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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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Thursday, October 07, 2004
--photo via katalog.jpc-verzeich
Announcement: Poetry Reading
from Skanky Possum's Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen :
Susan Briante and Joe Doerr
7:00 p.m. Friday, Oct 8
12th Street Books
Austin, Texas
* * *
a poem from Susan Briante:
The Groom Stripped Bare*
The hero flies through the air
on a steed; on a raptor; in the form of a falcon; on an '88 Harley-Davidson; on the board
of a flying schooner; on her flying carpet; on the shoulders of a giant; in the wheel
casing of a 747
He travels on the ground or over water
on the back of a horse or wolf; on the over pass; through the underbridge; in a green
Volkswagen taxi with the meter whirling; in a stifling boxcar over the Rio Grande;
a handless soldier carries a legless one
He is led
a coyote ushers the hero through a desert; red cotton thread unwinds like a clock from
his lady's hem
He makes use of stationary means of communication
he climbs a stairway; he finds a subway passage; he walks across the back of an enormous
pike as across a suspension bridge
He follows bloody tracks
to the cougar's lair; to a rusty tin; to the pulpit; to the villain; to one cardinal flame
burning above the charred door of her hermitage
The Groom Stripped Bare, in Shearsman 54
~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Susan Briante~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
11:29 AM
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On the New Sentence!
When I met with my class today I passed around the second issue of Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, which I had (so happily!) received yesterday in the mail.
An observant student, David Humes, remarked on the cover artwork, per effect: Oh! Look at the tiny details here: they are words, the things wrapped in the design. (Thank you for noticing, David!) A design of a web. A highly scripted or formalized web. Then full of tiny pencilled words such as "RAGE," "ANGER," & "_ESTRUCTION"--especially interesting, that missing (D): creating an effect in the word, destruction, since actually enacting itself as '_estruction'...
Exactly: words wrapped in design: words in a web. A web(de)sign. What a fantastically good visual pun, then, from Dallas artist, Michael Carris.
The intricate red/gold swirls framed in black cracks and arcs, geometrically somethig of a maze, ofcompartmentalized spacings and surface cracking, to reveal something yet not quite, though nonethe less (a)(mazing). The remarkable cover art Michael Carris is only the beginning of a provocative adventure in textuality. The term *amazing* covers the entire issue. The artwork is called Sweet Violence 9b, and I wish I knew more about it now, but will try to find out and let y'all know.
This second issue of Sentence is larger than the first, this one at some 240+ pages, which is nice to see, since it speaks of abundance, and every bit of it quality, too. There are two special features, one of Susan Briante introducing the prose poem and poetics in Spanish ("Hybrid Cultures..."), including work from Neruda, Odio, Mistral. Also, a feature in the form of a colloquium on the prose poem, with short essays by Barry Silesky, Deanna Kern Ludwin, and John Bradley (love this title: "Shapeshifting: Slipping Into and Out of the Skin of the Prose Poem").
Among the contributors of poetry are Linh Dinh, Sandy McIntosh, Tia Black, Tom Whalen, Christine Boyka Kluge, Anthony Tognazzini, Rachel Loden, Sally Ashton, Gian Lombardo, Michel Delville, Daryl Scroggins, Brooke Horvath.
Sentencealso devotes a large section to reviewing and commentary on poetics. This issue includes work by Dale Smith, kari edwards, Gloria Frym, Rebecca Spears, Brian Clements (editor of the journal), Michel Delville, Gian Lombardo, and yours truly: my review of Eileen Tabios' Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole (Marsh Hawk, 2003)-- also currently posted to the Marsh Hawk blogsite(scroll down).--Thanks for the honor of your kind words, Eileen, and Y'all good folks at Marsh Hawk!
