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Archive for the ‘Poets’ Category

Three Poems–(The Walrus: Summer Reading Issue, July/August 2013)

Posted in Canadian Content, Death, Derek Webster, J. Mascis, Mazzy Star, Poetry, Poets, Suzannah Showler, The Walrus, Vincent Colistro on July 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

walrusjulySOUNDTRACK: J MASCIS-“Fade Into You” (2013).

jmazzy I really liked this Mazzy Star song when it first came out.  Over the years I have gotten a little tired of it–it was a bit overplayed and a bit too…something.  So it’s nice to have this remarkably faithful cover from J. Mascis.

Mascis is of course the singer from Dinosaur Jr, and is usually fond of screaming guitar licks and wild vocals.  But one must not forget that Mascis is also a king of melody (underneath the noise are beautiful pop gems).  And this simple acoustic song fits very well with his vocals style and falsetto.  There are some beautiful overdubbed guitar licks, and it never veers into the treacle at all.

I prefer Mascis’ to the original now.

Perhaps more fascinating than the cover is why he has released it:  It accompanies a limited edition (360 pairs) of shoes.  [So limited edition that my size is sold out already].

The shoes are vegan (or however you phrase that) and feature a purple faux suede and a stripe from Mascis’ guitar strap.  As the write up says: In addition to having a design inspired by J Mascis’ guitar strap embroidered on the back, the purple shoe comes with an exclusive 7″ picture disc of Mascis covering the Mazzy Star classic “Fade Into You”.

And I have to say that the $75 price tag is surprisingly cheap for a limited edition/star inspired/benefit type shoe.  You can buy a pair (maybe) here.  Or just listen to the song at Pitchfork.

[READ: July 15, 2013] Three Poems

This issue of The Walrus is the Summer Reading issue.  It includes three short stories and three poems.  In light of my recent decision to try to read more poetry, I was pleased to see three poems here, even though in my head Summer Reading is all about Fiction.

Since there are only three poems (by different authors), I’m going to mention them all in one post, as I hate to write more words in a post than the author did. (more…)

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Kelly Davio–Burn This House (2013)

Posted in José González, Kelly Davio, New Yorker, Poetry, Poets, Sasha Frere-Jones, Short Books, Swedish Music, The Knife on April 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Burn-This-House-175x250SOUNDTRACK: THE KNIFE-“Heartbeats” (2002).

knifeheart

I learned of this song from the José González cover that was featured in the (very cool) Sony video with the bouncing balls.  The song turned me on to González, but not necessarily the song itself.  I knew The Knife did the original  and I remember when I first heard it, I didn’t like it nearly as much as the González version.

It’s been a few years and there’s a new The Knife album out and in the New Yorker review of it Sasha Frere-Jones mentioned this song again.  So I wanted to listen to it without the cover so prominent.  And indeed, the González cover is quite straightforward (acoustic guitar rather than mega synth, but otherwise pretty spot on). The Knife’s version is very retro synth-sounding .  It reminds me of a wacky 80s song.  Or perhaps a 2000’s Europop song.

The vocals are high-pitched and a wee bit over the top, but all in all it’s very catchy.  Frere-Jones said that The Knife version was very popular but evidently I didn’t travel in those circles because I don’t recognize it as being huge.

And I still like José’s version better.

I know it’s not really cool to show the video of the cover version when I’m talking about the original, and it’s really not that cool to use a commercial as a video, but it is still very fun to watch.

[READ: April 30, 2013] Burn This House

For the last day of April, the last day of poetry month, I read a new book of poetry that came across my desk today.  This is Kelly Davio’s first collection.  She is an MFA and quite an accomplished poet (managing editor and Pushcart nominee).  I also thought that I would see if she was a “modern, weird” poet or a more traditional one (I secretly hoped for more traditional as I’d burnt out on wacky ones).  For the most part she is more traditional and I liked most of her poems quite a lot.

The book was divided into five sections.  And I have to admit that the final few sections contained poems which seems a little forced to me (more on that later).  For it was in the early pages that I thought the poetry was most magnificent.

Although when I first started reading I was afraid that the poetry was going to be ponderous without enough concrete detail.  Like in “auguries” which showed a series of potential omens (Davio seems to have a thing with birds crashing into windows) which were effective, but I didn’t like the ending: “To what /significance such eroded things?” It seemed too vague to be powerful.

