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Frost In The Poetry Aisle


Caveat emptor: I am not a huge Robert Frost fan. I don’t dislike him. I’ve got a nice volume of his collected poems at home. But that’s more because he is someone you want to have in your library (by the way, check out this article – it talks about how having a physical library is very important for children; a library of one hundred books will give your child a 1.5 year head start in reading comprehension over her/his peers and a five hundred volume library a 2.2 year advantage), not because he’s someone I turn to in certain moments of melancholy or confusion or whatever (that would be Anne Carson, William Wordsworth, Paul Eluard, Shakespeare, and Kenneth Rexroth, among others).

So when I first heard a middle aged couple talking a little too loudly next me near the poetry shelves of the soon to be closing downtown DC Barnes and Noble, trying to decide between editions of Frost, I felt some never to be spoken, but nonetheless curt (if they had ever been spoken) words rise up.

But, it didn’t take more than a moment of thought to realize my mistake. Eavesdropping, some poem by Frost had struck the man forcefully and now he had to have a book of his poetry. Surely this is the goal? What poetry lovers and promoters want to see happen?

I hope you found some more poems in whichever edition you chose, sir.

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Rootless/Rootful


We bought our first home recently and it is still filled with boxes and bits of cardboard and trash that needs to be taken out (but how? when is trash day? I don’t know).

The neighborhood is nice, but not so nice as where we were renting, and a little further away from work and what not.

Homeownership has never been a dream of mine. It’s not something I object to and there’s no doubt it will be an important generator of future wealth, but was not something important to me as a thing, in and of itself.

The process is one of dislocation. My routines are dislocated and left rootless. My budget is a mystery. I have less money now. I even know approximately how much. But I don’t really know what that means. Certain luxuries, yes. And, yes, I am frightened of that. There was a line in the movie Pitch Black to the effect of, it is amazing how well one can do without the necessities of life, if one has the little luxuries.

But mostly change. My life has always been about change, which meant it was also about not changing for the sake of change. Change happened enough on its own. The rest was about limiting change. This was deliberate and optional change and is the more disconcerting for it.

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Monday Morning Staff Meeting – How Liberal Is Your ‘Hood?


Ozawa and Twain... weirdly similar hair
Ozawa and Twain… weirdly similar hair

My neighborhood (H Street, or the Atlas District), is conservative by DC standards and slightly less liberal than my old haunt of Capitol Hill/Eastern Market. But this is DC, folks. Doesn’t really get that conservative.

A little creepy, Mark.

The Kennedy Center is honoring Seiji Ozawa (who I saw conduct a mostly Dvorak program in Minneapolis).

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Paul Ryan Grew A Beard. Again. Apparently, This Is A Bigger Deal Than Climate Change.


I stick with my first explanation of this phenomenon.

Also… for future reference, Paul, this is what a beard looks like.

The_Beard

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Weekend Reading: Paywalls


The only way to get the real news on our government is through subscription-only, insider-only publications. Which is to say that you, the ordinary citizen, do not get to see it.

Remember Clive James fondly (even if, for myself, I am less fond of rhyming poetry than he is).

I know this homeless camp and think what is happening is a shame and a tragedy. All you need to do is pass by to see that it is community, not just a random squatting ground.

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‘My Life As A Foreign Country’ By Brian Turner


My Life as a Foreign CountryI saw Brian Turner speak for the second time when I saw him at the Hill Center (kudos to those folks for partnering with the Post‘s Ron Charles on this series). The first was when he read at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

I knew him as a poet, but My Life as a Foreign Country is very expressionistic memoir. More Jean Genet than Frank McCourt and more like Breton’s Amour Fou than any traditional prose book.

