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A very nice girl comes into the store, and finds our very small playing card section.
"Alice in Wonderland!" She says. "That is my favorite book!" I smile. It is also one of my favorites. “But that’s not the book. It’s nothing but a pack of cards!” She frowns at me. “What?” "Nothing but a pack of cards." ******SPOILER ALERT***** "That’s what Alice says before she wakes up at the end of the book." Blank stare. "it’s kind of her ‘Hasta La Vista Baby’ moment." Blank stare. I shrug. She says “I don’t remember that part of the movie.” "Well, it’s in the book. And the Disney movie. And, I’m pretty sure it’s in the TV movie, too." "It’s not in the Johnny Depp one." She says. "The good one." "But you’ve read the book, right?" Blank stare. “It’s a kid’s book.” "But it’s your favorite book." I say. "You said so." "The movie is my favorite book." I am all out of words today.
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Random Loiterer: “Oh my god, we had to read this book when I was in high school. I had no idea it was based on a comic book!”
She then approached the counter with her copy of the Pride and Prejudice graphic novel. She also bought a copy of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic #2. Not that I’m implying there is a correlation. I had forgotten they printed books without pictures in them. For the last several months, any time I've wandered dazedly into The Brookline Booksmith or a Rodney's Used Books, I've immediately shot to the Used Graphic Novel section, and looked for out of print books. The only non illustrated books I've even glanced at have been poetry collections. And someone at The Booksmith must have noticed this, because about a month and a half ago they moved the Graphic Novel section next to the Poetry section, so my fat, semi-literate ass doesn't even have to cross the room to see that no one is selling off good modern poetry collections, it's all either material that repulses me (and yet, I'll buy that Jorie Graham book if I'm in the mood to laugh), or classic poetry that I already own.
Today, on my way back upstairs from finding two poetry books (repurchasing Adrienne Rich's Fact Of A Doorframe, which I lent out and never got back, and buying Jorie Graham's The Depths Of The Unified Field I rarely buy terrible books on purpose. Particularly if they're full price. But there it was, a horrible cover, an almost offensively pandering idea, by an author who should have known better. So I bought that, and then went around looking for books I might actually enjoy (I'll make a post about books I like later). Having sat down and read as much of the book as I can possibly eyeball, I realized, yes, this is awful "literature", and I should warn my friends. 1.) You Better Not Cry by Augusten Burroughs. When I was first asked to make a manuscript for Houghton Mifflin, I took a bunch of my Insafemode stories, made them a bit less sexcentric (but only a bit), and sent off a draft to my friend Kari, who is the person whose taste I respect who is also very honest with his thoughts, and his initial reaction was "Why are you trying to be David Sedaris?" I revamped the manuscript. I like David Sedaris. I think he's the best writer I can think of who gets segregated to the GLBTA shelves. He's funny, he's accessible, but he's also very adept at storytelling. I have yet to be disappointed by any of his story collections. And, of course, the first one I read was Holidays On Ice, which is a brilliant collection of stories that happen to take place around Christmas: his job working as an elf at a department store, a fictional family update from a woman whose world has shattered just around the holidays. The cover of the copy I own has a rocks glass of whiskey on the cover, which is something I've always associated with the holiday that rarely gets exploited by your average retail outlet or Starbucks. Augusten Burroughs's You Better Not Cry has the photo of a guy in a Santa Suit flashing someone. Cover jackets are rarely selected by authors, and usually chosen by the publisher. The message here seems to be pretty obvious: "Fuck you, reader. The author is lonely, and desperate, and thinks he has something worth bragging about, but as you can plainly see, he's three stripes short of a candy cane." This book is awful. It opens with a thirty-four page collection of thoughts (they're too choppy to be stories) about things that confused him as a child. He used to think the Pledge Of Allegiance was about "the same furniture polish my mother used and that always, inexplicably, made me feel sunny." How droll. He also used to confuse Santa Clause with Jesus as he "could not tell you for sure why they strapped Santa to a cross. Had he missed a house?" Those examples are just in the first three pages. You know the "put your best foot forward" pages. The copy that I bought has blurred typography starting at page 80, and going all the way to 111, then picking up again for the last ten pages. This is either because the printer couldn't even inflict this on the rest of the world without getting shitfaced, or, it's a gift