Seth Oelbaum
Seth Oelbaum earned a poetry MFA from the University of Notre Dame. He is CEO of the literary Tumblr corporation Bambi Muse. His first chapbook, macey [triolets], will be published by Birds of Lace in January 2013.
Maybe if…
Maybe if Syrian people started being blown up while running marathons in Boston then the white race would care more about it…
Men in partial or full military dress went door to door, separating men — and boys 10 and older — from women and younger children.
Residents said some gunmen were from the National Defense Forces, the new framework for pro-government militias, mainly Alawites in the Baniyas area. They bludgeoned and shot men, shot or stabbed families to death and burned houses and bodies.
- “Grisly Killings in Syrian Towns Dim Hopes for Peace Talks,” Anne Barnard
… Although, according to Baby Adolf, if you want attention for being killed by the boatloads then you should probably be J E W I S H.
Speaking of that, Baby Idi is having a hard time comprehending that “Jewish, New York sense of humor.” Is there anyone out there that can elucidate it for him?
… Anywho, Baby Marie-Antoinette could really use a soft cherry cream cheese croissant right about now.
Baby Adolf’s Summary of the 5th Annual CUNY Chapbook Festival
A couple of days ago Baby Adolf, the first Bambi Muse baby despot, and I met up at a McDonald’s near a Germanic bakery located somewhere on the Upper East Side.
My outfit featured, among other things, sunnies. As for Baby Adolf, his deck was brown.
Both Baby Adolf and I ordered vanilla ice cream cones. And after we ordered second vanilla ice cream cones, Baby Adolf screamed (unlike PhD’s, &c, no one at Bambi Muse is captivated by “conversation”) about how he wanted to be on HTML Giant quite badly. After all, Baby George III has been and so has Baby Marie-Antoinette. Why should the boy who will one day kill six million you-know-whos and five million other oh-who-cares be denied the chance to appear on the site run by the continually cute-looking Blake Butler?
“Maybe,” I said to Baby Adolf, at the McDonald’s near the Germanic bakery on the Upper East Side, “if you gave me three Baby Ruths, four Jujubes, and a Coca-Cola then I’ll publish your summary of the 5th-annual CUNY chapbook festival on 9 May 2013.”
Baby Adolf grumbled his assent. What follows is Baby Adolf’s summary:
***
On Saturday Baby Adolf, accompanied by his mommy, Klara Hitler, visited the 5th annual chapbook festival at CUNY. For some time, Baby Adolf believed CUNY was just another way to say NYU. After Saturday, though, Baby Adolf realized that they were two separate entities. NYU is a big ugly college that’s usurping the West Village, while CUNY is a big ugly building in Midtown.
The festival took place in a plain white hallway, and, according to Baby Adolf’s eyes, there wasn’t anything particular festive going on. There weren’t any military marches or bellicose speeches prophesying global war along with the resurrection of the fatherland. Unfortunately, there were too many boys who looked like they’d just blown in from Bedford as well as a fair amount of girls whose clothes suggested that they had just come here from their weekly Park Slope Lesbian Separatist meeting.
But some commendable creatures were present, like Baby Ji Yoon. She spent most of her time at the festival taking mysterious notes, as if she were spying for a certain country that starts with North and ends in Korea.
Dressing Up Maya Angelou
There was a rather large period in which I basically refused to utter Maya Angelou’s name, let alone read her books. For quite a bit, I associated Maya with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and other guardians of the white race. In one of my classroom’s Maya’s poster was hung right next to Clinton’s. Why would I wander around in the text of someone that’s in such close proximity (even if it’s just in poster form) to William Jefferson Clinton? He, like white race icon Allen Ginsberg, was a pervert, and perverts are preponderantly narrow-minded since all they really care about is the human body.
