Postcards from the Imagination

I'm still trying to adjust to the work-sleep-work cycle of 8 to 5. Dear Grad School Admissions People, have mercy on my poor soul. Admit me, please. Please. Please. Please. Please.

Being too stunned to think straight, I offer you this clip from an essay called "Against Joie de Vivre," by Phillip Lopate:

The argument of both the hedonist and the guru is that if we were but to open ourselves to the richness of the moment, to concentrate on the feast before us, we would be filled with bliss. I have lived in the present from time to time, and I can tell you that it is much overrated. Occasionally, as a holiday from stroking one's memories or brooding about future worries, I grant you, it can be a nice change of pace. But to "be here now," hour after hour, would never work. I don't even approve of stories written in the present tense. As for poets who never use a past participle, they deserve the eternity they are striving for.

Besides, the present has a way of intruding whether you like it or not. Why should I go out of my way to meet it? Let it splash on me from time to time, like a car going through a puddle, and I, on the sidewalk of my solitude, will salute it grimly like any other modern inconvenience.

Lopate's prose strikes me as incredibly Larkinesque. On the whole, I could neither agree nor disagree with the essay's premise and observations, and I enjoyed it because of that. It was an oddly refreshing experience.

I'm slowly working on my own essay for the 'Personal and Reflective Writing' class I'm taking this semester. It has something to do with Home as an idea, though I don't know exactly what yet. I was thinking about the tension between sentimental constructions of the idea and my own experience. I was thinking about how angry I felt last week when construction workers cut down several trees I've grown used to seeing on the riverbank. I was thinking about the gulf, for those of us who live in borrowed spaces, between what we own and what we grow accustomed to living with. I was thinking about the tragedies of ownership.

Is the weekend really gone already?

Posted by Ginger at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Housing Works Bookstore is selling tickets for what looks like an incredibly interesting event in NYC on Thurs. January 25th:

Housing Works proudly presents acclaimed poet Anne Carson’s “Possesive Used As Drink (Me): a lecture on pronouns in the form of fifteen sonnets” This very special performance features Anne Carson reading her poetry, accompanied by choreography and dance by Julie Cunningham, Rashaun Mitchell and Andrea Weber, members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Tickets are $10.

Anne Carson's genre-stretching work fascinates me lately, as does the idea of collaboration between poetry and the other arts. I'd love to see this performance--or at the very least a review of it.

Posted by Ginger at 05:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Now that two people have asked for my take on the Zinc reading, I suppose I ought to post something. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what to say. This isn't something I do regularly enough to draw fine distinctions, and feedback can be really hard to come by at poetry readings. I asked the audience to hiss, throw tomatos, or clap between poems, but people aren't accustomed to that sort of thing. Next time, I'm going to hand out noisemakers and demand people treat the reading like a session of British parliament.

Terrifying hush aside, I had a great time. The space was as good a one as I've ever seen for reading. Ottessa was a fantastic storyteller. And Jim Behrle was a wonderful host. I was accidently groped when a women who turned to pay me a compliment went for my shoulder, and got a handful of boob instead. Really, what more could one ask for? And yet...

When Jim was finished passing the hat, I ended up with enough to head over to Strand and add a few more titles to our poetry library. I picked up Jorie Graham's Materialism and Joshua Clover's Madonna Anno Domini in hardcover; and in softcover Matthea Harvey's Sad Little Breathing Machine and Diane Wakoski's Smuding.

Speaking of books, Shanna Compton's Down Spooky arrived in yesterday's mail. I'm only a few pages in, but I admire, sympathize with, applaud Shanna's VERVE! More on that once I've read the rest.

Posted by Ginger at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'll be reading at Zinc Bar, Sunday evening at 7pm, with Ottessa Moshfegh.

If you're free that night, I'd love to meet you - whoever you are! I blog for the people factor, so if you're here it would cool to see you there.

Speaking of people, Scop just left a few hours ago. He was in NH for a day, stayed with us overnight. I barely saw him, which is a shame, because it's been ages since we talked too.

