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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:
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:
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
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Kevin Doran
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Janet Holmes: Humanophone
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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
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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
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Portable Press@Yo~Yo Labs
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Self Similar Writing: Jukka Pekka Kervinen
The Little Workshop: Cassie Lewis
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Pornfeld: Michael Hoerman
Seven Apples: Justin Ulmer
Hi Spirits: Andrew Burke
Bacon Bargain!: Joe Massey
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Chicanas! (Susana L. Gallardo)
Masters of Photography
Blog of Disquiet: Gary Norris' Teaching Blog
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E-Po
Zotz!
Optative Mood: Tim Morris
ecritures bleues: Laura Carter
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Tom Raworth
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Scott Pierce: Snapper's Junk
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Semio-Karl M&M
Stephen Vincent
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a New Word Placements
Narcissus Works: Anny Ballardini
Richard Lopez
Tributary: Allen Bramhall
The_Delay: Chris Vitiello
Jukka Pekka Kervinen: Nonlinear Poetry
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WOOD'S LOT
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Ann Marie Eldon
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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
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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
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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
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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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Sunday, October 31, 2004
from Lance Phillips: There's a new interview up at Here Comes Everybody: It's John Tranter, of Jacket. I hope you all will have a look.
chris at
10:11 AM
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Saturday, October 30, 2004
Maple Sayings Jammin' at Slight !
Check out the recent offerings at Slight Publications, where there is an exposition on the "Chainey Country Suction Cup Forehead Button"(s), as well as some innovative takes on music (audio file links). I like each of these a lot, but I do keep going back to hear these two tunes: Maple Sayings Jammin' and Much Above Eighty She's a Runaway Buckboard,. All the songs are inventively made (check out this cushion song!) with lyrics found and brought to music from some unusual, very interesting sources.
* * * * Rock on, Y'all! * * * *
chris at
9:09 PM
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Googlie Halloween: What About those Yarn Fish Out of Water
on the Voting Ballots?
Earlier today when I was searching for images of ballots or ballot scenes, or just to see what might come up--using the search terms, "voting ballot," I found it curious and fun of Google to be accommodating enough to include this image:
--North American Crochet Conference, 2003
--even though I have no idea how, as a display in a conference of crocheting, it ended up as a result for this voting ballot search, given these completely unrelated terms:outcome. though I have to say, it could not be more on the mark in relating to how the last election's voting ballots became both, fish out of water, as it were, and absolutely material completely unrelated to how the people were voting, as in the _popular vote_, eh?
The best operative question I can surmise here, then, may be something like, Does Google have a smart-ass sense of humor?--to which I have to say I'd give it a 60/20 chance on Yes.
The other, absent 20 in the equation (all equations lead to 100) goes to non-faith-based initiatives, of course.
And the 60/ (slash) in the relation goes to Google for being able to guess that I, (not really me, but rather the I it can construct out of my online history, and my recently--the last 3 months--frequent, thus becoming patterned, and then, predictable searchs/search history on this computer, would probably like this contradiction, even this particular kind of such (I am a crocheter and have mentioned on blog a total of 3 times) between text/image or something along those lines.
Or maybe not: how does a machine ghost-up what its handlers might like?--sumpin'ta think on, I speculate. & then, that other 20/BushbagBallot-part, on the outside of all this?--has to do with what it might be like to imagine that a search engine can really second guess and figure what it is that my particular url's "I" might have liked to see. Now that could be very Halloweeney, eh? brummmmoooohahahahahaaaa
And I can't let that just sit there without also adding:
Hey, Bushbags: are you packing your bags yet?--Y'all should be: Halloween's almost over, and definitely will be by the time elections roll out.
chris at
9:57 AM
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Friday, October 29, 2004
from Anna Eyre, Texfiles Poet of the Week :
The Importance of Knowing Our Meats
Meat is like the star of the show…the center around which the rest of the meal revolves. All the other foods are chosen on the basis of how well they go with the meat selected. Meat is also the most expensive item in our food budget…which is double important that we present this star performer to the best advantage.—Betty Crocker
Buying flesh is a lengthy process—be aware of the casing—-
the hue of red dyed to freshness
Storing must be taken into account, have you the space to allow
Carving by the sharpest or dullest implement—-
feel enough to decipher edges alignment when
Cooking meals to feed long internal famines brought on by loneliness
Roasting on a javelin, turning over and over, juices burbling
Broiling the uppermost layer of your skin,
pocketing burn in white lifts of cell protecting
against the sear of
Pan-Frying—fat bursting spit flames
Braising heats insistence on tangible scars
Stewing and Simmering stories of negligence at readable surface.
*
Fish
Buying fish and shellfish is perhaps best to learn the ropes when
Cooking flavors, dishes ever to be erased from memories importance.
Cooking shellfish is like deciphering the whispers
from another room in the house, incepted tempting—-
atmospheric toxins.
Clams open lips promise the pearl of
Oysters whose only howl skimpers in the wave of water beds ripple
Crabs pinch soft folds, entertain illusions of broad ocean
Scallops come, their flesh so much easier to release
than the crack of the crustaceans
Lobster screaming for melted butter force you to feel
the guilt of all the fat chunks skimmed.
*
Cooking Meat
Ham breathes smoke into your lungs,
desert nights open miniscule survival disturbances brought on by
Beef, the large Bull’s throat slit by your hips milky knife
dangling red coins in front of possession.
Lamb and Mutton soon settles your gypsy castanets shake into hard
strings of fervor tenderized by
Veal, too young to decipher any difference between your plush
hold and another’s. So familiar
Pork gathers your folds into one more hem along the length of a dark skinned
Ground and Cut Up green skirt eager to just be inside woman.
Meat Loaves, all the leftovers ridden bare back seven seconds until snake’s crust
Meat Pies in thick ropes of decadent log lean shafts.
Hash quivers before intellect requires physical
Jellied dace kept in time to deep bass first encountered in young drunken indulgence later
Leftover becomes consecrated a vowel hollow howl between
Bacon consonants felt in airs rush up your crotch at 4am on the empty streets until
Sausage mingles with the bakers first morning pancake.
Heart beats rhythm again and you retreat to the
Liver alive in scratch and take, gone, come back again when it’s too late the
Kidney having already filtered every crumb of misgiving into take and so you give
Sweet breads the chance again to tickle body-mind finally been given
Tongue chance to vocalize equal in consonant and vowel weight.
*
Poultry
Buying and Storing birds requires wire cages, one cock to insure
Cooking Fryers, Broilers do not produce too many eggs, instead fatten the muscle
Fried Chicken is known for, white quick-tempered twitch
Roasting fowl disturbances of reproduction into silly
Turkey eaten mainly one day a year when the tryptophan excuses
Leftovers in Tasty Dishes because oval has bee honored half consciously as
Stewed Chicken primed for de-feathering, short wing stomach flight, shit release.
*
Wild Game
Duck wanted to practice billed lips then
Pheasant pecked your flesh apart wounded
Rabbit, your hop quickly caught another mother, her son a
Venison tempered to sleep in your arms has fallen beyond retrieval.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Anna Eyre~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
11:51 PM
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 --image via Martin J. Powell, "The Night Sky"
Eclipse Poem
(note: this poem will posted again here tomorrow night,
translated to Icelandic by Arni Ibsen!--thanks, Arni!)
this moon's bitten!
loud--
a chord
of surprise
absence--what
a cloud boxing
thick haired humming
night-thing--
a C
disk
or is it globe
now? cinematic diminishing &
unnerving the dim
no wonder
ancients grew
jittery
& storied
about it
seeming so
contrived: next step
to ack! nothing
there! innocuous
a given
wishy—-
historygroupcommunityknowing
whowhatwhenwherehowwhy
(what is time to a dog?)--
washy
& rosemary
curbside
given a rattle
of rain fades
to carport
dark
for
now
or
was that the sycamore’s
leaves yapping for more camera
news
(old lyric tricks
those)
or dogs at three
apartment windows
side-by-side with book
shelves
until someone says that’s all
folks:
“Bookends” by surprise
har har (no lie: today!) I
suppose
& so I am here answering
my lunar gal
daughter alpabetized unsonic for easier
storage: Hy (other daughter
is He)
she calls me mid-video
from cell
phone
text message
games--
kindly
kid--
reminds me: eclipse!
mother, eclipse!
& missing her
train
of thought
her voice
goes whirring
to electric treble
drawl egress
"whatime's't, dawg?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of chris murray~~~~ o~o/
chris at
11:01 PM
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Ballot Troubles, Again: and in Texas
from Chad Parenteau and Shanna Compton, news of ballot problems for Texas voters:
an early voter in Austin reported this experience (see Chad's blog for more context):
"No joking around.. heres a heads up for you......
Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling locationin Austin. She voted straight Democratic. When she didthe final check, lo and behold every vote was for theDemocratic candidates except that it showed that shehad voted for Bush/Cheney for president/vice pres.She immediately got a poll official. On her vote, itwas corrected.She called the Travis County Democratic headquarters.They took all her information. They told her that shewasn't the first to report a similar incident and thatthey are looking into it.So, check before you leave the polling booth, and ifanything is wrong, get it corrected immediately.Report any irregularities to your local Democraticheadquarters. make sure you pass this along to your
friends.......hopefully this is all over the airwaves
in Texas........"
Do read your ballot carefully, folks!
chris at
10:11 PM
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a note from transdada :
Please vote and stop the hate!
please vote and protect human rights!
please vote and stop this nation from slipping further into another
religious empire. it has always slipped way too far..!
stop it now!
stay on guard, for whoever is elected, they will not be the answer!
always be vigilant against hate.. look what happened in the last 4 years!
thank you
kari
chris at
9:55 PM
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Quilts!
 Santarosa Art.edu
chris at
9:52 PM
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coming up a little later: more work from Anna Eyre, Texfiles Poet of the Week, so stay tuned and I'll try to keep my links straight...
chris at
3:43 AM
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 very big OOPs! here--apologies if you checked in during the last hour and clicked on the Shampoo Poetry post just below this one. I mistakenly coded the link wrong. I've corrected it now. (blushing, weeping, blushing, weeping terribly!)
chris at
3:18 AM
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YaY!! I love the notes Del Ray Cross sends out to announce a new issue of SHAMPOO. Check this one out--so far, it's my favorite :
Dear Cupcake,
SHAMPOO issue 22 is ready for your gorgeous eyes.
Please go immediately to:
www.ShampooPoetry.com
and relish the untamed poetry by Kemel Zaldivar,
Cyril Wong, Christopher Wells, James Wagner,
Chris Vitiello, Sharon Venezio, Zinovy Vayman,
Derrick Tyson, Barry Schwabsky, Suzy Saul,
Cynthia Sailers, Camille Roy, Julio
Peralta-Paulino, Daniel Pendergrass, Ronald
Palmer, Kaya Oakes, Sheila E. Murphy, K. Silem
Mohammad, Suchoon Mo, Corey Mesler, Diana
Magallon, Majena Mafe, Cassie Lewis, Corinne
Lee, Richard Kostelanetz, Elena Knox, Scott
Keeney, Mary Kasimor, Stephanie Kartalopoulos,
Travis Jeppesen, Elizabeth Hughey, Nicholas
Grider, Peach Friedman, Kae De Cotiis, Tom
Daley, Clayton A. Couch, Amanda Chiado, Ash
Bowen, Brian Dean Bollman, and Shane Allison;
plus smashing ShampooArt by Brian Fugett,
Amanda Chiado, and Otto Chan.
Thank you for scrubbing your hairs with the poetry.
Autumn Winters,
Del Ray Cross, Editor
SHAMPOO
clean hair / good poetry
www.ShampooPoetry.com
chris at
2:10 AM
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Thursday, October 28, 2004
ElectTrees Series
--"America 2" via Peter's Album, Nifty .com
chris at
12:58 PM
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"... with blossomed geigers the color of a burning focused spiral..."
awwww, so Beautiful!--what a fine thing to do, Anny! Thanks so much--i'll be smiling about this gesture all the days of my life. Anny Ballardini, You are a treasure of a friend!
: )
ZaZen, Y'all!
chris at
12:55 AM
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Wednesday, October 27, 2004
from Anna Eyre, Texfiles Poet of the Week :
San Geronimo
Bright heats’
long persistence
in shorter
days, parches
aspen leaves
brass golden.
Cadmium mountain
is made to foster rays
in plump bushels of
one root structure,
whose brittle
tinder vocalize
winds crisp
endeavor.
Long night taps
ripeness on the shoulder
bursts gourds ready
for hallow.
Near Blue Lake
an elder wonders
long as elements whisper
reveal a pattern,
give away the dark
knotted eye feast day
pine to stand in the pueblos’
center. Now stripped of its limbs
one thin branch is carved
in at the very top to form a cross
that supports the sacrificial
lamb, watermelon,
corn and squash.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Anna Eyre~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
7:16 PM
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More on Linh Dinh's Cartoon, "Bush's Hand"
Just a note to say I've added more to the exposition below regarding Linh Dinh's terrific cartoon and his citizen-effort to spam Young Republicans across the U.S. with it. I wove in some new responses from the (uh... butterball-Republican) reception of the cartoon. Anyway: I would have had all of this up in one piece today if my email at the office computer were not at odds with that of my home computer--the remote email is not working right (they just put a new program in campus-wide and my email's been messed up ever since). So I came over to my office tonight to do some other work and found these additional, particularly resonant further responses to Linh's cartoon. He'd emailed them earlier today. So: do go have a read on the second half of that section, below. Linh's cartoon and it's rhetorical situation are a hoot!
chris at
6:04 AM
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from "What's Showing?" * by Linh Dinh (these are very cooollly done)
LOVERS BY CHANCE (1990) 2hr.6 min. This comedy opens with two strangers waking up in the same bed, naked and embracing. They are in neither one's apartment. They have not been to a party or a pub the night before and they are not hungover. They are not even sure they had sex. For the rest of this film and the rest of their lives, they try to justify this original intimacy. (R)* * * * *
...
PLANET OF THE APES (2004) 2hr. 22 min. Apes are encouraged to wear blue jeans, given English lessons. Enraged, they blow up the Capitol building. This remake of the sci-fi classic packs a wallop for its sizzling scenes of urban warfare: house to house combat, everything burning, civilian corpses. In one spectacular sequence, ape fighters trapped inside the Jefferson Memorial are blown to smithereens by our brave soldiers. The final frames show the president announcing to a relieved public that "we have prevailed." (PG) * * * * *
BLOOD AND SOAP (2001) 1 hr. 35 min. A mass-murderer goes to a massage parlor to assuage his guilt. Stomach-turning scenes of outrageous carnage are interspersed with idyllic shots of naked girls soaping the murderer's muscular body. Enraptured men and women are shown sniffing bars of soap. Academic experts are also enlisted to expound on the pros and cons of various types of soaps. (R) * * *
...
TAKING OFF! (1967) 2 hr. 18 min. A nudie slasher space musical that will appeal to the nostalgic chainsaw mass murderer in all of us. (R) * * * * *
(99-102)
* Linh Dinh, Blood and Soap. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~copyright Linh Dinh~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
3:16 AM
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Tuesday, October 26, 2004
 Linh Dinh, "Bush's Hand"
chris at
10:43 PM
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image above created by Linh Dinh. Yeah! What REAL Poets Do and Don't Do: Linh Dinh's Cartoon and its Reception by Republicans...
Readers here have been letting me know recently they like that I've been putting up political posters and cartoons, especially the ones created by Propaganda Remix Project, which are pretty artsy-edgy in getting their main point across: get the butterball, war mongering, profiteering, blood sucking Bushbags outta office. These posters are entertaining but sometimes as we get closer to the vote, we need something less oblique, more blunt. Sometimes, that is, artsy-edgy is not enough: we need some real satiric clarity.
And that is how I see this very cool cartoon created by Linh Dinh. He made it especially to send to Bushbag sympathizers, Republican organizers, especially the group, Young Republicans, around the U.S.
Saying hello the other day in an email, for laughs he sent it to me. I nearly fell off my chair! I shared it around the Writing Center here and could not wait to post it to Tex (and sorry for the delay, but it took me a bit because I had to figure out the blogger photobot with two differing computers, one at work and one at home, since my email is still messed up between the two of them!--but that's another story... : )
So, hey, Linh adds these comments about the Young Republican reception of his cartoon art:
I just got this friendly note from a Mississippi Republican:
"I would have thought we were all past the high school age, but yet there are those that will always suprise you with only humor of a 7th grader."
Another Republican, from Florida, said: "your cartoon makes no sense whatsoever."
To which Linh responds:
As long as I'm getting under their skin,
then I'm a good citizen. Cheers!
Damn Straight!--wow, what it takes to be a good citizen these days...
and Dang!--these butterball Republicans must be having a very tough time seeing blunt reality, eh?
[I've incorporated the following this evening after finding some emails my office computer waylaid]
And then there are the ones full of that renowned Southern charm, such as this classic response from a highly educated Republican at LSU:
"Who the f&@k are you, &ss#ole?" (Obviously got a good grade in English: remembered to add that one comma...)
But this one, apparently the chairman of Republicans at Baylor U, in Waco, TX (despite the way it looks, it is not pronounced WACKO--
which is right down the road from here), in an email to his Baylor Republican flock and copying Linh into the response, truly shows signs of being both saved and resurrected to become a crackerjack spy as well as a Monumental Logician and Orator:
* * *
"Ok, I am not sure what the purpose of that was, but more importantly why and how did people from Auburn and Baylor only get this email? Linh Dinh--the real Linh Dinh--is a poet/writer, and obviously has some leftist views--Google him to find out for yourself.
Bush's hands on the burning twin towers? How about Bill Clinton who had a chance to fight terrorism during his administration, but lacked the Intestinal Fortitude to do so. Linh Dinh 99--you are a sick, and uneducated poor soul, next time you send something let everyone know who you are.
