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December 1, 2022
Daniel Nester's Playlist for His Poetry Collection "Harsh Realm"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Daniel Nester's poetry is imbued with music. Lyricism and melody abound, but also references to musical artists whose songs give added texture to his latest collection, Harsh Realm.
In his own words, here is Daniel Nester's Book Notes music playlist for his poetry collection Harsh Realm:
When I found myself writing poems about my twenties, there was no escaping the fact that it took place in an age of grunge and O.J. Simpson and this thing called “video rental shops.” Slowly, the poems started to talk to each other in '90s-speak: a poem about meeting Liz Phair after a concert in 1993 found its bookend in a poem in which I imagine Frank O’Hara meeting a young David Lee Roth in the Village. I had no other choice but to lean into the '90s of it all.
I guess I wish the book that came out of it, Harsh Realm: My 1990s, could be dovetailed into the current 90s revival, but it doesn’t quite fit that easily into that slot. I don’t think Nirvana killed heavy metal, for example. The New York City of the '90s I remember wasn’t some indie Shangri-La. My 1990s was kind of contrarian and melancholy. Which, as I think of it, is a very '90s thing to say.
Harsh Realm: My 1990s gets its name from a musical source, an infamous list of “grunge-speak” terms that Megan Jasper, a 25-year-old Caroline records employee, gave to a reporter for the New York Times. The terms were all made up. “Tom-tom club” is fake grunge-speak for “uncool outsiders.” “Swingin’ on the flippity-flop” means “hanging out.” And “harsh realm” was Jasper’s made-up term for “bummer.”
Most of the poems in Harsh Realm include epigraphs to songs from the '90s that stand out as touchstones. As a Gen X tom-tom clubber who hung out in record stores, it felt like I witnessed all the subcultures doing their thing at once. There’s no cohesive narrative to be made from my 90s experience, and so to write about it, I returned to writing poems. Here’s a playlist.
Cocteau Twins, “Heaven or Las Vegas”
Cocteau Twins helped me get through my twenties. People seem to be talking about Cocteau Twins more these days. This makes me happy. This song is the epigraph to a poem whose name is a sentence included in every one of my books: “I Tell These Stories to Explain Why People Stop Liking Me.”
Stevie Wonder, “Love’s In Need Of Love Today”
I was tired of grunge by the time grunge broke. And so was Crystal, the TLA Video clerk I write about in “Ruby in Paradise,” where I checked out lots of movies on VHS. She played Songs In The Key of Life to keep grunge at bay.
Liz Phair, “Divorce Song”
One of the best shows of my life was seeing Liz Phair on October 23, 1993 at Khyber Pass in Philly. This was just when Exile in Guyville was exploding. I write about the gig in “I met Liz Phair once,” which Liz Phair recently read and enjoyed its ‘quality nostalgia’!
David Hasselhoff, “Looking for Freedom”
I went to Germany to visit a college friend in December 1989. This is when the Iron Curtain fell, so we drove to the Berlin Wall for New Year’s Eve. David Hasselhoff, high up in a cherry picker in a suit of lights, sang this to drunk Germans chipping away at concrete. The title poem reflects on this, among other life events.
Hootie & The Blowfish, “Only Wanna Be with You”
September 5, 1995: At the Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards, Hootie & the Blowfish stop their performance of “Only Wanna Be With You” mid-song and raise a toast to R.E.M., who are getting an award. This is the moment college rock died, in case anyone is curious.
Madonna, “Ray of Light”
I got into some debate with some bro-dude about Madonna at Pete’s Candy Store, a bar in Williamsburg. The debate was dumb, absurdly macho, and the dude had a pit bull. I write about this in “Poem Written at Pete’s Candy Store Ending With Line from ‘Ray of Light.’”
TLC, “Waterfalls”
TLC’s best singles have a tinge of melancholy, and “Waterfalls” was my theme song around the time I got the results of my first AIDS test on October 3, 1995, a date that I would have forgotten if it wasn’t also the day the O.J. Simpson murder trial verdict was also announced.
The Smashing Pumpkins, “1979”
The '90s were a time of instant nostalgia. I’m not a Corgan/Pumpkins superfan, but this song ranks as one of the best songs of the 90s and maybe of all time.
Pavement, “Cut Your Hair”
I take this song to be a slacker meditation of “making it,” and it resonated with me amidst the absurdly ambitious world of poets, MFA and non-MFA alike, in New York City. Even now at readings and book parties, I hear Stephen Malkmus singing “career, career, career, career.
The Replacements, “Here Comes a Regular”
I don’t think we realized at the time what we lost when the Replacements broke up in July 1991, weeks before Nirvana released “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I write about this loss in “On Realizing Poison’s ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ Has the Same Chords as the Replacements’ ‘Here Comes a Regular.’”
Daniel Nester is the author of Harsh Realm: My 1990s, a poetry and prose poem collection published by Indolent Books in 2022. His previous books include Shader, a memoir; How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of humorous nonfiction; and The Incredible Sestina Anthology, which he edited. He currently edits Pine Hills Review, the literary journal of The College of Saint Rose, where is also a professor of English.
His first two books, God Save My Queen: A Tribute and God Save My Queen II: The Show Must Go On, are hybrid collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His third, The History of My World Tonight, is a book of poems. His poems have appeared in such journals as Bennington Review, The Hopkins Review, Word For/Word, Court Green, Love’s Executive Order, Barrelhouse, and other places.
As a journalist and essayist, his work has appeared in a variety of places, such as Salon, New York Times, Buzzfeed, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, and the Poetry Foundation website, and anthologized in such collections as Lost and Found, The Best American Poetry, The Best Creative Nonfiction, Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll, and Now Write! Nonfiction.
Before editing Pine Hills Review, he was the editor of the online journals Unpleasant Event Schedule and La Petite Zine, and served as senior editor at Painted Bride Quarterly and the associated web editor for sestinas at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He lives in Upstate New York with his wife and their two daughters. Find more at danielnester.com.
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