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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Anis Shivani: National Poetry Month Emerging Poet Spotlight: Interview with Lynn Xu, Author of Debts and Lessons

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Anis ShivaniWriter, anisshivani.com

GET UPDATES FROM Anis Shivani Like 58 National Poetry Month Emerging Poet Spotlight: Interview with Lynn Xu, Author of Debts and Lessons Posted: 04/15/2013 4:57 pm Read more

Experimental Poetry , National Poetry Month , Rusty Morrison , Canarium Books , Joshua Edwards , Lynn Xu , New Poetry , Omnidawn Publishing , Poetry Interviews , Poetry News , Postmodern Poetry , Small Press Poetry , Books News
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Lynn Xu's debut book of poetry, Debts & Lessons, has just appeared (April 1) from the always terrific Omnidawn Publishing. Together with Robyn Schiff, Nick Twemlow, and Joshua Edwards, Lynn edits Canarium Books. My interview with Lynn follows, but first, here's one of my favorite poems from the book, "For Frank O'Hara," from the "Lullabies" section:

Dear Frank. I am writing you a letter with nowhere to send it. We've taken a room in San Felipe, on the Calle de los Claveles. Separating the bedrooms are fifteen paces covering the length of our courtyard. Purple jacarandas seesaw above us and in the street, blouses dissolve like lozenges to release the natural color. At night we are carried out with our noses missing. Darkness spreads from person to person. Black hills outstretch the rugged profile of the soil.

Anis: How long did it take you to write Debts & Lessons and what were the major stages in its growth and progression?

Lynn: Debts & Lessons took about seven years to write and the book proceeds pretty much chronologically, with the first poem written in 2005 and the last finished in 2012. Given the fact that there are seven poem sequences in the book, I would say I write about one poem (one series) per year. Each time I sit down to write something new it feels like an insurmountable stage and I am plunged into the unknown. I'd like to believe that what I learn comes from my ability to forget. I've always consigned this to be a defect of my intellect, but now that I've lived thirty years with this engine of a mind, I am making an effort to embrace my forgetfulness as a valiant feature of understanding. I am growing, in spite of what I know.

Anis: This is your debut book. Can you talk about particular challenges you faced in putting together this book? What did you learn in this process?

Lynn: The hardest thing was to figure out what a "book" is--that is, what it is to me. I mean: is it a project? An argument? A collection of poems under the aegis of a governing lyric voice? These questions return us to a very basic problem of parts to whole. But the book, as an object in time, exercises its unifying power--indeed, it solicits our synthetic powers to make its existence something comprehensible, consumable in one go. My book does not openly undermine or seek to sabotage the regulative principle of the book as a form--but what I learned in making it, about myself and what I wanted it to be, was that it was simply a pause, a resting point against which to lean the mind's restlessness. I do not conceive of it as a closed object, nor secured against revision and further change. The book should not succeed too successfully, but raise furtive glances amid the dead and living alike.

Anis: What are your most important poetic influences? Both in general, and in particular for this book?

Lynn: This book is not shy about announcing its kin, or what it hallucinates to be its cultural deictics. Names not openly acknowledged, or books I was reading and rereading at this time: Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian), Brian Evenson (Dark Property), William Faulkner (Absalom, Absalom!), Walter Benjamin (Arcades Project), Susan Stewart (Poetry and the Fate of the Senses), and various parts of W.G. Sebald.

Anis: I particularly like the section "Lullabies." Could you talk about your favorite poem in this section, and the nature of your dialogue with the poet in question?

Lynn: During our reading tour this last month, the two lullabies I found myself returning to were: the lullaby for Hart Crane and the lullaby for Jules Laforgue. The Hart Crane one still remains a mystery to me--so I won't ruin it for myself by talking about it too deeply. As for the Laforgue, the incantation is not for him alone, but for the undergrowth. I wanted to call to mind a cross-current, wherein the voice that is speaking (whatever it is) cannot but risk it all--that is, subjectivity at the risk of history. Laforgue came to me first through Eliot and his ventriloquy in "Prufrock." I wanted to produce a similar ventriloquism here, but to restore to him (to Laforgue) a fearful intelligence, a promiscuity of absolute embodiment.

