Breaking/Whitman

An episode of Breaking Bad had Walt's lab assistant recite a Whitman poem, after they had finishing their first batch of meth together. Awesome. Behold:

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

BY WALT WHITMAN

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

The Trees Around

"There are many beautiful things.
I want them all to see me."

Those lines are out of my favorite poem "Postcard From "The Hacienda Del Mar". It was my favorite, but by default; I didn't care for the book. It was a fast read. I didn't hate it, but I didn't feel it lived up to the praise on it's back cover.  Maybe I was expecting something more, something crazy. With a title with trees and around, maybe I was expecting some kind of Ent story {on a side note, when I Googled walking trees of.... because I couldn't remember the name Ents, one possible search Google finished with was Costa Rica. A click later, I was looking at the walking trees of Costa Rica, which I saw almost 4 years ago, and had completely forgotten about}or maybe I had watched the Tree of Life trailer too much (which is one of greatest trailers ever, not sure about movie though, haven't got to see it yet) or wanted a childhood nostalgia and existence questioning book of poems.

I could see the threads, the personifications of trees, the oceans, etc., which I liked, but something was missing. I felt that, and I don't mean this necessarily as a criticism, but is, the collection as a whole felt like poems I  could read by someone in a poetry workshop. That isn't truly a criticism because there is nothing wrong with pieces being workshopped, as a young writer myself, I know this, and it wasn't even as if the poems felt unfinished. I think the poems felt like workshop poems because compared to the last poetry book I read, Rise Up, or even I Was the Jukebox or Come On All You Ghosts, the poems in The Trees Around felt no different than any poem I could read in a poetry workshop at DePaul (and I don't mean that as insult to my peers) or any poem I read from the Norton Anthology, and all I felt was ambivalent. Other than "Postcard..." very few lines dropped my jaw, where something I'd never seen before or left me wondering.

It kind of felt like going to a baseball game where you don't have any loyalty to either of the teams playing  and you watch it, but don't remember it the next day. But, sometimes, during those games, something happens that will stick in your mind. A late season call-up may go 3 for 4 against an aging veteran. A player may hit for the cycle or a pitcher may throw a no hitter with a half dozen walks. But, there are so many games that go unremembered, because nothing out of the ordinary happens. The ones you remember always had something that became engraved in your memory. The Trees Around didn't really have that, for me. I went back to it, and it's not difficult to read, and not necessarily boring, but I do feel like it lacks emotion. Like a ballplayer who is great, but plays with no heart, no grit, no passion. Chris Tonelli is praised by Bill knot (and has a poem dedicated to him) so clearly he is considered a established poet. But, this book did not make me bloom, Mr. Graham Foust, who also blurbed on the back cover. Did I miss something?

In other news, the first disc of the third season of Breaking Bad arrived in the mail yesterday and I burned through the first four episodes last night. The opening scene alone, of the gangster crawling on the ground to the shrine, was haunting. In Breaking Bad fashion the stakes are set, early on, and while I feel it starts slow, I know it all begins to boil, quickly, and by mid season chaos is on the horizon and then everything goes to hell, in great, one of the best dramas on television, fashion. I forgot how good B. Cranston is. There was a scene from the first season, where Cranston's character, Walter tells his family he doesn't want to take cancer treatment. His son responds by asking him why doesn't he just kill himself then and there. That scene was probably the most powerful scene of any show, film or play I've ever scene. I don't think I will forget it anytime soon.

over & out

Wiff and memories

Here is an interesting article on the history of the wiffle ball. http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112975/making-a-wiffle-ball-wsj It's pretty interesting, especially the part about the other uses of wiffle ball bats: the plastic yellow bats being filled with BB gun pellets to rattle pigs. As a kid I played wiffle ball once in awhile; it was usually at friends houses or with cousins. At home, we swapped a wiffle ball for a tennis ball and used a friend's Mark McGwire red blimp of a bat, that had a 2 Liter sized (that was actually hollowed and see through) sweet spot. Our field was a rarely used unpaved alley, and we hit home runs over the fence into the Salvation Army parking lot or we would play into front of my house. We always got yelled at for that, but the imaginary field was perfect, in my mind. There's this cement engraving directly down my steps (it's the only one in the city I've ever seen like it) that is in the middle of the sidewalk. That served as home plate. My neighbor's steps were first, second was a spot where the sidewalk  began treme and third was whichever paralleled parked car's side view mirror was close enough to being straight across from first. We touched, no grabbed onto first and third, for some reason. We never spent time on the bases though. That's what ghost runners were for. A light post was the pesky pole. Those were the days, when we played till the fireflies began to wink. 