(to be continued...)
chris at
1:33 AM
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Slow Steady Rain: Makes me wish:
Makes me wish I still lived in an Airstream at Grand Canyon, South Rim, heca-history-bunches-and-human hugs back, when I found out what it was like to have a tin roof in rain, people were doing lots of things I had no clue about but we all made blue grass music around pinon tree hill whirls and pots of pinto beans and cows. Yeah. Sounds unkickass to folks movin' in urban fastrack, maybe, but hey
all that was after I lived in my father's 250 year old house on the Erie Canal-- hand hewn beams there (I wanted to know: whose hands?), and whose barges docked at the landing and the bridge, who kept it going?
Just a tent. Or: just nuthin' but-yer-own skin,
yeah.
I was learnin' Now, it's no big thing for folks to do such, so yeah, an amazing thing.
Have I mentioned before how much I like these nice slow rains here?--at end of September, into October (check archive last year, k?), even lapping up into November & even, sometimes, Decemeber? Yeah.
Things here once in a while at certain times of year can be very congenial. As now. Gentle little rain thing goin' on.
I just like the Rod McKuen effect in all that. Thanks, Rod!
chris at
1:00 AM
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Wednesday, October 06, 2004
YaY!! going out to Halvard Johnson, who forwarded the following poem from the depths of internet flarf ** (see note below). I think it's a very nice poem from the bushbag school of stupitude:
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
--Donald Rumsfeld
Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey, Y'all, check out Hal's website, and his blog:
Halvard Johnson's website
Entropy and Me: Hal's blog!
** An added note: "depths of internet flarf" is my hyperbole. Since I wrote that earlier today, Hal--who is not the originator, nor the original finder of any of the Rumsfeld poems--emailed to offer the following link to the NPR website that thoroughly explains this Rumsfeld-poetry connection, which apparently has evolved into a (much deserved) parodic genre in its own right.
Here's the link which is to an NPR page on which you'll find not only more on the
provenance of that poem, but also a sound file of a musical setting of it (!) and other Rumsfeld works.
NPR story on the Rumsfeld poetry phenomenon
Enjoy!
chris at
9:18 AM
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Stay Tuned...
Eating teensy dark chocolate chips, one at a itty-bitty time. They are very good--some San Fran kind. But hey, the report on Sentence # 2 has been bumped up!--to Wednesday evening--got lots of live life (huh?) going on here right now, folks--but much good stuff to tell ya, too, about this latest, Sentence, the kooliest.
chris at
2:35 AM
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Tuesday, October 05, 2004
 -- Crusty Old Joe's Kodiak Military History Museum, Kodiak, Alaska
Hey, it's voting season, & for me
a crowd of loud brownout
humming in its finer
Or the too-smiley find its own
haired semiosis--sort of a rank
with all those rows-of-beans
questions on standardized tests & self
citations! something about how
we all got cultural
history & gendered sleves as typo
selves, Oh!--with a bubble
over the smiling
womanish
figure's head full
of a stupendous need
to stop posing
so to, yes: let's
vote
Bushbag outta here.
[Brought to you by *Evolving Janis Objects*, c. 2004]
& ZaZen, Y'all...
chris at
10:40 PM
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Received: the new Sentence! --more on that later this evening--but for now, hey it's lookin' great! Includes my review of Eileen's Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole and lots of facinating prose poetry, and mucho *prose poetics*: hang in there, Brian!--the phrase makes exacting sense for its object.
Stay tuned for more later...
chris at
4:19 PM
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the new Bookslut's out
chris at
9:18 AM
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"Silence creates vulnerability. You, members of the Commission on Human Rights, can break the silence. You can acknowledge that we exist, throughout Africa and on every continent, and that human rights violations based on sexual orientation or gender identity are committed every day. You can help us combat those violations and achieve our full rights and freedoms, in every society, including my beloved Sierra Leone." --Fannyann Eddy, of Sierra Leone, in her address to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, 60th Session, April 2004. Article found via the activism of the incomparable kari edwards, who has dedicated *transdada* to getting the word out--thank you, kari for all you do.
Note to self: Light some candles, send godspeed and prayer for this wonderful, generous soul.
