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"A note to Pound in heaven: Only one mistake, Ezra! You should have talked to women"
--George Oppen, _Twenty Six Fragments_
Archives:
xoxo Hey, E-Mail Me! xoxo
ManY PoETiKaL HaTs LisT:
Holly's Pirate-girl Hat,
chrismurray in a straw hat,
Michael Helsem's Gray Wyvern NOLA Fedora.
Duchamp's Rrose Selavy's flirting hat.
Max Ernst's Hats of The Hat Makes the Man.
Jordan Davis' The Hat!
poetry. hks' smelly head baseball cap.
Samuel Beckett's Lucky's
Black bowler hat,
giving his oration
on what's questionable in mankind,
in *Waiting for 'God-ot'*.
my friend John Phillips's 1969
dove gray fedora w/ wild feather.
Bob Dylan's mystery lover's Panama Hat.
Bob Creeley's Black Mountain Felt Boater Hat.
Duke Ellington's Satin
Top Hat. Acorn Hats of Tree.
Freud's 1950 City Fedora.
Joseph Brodsky's Sailor Cap.
Harry K Stammer's Copper Hat
Hell. Lewis LaCook's bowler hat(s).
Tom Beckett's Bad Hair Day
Furry Pimp Hat. Daughter Holly's black beret.
harry k stammer's fez. Cat
in the Hat's Hat & best
hat, Googling Texfiles:
crocheted hat with flames.
Harry K Stammer's tinseled berets.
Tex's 10 gallon Gary Cooper felt Stetson cowboy hat.
Jordan Davis's fedora.
Dali's High-heel Shoe Hat. Harry K Stammer's en-blog LAPD Hat
& aluminum baseball cap. cap'n caps. NY-Yankees caps. the HKS-in-person-caps
are blue or green no logos nor captions.
Ma Skanky Possum 10's nighttime cap.
moose antler hat. propeller beenie hat.
doo rag. knit face mask hat. Bob Dylan's & photographer Laziz
Hamani's panama hats. Mark Weiss's Publisher's Hat.
Rebecca Loudon's Seattle-TX-Hats'n'boots.
Ever-Evolving Links:
Silliman's Links
Dominic Rivron
Unidentified
Br Tom @ One & Plainer
Dan Waber: ars poetica anthology
Dan Waber: altered books anthology
chris daniels: Notes to a Fellow Traveller
Chris Daniels: Toward an Anti-Capitalist Poetry
David Daniels: The Gates Of Paradise
subterranean poets: Beijing Poetry Group
Charles Alexander/Chax Press: Chaxblog
Headlines Poetry: the latest weblog entries
Henry Gould's AlephoeBooks
Julie Choffel's Understory
Tom Murphy's former one
Jean Vengua's New Okir
Roger Pao's Asian-American Poetry
Tom Lisk: Oilcloth and Linoleum
Kevin Doran
Reb Livingston's Cackling Jackal Blog
Janet Holmes: Humanophone
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Mark Young's gamma ways
Brian Campbell: Out of the Woodwork
Shanna's DIY Publishing Blog
Galatea Resurrects: a Poetry Review
Tom Beckett
John Sakkis: BOTH BOTH
New Francois Luong:Voices in Utter Dark, KaBlow!sm is...
Old Francois Luong: Voices in Utter Dark
Margin Walker: Andrew Lundwall
Free Space Comix: the latest BK Stefans blog
Adam Lockhart, Experimentalist Composer
Antic View: Alan Bramhall & Jeff Harrison
lookouchblog: Jessica Smith
MiPOradio
Web Log -- Charles Bernstein
Google Poem Generator: Leevi Lehto
Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Feral Scholar: Stan Goff
worderos: Tom Beckett
In Galatea's Purse
Japundit
Quiet Desperation: Jim Ryal
Luca Antara: Martin Edmond
Brief Epigrams: Ryan Alexander MacDonald
Radio My Vocabulary: 4 pm Sunday Poetry Streams
Mark Lamoreaux: [[[0{:}0]]]
Hot Whiskey Blog
louder
Nick Bruno: They Shoot Poets Don't They?
Joe Massey: Rooted Fool
Kate Greenstreet: every other day
heuriskein: Tom Orange
Chiaroscuro Metropoli: Tom Beckett
Behrle's latest spout!
Fluffy Dollars: Michelle Detorie
Jane Dark's Sugar High!
The Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center
(Charles) Olson Now: Michael Kellaher & Ammiel Alcalay
kari edwards' TranssubMUTATION
Notes on the Revival: Jeremy Hawkins
PurPur: Petrus Pokus
Snapper Missives: Scott Pierce
A Sad Day for Sad Birds II: Gina Meyers
Great Works: Peter Philpot
zafusy: experimental poetry journal
Writeboard: a collaborative writing tool
John Latta: Rue Hazard
KP Harris: Croissant Factory
Stephanie Young's New Site
Stephen Vincent's New Site
Portable Press@Yo~Yo Labs
Square America
Amy King's blog
Robert: Peyoetry Hut
Muisti Kirja: Karri Kokko
Karri Kokko's Blonde on Blonde
Yummeee Blog (recipes)
Nice Guy Syndrome: Tim Botta
Left Hook
Del Ray Cross: anachronizms
Juan Cole: Informed Comment
BuzzFlash - Daily Headlines, Breaking News, Links
Aaron McCollough
Chris Lott's Cosmopoetica
Chad Parenteau
Little Emerson
Fever, Light--by Sawako Nakayasu
Second Wish
Nomadics
Alison Croggon
Radical Druid
Ron is Ron: the Ron Silliman Cartoon by Jim Behrle
Dagzine: Positions, Poetics, Populations: Gary Norris
Shadows within Shadows: Tom Beckett
Self Similar Writing: Jukka Pekka Kervinen
The Little Workshop: Cassie Lewis
Sky Bright: Jay Rosevear
Poesy Galore: Emily Lloyd
Lisa Jarnot's Blog
Poetry Hut: Jilly Dybka (has moved here)
Pornfeld: Michael Hoerman
Seven Apples: Justin Ulmer
Hi Spirits: Andrew Burke
Bacon Bargain!: Joe Massey
Ivy is here: Ivy Alvarez
Whimsy Speaks: Jeff Bahr
Umbrella: Jeff Wietor
Chicanas! (Susana L. Gallardo)
Masters of Photography
Blog of Disquiet: Gary Norris' Teaching Blog
Suzanna Gig Jig
Bad with Titles: Jay Thomas
Spaceship Tumblers! Tony Tost
Desert City: Ken Rumble
E-Po
Zotz!
