Skip to main content

WEST COAST EARLY 90S GOTHIC

I was reading a review of Lana del Rey's Ultraviolence the other day, in Q or the NME or somewhere, and I came across the suggestion of a new pop culture genre that had hitherto been vague to me, though one I knew I loved - without naming it - even as I very much lived through it.  In fact, the reviewer doesn't make a claim of a new genre, but mentions that her new album seems to be in the same world as early 90s American artifacts like Twin Peaks, the song 'Wicked Game' and Mazzy Star's heroin-pop music.

 There was a deviant, weird twang to that time, basically a twisted 50s vibe, where everything decent and American from the 50s became reinvested with the subtextual sex, subversion and queerness that was always latent in its Sirkian surfaces.  Buried Camp revisited, this time as a darker sultrier post-modern reorganisation - but dreamy, haunted, weird - Ed Wood the movie, as it were. Well, okay, I buy into that - the creepy post-modernity of X-Files (also West Coast and Gothic) fits, as does the fascination with the thwarted love affair between Lecter and Starling.

 And, the more I thought about this, I realised, I came into my own, poetically and aesthetically, in the early 90s - my first pamphlets published then.  Suddenly, my own post-modern style came to me - I too was a West Coast Early 90s Gothic kinda guy, at least up until my second collection, Cafe Alibi. Just thought I;d mention that, because, 20 + years later, the 1990-1994 American period in America seems most fertile muck indeed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A  poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
Post a Comment
Read more

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...
15 comments
Read more

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more