Alexis Orgera—
“This is not a new set of tricks but a new poetic personality.”
–Edmund Wilson
(blurb on the back of Berryman’s Sonnets)
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Adam Robinson—
If you were thinking about commenting at Silliman’s blog, you can’t. However, we’re happy to open the comment box to this post for whatever boring ass shit you were gonna say there.
Evelyn Hampton—
That we
have no ears to hear the
music the spores shot off
from basidia make obliges us
to busy ourselves microphonically.
-John Cage in Indeterminacy, a lecture performance in which Cage recited a series of one-minute stories and anecdotes in no particular order. Cage was a mycologist and many of the stories were about mushrooms. Some of the mushroom stories are collected here.
Lily Hoang—
The ever-edifying Joyelle McSweeney talks about genre:
So we all think we don’t want genre, we want to be anti-genre or perhaps hybrid, but since these are genres too, let us think about what it means to really go genreless. To go genreless in our contemporary publishing environment is to make a work without a ‘document map’, without a diagram, without a blueprint. Without a sales category. A work such as this has no overview or topography. It can’t be nicely summarized. It cannot be publicized, because it lacks ‘publicity’. In place of publicity it has secrecy, distortion, obscurity, waste. It is a waste product.
Jimmy Chen—
Typographical Mustaches (detail) by Tor Weeks
What a wonderful use of brackets! Full size/original post here. Buy it here.
Alec Niedenthal—
So, yeah, maybe it’s nothing new (wrong), and maybe there’s too much coverage to warrant another post (wrong), but I’m not apologizing for shit. Jesus. Over at The Atlantic‘s blog, Hua Hsu gives a quick, precise, and I think very insightful response to Tao Lin’s recent Gawker article. Insightful to the extent that Hsu articulates and interrogates what I find most compelling about Tao’s work. Hsu writes:
Why is Lin so polarizing? The comments that follow the Gawker “piece” are generally annoyed or sarcastically dismissive, which is expected given how long and gossip/link-free it is. But is Lin’s writing, as the detractors say, truly narcissistic or selfish? What does it mean to be narcissistic enough to be branded a narcissist, when we are all in the business of cultivating online followers and friends, issuing steady streams of news releases about our wavering moods? There’s something refreshing to me about Lin’s writing, the way it manages to be wholly about him, but deny our craving for interiority or motive.
Those are poignant, thoughtful and surprisingly novel questions about a writer who, by objectifying himself, becomes a cultural object in turn–and I think that’s a move whose significance we have yet to suss out. The question is obviously whether it’s worth our time, but I guess that’s up to you or whoever’s reading.
Adam Robinson—
Yesterday I posted the trailer for Eileen Myles’s new book. The book looks amazing, although I don’t disagree with Steven Augustine’s comment that the trailer comes off like a teaser for MTV’s 120 Minutes. Still and all, get that book. You can probably buy it from the author herself at next Thursday’s Belladonna/Dusie reading at Brooklyn’s Book Thug Nation. The reading also features: Cara Benson, Mairéad Byrne, Caroline Crumpacker, Susana Gardner and Kate Zambreno.
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Adam Robinson—
If I was in Chicago TOMORROW NIGHT (thanks Tim), I’d probably stop by Reckless Records, then go to Ed Debevic’s for mean food, then to the book launch sink for Davis Schneiderman’s new novel, Drain. Readings by some Giant faves: “Steve Tomasula, Cookies & MILF (aka Kelly Haramis & Jennifer Boxrud), Don Share, John Beer, Rebekah Silverman and Tadd Adcox (reading a piece by Fred Sasaki). Artwork by Elizabeth Birnbaum, Karen Larson, Eli Robb and Mai Wagner.” 7pm at Part Time Gallery (5219 N. Clark. 3rd Floor).
After that I’d close down the Oasis and tomorrow morning hit Heartland Cafe.