First of all, my many thanks to Michael
Cross for this invitation. As someone who tends to be a bit of a bitter realist/crackpot
conspiracy theorist, I seldom get asked to take part in celebratory
list-making. I’ll give it my best. Here’s my rundown of 2013.
Edward Snowden. When I was like 13 or 14
I remember discussing with friends, as though we had political insight, “yeah,
if you say words like ‘kill’ and ‘president’ in the same phone conversation the
NSA will automatically pick up and listen to your call.” Everyone believed
this. So Eddie Snowden simply provides proof of what we all already believed
and now has to live his life in fear and exile. The biggest travesty, perhaps,
is that almost no one even read what he released/published … and so we still,
ultimately, have no more proof than we did when we discussed these things 20
years ago – we just have one more element of hearsay. “This guy who once worked
for the NSA said all that stuff we use to say is true.” Oh well, a tip of the
hat anyway, for pulling back the curtain a bit further.
Ethan Couch killed more people than the
Boston Marathon Bombing. You know, since people like numbers and all.
My truck hit 150,000 miles this year. A
lot of good land under that old rust machine. The engine still sings like an
Easter morning choir, but you can’t hear it over the painfully evident missing
muffler.
Hellraiser. The original movie, not a sequel or spinoff or
anything. It’s most certainly not from 2013, but bear with me a minute. My wife
is amazing; I love everything about her, except for her love of horror movies.
And she loves the contemporary “possession” style horror movies where you wait
and wait, and then something shocking jumps out and makes you jump a little,
and so on. Not really my scene. I have a problem with ghosts in general based
on class issues – ghost believers generally describe ghosts as souls that
aren’t at peace. Well then why are most ghosts middle class white girls? Where
are the ghosts of slaves and immigrants and the generally downtrodden, those
who were never at peace? Why are apartment buildings (usually) ghost-free – do
you have to carry a mortgage before you can become a ghost? Anyway … so I
showed her Hellraiser and it scared
the shit out of her. And really, no horror movie has come out since that’s even
half as good. Find me any villain as badass as Pinhead. So even though Hellraiser came out in 1987, if you
watched it in 2013 it was the best horror movie of 2013.
Upon my relocation to these parts I was
contacted by some locals who were told by Juliana Spahr to contact me. They had
been working on a Free School type project in southwestern PA. As we were in
initial discussions, the Occupy Movement took off – and seemed to fulfill some
of those initial ideas. In the period of time following that immediate fervor,
an incredible poet and even more incredible person, Ryan Kauffman, took that
progressive/participatory gesture and translated it into a politically astute
poetry reading series called Poesis. All proceeds went to charity. All readings
contributed to a larger community. All readings had a sense of potential that
hasn’t been felt in this region in some time. I was honored to read/lecture in
February, and I believe that that was the final reading of the series, as Ryan was
shortly thereafter diagnosed with cancer. He is in remission now, and my
thoughts are with him regularly, but I still have to list Poesis as the best
reading series to end this year. Perhaps by the end of next year it will be
listed as the best reading series to start back up.
Michael Nicoloff was probably the best
Facebooker over the entire course of 2013, but Erika Staiti’s 12/13/13 paragraph
of her year-long struggles with Proust could easily go down as one of the
finest Facebook posts of all time.
More has been discussed this year
regarding the general state of adjuncts and adjunct working conditions than in
any year previous. This is good. Obviously, we’re not paid in coal scrip coins,
and I don’t want to make any unnecessary comparisons, but the working poor is
the working poor – and the starving class will one day throw down their
pickaxes, shovels, fruit baskets, dust rags, spatulas, and gradebooks and say
they won’t take it anymore. Not quite there this year, but this year seems to
have fast-tracked that dialogue a bit.
Ed Steck. The Garden: Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulation. Ugly
Duckling Presse. A few years ago I rode the Mega Bus to New York to watch Erika
Staiti read at the Segue Series. It was when Sara Wintz and Thom Donovan were the
curators. After, as we all drank and caught up, Sara told me about this guy she
met at Bard who was living in Pittsburgh – who wrote weird political/conceptual
poetry and loved old punk and metal. She knew we were meant to be friends and
introduced us via email. We did a reading together, and then sometimes drank
whiskey in the afternoon together. We’d talk about poetry, appropriation, lineages,
grad school, Burzum, Aus Rotten, Motorhead, The Clash, and so on. Anyway, this
book is exactly what I look for in a book. Ed understands the artful and
political balance of ethical appropriation; he composes texts that at once
overwhelm with their volume and simplify political/military discourses to their
linguistic realities. There is something we consider to be reality, and then
there is the reality we are told exists, and then there is the real reality –
Ed allows all of these to intertwine into some sort of language-mess, into some
sort of cubism gone awry, into some sort of beautiful landscape … everything
overwhelms and envelops, but upon allowing that landscape to settle, we’re left
with a terrifying vision of authority, surveillance, and power structures – and
we’re left with one of the most formidable books we might ever encounter.
Alli Warren. Here Come the Warm Jets. City Lights Books. “You begin from
economic fact.” I don’t know Alli’s economics – I know I wish I wrote that opening
line. I don’t know exactly how many chapbooks Alli has written, but my guess is
that it’s somewhere right around four thousand. Alli is always there. Reading,
conference, talk, planning session, symposium, protest, discussion, barbeque, book
release, dance party, and so on – Alli understands the importance of attendance
in voluntary, participatory communities better than anyone. These communities
are bullshit if no one shows up. She never asked for anything, but gave her all
to everything she took part in – I have nothing but respect for all she’s done.
This text is a culmination of that spirit – the voice of a woman who has
observed, documented, volunteered, laughed, suffered, and lived a life through
a poetic lens. Through the linguistic/participatory importance of personal
upheaval in the face of political uncertainty. Everyone who knows Alli has been
waiting for this book for years. People who don’t know Alli have been waiting
for this book for years. Everyone who waits for books has waited for this.
American Books. This is a new press by
the aforementioned Ed Steck and two cohorts; though it “officially” launched in
2011, they released their first full-length title this year (Cold Mountain Mirror Displacement by
Jeremy Hoevenaar). As Ed’s aesthetics, poetics, politics, and ethics are
spot-on, I’m totally excited about what he will do as a publisher. Good things
to come. Good things to come.
With all due respect to the other
small-market teams who made the postseason, and to my true AL love: the Oakland
A’s, the Pittsburgh Pirates were the best story in sports this year. They gave
me the most exciting baseball I’ve seen in decades.
I just realized this thing has hit
around 1300 words. I’ll end it. I hope it was enjoyable and uplifting as we end
the year. Again, much love to Michael Cross – one of those amazingly busy and
productive types. Thanks for including me in this tradition. And much love to
all of you. I’ll see you when the road leads that way.
Jeffrey Schrader is the author of Art Fraud (BlazeVOX), gridpattern (Erg), some chapbooks, and a
lot of internet and photocopier based journal stuff. He lives in a small town
an hour north of Pittsburgh, PA, where he adjuncts during adjuncting season and
landscapes during landscaping season.
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