Woo Lawd

Been quite some time, no? Let's see...a lyf upd8? Finished my first year; waiting on my review from the faculty to come in. The papers went fine, though I may be spending part of the summer revising one for possible publication. That'll take a shitload of work, however, as the paper just didn't crown as easily as I expected. On the to-do list:

-Employment? I have money saved up & probably don't need to work, but I'm terrified that I'll have a Bell Jar summer if I have nothing to get up in the morning for. Kidding? Ideally, I'd like to tutor, but I hear freelancing in Boston is pretty tough because you're competing with big groups like Kaplan & the like. May advertise, just in case. Thinking maybe an 8-week intensive course teaching high school seniors and/or college freshman how to write college level papers--with some literary crit & seminar-style discussion thrown in. This is mostly just a dream, but I figure it can't hurt to try. Otherwise, waiting tables, working at a coffeeshop, something like that, part time.

-A new place. If you're in the greater Boston area & know of any good places in Cambridge or Somerville opening up, give me a holler. Budget's around 600-700 on rent. I need out of my apartment asap.

Also, I joined okcupid...hahahaha. Whatever, it seems like a pretty classy site, & I need to expand my social circle or I'll hate Boston forever. Already had some interesting conversations there--and actually, a pretty good date? Don't feel like confessing details here, but I'm sort of interested to see where things go.

Other than that, just reading, looking around for a job & an apt, catching up on sleep. Not sure what to do with the blog this summer. Maybe I'll try and do the poem-a-day (poem-a-week seems more feasible now) thing again. Would be good critical stretching for me. I wanna start writing again regularly, & also take up exercise in a more serious way. I miss doing yoga every morning; might also start jogging, though that might require me to quit smoking. We shall see...

Hope ya'll's summer is off to a fabulous start. Boston's an oven again, but it has been perfect outside-reading weather for the past several days.

In lieu of anything interesting, some recent book reviews...

Desperate to get through the next month. Lawdy lawdy. Nothing to say, but plenty of books read, and here are a few reviews, x-posted from my goodreads. Included: Plath's The Bell Jar, Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters, Diane Middlebrook's Her Husband, Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Iceland: The World's Most 'Feminist' (?) Country

I'm curious to hear what ya'll think of this.

Strip Clubs Shut Down in Iceland

Iceland is being hailed as the most 'feminist' country in the world because of their nearly unanimous vote against the commodification of nudity in the workplace--most notably, in strip clubs, but the new ban places stricter parameters around this, in the case that loopholes (topless waitresses, etc.) are exploited. Also, I just said 'hole' and 'exploited' in the same sentence in a post about stripping. I'm 3 years old, thx.

I can't pretend to be an expert on Iceland. I like Bjork, which means I know about 90% of what needs to be known about Iceland. (And just so you know, I hated her last album, so you better step it up, Iceland.) It seems that prostitution was banned last year; they're putting together an action plan against the trafficking of women; and now, of course, the strip clubs have been shut down. And don't get me wrong here; I'm not trying to claim this is some strange Handmaid's Tale-style introduction to a totalitarian state of control over female bodies.

I certainly have a great deal of respect for any action taken against the trafficking of women--but as I've argued with my friend Gina, there are profound differences between sex trafficking and sex work. And within sex work, there is not a monolithic Platonic 'form' of the sex worker--there are people (not just women, though it seems no one remembers this when it comes to heated discussions about sex work) who become involved because of addiction or coercion, those who feel that it's the only viable survival tactic. There are also those who do it because it pays better than a lot of shit work, and some find it easy, or boring, or enjoyable, or horrible, or demeaning, or empowering, or whathaveyou. I'm unsettled by the almost colonizing compulsion for privileged feminists to point out the 'victimized' position of sex workers. I should say that I am not against sex work. I am against the criminalization of the industry, rather than regulation--to my mind, it'll happen whether or not the law says it 'can' happen, and so we should be providing services--HIV/STI testing, prophylactic provisions, possible wage-standardization and destigmatization. I still question the efficacy of regulation--in Amsterdam, for example, there is a major problem with human trafficking, despite the legality of prostitution. But I don't think the sex industry is a clear-cut issue, and I don't like the assignation of the term 'most feminist' to a country simply because it finds sex work necessarily unacceptable. Feminists are not unanimous on this issue--I count myself as a feminist, and as I've said, I do not wish to demonize sex work.

