Octopus #12

Oh, what's this? A new magazine? With 8 fabulous poets? Being introduced by their peers? And lots of great reviews?

So it is.

Issue Twelve of Octopus Magazine is up. Go put your eyes in it. www.octopusmagazine.com




Here's the announcement email I might have sent to you already. I'm writing this from Mexico, by the way, which is awesome.



1. Octopus Magazine #12
2. Heather Christle's The Difficult Farm
3. Open reading in August for #13 (the Recovery Projects issue)
4. Forthcoming 2009 titles
5. Update on 2009 April Reading Period

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1.

Issue 12 of Octopus Magazine is now online.
:: http://www.octopusmagazine.com ::

The issue features eight poets, each introduced by a peer.

Lynn Xu
Heather Christle
Jennifer L. Knox
Tony Tost
Cathy Park Hong
Christopher Stackhouse
Amanda Nadelberg
Kristi Maxwell

Introduced by

Katie Peterson
Lisa Olstein
K. Silem Mohammad
The Lucipo Poetics List
Arda Collins
Rebecca Wolff
Chris Fischbach
Ann M. Fine

The issue also contains reviews of

Farrah Field, Dobby Gibson, Thomas Hummel,
Carrie Hunter, Ellen Kennedy, Melissa Kwasny,
Helena Mesa, Vanessa Place & Robert Fitterman,
Robyn Schiff, Jeremy Schmall & Justin Taylor

Reviewed by

Dan Magers , Ben Kopel, Sommer Browning,
Kathleen Rooney, Dave Madden, Steven Karl,
Karla Kelsey, David Carillo, & David Sewell

2.

We are happy to announce that Heather Christle’s The Difficult Farm will be available for this coming semester.

The Difficult Farm is available for Pre-Order now at:
http://www.octopusbooks.net.

3.

In August we will be reading for issue 13 of Octopus. In addition to reading submissions of poetry, we are making a call for Recovery Projects.

Recovery projects are celebrations of a single book that you feel people should be reading but are not reading--books and poets off the radar. They should be about 1000 words, about a book that is at least 20 years old & out of print, but all those are flexible. The only real requirement is that the recovery inspires a reader to want to track down that book and read it asap. If you have an idea for a recovery, first pitch it to the editors.

4.

Octopus Books forthcoming titles in 2009:

Boris by the Sea by Matvei Yankelevich
Official Release Date: Nov. 1, 2009

40 Watts by CD Wright (chapbook)
Expected Release Date: Sept 1, 2009

5.

The editors are still diligently and anonymously reading April manuscripts. We expect to make an announcement about 2010 publications by late August. Thank you for your patience.

The Hurt Locker Is A Pretty Good Film, But Far From The Masterpiece All Those Reviews Claim It Is, Making Its Standing Among Critics Interesting To Me

First off, I forgot going into the theater today that The Hurt Locker was directed by the same woman who directed Point Break. But that makes so much sense, as it continues that Swayze-esque romanticization of male alienation with civilized society. In The Hurt Locker we have that familiar male character who only 'gets it' in the middle of the most stressful wartime experience (as counterpointed by a funny but overwrought series of soldier-back-at-home cliches). Then through a serial set of experiences we watch him be cool under pressure & wildly, nearly psychotically, inappropriate at other moments.

In short, this movie is going to be a classic for all those creepy teens who can't get enough of Apocalypse Now because they wish they could have such cinematic angst, as compared to their commonplace angst. It's extremely entertaining & fulfills plenty of war movie cliches as if it didn't know they were cliches. And it's a manly man film about who is the manliest of the men & how to be a real man you gotta be a little crazy, dude.

What bugged me while watching it was that the film portrays itself as a day-in-the-life film: no political agenda, no nonsense, just the view from the ground up in Iraq. But it takes great pains to hyper-stylize its explosion moments, thereby having it's realism cake & eating its Bad Boys 2 style action moments as well. Additionally, it also has Thin Red Line like moments of the rare, mysterious beauty of the details of being in the middle of things. All these different modes make the film kind of jumbled, like it's wearing two hats to an important party because they are both cool hats.

