Banango Lit

Russ Woods and Meghan Lamb live in Chicago. They are married. They run Red Lightbulbs. Russ just published “Pictures of Salukis Looking Majestic.” Meghan just published “Love, Jennifer Jason Leigh.” Justin reviewed “Pictures of Salukis Looking Majestic” and Rachel reviewed “Love, Jennifer Jason Leigh.” Rachel and Justin are not married.

Rachel Reviews Meghan Lamb:

I realized I wasn’t sure whether to call “Love, Jennifer Jason Leigh” a chapbook or a story or what, because it’s not structured as a series of poems. EDIT: it’s billed as a zine on Meghan’s site. The first part, “SECRETS,” is an exchange of emails showing Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is Meghan Lamb (or Meghan Lamb, who is Jennifer Jason Leigh?) applying for a CW reality show about “professional, polished, and successful women” who have problems. The second, longer part is entitled “MARRIAGE” and centers around an exchange of emails between Meghan Lamb/Jennifer Jason Leigh and a woman named Olga, courting one another through the service of a marriage agency. Pictures of young posing ladies are sent back and forth. Both parts of LJJL are written in broken English that I have no shame in admitting reminded me of that sage of our generation, @horse_ebooks. You know how before @horse_ebooks got hacked, it would spit out these serendipitously poetic phrases? That happens here too. The emails are charming in all of their bumbling language:
 
i too am in possession of a gnawing lack of patience, as for the lack without your shine, and the snaring, the space of your words.

I wish to find such the man which will look at me not as on a toy or hobby and as on the person who has ideas and the opinion….I think, if love, do not look on his age, and the main thing that him is good also they are happy together.

dreamsee the shine….you are a moonshore.

I liked how there were these especially poetic ribbons strewn throughout LJJL even though the structure was not overtly poetic in the way a chapbook full of discrete pieces is. The flipside is that this story-like structure creates expectations that a more explicitly poetic work might bypass, like character continuity throughout the whole piece. Jennifer Jason Leigh was definitely the same character in the first and second parts, according to the style in which she wrote, but I didn’t really perceive these parts as extremely connected. I liked the MARRIAGE section better, because it was more of an exchange between characters, whereas SECRETS just focused on Jennifer Jason Leigh.

It seemed like neither Jennifer Jason Leigh nor Olga were aware of the mutual language barrier. They weren’t completely talking past one another: many packets of words were directed and hit their mark. Olga was 32 and Jennifer Jason Leigh was 20, but the age gap, as well as the fact that they were two women connecting through a marriage agency, was never noted as strange by either character. Also unnoted was the fact that Jennifer Jason Leigh’s emails were “From: Meghan Lamb.”

With the cover featuring jigsaw pieces of an eye and a lip, it’s like Lamb threw Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars and other shows of that ilk into a prism, picked up the pieces, and arranged them into “Love, Jennifer Jason Leigh.” LJJL felt vaguely dystopian. It was challenging for me to get a handle on whether it was more fiction or poetry. I think these categorizations matter because we structure our expectations for a work around them. It was a good challenge though, and I found “Love, Jennifer Jason Leigh” ultimately worthwhile.

Justin Reviews Russ Woods

I hate to admit it, but before I read the first poem in this collection (when Russ posted it at Let People Poems not very long ago) I did had never read anything by Russ. I had read things from the journal he edits, Red Lightbulbs, and I had really enjoyed the work in the journal. But I had not read anything but Russ.

So I read the poem he posted a link to on Facebook.

It made me feel very excited and happy.

This poem, the first in the chapbook, is called “All We Grow Is Old” and is a list of reasons that the speaker does not want to get into arguments. There is a ‘surreal’ quality to Russ’ work, I think. The reasons he does not want to get into arguments are clearly reasons that grow increasingly less probable, but this doesn’t really matter. The tone of the piece matters. The feeling that the reader feels matters.

I have this theory that in a lot of contemporary poems, the actual narrative is only as important as the feelings it evokes. It doesn’t need to be believable at all or even really make sense, as long as it creates in the reader the feeling that the poet wanted it to make them feel (or any feeling really, since the authorial intent is not really that important).

Russ’ work gives me that feeling. In “City-Girl,” I am not really sure what is happening in the literal sense. I know that there is a girl and she is a city, or maybe vice-versa, or maybe both. I don’t know. What I do know is that the poem makes me feel very hopeful when it begins and then by the end I am feeling sad, when the girl has a nightmare.

“Dog-Arms” works in the same way. The poem is about someone that wants to have arms made out of dogs. This doesn’t make much sense on a literal level. Would you feed the dogs? What would it eat? The poem begins with a type of bravado though. I will have dogs for arms and they will do cool shit, but then it ends with the sadness of the dogs eating the speaker. This, again, causes me to feel sad.

    A lot of these poems follow a similar formula, although some differ. “Soon, Every Tiny Person Inside Me Will Die” does not really make me feel hopeful at any time. It makes me feel bad for all the tiny people inside the speaker. The poem ends in a hopeful way though, with the speaker thinking about the tiny people living on in his thoughts.
    I think this may have been the best chapbook I read in 2011. I think everyone should read it. Right now. Please.