Ecce Sigum

Tag: politics

  • February Barely Scary

    Books from the week of February 13, 2021

    First up is issue 7 of Tales from the Magician’s Skull, from a Kickstarter I backed this past October. It looks great, and I am eager to dive into it.

    Next is Classic Monsters Unleashed, from a Kickstarter run by editor James Aquilone. This was another of the Kickstarters for which the reward was delayed by *gestures at everything*.

    I like the coincidence of a magazine of classic sword-and-sorcery style stories arrived the same week as a collection of new stories about classic monsters. I appreciate the connection of the classic with the current, the exploration of how the old influences the new.

    In reading news, I finished Jesus and John Wayne and it left me in a foul mood. The book itself is excellent, well researched and well written, but the subject matter – the white evangelists who are deliberately working to turn the United States into a militant christian patriarchal ethnostate – well, let’s just say I don’t agree with their works, message, or goals. I have a small review written up in my monthly reading list which will post on the first day of March.

    To cleanse my palate, reading-wise, I picked up Per Aage Brandt‘s beautiful poetry collection If I Were a Suicide Bomber, translated from the Danish by Thom Satterlee and published by Open Letter Books. I originally acquired this book through my subscription to Open Letter Books, which I let lapse a couple of years ago because I had not read any of the books they had shipped me in well over a year. Now I am slowly working through my backlog of almost three dozen.

    I finished If I Were a Suicide Bomber the same day I started it, as I had taken a sick day from work and a few hours is plenty of time for a leisurely read through a poetry collection. I loved it! The poems are sharp, insightful, and full of humor. Taken individually, there are some echoes of Charles Reznikoff‘s Testimony (though lighter), and taken as a whole I noted an occasional similarity to Notes From A Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel by Evan S. Connell. Highly recommended.

    Now I am reading The Same Night Awaits Us All by Hristo Karastoyanov, translated from the Bulgarian by Izidora Angel and also published by Open Letter Books. So far it is quite good, and would fit well on a shelf next to Andrei Bely‘s Petersburg,and perhaps a short distance from Umberto Eco‘s Foucault’s Pendulum, if only because they both involve small, quirky publishing houses.

    In writing news, I didn’t accomplish much this past week due to the aforementioned sick day and the associated disruption to my schedule and routine. Perhaps next week will be a little more stable.

    That’s it for now. Unless something extravagant happens in the next ten days, this may be the first month in a very long time where I read more books than I acquired. A few more decades of that and I might get to the point where have read every book I own.

  • Halfway Through January

    I’ve been following Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky‘s annual State of the World conversation on the Well. Guest “speakers” this year are Vinay Gupta and Emily Gertz. Much of the conversation seems to center around blockchain this year, which makes sense as Gupta is one of the founders of Ethereum, and Gertz is an environmental reporter. Other topics include COVID (of course), politics (of course), the interaction of the two, and the possibility of a horde of Trumpist bootlicks and coprophages attempting to stage a civil war. The State of the World conversations are always interesting, and past years can easily be found in the index of topics.

    Other interesting reads from the week:

  • April in All Its Beauty

    Books for the week of April 11, 2021

    A year ago this week I began a project which kept me working second and third shift for three months, then a long and late first shift for a couple more. This year I am on a stable project which, other than the fact that I am working from home instead of in an office, is not particularly disruptive. Which is to say, not more disruptive than having a job in the first place.

    Only one new book arrived here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey last week – E. Catherine Tobler’s The Kraken Sea, from Apex Book Company.

    In reading news, I finished Maurizio Lazzarato’s The Making of the Indebted Man (published by Semiotext(e)), and it left me feeling all kinds of grumpy.

    No, not grumpy. Another word, begins with “g”.

    GUILLOTINEY!

    Yes. That’s the word.

    With all of the leftist and left-ish books I have read over the past few years I can feel the strain and stress from the day to day experience of living in a society currently dominated by forces which could be delicately called “reactionary”. But that is the subject for another post or fifty.

    I am working my way through Living at the Movies, a collection of Jim Carroll’s early poems. Carroll wrote these poems in his early twenties, and they are good enough for what they are, but as a 51 year old here in the 2020s, I don’t feel as much connection to them as I might have back when I was in my early twenties, thirty years ago.

    After finishing Lazzarato’s book I started reading Rediscovering Earth, a collection of interviews with environmentalist and writers about the possible futures of nature and the environment. I picked this one up from OR Books a couple of months ago. It is much more hopeful and inspiring, if not less rage inducing, than the Lazzarato.