Robert Watts
Chairman
Baylor University College Republicans
R_Watts@baylor.edu "
* * *
My favorite part in that one is the bit about how the real Linh Dinh wouldn't do this because he is a well known poet!!! (thus, quite a nest of hornet-inferences there: a poet would never do anything so political, or insulting to Republicans, or what?)
But YaY!! **Score** for poetry and for Linh Dinh!
Linh adds this note to emphasize what outstanding readers these outraged Republicans are:
Apropos the emailer's "next time you send something
let everyone know who you are," I'm not hiding my
identity at all, having signed the drawing and using
my real email address to send out my electronic flyer.
--Linh
Well, Linh, I guess we all now can be comforted by the knowledge of what REAL poets do...
If they are you, well, they kick ass!
:)
Linh, many thanks for this knock-out cartoon! Keep On!
--cm
o~o/
chris at
9:19 PM
|
from Reyes Cardenas, some tough-minded po-stuff bubbling up right outta Texas :
Dubya Paints Guernica
This is Dubya’s
Guernica.
The airplanes
dropping their bombs
on the innocent.
The body parts
flying in
the four directions.
Men, women, children.
The child
has no head.
The woman
has no breasts or chin.
This man has
no limbs whatsoever.
But at least
someday
this
desert country
of theirs
will be a democracy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~copyright of Reyes Cardenas~~~~~~
chris at
1:14 PM
|
Had a nice email message yesterday and then some more today from Linh Dinh. He sent me a very cool surprise that I'm going to post here this evening or tomorrow... so stay tuned, and sharpen up yer ballots--keep lookin' forward, Y'all!
chris at
2:15 AM
|
Monday, October 25, 2004
Hey!--I just realized this: How cool is it to share a birthday with Denise Levertov?--I never realized until today, as I was reading at one of my favorite sites, WOOD'S LOT. So nice to see this tribute to Levertov.
chris at
10:47 PM
|
 --via Jene's Tropical Fruit.com
from Anna Eyre, Texfiles Poet of the Week (check Saturday 10/23 for the introduction with bio)-- 3 poems :
Navel Rind
After Brenda Hillman’s Male Nipples
—we’ve all a whole,
a knob inverted or extroverted
that forms a sealed center—
—an unexplained noise
from around the corridor
forces an unlocking possibility turn
and after you saw nothing
of shadow is not shadow,
but nothing—
my fingers thread in and around
button crevices of the belly
use to useless—useless to use
—and after you saw
that the nothing of shadow
was not one bit shadow, but nothing—
painted elaborate faces
with earth and watched stain
eventually fade into pigment—
—the story of clay parched after
storm—intricate rivulets that dissipate:
when I first pulled
and pried in twist (having decided
it was no longer attached)—
Oh, the force I felt tickled
crumble. And I am a sand
animal, no carved statue—
—and after you saw that everything
is nothing, that the nothing of shadow
is not shadow but nothing, supposing,
—removed the dust and
lint gathered from days
of non inspect—
peels of yellow molted
disintegrated and were thrown
ground spice for the wind
Kept circling frame.
I tried
to stop, –but.
Round Hades coins
are about the
size of one—
And after you saw that the nothing
of shadow is everything, the almost, well,
you still had everything –
—So Mars pierced
the star cloak red tonight
—something that has been forgotten
*
500 Club
Eyes sewn into Mickey mouse
between her breasts-the
girl in clockwork orange
strides-her face indiscrete
as the rest—I pass
next see him slip
a mickey strip her of maturity
and place her in Mr.Bubbles
bath-skin concretes
into a baked porcelain
finely slipped with intimacies
opaque ability to coat
deformities obtrusive
bubbled faults—she sits
demurely atop his cage
he brushing his bald
head through cap with
a many toothed wand
manufactured for long
damsel
in distress dis-dress
locks—thinking in stokes
how to place his questions’
words in order for
trash receptacle
to answer
“Do you know”
with some crumb of yes
crinkled between
different hands
imprinted drop
*
Gallery
Nomadicized white wall four
corner cube room
unfolded unexpected disaffection
as he sat on metal traps of quick
cheap rest
Lines attached near electrical sockets
approximate limit
His hands folded in gesticulating prayer
commit calm in a vast ever presence
of space reemerging as specter geometry
circling concrete grids in
anecdotal dizzying
acrylic rope--
Materials--
facts are almost nothing
except phenomenal—
efficiency has immediacy
Brutal
duck/rabbit
reconfigure to overwhelm
rhetoric electrocute roped edges
of spatial occupation anthropocentrism
Minimalism has reached its peak
in pedestrian space
His sneakers threaten squeak
Containers solution
is not only to abandon—
to situate
~~~~~~~~~~~poems copyright of Anna Eyre~~~~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~
chris at
7:35 PM
|
Dot (x3) en Lone Bougainvillia
dot times
three a (L)one--
misterioso
i
my little
found
& plucked--
these 3
in deep non I--
flesh
feel & pollen star
centers more than ever
(now on this my
birthday)
here: a garment (of) remember--
everyone (quierer)
wants (que)--
(quiero) always
(arrogant to want to be always)
so be
wrapped in bougainvillia:
armed: container filled
with water
& wishing--
disco crisp i am not you
& your fanfare,
thick ruffle or chipped
heart--
pink rocky
mountain cresting
past snow of Poe's roof
who knows?
a (n)
ever.more
Alas so gothic
: (i) is personal here &
linear of
.
Cannot
rise above its although
.
Though i
will promise you
i love(d) you
my little
i dot
.
(monument of blue
satin petal turns
en tres below surface)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of chris murray o~o/~~~~~
chris at
7:47 AM
|
Sunday, October 24, 2004
more YaY!!--for my birthday, daughter holly is taking me out to eat lunch (thanks, kid!)--more soon : )
chris at
11:00 PM
|
 Italian Oregano, via Hakuba Japan .com
It's my birthday today. As a present to myself I'm writing a short story--haven't written one in some time (at least a year, maybe two), so it feels kind of good to do so. It's about urban green onions, the first time I figured out what they were growing wild, and that they were edible. I was ten. If the story turns out okay, I'll post it here later this week. Another present I've recently gotten myself (anticipating my birthday)?--nine tiny plant containers, each one a different herb:
Cilantro (a green flavor i love in everything but sweets)
Rosemary (a favorite scent--my most recent encounter with it is that a huge mass of it adorns the curb-way of Dale and Hoa's house in Austin--when Mama Possum Hoa needs some for cooking, Keaton goes out with Papa Possum Dale to gather some up)
Garden Sage (big lightish green, bumpy textured leaf, very aromatic)
Italian Oregano (pictured above, must be one of the prettiest vines, reddish stem, bright green leaf, I've ever seen)
Chocolate Mint (yes: it is a combo plant that smells heavenly, like both mint and chocolate--i can't wait to try it in tea or coffee--or maybe to make a tea of only it?--if anyone has experience with this please let me know)
Red Rubin Basil (great name, eh? sounds like a race horse. beautiful succulent stalk, thick huge purple leaves)
Munstead Lavender (scents up the entire kitchen--the apartment has a tiny kitchen--after a rain, as in two days ago here when it poured)
Pineapple Sage (name is misleading, but the plant is beautiful, tough stalk, a mini tree of a plant)
English Thyme (very pretty, petite tangled mass of leaves always turning quickly toward the source of light, almost quick enough to see the turning, whereas most others do so but imperceptibly)
I'm only missing dill from the lot, all from Whole Foods, and only because they were out when I went back to get it.
These are all such a joy!--and only 99 cents each, already planted and healthy looking in their little containers, which I then moved into bright red plastic bowls--so cheery! I love discovering things like this that are a delight yet cost little & have great potential and benefit--now this is Use Value! YaY!!.
My good friend Pam in Arizona sent me a cool card: it's a foto of a bulldog's face with a caption saying 'birthday's bite' and on opening it says 'bite back'. good one! it's true, i think, that birthdays seem to cease being full of glee after about the age of ten, overall, at least in my experience, and many people have expressed the same in conversations over the years. It's a bit of a push to build up the glee, eh? I think it's not about any particular age, either: it's almost like we're always trying to be in that exstasis of the birthday scene that was very intensely satisfying right around the age of ten. After that it fades off little by little, and glee must be imported and stored up.
Anyway, many thanks to Pam for the card and a beautiful candle scented of tangerine (a favorite scent of mine, too!). Also, special thanks going out to my good friend Cedrick May in Birminham, Alabama, for sending a cool e-card:
xoxoxoxoxo to you two!
chris at
10:07 PM
|
Saturday, October 23, 2004
...Her Red Sequined Cape is Nearly Completed and She Hopes to Be Flying with Pastry Poems in Hand...
--Anna, here's something I found to match with it :
Announcing the Inaugural Feature of the New
Texfiles Poets of Week Season:
A very warm welcome from Texfiles, to Anna Eyre,
latest Texfiles Poet of the Week!
