Incendiary Lit

Another Argument About the Impossible
by Lawrence Raab

Even if we agree in principle that a poem can be
about anything, you still want to claim
it cannot include space aliens,
since by their very nature (you insist)
they are silly. And even if belief
is a subject that’s stood the test of time,
a poem about a man who believes in space aliens
will be a poem about a man who is either
silly or demented. Belief requires
a world of consequence all around it:
men, women, nature, history, and so on.
Reality, of course, is another matter, but see
what happens (you continue) when these
are put together, as in: “My work
concerns the nature of reality, belief,
and space aliens.” It would be different
if we knew they were there, but we don’t,
and a poem cannot afford to adopt
such a wait-and-see attitude toward the world
which, after all, has provided so many
more compelling subjects. No (you conclude),
not even a poem that argues against them
can survive their presence,
not even if the aliens never appear,
never do or say anything, never threaten us
with their neutron blasters, never steal our women
to populate their planet, not even if their ships
remain hidden, and we are never taken up in them
to be probed and instructed, dazzled and released.

–

from his collection The Probable World, and also collected in Visible Signs; New and Selected Poems. Buy them both for under $2 at amazon. You won’t regret it. They’re great. Very easy to read, and very entertaining.

–

Cool huh? I bet most people have something to say to the speaker about the concept of extra-terrestrial life, or you laughed and thought “yes,” *sniff from the snifter of cognac* “a poem about an alien, how wickedly absurd.” Then the cackle that can only be made with a glinting gold monocle string dangling in front of the left cheek. But, that is covered in the poem. Because although it’s a discussion about discussion about unknowable (and therefore impossible to prove or disprove) things, it leaves a back door by saying “It would be different / if we knew they were there, but we don’t,” because of course, now, the concept of at least some form of alien life in the incalculable depths of space seem all but assured. However, by including that statement, it recalls the time before modern space research when aliens were Metalunans in shiny silver suits and massive foreheads– like the speaker in the poem says “silly.” So a poem that argues for aliens, and against aliens can’t survive the reality of aliens… if they float down one day in their ship with a computerized Rosetta Stone and open the world of earth in on a galactic empire, everything will change. But this poem isn’t arguing for or against aliens. It’s arguing for the argument, and for the concept of a discussion about unknowable things.

The poem is one I’ve come to associate closely with Raab’s style. Very conversational, even including dialog, presents a question in an anecdotal fashion, and ends with a series of images. Not a bad way to lay out a poem if you ask me.

–

Writing exercises:

Write a poem that is your take on aliens. Place it in an anecdotal, or at least loosely narrative setting. Raab’s poem uses poetry to root the discussion in the real, for your poem use current events. Be it high or low culture, root this opinion about aliens in a very specific time, so that even if they do descend, this poem could possibly survive as a ‘pre-alien’ historical document. Or, at least a glimpse into a specific time with an alien tilt.

Write a poem that follows the general pattern of this poem. A narrative poem that digresses a number of times, that presents an argument, or concept that is left somewhat in the air for debate, that is very conversational in tone, and ends with an anaphoric word and series of 3-4 images.

That’s right, HBO is playing MST3K the Movie. That only leads me to believe that they’ve cleared up any rights issues with Universal over the lampooned movie This Island Earth starring Faith Domergue, who is the real young actress girlfriend of Howard Hughes in The Aviator. The movie’s a very cheesy sci-fi from 1955, and Mike, Tom Servo and Crow really lay into it with their peanut-gallery comments If you’ve never seen Mystery Science Theater 3000, watch the intro to the TV show (which began as a cable access show in good old Minnesota [YAY MINNESOTA!]) that I’ve posted at the bottom and listen to the theme song is the perfect explanation of the situation on the Sattelite of Love, with the iconic line “If you wonder how he eats and breathes, or other science facts / repeat to yourself ‘it’s just a show, I should really just relax.’”

