Even though Canada has typically lagged behind the seminal literary movements the past centenary, the following linked article reveals a ray of actual light in a too-long theoretical tunnel. Just as retro May Parisian runway fashions juice the clothing industry, anachronistic elements -- people, physical objects, emotions -- may be a boon and a grace for literature this side of the Atlantic, too. (The hyperbole arrow's only at 90 degress.)
-----------------------------
"The French are aware of their waning influence in world literature. For the most part this is attributed to the way critical theory has dominated literature from the 1980s on; put simply, French readers, brought up on the diamond-hard prose of Flaubert or Zola, or the musicality of Baudelaire or Hugo, were sick of theory and theorists, and the stodgy, indigestible and incomprehensible literature they inspired."
------------
"a distinct resistance movement to theory has recently been gaining ground with French authors. The present crop of young writers are rediscovering the pleasure of writing to be read rather than studied."
------------
The entire article below:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2011/04/modern-french-literature-suicide-leve-jean-rolin-hose/
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Marilyn Bowering's green
green (2007) is, by my count, Marilyn Bowering's fifteenth book of poetry, two of which were nominated for the Governor General's Award.
Bowering has stated in the header to her blog, "Slow Books", that "It's become rare, though, for me to find books I haven't read that I want to read all the way through from beginning to end. Most books dissapoint [sic] after 80 or so pages."
The patience!
Here are some curious citations from her latest sure to make any contemporary poet green with envy.
"I listen to the trees:
what do they say
but green green?
At last I understand Lorca!" (p. 6)
"Remove this dress
and beneath that
the underdress
and beneath it
whatever you find --
I don't need it.
Then the skin,
layer by layer,
all bands of muscle,
and tissue -- whatever it contains --
lay it aside --
I need no protection:" (p. 12)
"The moon is round, like a lover's nipples --" (p. 35)
"What remains of the night?
Dark." (p. 36)
"It's better when I don't think" (p. 42)
"I'm wired end to end -- a flock of migrating birds
has found a short cut -- me -- to the other birds:
or maybe I'm empty space, a rare non-habitant,
the world's easement? Hello, hello -- do I know
any of you?" (p. 48)
"when I die, the day I lie down,
it will be with the poetry of night
layering the grass, swamping the lamplit windows
and beginning to come alive again,
like a stopped train
lifting its head
to contemplate a miracle." (p. 59)
"Ouch! everything hurts:
especially my eyes, near evening,
when the world is roaring pointlessly." (p. 62)
"Everything is as important as everything else:" (p. 64)
"I've taken off my clothes.
I want this to be natural. Put away your
camcorder.
Before I feel you sizzling in me,
I have to know your absence. Its presence
by absence, if you know what I mean." (p. 67)
"I'm naked: I'm full of ideas: I'm about to swim
out the window, graze in the grass
and sky,
move contrary to Nature. I don't know
what to do
with this passage of my soul through the night." (p. 67)
"My family -- mostly dead --
my lovers -- what can I say?" (p. 69)
"to live is to
think about the mysticism of cars" (p. 72)
Bowering has stated in the header to her blog, "Slow Books", that "It's become rare, though, for me to find books I haven't read that I want to read all the way through from beginning to end. Most books dissapoint [sic] after 80 or so pages."
The patience!
Here are some curious citations from her latest sure to make any contemporary poet green with envy.
"I listen to the trees:
what do they say
but green green?
At last I understand Lorca!" (p. 6)
"Remove this dress
and beneath that
the underdress
and beneath it
whatever you find --
I don't need it.
Then the skin,
layer by layer,
all bands of muscle,
and tissue -- whatever it contains --
lay it aside --
I need no protection:" (p. 12)
"The moon is round, like a lover's nipples --" (p. 35)
"What remains of the night?