I remember this faux stick ball game kids used to play up at summer camp in Michigan. It was in the knot tying section/fortress. I think the ball was a superball wrapped in duct tape. I always just watched bits and pieces of it. I was either getting my environmental science or swimming merit badges, and was always late to games. It seemed to be a combination of baseball and cricket and red rover. I could never figure out all the rules, as long as I watched. There are a lot of memories I have of camp that are foggy. There was this skit performed every year that's punchline was 'Yellow fingers!' that was always so funny. There a was bootleg Whose on First routine and the solemn camp hymn that might of sounded like a 13 year old version of a Fleet Foxes song about camaraderie and scouting.  


Okkervil River has a great line that I think fits with memories. From Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed of the roof the Chelsea Hotel, 1979, my current favorite O.R. song: 


Old times, hello, hey, I've missed you
Old life, hey now, let me in
Because you win on every issue
Now, can I kiss you?
Don't you care how long it's been?
It has been so many years, I lived my yearning
But in every bed, it led me through
They only bloom on what was burning

When I can't remember it all, I distract myself. I check out Hobart and their new tumblr. They reviewed a new sports website, Grantland, here: http://hobartpulp.tumblr.com/post/6601340512/hobart-mini-reviews-grantland I checked it out, read a few good articles about Ichiro and the Orioles, and the story by Jimmy Kimmel was the funniest thing I read in years. I also love the picture they have under their title; the man, in a suit, fully swinging for the fences. I need to figure out where that is from. It's a great shot, a story itself.  

over 

Big Papa

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/being-ernest-john-walsh-unravels-the-mystery-behind-hemingways-suicide-2294619.html

great article on why Hemingway committed suicide.

A Reflection

By my watch, the quarter officially ended on Friday, as two of my final grades finally trickled in. Looking back at the quarter, and the year, it was all great. 10 out of my 12 classes were English classes and several of those were meaningful workshops. Unfortunately, I don't believe next year will be as good, just as my senior year of high school wasn't as fun as my junior year. I have to take a lab, a math class, 3 language classes (French) or fail German 103, and a philosophy class. Not fun. Not like the classes I took this quarter. I thought I'd review them, point out the bright spots and low points:

ENG 378: Social Engagement

Highs: Reading Neverwhere, getting to see Gaiman talk at the Harold Wash., reading The Shining, workshopping a story about if the Chicago Fire had never happened

Lows: Reading The Left Hand of Darkness (snore inducer), and having workshops that were circle jerks (not the sexual act, but the workshop was run as everyone sits in a circle and says a positive thing and then a negative thing about said piece, and by the time the last person speaks, there is nothing new to say, everybody has almost always already said it, and those last people sound like jerks. I believe in the natural, free flowing approach to workshops (I wish I could think of a sexual act to apply to it, so I could write an academic article about it) because people don't end up repeating themselves, as much, and hence, get deeper into the stories; of course it only happens if the people in the workshop are dedicate to improving the story and author spent time and effort on that said story.

ENG 307 Advanced Fiction 

Highs: No circle jerks, thank god, because pieces were first introduced by students, in a sort of summary and led-in of topics/problems that would discussed, and then deeply and thoroughly discuused (it lived up to being an advanced fiction class for the most part). It may have been my imagination or the shear thrill of being workshopped, but I felt my piece was discussed for what seemed like almost an hour, in comparison to the usual 35 to 40 minutes (I could be wrong of course), and during that time a workshoppe, someone who I respect, pointed out my favorite sentence, which I believe is simple but so telling, as a moment of humanity in otherwise bleak story, and also, another girl told me in her written feedback that my story physically made her uncomfortable (which was what I was intending to do{that's should be the goals of good writing right? I have been trying to strive for that lately, especially after stories I read in this class and others in classes with this same professor}) which leads me to the reading list! here's a condensed list, because we didn't get to read everything originally intended for the class and I may have skipped a story or two (don't tell anyone)

