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“Skunk Hour,” by Robert Lowell: A Reflection

March 22, 2022 By James McWilliams 1 Comment

by James McWilliams

Robert Lowell
Life Studies / From the Union Dead
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 176pp

In 1958, The Partisan Review published Robert Lowell’s poem “Skunk Hour.” This was a notable moment in American literary history. The poem was closely linked to Lowell’s friendship with Elizabeth Bishop. Reading and re-reading Bishop’s work allowed Lowell to escape, as he put it, “the shell of my old manner.” It is to her that he dedicates this poem. 

“Skunk Hour” is worthy of close study because it captures Robert Lowell in the midst of creative transformation. He alters himself from a formal to a confessional poet in the middle of the poem. It happens “right before our eyes,” as one critic aptly put it.

What follows is my own stanza-by-stanza attempt to make sense of it. I’ve always loved this poem for the way it hits my ear, and the shifting imagery. But I’ve never really slowed down and tried to figure out why. This is what I’m doing here. My comments are italicized    —jm———

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Fiction, The Line, The New Word, Thought, Video

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Provokes an Imp

July 12, 2021 By James McWilliams Leave a Comment

Review by James McWilliams

Breath Like the Wind at Dawn
by Devin Jacobsen
Sagging Meniscus Press, 200 pp., $16.80

One doesn’t really enjoy a novel with a protagonist whose distinguishing feature is a passion for watching people take their last breath. And given that these last gasps are not gentle expirations after a life well lived but rather throat throttles at the hands of the protagonist, well, let’s just say Breath Like the Wind at Dawn is not what anyone would call a lyrical, feel-good novel. It’s safe to say it did not make any “summer must read” lists.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books, The Line

Reckoning Race in Eudora Welty’s Photographs

May 14, 2020 By James McWilliams 1 Comment

by James McWilliams

Two portraits; two men. Both are from 1930s Mississippi. The men are situated together, photos 22 and 23, both from Eudora Welty’s only published book of photographs, simply titled Photographs. If you could put a frame around both images it would be the Jim Crow South. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line, Thought

Subversion As Transmission In klipschutz’s Premeditations

February 5, 2020 By James McWilliams 1 Comment

Reviewed by James McWilliams

Premeditations
by klipschutz

Hoot n Waddle, 120pp., $16.00

Premeditations is a poet’s ode to poets. With wry nostalgia, klipschutz (the name author Kurt Lipschutz goes by), a San Francisco poet and songwriter (who works closely with the musician Chuck Prophet), opens his paean to poetry by defending the increasingly endangered sacred space where one typically discovers words that fuel the spirit: a bookstore. “North Beach Threnody,” the volume’s opening poem, leads with this stanza:

A landmark, registered, and us inside it,
folded up in folding chairs, with
everything outside moving
fast in another direction.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Books, The Line

James Dickey’s Black Mask: Deliverance as a Runaway Slave Narrative

December 5, 2018 By James McWilliams 1 Comment

by James McWilliams

When Burt Reynolds died last August, the obits recounted the strange life of an iconic American actor. Particularly weird was how Reynolds often lied about where he was born. He said he was born Waycross, Georgia. Why anyone born in Lansing, Michigan would want to be from Waycross, Georgia is a baffling question. What we do know is that Reynolds, who always identified as southern, and even affected a twang to fit the image, was, with this odd fib, participating in a cultural practice with roots dating back to nineteenth-century plantation culture. Burt Reynolds was “storying.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books, The Line, Thought

riot sounds

Into the Triangular Warp, Without Tether

New from Mandy, Indiana
“Injury Detail”

on Fire Talk Records

The Line

Louise Bourgeois: What Is The Shape of This Problem?

at University of Southern California, Fisher Museum of Art. (through 3 December 3, 2022) Reviewed by Margaret Lazzari Louise Bourgeois is widely recognized for her sculptures and installations, but Louise Bourgeois: What is The Shape of This Problem is a wonderful opportunity to immerse yourself in her perhaps-lesser-known prints, fabric work and writings. This exhibit contains over […]

Moonage Daydream Conveys More Myth Than Man

Moonage Daydream Dir. Brett Morgan Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin As one of the greatest shapeshifters in the expansive history of rock music, it seems only fitting that the documentary with David Bowie as its subject never seems content to express the trials, tribulations and artistic triumphs of Bowie in any one fixed way. This is […]

The Artful Construction of The ‘I’

by Merve Emre NYR The essay form…bears some responsibility for the fact that bad essays tell stories about people instead of elucidating the matter at hand. —Theodor Adorno The personal essay is a genre that is difficult to define but easy to denounce. The offending element is rarely the essay as a form, but its […]

Carnación di Rocío Molina, at Riot Material Magazine.

On Binding: Notes from Venice

Bienalle Arte and Bienalle Danza, Venice 2022 By Allyn Aglaïa Chest bound, lips sealed, I walked through Venice alone, quiet, and: thought about narratives that bind us to erotic binds

Mohammad Barrangi's Guardians of Eden (Dreamscape #8), at Riot Material magazine.

Transcendence Beyond Erasure in Mohammad Barrangi’s Dreamscape

at Advocartsy, Los Angeles (thru 5 November 2022) Reviewed by Christopher Ian Lutz Fantasy requires a symbolic vehicle to transport a character from the real world into the imaginary realm, where the laws of reality are subverted or obscured to justify an otherwise absurd event. The artist might depict the vehicle as a real object […]

Idris Khan's The Pattern of Landscape at Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Angeles. An interview with Idris is at Riot Material magazine.

