Remarks In A Minor Key

2011-01-21T09:30:00.000-08:00

Robert Montgomery

The "Hijacking of Advertising"

This is just a great finding, and I will let it speak for itself. Here is the artist's website. From it:

"Robert Montgomery works in a poetic and melancholic post-Situationist tradition. Since 2005 he has carried out his WORDS IN THE CITY AT NIGHT project where, echoing the Situationist concept of detournement, he hijacks advertising space in the city, often illegally. His texts are part poetry, part an enquiry into our collective unconscious. They are intended to be encountered by commuters who don't know they are art, and an attempt to describe in public space what it feels to like to live now."

Additionally, there is a good interview with Dazed Digital HERE.

~~Charles

2010-10-26T11:55:00.000-07:00

Florin Petrachi

Florin Petrachi is a promising young Romanian artist.

This young Romanian boy was born in the city of Harlau, into a family that has never fully-appreciated his talent. Ever since primary school, he has set a goal for himself and held onto it no matter what obstacles he has faced. He wants to become a prominent painter.

Since his childhood, he has painted on almost everything, from his notebooks to the walls of his house. When he ran out of colors, he would find other materials (such as lime) to get him out of a jam. Many times his teachers would scold him because his notebooks weren’t clean, but he would imagine a personal universe with portraits and still-lifes and draw them on his schoolbooks.
He began painting lessons in the 5^th grade, and then began to paint different icons. At the age of thirteen, he discovered oil paint and was fascinated by it. Instead of studying for his final exams, he just painted—or so thought his mother. She was wrong, though: Florin studied for his exams as well. His first exhibition showed the drawing boards he used to make for the school. He became recognized by both his teachers and classmates as “The Painter”.
He started learning the harmony of combining colors by painting masks and sculpting. It became time for him to start participating in different competitions where he would exhibit his own works and sell icons so that he would have enough money to buy the materials he needed.
During the period he was participating at the Art and Crafts Olympics in Sibiu, he found out that he was admitted to the Octavian Bancila Art School in Iasi. He was overjoyed when the jury awarded him the special prize for keeping tradition.
All through his high school, he always tried to excel as one o the best students. He participated at many national and international contests, and won awards that led to his getting a scholarship at the George Enescu University of Art in Iasi. He has participated in such famous international contests such as “Open Doors” Awards, and the International Plastic Art Contest N.N. Tonitza, where he won first prize. These are just a few of the famous contests in which he participated. He was awarded a scholarship from the Blue Heron Foundation, which is an organization that offers support—through a partnering of scholarship and mentoring for orphaned and abandoned children—ambitious and talented students like Florin. He has excelled in his major, and won entrance to the Master Painting Program at the George Enescu University of Art in Iasi. Florin continues to follow his dream of becoming a stand-out painter.

I urge you to explore his website widely. Here it is.

Additionally, I urge you to explore the Blue Heron Foundation's Website. This is a charity for Romanian orphans, and it has greatly helped people like Florin. It's a fantastic organization.

~~Charles

2010-09-09T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm going away for the weekend, and won't be near a computer; so I thought I'd post this early. We all have our own unique feelings about, and memories of, that terrible day. HERE is my entry from last year. It contains a poem that I think about every year on this day.

I recently came across a great film about 9/11 by the Naudet Brothers. It's definitely worth a watch when you have some spare time. Here is the YouTube playlist.

~~Charles

2010-06-07T18:59:00.000-07:00

A Note To My Readers

I'm sorry I haven't been keeping this blog up-to-date of late. Things have not been going well in my head in terms of creativity.

On the 16th, I'm traveling to Transylvania for a month. This will be a good thing, and hopefully my brain will be sorted by the time I get back, and I will try to update the blog with more regularity again.

Again, I apologize.

~~Charles

2010-03-01T14:54:00.001-08:00

Tina Barney

I was reading the March 1st issue of The New Yorker when I came across Larissa MacFarquhar's Profile of the economist Paul Krugman ("How Paul Krugman Found Politics"). It's a great article; very informative and revealing of its subject--definitely one of the best Profiles to appear in the magazine for months.

In staid New Yorker Profile fashion, the article carried only one picture of its subject. The photography in the magazine is, like the writing, almost invariably sharp and original, but the picture of Krugman and his wife holding their cats struck me as being somewhat of a perfect portrait. I looked on the corner of the page for the credit, and saw that the photographer was Tina Barney. A few years back, I was reading the great Lawrence Weshler's "Everything That Rises: a Book of Convergences", and I came across the short article he wrote about Tina Barney's portraits of a father and daughter taken over the years--photos that in their elegant but almost confrontational simplicity captured the evolution of a father/daughter relationship from childlike innocence and parental dotage through teenage rebellion and parental weariness (see above pictures). Her portraiture is technically perfect; yet she seems to evoke always something extraordinary from her subjects that provides a subtle contrast between the unassuming execution and the depth of emotion. It's a good combination.

She mostly takes portraits of friends and family. The Krugman picture is the only one of her pictures that I can recall seeing in the magazine, and it's the only one I remember of somebody that's famous. It got me interested in her work again, though.

HERE is her ArtCyclopedia page.

HERE is her Museum of Contemporary Photography page.

Books:

"Tina Barney Photographs: Theater of Manners"

"Tina Barney: Players"

And, speaking of Mr. Weschler, here are three (ONE, TWO, THREE) other excellent books by him.

~~Charles

2010-01-08T07:49:00.000-08:00

"'2666' Spring" with Bolaño

In a move similar to the Infinite Summer project, Matt at bolanobolano.com has created an endeavor dedicated to guiding readers through Roberto Bolaño's doorstop masterpiece "2666" this Spring. Hopefully this will catch on and engender much discussion. Updates will follow as the project evolves; this is just a heads-up, so go out and get the novel (it's out in paperback now) from your local bookstore soon (you've got until January 25th), and prepare to dedicate months to it. At 50 pages per week, it shouldn't be an overwhelming task. It will be well-worth it, as this is a truly wonderful novel. If you've never read Bolaño before, now is the perfect time. If you want something to keep you occupied until this starts, pick up a copy of "The Savage Detectives".

More to come...

~~Charles

2009-12-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

"Empty L.A."

Photographer Matt Logue has published a book of beautiful photographs entitled "Empty L.A.". As a resident of Metropolitan Los Angeles, I find these photographs strikingly surreal and ameliorative. They're not all Freeway shots (as above); some are beach scenes; others depict a tranquil Downtown, utterly devoid of people and cars. I have no idea how he did them. The WEBSITE for this project is well-worth perusal.

--Charles

2009-12-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

Mark Ryden

Mark Ryden's work is unsettling, creepy, gothic, and very well-executed. Check out his paintings and drawings at HIS WEBSITE.

--Charles

2009-11-17T14:57:00.000-08:00

"Young Poets, Please Read Everything"

There is much to be said for the autodidact. A well-read individual is analogous to a contemporary Renaissance Man of knowledge. There are professional fields (Law and Medicine come to mind) that produce diversified specialties of focus that require extensive work in one particular area. Poetry, however, requires its practitioners to be well-versed (sorry) in the works of many different schools. Adam Zagajewski, the Polish-born poet, argues for the merits of the young poet reading as widely and omnivorously as possible.

Zagajewski--discussed in this blog HERE (and also HERE and HERE)--lays out his argument for scattershot reading in his succinct essay "Young Poets Please Read Everything", from his collection "A Defense of Ardor". I think that "scattershot" is appropriate in describing his method, which, with the thematic ardor that links this book's essays, the author emphatically refers to as "Reading chaotically!" The poet could not be more ardent in his advocacy for voracious and widespread reading--consumption, really--of whatever one can get one's hands on. His advocacy of autodidacticism is evident when he contrasts Brodsky, who left school at the age of 15 and is famous for his endless thirst for more poetry and knowledge, with the average American that has a P.H.D.: the latter might have achieved the same as the former, but "while rarely setting foot outside the Ivy League's safe precincts". Zagajewski notices that American poets tend to read only poetry, which he says

"suggests that there's something rigid and isolated about the nature of contemporary poetic practice, that poetry has become separated from philosophy's central questions, from the historians anxieties, the painter's quandaries, the qualms of an honest politician, e.g., from the deep, common source of culture."

For Zagajewski, poets read for two different, but converging reasons: the thrill of ecstasy, and the power and grounding notion of memory. These motives are not only dependent on each other in that "Ecstasy requires a little knowledge and memory loses nothing when colored by strong emotions", but also symbiotic, in that one purely serves to enhance the other. He argues to

"Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition... Read your enemies and your friends, read those who reinforce your sense of what's evolving in poetry, and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are."

Zagajewski is easily one of the greatest, and most-approachable, poets at work today. This book of essays reveals him to be a sagely teacher; a trusted one to go to when looking to broaden one's scope.

Highly recommended.

--Charles

2009-11-06T20:31:00.000-08:00

Jill Bolte Taylor's "Stroke of Insight"

This video comes from one of the greatest websites in the history of the Internet. In it, Bolte Taylor (a brain scientist) describes what it was like when she had a stroke, and what it revealed to her about her work. This piece is informative, inspiring, and simply fascinating.

Click the "Play" icon on the video above.

If, for some reason (I, or you, have failed), and you can't see the above video, then click on THIS LINK.

That is all.

--Charles

2009-11-06T20:00:00.000-08:00

Edward Snow's "The Poetry of Rilke"

This book is out now. It's one of the greatest purchases you can make this year. I mentioned it HERE. It has an informative, great introduction by Adam Zagajewski. This is one of the best ways that you can spend your money right now.

That is all.

--Charles

2009-11-03T12:13:00.000-08:00

"If God Existed, He'd be a Solid Midfielder"

The Autumn 2009 issue (Issue 108, with a focus on Chicago) of Granta has a fine short piece written by Aleksandar Hemon about playing football as an immigrant in the United States. Hemon is from Sarajevo, and was due to fly back on the day the siege commenced; he has been in Chicago ever since. In his early days there, he fell in with a passel of other immigrants whose common link was the sport. They came from all over (Hemon lists 29+ countries), uniting and finding fellowship in a game that was as foreign to America as they were. Hemon, a self-described atheist, befriends an elderly playboy--a Fiorentina fan from Florence--who, in his unwillingness to tacitly acknowledge his age by quitting the game, gives the author a fleeting glimpse of a higher power:

"Whoever created Lido ought to be satisfied: Lido is perfectly complete. The rest of us must roll in the dirt, get weather-beaten, collect the patina, earn our right to simply, unconditionally be. And whenever I pass the ball to Lido--fully aware that it's going to be miskicked and wasted--I have the pleasant, tingling sensation of being with something bigger and better than me, the sensation wholly inaccessible to those who think soccer is about exercise."