But the poems that came right after were just wonderful with detail like in “The First Lines” which had this description of a scarecrow: (more…)

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Five Dials Number 27B: Pedagogic Poems (27 April 2013)

Posted in Advice, Babies, Books about writers, Death, Emily Berry, Five Dials, Hannah Bagshaw, Heather Phillipson, Huh?, James Brookes, Joe Prendergast, Kyle Platts, Luke Kennard, Nathan Hamilton, Oli Hazzard, Olly Todd, Poetry, Poets, Record Labels, Sam Buchan-Watts, Sophia Augusta, Tim Cockburn on April 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

fivedials_no27b

SOUNDTRACK:  FREEGAL MUSIC (2013).

freegalNot 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. (more…)

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Dan Chelotti–X (2013)

Posted in Dan Chelotti, Huh?, Melting Hopefuls, Peter Gabriel, Poetry, Poets on April 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

chelotti SOUNDTRACK: PETER GABRIEL-“The Book of Love” (2010).

pg

This is a cover of the Magnetic Fields’ song (not the fifties song).  I have this strange relationship with the Magnetic Fields.  I love the songs that Stephin Merritt writes.  His melodies are simple but timeless.  And his lyrics are usually wonderful.  Like from this song:

The book of love has music in it
In fact that’s where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb

And then there’s Merritt’s voice.  It is deep.  Almost comically deep, especially when he sings slowly, it brings on a strange profundity to these words.  And it works pretty well.  Although sometimes I want the songs to be…more.  And that’s where the covers seem to come in.

Gabriel’s cover doesn’t change the song really at all.  But it has Gabriel’s voice, which soars and it has Gabriel’s sense of instrumentation, which also soars.  Perhaps it’s that Merritt’s songs deserve bigger and lusher treatments–they practically scream for Broadway.    And while Gabriel’s version is nowhere near Broadway over-the-topness, it fleshes things out nicely.

Of course, it may very well be that Merritt’s understatement (and oftentimes, just one instrument) provide a successful counterpoint to the spectacle that the song could be.  And maybe that’s why they are so successful.

But Gabriel’s version is really great, too.

[READ: April 20, 2013] X

One more book of poetry for April, this one by Dan Chelotti.  It is Chelotti’s debut, and Chelotti’s poetry is wild and weird and often quite funny.  It is also unapologetically modern.  As you can see from the first poem “Ball Lightning”

I am looking out over
one of the first real gray
days of autumn listening
to a podcast in which
these two men are talking about
the phenomenon of ball lightning.

Or, more sadly in “ Grieving in the Modern World” in which he compares the way people’s grief in the old days was so public, but now it seems so small and insignificant, oh and besides:

…the microwave is
almost finished heating
my dinner , and the newshour
is about to begin. (more…)

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Margaret Atwood–The Circle Game (1966)

Posted in Bob Mould, Canadian Content, Death, Hüsker Dü, Margaret Atwood, Poetry, Poets on April 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

circleSOUNDTRACK: BOB MOULD-Black Sheets of Rain (1990).

I blacksheetstend to think of this as a very dark and claustrophobic album, which it is.  And yet it is also unavoidably Bob Mould, meaning that there are pop elements all over it.  There’s also some very cool, simple bass lines that tend to spruce up some moments of the album making it a bit more fun than it would be without them.

Even if the title track is over seven minutes long, with some really blistering guitar solos, there are still really poppy elements to the chorus.  As for claustrophobic, the title and cover make this seem like it would be really quiet and insular.  But a song like “Black Guard” is quite inviting.  And the third song, “It’s Too Late” is one of the poppiest songs that Mould has written.  The opening chords are so obvious and recall so many classic rock songs that it’s almost too pop for its own good.

“One Good Reason” is another longer song and it, too, has a catchy chorus.  “Stop Your Crying” is one of Mould’s great songs–a nasty-seeming minor chord structure with Mould’s screamed lyrics.  And yet he still manages to make you want to sing along.

The largely acoustic (with disconcerting organ) “The Last Night” is a breakup song.  A major downer with the odd lyric: “Tonight’s the last night that I will ever spend with you.  Please don’t ask me why cause I don’t know, yea.”  A similar kind of breakup song is “Out of Your Life.”  The difference is that “Out of Your Life” is incredibly poppy.  A major key with bouncy bass and super sing along chorus.  It’s two sides of an idea.  “Disappointed” sounds very much like earlier Hüsker Dü with that buzzy guitar that is unmistakably Mould.  The album ends with “Sacrifice/Let There be Peace” in which the dichotomy of Mould’s sounds are in full evidence.  Mould’s voice sounds completely shot by the end as she screams and growls (it’s amazing he could even speak after recording some of these songs).  The lyrics are practically impossible to understand and yet in the background Mould is chanting/singing a very steady chorus of “Sacrifice” and there’s a very melodic guitar line going on.