Optative Mood: Tim Morris
ecritures bleues: Laura Carter
The Ingredient: Alli Warren
Skanky Possum Pouch
Slight Publications
Jewishy-Irishy: Laurel Snyder
Sea-Camel: Alberto Romero Bermo
Growing Nations: Jordan Stempleman
Tom Raworth
Entropy and Me: Hal Johnson
Scott Pierce: Snapper's Junk
Chicano Poet: Reyes Cardenas
Semio-Karl M&M
Stephen Vincent
Hoa Nguyen/Teacher's & Writers
a New Word Placements
Narcissus Works: Anny Ballardini
Richard Lopez
Tributary: Allen Bramhall
The_Delay: Chris Vitiello
Jukka Pekka Kervinen: Nonlinear Poetry
Lanny Quarles: Phaneronoemikon
Clifford Duffy: Fictions of Deleuze & Guattari
DagZine
Carrboro Poetry Festival
Steve Evans: Third Factory
DEBORAH PATILLO
SKANKY POSSUM PRESS
Tim Peterson: Mappemunde
WOOD'S LOT
Geof Huth: DBQP
Ann Marie Eldon
Jim Behrle: The Jim Side
Ray Bianchi:Postmodern Collage Poetry
Never Mind the Beasts
Diaryo
New Broom
Flingdump Scattershot
Tony Tost: Unquiet Grave
Grapez
SB POET
Mark Young's Pelican Dreaming
|||AS/IS2|||
Li's A Private Studio
Anny Ballardini's Poet's Corner
Tom Beckett: Vanishing Points
Dumbfoundry
BadGurrrlNest
Jean Vengua's Okir
Hear-it dot org: info on hearing problems
Tim Yu's Tympan
James Yeager's Modern Lives
Tony Robinson: Geneva Convention
Daniel Nestor's Unpleasant Event
Ex-Lion Tamer
Carlos Arribas: Scriptorium
David Nemeth
Ela's Incertain Plume
Mairead Byrne's Heaven
Catherine Daly
Black Spring
Br.Tom's Finish Yr Phrase
Shin Yu Pai: makura-no-soshi
Harry K. Stammer: Downtown LA
Corina's Fledgling Wordsmith
Jilly Dybka's Poetry Hut
Ben Basan's Luminations
Katey: Chewing on Pencils
YaY!! Eileen Tabios: Chatelaine Poetics !
Jill Jones: Ruby Street
Geoffrey Gatza's BlazeVox
Bill Allegrezza's P-Ramblings
Gary Sullivan's Elsewhere
GoldenRuleJones
Poetry_Heat
Bookslut
Chickee's SuperDeluxeGoodPoems
As-Is !
John Latta's Hotel Point
Sawako Nakayasu's Ongoing Show
Shanna Compton's Brand New Insects
Crag Hill
kari edwards: transdada
Fluss
Michael Helsem's Gray Wyvern
Word Placement
Bogue's Blog
Jordan Davis: Equanimity
Robert Flach's Unadulterated Text
Michelle Bautista
Ironic Cinema
Mike Snider
Farewell Tonio!
In Through the Out Door
The Blonde Brunette
Awake at Dawn on Someone's Couch is Toast
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen:Non-Linear
Xpress(ed) !
Chris Lott's Ruminate
Venepoetics
Laura: Yellowslip
Stick Poet Super Hero
Mighty Jens!
Radio UTA: Toni's Thursday Poetry Show
Tim Morris: Lection
Gabe Gudding
Constant Critic
Sappho's Breathing
Waves of Reading
Jhananin's Insite
Fanaticus
AdvExpo
Stephen Vincent
Stephanie Young: New Well Nourished Moon
Kasey Silem Mohammad's Newest Limetree
Lanny Quarles: (solipsis)//:phaneronoemikon
States Writes
Rebecca's Pocket
Simulacro
Braincase Links
Sentence
Sor Juana
73 Urban Bus Journeys
Poeta Empirica
poetry for the people: canwehaveourballback?
Ernesto Priego's Never Neutral
Nick Piombino's Fait Accompli
Weekly Incite blogresearch
Jim Behrle's first monkey
Jim Behrle's Monkey's Gone to Heaven
David Kirschenbaum's Boog City
Not Nick Moudry
Laurable
David Hess Heathens in Heat
Jack Kimball's Pantaloons
Li Bloom's Abolone
Ron Silliman
Chris Sullivan's Bloggchaff
Chris Sullivan's Slight Publications
Chris Sullivan's Department of Culture
Kasey S. Mohammad's Old-New Limetree
Kasey's Old Limetree
James Meetze: Brutal Kittens
Cassie Lewis: The Jetty
Joseph Mosconi's Harlequin Knights
Nada Gordon's Ululate
ultimate: Stephanie Young's First Well Nourished Moon
Steve Evans: Third Factory
Noah Eli Gordon's Human Verb
Jean Vengua's Blue Kangaroo
Sawako Nakayasu: Texture Notes
Free Space Comix: BK Stefans
Crosfader
Malcolm Davidson's eeksy peeksy
Marsh Hawk Press group
Catherine Meng's Porthole Redux
Josh Corey's Cahiers de Corey
Very Nice! Shampoopoetry
UTA's Lit Mag: ZNine
Wild Honey Press
Jacket
JFK's Poetinresidence
Malcolm Davidson's Tram Spark poems
HYepez: RealiTi
HYpez: Mexperimental
Aimee Nez's Gila Monster
BestMaX: Jim Behrle's jismblog
Cori Copp's Littleshirleybean
Jordan Davis: Million Poems
Eileen Tabios: Corpsepoetics [see Chatelaine above]
YaY! Liz's Thirdwish
Ultra Linking
Henry Gould's HG Poetics
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Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Hurry: go to kari edwards' Transdada and take the quiz: "What art form are you?"
