review of "HELVETICA" by Steve Roggenbuck

You are in creative writing MFA program, I think, or you have taken workshops.  I remember reading that you were MFA though.  What do people in your program say about these things (assuming that you submit them for the workshops)?  I feel like writing workshops are opposed to such radical ( i mean this in its defintion's sense) approaches to writing due to the kind of main/stream/lined approach of workshops.  What do you think?

i haven't brought any of the helvetica poems to my workshops because i haven't felt really confident if they are actually "poems" or what other people would say about them. i have started bringing some other really short, flarfy writing though, and i get mixed reactions. the main comment i get is that most of my writing in those forms is "only funny." a number of people in my program believe that poetry can be funny but it should also be something deeper, like it should teach you something too... it's really weird getting those comments, and i feel like they've kind of distanced me from "poetry" and calling my work "poetry."

I posed that question to Steve.  He responded how I thought he would.  I have had similar experiences in workshops in the past.

That was a question I posed to Steve Roggenbuck over email, in response to his new book entitled "DOWNLOADHELVETICAFORFREE.COM"

There was an article written about Steve Roggenbuck, as well as Poncho Pelligroso and Jordan Castro, that described their writing as "neo-Dada."  Roggenbuck accepted this term, Pelligroso debated it, and I don't think Castro entered the discussion himself.

I think that to call this Dada is to point out why it would be called Dada and why the term is useless.

I dont know if that made sense.

Is this poetry?  It doesn't really matter.  It tests the readers' ability to just enjoy and not have to classify anything.

Dada.

Ducahmp.

The Fountain.

I don't know.

This one is good: http://www.downloadhelveticaforfree.com/helvetica-41/

A lot of these are funny, but that doesn't mean they lack value.  I think the above link demonstrates it.

Roggenbuck found these words for all these pieces from his MSN messenger chats back in high schoo.

The above link demonstrates multiple levels of meaning.  First, someone actually said that at some point.  But we don't relate to that immediately as readers.  We find it to be funny.  Then when we try to wonder about the context of it it becomes less straightforward humor, because someone had an actual life. They were checking their grade.

It also is interesting because this entire work challenges notions of what becomes literature in this digital age.  We are living in the twenty-first century. 

I feel most of the people who read this blog will agree with whatever I am going to say so I am going to just end by saying that I found this interesting and funny.  Intellectually stimulating even.  Because it takes me back to a place that no longer is here, and it also makes me wonder how I got from there to here and where here is and how here will soon be there and I will be in another here.

These don't have to be poems.  They don't have to be Dada.  They can just be.  I guess those terms are just useful to use in order to frame a discussion maybe.

I enjoyed this book.  I am going to buy it a print copy from the website when I have enough cash flow.
It is very much worth a read.

review of sam pink's "person"

(noah cicero blogged about my review of his book

we had a debate once on his blog about jack kerouac)

SAM PINK

PERSON

i had previously read his poem collection "frowns need friends too" as well as various things on the internet.  

i went into this book expecting to like it.  

and i did.

this book was fun to read, although it sometimes made me bit nauseous (yes, a combined mental and physical sensation, usually with negative connotations; transcending the mental-physical divide)

it reminded me of the beckett and the absurdists.  

the characters are kind of stuck in void.  

its pretty deadpan and dry, the whole book

the narrator will say something totally off the wall in the midst of a monotonous monologue about his day

there aren't a whole lot of characters besides the narrator, his roommate, and the "girl from the first floor" who the narrator has sex with eventually.  

there isn't a great deal of "plot" in the "traditional" sense.

it is more just an "everyday life" kind of plot.

that is cool, because most people don't live exciting lives, they just live.

the narrator is pretty paranoid, perverse, fucked up insane, kind of.

he reminded me of the protagonists you might find in dostoevsky, the ones who are always contradicting themselves and thinking things that are detached from any "normalcy" and are a bit insane/crazy and a bit dirty/disgusting

the book takes place in pretty impoverished urban conditions (decayed part of chicago)

a favorite line of mine in the book is: (referring to roommate)" It looks like me and him are dust in someone else's carpet and we can't say hello for fear of having to come up with a good reason."

he pretends to be asleep later in the book when he is with his girlfriend/"girl from the first floor" and i liked that part a lot because i can relate to be pretending to be asleep

the book is written in short one-or-two sentence paragraphs of prose and dialogue (much like this blog post)

noah cicero does that in his books sometimes too a lot

if sam pink or noah cicero read this i would love to know why they started to write like that

maybe i will just ask them

y'all should read this book

see you on march 31, 2011

review of noah cicero's "best behavior"

i am going to post three book reviews in the next week. this one is on noah ciceros new book.  on march 28 i will post about sam pinks "person".  on march 31 i will post about steve roggenbucks "download helvetica for free". <<<>>>

noah cicero's new book is called "best behavior."  i remember reading on his blog either in the winter of 2008-2009 or in the summer of 2009 that parts of it were about recognizable internet literary people.  i think he was writing the book around those same times, and that a lot of the events of the book took place around those times.  it was pretty easy to discern the characters who were tao lin, brandon gorrell, zachary german, james chapman, the guy who owns melville house, and ellen kennedy was mentioned i think (these are all logical guesses, not certainties).  they all have different names, the same thing that kerouac did in his books and the same thing that a lot of other writers have done.   there are many more characters who are just "ordinary" people from "middle america."

i read this book when it was published on his blog a year or two ago.  i only vaguely remember reading it, but I must have because i am in the comments section of that blog post.  i might have been on drugs.

i was going to try to put my favorite quote from every chapter in this blog post but i am tired and i dont know if that is really legal although i guess no one would care.  here are a few parts i liked a lot:

"Our parents...went where the jobs were.  They took the job and worked to get raises.  Things were different now.  Now, in that strange place called America a person could choose what their role in society would be."  It's followed soon by..."She didn't feel like doing the bills.  She feel like giving anyone her money.  But she rationalized that electricity and heart are important things and must be maintained to live a good life."