But pragmatically speaking, what I do question are these details: A) What happens to the women involved in the sex industry? I can see why Iceland believes this to be a 'feminist' move, and I don't know the culture well enough to say that this isn't a wider (not simply talking heads) belief. But how will the chips fall? I think about the U.S. conservative insistence on abstinence education, on eliminating abortion, on keeping non-heterosexual individuals from adopting children; these tactics assume that sweeping an issue under the rug will right the situation. But how do these coalesce in a larger wave of fuck-up-ery? This approach denies, for example, underage access to birth control; abstinence education pretends that these underage kids won't fuck--of course they do. Then, the same kids that have been already failed by the educational and healthcare systems are overloaded with unwanted children--these children are thrown into toilets or, if they're lucky, into orphanages. These centers are overflowing with unwanted kids--but the same conservatives who insist on the 'value' of these lives leave them ignored, and place further limits on *who* is able to give them the love and the homes they deserve.

What kind of fuckery is this, Amy Winehouse might ask. And I'm with her on it. Logic simply doesn't enter into this situation--it's a series of irrational moves congealing in a majorly flawed system.

So what happens to the Icelandic women who lose their source of income with the shutting down of strip clubs, with the banning of prostitution? Are the sex workers simply expected to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and move right along? Or are they provided for? Are there services to aid them in finding new employment, to help support the livability of their lives as they seek new venues of financial stability? I'm just curious about the details of this decision; is there the assumption that the end will justify itself? That the outright ban will cure the symptoms? None of this was mentioned in the articles I've stumbled across. If ya'll have seen answers and have links, or have some of your own to offer, leave 'em in the comments section.

Oh, and my B) thing was the conflation of anti-sex-work with feminist, which I addressed earlier, accidentally. That's it for now.

Currently in Pennsylvania, surrounded by my dogs. The pups have doubled or tripled in size, and the four of them together comprise a little wolf-pack. The pups' obedience class was amaaazzing--only cuteness and puppy tricks. Got some blog plans for the next few days, so keep an eye open. Just one.

Finally, here's that crazy Bjork, breakin' laws:

Poem o'the Day: Sylvia Plath, "The Detective"

A random favorite from Ariel. I'd never noticed it before this read-through, when the image of trains shrieking like 'souls on hooks' hooked me and I read the poem a half-dozen times, trying to figure out how the fuck SP manages to capture these X-ray images of horror and anguish so beautifully. Full poem and comments after the jump.




The Detective
Sylvia Plath

What was she doing when it blew in
Over the seven hills, the red furrow, the blue mountain?
Was she arranging cups? It is important.
Was she at the window, listening?
In that valley the train shrieks echo like souls on hooks.

That is the valley of death, though the cows thrive.
In her garden the lies were shaking out their moist silks
And the eyes of the killer moving sluglike and sidelong,
Unable to face the fingers, those egotists.
The fingers were tamping a woman into a wall,

A body into a pipe, and the smoke rising.
This is the smell of years burning, here in the kitchen,
These are the deceits, tacked up like family photographs,
And this is a man, look at his smile,
The death weapon? No-one is dead.

There is no body in the house at all.
There is the smell of polish, there are plush carpets.
There is the sunlight, playing its blades,
Bored hoodlum in a red room
Where the wireless talks to itself like an elderly relative.

Aural-gasm: Review of Goldfrapp, Head First

Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory, the two musicians that congeal behind the aptly-named duo Goldfrapp, prove themselves, once again, to be fascinating little sonic changelings. For over a decade now, they've been driven with each album to try something a little bit off, to veer in a direction that perhaps you thought would never happen following their previous effort. It began with 2000's stunning Felt Mountain, an atmospheric, film-noir-esque spectacle that sounded as if it were the soundtrack to the best townie bar on Pluto. Black Cherry followed, a bit more erotic, a bit more electronic, perhaps slightly more dance-able, particularly with robotic-grind tracks like their famous "Strict Machine." Nevertheless, the same icy sheen that accompanied Alison's breathy, wide-ranging siren call on the debut seemed intact. 2005 saw their venture into 70s-esque disco on Supernature and brought them into heavier club rotation, with singles "Ooh La La" and "Ride a White Horse." By this point, Goldfrapp seemed somehow everywhere and nowhere at once: songs like "Ooh La La" and "Strict Machine" were joyously accompanying phone company commercials, and every up-and-coming act interested in electronic music and in reviving New Wave either counted Goldfrapp among their influences or blatantly ripped them off without credit. Still, Goldfrapp has somehow evaded the mainstream spotlight, despite the instantly gratifying accessibility of much of their music and their wide-ranging (but usually unnoticed) reign over current 'It' kids like Little Boots and La Roux, not to mention that wacky bitch Madonna (who supposedly looked to Goldfrapp's Supernature tour for inspiration on her own Confessions on a Dance Floor tour). In 2008, the pair vomited up the glam image and club-crowns to tackle pagan-esque folk music and their most dreaded instrument--the acoustic guitar--in Seventh Tree. Alison's trademark vocals carried the effort, but the spacey chill of their first three albums was replaced with a lush new warmth. Alison shed her sex-bomb image to become, as in the first track "Clowns," a mischievous circus performer.