As stated, it's lark of a piece--and even though it's only eight pages, Hemon captures something of the Divine in the everyday escapes of a collective group of discrete nationalities.

Also, here's Hemon's famous novel, "The Lazarus Project".

Special thanks to Xerxes in Bombay for creating the image for this entry.

--Charles

2009-10-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

Vincent Lamouroux:

"Pentacycle"

French artist Vincent Lamouroux has taken an abandoned stretch for the prototype Aerotrain--an idea the French government abandoned in favor of the T.G.V.--and realized a new use for it. "Pentacycle" is rideable. What I like about it is that it takes a disused monstrosity of industrial/government waste, and turns it from a blight on the countryside into something that can actually be ridden again. It's great when people look beyond what something is, or what it's become, and see new possibilities for it. Beyond artists such as Lamouroux, I see this quality in many graffiti artists (Banksy entry HERE), and even skateboarders. That is all.

--Charles

2009-10-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

Liu Bolin: "Camouflage"

A repressive society has driven an unusually-talented artist to come up with a new way to express his frustration over censorship. The Chinese photographer Liu Bolin, whose studio was shut down by Beijing authorities in 2005, creates intriguing photographs in which he is both visible and "invisible"--a downplayed but earnest attempt to illustrate his government's irreverence and ignorance toward art and artists. Liu will find a scene, and then with help from an assistant, he will "paint himself" into his surroundings. This is a painstaking process that not only holds a mirror up to Chinese repression and indifference to its citizens, but also, in my opinion, illustrates his feelings about the attitude of far too many people in this world: that art is negligible.

HERE is a gallery of his photos.

HERE is a write-up in which he talks about his work.

--Charles

2009-10-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

Il Moto Poeta

The November issue of Harper's has an excellent memoir of sorts written by Frederick Seidel (discussed on this blog HERE) about his long love affair/addiction to fast motorcycles, and extremely fast custom-made Ducati superbikes in particular. These bikes often appear in Seidel's verse, and are treated by the poet with reverence for their power as well as their deadliness. By a poet's standard especially, Seidel is an extraordinarily rich man; thus, he has always taken the "only the best for me. Always I wanted the Best" attitude, and coupled it with an insatiable need for the thrill of speed that borders on Lust at its most elementary. For him, it's simple: "One wants to go faster".

First, there are the "halcyon" days of riding helmetless in New York, evading cops as he rides his first bike--a custom-built blue "chopper"--to work. This thrill becomes a Need for him, and he realizes, like a true addict, that he needs said thrill, only on a higher plane. He describes an early acquaintance that owned a Lamborghini Miura, and died in it at the age of 25: "Simone, who roared around on little streets at horrific speeds, knew that driving a race-car was asking for death. Simone loved life". Seidel finds something of the Romantic in the pursuit of operating machines that can kill you. In both the poems "Fog" and "Racer", from his collection "Ooga-Booga", Seidel writes:

"I spend most of my time not dying.
That's what living is for.
I climb on a motorcycle.
I climb on a cloud and rain.
I climb on a woman I love.
I repeat my themes.

(...)

Tonight, Bologna is fog.
This afternoon, there it was,
With all the mechanics who are making it around it.
It stood on a sort of altar.
I stood in a sort of fog,
Taking digital photographs of my death."

Seidel writes eloquently about eloquent things; as is his wont. At the Ducati factory in Bologna, where his bike was being custom-built (the workers referred to it lovingly as "Moto Poeta"), he offers us this cold assessment of flirtation with Death. Its precise simplicity makes it one of the best descriptions of this pre-occupation--or affliction--that I have ever seen. Elsewhere, from the Harper's piece:

"And there is something else in this. There is a way in which feigning nearness to death risks death. Faking it all well imitates real danger too faithfully and brings danger... Motorcycling is full of bravado and posing and the nearness of death. You pretend to be calmly, even coldly focused, when you ride, eyes everywhere, eyes on the job and immune to thoughts about risk. That is how one describes riding these fast motorcycles, except of course there is in addition the pleasure. You are riding beauty and you are riding speed and you are riding death. And it is a pleasure. But you offer yourself as a dashing devotee. You realize you are performing the role of yourself, and may be maimed out of existence as part of the act, as part of the character you are playing."

It's the speed, first and foremost, that attracts Seidel to his first MV Agusta, and later his stable of custom Ducatis. But he also has an appreciation for the aesthetic and craftsmanship of well-made things: "The street bikes were treasured, brilliant Italian products, meaning designed, designed with love and verve, bikes that went fast with style."

He writes about how he tried to "cure" his addiction to bikes by taking flying lessons, in the hope that he would become equally enamored of flight; to no avail. There was no cure. His need for extreme speed reached its apogee, and he was on his way to Bologna to have his newest machine built.

At the end of the piece, he goes to visit his Desmosedeci RR, which is in storage. He then walks over to, or confronts, his 999 F05, the "Moto Poeta". But it won't start; the battery is dead. It's a somber moment of resignation for Seidel, and in the winter of his life, a quiet and appreciative one. It's as if he's realized that he's taken a lifetime of passion in one area as far as it would go. After all, "The point is if you are afraid you ought not to be doing it."

--Charles

2009-10-07T18:04:00.001-07:00

John Ashbery

On December 1st, Harper Collins will publish the millionth book of poems by John Ashbery (Wiki entry HERE). The book is entitled "Planisphere". Is it just me, or does it seem to others that this man writes more than any other poet (and is that a good thing)? Ashbery is an intriguing poet for me because, with his later work especially, I either like it, or it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Moreover, often with the poems of his that I like, I have difficulty pinpointing exactly why I like them; I can't figure out what it is about them that makes them appeal to me. I remember reading that wonderful profile in The New Yorker from a few years back. In it, he talked about how each of his poems is essentially a polaroid of what's going on in his mind at any given time. That's a nice image, but it doesn't really give much of an explanation.

Without a doubt, though, Ashbery is one of the most-influential poets of our time, spawning schools that swim the seas that he created. He has already been published by the Library of America. Keep in mind that it wasn't until a few years ago that that house would publish anything by a living writer, until they published Eudora Welty--and since then Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. This "Collected Poems 1956-1987" is a beautiful book, and it contains the early work for which I think the poet will best be remembered by. "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (here it is) is undoubtedly one of the poetic milestones of the second half of the Twentieth Century. I have a Caedmon cassette version, with him narrating, somewhere lying around (I think it was released under their "Voice of the Poet" series). It's one of my favorite long poems, and the ideas and images that Ashbery developed in it are breathtaking in their revelation. The early Ashbery was a master of form when he wanted to be as well: here is a sestina called "The Painter":

"Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas
Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: “Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

How could he explain to them his prayer
That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As if, forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
“My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”
The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:
He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

Others declared it a self-portrait.
Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.
At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer."

Robert Frost once remarked that he found the poetry of Wallace Stevens to be "bric-a-brac". We all know how ridiculous that statement was. The funny thing was that some people believed it at the time. Critics have recently leveled similar claims about Ashbery: that he's a trickster whose best work is in his past. The estimable Meghan O'Rourke wrote a great piece about Ashbery back in 2005 for Slate.

It will be interesting to read this book when it comes out.

More Ashbery Links:

The Poetry Foundation page

Poets.org page

"The Ashbery Resource Center"

EPC/Asbery home page

--Charles

2009-10-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

Poetry vs. the Infinite

One of the poems from Adam Zagajewski's (discussed on this blog HERE) latest book, "Eternal Enemies", that struck me the hardest is a poem entitled "Subject: Brodsky":

"Please note: born in May,
in a damp city (hence the motif: water),
soon to be surrounded by an army
whose officers kept Hölderlin
in their backpacks, but, alas, they had
no time for reading. Too much to do.

Tone—sardonic, despair—authentic.
Always en route, from Mexico to Venice,
lover and crusader, who campaigned
ceaselessly for his unlikely party
(name: Poetry versus the Infinite,
or PVI, if you prefer abbreviations).

In every city and in every port
he had his agents; he sometimes sang his poems
before an avid crowd that didn't catch
a word. Afterwards, exhausted, he'd smoke a Gauloise
on a cement embankment, gulls circling overhead,
as if above the Baltic, back home.

Vast intelligence. Favorite topic: time
versus thought, which chases phantoms,
revives Mary Stuart, Daedalus, Tiberius.
Poetry should be like horseracing;
wild horses, with jockeys made of marble,
an unseen finish line lies hidden in the clouds.

Please remember: irony and pain;
the pain had long lived inside his heart
and kept on growing—as though
each elegy he wrote adored him
obsessively and wanted
him alone to be its hero—

but ladies and gentlemen—your patience,
please, we're nearly through—I don't know
quite how to put it: something like tenderness,
the almost timid smile,
the momentary doubt, the hesitation,
the tiny pause in flawless arguments."

It's an elegant tribute to one of the great masters of contemporary Poetry. I bought Joseph Brodsky's "Collected Poems in English" when it was published in 2000, and it's been one of my favorite books of modern poetry ever since. English was his third language, after Russian and Polish; the book contains all the poems of Brodsky's that appeared in English under his supervision during his lifetime. They're either translated by others, translated by others with his collaboration, translated solely by Brodsky, or composed directly in English by the poet. The translation of poetry from Russian to English is extremely difficult. Seamus Heaney, in his wonderful essay written after Brodsky won the Nobel in 1987 elaborates on this:

"In other words, like other strong poets, Mr. Brodsky sets the reader's comfort below the poem's necessities, and in order further to impose upon English the strangeness and density of his imagining, he is now the official translator of his own lines. So, in spite of his manifest love for English verse, which amounts almost to a possessiveness, the dynamo of Russian supplies the energy, the metrics of the original will not be gainsaid and the Engish ear comes up against a phonetic element that is both animated and skewed. Sometimes it instinctively rebels at having its expectations denied in terms of both syntax and the velleities of stress. Or it panics and wonders if it is being taken for a ride when it had expected a rhythm. At other times, however, it yields with that unbounded assent that only the most triumphant art can conjure and allow"

One of my friends says that Brodsky's rhythm is jangling; that either the translation wasn't done as well as it could be, or the meter was just scattershot. While Brodsky is not a lyrical "singsong"-type poet for me, I don't necessarily pay much creedence to my friend's quip. When I read Brodsky, I luxuriate in his clarity of thought and erudition more than anything else. In his translation of "Sextet: for Mark Strand" (another tribute poem), Brodsky shows an eloquence of word choice and a clarity for thought and metaphor that verges on the sublime:

"Petulant is the soul begging mercy from
an invisible or dilated frame.
Still, if it comes to the point where the blue acrylic
dappled with cirrus suggests the Lord,
say, "Give me the strength to sustain the hurt,"
and learn it by heart like a decent lyric.