from the printer, as I can now return it for another book. My main issue is not that this is crappy knockoff of David Sedaris by another Gay author. It's that Augusten Burroughs wrote Dry, one of the most impressive humor memoirs I've ever read. That book is by far better than anything I've read by Sedaris. But it's the only thinkg I've ever read by Burroughs that impressed me. Running With Scissors is more notable for its shocking subject matter than Burrough's literary prowress. This will be the second book I've ever returned to a store for being unreadable. The first book I ever returned was 2.) Nikki Giovanni's Acolytes, quite possibly the worst book of poetry I've ever read by someone who wasn't a dying toddler. Giovanni was the first famous poet I ever met, and Those Who Ride The Night Winds and Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day were hugely influential for me, even though I didn't read them until nearly two decades after they were written. While I don't ever expect deep metaphor or gorgeous imagery in Giovanni's work, she usually has a flair for making plain language poetic. Acolytes was an assemblage of bad writing exercises an unscrupulous publisher got a hold of and demanded be printed. There was not a single good line in the whole collection, and as she followed it up with her Virginia Tech poem "We are sad today", I fear that she's just become this senile old has-been willing to print every thought that ever passes her mind. Most of the books on this list are disappointing to me, because they're by authors I have loved, but they have made a major major misstep. Not just Bill Cosby Leonard Part Six bad, but fundamentally awful, like anything Nicholas Cage has been in since Faceoff. When I was in high school, I read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried for school, and three days after I finished, my great uncle's remains were found in Vietnam, and we flew down to DC for a burial service. So, yes, the book hit me at the right time. But I still love the way O'Brien weaved the stories in that book. So I was thrilled when, a year later, he was to speak at my college about his new book 3.In The Lake Of The Woods. The premise was simple. The technique in the first six chapters intrigued me. I don't remember exactly the order (and wouldn't dare pick it up again), but one chapter would be straight up narration, the next would be snippets of conversations, and another would be newsclippings about the murder. But, after, a while, I got the nasty feeling that the book wasn't actually going to go anywhere. That it would just be the same info over and over. So when my mom asked to borrow it, I let her. She returned it a week later, annoyed that the murder was never resolved, and that the last half of the book contained no new information. She was more annoyed when I told her I had let her borrow it solely because I wanted to know the ending without having to read through all of it. I did end up going to his speech at my school, and was relieved that he spent most of it talking about his experiences, and his older work. It gave me the imporession that it wasn't the work he was most proud of, either. Of course, they did make a movie about it. One of the most recent books I've been disappointed by was not awful, so much as awfully overrated: 4. Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao. It's another book that suffers from over-stylization. Several people recommended it to me because it had lots of comic book references. And, while there were parts of the book I found really engaging, the whole post-modern foot-noted media infused narrative by the main character was a chore to read. I know enough about Galactus that I didn't have to read the footnotes, but I did. They added nothing. And the comic book references were unnecessary and kept taking me out of the story. In fact, the only parts of the novel that I enjoyed were the parts told from the sister's perspective. The fact that the more classic narrative voice story about the Latino woman with the overbearing mother was more relatable to me than the outcast comic book nerd with love problems says horrible things about Diaz's reliability as a writer. The fact that the book won a Pulitzer frightens me. Just because something is densely written and researched (sort of) doesn't mean it's good. Even if it's about The Minority Experience. I say, again, if you can't make me interested in reading about a comic book reading outcast with love problems, then you have failed as a writer. I'm sure there are other books that have disappointed me. But, honestly, most books that don't engage me within ten pages are put down. I'm not a believer in the philosophy that good literature hurts to read. I don't care how good the ending is, if the first seven hundred pages suck, I'm not reading it. The only book that I ever really enjoyed at the beginning that really put me off the further I got into it was 5. Dave Eggers's A Heartbraking Work Of Staggering Genius. His foreword and afterwords are lyrically written and fluid. While the actual memoir is dry, and really amounts to "I got famous. Want to