Jonathan Ball's Blog, page 69

“Beware: Do Not Read This Poem” by Ishmael Reed

I recommend Dr. Peter Kittle’s online examination of Ishmael Reed’s “Beware: Do Not Read This Poem.” 

If you are  one of my students, in addition to reading the poem, also explore each of the links at the bottom of Kittle’s webpage. I’d recommend exploring them in order, but don’t worry if the “Context Analysis: Postmodernism” section is confusing.

The important question is this: What do you think of Dr. Kittle’s “reading” of the poem? Does you agree or disagree, and how? Why?

“Au Lecteur” ["To the Reader"] by Charles Baudelaire

This poem prefaces Baudelaire’s 1857 book Fleurs du mal [Flowers of Evil]. 

The poem and multiple translations are available at Fleursdumal.org, which also contains a note on the multiple editions of Fleurs du mal and the entire text of the collection.

If you are one of my students, be sure to read each translation and note the differences between them. Which differences seem meaningful?

If you can read French, why not attempt your own translation?

August Poetry Review Column

My August poetry review column is live at the Winnipeg Free Press site, containing mini-reviews of books by Andrew McEwan, Sarah Klassen, Lise Downe, and Moez Surani. As I update this site, these and the hundreds of other full and mini-reviews will appear in the “Reviews” tab to the left.

“A vacuum…”

Kevin Spenst called my attention to this quote, which (as he notes) recalls the themes of my book Clockfire (so I thought I’d share it here):

A vacuum is unalterably and untransferably a vacuum––the only thing that can happen to it is destruction. If it were possible to reproduce it in an audience the result would be the destruction of the audience.

— Laura Riding, Anarchism Is Not Enough (1928)

The Politics of Knives available now

The Politics of Knives now available from Coach House Books

from CLUSTER, from the INBOX Project

apportion violet transgressor slog

 

gainful

apportion sensate spy

slog cluster affine elliott sensate attentive lithuania snap elliott

amadeus consensus motherland philosoph bisexual transgressor apportion

palate sally shako hater

affine

hater hater snap fiery twelfth

duration elijah elliott rage lithuania hater principle borg palate

stifle

 

rob mclennan and the INBOX project

Over at his blog, rob mclennan kindly comments on a recent chapbook of mine, published by Sacrifice Press.

Over the past few years, Winnipeg filmmaker and writer Jonathan Ball has been producing increasingly interesting works, and there’s already a new title forthcoming . . . Ball’s chapbook Proverbs, From the INBOX Project suggests that this is part of a larger, book-length project, and the collage aspect of the work makes me interested to see how the work will hold together as a larger manuscript. Where is all of this leading?

The “new title” rob refers to is The Politics of Knives, which just came off the press and will launch in Winnipeg on Sept. 11. If you order a copy it should arrive post-haste.

I’ll take a moment to answer rob’s question. Proverbs, like some other poems I’ve published recently, are subtitled from the INBOX project. This project constitutes a collection of poems I have produced by massaging and sculpting spam text I received when my filters failed me for about a week. In fact, I completed an entire book-length manuscript in 2008.

INBOX is one of a handful of book manuscripts that I could publish anytime, that are in fact publishable, but that I don’t feel measure up to my recent books. Maybe with further revisions the ms will improve. The poems, in clusters or individually, work well. As a book, though, it doesn’t seem to have the unity and force that I demand.

So, instead of foisting a new book on the world, I’ve been excerpting and reshaping text from INBOX for chapbook and magazine publication. I am considering doing some sort of self-released eBook, sort of a lengthy chapbook. There’s a section of INBOX that was once the entire book (in an earlier draft), and that still constitutes most of the ms, that might work well as an eBook (it’s named, fittingly, This eBook is Otherwise Provided to You As-Is). Time will tell. It’s one of those projects that still interests me but doesn’t command my attention and my time.

I have two projects: INBOX and Factory Poems (one may become a subset of the other), which are things I work on when I have no time or energy, because they are composed through mechanical or automatic processes. (When you have no brain in your head and are exhausted, you still need to work! You can still write good poems, kiddos! Just don’t write poems that depend on you for their development. In your thinking moments, develop a concept and then in your unthinking moments just trust the concept and carry the work through.)

So, rob, the answer is: I don’t necessarily think it does hold together as a larger manuscript, at least right now. Maybe later. So that’s why I haven’t published this book that has been otherwise completed since 2008. Where is it leading? Perhaps to further excerpts in eBook form? Maybe some other chapbooks? In my next post, I’ll print a poem from Cluster, a different section of the ms.

 

 

Wreckin tha joint

Please bear with me while I destroy my site and a new one rises from its bitter ash.

What would you like this website to be?

In the past, I’ve experimented with this website as a promotion page/info source on me and my books, a place where people can find articles on writing, a place where they can find interviews with creative types (from Frank Black of The Pixies to a UFO expert to the usual gang of poets), to a journal of my writing/work  that I could fall back upon if CRA ever decides they want evidence of my business activity. I’ve had runs where I ran my Haiku Horoscopes column here and even a column called What Rappers are Saying. All that stuff is still archived here. I even have my short films and some song files here somewhere.

I’m planning to revamp this site and give it a real identity/vision/design, over the next while (after I finish a book project) but I may phase things in, in stages. Right now I’m still in the gathering ideas stage. Anyway, I thought I’d ask: what do you want this site to be? If you’re reading it, or have read it in the past, why? What did/do you like about it? What’s worth keeping? What’s missing? Why do/have you visit(ed) me here? What would make you visit more? What do you think I could offer that you don’t see elsewhere?

If you’re a current or former or even future student of mine, what could be on here that would help you? How could this site be useful to you even after you exit my course? If you’re a writer, what would help or interest you? If you’re one of my five fans, what do you want to know more about? If you’re a teacher teaching my books, how can I help? Do you want more from me, less from me, to hear from other people, pictures of rabbits?

What would you like this website to be?