When you are no more, unlike the rest,
the latter may think of themselves as blessed
with the place so much safer thanks to the big withdrawal
of what your conscience indeed amassed.
And a fish that prophetically shines with rust
will splash in a pond and repeat your oval."

Brodsky was undoubtedly a natural-born poet. According to his friends, his memory was amazing; an endless store of poems of his own and others that he could recite at the drop of a hat. Poetry--whether it was the writing of, or the teaching of--practically occupied his every thought. He was exuberant about it, and wanted the world to care more for it. When he received the Nobel, he lamented in his speech that "In any event, the condition of society in which art in general, and literature in particular, are the property or prerogative of a minority appears to me unhealthy and dangerous". He proposed in another essay that poetry be made more available to the public by putting anthologies in supermarket checkout lines and in the desks of hotel rooms, right beside Bibles. Poetry meant more to Brodsky than anything: read THIS article from the Hoover Institution, as it deals with his arrest and trial in Soviet courts.

I realize that this is a rather disjointed entry, but for me, Brodsky is a poet for any time, or mood. I come to his poems to get lost; to escape from whatever I need to escape from. For this reason, he is one of the more accommodating poets occupying my top shelf.

Other links:

Brodsky's Poets.org page.

Heaney writing about him in The Times.

Brodsky's Nobel lecture (amazing).

--Charles

2009-09-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

Olafur Eliasson:

"Your Space Embracer"

"Your Black Horizon"

Minimalist-type art is always hit-or-miss with me. For instance, I am rarely blown away by it. But, when I am, it hits me hard. Around 1999 or 2000 (I forget), I was in New York with a friend and we went to the Whitney. After having bland reactions to many of the paintings of an abstract minimalist, we went to the floor that contained the video installations. I came across a little room; in it was a medium-sized black-and-white television sitting on the floor in the corner. The television had a camera on top of it that was sending a live, closed-circuit feed of the corner that the apparatus was sitting in to the monitor itself. In other words, it was giving a live interpretation of what it was and what it was doing. It floored me. (I'm ashamed to say that I forgot who the artist, and what the work, was--so if any readers ever find out, I would be greatly indebted). This type of thing affects me greatly, but I often can't explain why. Another example of minimalist art that, for some reason, is very moving to me, is the work of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, whose work with space and light is mesmerizing.

Talk of space and light in Art brings me to the subject of Olafur Eliasson (previously discussed in this blog HERE). Eliasson does instillations that often deal with these themes. "Your Black Horizon" (the second picture) is just a color-changing light that's projected through a narrow gap in a room. The light is at eye level. Something about this is so beautiful to me. I like not only how it changes the nature and function of the room in which it's installed, but also how it creates a new framework through which the viewer defines boundary--all using a simple light.

"Your Space Embracer" uses a strong light projected through a hanging ring that has a mirrored surface. As the ring turns, the circle of light changes in pattern as it is refracted around the room. But, always in the focus of the light's beam is the silhouette of the ring on the wall. Thus, the viewer walks into a room in which parameters are set by the light. These parameters are morphing, but the viewer is given a more constant, but different reference to what's happening as represented by the shadow in the light's beam. Amazing.

I feel like I'm doing this work a disservice by even talking about it; maybe I'm just rambling--or missing the point completely--but this type of work is always a resounding success with me.

HERE is Eliasson's site (although the easiest way to just see the works is HERE--but the rest of the site is worth exploring).

Watch this:

*** HERE is a talk that he gives on TED.com (which is pretty much one of the best websites you'll ever go to).***

--Charles

2009-09-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

Alexey Titarenko

Alexey Titarenko (website HERE) is a Russian photographer who takes haunting black-and-white photographs. He often uses long exposures that lend his work an apparitional quietude. I don't know enough about photography to figure out what he's doing, but there's something about the way that he captures light that I find intriguing (examples HERE and HERE). Much of his work gives me the creeps--but in a comfortable way that is pleasing to the eye (example HERE). Many of his pictures remind me of the kind of old sepia-toned photos that one might find while going through a box in an attic or antique store. He has a true artist's eye, insofar as he can look at a random street, or a seemingly-uninteresting corner, and make either truly captivating. He's entrancing. I got lost in his website the better part of an hour one day. I've never seen any of his work in person, but it's something that I would love to do. I've been searching for a place to purchase some of his prints also; so if anyone in my small--but coveted--readership can find a link, please do me a favor and post it in the comment section. Thanks.

I would be interested in THIS if I knew more about it.

--Charles

2009-09-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

Gordon Stettinius

Gordon Stettinius is a Richmond, Virginia-based photographer who takes evocative photos that are quite arresting. His images are reminiscent of Walker Evans--had Evans been transported to modern times and confronted the world of today. At times, I'm reminded of Robert Frank's work as well.

I first came across Stettinius' work at the Robin Rice Gallery in New York in 2006. I was struck by how measured and perfectly-executed each image was. They all varied in subject matter. I wanted to take a few home with me. Each photograph seemed to possess a certain arresting quality, in that it begged you to keep looking. He possesses the eye of the natural artist, insofar as he can look at a wide variety of subjects--be they people, places, or things--and capture and distill the essence of what makes the particular thing beautiful. It comes across naturally and well. His work vacillates between the (mildly) disturbing and the serene--and sometimes accommodates both.

His website is well-worth perusal (here it is again). Explore it widely. Even if you are not "into" photography, I guarantee that you will be transfixed by some of his images.

Highly recommended

--Charles

2009-09-15T18:15:00.000-07:00

Out in Stores Today

Franz Wright's "Wheeling Motel" is out in stores today. Go to your local bookstore and get a copy. You won't regret it. (Discussed shortly in this blog HERE. <- Click on this link, and read about it).

Just go get the damn book. That is all.

And if you're new to Wright consider getting one or two of these as well:

"The Beforelife" -- the book that made me fall in love with his work

"God's Silence" -- a long book, full of amazing verse

"Walking to Martha's Vineyard" -- for which Wright won the Pulitzer

"Earlier Poems" -- another long book, available in paperback now, of his early work

"Ill Lit" -- a New and Selected Poems

"The Unknown Rilke" -- wonderful (some would argue the best) translations of Rilke's work.

--Charles

2009-09-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

"Try To Praise The Mutilated World"

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rose wine.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the grey feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

--Adam Zagajewski

Translated by Clare Cavanagh

This poem appeared in The New Yorker's first issue after the 9/11 attacks, and I think of it every year on this day.

2009-09-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

Rasskazy

Tin House Books has just published an anthology of contemporary Russian short fiction entitled "Rasskazy: New Fiction From A New Russia". (Links to buy from Tin House, or Powell's). It contains work by 22 different writers, most of which comes from respected Russian literary journals, and some published for the first time in this book. One story, "Drill and Song Day", by Vladimir Kozlov, appeared in the venerable American journal Agni.

This is an interesting anthology; one well-worth buying. To be certain, it contains the work of a people who are undergoing a new form of literary freedom for the first time. All of the writers contained within its pages have spent their mature lives in the Russia that took shape after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even though their newfound freedom is limited (Russia's media is still State-controlled), these stories are crafted by artists who do have access to the Internet.

In one of my favorite stories in the book, "A Potential Customer", by Ilya Kochergin, a man takes a temporary leave from some sort of commercial outfit in Siberia to go to Moscow so he can obtain a permit in order to have a rifle with which to hunt. While in Moscow, he falls in love with a girl, and the distinction of the remote world he is used to ("where everything gets measured against yourself"), and that of the cosmopolitan city whose denizens offer much more options for distraction, becomes apparent. This story is a nice representation of the book as a whole, insofar as it serves as a metaphor for the world in which these writers find themselves. The ending is unexpectedly restrained and beautiful.

In a direct example of Internet Russia, Olga Zondberg's "Have Mercy, Your Majesty Fish" tells the story of a blogger named Alya. This element alone adds a never-before-seen (at least by me) modernity to the realm of Russian fiction that is illustrious of Russia's being newly, but firmly, cemented into the Global Village. Alya writes about whatever is on her mind, which is mostly snippets of Existential postulations. At one point in the story, she becomes concerned when a person she knows responds to one of her questions with an uncomfortable dose of xenophobia. The ending of the story is a compellingly compressed evocation of loneliness: the fear of one's voice not being heard. Similarly, Kochergin touches upon the same theme: "But tell someone he must, someone must hear me. I must tell others of my life, in order to see my reflection in their pupils". Reading stories like this only makes me want to be more exposed to the modern writing of other cultures. This anthology is, regrettably, the first to come out in a while that has afforded me this... luxury--something it shouldn't have to be.

This is a problem with an easy solution: more people need to recognize the value of translation; there is a disgusting lack of work translated into English from languages that beg to be heard from across the globe. Personally, I would like to see more funding from our government (haha, for the most part), and perhaps private foundations, for translators, so that we can hear these types of voices--and writers from other countries--for the first time.

It's nice to get a sort of redefined "Russian Literature"--one that strays far from the immediate connotations of what the nation produced in the Nineteenth Century, and distinguishes itself with a strong nationalism that thrills in its endurance and adaptability to global exposure. Tin House brings us these stories that are full of a hardened Russian sensibility exposed to the heat-lamp of globalization.

In her succinct Introduction, Francine Prose gives praise to the anthology's editors and translators:

"Thanks for helping us Anglophones find out that the literature of the former Soviet Union is not only alive and well but also hale and hearty and thriving. 'Ah, the Russians,' we say. 'We're reading the Russians.' Yet now what we mean is not only the past--but also the present and the future."

Stories by Linor Goralik, Ilya Kochergin, Oleg Zobern, Olga Zondberg, Roman Senchin, Vladimir Kozlov, Nikolai Epikhin, Evgeni Alyokhin, Arkady Babchenko, German Sadulaev, Dmitry Danilov, Marianna Geide, Kirill Ryabov, Vadim Kalinin, Maria Kamenetskaya, Aleksander Bezzubtsev-Kondakov, Maria Boteva, Anna Strobinets, Ekaterina Taratuta, Aleksander Snegirev, Zakhar Prilepin, and Natalya Klyuchareva.

Edited by Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker

--Charles

2009-09-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

Raymond Carver

The Library of America has just published "The Collected Stories" of Raymond Carver (HERE is his Wiki link, which has some nice external links at the bottom of its page). This is a big event; Carver was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He put his own minimalist stamp on the form of the short story, and his style, for better or worse, greatly influenced many of his contemporaries and held sway (some would say dominated) the fiction workshops of graduate school M.F.A. programs across the country for much of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Without a doubt, he spawned legions of imitators--but none could touch the master who elevated a simple and plain-spoken style to the upper pantheon of Contemporary Literature. In fact, when the concept of utterly-inimitable style comes up, Carver's name is among the first that pops into my head.

