#phillip lopate
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We Who Are Your Closest Friends
by Phillip Lopate
we who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting
as a group
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift
your analyst is
in on it
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us
in announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves
but since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make
unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your
disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective
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The Film That We Wanted to Live"—An Homage to Jean-Luc Godard
Remembering Godard's genius through 5 of his early films. #JeanLucGodard
Nana (Anna Karina) weeps for Joan of Arc, and herself. (Vivre sa vie)
“What is difficult is to advance into unknown lands, to be aware of the danger, to take risks, to be afraid.”
— Jean-Luc Godard
On the afternoon that Columbia sophomore Phillip Lopate was released from the hospital after a suicide attempt, his brother picked him up, and they immediately headed downtown to catch a terrific…
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#Against Joie de Vivre#Anna Karina#Breathless#Carl Dreyer#Chantal Goya#Children of Marx and Coca Cola#French films#Jean-Luc Godard#Jean-Paul Belmondo#Jean-Pierre Léaud#Le Petit Soldat#Masculin fémini#Passion of Joan of Arc#Phillip Lopate#Robert Bresson#Vivre sa vie#Weekend (1967))
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Blog post or essay? An intriguing book over @ShinyNewBooks
I have another review on Shiny New Books to share with you today, and once again it’s a non-fiction collection; one which helped sustain me while I was laid up with Covid. The book is called “A Year and a Day” by Phillip Lopate, and it’s from NYRB.
Lopate is an experienced essayist, and here he gathers together writings which he undertook as an experiment; blogging for a year and finding out how…
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MY FAVORITE POETRY OF 2023 (Prologue)
As I've written before, sometimes it's a book year and sometimes it's a music year. Happily, this year has been a book and music year. Despite living in the meme where the garbage can slides down a flooding street to a Vanessa Carlton tune, a lot of great poetry (and other literature) was released this year. As my to-read list suggests, I'll still be catching up on books released this year for some months to come.
Personally, this was another good year for me. My second full-length manuscript, Wrong Horse, was accepted for publication by Moria Books (read some blurbs here). My first broadside was published, as well as a collaborative cento composed via the USPS with Danika Stegeman LeMay. Finally, as part of their second folio on the prose poem, periodicities kindly published this essay, maybe my favorite piece of criticism I've written.
As always, these books are just my favorite, not a best-of list. I've also included some bonus links and additional information below.
FAVORITE FULL-LENGTH POETRY COLLECTIONS OF 2023
Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate eds. Dara Barrois/Dixon, Emily Pettit, and Kate Lindroos (Ecco)
Poèmes deep / Gravitas by Amy Berkowitz (Noroît)*
Iggy Horse by Michael Earl Craig (Wave Books)
Aisle 228 by Sandra Marchetti (Stephen F. Austin University Press)
Toska by Alina Pleskova (Deep Vellum)
The Book by Mary Ruefle (Wave Books)
FAVORITE CHAPBOOKS OF 2023
Co-Pilot by Danika Stegeman LeMay (Self-Released)**
dear Elsie / seltzer by Nicole Steinberg (Bloof Books)
FAVORITE POETRY COLLECTION OF LAST YEAR (2022) I DIDN’T READ UNTIL THIS YEAR (2023)
Making Water by Laura Jaramillo (Futurepoem)
FAVORITE OLDER NOVEL READ IN 2023
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (Random House, 1985)
BOOK I HAD A BEEF WITH IN 2023
Cujo by Stephen King (Viking, 1981)***
2023 TO-READ LIST (ALL GENRES)
Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard (Liveright)
Diary by Marisa Crawford (Spuyten Duyvil)
Our Strangers by Lydia Davis (Bookshop Editions)
The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman (Catapult)
Ablation by Danika Stegeman LeMay (11:11 Press)
A Year and a Day by Phillip Lopate (New York Review Books)
The Ruins of Nostalgia by Donna Stonecipher (Wesleyan University Press)
---
*This book was published by Total Joy in the United States and includes bonus poems written by the Washtenaw County Women's Poetry Collective and Casserole Society. The bilingual edition I read includes a discussion with the translators.
