the road [2009]

opening night and my movie-nerditude kicks into overdrive. straight up, one of the reasons i fell in love with this story because it is about the love a man has for his son, that is so strong he will risk losing what little shreds of his own humanity to keep his kid alive. then you've got an ashen, post-apocalyptic south-eastern united states -- i understand the road the man and the boy travel is a real road somewhere in tennessee and that all the landmarks, including signage, are actual signs -- and the spare, cinematic prose of cormac mccarthy and the first thing i think about after reading the novel is how well the story will translate to the screen.

how well? depends on your mood and what you want from the cinema. if you head over to the meta-review site rotten tomatoes you'll see that the road is getting mixed reviews. i've read the reviews and been scouring the net well over a year now. still i was pumped to see this movie even if it sucked ass or no.

on the suggestion of anna i called her mother, my mother-in-law, if she wanted to see this flick with me. anna sure didn't want to see it. no one else i know would want to see it. my mother-in-law, a highly educated, deeply sweet woman, not only read the novel but looked forward to seeing it too. she said yes, and as anna went to pick up her sister in preparation for the thanksgiving day feast, annalena picked me up and we headed for the local arthouse, the only theater screening the road in sac.

all this is a preamble of course. the actual experience of the movie was somewhat mixed. as i mentioned in last night's post the projection was too murky and the sound way too low to lose myself in my seat. the trailers, all of them, were just a series of texts declaring each new masterpiece. plus, i could hear every moron in the theater as they chuckled, yes chuckled during certain scenes, and mind you, i'm not against laughter, but for fuck's sake this movie was as far from funny as a movie can get, shifted in their seats and gabbed on their cell phones.

oh christ! the only thing that made it bearable is my conversation with annalena who is, and i say this in all humility, one of the most intelligent persons i know. director john hillcoat's vision is sere and ash and devoid of color. his landscape is lunar and the few people who populate the film look like filthy scarecrows. the acting is brilliant, all around, and i think the movie will need a few more viewings to fully register viggo motensen's and charlize theron's subtle intensity. the boy, played by new-comer kodi smit-mcphee, is a study of feeling. this desolation is all the boy knows and his humanity is utterly heartbreaking.

still, hillcoat's pacing is rather monotonous matching the day-in struggle of the man and boy. hillcoat's directorial style is more like say stanley kubrick, think of the heavy plodding of kubrick's the shining, then say the idiot responsible for the the transformers franchise. like the book hillcoat does not spare us the horrors of this dead world but the actual butchery takes place off-screen. a brilliant touch is hillcoat's use of sound. the movie is mostly silent save for the few musical pieces provided by nick cave, letting the ambient sounds of the screams of the slaughtered, particularly poignant is the house of the cannibals scene, as well as the deep rumbles of falling trees, earthquakes, and raging fires.

luckily hillcoat also refrains from giving the cause of the cataclysm. there are more religious imagery than i would have hoped for which i think is a turn-off for some viewers. yet, that religious hope for humanity rings within the book too. only one scene did i feel was tacked on. the man and boy walk into a village where they soon spot a few spiked skulls. then they see blood covered snow. they make a run for it and hide just in time to witness a woman and her child chased by a large band of cannibals. i think that perhaps this scene should've made it to the cutting room floor.

by the end when the man and boy confront the thief, played by michael k williams, i was deep within the picture. it is a devastating scene. one that would make even the hardest of hearts wince in sympathy for both the man and boy, and the thief. the movie ends upon, at least how i register it, an even more upbeat tone than the novel. there is a moment when we find that life itself might be coming back. at the conclusion i was in tears.

it could be because i'm a rather sentimental goofball. i can still reread certain passages in the novel, especially the conclusion, and be brought to tears. that is the highest compliment i can give both the book and the movie. no, it's not a perfect film, and it is not a movie for everyone but the bleakness of hillcoat's vision of a wonderful novel is one of the most exhilarating movie experiences i've had in some time. i need to see this again and when it reaches the dvd shelves in a few months, i hope, as i think this flick will benefit from the smaller screen and intimate soundsystems, namely my computer and headphones, to achieve the intimacy of vision that hillcoat and his actors have achieved.

