Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
Joe Strummer + Allen Ginsberg = Arthur Rimbaud (and methadone kitties!)In terms of cultural popularity, the most enduring songs on Combat Rock — The Clash’s fifth studio album — are, in no particular order, “Rock the Casbah”, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, and “Know Your Rights”. The best song on the album, however, is probably “Straight to Hell,” a haunting and generally underappreciated song that should be recognizable to fans of M.I.A, who sampled the opening guitar and drum riff in her popular hit “Paper Planes”.
But there’s also no denying the sublime beauty of another of the album’s darker songs: “Ghetto Defendant.” If you aren’t familiar with it, watch the video above, courtesy of the film Rude Boy.
Recognize that voice reciting poetry? I didn’t. I had no idea who it was for years, was never even curious. But when I finally looked it up, it turned out to be none other than Allen Ginsberg. As an excuse I’ll just say that my musical curiosity far outpaced my literary curiosity as a teenager, meaning that although I knew who Allen Ginsberg was, I had never heard his voice and never would have guessed that he, of all people, was friendly with Joe Strummer. Of course now it makes perfect sense. Strummer’s lyrics were just as politically charged as Ginsberg’s poetry, and both were living icons at the time. A perfect match, ideologically. The risk came in having a poet speak in slow, even-toned lines in between Strummer’s passionate lyrics. The end result? I don’t think it’s everyone’s cup of tea, and I’m not always in the mood for it myself, but it’s hard not to smile at such enjoyable lines as “Do the worm on Acropolis / Slam dance cosmopolis” or “Methadone kitty / iron serenity.”
But this post is about Rimbaud, who makes an appearance at the 2:55 mark. For those of you who aren’t fans of The Clash (blasphemy!) and don’t want to bother listening, the lines Ginsberg reads are:
Jean Arthur Rimbaud
1873 Paris Commune
Died in Marseille
Buried in Charleville
Shut up in eternity
Volumes of biographies have been written about Rimbaud, and justifiably so. His lifestyle, his poetry, and his subsequent decision to stop writing poetry at a very young age have turned him into legendary figure. There was even, let us not forget, a really awful movie (Total Eclipse) made about him and Paul Verlaine, with young Leonardo DiCaprio playing Rimbaud. But Ginsberg’s slow recital (it spans over forty seconds of song time and plays second fiddle to Strummer’s chorus), and the mournful delivery of his conclusion, do about a good a job as is possible — in only sixteen words — to memorialize Rimbaud. A respectful tip of the hat to Messieurs Ginsberg and Strummer.
Head over to Slate to read the entirety of Patti Smith's wonderful introduction to Albertine Sarrazin's Asrtagal.
ND editor Michael Barron interviewed Elaine Lustig for Bomb's blog. Read it here.
May 2013 News from New Directions
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In this week's issue of The New Yorker, you can read an excerpt from The Unknown University entitled "Mexican Manifesto". Enjoy.
Lina Meruane interviews Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas in the current issue of BOMB. Read it here.
Congratulations to Enrique Vila-Matas, whose novel Dublinesque is on the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist.
While in Denmark last August for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Literature Festival, César Aira sat down to discuss his "ideal fairy tale." Watch it here.
Rebecca Ariel Porte, in a beautiful essay written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, dicusses Susan Howe's Sorting Facts: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker, addressing Chris Marker's films, as well. Definitely worth a read — here.
In one of the most creative reviews we've seen in a while, Bookslut's Lightsey Darst discusses all four collections in the first set of New Directions Poetry Pamphlets. Enjoy it here.
Calling it "breathatkingly subversive" in a review for the New York Review of Books, Yasmine El Rashidi discusses That Smell's English debut. Read it here.
Saying that the reading experience comes with a "sad sweetness," Vol. 1 Brooklyn dives into The Bridge Over the Neroch & Other Works, a newly translated collection by Leonid Tsypkin. Read it here.
Writing for Bookslut, Christopher Merkel reviews the 65th anniversary edition of the classic modernist text. Read it here.
Writing for The Washington Post, Scott Esposito reviewed our new edition of Queneau's Exercises in Style. Read it here.
In recent episode of Marfa Public Radio's "Talk at Ten", DeWitt read from and discussed Lightning Rods. You can listen to the entire program here.
The finalist shortlist for the annual Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction was recently announced, and Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods is among them. Congratulations!
In an essay entitled "Walking with Walser", The Quarterly Conversation tackles A Little Ramble and a book by Elfriede Jelinek that was inspired by Walser.
Poet Luljeta Lleshanaku recently contributed to The Paris Review Daily's "Windows on the World", a series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. Read it here.
Music & Literature's spring 2013 issue is devoted to László Krasznahorkai, the director Bela Tarr, and the artist Max Neumann. Needless to say, we're fans. Check it out here.
Poetry editor Jeffrey Yang recently spoke to The Atlantic's "By Heart" about George Oppen, grief, and the new collection Time of Greif: Mourning Poems.