i am alt lit

81.7 :: 'earth: missed connection' by kersey chase (chase kersey???), habitat 2k13

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:03:23 -0400

‘earth: missed connection’ by kersey chase (chase kersey???) // mammal habitat 2k13

81.7

(ed. note: some1 named ‘chase kersey’ occasionally contributes to this site; i’m not sure if kersey chase does. ‘chase kersey’ may or may not have anything to do w/ this review).

i think i got in some ‘argument’
last wk or the wk before last
on the ‘infamous’ ALG spread
w/ someone arguing that ‘image macros’ weren’t poetry

i haven’t gone all EBSCOhost on the problem yet
to find the ‘critical research’

but let’s think for a sec abt magazines & what they’ve been doing for
‘20 million+ years’
they include pics to help ‘enhance’ the article, ‘bring it to life’ etc
why this cant work for poetry idk
b/c even if the opposite is true, the image says ‘something different’ than the words,
that gets all up into ‘authorial intent’ vs. ‘reader response’

i’m not here to make any bold ‘proclamations’ on that argument 2day
just that kersey chase’s book (CHASE, NO KERSEY, WHAT IS YR NAME???)

((ed. note 1: feel like if chase/kersey were to respond right now he would respond w/ marlo’s classic MY NAME IS MY NAME)

just that kersey chase’s book takes the image macro and makes it into paper ((REPETITION))
the same slowly-morphing image allows the haikus to ‘speak’ for themselves
while also subtly letting us know that the page is changing, the page is aging, the words are changing, the world is changing

does this ‘date’ kersey chase’s e-book? as much as yr blog timestamp does, as much as the tech references (or lack thereof) of yr favorite old book, as much as anything else

would the words be ‘timeless’ on a blank sheet ???
yes, but then the reference payoff (watch for the million !!!!!) would not be as good

+, it helps that kersey chase chose a ‘classic’ format, the haiku
he nods to tradition, while shaking his head at it

+ the rhythm doubly aligns himself with the hip hop character the book is associated with

+ he builds up all of this ‘timely vs non-timely’ mess with just straight-up scientific breakdowns, adding another ‘dimension’ of what is fleeting vs. everlasting

it’s quite well-done, all these ‘layers’
the design and font is somewhat crude, idk if that’s a layout problem or what or intentional, that i’m guessing is probably good

let’s circle back to the beginning, b/c if the image macro is part of poetry, than that skill has to be as good
just as new words are being ‘added’ to our lexicon so are the new design ‘tools’
we can’t be well-versed in just reading, writing, we should be studying it all now
yes, this is harder for us creatives, but also potentially more ‘exciting’

i honestly didn’t think this chap would be this ‘thought provoking’
i honestly thought this chap was going to be #QS
i honestly though kersey chase may not ‘have’ it in him

this is good.

something in the 70s :: 'gesture magazine #4' by various

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:53:39 -0400

‘gesture magazine #4’ by various, edited by matthew sherling // gorilla press, 2k13

something in the 70s

(ed. ‘note’: matthew sherling contributes to this blog; he ‘may’ or ‘may have not’ written this; all reviews at ‘i am alt lit’ are anonymous unless otherwise noted)

Gesture is put out by Gorilla Press, which Matthew Sherling runs along with several other people

he also runs the interview/review site called Cutty Spot which everybody knows about, or at least they should

the introduction on the Gesture website says:

gesture started because there are so many writers in the world—on the internet and otherwise—and this magazine wants to present some of them. gesture doesn’t necessarily want a singular aesthetic, but it is drawn to work with immediacy, surprise, and the bizarre. gesture will tentatively release a new issue biannually or more, with an emphasis on young fresh writers.

I’m impressed that Lydia Davis and Phil Elverum and Ben Mirov and Cassandra Troyan have contributed to previous issues of Gesture

a lot of very well-respected writers have been published by Gesture

but there were even more writers who I didn’t know, people who are not necessarily part of the “alt lit” community

I feel psyched up and happy about this

there are some people who go to record stores (wats a record store) and feel the happiest when they leave with an armful of albums they haven’t heard before, because it’s a whole new crop of things to listen to and explore

I’m like that, and I suspect that Matthew feels the same way

I like Matthew a lot, he seems like a good person

he adds a lot to the “alt lit” community, I really appreciate all the work he does

the pieces in Gesture #4 are very short

short poems, flash fiction, two image macros

a lot of the writers seem to come from the MFA/academic world, although there are also some very well-known alt lit names in here like Steve Roggenbuck and Michael Inscoe

a good variety of people from different literary worlds, which I think is Gesture’s main strength

M.G. Martin – untitled

MG Martin is a poet who has been published in a lot of places, including >kill author, Nap, Pank, Red Lightblubs, and Everyday Genius

He has an ebook on Pangur Ban Party which I enjoyed

His poems are very anarchic and surreal

First two lines of this poem go:

Help! I am still alive and the rain is ugly with just one cat on the roof

I want to commit suicide by eating blacks diamonds & be perfect with my sister

I don’t know what all this ‘means’ but poetry doesn’t have to make ordinary sense, that’s why it’s awesome

His poetry has a cumulative effect on me, like when you’re around someone who’s really drunk and mumbling phrases and words that don’t completely connect

At the end of the night you can’t remember exactly what that person said but you get a sense that they were trying to communicate something intense, some big idea that’s all jumbled in their minds

M.G. Martin – & many other things too

In general this poem feels similar to the first, except I imagine this poem as somebody mumbling drunken things over the phone to an ex-girlfriend or a crush

I like this poem a little bit better than the first one

It sounds like this:

If you won’t hold me, gag me with your foot until I climax. You are a comfort: let’s climb inside a beehive & laugh at each other’s wounds. I will become a candle for you.

Steve Roggenbuck – PUT YOUR DEAD THINGS IN ME, I HAVE ROOM IN ME

Steve Roggenbuck probably needs no introduction

He’s a paradigm-changer, he’s moving poetry to a new place and helping it evolve to fit the digital era

This is one of his ‘darker’ poems, he made a video for it which feels slightly atypical and stands out from most of his videos

My favorite part is when he says:

i wil show up

in your home waterlogged and

dead with a panda costume on

and i will say

bleed into my little hands

this poem feels like a sad weird dream you would have

that’s set in an expensive spooky house

full of identical sisters and people in animal costumes

with random corpses on the floor

I think this poem plays into his satanic illuminati meme pretty well

it’s not one of my favorite poems by him, but it really does stand out to me as being a ‘different’ type of Roggenbuck poem, which makes it interesting to me

Daniel Alexander – sometimes

Daniel Alexander aka SNCKPCK is someone that most people reading this review will probably be very aware of

he is hella multi-talented and is funny and sweet

this poem is basically a list of things he’s thinks about ‘sometimes’

my favorite line is this:

sometimes I think about the water that runs down the shower drain and the journey it takes but I can never get past the sewer system in my mind

I’ve thought that too, seems funny now that I think about it

Anhvu Buchanan – POSSESSIONS

Anhvu Buchanan is a poet who has been published in many places and won many awards

Buchanan is a good ‘find’ for me, his poems are very beautiful and they make me feel dreamy and intangible

this poem seems to be about throwing away his ex’s things, getting rid of all traces of a person, everything they left behind

the last line is gorgeous:

Feel the hindsight tonight, blooming.

Susan Calvillo – inside every chicken there is a wishbone

Susan Calvillo doesn’t have a website that I can find, but if you google her name you can find several other things she’s published

this poems interests me because there are no line breaks or punctuation, but when you’re reading it it’s easy to tell where one thought begins and ends

in this poem she is missing someone who went away and never came back

there is a lot of details that make me think about an empty house, something that represents the a person’s absence

I like the ending:

a cactus cannot move its shadow any more than it can shake away its spines

Kati Mertz – METEOR SHOWER PARTY

If you google Kati Mertz’s name you can find a handful of poems she has published in various places, she’s also an editor at the literary mag Rubbertop Review

this line is good:

isn’t it funny

what you see when your eyes

stop asking for telescopes?

this seems like a love poem to me

I like the end part about the moon, it’s sweet

Kelly Schirmann – it’s weird

Kelly Schirmann is a poet who’s published in a lot of places like Metazen, have u seen my whale, Mud Luscious, and Illuminati Girl Gang

she’s also in a band with Sam Pink called Young Family

‘it’s weird’ is an image macro – I like her image macros, they are very distinctive and you can immediately tell that they are by her

this was a good opportunity for me to read more of her stuff, I think that you should go do that too

she has a lot of really cool stuff floating around the web

just gonna quote this whole thing, although of course you should see the whole thing for yourself, the pictures are very beautiful:

I’m going to / wear holes / in the knees / of myself / & you too / everyone has / this ability / to feel empathy / & keep secrets / it’s weird

Kelly Schirmann – too many rocks

a lot of Schirmann’s poems and image macros make me think about wilderness and wildness

does that make sense, probably not but

this one goes:

I peed in the cold water till my feet hurt / I shook my hair out like a dog / I believed in a nakedness / I lifted up too many rocks

Michael Inscoe – my parents dog was paralyzed a few days ago

Michael Inscoe is an alt lit hero, if you don’t know Michael Inscoe what the hell are you doing with your life

he runs the 6 star, legendary, very good lit mag ‘unsure if i will allow my beard to grow for much longer’

I really like his poetry, he’s very good

this line made me laugh out loud:

hello all beautiful women:

good job

his poetry is sad and funny in a unique way, I want to read a full book by him

he’s published two already but I don’t how the fuck to get ahold of them, aargh

Michael Inscoe if you’re reading this, hook me up please

shit, I just remembered this is supposed to be anonymous

Robert Vaughan – On Their Way Back Home

Robert Vaughan is a writer who’s been published in hundreds, literally hundreds of journals, he’s also published several books, the latest of which is called Microtones

he edits a sweet literary magazine called Lost in Thought and does tons of other literary stuff

this poem makes me think about when James Mason walks into the ocean at the end of A Star Is Born, do you know that movie

Robert Vaughan – Complacency

this poem is hard for me to understand, but I like some different lines

I feel bad that I don’t understand it, because it’s obviously a serious poem…it makes me think about getting older

a really good I like from it is:

Not another word to the mice whose ashen shit adorns our fry pan.

that is a fun thing to say out loud

Yume Kim – this philosophical argument is a waste of time

Yume Kim seems cool, I can’t find much about her online but I like this video of her reading, what she reads is funny

I like how she repeats the last part of the poem and rearranges its typography

Mat Cochran – i got sad and then i got drunk

couldn’t find anything about Mat Cochran online

I liked the line:

Every drug you

ever did will apologize

to your family

for you.

