rock stars (though they can be just as arrogant). I’d rather be humble in person and outrageous during readings. I maintain that level of performance and spectacle to give the audience a multi-sensory experience. I want them to leave feeling gratified that they came to see it, hear it, not just read it. I want them to see costumes, hear me sing the disturbing pop lyrics I’ve brought attention to on the page, and occasionally eat whatever curious thing I set out for them.

RK: your books (The Midnight Channel and Skin Job) are filled with monsters and slasher film victims (final girls, or in a few instances, boys) but for me what stands out most is an experience and atmosphere of exuberance and glee. Are the books, then, just like yr reading performances, meant to be “fun” also??

EJP: Yes, absolutely! I feel that if I had fun writing a piece, many readers will have that fun reading it. Without an element of camp and glee, poetry (especially work as dark as mine) quickly becomes an exercise in despair, punishing the audience. I do love Sylvia Plath’s bombastic technicolor despair, but I don’t want to be an icy, detached poet, that arrogant “fuck you, dear reader” poet. I hate that guy. I want my reader to tap-dance with me through the haunted children’s hospital.

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Lillian Dylan lives alone. She dyes her hair every other week. All 300 of her facebook friends are gay. She likes it that way.

This poem is the result of a combination of two journal entries: one about my ex-boyfriend and another about my current boyfriend. The parts about loss refer to the former, the parts about sex, the latter. I write in my journal about sex and loss a lot because those are the two things I feel I have experienced most in my life. Although I don’t think of myself as a poet, I like the idea of taking things written in my journal and turning them into little crystal-like objects that I can observe, neatly, and throw away. I am currently in a loving 24/7 BDSM relationship.This is my first published poem.

note: I’ve started this feature up as a kind of homage and alternative (a companion series, if you will) to the incredible work Alex Dimitrov and the rest of the team at the The Academy of American Poets are doing. I mean it’s astonishing how they are able to get masterpieces of such stature out to the masses on an almost daily basis. But, some poems, though formidable in their own right, aren’t quite right for that pantheon. And, so I’m planning on bridging the gap. A kind of complementary series. Enjoy!

Sandra Simonds lives a pretty boring life in Tallahassee, Florida. She works as a professor in Thomasville, Georgia. She is always tired. Sometimes she parks her car in random parking lots and just sits there and listens to music.

In some sense, this is a conceptual piece of writing in that it takes verbatim language delivered in one context (the stalker to me) and subverts it by delivering it back (me to the world) in an entirely different context/ new audience. It moves from the private (email) to the public (website) and in this sense it moves from the relationship of abuse (me and the stalker) to the relationship of reality/ sympathy and understanding (me and my other social relations). I would have never dreamed that I would write this sort of poem a year ago, but after having been stalked and harassed by this person for so long, after having called the police, after having ignored the stalker and fought back, I felt like writing the poem was my last recourse.
 

note: I’ve started this feature up as a kind of homage and alternative (a companion series, if you will) to the incredible work Alex Dimitrov and the rest of the team at the The Academy of American Poets are doing. I mean it’s astonishing how they are able to get masterpieces of such stature out to the masses on an almost daily basis. But, some poems, though formidable in their own right, aren’t quite right for that pantheon. And, so I’m planning on bridging the gap. A kind of complementary series. Enjoy!