hideously, she said

'We Need To Talk About Kevin' as horror

2012-01-30T17:11:00.000-08:00

Spoiler alert: We Need to Talk About Kevin is a straight-up horror movie.

I resent things that pose as art but are actually easy films, but I love horror movies because they are decidedly lowbrow. In a conversation I had today with Nikolai, he pointed out one thing: I like horror movies because I am allowed - nay, expected - to fall for schlock in order to believe in the world of the horror movie. So I am going to treat this film as the horror flick it is.

Once I recognized this, I realized that yes - in fact, the plot of We Need To Talk About Kevin is the exact same as the plot of the recent (horrible, horribly engaging) flick Orphan (see art below). Only Kevin is a psychologically disturbed child (in "reality") where Ester is an Estonian serial killer or whatever (in a horror movie closed system). But Kevin might as well be an Estonian serial killer. The movie doesn't let him be anything BUT evil, from his colicky beginnings to the bloodshed in the end.

In both movies, the mother is being secretly alienated by her off-putting child; in both movies, nobody else believes her when she tries to blame the child. In both movies, a fed-up father figure gets more and more protective of the evil baby and grows more and more distant from the mother/protagonist. In both movies, the mother is completely right. Wow! That child was up to no good all along!

I am tired of things that are easy, that are obvious, posing as art. Dr. Seuss is art; the world of Dr. Seuss is beautifully comprehensible and logical in only the way that art that someone has thought about, and then thoughtfully arranged, could be. In other words, it takes careful crafting to make things seem easy.

WNTTAK was not art. It was all searingly emotional close-ups of upset people; it was all obvious visual cues - target practice! The evil child narrows his eyes! - and so forth; it was all red BLOOD ANALOGS - tomatoes, paint, gross splashing jelly, Kevin constantly wearing shirts that looked like blood spatters - and it was all an exhausted Tilda Swinton washing her hands to get rid of every red thing she has ever touched.

If this movie admitted it was a horror flick, we wouldn't have to get exhausted with her. We would have had a Vera Farmiga running around, banging people's kneecaps out with a baseball bat, revenge-defending the family she has left. We would have had a hotter husband (Peter Sarsgaard for example). And most importantly, we wouldn't have been left without a shred of fucking hope at the end. Jesus Christ, Lynne Ramsay. Even Shelley Duvall's character had a tiny little twinkle of hope at the end of The Shining. You are just torturing Eva Katchadourian.

The reason this movie failed so miserably, I think, is that Lionel Shriver's original book is told in letters. The fact that it is told in letters explains why all the experiences are so very colored by Eva's observations - Kevin is "evil" because she probably suffered from postpartum depression, at least at first. And then after that it's all pattern recognition. Humans are programmed to seek out patterns, so everything that ever happens wrong is automatically lumped in together. But the film version drops the first-person, and assumes this odd third person omniscient perspective that makes the audience feel like it's supposed to be an objective story. And as an objective story, it robs its viewer. It robs every character of his or her well-roundedness and arc of development. It makes everyone dead-eyed and unlearning, just like in a horror movie! Don't go up those stairs, there's a killer in there. Or, holy shit, an evil child.

I closed my eyes in the climax of this movie. I never close my eyes at horror; I have a stomach of steel, and I am not squeamish about gore. No. I closed my eyes in protest of blatant emotional manipulation. If this film had owned up to being the horror movie it actually was, I would have watched the disgusting climax with glee. But as it was, sorry - I did not want to see the torture of Eva Katchadourian reach its pointed, stabbingly evocative, heartstring-severing, artfully arranged peak.

call for submissions: feminists talk about loving misogynist art

2012-01-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

It's Complicated: Feminists Write About the Misogynist Art We Love
ed. Judy Berman and Niina Pollari

"Listening to the Sex Pistols, trying to figure out if 'Bodies' was really an antiabortion song, I discovered that it was something even worse. It was an outburst of loathing for human physicality, a loathing projected onto women because they are babies and have abortions and are 'a fucking bloody mess,'but finally recoiling against the singer himself: 'I'm not an animal!' he bellowed in useless protest, his own animal sounds giving him the lie. It was an outrageous song, yet I could not simply dismiss it with outrage. The extremity of its disgust forced me to admit that I was no stranger to such feelings -- though unlike Johnny Rotten I recognized that the disgust, not the body, was the enemy. And there lay the paradox: music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated -- as good rock-and-roll did -- challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation. -- Ellen Willis, 1977

Feminists have never hesitated to dissect and attack art whose misogyny offends and repulses us. But what happens when we fall in love with the work of a musician, writer, or painter we see as anti-female? Do we rationalize our cognitive dissonance away, turn our back on the offending artist, or find a way to embrace the film or story that moves us while acknowledging what disturbs us about it? How does our attraction to misogynist art complicate our relationship to both the artist and to feminism itself?

It's Complicated: Feminists Write About the Misogynist Art We Love is project that seeks contributions by self-identified feminists. Essays of 1500-2000 words should analyze the writer's appreciation for an author, musician, artist, filmmaker, or other cultural figure -- of any gender -- who the writer also views as somehow misogynist. Glam rock, John Milton, Drake and Egon Schiele are among the topics that have already been approved, which should give a good idea of the project's breadth. As this anthology is intended for a general readership, academic papers will not be considered, and contributors should avoid field-specific jargon of all kinds. Proposals for non-essay contributions will also be considered.

If you are interested in contributing to the project, please email a short pitch no later than February 29, 2012 to itscomplicatedbook@gmail.com proposing a subject and briefly summarizing the content of your essay. We encourage writers of all genders, backgrounds and experience levels to submit ideas.

the old factory

2012-01-11T18:53:00.000-08:00

Since I have nothing awesome to write today, I'll say this: for mothers' day two years ago, I made this video for my mom. It features Rohin as a really cool guy, and my butt as a co-star.

selections from my work notebook from 2010

2012-01-10T08:28:00.000-08:00

P. xx. Everyone gets so sarcastic and aggressive.

P. xx. WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF

P. xx. [ a sketch of a pair of scissors with legs ]

P. xx. [ a sketch of a hypnotized-looking duck with "2% Productivity" written next to it ]

P. xx. Having a long distance boyfriend is like losing your mind. You make me so tired and happy. Why can't I talk to my own body? Your question is stupider than ever and it lounges around being a total weirdo. We spent a long time laughing at a phone which is an object, and then we published a video of it! Put a hand to your heart and laugh at an object, feel the veins in your legs coming to a standstill. Make a series of videos of you laughing at objects. A dishrag. A hedgehog skeleton. A tampon in a wrapper. This is the beginning of the explanation of your life. A spaghetti bag. A great magnet with a sophisticated visual joke on it. Now you can begin to understand. What will fix your problems? Electricity. Love. A's. Good skin. When you move the borders it will change everything. You get on a plane, you smell like Tabac Blond, your chest is one solid eraser with nothing inside.

P. xx. [ A series of sentences written in backwards cursive ]

P. xx. My life, 2 or 3 feet at a time. Regular stuff. My own office, cowboy landing. How can lake water make a wave?

P. xx. Snap out of your beautiful corporate snap-pants. You are the truest endless NIINA in this room. Points for teeth, nails.

P. xx. [ A picture of a man petting a dog ]

P. xx. How much do you think I know about Pokemon?

P. xx. Towards clawless

[x] in the morning, the end of december

2011-12-30T07:42:00.000-08:00

So that the latest post on my page is not a holiday post -- here are some links! It's a motley crew, so get ready for an upsetting ride.

Judy Berman at Flavorwire posted these photos by Carrie M. Becker, from her series "Barbie Trashes her Dreamhouse." In it, the cultural icon's abode is stuffed with the debris and minutiae of girlhood and life: dishes, magazines, shoes, nothing in its right place and everything brimming repulsively. How do you fill an iconic space? This is one way.

Franz Nicolay on the cultural implications and indignations of being an accordion player, at InDigest Magazine. "[...] the association of the instrument with the Welk-style Midwest, white-bread "squareness" is a signifier of an "ethnic "(Poles, Slavs, Scandinavians) which has so melted into the Great Plains pot as to be just another beige lump in a bland stew."

Our picture appears on this inscrutable Japanese website. Just kidding! It's scrutable. It's an interview with Heidi Van der Lee about Permanent Wave, the feminist collective with whom I and my homies do many projects. Speaking of Permanent Wave - there are Boston, Philly, and Bay Area chapters in the works! Be sure to get involved and hit PW up on Twitter, Tumblr, and (soon to be up-to-date) the website.

Roxane Gay on the ethics of "Adrien Brody." There has been a great deal about Marie Calloway the girl and MC the writer and MC the "character," and I'm not super interested in that part of the conversation. But this essay is not really about that. "When you write personally and intimately, difficult questions arise. Whose stories do we, as writers, have the right to tell? To what extent do we have the right to write about the people in our lives? What are the limits of good taste? Do we have to consider good taste and ethics when it comes to writing from our lives?"

I got the gorgeous Want Badly by Tricia Taaca from Dancing Girl Press this week in the mail. These are love poems; as a writer, T. Taaca is a lover. If you need proof read the sample at the page.

hideously xmas mixxx 2011

2011-12-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

Look - it's so hot outside (78 degrees!) that I had to try extra hard to get in the mood. It's hard when you have to go buy a tank top in Target cause you forgot to pack any. So I made a XMAS MIX and I wanted to share it. Track listing as follows!

01. Daniel Johnston - Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
02. Shonen Knife - Space Christmas
03. The Ronettes - Sleigh Ride
04. Cocteau Twins - Frosty the Snowman
05. Eurythmics - Winter Wonderland
06. Eartha Kitt - Santa Baby
07. Love and Rockets - Holiday on the Moon
08. Go Gos - I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With a Dalek
09. Kate Bush - December Will Be Magic Again
10. Mazzy Star - Flowers in December
11. Neko Case - Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis (Tom Waits cover)

(Download this mix at Sendspace)

Enjoy... if you dare! Say hi to your moms and sisters and dogs and things, and also to your friend-families! Ellen, enjoy this superb mix with a sour cream salad or whatever that thing is you eat.

no one takes the time to care for a monster

2011-12-23T07:07:00.000-08:00

Dorothea Lasky's poem "Who To Tell" over at The The is making me have a moment. Go read it, that's all.

lana del rey and the art sweetheart

2011-12-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

There is something to be said for the splendid array of feelings that Lana Del Rey has been inspiring in music consumers and writers. A strong feeling requires that a relationship be built, and that both parties of the relationship are energetically involved in the building and the maintenance. It's like a maintained eye contact across a bar or dance floor, and Del Rey is very good at keeping her eyes on you.

Like all artists and creators, Lana Del Rey imagines an audience for herself, conjures up a Platonic watcher to whom the creation is dedicated. All artists do this, even if their ideal watcher is not of this world. Then, she creates a world of conspiratorial us-against-them exclusivity that makes you want to be the other party of the relationship. The watcher sustains the art, and Del Rey knows the precarious placement of each exact tiny pin of the machinery of that relationship.

The unified ideal watcher for these videos exists for this music like Colonel Kurtz's beloved "Intended" exists in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Del Rey's art-sweetheart is the recipient of all her dedication. Each video is a devotion to compel the recipient to further advance down the rabbit's hole of the relationship.

What I didn't understand was why it bothered me. But then I watched the videos and realized that for me, the problem was that I simply am not the intended audience. When I fall in love with music, I fall hard and obsessively; for better or worse, the romance of me and the music runs its course as I watch the artist and she simply creates without looking back to see if I'm watching. Sometimes the relationship fizzles out because I am no longer interested in what she creates, but that doesn't stop her from creating (see: Tori). Sometimes the relationship burns splendidly and crashes, and is immortalized in a photograph of the wreckage that will forever not get better (see: Amy). In neither of these cases does the artist have to look to me for reassurance.

But in Del Rey's thus-far oeuvre, the intended audience is a lover who constantly needs to be re-engaged, re-compelled with forever fulfillment, reassured: "You can be the boss, daddy." The lover/observer, not the artist, is creating the rules, but both are watching so very very closely. To love these songs, I think, requires an exhausting level of interest.

For some different, fascinating thoughts about the complexity of this phenomenon, please see what my friend Amy wrote in this astute analysis: "When she sneers, her mouth curls around the word “You” so spectacularly, it sounds like the edge of a photograph curling in a fire. What was she a picture of? You can’t even make it out anymore. If you start paying attention, it almost hurts to listen to."

(Videos: Video Games, Born To Die)

i can be cruel

2011-12-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

I'm not TRYING to make this into a music blog, but I can't help it lately because music is so amazing. Yesterday, nigh-birthdayboy Rohin and I saw Tori Amos, and she pleased us both retro fans by playing 29384 songs from the 1990s albums. But the stunning surprise was the Apollon Musagete Quartett joining on many of the songs; here is the amazing "Cruel," circa From The Choirgirl Hotel. There is no video, but the sound quality is amazing. The strings will melt you if you have something to melt.

fairytale in the supermarket

2011-11-23T19:36:00.001-08:00

I am thankful for this song:

Aren't they amazing? I had the good fortune to see the reunion tour earlier this year and it was just so fun. Ellen and I were talking about how we wish there were more old ladies in rock. It was startling(ly awesome) to see several older women, clearly having a blast in each other's company, creating and recreating the fascinating noise that is only possible through their unique combination of talents. There is nothing generic about this band; everyone in it is in the Raincoats and not just in a band.

