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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
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poetry. hks' smelly head baseball cap.
Samuel Beckett's Lucky's
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giving his oration
on what's questionable in mankind,
in *Waiting for 'God-ot'*.
my friend John Phillips's 1969
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in the Hat's Hat & best
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Tex's 10 gallon Gary Cooper felt Stetson cowboy hat.
Jordan Davis's fedora.
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Ma Skanky Possum 10's nighttime cap.
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doo rag. knit face mask hat. Bob Dylan's & photographer Laziz
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Rebecca Loudon's Seattle-TX-Hats'n'boots.
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ultimate: Stephanie Young's First Well Nourished Moon
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Eileen Tabios: Corpsepoetics [see Chatelaine above]
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004
on BAP 2004, & Dove's *All Souls*
I just wrote a lengthy comment over at Tony Tost's blog, Unquiet Grave, in response to his excellent discussion about BAP 2004. Tony's discussion responds to Jonathan Mayhew's categorizing of poets whose work is included in BAP 04 (poets, not the poems, I feel I should note that distinction). Rita Dove is there listed with Billy Collins in a category called "Mediocrities of the Moment."
Because of all that, I decided to go ahead and post Rita Dove's poem, "All Souls" **, because I really do like much of her work (especially *Mother Love* and the early stuff from *Thomas and Buelah*, including this more recent BAP 2004 poem. The category of "Mediocrities of the Moment" is a curious one that I don't think a lot of Dove's work belongs in (though I would agree that the work is uneven, some quite flat and perhaps born of some kind of poetic "mediocrity"). Dove's not trying in poetry to be particularly experimental, it should also be noted, though the poems can be witty, musical, and fractious in energetic ways that I like. On the other hand, I tend to agree completely that much of Billy Collins' work would fit such a category as "Mediocrities of the Moment."
I see Dove's poem below as a basic, human philosophizing and dialectical response in poetry to a life-catastrophe, a sort of -- 'okay I guess this experiential lyric questioning is what I *can* do after this catastrophe' -- & I never thought there might not be room in poetics for that kind of response in poetry--especially as pertains to ways given to the writing of everyday life. Collins's poems, by constrast, seem to me mostly smirky besmirches of everyday life & whinnying insincerity. It was only last summer (2003) that my literature students seriously wanted to *impeach* Collins from his post as Poet Laureate (see archives for texfiles from June-Sept, 03, and the same time's archives from Tim Yu's blog, Tympan, where the case was made and discussed at length).
Regarding BAP 2004, guest editor Lyn Hejinian discusses in her introduction, how, in part, she made her selections: she was, in a way, haunted by the "destructiveness" of the year 2003, what I take to mean the general cultural malaise of violence, war after war, the leaning upon of warring and divisiveness, at least as I interpret what I read in Hejinian's intro. I see Dove's poem, therefore, as certainly having great affinity in terms of what Hejinian, as (reader) editor, was responding to in selecting poems.
from Rita Dove, "All Souls" (BAP, 2004) *
Starting up behind them,
all the voices of those they had named:
mink, gander, and marmoset,
crow and cockatiel.
Even the duck-billed platypus,
of late so quiet in his bed,
sent out a feeble cry signifying
grief and confusion, et cetera.
Of course the world had changed
for good. As it would from now on
every day, with every twitch and blink.
Now that change was de rigueur,
man would discover desire, then yearn
for what he would learn to call
distraction. This was the true loss.
And yet in that first
unchanging instant,
the two souls
standing outside the gates
(no more than a break in the hedge;
how had they missed it?) were not
thinking. Already the din was fading.
Before them, a silence
larger than all their ignorance
yawned, and this they walked into
until it was all they knew. In time
they hunkered down to business,
filling the world with sighs--
these anonymous, pompous creatures,
heads tilted as if straining
to make out the words to a song
played long ago, in a foreign land.
(73-74)
from Dove's BAP commentary on the poem:
"Our house burned down after a lightning strike in 1998. During the subsequent rebuilding and refurnishing, I didn't have much inclination to write at all; it took about six months before the poems began to reappear--shy erratic blossoms poking their heads up through the ashes--and always without warning or, as far as I could tell, logic. The beginnings of *All Souls* arose at this time, the first scribbled entry in a brand-new notebook. I liked what was there--the cadences and authorial distance--but I didn't yet understand its urgency, its raison d'etre, so I put the draft away in a drawer. Then came 9/11, and somehow its haunting images of catastrophe sent me back to those abandoned lines. Endings, beginnings; to linger in regret or to move on: I found myself turning back to the front of that notebook, reconsidering what had been jotted down years before, in haste and incomprehension... and I finished the poem." (253)
* The Best American Poetry, 2004. Lyn Hejinian, guest editor. David Lehman, series editor. New York: Scribner, 2004.
** Dove's *All Souls* was first published in The New Yorker.
chris at
7:58 AM
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Monday, August 30, 2004
About The_Delay !
A very warm welcome to the provocative thinking-through-writing that is going on here regarding poetry and cultural being-in-language:The_Delay: Chris Vitiello's new blog. I really enjoyed meeting, talking with, and listening to the poetry reading of Chris at Carrboro Poetry Festival--do check out the audio file of his reading.
By way of welcome to bloggy-world, especially given Chris's interesting blogpost on Francis Ponge, here is an excerpt from Ponge's, "Vegetation" * :
The rain does not form the only hyphens between the earth and the heavens: another kind exists, less intermittent and much better woven, and whose fabric is not carried away by the wind however hard it shakes it. If sometimes it succeeds in a certain season in dislodging a few bits which it strives then to pound to dust in its eddying, we perceive in the final reckoning that it has dispelled nothing at all.
Looking more closely, we find ourselves now at one of the thousand doors of a huge laboratory, bristling with hydraulic apparatus of many forms, all much more intricate than the simple columns of the rain and endowed with an original perfection: all simultaneous retorts, filters, siphons, and stills...
--translated by William Rees--
chris at
10:15 AM
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HaH!!--I love it: TAG poems--Shanna's onto it with "Canal Street Exit Influx,"-- after Laurel's idea of Poetry Tag, at JewishyIrishy.
Here's my response to Shanna's TAG Poem:
My Lycee TAG Poem:
so, yeah, i’m here peeling leather
rosy outers of can’t
wait, smattered with almost
points of
steve
tills' multi-
Walmart-burst me to sweet
bubble cells
& hey
gray
wyvern--
of lycee-revels rolling
thunder centos forth & back in
the lycee's oval
mahogany gloss—my,
what smooth
seed openings,
these navels
of undermind’s packground
or cluttersky
or a happy hardheaded
mule or two they say
it is less
airy but more
erudite the higher one goes
allen bramhall--
even as motes are
hurling
past a viscous sudden
last
night’s moon
or spoked queen of clubs clicking along for the cat hatter’s courier
& exclamation
repeatingly
shanna!!!! fun--(question: fair to tag back?)ever unprecedented
silver of air
propeller
planes
of surprise & one
clean contrail
splitting cirrus
effusion into veil
or moment’s Seuss-ina & history--
de-
light
as
might also
Jill Jones’ Ruby Street
tuning lyrics in Oz
to impermanent tenses & ever-time
: )
cm--
chris at
3:01 AM
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Sunday, August 29, 2004
from Steve Jonas' Exercises for the Ear * :
XLIV
the rock formation
that's yr head
w/perpendicular negative
or centerped
the shag grass
covering the ridge
a fertile halo
addressing you
to the plain fields
but blinds you to
the sharp upward
pointing elevation
like God's forefinger
into the stratosphere
(40)
LXVIII
tho' my songs
not decked out in
baroque trimmings
of adejective baubles
they, nonetheless, stand
lean & cleanly de-
fined against a gray de-
cember sky
as against the on-coming
of a spring
when all shall be
too gaudily dis-
playd w/too much of 'ev
rything to be
clearly outlined
(51)
*Stephen Jonas, Selected Poems. Joseph Torra, ed. Hoboken: Talisman House, 1994.
*note of special thanks: I'm grateful to chris daniels, who one day in July 2003 toured me through Berkeley, from campus to the streets to Moe's, and then we took a bus to 21 Grand to hear among others, Chris Stroffolino's Continuous Peasant perform--such a grand day, indeed. Happy to find Moe's where I was in turn happy to find this treasure of a book, bringing it home and then sharing it as textbook for students in my Engl. 4330 course of Spring 2004, Univ. TX, Arlington. Steve Jonas is one of my all-time favorite reads, and I want to say, then, that for readers books like this carry more of the goodness of life & its stories than a surface and all the inner voicings printed on pages can ever say. :)
--cm--
chris at
3:23 AM
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Saturday, August 28, 2004
Alivianate El Coco blog: Some Good BluntDubbbyyyyyaaaa Pomin'
Had an email the other day from Reyes Cardenas, of Papalote, TX whose wry poetry includes the book Survivors of the Chicano Titanic (Austin: Place of Herrons Press, 1981--of which P. Scott Brown Booksellers annotates: "A collection of poems by this original and very funny Texas Chicano poet. His work is marked by the sardonic wit of which this book's title is a good example. Introduction by Juan Rodriguez, illustrated by David Ellis.
