Anne made brownies tonight, and I fell asleep on the couch...after I woke up we stood in our too small kitchen, ate them out of the pan and passed a jug of milk back and forth...it was the most romantic date we've had in months.Saw Joyelle McSweeney & Johannes Göransson read up at Loyola last Thursday. In all honesty, I'm not so into Joyelle. My proof of that is this: I don't remember the poems or stories as much as I remember the voices she used...though I love well-performed readings, occasionally the performance can take over, the reading becomes bigger than the poems.
Johannes was really good. I love listening to non-native speakers use the English language. He made sure to wrap both his teeth and his lips around every word, so much so, that even without much of an accent, his exactness of pronouncement often left me feeling like I had never heard these words before. I am going to buy his books next paycheck (this Friday...don't rob me), they are: Pilot: Johann the Carousel Horse (Fairy Tale Review), A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (Apostrophe Books), and Dear Ra (Starcherone).
I also went back to Cedar Falls and caught Aaron McNally read. He also loves to perform his poetry and though he occasionally startled me, his performance of the poems is much more in line with the singer/songwriter. I really feel for McNally and his having/getting to read these poems. Though his book is really good, the poems in it are all 4-5 years old to McNally, which would personally drive me nuts, so I get his desire to "perform" the poems rather than just give a reading.
I will admit to the unfairness in my critique of McNally/McSweeney. It could be that one is a great friend and the other is someone I'm not all that familiar with. Or it could be that knowing one's poems so well allowed me to enjoy an "interpretation" of them, where the other, whose poems/fiction I was not so familiar with, left me wishing I could just hear the poems for myself.
Anyway, brownies kick ass. Eating brownies with milk also kicks ass. Eating warm brownies with Anne straight from the pan whilst chugging milk from the jug kicks the most ass of all.
You know what else kicks ass? Click on the title of this post and be amazed. Oh, and click here to be equally amazed: http://www.leftfacingbird.com/
2 comments:
I have to say Left Facing Bird is pretty fucking cool. I went to it via John Gallaher's blog and was amazed. Really cool shit.
The standard in discussing authors is to use the last name! If you know Joyelle McSweeney personally, that's different, but you'd hardly, then, be saying you were "not so into" her work on your blog, right? McSweeney is a brilliant poet in my view, one of our most underestimated intellectual writers. I am into McSweeney.
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