|
"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
Tom Lisk: Oilcloth and Linoleum
Kevin Doran
Reb Livingston's Cackling Jackal Blog
Janet Holmes: Humanophone
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Mark Young's gamma ways
Brian Campbell: Out of the Woodwork
Shanna's DIY Publishing Blog
Galatea Resurrects: a Poetry Review
Tom Beckett
John Sakkis: BOTH BOTH
New Francois Luong:Voices in Utter Dark, KaBlow!sm is...
Old Francois Luong: Voices in Utter Dark
Margin Walker: Andrew Lundwall
Free Space Comix: the latest BK Stefans blog
Adam Lockhart, Experimentalist Composer
Antic View: Alan Bramhall & Jeff Harrison
lookouchblog: Jessica Smith
MiPOradio
Web Log -- Charles Bernstein
Google Poem Generator: Leevi Lehto
Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Feral Scholar: Stan Goff
worderos: Tom Beckett
In Galatea's Purse
Japundit
Quiet Desperation: Jim Ryal
Luca Antara: Martin Edmond
Brief Epigrams: Ryan Alexander MacDonald
Radio My Vocabulary: 4 pm Sunday Poetry Streams
Mark Lamoreaux: [[[0{:}0]]]
Hot Whiskey Blog
louder
Nick Bruno: They Shoot Poets Don't They?
Joe Massey: Rooted Fool
Kate Greenstreet: every other day
heuriskein: Tom Orange
Chiaroscuro Metropoli: Tom Beckett
Behrle's latest spout!
Fluffy Dollars: Michelle Detorie
Jane Dark's Sugar High!
The Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center
(Charles) Olson Now: Michael Kellaher & Ammiel Alcalay
kari edwards' TranssubMUTATION
Notes on the Revival: Jeremy Hawkins
PurPur: Petrus Pokus
Snapper Missives: Scott Pierce
A Sad Day for Sad Birds II: Gina Meyers
Great Works: Peter Philpot
zafusy: experimental poetry journal
Writeboard: a collaborative writing tool
John Latta: Rue Hazard
KP Harris: Croissant Factory
Stephanie Young's New Site
Stephen Vincent's New Site
Portable Press@Yo~Yo Labs
Square America
Amy King's blog
Robert: Peyoetry Hut
Muisti Kirja: Karri Kokko
Karri Kokko's Blonde on Blonde
Yummeee Blog (recipes)
Nice Guy Syndrome: Tim Botta
Left Hook
Del Ray Cross: anachronizms
Juan Cole: Informed Comment
BuzzFlash - Daily Headlines, Breaking News, Links
Aaron McCollough
Chris Lott's Cosmopoetica
Chad Parenteau
Little Emerson
Fever, Light--by Sawako Nakayasu
Second Wish
Nomadics
Alison Croggon
Radical Druid
Ron is Ron: the Ron Silliman Cartoon by Jim Behrle
Dagzine: Positions, Poetics, Populations: Gary Norris
Shadows within Shadows: Tom Beckett
Self Similar Writing: Jukka Pekka Kervinen
The Little Workshop: Cassie Lewis
Sky Bright: Jay Rosevear
Poesy Galore: Emily Lloyd
Lisa Jarnot's Blog
Poetry Hut: Jilly Dybka (has moved here)
Pornfeld: Michael Hoerman
Seven Apples: Justin Ulmer
Hi Spirits: Andrew Burke
Bacon Bargain!: Joe Massey
Ivy is here: Ivy Alvarez
Whimsy Speaks: Jeff Bahr
Umbrella: Jeff Wietor
Chicanas! (Susana L. Gallardo)
Masters of Photography
Blog of Disquiet: Gary Norris' Teaching Blog
Suzanna Gig Jig
Bad with Titles: Jay Thomas
Spaceship Tumblers! Tony Tost
Desert City: Ken Rumble
E-Po
Zotz!
Optative Mood: Tim Morris
ecritures bleues: Laura Carter
The Ingredient: Alli Warren
Skanky Possum Pouch
Slight Publications
Jewishy-Irishy: Laurel Snyder
Sea-Camel: Alberto Romero Bermo
Growing Nations: Jordan Stempleman
Tom Raworth
Entropy and Me: Hal Johnson
Scott Pierce: Snapper's Junk
Chicano Poet: Reyes Cardenas
Semio-Karl M&M
Stephen Vincent
Hoa Nguyen/Teacher's & Writers
a New Word Placements
Narcissus Works: Anny Ballardini
Richard Lopez
Tributary: Allen Bramhall
The_Delay: Chris Vitiello
Jukka Pekka Kervinen: Nonlinear Poetry
Lanny Quarles: Phaneronoemikon
Clifford Duffy: Fictions of Deleuze & Guattari
DagZine
Carrboro Poetry Festival
Steve Evans: Third Factory
DEBORAH PATILLO
SKANKY POSSUM PRESS
Tim Peterson: Mappemunde
WOOD'S LOT
Geof Huth: DBQP
Ann Marie Eldon
Jim Behrle: The Jim Side
Ray Bianchi:Postmodern Collage Poetry
Never Mind the Beasts
Diaryo
New Broom
Flingdump Scattershot
Tony Tost: Unquiet Grave
Grapez
SB POET
Mark Young's Pelican Dreaming
|||AS/IS2|||
Li's A Private Studio
Anny Ballardini's Poet's Corner
Tom Beckett: Vanishing Points
Dumbfoundry
BadGurrrlNest
Jean Vengua's Okir
Hear-it dot org: info on hearing problems
Tim Yu's Tympan
James Yeager's Modern Lives
Tony Robinson: Geneva Convention
Daniel Nestor's Unpleasant Event
Ex-Lion Tamer
Carlos Arribas: Scriptorium
David Nemeth
Ela's Incertain Plume
Mairead Byrne's Heaven
Catherine Daly
Black Spring
Br.Tom's Finish Yr Phrase
Shin Yu Pai: makura-no-soshi
Harry K. Stammer: Downtown LA
Corina's Fledgling Wordsmith
Jilly Dybka's Poetry Hut
Ben Basan's Luminations
Katey: Chewing on Pencils
YaY!! Eileen Tabios: Chatelaine Poetics !
Jill Jones: Ruby Street
Geoffrey Gatza's BlazeVox
Bill Allegrezza's P-Ramblings
Gary Sullivan's Elsewhere
GoldenRuleJones
Poetry_Heat
Bookslut
Chickee's SuperDeluxeGoodPoems
As-Is !
John Latta's Hotel Point
Sawako Nakayasu's Ongoing Show
Shanna Compton's Brand New Insects
Crag Hill
kari edwards: transdada
Fluss
Michael Helsem's Gray Wyvern
Word Placement
Bogue's Blog
Jordan Davis: Equanimity
Robert Flach's Unadulterated Text
Michelle Bautista
Ironic Cinema
Mike Snider
Farewell Tonio!
In Through the Out Door
The Blonde Brunette
Awake at Dawn on Someone's Couch is Toast
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen:Non-Linear
Xpress(ed) !
Chris Lott's Ruminate
Venepoetics
Laura: Yellowslip
Stick Poet Super Hero
Mighty Jens!
Radio UTA: Toni's Thursday Poetry Show
Tim Morris: Lection
Gabe Gudding
Constant Critic
Sappho's Breathing
Waves of Reading
Jhananin's Insite
Fanaticus
AdvExpo
Stephen Vincent
Stephanie Young: New Well Nourished Moon
Kasey Silem Mohammad's Newest Limetree
Lanny Quarles: (solipsis)//:phaneronoemikon
States Writes
Rebecca's Pocket
Simulacro
Braincase Links
Sentence
Sor Juana
73 Urban Bus Journeys
Poeta Empirica
poetry for the people: canwehaveourballback?
Ernesto Priego's Never Neutral
Nick Piombino's Fait Accompli
Weekly Incite blogresearch
Jim Behrle's first monkey
Jim Behrle's Monkey's Gone to Heaven
David Kirschenbaum's Boog City
Not Nick Moudry
Laurable
David Hess Heathens in Heat
Jack Kimball's Pantaloons
Li Bloom's Abolone
Ron Silliman
Chris Sullivan's Bloggchaff
Chris Sullivan's Slight Publications
Chris Sullivan's Department of Culture
Kasey S. Mohammad's Old-New Limetree
Kasey's Old Limetree
James Meetze: Brutal Kittens
Cassie Lewis: The Jetty
Joseph Mosconi's Harlequin Knights
Nada Gordon's Ululate
ultimate: Stephanie Young's First Well Nourished Moon
Steve Evans: Third Factory
Noah Eli Gordon's Human Verb
Jean Vengua's Blue Kangaroo
Sawako Nakayasu: Texture Notes
Free Space Comix: BK Stefans
Crosfader
Malcolm Davidson's eeksy peeksy
Marsh Hawk Press group
Catherine Meng's Porthole Redux
Josh Corey's Cahiers de Corey
Very Nice! Shampoopoetry
UTA's Lit Mag: ZNine
Wild Honey Press
Jacket
JFK's Poetinresidence
Malcolm Davidson's Tram Spark poems
HYepez: RealiTi
HYpez: Mexperimental
Aimee Nez's Gila Monster
BestMaX: Jim Behrle's jismblog
Cori Copp's Littleshirleybean
Jordan Davis: Million Poems
Eileen Tabios: Corpsepoetics [see Chatelaine above]
YaY! Liz's Thirdwish
Ultra Linking
Henry Gould's HG Poetics
|
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Texfiles Tribute to Robert Creeley
--Saddest of news: Robert Creeley has passed on...
(1926-2005)--
RIP, wishing you a peaceful journeying...
Below is a mix of Creeley writings and links to things about him that I found to be insightful.
When I think *
When I think of where I've come from
or even try to measure as any kind of
distance, those places, all the various
people, and all the ways in which I re-
member them, so that even the skin I
touched or was myself fact of, inside,
could see through like a hole in the wall
or listen to, it must have been, to what
was going on in there, even if I was still
too dumb to know anything-- When I think
of the miles and miles of roads, of meals,
of telephone wires even, or even of water
poured out in endless streams down streaks
of black sky or the dirt roads washed clean,
or myriad, salty tears and suddenly it's spring
again, or it was-- Even when I think again of
all those I treated so poorly, names, places,
their waiting uselessly for me in the rain and
I never came, was never really there at all,
was moving so confusedly, so fast, so driven
like a car along some lonely highway passing,
passing other cars-- When I try to think of
things, of what's happened, of what a life is
and was, my life, when I wonder what it meant,
the sad days passing, the continuing, echoing deaths,
all the painful, belligerent news, and the dog still
waiting to be fed, the closeness of you sleeping, voices,
presences, of children, of our own grown children,
the shining, bright sun, the smell of the air just now,
each physical moment, passing, passing, it's what
it always is or ever was, just then, just there.
*Robert Creeley, Yesterdays. Chax Press,2002.
I had just run a post on Creeley and this poem,
8 Feb 05, a post about the Adorno notion of aura in photography, which began because I like the above photo of Creeley so much. I see now that many of the photos now being posted in tribute seem to hold similarly to aura.
a good place to start: EPC/Robert Creeley Author Home Page
Ron Silliman has been posting a lovely week-long kind of memorium on Creeley. Here are links to a few of the highlights:
Ron Silliman's post, "Onward"--Robert Creeley
Silliman's 3 Feb 2004 Overview-Review on Creeley's Significance to Poetry
Sunday, 3 Apr 05, a few more of Silliman's links on Creeley, including the Conjunctions page and the video file of Creeley's talk at the Zukofsky Memorial last year. Ron, thanks for all this.
Malcolm Davidson and Ivy Alvarez have put together a list of tributes at the blog Dumbfoundry.
*
The Rain
All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent--
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
*
"Oh, do you remember..."--Creeley's elegy to Ed Dorn,
posted at Cento Magazine
*
from Jack Kimball, poet, and the editor of
Faux Press: an entry originally published in Encyclopedia of American Poetry: the Twentieth Century, a fine critical-biographical take on Creeley's poetry and poetics, regarding Creeley's For Love: Poems 1950-1960 [currently posted to Pantaloons blog (Wed. 3/29/05)].
*
from
NPR's *Remembrances* obit on _All Things Considered_.
*
The World
I wanted so ably
to reassure you, I wanted
the man you took to be me,
to comfort you, and got
up, and went to the window,
pushed back, as you asked me to,
the curtain, to see
the outline of the trees
in the night outside.
The light, love,
the light we felt then,
greyly, was it, that
came in, on us, not
merely my hands or yours,
or a wetness so comfortable,
but in the dark then
as you slept, the grey
figure came so close
and leaned over,
between us, as you
slept, restless, and
my own face had to
see it, and be seen by it,
the man it was, your
grey lost tired bewildered
brother, unused, untaken--
hated by love, and dead,
but not dead, for an
instant, saw me, myself
the intruder, as he was not.
I tried to say, it is
all right, she is
happy, you are no longer
needed. I said,
he is dead, and he
went as you shifted
and woke, at first afraid,
then knew by my own knowing
what had happened--
and the light then
of the sun coming
for another morning
in the world.
*
On what, as a reader and editor, Robert Creeley liked 'best' in poetry, especially since he found the term 'best' to be very troubling since it is a designator of exclusionary thinking and poetic practices such as didacticism, with which he disagreed. The following is excerpted from Robert Creeley's introduction to the volume he edited, _Best American Poetry, 2002_ (series editor, David Lehman. NY:Scribner's, 2003) :
Pound advised the aspirant [of poetry writing] to listen to the sound that [poetry] makes and felt that poetry atrophied when it got too far from music. ... My grandmother could recite poems endlessly. A practical, working-class woman from Maine, she had a store of poems she much valued ... So, what is best, then? ... what one can use as measure and judgement has finally to do with his or her own perceptions and needs in that complex of others with whom one shares a life. ... I think of Robert Duncan's saying, "I can't remember if I wrote it or read it!" It was that kind of closeness, as if I'd come into an unexpected clearing, a space I had not known was there, and in it was something equally both familiar and strange, something *new* to me, that freshened ways I took the world and myself to be existing, and also made me at home in it. Just as my grandmother did, I wanted something in my head, I wanted the literal comfort of words, I wanted them to tell me things, all things, anything. I wanted them to speak to me. Robert Creeley, BAP, 2002 (xviii-xx)
*
The Language
Locate I
love you some-
where in
teeth and
eyes, bite
it but
take care not
to hurt, you
want so
much so
little. Words
say everything.