I wish that were true

Marcus Slease – Bashing Heads

Yessssss this poem is awesome, it’s about bashing heads

Marcus Slease is a poet who’s published 4 books, he’s got tons of stuff online that you can check out

this poem is good for a laugh but go investigate the rest of his stuff

he’s very good – when I have more time/money I’m planning on getting one of his books

even though this ‘review’ of Marcus Slease isn’t very long, I spent the most time reading him in preparation for this, he’s awesome

really good

Shali Nicholas – and/or/all

if you google Shali Nicholas’s name, you can find several things by her online

this poem is about being a little kid and hiding and snuggling inside things

do you remember when you were really small like that, so small you could fit almost anywhere 

this is what the ending sounds like:

all was whole and small

and fit the belly of the

kitchen sink or the curve

of my mother’s neck

and all was well.

Jesse Prado – Weird Lies

I know I’ve visited Jesse Prado’s website/tumblr several times, but I can’t find it

he’s a smart guy though, I wish I had more links to post up here

anyway he runs a literary journal with Patrick Trotti called “Thousand Shades of Gray”

I feel very affectionate about this piece, but it’s so small that it mostly just makes me want to read more stuff by Prado, I’d be interested in reading an ebook full of little pieces like this

James Claffy – nylon folds of oldness 

ditto about this being a very small piece that makes me interested to read more

if you like this, I’d suggest checking out his website, which has a bunch of these short flash fiction pieces

he definitely has a way with words, there are some very notable phrases and images that pop up in his writing

the piece is gesture is about an old woman who’s falling apart, I like this one

most of the people in alt lit are young and talk a lot about “young problems” but what about old problems, what about falling apart and dying

Dianna Dragonetti – There’s Something In the Water

Dianna Dragonetti is a poet with a lot of things online—here’s her website and here’s a couple poetry books she wrote.

This poem is about celebrities and all the dumb/disgusting things they do. It has a lot of pop culture references in it. I liked these two poems she published in Metazen a lot better, I don’t think this is the best poem she’s written.

Lexi Roberts – Compress Me So I Know It’s Real

Lexi Roberts seems cool, this is another good ‘find’ for me

she has written a lot of ebooks that I feel interested in checking out later, when I have more time

I think she has a good poetic imagination, she puts words together in interesting ways

this poem is okay, I like some of the stuff on her website a lot better though

I’m gonna be reading more of her later

Jaydyn DeWald – The Voyage Home

if you google Jaydyn DeWald, you can find some different stuff he’s published

I feel interested in reading more of his stuff, his poetry is kind of old-fashioned and purple but I take him seriously, I think he’s a serious poet

a lot of his poetry is very beautiful to read out loud, he has a very good ear for language

and I appreciate his stuff because it’s cerebral, you can think about his poems and study them

a lot of his poetry seems like ‘description poetry’ which some people will enjoy and some won’t

if you’re really into language and the pure beauty of words, I think you’ll dig Jaydyn DeWald

one line from his poem I really like is:

the charcoal shade of an olive tree

that creates a really interesting, clear image in my head, a lot of his poetry does that to me

TAKE AWAYS & BOTTOM LINES:

if you’re a writer—ESPECIALLY AN MFA WRITER—why not create a website so people can check out your writing? It’s not that hard to do. Also if you’re going to make a website, why make a shitty one? It’s not that hard to make a not-shitty website. All you need is something that’s user friendly with a bunch of relevant links, something that looks halfway decent.

writers I’m going to check back on and read more of:

Anhvu Buchanan

Kelly Schirmann

MICHAEL INSCOE, I WANT TO READ A BIG BOOK OF POEMS BY YOU PLEASE

Marcus Slease

Jesse Prado

Lexi Roberts

Jaydyn DeWald

Gesture 5 is out now, go read that

it’s got some really great stuff in it

also Gesture 1-4 has some very good stuff, you’re missing out if you haven’t read them yet

55.0 :: '#personal' by caleb bouchard

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:37:10 -0400

‘#personal’ by caleb bouchard // author created, 2k13

55.0

seems like an uneven score
seems like we’re ‘caught up’ in what it means to ‘fail’ & ‘succeed’
this is the end of the ‘school’ year, yeh
this is the end of formal education, yeh
but instead of the bipolarity of ‘failure/success’
let’s just think of it as a satisfying third way into the middle

//

like what am i ‘saying’ here?
it’s kinda uneven, yeh
dogeared a ‘whole’ bunch of pages
enjoyed some poems, did not others, that’s not groundbreaking, that’s everyday life
let’s go ‘deeper’

bouchard spins in pop culture fluidity
then tells the ‘normal’ alt lit experiences of random ‘adventures’
this is posetry
i like this however in “I can’t wait for the Jandek show”
   ”distortion fisting my laptop speakers.”
good use of “dis” then “fis” with “sp”
nice what is that … alliteration ???
idk idk

he talks about the places he goes to a lot—wal-mart, swayzes,
alt lit ppl go a lot of close-by places

bouchard is best with the ‘small moments’
like his one called ‘recall’
he laments a peanut butter ban and how he can’t fully enjoy an english muffin now, nice

“walking” is another poem about walking, turn the page

“fun” is next but instead of “walking” he is now “driving”, turn the page

the best part of the book are all the poems in the “#personal” series
these start on pg. 29
seems more ‘focused’ here
really like some of the repetition
like in “part 1”
   ”hey sorry i missed your call
   hey
   i think our barista is really into me
   heycouldyoupleaseturnthatdownhey”

finally he’s into the moments, rather than just repeating/ recalling the moments
stay in the moment caleb

#personal part 8 was good because of raking awesome metaphor abt dill pickle chips

i marked one poem as being “preachy”

my favorite was the “16 Dreams” in which caleb describes different dreams to very ‘comedic’ effect these were good, yeah

those are the moments i’m talkin abt, yeh
stay there with those dreams
with those dream moments
stay there with those dream moments

‘author

the I AM NOT ALT LIT e-chap now here, nice

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:35:33 -0400

deckfightpress:

‘selected image macros from i am not alt lit’

this is how ppl talk about ‘alt lit’ when they talk abt ‘alt lit’

from the blog I AM NOT ALT LIT

read it below or download it now

Selected Image Macros from I AM NOT ALT LIT

74.9 :: 'i am like october when i'm dead' by steve roggenbuck

Fri, 10 May 2013 11:12:35 -0400

‘i am like october when i am dead’ by steve roggenbuck // self-published, 2010; new edition 2k13

74.9

this book is exactly the width of my hand

it’s the height of my ‘pointer’ finger

its pages have no numbers

it’s printed v similarly to ‘crunk juice’ – just ~much smaller

he first published this book in 2010 & just recently reprinted it w ‘new poems’ in the back

although steve types in lower-case & doesn’t include apostrophes, this older work is more ‘tame’ in terms of taking ‘risks’ in form, aka no misspellings

but the ‘october’ poems are p great

characteristically roggenbuckian humor

irreverent

‘i dont care about reading a poem

who do you think i am, robert frost?

i have never been in the woods and i hate walking’

steve’s ‘speaker’ throws his ‘neighbor off a building’

‘he’ threatens to choke his nephew’s dad

the poems are ‘not unlike’ haikus

sometimes they are only two lines:

‘if you call me, I won’t answer

I am sitting under the moon inside of a wheelbarrow’

seems like no one talks abt how steve is a ‘skilled poet’

his newer work takes more formal ‘liberties’ & references more unashamedly things of the ‘internet world’, memes, pop culture

which i find for the most part exciting

in ‘october’ we see a roggenbuck at his most minimal, most ‘controlled’

imagine some ppl might not ‘get into’ some of the more ‘dry’ poems here

maybe i’m wrong

some ppl seem to not ‘engage’ w the open-endedness of ‘poetry’

the mere ‘suggestiveness’

& for this reason some ppl may not ‘prefer’ the ‘shaved down’ style here

however, throughout steve delivers his poems v ‘accessibly’

he seems concerned w that, always aware of an ‘audience’

he seems to write for ppl who wdn’t normally like ‘poetry’

in fact i think he has played an imp role in ‘popularizing’ poetry via his internet approach // writing style // humor // ‘posi’ msg

the ‘poems’ are set up essentially as jokes

w ‘punch’ lines

at some pts visceral, at some pt even ‘political’

‘the hymnal at my grandmothers funeral says ‘wives be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the lord’

his ‘new poems’ in the back are more ‘in yr face’, loud

the ‘speaker’ seems to have a heavy ‘preoccupation’ w birds & the ocean

these poems are also brief for the most part

sometimes we don’t know where one poem ends & another begins

each page is self-contained aka the reader can turn to any page & potentially engage w that page

the reader doesn’t rly need ‘context’

steve can sometimes pack whole ‘worlds’ into an extremely small space

‘i am lost in a gigantic park

i want you to be lost with me

unfortunately, I can’t give you directions here

because I am lost’

steve sometimes slips into his ‘juvenile’, ‘cute’ tone

but never w/o ‘spunk’

‘im rowing down your sexual mississippi river

im like

huck finn for you

im the sex version of huck finn

im like

mark twains sex toy’

feel like steve has been more ‘elusive’ in 2013

is it bc the absence of ‘illuminati power hour’ ? ? ?

is it bc he’s no longer ‘traveling the country’ ? ? ?

will steve be ‘boosting’ ppl till he dies ? ? ?

will he be making vlogs in his elderly days in his old pokemon hat ? ? ?

will he be tweeting back at ‘tweens’ then ? ? ?

