"but he is the peripheral sort
and not at the center of anything."


-mary ruefle, lapland

driving out the desire to question: excerpt of my thoughts on Maggie Nelson's The Art of Cruelty

Pg. 29:

“the mainstream thrust of anti-intellectualism, as it stands today, characterizes thinking itself as an elitist activity.”

I posted this on facebook. All my liberal friends liked it. 

I consider myself educated & intelligent (most of the time) & my reflex was to underline this & say “yeah!” & bemoan the influence of ignorance. But I think it might actually be more complicated than just that. Something about consumerism which drives out the desire to question… which Nelson elaborates on on the following page: “Instead it promotes something more like an idiocracy, in which low-grade pleasures (such as the capacity to buy cheap goods, pay low or no taxes, carry guns into Starbucks, and maintain the right not to help one another) displace all other forms of freedom, even those of the most transformative and profound variety.” (pg. 30)

In some ways it’s kind of funny, that sentence about the freedom to “carry guns into Starbucks”. At the same time it’s a pretty terrifying idea, that this is where we’ve come. I wouldn’t say it’s ignorance or stupidity really, I think it’s rather that a society which puts so much value on physical wealth is also a society which becomes increasingly detached from compassion & human connection. This is, I think, what Nelson is getting at. It’s also the role of art, & perhaps why we don’t value art or artists… they don’t have the same capacity for physical wealth. I’m asked all the time what I’m going to do to make money with my poetry degree… people are baffled & terrified when I tell them I don’t care. That I’m not getting it to make money off of (I’d be pretty dumb if I thought a poetry degree would make me rich). It’s interesting. It’s not enough that I want to learn & think or whatever… How will I make money doing that? Thinking is not enough, it has to come with wealth otherwise it’s not worth it. 

"Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair 
And I eat men like air."


-sylvia plath, lady lazarus
october 1962

times two

Two little snippets are in the world this month.

First, a poem of mine can be found at the fabulous Whole Beast Rag for their Idol issue.
READ: towards a theory of the virgin's physical body.

Second, my creative review/experimental annotation of Jill Magi's Threads is live on HTMLGiant.
READ: notes for a future review of threads by jill magi.

xx
n

in the grey

A friend of mine has an absolutely stunning essay up at The Paris Review Daily about loss, her father, & the city of Detroit. Please take a moment to read The Faint, Grey Areas, you won't regret it.

ode to a fly

I think the fly
on my ceiling is dead.

it hasn't moved
in three days.


-n

excerpt from my ruminations on The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf

"Unable to pinpoint her discomfort with her surroundings & their expectations, Christa T. is half assimilated into happy housewife motherhood. Though she clearly loves her children, the role of doting wife & mother is a shoe just a half size too small—she never quite settles into it. These are the subversive undertones of the book. The idea that an individual in an oppressive society could want anything other than what that society has deemed appropriate, & that this individual could pursue said alternate desires. The rebelliousness of Christa T. is found in her desire for something else, & her lifelong inquisitive search for that alternative. Though as she ages she becomes resigned to the fact that her struggle isolated her from her larger culture, she still feels that there is something not quite right. This uneasiness is her rebellion."