annalena and i went home exhausted and bummed out by the movie as only a good film can do. the next day was thanksgiving and anna and her sister were prepping the kitchen for the holiday meal. the house was redolent with the scents of pumpkin pie and dill and the sweet sounds of family vibrant and alive.

the scream

it couldn't have been the banshee, as i'm still living and this ain't ireland. well then just the same, last night a woman was screaming she was being attacked. our house was loud with nicholas clambering, hugo the hound barking, the tv cranked to 11, and i couldn't tell what the hell that screaming was. i stuck my head out the door to find a woman in the street crying in terror, a man running away from her at full-speed, and me going what the fuck?

turns out it was a domestic abuse situation. cops were called and they caught the guy. me and several neighbors tried to comfort the woman as the cops took her statement, took mine as i also called 911, then took the guy to the city jail.

i was exhausted after a long, arduous tour of duty putting new book cases together. after the scream i was wide awake. and feeling thankful that i live in a neighborhood of urbanites who know each other reasonably well and will come out of their homes and help should the occasion for help arises.

another what the fuck moment came when i was at the movies a couple nights ago. the sound and the projection at the arthouse kinda sucked. picture was too dark and murky and the sound was way too low. all the trailers for coming attractions had in bold and in nearly every frame some line of acclaim from some critic shouting how this new movie is the greatest masterpiece. break me for giving a shit. i'm on this side of giving a rat's ass. i don't need some lines of text in a trailer detailing all the critics' darlings.

and it's not that i'm anti-commercial or anything. i came of age when the hollywood blockbuster became the norm for summer viewing and product placement, from star wars bedsheets to spiderman underoos, is no stranger to me. but i think i heard the ghost of the good grey poet yelp in surprise and disgust when he heard his poem 'pioneers! o pioneers!' used in this levi's commercial that played even before the trailers.



oh what the hell. i've been trying for years to sell-out too but i can find no buyers. perhaps it is a good that the levi's sales machine is doing because it is using after all a poem and not just some earworm jingle.

blogs tip of the week: bill knott's prose re poetry and his poetry blog. knott claims to have given up conventional book and magazine publishing. whether he has or hasn't given up conventional publishing knott's blogs are addicting reading. they are brilliant, erudite, and cantankerous from a poet who deeply loves poetry and are ample demonstrations of the diy ethos for the 21st century.

thanksgiving

many, many reasons to be thankful. today we need to remember our own special and particular reasons. it is good to be alive, writing and surrounded by family and friends. if you think that that might sound like cliches one must remember that often we take the fact of living for granted. i need to be reminded myself.

it is a lovely day. weather is gorgeous. about to take nicholas to the park while anna and her sister begin making the feast for today.

saw the film the road last night at the local arthouse. review forthcoming.

if you need a lesson on how to carve a turkey the short below, starring harvey korman and exploitation stalwart william kerwin, will teach you. sure the vid is kinda boring but it is also fascinating in a bizarre way.



here at casa del lopez/bronson we eschew the consumption of turkeys. so have a happy tofurkey day!

the age

it was a long day. busy as fuck. i left the office late and started walking thru midtown. it is 6:00 pm and night had settled over the city. j st was packed with revelers, shoppers, a new ice skating rink tucked on the street between my favorite newstand, the newsbeat, a collection of gay clubs, and newish restaurants.

my favorite time of day when the chill in the air and the darkness is illuminated by signage and street cars. i run into my old friend richard hansen. we walk together down j st toward our respective homes and families. we are almost the same age. oldsters now. i tell richard that there is a pleasure in aging. tho my ancient brain couldn't remember what kind of pleasure.

i'm sure of it. i look forward to becoming the old poet. not for wisdom or even the alleged benefits of seniority. i can use an accumulation of experiences for my writing. besides, i'm an autodidact and a slow learner. i need as much time as i can get in order to make more discoveries and experiments.

