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longreads: “Death of a Revolutionary.” Susan Faludi, The New...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:27:32 -0400

“Death of a Revolutionary.” Susan Faludi, The New Yorker.

NaPoWriMo Day 3

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:15:56 -0400

Challenge: write a sea shanty (or shantey, or chanty, or chantey — there’s a good deal of disagreement regarding the spelling!). Anyway, these are poems in the forms of songs, strongly rhymed and rhythmic, that sailors might sing while hauling on ropes and performing other sea-going labors. Probably the two most famous sea shanties are What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor? and Blow the Man Down.

Up and loaded this poem must go

To my Tumblr account for NaPoWriMo

Here I aim to be finished before the rise of the sun

Because I’m in a hurry to get things done.

Type-o Type-o Type-o Type-0

It’s a pity this poem will get me no dough.

I sat at my computer with keys at ready

But my poem set anchor wouldn’t budge any.

I coaxed and wailed a verse to the air

But still no poem would climb out of my hair.

Type-o Type-o Type-o Typeo

It’s a pity this poem will get me no dough.

Author’s Note: I love sea shanties! I remember learning “Whatcha Going to Do with A Drunken Sailor” and “Shenandoah” when I was in gradeschool. Anyway, it was near midnight on the west coast and Day 3 NaPoWriMo was about to end. It might not be pretty, but it got me through it. :-D

NaPoWriMo Day 2

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:26:06 -0400

Here’s what I understand of Nirvana: People fight to attain it. Achieve it. Then fall out of it. The place is more of a purpose. The purpose is to always find your way back to it.

I try to repeat that night. I try to find that night again and again. Sometimes, I slip back through small things—a red veined leaf pressed to flat to the bed of a shallow stream. Sometimes, I slip through unintentionally—a round table filled with friends at the Cheesecake factory. And sometimes, it happens just when it must—a walk philosophic on an evening when the moon peaks through a palm frond at me.

But never it exactly. Never what I remember. And I understand how time moves forward and all the science behind that. But I still try to realchemize the pieces, which include you, together. Hoping to get back to that night so I can write with all the skill I now possess the poem I never did.

Author Notes:

You’ll notice a theme in my NaPoWriMo submissions—about a memory of mine. It’s because I actually am trying to write about this memory so I’m using NaPoWriMo as an opportunity to brainstorm how to best express it.

NaPoWriMo: Day 1

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 02:13:17 -0400

Prompt: Write a poem that has the same first line as another poem.

Because it burned, I kept returning.

My ember: a memory of dark

juniper trees en pointe and a

beardless moon, its naked chin

provocative and

pierced with a grin. And I didn’t recall

the salad. I replaced that ashy

part with a coffee because steam

rises with more nostalgic

clarity than lettuce leaves in a

plastic container that I chewed

before juniper trees who

danced nimbly in a way that I

knew for that midnight exactly

who and how I was supposed to be.

Author Notes:

My first line comes from the poem “Eurydice’s Refrain” by Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut in her book “Magnetic Refrain.”

Because it burned, I kept returning.

It was the same house, a desert white

with gaping windows and trees within.

Amd from inside, an alluring music that turned

sleepy, then strong. And when he

strummed, his fingers seemed strangely familiar

though his notes were old and slightly strained,

as if he’d been away for too long.

And from inside my throat, the flames

began to uncoil and recoil

in bursts of song.

And even though it hurt to always follow,

to always echo, I loved being

a shadow that grew larger and radiant

as he skipped across stage, bringing

me with him out into the open.

And when he laughed, I cracked

a smile of relief. And when he ached

I made it storm with violent rain,

and when he wandered back

to save the city from burning down,

I didn’t hesitate to follow

and spread myself into a salty wave

crushing, soundlessly, in his wake.

Mornings at Blackwater by Mary Oliver

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:39:22 -0500

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.

Bookshelf Porn

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:34:30 -0500

Bookshelf Porn

beatonna: 1066 QUIZ 1. How much Conquering is too much...

