Never Mind the Beasts

2/27/06

BEWARE YEA WHO ENTER WONDERLAND
without a way out

2/29/06

EVERYONE SMILES IN WONDERLAND

I speak to the mothers because I have the right format

Every building is a big block building

Every city has the same shops, the same food, the same signs

Maybe in ten years the word for foreigner will disappear

There is no honor in Wondland

The law is not FOR foreigners

GATE is being branded and I took part in the selling

scam, hoax, a hex
on my white
face sold to the mothers

I am $4000 in the hole

I live in a small room and
I ride a pack-
ed train

3/1/06

The mind that ran me is the mind that runs me. I am still my old self but in a new shell. Whose mind minds me but my own. I live in a small room. My clothes hang above me on a bar. Some of the shirts are frayed and thus unraveling. What unravels and then reveals me? This mouth tethers me. But to what?

3/2/06

Don’t know when this will level off
Don’t know when the dust will settle

Wonderland refuses to cancel my visa so I can work at the university. They signed a letter of release but the law means little. It takes forever to get anything done. I am thinking of finding another country. They want to blacklist me because they couldn’t find a new teacher. They want me to teach for them while I teach at the university. They signed a letter releasing me and I paid well over a thousand dollars in damage fees. The broke their contract but I must pay.

This is a strange system

I am not Kafka but I want to write through this

The law is not the law but a series of strange characters. You cannot leave a job without a letter of release. A letter of release does not release you. It is only a piece of paper. Immigration gets money from the hogwans. Foreigners give money to the hogwans. Recruiters promise a great time at a hogwan. The letter of release was hard to get. But a letter of release is only a piece of paper. Even after release you can be placed on a blacklist. The hogwan doesn’t need a reason except that you are foreign. A blacklist prevents you from working. Wonderland is blackmailing me.

This is a strange system.

I just moved to Beomgye yesterday because I landed a really nice university gig. The campus is new so everything is clean and fresh. By new I mean all the buildings including the bathrooms are less than one year old. Clean and new. YES!

Right now I am in my spanking new office looking at the mountains. Some light snow is falling.

I can’t believe how well the university is treating me compared to the hogwan experience. Wonderland did a number on me with my last paycheck but I was expecting that. Hogwans are not trustworthy. I knew they would find a way to take most of my last paycheck.

a few things in my gigantic office:

a brand new computer with a lcd

a conference table with six chairs for meeting with students

a great view

a gigantic glass bookcase (which is quite empty at the moment),

a few closets for my personal things with keys to lock everything

a new computer desk

a new leather office chair

a huge office desk

My name is even on the door. I would never get this treatment in the U.S.

The name of the university is Gyeongin (kyong in) National University. It is the number one university for training public school teachers. The university is in Anyang which is just a few stops from where I am staying right now. Unfortunately, I have to go back to Japan for another visa run next week. So I will have some intial expenses. But it’s worth it.

The English department secretary (her English name is Kate) just came to my office as I was typing this. She brought me a brand new cd player and radio with a remote so I can have music in my office.

The only downside to all this is I have to find my own housing (which would be the same in the U.S.) but I must have at least $3000 for a deposit on a small flat. So right now I am living in a Goshiwon. It is a walk-in closet. A real contrast to my university office. Goshiwons were originally set up for students preparing for exams who wanted a quiet, convenient place to stay when studying. There are thousands of goshiwons all over Korea, with the biggest concentration around universities. It’s very quiet. Like a meditation room.

Here is some more info on my new living quarters (I will not stay a whole year in a Goshiwon, but it will be an interesting communal and cultural experience).

“A goshiwon (고시원) is a small room somewhere around three square metres (1.5 pyeong) that students will often live in for a number of months in order to focus on a test. Goshiwons are generally located inside buildings somewhere around the second to sixth floor or so, and one goshiwon will have a dozen or two people living on one floor. A lot of goshiwons are for students studying for huge tests. These tests (고시 or 考試 is another name for test in Korean) are similar to a bar exam in the sense that they give accreditation for certain positions, and due to their importance people will often live in a goshiwon and do nothing but study for a number of months to be sure to pass the test. Goshiwons include a large number of people from smaller cities who do not have family nearby and need an inexpensive place to live.

At the same time, goshiwons are a remarkably cheap way of living in the country if one does not mind the small space, especially for a few months. Prices in a goshiwon will range from 200,000 to 400,000 won per month, and sometimes more.”

My goshiwon is about $280 a month. So that’s not too bad.

