“actually that’s basically the whole story / the end of the potato wedge / is dipped in BBQ sauce and / then transferred to the mouth I” – Jon Woodward, “REMEMBER ANYTHING”
With an epigraph for the holiday weekend. That’s right, I had other books I wanted to read last week, so I read a bunch more poetry this week! Poetry rocks dude. I know a few weeks ago I was like “wahhhh I’ve been reading so much poetry lately I just wannanooovellll.” Well I read a few really great novels and then hosted a poetry reading and now I’m all like “poooooeeeettttrrryyy.” The circle of literature, homies.
That said, pretty sick novel coming up next week.
Also, for anyone wondering—there will be both a June and July episode of The Line Break. Bob and I are coordinating with a couple of very cool guests. Don’t worry.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week
A book by a friend. A re-read I spent all year waiting for. A re-read, plus a new book by the same author. That’s right, four poetry books. It’s hard to do the “a book that does this / a book that does that” gimmick for four books, but one of these books does explicitly say that it’s in the tradition of “I do this / I do that.” Take that for whatever that’s worth, certainly not a tank of gas. Probably not a hot dog and Big Gulp combo either, or even a single candy bar. But we don’t measure poetry—or our own half-assed Frank O’Hara jokes—in monetary terms. We measure it in time spent breaking lines together. This week, I read the rest is up to you, love by Bridget Gordon, The Wine-Dark Sea by Mathias Svalina, Rain by Jon Woodward, and Want For Nothing by Jon Woodward.
the rest is up to you, love by Bridget Gordon: not to brag, but Bridget and I are friends. I’ve seen her read a few times, and she was featured at the most recent Lazy & Entitled reading. I bring this up because I think this is the first book I heard a significant portion of before reading. Like, I’ve seen/heard people read, then bought their book. Or bought their new book. But there was so much of this book I had heard prior to actually reading the text that seeing it on the page was a real different experience, and a treat. Bridget is a performer, and these poems read as though they are to be performed—if it comes down to voice or concision, voice is winning. Many of the poems are two pages. None of this is a bad thing, but in reading the text, I was struck by how much poetics were happening, you know, metaphor and juxtaposition and surprising imagery. Not that I don’t hear that stuff live, but the most poetic lines are not always the biggest laugh/gasp/applause/snap lines. This book would have paired perfectly with H. Melt’s There Are Trans People Here—they do some similar things and some very different things while maintaining that YOU CANNOT ACTUALLY STOP THE EXISTENCE OF TRANS PEOPLE energy. I wish I’d read it last week, but I’m glad I got to it this week.
The Wine-Dark Sea by Mathias Svalina: this is my fourth or fifth time reading this cover-to-cover, and it really does show me something new every time. Some poems I remember, like “THE WINE-DARK SEA” or “THE WINE-DARK SEA.” Others feel completely new (“THE WINE-DARK SEA,” “THE WINE-DARK SEA”). There’s so much here, so much that refuses to fully reveal itself and so much that is waiting for you to figure it out. I especially picked up on the longing this around, the calling out to friends. Even the weirdest poets have friends, idk if y’all know that or not. I think it’s sometimes easy to think of sadness in surrealist poetry as being at a remove, like all the strange imagery and dream logic means the stakes are somehow lower. Stakes feel high in this book, as they always are on the wine-dark sea.
Rain by Jon Woodward: maybe you’re not wired like me, but the elevator pitch is a formalist one. Each page has three stanzas, five lines per stanza, five words per line. Yet Jon has that New School-esque conversational tone that feels both effortlessly cool and surprising with language. It sorta tells some stories. His friend Patrick comes to town. But there’s just this nighttime rain feeling to the whole thing, like you’re not at all sure what to expect next but you figure you can navigate it. I wish I had smarter things to say about this book, but it’s such a vibe for me. Man, in 2010-2011, this book was practically religion. Glad it holds up now that I quit drinking, ha.
Want For Nothing by Jon Woodward: Ariana Reines’ intro describes these poems as having something to do with the way the internet is changing the way we talk or even approach language. It does, to an extent, but not to the point that you feel like you’re overwhelmed by internet speak (derogatory) or overwhelmed by internet speak the way Paul Cunningham does in SOCIOCIDE AT THE 24/7 (complimentary)1. I actually met Jon at AWP this year2and he told me that this book shared some qualities with Rain. Sure enough, there are three stanzas per page, five lines per stanza, and six words per line, with a caesura in between each set of three words. You know yr man the shipwrecked sailor loves a caesura. The ease-of-reading New School effect is still there, but that little gap in the middle of each line does actually do something rhythmically. The speaker of these poems certainly reads as older than the speaker of Rain, but crucially, the speaker is not more jaded. It was interesting reading these two back-to-back, and that’s an experience I want to have again soon.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? It’s July, my dudes, it is WAVVES TIME.
- This week in ICE: 5 People Sue Border Patrol Agents Over Use Of Tear Gas, Unlawful Detention During Midway Blitz by Madison Savedra and Who Were The Midway Blitz Border Patrol Agents? Most Were Veteran Immigration Officers by Crystal Paul, Mack Liederman, and Charles Thrush in Block Club, Immigrants In Illinois Are Finding Success Challenging Their Detention In Federal Court by Jose Abonce and Naisa Roy in Injustice Watch, ‘Everybody’s going to be living in fear’: Chicago’s Haitian community reacts to TPS decision by Tiffany Walden in The Triibe, More than 100 Venezuelans who were deported from the US hours before the earthquakes are missing by Gisela Salomon in AP, The Prairieland Sentences Are A National Emergency by Melissa Gira Grant in The New Republic, Once Packed with Day Laborers, a Chicago Hiring Corner Empties Out Under Immigration Crackdown by Aydali Campa and Camilla Forte and ‘It’s Catastrophic’: Chicago Organizations Mobilize To Provide Aid for Venezuela After Deadly Earthquakes by Tara Mobasher in Borderless Mag
- More than a martyr: Chicago artists reflect on ‘Emmett Till at 85’ by Jerome “RomeJ” Robinson in The Triibe
- “ELAINE” by LJ Pemberton in X-Ray
- “Foreign Objects” by Karlo Yeager Rodríguez in Typebar
- Hey everybody, the Chicago Pope said that writers are important. We have the blessing of Heaven. So, uh, pay us whatever that’s worth.
What’re you still doing here? Want another banger summer track? Hey, Reyna Tropical has a new album coming out this month with Helado Negro.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Hey, seriously, if you’re in your 20s and working a service industry job, read Jon Woodward’s poetry. I don’t know what it is about it. Something about Rain just reminds of working a double on the tour boats then having a whiskey or four at the Billy Goat Tavern then listening to music on my iPod on the train home. Probably because around that time in my life I was keeping Rain in my bag at all times, but whatever. The same way Giovanna Lomanto’s book is the poetry for the drive home after a concert, Jon’s is the poetry for the train ride home when you’re in a precarious time in your life.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- yes, I am aware that the (derogatory) / (complimentary) construction is entirely a creation of the internet. Hell, for all I know, it’s a creation of Bluesky, which is a weird descendent of both Tumblr and Twitter. What’s cool about Jon’s book is he doesn’t get all bent out of shape about internet language, but doesn’t give in to it. ↩︎
- Jon is extremely cool and nice in person. ↩︎