Amy King Contains Multitudes
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Welcome to BOOG CITY Festival Issue BOOG CITY pull-out program begins on page 5 A COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER FROM A GROUP OF ARTISTS AND WRITERS BASED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY’S EAST VILLAGE ISSUE 43 FREE Amy King Contains Multitudes BY MARK LAMOUREUX clear rejection of the old New York School proper-name without her mother,/ an insect apology on the hip of humanity/ I’m the Man Who Loves You shotgun approach): curably the most marked with womb envy for all,” and: By Amy King BlazeVOX Books Men who celebrate action aiting in line for tickets for Shakespeare in the Park’s with their cocks, women with newest rendition of Romeo and Juliet proved to be their cocks, hope in the impregnable Wan ideal setting to read Amy King’s new collection advances on loneliness, I’m the Man Who Loves You, recently published by BlazeVOX filters through our walking husks— Books. King’s book exemplifies what is profoundly wonderful about living in the metro New York area as well as what is profoundly annoying. The two offer unromanticized perspectives on life here in Gotham City. King’s work bodes well for the When Walt Whitman famously wrote “I contain multitudes,” it’s unlikely that he could have predicted the stratified reality that future of New York poetry, these multitudes would come to occupy a century-and-a-half carving out a space discrete later. Whether it is the socioeconomic caste system of the city’s social and literal infrastructure, or the similarly fractured from the unending partisan continuum of its literature, we can imagine that he would have had a different plan for his beloved city and his beloved conflicts of her precedents. borough of Brooklyn. Even his genial unschooled Brooklyn yob has mutated into a sinister version of its former self. It’s unlikely he would have predicted the bitter infighting that occurs between Her level of sexual candor is far greater than that of practitioners of the various models of New York poetry—the Whitman, and, in this respect, she brings his ghost home and New York School, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry, and the slam gives solace to his eternal internal conflict: aesthetic, among others. The differences would most likely have been indistinguishable to our jocular white-bearded forefather. … This is a caramelized After all, he spent a considerable amount of time nursing both treatment of syntax that maps the wetness sides of the schism of his own nation—the Civil War. For this we spatially spread can see the man as a great unifier, a notion so lamentably between the mucus that harbors our bodies. Scientists absent among the aesthetic turf wars of our contemporary Take, for example, a self proclaimed charlatan like to say parameciums and fleshy membranes, reality. But not for Amy King. who built a studio and turned out slyly stupid forgoing all the orgasms before and because of King and Whitman, both Brooklynites, have much in paintings made by his staff and tons of money. poetry. common, and perhaps King’s work could be seen as the true His popularity for a few years in the eighties made me heir of Whitman’s own project. In King one finds a synthesis of think of poetry in the larger art world, which is why King’s work bodes well for the future of New York poetry, the competing tendencies of the New York School and some of these strategies date the way that makes them carving out a space discrete from the unending partisan conflicts Language poetry, the Montagues and Capulets of our own not only irrelevant, but a little dangerously written of her precedents. I’m the Man Who Loves You dispenses with literary scene. She occupies a similar state of omnisexual in- in their terrible irrelevance. Sorry if that sounds harsh. the petty squabbles of the previous generation and elegantly between as Whitman himself, simultaneously in love with and employs tools from a diverse array of aesthetic models to vaunt alienated from those teeming multitudes who so readily At other moments, she is an enthusiastic acolyte in the cult of a classical cosmopolitan multiplicity that surely brings a smile to engaged his heart. her own personality—“the landscape of Amy King’s face fused/ the lusty lips of Whitman’s lonely ghost. I’m the Man with artificial intelligence on which hers lies”—gleefully tossing Mark Lamoureux is printed matter editor for Boog City and Who Loves You around proper and neighborhood names in a manner that editor of Cy Gist Press (www.cygistpress.com). is a collection of harkens straight back to Frank O’Hara’s tendency to compose contradictions. from his Rolodex. For