On the Show by Wells Tower (which I have previously wrote about)
Mac in Love and The Intruder by Stephen Dixon
A Perfect Day for Bananafish by Salinger
Feathers by Raymond Carver (which was read along Bananfish)
(I liked Bananafish and Feathers as much as On the Show and plan to reread them and review them)
I See You, Bianca by Maeve Brennan
Gershwin's Second Prelude by Charles Baxter (and something else by Baxter that wasn't as good)
Chablis by Donald Barthleme (which I'd read before, and still knocks my socks off every time)
Hot Ice by Stu Dybek (the same can be  said about Hot Ice as Chablis)
A Vintage Thunderbird by Ann Beattie (which I've read before, but doesn't do anything for me. My professor was a pupil of Beattie's so I figured I'd have to read again)

Lows: not being able to have our last workshop at a bar, but then going to a bar after the last class and a certain someone (I wont name names, but he has a blog) having drank too much and then dropping his phone on the el tracks (the phone was okay) and was extremely embarrassed when he had to go get a CTA worker to jump down and retrieve it, while two cops watched it all, and then feeling like something was burrowed inside his stomach and eating his intestines the next day

ENG 382 Major Authors: Hemingway, Faulkner and Bellow

Highs: Everything we read: Maybe half of Big Papa's short stories (too many that were so good to list), The Sun Also Rises (I read it in high school and had no idea Jake was impotent), Sanctuary (didn't want to eat corn on the cob after reading that), Go Down, Moses (read the Bear for another class and didn't know how it connects to such a deeper family story), Seize the Day (fathers can be real dicks and what happens to their sons if so) and Henderson, Rain King (Smolak the roller coaster riding bear, who pisses himself every time he rides it, which is one of my favorite details of any ending, and Henderson failing at blowing up the frogs), listening to Edith Piaf in class, watching Phone Booth, Seize the Day (with a surprisingly well acted Tommy Wilhem, played by Robin Williams)  and A History of Violence in class, my professor banging his head against the door a few times, his persona, and very personal stories and how they related to what we were learning in class, his intensity (he had to be low to mid sixties), writing an essay about The Old Man and the Sea and Joe DiMaggio for 5 pages and the professor seemed to like it, him calling me out on my graded quiz by telling me I got the only low score in the class (for any other professor I would have went to the department head), but with this professor, and what we were reading of Hemingway, I felt he was challenging me, in a way Hemingway's characters are macho and I accepted the challenge

Lows: Watching Phone Booth in class and The Modernists (except for Keith Carradine and Hemingway being portrayed in the film for about ten minutes, I didn't understand why we had to watch it)  

And last, but not least:

Reading Poetry:


Highs: Our third explication essay being turned into a Imitation poetry assignment (pick a poem by a published poet, imitate it and write about the process, among other things) I picked Matthew Zapruder's "Work" and was pleased with my first draft of the imitation I wrote (I think I posted 'Garden') and the whole process was so fun and challenging; getting to read and make a mood board for Brenda Shaughnessy's Human Dark with Sugar, getting a free copy of Blood Dazzled by Patricia Smith from a classmate (I still don't understand why she didn't want to keep it, but I will never not take free poetry books), kitsch and how it related to the feelings of some after the death of Osama Bin Laden, the little notes I scribbled that I think are about Wallace Stevens: 'the poem must resist the intelligence/ almost successfully', imagination is what saves us, and the use of language to make the world more vital, and I wrote 'Man Carrying Thing' above that all {I will research that}; a long list of contemporary poets I want to check out (that were options for our mood board) and a few poems from my peers for their mood board projects, including Berryman, Heaney, Kees, Carson and Bishop.

Lows: nada!

Super 8:


I didn't take a class on J.J. Abrams, but did go to see with my dad on Father's Day. I really enjoyed it. It had the 'Lost' feeling (Abrams) that balanced perfectly with the Spielberg heartwarming quality. I'd watch pretty much anything with Kyle Chandler in it, too. And, I like seeing young child actors really step it up too.

That's all.

Rise Up

After a somewhat slow start, I really warmed up to Matthew Rohrer's Rise Up. Some highlights:

"I tried to walk it off/
but I must have walked in the wrong direction."

That was the turning point for me. Everything just got better after that.

"I want no one to have reason/
to hate me, though I hate/
them, I hate them all."

 The narrator imagining Robert Frost (sort of) speaking on the kitchen radio:
"...miles to go before it sleeps."

"Do you hear that? she says.
It sounds like a boxer punching a horse/
through the top half of a barn door." (wow.)

