A grape pops out of u that u never even ate
May 28, 2014 9:03 AM Subscribe
"I consistently felt myself to be not male or female,” she said, “but the 11-year-old gender: protagonist." [. . .]
The title of the piece can only be rendered in these pages as “The Semen Queens of Hyatt Place.”
The New York Times Magazine profiles Metafilter's own Tricia Lockwood. (Previously, previously)
I bought Balloon Pop Outlaw Black, and it's a treasure. She really deserves this recognition.
posted by pony707 at 9:26 AM on May 28, 2014
posted by pony707 at 9:26 AM on May 28, 2014
I'm just indescribably delighted by her self-description "I was a hot teen Casaubon." Hooray.
Plus, this and this are pretty much my favorite thing ever to happen on or around Twitter.
posted by torridly at 9:36 AM on May 28, 2014 [10 favorites]
Plus, this and this are pretty much my favorite thing ever to happen on or around Twitter.
posted by torridly at 9:36 AM on May 28, 2014 [10 favorites]
She also gave me some really good writing advice on AskMe a while back so I am so happy she's gets a Big Damn Profile writeup
posted by The Whelk at 9:37 AM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by The Whelk at 9:37 AM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]
Check out the second stanza in this poem she wrote.
posted by glass origami robot at 9:41 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by glass origami robot at 9:41 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
I think I've said it before, but I ran across her wayyy back around 2000 when she wrote funny stories about her life on Diaryland (remember that place?). I am always so tickled and pleased when I discovered she's been featured somewhere or is publishing a new book.
posted by Windigo at 9:53 AM on May 28, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by Windigo at 9:53 AM on May 28, 2014 [3 favorites]
That the same person both re-ignited my interest in poetry and made me appreciate Twitter beyond a way to track what my friends are saying is such a wonderful thing.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:02 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:02 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
“Great novels have incest; if not, they’re not good,” Lockwood told me. “William Faulkner taught us that.” She and Kendall had high hopes, but the novel languished, and she was eventually told that, “in the climate after 9/11, people aren’t willing to take a chance on sister-on-sister action where someone loses a hand to gangrene.”
I narrowly missed spitting tea all over my desk. Excellent!
posted by rtha at 10:07 AM on May 28, 2014 [8 favorites]
I narrowly missed spitting tea all over my desk. Excellent!
posted by rtha at 10:07 AM on May 28, 2014 [8 favorites]
Yeah, she is my favorite twitter personality AND favorite poet, which somehow just doesn't seem fair.
posted by naju at 10:14 AM on May 28, 2014
posted by naju at 10:14 AM on May 28, 2014
Tricia's writing has been very important and powerful for me for as long as she's been on Metafilter, and I've been thrilled to see her gain wider and wider recognition over the last several years.
posted by Kwine at 10:14 AM on May 28, 2014
posted by Kwine at 10:14 AM on May 28, 2014
As a Johnnie, I'm sorry that she didn't get to go to St. John's, because she would have been awesome there, but I'm glad for the very cool stuff that she's done instead.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:26 AM on May 28, 2014
posted by hydropsyche at 10:26 AM on May 28, 2014
A couple tweets of hers that I can't read often enough:
The final incarnation of Marmaduke will be a nuclear bomb that wipes out the entire world & sends up a cloud the shape of a bone
Marmanuke
and
The high cat lolls on her back, reaching her paw up from time to time to try to snatch the salmon of my concern out of the river of my face
If I could only follow one twitter account it would probably be hers.
posted by mullacc at 10:37 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
The final incarnation of Marmaduke will be a nuclear bomb that wipes out the entire world & sends up a cloud the shape of a bone
Marmanuke
and
The high cat lolls on her back, reaching her paw up from time to time to try to snatch the salmon of my concern out of the river of my face
If I could only follow one twitter account it would probably be hers.
posted by mullacc at 10:37 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
After reading some of the links y'all posted, and discovering that she was the author of the poem Rape Joke, which was amazing and terrifying and excellent, I just bought her two books off of Amazon! So thanks for the link, especially as Balloon Pop Outlaw Black was only listed as having 1 copy left in stock. Hopefully that's accurate and it actually shows up!
posted by wyndham at 10:38 AM on May 28, 2014
posted by wyndham at 10:38 AM on May 28, 2014
This article reads like a crush. A restrained and awe-full one. But a crush.