Here is Anna’s Bio:
Obsessed with food, Anna Eyre grew up scouring strawberry patches and
playing mud puddle hog in Taos, New Mexico. Now she lives in San Francisco
where she is a pastry chef by day and MFA candidate at CCA by night. Her
red sequined cape is nearly completed and she hopes to be flying with
pastry poems in hand to a town near you soon. Her chapbook Metaplasmic can
be found at effing press, Scott Pierce, editor
And here are two poems from a group Anna put together especially for Texfiles--thanks so much, Anna! :
* * *
Trash Can Corset
subtle disturbances
distinct resurrections
illuminated translucent by street
lamp through thin plastic sheath
films cages pattern
bars crossed form
spacious diamonds
through which outlines crevice
object-subject thoughts determination
to place container within bodily context—this
garbage was once used by
who for containment purposes—
Each dent smoothes curvaceous rolls
prodded by kick-windfall
my hands grip rusted lips’ rim
lift to weigh against my
own strengths gravity other peoples
emptiness-no-use but to over turn
halo above my head
hope for at least one
shatter bottle
to crack my skull
conscious black-- I
want to crumble
inside its distorted bent O –-
be noticed only
by wayward home-
less searching
for collect to recycle
sick brass pennies
green from skin rub
into bread
tincture
dope
solace
 --Mike, 4/11/03--Satan's Laundramat.com
* * *
: Cake…
A symbol of home life.
From the beautiful cake for the announcement party—-to the triumphantly towering wedding cake—-and children’s birthday cakes, blazing with candles—-to the proud cake celebrating the silver or golden wedding-—cakes play an important role in the most significant moments of our lives.-—Betty Crocker
For Grandma Eve
Old Time Favorites
Maple hair curled around your
Apple plump Latvian cheeks blushed
Caramel (burnt sugar) when Al complimented your
Popular devils food cake. You creamed together his
Sour Cream fatal gastrointestinal infection with
Sweet electrician spark double quick method.
Pound of dry to pound of fat, you memorized balances in
Old Kentucky Nut that gave away bourbon without the liquor of
Lord and Lady Baltimore, who you knew would much rather have the numb of
Poppy field slumber just before hope of that wizard, now
Angel, Al-savior encounter.
 --Kassandra C, Melrose Park, IL
Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~poems copyright of Anna Eyre~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~
chris at
11:41 PM
|
coming up shortly here, announcing a new season of Texfiles Poets of the Week...
chris at
10:53 PM
|
Kandinsky, "Dominant Curve," poster by Yo! Arts.com
Featured today at the Cabinet of the Muses, a Festival of Poetry and other Curiosities :
at The LAB,
2948 Sixteenth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 tel. 415.864.8855
fee, sliding scale for all 3 Saturday events, $7-$15
Going on right now:
Dance as a Second Language, Improv Workshop with K.J. Holmes
2:00-4:00:
David Buuck (poetry)
K.J.Holmes (dance)
Kevin Killian (poetry)
M. Mara-Ann (poetry-music)
Schlafbau (Helen Mirra, film)
Sometimes My Feet Go Numb (Lourdes Portillo & Wayne Corbitt, film)
Juliana Spahr (poetry)
Videograms (Gary Hill, film)
4:30-6:30:
Ray Chung with Alex Artaud (dance)
Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (Ann Waldman & Ed Bowes, film)
Jean Day (poetry)
Stacy Doris (poetry)
YaY!! ** kari edwards ** (poetry)
The Floating Series (Konrad Steiner & Leslie Scalapino, film)
Junk Box Warrior (Preeti AK Mistry & Marcus Rene Van, film)
Elizabeth Robinson (poetry)
Edwin Torres (poetry/performance)
8:00 pm:
Brenda Coultas (poetry)
K.J. Holmes & Edwin Torres (dance/poetry)
Critical Mass (Hollis Frampton, film)
Jerome Rothenberg (poetry/performance)
Shelly Senter with Isabelle Cristo (dance)
Heriberto Yepez (poetry/performance)
** Good wishes to all, I'd have liked to be there! Special good wishes for a wonderful reading, to friend kari edwards. **
Enjoy!
ZaZen, Y'all
chris at
9:08 PM
|
Yeah--Propaganda Remix Project!--
Rocks! (found via Steve Evans' Third Factory
chris at
7:14 AM
|
Coming up later this evening: announcing the return of the Texfiles Poet of the Week series. A new surprise poet I think Y'All will really like...
chris at
3:56 AM
|
So, I was searching around for some nice images pertaining to Muses and Cabinets (see post following this one) and kept getting these marbly monuments and serial granite sarcophagi, when up popped this: hahaha, image of an ancient graffito! i love it! someone in ancient Rome drew this caricature in the "substructure" (basement regions?) of the imperial residence on the Palatine, to make mock at Nero. It's signed, Tullius Romanus, Soldier. Wow: Check out this incrediblly vast catalogue of ancient art from Barbara McManus, which is full of staid images until ya find a little graffiti in the mix.
** I'm dedicating this post/this delightful finding of this particular image, to Dale Smith, because his chapbook, My Vote Counts! rocks like ancient minded graffiti drawn in protest against and to mock tyrannic leaders. Keep on, Dale.
chris at
1:41 AM
|
Friday, October 22, 2004
Hurry out to Cabinet of the Muses, Y'all !(if you're in San Francisco, or will be tonight) :
Some of the Poetry All-Stars are reading right about now at UC Berkeley, Wheeler Hall, 3rd Floor, Maude Fife Room, and hey!--this one's free of charge:
Laynie Brown
K.J. Holmes and Ray Chung
Claudia Rankine
Elizabeth Robinson
Jerome Rothenberg
Juliana Spahr
and then this evening, 8:00 pm, at the LAB, for the bargain entrance fee of (on sliding scale) $7-15:
Gently Down the Stream: Su Friedrich (film)
Roxi Hamilton and Mobius Operandi (poetry/music)
The Making of the Americans: Roberta Freidman & Graheme Weinbren(film)
***Hoa Nguyen (poetry) YaY!! *** (awwwww, now, you knew I'd just hafta put those extra stars there on my good friend's name, right?)
Randee Paufve and Beth Murray (dance/poetry)
Photoheliograph: Jim Flannery (film)
Claudia Rankine (poetry)
***Dale Smith (poetry)*** (awwwww, now, you knew I'd just hafta put some extra stars on my other good friend's name, too, eh?)
So, then, wishing all well there, and big hugs to my good friends Hoa and Dale and Keaton and Waylon
More announcements later on readings scheduled for tomorrow in the
verrrrryyy koooool mixxxxx at Cabinet of the Muses
Sorry to say I couldn't go this time. I'm feeling kind of low about it, too, but hey, would be very glad and grateful to hear about it from anyone who cares to email me to let me know:
cmurray88ATyahooDOTcom
*** ZaZen, Y'all ***
chris at
10:52 AM
|
Thanks, Eileen--in reading, I became fascinated with the "Will in Poetry"--posted Wednesday 20 October--and found good things at the links. So, hey, Y'all, do scroll leisurely-like, turning a parasol off of this or that shoulder through all prior else (schedule of readings, Basil King, (all so good--always one of the best of blogs in my book) just to get there...
chris at
7:31 AM
|
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Actually, it looks like Faux Press is really rockin' out all over this season--Tim Peterson's Trinkets Mashed into a Blender is one, and there're more: check it all out at Jack Kimball's Pantaloons...
chris at
11:05 PM
|
anyone else having really slow responses from Blogger lately? things are just not working right here and I don't think it's my computer... let me know if you're having trouble switching between "edit posts", "create" and the publishing buttons, or even the "back to dashboard" links. sheesh--it's getting very frustrating here.
chris at
10:59 PM
|
... the constellations are really just a collection of dots you whisper to me across the aisle... --Tim Peterson, "In the Observatory all Stars will be Labeled and Shelved," Trinkets Mashed into a Blender (Faux Press, 2004)
Yes!--I've been reading through what I learned in an email from Tim Peterson: his new book, with artwork by Christina Strong, is out!-- and, I must say, is outstanding!
chris at
9:16 PM
|
The other day I received an email from Geoffrey Gatza :
BlazeVOX 2K4 [fall issue] is out--and is an excellent read: including work by kari edwards, Ann Marie Eldon, Andrew Lundwall, Harry K. Stammer, David Nemeth, Nico Vassilakis, Doug Barbour and Sheila Murphy... and so much more...
this issue also announces a contest: call for submissions of book manuscripts--prize is $1000 and publication. Judge is YaY!!--Kent Johnson! So, do check it out...
