PLOP PLOP LIT PLOP

It is no secret that I'm a Dean Young yahoo. This interview with him is wow. 

Narrative is a baggy concept. It accommodates anything from a baseball box score to the Iliad. Might it be possible we employ the term for any sequence of events that occur through time that seem to have some sort of relationship, a causal relationship even? Our language, albeit in spite of the Futurist attempt at words-at-liberty, makes a sequential sense—syntax is time passing so we could say any sentence or group of sentences is to some extent a narrative. Which pretty much makes the term useless. As divergent as my poetic practice is, I try to be alert to possible strains within drafts that signal modes of connection. For me those modes of connection certainly don’t need to be rational, logical, plotted, or telling a story. But any signal whatsoever I try to attend to and see as an opportunity, so sometimes I do end up using threads of traditional narrative, the scaffolding of story that can establish a stability, an endoskeleton. We could say that there is a narrative to these three words: brick, blood-drop, red feather which entails the passage from inert material to mortal flesh to a sort of avian/angelic possibility or we could say that what holds those things together is their redness. I try to be alert to as many possibilities of connectedness as I can simultaneously, even if one may undermine the authority of another. 

My top pal/mentor Todd McKinney has two poems up at the new and stellar Split Lip Magazine.

Very stoked for Wendy Xu's first book (not to mention that collab chapbook with my buddy Sturm). Cool to hear her talk about po-po and such.

I think language is always waiting patiently on us to engage it, to play with it and arrange its parts, to build something weird out of it, but the hardest time to stop and think to do this is any space outside of poems. To “negotiate” with a poem is right--it says things, you say something back, you say YES! or you say OH NO, but the two of you build the complete experience together. I always like when part of a poem’s contribution to the negotiation is a pseudo-“normal” syntax, if it seems aware and proud of its glitch, and if it wants to subvert my normalized expectations at every turn.

I have a poem "How Many Years" in the new nap magazine.

We All Need Reminders

After four years of chattering about it, some close calls, some flip-flopping, I did it,I got my first tattoo during this weekend's trip with my dear Ashley Ford to visit our Akron Family (not that Akron Family). All our Akron people said GOOD LIFE IS THE PLACE. Brian there hooked us up really nice. Ashley got "Anything Beautiful" on her shoulder, that being a nod at our pal Nick Sturm's massiveheart poem "I FEEL YES" (you'll see it soon in Forklift SO GET STOKED NOW). It looks good on her, so goooood! And I got the only first tattoo I could really see stamped on my bod, the only thing that I need on me right now. "We are clouds and terrible things happen in clouds." Dean Young said that. He says lots of beautiful and thumping things. That's from his poem, "Frottage," wowwow poem. This thing means YOU KNOW THIS DEAL WITH IT. This thing means MOVE FORWARD. This thing means WATCH OUT. This thing means I FEEL A RUMBLE YET IM BEAUTIFUL. I woke up this morning and couldn't believe it, this thing exists, I exist, the terrible exist. Let's rumble on, alright?

Matt Hart, pal of DY, got a big kick out of my tattoo, sent it to Dean, very nice.

Surrealism

Todd bought me the anthology The Poetry of Surrealism edited by Michael Benedikt as a graduation present. Of course, I've heard many of the names in this collection--Breton, Apollinaire, Tzara--but my actual reading experience with them, regretfully, has been minimal. As they influence some of my favorite poets, like Dean Young, I decided to dedicate a good amount of time to enjoying and understanding this wonderful movement. I'm about halfway through the book, spending a few days at a time with a single author. Below is a recording of some of my favorite pieces from the first half of the book.

Reading from The Poetry Of Surrealism Anthology by Stoked Press

Music is a mushroom, an argument between mirrors

Don’t know how to do that fancy upside down A like on the cover, so I’m just gonna call it Fall Higher by Dean Young.
We know Dean as the surrealist, associative master of the wacky and wild. We know him as the great example of the art of recklessness. We know him as the poet with the new heart. But reading this book reminds me of what is so simply evident in Dean’s best poems (in books such as Strike Anywhere and First Course in Turbulence): Dean Young knows poetry.
In this book, his musicality has been turned up. At first, I was like WOAH WHAT, but rereading these poems, it just shines through that this dude knows what he is doing, again and again.