Dark." (p. 36)
"It's better when I don't think" (p. 42)
"I'm wired end to end -- a flock of migrating birds
has found a short cut -- me -- to the other birds:
or maybe I'm empty space, a rare non-habitant,
the world's easement? Hello, hello -- do I know
any of you?" (p. 48)
"when I die, the day I lie down,
it will be with the poetry of night
layering the grass, swamping the lamplit windows
and beginning to come alive again,
like a stopped train
lifting its head
to contemplate a miracle." (p. 59)
"Ouch! everything hurts:
especially my eyes, near evening,
when the world is roaring pointlessly." (p. 62)
"Everything is as important as everything else:" (p. 64)
"I've taken off my clothes.
I want this to be natural. Put away your
camcorder.
Before I feel you sizzling in me,
I have to know your absence. Its presence
by absence, if you know what I mean." (p. 67)
"I'm naked: I'm full of ideas: I'm about to swim
out the window, graze in the grass
and sky,
move contrary to Nature. I don't know
what to do
with this passage of my soul through the night." (p. 67)
"My family -- mostly dead --
my lovers -- what can I say?" (p. 69)
"to live is to
think about the mysticism of cars" (p. 72)
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Jim Johnstone's Patternicity
A cavil to start, and a strong one: the title. Patternicity (2010), Jim Johnstone's second book of poetry, is pegged, according to Michael Shermer, as "meaningful patterns in meaningless noise". As themes go, this is an immediately arresting one. The problem is that serendipity, joyful chance and union, and creative diagramming are often, in the book, given the lyrical equivalent of plot-spoilers by the constant trumpeting of the title in the remembered background of the reader. Noise is a funny thing: the aural sense is our oldest one, the most primitive but also the most honest. Johnstone exploits this tragicomedy very well in places, violence vying with in-your-face beauty in a number of fine poems (more details in a bit). But the inherent thematic subversion of many images means pattern wins over wonder, which is a shame since I was on the edge of my seat for much of the book, but didn't need the metal safety bar after all. It's as if the author took a grant application outline to heart, and decided he needed to foreground the entire enterprise, as one often does in an essay with a strong stance.
Also, a contrarian could even say, by way of an ars poetica, that poems delight in making beautiful chaos out of humdrum order.
"Tithonus" is a good mythical critter in which to explore a desperation for meaning. All that time to figure out an incomprehensible fate. The rhetoric here is fine, controlled yet passionate ("I've watched/clouds tear" .... "I've steered/the unexpected"); a casual yet blunt, difficult statement comes unexpectedly though believably ("Love lasts a decade if you're lucky"); and the phrasing is tragically successful ("grind of roots").
One could do worse than seeing the two shortish prose poems, back-to-back mid-book, as polar responses to the problem of physical inertia and/or danger: action and escape ("Cliff Diving") and retirement ("Passing Through"). The former is the better poem since the anecdotal tension is matched by some excellent clauses ("the logic of our path is forsaken for clean speed" and "Depths reserved for leaded weights and worms"), whereas the latter reaches for a disquieting mood and ends up with preciosity ("The afternoon spreads out in fractals", and "the heat is a wasp's kiss, stitched octaves of venom").
"Rat Fink" is a terrific poem, and breaks out of its thematic box with some interesting shifts as well as some gorgeous and purposeful imagery ("an alterpiece of splintered milk bottles"). The relationship here, the "we" and "you", isn't delineated, and it works in adding to the menace. In other poems, though, the second-person and first-person plural voice creates an aura of vagueness when what is wanted is anchored and strengthened intimacy. Again, the poems could have achieved this, because Johnstone has the requisite talent to bring it off, but technical issues frustrate the vision. A few examples will have to suffice: ("where your finger's hints/line each pocket" from "Provenance"; "when you hold feathers in your teeth,/when you find the breath to laugh.//We were doing well before Saint/Thomas Aquinas named five new ways//to sin" from "Disgraceland".)
A few words about typos. Usually, I don't comment on them, but Nightwood Editions often takes great care in editing and presentation, so it may make the Romantic composer try to find a more pleasing pattern in the perverse "Where Schubart glimpsed madness", unless the line is taken as a literal posthumous reaction. Likewise, "stagger back into it's former prints" must have made the author understandably irritated, even if the formulation originally issued from his pen or computer. Writers sometimes spend a day or more on a choice between leaving out or including one punctuation mark; a few extra minutes of edits should've made this a non-issue.