"But older women in rock aren't that rare," you say. Yes, you're right. But groups of them are. This is the difference between the Raincoats, as a group of women, and someone like Kim Gordon, who is also super fucking awesome but usually the lone woman on stage. This makes her rather formidable, I think. Most of the time, I want women to be equipped with intimidation factor, and Ms. Gordon has it in abundance. But the Raincoats make me think of wanting to hang with my girls forever.

Somewhere in there, I think, is the purpose of mindtroll is (we're not all girls but y'know). I definitely do not want to compare us sound-wise to this beautiful group, but I want to draw the parallel that we are four people who are really into being friends and creating noise. And if I am going to live and make music, that is the music I want to make. If it's crafted with genuineness and love, what it sounds like is almost irrelevant.

melancholia

2011-11-17T07:05:00.000-08:00

Since my house has been a decidedly liminal space, I've been watching films a lot. Yesterday N and I saw Melancholia. The four humors: Dunst as Justine (of course) the melancholic; Gainsbourg as Claire the uneasy choleric. Lilies of the Valley everywhere - with their death, poison, Christian undertones - and funerary paper whites and dark greens. Lanterns escaping into night sky. Feelings of love that leads nowhere. Feelings of futility. The slow, slow motion. The exhaustion. The panic, then finally the biggest thing of all.

raid at occupy

2011-11-15T06:53:00.001-08:00

I am saddened and angered at the situation in Zuccotti Park. Saddened and angered at Bloomberg, the bully, who sent NYPD thugs to sneak into the tent villages under cover of darkness like raccoons raiding a trash can. Saddened and angered about the fact that peaceful protestors were beaten, gassed, cuffed. Saddened and angered about the fact that the 5,000-volume donation-based library, so lovingly managed by a team of volunteer librarians, was thrown into a dumpster. Saddened and angered that we are living in a police state.

***

Jarrod Shanahan read this piece last week at the Death Panel Press OWS reading. He added a comment on this morning's events. Read the excellent text here. And most importantly, continue to think of ways to (re)occupy your life.

wild transport

2011-11-11T06:50:00.000-08:00

In the fall, my brain fills with frenetic energy and I get pulled into moments of a kind of terror anywhere I am. The laundromat. The bus. The basement, at night, listening to the water leak down the wall. This song is possibly perfect. It reminds me of the kind of blue-sky moment in the middle of a huge, organized storm system. You go outside to stare up at it and you know from the oppressive peace that the other side of the disturbance is coming with sheets of bone-soaking rain and wind that doubles you over.

Then this song, a painfully beautiful cover of a song that already stabs my heart with a small sharp barbed pick. This is the body in stasis, but the inside unfurls. Let's all go to the beach together at night, and hop the fence onto the Juno Beach Pier, and stand there until sunrise. If we watch the sky get slowly bright, it won't hurt our eyes.

after the fire, and also do you have tiny feet?

2011-11-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

An update: we had a fire at my house and it's been quite interesting and horrible. It destroyed my computer ("Scorch marks all on the inside," the repair man said), ate some of my poetry collection, and together the fire and water "embellished" a lot of books (my Supermachines have a fancy new burned border and ALL TEN of my copies of Book Four are now ... unique). The sprinkler turn-on soaked a lot of stuff, and everything smells a little like the bonfires at sleepaway camp, plus burned plastic. And Ashley, the mindtroll megaphone, melted (her gruesome remains are pictured here; Ellen took the photo). So if I'm a little bit bad in communicating for the next few days, it is because I am trying to figure out my electronics situation - buy a refurbished machine? Order a new one? What. Etc.

Also this fun thing! I have some kind of weird dysmorphia where I think my body parts are smaller than they actually are. That is one disorder, and the other is a crippling eBay addiction. Now I have this pair of nigh-new Arche boots, in really good condition, in a size Eur 36. I'd say this is a women's 6 max; I thought I could fit them but I can't. So I'll try this! Do you have very small retro feet, you fancypants? If so, do you want to do some kind of mystery swap through the mail or in-person if you're in NYC? Leave a comment or email me at niina . pollari at gmail. They are even nicer than the picture depicts, and I can mail them to you along with other goodies that I choose. Let me know! Yeah.

happy birthday sylvia

2011-10-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Lady Lazarus would have been 79 today! Becca K said on Facebook that Halloween seems like the right time for Sylvia Plath to have a birthday, and I would tend to agree - even though I've posted this beachy photo, what we know about Sylvia's usual day-to-day style is that it's all besweatered collegiate chic, and that is certainly right for autumn. I would have loved to see her style at that advanced age. Maybe she would have been on this blog. Did you know Sylvia submitted dozens of times to Seventeen Magazine before one of her pieces was published there? I think I submitted once and gave up. Persistence, that's what this generation lacks. Am I too old now?

food and writing

2011-10-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Look look look! Or rather listen listen listen. Autumn, of the awesome gluten-free food blog Autumn Makes and Does, has started a podcast called Alphabet Soup. It's about the places & people where food and writing intersect, and I was a guest on her second episode. I feel very excited about this topic. We talked about all kinds of stuff, from kombucha to simple cakes to Seventeen magazine, and I read some poems and talked about the food in them. Thank you for having me, Autumn! (Psst: she fed me amazing dinner and cake, and made me a bourbon sour with thyme and honey simple syrup. Yeah, you should be jealous. If Autumn's blog isn't on your foodie radar, it freaking should be.)

Listen to my nonsense and Autumn's very good questions here.

To bookend -- today I made sweet and spicy kabocha in the toaster oven. (Pictured: squash smile.) The kabocha was from the 4th Street Co-Op, where you don't have to be a member to shop! I also have a handsome little butternut squash, waiting to be souped, sitting on my counter. How's winter squash season for you?

west coast!

2011-10-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

Headed to &NOW at UC San Diego this Friday. I have a paper on the Fatty poems from the excellent Tytti Heikkinen -- I'll bring some of these XL-lent ones with me. My section is on Saturday, but oh boy am I looking forward to so many other awesome-sounding talks and readings! Look at the schedule! Anna Joy Springer and Amina Cain have done an epic job of putting this thing together. Things I am especially looking forward to:

Spelling the Beasts
Spelling the Beasts is a poetic performance of two works, SPELLES and WE, BEASTS, created by hex laboratorium (an entity of inquiry created by Oana Avasilichioaei) and performed by Oana Avasilichioaei, using layered voices, vocal processors, a variety of sampled sounds, pre-recorded tracks and live vocal play.

Performance/MACHINE: Jell-O, Drano, Meteorology & Shape-Shifting
Kathleen Brown, Genji Amino, Liat Berdugo, Donna Fierle, Eliese Colette Goldbach, Sonja Greckol, Erin Robinsong, Lia Pas
performance/MACHINE is a structured improvisation of multi-media experiments combining text, performance, sound, electronic instruments, visual music and animation.deconstructs and re-composes the relationship between audience and performer. The performance consists of six movements or Whe(a)thers that are individual ‘compositions’ playing with futures of text: text’s tomorrow is uncertain, jiggly, re-forming and re-winding, a voice held in puberty’s wavering clasp.

No Future
Joyelle McSweeney, Lucas de Lima, Monica Mody, Feng Chen
Turning away from the positivist, well-lit vista of literary futurism & political progressivism, this panel will semaphor our queer concerns through a discussion of Art-poison; ecstatic states; media and channels; fatal art (not just for the artist); hack art & art-hacks; resistance & submission; the Necropastoral & the viral tree of life/the space in which writer & reader bleed through paper & kiss a dead being/it is embarrassing to be human.

A follow-up report will emerge somewhere after the fact, I'm sure. If you will be at &NOW this weekend, please say hello. You will recognize me by these facts: 1.) I am a shaved-head lady, and 2.) I am generally sporting a feral-looking scowl, but wouldn't you know it that I'm pretty friendly once you get to know me!

PS

2011-10-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

"It is disheartening to me that the same leftist press is willing to fall over themselves to report on revolutions abroad but when it comes to the desire to assemble in their own backyard, there is nothing but toxic cynicism."

This (thanks RG). I'll be down on Wall St today.

book four is out now.

2011-10-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

I am pleased that Margaret Bashaar at Hyacinth Girl Press has put out my little chap, Book Four. These poems are the bits that survived after I slashed-and-burned a full-sized manuscript; some of them are pretty old (and may be recognizable from other iterations) and some are a little bit newer. My friend (poetry friend and cheese friend) Tricia Taaca described the manuscript as "scary." I think I like that. The poems are a little interpersonal and a lot environmental with a bit of dystopic future. Who can guess what the title refers to (EASY EASY EASY really)?

My talented sister the artist Minna Pollari drew the broken-beaked crow on the cover. I love where this cover went - the book itself is so Deadly Serious and this cover is a little bit goth and it balances out.

I am stealing Margaret's picture, for now. I hope you get the book and if you get it, I hope you like it, and if you like it, I hope you tell me.

anonymous essential

2011-09-28T05:53:00.000-07:00

I just moved, and in trying to pare down to essentials and still live chicly I look to Joan Didion's packing list. This is from her book of essays The White Album. "The list enabled me to pack, without thinking, for any piece I was likely to do", she writes. "Notice the deliberate anonymity of costume: in a skirt, a leotard, and stockings, I could pass on either side of the culture." (Emphasis mine.)

To Pack and Wear:

2 skirts
2 jerseys or leotards
1 pullover sweater
2 pair shoes
stockings
bra
nightgown, robe
slippers
cigarettes
bourbon
bag with: shampoo, toothbrush and paste, Basis soap, razor, deodorant, aspirin, prescriptions, Tampax, face cream, powder, baby oil

To Carry:

mohair throw
typewriter
2 legal pads and pens
files
house key

It is not that this list encompasses everything I feel I need. (Well, there's bourbon.) It is a packing list, not a list for living. But what I find inspiring about this list is that it's so deliberate. I am trying to make all the choices in my life deliberate like this. It's like luxury: you forgo the nonessentials for the one thing you find defining somehow. In the end of 2010, in an interview with John Colapinto of the New Yorker, Bottega Veneta's Tomas Maier said something like (paraphrased) if you want to have the things you want, just have less of everything else.

I have never been good at having less, because I like cheap thrills and I like systematic collecting and I like a comfortable clutter. But at this time, I am sharing an open-layout apartment with a man and I find that I'm visually preferring less. Things have to have a box or space to go into. I could never, ever live in an uberstark modernist space where my scarves or copy of The Ear of the Other or stack of handmade poetry chapbooks of all different sizes would feel out of place, but I am steering toward a space where those things feel deliberate, not haphazard but like they belong.

wow poetry! Drop Everything!

2011-09-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

To Friday I offer this message, which popped up in my inbox from one R. Guha this fine AM. The original inspiration of the image is a typo, but the message is loud-n-clear. Remove your hats this instant! Don't make me come over there and softly tap you on the shoulder and then when you remove your one headphone to see what the heck I want, to tell you again, politely in person!

...There are two readings that I am involved with coming up in the following week. This one is TOMORROW, Saturday, 9/24, and it is a part of 100tpc.org, the ambitious, simultaneous, global-scale reading for social change. The lineup, which I curated with Steven Karl, is SO stellar! I will be on hand to host, and as a rowdie group of poets, we will be able to hang out in the wonderful LaunchPad afterwards so come out! Featuring the talented:

D. Nurkse

Tricia Taaca

Mark Bibbins

Brenda Iijima

Amy King

Ana Bozicevic

Hanna Andrews

David James Miller

You can also check the updated information for our edition at the event site here, to see links to the readers' work. And RSVP on Facebook here, if you'd like! You can see who's coming, I know how social relevance is important to you ;) ;) ;) J/K OR AM I?

The other thing that is happening is the InDigest reading at (Le) Poisson Rouge on Thursday the 29th (Facebook invite). I will be reading along with Nick Demske, Adam Fell, and Paul Legault. The reading is free, and in a beautiful venue. Thank you Dustin Luke Nelson (with whom I had the pleasure of reading at the poetry festival this summer)! <3 <3

a video from the new york poetry festival

2011-09-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

Uploaded by my darling Steven Karl, whose enthusiasm for poetry never ceases to amaze me.

This is not my favorite poem from the set that I read that day, but it is a good video because I sound so pissed off and my outfit is excellent. (What? It is. That's a one-piece skirty pants outfit!) But my real favorite part is the part where that guy comes to turn me down just as I say "shitbag." Yeah! Thanks Steven.

murder ballads

2011-08-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

I grew up in Florida, so I'm a storm veteran, but it's still weird to have one approaching this large city. We're preparing with food-making, bourbon-drinking, and atmospheric goth music (so glad N doesn't mind whatever I play).