So exciting to see all this poetry activity!
chris at
7:56 PM
|
How cool is this?--check out what Michael Basinsky has to say about the inaugural issue of Steve Tills' journal,Black Spring :
An interesting supermarket is Black Spring (from Henry Miller’s?) with a wide variety of tastes that are all cultured and focused. Hence, Black Spring is a hand of cards with poems different but the same in the pursuit of poetic contemporary experimentation, progression out from Olson and as Jim McCrary writes in his 103 section of Hotter Than And Now (let me quote it in its entirety) “Whoa!” And then there is Catherine Daly. Let’s quote a line from her: In EBCDIC & Hex, “84 89 a2 97 93 81 a8 a2.” I put the period in. Ah, that’s nice and and that’s only one line! So there is this real measure by Tills, whose works are within also, of him as editor renewing poets whom he has admired in other manifestations and reading and finding the freshest of poetry from about the country. Why not name them all, as if this were spermaceti or the supermarket sale paper and this store is called Black Spring. Disz week you got: Brent Bechtel, Catherine Daly, Kari Edwards, Stephen Ellis, Jim McCrary, Chris Murray, Layne Russell and Steve Tills. And Tills we meet again – enjoy. --comes outta Basinsky's recent issue of The Hold, which I encountered by cruising the blog streets and happening onto the doorway of Richard Lopez's blog, Really Bad Movies.
Thanks, Y'all!--so nice to see this recognition for Steve Tills, and then to have the honor of being a part of it, too. :)
chris at
9:09 AM
|
YaY!! Congratulations, on your new book, Patrick Herron:
The American Godwar Complex (just out from Geoffrey Gatza's BlazeVOX[Books])! I can't wait to read it : )
chris at
4:49 AM
|
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
from Stephen Vincent, a poem for the season... Walking Theory #81
Engage the skulls in the neighborhood
The one there in the black cape
Lavender shawl, signs of a former scowl:
Engage the skulls delicately, lick your lips
Offer red candies, white ones, too:
While one’s at it
Look for your brother, the one
In the fresh bones, the one
At the bottom of the stairs
The one not sure where he is:
Approach him kindly
Provide a gentle kiss on his lips
Tug the upper edge of his white shawl:
He’s still a novice - as both of you are -
Offer a candy, two or three:
Give each other condolences
In the awkward manner that one may:
Drop down the walk
Away from the stairs:
Go back into the world as one must
Whatever jitters on one’s lips
Or down to the base of the spine
That, too, shall pass:
Grab a wet pinecone
Fallen by the trolley track:
Press its cool to the side of the cheek.
chris at
9:24 PM
|
Here comes Geoffrey Gatza, Everybody...
chris at
11:40 AM
|
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Hello--offering my warm welcome to Laura Carter--
& Yes: let's get the bushbags outta office!
* * *
And here's another little bit of voterly cheer from the Propaganda Remix Project :
chris at
9:21 PM
|
Remembering J_D
chris at
7:18 PM
|
Monday, October 18, 2004
Texas Today, Y'all
And no action is being taken to prevent the nitrate infiltration of the watershed, resulting in recurrent dead zones in the Gulf, and a rising rate of shark bites occuring along Texas beaches... --article found via Tom Murphy's TJ Blug--
chris at
7:25 PM
|
News just in from Intake, Yerba Buena Center, and people's opera:
Eileen Myles' opera in one act, _The Workshop from "Hell"_
will be presented by YBCA and people's opera
Thursday, Oct 21
7 pm, pre-performance conversation:
8 pm, performance * Forum
$10 regular
$9 YBCA Members, seniors & students
701 Mission St @ 3rd
San Francisco
Tickets for Hell can be ordered ahead of time through the Yerba Buena
box office: 415.978.ARTS (2787).
"Hell" is an opera (loosely based on Dante's Inferno) about public
speech, corporate silence, global politics and poetry. The evening
opens to the smoking spectacle of lower Manhattan, then journeys
through a world of marvels, finally venturing into a town meeting
with a bleeped-out information warrior. After an encounter with a
terrible journalist, who believes that poetry should only be heard in
recordings of dead British poets, "Hell" becomes a defense of poetry
and live speech in a democracy, and spins out in ever-widening
reflections on war. Performed by ten singers and a fifteen piece
orchestra, the work-in-progress is travelling across the country
during the election season to take part in the public conversation
between citizens and artists who want to bring another perspective to
this moment of transition.
Libretto by poet and former presidential candidate Eileen Myles,
score by composer and recording artist Michael Webster. Directed by
Simon Leung. Sets by Beth Stephens.
From Eileen:
>
>Hell comes to CA and TJ
>
>Just to report that after two great soulful, sold-out & gorgeous
>performances in NY, Hell a new opera written by Eileen Myles,
>scored by Michael Webster, directed by Laurie Weeks, sets by Beth
Stephens,
>(original production & choreography by Simon Leung) with lead
>singing by Juliana Snapper, Scott Graff and James Rio, conducted by
>Alison Graf
>is now coming to these venues on the west coast.
>
>If you aren't from there, please tell your friends. Hell is remarkable
and
>very much geared for these last days of the Bush regime.
>
>Our wish list is to do another NY show before election day. Write me!
>Or to come to other cities & venues in the future. Hell is good
>under all regimes, being about power itself.
>
>UCLA Hammer, Los Angeles, CA
>Saturday, October 16, 8PM (free)
>
>Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco, CA
>Thursday, October 21, talk 630, performance at 8PM ($10)
>
>CECUT, Tijuana, Mexico
>Sunday, October 31, 6PM
>
>Loosely based on Dante's Inferno, Hell is an opera about public
>speech, corporate silence, global politics and poetry. This workshop
>production of Hell is the first step towards a fully realized
>production arriving in fall, 2005. This production is making stops
>in NY, Provincetown MA, Los Angeles and San Francisco before finally
>landing in Tijuana in fall of 2004 to take part in the public
>conversation about who rules America. The libretto for Hell is
>available at www.eileenmyles.net.
Wish I could see Y'all there!
chris at
5:43 AM
|
Sunday, October 17, 2004
from Emily Dickinson's Letters * :
102
Sweet Sue,
There is
no first, or last,
in Forever--
It is Centre, there,
all the time--
to believe--is enough,
and the right of
supposing--
Take back that
"Bee" and "Buttercup"--
I have no field
for them, though
for the Woman
whom I prefer,
Here is Festival--
When my hands
are Cut, Her
fingers will be
found inside--
Our beautiful Neigh-
bor "moved" in May--
It leaves an
Unimportance.
Take the Key to
the Lily, now, and
I will lock the Rose--
1864
(130-131)
* Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson. Edited by Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith. Ashfield, MA: Paris Press, 1998.
The note that editors Hart and Smith have appended to this letter-poem is:
In February 1864, Emily went to Boston to consult an ophthalmologist. In late April, she returned to Boston for eye treatments and stayed until November. During these seven months she lived with her Norcross cousins, ages twenty-two and sixteen, in a boarding House in Cambridgeport. Loo and Fannie had been orphaned by the death of their father in 1863, and their mother, Mrs. Dickinson's sister Lavinia, in 1861. The "beautiful Neigh-/bor" refers to Nathaniel Hawthorne who died on May 19, 1864. Emily suggests that his "moving" is unimportant because his spirit thrives in his literary productions. The "Lily" and the "Rose" have special significance in the spiritual, erotic exchange between Emily and Susan. These, not the daisy, are now the signature flowers in the correspondence, and they measure a shift in dynamics, a maturation of the bond between the two women. Emily regularly identifies or otherwise connects the lily (faith) and the rose (blood, beauty, and love) with Susan. (131)
chris at
9:04 PM
|
Friday, October 15, 2004
Do check out the recent additions to Anny Ballardini's sites:
A significant interview of Mary de Rachewiltz (who is Ezra Pound's daughter), by Italian poet, artist, journalist, and educator Anny Ballardini, posted to her anthology-website, Fieralingue.
And especially for students, here are some links to begin looking further into Pound, his work, life, and influence on poetics:
Ezra Pound reading aloud on the BBC radio, 1958.
Ezra Pound resources at the SUNY Buffalo center.
chris at
10:14 PM
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Jacques Derrida, why am I thinking of you ... : a JD poem from Brian Clements
One of my favorite Dallas folks, Brian Clements, who is a most provocative poet and poetic-thinker-in-writing and a formidable critic, as well as the esteemed editor/publisher of one of the finest new poetry-poetics journals--Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics. *And* : who recently accepted the offer of an appointment to Writing Program Director at Western Connecticut State University (YaY!! Brian, you go!)--emailed me today to say a quick hello.
I responded by letting him know how much I admire Sentence 2, which, aesthetically, editorially, poetically and in every aspect, is an especially satisfying read.
So-then, I was happy to see, given that Jacques Derrida's passing had been for me a moment of pause, resulting in a special texfiles and E-Po post here last weekend, Brian Clements today graciously took a second moment to send along this wonderful poem he wrote ten years ago in response to the phenomenon of Derrida, "Jacques Derrida," and which is included in Brian's 1997 book, Essays Against Ruin, (Texas Review Press, and which, by the way, is dedicated to Brian's parents * --please see note below). I find it a resonant poem which has caused me to reflect a few things. I don't want to delay the poem itself with any more of my exposition, so brief responses follow, but here is Brian Clements' provocative poem :
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida, what are you thinking?
And why am I thinking of you?