Then try not to break vows of nonviolence to go find these murderous jerks & kick ass, for,
this fine soul, Fannyann Eddy, was found brutally murdered in her home last week.
Bless you, Fannyann.
chris at
1:42 AM
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Monday, October 04, 2004
from Anny Ballardini, a Dante Gabriel Rosetti poem for the little bird who stopped by here last week for a couple days. My thanks going out to Jill Jones, Joe Ahearn, and to Anny for the helpful comments (see below) about the situation.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882) :
SEPTEMBER [from The Works (1911)]
And in September, O what keen delight!
Falcons and astors, merlins, sparrowhawks;
Decoy-birds that shall lure your game in flocks;
And hounds with bells: and gauntlets stout and tight;
Wide pouches; crossbows shooting out of sight;
Arblasts and javelins; balls and ball-cases;
All birds the best to fly at; moulting these,
Those reared by hand; with finches mean and slight;
And for their chase, all birds the best to fly;
And each to each of you be lavish still
In gifts; and robbery find no gainsaying;
And if you meet with travellers going by,
Their purses from your purse's flow shall fill;
And avarice be the only outcast thing.
chris at
9:49 AM
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Welcome to the bloggies, Jim Ryals, of Lawyer-Novelist blog! I applaud what you are doing by focusing on problems in American Special Education. A tough road, legally, educationally.
I have some personal experience that way: Many years ago, when one of my own children needed advocacy, no one was around to help or advise on it. I figured it out the hard way, which is not to say we didn't find what we needed, only that it was a whole lot harder to find workable solutions when running up against a hard-walled administration and inflexible policies, because there was no advocate for the student/student's family. Basically I just made myself a pain in their arse until they got tired of hearing/seeing me coming, so the changes my child needed were accomplished.
Ours was not a radical-needs-situation, either, so that helped us along. It was workable from a shrewd parental perspective. If it had been any more complicated, then a parent could not have done it. Increasingly, these conflicts with systems are more than parents can manage, yet the system does not care or accommodate them (or the students for that is the matter, no?). In many ways, the public education system in the US is worse than the church in middle ages Europe, in how people are made to enter and live through it, with little recourse--and this is not feudal Europe, but a (supposed) democracy! Which means, many people who just do not have the resources cannot deal with the system. So their children have no chance of getting through in a workable, reasonable way. That is unacceptable.
I'm so glad to hear you are out there for folks to ask or to rely on. Please: Keep On.
chris at
1:16 AM
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Sunday, October 03, 2004
--"turbulence" via plus maths .org--
Wave Layering & Mo(o)re (For(e))telling: on turbulence one
I'm having a look at David Nemeth's remarkable 1993 journal, turbulence one. First off, its presentation (design by Peter Ganick and Michael Ayling, of Graphic Reproductions, Inc.) appears not to be trying to shout itself into any one kind of existence or literary-artsy politic-consciousness, through any kind of textual antic or imagistic tease: it's a very modest staple-bound presentation, made from materials and text that are not elaborate or fancy, beginning with the plain card stock cover. This is a simple 4.5 x 8.5 (a regular page that has been halved), light-washed-blue with a band of black lettering running about one fifth the width of page, up the right-hand length, from bottom to top.
As such, even the lettering seems modest in the extreme, or at the least, equalizing, given what was being done on similar journal covers, aesthetically, in that early to mid-nineties period--where, at university, second wave feminism was being problematized for its privileging of mid-class-Victorian-inspired-white women, and Derrida was finally winding down his dramatics, while po-mo Foucault-inspired new-historicism was on the rise, so that Shakespeare could easily be a filmic and post-colonialist rhetorical text. This was before Harold Bloom made things like the hegemony of English in literary imperialism both more openly ridiculous and more insideous than ever. A little bit like the current trend called neo-con, eh?
