Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 88

Have a Woodland Critter Christmas!

Since it’s the holidays and I’m about to undergo some serious changes at my current employment cave, I’ll be taking a break from writing reviews until January (unless I die unexpectedly or the world ends, but since I’ve mentioned both now neither will happen… ). There is something I would like to discuss, however, and that is search terms. I guess this is my version of breaking a narrative wall because there’s probably someone who wasn’t aware that WordPress totally keeps track of search terms that lead people (or robots) to blogs. I’ve become very fond of some of the ones that lead “people” to me and very afraid of what the searchers were really looking for. Here they are, with reaction shots:

1. The most frequent phrase: your eyes are like space crystals aka your eyes look like space crystals

It goes here: Sleepwalk With Me

Thanks, Mike Birbiglia! I did enjoy your memoir and “Guitar Guy at the Party,” the place where I first heard that phrase. Belvedere’s eyes are way better than space crystals though.

2. Very puzzling edition: build a bear monkey names

I have no idea how that one led to me, but I am not unaware of the value of my naming abilities. But most likely it’s just because of this Jim Knipfel book: These Children Who Come at You With Knives

Call me when they have Build-a-Pig. And not that kind of pig. – Danger Crumples

3.  No, really, what? terms: adult book store New Orleans

I’ve written several reviews of books set in New Orleans [ Pigeons from Hell , A Confederacy of Dunces , Ruined ] because I used to live about an hour and a half away and was a very frequent visitor. It is my official favorite place to go see traveling musical shows and drink on the street. But I haven’t written anything about that kind of book store…hmm.

Duncan looks away. Away from her tired mistress who was probably at One Eyed Jack’s and Buffa’s the night before.

4. Right on terms: V.C. Andrews adjectives

I’ve only read Flowers in the Attic and that was an achievement unto itself so I feel comfortable saying that V.C. Andrews (and probably Andrew Neiderman, brand caretaker, too) loves adjectives. She adores them with the white hot fury of thousands of brilliantly shiny burning suns.

She may have loved adjectives more than writing about blonde incestuous people. But the world and darling Murderface may never know.

5. Confusing spelling edition : sordkin day of oprichnir

I’ll admit, Oprichnik is a little on the hard to spell side. Two vowels, fun pronunciation, lots of people aren’t used to reading translations from Russian, it’s not that bad. It was still strange to read in my list of search terms.

Wait till they read it. – Mortemer endured my befuddled looks while I read Day of the Oprichnik

6. Ha ha, they might not mean Spaced terms: spunk beans

Simon Pegg’s book Nerd Do Well

There’s this cook book they might want to try. I heard about it on the internet and decided it was gross, but it’s available somewhere. And someone tested those recipes. On purpose.

Seriously, it’s beans and spunk. Listen to Bill Bailey and pay attention with your childlike ears. – Pickles, not having it. Bel better know his Spaced quotes.

There will be two more parts to this saga of search terms. Reading it will feel like opening an incompetently constructed advent calendar.

Of course, Perri was no poet. Caryl was sure of that.

42. Nightmare Hall: The Experiment – Diane Hoh

I enjoyed Nightmare Hall in middle school. As I recall, The Scream Team was a particularly affecting work but I didn’t get around to this one during its initial run. It’s about a professor with an eye patch who teaches science-poetry class and the girl who crushes on him from afar, and then gets into his web, or someone’s web – of lies and deceit! Her work is excellent! Excellent! Caryl is an excellent science-poet with a realistic and admirable amount of concern for her personal safety (but not the letter “o”) in the face of amorous dudes named Ben and Dare. Yes, Dare. Wildcard if ever there was one. Also taking science-poetry from Professor Mysterious Accident, I mean DeLure.

Poetry and I do not have a very good relationship so it should go without saying that science-poetry seems like a slightly odd collegiate topic to me.  And I am the person who took the Glam rock vampire class. It was the best! Anyway, despite many workshop classes featuring poets, I’m still not entirely comfortable giving detailed feedback on most poems. If I have no reaction, typically I don’t say anything to the author or I have thought of saying, “not my cup of tea, I don’t even want to consider your phrasing because even though that might be useful I just don’t think it will be.”

It’s not like I actively despise poetry or anything. My favorite poet is Richard Brautigan, and I also happen to be quite fond of Edward Gorey’s limericks. Both of these dudes also write very sassy and impudent fiction though, which might be why I enjoy their poems. I also like Sylvia Plath, as I am contractually obligated to by the dour part of my brain. I’m still holding out for the day that when you (the royal you) become depressed and you receive a copy of The Bell Jar in the mail with samples of Tide. Maybe multi-tasking in the fiction world makes for better poets. Maybe no serious poet would agree with me.

In real life situations I’ve encountered a very large amount of very, very bad, very, very personal poetry and one time a not-so-good poet also chose to do some shout outs after reading a particularly trite poem about an indecipherable topic. The shout-outs made the poet sound a little delusional. This other time in a pre-shout-out universe I watched some guy reading a poem about how he wanted to “fuck the fruit machine” and he was using that as a metaphor for his gambling problem. It was really subtle and he was very passionate about his work, which almost made it charming. Sometimes though, the specific does not become as universal as one would like it to and then I cringe a lot.

One workshop taught me that there are several words that should never appear in poems and two of them are “myriad” and “lozenge.” I’d probably throw “moist” in there too. All three of those words can definitely be cringeworthy and possibly applicable to science. Uh oh, Caryl.

Baby Danger Crumples will hypnotize you with his whimsical word-paintings. Or that one-eyed stare he’s throwing out.