191. Fragments } lost & found.

After “Cry Baby Cry,” Paul McCartney sings a little fragment: “Can you take me back where I came from / Can you take me back / Can you take me back where I came from / Brother can you take me back…”—an eerie excerpt from an unfinished cut, McCartney’s plaintive wish not to be lost anymore. To go home. Another fragment, “Golden Slumbers,” McCartney sings, “Once there was a way / to get back home.” From the same period, “Get Back” (“to where you once belonged”) and “Two of Us” (“…you and me Sunday driving / not arriving/ on our way back home / we’re on our way home…”). Is going back home simply a poignant idea that appealed to McCartney aesthetically, or something to do with personal crisis?

The flip-side of his anxious longing for home appears in the fragments of this era too. From the (rather complete) fragment “You Never Give Me Your Money” that begins the Abbey Road b-side suite: “But oh that magic feeling / Nowhere to go.” And another fragment, “The Lovely Linda,” that begins McCartney’s solo break.

190. Napkins at } A Velvet Giant.

What do you do with this: “So excited and honored to have three poems alongside such incredible company in the latest issue of @avelvetgiant!❤️❤️❤️” [Spencer Williams]. It must make sense to somebody. I like Spencer Williams' poem “Masturbation”—in it, the narrator asks Adam to see if the dove that smacked into “the window” died. It did. In death it wears a crown of ants. The best poems in A Velvet Giant no. 3 are Karolina Zapal’s. But let’s be transparent: my name is Adam and my last name is Polish so naturally I’m biased. Kevin Latimer’s author’s photo deserves careful consideration. His poem “Back In the Backyard Again” led me to think about Stephon Clark, murdered in his grandmother’s backyard by the police: “black boy prepared for war / all his life.”

My contribution to A Velvet Giant no. 3 is four Napkin Poems. When I look at the issue on my laptop, I can’t view whole napkins—I wonder if on a desktop the experience is better? I do, however, like the close-up presentation, because the Napkin Poems are very much about texture. The actual napkins (as opposed to the scans) are now radically curled.

189. Whistling tunes } he will soon unfold.

My youngest likes Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” She digs the Dalek-intoned “I AM IRON MAN” and the coda—signaled by Bill Ward’s snare at about minute 4:40.

stevieray56 helpfully explains “Iron Man” (comment on “Black Sabbath ‘Iron Man’.” You Tube, posted 20 Oct. 2014):

…the story of a man who time travels into the future and sees the apocalypse. In the process of returning to the present, he is turned into steel by a magnetic field. He is rendered mute, unable verbally to warn people of his time in the future and of the impending destruction. His attempts to communicate are ignored and mocked. This causes Iron Man to become angry, and drives his revenge on mankind, causing the destruction seen in his vision. Now that is Heavy Metal!

stevieray56 makes sense where there is no sense: Iron Man may “Have traveled time / for the future of mankind” but he “Kills the people he once saved”—at what point did he save the world? If he saved the world, he prevented the apocalypse, then kills the people he saved but who mocked him. And stevieray56 can’t decide if Iron Man traveled in time physically or mentally. I’d argue physically, through a “magnetic field” that turns the Iron Man into steel. (If you pass an iron man through a magnetic field he would remain iron but become magnetic. To become steel, he’d need to be melted and alloyed with carbon. Whatever.)

Don’t worry, stevieray56! The lyrics don’t make sense.

(“Vengeance from the grave”—what grave? There’s no grave!)

It doesn’t matter if the lyrics are dopey on the page; what matters is the way they’re sung and generally what they describe.

I’m taken with the dumb steel man “the people” wonder about. “Has he thoughts within his head?” the people ask. A dormant god. Woken by…? “He just stares at the world” then “Now the time is here.” I’m reminded of Talos, the bronze man who defends Minos’ Crete from invasion and is ultimately defeated by Medea as she travels with Jason and the Argonauts. Is Talos a leftover from the Bronze Age—simply an example of what men were? A metal man who traveled through time the way we all travel through time?

My youngest refuses to listen to any other song by Black Sabbath.

In the wake of the 2016 election, a colleague asked what music I found myself listening to; Black Sabbath and Philip Glass. Mostly Master of Reality, the song “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” and the Elektra Nonsuch Music with Changing Parts. That semester I taught John Darnielle’s Master of Reality:

…and I was living my teenage dream: up to my elbows in sticky bloody ground beef, which I was feeding methodically to a loud and potentially very dangerous machine. I was alone, and in control, and nobody was going to bother me, and I sang along as loud as I could with my Black Sabbath tape.