This was of time when not since World War II had there been a panic-run on gas masks but the urge to go to Walmart and buy such was strong--whereas now, this is almost a normal behavior, so has become so familiar a marketing strategy that it is seldom questioned, now. This was the ass-end of the first Geo.Bushbag's reign with his fashioning of new wars, new other-worldliness killing. It was just before the advent of canon resistance and multi-culti-self-fashioning, creating a punkish moment where it was tempting for small press journals to give in to urges toward flamboyant break-out statements, at least in the cover graphics/lettering: here I'm comparing with the 1992 cover of the University of Rochester's literary mag, Logos, which we (I was on the editorial committee for that one) had decorated with all kinds of intriguing and intentionally busy clashes of antithetically semiotic images and lettering, from blackflies to Jesus to toaster plug-wires set against black and blue. We did have fun over all that, I recall.
turbulence one, however, doesn't even allow itself caps in the lettering, and then, has barely a space between its two words. So, minimalist in a time of antic excess. Impressively, independent-minded-stylish, in its equalizing modesty (given the moment's intellectual context), or perhaps just plain humble, an effect that is appealing since open, not full of drama-posturing. Basically, then, all this here to say that the emphasis appears to be on the poetry, as it should be.
The contents, 29 unnumberd pages of poetry plus a 2 sided title page and one sided final, blank page, are most impressive. Work from Sheila E. Murphy, Peter Ganick, Dennis Barone, Charles Bernstein, Mark Wallace, Susan Smith Nash, Antonio Calvocressi (translated by Charles Bernstein), John M. Bennett, Judita Vaiciunaite, Deborah Meadows, Robert Brown, luigi, bob lennon, Joe Banford. And one interesting thing here, too, is that where poets have more than one piece published in the issue, they are not all lumped together in consecutive paging. For instance, Sheila E. Murphy's, Deborah Meadows', and Charles Bernstein's poems are scattershot through the issue. I like how that was done. It breaks up a certain readerly expectancy of solid consistency, of seamless authority.
On the other hand, Susan Nash Smith's two poems from a series on Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, "Upon Oz Dorothy Dream Child Narrative Visual," appear in dead center, like two handprints side-by-side on a room of white-wall--gently but none the less riveting. For me this recalls the rhetorical effect of similar structural infolding, a strategy famously of Luce Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman, her talk-back-book to Jaques Lacan's ignorance in interpreting Freud and in turn, Freud's on Plato, regarding the subject of that which is feminine: the book is structured from the center outward rather than in the typical linear, Aristotelian structuration proceeding from beginning at page one to middle to end. Nice work on this subtle yet radicalizing editorial arrangement, David.
As for the poetry: well, you'll have to contact David to see if he still has some of these issues available. For now, for purposes of this review, let me offer a sample from some that I found wonderfully provocative poems. Here is the journal's opening poem, two stanzas of Antonio Calvocressi (1538-1574), from Canti Antiche, as translated by Charles Bernstein:
O! Heart of mine
Is cleaved by your betrayal!
The pigeon engorges its wings
To our exhausted sentiment!
My head is broken on the cement!
O! Heart of mine
In yearning my visage fractures!
We leapt together like matching porcelain doves
Before the curtain ripped
To its predestined hemorrahage!
(I've added the italics to indicate that the poem is quoted out of turbulence one). I love these lines!--taken as a whole, they seem poised on the brink of right now--or, they take the moment of Italian Renaissance and render it prismatic: completely unlike itself, and more baroque than baroque. These stanzas are full of estranged twenty-first century emphatic vocals & fracturing of image with sound (all those exclamation marks, yes!). I will definitely be looking into the work of this poet & in particular, this translation, to see how the rest of the poem plays out.
