EPISODE 5 - Can I Make Poet August Smith Cry?

AUGUST LEAVES A POEM IN AN AIRPLANE BARFBAG

This August, follow the Vectorizing adventures of August Smith as he brings poetry and art along on his travels. (See all his posts here.) August writes:

Okay, so I forgot to leave a poem in Amsterdam, which was the other city I visited on my trip. Something about that city makes me very forgetful…

So on my flight back to Boston, I decided to leave this final broadside, “Island Sided” by Abi Pollokoff and Ira Joel Haber, in my plane seat’s “barfbag.” I thought this was a clever way for the broadside to avoid detection; I know the cleaning crews go through the seat-pockets between every flight to clear out garbage and such, but I doubt that they search very thoroughly.

In my mind, I picture someone, an elderly man perhaps, flying to visit his only daughter overseas. He hates flying, has hated flying ever since he was a young man and was no longer allowed to smoke on planes. He’s also very nervous to visit his daughter (they’ve barely spoken in years, this being his attempt to “reconnect” with her after his wife’s passing), nervous also to be in a strange and foreign country. The flight is a bumpy one, too, and coupling that with his nerves and his inexperience with flying, he thinks, “Oh, great. I’m going to get sick.”

So he reaches for the barfbag and… what’s this? Some type of paper? A… poem? What colorful and interesting imagery! What strange rhythm and complex syntax!

And then suddenly, the plane has landed. He forgot all about his nerves and his upset stomach, so lost in the artwork was he. And then he gets off the plane and meets his daughter for dinner, and after a few drinks, he reads her the poem. And she loves it, she loves the moment they’re sharing, and they do reconnect, and they have a healthy and beautiful father-daughter relationship for many years. Or maybe he just throws up on it and is like, “What the hell…. why is there paper in here…” Either way, it’s an interesting way to interact with poetry.

August Smith is a poet. He lives in in Somerville, MA, and attends UMass Boston. He runs Cool Skull Press on the side. You can read more of his writing at his website, which includes links to published poems, chapbooks, essays, and other neato stuff: http://august.mostlymidwest.com/.

August Smith is a poet living in Somerville, MA. He runs Cool Skull Press and attends UMass Boston. He is writing in the third-person right now. You can read his published poems, chapbooks, and other stuff here. He tweets @augustjsmith.

My favorite childhood book

The only book I’ve read more than ten times is J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. My mother is the person who lent me a love of literature, and The Hobbit is one of the books she read to me and my brother at a young and impressionable age, so for me it’s all tied up with those memories and family and the excitement of childhood, etc. Besides Lord of the Rings, I never really got into fantasy in a big way, but The Hobbit is one of those books I can return to again and again. I’m a little wary of picking it up these days as every time I open it to a random chapter I end up reading it again to the end.

The book I enjoyed most in school

If by “in school” you mean undergrad, I think Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red is the book that has stuck with me the most. For the unfamiliar, it’s a “verse novel,” a collection of singular pieces that make up a solid novel-like narrative arc. I read it as part of a poetry class taught by Traci Brimhall and it pretty much ripped a hole in my brain as far as poetry goes. It really opened up the idea of the book as form, I guess.

The classic I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read

There are tons and tons of classics that I’ve never read, but it doesn’t embarrass me too much. I haven’t read many of the Russian classics (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc.) and I guess I don’t feel good admitting that. Hopefully I’ll get around to those.

A book I consider grossly overrated

I’ve never made it through a single Jonathan Safran Foer novel, despite repeated attempts. Take that as you will.

The last book to make me laugh

Return to the City of White Donkeys by James Tate. Just totally absurd little narrative poems that are kind of funny in a sideways, surreal way. There’s this one poem about this dude dressed as an Easter bunny. It’s gold, Jerry, solid gold.

The last book to make me cry

Gee whiz, I don’t remember. Books don’t make me cry very often. I can acknowledge they’re sad and can feel it, but I’m rarely brought to tears. That makes me sound kind of serial killer-y, but it’s the truth. I got pretty emotionally upset by Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, I will say that.

A book I wish I’d written

I wish I’d written Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.

What I’m reading right now

I just finished Proxies, a book of beautiful personal essays by Brian Blanchfield, and I’ve been dragging his poem-book A Several World around with me. I bought his poetry a couple years ago when it won some award, but the book felt way “beyond” me. It was just really difficult, dense, obtuse stuff. But now that I’ve read his essays, I feel like I understand him much better, and his poems make more sense to me, and I enjoy their erudite quality. It’s no longer obtuse to my ears, it’s musical. Funny how that works.

