The word of the century is crump.
You can comment on these posts again.
I had a great time with everyone at AWP. Getting punched in the ribs and thug rap in minivans and reading poems in elevators and eating pizza at 4:30am and cab drivers who speak five languages and this guy performing a Rastafari/Tupac mix in his boxers, in a bar. Selling books. Buying books. Being reinvigorated again after spending time with the friendliest people I’ve ever met and seeing their beautiful art. Their belief.
I’m now a part of the brilliant Understanding Campaign. The symbol at the top of the site is Arabic and means ‘understanding.’ Learn it. Say it out loud; it’s pronounced fihm. Write it. I think it looks like E.T. on his back, with a mullet, tossing a soccer ball in the air. What do you think it looks like?
J.A. Tyler generously reviewed The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney, and concludes with this:
There are places where the wading through of The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney is deep or rough or super complex, where it takes something other than a simple read to find Higgs’ meaning and willingly subvert the text alongside Mooney, but in the end, the mud-stuck footsteps through the lake of this book are worth it, every page, to come out with Mooney or Higgs, or without them perhaps, on the other side of literature.
And Okla Elliot somehow managed to track down Marvin and speak to him. Don’t ask how; my postcards and faxes and bouquets have gone unacknowledged for years. Marvin says this:
OE: Do you have plans to write another book any time soon?
MKM: No. Literature is now an exhausted medium.
Christopher Higgs also gives impeccable advice to artists (my highlights in bold):
…question everything, always challenge, learn that failure and rejection are positive things, subscribe to at least three non-literary magazines in three completely different fields (for me, right now, it’s National Geographic, Juxtapose, and Wine Enthusiast – last year it was Seed, Esquire, and Art in America), forget politics: it has nothing to do with you and any time or energy you invest in it is wasted time and energy you could be using productively to learn and experience and create, do not choose sides, do not agree or disagree, embrace contradiction, watch cinema from as many different countries and time periods as you possibly can, seek out unclassifiable music, spend time in unfamiliar locations, expose yourself to new activities, go to the opera, go to the ballet, go to the planetarium, travel a lot, observe as much as you can, pay attention to the way people talk and the way people listen, eat strange food, watch at least one sporting event but instead of thinking about it as entertainment think about it as narrative, ABR = Always Be Researching, carry a notebook and pen at all times, remember it is more important to ask questions than give or receive answers, seek to open up and never close down, seek to seek, do not seek to find, fall in love with language, think obsessively about language, about words, about sentences, about paragraphs, about the sound of words, the weight of words, the shape of words, the look of words, the feel of words, the placement of words, and most importantly be your biggest advocate, think of yourself as a genius, think of yourself as an artist, think of yourself as a creator, do not despair, do not listen to criticism, do not believe naysayers, they are wrong, you are right, they are death and you are life, they destroy and you create, the world needs what you have to say.
And Jonathan Schwarz thinks everyone should turn regular Fridays into Five Dollar Fridays. I’ll be doing this from now on. Here’s how: every Friday, give $5 to someone who’s made something you like online. Something like this:
PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Independent web videos.
