Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Poetry & the Art of the Institution
A lot can be said for the state of poetic thought in today’s world. Yes, it is true that we (the youth, the writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, truth-seekers) still remain optimistic about the power that our words and emotions contain. But it seems that a desensitization has begun, and our words are becoming obscured—writ in water, as Keats said—and the only clarity displayed on the film screen of our existence is the adherence to institutionalized paradigms, corporate dogma, the ideology of the majority. Poetry, music, art, fiction, or any other form of self-expression—forms that were once controlled in the hands of the individuals creating them—appear now to be hung on ventriloquist strings, and the ones controlling the strings, as is innate human nature, fashion and mold what they are holding to fit their own ideology.
Consider, for instance, poetry written at a University by students who attend the University. The poetry written is formulaic; it is conscious replications of antiquity, it is a nostralgic lust for the poetry of the past, and the only social self-reflection embedded in this prescribed poetry is that it reflects our generation’s inability to reinvent ourselves. If Hemingway was writing in the Lost Generation, Kerouac in the Beat Generation, what does that make us? Where are the voices of today’s world that are willing to combat the lies fed to us by Hollywood? Or the bullshit intended to hypnotize us and tie us to our chairs on the television screen?
If it is true that tides of history are constantly changing, then it must also be true that voices of those wading in the shifting tide must change. So I ask; where are the ones that are willing to put the air in the lungs of the poetry, music, art, and writing of today’s world? There are already a few, but I ask again…where is our Ginsberg? Where is our Shelley? We seem to forget that Walt Whitman said that he would always be with us, where does father greybeard rest his hat tonight?
The children today are being constituted with a belief system that brainwashes them into believing that money, beauty, Southern California, and clothing is what will make them happy. There is a reason why kids think that reading books is “stupid” or “gay” or for “nerds.” And that reason is not their fault. They have been succumbed to an institutional paradigm from an early age, for the youth know not what they do, forgive them. Power is controlled by institutions that allocate knowledge that will best fit those working for them and underneath them. A child born into a government housing project may be gifted with the ability to write a novel that would make the earth shake, yet it is quite possible that the child will never know it, for it is not in his/her nature.
I believe that there is enough poetry and writing about the antiquated kings & queens, there is enough copulation with the past, now I think it is time to write about the verities of the world today. There are people that we walk past on the street every single day of our existence but never really take the chance to look at—the walking dead, as Eliot said—let us tell these stories, for these stories about the real lives of the people that are embedded in the system will render the critical notions of thought that will, hopefully, enlighten others of how fucked up things truly are. To sign off with a final thought, I feel that Charles Wright said it best in the introduction to the quote-on-quote Best American Poetry Anthology of 2008:
“Perhaps that’s one of the reasons the younger generations are anxious to excise emotion its intensity out of their poems. But cleverness is not what endures. Only pain endures. And the rhythm of pain.”
Consider, for instance, poetry written at a University by students who attend the University. The poetry written is formulaic; it is conscious replications of antiquity, it is a nostralgic lust for the poetry of the past, and the only social self-reflection embedded in this prescribed poetry is that it reflects our generation’s inability to reinvent ourselves. If Hemingway was writing in the Lost Generation, Kerouac in the Beat Generation, what does that make us? Where are the voices of today’s world that are willing to combat the lies fed to us by Hollywood? Or the bullshit intended to hypnotize us and tie us to our chairs on the television screen?
If it is true that tides of history are constantly changing, then it must also be true that voices of those wading in the shifting tide must change. So I ask; where are the ones that are willing to put the air in the lungs of the poetry, music, art, and writing of today’s world? There are already a few, but I ask again…where is our Ginsberg? Where is our Shelley? We seem to forget that Walt Whitman said that he would always be with us, where does father greybeard rest his hat tonight?
The children today are being constituted with a belief system that brainwashes them into believing that money, beauty, Southern California, and clothing is what will make them happy. There is a reason why kids think that reading books is “stupid” or “gay” or for “nerds.” And that reason is not their fault. They have been succumbed to an institutional paradigm from an early age, for the youth know not what they do, forgive them. Power is controlled by institutions that allocate knowledge that will best fit those working for them and underneath them. A child born into a government housing project may be gifted with the ability to write a novel that would make the earth shake, yet it is quite possible that the child will never know it, for it is not in his/her nature.
