http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Fri, 18 Feb 2005 03:20:26 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/18/032026.php John MacKenzie Before work this evening I went to a doubleheader poetry reading, dreading, as I always do, what I might be subjecting myself to. You know this sort of feeling, it's the same one you get when you're watching a "B" horror movie and people just keep going places they shouldn't go and doing things they shouldn't do; and something bad, or at least something horribly cheesey, is going to happen to them any minute now. They know it and you know it, but they do it anyway, and you watch it anyway. Yeah. (Keep reading, I have positive things to say in a bit.)So I went to this poetry reading tonight. I went for the same reason I always go. I went because sometimes instead of something I dread happening, something good happens; there's a damn good poet, or a damn good poem, and it's worth every excruciating moment ever spent in an audience of people stroking their chins or tilting their heads profoundly while listening to somebody calling themselves a Poet somehow sing-songing monotonally through their Poems in their Great Canadian Reading Voice. (Really, there's positive stuff coming up. I swear)So I went to this doubleheader poetry reading tonight, and something good happened. One of the poets, Sue Sinclair, read some good poems, some poems with a lot of light and qualities of light working in them. And she didn't fall into that damn I'm Reading Poetry voice. I bought one of her books -- her third one, I believe -- The Drunken Lovely Bird. I chose that book because it has the following poem, which I like a lot: Lilacs For those who have lived where lilacs bloom, who have lost their immunity to idleness and wander through doorway after doorway when the lilac trees open their infinite mauve rooms. For those who give in and glide a little behind their lives, a hand trailing in the water behind a rowboat. Regret turns itself inside out, like a glove you've picked up after someone's gone. Even the bees feel it, sadly, sadly, nose in the flowers, a curtain pulled away and there's no hand on your shoulder to catch you before you lean too far out the window. A slow leak, something escaping as soon as the petals open. What's left grows twice as heavy, pales, sinks inside itself and stays with you, a dream of which there is not even enough left to describe: it is about to rain. It is always about to rain. These limp flowers.I suppose there are a few reasons why I like that poem. I like lilacs; their scent is almost enough to convince me to quit smoking. Almost; but then I think about how strongly they affect me with my sense of smell as dull as it is, and wonder if I could survive their full strength. I like the poem, too, because it reminds me in its simplicity and clarity of some old, old chinese poems I've been surrounding myself with for the past year or so.I like the poem, and the other poems in the book that I've read so far, because of the light and the qualities of light I mentioned earlier. That light in what I've read and heard of Sue Sinclair's poetry makes me think a thing which might seem like a kind of back-handed compliment but which I mean as pure praise: sometimes poets are poets because they somehow missed a window of opportunity that would have made them painters. Books25655@blogcritics.org Fri, 18 Feb 2005 03:20:26 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/15/120649.php John MacKenzieThe following is a combination of two entries which I originally posted on my blog last night/early this morning. Part 1 Johan Santana, the secondbest pitcher (after Randy Johnson) in baseball last season, has apparently signed a four-year deal with the Twins. This has to be a good deal for Minnesota. I don't think it's possible for a wallet-conscious team like the Twins to overpay for a pitcher of Santana's youth and ability, but they must have made it worth his while to pass on the upcoming free agency he was due for at the end of 2006.If Santana keeps pitching like he has for the last year-and-a-half -- and there's no reason why he shouldn't, unless he somehow loses control of the changeup that vaulted him into the elite rank of pitchers -- he'll command major money when free agency finally rolls around for him in 2009.His ERA this season probably won't be as low as the 2.61 he posted last year, but he should bring it in somewhere between 3.00 and 3.15 which is pretty sweet in these offence-crazy days.Don't miss a chance to catch a game that this guy pitches in. In two years time, when people talk about pitchers, there'll be Johan Santana and Mark Prior in one breath and then all the rest. Part 2 Minnesota Twins management and fans must be in the throes of off-season orgasm right about now. The numbers on the Santana deal are being reported as 4 years, $40 million. That's $10 million a year. For comparison, here's what some merely mortal pitchers have signed for this winter: Pitcher Age Team Years Total $ $ Per Year Carl Pavano, SP 29 NY Yankees 4 $39,950,000 $9,987,500 Brad Radke, SP 32 Minnesota 2 18,000,000 9,000,000 Derek Lowe, SP 31 Los Angeles 4 36,000,000 9,000,000 Eric Milton, SP 29 Cincinnati 3 25,500,000 8,500,000 Matt Clement, SP 30 Boston 3 25,500,000 8,500,000 Russ Ortiz, SP 30 Arizona 4 33,000,000 8,250,000 Odalis Perez, SP 27 Los Angeles 3 24,000,000 8,000,000 Kris Benson, SP 30 NY Mets 3 22,500,000 7,500,000 Kevin Millwood, SP 30 Cleveland 1 7,000,000 7,000,000 Jaret Wright, SP 29 NY Yankees 3 21,000,000 7,000,000 Jon Lieber, SP 34 Philadelphia 3 21,000,000 7,000,000 Paul Wilson, SP 31 Cincinnati 2 8,200,000 4,100,000 Orlando Hernandez, SP 35 Chicago Sox 2 8,000,000 4,000,000 Cory Lidle, SP 32 Philadelphia 2 6,300,000 3,150,000 That's an average of $7,213,392.86 per year for the bunch, even with the lower salaries for Wilson, Orlando Hernandez, and Lidle. An average of less than three million dollars per year less than Santana signed for. And none of those guys are anywhere near the pitcher that Santana is. The best deals in the bunch are Radke, Clement, Odalis Perez, and Hernandez.How about the contracts that a couple of once-immortal pitchers signed, guys who should also be out-performed by Santana both in 2005 and over the length of his contract? Pitcher Age Team Years Total $ $ Per Year Roger Clemens, SP 42 Houston 1 $18,000,000 $18,000,000 Pedro Martinez, SP 33 