Kent Shaw's Blog, page 10
August 21, 2015
Amy Lawless’s My Dead
What if poetry were written for the sake of butter. And I’m thinking mainly of butter, how it coagulates on the plate when you leave it out with the dirty dishes. You’re wanting to put off the dishes. Just for a little bit. And the butter is like, OK. Now it is butter coagulating. The object correlative necessary to consider how coherence is a process, our understanding of coherence is not so neat and tidy as we’d like to think. Are you thinking about water, and the water gathering in small places and large places? That’s one form of cohering.
Another is the impulse in animals to gather around death. And acknowledge some strange difficulty that everyone is having together about this one event. Look at how elephants do it. It’s easier to think of it when elephants are doing it, because when people do it our peopleness keeps getting in the way of us seeing the natural fact of the matter.
This is Amy Lawless’s book. And if you don’t believe me, then the act of coherence is likely more complicated in you. And you should try out her sonnets. You should try “Barren Wilderness,” where all the lines seems to be operating like a wolf pack that’s only talking about being a wolf pack, but taking out the human-author part that wants to dictate an encyclopedia entry about wolf packs so there’s a reason for talking about wolf-packs. Human-authors are such suckers for cohering things. And, yes, that is supposed to be a little bit funny for saying that Amy Lawless is human, and a cohering one at that. A sneaky one. Cohering like an elevator coheres the floors of the building at the Nakatomi Building. I’ve never mentioned this, but Die Hard is my favorite movie.
June 25, 2015
Who’s the one that gave the mic to Graham Foust?
How does Graham Foust expect us to outline the location of a speaking voice poem if it’s clear Graham Foust doesn’t actually know the origin or location or similitude or speaking arrangement or just even the physical vocal part of his body that makes language in the air? Graham Foust, how do you order hotcakes at Bob Evans? “Don’t make it a poem.” Obviously.
Most poems I know have done the courtesy of locating this device called “speaker.” But not Graham Foust, who couldn’t even be competently labeled “Graham Foust” in these poems. Or “consciousness.” The poems are all in some ambiguous in-between of these three speaking entities. And include the term, “‘the muse’.” Include the term, “architecture.” Sometimes, readers found in this circumstance might opt for a term like, “soliloquy.” A nice, conflationary term. But Graham Foust isn’t planning to let anyone let this happen. He knows your tricks to isolate his method. Or mollify his method. Or just dim all the spectacular lights that are happening in the poem, like you, reader, thought you could just feed the poem a little shot of codeine, and it would be dulled down for your palate. “That’s not going to happen.” says Graham Foust. Who is more like Kanye West in this moment, singing “All of the Lights.” All of those methods of making a voice are going to paradox the whole idea of voice for you. All of the lights shining on paradox until even the dark shadow of “paradox,” teased out by light, appears its own paradox.
What I am trying to say here: Where in the human body does voice start? And how are we going to find that point of origin without language? And how are we going to use the language that will spell out the origin of the human voice when a steady stream of language keeps spewing out, because we’re using language while fording upstream into the source of language? And Graham Foust has figured this all out. He’s also figured out how to make it very fun to be stuck amid all the lights and paradox. Like wishying and washying around different understandings of voice could be so much pleasure. Uncertainty is pleasure when descried in a fairly casual, Graham Foust voice. Excactitude need not be so exact.
June 22, 2015
“Tryst,” by Phyllida Barlow. She takes over the Nasher with that...
“Tryst,” by Phyllida Barlow. She takes over the Nasher with that nasty, nasty look. And I don’t even know where people have to walk!!!!
June 20, 2015
“Love Story,” installation by Liu Chuang. It feels like flowers...
“Love Story,” installation by Liu Chuang. It feels like flowers flowers everywhere!!