An uneven book, but a recommended one. I hope Johnstone's next collection is "spread out in fractals" or various unified but wildly unpatterned singularities.
Also, a contrarian could even say, by way of an ars poetica, that poems delight in making beautiful chaos out of humdrum order.
"Tithonus" is a good mythical critter in which to explore a desperation for meaning. All that time to figure out an incomprehensible fate. The rhetoric here is fine, controlled yet passionate ("I've watched/clouds tear" .... "I've steered/the unexpected"); a casual yet blunt, difficult statement comes unexpectedly though believably ("Love lasts a decade if you're lucky"); and the phrasing is tragically successful ("grind of roots").
One could do worse than seeing the two shortish prose poems, back-to-back mid-book, as polar responses to the problem of physical inertia and/or danger: action and escape ("Cliff Diving") and retirement ("Passing Through"). The former is the better poem since the anecdotal tension is matched by some excellent clauses ("the logic of our path is forsaken for clean speed" and "Depths reserved for leaded weights and worms"), whereas the latter reaches for a disquieting mood and ends up with preciosity ("The afternoon spreads out in fractals", and "the heat is a wasp's kiss, stitched octaves of venom").
"Rat Fink" is a terrific poem, and breaks out of its thematic box with some interesting shifts as well as some gorgeous and purposeful imagery ("an alterpiece of splintered milk bottles"). The relationship here, the "we" and "you", isn't delineated, and it works in adding to the menace. In other poems, though, the second-person and first-person plural voice creates an aura of vagueness when what is wanted is anchored and strengthened intimacy. Again, the poems could have achieved this, because Johnstone has the requisite talent to bring it off, but technical issues frustrate the vision. A few examples will have to suffice: ("where your finger's hints/line each pocket" from "Provenance"; "when you hold feathers in your teeth,/when you find the breath to laugh.//We were doing well before Saint/Thomas Aquinas named five new ways//to sin" from "Disgraceland".)
A few words about typos. Usually, I don't comment on them, but Nightwood Editions often takes great care in editing and presentation, so it may make the Romantic composer try to find a more pleasing pattern in the perverse "Where Schubart glimpsed madness", unless the line is taken as a literal posthumous reaction. Likewise, "stagger back into it's former prints" must have made the author understandably irritated, even if the formulation originally issued from his pen or computer. Writers sometimes spend a day or more on a choice between leaving out or including one punctuation mark; a few extra minutes of edits should've made this a non-issue.
An uneven book, but a recommended one. I hope Johnstone's next collection is "spread out in fractals" or various unified but wildly unpatterned singularities.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Margo Button's Heron Cliff
Margo Button's Heron Cliff (2007) was published by Signature Editions in Winnipeg. The author thanks the [Vancouver] Island poets (acknowledgement section), as well as her three main or sole editors, Marlene Cookshaw, Brian Bartlett (cousin), and John Barton. The 32 page sequence which concludes the book, "Blue Dahlias", in an edited version (for contest parameters) co-won The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize for 2005. The Malahat Review is, of course, one of Canada's most respected literary journals. Other poems in this collection were accepted (in slightly different forms) in other leading CanPo publications.
I go the introductory, seemingly surroud-sound, route for a reason which I'll elaborate on later. But first, another set-up before moving to the poems. On Dec 31, 2009 at this forum, I said I'd be providing fewer negative reviews since I'd come to my senses by saying "no" to reading entire books of bad poetry. When the first three bites of an apple are rotten, there's no point in being a masochist by devouring the rest and adding to an already flowering gut-churn. And if I haven't read a book at least once front-to-back, I don't think it fair to offer even a mini-review of it. Also, life is short, and there're a lot of them thar other words still waiting to be courted and fawned over. But as I turned the pages of Heron Cliff, my exasperation increased with my incredulity, and morbid curiosity and disbelief propelled me to the end.