The book, about his time as a Marine in Iraq, grows progressively more disjointed and disturbing over its course, as if mapping the psychic damage and dislocation of a war without purpose nor end. It begins as an expressionistic, but still recognizable autobiographical form. Childhood. Parents. Why he joined the Marines. But fragments of his father’s military service, his grandfather’s, and even the Civil War appear. Incidents in Iraq are overlaid with nightmares and fears, before finally horror, memory, fear, mental illness, and reality merge, without the relief of Turner distinguishing them for the reader.

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Weekend Reading – Don’t Start What You Can’t Finish


Palmyra
Palmyra

Finishing a book every time, after having started it, makes you a better person.

What responsibility do editors have in creating greater equity in literature and publishing? And the answer is not, ‘don’t worry about it – they should only publish good stuff, rather than engage in some kind editorial affirmative action’ because, unless you believe that 90% of all good writing is done by white, heterosexual men (and if you believe that, you are probably some heinous combination of racist/misogynist/homophobic and I really don’t care what you think, you intolerant snot), that attitude just isn’t doing it.

Best and worst coffeeshops to get your done in, according to the DCist. Myself, I’m a fan of Port City Java (though it doesn’t have wi-fi on weekends) and while Port City didn’t make the top five, it was repeatedly mentioned for qualities like ‘comfy couches’ and ‘availability of seating.’ So… lots of love from me and some love from DCist for Port City. As it should be, I suppose.

Arming Middle Eastern antiquities lovers with ‘rescue archaeology’ strategies.

 

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‘Artful’ By Ali Smith


9780143124498While enviously browsing  the art theory section of the bookstore in the National Gallery of Art, I saw this book and was immediately intrigued by it.

Artful is not exactly non fiction, not exactly a novel, and not exactly a collection of essays, but is something of all three.

Smith’s husband, apparently a university lecturer on literature, has recently died and the book is structured around his notes for four undelivered lectures. She digresses, extensively quoting from poetry and sometimes assembling ‘new’ poetry from lines from poets like Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and others to create a ‘new’ poem. She is even, briefly, haunted by visions or hallucinations of her late husband visiting her and stealing things (though she also recognizes that it must be she who is actually the thief, because her husband is not there.

It’s a beautiful book, but my expectations were too high, I fear. Nonethless, it is beautiful and a moving, highly literate elegy.

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Weekend Reading – The Real Thing


What is, instead of reading a mediocre poem by a white dude pretending to be an Asian woman, you read poems by actual Asians? Or, really, just don’t read stuff by white guys this weekend, as a kind of silent protest.

Another way our society devalues art – by stereotyping genuinely starving artists as entitled hipsters.

We are not a fashion conscious people, but we love our books (probably why I love living here).

Check out these amazing excerpts from a long, narrative poem, Voyage of the Sable Genius, by Robin Coste Lewis, proving once and for all the conceptual and found poetry can be moving, meaningful, and enthralling.

 

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The Downtown Barnes & Noble Is Closing And That Saddens Me


The Barnes & Noble nearest me, the one downtown, at 12th and E, will be closing this December.

The joys of the inevitable closing sales are not mitigants enough to make up for the loss. Yes, Capitol Hill Books is very close to my home and, yes, there are many great indie bookstores in Washington, DC, but this store, owned by a huge, evil corporation though it is, fulfills a very particular and useful function in my life.

Whenever we go downtown to see a movie, either at Chinatown for the big blockbusters of the E Street Cinema for the cool foreign, indie, and documentary movies, this Barnes & Noble provided a welcome space for a bookish type like me to browse and shop. Besides the fact that the only place to buy books downtown now is Urban Outfitters (and I’m making an angry and melancholy joke here, because humorous books about poop and cats and 99 ways to ruin good scotch by mixing it with other things do not feed my soul), it represents a kind of ‘third space,’ a welcoming, public location for people. That, and it has a huge selection of scifi and fantasy paperbacks.

Politics and Prose is a better bookstore, but it’s not half as close nor a third as easy to get to; Capitol Hill Books is a used bookstore, which is a different kind of space, and doesn’t serve coffee.

And… it’s just sad when a bookstore closes.