Esther Press

Received an email invitation to Wm. Rike's website, the incarnation apparition. His poems are dream-laden, somewhat distantly romantic, serious, with old-fashioned phrasing which is somehow not annoying. Worth reading.

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Watched Syriana the other night...a disparate, elusive movie, whose elusiveness is really not about much in the end. Big corporation's profit motives affects political situation, leading to a bloody coup. I guess one doesn't expect it from American films, so it's somewhat novel in that way, but most likely the only way. No Z.

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A new H_NGM_N. With work from one of my personal favorites, Daniel Borzutzky. See more links to Daniel's work here.

From an L.A. Times article:


"There's problems, ongoing problems, but we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime," Cheney said, adding that "there is a new regime in place that's been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off."

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Wasn't the initial objective to get rid of the WMDs? An interesting shift. A person never makes a mistake (or sees one) if the objectives continue to change to suit new claims?

Watch as Iran becomes the new Cambodia.

Watched The Trials of Henry Kissinger last night. Old Kissinger chum Alex Haig tries to run interference at several points throughout this blinding indictment, even at one point offering to the viewer that Christopher Hitchens is a sewer sucker, if I have that right. I got to wondering if Kissinger would be the shit in that equation. Competent, if a bit piecemeal, documentary.

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A new AL&C coming soon.

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Lighting market notes:

Most interesting ceiling fans are still at Fanimation.

Most exciting lighting company was Oggetti Luce. I can't seem to find a website to them, but did find an online seller with some pictures of their pendants. Expensive but beautiful.

I was at the semi-annual lighting trade show at the Dallas Market Center for the past week. The Center is the largest wholesale marketplace in the world. It's big. My co-workers and I also were lodging at the nearby Hilton Anatole, an enormous luxury hotel with 1600 rooms, full of marble and 100+ foot atriums with skylights. It was an exhausting trip. I had my fill of platinum blondes in sheepskin jackets and boots and smirking alcoholic businessmen.

I bought a couple of books for the plane-rides: The Journals of Lewis and Clark (a book that I've always wanted to read) and Norah Vincent's Self-Made Man. I didn't get to the Lewis and Clark book yet, but did finish Vincent's. Vincent goes undercover as a man for a year and a half and reports back what she felt, saw, understood. I've never read a book by a female that gets so many things right about being a man. Usually there is just sarcastic headscratching, coupled with stereotypical (mindless) depictions about sexist brutal clods. Vincent, however, gets to the center of things very nicely, and realizes the constructions men and women create for one another (and themselves) make for a tiring and awful state of affairs. It's no secret that boys have their "emotional" sides stripped of them very early by men and women, by the consistent regulating gestures, comments and societal stares one confronts as a boy from the time before he can even speak. It's also no strange thing what the result is: stoical, distant, sometimes violent creatures. Vincent's book goes a long way in pushing for a fully emotional world for men, something which would help us all.

From an AP article:

"...when asked if he owes the Iraqi people an apology for botching the management of the war, he [Bush] said "Not at all."

"We liberated that country from a tyrant," Bush said. "I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude."

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We are being governed by a delusional lunatic.

I'm not sure which of my friends has travelled more--Mark Sondrol (photo of him below) or Derek White.  Mark just came out here to visit us in Chico, telling us about his family's 17-day trip to Maine, Connecticut, Newport, Quebec--where he blew serious dough at Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac--, Lake George, etc.  He'll be doing a Scandanavian tour in June.  Derek's been all over the world and writes the best travel notes.  Informative, funny, and always a little bit peeved, which generates some of the humor.  He needs to do a whole book.  He and his wife Jess/ica Fanzo just visited Morocco.

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I'll try to write a little review of another book soon.

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Also received as a gift over the holidays:

The Omnivore's Dilemma--A Natural History Of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
Palestine--Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter

 

The pictures below are from our recent trip to the Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA.  The bridge was designed by the architect of the moment, Santiago Calatrava.  We visited the bridge on our return from Mount Shasta--2.5 hours north of Chico.  Shasta is one of the "fourteeners" in California--that is, one of the twelve mountains at the 14,000 foot range.   I'll post a couple of pictures of Shasta after this post.

 

Ron Silliman
Under Albany
Salt
2004
Paperback
$15.95


I purchased this book at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, WI, on the recommendation of Chuck Stebelton (whose book I also purchased there). We've witnessed other slim volumes of quasi-memoir from the various people involved with the magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: My Life by Lyn Hejinian, True by Rae Armantrout, Bad History by Barrett Watten, etc. Ron Silliman's contribution, Under Albany, uses as its frame the understories to each of the sentences in his poem "Under Albany." The book wanders around Silliman’s early life in Albany, California, through his various jobs, on the BART, his meetings with crucial figures in his life, his political and social concerns and actions, before finally arriving/detailing his beginnings with his second wife.

When I read most memoirs, I am frequently at-the-ready to cringe deeply at most authorial declarations of his or her past and present. Few professions contain more self-important people than the field of writing. By a writer’s very nature, he/she attempts to explain or simply describe what is called existence. I often feel anything written is a lie, and that the describing is merely hope presenting itself as reality. Furthermore, when the descriptions are presented as facts, as a sea of interlocking mechanisms that are convinced of its authority, my b.s. detector really goes off. Throw a healthy dose of author ego into this concoction, and I think one can see why I steer clear of most memoirs.

Silliman’s memoir sometimes dances pretty close to the edges noted above, especially in the links between the sentences in his poem and their shadow histories. As I was reading it, I thought someone who is not Ron Silliman should take the poem and write about his or her own life with his very sentences, for while there are certainly contextual links peculiar to Silliman, there isn’t a line in it to which others couldn’t have their own contexts.

Silliman emerges from his depiction of himself as an analytical notetaker, a kindhearted person, a bit proud of himself, an interesting thinker on social issues, a devoted father and husband, and a person with a good memory, if one trusts it. I wasn’t expecting much of what was revealed, as the Silliman he presents here is more open/exposed/raw than the one that comes through on his website. I think I appreciated this part the most, in the end. I admire his ability to show the world in both its horrors and beauties, together, with simple-minded decisions tossed to the wayside, where one is left living with intermittent questions of whether what one did or didn’t do was the right-wrong thing.

The 1st being a/the common site for reflection/progression, a couple things to remember/look forward to:

I read in NYC, San Francisco, and Chicago last year and was very glad to be a part of those events, to meet people interested in poetry.  I tend to feel most "at home" in Chicago and NYC for some reason--perhaps my attitude and humor are better understood in these places--but the San Francisco organizers and crowd were very accomadating and generous.  As well, I am very glad to be living in California, and wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

As for poets new to me in 2006, the person who really stood out was a Bay area writer named, then, Tanya Brolaski, who subsequently has changed her name to Julian T. Brolaski.  He is a wonderful, dynamic writer, full of concision, rhythm, intelligence, and animal fecundity.  If I were running a print press, I would publish him in a second.  I say this all without knowing Julian, so there is no friend/acquaintance-angle going on here.

As for 2007, perhaps the biggest news will be my marriage to my long-time friend, Lisa.  She has been an outstanding support for me throughout the years, through different major trials and tediousities--ie, the aftermaths of alcoholism, etc.--and am so happy to have her in my life.  

Happy New Year.