As soon as page two in the book (the first and title poem) appears this sequence or stanza:
"Friends wonder why I remain in a house
tainted by suicide. The long dance
I perform: allemande left, allemande right,
dos-a-dos with the dead."
Button's first book, The Unhinging of Wings, dealt (supposedly) exclusively with her son's death by suicide. I haven't read the book, so won't say any more about it. But a mother's understandable obsession with such a horrific event, and the compassion it should generate among anyone, reader or acquaintance, doesn't cancel the fact that the same reader is not affected in the same way, and (unless the poems are outstanding in ways beyond their emotional impact) that reader also holds the understandable position that other subjects and metaphorical directions -- if not outright obsessions -- would be warmly received. And as the page-matter accumulates like dead wreathes, the same graveside visitation is made again, and again, and again.
As the repetition grows, the circle of grief closes tightly, and the reader (certainly this one) is excluded. Personal grief needs a colurful array of lyrical feathers and/or a jackhammer powerhouse of rhetoric to surmount the perils inherent in trying to bridge the secret journal with the international journey.
But what's even worse than this is that Button not only flips to the suicide segue from natural indicators in autumn's moribund images, but -- like Evelyn Lau's latest poetry collection, reviewed here a half-year ago -- uses other shocking human events as a set-up for the main meal, which is ..... you don't need me to finish the sentence.
The following is taken from "One Cry":
"From the cliff house, I hear a siren,
watch a rescue team scurry across the sand
to a cluster of people
out of their element"
Eight lines later, we have:
"I cosy up to/someone else's death."
But we're not finished. Same poem, different event:
"One day in Mexico I saw a yacht explode
-- swirling flames in the bay"
and in another five lines:
"a cry keens around the cove,
vibrates in me like a tuning fork."
Now it may first be pertinent to point out that these are dead lines, and are representative of much of the book. This is journalistic jotting combined with diary anguish. But however cathartic this may be for the poet, the reader is again mislead and manipulated (though all art is manipulation, there're good and bad ways to formulate that). The reader realizes that the drownings and explosions aren't there for their own dramatic autonomy or poetic possibility, but are simply plot devices in allowing the higher waves and flames to catch and (the author's hope) overwhelm.
But there are still greater transgressions. Amplifying the same procedure is "Gardener Teapots". The subtitle marker? "Sept. 12, 2001".
Well, nothing like telegraphing the subject, especially when the bland anecdote successfully disguises the parallel for sixteen lines. So much for suspense.
"Gardener teapots ....
.... made in Russia
under Peter the Great,
lugged by camel caravans
over the Silk Road to Pakistan."
Oh, the proud beneficient trade corriders! But it's almost time for the money shot and the Hallmark denouement:
"-- birds in the air, fish in the sea,
and the world did not end
yesterday in New York.
When the pots broke,
menders salvaged the jagged bits,
bound them with copper lugs
and sealed the cracks with tar
so they could again brew tea."
3,000 murdered and transatlantic turmoil, but hey, the sun will rise again! I'm only surprised that the suicide wasn't directly introduced at some point in the poem.
The blithe arrogance of writing this the day after (even if it were written years later, the date stamped makes it plain the emotions and conclusion were born Sept 12) is mind-boggling.
On to the book's final poem, "Blue Dahlias", which, again, co-won a prestigious CanPo prize. "Blue Dahlias" is supposedly "ghazal-like", according to the back cover. But this is mistaking form for emotional creativity and integrity within difficult subject and tonal shifts. The poem fails miserably at this, and the failure is magnified because Button hasn't learned how to write an adequate floating, quasi-free verse poem, so why should a quality ghazal-like poem be a reasonable goal?
"The big bruiser orders me to move my car
parked in front of his house. Says he's a cop.
So? I'm a poet. A raging granny too.
It beats depression or medication."
Oh, the insouciance! Unfortunately, I don't believe either of her self-identities.
"According to Zen, one must learn the spirit -- kokoro --
of each plant and rock before placing it in the garden."
