• Did you know that white dudes are afraid to write now? Elisa Gabbert, fine poet and advice columnist for Electric Literature, gave some pretty sane and solid advice to a white dude who really wanted to write but who felt like the time for the white, male voice had passed. Gabbert suggested that he might reconcile the issue by submitting his work less often, which would make sure that his voice didn’t drown out the voices of others. She told him to avoid the White Savior complex, and to instead focus on writing really, really well. The white, male internet flipped shit in the comments. Then Saturday, white dude and Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf decided to mansplain all over Gabbert’s perfectly good advice and write his own response, which was essentially: (1) If any writing helps anyone then it’s necessary to have in the world, and (2) Rap is poetry and it’s really popular. So we’re good, right? Right? Oof.
• Speciality bookstore Cinema Books, at 50th and Roosevelt, is closing. The store has lost traffic due to construction on Roosevelt, and owner Stephanie Ogle told the Daily the store’s “too small to last them out.”
• In Vanessa Place news: Institutions from the literary and art worlds are canceling on her all over the country. Place says that the people of Boulder, Colorado, wrote a letter asking that she not give a lecture on Kenneth Goldsmith’s (clearly racist to my mind) poem “The Body of Michael Brown,” which involves Goldsmith “massaging” and rearranging one of the autopsy reports in order to climax on a description of Brown’s genitals. Instead of giving that lecture, Place sat in a room and allowed people to say whatever they wanted about her own work, responding only if they wanted a response. They did, and basically just asked the same questions The Stranger asked her. This canceling thing is becoming a pattern. Last weekend at the Whitney, Place was scheduled to perform a piece called “Botched Execution,” which includes a recording of her reading the last words of Texan inmates on death row. Place told me that was canceled because the museum was “essentially unable to respond to the public pressures around the event in such a way that it seemed safe to proceed.”
• What words pass through the minds of the soon-to-be-electrocuted, anyway? The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has posted the last words of all people sentenced to death in the state from 1982 until five days ago. Do yourself a favor and take 30 minutes to browse around. The statements range from the banally pious to the creepily silent to the whuuuuuut?
• In happier news: Two great poetry readings are happening this Thursday. I have no idea which one to choose. The choices are CA Conrad/Sarah Galvin/Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore vs. A Celebration of Frank Stanford featuring C.D. Wright and Ed Skoog + banjo. If you like your poetry funny, grimy, and glittery, then I’d suggest heading on down to the Ingersoll Gender Center around 6 p.m. for Conrad, Galvin, and Bernstein. If you like your poetry with a side of banjo, then get to Elliott Bay Books at 7 p.m. Cowboy boots highly encouraged at both.
• Speaking of cowboys: Online journal Okey-Panky just published some new stories by Padgett Powell. If you don’t know him, Powell is one of the greatest living Southern writers. He can describe the process of gluing one piece of wood to another piece of wood in a way that makes you question your place in the universe. Just to give you an example of his style, behold this mini-story in the interview that accompanies the piece about gluing wood together in Okey-Panky:
Once a buddy of mine proposed we play spin the bottle at the tail end of a party, three guys and two women present (we were in tenth grade). One of the girls, older than we, not in school, said: Spin the bottle? You guys don’t even know what it’s like to eat a woman. Ignoring the twisted logic of this putdown, my buddy said: You’re right, so tell us. The girl took a drag of her cigarette and said: It’s like sucking mayonnaise through a Brillo pad.
The last couple books from Powell have dealt with male shame in the face of powerful, more experienced women. I recommend buying The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? and reading it alone in your apartment while slowly drinking and answering all his questions on a separate sheet of paper.
• Why not add Okey-Panky to your list of places to submit YOUR stories about gluing wood and accidentally killing your dog? The magazine wants poems, short stories, and comics. They specialize in dark humor, they’ll pay you $100, and they’ll be open for submissions in late summer. So you have some time. If you want to send something right now, try these similar magazines: [PANK] or Hobart.
