1. What is the working title of the book?
(Daughters), which is a companion to another manuscript currently circulating in the world called Daughters of your century.
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
My daughters Sonia and Alma. How being a parent has changed my orientation as a poet, reversed my process. For many years I wrote big outward systems first, then clawed back toward (or sometimes still away from) my individual experience. Since Sonia’s birth and a little before even, I’ve been drawn to chart the ghosts of those systems in the daily experiences of parenting. Working from inner and quotidian experiences first. Poems have gotten smaller, sometimes too small I worry.
3. What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry
4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I’m bad with movies. I would be played by Spiderman I guess. Kate would be played by the colors in City of God—full of a love that holds all that strife and hope together. Sonia would be played by the sparkles coming off a fairy godmother’s wand or a unicorn’s horn. Magic, basically. Alma would be played by something elfin, sylvan, animist.
5. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Sipping coffee in PJs the morning magic’d up: Baby Unicorn stuffed into the attic legs akimbo in the dollhouse where things arrive & stay or don’t—Sonia tells me this is the right place for Baby Unicorn, as opposed to such effluvia as yellow plastic helicopters, or tiny creatures she refers to as chinchillas (but who really knows their provenance)—Baby Unicorn who is the totem animal of these months, how will we remember it if we don’t write it, here or in the baby book we have tried to keep but can never invent time to open.
6. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Going on five years. The draft isn’t done though.
7. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
See #2.
8. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
My children are amazing.
9. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Stealing Thom’s answer: Neither, I hope.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
Shout Outs
Some of the projects that I was lucky to publish in 2012 got some shout outs in various year-enders.
Kate & Sonia (in the months before our second daughter's birth) was called "moving and pleasurable" by Eileen Tabios.
The Great American Beatjack Volume I got a couple mentions:
Lauren Levin had this to say in her Attention Span entry for 2012:
This exquisite object has to be held to be believed, and has to be spiraled to be read. And then there’s the poetry. I love Dan Thomas-Glass’s music, his honesty, and his tireless explorations of community, memory, gender roles, and the future—embodied in his daughters Sonia and Alma, and in political hope.Erica Lewis mentioned the beatjack in her Disinhibitions entry for Michael Cross:
generosity. love. family. music. dan is one of the most sincere poets out there. and you can feel him putting it all out there. each and every poem. makes you want to believe in something.I'm very honored by all three—I want my poems to be moving, musical, and sincere—and I'm humbled to know some of these wonderful poets took the time to read and think about the work.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Being other than we are
I sent this coda—a version of the end of my dissertation that ended up chopped, changed, excised and different—to Joyelle McSweeney yesterday, after reading her brilliant take on Outkast's "B.O.B." Though it's missing some of the better theorizing that the eventual conclusion became, I still like the readings that are present throughout—of Outkast, Jay-Z, The Clipse, and others. I thought some of y'all might enjoy it as well.
You can download it here.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
On basketball and masculinity
Reconfigurations has just published a found poem I wrote during last year's NBA playoffs, culled from ESPN's basketball blog Truehoop, which I read far more often than I should, on the theme of masculinity and disappearance. For some reason, the sports world becomes obsessed in the playoffs/during tournaments with players either 'disappearing' or 'showing up.' I was interested in how that mapped on various masculine tropes—so I set myself a project of taking a word from each line of that blog's feed for a few weeks, with those constellations of questions in mind.
Here's the poem.
Here's Truehoop.
Enjoy!
Here's the poem.
Here's Truehoop.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Proofs from Little Red Leaves
... for the Ephemera issue & a chapbook designed Dawn Pendergast— holy cow, they are beautiful. I'm feeling very lucky to be working with such a talented artist.
Ephemera issue into the world next month, chapbook the following, as I understand it—ending 2011 and beginning 2012. Exciting stuff.
LRL site is here.
Ephemera issue into the world next month, chapbook the following, as I understand it—ending 2011 and beginning 2012. Exciting stuff.
