Poem: George Anderson: Ode to a Twistie (2004)

Recently came across this old poem- about 15 years old- a satire on an iconic Aussie snack- the humble twisty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisties

The poem was first published in the Oz magazine The Mozzie in April 2005 edited by the late great Gloria B. Yates- (1933-2008); thankfully without my accompanying image.

I was writing mostly for a children's audience at the time. The poem was prompted by the unusually phallic shape of a twisty I found in my son's packet one day. Fortunately, I was sensible enough not to be sidetracked & created a poem which fleeted with innuendo, but was more focussed on bagging the scientific enhancements of the junk food:

Ode to a Twistie

 

Your golden nuggets come

     in a jumble of sizes 

& shapes

          into my open cupped

               hand. I pluck

           you from the 

packet &

         hold you high 

in the sparkling light of 

                                                                           noon.

 

When I place you in my mouth       

a sick, sweet burst of salts (329, 331)

     & flavour enhancers (621) 

              & colours (160a & e) 

      & food acids (270) 

are released- pulsing from the mash of

your hydrolysed vegetable

                                  matter.

 

Afterwards, I swallow you,

                        feeling cheap

& used-

                 like the   empty

shinny packet   I have                             

                                         left 

behind.

Highly Recommended Critical Biography: Joseph Frank: DOSTOYEVSKY: A Writer in His Time (Princeton University Press- Revised edition, 2012) 984 pages

 

This is an outstanding critical literary biography- perhaps the best I have ever read of a major writer. It combines personal biography, detailed historical, political, cultural & ideological contexts of Dostoyevsky's writings, his incredible public life as an artist & polemist and a close textual analysis of all of his key texts.

Joseph Frank initially published a monumental five-volume 2500 page biography of Dostovesky’s life and work between 1976-2002. In this abridged edition, editor Mary Petrusewicz seamlessly blends Frank’s profound work into a highly readable but scholarly account.    

 

I first became familiar with Dostoyevsky’s writings when at 18. I chose a course at Dawson College in Montreal offered by Peter Ryerson called ‘A Season With Dostoyevsky’s Heroes’. In a smorgasbord of Dostoyevsky delights we studied The Gambler, The Underground Man, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ section from his greatest masterpiece Brothers Karamazov. 

A few years later at Concordia University I created a Major Project in which I  examined pre-revolutionary Russian writers, such as Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? (1863), Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (1862), Dostovevsky's The Devils (1871-1872) & a few others. Frank's book helped me to revive a few keen intellectual memories from that now ancient time.   

It actually took me about three or four years to read the book thoroughly because I put it aside from time to time as the biography progressed to do other things & to further read and study Dostoyevsky’s work. The book is certainly a brilliant read for any close followers of the hugely gifted & compassionate man. 

 

Some Book Blurbs

 

Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time thus immediately becomes the essential one-volume commentary on the intellectual dynamics and artistry of this great novelist's impassioned, idea-driven fiction. . . . To understand Dostoevsky's often savage satire or nightmarish visions or just the conversations among the Karamazov brothers, one needs to grasp not only the text but also the ideological context. To both of these there is no better guide than Joseph Frank. -- Michael Dirda, Wall Street Journal Magnificent. . . . 

 

A deeply absorbing account. -- James Wood, New Republic 

 

In compressing his longer work, editor Mary Petrusewicz tightens the rigor of a narrative that already departed from traditional biography by focusing chiefly on the ideas with which the Russian author wrestled so powerfully, providing the details of his personal life only as incidental background. Thus, for example, while readers do learn of formative incidents during Dostoevsky's four years in tsarist prison camp, what they see most clearly is how the prison experience deepened the author's faith in God while dampening his zeal for political reform. In a similar way, Frank limns only briefly the life experiences surrounding the writing of the major novels--Crime and Punishment, Demons, and Brothers Karamazov--devoting his scrutiny largely to how Dostoevsky develops the ideological tensions within each work. Readers consequently see, for instance, how Napoleonic illusions justify Raskolnikov's bloody crimes, how the Worship of Man dooms Kirillov to suicide, and how deep Christian faith enables Alyosha to resist Ivan's corrosive rationalism. Yet while probing Dostoevsky's themes, Frank also examines the artistry that gives them imaginative life, highlighting--for example--perspectival techniques that anticipate those of Woolf and Joyce. A masterful abridgement. -- Bryce Christensen, Booklist 