Much like Thomas Wolfe, there is always the talk about the writer-editor relationship when it comes to Carver. Without a doubt, Gordon Lish--at the time, Carver's editor at Esquire (Fiction link HERE)--pared-down Carver to the form that we know. How much shepherding was actually involved remains open to debate. Regardless, the stories themselves are absolute gems. It will be nice to have them amassed into one volume. I read that there will be some previously-unreleased stories as well.

Library of America books, while expensive (the suggested retail for this volume is $40), are great value--whether you're buying it for yourself, or as a gift. Simply-put, they're beautiful; the binding is exquisite, as is the cloth. The pages are practically Bible-thin, and the paper itself is high quality. There's even a built-in bookmark. I own many Library of America books, and they are quite durable. They also have great notes and chronology sections. This edition clocks in at 1019 pages.

I am very excited about this book. All lovers of Fiction should be.

--Charles

2009-09-05T05:08:00.000-07:00

Khristopher Carlson

Khristopher Carlson is a human rights researcher and freelance photographer who takes stunningly beautiful photos of war-affected children, pastoral African life, and basically anything that crosses his path. He does portraiture, too, and possesses a keen eye for capturing the essence of his subject, be it a tribal shaman or a vendor in an agricultural collective. His wonderful website is a must-see, and one that demands thorough exploration. I would have put one of his pieces up as the header for this entry, but the website doesn't allow One to copy images from it.

Highly recommended for anyone that is passionate about human rights, amazing photography, or both.

HERE is the link again.

--Charles

2009-09-05T01:59:00.000-07:00

Porous Borders: "National" Literature in a Global Village

The Atlantic Monthly's "Fiction 2009" special issue (on newsstands until October, and discussed on this blog HERE) has an article, written in four parts by four different writers, about the concept of National Literature, and whether such a thing can exist in today's world, which the internet--among other things--has shrunken into some sort of informational and cultural polyglot.

The first piece, written by the venerable Margaret Atwood, deals with the subject rather brusquely. For Atwood, it almost seems like she's tired of the question, and when confronted with it, has a stock answer that smells of lethargy and disinterest in the very topic:

"'Is there a National Literature?' people ask me. 'Sort of,' I reply. 'But the boundaries are stretchy'. There are certainly books you can't imagine being written anywhere else."

She doesn't seem that interested in the question. Elsewhere in her essay:

"Nations can't be ignored as factors but they don't define everything." [...] "'Do you identify yourself as a woman, or as a writer?' I've been asked. 'A North American? A Torontonian? An environmentalist? A poet, or a novelist?' As if we were so divisible.

'All, all,' I say. And so much more besides."

I like Margaret Atwood; she's a great writer--but I had higher hopes for her part when I saw her name on the byline of this piece.

The second essay, written by Joseph O'Neill (author of "Netherland"), is entitled "The Relevance of Cosmopolitanism". Right off the bat, I felt like I was in the hands of someone who might be able to give a better answer to this question. O'Neill was born in Ireland to an Irish father who spoke English to him, and a Turkish mother who spoke to him in French. The young O'Neill went to pre-schools in Mozambique, Turkey, and Iran, and was exposed to Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, and Persian along the way. An American family friend taught him how to read and write in English when he was five. He then went to British and French international schools in Holland, before spending a decade each in London and New York. To sum up, O'Neill is the definition of a well-travelled polyglot. He talks about labels (i.e. "African-American", or "Korean-American" writer), and readily admits that no such hyphenization can be applied to him. "But that requirement seems a little unfair, not to mention tricky". He goes on:

"Lately, however, it has come to seem that personal placelessness may no longer be quite so anomalous. The increasingly unruly and powerful flows of information and capital and humans mean that boundaried worlds, including nation-states, are leakier and more permeable than ever."

He makes a few more excellent points, but I feel I should share his conclusion in its entirety:

"The relevance of cosmopolitanism is fast becoming more than theoretical. As a matter of daily reality and to a degree previously unknown, we are faced with the experiences of others everywhere. This imposes new demands on consciences and nationalistic categories. Literature is not immune form such demands; one might even suggest, since we writers are concerned with reality and conscientiousness, that literature should be unusually interested in these demands. This does not mean that a new artistic regime is upon us. Writers, in order to produce something truly worthwhile, must be ruled only by their deepest impulses, which can come form anywhere and lead in a million valuable directions. But it does seem that those who internalize the new world have every chance of writing something newly interesting."

To me, this is a much better attempt at an answer and explanation that that of Atwood. There's no reason that an artist should feel constricted by, or cut off from, the call of the Muse if the Muse is not speaking his/her language--or speaking in a way that isn't lucid with cultural identity. I realize that we might be approaching a slippery slope of Post-Colonial argumentativeness here, but this is one of the major reasons why I love the writing of V.S. Naipaul (discussed earlier in this blog HERE): he has no cultural identity, and thus, as a writer, simply describes what he sees--free from the stricture of a heritage or cultural identity that would undoubtedly lessen his insight, and render him a far less potent writer.

Monica Ali's essay "Did I Know enough to be British" follows O'Neill's. Oddly(?) she cites both Naipaul and O'Neill in it--but to good effect. Ali takes a different tack:

"...fiction is still essential to the way that a nation understands itself."

before concluding that:

"Of course it's not only major events by which a nation reckons itself. In Britain, the only thing we can say for sure about our national identity is that it is changing around us, faster now than in previous generations. How better than through fiction to reflect and examine that change? We have a national literature now; that it is created by a multitude of diverse voices, many originally from other countries, that it presents a plurality of ideas and themes and perspectives, in no way detracts from its role. Indeed that is what makes it our national literature".

I can't argue with that, but it seems that Ali is saying that Britain has been forced into a new mold from which literature springs. Which is alright; it's hard to argue with the times that lead a nation such as Britain to produce such formidable literary luminaries as Zadie Smith, Zoe Heller, and David Mitchell. This is how it is now, and Ali seems comfortable with the change. After all, nothing is permanent. A "British Literature" from the early to mid part of last century would have included Forster, Woolf, Larkin, Greene, and Evelyn Waugh--all born in the U.K., and all of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. This is just not the case anymore.

Anne Michaels sums it up in the fourth essay:

"A national literature is made not only by writers, but by readers. [...] When people are dispossessed, a national literature can reside in a single voice. What makes a home for words is a reader; and what makes a home for a reader is words."

---

Also in The Atlantic's Fiction 2009 issue are stories by Tea Obreht, Jill McCorkle, Rick Bass (This, This, and This), Paul Theroux, Alexi Zentner, Wayne Harrison, and Kent Nelson.

Donald Hall, Brendan Galvin, J. Allyn Rosser, David Baker, Linda Gregerson, Chelsea Rathburn, Mark Jarman, and Carol Muske-Dukes provide poems.

--Charles

2009-09-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

Floc'h, Joost Swarte, and the Ligne Claire

I first took notice of the artist Floc'h's work when I saw the cover for the January 15, 2001 edition of The New Yorker. I loved the simplicity of the composition, structure, and colors in the painting. There was something else that struck me as well: a certain placid detachment that was pleasing to the eye. I seem to remember that his paintings always (I might be wrong about this, but I think not) accompanied the fiction of Haruki Murakami (Wiki entry HERE) that appeared in the magazine's pages. His work became instantly recognizable to me, and I delighted in it every time I came across it.

The magazine occasionally published work by an artist that I sometimes mistook as being the work of Floc'h. This was the Dutch artist and designer Joost Swarte, who, not surprisingly, has one of the coolest and most-intelligent websites that I've come across (HERE it is--have fun getting lost in it). Both of these men are purveyors of a style called the "Ligne Claire", or "clear line"--a name bestowed by Swarte. The paintings of both men are similarly tranquil, but those of Swarte sometime have a comic edge to them--have a look at the series he did on reading that I found in the archives of The Ephemerist. I don't have much else to say about their work, other than I love it, and I recommend looking into it.

It turns out that Swarte has a book coming out in October. Pre-order "Modern Swarte" from your local independent bookseller. As for Floc'h, I found this book on Amazon. I'm interested in finding more books from both of these artists, so if anyone stumbles across any, please let me know. Thank you.

(The first three works that head this entry are by Floc'h; the last by Swarte)

--Charles

2009-09-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

Literary Awards

In The Atlantic Monthly's special Fiction 2009 issue (on newsstands until October), Alice Sebold writes about literary awards. She writes about receiving them--Sebold won the American Bookseller's Association's Book of the Year Award for her novel "The Lovely Bones". Thrilled to be nominated for an award, Sebold sits through the ceremony nervously as each of her fellow nominee's names is announced. When she finds out that she won for her category, she takes the stage "gamely" (she humorously refers to "the toxic swim of booze and pills that greased the pathway of my thoughts from brain to tongue that night") delivers a brief speech, and then spends the rest of the night glad-handing with people from every echelon of the world of letters. At various points of the after-party, she tells people "You know this is bullshit, right? This. Award. Bullshit. Right?".

I have often thought this about awards in general (I have a long-harbored and deep-seated hatred for the Oscars™ that I won't get into now)--that they mean nothing, that they're over-hyped, and market and industry driven. Literary awards angered me to a lesser extent, but only because they lauded those that toiled in a field for which I have more respect. But even these awards annoyed me: the Nobel, in particular, is often politicized (which I guess can be said for most other awards), and sometimes goes to writers whom I feel haven't founded a strong enough career on which to earn it. More to the point, I feel that too many great writers are overlooked when it comes to the passing of accolades. This is not to say that I've never agreed with the conferral of many of the major awards of the past decade; rather--and without getting specific--there are a handful of these major honors that I felt were fully-deserved, and I took joy upon hearing the news of the winners.

Sebold's article brings a different argument to the table. She was made guest editor for the 2009 edition of "The Best American Short Stories", and was placed in the position of sieving through hundreds (pre-filtered from thousands by the Series' general editor) of stories that deserved reading. She ultimately had to pick twenty from those. In a broad way, this experience changed the way that she views the place of literary awards in our present society. She makes the point that it can't hurt to draw more attention to literature in times like these, where we find ourselves in a post-9/11 world that is rife with not only religious tension, but economic hardship as well. "Narrative, after all, is perhaps the most powerful antidote we have in the face of what at first may appear to be insurmountable odds", she writes, going on to emphasize that stories "can expand the realm that we inhabit" through metaphorical association. I know that this is not a new train of thought; it's just that I find her perspective interesting. Through her unique journey, Sebold has reached an interesting conclusion: literary awards can only help Literature. After all, at the beginning of the piece, she writes about the whole process "I now think that [it is] preferable to being loaded to the gills on a generous friend's anti-anxiety meds".