35.0 :: 'the mall, issue 2' by various

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:00:38 -0400

‘the mall, issue 2’ by various // the mall, 2k13

35.0

robert fournier

seems v ‘surreal’

//

wondering if things had emitted particles before ‘now’/ what changed to make everything emit particles

‘good pile of dirt’ seems funny

felt a ‘futuristic’ vibe from robert’s work

interesting line breaks & capitalization choices

parts of this poem seem ‘tangible’ and others seem ‘intangible’ and like, only exist in my imagination

unsure i ‘get’ his ‘style’ but i guess poetry is essentially a ‘you do you’ type of thing

////

nathan keele springer

ok first macro is funny

it’s p visually ‘appealing’ and ‘geometric’ and ‘does shapes and colors’

there are also pictures mixed in

feel like they’re little ‘memories’ that the nathan has assigned certain ‘feelings’ and ‘experiences’ to but bc we (the reader, the person experiencing the macro) wasn’t present for the moment in which the picture was taken, we don’t know what those ‘feelings’ are, but they seem significant

lol

don’t like the second one so much purely based on ‘visuals’ but i like the line of poetry in it, seems ‘quirky’

//

bunny in the pool quickly saved his life…. he’s thanking the heavens that we created him just right

like, what is that, ‘nice’, i don’t get it, feels good to read, nice

//////

aly cat

basically i love aly cat

her image macro is v ‘specific’ and ‘humorous’ and ‘kind of sad’

the short story feels ‘sad’, ‘real’, ‘raw’ but put into terms that are easy to relate to

mishu please stop throwing up on aly’s rug

i like the way she details her unconventional relationships with people on the internet/her boyfriend/her cat

she plays with the theme of ‘innocence’ which feels incredibly powerful

the simplicity and beauty of certain sentences seem ‘striking’

seems like she is ‘sixteen’ and ‘killing it’

///////

chris holdaway

i enjoyed the line //’perfect shift of the cabbage tree in strong wind’

feels like theres a lot of ‘crazy ass shit’ going on in this poem

‘structurally’ this was a bit hard to read

seems almost difficult to read on purpose, don’t really get the point of that

//////

megan o’connor

nice, ‘right off the bat’ she ‘gets into it’

hard hitting stuff ladies & gentleman

very clever

feels like this poem is a culmination of unspoken feelings towards past lovers and i think it was really important for her to get it out

‘purging’ or o/s

feel like the amount of line breaks included were ‘unnecessary’ but w/e

i liked the line // where you flit your xanax tongue at me

thought ‘okay, swag’ re: reading ending lines

/////

penny goring

honestly i’m pretty confused by this one but maybe it’s just bc i’m ignorant to ~70 BC rome

i’m diggin the second person prose going on lately
reads like a set of instructions, i like it, ‘keep it up’ guys

i enjoy // Catches the moon. Room fills with light. // The valise is subtle in a dumb way, if that’s possible.

it’s short and i don’t know ‘what the eff’ is ‘going on’ but i like the feel it gives me

/////

bryce warnes

oh my GOD okay

again without the line breaks, seems unnecessary to have that many line breaks

feel like it would read just as well if not better than it does if there weren’t as many line breaks

HOWEVER, i laughed out loud ~3 times
i don’t normally laugh at things

there’s something so innocent about it, very blatant, ‘mirrors’ the innocence and naivety of growing up and not knowing how to conjugate french properly or how to give head

sad and empty tone, i like it
he’s not trying to do anything
i don’t feel like he’s ‘trying too hard’

just like, ‘heres some shit that happened and you can probably relate to this’

i enjoyed this one

//////

katie gallagher

first off i know this girl from twitter, i think i have a ‘girl crush’ on her
hi katie

wanted to acknowledge the bio, this seemed like a creative and uncommon bio and almost served as a poem itself
nice

the image macro is visually pretty nice, i enjoy the ‘repetition’
haven’t even read the poem but visually it invokes a ‘yes’ from me

read it, seems a bit like she was responding to a prompt you might receive from a high school english teacher’s aid

yeah, i don’t know
i liked that it was about clif bars, i didn’t realize it at first, reminded me of ‘martian poetry’ or whatever that shit is where the people from the 70s described ordinary things from a martian’s perspective

tbh it wasn’t that well written
i admire the creativity tho
also this seems like one of the only ones that actually fits the issue’s theme

///////

codi oliver

// (Hands folded in my lap, New Age psychic consultant voice)

i laughed, nice, good opening line

i feel like she is using a lot of ‘big words’ that may be unnecessary
and this is just a way for her to rant about her ‘views’ on certain aspects of ‘internet culture’
but that’s cool

trying a little too hard
but i don’t dislike it

i like that it’s a monologue

i like some of the points brought up bat ‘victimizing’ ‘young girls’ but tbh this is just way too damn hard to read bc of the unnecessarily complex language used to make the author seem more intelligent
i may be ‘totally out of whack here’ but that’s what i’m getting is going on here

seems like there are important things being said and a very important story being told but it’s just difficult to ‘get into it’

/////

wyatt sparks

really enjoyed //and for two years i used lower case i’s
because i hated myself that much
okay once again what the fuck is up with all you people and your fucking line breaks

also bc i am ‘that anal’ abt formatting it really took me out of the poetry to see ‘wyatt sparks mall submission’ in between every poem

i feel like not a lot of really important things were said
it was pleasant to read and i liked some of the unusual metaphors that were used but they sometimes felt ‘out of place’ bc the poems were so straight forward

v dreamy, a lil ‘nostalgic’

///////

lucy tiven

eyyyo lucy what up
right off the bat i aesthetically like the image macros

okay i like the line breaks used
feel like they really ‘fit’ with how my brain processes words

i like that she used notepad as a medium
i use text edit and once again it’s like the same way i process my ideas and it seems to like ‘click’ with my head
flows well, i feel v close to lucy and that is why i love writing
seems like ‘mission accomplished’

not trying too hard, her natural thoughts seem witty and i like reading what people naturally think
‘stream of consciousness’

nice capitalization of Horrible in the middle of the sentence, it’s clever when people do that

wtf last one was really good
nice

///////

emily elizabeth scott

//getting wine drunk again

oh my god, aaron carter quote

she blends sweet, meaningful, almost ‘serious’ moments with cute funny lines and she does it beautifully
a lil ‘taken aback’ by that

she references jay-z and kanye in the same poem that she says //sideline shadow rise up // lift the fear into me

if that’s not admirable, i don’t know what is
seems like her poetry is a ‘rlly gr8’ reflection of what poetry being published on the internet is

//////

thais benoit

i enjoyed //bushes that nobody ever
thought about

rlly ‘takes me’ back ‘into the moment’ of the author’s ‘childhood’ bc normally ppl wouldn’t think about a bush being thought of or not, seemed ‘clever’, stood out as particularly ‘good’

v innocent, cute

seemed a little boring though, like what was the ‘significance’ of any of that, but maybe i’m just got ‘getting it’

///////

ryan pieroni

seems p repetitive and not particularly ‘good’
trying a lil bit too hard to be ‘quirky’ maybe

i like the 3000 calories thing i guess

seems comical that someone would call 9-1-1 to talk abt that and maybe that’s the ‘point’ of this poem

///////

jovial jellyfish

the pace is good
feels like a ‘movie’ or s/t

this is good //The Virtual where I was born in

i feel ‘calm’ reading this

some lines are funny bc they are describing things that i wouldn’t normally think abt in that tone of voice

considerably ‘chill’ poem, i can oddly visualize it p well, which is a good sign i think

56.1 :: 'mdma' by tao lin & megan boyle + 56.7 :: 'i saw bird sitting...' by kelsea bayse

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:57:00 -0400

MDMA (TRAILER 1) from MDMAfilms on Vimeo.

‘mdma’ by tao lin & megan boyle // MDMAfilms, 2011
56.1 
+

 ‘i saw a bird sitting…’; by kelsea basye // sway press, 2013
56.7

decided to read ‘i saw a bird sitting’ while watching the ‘film’ ‘mdma’ by tao lin & megan boyle, each for the first time  thought
‘i’m glad i didn’t pay $$ for either of these’ ~3 mins into the
‘dbl-immersion’ experience, watching the film on one laptop while
reading the ebook on another
 ~5 mins after starting, thought ‘i need more [something] or
[something else] to enjoy this at all but i’m going to keep doing it’  thought ‘take one for the blog’ 

  upon
reading the ebook’s title, thought ‘wtf, long-ass title, is this a fall
out boy song’ and ‘kelsea’s grandmother seems chill, maybe too chill,
maybe not’  focused intently on the adjective ‘unfazed’ for unquantifiable amount of time
 realized that this was going to take longer than initially estimated  tao
& megan are in a store, felt compelled to take more [something]
after tao & megan walked thru an aisle of pill bottles, is that a
‘trigger’, thought ‘dear god i hope my [something] habit doesn’t ever
approach the level of either of theirs’
 kelsea says she doesn’t feel like talking is productive,

“I’m pretty sure when I talk to people I’m talking to some
kind of object that is unable to understand language.”

thought ‘damn why don’t you get a job or something’, then realized she has a job at mcdonald’s or some equally shitty place

thought
‘maybe she is faking her social ineptitude to a certain degree,
probably to seem more unique, if you work at taco bell you are not
unique, unless you, like… pee in the sour cream and document it’
 maybe she really has ‘problems’, maybe this is ‘insensitive’, whatever  thought
‘i’m doing a bad job of reviewing this ebook, who cares’ and ‘according
to the pew research center, a new poetry ebook is released every 3 hrs,
whose job is it to wade thru all that shit, not mine’
 after typing that, wondered ‘is that 140 chars, should i tweet that, tag kelsea, apply at pizza hut, etc’

//

on
pg 4, while kelsea is saying ‘insane’ things to her co-workers,
remembered that she works at subway… seems worse than mcdonald’s or
pizza hut
 read this line and felt like there are at least 3 girls in the world who have thought this re: me

I don’t know if I feel lonelier listening to you quietly
sleeping or myself quietly unable to sleep.

wanted to tell kelsea ‘sorry for yr bad vibes w/ that bro’ but decided not to

[relationships relationships relationships], ok cool

relationships
seem to come up often in ‘ebooks’, maybe bc when ppl have ‘feelings’
they feel compelled to ‘write’ abt them, whatever

//

pg 12 was ‘ok’

got up after pg 12 to meet my friend outside to trade [something] for [something]
 thought ‘i wish there was more [something] in that ebook i have to
get back to’, didn’t tell my friend bc he doesn’t know what an ebook is

pg 13 gets down to the nitty gritty: kelsea likes attention.

cool, so like, does she like getting mail that says “attn: moon temple” and “urgent” and “final notice”
 does she like ppl staring at her with looks of disbelief / horror / creepy interest while taking public transit

does she like getting ‘panned’ or ‘shittalked’ or ‘unfollowed’, are those desirable forms of attention

//

on
one page, kelsea admits to feeling attached to physical objects and
expresses desire to move to another country (bc of this attachment?)

thought ‘wtf? where, other than maybe dubai, is materialism celebrated as openly and with as much gusto as it is in america?’
 googled ‘dubai’, read the wiki page for exactly 30 secs, maybe missing the ‘point’ here, if there is one

pg 16: blatant steve roggenbuck reference

paused ‘mdma’ to focus on finishing this damn ebook

keep
thinking things like ‘i will probably delete everything re ‘mdma’
before submitting this’ or ‘i will have to rewrite everything, every
sentence, i should start over’ then remembered what i was reviewing and
didn’t care as much

//

reference to the band ‘dads’ right after another seemingly-thinly-veiled roggenbuck reference

ok… expecting to see a poem that just reads ‘emo is a gang’ 10x

vague drug reference, sudden ‘addiction in immediate family’ confession, blah blah yoinky doinky yakkety yakky yak

at least this is prose and not some janky-ass poetry that requires ‘decoding’

