Pride

Holding this carp was the proudest moment of my life.

Just So You Don't Feel Left Out

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: OCTOPUS MAGAZINE #8

Octopus Magazine will be accepting chapbook manuscripts of poetry from now until April 30, 2006, for its 8th issue, which will be a print issue available in winter of 06-07.

Octopus #8 will be a collection of eight separately bound chapbooks presented together. All eight will also be available individually and each chapbook will have a print run of 250 copies.

The chapbooks will be the first product of Octopus Books, the new small press created by the editors of Octopus Magazine.

For Submission Guidelines and other information, go to http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue07/html/contest.htm

Please help us spread the word about this project. Tell all your friends, all your students. Announce it on your blog, your listserv, etc.

Thanks for your submissions and your help. Looking forward.

Zachary Schomburg & Mathias Svalina
Octopus Magazine/Octopus Books

How Men

1. Where is the California deny?
2. This is a troubling lack of evidence.

How Men

1: Do you have a weblog?
2: No, I maintain an online journal.

Hot Diggity Dogger

I spent the majority of the weekend trying to find a way to use the names of hot dog cooking equipment in poems. How can you resist these:

"Steamin' Demon" Hot Dog Steamer
Lil` Diggity Slanted Hot Dog Grill
Diggity Hotdog Roller Grill
"Like Butter" Condiment Server
Slanted Diggity Hotdog Grill/Bun Cabinet
Hot Diggity Dogger
Gold metal Dogeroo Hot Dog Cooker
Three Tier Slanted Roller Grill
Lil’ Diggity Slanted Roller Grill

I'm pretty much willing to call Two Gallant's What the Toll Tells my favorite album of '06, if you want to read a review of it that sounds like the reviewer listened to half the record while cooking dinner, had what he thought was a sudden insight and never bothered to decide whether his supposed insight had anything to do with the actual record you can check out pitchfork. Pitchfork reminds me of the Wonder Bread factory that was in Richmond, VA. Biking by it smelled delicious, like a city full of fresh bread. But only the foolhardy would eat its fruits. Pitchfork is good for keeping up with what comes out, but its reviews range from awful to unreadable. Stylus Magazine & Tiny Mix Tapes are a little better. Stylus is better at actually writing the smart reviews Pitchfork attempts; Tiny Mix Tapes is better at getting the quirky review over quickly so that it doesn't linger like an SNL skit. Pitchfork did review Patrick Phalen's album last week, which I'm happy about.

Favorite Three Records (other than Two Gallants) From this Weekend
Band of Horses: Everything All the Time
Born Heller: Born Heller
Sibylle Baier: Colour Green

Favorite Three Books (other than Zukofsky) From this Weekend
Ada Limon: Lucky Wreck
Josh Bell: No Planets Strike (a re-read, I'm letting a student borrow it and I just picked it up and got engrossed when I didn't mean to (it is so disappointing for the Zoo Press poets I like that all this ridiculous stuff is going on, now the UNL Press has broken its connection with Zoo))
Karla Kelsey: Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary (she had me with the title, really intriguing book)

{addendum]

A friend pointed out that I make it seem as if it UNL Press is arbitrarily jerking Zoo Press around--I am aware of the terrible business dealings by Zoo and I understand why Kenyon Review & Paris Review & UNL Press all want nothing to do with the press. I fully agree with their descisions. I am only lamenting the fact that the good books that Zoo (not only have contracts for but actually) published are going to vanish.


Zach gave a fantastic reading on Friday. If you missed it you should look at yourself in the mirror and give yourself a big thumbs down.

In sad news it looks like we're going to have to cancel the April edition of The Clean Part Reading Series. We'll be rescheduling Michael Dumanis and Sabrina Orah Mark for the fall or spring. In the meantime we're working to bring you a great May reading.

I'm fascinated by this.

Showdown: Shanna Compton's "Two Friends, One Occasion" vs. Ernest Borgnine

Two Friends, One Occasion
by Shanna Compton

We met.
We swapped bicycles
to make it last.
What legs we had.
What adoration.

We were regular guys.
We went to bed
to keep it longer.
How appealing,
our lazy game.

We could forget
love. We could forget
his wife’s lawyer.
We wanted women.
We wanted much.

