Because sometimes you just need someone who will throw knives at you

I enjoyed La fille sur le pont way more than I thought I would. After reading the description on the Netflix sleeve, I despaired: what on earth had made me request a film about a suicidal, sex-crazy French woman who falls for a gambling (possibly telekinetic) knife-thrower (played by the great Daniel Auteuil)?

I still don't have an answer for you, there. But, I can tell you that La fille is a great, fun summer film: it pokes fun at its own noir-ish ambitions and, amidst all the lusty jokes (somewhat irritatingly at the female character's expense), the movie somehow succeeds in portraying a love story based on mutual need rather than overwhelming physical desire.

It strikes me that this clip is a little Moulin Rouge-ish, though the film itself is not. Allez-y.

Summer like a fire sale -or- I'm feeling kind of list-y

Summer means big books and ridiculous pop music...as soon as I can pay attention long enough to do anything about the pile of novels I've been meaning to read and (imaginary) CDs I've been meaning to crank through my nifty globular speakers. Also on the summer agenda:

• vegetables
• Zumba
• Research Assistant-ing
• apartment hunting
• my Southern Odyssey (Lancaster/Philadelphia [whatever; it's the Mason-Dixon line], Virginia, and Florida [twice!])
• silly French movies

Since I can only seem to think in lists right now, here's the line-up for summer reading here at paper alphabet:

The Fortress of Solitude
Jonathan Lethem

My friend Jessica swears by this book, and I love Jessica, so I'm reading it. Despite my reservations about the whole Brooklyn publishing phenomenon. Also, I like superheroes.




A Fraction of the Whole
Steve Toltz

Recommended months and months ago by the great Maud Newton (who also lives in Brooklyn...). I've been itching to read it all year. Jail. Australians. I have to do something now that House isn't on anymore.




The Manual of Detection
Jedediah Berry

Jed Berry is a UMass MFA alum, so I've had the opportunity to listen to him talk a few times since being here. He was especially encouraging about working with/for small presses, which I think is admirable and exciting. Also, Jensen wants people to read this book, and I love him, so I will.


Delicate, Edible Birds And Other Stories
Lauren Groff

I've sort of had a girl crush on Lauren Groff ever since I met her at the Emerging Writers Festival in Lancaster two years ago. Her novel, Monsters of Templeton, hadn't even come out at that point; I've been following her ever since (you know, on foot, and everything. [I probably shouldn't joke about these things on the interwebs.])


Pretty Monsters
Kelly Link

I've been meaning to read Kelly Link for two years now, and I think I'll start with her YA collection of stories, since the summer makes me want to write stories with magic and monsters and people carrying their own heads. Her other collection, Magic for Beginners, is available for download (for free!) over at Small Beer Press--also where Jed Berry works as an assistant editor (the world is a small place.).


The Withdrawal Method
Pasha Malla

I think Pasha Malla is great. I think this interview with Pasha Malla, conducted by his mother, is possibly greater.

Did I mention that I love Canadians?




Super Natural Cooking
Heidi Swanson

Heidi Swanson knows how to make great food--and how to take beautiful photographs of the great food that make cooking look glamorous instead of time-consuming, and, if you're me, kind of a messy, tasty disaster. What I've read of this book has since become an indispensable resource for many of my cooking endeavors. A lot of these recipes are available for free on her website, 101 Cookbooks, but the book is worth getting--even if I don't think I'll ever purchase quinoa flour, she makes developing a pantry sound like quite the adventure.

I also plan to read lots of George Eliot. And Virginia Woolf. And July will be devoted to finally reading Ulysses cover to cover. Because I wouldn't be in grad school if I weren't a huge, huge nerd.

Bicycle Cure-All

On Sunday I went for a bike ride in the best kind of weather: the gray skies of almost-rain that make the whole world explode with color. I had no idea that the little town I live in extends so far to the west of the north-south road I travel everyday. Although at times it felt like I was in Amherst suburbia, there were also old farmhouses, tilled fields, horses, chickens, rabbits.


And the roads were quiet and flat, good for a jaunt. In many ways it felt like riding through a shrunken version of home: town and country all in a few square miles.

Biking cleared the air in my head, let some bugs out. This week still looks like: grading free-for-all seminar paper seminar paper presentation collapse repeat.

The sight of bridges and balloons

makes calm canaries irritable / and they caw and claw all afternoon / catenaries and dirigibles...


I just realized that the same reason I love Shannon Burns is quite possibly the same reason I love Joanna Newsom. Breadfruit.