VIDEO READING OF MADRIGAL



AHHH GEESH the video cut off the last two lines. WHY I DONT KNOW. I wanna finish this post and sleep, so here are the lines, read them to yourself in my voice or someting: while the next set of fools scampers into the puzzle garden/detonating with laughter.

The steady rhythm and rhyme scheme at the beginning, the parts with too many rhymes or syllables, and the choppiness at the end all mark for me the brilliance of what Dean is doing in this book. Like the subject matter dealing with loss, he starts with the sturdy and steady, before loosening up, breaking down.

Not to be a butthead in the middle of a review, but: ANYBODY ELSE REAL DISAPPOINTED WITH THIS INTERVIEW WITH DEAN AT THE RUMPUS RECENTLY? The majority of the questions seemed goofy or disconnected or broad to the point of being empty.

Often, music to me hides the meat of the poem or even makes it seem like something is there when it’s just a pop song. This book uses the music to sing a beautiful chant of blistering bitterness, strong contemplation, and yeah-yeah-yearning
Yeah, the typical Dean stuff is there, but the poems where he expounds on those old ways, using a tightened sense of music, a calmer sense of association, is where this book reaches into the fresh, the new, the bold. Take the last poem, “Teetering Lullaby.” Dean pushes here where he normally would pull, giving to the “you” this beautiful lullaby. Take the middle stanzas:

The heart’s
adumbrations of bees may never
cease, not the hopeful hum
or peevish sting but rest I would
my hand upon your breast, sleep I would

above the troposphere. No accounting
for your beauty moving through me
like a branch, a sigh coming from under
the squeaky remnants of the old barn.

Though more refined, these types of poems do not strike me as watered down or passive. Rather, they are bold in their clarity, their sense of self. Yes, we know Dean can rattle through a page and a half of associative energy that breaks bones and hearts alike, but that only makes this resolve so beautiful, so impressive. To end the book with such a feat of a slow exhale reminds us that this type of writing, this type of thinking, this type of living is harder than it seems.

we know you're in there

LAST DAY (NOOOO), but hey poetry lives on. And Dean Young lives on with his new heart. And I live on with the new Dean Young book. And I live on with the other Dean Young books. Let's accept it is over and do our best to KEEP GOING.

Acceptance Speech
BY DEAN YOUNG

This time I’m not going to say a thing
about deity. It’s not the blizzard,
it’s three days after. Trinkle from thawing
roofs, ruined crocus pronging through.
Ruin, I promise, won’t be mentioned again.
Trees, sure, still begging in the road, split
to the bole but this isn’t about the chainsaw.
A pruning saw will have to do. The puppets
aren’t hanging themselves in each other’s
strings. Everyone’s easily identifiable
beneath the funny mask. Somewhere in Oregon,
Mary has another month to go, she’s comfortable
in any position for thirty-five seconds. Lulu,
we know you’re in there but no one’s
blaming you for reluctance to come out.
Poetry is the grinding of a multiplicity
throwing off sparks, wrote Artaud
and look what that got him: toothlessness
and shock therapy. Your dad, who has the worst
teeth of anyone I know, once ordered eggplant
in a steakhouse. Do not order eggplant
in a steakhouse turned out to be more
than aphoristicly true. Do not spend a lot
of time in an asylum writing cruel poems
if you can help it, one Artaud is enough.
In Kandinsky’s Blue 2, there’s a shape
in two rows of shapes that seems okay
although to the right’s a capsized canoe
full of mathematicians, to the left a bow
about to launch the killer astrolabe.
By what manner is the soul joined to
the body? How about climbing a ladder
of fire? No thanks. On TV, a rhino’s
lying in some red dust, munching a thorn.
You wouldn’t think he could ejaculate
for half an hour straight, but you’d be wrong.
See that cloud, it might weigh 10,000 pounds
which is about average for a cloud.
Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.
Tony says Mary is always writing about the sacred.
Talcum powder, binoculars, this decimated
planet. I know, a promise has been made
but Tony’s been sick for years and no one
knows with what. Flax oil, bark tinctures,
corticosteroids. He’s not exactly someone
you’d trust to drive your car, but still.
Something awful’s coming, isn’t it?
Would it help if I said Amen?


Dean Young, “Acceptance Speech” from First Course in Turbulence. Copyright © 1999 by Dean Young.

What Matters, Revised.

