Close Calls, the book, is an NBCC Award finalist. I’m honored and taken aback to be in such good company.
Want to know what the @#$% happened in last night’s election? Here’s my take on the London Review of Books blog, where I hope I’ll be making less than regular but more than occasional appearances.
I’ve apparently been elected to the board of the National Book Critics Circle, where I’ll be joining such luminaries as Craig Teicher, Jane Ciabattari, Lizzie Skurnick, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Kevin Prufer… fortunately my responsibilities don’t start quite yet. It’s a welcome honor and I hope I don’t screw it up.
I’ll be reading at Fordham University along with Eamon Grennan on Feb. 25; the event’s supposed to focus on Irish poetry, and I’ll probably be talking a bit about the poetry of Paul Muldoon.
And now, music. When I feel frustrated with other people’s irresponsibility or overwhelmed by my own responsibilities there’s really only one band I can completely enjoy: it’s Scrawl, of Columbus, Ohio. I saw them at the end of their final tour, when they were in the process of being dropped by their major label, before about a dozen people in a big white room at the Knitting Factory: it was anticlimactic and sad, and it was also one of the best rock shows I’ve ever seen, and you can usually pick up their great last album, which also serves as a best-of (with out-of-print songs re-recorded), for pennies.
Scrawl broke up after that tour, to nobody’s surprise, and I thought they had stopped making music– but now it turns out that singer and bassist Sue Harshe has at least two great new songs. Is there a record? Are these live videos of Scrawl in Columbus really from 2009, which would mean that the band has come back together? Are there new songs?
Scrawl guitarist Marcy Mays apparently owns part of this Columbus bar. Here are two Scrawl songs, in much better sound quality than you’ll get from the video. And here’s a crazy long interview for compleatists; there was another one in a zine called Too Fun Too Huge, which I ought to revisit someday.
Nathan’s favorite word this week is “meta.” A dollhouse inside a dollhouse is meta, but a food item does not become meta simply because it has its name (“bread”) on its package. Sophisticated stuff.
Also sophisticated: book blogger Neil Verma, who devoted a graf to my Boston Review piece last month, and Canadian culture bloggers The Mark, who put Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden on a decade’s-best list.
That would be the last decade. I’m having trouble concentrating, right now, on the literary promise of this decade, because there’s a serious chance that a Republican will win Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. If you’re half as distressed about that prospect as I am, you might consider making a few calls, either from home or at an in-state event.
You might also be glad to see Coakley’s new ad. Had she been all over the airwaves with this one two weeks ago, a lot of Mass. Dems would be sleeping more soundly right now.
Back to poetry: my father and I went to hear Joan Houlihan read from The Us last night: the poems sounded good, and the story that connects them comes through when she reads.
Happy New Year to all, and to all a good preschool restarts on Monday morning night…
Habitual book reviewers, such as myself, keep an eye on the ratio of stuff read to stuff written about; when the denominator approaches the numerator, as seemed likely to happen in 2009, then it’s time to take a step back and read in genres you’re not likely to write much about, which is what I’ve been doing over the holiday. Further reports may, or may not, be on the way.
For now, I’d like to call your newly, yearly, resolved attention to the rock band Sleepyhead, who made four great records, lost a bass player (who happened to be our wedding photographer– I met him through writing about his band), moved to Massachusetts, had at least one child (not sure there), and spent about ten years making record #5– and now you can hear the first songs from that record: it’s not a big departure from record #4, and it’s going to be at least as good.
You might also check out Lightful Press, run by my dedicated and inventive former student Katie Fowley: they’ve got a book length poem by Liz Waldner out already, and some other projects in the works.
I plan to attend at least two Boston readings in January: Joan Houlihan at Lesley Univ. on Jan. 10, and Julie Carr at Pierre Menard Gallery on Jan. 30. Maybe I’ll see you there.
