Kerry Leves booklaunch

Come to 'Benledi', Glebe Library, 186 Glebe Point
Rd, Glebe, on Sunday 30 March, 3.30 for 4pm, where/ when Nicolette
Stasko will be launching A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar, by Kerry
Leves, published by Puncher and Wattmann, rrp $25.

A journey into another culture, conducted through words that feed the
senses and stretch the imagination

ASA money workshop

Financial Issues seminar - 9 April - Wollongong

Date: Wednesday 9 April 2008, 10am-4.45pm
Venue: South Coast Writers Centre, Level 3, Cnr Crown & Kembla Streets, Wollongong
Note: There is only stair access to the 3rd floor.

The ASA's seminar on financial issues aims to provide writers with the tools to effectively manage the business side of writing.

Presenters have been selected for their knowledge and expertise in advising clients on matters ranging from compliance with the tax office to providing income for the future.

Lou Kinnas, Chartered Accountant from Akele Kinnas & Co, has over 20 years’ auditing experience and will speak about:
* Running a small business: record keeping * An eye for detail: the importance of record keeping * Financial reporting: GST, BAS and FBT for the financially challenged * Tax accounting: ABNs, invoices and payments * Royalty payments

Penny Miles, Arts on Tour
* Applying for grants, awards and competitions

Jeremy Fisher, Australian Society of Authors
* CAL, PLR and ELR * Freelance writers and illustrators: negotiating payments

Sean Butcher, Wealthinsure Financial Services
* Superannuation: types of funds, superannuation guarantee * Insurance: accident & illness, defamation, public liability and income protection.

With the CAL Cultural Fund’s generous support of the ASA’s professional development program, we are able to offer this seminar at the affordable price of $82.50. If you know anyone who might be interested in attending the seminar, please let them know we have a limited offer of $172 for non-members, which gives them one year ASA membership and the seminar is free!

Come along to this very practical seminar, have your questions answered, and get your business organised!

Download your registration form at:
www.asauthors.org/lib/pdf/zPD_Seminars/2008/Reg_Form_Wollongong08.pdf

or email: kris@asauthors.org for a registration form.

It's funny I tell you: Watching Bitter Films: Animated Shorts by Don Hertzfeldt

The difference between what we expect and what we get is either disappointment or a definition of humour.

Genres work on expectations. If you see a romantic comedy, the bloke and the sheila better get together in the end or you'll ask for your money back. Imagine any Jane Austen novel where Darcy goes off and sulks forever and Elizabeth remains a conceited self-important, self-absorbed middle class Daddy's girl all her life. That girl with the big teeth, what's her name, Julia Roberts, would be out of a job and Colin Firth would have to kill himself. The heartbreak is not real and we know it's not real. The rejection and humiliation is for our titillation and vicarious enjoyment. We're pleased that it's not us and live in the happy, if illusory, certitude that somehow we're just like the heroine/hero, even though even our family admits we're not intelligent, good looking or about to become rich. The world, however, seems ordered and right.

Speaking of ordered and right: what does it say about a culture when most of its entertainment is about murder and law enforcement? There are whole programs about catching sexual deviants (Law and Order: SVU). Does this strike you as odd? It is possible to watch nothing but football and murder for hours and days on end and in one of them the same team wins all the time. The odd show where the crims are the heroes are a big surprise, but even then there's a moral dimension. And what about that darkly comic movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels for example. The complex plot unfolds in a very satisfying 'good guys' prosper 'bad guys' fail sort of way (though 'good and bad and very relative here). What does our insistence that the blokes in the white hats win say about our anxiety about keeping things ordered and right?

Even the biggest show on the planet, The Simpsons, embodies moral rectitude. From Chaucer to Mr H.Simpson via The Honeymooners and The Flintstones, there's a message there. Think about it. Every time Homer Simpson does something which scandalously threatens the right and the true, it never works out. He's always back to where he started. Not with the ruinous consequences such behaviour would invoke in our worlds, but back to zero for him. Most episodes invoke movies of the 30s40s50s (why does he give those Rousing Speeches? Don't you watch late night black and white television? Anything made by Rank? Why the dance routines? Homer lives in a post-modern world.) Homer's biggest sin, (Sloth) gets him into more trouble than it's worth. Homer even goes to church.

We're relieved we're not him, though mostly we are: yellow with 2.5 children and a secret wish to escape our responsibilities and to lie on the sofa in our underwear.

What about the phenomenon of Mr Hertzfeldt's simple cartoons? What secret do they nod to?

For the individual, it's clarity. Our wish for things to be simple and clear and for moral complexity to be straightened out and simplified to the point where we can act truthfully. Hertzfeldt laughs at us and we laugh too. We expect the expected.

