Lost At Sea. Perplexed Monkey-Face. Unwittingly Unearthed.
Finally starting the new compilation of James Richardson's work, Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms. It's absolutely fantastic thus far. My only gripe being that I'm completely fucking lost at sea with this book. Its greatest shortcoming is that I, Eric Chao, am reading it. I am incredibly unfamiliar with the specifics of reading a collection of poetry. Do I start at the beginning and go straight through? Do I jump from one to the next? If I don't like a poem straight away after the first read, is it apropos to say adios motherfucker and turn the page?
Prose is so much more comfortable. The best I can conjure up is that prose is like a guided tour. Sometimes you get the quirky, sexy guide and sometimes you get the balding, fat guide. But at the end of the day, both of them are showing you exactly where they want you to go. It's simply a matter of how willing you are to follow the literary equivalents to a curvy pair of swaying hips or, as is often the case, a disgusting coagulation of bulging corpulence.
Poetry, however, is like yours truly at the fucking San Diego Zoo. OMGWTF DO I GO NEXT LOOK AT THAT ANIMAL BUT THE SIGN SAYS TURN LEFT TO SEE ZEBRAS I CAME HERE FOR PANDAS AVIARY FULL OF BIRDIES BUT THEN OMGWTF. My knack for metaphor is, like my company, always edgy and insightful. (Please be laughing with me, please be laughing with me, please be laughing with me...)
This is not to say that I am not enjoying the book. Far from it. Despite my perplexed monkey-face (which I am positive is constantly plastered on the front of my head as I'm reading), I am happily digging away. A few gems unwittingly unearthed:
HOW THINGS ARE: A SUITE FOR LUCRETIANS
18
Why touch me, anyway, if nearness is just a metaphor
that leaves us in the cold? But to feel what planets feel,
holding each other to their swift ellipses,
their swinging out a form of their falling in: speak
around me, then, let me misunderstand
deeply, fail to compare yourself to me,
smiling subbornly. Rise so steeply
I can clamber up, scatter my equipment,
sleep, and wake to mountains of the dawn.
This from a cycle that opens with the quote, "The new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside; it has no inside," Emerson. One cannot help but love this guy's dedication to a metaphor. Fuck that pedantic third-person bullshit. YOU cannot help but love this guy's dedication to a metaphor.
FOUND
At my feet, this poem:
A Shaman, asked
Do these stones live?
glanced: Some of them.
That one was from a section entitiled "Half Measures." Dude doesn't like to waste words, it seems. (I know you're all begging to say it, so I'll go ahead and save you the trouble: I guess that means that I waste enough words for the both of us, then. Hah hah hah, jackasses.)
If you're like me, when you saw that whole "aphorisms" thing, you thought immediately of Ben Franklin and chuckled. Then thought Richardson was some arrogant prick. And if not, please stop ruining my fucking hypothetical fantasyland and just pretend you did. His aphorisms are actually rather interesting. Not all of them are exactly as melancholy as the following but shut your fucking face, you know I like melancholy:
150. A car or stone becomes the exact temperature of the winter, but a man gets colder and colder.
James Richardson. What a guy. Some of the quotes on the back cover of the book are pretty funny, too. But I won't waste anymore of the internet boring you people with it. Go find a copy of Interglacial! Unless you're too stupid to read. I'm looking at you, Kathleen Bola Kim.
P.S. This just in: drinking unsweetened iced coffee from Starbucks makes your pee-pee smell vaguely like coffee. That gets a "Wow" with an awkward silence followed by an "Ew." (Related Logical Leap: It can be deduced, therefore, that Kristina must urinate pure Colombian Dark Roast.) Couple that with the frequency with which one must make tinkle, and we have yet more reason to be slightly unsettled by coffee.
P.S.P.D. (Post Script Part Deux; teehee.) Oh, and check out these songs. The first band (Raising The Fawn) is a side-project of one of Broken Social Scene's guys. The name escapes me, but I'm sure that they will ride the BSS (voluminous) coattails into glory nonetheless. I seem to remember it sounding pretty good though, regardless of my snide douchebaggery. The second band, though, is out of left field, man. Check that shit out. They only have a four-track EP to their name at the moment, but I am excited for any full-length releases. The little synth bubble after the singer says something about "little red lights" makes me smile every time. Oh, did I mention that both these bands are playing in Chicago and asked the (fabulous) Palaxy Tracks to open for them? Fucking gigantic brownie points for picking my favorite band that no one has ever heard of.
Addendum: Apologies; long post. Hope you found something rewarding in there. The implication being that you should have, as there is so much cool shit locked away therein. Philistine.