Anis: In what particular ways do you think Debts & Lessons is marked by your unique voice?

Lynn: This is a difficult question, not because I do not think my voice unique (since every voice due to the timber and tenor of how one lives is singular), but because Debts and Lessons is so interested in preexisting voices. As a framing device, I am one way in which our relationship to what we read (to the canon, to what we learn and how we come to do what we do) can be read. I must regard the ego as a faceted lens.

Anis: Have you learned things during the composition of this book that you are either determined to repeat or not to repeat?

Lynn: I do not want to lose the exigency of voice, but I do not wish to repeat anything else.

Anis: Can you name a few specific ways your closest readers and/or your publisher helped make this a better book?

Lynn: First of all, it cannot go unsaid that I had the best teachers (Bob Hass, Lyn Hejinian, Geoffrey G. O'Brien, C.D. Wright, Forrest Gander and Keith Waldrop): they were a dream team for my mind. Geoffrey in particular was an incredible reader for the title poem, which in early drafts was in want of a structuring principle. And Rusty Morrison, editor extraordinaire, read through the manuscript with me, poem by poem, over the phone. I cut several lullabies as a result, and rewrote parts of "Debts and Lessons" (the poem). Finally, my husband (poet, translator, and founder of The Canary and Canarium Books, whose being-in-the-world I take to be an antidote to my own) provided an honesty and etiquette of tough-love I could not expect of anyone else. He made this a better book, no doubt about it.

Anis: Who in the contemporary poetry landscape do you think comes closest to the sensibility in this book?

Lynn: Another difficult question. I want to say: everyone and no one--because so much (and perhaps all) of writing is writing-with and writing-alone. I am a big fan of my Canarium co-editors (Nick Twemlow, Robyn Schiff, and Joshua Edwards--his Agonistes poem is something I feel extremely close to, to the point where I sometimes hallucinate its speaking voice) and, in effect, many of our Canarium titles I feel a strong bond with--for example, John Beer's The Waste Land and Other Poems, both collections by Robert Fernandez, We Are Pharaoh and Pink Reef, as well as Ish Klein's Union!--to say the least, in these I find spiritual and lyrical resonance, a balance between historical understanding and self-assertion. Hearing Mary Hickman read recently, I find this dissonance (how to test personal experience against this intellection of objective knowledge) in her ekphrastic poems to be an incredible challenge. This is true for Suzanne Buffam's poems as well as her husband's, Srikanth Reddy, both of whom make the ground rules of epistemology a playground, the clearing of which makes: a life well lived.

Anis: What is your next poetry project?

Lynn: This is a secret! I cannot work unless I have the non-committal reassurance of equal parts experimentation and failure. But I will say that one of the things I am working on is a collaboration with a British (but Paris-based) visual artist, Charlotte Moth, a Canadian architect and film-maker, Rebecca Loewen, and (my very own) husband Joshua Edwards. Also with Joshua Edwards, we are working on a building project with British architect and sculptor Alan Worn, tentatively titled: Notes Toward a House. Finally, I look forward to working with one of my best friends, the artist and poet (and one of the curators of Private Line) Kendra Sullivan; although our discussions remain aquatic at this stage, it is the best possible way.

Anis: What advice do you have for poets trying to make their way in the world of publication and recognition?

Lynn: My sincerest advice (and one which I abide by myself) is: do not let the rat-race lead you astray. Creative work is the work of the spirit, and though the spirit must do its earthly work in its allotted lifetime, remember that its responsibility and conversation is always with a much larger and much more abstract sense of space and time.

Anis Shivani's My Tranquil War and Other Poems has recently been released by NYQ Books. He has just finished a book of sonnets called Soraya. His book The Fifth Lash and Other Stories has also just been published. Look for his novel Karachi Raj in 2013, and a new book of criticism called Literature at the Global Crossroads.

