Accommodatingly

Nathan really likes Sam Cooke right now. We’ve been listening to an album that includes “Another Saturday Night” (yes, the song later covered by Cat Stevens).

Nathan: “I know why Sam Cooke is sad.”

Me: “Why?”

Nathan: “Because he has no body.”

That’s a fine old theory of lyric right there…

In other discoveries: every so often I find in the library, receive in the mail, or acquire, through the exchange of legal tender, books I very much want to recommend, and yet likely won’t have the time, nor the venue, to review properly (either that or the books are just too old for review). One such book is the new lit-crit study by the British poet and scholar Angela Leighton, called On Form. It’s one of the only recent books about form-in-general, poetry-in-general, and the history of ideas about poetic form in general that made me want to run towards, not away from its author: Leighton suggests, sympathetically and plausibly, that “form” has the hidden double “nothing,” itself a double (as you might expect) for “death”: that the fluidity of life (the opposite of nothing, the opposite of death) makes the idea of a wholly fixed poetic form something of an oxymoron; that Walter Pater understood all this; that we can trace specifically Paterian ideas about form, flux and “nothing” from the mid-Victorians all the way up to contemporary British poetry, with a useful stopover in the auroral America of Wallace Stevens; and that, once we have done that sort of tracing, we can place reductive, hostile ideas about the history of “form” (the sort of ideas many grad students think they’ve discovered) in the dustbin where they belong. I am making a vivid sketch of Leighton’s implications, rather than writing a proper book review and saying what she proves, because I’m not a Victorianist, really, and this is a blog, not a peer-reviewed quarterly: but really what I’m saying is, if you’re at all a lit-crit academic, I hope you will read her book.

Something else I really liked but probably won’t review: Franck Andre Jamme’s New Exercises, a book of brief shaped poems– all in caps, in shapes like the letters engraved on tombstones, with no spaces between the words– that sound good even in translation from the French. I knew that some folks believe lyric poetry evolved out of inscriptions on ancient tombs, but I never had an intuitive understanding of the sources for their beliefs until I read what Jamme has done: it sounds good even in translation (by Charles Borkhuis) from the French. You can see a typical, if more-than-typically laconic, Jamme-Borkhuis work here.

Two more recommendations, both graphic novels, both discovered in Ann Arbor, thanks to the dual agency– they are an irresistibly convincing combination– of Rebecca Porte and Ray McDaniel: first, the bittersweet, achy streamlined-realist teen-sadness chronicle SKIM, which is a lot less sexy– and a lot sadder, and at least a bit more profound– than the few reviews I’ve seen implied; second, the latest collection of Astro City installments. If I had ever possessed the ability to make technically sophisticated, long-form comics, Astro City is what I hope I would have made.

Apropos of nothing, very sad news from the indiepop world, a world which I seem to have nearly exited by accident: Keith Girdler of Blueboy (and later of several other bands) died last year. Blueboy were one of my favorite bands ever– still are, and most of their vinyl is down there with the rest of our vinyl, mostly non-unpacked: shed a tear or three over, and then sing along with, their 1994 masterwork Unisex. Save your hopes for the lovelorn gay hooker in “Marble Arch,” if you like, but shake your fist with the rocker “Imipramine,” and then shake your fist some more at the trio of fast-foward, distortion-armored pop songs on their three-song single “Dirty Mags.” (Yes, you can find quite a lot of these songs on iTunes: so their former label’s website claims.) If anyone’s writing this sort of song, this well, these days, I would be most grateful if somebody would let me know.

Still sad about our dignified, and now departed, kitty. Nathan reacted (last week) not so much with his own sadness, as by asking, fascinatedly, whether and why Mommy and Daddy were sad. Right now he’s playing with his friend W and with one of his teachers from last year, H, who comes over here to hang out with him some summer mornings: if I were an ideally responsible teacher I would be assigning grades to summer school papers all morning. Since I am not such a teacher, here are some things we found on the Interwebs lately, things we thought our friends might want to see:

At Rain Taxi Online, Eric Lorberer, Roger Gilbert, and a lot of other people tour John Ashbery’s house. It’s a big deal, a beautiful layout, and rather a coup for Rain Taxi– go poke around.

