Anointy-nointy

May 21, 2008 7:08 AM

Worried that contemporary academic poetry isn’t difficult and weird enough? Then check out this YouTube’d performance (which might be NSFW for some) of Hot White Andy by Keston Sutherland, poet, academic and J.H. Prynne disciple.

Parts 2, 3 and 4. Robert Potts on Keston Sutherland. A review of Hot White Andy by John Wilkinson, transcribing the opening lines and ending: 'Given the absence of print or internet commentary, I feel compelled to write a fan letter rather than a critique, and to say a possible poetic future starts here — and if it doesn’t, I suppose I can go and grow vegetables.'

posted by Mocata (10 comments total)

To just pull out the totally awesome words / phrases / lines from the excerpt at the beginning of Wilkinson's review:

* Lavrov and the Stock Wizard
* phlegmophrenic
* Cathex-Wizz monoplex
* Wuhan die-cut peel lids
* screw white chocolate to the bone
* recitative from a storm throat
* Your chichi news noose
* Dr. Unicef Cheng budget slasher
* it hurts, and I disappear but the nights stick

That's an extremely high percentage of awesome. It reads like if you played "Will It Blend?" with the complete works of William Gibson, Phillip K Dick, and William Burroughs, then made a glossy reduction of the result with a dash of rice wine and clarified butter.
posted by rusty at 7:56 AM on May 21, 2008

Made it almost to 90 seconds...and as the fed up reviewer of Waiting for Godot wrote: "I'd rather not wait any more."

(I'm probably as wrong here as that reviewer!).
posted by Jody Tresidder at 8:22 AM on May 21, 2008

It certainly sounds lovely, which I suppose is part of the point.
posted by jack_mo at 8:48 AM on May 21, 2008

Someone needs to get this guy together on the same bill as Frank Chu.
posted by eschatfische at 9:02 AM on May 21, 2008

I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
posted by languagehat at 9:02 AM on May 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

jack_mo: I think the way it sounds pretty much is the point. I agree that it sounds lovely, but it also sounds frustrated and confused, like the soup inside a person's brain right before sleep after a particularly strange day. Which, for me, makes it kind of difficult to listen to, because I usually want to turn off my brain when that type of thing is ongoing.

I like it.
posted by nosila at 9:06 AM on May 21, 2008

I expected to totally hate that, but didn't.
posted by The Straightener at 9:48 AM on May 21, 2008

That made me laugh.
posted by shivohum at 10:58 AM on May 21, 2008

That was really cool. Thanks.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 2:47 PM on May 21, 2008

There once was a girl from Nantucket ...
posted by kcds at 4:15 AM on May 22, 2008