On the highway in between Connecticut and Rhode Island I listened as two FM signals crossed. Peter Gabriel’s “Spiel Ohne Grenzen” blended with Queen’s “We Will Rock You”: “Shouting in the street, gonna take on the world some day”; Gabriel’s cheerful whistle; static.

188. Notes made yesterday } & today.

[ image: scan of first poem in Poetry, November 2018 issue (Lucia Perillo, "Say This") with cross-outs ]

Brookline Booksmith 7:04pm packed house. Maybe two people of color in audience for Teju Cole / Elisa Gabbert conversation.

Elisa reads “Variations on Crying.”

Gone With the Wind made Elisa weep; controversy re. Vanessa Place retweeting Gone With the Wind line x line

“When I was 26, I got 13 stitches in my chin after fainting toward a French door and breaking a pane of glass with my face.” Twenty-six? More than a decade ago? I shot footage of those French doors on my Motorola RAZR.

T. Cole offers “a special shout out to the nonwhite people in the audience.” He claims he’s the reason they’re at the reading; E. Gabbert says, “I brought you.”

T. Cole reads his anthology of cliché observations.

Elisa reads “one more”—“We’ve never owned property, and our families aren’t in a position to contribute to a down payment.”

Mentions her friend Katie, crushed by a gallery wall, in both essays. The power of this anecdote. Richard Serra.

T. Cole talks. Doesn't lead a discussion or engender conversation. Elisa listens. T. Cole asks of the audience if anyone is happier than they were ten years ago. Four women respond. He categorizes each response. He is pleased women commented because, he says, it’s usually men who comment. He interrupts Elisa. He decides to read another essay from his book during q & a. He tells anecdote about losing keys and worrying that he’ll end up in the news like Henry Louise Gates. He asks, “How is everybody feeling? Uncomfortable?” Yes—when will you give Elisa an opportunity to speak uninterrupted?

She answers a question about the lack of an index in The Word Pretty. Is frank about it—there was a rush to get the book done. She's asked about craft. Her answers are concise and honest.

Outside Booksmith, police cruiser, lights flashing. Blue.

187. Three from } the Elizabeth notebook.

[ 11. 20. 15. ]

[ 11. 20. 18. ]

[ 01. 22. 18. ]

186. Can an audience } be wrong?

Saturday evening [6:30pm – 9, Dec. 1^st] I read with [ — ] as part of the Arcade Asylum Author Series. I don’t know much about my co-readers. Larissa Glasser sings with Hekseri (a black metal outfit) (I’m listening to Microstoria Init Ding); Barry Lee Dejasu writes about horror movie soundtracks and reviews books, or did (I can’t tell); and Julie C. Day’s first collection, just out, is Uncommon Miracles (from PS). And Clint Smith.

Not Clint Smith the poet whose “the drone” was published in the October issue of Poetry. I don’t like Smith’s poem “the drone.” Here’s the passage that first put me off: “the drone could have been something other than a killing machine || the drone could have been a house || the drone could have been a spoon || the drone could have been a swing” I get it. Replace “drone” with “cannonball.” Or reconsider what drone could be as a drone. Or don’t list three things that are meant to be—what? Good? Is a house good?

Smith’s “the drone” never grows up. It’s just drone = man-made bad that kills. It fails to consider drone as machine than can be used for a variety of purposes. Consider the drone footage at Standing Rock:

But some of the clearest and most impactful footage offered a literally new perspective. Myron Dewey, a journalist and founder of the indigenous media platform Digital Smoke Signals, was capturing the scene from above with his drone and sharing it on Facebook Live. The footage, which clearly showed torrents of water falling down on protesters, now has over a million views on Facebook and was used to challenge statements by law enforcement suggesting the water cannons were primarily used to put out fires. [from Witness Media Lab]

I digress. The Clint Smith I’m reading with on Dec. 1^st writes horror stories. His second collection The Skeleton Melodies is due soon. He reached out to me after I praised his story “Fiending Apophenia.”

Why not come hear us read? It’s free and there’s a bar/coffee joint nearby. I’ll be there for the whole event. Readers’ books will be there too. The series is put together by Farah Rose for the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences bookshop.

Yes, by the way.

[ image from Tales from the Darkside episode "Seasons of Belief" (1986) ]