It ain’t a poetry slam, but it should be a lot of fun. I’m pretty stoked to participate. If you love me, you’ll send out good vibes and deep breaths my way. If you’re in the area, I’d love to see your friendly faces in the crowd.
Here are your deets:
Where: Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (map)
When: Doors at 7:00, show at 8:05 (sharp)
Cost: $5 preorder; $10 at the door; $5 with a valid student ID
http://www.literarydeathmatch.com/upcoming-events/march-18-2010.html#
I’m reading a new-ish story and I made a playlist to keep me motivated and on theme. Tracks include Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime, Jem’s They, Nas and Hova’s Black Republican, Butterfly Boucher’s Bitter Song, Bitter:Sweet’s Dirty Laundry, and Gomez’s How We Operate. Yeah, maybe I’m sharing way too much but whatevs, playlists help me write fiction.
I’m almost forgot my favorite one:
Happy Hunting.
I was a senior in college when Biggie died. It was a Sunday. We spent the rest of the night in Steve and El B’s suite in East Campus like we did six months before, the night Pac was murdered. We listened to Big for hours. We talked about hip hop. We talked about guns. We talked about Suge. We talked about innocence. We talked and talked and talked. We were seniors. We were jobless. We were facing a recession. We were first and second generation college kids. We traded lyrics. We talked about the future without Big and Pac. We said hip hop died. We said hip hop died again. We asked could hip hop have seven more lives. We talked about what kind people we were becoming. We talked about 80s. We talked about the Stop the Violence campaign. We tried to remember the lyrics to We’re All in the Same Gang. We played Self Destruction. We grew quiet. We mourned.
What we didn’t expect to happen during the same week was a call from the dean to tell us that campus security found the body of our friend Caryn. It was a Thursday. She took a bottle of sleeping pills. She left a note. She had been there for days. They said there was a smell. They never told us what the coroner determined was the time of death.
They found her Thursday. Biggie died Sunday.
We mourned. We wondered when was the last time we saw her alive. We retraced every last moment we had with her. We tried to isolate signs. We searched for signals she sent us to tell us something was wrong. We wondered why she didn’t tell us that she was in pain. We wondered if we there was something we could have done to save her. We grew quiet. We wondered when will it stop. We were seniors in college. We were in a recession. We planned a memorial. We packed up her room. We said hip hop had died again. We said our innocence was over. We wondered what kind of people we were becoming.
Click to view linkDownload full size (45 KB)Dear poets and prosy persons alike. I’m truly happy to announce the arrival of Union Station Magazine. The brand new lit mag from the folks who brought you the louderARTS Project. We’re giddy about the great work in this soft debut issue. Serious thanks are due in particular to our goddess of webtasticity, Emily Kagan Trenchard and to our lead editor, Syreeta McFadden. They’ve both burnt some brain cells on this one and it shows.
The writers and visual artist that we worked with were amazingly generous in ceding to our geek love for their work and we hope that you’ll enjoy them as much as we do. Union Station is a quarterly lit mag we plan to spend the next couple of months honing the next issue which will push the boundaries just a little of what you might imagine a lit mag can do so stay tuned for our interstitial updates and our digital delivery news.
poem/love
Lynne
Union Station Magazine
www.unionstationmag.com
Secret project… now unveiled! And it wouldn’t have been possible without the genius support and OCD mellower, Ms. Emily Kagan Trenchard and our indomitable co-editor, Lynne Procope.
We pretty stoked about this new endeavor. We hope you visit us at Union Station often. As we grow, we hope to do some pretty dynamic things, shift some boundaries and introduce you to some fresh voices in poetry, fiction, essay, interview and visual art.
I write to music. In fact, I can’t write without it. It helps me immerse myself in a scene or setting. To pretend that there isn’t a soundtrack to our lives is just disingenuous. And while I’m editing and organizing the launch of a new project, my iTunes playlist lands on an oldie but goodie from the boomer generation.