 

 

Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time at last offers non-specialist readers access to the definitive biography of an important figure in the history of the novel. . . . Patient, cautious, critical but not judgmental, using clear language and a chronologically ordered narrative structure, Frank neutralises the unreliable and hysterical self-constructions of which his subject was capable. The result is like watching an artist building an intricate, large-scale painting around a single figure. . . . Frank's great insight is that, just as no one aspect of Dostoevsky's complex personality can be separated from the others, no part of his writing--whether aesthetic, moral, religious or political--can be quarantined from the others. Frank's biography honours the polyphony of Dostoevsky's novelistic imagination: even in truncated form, it is a rare triumph. -- Geordie Williamson, Australian

 

With the publication of Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time earlier this year, a massive abridgement of five volumes written over three decades, Frank breaks once and for all with his early critic's stilted categories in portraying the human subject. His innovative method of biography, influenced heavily by literary criticism, starts with artistic expression and moves backward, seeking to carefully situate his subject within ideological context. . . Without a doubt, the genius of Frank's form is in combining three modalities in crafting his narrative: literary criticism, social and intellectual history, and biography. -- Aaron Stuvland, Politics and Culture

 

Most of us spend much of our life trying to understand only a handful of people we know and love, in a span of time usually extending just three generations (from our parents to our children). Imagine, then, devoting your life to trying to make sense of one other person long dead, whom you had necessarily never met, with whom you may have nothing in common, and whose times and works must always seem elusive, encoded and frustratingly out of your reach. In a pursuit of that kind, Leon Edel trudged through five volumes on Henry James, Robert Caro is working away on his fourth installment of Lyndon Johnson's biography, and Edmund Morris is finalizing his third book on Teddy Roosevelt. Joseph Frank, though, trumps them all. After writing Feodor Dostoevsky's biography in five volumes, Frank and a gifted editor (Mary Petrusewicz) have now turned that massive, interminable endeavour into an abridged, accessible one-volume edition. -- Mark Thomas, Canberra Times

 

A monumental achievement. . . This is not a literary biography in the usual sense of the term. . . . It is, rather, an exhaustive history of Dostoyevsky's mind, an encyclopedic account of the author as major novelist and thinker, essayist and editor, journalist and polemicist. . . . Wrought with tireless love and boundless ingenuity, it . . . A multifaceted tribute from an erudite and penetrating cultural critic to one of the great masters of 19th-century fiction. -- Michael Scammell, New York Times Book Review

New Poetry: Rus Khomutoff: HOTEL ETERNITY

Find it here: https://radiaworld.tumblr.com/post/668222364556918784/to-exist-between-eternities-wild-nothing-like-the

New Release: Kevin Tosca ZUCCHINI: A MEMOIR (Holy &intoxicated Publications, 2021) 20 pages

 

Prolific Berlin-based writer Kevin Tosca's recent release ZUCCHINI: A MEMOIR adds another layer to his impressive budding body of his work. 

 

The chapbook consists of 16 short narrative pieces, some of which have appeared previously, sometimes in slightly different form, in small press publications, such as Cake, Cleaver Magazine, Mojave River Review, Short, Fast, and Deadly and The Broken Plate.

 

Tosca’s pieces in this chap are usually short quirky narratives. As usual, the writing is inventive, unpredictable- sometimes, off its face. You will find parody, direct speech in the discussion of a film, a character study, relationship dysfunctions, how to create a modern art film- but the form and the words often defy classification. 

