Rabbit Light Movies Episode #11 (summer 2010): Zachary Schomburg's "Because it Comes Right at You Does Not Mean it Comes to Save You"

Zachary Schomburg from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

Rabbit Light Movies, brainchild of Joshua Marie Wilkinson, has been compiling and putting out issues of "poemfilms" since 2007. The poemfilms tend to be videos of poets reading their poems, but may also feature some other poetic footage with the poet's disembodied voice coming from off camera. Poemfilms are not only a smart publishing move in internet land, but they offer a great resource! RLM has published 115 movies to date, and if I was lucky enough to have a computer in my classroom, I could bounce back between their total visual archive and PennSound, exposing my students to lots of great contemporary poets whose books I did not force them to buy.

Well, yes, I could do that with online text-only journals, too. But I am one of those people who believes that poetry is very much about the pleasure of sound, about that slippage that happens between the text and the voiced language, and that poems need to be read. And that they need to be read well. Yeah, there are exceptions; there is conceptual poetry these days that is not really intended to be read at all, never mind read aloud. But it is unbelievable how many amazing writers are completely awful at reading their own, well crafted, completely enjoyable poems. I mean, you wrote those sounds because you could hear them bounce against one another, you crafted that syntax because you could feel the rhythm of your sentence, timed the beats because you anticipated the humorous response, broke the lines because of your sense of breath or meter or interruption or contradiction or time-dispersed meaning. Why are you reading these words as if they are haphazard, unrelated pieces of trash you are retrieving one by one from a grassy median on I-95?

Okay, rant over. What I want to say is that Zachary Schomburg is a great reader! If you haven't read his new book Scary, No Scary yet, seriously, go do it. How did you avoid it? Isn't he literally driving around the country offering rides to bums and handing out copies? But also, do it because it's a pretty good book. He is a fan of the completely underrated book apparatus known as the index. (See me avoid using the totally awkward plural form "indices" there? And I don't even have to read this blog aloud!) I think I love the index so much because it underscores, even privileges, one of the most satisfying feelings I have when reading a book of poems: that the writer, as Jack Spicer would say, has been tricked into this entangled web of language. That he's following a thread of language through this kind of chaotic cloud, and all the related and repeating motifs are folding in on one another. Or, as Robin Blaser might say (via Spicer), "that it's as if you go into a room, a dark room, the light is turned on for a minute, then it's turned off again, and then you go into a different room where a light is turned on and off." For Schomburg, the book is the navigation through this dark house, and the index is the retrospective of all the odd and glorious encounters along the way.

But really, I want to talk about the video. If you must see the text version, you are lucky that it was published in this spring's issue of Jellyfish Magazine. "Because it Comes Right at You Does Not Mean it Comes to Save You," as a title, benefits from being read aloud, since it's tone is so intriguing--proverb-like, practical yet ominous, coolly predicting disaster--and since it's fairly iambic. Also, it's a bit of advice that someone should have offered to the Lost raft crew back in season one when these guys were coming right at them.

You can tell Schomburg is a strong reader within the first 30 seconds of this video, when he thrusts his tongue into your ear with the word "boat," lest we miss the resonance with "Ocean," and then slips into a kind of light Anglo-Saxon beat in its wake with "tearing toward" and us/crust. His reading does justice to the repetitive "o" sounds throughout (boat, shoulder, cold, closer, hold, slow, go, etc. etc.) I love when writers aren't too proud to roll around in the pleasure of simple sounds and rhymes. He takes advantage of the performative edge that his tendency toward (reliance on?) uncanny narrative lends him, giving life to the dramatic impulse and dialogue of the poem. His voice always seems to be pushing forward, not picking up the words one by one, but pulling on a rope, hand over hand, that is leading him anxiously through the poem.

We all have our "poetry voice," which sounds like some dead baby zombie version of ourselves, but Schomburg's is not affected in an unbearably pompous, offensive way. Also, check out that little awkward smirk as he comes up out of the poem. That's why poemfilms are so cool!

--Megan

Aaron Burch's HOW TO TAKE YOURSELF APART HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF ANEW

I've been sifting through the various treasures I plundered (purchased with money) at AWP in the last couple of weeks, which run the spectrum from REALLY HIGH (Michael Chabon's personal phone number and measurements) to SO LOW (James Franco's personal phone number and measurements). Somewhere right up there near the tip-top, quite far indeed from Mr. Franco's very own original signed Green Goblin cape (Scribner bought that too and I'm not jealous, probably!), is Aaron Burch's new little book, HOW TO TAKE YOURSELF APART HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF ANEW. It straddles the line between genres, and also it is fun to read!

