Name: Matt
Email:
Web Site: http://www.wordsforguns.com
Bio: Matt DeBenedictis was a pastor but he is no longer. He has words published in places like Lamination Colony, decomP, Thirst for Fire, Dogzplot, and Ampersand Review. He has two chapbooks; the most recent Congratulations! There's No Last Place if Everyone is Dead he published his damn self. Matt is a contributor at Noisecreep.com.
Posts by Matt DeBenedictis:
D. Hopper, a Poet Cowboy.
May 31st, 2010Dennis Hopper is no longer with us, but here he is dressed as a cowboy reading a Rudyard Kipling poem.
Though I cannot confirm whether Hopper was an actual cowboy his love of poetry was never in doubt.
Words in Song: Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane
May 1st, 2010Do I need to say anything about Mike Patton? Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, Fantomas, movie scores, and oh that scream, that damn 
voice. From his mouth comes terror and tied up sex all in one breath; the following note will be a kiss and a touch. But now his newest outlet is Mondo Cane, a cluster of 60s Italian love and folk songs all sung in their native tongue while a 40 piece orchestra does what they do behind him.
In a recent interview Patton stated he went in with 200 songs to choose from and he was ruthless in his approach to what made the cut saying, “When you’re attacking music like this — or really when you’re doing any covers, in my opinion — you have to do them somewhat aggressively. You have to take liberties that maybe aren’t present in the material that you’re working with. For me, it’s important to wrestle these pieces of music to the ground. They’re already perfect. I’m not going to make them better. I’m just gonna make them different. So you wrestle them to ground and figure out what you’re going to do with them.”
Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, Use Internet Money to Self Satisfy!
April 26th, 2010That’s not Ben Spivey. I just found that image on an search using his name. I like to think it is him though, or some version of him that existed way before us all. That small Spivey of the past had a debut book too.
Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, is now up for pre-order from Blue Square Press and it should be noted that it is very much worth your hard earned money (link has an excerpt). Okay I haven’t read it myself but I’ve heard the Atlantain writer read from it; holy shit the language will cut you down. Be ready, it feels like lotion.
Here’s something someone else said:
“Malcolm Blackburn (motivational speaker, estranged husband of a bird with orange pubic hair, and lover to a mannequin) has a voice that throttled me from the first page, while Ben Spivey–an extraordinarily talented and shockingly young new writer–demonstrates that his own voice is versatile, vivid, funny, and trenchant. I read the book in one eager sitting. Flowing in the Gossamer Fold is a bizarre and genuinely exciting debut.”
- Nick Antosca, author of Midnight Picnic and Fires
Words in Song: Damien Jurado
April 24th, 2010
The best way to describe Damien Jurado is that he is inspired by fire. I read that somewhere, at some point in my own obsessive following of the folk singer since his more cutesy debut in ’97.
Damn what a year, such innocent times. There was maybe four thousand of us that knew that word emo: it was a dazzling descriptor of sonics that meant sparse production mechanics and kinda angry songs, but most of it was sexual and everybody smelled rather good. Jurado got that tag in his early days until he became a story teller and a showman with an acoustic guitar, long past cheap the symbolism of birds and trees.
Fast forward to this goddamn moment. Jurado has his craft; it’s complicated but it brings a craving for a touch, some pen ink, and smokes.
This is a great interview with Mr. Jurado. He mentions a book.
His new album Saint Bartlett comes out next month. Each song is its own book.
An Interview with Scott McClanahan: Stories, Guns, and Punk
April 19th, 2010We’ve shown a video of Scott McClanahan reading in Atlanta, but before that moment the West Virginian born writer and film maker was sitting outside the Beep Beep Art Gallery under a matchstick lit sidewalk long before any other readers or patrons showed up. Saddle suit with accompanying leather bag in hand he sat on the concrete steps with the patient gaze of an olden encyclopedia salesman; he smiled to all passing him.
“I just pick the stories full of shits and giggles and then I read them,” McClanahan said in e-mail a few days after the reading. He read two stories and a prayer for no monsters to grab us. “All of my stories are full of shits and giggles so it’s typically pretty easy,” McClanahan added on how he chooses what to read.