LRL site is here.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Three Sentences from September @ Poetic Labor Project
"When I try to make a narrative out of it, my job history reflects a string of disillusioned attempts at how I can make money doing something that will help me be a better artist." - Ariel Goldberg
"But we're swamped with craploads of our own non-art work." - Kristen Gallagher
"fetishes using a grant to be anti-productive and a drag on the economy, i.e. not make commodity art, but converse in a leisurely way or wander or day dream or “research” or cruise" - Monica Peck
The whole report is rad. Needless to say I'm honored to be included. The whole is here.
"But we're swamped with craploads of our own non-art work." - Kristen Gallagher
"fetishes using a grant to be anti-productive and a drag on the economy, i.e. not make commodity art, but converse in a leisurely way or wander or day dream or “research” or cruise" - Monica Peck
The whole report is rad. Needless to say I'm honored to be included. The whole is here.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Calm Before the Stork
I am going to try my hand at something like improvisational cultural criticism right now. No editing. I think.
I want to put a few things into play:
1) This morning after walking Sonia to drop her off at preschool, I was listening to the RZA-produced Kanye West song "Dark Fantasy," the kinda-title track off his much-lauded album that came out late last year. As I walked and listening, I was thinking about the refrain can we get much higher? in relation to two more things I want to put into play—
2) The Lil Wayne song "I Feel Like Dying" from The Drought is Over 2 (Tha Carter 3 Sessions), one of his 2007 mixtapes.
3) The continuingly spectacular decline of global capitalism.
4) The last piece I want to put into play is where the really bad pun of a title for this post comes from. This afternoon we are scheduled to induce birth for our second daughter, now twelve days overdue. The wait for her these past couple weeks has been a strange anticipatory quiet (and in the way of things in our family, included the death of a parent, Kate's stepfather). A calm, a waiting. I don't know if it's what makes me want to write. Maybe I just don't take time often enough lately to write about music. In any case, in a few hours my second daughter's birth will begin, if not before. So here we go.
1.
I'm watching the video for that Kayne West song now, for the first time. (Does anyone actually watch music videos on TV anymore? I'm guessing they don't.) It opens with a shot of what turns out to be a meteor, but on YouTube I first saw it as a shuttle launch or an oil well fire. Both symbols of a recent past that marks the present—an imagined future of the 1960s that involved various flying things and space travel; and the age of oil, that spectacular commodity.
But no, it's not oil burning, it's a meteor, which is in keeping with the weird latterday fairy-tale overtones of the video—slow-mo deer, forests, and Kanye in a fancy car. "I fantasized about this back in Chicago." The deer, you think? Or maybe Milton Friedman had this dream—millionaire on the open road. Anyway. Next shot of the meteor looks a little mushroom cloud. Another iteration of 20th century dreams of American self.
After about two minutes its clear that this video only has three elements—meteor, forest/car/Kayne, and deer. It's really leaning on the strings that the song really leans on to create its atmosphere. Meteor hits car. Trees hurt. Car/Kanye/deer are ok. Turns out the meteor was a female angel—I briefly hoped it was Nicky Minaj, but it wasn't—probably a lucifer reference there, since the devil shows up in the song in a chrysler lebaron—sucks to be the devil, I guess. Then Kanye shows up what he really fantasized about in Chicago—his moment of action movie slow-mo-walking-away-from-explosion-holding-passed-out-girl.
So it turns out the video is kind of boring—but what about that refrain? Can't get higher. And these lines: "Teacher how do you respond to students / refresh the page, restart the memory." There's something there. A death wish, a wish for renewal, for a clean slate. Wishing he could've been consumed by the meteor/shuttle/oil/20th century, back when there was a future and things were awesome. But instead he is forced to relive cliche moments from that century with these f**king deer that won't die.
2.
"Only once the drugs are done, I feel like dying." There's no video for this song, but that YouTube has a great picture of Lil Wayne looking like the drugs aren't done. Because he is more talented than Kanye, Lil Wayne actually formally messes with the death wish that is late capitalism. Check out what he rhymes with the refrain's 'dying' in the song: lying, flying, frying, buying. Or this couplet: "And violets are blue, roses are red / Daisies are yellow, the flowers are dead." The list of drugs to sustain the high lilting chorus, like the xanax might push the dead of Wayne's monotone into the bright rafters where the sample echoes. (And oh the magic of sampling: hard to believe that came from this.)
