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November 26, 2007
(uncompleted)
Illuminated
48 hours
Post Thanksgiving-
Friday night to Saturday night to Sunday night.
The scene: trying to fall asleep. It’s Shabboes, the Jewish Sabbath, but I’m on my computer anyway. Just no sleep in sight. Bounce from computer to bed to computer. Try to go to bed one last time and I hear the phone ringing downstairs.
Get out of bed or ignore it?
Get up. It’s Nate – he’ll be back in Ann Arbor in twenty –
Get dressed. We’ll get some beer.
I pull on clothes. The idea of drinking appeals to me: low impact, no stress, just chilling. He calls back after I pull on some jeans –
Paul called. We’re going to Detroit.
It’s almost midnight.
Where’s that crazy Nom I know!? The DIA is opening. Pull yourself together. We’re going out.
It starts.
There’s a six-pack of Miller Chill on the floor of the Accord EX, and he opens one for me. We talk loosely, about Thanksgiving and who was drunk - and who as sober. What we ate. Who was there. We talk about thesis for the first time since Tuesday. The car is parked in front of someone’s house that I don’t know, as we wait for Paul and a friend. We’re going to the DIA and it’s midnight and I’m drowning the beer and leaning back and it’s Shabboes but I don’t care because it’s so good.
Break was lonely.
In the car to Detroit we talk about leaving Detroit – the white flight, Nate’s mom leaving the house where he grew up in, it sitting empty yet full of stuff left behind by old renters and squatters.
I drift away for a second, to the time last month when we broke into the abandoned property. The floor a carpet of plastic bits, every color, every shape, all broken and distorted, every step a new crunch and the smell of stale feces and pine drifting up and out. In the living room, the sofa-couch half open, spilling its secrets to the room.
I just wanted to see Nate in that space, alone, just him sitting on that couch, toes bare in a formal suit, as the Barbie heads, muddy shoes and broken VHS tapes fell like snow coating grass. Just him and the camera in this space.
“We should go back and photograph.” I say it as I think it, the image, the house, the broken glass. And I soon as I do, I think, What a White thing to say.
“White people always want to photograph what’s been left behind”
So we leave it - behind.
In Detroit we park four or five blocks from the DIA. There’s a man sleeping in the street, no different from home, except that home is in the 70’s now, and D-town is freezing.
We decide to play the color game. A city of maybe 90% people of color, a museum in the city center, so who’s here tonight?
I count Nate first. One.
We pass maybe twenty people. Two.
Eight by the time we enter the museum, and we stop playing because there’s too many people and so much art and this is why we’re alive.
There was so much art. Image arrest, for sure, the over load and mass of art, the flow of people – I use the bathroom twice while we’re there. We use the buddy system so no one gets lost. At three-thirty am we decide it may be time to go home.
As we pass the man sleeping, I say, “I wish I had another blanket for him. It’s so cold out.” But that’s not what I meant. I meant where are the shelters in Detroit and why isn’t he inside? But I’m an outsider here, in more ways than one. I’m not sure what my place is.
We leave Detroit.
Paul and his friend fall asleep in the backseat. Nate and I talk. We talk shit, we talk future, we talk money – the music, sonic, spins rhythms. It’s Saturday morning. It’s still Shabboes. He parks the car behind my apartment, and it’s past four.
Posted by nikkur at 05:59 PM | Comments (1)
November 20, 2007
An older poam
Posted by nikkur at 11:10 PM | Comments (1)
November 12, 2007
Sestina
I wasn’t sure what exactly the Sestina was – a quick look on wikipedia altered me that it is a highly structured poem with “the same set of six words ending the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time…[so that] first stanza's lines 123456, then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531…” it is also normally written in iambic pentameter.
That’s crazy. No wonder most Sestina’s have the word “sestina” in the title – so we can know how difficult it was to create.
Before looking up “sestina,” the main part that stood out to me in the reading was how the last word in one stanza was the last word in the next stanza’s first line. This sort of puzzled me at first, as in essay writing you’re generally discouraged from repeating the same words in adjoining sentences. That the rest of poems end words were also repeating did not occur to me at a reading level – a sort of missing the forest for the trees.
The sestina enforces a mapping. There is no way to later the form while keeping it a sestina, since it is defined by its formal structure. To alternatively map it would be to rebuild it. What if we changed the whole sestina into a different poam structure – say a haiku?
grandmother and stove,
shed tears on an almanac,
the child left in house.
Different poam? Or same poem, different structure, different mapping?
Posted by nikkur at 10:01 AM | Comments (1)
November 04, 2007
We Jazz June
A while ago there was post in Limited Fork that linked to "The Pool Players" by Gwendolyn Brooks - I didn't respond to it then, so I will now.
The link had the option of hearing Brooks read the poem, and some brief commentary by her. Of course, this is the only poem by her that most people read - the poem that's taught in schools, and then banned for it. Right? That's the way life works.
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
After reading the poem, not for the first time, I printed it out and hung it in my Studio - each senior in the art school has their own cubical to create art in and haunt. Everyone who's come past the studio has commented on how much they love this poem in particular. And a few have read it outloud, enjoying the flow of sounds -- but never reading it as Ms. Brooks ment it to be read. Why is this?
As we read it, we relish in the badness of the boys. As outsiders (white women, 21st century hipsters, upper middle class artists) we read each line confidently,
"We real cool! We left school! We LURK late! We Strike STRAIGHT! We SING SIN! We THIN GIN! WE JAZZ JUNE!-"
and then, with a hint of surprise, we whisper, "we die soon."
why?
When Gwendolyn reads it to her unseen audience, she says each line slowly, letting the We's stand for themselves, as they are formatted to in the poem. The whole thing is read in a whisper.
Are we all reading it wrong? or just entering it from a different rung from the life-ladder?
Line up, line up. two x two
feel up that chest
dance with your legs spread
lets feel some life tonight. one x one, four
x four. one more song, June.
One more for me.
Posted by nikkur at 08:07 PM | Comments (4)