My hurricane album of choice has always been Nick Cave's Murder Ballads. Once I drove back from Orlando into one of these 'canes; the winds were picking up speed around 4AM when I hauled ass down the Turnpike, and I listened to this album the whole way. The tolls were suspended and there was almost nobody on the highway. Thunder, lightning. Very eerie.

So in honor of the hurricane, here's one of the greatest duets ever. So emblematic of goth kitsch - oversaturated, emotionally overwrought ("I kissed her goodbye, said all beauty must die, and planted a rose 'tween her teeth"), and the storyline, geez. And then it incorporates the pop queen of the world!

constant craving has always been, or, kd lang as fashion icon

2011-08-23T15:38:00.001-07:00

It's time for me to be frivolous, but the video for kd lang's "Constant Craving" is great. I've been thinking of the song nonstop too, but the video is so editorial. It's directed by Mark Romanek, who also did the heroin-chic video for"Criminal;" "Closer," that loveable sex anthem for everyone's favorite darling of darkness Trent Reznor; and the one video where Janet and Michael morph into each other in space. But this is so cool! All this talk about Andrej Pejic lately, but androgyny was already way hot in the nineties.

Striped shirt, mysteriously unbuttoned, plus great hair.

Oh it's a tuxedo jacket? I see what you're doing there. I think I'm always trying to do this when I wear a blazer. But wait, kd, could you vamp any harder?

...I see, you totally can. What is up with those sleeves, in the great way? They remind me of the Lip Service Psycho Circus line, the pants of which were a b&w stripe I totally coveted in high school. But I was too poor. OH WELL. You should watch the video here:

K.d. Lang - Constant Craving (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: K.d. lang

Oh and this is off-topic, but dear whoever searched for "Illusions that make you high" to get to Hideously, you won't find what you're looking for here, but for a nice time you might try these ASMR videos? Assuming you're of the head-tingly variety. I've become fond of the combination lock one, myself.

I've seen your repulsion: an ode to Courtney Love's phlegm

2011-08-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

I encountered the brilliant all-queer Hole coverband BUTTHOLE (wonderfully low on gear, songs dotted with irreverent punk rock screwups, singer sporting ratty blond wig and Courtney's signature fuck-you snarl) last week at Live With Animals Gallery. Since then, I've spent some days listening to Pretty On The Inside. It's not as good a record as Live Through This, nor does it stake as much emotionally, nor is it as just plain beautiful, but there are many moments I feel are worth talking about, and one specific disturbing, gorgeous phenomenon.

Listen to the first track, "Teenage Whore." Listen to it on headphones. You can hear the mucus, the way it rattles and snaps back. It becomes percussive. It is impossible to ignore.

The reason I find this example so compelling is that the phlegmy voice says Body so aggressively. There is no voice without a body to propel it, but especially in music, the voice often becomes vaporous or, at the very least, disembodied. (See Amy Winehouse; see the easy way we, her audience, were able to separate her otherworldly talent from her body's obvious crumbling. See any Big Voice Singers that have been subject to body scrutiny. We separate the two too easily.) The voice lives on after the death of the artist. But sometimes the body is so dearly intertwined with the voice, as it in this song.

Physiologically speaking, the voice exits the body and then enters the ear of the listener. Prior to and during the Early Modern era, medically speaking, experts believed that sound was actually composed of particles that would enter the ear (and so the head) of the listener. So the relationship between sound and ear became a kind of analog for penetration. Of course we don't believe this anymore -- we know that sound travels in waves, not teenytiny pieces -- but in the relationship between musician and audience, sound is still the doer where the listener is the one being done to.

So what happens when the body is present in this analog? Specifically the secretions of the body. Isn't it kind of like unprotected sex, if you think about it? Hearing the phlegm makes for a visceral reaction because by the time you hear it, you've already understood it, it's already in you, and all of a sudden it's just that personal, and you recognize that, and it makes you recoil a little, but it also makes you give in a little.

popsickle and stokedness

2011-07-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

Now the previous post has been up for long enough, and I feel OK talking about POPSICKLE. POPSICKLE was amazing. A couple hundred sweaty people, a couple hundred sweaty beers, 25ish sweaty poets and fiction writers. If you are on the Facebook, please look through my album of photos -- but here's a couple of my favorites, of the non-reading part (because this is my person blog!):

Me, and Rohin, and Eve.

Yours truly is icewater-sopping and this really nice guy doesn't mind, which is pretty much the greatest.

I feel so lucky that I am in this scene. As someone (maybe Jean-Paul Pecqueur) remarked in his intro before the reading, no other place is like this. No other place tolerates a day of being cooped indoors in an industrial space for 100-degree weather for the sake of poetry. This event makes me the happiest! Now I am the happiest! Now go listen to this!

amy winehouse

2011-07-24T12:40:00.001-07:00

I know this has been posted a million blogs over, but Amy Winehouse. Rarely does the semireality of celebrity death affect me in my real brain and heart. It is usually just a strange feedback loop, and the most it makes me want to do is close my computer.

But the death of Amy Winehouse makes me cry. She was so talented. These are my favorite YouTube videos of Amy. Her 60s glam was her performance trademark and sartorial style, but in these sessions, she's just sitting on a fucking couch and then she opens her mouth and these long threads of sound begin rolling out of her throat, note after note.

Back to Black is one of my favorite albums of all time. I can play it and play it and it doesn't loosen its grip on me. I listened to this beautiful record all through one long, lonely summer when I thought I had forever lost someone I loved very deeply. That summer is, for me, riding endless bus and subway rides through the city, emerging now and again to swelter and dust, trying not to freak out all the time, listening to Amy being brutal and honest and herself, over and over. The album and its words let me feel things. I don't know how else to put it. Rest in peace, beautiful lady.

POPSICKLE 2011: From Concentrate

2011-07-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

I love this town's literary scene. <33333

Please check the Facebook invite. One hundred people are already coming. Are you one of them?

mindtroll plays two upcoming shows

2011-06-09T06:39:00.000-07:00

Shameless promotional post about to happen. My band, the industrious MINDTROLL, has two shows in the very near future (Nair future?). The first is on June 16th at Death By Audio in Williamsburg (as part of Permanent Wave's concert series); the proceeds will go to benefit Support New York, which is a collective dedicated to survivors of sexual abuse. From their mission statement: "Our aim is to meet the needs of the survivor, to hold accountable those who have perpetrated harm, and to maintain a larger dialogue within the community about consent, mutual aid, and our society’s narrow views of abuse." This kind of advocacy is crucial, and focus on the organization is timely considering the recent acquittal of the two NYPD cops. The show is at 8PM; we will play last. The other bands bringing the noize will be awesome harmonic lady pop powerhouses Delta Hotel, as well as Clinical Trials and Cave Cricket whom I don't know but look forward to getting to know.

And then on June 21st we will play a semi-acoustic set (!) outside in the street as part of Make Music New York. The show will happen outside of the children's store Brooklyn Junior, at 150 Clinton Avenue in Ft. Greene, and we're playing at 6PM, after Plastiq Passion but before Toy Sugar.

Summer Friday MixxxxxxTape

2011-06-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

I'm all out of words, so let me chuck two tunes atcha! Go put on your favorite T-shirt and sneaks and make yourself a sufficiently neon-hued Brooklyn Fire Escape (1 part Absolut Brooklyn, 2 parts carrot juice, a squeeze of lemon), and jump around a little to these. It's going to be worth it, I promise.

SooooOoooo catchy and great. Tami Hart said she wanted to make an album for punx to dance to, and I think this succeeded. The video is also GROSS & SLIMETACULAR in a really fun 90s way.

THIS! From the amazing-haired Robyn. Makes me wish I had a big ole dance hall all for myself. I'd blast some songs and make up a sweet routine and then I'd call you and be like "hey, come see my sweet dance routine" and you could learn it too.

what to pair with the new EMA album

2011-05-24T05:53:00.001-07:00

For two weeks, all I listened to was Erika M. Anderson's (EMA's) new album, Past Life Martyred Saints (Souterrain Transmissions, 2011). It made me have powerful anxiety feelings, and let it be known on this blog that I kind of love when art gives me anxiety feelings. I won't go into full album review mode here, because it's already been said very well. But what I will do is tell you the things I did together with listening to these songs to produce my own heebie-jeebie cocktail (if you are already an anxiety-prone person please do not take this prescription).

Induce a feeling of fear. I make myself scared all the time, and it is very animal to do this -- horses startle themselves, when they get bored. What makes you feel afraid? Maybe think about water. It is imperative that you are ready to feel afraid. Past Life Martyred Saints is an emotionally charged album, but its charge doesn't live on the top, it's not full-on rage like the nineties (for which we are all so nostalgic lately). It is a simmering undercurrent like a terrible lake monster. Are you not afraid of the näkki? Seriously think about being afraid of these things; they can and will snatch you up if you get too close to the murky, unreflecting water. That is the first step. The second part is to add a few grains of sea salt to the water you drink first thing in the morning. This is actually helpful for water absorption, and might make you feel closer to the element. But it will also make the water taste weird, like Evian water, like minerals. It will give you a weird feeling like you maybe shouldn't be drinking the water. Only a few grains. You don't want it to be salty, just a little bit weird.

Read Kathryn Harrison's book The Kiss. You might remember the reviews of this book: a completely straightforward, troubling telling of the author's sexual relationship with her father. The EMA album has nothing to do with incest, but the language of the two works almost melds together. I happened to be reading the book at the same time and was affected by the narrators' immense body horror and the presence of the emotionally abusive other in both. Harrison's narrator, suffering tremendously in the stifling wrongness of the affair, grows to loathe her bodily self and dabbles in anorexia; Anderson's narrator, too, fixates on abuse, as in the nauseating, cracked-voice refrain "I wish that every time he touched me left a mark".

Watch the X-Files episodes "Ascension" and "One Breath" (season 2). This is the arc where Dana Scully is kidnapped by self-proclaimed UFO abductee Duane Barry. Listening to the UFO-influenced track "The Gray Ship" in between these episodes has a thrilling effect. NPR described it as an "unlikely leap of faith" when the instrumentation drops out; if you have ever watched the X-Files, you will know this is perfect.

If this worked for you as it did for me, the result is going to be really a really unsteady sublime head-cut-off feeling, a mixture of the chills and sadness and disgust and thrill. And a profound gratefulness that you have a normal life and you can look at your lover or pet or houseplant and go "Hey. We're both here." And even if you don't do these things, listen to the album. It's that good.

alexander mcqueen, and covering women's faces

2011-05-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

Visiting the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Met today made me feel strange. The walk through the show was captivating; I lost my friends quickly and whenever we did run into each other in the crowd, nobody said anything. The lighting was mostly dark, and the mannequins were either wooden headless ones (in the beginning) or tall, white humanoids with their heads and faces covered. The head coverings and treatments were all done by the same person, hairstylist and McQueen collaborator Guido Palau.

To me it is a little bit visceral to see a woman's shape with the head and face entirely covered. It is a trope common in fashion because it is so total, so complete, so literally head-to-toe. It is a political statement, too. (Remember this Fever Ray appearance?) And we've seen it all over, from McQueen himself to this high-movement fringe bodysuit designed by my friend Viktor. The face is a locus of all the senses, and to cover the senses isolates the wearer, seals her off. It made me feel so uncomfortable to see the faces and heads of all the mannequins covered in leather, metal, horsehair.

So by the time I emerged from this sensory overload, I had that funny feeling. I know that McQueen was very feminist, into women and women's power; he was obsessed with the feminine shape and embellished it to frightening and powerful extremes (huge hips and huge shoulders with terrifyingly clean lines). I also know that the focus of a fashion exhibition is the clothes, not the bodies that inhabit the clothes. But in this video you can see some of the mannequins with their faces; this repeated image juxtaposed with the ethereally draped, windswept Kate Moss hologram has a weirdly emotional effect on me.

facebook as antique courtship ritual

2011-05-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

Traditionally, love matters were public; courtship took place in the eye of the community, and relationships were business arrangements conducted in agreement for the best outcome for all parties involved. (Except the ladies, in most cultures and cases. But I am referring here to familial arrangement, for the "best.")

Then, sometime around the age of chivalry, romantic love -- as a private notion and indeed as a notion at all -- rooted itself into the human mind. Since that time, courtship has toed the line between public and private, romantic and business-oriented, with a significant modern turn towards the private and romantic in the twentieth century.

Enter Facebook. I am very interested in Facebook's role in this. We add our families, friends, and social networks, give them access to our photo archives and updates, publish our relationship statuses, and post pictures of our new significant others, waiting for the "likes" and comments to roll in. It is approval-seeking and narcissistic, but more than that, if left unfiltered*, it's kind of a return to ancient, public courtship ritual. Here are a few reasons for saying so.

The Facebook profile as a matchmaking profile for friends and family. In times of yore, the family of a marriageable young person would research the family and social strata of a candidate before approving or disapproving. Nothing has changed, except maybe the fact that research is not so heavy focused on the family now as it is on social decorum. In fact, for parents, I imagine this is the best part of Facebook. Let's say you're the savvy parent of a son or daughter of shackin' up age. Of course you're going to check up on the person-of-interest to find out if Offspring Dearest is dating a worthless Four Loko-chugging lout who posts nothing but grammatically incorrect, narcissistic rants aimed at the many petty friends who have slighted him or her, or if the child, in a remarkable moment of clarity, has latched on to a decent human who has a job title you've heard of, and who has managed to not wear a beer hat in any photos. If the former, you'll no doubt bring it up with your kiddo at some awkward point. If the latter, you may sit on in smug satisfaction at having raised a person capable of making great decisions. Or you may choose to make a gesture of goodwill toward the new person in the little one's life. Which brings me to...

