Ange,
I’ve been blessed with a head cold and so am home and resting and have time to finally respond to one of your very early responses (A Minor Distraction to the American Election) to an early post of mine (Midwinter Day). Reading your latest post it still seems that “Is it enough?” is the question. When I doubted my “taste” in “Midwinter Day” it was not that I really doubted my taste. Let me explain. What I meant in that post is that I find myself taking pleasure in things, though I would never champion them as art, as “literature” or “film.” There is a division between something entertaining and something truly artful. I have been and will be entertained by crap until I die. I use the term “crap” loosely and affectionately. Though, I believe, as I know you do, art, too, has to be entertaining. But not crappy. But just because I enjoy David Sedaris on airplanes doesn’t mean that I think he is writing literature. And I love the goofy comic melodrama of the movie “The Wedding Singer.” But I am damn sure neither is art. And it’s not because I don’t think comedy can be art. I have a great respect for stand-up comedians. Margaret Cho’s “I’m the One that I Want” is an extremely powerful piece that is hysterical and political and is 100% stand-up. She knows her form, her medium, and pushes it to its full range of possibility. That show makes performance art look like a haven for 2nd rate comedians. So what’s the difference between Cho’s piece and Sedaris or anything else that my brother and I laugh at while stuck in NJ visiting the parental unit? Probably the range. The number of things a certain form can accomplish. Sedaris for me is nothing more than funny. Sometimes very funny. Cho makes you laugh and suddenly you find yourself knee deep in a very dark place and you realize if she hadn’t steered you there through laughter and sarcasm you would have dismissed the story as melodramatic. You wouldn’t have been able to hear it as openly as you now find yourself hearing it. Her medium -- the comedy -- makes you see the darkness of her tale. The comedy has the effect of producing an affect in the audience? I am playing around now with words because I think what we are both looking for is a term. It seems that we are trying to pin the tail on the aesthetic donkey from different sides. I am saying “entertaining” is not enough and you are saying “intellectual” is not enough. I agree with you whole-heartedly on the dreaded intellectual. It does lack intelligence in that it is one-sided. The term to me denies the sensual which I for some reason tie to the emotional. Perhaps because both are physical in some way. I think your original term “sensibility” is exactly what we are talking about. It implies an intellect engaged in the sensual world. Perhaps we should start using the word in everyday speech. After a reading we can say “Her work has sensibility.” It would be an entirely different assessment from “I respect the intelligence in her work.” The first judgment expresses satisfaction. The second is a back-handed compliment. It expresses a lack of something by naming what was actually found in the work. OK. Tomorrow I will discuss my favorite piece of art and why. It will go nicely with the current thread.
Good Night.
--M
Monday, November 29, 2004
Sunday, November 28, 2004
After seeing Chris N. by chance on Elizabeth Street
What do I want to know? I want to know what Edwin Denby knew.
Sitting in a used bookstore tonight browsing his dance writings, that’s what I wanted; but what he “knew” was something beyond “Dance” in particular. There was some groundwork in the senses, in the affective brain, that preceded history and technique.
There’s something Pedro Almodovar knows beyond “filmmaking” too, and “Bad Education” made me think that if poetry—someone, anyone’s poetry—can’t do what that film did, then I don’t want to write poetry anymore. It didn’t break my heart the way “Talk to Her” did, but it dove into complexity and dashed itself to pieces and surfaced whole. As an intellectual feat, that’s more than “experimental” American filmmakers seem capable of. (Spike Jonz, I’m looking at you.)
An offhand comment at the beginning (“There’s nothing less erotic than an actor looking for work”) seems to have nothing to do with the story that transpires, then evolves into the secret key to a cautionary tale about artistic ambition. That’s the satisfying part; it’s also the unsatisfying part, since the motives of the characters spring from will not love. In “Talk to Her,” a radiant beauty is restored to life, and possibly innocence, after a violation that ends in the suicide—keenly felt—of someone we’re supposed to despise, and can’t; this welter of contradictory emotion works with the cerebral satisfaction of good cinematic technique to cause, finally, the selfsame tears for two intense pleasures. How now, poetry?
Edwin Denby is sympathetic toward the “anti-intellectual” view of ballet; in a way, isn’t it enough that beautiful bodies, male and female, are set in motion amidst fine music and backdrops and glamorous audience? Isn’t that what draws one in, and didn’t Denby himself read Shelley’s “Adonais” with rapt pleasure as a child before he could understand the meaning of the words? Rather than anti-intellectual, why can't we call it pre- or meta- or sensory-intellectual?
What would a really great anti-intellectual poetry entail anyway -- what thrills, what voluptuousness, what blind risk-taking? Wouldn't YOU read it?
(Was Zahara singing “Quizas” a kiss blown to Wong Kar-wai? It plays over the long montage in “In the Mood for Love” where the lovers part, almost meet, and miss each other over and over. It is a light, even slight, song. Perfect cover for devastation.)
