I began Ellen Bryant Voigt’s The Art of Syntax last night, and though I haven’t yet attempted to apply what I have learned to my readings of poems, I’ve actually found that her translation of some of Robert Jourdain’s thoughts on music (in Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy) had a deep, profound effect on the way I was listening to music this morning.  As someone who has never had any real musical talent, I have always been deeply envious of musical craftsmen and people who have an intimate and seemingly natural (or unrehearsed, though I know that is not the case) gift for the language of music.  Seeing musical terms translated into the terms I understand– or rather, the terms I am only beginning to understand– finally gave me enough context to map the way my brain works with language to the way I am able to hear music.

Obviously, I have more work to do, much more work to do.  I’ve got to finish the book, and I’ve got a lot more listening to do– both to the music collection with which I have a new tool to work, and to a million and a half poems.  But it was an exciting morning, because I was hearing new things in familiar songs, or rather, recontextualizing things I’ve already heard many times before.

Next up today: Beatles Rock Band (and how participation also changes the way one hears the familiar) and my first read of student poems.

Not now.  Not ever.

This is Bixby.  He is John and Jennifer’s dog.

This is Kirk. He is my cat. He thinks I am his cat.

Neither Bixby nor Kirk have anything to do with the Breeders.

• I have seen a couple pictures of Katy “I Kissed a Girl” Perry and I think she looks way too much like Zooey Deschanel.  I liked the idea of “I Kissed a Girl” a lot better when Jill Sobule did it.  Oh, wait, I didn’t really care then, either.  Kiss whoever you damn well please.
• Ladybug and I were watching Mad Men on DVD and we both felt the urge to drink more.  I had whiskey and she had something with Kahlua.  If we’d had cigarettes in the house, we would have smoked them, and damn, I hate cigarettes.
• Bull City Press has a brand new look on the web!  Our incredible intern, Jordan Wingate, redesigned the whole thing and it looks light years better than the old site.  Plus, you can now buy the newest issues of Inch… Jordan is not just our intern, he’s also a reader for the fiction you see in Inch.
• I am getting my contact list organized so I can be a better correspondent.  Or, at least, I hope to be a better correspondent.  So, if you have moved and you think you might one day like mail from me or from my press, send me your new address.
• Inch #8 is for sale now!  Did I tell you that?  You can buy a single issue, but you know, we like it better if you subscribe for a year.  It’s only four bucks plus a dollar for shipping.  Seriously, you can’t even go out to eat for five bucks.  Unless you go to Taco Bell, at which point your body is paying such a price for the food that you probably should have spent your money on a subscription to this little magazine!

Here’s a short list of things I really enjoy:

• T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
• American people faking British accents
• Portishead’s “Sour Times”

So why should this be so annoying?  Maybe it’s because it’s eight-and-a-half minutes of the loop from “Sour Times.”  Eight-and-a-half minutes!

Look, I applaud almost any mashup that incorporates good poems.  But, in a cruel and bizarre twist of fate, this one increased my appreciation of the Eliot for about 45 seconds, and then I became so annoyed at the loop that I actually started thinking, “Oh my God, if I never hear ‘Sour Times’ again, that will be OK by me.”  Is there such a thing as a mashdown?  You know, a mashup attempt that not only fails to do anything really new, but also makes you wonder why you ever liked the work it’s derived from in the first place?

I find it charming when rappers feel compelled to say what year it is in their songs.  I don’t know if this is happening as much any more.  But when you’re listening to BDP or De La Soul, and they get all haughty about how fresh they are in 1988, it’s kind of funny.  And cute.  You wonder if they continue to tour, repeating the original dates when they get to that part of the song, looking out at the crowd to see if they go crazy for 1991.

I wish I was a rapper.  I’d do that.

Before work, my iTunes, on random, played three Queens of the Stone Age songs, including “Better Living Through Chemistry.”

On my way to work, my car mp3 player, only a 9% chance of playing Queens of the Stone Age at any time, played three of their songs in a row, including “Better Living Through Chemistry.”

When I arrived at work, iTunes, again on random, was playing MF Doom.  Then it played “Better Living Through Chemistry.”

I am trying to get a long list of things done today, but every time I make an attempt, I find that either I do not have enough information to complete the task, or I have enough information but I make so many mistakes along the way that I think, “Maybe I should do something else.”  The one positive thing I’ve accomplished at work today was completely an accident.

When I went to get some lunch, my car served up another two Queens of the Stone Age songs.  That was five in a row, despite only a 9% chance that any given song on that disc will be Queens of the Stone Age.