chris at
3:22 PM
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Hey! Big Congratulations to Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan on their betrothal. Bliss is Best!
chris at
5:24 AM
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Wow, Jilly! Sounds like a really full exciting week. Rock on!
chris at
4:58 AM
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from Mark Weiss, Texfiles Poet of the Week :
Five poems from his new manuscript, recently completed after his travels in August, 2003 : Australia
San Diego
Away from home, and other teeth will eat my tomatoes.
Faithless, anyone’s tomatoes.
Butterfly almost the color of the blossom
it lands on. Slightly greener, but wings folded
become invisible. Something here,
must be eats
butterflies.
Scant rain
big drops
with space between
nonetheless
a hammer-blow
to a hummingbird
A second generation of flowers on my night blooming cereus
waits for dark, and in the valley between its ridges
tiny snails search for nutriments.
Cock-eye the sailor man
a port in every girl.
Just have to learn the sandbars.
Sydney, Coogie Bay
Like home? Two cockatoos perched on a phone line.
And a walk, still dazed with travel,
along cliffs and beaches, Coogie to Bondi. Coogie
an arch of sand between promontories.
Cemetary Cliff terraced above surf. A wheel
to steer by, three spokes intact.
“He sees his pilot face to face
Now he has crossed the bar”
Captain George Nyholm. 11th December 1907
Aged 55
Lorikeets
Magpies, but larger than ours, and perch in trees.
Blue-lit public bathrooms.
Junkies can’t see their veins. One would think
they’d miss.
Or skin pop. Or even
mark a vein before entering.
Katoomba, Blue Mountains
Like a white rag
cockatoo flutters down the canyon.
Silently the white cockatoo
like a leaf
floats
to canyon bottom
the merest lint
in the shape of a bird
on the green mat of eucalyptus.
60 years to get here
skating all the way
and how many left
for the rest.
The unfamiliarity of the southern sky.
“Sailors take warning.”
In the morning
In the morning al amanecer at the becoming
day the light,
understood as progress,
not mandate, declares
it will happen
in the face of all logic.
Fell, like a handkerchief
with wings.
Coogie Bay
Concrete pools filled by the tides.
“Beautiful”--alright, then.
The niceties of daily life.
Society a loose bond of friendships.
The sand drained from beneath her feet she enters
pushing the waves before her, become liquid,
dissolved, resolved
as vector.
Cliff to cliff,
and back again. Then dries her hair,
arms raised, neck bent to the towel,
a straight leg, and a bent,
torsion at waist.
The half-life of life.
A discontinuous life experienced as discontinuous.
A gull flies low across the beach
its shadow before it
broken by the surface it seems
to paint.
Sydney
Jewfish.
First time I’ve seen one on a menu,
and I order it
as if compelled, my head
thrust forward, reptilian,
checking the room for danger.
Danger without, and within. The fish
named for the way it rubs its pectorals,
for all the world a moneylender
rubbing his hands,
anticipating the ruin
of another Christian. Shylock
the Jewfish. Rationale
for the deaths of millions.
What would I call it,
swallowed insult? Eucharist
of humiliation? Delicious and tender,
with an avocado chutney.
Here as elsewhere,
the scourge of Christianity.
A short black/ a tall
black it’s only coffee,
only here.
chris at
3:30 AM
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New Orleans is not all that far from here--if you're going to be there this weekend:
check out this poetry reading on Sunday
by
Gerald Schwartz:
Sunday afternoon, Jan. 11, 2004, @ 3:00 p.m.
The Maple Leaf Bar
8316 Oak Street
New Orleans, La 70118
Free!
chris at
1:44 AM
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Ben Basan, at Luminations,
is interviewing me this week! Thanks for the showcasing, Ben! I'm glad to be there at Luminations, and honored.
I think this interview idea of Ben's is wonderful. It's good to be able to read at length about the blogger behind the blog, ya kno?--I was intrigued reading last week about Bill Marsh's life, ideas, and SDPG.
And now I can't wait to see which blogger and blog are next!
chris at
1:08 AM
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Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Coming up here shortly: New Work from
** Mark Weiss, Texfiles Poet of the Week **
chris at
8:01 PM
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that score below is meant as a way of saying i've been sick since yesterday, flu--yuck!--but it exacerbates the ear problem. so, the ear won that one but only by a point, no?
chris at
7:59 PM
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Last Night's and Today's Final Score:
Airport Runways & Impossibly Small Zen Monks with Tiny Bells : 100
Chris Murray : 99
chris at
5:29 PM
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Monday, January 05, 2004
Dale Smith Weighs-in: about that Unbelievable Believer article...
"It doesn't matter if Yasusada is 'real'; his existence in language is vitally active within the imagination of many people. There's a thin line between existence and nonexistence anyway, and both stream through us and language is the thread in it all." --Dale Smith, "Believer Beware," 02 Jan 04
The best kind of disciplined response to what lacks credence, as surely this Believer article does?--keepin' it short and sweet, as you do so well here, Dale. Very nice work: responsible...
Chris Murray
chris at
3:33 PM
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^ ) ^ --Yo!!--Skanky Possum 9 & 10 came in Saturday's mail :
scroll down here to Sunday, 04 Jan 04's 5:30 a.m. post for tex-sized bits of some great poetry, including Timothy Liu's version of Sappho # 1 ( L&P) !