**Second printing, first released in 2019.
***Cujo doesn't cast a long shadow over the novel: the primary story is domestic drama, so I don't think the title is fitting. There's a vague implication that there's something supernatural happening here, which is fine and dandy, EXCEPT we have a scene that explains, in a real world practical way, what happens to Cujo. The murking of the two explanations of what happens to Cujo doesn't work for this reader. [edited for time]
#2023#that's just like my opinion man#james tate#amy berkowitz#michael earl craig#alina pleskova#sandra marchetti#mary ruefle#laura jaramillo#cormac mccarthy#stephen king#mary beard#marisa crawford#lydia davis#lexi freiman#danika stegeman lemay#phillip lopate#donna stonecipher#ecco#noroît#wave books#stephen f. austin university press#deep vellum#futurepoem#poetry#bloof books#nicole steinberg
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Submission Spotlight: Gulf Coast
You’ve got until September, so dust off that piece that’s seen too many rejections and get to work. In three months, give it another go and consider Gulf Coast. Founded in 1986, this is the literary journal of the University of Houston’s creative writing program. Phillip Lopate and Donald Barthelme founded the journal, which has expanded to two print issues as well as its online publications. The…
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#Donald Barthelme#Gen Del Raye#Gulf Coast#literary journal#literary magazines#Marne Litfin#online literary journals#paying markets for short stories#Phillip Lopate#publishing short stories#Sharon Olds#submitting to literary magazines#University of Houston#writing contests
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One of the exercises my therapist has had me do before is to put some kind of form to my anxiety. She says that being able to picture it as something worth having empathy for, maybe a cute little rabbit or a younger version of myself, would help me transform it from hostile entity to something able to be soothed. I've never been very good at this exercise. Sometimes I'll lie and say I've done it just to move on but the actual form it takes is usually the same. It is dark sludge coursing through my body. It is viscous and slightly shiny, thickly reflecting myself back at me. It burns when you touch it, it stinks when you smell it, and knowing that it is always inside of me makes me want to scream. How are you supposed to deal with that?
This poem appeared in a book I'm currently reading. The book is about how to write and this chapter was specifically about the different voices in ourselves, our "mental illnesses", that keep us paralyzed and unsure. It had an immediate impact on me. I've never seen this exact sentiment put into words quite this way before. The first time I read it I was slightly confused and unsure what I thought about it. It seemed mean because by the end it appeared to confirm my worst fears about the subject: that they're a disaster and demand unreasonable things from those around them. This quickly flipped on a second read, of course this is satirical, and by my tenth read I felt as thought I had found some great truth inside of it. Like the best writing, and sometimes poetry specifically is best suited to this, it introduces a scalpel to some feeling deep in you. It cuts it out and lays it down, separated from the rest of you, able to be turned over and looked at and examined in a way that you couldn't before when it was buried inside of the pieces of yourself that give you life.
The concept of the group meeting discussing whatever latest stupid thing you've said or done spoke to so many moments in my life. It's something that has been happening in my mind for my entire life basically. The idea that somewhere out there the people you've entrusted yourself to are speaking of you negatively, they're out there pouring over your words to find flaws, plotting how to hurt you. It feels comical to type out, this grand conglomerate of Kingdom Hearts-esque villains, sitting with their arms crossed atop massive chairs, deliberating on how to deal with you. I'm extremely susceptible to the kind of thinking the poem describes though. My brain is in a fairly constant miasma of wondering if I said the right thing, have I made a complete fool of myself, is everyone around me secretly having conversations about how terrible I am. At the heart of it is desperately wanting to be accepted in the face of what my brain is telling me is for sure rejection. I feel like this need for acceptance is fairly universal, and I feel deeply for everyone out there who struggles like this as well.
