Vowel Movers

Here at Vowel Movers, our interns are an integral part of daily operation, as well as longterm strategic planning and development. This means that in addition to common office tasks, interns will also complete assignments that are more Vowel Movers specific. For example:

Imagine our delight when #3 came to fruition.

Late last night (around 11 pm), Tila Tequila posted an angry poem to her MySpace page:

Can’t wait for this drama to pass.
Oh the joy…**** you. My ****.

Live a lie.

Tell my mind.
Over soon. I can’t deny.
You will all soon see, the truth in my eyes.

Smile on my face, the loving embrace, but instead I’ll punch you in the face.
For a long time coming. I let you touch me….now that it’s over ****. You better start running.
Pent up inside…telling these lies…this has gone too far…the world will soon die.

every vowel mover loves a good summer read and no one’s a better read than Frank O’Hara. we believe the man lived in linen suits. even in winter, if Frank O’Hara was there, it was summer. so maybe that’s why he keeps popping up on our lazy hazy po-rads*.

first up is William Logan’s review of the new Frank O’Hara Selected Poems from Knopf (edited by Mark Ford). we don’t always know what to make of the NYTimes poetry reviews. most of them, even when complimentary, are ambiguous. logan calls o’hara “jazzy, elated as an eel” as well as “a vain young man”. he uses “insouciant” twice and compares o’hara to champagne. then he says, “but O’Hara almost never faces up to the emptiness beneath this high life and low desire”. logan says the collection is at once “foolish and self-parodic” and yet “fresh”.

wow. wow. we’re all for the grey areas and fine tuned distinctions, but chrissakes Logan, did you like the friggen book or what? get it? yes? no? maybe so? maybe not read book reviews and expect to get anything out of them…

better than Logan’s ambiguity is DA Powell’s sense of humor on the pofo’s** Harriet blog. from the title (Banal Probe), to calling out the hataz, to invoking the old adage (”everybody’s got one!”), Powell’s post delights. but the true gem is the O’Hara anecdote he recalls for all the non ivy league-community college poets out there:

Once, Frank O’Hara was giving a reading, and a familiar voice shouted from the back of the room, “You’re ruining American poetry, O’Hara.” Not missing a beat, O’Hara replied, “That’s more than you ever did for it, Kerouac.”

shit talking poets: 1

concerned sensitive poets: 0

*poetry radars. duh.

**poetry foundation. ok. we didn’t expect you’d get that.

LOL! Fence Magazine’s guest blogger is proposing a new, GRAPHIC lit journal rejection/acceptance system based on the LOL CATS model:

for the 99% of hopeful contributors who are rejected:

&, for the segment of those who don’t like cats, Fence is offering a little Creeley, Olson and Zukofsky. Says guest blogger: “Everyone loves Creeley. For reals. Even my old boss with fake nails and shoulder pads loved Creeley”

Finally, “for the 1% of slush that gets taken we can celebrate with:”

Dear Vowel Movers, we often worry about your health. How are you feeling lately? Are you nervous, anxious and unable to sleep? Do you experience frequent dizzy spells, diarrhea, or anal warts? Sweatiness? Nausea? The feeling of losing your mind? A low (low low low) sex drive? Don’t waste your time webMDing these symptoms because we have the diagnosis: you are afraid of poetry. You suffer from a known phobia called metrophobia.

That’s a medical term which more or less means “poetry makes me crap my pants and also makes me not want to have sex as much.” Maybe you read LangPo too soon. Maybe your mother tied you up and beat you while reading Gertrude Stein. Like all diseases and afflictions, no one is sure what causes your fear of poetry; it could even have been a seemingly innocuous event–like reading Kurt Vonnegut. Whatever the case may be, something in your past forces your neurons to fire HELP everytime you hear slant rhyme.

And you can’t just ignore the problem; it doesn’t go away. This fear is deeply embedded in your subconscious thoughts so that everytime someone says, “Have you read the new James Tate book?” your throat closes up and tiny hive-welts start raising all over your arms.

But so long as the negative association is powerful enough, the unconscious mind thinks: “Ahh, this whole thing is very dangerous. How do I keep myself from getting in this kind of situation again? I know, I’ll attach terrible feelings to poetry, that way I’ll steer clear in future and so be safe.” Just like that metrophobia is born. Attaching emotions to situations is one of the primary ways that humans learn.

Just think, you could eliminate your fear of poetry using CDs and be the first person to write a testimonial about it. How 21st century is that? Additionally you can conquer your fear of death, fear of eating then vomitting, fear of beautiful women, fear of making phone calls, and your fear of anger!

Yes, poetry fans, that’s not Busta Rhymes over there in the pink wayfarers, it’s BUSTY RHYMES. Busty, who lives in Australia, has been called a “POETRIX” She initially turned to poetry to vent her feelings about being unemployed:

“I was totally frustrated, and out of frustration, I wrote my first poem: The Path Less Traveled By.”