This poem by Shanna Compton was my first favorite poem in what is now one of my new favorite journals, Court Green. It is in Court Green 2 (a fantastic issue that you should order and read). While there are many other poems in the journal that I think are fantastic (Rachel Mortiz’s, Aaron Belz’s, Anna Moschovakis’ just off the top of my head), I’m still loving this poem because it has a particular aesthetic effect that I find so wonderful in Compton’s poetry. The experience of the poem is not the language, line and form on the page, rather this language sets up some space in me that is then filled in beyond the poem as object. In her best poems the poem itself is a conduit to an aesthetic event. This is not, however, in any way epiphanic, no wannabe zazen experience.

The deadpan language and syntax of this poem resist a readerly investment, yet from this limited palette and these concise prosodic parameters Compton comes up with a poem that both invite empathy and is full of surprises. “We met.” is about as straightforward and neutral statement about a relationship that one can make. The second line brings the poem into childhood, but the third line immediately undercuts that with a grasping tension. “What adoration” introduces the erotic elements of the poem, but in a way that makes me question it as well, there is a non-bootyful reading of this adoration available. But who would want that?

The second stanza tells us that they’re both guys and consummates the relationship. It seems to be a casual affair of sex. Nothing too shocking here. It is a game. OK, we’ve all been there. But the "to keep it longer" is disruptive. What is this "it"? Is this line a dick joke? The last two lines contain two of the only adjectives in the poem. In a poem this tight that is obviously important and the lines draw attention to the act of speaking. The adjectives move the speaker away from the experiences to speakignabout the experiences. Then I start to think about who is speaking—it is a we, but I can’t see this chanted, it’s not surreal. It is an I speaking as a we.

The third stanza drops the wife-bomb, making this relationship work on an entirely different level. “We wanted women” is so deadpan that it provides multiple readings. “We wanted much” while more abstract is also more direct. The unsayable nature of what they wanted is inarticulated in “much.” But it isn’t “they” it is “he.” There is an other character with a wife. The speaker can’t even express his individual It makes me want to cry.

The language of this seems to be straightforward, but upon further readings you can see a desperation below the surface. The assertion of “We were regular guys” could be just that, this is what guys can do. But after the last line of the poem rereading this line sounds too assertive, perhaps this speaker is trapped within an masculinity.

OK, I could continue this kind of reader-response thing, but I’m not so interested in that. What I’m interested in is what Compton is up to in her poems, which seems to be to create a set of language that will be read quickly and somewhat neutrally in order for an event to happen after the reading of the poem. The way she crafts a poem has a deceptively simple quality to a first read. But this poem is so full of multiple readings and tensions. The poem results from the poem on the page. Not that it makes you ponder it later, nor is the last line an O. Henry twist of irony, the thing that I look for in reading a poem, that aesthetic event, happens after the reading.




Ernest Borgnine

When we’re talking Ernest Borgnine what we’re really talking about is Ernest Borgnine in Poseidon Adventure. The gruff, pig-headed, muscle-bound cop who is crazy in love with his ex-prostitute wife. Did I mention muscle-bound? I couldn’t find a good picture on line to demonstrate this, but he was ripped!

The thing about Borgnine is that he is so active and contorted on screen that watching him is a unique kind of experience. While Gene Hackman smoothly (for the most part) negotiates his way through the awful, awful dialogue of the film, Borgnine is a sweaty, dirty, flexing, twisting, screaming package of energy. While his acting in the film is bad by my standards (sorry Ernest, loved your work in Sky Wolf), he is a wonder on the screen. Maybe it’s because I just read Deleuze’s book on Bacon, but he seems to contain a violence in him that is not malevolent toward anyone but a violence of experience. He mouth opens too wide, his biceps flex too much, he hunches in his linesman’s stance of a posture.

The Decision
Man, this is tough. To give Shanna a fair shot I should focus on just one scene in the film. Say the scene where Hackman splits off to find the engine room and Borgnine and Hackman make their famous "15 Minute Deal."

It's still tough.

Compton's poem is damn good.

Borgnine is so very Borgnine.

OK, I have to call it on irony. Inevitably talking about Ernest Borgnine involves a serious slathering of irony, and I just can't award this one to the ironic champ.

Shanna Compton's "Two Friends, One Occasion" Wins!!!

Borgnine packs a mean punch, but he doesn't have the staying power. he was drooping after the fifth round, dead on his feet by the ninth. He's still too strong (and muscular!) of a fighter for Compton to get in a KO punch but the judges were clear on this one.










