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Author: Marcus Silcock
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This is my first year with March madness even though I have lived in the States for quite some time now. The Air Force/Carolina game last night was great. A push and pull. Play my kind of game no play mine. Slow fast slow fast. Eventually fast one (thank god). I’m currently 12th in the…
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My students connected much more to the innovative poetry than the traditional in my Irish Lit. class. I played Seamus Heaney for 20 min. Then some audio of Gabe Gudding reading from a Defense of Poetry, then Mairéad Byrne’s “The Pillar” and Randolph Healy’s “Daylight Savings Sex.” Almost all of my students have not read…
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For outness is but the feeling of otherness (alterity) rendered intuitive, or alterity visually represented. –Coleridge. Just purchased Tony Tost’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0807129658-0" >Invisible Bride last night. I’m only a little ways in, but I am hooked and altered. The alterity in Invisible Bride feels genuine. What I mean is I got some serious head chills.…
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In my Irish lit class I am teaching from the penguin book of contemp. poetry. The usual poets. I am bored. So I logged onto the internet and played some poems in real audio of Lisa Jarnot and Wanda Coleman. A little talk about tradition and innovation. Students were shocked by Lisa Jarnot. Who’s emp.…
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Gotta guest teach an undergrad beginning poetry workshop in half an hour. Not sure what I’m going to say. All the poems are very stale, boring, cliched. Gotta talk about the difference between writing out your feelings in a journal and writing a poem. Not that a combo of journal/blogging and other types of discourse…
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Not sure about TV on the Radio. Some songs were quite interesting. My friends were not impressed. One friend said, “Fishbone meets Grateful Dead.” Another said, “a new and improved punkier version of Hootie and the Blowfish. A third good friend said, “Gimmick. All gimmick.” The gimmick comment stuck. What distinguishes a gimmick? Innovation as…
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Going to see TV on the Radio tonight in Greensboro. I don’t have their cd. Only heard “staring at the sun.” I’ve heard good things about them. Hope they put on a jolly good show. Also going to see Leo/Pharmacists at GO! on Sunday. Good week to rock.
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Just ran across an ad in APR for the new and improved poetry magazine with Pound’s “make it new” a crazy photograph of an electrified woman, and a quote from August Kleinzahler about poetry magazine being wide awake with its new editor. The new issue has a bunch of poems by Bill Knot. The latest…
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Aaron McCollough has a very thought provoking response to Ron’s poetry test. The rapid response (myself included) to Ron’s poetry test seemed in part motivated by approval. How smart can I sound so Ron will like me? Does Ron ever read my blog? The Patchen poem Aaron looks at is a very interesting example. I…
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I picked up Joshua Clover’s Madonna anno domini. I hope to grab a copy of Joshua Corey’s Selah in the near future. It’s the c and the o. I’ll have to take a taste test of Selah and Madonna anno domini.
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Traded in some Pinsky, some Steve Orlen, some Don Delillo, some Stephen Dobyns, some Thomas Lux at The Bookshop in Chapel Hill. In exchange I picked up: Philip Whalen’s Decompressions Gregory Corso’s Mindfield Denise Levertov’s O Taste and See Clark Coolidge’s Own Face Josh Corey’s Madonna anno domini I’m building here. Trade out old tastes…
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I was fascinated by the responses on Ron Silliman’s blog to the poetry test. The attempt to focus on the work of a writer is sometimes an attempt to increase the credability of the writer in question. Thereby increasing artistic capital. Does Ann Carson’s short short bio increase her artistic capital? Does the mystery surrounding…
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We question the gatekeepers and if what they are guarding is worth the entry fee. Can we get rid of the gatekeepers? I’m suspicious of gatekeepers because I am often denied entry. So often I hear it’s harder to make sense, speak clearly than speak/write cryptic. It’s the old text/reader/writer (Mr. Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle). Get…
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So far I’ve spent $50 from Mr. Bush’s tax return on small press poetry and indie music. I am very excited by Wild Honey Press Ordered: Blackwards by Rosmarie Waldrop ($5.00 USD) Daylight Saving Sex by Randolph Healy ($5.00 USD) Shipping and Handling: $2.50 USD Total: $12.50 USD $12.50 for two books from the other…
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Mini vacation to Chapel Hill yesterday. Art musuem at UNC then The bookshop. Found about 16 books I wanted. Ended up getting: A Paradise of Poets by Jerome Rothenberg Voice Over by Elaine Equi Lit by Ron Silliman The Happy Birthday of Death by Gregory Corso (with a nice little fold out poem) really digging…
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Rainy and sticky with lots of birds right now. I slept well. Watched American Splendor. I need to find some underground comics. I haven’t read comics since I was a little in Ireland. Loved Ajax. Traded Bob Hicok for the revised and enlarged selected Robert Duncan edited by robert j. bertholf. Play at hand: 1)…