But then, a couple of months ago, while I was sipping a berry Juicy Juice box and surfing the web I ran into a video of Fiona Apple’s 1997 VMA acceptance speech. Fiona is not a follower of middle class principles. “I’ve been a bad bad girl,” sings Fiona, in her hit single “Criminal.” “I’ve been careless with a delicate man.” Unlike Betty F, Sheryl Sandberg, Andrea Dworkin, &c, Fiona doesn’t believe that girls behaving like Capitalists is beneficial. What’s wonderful to her is mistreating men, not striving to emulate their trajectory. Rather than devote her earth time to working 9-5, saying things that no one needs to hear while touching commodities that are as cute as Ginsberg’s beard (not cute in any way whatsoever), Fiona hides in closets and rolls on the floor in sassy outfits. Hope is trivial to Fiona — what she sports is massively more marvelous: prettiness and pugnacity.
So… In Fiona’s 97 VMA acceptance speech, in addition to issuing the true declaration (“this world is bullshit”), she quotes Maya Angelou — “We, at our best, can only create opportunities.” While I’m not certain that I concur with this quote, Fiona’s embrace of Maya still caused me to reevaluate her. Maybe Maya did deviate from the morals of Community Organizer B.O., Clinton, Marc Rubio, Rob Portman, &c. Maybe Maya was concerned with more than allowing everyone to take part in the white race system of consumption, copulation, and contentment.
To find out, I read Maya’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and concluded that Maya was commendable. Instead of spending her Sundays scrolling an iPad, Maya attends church, where some members (Sister Monroe) get so much spirit that they chase the preacher around and around the chapel. Does Maya mingle with humans holding plain white race names like John Kerry, Jon Tester, John Thune, John McCain? No. When she moves to St. Louis to live with her mother, Maya’s surrounded by action-packed appellations — Wild West Brooks, Hard-hitting Jimmy, Two Gun. Then my eyeballs feasted (thought not actually; my eyeballs aren’t my mouth, so they can’t do that) on this passage:
Dear White Race,
One dead white peoples equals how many dead non-white peoples?
Huh?
Huh?
Huh?
xoxo,
Baby Marie-Antoinette
***
– 14 April 2013: 30 children were killed in Syria.
– 15 April 2013: At least 37 people were killed in Iraq.
– 15 April 2013: 3 people were killed in Boston.
The icky white race says:
***
Baby Marie-Antoinette’s “Dear White Race” letter was first published 15 April 2013 on the cute literary corporation Bambi Muse.
Outfit and Poem for Springtime
I am invariably unimpressed by spring. Warm weather and sun aren’t traits that I find becoming. But still… spring does mean that you can wear clothes that you wouldn’t wear otherwise. So here is an outfit that I recently assembled:
Vintage Olympic t-shirt from a Goodwill in Missouri, polka dot tights by American Apparel, sunnies from a Chinese person on East Broadway, and UO boots
Also, here is a spring poem that was first published on Lambada. It’s authoress is the marvelous Monica McClure. If I was a boy who liked girls I would probably like Monica McClure, and we would most likely live in a really special place, and only those cognizant of certain things would be able to keep company with us:
Problems of Spring
It’s not my fault; the moon is shining through me.
Naturally, the most romantic steps forward
to say he swallowed a daffodil for every lover he’s had.
I can see where they dimple his stomach, I can see
the hardiness of arms, the artless shoveling
he’ll do from night to joyful morning.
To release me will dry his mouth to lemon,
I know, but I need the gaze of a man more than rain.
Another Bacchanalia in April, and I have only
half a body to dance, half to steady a canyon.
Nobody knows how to stay or leave. It’s not my fault,
although the way white blossoms look like hail
when they’re thrashed in a storm—it’s a pity.
Monica in Mandate of Heaven
American Humans Are the Least Specialist Things In the Solar System
At least three times a week, whether I’m sipping Berry Juicy Juice, reciting Chelsey Minnis verse (“most poets don’t have any dick or balls under this their skirts”) or staring dreamily out the window, I think about how terrific it would be if every single boy in Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like” music video was my boyfriend. Oh, we’d almost surely have a swell time together. We’d engage in the most exquisite activities, like sip Berry Juicy Juice, recite Chelsey Minnis, and stare dreamily out the window. Though, obviously, if the GBE boys and I turned into an item, we might, even in this time period, be subject to racism. America hasn’t exactly been benevolent to those whose skin color resembles not a vanilla milkshake. America has savagely uprooted an entire race, dropped two atomic bombs on another, and averted their eyes from countless non-whitey genocides. Indeed, American human possess a preponderant of bias against those contrasting their skin color, just as, though in different degrees, they are biased against boys who don’t like girls, girls who don’t like boys, and anyone who doesn’t treat the Holocaust as an unspeakable occurrence.
