{"id":143211160,"date":"2024-04-05T12:31:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T12:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=143211160"},"modified":"2024-04-05T12:31:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T12:31:22","slug":"friday-links-repent-for-the-sun-shall-be-blotted-out-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=143211160","title":{"rendered":"Friday Links: Repent For The Sun Shall Be Blotted Out Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

“What are their bodies made of, rock or iron to block \/ your tearing bronze? Stab them! Stab their flesh” – Homer, The Iliad<\/h2>

Nazis unwelcome: here\u2019s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon<\/a>. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie<\/a>. I might forget\/get bored and stop. Not today though!<\/em><\/p>

Cotton Xenomorph\u2019s \u201cCryptids and Climate Change\u201d issue continues, with \u201cFlesh and Blood\u201d by Manaly Talukdar<\/a> dragging our literary <\/em>Nostromo to the underworld<\/em>.<\/p>

There\u2019s an eclipse Monday! We\u2019re going to Indianapolis to see some totality. My kindergartener has gotten really into his STEM class (separate from classroom science and math, they go weekly like with gym, library, or art), and the STEM teacher is very friendly if I see him at pickup, so I suggest, \u201chey, tell your STEM teacher you\u2019re going to see the eclipse!\u201d And the kid says sure, he will. Pickup comes on STEM class day. I go \u201chey, did you tell your teacher about the eclipse?\u201d <\/p>

\u201cI forgot.\u201d<\/p>

You already knew. I was (am?) the same way. <\/p>

What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week: <\/strong><\/p>

Already tipped my hat with Wednesday\u2019s column<\/a>\u2014yes, I\u2019m reading Homer this week. Rage on, Achilles! Man-kill, Hector! But it\u2019s also National Poetry Month, so I didn\u2019t want to not<\/em> do some small press or at least capital-P Poetry in this, our National Month. Hey, break Homer into two parts and it\u2019s normal novel-sized. Seeing my parents one weekend and then seeing them again the next weekend gives me an opportunity to steal a book off their shelves without them knowing and give it back in a way that makes them say \u201cwow, quick turnaround.\u201d So of course I took the debut collection from not only the inaugural Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, TN, but also a \u201cclose family friend\u201d and \u201cmy brother\u2019s friend\u2019s mom.\u201d That\u2019s right, along with not quite half of The Iliad<\/em>, I read Sugar Fix<\/em> by Kory Wells!<\/p>

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The Iliad<\/strong><\/em> by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles, Books 1-9: <\/strong>yikes, was supposed to read 1-12 this week. Hey! I was doing my taxes<\/a>. It\u2019s good so far, for all the reasons I said on Wednesday, but definitely not quite capturing me the way The Odyssey <\/em>did. Adventuring is far more interesting than warring, at least to me. It\u2019s loads<\/em> better<\/em> than that miserable pickled tripe Triolus and Cressida<\/em>, Shakespeare\u2019s worst play, which I got tricked into seeing at The Globe and don\u2019t care if I\u2019m spelling right. In fact, I was primed to kinda hate everyone because of that nightmarish play, which is just Closer<\/em> (another movie that completely sucks) for Elizabethans. Shakespeare\u2019s overrated. I do<\/em> get why HomerHeads hated Troy<\/em>. Personally, I <\/em>don\u2019t hate Troy <\/em>(here\u2019s me at <\/a>Cracked<\/a><\/em> pining for a<\/a> The Odyssey<\/a><\/em> with Sean Bean reprising Odysseus<\/a>), but I do now think it\u2019s an actively bad adaptation. <\/p>

One thing that keeps hitting me: how<\/em> did they keep all them names straight, just telling this story around a fire? Sure, maybe \u201cDiomedes\u201d is the ancient Greek \u201cDan\u201d or whatever, but this text rattles off some many names of recently killed bros, complete with little eulogies for them, family trees\u2014it\u2019s impressive. I\u2019m going to write more about this specific thing a little later. How the poem honors the dead. For now, the verdict is \u201cworth reading, but if you must pick one, pick The Odyssey<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>

Sugar Fix<\/strong><\/em> by Kory Wells: <\/strong>to be clear, while my family knows Kory really well, I confess that I <\/em>do not. She\u2019s my aunt\u2019s best friend, but by the time my brother and her daughter became good friends, I was already in Chicago (speaking of her daughter, check out the roots music the two do together<\/a>). So the two of us have spoken, but never about poetry, and whatever interactions we\u2019ve had were probably clouded by my interminable shyness. The phrase \u201cyou know our friend Kory is a poet\u201d has been uttered to me before, but I missed when this book came out (most likely because my kid was not quite a year old). This book has a lot of things I like\u2014softness, tenderness, sex, interrogations of genealogy and meditations on the one-drop rule\u2014y\u2019know, stuff I like in poems. It also is very much a Book Of Poems In Murfreesboro, and to know me is to know that I have a wildly love-hate relationship with Murfreesboro (people still in Murfreesboro are skeptical the \u201clove\u201d side exists, but I assure you, it does). So the times when a line wouldn\u2019t land for me or I\u2019d think \u201cthe Murfreesboro is showing?\u201d That\u2019s not Kory\u2019s fault, that\u2019s my own hang-ups. <\/p>

So let\u2019s do a quick half-breakdown of a poem that, because it takes place on a plantation tour, I was hesitant about, but ended up really enjoying.<\/p>

\u201cBetween Past and Present I Never Moved So Freely\u201d captures Murfreesboro\u2019s sometimes perverted and often euphemistic attempts at honoring its history with some remarkably well-placed line breaks and alternating right\/left justification. The speaker, a teenager, is reading a script for a living history gig in an antebellum house, taking us on a mini tour (\u201ca young lady \/ playing the harpsichord \/ (sir, I must ask you \/ not to touch) original \/ to the house,\u201d) that is full of finery until we get to \u201cImagine \/ the servants \/ my script called them \/ servants\u201d and then, after a few stanzas, the speaker\u2019s script directing tourists to imagine \u201csoldiers on the lawn, \/ the occupation well underway.\u201d We already have \u201cslaves\u201d or \u201censlaved people\u201d softened into \u201cservants\u201d before getting to the Invitation To Imagine Persecution\u2014a sacrament for white Southerners, particularly the ones at some of the churches my friends would take me to in high school\u2014and then the speaker says \u201cNever did I say \/ imagine \/ acres of cotton so endless. \/ Never \/ did I think \/ to say \/ imagine \/ welted backs, \/ unfree \/ fingers, \/ how they would bleed.\u201d There\u2019s <\/em>a volta I wish a lotta people in my hometown could have, imagining people who aren\u2019t white as people<\/em>\u2014print this poem out and staple it to the Oaklands Mansion front door like Martin Luther\u2019s theses. <\/p>

LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>

I was traveling last weekend, I\u2019m traveling this weekend, and in between, I\u2019ve been doing my taxes. It\u2019s gonna be a YouTube videos week. Since it\u2019s National Poetry Month, it\u2019s gonna be a \u201cYouTube videos of cool poets\u201d week. <\/p>

\"a<\/figure>

  • Back at the reading series my friends and I co-ran out of our homie Quin\u2019s apartment on Columbia Ave in Rogers Park during college, someone\u2014Quin, other reading series co-founder Charles Gabel, someone<\/em>\u2014told me about this video they saw of Alan Ginsberg reading with a jazz band and like, running up walls as though he were Bo Jackson. Finding that video is still something I\u2019d like to do one day, but it requires experiencing more Ginsberg than I\u2019m willing to consume at once. Here\u2019s him reading \u201cAmerica\u201d set to music by Tom Waits. <\/p>