Be Cool (2005)

This film, directed by F. Gary Gray, was not really that cool. If you love a glitzy cast, that's about all this one has to offer, but that may be enough of a reason for you to check it out. It was the only reason I watched it.

I thought Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was good in his role as a gay bodyguard, but otherwise I was snoozing through most of this one.

Illuminations – Arthur Rimbaud | Translated by Louise Varèse

Obviously, I was reading a translation, as you can see above. This is an odd but engaging book of poetry, prose poetry, but then most prose poetry might appear unusual to the average Joe. If you've read other poetry by this legend, who had given up writing before he was twenty-one years old, as the back cover states, the work in this volume will seem quite different, but should also captivate you as completely.

It's an exciting book to read, which is one of the powers behind the writing of Rimbaud. His youthful fire and energy is hard to duplicate and comes through clearly in the text. It's hard to believe someone so young could write such inspiring verse. A barrage of imagery and colors awaits, and colors seem particularly important as can be seen in this poem entitled Flowers:

     From a golden step,– among silk cords, green velvets, gray gauzes, and crystal discs that turn black as bronze in the sun, I see the digitalis opening on a carpet of silver filigree, of eyes and hair.
     Yellow gold-pieces strewn over agate, mahogany columns supporting emerald domes, bouquets of white satin and delicate sprays of rubies, surround the water-rose.
     Like a god with huge blue eyes and limbs of snow, the sea and sky lure to the marble terraces the throng of roses, young and strong.

On the surface, a beautiful homage to flowers and their wonderful, colorful images, but as a metaphor of people and their blind attention to their deceptively alluring champions, it takes a deceptively darker turn. I can barely even begin to speak about this poem in a critical way, much less the collection as a whole. It was a pleasure to read and read again, as must be done. Finally, the order of the poems in this collection is in dispute as the manuscript is not presented in its original form, if, in fact, it ever had one, which only makes it difficult to respond to as something that may or may not be intrinsically tied together by some overarching form.

Only Yesterday (1991)

Another animated film by Japanese master Hiyao Miyazaki which follows a young working woman, Taeko, as she returns to the countryside for her vacation and, ultimately, discovers what is missing in her life. While most of her coworkers and friends travel abroad, Taeko choose instead to go to the countryside to work on a farm harvesting saffron.

Throughout the movie, Taeko has flashbacks from her childhood which include scenes about her first boyfriend, menstruation, the only time her father slapped her, and many other firsts which mark important events in her youth and which all awakened her a little more. She wonders why she is remembering these things as she tries to sleep on the train. As she remembers these scenes from her past, the animation takes off as Miyazaki incorporates some great sequences which add more fantastic and symbolic elements to the story.

Unlike the other movies I've seen by Miyazaki, which all revolved around a young girl as the central character, and this movie, to some extent, also revolves around a young girl as the flashbacks make up nearly half of the movie, the main character is a young single woman. The movie appeals to a slightly different audience because of it, dealing with more adolescent issues, things that would interest a young adult, rather than environmental or social issues. The movie had a slower, nicer pace and I felt well-entertained at the conclusion as Taeko finally understands for what she was unconsciously looking.

this connection of everyone with lungs – Juliana Spahr

A beautiful long poem spawned when the author realized that America would again invade Iraq which, as the title suggests, attempts to show a connectivity among human kind. It can be taken a step further to include a connectivity within the world, in the things of the world and in the individual who desires to arrive at an understanding of it. About her process, Juliana Spahr is particularly revealing in her note preceding the section entitled November 30, 2002:

I thought that by watching the news more seriously I could be a little less naive. But I gained no sophisticated understanding as I wrote these poems.

She admits that she couldn't find answers to her questions or that her answers, if they were that, would only be as satisfying as her observances.

The poem, a wonderful list of the senses, kicks off with a passage about cells dividing. As in any good poem, the rules for its interpretation are provided within the poem, and the opening lines show us clearly where we begin. The smallest structural unit of living matter capable of functioning independently:

There are these things:

cells, the movement of cells and the division of cells

and then the general beating of circulation

and hands, and body, and feet

and skin that surrounds hands, body, feet.

This is shape,

a shape of blood beating and cells dividing.

A fine beginning. Ending with a colon, the first line is a cold, matter-of-fact and, by itself, plain statement about what will follow, a list. The poem then advances to introduce its first image in the second line, cells. They are not simply biological components of living things, they are also containers, jails, spaces. They form the living world, the places and people and things to which we respond and react. This is the shape of the poem, its form, which reflects its things and inhabitants and the whole huge list of the world.

But outside of this shape is space.

There is space between the hands.

There is space between the hands and space around the hands.

There is space in the room that surrounds the shapes of everyone's hands and body and feet and cells and the beating contained within.

There is space, an uneven space, made by this pattern of bodies.

This space goes in and out of everyone's bodies.

Everyone with lungs breathes the space in and out as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands in and out

as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands in and out

This shape which occupies this space is a living, breathing thing. Every stanza or trope which follows is repeated in its entirety, adding a new image to the end of each, pulling further away until we are actually in space, observing the entire world while we breathe in the poem and the world.

The poem shows a controlled use of repetition and list techniques to expose the contradictions of the microcosm of the narrator's life on a tropical island with the macrocosm of the world beyond. It also demonstrates a fantastic use of language and image to emphasize form and build the poem dynamically from the seed of its beginnings. The poem asks us to consider this place, this space we share, and also that those things which often seem so far removed from us must really be considered as parts of us. Parts of our shape and breath.