December 2009

Johannes Goransson has posted Joyelle McSweeney’s The “Future” of “Poetry”, involving Hiromi Ito, Kenneth Anger, Artaud, and a general consideration of the state of the state: “Poetry’s present tense rejects the future in favour of an inflorating and decaying omnipresence, festive and overblown as a funeral garland, flimsy and odiforous, generating excess without the orderliness of generations. It rejects genre. It rejects “a” language. Rejects form for formlessness. It doesn’t exist in one state, but is always making corrupt copies of itself.”

I will beat your ass if you give me The Top 500 Poems for Christmas again.

Ten Albums that Didn’t Shit Me in 00s

I kind of gave up on music during this decade. I got tired of the repeat. Or tired of things that could not be repeated, as most albums I got a hold of got thrown out of the window after a week. There were some things worth hearing a few times, as wallpaper, and then no need to hear them again. In me, music seemed to have become mostly tired of itself. On that note, here are ten albums from the last ten years that to me felt both new and worth repeating, or at least ones I spent some time with, or had their own business about them, whatever that means. Yeah, another list, feel free…

1. Liars, Drum’s Not Dead [2006]
2. Madvillain, Madvillainy [2004]
3. Storm & Stress, Under Thunder and Fluorescent Light [2000]
4. Tom Waits, Alice [2002]
5. The Angels of Light, Sing ‘Other People’ [2005]
6. Fantômas, Delìrium Còrdia [2004]
7. U.S. Maple, Acre Thrills [2001]
8. Subtle, For Hero: For Fool [2006]
9. Of Montreal, The Sunlandic Twins [2005]
10. Boredoms, Vision Creation Newsun [2000]

As much as I like these albums, along with perhaps a few others, I’m still going to maintain that this past decade has been by far the worst decade of music thus completed. 99% blank, in a bad way, and getting blanker. Somehow electronics and onlines and send this and that here and there has come to mean ‘less work, less presence’ in the sound. Here comes the 10s.

Random / 278 Comments
December 21st, 2009 / 10:56 am

when do you drink coffee & how do you take it? do either of these things actually mean anything to you?

Headache?

I had a headache the other day (hangover?) and remembered this video that got emailed around my program a few years ago: Rip Torn hitting Norman Mailer in the head with a hammer on the set of Maidstone. Read the comments of the poster for more info? If you haven’t seen it, then I hope you like it. If you have seen it, then I hope you enjoy it again.

Author Spotlight / 18 Comments
December 20th, 2009 / 11:23 pm

A bunch of year’s end reading reflections by people like Phillip Lopate, Rick Moody, Stephen Elliott, William Gass, Nick Flynn, Jesse Ball, etc., at The Millions.

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Sunday Service

Danika Stegeman Poem

Panacea

We live with glass flowers instead of flowers
that wilt light. Dinosaurs once owned the scene.

I hardly need to mention them to catalog
their numbered bones. A clock flashes on.

I’ll tell you how it will work. Nothing
is more likely to lead to an H-bomb

than the specter. We live in the air death has—
a tightened belt. The individual is some thing

we share until it hurts. I’ll tell you
how it will work. I would leave with you.

The path of life is strewn with bones
and the question is stirring. Nothing recounted

could assure intent hangs a lantern
or hope finds a horse.

Danika Stegeman graduated from George Mason University’s Creative Writing MFA program in May 2009 and co-edits the journal Rooms Outlast Us. She currently lives and works as a librarian, text editor and researcher in Bethesda, MD. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Juked and Noö Journal.

Technically devastating (as in perfect), “The Dead” by James Joyce is the Greatest Holiday Text Of All Time. Your choice?

Notes To An Art Maker & Marketeer, part I

Community is important, but so is dissemination.

Magic will always reside in the product. As the ignorant become less so, look for new ways to hide process.

‘Industry standard’ means broken.

Remember that you will probably embrace the idea that offends you the most. Make it sooner rather than later.

Do people really want to communicate with their storytellers? Recognize the value in the mystic, the shaman. Resist the quick and affirmative feedback of mass social connection. Again: see the majority and violently question, reinterpret.

Anticipate ecology moving away from the market and becoming an ethics again.

Even further? Plan for an automated technocracy. How does the story change? What ails?

Behind the Scenes / 6 Comments
December 20th, 2009 / 4:57 am

Anyone mess with LaLa.com? Seems incredible: buy a song for 10¢ and you can listen to it online, from anywhere. 89¢ total and you can have an mp3 too. Hmm. Any experiences?