The Friend Request as public social knowledgement by friends and family. In Victorian times, courting took place under the watchful eye of the woman's parents, who had to approve the beau-in-question in an elaborate series of ritualized public calling. Nowadays, the calling card is obsolete, but the Facebook friendship is its contemporary equivalent. Now, friendship doesn't always happen, but once it does, in my experience, it is always the parents (and to an extent the rest of the family) who extends the Facebook friendship request to the daughter/son's romantic partner. My significant other's family members have slowly been adding me as their friends, and I find it a slightly nerve-racking move. In fact, I think I always leave the invites hanging in the inbox for a day or two as I consider the implications. But I always come to the conclusion that above all, the Facebook Friend Request is a public acknowledgement of legitimacy from the family -- exactly the thing that the Victorian suitor would have hoped for in the 1800s.

The Wall Post and Photo Comments as "tokens" of love and intention. First of all, the concept of love tokens is hilarious to me, but it fits in here super well. So in the age of chivalry, gentlemen sent gloves to their intendeds. Norwegian girls would wear empty knife sheaths for suitors to fill (ouch! Metaphor!). The Facebook wall post, no matter how banal, is a public token, and with it the writer leaves a trail of intention. This is especially great and evident now with the "Show Friendship" function, which allows any interested party to examine a history of wall posts, common photos, and comments, all taken out of context except for that of linear time.

On this list, I am not even including the obvious: the roster of "Relationship Status" options that the user can choose from (this convenient research tool was one of Facebook's original intentions if The Social Network is to be believed). The public listing of relationship status is masquerading as cool modern openness ("In a Civil Union," "In an Open Relationship") but it's actually as painfully ultra-retro as wearing someone's class ring or letter jacket. Or knife for that matter.

*Yes, there are many ways to filter content for the eyes of specific viewers only. This post is not meant for the people who shrewdly guard their data. ...Also, I am not a person who shrewdly guards her data so don't consider this post paranoid, ha.

ARTS: Scandinavia, Scully, dead & naked

2011-05-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

ATTEND: Since I'm a "real live Finnish person," next week I'm doing a reading at this event of Nordic multimedia madness, and you ought to come. I'm incorporating a touch of audio, which is a first for me, and there will also be a few other surprises. It's at Brooklyn Fire Proof, an excellent cafe/bar/space in Bushwick, at 8PM. The address is actually 119 Ingraham Avenue (at Porter). Click the flyer below for additional details and go here for the info-blurb. READ: You should read this post on dead women as a trope and accessory. "Once you become aware of dead girls’ being used as scenery or decoration, you see them everywhere — all of these young women’s bodies, laid out in expressions of terror and relief, one shoe off, with unfocused eyes and a pancake-makeup pallor." Media gynonecrophilia reminds me of Twin Peaks, which I've recently watched. Half of the first episode is people dramatically, privately reacting to the death of a beautiful girl. (It's the most poetical topic, after all.) I guess reacting to this show seems timely. Tavi Gevinson has a post on about the aesthetics of the show.
Also speaking a little about death & looks, read Kate Durbin's post at Delirious Hem, as a response to the issue of Oprah's O Magazine where the big O dressed poets in couture and then shot them in awkward, possibly campy poses. (This is my opinion, at least.) Anyway, lots of people had lots of opinions about the feature. Kate's post is decidedly Not Safe For Work, as it features bodyparts and glitter galore.
THINK: How obviously influenced by Scully is Cate Blanchett's character in Hanna? Like a crueller, more smug Dana, I'd say. Dana Scully's expression was always great on the X-Files. Not smug, not full of schadenfreude, not even disinterested whenever Mulder showed up ranting like a looney about aliens this or poltergeists that. Can you tell the difference between the above photos? Gillian Anderson just had skeptical down, and it's so great to watch. I want to be able to make this expression.
SEE: This British television program called Pulling that's streaming on Netflix. If you like black comedies that have you laughing uproariously even when everyone is miserable, then please watch this. And speaking of cruel and smug, the Karen character (played by Tanya Franks, in the front) is absolutely brilliant. I guess maybe this post is almost wholly about redheads?And so what anyway. Redheads are fuckin' cool.

poly styrene

2011-04-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

Poly Styrene died yesterday from the breast cancer she had been fighting. This lady was a true awesome -- frontwoman of X-Ray Spex, one of late seventies punk's most unique and powerful voices, and a style icon to boot (braces!!! Neon!!!!!!!).
I've recently been revisiting this album, too. It's just been feeling timely. I feel sad that this happened. So let's watch the world turn Day-Glo.

I remember the first time I heard this track. It was off the Punk You! compilation (I know, it's a little funny). I was like 14 or 15. It blew my mind because it was so loud and great coming out of my boombox. I couldn't yell that loud anywhere, ever. I had an electric guitar but whenever I plugged it in someone told me to turn it down. (SUCKS TO YOU GUYS NOW, ha ha.)

i am building fort poetry

2011-04-25T17:57:00.001-07:00

Notes about how I assemble

This is why there was nothing for you there.
You answer and demand an answer, your huge
semaphore.

Contrast.
Start con. Cat snort.

Something bigger can make you more invisible.

A bigger sunburn.

–

Be a bat diamond
Guano on the curtains

Can you make your face hotter by adding stuff to it?
Then say Hey artifice is not a thing

for me

But actually
Poring over the picture of yourself
This is for me

–

But actually
Artifice is like pouring
An entire milkshake down your front:
Hot

–

Ostentation ---------- Genuineness

Attention so ---------- Nine genuses

Taste notion ---------- Geese in nuns

Notation set ---------- See nine guns

No-atone tits----------Ensue, ensign

–

Tell everyone about your pee jar

Before you leave

Make sure they know it was a gallon jar

Your uniform pulled up

Your quadriceps big

You're great

Don't stop now

_____________________________________

*This was kinda in response to the awesome stuff happening in the Seam Ripper project over at Delirious Hem, but I'm a delinquent and never got around to submitting or even refining whatever this is. Regardless, here it is.

music&costume

2011-04-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

Been listening to this album again. I first got it in 2007, and it was on marathon rotation in my little blue 1990 Civic. I would ride out on unlikely landscape of monotonous Interstate 95, blasting this incredible avant-garde. I love the album (Of Natural History) for all its weird taxonomy and animal references, and its creepy carnival sounds. I have a total music crush on Nils Frykdahl and all his projects, because he's got this operatic, Nick-Cave-on-a-grumpy-day voice. But this song has Carla Kihlstedt on vocals and is especially beautiful and terrifying. It sources from the Monday's Child-Tuesday's Child nursery rhyme, putting it over some theatrics and an intensifying beat. Sadly it has no video but you can imagine it I'm sure.

I also love all their costuming. I think music is drama, and costumes enhance it. They look a little bit Victorian (lots of white underclothes a la Rasputina in the nineties), a little bit metal (white face paint). I couldn't get into "real" metal ever because it didn't seem to play with aesthetic as much; it seemed somehow unironic in its adoption of black spikes and demon imagery. Unironic as in: lacking a layer of depth. But this feels appropriate, and I can get behind it.

Frykdahl is also in Faun Fables with Dawn McCarthy. Also great costuming, elements of perfomance art, but overall mfor the pale white morning when it's raining and everyone you love is far away.

In other, awesome, poetry news: Juliet Cook is doing a massive promo in her Etsy shop for the month of April. And Gina from Birds of Lace has a new title out - Perhaps a Girl Elsewhere by Adam Strauss. Get to buying some books.

notes on recent days

2011-04-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

I had a birthday and for my birthday we cooked amazing food at Casa Rohin and Eve. N took over the arepa cooking process with remarkable patience (as per usual, bless him) while I fussed around chopping and generally agonizing. We made margaritas. We put Bobby in a garment bag. We droned a single note for minutes at a time. It was really, really fun.

And I did kind of find out I have the most amazing friends ever. Rohin, who sometimes features a little segment on his blog called What Niina Said, took all these Gchat quotes and mailed them to Colin, one of the fellas at PoetryToMusic, who then in crafted it into an amazing, catchy, vaguely piraty hit single. (The refrain is a dramatic "Niina hits our hearts with a pickaxe; finds mineral deposits.")

And somehow mindtroll obtained & presented me with Viktor Luna's amazing monarch coat from last spring (number 10 on the page).* I was unbelievably moved. Really, I am not one to brag about swag I get but god! These people are so cool! And they're my friends!

Then we played a show on Saturday, and in honor of Wiz Khalifa (not really), my outfit was black and yellow. There's supposed to be video at some point, which I'll link when it happens.

Here are some links so I don't seem like a big fat braggart brat who can't stop talking about how awesome her life is.

"...[v]isual culture cannibalizes itself so intensely and seems a little backward no matter how well done." Carrie Leilam Love on the death of the icon at Ironing Board Collective.

Also, these are very good: a list of slang terms from Flapper Magazine. I'd like to promote the "cat's particulars" as a really pleasing sounding word combo, and I don't really enjoy being Edisoned, so cut it out!

*Yeah the bodysuit comes with it, and yeah it looks alarming on my giant butt, BUT SO AWESOME.

woman problems, movies, poetry

2011-04-06T07:39:00.001-07:00

Christie Ann Reynolds at Small Doggies Magazine.

"Asian Vampire Sensuality and Other Problems": Bhanu Kapil's essay on Harriet about writing the diasporic body.

"Merry Widow" by Gina Abelkop at Action, Yes. "Triple rich nightmare." So good.

Yesterday, I read that Tad Friend piece about Anna Faris in the New Yorker (blog about it here) that everyone was on about. I did like the way the people quoted (on and off the record) were pretty frank about the systemic sexism in the screenwriting industry (for a woman to be likeable and to deserve good things for the rest of the film, she has to be humiliated & broken within 15 minutes of its beginning; The House Bunny is considered empowering; if you want a good role, you have to get your friends to write one for you, and it will have a limited budget, and you will have to pitch it 19 times). So it's a good, long article and Anna seems really cool in it. But why, with TNY's woman problem, did they get a dude to write it? Just curious.

Also, I really want to see this movie (and not just because parts of it were filmed in Finland, though that did originally catch my eye). I'd like to see it to be able to comment on the *~*~*CoMPLeX*~*~* father(or father-figure)-daughter relationship that seems to be bubbling up as a film trope lately. (Sophia Coppola, Coen Bros, that movie Kick-Ass, etc.)

my life is a poetry stuff and other things

2011-04-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

Hey, a fruit cup is just fruit in a cup! I am happy and wearing the clothes to match it (shape and pattern). And the large and splendid heart of my love for poetry has many rooms; these have passed through lately! : : : : :

Kristin Hatch on Transom says this about Detroit. (Rohin, it matches what you said in that one blog post I can't find now. You need a search option, and you should also try these poems.) "There's some kind of pornographic schadenfreude with the empty building photos [of Detroit] that keep getting press. And I think it's wack when some editor somewhere is like 'Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and declare the death of the Motor City! That'll sell big!' It feels dishonest and sleazy and like someone just called your mama a bad name." Read The Need for Aged Buildings, whose last stanza is just whoah.

"Postcard" by Mike Stutzman at Bittering Agent. I am a big Mike fan and he's doing 30x30 again this year (something I do not have time for!). This poem reads quotidian and wondrous and wistful at once.

Also why don't you come see my band mindtroll on Saturday, 9th April, at Goodbye Blue Monday? Since it's already all over the internet, I would be lying if I said I wasn't turning old that day. We love you. Come listen to our screams.

Also, I huddled up with my beloved and some epic chips and dip and watched The Shining the other day. It reminded me to look up Gina's Shelley Duvall post. God, her outfits are so good in that film. Don't you guys think she could fit into hipster Williamsburg like right now, with her bug-eyes? Don't you think she would look epic in some red skinny jeans? I love the blazer-turtleneck-skirt. Very spindly women can rock this appropriately.

And I wonder what would happen I tried to recreate this eye fashion for the weekend.

and what does dancing have to do with it

2011-03-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

OK, my previous post was somewhat all-encompassing; let's bring it back to the locus of the micro-action: the body. The thing you can control most is yourself. Medieval women knew this: your body is a way to simultaneously transcend and experience. And like anything, our experiences begin with our own physical beings. (Cold. Hungry. Uncomfortable. Everything else is incidental & learned, isn't it?)

Body control is a massive thing. Here's some massively awesome video. I can't contain myself when I watch dance; I find parts of my body twitching along with the beat, even though I'm like the worst dancer in the world.