Buster Keaton's cunning simpleton evades disaster, unlikely odds, winning out and winning the girl, evoking our sympathy and sometimes anxious dismay until the end when the baddies are defeated and he comes out all right. When he's caught in a cyclone and the walls fall, he's the one left standing in the open doorway as the wall falls flat around him, He's blithely unharmed. The audience laughs as one. It's all too much, any normal person would have been killed. When there's a coiled rope on the deck of a boat he walks over it several times, and the joke becomes that he hasn't tripped up on it.

When Hertzfeldt's baby falls down the stairs, tripping over the small pun of the title ('First Steps') it's funny because it's appalling (poor baby!) and not real. When there is an impossibly huge set of steps, the like of which humanity has never seen in brick or stone, the joke becomes a meta-joke: we get it that he's sending up the trick he's just this moment pulled on us. When there is blood in excess, it is much less than any night of any week of television or the horrible realities of thousands of the real bloodied collateral damage perpetrated in our names just over the horizon. All the red scribble of Don Hertzfeldt doesn't come within spitting distance of this. But he makes us laugh. Why was that? Because 1. he steps over a loine and breaks a taboo (that anus talk) 2. he shows improbable gushing of blood 3. then he takes the improbably gushing illogically far too far (see the too many steps, above).

When, in L'Armour, the girls rejects our simple though confident hero, he remains unaccountably uncowed (think Keaton, think Chaplin, Marx Bros, Three Stooges, Dumb and Dumber) and optimistic in just the way we we hope we could be and tell our children to be. It's stupid. He should give up. He's had his heart ripped out and been beaten around the head with it. That, surely, was hint enough that he should give up. Or if not then, perhaps when he was cut in two, lengthways, with a chainsaw. But no, he reappears, whole, optimistic and even judgemental (he bypasses the overweight girl. We'd expected that he would approach her and she would be all right because…oops, in expecting the expected a vile little prejudice is revealed.) Only after several lifetimes of unlikely and excessive damage, does he finally work out what you are supposed to do to win the girl. He could have written a paper about it (others have) but by eschewing earnestness Hertzfeldt has been succinctly eloquent about gender relationships and got a laugh out of it. It's the men who laughed in recognition – while the women quietly exempted themselves from such sins. We do not lie around on the sofa in our underwear and we do not chop blokes up with chainsaws, tempting though that is.

When there is overweening inanity (My spoon is too big), the four million episodes of Sesame Street come rushing back, the comfortable wholesomeness exposed as slight. We laugh this time with embarrassed recognition that we accepted them as worthy and that we had suppressed our suspicion that they were actually silly. The innocent earnestness of the child character's face, the unlikely stupidity of the enterprise, even the awkward entry of the straight-talking and irrelevant banana, the pause for the punch line that doesn't come, make us laugh because we expected a development and it wasn't there.

When Bugs Bunny picks up the black circle that represents a hole and puts it under his arm and runs away with it, puts it down again and disappears down the hole, we laugh because we're operating in two contradictory states at once: one where we have accepted the fake as real (black circle equals hole) and one where we understand completely that it's a drawing and false. When the cartoonist's hand comes in and picks up the Hertzfeldt's rabbit by the ears in Genre and the ears are ripped off, and bleed, three conventions are being violated: the real hand is seen directly manipulating the creation (rabbit) and the rabbit's (non-existent) weight has internally consistent (though excessive) consequences (a reality is enforced though it was just revealed as illusory, and then immediately violated again). The blood is the third violation. We expect the expected: vile and excessive assaults in cartoons are neither lethal nor bloody.

Our first jokes are just like this. The terror of the parent disappearing behind the blanket in Peek a Boo only to magically reappear again from nowhere instantly is a wonder. Perception (what we see/don't see) gives way to anxiety which is replaced with relief. Something strange, worrying and improbable in the disappearance of the parent, is resolved. There has been a Trick. Do it again! When Uncle Jimmy pretends to take off his thumb, the joke is not the fear of mutilation which momentarily arises but the realisation that this is a Good Trick. We laugh because we know we've been duped, and everything is really, all right. We like it. Because we're in on the joke the gap between apparent reality and what subsequently seems true is not a disappointment after all.

What happens if the funny is not funny? Fart jokes, racist jokes. Why aren't they funny? Racist jokes are not funny because we can't suspend any disbelief there. We know the consequences: the very meanness that kills people. We've got to be careful. They've Gone Too Far. Jokes that could have serious consequences cease to be funny. Fart jokes, however, are funny to some people. The same way that bums and bottoms are hilarious to nine year old boys but less so when you are older: by the time we're 49 we've got used to having bums and bottoms and it seems a bit normal and unremarkable.

