i love looking at 1980s vhs box cover art. often the art was better than the grade z flicks on the tapes. i've not seen either of these two movies above but i remember these double-features lining the horror aisle at mom&pop video stores. even as a horror loving geek kid i sometimes had to swallow my fear to step into that aisle. & when i took the tapes home another kind of adventure awaited me. the thrill of watching movies in your own home. damn! that was magic.
oh fuck! it feels like a million years for the scary season to arrive. when it does it flies past faster than a quantum particle's spooky action at a distance. the weather is very warm. but the light has changed to its mellow smudged gold. i love it. shit be real! i love the halloween season. this year is just as fucked up & weird as 2020. perhaps even more so. we are at several inflection points: political, a disrupted climate, economical et al. that the mind reels & flattens against all the problems our civilization face.
& yet, we must live & do our best to enjoy our living as ethically as we can. take that sentence as you will. i am no sage. i am an ordinary, sentient being who is living in a very turbulent time. however, as bill & ted once so memorably said, party on!
a couple of weeks ago my brother from another mother jonathan hayes asked me what breakfast cereals do goths eat. the monster cereals, i answered. jonathan was skeptical of my reply. but i stand fast with my answer. i'll explain why.
first, what the hell are the monster cereals? the food giant, general mills corporation, in 1971, introduced two new flavors & brands of cereal to their line, count chocula & franken berry. the latter is a strawberry flavored cereal & the former is a chocolate flavored breakfast cereal. take a wild guess what monsters these two respective cereals are. a bit later, general mills included the ghost cereal, boo berry, to their line of moster cereals. a little later than that the company added two more characters/flavors to their line, frute brute & fruity yummy mummy. both of these later two additions were discontinued, except for an occasional limited production.
why make monster cereals? for the monster kids, & future goths, of course! really, i don't know why. but as a horror loving freak of the 1970s i'd beg my parents to get me boo berry cereal, my favorite of the original three. also, it was common practice of kids' breakfast cereals to have a prize inside the box. the prize could be anything from a plastic toy to a 45 record printed on the back of the box. was that an incentive to buy the cereal? does bark grow on trees & vocalize dogs?
but why would goths eat cereals with names & characters like count chocula, franken berry & boo berry? i say cuz goth kids are monster kids at heart. sure i've met a few goths back in the day who told me they were vampires. no, really. they told me that they were real vampires who preferred night & liked to consume blood. okay, i said. i'd go along with their delusion. & soon we were talking about our shared love of horror & monster movies. plus the goths i knew in the day who grew up watching saturday morning cartoons. & general mills' monster cereals had a killer TV ad campaign. to a budding goth eating a monster cereal would be as natural as their later blood fix. right?!
but i lost my cool monster kid card a long time ago. i don't know what present-day goths are like. i think they wear more color now. rather than the standard white pancake makeup & black clothing. but i don't know. also, monster cereals are produced only during the scary season, not year round. & i rarely eat this super sugar sweet cereal anymore.
but i get a kick at seeing the boxes in the stores at this time of year. & as i said, the 1970s TV commercials are as effective as fuck. as blake kinda said, would if he were a monster kid, here there be monsters
on a Netflix jag. the algorithms know that i like kung fu movies. from cheapjack HK early '70s fare on forward. so there is a documentary about kung fu flicks. the docu is from australia. well done & informative with many very good film scholars, makers, actors, choreographers etc etc. my only beef with the filmmakers is the style they used to present their material. super fast quick edits. even the names of the talking heads & their credentials blitzed past. i had to rewind & pause to read them. i know that quick editing is a contemporary style suited to our short attention span age. but is it? back in the early '90s, when my generation was still called the MTV Generation, & our attention spans seemed to get shorter & shorter with each newly generated movie & music video, an english professor published a piece that touted the new generation's ability to get the great modernist poets like eliot for their use of collage & imagery. perhaps. i don't know. but goddamn what about the pleasures of being slow. like slow down your movies. let the viewers luxuriate in their images & sounds. let the experts you sought out have enough screen time so that we can learn their names. shit. am i asking too much? sure it still seems hip to hit the viewer firing all cylinders on high octane. but it's not like contemporary movie makers can't slow the hell down too. werner herzog is such a master. so is denis villeneuve. slow down! christ i was getting a headache watching this docu on the history of kung fu cinema. even the movies they detailed were not so quickly edited. futhermore, i don't know if eliot's poetry is any faster than robert browning or tennyson. kinda a big conceit really to say that the 20th century modernists were so advanced as to anticipate the attention spans of music video viewers. eliot was writing in the era of his one lifetime. i don't know if the venerable poet would dig HK action cinema. but if he did i suspect he'd admonish the makers of this kung fu docu to read the very big books of 18th & 19th centuries & remind us to slow the hell down.