"At night this is what scares me:
Having to piss the forest blackness:
Seeing a faint glow:
Knowing it is two elk working together/
to balance a birthday cake on the their antlers."

"A child wakes up laughing/
it is going to rain/
dark sound of a saw."  

I love "dark sound of a saw" because it instantly reminded me of this NPR small desk concert podcast video I have of the band Horse feathers. One of the band members plays a saw (or a singing saw, as it is called by the musically inclined). The bending of the singing saw is familiar, yet haunting, and goes with guitar and cello so peacefully. I'm trying to think of any other instruments that have that homemade/workingman aspect yet sound so sweet and sinister at the same time. Are there any others?  

The book almost ends with these lines:

"A new song is sung onto/
her green dress and her long legs."

The strange, but fascinating sounds, a marriage possibly on the rocks (or did I read it that way after seeing Tapes 'n Tapes live and listening to Insistor on repeat afterwards?)  and the absurd but beautiful imagery all led me to finish the book in one night, reread it on the the train the next day and then once again when at home, all in a span of 24 hours. Shout out to Kathy for recommending Matthew [(no L.) Did you know there are two Matthew Rohrers? Crazy! Cool article on it on WeWhoAreAboutToDie] Rohrer after I wrote an imitation of Matthew Zapruder's poem "Work". I'll post that imitation in time, if I haven't already.

Well that's all for tonight. On Deck: The Tree Around by Chris Tonelli

Encore: Tapes 'n Tapes lyrics (from Insistor)

Kelly, Kelly, it's not your right 
To be cheating, fighting and starting life 
When my head and hands are tied to you so tight 
Oh Kelly just tell me one more thing 
Is it mine or is it some other ring 
That you wear as we lie in bed tonight? 

And Kelly, who's the logger? 
Oh, Kelly, who's the logger? 
Oh Kelly, who's the logger who's trees were felled with might? 
And Kelly, hold your water 
Oh Kelly, hold your water 
Oh Kelly, Kelly, hold your water tight 

holy shit "On the Show"

This story kicked me in the shins. "On the Show" by Wells Tower out of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. Here are a few memorable lines:

~ Sheila Cloatch mixed expensive blue cognac with Gatorade, which doesn't give hangovers. Classy 

~ This chilling piece of dialogue from Ellis: "I'd eat her whole damn child just to taste the thing he squeezed out of." For some reason this reminds me of a joke out of a Dorothy Allison story or something a character in one of her stories would say: What do you call a virgin from South Carolina? (I could be mixing up the state; it's somewhere in the south.)    A ten year old that can run fast. 

~ Jeff Park's stepfather attempts to bite his step son on his balls, which prompts Jeff to run away, and eventually ends up working at the carnival. 

~ Jeff watching the orange sweater wearing Katie, with "the pale green glimmering behind her teeth, a light of both desolation and comfort, the light of a lone cottage window on an empty street. He (Jeff) thinks it's there for him." At first, I imagined the green light to be the old style crystallized rock candy (or "phosphorescent candy that they sell at the fair"), but my professor in class pointed out in class that it was probably bubble gum. I like to imagine it as rock candy, in that "that green summer mouth". 

~ The whole story reminded me of the ending of Henderson, Rain King. Henderson had run away from home, after his father blamed him for his brother's death and he goes and joins a carnival. He rides a roller coaster with Smolak, a bear, that wets itself when it gets scared riding the roller coaster. [At one point Jeff calls home to see if he can return home and his mother dismisses that idea. She says to call later, because the Hendersons were coming over to eat dinner with her and the stepfather. Clue The Twilight Show theme song.]

~ The ending of Jeff looking for Katie, who ditched him, and when he finds her, she ignores him. He grabs her and causes a scene, and when he looks into her mouth, “the light…has gone out.”

~ Jeff's whole story is secondary to the main story: a boy is molested in a privy, and the search for who did it. Right after it happens, the boy acts undisturbed, his father questions if he believes his son and he thinks about how the ordeal will negatively affect his (the father's) life. The molestation is real, as the culprit dreamily recalls it, when it is revealed it is he who committed the crime on the third to last page. There are other side stories, even side shows almost, that pop in and out, but the crime and Jeff’s story are what kept my attention. It was like a culmination of the worse things you think carnies can do, a kind of wrong place wrong time story, shitty parenting, all in an intertwined with braided narrative.  Wells Tower delivered. I intend to check out many more of his stories.