I am almost through with Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, and I think I might just compete with my lover for the spot of the Baldwin scholar. Although this would mean I might have to relinquish my duties as the Fanny Howe scholar...not ready for that yet. I am so deep into his novel that I didn't even notice that a centipede the size of my thumb had crawled into my nightstand water glass. I just kept picking it up and drinking and reading as the little guy swam in a cool pool of my fiction-coma induced saliva. Sucker probably dropped some eggs in there. If you see wee lil' pedes crawling out my eyes you will know I have been on the books for too long.
It seems to me that we are always looking for a language that will be heard, understood. Done got. And as I read these parts particulary, I am blown away to some other country where tongues roll out bombs of truth and somehow remain on the edege, the radical steep edge and live in paradox- where the people swirl hot and bothered and resistant and lovely, forever resistant, always looking for the humanity at the core of experience:
"Some moments in a life, and they needn't be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of the human connection: if one can live with one's own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain."
-pg. 241
"What a tremendous decision had been made, what a mighty law had been passed, so long ago, and with the roar of universal relief and approval: that only the destruction of another could bring peace to the soul and guarantee the order of the universe! The fire said, in Caleb's voice,Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of? I wondered why it was a virtue, often presented as the highest, to despise oneself and everybody else. What a slimy gang of creeps and cowards those old church fathers must have been; and remained; and what was my brother doing in that company?"
-pg.257-258
"I know that, as I grew older, I became tyrannical. I had no choice, my life was in the balance. Whoever went under, it was not going to be me- and I seem to have been very clear about this from the very beginning of my life. To run meant to turn my back- on lions; to run meant the flying tackle which would bring me down; and, anyway run where? Certainly not to my father and mother, certainly not to Caleb. Therefore, I had to stand. To stand meant that I had to be insane. People who imagine themsevles to be, as they put it, in their "right" minds, have no desire to tangle with the insane. They stay far from them, or they ingratiate them. It took me almost no time to realize this. I used what I knew. I knew that what was sport for others was life or death for me. Therefore, I had to make it a matter of life or death for them. Not many are prepared to go so far, at least not without the sanction of a uniform. But this absolutely single-minded and terrified ruthlessness was masked by my obvious vulnerability, my paradoxical and very real helplessness, and it covered my terrible need to lie down, to breathe deep, to weep long and loud, to be held in human arms, almost any human arms, to hide my face in any human breast, to tell it all, to let it out, to be brought into the world, and out of human affection, to be born again."
-pg. 31-32
I have found no other writing passage that resonates with me the way this last one does. Sacred and muddy. The real deal. I hear it like the honking geese chorus I hear in Miles Davis "Bitches Brew" or like the raspy voiced poetics in Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom" or the balls-out subversive groove in Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddamn" or in Fanny Howe's "Plutocracy" or in Ani Difranco's "Subdivision" or Stevie Wonder's "They Won't Go Where I Go" and everything Adrienne Rich. Thank god for these. And for the new generation: Hareyette Mullen, MIA, Guante, Kill the Vultures, Chastity Brown. Thank god there's plenty more I am missing and that artists are grinding out their lives in pursuit of speaking such truths and with such conviction. It must be done. Right now. Forever engaged. Forever dismantling imaginations blooming. Amen.
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James Campbell wrote about Baldwin after studying his letters:
"All the aspects of Baldwin’s character are exposed … He was magnetic, compulsively sociable, elaborately extrovert, darkly introverted, depressive, magnificently generous, self-absorbed, self-dramatizing, funny, furious, bubbling with good intentions, seldom hesitating over a breach of promise – capable of exhibiting all these traits between lunch and dinner, and between dinner and the last whisky at 4 am."
-The Times Literary Supplement, June 13, 2007
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In the past couple of months I have come to the realization that there are specific elements I need in my life (and proabably forever):
+I will forever have to remind myself not to judge others, especially folks with money (but it feels so good to blame them, but as Chas points out- everybody has felt pain and try to tap into that- see Baldwin quote)
+I must work part-time/32hrs/week at most. I do not know how mothers and fathers do it. I need time to reflect, to read mostly and to write and to breathe, and to process all that is flashing before me because there are some really beautiful moments that I feel slip through my consciousness that I would like to have stay there so I can feel it in all directions.
