August 2013

Reviews

MOUTH OF HELL: Infernal Visions at the Edge of Consciousness

mouth-of-hellMouth of Hell
by María Negroni
Translated by Michelle Gil-Montero
Action Books, April 2013
112 pages / $16  Buy from Action Books or SPD

 

 

 

“So dark and deep and nebulous it was,
try as I might to force my sight below,
I could not see the shape of anything.” –– Dante, Inferno, Canto IV

“Then existence was a must, and I remain unborn. I’ve traveled with ghosts, or worse, drudged through discontent, destroying what I desired, which didn’t exist. Awkward to thrive as humanity atrophies, only to shelter in a garden of stones. And yet, in all that dismal jubilance, something sings: the soul, a tiny light that sounds among great monsters, growing always more equal to itself, thirstier for white words.” –– María Negroni, Mouth of Hell

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Mouth of Hell is inspired by Manuel Mujica-Lainez’s Bomarzo, a novel I’ve never read, which itself is based on the eccentric Duke Pier Francesco Orsini, a 16th century nobleman who commissioned a sacred garden of monsters to be built in his honor. Negroni’s Mouth of Hell is composed of brief untitled prose poems, the proclamations of the decadent aesthete Orsini at the exact point of his death, which occurs inside the garden’s hellish grotto. These poems act as jolts of energy and are the culmination of a peculiar life as seen from the edge of consciousness.

Jorge Monteleone’s superb introduction and the translator’s preface do excellent service to shed some light on the historical Duke Orsini as well as the novel Bomarzo. This convergence of sources and voices sort of mirrors the fragmentation and reconstitution of selfhood that occurs in these poems, all happening in the heightened reality of the monstrous sculpture garden, “my biography and my park of monsters, who I’ve despised, envied, admired, and loved, deep down, terribly.” Speaking of the park’s sculptures, Orsini said, “Each rock represented an enchanted figure, in my memory or imagination.” Each poem in Mouth of Hell could do the same, creating a fascinating interplay of life, art, creation, dissolution, and rejuvenation of the senses.

“A lot could be said of my hideout. It is here where I ruminate and write, where I wield my inhuman right to dissent. Deep in the light, I draw my self-portrait: the high signs of a fearsome counterdance. Here, I play at life. Nestled like a hoard of jewels, I even possess what I’ve denied myself. In a word, I play with death. My den is motionless. Like the world, an untouchable relic within.”

Mouth of Hell, in part, chronicles a human soul gaining knowledge of itself upon death. These are finely tuned revelations of deranged nobility, commemorating “a lascivious earth to an uncertain beyond, the thread of my hallucinated life.” These are memories, sensations, fantasies, and proclamations of “the body whirling into conviction” at the brink of death. For this reason it occasionally feels like a radically condensed take on Dante’s Inferno.

“The forest dark as ever, without latitudes. An aide-de-camp to say something about nothing and guide us up the river of blood. As if there were cover under human tabula. Things strewn here and here, for worse and better. And later, in the middle of the road, the end of the endless, an immense door, passable and impassable, like the glacial spaces of the soul.”

Orsini’s garden of monsters remains after hundreds of years a singular artistic oddity. Monteleone informs us that above the crude demonic mouth is the inscription, “Lasciate ogni pensiero voi ch’entrate,” which can be translated, “Abandon all thought ye who enter.” This curious variation on Dante’s famous line suggests a total annihilation of the personal self. A journey into the underworld is nothing less than a chance to merge with the archetypal, with the infinite formless monsters of the abyss.

800px-Bomarzo_parco_mostri_orco

The sculpture garden, “the estate of the sensual,” is a monument of excess, and the demonic face that graces the cover of this book is as comically grotesque as any of Iron Maiden’s album covers. The opening of the mouth serves as a meeting place of two worlds. Just as death is the edge of life, the brink of the abyss is the edge of the visible.

