Rounding Up, Rounding Down
Stephen Burt reviews Mark Bibbins’s The Dance of No Hard Feelings at Coldfront. He gives the book 8.5 out of 10 stars, and declares the poet “inescapably sexy”–this pretty much sums it up, but probably you should read the whole review.
Found this blog recently, via can’t remember what. It showcases what purport to be genuine letters from notable cultural persons. They offer a copy of each letter as well as a typed transcription. Letters of Note.
Ever since Jeremy Schmall turned me on to John Gallaher’s blog, my feelings about poetryland have been just a little bit brighter.
Last week I went to see Jonathan Lethem read from Chronic City at NYU. The reading was enjoyable, but the real standout for me was the Q&A, which I found especially powerful. JL talks with Darin Strauss about influence, composition, struggling to get that first book done, and the responsibility you feel to re-issued books that you write the introductions for. (Lethem recently prefaced Nathaniel West’s Miss Lonelyhearts / Day of the Locust for New Directions; first time that book’s ever had an introduction.) Anyway, while you’re over at the NYU page, you might want to check out some of their other recent podcasts- Lydia Davis, Forrest Gander, Colum McCann with Padgett Powell, which in fact I’m going to enjoy with my breakfast right now. The main page for the series is here.
Last but hardly least, I’m going to make a semi-concerted effort from now on to illustrate these posts with the work of visual artists I admire, instead of just random shit I Googled for. So pleased for you to meet J.L. Schnabel, an old friend of mine and a fantastic artist and writer and jewelrymaker. She blogs here, and writes for the more-SFW-than-it-sounds art website Fecal Face. Her most recent piece is a studio visit with John John Jesse.
GIANT Excerpt: from The Dance of No Hard Feelings by Mark Bibbins (#5)
Suicides of the ’90s,
you don’t need me to tell you we needed you and you were not nothing to us. Mimicking into stupor was a better guess at how to play ourselves–even I was on TV so I shouldn’t have to recount that either. We tried to say heathen but our mouths ended up spouting a music better suited to driving through a star-tarted desert. Creepy cowboy got an era, crossword lothario got years, but we do we call this shit? Might makes maybe, to put it mildly. Branches of science we haven’t invented or gotten around to suppressing would alter the hideous tides, keep us from killing what keeps us alive. The whole world, to the extent that we can name such an invention, we have sliced open–I never did make it to physics class but with luck it’s not too late, the last so slow to leave so leave on all the light.
you don’t need me to tell you we needed you and you were not nothing to us. Mimicking into stupor was a better guess at how to play ourselves–even I was on TV so I shouldn’t have to recount that either. We tried to say heathen but our mouths ended up spouting a music better suited to driving through a star-tarted desert. Creepy cowboy got an era, crossword lothario got years, but we do we call this shit? Might makes maybe, to put it mildly. Branches of science we haven’t invented or gotten around to suppressing would alter the hideous tides, keep us from killing what keeps us alive. The whole world, to the extent that we can name such an invention, we have sliced open–I never did make it to physics class but with luck it’s not too late, the last so slow to leave so leave on all the light.
All this week, HTMLGiant posted poems from The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon) Mark Bibbins’s eagerly and long-awaited followup collection to 2003’s Sky Lounge. Day #1 is here. Day #2 is here. Day #3 is here. Day #4 is here.
GIANT Excerpt: from The Dance of No Hard Feelings by Mark Bibbins (#4)
We are not kissing and the river
tricks the boat. Even at night,
colors freeze when they would
rather bleed. He likes delay,
He says, the long ascent to sex.
[first his finger to his lips]
He of the somewhere-wadded-up
mainsail, half hard and too tired
[to the knuckle now] to try–
when in doubt he demurs
then dissolves, spooked
as I and twice as strange.
The glass we handed back
and forth sits on the sill:
mouth- and fingerprints
overlap, more reasonable
as a form of mimesis [out now
and glistening] than simple
trajectory–and what about
the bridge, under which
the boat [back in, slowly,
slowly] has slipped, its
chain of lights, distorted
by the edge of the glass,
just now turned out?