hear about how difficult it was to buy a new house when I was taking care of my little brother?" Well, sadly, the answer was yes at the beginning. The man led an interesting life, and he's a very talented writer. Unfortunately, he was unable to write about his interesting life in an interesting manner. If you have the gift of lyric prose, use it as often as you can. It's why I love what I've read by Salmon Rushdie. Whenever his stories start to drift out the plot, he'll thrown in some phrase or image that will grab me by the eyelash and pull me along until the next one. He can even make dialect interesting. And one style of writing, I really abhor is dialect focused narration. I was introduced to 6. At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill by J*Me's spoken word poem based on it. And the story sounds beautiful. And people whose opinions I respect, say that it's a structurally sound, heartbreaking book. Unfortunately, it's written in dialect. And while I respect the honesty of dialog being written in dialect, I am extremely put off by narration (or, for that matter, poetry) written in any form of dialect, whether it be the "I iz coo, u is foo" horrendously bad "Black" dialect used by slam poets who don't talk that way in conversation (and also, Prince); "the like oh my god sparkleswoon hairflip Timberlake" of "Gay" dialect; n-e + |-|!l\lg 1337; or the accurate, but frustrating to read, Scottish dialect of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. I believe reading should be something to enjoy, not a task. At Swim just seemed like a school assignment. Don't misunderstand, I enjoy things that challenge. House Of Leaves by Mark Danielewski was not The Dick And Jane reader, but was a great story that happened to be stylized, not a stylized piece of writing that happened to be a story. His follow up, 7. Only Revolutions was, unfortunately the latter. That was a case of me buying a piece of fiction by an author whose previous work I loved, the moment I saw it on shelves. Because I HAD to be supportive. Among today's purchases was Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which I've not yet read, and really hope won't end up on an updated version of this list. because life is too sullen recently, and horrid line break choices amuse me), and no graphic novels, a book caught my eye that I thought we be so awful, I had to read it. A group of poets were discussing ways to be on the cutting edge of new fiction, when one of them came up with the idea of rewriting classics word for word, but inserting the word black into them, thus COMPLETELY changing the tone/perspective of the book. His original idea: Do Black Androids Dream of Electric Black Sheep.
So, Jim and I have been spending the evening coming up with other books that would be forever change by the addition of that one word: Mein Black Kampf Their Black Eyes Were Watching God Something Wicked Black This Way Comes Skinny Black Legs And All Even Black Cowgirls Get The Blues Little Black Women The Black Things The Carried The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Black Galaxy So Long, And Thanks For All The Black Fish I Know Why The Black Caged Bird Sings Heart Of Darkness The Autobiography of Black Malcolm X Dreams Of My Black Father To Kill A Black Mockingbird A Series Of Unfortunate Black Events I Did It Black : OJ Confesses The Jungle Book Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Black Secrets Harry Potter And The Half Blood Black Prince Men Are From Mars, Black Women Are From Venus His Dark Materials The Illustrated Black Man The Five Black People You Meet In Heaven The Black Great Gatsby The Complete Black Idiot's Guide To Slam Poetry The Dark Tower Uncle Tom's Black Cabin A Black Child's Christmas In Wales Yes, Virginia, There Is A Black Santa Claus Come On Black People: On The Path From Victims To Victors A Black American Werewolf In London Twelve Angry Black Men The Black Communist Manifesto Black On The Road Lord Of the Black Flies Black Beauty The Black Cat In The Hat Choose Your Own Black Adventure Are You There Black God, It's Me Margaret Black Like Me While some of these titles are just amusing, I think some of these books would be very, very interesting. In particular, I'd like to see a scottwoods poem called "Do Black Androids Dream Of Electric Black Sheep?" I mean, I haven't heard a bad Scott Woods poem yet (which doesn't mean they're not out there, just that he, wisely, only shares the good ones more than once), and think he'd come up with something pretty amazing with this title. edited/added from lj users' comments: Moby Black Dick Black Generation X Hope For The Black Flowers Lady Chatterley's Black Lover The Black Bible The Good Black Earth A Black People's History Of The United States Chicago Manual Of Black Style Yesterday, I received an e-mail requesting that I be a part of one of the nationwide rallies to let the world know how upset we are that Americans were open-minded enough to elect a partially African-American president, but not open-minded enough to let gay people marry. While I would certainly love to support the event, I have to work.
