Resting With Calliope

Calliope Nerve's latest post contained news about its editor. I only had one correspondence with Matthew, or Nobius Black. When I submitted my poem on December last year, his answer was quick, that he'd like to publish my piece. I was about to send another poem last month, when I saw the post below, on his journal, written by Lynn Alexander. My condolences. And wherever he is now, I'm sure he's doing some collaborative work with Calliope (Homer's muse), to help inject substance on the nerves of those who can't help find music and poetry anywhere.

Pyrta Journal

Thanks to Janice Pariat at Pyrta for including my poem:

Their Mutual Silence

London Riots 2011 & Los Angeles Riots 1992

The media has been underlining the similarities between the London Riots 2011 and Los Angeles Riots 1992. Both are brutal and bloody. But perhaps one specific difference that can be highlighted between the two riots is what happened to the particular individual that sparked them. In the case of London, Mark Duggan died, while in Los Angeles Rodney King survived and still lives to tell his story. Thus, I think the anger in London's case is more intense.

I have some vivid memories of the Los Angeles Riots, because the fires slowly moved to my old neighborhood around Hollywood, transformed some stores to ashes, and almost did the same act to my local library's temporary building. But most of the time, I stayed home, and watched the news with family.

One image I still remember from the L.A. riots was a person wearing a ski-mask, and holding a gun. I didn't see him in-person, of course, but on TV news. He was standing on a parking lot of a popular electronic store, pointing his weapon to different directions, unable to recognize where or who his real and immediate enemy was around him. He was wearing the body language of someone in a war-zone.

1992's place in the memory of Los Angeles is, no doubt, cataloged under nightmare, horror, racial unrest, social inequality, catastrophe, class divide, and other categories. It could happen again.

~

To display the recent London Riots images above, image-location links from
Boston Globe's The Big Picture section are used.

~

Into the Weekend

Expectations unfold when our gestures flow into words we prefer not to say, then stretch into busy freeways that hush on the windshield I'm looking through. As always, the day is our conversations, hanging on to familiar phrases. Tonight, we surrender again to a glossy menu with carefully written descriptions. I know you'll pick a dish that'll eat a subject we won't talk about, and I'll pick something to drink that'll make us feel as thirsty as a weekend that might be worth waiting for.

Rest Stop

On July last year, I attended a family event near Bakersfield. This was taken from the last rest stop, on my way back to Los Angeles. I remember it was hot, and the temperatures this summer cloned last year's, maybe even hotter. But surprisingly, the stop wasn't crowded with the usual vehicles summer travelers use around these parts, such as vans, campers, or trailers. That's why it felt quiet, but not restful because of the heat, the kind that emphasized California's dry climate.

A Blue Duet

Thanks to Otoliths for including my work: A Blue Duet.

This is the announcement from editor Mark Young:

Issue twenty-two of Otoliths has just gone live.

As always, it presents the broad church of creativity the journal is renowned for, with new work from John Martone, Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney, Richard Kostelanetz, Philip Byron Oakes, Karen Neuberg, dan raphael, Márton Koppány, Martin Burke, Stephen Nelson, John M. Bennett, Morgan Harlow, Sheila E. Murphy, Anny Ballardini, Raymond Farr, Ray Scanlon, Marco Giovenale, Ryan Scott, Tom Beckett (interviewing Kirsten Kaschock), Kirsten Kaschock, Erica Eller, Jim Meirose, Howie Good, Enola Mirao, Jean Vengua (on Dion Farquhar’s Feet First), Walter Ruhlmann, Jill Jones, David James Miller, Michael Caylo-Baradi, Catherine Vidler, Jillian Mukavetz, Zachary Scott Hamilton, Jill Chan, Glenn R. Frantz, Felino Soriano, Iain Britton, Mark Cobley, bruno neiva, Brenda Mann Hammack, Toby Fitch, Tony Rickaby, Grzegorz Wróblewski, Lisa Samuels, Kevin Opstedal, Gustave Morin, Rich Murphy, Laura Wetherington, Jeff Harrison, J. D. Nelson, Charles Freeland, Rosaire Appel, Ann Vickery, Isaac Linder, Bobbi Lurie, Sam Langer, Rose Hunter, Spencer Selby, Jason Lester, Michael Brandonisio, Bob Heman, Keith Higginbotham, Connor Stratman, & Marcia Arrieta.

Enjoy.

Ceasefires

Thanks to Blue Fifth Review for including my poem: Ceasefires.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Joan Rivers takes us on a ride, in this documentary directed by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg.  Here, Rivers attempts to frame her life in show-business, or perhaps, more so, as show-business herself.