I
love you
again,
then what
is emptiness
for. To
fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full
of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.
*
America
America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.
Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world
you thought of first but do not own,
or keep like a convenience.
People are your own word,
you invented that locus and term.
Here, you said and say,
is where we are. Give back
what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.Peace Y'all.
o~o/
chris at
7:49 PM
|
xo ! brightened up mah little day here, thanks so much... please send a note, too, saying how that little one is and how y'all are managing... bless Y'all!
chris at
9:19 AM
|
 photo courtesy kari edwards, India Journey, Dec 2004from Texfiles Poet of the Week, Joe Ahearn :
The Many
Matter itself
--lit,
hemic.
& tracings, or ripplings, as the limbed elm shimmers
into unlimbed sky, paling as it grows,
ghosted from bud to edge.
Often these auras, lightly blue and lightly grey,
as if within seeing itself,
as one looks at trees grown up out of the fog at dawn.
Glintings. A splitting off, she’d say. Not a spilling. Lighter
than that. A patterning.
The elm thinks itself up into daylight,
tinged, a weave of plasmas,
little spots of too-bright blindness.
& to see it we become less than we are,
merely the percipient,
captive to a vast
waiting,  *
which is always a sort of silveriness,
a simple series of figurations
that, perishing always, never return.
* photo via Auras
~~~~~~~poem copyright, Joe Ahearn~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~~~
chris at
7:11 AM
|
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Any new work begins with an instinct. Gradually, the instinct finds structures that will uphold it. And so, writing this first post, I hunt my immediate vicinity for driftwood for a fire.--Cassie Lewis
The Little Workshop:
Hey, this is exciting news: Cassie Lewis has started a new blog... I've been a great fan of Cassie's thinking and writing ever since I first found her stuff via blogging a couple years ago, and now it is exciting to see it evolving into new places, times, people, things... wonder-full! Cassie, congratulations on the new blog, and all best for the future!
chris at
9:17 AM
|
on Alison Croggon's Dramatic Character, Ruth, in Blue :
I've recently had the privilege of some very thoughtful and enlightening discussions with many of the good folks at the Poetry Etc, a particularly civil and intellectually lively listserv that is managed by poet, dramatist, novelist, critic and editor, Alison Croggon, of Melbourne, Australia. Alison is editor of the fine journal Masthead.
Some of the discussion centered on issues of gendering, power relations, art and cultural ideas of the western "soul," all of which came together for me with thoughts developed out of my recent viewing and thinking on the dramatic arts--scroll down here to St. Patrick's Day (Mar. 17): links and post on Samuel Beckett's work in the plays Waiting for Godot and Not I, the character named simply, "Mouth,"--drawing me, especially, to the following character from Alison's play, Blue, which she kindly let me read--a great read, by the way, a very provocative work.
The character is Ruth (intended, yes, with resonating name, I think), who has a prismatic kind of wisdom in her somewhat batty yet telling speech, in particular, perspectives on the "soul," which is explained by French philosopher Michel Foucault (as paraphrased by Alison) this way: "A soul is the marks and traces left by various authorities across a human psyche." I like this definition very much, and I do not find it irreverent (though Foucault may have intended it that way). It's simply a statement of fact in terms of where western culture has come to in notions of psyche and "soul," for now. I like it that no particular religious dogma or paradigm is implicated in this definition, too.
And here is what the character Ruth has to say on it in Alison Croggon's play, Blue:
"They went away and then they came back and then they went away again and then they came back. Policemen with wings like bats. An old man with the face of a baby. The busdriver with a hacksaw. Children with teeth like dogs. I knew what they looked like even though I never saw them. I only heard them.
"They laughed at me. All of them.
"They took my soul and they drew all over it with their claws. Crisscross crisscross. Teachers. Mum. The babies. The police. The judges. Crisscross crisscross. The doctors. Dad. The lawyers. The newspapers. The social workers. The nurses. The schoolkids. Crisscross crisscross. And that was my soul. This poor ragged thing what everybody walked across and tore and wrote on. They wrote everything on it. Everything. It got so I couldn¹t even read my own name. But then I remembered. I remembered at last.
"I went down to the river to look into the water but I didn¹t see nothing. All the drowned girls came out and stood on the banks. They stood there shivering and they said, come in, come in. But I didn¹t. And they said, Ruth, come in. And I remembered my name, and I said, no. I said, no, I don¹t want to. I remembered my name and I said no. And that¹s when the trouble started."
I liked this passage so well that I asked Alison if she minded my posting it--so here it is, with many thanks to Alison and everyone at PetCet for the helpful discussion.
~~~~~excerpt from *Blue* copyright of Alison Croggon~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~~
chris at
3:57 AM
|
A beautiful poem from Deborah Patillo, posted to her blog, Chimera Song Mosaic
chris at
3:44 AM
|
Monday, March 28, 2005
Do check out Sheila Murphy interviewed by Thomas Fink, at Tom Beckett's (Hi Tom!), e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s--where the interviews are accumulating in nicely (oh I'm adding this palimpsest, yes, and loving the thought of it:) patch-work-quiltings ...
: )
chris at
5:55 AM
|
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Looks like the artistas are getting restless: Graffiti artist smuggles his own art into MOMA ... check it out, Y'all!
chris at
11:36 PM
|
 from Joe Ahearn, Texfiles Poet of the Week:
Throe
1
Oh this tale again.
That the human  built of jellies *
not enduring, and suffering greatly,
let us say from gluey bacilli
flooding the dorsals, fevered, pained,
panting in the bed of an afternoon,
can redeem nothing.
—Private
experience, like a watercolor, is often too
precious and not to one’s taste.
Yet eventually
we walk again, we sit on the porch
and admire the birds 
and who among us regrets it?
2
Who among us has not hated the sun?
Better the bath of scents and oils,
the long lavishings of private sorrows,
the necessary swoonings into sweated sheets,
for to rise up into the air,
to rise into fire and to walk in fire,
oh, how could we,
with our violet
hurts,
do that?
3
Health!
Well again, we drive the streets 
& worlds bleed past the tinted glass.
& we talk and are contemplative,
& so long the journey,
so difficult the art,
& the salted tortilla soup,
how fine,  so fine!
* image: antique jelly cabinet
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright Joe Ahearn~~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
11:13 PM
|
Remote Sensing Tutorial
--a special feature created around a selection of poems from Halvard Johnson (blog link)-- & Check out Hal's website, here, too.
"Enough of the heavy stuff for a while! Let’s take a breather, have some fun, and just look at some stunning scenes that depict typical landscapes and urban centers of the world." --nasa dot gov, training course: "Remote Sensing Tutorial: Boston to San Francisco" (Famous Landmarks Tour)
1930s, Town Elders (Kansas--town name undocumented): face masks worn against dust storms
*
Poetry by Hal Johnson:
Stunt
Nothing much harder
than falling off a horse.
By grace of whatever--
no broken neck.
Ranging west,
driving across salt flats after dark.
High peaks--behind and to the north--
shrouded in darkness and tattered cloud.
Headlights pop up on the horizon,
steadily bear down upon you for half an hour,
maybe more--whoosh by--red taillights
jiggle in the mirror, half an hour more.
Nothing fades. It stretches and breaks.
The trick is to survive the snap-back.
*
14 Interventions
1. He turns the sky
into an enormous
equation
2. With obvious ease,
clarity
3. Mythology
and biology
of the double helix
4. Files,
hiding them
from foreboding
5. Heart rotted out
the old leaves turn to
reservoirs of life
6. Within a field of
probability--
a horse
7. Poem grenades exploding
on the fields
of Normandy
8. Keys already made
sound spirited
9. It is but a pair
of scissors,
my morning newspaper
10. Picasso's thoughts
their languor
11. If the law is a good one
we'll gladly
obey it
12. Please take this down--
My love grows
like hair.
13. Angels of hot water
in hot water
by hot water
14. Reality--
not what we thought
after all
*
 Alluvial Fan in Blue, Nevada Basin
 Phoenix Sprawl "... it is a wonder on weekends to find 1000s of power boats being hauled from Phoenix to cruise those waters [of Lake Roosevelt]."
--"Remote Sensing Tutorial," nasa dot gov
Mélange
Take a spinet or harpsichord and split
it into thin strips for making hats, bonnets, or baskets.
Warm over a fire made of dried buffalo-dung.
Flip once, letting it land in the dust
of the last sand-trap between you and the green--
heads, you lose; tails, you lose.
Place a silicon wafer on your tongue,
and call it Jesus.
*
In the West
What do you do
out in the West
where the proud remnants
of European aristocracy
climb down from their phaetons
in haughty disarray
and walk, bare-headed, into the desert
never to be heard from again
unless it is in some dusty town
called Drygulch or Sidewinder,
bypassed by the railroad,
wells long ago gone dry,
where they take their parched throats,
their sun-cracked faces,
into the only saloon left in town
and ask the one-eyed barkeep
for champagne, and are told that
there's one bottle left
which he's kept for just
such an occasion?
~~~~~~~~~~~~poems copyright of Halvard Johnson~~~~~~~~
Enjoy! o~o/
chris at
3:20 AM
|
 from Joe Ahearn, Texfiles Poet of the Week:
Reading John Berryman at Age 18
He as a young he: 
what does he, what does
he
conceal?
Some able moderns, poets of legendary
tongue, Manichean
hostility?
Perhaps he is too generous.
Perhaps he felt surely keen and broke his brains.
Perhaps he felt the fat Auden selection of his years.
He is the essential merry virtuoso trick:
alone, casual,
fake.
… Spendid writer, of course,
but amateur. 
~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Joe Ahearn~~~~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~~~
chris at
3:16 AM
|
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Picture of a Picture
Maker: Ansel Adams at work.
chris at
12:01 PM
|
"Mr Bones Bites the Bullet"... rock on, Reyes!--i want to be fully candid about this one because of what it did: it made me smile and tear at the eye all at once.
dunno why--
a li'l reluctant to think too far on it, overthink it in the institutionally 'trained' way, ya kno?--but just to say this:
Mr Bones is very cool, is all--& say it's just nice to know the poem builds a kind of heroism that is tricksterish in ways that resist conventional literary analysis (YaY!!) as well as & a materialism that is possible and caring--in exactly the way the message J&O sent does & wanted. Bravo: thank you... : )
chris at
8:35 AM
|
"...
i shall not again
fall back into not
..."
a fine lyric poem, "A Lay of Sanctity," (scroll over to it), and many other delights from <$Xvarenah$>
chris at
5:21 AM
|
Friday, March 25, 2005
Check out the new work up at Poet's Corner - Fieralingue, especially the translations of Rebecca Seiferle's work by Anny Ballardini. The Poet's Corner is
Anny Ballardini's excellent, online-ongoing contemporary poetry anthology. Anny blogs at Narcissus Works. Cheers to you, Anny!
chris at
10:07 PM
|
 Dust storm, Gobi Desert, China, 1998.
photograph via satellite.
chris at
8:45 PM
|
YBE: Yes! Do check out
Your Black Eye ... (coupla links to click here, Y'all)
chris at
8:44 AM
|
 Dust, Surface, Mars -- via Hubble from Texfiles poet of the Week, Joe Ahearn:
The Oklahomas
Amid the Oklahomas, dunes
& drudging winds
Dunes, drudging winds
& often, as though seen from afar *
sand-swept
caravans
that is, glittering sheiks on camel
chained & brawling mules
& glittering sheiks gone down
& backlegged kickings of ebony mules
asunk in wind-pocked seas
A thousand winds **
a thousand seas
spatter the crook’d-leg archipelago of the Oklahomas
For here we are blushed with Permian clays
here upthrust by limbed & fingered scarp
& here, among the Oklahomas, everything we know is true
The dirt on his eyes is true
 ***
& all his Oklahomas, true
& yes, parts of him ascendant
& sighting the squalor of the yellowing Oklahoma dawn
& yes, parts of him sick with dust
& parts of him sick with dusts
& dusts
& dusts
****
 --Woody Guthrie, writer's notebook page for "The Great Dust Storm," 1940--
* Mars Surface, Hubble
** "Snarling Turtle," original photo by Joe Ahearn
*** Boy in Oklahoma Dust Storm, April 1935
**** Dust Storm Over Town, Oklahoma 1936
~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem & photo copyright of Joe Ahearn~~~~~~~~~~
o~o/
chris at
8:14 AM
|
the fort-da fiasco of/on Schiavo--as filtered through Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"--exactamente...
chris at
3:55 AM
|
 these bird-folk are really having fun talking back and forth out in the TX parkinglots today. Mockingbirds, yeah!--some of my favorite folk.
--and here's a poem from
Me! (Feb., 2003)
Sin Duda
e tem razao particular to yellow
or a silence
mistaken for cliche
even by cliche
to be nothing
“from ether to dust”
for we are not just
but now
beginning again
& philosophy, blushing, sin duda,
y vayan con dios, fueled a world
to police money & more
police
children
it is the hour
in Birmingham, my friend
will soon rise to teach
dogwood streaks
suspended on foreshortened
limbs
knowing,
my friend says, *( )* cannot go on
[he-she-it]
i say, yes, go on
to speak though
gender is not speech
nor is this oratio:
voce e
voice
but to sound alike
“Di la memoria temblando como siempre e
n las raices o la piel que deseas y no
tocas.” [Speak memory trembling like always in
the roots or skin you want but don’t
touch]
Porque a veces no est
as solo en tu cuerpo
[Because sometimes you
are not alone in your body”] +
I am listening to the mockingbirds
dressed in blue blue sky on a phone line
gray wing flash over the parking lot
& they have learned
well to imitate Chevrolet car alarms
I am in love
with these bird-folk
because they understand
repeatedly they are employed
by surprise
+ Octavio Armand/ tr. Carol Maier--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poem copyright chris murray~~~~~ o~o/~~~
ZaZen, Y'all
--cm
chris at
12:14 AM
|
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Challenge in the Artist's Gaze:
To a large degree--maybe as large as the art--I like the specific art to be also about the person, or what they had to live in order to be accepted as artful, as creators of notable and innovative art. So, check out this interesting portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat--I swear it seems to me a dialogic response to a cliche popular at the time it was taken, "Go Ahead, Make My Day!" (which i think came from Goonie-PrezRonald Reagan). It seems to me that Basquiat is copping that same challenging look--handing it back, yet without words, in artist's gaze :
--(1985)c. Lizzie Himmel/Brooklyn Museum--and check out this new issue of ArtKrush. I'm fascinated with this interview by Paul Laster (you'll have to scroll down for it, but it's a nice scroll!) : with co-curator Franklin Sirmans of the Basquiat show, Brooklyn Museum. Nice work, Y'all!
chris at
6:13 AM
|
The source of those cool Google holiday-doodles: "Google programmer creates Internet buzz with cutesy logos"--Brian Bergstein, AP Business Writer (via SFGate)
chris at
6:09 AM
|
via kari edwards' Transdada blog: Sexuality was about creativity and self expression, and alternative sexualities should be celebrated, former archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Thursday:
Here's the link to the *iafrica website* article, "Tutu: 'Celebrate Alternative Sexualities' : "You should love who you are," Tutu said in a film-clip message at the opening of the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Rosebank, Johannesburg...
