i'm always shocked (shocked!) at what privileged backgrounds people you meet in art/literary worlds are in the UK and while I know that this is pretty much the historical norm, it feels far more accessible and diverse in ireland but also far more knitted into people's ordinary lives so I think there's something to be said not only about success etc, but also a diversity of contexts that we care about and the kinds of non-professionalised practices/platforms that we recognise.
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:26 (two years ago) link
certainly it was totally normal for people of my grandparents generation to be able to recite poetry, often people with little literacy skills.
And i remember attending a wedding where a friend was getting married to an australian guy and his family was pretty baffled at how all the irish people kept insisting on making speeches and incorporating long passages of poetry (often written by non-professional poet friends!). I'm not saying this happens at every irish wedding but its not incredibly unusual either. the speeches thing is pretty universal though!
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:30 (two years ago) link
Oh absolutely, and I only really talk about the US because my knowledge of non-US poetry and literary communities isn't large...I know a good deal about Vancouver and Montreal, but that's still so-called North America. The only poets I know personally in the UK are white dudes, for example, which is clearly not representative...
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:33 (two years ago) link
i would say the 'hottest young thing' is ak blakmore whose work, to me, is simply "i went to oxbridge and then i got a septum piercing" but thats probably more uncharitable than it needs to be
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:42 (two years ago) link
my sex
enter breakfast truck, the bluebottlesperforming obsequies to marbled bacon
enter girl with manacles. enterso damn adorable. he likes small fuckdoll.
girl who looks plaintively at porcelainsalt and pepper shakers shapedlike kittens sleeping, intertwined. enterdesolation beside a pinstripe spider-plant enterknowing how to dress your pear-shape historyhistory, and after you follow, with a bucketand a mop – or words to that effect.
enter girl who applies the cooling gel.enter the Tate Modern to see Yayoi Kusama’sI Am Here But Nothing which please youcannot photograph like wheni found out there was a fetish for everything sexualityseemed like a great leveller. enter nothingtoo weird to enter, biking, amused savagetender repetitions of toilet cubicle graffiti.
enter Fathers in the Clouds (’99)enter my sex like act not gender and other songsthat make me cry my sex sometimes ballet shoesboth the stones in the pockets of my coatand the welcoming cold river.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n11/a.k.-blakemore/two-poems
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:44 (two years ago) link
i guess
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:50 (two years ago) link
lmao that is rank
― imago, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:50 (two years ago) link
replace that with the lyrics to 'my sex' by ultravox for infinite improvement
― imago, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:56 (two years ago) link
Yeah that isn't quite good. Most of what I know is from SPAM and Face Press and Critical Documents...so perhaps similarly situated in the Oxbridge nexus, but more students of Prynne and that kind of thing..."difficult" poetry lol
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 19:58 (two years ago) link
i was loosely in with the Prynne crowd at the tail-end of university...there was some good stuff but it often came off as way too obscurantist and aloof for its own good
― imago, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 20:00 (two years ago) link
― imago,
my first thought when I saw the title
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 20:23 (two years ago) link
Imago, I admit that I am a huge fan of Prynne's work, but for the most part, I don't find his students' work as compelling.
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 21:00 (two years ago) link
i feel almost bad about posting that blakemore one. i feel like the first thing i ever read by her was really good and i've never been able to remember where it was but yes that particular one is like the lyrics to a bongwater song except too full of itself and not as funny
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 21:32 (two years ago) link
also i can't say i've ready anything by prynne is there anything you would recommend? i read a thing about him online just now that says he is influenced by olson holderlin celan and o'hara which is quite a mix and very intriguing
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 21:45 (two years ago) link
Plax, his collecteds (there are three editions, with timely additions in each) are worth looking for, but the one that gets most people into him is 'The White Stones,' which was reissued by NYRB a few years ago. The book is an outlier, in some ways, as the density and hermetic wordplay of his later work is not as foregrounded, but it's a lovely book, with some absolutely devastating poems in it.
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 June 2021 22:23 (two years ago) link
lol all of white stones is on genius.com for some reason!
― plax (ico), Wednesday, 30 June 2021 12:43 (two years ago) link
Ha, brilliant
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Wednesday, 30 June 2021 13:17 (two years ago) link
I bought an actual physical copy of "Walkman" last week, at a bookstore in Cincinnati. I like it.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 6 July 2021 23:04 (two years ago) link
😬 https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/jia-tolentino/
― jaymc, Friday, 6 August 2021 20:11 (two years ago) link
I have been enjoying the twitter reaction to that incredibly bad poem today.
― emil.y, Friday, 6 August 2021 20:52 (two years ago) link
I agree with the magazine's slogan: whatever that is, I'm against it.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 6 August 2021 21:22 (two years ago) link
.
― No Particular Place to POLL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 6 August 2021 21:41 (two years ago) link
jesus
― flopson, Saturday, 7 August 2021 05:49 (two years ago) link
, conditionally,
― jmm, Saturday, 7 August 2021 12:31 (two years ago) link
lol i was wondering if that would get posted here
― plax (ico), Saturday, 7 August 2021 16:54 (two years ago) link