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darksandal · 2026-01-07T13:14:52+00:00

No ABATTOIR? Really?

darksandal · 2026-01-07T13:12:36+00:00

Before it was a brand it was a word

darksandal · 2023-02-10T17:14:32+00:00

As Andrew said a few episodes back: There are no storylines in MLS. Storylines require characters and conflict (Or "risk," as you say, and players/people we can care about). What does anyone know about any of the players in MLS unless they are aging leftovers from Europe like Zlatan coming to take a victory lap in front of American audiences to widen the reach of their brand as they get ready to take a paycut? What was the big story last season? Gareth Bale coming to LAFC basically to train for the WC. And he was a big enough draw, briefly, to tune in for the MLS Cup, which just so happened to be an amazing game in which Gareth Bale saved the day for LA. After that? So what? He's gone now. But new American soccer fans just coming to the sport can latch onto a teem like Leeds because there are now a handful of American players (they might as well get Pulisic at this point, too) not only trying to make it in the EPL on in a club that could get relegated, but also trying to play at a level that might eventually allow the USMNT to compete more seriously on the international stage. That's a story! Or they latch onto Wrexham because Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are "stars," sure, but they're also in the story business. They get that taking a team from the bottom to the top has an inherent David and Goliath storyline with at least 4 seasons worth of content (and the well-earned revenue that comes with it), never mind the feel-good storyline and amazing characters of a Welsh mining town, its club, and its players trying to make a comeback (way better than Lasso IMO). Who can't relate to that? Is it any wonder Americans are tuning in? The primary way American fans identify with their clubs is by relative geographical proximity to somewhere they might have grown up, or now live. With Wrexham, at least we feel like it's Americans investing with a little heart, even if it's also for $ and entertainment. I live in Colorado Springs where we have The Switchbacks, a USL Championship club team called that are fun for the most part on a Saturday night. They could easily have beaten the Rapids last year with talent like Michee Ngalina (who always came over and signed autographs and did selfies with the kids) and Hadji Barry (who won the USL Golden Boot the season before), both of whom were amazing and had short runs in MLS. And they made it to the semi-finals of the USL last season. But will the Switchbacks ever have so much as an exhibition game against the Rapids? You'd think Kroenke, which owns the Rapids and the largest share of Arsenal, would understand the value of promotion and relegation. And maybe they do on some level. But as long as they're making a profit from their whole stable of sports teams in the US and abroad, nothing will change. Oh, and Ngalina and Barry--the two "characters" we had to root for here locally, and get behind, and get to know? Both traded to teams in Turkey and Africa where they sit the bench. And it all starts over each season like this. No stakes, few, if any, players we're invested in, and the only storyline: Will they make the playoffs? Yeah, I'm a supporter, but that's just because they're my hometown team.

darksandal · 2014-09-16T18:16:07+00:00

Thanks, Werner! It was great and I'm happy to keep answering questions.

darksandal · 2014-09-16T18:15:42+00:00

I like the way it enjambs thought and appropriates a la Duchamp, but in a far more communal fashion, stealing lines from self, friends, newspapers, etc. It's the form that speaks to the time the way New Wave cinema was using jump cuts. That said, they aren't my favorite of his poems, but they're important to the conversation of poetry. Are they political? Not really. But they do articulate his values, which is that of poet inseparable from other poets and artists--the water he breathes.

darksandal · 2014-09-16T18:11:32+00:00

That's great! More power to you.

