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.

Academic parochialism watch, vol. XXVI: this Monday I had a long conversation with a student (one of my senior thesis writers) about the changing job market for receptionists: they’re still in demand, but it’s not clear where they belong, or what sort of enterprise fits them best. We were talking about these sorts of receptionists, people who study reception: not until after she left did I remember that, to almost all Americans who recognize the term, “receptionist” would mean something else.

As some of you know, these are my favorite receptionists. And speaking of My Favorite… did you know Michael Grace from My Favorite had a new blog? There’s a new band, too, called Secret History, but it looks like they have yet to release anything… I’m looking forward to the EP (same name as the blog) called Desolation Town.

And speaking of indiepop reception history– I discovered this summer that Mary Wyer, half the songwriting duo from Even As We Speak, had a newer (not truly new) indiepop act called Her Name In Lights. They sound superb (and a lot like EAWS, with the same sweet voice and the same caustic undertones) on the Internets, but my attempts to order their record have so far been balked… developing…

I had the idea that I’d spend the morning writing letters of recommendation, and instead spent the morning cleaning out hundreds, yes, hundreds, of old emails, making sure I knew what recommendations I owe and for whom and when they are due. It’s much, much better than not knowing. I’m starting to think that John Freeman’s forthcoming book (click here for his take on Jarrell, then scroll down for his own book) will have something to say to me.

And speaking of people with something to say to me: Boston-based poet and critic Dan Pritchard reviews my critical book about adolescence.

Election euphoria still hasn’t worn off around here, I think: said euphoria hasn’t even been derailed by the repeated, and scary, realization that the economy is in the tank– and that the economic collapse explains the size (if not the fact) of the good guys’ win. Time for a letter to Pollio, while the hope lasts.

I’m spending a lot of time here these days. Thank you, obsessive They Might Be Giants fans.

Quasi-regular posting here could well resume after the election; right now, whenever I look at a computer, I’m either preoccupied with things I actually have to do, or else twitchy and frightened. Yes, we’re ahead, we’re ahead, but stuff could happen! Some one-day samples are tighter than the previous day’s samples! Pennsylvania won’t actually go for Obama by double digits! Stuff could happen! Yikes!

More seriously I am worried about last-minute surprises, and about the robocalls which have been flooding key states; will robocall slime outweigh the vast advantage Obama has in enthusiasm and volunteers? I and many other Dems are having flashbacks to Kerry, who was “supposed to win” due to his slim lead in key states despite trailing by a couple of points in national polls: we remember that he almost did win (while losing the popular vote, as McCain surely will), but more than that we’re just having bad flashbacks.

I felt a lot better yesterday after, unable to do much else in any free moment but twitch and worry, I decided to make some phone calls for Obama. You can do it from home! (And you can do it pretty late at night, even if you live on the East Coast– you’ll be calling Montana or Nevada!)

Fortunately the only thing I must do professionally between now and the time that polls close on Tuesday is… write half a lecture about Robert Lowell. Which should be fun.

I’m in the current LRB on Frank Bidart, though you may need a subscriber log-in to read the piece on line.

Nathan is typing on the cardboard “computer” Jessie made for him. Cutest bedtime comment this week: “You know, kangaroos can be friends!”

Two poetry books I’m enjoying, by people I’d never heard of, books I might or might not write about in a couple of weeks, but books worth your time: Mark Irwin’s concisely lyrical Tall If,and Gary Copeland Lilley’s bluesy Alpha Zulu, which includes poems set on nuclear submarines.

Next Thursday (two days post-election) I’m reading in Ann Arbor. See you there?