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August 26th, 2013 / 11:05 am

Reviews

Plural by Christopher Stackhouse

Stackhouse-cover-comp4Plural
by Christopher Stackhouse
Counterpath, Nov 2012
64 pages / $14  Buy from SPD or Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It wouldn’t be wrong to call the poems in Plural slippery: content just eludes you, as does the floor plan of a consistent or memorable form. Stackhouse has a playful but terse and lateral style that leads you to wonder why most poems start or stop where they do or aren’t combined. Two careful reads didn’t reveal many clues for the reader so, like I mentioned, while the book is interesting in synopsis form the individual poems stay slippery, just out of reach.

And to present the book in synopsis form: Plural incorporates poems in the same tone but different formatting strategies, notes from art world lectures that are interestingly similar to the poems, and a movement across the course of the book from being concerned with the mind and consciousness to reveling in the body. The lecture notes are actually some of the most interesting parts of the book because not only do they give the surrounding poems context, they serve as a map for Stackhouse’s cognition. And although the notes are about primarily visual art, a lot of what Stackhouse notes bleeds into not just his writing but the idea of writing, as in “Notes from Panel Disc. @ The Fish Tank Gallery”:

Art should speak (say) to a position from a position of an artist.
The artist takes a position based on how s/he sees itself in
contextual dialogue (art historical?) with the human condition.
The artist interprets his/her world to create meaning, or/and,
comment on the way meaning may be transmitted.

Those last two lines are important as applied to Stackhouse’s mostly brief poems, which seem more concerned with transmitting meaning than creating it and lack much broader context other than being in the same book. This is not a bad thing; if you’re looking for lots of meaning consult your local public library for probably a few dozen books of free verse heavily into creating meaning, for what it’s worth. But the poems arrive with the same matter-of-fact record-keeping as the lecture notes, which can render them frustrating at times not because you’re desperately searching for meaning but because you’re wondering, given the consistency, “why X and not Y?”

An example of the bulk of the book follows, from a poem about midway through titled “Chew the Candy”:

Chew the candy.  Torn like a leaf on a tree that grew
from a crack in the concrete laid in an alley brutal
but potential for a lawn.  Lounge there easy.
Find the line and then straddle it.  Stroke the pole.
Probe the hole.  Be comfortable in all that is not
there.

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August 26th, 2013 / 11:00 am

What Shakes and What Remains and Consumes

mcnair

You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For the could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.”) Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken–that is, created things–so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:18-29

This was a week that shook.

In my immediate circle, the shaking began on Monday with news of a fatal car wreck, a suicide, and the death of a pet. All this amid photos circulating of all those sweet faces on all those dead bodies in Syria. The next day, down the street from my house, a man brought an automatic rifle and almost 500 rounds of ammunition into an elementary school. You might’ve heard. It is true that nobody was hurt. It is true that a brave and compassionate act likely saved many lives. It is also true that everybody was hurt. Children, teachers, parents. It is also true that many lives are, for now at least, wrecked. That kind of intrusion is crippling (and other students, in other nearby schools that were put on lockdown, understandably believed their own schools had been invaded). Antoinette Tuff’s courage should doubtless be cause for praise. It should relieve us that her breathtaking kindness exists in this world. Still, we tremble.

I heard the scripture quoted above at church this morning. It’s filed in the bulletin under “Lesson.” Not for anything could I tell you what the lesson is, but I’m pretty sure this week taught it to me. There’s a lot in those eleven verses. There is a mountain no beast can touch. There is blood that speaks a word that’s better than the word spoken by the blood of a man who was killed by his brother. What does better mean in that context; what is the word spoken by blood. The opening is especially uncanny in its long list of everything that is not, but that, seemingly, was, given that the last item, the voice, had hearers who responded. And then just when it seems all tidied up at the end with the comparatively bland phrase “an acceptable worship with reverence and awe,” we’re suddenly back in the fire.

