Friday Links: Slaughter and Peace Edition
"We all want the same thing / from this world: / Call me nobody. Let me live." - Amorak Huey, "We Were All Odysseus In Those Days"
Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!
Cotton Xenomorph’s “Cryptids and Climate Change” issue continues, with “Lake House” by Jacob Dimpsey asking how long you can float on our literary Nostromo.
We’ll get to Ody & Telemachus in a minute. First, the intro paragraph has to be sad this week: Women & Children First—THE radical bookstore in Chicago, my favorite bookstore, my neighborhood bookstore—had a window smashed in Wednesday, because that window had a CEASEFIRE NOW sign and Palestinian flag. Look, here’s something unambiguous: there needs to be a ceasefire, and if you’re so on the side of a settler-colonialist government who bombs hospitals and aid convoys and refugee shelters and is behaving no differently than Nazi Germany despite being the exact country who should know better that you smash the window of a bookstore? Well, I don’t know what to say.
Ever-resilient, Women & Children First is planning on turning the smashed window into a pro-Palestine mural. They put out a call for Palestinian artists in Chicago to help. Here’s Kayleigh Padar at Block Club reporting. Here’s Women & Children First’s website, where you can buy books. They ship!
Buy books and rage against the bloodthirsty right wingers of the world: unofficial motto of this blog. Time for Homer!
What I’ve Been Reading Lately:
It’s the end of epic month. Do I feel like Odysseus, finally on the other side after 10 years of war and 10 years of journeying home? No, I had fun with these. But I’m excited to read something with 21st century language and concerns and PAGE COUNTS next week. Definitely got some good stuff for the swamp monster novel these last five weeks, though. If you haven’t read The Odyssey, sincerely: consider trying it out. The Emily Wilson or Robert Fagles translations. ICYMI, here’s our The Line Break on The Iliad (with some Odyssey talk thrown in).
Hey, speaking of the Wilson translation, the poet I read this week actually appeared in the Norton Critical Edition of The Odyssey! How sick is that?? Totally unplanned on your dude the shipwrecked sailor’s part. Imagine my delight when I got to the acknowledgements page. That’s right, in addition to The Odyssey, I read Amorak Huey’s Dad Jokes From Late in the Patriarchy!
The Odyssey by Homer translated by Robert Fagles: man, the second half of The Odyssey is so good. A masterclass in building tension, establishing what needs to be established, and the genuinely moving reunion/plotting together of father and son. Listen: I’d prefer to never have to slaughter scores of men who have been eating my food and drinking my booze and trying to marry my wife—but if I must, may it coincide with my son’s coming of age. Seems like a solid bonding experience.
My Count of Monte Cristo-style excitement at Book 22: “Slaughter In The Hall” is, of course, tampered by what happens after all those Mark-Wahlburg-in-Fear suitors get capped. The execution of the slave women (“You sluts—the suitors’ whores!” Telemachus yells, like someone who pays for Twitter) is hideous and impossible to defend in the 21st century, as is the mutilation of Melanthius (seems like the suitors are the ones who should have their genitals fed to the dogs, not a goatherd). Unlike in college, I’ve now read The Iliad, where roughly every other swinging dick in the Trojan army is a bastard child of Priam. Suitors eating Ody’s food and drinking his wine and trying to bang his wife are understandable offenses—are the slave women’s sins so great as to be mass hanging-worthy because Odysseus and Telemachus were supposed to make bastards with them? How else do you read it after Odysseus’s unfaithfulness on his journey? It’s sort of hard to read the slaughter in the hall as a “reclaiming his house” and more “a fortification of patriarchy,” thanks to the post-suitor-slaughter extracurriculars. It’s gross and a bummer, because the rest of that chapter is legitimately thrilling, totally action movie but with a Godfather’s amount of buildup.
The ending was rushed and baffling in college and still feels the same now—except my desire for some goddess to descend from the heavens and strike permanent fear in the heart of warmongers and usher in an immediate peace has only grown.
Dad Jokes From The Late Patriarchy by Amorak Huey: first, I selected this book to cap off ancient epics month based on title/what I know of how Amorak sees the world. Seemed appropriate, given the brutal patriarchy of ancient Greece. Then literally the fourth poem in the collection gives me this week’s epigraph. What a capstone to Homeric epics week! Amorak does a lot of what I hope to do in my work—write cogently and interestingly about the responsibilities of being a good dad in a world where paradigms and models are shifting (hopefully, Jesus) to a more equitable, less patriarchal order. Not to mention, these poems are funny, and not just because of the amount of Dad jokes. I joked on Bluesky that everyone should get this book for their dads for Father’s Day, but after finishing it, I do think this is one of them books non-poetry freaks can pick up and not feel too intimidated by. So get it for yr da!