Upon learning that I was skipping the event to sell comics, I received an e-mail from Well-Dressed Steve, calling me out for being a bad homo (it should be pointed out that Well-Dressed Steve, though a very dapper dresser, is 100% non-cock sucker): Pshaw! If California had voted to outlaw comic book stores, I'll bet you the gays would have come to the rally to support you. Fairweather friend. Gay people rarely support comic books, literature in general, their friends getting married, and me. Granted, the same goes for straight people. Having worked in seven different comic book stores (all part of the same chain) for the last year and a halfish, I can tell you, there aren't a lot of gay comic book readers in New England. And I know why. There are very few gay male characters in comic books. Plenty of lesbians, and bisexual women (even if you don't count porno comics), but, with the exception of yaoi, not a lot of gay men. I don't read yaoi. It's mostly two-dimensional, black-and-white cheesefests about older men "mentoring" then seducing and fucking younger men. And, being Japanese, these stories often involve giant squids, sentient vibrators, and thirty-seven kilometer cocks. Why would I want to read such drivel? I mean, I already live this kind of drivel. Mainstream American comics, however, don't have a lot of gay characters. In the Marvel Universe (the one I obsessively read/collect) the few gay characters are all drama, no plot. Northstar, a member of the little read/respected Canadian super team, Alpha Flight, infamously came out in issue 106 (1992) while rescuing an HIV positive baby, which may sound like a good story, but it wasn't. Ultimate Colossus's coming out was handled a little better. As opposed to Northstar's homosexuality coming out of left-field, there were many hints an innuendos in the sixty-four issued before he decloseted. I won't even mention the fact that two of the three male gay teens in the Marvel Universe were originally named Anole (hasn't changed), and Assgardian (renamed Wiccan) {I've got no beef with Hulkling as a name). Now, there are some specifically gay, all-gay, oh-so-gay comics out there. The problem is, I haven't found any that I've liked. Someone recommended Stuck Rubber Baby to me about a year ago, and I picked it up, and just didn't care. I find it really difficult to get into biopic comics, unless they're really well-written, like Maus and Persepolis. Which got me thinking that I only really like biopics about people surviving genocide. Two weeks ago, I was reading Dave Eggers's non-comic novel, What Is The What, as well as a new anthology of illustrated journals of real-life refugees (mixed in with a few fictional ones) called I Live Here. I was getting incredibly depressed, and not just because of the quality of Eggers's writing. Too. Much. Suffering. Luckily, right next to I Live Here on the new arrival shelf was Bottoms In Love, an anthology of gay comics by gay writers. Man, that comic needed more genocide. The art was cool, but the writing was hideous. Awful. Bad. Gay. Like the books you find in the LGBTA secton of Borders. Too trite for the literature shelf. If I want to see vapid, shallow, attractive men whining about how hard it is to find another vapid, shallow, attractive man, or how hard it is to be faithful to their vapid, shallow, attractive boyfriends, I'll get a gym membership. Stay the hell out of my comic books. Ummm...way sidetracked. What I meant to say was Penguin Lust. So, I don't see gay people flocking to my rescue, should they vote to ban comic book stores. But being gay hasn't been banned either, just gays being married. And while I certainly support gay marriage rights (and gay divorce rights), and while I have already petitioned the IRS to remove the Church Of Latter Day Saints from their religious exemption status, since those M-holes have spent 14 million dollars influencing the government, ignoring the whole "separation of church and state" thing, which reminds me that hey, marriage is a religious institution, anyway, why is the government involved to begin with? Ahem, Penguin Lust. I will, unfortunately, not be present at any of the rallies this Saturday. But Asterisk will be one of the speakers at the Boston rally. And, I suspect, Ben will be speaking in Northhampton. These are just two of the rallies taking place in Massachusetts. I would now like to devolve myself to toilet humor, and let you know that one of the other MA rallies is taking place at *giggle* The Old *snerk* Creamery in *snort* Cummington, MA. Thanks to Well-Dressed Steve for the heads up on that one. 1. The Nightly News by Jonathan Hickman. The story starts with a group of snipers at a WTO protest. One of them wings a protester, and the media descends. That's when they start killing reporters. This has been my favorite graphic novel for a few months now. Hickman does both the art, and the story, and it works flawlessly. It includes a number of sidebars that you can choose whether or not to read. I was most excited by a list of media controversy. He takes to task writers like Jayson Blair, but points out that you just can't hate on Patricia Smith. Amen, Hickman.
