MGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!

This is a comment I posted on Youtube for a Material Girl video--this view it totally old-hat for many friends who have heard a version of this in person; and it may be repeating a prior non re-paste post from way back whenever:

           5 months ago             

"This song is brilliant; it may be the best political pop song of the past twenty five years.  This may seem counterintuitive; here's a reason or two: if it's truly pop, the politics should not stand out, just totally be there; if you hear a message it's protest not pop.  This song gets this: the girl, the shallow blond, becomes emblematic of the world at large, or at-least the USA, and its materialism; one can't dismiss the girl as vapid etc because in fact she's ground zero for where some of the world is totally at--to dismiss her is to dismiss real politics.  Put colloquially: Bitch (finger points at dude), you think I mean nothing but I'm really at the very pulse of what your world means."

 

On a different, but related, note: I love the word-play happening in the title "Like a Virgin"--which, too, is a great song; isn't a Madonna a virgin mother?  So like a virgin like a virgin mother--lol.

 

OK, back to MG: I like the video--apparently it's the official one: M on a staggered/stair-like stage, in a long pink dress, with lots of cute guys in suits--but think this would extend the politics wonderfully:

 

M is overseeing an assembly-line chute chockfull of packages containing man dolls, and tossing the packages with damage...and scrutinizing how they should be displayed at toy stores....and doing other things clearly linking male bodies to Capitalist profit.  As it stands in the video, M is still a consumer--but she doesn't control the means of production.  With my fantasy version, girl does have this control.  Hmm, and then to play with cultural cliché of girl on stage being "bid for," we could have male execs fight to bid to buy her man-doll company!  My acedimazation of this song feels like such a no-brainer to me, so hopefully someone, or manyone, has made a version of this hypothetical video.

 

Oops, Blogger did not maintain GN's lines.  It's testament to the poem's quality that Blogger's prose-poem looking version is much inferior.  Here's, hopefully, restoration:

Lachrymatory

Geoffrey Nutter

Remote controlled substation no. 10,
a utilitarian structure down by the tracks

that run past the ruined marina,

was built in 1931, and is now being

renovated. Scaffolding has been erecte

dall along its sides. A big coil

of damp rope is lying in a pile

of broken concrete, brick, and plaster.

The topmost row of the chain-link fence

that runs along the river

is twisted into barbs, and shredded

plastic sacks are snagged in the barbs

as far as the eye can see: dirty gray

and shredded, flapping in the wind.

A candy box, once green, has been

bleached out to light blue by the sun.

Silent gray boulders are lapped at

by waves. What’s that

in the mud where the tide is going out?

Buttons; bottle caps; small bits

of styrofoam that look like shells or coral;

a few dead crabs; a cracked porcelain

vessel from the Victorian era

for containing the tears shed by those

who have survived the death of loved ones.

Signs are posted to warn against

the consumption of eels by children.

Poem from Gulf Coast

I bumped into this poem when looking up whether Gulf Coast is accepting submissions, which it isn't--which is a-ok.  I've read Nutter's poems here and there.  I sometimes semi like them.  Starting this one, I thought I wouldn't be jazzed, but I totally am: this poem is so saturated in the work of Elizabeth Bishop--not via direct allusion, but through overall echo and approach to observation.  In Lachrymatory, I do perhaps hear "The Bight" more than her other poems, particularly in the end, whose "Signs are posted to warn against/the consumption of eels by children" reminds me a bit of the "awful but cheerful" "untidy activity" of that poem's concluding lines.  And, in a hazily specific sort of way, I hear the end of Moore's "The Steeple-Jack."   I suppose one could take points off for a poem where its goodness stems from its resemblance to someone else's greatness, but I don't feel this way: it's lovely to feel like I'm reading a rivulet of Bishop, and though I can't conceive of GN being anything like great, this poem makes me far more optimistic about other poems of his: 

Lachrymatory

Geoffrey Nutter

Remote controlled substation no. 10,
a utilitarian structure down by the tracksthat run past the ruined marina,was built in 1931, and is now beingrenovated. Scaffolding has been erectedall along its sides. A big coilof damp rope is lying in a pileof broken concrete, brick, and plaster.The topmost row of the chain-link fencethat runs along the riveris twisted into barbs, and shreddedplastic sacks are snagged in the barbsas far as the eye can see: dirty grayand shredded, flapping in the wind.A candy box, once green, has beenbleached out to light blue by the sun.Silent gray boulders are lapped atby waves. What’s thatin the mud where the tide is going out?Buttons; bottle caps; small bitsof styrofoam that look like shells or coral;a few dead crabs; a cracked porcelainvessel from the Victorian erafor containing the tears shed by thosewho have survived the death of loved ones.Signs are posted to warn againstthe consumption of eels by children.