In less combative news Zachary Schomburg, the man with the man suit made of poems, will be reading today at 4PM at Sur Tango on P St. The address is somethingsomethingsomething P St. If you are in Lincoln and you are not there, it is beacuase you are being square.

Ideas in Poetry

The idea
Is not
In the mind
That can cut off
Our bodies.
To perceive a winged horse
Affirms wings on a horse,
They stay
Unless another idea
With the body as object
Removes wings from a horse
From the reason.

--Zukofsky

Do Not Doubt My Resolute Will

So a bunch of my students emailed me to tell me they wouldn't make it to class today, about a quarter of the class and those are only the ones who informed me. So I emailed them and cancelled class. Then fifteen minutes later the school cancels the rest of the day.

I jumped the gun. Now my students know I'm weak.

They used to see me as a strong authority figure, imparting the truth about poetry to them. Now I'm more like one of those chewing gums packed in their own hermetically sealed packaging bubble. Tasty, though.

Here's a poem to remind you of my strength:

His Small Intestine

His small intestine is a girl,
a girl wearing a fatty,
blood-filled skirt.
She does not like to
watch television.
She prefers a walk
in Fort Greene park.

He went to the park
& strangers in sweaters
carrying popsicles
asked him how
he got his small intestine
to be so girl-shaped.

He responded:
It is girl-shaped
because girls
are girl-shaped.
A melting popsicle
the color
of cuticles.

His mother was a girl
when he was born.
She married the butcher.
Her name was Omerta.
She severed the butcher’s
blood-stained hand
with a cleaver.

Wintery Remix

The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow

That came when we wanted it to snow?

--Ashbery

Wintery Mix

So who doesn't love the little engine that could? I grew up in Fairfax and Mason was sort of the default commuter school for kids in the area. When I was, i think, 15 I saw Adrienne Rich read there and it was tremendous to see a big crowd packed in for a poetry reading. During my teens I saw a handful of readings there, mostly of the Rich, Komunyakaa type world but it was always exciting for me. Who would have thought they'd be rocking UNC?

In local news the radio says that Nebraska is "bracing" for 12-15 inches of snow. That is more snow than I can use. If anyone wants some snow backchannel me and I'll email you some. I can send files of up to 100 Mb.

I'm responding to Mong-Lan's Why is the Edge Always Windy?, which I find fascinating and frustrating. When I read her work in journals (I never read her first book) I found it drop-dead beautiful. This book is not, but I think intentionally unbeautiful. It both participates in the economy of lyric beauty and openly distrusts it.

And the telephone teaches?

It is no small thing to
hearten men
But the quiet cannot speak
Unless a tie sustain their dead--
That the pure body bear them up
With their light it receives
Pure oil beaten for light,
To glow--not to grovel.


When dust lights up is it even?
And when men count as they have given
Do they not slight what each is?



If it helps, diffract crystals and tracers.
Rabbi S said:
-- You learn from everything
What man has made
Has also something to teach us.
His chassid jumped:
--Does a train?
--Yes, in a second
One may miss everything.
--A telegraph?
--Every word weighs
--And the telephone teaches?
--Also. What we say
Here is heard there.


--Zukofsky

The Clean Part Cleans up the Summertime

So any of you familiar with parts and cleanliness probably already know that April 8th will be the next of The Clean Part Reading Series starring the dashing and talented poetry of Michael Dumanis and Sabrina Orah Mark.

It looks like we've just sealed the next reading. Saturday June 17th: Paula Cisewski, whose book Upon Arrival can be found at Black Ocean Press, Sara Fox and Juliet Patterson will hop on down to our little burg and grace Lincoln with their poetry. Should have some excellent late-summer fall readers lined up pretty soon as well.

Zach and I rolled & tubed all the broadsheets from AWP and sent them out in the mail. So if you're expecting one from us, look for it in the mail. We'll be using the mail to transport the broadsheets to you. We're mailing them. Check the mail.

I'm trying to finish Zukofsky's "A" in one marathon 24-hour period. I forgot how utterly thrilling of a book it is, it's a pageturner, a barnburner. Still don't think I'll finish it today

Trying on Iowa City for Size

Went to Iowa City for the day, saw the Akron/Family put on an amazing show. These guys can balance relentless acid-rock with fragile songs of simple beauty, and they don't even stand up from their chairs throughout the entire show.