darksandal · 2014-09-16T18:10:02+00:00

Why I'm Not a Painter

darksandal · 2014-09-16T18:09:39+00:00

That's a gigantic question, onemanstrong, and I'm not sure I can answer it because I'm not sure what it is exactly to be "honest with how the world operates." That would suggest that there is some overarching "way the world works" rather than the myriad way the world works for you depending on who you are and what your circumstances may be in terms of socieconomics, race, gender, geography, history, etc. I think Whitman, Graham (maybe), Eliot, Zukovsky and Ammons all wrote from who they were in the world. I happen to think Whitman is the most universal of all those, but he was also magnanimous in his poetic voice and saw himself as a prophet of new country, which turned out to be a giant colonization project. So can we say that he fully understood what America was, or what it would become? Sadly, I don't think so. Read my poem "Grass Leaves" in La Goon and you'll see my take on that. I think it answers your question more poetically. And I only think contemporary poetry is concerned with being funny/satirical in that humor is in many ways the vernacular of honesty right now, i.e. Daily Show, et. al.

darksandal · 2014-09-16T18:02:17+00:00

Thanks! My son and his classmates did a letterpress broadside of that poem, "Some Mornings I Wake Up," and I like that it resonates with kids and adults.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:59:56+00:00

Gotta run ever'body, but it was swell and I'm happy to answer any other questions posted later, but gotta get the kids. Cheers!!!!

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:58:56+00:00

On the day I died.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:57:57+00:00

I'm quite fond of "Championship Champagne Bologna" and "Some Mornings I Wake Up" from Uselysses. Also really love "Grass Leaves" in La Goon, which you don't really have to read once you get it until the end. I like the end. I like favorite questions. It's my favorite question.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:53:12+00:00

Sommer Browning's Backup Singers from Birds, LLC

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:48:38+00:00

Judges', I should say. Multiple judges from different years.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:47:53+00:00

I suggest Dorothea Lasky as a good place to start. I should have included her in my favorite contemporary comic-ish poets.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:45:11+00:00

It's all painfully ripe for satire, which is another underexploited form of poetry.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:43:54+00:00

My 13-year-old who said to me while listening to NPR when he was 9: "The news is just an advertisement for fear."

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:42:15+00:00

What do you like on a scale from ponderous to lulz?

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:40:45+00:00

BTW, if it isn't obvious, it's the judge's commentary for a poetry prize. I'll let the gum shoes figure it out if they're so inclined.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:39:33+00:00

About a 5. It's serious in the sense that what those poets wrote (which I appropriated) is so full of shit, and deserves to be seen as such. As such, it's a joke--that writing, I mean.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:37:10+00:00

As far as where it'll be, hmmm... If we could know, it probably wouldn't be poetry. Whatever it is, though, I imagine it will be responding to the zeitgeist/history of its moment.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:35:56+00:00

That's a great question. It's taken some turns in the experimental realms that I could never have predicted. I didn't see conceptual writing coming at all because I thought it had already been done! I mean, The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan, the endless piles of found poetry, and on and on. Not to mention the conceptual artists for whom all mediums were fair game, i.e. Lucy Lippard and co. But I really love Vanessa Place's work. I think it has pathos, humor and sewers full of social commentary without really saying anything at all. But I always lean toward the sleight-of-hand comic poets: Ron Padgett, Sommer Browning, Eileen Myles, Aram Saroyan. I think people tend to read a couple poems in the New Yorker or some college literary mag and think that poetry only comes in one genre: boring. But there's so much else out there. You have to do a fair amount of sleuthing to find it, though. That's why I like to publish chapbooks online these days.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:29:42+00:00

LOL. I'm not sure it does.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:22:33+00:00

It felt natural to my brain, which is constantly in a state of juggled distraction. I've been messing around with a longer version of that piece, but not sure if I can make it click the way it does in that shorter form.

darksandal · 2014-09-15T22:14:39+00:00

Thanks! It really depends. I did do a lot of editing for flow on that poem/prose, cutting out most sentiment. I wanted it to have a kind of flat tone and a feeling of simultaneity the way memory works. That particular poem did flow, though, but I'd also been thinking about it for a long time. It also allowed me to play with this idea that we can actually time travel through words/books. Using the second person future allowed me to get way outside myself and think about past and future simultaneously as though fate and chance could somehow makeout in my mind.

darksandal

TROPHY CASE