I can pretty much quote this movie without it even playing, word for word. It’s THAT funny. When you see the movie and love it and want more, there’s always the TV show (some on DVD, some only through the intricate network of MST3K piraters who have labored in the wee hours of night for years to keep the episodes in circulation, in the good old days dubbing video cassettes lovingly taped from the weekly show, often for the cost of postage and the blank tape) and the hilarious new project of Mike Nelson’s RiffTrax, which skewers modern movies like Jurassic Park (with guest Riffer Weird Al), Casino Royale, Cloverfield, Harry Potter and more. And unlike MST3K, they’re strictly full length audio commentaries. So watch the MST3K movie on HBO (if you have digital cable, you can watch it On Demand) and then go check out RiffTrax. Here’s the pertinent MST3K intro, but also check out the earlier intro from when Joel was trapped on the Sattelite of Love and the origins of the show are revealed.

Woot! It’s a simple concept. Every day they have a certain number of a single item for sale. They purchase massive quantities of that one item and that is all they sell until midnight or they run out. Every day there’s a new item, and in the comments there are always helpful comparative links to places like the manufacturer, Froogle, Buy… Though every day won’t be for you, they sell everything from vacuum cleaners to mp3 players, blenders to desktop computers. Today it is a two-pack of coffee makers (they do that a lot, but usually with something pretty cool, and for cheap. We got 2 mp3 players for $25 including shipping) and yesterday was a 12.1 megapixel point and shoot camera. There’s also a shirt.woot.com and wine.woot.com for the wine and t-shirt connoisseurs. Everyday there is some sort of a good deal. Have fun spending your hard-earned money even more easily now.

One of them is the sweet ass kick-back music of A Tribe Called Quest, Biz Markie, KRS-ONE, and my all-time favorite Wu-Tang song “Tearz”; and freakin Ben Kingsley. Slow down, Ghandi, you’re killin’ ‘em. Check out this trailer, looks like a young summer American (slightly) romantic comedrama done by Brits. Check out the trailer and decide for yourselves. If you want to learn more, click the big old promo picture.

Enjoy the fail. We sure do.

see more pwn and owned pictures



We love FAILBlog.org!

Some of these quotes are really entertaining, and the stupidity of the general populace, at least, is often, and terribly frustrating. You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and I think David Kirby’s to blame for my long, confusing, meandering blogging style. I keep it somewhat at bay when writing poems, though sometimes you just yearn for a sentence with three adjectives and five nouns, you know? But yeah, Kirby and my rereading of his amazing and flowing poems has either affected my train of thought process, or it has tapped me into it, or maybe he writes poems like a blogger. What the hell is a blogger anyway? This is stupid. Which brings us back to the link of quotations about human stupidity. Here’s the page, and here are a couple of my favorites:

“Unless one pretends to be stupid and deaf, it is difficult to be a mother-in-law or father-in-law.” - Chinese Proverb (though in my case it’s not true, still, very funny that the stereotype has been around so long)

“Stupid mistakes are made by others. We only make unavoidable errors.”

“Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.”

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” - Thomas Szasz

Amazing awaits. It is not only a double assonant pair, but it has used amazing as a noun and dropped the article. How poetic is that? The amazing awaits, or something amazing awaits might be the more common sighting of these words together, but even then it begs the question, who does it await? And a subject will usually come into play. Something amazing awaits us. But no, it’s condensed, it sounds good, and is an interesting way that makes you pause for a moment and think about the words and how they work together. Good job US Olympic planning committee. It’s better than the official Games slogan”One World, One Dream” which sounds like a Nas song (I only got one world, one dream to make this gold medal bling!) And it’s definitely better than their original slogan: Mediocrity Awarded.