The 'lyric' moments are visually trite, working more as attempts at emotional establishing shots than anything fascinating unto themselves. But the action pieces are rad. And the emo-male moments are pretty affecting. In all it's an entertaining film. What confuses me is why outlets like the NYT & Time have been waxing our cars about it so vociferously. You could pretty much hear drops of AO Scott's saliva hitting the floor when reading his review.

Is it simply because it's a cool action film set in the war, whereas all the films about the Iraq/Afghanistan/Elsewhere films have been so clearly set by an political slant? Is it refreshing to them to get back to a Black Hawk Down style movie of badass war action?

Is it because so many action movies of late have sucked so much that a good action movie seems amazing now? Every anticipated action film has dudded out this summer (though I hear Crank 2 is awesome, just not so anticipated), so maybe The Hurt Locker allows a critic to have a pet action film among the films that critics are professionally obliged to review positively.

Is it because the film, with its no-agenda veneer, is so firmly supportive of the mythos of the American soldier as an ethical renegade? The film's claim to not have a political agenda, which nearly every review mentions as a positive feature of it, is really a tacit propaganda for the US military. It plays to the young male sense of alienation & implies that they'll truly understand themselves at war, regardless of the ideology of the war. Does this relaxation of ideology allow the critics to sink their teeth into the film?

I'm unclear, but the rabid support for the film is far more intriguing to me than the quality of the film itself.

This Is Where Babies Come From

My Name is Mathias, but I Go by Frohawk Fourfeathers

Sunburns aside, Denver is real good so far. I'm excited about the open spaces & bike paths. I like that the streets are full of the smell of wildflowers rather than human waste, like much of my old town. I like that we live next to a smallish Whole Foods. J & I had some great Vietnamese food with N & S tonight. E & A are coming over tomorrow. Soon we'll have the whole alphabet here.

I bought a vacuum today.

Enough about me. Let's talk about Uuvvwwz. There was a positive Pitchfork review of them a few weeks back, but like most of the pitchfork reviews, it's better not to read it. I like them very much. They are a rock band from Lincoln, Nebraksa & they sort of sound like the geographic center of a lot of awesome music. By that i mean there are reference points people can use to understand or describe their music (no-wave & neo-no-wave stuff in particular) but they sort of pull in from a lot of directions & make this music that is wholly its own & totally awesome.

I have this theory music trends about small cities. It's really boring. Want to hear it? Here goes.

Hip New Sounds arrive via a mixture of ideation & consensus in cities like NY, Chicago & SF. Then the Hip New Sounds get exported into other parts of America. By Hip New Sounds i don't mean good music, which happens everywhere, but music that gets on the covers of magazines & gets fervid reviews in places outside of music-nerd-holes. By the time they are exported, the Hip New Sounds are already outdated & deemed old news in big cities. Then the Hip New Sounds get transformed by small cities into organically exciting music because no longer do the practitioners of the Hip New Sounds have to refine their individual niche. Instead bands in small cities get to take what is truly awesome about the Hip New Sounds (which are old, tired sounds in big cities) & make music that makes people who don't give a shit about the Hip New Sounds dance & have fun night after night.

What I mean is check out these photos I took in Nebraskus last week:






Those are pretty sweet.

Enough about me. You should be thinking about Uuvvwwz.

You should know by now that UuVvWwZ's album is officially out now from Saddle Creek. You should listen to them & by their record here.

Their album cover looks like this:



When they are all up ons the stage they look like this:




When they are posing for photos they look like this:




Also I like this Tonstartssbandht record. It has nothing to do with Uuvvwwz & it's a bit goofy but I like it:



Listen to them here.

Burnt By the Sun

So I biked about 12 miles out of & back into Denver today for an interview & in the process got lost & then my tire busted. I ended up walking through the equally desolate environs of a mega-strip mall & the scrub-weeds beside a highway in order to find my way to my destination.

All of this was in bright sunlight &, because it was a bike ride for an interview rather than for fun, I completely forgot to put on suntan lotion. I got home finally feeling very ill, but with these rad new sleeves.

Surprise Bag: A Photo Essay

Eggplant Parm

Sommer Browning