Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (795 of them)

Also I was merely trying to be kind before, Goon Squad is fucking garbage.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 13:56 (two years ago) link

In poetry, for what it's worth, the debate about descriptors like 'experimental,' 'innovative,' and others continues to rage.

What I often think is ignored in these debates is that the state of mainstream poetry and literature is as such that words like 'experimental' serve an important function in establishing a work or poet as against a dominant hegemonic aesthetic. Other than this function, the words don't mean a whole lot.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:05 (two years ago) link

And if you want to know what the dominant hegemonic aesthetic might be, look toward the dilatory epiphanic tone that permeates the most popular English language poetry: Gorman, Kaur, Billy Collins, etc.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:07 (two years ago) link

Ugh. When I hear the name Collins that’s when I reach for my ….

Anyway, I like your term “dilatory epiphanic.”

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:13 (two years ago) link

It's been growing on me since the first time you used it

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:15 (two years ago) link

I always like this takedown by August Kleinzahler, although I don't know if I have had any takers yet on this borad: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/60488/no-antonin-artaud-with-the-flapjacks-please

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:17 (two years ago) link

Ha! Apart from the forced imbecilic simplicity of Collins' verse, I thought his mortal sin was going straight for the arena rock climax in the first stanza.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:17 (two years ago) link

You can also find it in the inexplicable fawning of the mainstream presses and book reviews of mediocre dead poets like Robert Lowell, who seems to have a new book around him every year for some godforsaken reason that no one I know can figure out. Heaping praise on dead people who were lauded mostly for their ghastly biography instead of engaging in challenging work of the present is not new, but it still irks.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:21 (two years ago) link

Billy Collins was in attendance at a good friend's wedding. It didn't end well.

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:23 (two years ago) link

Norman Mailer's son was there too, to add to the fun.

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:24 (two years ago) link

You can also find it in the inexplicable fawning of the mainstream presses and book reviews of mediocre dead poets like Robert Lowell, who seems to have a new book around him every year for some godforsaken reason that no one I know can figure out. Heaping praise on dead people who were lauded mostly for their ghastly biography instead of engaging in challenging work of the present is not new, but it still irks.

mmm I disagree. Lowell did change the course of American poetry briefly even though I prefer the chillier early stuff like Lords Weary Castle and have little to no patience for most anything after 1960; those 1970s collections he shat out are doggerel at best.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2022 14:27 (two years ago) link

He wrote one good poem afaic, and it's the most unlike the rest of his other work. Just a crazy racist Boston Brahmin who never should have been given a second thought.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 15:04 (two years ago) link

But even if you love him, why does his work still command so much attention when...well, he's been dead for 45 years? I think it has a lot more to do with mainstream fetishization of mental illness than the quality of his poetry.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 15:06 (two years ago) link

In a sense, what I'm getting at is there *is* an industry that keeps certain types of writing in circulation and has a vested interest in doing so. To my mind, being called 'experimental' often means that the work cannot be totally subsumed into the flow of capital that guides this industry's decisions. That's the kind of writing that I'm interested in, and similarly with music.

The idea that there is anything profound about ubiquity is a bankrupt one.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 15:11 (two years ago) link

You mean like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-nxdyTOtE8

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 15:12 (two years ago) link

(xoost to your previoius post)

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 15:18 (two years ago) link

Any book with a spine is too structurally unadventurous to be called experimental IMO.

Tim, Friday, 18 February 2022 16:29 (two years ago) link

Lol

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 16:35 (two years ago) link

user Tim v much walking the walk

ok what the fuck is happening in the uk (rain) (wins), Friday, 18 February 2022 16:41 (two years ago) link

At what point should we shit out dead poets? As soon as the doctor calls it? Get back, Homer! You too, Jethro!

dow, Friday, 18 February 2022 17:09 (two years ago) link

lol

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 17:20 (two years ago) link

Nice to see that people are taking reasoned points and shitting on them for the purpose of dunks.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 17:46 (two years ago) link

Instead of engaging with them in any meaningful way because you know I'm right.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 17:48 (two years ago) link

Really no wonder so many people are leaving this site, tbh.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 17:49 (two years ago) link

If you’re talking to me, let me be clear that I wasn’t dunking on you or anyone (except myself, slightly).

Tim, Friday, 18 February 2022 18:09 (two years ago) link

Yeah, I didn't notice any dunking. Just some friendly disagreement about when Robert Lowell jumped the shark or whether he was ever even on the right side of the shark.

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 18:11 (two years ago) link

FWIW I think, per TTITT and Daniel that “experimental” is used as a catch-all (marketing) term for art which resists being incorporated into the mainstream. I think it’s a bad term because it doesn’t say anything about the nature, content or quality of that art.

Non-ubiquity, in and of itself, is no more profound than ubiquity. Less so if anything because at least ubiquity has the kind of profundity that comes from shared experience (see Ewing, T; “Come On Eileen”, 2009).

Tim, Friday, 18 February 2022 18:21 (two years ago) link

Pretty much agree with all of this.