I begin with this because even those of my friends that are familiar with some of their music know little about their history, or the far reaches of their output--I've a friend, for example, who listens to "A&E" from Seventh Tree on the way home from the club weekly, but who probably doesn't know how much he'd love their more grind-y, eminently danceable work on Supernature. Sorry for the lengthy history.

Head First finds Alison and Gregory shifting shapes once more. Now that Goldfrapp's many proteges have seemingly exhausted the 80s revival, Goldfrapp finally make a record that seemed perhaps inevitable--perhaps impossible--for so long: an unabashedly sincere, joyous, warm, orgasmic 80s album. A number of critics have claimed that Goldfrapp fell behind the curve here--after all, who hasn't revisited the 80s by now? But what these critics leave out is this: who the hell does the 80s in the way Goldfrapp can? There are moments on the album that make you want to throw your hair into a bouncing side-ponytail and slide grease over your thighs to slip into fuchsia Jazzercise spandex--see "Alive," "Believer," lead-single "Rocket"--and others that evoke the ambient experimentalism of Kate Bush, circa The Dreaming and Hounds of Love--for this, go to "Hunt" and "Dreaming." The album is short and sweet; a mere 38 minutes long, this is easily listenable on your morning walk/run/shower, and it's about all I've listened to during those activities since it leaked a week or so ago.

(Continued after the jump...)

Poem(s) o'the Day (Month?): Sylvia Plath, "Morning Song," "Barren Woman"

It's been quite some time since I updated the blog, I realize. I was feeling burned out on a lot of things, including--GASP--Anne Sexton. I just finished Ulysses last night, and had been working on that for nearly ten weeks; had been working on Sexton for six or seven; and I'm simply at an intellectual impasse with my Feminist Methods class. The weather only finally turned last week (now it's rainy again), so I was beginning to feel that I was at an entire-life-standstill. In any case, it feels good to turn a few new leaves--onto a book-a-week in my Modernism class (now that Ulysses is no longer a bag of bricks in my backpack), onto not caring about said impasse-class, and onto Plath, onto Adrienne Rich, Louise Gluck, and hopefully spring as well. Time to get out of this nasty blue funk I've been in for so long.

That said, really nothing new on a more general level. My life is lived almost entirely on the page these days, so the new thing for me right now is rethinking my work on Sexton through the lens of my work on Plath. One of my biggest ongoing concerns with Sexton is to articulate a sort of "ethics of confession," in my loose terming of it--applying schemas like Jessica Benjamin's notion of "mutual recognition" (vis-a-vis intersubjective theory) and Judith Butler's conception of the 'ethical postmodern subject,' etc. This is probably too pretentious for a blog post, sry. So one thing I wonder is this: if I believe Sexton is interested in recognizing the Other--those she addresses in her poems, be they living or dead, base creatures or Christ--in a mutual way, do I believe Plath does the same?

I don't know, to be quite frank. As I immersed myself in Sexton, who seems by all accounts to have been a deeply compassionate and loving, if troubled, person, I found myself slightly repelled by Plath, who often seemed like rather a bitch. But now that I'm back in Plath-camp, I'm again strangely taken in by her tale. They're very different people and poets, though people tend to conflate them; Plath was a myth-maker; Sexton a sort of private storyteller, interested in revealing the underbellies of our darkest moments (sometimes her own, but often not). If you care to learn about the women themselves, I highly recommend Diane Middlebrook's biographies on each--Anne Sexton: A Biography (sort of notorious, because AS's private therapy tapes were released to Middlebrook and used, to the consternation of many), and Her Husband: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, A Marriage. The Sexton one is really the only biography on her, to my knowledge; the Plath is one of many many many, but is almost certainly the best, though it's interested in the marriage between her and Hughes far more than her pre-Hughes life. Any case, here are a couple of poems. I'll probably be avoiding the really famous ones on here ("Daddy," "Lady Lazarus," "Ariel"), simply because I feel like it'll be a bit redundant.

Anyhow, "Morning Song" (part in the open, part after the cut) and "Barren Woman" (behind the cut):

--

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

Whoa, Nicholas Sparks, lay off the opium...

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