Posted by Ginger at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I start a new job this moring--a temp gig doing administrative support for a super-mega-huge multinational conglomerate. Sounds right up my alley, no? Of course, this raises the stakes on my grad school applications. I went back to the temp agency rather than look for more agreeable work, because I didn't want to screw anyone over by accepting a permanent position and quitting in August.

Yesterday afternoon was all about the trauma of buying a wardrobe. I hate shopping for clothes, so I went into Macy's and decided I wasn't coming out until I had everything I needed for the next seven months. I was almost successful, though I did manage to lose my wallet at one point. I left it sitting on a table atop a pile of sweaters near a busy walkway. That it sat there for more than twenty minutes and no one took it is a miracle.

The clock says it's time to go. If it's icy where you are today, be safe.

Posted by Ginger at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Damn if I don't feel pegged for a Femi-Nazi and taken apart in a public forum. To wit,

"Elsewhere, Reginald, you are being called a "sexist" [I never called anyone a sexist.] because you explicitly indicate that you don't intend to talk about what you had for breakfast or what music you listen to, which some have taken as an indictment of female bloggers. [I talked about a particular style of blogging (i.e. that which touches on the personal and/or emotional), and explicitly acknowledged that "many bloggers do not fall neatly into one or the other category based on what's going on between their legs."] Remarkable, as that characterization of female bloggers--wholly inaccurate as it is--says more about anyone who subscribes to it than otherwise. While I hate the employment of anecdotal evidence in situations like these, right now that's what's being deployed against you, Reginald, [I did not deploy anecdotal evidence to support calling someone a sexist.] so I'll help you [?] by mentioning just a few of the many female bloggers whose blogs I don't understand a damn bit of because they're way, way over my head and have nothing to do with breakfast, CDs, crying children, or relationship problems: [Again, I never suggested that all female bloggers concern themselves with 'breakfast, CDs, crying children, or relationship problems.' Not even close.]...

Meanwhile, I needn't list all the perfectly good blogs run by men which are often concerned with esoteric and/or domestic matters such as pictures of "food I like," discussions of music and television, descriptions of recent personal experiences, and so on (hey critics: I like these blogs, too, despite "being a man"!) [Nor, obviously, did I suggest that men don't post about food, music, television, or personal experiences.]...

Meanwhile, despite "being a man" (there's that quasi-sexist categorization again), [I never used the phrase "being a man" and never asserted anything about what that might mean.] I've been soft-banned from plenty of blogrolls (male and female alike) because I either didn't do what these self-same anti-sexism critics believe "a male poet should do" (continually pen "hard" intellectual analysis related to poetry) [I never made any assertions, explicit or implied, about what 'a male poet should do.'] or did too much of what it's now being claimed (by these critics) "men like" (i.e., I wrote controversial things on my blog). [I never said the competitive manner in which boys and men are traditionally socialized was synonymous with what 'men like.']

I don't think that was a fair reading of what I wrote. Nor was it an intellectual response to the hypotheses I'd floated. Nor, for that matter, do I think I'm overreacting just because someone disagreed with my opinions. Did I miss the part that read, "I think ______________, and not sexism, is behind these attempts to disparage those who blog about their personal lives"?

I have more to say, but I'll be late for class if I don't leave right now.

Posted by Ginger at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Coffee, as usual.

Posted in Reb's comment box:

I come back to the idea -- discussed in blogland several months ago, I believe -- that sexism plays a role in the scorn heaped on us for our particular style of blogging. If it were simply uninteresting we'd be ignored. But when people get angry, I suspect it's because they're uncomfortable -- uncomfortable that the personal and emotional are making inroads into the public discourse.

Fuck those people.

If my own blog isn't more intellectual, it's partly because I wonder whether it's the right medium for it. Say something controversial, and suddenly there's an enormous conversation. Say something merely insightful, and there's a good chance no one will respond. One could easily argue that the pseudo-intellectual blogs do little more than allow men to bond in the way they find most comfortable: through competition.