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:14:35 -0500

beatonna:

1066 QUIZ

1. How much Conquering is too much Conquering?
- One hundred square miles
- Girl please that’s like askin’ how much chocolate is too much chocolate
- You can’t contain that stuff man, you gotta roll with it
- Trick question!! Now I’ve burnt down your house.

2. The Battle of Stamford Bridge?
- Mel Gibson was terrible as Harald Hardrada and there wasn’t even a bridge in the movie
- Historians agree, good use of tanks
- Tostig is all like, the pridelands are mine, Mufasa
- At least it’s not Sweyn

3. What was the relic of St Peter that William wore around his neck?
- A lock of hair tied in a ribbon inside a valentine
- Eyeball of Destiny (disputed)
- Genuine fart, captured in a vial, sealed in wax
- Geode, from that time the disciples visited Jesus’ bedroom in Nazareth and divided up all his stuff (Gospel of Mark)

4. When William’s horse died:
- All the other horses died too because: science
- Everyone was like it’s over but then William was like no way and they were like way but he was like no way and it ruled
- He used it as a weapon and slew many a Saxon!
- Han Solo had to open it up with a lightsaber to keep William warm and Rob Roy hid in it

5. How does one remove an arrow from the eye?
- Push it out the other side (recommended)
- Push it out the other side (not recommended)
- Doesn’t matter how you do it to a dead person
- Keep it bro! Chicks dig it.

6. Was William a bastard?
- He was once but it was just a phase
- Ask the Northern Earls
- I see what you did there
- Yeah but I doubt he has a complex about it or anything

7. Is England French now?
- I can’t hear you through all these baguettes
- Only the parts with money/swords/power
- Who do we know that can conduct a census to find out?
- Oh Tish I love it when you speak French! *mwah mwah mwah*

8. What is the better way to die:
- Arrow through eye
- Horse incident w/ exploding corpse
- A combination of the two
- Anything but those two things

9. Was Harold a good king?
- He was good at catching sharp things with his face
- He was good at LOSING
- He was good at having the worst family
- He was alright

10. The Bayeux Tapestry is:
- a propaganda machine
- too big to hang in the dining room
- The worst issue of Batman I’ve ever read
- Harold dies?? Um, spoilers

Please circle all your answers and hand in your papers via Harold’s favorite falcon

Website

Why we all sometimes need a little art in our lives.

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:27:33 -0500

Why we all sometimes need a little art in our lives.

longreads: Inside the life of Somali refugees in Nairobi,...

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:32:28 -0400

longreads:

Inside the life of Somali refugees in Nairobi, Kenya:

The heartland of that exodus is the vast refugee camp complex centered around Dadaab town in Kenya’s North Eastern Province—at 450,000 people and growing at the rate of over 1,000 people a day, the camp is Kenya’s third largest city, and the biggest refugee camp in the world. But many thousands of Somalis choose not to go to the camp and head straight to Nairobi to the neighborhood of Eastleigh, which Kenyans have nicknamed ‘Little Mogadishu.’ That’s where I was headed as I walked to the corner to catch a matatu, a dirt cheap minivan so crowded I had to hang out the doors. Eastleigh, Dadaab—over the past two years, they’ve been cardinal points on the compass of what K’naan, a Somali rapper, calls ‘a violent prone, poor people zone.’

But that’s only one part of the story: as Andy Needham, a deeply informed, canny, and humane Irish Aid press officer working with the UN, put it: ‘Journalists come to the camps because the story’s right in front of them. It makes for good photographs like, you can take one look and see the problems for yourself. But refugees in the city—and let’s be clear here, there are thousands of them, most of them undocumented, hard to trace, hard to reach out to—that’s a story that goes almost untold.’ And I could see what Andy meant: in Nairobi, there were no camps, no food distribution centers, and so the refugees disappeared into the city—for if you went to Nairobi rather than Dadaab, you had to make it on your own. There wasn’t a lot of obvious drama that would appeal to Western media, no ‘suffering chic’ to spice up your story.

“A Violent Prone, Poor People Zone.” — Tom Sleigh, VQR

More from VQR

5: A Hazard of Hearts (1987)

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:09:00 -0400

For my birthday, a friend gifted me a collection of 60 movies that span from the 1930s to the 1990s. So here we go!

