Thursday, April 05, 2007

April Enthusiasms

- Mika, "Grace Kelly." Does Daniel Nester know about this guy? He's the absolute reincarnation of Freddie Mercury (I hear/see more than a little bit of Rufus Wainwright and Hedwig and the Angry Inch too), and this is the wittiest, most infectious pop song I've heard in ages. Deserves to be as big as Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," or bigger.

- Effing #6, edited by Joe Massey. It's almost all excellent, but what stands out in my mind (with the magazine not in front of me) are the contributions of Mairead Byrne. She has a poem about a sponge in a plastic bag that nearly moved me to tears.

- The Show with Ze Frank. I am so very sorry I missed this while it was happening, but a stroll through the archives does not disappoint. Who likes the little duckies in the pond?

- Khaled Mattawa's poem "Tocqueville" in the premiere issue of /nor. One of the darkest, most sustained, genuinely terrifying political poems I've read in a long while. A searching investigation of self-betrayal and the violence that infects every level of empire, margins and centers. A poem-war on terror-war, a postcolonial polemic that never entirely loses sight of the mutual demands language and ideology make on each other. To paraphrase Ezra Pound, what this nation might be if it read poems like this haunts my sleep.

No comments:

Popular Posts

Followers