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PEN World Voices / Believer Night-Time Event

Inspired by some divine foresight, I showed an hour early to the Believer Night-Time Event at the New School's Tishmann auditorium. The crowd showed up not long after. I doubt everyone got in, but while they waited, the throng pulsed, disbanded, and reformed, over and over, for an uncomfortable forty-five minutes. Confusion reigned over the hip, hip, hip scene as a troop of pale, nervous people with special red passes hanging about their necks wrangled the line. Eventually, after much agitation and doubt, we were allowed into the auditorium.

John Hodgman provided the opening remarks and established himself as the event's happy jester. His presence was a welcome sign of relief when things (presentations, panels) lost their pace. He led the audience in a recitation of the "Six Oaths of the Virtuous Child." From the banal to the bizarre, the oaths ranged from "I shall not waste the day" to "In my sleep, I shall smile with my sharpened teeth." It was an auspicious start.

Ben Marcus introduced Matthew Ritchie who then reinforced the pretensions of some, muddled the preconceptions of others, and left me wondering whether his entire presentation wasn't some sort of schtick. He rehearsed a layered exercise in post-modern thought, which was definitely interesting, but I strained to keep up with the many turns in logic. Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein, Hitler, Dali, Pollock, Beckett, Smithson, Warhol, Ginsberg and their ideas were discusssed in passing, and all as a premise to discuss the influence of Ejlert Lovborg on the plays of Henrick Ibsen. Yeesh! Just as Ritchie was beginning the second part of his presentation, Hodgman cut him short with the proverbial hook. "What was that guy talking about?" Hodgman joked.

And so we laughed. The panel was next. Dubravka Ugresic, Etgar Keret, Rodrigo Fresan, Yiyun Li, and Helen Oyeyemi were prompted by the moderator, Samantha Hunt, on the topic of "The Secret Life of Secrets," which touched on politics, childhood, and identity. Hunt was the most loving, nurturing, nodding moderator one could imagine. She sounded exactly like Molly Shannon from the SNL skit, "The Delicious Dish." I don't want to talk about the panel anymore. Rushdie was next.

He read an excerpt from his last novel, "Shamilar the Clown." Now I'm not an authority on Rushdie's work by any means. I haven't read a word. But I sensed a certain complacency in the prose he read, like he knew it was good. Maybe it was, but it fell flat on my ears. There were a few moments when you could tell he was expecting to hear laughter, yet heard nothing. He smiled often, read quickly, and left without leaving much of an impression.

Donald Trump, projected on the overhead, then explicated the truths contained in Citizen Kane. It was funny, and Trump knows more than he lets on. Hodgman reappeared to conclude the evening and that was it. A panel celebrating the 50th anniversary of "Howl" was next, but I had had enough sitting and listening, so I left.

Exposure for the North

I was skimming my hometown paper yesterday for more news (and hopefully a particularly snarly local edge) on the Viswanathan case, and came across "Powow Poets Play Their Part" in The Boston Globe. Meet the Powow River Poets (if you haven't already): "The 15-year-old group counts among its ranks a former Pentagon insider, a lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court, a repeat ''Jeopardy!" winner, and a one-time New York Yankees batboy."  Last month they released their first anthology and they will be participating in the first annual Newport Literary Festival, going on today and tomorrow in the great commonwealth of Massachusetts (and I call it so with all the objectivity I can muster).  The festival honors the life and work of late Andre Dubus, the author of 12 books who has been described as "America's Chekhov." (Let me now kill many birds with one stone: Our own Joyce Carol Oates in the NYRB (some time ago, indeed) writes about the life and fate of the short story in her typically engaging fashion and makes mention of Mr. Dubus and his legacy as an heir to the Chekhovian throne so now you, dear reader, can trust that I know what I am talking about. Click here.) Should you be in the vicinity of this festival, I suggest you go, because in addition to all the other interesting and wonderful things that will be happening in the next 48 hours in this quaint seaside New England town in the name of literature, where, I have no doubt, one could purchase a tiny stained glass lighthouse or lobster to stick in one's kitchen window as a reminder of how unlucky one is for living anywhere but New England, you can witness the eclectic but accomplished members of the Powow River Poets in action.  Now, these poets have caught my attention for two reasons: one, they seem not quite your usual batch of poets and therefore I am curious to see how one would write winning poems about life in the Pentagon, for example, and two, the sound of them and their anthology makes me a little nervous.  Of these poets and their poems: "'We're not an agreeable bunch,' [editor Alfred Nichol] said, waving a hand at a copy of the anthology. 'The fact that we're gathered together under one cover--it's a wonder the thing lies still.' " Clashing styles and egos, forms and practices, it sounds so chaotic and disjointed, I get a little dizzy trying to put it all together.  But then again, maybe that's exactly why it will be great. 

