u/tawdryscandal

I was reading a review of Derek Beaulieu's Do It Wrong: How to Be a Poet in the Twenty-First Century and I was really struck by this quote (the block quote is Beaulieu, the second part the reviewer):

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Following on from this premise, Beaulieu notes that, of the estimated $12,475 grossed from the sale of said 500 books, an author on a 10% royalty deal will make approximately $1,249 after the publishers, distributors and bookstores have taken their cuts; that even this paltry sum is an optimistic scenario given how few titles actually sell out even a single printing; and, looming above all this, that poetry makes up a mere 0.12% of total book sales."

$1,249 total is like $5 a week. The economics of contemporary poetry are insane.

The great Russian poet, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer.

From a funny, and weirdly moving exploration I found on one of the last true porn theatres in North America.

"Originally dubbed Le Globe, the future L’Amour was opened back in 1914 as a combination movie house and live performance venue for the city’s sizable Jewish community. It is a proper theatre (pron. thee-ayy-turr) in the old style, with over a hundred floor seats and a looming balcony supported by enormous balustrades, its surfaces blessed with intricate stonework carvings and floral detailing by craftsmen who gave a shit about creating dignified public spaces. The screen hangs between two sets of curtains on the edge of what was once its stage, behind which (out of sight of the patrons) the rusting hulk of its original rigging still squats in the corner. Beneath the main floor, various disused dressing rooms and corridors contain decades of fascinating detritus—when I was given the tour some time ago, I found stacks of promo materials for vintage skin flicks, and some mouldering bankers boxes full of documents from an Argentine embassy. When it was converted into a porn theatre in the late ‘60s (first as The Pussycat and finally dubbed L’Amour in 1981) the old dame received a suitably garish makeover: columns and wall features painted a glossy shade of red that looks like it’ll leave lipstick smudges if you lean on it; row upon row of matching red plastic chairs; and huge red pleather-covered doors secured with heavy studs that do a modestly effective job of muffling the sounds of sex for patrons standing in the charming little lobby (where you can indeed get popcorn, snacks, and some pretty cracky coffee). The balcony likewise has been fitted with a pair of spartan red boxes containing padded benches intended for premium-paying couples who want to play in the theatre without being within skeeting distance of the other patrons."

..."I’ve never met [L'Amour's owner] Steve, and so I find myself projecting onto him an almost certainly inaccurate image as a sort of sentimental custodian. It’s the same role that I imagine I play in my own world as a literary editor: keeping the lights on a little longer for the old ways and those who observe them, jury-rigging a few more years of life out of the rusting mechanisms they don’t make parts for anymore. I believe we are on the verge of changes both psychic and material to our culture (in literature and beyond) for which me and my kind are fundamentally ill-suited, even hostile to—but I recognize that this is the fate of everyone who has lived during the past 200 years or so, if not further still. And I am not someone who believes that every last scrap humanity has ever created needs to be preserved in some great archive; in fact there is sometimes a greater freedom when certain things are lost, leaving gaps in the procedural this begat that chains of historical cultural production through which it becomes easier to imagine something new. But, even so, there is this defect in my thinking that seems to demand things be mourned a little before they go, mourned and played with one last time. This applies even to those scorned bits of junk culture (e.g. porn tapes from an undistinguished era) that do not appeal to me specifically but that I can sense were, in the days of relative media scarcity, once loci for people’s secret dreams and fantasies."

"I’ve never met [L'Amour's owner] Steve, and so I find myself projecting onto him an almost certainly inaccurate image as a sort of sentimental custodian. It’s the same role that I imagine I play in my own world as a literary editor: keeping the lights on a little longer for the old ways and those who observe them, jury-rigging a few more years of life out of the rusting mechanisms they don’t make parts for anymore. I believe we are on the verge of changes both psychic and material to our culture (in literature and beyond) for which me and my kind are fundamentally ill-suited, even hostile to—but I recognize that this is the fate of everyone who has lived during the past 200 years or so, if not further still. And I am not someone who believes that every last scrap humanity has ever created needs to be preserved in some great archive; in fact there is sometimes a greater freedom when certain things are lost, leaving gaps in the procedural this begat that chains of historical cultural production through which it becomes easier to imagine something new. But, even so, there is this defect in my thinking that seems to demand things be mourned a little before they go, mourned and played with one last time. This applies even to those scorned bits of junk culture (e.g. porn tapes from an undistinguished era) that do not appeal to me specifically but that I can sense were, in the days of relative media scarcity, once loci for people’s secret dreams and fantasies." — from "Cinéma L'Amour: The Last Porno Theatre on Earth" in Discordia Review

One of three by Toronto poet Meghan Harrison in HAD.

A short piece by the excellent Canadian poet Don Coles, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 90.

One of four alien abduction poems from the Montreal transgender poet and musician.