Yes, yes, American humans are prejudiced, and I wish to discuss what these prejudices mean: What is the basis for American humans’ brutal attitude towards others? What are American humans trying to preserve? What characteristics do American humans have that others don’t? What type of society are non-American humans being excluded from?
According to Lana Del Rey, “Money is the reason we exist / Everyone knows it’s a fact / Kiss kiss.” The German boy, Karl Marx, concurs with the pointed girl singer. The laborer, in Karl’s words, “consumes in a two-fold way.” While working, he consumes what’s needed to produce what he’s obligated to, like computers, smartphones, coffee bean grinders, &c. When the laborer is not occupied with his job he spends the money that he earned on subsistence, like meat, middle-class clothes, and an apartment (probably in Bed-Sty [sp?]) that is deplorably deprived of Disney DVDs (though not, unsurprisingly, lubricant and books by 99 percent poets). The worker buys these things since, without them, his labor power value would vault into worthlessness and then he, too, would be worthless.
All worth comes from money. Marx says, “Money brings the relation of commodities into values” since it serves as the “universal equivalent.” Money turns humans into commodities. They sell their labor – themselves – in the way that someone else (Kmart) would sell me, say, a teddy bear. Commodities can be becoming things; yet commodities that are arrogant, that deem themselves superior to other commodities, are utterly unbecoming things. My teddy bear doesn’t torpedo around town twittering of human rights, morals, and equality. My teddy bear is quiet, cute, and cuddly. The American human, however, is a disgraceful commodity. They operate under the belief that they are not commodities at all. American humans talk your ear off about freedom and liberty. But American humans are not independent. American humans are moored to money, for, minus money, American humans would be bereft of an identity, since money — how much money they extract for their labor power as well as the amount they spend in order to surround themselves with commodities of commensurate value, which, in turn, perseveres the appeal of their labor power value – forms the American human’s identity.
Dressing Up Anne Frank
Anne Frank is one of the most fortunate creatures to ever be compelled to live on earth. If I wasn’t a boy – that is to say, if I was a girl — she’d most likely be included in the Top 5 Girls Who I’d Want to Be. And it’s just not me who admires Anne so. Angela Chase, the moody heroine of My So-Called Life, envies her too. When Angela’s high-school English teacher asks her to describe Anne’s predicament, Angela answers, “Lucky.” Maggie Nelson – a one-percent poet – is fascinated by Anne as well. “But who can guess / what Anne would have said / about the last place she went,” Maggie speculates, with fantastic suspense. There’s plenty more examples – including a significant sample of sexualized feminists who harp on Anne’s clitoris – but that’ll do presently.
What’s of primary importance is that Anne’s life was preponderantly sensational and romantic. Her setting was one of a studio movie (the Holocaust), but, being confined to a secret annex, it was also one of a stormy Victorian romance novel. She kind of resembles Bertha Mason. Both were concealed from external society due to dark, devastatingly charming forces: Hitler and Lord Rochester. Then Anne’s also sort of like Harriet the Spy (Paramount Pictures). Both Anne and Harriet meticulously record their thoughts, especially their mean ones: Harriet is contemptuous of Sport’s (one of her BFFs) lack of money; Anne. meanwhile, puts down her future one true love, Peter, by declaring: “Can’t expect much from his company.” Yes, Anne’s disposition is commendably catty and literary. But a famous literary boy, Harold Bloom, says:
A child’s diary, even when she was so natural a writer, rarely could sustain literary criticism. Since this diary is emblematic of hundreds of thousands of murdered children, criticism is irrelevant. I myself have no qualifications except as a literary critic. One cannot write about Anne Frank’s Diary as if Shakespeare, or Philip Roth, is the subject.
