James Gendron's Sexual Boat (Sex Boats) is one of my favorite random purchases. I was at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference when I ran into Anis Mojgani, and asked him to recommend some small presses. He pointed me in the direction of Octopus Books, and I think I ended up dropping about $100 and loving most of the books I picked up from them. Sexual Boat (Sex Boats), in particular was a joy. I picked it for the unusual name, and that it appeared to be filled with several one page poems with unusual grammar. I loved it more than I understood it. So, in many ways, it was like the book and I had dated for several years. The title of this blog post is from an interview with James Gendron where he talks about his writing process and comes off more quirky than pompous, which is pretty rare in poets. The title of the poem is just a rewriting of the title of several of his poems (and his book). I tried to write it in an echo of his voice, as opposed to copying his voice. Then I had the word "echo" in my head, and I had to use it in the first line. Intimate Dinghy (Affable Gondola)
Adam Stone A stranger's name is a cave without echo that I have grown too fat to fit into When someone is familiar but in the wrong venue for me to recognize them I try to climb head first into their name but always get caught at the shoulders Hello and head nod is my nickname for my impending what's it called not amnesia when you have too many memories that you can't see the ocean for the salt oh yes Alzheimer's In middle school I outremembered all my friends and relatives perhaps because there were so few of them My imagination was feral but my memory was a squirrel raised by a golden retriever I still remember all of the answers to the trivial pursuit cards of my childhood but modern adult names are you know yea
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The title of this poem is taken from a Jennifer Knox poem, "And Then There Is California", whose title is taken from a line from Edward Albee. Sudden Color In A Blinding Field Of Beige
Adam Stone All of the solar system is talking about how Pluto got fat after science broke up with him via text There is a whole Reddit thread about his failed Kickstarter campaign to get reinstated in the group Neptune has always been closest to him but instead of supporting him through his awkward Goth stage Neptune started a Youtube Channel featuring the audio of all the sad voicemails he refused to return Saturn starts showing his texts around to any planet it runs into Mopey Pluto with the mix tape eyes always furthest from the sun humming the bassline to unnecessary apologies Everyone crayons him death star gray or sedan beige in their star charts But Pluto wears a brown leather coat marbles his face in photographs Pluto is photogenic now that he's over us glitter eyeshadow somehow subtle streaks in his hair that the sun can't take credit for Being abandoned by us miserable orbiters brings out the heart in his chest the caps on his elbows the freckles on his fuckless brow Poem inspired by Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" from The Panther & The Lash. This is wholesale thievery from the original poem. Same structure (though I added a couplet), same rhyme scheme and similar language. Here's the original. Rainbow Flag, Half Mast
Adam Stone What happens to a massacre replaced by a constantly tragic news cycle? Does it get washed away like blame in a hurricaned city? Or dry up like a well of unsupervised pity? Do its victims finally find peace with their names role called on a press release? Does it get filed as notes for the survivors' therapists when the media changes the word homophobe to terrorist? Maybe it just frays like a rainbow flag made of cotton until it's just another mass shooting forgotten Justin finally tracked down a copy of Langston Hughes's The Panther & The Lash, (take that public library!) and has his second interaction, this time with the actual text. My Privilege Has Nothing To Say But It Will Speak Anyway
Justin Strock My privilege has nothing to say, but it will speak anyway - it's wont and whatnot My privilege has nothing to say, but its ignorance does My choice of your text, based solely on lyrics by rapper turned actor In the grand tradition of fake gangstas playing faker detectives The real crime of their acting, unsolved reparations of vaudeville My privilege has nothing to say about the way your verse seems plain Stark as if the anger in your soul Stripped adjectives allusions like acetone the varnish coming off in patches The hues removed from pale wood not lost on me I have (and yes I am looking for your mocking approval) Marched in traffic spewed forth on social media Stood up against admittedly uncomfortable abercronies to defend a muslim kid at prayer A marine at my side Mecca's position shifting parallel to the view of huddled masses' avatar I consume mindfulcinos daily to stay woke Can I get a gold-star back-pat cookie now? My privilege has nothing to say about gentrification Except that I have an excuse for moving to Bed Stuy about how little has changed Since Leontyne belted out of darkness My privilege has grown weary of the echo in my skull First assumed as chorus Justin Strock had trouble finding a copy of The Panther & The Lash, which was the opposite of my problem. I accidentally bought the book twice but failed to science a copy into his hands. He persevered, though, and wrote an interaction about Not reading the book. Truly, he went above and beyond the expectations for this project. Oh, Langston.