Frottage By Dean Young

How goofy and horrible is life. Just
look into the faces of the lovers
as they near their drastic destinations,
the horses lathered and fagged. Just
look at them handling the vase
priced beyond the rational beneath
the sign stating the store’s breakage
policy, and what is the rational but
a thing we must always break? I am not
the only one composed of fractious murmurs.
From the point of view of the clouds,
it is all inevitable and dispersed—
they vanish over the lands to reconstitute
over the seas, themselves again
but no longer themselves, what they wanted
they no longer want, daylight fidgets
across the frothy waves. Most days
you can’t even rub a piece of charcoal
across paper laid on some rough wood
without a lion appearing, a fish’s umbrella
skeleton. Once we believed it told us
something of ourselves. Once we even believed
in the diagnostic power of ants. Upon
the eyelids of the touched and suffering,
they’d exchange their secretive packets
like notes folded smaller than chemicals.
They told us nearly nothing, which
may have been enough now that we know
so much more. From the point of view
of the ant, the entire planet is a dream
quivering beneath an eyelid, and who’s to say
the planet isn’t. From the point of view
of the sufferer, it seems everything will
be taken from us except the sensation
of being crawled over. I believe everything
will be taken from us. Then given back
when it’s no longer what we want. We
are clouds, and terrible things happen
in clouds. The wolf’s mouth is full
of strawberries, the morning’s a phantom
hum of glories, morning glories.

What Matters For 500

Paragraphs About 4 Books I Read Recently

Tasker Street by Mark Halliday

Not the Halliday book I bought at the reading, but contains my favorite poem from that evening: Ode: The Capris; Having read this book and Little Star, two of Halliday's earliest works, and having heard and read many of his newer poems, I'm realizing his older stuff connects with me more; hIs sincere approach to narrative, through a talkative tone and straightforward presentation of images and emotions, captivates me; at once, he seems to defy poetic conventions by recreating them in this tug-o-war of recognizability and freshness.


Skid by Dean Young

One of the final Dean Young books I haven't read; these poems fall somewhere in between the rawness of the things I love in First Course and Strike Anywhere and the established-voice-trying-new-things that sometimes puzzles sometimes excites me in his later books; of course not a poem in here I didn't find cool lines or an energetic approach that pushed me towards a migraine; rather, I sometimes feel as if Dean's attempt to balance his natural approach and attempts to push his aesthetic results in something a little too jumbled to take me to that level I love in poems like "Frottage"; favorites in this book include "Brighthead," "Whale Watch," "Action Figuring," and "Pulse."


Lighthead by Terrance Hayes

I totally see how this book could win the National Book Award; it has that meshing of political awareness, personal exploration, and balance of humor and deep material; though it wouldn't be my choice; Hayes connects with me most when sincerity seems like the driving principle exposing his situation; for instance, the opening poem, "Lighthead's Guide to the Galaxy," knocked me out; its association, its opening of "Ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and children of the state" as a point of entry, its beautiful balance of meditation and imagery; while at times he missed me with his approach, the times Hayes vividly describes his situation and compounds that with exposure of his mind and heart floored me; other poems that do this: "Shakur," "The Avocado," and "Arbor for Butch."


Starting From San Francisco by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I've heard people say that Ferlinghetti published one excellent book, A Coney Island of the Mind, (YES IT IS GREAT), and other just-okay books; this book fell into the latter for me, for sure; at times, the beautiful charm and energy of Ferlinghetti, which make him such a respected literary person, drive the poems, like how they carry him to great heights in Coney Island; but other times, Ferlinghetti loses me in his experimentation, his run-away style of pushing the joke/metaphor/point, and seeming disregard for connectivity; a poem like "Euphoria," with its repetition of "As I approach the state of euphoria" and its striking sense of addition of pieces, stays with me, buries within me; however, a poem like "Tentative Description of a Dinner to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower" chunks itself away from the title with obscurities and disengaging non-sequiturs; while Ferlinghetti holds a special place in my heart already as a poet and friend of literature, this book did nothing greater than make me remember how fantastic Coney Island is.

Also, I'm gonna try to read a book of poems a day over Spring Break and blog about each of those. Additionally, I'm gonna try to catch up on some blog topics I've been meaning to get to, including the greatness of Smalldoggies Magazine, Stoked Press news, the next Independent Study post (about Mark Neely's chapbook), and more.

