Yah the 'poetry/literature is dead/doesn't mean crud anymore' issue limps on, skewed by people that wanna get things off their chest. The issue is made heavier by some jacked up numbers: the writings of ladies are less presented than the writings of males. On and on and on this thing goes. What is reflected by this, the anger and zeal over a literature that does not reflect anyone anymore, that people don't feel represented by literature, that literature simply cannot represent anything? Internet, the pervasiveness of literature, via the internet, to literature corrodes/has corroded the question of privilege to some great degree, has it not... Internet is the equalizer of culture, technology is the alteration of culture into symptom, poetry/literature is the symptom of us now. Poetry/literature with a pre-understood set of intrinsic, nonequivalent, jacked up facets regarding receipt, audience, readership, affect, riches, respect, recognition is no new skinny for people engaging in it. For a straight whitesh male to say such inelegant things is bad taste, but taste. Taste, in the arts, the notion of taste in art. America is a kid with no taste buds, and no appetite for nothing neither. So much attention to who is what, seems a waste. Make the art. What is 'getting access'? Getting access to being read, getting access to being appreciated as a writer, getting what and how. Has it not been that poetry/literature is less dependent upon getting something for its production than its coming into being, its existence... There is a great decadence to the pessimism that seems necessary to write anything of importance. An unyielding, inarticulate, obscure sense of inadequacy and anger foreground the art I understand as 'good'. Doom. We are not the we we talk about when we talk about we. Poetry/literature is in this way always deathing. Because the power and exclusive importance of the straight white male to make himself always so is waned. Those for whom an optimism is a necessary part, those to whom an outward still warmly cares are split then. Skew that which creates symptom, virus, narcotic is a moment of poetry/literature, connected to the drugs they they they. / I know who Amanda Bynes is when other people know who Amanda Bynes is and not before.
o brother, egypt, egypt direct, egypt linear we had here our red chests on the young men hovering on top of the slip n slide, potato salad, beer, rains, firecracker demos, lady dances for the 4th / Plus theJonathan Richman show was delightful, humid, unimpeachable, acoustic roars, gypsy americana. / these are complicated images - a side effect of google earth's massive project / The radical, insightfull English Language Notes, and Language in Society each tossing me bones of late months, each aiding, each for me to play catch up, to forward, each and neither available easily on line (where does one acquire out of print books for very cheap? Bunker Archeology - from which these
/ Third Man hosts a PoetrySucks! reading on Sunday, 7/7, should be myriad entendres happening, with Paige Taggartreading, also SampsonStarkweather And and and The Big Beefers, Burg In Your Eyes, Pseudo-Omnivore, Beef Oven is doing up The Stone Fox on Wed, 7/10
Tao, Mingus ( I've bee'd through all of Yo La Tengo, their bests always are the 8-14 min songs, with mantra chant bass lines repeating under/around distortion ), Oppen, Aime Cesaire's Notebook. Don Delillo!
/ Namaste houseshow friendparty bday keg-in-the-el-camino went swell - Kin Ship, The Beef-Hags,R. Ghosts, Clear Plastic Masksstirred such a hotfoot party brew that everyone sloshed in the cup, backyard cuba 50's DIY economic setups mingled abuzz atop ourselves, we all split into sounds just pushed through each other unbodied then rebodied in materials leaned out on, I did.
/ Missed B&N's Lyrical Brew this last saturday. These things happen. PoetrySucks! to host an open mic at where else Dino's on the 6th, go sure, sure.
Also the Owl Farm is three for three on delivering straightup fun and delightful, stimulating, eccentric shows. I'm going more often. / Day the less objects jammed back into themselves, drum close wind, altered. After waking from men construction everywhere adjacent windows, I find little bones in the streets. Olsen's Maximus never got done, in face I owe money for re-re-re-rechecking it out /plus spilling coffee into her and quick bits of head hair during hair cut reads. Onto and re-into George Oppen, his brevity, linearity, machinations.
Our'Pider, ya'll made this list of experimental journals- Selby's List As per norm of late, missed last nights Poet's Corner at Vanderbilt. Jamie Collins read, uh, his, uh, po, uh, etry. Also, I missed sentry Toni Morrison read at the Barnes & Noble last week too. O, PoetrySucks! is doing an open mic thing at homebase Dino's on the 6th, June. *Recommended reading/listenings - explore yr tear ducts, compounded by the quality of his writing: Larry Eignerat PennSound. Pull up the written along with the vocal.
Campstars, wind in the mouth, tentpinchers: Got a poem ( "See, they return" ) in the absolutely fresh bioregional poetics anthology of Abigael C. Tripp ( the project is her thesis project, a darn fine one ) - In This Place.
Who want to go to that new Zeitgeist? Its former spot now a bunkhole in the hillsboro torso.
"Town, of Furs" ( from a series of a bunch of Town, of's ) is ready to be et in Dear Sir,'s newest one, get yr slice of upside down cake over at Dear Sir,
/ Now at least three ( 3 ) readings series in Nashville ( ? ) -PoetrySucks! & ( its new altered incarnation ) Sing Again Soon/ Vanderbilt's Front Porch & Poet's Corner ( plus on-campus readings ) / & Barnes & Nobles' Lyrical Brew( events nowhere listed on their website, check fbook ). Needless, a culture appraised long for music ( even if country ) ought expand ( outward, forward ) into more artfull aware less tired avenues with/in language; a re-appraisal of Nashville's chances for literary relevance in a national perspective is being cultivated. Cultivated, though, and bestly, by non-academic presentations of poetry ( this is in accord with the astounding house-show culture that exists concurrently ). Plus Parnassus ( eh, but less eh with David Sedaris coming to town ) & new Howlin' Books( adjacent Grimey's off 8th ) to boot, cahoots ( someone in the know said they may be hosting readings )... / & 'Pider 2 wants that art ya'll: send an art or two or three to us to gawk to, submissions to piderbits@gmail.com
Readings last night, Dino's hosting a joint venture: Sing Again Soon, Richard Houston's gem baby, hosted Whit Smith, Joshua Gillis, Spencer Connell, Harry Kagan, but then I lost Kendra Decola for the roof, and for pitcher-beer, it's an easy roof, and below me I could feel timbres of microphoning words, sure. It was a social drinking smile house, it's a bravo moment for the nashvillers that are (in/to) it, and burgs were getting stuffed in mouth places where words are from out of. Chrome Pony was the buzz of intermission and postscript.
/ The house show was a smash too: Kin Shipbecame all the new halloween costume ideas for October even the day after, Beef Oven - plus Boo Hags ( ! ) - ran the home room deep bones lurch by loud boxes connected to their connector limbs, and The JAG got its way denim knight python bangs.
