Daniel Bailey on ‘The New Sincerity/Alt-Lit’
For those interested (and for those who haven’t already read it), Daniel Bailey has written a tiny bit of a response to the recent discussion of The New Sincerity/Alt-Lit at his Tumblr thingy. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 if you’d like.
Excerpt below from Part 2:
I think Alt Lit is mostly posturing. It’s attaching one’s self to something larger and riding along. Alt Lit is a great white shark and the myriad Alt Lit writers are remoras along for the ride. The only thing is that Alt Lit is not yet a large great white shark. It’s still small. Aside from Tao Lin, who predates Alt Lit and, imho is not Alt Lit because he has his own vision, and Steve Roggenbuck, no Alt Lit writer has created anything that will last beyond Alt Lit’s moment. The shark is not big enough to carry the weight of so many remoras. Steve Roggenbuck, at this point, IS Alt Lit. All others are simply followers. Steve Roggenbuck is to Alt Lit as Nirvana was to grunge.
Twitter MFA
In which we do a close-reading of a Tweeter’s Tweet draft and assess its tone, theme, synecdoche and narrative arc, among other things. Today’s Tweet draft was written by Daniel Bailey. Join us next Friday for a discussion of a Tweet draft written by Colson Whitehead.
The Tweet draft:
i will gain street cred by shit-talking all streets in my hood on yelp.com. current mood: ti holding a baby. future mood: unstoppable
In reading Daniel Bailey’s Tweets, the reader imagines that Bailey is binge-Tweeting drunk from his bathtub. If he were a reportage-style Tweeter, or (god forbid) a promo-Tweeter, these excessive Tweetouts wouldn’t work. But Bailey’s laissez-Tweet style is like messy hair that looks really fucking good. So we’ve often wondered how ‘hard’ is Bailey ‘trying’? Is he a pre-drafter? An off-the-cuffer? A hybrid? Regardless, the Tweet draft that Bailey sent us, to use academic jargon, is ‘da bomb.’
drunk sonnet # 18
Damn, I thought this was going to be more dramatic, bit to re-shoot and all that is really not in the spirit of drunk sonnets. I’ll do another later. I am actually drunk. So sorry here. Some times with I could act more drunk when drunk, so sorry. But i sure as hell shot this poem and will shoot another better later. I do believe is shooting poems, as do you. i keep hearing birds.
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3 Fall Books I Just Preordered, All by Debut Authors
How Some People Like Their Eggs by Sean Lovelace (Rose Metal Press, August 09)
The Drunk Sonnets by Daniel Bailey (Magic Helicopter, October 09)
Prose: Poems, a Novel by Jamie Iredell (Orange Alert, fall 09)
DANIEL BAILEY’S “DRUNK SONNETS” TO BE MADE PHYSICAL
magic helicopter press will be releasing daniel bailey’s “drunk sonnets” sometime in the fall. i don’t think i have ever read anything by daniel bailey that didn’t cause me to at least go, “dear lord” with my fingertips to my slightly open mouth. here’s a good example of some o dat bailey crunk ass shit. i’m not sure if this post contains any potentially good comment-thread arguing-points, but i have faith in each and every one of you!
daniel bailey’s EAST CENTRAL INDIANA is a caulk-gun-i.v. full of morphine
a few weeks ago daniel bailey posted that if anyone wanted to see his new collection of poetry EAST CENTRAL INDIANA they should email him. i emailed him. he emailed me. i read the collection and i am being honest, it is the best book of poems i have ever read. nobody does anything like daniel bailey, and i mean, i’ve probably read close to five books of poetry. colin bassett published it on bearcreekfeed. after noticing that colin bassett published it, i felt close to him, like when you are out with someone and you find out that you both like pink lemonade better than regular lemonade for some reason, and it makes communicating easy for a few seconds. this post is weak. please go read EAST CENTRAL INDIANA. also, i wrote THE DANIEL BAILEY CATECHISM on my blog to celebrate this great publication. i hope that one day the book is in print so i can read it over and over and give it to people. reading it made me feel less inhuman, which is the only way i qualify books now. on a sidenote, i felt really excited about buying these “garden herb” triscuits but now after eating a few, and choking on the little slivers that always fucking catch on your uvula, i regret buying them. unlike “garden herb” triscuits, EAST CENTRAL INDIANA will not piss you off.
Uncategorized / 6 Comments
November 3rd, 2008 / 9:25 pm
November 3rd, 2008 / 9:25 pm
Daniel Bailey’s EAST CENTRAL INDIANA
Daniel Bailey has just released an ebook EAST CENTRAL INDIANA, which is a slick sick puppy of the gray variety and contains a nice contained set of poems creeped with inner-absurdity, meth smoke, & the bizarre made back-porch familiar.
Here are a few examples lines:
i’ve tried selling all of my belongings: my flame pants,
my fire couch, my incineration chamber,
but everything is obsolete here, even the expression
you used to show enjoyment when you ignited bats
Daniel does a certain mode of poetry I think more innovatively and with a stranger cull of images and lines than others that could be associated. This is a great read, and BEAR CREEK FEED is a great new source of ebooks.
DANIEL BAILEY CONTINUES TO RULE AND BE A TOTALLY HOT DUDE
yesterday i looked at daniel bailey’s blog. you may know daniel bailey as the most up and coming internet poet/totally hot dude on the web. on his blog he said he had finished a collection of poems. so i was like, “prove it man”. he then sent me the collection. it is called EAST CENTRAL INDIANA. i read it. it fucking rules. it rules like when you do a really good job coloring a page in a coloring book. it rules like when you think there is no more pudding in your fridge and then you move aside an old thing of jelly and there is another pudding cup. it rules like when you find a nest of baby birds and the mom isn’t there and you push a fast food straw into each of the baby bird’s skulls and blow air into their skulls until they expand and burst. here is a quote from EAST CENTRAL INDIANA:
“you looked
at the boney gravel as you said it and then you laid down
and made a bone angel and said, ‘it’s finally starting
to feel like winter is over.’ i said, ‘yeah’
and then i looked up at the sky and it wasn’t there“