Yeah!
chris at
4:31 AM
|
from Texfiles Poet of the Week, Joe Ahearn:
(image by Joe Ahearn) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
My Son Sends a Letter, Filled with Quotes from Antigone
We can’t quite see it.
That love rots us from uselessness.
That the gift is never heavy enough to save
us these wise useless years in the dark,
dying to nothing but the intelligence
sorrow pays. We say “love,” but we’re telling
how the years work: that we die foolish,
yet noble at last. Love, son of
loveliness… The only uselessness is strength.
That's eloquence, what never finishes.
--poem by Joe Ahearn--
("Aquarius Antigone," via Waterway Research, Australia dot gov--cm) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(image by Joe Ahearn, "War 1952")
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Additional biographical information about Joe Ahearn:
Joe is the author of the full-length collection of poems, Five Fictions, (Sulpher River Press, 2003), and and three chapbooks: synthetic (Firewheel Editions, 2002), Five Fictions (Mudlark Chapbook Series, 1997), and Kyoko at Play (Harvest Publications, 1994). His poetry, essays, and translations have been widely published in this country and abroad. Ahearn’s work has been anthologized in Another Testament (Incarnate Muse Press, 1997), CrossConnect: Writers of the Information Age (Cross-Connect Press, 1997), and Best Texas Writing II (Firewheel Editions, 1999). Ahearn has won the Web Del Sol Editor's Award, the HITBOX Review Award, and the Poets-In-Need Benefit Award from Illya's Honey. Ahearn was named a Distinguished Poet by the City of Dallas in 2001. He is currently writing critical articles for both the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Poetry (forthcoming) and the Prentice-Hall Anthology of American Literature (forthcoming).
~~~~~~~~~~~~poem & 2 images copyright of Joe Ahearn~~~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~
chris at
2:33 AM
|
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. . . . On "The" American [Stinker] Thinker: Once More with Feeling . . . .
 --Here's to it, Y'all--
Dear NeoCon Bozo: ...
American sinker, let poetry and souls be
American stinker, go and let it be
Don't come here hanging around my door
We don't want to see your neo-con trash no more
We got more important things to do
Than spend my time growin' flabby Romanticist souls with you
Now stinker, I said stay away
American stinker, listen what I say
American Thinker, get away from poetry
American Thinker, let it be
Don't come here knockin' around my door
Don't want to see your shadow no more
...
Sincerely,
chris murray
o~o/
chris at
11:15 PM
|
 SOUL, Bombing-Ulice 4, [Urban]Komix, CZ viz-poet
chris at
9:29 PM
|
 Managua, Nicaragua:
Protesting the U.S. war in Iraq
chris at
7:36 PM
|
from Gioconda Belli's From Eve's Rib * :
"I am the Woman who Loves You"
I am your untamed gazelle,
thunder shattering light on your chest.
I am the wind unleashed in the mountain
and the intense radiance of the ocote tree's fire.
I warm your nights,
lighting volcanoes in my hands,
making you cry with the smoke from my craters.
I come to you wrapped in rain and memories,
laughing the unchanging laughter of the years.
I am the unexplored road,
brightness, shattering darkness.
With stars, I join your skin and mine
and I wander your entire being
trail after trail,
unlacing my love,
undressing my fear.
I am a name that sings and entices you
from the dark side of the moon,
I am the extension of your smile and your body.
I am something that grows,
something that laughs and cries.
I am the woman
who loves you.
(32-33)
* transl. by Steven F. White
Curbstone Press, 1989.
~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Gioconda Belli~~~~~~~~~ o~o/~~~
chris at
8:22 AM
|
Congratulations to Clayton!
ARTIFICIAL LURE by CLAYTON COUCH
chris at
6:57 AM
|
Yeah: Hotel Point's John Latta weighs in...
chris at
12:27 AM
|
Return to Odious Tactics of "The Dirty War"?--Read it & Write:
Read it & write, right now!
More BushBag crap:
"The decision to bar Dora Maria Tellez, one of the best-known figures in recent Latin American history, who has frequently visited the US in the past, has been attacked by academics and writers. It comes at a time when President George Bush has appointed as his new intelligence chief a man associated with the "dirty war" against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. ... When [BushBag] took office he rehabilitated a number of people associated with the contras and one, John Negroponte, is now his chief of intelligence responsible for dealing with terrorism." --Duncan Campbell, writing in The Guardian (via Chris Vitiello, The_Delay)
Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli comments on this in The Guardian article, as well.
Thanks, Chris Vitiello for this update.
Scary-Retro Crap, this...
chris at
12:20 AM
|
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Announcing a New Texfiles Poet of the Week: Joe Ahearn !
Extending a very warm welcome to one of my favorite poets. Among many places, Joe's read here in my Poetry_Heat series (Fall, 2004), and his most recent book is Five Fictions: a e i o u (SRLR Press, Austin, TX). He publishes widely, and is co-editor of Rancho Loco Press, which released Best Texas Writing 1997. His criticism, translations, and poetry have appeared in a large number of periodicals, including Moria, The Quarterly, Five AM, Dallas Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, and others. Ahearn has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his work has also been collected in the limited-edition chapbook, Kyoko At Play (Harvest Publications, 1994), and in the anthologies, CrossConnect: Writers of the Information Age (CrossConnect, 1997) and Anti-Bible (Incarnate Muse Press, 1997). Ahearn lives in Dallas with his family, where he writes poetry, essays, and books about advanced software development.
For the Texfiles feature, Joe sent along some of his artwork, including the following lovely image:
"Chalk Cowgirl," --Joe Ahearn, Dallas, Texas
And to start off the feature, here is a new poem,
Parallel Constructions
(Not touching,
or touching exactly.)
Not higher, but further, out, away, these lithe throngs of dizzy wanderers,
like humans afflicted with merchandise, transit their bright stars,
and we know them only as hued blemishes on photographs of darkness.
For us, they are images arranged in series, whited and
insensate. Their edges crumble along the horizons of crusty earths, streaked,
silvery, or as high red crests, or as daylight dimpled with aura, like the madman
of the old stories who lights a lantern in the morning’s mild sun.
(The strict meaning is forever,
at all points equidistant,
but often there are clauses set grinning like towheaded twins,
small distortions in the field (as, for example, air is fluid and its movements
diminish along adjacent surfaces,
or, as within the bloods, the twitchings of rodded
cells, a sort of imbecility, like that). )
Emily, my dowager angel, I haven’t ransomed you yet.
)
( But I have decorated paragraphs with the hairs of my head
) Taped along the left margins
(
)
~~~~~~image and poem copyright of Joe Ahearn~~~~~~~~ o~o/~~~~
chris at
8:23 PM
|
 SOUL, Bombing-Ulice 2, [Urban] Komix
chris at
1:53 AM
|
Monday, March 21, 2005
Dear NeoCon Bozo at American Thinker,
"American Thinker: I Don't Want to See Your Trash-Talkin' No More"
--via Lenny Kravetz and Burton Cummings--
 Official David Bowie brand of Boxing
American thinker, stay away from poetry
American thinker--thinker, let it be
Don't come hanging around my door
I don't want to see your trash-talkin' no more
I got more important things to do
Than spend my time growin'a trash-talkin "soul" with you
Now thinker, let it be
American thinker, listen what I say
American stinker, stink away from me
American thinker--thinker, let me be
Don't come knocking around my door
I don't want to see your shadow no more
Flashy website trash can hypnotize
Sparkle BushBag eyes
Now thinker, get away
American thinker, listen what I say
American sinker, let poetry and souls be
American stinker, go and let it be
Don't come here hanging around my door
I don't want to see your neo-con trash no more
I got more important things to do
Than spend my time growin' flabby Romanticist souls with you
Now stinker, I said stay away
American stinker, listen what I say
American Thinker, get away from my poetry
American Thinker, better let it be
Don't come here knockin' around my door
Don't want to see your shadow no more
Flashy websites can talk trash
Sparkle BushBag eyes
Now Thinker, I said get away
American Thinker, listen what I say
American Thinker, I say quit trashin'
American Thinker, listen what I say
Don't come here hangin' around my door
Don't want to see your trash talkin' "soul" no more
I don't need your war machines
I don't need your trash talkin' scenes
Trash talkin' websites can't harmonize
Sparkle BushBag eyes
Now Stinker, get away from me
American Thinker, yeah, just let it be
Go, you just go, stop trash-talkin' now go go go
I'm gonna tell you, Trash Talker
Gonna tell you leave it be,
Bye bye, bye bye
Bye bye, bye bye
You're no good for poetry
You're no good for U.S.
Thinking--gonna look at you right in the eye
Tell you what I'm gonna say
You know I'm always gonna say
You know I'm gonna say, you
Let it be, now, let it be,
Goodbye, American Thinker
Goodbye American Sinker
And More: Dear Neo Con Bozo at "The" American Thinker:
There are two lines in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing that came to mind today when I read the inept and laboring defense you've written.
One is spoken straightforwardly by Dogberry: " 'e's an ass!"
The other is spoken facetiously by Beatrice: "O that I were a man!"
This is not a "guerilla" tactic. This is a meaningful response to your accusatory backlash.
And in the Texfiles posts that you've linked to, I did leave out one thing: in addition to being weakly argued, that source article (the one that began all this, as you put it, "hatefulness") by Alyssa Lappen is just plain creepy, cloudy rhetoric, which is a way of being hateful by indirectness, hiding behind assumptions, warrants, cliched ideas.
One more thing: you sure assume a lot, too: particularly with your f***ing pronouns.
Sincerely,
Chris Murray --Chris Murray, photo taken at Bandaras Bay, Mexico, Dec. 2004
chris at
10:06 PM
|
Sunday, March 20, 2005
on William Eggleston's Los Alamos at the DMA
William Eggleston, "Mississippi, c. 1971-1974," Los Alamos collection, Dallas Museum of Art [cm, March 18, 2005]
"I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around, that nothing was more or less important."
 --William Eggleston
The William Eggleston show, "Los Alamos," at the Dallas Museum of Art (until May 15, 2005) brings together 88 dye-transfer photo prints from 1965-1974, many gathered in Eggleston's hometown, Memphis, and many from Mississipi and Louisiana.
It's often remarked that Eggleston is the first innovator of artistic color photography, and that his is an art dedicated to the simplicity of everyday life, epecially in the southern U.S. In addition to these distinctions, Eggleston's work shows him to have a wonderful way of composing with paradoxical or contradictory elements, often leading to a humane sense of ironic humor, as well as a provocatively innovative use of text in/with the images. In pointing out simple yet contradictory elements there are also significant political points to be taken from viewing Eggleston's photography, many of which deal with environmental conditions in places usually not much noticed by our daily newsgroups here in the U.S.
One of the first pieces in this show is focused to a dining room window of a trailer house, the dwelling looking bleak on the outside but in terms of color and composition a very practical choice since it is a grayish brown frame for the brighter subject of the window's bright dining room, and so follows the aesthetic advice to make good use of contrastive elements in image making, especially in photography. Lest we forget that this is also a home, there is the centerpiece of the photo, a very elegant looking, 3-tiered, brass chandelier hanging from the dining room ceiling. It seems to be a proud addition to the home's decor, but may not be--may have been a major selling point for the trailer home when it was new (I've lived in trailer homes in out-of-the way places of Arizona and on the Navajo reservation, both with and without elegant chandeliers in the dining space). These elements alone might have been enough to create a highly evocative and provocative work, but as is usual with Eggleston, there is one more touch that puts the scene over the top, as it were: the dining room walls are covered in tin foil. I have no idea why the room was done that way, I mean, many people in the hot regions of the south do put a lot of tin foil on windows to deflect the sun, but I've not heard of tin-foiling the walls of a room. It may have been done as a decorative choice. Anyway, it makes the photo, demonstrating both human touch and Eggleston's keen eye for the unusual detail, adding charm and gentle humor via the mystique of why one might want to tin-foil one's chandeliered dining room, the answer to which may only be because one wants to. Definitely asserts a sense of the familiar saying, To each his own--unalterably--and that is one way that Eggleston's photos can be interpreted as particularly attuned to democratic thinking on the part of his aesthetics (as the quote above says).
One thing I had not realized before seeing this show is how much of Eggleston's work makes use of lettering, found primarily in brand-advertising signs but also in hand lettered messages. There are whole words (as in "Garage," above), but more often the letters of words have been elided somehow, and transformed into alternate ways of perceiving their usual (numbing) meanings, or not. The means of elision and alteration are either by the work of environmental forces, such as rust, decay, and plain neglect (many shots of abandoned business, gas stations, bars/lounges), or by the careful cropping and composing done by the photographer (one work in this show depicts the lilting final "E" (lilting due to the slightly happy slant of script used) of the familiar word ice, from the prolific ICE MACHINE or COLD ICE found outside convenience stores on every street corner). This pattern of play with lettering I found most fascinating. We are surrounded by estranging and meaningless language through advertising of all kinds, and yet again the human touch appears to remedy the cold effects or predicament of that (predicament because advertising and continual bombardment by product signage strands us in one of our only means of maintaining relations with one another and with community: language use, even if it is also, or *always already,* never much of an adequate means). One other photograph from the show depicts a paradoxical pair of signs posed in a gravel parking lot (the place is of grand expanse, another feature I find interesting in Eggleston's work--see how it is such an integral part of the effect in the above photo, 'Garage'). The signs say, on the one hand, "free gasoline" (a deteriorating, rusty old garage sign), and on the other hand, a vibrantly appealing, smallish, hand-scratched driveway billboard: Minnows, 2 c[ents] Each." I mean, what in the world *was* that *free gasoline* thing about, anyway?--I, too, would rather have the Minnows.