Uh-uh, Shakespeare was probably bisexual, or, according to rumors, an average person whose name was usurped by a member of Queen Elizabeth’s court (or the Queen herself) for a pseudonym. There’s nothing special about liking boys and girls, nor is there anything worth noticing about the middle class. As for Philip Roth… well, we know what Baby Adolf would say about him.
A more marvelous evaluation comes from Girl Land author, Caitlin Flanagan: “Anne Frank is an imp, a brat, a narcissist, a sulker, a manipulator, a manic talker, a flirt, and a person who insisted on the rapt attention of everyone around her at one moment, and on the pure privacy that all misunderstood people demand at the next.” Anne is moody and mysterious. She might possess some relationship to Fiona Apple or Lana Del Ray. These girls contain conflicting traits too. Conflict is quite entertaining, and entertainment should look lovely, and Anne Frank shall be just that since I shall dress her up.
The Kmart Belles Lettres Conference Summation
As many are already absolutely aware, beginning on March 6 and ending on March 9 there was a literary conference — sponsored by Bambi Muse and Fox News — of sparkly specialness. That literary conference — the Kmart Belles Lettres Conference — was clamorous, and clamor commands a summary. So here is a summary!
March 6 (Day 1):
Most of the attendees were in a foul mood for the first day. Edie Sedgwick, for one, lost her fur in a cab on the night before and refused to mingle with anyone, even the sharp society poet Edith Sitwell. Sitwell tried to offer Edie a coup of tea, but Edie insisted that no one speak to her about anything unless it was directly related to the recovery of her fur coat.
So, instead Sitwell started a conversation with none other than Baby Adolf, the first Bambi Muse baby. Here’s a snippet of their chat:
Grossness in John Kerry Land (which is already gross) 2013
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.
The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.
It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
Announcing The Kmart Belle Lettres Conference: March 6-9
My teddy bear, Kmart, is named after the place where I purchased him: Kmart (specifically, the one on Broadway).
Well, as it so happened, on Friday night, while Kmart and I were eating vanilla cupcakes, reading books about etiquette, and starting our collaborative biography on the Little Mermaid, Kmart turned to me and said (somewhat grouchily, as Kmart is somewhat grouchy): “I want to hold a literary conference!”
“Oh?” I replied.
“Yes,” confirmed Kmart, “and I want it to be right here in New York City. It can be held at Bergdorf’s. It can also be held at McDonald’s. But we won’t need to inform anybody where it’ll be at any given time because only special creatures will be permitted to attend and special creatures are always aware of where special things are.”
“Well,” I said, as I bit into my 27th cupcake, “will there be panels? will there be guests? will there be food? will there be hotel accommodations?”
“Maybe there will be panels, like one panel could be called, ‘Why The Little Mermaid Is More Marvelous Than Everyone.’ But, then again, if I’m feeling grouchy, then there won’t be any panels. And, of course, there will be special guests. Pretty Edna St. Vincent Millay, whom I text with regularly, will come. So will William Carlos Williams, Maya Angelou, Edie Sedgwick, and much more.”
“What about hotel accommodations?”
“The Plaza,” sassed Kmart, “obviously.”
“Sponsors?”
“Duh,” groaned Kmart, “Bambi Muse and Fox News…. Now, let’s return to our Little Mermaid biography. Should we start our author’s preface with a pronoun or an adjective?”
[NB: For complete, comprehensive coverage of the first ever Kmart Belle Lettres Conference read this site - HTML Giant.]
The AWP Should Stand For Something Very Vulgar Because It Is Very Vulgar
There shouldn’t be an AWP. There should only be one if it would result in me meeting Gina Abelkop. She is the publisher of Birds of Lace, a press that publishes books about girl groups, adventurous twins, and girls who justify murder in high school essays. Most Birds of Lace books fulfill one of the primary attributes of literature: They transmute the reader to magical, mysterious worlds of death, babysitters, and big hair. Gina and I could meet for tea (or vanilla cupcakes). We could discuss trenchant topics, like the veils in Meadham Kirchoff’s Fall 13 collection or Disney princesses. Why, we could even mosey to a Disney store (if there are Disney stores in Boston) and she could purchase an Ariel doll (because she’s a girl) and I could purchase a Buzz Lightyear doll (because I’m a boy). It’d all be rather idyllic. But according to the grapevine Gina won’t be attending this year. So I won’t either, which is fine, since the AWP is as disgusting as gay people, straight people, bisexual people, and Brooklyn.