And, another piece that particularly caught my attention today as I read, this from Sheila E. Murphy, a lang-po wonderment:
What burns east decides a yellow sky or pages
Safely clipped and mute like progeny like buff toned
Photographs respond in matte to blemishes we cover
Kin to yodeling or lung fed kinds of hurt
The urges snuffed like candles charm within
Where we are chiseling no plan at all
A wall instead of weather and a glyph to mark
The book of heaven, anybody's breast stroke
Through the cold brown seams of river see
Through envy and in moderation, tandem
Or appeasement of the luster near remembered flame
Some form of absolution dusts off
Chimes left molten in a closed space
Robbed of light and wind by walls erected
To prepare the heart for how it is out there
In random access war zones hasty with false white veined speech
Now, let me reveal something: I don't do much with media culture, ie., TV and movie-going, so I had not yet seen *Farenheit 911*. Until last night (daughter Holly works in a video rental place and was able to get a preview release--it's not due out for public rental-release until next week). As everyone says, the film is devastatingly well done. I hope it causes a lot of people to wake up and boot the Bushbags out of office. But I have to say, on reading this poem today, certain flashes of the poem's insight, brought about by the image-fracturing poetics at work in the poem, seem to me similarly reflected, via thematics, in Moore's film. Both call on the "heart" (those of you who know my poetry know that the heart is a trope I return to often) to be prepared for "how it is out there/ in random access war zones hasty with false... ". That might be enough right there to confirm a correlation between the film and this poem, for me--the poem could easily be an affective collage-summary of what Moore's protagonist, a mother whose son was killed in the first days of war in Iraq, has to say, framed in the Moore-filmic *flash and burn* mode. But of course there is much more in the poem and it takes a progression to get to our current here-and-now, one that leads into these last lines/images.
Even so, I am drawn nonetheless to its larger critique regarding the rhetorical and the political, the literal "white ... speech" of a White House, or a predominantly anglo or WASPish center dictating this devastating and absurd binary split: an accounting of who goes to war (via the documentation in the film, mostly ghetto kids, mostly African American and poor, who are actively recruited by the armed forces--sound familiar?--it does to me!)? And who does not: via Moore's film, we learn that the priviled anglos, our Senators, have children who do not go to war: one such eminence literally running away from the questions, the sheen of his finely made suit coat swinging in the gray light of day.
And, again in a foretelling moment that ends the poem, we hear/see that this is not just "white" "speech," a rhetorical/political phenomenon, but one sustained through an obvious kind of webbing: veins. This is all at once body, thing, and think, then, a phenomenon made akin to veined marble, something monumental, that is to say--of the kind of historical moment which a Walter Benjamin spends an entire life writing, thinking, actively resisting, via historical materialism. "White veined speech." Speaking statues. Here is a brilliant economy. A compressed critique embedded within this poem's poetry, its poetics. Is this how poetry lives and relives?--within and echoing, resonating, with metonymies of moments? Well, I happen to think, and to hope, so.
Affectively, I had to tell myself to stop shivering after reading this, apparently so telling poem. Or is it just my little readerly, subjective self adding all this into the object, the language of the poem? Probably, that, too, which is fine, since it seems to get the political word out in multiple layers, waves, know what I mean?
So, do have a relook into turbulence one if you are fortunate enough to have a copy handy. And if not, do look forward to David's new publishing enterprise, which, judging from the acumen of this 1993 pub, promises to be unique and significant.
--cm--
~~~~~~~poems copyright of the poets/translators~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
1:49 PM
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And now a weird from our sponsor:
Me & My (own) Mom--who, given her readings in philosophy (existentialism, Sartre, the history of rhetoric, de Beauvoir, the religious leaders she followed (I won't name them since to do so would target a certain church which would right now be unfair to that church), and second wave feminism (yeah!--or at least it was *progressive* for that time, and sorry, but of course turns out to be completely useless now), when I was a mere whippersnooper, would love this
or would definitely slap me upside the head for it:
Momoriam: A Mom's Birthday Tautology of Sartres
Today is my Mom's birthday.
Happy Birthday Mom.
I do wish all the time away
& you were just
here. I miss you. I've been
wishing you were here now
for a while.
Only a while--
I should say
aloud that I wish
you were here
to miss me or hear me
say I'm sorry
you're dead
aloud. I'm sorry
this is unadorned,
Mom--I should bring fresh
garlands and money and love
to
you
because you were my mom.