How certain or to what degree and in what evolving ways, can it be said that such examples are intended as language play through image? Check out the Masters of Photography site where you will find a 1980s Eggleston photo titled "Z Boy Hop"--it's cropped just exactly right to show this lettering, which is part of a store sign that appears in its whole version to say something like "La-Z-Boy [reclining chair product?] Shop." Its alternate meanings are rendered from a phonetic reading, a heard sense of the the cropped letterings (add to that its play on the word "hop" : is there not some allusion to activity that will apparently take place somewhere between the other select object-elements in the picture, the "King Size Waterbed," and/or the vintage red wheels in the foreground?). And there is at least one other point to this one-- the word "Furniture" is mirrored, so letters are backwards and contorted, upside down and stretched along the contours of the glass curve, of the car windshield, thereby indicating another way to 'see' and play with the numbing effects of advertising and signage, even the humble forms such as this. I find Eggleston's imagistic semiotic of comic fun to be just plain delightful to mind.
His humor extends, as well, to environmental issues: one photo in this collection is of an abandoned 1940s sedan, looking so much like a dinosaur. Abandoned in a field of overgrown and over growing weeds. The earth is taking back this gasoline hog automobile. I dunno: it felt very just, and terrible, too: how long will it take for these dinosaurs of irresponsible resource use to be subsumed back into nature? And what of our current dinosaurs?
The photo above (that opens this post) is in this Los Alamos collection, and it is one I found especially intriguing and touching. There is first of all, the self announcing self of it all, which is eye catching, and then the use of two of the 3 primary colors--which are blue/yellow, as here, and red to complete the triangle and I also think that in part the success of the color photos of Eggleston is due to his disciplined approach to color: many of his works rely mostly on wide or bold patches of primary colors, or if others are used (green seems another favorite), then again, in bold sweeps, or expanses, which effect is pleasing to the eye for what are probably, on the first level of effect, mostly instinctual or gut responses (eye, gut, and text/ure: ya can't get more primary than that, one can almost hear the photos echoing back). When one likes red, one can't get enough of it:
 ["Greenwood, Mississippi, 1974"]. Eggleston indulges that, delightfully, but with a little stop-sign of caution (indeed, a stop sign is the subject of another of Eggleston's photos), to make one keep thinking, too: in the bare bulb hanging and criss-crossed by too many wires, and in the partial frames of what looks like Heimlich Maneuver instructions in the lower corner background. Again, some paradox, contradiction, ironic humor.
It is not difficult, as a poet, to wonder at the way the word GARAGE is spread across that tenuous looking building. It may be idiosyncratic of me, but I could not help but associate it in my thoughts with the way the Language school was also a self proclaiming self (a meta focus, then, and I mean no criticism there: simply a matter of fact). The tip-off in the photo's focus on a meta GARAGE, is the easy-to-miss punctuation: the superfluous period at the end. Now, once again, one wants to ask the painter, why ever did it seem necessary to have a period there? Just because. Or just because a GARAGE is only that, period. I spent some time looking and thinking about this photo, partly because of the partial relations to things I know, like the Language poetry connection, but also partly due to the intriguing other connections possible with the idea of "language photography," a notion elaborated by Slight publications over the last few years of blogging.
So I looked a little closer at this particular Eggleston photo, and discovered, as with the apparently foil-ed upper crust dining room photo, that it is not exactly a GARAGE at all. Or it is not only a 'garage, period'. Those are bedsheets over the paned windows. Bedsheets with floral patterning. I think that indicates people are living in that GARAGE, an idea that made this photo even more touching to me than I could have ever imagined with only my intellect to feel my way around the heady analytical world of aesthetics. Real people are living in there. And they couldn't afford store bought curtains. Hey: I've been there.
If you are in the Dallas area, go see this Eggleston show. It's wonderful and will make you think, and think again, about many things. That's got to be one of the best things art can do.
bio at Eyestorm
Los Alamos [this collection's book, at Amazon dot com, a beautiful book, tho I think the short reviews posted at Amazon are not very observant, nor accurate, even if enthusiastically cheeful]
novelist Jim Lewis writing about Eggleston and his work, including how he proceeded when photographing.
artdaily dot com: article on the Eggleston show, "Los Alamos" at SFMoMA, and DMA.
chris at
2:21 AM
|
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Been off-line most of the last several days here in downtown Big D. Walked from dottir Heather's today to the Dallas Museum of Art. H wanted to see the exhibit on the Forbidden City (China, 18th c. emperor), something of good interest to me as well, particularly for the crossovers between Manchu culture and the import of Tibetan Buddhism into the imperial presence.
I have to admit, tho, that I was also exceedingly happy to take in the William Eggleston exhibit: apparently it is of mostly new works (works recently brought out or discovered and have not yet been shown). Initial and gut reaction is: it's a good thing someone let the word WOW escape the wrestling bag of superlatives some time mid-last-century, I have to say, because that is exactly what it felt like to survey the scene of so many Egglestons that were not stuck in a book or a web page (tho those venues are also fine with me, it's just that looking into the photo-subjects from just the way the guy wanted it to be done is, well, bigger, like the old 40s Dodge coup being taken over by lush Mississipi green growth: what a fine sight in person, or directly through WE's eyes, eh?
But hey, more on both tomorrow--just checking in here to say hey (and still playing hookey here in downtown Dallas, yeah--enjoyed fine middle-eastern food today from Cafe Izmir, a fave of Heather's and a place full of very nice folk).
Other surprises and beautiful things coming around soon:
announcement of a new Texfiles Poet of the Week--the superb, provocative and thoughtful poetry of a well known and favorite writer here in Dallas... :)
So, do stay tuned, all you wonderful red-bud or dogwood or elsewhere-spring-full folk! Green Buzz takes all, yes...
ZaZen, Y'all...
chris at
9:47 AM
|
Friday, March 18, 2005
 --"Soul," Bombing, Ulice 1. Komix Sity 1, Zilena
chris at
11:54 AM
|
"... I'm Tired. Let's Go. We Can't! Why Not? We're Waiting for Godot! ... I Only Like the Pink Ones..."
My St. Pat's day evening entertainment: watching Beckett's Waiting for Godot; Rough for Theatre I; Not I; & Ohio Impromptu. Blue Angel series, Beckett on Film
Here's a little of his poetry, from one of my favorites,
Ping [by Samuel Beckett]
All known all white bare white body fixed one yard legs joined like sewn. Light heat white floor one square yard never seen. White walls one yard by two white ceiling one square yard never seen. Bare white body fixed only the eyes only just. Traces blurs light grey almost white on white. Hands hanging palms front white feet heels together right angle. Light heat white planes shining white bare white body fixed ping fixed elsewhere. Traces blurs signs no meaning light grey almost white. Bare white body fixed white on white invisible. Only the eyes only just light blue almost white. Head naught eyes light blue almost white silence within. Brief murmurs only just almost never all known. Traces blur signs no meaning light grey almost white. Legs joined like sewn heels together right angle. Traces alone uncover given black light grey almost white on white. Light heat white walls shining white one yard by two. Bare white body fixed one yard ping fixed elsewhere. Traces blurs signs no meaning light grey almost white. White feet toes joined like sewn heels together right angle invisible. Eyes alone uncover given blue light blue almost white. Murmur only just almost never one second perhaps not alone. Given rose only just bare white body fixed one yard white on white invisible. All white all known murmurs only just almost never always the same white invisible. Bare white body fixed ping elsewhere. Only the eyes only just light blue almost white fixed front. Ping murmur only just almost never one second perhaps a way out. Head naught eyes light blue almost white fixed front ping murmur ping silence. Eyes holes light blue almost white mouth white seam like sewn invisible. Ping murmur perhaps a nature one second almost never that much memory almost never. White walls each its trace grey blur signs no meaning light grey almost white. Light heat all known all white planes meeting invisible. Ping murmur only just almost never one second perhaps a meaning that much memory almost never. White feet toes joined like sewn heels together right angle ping elsewhere no sound. Hands hanging palms front legs joined like sewn. Head naught eyes holes light blue almost white fixed front silence within. Ping elsewhere always there but that known not. Eyes holes light blue alone uncover given blue light blue almost white only colour fixed front. All white all known white planes shining white ping murmur only just almost never one second light time that much memory almost never. Bare white body fixed one yard ping fixed elsewhere white on white invisible heart breath no sound. Only the eyes given blue light blue almost white fixed front only colour alone uncover. Planes meeting invisible one only shining white infinite but that known not. Nose ears while holes mouth white seam like sewn invisible. Ping murmurs only just almost never one second always the same all known. Given rose only just bare white body fixed one yard invisible all known without within. Ping perhaps a nature one image same time a little less blue and white in the wind. White ceiling shining white one square yard never seen ping perhaps a ;way out there one second ping silence. Traces alone uncover given black grey blurs signs no meaning grey light almost white always the same. Ping perhaps not alone one second with image always the silence. Given rose only just nails fallen white over. Long hair fallen white invisible over. White scars invisible same white as flesh torn of old given rose only just. Ping image only just almost never one second light time blue and white in the wind. Head naught nose ears white holes mouth white seam like sewn invisible over. Only the eyes given blue fixed front light blue almost white only colour alone uncover. Light heat white planes shining white one only shining white infinite but that known not. Ping a nature only just almost never one second with image same time a little less blue and white in the wind. Traces blues light grey eyes holes light blue almost white fixed front ping a meaning only just almost never ping silence. Bare white one yard fixed ping fixed elsewhere no sound legs joined like sewn heels together right angle hands hanging palms front. Head naught eyes holes light blue almost white fixed front silence within. Ping elsewhere always there but that known not. Ping perhaps not alone one second with image same time a little less dim eye black and white half closed along lashes imploring that much memory almost never. A far flash of time all white all over all of old ping flash white walls shining white no trace eyes holes light blue almost white last colour ping white over. Ping fixed last elsewhere legs joined like sewn heels together right angle hands hanging palms front head naught eyes white invisible fixed front over. Given rose only just one yard invisible bare white all known without within over. White ceiling never seen ping of old only just almost never one second light time white floor never seen ping of old perhaps there. Ping of old only just perhaps a meaning nature one second almost never blue and white in that much memory henceforth never. White planes no traces shining white one only shining white infinite but that known not. Light heat all known all white heart breath no sound. Head naught eyes fixed front old ping last murmur one second perhaps not alone eye unlustrous black and white half closed long lashes imploring ping silence
ping over.
and here's an audio of Text of Nothing #8
...& here's what seems a most comprehensive page (missing a few things i've noted over the years, but nonetheless full of resources and links...
chris at
8:33 AM
|
Blogger's been a little strange this afternoon. It kept timing out and not showing my last post, so I gave up and went off to do other things. Came back and found it had published the thing five times. sheesh. So, I guess Y'all got the message of Happy St. Pat's Day, um... at least five times... .
chris at
2:49 AM
|
Happy St. Patrick's Day, Y'all. My daughters and I are in Dallas at *dottir* Heather's loft downtown on Elm St. A beauty of a day. Had a lovely meal last night at Trinity Pub, one of Heather's favorite places. Full of music and good folks. Heather's going off to work now, and I'm babysitting T.S. Eliot, her dog, a year-old golden retriever who is perhaps more fun than his namesake, but certainly as intelligent. And I'm writing some, er... "hideous prosal turgidity" (borrowing a phrase i think especially apt to the prose i now happen to be writing, a phrase that occurs sometimes in the enlightening projects and discourse at Slight.
I'm hoping Y'all have some fun today!... o~o/
chris at
1:18 AM
|
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Call what you're thinking poetry and find a form for it that holds the way you think. Make writing habits that look like your life. Take trains and planes." --Eileen Myles. interview with CA Conrad, PhillySound, 14 March, 2005. Yeah.
chris at
10:51 AM
|
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
 --Justin Ulmer, sunset clouds, March 14, 2005. -- Justin Ulmer, sunset, March 14, 2005.
Sky depictions are tricky--I mean, there's so much of it!--the contrast of clouds is helpful, yet still finds the same problem loose in the work. Likewise trees: lovely yet abundant in terms of working with image making. And then there is the problem of the sky ultimately being a cooly fluid and/or static (in terms of flatness in light) abstraction to try to do anything with as image. What to do to bring in both its humbling magnitude and its lack of points of reference for what are essentially the limitations of human perspective(s)? Clouds, yes, but it seems imperative that they be of significant shape and tone to supply tension and contrast.
I think Justin's photos here are exceptional for bringing this problematic into focus, as it were, because the photos from this sky-series are so attentively, carefully, composed. They give the infinite the realistic limitations that a human (or many humans, for that matter) must or can only give. These are artfully and playfully worked in terms of techniques, from that of the basics of cropping, all the way to the more sophisticated in filtering, shadow, grain, and contrast, including that of tinkering with emphatics and layerings of color. This is a series of 24 photos, and each one shows individualized subtlety of work and play: delightful dramatics, tricksterish talking back to the infinite. I'm grateful to have been able to view and think on these. Justin, I encourage you to keep that good eye open, keep that camera at hand: keep on!
chris at
10:26 PM
|
 Announcement for Philip Trussell's Art Show in Austin
(image via Scott Pierce: thanks, Scott!)Last week I posted a note here expressing my gratitude over being gifted a beautiful painting from Austin artist, Philip Trussell, who has an art show opening there this weekend.
If you are in Austin this weekend, or can get there, then do not miss this show.