The leaves are just beginning to change,
the weather turned Hopperesque--
no real rain, but everything wet,
my only delight from sitting in rooms
with picture windows and people
arguing over coffee. Weather which turns
you out of the house, brings to mind
the pleasures of sitting alone
in a room full of people,
the pleasure of books, of monologue,
of being the kind of person who would say
"Hopperesque." I am not interested in the intricacies
of me, don't want to hear any stories
of family tragedy and accident
when there will never be enough time
for half of the streets, or empty houses,
the barber shops and drug stores,
bars and parking lots,
for Rabin shaking Arafat's hand,
or the harvest moon's shrink to the zenith,
for talk in front of the car, for communion.
How did you get in here
when I wanted to forget our disagreements,
not to mention our agreements.
I've already killed the Buddha,
and I'll do the same for you.
Don't ask me to think, don't ask
about the rats, the sky,
the building we live in; don't ask
how we're going to stay alive.
I don't want you around here;
I want to go out and walk in the wet
not-rain and filter into the air
like smoke from my pipe.
I want to calm down and get lost
in Johnson City. I want to get acquainted
with the places where they know me.
I want to be something like the man in the movie
which plays out behind my eyes.
I want to play the part of Jacques Derrida
and move with confidence in the unspeakable world.
(25-26) **
Comments: Here are some random thoughts in response to this poem:
--Hah!--how brilliant, fun, and witty of you, Brian: "writing on" Derrida in just this way!--it seems so apropos, eh?--as if to say that as soon as it was possible to have a Derrida in consciousness, then there was no choice but to write on [its object spaces]... to turn meta, to try out the conundrum.
--Oh I love that freeing aspect of what such an ikon, consolidates--more possibility. Not the ikon itself, nor its attractive action of consolidation, but what can remain, driven to the dynamic cycles of itself (Sign, Texture, Event, Diss/em-i/Nation), well, this one in particular, since it is all about trying to recognize that essence of contradiction, self-referentiality quarrying at the frame of infinite regress. And yet, it has also opened that same awareness onto, has realized a particular largesse *for*, that part of the Derridean aesthetic and point. Otherwise, like many people, I cannot find its usefulness comprehensive --as Brian's poem also points up-- in a world where it can also be used to continue to marginalize anyone who does not think the same way. In that I am alluding here to academic theory-mongering that is often used to exclude those apparently _not in the know_, as it were. Thus, more excluding of an *other* (see Derrida on Love, posted here last Saturday, 9 Oct--and that questionable act of othering. But we will be sorting through all this for a very long time: well past our particular *we*. Perhaps that is one meaning of *free* and/or *freeing*?--to be able to question such universals of we and of othering, all in the same moment of thought. I hope it so.
--Though not freeing in all ways nor for everyone. Why did anyone ever think it (or any theory?) would/could be made to encompass "everyone," a universal, a fiction made in ways apparently not open to contesting? Theory, as many have contested, is itself a contradiction in terms, a fiction of irreality, a wish to be comprehensive when in fact, nothing is or can be. So: do we have partial theories and theorizing?--well, yes.
These are only brief notes brought out by thinking on the poem and its subject matter, not intended to explicate the poem nor to provide the phenomenon of Derrida as ikon, any legitimacy, extended authority, or even a neo-morphed reality. None of that works. What works is that so many folks tuned into what Derrida and his work were doing, and that created multiple levels of understanding about it and other serious matters of subjectivity and real life. That is only interesting. That it resulted in so many reaching inward and outward multiplicitously, is its strength and its vulnerable spot--I have to add with no little irony: Derrida! Damn You: I will still think ! am still stuck, as you were, with the laundry sack of a Cartesian I! & cf, as well, to Rousseau... & all to be continued... : )
Notes:
* I've always been particularly sensitive to--curious about, respectfully interested to read book dedications. As in: for my own work, everything I have ever done and will do goes out to my kids, Heather, Holly, Randy, whose lives growing up were shaped by the fact that I was driven to do both: love/tend them, and love/tend my way through textuality of poetry, as well as through the schooling it took to be here now. What I want to recognize with this note is that, like apostrophe in a poem, book dedications contain the seeds that abruptly shift ones receptive (readerly senses of) reality into a moment of recognizing what the dedication is and must be: a tribute to material life, more than merely artifactual textual weave. Also, a re-Mind-er of who beyond the author, in reality-context, helped make the text possible: usually those closest to the author. A dedication is that quiet boundary that leads honorably and inevitably to everyday life. Happy to see this dedication in Brian's book.
** Brian Clements, Essays Against Ruin. 1996 Winner, The Texas Review Southern and Southwestern Poets Breakthrough Series. Texas Review Press, Huntsville, TX, 1997.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Brian Clements~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
5:07 AM
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Thursday, October 14, 2004
from Rene Char, Disdained Apparitions
Civilizations are viscous. History shipwrecks, Gold slips from God no longer straddling our suspicious walls, man batters at the ear of man, Time misleads itself, fission is on its way. What next?
Science can only furnish to devasted man a blind beacon, a weapon of distress, tools without legend. For the most demented: the drill whistle.
Those who have installed this eternal compensator, as a final victory over the temporal, were themselves only temporary jailers. They hadn't violated the tragic nature--interloper, pillager, as if in abeyance--of human beings.
Putrescent light, obscurity would be the worst condition.
There was only a half-freedom. It was all that was granted. Half-freedom for the man in motion. Half freedom for the insect that sleeps and waits in its chrysalis. Phantom, barest memory, freedom in uprising.
Freedom was at the summit of a mass of covert obediences and accepted conventions disguised by an irreproachable deceit. Freedom is found in the heart of one who has not ceased to wish for it, to dream of it, who has won it in the face of crime.
(translated by Paul Mann)
chris at
6:26 PM
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Wednesday, October 13, 2004
from John Medaille, whose blog is Robots of Love
and who is a UTA student in my course, English 4330:
a combo poem: dramatic monologue/sestina:
"Why We Must Defeat Red China"
(Excerpt from address delivered to the Senate by Commander in Chief Claudius J. Hogfordshire on April 15th, 2009. Latter half of speech missing, presumed classified.)
My fellow Americans, we have but one
path to tread and that is the path to
the complete annihilation (in exactly three
minutes) of godless, red China, for
the purposes of turning East Asia into five
smoking holes, to smote the filthy cur who sics
at our shins. We will meet them at the six-
-tieth parallel and deal them a hard, fast one!
To any rational human, it would take five
kinds of degenerate imbeciles not to
see that Mars must be conquered for
the white man. Can't you see that three
(being the phonetic representation of 3)
million monkeys could type for six
million years in a darkened room be-fore
succeeding to envision even one
single, decent nuclear warhead to
char-grill the damned Maoists with five
times the atomic capability of Hiroshima, five
times the burnt babies of Nagasaki, for three
thousand years Beijing will glow un-to
the heavens for their shameless six-
-ty years of Marxism after we've won!
"Oh Beautiful for spacious skies" and so for-
-th! Of the people, by the people, for
the people and all that jazz! Five
billion Chinamen can't all be right! One
thinks they are the Red Dragon with three
slavering heads whose number is 666,
come from the depths of hell at last to
devour the faithful ( of St. John's letter to
the Collossians). Should we stand idly by for
the heathen Chinee? For promiscuous six?
For the schemes of infiltrators and 5-
-th Columnists? For the end of our three
rights: life, liberty, etcetera? I, for one,
say, "Never!" In six seconds we blow The Orient to
the one Happy Hunting Ground once and for
all! Countdown minus five, four, three...
chris at
6:26 PM
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Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Hey, Y'all, Color in your Curiosities for this one:
--Texfiles (Happily!) announces the following event
with special thanks to kari edwards
for sending along the info.
Note, too, that I am thinking of going to SFO
for this one because it will be exceptional &
if anyone here is interested and able to go,
please contact me--
CABINET OF THE MUSES ! *
A Festival of Poetry and other Curiosities:
** October 21-23 **
The Lab
2948 Sixteenth Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 864-8855
http://www.thelab.org
Fee: $7-$15 sliding scale, per session.
Luminaries of the contemporary poetry/arts world who will be reading/performing include kari edwards, Laynie Browne, Claudia Rankine, Elizabeth Robinson, Jerome Rothenberg, Juliana Spahr, Hoa Nguyen, Dale Smith, Kevin Killian, Edwin Torres, Brenda Coultas... and many more from film, dance, music, and all the performing modes.
Also offered, free of charge,
a special focus presentation:
Translation Symposium
Friday, Oct. 22, 1-3 p.m.
UC Berkeley, Wheeler Hall,
3rd floor, Maude Fife Room
I hope to see you there!
* Cabinet of the Muses is supported by the generosity of The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, The UC Berkeley Comparative Literature Department, The UC Berkeley English Department, UC Berkeley's Consortium for the Arts, and Poets and Writers, Inc., through a grant it has received from the James Irvine Foundation.
chris at
10:18 PM
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On a Clear Day Here, & Sentence 2, a Prose Poem & its Poetics
Stunningly clear day here, after many of cloud and some of rain, finally cooler temps, not quite crisp, but a breeze and cooler in the sun than it has been since March. Leaves are getting used to shorter, less indulgent or lavish days, and very shiny.
