Archive - October, 2011

Filmmaker Bill Morrison: Exhuming the Forgotten

October 30, 2011 in Images, Sounds with 1 Comment

A still from "Decasia" (Image courtesy Bill Morrison)

One of my favorite filmmakers working today is Bill Morrison. There aren’t many directors whose work compels me to see every film they make, but Morrison is one of those rare artists I’ve enjoyed following closely through the years. His films are always memorable and worth seeking out.

Over the past two decades, Morrison has built a filmography of more than thirty projects that have been shown in museums, theaters, concert halls, and galleries around the world, including Sundance and the Tate Modern.

What makes Morrison’s work unique is his use of rare archival film footage. Morrison not only researches and collects this footage, but he uses it to create compelling montages with original soundtracks. He has collaborated with some of the most interesting composers working today–John Adams, Henryk Gørecki, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Steve Reich, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, among others. The end result of these artistic collaborations is mysterious, beautiful, and highly unique.

 

A still from "Decasia" (Image courtesy Bill Morrison)

 

A still from "Decasia" (Image courtesy Bill Morrison)

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a screening of Morrison’s Decasia at The MacDowell Colony. The movie left me moved, astonished, and off-kilter. The 70-minute film is assembled from decaying, highly flammable, early nitrate footage collected from the George Eastman House and Museum of Modern Art and is nothing less than a masterpiece. It is a testament to Morrison’s skill as an editor and director that he can wrest so much emotion and meaning from this collage of archival images. Michael Gordon’s stirring soundtrack, featuring detuned pianos and an orchestra playing out of phase with itself, only adds to the surreal atmosphere.
 

Decasia excerpt1 HD from Bill Morrison on Vimeo.


 
Decasia belongs in the tradition of Stan Brakhage’s films and Michael Lessy’s memorable book Wisconsin Death Trip; it is simultaneously poetic, haunting, disturbing, and compelling. We experience not only the surreal scars, stains, and textures of decay, but also the forgotten landscapes and faces captured on film long ago. The entire piece is a meditation on ruin and the temporal nature not only of film, but of life itself. When filmmaker and writer Errol Morris saw Decasia, he said that it might be ”the greatest movie ever made”.

 

A still from "Decasia" (Image courtesy Bill Morrison)


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The Sunday Poem: Elisabeth Frost

October 29, 2011 in Sunday Poem, Words with Comments Off

 

 

 

 

Monarch

 

Those of us who survive are waiting for normal life, believing in the idea,
though everybody knows from months of TV that the wait has extended
impossibly, like a line in space or a rope stretched beyond all capacity. We
see signs. Who doesn’t want some small thing to interpret? A dumb movie
plastered on a fresh billboard, the diesel stink of a packed bus. Everything
seems to announce itself. We’re eating at intervals now, mimicking what we
know we were used to, but there’s no escaping nostalgia for old irritations,
crowds and short tempers, anything to get a rise out of somebody. No one
is willing to be rude. We assure ourselves that things will change, we will
change. For a time we can serve as our own confessors. But even now
people are on street corners, hugging themselves and speaking to no one
or simply the air. Just last week the monarchs fluttered in from Mexico and
left as quickly. In a northerly direction.

 

 

 

 

About Elisabeth Frost

A poet and critic, Elisabeth Frost is the author of a collection of poetry, All of Us (White Pine, 2011); a chapbook, Rumor (Mermaid Tenement Press, 2009); and a critical study, The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry (Iowa, 2003). She is also co-editor of Innovative Women Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Interviews (Iowa, 2006). In addition to a Fulbright Fellowship as a visiting professor at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, Frost has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation-Bellagio Center, the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, The MacDowell Colony, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation, and Ucross, among others. Her collaborations with the artist Dianne Kornberg have been shown at the Chicago Cultural Center and other venues across the country. She is an associate professor of English and Women’s Studies at Fordham University, where she founded and continues to edit the Poets Out Loud poetry series from Fordham University Press.