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Saturday, March 9, 2013

Jeremy Luke Is ON OUR RADAR: The Actor Talks Typecasting, Womanizing And Delivering Pizza (INTERVIEW)

Anyone can tell you who's already made it, but HuffPost Arts & Culture's On Our Radar series is here to tell you who's about to blow up -- and, in some cases, go pop.

You've probably heard the buzz around Joseph Gordon Levitt's directorial debut, "Don Jon's Addiction." The film stars JLG himself as a porn-addicted casanova who begins to question his womanizing ways. Although the film stars Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore and Tony Danza as well as the almighty Levitt, we have our eye on the comedic up-and-comer playing Levitt's best friend. Jeremy Luke, known for his web series "Turbo and Joey," plays Levitt's friend, a Jersey bred club hopper who, where the ladies are concerned, takes what he can get. We talked to Luke about Facebook, fame and the unbelievable beauty of ScarJo. Scroll down for a slideshow of Sundance's hottest new stars.

Jeremy Luke with Rob Brown and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, courtesy of Don Jon's Addiction

HP: Tell us about your character in "Don Jon's Addiction."

JL: I play Danny, Joseph Gordon Levitt's friend. Danny is the kind of guy who is in his late 20s, still going to clubs; he is a weekend warrior. His philosophy on women and dating is "go for the 2s and 3s, they're more open minded." Joe and I make a life out of going to clubs, objectifying women, and trying to pick them up.

HP: How did you wind up with the role?

JL: I was hanging out at this bar in my neighborhood and someone recognized me from my web show, "Turbo and Joey." This guy says he knows Joe and is looking for someone to play his best friend. They say they're looking for Jersey but I'm thinking it's going to be like "Garden State," so watered down. I wasn't expecting much, but I sent over some videos.

HP: The cast includes Joseph Gordon Levitt, Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore. What was it like to be surrounded by Hollywood's biggest stars?

JL: Scarlett Johansson is gorgeous. My scenes are primarily with Rob Brown, but man, she was stunning. I'm just a regular guy, so for me to be in the same room as Scarlett -- she was, like, so hot. And in the film she plays this character with kind of a trashy New York accent. When I was around her I just talked about my girlfriend a lot.

HP: Are you blowing up online?

JL: Yeah, a lot of Joe's fans are hitting up my Facebook wall and a lot of them are kind of weird. It's not like models, it's wackos.

HP: Who did you look at for inspiration when getting into character?

JL: To be honest, I looked at myself when i was 21, 22 years old. I'm sure there is a piece of that guy in all of us. Going out, objectifying women. Every guy has done it. It's a part of growing up.

HP: Does your character realize the error of his ways?

JL: Ha, nope. Joe's character realizes, but Danny has another five or six years.

HP: Your bio mentioned that you are more than just a Jersey boy. Do you think being from Jersey has helped your career or is limiting?

JL: Typecasting is a good and a bad thing. I get typecasted to play characters that are all, "Who's got the money?" BOOM! SLAP! "Joey's got the money!" But it gave me an angle. It gave me a way to work. But then again, I can do more than that; I've been acting for 15 years.

HP: How would your drama teacher describe you?

JL: He kicked me out of class. He was great, but honestly the real influence in my life was my acting coach in New York who gave me the inspiration to go out here to LA; it was not easy. I worked selling tickets for Dodger Stadium, I delivered pizza, I did every job under the sun. It's the part that sucks as an artist. But I've learned at the end of the day you just have to enjoy your life.

A lot of people just look at acting as a quick fix -- they don't have a work ethic. This is a job, it's not all margaritas on the beach.

"Don Jon's Addiction" premieres January 18.

See our slideshow of other Sundance faces to watch below.

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Film: Emanuel And The Truth About Fishes The actress, 20, already familiar to British audiences for her role as Effy Stonem on Channel 4's Skins, is said to knock it out of the park as a troubled girl who becomes preoccupied with a mysterious new neighbor bearing a striking resemblance to her dead mother in writer-director Francesca Gregorini's film.