According to poetry, one must learn to choose the right word
and then surround it with flavourful words in just the right places
so the garden sustains both planter and picker.
And according to Zen, those who speak, know not, especially when it's third-hand.
"Poets should be poor and lead simple lives."
.............
There's the cleaning and polishing, the insurance,
the alarm system, the misgivings. All that weight."
This is the cringe-worthy spectacle (not uncommon in literature) of Oak Bay-touring retiree gaining Romantic frissons by imaginary slumming. Thomas Merton is often admired, seldom emulated. "All that weight", indeed.
"I yearn for landscapes reduced to essentials.
The Arctic. The desert. The soul."
When people speak of getting back to "essentials", it usually means they wish to shrink from the world's confusion and complexity. We're all guilty of it to varying degrees, so in a strange twist, I'm grateful for the reminder, unintentional though it may have been.
Why bother to kick a book like this, goes the usual argument. Surely, if it's as lousy as you depict, oblivion will do its just work. Because the sheer weight of the stuff these days makes it truly difficult -- even for one on the lookout -- to discover much of the good stuff. And just as problematic, reputations do sail along for quite a while on the unearned boost from friends, family, and event community pointed out in this review's preamble. The teeter-totter analogy, introduced in a different context in Heron Cliff, comes to mind.
Margo Button has produced a book that seems to have exorcized a lot of personal demons. I'm very happy about that. But an appropriate close may be to quote her herself, again from "Blue Dahlias":
"I treasure the copy of Moliere's Comedies, published in 1760.
Doesn't mean it's valuable, said the antiquarian."
I go the introductory, seemingly surroud-sound, route for a reason which I'll elaborate on later. But first, another set-up before moving to the poems. On Dec 31, 2009 at this forum, I said I'd be providing fewer negative reviews since I'd come to my senses by saying "no" to reading entire books of bad poetry. When the first three bites of an apple are rotten, there's no point in being a masochist by devouring the rest and adding to an already flowering gut-churn. And if I haven't read a book at least once front-to-back, I don't think it fair to offer even a mini-review of it. Also, life is short, and there're a lot of them thar other words still waiting to be courted and fawned over. But as I turned the pages of Heron Cliff, my exasperation increased with my incredulity, and morbid curiosity and disbelief propelled me to the end.
As soon as page two in the book (the first and title poem) appears this sequence or stanza:
"Friends wonder why I remain in a house
tainted by suicide. The long dance
I perform: allemande left, allemande right,
dos-a-dos with the dead."
Button's first book, The Unhinging of Wings, dealt (supposedly) exclusively with her son's death by suicide. I haven't read the book, so won't say any more about it. But a mother's understandable obsession with such a horrific event, and the compassion it should generate among anyone, reader or acquaintance, doesn't cancel the fact that the same reader is not affected in the same way, and (unless the poems are outstanding in ways beyond their emotional impact) that reader also holds the understandable position that other subjects and metaphorical directions -- if not outright obsessions -- would be warmly received. And as the page-matter accumulates like dead wreathes, the same graveside visitation is made again, and again, and again.
As the repetition grows, the circle of grief closes tightly, and the reader (certainly this one) is excluded. Personal grief needs a colurful array of lyrical feathers and/or a jackhammer powerhouse of rhetoric to surmount the perils inherent in trying to bridge the secret journal with the international journey.
But what's even worse than this is that Button not only flips to the suicide segue from natural indicators in autumn's moribund images, but -- like Evelyn Lau's latest poetry collection, reviewed here a half-year ago -- uses other shocking human events as a set-up for the main meal, which is ..... you don't need me to finish the sentence.
The following is taken from "One Cry":
"From the cliff house, I hear a siren,
watch a rescue team scurry across the sand
to a cluster of people
out of their element"
Eight lines later, we have:
"I cosy up to/someone else's death."
But we're not finished. Same poem, different event:
"One day in Mexico I saw a yacht explode
-- swirling flames in the bay"
and in another five lines:
"a cry keens around the cove,
vibrates in me like a tuning fork."