I keep returning, still completely fascinated by the new issue, to Sentence, # 2--such fine work in both modes, poetry and poetics. The back cover lists some "Objectives" of Sentence, so that one aim of the journal is, quite simply, to publish work that extends our conceptions of what the "prose poem" is or can be. I like it that a distinction is here made between the more or less definitionally accepted matter of what is, and else: what would or will hold the potential of ability, of can be in the sense of "can" versus "may"--"can" meaning able, "may" meaning permitted, to_do_something. Basically, a definitional "is" would be constrained by a certain amount of stasis, so that even when contentious, it holds positionality because of a certain lack, lack of input, lack of changeability, lack of dialogue as motion. While an is may be contentious, every can be is more: it "swirls" with what is more able, thus has a more potent energy.
Thus, I find this remarkably potent prose poem that extends conceptions of the prose poem,
from Sean McLain Brown:
"trans.lations: [...]" *
"That bitter allusion of the mind, the notion looking out at the lights across the channel or through windows into a room where a man's finger swirls a drink, and I write poems for donations, I meant for translations, for me without a family, and to have failed which is hard enough and the prospect of losing words is like a blizzard in the brain, soused with the white lightening I drink from a jar. Out of control. What I do every day is give blood, collect my money and then sit and look out at the city, where one by one the leaves fall down in the street, where they lay like so many atrophied veins, I figure they've all got to fail sometime, I meant fall, and they do, every year like clockwork, and I can't stand the sight of blood, or words drained of life, with gray skin like underwater plants, where sound travels well but goes unheard." (143)
This poem, one of three from this poet included in this issue, emphasizes its action, its how, its extention outward, which quietly "swirls" everything that enters its path, so translates each sign, each relation between word and thing via movement. It enacts rhetorical motion, it finds a way to enact its potential, its potent "can be."
We learn on reading the bio section that this poem is part of Sean McLain Brown's forthcoming book, Manufacturer's Specifications and Guidelines due out soon from Blue Barnhouse Publishing. It's a book I'll definitely be looking out for.
* In the blog screen transcribing of Sean's poem, I'm unable to duplicate the phonetic spelling that the poem inserts here, so I've indicated an elision by the brackets and ellipses points.--cm
~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Sean McLain Brown~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
7:27 PM
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(scroll to Oct. 11: Wow, Steve!--how very cool your poetics & "pomin'" are. Congrats on the review from Michael Basinsky, and on the inclusion of this issue in the SUNY Buffalo poetry library. I'm just tickled for you (and happy to have been included in the inaugural issue of Black Spring, & oh, I just can't stop : ) : ) :) :) & etc...
chris at
9:08 AM
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Monday, October 11, 2004
On Jacket Magazine--one of my favorite reads, of all the contemporary poetry scene, online or in print:
Word from Jacket editor, John Tranter**, is that # 24 is now complete:
J H Prynne
Jacket 24 is now complete, featuring over two hundred pages
of responses to the remarkable work of British poet
and Cambridge don J H Prynne, edited by Kevin Nolan.
Jacket 24
including the following commentaries:
*** Kevin Nolan:
Capital Calves: Undertaking an Overview
*** Steve Clark:
Prynne and The Movement
*** Andrew Duncan:
Response to Steve Clark’s ‘Prynne and the Movement’
*** James Keery: ‘Schönheit Apocalyptica’:
An Approach to The White Stones by J.H. Prynne
*** Simon Jarvis:
Clear as mud: J.H. Prynne’s Of Sanguine Fire
*** Neil Reeve:
Twilight Zones: J.H. Prynne’s The Land of Saint Martin
*** Simon Perril:
Hanging on Your Every Word: J.H. Prynne's
Bands Around The Throat
*** Simon Jarvis:
The Incommunicable Silhouette
And don't forget that more than three hundred
Jacket book reviews and author interviews
are now gathered in one page of glittering links:
Jacket's new Reviews Link-Page From John Ashbery to Leslie Scalapino, from Caroline Bergvall to Ian Hamilton Finlay, this mass of chatter, lapidation and deep
introspection mines the ore of literary production and rethinks the seat of the soul.
** And word here from me is that there is also some fine reading in the following links, where you can learn more about Tranter's own significant poetry and other editing projects & writings: look here for John Tranter's homepage... poetry, reviews, etc, & here for his work on the Australian Poetry Sourcebook, for which he is editor, & here to find a website of Tranter's early writing. Enjoy!
chris at
1:01 AM
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Sunday, October 10, 2004
a pair of good ones:
from ee cummings:
)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is
)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is
more silent than more than much more is or
total sun oceaning than any this
tear jumping from each most least eye of star
and without was if minus and shall be
immeasurable happenless unnow
shuts more than open could that every tree
or than all life more death begins to grow
end's ending then these dolls of joy and grief
these recent memories of future dream
these perhaps who have lost their shadows if
which did not do the losing spectres mime
until out of merely not nothing comes
only one snowflake(and we speak our names
*
from Judith Wright:
Request to a Year
If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great- great- grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,
who having eight children
and little opportunity for painting pictures,
sat one day on a high rock
beside a river in Switzerland
and from a difficult distance viewed
her second son, balanced on a small ice
flow, drift down the current toward a waterfall
that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,
while her second daughter, impeded,
no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,
stretched out a last-hope alpenstock
(which luckily later caught him on his way).
Nothing, it was evident, could be done;
And with the artist's isolating eye
My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.
The sketch survives to prove the story by.
Year, if you have no Mother's day present planned,
Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.
~~poems copyright of ee cummings and Judith Wright respectively~~
chris at
11:06 AM
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Saturday, October 09, 2004
Adios, Jacques Derrida...
 --c. 1984, via hedbergska.sundsvall .se
on love: ... love means an affirmative desire towards the Other - to respect the Other, to pay attention to the Other, not to destroy the otherness of the Other - and this is the preliminary affirmation, even if afterwards because of this love, you ask questions. There is some negativity in deconstruction. I wouldn't deny this. You have to criticise, to ask questions, to challenge and sometimes to oppose. What I have said is that in the final instance, deconstruction is not negative although negativity is no doubt at work. Now, in order to criticise, to negate, to deny, you have first to say "yes". When you address the Other, even if it is to oppose the Other, you make a sort of promise - that is, to address the Other as Other, not to reduce the otherness of the Other, and to take into account the singularity of the Other. That's an irreducible affirmation, its the original ethics if you want. So from that point of view, there is an ethics of deconstruction. Not in the usual sense, but there is an affirmation. You know, I often use a quote from Rosensweig or even from Levinas which says that the "yes" is not a word like others, that even if you do not pronounce the word, there is a "yes" implicit in every language, even if you multiply the "no", there is a "yes". And this is even the case with Heidegger. You know Heidegger, for a long time, for years and years kept saying that thinking started with questioning, that questioning (fragen) is the dignity of thinking. And then one day, without contradicting this statement, he said "yes, but there is something even more originary than questioning, than this piety of thinking," and it is what he called zusage which means to acquiesce, to accept, to say "yes", to affirm. So this zusage is not only prior to questioning, but it is supposed by any questioning. To ask a question, you must first tell the Other that I am speaking to you. Even to oppose or challenge the Other, you must say "at least I speak to you", "I say yes to our being in common together". So this is what I meant by love, this reaffirmation of the affirmation. --Interview with Nikhil Padgaonkar
with poet Francis Ponge:  --Francis Ponge and Jacques Derrida, Cerisy-la-Salle Seminars given by Derrida in dedication to Ponge, "SignsPonge," 1974-1975
& on mourning, from Critical Inquiry: One cannot hold a discourse on the "work of mourning" without taking part in it, without announcing or partaking in [se faire part de] death, and first of all in one's own death. In the announcement of one's own death, which says, in short, "I am dead," "I died"--such as this book lets it be heard--one should be able to say, and I have tried to say this in the past, that all work is also the work of mourning. All work in general works at mourning. In and of itself. Even when it has the power to give birth, even and especially when it plans to bring something to light and let it be seen. The work of mourning is not one kind of work among other possible kinds; an activity of the kind "work" is by no means a specific figure for production in general. --Jacques Derrida, "By Force of Mourning," in Critical Inquiry, Winter 1996.
