So a lot has been happening, dear reader(s). I need to get better about updating this blog. First off, I want you to think of the last word you read that made you really happy. I read cloister in an article today and my mouth jumped up and bit me. Say that out loud and say it doesn't make you happy. Cloister. Also nice: cluster. As in: fuck. But! it doesn't have the complication of the oi.
So. News.
First off, if you're in Seattle or the surrounding areas, or if you like planes and me and find travel for poetry worth your time... I am reading at Open Books in Wallingford (2414 N 45th St.) with Shane McCrae(!) on Friday, October 22 at 7pm. Find out more about Open Books here: http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/. Also, the event has been *starred* in The Stranger (link to that here: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Event?event=5022417), which means we're superawesome and you should come. As usual, I will be taking requests.
Second, you can find some recent reviews of Money for Sunsets, here: The Sonic Imperative in the Prose Poem: a review of Elizabeth Colen’s Money for Sunsets. And here: Book Notes on Elizabeth J. Colen's Money for Sunsets. A big thanks to Metta Sama and Jory Mickelson.
Thirdly, I've just jumped on board as Thumbnail Magazine's new poetry editor. We're accepting submissions, so get on that.
So that's it for "business." I just got back, well a few days ago, from a long trip to Portland. Well, not long really. Not long enough. I'm working on wrapping up a new manuscript. Writers, what do you do when you work too fast and have several manuscripts you're sending out in the world? I tend to maintain focus on the poetry, as it is (to me) easier to place, but I'm not sure what I will do when I have two entirely finished books of poetry, orphans for a home. My thought is to take the more cohesive (the more recent) of the two and focus on that, meanwhile brainstorming what presses would be more willing to take on the riskier/boundary-pushing one. The bastard, if you will. The bastard that obsessed me for nearly two years. On top of that, I've vaguely sending out two novels. I don't have the administrative energy to go all out on sending three books everywhere I should. Again I will say: I need a secretary. I don't know how people do this. Even as relatively easy as my schedule is (I make my own hours, rarely work forty hours in a week, don't have kids), I can't seem to get Everything done. I also read a lot. Books are my drug. The one that saps hours. The one where I pull my eyes out from the pages and it really is like waking up on someone's floor and having no idea how I got there.
In other news, my town is sad. A week and a half ago a freshman at Western went missing. Wednesday they found him in the bay. A week ago yesterday a two-year old was killed walking across the street, holding her mother's hand. A car had stopped to let them pass and the driver in the next car, distracted, didn't stop. Ran into the car in front, running over the little girl. About a half-mile from my house, and right on the walk I take with Cally every morning. Every morning we walk past the makeshift memorial of flowers and balloons and stuffed animals and notes and candles that grows and grows and grows. Every morning I tear up. Most mornings some passer-by has paused, some car has pulled over to look, some bicyclist has stopped to stand there. This is the difference between living in a city and living here, which sometimes feels like a city. I didn't know either one of them, but I feel it. You know? I guess this is what community feels like. And maybe why I can never leave. I love those pausers. As much as I can love a stranger anyway. As much as I can love anyone. I wrote more articulately yesterday on my private "journal"/blog. Maybe I'll repost that here... Hm, maybe not.
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Friday, October 8, 2010
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wrecks in Effect
To those half-dozen or so who check back semi-regularly to see what I'm up to, my apologies. The contents of this blog are an adequate parallel to the real-life goings-on of one Elizabeth J. Colen... i.e. Not Much.
There's the walking of the dogs every day, the soreness in my calves still from a recent trek down then up the stairs at Wreck Beach in B.C. (a worthy hike for those who like sun on bare skin, beautiful sunsets, other assorted contact highs, and disorganized drum circles). The garden is growing lovely, Bing Cherry has finally sprouted leaves, the grapes are calling for an arbor I haven't the time or energy to build, and the big built box now full of bamboo has truly taken off. Perhaps there will be pictures here some day. I'm contemplating tomatoes, chard, onions, basil. I have a new writing project on the horizon, but am planning a new way of writing: detailed mapping, an outline of a paper city before putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, mind to serious work. Perhaps in the coming months I will begin. For now the locations and events are developing, the characters fermenting.
One of my favorite journals for contemporary poetry has recently accepted one of my favorite poems (Aposematic) for publication in the fall. I'm not really sending things out at the moment. Today even the focus must be on organizing the office, as piles of paper and books have now sprouted piles of paper, like tumors, sitting sideways on larger piles. I have no idea where anything is anymore, nor sometimes who I am. I'm hoping to come to organization with both by the end of the day. In the meantime, Her Circle has posted my latest review of a fantastic little book from FC2: Correction of Drift by Pamela Ryder. Check it out here:
http://www.hercircleezine.com/2008/05/30/correction-of-drift-a-novel-in-stories-by-pamela-ryder/
There's the walking of the dogs every day, the soreness in my calves still from a recent trek down then up the stairs at Wreck Beach in B.C. (a worthy hike for those who like sun on bare skin, beautiful sunsets, other assorted contact highs, and disorganized drum circles). The garden is growing lovely, Bing Cherry has finally sprouted leaves, the grapes are calling for an arbor I haven't the time or energy to build, and the big built box now full of bamboo has truly taken off. Perhaps there will be pictures here some day. I'm contemplating tomatoes, chard, onions, basil. I have a new writing project on the horizon, but am planning a new way of writing: detailed mapping, an outline of a paper city before putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, mind to serious work. Perhaps in the coming months I will begin. For now the locations and events are developing, the characters fermenting.