//

one
trope kelsea uses that seems ‘ok’ is when she starts a verse with “no,
what i need right now is…”, then completes it by describing a type of
person who she seems to ‘know’ she will never meet
 seems like an ‘unproductive’ train of thought, sort of ‘par for the
course’ here… at this point decided to restart ‘mdma’ to return to
earlier level of stimulation  decided to re-read what i’ve
written, thought ‘wait, is this a live-blog, is it shitty, i’ve never
done this’ while megan casually chewed an apple and tao spun in circles
in place at a train station
 tao and megan are on the train smiling at their ‘macbook pro’, i
see them on the screen of my ‘macbook pro’ as i’m typing into my
‘samsung chromebook’  kelsea comes off as ‘mallpunk sad’
 and in some moments hopeful but mostly as if her head is stuck in a
dim corner of a dusty room, cognitive function (outside of that
allotted for ‘basic existence’) equally devoted to sleep and reading,
unable to decide between one or the other at any given moment
 sort of ‘cute, sad’ if you’re ‘into that sort of thing’ and both of you feel the same way about ‘subway’  megan just asked if tao liked ‘at the drive-in’ and i performed a long-overdue neck roll
 thought ‘repetitive one-syllable exclamation’ as both of them repeated ‘yeah’ in monotone

  //

read
the word ‘spacefood’ where it reappears on pg 32 and felt slightly more
queasy, figured the nausea was more due to the onset of [something]
than the word
 but that was a queasy anecdote that made me more sad  wanted
to tweet at kelsea, ‘do u eat the veggies at subway’ and ‘wait aren’t u
veg or something’, then figured it didn’t make sense in any context
 imagined kelsea would be ‘a little bit happier than i am’,
liveblogging this, if she had actually been there on the subway with
tao and megan in 2010, instead of putting four scoops of tuna salad on
an eleven-inch ‘footlong’ at subway in 2013
 thought ‘what the fuck is up with the tense in this review,
kelsea’s ass ebook is probably better than this, wonder if i will feel
less queasy after i’m done writing it’  decided pg 32 is probably the ‘peak’
 //  sad poem, ‘s/o’ to ex-bf  sober poem, ‘s/o’ to coffee  wheatgrass poem, just realized kelsea keeps repeating that she is in ‘wheeling, wv’, where the hell is that
 got a phone call from a friend about [something], pulled
[something] out of my pocket, told him [something] as i stared blankly
at a tuition bill  that is a long ass flight of stairs they are
running up with that macbook, maybe that is the appeal of the
‘mdmafilms’, they are like ‘alt seinfeld’ (‘film about nothing’ w/ mild
subtext of ‘social commentary’ via comically-self-absorbed characters)
 thought ‘did i just type alt seinfeld? i should just end it with that, i should just quit altogether’  oh… then kelsea ends the ebook with that one line, nice, it felt ‘clean’
 //  what i learned from ‘mdma’: seemed like megan’s first time ‘experiencing’ nyc, maybe  ‘mumblecore’ was comparatively more enjoyable, maybe i was more [something] on [something else] when i watched it
 tao seems most ‘endearing’ when he is screaming in public on mdma, xanax, and [something]

//

what i learned from ‘i saw a bird sitting’: lots of bad food in
wheeling, wv (between grandmother’s cooking and subway), kelsea is a
lover and not a fighter, if you are sad you always have ‘something’ to
write about

left with more questions than answers, not really ‘pressing’ questions, just a faint air of ‘hmm…’

all in all, it seemed like ‘an ebook’, ‘not bad’, better than ‘mdma’ at least

97.3 :: 'mumblecore' dir. by tao lin & megan boyle

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:33:00 -0400

‘mumblecore’ dir. by tao lin & megan boyle // mdma films, 2011

97.3

the movie begins w. tao & megan both speaking in the same tone, w. the same inflections

that’s what happens in a relationship

the 2 start talking like each other

the 2 start high fiving each other & punching e/o in the arm, like megan & tao do in a bedroom, then she tells him abt a dream where someone’s touching her ass, & on the bed they seem v unaware / unconcered w/ the recording, hey don’t touch e/o much unless in a humorously violent way, at first, like in the library when he sticks his hands in her mouth & stretches her cheeks, then they start touching e/o more ‘affectionately’ as the movie ‘unfolds’

//

(the quotes I ‘present’ here are ‘plucked’, they are the ones that stood out to me, in other words there are lines in the ‘film’ that exist between most of the lines i ‘present’)

//

tao smiles a lot in this movie

‘You have a computer in Wal-Mart?’ someone asks them, as they walk thru wal-mart

megan responds, ‘Why don’t you? You didn’t bring yours’

tao says, ‘We’re writing an article for the New York Times’

MUMBLECORE (TRAILER 1) from MDMAfilms on Vimeo

tao asks her if she wants to go to north carolina with him & she says yes & he says that she says yes sometimes when she doesn’t actually want to do the things she says yes to & she asks if he can give examples & he does & she tries to explain what she was thinking in those contexts & he seems intently listening

‘So if something’s just something to do you still do it?’ he asks

she says, ‘ye-ah’

//

they usually keep their eyes open when they kiss throughout

//

‘Waka Flocka’ she says

‘Do you have any Waka Flocka?’ tao asks the man who (i think) picked them up from the airport when they visit north carolina

‘Sounds funny’ tao says

‘Sounds like he’s shaking his head’ megan says

‘This song makes it seem like we’re just gonna drive around forever’ tao says

//

what do we think of the DIY / lo fi nature of this ‘film’ ? ? ?

what abt the fact that so many ppl might find it boring but i find it ‘engrossing’ ? ? ?

what does it mean that we get thrilled abt watching ppl walking around nyc recording themselves through their macbooks ? ? ?

what of the honesty / rawness of this interpersonal relationship ? ? ?

do we see this as ‘alt lit’ in ‘film’ form ? ? ?

how can we ‘explore’ the capacities of an approach like this, the different options involved ? ? ?

//

he asks ‘Has anyone felt like that?’ after reading passages to an audience, & no one responds

//

he & megan run get half naked after eating apples together & (though the video kind of skips over it, seem to) have sex

//

he yells aggressively while driving

‘I’m worried about going fast in the stop sign neighborhood’ she says

‘I’ll be better’ he says

‘I only felt slighly interrupted from waking up when I was like Wait I don’t care right now about dying But in the future I might want to die’ she says

‘if you’re dead you’ll be dead’ he says

//

‘What did you think about the relationship in [his book] Richard Yates?’ he asks as he stirs his coffee

while she answers the questions he stirs his coffee with a neutral facial expression

she asks ‘What did you think about it?’

he says ‘It seemed better than other relationships’

‘The book ended at the climax of being bad’ he says

they seem nervous around e/o in this scene

they both are wearing plaid, drinking coffee

she is sitting down & he is standing up

he doesn’t make eye contact w her rly

they get in the car & she says she wanted to have sex w. him but she was ‘unsure’ & ‘less confident’ & he says he thought she was usually ‘aggressive’ & she says ‘Yeah but if it’s something that I want I feel unsure and I don’t. And I am not aggressive’ & they start walking, & this whole time, in the car, then walking, the video is either completely dark or unrevealing of tao’s & megan’s face

‘I always feel like I’m holding back ‘Cause if I do more it’s gonna overwhelm the other person’ he says

‘Who are people who have long relationships’ she asks, & he says, ‘Parents … Just when they have kids And they feel pressured to stay together’

//

‘People don’t like you’ he says

‘They don’t like you either’ she says

‘Yeah they do’ he says

‘No they don’t’ she says

‘Where’s that gigantic thing in the middle of everything’ he says, ‘Let’s go towards that, I think it’s over here’

//

they walk around screaming ‘Harry Potter’ … ‘Harry Potter 7’ & slapping hands w people in Las Vegas

//

‘Las ass Vegas’ she says

he says ‘No one cares about anything. Life is so bleak’ (she laughs) Alone. This is what the universe created’

‘This is what we came into’ she says, ‘This is what we have to work with. This is it. Nothing else’

‘Look, beautiful’ he says. ‘Life sometimes offers beautiful images’

‘Yeah sometimes’ she says

he says ‘But they’re just images’

‘Yeah they’re fleeting’ she says

//

‘There’s nothing I could possibly find out about you that would change my opinion of you’ he says, as they walk through what appears to be a movie theater

//

he tells her the points in the past when he felt ‘really obsessed’ w her & ‘depressed’ when she wdn’t respond to his emails, as they appear to be ‘under the influence’ of MDMA, although the ‘film’ sort of leaves it up to our imaginations abt when or when they’re not ‘on drugs’

‘I like just being around you’ he says

‘Me too’ she says

he makes his weird gum-tucked face throughout this scene, as they sit against a red neon lit wall & it gets darker, he bites her face

’What are you thinking right now’ she says

‘I was thinking Why didn’t you read the thing I sent you?’

she says ‘Well just reading about somebody else having interest in someone else while you’re in a period of being interested in someone sometimes is a little strange … like a felt jealous’

//

she says ‘Do we want to be on MDMA when we get married’

‘Yeah’ he says

‘They might not marry us if they think we’re on drugs’ she says

‘They can’t know’ he says

‘Yeah they can, it’s obvious….’

‘We might as well get an Elvis wedding. It’s fast’ he says

‘Marriage seems like a tattoo. I just want to get it’ he says

‘This will be good for “Mumblecore”’ she says, which is essentially the first time they break the ‘fourth wall’ perhaps, where they blatantly address the fact that they’re making a ‘film’

‘Gives it a plot’ she says

‘I don’t think anyone will believe me when I say I’m married’ she says

‘Who cares’ he says

//

i kind of wish they would have had an elvis wedding hehe

i imagined them in that setting & it seemed v funny

the wedding that ensues is amusing but fairly dry, an older man in a black suit sits down facing them & ‘gives them their vows’, megan seems ‘nervous’

when they’re outside tao says ‘I immediately thought “fuck you” to the person congratulating us’

megan says ‘Yeah I thought “pop-up ad”

their wedding / marriage, as it’s portrayed in the ‘film’, has an element of plasticness, disposability, , they don’t seem to take it v seriously

//

i ‘left’ the ‘film’ p impressed by how the film documents (what appears to be) weeks (os) but ends up only being ~1hr25minutes

i simultaneously feel like the film feels ‘effortless’ & also ‘well trimmed / edited’

usually when i watch a movie on my computer i end up ‘opening’ multiple tabs & multi-tasking while i watch the movie but w. this movie i didn’t open any tabs.

60.8 'the prodigal' by alexander j allison

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:21:01 -0400

‘the prodigal’ by alexander j allison // civil coping mechanisms, 2012? 2013?