While yr at it, also scroll to check out poetry on Sunday night from the latest
Texfiles Poet of the Week, Mark Weiss !
and the round-up post for Michael Helsem's poetry feature from the last week (give or take a few days, ya kno?)
chris at
6:12 AM
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Walking is Horizontal and Vertical: "a pleasure fulfilled..."
chris at
3:41 AM
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yeah, right, Jeff: you're just jealous because you don't have impossibly tiny zen monks with bells hanging out in your left ear... I kno how it is...
chris at
2:54 AM
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Tabasco: chipotle
A lesson from daughter Holly's bro, Jeff Brimager's excelante friend, Nick Choate. About Tabasco: "Do not put Tabasco in your blogg. Keep it in your pocket. Um, always. Or always keep it in your car. Su transportation devicee. Thank you, Ma'm. Love is Good. Good Night now."
:) cm
chris at
2:12 AM
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** Announcing
another newly featured Texfiles Poet of the Week! **
It gives me great pleasure here to introduce the poetry of the highly esteemed poet of intuition, sensuality, & erudition, as well as the exacting & most accomplished publisher of Junction Press. Last but not least, of course, is this poet's renown as translator. A warm welcome, then, to
** Mark Weiss ** :
(the above link is courtesy of Wild Honey Press)
PARTS OF A SUNSET
Williamsburg, Mass.
At sundown
gold on the birches.
One mountain sets behind the other
on the earth's curve.
On her side
purple water lavender stones.
In the valley
different birds.
.
A deep-voiced bird.
an orange persian attacks a sparrow in the tall grass. Some kind of tree behind her.
The cut hay lies flat
in the field by my old house. In blue twilight
a pert blond in cutoffs is painting it white.
A man hoes a rectangular garden on the slope where the survey map's contour
runs between the house and the pond. The eastern sky
has turned pale ochre, and
begins to be pink or orange. To the west
the red shirt on the line with the sun under it.
The life the other side of the windshield a miniature life.
.
Man tying baled hay to his truck. I remember it
carted by horses
in such a sunlight
eight years ago.
..
.
BRAHMS AND MARVELL
Brahms, we know, haunted bordellos, loved sopranos
and lady pianists, bathed
in post-coital sadness. Ich grolle nicht
wrote Schumann raving
while Brahms and Clara rolled in the next room. Marvell,
the scholars tell us, on the other hand,
died virginal his women
figures of speech. His verses
argue otherwise
his mourning nymph not marble
but flesh
quivering in the shock of loss a sexual loss. Or portraying his king as rapist. Always
the awareness of pressure in his own groin
the garden itself
an orgy.
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in paradise alone,
the passionate man's renunciation of passion for his self's sake. Brahms
is more explicit about his motives he writes to Clara
he shall never marry, his art requires it. Love
so comforting you lose yourself in it the self-absorption that the act requires constantly
intruded upon by domestic necessity. Society
is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
I keep hoping
for my own solution that
the love of life and its passing
can live together in my body with longing,
and with beauty,
who enters alone
like the moist girl from behind the curtains of my mind's castle the constant
adulteress. I have seen her,
her feet approaching over the bare stones
hidden within me. How
to conduct my life
with such a secret?
..
.
In the vest-pocket park I sit near the waterfall
and read. When I look up there are clusters of
yellow mums vibrating
like the Matisse at the museum. A woman
appears to be dipping her brush.
The paving-stones are paintings.
Women women with eyes and hair.
Her startled eyes.
The planes
of bodies and faces.
..
.
On the subway
radiant blond hair
frightened eyes.
I look again. A girl
on the verge of tears. When I look again it's to wonder
which of the newcomers wore rose-water so lavishly
that it filled the car
and I imagined myself in a garden.
..
.
RUSTY TRACKS
1
Abandoned tracks. Between the ties
heads and guts of chickens. I recoil,
move on. Later,
among the wreckage,
a bed of weeds,
a toad.
2
Across the cinders
red and white cloth snaps in the wind.
3
Through the overcast,
an ochre sunlight,
patches of blue. One goes about
one's business.
..
.
The women circle, the men
cut in, she dances
with many men. And I think
of the mating of bees, all those eggs in
their bursting sack,
to be fertilized by the chosen partner.
..
.
After a feast,
distended,
I sit among starving Africans, their naked
flesh hanging like rotted cloth, that
flaccid. I give them,
smiling,
an almost empty bucket from which
they will not eat. Even in sleep. Even in company.
..
.
THE BLUE CUP, after Joseph de Camp
In the painting she holds
a translucent cup to the light. She wears
a fluffy apron, and her sleeves are bunched
above her elbows. A young housewife,
cleaning, caught smiling, and in the light shining
on her upturned face she is translucent
as well. Enchanted, I leave the museum
and find her again in a woman
walking into sunlight.
..
.
chris at
12:21 AM
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Listening: Gate Krasher--special gift from Jeff Brimager, daughter Holly's good and wise friend, so like a brother. I'm grateful.
I love this mix you made, Jeff. So good, keep on!
chris at
12:16 AM
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Sunday, January 04, 2004
And some say I only know enough to be!
really dangerous!
yeah: coming [nod to Cixous, yes, you read that right, y'all]
(are people from New York or Arizona allowed to say Y'all?--I mean I know no one else is allowed this privilege, at least not in the disciplinary halls of my children's high school, but I never did get the rules on that quite right otherwise here in good ol' top-down Texas)
up on the Magic Hour around here: getting ready to announce another Texfiles Poet of the Week. I like this moment a lot. I'm really not a big control freak at all--really--just ask anyone who has met me or knows me in person: I'm very *oh, hey, do what you like, and I'll do what I like and somewhere along the way we will have anemone waves or some granny cookies, really!* Except of course with students: Y'all: beware, be scared. Grades are everything in my book of books. You know this. Do not underestimate my grave concern & etc, hey, Ted, duende dude, I like all that crow you keep talkin ... & etc ...
