…Paul Cunningham’s Poetry Patriotism — Pump-Pump!…
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In this day and age when most people are so politically apathetic and so many writers (especially the deadbeat young) are loth to mix beautiful politics with their beautiful poetics it’s more refreshing than a Mexican Coke (you know the ones with extra yummy sugar) to find a True Poetry Patriot like Paul Cunningham who sits squarely in American’s Great Big Bulging Heart:
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In amber waves of grain & purple mountains, above the fruited plain, Paul Cunningham, Paul Cunningham, God surely shed His grace on thee
(—-from Paul Cunningham The Beautiful)
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And, so, following but surpassing Joe Hall’s Poetry Road, Reb Livingston’s Poetry Home, and Carina Finn’s Poetry Youth in sheer American Joy, Industry, Charity & Greatness this is the 4th such photo shoot/interview where, again, the only rule’s that Paul has to answer in language from his manuscript-in-progress, The Stylets of Paul Sorbet
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Besides Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” Rammstein’s “Amerika ” (wunderbar!), The Ballad of Davey Crockett and all the rest of our beautiful and gauzy anthems what sort of ditties, aural-elevation sequences and rabid-hunting drum-beats (we have the right to bear! Yeah! we have the right to bear!) have you been listening to in the burning heart of your Poet Patriotism??
U.K. Author Spotlight (2) – Miggy Angel
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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Miggy Angel — (“Migs in School”)
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Double-Mint Your Reward Prize Publishing Genius 2.0 Kickstarter SWEEPSTAKES
Publishing Genius Press needs no introduction here. We are always loving and writing about PGP books, from “modern classics” like Easter Rabbit by Joe Young and Pee On Water by Rachel B. Glaser, all the way to “instant classics” like Night Moves by Stephanie Barber and Fun Camp by Gabe Durham. PGP is like the utility infielder of small-press literature: it can play any position (genre) reliably and look good while doing it (design). Except with also hitting lots of home runs, home runs with titles like Light Boxes and Meat Heart, if home runs had titles, which in this metaphor they do.
Nor does PGP company man Adam Robinson need an introduction. He writes for here. Here at HTMLGiant, we are always loving his body.
Ho-oh-ho but have you heard about his awesome Kickstarter called “Publishing Genius 2.o?” And have you seen the viral Mr. Rogers-style video of Adam wearing a dashiki? And did you hear they (he? we?) shot over halfway to the $10,000 goal in less than a week because people love PGP and want it to live as long as we both shall live? AND AND AND at every $2000 benchmark, Adam will reveal one of the 5 books that will be released in 2014.
AND DID YOU KNOW THERE WILL BE A CONTEST RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW because we love contests and giveaways at HTMLGiant, so much so that there’s already been one today!
Here’s how this will go: YOU GIVE MONEY to the Kickstarter because of how much you want Publishing Genius to thrive as it launches into its “2.0” stage, or for whatever reason. THEN MAKE A COMMENT HERE indicating that you’ve done so. Then, when the Kickstarter is 24 hours from being over (Sep 10 @ 7:47 pm), I will draw a name from the list of (contributing) commenters (I can easily verify whether you really gave up the dough. I have Adam on speed dial), AND (if you win) I WILL DOUBLE-MINT YOUR REWARD PRIZE. Meaning, whatever level you gave at, I personally will double so you get double-mint the reward (or its equivalent). I will even round up.
So, for example, if you give $60 for an E-Book Subscription (hey, smart choice!), I will contribute enough to bump you up to $125 level where you will have your choice of those rewards (pending availability). OR, if you give $1, for thanks and your name listed, I will contribute another buck and your name will be listed TWICE and you will be thanked doubly in Adam’s heart, once in each ventricle.
Official rules here.
GET GIVING. Don’t forget to comment here!
#LINDSAYSNEXTCHAPTER (/& EXTREME EXTREME TRANSFERENCE)
RUMORS
In a 2010 Grace Kelly inspired front-cover profile of Lohan for Vanity Fair, the Nancy Jo Sales we know and love states: “Lindsay looked a little raw. And yet shining through her worry and stress and whatever else was currently affecting her mood was her all-American beauty, finer and more delicate in person than in pictures. She still looked like a movie star. She smelled of cigarettes and exotic perfume.”