The next book I’m going to read

I don’t know! Don’t rush me! Probably more by James Tate. I also want to get that Olio by Tyehumba Jess once I have the money. Looks like a real stunner.

My “reading playlist” – 5 books about: BENDING REALITY’S ARM UNTIL IT BEGS YOU TO STOP

1. The First 4 Books of Sampson Starkweather

2. Harmonium by Wallace Stevens

3. Viper Jazz by James Tate

4. Percussion Grenade by Joyelle McSweeney

August Smith is a poet living in Somerville, MA. He runs Cool Skull Press and attends UMass Boston. He is writing in the third-person right now. You can read his published poems, chapbooks, and other stuff here. He tweets @augustjsmith.

My favorite childhood book

The only book I’ve read more than ten times is J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. My mother is the person who lent me a love of literature, and The Hobbit is one of the books she read to me and my brother at a young and impressionable age, so for me it’s all tied up with those memories and family and the excitement of childhood, etc. Besides Lord of the Rings, I never really got into fantasy in a big way, but The Hobbit is one of those books I can return to again and again. I’m a little wary of picking it up these days as every time I open it to a random chapter I end up reading it again to the end.

The book I enjoyed most in school

If by “in school” you mean undergrad, I think Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red is the book that has stuck with me the most. For the unfamiliar, it’s a “verse novel,” a collection of singular pieces that make up a solid novel-like narrative arc. I read it as part of a poetry class taught by Traci Brimhall and it pretty much ripped a hole in my brain as far as poetry goes. It really opened up the idea of the book as form, I guess.

The classic I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read

There are tons and tons of classics that I’ve never read, but it doesn’t embarrass me too much. I haven’t read many of the Russian classics (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc.) and I guess I don’t feel good admitting that. Hopefully I’ll get around to those.

A book I consider grossly overrated

I’ve never made it through a single Jonathan Safran Foer novel, despite repeated attempts. Take that as you will.

The last book to make me laugh

Return to the City of White Donkeys by James Tate. Just totally absurd little narrative poems that are kind of funny in a sideways, surreal way. There’s this one poem about this dude dressed as an Easter bunny. It’s gold, Jerry, solid gold.

The last book to make me cry

Gee whiz, I don’t remember. Books don’t make me cry very often. I can acknowledge they’re sad and can feel it, but I’m rarely brought to tears. That makes me sound kind of serial killer-y, but it’s the truth. I got pretty emotionally upset by Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, I will say that.

A book I wish I’d written

I wish I’d written Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.

What I’m reading right now

I just finished Proxies, a book of beautiful personal essays by Brian Blanchfield, and I’ve been dragging his poem-book A Several World around with me. I bought his poetry a couple years ago when it won some award, but the book felt way “beyond” me. It was just really difficult, dense, obtuse stuff. But now that I’ve read his essays, I feel like I understand him much better, and his poems make more sense to me, and I enjoy their erudite quality. It’s no longer obtuse to my ears, it’s musical. Funny how that works.

The next book I’m going to read

I don’t know! Don’t rush me! Probably more by James Tate. I also want to get that Olio by Tyehumba Jess once I have the money. Looks like a real stunner.

My “reading playlist” – 5 books about: BENDING REALITY’S ARM UNTIL IT BEGS YOU TO STOP

1. The First 4 Books of Sampson Starkweather

2. Harmonium by Wallace Stevens

3. Viper Jazz by James Tate

4. Percussion Grenade by Joyelle McSweeney

AUGUST LEAVES A POEM IN A BERLIN BATHROOM 

This August, follow the Vectorizing adventures of August Smith as he brings poetry and art along on his travels. August writes:

I love this collection of various haiku from 2015. I love the way it works as a contrapuntal piece, how it stretches its symbolism across various political and poetic poles with breathless deftness, how its design seems to radiate and warp the poems around the antenna like a cloud of linguistic magnetic miasma, how it catches the eye and then confuses it. If I saw this on a wall, I’d have to stop and look; the phrase “graph-porn” comes immediately to mind.

I left this poem in a bathroom stall at a Berlin restaurant. I think the restaurant was called Bird. My travel partner and I had stopped there for a drink on our first night in the city, just before I went out to meet an internet friend and attend a multi-national English poetry reading at an emptied out apartment venue on the outskirts of the city.

