Our Lady of the Flowers --- Variations on a Genet classic

Jan van Rijn, the celebrate bibliophile publisher, has a new book out, and it's about "Notre Dame des Fleurs", the mind-boggling first oeuvre of Jean Genet. Genet wrote it in a Paris prison in 1942, on brown-bag paper, whence his "manuscript" got confiscated by prurient prison guards. Undaunted, he asked for more brown-bag paper and rewrote it from scratch. Eventually it got published, so that Jean-Paul Sartre could discover it---Sartre, the inventor of Existentialism---and promptly declare the author a "saint". Genet's career was made---such was the way of French cultural life at the time. 

We read the "Lady" four times and it got better with each pass. Four times? Yes, because we had promised to contribute to Jan's publication and didn't know for quite some time what to do.

 

But then, in late 2019 we hit on an idea during a chance meeting with...

...the mysterious founding fathers of the Verse Reconstruction Movement. 

We had always dreamed of writing prose that could pass as poetry (and vice versa), and---having already isolated the "hottest" passages of the Fleurs---we undertook to turn them into poetic language. Six poems resulted, and they are in the book. Here's the first one:

EACH CELL A HISSING NEST OF SNAKES

(by Michael Ampersant)

I’m like those prisons,

Open to all the winds,

Empty and pure,

Swarming with dangerous,

Promiscuous males,

Sprawled out on their beds.

Prisons of dreams, I’d say, for a race of murderers,

Each cell a hissing nest of snakes,

And a confessional.

Their eyes,

Without mystery,

Terrifying,

Like empty theaters,

Machinery at rest,

Deserts.

I approach, my heart racing,

And see nothing,

Nothing but looming emptiness,

Sensitive and proud,

A foxglove possessed by terrible souls.

There are 16 contributors to this volume (if we don't count Genet himself), and one of them is John Coulthart, gay life's most prolific high-culture blogger. Have a look at his post about the book here.

You can order the volume here. It is also for sale in a few bookstores throughout Europe, ie,

Vienna 

buchhandlung löwenherz

https://www.loewenherz.at/

Milano

liberia antigone

https://www.libreriantigone.com/

Berlin

prinz eisenherz 

https://prinz-eisenherz.buchkatalog.de/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CK6rSnOlNM1/

and if things work well in Paris very soon at

les mots à la bouche 

https://motsbouche.com

PS: There are only 150 copies printed; it's a bit like bitcoins, and if we manage to convince Jan to rechristen his book "GenetCoins", or "CoinGenet" or anything else alluding to blockchains, the price will certainly skyrocket into the millions, especially if and when Elon Musk chips in a brief tweet. So, please, hurry.

The Verse Repair Movement strikes (again)

Michael and his handsome alter ego, John W. King, started the Verse Repair Movement a month ago on Gay Flash Fiction, and they're upping the ante now by re-christening it as VRRM (Verse Repair and Resurrection Movement).

The platinum members of VRRM

 Here's their first result:

Transitioning, committing to friendship, 

Unlock,

That wild piece of work,

 @ this exciting journey.

We stand with you,

Limited by impactful data,
You.

Def not trying to make this awkward,

 Or staying relevant.

Committed,

We're proud to present,
Or getting,
 Oscar buzz.

The tech-savvy, mobile-first generation,

One that understands who they are and what they're all about,

Is a lifestyle brand that embodies the core values of its
 Fast-growing consumer base.

Well, think again,

You sleeky-sexy form factor,

Integrated seamlessly,

And rolled out,

As the old law demands.

A touch point,

Of leadership potential,
You,

Falling short on polish.

It's extremely uncommon for royalty,
 To be pretending,
 To be just one of us,
 So they can secretly woo you,
Real princes and princes,
 Typically embracing their true identities,
So they can wear crowns to the grocery store.

We, my hus-band, and I,
We are so thrilled,

doing serious social media numbers,

Breachings of peace,
Adventures in abstraction.

We offer this column to you,
Technology-addled morons,
 In service of the mission of bloating.

Do you think the whole world is going up in smoke to sleep with you?

Brick-and-mortar bookstores,

Billowing roles of side fat,

You can have the room in stitches,

Marooned.

You can paddle those flabby arms as much as you want,

Bomb at the open mic,

In robust debate.

Dappled in autumn yellow,
Us,

Insane,

Us, the landing page,

Pivoting,

Believing deeply in ussa mission.

Robust,

We are another robot to feed,

Aggressively.

"I'm openly gay,"
We say to you.

Float us a nice chunk,

A silent auction of a coffee date,

You filthy lucre.

We're slunk into every corner of Walgreens,

The evening rolling by,
 In whiskey and conversation.

 A drug-crazed libertine on the lam,

You're a pioneer and a symbol of freedom,

A shitstorm,

Cavorted,

Future Tense Central,

A bold-faced name,

Falling off the wagon,

drinking lustily,

The raft of new offerings.

Buzzkill.

To have someone famous shine a spotlight on you,

The sickest coin on the friggin market,

My power to demolish is ten times greater than thy power to promote,

Headwind,

And sugar-coat.

