Tuesday, March 24, 2009

I'm not good at growing hair, but I could use a haircut now. I don't remember my last haircut, but I do remember talking to the barber about counterfeit money. I don't worry too much about counterfeit money, and I don't like worrying about my hair, which is why I like getting haircuts from this barber...I leave with less worry than when I go in.

Have you read CA Conrad's new book? I couldn't afford it when I bought it, but I also figured I couldn't afford to not buy it, so my consumer instinct won out. Conrad would be one of the writers involved with the violence I mentioned yesterday, but failed to mention yesterday, though his focus seems to be much more on sexual violence and language that perpetuates it and allows it. Yet, the violence in "The Book of Frank," is eerily juvenile and has a way of making you feel sympathetic towards Frank...you know, in his heart, that Frank is not scheming, manipulative or inherently violent, he just doesn't know any better. Thus you are left with sense that punishment is not the proper course, rather you want to sit him down. Talk. Tell him "no." This idea is one that Conrad occasionally makes reference to;

Frank's diary
returned
by mail
when he'd
lost it on
a bus

"Dear Boy come to Jesus"
penciled in the margin
for 108 pages

There is a "normal" world outside these poems, but much like "Bonnie and Clyde," you grow hesitant to be a part of it, instead leaning much more towards Frank's world and the innocence, however crooked, from which it is seen.

afterthought...I also like how Conrad basically spelled cock on the cover (CAC)

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