¡Bemsha SWING!

18 jul 2005

For example, C. Dale Young's lines about You weigh me down / like generic hairspray... I like these lines more than I do any poem by [insert here the name of some poet you think I probably don't like but that you think C. Dale probably likes]. The simile is fresh and smart and the sentiment genuine. It's like a parody of one of those bad hardboiled styles ("She clung on me like cheap perfume...") C. Dale can only look back and think how bad his poetry used to be, whereas if I were to read these lines in an on-line poetry magazine named after a certain hair product they wouldn't be out of place at all.

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C. Dale dijo...: You don't have the remaining 25 lines of pathetic (and maudlin) undergrad drivel that followed these lines. These lines were not fresh or smart in the context of the poem at large.

And you might be quite surprised by what I like and dislike in poetry. I suspect there are quite a few poets you like that I also like, admire even.; 3:42 p. m.
Anthony Robinson dijo...: i agree that these are sharp and funny lines.

i think that sometimes as we 'grow' as poets, we 'learn' that sharp and funny are not as important as 'serious.'

not that i'm sharp and funny, but i'd never send a poem of mine to Ploughshares, for example, as it'd have a snowball's chance of getting accepted, as that journal's aesthetic contrasts markedly with mine.

or perhaps my poems just blow. but i seem to have enough success publishing in magazines i like, so...; 3:47 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: ***

I probably couldn't even get arrested in Ploughshares.; 4:27 p. m.
Anthony Robinson dijo...: You could get arrested in Texas, though.; 4:31 p. m.
C. Dale dijo...: Ploughshares isn't always the same. They are constantly rotating guest editors. That said, most of the guest editors fall within a certain range of the aesthetic.; 4:59 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: (((}}}}}

So you're saying maybe I could get arrested in Ploughshares? I'm not saying it's all bad--that would be a foolish statement about any journal--but that, like Tony, I perceive myself having very little chance there. Who's the guest editor who falls most outside this "certain range"? I'll have to check.; 5:40 p. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

18 jul 2005

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