I saw Dean Young at the (highly overpriced but somewhat nice) coffeehouse, had a brief chat but I didn't want to overstay my welcome. Then when I looked up a minute later he was gone. I'm not positive that I scared him away, but it is possible. I am very intimidating. Trust me. Even after the AWP bookstravaganza I couldn't resist the siren call of Prairie Lights' poetry section. I picked up Barbara Guest's Forces of Imagination and looked at many other books that I would buy if I were made of many moneys.

Went to the Iowa natural History Museum, which was fun, and the Art Museum, which other than the Chagall and the Grant Wood print and the Beckman triptych was pretty weak.

Today I read lots of Zukofsky.

Reading

I'm heading to Iowa City today to see Akron/Family at The Mill, so I should be able to get AWP off the brain.

I read all the Kitchen Press chapbooks yesterday and they are fine, fine chapbooks that you should hold in your hands and read and cherish and then later the day that you read them pick them up to remind yourself of something you read and then you'll read it to your boyfriend or girlfriend and say "isn't that awesome?" but your boyfriend or girlfriend will be working on his or her resume and will kind of nod and say "yeah, yeah" and you'll feel a little embarrassed about the whole thing but then you'll reread the poem and think to yourself "it is awesome." If I were to rank them in order of most polite to least polite I would rank them like this:
1. (most polite) Chris Tonelli's {Wide Tree}
2. (mediumly polite) Matt Rasmussen's Fingergun
3. (somewhat less polite than 2) Justin Marks' You Being You by Proxy
4. (least polite) Ana Bozicevic-Bowling's Morning News


I also read the two WinteRed Press Chaplets I got, Wang Ping's Paradise and Dan Beachy-Quick's Sleep/Echo/Song. If there was a fight between these two chaplets I would not root for one over the other, rather I would step in between the two chaplets and say "Please Wang Ping's Paradise and Dan Beachy-Quick's Sleep/Echo/Song, let's try to be reasonable, let's try to work this out.

I am also enjoying Jen Tynes' The End of Rude Handles, Wayne Miller's chapbook What Night Says to the Empty Boat (which has an exceedingly dashing author photo), Joshua Clover's The Totality for Kids, Mark Yakich's The Making of Collateral Beauty, DJ Dolack's The Sad Meal and Don Mee Choi's translation of Kim Hyesoon's When the Plug Gets Unplugged.

The best two things I got in Austin are The Pines Vol 1 & 2. So lovely.

Best AWP Photo

Showdown: AWP vs. an awl

VS.






Overall Good Times.

AWP: It was a real pleasure staying with Adam, Zach and Brandon Shimoda. Our bookfair table became the Octopus/Typo/Copper Nickel/Burning Chair/Cannibal/Lit/Kitchen Press/The Pines/New School Summer Institute table, which was fine by me. It was good to meet Matt, Katie, Justin, Teague and all the rest. Readings were great, seeing people was great, discussing upcoming projects with lots of poeple was exciting and inspiring.

An awl: An awl can provide a lot of good times, but the good times are pretty much limited to the pleasure one takes from a good, clean puncture.

AWP 1, awls 0

Books & Journals.

AWP: I have a stack of brand new journals, books and chapbooks that I have to dig into this week. Luckily it is spring break, so I can get a lot of work done finally. It was hell getting my books from Push-Pull Press back to Lincoln, they were so heavy I had to pay extra for my bags. i hope you saw their books. They are seriously heavy. Physically, not metaphysically.

An awl: I’m not sure an awl could read a book. It could be used in the production of a handbouns journal or book, though.

AWP 2, awls 0

Aesthetic appeal.

AWP: People liked our broadsheets. So many thanks to Lara Glenum and Jennifer Knox for allowing us to make the broadsheets and signing them at the conference. Thanks also to Eugene Ostashevsky and Donald Revell, though they were not there to sign them. We sold out of all but a handful of the broadsheets and people seemed to enjoy the design work of the talented and handsome Denny Schmickle. I like that our broadsheets were unlike any I’d ever seen before. All but a handful sold, the rest will be available on the octopus Books website as soon as that is up, or you can back channel me or Zach to inquire.

An awl: There was this one awl in my dad’s toolbox that was old and worn, the wooden handle blackened by long use. It was pretty beautiful. Though i doubt it really was I like to think it was once my grandfather's.

AWP 2, awls 1

Effectiveness

AWP: People seem interested and even perhaps excited about issue #8 of Octopus. It feels a little creepy having a schpiel about some project that I’m in love with and to which I’m devoted but I think the final product will outweigh any creepiness involved in promotion. I am crazy-excited about it.

