Plans to watch Denis Villeneuve's Arrival (2016) with my parents at the Somerville Theatre tonight were foiled by the evening showtime having sold out and my parents not being up for the late night. We may try again next weekend. It's just as well: I am feeling like a freight train ran me over. I know I've slept since returning from New York, but I really don't feel like it.
In political news, I called Governor Baker's office again this afternoon to remind him that while his cautions against "prejudging" the incoming administration were tone-deaf enough coming after Trump's appointment of Bannon, who wants to model his "economic nationalist movement" after Andrew Jackson's populism (because the Panic of 1837 was so good for the economy) and likens Trump to William Jennings Bryan (I guess on the anti-Black, anti-science front, I can see it) and apparently fancies himself as the new Thomas Cromwell (all the way down to the bill of attainder and execution without trial? Oh, God, now I've envisioned Trump as the late Henry and I can't make it stop. He's still three wives down), they sound downright ostrich-like now that Trump's pick for attorney general is a man whose racist comments kept Congress in the time of Reagan from confirming him as a federal judge and his idea of a CIA chief is a man who transparently lied about the American Muslim response to the Boston Marathon bombing. Baker counseled his constituents to "judge people on the totality of their work, on what they say, and how they pursue what they're up to." That's fine. The opinion I hold of Donald Trump, I have formed based on his words and his actions. If my state governor cannot bring himself to review the evidence similarly and commit to a conclusion, roll on the artichoke. Meanwhile, I need to call Mayor Curtatone's office and thank him for his pledges of continuing support for Somerville's immigrants. Positive feedback is also important.
(I am listening to a lot of Gogol Bordello lately, which is not surprising, but the last couple of days have also left me with Florence Reese's "Which Side Are You On?", which like most people of my generation I learned from Pete Seeger. Especially the stanza about there are no neutrals there.)
In non-political news, or at least political news of a different kind, my afternoon also contained b/w (2010), the first collection from Niall McDevitt, Irish-born poet and psychogeographer of London. He's very good. If you want a comparison, in style, concerns, and allusion his poems most remind me of H.D. circa Trilogy (1946) and Iain Sinclair almost any time, although less so when they're in Bislama, which I take as a tribute to Ken Campbell, in whose memory the collection is dedicated. McDevitt's London is a demotic jumble of ghosts, anachronisms, and magic, inter- and undercut with sardonic, often self-interrogating political observation. When he goes wrong for me, it's because he makes nationality too much of a metonym for the nation. Otherwise,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nineweaving might like his ideas about nettles, crows, and Shakespeare. Also, if you are interested in the reception and influence of Derek Jarman, you may want this book. The back cover includes—along with a thumbs-up from Patti Smith—a recommendation from Heathcote Williams, an activist and poet himself1 as well as an actor last seen by me as a near-definitive Prospero in Jarman's The Tempest (1976). The most formal poem in the book is a sestina entitled "Wittgenstein in Ireland," which at least for me was worth buying the collection to read; it is dedicated for Karl Johnson, I think conclusively proving that I was not the only viewer to get knocked sideways into obsession and poetry by Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993). The poem "Blue" is subtitled after Jarman and will probably mean more to me when I have seen the film, which I have been putting off because I expect it to hurt. There are other tips of the hat, to Michael Hartnett, Jan Žižka, Mahmoud Darwish, Tony Jackson, Morrissey, Rimbaud. He writes some not quite ghost poems—"George Orwell Is Following Me," "Parolles (A Sonnet)," "At the Yeats vs. Crowley Café." William Blake looks like his primary genius. He also riffs, successfully, on Baudelaire. I will probably track down his second collection Porterloo (2013) when I have not just impulse-bought another book off the internet. Anyway, paging ashlyme.
I need to write about movies again. I feel like my brain's been shut off.
1. Wait, he wrote a biographical poem for Alan Turing in 2011? Why did I not know about this? Why don't I own this? Fixing that problem right now.
In political news, I called Governor Baker's office again this afternoon to remind him that while his cautions against "prejudging" the incoming administration were tone-deaf enough coming after Trump's appointment of Bannon, who wants to model his "economic nationalist movement" after Andrew Jackson's populism (because the Panic of 1837 was so good for the economy) and likens Trump to William Jennings Bryan (I guess on the anti-Black, anti-science front, I can see it) and apparently fancies himself as the new Thomas Cromwell (all the way down to the bill of attainder and execution without trial? Oh, God, now I've envisioned Trump as the late Henry and I can't make it stop. He's still three wives down), they sound downright ostrich-like now that Trump's pick for attorney general is a man whose racist comments kept Congress in the time of Reagan from confirming him as a federal judge and his idea of a CIA chief is a man who transparently lied about the American Muslim response to the Boston Marathon bombing. Baker counseled his constituents to "judge people on the totality of their work, on what they say, and how they pursue what they're up to." That's fine. The opinion I hold of Donald Trump, I have formed based on his words and his actions. If my state governor cannot bring himself to review the evidence similarly and commit to a conclusion, roll on the artichoke. Meanwhile, I need to call Mayor Curtatone's office and thank him for his pledges of continuing support for Somerville's immigrants. Positive feedback is also important.
(I am listening to a lot of Gogol Bordello lately, which is not surprising, but the last couple of days have also left me with Florence Reese's "Which Side Are You On?", which like most people of my generation I learned from Pete Seeger. Especially the stanza about there are no neutrals there.)
In non-political news, or at least political news of a different kind, my afternoon also contained b/w (2010), the first collection from Niall McDevitt, Irish-born poet and psychogeographer of London. He's very good. If you want a comparison, in style, concerns, and allusion his poems most remind me of H.D. circa Trilogy (1946) and Iain Sinclair almost any time, although less so when they're in Bislama, which I take as a tribute to Ken Campbell, in whose memory the collection is dedicated. McDevitt's London is a demotic jumble of ghosts, anachronisms, and magic, inter- and undercut with sardonic, often self-interrogating political observation. When he goes wrong for me, it's because he makes nationality too much of a metonym for the nation. Otherwise,
nineweaving might like his ideas about nettles, crows, and Shakespeare. Also, if you are interested in the reception and influence of Derek Jarman, you may want this book. The back cover includes—along with a thumbs-up from Patti Smith—a recommendation from Heathcote Williams, an activist and poet himself1 as well as an actor last seen by me as a near-definitive Prospero in Jarman's The Tempest (1976). The most formal poem in the book is a sestina entitled "Wittgenstein in Ireland," which at least for me was worth buying the collection to read; it is dedicated for Karl Johnson, I think conclusively proving that I was not the only viewer to get knocked sideways into obsession and poetry by Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993). The poem "Blue" is subtitled after Jarman and will probably mean more to me when I have seen the film, which I have been putting off because I expect it to hurt. There are other tips of the hat, to Michael Hartnett, Jan Žižka, Mahmoud Darwish, Tony Jackson, Morrissey, Rimbaud. He writes some not quite ghost poems—"George Orwell Is Following Me," "Parolles (A Sonnet)," "At the Yeats vs. Crowley Café." William Blake looks like his primary genius. He also riffs, successfully, on Baudelaire. I will probably track down his second collection Porterloo (2013) when I have not just impulse-bought another book off the internet. Anyway, paging ashlyme.I need to write about movies again. I feel like my brain's been shut off.
1. Wait, he wrote a biographical poem for Alan Turing in 2011? Why did I not know about this? Why don't I own this? Fixing that problem right now.
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