 

Take the following piece ‘Like Nothing Else’ which is dedicated to William Minor, presumably ‘the madman’ who helped Professor James Murray to develop the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (click on the image to enlarge- all work has been posted with the permission of the writer):

In contrast, the phallic title piece ‘Zucchini’ has a more tactile, naturalistic feel about it:

In summing up his nascent career as a writer, Tosca says in forewording his piece ‘Fresh’, thus far it is difficult to say if I have contributed anything new to the Wide World/ of Ideas. Actually, I have no idea if I have contributed or not, never having, until writing/ this little whatever this is, given this serious matter of any serious thought.”

 

Tosca remains tight-lipped about his work and future writing prospects. Wonder if he has a bigger, more complex work in progress- and is up to it? 

 

Find out more about Kevin Tosca’s extensive & incredible writing here: http://www.kevintosca.com/index.html

Featuring Patrick T. Reardon

 

Enough to be on your way

 

You disembodied when you had 

enough to be on your way.

 

You disconnected, 

discoupling, finally, from the mother ship 

and from each of us, 

every man jack and dockside sally.

 

Dispiered as you disappeared 

into the tunnel through your brain, 

cast off, disshored.

 

Dissorrowed your soul 

with fingerprints on the metal 

of the last thing you touched, 

your last action 

before, empty, you fell as sack of vitals 

disvitaled.

 

You dissinnered yourself who 

was more wronged, 

disguilted who was pure, stained, 

disconvicted who was on the other end of the gun.

 

I would embrace you now 

though you and I learned early 

the rule of disembracement, 

disbrotherhood, diskinship, dislove.

 

No one wants to hear this.

Shut up.  Ignore it.  You’re wrong.

 

Baby, don’t cry.  I mean it: Don’t cry.

Don’t disobey.

 

Those who demanded our care 

though we were cribbed — 

they took that photo of 

you screaming in rage, one, 

me looking to forever, two, 

both disciplined.

We displeased them.

 

Dischildrened we were,

adulted.

 

You disengaged, disgripped, disbreathed 

when you had enough to be on your way.

 

Enough, finally, 

distanced yourself.

 

Dissuffered,

disbirthed,

disconceived.

 

 

 

……

 

 

Duquesne whistle

 

The bones of the back tell stories.

 

Skin, muscle, mole, tan, tension, 

haired, scarred, leathered, age-curved, 

bare, skeletal, t-shirted, long-sleeved, 

stiff, round-shouldered, supple, 

a wilderness, 

an ocean.

 

Praise the baby’s ear-swirl of skin, 

as individual as a snowflake.

 

Inhale flame.

Speak thunder

 

The choir hymn:

Fortress, bulwark, mortal ills, 

foes, woes, power, flood,

earth, one grim little

word, strength, striving, Lord,

age to age, battle.

 

After walking Duquesne University, 

we ate hot dogs and listened to news 

of brain-dead woman dead, 

who we had never before talked of together. 

 

The rhythm of the drum. 

Hold or toss the dice.

 

My father said little.

 

He was told not to talk for three weeks 

after polyps were removed from his larnax. 

It was no penance.  

 

He whistled orders at his many children

as if we were truck drivers working badly 

to park our rigs at the South Water produce market.

Dummies.

 

Sacramental noise. Ritual bloom. Liturgical scar.

Blessed light. Mystical generation. Sacred bruise.

Holy water. Living stone. Solemn whisper. 

Solemn shout. Solemn scream. 

Beginning, middle, end.

 

He could have gone his whole life only whistling, 

and never a tune.

 

 

 

……

 

 

Peru’s Golden Treasures exhibit catalogue

 

 

Gold glove on cover — like 

gold French arm-shape reliquary 

holding saint arm or bone — 

into which priest slid hand to 

hold sharp-edge for 

innocent throat or maybe 

hold a fist of wheat or maybe 

hold hand full of bloody chest flesh.

