Water & Power

by Standard Schaefer

Poetry. WATER & POWER was the original title of the film Chinatown, referring to the utility department that caused so much devastation to the Owens River: a fitting title for Standard Schaefer's second book and its many thematic overlaps with the film. Schaefer draws on documentary materials, journals, biographies, Hollywood myth and the literature of the American West to describe the landscape and characters of that terrain as quite distinct from the legacy of Walden Pond and its corresponding notions of individualism so prevalent in American culture. Drawing from the music of Charles Mingus, Igor Stravinsky, Frank Zappa, and Willie Nelson, he tries to capture the music on which the landscapes depend. WATER & POWER is a portrait of the American West as seen through CIA satellite photographs accompanied by the music of West Coast Jazz and the European avant-garde composers who took refuge there.

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite profs wrote a book where he said the truth of the West is found in the twist of the radio dial that takes you from country & western to fire & brimstone, barstool to church pew, two-step to sermon, wreck and redemption and back to wreck again: the twin poles of California Okie life. Schaefer’s approach to California in Water & Power is kind of like that, locking into frequencies from “banjo ripples” to Robinson Jeffers, Spanish alcaldes to “dandy lions bobbysocking off Laurel Canyon,” sounds that stay only a moment before the static brings in a new tune, until all subjects finally fade and blur together but the canyons and peaks and rivers remain, against sunsets big enough for everyone to ride off into, dry as the desert that gave us the dream that sent us out there in the first place.

[Kosuke Arai]

1, 120min