& on Derrida's work and theories: ... [Derrida's] work intrigues me because of how it can account for the resilience of literary and other texts--their ability to adapt to new readers and contexts. As someone who did undergraduate work in creative writing, I also appreciate the way his writing refuses to accept a distinction between "literature" and "criticism." --"Derrida and Deconstruction: Key Points," Warren Hedges, Southern Oregon University
& from Wikipedia
& on Derrida the Movie
& to listen: Theory Radio: mp3s of/on Derrida (though, only one, with autobiographer and friend, Geoffrey Bennington, is in English)
& much more at WOODS LOT
& in French, from Le Monde
& this, I was grateful to happen upon, from the reflective literary/philosophic blog, Spurious,
Alas, adios, Jacques Derrida...
chris at
9:46 PM
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Poetry International
chris at
9:15 PM
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 -- genome image, bu.edu
Hey!--Do check out Hal Johnson's new e-book, G(e)nome, out from Jukka's (YaY!!) xPressed works-site. I'm having students read it next week. Nice work, Hal and Jukka!
chris at
2:52 AM
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Friday, October 08, 2004
on Sandy McIntosh's exquisite prose poem, "With Ignatow":
I want to say how very much I like the Sandy McIntosh work in the latest issue (# 2) of Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics. To my mind, it's a highly provocative piece for student writers of all genres, so I want to post some of it here and at my current poetry course-blog, E-Po.
I'm also very happy to note here for Y'all that Sandy McIntosh and Eileen Tabios will be here to read for my Poetry_Heat series in UTA's Spring Semester, Mar 3-6, as well as to give a presentation on publishing, at the UTA Writing Center. We're also planning a road trip to Austin, so stay tuned on all that...
Sandy's poem, "With Ignatow," is about various encounters with North American poet, David Ignatow (1913-1998), a few of whose poems can be found at this link on Webdelsol. Ignatow was known to be very definitely a unique thinker and writer, one who called it as he saw it and settled for no less along with commanding not only great respect, but great affection, as well. Sandy's poem shines with this problematic (not in the sense of problem but in the sense of conundrum, sets of contradictions that may not be resolveable, and may not need to be).
An excerpt follows here, but I hope Y'all will seek out your copy of Sentence and read the entire piece, as well as the rest of this outstanding issue. I confess I have been reading it non-stop for several days now--the variety, the range, the quality of work is outstanding in this issue. I'm honored to have my review of Eileen's fine book, Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole, in such an excellent mix that is representative of some of the best of contemporary prose poetry and criticism.
Here is the excerpt from Sandy's much longer Sentence work, each section crisp and exquisite--ultimately an epideictic tribute to David Ignatow--"With Ignatow" :
*
I stopped off at his house with a new poem I wanted him to see.
“He’s teaching today,” said his wife. “But come sit at the typewriter in my studio and wait for him.”
In the next room I could hear a radio announcing the death of General Eisenhower. She was surprised. “I thought he’d been dead for years.”
We listened together as the announcer read off a complex list of funerary events. She remarked on how chilling it all was. “They couldn’t wait for him to drop dead.”
That gave me an idea. She encouraged me to use her typewriter. “Go ahead,” she said. “Type all you want.”
My father had admired Eisenhower and always voted Republican. At his death I’d been fascinated with the preparations for the funeral, especially the process of embalming the corpse. I was thinking as much of my own father’s funeral as of Eisenhower’s while I worked at the typewriter.
He returned from teaching in an acrimonious mood. After supper (canned salmon on dry lettuce, water), he motioned me to hand him the poem.
I gave him the one I’d arrived with something I’d worked on for weeks. This, I wanted him to know, was finally the real thing.
He made chomping sounds, cleaning his teeth with his tongue as he read. When he looked up it was with a sour expression. “This is crap,” he pronounced. “Why are you wasting your time with this garbage? You can write better than that.”
I was devastated. I couldn’t breathe. I felt as if he’d shoved me backwards through the wall; that I was being pinned somewhere within the airless beams of the house.
“Come on,” he chided. “You can talk. You’re not going to die.”
But I couldn’t talk, his condemnation so forceful, unexpected. To play for time, I opened my notebook and offered up the new poem I’d written about Eisenhower. It wasn’t much. I’d just been having fun with it. But that’s all I had.
He grabbed it. His expression softened and he looked up from the typewritten sheet. “Now, this is something,” he said. “This should be published. Why didn’t you show me this the first time?
*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~prose poem copyright of Sandy McIntosh~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
10:43 PM
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via transdada:
Gay National Boycott Begins
by Beth Shapiro
365Gay.com Newscenter
(New York City) A one-day national work stoppage and economic boycott
called by a gay marriage advocacy group began Friday morning.
The Boycott for Equality called on gays and lesbians across the nation
to drop out of the U.S. economy for the day by staying home from work,
not shopping and not using cell phones.
The boycott also asks people to withdraw $80 from their bank accounts
and hold onto the money to symbolize the average daily contribution of
gay and lesbian people to the economy.
Estimates indicate that America's lesbian and gay population spends an
average of $1.4 billion each day, totaling $500 billion a year. But,
the effect the grassroots effort to show the clout of the gay dollar
will have may not be fully known for several months when major
companies release financial reports.
Boycott for Equality
chris at
9:57 PM
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 --
via Steve Evans’ Third Factory, link to the Propaganda Remix Project.
chris at
11:22 AM
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On The Impermanence Agent
Nana Futures: Check this Out, Regarding The Impermanence Agent--[I don't know much about its range of influence yet, but hey : ] I Love It! In spring semester here, I'm teaching a special topics course on the history of short story writing: from Poe to Prose Poem, and so right now scrambling around to look into stuff, and found this particular tekkie tie-in very productive for thinking things over and seeing where technology segues into this challenging trajectory of narrative and poetics (though, admittedly, I'm no accomplished nerd in the tekkie end of stuff). But this looks VeryKoooolShoes to me:
Noah: Nana was my grandmother. After she died, in 1993, I began working on an essay about media, particularly hypermedia, and dreams of permanence. It was in her house that I'd first read Ted Nelson's 1974 Computer Lib / Dream Machines, while on a school holiday (Nelson 1974). In that book, and later more fully in his 1981 Literary Machines, Nelson lays out what has become a common vision, decades later, of the future Internet/Web (Nelson 1981). In this vision, in a not-so-distant future, we will read and write (view and draw, hear and compose) almost everything from and to a world-spanning computer network. Everyone will have the ability to produce their own documents and connect them to any other public documents. The author may constantly create new versions of her or his own document, and individuals may create their own versions of any public document; public connections made between one version of one document and another version of another will usually automatically place themselves in all the extant versions. Historical backtrack and degradation-proof storage will allow us to visit any version, any moment in the network's history. To have the ultimate archive, and yet have each element of this archive constantly in process. Dynamism without loss. Impermanence enfolded within permanence.
At Nana's house, in the summer of 1993, we were left with her letters, photographs, collections of news clippings. Already, for many pictures, no one knew the people in sepia tones and odd-shaped haircuts. The letters were those that belonged to her, not the ones she wrote. A lousy way to try to know someone, the paper trail, the box of letters and photos. But I was drawn to it, and not alone in that. It seemed she must be in there somewhere, in the possessions, in the records, in the writing.
...
This seems to me very cutting edge mind engagement with cultural trend and technology. Very happy to see/read it, and then to offer to students here.
Oh, very many thanks to Anny Ballardini !--for many insights always, but here especially for offering commentary and links to this very fine project on her excellent blog, *Narcissus Works*.
chris at
9:39 AM
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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
7:29 PM
|
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
9:33 AM
|
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
9:00 AM
|
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
5:18 PM
|
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
10:35 AM
|
 -- 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
6:40 AM
|
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
12:19 AM
|
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
the new Bookslut's out
chris at
5:18 PM
|
"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
9:42 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
5:49 PM
|
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
9:16 AM
|
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
9:49 PM
|
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
9:52 AM
|
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
7:52 AM
|
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
6:34 AM
|
Saturday, October 02, 2004
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
9:09 PM
|
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
7:26 PM
|
--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~~~~
chris at
9:36 AM
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--Check(ing) out Lanny's Plunt blog--via & sez Jean: WoW! I completely agree: I'm amazed--seeing echoes of image, waves of reverb, all over the music of it! Terrific stuff, Lanny!--thanks for doin' whatcha do!
--And now, the parakeet is still there, and the sun has set, so I guess it's planning on roosting in this tree. Something a little amazing about that, I feel.
--I'm going out for a bit and when I get back I'll be posting a report about the wonderful Poetry_Heat reading given at UTA last evening by Dallas-area poets Joe Ahearn, Tia Black, and Corey Marks.
chris at
2:45 AM
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Lost/Found: Parakeet!
Someone's (apparently) domestic pet, a bird (pet, that is, unless they migrate here, too--I don't know), grayish back and wings, mediterrean-blue breast, little hooked beak--I think a parakeet (yes, I've confirmed via photos like the one above)--has roosted in the live oak tree right outside my window along with hordes of chatty wild ones: sparrows, starlings, mockingbirds. I wonder if it can find a way back to its humans or its indoor roost. Maybe it doesn't like that idea--cages are so dull, while trees, sky, and companions must seem so much better. It's preening itself slowly, as if it could care less that anyone might be looking for it, or as if it does not have to care that it is probably at a disadvantage as a domesticated bird loose in the urban wilds. I hope it does well. On the other hand, if it is a migrating bird (I doubt it, not having seen these before), then I guess this is a post I can scrap since the bird certainly needs no
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