    In writing news I am maintaining my pace of a poem a day for the duration of National Poetry Month. NaPoWriMo is also happening this month, which is appropriate, though I am not really participating as so many others are, in that I am not posting my poems in public.

    Perhaps next year. If NaPoWriMo happens next year.

    If there is a next year.

  • Thick Books for Cold Nights

    Last week felt like the first normal week of 2021. I had no family drama or cat drama, though we had Pepper fixed and after a day of withdrawal from the Ketamine which is used in cat sedative, she was back to being her usual sweet self, although with a bare belly and a shaved foreleg (for the i.v.) which makes her look like she is wearing an UGG boot.

    It was a pretty good week for reading material here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. Four new founts of information and entertainment arrived during the first genuinely wintry cold and snowy week of the season.

    On the left (ha!) is the latest issue of Jacobin, a magazine which has only increased in importance since America’s slide into being a corporate fascist state was slowed slightly by the election of Joe Biden.

    Second from left is the latest issue of Poetry, a magazine which has always been important, as poetry has always been important, as the inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman, clearly demonstrates.

    Third is The Cybernetic Hypothesis, a text by contributors to the leftist journal Tiqqun, from Semiotext(e), a publisher (and group) known for writing material which caused noted coward and fascist bootlick Glenn Beck to wet himself in terror at their mere mention.

    On the right is Son of a Liche by J. Zachary Pike, which is the sequel to the wonderful Orconomics. This one is self-published, as was the first which won the Self Publishing Fantasy Blog-Off in 2018.

    In reading news, I finished Isabel Wilkerson‘s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents and it left me with much the same feeling as Matthew Desmond‘s Evicted, Sheldon Wolin‘s Democracy, Incorporated, and most certainly Michelle Alexander‘s The New Jim Crow. Which is to say, again, that feudalism was never overcome, it was only rebranded.

    I am approaching halfway through The Brothers Karamazov and maintaining a comfortable pace to complete this behemoth of a book before the first day of spring.

    Now that I am done with Caste, I started (the late) John Giorno‘s memoir Great Demon Kings, which is a fantastic window into the art, poetry and nascent media scene in New York starting in the mid 1950s. I am a little over a third of the way into the book and enjoying the hell out of it. One note: the subtitle is “A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment”, and the sex is front and center, and very graphic.

    In writing news, my mind finally feels clear and I am ready to begin. I just need to come up with some ideas.

  • A Little Post-Holiday Pick-Me-Up

    We are slowly catching up on sleep here at the library of Winkelman Abbey. Fortunately the poorly-socialized idiot who lives across the street didn’t blow up as much of the block as he has done in years past. Then again all of those tickets for disturbing the peace are probably beginning to add up.

    A small stack of books this week, but two of the three include work created by friends, so what the pile lacks in height it more than makes up for in importance!

    On the left is the latest issue of Amazing Stories. I don’t know anyone therein, but if I did I am sure we would become fast friends. In the middle is local poet Kristin Brace‘s new collection, Toward the Wild Abundance. Kristin is a superb poet and a wonderful human being who for many years worked at the Creative Youth Center here in Grand Rapids.

    On the right is Mustapha Panda, from a recently-completed Kickstarter, with words by Karim Jallal and artwork by Teresa Zbiciak. I met Teresa recently, and in addition to being an extremely talented artist, she kills at karaoke. I love this book! It is a super-simple story about non-violently standing up to bullies and how to show compassion in the face of cruelty. I want to buy a copy of this book for every first grader in the state.

    On that note…

    Recently Michigan was recently ranked the worst state in the nation for bullying. Having lived here for most of the last fifty years, I can confirm that bullying might as well be Michigan’s official state sport. And as bad as it was for me back in grade school in the 1970s and 1980s, it is immeasurably worse for kids now, with communications technologies providing ever newer and more inventive ways for one person to torment another from the safety of distance and anonymity.

    It’s no wonder the majority of voters in Michigan cast their ballots for Trump in 2016. Bullying is made up of equal parts sadism and cowardice, and Trump has both in such abundance that it leaves little room for anything else. The bootlick attitude of bully appeasers comes from the same place, psychologically, as does the compulsion to show contempt toward and victim-blame people less fortunate than ourselves. Cower upward, kick downward. That, in a nutshell, describes the entirety of the puddle of dog vomit which is the administration of our odious 45th president, his supporters, admirers, appeasers, enablers and lickspittles. As was pointed out nearly a year ago, the cruelty is the point.

