Books Matter

"I guess what I’m getting at here is that there has never been a better time to start censoring art..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:59:02 -0400

“I guess what I’m getting at here is that there has never been a better time to start censoring art in America … The stuff we ban doesn’t even have to actually be profane—most anything could offend someone somewhere given the proper context and fuel. Make people afraid of what William Vollmann is going to say next; what damage to reality Ben Marcus has up his brain-sleeve; how hard Kelly Link is going to screw our idea of what we are. Let’s make someone scared about a sentence or a song or an image composed by someone who never leaves the house or might want to actually hurt another person. Even if it doesn’t change anything, it’d be fun to watch people burning inert objects in the streets again, screaming about God.”

- Blake Butler, “Please Start Banning Books Again”

Sharp: A Discussion of Women and Criticism

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:21:12 -0400

On Wednesday, May 8, Housing Works Bookstore Cafe hosted a panel discussion on women and criticism, featuring a tremendous line-up of writers: Michelle Dean (who organized and moderated the event), Kate Bolick, Ruth Franklin, Laura Miller, Miriam Markowitz, Michelle Orange, and Parul Sehgal.

Here are some of the bursts of wisdom and wit that I managed to scribble down during the discussion (n.b. these are almost direct quotations, but I may have gotten an indefinite article wrong here or there):

“Apparently, smart, serious men took exception to the idea that they had misunderstood anything, including a novel they obviously hadn’t read.”
—Michelle Dean on readers’ responses to her (editor-titled) review, “Listening to Women: Why smart, serious men have misunderstood Sheila Heti’s new book”

“The thing about ‘serious’ is that men are ‘serious’ and women are not.”
—Laura Miller

“I really don’t mean to be mean to men…A lot of young men, when they pitch me, are really, really interested in reviewing the new Martin Amis.”
—Miriam Markowitz on getting pitched at The Nation

“How you experience a work of art or how a work of art makes you feel should be a legitimate part of the discussion.”
—Michelle Orange

“When I wrote a very critical review of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, it ended up on Page Six…When I wrote an equally critical review of Zadie Smith, there wasn’t any kind of backlash.”
—Ruth Franklin on being a “mean” critic

“Why is there a problem if people are mean [in reviews]?…This is an ice pick, not a needle.”
—Miriam Markowitz

“As the ‘critic of color,’ I’m frequently asked to review Indian and Pakistani writers.”
—Parul Sehgal on power and pigeonholing critics

“Women are more aware or comprehending of power so the truths that they deliver in criticism are often more devastating for men to receive.”
—Kate Bolick (who prefaced this by saying she was about to make a sweeping gender generalization)

“If all readers see women writers as substantive writers…then they’ll just absorb that.”
—Laura Miller on ways to correct gender disparity in publishing

“Remember: every poet was first an entrepreneur. Poetry is...

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:05:00 -0400

“Remember: every poet was first an entrepreneur. Poetry is the proper worth of life. The most intense mode of investment.”

POETRY IS A KIND OF MONEY
VanessaPlace, Inc.

Brain in a Vat

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:28:28 -0400

When I fly through the cloud
in the video game, somehow
the game doesn’t know what to do.
I am exposed as a brain in a vat.
It looks like I am trapped in a tower
of beer at the Arizona Pizza Kitchen,
but someone must love me very much,
or I am being used in a scheme to skim
the recipes I come up with in my dreams.
When the lights go out
they go out for a couple millennia,
and then I don’t really care what happens next.
I am flying on a plane through the international dateline,
a couple people vanish in first class and
I ask the stewardess if I can have their seats.
I heard that the Bermuda triangle has been
hovering in Buffalo for the past 20 years,
says the twilight man beside me.
The movie on his laptop looks abstract from this angle.
It is a movie called “Magnetic Basin.”
When I arrive on the tarmac and
descend the stairs onto the airfield,
I feel exposed. It is winter in the city.
I am trying to find a place to go to the bathroom,
as I think about Modigliani in turn of the century Paris.
How will I reward myself when I am normal again?
Thunderstorms mean someone is trying to get
at your snacks, I am told in the vat.
After a struggle against my own foreign limbs
I realize that during rest I am
propelled in a mysterious direction,
but you have egg on your pants I am
told in the vat. It must have come
from the man sitting next to me, I say into the liquid.
I ask to be kept central to my own story, but I find
that I am becoming more and more of a minor character.
I make a break for it by closing my eyes.
I spend long hours at home with books
about yarn and cabinetry. I am coming closer and closer
to realizing my dream of becoming
a single note sung out into a wide valley
by some 17^th century village child.