While freighted with pros and cons, if awards can advance the purpose of Literature (be it Fiction or Poetry), then that can only be a great thing.

--Charles

2009-08-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

Franz Wright

American poet Franz Wright has two new books being published in the forthcoming weeks. Knopf is releasing "Wheeling Motel", and Marick Press is putting out a small chapbook entitled "7 Prose". I have heard that Marick makes beautiful books that are well-worth the money.

I'm not a bookseller, or recognized critic, so I have not been able to obtain an advanced copy of either; suffice it to say that I can give no review as of now. But this is very big news for anybody that loves poetry. Franz Wright is one the best and most-influential poets at work today. He has his detractors (so does everybody, though), but his work has a deep emotional resonance that holds sway over many a reader--myself included. Wright has had a tough life, and has learned many lessons the hard way; this comes through in a very controlled and elegant manner in his work. His poetry is extremely unique and satisfying, and I highly recommend it to anyone that hasn't read him.

I suggest ordering "The Catfish" from Marick Press (and pre-ordering "7 prose"), and "Wheeling Motel" from your local bookstore as soon as you get the chance.

More recommended books by Wright:

"The Beforelife" -- the book that made me fall in love with his work

"God's Silence"

"Walking to Martha's Vineyard" -- for which Wright won the Pulitzer

"Earlier Poems"

"Ill Lit"

"The Unknown Rilke" -- wonderful translations of Rilke's work.

Also:

Poetry Foundation page

Poets.org page

--Charles

2009-08-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

Poetry International 2009

Poetry International's annual issue (for '09, it's a double issue: #13 and #14) hit the stands about a couple of months ago, and I managed to get my hands on a copy of it today. I had never read it before, and am now ashamed of that. The issue is full of great poetry by poets of both the famous and the lesser-known variety. In addition, there are translations of works by poets from Vietnam, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Italy, Lebanon, Israel, Cuba, France, and Belarus. There's a comprehensive feature (with a brief but informative introduction by Mariela Griffor) entitled "Chilean Poetry Today" that features the names that One would expect (Neruda, Parra, Mistral, and Bolaño), along with ten other poets whose work I have never read before. There's a "Chapbook" section that has marvelous David Young (discussed previously in this blog HERE) translations of the great Paul Celan. This section also contains a tribute--with an Introduction by Carolyn Forché--to the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who died last summer. A Commentary and Essay section is followed by a Book Review section that contains reviews of 28 books. I am particularly looking forward to reading Marit MacArthur's "A Second View: The Collected Poems (1956-1998) of Zbigniew Herbert", as I love Herbert's work.

I've enjoyed everything I've read in the book so far, and I can't wait to finish it.

Here is a link from where you can buy past issues and/or subscribe.

--Charles

2009-08-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Temporary Art

Back in 2005, the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed a project that they called "The Gates" (Wikipedia entry HERE) in Central Park. It consisted of over 7,000 flowing, orange-colored pieces of fabric (much like a gate, though in an abstract way) that meandered along 23 miles of the Park's paths. It was impressive: love it or hate it (and it was contentious; many people forget how polarizing it was), it managed to transform the experience of Central Park for two weeks. And then it was taken down, as if it never happened. In 1985, the same artists did something similar with the Pont Neuf in Paris: they wrapped it with light tan cloth; simple, but it changed the whole way that the bridge was experienced. The "Pont Neuf Wrapped" drew over 3 million visitors in two weeks before being "unwrapped" and vanishing into the collective annals of History.

The Danish artist Olafur Eliasson was hired by the City in 2008 to create the New York City Waterfalls project, which eclipsed the cost of "The Gates" and lasted for about three-and-a-half months. Almost randomly, waterfalls sprouted up in four places on the East River--most notably under the Brooklyn Bridge. It was simply an erection of scaffolding and piped water, but it was a waterfall, nevertheless, and it did appear to be flowing out of the Bridge. It was bracingly creative, and just all-around cool. Then, it too was gone; never to happen again.

These kind of things fascinate me. An artist comes in and makes a simple (or not-so simple--depending on how you look at it) change to a famous place or thing, lets it set in, and then takes it away. It raises a lot of questions about art itself, and the fleeting nature of it. For me, I think about it along these lines: how can I translate such a "once upon a time" feeling into the artistic medium of the written word? It's bothered me for quite a while now, and I've been searching for an answer. Is the written word versatile enough when compared for this purpose to the medium of the Visual? And I'm not talking about ekphrasis here, because I'm not looking to just try to "find" a way to transliterate the experience. I would like to actually realize a way that words (on paper) could have such an effect. I just don't think it can be done, and it periodically drives me crazy. Am I even making any sense?

--Charles

2009-08-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

Sonnet Anthology

The poets Edward Hirsh and Eavan Boland have edited a wonderful anthology for Norton called "The Making of a Sonnet". I don't see how any more information regarding this form and its practice could be crammed into 500 pages. At the beginning, each of the poet/editors provide "Personal Essays on Encountering the Sonnet". Hirsch speaks fondly of coming across Frost's "Acquainted With the Night" as a 17-year-old young man, and lying in the darkness of his room, reciting it to himself. Boland writes about growing up in Dublin and wanting to be a poet.

"I was trying to put together some foundation for my hope of being a poet. I wanted to belong to Irish poetry; I wanted Irish poetry to belong to me. The sonnet, I believed, could have no role in that. I had read it at school and resisted writing it. I was sure it was un-Irish, un-local, too courtly for a new republic, too finished to ever find a new beginning in the literature I was trying to understand."

She--at 17 years of age as well--stumbles upon Patrick Kavanagh's sonnet "Epic" in a bookstore, and is carried away by it. She goes into detail about why it holds her in such thrall, but I will not go into that here. However, she reaches a conclusion:

"It showed me something else as well: It convinced me there and then that the sonnet is a form of true power--malleable, nomadic, humane. And that it can travel to any situation and to any uncertainty and offer its marvelous interior architecture to shelter the moment."

The editors then offer two very brief chapters entitled "The Sonnet in Summary", and "The Making of a Sonnet: a Formal Introduction". Next up are the main sections of the selected sonnets that comprise the anthology. The first, "The Sonnet in the Mirror" is a grouping of poems that poets have written about the form itself. Examples from this chapter include Millay's "I Will Put Chaos Into Fourteen Lines", Keats' "If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain'd", and Billy Collins' (who I usually dislike) "Sonnet".

Each century--from the Sixteenth to the present--gets its own section; each has a brief introduction, followed by at least a dozen (a few dozen in the case of the Twentieth Century's section, which is extremely comprehensive and varied) well-chosen examples of the form. By seeing the evolution of the form over the years, the reader gets a sense of just how versatile and accommodating the sonnet really is. The next section, "The Sonnet Goes to Different Lengths" illustrates the pliancy of the form and how some poets have tried to make it yield to different demands. The last section of poems, "The Sonnet Around the World" is exactly as it sounds: translations of international poets--among them Goethe, Rimbaud, Borges, Pushkin, Baudelaire, Rilke, Mallarme, Verlaine, and Lorca (etc.).

The last sections of the the book, "Ten Questions for a Sonnet Workshop", and "The Sonnet Under the Lamp: a History of Comments on the Form", are exactly as they sound. Both are superb additions.

In the appendices, the authors provide suggestions for further reading, and a brief biography of every poet that appears in the book.

This anthology is excellent. Highly-recommended.

Edward Hirsch: Poetry Foundation page, Poets.org page

Eavan Boland: Poetry Foundation page, Poets.org page

--Charles

2009-08-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

Keith Loutit

Keith Loutit is a Sydney-based photographer who uses time-lapse and tilt-shift to create ethereal and soothing pastiches of life around Sydney and Sydney Harbor. I found out about him over a year ago, and I religiously check his Vimeo site every couple of weeks to see if he has updated. The methods he uses make his subjects appear miniature, as if they're toys. He often sets his videos (I guess they could be called that--they're just assemblages of time-lapse stills--but I'm no photgrapher) to interesting music. The scenarios themselves are intriguing as well: one involves a sea rescue; another is an overview of the activity of a port and all the shipping container transport; another just follows people on a beach. I could go on and on, but I think I will just let the videos speak for themselves (that is also why this is one of my shorter recommendations--plus, I hadn't done something "artsy" in a while, and this perfectly fits that niche).

Here are my favorites (but you should explore his whole site, and the Vimeo site):

"The North Wind Blew South"

"Bathtub IV"

"Bathtub III"

"Bathtub V"

I have watched his videos over and over again. It's safe to say that I'm addicted.

--Charles

2009-08-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Rilke

This is a couple of months away, but it is nonetheless some very exciting news: on October 13, North Point Press will publish a large collection of Rilke poems, with facing-page translation by Edward Snow, and an introduction by Adam Zagajewski (discussed on this blog HERE). I love Rilke. A few years ago, I bought Snow's translation of the "New Poems" and took them on a vacation with me. I got hooked on the poet, and went to look for a more comprehensive selection of his work. I ended up buying "The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke", translated by Stephen Mitchell, with a (wonderful) introduction by Robert Hass. I love this book, and re-read parts of it this weekend on a vacation with my wife. It's strange, though, because I remember as I was reading it, I wondered why Edward Snow hadn't translated a big selection of Rilke (he has done a couple of the poet's other works, but nothing nearly as comprehensive as Mitchell's "Selected")--because when I compared the translations of "New Poems", Snow's work came out on top for me; it read easier; it seemed more lucid and modern. Well, now I don't have to wait any longer, because North Point Press is publishing a 720 page behemoth. Here is their product description:

"For the past twenty-five years, North Point Press has been working with Edward Snow, “Rilke’s best contemporary translator” (Brian Phillips, The New Republic), to bring into English Rilke’s major poetic works. The Poetry of Rilke—the single most comprehensive volume of Rilke’s German poetry ever to be published in English—is the culmination of this effort. With more than two hundred and fifty selected poems by Rilke, including complete translations of the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies, The Poetry of Rilke spans the arc of Rilke’s work, from the breakthrough poems of The Book of Hours to the visionary masterpieces written only weeks before his death. This landmark bilingual edition also contains all of Snow’s commentaries on Rilke, as well as an important new introduction by the award-winning poet Adam Zagajewski. The Poetry of Rilke will stand as the authoritative single-volume translation of Rilke into English for years to come."

Sounds good to me. I encourage all who have an interest in this book to pre-order it from your local bookstore. Other Rilke recommendations are Franz Wright's excellent "The Unknown Rilke", and the Modern Library's "Letters on Life: New Prose Translations".