And if women's controlling 50% of the discourse didn't represent a real loss of power for men, I doubt there'd would be so much pressure to conform to the male-centered model.

Lest I seem to be painting with too broad a brush, I realize (and admire the fact that) many bloggers do not fall neatly into one or the other category based on what's going on between their legs. Like Virginia Woolfe, I admire the androgynous mind.

Nonetheless, I do think certain gender-based cultural trends drive this desire to form hierarchies out of the radical egalitarianism of the blogosphere.

Posted by Ginger at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

To Peter Jay Shippy, whose poem "The Tragic Conversion of Keith Richards" (The New Hampshire Review No. 1) was selected by Paul Guest for inclusion in Sundress Publications' 2006 Best of the Net Anthology.

Posted by Ginger at 08:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love Jordan's idea for a 'Best American' mailing list. If you'd like sign up for Ginger's Best of 2007, send an email to bestof2007[@]virginiaheatter.net, and I'll add you to the list. In the body of your message, tell me which poetry collection was your favorite of 2006.

Posted by Ginger at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Seth's on Poetry Daily today!

Posted by Ginger at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Book meme via Pamela:

Find the nearest book.
Turn to page 123.
Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
Name the book and the author. 

"And the gardner would assent, with 'Ay, they're the cunning ones,' for he would not allow that war was anything but a kind of trick which the State attempted to play on the people, or that there was a man in the world who would not run away from it if he had the chance to do so.

But Francoise would hasten back to my aunt, and I would return to my book, and the servants would take their places again outside the gate to watch the dust settle on the pavement and the excitement caused by the passage of soldiers subside. Long after calm had been restored, an abnormal tide of humanity would continue to darken the streets of Combray."

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1, Swann's Way.

* * * * * * * * 

La fille sur le pont (1999) 

Another amazing French film. The cinematography, the music, the acting--all gorgeous. If you think knife-throwing is just illusionist kitsch, think again. While the premise of this film and its plot are entirely implausible, the whole is so seductive it makes the willing suspension of disbelief easy. 

More than that, it left me feeling as though realism in art is probably unnecessary, and perhaps even undesirable. Following on my previous post regarding the authentic sublime, I'm convinced that realism and authenticity have nothing to do with one another. Rather, the two may be opposed in many cases. (See, for example, much of the poetry in The New Yorker.)

I came home from class and immediately scoured the Internet for a soundtrack. Unfortunately, it was never released as such, though one of the most stirring tracks--Marianne Faithfull's "Who Will Take My Dreams Away?"--appears on a limited-edition CD released in France called Le cinema de Patrice Leconte. Since ITunes didn't have it, and I couldn't live without it, I resorted to peer-to-peer.

Maybe those of you who know more about the subject can tell me: Are there English speakers out there making films this good? I'm deeply skeptical about my own francophilia, yet I can't recall seeing anything that comes close to what the French have done/are doing.

Posted by Ginger at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 

Turns out I need two more electives to finish my degree. I'm knocking off one of them over the winter break with a course called Women in French Cinema. Last night we watched Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7.  I need to stop saying I dislike film. I dislike "the movies," but this movie was wonderful. I'd say more but I have to leave soon for tonight's screening of Jean-Luc Godard's Une femme est une femme. Hard to believe I'm earning credits for this.

Posted by Ginger at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This phrase just popped into my head with regard to Josh Beckman's work. It has something to do with the New Sincerity, and yet it's more than that. It's about trusting the speaker's experience--trusting that it was not, and could never have been, given the nature of the perceiving voice, mundane. The authentic sublime. Hmm(?)...

Posted by Ginger at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy New Year, Everyone! I have only one resolution for 2007, but it's a big one: Personal Growth. The difficult, but eminently worthwhile kind. The kind from which any number of other positives might flow. Here's to cautious optimism, and hoping this year will be the best year yet.

Posted by Ginger at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)