example, “From this Union Square Park,/ I King seems most peek between fingers at Tuscany,” and “My freckled shell now at home balanc- sings etudes of memories in Chopin.” Joanna Fuhrman ing on the taut The text’s few stumbles occur when King seems to retreat back Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn wire between to the evidently familiar territory of New York School flippant Inflation parse-able old surrealism, while her most profound moments occur during flight New York from expectations. But for every familiar-feeling “upon a city bent School surreal- on pneumonic control, then knock/ the Chelsea Hotel down,” When the rent went up, we shifted ism and the there exists a less-expected, more satisfying 180: all motion west, lifted the bottoms expressive of of our pant legs as if crossing a creek. opacity of Lang- I did not become uage Poetry: a figment of No one cared that our poems were made “The yellow New York City, of torqued magnetic force or that our pearls hugging ‘ a latent family hands could translate the language of light her loose skin through which I am your sister, are/ a smorgas- so that it will take more than into a million fractured dialects. We still bord of shows your bluish frayed body had to climb. Like every other army of bald that apologize/ in an open boat Rapunzels scaling the leaning tower of Babel. Much like Whitman, her work aspires The most satisfying moments happen during such narrative, When the rent doubled, we drew smiles to a kind of expansiveness that, by its almost-confessional, occasions (“So much happened the night/ around our real smiles, curtsied our way very nature, cannot be contained within the sky was sober beneath/ the hidden words of poet men”) but into the arms of identical semiotics experts also when the narrator’s voice is at its most opaque: a single gender or sexuality. who changed our names to fit the texture where did your feverish glow go of the times, tucked in our billowing tunics, for each forgot-ten glance incited.” The influence of these with blood in hair, a blonde-shaped DNA whipped our hair into vertical configurations, schools, as well as that of a more literal expressive tradition that your poison sticks focused on the lyric I, is clearly evident in King’s work. Just as the to the song of malted alcohol running over and out— —blond aqua-netted beehives— tall enough narrator of the text appears uncomfortable settling into any to pass through the school’s cracked skylight, number of conceptions of emotional intimacy, she seems King’s liminality is mirrored by an analogously liminal identity to reach the blimps inching through the noise. uncomfortable with settling into any one aesthetic school. of gender. Much like Whitman, her work aspires to a kind of At one moment, she may be refreshingly lifting her leg on expansiveness that, by its very nature, cannot be contained Andy Warhol, coyly refusing even to mention the man’s name (a within a single gender or sexuality. “She becomes a girl born COMICS A Personal Meditation My Seth Tobocman on the Radical Comics Artist BY GARY SULLIVAN generally, of focusing on a key radical figure as a squatter, than very much like one. I seem sketchbook drawings, I have a fuller hen the call for work for this like levy in comics. Ultimately, I broke down to recall that artist telling us that he was most appreciation of the project as a singular work Welcome to Boog City festival and made the trip. comfortable drawing when sitting on a big, of art rather than an ongoing process. Wissue came, where the paper As a teacher Tobocman was an unremitting empty plastic T obocman would feature work on or by people taking part taskmaster. I don’t recall a single week when drum. Or allows us in the event, Boog City editor David we were allowed to turn in anything less than something like sympathetic but Kirschenbaum suggested that since there were three pages. During the last weeks of the class, that. clear-eyed no comic artists giving talks that I should instead our assignments escalated to between five and Oddly glimpses of try to write an East Village/Williamsburg- 10 pages. A really good professional, or Tobocman never numerous East focused comics piece. My first thought was to someone without a day-job, might be able to brought in the Village write about Seth Tobocman, who has lived in crank out more than five pages a week. But book itself, characters, from the East Village for more than 30 years, and is most of us in Tobocman’s class were working though he did working- and one of the few visual artists to really and fully full-time as editors, graphic designers, wait staff show us a few of middle-class explore the neighborhood in any medium, save in restaurants.