What I want to say is that both of these songs are about the moment just before the crash, the long intoxicated pause in the early hours before it is properly tomorrow, when things begin to spin and look beautiful-ugly, shiny with the sweat of it all falling apart. In that moment, in these songs, we hear the late 20th c., still the obsession of the early 21st: but wishing the high would last is knowing already that it's over. Only once the drugs, the $, the oil, the enlightenment, "America," the spectacle—only once it's all done, is the dying feeling of the morning of the new century.
3.
But that's a weird place to end something I'm writing on the day my daughter will begin her birth. And that's why I needed to include this fourth thing. Because, people, today we are still human. Today of all days we are truly human, we are alive and soon more of us, more of my family at least, will be. And tomorrow will be written by us people—it will have to be. So I am ending in this hopeful calm place—that we are alive, that we are human, that we can make something new. Gentle now. I insist. We love you, everyone, get up.
I want to put a few things into play:
1) This morning after walking Sonia to drop her off at preschool, I was listening to the RZA-produced Kanye West song "Dark Fantasy," the kinda-title track off his much-lauded album that came out late last year. As I walked and listening, I was thinking about the refrain can we get much higher? in relation to two more things I want to put into play—
2) The Lil Wayne song "I Feel Like Dying" from The Drought is Over 2 (Tha Carter 3 Sessions), one of his 2007 mixtapes.
3) The continuingly spectacular decline of global capitalism.
4) The last piece I want to put into play is where the really bad pun of a title for this post comes from. This afternoon we are scheduled to induce birth for our second daughter, now twelve days overdue. The wait for her these past couple weeks has been a strange anticipatory quiet (and in the way of things in our family, included the death of a parent, Kate's stepfather). A calm, a waiting. I don't know if it's what makes me want to write. Maybe I just don't take time often enough lately to write about music. In any case, in a few hours my second daughter's birth will begin, if not before. So here we go.
1.
I'm watching the video for that Kayne West song now, for the first time. (Does anyone actually watch music videos on TV anymore? I'm guessing they don't.) It opens with a shot of what turns out to be a meteor, but on YouTube I first saw it as a shuttle launch or an oil well fire. Both symbols of a recent past that marks the present—an imagined future of the 1960s that involved various flying things and space travel; and the age of oil, that spectacular commodity.
But no, it's not oil burning, it's a meteor, which is in keeping with the weird latterday fairy-tale overtones of the video—slow-mo deer, forests, and Kanye in a fancy car. "I fantasized about this back in Chicago." The deer, you think? Or maybe Milton Friedman had this dream—millionaire on the open road. Anyway. Next shot of the meteor looks a little mushroom cloud. Another iteration of 20th century dreams of American self.
After about two minutes its clear that this video only has three elements—meteor, forest/car/Kayne, and deer. It's really leaning on the strings that the song really leans on to create its atmosphere. Meteor hits car. Trees hurt. Car/Kanye/deer are ok. Turns out the meteor was a female angel—I briefly hoped it was Nicky Minaj, but it wasn't—probably a lucifer reference there, since the devil shows up in the song in a chrysler lebaron—sucks to be the devil, I guess. Then Kanye shows up what he really fantasized about in Chicago—his moment of action movie slow-mo-walking-away-from-explosion-holding-passed-out-girl.
So it turns out the video is kind of boring—but what about that refrain? Can't get higher. And these lines: "Teacher how do you respond to students / refresh the page, restart the memory." There's something there. A death wish, a wish for renewal, for a clean slate. Wishing he could've been consumed by the meteor/shuttle/oil/20th century, back when there was a future and things were awesome. But instead he is forced to relive cliche moments from that century with these f**king deer that won't die.
2.
"Only once the drugs are done, I feel like dying." There's no video for this song, but that YouTube has a great picture of Lil Wayne looking like the drugs aren't done. Because he is more talented than Kanye, Lil Wayne actually formally messes with the death wish that is late capitalism. Check out what he rhymes with the refrain's 'dying' in the song: lying, flying, frying, buying. Or this couplet: "And violets are blue, roses are red / Daisies are yellow, the flowers are dead." The list of drugs to sustain the high lilting chorus, like the xanax might push the dead of Wayne's monotone into the bright rafters where the sample echoes. (And oh the magic of sampling: hard to believe that came from this.)
