Saturday, June 30, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Juliana Spahr
The Transformation
Atelos
223 pages
2007
$13.50
Whenever I read a book by a member of a majority population talking about members of a minority population, the first thing I look for is the depiction of the minority members and if they are allowed the right to not be angels. So many books by sensitive, politically-correct writers depict the innocence of the “other” in an embarrassingly phony way, where one imagines them never swearing, never saying an unkind thing, which is used as rhetorical shorthand to point out even more the incredible savagery of the majority population’s presence on them. When I read only about angels, I know that I am being conned badly, and that this is erasure again, and not about life, or anyone who has ever lived it.
Juliana Spahr’s The Transformation depicts the “other”—here, Hawai’ian—as both unsentimental victim and aggressor (in speech), as her narrator and her friends witness it as haoles, when the narrator begins working at the university. The narrator and her friends are intellectuals and are constantly thinking about who they are, and how they might not offend “the other,” and how they might have been offended, and what there is to be done about being offended, and if there is any way out of any of it. What may sound, in the above, like more egomaniacal, liberal guilt talk therapy, actually doesn’t descend into it, or at least not to me. The narrator and friends are nameless, but serve under the term “they” throughout the book. The “they” are endlessly revealing themselves to be awkward, confused, uninformed, informed, embarrassed by their presence, etc., and while it creates a sense of “fumbling humanity” and not “dominating humanity,” it is also an earnest effort to break free from “themselves,” with the emphasis much more on the “them” than the “selves.”
The “they” play the role of outsider and inhabitable, as the metaphors and realities of air pollutants, and prickly new blood cells, and transforming thinking all play a role in creating, by book’s end, a multivalent, multi-species organism, full of blood and disgust and war operations and island air and worry and planes and zooplankton. The statement made by the choice of “they” is not dual but triple—the they of the outsider, the they of belonging, and the dual third way, of outsider-belonger. Spahr is certainly shifting between all three of these fields but mostly pressing for the use of the third way, of being the one of constant “otherhood-belongingness.” This kind of “otherhood,” she seems to be arguing, is a way out of a politics of dominance and submission to one of interactive arrivals and informative connections with other theys, including the theys of other non-human life forms.
What does all this theying mean? (One thinks of the title Sexing of the Cherry as entrance to The Theying of the People.) Is this one intricately woven Oprahic hug? Does one want to be hugged? Does one have a choice? Is it overly optimistic thinking? I don’t think so. Spahr is ultimately interested in destroying binaries of thought, of action, of thought in action, and in creating a world with “both-at-once.” One understands this in the assembling of the book itself, and its tone. One reads what may seem like an endless inversion of diction, or a tone meant to imitate ocean waves, with its culling and reminding of previous thoughts, displaced, and reassembled. I tend to view it as both at once, as drone-ebbing, to coin a clunky term, or how the calmly uncalm ocean doesn’t care what you think about it—it just moves on, powerfully, beautifully, hypnotically, filled with fish and minerals, undercurrents and ships bringing theys and they-things to here and there.
The “they” is also the plural usage given to the narrator and the two live-in lovers in the book. Their threesome relationship itself is frequently unable to comfortably exist beyond their apartment doors, and this anxiety about their perversion (Spahr’s term, not mine) is given ample room, with both—again—sad-humorous outcomes. The intensity of the relationship, and the intensity of the thinking about their relationship, and the intensity of thinking about how their presence in the world is seen as toxic (in Hawai’i, as haoles) can be both intellectually gratifying—because of the rigor—but also quite funny because of the very (over)analyzing of itself. In fact, overall, the book does contain an awfully grim wit within its solemn movements about war horrors and 9/11 atmospheres.