On PEN's Faith and Reason event: Maud Newton

SSN

Last night, I swung by the reading/big-night-out for Small Spiral Notebook.  Happy Ending was a good venue: ample seating, fine lighting, accessible bar, and pleasing acoustics.  Todd Zuniga, Joan Biddle, Joshua Mandelbaum, Michelle Wildgen, Patricia Powell, and Elissa Schappell read selections of poetry and prose.  As an endcap to the reading, singer/songwriter, Summer Pierre sang and made everyone happy.

There are some amazing pieces in Issue 1 of Volume 3.  I just finished "You Don't Have to Live Here" by Natasha Radojcic.  I suggest you finish it sometime soon, too.  Keep an eye out here on the CruelestMonth for an upcoming interview with Founder Felicia C. Sullivan and Poetry Editor Kristen Henley.

Small Spiral Notebook

Tonight from 7-10 come (or go?) celebrate the fifth birthday of the Small Spiral Notebook

We're celebrating issue three on April 27, 2006, at Happy Ending Lounge (302 Broome Street) in NYC 7-10pm. Readers include SSN Contributors Elissa Schappell, Todd Zuniga, Joshua Mandelbaum, Idra Novey, Joan Biddle & Michelle Wildgen. Performances by indie recording artist Summer Pierre & an exhibition of Michael Paige Glover's prints. $10 door fee scores you a copy of issue 3.

This looks good, too: 2006 NY Writers Coalition Write-A-Thon.  Really good.

Dissed in Verse: The Art of the Poetic Insult on Slate.com

Trashy Lit News

Viswanathan

Sorry for not posting yesterday.  It couldn't be helped.  Let's pretend we're still diligent bloggers and that we're not overwhelmed at work.  David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and most recently, Black Swan Green, will be reading at Skylight Books in L.A.  Black Swan Green has been reviewed in The Believer, the NY Times (by our own Nell Freudenberger), and the New Yorker.  Editors really like to pass that stuff around, apparently.

Also, visit us early next week for an interview with poet John Koethe.  Sally's Hair.

Here's a poem from Tonelius Oliver's "visual collection of poems and paintings," The Myth Stimuli. You can preview more of his poems through the hyperlink where his book is also available. He is a calming sort of poet. A little Lao Tzu in there.

Cremation Nuclear

Pressure pulling you forward
Knowing that you’re ready
Ready to fulfill the role
The role that meets destiny
Destiny is you’re fate
Fate is the correct path

Coals stored away from this time
Cremation nuclear
This could be the last time
You come to see this planet
So make a go at the prize this time
Nothing but tranquility stored in the heart
Yet living in chaotic times

Sunlight at midnight
Black as snow
Dust rounded up
Stored into this molecular structure
Framework
Nothing will stop me you
Not even a nuclear cremation

Who says you always have to think for yourself?

It's Tuesday afternoon and right now I'm much happier to let other people do the thinking for me. But as far as I can tell, hero-worship and axe-grinding aside, the experts have offered up some stimulating material.

In the Christian Science Monitor, a warm tribute to X J Kennedy: " 'He was the Billy Collins before there was a Billy Collins.'"  Elizabeth Lund highlights Kennedy's ease and accessibility, his commitment to younger poets, and reveals how seeing himself as a " 'tour guide through the murky forest of poetry" has shaped his own poetry.  With free verse, perhaps the most common currency in poetry, Kennedy's interest in metre in rhyme is both a comforting return and a refreshing break from the norm.

Elizabeth Lund also examines the works of Wislawa Szymborska and our own Jane Hirshfield.  In "A Fascinating Journey with Two Women Poets" Lund writes, "Often poets don't look at the world straight on. They gaze down in order to glimpse something clearly. Or they peer in so they can see out." Reviewing Symborska's  Monologue of a Dog and Hirshfield's After, Lund speaks to the different ways in which each transverse the landscapes of their subjects--one in "imaginative leaps" and the other in "analytical" steps. 

In the Times Literary Supplement, Peter McDonald writes of Yeats's Ghosts, that is, his prose.  McDonald takes a look at Yeats's efforts in fiction, specifically his book Mythologies. Although certainly worth reading because, well, it's Yeats, the biographical tidbits here are choice.

And if the "séances and magical invocations" surrounding Yeats aren't enough, at the Poetry Foundation, Tim Apello considers whether or not it was a poem that turned Kurt Cobain on himself.  In "Desire to Burn," Apello looks at the poetry Cobain copied and responded to in his notebook. 

Feeling less like an automaton, I'm off to get my Ouiji board.  Cheers.