All this week, HTMLGiant will be posting poems from The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon) Mark Bibbins’s eagerly and long-awaited followup collection to 2003’s Sky Lounge. Day #1 is here. Day #2 is here. Day #3 is here. Check back daily for fresh doses.
GIANT EXCERPT: from The Dance of No Hard Feelings by Mark Bibbins (#2)
I Used to Have the Shampoo
with D.A. Powell
with D.A. Powell
I used to have the shampoo
by the balls but the wind hurt my hair so.
I can’t get over that retarded girl on the trike,
can’t find the apes in the apiary
can’t get hard for the hardtack
and the cannery is closed.
Well, this is just a trumped-up way of saying
your haircut is among the finest in Wyoming.
From the brightly arranged parlors of San Francisco
to the uncompromising river, beside which, huskily, we sang,
you can modify an adverb with an adverb–they do it all the time in France–
but I have not left my room in thirty years.
My life is shrinking like a desiccated organ,
wilted japonicas drenched in wine.
All this week, HTMLGiant will be posting poems from The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon) Mark Bibbins’s eagerly and long-awaited followup collection to 2003’s Sky Lounge. Day #1 is here. Check back daily for fresh doses.
GIANT EXCERPT: from The Dance of No Hard Feelings by Mark Bibbins (#1)
Arriving In Your New Country
Wrong decisions are harder to make than most
people realize, tears flying sideways in a gale.
We swerve in the road so as not to hit dead things,
but I used to know someone who did the opposite.
He liked to drive through them. Stars are most
serious when seen from the back of a pickup truck
while very very drunk, and if someone kisses you
there it doesn’t count. I would grab your sadness
as a movie monster would, bring it to the harshest
part of the mountain: I haven’t seen this place yet
but I am told weeping is not part of its economy
and everything there is delicious if eaten alone.
All this week, HTMLGiant will be posting poems from The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon) Mark Bibbins’s eagerly and long-awaited followup collection to 2003’s Sky Lounge. Check back daily for fresh doses.
Mary Jo Bang’s favorite book covers
Over at Best American Poetry Blog, they’ve apparently been running a thing where poets choose some of their favorite poetry book-covers. I’m a little late to the party, as there are already entries from Major Jackson, Jesse Ball, David Lehman, and several others. But I’m a big fan of Mary Jo’s, and so it was exciting to enter the series via her entry, which by the way, includes the cover of Mark Bibbins’s forthcoming The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon), perhaps the most eagerly-anticipated follow-up collection of 2009. So why don’t you head over to the blog, read Mary Jo’s piece, then check out some of the others.
New Poets Off Poetry up at Coldfront
Maybe some of you remember Poets Off Poetry, Jackie Clark‘s continuing mission to get poets to talk about something else for a change–namely music–which used to run on This Recording but then stopped. Well it didn’t die, it only moved to Coldfront, where it has been thriving. The latest installment features my–and Jackie’s–former teacher and much-esteemed buddy, the inimitable Mark Bibbins (whose website seems to be MIA at present, and whose forthcoming collection from Copper Canyon, The Dance of No Hard Feelings, doesn’t seem to have an Amazon page yet, so, uh, sit tight I guess). In his P.O.P., Bibbins talks about My Bloody Valentine, Goldfrapp, Portishead, The Verve (who are back, apparently), Stereolab, Deerhunter, and many more musicians you either have or haven’t heard of. Ample YouTube embeds for illustration make this a must-read and potentially a slow load, so why don’t you click on it now, go pour a coffee, then come back and settle in for a real good time. [JUSTIN: that last sentence begins as a question but ends with a period. What gives? -ED. / BLAKE: By the end of the sentence I realized it was an imperative, not an interrogative, and I want the readers to experience that transformation with me. -JT]
Read “Tatooine Sunset: An Assembly of Last Year’s Fantastic Things” by Mark Bibbins.