“I didn’t realize that you wrote such bloody awful poetry,” sang Morrissey in 1987. And indeed, the history of musicians with poetic aspirations is a long and patchy one. This year has already seen the publication of a couple of collections of poetry by famous musicians – we recently got hold of a copy of System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian’s book Glaring Through Oblivion, and Tom Waits has just published a collaboration with photographer Michael O’Brien called Hard Ground. Writing lyrics is a very different skill to writing effective poems, and the two disciplines rarely coincide. With this in mind, here’s a look at the best and the worst of musicians in poetry – starting with five whose work really should have stayed in their notebooks.
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Welcome to Conversation Pieces, where Flavorpill curates five articles from the past week that you should read. Some are long, others are short. Some are from major publications, others aren’t. The only thing all these articles have in common is that they’re interesting. This week, we discuss the strangeness of William Shatner, the philosophical importance of lost laundry, the current state of poetry, Canada’s willingness to let drug addicts have their fix, and more. After the jump, find something exciting to discuss this weekend in the home, at the bar, or on the street.
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While the world’s Christians have been decking their halls with boughs of holly, the rogue artists of Luzinterruptus have been at work on a much more ambitious tree-adorning project. In honor of a poetry festival in Madrid, the group stuffed 1000 envelopes with tiny lights and poems by 17 writers and hung them in the garden outside the building where the event was being held. On the festival’s final night, 100 of the illuminated envelopes were distributed to attendees to send through the mail. See more images of the poem-lit garden after the jump.
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For anyone who has ever felt drawn to the Beat Generation, yet has never fully comprehended its history, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters
provides a long-awaited context for the lives, loves, and poetry of its founders. Beginning in 1944, Kerouac and Ginsberg’s correspondence stretched nearly 20 years, spurred by a murder and sustained by a mutual love of the written word.
In Viking’s new publication, the depth and cultural significance of the two writers’ works takes on a new perspective. Their letters chronicle the authors’ complex relationship, including Ginsberg’s early admiration of the hyper-heterosexual Kerouac, as well as their numerous publication rejections, and the establishment of a literary movement that defined a generation.
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Nicholson Baker’s tenth novel, The Anthologist, finds the acclaimed experimental novelist offering a pared-down love letter to poetry itself.
Never one for straightforward narrative, Baker revels in his protagonist’s meandering alienation following the loss of his girlfriend. As the poet struggles to write the introduction to an anthology, the story touches on themes of literary craft and compulsion, as well as offering an overview of poetry heavyweights — but skirts insidery navel-gazing by anchoring itself in the narrator’s own battle with banality. Read More »
Amber Tamblyn was raised by beatniks and bohemians, which might explain why the TV and film star insists on spending her free time buried in books. From her earliest published poems and stories, it was clear that she takes the power of words seriously, crafting poetry and prose that is dramatic, emotionally raw, and always cliché-free. This week, she celebrates not only the launch of her much-anticipated new volume, Bang Ditto
, but also the anticipated theatrical release of her new film, a remake of the classic Fritz Lang thriller Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, in which she lays down the law to Michael Douglas and Jesse Metcalfe. Flavorpill’s Shana Nys Dambrot caught up with her between hats to ask all about it. Read More »
Bernard Schwartz directs the 92Y Poetry Center, and chief among his vocational duties is putting together 92Y‘s legendary lineup of literary readings and events each year. Just as diehard Harry Potter fans lined up for midnight showings of Half-Blood Prince earlier this summer, 92Y tickets are coveted and eagerly awaited among lit nerds. This year’s agenda includes poet Charles Simic, novelist A.S. Byatt, Sam Shepard, John Irving, and other assorted writerly heavy-hitters. Tickets go on sale today, August 3, and cost $10 for those age 35 and younger. After the jump, Bernard Schwartz recalls some of the center’s highlights, invokes a maritime metaphor, and tells us what we can expect this season. Read More »
Born and raised in Jamaica and living in New York City, Staceyann Chin is a spoken word poet and performance artist. From the spittin’ her words at the Nuyorican Poets Café to her solo performance Border/Clash at The Culture Project, Chin’s work as a has the ability to quickly capture an audience and take them back with her to the hot days of her childhood in poor neighborhoods of Lottery or Bethel Town or Montego Bay, the places that inspired the title of her newly published memoir The Other Side of Paradise. Read More »
We told you yesterday about Audrey Niffenegger, who just received a $5 million advance on her second novel. OK, more like we guffawed and let you watch. But what we felt then was nothing — NOTHING — compared to the nausea mixed with the STFU madness we felt when stumbled across this news thanks to our bookish pals at GalleyCat:
“Captain Chesley Sullenberger scored a $3.2 million two-book deal with HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint. He will write a memoir that climaxes with his miraculous airplane landing and a book of ‘inspirational poems.’”
Now, we mean no offense to Captain Sully. Like many Southern expats, we’ve taken that flight from LGA to CTL more times than we can count on ten hands, which means that when he managed to emergency land without killing anyone on board, he was also vicariously saving us. Or something. So we’ll grant him the heroic memoir. But the idea that this pilot is now an inspirational poet — a budding John Ashbery newly unleashed thanks to a near death experience/public act of bravery? That’s bonkers.
But what’s done is done, so on to more important topics: Do you think it will top Ryan Adams’ book?
Since we ran Fiction Fix on Monday, we’re going to mix it up today and give a little love to poetry. Laura Goode has two poems in the current issue of Fawlt, and both are lovely. We chose to feature Dear Fred because we’re suckers for epistolary literature and Capote references. There was a time when we might have made Paul Varjak a mix tape, too.
“I might have canoodled you under the shadow/ of the Megadeth monolith, might have managed a motion/ picture soundtrack from the fire escape…”
Goode recently sold a YA novel called Sister Mischief to Candlewick Press, pitched as “The L Word meets Saved! meets Eminem’s 8 Mile.” Yeah, we’ll take that over Twilight any day.
