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

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

There’s that meaningful engagement

Go fuck yourself.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

No, it makes sense.

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

^prestige publishing

"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.

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

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

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?

I would read it if it appeals to you

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.

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

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

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

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

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

fuck washing a book

classic

Why not?

I think the intention was that he'd be satisfied with a lesser level of prominence than a big up in the Times, rather than that such a thing was anathema.

Exactly, thanks Aimless.

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

― plax (ico), Friday, February 18, 2022 12:07 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

What other adjective would you propose, or do you mean the idea of writing that is experimenting with language is anachronistic and quaint?

Actually, forget it, I need to take a break from this site I think.

Take a break if you need one, but please free to come back when you are ready.

Why not?

I think the intention was that he'd be satisfied with a lesser level of prominence than a big up in the Times, rather than that such a thing was anathema.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 18 February 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Exactly, thanks Aimless.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 18 February 2022 bookmarkflaglink

This is absurd.

Why is that?

Or, more clearly, in what way?

What I'm reading here is a fantasy of an intention that this recently deceased poet might have had, that he'd want to remain obscure (or even just like a cult figure), because you are precious about his work and you wouldn't want those people (libs, say) to touch it and yet bore on and on about Ted Hughes/Lowell being prominent and that those people don't know better.

I'd like a better class of snobbery here.

Reading slightly wrong but still the desire to keep poets/writing away from people because well who knows, they might like this, but not in the right way, seems to be the fear.

I sent tables my regrets for posting just as I did...
Got John D.'s new Devil House at library this evening.

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).

Love this !!!

(But surely it was more like 2001?)

I finished Adam Mars-Jones' long article about disability. He's shrewd and eloquent. Some of the ideas discussed are compelling and challenging. I get the sense that AMJ didn't previously have a special interest in the subject, but developed one after this. He's good at thinking about the relations between disability and other identities that have been the basis of identity politics.

Actually I sense that things have moved on since then (1996) and disability *is* now a bit more established as a significant form of discrimination, alongside eg: race and gender, than it was when AMJ wrote this.

The title of AMJ's collection is BLIND BITTER HAPPINESS. I'd never known where that phrase comes from. I now see from one essay that it's a paraphrase of his mother's name (ie: those words were the 'meanings' of her names).

I also returned to Gerry Smyth's DECOLONISATION AND CRITICISM (1998) and Graham / Kirkland's IRELAND AND CULTURAL THEORY (1999), as well as the perpetual standby Kiberd's INVENTING IRELAND (1995).

You’re right, PF, my swift google picked up the slightly shortened re-write that formed part of Tom’s Popular project.

xyzz I don't think that's what's being said at all, table's point is it would be great if this poet got written up in the Times but that's clearly not going to happen so he'd be fine with a lesser level of prominence instead of the relative obscurity he's in.

"I don't want the just-died David Melnick, whose work is astounding and irreplaceable and obscure, to be hailed in the Times review" is the direct quote. No "it would be great if the chumps at NYT got this".

well, I guess it's the words of a living author, so I'll let table say which one it is, unless he's quit ilx

White Feminism KOa Beck
Book by hawaiian lesbian author on the problems with various focuses of traditional feminism and what it has excluded in terms of non-white women. Also in the way that it has put forward teh single individual heroine as model for activity rather tahn showing that the way things work relies on collectivity.
Quite enjoying it. may need to reread so may need my own copy instead of this being an interlibrary loan.
I have been looking through the irish library system and ordering things i find interesting which may be a bit counterproductive since it has meant i have several books on the go and more deadline than I should have given myself. Plus I'm not paying attention to the books I've picked up in charity shops. Have to find a better system for doing this. Have been flying through books at speed and buying a lot of very interesting looking things. Still looking for others. Think I'm already on like 28 books finished this year.

Emma Dabiri Don't Touch My Hair
Half Irish author talks about black hair in her own personal history and in general. Which leads on to a number of other connected issues.
I'm enjoying the writing. Hope she writes more.
THink she may be regularly in some newspaper which I need to look out for.

Carl Sagan Demon Haunted World
astronomer's book on scientific illiteracy and general credulity.
Good read, may have some issues that need to be clarified and is 25 years old now . But a good starting point for further research/investigation. shame it is still as topical as it was when it was published though still not as up to date as a more recent book would hopefully be. I need to read Great Popular Delusions since i have at least one copy lying around. Think that may overlap with this to some degree but is much older.

Xyzzz, Melnick quit writing in the 80s after writing a long poem on the AIDS crisis and becoming absorbed in his job as a copyeditor at the SF Chronicle. He purposefully dropped off the map, and in the only interview he gave, he seems pretty content with his decision.

It's probably best for you to shut up when you don't know what you're talking about.

That’s never stopped him before.

Remember that not everyone longs to be in the limelight, or to have their work read by everyone.

Which is why the point about ubiquity still stands for me. The idea that collective or shared experience is more profound than individual experience, and that thus, more popular media is more profound than what lurks in the shadows, is an absolutely ridiculous one. I'll argue that to the end.

You bring up that the media only writes about Lowell but you just want things you find good to remain obscure and then lash out when people apparently don't know what you're talking about, or people don't know the names of these poets. It's just incoherent rubbish.

Lock yourself in a room with trashy SF and cheap crime paperbacks for a year to get these banal notions out of you head, table

That’s never stopped him before.

― Solaris Ocean Blue (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 19 February 2022 bookmarkflaglink

As for you, put up a witty YouTube link, that's all you're good for.

Fellas… this is the wayr room

lol!