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August 25th, 2013 / 2:22 pm

Reviews

Video Review of Gabe Durham’s Fun Camp

Peter Tieryas Liu reviewed Fun Camp by Gabe Durham last week (read the review here), and now, in addition, Peter Tieryas Liu with Angela Xu have made this cool video review using some great archival footage from a 1950’s YMCA commercial. Check it out:

4 Comments
August 25th, 2013 / 11:36 am

U.K. Author Spotlight (2) – Miggy Angel

union jack

Realizing that they speak and read English in the U.K. and that they write in it too (and because I’m originally from South Africa a kind of diamond and veldt version of the U.K. with much better weather and beaches), I’ve decided to start a new feature that follows kind of in the vein of the Seattle Author Spotlight series. So, periodically, now, I will be featuring a U.K. author.

The first UK Author Spotlight was of Gary J Shipley and the 2nd one, now, is of Miggy Angel. Miggy and I met on Twitter. It was love at first tweet, really. Miggy’s a wonderful tweeter. And a wonderful writer too. Miggy is also just a plain old good guy. Not a hipster. Not an asshole. Just a good guy who also happens to be a wonderful writer. It is my pleasure, then, to be featuring Miggy here.

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Brief Bio:

Miggy Angel is a poet, performer and workshop facilitator, born and raised in South London and currently resident in Nottingham. His first collection, Grime Kerbstone Psalms was published by Celandor books in February 2013. He is the co-organizer of the monthly poetry event, Speech Therapy – as well as the founder of the Do Or Die poets, and one half of the musical project We Bleed Ink, with producer/musician John Freer. He has work published online at Kill Author, 3AM Magazine, and elsewhere.

 

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Brief Interview:

Rauan:  your story (Miggy Angel’s) is of hard times, perseverance, redemption and resurrection. Can you share with us about your lowest point(s)

Miggy: Wow, Rauan, you’re straight in there. Lowest point? You mean apart from every time I walk down the road, and get my heart broken by every single thing I look at? I mean, I started trying to write whilst I was living in a half-way house, then a homeless person’s unit. So, yeah, there have been some low points along the way – mental-health related, addiction, etc. In many ways my life was a sole, protracted low point all of its own, over many years. The perseverance you mention was just me trying to write my way out of a very black and very deep hole. I don’t really go with the redemption and resurrection narrative, mainly because those words have certain religious connotations, and also because I’m still very much in the trenches my friend.

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migs in school2

Miggy Angel — (“Migs in School”)

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August 24th, 2013 / 11:52 pm

B-Magic defeated Charlie Clips 2 – 1.

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The culture is vast and people are truly weird

Some things I’ve recently learned that it might benefit you to know:

1.) Did you know that, after Bruce Lee died, there was a cottage industry of films “starring” the recently-late martial arts star? I didn’t, but they exist (and are sometimes called “Bruceploitation“). For instance, witness The Dragon Lives Again, aka Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, aka 李三腳威震地獄門 (1977), the entirety of which is currently up at YouTube watch it quickly:

In it, according to le Wikipedia,

The deceased Lee meets a number of pop-culture icons, including Dracula, James Bond, Zatoichi, Clint Eastwood, The Godfather, Laurel and Hardy, The Exorcist, and even 1970s soft-porn character Emmanuelle.

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August 23rd, 2013 / 10:42 pm

Reviews

The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka

9780143123729HThe Big Smoke
by Adrian Matejka
Penguin Books, May 2013
128 pages / $18  Buy from Penguin or Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mixed martial arts matches often descend into tussles, yet boxing remains a splintered dance: when you are down, you are out. The stripped-down bodies of boxers moving on the lit ring-stage is ripe for literary fetish; even Joyce Carol Oates, whose God is the unsentimental moment, could not resist waxing about Mike Tyson. Although Leonard Gardner’s 1969 novel, Fat City, chronicles the emotional and physical destruction of impoverished fighters in Stockton, California, he could not resist corporeal iconography: “Padded and trussed, his face smeared with Vaseline, a rubber mouthpiece between his teeth, he stood waiting while two squat men punched and grappled in the ring.” Sinewy syntax to represent a body ready to burst.

The same mythos allows Adrian Matejka to channel Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion. Matejka concedes that Johnson, in his own memoirs, was a “natural fabulist,” so fact matters less than emotion. But hasn’t it always in boxing? When Frank Bruno said he would knock Tyson onto Don King’s lap, no one believed him: except himself. The inches between boxers allow for miles of fantasy.