--Charles

2009-08-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

Charles Wright

Charles Wright is a poet who lives and teaches in Charlottesville, Virginia. I first came across him in 1998, when he won the Pulitzer Prize for his book "Black Zodiac". I found his poems to be immensely relaxing to read. His work was always a haven for me; a simple and accessible place that was reliable for its welcoming warmth. Eastern poets have had a great influence on his work; one encounters a certain sagely erudition that permeates his long, flowing lines. He often references Eastern poets directly, either in the title of a poem, or the poem itself.

Earlier this year, F.S.G. published a new book of Wright poems called "Sestets". Just based on appearance, the book has an understated simplicity: the cover is pitch black, with the author's name and the title in white. True to the title, each poem in the book is a sestet (a six-line stanza), and true to Wright's form, the lines often overflow, and creep downward--one long line unable to be contained as such by page limitation. The poems are all little compact gems of efficient poetic acumen. Wright often sings of the oft-overlooked solace that's bestowed by our natural surroundings. I have always noticed a Zen-like quality to his work, which, in the case of this book, remains present, and is enhanced and serviced by the brevity of form to which the poet remains consistent throughout. It's an interesting book (among many other reasons) because of this: one can pick it up and read a poem in seconds. What makes Wright so great, though, is that these poems not only stand up to, but demand, many re-readings. I know this is the case with all good work, but there is something about the quiet and unassuming "smallness" of this collection that possesses a limpid and welcoming wisdom.

This book is a good starting point for one who should want to explore widely in the work of Wright. Also recommended:

His trilogy (which is mostly (I think) collected in "Negative Blue") of "Chickamauga", the aforementioned "Black Zodiac", and "Appalachia" is amazing reading. This is the first Wright that I really got into. Last year (or so), I bought "Scar Tissue", and have come back to it many times. "The World of Ten Thousand Things" is a bigger book that collects his work from the '80s. Highly-recommended.

I recommend Wright to anybody--readers of, or newcomers to, poetry--who like readily-accessible and serene work.

HERE is his Poetry Foundation page.

HERE is his Poets.org page.

Go to the bottom of THIS PAGE, and you can hear him read three poems.

--Charles

2009-08-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

Ian Frazier: Siberia

Over the past three weeks, The New Yorker published a two-part (first in the August 3rd issue, second in the August 10th and 17th double issue) feature, written by the esteemed Ian Frazier, about a five week journey across Siberia. Before reading it, the only two things that came to my mind whenever I happened across the word "Siberia" were the Gulag --as I read about in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's wonderful landmark "The Gulag Archipelago" (Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Abridged Version), and tennis player Maria Sharapova, who was born in Nyagan. So in my mind, it was a vast expanse of harsh Post-Soviet wilderness that had horrible, remote prisons, and sometimes produced goddess athletes. Frazier provides a nice first-hand account of the Siberia of today, which he traversed in a grueling 5-week journey that he alternately describes as arduous or hilarious--or a combination of the two.

To begin with, the car that is chosen to make the trek in is a converted delivery van that he has his doubts about upon first sight. He hires a guide, Sergei, who is the head of the robotics lab at St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute (and a former employee of the Soviet space program). Sergei apparently knows the region quite well, and negotiates the purchase of the van--assuring Frazier that it is perfectly-suited to the trip. Sergei also brings along a helper. The ensuing adventure that the three men embark upon is rife with problems, amusement, and frequent scenes of wondrous beauty.

Besides being a great adventure (which it most definitely is), I really enjoyed how informative Frazier's piece is. He starts of with a brief history of Siberia--what it was and what it became--that he revisits in a comfortably rambling way throughout the narrative. I'm not going to condense the history into this space, but rest assured that it's surprisingly fascinating. Frazier also brings an artist's eye for detail to his descriptions of his situations and surroundings. You really get a feel for what it's like to be on the vast expanse of a steppe. Frazier does his best at times to draw comparisons between what he is experiencing and what it most-closely resembles in the Western World, but on most occasions even he admits that this is too challenging. His evocation of the permafrosted open spaces, the taiga that spread over them, and the rivers that wind through it all, is captivating storytelling at its best. When he reaches Lake Baikal, he's overwhelmed by the clarity of the water. As previously mentioned, he does the best he can to relate said clarity by describing the way the moonlight reflected on the water--but even he admits that it is actually impossible, and just makes do by saying that he realized he had never seen the Moon reflected in water before. The same goes for his amazement, upon leaving city limits and actually reaching the middle of nowhere, at seeing how bright the night sky was, with its blinding stars and slowly-moving satellites.

He brings his trademark humor on board as well: his long diatribe on Siberian mosquitoes is so amazingly awful as to be funny; one can't imagine things being so bad. He goes into great detail about the sweeping, omnipresent trash heaps that litter the side of the road. At one point, Sergei stops the van to make a repair, and finds an adequate part just by kicking around in one of the piles. The brusqueness of the two Russians contrasts nicely with the neediness of the narrator on many occasions. A memorable part of the story occurs when the travelers run out of road, and have to put their van on a Trans-Siberian Railray car for a stint. They eventually reach the Pacific, near Vladivostok, on--oddly enough--September 11, 2001. I can't imagine what Frazier felt about the news of that day after having just completed such a trying journey over such a magnificent landscape.

--Charles

2009-08-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Globalization Through a Different Lens

Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, wrote an interesting book about Soccer/Football entitled "How Soccer Explains the World: an {unlikely} theory of globalization" (U.K. edition HERE). I bought it because I'm a huge fan of the game, and there is much within the book to satiate the needs of the fan who loves to learn more about it. He talks about great and historic rivalries--such as the Celtic/Rangers one that brims in Glasgow (although the author observes that it has mellowed into more of a front of late), and the Red Star/Partizan one that boils over into gang violence and riots in Belgrade (HERE is a famous example of a Belgrade derby). There's a chapter on hooliganism that explores the past and (laughably benign) present of the hooligan through the story of an aging member of the Chelsea "Headhunters" firm. There's a story of an unassuming Nigerian who went to play in the Ukrainian League, and found himself to be the first black person that many of the fans had ever seen. Judaism in the game is covered extensively--from the little-heard story of the great club Hakoah, to the more ambiguous Jewish ties that clubs such as Tottenham and Ajax claim. Another chapter deals with the politics and corruption of Italian Football (a book in itself, really), and covers the Agnelli family and Silvio Berlusconi. Iranian and American football are discussed in other chapters.

I like Foer's writing style; it's one of a learned man with a sweeping vocabulary who can cull le mot juste on a whim. I thought the book would offer more, though. I bought it for the title, and was disappointed that I didn't come away from the reading with a more cohesive thread in my mind of "how soccer explains the world". Frankly put, it's a misnomer that--to me--feels like the author (or maybe publisher) pushed in order to distinguish the book from others and promote sales. A more honest title for it would have been "10 Interesting Anecdotes About Soccer". Foer didn't put across a unified theory of how the game is a synecdoche for globalization; rather, he provided a focused and limited history of it that sweeps across continents.

Recommended for those that like to learn more about the game, and nothing more.

--Charles

2009-08-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

"Inherent Vice"

Pynchon's new novel came out yesterday (see below post). I just finished it, and I must say that I liked it. There's the standard-issue dosage of Pynchonia in it: entangled plot elements and characters (almost all with weird names); rhythmic, intoxicating prose; limitless knowledge of arcana (up to, and including Vietnam-era C.I.A. fake-currency airdrops on North Vietnam); prodigious amounts of humor (puns and jokes on the surf music scene, even the invention of a little-known black band that played Dale-type riffs--albeit with hilarious lyrics); a Topanga-dwelling surf music band that turns out to be zombies, until being ritually-cleansed by some sort of guru; bars with gigantic nickels, on whose embossed face Thomas Jefferson comes to life and dispenses detective advice, affixed to the wall; a L.A.P.D. detective who keeps a freezer full of chocolate-covered bananas and randomly shoots them throughout his office's vacuum-tube message system; a mysterious, veiled killing consortium of dentists on a tax break who may or may not be running the whole scheme; Pychon's endless inventions of groups with names that ultimately exist to form a strange and/or funny acronym; etc.

To be certain, Pynchon delves into genre territory here. The book is essentially a detective story. It's very noir-ish, with familiar tropes of said genre, most of them being the slant of the ethos of the Private Investigator versus that of the Cop. The noir here is bright, insofar as it's set under the unrelentingly monotonous sun of Southern California--all the way from Leo Carillo, Ventura, and Ojai, to Orange County and Palos Verdes (with a brief jaunt to--where else?--Las Vegas). Pynchon takes the gritty cliche that the genre demands, but exposes it to open space and almost-blinding definition; think of what Curtis Hanson did to "noir" with "L.A. Confidential"--only fast-forward it about twenty years (in subject time), and add a truly-massive dose of drugs and debauchery. Sounds fun?

I wonder why Pynchon chose this genre, though, and I will be thinking about it for days to come. At one point, I was struck that the story was like "Chinatown" on acid, where the central issue is not water rights, but, rather, a convoluted and less-defined sequence of hijinks whose centripetal point is a missing person. I haven't read any reviews in full yet (mainly just an opening paragraph to see if the reviewer liked it), but I hope that Pynchon doesn't get taken to task--or even called "lazy"--by some for whom more is expected from him. In my view, he has the license to do whatever he wishes because the scope, acuity, and uniqueness of his storytelling power is such that it can fully overtake any labels that one might throw on it, and stand firmly on its own feet.

He seems to be making some strong statements about Los Angeles in this book. As he writes, "Inherent Vice" is a term used by insurers to describe something that is undesirable to insure because of its fragility--like, he says, a carton of eggs. Pynchon is saying that L.A. fits into this category. One of his characters says, "there's this evil subgod who rules over Southern California? who off and on will wake from his slumber and allow the dark forces that are always lying there just out of the sunlight to come forth?". The plastic Jefferson head on the nickel tells the narrator, "The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants... It is its natural Manure". There are a few other passages in the text that echo this, and Pynchon (while I may afford that he could be talking about Humanity in general) holds Los Angeles in a regard of passive disdain. For Pynchon, Los Angeles is an "Inherent Vice".

Good read, and recommended for fans of, or newcomers to, the author.

--Charles

2009-08-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

PYNCHON!