He was 71 when he died yesterday from heart failure. If you don’t know who George Carlin was, I don’t know how that’s even possible, actually. If you don’t know who George Carlin was I hope you’re under the age of 18 and/or were raised in a strict religious cult because the man was brilliant. There’re a ton of clips of him on Youtube if you wanna reminisce. Click here for a bunch. He was the author of some of the dirtiest jokes to not be the Aristocrats, and scathing political and religious satire. There. I told you, just in case you only landed on Earth today. Go watch some of his bits. Here’s one about death that may help those mourners through. Don’t mourn for long though, he was always a celebrant, so instead celebrate his work and move on to more acts of creation like writing or singing or making babies (unless you’re a big dummy, in which case, please don’t procreate).

There’s a couple ways to do it, but the easiest is this: before each paragraph you want indented type<p style=”text-indent: 2em;”> before it, and </p> after it in the html, or code editor tab (as opposed to ‘visual’). Simple as that. I suggest typing everything up without it, then copy/pasting the longer string, and typing the </p> at the end of each paragraph.

So they’ll be indented. Huzzah!

OK, Day 1 is all about being prepared for this intricate sequence, so to prepare for that, let’s remember the fun of rhyming, rhythm and repetition. Let’s assume you’re writing Shakespearean Sonnets, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, though there are other forms, here’s a few options with some info about the forms. But I’m going to be leading you through the English Sonnet Crown, or Shakespearean or whatever you want to call it. Let’s start out with standard sonnet rules:

1) Iambic pentameter. “The cow will jump again, the next mid-day.” It’s like a heartbeat- ba-Duh, ba-Duh, ba-Duh, ba-Duh, ba-Duh. Five poetic feet (metric units) of two syllables, the first un-stressed, the second stressed. As in: when in doubt, sound it out. Say the words aloud and find out where the stresses are. Many recent sonneteers have included lots of alternate metric plans, or a lack of plan, substituted for a syllabic line organization. What that means, if you don’t follow, is that instead of worrying about what syllable is stressed, they stress about making sure the line has ten total syllables, stresses be damned.

2) Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGG- that simple. (A) rhymes with (A) , each letter represents a line’s ending word.

3) Turn: This isn’t an absolute necessity, but many sonnets have a turn around lines 8-9… just past what would be the first octave in the Italian sonnet. What is a turn? It’s when the poem takes what it’d done in the beginning of the poem and changes its direction slightly, it turns the poem so that it isn’t completely predictable. It’s the turning over of the leaf, the brilliant orange is brown underneath. If you want your sonnets to have a non-traditional approach to the turn, though, go for it!

Now, a Heroic Crown of sonnets is 15 related sonnets, usually dealing with slightly different aspects of the same subject. For the sake of this experiment, we’ll base our crown around an event. First, though, we have to consider the amount of rhyming we’ll need to do. Each poem’s ending line must have two other rhyming words within the surrounding poems (the final couplet’s pair, and the opening ABAB of the next poem) as well as having to rhyme in poem 15, which means that there needs to be 2 sets of that rhyme, with 3 separate combinations for that rhyme. We’ll do the actual crunching of numbers tomorrow.

As the rules of the crown say that there’s a repetition of last/first lines that links the poems to each other. This means that the last line of poem one is the same as the first line of poem two. then the last line of poem two is the first line of poem three and so on, poem 14 begins with the last line of poem 13, then ends with the first line from page 1. Poem 15 is a combination of all first lines. So it only makes sense to work backwards. To facilitate this repetition without seeming, well, repetitive, there is a lot of forethought required. Today’s task is research. Find 20 of the following: Homonyms (search Alan Cooper’s Homonym list free online here) Groups of 3 interesting rhyming words (my favorite rhyming dictionary is RhymeZone) which, if at all possible, have some sort of link between them besides rhyming; and also come up with 25 different possible perspectives for one event. Think the opinion of animals and inanimate objects as well as people, and don’t feel stifled by time or space or living or dead or anything. You’ll only need at most 15 of these for the final product, but having a surplus is nice when you’re narrowing down the larger implications and suggestions of the piece. You’ll find patterns in the rhymes, perspectives and homonyms that will hopefully drive a few of those earlier poems to their home. Work on that for now. We’ll begin working on forming Poem 15 tomorrow.