What I want to say is that both of these songs are about the moment just before the crash, the long intoxicated pause in the early hours before it is properly tomorrow, when things begin to spin and look beautiful-ugly, shiny with the sweat of it all falling apart. In that moment, in these songs, we hear the late 20th c., still the obsession of the early 21st: but wishing the high would last is knowing already that it's over. Only once the drugs, the $, the oil, the enlightenment, "America," the spectacle—only once it's all done, is the dying feeling of the morning of the new century.
3.
But that's a weird place to end something I'm writing on the day my daughter will begin her birth. And that's why I needed to include this fourth thing. Because, people, today we are still human. Today of all days we are truly human, we are alive and soon more of us, more of my family at least, will be. And tomorrow will be written by us people—it will have to be. So I am ending in this hopeful calm place—that we are alive, that we are human, that we can make something new. Gentle now. I insist. We love you, everyone, get up.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Online poetry resources
I'm compiling some lists for Anna & Emma, two students about to enter the 9th grade, who are doing an independent study with me this summer on contemporary poetry. We've been reading Juliana Spahr's Well Then There Now, Joseph Lease's Testify, and Jennifer Moxley's The Line. They are some hardcore young people.
This first list is of online resources; it will be revised and updated. Coming soon: a list of great paper journals.
http://jacket2.org/
The single best place for all things relating to boundary-pushing poetry
http://english.utah.edu/eclipse/
Eclipse—lots of scans of older small-run books (language poets esp.); super useful
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/
The Electronic Poetry Center—lots of useful information on poets
http://ubuweb.com/
Amazing archive of sound/visual/avant-garde poetry
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/
Penn Sound—archive of recordings of poets
http://www.critiphoria.org/
Super strong collection of poets
http://littleredleaves.com/
Annual journal—really smart—also includes PDFs of chapbook-length projects
http://htmlgiant.com/
Lots of writing about writing—interesting articles—as well as creative work
http://www.alicebluereview.org/main.html
Fiction & poetry
http://www.durationpress.com/
International poetry
http://www.wombpoetry.com/
Poetry by women
http://www.deepoakland.org/
Site-based investigations, poetry & prose
http://disinhibitor.blogspot.com/
Poet Michael Cross’s blog—lots of great reviews of great books
www.actionyes.org
Politics & poetry
http://ecopoetics.wordpress.com/
Environment & poetry
http://www.thirdfactory.net/
Compiles an annual list of various peoples’ favorite poetry books/journals/etc.
http://www.brooklynrail.org/
Art & culture
http://blog.sfmoma.org/
Suzanne Stein at SF MOMA brings together some really smart people for this project
http://www.trickhouse.org
Beautifully designed, lots of beautiful work (Phoebe Wayne in the current issue is amazing)
http://www.onedit.net/
Poetry journal
http://www.raintaxi.com/
Good reviews
http://galatearesurrects.blogspot.com/
Good reviews
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/
Many good guest bloggers
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/
At one time the clearinghouse for poetry news, though no longer; still useful
http://www.shampoopoetry.com/
Lots of good poetry
http://stevenfama.blogspot.com/
Steven Fama writes long and smart reviews of lots of different poetry books
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Chronic/index.html
Great press and paper journal, also publishes excellent work online
http://lemonhound.blogspot.com/
Good reviews by a range of writers
http://www.h-ngm-n.com/
Poetry and chapbooks
http://davidwolach.blogspot.com/
David Wolach's smart, smart blog
http://whof.blogspot.com/
Thom Donovan's likewise excellent blog—lots of great stuff on art & music as well as poetry
http://jupiter88poetry.blogspot.com/
A video journal run by the inimitable CA Conrad—he brings in some amazing folks
http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/
Speaking of CA Conrad, these poetry exercises are unlike anything else.
http://www.labday2010.blogspot.com/
Poets writing about work/labor—the paying kind
http://www.eveningwillcome.com/
New-ish, but very promising
http://petroleusepress.com/download
Longer projects
http://andrewkenower.typepad.com/
Recordings of live readings in the Bay Area
http://www.drunkenboat.com/
Art & culture
https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter
San Francisco State Poetry Center's Digital Archive
http://ww2.rediscov.com/sacknerarchives/Welcome.aspx
Visual & concrete poetry archive
http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/
HOW2—innovative poetry by women
This first list is of online resources; it will be revised and updated. Coming soon: a list of great paper journals.