The book also details life on the island of Manhattan—one of the organizing metaphors of the book is centered around the idea of the island—and the contrastive living there as opposed to Hawai’i, or the papermill “island” of Chillicothe, Ohio, where Spahr grew up. But these islands are connected by land and sea and people and ducks and wars and paranoia and sexist language and children and fallen buildings, and this is Spahr’s burgeoning area of interest—of connectivity, of communication, of mindful critique, of mindfulness. Spahr’s world seems to be ever expanding, folding, and imploding, displaying here in the The Transformation what appears to be a rigorously spiritual depth, recalling and updating John Donne’s sentiments:
No man is an island. entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Though, here no they is now an island. The man is a woman and a man (and a man). And Europe is America and elsewhere. And mankind is humankind. But the sea is still the sea, however polluted and overfished, and war deaths still diminish everyone, all the theys and thees.
The Transformation
Atelos
223 pages
2007
$13.50
Whenever I read a book by a member of a majority population talking about members of a minority population, the first thing I look for is the depiction of the minority members and if they are allowed the right to not be angels. So many books by sensitive, politically-correct writers depict the innocence of the “other” in an embarrassingly phony way, where one imagines them never swearing, never saying an unkind thing, which is used as rhetorical shorthand to point out even more the incredible savagery of the majority population’s presence on them. When I read only about angels, I know that I am being conned badly, and that this is erasure again, and not about life, or anyone who has ever lived it.
Juliana Spahr’s The Transformation depicts the “other”—here, Hawai’ian—as both unsentimental victim and aggressor (in speech), as her narrator and her friends witness it as haoles, when the narrator begins working at the university. The narrator and her friends are intellectuals and are constantly thinking about who they are, and how they might not offend “the other,” and how they might have been offended, and what there is to be done about being offended, and if there is any way out of any of it. What may sound, in the above, like more egomaniacal, liberal guilt talk therapy, actually doesn’t descend into it, or at least not to me. The narrator and friends are nameless, but serve under the term “they” throughout the book. The “they” are endlessly revealing themselves to be awkward, confused, uninformed, informed, embarrassed by their presence, etc., and while it creates a sense of “fumbling humanity” and not “dominating humanity,” it is also an earnest effort to break free from “themselves,” with the emphasis much more on the “them” than the “selves.”
The “they” play the role of outsider and inhabitable, as the metaphors and realities of air pollutants, and prickly new blood cells, and transforming thinking all play a role in creating, by book’s end, a multivalent, multi-species organism, full of blood and disgust and war operations and island air and worry and planes and zooplankton. The statement made by the choice of “they” is not dual but triple—the they of the outsider, the they of belonging, and the dual third way, of outsider-belonger. Spahr is certainly shifting between all three of these fields but mostly pressing for the use of the third way, of being the one of constant “otherhood-belongingness.” This kind of “otherhood,” she seems to be arguing, is a way out of a politics of dominance and submission to one of interactive arrivals and informative connections with other theys, including the theys of other non-human life forms.
What does all this theying mean? (One thinks of the title Sexing of the Cherry as entrance to The Theying of the People.) Is this one intricately woven Oprahic hug? Does one want to be hugged? Does one have a choice? Is it overly optimistic thinking? I don’t think so. Spahr is ultimately interested in destroying binaries of thought, of action, of thought in action, and in creating a world with “both-at-once.” One understands this in the assembling of the book itself, and its tone. One reads what may seem like an endless inversion of diction, or a tone meant to imitate ocean waves, with its culling and reminding of previous thoughts, displaced, and reassembled. I tend to view it as both at once, as drone-ebbing, to coin a clunky term, or how the calmly uncalm ocean doesn’t care what you think about it—it just moves on, powerfully, beautifully, hypnotically, filled with fish and minerals, undercurrents and ships bringing theys and they-things to here and there.
The “they” is also the plural usage given to the narrator and the two live-in lovers in the book. Their threesome relationship itself is frequently unable to comfortably exist beyond their apartment doors, and this anxiety about their perversion (Spahr’s term, not mine) is given ample room, with both—again—sad-humorous outcomes. The intensity of the relationship, and the intensity of the thinking about their relationship, and the intensity of thinking about how their presence in the world is seen as toxic (in Hawai’i, as haoles) can be both intellectually gratifying—because of the rigor—but also quite funny because of the very (over)analyzing of itself. In fact, overall, the book does contain an awfully grim wit within its solemn movements about war horrors and 9/11 atmospheres.