poetry as a career? you gotta be fucking kidding me. poetry is an obsession, a way, in the phrase of auden, of happening, a mouth. the greatness of poetry lies in its utter uselessness. like the universe - if i may be so bold - it just is & is a great good for it being so. be obsessed with poetry. be nuts. let's go crazy. but not with the notion that it be a career. poetry is not an occupation, as pablo neruda said it was. but a life in poetry. poetry as a way of life.
Everybody. I pick up bits everywhere, not just from poets, painters, whatnot. I'm a magpie. I pick up things on the street, from radio, overheard conversations, cloud formations, the Fairway market, the Chinese produce store -- I mean, that's what I do, and I do it from when I wake up in the morning till my darlingdear plumps my pillow for me at night.
interviewer
So at your age, you're not beyond influence?
kleinzahler
Beyond influence? Good grief. I'd have to be dead.
[august kleinzahler: the art of poetry #93; paris review 182]
anna & i watched a few episodes of the archeology tv show digging for britain: did our weekly chores: took nick to watch the first high school football game in over a year & a half: it is either late summer or very early fall: the day was hot: the evening warm: read a few poems by the late british poet richard caddel: there is still the pandemic: still there are those that hate us: still there are those who love us: people are wearing masks: people are refusing masks: many of us our vaccinated: a great many few refuse the jab: i watched some now historic video/audio that still tears a hole in my heart: while a new generation have no memory of it all: & find it strange to be alive in the midst of all of this: as if it were a movie: as if the shooting script read: but now: & now: & now: & now
i'm quite fond of this 1983 film starring tom conti as a womanzing souse scottish poet gowan mcgland & kelly mcgillis as the love of his life. conti gives a bravura performance. there is indeed poetry, the writing of poetry, & the grandeur of making as well as the silliness of taking ourselves too seriously. i have a great soft spot for movies about poets. & this flick is one of the good ones. the flick is based upon a novel by peter de vries which was later adapted as a play. & a real poet, the actor roberts blossom, is in this one too. do seek this movie out. i beseech you. i've written about this pic before for i love it so. this trailer doesn't do its wit any favors. the poet mclgland is far more subtle & nuanced then what we are given in this VHS trailer. but if you like your screen poets to be witty, slightly drunk, thoughtful, & a tad goofy [i do!] this is the flick for you.
quite a claim, i know. some kinda humble bragging, right. but hear me out. i take eileen tabios' ethos quite seriously, 'life in poetry.' to say it in another fashion, also from ms. tabios, via the possibly fictive danish poet, paul la fleur, 'to be a poet is not about writing a poem. it is finding a new way to live.'
& boy, do we need to find new ways to live. the horrors of the disrupted climate are here & will get worse. i read early this summer from a climate scientist that this summer of 2021 is the coolest we will know in our lifetimes.
plus, the ordinary matters of trying to be a good person, a decent citizen, in a civilization that seems determined to kill itself. the wonderful, late poet michael dennis wrote that being a good person is more important than being a good poet.
tho i would like to add a wrinkle to michael's ethos, that to be a good poet also means one must be a good person. i know the evidence is abundant that this is not the case. but for me, the limited, sentient human being that i am, being a good poet is predicated, dependent upon, being a good human being.
i won't bore you with examples of goodness. make of my statement what you will. but i will say that the practice of kindness is paramount in finding a new way to live, in poetry, & in the ordinary things we do to live.
such as doing steady work to support ourselves & our families. being a loyal family person. being a loving partner & parent. etc etc. the poet can live life at a slant to society & still be a good citizen. e.g. i was googling long lost poet friends. i found that these friends migrated to other digital platforms. i love seeing their pics posted on instagram holding their grandchildren. seeing their work lives on linkedin & reading that they are good at their jobs as well as being good poets. for poetry is indeed life. & any work a poet does to support herself, her art, & her family is a boon.
not that i know the best way to be a poet. or be the best poet. i fucking have no clue about those things. i don't really care either. it does matter a great deal to me that i do my best to be a good person in an increasingly chaotic civilization. i am glad i have my family, poetry, friends in poetry, movies, music etc etc & the relative freedoms to explore my arts. for i wish to live in poetry as a good person at the best of my ability. as the poet said, my life is made of the world. i will do what i can.
