Making the Scene: Michael Davidson Reports from a Car Wash in Austin
Poetry readings suck. They are exercises in the worst kind of narcissism: the narcissism of a bad actor. There is nothing worse than having to endure two hours of bullshit from people you don’t even like. If you attend poetry readings regularly, then you are probably a wanna-be poet. And if you behave yourself at such readings, then you are definitely a loser. If you want to get a poet’s attention, here’s a simple formula: attend a poetry reading, politely approach a poet, punch the poet in the mouth. Not only will you get the poet’s attention, you will have accomplished something that not even the poet you’ve come to see could have accomplished: the creation of an almost pure act of poetry.
Of course, you could also stay home and write poems. But that would require you to be comfortable with long periods of loneliness, anxiety associated with the feeling of missing something, and mostly heart-breakingly intense bouts of solitude. For those of you who can’t bear the responsibility of becoming a poet, you can continue to attend poetry readings and, after you leave, perform the ritual of bitching and complaining about how shitty they are–and how awful so-and-so’s stuff is–as you drive/are driven to the nearest Taco Bell or whatever.
I attend poetry readings very infrequently. And when I do I do it for two reasons: one, I have convinced myself beforehand that I will learn something about writing poetry (by attending and actually listening to the poets read stuff at the reading), and two, I believe I will discover something about the mystery of existence (I know, stupid romantic). Simply put: people, signs, architecture–lots of things–intrigue me. Especially super fucking weirdo, but seemingly simple, things. Like the poetry reading that took place in a car wash in Austin, Texas, last week. Below, I provide you with a scintilla of evidence that poetry readings don’t have to suck, that somewhere in the world poetry people are trying to do it right, attempting to make–in their very own uniquely foolhardy way–a little miracle (which, by the way, I have always associated with crime).
Michael Davidson (aka herocious) reports from Austin on the Sad Sad Sad Fest: A Car Wash Reading (first posted by Michael on Alt Lit Gossip):
“I tweet: I’m reading a tiny story aloud today at a car wash on MLK and Airport in Austin. Come say hi at 7pm :) I don’t tell anyone I work with about the event, not even to make small talk in the copy room.”
No Glycon reads inside a car wash
“At home I practice reading aloud the story I plan on sharing at the event. I delete words I don’t like, then I delete entire sentences I don’t like.”
Cheryl Couture faces a fierce but extremely clean audience
“We discuss a meeting place. We decide on 21st and Guadalupe, the same corner with the Daniel Johnston alien frog.”
Michael Davidson stands in front of graffiti by Daniel Johnston
“Alicia Fyne, the event organizer, is in her car in the far left bay, just like she said she would be. There are people packed into her car.”
Alicia Fyne reads stuff and gets her car washed, with Joseph Green (standing, left)
“We meet Alicia Fyne, Andrew Hilbert, Joseph Green, Cheryl Couture, No Glykon. There is beer. There are flasks of whiskey. In other bays at the car wash, people are washing their cars. A friend shows up: David Nguyen. Other people enter the far left bay, lean against the tiled walls, introduce themselves. It’s fun. No one gives a shit.”
“To hold a reading where you least expect it. To hold a reading where it doesn’t fit in. Behind me I hear people ordering from Popeye’s.”
The Sad Sad Sad Fest was the name given to Alicia Fyne’s monthly readings series wait . . . what? The writers reading at Sad Sad Sad Fest on November 7, 2013: Michael Davidson, Cheryl Couture, Andrew Hilbert, No Glykon, Joseph Green, and Alicia Fyne.
Note: This post will be part of a series called, “Making the Scene”. The series seeks to report on readings that happen in your neighborhood. If you’ve got something to report, hit me up.
twitter: @janeysmithkills tumblr: kottonkandyklouds.tumblr.com
………Alt Lit set for Huge International BOOST……..