An awl: Never any creepiness involved in the use of an awl. You have a thing you need to poke a hole in and then you grab your awl and you poke a hole in the thing, QED.

AWP 2, awls 2

Transcendance

AWP: Hearing Lara Glenum read at the Action Books reading. The moment she started reading I knew that this was the reading I had come to hear. I was in a weird mood because an hour earlier I had heard an incredibly bad, horribly bad reading by a famous poet, let’s just call her (for the sake of privacy) Manuel Noriega. Glenum’s reading kind of revitalized me, reminded me of what it is I love in poetry.

An awl: Awls are pretty grounded objects. They tend not to transcend.

AWP 3, awls 2

Highlights.

AWP: Sitting in the Hilton hotel room after the Effing Press, etc party, drinking Shinker Bock and passing the computer around to write a collaborative piece with Zach, Adam, Brandon Shimoda, Josh Marie Wilkinson, Matt Henrikson, Katie Henrikson and Betsy Wheeler. Watching Zach steal the show at the Lit reading. The first time someone came up to our table and said "So these are the broadsheets everyone has been talking about." Adding hand-written sign to our table. Getting matching tattoos with Denis Johnson and Naomi Shihab Nye after a long night of drinking Cisco; our tattoos read AWP 4 EVER!

An awl: I don’t think I’ve ever actually used an awl. Maybe in shop class to poke holes in a black leather wrist band when I was 12. Not much of a highlight. I probable thought I would look cool with a black leather wrist band and then I put it on and realized that it actually emphasized my wussiness.

AWP 4, awls 2

Social

AWP: Hanging out with friends: I got to see Josh Poteat, Allison Titus, GC Waldrep, Mark Yakich, Anne Boyer, Matthew Dillon, Pablo Prescheria, Greg Donovan and bunches of others. Would have liked to have talked to all of them longer, but it’s good to see them. i met some great new people, but I don't just want to list their names here because that would be boring.

An awl: Awls grow socially tedious pretty quickly.

AWP 5, awls 2

Poking Holes in Things: Our Octopus Magazine buttons I guess poke tiny holes. There was a moment at the hotel room when Matt needed a needle for Cannibal. Could've used an awl then.

Awls are very good for this purpose.

AWP 5, awls 3

Surprises

AWP: At the Lit reading some angry guy heckled Chris Tonelli by yelling “Epigraphs aren’t fucking poems, douchebag!” And then he stormed our, clenched fists and stomping feet.

An awl: An awl can have deadly surprises.

AWP 5, awls 4

Best Readings

AWP: Hoa Ngyuen and Joe Massey at the Effing party, Mark Yakich and Ilya Kaminsky at the Tupelo, Lara Glenum at Action Books, Danielle Pafunda, Adam Clay, Matt Henrikson and Zach at the Lit reading.

An awl: This one isn’t fair to the awls, so I’m going to call it a tie.

AWP 6, awls 5

Handholdability

AWP: AWP did not fit in your hand.

An awl: The average awl will always fit in your hand.

AWP 6, awls 6


IT'S A TIE!!!

AWP and the awl are so closely matched that one can only marvel at them both.

Dream Come True

Someone came to this blog by googling "Starling Pie."

Watched the final product of Robbie Wilkins' film last night. It's called Room Tone. It takes stories told by a bunch of us and links them together so that they seem to create one dislocated voice. Beautiful timing in the editing, rich color in the lighting, I thought it was great. Then again I'm in it, so who am I to say. Afterwards I hung out for a bit and Robbie's three-year old neice Adeline danced to some Warren G songs.

I'm trying to pick the best flying-to-Austin music for my ipod. Flatlanders and Steve Earl and Lucinda Williams are all frontrunners. I kinda like-like this Four Guitars cd I picked up this weekend. Maybe I'll just keep that on repeat.

If you're in NY this week, stop by Pete's Candy Store on Friday. I have much love for Brandon Som's poetry:

Jerry Williams & Brandon Som

This Friday March 10th -- 7pm -- FREE

Jerry Williams' first collection of poems, Casino of the Sun (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2003) was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His poetry and creative nonfiction have
appeared in American Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, and other places. Jerry is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.

Brandon Som is originally from Arizona where he earned his B.A. in English. He has an M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. He has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as, Duquesne University, Chatham College, and for the Semester at Sea Program. In 2004, he received a Walker Fellowship to the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, West Branch, Black Warrior Review, Indiana Review, and McSweeney's. He currently lives in Brooklyn and works for a health food store.