Now it may first be pertinent to point out that these are dead lines, and are representative of much of the book. This is journalistic jotting combined with diary anguish. But however cathartic this may be for the poet, the reader is again mislead and manipulated (though all art is manipulation, there're good and bad ways to formulate that). The reader realizes that the drownings and explosions aren't there for their own dramatic autonomy or poetic possibility, but are simply plot devices in allowing the higher waves and flames to catch and (the author's hope) overwhelm.
But there are still greater transgressions. Amplifying the same procedure is "Gardener Teapots". The subtitle marker? "Sept. 12, 2001".
Well, nothing like telegraphing the subject, especially when the bland anecdote successfully disguises the parallel for sixteen lines. So much for suspense.
"Gardener teapots ....
.... made in Russia
under Peter the Great,
lugged by camel caravans
over the Silk Road to Pakistan."
Oh, the proud beneficient trade corriders! But it's almost time for the money shot and the Hallmark denouement:
"-- birds in the air, fish in the sea,
and the world did not end
yesterday in New York.
When the pots broke,
menders salvaged the jagged bits,
bound them with copper lugs
and sealed the cracks with tar
so they could again brew tea."
3,000 murdered and transatlantic turmoil, but hey, the sun will rise again! I'm only surprised that the suicide wasn't directly introduced at some point in the poem.
The blithe arrogance of writing this the day after (even if it were written years later, the date stamped makes it plain the emotions and conclusion were born Sept 12) is mind-boggling.
On to the book's final poem, "Blue Dahlias", which, again, co-won a prestigious CanPo prize. "Blue Dahlias" is supposedly "ghazal-like", according to the back cover. But this is mistaking form for emotional creativity and integrity within difficult subject and tonal shifts. The poem fails miserably at this, and the failure is magnified because Button hasn't learned how to write an adequate floating, quasi-free verse poem, so why should a quality ghazal-like poem be a reasonable goal?
"The big bruiser orders me to move my car
parked in front of his house. Says he's a cop.
So? I'm a poet. A raging granny too.
It beats depression or medication."
Oh, the insouciance! Unfortunately, I don't believe either of her self-identities.
"According to Zen, one must learn the spirit -- kokoro --
of each plant and rock before placing it in the garden."
According to poetry, one must learn to choose the right word
and then surround it with flavourful words in just the right places
so the garden sustains both planter and picker.
And according to Zen, those who speak, know not, especially when it's third-hand.
"Poets should be poor and lead simple lives."
.............
There's the cleaning and polishing, the insurance,
the alarm system, the misgivings. All that weight."
This is the cringe-worthy spectacle (not uncommon in literature) of Oak Bay-touring retiree gaining Romantic frissons by imaginary slumming. Thomas Merton is often admired, seldom emulated. "All that weight", indeed.
"I yearn for landscapes reduced to essentials.
The Arctic. The desert. The soul."
When people speak of getting back to "essentials", it usually means they wish to shrink from the world's confusion and complexity. We're all guilty of it to varying degrees, so in a strange twist, I'm grateful for the reminder, unintentional though it may have been.
Why bother to kick a book like this, goes the usual argument. Surely, if it's as lousy as you depict, oblivion will do its just work. Because the sheer weight of the stuff these days makes it truly difficult -- even for one on the lookout -- to discover much of the good stuff. And just as problematic, reputations do sail along for quite a while on the unearned boost from friends, family, and event community pointed out in this review's preamble. The teeter-totter analogy, introduced in a different context in Heron Cliff, comes to mind.
Margo Button has produced a book that seems to have exorcized a lot of personal demons. I'm very happy about that. But an appropriate close may be to quote her herself, again from "Blue Dahlias":
"I treasure the copy of Moliere's Comedies, published in 1760.
Doesn't mean it's valuable, said the antiquarian."