On their site, the AWP claims to be “the largest literary conference in North America.” But the AWP has little relation to literature. Only around one percent of the attendees make literature. There’s just a tiny fraction who formulate texts that are monstrous and divine – that, like those German boys, possess the grit and glamour to wage war on basically everyone on the globe. As for the rest – the 99 percent of AWP people – they are not poets and they are not composing literature. They are not concerned with epic Emily Bronte or moody Frank O’Hara. They are a product of typical middle class capitalism, or, as Karl Marx says, “the bourgeois.” According to Karl, the bourgeois live off others’ labor. They acquire value through accumulation. As the bourgeois stockpile products their worth increases. This renders them reliable upon the proletariat who must toil night and day with very little rest to keep up with the insatiable, indiscriminate bourgeois.
Dear Apple Store on 103 Prince Street,
I hate you.
You aren’t really a store that sells technological appliances (though really you are). But really you are a late 80s/early 90s San Francisco-style bathhouse that sponsors unprotected sodomy orgies 24/7 and even on holidays, like Presidents’ Day.
Stop being so bisexual, Brooklyn, weird, and a host of other disgusting symbols.
PS, Baby Jong-il hates you too.
Dressing Up Maggie Nelson
I first became of aware of Maggie Nelson when I overheard two feminist girls debating whether or not what “she was doing” was ethical. I did not know what “she was doing,” nor did I care. I was forbidden to read her. She was a girl, and for quite a bit it was against the law for me to read girl poets besides, of course, Sylvia. The ban against girls began when a teacher (another feminist, and certainly not the catty, commendable kind) assigned us the Sharon Olds’s poem “The Language of the Brag.” The poem perpetuates the base boast: “I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman, / Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing.” Oh bother! A demographic whose primary goal is to be like two hairy free-verse guzzling perverts will elicit neither esteem nor heed from me. But then another teacher (a boy one) suggested I read Ariana Reines. Ariana isn’t an intolerably gregarious gay and she isn’t a beatnik-hippie sodomite. Ariana is a monster. In one poem in The Cow, she munches her own poop, sips her throw up, and goes down on herself. She is “self-contained”: disciplined and exacting. She is a sword-sharp: the antithesis of the free verse commoners who are as loose and watery as Barack H. Obama’s negotiating skills.
Obviously after I discovered Ariana and the rest of Rebecca Wolff’s spitfire songstresses my ban against girl poets had to be banned. This meant I could finally read Maggie, which turned out to be marvelous. Maggie is obsessed with ghastliness, terror, and the dead. She devotes “years of compulsion, confusion, and damage” writing about her Aunt Jane, a girl who was viciously murdered while returning home from college. Moreover, she’s compelled by one of the most blessed, articulate, and mischievous girls to ever be forced to live on earth… Anne Frank! “But who can guess / what Anne would have said / about the last place she went,” Maggie tantalizes. Indeed, Maggie has outstanding tastes and curiosities, so I will provide her with three outfits so that she feels fabulous in her wonderfully horrific world.
A Few Things
I think everyone should be as concerned about their art as Lily and her mommy are:
The organizers of The Hunger Games academic conference have released a list of their panels.
Megan Milks’s choose your own adventure book is sweet and sharp. Baby Adolf and Baby Joseph like it as well.
This is an insightful song about girls.
Alexandra Petri and John Deming Should Probably Get Married Because They Have A Lot In Common Because They Are Both Considerably Misinformed About Poetry
I intentionally missed most of the inauguration of Bruce Springsteen’s boyfriend. Symbols of democracy and freedom make my tummy quite queasy. I prefer the enchantment of The Little Mermaid to the mediocrity of the middle class and the person that they pick to govern them. But a couple of days after The Boss’s “partner” was publicly sworn in, I overheard two princess friends of mine discussing a poetry quarrel that arose from this inauguration. Supposedly a poet named Richard (I’m not sure of his last name, and considering his connection to Obama, he’s certainly not talented enough to Google or even Bing) read. The poem prompted a girl Washington Post blogger, Alexandra Petri, to declare that poetry is probably dead. A poetry boy, John Deming, quickly rendered a rebuttal. After reading both, I’ve come to the conclusion that each has a very un-magical, unsupportable viewpoint on poetry.
