Best Movies

It's rare I see a movie any better than Hal Hartley's

Simple Men. It's hard to define, like anything that's

worthwhile, but the film doesn't pander to the collective

American movie viewership. For one thing the acting

is over the top, lines spoken as if read or badly memorized,

and the result is mildly surreal and very funny. But

if at times the acting feels wooden sometimes it also just

feels authentic, not bristling with movie mannerisms,

including amped-up sincerity. I enjoyed every character

in this film, including Jack, the "psycho" who does some

of the best silent acting I've seen in a while--and he just

sits there, making a pinched face. And there's also, all

of a sudden, a great dance scene with great music, and it

doesn't feel the least bit incongruous. Yeah, like an Indie

movie, this film is quirky but it all adds up to something more

than the sum of its parts--and its parts are pretty great.

By the end I was moved to tears, and I was spooked a little

when right at the last second of the film someone off-

screen tells Bill "Don't move."

THE ART OF SPEEDING


(an Ashbery Erasure poem)


Some sideward why, her green gate is enough,
prim.

Day mocks me,
but all forgotten
shade rots sympathy.

Don't free the last man.

A pint in part is my patterned
ex traveler,
wed in gray at the end.

He farts at the city's rage
and sins naked.

girls and evil, heaven over sand, child as wilderness

We who have gushed.
Now his love is a picture:

Sometimes we darken in pain.

In honor of the Juncos--the snowbirds--who've been moving.
This tiny William Stafford poem:


Juncos

They operate from elsewhere,
some hall in the mountains--
quick visit, gone.
Specialists on branch ends,
craft union. I like their
clean little coveralls.

Auto Focus is the oddest movie. I'm a Paul Schrader fan (he's
a Grand Rapidian btw) but he's uneven. So is Altman, but Altman
is uneven the way Woody Allen is. They both make so many
movies and they are so various half of them are bound to
not work, but so what. Here comes the next one down the pike.
Schrader does in fact stay busy, but some of what he does
you never hear about unless you're a fervant fan. I was last
blown away by Schrader's Affliction, a movie about male relationships
(father/son). Auto Focus is about male relationships, too, but isn't
intimate the way Affliction is. This movie is about the late Bob
Crane, once star of Hogan's Heroes, which I thought was a pretty
good sitcom. But it is also about sex, the 1960s and early 70s, and
how two men bond with (because of?) the introduction of new
technology (videotape). Greg Kinnear plays Crane, does a good job,
but I don't think he manages to capture the part of Crane that re-
minds me of David Caruso now. Both try to push Cool into some kind
of new prototype for cool, and both turn hammy doing so. Kinnear's
not smarmy enough to pull it off. So he seems through the entire film
just a curious boy who has discovered remote control model cars . . .
He's matched with Willem Dafoe, who exudes creepiness just stand-
ing there letting his heart pump blood, his pale face alert and full of
derelict longing (and yet he's sweet, an innocent--the movie is full of
this kind of unexplainable charm) It's the oddest chemistry, and there
is a strong homoerotic undercurrent to the film. The movie is about
sex addiction (so was CHOKE, that novel I recently plowed through),
but it's also about men being boys, how men in the 60s and 70s
worked and played, loved their friends more intesnely than they did
their wives, and, in the case of Auto Focus, went ape shit with the
introduction of the technology that really got DIY porn going. Big kids
with cameras filming themselves doing it and doing it. There is a lot
of nudity, women all over the place, and the occasional male ass
shot, but the love story here is between Dafoe (playing a character
named John Carpenter--not the director), and Kinnear's Crane. There
are echoes of Boogie Nights, but only distant ones--bad haircuts,
neon interior decorating. In B.N., Wahlberg's character is an empty
vessel who wants love so badly it's clear he'll never find it, through
onscreen fucking or anything else. But Crane just wants back into the
celebrity machine. (Crane's character feels simple, too simple).
He's humbled into trying to change his philandering ways because
he's broke and close to becoming unknown. It's about attention
and image more than it is about love. Dafoe's Carpenter is the
character we feel for--he needs Bob Crane--and to say more
gives away the film's ending, although most people know the
ending already to this strange biopic. In essence, Crane "breaks up"
with Dafoe. Crane goes through two divorces as well but there
is no emotion generated in the film for them. It is simply bad on
the face of things (bad for the Image). It's hard to watch Auto Focus.
No one knows who they are--everything's beginning to change--
or how to feel comfortable really. Interestingly, it's
not as if Schrader pushes us toward wishing Crane would just
settle down into family life. And that feels right. Like family
is all beside the point. Strange movie.

Like a room full of contusions. It'd be nice to

have a nice smooth time for months. Not to get

whiny but whatever suddenly looks promising--

some sudden cash, a promotion, I don't know,

let's call it good luck--is a mirage, at least over

here where the silo throws its shadow over the

unharvested corn in the fields of puddles. I'd shelved

the idea of freelance editing, but back

that comes, probably--although the deadline for ads

is passing me by. If gas prices

don't keep going up I'll spend part of the summer

in a bunch of different places, finishing some prose--

forget about the politics of work--count birds,

and end up with not a cent. California. Marquette.