Rivers understands show-business, particularly because of brutalities the ambitious must swallow and endure. And she endured, because she's driven. Workaholism has been her vehicle to success, fame, respect, wealth, and, yes, disrespect as well. For her, work is air, perhaps the only way the lungs of her ambitions can inhale.

I assume she has an over-active imagination, full of ideas, brilliant, bizarre, stupid, or otherwise. And like many successful comedians, who have been through numerous hurdles in show-business, she is smart and calculating. At seventy-five*, it's amazing how energetic this woman is, performing to this and that city, traveling, hungry for something that's not merely money or fame, or even a sense of power, but some sort of fundamental continuity and rhythm in her life, to not fade out of entertaining people.

I'm tempted to say her workaholism is an expression of madness, of trying to control some beast inside her, one that cannot be domesticated, or must be liberated out of its cage through stage performance. And perhaps this is what glamour in show-business is, the liberation of what refuses to be domesticated, into a savage space, the space of spectacle, which, in unequal parts, is: Entertainment, Enlightenment, Farce, and, even Pollution, or simply Air.
[ * Her age when the film was made. ]

Wings

Blown

When breezes blow those leaves, that's my gesture I'm taking you with me. Some are green, others brown, or colors that fall between seasons. They fly, rise, give in to gravity, then trashed, after someone's silence gathers them, where echoes of memories flicker like late-afternoon sun-rays filtered through trees.

Breathing Paradise Outside Eden

Sunsets punctuate us into infinity, into a curve of horizons each time you look at me over your shoulder, commas that deform into teardrops, and fall like echoes. The apparitions from your touch crowd like waves on shore dissolving in my pores. I'm touching you now, fresh as memory. I feel symmetry, this geometry of moonlight that overwhelms our whispers, and mutes them into elements we inhale.

Kisses

We are an accumulation of kisses, of goodbyes that flap wings in the wind, to join flight of birds. We are an addiction of words that tell us we'll see each other again. I think these moments are copies of many movie scenes. Let's not say goodbye next time, but instead just close our eyes, and long for each other there, in the dark, in a cinema that never ends, without departures.

White House Poetry Reading

Splendor In The Grass

Natalie Wood's Deanie Loomis in Splendor In The Grass is performance that's way up there. You can feel her transformations, from an innocent girl, to the part when she feels her love for Bud is robbed by one of her classmates, to her declining mental state, her abyss, then back up, to where she has moved on, as though she, indeed, has found "strength in what remains behind" - to quote William Wordsworth (1770–1850) from "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". A classroom scene talks about a part of that poem, from which the film borrows a phrase:

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;

On the other hand, I'm not quite sure about Warren Beatty's Bud, although he got his share of accolade for his work in this film. And thumbs up, indeed, to Zohra Lampert's Angelina - who only appeared in a few scenes - but played her part well as the woman Bud would eventually marry. There's nice touch in the last part when Angelina is aware about her own clothing, after she meets Deanie who is dressed quite elegantly for Bud but doesn't know that he already has a baby, and another one in the oven. Deanie, too, is aware of her own clothing after meeting Bud's wife. Somehow Deanie realizes she has dressed up for some occasion that doesn't quite belong to what Bud has become, now husband and farmer, what he always wanted to be, ever since, even when his father told him he has to go to Yale. It's as though Deanie realizes that "nothing can bring back the hour [o]f splendour in the grass" with Bud, their years together. It's one of the most painful moments in the film.

Sometimes I wonder if James Dean would've been better for the part of Bud, even though he passed away six years before, in 1955. Marlon Brando would've been good, too, or Monty Clift, but perhaps not Paul Newman. If Beatty and his fans read this, I'm sure they'll get mad. Now this film was Beatty's first as leading man, and already won him a Golden Globe Award, for Most Promising Newcomer, that is; and so, I guess this suggests my assessment of him in this film is incorrect. However, while watching this Eliza Kazan film, I must've been thinking of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, in which Beatty's matinee idol appeal fits perfectly well as a Tennessee Williams protagonist.

