Ounce of Pound
Another point miscomprehended by people who are clumsy at language is that one does not need to learn a whole language in order to understand some one or some dozen poems. It is often enough to understand thoroughly the poem, and every one of the few dozen or few hundred words that compose it.
– “How to Read”
Catch it if you Can: The Sad Meal, by DJ Dolack
I met DJ Dolack for the first time a few weeks before Christmas, at a party. Turns out we’ve both written for Coldfront. So okay, nice to meet you, DJ. Then the next week I’m getting ready to give this reading for Hexed, and notice that I’ll be sharing a bill with–among others–one DJ Dolack. Also, now that I think about it, weren’t me and dude both in the Fall 2008 issue of diode? (Yes.) Weird how much your life can overlap with somebody else’s without either of your even knowing it. Well, anyway, when we were at the reading, DJ gave me a copy of his 2005 chapbook, “The Sad Meal,” which was published by Eye for an Iris and distributed through Black Ocean. It’s a gorgeous little book, on nice paper, about the size of a thank you card (it came in an illustrated envelope) and bound with a single staple. I have no idea how many were printed, or how to get one (Eye for an Iris’s site seems to not have anything on it, and the Black Ocean page for “The Sad Meal” doesn’t exist anymore) but I have one and I think it’s pretty cool.
O Captain, My Captain: Lish Power Quote #3
Work on your blanks.
– Arcade, p. 172
The Believer interviews Doseone
Doseone is a true original among the rap shits. Pretty much any record he touches (from cLOUDDEAD to his solo discography to 6-piece band Subtle), dude is going to be doing new things not only with the music he is rapping (or singing) over, but with the words he puts on top of it. Where a lot of rap is made of repetitions and nonsense, Doseone invents science and languageisms that are often just as new as the words coming out on Diagram or Fence or wherever you wanna talk about.
I tried to do this interview for the Believer but couldn’t get a hold of my man. Anyway, you can read the interview now fully online, and it is a fun weird one, as would be expected of a man who wears suits made out of plastic spoons and writes huge poetry manuals to accompany his most recent project’s trilogy of albums (all of which are really good and worth checking out, if you like experimental but still catchy music):
Letter From Austria: Peter Handke’s Sorrow and My Own
I am deep in the Austrian Alps of Carinthia, near the borders of Italy and Slovenia, in a province largely full of people who never leave it, a six hour train ride from Vienna, staring out my hotel window to enormous mountains and yards and yards of snow, pine trees, and quaint houses that have not changed in structure for hundreds of years. Handke is from Carinthia, from a town not far from here. My parents and I see each other once a year because they live in Vienna and we live in New York. Once, I looked out at all the beauty and thought; “All this beauty. Too bad it is full of Austrians.” Other times I look out and try to be happy and grateful. (There are things I like about Austria. I like the food, the Frittatensuppe, the Topfen, the Semmeln, the delicious Austrian pastries, as good as any Italian pastry. I have a weird fetish for the traditional clothes, the Dirndls, the Lederhosen, the felted wool in general. (I grew up wearing that stuff.))
Peter Handke’s mother killed herself by taking an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of fifty-one. He writes:
My mother has been dead for almost seven weeks; I had better get to work before the need to write about her, which I felt so strongly at her funeral, dies away and I fall back into the dull speechlessness with which I reacted to the news of her suicide.
Merry Xmas from HTMLGiant & John Donne!
Nativity
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov’d imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod’s jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
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More English Renaissance Christmas poetry at the Shakespeare Authorship page.
Power Quote: Donald Barthelme
ANATHEMATIZATION OF THE WORLD IS NOT AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THE WORLD.
– Snow White
O Captain, My Captain: Lish Power Quote #2
Here is what I wanted. You know what I wanted? I wanted for me not to have to make believe I wanted something.
– Arcade, p. 156
Supersucker: A Novel by Lee Klein
Lee Klein, our own Massive Person No.3, wrote a novel Supersucker which can now be easily accessed as a pdf from the Supersucker page on eyeshot.
(I hope I’m not stepping on any toes Lee), but if you’re a publisher, please take a look. According to Klein, it’s “a simple good-natured love story involving a woman with immaculate conception disorder and an autofellator.” It also features remarkably adroit illustrations by the author.
Also, check out The Eyeshot Gold Star Reserve, a “best of” eyeshot.net thus far, going back into the archives for gems, including HTMLGIANT friends Blake Butler, Elizabeth Ellen, Kevin Sampsell, Jensen Whalen (Whelan?), and others.
There’s also Randa Jarrar’s piece which was included in Eggers’ Best Non-required Reading some years back, and my personal favorite, “Why You Should Touch My Balls,” by a mysterious Will Ratblood, who per his website, seems to be ‘around,’ however obscurely.
Everything eyeshot continues to dazzle.
I like Eddie Bunker a lot.
I imagine Eddie Bunker slow smoking a cigarette while blank staring out a dirty window in a dirty motel room in a dirty city called LA. Eddie feels fear and outspoken rage towards normal society because they refuse to accept him as a valid human being. Eddie understands the concept of urban survival and has made a cognizant decision to become the predator and not the prey. A stolen hand gun sits on his left and a typewriter sits on his right. Today Eddie chooses the typewriter.
***
I like Edward ‘Eddie” Bunker a lot. His prose isn’t anything particular and you won’t find University professors discussing his work to bubblegum eyed freshman. The work is still enjoyable.
He spent the first half of his life surviving mean streets and concrete cages, evading the law (including being on the FBI’s Most Wanted list), and writing from his prison cell.
Urban survival in LA taught him to be predatory, violent and apathetic towards fellow humans. Acclimation to his harsh reality resulted in rejection from society. Overwhelming feelings of alienation and rage followed. These concepts are static in his writing.
If I had to choose one of his books to recommend, I would suggest “No Beast So Fierce”. “Animal Factory” being second.
Any young person with MTV glossed images of LA dancing in their soft little heads should read Eddie’s work. Greater people have broke themselves against this city’s teeth.
You aren’t very special. You won’t make it out alive.