The woman in this Pina Bausch video is incredible. With the lighting, she almost doesn't look real. I am filled with awe when I see this kind of power.

on nuclear power and poetry

2011-03-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

Today I am on nuclear power. Der Spiegel says the Japanese disaster could be the end of the nuclear era, of our thinking that nuclear power is safe. My native Finland has four active nuclear reactors, with a fifth scheduled to go live in a couple of years; these are highly productive energetically speaking, and have a good safety record, but I was a little kid in 1986 when Chernobyl exploded next door in the USSR. The effects were wide and long-term. Can we live safely near nuclear power? Clearly we cannot. Is it "clean"? It is highly efficient and has relatively little immediate consequence, but as Bobby pointed out in the conversation we had yesterday, humans haven't been able to build anything that would still remain intact during the half-life decay of our nuclear waste. We can't build anything that would outlive the consequence of our "clean" energy. And if we continue having epic nuke disasters every twenty-five years, well.

So in this world, what should we be writing? In the 90s, Carolyn Forche's poetry of witness called for a "social" space within which to grapple with our disastrous world. Take Nick Flynn's new book, The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands. Is this considered poetry of witness? I find the differentiation between personal, political, and social in Forche's description to be the troubling bit. Flynn's book pulls together references to news headlines, lines from Galway Kinnell and Krishna and Arcade Fire songs and Abu Ghraib testimonials to create a timely portrait that is not apolitical, not apersonal, and not asocial. I guess also the other thing I feel weird about is the passivity of the word "witness," as if it could only take information in and then testify. I think the writer should have a powerful opinion because the writer has a powerful conscience.

So I'm sorry this blog entry is so half-baked, but I guess what I'm asking is how can we write about the space of the world we inhabit, without separating ourselves or the poem from it, without taking a stand after-the-fact and testifying? We live here and work here. What aren't we doing?

a collection of loosely curated links

2011-03-07T05:32:00.001-08:00

Burma's generals attempt to prevent revolution by cross-dressing: it's gotta be black magic!!!!!!!

New York Times' nostalgic vision of poetry by Johannes Goransson (at Montevidayo). Oh, NYT. When will you stop disappointing us?

This is a fantastic book: The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse by Lonely Christopher (bonus points for also being a great title to be seen reading on the train, and the cover is so beautiful, with its photograph by Anthony Goicolea).

How to be a woman in a Boys' Club by Molly Lambert (at This Recording). I read this last week. It's so tragic that we have to pander to the boys' club idea but it exists and Lambert has some thoughts being in it... how should I say this? Stylishly and with conscience. (Read also Lambert's post on Fleetwood Mac.)

what will the girl become?

2011-02-15T06:40:00.000-08:00

Here's to bad literature and dissipation. Let's dance!

goth nostalgia: here we go again (yo no comprendo)

2011-02-02T19:52:00.000-08:00

I guess I've been in a posting mood! And a video mood. But it's winter, so here's Siouxsie. My first goth band obsession with a lady singer... second, in goth band obsessions, only to Bauhaus. This song isn't that goth but oh well. It still makes me kind of secretly sad that I gave away my five inch silver ankh that I got from the renaissance fair.

And here is the Weathered Remix of Rasputina's "The Olde HeadBoard," with a good golden Brooklyn accent and some fuckin' roller skates. And how awesome does the two-tone hair look on Melora? God, I always wished for wavy hair so I could pull off a big mess like that. This video, low-quality as it is, makes me positively giddy.

bodies cost a lot, and other thoughts

2011-02-01T05:57:00.000-08:00

Listen to this song while you read the post!

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but (as if my life weren't already overly busy) I'm doing a 200-hour yoga teacher certification. I think during an ongoing yoga practice it is relatively easy to stay in the same place (same strength level, same flexibility level) if you practice seriously a couple of times a week. You push your body to the place you know it'll go, but then you're done. Lately, though, I have been going four times a week, in addition to the mandatory hours. The consequence of this is that I feel myself getting stronger. I can do more pushups, I am getting closer to the 90-degree angle in Virabhadrasana. I can hold poses for longer, my stability in balance poses is better. Body change is so so fascinating and I am cautiously optimistic. I wrote a small post about the teacher training process here if you are interested. This post makes me sound really fucking nice, and also really excited, which I guess is accurate. ABOUT THIS ONE THING.

It is also great for writing. I am not about to spout any hubbub about how yoga balances me out mentally (although it helps). It's a real physiological thing. When I write a lot, or when I sit and pore over details a lot (such as now, when I am in the wrapup stage of working on the book), my back hurts a lot. I sit for hours and sometimes I don't sit right. But the past month has only produced the satisfying kind of muscle pain.

I still have my issues. I still drink a dangerous amount of coffee. But I feel kind of good and that's making me stoked. And now, because I feel stoked, it is about time for me to do my yearly posting of this song. I feel like looking at something beautiful, so here is "The Modern." I love this video and song so inexplicably much.

"Won't be afraid of happiness / won't be afraid at all."

boring boring boring

2011-01-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

Symptom: boring. I could sound so boring if I wanted to. I've been finishing all my correspondence on time, going to bed before midnight, waking early, sweating a lot on purpose, and eating right. I've begun teacher training at this lovely studio. I've been telling my ducks to get in a row and they've been listening. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it means I choose life, in the non-oppressive way.

Yesterday's yesterday, 23rd January, was mindtroll's first birthday. Can you believe it? For one year I have been oppressing people with links about brain-exploding concerts. A human child at one year is nigh useless; a troll at one year is world-dominating. That's the difference.

If you've grown very bored by now, please read this definition at urbandictionary.com -- nestled there, comfortably between "dolterguiest" (sic) and "dolthead" is the terrible brainbaby that I've begun to use for all over town to mean "general fail." Geez, I just realized I've used three baby-related metaphors in this post. But I'm not going to self-edit now!!!!

glitter pubes and other fascinating depictions

2011-01-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

Annnnnd now let's talk about this! A music video about women's pubic hair. The song is catchy enough, though a little fluffy (HAHAHA I KNOW WHAT I SAID); however, it is the video that really makes it.

In college I was in a pretty excruciating production of the Vagina Monologues. (Don't get me wrong here. I kind of love the story of the play itself, and how it came to be, but during this particular production the director repeatedly played Meredith Brooks' "Bitch" as a way to motivate us backstage and it made me cringe more than silence would have.) Anyhow, my monologue was "Hair," the one about pubes (find it here, it's a couple paragraphs down). Every now and again I think of it, and wonder why people are so squeamish about this topic.

Also! If Americans weren't so globally disinterested, we wouldn't have had to wait this long for an awesome euphemism.

awesome horrifying friday

2011-01-14T08:18:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I am going to be here: A Day In The Life -- the purpose of the project is to highlight examples of gender/sex based issue we encounter in daily life and feel like commenting on. I am blogging for January 14th but will post tomorrow.

Not super much to say otherwise, so for now, here's a terrifying Whitney Houston impersonator to help you start the weekend right!!!!

MOVIES: a.) isn't this a great poster? & b.) gripe

2010-12-22T10:35:00.000-08:00

The British design firm LaBoca created some posters (in true movie poster style) for this movie. Right down to the font, I think they're really brilliant, and I might try to snag one for my house.

There it is. It makes me want to wear black, red, and white. Of course, that's not that new of an impulse for me. Actually, recently, when Rohin and I went to see the Matthew Bourne production of Swan Lake, I was completely twitterpated by the costumes -- shirtless dancing men with big feather culottes and slicked hair. It was very good. But it's not just swans, is it?

But the campaign for True Grit is lousy. When I saw the posters, I had to think hard to connect them with the preview I'd seen some months ago -- it didn't seem like the same film. Why is the campaign for this movie, an interesting, original premise, obscuring one of its interesting focal points? I'm talking about the teen girl character Mattie. The posters make the film seem to focus on, like, "Hey! Jeff Bridges is in a Western!" which is of course true (and pretty great) -- but they're obscuring an important plot point which is that it's a revenge story set in motion by a "plucky" young girl. Why? Oh, yeah. Because this movie doesn't have a teen girl audience. (It probably should.) (Here's a post about it at Ms.)

kathleen hanna, xmas, awesome, confusing

2010-12-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

I know it was over a week ago but THE KATHLEEN HANNA SHOW WAS AMAZING. I can't thank Rebecca and Sini and everyone enough for allowing us to be a part of it. While we were waiting backstage before going up, Kathleen herself walked in! She listened to our banal, nervous chatter and didn't appear annoyed at all. Only Anna Copa Cabanna, who was waiting with us, appeared cool (she appeared cooler than cool -- she was wearing an Old Glory onesie and a platinum wig). And after the covers (The Fancy's amazing, slow, gorgeous cover of "Les and Ray"!!! Bridget Everett rocking out "After Dark"!!! MEN doing "Double Dare Ya"!!!), Murray Hill came out and introduced Kathleen's new band The Julie Ruin which featured Kathi Wilcox. And we saw teeny tiny Tavi Gevinson there, rocking her Feminist sweater (gift from KH, I believe).

Here's Bridget Everett who is seriously my new fucking hero. And yeah she played with Beastie Ad-Rock.

AUGH! Also if you know what I look like good enough, you can maybe spot me for a split second, as I am visible in the audience.

And here's Julie Ruin and a new song, "Cookie Road" (the chorus of which goes "Cookie cookie yah cookie yah cookie yah yah"):

In other news!!!! I've been taking aerial silks classes, and it's been super kicking my butt (and triceps and biceps and upper and lower abs and and and). In addition, in the coming year, I will be enrolled in a yoga teacher training program AND Rohin and I've just got gym memberships at the cheapo gym. So I'm guessing I'm going to be awesome pretty soon.

But on Thursday, I'm going to Florida. I don't care what the temperature is, I'm going swimming in the kidney-shaped pool in my mom's housing community -- even if I have to put on my sweater immediately upon exiting the pool. Even if I have to disguise my gooseflesh with an overly enthusiastic having-fun grin.

Actually the thing I can't wait for is cooking. And also drinking coffee in the living room with all the lights off except for those of the tree. I'm kind of a sentimental fool that way. We used to get the itchy holiday feeling weeks beforehand (like when we found the Moon Shoes hidden in the laundry closet), but nowadays it only comes on the day of. I guess that's fine. I'm much too busy to go storming around being all "LET'S LOOK AT ROCKEFELLER PLAZA OR WHATEVER AND GO SEE SOME STUPID HOLIDAY MUSICAL!"

But I'm not too busy for this:

We took a holiday photo. (Ellen, genius Ellen took it and then ran into it and appeared to look like she'd been there all along. Did I mention she's a genius???) When we recorded the terrifying surprise song that goes with these images, I had a head cold -- but I wish I could say that was my only excuse! Haha. My favorite part is where Eve comes in on the bridge and then I join her for the sleigh bells part. It's sheer insanity after the bridge. (Kind of like Ace of Base's career.) But dig my kimono! Ow, the colors.

Here's the official page: MINDTROLL XMAS SURPRISE.

And in case I don't post again before then, happy Xmas!

jex thoth; poetry; black swan

2010-12-07T06:13:00.000-08:00

I've posted a thingie on this at girlpants.org, but wow, Jex Thoth is amazing. Within the context of her band Sabbath Assembly she has reworked the hymnal of the 1960s cult Process Church of the Final Judgment (here is a great interview about it). Her voice is the kind of controlled and chilly that has the potential to turn rapturous at any moment, and when it does, you should be terrified. Her work outside of the album I wrote about is pretty freaking metal, but if you visit girlpants, you can hear two of the tracks I can't stop listening to.

Now for short links burst!!!!! ARTS!!!!!

Attend:

Mindtroll at Mixer Reading and Music Series. We'll be playing MIXER next week! At the Cakeshop! With Eileen Myles, Emily Gould, Lauren Waterman. AND IT'S FREE! How much awesomer can a deal even get? December 15th, 7PM for readings then stay for mindtroll. (Calendar details so you can see for yourself.) 152 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side.

Read:

Gina Abelkop has a poem up at Everyday Genius and you should read it now.
Paul Tunis (sometimes mistakenly identified as "PT Cruiser"), who is both a visual artist and writer (and cover artist/creator of promo video for Rohin Guha's chapbook) (and a hot food enthusiast) has a short interview up here at Drunken Boat. It's a good read.
My darling Christopher Phelps has answered some great questions at Pank Magazine. His answers are witty, charming, and devil-smart and you should read them. (This interview is also the reason I chose the anhinga to play Cover Bird of this post. Nah, I know it's not a black swan.)

Think:

Think hard about the role of mental illness in film. Black Swan is about obsessive workaholic women who are under ridiculous pressure to achieve perfection during their short careers. The main character slips "in and out of psychosis," consistently seeing schizophrenic visions that are left completely unnoticed. This is a film about women under the coercion of exactness.

See:

The girls at Design Glut have a new set of holiday photos up. These pics are both darkish and goofy (IE the opposite of that godawful Paul McCartney xmas song). While you're there, read the blog -- they give some cute gift recommendations if you're into that sort of thing.

That's that for that. Seriously come to the show next week.

i will tie dye you

2010-12-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

My band mindtroll was asked to participate in Rah! Rah! Replica, a too-cool-for-words cover show that is also a fundraiser for Sini Anderson's documentary on Kathleen Hanna. The show is on December 11th. We'll be covering Bikini Kill, and we're opening the show! It's sold out now but it's being filmed, also. How fucking cool is this? It's probably the coolest thing I've ever done (so far). Mindtroll with all these amazings!!!