Prose is so much more comfortable. The best I can conjure up is that prose is like a guided tour. Sometimes you get the quirky, sexy guide and sometimes you get the balding, fat guide. But at the end of the day, both of them are showing you exactly where they want you to go. It's simply a matter of how willing you are to follow the literary equivalents to a curvy pair of swaying hips or, as is often the case, a disgusting coagulation of bulging corpulence.
Poetry, however, is like yours truly at the fucking San Diego Zoo. OMGWTF DO I GO NEXT LOOK AT THAT ANIMAL BUT THE SIGN SAYS TURN LEFT TO SEE ZEBRAS I CAME HERE FOR PANDAS AVIARY FULL OF BIRDIES BUT THEN OMGWTF. My knack for metaphor is, like my company, always edgy and insightful. (Please be laughing with me, please be laughing with me, please be laughing with me...)
This is not to say that I am not enjoying the book. Far from it. Despite my perplexed monkey-face (which I am positive is constantly plastered on the front of my head as I'm reading), I am happily digging away. A few gems unwittingly unearthed:
HOW THINGS ARE: A SUITE FOR LUCRETIANS
18
Why touch me, anyway, if nearness is just a metaphor
that leaves us in the cold? But to feel what planets feel,
holding each other to their swift ellipses,
their swinging out a form of their falling in: speak
around me, then, let me misunderstand
deeply, fail to compare yourself to me,
smiling subbornly. Rise so steeply
I can clamber up, scatter my equipment,
sleep, and wake to mountains of the dawn.
This from a cycle that opens with the quote, "The new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside; it has no inside," Emerson. One cannot help but love this guy's dedication to a metaphor. Fuck that pedantic third-person bullshit. YOU cannot help but love this guy's dedication to a metaphor.
FOUND
At my feet, this poem:
A Shaman, asked
Do these stones live?
glanced: Some of them.
That one was from a section entitiled "Half Measures." Dude doesn't like to waste words, it seems. (I know you're all begging to say it, so I'll go ahead and save you the trouble: I guess that means that I waste enough words for the both of us, then. Hah hah hah, jackasses.)
If you're like me, when you saw that whole "aphorisms" thing, you thought immediately of Ben Franklin and chuckled. Then thought Richardson was some arrogant prick. And if not, please stop ruining my fucking hypothetical fantasyland and just pretend you did. His aphorisms are actually rather interesting. Not all of them are exactly as melancholy as the following but shut your fucking face, you know I like melancholy:
150. A car or stone becomes the exact temperature of the winter, but a man gets colder and colder.
James Richardson. What a guy. Some of the quotes on the back cover of the book are pretty funny, too. But I won't waste anymore of the internet boring you people with it. Go find a copy of Interglacial! Unless you're too stupid to read. I'm looking at you, Kathleen Bola Kim.
P.S. This just in: drinking unsweetened iced coffee from Starbucks makes your pee-pee smell vaguely like coffee. That gets a "Wow" with an awkward silence followed by an "Ew." (Related Logical Leap: It can be deduced, therefore, that Kristina must urinate pure Colombian Dark Roast.) Couple that with the frequency with which one must make tinkle, and we have yet more reason to be slightly unsettled by coffee.
P.S.P.D. (Post Script Part Deux; teehee.) Oh, and check out these songs. The first band (Raising The Fawn) is a side-project of one of Broken Social Scene's guys. The name escapes me, but I'm sure that they will ride the BSS (voluminous) coattails into glory nonetheless. I seem to remember it sounding pretty good though, regardless of my snide douchebaggery. The second band, though, is out of left field, man. Check that shit out. They only have a four-track EP to their name at the moment, but I am excited for any full-length releases. The little synth bubble after the singer says something about "little red lights" makes me smile every time. Oh, did I mention that both these bands are playing in Chicago and asked the (fabulous) Palaxy Tracks to open for them? Fucking gigantic brownie points for picking my favorite band that no one has ever heard of.
Addendum: Apologies; long post. Hope you found something rewarding in there. The implication being that you should have, as there is so much cool shit locked away therein. Philistine.
posted by Unknown at 10:24 PM
4 Comments:
hey, cool blog... come and see mine!
deathbymuffins.blogspot.com
Thanks,
YFL
usually, i close my eyes, and open random page for a poem.
it probably defeats the poet's meticulous, painstaking ordering of his precious precious work,
but i say, "eh, spontaneity."
because the works compiled convey some large grand sense of the poet, but still, those little things called poems are still their own islands.
i like your latin. although "deux" perplexes me because i don't think romans used the letter "x."
wait a minute. pee isn't supposed to smell like coffee?
D: Deux. French. You Geekatron.
M: Yet more reason we should get married. Candy mouth and coffee pee.
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