The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts Wednesday, March 13, 2019 — 5A In the next week, the Book Review will be featuring works from Gimmick Press, a independent publisher of niche literature and art based in Detroit, Michigan. Gimmick was established in 2015 by Josh Olsen and Katie MacDonald with a commitment to diversity and inclusion of both subject matter and voice throughout all aspects of their work. Gimmick publishes digitally through “Worthless Treasures” and calls for printed chapbook and anthology submissions throughout the year. They’re currently accepting submissions for an anthology of creative nonfiction about pop culture obsessions. I find it necessary to preface this: I don’t have much experience reviewing poetry. I’ve spent most of my time with nonfiction, the remainder with fiction and poetry only when a particular poet has been introduced to me within a larger academic context or a stroke of luck brought me their way. So I enter this reflection on Mark James Andrews’s “Motor City is Burning” by defining it as exactly that — a reflection, not a review. Which is fitting, in the end, because this collection is much more about evoking a sense of place rather than challenging and advancing the contemporary canon. And that place is the grimy, Beatnik basements scattered throughout Detroit during the ’60s and ’70s. It is the rock ‘n’ roll, blues-laden scenes and rioting in the streets that lit Detroit on fire during a tumultuous era in our country’s history. We identify and recall beat poetry based on its distinct, mythologized features and the lifestyle it inspired: a dirty and progressive use of language, the flagrant abuse of drugs and alcohol and a privileged assumption of anti- materialism and counterculture ideas. Andrews’s collection is reminiscent of the beat style, and self-aware in its endeavor: In the poem “Words Can’t Describe,” Andrews writes “I lifted my pages off the green felt and began to chant / my own personal Howl / derivative to be sure but I was pure and sincere / and the young crowd was with me.” Most of the poems unfold like this, following a stream of consciousness rhythm, written as if Andrews couldn’t get the words out of his mouth and onto the page fast enough. They all contain this performative air, meant only to be read to an audience at Dick’s Bar or Samsara Lounge — settings for many of these poems. Often enough though I find that it’s easy to confuse good poetry with a confident speaker. And much of a beat poet’s allure is in their delivery, their undeniable style. This is what I think about when I read Andrews’ poetry, how, were I seated before him at Dick’s Bar listening to him perform in a daze of smoke and a cloud of alcohol, I could be swayed by it. But on the page, in 2019, these poems seem anachronistic. Even when he’s talking about current events, a suicide on Belle Isle Bridge, the language harkens back to a style and demographic from which poetry has distanced itself. And it’s one reason I cringe when reading some of these poems. I’m not sure sincerity is enough to compensate for the derivative nature of them, the feeling that, because I’ve read Ginsberg and Thompson and Burroughs, I’ve read Andrews before. And I’m not sure sincerity makes the heady sexual imagery of some of these poems any easier to swallow. Perhaps one of the most explicit examples of this is an excerpt from the poem “Rusty Cage,” which seems to take place in a strip club or cabaret: “I’m waiting for the next one / a stunning amazon / lanky, goofy, sneaky pretty / bare midriff top. / I hope her gig is a belly dance / or anything with a little bravery.” Given the opportunity to briefly glance over the collection, anyone can notice the prefuse objectification of the female body employed in many of these poems (I gave it to a co-worker and they commented on it, unprovoked). Because, of course, with the tradition of this era and its poetry comes the tradition of extraneous sexual imagery, often to the detriment of the female body (The poem “Revolution” opens with the statement that “Revolution was about pussy / more pussy / strange pussy / better drugs”). The narrator dismisses the ’60s revolutionaries in this poem, as he gazes upon the Occupy Detroit protesters in the park. But with the employment of over-sexualized language and a kind of bebop rhythm, he still romanticizes this era and draws us back to it. “Satan bebopped into Detroit / with a wad that would choke / The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse / with a Saturday Night Special,” begins the poem “Boom Boom.” Each poem in the collection is dedicated to a different rock or blues musician. “Boom Boom,” dedicated to John Lee Hooker, is more straightforward in its dedication than the rest, seeming to narrate a bit of Hooker’s importance in the Detroit jazz scene. But this connection between dedication and content is hard to locate in many of the poems. Most serve a symbolic purpose, anchoring the poem in time and memory, making them only accessible for those familiar with the musician or a specific historical instance. His use of allusions do this as well, especially in “Boom Boom” where the substance of the poem is