Attention Span – Tom Orange

Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand | Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space | Palm Press | 2008

The smartest demonstration and open invitation I’ve seen of what a poetics off the page and engaged with the world does, can and might look like.

Benjamin Friedlander | The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes | Subpress | 2007
Laura Moriarty | A Semblance: Selected Poems: 1975-2006 | Omnidawn | 2007

Overviews from two of our most important poets at mid-career, presenting new opportunities to see where they’ve come from and where they’ve now brought us.

David Harvey | A Brief History of Neoliberalism | Oxford University Press | 2007
Naomi Klein | The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism | Picador | 2008

Particularly instructive when read together.

Maggie Nelson | Women, The New York School and Other True Abstractions | University of Iowa Press | 2007

It’s about time someone like Nelson has come along to explode the conventional wisdom on these matters! Her refusal to accept the terms of debate on their own terms is utterly refreshing.

Michael Pollan | The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World | Random | 2002
Michael Pollan | The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals | Penguin | 2007

“Everything’s connected” goes the ecological credo, but Pollan’s exemplary studies show that credo operating with new subtleties and depth, a true parti pris des choses that is at once a profoundly important politics and ethics as well as ecology.

Rod Smith | Deed | University of Iowa Press | 2007

What the small press poetry world has known for years now finally garners national attention: this is a poetry to be reckoned with.

Charles Gayle (alto sax), Sirone (bass) & Rashied Ali (drums) | Stadtsaal, Burghausen (Germany) | 8 March 2008 | audience recording circulated via dimeadozen.org

With this formidable rhythm section behind him, Gayle trades in his trademark scorched-earth tenor saxophone for a lighter and sweeter horn. Be assured, his alto tone is still incredibly biting and intense, but it’s somehow more soulful, warmer, more human. He has blended the blusey wail of Ornette Coleman, the flurrious attack of John Coltrane and the ecstatic leaps of Albert Ayler with his own genius to become a true master of the idiom.

Harmony Korine | Mister Lonely | IFC Films | 2008

An expatriate Michael Jackson impersonator alone in Paris finds the company of kindred spirits when he is invited by a Marilyn Monroe to join a commune of other impersonators in the Scottish highlands. The trailer for this film made it look overly sentimental and sappy  — in stark contrast to the shock tactics of Korine’s previous efforts (Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy). To my surprise, however, and with the addition of flying nuns under guidance by Werner Herzog in cameo, Korine has put together a truly touching mediation on freedom, marginalization and utopia, and what it means to discover and be yourself in all its joyous possibilities and painful limitations. Attending the Nashville premier, which featured a special appearance and Q&A session by hometown hero Korine, was an added bonus.

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More Tom Orange here.