not really paying attention

to the movie playing right now on CHILLER station.  the movie is called the shadow.  an army vet is on a mountain biking excursion with his girlfriend.  they are hunted by two rednecks armed with M-16s and a vicious dog.  then all three are captured by a psychopath who lives in a castle with lots of sophisticated but gritty tools to do some meat work.  then it turns out it is all an illusion as the young vet is in the hospital recovering from wounds sustained in combat.

not a bad pic.  pretty well acted, edited and photographed.  the direction is solid.  the movie doesn't break new ground.  it quotes a shitload of previous movies like deliverance [1972] and any garden variety 1980s era slasher flick.  the pace is even and taut.  the filmmakers know their genre and created a worthy entry for it.

not that i can make a direct comparison between this movie and all the fuss about avant-- and conceptual poetries is kinda, for me boring.  i did see kenneth goldsmith on the colbert report last week.  pretty cool to see a poet on TV.  goldsmith said he never writes his books.  i believe him.  according to robert archambeau in his article charmless and interesting conceptual poets like goldsmith are not after a readership for their work but a 'thinkership.'

all fine and good if you dig that kind of thing.  that's not a diss.  i was thumbing thru paul hoover's american postmodern anthology 2nd edition at the library last week and read a few pieces by robert fitterman i think are quite good.  but if goldsmith is making books to think about vs. reading then i won't be buying them and putting them on my shelf.

for me poetry is not a either/or.  poetry is a large AND.  last night i read henry gould's terrific piece natural poetry.  how i read gould he advocates for a poetry of AND.

not that i'm really wading into these debates.  i am reading these various pieces and essays as they appear.  i'm sure i'm missing something in all this.  for my life and art [sounds hi-falutin' i know but fuck it because if you dedicate your life to something it becomes a life and frankly i don't care if i sometimes sound pretentious because life is short and if you want to make reading/writing a life do it and don't apologize never mind a theoretical audience or the import and magnitude of your calling because really you must finally ask yourself how do you want to spend your life] i learned from thom gunn who called himself a derivative poet.  i am too.  i am the sum of all that i read.  and i take my reading very serious.

which might explain the making of shadow [2009].  the filmmakers are probably lovers of horror.  they've taken what they've learned from older horror movies.  the film is a sum of movie quotes honestly made.  it won't be for everyone but for a few lovers of the genre the flick might be, to quote a poet, the music of what happens.