http://jacket2.org/
The single best place for all things relating to boundary-pushing poetry
http://english.utah.edu/eclipse/
Eclipse—lots of scans of older small-run books (language poets esp.); super useful
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/
The Electronic Poetry Center—lots of useful information on poets
http://ubuweb.com/
Amazing archive of sound/visual/avant-garde poetry
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/
Penn Sound—archive of recordings of poets
http://www.critiphoria.org/
Super strong collection of poets
http://littleredleaves.com/
Annual journal—really smart—also includes PDFs of chapbook-length projects
http://htmlgiant.com/
Lots of writing about writing—interesting articles—as well as creative work
http://www.alicebluereview.org/main.html
Fiction & poetry
http://www.durationpress.com/
International poetry
http://www.wombpoetry.com/
Poetry by women
http://www.deepoakland.org/
Site-based investigations, poetry & prose
http://disinhibitor.blogspot.com/
Poet Michael Cross’s blog—lots of great reviews of great books
www.actionyes.org
Politics & poetry
http://ecopoetics.wordpress.com/
Environment & poetry
http://www.thirdfactory.net/
Compiles an annual list of various peoples’ favorite poetry books/journals/etc.
http://www.brooklynrail.org/
Art & culture
http://blog.sfmoma.org/
Suzanne Stein at SF MOMA brings together some really smart people for this project
http://www.trickhouse.org
Beautifully designed, lots of beautiful work (Phoebe Wayne in the current issue is amazing)
http://www.onedit.net/
Poetry journal
http://www.raintaxi.com/
Good reviews
http://galatearesurrects.blogspot.com/
Good reviews
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/
Many good guest bloggers
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/
At one time the clearinghouse for poetry news, though no longer; still useful
http://www.shampoopoetry.com/
Lots of good poetry
http://stevenfama.blogspot.com/
Steven Fama writes long and smart reviews of lots of different poetry books
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Chronic/index.html
Great press and paper journal, also publishes excellent work online
http://lemonhound.blogspot.com/
Good reviews by a range of writers
http://www.h-ngm-n.com/
Poetry and chapbooks
http://davidwolach.blogspot.com/
David Wolach's smart, smart blog
http://whof.blogspot.com/
Thom Donovan's likewise excellent blog—lots of great stuff on art & music as well as poetry
http://jupiter88poetry.blogspot.com/
A video journal run by the inimitable CA Conrad—he brings in some amazing folks
http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/
Speaking of CA Conrad, these poetry exercises are unlike anything else.
http://www.labday2010.blogspot.com/
Poets writing about work/labor—the paying kind
http://www.eveningwillcome.com/
New-ish, but very promising
http://petroleusepress.com/download
Longer projects
http://andrewkenower.typepad.com/
Recordings of live readings in the Bay Area
http://www.drunkenboat.com/
Art & culture
https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter
San Francisco State Poetry Center's Digital Archive
http://ww2.rediscov.com/sacknerarchives/Welcome.aspx
Visual & concrete poetry archive
http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/
HOW2—innovative poetry by women
Friday, June 10, 2011
Memory
8th graders graduated yesterday at my work. A class I was very close to.
Speaking to a grandmother of a student about her husband's recent death; I had sent that student Whitman's Hymn for Death from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd as it'd meant much to me during my mother's passing; esta abuela me dijo: "tu entiendes algo de la perdida" (o quizas me dijo "algo de la muerte"?); I responded with the story of the month between Sonia's birth & my mother's death. Things you can't forget.
I'm going to miss that class.
I found this poem & I can't remembering writing it. Did I write that? Is this poem mine? It's about some of my obsessions, so maybe it is.
& then it was asked—by the air, let’s say—
what do we do, painting pictures, seeking
the abstraction of to be in the contradictions
of the day? Or better: stand & shout. Or
better: make it pretty. Or better: don’t add
to heartache. Or better: tell a story of the
time you spent staring at the time & were
left empty of money, built of money, money
talks so talk more bucks. Better. Insipid to
wish for a home which didn’t bomb homes
with the $ spent to build it. Admit it. Air
asks. Sirens respond. Air empties. Sirens.