Why not, right? Go to Poetry Blog Rankings and start up an account, then go here and vote for Incendiary Lit as the greatest, of allllllll time. Word to your mother. We’ve finally gotten relocated, so the posts should be picking up soon.

It’s Billy Collins’s poem “Workshop” and it’s so accurate, and the poem so absurd I wish I got to read the poem critiqued. It would have to be better than much of what I’ve read in workshops. There’s audio and the poem at this link. Billy Collins introduces the poem and reads it. He kind of sounds like Kevin Spacey, doesn’t he? Poets.org is just awesome. Thank you Poets.org for providing such an enormous well of information. Here’s the poem.

Workshop
by Billy Collins
(more…)

Since it’s on their website, I’d rather link to it than post it, but “How me breaking up with you is like Jon Lester pitching a no-hitter against the Royals” is a hilarious story in the form of an email. Here’s a short selection from the analogous piece:

Yes, I know we were together two years. Did you know the Royals hadn’t been no-hit for 35 years? Yes, I know how much you’ve committed to the relationship. Do you have any idea how much my collection of George Brett jerseys cost? Yes, it will be awkward for you to see me at work. You know what will be really awkward? The Royals finishing a four-game series against a team that just no-hit them. Can you step outside your own selfish world and imagine that for a second?

So check it out, it’s pretty short and really funny. Also browse around McSweeney’s while you’re there, they host copious amounts of great stuff. And you can even make a donation to help Sudan’s Lost Boys.

We’ll be trying to change the songs on incendiarylit.muxtape.com which is the new Incendiary Lit Muxtape, to translate that crazy html internets language for the non tech savvy. Haha. Right now there’s a wide mix. Joe Hisiashi next to Jason Castro next to Sage Francis next to Lily Allen. But it’ll change in a few days. If we ever remove something you liked let us know and we’ll put it back up for you. Word is barn. Moo.

And then watch the last minute for sure comic goodness, especially considering Nigel Lythgoe is richer than Scrooge McDuck. He has two silo-vaults. Anyway, Robert Muraine, aka Mr Fantastic, an LA streetdancer, and I gotta say that if I saw him performing I might empty my pockets in sheer confusion. 1/2 Mime, half liquid, this guy certainly is Mr. Fantastic.

The Arrested Development Pilot. That’s right, for those of you who have never seen the show– Meet the Bluths. For fans, remember way back in the beginning? So much changed over the course of three seasons, but the pilot’s still damned funny.