We'd be remiss,

Our supplies are scant.

Yes, we know,
It needs some work.

Underlying text here was gleaned from various posts on McSweeney's Internet Tendency and a few articles in New York Magazine.

Harem Rock

By Michael Ampersant (text) and Theo Blaze (art)


Michael Ampersant had dreamed of using some poetry in THIS IS HEAVEN---one character speaking in verse, say---but nothing came of it. But then he discovered that the first part of Chapter 33, "Harem Rock" would actually work as poetry if reformatted as a stanza. Nothing up to Shakespeare standards, but still. Next, the formidable Theo Blaze put up an invite on his site, asking authors to come up with a brief story to illustrate one of his pictures. Michael reacted, and they got a deal; Michael would write a story, if Theo would create an illustration for "Harem Rock." And there we are:
  

John,

Why couldn’t you,

At the end of a page-turning,

Adverb-packed day,

Of unparalleled heat levels.

Why couldn’t you,

Just down the third ‘fortification’ the lady of the house was handing you,

And chuck your dirty shorts one more time,

And let the sex slave fix the Magic-Mike collar around your neck.

In view of the advanced hour,

We’ll keep the strip-tease to a minimum.

Grandma got run over by a reindeer

Grandma got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas eve

You can say there's no such thing as Santa

But as for me and grandpa we believe

She'd been drinking too much eggnog

And we begged her not to go

But she forgot her medication

And she staggered out the door into the snow

When we found her Christmas morning

At the scene of the attack

She had hoof-prints on her forehead

And incriminating Claus marks on her back

Grandma got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas eve

You can say there's no such thing as Santa

But as for me and grandpa we believe 

Now we're all so proud of grandpa

He's been taking this so well

See him in there watching football

Drinking beer and playing cards with cousin Mel

It's not Christmas without Grandma

All the family's dressed in black

And we just can't help but wonder

Should we open up her gifts

Or send them back (send them back)

Grandma got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas eve

You can say there's no such thing as Santa

But as for me and grandpa we believe

Now the goose is on the table

And the pudding made of fig

And the blue and silver candles

That would just have matched the hair on grandma's wig

I've warned all my friends and neighbors

Better watch out for yourselves

They should never give a license

To a man who drives a sleigh

And plays with elves

Grandma got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas eve

You can say there's no such thing as Santa

But as for me and grandpa we believe

Been there, done that

Too late

"After Auschwitz---no more poetry!"

"Alles hängt mit allem zusammen," (everything is connected with everything) would Norbert Elias say, the German sociologist and first recipent of the Theodor W. Adorno Price. It wouldn't be an Adorno saying however, because the man himself, the heavy thinker of "Critical Theory" and its Frankfurter Schule, would never say (or think) things as simple as this.

Theodor W. Adorno

But there you have it. We wake up, tumble upon a link to The New Yorker and read an article on Theodor W. Adorno and his Frankfurter Schule and learn that "he died of a heart attack in the shadow of the Matterhorn."

The Matterhorn

That's us here in Switzerland, folks, the Matterhorn is right around the corner. And yes, alles hängt mit allem zusammen, Adorno suffered his attack, was brought to the nearest hospital and died there, an unassuming Spital located in Visp, Valais, Switzerland, unassuming except that yours truly spent a whole week in the same hospital, his first time ever as a hospital patient, waiting for his foot to unswell so that Dr. Ursprung could repair his broken fibula.

Time for a really bad poem (2)

Our post Time for a really bad poem is an enormous success page-view wise (possibly due to the accompanying picture (reposted below)), so here's another really bad poem with another, really baffling picture. Spoiler alert: this one doesn't rhyme (the poem).

 Unbeknownst to most film historians, the Empire's Stormtroopers often enjoyed cosplaying as WWII soldiers (Cathy Ulrich) 

Handlers of ever-lasting grief,

Doggerels,

Mountaineers,

Veracious or ferocious,

For eternity deployed,

Here,

With all their might,

Their kingdom has come,
Here,

Until now.

Tfarbp

Shakespeare---let's celebate his 450th birthday...

...and repost our piece about his 18th sonnet:

(So, it starts:)

Since we are a literature blog now, we have to do serious stuff, like posting some serious pictures, like. Like this one...

Tyson Beckford

...which brings to mind Shakespeare's 18th sonnet...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

...(you don't want to look at the HTML code underneath)...

...but you might want to look at this clip, eternalizing David Gilmour, the singer of Pink Floyd, when he set the sonnet to his music, because that's what aging rock stars, like us, do, when, they, have, their, reflective, moments...





...and judge yourself.

Hold on, here are a few pointers to Sonnet 18:

Time for a really bad poem

Upfront update: This is really getting embarrassing folks---we're getting so many hits for this post, possibly because people think: "This must be a good poem," but no, this really is a bad poem:

The Morning flame is on her mind

The up-and-up is hard to find,

For every dollar is a dime,

For summer solstice is a crime.

When moonlight strikes the heaven breaks,

Has nothing done, has eaten steaks,

Has drunken whiskey far to much,

Has left the sickbed not as such.