The Crying Game

It's still fresh, the movie The Crying Game, which came out almost twenty-years ago, in 1992; but definitely not for everyone. In it are two love stories intertwined, tightly choreographed, to heighten the plot to an explosive rage. While telling these stories, the film offers an image of the Irish Republican Army, especially its commitment to a cause. And the hurdle to that cause -in the film, that is- is a British subject, Dil, played by Jaye Davidson with hypnotic calculation. She seems to be what we think she is, until the film reveals something about her. From that point on, we realize its writer and director - Neil Jordan - is twisting the story to another dimension, through illusions nurtured in the notion that gender is performance. Jordan is careful that, when Fergus - played by Stephen Rea - enters The Metro bar to look for Dil, we don't immediately recognize it's not quite a bar for everyone. We somehow see the bar through Fergus' eyes, almost oblivious to the kind of crowd he is in. I think it's a satisfying trick and illusion, so that we, too, will be surprised what Dil is trying to hide. And that revelation seems to carry the weight of conversations about this film, overshadowing other heavy elements that attempts to tackle issues of race and nationality.

Jessica Hagedorn, Toxicology

Toxicology - Jessica Hagedorn's latest novel - is vintage Jessica Hagedorn. Her prose pulls you in, and as you arrive in the world of that prose, Hagedorn leaves you alone to piece the narrative together. It can be daunting task for readers new to her style, especially in her first novel Dogeaters, which is a feast of personalities and multiple plots that tries to imagine the Philippines. And Hagedorn's novels after that novel have, more or less, tried to paint an image and idea of that place, through perspectives inspired by distance, in exilic life. Still, the Philippines is alive in Hagedorn's recent novel, but as a sort of ghost, apparition that hovers above and through the life of artists in New York City, a carnival of grit, sarcasm, desire, sex, pop-culture, and drugs. Once again, it's a feast, but this time a feast of toxic elements, or even a study of toxic personalities trying to coexist the best way they can.

Cannes Lars von Trier still win? Lars Von Trier has been Cannes-ed.

At the 64th Cannes Film Festival, the controversial nazi comments Lars Von Trier had said during a press conference for his competition-entry - Melancholia - was the height of that conference session; but it may also be the height of the festival itself, in terms of the attention it received this year. Von Trier's comments were made just a few days away from the festival's closing ceremonies. Thierry Fremaux, the festival's General Delegate, gave a brief press announcement to distance the festival from Von Trier's comments, even though the director meant to be funny. Thus,on 19 May 2011, festival officials declared Von Trier persona non grata.

Now before Von Trier made those comments, the conference was sailing somewhat smoothly. In some ways, the exchange of questions and answers was lively, peppered with jokes by Von Trier himself. However, there were moments his jokes verged on crossing certain lines, especially those directed to his female cast-members: Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Around the middle of the conference, his jokes about doing a porn-film with these cast-members in his next film-project received shaky laughter. Funny, somewhat funny, mocking, sarcastic, insulting, and, in some ways, sincere. Perhaps this is Danish humor?

Towards the end of the conference, the marriage of those descriptors above gained a less appealing momentum, when Kate Muir from The Times of London asked:

"Can you talk a bit about your German roots, and the gothic aspect of this film? And also, you mentioned in a Danish film magazine also about your interest in the nazi aesthetic, and you talked about that German roots at the same time. Can you tell us a bit/more about that?"

A great question, I think. Muir's question was more provocative than the question hurled at this year's competition-jury president, Robert De Niro: "Did you f— my wife?" Had that question been directed to Von Trier, his press conference, no doubt, would've ended with a less depressing note. And so, to answer Muir's question, Von Trier gave a long answer:

"The only thing I can tell is that I thought I was a Jew for a long time, and was very happy being a Jew. Then later on came Susanne Bier and suddenly I wasn't very happy about being a Jew. No, that was a joke. Sorry. It turned out that I was not a Jew, and even if I'd been a Jew, I would be a kind of a second rate Jew because there are, kind of, a hierarchy in the Jewish population. But anyway, no, I really wanted to be a Jew. And then I found out that I was really a Nazi. Because my family was German, Hartman, which also gave me some pleasure. So I'm kind of a, what can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely! I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end. But there will come a point at the end of this. No, I'm just saying that I think I understand the man. He's not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him and I sympathise with him a little bit. No, but come on! I am not for the Second World War! And I'm not against Jews - Susanne Bier? No, not even Susanne Bier, that was also a joke! I'm of course, very much for Jews, no, not too much because Israel is a pain in the ass. But, still, how can I get out of this sentence? No, I just want to say about the art of the, I'm very much for Speer, Speer I liked, Albert Speer I liked. He was also maybe one of God's best children, but he had some talent that was kind of possible for him to use during - OK, I'm a Nazi!"