weighed down by references lost on me and, I’m sure, other readers. The strongest poems in “Motor City is Burning” are the ones that both speak to a unique experience and don’t sink under the weight of history. “Looking at You,” dedicated to Wayne Kramer & MC5, is one of these. Recounting the night he saw MC5 play The Magic Stick, Andrews moves from a party on one end of Detroit to the crowded floor beneath the stage, and captures the rush of excitement and adrenaline that pushes a night forward from one place to the next before ending, in this case, “with a mic upper-cut popping my chin” as the narrator stood in front of the stage. There are moments in this poem where the sincerity Andrews speaks of in “Words Can’t Describe” break through gauzy descriptions and reach the surface. Moments like small children waving “as if our passing was an event / and I felt foolish just for a minute.” ‘Motor City’ needs a Tylenol I really cannot stand Billy Joel. Granted, there are a lot of artists I dislike, but none of their music is as pervasive and unavoidable as his. Billy Joel reaches for both the everyman charm of Bruce Springsteen and the campy virtuosity of Elton John however, he misses both marks, falling flat on his face in the middle. Billy Joel is no stranger to lukewarm critical reception — when asked about the critics in a 1982 interview with Playboy, Billy responded: “What they say has absolutely no effect on me! I really don’t care what they say. It doesn’t bother me. It’s irrelevant!” He has been known to rip up negative reviews on stage during his concerts, which is a great way of showing that you are definitely not mad. Let’s move to his actual music, beginning with the mawkish piece of work that is “Piano Man”: The narrative is centered around the perspective of a dive bar musician who describes the lonely clientele that pass through on a Saturday night. Like almost all his songs, the central character, in this case the “piano man,” is a hammed- up version of himself. While masquerading as a portrait of the common man, the song does not actually explore the emotional world of the patrons in any way, the only real observation being that they are lonely and dream of a better life. Instead, the narrative turns on how much they all come together to enjoy the music of ... Billy Joel. Likewise, any attempts he makes at empathy or insight are painfully banal; take “The Stranger”: “Well, we all have a face that we hide away forever / And we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.” A lot of Billy’s stories, much like “Piano Man,” seem to focus on how effortlessly cool he is. In the Playboy interview, he tells this one: “I was in Turin for this press conference and this well- dressed journalist with wing- tip shoes from a left-wing paper asked, ‘Why did you play Israel?’ He was trying to create controversy. I said, ‘I played in Israel for the same reason I played in Cuba — to play for the people. We wanted to see what the people in Israel were like instead of listening to the propaganda we get in our country.’ The people at the press conference stood up and clapped.” This anecdote could come straight from a chain email circa 2005, right down to everyone in room standing up and clapping for him. He tells a very similar story about a show in Cuba as well — his self-aggrandizement is not constrained by petty politics! Let’s also look at the “A Matter of Trust” music video. It consists of Billy and his backing band performing an open-air basement concert while onlookers slowly congregate, the event eventually turning into an impromptu concert. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s almost exactly the same concept as The Beatles’s famous rooftop concert, except Billy Joel is under the building instead of on top of it. Specifically, his feeble attempts to emulate the irreverent and mischievous public persona of The Beatles come across as arrogant. In regard to his experience with The Beatles, Billy says, “They don’t look like they were manufactured in Hollywood. They look just like me and my friends. I could see this look in John Lennon’s eyes that told me something: They were irreverent, they were making fun of the whole thing. It was this smirk on his face. They were a bunch of wise guys like me and my friends! That’s when it all took shape. I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’” The problem with this is that Billy Joel, like most people, is much, much, worse at being a wise guy than any of The Beatles. He paints himself as beleaguered by cultural elites at every turn — he’s just trying to be Billy and they won’t let him! And you know what? He’s not totally wrong. A lot of the criticism of Billy comes from a place of condescension — he is perceived by critics as middlebrow and uncool. This is a correct perception, but such criticism merely feeds into his desire to be perceived as the scrappy underdog who doesn’t care what the haut monde has to say about him. Of course, this image does not square with the fact that he is one of the best-selling artists of all time, has five Grammys, and as of last summer, Jul. 18 in New York state is henceforth to be known as “Billy Joel Day.” Thanks, Andrew