At the PoFo site, there’s a newly-reprinted prose poem by the inimitable C. D. Wright, a good introduction to her casual intensities. (I say “inimitable” advisably, since so many young poets have started trying to imitate her– mostly a welcome development, about which I may have more to say in print.)

Douglas has just won an Eisner! This post-Eisner interview makes me wish we were in San Diego too– though it’s not so much a comics year for me. More of a sonnets year. Or a library year.

We live on the worst street in Belmont. By “street” I mean “paved, or semi-paved, road surface,” and by “worst” I mean that it’s pretty bad.

But we like Belmont anyway. Here’s a great photo of Nathan, Bubbe and Zayde at our local pool. (You may have to click on “Related Photos” to see the right pic after you click the link.)

Last week we saw Tilly and the Wall. The first true rock and roll show we saw this year, it was also one of the four or five best rock shows I’ve ever seen. And not just because there was tap dancing. We knew there would be tap dancing. We didn’t know there would be a wall-pounding encore of “Lost Girls.”

It’s Time to Grade Papers. Soon enough it will be time for new poetry books: among those I have not, or not yet, written about anywhere, I’m especially excited to re-open and re-scrutinize Craig Arnold’s vivid, fierce and sexy Made Flesh (it’s not much like, and it is better than, his well-crafted first book), and the brand-new, came-in-the-mail-yesterday third book from the prose poet Donna Stonecipher.

Rebecca introduces James K. Baxter!

Several new poetry-related blogs, among them XPoetics, from Robin Tremblay-McGaw and others: I’ll be coming back to it, esp. since I’m teaching Niedecker for the first time this fall, and advising a thesis on Stein: how would an account of 21st century poetry with those two as giants of the 20th century look? (It’s not quite the account I would want to give, but I think it’s the account that some poets I really like right now– e.g. E. Treadwell– want.)

Last night we had fun dinner guests, some of the people I miss most from Macalester, though they left Minnesota years before we did: Henry and John and Laura, who now live in Pittsburgh. In more good news, Laura, who studies 18th- and early 19th-c stage performers, now has an essay on muffs and their meanings forthcoming in Fashion Theory, a journal I hadn’t known, to which I will probably never contribute, but which I now hope that I am likely to read.

You know, I’m enjoying this summer, I am. But I wish each week were ten days long: seven just doesn’t seem like enough, right now.

First of all, and perhaps most consequential: we have some stuff we took with us from Minnesota, stuff we realize that we will not use again. Does any one of our readers want any of: two neat, slightly plush, retro pink chairs (soft ones for living rooms, not deskchairs for offices); one comfortable if unprepossessing wooden chair with black vinyl back and armrests (for living rooms, but could be used in a home office); a big but recent and snazzy home-theater system, with speakers; folding lounge chairs (for living rooms); small wooden folding tables, the right size for a plate and a bowl, or for a few books; dozens of narrow shelves, suitable for holding CDs if you are the brick-and-board-shelf type; a wicker bench? There’s almost enough here to construct an entire graduate student apartment. If you want to pick it up and we know you, get in touch. (A few days from now we will post the remainder of our unwanted furniture on Craigslist or someplace like that, and in more detail– but we wanted to give our loyal readers first crack.)

In other news, Nathan continues to coin words. Last week he told me that the water going down the bathtub drain was “snoring.” He may have meant “snorting,” which is almost as cool. (He said it was snorting earlier this week.)

Madison’s paper of record interview Jordan Ellenberg! Jordan responds to the article here, and refutes anonymous detractors here. And he’s right about Joss, of course.

Speaking of Joss: I am having real trouble waiting until this evening (when Jessie comes home from Beacon) to watch the second episode of Doctor Horrible, whose first episode was one of my favorite televisual entertainments this year– though indebted perhaps to Austin, since great supervillains minds think alike. Yay Joss! Yay Austin! (I had no idea that Austin was speaking at the San Diego Comicon.)