Monday, May 16, 2011
A Timely Jon Stewart Corrective
From today's blog posting by James Howard Kunstler:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/05/a-flea-in-his-ear.html
"Imagine the fright mask that the Sofitel Hotel maid's face turned into when a black swan in the form of an international banking poobah waddled out of the suite's bathroom with wings rampant. Black swans appear now in the unlikeliest places. I bet you a million Euros that Dominque Strauss-Kahn's lawyer will say that his client was driven mad by relentless, revolving, unresolvable thoughts of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, and that he mistook the hotel maid for Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou."
Link above for the rest.
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/05/a-flea-in-his-ear.html
"Imagine the fright mask that the Sofitel Hotel maid's face turned into when a black swan in the form of an international banking poobah waddled out of the suite's bathroom with wings rampant. Black swans appear now in the unlikeliest places. I bet you a million Euros that Dominque Strauss-Kahn's lawyer will say that his client was driven mad by relentless, revolving, unresolvable thoughts of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, and that he mistook the hotel maid for Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou."
Link above for the rest.
Jon Stewart
Just clicked a Harriet link to Jon Stewart. Couldn't find the "Tone Deaf Slam Poet" episode they thought worthy to point out, but I surfed the Stewart backlog for 15 minutes and ended up viewing a 9 minute "humour" monologue on Newt Gingrich's announcement to run for U.S. president via Twitter.
At a dinner last night, I argued with friends about the relative merits of U.S. comedians, left or right dimensions. I've long held that most political chuckle-gatherers have no concern, and little talent, for humour, creative or ultra lowbrow, that they cynically target-market their audience and smarmily project their unfunny tags as a cover for the faux group hug and self-importance of simplistic political statement. It's that heady feeling of contributing to the cliche of the week, only they believe they're shaping it, and it ain't a cliche. That's why I respect -- and actually laugh with -- comics like Jay Leno (or I used to until he overstayed his welcome) who take the accepted caricatures of their targets (sex-crazed Clinton; verbal bumbler Bush Jr.) and spin a never-ending supply of jokes on the same theme. There's no attempt to swing a vote, and there's no pretense of being a respected political pundit. Maher or Miller, it doesn't matter what side of the divide they mock. But back to the Stewart episode.
His message (I'll get to the putative larynx-tighteners later) was that Gingrich should get real and forget about being hip by going the new media route, that it was pandering to the young, that anyone knows he's a "square", and "a policy wonk". Well, as his man has been in the White House for some time, dispensing charisma in moving his head side-to-side reading teleprompter scripts created by others while his country continues, and increases, the same policies engendered by Bush, one would think that a little less image and a little more policy wonking might be in order. The further irony is that Stewart is likewise pandering to the young by speaking for and to them, aligning himself as one of them. Besides, a lot of people I know, and who are as old or older as me, watch the guy, so maybe age and coolness aren't much of a factor in Stewart's show. Maybe he's "cool", maybe he isn't. But what that has to do with current big government madness escapes me. (A lot of funny gags could be creatively powered by Gingrich's philandering, but the Clinton parallels are perhaps too close to home, and/or maybe they figure in other sketches.) I guess the circle will be complete when they have a smirking, ironic presence as the chief figurehead. Oh, wait, Obama already supposedly appears on Oprah and Rosie O. Just one of the guys. Third-term senile Juan Peron became a "square"; similar policies are often conducted by different personalities.
As for humour, this episode was particularly unfunny, the laughs generated (though the punch line words were deleted online) solely by exclaiming "fuck" as adjective, noun, or verb where it was entirely superfluous. This has been a long-running staple of comedians, both political and cultural, for decades. To reference Leno again -- "where's the joke?".
The horrific take-home in this: an increasing number of citizens are now acquiring their political info -- chiefly if not entirely -- through the medium of T.V. comedy. That isn't just speculation: it's experience in talking with a range of viewers who have ready opinions and feelings on topics the media promotes at the expense of many others which for various reasons don't sell to living-room consumers.
There's nothing wrong with combining humour and political commentary. I enjoy it when done wittily and creatively. But Stewart et al fail on both counts, much like a lot of political poetry, and for the same reasons.