New Poetry here on the blog slate. Always feels so festive to me. I like it, yes, I like that a lot!
chris at
11:51 PM
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Actually, ya kno what music sounds better?--with the ear thing
going on, I mean (cf post below, "ear problems")? Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark. It's way-far-overboard conventional bougey Malibu aquanet spray on my blonde shoulder strap-ons (!ooooo) (it was just a smokey mirror PR B-job when it came out: Mitchell says as much in the live double done a few years later with the LA Express), and needs more, um, salty court, peppery spark? Heck, how about some habanero or just a nice cold lover's plum?--wasn't happ'n w/the promoters who were helpn on the money end of who you are, honey, ya kno? Identi-T-straight ironed blonde hair sings nice har har.
But yeah, the impossibly tiny zen monks with bells certainly make for a much better (he he he) *helpme! ima parking lot blonde! im yer best shoulder pad...*
Well, anyway, one of the lists I belong to just had a very interesting riff on Janis Joplin--definitely a rock enigma skidding across all helpmes, that my little zen fellows could not ever improve upon (she woulda picked 'em up and hugged 'em straight outta life, ya kno?). The question begins with O. The answer is Original.
So, I have some poems done over her somewhere around here, I think, archives about 3 months ago?--mentioned in passing to the spectacular Sawako Nakayasu! [that one's a link to Sawako's first blog, Texture Notes, where you can find my favorite Sawako poem, the dream about hamburger--Ouch!]--
(hi, Sawako!)--and that one is a link is to the second blog, The On Going Show--Sawako's slate for performance pieces--over email during the week she and her fantastically gummy-surreal poems were featured on Texfiles Poet of the Week (check archives for early October).
Well anyway, my working title for that grouping of poems, re: Janis Joplin, is *Evolving Janis Objects*. I'm such a synechdochal fool sometimes: I just love the title: I think I love the title more than whatever the poems might be now or might become. That may be a bad sign, as in: Janis!--Born Under a Bad Sign (Again!). Will keep working on getting a far, far, better attitude here. I promise. [Praying, right now, to the impossibly tiny zen men with bells, yes! as we speak.]
* "Well some are gonna try to break you, too, O Trouble Child, breakin like the waves at Malibu... "--yeah, right. Janis would never have put up w/that sh_t, no?--more like: break that effiing bottle on my back, Suuhkkuhh, and see what it gets ya, baby summmmmmmertimerimeitiloveitdon'teverstop....
but then she did. damn!
ta ta fn xoxoxo
chris at
10:46 PM
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Kindly Reminders Received * :
from harry k. stammer * : new caps for the ManY PoETikal HaTs LisT:
NY Yankees cap & every kind of captain ("cap'n") cap !
which then got my sleepy memory jogged enough to recall seeing, just this afternoon, another new beauty for the list:
On the cover of Skanky Poss # 10, where Ma Poss is wearing a Nighttime Cap while she is rocking and knitting by the woodburining stove (?--i believe it is a heating stove, it may be some other kind besides wood, tho; will have to check on this detail; and indeed, it may also be a stand-up radio--not sure!). YaY!!
* Special thanks to harry k. stammer (who also has a kick-ass piece of foto art--"Wittgenstein Wipes, 1/1/04"--up on his blog right now! ) for not letting the ManY PoETiKal HaTs LisT be inadvertently neglected by yours truly :)
chris at
10:11 PM
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Going walking! In the wind. Wearing a scarf I made, and a hooded sweatshirt: don't want any wind bothering the impossibly small zen monks with bells asleep in my left ear...
chris at
7:00 PM
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ear problems
all day yesterday but receding today. not vertigo this time, but likened to the effect of having a host of small jets landing inside my left eardrum over and over with little bells being rung by impossibly small zen monks. if you've ever experienced it, you know what i mean. if not, then don't get in line for this one... so strange. there may be some correlation, they say, to work done earlier in life as an airline ramp agent: loading baggage into the cargo holds of DC 9s, directly under idling jet engines--it can cause ear damage. well yesterday, at least, there were no train whistles tho, which is nice (no, I never worked on a train...)--those get very alarming and make all of that noise very hard to ignore. teeth, sinus, inner ear, who knows. there were also echo effects for everything yesterday: didn't bother me much when i was listening to Dirty Vegas, since there is a sound zoo operating all the time in their music anyway. but generally it makes music listening an experience either very annoying or very unintentionally new. and people get very irritated when asked to repeat themselves--that's always fun. all this strange humid overwarm for January weather. the sounds make sleep nearly impossible. being unable to hear on one side really messes up the sense of awareness of self-in-sound-space--difficult to orient oneself on that perceptional level. doctors know nothing. all their tests are dumb and unreliable as far as I am concerned. colder, drier weather today. things improving--smaller, less frequent fliers making special trips in the alien spaces of the inner ear? let us not even begin to talk of brains and nerves
cm
chris at
6:42 PM
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from Michael Helsem,the Gray Wyvern, current Texfiles Poet of the Week :
Here are two more immaculate poems of Michael's to round out this Texfiles feature:
"The Trick"
it was just a casual trick
at the end of the Seventies
that old man with jetblack hair
& his winning smile
one more Late Seventies folly
& a shudder in the loins of America
engendered there
these cratered streets & playground Uzis
cooking fires under the overpasses
libraries selling off their books
& my friends dying without health care
America caught it
way back when but only now does it begin to show
that fatal nihilistic germ
or social virus
now the denial ends
& we will be wiser at last
in the dreary decline before
America has to die
of its social AIDS
4 23 94
*
"Planarian Child"
And will i only one day say,
"we would have loved"?
A lunar chore, to count unsaved;
dry maria.
Yet somehow still i must believe
this waste of blood
was not our need,
but genuine choosing not to love...
Why have it so?
--But that a bitter anguish sleeps
where other lovers store their hopes,
as proud,
as free.
