Ecce Signum – Page 26 – Immanentize the Empathy

IWSG, April 2022

2022-04-062022-04-04 John Winkelman

It’s not that March was objectively longer than either of the previous two Marches, but it was around this time two years ago that the lockdowns began, and now that restrictions have eased considerably from even a year ago, the stress levels are much reduced, and that leaves more energy for creative endeavors.

This month’s Insecure Writers Support Group question is:

Have any of your books been made into audio books? If so, what is the main challenge in producing an audiobook?

I have not yet published any books, so the simple answer is…No.

But I have friends who have published books in both print and audio book version. Dyrk Ashton, in particular, who is a friend I met at ConFusion several years ago. He is the author of the most excellent Paternus Trilogy, of which all three are available in audiobook format. Dyrk is part of the Wizards, Warriors and Words fantasy-writing advice podcast, which recently released an episode about creating audio books for self-published authors.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.

The Bottom of the Top #14

2022-04-042022-04-03 John Winkelman

Before anything else, I want to give props to Top 40 Weekly, where I have been getting the info necessary to make these posts.

I have standardized the naming convention for these posts around the relevant week of the year, as determined by the order in the listing at Top 40 Weekly.

This week’s Bottom of the Top came with a couple of familiar names – Ray Parker, Jr. of “Ghostbusters” fame and Huey Lewis, who needs neither introduction nor explanation.

Of these songs, I have hear the first three. “Spring Rain,” certainly, because, apparently, how could I have not heard it? “The Other Woman” vaguely rings a bell. I would have been in seventh grade, I think, and slowly discovering music which was not country. And of course “I Know What I Like” was all over the place in 1987, which bridged my last year of high school and my first year of college, when I would have (finally!) had regular access to MTV (insert joke about the relevance of the “M” therein).

The latter two, by RTZ and Crystal Waters…maybe? Time and the entropy of memory have blurred a lot of details of the nineties.

1977. Bebu Silvetti, “Spring Rain”

1982. Ray Parker, Jr., “The Other Woman”

1987. Huey Lewis and the News, “I Know What I Like”

1992. RTZ, “Until Your Love Comes Back Around”

1997. Crystal Waters, “Say If You Feel Alright”

April is National Poetry Month

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New arrivals for the week of April 27, 2022

This past Tuesday I went to my first Open Mic night in over two years. The event, Poetry & Pie, took place at The Sparrows on Wealthy Street in Grand Rapids. It was the return of an event which had been ongoing at the cafe for some time before the pandemic closed everything down. Of course, with Tuesdays being Tai Chi night for the past thirty years, I had never attended, but now that practice has moved to Wednesday I took advantage of the opportunity and listened to some poetry.

Two new volumes arrived at the house in the past week.

First up is the latest issue of Poetry Magazine, a publication of which I have a shelf full of unread issues. But this being National Poetry Month, I am working my way through them at a rate of roughly one issue a day. So I might catch up to present by the middle of May.

Next is The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, which arrived unexpectedly as a gift from my good friend Miyah. An unexpected and appropriate addition at the start of National Poetry Month.

In reading news, in addition to the back issues of Poetry, I recently finished I Am the Brother of XX by Fleur Jaeggy, and also This Is Us Losing Count, a superb collection of Russian poetry in translation from Two Lines Press, as part of their Calico series. It’s books like these that prompt me to shell out the money for annual subscriptions to their catalogs.

In writing news, it’s all poetry, all the time, for the entire month. So far I am on track for one poem a day for 30 days and, as last year, I do so love having my mind in this space.

March 2022 Reading List

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Books I reds in the Month of March 2022

Not a bad month for reading, was March. The first book, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, took the first half of the month to read, and the remaining six flew by, relatively speaking. This was a good mix of fiction and poetry, with a surprise nonfiction in They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurrraqib’s collection of music reviews and criticism which I picked up at City Lights Bookstore back in the summer of 2019.

Books

Dickinson, Seth, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (2022.03.15)
Poetry Magazine #207.1, October 2015 (2022.03.15)
Abdurraqib, Hanif, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (2022.03.20)
Tomlinson, Patrick S., Gate Crashers (2022.03.24)
Jaeggy, Fleur (Alhadeff, Gini, translator), I am the Brother of XX (2022.03.28)
Coolidge, Sarah (editor), This Is Us Losing Count (2022.03.29)
Poetry Magazine #208.4, July/August 2016 (2022.03.31)

The Bottom of the Top for Late March

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This week’s #40 hits for 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992 and 1997 bring two acts I either forgot about or had not heard of – Hot and Donna Allen.

1977: Hot, “Angel In Your Arms”

1982: Kool & the Gang, “Get Down On It”

1987: Donna Allen, “Serious”

1992: Eddie Money, “I’ll Get By”

1997: The Prodigy, “Firestarter”

Poetry Resurgent and Resplendent

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Newly arrived in the week of March 20, 2022, and Poe

Early Satuday afternoon I drove to Garfield Park just south of downtown Grand Rapids, where I was interviewed as part of An Oral History of Poetry in Grand Rapids. I haven’t really been involved with the poetry community for a few years, thanks in no small part to the COVID pandemic, so this was a wonderful reintroduction to The Scene.

As part of the interview my interviewer Toni Bal asked me to read a poem. I brought “Back-Road Labyrinth,” which I wrote in 2018 or 2019. This was the first time I had read a poem in about three years, the previous being “36 Views of New Orleans” at The Drunken Retort in (I think) 2018. Now that I have read it, maybe it is time for me to send it out to be published.

I donated most of the print run of The 3288 Review to the project, from the Caffeinated Press archives which occupy three banker’s boxes in my office closet.

The new issue of The Paris Review was the only arrival this week. Poe is earning her keep as a book rest, atop her panda blanket as she watches the porch for squirrels and birds.