And speaking of comics: more comics content (graphic novel autobiography, not superheroes, of course) from Dylan Edwards at the Beacon Blog. That’s a graphic novel I’ll put down a lot of other books to read– once it comes out.

The month so far has consisted of playing with Nathan, teaching two summer school classes, and trying to write 50 essays about 50 sonnets for a book of 100 sonnets, commissioned and now in progress, with 50 more such essays by my stellar coauthor David, whose new book from Yale Press appears to be out now. If you have a very favorite, and relatively obscure, sonnet, send it our way now. What spare time we had in June I spent trawling Victorians, with truly expert advice: it turns out that Michael Field (pseudonym for an aunt-and-niece collaboration who lived openly as lovers in the 1890s) was sometimes very, very good at writing sonnets. He/she/they will go in. A. M. F. Robinson, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Augusta Webster, Amy Levy, and John Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley, wrote sonnets worth reading as well, though perhaps nothing that makes a Top 100 list: it’s truly melancholy-making to see how much late-Victorian poetry (and how much mid-20th-century poetry, too) just misses, how much of it seems talented, well-shaped, or thoughtful, but… not enough.

It’s exciting, on the other hand, after several months of Buying No Music, to see how much cool music there is about. Recommended so far, in a more-or-less rock vein: the still new-ish Dinosaur Jr, where J’s reunion with Lou bears songwriting fruit; the very pretty Maryland outfit Wye Oak; the latest Hold Steady; and the 2006 record from Franklin Bruno and the Human Hearts, which has been in heavy rotation around here now that we finally have one of our own (a copy of the record, we mean, not a human heart).

Dan Bouchard and Cathy Park Hong read their poems tomorrow in Cambridge, in Central Square. I’ll be there. Both are worth hearing. (Cathy Park Hong writes science fiction poetry. It’s not what you think.)

If you live in Minnesota don’t miss the Book Festival next Saturday. You never know who you might see. (Actually, you could just check the program.) I wish I could be there. Jessie will be there!

I, though, will be in Chicago next weekend, and in Long Beach/ Los Angeles the first weekend in November. Let me know if you want details.

Jessie keeps up with protests on behalf of Iraq and Burma.

I think about Sassy magazine in Rain Taxi’s online edition, and review Robert Hass’ new book tomorrow in a newspaper.

Also in Rain Taxi, Eric thinks about Jack Kirby.

Laura Kasischke’s new book, Lilies Without is amazing, though not a radical departure from her amazing last book, Gardening in the Dark. Ausable Press have been doing a great job as a poetry press lately, but they should perhaps put their fall list on their website.

Lyra is stubborn. And cute.

Nathan dropped a CD this morning and then said “Uh-oh what happened CD fall down Nathan!” Pretty soon we’ll be seeing multiply subordinated clauses from our little guy. Also in the language department: he has a set of rubber letters and numbers for his bath, and when he’s done with his bath he lets us know by saying goodbye, one by one, to all ten of the numbers (including zero), or to all the letters he can find. “Goodnight, eight! Goodnight, nine! Goodnight, J!” Every time he seems to have done the cutest thing imaginable, he does… something… cuter.

My current employer just won an award for the ways in which it assists families, and especially moms (the award comes from Working Mother magazine), in balancing professional and family commitments. Nice to know, though– like any employee of any employer anywhere– I regularly wish that my employer did more.

New work from the two of us elsewhere on the Interwebs:

At Babble, Jessie considers the Terrible Twos (and insults my dancing, but, you know, she’s right).

At the Poetry Foundation, I offer up a rap Pope. Not for eighteenth-century specialists, I think; more for people who have never heard of Mr. Pope but might like him a lot if they found a way in. Do let me know if you find errors. This means you.

I have spent part of the day overwhelmed by sadness, nearly to the point of emotional paralysis, over leaving a place where we have so many good friends, and so many reasons for sticking around the Twin Cities as long as we did. I bet the sadness dissipates soon after we get to Belmont, especially since I think we’ll be coming back every so often to see our friends here.

