Amelia Gray’s AM/PM
Out this month from Featherproof, as a kickoff to their brand new and already brain-changing Paper Egg Books: Amelia Gray’s fabulous AM/PM, a short novel that follows “23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes and volcano love.”
I was already really excited about this before I saw how beautiful the book is (as is to be expected in the nimble hands of designer Zach Dodson), having continually been wowed and had my skirt blown up by Amelia’s work in the past, such as this amazing story in the Diagram Innovative Fiction finalists, and Caketrain, American Short Fiction, etc.
Last night, though, reading AM/PM from cover to cover before bed, I could not stop rotating between the sharp, quick gut giggles that Amelia’s layered one liners continually deliver, and awe at her unmatched ability to meld the everyday minutiae of houses and people-talk with moments of pure existential terror and sublime gloaming.
Vicarious MFA: Two week round-up.
The Vicarious MFA
The thing about getting an MFA is that time tends to move really quickly when your “job” is to read and talk about great books and write on a deadline all the time. So, it looks like two weeks went by without me really noticing. Things were discussed. Revelations were had. D’agata talked about dancing in sequined pants…
First, the notes from John D’agata lecture:
Crickets by Aram Saroyan
You know how in the future all the animals will be dead because of global warming or global climate change, and all our meat will be either human meat or meat grown in large vats? When all the animals will just be robots?
I want, when that happens, to replace the sound all the crickets make—all the crickets who live with me under my glass dome—to have their chirping sounds replaced with an endless loop of this recording of Aram Saroyan reading his poem “Crickets.”
If you are a person who can help me make this happen when the future arrives, please contact me now (giantblinditems at gmail dot com) so we can keep in touch. The future could sneak up on us.
Among my favorite works of minimalist art (the paintings of Agnes Martin, the sculptures of Donald Judd, the music of Steve Reich), there are the poems of Aram Saroyan. Follow this link to read some of his work.
Aram Saroyan pissed off Jesse Helms in seven letters. Clearly, he is an absolute good.
Funnily enough, on the subject of Minimalism, I don’t have much to say.
Travis Bickle tries his hand at Sam Pink’s blog
RIP YOUR PLACENTA WITH YOUR TEETH THEN EAT IT
i wiped off last night’s ejaculate and drove the taxi again. there was a pregnant woman screaming to get to the hospital. i told her i was in her womb at that moment and that i wanted to start chewing upwards from her spleen to her mouth. she was with her boyfriend who punched me in the neck. the bruise was shaped like africa and all the africans were crushed. he looked like harvey keitel and i realized he was her pimp because instead of origami the hundred dollar bills were flat. i dropped them off at the hospital and picked up this guy scorcese who wanted use a shotgun on a woman. i put my words and thoughts into a paper bag like the ones you give people with asthma and told him all words were shit and he could throw the shit bag at the person he wanted to murder instead. kill your enemies with thoughts of kindness then kill yourself. then i followed betsy around and her hair looked like the shed feathers of two dying swans lit by a day broke sun and my veins felt cut from inside by a thousand pieces of confetti for a celebration she and i will never have. back at the apartment i asked the mirror some rhetorical questions and burned myself with blue flames.
AWP through the eyes of Gena Mohwish
hello. i guess i am gena mohwish. both sam and jereme wanted me to write about my experience and post my pictures on htmlgiant, so here i am. it feels a little frightening to be writing here. my body just shook a little. okay.
**Pictures after the jump!**
Valentine’s Post
As cued by asstastic pr, here’s a valentine’s post:
My favorite love story is “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” from Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. There’s something rather unacademic and cliche about loving Salinger, but seriously, he might be the best writer in the world.
Let me be brief, redundent, and pedantic: “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” is about a young smug painter who moves to Canada to teach painting with a weird Japanese couple; hilarity ensues. (I’m butchering this already.) Put short, he is a lonely asshole. He falls in love with a student — through paintings she sends in the mail for him to critique — and, in that sacred way, courts her with the untaught heart that makes love unbearable. The student is a nun Smith invisions as young ripe 18yr old nubile, in denial of the fact that she’s really around 60 yrs old. Upon recieving Smith’s heated letter/booty call, the seminary retracts the nun’s enrollment in the painting program. Smith loses not only his prospects of getting laid, but much more (there’s a lot of Christ symbolic stuff that I won’t get into). Smith dresses up in a tux and gets hammered, to make a memory out of nothing, and through a stunning moment of reflected sunrise light only Salinger could imagine and convey, Smith realises that “everyone is a nun,” which, in my mind, reads as “god is everywhere.”
Salinger’s god is love. Happy Valentine’s day.
Cribs: Literature special
This post is somewhat of a stretch, but I figured (as a non-AWPer) it’s my duty to post something at least once before their long awaited return.
Last night I watched MTV Cribs, which I’m sure most, if not all of you know, is a show which follows celebrities around in their homes. The first home was 50 Cent’s; he lived in a mall-type castle, with a movie theatre, recording studio, complex lagoon system, and live strip-club (with actual bitches n’ shit — sorry, just keepin’ the vernacular fo realz). The rappers and basketball stars seem to live in the most oppulent places, which are (despite their success) probably on lease. Anyways, I have a point.
CAN SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE
hi. i just realized my blog has entirely disappeared for seemingly no reason. is there some way to remedy this? i will send you a copy of my book if you can help me and if you are interested in the book.
Junior High Dance
- Is my poor boy suffering? Are you Htmlgiant people having fun without me?
No, this is not a picture of htmlgiant contributors rocking out at the AWP. (Yes, I am jealous and bitter.) This is a photo of a junior high dance. My son is at one tonight. I sit at home, worried about him. When I think of junior high dances, only one thing comes to mind: me, at a dance at a roller-skating rink, they play the “slow song”, called, “I Like Dreaming (cause dreaming will make you mine)”, and standing alone watching people slow roller skate, my heart broken in two. Here is an A.A. Bondy song about dancing, and death, and the Rapture:
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