California has overturned a ban on gay marriage.  Charleston is hosting National Microfiction Weekend.  Schools, get your web filters ready to go to work, because Joe Biden just called Bush’s “Democrats appease terrorists” speech “bullshit.”  And if you check my Last.fm page, guess what just came up again?

OK, I will go ahead and tell you:

Queens of the Stone Age – Better Living Through Chemistry [mp3]

Though “scrobbling” sounds like something that can’t possibly be healthy, I’m doing it again. I hadn’t really considered when I bought my new computer that I finally had the computing power to manage my 35,000-song iTunes library and run other applications, so for months afterwards I didn’t bother with a number of applications that I once tried to use. My last go-round with Last.fm was last year, when I scrobbled a couple of weeks worth of music before realizing that the software was absolutely killing my machine’s performance.

So, if you’re my friend and you’re using Last.fm, go ahead and friend me, but be prepared to see some horrifying tunes come up in my playlist, which basically runs 24/7 on random. (Also be prepared to see the new Portishead album a couple of times. I’m really enjoying that.)  My username there, unsurprisingly, is rosswhite, because either I have no problem with leading a very public life or I am too lazy to come up with a cool username.

Next up, I’ll finally be playing Civilization IV. I’d play Sim City 4, but somewhere along the way, I lost disc 1.  (If you want to maybe burn me a copy of disc 1 of Sim City 4 for Windows, I would reciprocate with some music, which you may pick out by looking at my playlists.)

Trent Reznor wins.  Nine Inch Nails, finally freed of its record contract, released a new album, The Slip, for free today, without DRM.  It was a classy move, and it’s potentially a very important one for digital rights and the future of music.  And here’s the best part – it’s good!  Go get it from nin.com.

In patented Scott Jennings bullet-point format, here’s some miscellany:

• Travis Smith and I wore a path in the highway between Greensboro and Durham this week. On Thursday night, we went out to see Michael McFee and Michael Chitwood read; on Friday, we went to see Natasha Trethewey and Van Jordan. We had the opportunity to hang out for a while after both readings; the chance to be around poets in such high concentration, even if there’s not much talk of poetry, is tonic for the soul. Van and I talked in our last exchange about life after the MFA. Speaking of the intimate connection that the Warren Wilson structure provides to talk about poems, he wrote, “I know how dark it can be.” But I’m starting to feel that I can see what that life will be like, and it doesn’t look dark to me, not at all.
• Remember that song “If You Leave”? Amazon’s offering a free live version, which sounds pretty good.
• Miniature album reviews of stuff I have picked up in the last couple weeks:
  • The Breeders, Mountain Battles – I hope that heaven tastes like carrot souffle from Dillards BBQ and sounds like Kim Deal. If you would like to be thoroughly rocked, listen to “German Lesson.” I suspect German speakers would find their accents deplorable. Whatever, German speakers.
  • R.E.M., Accelerate – It seems impossible that R.E.M., after so many years of middling albums with a few stellar tracks should come back with a stellar album which contains only a few middling tracks. This is the stuff, people. “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” is phenomenal; “Supernatural Superserious,” despite its goofy lyrics that seem so out of place from a guy Stipe’s age, is actually somewhat moving; “Mr. Richards” just flat rocks. I bought the bonus tracks this morning… only one listen each, so too soon to tell for sure, but I think I like.
  • Phantom Planet, Raise the Dead – Disappointment. This is what mediocre pop-rock sounds like. After giving this album a few spins, I’ve come to the conclusion that I want my money back. Not all of it. About half.
  • Nine Inch Nails, Ghosts I-IV – Let me first tell you the story of how I purchased this album: Seeing it on sale for $10 at Target, I tossed it in the cart on a big shopping day with Ladybug. When I got home, I found they’d charged me $13, so I returned it and thought I’d try to catch it on sale. I found it later on Amazon’s download service for $5. Score. Worth $13? Actually, probably; it’s atmospheric, sparse at the right times, and very typically NIN. Which, you know, I prefer to, say, Aphex Twin, who is actually probably the closest comp I can think of for this album.
  • Tristan Prettyman, Hello – I had heard some of her live stuff and got suckered into this, an album which is cute and sweet but entirely overproduced. And you don’t hear me say that often.
• I’m doing my first Sequential Swap in a while.
• Ladybug and I have been working iteratively on Iron Scav 11, Chapel Hill’s most socially retarded scavenger hunt. We have about 40 people who have said they’re coming, but not one team has registered with their members’ names, which means no one yet knows the secret third character.
• Can I just say that as much as I love and support National Poetry Month, I freaking hate this “Poem in Your Pocket” thing they have going this year?  Hated it as soon as I heard the name (proof).

