I haven't really "blogged" in a while. As Jean told me over lunch last week, explaining why she was supposedly signing off from blogging: sometimes bloggers would be seized by a moment of self-consciousness. I know what she means.
I haven't been reading others' blogs either. Back in the day I always knew what Barb and Eileen and Rhett and Michelle were up to. Not anymore. (So I'm still kicking myself for missing the poetry reading at the SF Public Library last week.)
- Pat Rosal's Kutibeng (finally met him last week, but not at the reading).
- Oliver de la Paz's Pugnacious Pinoy.
- Stevie Nixed's Zero Interrupt.
- Dan moves The Square of the Hypotenuse around.
- And my friend Karen makes her blog debut with The Tacit Diseuse, and instead of a more appropriate Theresa Cha-related post (at least that's what I think the title refers to, but my Dictee's at the office), she blasts The Polyphonic Spree, which I love.
When I wrote her that PJ Harvey (who was at the Spree show) clearly had better taste than her, she answered, "PJ can kiss my ass these days." How's that for music criticism?
And about that "Screen Shot Movie Quiz:" SEND ME YOUR ANSWERS at wily@removethisthewilyfilipino.com. You have until the end of the month.
And finally, responding to Jean:
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I don't know how to answer that one. Ricky Jay's Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women?
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Franny in John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire?
The last book you bought is:
Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.
The last book you read:
Billy Childish's Hunger at the Moon.
What are you currently reading?
Look on your right -- that's what I have All Consuming for!
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
William Eggleston's The Democratic Forest.
T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems.
Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar / Jaime Hernandez's Locas.
Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere.
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
- Karen, so she can write more than just posts attacking the Spree;
- Happy, because I owe him a phone call and more;
- and the Sassy Lawyer, because I haven't read her blog in ages.
did i ever respond to the "post modern" question?
ts is not
jj's ulysses most definitely is
so does this mean you're back in blogland?
and seconding karen, ts is definitely modernist and not post.
Posted by: barb on March 24, 2005 01:58 PMNo no no:
TS, definitely mo.
Ulysses, mo, not pomo.
first... i sincerely dislike the term "PoMo" especially because I've been to god awful hipster bars that serve drinks called "PoMo's" in martini glasses... second... ulysses critiqued the notion of a "grand narrative" - very post modern. are we limiting the works to the era in which they were birthed?
Posted by: Karen Swing on March 24, 2005 04:21 PMYeah, you didn't think I'd be gone from blogging for long, did you? I'm sure not. Interesting choices...I was seriously considering Lord of the Rings, too. But L. Frank Baum was a feminist, so I picked the Oz books instead. Dorothy always found unique ways to get out of difficult situations. ; ))
j.
Posted by: Jean on March 24, 2005 05:06 PMso, i too dislike "PoMo," for not only does it reek on "who's in/who's with it" (how 'bout some good "po-lang-po," for example - blech!), but because it was first the name of a california native tribe, that don't get no love for nothing.
yeah, i thot of LOTR too but opted for mists of avalon for reasons similar to jean on Oz.
Posted by: barb on March 24, 2005 05:22 PMI always thought "pomo" was meant to be partly derisive -- my friend Jeff always referred to things as "oh so pomo." That is, no one in their right minds would refer to their own work as "pomo," or, perhaps even, "postmodern."
Like: "What kind of fiction do you write?" If they answer "Oh, mostly postmodern kind of stuff" they get points off in my book. They're basically people who have no idea what it means. They think of "postmodern" as meaning, I don't know, "different from the mainstream." "Or "pushing at boundaries."
Only "diaspora" is a little less-abused a term than "postmodern."
I kind of subscribe more to Harvey's (David, not Polly Jean) notion of postmodernity as being tied with particular capitalist strategies emerging in the '70s, but that just might be me. While "Ulysses" does mess with narrative, it still adheres to the old modernist aesthetic of returning to or revisioning myth -- and thus the "Odyssey" structure. Same thing with another quintessentially modernist text, "The Waste Land." I guess "Ulysses" isn't -- oh, let me think of someone oh-so-pomo who I can't stand... Kathy Acker or something.
Posted by: the wily filipino on March 25, 2005 12:11 PM