ISBN # 0916908151") Yeah!
Reyes' blog is Alivianate El Coco--Chicano Poet. He's got it all decked out lately with a cool series goin' on about Our Tex-Beloved Dubya. Do check it out.
For now, here's one:
Dubya’s Desktop -- by Reyes Cardenas
When you turn on
Dubya’s computer
the Start button
is misspelled.
It reads
Retart.
The My Documents folder
is renamed
the My Lies folder.
There is no
word processing program.
What for!
But if you open Powerpoint,
you find presentations
of God actually talking to him.
And indeed
God is telling him to kill
all the enemies of the Republicans.
God jokes with Dubya
and tells him
"Hey, George, spell goddamnit backwards!"
Suddenly,
a tin, mad dog chases them
around the Rose Garden,
thorns sticking
out of
both their behinds.
~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Reyes Cardenas~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reyes, Hey!--rock on!
--cm
chris at
5:15 AM
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Friday, August 27, 2004
Back by popular demand!
~~~~~~~from H.D. Thoreau's Walden *
This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our intstruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. Waht sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men, surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, when in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its root in that direction... (144-145)
~~~~And I've been reading H.D. Thoreau side-by-side with:
Rachel Carson's Silent Srping **
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autum, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings. ... Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. ... No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves. ... The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. ... Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species--man--acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world. (1-5)
*Henry David Thorough, Walden. Columbus, OH: Charles Miller Publishing, 1969.
**Rachel Carson, Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.
chris at
8:59 PM
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I really like how the cover art for Eileen's Menage a Trois with the 21st Centuryworks: digital, non-linear concrete image repro of a portrait of Eileen. Savvy math, indeed. YaY!! for Jukka's fine, thoughtful work.
chris at
7:53 AM
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Richard, Hey: many thanks for your kind applauding of
my little chapbook, Meme Me Up, Scotty!
chris at
1:31 AM
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Welcome to E-Po!
chris at
1:19 AM
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Thursday, August 26, 2004
Oh Yes: Do Rave **Against** the Colonizing Machine: Eileen Tabios' Menage a Trois with the 21st Century !
& How Der Postal Fort-Da of Our Lumbering Campus Giant Finally Yielded Some of the Best Poetry I've Ever Read:
Eeeeepppp: First week of classes, and the end of the fiscal year, here, all at once (I think they should change the fiscal schedules--it's far too much having both these thresholds at once). The only word for it is chaotic, though a lumbering kind of managed giant of a chaotic, for sure. So much is being shifted around and negotiated all at once in every reach of campus that there is a near-wall-like essence of energy (lumber, lumber, giant, giant) to encounter whenever entering any boundary of the place--driving or walking: it's just weird (I notice this as palpable every single year but this it the first time I've tried to describe it).
Well, in keeping with that lumbering, managed yet giant of chaos, I want to mention some of the apparent related results for me, specifically the postal kind: several folks have let me know that there were some odd delays when I mailed out my Meme Me Up, Scotty! chapbooks last month, including some apparent stopovers in Germany for added postmarking, for at least 2 weeks, it seems (this may or may not have been due to the lumbering giant I mention above--it could also be due to summer's slow gumminess that affects everyone and everything in the heat and humidity and air pollution here). I had mailed the Meme(s) from the university service here, and didn't have a clue that there would be such contortion in the routing. One person in Europe still has not received hers.
So: several reciprocal packages of chaps and books were sent to me, almost all of which I received and have happily noted here (I have a fetish about it: I really love getting books in the mail!). But I have been waiting on a special package from Eileen Tabios for a few weeks now, and was about ready to email her to gently inquire of the delay, when Lo!--our lumbering giant of a university postal service finally delivered the package to my department box. The postmark is from early August! If books could only talk and tell where they've been! I have no idea what routing on campus this one took--no German postage is evident(!), and wouldn't be since it certainly was properly addressed. What made it take so long to get here? I can can only imagine it floating around in one of the university's big canvas and wire postal carts from building to building here, landing in a few other department offices, and then finally getting over here to the right place.
I tell this story, too, because university mail here is not only sometimes very slow, but known to lose things, as well. I had forgotten until this episode, but they did lose my application package several years ago, and I had to resubmit the entire lot, right at deadline, thankful to an astute program administrator who realized my stuff had not made it from one office to hers. So, I guess I should have anticipated something like this and had people mail to my home address... well, lesson learned!
At any rate, let me just say here YaY!!--finally here are the 2 wonders I've been waiting on: Pinoy Poetics, ed. Nick Carbo (Meritage Press, 2004), the excellent first collection of essays on filipino poetry. And: (drum roll!) Eileen's own poems of Menage a Trois with the 21st Century (Espoo, Finland: xPressed [YaY!! Jukka Pekka Kervinen]). I can't wait to read both and will have more to say soon on each.
For now, though, since I cannot resist any poetry (as Eileen has signed Menage with this wonderful note: "To poetry as a way of life!"), I want to post here a favorite I've found even if on first read-through (I usually take several read-throughs before commenting). This poem speaks to far more than it's apparent subject, something that Eileen is a consummate master at effecting in her poetry (note, too, the book is sectioned into differing historical poetic-voices--dramatic monologues--this one is in the recovered voice of revolutionary, Gabriela Silang, wife of Diego, who organized the Ilokano revolt against Spain's colonizers. Gabriela has been revived to a 21sdt century persona in Eileen's poems here :
A Memory's Resonance Du Jour (II)
As Gabriela Struggles to Apply Significance
One wants to slap any majordomo
For believing he controls the equinox
Until I shy from physical fulmination
As someone obsessed with oxymorons--
The doughty poem offers its own significance:
e.g. ancilla for "Understanding James Joyce"
And saffron-colored mulsum and turriculae
Imbibed by the Romans turned inane then insane
From raisins fermenting in ill-designed earthenware--
Oh, my Love--how many civilizations expired
After marauding soldiers were deceived
By myrrh, honey, balsam and pepper
Camouflaging spoiled wine in amphoras
Now lining the Mediterranean?
Thousands and thousands of shards deliver
an inadvertent memoir of an empire's fall--
Bones from a million rebels
Become my history whenever I exhale Poetry--
(100)
Yeah: now this is what I call Poetry!
I'm so glad now to finally have these in hand.
More on this and on (I can't wait to read it!) Pinoy Poetics, very soon (as soon as I can get the lumbering giant to settle down a little...
Many thanks to Eileen for sending these treasures and especially, for writing such fine poetry.
:)
--cm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Eileen Tabios~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
7:48 PM
|
Another Wow!--check out Tony Robinson's rockin' poems up at *No Tell Motel*
chris at
7:50 AM
|
Carrboro's Poetry as Envisioned in Clay Art: Ellen Kong's Tribute
Hey, do check this out: the North Carolina artist, Ellen Kong, created a special piece, "The Poets' Circle," images in clay of the faces of 4 poets from the Carrboro Poetry Festival. Kong's Carrboro piece is on display now, along with several more of her pieces for her showing at the Tyndall Gallery in University Mall, UNC, Chapel Hill. What a fine tribute to the CPF! And also I'd like to speculate that although I could not say with much certainty who three of the faces in the piece are, I will venture that one could easily be Kasey Silem Mohammad--see what you think! & I'm also wanting here to say good luck on the move to Oregon, too, Kasey!--as well as noting the fine write-up today on Limetree about parties and especially Alli Warren's poetry--keep on *jumpin'* Y'all!
(with thanks to Chapel Hill poet Paul Jones for sending the Ellen Kong-Tyndall Gallery link to the CPF listserv.)
chris at
6:21 AM
|
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Anny Ballardini, bless you!--you've translated another of Joseph Brodsky's poems into Italian, where it is sounding even more beautiful! And just so that I can bring it out here, on texfiles! It's the section from *A Part of Speech* that I posted last week :
from Joseph Brodsky's long poem, A Part of Speech * :
A list of some observations. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than his skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow, the body hulks
like a glacier's debris, a moraine of sorts.
A millenium hence, they'll no doubt expose
a fossil bivalve propped behind this gauze
cloth, with the print of lips under the print of fringe,
mumbling "Good night" to a window hinge.
