Just a brief couple of notes before a three week business trip takes me to UCLA. First, we’re pleased to announce that Jim Daniels has given us a manuscript for a future Ahadada project. In addition, I just wanted to thank Philip Rowland, the editor of Noon–A Journal of the Short Poem, for a pleasant visit yesterday.
Finally, Dan Sendecki, myself and other writers associated with Ahadada Books are scheduled for a reading at Beyond Baroque on Saturday, December 17th. More details later.
My big birthday gift several days back was an all-day tour of the haunted spots of Tokyo. The trip included stories told by a wonderful lady rakugo performer, lunch, and all the Japanese history one could want.
It was while taking a turn on the old Edo execution grounds in Asakusa that I saw a stone monument that had been reduced to the size of a half-eaten loaf of bread. The guide informed us that this unusual head stone was that of Nezumi Kozo (literally “Rat Boy”), Japan’s own answer to Robin Hood. The poor shape of the monument was due to its being chipped away by Rat Boy’s fans, who believed that pieces of the stone were potent amulets for the attraction of money. A flower or two in a glass sat before the stone–an unusual sight at this grim place of head-choppings, crucifixions and eviscerations, where the last sight that met the eyes of the condemned was that of the “Kubikiri Jizo” (”Chop-Neck” Jizo), a huge seated statue of the traditional Buddhist guide of little children and the lost. Needless to say, he’s still there, looking over the scene with his half-closed, stone eyes–the same eyes that watched rogue samurai, thieves, murderers, and in this case, a genuine folk hero, find an abrupt exit from this troubled life.
I asked my wife if she knew the story of Rat Boy and she told me that every Japanese knew about this gentleman through folk songs, kabuki plays, movies, television and manga.
His real name was Jirokichi and he was a common laborer during the day. Some say that he earned his sobriquet because of his small stature and homely looks, but others say that he carried a bag of trained rats with him when he went about his night job. He would break in through the roof of some well-heeled samurai’s establishment, open up his pack of rats and make them scurry about–effectively disguising the bumps and scrapes incumbent upon his acts of thievery. And what a thief he was! Before he was made to bow before the Chop-Neck Jizo in 1832, he confessed to the burglary of over 100 samurai homes and the theft of over 30,000 ryo–an immense fortune for the time. His exploits were followed by the numerous poor of Japan, and though he may not have been as generous with his money as the old stories say, he stood as someone who bucked the oppression of Feudal Japan and got away with it–at least for 15 years. I thought immediately of Woody Guthrie’s glorification of Pretty Boy Floyd, the hero of Depression-era, back-woods America and I shook my head yes.
Jirokichi was 36 when he died: like Pretty Boy Floyd both met their fates early. “”Hajimemashite” (nice to meet you) I said to the stone, and everyone laughed at this henna gaijin. But it really was.
Once long ago Duke Mu of Quin [659–620 B.C.] was in his ancestral temple during the day, when a sprit entered the gate and turned to the left. It had the face of a man and the body of a bird, wore a white robe with black borders, and was very dignified and grave in appearance. When Duke Ma saw it, he was frightened and started to run away, but the spirit said, “Do not be afraid. God recognizes your enlightened virtue and has sent me to bestow upon you nineteen more years of life. He will make your state prosperous and your descendants numerous, and they shall not lose possession of Qin!” Duke Mu bowed twice, lowered his head, and said, “May I ask the name of this spirit?” and the spirit replied, “I am Gou Mang.” If we are to accept as reliable what Duke Mu saw in person, then how can we doubt that ghosts and spirits exist?
From pg. 100, Mozi Basic Writings, translated by Burton Watson.
Once, over dinner, I heard the late Fielding Dawson chortle:
“Body heat is a Fielding Dawson film! It’s just so full of everything that is me!” I thought at the time it was the wine and the star-struck company working on this middle-aged writer’s brain, but now I too have found a film to cackle over: Alex Cox’s The Revenger’s Tragedy. Indeed, I’ve been cackling over the original play (by Thomas Middleton, or some say Cyril Tourneur) for quite a few years. Here’s an example of the powerful writing found in the play in just the opening scene. Vendice (the Revenger) is talking to his lady friend’s skull about his intentions toward her murderer the Duke:
Duke; royal lecher; go, grey-hair’d adultery;
And thou his son, as impious steep’d as he;
And thou his bastard, true-begot in evil;
And thou his duchess, that will do with devil.
Four excellent characters–O, that marrowless age
Would stuff the hollow bones with damn’d desires,
And ’stead of heat, kindle infernal fires
Within the spendthrift veins of a dry duke,
A parch’d and juiceless luxur. O God!–one
That has scarce blood enough to live upon,
And he to riot like a son and heir?
O the thought of that
Turns my abused heart-strings into fret.
Thou sallow picture of my poison’d love,
My study’s ornament, thou shell of death,
Once the bright face of my betrothed lady,
When life and beauty naturally fill’d out
These ragged imperfections,
When two heaven-pointed diamonds were set
In those unsightly rings–then ’twas a face
So far beyond the artificial shine
Of any woman’s bought complexion,
That the uprightest man (if such there be
That sin but seven times a day) broke custom,
And made up eight with looking after her.
***
One can’t beat the Elizabethans for their language (as Hart Crane knew) and the play is full of brain-popping tropes that draw one further and further into the wind-up mechanism of the plot.