Now, Busty, who has performed at many Australian Fringe festivals, is living the poet life, complete with the requisite heartache. Busty has noticed that many men are “frightened of poetry.” She says:

“Some even see shrinks to deal with their metrophobia, which is a fear of poetry . . . Apparently, they’re worried about a limerick leaping out at them and touching them inappropriately. But that happens so rarely anymore.”

If you need more reasons than the mix of big boobs and poetry, here’s what others are saying. The Ottawa Fringe Festival defines her show as “the bastard love child of Eminem, Cosmopolitan Magazine and The Wiggles” & Edinburgh’s Three Weeks says:

“poetry to make you hungry, happy and horny.”

Now, if they could only combine poetry and pizza…..

So says Alan Arkin about VM’s favorite Wilson brother, Owen.

Adding to our crush on the fair headed actor, People magazine reports that since the movie, “Marley & Me” wrapped Arkin and Wilson have been sending “little poems to each other” and brands Wilson a “big poetry fan.”

Ben Stiller agrees, describing Wilson to Slate as having “a library in his head.”

SWOON!

Not only does Carrie Bradshaw  incite women to search for studded belts and rare Manholos, but Bradshaw’s influence extends to literature, too.  The imaginary book of love letters she was reading in bed with Big in the recent Sex and the City move (Love Letters of Great Men), sparked quite an internet searching sensation.  Abebooks.com reports hundreds and hundreds of queries about the title, and that the closest equivalent title, “Love Letters of Great Men and Women: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day” saw it’s ranking skyrocket to as high as no. 134 on amazon.    Vowel Movers is stoked that poetry and prose got such an excellent role in the movie. Though it’s not the hottest LV bag,  a sexy love letter is what crazy Carrie wants.

In the age of cellphones, email and instant messaging, you would think love letters would be a thing of the past but a love text message (I luv u) hardly compares to a letter from the heart. The producers of the Sex and the City movie agree and they are currently helping to revive interest in love letters.

Note to interviewers: Gore Vidal will have none of that!

Maybe the only reason to be an author is to hold out for that one interview you’ll get at a later age, when you couldn’t possibly give a F@&* anymore and you’re just gonna go for it. You’re just gonna rip this kid a new one, tell it like it is! Balls to the walls man, just go for it. Not sure how that might work? Need a model? How about Gore Vidal.

It’s hard to pick a favorite response from this interview; is it the part where he dismisses Obama out of the blue? Or, no–wait–is it the part where he makes a pretty good Al Gore joke? Or are we so self-centered that the only thing we find interesting is Vidal’s supreme disdain for lit-crit? Late twentieth century: J’Accuse! Love, Gore Vidal.

Do you read a lot of contemporary fiction these days? Like everyone else, no, I don’t.

This curmudgeonly approach to literature seems to be a suspicious trend amongst old male authors. Might we suggest, Mr. Vidal, the company of one contemporary charmer, VS Naipaul? Back in May, the Book section of the UK based Independent reported that, much like GV, VS feels there are “no more great writers”.

Secretly our wish is for the two to pair up and do a pomo Lemmon & Mathau act. I mean what’s more fun than watching two old men get all crankypants about the current state of literature? (Answer: absolutely nothing!)

I can’t say that I cared very much for Sean Penn’s “Into The Wild”. It’s sorta like “Grizzly Man” but more confusing, less pretty, and without any recognition of the evil of nature that only Herzog can affect. But–wait!–there’s poetry!

In the first few scenes of the film, Emile Hirsch’s character whips out a copy of Sharon Olds’ The Gold Cell and begins schooling his younger sister on the ways in which Poetry can totally help you understand that parents are fucked up everywhere. It kinda jumped out at me and I got scared like, “WHOA! A POEM! IN A MOVIE? Weird…”

Also weird? The lamely vague references to Augustine’s Confessions, which we can’t blame anyone for because, apparently some are true; like McCandless’ time in Carthage South Dakota. But good heavens, is every male story about self discovery a parallel to Augustine? (Yes, emphatically, says the historic record)

Let’s face it, we can’t beef with Penn because as it turns out, this is the most literary film to come across our radars since The Royal Tenenbaums. And, in case you aren’t now (or never were) in the Olds fan club and can’t recognize her work in three words or less, below is a reprint of the poem in its entirety (thanks to http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/olds/poems.htm)

I Go Back to May 1937 (from The Gold Cell)

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it–she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Vowel Movers is excited to announce the winner of the annual

“BEST ADVERTISEMENT FOR A LITERARY JOURNAL”…..

congratulations to issue 3 of melancholia’s tremulous dreadlocks, endorsed on Gina Myers‘ site:

Issue 3 of melancholia’s tremulous dreadlocks is now out. Featuring work by Annmarie Eldon, Diana Magallon, Gina myers, GM Quinte, Matina Stamatakis, Jerome Rothenberg, Logan Ryan Smith, Mark Lamoureux, Noah Falck, Ray Hsu, Mark Wallace, Richard Meier, Brane mozetic, Noah Eli Gordon. PLUS art by Claire Webb & a picture of Noah Eli Gordon in a wifebeater

How can you NOT click on something that says “this is an author photo wherein a famous poet is wearing a wifebeater“?