Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Eileen Myles vs. Justin Timberlake

This is old, but I just found it and thought it HYSTERICAL. How can this guy be serious:

I, Necrophiliac
By Rich Baiocco 02.12.07

I’m not a native of San Diego—and chances are neither are you—but I’ve lived here long enough to call it home, and long enough to take offense to Eileen Myles’ dismissive comments about San Diego’s arts scene in the City Beat cover story (Alone In San Diego, www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=5298) a few weeks ago. First of all, who cares about Eileen Myles? Secondly, who cares about poetry? It’s 2007, and unless you have a band or a movie, it’s extremely difficult to make an artistic impact on society, or cultivate the type of vibrant, thriving scene that Myles was apparently looking for in San Diego. I can’t remember the last time I was so moved by a poem that I bothered to memorize it, yet I know all the words to almost every Justin Timberlake song and I don’t even really like him that much; it’s just saturation, numbers. Sure there are poetry readings here, but what usually comes out of them is less an awakening or a revolution and more a fleeting sense of community perpetuated by likeminded lonely poets desperate to be a part of something; maybe an inspiration or two, and maybe, just maybe, a good poem. And NYC, the “artist-friendly” mecca that Eileen Myles fled, is filled with so many more desperate loners per city block that a poet with even the slightest bit of hustle and enthusiasm can build a scene; but then what? It’s just numbers. It’s just poetry.

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