The same tendency toward fantasy makes many persona poems feel like projections of the poet rather than reconsiderations of the subject. Thankfully, Matejka resists pure fantasy and artifice; treatment of Jack Johnson is complicated and passionate. He appreciates his subject, much better than the analytical mode of much persona poetry, which makes the phantasmagoric act an exercise rather than an experience. From the start, his focus is on Johnson’s body: the tension between whether Johnson owns his own body enough to profit from it. It’s a smart take on the slavery that Johnson’s parents endured, and that he retains, in and out of the ring. In “Battle Royal,” the collection’s first poem, Johnson and other blacks fight for a single prize: “the last darky on his feet gets a meal.” Free enough to know what whites feared him, and to use that fright to complement his athleticism in the ring, but enslaved by a new system, where money creates identity, however tenuous.

This duality helps Matejka play on the concept of shadow boxing, with several dialogues between Johnson and his other self, one always chiding him for “Negro / caricature,” including his gold teeth. Those teeth are a light, a presence: power. From “Gold Smile”: “They call teeth dent in France, & the name / makes sense the way teeth do what they do / to bacon & shoulders & cakes. The French / word for gold is or, so when the folks in Paris / / describe my smile it sounds like what / happens when I punch a door: dents d’or.” The poem ends with Johnson’s taunt before the Tommy Burns fight: “the only reason I got gold uppers was to make / every bite of my food twice as expensive.”

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August 23rd, 2013 / 11:00 am

Reviews

25 Points: The Unknown University

Unknown_University_300_450The Unknown University
by Roberto Bolaño
New Directions, 2013
766 pages / $39.95 buy from Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. I’ve a strange attachment to Roberto Bolaño. One of coincidence and timing and love.

2. The Savage Detectives came out in the US six years ago, the same week I decided that—yeah, dammit—I was going to do an MFA.

3. I finished my MFA not too long ago (May-ish), just as the Bolaño Library seems to have exhausted its basement of posthumous manuscripts with The Unknown University, “a deluxe, bilingual edition of all the poems of the great Roberto Bolaño.” (Or so says the flap).

4. The Unknown University, really, reads more as a manuscript of notebooks. Poems incorporate drawings, caesuras become page-breaks, forms change again and again and again. At first, it reminded me of Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues, in which every page of the book was in fact a typed page of a notebook’s musings. This feels like that, but rewritten from notebooks to computer and revised.

5. It’s 700+ pages and irresistible to a Bolañophile like me. A short story that recently ran in the New Yorker appears (“Mexican Manifesto”), as does the whole of the novel Antwerp, albeit in somewhat different form (and under the title “People Walking Away”). I didn’t do a full index-to-index comparison, but it also seems the whole of 2008’s The Romantic Dogs appears in a scattering throughout Part Three.

6. Despite these inclusions, though, The Unknown University isn’t a collection of previously-published books, like other “complete” collections can tend to be. (Just above my Bolaño shelf at home are the Collected Lydia Davis and Amy Hempel, which are exactly that).

7. Some such collections, like Jack Gilbert’s or Richard Hugo’s, have a section of “uncollected” pieces that follow the chronological reprintings. The Unknown University is sort of like one big “uncollected” section, but one that the author took the time to fashion into something that can live alone.

8. According to the note from the heirs: “The present edition corresponds exactly to the manuscript we found (with only a few minimal corrections taken off of his computer). Roberto himself dates it to 1993.”

9. These are early writings. An author’s note lists the completion of some sections as early as the 1970’s, when Bolaño was just Roberto, one of the boy-poet idealists he takes so often as subject in his fiction. In several poems he makes reference to his age (typically 26 or 27), which would have been around 1979-80.

10. One could imagine The Unknown University as the texts Bolaño wrote during the time of his writerly maturation, for what many now is the MFA. READ MORE >

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August 22nd, 2013 / 11:00 am

Seth Fishman, literary agent, did a very comprehensive Reddit AMA.