change

Okir is moving on. I’ll be around on the web (see “Blogs-Mine” in the sidebar. Most of my poetry news will be on Prau). Time for a change. It was lovely.

. . .

Philip Whalen

Trying to decipher Leslie Scalapino’s intro to The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen. How many ways can you gloss his playful poetry of “free-fall not bound by pre-conceived boundaries of ordering” (Scalapino)? He said it well enough: “The trouble is, I no longer believe in concreteness. I think that everything is fluid.” (Whalen, interviewed in David Meltzer’s “Whatnot: A Talk with Philip Whalen,” Poetry Flash 1999.)

A memory from grad school days: “Let’s see how we can complicate this!”

Printing the Pictorial Webster’s

Pictorial Webster’s: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

Carrera is founder of Quercus Press.

This is a pretty amazing video…

R.I.P. Remedios Hallar Groyon.

e-books vs. print?

(Note: this article can also be found at my active blog, Local Nomad.)

In the New York Times “Opinion Page,” Alan Liu and others weigh in on how our brains are adjusting to e-books and reading onscreen. I still feel that I can’t concentrate for long periods reading online–there’s too much to distract me. No such problem on the Kindle, although I miss being able to jot notes in the margins; and getting a physical/visual sense of the “whole” text seems to somehow help the reading process (something e-books still can’t do). Reading the printed page feels relaxing by comparison. Having a Kindle is good for some types of books, and nice to take traveling. But it also makes me really appreciate the print book.

Via Ernesto Priego’s tweet, here is another article, which claims the demise of print books; this seems to be the big angst of the new year among writers and readers, and in the media. The author, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, has just begun using an e-book. Well, I’ve been there and done that. So I can tell you the initial fascination wears off–but the utility of the e-book will remain. I think that print books will stick around, but they will acquire a different or enhanced value. The well-made print book, along with graphic novels, special editions, and gift books, will rise in our estimation (along with their prices).

Another category will emerge in e-book form; these are books that we may find interesting or entertaining (e.g. “summer reading”), and educational (although e-book manufacturers will have to figure out how to make graphics more legible) — but not special or personally meaningful to the reader.

I think that the bookstore “environment” will also be revalued. Small, independent bookstores (like the Literary Guillotine, pictured above) are already spaces of “comfort” and nostalgia to which print-book readers retreat in order to get their fix of the feel, smell, and visual candy of the book. Big box bookstores will try to make their environments more homey, more “local,” and they will have to find new ways to pull in customers –if they don’t fall apart altogether.

There will be continuing squabbles between print vs. electronic camps. But if you think that there is a big difference between electronic vs. print use of natural resources, you might want to think again. And I’ll give Don Carli of the Institute for Sustainable Communications the last e-word:

…this isn’t a time to fight back with underfunded and ill conceived campaigns based on zero-sum arguments. Trying to pick a “pixels vs. paper” fight is a no-win proposition. Business, government and society cannot afford to become dependent upon a digital media mono-culture any more than it can afford to be solely dependent on fossil fuel energy. This is not a time for the print media pot to call the digital media kettle black. The fact is that neither print nor digital media supply chains are sustainable as currently configured. This is a time to call for transparency and truth in advertising. We need media that is greener, not media that just says it’s greener. The whole article is worth reading.

green retailer sweatshop scorecard

Where NOT to shop and why.

bosko & honey’s new year song

A reflective song for the new year:

The decade

This last decade, the first of the 21st century, has been the most maddening, scary, nightmarish, sad, desperately impoverished, schizophrenic, financially comfortable, satiating, exciting, exhausting, erotic, sweet, fascinating, and happy decade of my life.

Sigh.

Looking forward to 2010.

Happy New Year!

vooks

The trouble with vooks is that it makes me tired just thinking about it. Multi-tasking is the scourge of the current age, and the vook concept just extends that paradigm.

san francisco panorama 1

I just received a big package in the mail containing my copy of San Francisco Panorama. This is the now somewhat infamous (because of its distribution problems) full-sized, full color newspaper published by McSweeney’s, the small independent publishing house run by Dave Eggars. I received it late, after I emailed customer service with my complaint.

Nevertheless, why do I feel like I’ve just received my Captain America super secret decoder spy ring, along with instructions for building a rocket a ship to mars, and a map that will lead me to hidden treasure? (In fact, tucked into the the generous comics section there is a Secret Sam cut-out-and-fold spaceship with diorama.)

Visually, the newspaper is over the top. It tickles your sensory inputs. Color jumps out at you from every page. It’s a font-lover’s delight; the primary fonts used are Sabon, Filosofia, and Verlag, according to their fact sheet. But there’s plenty more font and graphic artistry in the newspaper, for example in the article on KPOO public radio, whose opening page can also double as a nostalgic poster of retro fonts and design.