Burch runs HOBART (the CAPS, this guy!), the wonderful literary journal and blog. This collection, published by the similarly fabulous and Grade-A Nice Folks at PANK, shows Burch putting his feet into the worlds of prose poetry, flash fiction, and short shorts (the literary kind, not the garment -- Burch was not available for comment regarding hotpants by press time). That's three worlds he's in with just two feet, how does he do it! You be the judge, Justice Metaphor, we're not reviewing my book, here. HOW TO TAKE YOURSELF APART spreads itself out comfortably across three sections. Let's look at them together.

The first, "How to Take Yourself Apart: Instructions" seems to me a group of prose poems on the same titular theme. The book's subtitle, notes and instructions from/for a father, comes into play with the greatest force in this section, as each poem focuses on the idea of a conscious reconstruction of one's identity, a sort of emotional molting, an opening up on the speaker's behalf. We the readers are implicated here, too, as the poems are told in the imperative. The "How to" instructions work well for cohesion's sake -- I'm a sucker for the second-person, anyway (Lorrie Moore, hero!). Take an example of the kind of visceral imagery Burch is working with, here, from the first of the series:

"Gut yourself. Slice first from wrist to elbow fold -- slow and smooth, the sharper the blade the better. Remember the filet knife you gave your dad for Father's Day when you were ten." So, the speaker's taken that knife back from his father in order to transform himself, in a manner of speaking. He's become the father, now. I really love Burch's earnestness here -- throughout all of these poems. He's bursting with emotion (prick the skin and let it out!) at the idea of fatherhood, recognizing that he must become a new version of himself to take on the responsibility, to disassemble and reassemble himself to be better, his joints smoother, his flesh thicker, his heart bigger. It's moving stuff, even for a guy who can't handle the responsibility of paying alimony so his ex-girlfriend can take care of his old Beta fish now that she's left him (how could you take Bubbles, Christine!), let alone think of himself as one day having human children. Yikes!

The next section, "How to Fold Paper Cranes: tales" goes all narrative on you. Flash fiction is something I approach with trepidation, mostly because it's alien to me as a writer (in other words, it's not in my skill set, okay?). I like Burch's stories here, though not as strongly as I liked the sections sandwiching this one. I'm particularly pulled toward "Molting" and "There There," two of the more imagistic, less plot-driven shorts in the collection. In the first, a young girl wants to change her hands into wings, enlisting her friend to help to horrifying effect in the final lines. In the latter, Burch conveys the feeling of palpable longing for a lost love (tell me about it, am I right, internet?) by having his narrator physically ingest the woman he loves: "Or, I fold her as many times as I can, counting. I put her, folded in my mouth and swallow, pushing her down my throat with my index finger, inviting her to stay forever." I'm taking notes!

The final section of the book, "How to Make Yourself Anew: a bestiary," is my favorite by a few leaps and several bounds. More prose poems, each dedicated to a different animal, with Burch instructing the reader how to become the creature at hand. "Caladrius" picks up the earlier themes ingesting others' qualities -- here, taking someone's pain and making it your own, another selfless gesture that evinces Burch's fatherly thoughts -- and would have its readers confront those around us to take "their suffering, their sorrow and grief, heartache and sadness, take it all into your mouth, your beak, and hold tight but careful like a stork carrying a baby." The final image of the poem, touching on the Icarus myth but twisting it anew, got me all choked up (don't look, turn away!). Burch's prose, the contagion of his earnestness, so pure and guileless in its intent, hits with a quiet force. It's something to carry with you. I think his kids will be all right.

--Corey

Elisa Gabbert's The French Exit

So, the blog world has been telling me about this new press, Birds LLC, and this new book, The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert. And I’ve been thinking, I should buy this book. And then I walk into my office, and what is sitting on my desk? Review copy! This was very exciting for me. I am not usually important enough to get review copies of anything. And to be fair, I think it was actually in Phoebe’s mail. Fortunately the poetry editor over at Phoebe is my roommate and friend, Moriah Purdy. She will probably forgive me for swiping it.

