Freaky Friday

1. Well, it's not that freaky, indeed perhaps not freaky at all. And now that I've trotted out this stunning headline, I can't re-use it here at The Dizzies for when something truly freaky happens.

2. National Poetry Month madness continues here at The Dizzies. From "God Went Rollerblading," by Cynthia Rylant (thanks to Dizzyhead Regina):

He loved it.
He wasn't very good at it.
He fell twenty times.
But God always
bounces back.

(For more on God, visit the Saturnhead archives.)

3. Citizen Truth is like poetry, I think:

Bread

Where do they grow these chicks?
Is he their dad-figure or what?
(We were there for the shift change.)
(It seems fun here.)
(We cheer for what we recognize.)
(I'm part phlegmish.)

4. I thought of a joke the other day, but perhaps it's already been done? Check it out:

"Apple just announced a new iPod geared toward colorful sports figures of yesteryear. It's called the 'Icky Shuffle.'"

I might have to jazz up the wording a little. Shortly after coming up with this joke, I had a three-minute fantasy in which I became a standup comedian, despite my intense aversion to standup comedy. But then I couldn't think of any more jokes.

5. Don Imus! I've never listened to his show, but the recent fiasco dredged this up from the memory banks: Years ago, I was sifting through the book-reject pile (at a magazine where I was interning) and picked up Imus's novel, God's Other Son. I had no idea who Imus was. I opened the book, and on the very first page, possibly the first sentence or two, there was a gratuitous dig at African American women, something along the lines of: I (the other son of God) am a white male, and people who think that God could have, say, a black woman as a child are just plain PC-nuts.

That's my memory of it; I could be off on the details—I've tried to "look inside" the book at Amazon (this passes for research here at The Dizzies). In any case, there was something so instantly depressing and distasteful (Imus going out of his way to make such a bizarre insult, right off the bat) that I shut the book, and forevermore grumbled internally at any mention of his name.

Amazing—to so completely turn a reader off before the end of the first page! To completely turn off a reader for life!

6. Dizzyhead Hua's Palace has a beguiling Korean rocker up today...more dope on the band, San Ul Lim, here.

7. Dizzyhead Drew now blogs at The Ballad of the Cagener...

8. And finally: Dizzyhead Chrita, proprietor of the now defunct Crisis/Boring Change, will join Team Dizzies as soon as we get all the contract work vetted. He will focus on comic books and amusing anecdotes from his life.

(By the way—I'm loving the sub-200-page-novel reading suggestions—keep ’em coming! I am going to make myself scarce, or at least scarce-ish, for a while—Team Dizzies, start posting!)

Wining, Reading, Grading

From Tony Hoagland's "When Dean Young Talks About Wine," in What Narcissism Means to Me:

He says, Great first chapter but no plot.
He says, Long runway, short flight.
He says, This one never had a secret.
He says, You can't wear stripes like that.

This suggets a good writing exercise: Elaborate descriptions for wine.

* * *

Dan Rhodes's Guardian list of his favorite books under 200 pages has been much linked to. (Dizzyheads, any candidates?) Off the top of my head, The Mezzanine would be high on my list, something by Richard Brautigan, and of course something by Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle, probably). Bernhard's The Loser is 183 pages. I'm also, randomly, a fan of Isherwood's Prater Violet...and Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means must be sub-200. . . .

* * *

Here is the Guardian obit for Vonnegut—the Times one is more interesting, I think. His official website is here, and today its splash page features an opened bird cage.

Wikipedia mentions Vonnegut's self-assessment of his books (in Palm Sunday); it reminded me of Nabokov's annotated copy of a collection of short stories, in which most things received C's or lower, except Salinger's "Bananafish" (A+) and...something by VN himself, if I'm not mistaken.

Here's Vonnegut's list:
Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat's Cradle: A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C

This seems pretty clear-eyed—though I remember seeing this before reading Breakfast of Champions, then thinking BoC must be pretty mediocre...then reading BoC and being pleasantly surprised—the result of lowered expectations? Anyway, what a nice chunk, from Sirens to S-5. Enough for any writer, no?

UPDATE: Excellent set of online Vonnegut resources, compiled by the Mirror Ed.

Abstraction like an oil slick

In This Skin is a series of songs that will explore our ongoing relationship to notions of fate and mortality. Accompanying the aural elements will be still and video images of stagings and performance piecesthat when viewed as a whole will—because of my choice of forms—have the appearance of a melodramatic narrative but, upon closer inspection, will reveal abstraction spreading like an oil slick....

A grant will allow me to build upon my previous practice, such as 2001's Irresistible, and develop a new language of material skills with which to delineate loss and love.

—From "Jessica Simpson's Grant Application," by Brian Joseph Davis, in Portable Altamont (Coach House, 2005)

Million Squirrels Show

Important National Poetry Month news: Cathy "No Relation" Park Hong's Dance Dance Revolution is being published soon—it's the winner of the Barnard Women's Poetry Prize—and she'll be doing a number of readings, including one next Tuesday at Barnard. She'll also be appearing on Mr. Equanimity's Million Poems Show and in an up-and-coming borough called Brooklyn. Check her blog for the full schedule.

* * *

CPH raves about Ed Roberson, which reminds me that the PTSRNLS published a poem of his, a bit of which runs:

Deadheading the spent flames
to encourage a re-bloom

only makes the ashes see light again
as darkness,
feeling their way across a floor of faces

until every one is theirs.

* * *

I was happy to wake from a dream in which I was chasing a squirrel out of the house, a sequence that seemed to last forever. That's not poetry. That's for National Dream Month.

See also...

This is a good exercise for National Poetry Month—make your own dictionary. Here's the entry for "Movie" from Marisol Limon Martinez's After You, Dearest Language , published by Ugly Duckling Presse. (All-caps words have their own entries, elsewhere in the book):

I watch a movie on TELEVISION with my FAMILY. The television is in the CORNER of the ROOM. I cannot really see what's happening. Michael is walking a BABY ALLIGATOR. My MOTHER asks Veronica if they should tell me about it. My FATHER can see the television but not the images. I am taking care of three KITTENS. As soon as Julien and I walk in the DOOR one of the kitten pees all over the Oxford English DICTIONARY. A MATTRESS is on the floor. At least we have some place to sleep. [...]

Whan that Aprille

National Poetry Month continues here at The Dizzies. Today's poem is "Dream Job," from Matthew Zapruder's The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon).

The poet reads about an experiment in which scientists carefully nab migrating birds and inject them with "double-/labeled water ampules."

and it occurs
to me in my snow globe
surrounded with rain
on Water Street by the sea,
it's possible all this
capturing daily
was for some other purpose.

Very nice...snow, rain, water, sea. (The shoores are certainly sooteing today in New York, eh?) And I dig the end, which took me by surprise.

Go, Jerry. Soon you will be
in Canada where
Neil Young was born.

Then I remembered the title, and remembered this—another dream job.