60.8

//
started reading this book by not reading this book

read 10 pages of the book

felt really ‘off-put’ by gchat references

came back to it ‘eventually’

aka ~2 months later

(sorry)

//

when i started reading this for the second time

i was ‘listening’ ‘passively’ to tchaikovsky

symphony no 2 in c minor op 17 to be ‘exact’

felt that this music ‘suited’ the poker sections

‘maybe’ 90’s jazz rock would have worked

i’ll never have the chance to ‘find out’

//

got interesting ‘around’ page 30

thats when david and martins ‘relationship’ ‘clicked’

the group ‘dialogue’ between becky, craig, martin, and david was ‘nice’

although after the poker ‘sesh’,

im glad becky and craig werent in the novel again.

//

i don’t know the ‘nitty gritty’ of poker

i.e. the terms, which are ever ‘prevalent’ in this novel

but the terms / poker games were ‘presented’ well

in a very ‘digestible’ form that can be semi-understood

made me feel like

‘i have no whats going on but part of me gets it’

good job, that sounds like a ‘difficult thing’ to do

//

i ‘understand’ memetics

but

(initially) the constant “seems f***ed” was ‘sigh-worthy’

i grew accustomed to it after things really became ‘f***ed’

the ‘poker-addiction’ aspect of this novel was ‘refreshing’

//

one main thing did ‘irritate’ me

when martin was ‘running away’

i felt like his ‘reaction’ to his father

was very very very very unrealistic

(no scare quotes around that, its genuine)

he would have had a more ‘substantial’ reaction

either nervous ‘or’ emotional ‘or’ both

his ‘unbothered’ thoughts ‘bothered’ me

i know that if my ‘rich ass’ dad was yelling at me

and i was about to ‘run away’ for an ‘indefinite’ amount of time

i would be the ‘opposite’ of calm

i wish i could say that this is ‘dismissible’

but that was a ‘pretty big’ point in the book

also when he gets into david’s car

the conversation they had is, again, ‘unrealistic’

like he isnt currently ‘on the lam’

//

about halfway through the book

i got tired of tchaikovsky

searched “dubstep”

turned on “ukf dubstep 2011” (album)

this is when the book sort of got more intense

less like orchestral pieces and more like dubstep

i like it how they ‘get crazy’

//

this book ‘felt’ different

different than other ‘suicidal teen’ books

prolly because he was ‘privileged’

and **almost** ‘resented’ his problems

//

the formatting was ‘fun’ and ‘interesting’

really made things pop,

especially changing fonts in dialogue

‘great job’

//

the ‘ending’ was satisfactory

enjoy that it was ‘open’ ended

leaves ya thinking

‘well what now, pal?’

which is always a great way to ‘end’ a novel

just enough ‘satisfaction’ for it to be enjoyable

and still leave ‘something to be desired’

there isnt much prupose of me submitting this here haha, but i love this :) "Readers of I AM ALT LIT typically are out of control much like those depicted in the award winning movie ‘Spring Breakers’. Unlike those out of control spring breakers the online readers don’t go anywhere. Even if they move they remain online." - Beach Sloth

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:54:31 -0400

thanks we love ‘this’ too

59.0 :: 'austin nights' by herocious

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:43:34 -0400

‘austin nights’ by herocious/Michael Davidson // tiny toe press, 2011

59.0

read this book if you believe in self-determination

“If I must run according to a clock, I want to run on this clock…the one of shifting tectonic plates, creeping oceans, imploding stars, and winding rivers.”

‘austin nights’ doesn’t bother with ‘conventional’ plot;

the novel functions like the ocean: themes, motifs, people,

reflections, philosophical inquiries, and the ever-present

desire to find or make meaning out of one’s life briefly

wash up into the reader’s proximity before receding again

into sea and sky, character and description; herocious masters

the ebb and flow of observations referenced, set aside, referenced again

“This memory is an irrational number. I made it that way because irrational numbers like [pi] will always remain free despite an unrelenting human ambition for order and control and predictability.”

read this book to be refreshed

“I find the mixture of caffeine and inner thighs more stimulating than just caffeine.”

‘austin nights’ is a wholesome, nutritious, fulfilling salad,

a mixture of various ingredients: leafy greens tossed

with tomatoes, bell peppers, and mushrooms,

dried cranberries, walnuts, and cheese;

a glass of wine punctuates the prose with humor

“I want to take a picture of her, so I blink my eyes.”

read this book to witness one man’s journey

into accepting big changes

“No shooting stars. No swerving cars. No rain. No fog. No bumps on the road. No ice on bridges. No snow. No cold. No traffic. No roadwork. The perfect night for driving, for making time and thinking about how great it is to be alive and moving west.”

‘journey’ is the thematic heart of ‘austin nights;’

there are physical travels as Michael and Bridget

move from Miami Beach, FL, to Austin, TX,

as they bike, walk, and run around both

the beach and explore their new city;

there is emotional evolution as Michael assesses

his adequacy as a breadwinner, a writer, a good human being

“Positivity is all there’s time for on earth. Think positive, Michael.”

read this book while you journey

to other cities in other parts of the country

“I can smell the ocean. It’s in my nostrils, and from there it’s absorbed into my bloodstream.”

‘austin nights’ is colored by a love for the ocean

and the comfort of that which is known;

‘austin nights’ is shaded by a love for the land

and the uncertainty of that which is unknown,

but with a desire to discover and fulfill one’s purpose

“Austin’s sun is arid and too strong as it hangs up there forever in the biggest sky I’ve ever lived under.”

read this book while you journey

through new mental and emotional terrain

“Every really good movie makes me feel the same way. Somewhere near the beginning, I want to stand up and leave and create a piece of art. I feel like I can do it, all I have to do is start writing.”

‘austin nights’ is sincere, heartfelt, and earnest book;

Michael, the book’s protagonist, makes an earnest attempt

at finding meaning in his life, at leaving behind

a literary legacy he can point to and be proud of

“If we’re incapable of learning from our mistakes, we’re incapable of learning.”

read this book to witness a man’s sincere inquiries

into the inner workings of his mind

“…a world of not knowing isn’t a world worth knowing.”

Michael questions the purpose: of his life,

of his purpose, of his ability to interact with others,

of his usefulness in society if he is not ‘working,’

of his ability to ‘grow up’ and discard his childlike sense of ‘wonder and awe,’

of his ability to think and function in a proper way with others

instead of assuming they will understand his logical conclusions

“I prefer being rather than becoming.”

read this book if you believe in

the redemptive power of art

The lines of fiction and nonfiction, novel and memoir

are ‘blurred’ in herocious’ piece; “austin nights”

is a novel told through memories that, like real memories,

recall themselves spontaneously, periodically

sections 7 on p. 14; 4 on pp. 24-5;

6 on p. 95; 7 on p. 130; & 3 on pp. 152-3

read this book to delve into one man’s thoughts re:

relationships, family, friends, pets, memories,

cross-country moving, one’s purpose in life,

the desire to do what one loves vs.

feeling inadequate for not being a

“productive member of society with a marketable skill set”

“…our brains and hearts kiss…”

‘austin nights’ is like an Alexander Calder mobile:

each section within itself and in relation to other sections

strike a balance between beautiful scenic descriptions,

plainly-stated episodic events,

and insightful, philosophic questionings and epiphanies

“It’s an act of salvation, opening a dying book. But this salvation is mutual.”

86.0, 97.1 :: 'taipei' by tao lin

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 09:30:00 -0400

‘taipei’ by tao lin // vintage contemporaries, 2013

86.0 or 97.1, depending on level of sobriety

review by austin islam

***ed note: more ‘i am alt lit’ contributors will read this book, will probably concentrate on different elements, etc. read review #1 by josh s. thankks.***

//

received this book in the mail as part of a ‘reading chain’, a sort of ‘round robin’ of ‘reviews’ within ‘i am alt lit’

was initially excited, having pre-ordered the book on amazon for ~$13 a few months earlier

read with great ‘aplomb’, albeit in intermittent periods separated by not reading / thinking about reading / reading tao’s poetry collection ‘cognitive behavioral therapy’ instead

felt ‘relieved’ upon completion of ‘taipei’, then immediately ‘intimidated’ re writing a ‘review’ of it (due to not having previously read modern fiction which resembled this at all)

//

the ‘heightened’ level of ‘self-analysis’ and also analysis of others’ behavior, quirks, successes & failures, etc. by tao thru-out this novel (a ‘main’ stylistic choice) seems somewhat influenced by ‘formal’ cognitive-behavioral therapy

wondered “how much ‘actual’ therapy has tao participated in thru-out his life?”

tao indulges ‘extensively’ in ‘inner-monologue’ tangents about his mental, emotional, metaphysical states that seemingly ‘transcend’ the inner monologue of probably 98% of the human race

there is a ‘zen-like’, sometimes ‘meditative’ quality to the way the plot is diverted by tao’s inclusion of intense ‘autopsychoanalysis’

felt like my own self-analysis was at ‘fetus-level’ whereas tao, due to possible mental issues (supplemented by ‘therapeutic’ ‘tools’), was at ‘adult level’

did some ‘drugs’ to feel ‘better’ abt myself while reading, considered asking tao via email “to what degree does ‘liveblogging’ your daily life into a text document assist in ‘assessing’ your own mental ‘health’ and the ‘health’ of each of your relationships?”

//

relationships

romantic relationships between tao and (mainly two) others seem interesting, esp. in the context of ‘psychoanalysis’ (ed. note: unsure if austin means ‘tao’ as writer and his relationships or if he mistaking ‘tao’ as the character ‘paul’ in the book or ‘both’, idk)

the relationship with the character ‘erin’ appears to be the most ‘open’ and ‘fruitful’ of any tao (ed. note: again, see ‘above’) engages in, even though its conception and eventual demise are documented in the latter half of the book

anyone who has viewed any of the ‘mdmafilms’ will recognize much of the plot during this relationship as ‘re-used’ material, but supplemented / enhanced by the ‘internal monologue’ prose style

felt emotionally ‘invested’ in the minutiae of the actions/interactions between tao and ‘erin’ via personally respecting/admiring them as individuals

relationships with other people thru-out the novel (drug dealers, literary figures, a younger couple known as ‘calvin and maggie’) show different facets of tao’s ability (or inability) to react ‘appropriately’ in a variety of social settings

the ‘autopsychoanalysis’ within a mostly-autobiographical novel such as this, provided that the reader has some knowledge of the actual people behind the ‘characters’ seems esp. interesting

//

drug use is featured heavily (heavily [heavily]) in ‘taipei’

this may become the ‘main attraction’ for a certain subset of readers, the vividly ‘diary-like’ documentation of what amt of what drugs were ingested when, by who, and sometimes ‘why’

found it most interesting when tao rationalizes ~~his~~ the characters’ regular, low-to-medium-dose, abuse of mostly-prescription drugs (although ‘shrooms’ and ‘heroin’ play key parts) by explaining that he considers it less ‘harmful’ to himself & friends in the ‘long run’ than the ‘binge drinking’ / ‘binge activities’ some of his other friends engage in

he seems content, even through his mother’s ‘worrying’, to continue living a ‘non-sober’ life, as long as he remains ‘productive’ in some capacity

this seems not only ‘honorable’ but also something to ‘shoot for’: ‘success’ w/o sobriety, ‘success’ despite mild heroin overdose that causes one to vomit continually thru-out one night into the streets of [nyc or somewhere else]