Sitting in a used bookstore tonight browsing his dance writings, that’s what I wanted; but what he “knew” was something beyond “Dance” in particular. There was some groundwork in the senses, in the affective brain, that preceded history and technique.
There’s something Pedro Almodovar knows beyond “filmmaking” too, and “Bad Education” made me think that if poetry—someone, anyone’s poetry—can’t do what that film did, then I don’t want to write poetry anymore. It didn’t break my heart the way “Talk to Her” did, but it dove into complexity and dashed itself to pieces and surfaced whole. As an intellectual feat, that’s more than “experimental” American filmmakers seem capable of. (Spike Jonz, I’m looking at you.)
An offhand comment at the beginning (“There’s nothing less erotic than an actor looking for work”) seems to have nothing to do with the story that transpires, then evolves into the secret key to a cautionary tale about artistic ambition. That’s the satisfying part; it’s also the unsatisfying part, since the motives of the characters spring from will not love. In “Talk to Her,” a radiant beauty is restored to life, and possibly innocence, after a violation that ends in the suicide—keenly felt—of someone we’re supposed to despise, and can’t; this welter of contradictory emotion works with the cerebral satisfaction of good cinematic technique to cause, finally, the selfsame tears for two intense pleasures. How now, poetry?
Edwin Denby is sympathetic toward the “anti-intellectual” view of ballet; in a way, isn’t it enough that beautiful bodies, male and female, are set in motion amidst fine music and backdrops and glamorous audience? Isn’t that what draws one in, and didn’t Denby himself read Shelley’s “Adonais” with rapt pleasure as a child before he could understand the meaning of the words? Rather than anti-intellectual, why can't we call it pre- or meta- or sensory-intellectual?
What would a really great anti-intellectual poetry entail anyway -- what thrills, what voluptuousness, what blind risk-taking? Wouldn't YOU read it?
(Was Zahara singing “Quizas” a kiss blown to Wong Kar-wai? It plays over the long montage in “In the Mood for Love” where the lovers part, almost meet, and miss each other over and over. It is a light, even slight, song. Perfect cover for devastation.)
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Do Dogs Count?
Dear Readers,
I apologize for my absence. I am wondering what Ron Silliman thinks happens to women's writing after they acquire their first middle-aged blind dog. Certainly if the last two weeks are any indication, my future as a literary artist is in jeopardy.
I have a parallel story to add to Ange's fecal one. Percy, my new old dog, after spending two days alone at my house with Kate and me, was introduced to Kate's roommate's dog, Cody. Percy began barking for the first time and when I went to pet Cody to keep her calm, Percy promptly pissed on my shoe. Kate said he wanted me to know I was his bitch. I guess I am.
I plan to stop reading solely about natural dog diets in the next few days and return here with something real to say. I still want to respond to one of Ange's pre-election posts.
Happy Thanksgiving.
--M
I apologize for my absence. I am wondering what Ron Silliman thinks happens to women's writing after they acquire their first middle-aged blind dog. Certainly if the last two weeks are any indication, my future as a literary artist is in jeopardy.
I have a parallel story to add to Ange's fecal one. Percy, my new old dog, after spending two days alone at my house with Kate and me, was introduced to Kate's roommate's dog, Cody. Percy began barking for the first time and when I went to pet Cody to keep her calm, Percy promptly pissed on my shoe. Kate said he wanted me to know I was his bitch. I guess I am.
I plan to stop reading solely about natural dog diets in the next few days and return here with something real to say. I still want to respond to one of Ange's pre-election posts.
Happy Thanksgiving.
--M
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Primal Self-Expression
I saw Drew Gardner in passing tonight, at Peter Gizzi’s reading at the Project, and he thought I should share the story of how I almost didn’t make it out of the apartment. Not an hour before I expected to be on my way, I was seated at my computer and felt a familiar pair of small hands on my leg. When I looked down there was my son wiping his hands on my pants and—they were covered in, how can I say it, he was cleaning shit off his hands with my pants. Phoebus Apollo! (Exeunt; roar of a bath and howls of the offended child, not to mention the howls of the offended mother.) How did that happen? Later his father asked him, “Jake, did you take a poo?” and he boldly stuck his hand down the back of his diaper. There was my answer.
At least he spared the sofa, already a sour sponge of dried milk and peanut butter; in fact from a housekeeping point of view cleaning himself on me was the least worst option. From the psychoanalytic point of view … well, Mr. Gardner seemed to find a wealth of metaphor in this little tale, which I don’t wish to overburden with analysis.
At least he spared the sofa, already a sour sponge of dried milk and peanut butter; in fact from a housekeeping point of view cleaning himself on me was the least worst option. From the psychoanalytic point of view … well, Mr. Gardner seemed to find a wealth of metaphor in this little tale, which I don’t wish to overburden with analysis.