(104)
* * *
da Parte di un Discorso di Joseph Brodsky
Una lista di varie osservazioni. In un angolo, fa caldo.
Uno sguardo lascia un’impronta su qualsiasi cosa si posi.
L’acqua è la forma più pubblica del bicchiere.
L’uomo è più spaventoso del suo scheletro.
Una sera d’inverno in nessun luogo con del vino. Un porticato
nero resiste gli assalti rigidi di un vinco.
Fissato su di un gomito, il corpo incombe
come il detrito di un ghiacciaio, una morena ordinaria.
Da qui a un millennio, indubbiamente esporranno
un fossile bivalve puntellato dietro a questa benda,
con la traccia delle labbra sotto la traccia di una sbavatura,
che mormora “Buona notte” alla cerniera della finestra.
(104)
*Joseph Brodsky, Collected Poems in English New York: FSG, 2000
Many thanks, Anny! : )
chris at
9:28 PM
|
YaY!! You're definitely Memed Up!
chris at
9:24 PM
|
kid
irreverence beyond
camera eye
repair: that's all
there is
to it. whatever.
it is.
your....own your
eye....smirkishness/
of
///slap////
yeah that,
too. O slap
happy
& ekphrasms the
music
goes with everything.
or//////
numbers are infinite
&
should. street.
lights
& books: thoreau-
ly. authority of
of.
rochester: kodak park.
the factory of dads or dad's
?
is called. park.
not park-
ing-lot.
park: Kodak
Park. capital
letters
& chemicals
& a billboard
at Lake & Ridge: see?
not kodial. or kodiak.
or Kodack
but Kodak
an efficient
busstopsfull
of
of the shoes worn.
the daily
laces: round weave, black
chemical burns
he wears white
coats like doctors
& faces
in rain. kiosk
at Lake and Kheel.
stripper joint
of neon blinds
across Lake. go
don't look there, okay?
okay.
everyone waiting
for the bus. not any bus:
this is a book
says: "thorofare."
here one of. full of
diesel cloud & could,
in & out the rain.
& here you come tripping
on the curb.
falling. oh
well, now you've torn your stockings:
"run": ontological is many
years hence.
that is how each
bus face has its own one. someone.
trips. everyone is a
window
of diesel & could
have
been
me. blast of
bluff sound & rubber tire
skrid (no such word here at work no such word here
no such) almost to.
kiosk your finer
self at the Lake
Ave (pronounced Ah as in nasal "ant" plus
moving at the same time the lower
labial to the top dental for a tight vvvvvv
never give it away the exotic Aunt from Annanheim
said on the phone) as you later learned
similarly Kant said
of
the "crowd."
--cm.poem--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~copyright aug 04 chris murray o~o/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
8:22 AM
|
Calling McArt tomorrow with a brand new deal!
I just had an Ekphrasm: Pink Floyd's The Wall as (french fries?) combo with Ansel Adams' "Moon and Clouds over Northern California, 1959" [no highways in sight!]. O my omyomyomy.
chris at
8:07 AM
|
Listening: Pink Floyd, The Wall. Yeah!
chris at
7:26 AM
|
oh yeah!--the Black Spring flows forth!--wowing me, as ever...
Steve has once again written very good stuff about my writing and such, for which I am most grateful. More importantly, though, he's written a kind rejoinder to my short shrift, knee-jerk response to the excerpt below from HD Thoreau. I should, while adding my contemporary smirkishness, also have explained in more detail why and how I do really appreciate Walden, and Thoreau, generally. Forgive my smirkishness, if y'all will, please. I am from a generation of readers who were spoon fed in school all of and *only* (the available) our American version of canon: Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne (there were a few others but these were the mainstay). As a reader, I yearned for a larger perspective than this American-aggrandizing, very narrow, canon-making agenda of literary pedagogy representing the history of writing in the new world. I found an answer at college, not 1 year after high school readings I mention above, but 15 years later, and gladly. But finding that there was more (including such as Kerouac) did not take away from the qualities found in the mainstay. Finding so much more that had been there but that had somehow never made the textbooks or the classrooms, did tend to give me an agenda when being seriously intellectual, and when being just myself as in, perennially a kid under a streetlight reading a book while seated on the curb because my summer room is/was too hot, and knowing what I was reading was nowhere near inclusive enough, thus I let a certain smirkishness about narrowly defined literary authority become a vital part of my healthy skepticism about literary writing. On the other hand, well, ironically or paradoxically or both: isn't that close to the same thing that the independent minded thinkers (whatever their particular locations and nationalizing situations) such as Emerson or Thoreau were trying to get elucidate and hope for the future? Hell, yeah. So ignore my smirkishness, then, it's just a kid misbehavin' under a streetlight because the world just isn't enough ever, to hold everything a mind can find and find to love.
chris at
6:57 AM
|
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
from HD Thoreau (HD Throw-ya?), "Sounds," in Walden : *
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of the traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. ... My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock...
(121-122)
How lovely!--Nice life if ya can get it thata way! 'Course, he doesn't say what kind of birds, and some are more raucus than others, & Ya kno, I do dig ol' HDT, but I have to add this to the uncomplicated, summer romanticist-transcendentalist scene described there: Last time I let my Texas wheels sit (nearly everyone in TX has wheels, & I find that disturbing: I think I've mentioned before that in many places in town here there just are not any sidewalks, such as: on one of the most-traveled pedestrian streets here on UTA campus: students 5-deep at peak times, forced to walk in the road while cars four-lane-deep anxiously beep and wait, jumping the light & etc.--it's dangerous! but since we all do have these wheels, I'm offering the rest of this commentary) long enough to listen "while the birds flitted noiseless" in the live oak trees above, I glanced outward to the horizon and found polka dotted white/brown 
birdshit complete with tiny gray molted featherings all stuck like cement to the hood of my wheels. That might be a little yin-yang for the Texas psyche relying, even housing itself so wishfully and so heavily on fossil-fueled wheels, no? Awwwwwww. Well, even so, it still does not make me want to sit Thoreau-ly from sun-up til dusk under the live oak tree, because, well, it's the home of about 100 starlings this time of year (late summer), & birds are birds and they randomly place their various gifts, ya kno? Starlings have a lot of gifts, soundwise and otherwise. And I actually do love birds. But just give me a nice sunny porch where the (singing to the tune of *give me a home where the) *birds* & the antelope _do not_ roam...,* inside it all day, or at least not the starlings... while I sit passively meditating in my doorway, eh? Just sayin'...
: )
* HD Thoreau, Walden. Willard Thorp, ed. Columbus, OH Merrill Publ: 1969.
chris at
10:31 PM
|
Here is an image of a tatted sun-catcher (tatting is an ancient, meticulous craft, the challenges of which you might guess from the tiny twists of threading on this piece: well, it yields a special kind of craft as art, a beauty of an art as hands-on-work) from an Alaska artist (Georgia Seitz), which I post as eye-gift-offering for Brother Tom's birthday, because, Omigosh!--I just figured out on hopping over to his TJBlug-blog that a whole bunch of anniversary things are going on there all at once: I don't want the day to escape [oh dear, and now I see it almost did get away from me before I can get to publish button!--eeepp!] without having the chance to send my very best wishes for Tom's anniversaries: his birthday is today (Monday, 8/23: Happy B-day!), and his anniversary of joining the Carmelites is this past week, too (YaY!! Peace and Love and Good Faith to All), as well as his anniversary of teaching: 29 years! Amazing, such goode werkes!. Congratulations, and Keep On, Tom!
chris at
7:38 AM
|
first day of classes here today. my poetry students are lookin' *awesome* as they say. the course is on electronic poetry (i'll soon be announcing and linking here to the site i put together for the course), and they'll all be blogging as a group and individually. we had a great meet/greet day today--they wrote an off-the- cuff 14 liner using oppositions/tensions in each line--some were very brave and read theirs aloud this first day. I love it when that happens: people taking risks together and putting their minds together about poetry. I'm getting a very good vibe about this group, and so, am grateful for the good fortune and the privilege to be able to do this.
chris at
7:31 AM
|
Monday, August 23, 2004
from Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums (Penguin, 1958, 1986):
... I was anxious to get out of the South, out of chaingang Georgia. The bus came at four o'clock and we were in Birmingham, Alabama, in the middle of the night, where I waited on a bench for my next bus trying to sleep on my arms on my rucksack but kept waking up to see the pale ghosts of American bus stations wandering around: in fact on woman streamed by like a wisp of smoke, I was definitely certain *she* didn't exist for sure. On her face the phantasmal belief in what she was doing... On my face, for that matter, too. After Birmingham it was soon Louisiana and then east Texas oilfields, then Dallas, then a long day's ride in a bus crowded with servicemen across the long immense waste of Texas, to the ends of it, El Paso, arriving at midnight, by now I being so exhausted all I wanted to do was sleep. But I didn't go to a hotel, I had to watch my money now, and instead I just hauled my pack to my back and walked straight for the railroad yards to stretch my bag out somewhere behind the tracks. It was then, that night, that I realized the dream that had made me want to buy the pack. It was a beautiful night and the most beautiful sleep of my life. ...
