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Rebecca Lindenberg
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The Pursuit of the Perfect (by Rebecca Lindenberg)
Posted Mar 24, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
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Food/Writing [by Rebecca Lindenberg]
Posted Mar 22, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
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Funeral Potatoes (by Rebecca Lindenberg)
Posted Mar 20, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
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Further Adventures in the Jell-O Belt [by Rebecca Lindenberg]
Posted Mar 19, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
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Welcome to the Jell-O Belt...(by Rebecca Lindenberg)
Posted Mar 18, 2012 at The Best American Poetry
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TTFN - Rebecca Lindenberg
Many thanks again to Stacey Harwood and the Best American Poetry Blog for having me as a guest this past week. It’s been really exciting and wonderful for me to have this occasion to muse about poetry and related subjects, and to have this community to muse it to. There were so many things I wanted to write about and couldn't possibly have gotten around to in the days and space of a week’s blogging, so rather than try to cram in one more, I thought I’d just propose a few of the questions and notions I’ve been kicking around, that others might kick them around with me, here or elsewhere in the world. I like lists, so… Some Things I Wonder About When I Wonder About Poetry Derrida talks about “the proxy of the sign” and Heidigger talks about the way language “calls” something absent into presence, but by needing the word in the first place, language reinscribes the absence. What is the relationship of language to absence? Better yet, what is the relationship of language to presence? What are the consolations of language? Something about language as an organ of perception. How the word “rosemary” tastes different than the words “blue paint”. How the word “soberly” weighs something different in the palm of the mind than the word “whim”. Something about attention. Every time we sat next to each other that week, we couldn’t even listen to the readers, we were both so busy attending to every moment our knees or fingers or shoulders didn’t touch. When we use the term “sentimental” as a form of derision, what is it exactly that we’re accusing a poem (or poet) of? Is it the overly familiar? The cliché, the kitch? Is it the overly candid, the naïve emotional outpouring? What’s the opposite of sentimentality, then? Is it restraint? That seems such a hard word, so correctional. So antithetical to Blake’s “exuberance is beauty.” Is it silence? Speaking of Blake, I love a good aphorism. Jim Richardson writes splendid aphorisms, like “All stones are broken stones.” Like “Who breaks the thread? The one who pulls, or the one who holds on?” To all of the teachers who feel I never learned anything from them: Take my word for it, it’s all in there. I keep relearning how much you taught me each time my life changes and I find I need this or that insight you imparted; each time I suddenly understand something I otherwise just remembered. So if it doesn’t show, it’s just because it isn’t time yet. Given the choice between a black cocktail dress and a good pair of jeans, I will choose the black cocktail dress every time. And yet I own five pairs of jeans. If you're having trouble writing, it’s probably because you’re having trouble accessing sensation, or possibly because something in your soul is a little off-kilter, or maybe for some reason you don’t feel safe. All of these problems, I find, can be... Continue reading
Posted Apr 3, 2011 at The Best American Poetry
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Thanks for always commenting, Jessie. (I know at least you and my mom are reading this!) :-) And thanks again for helping to make this opportunity for me. You are *wonderfulness*.
Japan - Rebecca Lindenberg
Japan As I hope we all know by know, a couple of weeks ago an earthquake of Richter scale magnitude 8.9 shattered Japan and bumped the sudden black flood of a tsunami out of the ocean’s depths, sent it pouring over the country, an archipelago which all-told has about the same land-...
Japan - Rebecca Lindenberg
Japan As I hope we all know by know, a couple of weeks ago an earthquake of Richter scale magnitude 8.9 shattered Japan and bumped the sudden black flood of a tsunami out of the ocean’s depths, sent it pouring over the country, an archipelago which all-told has about the same land-mass as the state of California. Over 11,000 people died in this series of events, in whose aftermath a broken nuclear reactor in Fukushima is burning like a blaze in tree roots, threatening to erupt into a firestorm at any moment. Radiation is seeping into water and evaporating into rain clouds carrying trace ions as far as Boston to fall generally on the world. Babies in Tokyo can’t drink the water, apples grown miles from the power plant are totally unfit for human consumption, and now the radiation is beginning to appear as dangerous levels in the sea. Hundreds of billions of dollars of damage have been done to the nation’s infrastructure, decimating the economy of a country that was already feeling the chill of the current economic climate. With grace and stoicism, the people of Japan have pulled the dead from the rubble, the cars from the second and third stories of houses and buildings they were washed into, have bandaged the wounded and staunched the nuclear wound as best they can. It is always hard for us to imagine what effect a sudden and incomprehsible tragedy can have on a place, on the individual people who experience it. This isn’t a failure of imagination on our part, and it doesn’t make us callous or uncaring when we cannot muster a feeling of emotional identity with people who are suffering so acutely. In fact, I think even when we ourselves are suffering very acutely in the face of sudden and unbelievable tragedy, it is hard for us to feel emotional identity with our own experience. There is nothing to prepare us for the unbelievable. We have no ready response to absolute psychic devastation. To feel estranged from tragedy and suffering and loss is a way the mind has of keeping itself safe. It is why we have phrases like “unspeakable horror”. It is why we have phrases like “I am so sorry for your loss.” That last one is not a meaningless cliché, it is a way of saying “There’s just nothing I can say. But I want you to know, I care.” It is a phrase our family heard a lot of for awhile, after my partner Craig disappeared on a small island called Kuchinoerabu-shima, off the southern coast of Japan. When he was a kid, Craig’s father John was in the air force, and for awhile they lived on the American military base at Okinawa. Craig and his brother Chris were young, but Craig had memories of the place that were vivid and immediate in the way that only childhood memories ever can be – memories of a scorpion fish hovering just below the sea’s surface,... Continue reading
Posted Apr 1, 2011 at The Best American Poetry
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She would indeed, I am a great admirer of Danielle's work! Thanks for mentioning her here!