Kim Gordon, Kaia Wilson, MEN, Bridget Everett, Care Bears on Fire, Hilly Eye, She Murders, Toshi Reagon, Making Friendz, Christy & Emily, Dan Fishback, Anna Copa Cabanna, The Fancy, The Roulettes, Schwervon! + friends, Love Tribe, The Awkward Turtles, Alison Clancy, Mindtroll, video performance by Caroline Polachek (Chairlift), dance performance by Emily Wexler.

And in my life now I am so happy. I want to put color all over the place to express the pure and terrifying joy that I feel. I'm going to post a couple of photos instead of expounding more because it's kind of painful to read about other people's happiness. It's like drinking champagne during a road trip: inappropriately bubbly and will make you feel uncomfortable. So behold!

(Viktor Luna)

(KronKron)

(Etsy)

I think that worked out fine, don't you? We're not all into musing, but everyone loves pictures of outfits.

just a song and some notes.

2010-12-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

This is the mood for the day, and I don't find it depressing. This song breaks my heart a little but it's also kind of got a twinkle in its eye, at least in this iteration. It feels like the devil a bit. And that's good. I have a bunch of exciting plans I'm not going to talk about yet so I'm just going to be listening to some songs while I get started on my house-related errands and holiday cards.

Other soundtrack: Loretta Lynn (Van Lear Rose); Laura Veirs (July Flame).

Ok, throw this song in there, too and have mercy!

hair, awesome stuff, links

2010-11-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

I got new hair again and even though this blog is mostly for "writerly" things (ostensibly) it's still MY BLOG and I can show you my hair if I want! It's going to help me with my writing, to have my head be a little bit colder than it was before, so that is also relevant. See left for sweet hair photo.

For the haircut, I went to a peculiar but awfully nice guy on the Lower East Side. He specializes in cutting only girls' hair into short haircuts (seriously, the nomenclature is "girls", I'm not just trying to pretend to not be 26 Geri Halliwell style). I guess I look enough like a girl to pass. I really like it, and think it's kinda Annie Lennox.

That's my "office" visible in the background. As you can see, it doubles as my "music room" as well as the guest room, the living room, etc etc. Multipurposing and -tasking is what I'm gonna concentrate on, from now forward.

Just so this isn't a me-only post (me-ow), I'm going to link to two nice things on the internet:

"Spirits of the Humid Cloud" by Gillian Cummings (Wicked Alice 2009). I'm not sure if Gillian would remember me, but we had a class together at Sarah Lawrence, and though we never really spoke I was always a great fan of her work. This poem does not fail to please me. It reminds me of Larissa Szporluk's in the way that the images follow relentlessly one after the other. Gillian's work is much prettier though. You should know what I mean by prettier in this context.
"Artists fleeing the city," a Crains article I read the other day and linked all over town. It's about how young artists are opting to skip the "New York experience" altogether and move straight to cheaper cities with burgeoning scenes. Is New York over? I don't know, but it is expensive. What do you think?

how much I love food (& watching it)

2010-11-12T06:43:00.000-08:00

At Nikolai's suggestion, yesterday I saw FRESH: The Movie, Ana Sofia Joanes' self-distributed food production documentary. It screened at Congregation Habonim on the Upper West Side in conjunction with an CSA info session. Quoting the conversation N and I had a bit later, one of the foci for the people of this film is to bring the consumption of food from routine to ritual.

There are two sides to films (and all media, really) about food and conscious consumption: the first is the horror of the food industry (a la Food Inc and all its predecessors going back to Upton Sinclair's meat industry-exposing tome The Jungle); the second is the uplifting, people-oriented, we-can-do-it message. Both are effective in their own ways (who wants to eat something that was terrorized to death?) but the latter, for me, is the more emotional. It isn't that I don't feel terrible watching caged chicks and pigs, pale and unable to move and in horrifying conditions. I do. The aversion reaction is strong, but so is the disconnect. But it actually makes me a little misty to watch communities of people getting together, eating well, and learning about food.

Why does this happen? I'm trying to figure out what causes this reaction in me. It's not as if the film was sentimental -- it wasn't, really. I think it was about the transfer of information a.) between equal parties, and b.) about something benevolent. Teaching is usually a transfer of information between power dynamics in exchange for currency - so a student-teacher relationship is by definition unequal. But although there is a fiscal exchange between the farmer and the consumer based on product and value, in the information exchange there is no such monetary transfer. There are only happy, excited people, putting their hands into compost, getting dirty and becoming reacquainted with the things they eat.

In short, if you have a chance to watch FRESH, please do.

Oh and also -- reading tomorrow

2010-10-25T05:55:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot to post about this! I'm reading tomorrow night at Dangit I'm Thirsty, a reading series run by Brie Huling and Roof Alexander at d.b.a. on North 7th St between Berry and Wythe in Williamsburg. You should come along. It will be like the pit bulls in this photo. It will be happy and attentive.

Other readers include Mira Ptacin, Shelly Oria, Julie Porter and Roof Alexander. With musical guest Zeus! Seriously this series is super fun. Everyone reads for a shorty short time and nobody gets bored. How could you resist?

more! awesome! events! books!

2010-10-24T13:55:00.001-07:00

I think the fall and early winter are PRIME TIME for creativity. I always find myself amping up around October and not letting go the pressure until about January. Similarly, many people I know are doing some amazing, brilliant things around the web and world and world wide web. These are but a few examples.

Watch, for instance, this book trailer for Rohin Guha's short story collection Relief Work, out from the brilliant San Francisco-based Birds of Lace in December:

I had the good fortune to preview some work from this collection of "short shorts" about a month ago at Earshot. Rohin is both funny and heartbreaking as a writer, pop-savvy and thoughtful, self-deprecating and deeply observant. When this booklet comes out I'll doubtless harangue you about it again, but there it is, for now. The art for the cover (and for this trailer) was done by the awesome Paul K. Tunis, whose weblog you should read stat. He does a small comic called Laika & Qubit which has been going on for a few ... episodes ...? now. I think if you hurry you could still catch up.

Then! Next Saturday, October 30th, Typecast Publishing and the Letter Home Reading Series team up to bring together BARDS & BOURBON: A Kentucky Press comes to Brooklyn, at the Observatory. It's the press's first Brooklyn event, and also the book release party for Matthew Lippman's new book Monkey Bars.

Lippman's book also has a weird, awesome, short-filmy book trailer here. My dear friend S. showed it to me one day while we were sitting around her apartment listening to her baby boy babble from his seat. It was the tornado day.

Isn't the idea of the book trailer fascinating? I love the idea -- of course the relationship of book and film is not new, nor is the idea of advertising one via the other -- although generally, it is the other way around (as with literary writeups, criticisms, or reviews of films). But how perfectly (re-)vital the book trailer is, as an idea, to the continuity of publishing as an industry.

And finally - do you know how I am in a band called MINDTROLL? We are playing as a part of Rah! Rah! Replica, or the Kathleen Hanna tribute show on December 11th at the Knitting Factory. If you are a Kathleen Hanna fan, suck it up and attend -- the door charge is to fundraise for Sini Anderson's documentary about KH. It is going to be so awesome.

PUT SOME VOODOO ON IT: Links!

2010-10-19T06:55:00.000-07:00

Just a shorty. Just a couple of links for you.

New issue of The Scrambler. I am in this issue, and it is a huge issue. Other poetry contributors are Luna Miguel, Cassandra Troyan, April Michelle Bratten, Howie Good, Stephen Tully Dierks, Eric David Lough, S. J. Bridgins, Nicola Scholes, Ben Kyler, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Nicholas Ravnikar, Duane Jackson, John Grochalski, and Mike Berger.
Please read this essay from Jen Woods. It is a wake up call to the Poet as Underdog. Jen is the editor for Typecast and a rad individual who sees that poetry has potential reaching far beyond the page and far beyond academia as a venue. This essay is a heartening call.

some notes on perfume because why not.

2010-09-28T05:43:00.000-07:00

Pictured is a lily of the valley -- a scent both peculiar and poisonous. When I was a kid, if there were lilies-of-the-valley around, we were only allowed to sniff them once per day. When you limit something it draws people in more, and so the scent of this little flower became something I forever find fascinating.

I make reference to scent often, but I'm kind of an untraditional fan. I don't believe in applying more than can be detected by someone very close to you. I love the idea of someone extraordinarily chic overtaking a room in a billow of Chanel No. 5 or Caron Tabac Blond or some other iconic perfume, but in reality I can't stand it. It overwhelms, clings, chokes. I think the era of the three-foot radius of perfume went out the window with the near-universal smoking ban, at the very latest. The office no longer stinks like a humidor, so we shouldn't practice the opposing kind of smell hegemony. Compared to neutral air, it just gives people a headache.

Nevertheless, I am a perfume nerd. I think often people use scent to disguise their own smells, but the best perfume amplifies something about you and that is why it works. I vividly recall people by their particular smells (my first boyfriend will always be antibacterial soap; my mother, the peculiar, classy, un-sweet oriental floral of Oscar). I even fell in love with someone's shampoo. Really, there is no universal to scent, high or low class, perfume or everyday product -- not even the aforementioned iconics. You can put on the classiest most expensive perfume and if it doesn't agree with you you will smell skanky. That stated, I think there is a lot to be said for subtle application and I think too few people practice it. Your scent should be you with perfume, not just PERFUME FOREVER AUGH.

My first perfume purchase was a big bottle of ckone which I loved because older sibling of a friend my sister and I played with often had a bottle of it, and I thought she was hopelessly cool and I always used her products when she wasn't looking. So a couple years later I had my own bottle, a boxless, capless sampler bought at a discount from the swap meet. I wore it and loved it, the green tea note, the dark, masculine (but not too masculine) feel it developed by the end. I can no longer stand it because you kinda have to keep spraying it, and I don't like to reapply OR be overwhelmed. But ckone taught me to love unisex scents. Since then, barring one lengthy love affair with the weird, flannely Burberry Brit (vanilla, what???), I'm drawn to the masculine - specifically bone-dry, oriental, vetiver-based or metallic scents. They are more nuanced and less fussy than florals and less repellent to me than straight-up gourmands (I love food but I do not under any circumstances want to smell like food).

Once I had a conversation with a former roommate, a fine craftsman himself, about the "craft" of perfuming. He was not convinced of its craft status, for which I argued vehemently. Notes have to be blended to evoke the right impression and this takes a nose far subtler and more trained than the layman's. Further, they have to develop in the right order. This fascinates me and reminds me of Stephen Dobyns's book Best Words Best Order. The elements have to be right, but they also have to be correctly ordered for the product to make any sense as a whole. Assembly is a vital part of craft, right?

My very favorite is by Swiss perfumer Andy Tauer. It is called L'Air du Desert Marocain, which I am wearing today, and which is perfect for the foul weather because it's dry and balances out the watery outside. That's really why I was writing this -- because I smell it so it's on my mind. It's not only a smell but also evokes a feel, and I can't quite put my finger on what I find so perfect about this feel. It just is something correct to my nose. Also, however, I have not spent a lot of time with someone very close to me lately, so I don't know if this scent is something that is agreeable to me only. Ultimately, I am interested in this: is your own smell like your own voice, which, when you hear it recorded, surprises you? Does it smell different to you than to other people? If you have any thoughts on this tell me them. If you have any favorite smells please tell me them too.

love and poems: some lists (and other things)

2010-09-17T07:15:00.001-07:00

This Marie Claire post, "How to Use Poetry to Seduce a Man," is a little bit funny. Poems for love occasions in a women's mag - but at the same time I'm glad people are posting and commenting. But what this makes me want to do is to collect a better list of poems for a more complex range of emotions.

Also it follows on the heels of this retort to the "25-Reasons-To-Date-A-Writer" meme that's been popping up on Tumblrs far and wide and near and nearer. Is the answer "don't date us, we're bad at dating"? Or is it "We take this shit seriously so stop asking for it, it's not like I'm asking for casual love demonstrations of your job"? Why is a list like this necessary, or is it?

Finally, dangerlove: Ben Fama wrote some great stalker letters for Gaga Stigmata, the Lady Gaga journal run by Kate Durbin.

Also, guys, I'm reading tomorrow at CROWD in Bushwick.

NPR, readings, etc

2010-08-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

Firstly I should say there is this bizarre phenom: last week NPR picked up our song "Jazz Boyfriend" for a story about the eponymous. Apparently it's a good lead to a discussion on musical incompatibility. It's led to a plethora of comments that I have been following with great interest. I do not think jazz enthusiasts are the intended audience for this song, but a great many of them have been gracious and refrained from commenting, so that's kind! I know our musical ability, when compared with jazz greats, is best classified "dodgy." Except (disclosure!) Zane, who is a total Jazz Boyfriend and could "out-jazz" most. Nevertheless, now, when you google "Jazz Boyfriend" you get like 2933495 stories about the Mindtroll song, so that's pretty interesting...