Poet Alicia Ostriker eloquently describes Frost’s latest poetry collection, All of Us: “In the white space out beyond Elisabeth Frost’s cropped tales, subtle situations, plausible and bizarre fantasias, you may sense the ghosts of Kafka and Borges strolling. But these delicious, low-key, disturbing and always surprising prose poems, with their train of lyric elegance, are a world unto themselves. All of Us is a compulsively readable book.” To learn more about Elisabeth Frost and her writing, visit her website.

 


 
If you enjoyed “Monarch,” please consider sharing this poem on Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can read the entire Sunday Poem series here.

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“Monarch” © Elisabeth Frost. This poem originally appeared in Ekleksographia and was reprinted with permission by the author.

 

The Sunday Poem: Gregory Pardlo

October 22, 2011 in Sunday Poem, Words with Comments Off

 

 

 

Problema 3

 

The Fulton St. Foodtown is playing Motown and I’m surprised
at how quickly my daughter picks up the tune. And soon
the two of us, plowing rows of goods steeped in fructose
under light thick as corn oil, are singing Baby,
I need your lovin, unconscious of the lyrics’ foreboding.
My happy child riding high in the shopping cart as if she’s
cruising the polished aisles on a tractor laden with imperishable
foodstuffs. Her cornball father enthusiastically prompting
with spins and flourishes and the double-barrel fingers
of the gunslinger’s pose. But we hear it as we round the rice
and Goya aisle, that other music, the familiar exchange of anger,
the war drums of parent and child. The boy wants, what, to be
carried? to eat the snacks right from his mother’s basket?
What does it matter, he is making a scene. With no self-interest
beyond the pleasure of replacing wonder with wonder, my daughter
asks me to name the boy’s offense. I offer to buy her ice cream.
How can I admit recognizing the portrait of fear the mother’s face
performs, the inherited terror of non-conformity frosted with the fear
of being thought disrespected by, or lacking the will to discipline
one’s child? How can I account for both the cultural and the inter-
cultural? The boy’s cries rising like hosannas as the mother’s purse
falls from her shoulder. Her missed step from the ledge
of one of her stilted heels, passion loosed with each displaced
hairpin. His little jacket bunched at the collar where she has worked
the marionette. Later, when I’m placing groceries on the conveyor
belt and it is clear I’ve forgotten the ice cream, my daughter
tries her hand at this new algorithm of love, each word
punctuated by her little fist: boy, she commands, didn’t I tell you?

 

 

 

About Gregory Pardlo

Gregory Pardlo’s first book, Totem, was chosen by Brenda Hillman for the American Poetry Review / Honickman Prize in 2007. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, and Best American Poetry. A finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award in poetry, he is recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received other fellowships from the New York Times, The MacDowell Colony, the Lotos Club Foundation and Cave Canem. Pardlo is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at George Washington University.

If you enjoyed “Problema 3” please share this poem on Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can read the entire Sunday Poem series here.

Would you like the Sunday Poem delivered to your email box each week? Subscribe to Gwarlingo by email. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook or share a “like” on the Gwarlingo Facebook page.

Check out the Gwarlingo Store for some of my favorite poetry and art books. Your purchases benefit this site.
 


 
Author photo © Jay Franco. “Problema 3” © Gregory Pardlo. This poem originally appeared on the Pen American Center site and was reprinted with permission by the author.
 

Photographer Bill Jacobson: A Rare Look at the Evolution of an Artist

October 19, 2011 in Events, Images with 1 Comment

New Years Day #5074, 2003 © Bill Jacobson (On view at Julie Saul Gallery)

 

Untitled #4118, 2001 © Bill Jacobson

 

New Years Day #4580, 2002 © Bill Jacobson

If you’re in New York be sure to stop by Julie Saul Gallery to catch Bill Jacobson’s new photography show. Into the Loving Nowhere (1989 till now) opens Thursday, October 20th with a special reception from 6-8 p.m. and will be on view through December 10th. The featured photographs were made over a 22-year span and offer a rare opportunity to see a select retrospective of Jacobson’s work.

I’ve been following Jacobson’s photography for many years now and have enjoyed watching his style evolve from the soft, out-of-focus black and white photographs of his early career, to his series of color landscapes and interiors, to his current exploration of space and geometry.

As Jacobson explains on his website, his work “parallels an inner journey through a world we are constantly experiencing with the uncertainty of the mind’s eye rather than the sharp clarity of a camera lens.” His photographs are intimate and deeply poetic, evoking the fragmented states of memory and dreams.