A very embarrassing thing I have fully embraced about myself is that my brain holds too much information about Lindsay Lohan. In a hypothetical quiz where I was presented with a random photo of the actress, I would swiftly be able to easily identify what specific era it is derived from, as well as extensive details that to someone unfamiliar with her saga would seem chimerical. When names like Patrick Aufdenkamp become familiar, I begin to wonder why I care so much. There is an element of irony in my admiration, but there is no doubt I do hold a positive stance about the starlett.
Tabloids and gossip magazines often report the behaviors of young stars. A large segment of the tabloids focus on those who act entitled and expect special treatment due to their fame. The inquiry ‘Don’t you know who I am?‘ is most frequently perceived as pompous, but maybe it should also be interpreted as the absolute cry for help. The person posing such a self-important question is so unaware of his/her reality that s/he needs others to remind him/her of it. The worth or lack of worth ultimately appears to fully depend on the recognizability of the individual.
TRUTHS
In “The Schema of Mass Culture,” Adorno argues that the commodification of the cultural industry ceases its distinction from pragmatic life: “On all sides the borderline between culture and empirical reality becomes more and more indistinct.” Consequently, the individuals who find themselves in the culture industry confront the loss of their private reality, especially when their public presence is one in which they are investing in to develop a personal brand. As the person becomes the product, the risk of losing a part of their previously held individuality becomes grave: the personality features that are expected to generate more profit will comprise the new “person,” more representative of the brand/ product.
BOOKS GIVEAWAY!
I’ve been trying to think of a solid way to give away an early copy of my novel, The Persistence of Crows, along with a few other things that’ve been published this year or inspired me while writing the book, and I’m still at a bit of a loss. With that in mind, I’m going to leave things wide open and encourage you to say WHATEVER YOU WANT in order to win all five of these things.
They are:
Signed copies of The Persistence of Crows (Tiny TOE Press, Oct. 8, 2013)/poor me i hate me punish me come to my funeral (ebook/Eden Chapbooks, 2013)/Ode to a Vincent Gallo Nightingale (Black Coffee Press, 2013).
As well as brand new copies of CROW by Ted Hughes, and Ask the Dust by John Fante, both of which have been essential to me the past few years, but I now own multiple copies.
So again, no real rules, just say whatever you’d like and I’ll eventually pick from one of the comments and mail you these books free of charge and that will be that.
THANKS!
– Grant Maierhofer
Dear Rauan,…(6)
Rauan — Ready to Help
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[ note: some letters, like this one, require immediate attention — which is fine by me, because, of course, I am here to help, day and/or night ]
Veronica from Northern California:
dear rauan,
my son is gay but far worse I think she’s a poet and I am quite anxious for her. I know I am a worry wart but poets in their poor little poetry fantasy world are such a sad sack full of bad laundry.
and people are cruel and hate! … rauan, I need to change my kid. what can I do? where can I send her?
thank you in advance
Veronica D.
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bad laundry (?)
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And, so–
Rauan Responds:
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Dear Veronica,
1) let’s start with Flannery: “He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right.”
Europe’s to blame
2) This may be counterintuitive READ MORE >
Mistakes Friends Made
In the second season of Friends, Rachel—in what could be construed by the spiritual as divine intervention—is seen, between takes, suddenly wearing a necklace. The famous episode concerns Ross, whose budding relationship with another woman (they recently acquired a cat) summons dormant feelings in the waitress, whose real life actress, Jennifer Aniston, is to go on—through divorce and a kind of, in my mind, nobly unmarketed depression—to embody the developing cougar. They kiss for the first time in this episode, the laugh track giggles supplemented by oohs and awws. In this modern Romeo & Juliet, a “conceited tragedie” according to the 1597 first edition title page, the two rivaling families are replaced by the likewise quarrelsome rent vs. romance. Rachel’s spontaneous, perhaps wishful, necklace is captured by Movie Mistakes, a website featuring stills of logical inconsistencies in popular television and film. While these may all be simply attributed to overworked P.A.s occasionally letting logic slip by, each incident has spiritual gist, if by “spiritual” we mean the irrational answer to irrational quandaries: the sudden appearance of an object, or feeling.