—C.S. Ward

Now, this is how the man ends the storywhen he makes love to the...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:55:00 -0400

Now, this is how the man ends the story
when he makes love to the woman. He looks at her
and says, It doesn’t end, it isn’t a story.

It’s a poem.

—Mark Leidner, “Story”

seven centuries ofsobbinggatheredin thetwilight.andhad...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:40:01 -0400

seven centuries of
sobbing
gathered
in the
twilight.
and
had their
pages
wandered, through

the dead.
borrow so little from
the past
as if they were alive,

—Mary Ruefle, from A Little White Shadow

I Imagine the Gods

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:21:55 -0400

I imagine the gods saying, We will
make it up to you. We will give you
three wishes, they say. Let me see
the squirrels again, I tell them.
Let me eat some of the great hog
stuffed and roasted on its giant spit
and put out, steaming, into the winter
of my neighborhood when I was usually
too broke to afford even the hundred grams
I ate so happily walking up the cobbles,
past the Street of the Moon
and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers,
the Street of Silence and the Street
of the Little Pissing. We can give you
wisdom, they say in their rich voices.
Let me go at last to Hugette, I say,
the Algerian student with her huge eyes
who timidly invited me to her room
when I was too young and bewildered
that first year in Paris.
Let me at least fail at my life.
Think, they say patiently, we could
make you famous again. Let me fall
in love one last time, I beg them.
Teach me mortality, frighten me
into the present. Help me to find
the heft of these days. That the nights
will be full enough and my heart feral.

—Jack Gilbert

Gnostic Aubade

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:09:52 -0400

In the morning, say what is the beautiful
thing that is broken? Say we do not sing
one song. The morning comes suddenly,
the light cutting across the door
like a blade, the sun is quick, opaque,
& white, within a cat’s paw.
So say let’s sit awhile in a state of awe,
let’s tap on the glass until we hear
a heartbeat or the beating of wings—
& look, there’s a damselfly circling
the empty space, her eyes
compound, compound, compound: you are
just one of many copies. The morning
is when we pray & drink coffee
& invent a new language consisting
mostly of warbles. Your hand wakes.
Remember forgetting to lock the door?
So find the stranger in your bed.
His body isn’t as foreign or rotten
as you think. Say yes, I know how
he got here—how all of us got here—
even though you don’t. You couldn’t.

—Tory Adkisson

A Response to the World as We Know It

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:12:35 -0400

Did you know that last night,
someone either:

a) was trying to break into the apartment
across the hall
or

b) lost their keys in the subway
and paid a large sum for a 24-hr locksmith

I don’t know which is true, but
I was so comfortable in sleep, I treated it
like a bad dream & tucked its agency
back under the kitchen sink.

Some people wish they could tuck away
this electronic age. Live in the dark.
Harvest eggplants or squash and legume
themselves in a shaded-space where
the only backlight they see is the stars
spurning in the skies.

I wouldn’t want that. I enjoy the blues
of this age. I like my astronomy
at my fingers.
I want to carry this
elsewhere.

—Leah Umansky

Judgment

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:31:20 -0400

When the shaman comes to town I try to hump the shaman

I try to hump angels

My guardian angels are mine and all for me

When they leak they leak me

Still there are cracks between us

And you have to fill up cracks with candy

If I am not allowed candy I use my body

If I am not allowed my body I use the internet

Television is going to deliver me from the internet

The angels pray over my screens

My angels are probably lonely

Also disillusioned with me

I have always felt the presence of a disappointed being

The shaman says I am not dead

I am definitely dying

I am already digging out of my coffin

I dress in cicada skins

I go bright blonde

Above me is the blonde angel Raphael

And I try to make the blonde angel french me

The blonde angel has a thick tongue

He wants to talk about healing

The violence no one has done to me

Every violence I have done to me

When I leak I leak me

What was so hell that I violenced me?