+I must constantly read and study writing if I am going to write well. That's that. Just a recent revelation I had while preparing my MFA application materials. Also- drafting my statement of purpose has turned into a really fun project because I am coming to terms with the fact that I must write. And why I must write. And that it must be now. I am forever blown away by the slivers of truth in people, in animals, in nature, in experiences, and I reconcile these gut-wrenching emotional truths, the differences, the utterances of chaos and calm, the experimental partial-yet-coherent meanings all through my writing. Whether this means I need to go through an MFA program- I guess we'll see, but in the meantime I am loving this revelation and it is constantly opening me up. I had a great conversation with a sculptor/visual artist the other day and she pointed out that we have to do what we are supposed to do to better serve others and I feel that I will better serve my community and myself through writing.
+I must do yoga. As a naturally fast-paced person I must reconcile with all that my breath holds. Yogi pants are on folks, watch it, I'm bout to be so grounded you'll think I'm a tree stump.
+I must cultivate friendships. I have felt a lack of people I love lately and realized that this is probably my own doing. I want to reconnect with folks from South Dakota, Scotland, and even here in the Minneapple. To be supportive and intuitive, not so closed off. Also, disagreeing is getting easier so I should remember this when in heated convos and also to honor the multitude of differences between persons.
+I want to live minimally. This makes sense as the only way to harmonize with my desire to work/advocate part-time and have more time to reflect and write and travel. This goes against everything I was told (more so, not told) growing up. I observed my parents work 40hrs/wk my entire life. I respect their ability to give themselves entirely and work themselves from the bottom up, in fact, I am amazed at their work-ethic and am so thankful, but I do not have that in me, nor do I care for material goods/needs at all.
+Talk to myself when I am lost. Do not go to my lover for all things. Venture by myself. Sit in the silence, embrace the awkward and my embarrassments because this allows me to be. To truly effing be.
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New journal obssession: jubilat
I am going to submit:
Blue-Glass Prairie Graffiti
Dynamo
Man O' Livin
White Buffalo Song
but am not sure if they are "experimental" in the way that this journal's aesthetic leans towards.
From an interview with Peter Gizzi:
"We record the pieces of other songs, of people and their everyday struggle of living, of things coming into being even as they are lost within a larger story."
"Sound tends to work in a number of ways for me, to keep new information coming in and to handle it- the present, I mean."
"For me if a poem is a closed, contained vessel, it's dead on arrival; instead, I want to leave some part of the poem open so that I or another reader can enter it again and again."
I have much to learn in the way of this journal and my own writing. I am excited to think about writing with all these new elements to factor in. I have this big ambitious idea of writing in an open, experimental way, yet retaining the emotional truth rides a narrative provides. That resistance can be innovative and still accessible. I am pretty sure I am not the only person who has thought such things, but for me, right now, it seems like a good way to exlpore while drafting new pieces.
Also, in the African American Experimental Poetry Forum:
"The root of narrative, of the sentence itself, is experience, coming to terms with it....By capture, I mean how much of the experience in question one can actually represent in language."
"I am drawn to poetry because in its often fragmented nature there is room to grapple with the utterance of experience, to break it down to even the phonetic level...they hyperawareness makes you exploratory."
-Renee Gladman
"Thus, it extends from poems and enjoyment of poetry to how we inscribe and perceive difference. When I write an experimental poem, my ambition is to encourage the readers to read more than the poem, my ambition is to use the poem as a Danger Room in which they can practice strategies for reading the world and their own texts within it...A successful experimental poem for me must provide a space in which its particular challenges are rewarded ultimately with the ache and pleasure that comes with a new way of thinking."
-Douglas Kearney
"It is ironic that experimentalism can be that to which an appeal is made in the interest of a disavowal of the experiement. And what is more terrible than to have been born/e into the lust for and aversion to difference? But that is everybody's story."
-Fred Moten
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Quote of the week (in lieu of "the poem of the week" I'm slackin on):
"I'd totally knock you up if I could babe"
(woman to woman)
Makes me want to re-read Stein's "Lifting Belly"
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I am about as funk-ified as can be thanks to Stevie Wonder. Where have you been all my life? This is me lung rattling, neck veins a poppin': "You can FEEL IT...FEEL IT SPIRIT...come on now you can FeeeEEEEEEEEL IT FEEL IT SPIRIT!"
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Well I'm off to go see Ani D. at First Ave. tonight (close to my 10th show of hers), but first I've got to pull some radishes out of the ground and look totally amazed that I planted the damn things and that they grew and that I can eat them...did I say amazing? It's amazin grazin yer own garden. Have also got some kale and chard to cut back and cook up- maybe tonight for dinner!
