The Purpose of Stories, 3

Let’s take this dis­cus­sion back to the book. I’ve thought a lot about porta­bil­ity lately, and even about own­er­ship of words. Maybe the only way the story I’m writ­ing will sur­vive its book­ness is for me to release it entirely. My ver­sion of the story is just one. Yours will be next.

I'm Featuring Tuesday

I’m help­ing to kick off a new Burque read­ing on Tues­day night, with Ben Bor­mann and another cat. 7:00 at The Danc­ing Cup, on the NW cor­ner of Cen­tral & Quincy. I might try a mix of Fresh­wa­ter and Well­wa­ter poems, or I might stick to one or the other. Help me say goodbye!

Dredge Poetics (Full Text)

Well, it’s been deliv­ered. The mighty Bren­dan Con­stan­tine also deliv­ered a deli­cious lit­tle lec­ture, and it was an honor to open this new com­mu­nity series with him. Here’s the full text. If you like or if you don’t, please say so!

Criminal Elistism

How many times has this hap­pened? You want to deepen your under­stand­ing of some­thing. You get a book. You start read­ing. The writ­ing is so dense, or need­lessly com­plex, you can’t get through it, much less enjoy it. This is crim­i­nal elit­ism. Shit’s gotta stop.

Redemption

Just now, read­ing Sex at Dawn in the Captain’s Chair in the liv­ing room, I had one of those Impor­tant Moments. A few years back a friend asked if and how my writ­ing redeems its dark premises. While I stared through the wall, he sug­gested “beauty.” That answer always sounded like a copout. The words can dress the sub­ject ten­derly, but the sub­ject remains dark, bit­ter, dis­turb­ing. Untrans­formed. But all this talk of humans fight­ing and caging our sex­u­al­ity by insti­tu­tion­al­ized “pair bonding”  –  on top of mak­ing me randy as a sono­fabitch  –  is reveal­ing some­thing. I’ve been wor­ried this whole time* that I’m paint­ing an unre­deemable pic­ture of North­east­ern Amer­i­cans. That we’re worse than history-​​​​deniers: we devalue and…

Flintstonization

I’ve been read­ing Sex at Dawn: The Pre­his­toric Ori­gins of Mod­ern Sex­u­al­ity. Along the path to claim­ing that humans are really bad at monogamy, authors Ryan and Jethá make a very impor­tant point about fram­ing and per­spec­tive: we can’t pro­duc­tively cast old worlds in the mold of the present. It’s like tem­po­ral hege­mony. In the same way we can’t pro­duc­tively look to other cul­tures exclu­sively through the moral frame of our own, we can’t the­o­rize about ear­lier ones with cur­rent behav­ior pat­terns as a guide. If we want to under­stand them (and thus our­selves), we can’t treat them as mediocre reflec­tions. Fel­low his­tory blog­ger Jim Belshaw calls it Pre­sen­tism; Ryan and Jethá refer to it at…

To Plan the Plan

Let’s recap a moment. Fresh­wa­ter Dredge was about a year of work. Well­wa­ter Dredge, about three. So far, Trib­u­tary Dredge  –  at 20 poems, 1⁄2 Fresh­wa­ter’s length; 1⁄3 Well­wa­ter’s  –  has taken six months, and is only begin­ning to reveal its fun­da­men­tal secrets. Each takes an eter­nity because I’m approach­ing it as an explorer. That, and I don’t have the lux­ury of writ­ing full-​​​​time. From the begin­ning, the plan has been to seri­al­ize the release of this book. I wanted it to pro­ceed as a saga, a back­ward nar­ra­tive, an epic in digestible bits. And I didn’t want to lose your atten­tion along the way. This open­ing look at 17^th cen­tury his­tory has me recon­sid­er­ing. So much of what’s coming…

In Which I Reject Your Stories, pt. 2

Part 1. I think our cul­tural rela­tion­ship with our dreams rep­re­sents our rela­tion­ship with spir­i­tu­al­ity. Let’s talk about some depic­tions of the uncon­scious in recent cul­tural mem­ory: Other Mother (Cora­line), Drop Dead Fred, Mau­rice (Lit­tle Mon­sters) and Betel­geuse. Of course, through them all, I’m think­ing of Mor­pheus, Hansel, Gre­tel, and the Witch. Since I’ve already cov­ered the Other House, let’s start with Drop Dead Fred. He’s the invis­i­ble best friend incar­nate. After a bad end to an unhealthy rela­tion­ship, Fred reap­pears to rein­voke Lizzie’s child­hood. Ulti­mately he grants her entry to her uncon­scious, where she can face the spec­tre of her mother  –  and “grow up.” Presto. When she wakes up, Fred’s gone, no longer needed. She does…

In Which I Reject Your Stories, pt. 1

I saw Incep­tion the other day. Hon­estly, dis­ap­point­ing. Read on for spoil­ers. Granted, I’ve been read­ing a fuck­ing trea­tise on the uncon­scious, but sev­eral things bugged me, of their own right: It’s a heist flick mas­querad­ing as sur­re­al­ist phi­los­o­phy. There was lit­tle human­ity or insight. Dom Cobb and his mot­ley, intre­pid crew of dream-​​​​invaders assem­ble to break into someone’s head. They have to get in, plant their sub­ver­sion (the “Incep­tion”), and get out, unno­ticed. They’ll all get paid might­ily, and every­one has their own moti­va­tions for the money. The film’s mech­a­nism was Dream for Profit, rather than Dream for Truth. Christo­pher Nolan does get around to the big, honkin’ ques­tions of authen­tic­ity, orig­i­nal­ity, and our respon­si­bil­i­ties to…

Off the Hook

One of the bet­ter bios I’ve read in a long time, in the back of Sand­man 6: [next to his pic­ture] This is Mark Buck­ing­ham, so you don’t have to be. Clever and, in a bizarre, almost round­about way, hum­ble. Appro­pri­ately, I’m think­ing today about an anony­mous man­u­script I got a few years back, that never panned. “This is this book you couldn’t write, so you don’t have to.”