Procol Harum’s greatest known work is pretty literary as far as a rock song goes. Some speculation (confirmed?) of sampling; the organ in the song’s opening bares an astonishing similarity to Johannes Sebastian Bach’s Air on the G String. Others trying to discern meaning from its rather obtuse lyrics — ‘the miller’s tale’ (a wink to Chaucer’s Canterberry Tales), ‘playing cards’ (a tarot deck), ‘16 vestal virgins’ (a reference to the feminine divine, priestess to Vesta, Goddess of the Hearth)— and in their search, yield not a single satisfying explanation for me. Such a song that inspires curiosity around its creation and as a result develops its own mythology and makes this song– timeless. The nod to Bach, the progenitor of the diabolus en musica, which is also known as the diminished fifth — the tritone– and minor note is the heart of the song. It is chthonic, primordial; it’s a sound that lives in the back of the throat, known to all as heartbreak and mourning, Lorca would call it ‘duende’, Cape Verdian’s would call ’saudade’, perhaps the French would call it ‘le petit mort’. It’s what brings me back to listen each time. Much like a good story or poem. A small turn to make the whole work vibrate with intensity, emotion and heart.
And this song is a poem:
We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
but the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray
I can accept its narrative and its seemingly disconnected imagery to construct a narrative of my own. A soldier or a sailor, a bar, a chance meeting, a love found and then a love lost. There’s a romance to it.
This obscure video offers no explanation for the meaning of this song (but it must of inspired Coldplay). But it does evoke something. Nostalgia? A memory? Loved but lost? I don’t know. I do know I love the super 8 video, the grainy washed out feel of the film, the paisley shirt, the pure karaoke aesthetic of it all.
I’ve been writing and thinking a lot about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of you know this from an earlier post. As a result, my reading list is unending. Yesterday’s New York Times has also spotlighted this latest trend of war literature written service men and women, first person narratives of current wars:
The writers say one goal is to explain the complexities of the wars — Afghan and Iraqi politics, technology, the counterinsurgency doctrine of protecting local populations rather than just killing bad guys — to a wider audience. Their efforts, embraced by top commanders, have even bled into military reports that stand out for their accessible prose.
It’s certainly an intriguing development (definitely not surprising), and the bibliography noted at the end of the article is a good start. Mullaney’s The Unforgiving Minute lives on my Goodreads ‘to read’ list. Yet, this list neglects to mention Shoshana Johnson’s memoir, I’m Still Standing, released this month. It’s almost comical, if not ironic. The omission compounds Johnson’s point about her story noticeably absent from mainstream discourse, vibrating just below the radar. For the uninitiated, here’s a clip of her going tete a tete with another veteran. Also absent from the mainstream media narrative is the rising number of women veterans, some who are becoming the fastest growing homeless population. Additionally, in the under-reported category, here’s a link about the effects of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy on African American women in uniform.
I’m also reading The Photographer, the harrowing tale of the late French photographer, Didier Lefèvre, who chronicled the conflict in Afghanistan in 1986 while traveling with Doctors Without Borders.
Speaking of soldiers, during my internet wanderings, I stumbled on DJ Stylus’ recap of the listening party for the highly anticipated Sade album, Soldier of Love. The album comes out today. He also links a few little gems there. Then there’s the soldiers for justice, the late and great Bayard Rustin is the featured profile on my friend Al Letson’s NPR program, State of Re: Union. The episode is also available as a podcast on iTunes.
Lastly, some blog love for my former classmate Stacia Brown (aka slb on postbourgie.com) She’s been writing deeply moving inquiries of family, love, life and baby while she’s on her journey to motherhood. Soldier on, Ma.
December 18, 1954 – February 6, 2007.
Photo taken at the intersection of West 120th Street, Frederick Douglass Boulevard and St. Nicholas Avenue for the April 20, 2000 issue of New York Magazine.Ta-Nehisi Coates touches on something that I’ve been stuck on too with respect to the ‘freeze’ and POTUS most recent comment about his presidency:
Andrew also notes that it’s largely a symbolic measure, but has faith that Obama will eventually move to the hard choices around defense and entitlement. I don’t know. I think the way Obama has evidently decided to fold on health-care leaves me with little faith that he’ll actually do the hard work.
It is, potentially, like this with all presidents. And I heard his point the other day about being happy with serving as a great one-termer. But I’m struggling to understand what he deeply, truly believes in. What he believes must be done right now. What he’d fall on his sword for. Again, maybe it’s this way with all presidents, and maybe my larger beef is with electoral politics. I’ll sort it out over the next few weeks.