Philip Trussell now has webpages at the site of another Austin artist, Michael Schliefke, at
New Paintings by Philip Trussell, and here: The Art of Philip Trussell
Michael's main page tracks his life as an artist, here: SCHLIEFKEVISION
Hey, Y'all, best wishes and success to Philip on the upcoming show!
chris at
10:30 AM
|
You might think, "I am the cause for mindfulness being present." But if you look around, you will never find an "I." The telephone's ring, the clock's chime, your teacher, and your Sangha can be favorable causes for mindfulness being present. Imagine yourself doing walking meditation on a beach, when suddenly the thought arises, "Do I have enough money in the bank?" If you return your awareness to your feet making contact with the sand, that is enough to bring you back to the present moment. You can do this because you have practiced walking meditation before. But it is your feet and not "I" that remind you to be present.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, transl. Sister Annabel Laity, New York: Broadway Books, 1999 (215)
chris at
8:47 AM
|
Bandolier, Corn, Guitar, Italian photographer, Tina Modetti, in Mexico, 1929
via
Masters of Photography
chris at
5:04 AM
|
from Slight's Custom Strawperson Manufacturing Poetry Workshop:
Outrage is the Hardly Saying of Her Name
Hole is the Window of my Sock
Podiatrist is a Woman named Maureen Who Handles my Feet,
insurance or no
Moans are the Skylights of Lttle Morte
Napping Kitty is the Passive Solar Collector of Shopwindow
Thumbs are the Linchpins of the Hands are the
Pawns of Wrenches that Maintain Automobiles I hate it when they Slip
Laws are the Lugnuts of Social Contract
Sirens are the Lungs of Trouble, Red-lights are Signals of a State
Curious about the sweet incense type odor in my Castle
that is the Motor of Amusement in My Thought
Bumpers-ticker is the Top-40 of Zeitgeist
Fast-food Drive-thru is the Dream of Immortality
Soil is the Excavate of Foundation is the Heel of the Home
Indoor Air Pollution is Probably Nothing to Worry About
Unless it is ToxicMold which is a Spore to use Professionals for
Fumigation is Right Wing Hit Woman Natural Disaster Scenario Paglia-ese
Remind.
Decent is Camille's Missing Most Diminutive Caboose
Single Glove is Missing Hand's Lament
Asphalt is River of Automobile
Alarm is the Price of What's Yours
Smith and Wesson the Insurer of Constitutional Protection against
Unwarranted Intrusions
Truths is Matter of the Self Evident is the Aromatic Waft of Natural
Rights
are the Sniff-Test of the Noble Savage Gerard Depardeau,
Assiduous is the Octopus of Ambition
Storm Windows are the Saviors of BTU's
Professional Wrestling is the Tableaux of American Talk Show Newspaper
Cultural Section
Hope is an Emily Dickens-en Thing
Owl is the Pete Towns-end of my Kitten Guitar it better just move on
Perishable Comforts are the Slow Ruin of Sofa's;
Drink Coasters are the Untouchable Caste of Mahogany Tables
Napkins - napkins, don't get me started
Reason is the Living-Room of the Healthy Forehead
Knokahoma is the Contrition of a Stolen Land
Kent State is the Remedial Institution of No More Learning
Arthur Alexander is the Church School Bus Driver of a Cruel World;
and gone. Arthur would never have sung to this woman, but I will
Better Just Move On
Hoover Institute Think Tank Fellowship is Retainer of those who gain
weight in death;
for Poetry is the couldn't get elected 21Grams-Catcher of the Soul;
For who wants to be a Millionaire?
Name of the White-House Negro Doorman
Herbert Hoover never said Hello to, Once? In 4 years
Take all the time in the world.
Sorry, Loser, Monogramed Towel of the Bohemian Club
is the correct answer...
~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Chris Sullivan~~~~~ o~o/~~~
thanks, c
chris at
4:21 AM
|
 from Justin Ulmer, who spent yesterday's sunny afternoon taking what can only be called a glorious series of photos of the sky, trees, sun, and then sunset. This next pic, tho, is also a favorite of mine, from his hike last weekend:
"Sundowner"--photo by Justin Ulmer
This next one is from yesterday's series... i'll be posting some more over the next few days. Since I've had to spend a lot of time indoors lately, I have to say that these bouyant fotos certainly counterbalance in my perspective the gloomy-cloudiness and dulling rain out my window today (though of course rain is a great and beneficial thing, too)!
--thanks, Justin!
chris at
4:05 AM
|
Updates:
I see that I neglected to add links last night to the post below of Dale's fine work, both to his site and to First Instensity. I've added them now, and will also put them here for the sake of reader convenience:
Dale Smith's Skanky Possum Pouch
And the publisher of Dale's The Flood and the Garden: First Intensity Press, out of Lawrence, Kansas.
Also outstanding, and not to be missed:
First Intensity: A Magazine of New Writing
More news: in an email yesterday from Steve Tills, I hear the new issue of Black Spring is at press. This is a special issue centered on writings/writers from Lawrence, KS. Looking forward to that one, then!
chris at
2:09 AM
|
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
from Dale Smith's The Flood and the Garden *
"How Do You Do?" * :
On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
--D.H. Lawrence
June-August, 2001
1
One morning moved into another, dreaming awake first light. There was much to do, and my limbs regained movement on cool cotton sheets. Later in the day I went swimming. The pool widened and springs sang with voices sent from goose-pimpled flesh. I daydreamed the dry expanse of a western range. The sky's heat cooled with repetitive dunks.
...
3
The cells in her body divided into baby. His sky tightened as he grew in the dark red sac of light and fluid. The dry western wind wastes our weeds. Plumbego. Bull vine. Mountain laurel. These things lived in me, words.
...
4
My friend annoyed me with his confidence, his pathetic proof of social accountability. He rotted inside and his body showed it. One of those faces that twist with age presented what there was inside him. The domestic charge of women and children grip hard to an easier release. A chameleon's black eye blinks, throat pale pulsing. Dreams bring life to the pecan leaf. Thunderheads gather over the trees southwest. If it rains there will be something to say.
...
5
Diotima told her story of Eros through the philosopher. Philip read me the passage and later I looked into it myself. Love was born of Want and Plenty, lived an urchin's life, sleeping exposed on bare earth. Cracks formed in his face but did not dim his rugged, robust beauty. An alchemist, magician, trickster, hustler. He played for the quick spark, its master.
...
10
Philip and Hoa converse on the porch, the smell of garlic and oils simmer in the kitchen. Others join us here. There's Spanish wine and French bread. Apples and pears lie next to the cutting board. I try to view this through the painter Balthus's eyes. We share a sensual condition of friendship.
...
11
A book-scorpion popped out of oak bark. An Arachnida, it swiftly scooted away. Its food consists of minute insects or mites. Eggs are carried about by the mother, attached to the lower surface of her body. The young remain with their parents until they have acquired definite form and are able to shift for themselves.
...
22
Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies belong to our souls. In June twilight mosquitoes gather to raid our legs. I reach out with my toes on cool saltillo, cold bottle of beer aslant in the grass. I traveled under stars, speaking of Rimbaud, Melville and Cabeza de Vaca. They went out, returned, vanished. The moon made a light on us.
...
33
Dear William Carlos Williams: I read your poems tonight. June bugs pop up on the porch between mosquito bites. Here, the sensual world continues, despite computers, autos, cell phones and airplanes. Words too drive through us. Your Kora in Hell goes strange and powerful. What looked through you then? Alone in your room late nights bringing your words to the page? Your earth tenderness took root in the freed composition of song.
* Dale Smith, The Flood and the Garden. Lawrence, Kansas: First Intensity Press, 2002 (72-84).
chris at
7:11 AM
|
The Talk-Back Urban Spirit of It All--
Now, maybe this is more like it, if representation and art are the crux of the matter (in some ways I think so, and in other ways that is not it at all) : this urban scene is definitely a literal "window on the human soul" though I think not the privileged, sappy metaphoric and humanistic-static soul that the assuming and frivolous *American Letters*/*Campus Watch* author, Lappen, meant (see the posts below).
--"soul 26," by "Bombing" "Ulice 18" at
this very cool site: Slovakia Graffas ... silvers ... chrómy.
chris at
4:52 AM
|
Warring & "Great" (military/militant/militating) "Liberators" of "the soul" ?  There are plenty of amenable associations in the semiotics of "soul"--most of them musical.
But there's also a definite problem in a certain kind of western thinking that claims to know via totalizing what a ("the") "soul" is, in terms of art, its reception, individuals and spirituality, humanity in general (if there is such a thing), and diverse spread in community. one item that came up on googling "soul" is the above image, loaded with the illogic and assumptive claims that concern me, not least of which is the easy association with war and military "liberation". And this one is decades old, yet could easily apply today. In other words, the terms and rhetorical means have not changed all that much over time. Defining "tyranny" seems an equally troubling matter, over time.
chris at
4:28 AM
|
Romanticist Literature "Soul" --Sheesh:
Camille Paglia writes in her new hurried-up bandwagon poetics book on 'radical poetry' (I'm not even going to dignify the book by naming it--you can find it at Amazon) that "poetry develops the imagination and feeds the soul." And Allysa A. Lappen, the writer of that piece of crap article that attacks poet Ammiel Alcalay in the American Thinker and on Campus Watch, begins her article with this: "Poetry is a window on the human soul."
I'm fascinated by what amounts to some kind of retro turn to romanticist crap: Goethe's Young Werther must be right around the corner selling beer, eh? Isn't poetry responsible for enough things without also having to go retro and be responsible for its audience in terms of some illogic and unwarranted, metaphoric food relationship and/or some architectural fixture of/for whatever a "soul" is?
Pahleez!
What exactly is a ("the"?) "soul," anyway?--is this the standard issue, hegemonic western version, or some newly revised, far more transcendent, perhaps more global, more capitalistic, more conveniently corporate version? So: who gets to decide what a soul is and what that might have to do with poetry?
Sheesh: what a load of rhetorical garbage they've got going there. I'm thinking, why don't you two (Paglia and Lappen) retro-poetry types just tie your diamond-studded leashes to the Pavlov dogs and jump right up on that neo-con Republican band-wagon I heard outside this morning as it was furiously ringing its bells and hoping we'd all write crap like Paglia and Lappen, you know: all follow along nice and quiet-like?
chris at
1:57 AM
|
Monday, March 14, 2005
 this is a foto-graphic interpretation by Justin Ulmer of the Texfiles blog cheer, "YaY!!" --(Justin was out hiking in Texas this weekend and taking pics: this is one of them, and there are more over at his blog, Seven Apples.) Thanks, Justin! Your fotos are all wow! You've definitely out-Sudek'd me!
o~o/
chris at
11:55 PM
|
 from
Steve Tills' Behave [California Rant 66]
Rant 128
Read the Tao Jones, what's fixed
for oncologies if capital interest,
what's anthologized; whats are not
who's whose that's what James Watt
did for paper. There's a lot
of currency in things like American
trees, phone trees. AT&T
has a book of names for making connec-
tions,
but all these little numbers
oughta fo up in smoke; history
repeats its myriad and marketable
selves; more conglomerations of predigested
interests pile up on shelves.
There's enough pulp friction between
our ears. That's not the way
I like it, I like it stapled
and folded if people simply reduce
to glue so that so much horseshit
binds a lot of signs for individual
fame to mass famine, one's end
of the earth to others covered
with perfectly boundless Top 40
music. Sure, they're sour
if they're not included in the yellow
and white pages, not a note
if they don't own a phone/bank.
Listen, Operators, I want to make it
a person-to-person plea here,
but you've got to get off the bottom line.
Get out and touch someone.
Take a collection and shove it
into your hard drives. Spare a dime
or two for real books, not advertising
brochures.
(45-46)
* Steve Tills, Behave.Sebastopol: dpress, 2004. Also, check out Steve's Black Spring blog...
chris at
9:47 PM
|
Dear Andrew Burke (of blog Hi Spirits),
I like the humorously aimed rhetoric of your religions-list. Religion is a sensitive issue, no matter the affiliation (excepting agnostic and atheist, though sensitive to self concerns, also somewhat meta). Yet so many religions aspire to be comprehensive--hegemonic--when it is well known that around the world there are as many religions as there are peoples, thus no single religion could ever truly gain the wish of sweepstakes. Relgions with that goal aspire to being good, yet end up oppressive (which your post demonstrates in *many* ways), whether or not its participants recognize it as oppressive. That is the end-effect (endgame) of exclusionary idealisation and practice.
Few recognize that particular outcome or potential (that power differential), instead prefering to hierarchize what is believed to be the singularity or the unique import of a set of beliefs that supposedly or apparently differs from others, when actually there may be more similarities than differences, in terms of human and environmental survival in our global sense (tho i am the least sympathetic to use of the term or the concept, "global").
But for these and more reasons, your post, in terms of issues of religious r-e-s-p-e-c-t, a large amount of fun *irreverence* also abounding, although not in any categorical or meta sense (which would counter productively participate in another kind of hegemony) what you have is very cool.
The list you post rocks--for the sense of *not* being bitter, and *for* being honest: evaluating the beneficial aspects of the religions in respect of the non-benefical, via humor. And then, for a bit of traditional Swiftian irony, as well. Added to that is the enjoining (especially inviting) sense of meta-critical awareness offered. Though last but not least, the list (your post) rocks for simple comic energy: Bugs Bunny or Betty Boop or Bart Simpson or I dunno, South Park's Kartman and many more might have made a similar list.
My point?--humor is the most radical, thus the most effective rhetorical mode. It unpredictably overturns the (I guess this goes back to Bakhtinian theories) status quo: *every time*--in effect it is the one reliable factor, although other modes and claims try to argue that entitlement.
In all, the post at your site surely made me laugh, and, well, sheesh!--I sure did need to have a laugh on that particular matter.
It's a well done list: humorous, but not bitterly, or exclusionarily so, in my opinion.
Thank you!
Best,
chris murray
chris at
8:59 AM
|
P! : "A Crash Course in the Christian Supremacist Movement" ...
via
::: wood s lot ::: --as bravo! as ever... many thanks for finding and disseminating the necessary, illuminating 'windows'...
chris at
7:35 AM
|
Happy Birthday to You... Happy Birthday, Dear Waylon... --Ah, a Very Happy 1st Birthday to you: Waylon Smith-Nguyen, here shown with his mother, Hoa Nguyen)!
Hugs to You!
chris murray
chris at
6:42 AM
|
HAPPY FEEDING & READING, Y'all!!
 via Unicef
A request from the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1973 led to a research project funded by the Government of Norway to examine the declining use of mother's milk in developing countries. Two consultants were appointed to compile information on the subject, to develop a theoretical model to illustrate the economic value of breastfeeding, and to study the situation in two developing countries, Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Lack of data was a problem in both countries, but estimates could be made, and some of the conclusions reached are the following. Breastfeeding is still the norm in both countries, yet if it were to increase in the Ivory Coast so that every infant were breastfed for two years the savings in national goods cost could amount to US$ 16 to 28 million annually. If it declined to the level of Paris in 1955 (chosen for comparison) the annual national cost would be between US$ 33 and 55 million. At the individual level, by breastfeeding rather than artificially feeding an infant for two years the average family in either country would save between US$ 600 and 730 in the cost of goods and time, plus any savings that might result from the avoidance of disease or malnutrition caused by artificial feeding. In Ghana, changes in the infant-feeding pattern due to rural-to-urban migration would cause only a 20-percent increase in formula imports, while import increases would be more than five times as great as this if the present severe restrictions were relaxed so that formula replaced only one percent of the potential national breast-milk production. A change to artificial feeding could possibly result in considerable population growth because of loss of the contraceptive effect (through lactation amenorrhoea) of breastfeeding. In-depth studies of the economics of breastfeeding present great difficulties and would probably not justify their high cost. The report suggests that studies be carried out to establish national infant-feeding patterns, to monitor how these change and determine the factors responsible for change, and to design appropriate intervention. The report recommends that governments assign the highest possible priority to the promotion of breast-feeding based on its already proven contribution to the health and well being of the child.