Based on the romance novel by Barbara Cartland, A Hazard of Hearts stars a very young Helena Bonham Carter as unfortunate Serena Staverly who is won in a gambling game by the mysterious and broody Lord Justin Vulcan. (I still cannot get over that our hero’s name is Vulcan! It’s such a romance novel name.)

Here’s the plot: Serena’s dad played by Christopher Plummer for the first 10 minutes of the movie has a gambling problem. At his usual game at his cousin the pastor’s house, Lord Staverly’s honor is impugned by the the evil Lord Wrotham. Staverly feels FORCED to put his house and daughter’s hand in the pot just so he can prove that Wrotham isn’t awesome. He loses then commits suicide. All the other gentlemen bystanders can’t help but feel something is wrong about gambling a young girl in a poker game, but no one does anything about it until the mysterious Lord Vulcan wins the pot from Wrotham.

Instead of just dissolving the terms, Vulcan goes to claim his house and check out this girl. (Don’t worry! We later find out the mysterious Vulcan is an honorable man just not obviously due to mysterious circumstances.)

“Gee, I bet she has a wooden leg,” his friends tease. But then they find out Serena is YOUNG and BEAUTIFUl and therefore to be PITIED. What else can they think when the girl comes to meet them in her nightie?

Like all period heroines, Serena doesn’t tell Vulcan to get the f@#$ out of her house. She recognizes that she must uphold her dishonorable father’s honor and submits to Justin’s command. The house is sold and she is off to live with his mummy at Mandrake Hall.

From there, viewers learn how Vulcan can up his brooding intensity to Level 30, how his mummy is the fashionable version of evil incarnate, how highwaymen can be timely, how Helena Bonham Carter never gets flushed even when swooning, and how men are only attractive when they’re manhandling the ladies, unless said man is the villain in which case it’s always unattractive.

Tangent: I recently skimmed through Michael Kimmel’s Guyland in which he discusses how the Guy Code encourages unmanly behaviors like gambling away young girls in a dice game at your cousin the priest’s house. There are three main cultures in the Guy Code: of entitlement, protection and silence, and all three were on full display in that gambling scene. Even Vulcan showers in it when he zips over to Serena’s house to claim her.

What would the movie industry do for plots without the Guy Code?

When my friend surprises me with a poetry book

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:58:41 -0400

Mini Summer Reviews

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 19:53:00 -0400

Romantics Anonymous (2011)
Language: French
Any movie that sews “I Have Confidence” from The Sound of Music into its story earns crazy points in my mind. This is a ridiculously sweet movie about two timid chocolatiers.

The Conformist (1970)
Language: Italian
When we first started this movie, we were confused about whether its language of origin was French or Italian. The DVD menu was weirdly set up and the movie starts with our protagonist Marcello fleeing France. Anyway, this movie is strange, interesting and set in 1930s Fascist Italy. Marcello is ordered to assassinate his old professor. Will he do it? Movie contains some very interesting visuals. Is stark.

Goodbye, Lenin! (2003)
Language: German
I remember seeing trailers for this in the long-ago early aughts. The premise is that Alex’s mother is a proud communist, but she falls into a coma just before the Berlin Wall falls. When she wakes up, her doctors warn that a shock could kill her so Alex needs to pretend the West is still on one side of Berlin. My verdict: Funny. Heartwarming. Thoughtful. It’s interesting to see how quickly East Berliners embraced all the decadence of the West.

Once (2006)
Language: English
Set in Dublin, this movie tells the story of two down-on-their-luck musicians. He’s broken up with his girl and busking for peanuts. She’s a Czech immigrant with no time for her piano. Together they work on a CD. This is a soft, sweet and melancholy little musical that doesn’t go for fireworks.