richard and i laugh like kids. i worry about getting cantankerous as i grow old. it's a cliche, sure, but one grounded in anecdote and personal observation, some people just get so bloody unpleasant as they grow older. is it a lifetime's accumulation of disappointments and the cold relief of reading the papers everyday with its fresh sources of horrors of the world and bad news?

i worry about that, too. i want to cultivate wonder but grounded in the quotidian messes of our lives. no, i don't mind getting old. i was young once. now it's for others to have their turn. they shall be older soon enough too. maybe i need to study more yeats who wrote poems about growing old. perhaps i should not worry over much. perhaps i should at that.

on language

once upon a time, in a former incarnation, an old boss called me a potty mouth. shudders!!! not because i do have a mouth that would make a truck driver and/or sailor blush did i feel admonished by my former boss's phrase, but because the words, potty mouth, sounds, at least to my ears, like it came from my old 3rd grade teacher.

i confess to being such a thing. what can i say. i love language. all of it. including the gamier bits. problem today is that nicholas is all eyeballs and ears and i have to watch what i say around him. he's let slip a few choice morsels that are both repellant and funny. a couple weeks ago his teacher took me aside to tell me the funniest thing she'd ever heard in all her years of teaching. i won't repeat what nicholas said, but this woman, a very sweet person, told me that she had never heard that sort of language from a 4-year-old boy and tho she admonished the child for his choice of expression she also had to keep from laughing so hard.

that's just the thing. i believe there are no, or very few, genuinely bad words. there are insulting and hurtful phrases to be sure. language by and large is hurtful thru its intended users. even a rather bland and benign word, such as sugar, can be uttered with such force and venom by the speaker as to leave the hearer reeling.

one of my favorite lines of verse is by robert vander molen and goes like this:

that fucken fucker's fucked.

i marvel at the flexibility of the word, fuck, how it is an object, predicate, and even an adjective. a word that is operational by its very utility. it is an old word, maybe not as old as the language itself, but the word fuck has been around a long time. and in this line the word becomes part of the action and not just an idiomatic flavor of the speaker.

i have a thing for so-called bad words. last night anna and i watched role models [2008] starring paul rudd and sean william scott. not a perfect comedy but one that i enjoyed because of its colorful language and its sweet nature. nearly every sentence was salted with some expression of questionable vintage. however, the story of two 30-something goofballs who are redeemed by their relationships with troubled children, who all spoke like sailors, was very watchable because of the language married with a sweet temperament. it's what i dig.

if bad words are wrong then i don't want to be write.

peace

maximinalism

i was asked tonight, lopez, you talk so voluminously, why do you write these tiny poems. my answer: i don't know but to say that i'm attracted to the short form. my eye is automatically attracted to short poems. lately i've been digging the nyc poet vincent katz and how that dude gets the maximum out of so few lines and images simply blows me away.

yet, without getting all boo-hoo about it, i think my poems lately suck big donkey dicks. not satisfied with the sound and look i'm trying to achieve. there are some poets i read with utter amazement, like katz, who challenge me. i've not felt up to that challenge.

not that i'm conceding defeat but is not writing largely an exercise of futility, of failure. success is measured in how well you fail. not that i should be really giving a shit about all this. there is no money, fame, or prestige in poetry. duh. you all know that too. but like my life, sometimes i'd like to be a better person. same goes for my writing. i'd like to get to it a bit better.

hmm. . .still, i think the short form is hard-wired in my brain. it would take some major surgery to change that. the one change for me tonight in my monthly writing group is to present a poem without a movie reference in it. that was duly noted by all present at the meeting. as for my propensity to write in a few lines or images, and to step out of those habits, that'll take some work. am i up to the task? as the bear asked the rabbit, does shit stick to fur.