Have you ever tried to explain an elephant joke to anyone? I have. Me: Why do elephants paint their toenails many different colours? Them: I don't know, why? Me: So they can hide in Smarties boxes. Them: Elephants are too big to fit into Smarties boxes. Me: I know. Them: So how's that funny? Me: That's the joke, that they're too big, so painting their nails would be futile and no help at all disguising them. Them: So why say they should hide in Smarties boxes? Me: Look! Over there! {Exits, stage right. Sound of rapid footsteps, off}. There comes a point where you have to admit that if it isn't funny to them, it isn't funny to them.

Even so, I've got to tell you, Don Hertzfeldt is funny. What about when the people with the silly hats beat up the guy with the normal hat! Hilarious.

Collateral misinformation

From Urban Word of the Day:

When someone alters a [Wikipedia] article to win a specific argument, anyone who reads the false article before the "error" is corrected suffers from collateral misinformation.

I changed the scientific classification of red foxes last night in order to win an argument with Judy. I hope some stupid High School student didn't suffer from collateral misinformation.

PressPress Chapbook Award

The new Big Bridge is out now!

BIG BRIDGE
is pleased to announce its 2008 issue.
It includes:
CHAPBOOK

Up By The Maritime Museum
Poem by Nathaniel Tarn; Drawings by Nancy Victoria Davis




FEATURES

BERKELEY DAZE
Exhaustive anthology and commentary on the Berkeley Poetry Scene of the 1960s; some writers went on to become major figures; others set up a unique dispensarion of their own
Edited with Commentery by Rychard Denner


BOLINAS DREAMING
Book-length study of community of poets just north of San Francisco from the mid 60s to mid 80s, many of whom went on to play major roles in the literary modes that followed throughout the century
by Kevin Opstedal

AN ANTHOLOGY OF BAY AREA WOMEN WRITERS
Spritely and diverse anthology of women living in the San Francisco Bay area today
edited by Katherine Hastings

On The Publication of Philip Whalen's COLLECTED POEMS
Celebration of the Collected poems of one of the most important American poets to emerge at mid century. One of the original Beats, his poems do not age or become dated, as this ample selection of commentary, poems, and appreciations makes clear.
Commentary and poems by: Dale Smith, David Schneider, Karl Young, Neeli Cherkovski, Brian Howlett, Ron Silliman, John Tarrant, Tom Clark, Anne Waldman, and David Meltzer.
Edited by Dale Smith


THE CHILDREN
Poems by Philip Whalen; Photographs by Aram Saroyan:
Saroyan took photos of children more or less his own age while travelling in Europe with his father. He sent them to Whalen who wrote poems based on them.


WAR PAPERS (2)
Poems, essays, comments, and hyper-text art against war.


First Impressions of
OCEANS BEYOND MONOTONOUS SPACE:
Selected Poems of Kitasono Katue
For most readers in the west, Japanese poetry of the 20th Century remains almost if not completely unknown. Yet it had its Avant Gardists comparable to Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, and Kenneth Patchen (to mention three who saw Kitasono as a peer. Kitasono foreshadowed most concerns and methods of western poets, from Concrete to Language Poetry to the PhotoPoetry emerging today decades before his western counterparts. This gathering respresents initial responses to the first large and easily available selection of his work.
Comments by: Aysegül Tözeren, Anny Ballardini, Susan Smith Nash, Carlos M. Luis, and Dan Waber


NOW, AS YOU AWAKEN
Poems of Mahmoud Darwish; Translated by Omnia Amin and Rick London
Generally considered the most important contemporary Palestinian Poet, this selection of poems shows a poet steeped in a great tradition dealing with contemporary issues, and doing so outside of stereotypes and predictable misconceptions


a d.a.levy satellite
Still controversial 39 years after his death, levy is finally emerging as a major American poet, inovator, publisher, and influence. This widly diverse collection of responses gives a sense of his range and his appeal to audiences of all sorts.
Comments by T.L.Kryss, Joel Lipman, Ingrid Swanberg, Karl Young, Dan Waber, Stephen Nelson, Joshua Gage, jon beacham, John Oliver Simon, Richard Krech, Geoffrey Cook, and Charles Potts.
Edited by Ingrid Swanberg and Karl Young


Nathaniel Tarn: quatre poèmes; traduction : Auxéméry
French translations of some of Tarn's best-known poems


A California Trip: Salutations from Ira Cohen —
Two Spontaneous Odes and a Photo of Terri Carrion


CORNUCOPION BOSEGSZARU
Ira Cohen in Hungarian



A Retrospective of the Publication Work of Karl Young, Part 3



ART

The Convergence of Then and When: A Game Without Rules
by Jane Dalrymple-Hollo


Spitzer Breakdown
A Reading of a Poster by Jim Spitzer


La Femme Mecanique
Photo Art by Johnathan Kane


Family Photos: Beats In Winter
by Larry Keenan


The Fine Art of Conversation
Collaborative art by Brian Howlett and Associates


Memories of Vali Myers


Waning Moon – March 20, 2003
In Memoriam Carl J. Young
by Karl Young, Jr.




