25th January 10
After a humbling, fumble-crazed loss in this weekend’s New Orleans-Minneapolis referendum, I suppose there is little else for the people of Minnesota to do but that which they have done for generations: crawl into a darkened, frozen teepee with the St. Paul poet Paul D. Dickinson, and read poetry and drink Hamm’s beer until April.
I am depicted here doing just that. Note the silk scarf and far-off look of consternation. It’s a way of life, reader!
Photo by Cyn Collins.
11th November 09
I just received an email from an account executive in Philadelphia letting me know she was “reaching out” to inform me of an upcoming publication deadline. I love it when people unintentionally use really grandiose language to describe very mundane situations. Reaching out, from far beyond the muddy banks of the River Schuylkill, across prairies and plains and the watery depths of Lake Superior to let you know, Mr. Sturdevant, that the deadline is Monday, November 23.
The most common instance of this is when people use “downfall” as a synonym for “drawback.” I hear this a lot, as in: “Well, the downfall of this particular brand of chips is that they’re very high in sodium.” Suddenly, the stakes become much higher; choosing to eat a bag of too-salty potato chips is transformed from a questionable but harmless personal decision to a face-of-God-punching act of pure hubris. That were an ignominy and shame beneath / This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods / And this French Onion substance cannot fail.
27th October 09
Steph has a really nice camera, so you know you will always look OK when she takes a picture of you. This one is from Saturday night. I look like I am considering a number of sad, crazy ideas about the way life should be lived. Maybe I am!
Actually, that’s the perfect tone, because I am hoping photographs like this can be used to trick advertising executives into using my epic sad-crazy American poetry for the new Levi Strauss blue jeans fall ad campaign. “Sturdevant’s got the impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship western youthful look that’s really hot right now,” they’ll say. “Throw ten thousand dollars at him and let’s see what happens.” We must cash in, my darlings!
(On a related note, how do those Walt Whitman Levi’s commercials make you feel? I will admit they fill me with a strange and not altogether disgusted feeling, which probably has something to do with the shock of hearing wax cylinder recordings emanating from a source other than the old beloved-by-us-dorks UCSB archives. Actually, it’s sort of a generally positive feeling. While I have probably seen enough ad campaigns knocking off Ryan McGinley’s wild-shirtless-bros imagery to hold me over until I am a very old man, I do like hearing Walt Whitman recordings in public, and wish I did more often. Plus, Levi Strauss was manufacturing clothing while Whitman was still alive, which seems worth pointing out somehow. I guess I approve. Of course, it won’t make me run out and buy jeans, because I never wear jeans.)
24th September 09
The wonderful Minneapolis poet Dobby Gibson has discovered a mysterious silver star on First Avenue’s legendarily star-spangled facade, and posted a photo of it on his Facebook. Conrad! Who is/are he/they?
YOUR ASSIGNMENT: Tell me who Conrad is. Wikipedia doesn’t know. There’s all sorts of things I don’t know about Minneapolis, though, despite stomping around all the time and loudly pretending that there isn’t. So there must be a story behind Conrad’s place on the wall. Like the editor says at the beginning of Citizen Kane: it’s probably a very simple thing.
UPDATE: It turns out, like, everyone knows who Conrad is (read the comments for some excellent descriptions of who Conrad is, or read this or this). What a jerk I am! I had better just go ahead and relinquish my Minneapolis citizenship for the day.