posted by Diablevert at 10:53 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Diablevert at 10:53 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
She also inspired one of my favourite Twitter toys - The Sext Exchange. Instructions here.
posted by sawdustbear at 11:30 AM on May 28, 2014
posted by sawdustbear at 11:30 AM on May 28, 2014
Okay. I will buy this book. I just read Incarnadine and I could use something with a sense of humor.
posted by lumpenprole at 11:49 AM on May 28, 2014
posted by lumpenprole at 11:49 AM on May 28, 2014
Stop everything, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT:
CHALLENGE: If "Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals" sells out in the next month, Jason will legally change his name to ... Twitter Boy
Folks, we can do this. They're even counting ebooks.
posted by anotherpanacea at 11:59 AM on May 28, 2014 [4 favorites]
CHALLENGE: If "Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals" sells out in the next month, Jason will legally change his name to ... Twitter Boy
Folks, we can do this. They're even counting ebooks.
posted by anotherpanacea at 11:59 AM on May 28, 2014 [4 favorites]
Tricia is totally a super-powerful poet, her idle animation has little elisions and dactyls erupting in blue arcs around her, hit half circle + punch and she yells POET FLAME and billows pyrrhic syllables out of an unreasonably long neck
sorry, sorry, every time someone calls a poet 'powerful' I imagine them spot-welding a thesaurus to an Evinrude and just revving the fuck out of it and cackling while epigrams blow out the exhaust
posted by suckerpunch at 12:31 PM on May 28, 2014 [13 favorites]
sorry, sorry, every time someone calls a poet 'powerful' I imagine them spot-welding a thesaurus to an Evinrude and just revving the fuck out of it and cackling while epigrams blow out the exhaust
posted by suckerpunch at 12:31 PM on May 28, 2014 [13 favorites]
Bought, immediately. She sounds like my kind of people. Please come do a reading in Cleveland, Tricia. I will take you to the terrifying barbed wire having karaoke dive bar. It will be so great.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 12:58 PM on May 28, 2014
posted by bitter-girl.com at 12:58 PM on May 28, 2014
thank you metafilter, for introducing me to more wonderfulness. that's a great write-up
posted by angrycat at 1:04 PM on May 28, 2014
posted by angrycat at 1:04 PM on May 28, 2014
also i recently got to read a tiny excerpt of the memoir, and my reactions were:
1) mashing my fingers onto every page in a desperate attempt to retweet so many perfect sentences
2) shouting into the other room to my SO: "THIS IS SO GOOD, THIS IS TOO FUCKING GOOD"
3) marveling at the fact that she may well be super-famous after it comes out, because it is more funny, beautiful, and dense than any other memoir I think I've ever read
goddammit I was already excited about getting the good new book and now I have a whole other good new book to get excited about. this is truly the worst of all possible worlds
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:22 PM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]
1) mashing my fingers onto every page in a desperate attempt to retweet so many perfect sentences
2) shouting into the other room to my SO: "THIS IS SO GOOD, THIS IS TOO FUCKING GOOD"
3) marveling at the fact that she may well be super-famous after it comes out, because it is more funny, beautiful, and dense than any other memoir I think I've ever read
goddammit I was already excited about getting the good new book and now I have a whole other good new book to get excited about. this is truly the worst of all possible worlds
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:22 PM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]
Loved Incarnadine, lumpenprole. To un-derail, her recent poem in Poetry was a nice find this December (linked by glass origami robot above). I'll have to check back through it when I get home to see if she had another in there.
posted by GrapeApiary at 1:32 PM on May 28, 2014
posted by GrapeApiary at 1:32 PM on May 28, 2014
Just before she took the microphone one soggy night in Portland, Ore., the poet Patricia Lockwood downed a shot of cheap bourbon....
Oh. Oh, dear. This must be fixed at once.
posted by magstheaxe at 2:39 PM on May 28, 2014
Oh. Oh, dear. This must be fixed at once.
posted by magstheaxe at 2:39 PM on May 28, 2014
Welp, guess I should get this book.
posted by postcommunism at 4:42 PM on May 28, 2014
posted by postcommunism at 4:42 PM on May 28, 2014
Oh wow I am obsessed, just like that. Devouring everything I can find. Too happy to even be jealous.
After reading some of the links y'all posted, and discovering that she was the author of the poem Rape Joke, which was amazing and terrifying and excellent, I just bought her two books off of Amazon! So thanks for the link, especially as Balloon Pop Outlaw Black was only listed as having 1 copy left in stock. Hopefully that's accurate and it actually shows up!