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Returning Bob Hicok. He bored me after six poems. Per the suggestion of Aaron McCollough, I am going to order Shanna Compton’s Down Spooky. Liked the audio of “We the blind need pushing.” Picked up Sleeping with the Dictionary. I am very excited. Got a serious roll. Sacked the headmaster for a monkey. Post Date: Fri…
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Wondering about the head/intellect. It’s all up there, but is it useful to pretend the ‘ole heart is something else? (All of a sudden I feel like that main character from Sex and the City typing on her mac). Playground tactics. Original tactics not like the rabbit in a hat trick. <a href="javascript:SquawkBoxPopup()” title=”Comments by…
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reread Tony Tost’s Disarm the settlers at Typo and thinking about programs. My cousin visitied from Ireland two summers ago and found it really strange we kept introducing people as: this is so and so, he’s from the program. Which reminds of: the church. The church says. . . As if everyone belonged to the…
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I am really digging Berstein’s “Artifice of Absorption.” I read parts of it a while back, but I wasn’t ready. Berstein says/writes: “Antiabsorptive does not necessarily mean nonentertaining . . . readers can be expected to enjoy a device that ruptures the commodification of reading insofar as this fulfills their desire for such a work.”…
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innovation, difference, and process become part of the machine of capitalism. The new, innovative food processor from GE etc. How can the new get over its specialness? I picked up Charles Bernstein’s A Poetics at the used book store and Insomnia Diary by Bob Hicok. I’ve only read four pages of Bernstein and it’s really…
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The local indep. music store (gate city noise) sent out an emergency email. They could go under in less than a month. So a big group of writers spent money on good music. I picked up: The Flaming Lips (The Soft Bulletin) Ted Leo/Pharmacists (The Tyranny of Distance) Califone (Heron King BLVES) The Wrens (Meadowlands)…
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Reading a Frank Bidart interview from Chicago Review (fall 2001). He talks about how irony can be a kind of “sophicated armored writing.” Bidart says, “I like extreme art. So much middle of the road art is simply boring . . . sophisticated armored writing feels very middle of the road to me. Aping the…
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Is honest searching for difference different than sinister specialness. When does specialness become sinister. Is it possible for extreme individualism to screw up a society? Maybe what I mean is beside the point rather than the point. (Ha. I’m clever. I’m special. I’m unique. I’m me. etc.) I worry about difference daily. And community. I…
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How can we know our victories? I hear a lot of complaints about the Iowa poets (I have participated sometimes) from the 1970’s. A kind of McPoem (ala Mr. Hall) narrative, easily digested etc. Now Iowa is on the other side. Mostly avant guarde inspired/influenced poetry. Iowa has power. Iowa is bringing the avant strategies…
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Wondering and worrying audience. The creation of audience versus the packaging of poetry for an audience. Writing for other poets versus writing for????? Sometimes non-readers of poetry (close friends) say they feel unintelligent because they don’t get process oriented poetry. I don’t want anyone to feel stupid and unworthy, including myself. I am driven to…
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Group identification seems to get a bad name (NY School, Language Poetry etc.) Why is that? Originality/indvidualism/ego? Of course classification enhances and limits the work of the artist. Over and over again I hear muscians getting mad with labels (not alt country just good music). Don’t we have to classify and label in order to…
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FIFA is playing downstairs on the PS 1. I need distraction sometimes. Leisure has such bad connotations for me. I see well to do English chaps playing badminton. Quite a tightrope. Labor and leisure. Looking at independent secondary schools for a teaching gig. I like teaching all in all. I need headspace for writing poetry.…
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Graded 44 essays for my existentialism class (a freshman seminar). The essays were on free will (since existentialism hinges on complete free will and responsibility. You can’t be responsible for actions/choices unless you have free will). Most of the students believed they had very limited free will. The few that believed in free will took…
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Spoke with a youngish yale winning poet a few weeks ago who said to be careful with blogs sucking dry and giving away stuff for free. Suck dry for free. Suck dry for money. Either way, you’re still suck dry. I was locked out of the house and my toes are cold. Someone had an…
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Nice little surprise in the mail today. Columbia Poetry Review accepted a poem. I wonder how many journals are named after animals versus how many are named after food (milk and octopus for example). By far, the so and so review has to be the most popular. Does the word review make a journal seem…
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Lorca: “Poetry doesn’t need skilled practitioners, she needs lovers, and she lays down brambles and shards of glass for the hands that search for her with love.” Maybe I do go to poetry for answers. But not answers in the empirical sense. What is an answer anyway? Is love an answer or a question or…