I’ll leave you with this poem, which I read Thursday night at Old Town and immediately took a shine to. Apparently, the publisher feels the same way: this is the sample poem on poets.org.

Among the Things He Does Not Deserve

Greek olives in oil, fine beer, the respect of colleagues,
the rapt attention of an audience, pressed white shirts,
just one last-second victory, sympathy, buttons made
to resemble pearls, a pale daughter, living wages, a father
with Italian blood, pity, the miraculous reversal of time,
a benevolent god, good health, another dog, nothing
cruel and unusual, spring, forgiveness, the benefit
of the doubt, the next line, cold fingers against his chest,
rich bass notes from walnut speakers, inebriation, more ink,
a hanging curve, great art, steady rain on Sunday, the purr
of a young cat, the crab cakes at their favorite little place,
the dull pain in his head, the soft gift of her parted lips.

–Dan Albergotti, from The Boatloads 

My concertgoing habits have not exactly been the stuff of legends: I have seen some great bands, and in some cases, I have seen some great bands multiple times.  But it seems I’ve found new and interesting ways to miss some of my favorite bands, time and time again, until they’ve broken up and I missed my chance altogether.

By “great bands,” of course I mean the bands that I hold dear.  Whether or not you share my opinion as to their greatness is irrelevant.

Bands I’ve managed to see: R.E.M. (repeatedly… like 9 times now), Throwing Muses (also repeatedly), Kiss (though, oddly, it was without the makeup), Foo Fighters, that dog, Wilco, Ben Folds Five (never solo), Hooverphonic, Living Colour, Sarah Harmer, Nine Inch Nails, The Amps, Tammy & The Amps, eels, Fugazi, They Might Be Giants

(OK, I’ve seen more bands than that… and this doesn’t even account for some of the best shows I have seen, but these are bands that I’ve  listened to so much that I should have seen them.)

Bands I never got around to, or haven’t yet gotten around to: Luscious Jackson (had tickets, but my sister made us late and we missed them, for which I have never forgiven her), Soul Coughing, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Pixies, Radiohead, Decemberists, Metric, Sloan, Jane’s Addiction

Bands which are currently on the latter list, but for whom I have tickets! Duran Duran (May 21) and The Breeders (June 12).  Aw yeah!

If you know me at all, you know what each new Breeders release means to me.  After waiting a week for Amazon’s 2-day shipping to get it to me, Mountain Battles is now in my grubby little paws. Yes!  Pure joy!  Kim singing in German and Spanish!

I was just upstairs reading, and had one of those satisfying moments. My iPod served up Oasis’s “Live Forever” (mp3) and I flipped to Auden’s “The More Loving One.”

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Both the Oasis and the Auden cover essentially the same topic, albeit in different terms and different media. Auden essentially acknowledges the impossibility that we matter in any reasonable cosmic scheme, but at the end of his poem, he outlives the stars and comes to appreciate the universe changed. Oasis rejects the natural order of things and achieves immortality for their daring.

Run these through the filter of my last few days, and you come up with one irresistible conclusion: being alive in the moment is the only immortality one needs. You can look at the world, littered with the walking dead, and conclude that you’ve bested it forever by enjoying it now.

***

Of course, the possibility exists that when Auden looked at the stars, knowing”That, for all they care, I can go to hell,” he was simply prophesying the inevitable existence of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton. Yes, devoid of them, we might all come to appreciate the world. But it would take a while. It would take a while indeed.

My sister and I have never been particularly competitive, or if we have, I’ve never known about it. She did her thing, and I did my thing, and those things didn’t often intersect, so that was good. But she did one thing in her teens that I never did, and I always wished I had, but by the time I was interested in it, I didn’t much have the chance.

Well, roughly 22 years after she did it, I’m doing it. I’m going to see Duran Duran!  I have tickets with friends on May 21.

Word of my joy spread quickly through the Twitterverse (since I twittered it) and soon, the messages and Facebook wall posts were streaming in, my favorite from Amy Minton, who said:

Please. If you love me. Bring me the autograph of John Taylor. It must read: “Amy, I have always loved you, too. -John Taylor.”

This is what the band looked like when they released Astronaut a few years ago.  (“Reach Up for the Sunrise,” the first single from that album, was the song Ladybug and I woke up to for almost a year.  We were, in fact, reaching up for the sunrise.  Or the snooze bar.) So I guess I can see why Amy’s still in love with John Taylor, though I have to admit that Andy Taylor looks shockingly like the woman who taught my fifth grade class.