“ready to die a violent death”
1) When Sachin Tendulkar, famous cricketer, walked back off the Wankhede field in Mumbai after having accumulated nearly 16,000 Test Runs in exactly 24 years at the highest international level (a career surpassed in excellence only, perhaps, by Sir Donald Bradman) he proclaimed “I am ready to die a violent death.”
Yes, it seems the world’s most famous cricketer (a virtual God in India and the rest of the subcontinent) is headed for new glories, laurels and great, foaming spikes of URL fame in the crazy, wide-open world of Alt Lit.
2) “Yes,” Sachin continued, “I plan on running amuck in the woods muttering glorious Carpe Diem extravagances”— whereupon Steve Roggenbuck leaped out of the Wankhede stands and hoisted Sachin up on to his shoulders and started chanting “Boost! Boost! Boost!” and the whole crowd, 40,000 strong, joined in immediately, voraciously chanting “Boost, Sachin, Boost” and Eternal Lief seemed all-too possible. Beautiful. Exquisite. Here. Now. Now.
an experienced “Booster,” Tendulkar (pictured left) is ready to Boost some more
3) “Will you be going to Brooklyn?” READ MORE >
Rauan Klassnik—
– – watch this imagining it’s Janey Smith!!
– – watch this imagining it’s Johannes Göransson!!
– – watch this imagining it’s Alt Lit in toto!!
(just kidding… just kidding)
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POEM-A-DAY from THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN LUNATICS (#4)
Sandra Simonds lives a pretty boring life in Tallahassee, Florida. She works as a professor in Thomasville, Georgia. She is always tired. Sometimes she parks her car in random parking lots and just sits there and listens to music.
Poem Composed Entirely Of Lines From My Stalker
He doesn’t love you It’s just a way for him
by Sandra Simonds
He doesn’t love you It’s just a way for him
to feel less lonely in his love for me Hope you got some
money to take care of your AIDS and keep
your ignorant mouth shut Hope that you end up
committing suicide If you care
about your life at all you will SHUT THE
FUCK UP WHORE You greasy slimy jstinky
mentally Jewish nasty whore Kill yourself
cunt I will FIND YOU (Namaste) If you care about
your life at all (Namaste) you will SHUT THE
FUCK UP WHORE I am tall witty thin blonde Sorry
If I see one FUCKING THING about me anywhere I am coming
to your house Men of power and influence have been
and are attracted to me You’re writing is
GARBAGE Yes people in the world
Move They
Change You moron you can’t even pronounce “koan”
Sometimes even beautiful poets who come
from money such as myself fall in love
with poor white trash alcoholics and go the south
and live with them a few years Enjoy the charity people
who want their dicks sucked Women get
divorced It is
awful DOG don’t give your kids AIDS
You should commit suicide Believe it! I’m rooting
for you You only had them
so you could be a “mommy poet” (Namaste)
In some sense, this is a conceptual piece of writing in that it takes verbatim language delivered in one context (the stalker to me) and subverts it by delivering it back (me to the world) in an entirely different context/ new audience. It moves from the private (email) to the public (website) and in this sense it moves from the relationship of abuse (me and the stalker) to the relationship of reality/ sympathy and understanding (me and my other social relations). I would have never dreamed that I would write this sort of poem a year ago, but after having been stalked and harassed by this person for so long, after having called the police, after having ignored the stalker and fought back, I felt like writing the poem was my last recourse.
note: I’ve started this feature up as a kind of homage and alternative (a companion series, if you will) to the incredible work Alex Dimitrov and the rest of the team at the The Academy of American Poets are doing. I mean it’s astonishing how they are able to get masterpieces of such stature out to the masses on an almost daily basis. But, some poems, though formidable in their own right, aren’t quite right for that pantheon. And, so I’m planning on bridging the gap. A kind of complementary series. Enjoy!
5 Comments
November 13th, 2013 / 9:00 am
November 13th, 2013 / 9:00 am
……..In the Dark like a Pig // Blah, Blah……..