In reading news, I finished Patrick S. Tomlinson‘s Gate Crashers. It was a lot of fun, with engaging characters and an interesting plot. Gate Crashers was Tomlinson’s first book, and it is a little rough around the edges. He mentions in the author’s note that he wrote it in response to the ending of the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and it shows in the sense of humor and turns of phrase. Then again, there are worse influences to wear on your sleeve than Douglas Adams.

I am currently reading I am the Brother of XX, written by Swiss author Fleur Jaeggy and translated from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff.

In writing news, I didn’t do much this week other than edit the poem I read for my interview. But I feel better than I have the past few weeks, so perhaps the changing of the month will bring renewed energy and I will be able to get back in the saddle.

A Music Experiment, Of Sorts

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So I had this idea a while back, that every now and then I would do a survey of the #1 songs in the weekly top 40 of bygone years. I thought it would be fun to make weekly posts, tracing the ebb and flow of music styles and tastes.

But when looking through lists of past hits, I noticed that songs which hit #1 tend to stay there for a while. They are well known, and while interesting as a source of nostalgia, such posts could quickly become repetitive, as the same songs stay in the #1 position for weeks at a time.

So rather than picking the top of the top, I decided to go with the bottom of the top. The songs at #40 on the weekly top 40 change wildly from week to week, and many were mere blips in pop culture, surfacing for a week then disappearing, never to be heard again.

These were the songs I often heard while milking cows on Sunday mornings for most of the 1980s. Casey Kasem or Rick Dees usually hit the top 10 well after morning milking was done, and I would be back at the house taking care of things which kept me out of range of a radio.

Now I am going to go back in time, and select song #40 of the weekly top 40, for the historical week which corresponds to the present week in the year 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, and 1997. Five years, five years apart, from 45 years ago to 25 years ago. That means I will be able to make 259 weekly posts like this before I repeat a week. And at that point, assuming the continued existence of me, the internet, blogging, etc., I will look at shifting things around. It will be a good problem to have.

This post series will mostly simply be links to music videos, but if a song comes up which brings a sense of nostalgia or deja vu, I might write something about that.

And with that, here are the songs, ordered by year, with links to artist information.

1977: The Andrea True Connection, “N.Y., You Got Me Dancing”

1982: Charlene, “I’ve Never Been to Me”

1987: Glass Tiger, “I Will Be There”

1992: Ozzy Ozbourne, “Mama, I’m Coming Home”

1997: No Mercy, “Where Do You Go”

Some Different Points of View

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New books for the week of March 13, 2022

Oh, what a week this was. For reasons not germane to this post, this past week was unproductive and exhausting in the extreme. Suffice to say that, even in the declining days of the pandemic, as the world slowly reawakens after a subjectively excessively long winter, the mundane world continues to exist.

Three new books arrived this past week, and it is indeed a stellar stack.

First up is Coyote and Crow, the core rule book for a new tabletop role-playing game which was funded through an immensely successful Kickstarter campaign. Like so many other Kickstarters over the past couple of years, there were delays and setbacks, but the final product is stunning!

Next up is This Is Us Losing Count, a collection of poems in translation from eight contemporary Russian poets. This anthology is part of the Calico series from the Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press, one of the two publishers with whom I still have a subscription.

And finally we have Mister N, written by Lebanese author Najwá Barakāt and translated by Luke Leafgren. This book arrived from And Other Stories, the other publisher to whom I am still subscribed.

In reading news, I just finished They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib‘s collection of articles and essays about music and its intersection with race and culture. I picked this one up when Zyra and I visited City Lights Books in June 2018. I pulled it down from the shelf when I saw that Abrurraqib will be the guest lecturer for the March 2022 GVSU Arts Celebration hosted by Grand Valley State University.

And in writing news, there was no writing this past week. Too many distractions, disruptions, and sorrows.

Interesting Links for the Week

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* We recently celebrated Jack Kerouac‘s 100th birthday. Here are a few interesting links:
** Politics and Prose Live: Does Jack Kerouac Still Matter?
** Jack Kerouac reading poetry, accompanied by Steve Allen on piano, 1959.

* Speaking of dystopias, bad things are still happening in Ukraine.
** The Financial Times released an interactive presentation titled How Russia’s mistakes and Ukrainian resistance altered Putin’s war.

An Illusion of Normalcy

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Reading material from the week of March 6, 2022

Two years after the office closed, I am back to working downtown two or three days a week. Being able to spend extended hours out of the house has improved my state of mind substantially, though the office, and indeed much of downtown right now, feels comparatively deserted.

This week’s new reading material comes courtesy of two Kickstarter campaigns.

First up is the latest issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, which always delivers excellent short fiction.

Next is War of Gods by Dyrk Ashton, in the limited edition hardcover, next to the box which fits the complete hardcover trilogy. I have been a fan of Dyrk’s work since I first met him at ConFusion back in…2016? He had just published the first volume of his Paternus trilogy. The completion of the hard-cover boxed set feels like the end of an era, and I have heard rumors that Ashton is working on something new. Based simply on that rumor, I am already looking forward to reading it.

In reading news, I am still working my way through Seth Dickinson’s The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. I am enjoying it, but wow, is this a long book. I also got an early start in working my way through all of my back issues of Poetry Magazine, starting with issue 207.1, publishing in October 2015. I have 40 more issues after this one, not counting whatever shows up as I work my way through the stack.

In writing news, not a lot to report for this past week. I have been too distracted by the goings-on in Ukraine to be able to focus on creating new work. Like living in a global pandemic, adjusting to the reality of living in World War III will take time, but eventually I will be able to tell stories around a trash fire which will be the only source of light and warmth in the plague-ridden nuclear winter which will surely be our new normal in the coming decade.