Field Recordings

Ivan, my youngest son, and I went back to Star Wars for viewing three. We would not be seeing this film again if it were not playing in our small town theater , which just recently completed a digital conversion. It's literally a mile and a half away. The prices are reasonable, ditto on the concessions. Normally we have to drive 60+ miles to see a film when it opens.  Not this time. My inner kid went nuts. And so did my actual kids. We've enjoyed the discussion, the buzz, the music, and the experience. There are plot holes in the film, but most of the hullabaloo is forgivable. Seth Abrams, over at the Huff Post does a nice job fanning/ranting about it here . And many of his points, are valid, particularly number two, but most of his beef is with the thin narrative JJ Abrams laid out for the audience. What people forget about Star Wars is that it works better without all the details filled in. In the Star Wars  universe the details usually equate to bad pacing, bad dia...

Paper Nautilu s published one of the Tiresias poems, "In the Small House at the Edge of the Field." The fine experimental folks at Coe Review published "The Girl Notebooks." Both poems are from a series of poems dealing with Tiresias, identity, and gender dysphoria. The  Coe Review published one of my most bizarre poems, "Diagram of a Walking Poem" back in 2005. More poems out this year. Look for announcements later this month. All of the ebooks on Amazon will be updated with new sections, or new selections as I continue to play around with electronic publishing.

JJ Abrams The Force Awakens hits the high notes. It begins aloft and never really falters. Some critics are calling BS on the nostalgia trip and the Starkiller remix plot. The homages extend not only to Star Wars A New Hope , and the original trilogy, but I could also not help recalling Raiders of the Lost Ark , and  Force Ten From Navarone --  a great WWII dirty dozen style adventure featuring a young shiny Harrison Ford as the American Col. Barnsby. Aesthetically these films share paired down plots, archetypes, and storm troopers of either the Galactic of Nazi variety. Abrams shot a movie that is as good as what we remembered our favorite movies to be. It's magic.  Don't be a hater. He's a stylist, one groomed on the Goonies, Indiana Jones, Superman , and Jaws . Grand summer cinema. In many ways the film celebrates Harrison Ford's legacy as a big screen action hero. He gets to do everything here, and with charm. Abrams film is a marriage of old school craft ...