MERRY VIDEOBLOG

I GOT A SWEET VIDEO CAMERA FOR CHRISTMAS = VIDEO BLOG = WATCH MY FACE DO WEIRD THINGS = HEAR MY VOICE GO WAHWAH

A Few Things That Have Come Through My Google Reader And/Or Facebook Feed That Are Interesting Or Saddening Or Exciting Or Something

1. Dean Young is sick. Dean Young is one of my favorite poets and biggest influences. Dean Young needs a new heart. Dean Young is one of Tony Hoagland's pals. Dean Young needs some money. Dean Young is a poet, a very good one.

2. One of the boys of beastie made a movie, which seems to be a sequel to the Fight For Your Right video. It has like Danny McBride and Elijah Wood and Will Ferrell in it. That should be interesting if I ever see it.

3. I am more excited about a Thursday Full Collapse Anniversary tour than I should be. That is still one of my favorite albums, and my first real girlfriend burned me a copy in 8th grade. MEMORIES PEOPLE.

4. People Getting Arrested Over Poems. YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

Prowling The Internet Like A Mountain Lion

I gave myself until 11 pm Kansas time then it's bedtime:

-I just sent Elimae a piece called "On Sex." It's a part of a series of little things I'm writing. Others include "On Clouds," "On Motion Sickness," and "On Marriage." If Elimae rejects it, I'll probably post it here.

-Looking through this online journal, We Are Champions Issue 3: Sasha Fletcher talking about birds, Gregory Sherl wrote a poem about Oregon Trail and Mel Gibson, Donora Hillard with three cool sections (though the "eating dust and vaginal yeast" part seemed out of place).

-Mike Young has been posting some pretty sweet little pieces on his blog. I love the bend of each piece, the layers piling and twisting together. Very enjoyable, quotable, thinkable.

-I started The Art of Recklessness by Dean Young today. Already 65 pages in. Really awesome so far. This guy smacks together words in a way that truly hits me.

-Just found out my buddies The Bonesetters officially signed with Mossback Records, home of the super cool Cowboy Angels.

-I'm definitely ready to be home. This trip has been cool, but I miss some people.

BOOKS FOR THE TRIP

Confession: I'm a book over-packer! But these are the things I want to take on our upcoming two week CO/UT trip.

Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein: The excerpts I've read from this hurt my head. Everything from Stein hurts my head, but still there is something about this that makes me want to lug it around the country. Maybe the title (AWWWWW) or the size (AWWWWW tiny).

Poet's Companion by eds. Laux and Addonizio: Givin' me some insight, prompts, craft readings, some school away from school.

Collected Poems by Marianne Moore: I read two essays about Moore recently by Randall Jarrell. He says do this. I trust him!

Ashes For Breakfast by Durs Grunbein: This was a long shot. I wanted some translation flavor on this trip. Come on, I'm gonna be deep in America. East Germany poetry, here I come!

MC Oroville's Answering Machine by Mike Young: Been holding onto this one. Mike Young is an intriguing intriguing contemporary writer.

45 Mercy Street by Anne Sexton: Another Goodwill sweet deal. Excited to learn me something about a writer I've known about, but haven't been able to delve into much.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by DFW: MOST EXCITING! It's been so long since I've read a book of prose. Gonna be sweeeeeet. Shooting for 30 pages a day in this.

First Course In Turbulence by Dean Young: Continuing the Dean Young kick.

The Duino Elegies by Rilke: I need more lyrical stuff in my life. I know this.

A New Path to the Waterfall by Carver: He can write stories, but poems?

Collected Essays by WC Williams: I love hearing my favorite writers talk about their favorite writers.

Life is good with books. Thank you.

Tattoo Ideas

1) "We are clouds, and terrible things happen in clouds" from Dean Young's Frottage; probably on my side; am I a big enough Dean Young fan for this?; epigraph for one of my favorite collections: Donkey Gospel by Hoagland; Clouds around the letters/behind maybe.

2) The Away With Vega man from the cover of recovery (see below); probably on calf or low maybe my chest; no band name with it though; probably wouldn't hurt much since it wouldn't be filled in, I'm told; maybe cheapest too?; favorite band tribute



3) Disc golf basket (see below); just logo like on Aviar putter; probably calf; have I been a disc golfer long enough? More importantly, am I good enough?