Monday, November 15, 2004
Going to Sleep with Quandariness
John Ashbery’s new Selected Prose is stacked high at St. Mark’s Bookshop, and my quandary is this—do I pack my 25-lb. boy in his 8-lb. stroller and brave the stairwells of the subway to buy this book today? It’s like running an obstacle course. It is no exaggeration to say that I’ll spend half the day fretting about this book, which I desperately want, but being unable to bring myself to leave the neighborhood to get it. It is no exaggeration to say I rarely leave Park Slope. Having a child in New York City is punishing, and the subway is only one of many reasons.
Park Slope is one of the few habitable neighborhoods of New York, and it has the virtue of bookstores and independent record stores in a concentrated area. But none of the bookstores seem to have Ashbery’s Selected Prose. It is a neighborhood renowned for its literariness, but it is the literariness of novelists, not poets. Or it is the literariness of the New York Review of Books, where real poets are certified by British or Irish accents.
Apropos an earlier post, I learn from my Raymond Williams’ Keywords that there is a history between “intelligent” and “intellectual” that stretches back to the early 19th century, and uses a quote of Byron’s to exemplify an unfavorable view of the “intellectual.”
Past the halfway mark in Schuyler’s letters, I’ve learned quite a bit about what to see in Rome, gardening, baking brownies, gossip, painting, and of course how to be a poet. He confirms what I already thought: Read everything and be otherwise as daydream-lazy as possible.
Park Slope is one of the few habitable neighborhoods of New York, and it has the virtue of bookstores and independent record stores in a concentrated area. But none of the bookstores seem to have Ashbery’s Selected Prose. It is a neighborhood renowned for its literariness, but it is the literariness of novelists, not poets. Or it is the literariness of the New York Review of Books, where real poets are certified by British or Irish accents.
Apropos an earlier post, I learn from my Raymond Williams’ Keywords that there is a history between “intelligent” and “intellectual” that stretches back to the early 19th century, and uses a quote of Byron’s to exemplify an unfavorable view of the “intellectual.”
Past the halfway mark in Schuyler’s letters, I’ve learned quite a bit about what to see in Rome, gardening, baking brownies, gossip, painting, and of course how to be a poet. He confirms what I already thought: Read everything and be otherwise as daydream-lazy as possible.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Shall We Gather at the River?
All advice from slav grandparents boils down to “guard your health” I think.
In my copy of Benjamin’s Moscow Diary there is a photo of a homeless child from 1926. He or she is huddled on a stoop, sleeping. Regarding begging in that post-revolutionary period WB wrote: “One rarely sees anybody give. Begging has lost its most powerful base, the guilty social conscience that opens purses far wider than pity.” In that year my grandmother (in Minsk) was 4 years old; at age 9 she would lose her father to pneumonia, and then when her mother came down with pneumonia also, she almost lost her mind at the thought that she and her three younger siblings would be orphaned: they’d be put out on the street, she said.
Well, Antonina survived the pneumonia—luckily her children were grown when she was disappeared by the Stalinist police—and the little 9 year old, sent off to earn a living picking potatoes, survived the war and famine of the German refugee camps and bad childbirths and so on, but still lives in a row home in Philadelphia, where she dispenses this advice: “Guard your health.” And then something like “Pray to God.” So every year on Easter I call her up and give her the standard Orthodox greeting in Russian: “Christ has risen.” And she: “Indeed he has risen!”
This is not a “Be Grateful for What You Have” message of the day, but perhaps an “Indestructible Slav Woman” message of the day, if you like. May our poetry be as tough as our barge-heaving ancestors.
In my copy of Benjamin’s Moscow Diary there is a photo of a homeless child from 1926. He or she is huddled on a stoop, sleeping. Regarding begging in that post-revolutionary period WB wrote: “One rarely sees anybody give. Begging has lost its most powerful base, the guilty social conscience that opens purses far wider than pity.” In that year my grandmother (in Minsk) was 4 years old; at age 9 she would lose her father to pneumonia, and then when her mother came down with pneumonia also, she almost lost her mind at the thought that she and her three younger siblings would be orphaned: they’d be put out on the street, she said.
Well, Antonina survived the pneumonia—luckily her children were grown when she was disappeared by the Stalinist police—and the little 9 year old, sent off to earn a living picking potatoes, survived the war and famine of the German refugee camps and bad childbirths and so on, but still lives in a row home in Philadelphia, where she dispenses this advice: “Guard your health.” And then something like “Pray to God.” So every year on Easter I call her up and give her the standard Orthodox greeting in Russian: “Christ has risen.” And she: “Indeed he has risen!”
This is not a “Be Grateful for What You Have” message of the day, but perhaps an “Indestructible Slav Woman” message of the day, if you like. May our poetry be as tough as our barge-heaving ancestors.
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