And this is kind of what I feel like right now. Archive. Palimpsest. Paper! Except my clothes aren't as nice.


And I'd much rather be here, on the water.

(I promise to make more sense in a month, after a massage and a bubble bath and a pot of chocolate fondue.)

Remember that $20/month on books rule?

Now I won't be able to get my hands on G.C. Waldrep's new book Archicembalo (Tupelo Press) until 2012, at the earliest. Clearly, I have a problem that is not strictly monetary. But I do have a birthday...in four months...


{Edit, 5 May: Totally caved and bought a $10 copy at the Juniper Festival. Worth every penny.}

Fly me to the moon...

So, I've been thinking about a writing strategy Caroline explained to me over spring break--that is, writing a line (or so) every day and at the end of the week putting all the fragments together into one joyous poem (style copyright Dean Young, or something).

I've started trying to write this way, and it's going fairly well. Except I didn't do it yesterday or today (yet). But the line from Thursday was great!

One of my writing/image obsessions is with the backs of things. Fire escapes. Behind old buildings and train stations. Water stains. Crumbling brick. Dumpsters. The things that people don't want you to see. I used to try and take pictures of these things with my old film camera.

In other news, in other words, I've been a bad phone correspondent these days. I needed time to do work and to catch up, since I was behind on everything, so I was hermiting. I feel more on track now (despite spending an inordinate amount of time looking at photos online and writing blog posts about random things today). I will call soon soon.

Dear Jalapeño. It's springtime.

I tend to make playlists when the seasons change, though mainly during winter and spring. This winter I was obsessed with every single Bon Iver song I could get my hands on. And with Nina Kinert, who gave me some alternatives for my need to listen to "Peach Plum Pear" at moments of transition.

Now that the weather is crazy, wavering between late fall and early summer and wreaking havoc on my sinuses, I'm pulling out songs that always always remind me of springtime: Arcade Fire's "No Cars Go," as cheesy as it may seem, is a big spring song for me--I first heard the EP version several years ago while I was living in England, and I listened to it on my long walks into town from my flat, everything shrouded in mist and drizzle. I prefer the momentum in the newer version, though I don't know if it will fit into "Dear Jalapeño." Arcade Fire tends to overpower everything else in mixes.

The Most Serene Republic's song "Phages," is pretty much the song I put on as soon as the sun comes out. Renewal! New beginnings! I am pretty much desperate to see them again in concert.

All this talk of playlists and music because I'm going to the Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos show next week with Gale and Jess--I'm excited for the first taste of live music since last semester. I like Margot, I do, despite the fact that I think they milk the melancholy in their songs. I think I am more looking forward to being against the stage and trying to hear what the person next to me is saying.

"Dear Jalapeño" because I went to a Zach Schomburg and Emily Kendall Frey reading last week, and Emily read a slew of her "Dear Jalapeño" poems. I like the idea of tying poems together through the repeated use of one phrase, with the aim of changing the meaning of the phrase itself and how we think about it in relation to other lines (at least I think this is what's going on here). Gale and I talked about how "jalapeño" becomes an endearment: her word was "tender." You can read some poems with tender "Dear Jalapeños" in them at La Petite Zine here.

Zach Schomburg read new poems from his MS "Scary, No Scary," and I liked them, of course. I almost liked my friend Ben's introduction of Zach Schomburg even better, though. A kind of amazement about the brain that gave us The Man Suit, which made me realize I could be writing very different kinds of poems. You can read some new Zach Schomburg over at Typo.

And now...a bad spring playlist:

***

Dear Jalapeño--it's springtime (in the works)
1. The Changeling (Get Guilty) / A.C. Newman / Get Guilty
2. Fitz and the Dizzyspells / Andrew Bird / Noble Beast
3. Nightlife / The Muslims / The Muslims
4. Blindness / Metric / Fantasies
5. Zero / Yeah Yeah Yeahs / It's Blitz!
6. Take Me to the Riot / Stars / In Our Bedroom After the War
7. LES Artistes (XXXchange Remix) / Santogold
8. Phages / The Most Serene Republic / Phages
9. Swimming Pools / Thao Nguyen & The Get Down Stay Down / We Brave Beestings & All
10. Only Pieces / Here We Go Magic / Here We Go Magic
11. Dance Dance Dance / Lykke Li / Little Bit EP
12. Take on Me / A.C. Newman / Cheesy Starbucks compilation

{Edit: also, apparently I can't spell but I do know how to use a tilda. Who let me into grad school, anyway?}