Berlin, hands-down, has the best bathroom stalls of any city I’ve ever visited. Not only is the graffiti downright ubiquitous, but it’s often clever and creative too (this particular picture doesn’t showcase that aspect very well, but the adjacent wall to the right had some very poem-y vibes. One that I remember: “Maybe you should buy/ a house./ Maybe you shouldn’t buy/ a house.”) The city in general is extremely multicultural, kind of grimy and dingy, but overall very friendly. Before I put this broadside up, I had a brief conversation with the barkeep. I asked him if he has ever visited the United States. He, a black man, replied that he would love to some day, but that he’s scared of getting shot. We both laughed one of those mirthless laughs that feel like the only appropriate reaction when there really isn’t one. His statement stuck with me, and that’s why I chose this particular series of poems form the lot I brought on my travels. A little antenna, stuck on the wall, jamming the local frequencies of a far-off bathroom, transmitting something both alien and familiar from our own country.

August Smith is a poet. He lives in in Somerville, MA, and attends UMass Boston. He runs Cool Skull Press on the side. You can read more of his writing at his website, which includes links to published poems, chapbooks, essays, and other neato stuff: http://august.mostlymidwest.com/.

“Work Hard & Dream Big” by August Smith

Welcome! Thanks for coming to our monthly meeting. Please enjoy the generous spread of cheese and crackers I’ve arranged. Today, I’m happy to say that our numbers are up. They’re way way up. Our numbers are fucking stellar. Fifteen hundred, for example. Simply stellar. Our sales, too, are off-the-charts, but as this chart illustrates, not literally. Next, my friends, I’d like you to gaze at this inspirational picture of a horse prancing on a beach, the sunset center-frame and velvet-sodden, a looming planet-sized ruby. Note the inspirational quote written on the bottom in that huge and motivating typeface: WORK HARD & DREAM BIG. Take it in, my friends. It’s stellar. Please keep this in mind because we’ll be coming back to it later. Remember: work hard and dream big at the same time. Just like the horse prancing on the beach is doing. Stellar! Moving on: this pie chart, showing what we want you to “give” every day at work. Notice how it equals one hundred percent. Next, your questions. Are there any questions? Colleagues? Trustees? Any questions? Stellar. At this point, the horse has arrived at the end of the beach. She fixes her eyes on the sun as the last lavender sliver of day drowns its light in the waves, giving form to the crystalline mane of the Milky Way. Why, the horse wondered, was she here? Who had placed her by this ocean, on this infinite, endless, idyllic beach? She remembers a speech about… sails? About numbers and charts… about cheese…? But it doesn’t feel clear or coherent… And a strange and abnormal desire to work hard— and perhaps even dream big— seems to urge and inform every step. The horse turns around, facing the length of the beach once again, with the sun upon the horizon again. Walking on the fluorescent sand colored red in the fading sunlight, she thinks to herself in huge and motivating letters WORK HARD & DREAM BIG. And that, my truly stellar friends and colleagues, is in itself the very picture of inspiration. Let’s give it up for the picture of the horse.

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August Smith called us from Somerville, MA. More about August.

voicemailpoems.org // 1-910-703-POEM

A sex dream trips over itself and gets weird, 
introducing the wrong characters and far too many. Thrust again as I am to the sphere of the human-shaped lonely,
 I yoke my ideas to my beliefs and drive them out to the pasture.

Is it possible to think of only one thing, always? To isolate a single thought? Hold it in mind? Bond with it? I don’t have room for this question. My Finances are the size of a barn, always grazing. Politics are a serpent toxic to the flock. Love? A widening black hole in the field.

Self-Esteem is a gelatinous cube absorbing all color. All the Pensive Thoughts are soft, small, furry— worthless woodland shrubs. Cradle them: they purr. Smother them; no one seems to care.

Beyond these verdant hills lies a patient and forgetful world,
 full of strange ideas: men rolling barrels of them onto boats, 
ethics wearing their elaborate hats, shepherds crossing the rope-bridge into the city and jostling with their staves for space.

I want to leave and go off alone and be bored and empty. I want to sit beneath the linden tree in blossom at the riverbank. But I can’t leave the serpent, the cube, the barn-sized beast,
 the purring shrub of Loneliness forever resting at my side.