The book contextualizes it in relation to writing and the voices that grind against us, triggering paranoia and deep uncertainty. It says that the poem is an example of turning ugly feelings into something "artistic and true." I melted when I read this. I'm not saying anything unique here about turning bad feelings into good art but I do think it's sometimes hard to imagine positive coming from negative. And the second part was what really hit me: the truth of it. Reading this poem felt so vivid and full of experience, it was like a pair of arms gently draping over my shoulders and a voice whispering that I am not alone. This is I think something I always want to impart in my writing whether it's a subtle attempt to poke at an emotion or a big loud screaming thematic framework. The dark sludge is truth and making sense of that truth may be never ending but it can be beautiful.
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The Existential Dread of Working Life - A Collection
Work, Hockey
Thunderstruck, Peter Ravn
Artificial Tears, Evelyn Bencicova
I Thought There Would Be More To It, Jon Michael Frank
Love me More, Mitski
Working for the Knife, Mitski
The Assistant, Dir. Kitty Green
9 to 5, Dolly Parton
Holiday, Dir. George Cukor
July 19th, 1920 Diary Entry, Franz Kafka
The Assistant (Script), Kitty Green
Things You Wanted To Say But Never Did, Geloy Concepcion
Numbness, Phillip Lopate
#this might as well be titled: the industrial revolution and its consequences#quotes#words#mitski#the assistant#movies#holiday#art#photography#franz kafka#poetry#dread#existentialism#nihilsm#loneliness#emptiness#web weaving#collection
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phillip lopate - we who are your closest friends
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ohhh jules ur so smart and ur big brain is so sexy... I would love to hear more about ur thoughts on the bible story u picked for yoongi if you don't mind? I was raised protestant and I guess I'd never heard/considered that particular interpretation of that story, and now I'm wondering what exactly you meant by "yoongi knows what jungkook does to him" (and the rest of that sentence but I don't want to spoil too much) in the context of that particular interpretation? sorry for not being big-brain like u 😔😔
omg plssssss u are also big brained we are big brained together what r u talking abt .... <3 anyways under the cut again bcs this got long lol
i don't actually kno if theres much of a difference between protestant and catholic interpretations of samson & delilah but the way we were taught it i think falls into the typical catholic discourse of delilah being a wicked treacherous wench and samson falling into sin which causes his figurative and literal blindness. but also i've seen a lot of feminist scholars discuss delilah and samson as a story of liberation in a way. samson willingly chooses to give up the secret to his strength to delilah knowing full well she plans to betray him. he goes to sleep at night knowing she is going to betray him. delilah herself is a disruptive character not because of her implied sex work or her scheming, but because she is fully independent. unlike many of the women in the bible, she is not characterized by her relationship to another man like a husband, father, brother, etc. and so samson may have accepted the betrayal as a way for him to also experience that independence. phillip lopate writes "don't we secretly rejoice at [samson] having the good sense to follow the route of his desire, to free himself from the 'good boy' nazirite onus by putting himself in temptation's way?" maybe this is all just part of my #makehyyhyoonkookworse agenda lol but i feel like so much of yoonkooks' narrative revovles around the struggle between dichotomies of alienation/community and restraint/liberation. so much of their storyline revolves around them falling into each other because they are outcasts in the same way. they commune together over their shared self-hatred. they are self-destructive together and yet being together makes them feel a little bit better about being alive. however yoongi is so stuck in this cycle of grief that the goodness that his relationship with jungkook provides him is frightening. it frightens him that he means so much to jungkook and that jungkook means so much to him as well. i think then the best way to explain my connection of yoongi to samson is less that his narrative mirrors him exactly, but rather than yoongis relationship with jungkook is like that of samsons' with deliiah in the way that jungkook holds that power of destruction but also of liberation over yoongi. maybe if yoongi identified himself less with grief and independence, he would let himself submit to jungkook the way samson did to delilah. he would let jungkook blind him and be liberated by the tangibility of their mutually assured destruction.