In the same manner Alex Cox gives us a grim eye-popper of a movie, as mannered visually as the language in Middleton’s play is mannered to the ear. Set in Liverpool in 2011, the Revnger’s Tragedy takes place in a decadent city in a punked-out country presided over by the present Queen and her degenerate minions. When the duke dies he’s surrounded by teddy bears and love and miss you notes like Princess Di was, and immediately after his death Vendice and his brother and sister watch the duchess fornicate with her son on a sci-fi holographic screen floating in the middle of the polluted air. The look these three have on their faces is one of the high points of the film.
The other is the opening sequence, which encapsulates the out-of-control feeling of the whole production.
A critic on the BBC complained of the “roughness” of the play–but I believe that the studied roughness and the inspired ineptness of some of the performers is part and parcel of punk aesthetics–just as much as the out of tune howls of the Sex Pistols and the jerky narratives of Kathy Acker’s best novels. If there is a weakness in the film, I’d say it’s in the fact that the language as well as the plot of the original play are not fore-grounded enough. When seeing the film, I’d suggest that you read the play first, then Cox’s brilliance shines like a strobe light.
The sound track by Chumbawamba is a stunner too.
Christopher Eccleston does the job as the Revenger Vedici; Eddie Izzard is the Duke’s effete heir.
I know I’m behind the times here–the film’s been around since 2003, I see, but what the heck, better late than never. My advice: see this DVD with the one you love.
First, I want to say that I was totally gob-smacked by the birthday blog entry and gob-smacked again by the wonderful wishes posted on the site and to my e-mail account! Thanks to one and all and may your own birthday be as wonderful as ours was! Actually, we still have two more birthday parties to go–Maya’s and Yo’s! I’d vowed to let this one creep by without a word, but none of you would let me! Again, my deepest thanks and very best wishes to everyone!
P.S. Geraldine Monk’s August birthday bashes are the stuff of legend in old Sheffield. Happy birthday Geraldine! Next year we’ll try to make it back to Netheredge!
The literal and figurative “dada” of Ahadada celebrates a birthday today. Last year, my girlfriend Katie and I spent a couple of weekends with the Glass clan in Shin Urayasu, Chiba, Japan.
The wonderful thing about the Glass family is that, somehow, someway, through meticulous planning and/or serendipity, they all were born in August! It makes August one hell of a month, as Jesse usually has a little time off from classes and the kids are out of school for summer holiday.
As George Bernard Shaw was oft quoted as saying: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
So, Happy Birthday Jess! And while the bad news is time flies, the good news is you’re the pilot!
According to Mark, the reading at the Drake is part of Damian Rogers’s series, the Pontiac Quarterly. Next Wednesday’s theme: Virginity!
Wednesday, August 17
Drake Hotel
1150 Queen St. West
8:00pm, $10 or pwyc
Readings by Karen Hines, Claudia Dey, Andrew Kaufman, Mark Truscott, and angry man Edward Keenan. Essay by David Balzer, advice column “Liz, What the Fuck?” and a short film by Alex Pugsley.
Maybe afterwords we’ll all go see “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. I’ll try to grab some pics from the Drake and if I’m able will post them back here—that’s if I can get away from work next Wednesday!
We make no secret of our enjoyment of David Jaffin’s work. We admire the range and the ambition of it–and often its music. We encourage our readers to seek his collections out–many available from Shearsman Books via the Shearsman site, or in the U.S. via SPD. A few posts ago we reprinted some excerpts from his latest work, Intimacies of Sound.
Today we received the following interesting letter from the poet:
Dear Jesse,
As we have neither t.v. nor a computer, nor internet, I just learned of what you brought on [sic] my poetry in November of last year and my part-response on Cid Corman last March. First of all, many many thanks for taking an interest in my poetry! I think a response here is necessary: 1) What I write large (capitalize) is to emphasize and that’s what I do 2) these lines and stanza breaks are certainly not “willy-nilly” for I am interested in a contrapunctal interweaving sense, of meaning, also using the ambiguity of language 3) the hyphen I use in two ways: the normal way of interlocking words together such as “time-sensing”, but I also use the hyphen with a hard break, not a soft one, between words at the line-break.
Could it be, that you have Cormaned me [sic] into his use of line, language and the like:
Reading
through
the eyes of
others is
why glasses
need be indi
vidually pre
scribed.
I am deeply interested in what you write on my poetry and would like to keep up-to-date on it. A specialist for internet here, who does it for the Bundepost, is a dear friend of mine and could out-gobble [sic] for me. hope all is well with you and yours
DJ.
We have a good tape of David reading his poetry which we hope to feature on Ahadada Radio once we establish it here on the site. Interestingly enough, though Mr. Jaffin is a wonderful reader, his line breaks and hard and soft usages of the hypen do not appear in the performance of his work–i.e. he does not stop, or drop his voice to signal the line breaks or those hard and soft hypens he tells us about in his letter. Of course, this does not detract from the integrity of Jaffin’s reading style, but it does give one pause.
One suggestion that we would like to offer is that he publish his explanation of why he breaks and capitalizes and hyphenates the way he does in a kind of key or “forward” to his books so that readers will correctly interpret the work. However, the question immediately comes to mind: How should readers be expected to “correctly” read the poetry, when Jaffin himself does not appear to follow his own guide when he reads? These are inconsistencies that perhaps the poet will address in a future letter.
As far as Cormanizing Jaffin’s poetry, we believe that every poem written in English when read by someone familiar with the canon of English language poetry risks comparison with every other poet who has contributed to that body of work. If we are guilty of “izing” Jaffin’s work, then we are also guity of Donneizing, Wyattizing, Campionizing, Laxizing, etc. etc., it.
All of this aside, David Jaffin is a fine poet and we are very happy to promote discussions about his work.
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