To begin, I’d like to declare that being “dead” isn’t deplorable: it’s delightful. Sylvia adored the dead. She covered herself in concentration camp victims. Her skin was “bright as Nazi lampshade.” Was Sylvia disempowered or on the margins of culture? No way, progressive gays! Sylvia was a spitfire. She slashed her daddy and her canonized poet husband. Charles Baudelaire, one of the best boy poets ever, sought the dead too. In “Spleen (ii)” Charles boasts that his skull holds “more corpses than a common grave.” Identification with dead doesn’t disadvantage Charles either. He’s a dandy — someone superlatively superior to humans, a boy who follows his own special set of laws. The dead are special and unique. They’re much more powerful than humans. To call someone or something dead is a term of incredible endearment, and should be embraced.
A Little Video For My First Chapbook, macey [triolets], and A Picture of Mittens
My first chapbook, macey [triolets], has been published by Birds of Lace, and may be purchased now for five U.S. dollars.
I made a little video for it featuring music by DMX and Sisqo
Also, the weather is finally freezing, so everyone can wear mittens, and mittens are so cute, you absolutely have to post pictures of outfits that include them.
Clothing Credits: mittens by Urban Outfitters, coat from a shop in Missouri, vintage sweater, Penguin collar, sunnies from a Chinese person’s store on the Lower East Side.
Three Outfits for the Teacher Boy from Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House
A young Willa Cather
During Christmas Break I, along with two dear, marvelous, mythological kitties, convened a book club concentrated around girls. We read a remarkable amount of literature by ladies. The non-boy authors included Marisa Meltzer’s review of sass in the relatively recent music business, Caitlin Flanagan’s charmingly 50s housewife advice on how to treat your daughter, and the Great Plains gal Willa Cather. The last of these non-boys caused the sharpest reactions amongst the book club members. Willa’s exacting, singular, and peculiar worlds wound up the kitties to such an extent that they cried, moaned, groaned, and dispensed caca in places where politer creatures wouldn’t dare dispense caca.
I, too, was enchanted by Willa; especially Professor Godfrey St. Peter, the teacher boy in The Professor’s House. Unlike most feminists and nearly all LGBTQ’s, St. Peter isn’t thirsting to earn entrance into un-movielike white America. St. Peter pulsates with literature. He composed an eight-volume study on Spanish Adventurers. Insight is the sole currency that concerns the professor. When Oxford awards him a prize of five thousand pounds St. Peter informs his wife, “If with that cheque I could have brought back the fun I had writing my history, you’d never have got your house. But one couldn’t get that for twenty thousand dollars. The great pleasures don’t come so cheap.” A new crib is zilch compared to learning, and, obviously, one should collect knowledge in wonderful clothes, which is primarily why I shall now take up the task of dressing St. Peter.
A Rebuttal to Nina Power’s Infuriating Review of Preliminary Materials For a Theory of the Young-Girl
I intended to spend today (29 Dec. 2012) staring out the window and starting a list of all the reasons why kitties were superior in every single way to humans. However, my plan was pummeled to pieces when, through Facebook, I came into contact with Nina Power’s review of Tiqqun’s (trans. Ariana Reines) Preliminary Materials For a Theory of the Young-Girl. I am a boy. I like monster trucks and Arthur Rimbaud. But, even though I’m not a young girl, I still contain an awful amount of admiration for how Tiqqun (a French collective of theorists and artists) depicts the young girl, and I did not appreciate Nina Power’s patronizing, neo-liberal evaluation of it.
So, now, I am impelled to illuminate the wrongness of her ways.
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December 29th, 2012 / 4:57 pm
December 29th, 2012 / 4:57 pm