    And that concludes the political commentary portion of this post. At some point I will do some long-form essays on the stochastic terrorism which our emasculated president commits with his every tweet, word and action.

    (Maybe I should break the non-book commentary out into separate posts.)

  • The Books of May

    Some interesting additions to the library this week. I took advantage of the Mayday sale at OR Books and picked up some titles to help give me some perspective and energy in this, the most stupid and sadistic timeline.

    The top row is all OR Books books. on the left is Beautiful Trouble, a primer for “carnivalesque realpolitik” which seems like a more and more necessary aesthetic as fascism reasserts itself in the Western world.

    Next to it is Dream or Nightmare, an exploration of taking the struggle against ascendant fascism to the realm of stories and myths. This makes sense, as there are no rational versions of pro-fascist/alt-right/neo-feudalist thought or actions, so applying reason in the fight against right-wing theocracies simply doesn’t work. Fight stories with stories.

    On the right is Welcome to the Greenhouse, a collection of stories exploring various facets of climate change. Also necessary, and not shelved in “current events.”

    In the second row, on the left, is Here: Poems for the Planet, a new poetry collection from Copper Canyon Press. Timely, all things considered, and a good companion to Welcome to the Greenhouse.

    In the middle is the latest issue of Poetry, which actually arrived a couple of weeks ago. I simply forgot to add it to that post.

    On the right is the newest issue of Pulphouse Magazine which I hope to dive into this weekend.

    On the reading side of things, what with upgrades to my relationship, as well as some upcoming family stuff, I have not had a lot of reading time. Still working my way through The Nine by Tracy Townsend, and so far it is excellent, interesting, and occasionally very weird. I am still also working through Jessica Comola’s poetry collection. With a little luck I will complete both this weekend. Then on to, uh, something new. Selah!

    On a side note, last night I watched the season finale of Game of Thrones, and I overall enjoyed it, though it did have some flaws and the last two seasons felt quite rushed. Scientific American has a long write-up about GoT and storytelling which puts a lot of my feelings in context. Definitely worth reading.

  • Links and Notes for the Week of March 3, 2019

  • Suddenly, A Stack of Books

    So I started this week expecting to maybe get one or two books from my various subscriptions, and maybe buy myself a little something. This in fact happened – the right-most book in the second row of the above photo (“Muslim”: A Novel) is the latest from Deep Vellum Publishing. Just to its left is Screaming Like War from Sault Ste. Marie poet Mark Senkus, which I picked up over the weekend while in the Upper Peninsula visiting my girlfriend’s family.

    All the rest of these books appeared unexpectedly.

    The bottom row consists of the contents of the new shipment from Ugly Duckling Presse. Four books of poetry, one of experimental prose, and Emergency INDEX, which is a listing of well over 100 performance art works in calendar year 2018. It’s all brilliant stuff, and I wish I had a couple of years free so I could bury myself in the beauty therein.

    The top row, and the first three titles in the second row, are books of poetry which I unexpectedly acquired when I attended the Evening of Literary Luminescence, a fundraiser for local literary organization Write616. Not surprisingly, almost all of the poetry is by local and regional writers, so extra bonus there.

    And now reading news:

    Last week I finished Scarborough and, needing something lighter, read Kelly Link‘s wonderful Origin Stories, which is a hardcover chapbook published by Subterranean Press.

    Currently I am over halfway through A People’s Future of the United States. It is, simply, an amazing collection of stories. They follow the theme of the possibility of hope standing against the logical outcome of the current (reactionary right-wing, racist, bigoted, sadistic, misogynistic, jingoist, xenophobic, capital-fetishizing, violence-loving, neo-fascist, Dominionist) political and social climate. The stories are beautiful, sad, infuriating, hopeful, astonishing, intelligent and above all necessary. Every imagined dystopian future in this book is easily extrapolated from the actions of the current dominant power structures. And each of these futures must be recognized and resisted.

    In other literary news, I am almost done re-integrating at Caffeinated Press and am at various stages in four projects: Issues 4.1, 5.1 and 5.2 of The 3288 Review, and layout work for the next edition of our Brewed Awakenings anthology. Other things are afoot as well, which will be revealed in the fullness of time. Selah!

  • Links and Notes for the Week of January 27, 2019

  • Links and Notes for the Week of January 6, 2019