There were eighty years of candy magick after all

There were also beautiful horses

There were cracks in all the horses

When I stuffed their mouths with candy they turned to rotten

I made candy luncheons in the pasture

It tasted very desire

I poured cherry soda into all my cracks

Tell the angels to give me sugar

If they do not want to hump me

A supreme being should heal me

But only for forever

—Melissa Broder

Artless

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:54:07 -0400

is my heart. A stranger berry
there never was,
tartless.

Gone sour in the sun,
in the sunroom or moonroof,
roofless.

No poetry. Plain. No
fresh, special recipe
to bless.

All I’ve ever made
with these hands
and life, less

substance, more rind.
Mostly rim and trim,
meatless

but making much smoke
in the old smokehouse,
no less.

Fatted from the day,
overripe and even
toxic at eve. Nonetheless,

in the end, if you must
know, if I must bend,
waistless,

to that excruciation.
No marvel, no harvest
left me speechless,

yet I find myself
somehow with heart,
aloneless.

With heart,
fighting fire with fire,
flightless.

That loud hub of us,
meat stub of us, beating us
senseless.

Spectacular in its way,
its way of not seeing,
congealing dayless

but in everydayness.
In that hopeful haunting
(a lesser

way of saying
in darkness) there is
silencelessness

for the pressing question.
Heart, what art you?
War, star, part? Or less:

playing a part, staying apart
from the one who loves,
loveless.

—Brenda Shaughnessy, from Our Andromeda

Never Have I Ever

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:40:21 -0400

Never have I ever walked into a room feeling brave. I drink flower water and bloom the sun. Dehydration sets in, which brings night, which brings frogs, which hop towards the lights above apartment doors. If Hell exists, I don’t want to know God. Never have I ever not missed K. In every poem I have yet to write I am hoping she shows up with a glass of flower water, two hearts sayingmush mush mush. It’s too hot to see our breath but we’re still alive, so we know it’s there. My lemonade stand is open even in winter. Sugar teeth I tell her. Come home and spoil me. Sometimes a song makes me want to surf and I’m like Stop that right this instant. Atlantis sank and that’s weird. Venice is sinking but I’m too worried about my receding gums to care. The levees broke, people were like Help us, help us! Days and days and then some help. Never have I ever been rich. I am scared of needles shaped as needles. I am scared of needles shaped as anything that turns into a needle. When did blood get a bad wrap? It is why I am touching K on a nightly and a morning and sometimes a mid-morning basis. Lately I have been thinking about sitting under a linden tree. Lately I have been thinking about the age of trees and the age of romance and the strength of K’s thighs wrapped around mine when there is nothing keeping us apart but our own sweat. Lately I have understood how they all mean the same thing.

—Gregory Sherl

You are the poorest person here

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:20:00 -0400

when I was born I was born
a victim
when you were born you were born
a hero
just kidding
you were anything you wanted to be
remember that you are supposed to
barf on me
& I am supposed to barf
on myself!

Go ahead
& say that I have not planned for my future
let’s hear you say that
your degree in sociology
is as important as being an unborn baby
the day we dropped the atom bomb
you cloud
& the mushroom tip of your dick
is just disgusting!

I don’t give if the third world makes hygiene
difficult
“I said I don’t give if the third world
puts you at a disadvantage
I didn’t choose to be born where I was born
& if your baby was not born
the day yr flower dress
got burned onto yr back
that’s like
not my fault!”

Okay
so is it my fault
that I want to leave this poetry reading
so I can go look at the electrical fire
& applaud for the fireman
who we think are great
because they are not poets
but one of them says something
he’s like, burhgh and we ask for more!

—Jenny Zhang

Sonnet for Sweetypies

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:22:58 -0400

Sometimes a sweetypie has nothing to lose
when the black crags crack and muscle apart
like tectonics or brûlée. Sometimes a sweetypie,
though deeply moved, has nothing important to say,
and scours the dank tunnels of subways
for someone to say it to. Sometimes it takes two:
two shoes, two ferrets, two roller coasters careening
to a variety of doom known acutely by sweetypies,
and sometimes therefore a sweetypie just wants
another sweetypie to rub a bit when the lights go dim
and the heart monitor blips to its thin white whine.
Sometimes it takes time. Sometimes there is no
“him,” no “her,” no “I.” Sometimes it’s said
there isn’t even a sweetypie.

—Sean Bishop

The Job Interview by Darcie Dennigan

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:31:00 -0400

Actually, my current one—in the sancristy—is a good job.
And you know, it’s fulfilling?