//

received, in return for pharmaceutical ‘gifts’ sent to tao, ~50 pages of drafts for ‘taipei’, or as it was called in one stapled wad of printouts, ‘third novel’

these provided ‘insight’ into the ‘crafting’ and editing process tao used while writing the novel, from short-to-medium tracts of deleted texts to lists of specific ‘tropes’ and ‘motifs’

some ‘backend’ things that are present in the supplemental notes include ‘linear’ vs ‘nonlinear’ plot progression, felt unsure what that meant

especially interesting was the difference between the ‘proof-version’ text and earlier versions of things like dialogue between ‘paul’ and ‘erin’ (this dialogue seems to have been largely ‘transcribed’ from hours of photobooth footage, including some featured in tao and megan boyle’s film ‘mumblecore’)

a sampling:

USE
“as” to indicate concurrent action (use “while” if near an “as if” or other “as”)
“upon” to indicate causation
“tomorrow” not “the next day” (if from characters’ p-o-v)
“voice” not “tone” re speaking (“tone” for other)

DO NOT USE
“while” to begin a sentence
“after a while”
commas after # in “[#] [adjective] [noun]
“falling asleep” (only “waking,” because of no awareness of moment of unconsciousness)
“There was ___” (to begin sentences, can use later in sentences)

//

obviously tao ‘cares’, to a potentially ‘obsessive’ degree, about each infinitesimal detail of his writing

this seems to have ‘paid off’, stylistically, although the material ‘success’ of the book has yet to materialize

feel like tao has done a good job of building the requisite amt of ‘buzz’ for the book, pre-release, including sending drafts to ‘friends’, writing articles for VICE featuring ‘taipei babies’, etc

this book is a departure from ‘richard yates’, maybe less of something that a ‘high schooler’ would enjoy, maybe more of something a ‘college student’ or ‘young writer’ would enjoy

seemed markedly more enjoyable while read ‘under the influence’

62.0 :: 'if there is to be a zeitgeist going forward, I imagine it to be focused on attempts at immortality, and the ways we erase ourselves for immortality, and the ways we record ourselves recording ourselves' by james tadd adcox & robert kloss

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:51:29 -0400

‘if there is to be a zeitgeist going forward, I imagine it to be focused on attempts at immortality, and the ways we erase ourselves for immortality, and the ways we record ourselves recording ourselves’ by james tadd adcox & robert kloss // nap, 2013

62.0

tumblthe ebook’s title ‘if there is to be a zeitgeist going forward, I imagine it to be focused on attempts at immortality, and the ways we erase ourselves for immortality, and the ways we record ourselves recording ourselves’ is a p ‘poignant’ way to ‘frame’ a book

esp since we operate in this internet labyrinth

esp since we exist in a tension btwn ephemerality & permanence

in other words, our ‘work’ / social media / etc will probably stay in cyber space for a long time after we’re dead

however, since the internet breeds speed speed speed

where a multitude of things are released every day

it’s easy for things to get quickly forgotten bc the next new thing is already out

as i’m sure you know, ‘zeitgeist’ means ~’spirit of the times’

as i’m sure you know, ‘zeitgeist’ was a multi-part documentary examining our world – our religions, monetary system, 9/11, etc through a ~conspiracy lens

long titles seem to be a trend in ‘alt lit’

have you seen the title of moon temple’s upcoming ebook? it’s like an essay

adcox & kloss call this book ‘a sort of novel in correspondence’

the 2 authors here sent each other every single written word from each of their respective hard drives

poetry fiction personal correspondence notes journal entries everything

each person wrote pieces only using the words from the other person

in the intro, robert writes ‘At some point, all of the information that makes up a “self”—-our fears, unconscious motivations, decision-making processes, etc—-will be accessible electronically. At that time it will be possible to trade and remix selves in a much more thorough and literal way than we have during this project. But we present our experiment as, if nothing else, a first step. It is worth noting, perhaps, that I have never actually met James Tadd Adcox’

ya know when ppl say ‘it’s not what you say but how you say it’

or ‘it’s not what you do but how you do it’

sometimes i ‘sympathize’ w/ that ‘sentiment’

like, for example, w/ this book

if i didn’t know how it was put together i don’t think i wld like it as much

knowing how it was made makes me more intrigued though

much of it seems v ‘fragmented’ / hard to follow

there are, however, beautiful passages here

gripping ‘textures’ of language

an ‘attention to detail’

moments of surprising humor (‘comic relief’)

what interested me most while reading this was imagining how the two went abt choosing what to use from all the written words they’d received from the other person

how to mix things around, organize words in a fresh way

i admire how the two were willing to send everything they had to the other, trusting that the other would do something cool w/ it

i think the ‘concept’ // ‘procedure’ of this ebook is remarkable

it explores the type of ‘reality’ we are in // moving into

i feel like we will see more of this type of work v soon

there is ‘a play’ in here

there is ‘a film’

there are certain recurring ‘characters’

Plato shows up at one pt.

& Thelonius Monk

there is ‘darkness’ here

there are playful explorations on ‘What is literature?’

there are short stories within short stories

these things stands out:

‘Later, Robert’s big hands, a drop of water falling: the patterns of the voice of America: “I’m too selfish. I’m unable to see my goals as wrapped up in someone else’s life. Or hell, perhaps this is the worst of it—-too unwilling to share.’

‘We are always scared of what we try to open’

‘We do not know: is it better to be loved or feared?’

‘…an illumination, with a subtle destructive composition’

‘what is it that you’d like to see under these clothes?’

‘Pulling her thinly covered breasts in close to me and then the rest of her figure until we were crying, a fun thing, a happy fucking moment’

the whole ‘alligator’ section

‘We found the alligator, fat and yellow, bulged on your father’s recliner’

this stands out: I now see why being direct is probably the best way to have success

the process of this ebook seems ‘not very direct’

the writing here doesn’t seem ‘very direct’

in much of ‘alt lit’ we are used to a conversational tone / colloquial language

of course not in all of it

duh

but here we don’t have that, rly

it is ‘experimental’ & the language cld maybe even be called ‘academic’

yeh

don’t read this when you’re listening to music w/ lyrics

don’t read this unless you’re in the ‘mood’ for something ‘disjointed’

don’t read this unless you feel patient

don’t read this till you’ve gotten all yr practical shit out of the way for the day

till you’ve thoroughly checked all yr social media sites & are not distracted

don’t read this unless you have a full stomach

82.1 :: 'Every September since 2005' by Paige Gresty

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:09:00 -0400

‘Every September since 2005’ by Paige Gresty // UP Literature, 2013(?)

82.1

‘Every September since 2005’ is a 16 page ebook

with 4 short prose pieces and 2 poems

it is full of beautiful sentences like this:

They had spent the day with hands out of windows, a kind of Saturday arranged over instant messenger that ended up driving from quiet coffee shops to 14th street, hand-in-hand over the crispy fall leaves and the abandoned house where Borf had his last solo show before getting arrested.

and this:

that second april i bought a long necklace chain with hearts on it and as we were fucking i said i love you and you literally stopped and looked at me and got off and you were still hard and i was both saddened by the fact that you would stop fucking me because i said that and simultaneously really impressed that you managed to stop mid-thrust with a hard-on

and this:

He lifted up my hair with his fists and asked me if I cared, because I was a little girl, that his feelings were getting hurt. If I knew, because I was a little girl, that I was fucking up his feelings. I was semi-consciously aware of the fact that his complicit friends at the bar could probably see through the window to our smoking area and that he was pulling me by my hair, and even demi-semi-consciously aware that they probably didn’t care because they had already seen me with cut-up knees and bruises and crying several nights before. I had had to have been drunk for days.

Gretsy’s prose is often very beautiful and eloquent and full of emotion, as the previous excerpts show

her writing immediately stands out from most ‘alt lit’ type stuff by refusing to play itself down

or conform to whatever popular styles/tropes of the moment

her writing seems more adventurous to me than other things

because she’s making something of her own

she’s putting out works that reflect her own personality, instead of borrowing someone else’s

the best thing I can say about this ebook is that it’s ‘an ebook by Paige Gresty’

instead of ‘a Tao Lin type ebook’

or ‘a Vice Magazine/Thought Catalog type ebook’

or ‘another alt lit type ebook, you know what I mean’

maybe this is a short term handicap because the writing isn’t tapping into a ready-made audience, like how a person who dresses emo can easily make friends with other people who dress the same

but it’s an incredibly important long term benefit

something that an artist ‘has’ to do if he/she wants to remain relevent for more than a year or two

because trends inevitably cycle through, and if you strictly or exclusively shape yourself according to them

you put yourself at tremendous risk of going stale and getting replaced by the next hip face that appears, wearing something much kewler

lol ‘Jimmy Eat World’

lol ‘Alkaline Trio’

lol ‘other bands that you barely remember but at one point ruled the airwaves’

‘Every September since 2005’ is all about love

and love’s dissapointments/elations/pains/pleasures

relationships can be wonderful, of course

it feels good to be close to another human being

especially a human being that you naturally like way better than most other human beings

but relationships can also cause so much hurt and drama and self-loathing

putting up with things that you shouldn’t tolerate

making excuses for people, making convoluted rationalizations

enduring embarrassments and abuse, inflicting embarrassments and abuses on others

it sucks that at a certain point you become dependent on another person

you begin to ‘need’ that person around to be happy, I don’t like that feeling

but that’s the nature of love, there’s always a big risk involved

there’s a point when you love somebody so bad that you’d rather be hurt by them

than walk away

the phrase ‘every September’ seems to represent the habitual disappointments that come hand in hand with romantic relationships

maybe you have found the person that you will spend the rest of your life with

but most likely you haven’t, most people fall in love with many people throughout their lives

which means that 99.9% of all serious relationships are going to end up causing you a lot of pain, eventually

that particularly knife-like type of pain is on full display in Gresty’s ebook

but so is that equally sharp stab of joy you feel when the person you love

looks at you and smiles

why do we spend so much time chasing after other people?

why do we even bother?

this is why, Paige Gretsy tell us why

and it’s an answer that is true and sad and beautiful:

Your chest on my chest was the most exhilarating sensation I had had up to that point in my entire puny life.

this is a very short ebook, the only complaint I have is that it isn’t longer

but I feel excited by the quality of what she did include, there isn’t anything in here that is meant to take up space

it’s obvious that everything has been revised and worked over, nothing feels hustled or rushed

I have the feeling that Gretsy is a serious talent, one that will be around for a long while

19.8 :: 'selected tweets from i am alt lit' by IAAL

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:32:21 -0400

‘selected tweets from i am alt lit jan 2k13-mar2k13’ // deckfight press, 2013

19.8

initial reaction to this concept: ‘who cares???’ (~4x)
‘i am alt lit’ is somewhat full of ‘themselves’ for putting this 2gthr
like they are cannibals of their own ‘flesh’
selfies selfies selfies

we are ‘living’ in apr 2k13
‘justin timberlake’ hasn’t yet made enough $$$$$$$,
seems to be paying his student loans with ‘weak’ attempts to revitalize his ‘mass appeal’
which was artificially ‘inflated’ from the ‘jump’

this ebook invokes a mental image of ‘assisted living’
‘baby boomers’ and increasing ‘healthcare’ costs are projected to become a burden on ‘society’
this inevitably tragic hardship can be attributed to ‘folkks’ such as ‘j spilker’
indulging in ‘treatment’ to prolong their lives
hoping to receive their ‘constitutionally’ promised ‘happiness’

does any1 know what this is?
does any1 remember ‘______’ during class in ‘junior high’?
does any1 remember the band ‘brandtson’?
does any1 remember ‘purevolume.com’?
wondered as the nostalgia became overwhelmingly sickening

will any1 ‘remember’ this ‘release’ from deckfight?

