irony

i got a netbook so that (among other reasons) i could blog more often. and all i've done is blog infinitely less. with that, i'd like to kick off a brief entry about a poet i really dig, Dennis Johnson. i've recently been reading his KICKASS short story collection "Jesus' Son" (oh yeah lou reed reference) and everyone need to read this book. it's not even an issue of time or effort because the collection is tiny and gorgeous and it flows so delicately and smoothly: his prose is poetry. and for an example of his poetry, take Heat:

Here in the electric dusk your naked lover
tips the glass high and the ice cubes fall against her teeth.
It's beautiful Susan, her hair sticky with gin,
Our Lady of Wet Glass-Rings on the Album Cover,
streaming with hatred in the heat
as the record falls and the snake-band chords begin
to break like terrible news from the Rolling Stones,
and such a last light—full of spheres and zones.
August,
you're just an erotic hallucination,
just so much feverishly produced kazoo music,
are you serious?—this large oven impersonating night,
this exhaustion mutilated to resemble passion,
the bogus moon of tenderness and magic
you hold out to each prisoner like a cup of light?

try reading this poem aloud. it's really musical. that gives you something of an idea about how his short stories sound, and the effect is enhanced by the brevity of it all. i started "Jesus' Son" yesterday and i'm over halfway through it. It moves quickly like a series of snapshots. anyway, mull on that!