I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK:  FREEGAL MUSIC (2013).

Not only am I a librarian, I’m also a patron of libraries (we currently use four!).  I’m also a huge advocate of library usage.  Everyone knows you can get free books at the library.  And many people know (but many people don’t) that you can get free CDs and DVDs from the library.  Well, I’m advocating a new service that many libraries have implemented (both the library where I worked and my local library have it).

It’s called Freegal and it allows you to download (and keep) three songs a week.  The selection is quite impressive, as they have made agreements with 10,000 record labels.  That’s 10,000 LABELS, not artists, so huge numbers of songs are available. I did a few random searches and was delighted by how much was there.

Even their genre divisions are impressive.  Just check out this sample selection from the B’s: BeBop Big Band Black Metal Bluegrass Blues Bolero Bollywood Brasil Soul Brazilian Breakbeat BritPop Broadway.

So check out to see if your library subscribes.   You get three free songs every Monday morning!  Not bad for the price of a free library card.

[READ: July 3, 3011] Five Dials Number 27B

I haven’t posted about a Five Dials in a couple of issues, primarily because I find writing about anthologies is very time consuming (I have recently read three McSweeney’s which I haven’t had the time to edit together into posts).  The good news is that I have only missed two issues, but I know that at least one of them is pretty large.  I was a little bummed to see another new one already, but then I saw that this issue was not only short, it was full of poetry.  And, since this is my poetry month, why not end the month with a little more poetry.

I enjoyed the offputting cartoon on the cover of this issue which is creepy and funny at the same time.  (Illustrations are by Sophia Augusta, Hannah Bagshaw, Kyle Platts, Tom Rees and Joe Prendergast.  I assume Augusta did the cover).

There was no letter from the editor or any of the usual suspects in this issue.  Rather this issue opens with a Letter from the Poetry Editor.  It is shaped like a poem but isn’t one.

SAM BUCHAN-WATTS-On Parenting Poems
Mentioning a 1954 parenting guide (from Elizabeth Longfellow), Buchan-Watts says that they asked eight young poets to choose a chapter heading from Longfellow’s book Points for Parents, and to make a poem starting from that title.

And it’s now that I admit that these poems have set me back terribly in my appreciation of poetry which I have been nurturing all month.  If ever there was a collection of seemingly random words, it is these.

TIM COCKBURN-“In Praise of Children”
I have nothing useful to say here.

HEATHER PHILLIPSON-“What We Learn from Fantasy”
Perhaps I took Buchan-Watts words too literally and expected that these poems would have something to say about parenting?

NATHAN HAMILTON-“Can We End Those Quarrels?”
But I couldn’t even find a place to land on some of these poems.  This one had                   weird spacing  that               may              have been significant.

EMILY BERRY-“What Are Good Manners?”
This one I actually liked.  The final line had real punch and it completed a poem that was metaphorical and interesting.

OLLY TODD-“A Teenager in the House”
This one has one line on the left and the next on the right and is visually interesting but not really verbally interesting.

LUKE KENNARD-“New Problems”
I will not be told that this is a poem (I’m not sure if Kennard will want to tell me it is one).  It is a story (one page) with a very surreal ending.  It begins with a couple telling how their once-fun son had become withdrawn.  They didn’t want to take his music away so they took his staircase away.  It just gets weirder from there.

OLI HAZZARD-“A Later Stage of Discipline”
I like the stanza structure and alliterative nature of this poem but it was yet another poem where random words seemed to be the point of the poem:

Being providential,
your pince-nez was preserved
against the cataracts and hurricanoes ramming
against what, I’m afraid, has been downgraded to a wig-wam;

See?  Is that profound or nonsense.?

JAMES BROOKES-“The Importance of Being Father”
This poem               has two columns
do you read            it straight across
or down                   column one first?
I’m so                        worried about that
that I can’t              even pay attention to the point.
Of the poem.

~~~~~

This was not
my favorite
issue of Five
Dials.  Although
I did enjoy the
funny
cartoons.