The pay isn’t great, and I’ve had to make accommodations.
Bring a lunch and all. But if I forget my sandwich, there’s always
extra…bread lying around.

And wine.
Though on the job I would never!

Though, this is kind of gross, but—
I’ve acquired a bit of a taste for baptismal water.

After the water washes over the baby’s forehead, you can’t just dump it—
There’s a special baptismal water sink, with a sacred drain.

Since it’s so sacred—you know, the white lace, the whelp’s skin—
Or maybe so dangerous—full of germs of original sin—

It seems a waste to put it down the drain.
So I’ve been sipping it.

Since I’m confessing, it’d probably be a stretch to say I only eat the
communion bread in emergencies,
because I pretty much eat it all the time.

Though the incense under my arms was a singular occurrence.
I’d forgotten deodorant that morning, that’s all.

That day, I may have performed my tasks in the sacristy a little more emphatically—
To, you know, get a little heat going under there.

The smell of the incense made me feel as if I were leading a solemn procession.
It also made me feel sort of sexy?

Anyway, I can’t keep this job.
And I can’t go back to the museum gig.

I mean, I still have the uniform and no one said anything explicitly
but after the incident with the Corot—

It was the Boatman of Mortefontaine—
Have you ever seen it?

It’s not even really my taste.
If I were going to get caught making out with a painting I’d rather have
had it be a Rauschenberg.

But.

There was something about that picture. It has autumn in it.
Even though the trees aren’t orange or brown.

Actually, the trees are greenish white. The sky is white.
Every time I’d look at it I’d feel white and blank.

And also the picture has this white and blank lake.
That I wanted to drink.

Later on, I did read about the pernicious effects of human saliva on paint.
It would be terrible to go back and see that I had caused any—

At one point, I also did some work as a skydiver.
It was a strange summer because I was pretty young and had just gotten my period.

Not to be gross, but I basically bled all summer. And that was mostly fine.
It was beautiful weather and I, you know, wore dark pants, took loads of baths.

But there was this one cloudy day, and they sent us up anyway.
I thought—if the crotch of my pants rubs against a cloud, I’ll leave red streaks.

And I did fall through a cloudbank and even kind of tried to do a split mid-cloud.
But clouds are nothing to rub against, are nothing but emptiness.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that sky diving is still an option.

#1 I am not an idealist!
#2 I’ll work anywhere and hard.

The thing with this sacristy job is—

The eating and drinking the bread and water is fulfilling
and I don’t think anyone minds too much.

But part of the job is taking care of the vestments, and once a week you need to iron them.
And they’re long—these long, white robes with 80 million folds.

And forget trying to do it on an ironing board.
So I’ve been using the altar, because it’s really just the right length.

Something about pushing the iron back and forth—
All that cheap white cloth—

The altar has saints’ bones buried inside it—
In the afternoon there’s the stupid beautiful light through the stained glass—

I don’t believe in God though. That’s not where this is going.

Even if I believed the Word became flesh, well—
I’d probably just want to have sex with it.

Because there I was, just vestment ironing!
My mind was blank.

And the altar and the space were so majestic.
And the part of me that really responds to majesty are my hips.

So I was sort of rubbing myself against the altar.

And obviously, having an orgasm is antithetical to the whole spirit of the job.

I’m so sorry,
so sorry to have a body.

But how else.

I don’t have heaven.
I don’t have clouds even.

#3 What I’m really good at is loving the world well.

I just don’t know who—
who I’m supposed to be or how to make enough money.

[From Madame X]

Unnecessary Thank You for This Terrible Job by Alexis Pope

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:54:57 -0400

Nonflexible people die everyday. At least, that’s what you tell me
and we pack our bags for separate occasions. A detour of mud,
a situation of horses. This vehicle we jump from. I can’t feel
my bones and this makes me frightened. Try to be more understanding,
I’m not pointing any guns in your direction. I have these missiles
and no one to hold them. My body is feeling very fragile
so consider the option of reinventing our organs. I’m okay
with the toothpaste, but not the knowledge that our teeth
are bones. I am trying to concentrate on how to tell you this: I ate
all the cheesecake. I peed in the sink. I laughed when you
broke down. We are trying to run with two feet and it is hilarious. The way
our bodies pretend to store strength. How an orchard can give more
than emotion. I’m stuck on petals. Everything is dying
except for this table. I’m bidding on objects I can’t fit into our apartment.
I am thinking about money. We should know better.