I believe that there is enough poetry and writing about the antiquated kings & queens, there is enough copulation with the past, now I think it is time to write about the verities of the world today. There are people that we walk past on the street every single day of our existence but never really take the chance to look at—the walking dead, as Eliot said—let us tell these stories, for these stories about the real lives of the people that are embedded in the system will render the critical notions of thought that will, hopefully, enlighten others of how fucked up things truly are. To sign off with a final thought, I feel that Charles Wright said it best in the introduction to the quote-on-quote Best American Poetry Anthology of 2008:
“Perhaps that’s one of the reasons the younger generations are anxious to excise emotion its intensity out of their poems. But cleverness is not what endures. Only pain endures. And the rhythm of pain.”
Monday, April 26, 2010
Pornography
The medical examiner had a long day and needed a drink. Rightly so, he was exhausted from an afternoon of investigating various causes of death, he smelled of formaldehyde and latex, and all he wanted was a tall glass of scotch and just a little bit of love.
The medical examiner's downtown loft was empty when he arrived. It was half-past nine. Where was his wife? Her coat and hat were hung-up on the coat-rack, the television was on, and Marvin Gaye was playing on his vintage record player.
There was a note in the kitchen.
“Dad called, he’s sick, won’t be home till late. Food is in the refrigerator.”
The medical examiner did not believe the note. Marriage counseling, Viagra, all of the works; his wife was not with her father, she was out on the town, it took no private eye inference to figure that one out. But the medical examiner did not fret—he was used to it all. He bypassed the refrigerated plate of spaghetti and meatballs, poured a tall and stiff scotch, walked up the stairs and entered his bedroom.
The medical examiner undressed. He felt like a replicated photograph of a once vibrant scene, but had become weathered from habituation, monotony. The medical examiner considered his life to be a once-classic hit that had been played on the record player too many times. He had lost his vitality, and was succumbed to the banal up-and-down-and-back-and-forth tedium of life.
Wearing nothing except his trousers, he drew-open the window curtain. While sitting cross-legged on his bed, he took a moment to gaze out into the hustle and bustle of the downtown cityscape. The medical examiner always liked to watch the countless citizens from his window. They interested him. He would fictionalize their life stories, he’d give them names, objectives; he would conjure plots that were always similar to the pulp magazines that he read as a child—the medical examiner had always wanted to be a detective.
The medical examiner noticed a woman alone in her apartment across the street. Well, he at least thought she was alone. He found the woman very attractive. She was dressed in a fine black summer dress, had long black hair, and was smoking a cigarette with her back turned towards him. The medical examiner did not choose to give this woman a name. He moved a little closer to the window and continued to watch the woman. She began to undress. First she removed her high-heels, then her earrings, then the exquisite pearl necklace that was draped around her neck. The medical examiner noticed that the woman did not wear a wedding ring.
Then the medical examiner closed his eyes.
The woman was even more beautiful up-close than she was from across the road. The medical examiner, still in his trousers, sat on the red floral cover of the woman’s bed. Her clothes were lying on the floor, and she was now staring out of the window, wearing only her lingerie, taking long and sensuous drags from her cigarette. The medical examiner wondered what the woman would look like on the table, and he dreamed what her cause of death would be. Asphyxiation, poisoning, cancer, hemorrhage, a bullet in the temple, maybe. This pondering was nothing out of the ordinary for the medical examiner, for he was a professional in the art of death and erotic prophecy.
The medical examiner was aroused. His trousers were getting in the way. He felt alive again, he felt like a twenty year old undergraduate with a good buzz and a fistful of confidence. So he did the next logical thing—he removed his trousers. Bare-assed and cross-legged like a sexually frustrated Hindu deity, he watched the woman turn away from the window. She unclasped her strapless white brassiere, and sat on the bed next to the medical examiner. His heart rate was beating with the exigency of an anxious thoroughbred horse that had been waiting in the gates for much too long. Now was the time, he could feel it approaching, finally, after so many long, dull, blind, and tepid days he was finally utilizing that sexual prowess he took too much for granted as a young man. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen; Venus, Helen of Troy, the woman with the power to set sail to one thousand ships.
The medical examiner straightened out his legs and fell back on the bed. There is nothing in the world better than this, he thought, to completely lose oneself in the caprice of a beautiful woman. He wanted to be the one to cut the woman open when her day of reckoning came, he wanted every intricacy of her flesh, and nothing more—nothing of the soul, nothing of the spirit, for the intangible spiritual self to the medical examiner was a fabrication by the hierarchal powers at hand to make the hell on earth (the hell that he witnessed at his job on the daily) much more tolerable. She would make a picturesque corpse, the definitive corpse, the one-and-the-only fathomable body of flesh.