Next you should know: I am reading in two upcoming readings. First, I will read at the Southern Writers Reading Series at Happy Ending Lounge in the L.E.S, on September 8th. This is a Wednesday night. Then, 10 days later (can you wait???) I will read at Douglas's reading series CROWD at Cafe Orwell. That would be a Saturday night.

Lastly, listen to this song: it's my brain forever.

thoughts about books

2010-08-26T06:12:00.000-07:00

On The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart.

On the superficial level this book is an immigrant story:Vladimir - an uncomfortable, slouchy, young Russian Jew with great deference to women and, initially, all authority - learns to become American and then uses his Americanisms to create a sketchy underworld persona. And it is about that. But it's also about the performative aspects of national identity, and how tough it can be to overcome the performance and just be it when the narrator is at all anxious or self-reflexive.

Distillations of Vladimir's attempts at performing a solid national identity often involve the book's strong central female characters. One of the book's driving forces is Vladimir's mother Yelena Petrovna, a highly respected businesswoman and major decision maker for all those in her circle including her son. In the book's first third, she identifies that her son's drawback is his walk, and then tries to teach her son to walk like an American and less like a Jew: feet straight out, shoulders back. It's funny and tragic: funny because it's a hilariously described scene; tragic because it's indicative of the repeat on which this mother and son are stuck, where he, now grown, is having to learn to walk over and over again based on her current ideas of how to do it. And so, throughout the book Vladimir is drawn to powerful women who know how to walk without hesitation. A central metaphor of the second two thirds of the book is the looming statue Stalin foot that hovers over the old town of Prava; this foot is also inextricably tied to both Vladimir's main love interest and to his "foothold" in Prava and in life.

Anyway, heavy-handed (heavy-footed?) metaphor aside, this book was really funny. And now I'm reading Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, which is something I'd had since it came out but had been saving for the right time. It's time. The season is changing a little and I feel like reading a lot of fiction. Notes when I finish.

blog blog blog blog

2010-08-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

Alright, it's been like a month, and as I said to a writer recently (over wine and french fries naturally), as a rule I do aim to update my blog more often than I suffer from my menses. But alas; that hasn't been the case as of late. I wish there was a "So sorry, Internet" card I could mail someone, but who would be the clerk in charge of receiving the post and distributing the news?

Mindtroll, the band for which I am lead beepist, more-than-occasional vocalist, and very random guitarist, has a show coming up on Tuesday night at Goodbye Blue Monday. The show begins at 8, but we will go on at 9. Goodbye Blue Monday has coffee/tea, booze, and nice food, and lots of doohickeys, mobiles, old encyclopedias et cetera to sift through so even the most Wikiminded of the ADD generation will be entertained. Not to mention that we will be... a spectacle.

But even though I'm a busy lady, when I'm off, more often than not, Internet, I am comfortable with being alone. I used to live with so many people at the factory that I got used to never really spending time alone. I am not trying to convey that I hate being social; I thought it was a very good situation actually, but here at this apartment where I've lived since June, I have made my space into something actually rather pleasant. I feel OK with my yoga mat unrolled in the middle of the floor and my plants all around me. It's a nice place to be, when you're not fighting anything in your life (I guess metaphorically and actually?).

So there. Hopefully more blag soon. Cheers!

POPSICKLE: A Festival of Literary Arts

2010-07-20T04:14:00.000-07:00

It's coming up this weekend! Finally! Bushwick's first lit-arts festival is here, and it's been on my dreams (nightmares?) but it looks like everything is coming up stellar. The lineup is awesome:

Alaina Stamatis, Anna Fitzgerald, Ben Fama, Brett Price & Dani Leventhal, Carter Edwards, Dan Magers, Eddie Hopely, Emily Pettit, Evan Burton, Gina Abelkop, Jamie Peck, James Copeland, Jordan Michael Iannucci, Joshua Mehigan, Lauren Russell, Leigh Stein, Marc Nasdor, Michael Barron, Natalie Lyalin, Nicole Trigg, Paige Taggart, Parker Phillips, Timothy Donnelly and more!

To RSVP to the Facebook event, go here. To see the schedule and view some teaser poems, please visit the blog here. Otherwise, I will see you there.

You should read...

2010-06-18T06:03:00.001-07:00

This droll, language-slinging review of/essay on Maximum Gaga by Lara Glenum. I've been digging on this book and you should, too. I feel like the reviewer, Will Cordeiro, got into the language of the book in writing this, which makes it an entertaining read (I imagine) even if you haven't read the book.

On a side note, I don't necessarily think the title was an homage to Lady Gaga (the timing would have been too close, unless Glenum was following Gaga's work pre-The Fame, which of course is possible); still, it certainly doesn't hurt Glenum's book or writing that Gaga exploded when she did.

Speaking of Gaga, a short while back Gina Abelkop had a piece in Gaga Stigmata, the LG-only-themed online journal. The piece delves into the relationship between Kate Bush's "The Big Sky" and LG's "Dance in the Dark."

And happy Friday.

tomorrow: juvenilia, read-in

2010-06-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

GUYS! Purple Lake of Desolation is tomorrow! You should come because it's going to be so ridiculous and mortifying that I might just explode a little (and I'm only speaking for myself!). Things get rolling around 7 and we'll be ON TIME so BE ON TIME. You know how Pete's is. (Image credit: Rohin)

You know what else is tomorrow? The We Will No Be Shushed library 24-hour reading to protest budget cuts. I'm reading, along with Eve Bates, Martin Rock, and Jarrod Shanahan, over on the steps of Brooklyn's Central library starting at 5:15AM on Sunday morning. You should attend some of these readings because you should be concerned about budget cuts for Brooklyn's already ravaged library system.

That's all.

Upcoming & more

2010-05-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

The next month or so will be quite crazy around here. First the folks over at Death Panel Press are hosting their exclusive star-studded gala launch of Issue #2 over at our place (A Brooklyn Co-Op Facility, for those of you who are unfamiliar). Details of this evening are found in the below poster, or you can browse over to Death Panel's blog. You should probably also be aware of Poetry Comics, which is totally brilliant.

The following week, on June 12th, I'll be hosting a reading of juvenilia at Pete's Candy Store. On the bill for this reading are Nicole Steinberg, Rohin Guha, Lucy Ives, Amy Lawless, Jared White and Eve Bates. The Facebook invite for this event is here. Look out! Things are happening!

Reader, this is what happens

2010-05-16T20:24:00.001-07:00

when you become more conscious in your social networks.

In other news, I got a couple readings coming up... ones I'm in, ones I'm hosting, etc... I know after 30x30 it was pretty unarable around these blags but listen, I got some real announcements coming up so stay tuned. XOXO!

day thirty of 30x30: FINAL COUNTDOWN

2010-05-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

This has been a fun month. Thank you to the people who read, and the people who commented, and the other 30x30 participants that I enjoyed reading in April: Jane and Mike and all the other totally brave people posting daily drafts that are a lot tighter and more finished than the things I've been sharing here. Here's the final one, for now.

_________________________________________

Sonnet of Myself

My eyes are starting.
They are filled with stabbers.
Around them looks crop circular,
pansy-black like a funeral party.
A graceless note that forgets to acknowledge
a gift am I, full of it and nothing else.
This time of year I begin to hate
everything, rank it in hate order,
make it teenage personal. But still drive
myself down that singe-hot sidewalk
to find out what you’re doing, oh, you,
delicate temporary fine-ass world.
Could begin every day like this,
sick puppy. Forgetting any dream.

day twenty-nine of 30x30

2010-04-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

Annabel Lee,

there are tiny fishes in your hair
as it bellows out behind your un-doll features, the quite
ordinary angle of your nose turned up at the bland sky.
As they drag you from the water, your death
fetishist lover is still a very young boy;
forgive him for being forever haunted by some version
that was never you, salt in your sinus,
waterlogged pinafore ratty.
They will change you for your funeral,
push the water up out of your bloated gut
and pretend away your putrefaction.
They will grease up your cheeks
like a not-quite-live girl, and forget you
were supposed to make a fuckload of mistakes.

27 and 28 of 30x30

2010-04-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

You Cannot

I write everything down in a big pink book
and close it conspicuously and hug it to my chest.
I let my eyes dart around the room like bait
to catch your eye, or anyone’s.

What could I be writing in my big pink book?

I want to seize you with the kind of terror I feel,
the kind that forces tears out
that seem to have a shape & a weight.
I have known all along what I am not.

I will flash and flash and five more of me

lie in wait behind the tapestry.
Then I pretend I am a reverse vacuum, blowing
bougainvillaea and paper money blooms.
You come to me because you like my colors,

then feel repulsed with yourself and your greed.

Heartpounding nausea. A sweet eaten, then immediately
puked, glutinous and intact. Still beautiful-looking.
You make my stomach churn. You are it,
and right at my gut there’s a jut in the shape

of a large music box. It plays at inopportune times.

I might need an otomy.
If horror and mock horror
are both placed in your body,
can you tell which is which?

Amoeba (or, Things You Deserve)

A corroded hollowbody
crowding with green un-flowering plants. A skeleton
posed to look like you in the bunk above yours,
as you lie awake, terrorized with the kind
of terror that you thankfully are the only one
in the world to feel. Suffer. Suffer.

Your petty finch-sins
peck out of you as if by machine
they were being sewn onto the fabric of night
in a gibberish of pattern. Yes from your pores
a microbe new to science. Yes in the pondwater, go.

day twenty-six of 30x30

2010-04-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

1. THIS IMAGE IS LARGE

2. and these are zombies.

3. I'm still one poem behind,

4. have been for days now,

5. but I will make these last few count if you stay tuned.

______________________________________

You Know the Phony

We’re forging ghost meat,
clay, or wax. Let’s fingerbang.
Let’s be together forever now,

a duplex echoing with yell:
I’m you. I’m you. We’re big cuckoos,
we swell with noise until the chest

under us bursts into gross-smelling flames
-- you know the phony
never liked you. The pictures which all

were hating you, staring you down
from the tack paper, your lentil
of good hope a big hate in their eyes.

But now the tiny venge is grown
and knit up like a vine. Something
with no father, forever climbing.

day twenty-five of 30x30

2010-04-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

Amphibian

When I was something else
than a girl, in the mauled darkness
a named vessel. Known
stink. Little moon.

When you imagine drawing a bath
for a shadow or a ghost, remember
the tub’s volume and the way
the water fingers

over the sides
and to the floor. If it had a color
everything it would touch
would be that color.
But just the light

like a cheloid right there.
This room has never had a window.

Day twenty-four of 30x30

2010-04-25T21:08:00.000-07:00

Island

We descended
to the island where the bodies were:
stinkless, scentless actually,

dreamlike in that they had no presence
save the feather waft,
soft in the late day breeze.

Ashram, why
are your geese plunked beside
the waterfront,

angled unnatural,
heads turned sweetly away?
Demure angle,

wing fold. This death
is recent, and it’s probably not nature,
but it’s nature,

because we’re nature
and I am trying to remember that.

day 23 of 30x30

2010-04-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm having a very difficult time with this and so this is more a fragment than anything. But yesterday, the Huntington Beach police department released a series of photos in the possession of serial killer Rodney Alcala. The photos, mostly of unidentified women, were made public in hopes of gathering information about additional victims. Several women have come forward claiming they are depicted in the photos; several families have also come forward claiming that their long-missing loved ones are among those in the images. This story is troubling me, in a really uncomfortable way. I think that's why I used no punctuation but the period. This will be revisited.

_______________________________________

Through the Gallery of the Potential

Hairdo after hairdo. A shift.
Into minor key. And they are so.
A ramble with vining flora.
A retrofeel rec room. Visual noise.
The garden pushing hard.
Forever. In the foreground.
In the background. The photos.
Sixteen of the same blurry girl.
Her confident smirk.
Her no-environment. The lens is a man.
With an idea. Something is in.
That identifies. The expression left casual.
That laugh. The hand-grasp. Parts are cropped.
Or left inside. Outside the frame.
The ceiling is visible. The torso is not.

days 21 and 22 of 30x30

2010-04-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, applications aren't appropriate out of context. This drop menu from a recent website I viewed, however, is amazing. I laughed. The friend who linked me to this described it as "creepy," and I think I might agree -- would you apply for anything if the application form was like this? As you can see, I have selected "Empty" (obviously the most bizarrely appropriate answer for anything ever).

For Earth Day, the Empire State Building was lit up a smug green. Wouldn't it have made more sense to just leave it dark? Poems 21 and 22 as follows.

_________________________________________________

Equinox

Who you said who uses these.
You meant something else but I thought
of the puffing horses we had passed at the park,
their coats dusty and traffic-smelling,
their public defecation. Remember the images
of the rimpling Iceland ponies, furred
flanks to the wind, a muscled look
not disregard, not aloof, each foot’s
little hoof so: up or down.
I want to think: park
horse, I validate your park, you’re the dark
pony here and you can come up fast. But there
are so many horse poems, and the night sparks
indefinitely, and in it we are torn
and cannot redeem even a smallish animal.