It’s an interesting ending to a very schizophrenic album.  It’s nowhere near as dark as I remember, but not exactly a cheery walk in the park either.

[READ: April 10, 2013] The Circle Game

It’s funny that I’m reading so much poetry, as I don’t typically enjoy it.  Well, April is National Poetry Month after all, so why not.  I received this Atwood book at work.  I really like Margaret Atwood a lot and I hope to delve into her oeuvre more.  So why not take the opportunity to scan this brief volume of poetry (which I thought was new, although I now see is from the sixties).

I’ve read a lot of different types of poetry this month and I found that I really enjoyed Atwood’s work a lot.  Could it be because it’s 40 some years old and not “new” poetry?  I don’t know.  Could it be that she uses parentheses a lot (could be).  Or is it just that she is a great writer.

Her poems actually made me think about the nature of poetry itself.  Why does a fiction writer write poetry?  It seems like some of these poems are simply very short stories.  Is that all a poem is?  A very short story (I mentioned how flash fiction has arisen as a genre, and some of these pieces feel like they could be rendered as flash fiction.  I often find flash fiction unsatisfying and I think it’s because poetry is even tighter and more effective than a flash fiction piece.

I’m also intrigued by Atwood’s poetry because she is writing about atypical stuff (as is Atwood’ wont).  So there’s not a lot of “love” here, except under the guise of something else. (more…)

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Dean Young–Embryoyo (2007)

Posted in Dean Young, Eddie Vedder, Funny (strange), Language, McSweeney's, Paul McCartney, Poetry, Poets, Queens of the Stone Age, Short Books, Super Furry Animals, Word usage on April 4, 2013| Leave a Comment »

embryoyoSOUNDTRACK: QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE with EDDIE VEDDER-“Little Sister” (live) (2013).

qotsavedderThis is a live song from Chile (from what I gather it’s a Lollapalooza show–is that even still around?).  I have no idea if Pearl Jam were in Chile at the time, but what a strange thing to bring Eddie Vedder out on stage and then have him only sing backup vocals and play the cowbell.

The song sounds very much like the record, although a little sloppier.  I’m a bit surprised at that as I think of Homme as running a tight ship (but the sloppiness comes from him, so he has no one to blame but himself).  You’d never know Vedder was even there.  It’s one of the strangest guest appearances since Paul McCartney munched carrots and celery for the Super Furry Animals song “Receptacle for the Respectable.”

[READ: April 3, 2013] Embryoyo

Embryoyo is the final book of poetry I’m going to read for a while.  This book came out a few years ago but McSweeney’s had a garage sale version that I found for cheap.  I’ve always been intrigued by the title (so silly and odd) that I decided to give it a ago.  The blurbs on the back (and I know, no one should read blurbs) are telling: “Dean Young’s work will delight only two kinds of people: those who generally read poetry and those who generally don’t”  And, “No one is unsure if they’ve read a poem by Dean Young.”

I probably concur with the first but I definitely do with the second.  Because Young’s poetry is quite unusual.  And Embryoyo proves to be a demonstrative title.  Not that it means anything specifically, but in the way Young creates portmanteau words, which Young uses liberally.  Like the title “Empheroptera.”

I’m going to give some examples of his poetry that I found really enjoyable: (more…)

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Zubair Ahmed–City of Rivers (2012)

Posted in Death, John Keats, McSweeney's, Poetry, Poets, Short Books, Sigur Rós, Zubair Ahmed on April 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

cityofrivers_cover_FINALstickerSOUNDTRACK: SIGUR RÓS-“Brennisteinn” (2013).

Wsigurhat is that sound?  Low end electronic…noise?  Coming from a Sigur Rós song?  Typically you get a band in the ether, but here’s the band with loud pounding drums and almost glitchy music.  Of course, Jonsi’s voice tells you you’ve got Sigur Rós.  And yet, he’s not singing in his otherworldly falsetto–it seems like an almost human voice.