Gabbert has done some pretty fun stuff as a guest over at HTMLGiant, like this amazing list of “moves” in contemporary poetry and a recent bar graph of personal clichés in reviews, blogs and books, and I’ve seen parts of her collaborative work with Kathleen Rooney before, so I was really interested to read the book. And the title is sexy. “Exit” is such a cool word.

So, I had to look up what the phrase “French exit” actually means, and it refers to when someone leaves a place stealthily, without saying goodbye. It seems to be used in the context of social events/parties. . . when someone sneaks away and is gone when you turn around to look for them. What’s satisfying about this is that so much of Gabbert’s book deals with dream-like experiences and fears. This is what dreams so often do, sneak away before you’re done with them, leaving you feeling powerless, afraid of your own impotence. There are a few moments in the book where she really nabs my most common, terrifying dream experience—feeling in some way paralyzed. In the first poem, “Commissioned,” she writes:

You find a notebook, the first several pages

filled in with your own writing, red pen.

You must know what it says.

But in the dream you can’t read it.

In dreams there’s no quality to the weather.

But an orange sky, hanging. Something it means.

Your own writing in red! Urgent and intimate but you can’t access it! I have recurring dreams where I’m being attacked up against the fence in the front yard of the home I lived in growing up, and people are very close by who could save me, but I CAN’T SCREAM. I HAVE NO VOICE. TERRIFYING.

She ends “Decoherence,” “I keep thinking about a woman I met. / One day, approaching an intersection, / she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop walking.” This reminds me of a common dream I have where I’m walking down a busy road w/o sidewalks. There’s plenty of room on the shoulder of the road for me to walk, BUT I CAN’T WALK STRAIGHT. I keep veering into traffic. I can’t stay out of the road. I have no control over my body. I know I’m going to get hit by a car. Please email with psychoanalysis.

Anyway, so much of desire (our dreams) is also fear, and Gabbert complicates desire and anxiety. This was a refreshing take on human want. And yet the language comes off as poet-casual. She makes the meta-poetic conversational (throughout the book, but the second section, in particular, is comprised completely of “Blogpoems” she wrote for a project on Chris Tonelli’s blog), isn’t afraid of puns, and has some really playful conceits (“Where do holes go / to die? Their cemetery / sure would seem a waste / of space—all those graves / of graves. . . “).

So, there are a million off-site events I want to see at AWP, and Gabbert is reading at one of them. It’s Thursday night at Mercury Café, and it’s hosted by six small presses, including Birds, LLC. There are a bunch of other readers, too, so if you’re interested, check it out on the AWP site.

-Megan

RE: Elisa Gabbert's The French Exit

First of all, my dreams consist almost exclusively of me successfully lifting heavy objects or dolphin-skiing around glistening Lake Beasley (the proper technique of dolphin-skiing: step 1, put one foot on one dolphin, step 2, repeat, step 3, ski) while people on the shore applaud and feed me grapes. This is all to say that I'm worried about my colleague Megan, and encourage her to go seek out a dream doctor who will help her with her dreams (because those exist and I learned about them in dream medical school, duh). In any case, despite the fact that my psyche is extremely healthy and has excellent muscle definition*, I really enjoyed Elisa Gabbert's poems in The French Exit, particularly those that deal with the dreamlike imagery that Megan discussed.

*the opposite of that

I particularly love the lines in "Decoherence" quoted by my esteemed co-blogger, though I like them more when taken as swinging toward realism rather than the surrealistic: "I keep thinking about a woman I met. / One day, approaching an intersection, / she was afraid she wouldn't be able to stop walking." I've had moments where that kind of self-destructive impulse seems to raise itself over the horizon in a way that seems to draw me to it, unalterably. It reminds me of that opening passage in Moby-Dick (I promise I've read other books) where Ishmael's confessing his vaguely suicidal impulses: "...it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off." Both Ishmael and the speaker in "Decoherence" want to avoid these self-destructive encounters, but both feel as if doing so is almost impossible, out of their control. It hits me as being pretty real, the kind of crystalline sentiment I'd feel uneasy revealing in my own work but would reward in someone else's texts with exclamation points in the margins.

The Blogpoem section of the book is probably my favorite, and Gabbert gives us more of those sharply captured moments of anxiety. "Lousy Day Blogpoem" goes, "Was the end of a lousy day. Drank too much / and everyone agreed my emotions were implausible." What's up with everyone doing that all the time?! My emotions always seem plausible to me, and even if most everyone seems to be in the other camp too frequently for my comfort, Gabbert gets it. Thanks for that!

--Corey