#obamacare

64.0-73.0 :: 'twilight zone' by jackson nieuwland & carolyn decarlo

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:06:11 -0400

‘twilight zone’ by jakcson nieuwland & carolyn decarlo // nap, 2013

64.0-73.0

jackson & carolyn are in a ‘romantic’ relationship

they live in new zealand (she’s originally from the US, i think?)

i can imagine them in the process of writing this book underneath a very ‘homey’ ‘comforter’ w/ their backs against the bedframe & their legs stretched out on the bed passing their laptops to each other or perhaps huddled around 1 laptop

i can imagine them in some hip park sitting on swings but not swinging, passing jackson’s clunky notebook he started using at the cusp of this year while little kids walk by & think ‘damn that guy is tall’ then walk closer & realize they want to hug him as a woman pushing a babystroller on the sidewalk in the distance says ‘aw’ when she sees jackson & carolyn

this ebook is released by NAP

NAP continues to impress me

chad redden’s designs / aesthetic / prolific nature / humor / wide blend of writers

the poems oscillate from poems in gray txt over a black background to poems in gray txt over a white background

the ones with white backgrounds hurt my eyes

is that intentional?

(if yr using a laptop, tilt it back)

there is a lightswitch on each page – turned ‘on’ for the white pages, ‘off’ for the black ones

i can imagine j & c writing the black background poems at night, maybe even partaking in an experiment that involved writing nothing down initially & creating lines in pitch darkness, ‘feeding’ off each other

as with other poems i’ve read from jackson (i haven’t read any of carolyn’s other ‘work’), these poems are bizarre

i heard him say once that he enjoys the ‘escape’ that literature can cultivate, particularly that which harnesses playful imagination

that is always apparent in his ‘work’

1 thing that stands out is the variation of form

some poems are in small stanzas

some are in experimental columns

some are in ‘prose blocks’

many of these poems take place in the ‘domestic space’

in a house or bathroom or bedroom or livingroom

i suppose the lightswitch accentuates / plays into that

thought (movingly) ‘grotesque’ a few times

‘what do you think of frostbite, he replies. you push your fingers down into the snow and wait. I think it beautiful, you say.’

‘she wipes until the color is gone, then flushed. you hide behind the bookshelf when she opens the door. when you check, threads of red lift toward the surface of the water from the black

stones she left behind in the bowl.’

i thought ‘surreal’ periodically throughout this

but it’s a v controlled type of surrealism

it’s not ‘rough around the edges’, it’s focused

in other words, the imagery & experience feels v ‘otherwordly’

but the way it’s all delivered feels v ‘emphatic’

it is a bit challenging to ‘get into’ this ebook

to literally get into the inside of the book

when you click the link it takes you to a cover that is a huge room w/ several objects in it

‘the twilight zone’ was a popular tv show from 1959 – 1964

‘Each episode (156 in the original series) is a mixture of self-contained drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist.’ (wikipedia)

a movie was made in 1983 that perhaps more of ‘us’ are familiar with?

how much does this popular culture phenomenon ‘play into’ this ebook?

the first monologue of the movie, which i remember watching on TBS as a young kid w/ my brother on the pull out couch bed when we had food poisoning, is this:

‘You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… The Twilight Zone.’

i feel like this description wld work as an intro to this ebook as well

& in order to enter into this twilight zone of an ebook you have to find the secret passageway, which I will not ‘give away’ & which you must find for yrself hehe

this ebook seems to deal w/ opposites

black/white - living/dead - inside/outside etc etc

seems to deal w/ ‘paradox’

the ‘impossible’ manifested in the ‘everyday spaces’

‘Ghosts are not

blanks white sheets.

Ghosts are holes.

You do not

simply walk

through a ghost

and out the

other side,

you walk through

a ghost and

into a

brand new place’

i must say that mister nieuwland is a fairly mysterious human being

last year steve roggenbuck claimed him ‘most alt lit’ bc he had the most ‘mutual friends’ w/ beach sloth on facebook

jackson’s facebook activity is prolific but mainly involves copious ‘likes’ & his popular fb status:

today I am happy

for someone who claims to be so happy, which i don’t doubt considering the videos i’ve seen from him, his writing is predominately ‘dark’

this contrast / tension is cool

& it looks like caryolyn went to school for fiction writing, so for her to have collaborated on this poetry project is pretty impressive

bc the poems here are v ‘tight’ (as in condensed)

v concise

v ‘stripped down’ / minimal

seems the poems have been carved carefully

& it’s exciting how the reader doesn’t know ‘who wrote what’

the collaboration element makes it feel ‘bigger’ in a ~spiritual way or something

thought ‘occult’ a couple times

there are no titles for individual pieces

the poems are boiled down to fairly ‘common’ / simple language

& in this way they are v ‘accessible’

there isn’t ‘highbrow’ / unnecessarily polysyllabic language (like i’m using there «<)

‘i never learned how to count syllables’

similarly, the ‘voice’ throughout feels ~child-like

a v wise child that is in tune with the ‘metaphysical’ world

a mother takes a picture of her 2 sons – 1 of whom is in a chicken costume, the other of whom disappears when the picture is taken

the 2^nd person ‘you’ is used here throughout, & i quite enjoyed, esp since the ebook from the beginning makes itself interactive w/ the reader (since the reader has to find his or her own way in)

the ebook feels like it wants the reader’s full attention, & i think that’s fucking great

a speaker carves a keyhole in his or her chest

characters hold hands

there are always layers upon layers

doors upon doors holes upon holes the logic constantly ‘turns back on itself’ & keeps spinning

abt halfway thru characters begin to be named

idk how i feel abt this

things like a ‘jansport backpack’ are named

does this shift the ebook more into ‘the real’ as it progresses?

some of the pieces get longer & more ‘prosy’ as the book unfolds

is this carolyn exercising her story-telling muscles?

from my subjective perspective, since i usually ‘engage’ more w/ poetry, the longer / more prosy pieces derail my focus a lil

other ppl might feel refreshed by these pieces, since they ‘open up’ & include more detail / material than the more ‘clipped’ pieces

i just think the pieces here that are evocative, that leave much ‘unsaid’, are the most powerful

abt halfway thru i started reading the ebook outloud

it helps you be aware of each word on the page, as i think the ebook ‘calls for’

read them outloud, over & over, like mantras that unlock the door to the twilight zone of both ‘shadow and substance’

‘twilight zone’ by jakcson niewuland & caro

100.0 :: 'crapalachia' by scott mcclanahan

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:46:00 -0400

‘crapalachia’ by scott mcclanahan // two dollar radio, 2013

100.0

there are

those

moments

that seem

inconsequential at first

but then you

remember them

for years and years, and possibly more

like i remember in first grade

when a girl threw up

after swallowing too much toothpaste

at the dentist

her name was stephanie

//

scott mclanahan tho

lives for exactly those moments

and then he lives to write them down in a book

calling mcclanahan’s style “conversational” is an insult

to mcclanahan and what he remembers

“conversational” is a basic social skill that i can’t master

what mcclanahan does is not “conversational” it’s transcendence cloaked
in the everyday

//

i sped thru this book like an overloaded megabus late for its parking lot hookup

instead of “conversational” i’ll say mcclanahan is part of a strong “oral” tradition, but really it’s just all of us telling stories to one another

i mean the stories he tells are all in the set up, as he explains here

but not everyone can set things up, so ‘boy oh boy’ that’s a skill

there’s bill calling the family and watching the pit stop

there’s a girl with a locket

there’s a bathroom at captain d’s

there’s a man named nathan and a woman named rhonda and a grandmother named ruby

but then mcclanahan takes these stories, almost glosses over them, only delivers the most salient details, then busts you over the head with this morality / deep thought line and you are lying on the floor wriggling from its goodness

he does this repeatedly

and did i mention that this book is funny?
it’s funny

i mean nothing in particular happens here, really it’s a bunch of short stories intertwined with very creative chapter titles that pushes the story further, it all just keeps going and there’s no way you want to stop until it ends

but then you open the “appendix and notes” section and you realize the ride you on took you somewhere else than where you thought you had just gotten off of

i mean the overloaded megabus full of annoying strangers has just become your most dear friends in the whole world

that’s crapalachia and why mcclanahan can’t shake the place

//

style — i’m going to talk about this again, b/c mcclanahan employs the simplest thing in the world—i swear he doesn’t add “descriptive detail” and the mess that your teachers have told you about, he just skates on the surface of everything, he’s a magician enchanting you with beautiful smoke and mirrors until he reveals a firmly constructed house

that’s the only way i can explain it

the only way

//

the back of my book says it is $16 and i paid that much for it

you should pay that amount for it too

i mean do it

//

forget what the previous scores have said this is the winner, so much so that it makes me want to push almost everything (SO NOT EVERYTHING) we’ve ever reviewed down another 10 points

this should be taught in those ‘memoir’ classes for years to come, please add this and debate it—what’s real and what’s not, pls debate it all day so it remains for always in the conversation