At a dinner last night, I argued with friends about the relative merits of U.S. comedians, left or right dimensions. I've long held that most political chuckle-gatherers have no concern, and little talent, for humour, creative or ultra lowbrow, that they cynically target-market their audience and smarmily project their unfunny tags as a cover for the faux group hug and self-importance of simplistic political statement. It's that heady feeling of contributing to the cliche of the week, only they believe they're shaping it, and it ain't a cliche. That's why I respect -- and actually laugh with -- comics like Jay Leno (or I used to until he overstayed his welcome) who take the accepted caricatures of their targets (sex-crazed Clinton; verbal bumbler Bush Jr.) and spin a never-ending supply of jokes on the same theme. There's no attempt to swing a vote, and there's no pretense of being a respected political pundit. Maher or Miller, it doesn't matter what side of the divide they mock. But back to the Stewart episode.
His message (I'll get to the putative larynx-tighteners later) was that Gingrich should get real and forget about being hip by going the new media route, that it was pandering to the young, that anyone knows he's a "square", and "a policy wonk". Well, as his man has been in the White House for some time, dispensing charisma in moving his head side-to-side reading teleprompter scripts created by others while his country continues, and increases, the same policies engendered by Bush, one would think that a little less image and a little more policy wonking might be in order. The further irony is that Stewart is likewise pandering to the young by speaking for and to them, aligning himself as one of them. Besides, a lot of people I know, and who are as old or older as me, watch the guy, so maybe age and coolness aren't much of a factor in Stewart's show. Maybe he's "cool", maybe he isn't. But what that has to do with current big government madness escapes me. (A lot of funny gags could be creatively powered by Gingrich's philandering, but the Clinton parallels are perhaps too close to home, and/or maybe they figure in other sketches.) I guess the circle will be complete when they have a smirking, ironic presence as the chief figurehead. Oh, wait, Obama already supposedly appears on Oprah and Rosie O. Just one of the guys. Third-term senile Juan Peron became a "square"; similar policies are often conducted by different personalities.
As for humour, this episode was particularly unfunny, the laughs generated (though the punch line words were deleted online) solely by exclaiming "fuck" as adjective, noun, or verb where it was entirely superfluous. This has been a long-running staple of comedians, both political and cultural, for decades. To reference Leno again -- "where's the joke?".
The horrific take-home in this: an increasing number of citizens are now acquiring their political info -- chiefly if not entirely -- through the medium of T.V. comedy. That isn't just speculation: it's experience in talking with a range of viewers who have ready opinions and feelings on topics the media promotes at the expense of many others which for various reasons don't sell to living-room consumers.
There's nothing wrong with combining humour and political commentary. I enjoy it when done wittily and creatively. But Stewart et al fail on both counts, much like a lot of political poetry, and for the same reasons.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Barry Dish's Avocado Love
This kitchen sink book of poems does the cliche-slight proud as it is about a kitchen sink. The first-person aluminum cupola alternately sings and moans in Barry Dish's Avocado Love, and the results are striking: "I accept the sludgy waste of your bowels, O tomato paste!" and "Foul dispenser of unwanted guts, the casserole's detritus hang at my drain's uvula" are just a few lines that will rivet the reader in suspense and disbelief.
Some poems, true, skirt mawkishness when the family is away and the sink grows bored enough to elaborate on its passive pensees: "I, the receptacle, accepting anything and everything/Rust in this corner, dark and damp when the plug is stuck".
Not to everyone's taste, perhaps, but Dish's pleas are brave interrogations into our many loveless kitchen hypocrisies, the lemons often dominating the sweet basil and the cupcake.
Some poems, true, skirt mawkishness when the family is away and the sink grows bored enough to elaborate on its passive pensees: "I, the receptacle, accepting anything and everything/Rust in this corner, dark and damp when the plug is stuck".
Not to everyone's taste, perhaps, but Dish's pleas are brave interrogations into our many loveless kitchen hypocrisies, the lemons often dominating the sweet basil and the cupcake.
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