Warhol's Mother's Pantry: Art, America, and the Mom in Pop
M. I. Devine
(Author)
Description
Winner of the 2019 Gournay Prize "What are these fragments we've Jersey Shored against our ruin?" asks M. I. Devine, remixing T. S. Eliot, in this dizzying collection of essays that pays homage to the cultural forms that hold us steady. These fragments are stored in Warhol's Mother's Pantry, which takes us deep beneath the surfaces of pop to explore our shared quest for meaning today. Julia Warhola, an immigrant who arrived as the US was closing its borders a century ago, is the muse of reuse in these essays that cross boundaries--between now and then, high and low. She is the mom in pop who cut tin cans into flowers and taught Andy (and us) how to reshape and redeem our world. In essays as lyrical, witty, and experimental as the works they cover, Devine offers a new account of pop humanism. How we cut new things from the traditions we're given, why we don't stop believin' (and carry on, wayward sons) when so much is stacked against us. Here are Leonard Cohen's last songs and Molly Bloom's last words; Vampire Weekend's Rostam and Philip Larkin too; Stevie Smith, John Donne, and Kendrick Lamar; sonnets and selfies; early cinema and post-9/11 film, pop hooks, and pop art. In Devine's hands, these literary and cultural artifacts are provocatively reassembled into an urgent and refreshing history that refuses to let its readers forget where pop came from and where it can go.
Product Details
Price
$24.95
$23.20
Publisher
Mad Creek Books
Publish Date
November 09, 2020
Pages
288
Dimensions
5.5 X 8.4 X 0.6 inches | 0.7 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780814256060
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
M. I. Devine's essays have appeared in American Literature, Adaptation, Measure, and Los Angeles Review of Books. His writing has won support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Cofounder of the pop music project Famous Letter Writer, he is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh.
Reviews
"In critico-lyrical prose that pops off the page and skips over boundaries with the agility native to its most daring subjects, Devine issues a challenge to his readers: Let us go. Take him up. You won't regret it." --Boris Dralyuk, Executive Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Witty, subversive, poetic. This book is a joy to read. M. I. Devine is a writer for our times." --Keith Zarriello, singer-songwriter, The Shivers
"Devine is remarkably successful at arraying a pop cosmology that positions his sources so they can talk to each other, upending chronology and genre such that T.S. Eliot samples Hozier, the Kardashians are trying to keep up with Phillip Larkin's 'selfish' sonnets, and John Donne and Kendrick Lamar speak of God in unison." --Jordana Rosenfeld, Chicago Review of Books
"Warhol's Mother's Pantry is an inventive, playful, and rangy consideration.... It's the type of generative book that left me with a personal syllabus of poetry and film--Devine has a way of magnetizing himself to past and present, bounding across references and texts." --Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions
"Devine's book is part performance piece... putting the past in conversation with the present--not conversation, dance. A Twyla Tharp piece, feat. Tyehimba Jess and Leonard Cohen. Reading Warhol's Mother's Pantry is reading as modern dance. We move from space to space, with partners and solo, trusting his choreography." --Amy Penne, Tupelo Quarterly
"Linguistic playfulness, T.S. Eliot mixing it up with Snooki, is typical of Devine's method, as is his blending of aesthetics and theology. (In one section, he puts John Donne in conversation with Kendrick Lamar.) Sometimes the writing resembles prose, sometimes poetry, often something in-between." --Anthony Domestico, Commonweal
"Part prose poem, part mixtape, part mash-up, and part commonplace book, Warhol's Mother's Pantry channel surfs the cultural waves of the long twentieth century as they break on the shores of pop." --Mike Chasar, author of Poetry Unbound: Poems and New Media from the Magic Lantern to Instagram
"Witty, subversive, poetic. This book is a joy to read. M. I. Devine is a writer for our times." --Keith Zarriello, singer-songwriter, The Shivers
"Devine is remarkably successful at arraying a pop cosmology that positions his sources so they can talk to each other, upending chronology and genre such that T.S. Eliot samples Hozier, the Kardashians are trying to keep up with Phillip Larkin's 'selfish' sonnets, and John Donne and Kendrick Lamar speak of God in unison." --Jordana Rosenfeld, Chicago Review of Books
"Warhol's Mother's Pantry is an inventive, playful, and rangy consideration.... It's the type of generative book that left me with a personal syllabus of poetry and film--Devine has a way of magnetizing himself to past and present, bounding across references and texts." --Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions
"Devine's book is part performance piece... putting the past in conversation with the present--not conversation, dance. A Twyla Tharp piece, feat. Tyehimba Jess and Leonard Cohen. Reading Warhol's Mother's Pantry is reading as modern dance. We move from space to space, with partners and solo, trusting his choreography." --Amy Penne, Tupelo Quarterly
"Linguistic playfulness, T.S. Eliot mixing it up with Snooki, is typical of Devine's method, as is his blending of aesthetics and theology. (In one section, he puts John Donne in conversation with Kendrick Lamar.) Sometimes the writing resembles prose, sometimes poetry, often something in-between." --Anthony Domestico, Commonweal
"Part prose poem, part mixtape, part mash-up, and part commonplace book, Warhol's Mother's Pantry channel surfs the cultural waves of the long twentieth century as they break on the shores of pop." --Mike Chasar, author of Poetry Unbound: Poems and New Media from the Magic Lantern to Instagram