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Lorca’s “Imagination, Inspiration, Evasion” Reading a little Lorca in Jubilat #7 today. Lorca: “no one should say this is clear, because poetry is obscure. And no one should say this is obscure, because poetry is clear. . . we need to have forgotten poetry completely before it call fall naked into our arms.” I suppose…
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Can a good movie be mainstream? Can good music be mainstream? Can a rap artist sample country music (or is she/he wishy washy and mixing their politics). Country music= mostly white folks who are often rural. Rap music=mostly black folk who are often urban. (I am well aware this isn’t always the case. But don’t…
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American Poetry acccording to a few hundred students at UNCG: Most students in four different classes had friends who wrote poetry and read at coffee shops. Quite a few thought a poet was polite, agreeable. A nice dinner guest. Only a few thought of a poet as crazy and dangerous (we were discussing the Irish…
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What is the relationship between retire and tire? For and between also interest me. If I am between Irish nationalism and cosmopolitanism what am I for? or (as the small stirs indicate almost to the point of a dead horse) If I am between language as multivocal, flux filled, slidding, anxiety ridden and language as…
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Swimming underwater today with head cold. I’ve been thinking a lot about period styles (conversational narrative etc.) Sebastian Matthews came last week and read some poems and part of the memoir. Did not enjoy it. William Matthews is ok, but not very interesting. I am not sure why (other than recognition, status as son of…
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I am looking at: a nice color plate of Dali’s Night and Day Clothes and listening to: Bonnie Prince Billy’s “wolf among wolves.” The combination is moving me. juxtapositions that buzz. Snow on the ground. Cold fingers. I don’t have to teach today because of the ice. Cuddle up to Dali, Bonnie prince billy, an…
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Gotta read Yeats “The Twisting of the Rope” and prepare a lesson plan for it. A little Celtic Twilight lecture perhaps. Listening to Czech music. Jaromir Hohavica and Kapela. I am wondering about poetry and performance after listening to Craig Arnold the other day. I like poetry read well, or well read poetry, but sometimes…
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So the mac version of blogger is different. Not a split window. Maybe nicer. Watched Lost in Translation last night. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The inaudible whisper near the end. Most of the movie uses gestures more than conversation. Emotion is lost in translation from movie to audience. Which came first, the emotion/experience…
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Neck Popping feels good in the morning after a night of gorging on brick oven pizza, Guinness, Genache, coffee. Watched In America last night. Felt quite familiar. I came to America at the age of 12 from N. Ireland. It was 1985. Breakdancing was big. My preconception of America was built around movies (of course).…
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Some Fragments soon to be made whole At the thumbshow my lover parades like a peacock. The minions are swept off their feet. Ash in the throat. Clean wind is the cosolation of my future. My lot behind twelve million clomping hooves. It behooves you to bereave with bandits. Glaciers recommended their services but brisk…
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Consciousness without reason? If consciousness requires reason, then before the Greeks invented reason, no one was conscious? (William Barrett’s argument in Irrational Man) I am struggling to understand and define the illogical in language. Is language inherently logical? Language and magic. Language before deconstruction. However, language is always already there. So to think of the…
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So, some great new books for christmas: Allen Grossman, The Long Classroom and How to Do Things with Tears and Of the Great House Joyelle McSweeney, The Red Bird Barbara Guest, The Location of Things, Archaics, The Open Skies Best American 2002 (curious. Got it for $2) Edward Dorn, Gunslinger Octavio Paz, A Draft of…
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Purchased an old imac (233, 160mb ram). I hope it works well when it arrives. Tired of laptops. Pulled in by the marketing/design of the old imacs. The macs are artistic outsiders. Form and content not seperate for the mac (for pc it’s all content, form is secondary). So very ugly mass produced pc’s. So…
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Went to a used bookstore today. I can’t seem to stay away. Almost always overwhelmed by boring poetry section. Then again in the last few weeks I did pick up: Nice to See You (Homage to Ted Berrigan) $2 The Dada Market (anthology) $4 Routine Distortions (Kenward Elmslie) $5 Mercurochrome (Wanda Coleman) $5 Charles Simic…
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Implied narrative. Everything has an implied narrative. That’s what I hear. Some narratives are more implied than others. How do implied narratives within lyric poetry work differently than linear, straightforward narratives. Subjectivity? The energy of image. Image is static. Does not move much outside the poem. How to light up images, make them move. Rhetoric,…
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A t.v. show called “Jim’ll Fix It.” Boys and girls wrote letters to Jim explaining their fantasies like drinking a fresh bottle of milk while riding upside down in a roller coaster. Other winners included eating forty different kinds of cheese at a factory in the midlands and singing with the whales in the Baltic…
Never Mind the Beasts 