THE TOP 200 POETRY AVOCADOS
the “definite” list — coming soon
On the End of Love
Written on the Body
by Jeanette Winterson
Vintage, February 1994
192 pages / $14.95 Buy from Amazon
&
To the Wonder
Dir. Terrence Malick
2012
I
To put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin
but apparently this is not possible
and just to say – I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds– Zbigniew Herbert “I Would Like To Describe”
The greatest irony for a writer, a person obsessed with language is to run into the boundaries of words. In our intense, overwhelming moments these faithful friends fail us when we need them most. All artists seek to express something, but what do you do at the end of expression?
That we call the ineffable the “ineffable” points to the paucity of our expressive capabilities. This is both a universal and a poignant contemporary problem. Post-modernity, while often exaggerated, highlighted the strange duality of living in a world constructed by words and the attending inability to transcend the world of words. From time immemorial artists understood the inability to translate the wondrous into a chain of letters and symbols, but with the accretion of time the problem of clichés grew, leaving many to shrug in cynicism at our inability to say anything new or urgent.
II
“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.”
– Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
It would be the greatest torture, if love really could contain such a self-contradiction, for love to require itself to keep hidden, to require its own unrecognizability.
– Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love.
No topic has seemed to run its course more than our abiding obsession with love. We like to think of this obsession as timeless. We recall Shakespeare’s sonnets, and the urgings of Jesus, but love rarely engendered this kind of devotion as it does in our time. In an increasingly secular and secularized world, Love has become our universal religion, our God, the altar at which we pray. It provides the foundational meaning of our lives and defines our pursuits. In our zeal and haste we’ve plundered the emotion, the experience, the concept leaving it bloodied, bruised, depleted. No sentence has more fill-ins than the sentence Love is_________.
Yet, as Winterson writes eloquently, love does demand expression. An unexpressed love is hidden, narcissistic, predatory, and painful. In the same breath Winterson writes, “It’s the clichés that cause the trouble.” There is no greater cliché than “I love you” and yet, there is nothing that needs expression more than love.
A sort of artistic paradox.
Clichés about love not only threaten the ability to express our deepest emotions and thoughts, but force us to experience love in the shadows of other people’s conception.
Do you fall into love, or create it? Does love grow or wither, does it overtake your life? Does it matter?
READ MORE >
1 Comment
August 16th, 2013 / 10:55 am
August 16th, 2013 / 10:55 am
SEVEN BOOKS I HAVE ACQUIRED THROUGH CASUAL SEX
Recently, [1] I grabbed dinner with a friend of mine from when I worked in the financial services industry. To me, that seems like a lifetime ago but it is actually equivalent to only a couple of–amazing!–years. His name is Kevin and we mostly talked about books we like and why we like them as we shared dinner at an overhyped restaurant in the LES, called “Mission Chinese.” [2]
In this friend-session we also talked about the act of underlining in books, an act in which I engage in fiendishly and sometimes manically, as well as how the things we underline are topically representative of ourselves. The things that speak to us at a set moment in time usually encapsulate how we view the world at that point in our lives. [3]
Following dinner we walked around and it was pleasant. The weather was at the precise intersection of where one is warm enough to be horny and cold enough to crave cuddling. The last person I have been horny and cuddly with recently received an email including my question: ‘Do you happen to have my copy of Bright Lights, Big City?’ The inquiry remains unanswered, but it is highly likely I might have previously clarified I never want any answers–and certainly no questions–from that recipient. I am glad I gave this book, because whatever, there are always 50 copies of it at all the used bookstores I go to and it is almost as easily replaceable as the good Bret Easton Ellis ones. However, I don’t actually plan on replacing it anytime soon; I did enjoy reading it when I did but I am not feeling a void since realizing it has been gone.
The person I was when Kevin first got to know me is still a part of me, but when he knew me I was underlined very differently. For example, I used to go to a funny place that is no longer in existence, which we can call “Not The Beatrice.” I used to go there with a friend of mine I no longer remember, [4] and we used to spend a ridiculous amount of time (and money) in the bathrooms, because it was that era of our lives. During a winter night there was a beautiful girl that pointed at me and complimented my coat. Claire had an expensive eye–because my coat was Dior Homme and it was tailored to fit me expensively–but she also spoke British and asked to do coke. I had none, but others did and when “Not The Beatrice” closed much after the hour all other places closed we ended up in a Soho apartment that was way too nice and full of everything Claire could ever want. My nightlife friend kept falling asleep, but I was awake and so was Claire so then we let everyone sleep and did things mostly with our hands. [5]