Le Samourai (1967)
Language: French
A plot-lite film, he’s a hitman with bushido-like leanings. He’s cold, detached and an enigma, and in the end, we learn nothing new. But there’s an interesting cat-and-mouse game in this film as well as some stunning visuals. What I remember most is that Jef, our hitman, keeps a bird in his Spartan settings. And the only way he clues into the police bug in his flat is through the bird’s fluttering unease. Obviously, someone was in this room before him. It’s a very tense scene with no dialogue or sound.

Bread and Tulips (2000)
Language: Italian
I didn’t expect a film about a disillusioned Italian housewife fleeing to Venice to be so funny. The story doesn’t hang together as well as it could, but the characters and situations more than make up for it. Costantino Caponangeli is also the best private eye ever. I loved that when his cell rang it was either Rosalba’s annoyed husband or Tino’s concerned mama.

Dhoom 2 (2006)
Language: Hindi
I love Bollywood films, and this one is pretty silly. If you ever cared to see how Queen Elizabeth and Snow White and 7 Dwarves might be good disguises in a caper, then you need to see Dhoom 2. The music’s not that great, too. Obviously a new breed of Bollywood in which kissing on the lips is permissible!

Devdas (2002)
Language: Hindi
I loved the music and dance numbers in is this otherwise OK Bollywood film. Devdas and Paro are in love, but their families are dumb and keep them apart. Then when Devdas spirals into alcoholism and, you know, death, his family can’t understand why. Aside from all the ineffectual brooding, the ladies destroy their dance numbers with every little gesture and look. There’s this moment when Chandramuki, as played by actress Madhuri Dixit, arches one eyebrow then another at the forlorn Devdas, and for such a tiny gesture, it fills the entire screen.

Summer Foreign Films

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 01:20:00 -0400

My favorite musical numbers from Devdas (2002)

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 02:43:57 -0400

20 Tips for Revisions

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 12:06:11 -0400

20 Tips for Revisions

Hymn to the Neck by Amy Gerstler

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:46:40 -0400

Tamed by starched collars or looped by the noose,
all hail the stem that holds up the frail cranial buttercup.
The neck throbs with dread of the guillotine's kiss, while
the silly, bracelet-craving wrists chafe in their handcuffs.
Your one and only neck, home to glottis, tonsils,
and many other highly specialized pieces of meat, 
is covered with stubble. Three mornings ago, undeserving
sinner though she is, yours truly got to watch you shave
in the bath. Sap matted your chest hair. A clouded 
hand mirror reflected a piece of your cheek. Vapor
rose all around like spirit-infested mist in some fabled
rainforest. The throat is the road. Speech is its pilgrim. 
Something pulses visibly in your neck as the words
hand me a towel flower from your mouth.