Illustration by Charles Darwin, from The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, Part...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:55:54 -0400

Illustration by Charles Darwin, from The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, Part 2 Mammalia

These thoughts begin, for most of us, typically, in childhood, when we are making eye contact with a pet or wild animal. I go back to our first family dog, a preternaturally intelligent-seeming Labrador mix, the kind of dog who herds playing children away from the street at birthday parties, an animal who could sense if you were down and would nuzzle against you for hours, as if actually sharing your pain. I can still hear people, guests and relatives, talking about how smart she was. “Smarter than some people I know!” But when you looked into her eyes—mahogany discs set back in the grizzled black of her face—what was there? I remember the question forming in my mind: can she think? The way my own brain felt to me, the sensation of existing inside a consciousness, was it like that in there?

For most of the history of our species, we seem to have assumed it was. Trying to recapture the thought life of prehistoric peoples is a game wise heads tend to leave alone, but if there’s a consistent motif in the artwork made between four thousand and forty thousand years ago, it’s animal-human hybrids, drawings and carvings and statuettes showing part man or woman and part something else—lion or bird or bear. Animals knew things, possessed their forms of wisdom. They were beings in a world of countless beings.

Read the full text of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s essay on animals and consciousness, “One of Us,” via Lapham’s Quarterly

Poem by Dorothea Lasky, art by Kaori Mitsushima. From their...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:37:11 -0400

Poem by Dorothea Lasky, art by Kaori Mitsushima. From their collaboration The Blue Teratorn, a webBook from YesYes Books.

I’ve seen him before, crawlingunder church pews,...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:10:00 -0400

I’ve seen him before, crawling
under church pews, tying

parishioners’ shoes together.
Herding the flock, so to speak.

He forgets birthdays. He kills
without honor. He knows

the things that make us
nervous: burnt toast,

a meeting on a train
and the extra valve in an

alligator’s heart. Raise your hand,
he chides, if your work

is important. Would you believe
me if I told you that for most

of his life he has been busy
answering doors? For him

there seem to be two options:
forget or regret. Two stories

with the same ending: men
in suits with shovels. Now

and now and now, he tries
to convince himself. How deep

is your compassion? he taunts
himself as if he were someone else.

All the world’s a place where he
doesn’t read this. All the world’s

a place in which the water
in the pipes. The world at arm’s

length. In the distance he is sitting
on a mule. He has that childish

look of exaggerated attachment.
Beside him, the single branch

of a dead oak seems to move
a dark cloud like a kite.

Self-Portrait At Seven, Seventeen by Liv Lansdale

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:43:50 -0400

I flick the little banister and cause it to quiver.
I enter the attic and unleash a dust storm.

I fashion a chandelier from tape, half a doily,
and string. I ignore that it drapes onto

the kitchen table and chairs. I contemplate
the dishwasher. I leave it alone. I walk

my fingers up the stairs. I skip through
the wall to the green plastic bedding on which

I place the harvested feast: I arrange four
lemons around a pizza. I come up with a trick

for spelling “Massachusetts.” I believe that
pilgrims and Protestants are all the same, that

they all wear buckled shoes. I know as much
about my family as they know about me, and

possibly more. I forget about the cosmic room
outside the dollhouse window, though I love it

there because of the baby raccoons
I once found and think I’ll find again.

I scrounge for five quarters. I examine my
leaky ceiling. I look away from it. I tell myself

not to look at the clock in hopes of getting
some sleep. I give up. I blast some Stravinsky

then turn it back down. I try to video-chat my
grandfather. I try again. I take a Sharpie

and paint “Goal: 84.2” on a napkin. I tape
it to my desk. I sigh. I laugh for sighing. I

re-read my emails. I count my chickens; I count
my blessings. I count the number of days until

the holiday. I delete spam with gusto. I ask
Damaris if she needs any laundry done. I hope

she says no. I borrow quarters. I plan a poem about
contentment. I select “Cottons and Linens.”

I write a poem about uncertainty. I remember
arriving here, handing a one to a girl lying on

the street, finding that she was just
a sleepy student, turning inwards again.