I really feel that.
I hope you understand
anything
(ampersand)
irreverence--
my I is always
irrelevant, thank you
I hope
you do
not
think
I am
ungrateful.
Truly, Mom
I am not.
chris at
1:52 AM
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Saturday, October 02, 2004
Re-Post (something too telling about it, too, I now wonder... ), from my first week as a bloggie: a poem for my then 15 y.o. kid, Randy, my son who is now adamant about going to the Marines, despite all. We'd that week been talking about the state of the world and the prospects for people his age, and we've always been close, so I did this poem. It was a revision of something I was working on--yes, really--for several hours on the evening of Sept 10, 2001. Randy kept a copy of the original draft up on the door of his room until we moved the following year.
Tornado-Alley-Day Parade
(for Randy)
Raise the sky blue
umbrella. Find the neon
see-through
mac in the U-Haul trailer
and bring your Bugs Bunny flip
flops. First we'll write our names
in it, then wipe a spring's worth
of Texas dust off our windshield.
Soon it will be raining light
rain and possibility. Even the wild
goldfish are used to it here:
rain hungry thick
ribbons, paintbrush orange, swimming
figure 8s, hoping the sky will rain bread
once more out of a speckled above where
Witnesses & recruiters,
phone book distributors,
have been at the doors again
wafting old lily of the valley promises,
cathedral boom & kingdom come
with navy-blue voice-overs--
cliche and commitments
to end-of-the-world visions.
Just tell them:
we've already had some
& we're busy rising
all the time from what's dead
or coming & going on
or is just
the past.
Then bring the bread crumbs
and find your camouflage
tackle box. Thread the collapsible
poles with new line. Load the red--
so much depends on a--
car. We'll find a road--
they have so many of them here.
chris at
11:52 PM
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Oh Hey, I Love It:
Driver: When You See the ( Pink? )Ambulance Flashing, Immediately Pull Your Arse Over to the Far so it may (P)arse You...
YaY!!--finally: a Pink 911 flash for poetry! 911 in the former sense of that emergency numeric code, of course, as just a code, not a coded historical day to be continually refered to by Bushbagpoliticians.
 --"Pink Ambulance," Die Cast Figures .uk.com (but why does "pink" look so red here?)
Well, I can't speak for how particular to the Canadian situation all the elements and factors here for poetry are, but I do think it could as easily be done here, given caveat:
--a series of questions to consider--
Thus: now will poets finally be equal to Brittany and Buffy or any other *pink* pop star?--or will poets just be able to make much more moolah? Wherein, poetry becomes a new paradigm, a self supporting autonomous notion, enabling poets to have a full career all on their own? Even while still maintaining a cute nose, a stubborn, flirty sense of unique and independent stage presence? So to be distinguished from that of the less pink celebrity?
Pink! I confess I, too, have loved and lost the emergency vertu of pink.
Pink, you cat's tongue ambulance engine lick,
baby, you are so very.
chris at
10:34 PM
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Chain on Chain: Gary Sullivan on Chain 10, (scroll a ways down for it) and many other iterations of interest, including a crumpled up paper copy of one of his poems found under a bed at a quaint Inn in Ithaca ... this is some good reading
chris at
1:09 PM
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Friday, October 01, 2004
Sad to say: no more Yellow House for me.
-- Paul Klee, The Yellow House
In the end, I had to say no to the deal--since the Fed rates were going up, the financiers were raising the loan rate, and they were already charging me a higher rate because I have student loans (oh yeah: these are not supposed to matter if they are in good standing, and mine are, but financiers will use every excuse or do whatever they want at the last minute to tack on points, so there it is, and they said it is justfied because of the student loan debt), so they pushed it beyond the point I could tolerate.