Something Understood - Rebecca Lindenberg
For today, some poems by just a tiny few of the contemporary lady poets whose work I really enjoy and by whom I feel both influenced and bettered. Interview by Kathryn Cowles, from Eleanor, Eleanor, Not Your Real Name Interviewer: I'm going to ask you a question. There is a right answer, and I'...
Maledizione is a pun. Male means "bad" and "edizione" means "editions" or "issues", so the name of the press translates as "bad editions". But the word Maledizione itself means curse or hex, an act of utterance designed to bring about a magical result, like a dark spell. I thought it was a pretty clever name for a publisher!
Difficult Things - Rebecca Lindenberg
Languages are difficult. When we first moved to Rome I couldn’t speak a word of Italian, but I took classes and learned to talk for both of us. Once weekend we were wandering around this art installation at a villa outside of town. Someone introduced us to an Italian publisher from a press ca...
Something Understood - Rebecca Lindenberg
For today, some poems by just a tiny few of the contemporary lady poets whose work I really enjoy and by whom I feel both influenced and bettered. Interview by Kathryn Cowles, from Eleanor, Eleanor, Not Your Real Name Interviewer: I'm going to ask you a question. There is a right answer, and I'm very serious, and I want you to answer seriously. Seriously, but also honestly. Here is my question: What do you do if you find a dead cat? Eleanor: Name it. Interviewer: Wrong. What do you do if you find a dead cat? Eleanor: Mouth to mouth, depending on the newness of its deceasedness, the likelihood of revivification, and whether or not it's an ugly cat. Interviewer: Wrong again. Eleanor: Was the cat on my property or my neighbor's? Eleanor: Is it summer or another season? Eleanor: Put it in the freezer to buy time. Interviewer: No, no, no. Eleanor: Light its cigarette. Eleanor: Ask it to light my cigarette. Eleanor: Brush its black, or grey, or tawny hair out of its eyes and shed a single tear. Interviewer: Stop it. Lies, all lies. Eleanor: Kill another cat so it has a friend. Eleanor: Show it photographs of my children. Eleanor: Actually, I have no children to show. Interviewer: This is not at all what I had in mind. Eleanor: Chalk a line around its silhouette for future reference. Eleanor: Of course, I'm assuming the dead cat is on the ground. Really, it could be anywhere. Eleanor: Up a tree, or nailed to the side of a building. Eleanor: Utilize catnip in creative ways until it stops playing dead, that old trick. Eleanor: Wait for Jesus to come. Interviewer: You never say what I want you to say. Eleanor: Taxidermy. Eleanor: Halo its head, lend it my wings. Eleanor: Are you listening? Eleanor: Do you really want to know? Eleanor: You can learn a lot about a person by asking. “I am in love, hence free to live” by Vera Pavlova, from If There Is Something To Desire, There Is Something To Regret (trans. Steven Seymour) I am in love, hence free to live by heart, to ad lib as I caress. A soul is light when full, heavy when vacuous. My soul is light. She is not afraid to dance the agony alone, for I was born wearing your shirt, will come from the dead with that shirt on. Camera Lucida by Claudia Keelan Though the photograph deceives The viewer is drawn to its light, Vision itself a device Where the world becomes An animated drawing. The lover, for example, is hollow in the middle, Standing beside the skeleton bones Of a 19th century hoopskirt. And though you can’t believe it, She’s you. The Door Opens by Martha Ronk, from Vertigo One painter put a thick white line where the door opens into the dark room and women make beads and light stripes the floor. Each time paint becomes light, we are asked to believe. The... Continue reading
Posted Mar 31, 2011 at The Best American Poetry
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Difficult Things - Rebecca Lindenberg
Languages are difficult. When we first moved to Rome I couldn’t speak a word of Italian, but I took classes and learned to talk for both of us. Once weekend we were wandering around this art installation at a villa outside of town. Someone introduced us to an Italian publisher from a press called Maledizione, I laughed at the name. He smiled. So you speak some Italian, he said. Not really, I said, but I’m learning. Me too, he grinned. I hear it’s a beautiful language. Wild onions grew in the yard, and wherever people stepped, the smell of crushed scallions rose into the sun-stung air. I think it was Rilke who said “everything worth doing is difficult.” Which is bollocks, by the way. There is nothing at all difficult about enjoying a good bacon sandwich, and it is absolutely worth doing. People sometimes say that Love is difficult. This, I think, is true. But I also think Love simplifies many other things – whether or not to get up in the morning, for example, who to call. Bernadette Mayer says, “Obfuscation bewilders old meaning.” When do we pass from difficulty to opacity; from opacity to meaninglessness? And what are the productions of meaninglessness? Say