Hugs—
Dan
Speaking to a grandmother of a student about her husband's recent death; I had sent that student Whitman's Hymn for Death from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd as it'd meant much to me during my mother's passing; esta abuela me dijo: "tu entiendes algo de la perdida" (o quizas me dijo "algo de la muerte"?); I responded with the story of the month between Sonia's birth & my mother's death. Things you can't forget.
I'm going to miss that class.
I found this poem & I can't remembering writing it. Did I write that? Is this poem mine? It's about some of my obsessions, so maybe it is.
& then it was asked—by the air, let’s say—
what do we do, painting pictures, seeking
the abstraction of to be in the contradictions
of the day? Or better: stand & shout. Or
better: make it pretty. Or better: don’t add
to heartache. Or better: tell a story of the
time you spent staring at the time & were
left empty of money, built of money, money
talks so talk more bucks. Better. Insipid to
wish for a home which didn’t bomb homes
with the $ spent to build it. Admit it. Air
asks. Sirens respond. Air empties. Sirens.
Hugs—
Dan
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Interview
Taiga's issue T has arrived, and is beautiful. New site for them too, here:
Taiga Journal
I did a short interview for them, as did erica lewis, my collaborator on the piece in the issue—and she has an interview up as well. Check potion!
Interview is here.
Taiga Journal
I did a short interview for them, as did erica lewis, my collaborator on the piece in the issue—and she has an interview up as well. Check potion!
Interview is here.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Physical iterations
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Other Letters
Thom Donovan has set out to do something that feels very much like a corollary to his work as part of the ON: Contemporary Practice editorial team. In Other Letters, his new site project, he wants to document the letters and emails that poets, writers, and artists exchange with each other. I'm honored to be featured in the inaugural post, with the incredibly generative series of emails Stephanie Young and I exchanged around the 880 project that is linked on the sidebar of the blog.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Onthology/audio feature
Exciting news from Baltimore—Christophe Casamassima has me as a featured poet as part of his audio anthology project.
Check it out here.
Check it out here.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Attention Span 2010, Dana Ward, props
thanks, Dana, for the W+S shout out.
Check out Dana's list—and the whole (and wholly excellent) Attention Span 2010 at:
Dana's List.
The 2010 List.
In addition to Dana's I highly recommend the lists of Brent Cunningham, Jennifer Scappettone, Joshua Edwards, Barbara Jane Reyes (especially her take on Murillo's Up Jump the Boogie, very smart), Kevin Killian (love his reading of A Community Writing Itself), and Suzanne Stein.
So yeah, there's a lot to like.
Check out Dana's list—and the whole (and wholly excellent) Attention Span 2010 at:
Dana's List.
The 2010 List.
In addition to Dana's I highly recommend the lists of Brent Cunningham, Jennifer Scappettone, Joshua Edwards, Barbara Jane Reyes (especially her take on Murillo's Up Jump the Boogie, very smart), Kevin Killian (love his reading of A Community Writing Itself), and Suzanne Stein.
So yeah, there's a lot to like.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Furniture Press chapbook
Very exciting news this past week—Baltimore's Furniture Press will be publishing a poem of mine called "Seaming" (written for Sonia while she was in utero) as a stand-alone chapbook, as part of their fascinating and excellent PO25EM series, which (like our own dear W+S project) puts poetry physically into the world for free.
Check it out here. —A chapbook from Lars Palm is also part of the new run of the series; it's exciting to share the bill with him.
Also be sure to check out their link page—they're compiling quite an interesting list of people and projects.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Versal Rock Steady
I have a minute here while waiting for a class to vacate a room so I can see if I left my waterbottle there while talking to them about this Clipse video. During this minute I want to write, briefly, to say that Versal #8 arrived from Amsterdam yesterday, and it is amazingly beautiful. It is up there with the most impressive journals I have had the pleasure of being part of. I'll write more, maybe about how fucking awesome Brandon Shimoda's piece is, or about Editor Megan Garr's intro on the translocal which I was immediately fascinated by, when I'm back with the journal, which traveled with me yesterday but today did not.