Brief Reactions to "High Wire Acts"

   [I thought I'd lost this post; it was written before the one just before this one; and I was sort of glad for its disappearance; but I'm happy too to see it still exists and have added a bit more] 

     For the most part, I find this roundtable dull/repeating the same old mid 20th to 21st century truisms about the sonnet.  I have a hard time taking seriously discussions of sonnets that don't involve rhyme whatsoever.  From 1350 to 1950, sonnets largely rhymed--so the form lived and, inevitably, changed, morphed, for those 600 years, but rhyme wasn't tossed.  For around sixty years it's been, in America, tossed.  The sonnet has died and been replaced by 14 lines.  Or a few more or less depending: Gerald Stern, etc.   Why, why, why won't poets just embrace that they write 14-line poems but that they're not sonnets!  Poets--shuck the residual glamour/cultural capital of centuries past!
     Sure, someone could do some extremely sophisticated alluding to sonnets without end-rhyme--I agree.  But I can't think of any poem/poet in the past thirty-plus years who has.  I guess this would constitute the topos of the almost dead but still being revitalized stage of the sonnet, not its for sure death-----OMG, I am so dumb: Karen Volkman's Nomina is so sonnety, as in end-rhymed, and with Petrarchan schemes, but totally 21st century!  
     I do like this bit from Michael Robbins: "The sonnet is as adaptable as capitalism."  This partly sings/zings me, but also seems a bit off: in all its adaptations, Capitalism never seems to get lost, only scrimmed.  The sonnet is now so lost it will never be regularly found.  And I feel bad for largely dissing this exchange: I think Sandra Simonds is terrific--as electronic correspondent and POET!  And her Sonnets have inspired me to write Noncenets: 14-liners which are decidedly not sonnets.

Note: from around 1960 to the present, there's a clearly demonstrable tradition of the unrhymed sonnet.  At this point, it is very much its own deal, a mode (form doesn't quite strike me as the right term) which whether I dig or gripe at totally exists and is very much more alive than what I believe sonnets are.  My beef is totally losing.  I am cheerleading corpse form not living nerves.      

Howdy

I suppose posting poems is dumb--who wants to read other than prose (aside quotations) on a blog?
Oh well--I feel so much more comfortable posting poems--whether they're bad or not doesn't bother me.  But I'm more than less scared to post prose many may deem stupid.  I mean I kind of want to gripe about poem rejections, post stats for how many Submishmash rejections I have amassed--but yah I also really don't want to go there because I already so thoroughly am.  Well here's a poem I wrote yesterday, which is not part of any manuscript.  Often I write poems having a sense that they do make a manuscript, but I also crank out floaters:

Short Lines

By that time we
Were out of
Seconds.  Silver
Throats.  Camellias
Bloom.  Arsenic
Studs stems
Spindle length of
Deck.  Depth
Deceives.  Wreck
Recalls initial
Slip.  Lips purse
Ripping apart
Imperfect and
Perfectly
Necessary witness.
For every
Split there are
Ellipsis
Orbit astute
Skips smooth
Favoring fen where
Once one
Learns to do
Without air
Breath comes
Naturally. 
Read my
Hips.  Screen its
Blips.  Lean
In or
Let go.  Forget
Going that
Gong may
One scorcher day
Set snowing.

Problem(s)

I, in prior post, poem, failed-post maybe almost ok poem, wrote "twat."  I like the sound; but I hate the meaning.  If this and other epithets vanished, I would not rally for their recovery.  I like restraints, so excising words from English strikes me as lovey not censorial.  I adore syntax and this gets me into trouble: I didn't/don't mean twat, or not in any comprehensive way; it emerged out of a desire to write, write basically anything, write a logic that has no life outside of itself, but if so then I should be doing Zaum (sp?) not American vernacular.  I am cool with the letter T, and W, and A, and T, but not when they're turned word.  Stupid word.  And even worse as acronym.  It's kind of terrible how writing not meaning is what grabs me most.  As if writing has no meaning even when none is intended.  And then there's the Heterosexuality claim.  I do believe that, do mean it.  But I also mean this: if the world suddenly turned Gay as Gay as Gay as can be, the issue of female having dubious cultural status would not disappear.  Heterosexuality is everyone's problem--which isn't to state one has to be aware of this--and I don't imagine any one demographic could lay claim to solution.  I hope one year I figure out how to pull off lucid prose.  I suspect it will be when I stop being me.     

It's Been A While--And This Post Is No Reward

There was a rat, there was and there was.  Rat was and was rat there or ranger.  Was range present or at a distant ridge.  Was and was and was and passive.  Without voice.  Was voice rangy yes no maybe more of that pastoral tune would do but not now nor then and Zen zeroed out in ginger.  Who do you want to fuck Ginger or Mary Ann or do you want to marry her and her who is she.  She is the point.  He is the Doberman thus sun comes between.  Day after day divided by bray brings us away from fucking and fucking brings the world right here to this spot this hot plot of panders.   Words come so slowly.  Passive reigns.  Regicide passes out on the sidewalk.  Twice then thrice then twat.   As long as there’s Heterosexuality misogyny cannot be wiped off or out and out of this box there’s jack.  Heterosexuality cannot be disposed of unless the concept of human is tossed out the tenth floor window.  Which is good.  Without it there’d be nothing to look at.  Look at him.  Strip that grin.  Those clothes.  Lasso his cock.  Tell it how it is.  Regis is fucking a babe named Leandra.  His contract has turned a blind eye.  The eyes of this spider are beside her.  Every room romanticizes bestiary.  Without rhetoric what could writing do than be dull as some dullard but then he’s dead and in an uncanny position.  I’m enthralled.  Dead men rock.  Men are like geology as seen through a shattered mirror.  Men are and passivity is and these two nodes are congruent.  These words are inspired by Ariana Reines even as they bear do I mean bare no close connection.  I wish this could pass as prose.  It can’t and I can’t and can’t is and is at times passive but who cares who cares who cares not even I do though I don’t matter but oh you are mega.