I spent a much happier part of the day reading Douglas’ book. It looks like one of the books I’ll be writing over the next few years is an introduction to twentieth-century poetry from around the English-speaking world, aimed at students and others who read poetry avidly but don’t know Marianne Moore from Nicholas Moore, or Edward Thomas from Dylan Thomas from R. S. Thomas.

Douglas’ book (so far) looks like a perfect example of how to write for such an audience (it’s also funny, where funny is appropriate).

So does Alex Ross’s book, though there I’m only about on page ten.

Do you live anywhere remotely near the Twin Cities? If so, do not under any circumstances miss Thursday’s comics-and-subcultures-and-graphic novels event, a public conversation involving Douglas Wolk and Austin Grossman.

Douglas is the author of Reading Comics, a forthcoming critical guide to the medium, which Douglas discussed in Salon. He also wrote a good book about James Brown and several thousand insightful reviews of records, comics, performances, equipment, Burning Man festivals, and some other stuff.

Austin is the author of Soon I Will Be Invincible, a novel about superheroes and supervillains that’s the most fun I’ve had in a while: it’s like a literary novel set in Astro City. (If you know Astro City, you know that’s high praise.) Austin also enjoys some reputation as a designer of video games, including what I’m told is the highly acclaimed System Shock.

The free event takes place at 7:30pm this Thursday June 28 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (click the link for directions). We’ll see you there!

Once you finish Douglas’ and Austin’s books you may be seeking summer reading: I recommend chasing your adorable toddler around the room until your eyes glaze over and you can’t read anything

Sara Ryan’s absolutely perfect second novel for young adults, set in Portland, Oregon…

Edward Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds, an informative book about online gaming aimed at non-online-gamers, now supplemented by his cool-looking Synthetic Worlds Initiative; and…

Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, a nearly-perfect work of Afro-Caribbean coming-of-age science fiction, which I’ll likely be teaching this December (note that this is not a general Nalo Hopkinson recommendation).

As for poetry… well, stay tuned.

Two more of my reviews now online: one (actually online for a while, but I didn’t realize it) about Louise Glück’s latest (and best in a while), at the Poetry Matters site; the other, at the Believer, about Katie Degentesh.

Also at Tower Poetry, and truly new there: Tim Kendall on David Wheatley, and a new poet perhaps as English as it is possible for a new poet to be.

Also at the Believer, a defense of Wichita Vortex Sutra,, the Arcade Fire commune with Boston by covering the Magnetic Fields, and an interview with comics genius Scott McCloud, who, alas, will almost certainly never put out another issue of Zot!

And at a legal-reporting site, a recently-retired career public servant explains how it felt to work for Gonzales’ Justice Department, and why it felt so much worse than working for John “Let the Eagle Soar” Ashcroft.

Just read at UCLA’s Hammer Museum. Medium crowd, very bright lights– I couldn’t see the audience at all!– lots of enthusiasm, and a surprising stack of books sold, afterwards. I could get used to this sort of thing. Especially if I could rocket back home to Jessie and Nathan immediately afterwards.

Instead, they’re putting me up in the too-cool-for-school Westwood W Hotel, where the colors are black and ecru, even the furniture is sans-serif, and the mantra is “whatever/ whenever,” meaning that if you pay them they will perform all sorts of guest services (personal shoppers and so on) which I can’t imagine I’ll ever need. The big white beds are fluffy, but the showerhead nearly exploded yesterday evening– I came within twenty minutes of reading in a very wet shirt, and was saved only by the restorative drying powers of SoCal sunlight. Strange powers.

Check out this neat blog devoted to striking photographs and to contemporary British and Irish poetry (not nec. in that order): its blogger unfortunately wishes to remain anonymous.

Last night I also got to hang out with Mac alum webcomics author, and game designer Annie and Web Guy Josiah. Today I get to see other friends who live here; look at the actual art in the Hammer Museum; and take a city bus to the Pacific Ocean. And tomorrow I go home.

Jessie and I just watched Purple Rain looking for Mpls insider references. Very few appeared. Not much acting, either. Jessie pointed out that it’s got the same structure and proportions as a porn flick, except that instead of sex, you get music. Good music, mostly. I still like the title track and “When Doves Cry” and “I Would Die 4 U”; “Darling Nikki,” though, seemed way too fifth-grade-ish when I heard it in fifth grade, and hasn’t improved. Should you watch it again if you get the chance? Maybe you should.