Here’s a link to one of the songs on their new album, a collaboration with Timbaland, who would collaborate with a horny toad if they paid him enough.  (And he’d probably make the toad sound good.)

Duran Duran – “Skin Divers” (mp3)

I’m not a big jazz fan, but I have been sitting here for a while, browsing the web on the new 24″ widescreen monitor I bought a couple of weeks ago, listening to Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain. And it’s pretty amazing. I’ve tried to listen to Miles a few times before, but just never found that it was my thing… I mean, I still listen to Nickelback*, for chrissakes, I’m not nearly refined enough for jazz. And Bitch’s Brew still irritates me some when it finds its way into my iTunes shuffle. But it’s a quiet night in the house, and Sketches of Spain really just hit the right note. “The Pan Piper,” in particular, has me blissed out. (no mp3 to share, but here’s the m4a file)

* Really. But not that often.

My initial intention for this packet was to read and discuss some Robert Lowell, but Van fired back a suggestion that was a little surprising– Robert Browning. I’m looking now at how Browning manages syntax in “Love Among the Ruins.” In some ways, this in infinitely more fun than Lowell.

The perfect music to accompany Browning– sexy and subtle: Morcheeba. I’m listening now to “Otherwise” (mp3) but most anything from Charango would suffice. Now if I only I could get this weird taste out of my mouth (unrelated to Browning or Morcheeba… I think it’s my new medication).

Every so often, you hear a song and it just blows you away. Though you heard the song only one time, it sticks in your brain. You walk around humming to yourself. You hear other songs, but they don’t measure up. You think about that song, think about its melody, and determine to purchase the album that contains that song. Sometimes, this action proves to be a brilliant bit of foresight on your part: maybe you bought Vivid by Living Colour. Other times, your gamble does not pay off.

Perhaps when I arrived at the store to purchase Sia’s Some People Have Real Problems, I should have been cued in by the absolute idiocy of the cover. But her song “The Girl You Lost to Cocaine,” with its whiny, Nelly Furtado-like vocals and killer hook was deeply, deeply embedded in my brain. I was fully prepared for a few of the songs to be filler, but I ignored the obvious warning signs presented by the cover and it’s MS-Paint sprawl.

Seriously, I bought an album that looks like this:

God, what was I thinking?

Well, here’s what I was thinking: “The Girl You Lost to Cocaine” (mp3)

I have been a fiend on the music blogs recently and have been richly rewarded for it. I am listening to some great music. “Buildings & Mountains” by The Republic Tigers has been the best of the lot so far. (I’d credit the blog where I found it but I can’t seem to find which blog right now.)

I got a new laser printer and paper cutter for Christmas. To top it off, my new Bostich long-arm stapler arrived this week. I love my Swingline, don’t get me wrong, but I am hella looking forward to the sliding red guidebar which will give me a more accurate length on each sheet of paper. I get excited about these things. It’s a sickness, yes, but it’s a sickness I use to make magazines for you. You should subscribe.

Congratulations to Deborah Ager and 32 Poems– one of the poems they published this year will be in Best American Poetry.

Everyone and his brother has started a game of Scrabulous with me lately. I cannot possibly keep up with them all. But I will try. Just don’t expect much play during work hours, OK? I really have to get some work done.

Courtesy Wade:

I feel bad for you son.

I do not feel bad for you son.

After a weekend of intense scrabulizing, I have won a couple more games and lost a couple more games. Curiously, I’m now beating the people who are pretty good and losing to people who aren’t; I think I truly play to the level of my opponent. (Granted, against the better players, if I can’t find a 30-point word right away, I’ll let the game sit for a while and come back when I have more brain space and patience. Against the opponents who don’t play me so tight, I’ll play a word each time I open the game.)

I spent much of today working on poems, revising a small handful (minor edits here and there, things like snipping an article or strengthening a line’s rhythmic qualities) and working for a while on one. In November, I wrote a poem called “Man on Ski Lift Passes Reindeer,” triggered by, of all things, a Starbuck’s commercial. When reviewing the November output, this poem, which was really dashed off and felt, at the time, woefully incomplete, was the one that interested me the most. I’m now using it as the basis for a poem that I agreed to write one night in July after several glasses of wine with Dean Young. I was surprised at just how thoroughly “Man on Ski Lift…” adhered to the rules I knew I would want to set for this other poem… without realizing it, I’d begun a poem I’d been intending to write for some time.

I bought the new Foo Fighters album, knowing before I listened to it almost exactly how it would sound. Turns out, I was right. Do they have software for crapping out their new albums? Have they inserted a microchip in my brain to ensure that I will like each one?

Grouchy to giddy in 3.2 seconds: Breeders tell all about new album