Do You Mean What You Say?
Are the enemies of God welcome here at the Bay Shore Mennonite church? Verse 11 of Matthew 5 reads, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” But, seriously, what if the enemies of God (whatever that means) walked into church one Sunday morning screaming obscenities or staging a hunger strike in front of the podium? I seriously doubt the Mennonites would be down. Not to mention, this sign is probably not saying what it means (or meaning what it says for that matter). Does it mean, “Praise and worship the enemies of God” or “The enemies of God are welcome here” or “Praise and worship. The enemies of God, with reference to the Beatitudes. Welcome” ?
Look at this (bathroom poetics No. 3):
I believe that someone in the bathroom stall at Smokin’ Joes was tired after a few beers, a few missed opportunities, too much inhaled smoke. I believe it because it’s a likely scenario. But welcoming the enemies of God into your place of worship is not as likely on a number of levels, the most obvious being that “enemies of God” is the dumbest phrase in the world. Not that I am a realist, by a long shot. I like unlikely scenarios when the writer gives me the freedom (leeway, wiggle room) to not believe them literally.
Dream a little dream of a little dream
A few days ago, I wrote a scene where my protagonist dreams she’s in a huge cake maze, like a maze made out of gigantic cakes. This was her dream birthday party, but there was no way for anyone to eat the cake, so she ran to the kitchen to get spoons, spoons for every mouth! Inside, she faced a second labyrinth: an ocean of tarp that bit at her, obstructing her from the silverware drawer.
A few years ago, I had a dream where I was under attack in this poet’s house. It’s a big house, red brick, gorgeous really. Out of nowhere, an older writer strolls in drinking a beer. Nothing else happened. The attack stopped. I was safe. Later, I told her about my dream. This was years ago. She told me she was a recovering alcoholic. I was so embarrassed, I don’t even remember how I reacted.
I can’t tell you how many short stories I’ve read that end with “and then he/she/it wakes up.” It’s the lamest kind of trick.
Which is why I found Inception potentially very interesting but in the end quite disappointing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3XzUYd6nrU&feature=related
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July 17th, 2010 / 12:46 pm
July 17th, 2010 / 12:46 pm
What is a Long Poem?
Seems like a strange genre. Is it a genre? How can the term “Long Poem” apply to both Eliot’s Wasteland and Zukofsky’s A, when the former is 434 lines and the latter is over 800 pages? How come everybody’s always yapping about Pound’s Cantos, when they should be yapping about Stanford’s The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You? Does Chelsey Minnis’s Poemland count as a Long Poem? What about Ben Lerner’s Angle of Yaw?
Edgar Allen Poe says: “I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.”
Peter Middleton asks: “What significance does the adjective ‘long’ carry when we talk about the long poem? Is it literal or metaphorical, or a more or less implicit proper name?”
Rachel Blau DuPlessis says: “[W]e could say that the lyric/short poem haunts the long poem even as the long poem surrounds it, trumps it, smashes it, and envelops it. Even when it is made to disappear, or to become untenable, perhaps the ghost of lyric/shortness does variously haunt the long poem.”
Big Shoes
Has anyone else been reading Greg Oden’s webpage/blog? (“Greg Oden’s Recent Activity is empty!”) It’s like poetry of the clinically depressed. It’s so honest as to be beautiful.
Well to start, I woke up this morning with an itchy throat and a runny nose.
After media training, I went out to dinner with the little white guy, the really quick one and I think he told me he played soccer all summer.
The second half i went up to the press box because i was getting cold and was tired of standing.
I usually hate it when there is fruit with my meal.
The next night when i woke up i had a puddle of blood where i was sleeping. It was in the spot where my puddle of slobber is usually at.
No one really looks at me as a 19 year old kid, and no one has for a while now.
I never get a chance to just come out and be here to go see the sights and walk around.
Im actually here in Portland right now visiting Nike and on the way here I saw mountains with snow on it, I thought to myself its May.
I sucked worse then anybody who ever played golf, i didnt even have one decent shot.
Its so bad that i watch Cold Case up to 4 in the morning every week night, because it comes on TNT starting at 12 and they play 4 episodes back to back.
When i got back here and i was going to move in i didnt have anything in my room.
I get lost just about everytime I step out my room.
I don’t think I was supposed to do it anyway.
I saw a guy with a Ohio State shirt and I got hype I was like thats amazing someone who loves Ohio State then once i saw 30 more people with the same shirt I was like hold up not all these people like Ohio State, but its ok.
I was quiet most of the time, and when I did talk they told me to speak up.
After that i hung out at home with my dog who i havent seen in over a month.
I can keep going and going but mostly im thankful just to wake up each morning.
Art’s not dead.
Punk Van Gogh image by your friend and mine, Jim Ruland.
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10
Two Things to Make It Rain
It’s warm out.
1. Commenter kirby pointed to this essay by Jim Rossignol about video games and architecture.
2. Bookstore Memory: I went to this bookstore in Appleton, Wisconsin years ago, and noticed a bunch of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion reviews in frames on the walls. A place of honor was reserved for one from Rolling Stone that was on the same page as a Bob Dylan review. I talked to the owner, and found out that she was the mother of JSBX guitarist Judah Bauer. She told me he had been really excited to see his band reviewed so close to Dylan because, even if he wouldn’t admit it to his punk rock/noise rock friends, Dylan was his favorite artist. “All the tapes in his room were labeled Honeymoon Killers and stuff, but they were all actually Dylan records.” She told me that story while I waited for my change—I was buying, I think, Dr. Sax by Jack Kerouac—and I’m 67% certain she was hoping if she dazzled me with rock gossip, I would forget she owed me for the $20 I had given her.
Got a bookstore memory? Comment.
Literary Doppelgangers
The subtlest smirk closes in on an untold joke; the heavy eyelids weighed down by ponderous thoughts; the broad nose a bridge to the mind; the fragile inverse window of tiny spectacles. William Butler Yeats and David Foster Wallace don’t have much in common, except to say that the latter did perhaps the far opposite of rhyming, his work mired in syntactical and phonetic difficulty. Notice what looks to be a faint scar on WBY’s cheek, and its uncanny reflection in DFW’s deep crease at the same place. But only one is wearing a bandana, so we know who the gangsta is. That it is white, a soft surrender.
Barbizon school
Behind the violence of Grand Theft Auto [left], light which has been most challenging to convey since the inception of painting is unconsciously rendered, almost inadvertent, unknowing of its beauty. The television and monitor offer us emanant light, not mere reflected; its brightness comes from within. Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot [right] lived with his parents until he was fifty; he painted twice a day — in the hours preceding dusk and following dawn, when the light was most tentative and transparent. In the 150 years between our cited landscapes, a lot has happened. What took months, even years to paint, is now addressed as a backdrop; its light perfect and eerily humanist. In both, look at the faint haze of sunrise in the distance, the tickle of leaves. Computer nerds now make bank writing code for games, seducing the newest generation of nerds.