Below is an excerpt from Hoa Nguyen’s reading at Buffalo State College on February 26, 2010; go to the Habenicht Press Youtube channel for her full Q&A after the reading. Enjoy!
There’s a new youtube page for Habenicht Press, on which I’ve posted video of the most recent readings, by Alex Porco and Lisa Forrest. Below is a link to part 1…
Enjoy!
Just returned from a brief vacation in Texas, where, among other things, we got to stay with Dale and Hoa, and see other conspirators from the small press scene like Kyle Schlesinger and Micah Robbins. I came back laden with new publications. Here they are:
Micah Robbins and his printing partner Clifton Riley are quickly proving to be some of the finest bookmakers going. This new book by Richard Owens ups the ante once again. Bound with a buttonhook stitch, the covers are individually printed by a screen and litho process — which is a heck of a lot of work! There are only 75 copies produced, and they’re no doubt going to disappear fast.
Even less of these were made (Provisions, by Francis Raven) — 50 copies using a combo long and kettle stitch, with what looks to be a digital print cover applied to book board.
Visit Interbirth Books for ordering info.
Kyle Schlesinger is a fine printer who graduated from Buffalo and now lives in Austin, TX. This is the 3rd issue of Mimeo, a publication on print culture he co-edits with Jed Birmingham. Also Ted Berrigan, a truly unique oversized book of sayings from Berrigan and art by Bill Berkson and the late George Schneeman. “In the minor leagues of art there is no forgiveness…”
Visit Cunieform for more information.
Marcia Roberts, a poet and former classmate from Tom Clark’s New College seminars now living in San Antonio, actually has two new books out from Effing, the other one being Autumn’s Slant. Both saddle-stitched with a letterpress cover.
Hoa gave me a copy of her recent Effing book, as well as the Skanky Possum / Effing collaboration Ed Dorn & the Western World by Amiri Baraka. I can’t wait to dig in to both of these, especially since Hoa’s visiting Buffalo in a couple months, and catching up with her and her work will be a good way to sharpen my attention for her reading at Big Night.
Visit Effing Press for more info.
This book doesn’t want you
to put it down.
Honestly,
the book says.
It’s not of glue, paper ink
it’s not succinct.
This book wants you
to work on your slapshot.
This book has a title:
It’s Not You, It’s Me
OR
The Man Who Wrote on His Own Back.
This book looks at you.
Says,
Would you like me to
put out your left eye?
Would you?
the book says.
Below are two of the six different cards I created for my print media class this semester. Needless to say, the theme was hockey, and each card (fold-out, 5×7) also has a two-word hockey term printed on the front. Some of you can expect to get these as Xmas cards!
You have to look closely, because the lettering is printed in transparent white-grey; it says “Body Check.” This was done with letterpress. The image was printed from a photo-litho plate. There are three different cards printed by this method.
The lettering on this card was also done on letterpress. The image was printed on an etch press using centra for the negative impression. There are three different cards printed by this method as well. By and large, I was happier with these. I like the line and the fact that I was able to do a different color for each card without too much trouble.
I’m thinking about taking the class again in the spring to continue learning about press techniques and working some more on this project.
What if Jim Stark, James Dean’s character from Rebel Without a Cause, left home after the end of the movie, learned some sick dance moves, and became an instructor in a string of cheesy resorts in the Catskills? That’s essentially the character Patrick Swayze portrays in Dirty Dancing, which has been playing incessantly on the TV guide channel of our cable service for the past several days. In catching bits and pieces of the flick — getting sucked in against all reason and better judgment — I’ve come to realize what a weirdly remarkable film it is. And the fact that Swayze died earlier this year adds a touch of poignancy to seeing him in this role, arguably the one he’s best known for.
In the world of the Catskills that the film presents, there are three levels of society: the upper-crust guests and resort owners, the snobbish waitstaff who are only a few years at Yale away from joining them, and the lowly dance crew and ordinary workers who come from the other side of the tracks. The central plot point in the movie is the abortion needed by Penny (Cynthia Rhodes), the dancing partner of Johnny Castle (Swayze). Everyone from the first group outlined above believes it was Johnny who got Penny pregnant, when really it was a jerky waiter who can’t be bothered to help her.
Baby (Jennifer Grey), daughter of a doctor and guest at the resort (Jerry Orbach) steps in, secretly providing the funds for the abortion and learning Penny’s dance moves so she can team with Castle at an important gig. Amazingly, there is not a single hint in the movie to suggest Penny should not get an abortion; it’s simply taken for granted she must and will get one, even though at the time of the film (1963) it was still illegal. I doubt a film with a story like this could even be made today, though in 1987 it apparently passed without much comment.
