Bests

here's some best of 2011, off the top of my head.

best books:
I Wore The Ocean in The Shape Of A Girl - Kelle Groom
Running In The Family – Michael Ondaatje
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
The Lost Father – Mona Simpson
The Caged Owl – Gregory Orr
Gravity and Grace – Simone Weil
The Captain Asks For A Show of Hands - Nick Flynn


songs listened to on repeat:
Stick With Me Baby – Allison Kraus & Robert Plant
Love More – Sharon Van Etten
Challengers – New Pornographers
For What It’s Worth – Stevie Nicks
For Kalaja Mari – School of Seven Bells
Excuses – The Morning Benders
Solitude – Girls
Marked – EMA
Flirted With You All My Life – Vic Chestnutt
Cannons – Little Scream
Too Young – Taken By Trees
Helplessness Blues: Fleet Foxes
Secrets- Silver Swans
It’s Okay – Land of Talk
Ring – Glasseer
Eleanor – The Turtles
Say No More – Humble Pie


best movies:
Biutiful
Beginners


best places:
The Ocean
The West Village


stay warm, chickadees.

tens for twenty-ten

Top 10 Whatnots , because it's that time of year, in no particular order

Books Read
Quiver of Arrows - Carl Phillips
Dark Things - Novica Tadic
The Ticking Is The Bomb - Nick Flynn
Heaven's Coast - Mark Doty
The Lover - M. Duras
In The Skin of A Lion - Michal Ondaatje
Short Talks - Anne Carson
Selected Poems - Robert Duncan
Please - Jericho Brown
The End of Beauty - Jorie Graham

Songs Listened to Repeatedly
Sea Talk - Zola Jesus
Headache for a Heartache - Emily Hope Price
Rowing Song - Patti Griffin
Your Love is My Drug - Ke$ha
Just Didn't Need to Know - The Shivers
Here Come Those Tears Again - Jackson Browne
Instruct Me - The Drums
Fembot - Robyn
The Story - Brandi Carlile
Black Rain, Black Rain - AA Bondy


That's all for now, chickadees. Stay warm.

to rest upon

Sometimes I can't articulate the Much To Say. Lately other people have been offering the words & sounds to me of others, and that's what makes sense. It's okay to take a little rest from explaining.

---Five Remembrances offered by Thich Naht Hahn
(sent to me by my friend Rob, he of the motorcycle & bicycle & yoga mastery; who was once a painter, who is deeply kind.)

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.


--Vic Chesnutt (introduced to me this week by a friend, he of the almonds, cold wind & empathy.)

Funny, strange, sad. Brilliant. Here's his Daytrotter session with Elf Power.

summer recommendations

Fiction: the first show I was involved with in college was called "The Street of Crocodiles." I ran the light board - it was one of those ancient slide boards, no easy buttons. It was like playing an organ - the play was so deeply magical that there was a light shift at least every two minutes. Years later I came across something else called "The Street of Crocodiles" - a film by The Brothers Quay, with which I became similarly entranced. Eventually I was to find The Street of Crocodiles in it's (almost) original form - a book by Bruno Schulz, a Polish writer murdered by the Nazis. His work drips with sensation, with strange birds & light & honey, with thick tensions of realities co-mingling. Here is the opening of "The Street of Crocodiles," from the first story entitled "August":

In July my Father went to take the waters and left me, with my mother and elder brother, a prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days. Dizzy with light, we dipped into that enormous book of holidays, it's pages blazing with sunshine and scented with the sweet melting pulp of golden pears.
On those luminous mornings Adela returned from the market, like Pomona emerging from the flames of day, spilling from her basket the colorful beauty of the sun - the shiny pink cherries full of juice under their transparent skins, the mysterious black morellos that smelled so much better than they tasted; apricots in whose golden pulp lay the core of long afternoons. And next to that pure poetry of fruit, she unloaded sides of meat with they keyboard of ribs swollen with energy and strength and seaweeds of vegetables like dead octopuses and squids - the raw material of meals with a yet undefined taste, the vegetative and terrestrial ingredients of dinner, exuding a wild & rustic smell.

Schulz has received some attention lately; There is an article about him in the recent fiction issue of The New Yorker. I have been reading "Sanatorium Under The Sign of The Hourglass" - another deeply strange & entrancing book. His murder, and the frenzy of WW II, alas, swallowed the manuscript his last novel - a book apparently called "The Messiah," which no one had ever read....