Cuomo. There are plenty of musicians who don’t really offer much of substance but are pleasant nonetheless because they create well- constructed, consumable art. There’s nothing wrong with that! What makes Billy so much more offensive is that a large part of his brand is based on a supposed authenticity, when in reality his appeals to “man of the people” imagery are a cynical, self-serving act. When asked how he would define rock ‘n’ roll, Billy said, “It’s music that has passion in it, whether it’s a ballad or whatever. There’s some kind of intensity.” Aside from being a terrible attempt at defining rock music, that answer explains a lot of the lurid melodrama Billy shoves into his tunes. Billy is keenly aware of what signifies “meaning” in music and takes advantage of these tropes to create a veneer of poignancy. It is a hollow imitation. It is the Applebee’s of pop music, a tepid microwaved repackaging of actual musical expression, and it deserves little more than contempt. I do think “Vienna” is a good song, though. I loathe Billy Joel. Here’s why this is not a problem. COLUMBIA RECORDS MUSIC NOTEBOOK Clocking in at three hours and nine minutes, “Never Look Away” is an epic journey through the life of Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling, “A Coffee in Berlin”), a young artist seeking to find his sense of self through art. His youth was influenced by World War II — his aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl, “Lore”) was sterilized and euthanized by a Nazi doctor due to her “mild schizophrenia.” When we first meet Kurt and Elisabeth, he is five or six years old and she is taking him to the famous 1937 “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Dresden — one of the greatest exhibitions of modern art in history. It is here where Elisabeth tells Kurt to “never look away” as “everything true is beautiful.” Kurt never forgets these words, and the loss of his aunt affects him deeply. Raised in East Germany, Kurt attends art school in Dresden. There, he meets his wife Ellie (Paula Beer, “Transit”) with whom he ultimately leaves for the West. Despite rising above his classmates, he is restricted by the prescriptive nature of Socialist realism. Kurt desires a greater artistic freedom, which he finds in Dusseldorf. Throughout the film, we see how World War II affected Germany, personally and societally. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (“The Lives of Others”), “Never Look Away” addresses the war with brutal honesty, reminding viewers of the Nazi slaughter of non-Jewish Germans with mental illness and “undesirable genetics.” Von Donnersmarck based this film on the life of German artist Gerhard Richter. The biographical accuracy has been debated, but the similarities remain unquestioned. Kurt’s ultimate artistic style is very Richter-esque; some of the works Kurt paints in the movie are direct references to Richter’s works. This film is remarkably moving. Von Donnersmarck’s treatment of the war is raw. One particularly disturbing and somber scene, in which mentally ill women walk into a gas chamber to be euthanized, provokes a melancholy feeling of profound disgust. The film addresses life and death, particularly how living and dying affects those around us. Mother and child, birth and loss, creation and destruction. The viewer is engaged for every minute of the film; every scene adds to Kurt’s intricately layered history. This is not your average biopic. Despite the intense and artfully woven plot, the film would not be as moving without its remarkable score. Composed by Max Richter, the wonderful music elevates the film. It is fluid, powerful and engaging. I am always drawn to repeated motifs, small visual moments which tie characters and scenes together. “Never Look Away” features a few of these, most notably Elisabeth and Kurt’s separate moments of aural rapture: An unexpected mechanical chorus provides the blank canvas from which Max Richter’s score erupts, sending chills down the viewer’s spine. In “Never Look Away,” film meets music meets painting to create a portrait of human suffering and flourishing. Growth, decay, regrowth — this arc emerges in Kurt and Ellie’s passionate romance, in Kurt’s art and in the career of Ellie’s father. I would say Von Donnersmarck paints a portrait himself, of being human in the face of inhumanity. This is not your average World War II film, either. Von Donnersmarck gives the viewer an intimate look into mid- and post-War Germany. It is a film about passion and perseverance. The viewer is ultimately reminded to appreciate art and love wholeheartedly, for how else are we to cope with life and loss? ‘Never Look Away’ is a portrait on beauty FILM REVIEW ROSS ORGIEFSKY For the Daily BOOK REVIEW NATALIE ZAK Daily Arts Writer ‘Motor City is Burning and Other Rock and Roll Poems’ Mark James Andrews Gimmick Press Nov. 22, 2018 JONAH MENDELSON Daily Arts Writer ‘Never Look Away’ Sony Pictures Classics A lot of the criticism of Billy comes from a place of condescension — he is perceived by critics as middlebrow and uncool He paints himself as beleaguered by cultural elites at every turn — he’s just trying to be Billy and they won’t let him!