The Politics of Narrative: Why I Am a Poet by Lynn Emanuel

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 13:54:00 -0400

   Jill's a good kid who's had some tough luck. But that's 
another story. It's a day when the smell of fish from Tib's hash 
house is so strong you could build a garage on it. We are sit-
ting in Izzy's where Carl has just built us a couple of solid 
highballs. He's okay, Carl is, if you don't count his Roamin' 
Hands and Rushin' Fingers. Then again, that should be the 
only trouble we have in this life. Anyway, Jill says, "Why 
don't you tell about it? Nobody ever gets the poet's point of 
view." I don't know, maybe she's right. Jill's just a kid, but 
she's been around; she knows what's what.
     So, I tell Jill, we are at Izzy's just like now when he 
comes in. And the first thing I notice is his hair, which has 
been Vitalis-ed into submission. But, honey, it won't work, 
and it gives him a kind of rumpled your-boudoir-or-mine look. 
I don't know why I noticed that before I noticed his face. 
Maybe it was just the highballs doing the looking. Anyway, 
then I see his face, and I'm telling you—I'm telling Jill—this is 
a masterpiece of a face.
     But—and this is the god's own truth—I'm tired of
beauty. Really. I know, given all that happened, this must 
sound kind of funny, but it made me tired just to look at him. 
That's how beautiful he was, and how much he spelled T-R-
O-U-B-L-E. So I threw him back. I mean, I didn't say it, I say 
to Jill, with my mouth. But I said it with my eyes and my 
shoulders. I said it with my heart. I said, Honey, I'm throwing 
you back. And looking back, that was the worst, I mean, the 
worst thing—bar none—that I could have done, because it
drew him like horseshit draws flies. I mean, he didn't walk
over and say, "Hello, girls; hey, you with the dark hair, your
indifference draws me like horseshit draws flies."
     But he said it with his eyes. And then he smiled. And
that smile was a gas station on a dark night. And as wearying
as all the rest of it. I am many things, but dumb isn't one of
them. And here is where I say to Jill, "I just can't go on." I
mean, how we get from the smile into the bedroom, how it all
happens, and what all happens, just bores me. I am a concep-
tual storyteller. In fact, I'm a conceptual liver. I prefer the
cookbook to the actual meal. Feeling bores me. That's why I 
write poetry. In poetry you just give the instructions to the 
reader and say, "Reader, you go on from here." And what I like
about poetry is its readers, because those are giving people. I 
mean, those are people you can trust to get the job done. They 
pull their own weight. If I had to have someone at my back in 
a dark alley, I'd want it to be a poetry reader. They're not like
some people, who maybe do it right if you tell them, "Put this
foot down, and now put that one in front of the other, button
your coat, wipe your nose."
     So, really, I do it for the readers who work hard and, I 
feel, deserve something better than they're used to getting. I 
do it for the working stiff. And I write for people, like myself, 
who are just tired of the trickle-down theory where some-
body spends pages and pages on some fat book where every-
thing including the draperies, which happen to be burnt orange, 
are described, and, further, are some metaphor for something.
And this whole boggy waste trickles down to the reader in the 
form of a little burp of feeling. God, I hate prose. I think the 
average reader likes ideas.
     "A sentence, unlike a line, is not a station of the cross." I 
said this to the poet Mark Strand. I said, "I could not stand to
write prose; I could not stand to have to write things like 'the 
draperies were burnt orange and the carpet was brown.'" And 
he said, "You could do it if that's all you did, if that was the 
beginning and the end of your novel." So please, don't ask me 
for a little trail of bread crumbs to get from the smile to the 
bedroom, and from the bedroom to the death at the end, al-
though you can ask me a lot about death. That's all I like, the 
very beginning and the very end. I haven't got the stomach for
the rest of it.
     I don't think many people do. But, like me, they're either 
too afraid or too polite to say so. That's why the movies are 
such a disaster. Now there's a form of popular culture that 
doesn't have a clue. Movies should be five minutes long. You 
should go in, see a couple of shots, maybe a room with orange 
draperies and a rug. A voice-over would say, "I'm having a 
hard time getting Raoul from the hotel room into the eleva-
tor." And, bang, that's the end. The lights come on, everybody 
walks out full of sympathy because this is a shared experi-
ence. Everybody in that theater knows how hard it is to get 
Raoul from the hotel room into the elevator. Everyone has had 
to do boring, dogged work. Everyone has lived a life that 
seems to inflict every vivid moment the smears, finger-
ings, and pawings of plot and feeling. Everyone has lived un-
der this oppression. In other words, everyone has had to eat 
shit—day after day, the endless meals they didn't want, those 
dark, half-gelatinous lakes of gravy that lay on the plate like 
an ugly rug and that wrinkled clump of reddish-orange roast 
beef that looks like it was dropped onto your plate from a 
great height. God what a horror: getting Raoul into the ele-
vator.
     And that's why I write poetry. In poetry, you don't do 
that kind of work.

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 12:27:49 -0400

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

- W.B. Yeats

This never fails to crack me up!

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:25:05 -0400

This never fails to crack me up!

"Poetry is the art of grabbing a fleeting moment of human truth and pinning it to the page in a..."

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 19:00:38 -0400

“Poetry is the art of grabbing a fleeting moment of human truth and pinning it to the page in a perfect phrase, alive, iridescence intact. To compress broad experience into a crystalline memento, to pull the curtain aside on reality taking a shower—just a moment’s glimpse of its beauty and sorrow and perfection.”

- Janet Fitch talks about Calamity Joe by Brendan Constantine on GoodReads