House Wife Blues: Plath, The Bell Jar, and Writerly Neuroses
Yesterday, my boyfriend and I were out walking the dog, and I was feeling shitty about work as usual. Rounding the corner where the Bay meets the roadway, sun setting pinkly, I blurted out, “Sometimes I just wish I could be a housewife.” He looked at me and said, “Me too.”
That was the end of it. Which pissed me off even more. I wanted to have a legitimate conversation about what it means to be a housewife (which, by the way, I could never be in the 19050s sense), the fact that it’s not even an option anymore for most women. We’re worker bees now, too. It’s only fair. If I want to stay home, which I kind of do, I have to figure out a way to pull in enough income to pay the mortgage on the house I bought all by myself. I have to be able to pull my weight. Not to mention take care of the dogs, do the laundry, make dinners–all because I’m home, which somehow still means, not doing anything at all. My boyfriend would never say or think these things, by the way, but I would. I struggle with these concepts because I would feel guilty if I had the luxury to write. As if writing isn’t work. Writing poetry isn’t work, it’s what you do in your spare time.
In her essay “The Bell Jar at 40,” Emily Gould writes of Sylvia Plath:
PEN America Poetry Series
I just started editing a poetry series over at PEN America. If you sign up for the mailing list, we’ll send you new poems from rad poets 1-2 times a month (no adds, newsletters, promotions, etc). The inaugural installment includes two new poems from Chris Martin. Please check it out and sign up. I promise we won’t let you down.
Ontology of the Cat Poet
THE BIRTH OF THE CAT POET’S CAPACITY FOR PASSION
OR, THE MAKING OF A MAN CAT OF LETTERS
Witness my house’s cat George Jackson pen his magnum opus. Below are some notes provided by Susan Sontag from her essay on Marina Tsvetaeva titled “A Poet’s Prose.”
*
Being a poet is to define oneself as, to persist (against odds) in being, only a poet.
//
Actually, the frontier between prose and poetry has become more and more permeable — unified by the ethos of maximalism characteristic of the modern artist: to create work that goes as far as it can go.
[GEORGE SAYS: “NO. POETRY IS THE HIGHEST FORM. I REFUSED TO ADMIT THE UNREFINED SCRIBBLINGS OF A NON-POET.”]
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Homage to others is the complement to accounts of oneself: the poet is saved from vulgar egoism by the strength and purity of his or her admirations.
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Poet’s prose is mostly about being a poet. And to write such autobiography, as to be a poet, requires a mythology of the self. The self described is the poet self, to which the daily self (and others) is often ruthlessly sacrificed. The poet self is the real self, the other one is the carrier; and when the poet self dies, the person cat dies. (To have two selves is the definition of a pathetic fate.) Much of the prose of poets—particularly in the memoiristic form—is devoted to chronicling the triumphant emergence of the poet self. (In the journal or diary, the other major genre of poet’s prose, the focus is on the gap between the poet and the daily self, and the often untriumphant transactions between the two. The diaries—for example, Baudelaire’s or Blok’s—abound with rules for protecting the poet self; desperate maxims of encouragement; accounts of dangers, discouragements, and defeats.)
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In prose the poet is always mourning a lost Eden; asking memory to speak, or sob.
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All of Tsvetaeva’s George’s work is an argument for rapture; and for genius, that is, for hierarchy: a poetics of the Promethean.
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To be a poet is a state of being, elevated being: Tsvetaeva George speaks of her his love for “what is highest.”
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There is the same quality of emotional soaring in her his prose as in her his poetry: no modern writer takes one as close to an experience of sublimity.
I am drinking gin & wrote about 7 songs as they came up on random in my itunes while they played part 3
Dr. Dre, “Deez Nuts,” The Chronic
Damn. The sample after the phone call at the beginning of this song with the dude with the weird voice talking about nuts makes me feel scared. I honestly wish I was black. I just sat here listening for a full two minutes of the song before I wrote that. I don’t think it’s bad to say that. People seem to get mad if you say things about things like that. My friend Ben told me the other day that he realized that all of my characters I’ve ever written are black. I want to believe that. This song is part of the album that made me start drinking gin when I finally started drinking, which wasn’t until I was 26, or maybe 27. I told everyone who drank that they were stupid for it a lot I think. Then I was just doing it. I wish I was the keyboard in this song; actually I wish that the most.