2. Maus by Art Spiegelman. The only graphic novel to ever win The Pulitzer. It's the story of an artist whose parents were put in concentration camps during World War Two. Part Holocaust memoir, part story of a father's relationship with a son, it's an amazing story. 3. Daredevil: Parts Of A Hole by Dave Mack, artwork by Joe Quesada. I'm not a huge Daredevil fan. Dave Mack is not my favorite writer. I would probably punch Joe Quesada in the face for his editorial decisions over the last ten years. But, damn, this is a great title. It's mostly the way the art and the words emerge from the page. Not your standard panels, and right to left reading. The art also takes the cliche off of the Blind Man opens the eyes of a Deaf Woman, who opens his ears idea. It was good enough that I went back and read the preceding volume by Kevin Smith (Guardian Devil), which is nearly as good. 4. Invincible The entire series by Robert Kirkman, art by Ryan Ottley. Imagine if Superman were written by one person, and just had one continual story, not a jillion different appearances in six different titles every month. A Superman whose history you could follow from beginning to end. That's what Invincible is. A teenager finds out he is a superhero, and his father, who's viewed as a superhero by the entire world, is actually bent on destroying the planet. The first trade "Family Matters" is a bit slow, but after that, every volume is amazing. 5. Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 Story & art by David Petersen. Cute little mice can also be bloodthirsty tyrants, double crossing bodyguards, and noble adventurers. The art is amazing, the story is consistently good. 6. Origin by Bill Jemas, Paul Jenkins, and Joe Quesada. Marvel's "Greatest Story never Told": the origin of Wolverine. While I find most Wolverine titles poorly written, or confusing, this one is well-crafted. Told from the perspective of a young girl who befriends a little wussy boy names James Howlett, who, upon seeing his father's death, watches bones grow out of his hands. It's not an automatic kid gets powers becomes badass, the layers of suppression, and fierce will, make the character much more than the two-dimensional fighter he's often depicted as in X-Men comics. 7. The Walking Dead, another Robert Kirkman title (this one with art by Tony Moore). This is the story of a world overrun with zombies. But, instead of focusing on the zombies as villains, it focuses on interpersonal relationships, and what happens to American Society in a post-apocalyptic world. With zombies. But, really, the zombies are just window dressing, as in most stories, the most evil characters are the humans. 8. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Covers by David McKean, art by a bunch of people. This is the story that got me back into reading comics/graphic novels. It's mythical, it's adventure, it's moral, it's funny, it's just entertaining. There are eleven volumes under The Sandman Title, two Death books, one book about Destiny, a couple of one-off spin-offs, and a whole related series by Mike Carey called Lucifer, which follows the devil after he gives the keys to Hell to The Sandman. 9. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. Three stories that start out being unrelated, but you know will be woven into each other by the end. A young boy of Chinese descent has to deal with his horrible stereotype of a cousin; the mischievous monkey king grows tired of being the laughing stock of the gods, and must be dealt with; and a boy of Chinese descent tries to fit in in an American school, while interacting with a FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) new student. I had a pretty good idea of how they would be drawn together at the end. I was wrong. 10. Bone by Jeff Smith. Three creatures from Boneville end up in a forest with Stupid Rat Creatures, dragons, and humans. Kid-friendly, and just generally awesome. Also check out his Shazam! and The Monster Society Of Evil Other recommendations: The Maxx by Sam Kieth Plastic Man: On The Lam by Kyle Baker Thirty Days Of Night by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith Regifters by Mike Carey Y The Last Man by Brian K Vaughn Fables by Bill Willingham Hellboy by Mike Mignola Avengers Disassembled by Brian Michael Bendis Astro City by Kurt Busiek. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born by Stephen King/Peter David Titles that other people swear by that I cant get into: Goodbye Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson anything by Alan Moore Preacher by Garth Ennis The Death of Superman (really? it's so boring) Powers by Brian Michael Bendis Current comics not enough people are reading: The Sword by The Luna Brothers Pax Romana by Jonathan Hickman Omega The Unknown by Jonathan Lethern and Farel Dalrymple Echo by Terry Moore X-Factor by Peter David The Dark Tower: The Long Way Home Stephen King/Peter David Yesterday, there was a fairly large comicon in Boston. Lots of artists with tables, lots of businesses with tables, including the stores I work for. I was on my way there when I realized I didn't have my admit free ticket, so I decided to wait around one of our stores until it opened, and pick up a spare ticket. While I waited, I perused the used bookstore down the street, and found $50 worth of used graphic novels that 1.) I wanted and 2.) were out of print. $50 being the amount I had set aside to buy trades at the comicon. I was relieved to discover, when I got to the con, that they had nothing I wanted.
As I flipped through a bunch of diffferent New Mutant/Academy X titles to remember continuity, I noticed for the first time something completely horrible. As a lover of obscure puns, a lizard owner, and a gay man who likes asses, how did I not notice that the the green gay mutant's name is Anole. And what sick bastard named him? It's summery, and the geese are honking in the park. I am in a park. It's summery and I'm outdoors in the morning, and I swear this time, mom, I'm not even close to homeless.
The geese are honking, not at me, but at each other. Mating and flying and hissing and swimming and eating the plant life in this unswimmable water. These black capped, white chin-strapped loud beaks breaking the silence of a Tuesday morning bagel. They will not get the bagel. I remember being three or four, sitting on the pondfront in front of my cousins' house in Atasmansit, with various members of my mother's side of the family. There was a family of geese that owned their quarter of Lawrence Pond. We called the alpha female, Big Hiss, because she was big. And hissy. I remember feeding her bits of bagel, and turning to my Aunt Maggie, a laughful Canadian woman with fluffy black hair and a ten mile smile. "Canadian geese are funny." I said. She crossed her arms. "They aren't Canadian geese, Adam, they're Canada Geese." Now I understand why they honk and hiss so much. These beautiful vegetarians named for a country that refuses to claim them. The nation that births them, but does not allow them to call their birthplace home. I get it. When the article in the paper announced my upcoming show, I was disheartened to see that they'd labeled me a Gay Poet. Sure, I've been sleeping predominantly with men for the last decade or so, but more often I've been sleeping alone, and nobody labels me an Asexual Poet. I'm not sure why the Gay distinction makes me any angrier than the poetry distinction. After all, I've been writing more prose than poetry these days. I suppose I'm more forgiving of the poet because I'm doing the show to perform poetry. I'm not going there to recruit gays, pick up guys, or pass along any agenda associated with who I sleep with. Will I be reading some poems about men I've slept with? Probably. But I'll also be reading some surrealist shit, and some a bunch of persona poems. I'd probably be just as angry if I'd been listed as a Surrealist Poet or a Persona Poet, because, while they're things I do write about, I rarely fill a set with them. Still, the whole being a Gay Poet thing annoys me. Not just because I don't often identify with the Stereotype Gay Poets. Those who only write about being Gay. Those who go out of their way to be self-parody or walking political campaigns. When I think of my favorite poets who are gay, I don't think of them as gay poets. Who gives an unfuck who Daphne Gottleib sleeps with? Justin Chin? What part of Morris Stegosaurus's "Clockwork" is enhanced by the fact that he's a gay babyfur? And what does giving the occasional blowjob have to do with Buddy Wakefield's "Pretend"? I'm getting ranty. And Rant Poet isn't a title anyone should be reaching for, so I'll just fold this little article up into my poetry scrapbook, pick up the copy of Blues For All The Changes, that I hope will get me to remember what it was about Nikki Giovanni that made me love her work, and start reading again. I'll try and relax while the joggers and dog walkers dance around me to the beat of the geese, who skim the water in front of me, honking "Fuck Canada" over and over again in their beautifully raspy voices. I have spent an absurd amount of time and money into comic books this year. Between various Marvel X-titles and Vertigo series like Fables and Lucifer, I have two shelves full of graphic novels.