That reminded me of myself.  His girlfriend's dilemma.  His dilemma.  That is my dilemma.  It's all of us, it's our dilemma.  It's not even a dilemma.  It just sucks, and it sucks because it tells us its awesome.


(playing with weird Monopoly pieces)
"....You're doomed with the dog.  You should be that hat."
"I don't want to be a hat.  A hat isn't even alive.  I want to be an organism."

You can just read the book.  This book is really funny and sad at the same time.

"I brought my cheeseburger to a table.  It tasted somewhat like a cheeseburger.  I wasn't sure when the cow was killed, where it was killed and what kind of cow it was, what the cow ate, but I was sure it was killed a long fucking time ago, it was probably a miserable cow, and the cow ate bad tasting grass that had little nutrition."

This is anarcho-primitivistic maybe or veganisitic maybe, although I don't think Noah Cicero cares for either of those philosophies too greatly.  It's funny and sad at the same time.

"American Protestanism...Their Jesus isn't an ancient Jew that lives in the desert and shits in an outhouse.  Their Jesus isn't a homeless Jesus.  Their Jesus is this hard working man who has short hair and combs it to the left."

This is Weber pretty much, but said from the perspective of the character who is supposed to be James Chapman, I think thats who that character is supposed to be.  also weber wouldnt say this because weber wasn't american and i dont think he would care and he lived a long time ago although i guess he would care.  It's also uses concrete reality and dark humor to illustrate its point much better than any boring social science article.

"It never occurred to me to be a big writer.  When I was in high school I remember really liking the story of Emily Dickinson...her poetry...It was alright, whatever, Emily Dickinson.  But I remember walking around my neighborhood thinking about Emily Dickinson walking around lonely in her house.  She was walking around her garden being scared and nervous about everything...I didn't think about Stephen King.  I didn't imagine attending a movie premier of my book, or doing long signing tours across the world."

That is told from the perspective of the character that is Brandon Scott Gorrell, I think is who it is supposed to be.  It was a great line.


This book reminds me a lot of the narratives of Kerouac, in that theres travel as a central "plot" element and writers/artists as some of the central characters along with "normal" people as other central characters.  It breaks it down a lot though.  Rather than travelling across the U.S. on an epic journey, we get eight-hour bus rides between Youngstown, OH and NYC that have a lot of NYC writer-drama and Youngstown worker-drama.  Drama isn't the best word. I shouldn't have used that word.  The scene when "Benny" the narrator comes to New York and is in Times Square was very remininscent of the "Paper America" scene from On The Road where the narrator of that book is in Times Square.

The story is told in sharp sentences that still manage to ramble, like Hemingway.  It deals with a dream after the fact.  It's like waking up from a dream.  The background is that the narrator thought he would/could possibly be a writer, as a "profession."  Five years after the publication of his first book, thats still not the case.  This isn't surreal though.  There is real.  He wanted to feel at home in NYC.  But he can't.  He feels at home in Youngstown.  But he doesn't really feel at home there.  He doesn't feel at home anywhere really.  And that is what makes this an American narrative. The three drawings in it are great. one is by sam pink.  one is by ellen kennedy.

I read this is in a day, as I usually do with Noah Ciceros books.  I remember in the summer of 2007 I discovered Tao Lin and then Noah Cicero and all these other writers.  I was very depressed very lonely very alienated very suicidal very sad very anxious very detached.  The Human War spoke to me.  The Condemned spoke to me.  These writers and books spoke to me.  They had similar issues.  Their ideas got them through them.  It wasn't self-help cliches.  This is kind of a behind the scenes look at that scene, and that one writer, by that writer by that scene.  I met noah cicero briefly over thanksgiving this past year.  his girlfriend lives next door to some old friends of mine.  he seemed different than i imagined.  its hard to imagine what people will sound like in real life.  its a "theatre of culture" we live in, and this book is trying to escape that, i think.  i don't know what else to type.  it was both good and great to read this.

Things

I recently purchased Best Behavior by Noah Cicero.  I await its arrival.

Metazen published a poem by me.  Another one is forthcoming later this month.  I have doubts about the one that is already up.  It is kind of whiny.  But that is the point, i guess.  I like the one that is coming out in a few weeks a lot more.

Crispin Best published my small play "Defenestration is Quite Bohemian" on his website FOR EVERY YEAR.

I am finishing up my book currently.  Hopefully in the next week or two.  It is about a mental ward, partially.

I have read 1/3 of Steve Roggenbuck's new book DOWNLOAD HELVETICA FOR FREE DOT COM several times, but I haven't had time to read the whole things yet, because I have to keep clicking for a new page every poem, which is cool except my comp/connect is slow and it takes forever.  I am going to finish it soon, and probably write about it on this blog because it does some cool things in terms of "poetry."

I recently read some books.

I was good about putting links in this post.  Laziness is over.  Think blogging will be fun again, maybe.