Long Poems About Male Cousins

Just looking back over the search-term stats for this blog has taught me a few things. More people than I would have guessed search for poems about cousins who are male: “poem for a cousin (male)” “birthday poems for male cousins” “poems about a male cousin and his achievement” and my favorite “long poems about male cousins”. I don’t know what you’d do with a long poem about a male cousin once you found it, though I suspect you’d just slip in the name of your own male cousin and call it a day. Also, there seem to be more than a few people out there who feel guilty about the crush they have on a male cousin. I only hope my blog can help them in some way. My advice: fill your boots.

As for poetry, I’ve managed to keep paying attention and work on a few projects despite all the insanity of moving to and living in Asia. THE CONTAINER STORE collaboration with Joe Hall is reaching its unnatural conclusion, a photo/textual essay called 391 HANGANG-RO 2-GA about the destruction of one of Seoul’s red light districts is practically done, and a collaborative erasure project with Geoff Walace is underway. A selection from THE CONTAINER STORE is slated to come out in the next issue of Caketrain, one of the slickest looking journals on the market today. 391 HANGANG-RO 2-GA should be available in the next issue of Frankly, though I’m not sure when that is going to happen now that Stephanie is headed to Austin, TX.

As for movies, I’ve been watching a lot more lately. The Possession (1981) by Andrzej Zulawski has stuck with me more than most. Evidently the inspiration for Lars Von Trier’s  controversial and absolutely perfect Antichrist, Zulawski’s film takes the psychological trauma of infidelity as its subject to Von Trier’s death-of-a-child. It’s well paced, well acted, and emotionally intense – even when it drifts into horror movie territory. There aren’t any talking foxes, but there is a vaginal monster growing in a dark room that needs to be fed.

Also in the horror genre is the Japanese phsych-horror masterpiece Hausu by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi. Recently touched up and re-released by Criterion, Hausu is easily the trippiest horror flick I’ve ever seen – a colorful, blood soaked, and joyful film that deserves to be ranked high on any serious B-horror best of list. You can find clips from the film on youtube, but the high-def remaster looks great, and it’d be a shame to not see it on a big screen.