4.4.05
I haven't fully recovered yet from AWP.
Too much stimulus and consumption and laughter and trips through the
book fair. It still feels like I have Styrofoam peanuts inside my skull.
I bought five wonderful poetry collections, reading a few from one before
picking up another:
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
Highlights: clowning around with Alex Lemon, Timothy
Liu plopping shredded jellyfish onto Bob Hicok's plate at King Fortune
Seafood Restaurant, Robson Street, the sing along at The
Pic Pub, finally meeting Lucia Perillo, and the breakdance competition
between Anne Carson and W.S. Merwin (Anne won). Here
are a few photos.
3.28.05
What
do a taxidermied anteater, Fiona
Apple, a shaman, and the inventor of the apple martini all have
in common? Oh, you were so close. Give up? The answer is they
were all at the Swink
launch party for issue 2 last Saturday at Equator
Books. I only have photographic proof for three, but who cares?
What matters is issue 2 is finally out and is more gorgeous than the
premiere issue. You can read excerpts here
and purchase the magazine directly here.
Anyway, here are a few pictures from
the surreal night. Oh yeah, the guy who wrote American Psycho
also stopped by. I kept waiting for him to go berserk. What a dullard.
So you love poetry? Enough to get a
few lines tattooed on your chest? I'm thinking about getting this
poem by Charles Simic tattooed on my gums.
Lisa and I are leaving tomorrow for AWP, a day early,
to see as much of Vancouver
as possible. If I spot Celine Dion or a herd of hockey players or Celine
Dion getting checked by a herd of hockey players, I'll be sure to have
my camera ready.
3.15.05
I
can't remember the last time I read a novel as inventive as Jonathan
Safran Foer's newest, Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close, or read one as quickly (2 days),
or read one I didn't want to end as I was reading it. It's been a few
days since I've finished it and the book is still with me, in my eyes
and skin, in my hair. The hero of the novel is Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old
boy who's father died on 9/11 in one of the Twin Towers. He's constantly
imagining ways to make the world a safer place to live, or how to make
use of our grief: "In bed that night I invented a special drain
that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect
to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears
would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could
report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down,
and you could know if New York was in heavy books. And when something
really terrible happened—like
a nuclear bomb, or at least a biological weapons attack—an
extremely loud siren would go off, telling everyone to get to Central
Park to put sandbags around the reservoir." Half of the 326-page
novel is from Oskar's point of view, the other half are letters from
his grandfather and grandmother. Why John Updike mentioned in The
New Yorker that his heart slightly sank when he realized that
Foer "was going to spend more than three hundred pages in the company
of an unhappy, partially wised-up nine-year-old" is a mystery to
me, or why he said Oskar's pet Buckminster was a dog when, in fact,
he was a cat. Maybe Updike read Foer's
novel upside-down. Do yourself an enormous favor and buy this book.
And read it right-side up.
Your should also check out Brad Land's memoir Goat,
which I would rave about here but I'm all raved out.
M.
Ward's latest, Transistor
Radio, is on heavy rotation in my office. You could listen
to the beautiful record in its entirety here.
Lisa and
I flew to New York City last week, but first our plane had to turn around
and land at the Syracuse airport
because of weather conditions, then we had to sit on the tarmac
for four hours, then mill around the airport for two more, eat dinner
from a vending machine because all the restaurants were closed, then
fly back into JFK through turbulence, turbulence so bad everyone had
their air sickness bags ready, during which I had this thought: "If
we crash, at least the nausea would be end." Once our feet were
in Manhattan, it was all worth it: Nam Phuong restaurant, blueberry
martinis at our hotel bar, and the reception announcing the finalists
for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes at The
National Arts Club, in which Lisa's novel
is up for the Art
Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Click here
to see a few photos from our short trip.
3.1.05
How
does an album leak begin? If an album has leaked, Is it safe to assume
that someone working close with the musician(s) is the culprit? Who
knows. But I've been listening to Spoon's
Gimme Ficiton quite a bit, which won't be released until May
10th. You could hear the album now if you're web-savvy enough. Before
you accuse me of ripping off the band, let it be known that I've bought
all their other albums, EPs, singles, paid to see them live, and have
been spreading the gospel of Britt since '96 when Telephono
was released. So there. As for the new album: hot damn. If Gimme
Fiction doesn't catapult the band into the sort of acclaim and
attention that Modest Mouse received last year, then they should've
titled the album Gimme Nonfiction. No, what I meant to say
is I'll buy the album. Hell, I probably will anyway. Check out the
demo version of "I Summon You," one of the better songs
on the new album.
A record you can actually purchase now (and should) is
Iron
& Wine's Woman King EP. It's glorious. Here
is the title track.
So I went to my parents' house a few days ago to pick
up some of my stuff—books,
magazines, CDs, notebooks, a premature manuscript for my first book
(I say premature because only three of the poems are in HWM),
and a bunch of drawings when I was an art major. Check out this
portrait of Marcel Duchamp I did and shot with nine rubberbands dipped
in orange DayGlo paint. If you're asking yourself Why did he
shoot Marcel Duchamp with rubberbands dipped in orange DayGlo paint?