The book also details life on the island of Manhattan—one of the organizing metaphors of the book is centered around the idea of the island—and the contrastive living there as opposed to Hawai’i, or the papermill “island” of Chillicothe, Ohio, where Spahr grew up. But these islands are connected by land and sea and people and ducks and wars and paranoia and sexist language and children and fallen buildings, and this is Spahr’s burgeoning area of interest—of connectivity, of communication, of mindful critique, of mindfulness. Spahr’s world seems to be ever expanding, folding, and imploding, displaying here in the The Transformation what appears to be a rigorously spiritual depth, recalling and updating John Donne’s sentiments:
No man is an island. entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Though, here no they is now an island. The man is a woman and a man (and a man). And Europe is America and elsewhere. And mankind is humankind. But the sea is still the sea, however polluted and overfished, and war deaths still diminish everyone, all the theys and thees.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
"Sistah" Lalley in the new Konundrum Engine. She also has a long essay in the new Bitch. My previous local outlet for Bitch--Tower Records--was about 250 million in the red and is no longer. You can look here for local stores that carry Bitch. Or just get it online.
*
There was recently a study done at Emory University on what men and women look at when presented with nude heterosexual pictures. Contrary to what was always thought, it turns out that men actually look upon the divine faces of women first, and that women are the ones looking at sex first. Those soulful men! Those loose women!
*
Watched Breach. About the Robert Hanssen FBI case. Eh.
*
There was recently a study done at Emory University on what men and women look at when presented with nude heterosexual pictures. Contrary to what was always thought, it turns out that men actually look upon the divine faces of women first, and that women are the ones looking at sex first. Those soulful men! Those loose women!
*
Watched Breach. About the Robert Hanssen FBI case. Eh.
Friday, June 22, 2007
An urban rube is someone who believes that life doesn't exist out of whatever city they happen to live in. The urban rube often feels the need to disparage where other people live, usually without any idea what that place is like or who the people are. The most extreme viral display of urban rubes show up in the American East Coast cities.
*
Trying to find a video of 9/11 at You Tube and stumbled upon this very nicely done edit job: Bush.
*
FENCE magazine is using my story in the recent issue as one of the online samples. It's here. All about the magical world of MFA programs.
*
Trying to find a video of 9/11 at You Tube and stumbled upon this very nicely done edit job: Bush.
*
FENCE magazine is using my story in the recent issue as one of the online samples. It's here. All about the magical world of MFA programs.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Today, again, struck by the very small number of known sober poets. (Perhaps it's one of those incompatibles like "humanely killed"). I can only speak of my own experience, of course, but when I was drinking I simply had no fathomable idea what a controlling "reality-maker" alcohol was, how much it made me who I was then, how much it made me think this was who I was, made me nearly not imagine other possibilities of personality, or, simply, options for growth. In my case, it was very much like getting entangled in a large net that one has purposively or not-so purposively thrown over one's self. When I was drinking, I never even noticed I was inside a net. As I saw it then, what was in fact the net was just "who I was."
*
Nearly finished watching Crime and Punishment (1969), directed by Lev Kulidzhanov. No movie's predetermined two-hour viewing time will ever be able to get to the subtleties of a book--there simply isn't enough time alloted. This is also why characters in movies tend to be cartoonish figures--pure evil, pure good, etc. When enough time is alloted, like in the wonderful 11-hour Brideshead Revisited (1981) (with Jeremy Irons), the scope of a book can be better felt, the characters take on more of the complex/"contradictory" (if so) shifts of personality. Kulidzhanov's version of Crime and Punishment is about as faithful and nuanced of a filmed version as we'll likely ever have. The delerium of Rasklinokov is portrayed extremely well, and the cinematography presents the same kind of uneasy, ruinous world that appears in the book. 3 hours, 20 minutes.