direction

be
when awake
dream as / sleep

travels with cavafy

the mind is porn
after-images
no longer tell

it is like what is
the emptiness
of the theater

a warm hand
strong shoulder
going home an idea

* * *

hotel durant
tempt-ation is lust for the uknown
--john weiners

dig the good trip man
explicit shapes of light
dappled on moss and redwoods
against an idea
of peace park
come get yr freak on
head for
telegraph ave
a hit of blotter
soundtrack provided
by an suv pounding
the grateful dead
why you dude
with the tie-dye
and thinning long grey hair
tied together
in a loose knot
look around
look good buddy
did ya think
you'd live this long

dreaming

somehow anna and i got stuck on a plane heading first to australia then to new zealand for no reason i can fathom

mark young was sitting across the aisle serene and grinning

i took his hand and asked why so happy

--i'm going back home to new zealand at least for a little while

why are we on this plane i asked

--just for the ride i suppose

quote unquote

You are a poet but your difficult theme is happiness.

--mark mcmanus

at the end was the word

i make no bones about it. straight up: jim mccrary is the shit and even tho i can almost hear him say in his whisky voice, lopez, knock this crap off, i'll say it just the same: mccrary is not only a dear friend but one of my teachers in our world of words.

his stance in living in the word while not giving a fuck about careerism, the way his lines and images crackle like the frames of a great film, but with some speckling and a few jumps and burn marks on the celluloid, his dedication to the craft, and his humility of spirit, make him, and i say this with a straight face, a great man and poet.

i say it and say it loud. the dude makes me glad to be alive and reading. so after being forced into a retirement brought on, i think, by the present dire economy mccrary's as fecund as ever. witness the batches of poems he published on his blog resisting poetry and try to resist these goodies. then click over to here for a profile and interview with the poet.

spread the word

dinner at costco

without making this sound like a plug for the chain warehouse retailer -- it's an establishment you can lose yourself, both figuratively and literally, the place and its plethora of goods on sale are huuuuge! -- anna picked me up after work for our weekly trip. we needed the usual things.

one thing led to another. the time was later than earlier. dinner was the subject of conversation as we began the long journey across the enormous parking lot, across the vast sea of vehicles. there's a foodcourt at costco with a very limited menu but one that offered slices of pizza. a lightbulb flashed over my head. another thing led to one thing. three slices of the greasiest cheese pizza and a fountain drink were ordered. the slices were ginormous. we sat outside in the cold and dark. california cold, not wisconsin cold. just a bit of crispness in the air. our favorite time of year and one of my favorite times of day. this is the life poetic here at casa del lopez/bronson. the evening ended with me and anna watching a disc of the vincente minnelli helmed vehicle for judy garland meet me in st. louis [1944], a fabulous movie about the life of a family in 1903. one thing i always do in period pieces such as this picture, and also older films too, is try to place myself in its timeline. for example, i was born in the late '60s, so if i were born a hundred years earlier i'd be too young to be the father but too old to be one of the kids in the flick. so where would i sit?

finally, a shout-out to poet michael lally who underwent brain surgery yesterday. read his beautiful pre-surgery post here. here's too a speedy recovery and a return to the word.

peace out

splinter [2008]

yesterday after dragging my lobster thru midtown which exhausted him and exasperated me i returned home, hung up the leash, and popped in the disc of this flick. i'd read some good stuff about it so why not give it a go. sure there are better ways to waste 82 minutes of my life, but there are worse ways too.

the premise is this: a young couple, nerd boy and phd candidate seth and his tough, pragmatic yet dewy-eyed girlfriend polly, want to spend a night camping under the stars in the backwoods of oklahoma. seth couldn't slice bread if a gun was held to his head, and later a gun is indeed held to his head, and his inability to slice bread nearly exhausts its welcome, as he fucks up the couple's tent. in lieu of sleeping in a torn tent they decide to forgo a romantic night of sex under the night sky, pack up their suv, and head down the road looking for a motel.

