February 2010
January 2010
Radiohead - Morning Bell
Soundtrack to my...
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"Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh," by Gary...
Because it broods under its hood like a perched falcon, Because it jumps like a skittish horse and sometimes throws me, Because it is poky when cold, Because plastic is a sad, strong material that is charming to rodents, Because it is flighty, Because my mind flies into it through my fingers, Because it leaps forward and backward, is an endless sniffer and searcher, Because its keys click like...
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“I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I...”
– The Catcher in the Rye
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Short Interview with Rae Armantrout →
CM: In a culture so dominated by the interests of young people, what do you feel is the place of upcoming generations in the appreciation of poetry and the written word?
RA: Once again, I hate to make predictions. The first fact that faces all of us is that our water and fuel are running out, right? Your question assumes that the future doesn’t look something like a Mad Max movie. But, setting...
Beer. Chick peas. Husserl. Dry socks.
Now I just need some ideas on paper, preferably in a logical form that my professor will like. Come onnnn, inspiration.
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Pantoums
For all you poets/poem-lovers/writers out there: I’m writing a thing about pantoums (for elementary/middle school-ish aged kids) and have to include an example poem.
As it’s aimed at school-age people, the poem shouldn’t be super difficult to understand, and should be a faithful representation of the form (no “creative” pantoums). AND, preferably, in the public...
Remember how Whole Foods CEO John Mackey is crazy?
skybarn:
fatmanatee:
stephenfalk:
katherinespiers:
He has just announced a new program whereby skinny Whole Foods employees will enjoy bigger discounts at work than their fat colleagues. Nope, not making it up. BMI-based benefits, people. Can we stop shopping there now?
Okay, I was off on Mackey. WAY off. Hand me a dunce cap and I’ll go sit in a corner now.
A lot of companies are...
"Vertigo," by Ralph Angel
Only one is a wanderer. And when she was sad she’d go into the street to be with people. Two together are always going somewhere. They lie down beneath cypress, next to a bird. I imagine the sky. It fans her mountains and waves. She’d left some small town where they used to make tires. Stories are made out of stairwells and rope. I’d been interrupting for years and didn’t...
“All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, it’s my...”
– Conan O’Brien (via theotherniraj) (via mundy)
I almost teared up at this last night. I think I’m making this my mantra.
For Your Reading Pleasure →
Three poems of mine are up at La Petite Zine! Go read them!
And if you don’t like mine, I’m a big fan of Jennifer L. Knox, who’s also in this issue with (among other awesome poems) a piece called “Beverly Hills Cop III” … dammit, why didn’t I think of that?
Overheard at USC:
Girl 1: So what are you going to do today? I have so much work …
Girl 2: Oh my God, I, like, dropped my phone in a puddle yesterday? So I just got, like, a new Blackberry? I have to set that up and everything.
“A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in...”
– Randall Jarrell (via thebronzemedal)
This is a very relevant quote for poets in L.A. right now. I was mad about getting my feet all wet walking through huge puddles, but now I’m going to hold out for some electrocution.
“You do look, my son, in a movèd sort,
As if you were dismayed: be cheerful,...”
– Prospero in The Tempest (IV.I.146-158)
David Lynch Week: Dune (1984)
chriscantwell:
brightwalldarkroom:
DUNE IS TERRIBLE
by Christopher Cantwell
When I found out we were going to do David Lynch Week, I asked to write about Dune. I’d never seen the movie, didn’t know what it was about, and asked in the same way a guy might yell to his friends, “Hey, watch this!” moments before jumping off a cliff to his death. There was a nervous titillation to my...
“I don’t care what other books are like, bad or not. I am going to keep doing...”
– Aleksandar Hemon on writing.
(in a fantastic piece in The Believer where Hemon and Colum McCann interview each other)
David Lynch Week: Twin Peaks (TV pilot,1990)
Read my semi-rambles about the Twin Peaks pilot episode!
brightwalldarkroom:
THE TWIN PEAKS PILOT EPISODE: Or, You Didn’t Know Laura Palmer
by Elizabeth Wilcox
April 8, 1820: A peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas discovers a strange piece of marble buried in the ancient city ruins of Milos. The marble is excavated (in two pieces), cleaned and nearly sold to Turkey—when a French ambassador,...
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Favorite part of a (largely good/interesting)...
The woman who read a poem about “God’s celestial penis” and “His Holy seed” in complete sincerity.
Oh yeah, she also read a poem in which she compared a pet frog to a victim of Auschwitz. And one in which she warned against going to a sperm bank, because if you have a baby girl who grows up to be beautiful and likes older men, she might end up sleeping with her...
"Still as in a Still after Still," by Mary Jo Bang
How-then-why is charted like a map is a chart, In four colors. The typography forms another layer
That includes the map Of the nap you took on Sunday. The dream sky
That pressed in. A still is a picture Of one segment. A tabletop rectangle That is recommended. Okay, fine,
It was like that and like a de Chirico as well. Sharp shadows. Summer sunlight. An artichoke. A chokehold.
A...
“By July of 1967 Howard Hughes is the largest single landholder in Clark County,...”
– Joan Didion, “7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38”
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Bloom cancels class due to illness →
Get better, you crazy, curmudgeonly, arrogant academic.
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“What makes the potential death of a language all the more emotionally charged is...”
– John McWhorter, in an interesting meditation on language death/the growing dominance of English as an international language.
"Death," by Bill Knott
Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest. They will place my hands like this. It will look as though I am flying into myself.
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The Translation Gap: Why More Foreign Writers... →
There are a number of explanations for this phenomenon, very few of which have to do with stereotypes of American readers as being culturally insulated or lacking curiosity about the outside world.