May 26, 2015
Don’t read Paul Killebrew’s poetry
I am absolutely not hesitating insisting on this. DON’T FUCK-ING READ HIM. For poetry is of a finite quantity. It cannot fill up the entire human race or the human population of any of these United States or the kilobyte and megabyte and gigabyte database capacity assigned every record that has been accorded to Paul Killebrew’s call log. I am reading Paul Killebrew, he is nothing there but himself. The poems are a pealed onion that Stephen Burt would likely get annoyed about and label “neo-surrealist” with punitive intentions. Stephen Burt, be punitive intentions to Paul Killebrew so no one will read the poems. I need this Paul Killebrew alone for me. Have you ever noticed how much people focus on the “nothing” at the center of a pealed onion, and meanwhile, there’s still all this onion left on the counter top? Whatever capacity I have, it has been assigned to absorbing Paul Killebrew. HE IS ABSORPTION AND HONOR! He is an absorbent paper towel pictured on TV. He is all the awkward advertisements they are making these days for toilet paper. Maybe he’s toilet papers stuffing flowers in the private places on your body. Quit looking at me Google Image of Paul Killebrew’s face.
May 7, 2015
Parris Goebel is me inside me when I see me being me.
Parris Goebel is me inside me when I see me being me.
May 1, 2015
Mini-”Review” of Rachel B. Glaser’s Moods
Whoa, Rachel B. Glaser. Where are you going with that woman thing in your pocket. It’s like a smart drape laid over an otherwise practical poem. Drape! Quit with that voice, “Woman thannnggggg….” It sounds too much like James Franco.
Can you take Woman Thing on a bus? In an airport? On a bench? With a half-pint of other liqueur present? I don’t need another liqueur. I just want whatever that woman thing is. I want to hold it in my pocket. No, I want you to hold it just out of my reach. WOMAN THING! I’ve never seen Streetcar Named Desire, but I know that scene where the main character is yelling, “Stella!” That’s not me. I’m whimpering over on the side. “Woman thing?” It’s so placid and concrete and solid and a rock. I have a rock I’ve collected from a beach in Connecticut. It has the perfect weight and density. It feels just right in my hand. I like when you hold the WOMAN THING right in my face, and I can fantasize I’m holding this rock. Hey, Woman Thing! Is this what it’s like to be writing about a Woman Thing? What is so thing about a woman thing? Rachel B. Glaser. I think the B. in your name stands for THING!! Which isn’t a very sensible use of the word B.
But that’s what Rachel B. Glaser knows everything about. Poems and POEMS! and, “Poems?” and Poems with those tildas on either side of the word. But I’m not going to type them in here. That way you know what it’s like when a reader like me encounters the Woman Thing in Rachel B. Glaser’s poems.
April 28, 2015
“Alexander the Great,” by Rachel HarrisonI keep trying to put...
“Alexander the Great,” by Rachel Harrison
I keep trying to put this somewhere in my brain. Does it belong in a department store? At a NASCAR? In the painting aisle at Home Depot? She doesn’t belong anywhere, obviously.
She’s not really a “she,” but she’s unmistakably she to me. Hey, she. Quit looking at me! Is it the cape? The color coordinating? Just the way she’s looking to the side?
April 22, 2015
Bookslut | Come On All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder
My God. I am just in such awe of this book review. Sean Patrick Hill brings the kinds of questions to Matthew Zapruder’s poems that are as peevish as they are thoughtful. As insistent as they are considerate. I want to have a beer with Sean Patrick Hill after reading this. Because I like imagining that he and I would be thinking different thoughts about how to push back at this tidal wave of poetry publishing. Hold up, poetry! Or, rather, Wow! Poetry! Or, rather, Really? That’s poem? It’s what I do every time I read a poem. It’s what I suspect everyone does if they have taste.
Notice, please. Hill doesn’t dismiss. He doesn’t dismiss Zapurder, or the presumed readers of Come On All You Ghosts. If anything Hill grasps hold. He owns his own expectations as a reader, and what he thinks other readers’ expectations should be. I don’t agree with everything that’s Sean Patrick Hill, but I definitely want to listen to him talk and talk about these readers.