***
part 1-– on my way back from Atlanta I was listening to Kylie Minogue and enjoying and cringing at her cruelty:
If love is really good
You just want more
Even if it throws you to the fire fire fire fireAll the lovers
That have gone before
They don’t compare to you
Don’t be running
Just give me a little bit more
They don’t compare
All the lovers
Basically what we have here is an insatiable sexual appetite inciting its lover the way a jockey uses a crop to get the last bit of zest out of its thundering horse. (or I dunno, I dunno, I mean I really like Kylie)
***
almost upside down
***
part 2— then, wrapped in the sky’s lust, I was thinking about Kill List which I think about often kinda the way I think about God a lot even though I’m a total atheist. I guess I mean I was thinking about all the fanatic reactions. All the foaming at the mouth. All the literal morons. Blah, blah, blah (yawn). . . .
. . .And then I thought perhaps I should write a Kiss List but before that even took root in my brain (shimmer, shimmer) I thought a Spank List might be better
CAConrad’s got a sweet ass
Greg Bem’s got a gorgeous ass
Reb Livingston’s got a sweet ass
Kris Hall’s got a sweet assJosef Kaplan’s got a sweet ass READ MORE >
Behind the Scenes & Random / Comments Off on ……..In the Dark like a Pig // Blah, Blah……..
November 10th, 2013 / 10:52 pm
November 10th, 2013 / 10:52 pm
POEM-A-DAY from THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN LUNATICS (#3)
The Penis List
Jim Behrle was recently featured in “Kill List” as a comfortable poet. It’s possible that he is the least famous poet to earn such a distinction. He lives in Jersey City, NJ. By day he wears a green t-shirt and a nametag at a university bookstore, fetching textbooks for people with bright futures. He lives his broken dreams, a famous internet poetry troll, he’s probably better known for crap like “Best American Poetry: The Cartoon”, “Stone Cold Poetry Bitches” and “What the Hell is Up With Your Author Photo?” Behrle really has to get more of that Ruth Lilly money somehow.
by Jim Behrle
Jim Behrle has a half inch penis
The Kill List Kid has a three inch penis
Vanessa Place has a six inch penis
Billy Collins has a four inch penis
The Poetry Foundation has a $100 million penis
But Poetry Magazine has a two inch penis
Your iphone is a mile long penis that’s
Always secretly fucking you
When you look at your iphone think “penis”
Google is a huge penis sticking out of
Everything everywhere
And where ever you go you bump into them all
Poetry is a huge warm wonderful vagina
But everyone treats it like a narrow
Tight, unbreakable asshole that only
One penis at a time can fit in so
You’ve got to out-penis everyone else
Manhattan and Brooklyn take an inch off
America’s penis is old and gross
But we’re working on it now
The internet takes a half
Inch off your penis, snip, snip
Let’s just cut off all penises
Or yank them all out by the root
What will survive is love
And penises usually fuck that up, too
Kafka once wrote “We are incapable of loving, only fear excites us.” Behrle quotes this all the time, it is the only thing he’s ever read from Kafka. And he wants to sound smart. This poem began as a long list of poets and their perceived penis lengths but once he got to the line about Billy Collins penis he lost his stomach and turned it into something else. Vanessa Place’s penis on the other hand kills poetry every night, aw yeah. Behrle. . .
note: I’ve started this feature up as a kind of homage and alternative (a companion series, if you will) to the incredible work Alex Dimitrov and the rest of the team at the The Academy of American Poets are doing. I mean it’s astonishing how they are able to get masterpieces of such stature out to the masses on an almost daily basis. But, some poems, though formidable in their own right, aren’t quite right for that pantheon. And, so I’m planning on bridging the gap. A kind of complementary series. Enjoy!
3 Comments
November 8th, 2013 / 9:24 am
November 8th, 2013 / 9:24 am
Rauan Klassnik—
over at her Tumblr Thais Benoit, answering a call from Alt Lit Press, offers up a kind of manifesto of thoughts about and definitions for Alt Lit:
“Writing that is happening outside of traditional publishing, mostly online and in digital forms.”