There is something timeless to the writing of McClanahan. In no way is he a part of the sects of literary voices calling for stories to be flagged as boring and trite (in most circumstances); he answers most questions with stories. “There’s a great story that Winston Churchill loved pigs and kept them as pets. A reporter once asked him why and he said: ‘A dog will look up to you, a cat will look down at you, but a pig will look you right in the eye.’ That’s the whole writing racket in a nutshell (both audience and writers)—tight asses and snobs, boot lickers, and pigs. I’m a pig out there searching for other pigs. Oink. Oink”
A little over a year ago McClanahan, who lists his Grandma Ruby, Uncle Nathan, and himself as the greatest storytellers he’s ever heard, seemingly just appeared with his first book Stories. His bound debut had no liner notes puking forth some kind of list were each piece of the book had been published, just a note for his wife Sara (“for Sarah”) and picture of his former bootleggin’ Uncle Terry’s mug shot. The book got its praises and soon the sequel came out stealing even more blog claps. It’s fitting he just appeared because a good storyteller should do that (just end up at the bar stool beside you) and a good story should be just as much a surprise. “Stories are alive. LESKOV LIVES,” McClanahan typed into this interview — forcing the idea, the almost forgotten notion, into the air so to speak.
The Hottest Piece of Dance Chocolate
April 13th, 2010… is a wolf. I find this furry inspiring. No getting drunk because it’s only Tuesday is a go.
According to the youtube comments AhoteWolf didn’t plan out those sweet moves. Let’s never plan anything ever again.
Let’s Read While Everyone Else Does Important and Fun Things
April 8th, 2010I’m not at AWP in Denver.
You’re reading this so that means you’re probably not either, but these people are. You can still read their great words while not stumbling drunk from reading to reading to lightly vacuumed floor.
Now these are only three writers but if there any other great things to read while our internet sleeps to publishing prose, poems, and the like please leave links in comments. Let’s have a party with no plane tickets.
Confess Your Writing Religion
April 6th, 2010
Let’s do this. Come on you know you have one. Well, maybe you don’t but I do.
A holy process it tends to be, and it does changes and grow but there are constants keeping it anchored. It begins with a voice — rhythmic in a nature of my own creation or something stolen from the air. I put on a music to fit my mood. This is where the process begins.
Sometimes the musical accompaniment is spastic and delighting in violence while other times it’s the sounds of tender robots making love. Never with vocals; they distract me from the higher goal.
I type with a yellow pad placed at a specific degree to the right of the computer. The pad serves for notes and scribbles to sort through. If I laugh when it’s over then the draft is done. If I don’t have a careless laugh then it’s far from an edit mode. Time to rethink.
I have tried to break from the process: no music, no pad, no laugh like I truly don’t give a damn, but I do. I’m faithless in finding universal methods. Does the shinny MFA teach to break patterns? I’m sure it does.
What is your process? Is there an OCD like process you can’t break from? A special drink? Watching porn in a midget screen on the right?
Confess.
Touch Yourself to an Oxbow Video
March 29th, 2010Why when it comes to music videos are fan videos better than the ones the label shells out for? Not that the glorious, furious, and sexy ava
nt-garde outfit Oxbow have ever had a label pay for a video.
“Wait. This is a place of talking of words” I imagine you saying (thinking). Well Oxbow frontman Eugene Robinson is quite the lit man. Last year his debut novel A Long Slow Screw came out; it reads like a ’70s disco-punk-robbery story. Robinson also wrote the book Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking and has spewed things for Vice and Hustler.
Back to the video. It’s for Coalking from the band’s 12″ only album Songs for the French. This video is a barrage of anger, contrasting lights, castration, and possible jerking off. Hit play. Turn your computer up. Yell through your teeth and breathe through your chin.
http://www.vimeo.com/7818936Video Proof: Scott McClanahan Reading Stories in Atlanta
March 22nd, 2010Scott McClanahan recently read in Atlanta. Seeing Scott read is quite an experience; it’s not so much a performance, even though there are elements of that sprinkled in as Scott hunches and gets to grabbing distance to the audience, but this is old fashioned story telling. You know the primordial ooze that performance art, spoken word, and talking your way out of a speeding ticket was born from.
Kidney Stones is the opening tale from Scott’s second collection aptly labeled Stories II. We will have a full interview with the wonderful West Virginian man on this site very soon, but until then enjoy Scott tale of the glory and the gospel born in a bathroom of a coal mining state.
