DJ's RJ

It's in my unshakable spirit of needless acronymization that I christen this latest project of mine my RJ - it's a Reading Journal. I don't read enough poetry to earn the poet / rogue status I so often quietly claim. Therefore:

Elizabeth Bishop, "View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress".

Seems appropriate and timely. A march is a march - as in Sherman's to the sea. As in the Bataan Death. Bishop's poet's-poet subtlety is as finely tuned here as it is anywhere. She plays... coy. Coy and sad all at once: she knows what lies under the march, but disguises her recognition of the martial basis of the march via this museful tone - much of which depends upon those crucial two words "I think" in "I think the trees must intervene." Anybody else read "The gathered brasses want to go / boom -- boom" with a substantial pause between the two booms? Idea: the poem itself occupies the space between booms (wars). I feel like such a literalist.

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What happened to McNabb and the Philly Eagles? What happened to the dependability of a good ol' death from above passing-game-only drubbing?

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Indie rock kids and record store clerks take note: the new Yo La Tengo album, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, is a return to form. Naysayers naysayed Summer Sun for being too samey; I was not among them. But here Yo La goes back to the scattershot eclecticism of I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One; this album, like that album, juxtaposes Sonic Youth-style noise rock numbers with the sort of ambient midnight dream-pop Mazzy Star managed to imitate well that one time. There are some new textures too: "Mr. Tough" sashays with some unexpected but spot-on Motown horn flourishes.

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Now playing: Yo La Tengo, Electr-O-Pura. Perhaps their best in a catalog of bests.