“Alt Lit fits in perfectly with historical literature context. Alt Lit is challenging the norms of the past, and can be compared/contrasted easily to the Beat movement of the 60s. We see authors using their lives as the set of their writing. Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac did things (many of which seemed taboo or ‘wild’ or eccentric) and then wrote about them, and they wrote about them in a way that was real to their readers at the time. Please compare Taipei to On The Road: it’s fun.”
“More than anything else, Alt Lit fills a hole created by the commercial publishing industry. ”
“works by authors such as Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith, do not connect with many readers today. . .
WE DO NOT IDENTIFY.
WE DO NOT IDENTIFY.
WE DO NOT IDENTIFY.”
read Thais’ entire post here
Seattle’s Cheese & Wine Poetry Community / The Cult of Henry Darger / etc / etc / (talking with Rebecca Loudon)
Rauan: Seattle’s a polite town. Everyone’s super polite, cordial, in a way, cool in their dealings. But not so warm all the time. Seldom even maybe. What do you think of this? And do you think Seattle’s writing (poetry, etc, whatnot) suffers and/or benefits from a similar sort of politeness? Coolness?
Rebecca: Seattle used to be considered a “friendly” town but Seattle grew up and is now a Big City. Seattle suffers from a kind of passive/aggression. I’ve seen people at six way stops get out of their cars and start fighting over who goes first. We also have a lot of homeless displaced people here but they are mostly ignored or hidden so the city will look prettier. Seattle is famous for leading the way in cutting down its carbon footprint but the city’s largest private employer makes airplanes. No one (at least publicly) acknowledges how jet fuel which emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an alarming rate contributes to the acceleration of global warming. And yet you can no longer get paper or plastic bags at Seattle stores because it’s bad for the environment.
Seattle writers are friendly among themselves those writers who write similar poems those writers who are polite whose poems are polite whose work doesn’t take risks whose poems are widely published in polite poetry journals. It’s an easy place to be a poet. You can’t swing a contrabassoon without hitting a poetry reading in Seattle. This city has supported poetry on buses poetry readings for the city council poetry readings in museums and offers all kinds of grants and opportunities to poets who write polite non-threatening poetry. Sometimes Seattle gets lucky and brings in outside poets to read but mostly it’s the same circle of poets making the rounds being passive aggressively nice with their nice natural fiber clothes their hybrid cars their little hemp bags in which to put their shopping and their polite nice poetry.
*****
Seattle Author Spotlight (10)
*****
Okay, so that was the first part of my latest Seattle Author Spotlight, the 11th, featuring Rebecca Loudon. Several years I did an interview with Rebecca regarding her excellent book Cadaver Dogs (which you can read here, it contains info about her being a violinist as well as some of the very personal elements of that book) but this time I had the pleasure of meeting Rebecca in person. Rebecca claims to be a sort of hermit, but we got along great, intensities coming and going. And Rebecca’s work as I’m finding out is getting stranger and stronger READ MORE >
4 Comments
November 5th, 2013 / 10:52 am
November 5th, 2013 / 10:52 am
APHEX TWIN: AN ENIGMA
Recently a friend accused me of not listening to any music that is not rap. Of course that is totally untrue, but in a social context it is somewhat correct: publicly the music I am most likely to enjoy is rap. Privately, I have always listened to different music as well, especially while working/ writing.
When I was in college I used to do most of my work in a very claustrophobic, constrained space to avoid all possible distractions. It was a lab that was equipped with a large Mac desktop and a bunch of equipment that I never used, because the lab was actually intended for the “New Media/ Critical Theory Studies” kids and during that time I was learning different stuff I am no longer using today. It was around that time I first became obsessed with Aphex Twin’s music, definitely starting with ‘Selected Ambient Works 85-92.’ I loved the combination of the productive/ manic energy of the beats and the simultaneous soothing effect of the majority of the melodies in the album. I remember listening to “Ageispolis” after–and during– sleepless nights of meticulous studying, sometimes watching the very ravey video as a study-break.