‘

56.6-61.5 :: mspaint and heartbreak by michael hessel-mial

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 22:00:00 -0400

‘ms paint and heartbreak’ by michael hessel-mial // author published, 2013

56.6-61.5

seems like i meant to review this approximately ‘4wks’ ago, wrote something, have been looking for it, can’t find it, it’s now like this ‘lost’ text that will haunt mew

this is an image macro series and i’ll say it straight: the images are better than the words

seems like hessel-mial spent most of the ‘time’ really developing interesting celeb-influenced-landscape-collages while neglecting the words

but that’s ok, b/c poets have been neglecting imagery for the better part of 4ever until ‘recently’

don’t hate don’t hate don’t hate don’t hate

the selection of the ‘go to’ image macro font of impact (LOL THERE ARE SOME CATZ) was also displeasing to me i guess, but to some ppl, the non-jaded CHEEZBURGER lovers will find hessel-mial’s textual subversion somewhat suprising since he is making ‘earnest’ declarations with the impact font

perhaps my favorite is the steampunk grape suit temptress image

rlly liked how the ‘image macros’ functions as a coping device
however the honesty hear sometimes ‘bleeds’ too fully and his ‘real talk’ loses its poetic edge for whining

like in this one:

which is sad b/c many of the ones b4 it displayed some real ingenuity, like this line:
‘you were poison / so i got a book on plants and poetry’

but i don’t rlly get the foregrounding of ppl within the landscape, seems somewhat repetitive for the point, would have enjoyed more ‘character development’ idk one / 2 characters crossing this terrain together

even if they were famous ppl

shoutout lawrence of arabia shoutout

let’s talk art for a sec idk anything idk anything

but many of these photos seem to be mid-foreground landscape shot with some type of figure interposed on top to create a jarring sensation—that person does not necessarily belong in this environment

now we can start to see the loneliness emerge, these figures alien to their given landscapes yet asked to exist there

this is called juxtaposition i know and it’s powerful for us, it still is
b/c we are not used to such ideas yet

our commercial photoshop abilities and capabilities have made it to where we want ppl interposed onto a background/situation to appear normal rather than for them to appear ‘out of place’ as hessel-mial does

we expect to fit in not to stand alone

that’s hessel-mial’s greatest strength in this work—the ability to stand alone

there’s also a ‘high fashion’ component at play, putting ‘models’ / ‘pretty ppl’ in these barren landscapes

this part doesn’t feel new to me, however, the strange ‘costumes’ of professional fashion that are not actually worn on the street—fashion has always given the impression that it is a foreign land

i kind of like this within the relationship narrative that hessel-mial is telling, maybe showing that relationship assuredness/confidence is actually ‘beyond’ him, much like the high fashion is actually outside of the ‘avg person’

take the ‘iconic’ image that hessel-mial has used to promote his book

actually im not sure if this is ‘high fashion’ model (OK MY ANALYSIS BREAKS DOWN) but the speaker is literally ‘outside’ asking for a connection via cultured/mediated boombox allusion

i didn’t give this a ‘high score’ but it is starting to work on me, maybe i became bored with the images over time, the similar composition of them all

i sub boredom in for style, i am horrible

0.0-100.0 :: 'young americans' by jordan castro

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 01:00:31 -0400

young americans by jordan castro // civil coping mechanisms, 2013

0.0-100.0

i spent this past wknd aerating my lawn
i planted grass seed
i bought top soil at the local ‘home improvement’ store

i find more excuses not to go to shows than i used to
i hate paying full price for movies

i’ve ‘rolled over’ an IRA before
i have a savings account

i am not young

//

b/c of the above-stated ‘facts’ pls disregard my opinion in the following ‘lines’
b/c i am ‘not young’
b/c i remember being ‘young’ and dismissing ppl who didn’t ‘get it’ anymore
b/c i remember writers writing articles on ‘trends’ and ‘young artists’ and them not understanding what was really ‘happening’
pls disregard me then pls
b/c you already know that if i’m old i won’t ‘get’ it and will not like this and just like…
b/c if i type a ‘high score’ into this entry you will think i’m trying to be ‘relevant with the kids, yeah!!!’
b/c if i type a ‘low score’ into this entry you will think i’m trying to show that i still ‘understand’ what the ‘kids’ are ‘into’

with a title like ‘young americans’ no one can do anything nothing nothing

//

a man not as young as me is in starbux says he listens to ‘mumford and sons’ for inspiration

god help art

//

from the poem 11.22.10
‘art can just be like, the things i make for myself or my friends or whatev’

//

the word ‘something’ appears in this book 54x over 75 pages or something

//

i am not young, so i do not ‘understand’ jordan castro saying things like ‘caring doesn’t help or change anything’ then immediately say he once ate soft cookies with people he liked but don’t see often which was fun, proving that he did in fact ‘care’ abt the situation, (ie it was ‘fun’ meaning that he enjoyed it) and that he was with ppl he ‘liked’ (ie enjoyed them, compared to not caring which means he would have no emotion either way towards them), caring means talking to ppl, asking abt them, influencing them, showing then that things can ‘change’

comments immediately above made in reference to the poem: ‘you guys know shrimp, right? well shrimp, you know, they keep everything to themselves, like, they don’t give to charity or anything. well the other day, my friend, he tol me, he said ‘you know why shrimp are like that don’tcha?’ i told him, i said ‘no clue, why are they like that?’ he told me, he said ‘because they’re shellfish’

//

feel like the brad listi interview with jordan ‘ruined’ this book for me, as if the work and person are supposed to be separate ( I GET THAT) but very often feel in the course of reading this and in reading other jordan castro works that he doesn’ t necessarily want a ‘separation’ i may be misguided in this assumption, i admit

//

inherent contradictions on worldviews are part of being ‘young’

//

very much enjoyed the poem ‘sad americans’

//

some subject matter mentioned several times throughout the book: drugs, pooping, not caring, something, hamlet, mustache, google products

//

feel the best about jordan castro when he is addressing social situations such as in ‘i don’t feel comfortable around you anymore’ and ‘help me’

//

‘help me’ really seems to ‘get at’ our modern angst
i enjoyed the feelings of anxiety surrounding gchat
seems very honest this line:
‘i want you to want to help me but
i want to remain, for the most part, helpless’

worries abt the future, how to survive post-parents, how to survive
seems easier to be dependent, until you’re not ‘dependent’ and then you’re like ….

//

but i never understood the ppl that were my ‘age’ either i only get a select few i guess some of them were older than me some of them were younger but they were ‘few’

//

transitions, we’ve got to do them
all of us always ‘transitioning’

it’s enough to make us write poetry
like everyday
or something

81.9 :: 'joke book' zine by victor 'kool ad' vazquez

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:31:00 -0400

‘joke book’ zine by victor ‘kool ad’ vazquez // sorry house, 2013

81.9

thought ‘happy that kool ad finally accepted my friend request the other day’

thought ‘feels like ppl in the western world w/ computers are hiding if they’re not on facebook’

thought ‘I admire ppl who don’t “succumb” to facebook’s void’

thought ‘I liked kool ad // das racist before I heard kool ad was “tight” w/ sorry house’

thought ‘I liked kool ad before I found the interview he did w/ tao lin (2009)’

thought ‘kool ad is one of my favorite rappers & I am ambivalent abt his new mixtape’

thought ‘I hope I like this ebook better than I did his new mixtape’

thought ‘watchin twin peaks bitch look i’m laura palmer - YOU TUBE dot com I don’t even read that’

seems like kool ad is ‘hella’ smart

seems like this ebook is more ‘serious’ than his raps

seems like every time I see an old das racist (RIP) interview heems is tryna ‘steal the show’ & kool ad is partially agitated partially aloof abt that

this ebook is filled w/ twitterly aphorisms

I feel sure a lot of these lines were once tweets but I don’t feel like checking

kool ad laces this ebook w/ politically keen insight

w/ humorous wordplay

w/ cultural unveilings

he seems ‘preoccupied’ w/ the concepts of ‘love’

of ‘revolution’

of ‘entertainment’

of media’s manipulative ‘nature’

of challenging our ‘inherited’ ideologies

abt ‘capitalism’

abt ‘pleasure’

abt ‘convenience’

he seems to wanna ‘uncover’ truths abt the (western) world :::

‘CLASSIC WESTERN PHILOSOPHY IS SLAVEOWNERS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SLEEP AT NIGHT’

:::

‘IF I’M ON AN AIRPLANE WITH (X AMOUNT) DOLLARS WORTH OF FUEL IN IT, TRAVELING (Y AMOUNT) MILES, HOW MUCH MONEY DID MY 7TH GRADE MATH TEACHER MAKE IN A YEAR?’

:::

‘The TV show C.O.P.S presents us with images of brutality and asks that we perceive them as justice’

:::

‘How much of my time should I invest in trying to understand how the world is and how much of my time should I invest in trying to understand how the

world should be?’

:::

‘EVERY TIME YOU GO TO MCDONALD’S WHETHER YOU KNOW IT OR NOT, A PART OF YOU IS SAYING “F**K IT.”’

he seems to think a lot, & his raps reveal this too, but here he doesn’t so quickly shift into irreverence & lackadaisical improvisations (not to say it’s ‘bad’ when he does)

although this ebook doesn’t seem necessarily ‘neatly’ structured, each line is a nugget to be potentially ‘reckoned’ with

he’s like a hip scholar that’s been stuck in a library w/ a basket of hash

he’s like a politically-savvy wizard

he interweaves statistics into his pulsing questions

statistics like: ‘34% of the world has internet access’

81% of this book is questions, I calculated ‘it’

41% of this book was written under the influence of kool ad’s beard

59% was written under the influence of ‘punk’

thought ‘he seems to find “solace” in humor’

thought ‘bc of the title I expected this book to be even more joke driven’

thought ‘I am (surprisingly) glad it’s not entirely joke driven’

thought ‘it seems like a “gift & a curse” to be a funny person bc then everyone expects you to be funny & sometimes you don’t wanna be funny then yr caught in a dilemma of maintaining yr own integrity or “playing into” yr audience’s f**ked up desires’

‘WORDSWORTH: ACCEPTABLE WHITE RAPPER?’

kept thinking abt what kool ad said abt tao lin’s work :::

‘kind of an incredibly accessible operating manual on how not to be a hater’

::: & how that might relate to this ebook

is this ebook an ‘incredibly accessible operating manual on how not to be a hater’ ? ? ?

thought ‘postmodern proverbs’ ~3 times while reading this ebook

thought ‘is this “alt lit”’

thought ‘this is definitely “alt lit”’

thought ‘I am glad that he’s making me think – I am glad that he is challenging me’

thought ‘he “strikes” a nice balance btwn being “challenging” & being “entertaining”’

thought ‘is this poetry?’

thought ‘this book is not abt individual ‘pieces’ but abt individual inquiries

thought ‘does the form of this book reflect our ADD culture?’

thought ‘am I ADD for enjoying this?’

thought ‘each line doesn’t seem ADD at all though – in fact, each line seems emphatic & nourishing’

thought ‘I am possibly everything plus everything that is not me’

thought ‘I HOPE MORE RAPPERS WRITE MORE EBOOKS’

thxxx VICTOR thxxx a lot