How is it that your pantheon is not sold at The Strand, nor able to be retrieved (except in eBook format) - blech at the Central Brooklyn Public Library? it's ceilings vaulted, it's escalators slow, it's cafe and business center teeming: Hassids, West Indians, Hipsterati, the bored, and elderly and adolescently-afflicted. it's stacks sagging, not from the weight of books, but from their rapid obsolescence... What hath become of this once venerable seething city? Where may we still snap our applause unironically? Is this Nunu York now? This first section of the interaction was inspired by the epigraph from Sharon Olds's "Late Poem To My Father". It's also part of a series of poems inspired by a Nicole Homer prompt. The second portion is just my response to how I read this book at eighteen, and how I read this book at thirty-nine. Ten Meals I Don't Remember Eating #10: February 16th, 2016, Cambridge, Massachusetts When I love you now, I like to think I am giving my love directly to that boy in the fiery room, as if it could reach him in time. --- Sharon Olds, "Late Poem To My Father" You were never as eighteen as you were at thirty sitting on my bed in your room playing Kingdom Hearts pretending you didn't hear me knock on the door We had both ordered dinner at the same time from slightly different restaurants Yours arrived first but I had mistakenly answered the door and paid for your meal I knocked louder Not your cluelessly optimistic ex but a parent trying to respect the privacy of an unnecessarily belligerent teenager I had a speech memorized opening with a joke and ending with you moving out again I didn't speak to you for three weeks in case I accidentally recited it You smiled as you took your food into your room I paid for my dinner too sat on the floor in my room watching the door between us imagining I knew how to open it without disturbing you when i was eighteen and less metaphor i read the gold cell from cover to i can't anymore . laughed at the pope's penis and imagined i truly understood the solution . i loved how sharon olds viewed the world outside her own . but when her family came in . her father . her history . her impending children . i . i read them over and over . knowing that i was missing something . all of my love was current . all of my realizations were in other books . all of my love was things . all of my people were something missing .
when i was thirty-nine and prime time soap opera i read the gold cell from back to front . family to the outside world . how much simpler to start with the closeness i don't understand . end with the world i'm afraid to know This post was written by Valerie Loveland about her relationship with Sharon Olds's The Gold Cell. Visiting my Friend from College
Gold Cell I still don’t know what your title or your cover means. Gold Cell you are the first poetry book a friend loaned me and he regretted it. Gold Cell, I am sorry I roughed you up! Gold Cell, how is it possible that you weren’t published the day I was born? Gold Cell, I could only start sentences with Gold and could only end them with Cell. Gold Cell, why didn’t you tell me that men will pretend to like poetry to trick me into believing we could have a poetry life together? Gold Cell I went with them to an arcade and read you instead of playing video games. Gold Cell, I only wanted to talk about poetry my entire talking life. Gold Cell, I used you as a poetry diplomat. Gold Cell, you are thicker than I remember! Gold Cell you are a time machine a nostalgia machine a regret machine a poetry machine an embarrassment machine. Gold Cell, remember my uptight friend who accidentally chose the poem that sexualizes the states to read out loud in class? Gold Cell you name drop my favorite style of dresses to allow me see you even more clearly. Gold Cell, my friend recently told me she didn’t understand why people like you. I had to defend you and didn’t know how. Gold Cell you hide from me on my bookcase with your red cover because I was looking for a gold book. Gold Cell you were such a companion I started calling you Goldie. Goldie you are back in my backpack and I am 19 again and we are both boy crazy. Goldie, I wrote you are back in my backpack but I keep writing “where you belong” and then keep erasing “where you belong.” You first see The Gold Cell through binoculars and press clippings. On the longest day of the year, a man is talked down from the roof of a building by concerned police officers. A woman confronts her own racism on a New York city subway. Paramedics save an abandoned baby. A man has a conjoined twin. A young girl survives rape but her friend does not. The stories are told as facts. No need for melodrama. The truth of the events is enough blood.