American writer/genius/recluse Thomas Pynchon's long-awaited (although for not as long as some of his previous efforts) new novel, "Inherent Vice" hits bookstores tomorrow. I have read multiple websites/reviews that describe is as a "noir-ish" read that's totally different in style from anything the writer has done; this really doesn't say much, because all his books are different. Disclosure: I didn't make it through "Gravity's Rainbow" because I was, quite frankly, stultified by its labyrinthine plot, enormous amount of characters, and... well, maybe I just wasn't dedicated enough at the time. Pynchon's encyclopedic knowledge is amazing, and he employs it in a way that's playful and fun to read. I plan to revisit the book (along with the "Gravity's Rainbow Companion") when I have a couple of weeks to kill. From what I have read about "Inherent Vice", the new book is not as much like this, but I'm sure it will be full of backbreaking amounts of allusion and literary in-jokes.

Pynchon has always intrigued me. I loved "Mason & Dixon", but I found "Against the Day" to be completely claustrophobic and nonsensical. I didn't make it far (probably about 200 pages) into that cinderblock of a book. He's an incredibly powerful storyteller in every way, though. "Mason & Dixon" is written in the style of an 18th Century novel--replete with random capitalization and arcane or even extinct words that Pynchon mined from the past. I can't even imagine the research that he put into the writing of that book. Once you get used to the completely "new" and different style, it almost seems to disappear; the reader submits to Pynchon's overwhelming power, and evaporates into the narrative itself. Like all writers who provide a big reward, he is extremely challenging.

I'm buying the book tomorrow. Some stores are staying open until midnight (Harry Potter-style).

Review forthcoming.

--Charles

2009-07-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

Robert Pack

Robert Pack is an American poet who teaches at the University of Montana. Last year, he came out with his nineteenth book of poems, "Still Here, Still Now". I was greatly excited by this news, as I love his poetry. "Fathering the Map" is/was always a collection that I've held close to my heart.

Pack is often described as a "nature poet". I dislike labels like this; for me he is simply a great poet who can mine personal meaning from a variety of circumstance--nature or not--and convey it precisely to the reader in verse that's elegant in meter and structure. His poetry is extremely accessible. One of the things I like most about Pack's work is its combination of accessibility and its learned conveyance of emotional depth. He's a personal poet that I think would appeal to anyone, regardless of their familiarity with, or wariness of, Poetry. The experienced reader can appreciate it, too; Pack is an undisputed master of form, and he has an uncanny ear for the metrics of verse. I think his poetry is very pleasing to read because of this.

As I said, Pack is a very personal poet, and he speaks about aging, health, physical deterioration, and happiness with a sagely wisdom that emits not a whiff of condescension--think of a mountaintop guru meeting the seeker halfway. He's also comfortable writing about various areas of the Sciences as well.

I've been hoping for years that his work will find a much wider audience. Now is the time. I honestly couldn't think of a new book of poetry out there that would be better to get as a gift for anyone that loves poetry or just good writing. It also makes an excellent gift for One to give Oneself.

Other recommendations:

"Rounding it Out"

"Elk in Winter"

"Minding the Sun"

"Belief and Uncertainty in the Poetry of Robert Frost" (Pack is also an excellent critic)

On a personal note, this recommendation of Pack means a lot to me, as he taught me at Montana. He was the best teacher that one could ever hope for.

--Charles

2009-07-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Du Fu & David Young

& Others

Last year, Knopf published a new translation of Du Fu's poetry by the American poet David Young. "Du Fu: A Life in Poetry" is a handsome paperback that has over two hundred pages of poems, as well as a seven page introduction. These translations are great because, in Young's words: "I have evolved a kind of middle way... [which] allows me to reflect some of the formal properties of the originals (e.g., their extensive use of parallelism) without feeling restricted by conventions that are comfortable in one language but often strained or awkward in another". The resulting effort feels lithe and free--his work brings a refreshing and airy modernity to Du Fu that I have never noticed in other translations of the poet. Young also divides the book into eleven sections--each representing a different stage of Du Fu's life, and each prefaced by a brief biographical summary. Young wants to trace the development of Du Fu: "His unique development is partly a matter of artistic growth, which we see of course in many poets, and partly the response of the imagination to what Wallace Stevens called 'the pressure of reality'". This book is right up my alley; it takes one of the greatest poets of all-time and revivifies his work into a highly-enjoyable and enlightening experience.

Young also compiled a nice book called "Five T'ang Poets" (which is part of Oberlin College's Field Translation Series--the wonderful people who brought us Franz Wright's marvelous "The Unknown Rilke", Marin Sorescu's "Hands Behind My Back", Vasko Popa's "Homage to the Lame Wolf", and Miroslav Holub's "Interferon" and "Vanishing Lung Syndrome", among many others). "Five T'ang Poets" collects Wang Wei, Li Po, Du Fu, Li Ho, and Li Shang-yin. This book is perfect to get as a companion to the above-mentioned "Du Fu" one.

Young has also written ten books of poetry, the latest being "Black Lab". I recommend this book highly, as he's a competent poet who's now in his prime.

More links (as if I haven't given enough already):

Miroslav Holub: Poetry Foundation page

Franz Wright: Poetry Foundation page -- Poets.org page

Vasko Popa: Wikipedia entry

Marin Sorescu: Poetry Foundation page

--Charles

2009-07-27T06:34:00.000-07:00

The Floating World

A few years back--it must have been the early 2000s--I visited New York with a friend, and we went to the Brooklyn Museum to see an exhibit they had of Hiroshige prints. It was arranged by season; as you walked around the gallery, the artist took you from the placid Winter scenes, through the ameliorative Spring ones, then to the bright Summer, and so on. I loved his little depictions of scenery and daily life. There was an almost Zen-like quality to them, in that they were analogous to the efficiency and clarity of haiku. They were tranquil. In the middle of the gallery was a display that explained the art of woodblock printing, which I had had seen before, but never really knew what it was. I started looking for his work in every museum thereafter (the Met, for instance, has an extensive collection of Japanese "Ukiyo-e" print artists).

In my perambulations through different museums and books, I realized that I liked pretty much all the art and artists from this period. Hiroshige stood out, though, but Hokusai is a close second (many I have talked to prefer him more). He may be the more famous of the two, chiefly because of this print. Edo--modern-day Tokyo--contained one of the most thriving periods of art and poetry that the world has seen.

"Ukiyo-e" is an essential book to have. While it's a bit expensive (you might be able to find it for cheaper elsewhere, but I do my best to promote independent bookstores on here if I can), it's well-worth it for its comprehensive selection of pictures accompanied by informative text. The Hiroshige book that I got is great as well.

--Charles

2009-07-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Curve of Binding Prose

John McPhee, a New Yorker staff writer who teaches at Princeton, is my favorite purveyor of creative nonfiction. At University, I took a class that was sponsored by the magazine, and our teacher assigned a piece by him from its pages. I had never heard of McPhee, but I was instantly enamored of his style and knowledge when I read said piece ("Atchafalaya", which was collected in his book "The Control of Nature"). I couldn't believe how well-researched it was, and how McPhee could make his informed knowledge fit so comfortably into a truly engrossing narrative. The subject matter of the book is reflected in the title; it's a triptych of the hubris of Man versus the indomitability of Nature. The "Atchafalaya" part deals with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer's inherently futile attempts to tame the flow of the Mississippi River as its course approaches the Delta. It's shocking to read about how much could go wrong in this situation; the shock is compounded by the fact that not many people actually know about it. Another part, "Los Angeles Against the Mountains", basically deals with the fact that the city shouldn't be there inasmuch as it's essentially in the worst place that a city could be. McPhee's accounts of mudslides that send multi-ton boulders careening down streets and into people's houses and cars is horrifying--all the more because his work is thoroughly grounded in reportage; he always interviews many people in his never-ending quest for narrative verisimilitude and vividity. The other piece, "Cooling the Lava" concerns Icelanders and their never-ending struggle to deal with the inconveniences of living on top of one of the most concentrated hotbeds of geothermal activity on the planet. McPhee is such a good writer that his book "Oranges" (about the history of the orange) was hard to put down. Just to reiterate: book about oranges = riveting. Everything that he writes first appears in The New Yorker, and then gets collected into book form. The man is an unstoppable machine, churning out pitch-perfect writing at an alarming rate. In recent New Yorker articles, he has written about Lacrosse, and one can only assume that they will be collected soon and that F.S.G. will put it on the shelves.

Another McPhee book that I recommend is "Coming Into the Country", a three-part narrative about Alaska. The eponymous third part of the book illustrates the lives of multiple people living in back-country Alaska. It's so fascinating that it made me want to travel to Alaska immediately after reading it. I literally considered transferring to the University of Alaska-Fairbanks at the time--such is the thrall of John McPhee.

--Charles

2009-07-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

Ovid and Catullus

Catullus was a Latin poet whose poems remain very influential. His work is extremely sexual; there is an over-arching bawdiness and eroticism that suffuses it. A quasi-street poet, Catullus often wrote poems to settle scores--the reader often gets the impression that the poet was just very pissed-off with someone, and wrote the poem as a form of Roman Empire "smack talk". Many of the poems are funny. Very funny.

A few years ago, I bought Charles Martin's (whose excellent translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" is the best one out there) translations of Catullus. I liked it very much, and it seemed like the perfect introduction to his work for me. I bought it based on the strength of Martin's aforementioned Ovid work, and it seemed to me--a non-Latin speaker--that he did a good job. The poems were excellent.

Then, about a year ago, I was in Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, and came across Peter Green's "The Poems of Catullus". I had previously read his book of Ovid, "The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters" and was very impressed with the scholarly introduction and notes. It was a very well-researched book, and was a joy to read (after he wrote "The Metamorhoses", Ovid was exiled to present-day Romania by Octavian, and spent the rest of his life writing wonderful poems--many of which were essentially pleas to the emperor to let him return to his beloved Rome). Green's Catullus didn't disappoint: it too has an excellent introduction, as well as a fairly-comprehensive glossary and endnote section. Fans of Latin, and translation in general, will also love the book because it's a facing-page translation (the Latin is on the left page, the English on the right). I highly recommend Catullus as a poet who surprises with his modernity. Ovid's "Metamophoses" is a book that everyone should have.

--Charles

2009-07-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Eduardo Galeano is an Uruguayan writer who has just come out with a new book that's receiving a lot of attention. I saw it in Chaucer Books in Santa Barbara and bought it immediately--due in large part to the fact that he wrote one of my favorite sports books of all time: "Soccer in Sun and Shadow".

Galeano is an ardent fan of the game, and one of the things that attracts me to his writing on it is that I identify with the way he seems to appreciate it for its aesthetic first and foremost. The book is a compendium of anecdotes that range in length from one paragraph to a couple of pages--so it's not the type of book one would read in one sitting (at least for me). I like picking it up every once in a while whenever I just want a brief read about the game. The book contains descriptions of long-forgotten competitions, players, and goals. When Galeano does rhapsodize, he eschews the overbearing manner of the fanatic who is trying to relate his enthusiasm to those to whom it is irrelevant. Rather, his vignettes are colored with the tone and manner of a man who is gifted in the way he can relate his intoxication to others. This is not to say that the book fits best for the reader who isn't familiar with soccer. On the contrary, the book possesses a wealth of information that even the most sapient of the game's fans would appreciate.