4 21 94
^*******^)^*************poetry^ by ^ michael helsem****^)^****^
Many thanks to Michael Helsem for letting us all have these glimpses into his wide ranging, sharp and immaculately polished work. Happy & Prosperous 2004, Michael!
cm
chris at
5:50 PM
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Some Big Doin's on Tex's To Do slate for today :
--post work that rounds out the feature of Michael Helsem, current Texfiles Poet of the Week
--announce and post work (this evening) from another new, featured poet for Texfiles Poet of the Week
--complete the in-process introduction to Skanky Possum issues 9 & 10, started this morning (see post just below this).
--post *A Little Crimson Faced Expo on The Typo* : how it is that "trailer" is really "trialer," and vice versa.
--post some poetry!
lookin' forward--let's make more YaY!!
chris at
3:03 PM
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Skanky Possum 9 & 10 * : Just Say Yes -- and Gitcher Bestest Skank On, Now!
Those fuzzy white gray longtailed rat lookin loveable big cone noses are hangin out upside down all over the place here lately: in trees, in security-tight sheds and garages, & they're sayin' stuff with their fortune tellin' little onyx eyes, like, "Well what the heck do you want with my one and only garage-beam-perch, anyway?--darn humans are dumber than a box of locks"-- I swear!
Well even if we can sure love the skanky, no? True to its implied promise of representing the bureau of Skanky research (one single woolly belly full of words in the farce, no I mean the face, of the rest of the world full of so many other bellies full of words!--ooo la la), and of expressing "The Opossum Revolution" of which we of human dignity are all a major pat no I mean part, darn it all!--these exceptional issues, #s 9 & 10, include work from such devoted possumites as Eileen Myles (love this, in 10's--had to be!--opening poem) :
"I am a post
modern ..."--Eileen Myles, "Mr. Fixit" (1) # 10 **
yes!--working with line can mean everything to the concrete
post, no?!
But think on this, too, from # 9:
"...
I wonder whatever happened
to the families of those who died
when we shot the Iranian airbus
out of the Persian Gulf blue sky.
... "--Daniel Bouchard, "The Fourth" (20) #9 @
And here is modus slant, ever opening up more linguistic playing fields, true to form:
Chris Stroffolino:
"We tear each other whim from whim
and blame love. ..." (31) # 10 ***
& ah, more masters of the fold unfold these:
"...
Here's none I walk away with --
the whiteprint of her spine.
Word breaks its word
with truth breaking its fast
back from interminable hunger..."--Nathaniel Tarn, "Tention! Her Cadences" (11) # 9 @@
Three from Jerome Rothenberg's A Book of Concealments--this from "Larger than Life" :
"...
The rain fades over Europe.
Men & angels
dance before the sun,
a dead snake
dangles
from a tree,
the babe
with glaring eyes
stamps on a half chewed
apple. Happy days!
..." (17) # 10 ****
Yet how, when at last availed, can we not speak of fond allusions to our most venerable Sappho?
And here is that very thing, made from the poem opening we know so well, Sappho 1 :
"Porcelain-throned Aphrodite--
don't leave me sitting here
on a public john with no one
..."--Timothy Liu, "Disgrace" (1), # 9 @@@
This is only a mere freckle on the belly of the 9th Skanky Possum: here are some of the 9th's much beloved sister and brother contributors: Eleni Sikelianos & Jack Collom, Joe Safdie, Joanne Kyger, Caryl Thayler, Tom Clark, Gloria Frym.
And more in SkPoss 10, including Richard Owens, Thomas Fink, Peggy Kelley, Duncan McNaughton, Chris Tysh, Linh Dinh, Diane di Prima. Then also, excerpted highlights from The Possum Pouch.
But please, do not make me keep going on here!--get the SKPoss
in it's luxurious-belly-entirety, soon! & see how wonderful the work in these issues really is. Above all: do enjoy!
*Skanky Possum: Bureau de Recherches Skanky, La Revolucion Opossum. Hoa Nguyen and Dale Smith, Eds. Austin, Texas: 2003/2004, Vols. 9 & 10.
** Eileen Myles, "Mr Fixit," Skanky Possum Vol. 10, p 1.
@ Daniel Bouchard, "The Fourth," SkPoss Vol. 9, p. 20.
*** Chris Stroffolino, "Entre Nous," Skanky Possum
Vol. 10, p. 31.
@@ Nathaniel Tarn, "Tention! Her Cadences," SkPoss Vol. 9, p. 11.
**** Jerome Rothenberg, "Larger than Life," A Book of Concealments, Skanky Possum Vol. 10, p. 17.
@@@ Timothy Liu, "Disgrace," SkPoss Vol. 9, p. 1.
cmurray 04jan04
chris at
5:03 AM
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Received in Saturday's mail:
Skanky Possum 9 (Pa 'Poss)
(YaY!! & YaY again : )
Skanky Possum 10 (Ma 'Poss)
And, purchased in addition for reviewing later this week:
The Believer V.1 # 9
chris at
3:36 AM
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Saturday, January 03, 2004
from (this is one of my all time favorite poems)
Frank O'Hara * : Poem
Lana Turner has collapsed !
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED !
there is not snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
(129)
* Postmodern American Poetry. New York: Norton, 1994.
chris at
5:31 AM
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from (me!) :
lOvErsTOp HoT CoLd MOuNTaiN CoupLets
sTOp, lOvEr, I cannot
Be your Keanu shell
Girl up the streaming butterfly feel
Good flick fuck today no sTOp
Sorry two other Pine Ridge bus sTOp
Kiosks collect real civil war bones or Great
Rain of blood Great Civil Divide before oil kill no I’m kissing a Wall
Street interest today sorry sTOp holding
Me Me Me Britney & you Fortune
500 tomorrow sTOp all Nicole you biotch you've ruined my download
rayon padding fiduciary
Wearing cheery Piute pop-up killer sTOp
Insurance & ancestor is my anemone
Name & taffeta laugh sTOp I lift
The past joyful capitol
Toll booth marm sTOp
Instructing on myopic credit
Guilt limits sTOp lipstickn numerical
Phone shattering statements for capital one L
Love her leave her aquanet mother bridge sTOp
Xray of cup cracks: once the cup is broken fade to gray
Inside psyche sTOp... yeah whatever Valentino drop kick opportunity
Poutmouth girl percentage rate sTOp just sign here
Sign me here at pigskin TeX I wannanew 6 fords for my driveway yes
Over the river & through the babies'
Gun blue mascara woodsTOp more oil gimme
&&&&xoxoxox&&poetry & more O YaY!! by chris m&&&&&&&&&&&xoox&&&
chris at
2:03 AM
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Friday, January 02, 2004
mmmm, btw, i do so much like bobas, yes!