***

Manifest

There's a normal look
to the exterior, but inside is gnarled
and beastly, like something stitched together by melodramatic
taxidermists, from a gruesome and untidy end, no gunshot
but a road wound maybe. Yes, everything stinks out here; nobody
can tell the gross airs that come from my pores,
the glisten of my baroque oils
from the surrounding garbage station’s grunge
and sheen. My friend,
I am actuating and wormy, my dear,
all along I have been lying to you.
This is my one clean try,
hateful as though it may seem.

day twenty of 30x30

2010-04-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

(Dear I know I owe you one more.)

Foolest, what have you done.

(For Jonatan and Karl)

Astrid, it’s hard to put a finger
on a volcano’s pulse, we tried,
believe us, we burned
bits we love best. A hangup
and no smile at all. Your dead
dove relatives linger, cannot leave
a torch unlit, in the night, the sunflower
from the berg, bright as borealis:
shuffle your unfed feet, hear
as your mama cries. Your gross
overestimate of your worth
at the shack: Adam
and Eve it, you’re not flying out.

day nineteen of 30x30: can't turn me away

2010-04-19T22:16:00.000-07:00

I've been working a lot. There's been so much writing. I don't feel burned out yet which is kind of a sweet surprise, though today at work I did feel tired and when I came home I had a run and nap (it fixed it). Since then I've just been writing about music. And working on this, which is just a little bit.

______________________________________________

Bad Mouth

Today I will need mechanical help.
A cloud cover over the loud magpie hover
of the trees: we fix it up on our front yard,
how everything is on blocks,
guts out, much bigger
than when it’s in
the mysterious There.
Describe the problem. Yes,
the issue is with the frontis-bit
where you had fed
the oil. I heard there was in addition
a phenomenal sparkle plug. So, I was
interested in saying
some magic phrase, but the loud
gargled out. Said an ordinary one.

day eighteen of 30x30: in which i graduate to lofty themes

2010-04-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

On Poetry (ha, ha, ha)

When I try to put it down it starts
up with that moaning sound. Chains
on a blinged-out diva, no regard. Or what I mean is:
we were alone and it was not dark,
and the winter is always coming,
in less than a year.

The scheming nonsequitur, like
a phonecall from a phone booth,
I changed in that phone booth, I left my boots
and a lipstick print. Now significant
is the less exciting.

What magic bruise is time, the blue
and black of my resting legs. A cat sigh
wafts fat from the rambles of my slipcover.
This is how I remember to go to sleep.

days sixteen and seventeen of 30x30

2010-04-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

I was up the SLC Poetry Festival the last couple of days, and I was socializing so I didn't update. I saw some amazing poetry, though -- Matthea Harvey shared her new erasure-based Lamb poems, and Jericho Brown's just got this gorgeous reading voice, and G. C. Waldrep was an amazing, lyrical surprise. There is one more day and I wish I could go but I can't. Anyway, here are 16th and 17th. The former (up first) is more of a fragment but I was in a good mood.

This will help you with your good mood.

____________________________________________________

Statement for 4-16

All day you were happening,
flagrant as a cuckoo, you kept
sweetening the deal. Like
the pulley on the pop can, the flip tab,
you are more than garnish, you proved
useful and beautiful. But thank you especially
for being so beautiful.

***

How far? So far.

Although you are big
we want you to be small
and functionless, a tangent,

barely able to mouth Hello. So we bring
our best to the dinner,
we wear our finest till the darkness

grows thinner. The flowers were placed
there with great care, we had
a dream in which we selected the color.

The dresses are blue and the girls,
chameleon, wait,
because though this poem is about you,

the questions in it are ours
and their blunt ends strike
and repeatedly strike

until we let them fall on the old
lace spread and our hands,
a hot blood color, drop

to our sides and seem useless again
as if they had never been reaching
towards anything, ever, at all.

day fifteen of 30x30: halfway house of dreamgirlz

2010-04-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

What do you comprise of? Is it true? If it is true, then what are your poetic chops? What good is your goddamn blog if you can't post something kind of screwed up on it from time to time? If I understand blogs correctly, you can say any old bullshit on them, and it'll be OK. Is that accurate? This is a poem for all the naysayers.

xoxo

Niina

_______________________________________________________

DreamGirlz Ask You Questions!

We have for us a glorious pony
with an unbelievable tail, so long it could catch
a million unluckies and crush them for the right response.
Did you know how much we loved you?
All while we gallop, minty,

we are learning your name,
we are learning how to say it.

Are you the scared one
with the green side-eye,

putting on your hiding clothes? We have
champagne. Let’s stop here, and pick something.
The right kind of mint thing,

and you won’t hear from us again,
of course nobody wants that.

day fourteen of 30x30

2010-04-14T21:13:00.001-07:00

Time -- it's on my side (yes it is). My side is the one with the enormous gravity, ok?

_____________________________________________________

Wastrel

The pathetic wave gray. Bleachy sidewalk.
As I am waiting, which I am,
the trouble
with waiting.

My mouth is a line. The rest
of my person is not a sound:
un.

I had not heard from you. Granulating.
I became a garble and undistinguished
from the back

like a prom of kids
or a goose meadow – individual
nothing.

A fiddle,
meaningful.
Any other instrument.

day thirteen of 30x30

2010-04-14T04:24:00.000-07:00

Oblique Directions

Utterance. From green to blue,
and fast,

and inorganically if possible (blue is
the less appetizing color). There are gimmicks,

yes, but we
prefer the more authentic ways.

day twelve of 30x30

2010-04-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

Thesis with Cosmetic

The left lipstick, a fetish tube
floored, faraway disdain.
You, the final
fashion event,

forgetting the caraway
& burn colored set
ultimately.

day eleven of 30x30

2010-04-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

Finally, I am up to speed.

__________________________________________

(Notes)

The first time I let anyone touch me
for more than an hour, that isn’t a lover,
he is wielding a pen. When he lifts it from my back,
he buzzes it with the beat of the song, exact.
It is a song I don’t know, not terrible,
not great, but its beat slice matches the black garnish
I dreamt, and decided, and paid for in advance.
The quiet of the room is a not-at-all-quiet:
machine’s embossing whirr, hard
core. Each nerve leads a strict tether
to its original point, centre: where the body
is soft, its exterior is its own weird mirror
softer still. It bleeds, it burns, it takes
color so easy there’s almost no decision.

Day 10 of 30x30

2010-04-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

Why the heck is it so hard to catch up? Today will be the day I catch up. This can't keep happening. But you can't blame me -- I had a busy weekend -- yesterday I hit up the Greenpoint Food Market, had "band practice," and saw one of my favorite bands, the Shondes, play one of my favorite venues. Their timing is so spot-on impeccable that I always leave in fabulous fucking mood when I see them play. But my timing wasn't as great because the G train was all busted up and I didn't get home until 2AM. I worked on this poem but I didn't post it because then I fell asleep. [/excuses] Today, Sunday, is much more quiet. I'm making this happen.

________________________________________________________

Sonnet about the Rules

Between the deals there is always no deal.
You old-at-heart, around that tableau
with your bunch of comic dogs posed
listeningly to the sides, continuation.
There is a disinteresting trickle from outside
but it isn’t what felt green. Happy
or happening, or filled
with blowsy smoke, the crazy beacon light
giving a tendriled fabulous life
to each misprinciple and straight-face.

& god you know it but you keep
on bluffing, even though your fucked up
deck is missing some of its hearts.

day nine of 30x30

2010-04-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

Brooklynixxxx again. Tardy again.

_________________________________________

Bushwick

The invitation is warm, a homing reek.
To get to your windowless bedroom,
all minor situations, all sweeping

gesture and intent
pad through the oily sawdust. You aren’t the only
stray cat per this square mile.

day eight of 30x30: my apologies for tardiness

2010-04-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday. I failed to post yesterday because I fell asleep at 11 like a big sloth, so I'm not even going to pretend I "wrote" a "new" poem, but I did tinker with this draft before my unfortunate fall from grace, so here it is (and nevertheless it is not more than like 2 weeks old). Something truly new is coming up later.

Tonight there will be friends, Scrabble, and a slight Southwest theme. (What?)

Sock on a plate from Chez Aristote, in summary, gratefully.

___________________________________

In Which I Ask For Help

Have I made it to the other side? The side that falls off
like a goodbye. Blue, the sense that things revert,
the romantic most revolting sense. Somewhere

it's all green, the jangly place
where you are so loved. But for now, the bedding
sunset, for now I am the holy cow.

Bring me the milkpail,
brilliant with ooze,
and help me take these gnashers home.

day seven of 30x30

2010-04-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

Um, I just found out I've been in space all this time. But I'm still doing 30x30 even if I have to relearn my earth gravity!

Another beautiful 30x30 to visit, here: Joanna.

________________________________________

uberfrau

Someone with that mythical hair, all
beastess, no mercy, weepy human gene.
Valhallan burn eyes to watch
your world’s teary masses twinge
in all your formidable wind. Show up
drunk all the time, fabulously unfit
for battle, rasping your patina
on the floor around you til the room
filigrees, impatient. Meet someone
at the cool of the fridge, and laugh a bit,
and ask them if they live there too.

as ever: day 6 of 30x30

2010-04-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

Did you know my name was a synonym for some cops? My last name, I mean. I guess my first name doesn't mean anything as intricate. As far as I know, it's just a compromise my parents arrived at after each one rejected the other's first choice.

Note some of the many awesome names in the map to the left. Cripplebush, for instance, for Bed-Stuy, and Flatlands in general for that whole untidy lot, and look how big Gravesend is. Brooklyn used to be a lot different though it has always been the same land.

Boswyck, then. Cheers guys. Don't forget to check in with some of the other 30x30s.

__________________________________________

Bushwick

Today I vacuumed up a ballerina.
It was one you had found, a music box part.
Spring is here and my blood is close to skin,
drawing under the tent of it, shaky
like a great animal’s
fascinatingly labored breath, slow, piney
with the whatever of what it ate. Every day
I hope I collapse, and every day I take it
back & am become
more embarrassed,
or less. I walk alone often
but not every time. Birds frequently fly
over the nearby barbed fence
of the New Century Meat Corporation,
but none of them ever get caught.

day five of 30x30, and footing the bill

2010-04-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

What my new room gains in space it loses in storage space, and I am now surrounded with objects that I own all around me on the floor. I'm having to sort through them all. I'm finding things that aren't even mine. But it's all sort of meditative, sort of.

This used to be the cat owner room, and now the cats like to come in like they own the room too, and I don't own the room but neither do they and I own most of the stuff. So I kick them out.

Here's a poem about iambixxx. You could say a lot of things about this idea. Nevertheless, day five came easier.

__________________________________________

untitled (Controls #8?)

When something presses
so down it becomes
fulcrum, bones like bird bones,
the hollow center, the lover’s foot. Greenery unfurls
in spite of it, longer than intent
is walkable. Watching
the heel in front of you, which is covered by several
layers of thin and thick material. I would,
yes, if you asked me, but I don’t write this
to wax sexy about all ends of the body,
beautiful though they become
with time and with the right motive. I don’t
write to say please climb
with me into the foothills forever,
sink down to the anklebones with me
in the swamp forever.
Forever is a one-man show,
concentration, the brow and all
that churn, and I
am writing only small
and urgently: don’t waste
your tears any more on the wicked
hand, when someone stands
on these splendid things.

grave, or day 4 of 30x30

2010-04-04T20:49:00.000-07:00

A long beautiful day of moving (room to room not house to house), two grocery stores, and cider on the roof in the startlingly warm (for April) sun with a good friend and good roommates. Spring has arrived, but I did not say that if nature decides to take it back. (Please no.)

Squeaking by on day 4, five minutes left (but I spent some minutes finding this picture).

_________________________________________

Controls #7

This body is heavy and overcame
with sleep. Being with you
is like new gravity.

You’re grave. I’m anemic.
I had wished a radiant
nearness for so long,

a big sun flank,
and when you’re finally here I’m
a rogue unelliptical.

Planetar,
sweetly formed through collapse,
I sense your heat like a desperado

must always know a gun
from a convincing pocket. I have
an atmosphere, yes. But the air

around me is not warm
even though it looks that way.

correct! or, day three of 30x30

2010-04-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

Listening to the sounds of the coffee machine making someone else's coffee, getting ready to launch headfirst into what will be a pretty fucking long day (in the good way, hey).

___________________________________________________

i tell you, i have been stumping for the wrong thing

I flossed with a cherry stem. I combed my hair
with a cocktail fork. The gloss of bird-grease
and fake champagne, atomized,

for the exact pheromone slam
to right a gaze in this direction. Everything had big
ideas. Wanted to get near, to see the misery machine

working and working, the click, the gloze. Wobble closer.
Take your shoes off and listen to this.
I am a total bullshit fairy,

garbage wings and glitz, minor vehicle
of doom, but I

am changing these ways today.

Left myself a voicemail:
Step off the great butte
of your sparkling anguish

and look around at the shiny closeup world.
Listen, it's great even when it's not that high.

"i want to write something i would not show"

2010-04-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

This is not the thing, no.

________________________________________

Controls #6

The two sublime caves,
their dark strange gold, the way
they almost certainly held bats,
O, bats and other nocturnals.