The Scowl is good bloggish
In this interview at The Scowl, Jonathan Messinger is well-spoken about Paper Egg books — the subscription imprint from those pros at Featherproof. It’s sensible stuff; by using a subscription model, they know how to set their expectations and can take bigger risks with the work they publish. And that’s better for everybody in the world.
I like The Scowl a lot. It’s hipper’n me.
Apples and Cheese: Both in Your Mouth
Rauan Klassink’s Ringing, a new e-book from Kitchen Press. Sam Pink just interviewed Rauan a few hours ago, which means it’s almost outdated. Mercy!
PAIRS DELICIOUSLY WITH:
Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers. A novel that should be as indie-revered as any you can name by Yipzeeny, Kurdledonk, or Qqqqqqqq. But people never mention it? Is it because Thomas Pynchon liked it? Is it because it’s about a bisexual love triangle and a dead Native American Catholic saint? Is it because Montreal? It is because God of? You’re like, “Is that the Hallelujah guy? Didn’t he write that cute Suzanne song?” Is it because of Charles Atlas or a mystical dildo? Are you afraid? Cohen called Beautiful Losers more of a sunstroke than a novel. People turn into movie projectors. People cancel a statue of Queen Victoria. Hey, when you get a chance, you should buy your new favorite novel:
I like Alan Dugan a lot. Also, sorry, pr.
I didn’t really know Alan Dugan’s work until very recently, but was introduced to it through the I assume well known Love Song: I and Thou. It was a part of a lecture I attended, and the lecturer had a friend of mine stand up and read it at the very end of the lecture, the “Okay, thanks a lot,” moment. (The lecture was about irony. Or Irony, I suppose. An old subject, but certainly one worthy of discussion, as it tends to be so often misidentified.)
Since then, I’ve picked up Poems Seven, and have been enjoying it.
Dugan is a straight-ahead sort of writing, but he’s apparently also very formal. A fine combination.
Here’s my favorite:
READ MORE >
I like “I Am a Cat” a lot
I Am a Cat was written by japanese author Natsume Soseki in 1906. Its clear, taut prose is notably ‘modern’ for its time. I was affected by its writing more than other books — not just in part due to the unlikely cat narrator — but what it taught me: the best satire is born of compassion. After the following excerpts, I will try to explain what I mean.
Excerpt:
I hear that, on occasion, this species catches, boils, and eats us. However as at that time I lacked all knowledge of such creatures, I did not feel particularly frightened. I simply felt myself floating in the air as I was lifted up lightly on his palm.
This is early on in the book, where Soseki quickly establishes the satirical tendency throughout the novel. There is a certain rationality that comes easily for the cat, who gains the reader’s authority.
On hearing the front bell (after the break):
Friggin Winter
Here are two things I like a lot about FRiGG, which is edited by Ellen Parker:
1) It always looks amazingly ornate. Each issue flings these full color graphics at you for every author’s page. I think this is a smart way to be an online magazine in a different way than we normally imagine. Normally we think online lends itself to streamlined, simple, a few solid colors. Sure, that makes sense. But FRiGG’s approach also makes sense because you couldn’t do this lavish kind of stuff in print; it would be too expensive, right? Yes. And then the paintings are smart enough to recede into the background for the text, which is just a very simple black on white. I feel like there is a curator’s sense of individual-by-individual care that goes into presenting all the authors, and that’s great.
2) FRiGG seems aware that people don’t usually want to read 2000+ word stories on the Web, but they publish some anyway, and usually the ones they publish seem smart in their length: broken up cleverly or chasing you with enough line-by-line momentum that you forget the idea of eye strain and read the whole thing. I think this is terrific editorial shrewdness.
All of which is to introduce FRiGG’s new issue, which features stories and poems from: Joshua Ben-Noah Carlson, Louie Crew, Barry Graham, Crystal J. Hoffman, Tiff Holland, Paul Hostovsky, Dennis Mahagin, Ravi Mangla, Mary Miller, Suzanne Ondrus, Jennifer Pieroni, and Katy Whittingham. Peek it now.
I like Buddy Wakefield a lot.
My introduction to poetry readings was interesting. A few years ago my life consisted mostly of copious amounts of Oxycontin (among other opiates), extreme alienation and reading poetry. I used poetry to cope with the loneliness and agony when the opiate ration wasn’t enough to distract me.
I wanted to hear live poetry for a reason I cannot remember now. Google showed only one poetry reading in Orange County. It happened to be right down the street from where I lived at an independent cafe named “the Ugly Mug”.
Nice Hat
profile picture without evidence of flash that you took this yourself
and I saw the best minds of my generation
living in lofts
thinking they were the best minds of their generation
while the world hacked up tax breaks and jet fighters
-Death Lasts
Shake
by Joshua Beckman
Joshua Beckman has a wikipedia page.
Joshua Beckman has a page on poets.org.
Joshua Beckman is a great mind and a great poet. As early as 2004 you could google his name and ‘rock star poet’ would surface as a result.
Over the past ten years he’s published six books of poetry. His seventh, “Take It” is due sometime this year from Wave Books.
The first thing I read by him was his tiny, tiny book (amazon cites it at 6.1 x 4 x 0.5 inches and 3.8 ounces, I would say it is the size of about half a sandwich) “Your Time Has Come” put out by Verse Press.
This holiday season I Secret Santa’d myself and picked up “Shake” and “Something I Expected to Be Different.”
Start your New Year right and pledge to read a poem a day until you’ve mowed down his entire collection of works.
But What Will We Tell The Kids!?
Storyville Radio is a new(ish) radio show and free podcast that you can find here on their blog. This month’s episode is titled “What Will We Tell The Kids.” This show’s format is comparable to This American Life and/or Radio Lab and is equally awesome, evocative and funny. Go Listen.
I like the book “Histoire d’O (the story of O)”
The “Story of O” is a French erotic novel written by Anne Desclos (originally under a pen name). Desclos wrote “O” as a series of letters to Jean Paulhan, her lover and eventual publisher, in response to Paulhan’s claim that a woman could never write like the Marquis de Sade.
Many terms used in contemporary BDSM are attributed to Desclos’s novel. It is a story of female submission, torture, sexuality, objectification and (ultimately) of love. The character O is whipped, chained, branded, beaten, pierced, dominated and fucked. Basically O is a submissive good girl who allows all of these somewhat horrific events to occur by granting her masters verbal permission to perform the acts.
The ending is beautiful and will upset some.
The story is fiction and should be treated thusly by those who find the novel misogynistic or disagree with the submissive nature of the heroine. The book was written by a woman, not a man, as an act of love.
Who are we to cast objections over love between two lovers.
I like Jimmy Chen a lot: the many minds of JC
Jimmy Chen contains Asian multitudes
I think in future litmus tests of potential significant others, one could do well by presenting to them a bibliography of Jimmy Chen, inclusive not only of his fiction, but his blogging, his persona, his internet collage. Then watch their face. If they aren’t with it, they are worthless. Send them crying to their moms.
Knowing Jimmy Chen exists in the world has on more than one occasion made me feel better about my life, and about writing. This is strange, likely, as I have never met Jimmy, never even Gmail chatted with him, or had much direct correspondence with him outside of brief emails and blog comment banter. And yet in most every instance of him I can remember, I have come to believe that if more writers were like Jimmy Chen, this whole game would be so much better off.
There are lots of ways I could define this sweeping statement, but rather than explain why he is a good person (which I believe he is), or positive for the mind, or just plain goddamn funny, I’d rather look at what he does more concretely, and in the mind of how what Jimmy does can be used as a model or a mindset worth trying to strive for.