*
About 2/3rds through Juliana Spahr's The Tranformation. It feels like I may have to write about it here when I'm finished. I don't always feel that need, or have that desire to say something. I have no idea what it is, though; it tends to feel like some weird boulder that needs to be freed.
*
Nearly finished watching Crime and Punishment (1969), directed by Lev Kulidzhanov. No movie's predetermined two-hour viewing time will ever be able to get to the subtleties of a book--there simply isn't enough time alloted. This is also why characters in movies tend to be cartoonish figures--pure evil, pure good, etc. When enough time is alloted, like in the wonderful 11-hour Brideshead Revisited (1981) (with Jeremy Irons), the scope of a book can be better felt, the characters take on more of the complex/"contradictory" (if so) shifts of personality. Kulidzhanov's version of Crime and Punishment is about as faithful and nuanced of a filmed version as we'll likely ever have. The delerium of Rasklinokov is portrayed extremely well, and the cinematography presents the same kind of uneasy, ruinous world that appears in the book. 3 hours, 20 minutes.
*
About 2/3rds through Juliana Spahr's The Tranformation. It feels like I may have to write about it here when I'm finished. I don't always feel that need, or have that desire to say something. I have no idea what it is, though; it tends to feel like some weird boulder that needs to be freed.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
David Markson
The Last Novel
Shoemaker & Hoard
2007
190 pages
$15, paperback
People magazine for literary people?
Random gossip, random insults, an interest, again, in celebrity names, their lives?
Pithy soundbites?
A lot of deaths, reasons for, interested in.
Equating one's self with Monet. (?)
Remarkably most of this is actually known. So, known things mixed together.
With a winkwink intrusion of authorial instep.
Being hard on the book. Too hard.
Reconsider.
Ugliness of artists, ugliness of writers, ugliness of the world.
Always have been interested in the texts of phone conversations.
Some surprising knowns not known by me previously.
How long has Markson thought this will be his Last Novel?
10 years?
15?
Funny at times.
Though one wonders how many Israeli-Jewish schools recognize Palestine?
He stoically cites the opposite as, I'm assuming, deplorable.
Much music.
Skillful with attribution.
Disturbingly tossed-off summations of "crazy" people, the "deranged". As if that's who they are.
The "in-crowd" given, as always, the kid-glove treatment.
My people.
Have to admit to being bored this time around. One too many times around the same track.
Or perhaps this was always just one manuscript, split up four ways (Reader's Block, This is Not a Novel, Vanishing Point).
Yes, but there is a difference. The vacuous saying vacuous things is not the same as "intelligent" writers saying vacuous things.
Anti-Christian sentiments given a typical pass. As well as anti-Islamic.
Some of them not without merit.
A novel about egomaniacs and their struggles and "struggles."
Some wonderful beauties. Some horrifying descriptions (of concentration camps, Hiroshima, etc.)
Nice observations on the impact of writers on their families.
Also, of general patriarchy inserting itself.
Writer can't hide, though, from the selections. Of what gets put in. Versus what doesn't.
An unusual interest in coincidence.
This Is Not A Review?
One's mother's brother is one's uncle.
The Last Novel
Shoemaker & Hoard
2007
190 pages
$15, paperback
People magazine for literary people?
Random gossip, random insults, an interest, again, in celebrity names, their lives?
Pithy soundbites?
A lot of deaths, reasons for, interested in.
Equating one's self with Monet. (?)
Remarkably most of this is actually known. So, known things mixed together.
With a winkwink intrusion of authorial instep.
Being hard on the book. Too hard.
Reconsider.
Ugliness of artists, ugliness of writers, ugliness of the world.
Always have been interested in the texts of phone conversations.
Some surprising knowns not known by me previously.
How long has Markson thought this will be his Last Novel?
10 years?
15?
Funny at times.
Though one wonders how many Israeli-Jewish schools recognize Palestine?
He stoically cites the opposite as, I'm assuming, deplorable.
Much music.
Skillful with attribution.
Disturbingly tossed-off summations of "crazy" people, the "deranged". As if that's who they are.
The "in-crowd" given, as always, the kid-glove treatment.
My people.
