STARK WEEK INTERLUDE: SLampson and the Mermaid
This is what happens when a poet meets a mermaid on Second Life, a 3D world where everyone you see is a real person and every place you visit is built by people just like you.
[19:31] SLampsonSLarkweather: Hail, Hail, the kid can swim!
[19:32] rigar yumsfeld: kid?
[19:32] SLampsonSLarkweather: I scream even more, you’re all here to see me bleed, run down roosters, bees, the buoyancy of already gone, I was just playing
[19:32] SLampsonSLarkweather: FISH OUT OF WATER.
[19:33] rigar yumsfeld: haha
[19:33] SLampsonSLarkweather: So I float. So I kick and scream for no other reason than being born.
[19:33] rigar yumsfeld: haha you could float
[19:34] rigar yumsfeld: :)
[19:35] SLampsonSLarkweather: We whored our pool via free advertising. Paid through the nose. “Above ground” is a term I still don’t understand.
[19:37] rigar yumsfeld: haha yeah
[19:38] SLampsonSLarkweather: We all come out swimming. Not a lifeguard for miles. They called me White Lightning in the stands, but nobody knew my name was Doubled-Over, that I peed my pants simply to stay warm.
[19:38] SLampsonSLarkweather: What can you do?
[19:38] rigar yumsfeld: what you mean?
[19:40] SLampsonSLarkweather: I mean that You believe in words. Their power. Weight.
[19:40] SLampsonSLarkweather: Like some kind of nerd.
[19:40] SLampsonSLarkweather: imagine this as music.
[19:40] SLampsonSLarkweather: dunzo
[19:40] SLampsonSLarkweather: now where to go
[19:41] rigar yumsfeld: idk wtf you are talkign bout
[19:43] SLampsonSLarkweather: clusterfucks aren’t a breakfast cereal.
[19:44] SLampsonSLarkweather: I’m telling you the clouds point to us, too.
[19:49] rigar yumsfeld: sorry im at work
[19:51] SLampsonSLarkweather: Instead of a raise, my job offered to get me a new chair, in the form of one of those giant exercise balls.
[19:53] SLampsonSLarkweather: As if I don’t realize they are actually saving money by buying me a plastic ball for a chair.
[19:53] rigar yumsfeld: I dont need a raise
[19:53] rigar yumsfeld: ^^
[19:55] SLampsonSLarkweather: i can do anything with money.
[19:55] SLampsonSLarkweather: i’ll show you if you give me the money.
[19:55] rigar yumsfeld: lol
[19:57] SLampsonSLarkweather: Have you noticed all the commercials these days are trying to cash in on the economic crisis?
[19:58] rigar yumsfeld: yeah :P
[19:58] rigar yumsfeld: well I better get going
[20:00] SLampsonSLarkweather: I’d love to partake
[20:00] SLampsonSLarkweather: but i’ve got umbrellas and promises to break
[20:01] SLampsonSLarkweather: and miles to go before this roofie wears off.
[19:58] rigar yumsfeld: you are fucking weird man
[Note: This dumb thing was inspired by this broadside from Rye House Press.]
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July 16th, 2013 / 4:15 am
July 16th, 2013 / 4:15 am
STARK WEEK EPISODE 1: “The redonkulous and the sublime” — An interview with Sampson Starkweather
WEEKS: A lot can kill you in a week. Even more can eat you at your weakness. A whole week of hair growth depends on, uh, genetics? Weeks contain a finite series of burritos and an infinite burrito of choices. Hoopla, regrets, collapses, dancing so hard you have to pour a cup of ice water on your dome, other times that feeling like you have to drag yourself so hard by your own collar your shirt might tear. Huge trucks at night carrying turned-off, unblinking versions of those normally blinking signs that say CONSTRUCTION AHEAD or SLOW LANE ENDS, except the signs are big so the trucks themselves say OVERSIZED LOAD and are blinking, themselves, even though their cargo’s dark. What I would like to do is nominate Sampson Starkweather to rewrite the entirety of America’s highway marginalia, to be the official roadside spokespoet for all of America’s restless feelings. I don’t have shit to do with those decisions, so what is happening instead is that this week will be Sampson Starkweather week here at HTMLGIANT, aka STARK WEEK.
THE BOOK: Sampson’s debut book of poems, The First Four Books of Sampson Starkweather, is out now from Birds LLC. It’s really big. Like almost 400 pages. Who does that? It’s what it says it is. 4 books. All the feelings enacted in the opening paragraph happen inside of its four books, which are categorized as “poetry/life.” Sure, yes, yeah.