Yesterday, in the Allston store, where I'm prone to hanging out with the employees being bitter and judgmental, I had a bit of an OCD attack. Their trade shelves were...frighteningly out of shape, and messy. So, I did what any normal lunatic would do, I spent four hours fixing them. Realphabetized, restacked, removed doubles. It was totally an A Beautiful Mind moment...err...series of moments. So I now have a job at New England Comics. I'll be delivering comics from the warehouse to the Boston area stores (Allston, Brighton, Cambridge, and Quincy), as well as floating between stores when they need me. It's a minimum three day a week job, and it will no way interfere with my getting drunk while waiting tables/bartending job at The Cantab. This makes me happy. And less broke. We Are Virginia Tech
It hurts me that Nikki has become poetry's answer to Elton John, who ran right out after Princess Di died and put out a rewritten tripe version of "Candle in the Wind." "We Are Virginia Tech" hurts me. Not because it's a sad account of a tragedy, but because it's terrible. It reeks of all the slam poets who run right out after every hurricane, tsunami, school shooting, earthquake, etc., and write vapid, impersonal diatribes filled with cliches but not a single metaphor or answer. Transcript of the poem (hold your nose): we are Virginia Tech...we are sad today...and we will be sad for quite a while...we are not moving on...we are embracing our mourning we are Virginia Tech...we are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly...we are brave enough to bend to cry...and sad enough to know we must laugh again we are Virginia Tech...we do not understand this tragedy...we know we did nothing to deserve it...but neither does the child in Africa dying of AIDS...neither do the invisible children walking the night awake to avoid being captured by a rogue army...neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory...neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water...neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands...being run over by a boulder because the land was destablized...no one deserves a tragedy we are Virginia Tech...the Hokie nation reached out and embraces with open hearts and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds...we are strong...and brave...and innocent...and unafraid...we are better than we think...and not quite what we want to be...we are alive to the imagination and possibility..we will continue to invent the future...through our blood and tears...through all this sadness we are the Hokies...we will prevail...we will prevail...we will prevail...we are Virginia Tech There is not one moving thing in this entire wet fart of a poem. Not a word of the professor who put his body between the gunman and the students, not a line for the woman whose quick thinking and barricades saved the lives of all the students in room 105, not a metaphor, not a thought for WHY neither VT students nor the elephant or the Mexican child don't deserve to die; just a list of other things that are sad, like Virginia Tech is sad. I know it's sad because Nikki told me it was sad. She is sad today. I acknowledge that the community at VT need something to rally behind. That they have undergone a monumental tragedy. That it must sting to hear that cow, Diane Sawyer who said (and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have a transcript, and can't find one online) that the students went to college to learn, and on Monday they learned an important lesson of sadness. I know they needed something to give hope. If this poem were written by a student, a novice, anyone who was not heralded as a "prolific poet" with multiple legitimate books published, I'd understand. A tearful cheerleader. One of the students who watched his friends murdered. A dean of student life. The president of the college. These were sentiments that the community needed. They are not a poem. Tonight, Patricia Smith (pswordwoman) will be reading at The Cantab. She is also a much published author. She is also a strong voice who writes about tragedy and hope. Unlike Giovanni, though, she takes time to actually work her way into the personal side of tragedy. I've never heard her say she is sad, or that pain hurts, but I've felt it between her words. Her new book about Hurricane Katrina would make Bush & Michael Brown cry...both Michael Browns (Patricia's ex-husnabd and the FEMA fucker both have the same name). I'm sure she'll have some thoughts on the VT tragedy. They'll be insightful, and moving. I wish Nikki Giovanni could be there to hear what a real poet sounds like. |
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