emperor's-new-clothes kind of moment

I was forwarded this article, written by Mike Young for HTML GIANT, by a few different classmates, on the some of the most common moves by contemporary poets. I guess it has been circulating for quite a while and I've managed to inadvertently avoid it until now. Anyways, here are some analogies I've come up with that summarize my response to it:

It's like that being naked in front of your homeroom dream.

It's like someone has found the magician's handbook.

It's like that scene in I Heart Huckabees where Jude Law's character hears the recordings of himself telling the same joke over and over again. [Unfortunately, I could only find the clip in Italian. On second thought, perhaps it's a good thing. Jude Law's American accent is rubbish.]

But, really, I find it funny mostly. It is comforting to know no poet is that original. Also, some of the items on the list are just things that occur when we use language.

Regardless, it's a good thing to be aware of what we instinctively do, repeatedly. I don't think we're meant to take the article as being judgmental, just a little self-ridicule-y. I actually wrote a poem recently that operates almost entirely on items 1b and 30, but I'm sure in a large way fulfills many of the other items. See if you can identify more:

takebacks

it left my house
i mean it left my mouth
as if it were late
to an appointment and couldn’t
waste any time getting there.

i didn’t mean to say i love you.
i was meaning to say i hate you, instead
i showed you with my actions.

it’s called parapraxis—freudian
slip, colloquially—so
when i said good-bye, i meant please
don’t ever leave me.

i was alone in my mouth
and something was missing my lips.
i was alone in my bed
and i gave myself a paroxysm.

i looked at myself in the mirror
and then at a photo of you and saw
a parallel, i mean a parallax (it lacks
paratactic syntax; i also mean parallel
structure), what i mean,
succinctly, is that you were further
than i wanted you to be.

i wanted to be you
for at least the duration
of us fucking so i could make sure
it felt as you pretended. i mean
as i intended.

you left my house and my mouth
was full of snow. it was cold
and uncomfortable, and when
my tongue was fully numbed
i said i hate you instead of what i really meant,
spitting pretty snow flecks at your face.

I was also impressed and surprised by the variety of sources Mike Young used for his examples in the article. He called out some pretty big names, and curiously some of the lesser known, but emerging, contemporary poets. It points out that we're all in this together.

Since I brought up I Heart Huckabees, here's a scene I think is perfectly germane and we can all enjoy--in English!

year in review - less poppy portion

Top Five Independent-ish Films

PreciousThis film is special. It achieves in being uplifting, but more impressively, does so while not shying from the grittiness of reality or disneyifying itself. Precious is a coming of age story rooted in depicting the true-ness of a hard-knocked life through a neo-realistic lens. I have no doubt this fictional portrait of a life will become a valued cultural artifact that exposes our society's failures in education, parenting and government assistance; and exalts the triumph of spirit, love and superb acting.

(500) Days of SummerIf there is a formula for a good 'indy' movie, (500) Days of Summer is the proof. In mathematical terms, if there is a proof for a good 'indy' movie, (500) Days of Summer is the theorem. I don't not mean it pejoratively, but I sort of do, but it sort of doesn't mean this movie isn't very good. More soundly, this movie is very good. You will find yourself charmed (read: manipulated) by the actors, the writing, the facile cinematic choices and cheesy hope for the protagonist. There is very little hope for independent films these days, but at least there is hope for that guy.


A Single ManNot a perfect film, but beautiful effort. I mean beautiful in a purely aesthetic way. Had A Single Man succeed in being the intellectual art film it poses as, had it successfully emulated the sources it drew upon (Fellini, Hitchcock, Almodovar, even Woolf), perhaps we would have a masterpiece. As it is, it is a gorgeous, well-acted, well-shot, tasteful effort with poor writing. Scenes are undeniably edible.

September IssueThe ONLY documentary I liked this year.

Away We GoSam Mendes obviously let Dave Eggers being him over the head with his hipster stick, and we should be thankful. Elegant understated performances by young but seasoned comic talents navigate us through the film's heartful and (self-consciously) artful scenes. A good screenplay is still a good screenplay even when it comes from a annoyingly proficient source. Mendes has a talent for making great actors shimmer and decent actors blossom. Uber scheingarten.

Top Six Books (Fiction and Non-Fiction) That I re-/Read this Year

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan DidionI'm a boy who likes a good cry. I watch Grey's Anatomy and read elegies. I got what I bargained for with Didion's apogee. A virtuoso of personal essay, this book hemorrhages affect while it gropes, along with the reader, for solace.

Call me By Your Name by Andre AcimanI have yet to read another piece of literature that more accurately depicts the agony of desire. The blurb on the the back cover from Nicole Krauss articulates my sentiments more clearly:

If you are prepared to take a hard punch in your gut, and like brave, acute, elated, naked, brutal, tender, humane, and beautiful prose, then you've come to the right place. If you can't handle the violence of regret the novel will awaken in you, or the agony of remembering wanting someone more than you wanted anything in your life, or exquisite suffering that comes with the gain, and loss, of something that neared perfect understanding, then don't read this book. Ditto if you like your literature censored. Otherwise, open the cover and let Aciman pull the pin from the grenade.

This is your Brain on Music by Daniel J. LevitinThis book inaugurated my fascination with the brain. Scientific non-fiction at its best.

Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah LehrerYoung but assured scientific voice. This book gives hope to both science and art by acknowledging the imaginary boundaries that supposedly separate the two. Along with This is Your Brain on Music, this book privileges access, for the reader, to a field of study that under normal circumstances, one would need a PhD.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick FlynnEverything I like about creative non-fiction. There is poetry among the derelictness.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
There are times when you are confronted with such genius that you doubt your value as a participant in culture. There are times when you are slapped in the face by such insanely architectured fiction that you feel icky. There are plenty of other things to make you feel icky here, also.

Top Six Books of Poetry That I re-/Read this Year

Chronic by DA PowellLyrical, mature and eloquent. The book is current, located and honest. Haunting is also a word that fits; as well as, pretty, raw and romantic.

Wind in a Box by Terrance HayesThe book shifts from form to form, but consistently engages the notion of identity. There is a definite narrative of a life that anchors the book, however un-pinpointable that anchor is.

Fire to Fire by Mark DotyThese poems are dusted jewels. Each one tinged with deliberate caress. With deliberate shine.

Elegy on a Toy Piano by Dean YoungNo one does Dean Young like Dean Young does Dean Young. No book is more Dean Young than Elegy on a Toy Piano. Keen, whip-smart and whipping. There's pathos there too among all the shifts; in fact, the shifts activate it.

Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’HaraNew York School poetry at it's best. If I could let a book of poetry write my personal ad, I would choose this book.

The Father by Sharon Olds
There's an eerie erotic complexity that shapes our world and our relationship to it. Olds might be the best person at seeing this.

poem; or, truths about having a sister

that you cried at her wedding reception while you gave your toast the way good brothers are supposed to cry at their sister’s wedding. that you cried the way bad brothers who want to be better brothers cry at their sister’s wedding.

that you would have waited for your baby teeth to fall out on their own had she not knocked a few out during races in the backyard.

that you gave her a scar on her finger fighting over which one of you would cut the apple.

that you never think to thank her until she asks. that that’s what brothers do.

that you are a better writer because of her. that the way she ripped into your middle school essays which made you literally rip them up then rewrite them and hide the second, third and fourth drafts from her, but turn in the best middle school essay you have ever written. that she believes in you and that’s why.

that you were nested in the same womb, listening to the same heart beat for nine months, the same experience five years apart.

that you both have inherited nagging.

that she resembles your younger brother more than she does you.

that she is, too, a gemini, and when you get along you are the same person. when you do not it is the end of days.

that you share gray-area truths, like both hating and loving a father. possessing a fear your brother born in the states never knew. and straight out dark truths about ghosts and wars and suicide attempts and hating your bodies and vomit and the infidelity of parents and men who are flawed who are uncles whom you despise and the love that ferries you through it all.

that she has more handbags than you do. that she steals your clothes.

that when she wants you to be proud of her it takes you by surprise, because you seek her validation as if it is the sound of your mother’s heart beat. that her pride is a version of your mother’s beating heart.

that she wants you to write a poem about her. you’ve tried and there was this: the poems display her in a light that isn't flattering. that it doesn’t address what she really wants you to do, compliment her. but they show her importance to you. that they end up being about more. more than her. but because of her.

thanking in prose

At both of the dining tables to which I was privileged to have been invited this past Thanksgiving, toward the beginning of the meals, the usual suggestion was made of sharing for what each one of us was most thankful. Naturally, there was a collective grumble from the more pragmatic dinner guests. I too shrank away from participating in this activity, though not because I am resistant against such opportunities that serve as un-trafficked avenues for maudlin confessions that inevitably devolve into primetime-TV-esque saccharinities of friendship and love—quite the contrary, I welcome and enable them—but at the moment, I could only think about my recent job loss and, in turn, the confrontation with reality that is my failed adulthood. This hardly put me in the mood to entertain such holidayisms, so I diffused the activity at each dinner with my prudence and humor. I’m resolved to keep that act of diffusion vague to get into the meat, the reason for this blog post.


It wasn’t until later, a day later perhaps, that I realized that I was thankful for many things. My mother of course is one of them. What that poor woman has to put up with with me I can never gesture toward understanding. My friends and the network of support I’ve managed to fashion myself here in the Bay Area, however inconsistent the support seems to be. I am thankful for it. I am thankful that I attended Berkeley as it gets proven to me daily that the quality of my education there has put me ahead of a large percentage of the waking world, and that it is an asset that feels like a curse but is mostly an asset. I am thankful that I lost 30 pounds and managed to keep it off. I am thankful for modern medicine; more specifically, I am thankful for Propecia. I am even thankful that I am gay and that I am Asian and that I am brown. If I weren’t I don’t think I’d be as strong as a person, as eloquent, as educated, as fashionable, as tasteful, as cultured, or as special of a person. And I am thankful that there are enough politically driven people out there to fight for my rights so that I can focus on art, which brings me to a new thing this year, for which I am thankful, because I’m always thankful for these aforementioned things.


I am thankful to have poetry in my life. I am happy, and couldn’t be happier (the accuracy of this bromide deems it unavoidable), that I have decided to subscribe to a life of reading and writing poetry. I feel lucky to have fallen down the rabbit hole of this art form that most individuals only experience partially through the miscellany of audio and visual culture, or overtly and obsequiously at weddings and funerals, and that I get to—because I allow myself to—take it in in all of its awesome distillations. Even now, I am thinking in poetry.