The Situation
A disappears.
He is accused of crimes but not formally charged.
He is well known and generally well regarded among many artists and critics and art collectors and journalists and architects and politicians and lawyers and government officials and political activists and blackjack players.
He is well known and poorly regarded among some other artists and critics and journalists and architects and politicians and lawyers and government officials and intelligence officers and police investigators.
Not too many other people really know who he is.
(Continued)
“Poet, cartoonist and loudmouth” (not to mention Flarf SEAL assassin) Gary Sullivan’s doing a great thing over at Bodega Pop, sharing music and videos he’s picked up at bodegas around NYC in recent years:
When I moved to New York City in 1997 I began to notice that bodegas run by people from different countries sometimes stocked CDs and DVDs of music and film from those countries.
The music I’ve collected from these bodegas can almost never be found in the “World Music” sections of the few remaining places to buy CDs in the U.S.
And you can mostly forget about finding it on iTunes (or cheapo MP3 sites like Soundike).
Though, oddly, many of these artists can be found on YouTube; where that is the case, I’ve embedded a video or two to watch while you download.
I’m currently enjoying Grace Chang’s Mambo Girl stylings. Visit Bodega Pop for more on Grace Chang and a YouTube clip of the opening scene of 1957’s “Mambo Girl,” along with a slew of fantastic pop from around the world, from vintage stuff like Chang to current Asian hip-hop and rock.
(Continued)
Reposting this old Poetry Project Newsletter review of Peter Culley’s Hammertown. One of my favorite poets, he’s also a favorite reviewer — his review of Clark Coolidge’s Far Out West, for example, has always really done it for me, packing more references into less space than almost anything else, ever (to say nothing of the ongoing catablogging of Culley’s favorite stuff over at Mosses).
*
“His playing is beyond what I could say about it.”
—John Coltrane on Paul “Mr. P.C.” Chambers
“Probably intended for dance tunes or with dance tunes in mind.”
—Louis Zukofsky on John Skelton’s “To Mistress Margaret Hussey”
Presented in three sections of six poems each, Peter Culley’s Hammertown is experimental at its core — check the particle-accelerator serial mash of “Snake Eyes” — and, strangely, beautifully, classical on either wing of the triptych (or gatefold LP cover), as the poet deftly mixes modes and methods — a sustained lyricism shot through with riffs epistolary, pastoral, elegiac; leavened with sincere homage; ventilated by epic-ironic gestures. And then there are complete surprises, such as the doses of “tumbling verse” à la Skelton; Culley’s rhymes and snapped lines, written “with dance tunes in mind,” help leash the poems enough to keep their wilder energies from spinning the work off into space while nudging what can be a very dark book towards the light. There is nothing emptily virtuosic in Culley’s polyverse; on the contrary, I repeatedly felt the thrill of the new while plunging into “a mix without edge or limit” and, just as often and importantly, the satisfaction of frequent enough snatches of “an air familiar” to keep from losing too many wits to bear witness.
(Continued)
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Not a second
or you’ll stop, the
primacy of an event
depends on its having been
for so many the mistakes
all blending into one
common take from all
the others spinning off
eyes in the generator
sun oil pools in
the sky reflected
and like as actors
we agree: COSTUME!
ripples generally
we all take photos
with our phones
of all we see
xiaojie vs. bao’an
chemical peel ads
roads asunder
capitalist ass
socialist tits
harmonycock
a tariff farmer
a mixed martial arts champ
and a woman flattened
by cement truck snap!
______________
One in a series of dailies written at head-speed en route to the office on Shanghai’s 10 Line, usually somewhere between the Shanghai Library and the Hongqiao Lu stops around 8:30 in the morning or so. (Though this one was written in the office.) Sometimes I’ll post them here.
The name of the series is TOWERS.
The not-so-discreet charm of the cultural bureaucracy: Everyone’s a critic, especially this plainclothes note-taker. His opinion? Censored.
It’s not often that I’m able to write something for my current corporate day job that I really like. But along with the travel guide copy and any and all other conceivable copy writing and editing needs an enormous Chinese travel company with a rapidly growing English-language website might require, my colleagues and I are blogging a bit on the China experience in a fairly personal vein.
Of all I’ve done to date for the travel site, this feels the best and most honest: Catch as Catch Can: Beating the Man to Shanghai’s Most Wanted Art. It was published months ago, before the larger crackdown that has seen Ai Weiwei disappeared – along with a slew of Chinese intellectuals, activists, lawyers, artists and good church-going folk – had taken shape (it was also before my mobile phone received a strange series of calls).
It’s as much about the strangeness not only of being in such a situation, but having chosen to be so in a crucial sense.
The opening paragraphs:
A Shanghai art gallery runs afoul of the local Culture Bureau, and we reflect on the fact that artists and curators in China run real risks every time they push the envelope. For art-curious foreigners, ham-handed government interventions in the arts may be in turns annoying, amusing, or plain befuddling. For the artists and galleries involved, however, it’s serious business.… »
Though many would deny it, for most first-time Western visitors to China — especially Americans, I suspect — part of the allure is the thrill of being watched. A light bout of paranoia puts an edge on things, and imagining that you’re somehow important enough to bear watching can flatter the ego and create an easy sense of drama.
(Continued)
A cold air fire
Jenson is a name
meaning SON OF JEN
we are architecturally
accelerated it’s
retarded growth
for a full five
quarters in just one
day a report
sharpshooters up
in Misrata
the news is of a man
alone against meddling
in the internal affairs
of any news at all
aside from long
longing shots of planes
launching from carriers
lifting off from those
European airfields
an exercise daily
as tai chi or checkers
and half a pack
of cigarettes
in the pocket
park’s retired comrades,
guards, granny chatter
______________
One in a series of dailies written at head-speed en route to the office on Shanghai’s 10 Line, usually somewhere between the Shanghai Library and the Hongqiao Lu stops around 8:30 in the morning or so. Sometimes I’ll post them here. The name of the series is Towers.