Only at Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer Street, Brooklyn

Received G.C. Waldrep's The Batteries yesterday in the mail. I'd already read almost all of these in the Georgia Review and found them stunning then, but I'm happy to have the chapbook now. Waldrep continually impresses me for the range of his aesthetic approaches, from playful operational poems to poems like these, which have the kind of knife-like precision of idea that I find so impressive. Waldrep is definitely in my shortlist of best poets of the generation.

Heading to Austin on Wednesday for the AWP fun & silliness. This weekend is as a flurry of preparations for that, and an even more flurious time of PhD-school work. if you're going to be in Austin stop by the Octopus Magazine table and say hello. At the very least you receive a caring, compassionate shoulder to cry on and a button.

Showdown: Alan Trammell 1981 Topps Baseball Card vs. Brenda Iijima's selection from Eco Quarry Bellwether

When I was a kid I collected baseball cards. I had tons of them. Somehow I think that the same impulse that led me to store shoeboxes upon shoeboxes packed with these little pieces of cardboard now leads me to want to read the latest journals, the newest poets. It's why I have books on my shelves that I have not read.

For some reason this Alan Trammell 1981 Topps baseball card has always stuck in my memory. I had cards that I treasured more as a kid, an old Jim Rice, Wade Bogg's rookie, weird Darryl Strawberry cards from cereal boxes, yet this card is the one that pops to mind when someone says "baseball card."

It is a memorable composition. Topps really knew what they were doing at this point, simple, somewhat folksy. The following year they switched to a style that incorporated more designy elements and even by the time I stopped with baseball cards in 6th grade or so they were headed down the road of X-treme aesthetics. The purple works well against the black. The team name "Tigers" has a cute look to it on the hat. But really its charms are brutish in nature.

But I think this connection of mine for this card must have a deeper meaning. I have to look into my personal relationship with Alan Trammell as a public figure.

Alan Trammell
Alan Stuart Trammell

Bats Right, Throws Right
Height 6' 0", Weight 175 lb.

Debut September 9, 1977
Final Game September 29, 1996
Born February 21, 1958 in Garden Grove, CA
Drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the 2nd round of the 1976 amateur draft

Career Batting Average: .285
On Base Percentage: .352
Slugging .415

www.baseballlibrary.com says this:

"Trammell and Lou Whitaker formed a keystone combination that surpassed all others in consecutive years together, yet Alan emerged as the acknowledged leader of the Tigers. After a Most Valuable Player year (1977) in the Southern League, the righthander graduated to the Tigers. Slight of build, Trammell proved a complete offensive and defensive player. He led the AL in sacrifice hits in 1981 and 1983. After an off-season in 1982, he was AL Comeback Player of the Year in 1983 at age 25. His 30 steals in 1983 were the most for a Detroit shortstop since 1917 and his .319 batting average was best among all AL righthanders. The Tigers reeled off 11 straight winning seasons with Trammell at shortstop. He was voted smartest and best defensive infielder by AL managers in 1984, drove in all of Detroit's runs in Game Four of the World Series, tied a five-game Series record with nine hits, and was named Series MVP.

A persistent elbow injury, first suffered in 1983, threatened Trammell's stardom. After a subpar 1985, a more muscular Trammell helped Detroit have an all-20 home run infield in 1986. Surprisingly, Sparky Anderson moved Trammell to the cleanup spot in Detroit's 1987 offense. The once-scrawny infielder rose to the occasion with a career season, hitting .343 with 28 HR, 105 RBI, 205 hits, and 109 runs. He narrowly missed the league MVP award. Part of an era of shortstops that includes Ozzie Smith, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Robin Yount, Trammell has held his own in all-around ability. He is among Detroit's all-time leaders in doubles, runs scored, hits, and stolen bases."

That is a pretty impressive career. And yet Trammell does not come immediately to mind as a superstar. And maybe this card shows why. Cheek full of dip, somewhat dazed expression on his face, Trammell could never convey the Wizard of Oz's charisma or Ripken's stoic control. Unless he does something truly dazzling as manager I doubt he's going to end up in the hall of fame.

And yet if you flip the card over you'll see something beyond the stats.