NY Mets 4 53,000,000 13,250,000 The Santana deal by the Twins is far and away the best deal for pitching any team got this winter. It was probably the single best deal for a team signed with any player this winter.Twins fans, rejoice. The savings from the Santana deal should allow your team to remain competitive for at least the length of his contract. Sports25542@blogcritics.org Tue, 15 Feb 2005 12:06:49 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/12/025028.php John MacKenzieA few thoughts about some science fiction works that treat with religion were spurred when recently, on a whim, I started re-reading Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, a novel which purports to tackle the question of what directions and forms belief in a Higher Being might take in a future where mankind has found ways of colonizing the Galaxy.As a science fiction novel, Hyperion is a decent-to-good read. The main setting is a planet named after John Keats' unfinished poem Hyperion; and Keats is the planet's capital city; one of the main characters is Martin Silenus, ancient, hard-drinking, morality-spurning poet of uncertain provenance and talent; the format of the novel could be said to be based loosely on The Canterbury Tales, in that it proceeds by means of the main characters telling their stories to each other as they undertake a pilgrimage — all very clever, don't you know. In the background is a mysterious, metallic, blades-on-seemingly-every surface, not-quite mythical bloody embracer of pilgrims, a figure known as the Shrike, to whom, of course, the Church of the Shrike is devoted.I suspect the novel's genesis has significant roots in Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz, a book to which Hyperion (both alone, and together with its sequel, The Fall of Hyperion) is inferior in characterization, treatment of theme, story, plot, breadth and depth of theological meditation — in short, in every way except melodrama.A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic novel in which the monks of a small desert abbey are the main preservers of the written word, especially scientific knowledge, through the centuries following civilization's collapse and on into its gradual re-emergence. I would call faith the main character here, as Miller meditates on its forms, difficulties, and suspect rewards through a changing cast of characters who inhabit Leibowitz Abbey as they go about the business of preserving the legacy of their doubtful patron saint. A Canticle for Leibowitz is probably the most successful treatment of religion and theology and their sociological effects ever attempted by a science fiction writer.The only major science fiction work I've read which might be said to come close to A Canticle's achievement in regards to religion is Frank Herbert's Dune. And while it is, in a sense, about religion, it is much more about cultural ramifications of ecological crises and shortages of natural resources than it is about the probably futile, possibly fatal, but nearly irresistible attraction of mankind to believing in a purposeful Universe. Besides, the Dune series became way too long. One book was enough.A minor work which delves deeply into theological approaches is Stanislaw Lem's short story, the "Twenty-First Voyage" [of Ijon Tichy], which can be found in the collection Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences Of Ijon Tichy. In the story, Tichy finds himself on the Planet Dichotica discussing theology with robot monks who belong to the order Demolitia. Hilarious and thought-provoking, it stands as one of the best meditations on the nature of faith that I've ever read. It's a story worth searching out and reading. Books25400@blogcritics.org Sat, 12 Feb 2005 02:50:28 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/10/174236.php John MacKenzieThe following poem appears in John Thompson, Collected Poems and Translations (edited by Peter Sanger): Don't talk to me of trifles; I feel the dirt in these: what brightens when the eye falls, goes cold. I have so many empty beer bottles, I'll be rich: I don't know what I'd rather be: the Great Bear, or stone. I feel you rocking in the dark, dreaming also of branches, birds, fire and green wood. Sudden rain is sweet and cold. What darkens those winds we don't understand? Let's leave the earth to be; I'm asleep. The slow sky shuts. Heaven goes on without us. I'm not going to try to dissect or deconstruct this poem. I'm not going to go on a long ramble about ghazals, a form I'm partial to when it's kept tight (as Thompson kept this one tight). I'll leave the ramble to this link about ghazals. I'm not going to talk about Thompson's career, or tragic (some would say pitiful) end -- if you buy the book, its introduction covers that.I'm not going to talk about the disillusionment, distrust and loneliness I find seeping out of the poem above, nor the extreme and perfect dichotomy between the Great Bear and stone, nor about the poem's tenderness, its confusion, nor its final grasp at stoicism.So what am I on about? Well, this post originally appeared on my blog --- one of the purposes of which is to look without heavy deconstruction at poets and poetry that have affected me, influenced me. And Thompson's poetry has done that. I first read his work in the late '80s, and felt an immediate and deep connection to it. The connection remains, perhaps deeper than ever. Thompson is one of the poets I return and return to, never feeling that I've fully digested him or that his poems have lost their salt sting.Thompson's work was my first brush up against the ghazal form. My first attempts to use it, to fit it to my own hand, were deformed and miserable and are now long gone into a dark landfill of unrecyclable [ugly word] crap. Ten or more years later, after having left the form to its own devices in whatever strange basement corner of the subconscious such things play in while a writer matures a little, I found that, whether I was ready for it or not, the ghazal was what I needed as the form for a sequence of poems which became the core of my first book.I suggest that if you have any interest in poetry that avoids descent into sentimentalism and dreary, hackish, confessionalism, any interest in a poetry of clean lines, honesty, strong images and skillful technique, you could do worse than to check out Thompson's work. Books25358@blogcritics.org Thu, 10 Feb 2005 17:42:36 EST