Press Conference for Melancholia, Cannes, 2011;from Wikipedia,

But while Von Trier was banned in the festival, his film was not taken out of competition. In fact, it won in the Best Actress category: Kirsten Dunst. In her acceptance speech, after receiving her Prize from Edgar Ramirez, Dunst said:

"What a week! My thanks to the Jury, this is a real honour. I'm grateful to the Festival for keeping the film in Competition. And I'm grateful to Lars Von Trier for letting me play the role with such freedom."

Cannes Pedro Almodovar win this time?

It's a very short trailer, but says a lot about the story. And some calculated shots in this clip, I think. For example, Almodovar puts Banderas in front of a big painting, of a naked woman, and the woman Banderas is looking at stands on a red circle, a target. On the other hand, Almodovar directing Antonio Banderas in this film must feel like a reunion of their earlier films. Banderas looks much older now, of course. But he does have that look from his earlier films with Almodovar, when he tries to play someone inebriated with anger. It's hard to tell if Almodovar will win this time. Terrence Malick is in the festival's 64th year, including other notable names.

Heading South (Vers le sud)
Directed by Laurent Cantet, 2005;
Haut et Court/Sévile/France 3/Studio Canal;
108 minutes, French and English
Video-Clip Source: SodaPictures



Coming For Colonialism
Michael Caylo-Baradi

Read Full-Text at Latin American Review of Books

LAURENT CANTET’S Heading South (Vers le Sud) is a film about sex tourism, with the sex tourists in this case citizens from the north, specifically Canada and the US. The setting is Haiti under Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in the late 1970s.

The sex-tourists are not our usual suspects but white women, over 40 and the objects of their desire are young men from Port-au-Prince.

At the heart of the story is a love-triangle between two of the women tourists and a young man; the “bitch[es] in heat” are Ellen, played by Charlotte Rampling, and Brenda, played by Karen Young. The young man these women are crazy about is played by non-professional actor, Mènothy Cesar as Legba.

To cushion the cat-fights between Ellen and Brenda, Cantet uses the French-Canadian Sue, played by Louise Portal, as occasional referee. Sue seems to know when to move out of the way, when the cat-claws are out, and since Sue has her own young man, Neptune, she safely admires Legba from a distance.

Ellen and Brenda’s rivalry starts to evolve upon the latter’s arrival from Altanta, Georgia, in Petit Anse Resort. At 48, Karen looks slim, somewhat attractive for her age, and ready for a good time; but she had met Legba three years before, when he was 15. It was then that Legba gave Brenda her first orgasm, at the age of 45. Legba, therefore, defines a milestone in Karen’s life as a woman - he is Brenda’s orgasm. Legba bookmarks Brenda’s life, before and after her first orgasm experience.

But now Legba is 18 and the most desired escort among the women tourists. Outspoken and aggressive, Ellen does not hesitate to let Brenda know Legba’s status in the resort: that he is meant to be shared. But the memory of Brenda’s first sexual encounter with Legba heightens her advances towards him. When Ellen realises that Legba responds to these advances, Ellen notices, and foresees complications, because she understands her desire for Legba has found a rival in Brenda.

The competing desire for Legba among these two women is our window into the strength of their characters. Brutal, this clash propels the story; it is the Caribbean “hurricane” or calamity that spins Legba’s fate out of control, even though he projects calm demeanor to save his masculinity from being castrated by hysteria.

Besides being a resort escort, Legba has another life outside the hotel complex. The film reveals that he has relations with other women in Port-au-Prince, especially those from rich families. But his life outside clashes with his life inside the resort. On the day Legba takes Brenda around Port-au-Prince, a four-door Mercedes Benz tries to run him over and then its driver chases him with a gun. Later, when the resort and its patrons have gone to sleep, a Benz dumps two naked, dead bodies in its grounds: one of which is Legba’s. Ellen and Brenda are shocked and confused, that they are not in paradise after all.

After talking to local police about apprehending Legba’s assassins, Ellen talks to the resort’s manager, Albert. A son of resistance fighters, Albert has inherited his parents’ brutal and unapologetic views of white people and when he listens to Ellen, he merely listens as though anything he would say to comfort her is useless because words are inadequate to explain the Haiti that exists beyond the borders of the resort.

Soon, Albert takes Ellen to the airport for her flight back to North America, and home, and she can, at least, anticipate consequences when things happen. But for Karen, the resort is only the first leg of her journey into the Caribbean; the names of the places she wants to visit fascinate her: Cuba, Barbados, Martinique, Trinidad, Bahamas. She seems ready to put Legba behind, although he, no doubt, serves as a reference point for what she expects in Caribbean men, in her sex tours.