Highly recommended for anyone who is a fan of the game, or anyone who wants to become one, or anyone who knows one.

--Charles

2009-07-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

Poetry 101

Often, when I'm talking to people about poetry, they say something along the lines of "I've never studied it, and I don't think I would understand it", or "I don't 'get' poetry". I think too many people nowadays view poetry as unapproachable, or unaccessible; it seems to me that they think it inhabits some sort of stilted ivory tower realm that's snobbish in its exclusion. Needless to say, I find this to be lamentable and totally untrue. Almost nobody I know that is my age reads it, and it saddens me that such a versatile and expressive art form has fallen by the wayside.

Let's say (for the sake of this entry) that you're a person who's interested in reading poetry and learning more about it. There are many books that are widely available that would meet this need. All of them are cheaper than College/University.

Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within" is a good place to start. This book is the most like a class for writing poetry. It discusses meter (he even put a table of metric feet, which is nice), rhyme, form, and diction. Fry provides examples from various poems, and he writes in a very modest and even self-deprecating way at times. He does a very good job with explaining things in simple terms. He even provides the reader with various exercises to do. I did not do them, but I can see how they might be useful.

Robert Pinsky's "The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide" is shorter in length, but benefits from the fact that Pinsky writes about poetry in a learnedly excellent way that reflects the fact that he's an amazing poet and a penetrating critic of poetry. The book deals with all aspects of technique, and provides examples for explanation. This book is probably a little bit better than Fry's for readers who already know a little bit about verse.

Mark Strand and Eavan Boland's "The Making of a Poem: a Norton Anthology of Poetic Form" is just what it sounds like. The authors start each section by defining the form they are going to talk about (as I recall, they go over the Sonnet, Villanelle, Sestina, etc.). Then, they provide pages of examples of the form as written by poets--both "Old Masters" and Contemporaries.

Two books which are also good, but I can't remember well (I read them years ago) are Edward Hirsh's "How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry", and Kenneth Koch's "Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of reading and Writing Poetry". I remember liking both of these books a lot, and I think I will re-read them soon. Edward Hirsch is one of our great living poets, and Kenneth Koch was a brilliant poet who I think deserves a wider audience (although, with the publication of his "Collected Poems"a couple of years ago, I think he is starting to get one).

Here are some more links:

Mark Strand: Poetry Foundation page - Poets.org page

Edward Hirsch: Poetry Foundation page - Poets.org page

Robert Pinsky: Poetry Foundation page - Poets.org page

Kenneth Koch: Poetry Foundation page - Poets.org page

Eavan Boland: Poetry Foundation page - Poets.org page

NOTE: Special thanks to Yasin in Preston for his kind help and suggestions for this blog.

--Charles

2009-07-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

Banksy

Banksy is an English artist whose clever and subversive graffiti work has been causing a buzz in London--and now around the world--for at least a decade. In a shrewd attempt to let his work speak for itself, he has remained anonymous for his whole career; his face is always covered in the few pictures and videos of him that exist, and he shuns interviews. Because what he is doing is illegal (vandalism), he has adopted a stenciling technique where he pre-cuts cardboard in his studio, so that it can be easily unfolded under the cover of darkness and he can spray his work more quickly. Some have even suggested that "he" is really some sort of well-organized guerilla syndicate that has a centralized base and dispatches its minions out to various assignments. I think this hypothesis arises from the fact that he is extremely prolific. I'm of the opinion that, while he probably does have a cadre of artists and technicians in his employ, he certainly is the overseer and creative director. Think of a graffito Frank Gehry with an anarchistic bent.

Some of his work is political; some a lark; some confrontational; some simply beautiful (or any/all a combination of the above). My wife and I have his book "Wall and Piece", and it has deservedly earned a permanent place on our coffee table (hardcover version HERE). I've noticed that all of our guests--regardless of age or occupation--that come across it for the first time sit and flip through it with unwavering interest and an occasional sign of glee for a lengthy amount of time. For me, most of his "installations" are an interesting juxtaposition of curt tongue-in-cheek prankster-ism and simple yet cultivated pulchritude. For instance, one of his more famous images is an Apache helicopter with a big, cute pink bow directly under the rotor. Another shows two English police, replete with "Bobby" helmets, kissing. He also traveled to Palestine to paint some dream-like images on the horrible wall that Israel built. I could go on and on, but trust me: visit his website (here it is again) and buy his book.

Other Banksy™ links:

Television feature

Banksy's Guantanamo detainee "installation" at Disneyland

Another Television piece

--Charles

2009-07-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

An Anthology for the Ages

Last year, Graywolf Press published "New European Poetry", a wonderfully modern and far-reaching anthology that collects poets from all over Europe into English translation. Most of these poets had not had a large amount of their work published up until this point. In their introduction, the book's editors, Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer, lament the fact that many Americans aren't as familiar with their European Contemporaries as they once were. I can definitively state that this is the case with me, and when I read Roberto Bolaño's "The Savage Detectives"--a book which drippily romanticizes International poets and poetry much like Hollywood does Gangsters and Crime--my appetite was whetted, and I rushed to my local bookstore to look for an appropriate anthology. I came home with this.

It was a good purchase. For $18 I got a book that staggered with the breadth of its offerings: poets from 45 (if I'm counting right) countries are included, and I had only heard of a few of them before. Responsibility for selection and editorship was divvied-up into regions, and, according to the introduction:

"Each regional editor also had the following very general instructions: Be as generous and open to various aesthetic schools and styles as possible; try to focus on poets who have not yet had significant work published in the United States..."

To me, it seems they accomplished their goals with laudable success; 290 poets from 40 different languages are represented and translated by almost 200 translators (some of them very recognizable/famous) into over 400 poems. Style, tone, and manner vary widely throughout. This is a book that every lover of letters should immediately obtain.

There should be some sort of law that facilitates the express publication of a new book of this type yearly. Write your Congressperson.

--Charles

2009-07-08T06:44:00.001-07:00

Bill Knott: Unsubscriber

I think it's safe to say that most readers today have never heard of Bill Knott. A poetry "outsider", Knott has been writing elegant poems for decades now, and while he is not well-known by the general reader of poetry (though this is slowly starting to change), his peers in the community have--for the most part--held him in high esteem for some time now.

A couple of years ago, I was reading Franz Wright's book "God's Silence", and noticed that one of the epigraphs was extremely resonant for me: "Pain passes for sunlight at some depths". It was Bill Knott. (*CORRECTION*: the book containing this epigraph is Wright's "Earlier Poems") .I immediately went online to look, and I found out that he had just published a book; I ordered "The Unsubscriber" immediately. I instantly fell in love with his work. I found him accessible and, for lack of a better word, empathic; it was as if he was speaking directly to me in some of the poems. Also, his accessibility is contrasted nicely by the fact that he's what some would call a "poet's poet". To have these two traits be able to coexist is a luxury that most writers would welcome. I feel the same way about Wright, and it's not surprising to me that they read each other. Knott is a master of form, as his sequence of sonnets shows. Most of his work has a simultaneously pellucid but vague quality, insofar as one sometimes gets the sense that she fully understands it, but might not be able to explain why. For me, this is quite intriguing, and represents a certain artistic sleight-of-hand that is difficult to emulate and impossible to copy.

Another great thing about Bill Knott is that he blogs his poems, and has come to the notion that his work should be free. Here is his blog. He used to be on Typepad, and that blog had an extensive archive. I can't tell if his Blogspot one has this or not, but you can download a ton of his work there.

*NOTE*: every piece of work that appears on Mr. Knott's blog is a work in progress, not a finished draft.

Here is the Lulu.com link, where you can download his poems for free.

Here's his Poetry Foundation page, with a few poems.

--Charles

2009-07-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

Making His Way

About once every year, for some reason or another, my mind gets drawn back into reading V.S. Naipaul. Depending on who you ask, he's one of--if not the--most misanthropic, pessimistic, misogynistic and horrible men in the world of letters. Others consider him a seer; a lens through which one can accurately and vicariously view the political, social, and cultural milieux of the world. I think that he's one of the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century.

Born in Trinidad to parents who descended from Indian indentured servants, and living in England since he was 17, Naipaul is the perpetual outsider; the exile in the truest sense of the word. He utilizes this, I think, as a technique to provide himself with the detached lucidity that he needs to contextualize what he sees into a global perspective. More often than not, he's blunt about what he sees, and that puts him out of favor with many Postcolonial theorists--Edward Said among them. Some just find him gloomy: I remember reading a Derek Walcott poem in which the poet threw a headlong reference to "V.S. Nightfall". Patrick French, whose authorized biography of Naipaul came out last year, details a lifelong legacy of embittered abuse and domineering egotism (hats off to Naipaul, though, who fully complied with French's research and in no way hindered the scathing and uncomfortable truth).

But enough of the endorsements. The thing about Naipaul, for me, is he's just a damned good writer. I also have tremendous respect for his notion of, and reverence for, the calling of writing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the epistolary volume "Between Father and Son", which contains a large chunk of the correspondence between the author and his father--an aspiring writer who reported local news for the two Trinidad papers of the time (there are also letters to and from his sister). Naipaul had gone to Oxford on a prized Trinidadian government scholarship, and both men found that Naipaul fils had the chance to realize his father's dream. The book is heartrending in its earnest desire and honesty.

But Naipaul shines the brightest in his fiction. There are still many parts of "A Bend In The River" which have lingered with me for years--particularly the elegant denouement and final scene. The books details a man and his quest to make his way at a small river settlement in a unnamed nation that has recently won its independence from colonization. I was worried when I began the book because I thought the pace was too slow. Then I started to get used to Naipaul's rhythm, which is stately in its simplicity, and the book started to open up for me. I also put the unabridged version on my iPod, and it's good to listen to if you are, say, driving across America.

"A Way In The World" is a book that's a fictional story blended with many autobiographic and historical narratives. It tells a few different stories. The book received mixed reviews, but I think it will find its place in history as the great book that it is. Again, this book has countless scenes that live on so vividly in my mind even years after reading. I can't decide which book I should recommend to begin with, but if pressed, I would choose this. Or, put it this way: if you're looking for a linear narrative, go with "A Bend In The River". If you're looking for a more adventuresome book that has many stories taking place on different continents, then go with "A Way In The World". It's more complex in structure, though. Read "Between Father and Son" while you read one of these.

--Charles