Mixology

Adrian Matejka's Mixology is well titled, in that it is a complex blend of references to music, cultural icons and literary works. These all largely pertain to the poet's conflict with his identity as a half-African American, half-Caucasian male. Mixology is flavored with allusions to music and musicians alike, including George Clinton, Public Enemy, and Hendrix right alongside other cultural icons such as Spike Lee and the Black Panthers. The book remains true to what the poet himself said, that he tried to "fit in as many of [his] favorite things as possible," and therefore gives us both a picture of the poet and the world he inhabits.

Adrian Matejka uses language to create a collage effect, mixing urban lingo with lyrical, more traditional diction. The opening poem of his book, "Seven Days of Falling" prepares us for this with it's first line, "Today, I'm assimilating like margarine/into hotcakes." True, throughout the entire book, we see phrases prefaced with "Man," and profanity, slang like, "dub" and "yo" blending in with references to The Cantos, biblical passages and William S. Burroughs. We are here given the impression of Matejkas "world," one of pop culture and urban grit, making its way into literary, traditional and stereotypically "white" culture. Matejka's lines are generally of short to medium length, relying heavily on the dialects of slang and pop culture in order to deliver lines that reflect the blending of the music they speak of.

i believe Matejka is very successful in his blending of cultures in Mixology. He speaks of all his references with an ease and a familiarity that makes the quick jumps between cultural icons brings us through the book with the sense that he easily navigates both of these worlds. The way he is able to seamlessly bring together utterly different musical references, pop culture icons, etc., makes the book a smooth read. Even though I often found myself looking up name after name in order to educate myself as to what he was talking about, more than anything, I was comfortable with not necessarily knowing what he was talking about, as I was comforted by the fact that Matejka clearly knew what he was talking about. The overall effect I gained from reading the book was what it is like to navigate between various different facets of a culture, to live between them.

Adrian Matejka's "Mixology"

Adrian Matejka’s book Mixology is full of poems that, through the typically short lines, word choice, and constant references and allusions to musical artists in varying genres, create a unique, definitely purposeful, rhythm. Reading through the poems, even when just in my own head, I read with a consistent beat much like the beat in most hip hop songs. The content of the book is based off of Matejka’s experiences as a mixed race child, teenager and adult having to deal with issues of race and not quite fitting in with either race. Matejka’s poems are also heavily about rap, hip hop, blues and jazz music and the artists that performed those genres, such as Flava Flav and Bob Kaufman.

Adrian Matejka’s poetry mixes urban culture, hip hop, blues, and his own life experiences, with highbrow traditional poetry. He does this by using poetry, an old art form that has come a long way and changed exponentially especially in the last century, to relate his struggles with race and where he lived and the culture that he grew up in, I believe during the 1990s. He uses the form of poetry and the feel of hip hop to produce a new rhythmic, urban literary masterpiece.

I believe Adrian Matejka’s work is successful because it caused me to begin to understand and learn about a culture that I wasn’t familiar with. It also works because while reading the poetry I instantly read with a definite rhythm as if I were reading to a beat. The meld of urban and mixed race culture with literary poetry is perfectly balanced to create something new and unique.

Susan Howe, The Midnight

Susan Howe’s “The Midnight” is a book that encompasses the tossing and turning of insomnia, of bed hangings and boundaries between dreaming and memory, a collection of history and the heirlooms of an Irish heritage—poetry quilted in verse, prose, and visuals that redefine the space between text and textile, requiring a re-reading of this Language poetry, a combination of three mediums in a new contemporary poetic style.

“Where philosophy stops, poetry is impelled to begin,” says Howe as she steps into the space between jumping into the undefined or defining “SLEEP,” two ideas separated by Emerson’s quote, “Every word was once a poem”(115)—and this is the substance of Howe’s poetry, a question of the REAL in the dreamscape of poetics. Every paragraph, every stanza, every line, every picture—paintings, drawings, curtains, photographs, book covers and pages of books and marginalia and illustrations—are a quotation in themselves (116), everything in itself and together is a poem. “Poems are the impossibility of plainness rendered in plainest form” (124) says Howe—and in her collection she explores the limits and limitlessness of her research and her art in history and her family.