Value of Breast Feeding
* * * * * * *
But the King had spammed the patriots, accusing them of "vitriol."
Here is the notice posted about the tea:
 via NY history
Read more about it here
HAPPY FEEDING & READING, Y'ALL !!
chris at
5:40 AM
|
 For "The Bastards" at Campus Watch
a Most Dangerous Poets List :
[hey, Y'all, send me some nominations, eh?--you can definitely nominate yourself for this one]
Here are the categories:
** Habanero Hottie (refers only to poetry) Dangerous:
Kent Johnson,
** Medium Warm Jalapeno Popper Dangerous: T.S. Eliot, Sam Hamill
** Ancho Gazpacho Chilled:
chris murray (that shameless self-promoting hussy)
Well, okay, Y'all, here's the, um..., scoop...
Kent Johnson sent me a copy to post on Texfiles of a letter of protest he wrote to Campus Watch regarding their neo-con attack on poet Ammiel Alcalay. Kent wants to be included in their list of dangerous poets--judging from the letter, Kent's certainly done his time that way. He also sent the letter to Pantaloons and Hotel Point.
I see it's up at Pantaloons, and with a wonderfully wry comment from Jack Kimball alluding to Kent's well known ego-centricity and vociferous blog-hopping. It's a good point.
In his email to me, though, Kent sends this comment: "Feel free to post the letter on the blog or link to Pantaloons or Hotel Point. The more on something like this the better and merrier!" So, hey & YaY!!
I'm thinking the political aspects of the letter make it such that it should be disseminated widely. In fact, I'd write a similar one, except I don't know if they'd consider me for their hot-dangerous list. I mean they must have some categorical distinctions they make about these pronouncements, eh? Thus, maybe they have a medium-warm dangerous list? And then, maybe a gazpacho level? Or how about just a Tex-crazed loudmouthed nice woman list?
Anyway, Kent sends this comment directed to Campus Watch: "The bastards." I absolutely agree, in fact I'd add "fucking" to it, ya kno?
Basically I think Campus Watch has no thunder--though if they did, Kent is definitely the one to steal it!
Nice work, Kent!
Here's the letter:
Dear Campus Watch,
I have recently read the diatribe on the poet and activist Ammiel Alcalay, published in the American Thinker on March 4.
I am not writing this letter to argue politics with you, for that would be silly, wouldn't it? I am writing, rather, to ask that you add me to the list of American poets you are putting under surveillance. Allow me to briefly list some of my credentials, as I think you will agree I deserve to be given a file in the archives of your organization.
I was one of the poets published in Sam Hammill's Poets Against the War anthology. My poem, which was widely distributed before its anthology publication, including by the openly Marxist journal Monthly Review, is titled Baghdad, and it is loosely based on the children's book Goodnight Moon.
Days went by... Then, the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison happened, and I published a poem titled "Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz, Or: Get the Hood Back On." This poem may be of particular interest to you, since (in addition to the fact that it is accompanied by photographs and the music of Dean Martin) Ammiel Alcalay himself saw fit to send it abroad for possible translation into Arabic. I don't know if it has been translated yet, but the English version is available here, where it has received thousands of visits since its appearance : http://www.blazevox.org/kent.htm
Further, this poem is now the title poem of a collection of mine that is soon to appear. This book will contain numerous pieces by me (not everyone would judge it poetry!), all of which have some relation to the war in Iraq. The cover of this book will be, I think, somewhat original: The infamous shot of the American soldier holding the leash which is clipped to the neck of the prone prisoner shall be surrounded by pictures of daffodils among which shall be little Cupids shooting their arrows inward, toward the picture.
But the most important thing I wanted to say about the forthcoming book is this: I intend to announce in the book that all author royalties from the sale of the collection are to be donated to Campus Watch. I wish to do this (and I hope you will accept the gesture) because I strongly believe your proto-fascist activities are an excellent stimulant to the defense of American values, like civil liberties and other stuff.
Also, I should tell you that I correspond with Joseph Safdie, one of the "leftist" poets mentioned in the American Thinker article! He and I almost co-edited a book of recipes and favorite dinner anecdotes by poets. Alas, this book idea fell through, though I now can't quite remember why. But someone else should certainly do it, as it is a wonderful idea. Oh, and I should also say that in the 1980's I worked as a literacy teacher in Nicaragua on two different occasions. This was when the Sandinista's were in power. Though I'm more or less a social democrat now, I was *really* radical back then. From our village, we could hear the Contra mortars going off almost every night. Some of my friends died. Then I came back and founded the Milwaukee Central America Solidarity chapter, which went on to do all sorts of protest activities. One event we organized was called "Who's Watching You in 1984?" and hundreds of people attended, including numerous FBI agents. Not to get too sentimental, but it was at this event that I met my future wife.
So, these would be some reasons you might wish to accept my request to be inducted into your files. I will be sure to send you a copy of the forthcoming book, which, again, shall go to support the activities of your organization.
Sincerely,
Kent Johnson
chris at
4:42 AM
|
Sunday, March 13, 2005
 from Ed Dorn
Geranium
I know that peace is soon coming, and love of common object,
and of woman and all the natural things I groom, in my mind, of
faint rememerable patterns, the great geography of my lunacy.
I go on my way frowning at novelty, wishing I were closer to home
than I am. And this is the last bus stop before Burlington,
that pea-center, which is my home, but not the home of my mind.
That asylum I carry in my insane squint, where beyond
the window a curious woman in the station door
has a red bandana on her head and tinkling things hand themselves
to the wind that gathers about her skirts. In the rich manner of her kind
she waits for the bus to stop. Lo, a handsome woman.
Now my sense decays, she is the flat regularity, the brick
of the station wall, is the red Geranium of my last Washington stop.
It is my object no shoes brought from india.
can make exotic, nor hardly be made antic would she astride
a motorcycle (forsake materials and we shall survive together)
nor be purchased by the lust of schedule.
No,
on her feet therefore, are the silences of nothing. And leather
leggings adorn her limbs, on her arms are the garlands of ferns
come from a raining raining forest and dripping lapidary's dust.
She is a common thief of fauna and locale (in her eyes
are the small sticks of slender land-bridges) a porter
standing near would carry her bundle, which is scarlet too,
as a geranium and cherishable common that I worship and that I sing
ploddingly, and out of tune as she, were she less the lapwing
as she my pale sojourner, is.
chris at
10:13 AM
|
Saturday, March 12, 2005
check out the Stimulax!
chris at
10:37 PM
|
 MANY THANKS!
chris at
11:56 AM
|
Spring Break is on here--it's nicely quiet. & I've lots of writing to do...
One other matter, regarding my UTA email address: it's going to be out of service for the weekend, so if you're emailing me for something between now and Monday, please do so at the Yahoo address, not the UTA one.
That's cmurray88 at Yahoo dot com
Happy Spring!
chris at
7:05 AM
|
Friday, March 11, 2005
 from Travis Catsull * :
tangled hounds
halls thru the asphalt
hills are surrounded
by panthers.
pandas with prey in their jaws
and the eyeball
on your wrist is covered
by a warm tea bag.
I should know,
you invited me here,
but now I'm busy
getting ready
to drag this lantern
thru the isle of panthers,
past the hills of asphalt.
I'm being honest
when I say a lizard
could blow by
like a rolled up hundred
thousand dollar bill
and I would think
of helicopters
dropping glo-sticks
instead of this.
then I could see
into the shadows
collected
under the table
like black hounds
I would untangle them
with a fork.
(5)
* Travis Catsull, isle of asphalt. effing press, 2004.
~~~~~~~~copyright of Travis Catsull~~~~~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
9:04 PM
|
Josef Sudek : 
--"untitled [tho looking to me more like a dialogic redux: on Rilke: on archaic torso motif & etc. ...]"
Sudek was one of the finest foto image makers: texture, texture...--
a favorite of mine, Y'all...
o~o/
chris at
11:35 AM
|
... I'm a violinist and I have to practice. I practice scales. I practice Mozart, sure, but it is the daily habit of practicing scales that allows me to play Mozart. Practicing scales every day allows me to stop thinking when I actually sit down to play Mozart. My brain can get out of the way and my body takes over. My fingers know where to go. This is where joy lies, for me, in the letting go. Is writing every day going to make the crafting of poetry easier? It might and it might not. But I can guarantee that once you get used to facing a blank page or the blue hum of a computer monitor every single day, that task becomes less daunting as time goes by. ... --Rebecca Loudon, "The Writer's Craft," It's About Time Writers.
chris at
9:18 AM
|
all the trees have that buzz of color on the tips of branch, of twig, the reddish or whitish or greenish something is about to and is already happening. it's a strong runner for my favorite time of year, tho i have to say there are things about all the seasons that i really like--melty velvet of snow (even in March, when it's time to be really tired of it, too). nothing seems to have quite the excitement spring opens up, tho, cloud sky or sun. buzz, damp soil drying-warming in sun, people outdoors shouting, playing, having fun. blue frisbe, green ice-cream trucker, playground riot, wind chimes, live oak leaves waving, not a frozen but a warm wrought-iron railing. light shifting to another angle from morning to dusk, on the north patio sliding glass door.
chris at
8:03 AM
|
Dept of Old Rhetoric Handbooks: Odd Relations in Exempla
Words and Their Uses, the chapter on "Misused Words" * :
CALIBRE is used with a radical perversion of its meaning of by many persons who should know better. As for instance--
"She has several other little poems of a much higher calibre than that." --_London Spectator_, February 20, 1869.
The writer of this sentence might as well have said, a broader altitude, a bulkier range, or a thinner circumference. Calibre is the measure of the mass containable in a cavity; e.g., the calibre of a bullet or a brain, and hence of a gun or a skull. Therefore its metaphorical use is for the expression of capacity, and its proper augmentatives are of expansion, not of height or depth.
* Richard Grant White, Words and Their Uses, Past and Present: a Study of the English Language. New York: Sheldon & Co. **1870**
(!)
chris at
2:56 AM
|
Thursday, March 10, 2005
"Hallo! my name's Bush
that's short for Bullshit..." --"A Family History," Stefan Hynen.
7:00 pm Tonight: SKANKY POSSUM READING SERIES
at 12TH STREET BOOKS, Austin, TX:
Jim Koller and Stefan Hyner
James Koller has published three novels, & numerous essays. His writing has been translated into Italian, French, German, Dutch & Swedish, & he has translated the work of others from French into English. Editor of Coyote's Journal & Coyote Books since 1964, his most recent book is Snows Gone By: New & Uncollected Poems 1964-2002 by La Alameda Press.
Stefan Hyner was born in 1957 in Mannheim, and became a carpenter before enrolling at the Universities of Heidelberg and Taipei where he studied Sinology and East-Asian art history. Hyner, together with Joanne Kyger and Donald Guravich, publishes GATE, an international poetry journal. He also translates the work of Franco Beltrametti into English and is researching that poet/artist's archive currently for a complete text in English.
chris at
8:31 PM
|
Stephen Vincent's reading this Friday! Sure wish I could go--if you are in the area, don't miss it, Y'all!
chris at
8:06 AM
|
Ernesto on what amounts to an ongoing neo Pharmakon...
chris at
7:32 AM
|
Josh Corey's response to some dangerous foolishness: now, *this* is a letter.
chris at
7:21 AM
|
a new kind of feature at Texfiles:
Found: Matter & Abstraction
 --"the final segment is a heart"
(Tien Chiu) *
Mettle: a different matter
of "found" form
on Google:
on entering the abstraction
"compassion" into image
search, here is one kind of mettle ...
The following is quoted from Tien Chiu:
"The hazards of objectification--the replacement of an object by an idea--are in some ways obvious. ... [A]bstraction of mundane objects deprives us of our identity as individual creatures, of our sense of self-worth. When we lose the towering oak to the fine specimen of Quercus albans, when we lose our kneaded breads, the products of our own efforts, to an anonymous lump of processed flour and additives, we lose something of ourselves. Mass-production, fundamentally, sends the message, 'This is not important; this is a convenience, a shortcut because the route does not matter.' And thus we lose our daily bread: what we eat is worth no more than five microwave minutes, and hence does not deserve our attention, our enjoyment, our discovery. We are reduced from people who can enjoy and savor food to machines which need to be refueled periodically, as quickly as possible. We, too, become objectified.
"Refusing objectification, classification, abstraction has become an integral part of my life--perhaps, viewed negatively, an obsession. But I feel my reward for this refusal outweighs the cost in time: I know for myself that I am human, I am individual, and I cannot be abstracted. I know that things, basic things, are important, are worthy of time. I appreciate the hand-stitched skirt even as I spread it across the table and pull out the dyes." --Tien Chiu, 1991
It was a great pleasure to find Tien's site on googling the abstract term, "compassion." Thanks, Tien, for sharing all your good works!
*
all from Tien's homepage: © Tien Chiu
chris at
6:12 AM
|
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Hah!--check out the Possum Pouch "Blog Academy Awards"--here's a sampling :
Wood's Lot: "Best Cabinet of Wonders"
"Best Letters from a Citizen: Kristen Prevallet"
Snapper's Junk: Scott Pierce: "Best Blog for Being a Kick Ass Publisher and Book Designer and Friend"
"Best Blog for Sluts: Bookslut" & BTW, they just announced a new issue...
"Best Blog (is it a blog?) for anonymous whiners to complain and avoid book production according to their own terms: foetry"
"Best Genius Digital Agent Provocateur in need of a Blog: Kent Johnson"
"Best Blog for Best American Poetry: Unquiet Grave"
& hell-yeah! "Best blog for signs of Texas intelligence and grace" : if you're reading this, you're here, Y'all: "Texfiles"
--thanks Dale!
o~o/
chris at
9:21 PM
|
Received a nice email note from Kent Johnson, extending congratulations on the second anniversary of Texfiles: "hearty and warm congrats and good wishes for the great Texfiles," he writes.