"Outside The Operating Room Of The Sex Change Doctor" is sweet mango candy with a jalapeno center. It begins a trio of poems that I use in workshops and classes. "The Solution" which snakes around Sharon's (I don't know if it's ok to call her Sharon yet. There's still a distance here. Like she is someone you're standing in line at the post office, and you're both afraid it might close before you can send out your really important documents, and she just made a very funny joke, but you don't know if she made the joke for you or if you just happen to be standing near her while she makes the joke to herself.) "The Solution" snakes around Ms. Olds's projection for how to fix "the singles problem". (Is being single a problem? is not the address on the envelope she's affixing stamps to. It's for the people who want. It's for people who want to be wanted. It's for people who want in very specific ways that 1987 didn't know how to handle with their lack of Craigslist and farmer-themed dating websites.) "The Solution" snakes around Ms. Olds's view of American sex, and it plops us at the feet of her next poem "The Pope's Penis" where she grants...ahem...a weight to what's inside the Vatican leader's robes. She closes the first section with open arms, watching imaginary mother and imaginary daughter in bliss. This is the section I use in workshops and classes because sometimes a poet doesn't need to memoir and "I" to make poetry seem personal. Section 2 is her childhood. Her parents. Her how-do-I-forgive-the-loving-monsters-who-raised-me parents. She begins the section with "I Go Back To May, 1937" where she debates keeping her parents from falling in love so that they won't hurt each other. Then Polaroids of what was. Being held over a laundry chute to fix wires. Lies about presents. Driving up steep hills. Her mother's diet. All these innocent sounding things make for poems rooted with grief and regret but mostly love. (And now she is definitely Sharon, not Ms. Olds. You envy her forgiveness now. You wouldn't dare reassure her things will be alright, because you know that she understands more than you are capable of understanding. You would take back every negative thought you've had about your family except that her narrative is telling you no, you can forgive what you need to forgive, forget what you need to forget, but never feel your story isn't important. You feel that once Sharon is finished telling you about her parents, she will ask you about yours, and no matter the size of your fondness or grievances, she will listen and you will feel everything is...not right...not better...survivable...allowed.) In the third section Sharon leads us away from her past, into the garden of her first love, her first kiss, and her first sex before we arrive in her 1987 present. In "Premonition" she drives through a parking lot filled with children, terrified she will injure or kill one with her car. Then she drives her car into your sternum. She didn't turn on her blinkers. Her hard left against the red light leaves you sitting in your own car, terrified to move or not move. The final section introduces us to her children. She mentioned them in the third section but now we learn their names and watch them grow for a bit. Sharon is a thoughtful mother, but she also respects you. Each poem is a picture she takes out of her wallet to show you how she loves them. And, and this is unusual for doting parents, none of her photos look the same. It is not four headshots of a child dressed up and wearing identical forced smiles. Everything is candid. Everything shows she, and her children, and obviously everyone, is flawed. Love is flawed most of all. But worth it. You want to thank Sharon for talking to you. (Oh god, are we still snaking in a line at the post office? Is that sort of metaphor still happening? Because the window is closed and the lights are out. And you feel that maybe your letter wasn't important enough to mail, but you also feel that you already mailed it. Sharon gives you such conflicting feelings of accomplishment.) You want to thank Sharon for not talking down to you or thinking you needed her to explain her feelings. You want to thank her for leaving her thesaurus at home and just talking to you like a normal person. A person who maybe likes poetry or maybe likes interweaving flash fiction. You just want to thank her. |
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