(153)
chris at
6:44 PM
|
from Babette Deutsch's Poetry Handbook (Harper, 1957+) :
--poetry:
The art which uses words as both speech and song, and, more rarely, as typographical patterns, to reveal the realities that the senses record, the feelings salute, the mind perceives, and the shaping imagination orders. This definition is offered with some diffidence and should be read together with a few by other poets. Sidney said that poetry is "a representing, counterfetting, or figuring foorth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight". Wordsworth called it "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge... the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all Science." ... The distinguishing feature of verse is its formal aspect, that of poetry is its imaginative power.
(126-128)
chris at
11:04 AM
|
from Missy Eliott Say
ur makin' imags full o
tiny concrete blocks
lookin near urban--
no rhymes, yah--
uh huh--
d'ya
lu'me?
yah--
xo--
hipful
recipro.
chris at
9:41 AM
|
Image is (majorly) Missy Elliot: *Get Yr Freak On*-- & We are: Listenin' Up!
Ann Marie Eldon, over in g'mornin' London! (Hi, Ann Marie: thanks so much for sending the good thoughts!) sends this along, as she says, a "romanticisized" take as counterbalance--photos!--to the yellow sign below declaring itself full of "sharp edges," yeah... Well: hey, I love it!-- This poetic response, "Stumped!"-- And some Ann Marie poetry from the same post over at her blog, excerpted below:
...from some indebted dead
wood. Focus upon each just-next silkstain
There may be nightshades of uncaring
I shake barbs. Take leave
(of) myself. Place weight on
empty spaces. Strain along
borrowed boughs...
& let me add
here what
listening is
also floating
here about this
space right now :
the very &
supreme
Missy Eliot:
Supa Dupa Fly
And then only to love Busta R, eh? say wha? uh huh...
oh signs fulla sharp edges? As Missy wisely says:
"I shake 'em off like jello..."--yeah. Thanks, Ann Marie.
chris at
7:56 AM
|
Sunday, August 22, 2004
from Brian Blanchfield's Not Even Then
(Berkeley: UC Press, 2004) :
PROPELLER OR CHIME
Mobile, the elements could but do not touch.
Even if they wanted to? This, passing,
the passing looking like lying along
a tail that coils and volunteers a beat,
is to a tomatillo an osage's moon. You cook it
out of love. It's dressed in overcompensation.
I watch your disappointment and suspect
you're sexy, but drill myself on moving right
by. There's no handle on this. Passing
for inattentive, inattention pulling
as at sutures till they weep, a trickle
escaping, enjoining even wanting to
--surprise surprise two estimation marks--
step rung from sleep's low rung awake.
(33)
chris at
11:23 PM
|
Herald Sun article on Patrick Herron, including a great picture of him with new daughter, Sofia--Go Patrick!--via a post to the Buffalo Poetics list by Ron Silliman
chris at
9:34 PM
|
"Come, gather, move, liberate" ... Glad to see you back!"
chris at
12:25 PM
|
 --using it here, i'm just gonna call this image
"nipples of light"--cm
Books (gladly!) Received :
from Richard Lopez,
-- The Grapevine
--CD of Richard's reading, 9 Aug 03, "Live at the Book Collector"
--3 tinybooks from a series called Poems-for-All at Sacramento Free Press: These 3 of Richard's are titled *Clove Cigarettes*.*Troubador*.*Brass Knuckles*.
I love opening the mail to poetic surprises! The tinybooks are matchbook sized with beautiful colored covers complete with black ink drawings--a profile of an old, contemplative, bespectacled & long-bearded & big-bellied man, in skull cap and dishevilled hair slouchy smoking jacket, who is holding a cigarette on the pumpkin colored one titled, *Clove Cigarettes.* On the back cover is this statement about these tinybooks' press: "Poems-for-All... scattered around town, on buses, trains, restrooms, coffee shops, left along with the tip, stuffed in a stranger's back pocket, whatever, wherever, an ongoing project of the irregular 24th Street Press, 1008 24th Street, Sacramento, CA 95816. Poems@sacfreepress.com"
Well the tinybook project I already love before I can even look to see what else is in the little package Richard sent me. So I look, and wow!--there's a CD (more on that soon), and here's this other cool looking chapbook of larger dimensions though smaller than the usual book, sure. It, too, is sharply made, with artful cover, comic-ominous: the subject is what looks to be a birch pole topped by a baseball cap and a set of speakers, these reminding me of the drive-in variety that attach heavily to your roll-down driver side window, thick cords wrapping and warping the the scene here. Another of the same get-up appears at a distance, or it could just be some other unrelated thing of similar shape meant to distort the tendency in perception, i.e., mimesis will be sought by any given viewer. The photo is intentionally obscured in definition, and delightfully so, in my opinion, just as language choices in poetry *and in poetics* will also have that same indeterminacy, stretching and risk for the user/viewer. I note the risk, too, since I'll probably hear from Richard that what I've just speculated here is not at all what the original subject of the photograph happened to be. All the more delightful, I say. "And how should I presume?" the Prufrockian voices in me are right now echoing forth in mermaid chorus...
But do *let us go and make our visit*--here is the title poem from this lovely, in-yer-face little chapbook by the very blog-witty Richard Lopez:
The Grapevine
We pushed the little Ford Festiva
through flat brown California
--dry vistas of nowhere
places we could neither fathom
nor work up much enthusiasm
--where we are--could have been
the final question on a philosophy midterm
--we could only move forward
the car had no reverse--the AM radio
gave such sound you would think
reality is random strings of dots
corroded loops
maybe it is for all we know
--we had no where to go
so forward--we made
the summit just after nightfall
we found the city lit up like a brick of firecrackers
--air soft and deep purple like a plum
but clear and above the city passenger
jets stacked eight high above LAX
--pinwheels of light
Many thanks, Richard, for sharing all of this: they are in every sense, gifts of your gift!
--cm
~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Richard Lopez~~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
1:53 AM
|
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Daniel Nestor's New Blog (Hi, Daniel--nice to hear from you!): "God Save My Blog!"
chris at
5:39 AM
|
Heads Up & Let's Continue to Move to Eliminate Hate & Violence toward Gays and Transgendered Folk
Sad news from San Francisco, request for information and notes on the vigil, as forwarded by gender and human rights activist, kari edwards, of transdada blog :
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Transgender Woman brutally Murdered -
> Family Requests Community attendance at her Vigil
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> A 46 year old African-American transgender woman, who went by the name
> Delicious, was murdered on Friday August 13, 2004 in the Franciscan
> Motel - 6600 3rd Street. Currently the murder is under investigation
> and anti-transgender bias is being looked at as a motive. Delicious'
> family is holding a community vigil for her on Sunday, August 22,
> 2004, at 7pm, at 27 Garlington Court (cross street: La Salle) in Bay
> View Hunter's Point.
>
> There will be a reception following the vigil in the same neighborhood
> at Comma Court. Friends, family members, and the community are welcome
> to come & remember Delicious and support her family. Participants are
> welcome to bring flowers, cards & food for the reception..
>
> If anyone has questions about the vigil please contact Tina D'Elia or
> Norma Garcia at CUAV (Community United Against Violence). If anyone
> has information regarding this case please contact Investigator Mike
> Mahoney at the Homicide Unit of the SFPD.
>
> Contact Information:
> Investigator Mike Mahoney: (415) 553-1145/ (415) 553-1071
> Anonymous Information can be left at the Hot Tip line: (415) 553-1071
> Tina D'Elia, Hate Violence Survivor Director, CUAV: (415) 777-5500
> ext.304
> Norma Garcia, Hate Violence Advocate, CUAV: (415) 777-5500 ext.305
chris at
5:29 AM
|
Friday, August 20, 2004
  To Sister Jo : YaY!! Happy Birthday! with lotsa Love & Big Hugs (oops!--even if it's a day late)
chris at
8:34 PM
|
now this gives me turns & dazzles of shivery ticklies. Not to be picky & such, but is there a way to do it hotlinked? Now, on key terms, well, that would be too-too.
(Jukka: xo!)
chris at
10:40 AM
|
Chronicles of Texas Crude:
a Bumper-Sticker-Deluxe ( Don't Mess With It)
or Dept. of Un
& Believeable :
Bumper sticker today (Arlington, Texas: Cooper & Park Row,
5:30 pm) :
Rome did not build an empire by talking about it.