language is an organ of perception. Now, say “lemon”. Can’t you taste it? Remember the ancient Greek problem of the “heap”? Are two grains of sand a heap? Are six? Six hundred? Six-hundred and one? Which grain of sand transforms the accumulation into “a heap”? Surely, this matters more to the heap than to the sand. The Cantos are difficult. They’re difficult in a way that teaches me nothing except how to feel very, very small. Which, I suppose, is not really nothing. But Gertrude Stein is difficult in a way that teaches me to wonder why, after all, sugar is not a vegetable. It grows. Is flower feminine? It’s not a very manly word. But is asphodel? After we’d lived in Italy for a few months, I gave a reading at the house where Keats died. Afterwards, you and your son and I went out to dinner. On the way home from dinner, giddy with poems and wine and Sardinian food, we saw people rushing out of the internet shop where I always bought our bus tickets and phone cards. Then smoke, then a noise like the canon they fired each afternoon in the park down the street. Then all the glass cascading from the windows. I was afraid, I wanted to go home. No, you said, I think I saw who did it. We have to go see if we can help. I was mad at you, not because I didn’t want to help, but because it meant me speaking for us both again, since I alone was learning this new language. The caribinieri arrived. I talked, embarrassedly just listing words from the pages of a chapter on description: brown hair, black shirt, yellow how do you say? stripe. I said in Italian... Continue reading
Posted Mar 29, 2011 at The Best American Poetry
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Oh, thanks so much, Jim, for the exceedingly nice comment. I'm happy you found things to like!
America's Next Top Poet - Rebecca Lindenberg
America’s Next Top Poet So, I’ve been watching America’s Next Top Poet. If you haven’t seen it yet, there are things I don’t want to spoil for you, so I’ll just give you the basic premise. You can catch up on Hulu if you want – there are only two rounds left this season but each one’s gonna be...
America's Next Top Poet - Rebecca Lindenberg
America’s Next Top Poet So, I’ve been watching America’s Next Top Poet. If you haven’t seen it yet, there are things I don’t want to spoil for you, so I’ll just give you the basic premise. You can catch up on Hulu if you want – there are only two rounds left this season but each one’s gonna be a doozy. Basically, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, this is a spin-off of Tyra Banks’ wildly successful show, America’s Next Top Model. Alas, our version is a little less picturesque. First of all, a model is lucky if her career lasts until she’s 30 or 35, which is (by contrast) more or less when a poet can expect her career to begin. There are a couple of just-starting-their-MFA youngsters on the show. There are also a couple of contestants who came later to poetry. But for the most part, the baker’s dozen original contestants are emerging or recently-emergent poets in their later twenties to mid-thirties. The host and judge, aka the Tyra Banks of the poetry world, is a well-known writer whose career is by no means over, but who has begun to enter what can best be described as the retrospective phase of that career – a Collected under contract, maybe on faculty still but not really teaching much, starting to talk to an editor about what to do with all that correspondence. Somewhere, a grad student is writing a paper that features their work. I’m not telling who it is – you can guess, but I think you should just watch. I’m also not telling you who on the panel of judges is poetry’s counterpart to ANTM’s eccentric but likeable drag queen runway coach, Miss J. But I will tell you that apparently Paul Muldoon is the Nigel Barker of the poetry world, so you’re not totally in the dark. The show was originally going to film in New York City, but after the “NYC vs. MFA” debate, the producers didn’t want to be seen as weighing in too heavily one way or the other, lest they should alienate viewers. Instead, they decided that America’s Next Top Poet should be set in a small city on the Gulf Coast, ravaged by hurricanes and oil spills, in hopes that the presence of poets in that community would raise visibility and support economic prosperity. As you’ll see when you watch the show, as noble as this sentiment may be, this has mostly resulted in a series of ill-advised encounters with beleaguered locals that’s created an insurmountable town-and-gown antagonism between those attached to the show, and those attached to the town in which it currently takes place. There was one incident in a downtown dive bar involving a concealed weapon, a live chicken, a thermos of gin and tonic and a bad karaoke rendition of Erasure that has since become the stuff of reality TV legend, as well as an SNL sketch and a John Stewart punchline. Perhaps you saw the “Poets... Continue reading
Posted Mar 28, 2011 at The Best American Poetry
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Bex, not hex. Stoopid spellcheck.