Film: Ain't Them Bodies Saints All of the buzz surrounding the writer-director's bleak, U.S. drama competition title, starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck as an outlaw couple on the run, is sweet revenge for the Texan. His previous film, 2009's St. Nick, was turned down by Sundance (it instead screened at SXSW).

Film: Afternoon Delight Long relegated to sidekick and cameo roles in such films as Our Idiot Brother and Step Brothers, Hahn, 38, seizes the spotlight in the dark comedy, another entry in the U.S. dramatic competition. Jill Soloway directs her in the role of a well-to-do mother who takes home a stripper (Juno Temple) whom she attempts to save.

Film: Mother of George The 34-year-old actress, best known as the fierce, sword-wielding Michonne on AMC hit The Walking Dead, is garnering heat for her turn as a fertility challenged African immigrant desperately trying to save her marriage in Andrew Dosunmu's U.S. drama submission.

Film: The Spectacular Now All grown up since his supporting turn opposite Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole, the 25-year-old stars in James Ponsoldt's coming-of-age film, in the U.S. dramatic competition, as a budding alcoholic who strikes up a relationship with a classmate (Shailene Woodley).

Also on HuffPost:

View the original article here

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Edward Deeds, Outsider Artist, Leaves Behind Hauntingly Innocent Drawings From Mental Institution (PHOTOS, INTERVIEW)

"The artist really should be lost to history, and certainly these drawings should," said curator Tom Parker of his unusual and mysterious upcoming exhibition. The exhibited works are by outsider artist Edward Deeds, a mental patient at a Nevada, Missouri’s State Hospital for almost 40 years.

edward deeds

Deeds, who was diagnosed with dementia praecox and schizophrenia, was committed to a mental institution in 1936. Beyond this fact we know little about Deeds' condition, personality or life, although curator Parker sees all he needs to in Deeds' artwork. "The images have one fabulous clue on every page," Parker explained. "State Lunatic Asylum, written on the paper by the hospital. One poetic detail which encapsulates everything you need to know about the artist and his circumstance."

Deeds' drawings, crafted on the official hospital stationary, radiate a remarkable innocence given the circumstances of their creation. Whimsical lions, wide-eyed characters and vintage vehicles comprise a pictorial land far beyond the mental facility walls. The only reminder of Deeds' dark reality is recurrence of the letters “ECT,” a likely acronym for the controversial shock treatment known as electroconvulsive therapy.

At the time of Deeds' death he gave his collection of drawings to his mother, who passed them to her other son who stored them in his attic. Years later the drawings were tossed out to a curbside junk pile when they were miraculously stumbled upon by a fourteen-year-old boy who became fascinated with Deeds' details. He kept the works safe for 36 years.

The precious drawings, both unpretentious and cryptic, present an idyllic vision from a mysterious perspective. The story of their creation and survival is as magnetic as the raw emotion in his innocent crayon strokes. Thirty of Deeds' works will show at Hirschl & Adler Modern early next year.

Talisman of the Ward: The Album of Drawings by Edward Deeds will show from January 10 until February 9, 2013 at Hirschl & Adler Modern.

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Talisman of the Ward: The Album of Drawings by Edward Deeds Image courtesy Hirschl & Adler Modern

Also on HuffPost:

View the original article here

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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Anis Shivani: National Poetry Month Emerging Poet Spotlight: Interview with Lynn Xu, Author of Debts and Lessons

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Jeremy Luke Is ON OUR RADAR: The Actor Talks Typecasting, Womanizing And Delivering Pizza (INTERVIEW)

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Edward Deeds, Outsider Artist, Leaves Behind Hauntingly Innocent Drawings From Mental Institution (PHOTOS, INTERVIEW)

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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Anis Shivani: National Poetry Month Emerging Poet Spotlight: Interview with Lynn Xu, Author of Debts and Lessons

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Jeremy Luke Is ON OUR RADAR: The Actor Talks Typecasting, Womanizing And Delivering Pizza (INTERVIEW)

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Edward Deeds, Outsider Artist, Leaves Behind Hauntingly Innocent Drawings From Mental Institution (PHOTOS, INTERVIEW)

About Me

Blog Archive