They killed off all who opposed them.
response: hurry little red light. hurry.
once upon a SUV shiny
chrome bumper,
silver-sleek-body-
never-will-windows &
Yikes! Few or l=ittle material
clues to go on
to detect if this monsterly
expensive Um
gym-growth vehicle
espouses (represents?)
any life support beyond jockish
of any particular view
of Rome,
& by extension, the present
demands to exceed the Um
or the [no one has yet mentioned the code word: corporate]
U.S. [even if we so many poets toe their line],
or anything at all?
Well, one big clue
is "empire," hey?
So, I'm kind of liking
how this just says its Qs
(aren't we so smart-assed
privileged to do so?!)--
what a nation of Horaces,
YaY!!
& in so doing, raising the (fucking:
can I say that?) roof,
ya kno?
But what to mah wunderkind
ears duth happen? but: O
(dunno why the mind works
in such misterioso Um,
ways, que?) :
Alison Kraus, or Linda Ronstadt, or any
version of sweet
U.S.-identi-female-voice
singing:
"Someday, I'll get
Over
you...
[hard to distinguish which parse is the meta-
most-dangerous-chorus:]
I'll live
to see it
all through
but I'll always miss
dreamin'
my dreams
with you...
I won't let it change me not if I can
I'd rather believe
in
love
and give it away to those I'm fondest of...
Someday I'll get over you...
I'll live to see it
all through
but I'll always miss dreaming my dreams
with
you
eeeeepppp-creepyromanticist-destruckto-creepygoingson-but-doesn't
*know* what, *relationally*, does that mean?
Hey! Yipppee Kii--Oh-Zero-YaY!!
Gimmee, gimmee, gimmmeee, more-a-dat-bumper
stickin' datum, yah, Mama!
* * *
oh, geez: what can I say but hey, keep watchin' for those analogies with Rome, 'n never underestimate the power of
love:
ZaZen, Y'all!
~~~~~~~~~~~~i kno i don't have to copyright this one. cm.~~~~~~~
chris at
8:35 AM
|
Oh hey--in case you were wondering about beating the drum for *Against_the_War rallies?
How about looking into the Can We Just Try to Concentrate on a *Peace*
idea for a rally?--Yeah:  Keep on.
chris at
8:23 AM
|
Thursday, August 19, 2004
raining here today!--YaY!!--clearing out all the dusty code red pollution air.
here's a cm rain poem:
Raininginginging
1.
how do you feel
about it, the
rain it
is making me all
wet
2.
History: quiet of the street the
pipe
layers
made a ditch yesterday
quiet now
3.
mud’s crawling
slowly
into the ditch
earthworm rivulets
out of
that
kind
of a kind
rain
4.
sound. minute tympanic beat
I thought: no vision fiction?
opening from sleep
it might have been
to your heart
5.
how about a long O
rain lunch ride
in tin & that
abandoned yellow
caboose?
chris at
8:18 PM
|
Update: the latest Scribner's Best American Poetry (2004), edited by Lyn Hejinian, is now on the shelves (see my post from a few days ago). I have picked up a few for the Writing Center, today. Hey: this collection is really lookin' good! More on this year's best Am Po, soon. :)
chris at
11:08 AM
|
for a new texfiles series: along with the fotos of Sofia Herron, of Patrick and Janet File This In Birth of a New Poetic:
Awww, just been wanting to post this combo of pic & poems for a while now, and checked with Kent on it, though this appearance here is just an extension/addition to a great previous post over at Gabe Gudding's blog, from Thursday, 5 Aug 04 : 
a very cool pic of Kent Johnson's son, Brooks (left), with Gabe Gudding (right). I wanted to add some of the accomplished poetry Kent has been mentioning, too, so here are some from Lit Vert, issue 9, done several years ago when Brooks was 16 (Dad-Kent says he's into ever more writerly wiles now: rock lyrics and music for his band, and short stories). Well, hey, Brooks: rock on!
Haiku
*
Cicada's conversation:
only twice do they
interrupt each other.
*
Anxiously awaiting departure--
The faded writing on my palm
*
the cradling arms
of autumn-leafed branches
hold a single moon
Good stuff, eh? YaY!! More fotos of poetic generations soon...
~~~~photo.copyright.Gabe.Gudding..poem.copyright.Brooks.Johnson..All.courtesy. Conchology.blog.&.Andrew.Felsinger's.Lit.Vert~~~
chris at
8:55 AM
|
Two, too-startling beauties from
Bro Tom Murphy :
i'm thinkin' YaY!--all those figural bees
stirring up the poetry,
those silly gluttonous
or is it merely extravagant?!--
pollen tasters, every last one
of 'em, hiving & makin'
honey for winter
& the hibernating next
generation, the site of the next loud
crowd of it all...
--cm
* * *
 and here I'm thinking this is one of those oh, *touching* "monumental moments," ya know?
Thanks, Tom, for sharing the photos! & ah! those fascinating nasturtiums?--another of my favorite flowers (mostly because of the floral looking leaves, which in your fotos do so remind me, too, of little green galaxies: lovely). Keep on...
~~~~~~~~~~~~images copyright of Tom Murphy~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
8:13 AM
|
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
This note of updates from Clayton Couch, managing editor of Sidereality (one of my favorite journals) :
Dear sidereality friends, contributors, and readers:
I hope that everyone is doing well. Although sidereality 3.2
(http://www.sidereality.com/) has been out since early July, I'd like to
take this opportunity -- since I didn't have a chance to do so earlier in
the summer -- to formally announce its presence on the internet. The issue
features the writings of Peter Finch and Barry Schwabsky, along with poems,
reviews, and art by William Allegrezza, John M. Bennett, Charles Fishman,
Amy King, Stephen Paul Miller, Fariel Shafee, Todd Swift, Eileen Tabios,
Dean Terry, and others. While perusing the current issue's contents, please
feel free to use the new "Comment" option -- if you have questions about
this feature, please email me -- at the top of each page.
Additional SIDEREALITY NEWS:
*** The next issue, due out in early October, will a double issue, combining
issues 3.3 and 3.4.
*** With the recent departure of one of our Associate Editors, we're looking
to add 1-2 new faces to the sidereality staff. If you're interested in
helping out, please email Clayton A. Couch(managingeditor@sidereality.com).
*** Since sidereality receives more outstanding books and chapbooks than we
can possibly review in any given issue, a new weblog -- for the editorial
staff members -- has been created at
http://www.sidereality.com/editorsweblog/. The weblog, which will serve as a
repository for books received lists, short reviews, announcements, and
commentary, goes public in early September.
*** Very soon, the sidereality forums will be reorganized. Stay tuned.
STAFF NEWS:
*** Loren Kleinman (Associate Editor) has resigned from the sidereality
staff in order to concentrate on her graduate studies in the UK. We'll
certainly miss Loren, as she has been a consistently outstanding editor and
a great supporter of poetry.
*** Steven J. Stewart's (Associate Editor) book of translations of the work
of Spanish poet Rafael Pérez Estrada, Devoured By The Moon, was published by
Hanging Loose Press earlier this year. In a recent review in The Bloomsbury
Review, Ray González writes that "this book should be noted as one of the
best poetry books of 2004." Two pieces from the book are slated to appear in
Poetry Daily (www.poems.com) this next Tuesday (August 17th). For more
information, go to http://www.hangingloosepress.com/newtitles.html.
*** Clayton A. Couch (Managing Editor) has had work recently accepted at
call:review, eratio, hutt, Lost & Found Times, and moria. In early June, he
had the opportunity to read work at the outstanding 1st Annual Carrboro (NC)
Poetry Festival, an event that was tirelessly organized by the talented
Patrick Herron; in July, he learned that his first poetry collection,
Familiar Bifurcations, was a Finalist in the 2004 Marsh Hawk Press poetry
contest; and in mid-August, he completed his Master of Library and
Information Science degree at the University of South Carolina. To see what
he's up to now, visit Clayton's blog.
Thanks for reading!
Clayton
chris at
8:04 AM
|
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Ruby Street(s) Good Vibe!
--this one's from Glasgow, mid 1950s (also where my granny came from!)
awwwwww, Y'all!
Sending out many happy & humble thanks to Jill Jones who is of another Ruby Street--her own street in Australia, I believe, and the name of her contemporary po-blog, as well--for the (spiffy! non-reviewese! um... see my post below... response to my chapbook, *Meme Me Up, Scotty*. I'm going to go ahead and blog here, too, what Jill wrote:
Just received a copy of Chris Murray’s wonderful and bright-covered chap, Meme Me Up Scotty. I'm loving its music, its sonic play, its fluidity. I read a lot
of books where the poems don't sing to me, but Chris's sure do.
