Through the glass, a quickster. A trick. Scale upon scale the little fish spiking up with the bubbles. Then the easy dark of the theater and eyes, wide-lidded in awe.
Sherman Alexie owns the top spots with a number of Harryette Mullen books in there as well. Also good to see Barbara Jane crack the top 20.
***
I've been meaning to post this for awhile. It's been difficult to choose 30 albums because I like music and my moods vary. For example, I've got stuff I listen to when I'm in the gym, in the car, when I'm writing, and when I'm grading. And often the choices are so disparate. *edit: after much reflection, there's still a tie at the top, but I'm more careful with the rankings.
1. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
1. Andrew Bird, Noble Beast
2. Various Artists, Dark was the Night
3. St. Vincent, Actor
4. A.C. Newman, Get Guilty
5. We Were Promised Jetpacks, These Four Walls
6. Micachu and the Shapes, Jewellery
7. Taken By Trees, East of Eden
8. The Low Anthem, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
9. Lighting Dust, Infinite Light
10. White Denim, Fits
11. Laura Gibson, Beasts of Seasons
12. Jason Lytle, Yours Truly, The Commuter
13. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
14. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz!
15. Great Lake Swimmers, Lost Channels
16. The Flaming Lips, Embryonic
17. Tegan & Sara, Sainthood
18. Son Volt, American Central Dust
19. Fanfarlo, Reservoir
20. Telekinesis, Telekinesis!
21. The Dutchess & The Duke, Sunset/Sunrise
22. Woods, Songs of Shame
23. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca
24. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love
25. Thao, Know Better Learn Faster
26. Coconut Records, Davy
27. Choir of Young Believers, This is for the White In Your Eyes
28. Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career
29. Metric, Fantasies
30. Rain Machine, Rain Machine
OK, so that was quite strange and very unexpected. A couple of things I'd add--Dark Night of the Soul would be one.
Disappointments--BLK JKS. I thought they would put out a fabulous album, but After Robots was overproduced, IMO.
I also wanted to like the Wilco album and the Monsters of Folk album, but I didn't so much.
***
Edited: Had some time to think it over
***
Back to your regular broadcast.
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Still reading Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist which I'm finding to be funny, heartbreaking, and instructional.
. . . well, I'm technically not in Atlanta, but rather a suburb of sorts. So, if you're in Atlanta and want to hang out, give me a shout!
We'll be in the Atlanta area until the 27th (with a short trip to South Carolina in between).
Among the possible adventures planned:
1) The Aquarium 2) The Zoo 3) A good chicken & waffles joint
***
I've been busily catching up with my correspondence despite a steady trickle of reference letter writing.
The numbers were slightly different this year--I had fewer students asking for letters, but the few that I did have are applying to more schools.
The average number of schools applied to was eight. I think students are realizing how competitive the application game has become. I'm also having more students applying after a year or two off.
***
It's raining here. A little bit o' the Northwest here down South.
***
Kid's finally down for a nap. Whew.
***
Current Spin:
We Were Promised Jetpacks. On my top 20 of 2009--I think I'm titling the list "Albums that Aren't Getting Their Proper Cred"
When I started thinking of my top 20 albums, I saw that I was duplicating a lot of other lists, so I figured, I'd change up my list. It'll be up before the new year.
Since 2002 I've been an active member of Kundiman, both as staff, and as substitute faculty. Now I'm the co-chair of the advisory board and what's clear is if we are to continue, we need money. Non-profits are hurting all around, and what's more if you're an up-and-coming arts organization, you're really hurting.
The organization's at a crossroads, and we need help.
If you can give us a hand or a good word, we'd greatly appreciate your help.
My grades are turned in. I'm all set to head over to Atlanta for Christmas to visit the in-laws, though I'm not ready for a 6 hour plane ride with a toddler.
We scheduled our flight with the kid's sleep schedule in mind, so such a schedule has us arriving at SEATAC at 4AM (leaving B'ham at 2:00AM). Brutal.