In her combined-medium form, Howe switches from fact to lyric, from memories to ideas about history and her heritage. “She loved to produce and destroy meanings in the same sentence” (64) Howe says of her mother as they perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and in memory Howe’s mother appears, clearly or hazy as if in a dream, the two of them sharing a love of books as objects and chaotic fragments. Howe’s mother is a powerful theme throughout “The Midnight,” an exploration of Howe’s Irish heritage and the connection she has with her mother, playwright and actress Marry Manning. Under a picture of the book Later Poems, Howe explains the note scribbled there: “Six Irish actors have inscribed [my mother’s] copy of Later Poems: “‘28 October 1924 To Mary with love from us all. Sara Allgood, Dorothy Day McCauliffe, Joyce Chancellor, Gertrude McEnery, Maeve MacMorrogh, Shelah Richards.’ Inside, five narrow strips of what looks like wrapping paper, once meant to serve as markers, are still intact” (75). On the next page is a picture of these make-shift bookmarks, each with fine notes written on them. “Sometimes I arrange the four snippets as if they were a hand of cards, or inexpressible love liable to moods. I like to let them touch down randomly as if I were casting a dice or reading tea leaves,” says Howe. “She loved to embroider facts,” she says of her mother. “Facts were cloth to her. Maybe lying is how she knew she was alive because she felt trapped by something ruthless in her environment and had to beat the odds.”

Howe’s ideas and memories of her mother throughout her poetry are either factual, personal, poetic, or thoughtful, a reoccurring and important node that incorporates Howe’s connection with her mother to the other themes in “The Midnight.” As we can see in this single example, Howe incorporates visuals, facts, history, and textiles in her thoughts about her mother, which also, I believe, mirror thoughts about Howe herself and her poetry book as a whole. On the previous page, Howe writes, “[my mother] hung Jack’s illustrations and prints on the walls of any house or apartment we moved to as if they were windows…They marked another sequestered “self” where she would go home to her thought. She clung to Williams’ words by speaking them aloud. So there were always three dimensions, visual, textual, and auditory” (75). Inspired by her mother’s love for these “dimensions” of books and objects, Howe weaves this personal node into the fabric of her image-and-text-patterned poetry book. The purpose of her work is best shown in her last poem: “Style in one stray sitting I / approach sometime in plain / handmade rag wove costume / awry what I long for array” (173). As we talked about in class, Howe’s interest in “re-arranging” the “expected course” is the result of this book, a collection of fragments woven into a solid cloth of poetry; to “approach…in plain / handmade rag wove costume,” Howe is on an exploration. “If poems are the impossibility of plainness rendered in plainest form, so in memory, the character of ‘either’” (64) Howe says. “The original is untouchable, what I see before me, incorporeal” (137).

“The Midnight” is successful in its structure of image and text stringing together history, heritage, cloth and books, the real and the unreal, Howe’s mother and Howe herself. In a new contemporary medium, this Language poet successfully requires her audience to read in a new way, to read visuals as texts, to read and reread definitions until definitions are lost altogether, to explore connections and boundaries in combined art forms.

For those who love listening to poets read (like me): Howe discusses reading aloud and spoken poetry in thoughts about her mother: “Waves of sound connected us [my mother and I] by associated syllabic magic to an original but imaginary place existing somewhere across the ocean between the emphasis of sound and the emphasis of sense. I loved listening to her voice. I felt my own vocabulary as something hopelessly mixed and at the same time hardened into glass” (75). Stumbling around online I found an audio of her mother reading from a play (http://www.flashpointmag.com/manningwake.htm) and an audio of sound art with Howe reading her poetry (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EueDt28FIs&feature=related). Kind of interesting listening to them both; they sound rather similar, except Howe’s mother has an Irish accent. I find Howe’s sound art compelling, her mixing of genres, of poetry and music, much like her mixing of text and visuals in “The Midnight.”

Joana's response to Howe

Susan's Howe's book midnight was, I have to admit, an extremely confusing read. While many themes such as family and heritage are prevalent, the entire book seems to be hinging on the theme of exploring the mindset of an insomniac. While insomniacs are chronically unable to sleep, that doesn't necessarily mean that their thoughts are coherent.