An Interview with Idris Khan

The Pattern of Landscape, at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles (through 5 November 2022) by Ricky Amadour Opening on the corner of Highland and De Longpre Avenues in the heart of Hollywood, Idris Khan’s The Pattern of Landscape is the inaugural exhibition at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles. Khan investigates color theory, text, and musical concepts through […]

Soul Crash: Our Slow, Inexorable Release Into the Metaverse

by Sue Halpern The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball Liveright 352pp., $18.89 NYR In October 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would now be called Meta and its business interests would be pivoting to the metaverse, there was almost universal confusion: most observers had no idea what he was […]

green tara

Pointing the Staff at the Old Man

A wisdom transmission by Samaneri Jayasāra Excerpted from —  Advice from the Lotus Born  from the chapter “Pointing the Staff at the Old Man” Translated by Eric Pema Kunsang Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 184pp., $21.95 . .

Margaret Lazzari’s "Shimmer." From the exhibition "Breathing Space."

Margaret Lazzari’s Luminous Breathing Space

at George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles (through 8 October 2022) Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner “Things are not what they seem: nor are they otherwise.” –Buddha Margaret Lazzari’s luminous solo exhibition of paintings, entitled Breathing Space, were painted during the pandemic, and the exhibition title is indeed significant. It’s defined as a respite, a hiatus, or an […]

A Look Back on an Iconoclast: Art Critic Dave Hickey

by Jarrett Earnest Far From Respectable: Dave Hickey and His Art by Daniel Oppenheimer University of Texas Press, 141 pp., $24.95 The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded by Dave Hickey University of Chicago Press, 123 pp., $15.00 (paper) Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy by Dave Hickey Art Issues Press, 215 […]

From Phil Tippet's Mad God, reviewed at Riot Material magazine.

Nihilism Births Its Own Interminable Hell

Mad God Dir. Phil Tippett Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin Technically astonishing and immersive to a fault, director Phil Tippett successfully demonstrates that thirty years of relentless dedication to your craft can lead to cinematic innovations even his old stomping grounds – the sets of Star Wars and Jurassic Park – have yet to catch up. […]

Eve Wood, "Ostrich Pretending To Be A Francis Bacon Painting." At Riot Material.

An Interview with Artist Eve Wood

Eve Wood: Hanging in There to Hang On at Track 16 Gallery, Los Angeles (opening reception: Saturday, September 10, 7-10pm) by Julie Adler I met Eve Wood at Holly Matter, an art gallery on Heliotrope in East Hollywood, 22 years ago now. I recall she got up and read some of her poems. Incisive, cutting, […]

John Lurie’s The History of Bones

Reviewed by Cintra Wilson The History of Bones: A Memoir by John Lurie Random House, 435 pp., $28.00 NYRB It was 1989 when I saw John Lurie on TV in a late-night advertisement for the new Lounge Lizards album, Voice of Chunk, which was “not available in stores” and selling exclusively through an 800 number. Operators were standing […]

Marlene Dumas, "Losing (Her Meaning)," 1988. At Riot Material magazine.

Marlene Dumas’ Masks of Inborn Gods

open-end, at Palazzo Grassi, Venice (through 8 January 2023) Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx Four relatively small artworks greet the visitor in the first room of the Marlene Dumas exhibit, open-end, at Palazzo Grassi. D-rection shows a young man contemplating his rather large and purple erection. A bluish white face and a brown face unite […]

Clarice Lispector

Baffling the Sphinx: The Enigmatic World of Clarice Lispector

Reviewed by John Biscello Água Viva by Clarice Lispector New Directions Publishing 88pp., $14.95 Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas by Clarice Lispector New Directions Publishing 864pp., $29.95 The word is my fourth dimension –Clarice Lispector And on the eighth and endless day, where the bottomless hallelujah meets Ouroboros, God created Clarice Lispector. Maybe. […]

Donna Ferrato "Diamond, Minneapolis, MN 1987." At Riot Material magazine

Donna Ferrato’s Magnificent Holy

at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, NYC (through July 29 2022) Reviewed by Phoebe Hoban The small scale of Donna Ferrato’s snapshot-like black-and-white photographs belies their personal and political power. Whether they document the medical sinks and shelves in a now-shuttered Texas abortion clinic, or hone in on the badly bruised face of a domestic violence […]

Darcilio Lima Unknown Lithograph, 1972. At Riot Material magazine.

Magia Protetora: The Art of Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos and Darcilio Lima

at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick, Cleveland OH (through 30 September 2022) Curated by Stephen Romano Gallery Reviewed by Christopher Ian Lutz The extension of a lineage occurs not merely by the repetition of form, but by the intersection of conservation and revolution. Transformation is fundamental to preserving the essence of a given tradition’s rituals and […]

Eve Wood's A Cadence for Redemption, written in the fictive voice of Abraham Lincoln, is excerpted at Riot Material magazine.

Songs For Our Higher Selves

A Cadence for Redemption: Conversations With Abraham Lincoln by Eve Wood Del Sol Press, 46pp., $5.99 Employing the fictive voice of a former president, Eve Wood shifts the perspective on the happenings of our times – where all indicators point to the slow, inexorable collapse of the American Experiment – to the one man who […]

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