Updated. (Sorry.)
Ben Mirov—
Poets are the most jealous type of artist. One of the most jealous moments I’ve experienced is when I heard Heather Christle’s second book The Trees the Trees was being published by Octopus Books and her third book What is Amazing was forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. I’d love to hear your jealous moments (bonus points for commenting under your own name).
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“On Writing” Roundup
For easier access, by request, here’s a roundup of all our “On Writing” posts, with craft thoughts by:
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme
Coco
GZA
Delonte West
Mark Rylance
Kenneth Anger
Damien Hirst
Anton LaVey
Prince
Gerhard Richter
Judy Garland
Kimora Lee
Peyton Manning
Mark David Chapman
David Tudor
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Bill Evans
Ted Bundy
Ray Lewis
Andre Agassi
Wu-Tang
Aleister Crowley
Grace Jones
Liz Fraser
John Holmes
Floyd Mayweather
Klaus Kinski
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Ron Artest
Louise Bourgeois
Gustav Mahler
Iggy Pop
R. Kelly
Captain Beefheart
Dee Dee Ramone
Kool Keith
Mike Tyson
…
KILL/SLF/DR/HELP/ME/KILL/MYSELF/GAS/CHAMBER/AEIOUR/DAYS/QUESTIONSABLE/EVERYY/
WAKING/MOMENT/IM/ALIVE/MY/PRIDE/LOST/I/CANT/GO/ON/LIVING/IN/THIS/WAY/KILLING/
PEOPLE/I/HAV/KILLD/SO/MANY/PEOPLE/CANT/HELP/MYSELF/IM/SO/ANGRY/I/COULD/DO/
MY/THING/IM/ALONE/IN/THIS/WORLD/MY/WHOLE/LIFE/FUL/O/LIES/IM/UNABLE/TO/
STOP/BY/THE/TIME/YOU/SOLVE/THIS/I/WILL/HAV/KILLD/ELEVEN/PEOPLE/PLEASE/HELP/
Art, Crime, Beauty, Murder
To approach. To peek through. To see Marcel Duchamp’s final contribution, “Etant donnés,” is to confront the intersection of art and crime and beauty and murder.
Remember what Poe said in “The Philosophy of Composition“:
I asked myself—“Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death—was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious—“When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
Here is the threshold:
Here is the observer:
And here is the observed….
BEWARE…NSFW…GRAPHIC VIOLENCE…enter this post at your own risk:
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme on Writing
“Anybody can kill anybody.”
“I do not have the answers and as a woman I do not intend to play my own thoughts over the truth. I can clearly state the problems and tell you that I suffer from them.”
“We all came from houses with doors, doors that were supposed to be closed when there were things going on that we weren’t supposed to see, and when our pants were down.”
[re: approaching Gerald Ford with an unloaded weapon] “He looked like cardboard to me… but at the same time, I had ejected the bullet in my apartment, and I used the gun as it was.”
[re: Charles Manson] “I know I laid a lot of my thinking in his mind.”
“I am co-counsel and as co-counsel I have the right to represent myself, speak for myself and conduct myself and my trial by myself in my best interests in order of due process.”
“Keep talking about moving toxic wastes, but never let it cross your mind to quit producing them.”
“People have already shown you can lay blood in front of them and they’re not, you know, they don’t think anything of it.”
“When the circumstances are right, everything becomes a dance.”
“Usually a person who does what I did doesn’t repeat it.”
“It’s in everybody.”
Two Things
I’m working on some longer things to post here over the next couple weeks but in the meantime:
At Slate, Robert Pinsky offers three rules for writing a book review.
Anil Dash writes about how to foster productive online communities on your website by managing comment threads.
Subcrime
Art is crime because it departs from municipal, state, national, and moral codes, introduces puncture, rupture, lawlessness, collapse. Sometimes Art-as-crime reveals the criminality in the current hygenic system or makes visible a kind of filth that is under threat of extermination. But is the reverse true– is crime Art? If I’m being honest, I ‘d have to admit that some crimes are also Art. I think Fascism had/has a big art component– the brutal State was made like a brutal artwork. This is a sad and flummoxing fact and this is why people so often come back to Fascism when they’re trying to grapple (or not grapple) with Art as maximalism.
Maybe it’s just more accurate to say that Art and Crime are both limit experiences– sometimes they double with each other, sometimes they split from each other, sometimes they feed off of each other, sometimes they destroy each other, sometimes each causes the collapse of the other.
At six-thirty or seven I’d get up, scramble Marilyn some eggs–she was eighteen, I was nineteen; we’d been married that August–make toast and coffee. She’d go out to work, and I’d start writing. I’d work all day, with a couple breaks for extracurricular sex in the local men’s rooms and a stop at the supermarket for dinner makings. Right before five, I’d start cooking again. In general, I believe I work a lot harder today than I did then. Today I’m a five-o’clock-in-the-morning riser. Although I do stare at the wall a lot.