At first I thought that marrying his highschool sweetheart on his birthday was going to be the edge that Trammell would need to nudge past Iijima. This tiny image gives him a greater depth, I begin to feel for the man. But then on second thought I begin to wonder why he would get married on his birthday. Is this an act of egotism? Is his wife just another gift for this guy? And then I wonder why Topps chose to include this piece of information. It would have been more beneficial to Trammell's image to simply state that he married his high school sweetheart. Perhaps they were actively intending to undercut him. Is stealing home a coded reference to Trammell's cavalier treatment of his personal life?

After putting a little pressure on this card I start to see it as both a public presentation, which implies glorification, and also an attempt to portray Trammell badly. The dunderheaded look, the passive aggressive dig. Perhaps this card speaks to a backstory that I can only hint toward. I begin to think about why this card, which seems so forgettable, has stuck in my head. I can't answer this question, but it does. It works.



Brenda Iijima

from ECO QUARRY BELLWETHER (you can see the correct formatting on Tool A Magazine where it was originally published)


Erotic
Rebellion

( )


Rebellion erotic nodding
Saturation is reached: biawack; mask, posture
Inverted pyramid, ruffled water
From the well
Translucency in telling promissory—then
Mouth of words gulch dote kindle, give illusion


( )


Slip over version gel


( )


Assassination illustration


( )


Spillway department


( )


Childhood, flint and wedge


( )


Formations in a subsequent hush


( )


Anguished, blankly—earnest refugee


( )


Anesthetized truly, Lake Shore Drive


( )


Flock of seagulls hover in the embroidered dawn
Glows the cathedral air
Peacefulness of creamy orange
Salt splashed metamorphosis snowfield
Touch approaching festivals


This is the poem that most struck me from the latest issue of Tool A Magazine. I immediately liked the form that created not only a space between the fragments but with the use of parentheticals created a space within the airy space. It seems to me like an enclosed, private space within the parentheses. I kind of took this as a direct recognition of, if not a tongue in cheek response to the idea of hermeticism in fragmentedly lyric poetry.

To be honest the title and opening does not do much for me. Erotic rebellion might be an interesting concept, some kind of Bataille thing or it might be a joke of some kind but both of those words feel weighted down, deadened. But the poem explodes with "Saturation is reached: biawack; mask, posture/Inverted pyramid, ruffled water/From the well" These lines push me forward both through the suprise of the new images and the energy of the sounds. I almost feel my tongue slapping against my palate. Then my favorite phrase in the poem: "Translucency in telling promissory." This leads to an almost ars poetica moment with "then/ Mouth of words gulch dote kindle, give illusion." This opening sets up the physicality of the language in this poem, not only the words as material but the way language and sound push you around. It makes her fragmentation concrete, rather than airy.

I'm not going to explicate the fragments because that would be a bit boring but as a whole they pull me through both an uraban space and a childhood time. In this respect the erotic rebellion could be a kind of response to this amalgamated image pool. I love where the last short fragment leads me: "Anesthetized truly, Lake Shore Drive." This makes me giggle evey time I read the poem.

The closing stanza mirrors the weight of the opening, begging to be read as a conclusion in response to the opening. But whereas the opening sets me into language this closing sets me in representational images of a familiar and not unpleasant world. But the the last two lines, alomst like a sonnet's concluding couplet, turn me again: "Salt splashed metamorphosis snowfield/ Touch approaching festivals." These are challenging lines to read out loud, again reiterating the physicality of language. I wonder if this physicality could be a kind of eroticism, the more the tongues slithers aroudn the mouth, the more sensual a poem becomes as a language event.

This is a good poem, probably one of my favorites from the last month. I've read it a bunch of times but I'm not "in love" with it. Great batting average, team leadership, occassional home runs, soft hands in the field, but I don't know if it's hall of fame material.

So in a way this should be a tie. Iijima & Trammell 1981 Topps Baseball Card should each be awarded a blue ribbon with gliter on it.

But I'm afraid our judge is not a fair and honest judge. I've had this card for nineteen years. Somehow in that time it has been packed up with my belongings through the 20 or 30 places I've lived since leaving home. It is dogeared, yes. It is not a thing of value, yes. It is not a compelling image, yes. It is not a particularly compelling player, yes. And yet I think about it. Something that I can not quite put my finger on with this card has hooked me. I think I might be "in love" with this card. And so, today it is the winner.

Alan Trammell 1981 Topps Baseball Card narrowly defeats Brenda Iijima's selection from Eco Quarry Bellwether.

If I were Brenda Iijima's selection from Eco Quarry Bellwether i would appeal this one, I think the judge is biased.