After reading a great deal of literary magazines I’ve come to hope that if I enter enough of the Indiana Review contests that I’ll eventually accrue a lifetime subscription. Every issue there are amazing poems, fiction, and even art. Also, ever since Sydney Brown’s creative nonfiction workshop I’ve had a soft-spot for the flash-fiction. The short short. Not sure who to blame for my prose poem affinity. Maybe Campbell McGrath. Yeah, I could probably safely blame my love for prose poems on his first book Capitalism.
The bastard.
Anyway, the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize is another one of those self-explanatory contest title names like “First Book of Poetry” or “Who can fart the bonfire started with a lighter?” though I’ve been told first prize for that last one isn’t quite as much as the hospital bills the second place winner receives, so it’s a gamble. The prize is for prose poems or short-shorts that are 500 words or less. 1/2 of 1K, 1,000. Yeah. 1000×0.5, even.
Entry Fee: $15 ($27 overseas)- which includes a year’s subscription to IR. Definitely well worth it. Consider it a bonus gift for subscribing, you’re entered into a sweepstakes where you could win $1000 and critical acclaim! HOORRAYYYY! But really, you never know who’s going to like your style, your flair for story structure, your unique image sets, so why not spend the $15 and ensure yourself two 200 page collections of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and reviews that I personally guarantee you’ll enjoy at least 1/3 of. If you don’t I’ll personally apologize in a form-email that I’ve already composed.
Deadline: June 9th! That’s right, very soon. That’s the postmark deadline. You can also submit online for the Indiana Review 1/2k Prize here.
Final Judge: You know the deal, the regular readers for the Indiana Review sort through the hundreds or thousands of pieces submitted, and narrow them down substantially. Then they move onto the senior editors who narrow it down to a reasonable number for the guest judge. Or it goes from readers to judge, depends on the contest, but if you make it past the early screening your prose poem/short short will be judged by none other than Russell Edson. I think Webdelsol summed up his biography best so I’ll shamelessly copy-paste that here for convenience: Russell Edson was born in Connecticut in 1935 and currently resides there with his wife Frances. Edson, who jokingly has called himself “Little Mr. Prose Poem,” is inarguably the foremost writer of prose poetry in America, having written exclusively in that form before it became fashionable. In a forthcoming study of the American prose poem, Michel Delville suggests that one of Edson’s typical “recipes” for his prose poems involves a modern everyman who suddenly tumbles into an alternative reality in which he loses control over himself, sometimes to the point of being irremediably absorbed–both figuratively and literally–by his immediate and, most often, domestic everyday environment. . . . Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and the bizarre, Edson delights in having a seemingly innocuous situation undergo the most unlikely and uncanny metamorphoses. . . .
I mean, it’s not a biography, but the pertinent information for someone who’s judging a writing contest. I first read Edson in Stand Up Poetry, Charles Harper Webb’s kick ass anthology. So send in to the 1/2k prize. What were you going to do with that $15 anyway? Buy two drinks at dinner? A frappuccino for yourself and two friends? 1/2 of a shirt? Get some good literature and an extra reason to be excited to see the mailman.

Just here to make you feel a little smaller. Check out these awesome astronomy ytmnd’s

This is the Size of Our World in respect to other celestial bodies.

This is A Tiny Glimpse into an area of the night sky that is pitch black to a normal telescope, via the Hubble Telescope over the course of months to show, well, watch and see.

They’re kind of hard to find, in my past searching, but here someone has RAM, As in Real Video, or audio, or whatever. But it’s permanent. So everyone with a harddrive worth its weight in… I don’t know, flax, should be able to hold a fair amount of media, and these classic SNL clips are always great for the dwindling hours of a small gathering, or a late night of ‘editing’ which has consisted more of finding ways not to edit than to edit, despite its ‘fun’. Anyone with ready access to the internet knows what I’m talking about. Anyway, MrT300 has a bunch of these classic clips, of Nick Burns, Celebrity Jeopardy, The Ladies Man, The Ambiguously Gay Duo, SNL commercials and more. So have fun, watch Turd Ferguson, or consider “Below Me” and laugh and laugh without worrying about searching for the clips. Go here.

Yeah, we’re a) poor, b) college students with an overload of classes c) food servers (which adds to the poor factor, and subtracts from time to go to movies) so we haven’t been able to go out to the movies much recently. But we did finally go to see Ironman, which was actually really good. Robert Downey Jr.’s a damn good actor, I gotta say. For more proof of this, anyone who hasn’t seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang should immediately put it on their Netflix/Blockbuster queue. (Val Kilmer as Gay Perry, the badass gay PI who always has a comeback, is just amazing) But yeah, one thing I really appreciated about Ironman was that it made you laugh without dumbing itself down, or cutting in on the big explosions and near-death experiences. But remember, this IS a comic book movie, so suspension of disbelief in some aspects is necessary. But unless you’re a tool, that shouldn’t be a problem, since movies are really only distractions from your own life, so loosen up and don’t overthink everything. Laugh when something tickles the back of your throat a little bit and you can feel the air in your lungs just begging to chuckle out. Hold your breath when he’s freefalling without power. Spend a couple hours outside of the world you’re familiar with. I understand that would much better apply to a movie like Pan’s Labyrinth or Mirrormask, but this is a un movie that everyone should be able to just loosen up and enjoy. Based on the 93% fresh rating the movie’s got over at RottenTomatoes.com, I assume most people are.