WHAT’S IN IT: It’s a book I’d give to someone just coming to poetry and to someone who feels totally burnt out on poetry. Those are kind of the same readers, I think. That’s why the whole week. Starkweather’s poetry is the existence of a nonexistent photograph of Andre the Giant jumping off the top rope. In his introduction, Jared White mentions “bass-voiced sexy soul-singer slow jams” and “punch-drunk Harlequin-robocop masculinity.” The poems have angry leaked dreams and love before roads and a pistol-whipped desire and the world’s saddest TV and offensive hurricane names and corpses wrapped in huge tropical leaves on islands named after them and that’s just in the poems you can read on the excerpt page.
WTF IS GOING ON: Over the course of this week, we’re going to feature a series of guests talking about Sam’s work in each of the books within T4B—1) King of the Forest, 2) La La La, 3) The Waters, 4) Self Help Poems—and also we’re going to hear from the awesome artists who made the covers for each of these four books. There will be criticism, talk of process, grand sweeping theories, tiny insightful scalpels. You’ll get to read some of Sam’s poetry. There will be some talk of what goes into, in 2013, putting out a 400 page book of your poems that is actually 4 books. Maybe there will be some interaction, multimedia, surprise. Buy a copy of the book if you want to follow along closely. I promise it won’t feel like being stuck on a brokedown bus at a rest stop in Connecticut. There are poems that feel like that, but not in this book. Here’s a list of who’s coming at you: Matt Bollinger, Ed Park, Bianca Stone, John Cotter, Melissa Broder, Eric Amling, Elisa Gabbert, Jonathan Marshall, Amy Lawless, Sommer Browning, and Jared White.
WHO IS SAMPSON STARKWEATHER ANYWAY, IS HE THAT GUY WHO DID THAT THING GUYS DO: The reason a lot of people want to share and talk about Sam’s huge ass tree-killer is because he and his work (which are impossible to unspoon from each other, which is how it should be) is like getting the best high five of your life from Teen Wolf. He is loved and easy to love and easy to mistake in rural supermarkets for Javier Bardem. He’s a longhaired poet surfer with a heart of messy pizza and manic kindness. Thank the exhausted fucking stars he is with us and with poetry. Enjoy STARK WEEK.
HOW DOES STARK WEEK BEGIN: To begin STARK WEEK, I talked to Starkweather:
1) Hi Sam. Welcome to Stark Week. This is how it starts, with an interview of you. Our interview starts with the “who is Sampson Starkweather and what’s going on, what is this stuff all over my arms, is this sap” portion of the interview. So let’s start at the start. Four books? Why? Why buck the prevailing model of slim little precious supermodel books? More importantly, why buck it in this beautifully thunking doorstop fashion?
Sorry about the sap “this forest / is unusually horny.”
In the end it came down to precisely the opposite of your question: “Why not?” Why not 4 books in 1? Why not a 328 page monster poetry collection that sounds like a seminal lifetime work by some famous, award-winning, about-to-die poet who now tends a garden, published by some big-ass conglomerate press like Penguin, but is actually by some dude with a ridiculous name that no one has heard of (and sounds like a character from Game of Thrones) and has yet to publish a full-length book, on a small indie poetry press that, oh yeah, he just happens to be a publisher/founding-editor of? It seemed ridiculous, audacious, absurd, unheard of, taboo, laughable—in other words, perfect.
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July 15th, 2013 / 1:28 pm
July 15th, 2013 / 1:28 pm
Sampson Starkweather Strips it Down to Just Chapbooks
The 2012 Chapbook Festival starts tomorrow. I call it “the good AWP.” In preparation, this year I’ve asked Sampson Starkweather, 1/5th of the Birds, LLC braintrust and chapbook enthusiast, some questions about the form. Go get a blanket–he links up some great stuff that is way worth the read.
Hey Sampson, what’s the deal with chapbooks?
Funny, that’s how I start all my stand-up comedy gigs. It kills of course. So I wanted to start with a quote from James Haug’s Why I Like Chapbooks (Factory Hollow, 2011), who waxes lyrical “Chapbooks are stealth books./ They can slip under a door./ They don’t impose. They suggest./ They’re not one thing or another. They don’t take much time. They’re sly and easy to ignore. They imply, insinuate, inquire./ They don’t expect an answer./ They have a long history; they have no history.” READ MORE >
“Subject matter is important”
“A photo of whales on your phone will not protect you”
Sampson Starkweather’s latest chapbook, The Heart Is Green From So Much Waiting (Immaculate Disciples Press), is a chapbook of “transcontemporations,” which, Starkweather explains, are to poems what Robocop is to normal police officers. Obviously, if we’re playing along at home, this is both a joke and not a joke. Like maybe it’s a battle cry and a cat call, maybe it’s a desire to be unremoved from the original feeling of seeing through the eyes of Robocop himself. If we’re playing along at home, The Heart Is Green From So Much Waiting feels some kind of gameshow hosted by a monk. READ MORE >
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June 13th, 2010 / 10:55 am
June 13th, 2010 / 10:55 am