Believe me, I have no problem saying no when something looks eff'ed up--I think that this cat-mouse game of pressing the interest rate at the last minute in a mortgage deal like this for a first time buyer is similar to the used car sales strategy of manipulating the dynamics of desire in the buyer, as in, most people get very emotionally attached to the thing they are trying to buy, cars, houses, land, and basically whatever escalated dream they see themselves fitting into with these things. I don't. Or at least, I don't in a way that goes beyond the practical means I know I can support. So there we were, rates being jerked around day-to-day, and perhaps designed to pressure a buyer like me just a tweak more, betting on my wanting, desiring, dreaming of this particular house, & being so close to having it & etc.
Well, I'm glad I said no. It would not have been good to be in that particular 30 year payment schema, and they had of course built in penalties for refinancing, too, so I would really have been locked in. Sometimes *no* is a great word.
As for my feelings and all that, well I am a little disappointed which adds up to sad, in part because I don't want to spend another year in this ghetto apartment but oh well, there it is. I'll get over it--I tend to take the attitude that, for now at least, it was supposed to end this way (if it could have worked out, it would have... what a great tautology, eh?!), and to move on, emotionally speaking. Trying that today. Maybe a house next year some time, and with a more reasonable deal.
Thanks for all your supportiveness Y'all, on this matter and on many other things.
chris at
11:26 AM
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--Blue Glass Reflections, Studioe 3.com
This Giving and Receiving is a Motion that Results in the Blue Glass:
Report on the Poetry_Heat, 29 Sept. Reading at UTA:
It was just a wonderful reading: Joe Ahearn reads like a Sapphic charm waking from a 2,500 year nap; Tia Black like an Homeric storyteller transplanted to the Black Forest; and Corey Marks like one of Diotima's chosen.
We were fortunate to acquire the much coveted Carlisle Suite for the reading, a quiet, well carpeted and chandeliered room most often used by upper admin folk to give presidential awards to one another. Better use is poetry, I thought, so asked and got the room. VERY comfortable chairs, Joe remarked and I had also noticed: cushy stuff. But a little hushed in there, too, even with the microphone, podium, and planned acoustic perfection. I may actually try a different room in future. Anyway, for this reading it was exquisite--a generous, eloquent space for some especially generous minded poets and their work. *Eloquent* in its best senses, is the operative word, in all poetic matters here. Many students and several faculty members came out--it was a good showing in that sense. Thanks, especially to faculty Wendy Faris, Tom Ryan, and Vicky Sapp for coming out and for encouraging your students to come out, too. As always, I was also glad and am grateful to the many students who were able to come, as well.
Wendy Faris, scholar of magical realism/Borges/Latin American textuality, and an artist whose medium is textiles in collage, is chair of our English department. One of her collage pieces graces a poem of mine in Znine, "Your Bruise"--also a poem that Steve Tills has generously written about, as has the incomparable Chatelaine, Eileen Tabios--(thanks very much, once again, to y'all for the good words). Well, Wendy had kindly asked me to read something, too, noting she'd not heard me read any of my work before, so, I did read briefly that poem and one other that I'd posted here and at the group blog, As/Is (now featuring several fine poems by excellent others) last weekend, "The Sujet"--and I heard from Wendy after the readings that she liked these very much. In any case, that was my different way, this time, of opening the introduction to the evening's readings.
Corey Marks read first, and I was stunned by the work from *Renunciation*(Univ Illinois, 2000), for its narrative mode, its probative epistemological questioning. Here are the first two stanzas from the title poem:
In evening light's splayed radiance,
in a field of scrub and vines hedging a river,
a boy found a black snake sunning itself.
When he crouched near, his face bloomed in its scales
so the snake's coils were crowded with his eyes.
I almost want to leave him there, dawning
with amazement, this boy dead centuries now
and hushed in weak soil, leave him before
he flares with too much certaintly.
But like every moment, this one brims over.
(45)
The switchings out of time and place are sudden, thus a surprise--the boy is an ancient figure, not really only a *boy*--yet also put so subtlely that it is a real whammy--no less aloud in the context of reading-room delivery. Audience was completely drawn in by the combination of skillful delivery and intriguing text.