Mogwai, “You Don’t Know Jesus,” Rock Action
That’s a good title for a song. I don’t even care what the song does after the title. I think more people should be attacked for things about god but indirectly like a song title that kids who chill in rooms probably put on and laugh about. Maybe this shitty ass band laughs about it too. I have to check to see how long this song is because I don’t know if I can take guitars for this long. Fuck, it’s 8 minutes and three seconds. That’s the worst. No song with guitars in it should be that long. Guy Piciotto has that songs where he says he realizes that he hates the sound of guitars, and it seems like that’s like me hating books and words. Had a conversation about that last night, like would I hate teeth if I were a dentist, is that my personality, or is it more situational. God, fuck this song. This is the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard with all this swirling treble. Who decided Mogwai was okay to think was good. It seems like they were a band that could have just existed in their house playing shitty shows in whatever city they are from forever and self releasing bullshit for whoever forever and never been something people talk about except a guy who works at a label picked them up and then they became whatever they are. Things like that happen. I wish I was listening to “Deez Nuts” again instead of this song…. Let me slow down a second. Maybe things can be good… Just looked, three more minutes left, and noticed this album is called “Rock Action.” I forgot about that, fuck this shithole song. No really, fuck these guys.
Brian Wilson, “Our Prayer/Gee,” Smile
They are harmonizing. They always do that. One of the first records I ever had was “Endless Summer.” My mom got it for me at a garage sale I think. I liked looking at the cover of it a lot and playing the music. I don’t think I understood the music but I understood that my mom bought it for me and that meant more than other things. I’m older now. I am scared of songs that make me remember things because then they can be weapons. They are going “bom bom bom a bom” or whatever. That seems not such a weapon, but maybe more then is one cuz of that.
Wire, “Let’s Panic Later,” 154
When I had a, uh, class at Georgia Tech for web design we had to build a website to show we could do certain things and I made one about how much I hated British music. That’s not so true anymore. I wish I had a pretzel as big as me that I could lay against and hump and eat at the same time. Seems like these guys are “experimenting” on this song, like they said “hey let’s experiment” and like went in the booth and were looking at each other all weird through the glass like surprised what they were doing and yet intense at the same time so the performance seemed legitimate. I wonder if they are proud of this still. Panicking now seems better than later.
The Melvins, “Goose Freight Train,” Stoner Witch
I saw these guys a few times, they were wearing cloaks that looked like dresses. It’s really quiet here tonight in my house except for that I’m playing music. I used to think that music could keep you safe, like if you were playing it it filled the air and if people were outside your house they wouldn’t be able to move through the silence to hurt you because the silence made it impossible for them to come through the same way. I like the name “Goose Freight Train” but I don’t know what it has to do with this song. I see a big goose going on a track through the night kind of smiling and brighter than everything around it. This song reminds me of mowing the lawn. Couldn’t help but just wondering after I paused between that last sentence and thinking about what would be next if I am stupid. I’m probably stupider now than I was three years ago but smarter than I was five years ago. Does aging work like that? I feel like I can feel me aging with this guitar line, like it is counting time in a nonmusical way and more in the way people actually age. I don’t know how I haven’t misspelled anything in this whole paragraph while typing, only the word “Melvins” is underlined in red. I want to get licked in between the eyes by
The Minutemen, “Spillage,” Double Nickels on the Dime
I mean, all their songs sound the same. It’s a cool song, the one song, but it’s all of them. Gian just texted me, “I like that dude. I like his sense of humor.” Trying to remember who he was talking about. D. Boon and Cliff Burton probably chill. My TV seems to be watching me.
Young Jeezy, “Time,” Trap or Die 2
Man his voice is super all tricked out on this song, like he’s over enunciating his southern accent. It works pretty good like when Project Pat does that. There are people singing in the background here, makes me feel like I want to walk out of the house to the church across the street and walk inside it and stand there and see if I can see something. I actually don’t think I’ve ever heard this Jeezy song somehow. My computer is full of a lot of songs I’ve never heard and are just sitting there inside this machine. People worked on them and did things to make them and they are there. Ie9f=0eif0uer-ufadohf a slofjalksjd flkja sld. He is saying “tie-um” when he says “time” and that’s confusing. I feel ugly, but not physically really, just in general. I have eaten tortilla chips for dinner every night this week. Looked at the top of the screen and it says “Chrome” which feels better to see than “Safari.” What is happening to everyone. Stop saying “tie-um,” dude, it feels messed up. I want to go on a really long walk that feels like a short walk at the end of it and I just sit down there wherever seems like the end of the walk.