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Piano music is always an easy sell for me, especially if you tell me it’s made by Brazilian musicians. Synth music is a way harder sell for me, because I have (probably Boomer-ish and juvenile) hangups about music I can’t picture being played live. That said, I obviously enjoy it—big Herbie Hancock and Anomalie fan here—and it helps when I can see dudes wailing on three NORD keyboards at the same time. So here’s NORD LIVE from São Paulo!
Was gonna make this an all-poems LINKS! because it’s the last week of National Poetry Months, but I saw a couple great pieces about writing anxiety that resonated with me for ~~~reasons~~~ this week. First, here’s the prolific
at asking how we get validation as a writer. I’m not too proud to admit that getting a poem/story published or, back when I was at Cracked, getting an article published is an extreme rush. It’s a validation that feels a little embarrassing, how validating it is. As far as this blog, I basically just now got to a point where I believe people actually read it. If you know a writer, assume they are lonely and filled with self-doubt every waking minute.And here’s
1) at Defector on war in Ethiopia, asking how it’s even possible to get USians to care (Casey, for his part, is a religious history guy and went to Ethiopia to go to church—this article is not some parachute journalist’s redux of #KONY2012) and 2) anxieties about purpose and the moral cause/scam of writing in his blog. I still very much believe in the power of writing to change hearts/minds, or at least make people feel like they aren’t the only person in the world who sees things the way they do. But in the age of Donald Trump, crypto/AI, Israeli-led and U.S.-sponsored genocide, and vaccine denialism? Frankly, the enemy has better numbers and more money.Other things I’m weirdly conflicted about: PDF chapbooks. On the one hand, I love chapbooks—these little between-book exports from poets are a cool way to get little snack-size work. PDFs mean wider distribution, but sacrifice the cool tactile, artistic, limited nature of a handbound chapbook. I remain a sucker for AWP memorabilia—also let me know if you want a LAZY & ENTITLED bookmark—but AWP only happens once a year and is expensive. So every once in a while, I read a PDF chapbook, and Nnadi Samuel’s Nature Knows A Little About The Slave Trade, from Sundress Publications, rocked me this week. What poems! And hey, if you’ve got some spare quarters to rub together, Nnadi just got into the MFA program at University of Virginia, and could use a little help getting from Lagos to Charlottesville.
This ethereal (positive) poem from Jude Marr, “The Body As Intersecting Lines,” published in Moist Poetry Journal (hey I know that place) made me feel like I was floating, disconnected from my body, like normal sensory assumptions no longer applied. And it did it in just five stanzas!
Shifting gears to a pretty brutal poem about growing up in an abusive household with a drug-addled father—take care of yourselves but this poem is really worth a read. “The Lord’s Supper Reenacted by Piñatas Stuffed with Boiled Beans” by Jose Oseguera in Drunk Monkeys is a bracing reminder that your kids are gonna do whatever the hell they want, not only “even if you do hit them” but sometimes especially because you hit them. I once asked my former actress wife what she thought of method acting, and she said one of her teachers always said “instead of method, you could try acting.” Sums up how I feel about hitting kids—you could try parenting.
BONUS SIXTH LINK BECAUSE IT SEEMS TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO INCLUDE: the International Olympic Committee—a body of war criminals and genocidaires and capitalists more ruthless than Ghengis Khan—sponsored a study about whether or not trans athletes have unfair advantages. Turns out trans athletes have no special advantages. If the IOC is admitting this, can you anti-trans idiots shut up now?
Aw hell, bonus seventh link—I used to pick tangerines off a tree in my grandparents’ backyard in Gainesville, FL, and one of my aunts had a delightful cat named Clementine for a long time, and three poems is not enough to include the final blog post for National Poetry Month—here’s “clementine heart” by Amanda Conover in Moist Poetry Journal.
What’re you still doing here? Go buy a book from Women & Children First! They’ll ship to you if you’re not in Chicago!
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Listen, if you new boss is a huge jerk and you’re just trying to get through the day, clock in, do your work, clock out, go home, mind your business? And then your old boss and his son come back and want to hang you? You don’t have to put up with that. Know your worth as a worker.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
Thanks for the shoutout!!