For now, I just wanted to shout some props out there into the ether.
For now, I just wanted to shout some props out there into the ether.
Monday, May 17, 2010
and since I made it here...
Writing about Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind." How there's only states of mind left, not states, when it comes to empire. The last gasp of the rap of American hegemony. The true end of the 20th century, the American century; thus the black and white, thus the Sinatra references, thus the vested heights for the final verse, thus the cloudy and overwhelming nostalgia of the whole thing. A dirge for place, for the era when place mattered, for the version of capital accumulation in which seats of power were physical and not financial, for the tangibility of monuments. "The upper-crust landmarks [Jay-Z] now references are a far cry from the grimy Marcy Projects sights that he once detailed, something that perhaps is to be expected from the self-described 'new Sinatra'" sez USA Today, by which Steve Jones really means that white people miss the financial bubble too, so we're feelin' it.
"Long live the world trade"—as in the best art the song gets it, precisely, and precisely does not. It is the living long of world trade as a system—of the age of globalization, we might say, or postmodernism, others might scoff—which sculpts all of the above. It was the spectacular death of the physical version, of the towers, that marked one version of the end of the American century. So it does and does not live long, just like the New York City of the video, in enough b&w for a Sinatra box set (I would've guessed sepia, though perhaps the case can be made that sepia intones 19th c., ceding the 20th to b&w). When, at the end of the video, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys spark into bright color, on a glowing red staircase in Times Square, they read not as suddenly contemporary, but rather just laconically aware that the second half of the 20th century is also over. "These streets will make you feel brand new, bright lights will inspire you," croons the hook, but it sounds like a plea. Alas, "make it new" was a directive for a different day; the song isn't about youth and vitality, and it isn't a song for graduations or bar mitzvahs. "Empire State of Mind" is a song for a retirement party, for the end of a good run, a song to remember you by. It marks, as I said, the true end of the 20th century—when New York as a place, when place as a meaningful marker and America as the center of something, finally shut down. It was Ford who said Drop Dead, but Obama presides now as the whistle signals the end of the shift.
This is where the conclusion, the final coda, of this dissertation begins—not at the beginning of the end, but at its end. The moment when art recorded again the ages-old historical inevitability that all empires shudder to a finale. Welcome to the 21st century! (And who else could be coming up the bright red staircase but China?)
"Long live the world trade"—as in the best art the song gets it, precisely, and precisely does not. It is the living long of world trade as a system—of the age of globalization, we might say, or postmodernism, others might scoff—which sculpts all of the above. It was the spectacular death of the physical version, of the towers, that marked one version of the end of the American century. So it does and does not live long, just like the New York City of the video, in enough b&w for a Sinatra box set (I would've guessed sepia, though perhaps the case can be made that sepia intones 19th c., ceding the 20th to b&w). When, at the end of the video, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys spark into bright color, on a glowing red staircase in Times Square, they read not as suddenly contemporary, but rather just laconically aware that the second half of the 20th century is also over. "These streets will make you feel brand new, bright lights will inspire you," croons the hook, but it sounds like a plea. Alas, "make it new" was a directive for a different day; the song isn't about youth and vitality, and it isn't a song for graduations or bar mitzvahs. "Empire State of Mind" is a song for a retirement party, for the end of a good run, a song to remember you by. It marks, as I said, the true end of the 20th century—when New York as a place, when place as a meaningful marker and America as the center of something, finally shut down. It was Ford who said Drop Dead, but Obama presides now as the whistle signals the end of the shift.
This is where the conclusion, the final coda, of this dissertation begins—not at the beginning of the end, but at its end. The moment when art recorded again the ages-old historical inevitability that all empires shudder to a finale. Welcome to the 21st century! (And who else could be coming up the bright red staircase but China?)
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Shout out from Silliman
Le Grande Dame de poetry blogging has links to my Bruce Andrews interview and With + Stand's Lisa Robertson issue in his 4/6/10 post. That's right, two links, and both in the top ten. I'm Sillifamous. Thank you, Ron Ron.
Shout out to Brent @ SPD for the heads up!
Shout out to Brent @ SPD for the heads up!
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