I feel a lot of ambivalence too. On one hand, I really hope that the freeze is a strategic boondoggle, symbolic as Andrew Sullivan says, to weather the midterm election season. Yet, I know that this ’strategy’ won’t necessarily yield any substantive results in deflating the Right’s objections to the Democratic Party’s governance. A freeze on discretionary spending won’t silence POTUS most vehement objectors. I’m not sure if anything will. If this is in fact a fake pass, that will allow POTUS to effectively quarterback the real work of governance -creating policies that support job creation and restore some balance to our economy– by canceling out aspirations for a second term, we’d be lucky. It’s a leap of faith in taking that tact.
I’m not sure what Obama’s doing right now. Junot Diaz wrote a piece for the New Yorker last week bemoaning the loss of story in Obama’s rhetoric as he moved from Candidate to President. And although there’s some validity to that in terms of connecting the message of candidate and man capturing the imagination of the electorate (election platforms are aspirational), governance is an entirely different beast. I don’t need Obama to tell me a story to tuck me in at night. I need him to reform the banking system. There’s nothing inspirational about debating the merits of Glass-Steagall. I need for him to reform the banking system so my friends who run small businesses can secure loans to build and grow and hire people (ahem, job creation). I need for him to push for diplomacy that will inevitably lead to our military withdrawal out of Afghanistan and Iraq, which would reduce defense spending. There isn’t a pretty story for that. I need him to put a foot up the ass of the leadership of the Democratic Party to pass. the. damn. bill. already. Jeez.
This question about the state of our democracy, the state of our union, is invading my dreams. A couple of nights ago, I dreamed I had 8 missed calls from David Plouffe? And the only meaning I can derive from that is that these guys need our help.
As I read/edit submissions for an upcoming project that I’ll announce at later time, I’ve come across an assortment of interesting items on the internets.
- A blog devoted to the Best American Short Fiction collections.
- A response to photo work of Pieter Hugo’s Nollywood series via Amy Stein.
- A how-to guide to book trailers.
- A thoughtful blog about photography.
- The awesome new website for poet Jeanann Verlee as designed by poet/designer David Ayllon.
- This video-essay and photo stills.
- Insight from Paul Lisicky, courtesy of Saeed Jones.
- And because it’s Sunday, I never get tired of hearing this. ‘It’s all about the Hamiltons baby!’
I think that’s enough procrastination for now. *smile* Go Jets!
Warning: This is an extremely meta post.
In response to a recent NYT article in which I was quoted, a very clever reader I assume, googled me, found my Facebook profile and proceeded to send me the following message:
Speak for yourself. Asian and Indian men are raised pretty much by doctors and engineers, and doctors and engineers only. They get married relatively young, don’t cheat, don’t even look at other women, do more household chores than anyone and everyone, and expect their women to be equal (if not greater) partners who achieve at a similarly high level.
There are a lot of things problematic about this statement. One, I AM speaking for myself. Two, that generalization is sort of racist.
I feel like I grabbed the third rail of some conflict I’m not sure how to define. The Pew Report is interesting, however, as a culture, our response to its findings is fascinating. And not in a good way. At all. Some people are downright Catty McBitchy.
Others are misogynistic:
This is a disastrous trend. Can anyone name one society in history that has been dominated by women and which has prospered and survived. I can’t.
Others are comedians:
Big buff dude, who is for some reason shirtless in a library (who may also be carrying an axe in order to appear lumberjack manly): Hey babe, are you done with the microfiche?
Syreeta (turning slowly, flicking her hair, pushing her glasses down to the tip of her nose): Why yes, yes I am? Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a passport handy now would you?
Others just think I’m bitter:
‘I read the article in the Times that you were quoted in and looked you up online. Were You quoted correctly? “With men of any ethnic group, it’s a little intimidating for them to encounter smart women.”
Really? All men? All ethnic groups? The stereotypes that you generate are worse than the stereotypes than men generate about women, but you went to Sarah Lawrence, so I know that you are a bitter, angry, unbalanced and unpleasant young lady who will spend most of her life contriving ugly things to do and say about men (how’s that for a stereotype?)’
Um, WOW. And regardless of whether or not I was quoted correctly, or because I went to one school over another and that says how I feel about everything is also a bit ridiculous. I also love the internet for encouraging some seriously bold assaults from people who wouldn’t dare say any of this to my face. Many of whom are women. Seriously. I’ve had more women assault me with vapid commentary about what they *think* I meant rather than engage me seriously about the conversation. People were angry, cynical, bitchy, frustrated, bitter or assumed that I and my lot are. *kanye shrug* 