Predictably, Baby and Johnny fall in love. But it’s not what you’d expect. Far less than being about Baby’s awakening to the liberating underground world of the dancers — an awakening that happens almost at once in the early scene when she helps bring watermelons to a late-night juke party in the workers’ shack — the story really becomes about Johnny’s quest for approval and acceptance in Baby’s world. Now supposedly, according to IMBD, Val Kilmer was originally offered the role of Johnny, and Sarah Jessica Parker was considered for Baby. Needless to say, it’s unimaginable without Swayze and Grey in these parts. Daughter of Joel Grey, who was so scintillating as the master of ceremonies in Cabaret (stage and film versions), Grey has largely disappeared after a botched nose job during the 90s.
Meanwhile, Swayze in Dirty Dancing is simply astonishing. His dance scenes have energy, agility, and a feeling of pure joy that I’ve rarely witnessed on screen before or since. It’s no accident that, as accomplished a dancer as Grey is, the floor is cleared for Swayze’s virtuoso moment in the climactic scene of the film. And the acting he’s asked to do — the lines he’s asked to deliver — alongside the dancing truly defies description. What, for example, are we supposed to make of the scene when Baby asks Johnny, as they nuzzle in bed after making love, if he’s been with “a lot of women”?
Typical of the role-reversal throughout the movie, what ought to be a moment of reassurance for Baby turns into one for Johnny instead, as he describes being “used” by an endless parade of rich women shoving keys into his hands, “sometimes several a day — different ones!” etc., the implication being that Johnny, coming from the streets and not knowing any better, mistakes their momentary desire for acceptance and access to their world. That acceptance and access, we come to find out, can only be partially provided by Baby, and ultimately must come from her father, the upright and moralistic doctor who winds up getting drawn into Penny’s abortion fiasco.
This is where, I think, the film channels Rebel, which in so many ways is about Oedipal struggles and homoerotic male bonding. While women can cross the boundaries between high and low, doctor and dancer, resort suite and worker shack, only man-to-man love can truly obliterate those boundaries and bring the opposite poles together. It’s only in the moment that Baby’s father discovers it was the devious waiter, and not Johnny, who got Penny pregnant, that he shakes Johnny’s hand and welcomes him wholly into the main ballroom world. In a larger sense, as old fogies rise to shake and shimmy with the dirty dancers, we’re meant to understand this as a watershed moment, the birth of the 60s — I guess.
Somehow Swayze is able to pull this character off, wince-worthy script and storyline and all, while somehow maintaining a sense of dignity and even grandeur. He’ll be missed.
In the dream, the ball is bouncing towards me. Only every time it touches the grass, it splits in two. One ball, two balls, four balls, eight. I can see each of them clearly and I spread my arms out wide as if I’m going to try to gather them all up at once. But there keeps getting to be more of them and my arms won’t spread wide enough and by now the runner’s past me.
Baseball is a game of angles. Or, you could say, it’s a game where a couple different things are always happening at once. Or more than a couple things.
Think about this: think about what happens when a ball’s put in play. If there’s no one on base then the moment a ball is hit there’s a player reacting to it, trying to catch it and throw it back, and another player, the batter, running to first base. But what if there’s more players on base? Each one of them has to make a split-second decision about whether to run once a ball’s been hit; and unless there are already two outs, then depending where each runner is and where the ball gets hit, each runner’s decision is going to be a little bit different. And even if there’s only a runner on first base, then that gives the pitcher something to think about already, before he pitches the ball.
Another dream I have is one where I keep throwing over to first. The runner is there, and I know he’s going to steal, everyone knows it. We look at each other, we lock eyes, and just from his eyes I know he’s only waiting for me to glance away and begin my motion and he’s gone. So I make the throw.
The first baseman snags the ball and sweeps his glove across the runner’s butt and the ump motions “safe.” He gets up, dusts himself off, glares at me, takes an exaggerated step or two. We lock eyes again. Something won’t let me turn away, won’t let me twirl and make the throw home. I toss over again.
A murmur goes through the crowd. It makes me anxious, but as I settle on the mound I already know I’ll do it again. I throw over a third time, fourth, fifth, six, I lose count—I’m just stuck doing it. It’s the yelling of the crowd that wakes me up.
Baseball is beautiful, but it’s terrible, too. There’ve been times when I’m out there just doing it, soaking it up and enjoying every moment, because I’m not thinking too much. I’m noticing little things like the way the light makes everything glow, and the smell of the dirt and the grass, the bats and the mitts and the powder, and the contentedness of the crowd as they arrive at their seats and look around at each other and see us warming up, and the rising excitement right before the game starts.
But other times, I suddenly think about the idea of winning, and I get frightened. Not of winning, but of something happening that makes us lose. And that I’ll be involved and everyone will see it. So my heart starts racing, and I hunker down and hope like hell that whatever happens, the ball won’t roll towards me.
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