sherman alexie

Sherman Alexie got banned in the state of Missouri. One down, forty-nine to go.

Face by Sherman Alexie

Face (Hanging Loose Press, poetry) is ax/not ax/poleax, as in still S. Alexie. His personae (will contain biographical elements of the author) have one leg stuck in White Batter (all connotations) of mainstream academia/book/laugh at nothing/muttering $peaking tours and one shakily afoot “the rez.” The third leg is a ghost leg. Tear ducts in its toenails, Andrew fucking nebulous Jackson. Like a man standing in two canoes (never try this), sway and suffer consequences. The question—in the words of another poet noticing Halle Berry dragging along the Very First Oscar (2002!) like a battleship anchor—is whether speaker will crust and sugar over, sag like a heavy load, or, well, explode. I celebrate the men who preceded me. Face has numbers in a burlap sack (math, as history, as stat, as in right now. As in statistics): 1492, 15 million Native Americans. 1892, 750,000. 2002, 1.8 million. Look up Pamunkey, an odd word. Face, do you feel yourself rowing against the current/into the past, like White Fitzgerald? Hypothermia. Face, blanket, and not blanket. Mask. Shroud. OK, speak.

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Uncategorized / 6 Comments
January 5th, 2010 / 3:11 pm

Recoup

I have a question.

Here in this video, Sherman Alexie compares digital books to digital music, and says that now, all musicians need to make their money touring instead of by selling records:

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sherman Alexie
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

Please correct me if I’m wrong here, musicians: most artists never see much money from their recordings. And they didn’t even long before the internet made wide-scale file sharing possible. Because they couldn’t recoup the costs of the recordings they made to their record labels. (Doug Wolk linked to this little post by a member of the band Too Much Joy recently. They still owe nearly $400,000 to Warner before they will ever see a penny of royalties.)

The analogy simply doesn’t hold. If you are making a principled stand based on a false analogy, what then?

Technology / 71 Comments
December 3rd, 2009 / 2:12 pm

READ THIS. It’s the nonfiction equivalent of TYSON V. SPINKS.