YOU are the reason my copy is back-ordered, eh?
posted by sallybrown at 4:44 PM on May 28, 2014
After reading some of the links y'all posted, and discovering that she was the author of the poem Rape Joke, which was amazing and terrifying and excellent, I just bought her two books off of Amazon! So thanks for the link, especially as Balloon Pop Outlaw Black was only listed as having 1 copy left in stock. Hopefully that's accurate and it actually shows up!
YOU are the reason my copy is back-ordered, eh?
posted by sallybrown at 4:44 PM on May 28, 2014
Depressingly dumb, condescending review on the New Yorker's book blog. I've enjoyed the responses in this thread on Twitter.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:39 PM on May 29, 2014
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:39 PM on May 29, 2014
From The New Yorker's review (emphasis mine):
Still, I hope that Lockwood follows ["Rape Joke"]'s example, if not in its self-doubt than at least in its not having its ideas settled from line one. This would presumably make her more open to the emotional lives of the men she mocks, which of course would help her to mock them if she chooses to. But her talent for humor extends beyond mockery, and I wish she’d bring to all her humorous poetry the same openness she brings to “Rape Joke,” the same ability to compel as she repels. If the poems strike cultural nerves, all the better, but there are probably too few of them for her to find them reliably. And she shouldn’t have to depend on what Twitter likes, anyway. Her followers will read her regardless.
Geez Louise. To say after the events of this week that there are too few cultural nerves to strike related to the men Lockwood "mocks" in her poetry (which...even from a cursory reading of her poetry seems an off-base claim to make in the first place)? I can't even parse the point he's making about "Her followers" -- if she has so many followers because she goes for easy mockery of dude bros (which is what's implied), why would her followers then follow her if she stops doing that?
posted by sallybrown at 5:10 PM on May 29, 2014
Still, I hope that Lockwood follows ["Rape Joke"]'s example, if not in its self-doubt than at least in its not having its ideas settled from line one. This would presumably make her more open to the emotional lives of the men she mocks, which of course would help her to mock them if she chooses to. But her talent for humor extends beyond mockery, and I wish she’d bring to all her humorous poetry the same openness she brings to “Rape Joke,” the same ability to compel as she repels. If the poems strike cultural nerves, all the better, but there are probably too few of them for her to find them reliably. And she shouldn’t have to depend on what Twitter likes, anyway. Her followers will read her regardless.
Geez Louise. To say after the events of this week that there are too few cultural nerves to strike related to the men Lockwood "mocks" in her poetry (which...even from a cursory reading of her poetry seems an off-base claim to make in the first place)? I can't even parse the point he's making about "Her followers" -- if she has so many followers because she goes for easy mockery of dude bros (which is what's implied), why would her followers then follow her if she stops doing that?
posted by sallybrown at 5:10 PM on May 29, 2014
The one thing that horrible New Yorker review is that it provides me with actual proof should anyone ever say again "why are you mad about this when that also happens" is that my well of outrage is bottomless when provoked and no matter how shitty the week is, I've got room for more anger.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:12 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:12 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
Mallory Ortberg explains what makes Plunkett's review dumb.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:46 PM on June 2, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:46 PM on June 2, 2014 [4 favorites]
She is just great. One of the few things I miss about Twitter.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:57 PM on June 3, 2014
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:57 PM on June 3, 2014
The Awl: A Conversation With Patricia Lockwood
I’m the absent-minded type, so I’ve always felt more detached and curious about reviews than personally affected by them. You know when your dog looks at you with its head cocked to one side, half “… go on” and half “I used to be a wolf”? That's how I look at reviews. My main feeling about the Adam Plunkett review was that it had gotten the whole conversation off on something of a weird hairy foot, and led it down a path of reviews of reviews, and reviews of reviews of reviews, which eventually seemed to travel farther and farther away from the actual work.posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:46 PM on June 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
In a strictly poetic sense it was delightful, because the name Plunkett is so euphonious, and if you wanted to pretend to be mad about the whole thing you could bellow PLUUUUNKETTTT! at the darkening sky while ripping your shirt open to the waist and shaking your fists at the clouds. That's not an opportunity I’m ever going to pass up.
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posted by The Whelk at 9:17 AM on May 28, 2014 [19 favorites]