Layers of Poverty

Cantet’s realism, in this film, is convincing and can be nauseating; it feasts on the melodramas, pornographies, and dynamics of sex tourism to a point where the facade of tourism disappears and what we see is unapologetic desperation to satisfy basic human needs: food, sex, money, and love. Desire binds these elements together as Haiti: Haiti as state of distress, need, and eroticism. Here, the narrative interrogations of desire take place in familiar terrains that often highlight concerns in post-colonial and neo-colonial social-relations: poverty, labour, and race.

Read Full-Text at Latin American Review of Books

Adoring Adorno & Aesthetic Theory

Indeed, displacing the senses from its habitual consumption of things that exalts consumerism is refreshing. It aspires toward states of alterity that can be viewed as necessary alienation from consumerist habits, a sort of negative space that nourishes aesthetics not administered and controlled by exploitative hierarchies in structures of culture. And in many ways, it is tempting to view that space as an escape 'back' to nature, perhaps nostalgia for something simpler. However, one's entrance into that space is already burdened with the idea of departure from certain states and conditions: consumerism, culture, ideology. Thus, it's convincing to argue that this space, which is dialectic, is not 'also' or 'new' nature, but nature itself, located in moments of displacement.

Two Poems

Thanks to Asia Writes for including my work.

Gromyko Semper

Now Live: Otoliths 21

Thanks to Mark Young for including my work:  

EYES CUBE

Mark Young's announcement:

"The expense of getting a new designer outfit for the Royal Nuptials means there's no money left in the budget to appropriately acknowledge the fact that Otoliths is celebrating its fifth birthday, so we'll just have to let the issue speak for itself, & it does, as elegantly as ever.

"Once again it's a wide-ranging compendium, containing text & visual work from Kirsten Kaschock, Tom Beckett, Marilyn R. Rosenberg, J. D. Mitchell-Lumsden, Martin Edmond, Ed Baker, Eileen R. Tabios, Nava Fader, Michael Caylo-Baradi, Curt Eriksen, Eeva Karhunen, Howie Good, Jennifer L. Tomaloff, Andrea Jane Kato, John M. Bennett, Sheila E. Murphy & John M. Bennett, Sheila E. Murphy, Patrick Williamson, Michele Leggott, Beni Ransom, Philip Byron Oakes, Jim Meirose, Cilla McQueen, Thomas Fink, Theodoros Chiotis, Christopher Mulrooney, Keith Higginbotham & Matt Margo, Raymond Farr, Cherie Hunter Day, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, J. D. Nelson, NF Huth, Patrick Cahill, Mark DuCharme, Pam Brown, SJ Fowler, Tony Brinkley, Cecelia Chapman, David Mitchell, Felino Soriano, Jamie Bradley, Peter LaBerge, Charles Freeland, Corey Wakeling, Jeff Harrison, Jen Besemer, dan raphael, Yoko Danno, Joshua Comyn, Emma Smith, Cassandra Atherton, Michael Rothenberg, Bill Drennan, sean burn, Kit Schluter, Caleb Puckett, Rosaire Appel, Robert Gauldie, Zarah McGunnigle, Bella Li, Hala Hoagland, Marcia Arrieta, Reijo Valta, Gregory Kan, Lawrence Bernabe, Housten Donham, Sam Langer, Bob Heman, & Gustave Morin.

The issue is dedicated to Robert "Bob" Gauldie, painter, poet, scientist, & regular contributor, who died suddenly, in Utrecht, on April 5."

Van Nuys, California

Things tend to blur after sunset. Details tend to fuse, as though minimized through fissures in the eyes. Edges have a different sharpness, that which reduce forebodings in hallucinations, make them appealing, even seductive. The sound of cars recedes like slurs, in the language of propositions that echoes in rear-view mirrors.

Afternoon Sunset

This was taken on Sunset Boulevard, around Echo Park. I was on my way to get some groceries. The usual traffic took a weekend off, and the afternoon was able to relax. If today had been a century ago, I would've been in a rural area, walking on small country road, whistling, feeling the breezes, and perhaps totally unaware that I had risen above ground for a quarter of an inch, because of cow or horse dung pasted under my shoes. I would've felt elevated because of the relaxing air, while literally or physically elevated by elements on ground. Nature can be powerful that way, in its usual dualistic mode. And what a coincidence to think about elevations; today celebrates a 'rising from the dead', in the Christian calendar.