Tuesday, September 13, 2005
I still believe, in principle, that a club set witnessed by 15 people might be as thrilling and valuable as one experienced by a packed house -- but when, in practice, was the last time I was actually at one?
~~~
Really, questions about affect v. language aside: as a watcher-from-the-margins, I don't know whether I'm more amazed that there's something (or is there?) called "The New Sincerity" (a term I can't shake loose from associations with features on 10,000 Maniacs and Guadacanal Diary, -- basically, anyone who ever opened for pre-arena R.E.M. -- in back-half-of-the-'80s Spin) or that those who are using it are, in some cases, not kidding. [Which, as with nearly all jaundiced comments on theoretical positions, caricatured or not, is not meant to speak against a particular poet's poems.]
~~~
You can, it turns out, be homesick for a home you were sick of. [See, the don't-end-with-a-preposition norm really sticks in my craw -- this wouldn't sound right if it read, "a home of which you were sick."] On the other hand, amazing bakery smell (not to get all last-page-of-Bright Lights, Big City) coming from somewhere near the exit from the Evanston El. (Is the orthographic idiom "El" or "L"?)
~~~
Really, questions about affect v. language aside: as a watcher-from-the-margins, I don't know whether I'm more amazed that there's something (or is there?) called "The New Sincerity" (a term I can't shake loose from associations with features on 10,000 Maniacs and Guadacanal Diary, -- basically, anyone who ever opened for pre-arena R.E.M. -- in back-half-of-the-'80s Spin) or that those who are using it are, in some cases, not kidding. [Which, as with nearly all jaundiced comments on theoretical positions, caricatured or not, is not meant to speak against a particular poet's poems.]
~~~
You can, it turns out, be homesick for a home you were sick of. [See, the don't-end-with-a-preposition norm really sticks in my craw -- this wouldn't sound right if it read, "a home of which you were sick."] On the other hand, amazing bakery smell (not to get all last-page-of-Bright Lights, Big City) coming from somewhere near the exit from the Evanston El. (Is the orthographic idiom "El" or "L"?)
