CruelestMonth.com

The mastermind of useful enthusiasm behind 52 Projects.com brought to my attention the blog Poetry Thursday--a cheerful forum for people and poetry.  As you might expect, Thursdays are a popular day to visit the site, but even on its days off there's plenty of links and reading material.

Also, I've finally stopped lying and have taken the time to add the sites I said I would to the blogroll.  Enjoy.

The Amy Award

"The Amy Award is given to women poets age thirty and under who live in the New York City metropolitan area or on Long Island. Winners receive an honorarium, books, and a reading in New York; they are selected based on the submission of three lyric poems of up to fifty lines each." (via Poets & Writers)

Bay Poetics

Just received my copy of Bay Poetics from Faux Press and edited by Stephanie Young.  Click on the image to get a better look at it.  Fittingly, I'm a little behind in the conversation about this anthology.  Silliman's Blog prompted me to buy it--as the conversation was taking place--then the U.S. mail took its sweet time delivering the package, and now, upon arrival, I find a tome of such bewildering scope and eccentricity that I don't know where to begin.  The beginning seems a logical starting point, but it looks like a bushwack, and I'm a wimp with a pile of books already weighing down my Jack Bauer-esque satchel.  Silliman provided some direction with a follow-up post, though, I'm still bewildered (which is my fault alone).  Now I am talking out my behind.  The jury is far, far out on this ambitious and welcome effort by Young.  Visit Faux Press to order this anthology and other books.

Back from the Dead

Most of the Outlook away messages read: "...will be back on Monday from BEA," and yet they are still blinking into my inbox this morning.  Work is back from the dead but barely breathing--and still pretty eerie. It brought to mind "The Beautiful Shoeshine" from Return to the City of White Donkeys (Ecco, 2005) by James Tate:

There was no one in the airport. I

couldn’t believe it, so I walked down hallway

after hallway.  No passengers, no airline

personnel, no one in the little shops and

restaurants.  It was spooky.  I had a plane

to catch.  I had to get to Chicago.  But

actually that was a minor detail compared

to the overwhelming sense of otherwordliness

I was experiencing being alone in this huge

terminal, which is always bustling with

hordes of travelers and employees.

Finally I saw a shoeshine man sitting alone

on his stand.  I walked up to him and he

smiled and said, “Shoeshine, Mister?”

“Sure,” I said.  “You must be having kind of

a slow day,” I added.  “I’m doing fine,” he

said.  “It just seems the more people fly

the harder it is to see them.” I looked

around.  Some blurs were dashing

for the gates, others were asking the time

in high squeaky voices. It must be my fault,

just not flying enough.

Weekend Post*

It's not unexpected that Elegant Variation has an entertaining and informative play-by-play of BEA. Check it out so you know what we're missing. While not attending BEA, I did experience the similar spectacle of the Met. There's not much to say about the Met that hasn't already been said or that people care to hear, but I would like to comment on the current exhibit "Anglo Mania."

It's the silliest freaking exhibit I have ever seen in my life. Reasonable concept, botched execution.

"AngloMania focuses on British fashion from 1976 to 2006, a period of astounding creativity and experimentation. Over the past 30 years, British fashion has been defined by a knowing and self-conscious historicism. In their search for novelty, designers have looked to past styles with an appetite that is as audacious as it is rapacious. Focusing on their postmodern, historicizing tendencies, this exhibition presents a series of tableaux based on Britain’s rich artistic traditions. The irony of satirical prints, the romance of landscape paintings, and the glamour and bravado of grand manner portraits are evoked through a wide spectrum of British designers. The exhibition is set in the Metropolitan Museum’s English period rooms—the Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries—to create a potent dialogue between the past and the present."

Maybe the last thirty years have been great, but in the Met! Spine corsets and tampon mohawks in the English rooms? You shouldn't have to read anymore about this. Go if you want to be put-off and confused.

*Being the weekend, I'm writing from my girlfriend's computer and for whatever reason I can't include links in my post. Sorry.

Harold Bloom

It's strange being at work today.  Everyone has left for BEA and someone's flicked the weather-switch to Doomsday.  The weekend approacheth.   Saw some nice cracks of lightning from my boss's desk. Not much doing otherwise.  Though, while lovingly reshelving my boss's books, I found The Art of Reading Poetry by Harold Bloom.  It's not much thicker than a chapbook and the cover's ace.  Didn't even know we published it.  Since, as I said, everyone's down in D.C., I had a nice sit down this afternoon.  Bloom begins:

"Poetry essentially is figurative language, concentrated so that its form is both expressive and evocative. Figuration is a departure from the literal, and the form of a great poem itself can be a trope ('turning') or figure. A common dictionary equivalent for "figurative language" is 'metaphorical,' but a metaphor actually is a highly specific figure, or turning from the literal."