Have to admit to being bored this time around. One too many times around the same track.
Or perhaps this was always just one manuscript, split up four ways (Reader's Block, This is Not a Novel, Vanishing Point).
Yes, but there is a difference. The vacuous saying vacuous things is not the same as "intelligent" writers saying vacuous things.
Anti-Christian sentiments given a typical pass. As well as anti-Islamic.
Some of them not without merit.
A novel about egomaniacs and their struggles and "struggles."
Some wonderful beauties. Some horrifying descriptions (of concentration camps, Hiroshima, etc.)
Nice observations on the impact of writers on their families.
Also, of general patriarchy inserting itself.
Writer can't hide, though, from the selections. Of what gets put in. Versus what doesn't.
An unusual interest in coincidence.
This Is Not A Review?
One's mother's brother is one's uncle.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Am one-third of the way through Hannah Weiner's Open House. Quite clearly this will be one of the top books to have this year. The writing is invalueable. Next to the Complete Vallejo, this one follows right along after.
Monday, June 04, 2007
To listen to Suzanne Stein, Alli Warren, and myself reading at Pegasus Bookstore in Berkeley, you can go to Andrew Kenower's site, a voice box. I apologize for my throat-clearing. I didn't realize I was doing it that often. Oh, and the part where I say Wow! is in reference to two people who got up to leave right before I began the poem. Here's a direct link to my reading only.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Watched Color Me Kubrick: A True...ish Story. It starts out fairly strong but degenerates as the film goes along. It is still interesting enough, and Malkovich has not been campier, more hilarious, than he is here, although he does go far afield at times. The film is about the real-life Kubrick impersonator, now deceased, Alan Conway. No F For Fake.
It was a fun time in Berkeley, meeting all the local writers and poets. It's a casually vibrant scene. I didn't think anything could top the wonderful intensity of the Chicago-Milwaukee environment of a few years ago, but I think Berkeley-Oakland-SF has. Very exciting.
I dropped into Moe's and bought the following:
Carla Harryman, Gardener of Stars, Atelos, 2001
Juliana Spahr, The Transformation, Atelos, 2007
Jocelyn Saidenberg, Negativity, Atelos, 2006
Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, I Love Artists, University of California Press, 2006
Charles Bernstein, Controlling Interests, Roof, 1980/1986
And then I bought some more at Pegasus Bookstore:
Lisa Robertson, Debbie: An Epic, New Star Books, 1997/2003
Michael Magee, My Angie Dickinson, Zasterle, 2006
Benjamin Friedlander, The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes, subpress, 2007
Hannah Weiner, Hannah Weiner's Open House, Kenning Editions, 2007
Dodie Bellamy, Academonia, Krupskaya, 2006
David Markson, The Last Novel, Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007
*
The reading was recorded. I'll post a link when it shows up.
I dropped into Moe's and bought the following:
Carla Harryman, Gardener of Stars, Atelos, 2001
Juliana Spahr, The Transformation, Atelos, 2007
Jocelyn Saidenberg, Negativity, Atelos, 2006
Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, I Love Artists, University of California Press, 2006
Charles Bernstein, Controlling Interests, Roof, 1980/1986
And then I bought some more at Pegasus Bookstore:
Lisa Robertson, Debbie: An Epic, New Star Books, 1997/2003
Michael Magee, My Angie Dickinson, Zasterle, 2006
Benjamin Friedlander, The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes, subpress, 2007
Hannah Weiner, Hannah Weiner's Open House, Kenning Editions, 2007
Dodie Bellamy, Academonia, Krupskaya, 2006
David Markson, The Last Novel, Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007
*
The reading was recorded. I'll post a link when it shows up.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Pacific Ocean between Big Sur and San Simeon. Rhodies in bloom, Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens.
Hearst Castle from Hwy 1. Arriving by bus at Hearst Castle. A detail. The Roman Pool at Hearst Castle. Just four miles north of the Castle is a huge colony of elephant seals. These seals are not dead. They're sleeping, trying to sleep, starting fights, coming and going into the ocean.
