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Rockstars Stab At Literature, Namedrop Stabs Them

February 8, 2010 by Sarah

Dear readers of Namedrop – all six of you (I see Jayce! and Jason! and Michael! And Svetlana!) what lengths I go to for you. What investigative journalism. I don’t know what that means.

But do you know what I did for you, dear readers? I read Jewel’s A Night Without Armour in public for you. That was kind of embarrassing. I slogged through a whole three pages of Nick Cave’s And The Ass Saw The Angel, but I didn’t know what in the hell he was talking about. At Barnes & Noble, with the clandestine stealth of a spy, I transcribed some of Jill Scott’s poetry for you.

I even purchased Billy Corgan’s book of poetry, David Berman’s book of poetry, and Steve Earle’s book of short stories, and I read almost all of them! I love you, too.

Let’s get started right away with a l’il ditty from Jill Scott because I think you’re really going to like it.

from THE MOMENTS, THE MINUTES, THE HOURS: THE POETRY OF JILL SCOTT

POTTY TRAINED

I pushed &
I grunted &
I labored &
I squeezed &
You splashed &
I cleaned &
I stood &
I flushed
&
I don’t even think of you now

I took this poem at face value until someone pointed out that it might be a metaphor for a shit boyfriend. Either way. Wow.

DOGHOUSE ROSES
Stories by STEVE EARLE

Ugh. More stories about how LA will suck the life out of you, more stories about how everyone in LA is in the entertainment industry. I’m sick of it. It’s a boring conceit and it’s not even true, and besides, Bret Easton Ellis does it better. More I-wish-I-was-Ernest-Hemingway-stories about strangers in Mexico. One stand-out story, called Wheeler County was about an unlikely friendship between a cop and a hitchhiker, and at their best these stories were like great American road songs set to prose. But in general, the problem with them is that Earle is all tell, no show. Which means the reader has do a lot of work. Too much for me. I didn’t finish the book. Frankly, the only thing I want Steve Earle explaining to me right now is why the current Wire song sucks.

BLINKING WITH FISTS
BILLY CORGAN

What a title! I think it should have been called Blinking With My Anus. The first poem in this book (which was a national bestseller? Really?) is called The Poetry of My Heart which apparently means that Corgan’s heart is cheesy and trite:

“Revealing now the poetry of my heart
Think birds in flight and you will start to come close
As faces come from the darkness familiar
To greet you hello again….”

And on and on it goes, until I barfed.

ACTUAL AIR
DAVID BERMAN (of The Silver Jews)

So, I get this in the mail from Amazon, and the first thing I see are endorsements from The New Yorker, James Tate, and Billy Collins. Collins, a former Poet Laureate writes that, “…Berman possesses the most engrossing new poetic voice I have heard in many years of hard listening.”

That’s some recommendation. Imagine how many poets would gnaw their right arm right off for a blurb like that? I was a little cynical at first, but I read the whole book through in my first sitting and I really liked it. No cool posturing. No irony, but also not so earnest that it hurts. Just a clear appreciation and interest in language and people. I particularly admired his selections from Cantos for James Michener and A Letter From Isaac Asimov To His Wife Janet, On His Deathbed (in stark contrast to Jewel’s poem on a similar theme, entitled Bukowski’s Widow, in which Jewel imagines herself thus and writes: “You’d say time knew nothing/ well now you’re gone/ and time is all I have left.”)

Here’s the first stanza from his poem Self-Portrait at 28:

I know it’s a bad title
but I’m giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly cancelled by sunlight
when the entire hill is appproaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think “at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand”
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.

That’s all she wrote, guys. I wanted to cover Henry Rollins but having once read Black Coffee Blues I couldn’t justify spending any money to buy a book that makes me feel like I’m getting yelled at, and Jeff Tweedy’s Adult Head was going for a whopping fifty bucks on Amazon. In other news, this column will be out of commission for a little while. I’ll be working in Vancouver for the next two weeks and then I’m going on vacation. In the meantime, suggestions for future columns are encouraged.

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