1.

I hope I am all right; sometimes I feel paranoid, but this might be Oklahoma talking to me. Is posting stuff to facebook a real "action"? I am as guilty as anybody, but I tire of myself and the feeds. But I also like it, go figure. I realize I only read Gawker and Deadspin.

2.

It is funny and sad when someone opens a poem with someone better's line; like the poem is way better. Funny in that shitty "you don't know" way and sad because the writer is saying "you don't know me." That can be Jerry Springer or Ingmar Bergmen. Whichever. Still you showed me something new about William Blake. You did not show me something new about Bob Hicok.

3.

You don't have to. I have no more right to newness than anyone else. I just read the packets. 

"Our Iowa who art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name"

1.

Me and Andrew Terhune started a reading series called Bumpkinitis. We've done five so far this year; we got videos and things.

We're starting to put together dates for next year. If you are on tour and find yourself coming through Oklahoma, email us. Readings will third Fridays of October, November, March, and April 2013-2014.

2.

I saw a bunch of movies over winter break.  I know Argo won and I saw it but it shouldn't have won--such an easy thing to say. Affleck is one of those artists that knows the craft so well that when it comes to the screen or the page or the canvas it is dead immediately. Argo is a machine. I also saw it in a dollar theatre back in Dayton and the crowd of Baby Boomers kept chatting through it; some said "I remember that," or "that is so sad," or "Reagan fixed this, I don't believe it." Baby Boomers of all classes.

I'm not sure what to say about Django Unleashed other than I liked it, a lot, and it maybe Tarantino's best film, at least better than Inglorious Basterds, though that film's final scene is the greatest in American cinema. Ishmael Reed critiqued Django on facebook and what he said was the best (to paraphrase): Tarantino  should've let Jamie Foxx, as Django, kill Jefferson Davis, not some fictional, petty-bourgeois, slave owner.

I don't want to start my sentence with "but" because Reed is legit in what he proposes and what I propose, I hope stands near and with Reed's concerns, not to negate what Reed suggests. Django, to me, is more about white guilt, especially white northerner guilt. Tarantino realizes film's ability to rectify even if it is only modicumly. The best Taratino can do is to make a white audience empathize with Django's final, violent scenes and force us to reflect on the blood that will always be on our hands and Tarantino's. It is flawed and Django, not Dr. King, should've been able to kill Candy. He needed to kill Candy.

Davis would've been even better: that son of a bitch outlived Lincoln and everyone involved in the Civil War by twenty years. Southern legend likes to spin that his former slaves still worked for him and that his driver cried at the funeral because Davis was a good man. I'm sure parts of that are true, but Davis is as much the face of slavery as anyone else, and I think Tarantino could've "gotten away" with it; he would've been criticized, but those who critique him would've been the ones who reveal themselves actually, and would've become the butts of jokes that don't accomplish anything. There are white Southerners who wouldn't have had a problem with it.

I think what Django does best is to show the fucked up, confusing, complicated, and awful ways whites think. That is where the film is most raw and off the hook. And that Tarantino does this, almost strictly, through whites of dominance--Big Daddy, Candy--makes a greater indictment and a greater space for empathy. It exposes and it doesn't marginalize racism to white, redneck stereotypes, though those characters exist in the film as well.

3.

I feel a tremendous guilt when I talk about my childhood: I lived in a predominantly black, middle class neighborhood in Dayton from age 4-12. The neighborhood was even called Greenwich Village. I miss that time because I loved it, I had a lot of friends, I was exposed to experiences and lines of thought I never would've experienced otherwise, but I am inclined to bring it up when I talk to people who grew up in the suburbs. I mean, christ, we moved to a small, mostly white, town/suburb of Dayton when I was 13 I like Django because I identify with Dr. King's final scene, in which he can't take Candy anymore; I've dined with and played to Candys, who have weird racist theories, and I can't wash my hands of it. I let them say those things, in the past, and I feel worse for letting that happen. I don't want to discuss these topics academically, because they have the potential to become dead. I don't want to post stupid, liberal, "safe" facebook images to my wall because that would do no good either; that makes my beliefs and thoughts dead and easy. I would be a walking Argo. I try my best but I know I fail constantly. I think most do.

Children of Reagan

Rabbit Catastrophe published my chapbook Children of Reagan earlier this year and it sold out, but I have a few copies myself. If you'd like a copy, they're $4 shipping included. I am out.

 

Movies, etc.

I saw Anonymous with Lexi; in a very general sense when we think of art--right--we usually identify with the underdog, and even when we're not Marxists or class-conscious-or-whatever, a viewer/reader still identifies with the person facing insurmountable odds, etc. We like Don Draper because he came from nothing and he's smarter than Sterling Cooper. We'd rather be in a frat like Delta Tau Chi than Omega Theta Pi; even the Goldman Sachs employees of the world agree with this when interacting with any art, film in particular. Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, for as nasty as he is, comes from nothing and builds himself into the figure that invests a half-ass amount into cold fusion in Wall Street 2.

Roland Emmerich doesn't get this; Anonymous looks and feels like an intro to lit essay by an Entrepreneurship major. It looks right, the format is all correct, but there's nothing to it, it gets its facts all mixed up, it misses the point. The worst thing about it is that Edward de Vere still isn't as interesting as the Shakespeare character Emmerich presents: a dumb, opportunistic illiterate yes, but a funny one who screws around and knows how to act. I still rather hang out with Will than a gloomy blond rich guy who turns out to have fucked his mother. And I don't like being reminded how brilliant he is by the film and Derek Jacobi, who preforms the prologue and epilogue with the pathos-overload of a Bill O'Rilley.

I understand Emmerich's bravado to piss people off, but at least get your history right--he conflates James I with Charles II, he  has Richard III performed the night before the Essex rebellion when it was actually Richard II. And at least get art right: de Vere has to be more interesting than some lord with a private estate who thinks he's better than Ben Johnson. No one wants to side with the privileged over the underdog and no matter how much de Vere glooms around and lies in his deathbed with his "masterpieces," he's still no underdog--he seems as much a phony: you never see him work on a play. He sits at the an ornamental desk with a stuffed eagle and a bunch of papers and sighs at paupers. That's not art. That's propaganda. 

White Lines at Greying Ghost

Available through Greying Ghost with the purchase of a chapbook.

Scissortail 2012

I will be reading Friday, April 6, as part of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival.

My fellow OSU buddies are also reading: James Brubaker, Karen Sisk, Andrew Terhune, Haesong Kwon.

I got nothing else.

New Poems, Films

I.

I am in Oklahoma, so I have had a quiet summer. Some of my friends are out of town so I don't know. I have been watching a lot of movies.

II.

I just watched Gigante; I always want to be a quiet strong guy with empathy, but ain't got shit. The hero is weird, but I rooted for him.

III.

Here are some poems at ACREAGE. I met Bayard, Sara, and George McCormick at Scissortail and they are cool people.