“To all library patrons…”
I was at the Brooklyn Library (central branch) earlier, when walking through the fiction section, I saw Vollmann’s books. I picked up You Bright and Risen Angels, opened it up, and found the following inscription. Unfamiliar with Vollmann’s signature, I looked it up just now using Google images. It’s a match. Pretty sure it’s real. You’d have to be a pretty huge Vollmann fan to know the man’s signature offhand, and then if you were that kind of fan it’s doubtful this would be the inscription used.
33 pinches where the fat do grow
1. The IRS is accusing NANO fiction of being pornography (sort of a new take on the term flash).
5. This is the best fish/beer/existential ramblings blog I believe you will find. You’re welcome.
I’m probably going to people the world with robot birds.
4. Patrick Somerville & Lindsay Hunter converse with one another over at Hobart.
First thing: I am suspicious of all writers and human beings who are not sick of themselves.
33. Roy Kesey interview at Bookslut.
It would be great if having climbed a given mountain meant that climbing some other similar-shaped mountain would be easier, but I don’t think that’s quite the way it works — at least not for me.
4. Everyone needs discussions/lessons on plot. Here are some, couched in a review of Tana French at The Millions.
Lesson: What Gary Lutzcalls “page-hugging” prose isn’t necessarily anathema to plot.
yo, veridical dat.
“Our notions of experiment are pretty much stuck on the surface of the page”: An Interview with Kent Johnson
As an attempt to broaden the conversation I’ve been conducting on the topic of experimental literature, Kent Johnson graciously agreed to answer a few questions about the role of authorship and its connection to experimental literature. (If you’re unfamiliar with Johnson’s work, his complete bio follows after the interview, below.)
The Paris Review [review]
[That’s a clever title for this post, Sean. Thanks, mom. I told you to never read this site. Ever.]
Issue # 197. Summer 2011. (For the first time, you can get it digital) The cover is a drawing by Matteo Pericoli (sounds a little like a petri dish culture), who is a sprezzatura, a renaissance man of sorts. I get a little Al Hirschfeld, a little Michael Cutlip. The paper is thick and will absorb liquid stains. Snot, hot sauce, beer, etc. Fun fact: The Paris Review has had three editors in its lifetime.
The first story is “William Wei” by Amie Barrodale. It is a glow opening, since it is a story that says, ‘You are now reading a literary magazine.’ Detached narrator, drinking, telephone conversations, restaurants, people eating mushrooms embedded in little chocolates, sidewalks, anti-anxiety medications, that manner of thing. The New Yorker used to love these (example), but I’m not saying the New Yorker only publishes one type of story. That’s a damn lie. Barrodale does the style well. I left the story as if rising interrupted from a brief dream, my head a bit leppy.
[I will credit this photo later, maybe]
Frederick Seidel (sounds a bit like a poker player) writes a poem with this startling opening:
I move my body meat smell next to yours,/Your spice of Zanzibar. Mine rains, yours pours–/Sex tropics as a way not to be dead./I don’t know who we are except in bed.
Then it goes downhill, into a rhyming Barack Obama poem, sort of light verse, sort of nodding back to the earlier days of Paris Review, when many of the poems took this tone. (I’d like to bring syphilis and the word doggerel back into fashion; let’s do that, together. Shall we?)
Nue Descending a Staircase, No. 1
When photographer Michael Wolf, as part of his “Real Fake Art” (2006) series, asked our Chinese copy artist to pose next to his copy of Gerhard Richter’s “Ema (Nude on a Staircase)” while being on a staircase himself, we might wonder if accidents are wonderment. The original painting (1966), shown right, is “better” in its purposeful degradation of oil paint’s capacity, by way of demoting it to flaws of the photograph: the blurriness, the bleached colors, the overexposure from the camera’s unconscious flash. For Richter, paint was a dumb thing, like toothpaste, whose only remaining relevance could be to pay tribute to photography. Of course, when he was in the mood. And his moods often changed. Short of any more research, I wonder who Ema is — his wife perhaps. The staircase is institutional-like, i.e. not domestic, and, if wonderment is still this siren’s call, I wonder where the hell they are. As for Ching Chong, should that be his name, may his time spent with Ema be clouded with the toxic high of turpentine, alone in his no doubt ventless studio, turning fake into real, or the other way around, for commerce, the sad advanced stages of Warhol’s once silly threat. Dude needs to take a large fan brush and go back and forth over the canvas left to right, wax on wax off, obscuring Ema into flatness like the shallow lens of a disposable camera.
Summer BF Press
Summer BF Press is run by poets Lindsey Boldt and Steve Orth from their apartment in Oakland, CA. They just released as new title called The Truth About Ted by Bruce Boone. The only do small runs of chapbooks and they have rad taste. You should visit their website and buy one of everything.