***
Current Spin:
AC Newman. "Prophets." Another one of my top 20 picks for the oughts. I thought his album was quite underrated and was frequently played on my stereo system.
I am blogging right now because I am a procrastinator.
****
I've got roughly 40 portfolios in my back pack. I haven't even pulled them out of my bag since arriving at my office this morning.
As I mentioned in a Tweet, for some reason I decided to pack all the portfolios and take them home. I guess I thought I'd grade them, but I wound up helping Meredith take care of a kid with a cold, and then after they went to bed, I wound up playing video games until I got sleepy. My brain's mush.
***
I haven't come up with my list of top 20 albums from the 2009 year yet 'cause I haven't had time to sit down and think about such things. Maybe when I get out from under portfolios. Maybe I should stop blogging and just grade the damn things.
***
I'll be reading for the It's About Time reading series tomorrow evening, 6:00 - 7:45PM with Martha Silano, Lyn Coffin, and Matt Briggs. The location is listed in the link. Come out and see us!
***
Current Spin:
Lightning Dust. I'm adding their album, "Infinite Light" to my list of 20 albums.
It's the end of the academic quarter and I'm beat.
The 8AM class destroyed me, namely because of my roughly 45 minute commute to campus. I was waking up extremely early in order to catch this class, and I was late only once by 5 minutes.
***
A steady stream of students has been stopping by dropping off their portfolios. Ah, to be done with grading.
***
I've still got one more item on my once 9-item to do list. It'll get done tonight.
***
Baby's got a cold, so collectively we've been miserable for the past few nights. Egad.
***
Son Volt was quite good, though I had to leave the concert before they were finished--such is the life of a parent.
***
Current spin: See below. I don't want to numb you with Son Volt postings.
Today is the last scheduled day of classes. I looked at the faces of the students in my classes on Tuesday and made the executive decision to hold extended office hours in lieu of a class on Thursday. They didn't seem grateful, just relieved. I suppose at this point in the academic year I shouldn't look for gratitude, especially after what I put those students through. ;-)
So here I am. Office hours. Nothing to do but blog.
***
I returned my first page proofs to the press today. It was very interesting to see Requiem in this form for me. A kind of distancing took place as I was reading for a misplaced punctuation here, a typographical error there. The process was mathematical and objective--a matter of making sure page numbers in the TOC matched with page numbers in the document.
What I must say, though, is that I think I did a pretty good job of structuring this book--more so than the previous books. Furious Lullaby was a relatively interior book. The poems were meditative and therefore it was difficult to build the inertia to move the book forward. The aubades that fill the pages of Furious collectively constructed a narrator who was displaced. Unsure.
The big distinction between Furious and Requiem is that while a lot of the poems in Requiem do exist in the interior, they are clearly grounded in a real place with the real and active process of revisiting the past.
Furious is a metaphysical manuscript in the most spiritual sense, attempting to locate the self in the world, and Requiem's metaphysics exist in its attempt to locate the self in the past.
***
But more importantly, the way I write has changed quite a bit. My lines have gotten longer. The way I think about lines has gotten longer. The way I think has gotten a bit more tangled. Perhaps all of these things have led my work to these odd syntactic/linguistic places.
I'm still interested in clarity, but I'm more interested in clarity as it appears in the new complexities of a sentence.
***
I have a very tall thermos filled with black coffee next to me and I've been taking hits out of the coffee lid for the past two hours. I don't know what I'm saying, but it sounds big and proper.
***
Current Spin:
Shonen Knife. I wish I saw them here in Bellingham.
I recently got pounded by deadlines, so I've been doing my best to try to stay afloat. It's the last week of the fall quarter, so there was much grading and much end-work prep. Needless to say, I've neglected the blog. So here I am. Checking in. *wave*
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Many of you chose Cover #4, which is the cover that Amy, the designer, and myself have chosen.
