Allow me to introduce you to The Real Housewives of Bohemia, a podcast that Lauren Besser (an Upright Citizens Brigade performer and a Scorpio) and I (a poet-scholar and a Cancer) launched this August. RHB is a (weird) sister project to WEIRD SISTER in that they both involve: witches, feminist field trips, the 90s, girl bands, and me. One major point of difference, however, is that there’s a lot more James Franco discussion on RHB, because although I can never decide whether my fascination with the Franco is sincere or ironic, I’m never gonna pretend it’s feminist. RHB is full of weird jokes about astronomy &vs. astrology and lawyers and honoring-our-sisters that hopefully reward longtime listeners (okay, okay, we only have twelve episodes so far, but they are stacked thick with weird jokes meant to reward longtime listeners, or at least crack ourselves up). We call it a comedy podcast, partly because Lauren is a bona fide comedian, partly because we love to make each other laugh, and partly because we like to trick people into listening to a feminist podcast by calling it “comedy.” The full truth is that we are jouissance-filled feminists, laughing like MFing Medusas in the face of the patriarchy. We care deeply and then we don’t give a fuh, and we swerve from one to the other within seconds sometimes as we perform what it means to try to make sense of the world as women. We’re trying to unearth subjugated knowledges through the art of intense girl talk. For our latest feminist field trip, presented here as part of WEIRD SISTER’s “We Were There” series, Lauren and I attended a conversation about Emma Sulkowicz’s mattress performance at the Brooklyn Museum.
Category Archives: We Were There
WE WERE THERE: Emma Sulkowicz’s “Carry That Weight” at the Brooklyn Museum & The Real Housewives of Bohemia Podcast
Filed under We Were There
WE WERE THERE: Alette in Oakland in the Crystal City
Alette in Oakland: A Symposium on the Work of Alice Notley
The Bay Area Public School
Omni Commons, 4799 Shattuck Avenue, Oakland, CA
October 24-26, 2014
Most of the Omni Commons building in Oakland is a big auditorium painted black, with skylights and chandeliers and a stage. I try all weekend to think what it reminds me of. I learn that it used to be an Italian social club, a rock club, and a private home. To me it feels like a barn or a gymnasium or a church. I’m here for Alette in Oakland, the first conference devoted to the work of Alice Notley (organized by Brandon Brown, David Brazil, Frances Richard, Alana Siegel and Laura Woltag) who instantly became one of my favorite poets when I read Waltzing Matilda (1981) in David Trinidad’s New York School Poetry class at Columbia College Chicago in 2006. I loved Notley’s early work for its vernacular wit and quotidian detail, and soon loved her later work—The Descent of Alette (1992) is often thought of as the dividing line—for its fierce feminist dissidence. That one poet could be capable of all these modes in a lifetime, could dig so deep into the everyday and then later so far toward the elsewhere, manifesting new cityscapes and desertscapes and other realms, still strikes me as astonishing.
In Oakland, there’s a kind of reverence in the air all weekend, not only for Notley and her poetry, but also for the agreement to sit in a big room as if in one of the feminist alternative worlds that Notley has conjured in her books for the last couple of decades. When phrases like “a poem could be considered an idea-city” (Marcella Durand) fill the air continuously, you can trick yourself into thinking you live in that city. The title of the symposium is perfect, then. “Alette in Oakland.” It’s as if we’re agreeing to treat Oakland as the setting of Notley’s feminist epic The Descent of Alette. With its black walls and ceiling, maybe the Omni is a cave, like the ones in Alette but larger, where we can all gather…
This roundup gives some sense of the topics discussed at the symposium panels. (There’s also word of a plan for a published volume of all of the papers.) I’ll leave out notes on Notley’s reading on Friday night (it was powerful, the room was packed like a rock club, and it ended with a standing ovation), Eileen Myles’s keynote (because there’s video of the whole thing), and the performance of Notley’s play Anne’s White Glove, directed by Alana Siegel, on Saturday night (because I missed it like a fool).
Disclaimer: Many of the quotations below were scribbled very quickly and likely contain inaccuracies. If any presenters want to send me corrected versions, please feel free.
Filed under Books + Literature, We Were There