Interim Landscape #134-14, 1989 © Bill Jacobson (On view at Julie Saul Gallery)

 

Interim Landscape #185-6, 1989 © Bill Jacobson

 

Interim Portrait #245, 1992 © Bill Jacobson

 

Song of Sentient Beings #1583, 1995 © Bill Jacobson (On view at Julie Saul Gallery)

Looking at Jacobson’s earlier blurred portraits of people and places, I am often reminded of the vintage, out-of-focus snapshots I collect at thrift and antique stores. It came as no surprise then, when I discovered that Jacobson also has a fascination with 20th century vernacular photographs. He describes their influence in an interview with Ian Berry:
 
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An Occupy Writers Update: 13 Observations by Lemony Snicket & More

October 18, 2011 in Events, Words with 2 Comments

Author Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket, shared "13 Observations" about Occupy Wall Street today: "Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there." (Photo by Meredith Heuer)

I’ve had a few emails from readers asking for an update on the Occupy Writers project, which was unveiled on Friday.

The list, which was the brainstorm of writers Jeff Sharlet and Kiera Feldman, began with almost 200 signatures, but has burgeoned to over 800. News of the project has spread quickly. This piece, “The Zuccotti Literatti: Slumbering Prolixariat Awakes,” ran in the New York Observer on Friday, and the story was also picked up by the Associated Press. Traffic at Occupy Writers has been so heavy that the site’s server has experienced periodic crashes. (Organizers are ironing out these technical glitches as we speak.)

As I reported Friday, the original list included writers as diverse as Jonathan Lethem, Lemony Snicket, Mary Karr, Neil Gaiman, Salman Rushdie, Jane Brox, Barbara Ehrenreich, Sasha Frere-Jones, Jane Hirshfield, Honor Moore, Luc Sante, Meghan O’Rourke, Ann Patchett, Sam Lipsyte, Young Jean Lee, Lewis Hyde, Jennifer Egan, Bill McKibben, Sarah Jones, Ayelet Waldman, and Lynne Tillman.

Some new names were added over the weekend: Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, William Gibson, Maxine Kumin, Patrick McGrath, Rose Styron, Jayne Anne Phillips, Cathleen Schine, Gloria Steinem, and over 800 other novelists, non-fiction writers, poets, playwrights, and editors. The list is striking for its range.

As well as offering a petition (which reads, “We, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world”), Jeff, Kiera, and the other organizers of the site are now asking authors to write about their experiences and thoughts about the protests.

Today, Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), Francine Prose, and D.A. Powell added their voices to the conversation.

Here are “13 Observations Made by Lemony Snicket while Watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance” as posted on the Occupy Writers site:

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Antti Paalanen: Breathbox

October 16, 2011 in Sounds with Comments Off

I recently came across this hypnotic piece of music by Finnish musician Antti Paalanen. Paalanen is a composer and a master of the diatonic accordion.

Accordions are made in a range of different configurations and styles. Diatonic button accordions are bisonoric, which means each button produces two notes: one when the bellows is compressed, and another when it’s expanded.

The instrument was invented in the 1800s and has been an important part of many folk traditions, including French Canadian and Cajun music, as well as Tex Mex and American country square dance music.

Paalanen plays with a number of folk music bands, but he’s exploring a new direction in his solo work. I love the unique, mesmerizing sound he is creating in this song “Breathe” from his 2010 album Breathbox. The accordion never sounded so good.

Thanks to Alex Ross for this clip.
 


 
Breathbox - Antti Paalanen

 
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The Sunday Poem: Stephen Dunn

October 15, 2011 in Sunday Poem, Words with 1 Comment

 

 

 

Quieter

 

After grandmother’s funeral, I rode home
in a black limo built to hide faces like mine,
and to schlep the famous to their galas,
or high rollers to their ruin. Next day,

in my little Toyota, I headed north to price
the cost of forgetfulness at Saratoga,
and give myself permission to scream.
The nags I bet on that afternoon permitted

only mutterings, though in the last race
twenty-to-one Big Cat came from behind,
majestically lengthening its stride. “Oh no,”
I said to myself, as it passed my horse by.