 

What do I know?

I make this up as I go along.

 

Small, embossed grimace-head of 

gold, once full-painted red and blue, 

containing all eaten sin.

 

Gold-copper alloy green headdress 

with metal disk eyes, 

staring full-face at unseeable, like 

gold Agamemnon mask, like Turin shroud.

 

How am I supposed to know 

what Incas, French Christians, or old, old Greeks 

did, thought, knew?

 

None of this is fact.  All invented 

(except 1978 catalogue, brittle but 

still color full, found in free book box).

 

I embrace fact-haters.  

I design to look deep at these things 

to see what I will, to see what I see.

 

Don’t tell me what to see.

 

 

 

 

………..

 

 

Brothers

 

 

Red Cent ambled out of the bar 

into the rush-hour morning, 

factory dirty, shot-glass stunned, 

watching the slash-slash-slash 

of traffic colors at his embankment feet, 

two-direction balance of speed, 

 

turned left 

for the mile to McDonald’s on the king’s highway 

to meet his brother Lincoln 

close-printing his prose scripture, 

numberless numbers in formula, 

as if batting averages for breathing,

 

sat across from him, foodless, 

 

and they were statues underground, 

an invading army of two 

in a war everyone else had forgotten, 

dancers at a wedding, 

holding aloft the groom’s chair, 

unrecognized as crashers, 

 

and they had no words for each other.

 

 

 

 

……..

 

 

 

 

The problem of human suffering

 

 

My moments rosary,

each bead a flighted arrow,

fleshed an edged head.

 

Can’t money aside the bullet,

gleam the path away with polished teeth.

 

Read the scripture inside the scripture.

Pantomime the silence.

 

A mansion with many locked rooms.

Turn your face from me.

Gaze not to my affliction.

 

You are an insect of many eyes,

each slices and does not blink.

 

The storm never won’t oppress.

 

Howl.

 

Virgin clowns dance at halftime, 

bridegroom quarterback kneels at midfield 

to offer his brain to Mother Science 

as snow falls and, through green fabric, 

pushes up strawberry weed.

 

Bend back, offer neck to blade, 

yearn for angel.

 

Let the baby sleep.  

Soon enough,

she will walk the jagged path, 

encased in her fate.

Bio:

Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of ten books, including the poetry collections Requiem for David (Silver Birch Press) and Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay). His memoir in prose poems Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby is forthcoming from Third World Press, and his chapbook The Lost Tribes will be published in January, 2022, by Gray Book Press. His poetry has appeared in America, Burningwood Literary Journal, Rhino, Meat for Tea, Under a Warm Green Linden and many other journals.

New Release: John D. Robinson SONGS OF BASTET (Scumbag Press, 2021)

 

English poet John D. Robinson has a new chapbook coming out on Friday 26 November 2021 through Scumbag Press. He says of the chap, “The poems within are ALL about cats: the cover art and promo art are taken from my paintings.”

 

Here is a poem from the collection: 

 

ON THE DAY THAT OSCAR LEFT ME

I awoke terribly fragile,

shaking and frightened  and

I called in sick,

an ex lover

telephoned and asked

for money

which I didn’t have,

the backyard flooded

and my pot dealer

had gone on

holiday,

the radio broadcast

stories of tragedy

and sadness and

of wars

and payday was

two weeks away;

Oscar had suddenly

shown up a few

months back, wailing

and crying and

hungry and we made

friends and he moved

in and I called him

Oscar and he ate

whatever I could

give him and he

seemed thankful and

then one day he

didn’t come back 

and I

knew that he

wouldn’t return;

Oscar was a beat hobo cat;

I had a real lousy

day the day

that Oscar

left me.

 

(the poem is posted with the permission of the writer)

 Buy the chapbook here upon release: https://www.scumbagpress.co.uk