meanwhile ex-con dennis' and his junkie mole lacey's truck breaks down in the same section of hell as our young couple. dennis is hardcore, has a gun and decides to carjack seth and polly. dennis is a mean sumbitch and his body movements with the gun appear almost balletic as the man contains just a weird amount of physical grace. lacey is nearly psychotic as she goes thru heroin withdrawals.

in the midst of all this a mysterious but blood-thirsty parasite is on the prowl. the film opens with a bang as the owner of a gas station tries to get the lowdown of some strange noises emanating from the grass on the edge of the station. needless to say the owner gets chomped to death by some thing.

you can tell where this movie is going. after running over said thing and getting a flat dennis gets one of those titular splinters stuck in his forefinger. that spells trouble for the whippersnapper down the line. polly changes the tire because seth doesn't know how even when a gun is put to his head. the splinters also punctured the radiator and coolant flows like it was blood in a horror film. guess where our heroes end up? that's right, the gas station!

lacey is the first to go. seth turns out to be not so useless after all because he's book smart see and he figures out what those parasites might be. dennis is hardcore but he's got a big heart and a code of honor that would make any cowboy proud while polly is simultaneously pragmatic and dewy-eyed. not bad for a chamber piece. the director toby wilkins knows how to get the most bang out of his small budget and tiny cast.

there's gore enough and the cast members are believable. none of the usual cliched types of characters found in most horror movies. the action is fast and the movie is at 82 minutes nicely compressed to keep the tension taut. i was muy impressed even if i thought i'd seen the plot done before. there's no pomo'd self-ironizing here, what wilkins achieves is a straight horror flick that was refreshing for it being so redolent of old monster movies and survivor-types holed up against the nightmares outside, a la romero's groundbreaking night of the living dead. i want more of these flicks please and fewer hostels and saws. what do i have to do now, write a letter to sandy claws?!

blog tip of the week

final girl
horror journalist stacie ponder's reviews and musings over all things horror are hilarious, snarky and brilliant. check it and get hooked.

walking the lobster

my interest in buddhism, while always present, waxes and wanes. that interest is presently waxing. i am an atheist, but like thom gunn who described himself as an atheist who admits to the supernatural. or the natural-natural. at any rate, when i read buddhist texts about presence and no ambition [of course i'm simplifying the 'no ambition' portion here. if i wasn't so lazy right now i'd get up from my chair and look up the poems of basho, buson and issa as i think they all wrote about having no talent and no ambition. and i think they weren't making those claims as a literary conceit but really believed their claims.] i am thrust in to the delight of being.

and that for me is why i love poetry so. the good stuff makes me want to be alive and for no other purpose than being alive and awake is itself the ultimate pleasure. with that pleasure comes an almost limitless set of responsibilities. what might those be? one must discover his/her own definitions. for me part of to live responsibly entails an ethos toward loving-kindness, an essential goodness. but i'm still trying to define those terms too.

quickly i'm out of my depth. there are no careers, i think, but jobs we do for a living. poetry is not one of those jobs. poetry is a choice on how we live and engage our varied realities. as poet robert vander molen cautioned young writers recently, 'there's no money in it'. however, for me, one of those essential goodnesses i mention is simply to read/write. these are how i engage and cope with being. when i read a fabulous text i am, at least for a moment, radiating light.

oh shit, does that sound hippie-ish, or what? no matter. poetry, for the serious, is a way of living. i've said all this before. these thoughts come as a result of reading this post by u.k. poet alan baker, who reminds us, or me, that poetry is not a career. it is what we do because we can't help it, out of love.

now, if you'll excuse me. i have the day off and it's time to go walk my lobster.

rollercoaster

not like george segal
or maybe quite
in that film

where he is
mouse to a serial killer's
cat at a theme park

now that you've
crossed that divide
of your 40th year

death is no longer
simply over there
but approaching

with gross speed
and you're eyeballs
and toenails

can face anything
right
right

even if it is
the death you
the ride of your life

our name

if you don't know this i'll tell you: my name, esp. for one who lives in this part of the u.s., is common as the dirt we tread. there's nothing wrong with that but for those of us who also have a textual presence, whether on the page or in the pixels, a name that is like dirt can be a bit confusing. if you're like me you google for writers you want to know more of. i get a kick out of names. i like the sound of many kinds of names. my own name, richard lopez, is okay i suppose but there are many better names out there that are distinctive and frankly cool. i'd like a better name, but i'm stuck with the one i was given.