Hey, much appreciated, Kent!
chris at
9:02 PM
|
More Thanks (and clarification) to Give Out for this Past Weekend's Poetry Successes
I've just added some clarifying notes to my poem-post of yesterday, "Red Bud Moment Not Monument," to give accuracy where it could have been (unintentionally) ambiguous.
But I want to be sure everyone understands this, too: a lot of credit for success of this past weekend, when I hosted via my Poetry_Heat series, Eileen Tabios and Sandy McIntosh, primarily goes to University of Texas at Arlington, which supports my series and funded many things.
And I want to send out a very special thanks, once again, to my assistant, James Ola, excellent student poet, who assists me with Writing Center matters, particularly with the Poetry_Heat series. Thank You, James, You Rock!
chris at
8:00 AM
|
 (Arizona lichen: Navajo dye source for rug-weaving yarn) **
from Brian Clements * :
Spelunking
There's no place for illusion
where overhangs knock you senseless.
You believe it all, matter of necessity.
You learn to dodge every shadow
just to save your lamplit head.
And if you've come to love your life
you learn to value air, assess grain,
to count the blessings your senses bestow.
You move into the current and away
from dark attractions, like the Melanesian mystics
who travel into the Nether World
and come back with news and direction.
Get lost down there, you don't come back.
Getting by means hugging
the wall, kissing wet rock,
one hand always reaching.
The fingers learn to read
lichen, fissure, guano.
You come to love these, too.
And though you long to explore the alluring
drips from far below,
you haven't the luxury of wondering,
the leisure to estimate
the promises of gold, diamond, ruby,
emerald--no,
you cannot afford it. Concentration is more precious
than a vein. Better to think on your feet,
think without hope, never dare to believe
there will ever be light that deep
unless you stumble face-first into it,
or are fortunate enough
to sleepwalk
into that bright inglorious spelunking
without roadmap, tether, or crumb,
and become rich with knowing,
and remain unawakened
to your depth.
(37-38)
* Brian Clements, Essays Against Ruin. Texas Review Press, 1997.
** Flavopunctelia soredica ("powder-edged speckled greenshield") on oak bark on a mountaintop in Arizona. The Navajo use this lichen as a dye source.
Photograph copyright Stephen/Sylvia Sharnoff, @ lichen dot com.
~~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Brian Clements o~o/ ~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
6:37 AM
|
on "Lies Military Recruiters Tell"
Y'all know how I stand on this, and it is very personal: I wish this much resistance had been going on when they found my son...
On January 20, 2005, several hundred students at Seattle Central Community College chased army recruiters from their spot in the Student center. On February 23, campus police arrested a woman student during a picket in front of the military's recruitment table at a job fair at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A couple days before that, several dozen students chased military recruiters off campus at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU). In September 2004, more than a hundred students protested the presence of military recruiters at the University of Pennsylvania. On February 22, 2005 several dozen students picketed recruiters at the University of Illinois campus in Chicago. At the USC Law School, recruiters were met with pickets and leafleters demanding that they leave... . --Ron Jacobs, "Lies Military Recruiters Tell," Mar 5/6, Counter Punch (article is linked below via Infoshop dot Org)
Military Recruiting Problem: some links to news of an interesting counter trend happening with the problem of military recruiters going into schools and signing kids up:
Yahoo! News: 'Counter-recruiters' shadowing the military
Infoshop News: Lies Military Recruiters Tell
Yahoo! News: "For Guard recruiters, a tough sell" [this one describes something of how recruiters think when going after you or your loved ones...]
As employment, recruiting reminds me of debt collection agencies: no self respecting person would do this kind of work that intentionally goes about messing with people's minds, and if enough people said no to it, then the system couldn't be maintained. This is where the dumb cliche 'Just Say No' really does have some value, eh?
chris at
2:30 AM
|
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Check out what's up at Tympan, Y'all.
I wz out of town over the poetry reading series & Austin road trip, so wasn't connected or wasn't able to read up on the latest crap coming out of Buffalo Poetics list.
But even if a little late to add my supportive two cents, i do just want to say Keep on, Tim!
chris at
8:27 PM
|
 Well, this Grand experiment didn't exactly work:
NPR : Grand Canyon to Receive Massive Water Influx
According to news today (I saw it at Yahoo news but there was an obnoxious ad frame surrounding it so i'm not linking to it), there are now more than a third *fewer* fish in the Colorado River than before they did this big gig. Sheesh!
chris at
8:10 PM
|
Red-bud Moment Not Monument *
There was One Being
Brief Oval
Outline or Lorca & Partially Naked **--
To Wake to a Baby Waylon
Nestling *** & a Multiple
Keaton Being
Coin Fish *** or Vanilla
Charmed Dark Chocolate Scarf-
Bird Singing Moment ****
& Then to be Seen by Me & Eileen *****
the Brief Near-Bare * Thing of Red *
& Thousands More Glancing
Above Concrete Abutments
Bumper-to-Bumper at 80
MPH: (Who Thinks Religious?)
of Every
& Then
We Were There
Driving Again in Road Steam
& Muck
in The Every Stream Again
Convenience Store Steak
or Talking
of Import & Art
Thou Statues
Staring on Road Stripes
or Jostling Pothole Skips
from Austin or Houston
to Arlington,
Mundane Thumps
to Night Lit Core of
Granite or Macadam
Cold or Hot
or a Suddenly Marble Unsure Art
in the Mid-Nowhere
in a Gray Gathering
& Raining
Impressions Light
& Sign & Sound
of Miles
(it was)
Davis Playing
About Turning Around & We
Were Talking Out
Spoken
or Word Making a Living
Poetry
& Driven to Go On
to Dallas & Read & Live
Live & Today & Yesterday
All at Once
& So There!
this Being Appeared Then--
Stature Definitely--
No Statue for Sure:
 redbud!
* refers to a red-bud tree by the side of the road, seen from 80 mph
** These allusions to nudity refer to the red bud tree seen along the highway: naked from winter but for its glorious new blossoms.
*** These refer to the children of Dale and Hoa: at morning, Waylon crawled over to the pillowed mattress I slept on, so to give me a hug, and nestle a little. Keaton had played a game called "coin-fish" with Eric at the after-reading party.
**** I had brought a gift to Keaton of some hand-made scarves, one I crocheted, and one gifted to me a few years ago out of velvet & original dye design, the work of a hand making clothier in Santa Fe, NM.
***** Refers to the wonderful poet Eileen Tabios, who I hosted here, along with fine poet Sandy McIntosh from March 3-7 for my reading series, Poetry_Heat, via the generosity of the Writing Center I direct at University of Texas at Arlington. Additionally, I arranged a reading for Eileen and Sandy in Austin, TX with my generous friends Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen of Skanky Possum as well as Luke Bilberry's 12th Street Books. The poem above results from a moment when, as I was driving the three hour drive in the rain on the flat&boring I-35 with Eileen (racing back from Austin because another reading was planned for Dallas that evening), I was delighted to notice one lone red-bud tree near the road in a field, and pointed it out. It is the kind of moment that is valuable because such is always better when shared, thus I was glad to have seen it when with someone such as Eileen, for whom I have great esteem.
ZaZen, Y'all : )
chris at
7:00 AM
|
Thanks going out also to Steve Vincent for the emailed good wishes on the occasion of Tex's second anniversary.
chris at
4:56 AM
|
Monday, March 07, 2005
BurnDenverDownPress Call for subs (for chapbooks)
via one of my favorite reads:
::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal"
chris at
11:40 PM
|
Mellow-Hellows to Ruby Street and Narcissus Works!
A nice note below on the Texfiles Birthday (Mar 3) comments page from Jill Jones, one of my favorite experimentalist poets (Hi Jill!) along with Anny Ballardini (currently featuring some very fine translations by Rebecca Seiferle), and then, on reading over at Jill's blog, Ruby Street, I saw that a new issue of
Foam:e is out, too--lots of admirable poets & fine poems really lookin' good, Y'all!
chris at
10:54 PM
|
in the ACK News:
Texas is set to supersize highways
DEPT OF NO MAS  DE BUSHCRAP...
--a poem from Stefan Hynan,
who will be reading this Thursday in Austin, TX :
A Family History
- "Hallo! my name's Bush
- that's short for Bullshit, & I'm a
- paying member of the Order of
- SKULL & BONES.
- As executive of the Union Bank Coop. I
- financed Hitler, but no sweat
- my buddy William A. Harriman
- & his Guaranty Trust Coop
- paid for the build-up of the USSR.
- That's our philosophy: create the thesis
- & the anti-thesis, so we can profit
- from the synthesis we impose, as done by
George, Sr. '91 in Iraq
- to keep the threat alive & let
- others pick up the bill (40 bill-
- ions from
- Japan & Germany) while we
- reek in the profits."
21.IX/2002 (Rohrhof)
o~o/
chris at
10:02 PM
|
a new mag, SAUCY!--is lookin' promising--just out from Jessa Crispin, editor/publisher of Bookslut.
chris at
9:58 PM
|
eep... correcting an html error i just discovered in this post about the poetry reading on Friday at UTA... i cite Tom Murphy because in my introduction I had read aloud from one of his poems--his chapbooks are some of my favorite reads--hurry and get some!--but for some reason my link to tom's site didn't work out.
So here's some workable html for the link, with apology to all... & a note to also check his link to his other page, TJ Blug ... happy readings, Y'all!
chris at
9:42 PM
|
My Thanks to Artist Philip Trussell
Very special, humble and happy thanks to painter Philip Trussell (whose work will be showing next week in Austin--i'm not certain of the location, but will try to find out and add to this post later today or tomorrow) for the beautiful gift of one of his fine works (a surprise gifted to me at the poetry reading's reception on Saturday evening in Austin, at the home of Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen, Keaton and Waylon).
Philip: this is just a note to say how much I appreciate your kind consideration, and the terrific energy of this painting.
Thanks so much!
best,
c
ps. Hey, Y'all: as soon as I can I'll be taking a photo of this beautiful painting and then to scan it for posting to texfiles. I'm so happy to have it and to be able to share something of it with you. Yeah!
o~o/
chris at
12:53 PM
|
On the (poetry) Road, Again: with Eileen Tabios and Sandy & Barbara McIntosh
HEY, AUSTIN TEXAS: POETRY_HEAT LOVES Y'ALL ...
What a super time we all had (Eileen Tabios--you rock!) (readers: *everything* you have heard about Eileen is absolutely true) on our poetry-reading-road-trip, where we met up with Skanky Possum's super-possums (hey: check out the Blog Awards list there!--go Dale) at 12th Street Books (many thanks to Luke Bilberry for graciously making available this wonderful reading space to us).
Eileen and I drove down yesterday afternoon in (shall I say ) *moi* bright red trucky thing, and Sandy McIntosh and his super-wife, Barbara (who kept us all on track in the most gracious and disarming way that I have ever seen anywhere), drove in a rental car: this drive is not a pleasant one, Y'all: flatlands, Tex, all the way, and it was dreary weather, gray-rain-gray, all the way. But who had time to notice weather?--not me--I was way too busily involved in conversations about poetry with Eileen. Everything I've always admired about her as poet, thinker, publisher, and super-blogger, was confirmed and more. Absolutely one of the warmest friends a person could ever find--I say this to acknowledge the friendship and to let Y'all know how much I really appreciate the opportunity this week to get to know Eileen in person and to share ideas. I'm so pleased!
Austin is a special place for me because the poetry and arts people there are such a fine group of supportive folk. We pulled into 12th Street Books, visited for a while in that laid-back way that all good po-folk create for their venues and when we'd all had a congenial chance to visit, began the reading. Students from Susan Briante's poetry course at UT attended as well as students from Hoa Nguyen's Saturday poetry course (where Hoa had put together a packet that included poems from Eileen Tabios' Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole, as well as some work from Stefan Hynen, who will be reading at 12th Street Books this week on Thursday evening).
For our reading, Sandy McIntosh read first, offering a sampling from his new book, The After-Death History of My Mother (Marsh Hawk, 2005). Here's one of Sandy's poems that I really:
Meeting an Old Friend at a Lecture
A small leaf settled on your shoulder,
stuck to the threads of your sweater.
I was about to pick it off, but you bent forward,
suddenly attentive to the speaker,
and your wild gray hair flapped
and rustled about your head as if in a wind.
I thought how much like an old tree you had become,
and I would not remove your only leaf.
(Between Earth and Sky--Marsh Hawk, 2002)
Eileen's read from several of her books, including the latest, I Take Thee, English, for my Beloved (Marsh Hawk Press, 2005). Here is one of my favorites:
Question
I am cognizant
my flight
relies on the ladder
of Babel
I speak
ergo, you love me
Why must speech
be one with flight--
The paradox
of writing
You away from
me away from you
while you witness
all in silence
The congenial crowd stayed for a while talking and sipping wine, then we moved over to the home of Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen for a happy get together, with such fine poetry folk as Susan Briante, Farid Martuk, Phillip Trussell, Sharon Roos, the fabulous Keaton, Eric, Waylon, Zack, and many more good po-folk.
What I most want to say is I think we are all blessed or charmed (and both are fine with me) in this po-stuff.
More soon: the Dallas reading (Shin Yu Pai came out to hear, and is also reading next week!)
chris at
9:20 AM
|
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Report (and clarification on the name I chose for this series) : UTA Poetry_Heat events, Friday, March 4, 2005:
"... He felt the heat of the night--
hit him like a freight train moving
with a simple twist of fate...
one more time for a simple twist of fate... "--Bob Dylan, "Simple Twist of Fate"--Blood on the Tracks
"Texas," for many months of the year, is a climate full of remarkable heat, but that's only one reason that came to mind when I decided to name this reading series Poetry_Heat. Basically, for poetic or poetry reasons, I don't really give a flyin' F about the state apparatus that calls itself Texas. I also don't care about the reasons there is any state by any name, but certainly not the ones that led to this one (excepting where, in the past, so many lost their lives in conflicts over some ideological framework that eventually established this as a state within a state).
Here I'm talkin' Althusser and Jameson (the theorist of third-'worlding', not the sharp whiskey, Y'all). Those few lines of Dylan's, tho interesting in their focus on a single perspective of a "he," i read second naturedly (like i read so many things, out of necessity) from the multiplicitous positioning of denying their obvious gendering of the subject. So, in case anyone was wondering, the result of that interpretive readerly perspective was more the spirit behind the name, "Poetry_Heat". Of course, there is always the question of it's relation to what sounds a natural: "Poetry_[in]_Heat". And yeah: that tends to linger around the metrical-music and set-up or expectancy, doesn't it? Language plays us as much as we think we're playing it, eh?
