A 2nd Ryan Adams post in less than a month seems a bit much, but his new book came out yesterday, & since I was @ Nicolas anyway, I grabbed it solely because I thought it might be bloggable. I was right. It's actually not bad, or rather
some of the poems are really good... others are shit. Interesting post-modern ideas back to back w/ whiny teen-angst. from what I've read so far, I'd say a good 2/3 of the poems are worthwhile. I don't know that they'll ever find their way into my classroom, but w/ a little more editing he could really have something. It's no
Tarantula (the Dylan influence is pretty obvious throughout), but it's not
Jewel either.
Here's a little excerpt from the poem "Cinderella" ll 26-46:
I am too weak for you
between my legs where the balls are
my battleships are pirated
my seas triggered with anger
and the wrath
of the day of the dogs
so cast your wicked eyes from mine
and be a child
but not to me
because I am further now than gone
and your feet give you away
with your dark heart path
and those shoes
so wrong
you are weaker than those drinks
with those girlyboys
fruit, seafoam, glass, and umbrella
chase it to the bottom of the pile
it's trash
and I am glorious in my natural bottomless rage
and far too clean
10 comments:
Hmmm... can't say I'm too impressed. And as much as I wanted to love tarantula, I didn't like it much at all. And I love Dylan.
But still, I'm interested. I might investigate.
So you and I have very similar tastes in music, and I've noticed you mention Ryan Adams many times. I haven't heard much of his music at all. If I were to get one album, which one should I start with?
are you familiar with Albert Goldbarth? Particularly "Heaven and Earth, a Cosmology"? Just incredible poetry. Pretty intellectually heavy, which is nice to struggle with at times.
Buy the book, blog it, and if you don't feel it was worth the money, I'll send you a reimbursement check.... That's how great I feel this book is.
I'm not sure what's in this for me, but....
Joel, is tiny blue marble your blog?
I really like about half the poems in IB. I like the ones in the chapbook, Sad American Mythology, even better. I don't think he's a great poet but a lot of them grabbed me, and felt alive on the page and that's a lot more than quite a bit of the Literary Canon or New Yorker type stuff that I am usually asked to read. I love his singing but I would have bought this, from flipping through it and reading bits, even if I didn't know who he was.
tiny's is my blog, although i say that with the caveat that it is still much under formation. The plan is that I'll be blogging about whatever + Korea, and two of my friends will be blogging with me as well. However, one friend's computer just got fried and the other doesn't own a computer at the moment. So, yeah.
http://tinybluemarble.blogspot.com/
Soren's is
http://curioussoren.blogspot.com/
opps. Joel wrote that, apparently logged in to blogger as Soren. It's confusing.
I'm hyjacking your comments.
So, do you know Albert Goldbarth? I'm curious seeing that your a lit professor and all.
I don't think so, but I'll check him out this week.
Here's a link to a bunch of his poems. I read a couple this morning. They're realy cool. I'll post most about him soon.
http://www.geocities.com/storeez1/AlbertGoldbarth.html
Cool. He's the only poet whom I've tried to read everything that he's written (I gave up a several years ago).
Heaven and Earth (which brought him his first National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry), clearly for me was the most superior. Though each book had a handful of poems that blew me away. For me, some of his lesser books can be a struggle at times (b/c each poem can be laborsome in itself). But when I find a poem that speaks to me, wow.
Thanks for the link - audio interviews... looks very interesting.
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