William Stobb

MiPOradio is setting up on Soundcloud-- link here --and is featuring archived episodes of my podcast, "Hard to Say."  Right now, you'll find my review of the Norton anthology, American Hybrid , "The Idea of a Hybrid Poetic," my early review of Tao Lin's first book, You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am , a segment called "Live Noise," produced out of audio from a multi-media event in Portland, part of my book tour for Nervous Systems , and one of my favorite episodes, "The Defense of Meaning: Encountering Dada," in which you can hear amazing recordings of early Dada texts by Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters, performed by Anat Pick.  All free and easy, via Soundcloud's fun, accessible web presentation.  Check it out!

Published on Airplane Reading .  Here. This essay, entitled "Stations," honors the work of late poet and professor, Jay Meek, whose 1989 book,  Stations , seems to find its way into my backpack whenever I travel.  The piece also drifts back to my days waiting tables at the Columbia Road Perkins in Grand Forks, ND.  Sunday morning, breakfast rush, slammed.  Been there?  Then you know it gets hairy.

Interview footage plus a reading of the poem, "Absentia."  Words, music, and images written, recorded and produced by William Stobb.  Film shot on my low-res camera at Turtle River State Park, west of Grand Forks, ND.  Music composed and recorded at Larry and Kathy Houser's home in Park River, ND, 10/14 - 10/15, 2011.

“The grief-stricken survivor at the end of the world is not someone I identify with, unless I go to Whole Foods or a party or something.” That’s Colson Whitehead in a recent Harper’s interview, talking about his forthcoming novel, Zone One , the most recent manifestation of our current Zombiegeist.   Another day, another zombie.   Obviously, human fascination with monsters and the undead in particular is an enormous topic, with a rich history, and I’m not pretending to engage that in any thorough way, here.   I just have an intuition about our current zombiphilia.   If it’s bullshit, or so obvious that it’s not worth saying, my bad.   Basically, I think zombies today spark a horrible feeling of correspondence in many of us.   We see mindless creatures of pure appetite, staggering through the apocalypse, and we recognize ourselves.   We can’t turn away.   And I think that this is a slightly different motivation than zombie audie...

I love the  Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.  It's been a semi-religious place for me, since my early twenties, when I had a typical young person's crush on the abstract expressionists, and I saw the Walker as the one place in the world that really got me.  I'm a little less brooding now, but I still make it to the Walker about once a year, and it's always a highlight for me.  I've really enjoyed seeing their collections grow, and seeing them reconfigured, so that familiar works are viewed in a new light.   When I was there last week, I saw the current show, “Absentee Landlord,” which was curated by the radical writer and film-maker John Waters .   I don’t keep close tabs on Walker acquisitions, but it looked like the show was primarily work from the permanent collection, just re-mixed according to Waters’s   sense of what would be cool--like taking all your old songs and making a new mix tape in the hopes that everything will seem ne...

M AN  sits in pizzeria with pizza wrapped around his feet                         WOMAN enters pizzeria PIZZA GUY is behind the counter PIZZA GUY [as WOMAN enters] Welcome to Miraculous Pizza! WOMAN Thanks!   Do you have any specials today?   [notices MAN with pizza slices wrapped around his feet]   Whoa!   Dude!   Why do you have pizza slices on your feet? MAN When my Gout acts up, I just come to Miraculous Pizza.   Their slices have healing properties. WOMAN [to PIZZA GUY] Is that true? PIZZA GUY Of course!   Yeah!   It’s totally true.   [Gestures for WOMAN  to come closer, then whispers]   No, it’s not true.   At least not that I know of.   But what am I gonna do?   He’s my coursin. WOMAN Good point.   Well, I’ll take a classic Chicago slice.   Pepperoni.   M...

From "Doom" Doom is the law book of King Alfred the Great, circa 900 CE.   This book is so awesome that the Ten Commandments are the preface .   That would be my blurb for it: "this book is so awesome that...."  Doom means something like “law” or “judgment” to King Alfred because language evolves over time.   Wikipedia provides the example “Doom very evenly!   Do not doom one doom to the rich and another to the poor!”   King Alfred rated honesty pretty highly: “if he belie himself and be slain, let him lie uncompensated,” and it’s ironic that I get a very doomy image from that of a big red-bearded Viking guy lying in the mud, bleeding out from a sword wound, blinking his last blinks knowing that no one has prayed for him in the way you need to be prayed for if you’re going to heaven.   And the camera pans out up into the sky and into our solar system and our galaxy and our universe, but the heavy string music continues over top of all of it because ...