Attention Span 2010 – C.E. Putnam

David Winters, dir. | RAQUEL! | 1970

Filmed in Acapulco, London, ,Mexico City, Paris, and Sun Valley, Idaho, USA! RAQUEL! is a 1970 made-for-TV variety special where Raquel skis in slo-mo soft power, sings with Tom Jones, does “numbers” with Bob Hope and John Wayne, and dances around the 1968 Mexico City Olympic park in a space-age-of-aquarius costume designed by Bob Mackie!

David Moe | Plug in the Electric Dictionary | The Community Press | 1973

“HOMEINGsplit it’s you circuits socrates golding fat take off next necks space
eggs built dostoevsky’s nostril SEEING CONSCIOUS solar sidereal thrill
twoways glaze pats increasing secrets be ouiji…”

Ethan Fugate | Cadence | Honey Hoggle | 2009

“Squid thoughts aren’t as impressive on
the deck of the boat
as they are under the water.”

Allison Cobb | Green-Wood | Factory School | 2010

“The first year I didn’t set foot inside the cemetery. The still smoking hole across the water held my attention, a smell curling inside the minds of the million–headed city, even in sleep

a weather breath resurrects”

CA Conrad and Frank Sherlock | The City Real & Imagined | Factory School | 2010

“when will I
vanish at
all my
want
dear
impatient
city I
Love?”

“There is a dirty hole

There is something about to be

planted”

Edgar Allan Poe | Arthur Gordon Pym | Oxford | 1998

“So rapidly had these events passed, that we could scarcely believe in their reality, and were standing over the bodies of the dead in a species of stupid contemplation, when we were brought to recollection by the sound of shouts in the distance.”

Larry Eigner | another time in fragments | Fulcrum | 1967

“birds

are apples

an upward ground
the gray bark
spring direction”

D.C.A. Hillman | The Chemical Muse: Drug Use and the Roots of Western Civilization | Thomas Dunne | 2008

“In writing The Chemical Muse, I wanted to show that recreational drugs were an integral aspect of the same societies that gave us valuable concepts like democracy and the scientific method. I wanted the modern West to see that its founding fathers were drug users, plain and simple; they grew the stuff, they sold the stuff, and most important, used the stuff.”

The Chemical Muse is an expanded version of a chapter in the author’s dissertation, a chapter that the Classics faculty required he remove in order to pass his dissertation exam! Academic Revenge!

Kevin Varrone | g-point almanac: passyunk lost | Ugly Duckling | 2010

“I felt what you felt: a ball in space

a great astrofuge.
I felt blue & white or wonder.”

Paul Nelson | A Time Before Slaughter | Apprentice House | 2010

Paul Nelson’s Patersonesque telling of the story of Auburn, Wa. (formerly Slaughter).

“Slaughter is the rush of Stuck through rocks on a rainy August  F r i d a y.”

Gaslamp Killer | All Killer. Finders Keepers Records 1-20 Mixed By The Gaslamp Killer | Twisted Nerve | 2009

Fantastic mix of retro-international-psych-rock sounds (Turkey / India / Pakistan) with lo-profile beats to string it all together. Fun, wonderful and surprising and every turn.

Example: Track 3 contains sounds from the following: Mustafa Özkent – Zeytinyagi (Fkr010) / Susan Christie – Europa (Poetry) (Fkr018) / Jir’ Slitr & Jir’ Sust- Sugar Stealers / Man With A Typewriter (Fkr013)

More C.E. Putnam here. His Attention Span for 2009, 2008. Back to directory.

Attention Span 2009 – CE Putnam

Peter Cully | The Age of Briggs & Stratton | New Star Books | 2008

Another set of walks around Hammertown with Mr. Cully. Nature and machine in conflict and decay & Smithsonian bird found-poems from 1910-1954.

& even when they make it over the line

the berm is not permanent

and the fuckraking leafblowers

papercut the air into orange froth.

Mel Nichols | Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon | Edge Books | 2009

Fragmented lyric float bubbles: Day Poems. Step carefully.