The medical examiner, in a frenetic dash towards climax, sprinted for the summit. His legs jolted in the air, his breathing was heavy, and then, from what he would later consider a terrible coincidence, the bedroom door was flung open.
The medical examiner opened his eyes. His spine instantaneously sprung upright, the window of the woman’s apartment across the street was still open, yet she stood there in the warm embrace of another man.
His wife stood in the doorway, half-drunk with a maudlin disposition in her knees from a failed night out on the town, and saw her husband—the one whom she thought was impotent beyond repair—sitting naked in bed, with a hard-on.
The medical examiner's downtown loft was empty when he arrived. It was half-past nine. Where was his wife? Her coat and hat were hung-up on the coat-rack, the television was on, and Marvin Gaye was playing on his vintage record player.
There was a note in the kitchen.
“Dad called, he’s sick, won’t be home till late. Food is in the refrigerator.”
The medical examiner did not believe the note. Marriage counseling, Viagra, all of the works; his wife was not with her father, she was out on the town, it took no private eye inference to figure that one out. But the medical examiner did not fret—he was used to it all. He bypassed the refrigerated plate of spaghetti and meatballs, poured a tall and stiff scotch, walked up the stairs and entered his bedroom.
The medical examiner undressed. He felt like a replicated photograph of a once vibrant scene, but had become weathered from habituation, monotony. The medical examiner considered his life to be a once-classic hit that had been played on the record player too many times. He had lost his vitality, and was succumbed to the banal up-and-down-and-back-and-forth tedium of life.
Wearing nothing except his trousers, he drew-open the window curtain. While sitting cross-legged on his bed, he took a moment to gaze out into the hustle and bustle of the downtown cityscape. The medical examiner always liked to watch the countless citizens from his window. They interested him. He would fictionalize their life stories, he’d give them names, objectives; he would conjure plots that were always similar to the pulp magazines that he read as a child—the medical examiner had always wanted to be a detective.
The medical examiner noticed a woman alone in her apartment across the street. Well, he at least thought she was alone. He found the woman very attractive. She was dressed in a fine black summer dress, had long black hair, and was smoking a cigarette with her back turned towards him. The medical examiner did not choose to give this woman a name. He moved a little closer to the window and continued to watch the woman. She began to undress. First she removed her high-heels, then her earrings, then the exquisite pearl necklace that was draped around her neck. The medical examiner noticed that the woman did not wear a wedding ring.
Then the medical examiner closed his eyes.
The woman was even more beautiful up-close than she was from across the road. The medical examiner, still in his trousers, sat on the red floral cover of the woman’s bed. Her clothes were lying on the floor, and she was now staring out of the window, wearing only her lingerie, taking long and sensuous drags from her cigarette. The medical examiner wondered what the woman would look like on the table, and he dreamed what her cause of death would be. Asphyxiation, poisoning, cancer, hemorrhage, a bullet in the temple, maybe. This pondering was nothing out of the ordinary for the medical examiner, for he was a professional in the art of death and erotic prophecy.
The medical examiner was aroused. His trousers were getting in the way. He felt alive again, he felt like a twenty year old undergraduate with a good buzz and a fistful of confidence. So he did the next logical thing—he removed his trousers. Bare-assed and cross-legged like a sexually frustrated Hindu deity, he watched the woman turn away from the window. She unclasped her strapless white brassiere, and sat on the bed next to the medical examiner. His heart rate was beating with the exigency of an anxious thoroughbred horse that had been waiting in the gates for much too long. Now was the time, he could feel it approaching, finally, after so many long, dull, blind, and tepid days he was finally utilizing that sexual prowess he took too much for granted as a young man. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen; Venus, Helen of Troy, the woman with the power to set sail to one thousand ships.
The medical examiner straightened out his legs and fell back on the bed. There is nothing in the world better than this, he thought, to completely lose oneself in the caprice of a beautiful woman. He wanted to be the one to cut the woman open when her day of reckoning came, he wanted every intricacy of her flesh, and nothing more—nothing of the soul, nothing of the spirit, for the intangible spiritual self to the medical examiner was a fabrication by the hierarchal powers at hand to make the hell on earth (the hell that he witnessed at his job on the daily) much more tolerable. She would make a picturesque corpse, the definitive corpse, the one-and-the-only fathomable body of flesh.