FICTION


Fiction by Chris Wells, Paul A. Toth, Roberta Allen, Ann Bogle, Stephen-Paul Martin, Tsipi Keller, Tsipi Keller, Marc Lowe, Richard Martin, Mel Freilicher, Fisher Thompson, Nickolay Todorov, Paul Kahn Lou Rowan, and Jordan Zinovich.



REVIEWS and INTERVIEWS

Reviews of:
Vali Myers, Joanne Kyger, Alice Notley, Judith Roche, Allan Weisbecker, Lou Rowan,
James Broughton, Jack Foley, Jeffrey Side, William Allegrezza, and Raymond Bianchi

Reviewed by: Allan Graubard, Kirpal Gordon, Stephen Vincent, Allan Davies, Lynn Coffin, Mary Sands Woodbury, James Tierney, Katherine Hastings, Jake Berry, Michael Schumacher, T. Hibbard

Interviews:
Malcolm McNeil
Interviewed by Larry Sawyer
with some of McNeill's graphic collaborations with
William S. Burroughs

Vernon Frazer
Interviewed by Ric Cafagna

Lou Rowan
Interviewed by Dominic Aulisio



POETRY

Index of poems by more than 138 writers, including

War Papers Poetry (2) includes poems by:

Keith Wilson, Robert Sward, Rebecca Kavaler, Harriet Green, Tad Richards, Jennifer Compton, Joel Solonche, Chris Mansell, Steve Dalachinsky, Jéanpaul Ferro, Hugh Fox, H. Palmer Hall, Louis Armand, Gay Partington Terry, John M. Bennett, Paul C. Howell, Eileen Tabios, Harriet Zinnes, Philip Metres, Ruth Lepson, Edward Field, Susan Donnelly, Neil Nelson, Larissa Shmailo, Hal Sirowitz, Laura Lentz, Jeffrey Beam, Frank Parker, Alan Sondheim, Murat Nemet-Nijat, Sheila Black, Barbara Crooker, Richard Kostelanetz, Rodney Nelson, Karen Alkalay-Gut, Patricia Valdata, Sybil Kollar, Mark Pawlak, David Howard, Marcus Bales, Jose Padua, Patrick John Green, John Bradley, Kent Johnson, CL Bledsoe, Joseph Somoza, Martha Deed, Lisa Sewell, Hugh Seidman, Sheila E. Murphy, e k rzepka, Harris Schiff, Bobby Byrd, Clarinda Harriss, mIEKAL aND, Jayne Lyn Stahl, Rachel Loden, Jorn Ake, Paul E. Nelson, Alexander Jorgensen, Helen Duberstein, Michael Heller, Georgios Tsangaris, Stephen Vincent, Michael Maggiotto, Marthe Reed, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Ana Doina, James Scully, Glenn R. McLaughlin, and Ray Craig

Berkeley Daze includes poems by:

Luis Garcia, Belle Randall, Helen Breger, Ron Loewinsohn, David Bromige, Gail Dusenbery, Gene Fowler, Jim Thurber, David Meltzer, Doug Palmer Facino, John Bennett, John the Poet Thomson, Rychard Denner, Julia Vinograd the Bubble Lady, Larry Kerschner, Charles Potts, Joel Walderman, Harold Adler, Richard Krech, Michael Upton, Ron Silliman, Doug Palmer, Patricia Parker, Martin P. Abramson, Richard Denner, Gene Fowler, Norm Moser, Charles Potts, De Leon Harrison, John Thomson, John Oliver Simon, Andy Clausen, Jefferson D. Hils, Richard Krech, Jack Foley, Al Masarik, Kay Okrand, James Koller, David Cole, Thanasis Maskaleris, Sister Mary Norbert, Lennart Bruce, Marianne Baskin, Hillary Ayer Fowler, Sam Thomas, D.R. Hazelton, and Jim Wehalage

An Anthology of Bay Area Women Writers includes poems by:

Mary-Marcia Casoley, Sharon Doubiago, Adelle Foley, Judy Grahn, Susan Griffin, Katherine Hastings, Beatriz Lagos, devorah major, Tennessee Reed, Nellie Wong, Leslie Scalapino, and Maw Shien Win


LITTLE MAGS

Humonomous

Versal

Heaven Bone