chris at
6:03 PM
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no winter here?--smoggy & *really* obscenely warm weather here today. so strange, can't figure whether to think of it as a blessing or some other chicken little kind of thing having to do with environmental-global warming trends. surreal, yes, that says it too. going off now in my summer clothes--sleeveless blue linen shirt, summer's bright yellow flip-flops, for heaven's sake! but that is the only comfortable way when the temp is near eighty, but yes, going out for boba tea--black tea latte with almond & honey has become a recent favorite, tho I can do without the honey just as well: it can make things way too sweet, kno what i mean? : )
more poetry coming up soon, some of mine, I think
ta ta fn
chris at
5:52 PM
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More Great New Hellos!
SF Bay Area's YaY!! Julia Serano, Renaissance Woman !
via introduction from kari edwards, Transdada
kari, thanks for this link--
Julia, i love yr website--it really highlights well all your good works !
chris at
2:49 PM
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from Michael Helsem, the Gray Wyvern,
Texfiles Poet of the Week :
"CARILLON TOWERS"
Oil-strewn coral,
slow carol trine.
Rat loin escrow,
allot iron screw;
nor will coaster
allow nicer sort.
Scowl in art lore.
Let iron scar low.
Worn solacer lit,
we scroll-ration;
crawl into roles.
O winter collars!
Sorrow, lilac net
no car lilt worse...
raw silent color.
Worst cell: no air.
Tell Orion's craw
creator ill now;
slow iron cartel.
Rote lion scrawl.
Clean-lit sorrow
lest narrow coil...
Twill scone roar.
Oil-strewn coral.
4/8/94
chris at
5:34 AM
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2 beauties selected from Kent Johnson's and Stephen M. Ashby's wonderful anthology, Third Wave: the New Russian Poetry * :
Tatiana Shcherbina's "The Mermaid" [translated by J. Kates] :
I make my way as a mermaid,
as they wrap themselves in raincoats and plunge into
the shower,
I always go out in my golden scales on the shore.
They will say: here's the moonlit sea splash-flashing
under my tail
The thousand-eyed will see its likeness in me.
City, city, you are old and you barely fill the eye
how the air congeals, like a bird and a lion
and how it strips scales from off my scaly skin,
how brave and tender I stand in the light
of the world.
And the scales float onto a merchant vessel
from Thebes.
The wind is long and comely, slow in its flight.
They drift like snowflakes, like tea leaves--
my stiff attire.
They will say: Look, the sea sparkles and gulls hang
in the air.
(19-20)
Vladimir Aristov, "From The Dolphinarium" [translated by Gerald J. Janecek]
(A Poem in Fourteen Statements)
Dedicated to the Armory Baths
Dolphin--a sea mammal from the
subclass of toothed whales,
serves as an object of trade;
its fat is used to produce lard,
its skin provides durable leather,
its fins and tail provide glue.
--Dictionary of Foreign Words, 1954
Let us go then, you and I...
--The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock
I.
Well, let's go then,
You and I ...
And in the sidestreet
Beyond the watery smoothness of the air
We will part
Here beside a wrought iron fence,
Around a graveyard of autumn airplanes--
Of maple tinplate disfigured accidentally.
You concealed yourself in the last archway,
And I circled the inside of my lips with my tongue,
And my tongue lay motionless,
Its tip come to rest on my teeth.
You flitted by like a dolphin with a raging face,
The fire of a cigarette
Going off into the Moscow night.
And my tongue sparkled
And sank into my depths,
Making its way through my blood
Holding the lantern of speech.
Come up to the surface, dolphin;
This body of yours has emerged in the dark
Of still early damp sidestreets,
And from your and my
Moist depths
Came a marine voice.
A dolphin chattered in the fountain
With a splashing brass mouthpiece in its beak,
Bestilled before the entrance
Near curtained portholes of eyes.
(186-187)
* Third Wave: the New Russian Poetry. Kent Johnson and Stephen M. Ashby, Eds. Ann Arbor: U Mich Press, 1992.
chris at
5:00 AM
|
Had a pleasant note from Jilly Dybka, of Poetry Hut, wishing me happiness in the new year, and letting me know she had linked to Texfiles. Thanks, Jilly, and Happy & Prosperous 2004 to you, too!
cm
chris at
4:56 AM
|
from Claude B. Levenson, *** Symbols of Tibetan Buddhism *
Chapter 17 : "Mudras: Signs for the Expression of Indescribable Forces" :
The word [ mudras ] itself means "seal" or "sign,"
revealing the intention to both seal and to demonstrate,
in other words to "translate" words by different means.
In short, a species of visual alphabet that serves to attain
the essential beyond speech. Here, also, the heritage is Hindu,
but the interpretation varies... These sacred gestures
flourished with greater exuberance in the schools
of the Great Vehicle, while those of the Small Vehicle
generally restricted themselves to the distinctive seals
characterizing the rigorously precise and codified
"moments" in the life of the Enlightened One.
...the attainment of Enlightenment ... integrates
object with subject... the privileged moment when
opposites are transcended and the road
to omniscient wisdom opens...
(69)
* Claude B. Levenson, Symbols of Tibetan Buddhism. Photographs by Laziz Hamani ** . Foreward by the Dalai Lama. Singapore: Assouline Publishing/Barnes and Nobel, 2003.
** French photographer, Hamani (b. 1959, Paris), has published several collections of his photographs, among them, Panama: a Legendary Hat [note to self: include in Texfiles hat list via both Bob Dylan and this photographer.