I'm in the midst of proofreading my 1st proofs (another deadline). It's interesting to revisit the manuscript in this form. The formatting doesn't make the idea of the book any more real.
***
To be honest, I haven't had my mind on anything literary for awhile. I've been playing video games to take the edge off.
***
My Thanksgiving was fine, thank you. My family members from Portland drove up the I-5 corridor and crashed with my parents in their tiny Bellingham abode. Much madness ensued.
There was a houseful of "Tweenagers" and a PS3 with all the accouterments. The funniest game has to be Little Big Planet.
***
Current Spin:
Son Volt. I'm seeing these guys this Saturday with Meredith, in tribute to the end of the quarter.
My students are quite concerned with "voice" these days. They want to write poems that are uniquely their own, poems that are immediately recognizable as John Q's, Sally G's, or Ruben T's. Often, their quest for a voice confronts their willingness to participate in the various exercises I have them attempt in my classes. I think the issue for them is they prefer the term "voice" to "point of view." "Voice" is more poetic--song-like. They want to be opera singers. To be on stage. They want fruit baskets delivered to their doors.
There are no fruit baskets in poetry, only fruity poets.
***
I get a lot of resistance to my assignments in workshops. This is partly because my assignments can range from the bizarre to the elaborate. This is also partly because the students are at the stage where they are trying on their own identities, both as people and as writers, and to follow my very stringent and oftentimes impractical rules would demean their art.
I basically run workshops based off of the exercises I give my students--they don't bring in poems composed outside of this context. For one, a lot of times they dust off crusty poems they had written in the past for workshop and I'm of the opinion that this is the time to practice craft rather than impose craft on an already wrought piece. For two, it's just easier to conduct a workshop with honest feedback if the poem in front of the participants are assignments. ANYWAY, to bring us back on course, I suppose it's an honest, earnest concern, especially from a population who's just beginning a writing path.
***
Teaching, administrative work, and the arrival of my page proofs have got me in an introspective mood these days. I've been buried under an avalanche of work, so I haven't had the time to converse with you guys about my meanderings.
Anyway, all this stuff got me thinking about my own writing journey, which wasn't a very linear journey. I got my page proofs for Requiem for the Orchard today, and I've been thinking about how different my three collections are and my relationship with all of my books.
To be honest, as much as I love SIU Press and the work that I have done in the past, I'm sick of my first two books. (Allison and Jon, if you're reading this, don't worry-I still read from the books at readings and plan to do so far into the future). Can we say such things? And can I look back and say that any one of those books encapsulated a particular "voice" that I was striving for in my poetry?
Just looking at the first book, there's such a change, both tonally and stylistically--and the shift in tone and style was conscious and wholly intentional. I did not want to write a sequel of the first book, though initially many people suggested that I craft one. But why would I and how could I? I was a different writer when I wrote the first book, I was a different writer when I started the second book. How could I expect to duplicate both the style and the sincerity of the initial production.
So this retrospective while looking at the pages of this newer document, has been quite interesting. At this point, with three books in my catalog, can I say that I've found my voice? And what to tell those students who are looking for their voices? Generally, I tell 'em to read more. Sometimes they do. Often they blow me off. I'm okay with both. Their journeys are their journeys.
***
I too like pizza.
***
Other stuff--read last night to support the Western Washington University literary journal, Jeopardy. Quite a turn-out last night and it was good to see many of the students (so of whom were discussed above) at the reading. Good on you.
It's quite interesting and I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's why such lists are compelling. They're very careful to signify that they're talking about importance and not necessarily the best recordings.
Imagine me trying to do the same thing with poetry? Do we dare? A lot of things happened in this decade, y'know--9/11, the upsurge of the internet as a viable force, the pressures of new media on the publishing industry, the rise of POD publishing, e-books . . . And of course the poetry books that have arisen from all of the above and then some.
Whew. This might require another blog.
***
Current spin:
Chad Vangaalen. "City of Electric Light"==a fan video.