Poetry: In my recent workshop with Mark Doty, he arrived one day with a box full of books to give away. HUZZZZZAH! A feeding frenzy ensued (or, rather, my insane urge to gather free things kicked in). One of the books I went home with was "Shells" by Craig Arnold, who earlier this year went missing on a volcanic Japanese island. I had never read his work before, and as I read shells, I'm struck by the loss of such a poet. I'm only in the middle of the book, reading & re-reading his poem "Grace," for Jeff Buckley. It's deeply refreshing to read someone who (if pressured to label), I'd call a narrative poet - I go adrift sometimes in the sea of ...what? Poems I can't find a heart in - poems that are all machine & no blood. (Thank you, Mark.)

Music: for dancing - Lady Gaga; for driving - Regina Spektor's new album 'Far'; for walks at dusk - Flying Club Cup by Beirut; for Sundays - quiet Velvet Underground songs

To Eat: Yogurt with honey; cherries

recommendations for winter

(note: I won't write "real" reviews here - I seem to be opposed to writing critical analyses.....I'm saving those for my next adventure in academia. I'd rather write impressions & encouragements towards art that I love. There's enough strong critical opinions out there in blog-land to choke a wildebeest. moving right along...)

poetry:
I've recently finished Allison Titus' chapbook, instructions from the narwhal. Titus keeps a syntax precise & unexpected, keeps her hand steady on the strange lens. Reading these poems, one has the sensation of peering into a miniature railroad set & being hit with the realization that it is you & your life depicted in the desolate landscape, & with small mechanical movement lights will go on in the tiny house to reveal interior movements so obscure you didn't realize could be captured. & yes, so familiar.

A poem of mine will appear in the Open Thread Regional Review, Vol. 1, sometime in January. A celebratory release event is sure to happen - details to follow. For more information on Open Thread, and how you can become involved, please direct your attention here.

fiction:
Re-read Jose Saramago's All the Names. This was one of the first Saramago books I'd encountered, after Blindness. These days, I refuse to be without Saramago's influence for too many months at a time. Why is it that even his tangents seem urgent? Perhaps it is because Saramago's investment in the narrative never ceases, the tangent is a part of the stream of consciousness is part of the necessity. Because the story would not be the same without it, because the tangent is not a sideways gesture for Saramago, is part of the whole; while not linear, is not disconnected. I love Saramago because he is at once the most innovative & the most traditional of storytellers. Very much looking forward to reading his newest work Death With Interruptions.

some summer recommendations

Fiction: In a letter to his two eldest sons, Henry James Sr. wrote that "the natural inheritance of any one who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters." It is from this quote that Jose Donoso lifted the title for his stammering, labyrinthian novel The Obscene Bird of Night, which I am currently reading & recommend. A very disturbing read, but provocative & of worth if only as a study in unreliable/multiple narratives in a single voice.

Poetry: While reading Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular, I thought immediately of Michael Ondaantje's Coming Through Slaughter,which if you have never read, you should buy, immediately. Ondaatje & Komunyakaa both possess an innate sense of musicality, & although their subject matter may not always hold conversation, their rhythms will. Some readers inexperienced with Ondaatje, will find thwarted their expectations regarding "normal" forms of fiction. However, if these imaginary readers are poets, then perhaps they'll be as delighted as I. Komunyakaa, although I've read his work before, continues to surprise & teach me; this time around, I find him to be a much more surreal author than before, particularly in poems such as "Looking a Mad Dog Dead In the Eye."

Music: I have been obsessed with Johnny Cash records & with nearly obscure 1960's girl groups & personalities like Evie Sands

Film: The other night I saw Youth Without Youth, a film by Francis Ford Coppola based on a novella by Mircea Eliade the late University of Chicago professor, philosopher & historian. Eliade's theories have been useful & illuminating to me in the past, but I've never read one of his novels, much less seen a movie based on one of his novels. The film was gorgeous - just enough magic & heartache - &, in my opinion, a damn interesting story, even for a slightly heavy lean on metaphysics. But hey, you gotta give Coppola some credit: it's hard to film metaphysics.

Visual Art: Despite getting slammed by notable voices such as The New York Times, the 55th Carnegie International exhibition is really quite wonderful. Works by artists such as Cao Fei and Friedrich Kunath give the show an element of necessary whimsy... actually, the prevalence of whimsical gestures at the exhibition overall struck an almost political chord regarding things like routine, rules, regulations & procedures. A worthwhile show which will be up until November. I think I'll go again.

Movement: Swimming.
Food: Watermelon.
Sleeping: Not so much.