All day long early speed had given way
to what came late and hard. Wisdom
would have had me a Big Cat man,
but if I were wise I’d have been elsewhere.

I left, wearing my gambler’s this-is-what-
happens smile, and beat traffic to the Northway,
the car reverberating with a mindlessness
of my choice, music at full blast.

But at Halfmoon in search of cheap gas
and something cold, I pulled in to a Stop
‘n’ Shop and just sat there
behind the wheel, a sudden quiet in the air,

a quiet I hadn’t known I’d been staving off.
It was as if a careless wind
had finally died down, the only evidence
of its existence what it had swept away.

No, it was quieter than that, just an undertone
of all I’d left unsaid. I apologize in advance
to those I love. I still need to go some distance
to locate what I feel, to total what I’ve lost.

 

 
 

About Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn is the author of 16 books of poetry, including the recent Here and Now (Norton, 2011) and What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009 (Norton, 2010). His Different Hours was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, and his many other awards include the Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  He lives in Frostburg, Maryland, with his wife, the writer Barbara Hurd.

To read more about Stephen Dunn and his work, you can visit his website.

If you enjoyed “Quieter” please share this poem on Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can read the entire Sunday Poem series here.

Would you like the Sunday Poem delivered to your email box each week? Subscribe to Gwarlingo by email. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook or share a “like” on the Gwarlingo Facebook page.
 


 
“Quieter” © Stephen Dunn. This poem originally appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of The Georgia Review and was reprinted with permission by the author.
 
 

187 Mega-Hits by the 12-Tone Masters

October 15, 2011 in Sounds with Comments Off

A self-portrait by composer Arnold Schoenberg, 1951

I don’t often post satirical videos, but thanks to Gwarlingo reader Elly Weiss, I had the pleasure of watching this hilarious “commercial” for the “all-time greatest hits by the beloved twelve-tone masters” this morning and wanted to pass it along.

The fact that the video was posted by the Arnold Schönberg Center is intriguing. Perhaps they’re trying to interest a younger generation in the composer’s music? The You Tube tagline says that it’s a “non scholarly approach to the second Viennese school.”

This one is for all of my composer friends out there. Enjoy!
 


 
(If you’re reading this in an email, click here to watch the video.)
 
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A Renaissance of Public Conversation: Writers in Support of Occupy Wall Street

October 14, 2011 in Events, Words with 1 Comment

Occupy Wall Street

The Occupy Movement has just received the support of almost 200 great novelists, non-fiction writers, journalists, poets, editors, and playwrights. Occupy Writers was published this morning and includes the signatures of Jonathan Lethem, Lemony Snicket, Mary Karr, Neil Gaiman, Salman Rushdie, Barbara Ehrenreich, Sasha Frere-Jones, Honor Moore, Luc Sante, Ann Patchett, Sam Lipsyte, Young Jean Lee, Lewis Hyde and many other established writers and editors.

The original letter, which was circulated throughout the literary community this week, was as follows:

As writers our work depends on imagination; for the Occupy Movement, such imagination has become a genuine starting place, at the convergence of telling stories and making change happen. Not just any change. Real democracy. Economic justice. Freedom of speech that includes the freedom of assembly, the freedom to gather and together exercise our imaginations of what democracy and justice can mean. We want a world worthy of the best we think stories have to offer — and what would that world look like but one in which discussion is both nonviolent and vivid, spectacular, and engaging in the way that the protesters of the Occupy Movement are reminding us it can be? We see in the Occupy Movement the beginnings of a renaissance of public conversation, and we, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support the Occupy Movement in its pursuit.

The idea for creating the list of supporters was the brainstorm of writers Jeff Sharlet and Kiera Feldman. The project is being realized with the help of many volunteers, which include students, writers, and artists. If you’re a writer and support Occupy Wall Street, you can add your name and the title of one book to the Occupy Writers website.

You can view the entire list of writers here. Please consider spreading the word about the list by sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Would you like Gwarlingo delivered to your email inbox? Subscribe for free here. You can also follow Gwarlingo on Twitter and Facebook or share a “like” on the Gwarlingo Facebook page.

 

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