Poetry Matters - Rebecca Lindenberg
Poetry Matters Thank you, Best American Poetry and Stacey Harwood, for inviting me to blog and muse here for the week. I’m really excited, and since this first post turned out rather long I want to promise that my intention is to post wildly various things all week. Tomorrow, thanks to a sugge...
I sort of think any of us are only as smart as the people we can convince to talk and argue with us. So, in this case, that would be you. Also, I totally could have 8 Miled that shite and I didn't. :). Baby cat says hi. Throw that slimy blue thing fr spoo and tell him his auntie hex loves him.
Poetry Matters - Rebecca Lindenberg
Poetry Matters Thank you, Best American Poetry and Stacey Harwood, for inviting me to blog and muse here for the week. I’m really excited, and since this first post turned out rather long I want to promise that my intention is to post wildly various things all week. Tomorrow, thanks to a sugge...
Jessie,
You are so *totally* the person, and you deserve fullest credit because I can't stop thinking about our talk - I just didn't want to presume to represent you! I didn't want to get you wrong, which is also why I didn't try to put your words and arguments in - but do it here, in the comments! Do it! I'm not trying to be the only voice here, I'm just not sure I can represent anybody else's but my own.
And say hi to Arthur. He's a charmer, math and all.
I love you. Thanks for being such a good hostess and such a good friend.
xo,
Bex
Poetry Matters - Rebecca Lindenberg
Poetry Matters Thank you, Best American Poetry and Stacey Harwood, for inviting me to blog and muse here for the week. I’m really excited, and since this first post turned out rather long I want to promise that my intention is to post wildly various things all week. Tomorrow, thanks to a sugge...
Poetry Matters - Rebecca Lindenberg
Poetry Matters Thank you, Best American Poetry and Stacey Harwood, for inviting me to blog and muse here for the week. I’m really excited, and since this first post turned out rather long I want to promise that my intention is to post wildly various things all week. Tomorrow, thanks to a suggestion from Nicky Beer, I’ll be musing about what kind of reality TV show “America’s Next Top Poet” would look like. For now, since this is a conversation that came up this weekend (and I’ve been thinking on it ever since), below are some thoughts on why poets worry about poetry’s relevance. To all who take the time, thanks so much for reading. So I was just visiting some pals in L.A. And my friend has this book on her shelf. It’s called Can Poetry Matter? I have never read this book, but it seems like a strange title to me, in no small part because its author is, ostensibly, a poet. I imagine most poets would say, Well, yeah. But people seem to want to talk about this – can poetry matter, does poetry matter, how much, and to whom? In fact, the very friend who had this book on her bookshelf wanted to talk about it, so we sat down at her dining room table one afternoon and just talked about it. She is passionate, articulate, and anxious about this question. She and I didn’t answer the question, and I do not propose to answer it here. I don’t even really propose to examine it here. Rather, I want to examine – briefly – another question: Why is it that poets feel this question has such urgency? Might we even be doing poetry itself a disservice by insisting on revisiting this question over and over again? Might we be convincing ourselves and others that our art, plagued by fears of its own irrelevance, is ultimately doomed? I mean, nobody ever asks, can math matter? Nobody asks, can physics matter? Nobody argues that the current state of cell biology is very worrisome and we should talk about it. We don’t usually ponder the relevance of astrophysics or theoretical math. Or catechism or pizza or mountain biking, for that matter. Well, you might say, we don’t ask that because obviously cell biology and math and physics are useful, because mountain bikes are useful, pizza is delicious, and even religion is useful in devising communities or ethical codes (arguably, pizza is also good for this). What use is poetry? I perceive this as a very Puritanical anxiety, though the question about the role of the poet in society is as old as Republic X, and perhaps something about Plato’s banishment of the poets from his ideal state finds its way into our current anxieties. Perhaps all poets secretly feel like interlopers in an otherwise-virtuous world of even-keeled and industrious citizens. Perhaps Plato’s repudiation, based though it is on poetry’s emotional efficacy, rhymes with some deep-seated Puritanical anxiety about poetry’s... Continue reading
Posted Mar 27, 2011 at The Best American Poetry
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