So tonight's reading: in a word: fantastico!
Today, a cold and cloudy one here was brightened immensely by meeting and talking with Eileen Tabios (but of course!--the chatelaine rules, Y'all!) and Sandy McIntosh and his wife, Barbara (who sweetly yet ever-so-business-wise, kept us all timely--since I had no watch--and then, after the reading, she keep track on/with books-for-sale: many thanks, Barbara!).
Students at the afternoon presentation were full of interesting questions. They'd just this week finished reading Linh Dinh's Blood and Soap, so were reeling from prismatic considerations of poetics and narrative perspective, but also, many just wanted to ask the simpler questions, like, "what's it like to be a writer?" The diaglogue with students went very well.
The poetry reading was wonderful: many students, a few faculty and grad students attended. Sandy read first, and extremely well, from his new book, The After-Death History of My Mother (Marsh Hawk, 2005), including a knock-out poem about Marilyn Monroe that the students at the afternoon presentation had found lots of fun.
Eileen, who had keep us all in good humour during the earlier talk and then at dinner (during the break between events), read... well, I think the apropos term here would be *soared* or sung !) from Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole to begin with, and then much more... soon to be elaborated.
I will also note here that I opened tonight's reading by (not surprisingly) reading. Briefly and from several sources, http://brtom.org/blogger.html
a *finish your phrase* which was a chapbbok I received this week from br.Tom Murphy: Fingers. no ink, from the chap series of _finish your phrase_ (2003). Here are Tom's lines:
how many bad things tackled your truth today?
when they float at you... scream "I am a golden child!"
maybe your family history is a board game...
you be the shoe... let them becames rich and aloof.
Is that cool or what? --Thanks, brTom, for sharing such fine work.
And, hey, Y'all--I will have much more to report tomorrow or Sunday, after our next leg of journey: Austin!
Stay tuned, Y'all!
o~o
chris at
10:16 AM
|
Friday, March 04, 2005
 *
Poetry_Heat Events Today and Tomorrow:
Chatelaine Eileen Tabios, and Sandy McIntosh !
4:30 today, Dialogue with Students about writing and publishing
@ UTA Writing Center,
4th floor, Central Library
7:30 tonight, Poetry Reading: UTA
Rady Room, 6th floor, Nedderman Hall,
7:00 tomorrow night, Poetry Reading: Austin, TX--
in conjunction with Skanky Possum Press:
@ 12th Street Books--827 W 12th Street, Austin.
[an additional reading has been planned by Eileen and Shin Yu Pai:
Dallas, TX, Sunday, Mar. 6 @ 5:30 pm:
Paperbacks Plus: 6115 La Vista Dr. ]
* photo credit: Eugene Atget
chris at
8:49 PM
|
To all these wonderful folks sayin' Hey to texfiles, opening the third year of fun, here: I love Y'all! Many thanks for reading and caring.
Best,
c
chris at
8:01 PM
|
Press Play: O-mi-G!
& on the
the artist is Avelino de Araujo--and this is the site: Poesia Visual/Experimental, from the main page. Depending on tastes, some might be more arresting than others (given changeable characteristics), but all are quite amazing (in my humble opinion).
chris at
10:42 AM
|
from Pablo Neruda (in translation by David D. Walsh) *:
THE SOLDIER'S LOVE
In the midst of war life led you
to be the soldier's love.
With your poor silk dress,
your costume jewelry nails,
you were chosen to walk through the fire.
Come here, vagabond,
come and drink on my breast
red dew.
You didn't want to know where you were going
you were the dancing partner,
you had no Party, no country.
And now walking at my side
you see that life goes with me
and that behind us is death.
Now you can't dance any more
with your silk dress in the ballroom.
You'll wear out your shoes,
but you'll grow on the march.
You have to walk on thorns
leaving little drops of blood.
Kiss me again, beloved.
Clean that gun, comrade.
(100-101)
* Pablo Neruda, The Captain's Verses. transl. Donald S. Walsh. New York: New Directions, 1972.
chris at
8:45 AM
|
Go Optative Mood! : the state of Paris, governments & media...
also: esto iz wei keul de Brasilia:
!CONCRETISMO!
(found via
Jay Thomas' links-list at Bad with Titles)
chris at
4:04 AM
|
Yeah! Terrible Twos!
nawwww.... we're
ust plai ol ickedly ba,
Y'all!
Texfiles: still at it
o~o/
chris at
3:56 AM
|
Thursday, March 03, 2005
 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TEXFILES !!
texfiles is 2 years old today, y'all! YaY!!
chris at
8:42 PM
|
Announcement from Halvard Johnson:
Hamilton Stone Review, Issue 5, Winter 2005, Now Online!
Featuring fiction by Sybil Kollar, Sue Mellins, and Lance Olsen,
and poetry by Deborah Poe, Alan Brilliant, Susan Donnelly, Paul
Murphy, Catherine Daly, Tad Richards, Todd Swift, mIEKAL
aND, Roy Frisvold, Rochelle Ratner, Hugh Steinberg, William
Sylvester, Tim Martin, Sybil Kollar, Andrew Lundwall, Bert
Kimmelman, James Cervantes, Skip Fox, Sheila E. Murphy,
and César Vallejo (in translations by Rebecca Seiferle).
Hamilton Stone Review
Submissions to the Hamilton Stone Review
At this time, the Hamilton Stone Review is not open to unsolicited
fiction submissions, but will be taking unsolicited poetry submissions
until May 1, 2005, for Issue #6, which will be out in June 2005.
Poetry submissions should go directly to Halvard Johnson at
halvard@earthlink.net.
chris at
12:12 AM
|
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Hey, Y'all: Big Poetry Weekend
Eileen Tabios and Sandy McIntosh will be here to talk to students and to read poetry on Friday! Then we're off to Austin together. Looking forward here! : )
Here's a poem from the new books of each:
from Sandy McIntosh * :
My Friend Ignatius
I find myself at a carival shooting gallery
with my friend, Ignatius. We pop our rifles, having fun,
until I realize that this is a dream.
We are not at a carnival. We are asleep in our beds
in different cities, but we have met in dreaming!
I try to convince Ignatius, but he doesn't believe me.
I show him how I can leap in the air
and fly around the carnival tents.
"You can't do this when you're awake," I tell him.
To prove it, I take his hand as we fly through a solid wall.
"Wow," he says. "I think you got something there."
Ignatius leaps into the air and I follow.
We visit strange cities and meet interesting people.
"Now," I tell him. "It's the critical moment.
I'm going to wake myself up, and call you on the telephone.
If you verify that you were here with me in this dream,
we'll have proved Carlos Casteneda correct:
two people can share a dream."
Finally awake,
I reach for the phone and fumble some numbers.
However, in waking life,
I don't have a friend named Ignatius.
--for Amy Wallace
(54)
~
from Eileen Tabios * :
LUDIC + [...]
for Jean Vengua
ridiculous absence
if only it were not
a life of baroque
sears bathingsuit
mermaid, just
that i am no
eyes under water
because of this
nonexistent guitar
plucking the strings
practice practice
less and pretend
of this absence
cheeks. because
pale remains
orchid and use
tisane drained
absence i have
(not yours)
yes my rib
shard needle
with thread
sew a dress
because of this
ridiculous absence
(64)
* the books:
--Sandy McIntosh, The After-Death History of My Mother. Marsh Hawk Press, 2005
--Eileen Tabios, I Take Thee, English, for My Beloved. Marsh Hawk Press, 2005.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~poems copyright of the authors~~~~~~~~ o~o/
chris at
9:54 PM
|
scrammin/scramblin w/Modest Mouse
went to the porch
to have a thought... [something about]
[wha? : cheech or chablis] indiscriminate colon: [more wha]
& my ("mah") thoughts
were so loud I couldn't hear em in
my mouth...
realized there wz no
porch...
we'll all float on okay...
or nay:
[lots of bouncy muzik
& i luv
my son
(mom don't worry
it's not too heavy... i'll be alright)
not worryin then if its *my* son!
goin off to Bushbag shit
nosirree
realized there wz no porch
ya kno? but maybe we'll all get
lucky and we'll all
live [leave?] again...
something else about your head
on your mouth
over your soul
which is the size of a grocery store
pea inside a galaxy only a science
fiction (you parental ideological state apparatus fool!) writer
you'll never meet
ever begins to
tell anyone about ever,
everywhere
if ya got one and if ya kno
it. know what i
mean?--it's like that, & more...
well, he ain't even over there yet
an' he's the one to ask, ya kno?
--cm
o~o/
chris at
1:31 PM
|
hey Wesley! you gotta smile...
chris at
8:52 AM
|
from Toni Morrison, on writers, writing * :
Writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, * most representative, most probing of artists. The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power. The languages they use and the social and historical context in which these languages signify are indirect and direct revelations of that power and its limitations.
* Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Random House, 1992.
I especially like that part about being "intellectually anarchic,"--yeah! Ya kno?
: )
chris at
2:34 AM
|
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
chris at
11:43 AM
|
Dear Glamourpuss,
SHAMPOO issue 23 is eagerly awaiting your lovely locks.
Please conspicuously catwalk over to:
SHAMPOO POETRY
and lather up with poetry by Tim Yu, Muesser Yeniay, J. Marcus
Weekley, Alli Warren, Mike Topp, Shannon Tharp, Andrew
Slattery, Barry Schwabsky, Cassandra Schiemann, C. Allen
Rearick, Stephen Ratcliffe, James Penha, Ronald Palmer, Wanda
O'Connor, William Moot, rob mclennan, Eric Low, Jon Leon,
David Koehn, Stephen Kirbach, Raud Kennedy, Christine Neacole
Kanownik, Malia Jackson, Yuri Hospodar, August Highland, Jeff
Harrison, Nada Gordon, Ethan Fugate, Monica Fauble, Olivia Cronk,
Bruce Covey, Amy M. Conger, Todd Colby, Brandon Brown, Jason
Bredle, Taylor Brady, Kelly Bartolotta, Glenn Bach, Jane Adam; plus
do enjoy glamtastic ShampooArt by Nico Wijaya.
Thank you for looking so good!
Next up: 5 Year SHAMPOO Anniversary Extravaganza (stay tuned)!
Scrub-it-cuz-you-lub-it,
Del Ray Cross, Editor
chris at
10:53 AM
|
Christos et al & the Why Is It Art Questions
I'm most often skeptical--about this wildly popular  art and such--
but I like what is found here: this way of taking a bird's-eye-view in both the foto representation and the writing's perspective. They're mutually reinforcing in ways that work out well for the reader, especially those who've not had a chance to see the Christos work. This bird's-eye-view, though?--it's, first of all, unusual to this specific event: so much of what's out there in terms of images meant to reflect on the (unresolved question of) momentousness of this artistic event has a really bad post-pumpkinish-turns-to-princessish kind-of-flavor-twist to it (just Google for images: they're all about repeating some academic- or revivalist-romanticist crap rather than the work, in other words, so far the images collectively say more about the sinking ship of grasping romanticist notions of late capital commodity culture than they do about this work, which I think really has some significance to it). The lack of perspective on this work, then, has made the event near laughable in some ways--most regrettably the critical-thinking ways.
But there's more to it than that, as Ron's post and many others have noted--also Geof Huth, for example, whose account of the event i admired here the other day; and then the student blog i linked to yesterday, a wonderful skeptic who turned the resistance of skepticism around--was smiling and actually happy by the end of a walk through this mysterioso, The Gates. Now that is what I'd call a radical response brought on bythe art.
In all I think that perhaps it is the bird's-eye-view, though, that provided something else necessary to understanding it (if one can hope to do that much), or reaching something at the very lest which would counteract the necessity for skepticism long enough to find a peaceful moment with it as art. So, there are fair-minded ways to grapple with the apparently rhetorical complexity of this work and its reception. That's what I look for. The response to "The Gates," has been so en masse, that one cannot help but get a little twinge of a Golden Arches puke-o correlation, eh? But I think it must deserve more than that: there is an inevitable and warranted connection to be had in phenomenology-based aesthetics (Adorno style): that enlightened shudder he makes so much of, the legacy from ancient human life with art as community. That's not to be underestimated in terms of power to move folks.
And as for analytical takes, well, I dunno: it's just infinitely intriguing to me that the response is so (wonderfully!) diverse--the thing is either damned or elevated to the tenth level of heaven often, for strong reasons, and in such unexpected voices, in so many differing ways, that how could one not try to gather some understanding on it all? Well, that kind of diversity rocks, I think. But alas I was not able myself to go to NYC for it (sigh), so my response is mostly vicarious, thus not based in materiality and this work seems to invoke a strong materialist response.
All the more important, then, that folks took the time to post on it at length, so those who couldn't go experience it in person could at least have some word of it?--or maybe that misses the point--perhaps so.
Anyway, I also note here that I had a good read, I found another unique, inimitable view on the Christos work over at the mischievous, um... Hoetry dot com--
(not to be confused with the whose-its-anonymous-because-it's-so-safe
-to-hide-behind-a-Foetry-listserv...).
Yeah, Y'all.
chris at
7:28 AM
|
Dept of High Interest: on e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s
Tom Beckett interviews,or, really, perhaps the better term is that he has a dialog with
Nick Piombino. Well, hey, Y'all, that's certainly a nice fait accompli, eh?--very nice work!
chris at
7:09 AM
|
Encore! More intriguing foto & poetry from Justin Ulmer...
foto by Justin Ulmer, "Scott's Favorite" *
A Goat For Azazel
When I was afraid of the dark
My sleep was deep and urgent
And often after hours
Under the covers with pajamas
I would blow kisses to angels and God
Wiggling my toes into the mattress
Me and Ted
Waiting on the night train
I am no longer afraid of the dark
Like a baby
I sleep naked
But for boxers
And more expensive sheets
A high thread count
And my prayers have turned into conversations
Debates
Grown-up stuff
The teddy bear stuck with me though
He spends his nights up
In the high shelves with photographs
My books
Faux ivy and the occasional cobweb
With two glass eyes and patience
Always watching
Poised and reluctant
To leave it all behind
The light stays on for him
* The foto caption refers to friend
Scott Pierce. (Hi Scott!)
~~~~~~~~~foto & poem copyright of Justin Ulmer~~~~~~ o~o/ ~~~~
|
|