It’s funny and serious, it’s “shining as a satellite”.
fur in slow winter
turning the air
softer
saying “now”
- from Jump Phasing 1
In fact, the words ‘yes’ and ‘now’ mean a lot in this book which turns the world’s noise into vibrations, sympathies and conversations. It’s mindful and full of wonder and play - and of the poetry in things, in all our ‘stuff’, the “pollen electricity”.
Chris has one of the best, jumpingest blogs I know and this book is both cool and jumping, thinking and loving sounds of poetry.
Thanks for sending it to me, Chris, even though it took its time making it down here.
ladoremi
fababylala ...
(La La Ism)
Lots of good vibes have come from Ruby Street(s)!
chris at
7:28 PM
|
Stock- & Shore-Up the Reviewese!
I'm thinking a good term might be *spiffy* as in dancingly and playfully--for much of the recent fine poetry I've been reading. But am trying to find terms not yet on Mr. Tom Payne's literary reviewese list (fr London Telegraph)--& spiffy seems a good one but it may be older than all of us, since I think I got it out of some Bing Crosby 1930s dancing flick when I was an adolescent watching TV at my grandmother's in Rochester New York...
so maybe i'll just go ahead and keep looking :)
(eeeeppp: smiley face is unavoidable, sorry!)--thanks for this interesting list Jill!
chris at
7:17 PM
|
Monday, August 16, 2004
from Hoa Nguyen * :
SPEAKING WHEN SPOKEN TO
Mother is a cookie cutter, an attached lid
shut. The little ones escaped
outside. Skip. Flip. Attack
one another with cart-wheels.
Father is running. You were clever
to look like a machine.
Home, our small beds,
something else reeling us in. I hung
hair, stood on my head, we were good fish.
You talk to them like you talk to them
on the phone. We say a few words.
(70)
[MONSTER MADE       YOU WERE]
Monster made you were
to sing and blaze because
issue quickened how my glory is
your little feet chrysanthemums
that made me hate sister blood
I hated you for you wouldn't hush
burgeoned from peaceable jingles
Lucky Dog yours is a mouth
(71)
[YOU HAVE YOUR ANCIENT SEE THROUGH]
You have your ancient see through
ways Stars sustain their axis
Orion listing like gallows
for my creepy life the pieces
of our ascending selves
Olmecs
(save a few stone faces)
erased in the '50's by an oil company
Bleeping gastro kick-start
We pock mark plains
(77)
* Hoa Nguyen, Your Ancient See Through. Subpress, 2002.
chris at
8:11 PM
|
Happy! Big! Congratulations! YaY!!
--all applause going out to the poet-bloggers and others of the avant crowd whose work was selected by guest editor, Lyn Hejinian, for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2004 (Scribners: David Lehman, series editor,).
This year certainly looks like a coup for the avants/experimentalists! Avant Po Bloggers include Ron Silliman, kari edwards, Kasey Silem Mohammad, Brian Kim Stefans.
chris at
1:09 AM
|
Attention Span 2004 is now up at Third Factory--wow!
chris at
1:05 AM
|
Really Bad Movies is, um... *really* *HOT*!!
chris at
12:37 AM
|
Sunday, August 15, 2004
Different Birds by Mark Weiss
In the first part of January this year (see archives), I ran a Texfiles Poet of the Week feature here on Mark Weiss of Junction Press (publisher of work from several of the best contemporary avant writers, Stephen Vincent--Walking and Armand Schwerner--Selected Poems among them, as well as Rochelle Owen (whose work, Luca: Discourse on Life and Death, along with Stephen Vincent's, my students loved in the Spring 04 poetry seminar). In particular, the feature of Mark's work included many of the poems he had just finished revising from a batch he wrote while on a jaunt to Australia in August 2003 (the manuscript title at the time was *Australia*. Well, I'm happy now to see those poems have evolved into a book, a new ebook that just came out from Shearsman Press, and it is looking great!--some of the editorial thanks for that, I see, is due to advice from Jill Jones of Ruby Street blog, I'm also happy to note. Congratulations to Mark! Do check out his book:
Different Birds, by Mark Weiss.
chris at
10:01 PM
|
i... okay/cake: eat ottyup!
chris at
9:12 PM
|
a Take Action Note
from kari edwards, regarding Chris Crain's obnoxious assertion in an article this week in the Houston Voice that transgendered people should not be considered part of the focus on legal protections for gays (gay rights and proposed legislation thereof):
CHRIS CRAIN @ CCRAIN@houstonvoice.com...
wrote "ENDA gets trans-jacked" (see link to article below) in the
Huston Voice and others
CHRIS CRAIN article in Houston Voice
encourage everyone to write this hateful person and get them
removed from the staff of the Houston Voice online... we do not need
people like this in the ranks and file when we are struggling for our
rights
you can also respond @
Houston Voice's online response address: SOUND OFF
chris at
9:05 PM
|
Just Theenk-ing...  ** & definitely PuuuurrrRrRrrRRRRrriINgNGgNING...
& oh my, my Lynx: such good company, too... oo-oo-oo-wheee--keep on
winking!
**image by Erin-English
Many humble thanks to Steve Tills (& my cool Lynx) : )
chris at
2:39 AM
|
A fabulous wonder of an article just up today in Jacket 25, by Kent Johnson and Forrest Gander, on their trip this past June to Bolivia--in effect, seeking out, channeling the poesis of Jaime Saenz. Includes several fascinating fotos, as well: one in particular stood out to me: Saenz and his sister, Elva, as children, dressed in costumes!--beautiful and haunting. Also, a good pic of Kent, holding a bouquet of flowers in the marketplace. Hey: Congratulations, Y'all! And thanks for writing/sharing this great glimpse of your journey.
chris at
12:14 AM
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Saturday, August 14, 2004
Farewell & Good Prayer for the soul to leave well
this state of being: Czeslaw Milosz, 1911-2004
Poems, bio, and work, here at ibiblio and an abc news report, here (both via Patrick Herron and the Buffalo-EPC listserv: Thanks for these, Patrick). Also this, a most interesting Australian article, found via Bro-Tom-Murphy.
Additionally, I offer the following from my copy of Milosz's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1981-82 (as Chair of Poetry, Harvard), The Witness of Poetry (Harvard UP, 1983) :
Many learned books on poetry have been written, and they find, at least in countries of the West, more readers than does poetry itself. This is not a good sign, even if it may be explained both by the brilliance of their authors and by the zeal in assimilating scientific disciplines which today enjoy universal respect. A poet who would like to compete with those mountains of erudition would have to pretend he possesses more self-knowledge than poets are allowed to have. Frankly, all my life I have been in the power of a daimonion, and how the poems dictated by him came into being I do not quite understand. That is the reason why, in my years of teaching Slavic literatures, I have limited myself to the history of literature, trying to avoid poetics. ... I have titled this book *The Witness of Poetry* not because we witness it, but because it witnesses us. Both individuals and human societies are constantly discovering new dimensions accessible only to direct experience. (3-4)
and, also from his *Witness* this resonant poem:
BYPASSING RUE DECARTES
Bypassing rue Decartes,
I descended toward the Seine, shy, a traveler,
A young barbarian just come to the capital of the world.
We were many, from Jassy and Koloshvar, Wilno and Bucharest,
Saigon and Marrakesh,
Ashamed to remember the customs of our homes,
About which nobody here should ever be told:
The clapping for servants, barefoot girls hurry in,
Dividing food with incantations,
Choral prayers recited by masters and household together.
I had left the cloudy provinces behind,
I entered the universal, dazzled and desiring.
Soon enough, many from Jassy and Koloshvar, Saigon or
Marrakesh
Were killed because they wanted to abolish the customs
of their homes.
Soon enough, their peers were seizing power
In order to kill in the name of the universal beautiful ideas.
Meanwhile, the city behaved in accordance with its nature,
Rustling with throaty laughter in the dark,
Baking long breads and pouring wine into clay pitchers,
Buying fish, lemons and garlic at street markets,
Indifferent as it was to honor and shame and greatness
glory,
Because that had been done and transformed itself
Into monuments representing nobody knows whom,
Into arias hardly audible and into turns of speech.
Again I lean on the rough granite of the embankment,
As if I had returned from travels through the underworlds
And suddenly saw in the light the reeling wheel of the seasons
Where empires have fallen and those once living are now dead.
There is no capital of the world, neither here nor anywhere
else,
And the abolished customs are restored to their small fame,
And I know the time of human generations is not like the time
of the earth.
As to my heavy sins, I remember one most vividly:
How, one day, walking a forest path along a stream,
I pushed a rock down onto a water snake** coiled in the grass.
And what I have met with in life was the just punishment
Which reaches, sooner or later, everyone who breaks a taboo.