The Mid Atlantic. Probably I'll be in Houston, where

I can can check out Twombly scrawls everyday if

I want to, across the street from the Rothko Chapel.

Yes, Texas gets hot, but someone I know has a pool.

By now the blue birds in Kentucky have made it up

this far, near Constantine anyway, where I found

a field to walk in near some factory. The city

of seat belt law stings. Nice to drive anyway,

find the groundhogs clicking away from a dead

tree that only goes twelve feet up. "I'm not

going to touch you you big lump," but he or she

keeps clicking. Soundtrack to 200 Cigarettes

was playing in the car. Not a great movie

but the songs make me nostalgic. For what?

Then Roger Miller's Elemental Guitar, which

just makes me sort of happy. Or maybe that's stopping

every fifteen minutes and feeling the wind,

noticing the buds on the trees, walking somewhere

I don't have permission, down some pastoral

(even in March) alley seeing stacks of junk

and the birds that attend these stacks. The geese

flying overhead, arrows of geese. The fog

has almost burned off. It's almost like you

can see what's far away, what might be coming

toward you. Almost like that.

The Remarkable Objectivity of Your Old Friends


by Liam Rector


We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.

We called other friends--the ones
Your mother hadn't called--and told them
What you had decided, and some said

What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we'd just have to live
With that, that your life had been one

Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,

Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we'd have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.

Poems by Stella Radulescu



wrong number


I called you: no answer

I said day:
night came up

my mother told me how to button my dress
look at it

it's all crooked
crooks on the street are like saints

winter in June birds are freezing
the willow tree bleeds

poets are fleeing the place



*


who created the world-

I promise you to make a small change

one word I will whisper

in your ear


even if the wind will take it away and you'll never
hear it :

this is how silence sounds in my yard

love

music

BOOKS AND . . .


It's hard to get back in the swing of things, the cycle
of poems, all the good work the students do. It so nice
just being deep in other books with regard for nothing
but how you might riff off of that music, that content.
And it's warming up so there's that thawed out smell
rising over us, moving over the houses at night. It
starts one a-dreamin'. In other news, Denver Quarterly
took two of my poems for an upcoming issue. A story
leaked out of my brain and onto some torn paper last
night, despite my being inundated with job hunting.
Before it got dark tonight I could see dark clouds
over Illinois. This time of year one licks one's
chops in anticipation for the lightning crack. It thundered
in Kentucky, land of the fair lady in the sun, on the grass;
land of the box turtle who counts each leaf he crinkles
with his foot; land of the towhee and the brown creeper.
Land of men not wearing shirts and smoking cigarettes
in the kitchens of restaurants (no thanks, I'll cook at home);
land of the many new bluebirds and the fifty houses
torched for tax money still standing. I was swamped by
a crowd of basketball fans on the way home, the beginning
of the final four exploding in Lexington as well as wherever
else. If I seem kind of goofy in class it's that my head's
full of clouds and mile markers, and the air in between
words on fresh new pages just brightly out of the Amazon
box. But the poems--student poems--are good. Nothing
boring in the dreams of poets at IUSB these days. A thank
you, by the way, from me and Vince and Talia Reed,
to John Gallaher for agreeing to do an interview (with Vince)
on the fly. It's great (everyone can read it in the Analecta
come April 21). What did everyone think about the reviews
in the NYTBR; the one Burt did, rather luke-warm, on
Rae Armantrout. What about Kirn on Vollmann (is being
eccentric still enough?!). What about the skinny on Lethem's
new slender rock and roll novel? Is it, indeed, parenthetical,
as the reviewer notes, quoting Beck on his music, merely a slip of
light blue paper in between more serious meditations for Mr.
Lethem?

CHOKE


Palahniuk's Choke is a book that starts off
strong, I guess, (I was into the nervous energy
of it), but fifty "dudes" later I was happy to be
done with it. It's too clever by half, and some
verisimilitude via texture would have helped.
By page 200 I was tired of Palahniuk giggling
and spitting into my ear. And, by the way, can
someone stick an apple in Stephen Colbert's
mouth? Is he going with that persona for
the long haul? I always turn off the TV
and go stand outside and look at the stars,
the way they are shredded across the sky.

FICTION MAINLINE



I like the fast comedy in A. M. Home's novels, finally,
the breakneck way all the characters think and speak
and it all just shouts from the page, back and forth,
up and down, funny as hell, everyone intermittently
alarmed by life--by who they are, the hair rasing truth of
themselves--and then these same characters become deflated.
There's a verisimilitude there I can't
find other places, except maybe in an amped up way
in Stephen Dixon's work. I'm reading In a Country of
Mothers. I've got Anne Cummins, Yellowcake on deck
and a book of stories by Stacy Richter and Chuck
Palahnuik's Choke, because students recommend
Palahnuik over and over. La Misma suggested Stacy
Levine's Dra-- a while ago and it's a startling book, very
good, and I wonder how Cummins will compare.
Be Mine is Laura Kasischke's last novel and it's
unbelievably bad--predictable, unintentionally funny.
I kept imagining all the male characters looking like the
adult male characters from South Park as I read. All the
poetry that was in Suspicious River has vanished, finally,
and you get a book of Chick Lit with graphic oral sex, etc.
and every cliche about the middle class you might see
in a 1970s made for TV movie. I don't know what happened?
Looking over some Chris Offutt, re-reading, because
I'm going to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky to
melt . . . Lexington and then south, Sunday until Thursday night.