Many of the connections she makes seem to be very rambling, and the poems that she prevents are more stream-of-thought than poetry usually is. With Armantrout, for instance, her poetry was very abstract but still seemed to have a meaning, even if that meaning was often left up to the reader to decide. The short poems at the end, in particular, seem to have little coherence to them. However, as someone who has gone through insomnia before (if not clinical then the kind that all college students go through at one time or another) I can understand how something that makes no sense to you in the morning after you've gotten sleep can make perfect sense when you're typing or writing it up at 2am.

In this way, going between prose, poetry and scans of the book that she inherited, the disjointedness of the book is a perfect example of an insomniac's thought patterns as he or she just tries to get through the night.

Susan Howe Blog Response

Susan Howe's book The Midnight is a chaotic compilation of various texts, histories, people, and emotion. It is difficult to describe the structure of her work for it lacks any real grammatical or thematic boundaries. She separates her text into different sections composing of prose-like pieces along with parts that are structured like poems. There are many images scattered throughout the text that give a collage-effect to the book. Howe threads numerous themes and nodes in her text which force the reader to make connections and be active. This also makes the book not only significant in its content, but also in the experience of reading it.

To be honest, when I read the first two sections of this book I couldn't get myself into it. This worried me because usually even if i Don't understand a text, I can appreciate it for other aspects. It wasn't until the last section and our class discussions of this section that it became more clear to me what Howe is trying to do. As many people have mentioned, a major theme of this book includes the disorienting effects of insomnia. Never is a mind more scattered, confused, and overwhelmed than in this state, and this is the primary aim of Howe: to extract all the chaors and strangeness of a human mind as well as different texts and bring them to the surface. This is why many of her images and references don't immediately make sense or connect. For example all the Alice and Wonderland images set throughout the text don't necessarily relate to the text displayed next to or around the image, but Howe is more focused on the ideas surrounding the story of Alice and Wonderland such as dream-like adventures and the question of what is real or unreal. Additionally, on page 74, there is an image from Alice and Wonderland that has been cut and pasted onto a newspaper which goes with one of her other central themes of books or texts as objects. She places emphasis on her belief that texts tell a story and should be manipulated, added to, and decorated in order to make them unique to oneself. Her family and Irish heritage play a large role in her book as well which at first can be confusing to try and distinguish the specific people but becomes clearer as the text unfolds. Howe plays around with the concepts of revealing and covering up objects which is a recurring effect of her book as well. She unveils certain ideas or images while hiding others so while reading it one has to work to break down the different concepts.

I believe Howe is successful in grasping the madness of life and pieces of texts. She utilizes so many devices to convey a chaotic representation of these thoughts and images. All the different styles and ideas that How presents create a disorienting reading experience which is exactly her goal. Multiple people have mentioned that while reading her book, it is almost like entering this insomniac state of mind where objects or ideas may exist on some level, but are distorted and altered in one way or another. I don't believe her book holds many things to "figure out." It is a representation of all the insanity we repress in our mind and that is sensored in texts. What is so interesting about her book is that what is repressed will never end. There can be no real closure to her book. My reading experience took a big 180 after realizing all the tactics she uses and how relatable it really is to everybody, whether they'd like to admit it or not.

Susan Howe’s The Midnight is a rather unconventional collection of prose and poetry that appears to lack a clear focus and may be a challenge for a reader not used to Howe’s particular style.

The Midnight presents to the reader an eclectic mix of topics ranging from insomnia to musings on the author’s Irish heritage. In alternating prose/poetry sections Howe relates little factoids and anecdotes that eventually converge at an “ah-ha” moment for the reader (every reader’s will most likely be different).

The best grasp at an overarching theme present in The Midnight would be connections. Throughout the book, Howe is constantly making connections: connections from herself to her family’s heritage, Shakespeare’s Macbeth to her bouts with insomnia, connections between the concepts of textiles and text. In fact, the entire work becomes a sort of textile with each fact and story woven into the whole of the book.

The material is varied and each form has its own indelible style. Howe’s poetry looks as if it is a conglomerate of words smashed into a square cookie-cutter; each poem is almost perfectly justified into the same square dimensions. It became noticeable when the pages of the book were glued and cut at a different height because of the similarities between every page of poetry.

As far as the language of the poetry, it is abstract, at best. It borders on incomprehensible were it not for the fact that many of Howe’s central themes are included in the poems.