I'll respond by saying the art supply store was out of green DayGlo
paint. No, what I meant to say is Duchamp did a similar thing for The
Large Glass, shooting nine matchsticks dipped in paint with
a toy cannon, then drilling holes where they hit the glass. I also brought
back a few life drawings, which you could see by clicking here.
Oops, sorry, wrong link. Try this one.
Here's a poem.
2.15.05
So
much to listen to, so much to read, too few pairs of ears and eyes in
my head: Ambulance LTD's self-titled
album (if you don't like this
song, you might have some wax build-up), Dave Eggers' How
We Are Hungry (note to self: refrain from walking into a bookstore
after two glasses of wine), Andrew Bird's Mysterious
Production of Eggs, Charles Simic's illustrated book Aunt
Lettuce, I Want to Peek Under Your Skirt, Oldham & Sweeney's
Superwolf,
the new Paris Review (Jeffrey
Skinner's two poems were my favorite here), Black Mountain's self-titled
album (track #3, "Druganaut",
is my new soundtrack for strutting), Pleiades
(Mary Jo Bang knocks three out of the park), Neva Dinova's The
Hate Yourself Change, D. Nurkse's Burnt
Island (so good), the Bright
Eyes/Britt Daniel split, and issue 2 of Ninth
Letter.
How do you score 557 points in Scrabble? By getting 203
in one turn. Oh, it was a thing of beauty equivalent to a herd of
peacocks running across a field of fiery tulips.
I was going through some old sketchbooks this morning
and found something I kind of like.
Wish I had more time to draw or octoarms. That way I could write, draw,
pay the bills, and make a grilled cheese sandwich at the same time.
2.1.05
Last
night I finished reading Home
Land, the new novel by Sam Lipsyte. The man is gifted. He's
America's answer to Irvine Welsh, methinks. No, he's better than that.
He's got a wild imagination, his humor's as dark and sharp as George
Carlin: "I've seen videos of mama pandas sitting on their newborns.
They do it a good deal, I gather. The baby comes out looking like a
pink minifrank and, depending on her mood, the mother suckles it, or
sits on it, or flings it against the wall. That's why pandas are so
rare, I think." Did you laugh? No? Then this book isn't for you.
If you did, then get it now. It's brilliant. Well, except for the last
twenty pages. Just put the book away when you get to this line on page
209: "'Alright already!' somebody called. 'Bring on the dancers!'"
It all falls apart from then on. So close, Sam, you were so
close.
Tired of hearing all the hoopla surrounding Bright
Eyes? Me too. The fact is, Conor Oberst just put out a genius record,
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. If this album was a soup,
you'd see Bob Dylan, M. Ward, and Wilco floating in the broth. Damn
good soup. Here's "LUA",
one of the more beautiful songs on the album.
You know already that I believe Field
is the best literary magazine out there, hands down. So when I got this
rejection slip, "what if" looped in my head like a scratched
CD. Which has now (thankfully) been replaced with the aforementioned
Bright Eyes CD.
Check out my office cam and
see how prolific I've become.
Here's a poem.
1.15.05
Epoch
kicks. They should make t-shirts that say just that. I'd wear it. Read
the latest issue and you'll understand why I think a white T with my
assertion printed on it makes sense. Nicole Cooley's "Cesarean"
kicks ("Now here's the lesson chalked on the sidewalk like a missing
/ body."). Rachel Contreni Flynn's "Dead Center" is a
roundhouse kick ("Grasshoppers popped under tires, / the tress
swelled with grackles"). But what kicked me hardest were Stephanie
Reents' stories "Roommates" and "Disquisition on Tears".
I would not be surprised to see the latter in Best American Short
Stories 2005. The story kicked me so hard, it rattled my heart.
Did you know that I design book covers? I do. Here
are a few that I've done for Simon & Schuster. Lisa's book
of stories, by the way, comes out in June. She was interviewed yesterday
on Bookmark with Maria Hall-Brown.
Here's a photo from the interview.
I've been listening to Sons
and Daughters religiously. Their EP, Love
the Cup, is a thing of beauty with black boots and a sneer.
Even though they hail from Scotland, they sound as American as X
and the White Stripes. Check
out the
video for their song "Johnny Cash" and try not to tap
your foot or bob your head.
Another video: live
footage of the Arcade Fire
playing "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)". They'll be playing
live this Monday at the KCRW studio,
which you'll be able to watch here.
So Thursday I was feeling pretty euphoric after Steve
Gehrke from The Missouri
Review called to tell me they'd like to publish four poems.
But yesterday I got this letter. Big
congrats to Jennifer.
She kicks, too. So good news and then ah-man-I-was-so-close-damn-oh-well
news. Keeps me leveled, like that
Modest Mouse balloon weighed down by an anchor.
Previous Journal Entries
9/28/04 - 1/1/05
8/17/04 - 9/15/04
5/2/04 - 7/31/04
1/30/04 - 4/15/04
10/17/03 - 1/15/04
7/2/03 - 9/30/03
4/21/03 - 6/15/03
1/7/03 - 4/18/03
9/24/02 - 12/24/02