(8-9)
** "I come from Lithuania where the water snake was
considered holy."
chris at
9:59 PM
|
"... a sleepy soft grunt answered:
--Mn ... "
(via botheration, via Wood's Lot--btw, also in today's good stuff: a great feature on photography of August Sander)
chris at
8:50 PM
|
Listening: Peter Gabriel: Shaking the Tree, "San Jacinto" (I hold the light!)
& reading from Clayton Couch's terrific prose poems, and musing with these fabulous images of fly fishing lures:
"Begin at the tip. Afterglow. Touch is finished. ... 
What if no one knew ["Oh, Biko--Biko--
Biko--Biko: muh mahn 'eeeezz
dead..."]
a new
guru... ?"
Oh my,
la la la: lyric... its all too unfinished
biz 'n all (as in its non-closure)--
Oh yeah, Y'all ...
chris at
8:52 AM
|
from Joseph Brodsky's long poem, A Part of Speech * :
A list of some observations. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than his skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow, the body hulks
like a glacier's debris, a moraine of sorts.
A millenium hence, they'll no doubt expose
a fossil bivalve propped behind this gauze
cloth, with the print of lips under the print of fringe,
mumbling "Good night" to a window hinge.
(104)
* Joseph Brodsky, Collected Poems in English. New York: FSG, 2000
chris at
3:52 AM
|
 --Wonking the Wonkers One at a Time:
Go, Citizen Kay!
via Nada Gordon, post of Sunday, 8 Aug 04, and do check out the cool images Nada's students have been creating.
chris at
2:09 AM
|
Friday, August 13, 2004
Geof Huth--of Visualizing Poetics blog, gives extensive critical commentary--it's a thorough explication--here, of David Nemeth's recent mulitplicitous experimental fling, Bernstein's Homolinguistic Translation Chain (I'm very happy to have been a part of this readerly/writerly fling!--thanks, all--it turned out wonderfully elaborate, and thanks, Geof, for this in-depth critical look into it).
chris at
11:01 PM
|
Pelican Gliding...  a new cm e-image/text series, "gliding" along with
Mark Young's The right foot of the giant : *
At the Gallery
The paintings delight the eye like
acrobats. Around & around
they spin, creating
out of apparent distortion
a succession of diverse &
sometimes gaudy images, a summer audience
seen from the trapeze.
Incredulous,
the mind attempts to follow
every movement--each play
of paint, the precise & intricate
manoeuvers performed upon these
canvas bars. Building up a new
painting as it does so, composed
upon the white sheet of shock
that was its first reaction.
*Mark Young, The Right Foot of the Giant. Wellington, New Zealand: Bumper Books, 1999 (a regathering of Mark's poems from 1959 through 1974 [including one additional poem from five years after that period]).
chris at
9:33 PM
|
Thursday, August 12, 2004
Steve Evans, our Maine-Man blogger and incisive critic of po-stuff and kultura, is getting ready to release his annual readerly project, *Attention Span, 2004.* This is quite a deal: over 350 books currently being read by 37 contributors (including a little list by moi, yes!). Looks as if Steve will be able to post it on Sunday. Looking forward, then. Go readers! Go Steve!
chris at
8:03 PM
|
Two really important things I keep finding myself sidetracked from getting in here and posting, but will do so now:
1. The new issue of Contemporary Poetry Review is out, and is full of good stuff as usual, but in particular, there is a thoughtful piece by Ernest Hilbert, "The Pages of the Future: On the Uses of the New Online Media." I'm adding it to the reading list for my students this coming fall semester. My course is another senior level poetry seminar, creative writing: electronic poetry.
2. And I was reminded in a couple ways that the new issue of Slope is out. One way was reading Hilbert in CPR, and the other was a note from Dallas area poet and editor of the prose poem journal, Sentence, Brian Clements. Slope's one of my favorite reads, but this time I can happily say I have a small part in that: my interview of Chris Daniels, Chris Chen, and Susan Maxwell, on the translation embargo, is included here (and I say my part is small because congratulations for the real work of this piece belong to the interviewees--translators, all, and highly accomplished, meaning that they are very disturbed about this embargo and not willing to let it go by--they've raised hell about it, and rightly so: Keep on, Chris, Chris, and Susan.). Add to that how this issue also has some great poetry, including some from Brian, who, I might add with a little preening, is also a Texfiles Poet of the Week (check October 2003 archives).
Well, then: enjoy!
chris at
7:28 PM
|
Hey, ya, kno? How about just to love love?
Some days ya want to select every one of the names in yr favorite e-address file, and just say gosh, "I Love Y'all!" But really, ya wish ya could do so in person. Aww, yeah, I'm such a sentimental being, really. dunno what to do with that!--in a world full of non-worth for sentimentality. And then, geeze: there is war. And boys go off to do terrible crap in it. And it may be yr own kid, who you bore in committed pacifist mindset. oh hey. about those hugs. i think they do a whole lot more? as in, can we all just try to: give hugs, not war? (ulterior motive: maybe my own son won't get killed from some stupic human shit, right?). Just sayin'--but then, y'all are the ones already convinced.
On our way through my old ground on Sunday (Flagstaff, AZ--site of my master's degree), we encountered a slow traffic thing. Not unusual for this time of year, given all the tourists in a hurry to see sunset at Grand Canyon, 70 miles away. But this was something else. At first I thought it was a Rebublican prez rally, cuz I saw a placard raised, sayin *Bush* an' stuff all over it. But then we figured out, moseyin' down the slower than slow road, that, acutally, it was a Kerry appearance: right there in po-dunk Arizona. Damn! That felt kinda good. And ya kno what?--people were lined up and crowded happily together all over the effing place! How cool! Not that it was a surprise for that particular college town. But in reality, Arizona being basically a conservative polity, I was kinda proud and happy to see all those (of course: mostly young) folk out there raising their big *Hey!--wazzup?* all over the political sphere. And a beautiful sphere it was, too: sunset full of red flava clouds
and just plain
could.
fini, Y'all...
xoxoxo
chris at
9:09 AM
|
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
 also in love with *this* :
how cool is that?--daily doses of joyce's *ulysses*!
--found via one of my extra-favorite sites, Wood's Lot
chris at
11:18 PM
|
dear kari!
has new work (I'm always taken by kari's poetry, and this one I just love!) posted here: PoetrySZ: Demystifying Mental Illness, as well as work in Scribner's new Best American Poetry 2004. Also, if you haven't already, then check out this review.  Hey, kari--Rock On!
chris at
9:51 PM
|
Cosmopoetica!
I'm catching up on blog readings after all the traveling. Found this interesting take full of elaborate commentary/response on Kent Johnson and the Avant poetics feature done at Boston Comment a few months ago. Chris Lott really does dig in, applying dialogue as an absolute necessity. So admirable. Thanks, Chris! I also like what Chris says in another post last week about e.e. cummings. Keep on.
chris at
9:09 PM
|
the new Bookslut's out! # 27
Especially, do fix yr gaze on the excellent Marsupial column--Dale Smith's fine work--as it looks into recent Hejinian and much more...
chris at
7:43 PM
|
YaY!! Desert City's a Daffodil till dawn...
Ken Rumble has a blog for his Desert City Reading Series in North Carolina. Ken, Hi--so nice to see you out here in the bloggy spaces!
Here's a little something of Ken's from the Lucipo Group chap that I was lucky to pick up at the Carrboro Poetry Festival this past June :
Your Middle Name
The caterpillar scrapes by, head last
and leaving flat roads -- bowling lanes
the Yankee called them -- who
knows where he drove -- strictly the green,
snapping heads off water towers,
curse in plaid. The white gloves don't stop
thorns -- they don't keep anybody out these days.
Felony business, the work program
brings help since water rates are high. Behind
the club there is another we know by what's left:
16th hole sand trap, out of the wind, not a bad lie
on a Friday. Where are these lights coming from?
The moon is out, the stars are gone, yet
these lights swing and approach -- the long arm in to grope.
Daffodil till dawn. The drive from what's your name
to never getting what you want takes time -- flies
shag and hatch
the spider between the window and screen and spinning
with the flies -- the Civil War
all over again.
Other members of this lively, Lucipo group (short for Lucifer Poetics) are:
Tim Botta, Amy Sara Carroll, Joe Donahue (I'll be posting something cool from his fine book, *Incidental Eclipse* soon), Patrick Herron (beyond YaY!!--just drop down a few posts here to see what he's been up to lately: proud daddy!), Maura High, Brian Howe, Tessa Joseph, Aaron McCullough, Eden Osucha, Evei Shockley, Marcu Slease (forever one the Texfiles Poets of the Week!--see June/July posts), Jon Thompson, Tony Tost (another huge YaY!!), and Chris Vitiello (who kindly shared some great conversation at Carrboro--Hi, Chris!).
