Before John D’Agata was unleashing ill-literary lyric flavor all over middle school loose leaf and waxing prose-poetic about Halls of Fame (not to be confused with E-40’s seminal work, Hall of Game) William Blake was getting mad-hyphy with his poetics and visuals like he was the Matthew Barney of the 19th Century. But we’ve all got to ask, will anyone give a hoot about Barney in 250 years? Sure, he’s rockin’ the Icelandic pop-songstress cradle, but will our non-oil dependent descendants have any use for Drawing Restraint #69? To tell you the truth, I have no idea (all this and more to be argued by offensively pretentious Iowa graduate students at the Foxhead in lieu of Thursday Night Football) but what I do know is that we still care about that old English bloke, William Blake, who flexed impressive talents in both poetry and painting. To celebrate his 250th birthday the editors of The Norton Critical Blake anthology and a powerhouse combination of contemporary writers will be getting all chummy-chummy at Prairie Lights on Wednesday. If you have any respect for words on pages or images on canvas, you’ll be there to hear Mary Ruefle, Mark Levine, Dean Young, and original Hall of Gamer John D’Agata dropping literary science like Gallileo dropped the orange. Get thee to the ‘Lights at 7PM on Wednesday, November 28th.
*NEWS FLASH* This just in from Prairie Lights management: will all of you “poor” Ivy League-educated writers please stop stealing books? Remember, this is, like, an independent bookstore. Shoplifting is for Borders + Barnes & Noble.
I’ll pick up the Barney gauntlet. BE THERE.
Also, you should post something about the Hall Mall show on Thursday - Tanks/Caves/I forget what else, but it’ll be real.
Also, how can you connect William Blake to hyphy without throwing at least on “thizz” reference in there? Look, here’s your lesson on how white critics should use hip hop slang:
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/51057/federation-its-whateva/
/irony
i’m not white.
Ah, caught out. I thought it was that other fella posting.
The real point was the popmatters review, though - it’s mildly shudderiffic regardless of the writer’s race. I can’t quite figure out why, but there’s something about the high/low slippage in the language that leaves subculture with the short end of the stick. The writer’s like, “Yeah, I’m going to condescend to use your language for the moment, while I’m secretly goofing on your style, and I’ll drop you like a hot rock as soon as hipsters don’t care about you anymore.”
Maybe I’m reading into that, though.
haha, i’m with you, no worries!
“that other fella?” i take issue to that. unless you were talking about that other fella.