I saw one of these in the parking garage on my way in to teach.
I got all choked up and nostalgic.

CAVE CANEM

I got this message. DDL.

David -- alert your students! Big Cave Canem
conference over at ND Wed-Fri, (readers below)
and at this point there's actually still room in
the workshops, too. (Local paper was so busy
doing Cave Canem's background they neglected
to mention the workshops were open to the
public.) The big reading's Thursday night. See
below:The official word: On March 7-9 the
Notre Dame Creative Writing Program will be
hosting Gathering Ground: Ten Years of
Cave Canem, a three-day poetic event
featuring readings and workshops with keynote
speaker Arnold Rampersad, Yusef Komunyakaa,
Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte, Ross Gay,
A. Van Jordan, John Keene, Opal Moore,
Lyrae Van Clief-Stafanon, and Ivy Wilson.
This event is free and open to the public.

The schedule is as follows:Wednesday, March 7. 8.00pm.
Keynote address: Arnold Rampersad, Stanford University.
McKenna Hall Auditorium, reception to follow.

Thursday, March 8.11.00am--12.15pm. Workshop for
undergraduate students, staff, community. McKenna Hall 200.

To register, send an e-mail with one or two workshop
poems (include your name, please!) to creativewriting@nd.edu.

2.00pm--3.15pm. Legacy panel: Cornelius Eady and
Toi Derricotte, co-founders of Cave Canem; Ivy Wilson, University
of Notre Dame.
McKenna Hall 100-104.

6.00pm--8.00pm. Reading with Cave Canem poets.
Toi Derricotte, Cornelius Eady, Ross Gay, A. Van Jordan,
John Keene, Yusef Komunyakaa, Opal Moore,
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. McKenna Hall 100-104Friday,
March 9.10.45am--12.00noon. Workshop for undergraduate
students, staff, community. McKenna Hall 200.
To register, send an e-mail with one or two workshop poems
(include your name, please!) to creativewriting@nd.edu.
Hope to see you in attendance! For more information on the
mini-conference, please see
www.nd.edu/~alcwp/gatheringground.html, or e-mail the
Program directly at creativewriting@nd.edu.

Google Really Sucks & Ashbery Doesn't

Some words about the process of the Erasures


The wonderfully improved Google Blogger
is a major pain in the ass. Screw you twerps.
For one thing I can't get my computer to
"remember me" so I have to sign in every
time I want to post on the damn thing. Oh
progress! Oh data collection scam! Meanwhile

I've gone nuts making Ashbery erasures. The
last seven are taken from individual pages of
Flow Chart. The language you see in these
"versions" is always presented consecutively.
If I need to go eight lines down through the
poem to use the word "time" I can't harvest
a word from those lines after doing so. The
order of the words mirrors Ashbery's order,
only I've expunged most of A's words, leaving
the few on the page that make up the new
"poem." Yes, I put them into new lines or
they'd hardly be readable. Sometimes a single
word will be composed of letters spread
through-out several long lines, as few as
one letter per line, but that is rare. For the curious
but partly lazy (I am), "In favor of life" is taken
from page 121 of Flow Chart. The titles
are always lifted from text at the beginning
of the poem (the text of the poem itself must
follow it). There's more to all this, but there's
the bones of it. I do make an effort to MEAN
differently. I mean, I have the power to choose
and reject lines and words, so . . . More later.

Lucky hits


(an Ashbery Erasure poem)



One doesn't excuse or batter
the pupils

I came straight after love and left
shame routed the street
I was a good peasant

so let me bang toward a cock
and it's one eye rolling

I don't know what makes
the maker sacred

paste that squeezes our seed

we were not meant to be some problem gone dead

Buy something

(an Ashbery Erasure poem)



And so never has
already happened.

You can turn off that pet now.

Girls I know were
Boy handed.

one side they sin

my idea of myself does exist
like this thin man

I told the kids the air was nice

cheese for everybody

the knife sat on the lock, a figure
to include

in our bones the big child hits

All at once

(an Ashbery Erasure poem)


eventually rot seeds the ground

rot is a question--

and shot people don't look back at you

I'll have the food--
eyelids for wood

you saw it shut in them

inside every house there's a spotted sun
warm as thunder

all the doors in a flood
it never occurs to the light of the sun
the people are able to sound simple
out the upstairs window

so the loud hen withdrew

no person was actually coming unclear

In favor of life

(an Ashbery Erasure poem)



nobody knew where to buy a minute
after God was forgotten

long shadows wider each time

names in the fabric like pain

so when will God be able to
disconnect us from all that is real?

you think of desire as a lit stone in hell

my life, what's the point?

it isn't nature

wind is a noise, a thing I'll punish tonight