You can purchase a copy of their chapbook, *The Displayer* (Ken's poem above is from Volume One), by contacting Ken. Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Ken Rumble~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
4:52 AM
|
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
from Standard Schaefer's Nova * :
The upside curbs are in, smudged numbers
carbon on the hands, rubbed off
The hum and click of a strictly older testament
Heaven is without an old testament. This is heaven. One afraid
of patterns.
The pattern of one click and bleach across the mountains
Shifting their weight, always surrounded, almost off
Mountain evidence and a necklace of smoke.
A lecture of smoke.
Bright opposing sentences pinion and shift between rear views.
Lots and fixed forms, slow escalation. Then steam and ink across
the meltwash.
*
Ostensible fog, mostly places, sometimes song.
A grim moment of review, dim shimmer across a gray helmet of
insomnia.
Sodium lights.
Mountain evidence and marginal revenge.
But, up and down high event all those days fizzling
A game of rangy light almost off almost through--
the arteries, thought left wavering--
between strict behavior and streaks on a bottle,
while in the valley, a shadow of an angel all morning over
the garage, the car running with the trunk clean,
the door coming down from the north.
(44-45)
*Standard Schaefer, Nova. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 2001.
~~~~~~~~~~~~copyright of Standard Schaefer~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
8:24 PM
|
of "conjectures" & knots & etc-text: 
Wow: check out Textual Conjectures, Jukka's new blog-space! It's chugging along in more text than this little mathematic-knot-fishie could hope to swim ...
chris at
7:24 PM
|
(S/H/e)eeeeeeee'zzzzzBaaaaacccckkk....
Well, yeah. Over the next few days, there will be more on the questions of son Randy and the Marines, as well as the doin's in Arizona's Verde Valley (Sedona, Jerome, Camp Verde), and Flagstaff, my other fave place, where my master's degree magically appeared one day several years ago all on its own--yeah, right!), tho nothing on Grand Canyon, my true love but who knows whY?--viz, in New York they say Grand Canyon?--oh, nuthin' but a big hole... .
For now, here's some very fine intertwining poetic with poetry, and vice versa, to consider: the previous hour of email opened happily with this news from David Nemeth: the awaited response to his elaboration on a Charles Bernstein exercise, the Homolinguistic-Chain-Translation. Well, the poem is up and running! It's wonderful!! Happy thanks to David for plugging along with this--it's turned out fabulous!--an exercise to keep Y'all thinking--ummmmm. in case you weren't! But we know you were, and will have some cool things to say in response to this project, not least, some new take-offs it might take. Cheers!
chris at
6:35 AM
|
Sunday, August 08, 2004
The sign is here. The problem is please & difficulty & rhetoric. What TV & how. Corporate means bodies. Corporate commercials. someone was persuaded to do some thing, this thing. as soon as possible. sign here. To do is to commit an act, action. who did it? who what how why? sign here. right now can probably be summed up into rhetoric volumes. epic life is in it. to do life is in the balance. the cliched rhetoric. this is the way past the TV. sign here. (but it cannot be resolved as in 'solving a problem'). the difficulty is about rhetoric. balance is intervening. life is in it, the glamour. put the sign here. the hero is on TV. the difficulty is signs. it's about rhetoric misrecognized. just sign here. misrecognized being. free. being 17. & wanting, wondering. wanting to be recognized for being. somebody. sign here please. the difficulty is in wondering. wonder about glamour. military as glamour. glamour of heroics. Aristotle. art of rhetoric knowing thyself (Socrates was saying, dying). okay where do I sign? life is not cheap. oh. oh please.
chris at
7:46 PM
|
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Sudden Trip
to Verde Valley, Arizona
to see son Randy (all of 17), who some fool military recruiter has somehow talked into signing up for the Marines. Un-eff'n'-believable. I respect my son's right to make his own decision, of course. But since when were military recruiters allowed to f2f-spam high school kids, basically hitting on them day after day (wearin' em down?) like used car salesmen?
Hoping he will listen to reason from me and his sisters. Looks like the damage is already done, tho.
I'll see if I can get online to blog a little along the way.
Wish me luck please!!! & stay tuned you wonderful tex folk!
chris at
7:01 AM
|
a Virtu(ous!)al Concrete Essay: Gumby DerBlauMuunzzz
chris at
5:28 AM
|
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
from Jill Jones: Received (and read with greatest of pleasure!) :
Jill Jones, Struggle and radiance: ten commentaries,
Wild Honey Press, 2004.
A beautifully made, hand sewn chapbook. Stunning artwork on cover, a rectangle of splashes, dashes, swirls of color, which might best be described with a fragment of the poetry as "beyond the difference/ trapped in vision" ("I. A Vision"). The poems fairly take off from there, each with Jones customary precision and care for word and deed in life experience. This is a poet with not only ear and eye fully committed to work together in/on the poem, but the entire body of being is ever present, fully an art, then, not only committing distinctly differing parts to the whole, but of engaged commitment to the larger social body of ideas, not least of which that of self-reflective questions of temporal presence, transcendence and influenced by cultural habituation:
...
But still a consumer
the constant capture
shelves my handy packets.
(Can we still talk?)
The boys, the queens
unhappy together.
Are these the years?
...
(I. "A Vision," 6)
Here is more of what I sense on these somewhat quiet, yet heady and so welcome matters of body, its perceptive partialities, its sensual intellect splashed into being:
II. Colours swim
What sort of eyes
I must have now
to see past these streaks
of eden.
Black outlines
in which vision
& nbsp; swims
a cotton that covers
sleep.
Quick wings
pass branches
settle on air
tiny green-backed flies
and memory
is still a colour.
Cloud sky
yellow as an old summer.
The squealing yards
kids again.
(7)
So compelling, this poetry: it makes me want to be a "green-backed fly" or at least, a "memory"!
Congratulations, Jill, and Randolf of Wild Honey, for this wonder of a book.
--cm--
~~~~~~~~~poems copyright of Jill Jones~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
5:23 PM
|
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Announcing:
The Birth of a Beautiful New Poetic!--from Patrick and Janet Herron:
Sofia Anne Herron !!
Sprogblog: birth announcement & link to photos
Born: Sunday 31 July 2004
12:51 PM--7 lbs., 3 oz., 19 in.
YaY!! Sofia!
Papa Patrick Herron sends along the birth-story:
Janet started labor at 6PM Wednesday, nearly two weeks past the due
date. After an incredible nonstop sleepless 60-hour effort by Janet to
attempt a drug-free delivery, we finally decided to alter our course and
have the baby at UNC Hospitals. A small amount of rest and just the
slightest gentle nudge was all that was needed. Janet was of course
still able to deliver under the care of our Nurse Midwife Sher DiMaggio.
"Janet is healthy and happy and so too is Sofia. At least 10 fingers
and no more than 10 toes.
"Extra-special thanks to our friend Robin Verhoeven and Anne Adams (Jan's
mom) for their constant support and hard work during the week leading up
to the birth. Also thanks go to everyone at the Women's Birth and
Wellness Center for their peerless expert care.
Thanks, Patrick: we love Y'all here, and send lots of big texfiles hugs!
chris at
10:30 AM
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Monday, August 02, 2004
from Anna Eyre's Metaplasmic (Effing Press, 2004)
Shattered Expanse
Sanded and torn
smooth from turbulence
contains no trace
of sharp
break the flesh-
pierced some salted
drunken sole on
an exotic distant
shore. Fractured in my palm
its refined sufferance
gathers magnification
incineration through clouded
opulence. The irresistible gleam,
dried white with ache
for waves carve, pound, and glimmer,
nets my eyes in peer.
(16)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~copyright of Anna Eyre~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
5:08 PM
|
Sunday, August 01, 2004
TORNADO
ALLEY
from Scott Pierce, Texfiles Poet of the Week:
our surface worlds (from tornado warning)
rain comes like a race
the announcement is a poem
of miles and treelines
hills and buildings
the strobing green stripes
a purple sky of tumbling cloud
stack upon this town
bring the river the streets
dream of in the flat dull night
I quote you on the path you trip and fall
we end it there. the catching roots
we fall along the treeline, it doesn’t sound like me
she’s strumming in the ez chair
the plants and flowers hang
what’s closed will re-open
the chemicals will swirl in this,
our controlled burn of surface life
we’ll never speak of it again. yes,
weed wack around that bush
we’ll pave a diversion.
standing still.
with sunburns.
and gold can happen,
push the dope through the system
sweep us off our feet
and into the gutters
bodies bent in protrusion
and dream
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~copyright of Scott Pierce~~~~~~~~~~~~
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