The play was not in ordinary time,
He and classmate Mary memorizing,
Words, positions, several costume changes.
And his being coached to be persons other
Than what he was always told he was,
Feeling more marionette than actor,
Eager to cut strings from marshalled head and
Appendages, free a new inner force.
The boy thought himself less fixed on who
He was than most kids he knew, but acting
As the agent needed, not a distraction,
More a fitted piece in a story’s puzzle. […]
It might be an offense to purists, but the identity of an author tends to precede interactions with written work because of the nature of books: the cover giving the name, and how readers see cultures in names. Whether or not the work is allowed to speak requires the reader to open the book.
There is a moment when a choice is made: whether or not to even pick up a book, whether or not to open a book. If the author has a photo on the cover, there’s the reader’s personal response to the symbols in that photograph—it is a flat image that we see as symbols; the type of human, the accessories in the image that speak to details of that person. This formulation occurs before the words of the text are ever revealed. […]
I remember the first time I read Allen Ginsberg. I was in high school, 16, and in my third year, where within my textbook I stumbled upon the poem, ‘A Supermarket in California.’ At the time, I was too interested in Emily Dickinson and the Romantics to be so astounded by this free verse poem that has since remained with me all these years. I eventually came to learn this is how writing works—or any art for that matter. One might stumble upon it, and at first, it leaves little impression because…well, perhaps one’s mind needs to mature. Reread it, however, and then again years later, and as Don Moss might say, ‘Your imagination will be lit.’
Fortunately, the same can be said about Howl (2010), which I might have stumbled upon when I still had a Netflix subscription. I knew when I first saw this film that it was a good, clever rendering of the story behind Ginsberg’s writing of Howl, as it also touches upon the public trial that followed. Howl, the poem, was published by City Lights Press in 1956 and was later banned for obscenity, resulting in poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti being deemed not guilty in a court of law (seems extreme, doesn’t it?) for publishing said obscenity. […]
Bruce Ario’s “Selected Poems (1980 – 2022)” is now available for purchase from AUTOMACHINATION publishing. It features a major, 150-page essay from his literary executor, Dan Schneider, examining Bruce Ario’s life and work. Our film, “From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet”, is also available for streaming on Patreon. You can watch the film’s latest trailer on our YouTube channel or learn more about the film here. The first part of Dan Schneider’s introduction to Bruce Ario as writer is reproduced below: […]
As usual, the pupil poses—this moment
Within the garden, where a pair befriends
The jungle, as it becomes
The dandies who live
As she—this nude woman ever
Near his boot. Look—lunch can be
Such an immediate hour, wherein
One remembers her father, once when
He and she went
To eat in midst of some noon […]
The anthology is a desirable volume for publishers, as it has appeal to both educators and general readers of a particular genre. For an editor, the creation of a successful anthology means steady groceries—an atypical situation in the literary arts—and as a required textbook, a volume will show financial reward. For an author, inclusion in a successful anthology (especially in a genre that is not high-dollar) might be akin to sainthood, as it is certainly a form of canonization. Anthologies are intended as a high visibility variety show, a silent festival. However, some anthologies are offered for thematic reasons within an area of interest, and the economics of publishing become tangled with altruism. The concept of the common good is not central to all cultures, and anthologies that are thematic can appeal to the isolated. When the theme is one of social justice, the entire structure of publishing an anthology might be perused for philosophical consistency. […]
Each second, no, third Tuesday they would play,
paired as they were by gravity and fate.
E(ast) pretends to rush a declaration
And W(est), no dummy, knows to look askance.
They signal in sweet brief practiced signs,
hands posted to the sides, yet intertwined
with…What was it they were to play
on their respective sides of middle C?
Stated emphatically, this ensemble holds
as well as the…ah, Mendelssohn Brilliant. […]
From time to time I come across some thoughtful commentary about the absence of solid examples of masculinity in modern culture. Any discussion of positive role models is less common than that of its ‘toxic’ counterpart—and is often portrayed by those who fail to embody it. It makes sense that this would have negative effects on young men. But it also seems to me that young women are dealing with a counterpart sickness—one of surfeit. You can binge for hours without ever being satiated, if what you’re consuming lacks substance. Even the most intrepid attempts at “validation” wither when untethered to reality, and so much of what’s held up as models of femininity is shallow and incoherent.
But then consider the issue of “representation” in general. Fair enough, as it’s undoubtedly important: both in terms of who gets to have their work taken seriously, and in what subject matter gets taken seriously. In the sense that insofar as art can distil aspects of reality with a unique power, it’s just nonsensical to arbitrarily exclude whole domains of life from this. But one of the issues with an excessive focus on representation creeps in here, as quality art just can’t be subjected to a quota, and have this result in anything constructive. Inevitably, laziness sways, and it is simply much easier to quantify how many authors published by a certain press have vaginas as opposed to penises, than it is to tease out the particulars that distinguish a masterpiece from a mediocrity.
The consequences? On the one hand, considering how many of the proverbial Dead White Males were themselves trivial, literarily speaking, what harm is there in adding a few more living, be-melanined, or female dull equivalents to their number? The other problem is a little subtler, based on not who gets to write, but what gets written about. Why should representation be aspirational? The idea that art has a duty to present some kind of wholesome moral message (nuance need not apply) seems omnipresent these days. Even putting aside the fact that it’s been proven throughout history that the greatest works tend to chafe against the pettier needs of their times—well. Yet an excellent poem (for example) can offer a vivid representation of life through being able to capture more of its layers and complexities than is possible through any other means. Enough talking about this. Let us look. […]