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 18:23 (two years ago) link

Totally disagree with the point about ubiquity vs non-ubiquity, but whatever.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 18:45 (two years ago) link

There’s that meaningful engagement

ok what the fuck is happening in the uk (rain) (wins), Friday, 18 February 2022 18:51 (two years ago) link

Go fuck yourself.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 18:52 (two years ago) link

But even if you love him, why does his work still command so much attention when...well, he's been dead for 45 years? I think it has a lot more to do with mainstream fetishization of mental illness than the quality of his poetry.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! the table is the table)

Lowell made a lot of friends in the poetry and publishing world; he was, as you point out, an establishment figure. His persistence well into a new century makes sense when you consider how many dads and grandads of writers he may have talked up.

Also, though you and I will recoil from this point....he commands attention because people still like his poetry. As a junior in college I was quite alone in thinking, say, "Skunk Hour" and Lowell generally not particularly interesting if not gauche. I wanted to spend more time on Bishop and Merrill, the contemporaries who still command MY attention; the latter in particular's a queer lodestar for me. THERE'S a guy with millions at his disposal who was lighter, gayer, and wittier in verse than 187 Lowell lines.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2022 18:53 (two years ago) link

But what I'm saying, Alfred, is that I really believe that a big part of his popularity has to do with establishment publishing and academic types manufacturing an idea that Lowell is what quality poetry is. Even John fucking Berryman is a more interesting poet than Lowell, and there's comparatively little attention given to him.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 18:57 (two years ago) link

Give Harold Bloom this: he wished with all his being that Lowell would remain a period piece.

re Berryman: have you seen the new editions of Dream Songs? The New Yorker spent a lot of words on him a little over a year ago:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/19/the-heartsick-hilarity-of-john-berrymans-letters

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:00 (two years ago) link

I think that people liking Lowell's poetry and that people will tend to consume what's most available can both be true and not necessarily in conflict. I think there's something of Don Draper about Lowell. He's an archetype of a particular east coast intellectual and particularly when you factor in the weird ongoing fascination with the Elizabeth Bishop relationship, his mental illness etc you have a very sellable package.

Also, doesn't it also come down to how invested you are in this - as in, I can imagine as a poet vying for real estate in what is the smallest of marketplaces anyway you're perfectly entitled to be pissed off at how much of a colossus Lowell still is.

Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:05 (two years ago) link

That second part is clumsily expressed. I hope I don't come across as a patronising dick.

Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:05 (two years ago) link

No, it makes sense.

I thought Lowell was finally gone until that collected poetry tome came out in 2003, goddamn it.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:08 (two years ago) link

^prestige publishing

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:10 (two years ago) link

"when you factor in the weird ongoing fascination with the Elizabeth Bishop relationship"

It is my impression his behaviour towards Bishop is over-used to write about Lowell, no matter any actual quality of the poetry.

xyzzzz__, Friday, 18 February 2022 19:21 (two years ago) link

I've never heard anybody bring up Lowell in conversation so don't feel in any way oppressed by the continued appreciation of his poetry by people I don't know

plax (ico), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:27 (two years ago) link

I feel like at this point he's just an American Ted Hughes, a figure of dwindling prestige that people more easily remember the gossipy unflattering stuff about

plax (ico), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:30 (two years ago) link

So are you guys telling me I should or shouldn't bother to read the Ivana Lowell memoir I eventually bought after seeing it for months if not years near the checkout counter at the old RIzzoli Bookstore flagship on 57th Sttreet?

Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:33 (two years ago) link

I would read it if it appeals to you

plax (ico), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:34 (two years ago) link

Chinaski otm about some of the anger coming from being a poet, finding the Lowell's work to be largely trash, and being totally confused by the ongoing attention paid to him and his work. It's worth noting, too, that I don't know a single poet who will stand up for Lowell besides a few poems, if that.

Another thing that concerns me about his prominence is that it reinforces the idea that poetry is largely dead. Obviously that isn't true, so why do mainstream critics and publishers pretend it to be so? I don't want the just-died David Melnick, whose work is astounding and irreplaceable and obscure, to be hailed in the Times review, but I'm also tired of hearing about this one motherfucker when I know there are so many others whose work is amazing but remains hopelessly lost in frightfully expensive original editions. Only a year or two ago did John Wieners get a selected, for example, and he's considered one of the great queer poets of the past 100 years. Full editions of his most important books go for $150-- that's a shame. Instead, we get another book of Lowell's farts to Hardwick or whiny letters to Bishop.

we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:43 (two years ago) link

I don't want the just-died David Melnick, whose work is astounding and irreplaceable and obscure, to be hailed in the Times review


Why not?

Tim, Friday, 18 February 2022 19:48 (two years ago) link

ooh -- my uni library's got Wieners' 1986 collection.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:53 (two years ago) link

Any book with a spine is too structurally unadventurous to be called experimental IMO.


This was very clearly a joke, I don’t understand the reaction at all tbh

mardheamac (gyac), Friday, 18 February 2022 19:55 (two years ago) link

I'm very late to this but the idea of experimental writing seems very anachronistic and quaint to me

plax (ico), Friday, 18 February 2022 20:07 (two years ago) link

That’s how I feel about washing cast iron pans with oven cleaner tbh

mardheamac (gyac), Friday, 18 February 2022 20:15 (two years ago) link

fuck washing a book

america's favorite (remy bean), Friday, 18 February 2022 20:20 (two years ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.