The medical examiner, in a frenetic dash towards climax, sprinted for the summit. His legs jolted in the air, his breathing was heavy, and then, from what he would later consider a terrible coincidence, the bedroom door was flung open.
The medical examiner opened his eyes. His spine instantaneously sprung upright, the window of the woman’s apartment across the street was still open, yet she stood there in the warm embrace of another man.
His wife stood in the doorway, half-drunk with a maudlin disposition in her knees from a failed night out on the town, and saw her husband—the one whom she thought was impotent beyond repair—sitting naked in bed, with a hard-on.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Salutations.
I guess I should begin with an introduction.
Hey y’all,
My name is Tom Connor. I am an Undergraduate literature student at the University of Connecticut. I’m having trouble with the next sentence. I’m not good with introductions, never have been. The logical approach, I guess, would be to start at the beginning, but I don’t think that would help to shed any relevant light, for I’m not a fan of beginnings—-they tend to falsely prophesize ensuing events.
So I figure that it would be best to just cut to the chase. A writer is one who writes. A writer is one who sees the blank page as a form of liberation. I am a writer.
I have begun my own blog for a few simple reasons. Apart from the normal and functional aspects of a literary education (reading, writing decorous papers that adhere to the fucked-up hierarchal ideology of the University institution, smoking cigarettes, drinking too much coffee, loving too much, and trying to still remain creative) I feel that another outlet is needed. With this blog I intend to write whatever it is that I want; whether it is poetry, fiction, non-fiction, rants and maudlin and frenetic utterances of a spontaneous mind desperately seeking to jigsaw the Rubix Cube into some sense for once.
A wise man once said that it is fortunate to live in interesting times. Well, my friends, interesting the times sure are, so may we all embrace it, unveil the strangeness, the weird, the not-so-normal, the insanity, the madness, the absurdity, the chaos. Life would be much easier if it took place inside Jane Austen’s ballroom, but unfortunately for us, it does not.
I hope this suffices for an introductory statement. I’m not what one would call a “by the book” kind of guy. I like rock & roll, Wu-Tang Clan, Chuck Taylor sneakers, and my weapon of choice is a 1935 Smith & Corona Typewriter. I read Marx. I am not sorry.
If anyone out there has taken the few moments to read this prologue, well, I am very grateful, and I just truly hope that I can cook up some recipes of relevance for each and every single one of you.
With all the best regards,
Tom
P.S. –“Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music, and never forget…you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers, and warriors.”
- Hunter S. Thompson
Hey y’all,
My name is Tom Connor. I am an Undergraduate literature student at the University of Connecticut. I’m having trouble with the next sentence. I’m not good with introductions, never have been. The logical approach, I guess, would be to start at the beginning, but I don’t think that would help to shed any relevant light, for I’m not a fan of beginnings—-they tend to falsely prophesize ensuing events.
So I figure that it would be best to just cut to the chase. A writer is one who writes. A writer is one who sees the blank page as a form of liberation. I am a writer.
I have begun my own blog for a few simple reasons. Apart from the normal and functional aspects of a literary education (reading, writing decorous papers that adhere to the fucked-up hierarchal ideology of the University institution, smoking cigarettes, drinking too much coffee, loving too much, and trying to still remain creative) I feel that another outlet is needed. With this blog I intend to write whatever it is that I want; whether it is poetry, fiction, non-fiction, rants and maudlin and frenetic utterances of a spontaneous mind desperately seeking to jigsaw the Rubix Cube into some sense for once.
A wise man once said that it is fortunate to live in interesting times. Well, my friends, interesting the times sure are, so may we all embrace it, unveil the strangeness, the weird, the not-so-normal, the insanity, the madness, the absurdity, the chaos. Life would be much easier if it took place inside Jane Austen’s ballroom, but unfortunately for us, it does not.
I hope this suffices for an introductory statement. I’m not what one would call a “by the book” kind of guy. I like rock & roll, Wu-Tang Clan, Chuck Taylor sneakers, and my weapon of choice is a 1935 Smith & Corona Typewriter. I read Marx. I am not sorry.
If anyone out there has taken the few moments to read this prologue, well, I am very grateful, and I just truly hope that I can cook up some recipes of relevance for each and every single one of you.
With all the best regards,
Tom
P.S. –“Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music, and never forget…you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers, and warriors.”
- Hunter S. Thompson
Saturday, April 24, 2010
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