CUTTY SPOT

[words on IF I FALTER AT THE GALLOWS by EDWARD MULLANY]

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I was gonna wait for his new book to write abt Edward Mullany

I’m not sure when it’s coming out

it will involve (post) apocalyptic content

I put some of its poems in the first 2 issues of my online magazine: 

http://thegorillapress.com/gesture

I am listening to MOUNT EERIE right now

the song ‘I Hold Nothing’

plz check out MOUNT EERIE if you haven’t

I just finished reading Edward Mullany’s first book IF I FALTER AT THE GALLOWS again

I have read this book several times

& I listened to Mount Eerie today while reading this book

these 2 things go very well together

both Edward Mullany & Phil Elverum (he who makes up Mount Eerie) have a penchant for ‘dark’ landscapes

for ‘earthy’ over ‘urban’ settings

for an almost (seemingly) primitive // mystical relationship to the ‘natural’ world

for minimal, lean lines

for haunting impact & resonance

for offering that which lingers with us after being under its trance

when I read Edward Mullany, I am reminded of how ‘much’ one can inject into so ‘little’

his poems are often miniature

for example, the first poem in the book goes like this:

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SILENCE IN THE MILKY WAY

A man

knits

while a woman

who likes to nit

gardens.

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yes

‘yes’ is what I characteristically say at the end of his poems

he has a similarity w/ the old Japanese haiku masters

offering a ‘suggestive’ image pregnant w/ possibilities

he also reminds me of Cormac Mccarthy

his almost ‘bleak’ yet mysteriously provocative handle of language & description

in an interview I conducted w/ Edward (in which his insight often baffled me & excited me):

http://cuttyspot.tumblr.com/post/16970244743/edward-mullany-interview-edward-mullany-recently

he says,

‘My poems are generally short; sometimes I can’t tell if I’m editing as I’m writing, or if I’m editing in the moment after I’ve written.

he ended the interview w/

‘The internet is creating the opportunity for something like ‘livestream’ art, wherein the challenge is to manipulate the given platforms in a way that results in the creation of an original and compelling persona, one that can be updated, and viewed by the general public, not only on a daily basis, but on a minute-by-minute basis. I use the word “manipulate” very consciously, or seriously. Forms of social media are most interesting to me when the person who uses them is able to divert them from their most straightforward purposes, and into something slightly or radically askew’

um, pretty smart dude I’d say

one thing that has stuck w/ me perhaps more than anything from the interview is this:

‘You don’t have to start with ‘exposition’, or develop the ‘rising action’, for instance. You can just start right at the climax, even of the most trivial human event, and explore it with a kind of insane precision.’

hallelujah!

that’s what I love abt Edward Mullany

his poems have nothing ‘extra’ abt them

he is unafraid to give these pieces to us w/out tying a bow on them

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another striking aspect of Mullany is his intense religious sensibilities

he claims to be firmly Catholic

I email him sometimes

he emails me sometimes

sometimes we talk about ‘big’ questions

sometimes not

sometimes we type in ‘proper’ punctuation & capital letters

sometimes we type kind of like I’m typing right now

Edward Mullany is also working on a project called ‘Notes from a Resuscitated Man’

he posts things for this project on this tumblr: http://notesfromaresuscitatedman.tumblr.com/

we have spoken several times abt Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet (one of my favorite books)

he ordered it a few months ago

Pessoa calls this book a ‘Factless Autobiography’

“Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!” Pessoa screams

Edward claims to be inspired by this & Kafka’s diary for this project

Edward also has another tumblr, on which he posts his own drawings

or odd pictures of himself

often bleak, often absurdly funny

http://theothernotebook.tumblr.com/

& as one might expect from his gift of pithiness

his ‘twitter handle’ is often great too

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in terms of If I Falter at the Gallows I do wanna say he has moments of a Charles Simic-like wacky, dark surrealism too

often his poems are extremely ‘straightforward’, but gripping

but sometimes he has poems that break w/ ‘logic’

like, ‘The bathtub overflows. / The bathtub sprouts legs, and leaves / the house, and returns at night, drunk’

I enjoy these moments of broken logic

of the ‘uncanny’

he weaves these moments tastefully throughout the ‘work’

he often gets ‘meta’ – charging w/ language to that which is a ‘step away’ from the actual

or a reflection of the ‘actual’, ‘the real’

ripples of it

extensions of it

simulacra of sorts

a copy of a copy of a copy

but what is ‘the real’ & ‘actual’ again?

perhaps these moments are harping on the ‘Universe”s multiplicity

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Here is a part of the sky.

Here is a part of the part of the sky.

or

Here is an earth. Here is another

earth. Here is another earth.

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these are lines from Edward Mullany.

here are my other favorite moments from the book:

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‘TO MATTHEW, I’M VERY GLAD & HAPPY THAT WE MET! SEE YOU AROUND. - EDWARD’ (on the first title page)

‘The sun begins / to come up, or the movement / of the earth lets the sun / appear to come up’

‘A philosopher sticks / his head in the fire, so / what?’

‘Assume a black / dot on a white / wall and a white / dot on a black / wall are facing / each other’

‘The dental / office was quiet at night, but no one experienced / the quiet’

‘Imagine a dance hall where shirts / dance to wordless music.’

‘I have a question but I’ll only ask if no one’s around’

‘When I asked my mother what fear / and trembling was, she stopped / what she was doing, and looked at me / funny’

‘No / one is with me, yet I hear singing’

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find his book here: http://publishinggenius.com/?p=59

watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgLbQI2Wam8