“do the fish know they are not drowning but in dream photograph with dense knowing”

Takashi Hiraide, trans. Sawako Nakayasu | For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut | New Directions | 2008

111 prose poems (many in a commuter/subway context). I love living in its strange beautiful world. I couldn’t help but think of Yoshida Kenko’s “Essays in Idleness.”

“The soap that transforms in the hand of silence into a living thing. The railway where the claw marks of those approaching death lather fragrantly upon our skin”

Ruth S. Freed & Stanley A. Freed | Ghosts: Life and Death in North India | Anthropological Paper of The American Museum of Natural History | 1993

This anthropological study utilizes an unusual method for naming project informants, resulting in lines like:

“Curmudgeon, who, like all men in the village was much concerned about the perpetuation of the male line of descent, blamed the death of Little Boy on his levirate spouse, Scapegoat.”

Carlos Reygada, dir. | Stellet licht | Mantarraya Producciones | 2007

A big screen is a must for this one. I had the chance to see it at the NW Film Forum earlier this year. This film tells the story of a love-triangle in a secluded Mennonite community in Chihuahua, Mexico. The film is gorgeous to look at and it moves at a very very slow & quiet pace (watching a sunrise/sunset speed), but it builds and builds and storms. The lack of a musical soundtrack & great sound editing/effects (crunching snow, an unnerving ticking of a kitchen clock, etc.) add tension / agitation. Unforgettable ending. Dialogue in German and Spanish w/ English Subtitles.

Endless Boogie | Focus Level | No Quarter Records | 2008

I STILL can’t stop listening to these NYC 50-somethings as they punch me out with “Safe as Milk” era Captain Beefheart vocals (a low-key growllllllly mumble rather than annoying) riding atop an “endless boogie” of psychedelic blues jams. Tough, rough and raw. Fire up the grill. We are “Smoking Figs In The Yard.”

Joshua Beckman | Take It | Wave Books | 2009

Starts like this:

Dear Angry Mob,

Oak Wood Trail is closed to you. We

feel it unnecessary to defend our position,

for we have always thought of ourselves

(and rightly, I venture) as a haven for

those seeking a quiet and solitary

contemplation. We are truly sorry

for the inconvenience.

Signed,

Ranger Lil

Portable Shrines Shows | Seattle, WA | Various Locations (Funhouse/Comet Tavern)

Portable Shrines is a new “psychedelic music” collective that has just started putting on shows and experimental sound events in the Seattle Area. It’s a homegrown thing, sheets on the walls for projections, etc. (really enjoyed “Yoko Ono’s Fly flim during the Oko Yono set the other week—and Treetarantula and AFCGT were pretty good too). Anyway, haven’t been as excited about a Seattle scene since pre-Nevermind Nirvana. Can’t wait to see what happens next.

Aram Saroyan | Complete Minimal Poems | Ugly Duckling Presse | 2007

“typewriter kittens”

Kenneth Patchen | Hallelujah Anyway | New Directions | 1966

Maybe it’s the effect of living with a two-year-old, but I’m especially enjoying the curly words and crazy critters in these “picture poems.” A nice old edition. The kind that you can still find (sometimes) in U-District used bookshops.

A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies: Primary Access to Observations of UFOs, Ghosts, and Other Mysterious Phenomena Compiled by George M. Eberhart | Greenwood Press | 1980

My selection for reference book of the year (1980). Organized by geographic regions of North America it documents over 22,000 separate events in 10,500 geographic locations with a Subject AND an Observer Index.

Erratic Starfish, 261

Moving lamp fixture, 611

Mystery balls of fiber, 34

Phantom cabin, 574

Pink squirrel, 839

Water forecasting rock, 498

Weeping mounted deer’s head, 497, 865

More CE Putnam here.

Featured Title – The Nancy Book by Joe Brainard

Joe Brainard | The Nancy Book | Siglio | 2008 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 4 mentions in Attention Span 2008

A much-anticipated event, heightened even further for me by getting to see the exhibit at Colby College, Maine, at which many of these works were on display, earlier this summer. (K. Silem Mohammad)

“I have burned down the sky.” (C.E. Putnam)

Also mentioned by Richard Deming and Gina Myers,