Bloom handles what's subjective as if it were hammers and nails--step-by-step, he builds for the reader a bookshelf of critical understanding, on which he places the world's great works, by which he stands looking pleased and, perhaps, a bit hungry.  But what is poetic metaphor if it doesn't allude to anything?  Would it be anything more than a scrapped project of indistinct make rusting in the garage?

"The art of reading poetry begins with mastering allusiveness in particular poems, from the simple to the very complex."  But: "Allusion is only one strand in the relationship between later and earlier poems. More (in my judgment) than any other kind of imaginative literature, poetry brings its own past alive into its present. There is a benign haunting in poetic tradition, on that transcends the sorrows of influence, particularly the new poet's fear that there is little left for her or him to do. In truth, there is everything remaining to be thought and sung, provided an individual voice is attached."

I let that quote run a little longer than coherence would normally allow, but it was nice, wasn't it.  "Benign haunting." Oooo.  Hit the link up top to read more great quotes from the book.  And if you really want to dig into some Bloom, take a gander here.  The air beckons.  FREEDOM!

Here are some Journals, Blogs, Publishers that you should check out:

Other Voices Books
Sweet Fancy Moses (Home of the Literary Death Match)
Swink
One Story
Me Three
Big Game
Wet Ink (An Art Magazine for and by Canadian Youth)

"Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado Professor who called some vicitims of 9/11 'little Eichmans,' is guilty of plagiarism." (via Bookslut)

Revolution Will Be Accessorized

Last night, McNally Robinson Bookstore in SoHo hosted a BlackBook event featuring the editor-in-chief, Aaron Hicklin, and two contributors, Meghan Daum (L.A.) and Dirk Wittenborn (NY).  The topic for discussion was the state of bourgeois in New York and L.A.  Wittenborn held homefield advantage, but had his hands full with Daum, who fiercely deflected any assertion (or compromise) that Wittenborn offered.  (Oh, I should mention this, the discussion celebrated the publication of The Revolution Will Be Accessorized--a complilation of the best essays, articles, reviews, etc. from BlackBook)  Below find representative excerpts from each author:

Daum: "What California is and, more important, what Los Angeles represents to the vast majority of its residents, is an exhilarating merger of middle-class values and upper-class aesthetics. If Target were a city of eight million it would be Los Angeles, a place were ambition is expressed through appearance and form trumps function any day of the week."

Wittenborn: "The Puritan myth that what made America great was making it on your own merit rather than who you knew was a fairy tale designed to keep the worker bees in line. It was only when the bourgeoisie began to ass lick with the efficiency and aggressiveness of their betters that it became networking."

Whenever a member of my own sex (that's a big Male to you) is getting trounced by a woman that is in a startling number of ways more articulate than he is, it's not long before the male begins to talk louder, make more jokes, and just be oh-so charming.  This is not what happened during the discussion, but there were moments when the battle of wits looked like it might devolve into less eloquent forms of winning the audience's approval.  But these were just moments!  Overall, the discussion fleshed out some great opinions from both sides!  HUZZAH!  Wittenborn was charming, but he also had some great observations on the social networks of New York City.  Daum was uncompromising in her opinions, but, damnit, she was right, so why shouldn't she be!  Enough yelling.

Now for the plug, Revolution features these authors: Jay McInerney, Joan Didion, Sam Lipsyte, Jonathan Ames, Neal Pollack, and many others. By the by, McNally Robinson is a wonderful bookstore.  They have my favorite display of all time: "Bad Covers, Great Books"

Until tomorrow.

Book of Longing

I've been meaning to talk to you about this (yes, you're in trouble), Leonard Cohen--the internationally celebrated writer, musician, and artist--has, over the last twenty years, penned a wonderfully sad (if things can be such) collection of poetry.  Written on southern California's Mount Baldy and in Los Angeles, Montreal, and Mumbai, the Book of Longing follows his 1984 publication, Book of Mercy.  This new collection features his own playful line drawings alongside poems of simple measure and true feeling.  As a book of longing, Cohen pines for the women of the world past, who seem to have lost human shape and exist only as perfumed memories.  In honor of its publication and in reverence to the end-all-be-all reader, Cruelest Month will send a copy of the Book of Longing to the first three readers to send their mailing address to [email protected].

You Have Loved Enough

I said I'd be your lover.
You laughed at what I said.
I lost my job forever.
I was counted with the dead.

I swept the marble chambers,
But you sent me down below.
You kept me from believing
Until you let me know:

That I am not the one who loves--
It's love that seizes me.
When hatred with his package comes,
You forbid delivery.

And when the hunger for your touch
Rises from the hunger,
You whisper, "You have loved enough,
Now let me be the Lover."