There’s a very distinctive chorus which is actually catchy in an almost poppy way.  And then, after four minutes, the Sigur Rós of old comes in–Jonsi’s voice soars, and the music reaches for the heavens (but with drums and some crazy sound effects) added in.

And then it grows haunting as the song slows down and distant horns come swelling in, keeping that soundtrack feel that the band does so well.  The video is creepy/cool interspersed with the band playing live.  I love watching them make the sounds they make (there’s a bowed guitar at some point).  I really like this a lot, and can’t wait for the rest of the album.

[READ: March 30, 2013] City of Rivers

I have said before that I don’t really like poetry.  It makes me feel stupid.  This is mostly because I have taken poetry classes and I know what good poetry should be, and yet I see so much poetry published which I think is not very good.  And yet, if it has been published, doesn’t that mean it’s good?  Have I missed something?

I’m not a total old school poetry boor, I don’t need my poetry to be in iambic pentameter, nor does it even need to rhyme, and yet sometimes a lot of contemporary poetry seems like a sentence, not really a poem.  I also suspect that the ascendance of flash fiction has made the ascendance of this flash poetry acceptable too.  Don’t get me wrong, I know a haiku is short as well, but there are lots of constrictions to haiku, whereas some free verse short poems really lack in the substance department.

I am also nonobjective about poetry because of all of the poetry slams that I have witnessed in college and since, in which basically anything is  poem if you e-nun-ci-ate it interestingly (something I doubt Keats was doing).

In an attempt to appreciate new poetry more, I decided to get a few books from the McSweeney’s poetry series. (more…)

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Cynthia Ozick–“The Bloodline of the Alkanas” (Harper’s, February 2013)

Posted in Anachronisms, Cynthia Ozick, Dinosaur Jr., Guided By Voices, Harper's, Marriage (Happy), Poets, Sebadoh, Short Story, The Capstan Shafts on February 14, 2013| Leave a Comment »

02013SOUNDTRACK: THE CAPSTAN SHAFTS-Revelation Skirts (2010).

capstanI’d never heard of the Capstan Shafts when Sarah bought this disc for me for Christmas a few years ago.  (It was in the NPR recommended discs for 2010).  Turns out the band has been around for nearly 20 years but have been making home recordings with little publicity for much of that time.  They (he, really, as it has always been one guy) finally decided to release a proper album with a second guy in the band.  I wouldn’t have known any of that if I hadn’t looked it up just now–because even with the accolades, this is still a low selling record.  I also wouldn’t have known that for some fans this album is the commercial sellout for this band who usually makes weird personal songs.  And yet I like this album a lot–and it is plenty weird.  Or perhaps a little weird-sounding–like the buzzing noisy guitars (which I guess are from the “new guy”).

The songs are pretty straightforward folkie indie rocky.  They are bouncy and poppy, and the buzzy guitar solos adds a nice contrast to that bounciness   There’s an air of Guided by Voices (“Let Your Head Get Wrong”, with the singer’s slightly faux British accent (he sounds like about half a dozen different singers throughout the disc).   There’s definitely a feel of 90s rock here–maybe Sebadoh (“Little Burst of Sunshine”) or even Dino Jr (“Versus the Sad Cold Eventually”).  The album has 14 songs in 30 minutes–and it feels like a full record–there’s not a lot of shilly-shallying with solos or extended verses, and yet the song are not fast punk tracks either–the pace is leisurely.

I really enjoyed this record and I like popping it in from tome to time for a good album that will never be overexposed.

[READ: February 5, 2013] “The Bloodline of the Alkanas”

I found this story to be quite challenging.  The prose was awkward and not very fluid.  I found it slow going until the end, but even that seemed a mite slower than necessary.

This story has three informal parts.  The first shows the narrator’s parents–her father is Cyrus Alkana, a poet who believes in older, more formal rules of poetry.  He is passionate, but far more passionate about his dislike for more modern writers, especially Alexander Alcott to whom he writes nasty letters.  Or actually his wife writes them–she does everything for him believing unquestioningly in his genius.  She works a full time job then comes home and takes care of the house and also types his correspondence.

The parents have no respect for the narrator because she did not receive The Bestowal–what they call the poetic gift.  The narrator doesn’t care about any of that–she explicitly states that she doesn’t know half of the poets that her father admires.  Consequently, her parents show her no respect.