One of my favorite journals for contemporary poetry has recently accepted one of my favorite poems (Aposematic) for publication in the fall. I'm not really sending things out at the moment. Today even the focus must be on organizing the office, as piles of paper and books have now sprouted piles of paper, like tumors, sitting sideways on larger piles. I have no idea where anything is anymore, nor sometimes who I am. I'm hoping to come to organization with both by the end of the day. In the meantime, Her Circle has posted my latest review of a fantastic little book from FC2: Correction of Drift by Pamela Ryder. Check it out here:
http://www.hercircleezine.com/2008/05/30/correction-of-drift-a-novel-in-stories-by-pamela-ryder/
Sunday, November 25, 2007
No anchorless groping disturbs the hand**
C and I are going to see No Country for Old Men this afternoon. In about an hour, actually. This is why I seem content to tool around shifting words online rather than getting into the meat of something or going back to my reading (Israel Chalfen's _Paul Celan: A Biography of His Youth_).
Part of me would like to compose a long post about this film, which I have not yet seen, based on what I have been told and what I have read elsewhere. While I like to hear what other people have to say about a film before I watch it myself, I refuse to read reviews before watching a film. After, when I can argue with the writer while I read, I will see what they have to say. But there is a kind of posturing that happens in film reviews that taints the film for me. It's like I sometimes analyze a film using the text of the review. The few times I have done this it has made me uncomfortable and taken me a little while to figure out why my enjoyment of the film was off.
Whether the film is actually *good* or *bad* means nothing to me about how I enjoy the film while watching. I like looking at attractive people on the screen. I like the ritual of the ticket counter, the popcorn counter. More than anything I like the feel of experiencing something with strangers in a darkened room. That said, I like to experience this something with no one sitting directly next to me (unless I've brought someone myself), in front of me or directly behind.
If someone sits directly behind I wonder if they're putting things in my hair. This fear, I'm sure, stems from my first movie date in junior high. I was an awkward child and people noticed this. I will even say they took it upon them to capitalize on it. Regardless, I came out of Rocky V with popcorn and whoknows whatelse in my hair. And though my date was kind, the relationship did not last out the month. I don't blame this on the popcorn so much as the roving hands.
I want to be one of the people who will sit in the semi-darkness before the previews begin with my feet on the chair in front of me. Somehow I grew out of this in my middle twenties. I should perhaps have grown out of it sooner, but as I've said, I'm very protective of a positive movie-going experience. Now when someone sits in front of me I simply move, if possible. When the theater is crowded I have to give myself over to a different kind of mentality to fully enjoy a film. Like dancing with the rabble in a crowded concert venue (which I do less and less), I stop playing us and them and imagine myself as less myself (the island) and more as one piece of the crowd.
Then there's the snackfood. Popcorn and M&Ms, mixed, the chocolate warm and soft within the shell, the popcorn becoming stained with the candy colors. And also contraband Diet Dr. Pepper.
In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing Javier Bardem. I have a slight crush on him. And the Coen brothers have only let me down once, though admittedly I have never seen Intolerable Cruelty or Ladykillers.
Regarding book reviews, I do read them, but never to the end unless I have already read the book myself. In these the posturing is less aggressive, less obnoxious, but often the writer of a review is self-involved enough to include too much of their own world I do not wish to know. Except for People magazine, which tells one nothing, but is nontheless not invasive.
**from Celan's Mother's Day poem, 1938
Part of me would like to compose a long post about this film, which I have not yet seen, based on what I have been told and what I have read elsewhere. While I like to hear what other people have to say about a film before I watch it myself, I refuse to read reviews before watching a film. After, when I can argue with the writer while I read, I will see what they have to say. But there is a kind of posturing that happens in film reviews that taints the film for me. It's like I sometimes analyze a film using the text of the review. The few times I have done this it has made me uncomfortable and taken me a little while to figure out why my enjoyment of the film was off.
Whether the film is actually *good* or *bad* means nothing to me about how I enjoy the film while watching. I like looking at attractive people on the screen. I like the ritual of the ticket counter, the popcorn counter. More than anything I like the feel of experiencing something with strangers in a darkened room. That said, I like to experience this something with no one sitting directly next to me (unless I've brought someone myself), in front of me or directly behind.
If someone sits directly behind I wonder if they're putting things in my hair. This fear, I'm sure, stems from my first movie date in junior high. I was an awkward child and people noticed this. I will even say they took it upon them to capitalize on it. Regardless, I came out of Rocky V with popcorn and whoknows whatelse in my hair. And though my date was kind, the relationship did not last out the month. I don't blame this on the popcorn so much as the roving hands.
I want to be one of the people who will sit in the semi-darkness before the previews begin with my feet on the chair in front of me. Somehow I grew out of this in my middle twenties. I should perhaps have grown out of it sooner, but as I've said, I'm very protective of a positive movie-going experience. Now when someone sits in front of me I simply move, if possible. When the theater is crowded I have to give myself over to a different kind of mentality to fully enjoy a film. Like dancing with the rabble in a crowded concert venue (which I do less and less), I stop playing us and them and imagine myself as less myself (the island) and more as one piece of the crowd.
Then there's the snackfood. Popcorn and M&Ms, mixed, the chocolate warm and soft within the shell, the popcorn becoming stained with the candy colors. And also contraband Diet Dr. Pepper.
In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing Javier Bardem. I have a slight crush on him. And the Coen brothers have only let me down once, though admittedly I have never seen Intolerable Cruelty or Ladykillers.
Regarding book reviews, I do read them, but never to the end unless I have already read the book myself. In these the posturing is less aggressive, less obnoxious, but often the writer of a review is self-involved enough to include too much of their own world I do not wish to know. Except for People magazine, which tells one nothing, but is nontheless not invasive.
**from Celan's Mother's Day poem, 1938
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