a while back at my monthly poetry get-together the conversation steered toward a younger poet who just published a few poems in a bay area journal. i mentioned that i liked the poet's name and explained why i like it. the first name was a bit unusual and harkened, at least in my mind, to a revered pop culture icon while the surname was common, like mine, but strengthened by the weight of the first. the combination turned to one cool sound. but then i was reminded by one of my seat-mates that the poet's name was given by the parents and the poet had no choice.

which is and isn't true. for some of us we create our names. william faulkner inserted the letter u back into his surname, after his grandfather took it out, when he began to publish. e.e. cummings decided to go completely lower-case with his name and his writings. see what i mean, names are both a conscious act and a settlement with what we are given by our ancestors.

recently my younger brother told me he googled my name and found page after page of my writings. i was surprised by this and pleased. i asked if he had any trouble finding my poems. nope, they were the first things that popped up. i have self-googled but i rarely do it now. i was surprised not by the sheer numbers of those who possess the name of richard lopez but that there is a jazz musician, a landscape painter and so on.

but then names are our individual markers. it was what i'm known by. however, unusual your name might be someone else probably also has the same. e.g. once at work i came across the name ellsworth kelley, which is a slight variation of the name of the painter ellsworth kelly. i was taken since i thought that the painter's name was so unique but no, some one also shared it.

which pleases me enormously. all these thoughts come bidden after reading this post by irish poet billy mills whose name is shared by another, and arguably more famous, billy mills. what's in a name, shakespeare asked. i say everything. names are malleable but they are what we are. not only are our names represent how we are known in our respective world(s), they are the texts that we write in our minds and our bodies. change your name and you might change who you are.

dreaming

i recall

anna nichloas and i got a great flight to stockholm

cheap seats and the plane half-full

we rushed to the airport and was about to board

excited and feeling calm

anna's mother was in sweden waiting for us

in a flat we shall call our own

but then we forgot our luggage at home

what to do

have anna go and i catch the next flight

call my brother and ask if he can get our bags

i'll never know

i awoke

house cleaning

welcome to costco. i love you.

the above quote comes from the movie idiocracy [2006] directed by mike judge, he of the mtv video show hosted by 2 of the grossest animated morons ever on television, beavis and butthead. the premise is simple: luke wilson plays a slacker who is so average the army uses him in an experiment that goes awry. wilson is put into hibernation than forgotten about thru a series of stupid mishaps by army scientists and when he awakens 500 years in the future he finds the world has been so dumbed down he is the smartest person on earth. not a masterpiece but a favorite of ours at casa de lopez/bronson.

so i was at costco this afternoon and thought of the greeter in the movie who says those lines quoted above. perfecto. anna and i spent the remainder of our vacation doing some serious house cleaning, going thru a massive purging of things and doing some serious organizing. well, then anyway, okay, at costco i see the paperback tie-in for the movie version of the road, which is slated to open in 2 weeks. this makes me happy.

i've been waiting for this goddamned flick for a long time now. when i told anna about getting happy seeing the paperback tie-in she said, god, your bound to be disappointed now because you have so much invested in the movie. no, i don't have so much invested in the movie. it could suck for all i know and i still will be pleased to see it.

but you see, anna hooked up with a geek. a serious mutherfucking geek. a movie nerd and poet with almost no ambition but to live a life fully in my family and my obsessions. films make me happy and i look forward to certain films. and the road is a story i fell in love with because it is about the end of the world, a subject i'm nuts about, and the beauty of love and survival.