The prose of the book is interspersed with various photographs and illustrations, for one of Howe’s objectives of the book is to present the relationship of text and the image it represents. The subject matter—as mentioned earlier—is varied. One of the book’s sections will bring you through such diverse subjects as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae; Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Poet;” biographical notes on Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect behind New York’s Central Park.

It’s hard to pinpoint whether or not Howe is accomplishing what she has set out to do since it’s hard to describe what exactly she’s doing in her book, The Midnight. It’s easy to pick out central themes but to connect them all becomes somewhat tedious. This is why it becomes necessary for the reader to step back and take in Howe’s work from afar.

Thinking logically about this book does not work because it goes against most conventions one comes to expect from a work of literature. The reader has to, instead, look at The Midnight from the perspective of what he or she can get out of the work. In other words, take one of the main themes and use that to explore the work.

The Midnight is a highly challenging and versatile work. It pushes boundaries in what readers expect from a work and also what they take away from it. Versatility, though, is the main attribute of the work; the book can be just about anything the reader wants it to be, he or she just has to look for it.

Benjamin's Response to Howe

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Susan Howe

Susan Howe both writes poems and poetical prose...of sorts. In Midnight, she manages to combine the poem with the memoir, but doesn’t make Midnight come off as narcissistically personal. Howe combines history, personal history, and literary illusions to create...something. What that is, of course, I’m not entirely sure!
Howe’s ultimate objective, however, despite her myriad number of themes, is to hammer home the idea that a book, a collection, regardless of what it is, is inherently personal. A text is unique to an individual, and not necessarily just to the author, or the reader. In the case of Midnight, Howe attempts to create a book in the traditional of her family’s own “constructed” books, of sorts. In recollections of her family, Howe states,

“My mother’s close relations treated their books as transitional objects (judging by a few survivors in my possession) to be held, loved, carried around, meddled with, abandoned, sometimes mutilated. They contain dedications, private messages, marginal annotations, hints, snapshots, press cuttings, warnings*” (60).

Howe goes further to state:

“Every mortal has a non-communicating material self––a waistcoat or embroidered doublet” (60).

Howe connects her idea of the personalized text to another theme of the book, that of the textile, something that come through most in the first part of the text, “Bed Hangings I,” which will be enough to make you never want to hear mention of drapes or bed hangings ever again.
The most meaning of the text (or at least, the clearest) comes through in Howe’s prose sections, heavily on history as well as personal reflections that occasionally diverge into the completely incomprehensible. Still, this does not mean that Howe’s poem sections do not contain any meaning. To the contrary, “Bed Hangings 1” alludes to philosophy, religion, and various individuals referenced and expanded upon in the later prose.
In these prose sections, we see Howe fulfilling her family legacy, of taking a text and making it her own. We see “private messages” in her references to Alice and Wonderland, one of the most clever and obscure examples being on page 64 in the photograph of a torn up newspaper (the phrase “looking glass” can be seen in the top and middle of the image, above the picture of a woman), and “warnings” such as “Go away and do something else, grave robber” (60). Numerous pictures, paintings and pictures of textiles are mixed throughout the text.
In terms of history in the text, Howe utilizes real historical figures and events as a sort of inroads to her own personal experience. This in turn allows the reader to know of her personal history which leads to to her thesis of the personalized book. A very roundabout way of doing things, but sufficient nonetheless. For example, to speak of her own insomnia, Howe commonly references MacBeth, or Frederick Law Olmstead, and so forth. To lead into the history of her family member’s unique way of enriching (or defacing, depending on how you look at it) their books, Howe notes that figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson did similar things to books, ripping or removing pages and assembling an entirely new text of particularly special quotes.
Howe’s misdirection and escapades into the incomprehensible or really “out there” stuff, however, feel like a distraction from her main themes. However, I went along with Howe, stuck with her through some of the more bizarre sections of the text, and feel as if I got most of what she was trying to say. I will admit that attempting to read Howe isn’t easy. There’s no real easy way to enter into this text. It’s something I simply had to jump into, and sort of find a direction after I got about fifty pages in. In this sense then, The Midnight feels like a great ego trip, and we’re along for the ride. The Midnight is Howe’s, it defines her and it has meaning that can only be known to her. But that doesn’t mean we can’t derive meaning from it as well. Howe encourages us, or at least me, to want to make a text like this of my own!