Tia Black read next, new work and from her excellent book, Near Sydenham, (DAAGNIM, 1995)-- a book dedicated to Linda Hull, who tragically lost her life in a car accident the year before the book came out. Linda and Tia were friends. I knew neither personally at that time, but was a great fan of Linda's poetry via poets in Northern Arizona where I was at that time completing my master's degree. It is stunning and good to find this tribute to Linda, now, and this very fine and utterly unique poet, Tia Black. Again, in the reading last night, here was a hearkening to narrativity, to labyrinthine storytelling, yet heady with lyric, a calling up of tropes drawn fresh from the wells of myth and fairytale. There, a wonderful Persephone poem that easily fits with some of the best in that recently burgeoning sub-genre (a favorite of mine, some readers here may recall). And Tia likes to dispense with the academic techno props of podium and microphone, so to move in close, gently so, with her audience--she is an exceptionally personable poet, very engaging, engrossing, and the poems reflect this in their own way, via lyric that is sensually penetrating. Here are lines from "Persephone":
No one dreamed I'd walk into a flowering field
sun blazing down my back, lie
in the cool grass and fall silent, still as glass.
Dreamless, how well I slept under the cold.
Time, like sand, fell through me.
I wandered off, that was all
... not knowing the sentence I read, days passed.
Stiff with frost, hay was mown
...
Above, Demeter held my child,
...
as if I were still to be found.
(15)
Persephone is a difficult subject matter for a poem: it can easily slip into either a terrible sentimentality or a mannered superficiality. Tia handles this problem with great aplomb, and the delivery aloud opened its full gift. I was happily drawn in and amazed.
Joe Ahearn is one of the most dedicated, perceptive, imaginative and versatile writers I have ever met. Beyond all that, he's just one hell of a guy. He and his wife, Lisa, keep a keen eye on art and politics via action in the Critical Art Ensemble, which is currently tracking the government harrassment of artist and SUNY Buffalo college prof, Steve Kurtz. If you have not yet had the pleasure to meet Joe and hear his work, then do find a way soon to do so--you will find yourself within a compelling, powerful poetry. Joe read from work in syn-the-tic (Firewheel Editions, 2002)--one of my all-time favorite chapbooks: it is not too short and not too long, yet it's packed full of tightly-put, masterly poems, in many voices, so is definitely a wonder both to hear for pleasure and to study/ponder--and he read from his new book, Five Fictions a e i o u (SRLR Press, 2004). Joe's work has an eclecticism that is seldom found today. He can write in every mode I'm aware of, and he does so in some of the most sensitive and affecting poetic lines I've ever read. Technically, his poems are all about economy of language, compression of image, and rhetorical expanses that stretch out and out and out as would a Picasso painting in the most radical cubist moment, yet, in the poems?--oh, these are made of silk: thus, a cubism of silk. An "objectivist" thing, as Joe pointed out. Very nice effect. And reading aloud?--Joe is marvelous, one of the best in poetic delivery. Here is a poem he read last night, one that I will be adding to my favorites list of poems:
The Blue Glass
The blue glass stands alone,
smoothed and calmed by loneliness.
It is brusque, planar, beveled.
The blue glass is formal
and untouched by confusion.
The blue glass stands in a round blue pool.
It has always stood so.
It is from every side the same:
a slow outward-leaning
and two feet pressed together.
It is thought at the top.
This morning I drank from the blue glass.
I supposed it was liquid that I drank.
I see now that I drank instead the blue glass,
which gave of itself,
and then, in an instant,
recollected perfect form.
This giving and receiving is a motion
that results in the blue glass.
This is the song of the blue glass:
all form is sorrow.
(27)
I think for now this poem says about all there is, ya kno? Such as, do check out this new book of Joe Ahearn’s. But do not expect fluidity as slow as glass...
Many thanks to all, poets and audience alike, for coming out last night.
--cm—
~~~poems copyright of Corey Marks, Tia Black, Joe Ahearn, respectively~~~~
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