one thing we found in our purge was my w2 statement from 1994. i made just a little over 5 grand. i can't recall if we kept it or not. anna knew what she was getting into. at that time i spent more time in the library stacks making one poetry discovery after another than i did in the classroom. not that that matters so much, i guess, however she knew that my only need was to become a poet. that is a process i've learned that is never finished and is never remunerated. ever.

from the notebooks

it is not enough to simply be 'lyrical' in writing. i mean the standard epiphany at the end of the poem enacted by the 1st person pronoun.

what! give up lyrics?!

no, not at all -- too many writers either eschew 'personality' i.e. post-language writers, or have too much 'personality,' i.e. post-Bly writers.

then what?

a corrosive lyric -- a pessimistic optimism. a movement toward pleasure foregoing the blandishments of the so-called sublime.

8/25/02

quote unquote

"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy.

"Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

--from pride and prejudice by jane austen

a reading




this video of jean vengua reading her poems cuts off in mid-text. but no matter, jean is one of my most favoritest of poets. she is a poet-blogger with little peer, simply one of the best poets writing on the page and pixels to be found.

dig it deep.

9 bows to another fantastic poet-blogger, mark young, who posted this vid at his blog yesterday.

learn to chill

is an art i'll never master but i'll write it like the good poet advised like disaster

spent the past 2 days [anna and i are currently on vacation] cleaning and organizing the back room

quite a task and resulted in 2 huge bags of books for either resale at a used bookstore or donation

went with the used bookstore and now have 30 bucks in store credit plus 2 huge bags of books for donation

what the hell anyway

i now have shelf space for more books and discs

tallyho

some bits and pieces

one of the chaps i've been re-reading is delusiveness [3rdness; 2006] by randy prunty. i love the structure and form of the book whereby meaning is made elusive as each sentence complicates and lingers toward a kind of meaning that dangles on the tip of the tongue but simply is unable to be said. prunty is a favorite of mine as he is a comedian of sorts and his lines jangle and hum with self-deprecation and deadpan irony. to this reader the texts are attempting a definition of a certain consciousness that calls itself randy but the randy is various and basks in a kind of laziness. however, it is a laziness of intent and not of execution as the speaker(s) long for a sort of delusiveness that is obviated by the process of collaging these texts together. prunty achieves a fragile unity that threatens to untangle at each successive sentence. these poems are very like a low-budget movie that succeeds by sheer will and an obvious talent at making an art simply pop in explosive joy. in the end, these are texts that make me happy to be alive as they bring to mind a kind of b-movie that i adore: goofy, earnest, funny, and so much bloody delight on display in the making and saying of these texts.

* * *

the film version of cormac mccarthy's the road, starring viggo mortensen as the father trying to keep himself and his son alive in a dead world, has been pushed back and pushed back so far it seems like the movie would never open. the news is that the movie is slated for a 11/25/09 release. i don't want to say i've got a lot invested in this picture but man i'm dying to see it. head over to imdb.com where there are several clips to be seen. click here to see them all. the clips are, i suppose, a proof that the movie does indeed exist. another proof is the official trailer. see below.



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i'm going to try at least once a week to recommend a blog or website that i've been digging but don't have in my links. consider it a hot tip, much like what jim harrison did when he used to write his 'raw and cooked' column for esquire magazine back in the early '90s.

blog: acidemic film, a movie blog that deals primarily in horror and exploitation movies by, about, or viewed thru the rainbow-hued lens of lsd. great stuff and is a lens i'm particularly interested in as i cobble a collection of texts together that have the same sort of sensibilities.

peace out

reading:listening

i write all the time but sometimes when i write i'm not writing at all e.g. writing these words right now some would call not writing but i'd prefer maybe to call it anti-writing and then again perhaps that's how i'd like to think of my poetry too because after all should one be so affected to call oneself a poet well then that one does indeed risk the appearance of putting on airs but then again so what we are all phony to some extant some are flamboyant about their phoniness while some try to hide it but is not life itself structured on artifice so now i'm writing but not writing and lately doing more reading and listening which i know feeds my writing so be it let there be writing okay