*** Claude Levenson is a Parisian journalist for Le Monde and other periodicals. A polyglot, she has also translated work of the Dalai Lama and Russian writers such as Mandelstam, Zamyatin, and Eliad.
chris at
1:42 AM
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Thursday, January 01, 2004
just as I head for the door
something says no, check this out
first--technorati, forgot to look at
earlier today, so i decide yes,
will look at this before going walking--
and so glad, too, for, lo!
what's found? a most happy surprise, yes:
YaY!!--Jill Jones via "Ruby Street: JJ taking poetry for a walk!" is bloggin--so, a Warm Best Wishes for 2004, Jill, and so nice to see you here: welcome to bloggieland
chris at
8:01 PM
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goin walkin. then to eat. then to post more poetry!
ta ta fn
chris at
7:44 PM
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Lotta blithering gone on around here last night. Sucks to be Sting at Texfiles, I guess. And, awful typist that I am, I did let a really wild post slip in between the two DiPalma poems I put up (love those two poems!), but didn't proofread it, I guess, because some of those things in there were not even words! Yeah, yeah. LaLaLa. I have to laugh at myself so I forget how dumb my tuppence is sometimes. So that section had to be edited, completely out, is gone now, since I don't know what words might have corresponded to what the furiously typing fingers of this bad typist put in there. Talk about deep *language poetry* one letter at a time--hmmmm.
But anyway, am glad NewYear's and Sting are both done-for now. It's always such a strange night for me--the transitional aspect, I suppose. Freaked me out to put the TV on while jsut looking for something decent or simple and then to land on Sting's face with Oprah. Just very bad, that. Should have known better than to put the TV on, I guess. Best lesson.
Somewhere in my many online travels last night I encountered a list of words coined in 2003--I think it was from a news article, but am not sure and didn't bookmark it or note it. I hate when that happens, because I can't be sure in all the semiotic flow & flew, where it came from. O happy sieve-brain of mine: i love you but i also live you. Anyway: most of the terms were already well known to me but one term intrigued me about its contextual use or probable use?--dunno, cuz haven't heard or read it being used. The word is "metrosexual." Anyone know anything about this term, its referents, referrees, and contexts? Thanks.
chris at
5:26 PM
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I just found this blog tho it's been going for a while, I guess, and it's local, here in Dallas. It's lookin' good. Check out Katey!
chris at
3:37 PM
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I think a big HAPPY NEW YEAR
got layered in,
down there
'mongst all the rubble
somewhere, dunno,
but I do mean it every time I say it!
Once more, then: Here's wishing the most excellent new year prosperity and happiness will be shared among the good and the heretofore not so good, y'all! Go make some YaY!!
(Well, I guess you can see why I am never elected to make the toast... )
smiles,
cm
chris at
7:15 AM
|
from Michael Helsem, Texfiles Poet of the Week :
The Peacock Cult
Heat o' the sun, vertigo
in an untemperate month.
Cinnamon latte makes mirth
out of my glum indigo
& vermilion limbo. Filch
rubies. Far from my lover
watch light slide on the silver
inkpen that is all to touch.
Acolytes of the big sky
would relish this bleak shindig.
Car in the shop, O stormgod
of little mishaps a flung paean
into; Lord Wart Hog.
chris at
6:48 AM
|
Welcoming the YaY !! New Year:
from---I love these!---Ray DiPalma * :
[Rumor's Rooster]
Rumor's rooster
halloos the distorted
strata of analogies
my A is a vegetable A
my A is a vegetable Z
profligate and tangential
is the balance
commercial and run by
the transmission of
the undeclared
or the strange low
coherences of the ear
when and where there
is no such thing
the thought walked
(429)
And then to think about this fine piece of work:
Each Moment is Surrounded
Each moment is surrounded
by the correct torrent
Each moment is
surrounded by
the correct torment
The sphere's endless erasures
and a longer calm protect the song
A full moon
makes a litigant of the tides
Their issue
they'd have you know
is the province of apprehension
where the joke clatters through eloquence
and its busy simplicity to postpone the marvelous
Embracing yet another version
of the sham paragon you heave majestically
in the thickening denials
There is much to be answered for
based on a play by one so big
his name need not be mentioned
And how much longer
can you continue to spit in the face
of the baggy scholar gentry
for they are many and their sincerities
come like the loaves and fishes
(1988)
(429-30)
* Ray Di Palma, "Rumor's Rooster," & "[Each moment is surrounded]," in Postmodern American Poetry, Paul Hoover, Ed. New York, Norton, 1994.
chris at
5:56 AM
|
Whew. Somebody got a little riled over Sting, below. Dang.
It's the way it is.
chris at
4:48 AM
|
Sting: Do Not Give Me Crap Crackers in your Saturday Safe-Way, Baby:
Sting is still tryin to get a life-lie in a velvet Un,
a consumerist buying life-lie:
I cannot believe how
here in my living room unbidden
he is still usurping
so a no-muscle no-work scarecrow man
with his supposed guitar
angst, life-is-academic-
& hard-for-this-man-Sting,
on Oprah (what naive is her excuse?--must be about money's fast gimme must).
what a definite gauge on the flesh
of poetry
in its velvet
Un.
As they say so well with the pointy > pah & pah-
leeze.
Just because you purchased yr due copies
of Chaucer,
and called yrself oh-hurt-me-
Sting,
with some big boy degree
that you also have a purchase on music-art-poetry-today.
Anyone can tap their western excess
forceps tear you up man
faucet the foregone gimme
(it's always all about) product,
but few can deal with
means:
Sting,
slam a hair-gello-knock-off,
you do'n know
what "means"
means, man--
to a now, a little Amen
is in order
not least because of :
love & diamonds
on beaches & South Africa
arriving for
unwitting engagement
rings,
slow as blood
you so many centuries full of
west-girl-not-knowing.
Sting, make yr memorable: You
Suck, Man.
cm
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