#THANK UUUU for letting me talk abt this :')#everyone keeps skipping this question so its fun to be able to talk about my reasoning !!!#💌#anonymous#hyyhposting
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Episode 563 - Phillip Lopate
With his new collection, A YEAR AND A DAY: AN EXPERIMENT IN ESSAYS (NYRB), master essayist Phillip Lopate explores the world & himself through the mode of a weekly blog. We get into how he adapted to a short, time-constrained essay form for The American Scholar, how he avoided The Columnist's Curse (limitless curiosity helps!), whether an essayist can truly write about anything, and how he has and hasn't changed since the 2016-17 period in which he wrote these pieces. We talk about Phillip's integration of the private and public self in his writing, how his wife & daughter felt about being included in this book, the question of whether he's fulfilled as a writer, why he hides his journal, and how editing the three Great American Essay collections allowed him to leave something canonical behind for students & readers. We also discuss how it feels when readers thinking they know him from his essays, how his books and essays add up to a fragmentary, lifelong memoir (and why he'll likely never write an actual memoir or autobiography), why his multiple myeloma diagnosis was more of a psychological hit than a physical one, how he found himself working on a biography of Washington Irving, the benefits of a fragmentary unitary self, the career validation of being inducted into theAmerican Academy of Arts & Letters, and a LOT more. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack
Check out the new episode of The Virtual Memories Show
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"Hedonism can be a rational response to a difficult life."
Phillip Lopate
This is probably one of my favorites!
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The peculiarities of each of these owners and their venues are duly noted: Rowley’s meticulous presentation of MGM classics, including stationing underlings to clap at the end of big musical numbers; Schwarz’s temper tantrums and love of B-movies, The Thalia’s impossibly parabolic slope and permeable acoustics, The Bleecker Street’s tendency to run behind schedule, so that its small lobby was often packed with disgruntled queues, Theatre 80’s odd, fuzzy rear-view projection, Sid Geffen’s imperial schemes in complete disregard of his lack of capital.… Overall, these pioneers come across as a bunch of wildly idealistic missionaries, lovers of film much more interested in spreading the gospel of cinema than in making money. They took chances, they played hunches, they went against the grain of commercial conformity, they artfully constructed balanced double bills, they connived to get their hands on the best possible prints. And eventually, most of them went under.
“It was not the VCR revolution that did the theater in,” Davis explains, “but the real estate revolution. Much like the closing of the Elgin, the Bleecker’s closing pitted a real estate developer who saw the property as a profitable investment against a theater owner who treasured it as a cultural resource. It was a doomed struggle.”
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I just saw someone refer to a personal essay as an "excuse for navel gazing/narcissism" and like I'm just gonna carry around a Phillip Lopate compilation book to throw at people's heads from now on
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la collectionneuse by eric rohmer
supplemental readings:
review by roger ebert
marking time by phillip lopate
la collectionneuse: dandies on the côte d’azur by jacob leigh
personal notes:
i’m looking forward to watching more films of the french new wave
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777. Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley is the author of the novel Cult Classic, available from MCD/FSG.
Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling essay collections, I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and How Did You Get This Number, as well as Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the bestselling novel, The Clasp. She served as editor of The Best American Travel Writing series and is featured in The Library of America's 50 Funniest American Writers, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Phillip Lopate’s The Contemporary American Essay and others. She was the inaugural columnist for The New York Times Op-Ed "Townies" series, a contributing editor at Interview Magazine, and a columnist for The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, The Independent, Black Book, Departures and The New York Observer. She is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her next nonfiction book, Grief Is for People, will be published in 2023. She lives in New York City.
***
Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.
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we who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting
as a group
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift
your analyst is
in on it
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us
in announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves
but since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make
unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your
disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective
Phillip Lopate
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