One Reader Writes

This comment appeared yesterday on a very NSFW post of mine from back in June, “Getting to Know Furry Girl & Feminisnt”. It comes from Janet Hardy, co-author of The Ethical Slut, and it clears up some confusion I had about a seeming change in authorship–namely hers–between the original and revised editions of the book.

December 20th, 2009 / 10:58 pm edit Janet Hardy—

Janet Hardy here — a Google alert pointed me toward your blog when you started talking about Ethical Slut. “Catherine A. Liszt” and I are the same person — she’s a pen name I used to use when my kids were still minors (“cat-a-lyst,” get it?).

The new edition of “Slut” is an extensive rewrite and expansion of the original book — after 12 years, we found we had a lot more we wanted to say, and a lot of changes we wanted to make in how we said it. I’m glad you enjoyed the original book but I think you’ll like the new one even more.

Thanks,
Janet W. Hardy

You can learn more about The Ethical Slut (the perfect last-minute Christmas gift for that special slut in your life–or, better yet, that special non-slut you’re looking to loosen up) at the Greenery Press site (while you’re over there, be sure to also check out The Compleat Spanker and A Hand in the Bush: The Fine Art of Vaginal Fisting for all Genders and Orientations). And the best part of this whole episode is that I was reminded of how long it’s been since I checked in with either Furry Girl or with Susie Bright. Anyway, we can all look forward to more sex-positive literature-related pornography appearing on this site in the nearish future.

PS- bonus points for any commenter who, without googling, can cite the literary reference in the title of this post.

Behind the Scenes & Random / 16 Comments
December 21st, 2009 / 3:39 pm

The Laminated Cat (Rule of Threes #2)

Urban Perspective with Self-Portrait, Federico Garcia Lorca from graphicwitness.org

1. …and I just spilled coffee all over García Lorca’s “Dance of Death” from Poet in New York. Just listen to these lines (read them aloud, I mean):

They are gone, the pepper trees,
the tiny buds of phosphorous.
They are gone, the camels with torn flesh,
and the valleys of light the swan lifted in its beak.

It was the time of parched things,
the wheat spear in the eye, the laminated cat,
the time of tremendous, rusting bridges
and the deathly silence of cork.

Now imagine those lines swimming in Starbucks Christmas blend. What is a laminated cat? WHAT IS A LAMINATED CAT? (Other than the band or the song.) I don’t care–I’m a believer in Keats’ negative capability argument:

when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

Which could be a handy way of getting out of analysis, but I don’t think so.

If you buy any book with that holiday gift card from Aunt Mitzy, go out and get García Lorca’s Selected Verse, Revised Bilingual Edition, edited by Christopher Maurer. With cover art by the poet. I don’t actually understand very much Spanish, but I think it’s important to read the Spanish aloud anyway to get the rhythm and lilt into my bones.

2. On a more ridiculous note, I reread The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett this weekend. Yes, that’s The Secret Garden, the book many of you (girls?) read when you were nine or ten. I was at my parents’ house and forgot to bring a book. Dickon was one of my first literary crushes. He went around with a pet raven on his shoulder (those of you who know me will recall my only tattoo).

Remember the books that made you fall in love with reading? And the characters you first fell in love with? What were they? Sometimes I think we all get so caught up in what’s going on now, what’s cool now, that we forget the importance of our formative literary experiences…

3. Interesting article about female sexuality as portrayed in the media (New York Times).

Random / 26 Comments
December 21st, 2009 / 12:28 pm
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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.”

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

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

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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
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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.

Comments Off on

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.

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

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