I have been thinking and wanting to write on Aphex Twin for a long time, but my wish proves to be a somewhat impossible task. Richard James–also known under his pseudonyms: AFX, Blue Calx, Bradley Strider, Caustic Window, Smojphace, GAK, Martin Tressider, Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Q-Chastic, Tahnaiya Russell, The Diceman, The Tuss, and Soit-P.P–is someone who definitely chooses to be an enigmatic figure. James has spent a great deal of his career creating an unflattering image of himself intentionally. The point behind his dedication to making the world see him as an unattractive individual remains unclear to me, but that is part of his enigma.
Initially, I was planning on doing a mini-series of sorts on “The Way Every Richard James Album Makes Me Feel.” Ultimately, I am deciding against proceeding with that idea because it might be relentlessly self-absorbed and perhaps even too-revealing for no-reason. Instead, I present you with my deepest wish of someday writing the absolute Aphex Twin profile after spending a month with him, observing his daily life, work habits and nightlife activities.
This 7-minute MTV interview is maybe the closest the artist wants us to get in understanding Richard James.The interviewer asks him what he means when he says that he builds his own instruments, and he states that he uses software, computers and the net to create. Often, he uses the help of others to perfect his sound. Questions about the way he releases his music continue, and his laidback attitude makes me admire him even more. It is particularly interesting to me to see the vibe between him and his enthusiastic interviewer. The interviewer clearly recognizes his genius and tries, at points perhaps too hard, to instigate a more intricate interview. Richard James seems humble, composed in a careless manner, soft-spoken and completely unaware of how brilliant he is.
Day One: An Amazon Joint
The publishing arm of Amazon announced that they’re going to publish a weekly journal called DAY ONE. It’s for the Kindle and will feature short stories and poetry. The first issue is now live. An annual subscription costs $20 but right now it’s only $10.
Their motivation for creating the journal is funny: basically, they say, sometimes it’s hard to know what to read next, “With so many things competing for your attention in this increasingly digital world … especially if you are looking for fresh voices and new perspectives.”
I subscribed.
The editor’s note from Carmen Johnson reiterates the mission, to “feed an audience of literature-hungry, time-constrained readers.” To do this, they went to MFA programs to find writers. They don’t name them, though this issue’s poem comes from Zack Strait, a student at Wichita State.
Along with Strait’s poem—called “Wrought,” and it is, heavily (“Grandpa could forge any object/from tobacco smoke//like a sideshow illusionist//when he worked for the Union/Pacific Railroad”)—there’s a short story by Rebecca Adams Wright called “Sheila.” Haven’t read it yet. It’s “22 pages” if your font size is the third smallest. Day One doesn’t list percentages like the other book I’m reading on my Kindle now: The Battle of $9.99, about the eBook pricing war against Amazon. However, this eBook is put together better than most, with easy jumping around and a nicer table of contents than I’ve seen on my Kindle Fire before.
There’s also a conversation between Strait and Wright. In the first question Wright asks about influences, and Strait says, “That’s a great question!” They seem very nice. The contributor notes are separated; there’s one for the writer and another for the poet. Maybe One Day we won’t have to distinguish the two things. Day One does give equal attention to the illustrator.
It feels a little strange supporting Amazon this way, and having things I care about supported by Amazon. Strange reciprocity! Should it feel strange that suddenly Amazon—one of the biggest companies in the history of the world—finds something marketable about poetry?
Will Day One be as good as my favorite journals, like Hobart and PANK and Big Lucks? Will it be as edgy as the best online journals, like Robot Melon and NOÖ? Will it aspire to be more like VQR or New Yorker? Does Day One allude to Everyday Genius?
Would you publish with Amazon? I know there are a few htmlgiant readers who already do. How’s it going?