Many articles appear to be lengthy and in-depth — much longer than anything you’d read in an online newspaper. There are 3 posters, and 22 comics (including 9 full-pagers). The broadsheet pages are so big that it’s a challenge to hold the thing and turn the pages. And once you get them open, your head is enveloped in the scent of newly printed paper and ink. Besides 120 broadsheet pages, the package contains Panorama Magazine (112 pp.) focusing on current events, and the Panorama Book Review (96 pp.) which includes short stories, essays, and interviews.

I can’t imagine that any newspaper company can publish something like this on a more than bi-annual basis.

This is so not E-. It’s everything you can’t get from online content. But I’m just talking about the object itself now. I haven’t even read the thing yet.

To be continued…

Joan Baez Songbook: a girl’s guide to grown-up love, sex, & betrayal

(Note: this article can also be found at my currently active blog, Local Nomad.)

Recently I found and bought a copy of the old Joan Baez Songbook, circa 1964, at Book Haven in Monterey. That brought back memories. In my early teens, I bought the book to teach myself how to play guitar. While I did learn to play guitar (great songs, easy chords), there was much in the book that I could’ve learned then, but somehow didn’t–and I’m not talking about playing guitar. However, it did give me a preview of adult (and sometimes childhood) life and its travails.

The songbook came out after a long period of dormancy for women who, in the 1960s, were feeling their frustration. No perky Doris Day songs here; the Joan Baez Songbook drew from folk lyrics and laments that lay bare the grief and frustration of men, and especially women, throughout the ages.

The intro by John M. Conley reveals how difficult it was then for women to pull away from a sexualized and romanticized public focus, and to be taken seriously as an artist. In the opening paragraph, he writes, “The paramount fact about Joan Baez is beauty. She has it; she generates it; and she uses it. Lest this seem rhapsodical, be it admitted that she is a human being, with impulses, frailties, and foibles, perhaps even a little young wickedness. But the gospel is beauty.” He goes on like this–focusing on her appearance–for the next three paragraphs, mentioning “the dusk of [her] long hair,” the “deep topaze” of her eyes, her “lithe dancer’s body,” as well as her odd habit of wearing “purposely shapeless” dresses not unlike “gunny sacks” onstage — before finally discussing her musicianship.

Beauty and love rarely succeed in these (mostly traditional) folk songs. If not betrayal in love, then war, death, or opposition by parents pulled lovers apart–or sometimes just plain stubborness. In “The Water is Wide,” the singer laments, “I leaned my back against an oak / Thinking it was a mighty tree / But first it bent and then it broke, / So did my love prove false to me.” I seem to remember that the song, “I Never Will Marry” did at one point influence me to tell a boy that I never wanted to marry (so much for youthful claims!). “I never will marry / I’ll be no man’s wife / I intend to live single / All the days of my life.”

The “Child Ballads” were not very happy either. “Ah, my Geordie will be hanged in a golden chain” (“Geordie”) points to the death by hanging of a young poacher. In another song, young “Matty Groves” beds a nobleman’s wife, and gets stabbed to death by the husband.

Illustration by Eric Von Schmidt

Eric Von Schmidt’s collage illustrations instructed me about the attractions and the dangers of eros; a number of images expressively rendered women nude, or half-nude, or with bosoms nearly bursting from a bodice. In all cases, these pictures accompanied songs in which violence, betrayal or loss was the theme. In “The Lily of the West,” Flora is down on her knees, breasts heaving, hysterical as two men go at each other with knives.

In at least two songs, women were dressed as men: in “Jackaroe” to accompany her man as he goes to war (of course, he is killed), and in “Ranger’s Command” by Woody Guthrie, to join in a gunfight against cattle rustlers.

The folksong laments and high drama of the Songbook were a nice respite from all the “Goin’ to a Chapel and I’m Gonna Get Married” songs of the 1950s, and–her amazing voice aside–Joan Baez’s presence in the 1960s was a breath of fresh air for women. A photograph of her on page 9 said it all to me. No cinched waist, no girdle, and likely no makeup. She is facing away from the camera, walking off barefoot through a field wearing one of her “gunny sack” dresses, with her guitar slung over her shoulder. It was a good moment.

Babe, I got to ramble,
You know I got to ramble,
My feet start goin’ down and I got to follow,
They just start goin’ down, and I got to go.

–”Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” by Anne Bredon

more good news

Continuing from my Dec. 23rd “good news day” post, there’s more good news:

1000 Views of “Girl Singing” is on Stride Magazine’s top ten best picks of poetry books for 2009.

Barbara-Jane Reyes’ Poeta en San Francisco is on SPD’s list of 20 bestsellers for 2000–2009.

GR#13 book reviews are now available!