Halfdead she is and half alive,

Not given much to sinful strife,

How is she getting out of this,

Well, she is not, tell mighty Chris.

It's Easter morning here in town,

My neighbors dog won't show his crown,

But royals will, and that's enough.

(And you thought we were joking)

A man is beautiful

It's perhaps a minor issue, so give it perhaps a minor thought. What's wrong with this poem:

A man is beautiful

but

you have to swing

and swing and swing

and swing like

a handkerchief in the

wind

Well, consider this one:

A woman is beautiful

but

you have to swing

and swing and swing

and swing like

a handkerchief in the

wind

That better, right? Well, it's also from Jack Kerouac, the last one. But that's not the only thing. Let's think about this some more.

Limerinski (Maud)

We sometimes do poetry, right? So here goes:

Monica Lewinski, former White House intern

The Washington Post runs a weekly contest in its Style section.

Ted Kaczynski, former assistant professor, dept. of mathematics, Berkeley University (possibly the best math department in the world), serving a life sentence for UNA-bombing

This week contestants had to use the two names Lewinsky and Kaczynski in the same limerick. Here are the three winning entries:

　
Third Place:

　
There once was a girl named Lewinsky
Who played on a flute like Stravinsky
Twas 'Hail to the Chief'
On this flute made of beef
That stole the front page from Kaczynski.
　
Second place:
　
Said Clinton to young Ms. Lewinsky,
We don't want to leave clues like Kaczynski,
Since you made such a mess,
Use the hem of your dress
And please wipe that stuff off your chinsky.
　
And the winning entry:
　
Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
What Kaczynski must surely have known,
That an intern is better
Than a bomb in a letter,
When deciding how best to be blown.

(Please let us know in the comment section what you think of the ranking, and, oh, Stravinsky didn't play the flute)

French for beginning poets (1) --- On se fout de nous

(lyrics)

Et passent [pass], passent, passent, passent, passent, passent les jours [days (as in journal)],
Et rien [nothing], non rien, rien ne change [changes] sur le parcours [parcours],
Ce sont les mêmes [same] pages [pages] qui défilent,
Les mêmes vers [verse] qu'on récite,
Le même vieux [old]  film [film] que depuis cent [hundred] fois [times] on rembobine, [replay, sort of]
Et on s'accroche [acroach] et on s'acharne [acharne], et on s'abime [abime] et on se gâche [spoil], on s'épuise [epuise] et on s'entame [entame], on s'enlise [enlise] et on s'éloigne [eloin],
Et on s'accroche et on s'acharne, on se brise et on s'attarde, ne soyez pas si cons.

Shall I compare thee to a summer day?

Since we are a literature blog now, we have to do serious stuff, like posting some serious pictures, like. Like this one...

Tyson Beckford

...which brings to mind Shakespeare's 18th sonnet...


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 


...(you don't want to look at the HTML code underneath)...

...but you might want to look at this clip, eternalizing David Gilmour, the singer of Pink Floyd, when he set the sonnet to his music, because that's what aging rock stars, like us, do, when, they, have, their, reflective, moments...





...and judge yourself.

Hold on, here are a few pointers to Sonnet 18:

Car poetry

"You need one of these," a friend writes and sends this picture:

 "Perhaps you don't know," we write back, "but we've got a new car, well not so new, but it has a cool running board and sexy tires." He can't believe it, he needs to see a picture. Here it is:

And here's the cultural excuse for all this:

A car is a car
If it can ride you nearby or far

A car is a car
When it gets you in time to the bar.

Sylvia Chidi

(Editor's note: the poem continues for another 30 lines or so, which we edited out for obvious reasons)

Cow poetry

Please take a picture of the cows...asked Jo on the phone. So here we are, with cows right on the little patch below the parking lot of the chalet zone in Bürchen, Switzerland, where we are staying at the moment...

...but we are not yet done, since this blog is about to undergo transmogrification into a platform for Michael's writing and other cultural pursuits. How are we going to justify pedestrian cows to high-minded readers? With poetry, of course, Cow Poetry. Let's keep it short, though, you never know how this will end.

I've never seen a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
but I can tell you anyhow,
I'd rather see then be one!

Gelett Burgess

From dawn to dust

 From dawn to dust,

 It's such a lust,

Vom Eise befreit

Dirk Sch. sent us this charming picture, and it brings to mind the mysterious scriptwriter that we met the other day on the Croisette. You may recall that he handed us a stack of manuscripts before his unfortunate disappearance in the Bay of Cannes.


Hidden in this heap was a single sheet of paper, not attached to any of his hopeless feature scripts ("Lethal Weapon meets Dr. Strangelove"). The sheet was covered with three handwritten lines, and nothing else. Here they are:

It's hardly legible, and it's in German, but here is the Google translation:

"Are freed from ice streams and creeks,
Spring holder, invigorating look,
Springeth in the valley hope luck."

Yes, I know. Perhaps I should not have brought this up. Perhaps it isn't German after all. Plus, it's unfortunate that his "poetic" lines do not really match the beautiful winter theme of Dirk's picture. One starts to understand why the washed-up scriptwriter had to end the way he did.