Why does Charlie Cook think Rhode Island’s Senate race is tied? For that matter, why does he think Maryland is tied, when the only pollster to show a tie is the one (SUSA) that has showed the race tied for months, when everyone else has the Dem ahead? Ah, the useless twitchiness. Still no big news.

The first 20 pages of Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex are wonderful; they crackle with oddity and verve. The next 50 repeat the first 20. I’ll give it to page 100.

Scott McCloud’s Making Comics, (now on page 80) makes me want to make some comics.

Yes, Nathan took a long nap today. Long enough that I could both nap and read. I won’t count on such a thing happening often.

3/4 of our stuff = excessive, but yeah, I’d like to get rid of some clutter too.

I haven’t done anything at the Huffington Post in forever, and so I’m going to experiment by cross-posting these updates both at accommodatingly and over there.

Taking a cue from Mrs. Coulter, some bullets of recentness, and a couple of links:

+ Nathan no longer seems fascinated by empty plastic tubes meant to hold bundled-together electrical cords. Instead, he likes pushing his new “car” across the room, which is a definite advance on pulling mommy or daddy across the same room.

+ He said “hi” this morning and seemed clearly to know what it meant (also that it goes together with a wave). Does that make “hi” his first word? Could be. But words for babies seem to coalesce gradually out of protolinguistic babble: how can anyone be certain what a baby’s first word (that is, the first phoneme in a native language to carry a referent) is? But Nathan’s may well be “hi.”

+ Silliman blogs Project Runway, supports Uli over Jeffrey, points out that reality television has scripts too. Silliman watches the same television shows we watch. (Most of the readers whose taste in contemporary poetry more nearly resembles my own seem not to watch television at all, or else they don’t admit it.)

+ Last night I hit a criticism-writing wall: it’s time to put together a fifteen-minute talk about William Empson, later to become (with luck) a full article, and though I know what I want to say, have all the quotations in a big file, and do believe my argument, I just. couldn’t. do. it. I’ve felt quite like this before but not for, oh, months. (With luck, Empson gets back on track tonight.)

+ Due to complications involving former co-workers and our being a one-car household, I missed Sarah and John’s reading. I bet it ruled.

+ The more of you read this interview with Sarah the less bad I’ll feel about having missed the reading.

+ Due to houseguest and school stuff, we also missed the Micawbers reading with Alex Lemon and Amanda Nadelberg. We would go see them read together in December if we had a time-space-continuum altering machine; an earlier version of this post misread this announcement of Amanda’s reading in Nebraska, conflating it with this announcement that Alex read there last year.

+ Ange’s blog is back.

+ The new volume of Finder isn’t as good as the others, but if you like the series as much as I do you will want it anyway– there are cute sequences, fun Jaeger-characterization moments (it’s almost all about him and his sex life), and an eye-opening set of endnotes having to do with author-artist-creator Carla Speed McNeill’s having had her second baby. Future issues of Finder will apparently exist only online (that is, no more single comic-book-format issues), though the trade paperbacks will still be trade paperbacks.

+ Want an intro to Finder? Here’s the first intro page.

+ I think I have finished a poem about Breaking Circus.

+ If Democrats don’t in fact take back the House of Representatives, people will blame Howard Dean, or give up on the party, or throw up their hands in despair, all of which would be really silly reactions: if we don’t in fact take back the House, the fault will lie either with Republicans’ decade-and-a-half’s worth of infrastructure-building state by state (the same process Dean has started belatedly for the good guys) or perhaps with the New Jersey Supreme Court.

+ If you don’t have election day plans, or you want to spend just an hour or two helping Dems, consider MoveOn’s Call for Change. You might not even have to leave your house! (Or: get in touch with your state democratic party. In Minnesota, that’s the DFL.)

+ An earlier version of this post claimed that Jessie wrote it. She did no such thing; all errors are my own.