SOUNDTRACK: STEVE MARTIN & THE STEEP CANYON RANGERS-“Athiests Don’t Have No Songs” (2010).
We watched this Steve Martin performance on Austin City Limits last night. Who knew that Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin) won a Grammy in the bluegrass category! I’m not a huge fan of bluegrass–basically I like it enough for a few songs, but a half an hour is a bit much.
Nevertheless, Steve Martin is an amazing banjo player. Anyone who has his comedy albums from the 70s knows that. He used to play banjo between jokes (“Oh…death and grief and sorry and murder). Now he tells jokes between banjo songs (the joke about the Grammy is very funny).
This song does not feature his amazing banjo playing but it is very funny indeed.
I just love the crazy notes that Martin hits near the end, which sounds so out of tune and yet fit very well together.
[READ: July 27, 2011] Five Dials 18b
The bulk of this short special issue is the five poems by Michael Robbins, a poet with whom I am unfamiliar. The only other items included here are Craig Taylor’s Letter and Laurence Scott’s Currentish Events about Galliano and Gaddafi. Since Five Dials issues are of varying sizes to begin with, it was unclear why this issue was a “b” and not the next issue, but Taylor sets us all straight.
CRAIG TAYLOR-A Letter from the Editor: On Spring and Robbins
They got into the publishing gig to be able to comment on things as they occur. So this special issue is designed to usher in Spring and to introduce the world to the new poet whose title “Aliens v Predator” so impressed them that they asked him for five more.
LAURENCE SCOTT-Currentish Events: Galliano and Gaddafi
This essay looks briefly at the role of fashion in France, particularly at the Galliano episode that got him fired from Dior (a whole barrage of anti-semitic comments–and more!). But Scott also looks at Natalie Portman who dissociated herself from Galliano as soon as all that went down. Scott points out that as a model she herself is kind of disassociated from anything (except selling). Nevertheless Portman felt bad about working with this deranged anti-Semite.
Also feeling bad were Nelly Furtado and economist Howard Davies, not because of Galliano, but because they both were associated with the Gaddafis. And in light of the Libyan uprising they wanted to be removed from the Gaddafi coffers. [Although, honestly, did they think that the Gaddafis were decent people before the uprising? Really?]
Furtado received a million dollars from the Gaddafis for a 45 minute set (and fair play to her, I say), and apparently Mariah Carey and Usher also received (and subsequently donated to charity) vast sums from the Gaddafis too. This leads Scott to ask, should we only sell our services to the just? What about waiters and other servers. Should they get rid of their tips is they served a dictator? It’s an interesting question.
MICHAEL ROBBINS-Five Poems
Robbins’ poetry is a weird mix of pop culture and cliché which I can’t really figure out the point of. There’s certainly some funny lines, in fact there’s a lot of funny lines, but so what? Should poetry be more than that?
“I Did This to My Vocabulary” features this inscrutable verse:
Who put pubic hair on my headphones?
Who put the ram in Ramallah?
I’m just sitting here spinning my spinning wheels–
Where are the snow tires of tomorrow
Yea, that’s what I thought.
“Mission Creep” features this couplet:
The Easter Mass begins, Don’t put that
in your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been.
That’s kind of funny.
“Enjoy My Symptom”
This is the first of two poems that talk about rape. Which is a bit odd, isn’t it? After a stanza that ends “They raped a rhino. They raped some apes,” the final stanza ends:
I can’t live with or without me
I etch the speckled cybernaut
I rape the earth. It’s not my fault.
He references The Beatles and U2 quite a bit
“[Things I may no longer bring on airplanes:]” is here printed in its entirety
Things I may no longer bring on airplanes:
1. Box cutters
2. AirplanesAll that is sullied melts into flesh
Hebrew, the original HTML.
How will I open my box on the airplane?I saw a bat another bat
& two batlike swifts
that might’ve been bats.
I can’t connect these stanzas in any way. Not even with glue.
The final poem, “Bubbling Under” has more rape! and opens with this couplet set of three lines (that’s awkward):
I live by the alien logic we impose on children.
Whoever smelt it dealt it. I’m glazed with K-Y
beside the Goth girls gone haywire.
I just don’t get it.
But there’s some interesting illustrations by Eric Hanson. And you can witness the cool launch of this issue here.
[One of the comments points out my gaffe with the word couplet above, so I’ve fixed it. The other comment about subject-verb agreement was a case of very bad editing on my part (my excuse if that my kid really wanted to go outside before it rained, so I did a half-assed job). So I fixed them but left no trace of the originals because they were so egregious that no one needs to see them.]
I Just Read About That... 
You are a complete moron who is obviously unfamiliar with contemporary poetry.
I have admitted my unfamiliarity with contemporary poetry on many occasions, yes.
For instance: what you call a “couplet” in the poem “Bubbling Under” is not one. Look up “couplet.”
You might also consider looking into subject-verb agreement.
It’s clear that you miss the allusions in the lines above to Shakespeare & Villon, by the way.
You’re totally right about the couplet thing. You’ll notice I used it correctly earlier. Call that lazy editing–I was originally only going to quote two lines, but decided to go for three.
I’m usually pretty careful regarding subject verb agreement, I’ll have to look and see where I missed it.
I have completely missed the allusions to Shakespeare and Villon, yes. Never read Villon and only really read Shakespeare’s “best of” when it comes to poetry. Care to enlighten?
have you reviewed/read tao lin? he is very successful in the literary world but his poems seem similarly unremarkable
No, I don’t know Tao Lin, but I just looked him up and his novels seem interesting. Not sure about the poetry though. I was taught that poetry was almost too beautiful to touch, so I’m pretty afraid of it. I see a lot of “poetry slam” poems to be little more than diary entries read to a rhythm that I’d never guess in a million years. I’m more familiar with Enlightenment poets or even Modern poets. But even so, I’m never really sure what to make of poems that feel tossed off and casual. I’ve written some bad poetry myself, and it often seems not unlike some of these!
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