Cyrus can’t seem to get published anywhere.  His wife unfailingly sends out his poems but they receive nothing.  Finally, she decides to bundle up his work and to include a cover letter expressing how wonderful the work inside is.  We later learn that the name she put on the letter was Alexander Alcott.  Obviously, this would show an instant sign of respect and it would be a rather shocking development in the land of poetry.  Especially when the publisher agrees to publish the book only if Alcott’s accolades are included.

The narrator is understandably freaked out about this–her mother is publicly defrauding another (far more famous) writer–surely there will be hell to pay.  But her mother is not concerned in the least.  She says that Alcott will be happy for the publicity.  After its publication  critics do talk about it–most wondering what happened to Alcott to endorse such a poet, but there is never any formal repercussion.  And no word from Alcott at all. (more…)

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Paul Legault–The Emily Dickinson Reader (2012)

Posted in Death, Emily Dickinson, Funny (ha ha), John Doe, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, McSweeney's, Paul Legault, Poetry, Poets, Sex, Short Books, Translation, X on September 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JOHN DOE AND EXENE CERVENKA at KEXP December 31, 2010 (2010).

X toured the Los Angeles album back in 2010–the 30th anniversary of the album.  John Doe and Exene Cervenka came to KEXP to do an acoustic set and to talk…a lot.  The DJ tells them of when he saw them at age 16.  He had his camera and wanted to be a rock photographer.  He was getting pushed around in the pit and Exene pulled him onstage (he got great photos which I’d love to see).  Surprisingly, Exene does not seem as moved as one might expect by that story.

This is a simple, acoustic set–John with his guitar and he and Exene singing.  They play a few songs from across their career: “Because I Do,” “In This House That I Call Home” (a personal favorite), “True Love” (another favorite) and “See How We Are.”  John still sounds great, although Exene’s voice sounds a little worn on “Because I Do” and is actually hard to listen to on “True Love.”

There’s some really long interviews–talking about drugs and The Germs and the heyday and how Exene can’t wait for 2011 to start.

[READ: August 27, 2012] The Emily Dickinson Reader

This book is “an English-to-English translation of Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems.”  What?  Well, basically Paul Legualt has taken all of the “poetry” out of Dickinson’s poems and has left us with what the poems might mean to contemporary readers.  But he also reduced them to basically one line summaries as well–or as McSweeney’s says: “ingenious and madcap one-line renderings.”

So you get “translations” like: #314

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me.

Which Legault translates as: “Hope is kind of like birds. In that I don’t have any.” (more…)

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Thurston Moore and Patti Smith–“Patti Smith” (BOMB, No 54, Winter 1996)

Posted in Bob Dylan, Books about music, Huh?, Marriage (Happy), Patti Smith, Poetry, Poets, Religion, Robert Mapplethorpe, Thurston Moore, William S. Burroughs on July 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THURSTON MOORE-“Patti Smith Math Scratch” (1995).

I couldn’t find any archives of Patti and Thurston playing together, so the next best thing is this song named after her.

For a band as dissonant as Sonic Youth and a guy who plays as chaotically as Thurston Moore, it’s amazing how he/they are able to recreate their studio noise live.  There are dozens of versions of this song available on YouTube and while they don’t sound identical, they all sound reasonably close to each other.  And they sound reasonably close to the original studio version.

This is a pretty straightforward song: a simple riff repeated.  It doesn’t have too many crazy guitar pyrotechnics although the solo is pretty awesome.  Especially live.  No idea what the lyrics are about–much like with Patti Smith.

[READ: July 3, 2012] “Patti Smith”

This article just solidified the coolness of my job.  I’ve always enjoyed the JSTOR articles that get passed around here.  Mostly they’re esoteric studies of unexpected topics.  But this one, from BOMB magazine–who even knew JSTOR saved BOMB magazine?–has just boosted JSTOR’s coolness cred by a magnum.

This is an interview with Patti Smith conducted by Thurston Moore.  Already that’s pretty awesome.  What’s even more awesome is that the interview is done in the car while they are driving back from a show in Massachusetts–it’s just Thurston and Patti talking (although obviously edited).

The opening of the article is an introduction by Thurston, which is interesting in and of itself.  He talks about how he got to know Patti’s music (he grabbed her ankle at a concert when he was a teenager) and then how he got to know her .  I didn’t know she was from South Jersey or that she was Robert Mapplethorpe’s lover.  I also never really put together that she married someone with the same last name as her.

First off, it’s very cool to be reading an interview from fifteen years ago in which both musicians are still alive and producing great work. (more…)

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