I can’t wait to climb all these mountains around me in the spring. I have the best of both worlds here. I am right around the corner from the subway which goes right into Seoul (unlike where I was living before) and I am in the mountains.

I will post pictures soon.

TEXT

I discovered
much later, for
instance
the social
economics
of language

2/10/06

I want to populate new cities

A thicker ear abstracts me

Tea tends to give me the trots

And alas this dust unsettles me

2/14/06

Valentines Day

the six-year olds
gave me
chocolate &
socks

2/17/06

This is JakJeon

A constant buzz of lights

The smells are strong and the pavement is uneven

My hands are filthy and my mouth is drying out

2/22/06

Korea is inefficient but some of the folks are fantastic

Everything is in the air

I’m leaving Wonderland for Gyeongin National University

Just like a faucet there’s comfort
in the sound
of small drops
through a pinhole

2/23/06

I do believe
I have a naked
craving

no one makes these rules

my movements
are regular
& my shit
floats

there are different names for the same thing

God knows justice is smug

P
L
O
P

P
L
O
P

boil the burns
stitch the season
& I’ll follow you
into this dark

from top to bottom:

1) famous Korean king

2) Peking duck (in a nice park in Seoul)

3) Quick shot of Osaka, Japan

4) A Buddhist temple in the middle of the city (sinchon I think)

5) Old Buddhist temple in Seoul

In order from top to bottom:

1) Live Jazz club in Seoul (Itewon)

2) food stand (they are everywhere in Seoul. Cheap and good on the tummy after a few pints)

3) My compact apartment

I’ve tentatively decided to name this new project/ms WONDERLAND. It fits perfectly. Here are a few more rough entries. All of these are unrevised. I will revise more later.

1/22/06

My anti-hero has painful hiccups

At the end of this journey
I will become a blip
in other words in or
above the clouds.

I keep hearing Mona’s meow but she is halfway across the world.

The coffee was warm but my foot is asleep.

Does it take longer to spot or spy?
Both require my small eye.

1/24/06

It’s really
moment by
moment

what a glorious
failure

paying at-
tention is hard

2/4/06

Six days till payday and I have ten dollars left

I am keeping it cool

2/6/06

Four days till payday

I am still cool

2/7/06

Incomplete language does not truncate desire
My mother tongue is on the roof
of my mouth

This is not London

This is not Seattle

This is not Portadown

My Irish tongue wants back

I have too many tongues

This is not Ireland
This is not America
This is not England

I have an Irish cousin teaching in Seoul.

His tongue is almost my tongue.

2/9/06

This is not a school. Money rules the roost. Grades? It don’t mean a thing. GATE is being branded. The students are branded. Wonderland is branded. I speak for the brand. I will speak to mothers for the fourth time while another brand translates. The big brand wants more money. It’s for the children. There is no other place to put it. A complete tour takes 10,000 years. Swallow until the organ is gone. Even stagnant air sings.

I lost the usb cord for my camera, but as soon as I find one I will post some pictures from Korea and from my recent visit to Osaka, Japan. In the meantime, here are some more notes from Korea:

1-14-06

This is a dry climate. Dust builds on the counters. Everyone’s older on the slush. A ghostly rat rides me. Saving face in all the rooms without keen interrests. Ten years out the machine backs down and each neuron drifts. It’s not a dream but it still drives me batty.

I wanted to travel lighter. I sold almost all my books to travel the world. If I get through this will I write poetry? What is this and what am I writing? Don’t let me be lonely.

I want to read for the first time. Without an as or an if. Put the pins back in the soap. Sometimes the music is too weak. Coming out and wanting my mind back.

This is not
the end or
it is the beginning

I am still thinking with my old mind. Where is my new mind?
Minimalism attracted me for a long time. We’ll see what happens.

1-18-6

One step ahead with a double-sided phrase. Trumpet call for a wedding feast. Broke into my own skin, now what? My lord’s body is too shiny. My sibs are spread across the world. A shiver or two stains my sleep. What can I say? The heater heats the Soju in my tummy. Word instate. When was my last day in America? Still too early to tell. It’s in the writing but mind the gaps. Where is my outline. An apple is still an apple even in Korea. It’s impossible to say WHAT awaits. There might be snow but it could be pollution. The dust keeps settling in my room. My head sticks to the window of ________. To whom do I dictate and why? A soft serial with tongue in mind.

MIND THE GAP

Calling Carolina from South Korea

I’m leaning too heavy
on myself and my mouth
is dry

The view is forbidden, absent, all the same
I’m happy but a little less
up on my words

12-26-05

Mona is warm
and my lap is warm
when we will I hear this purr?

Iris chases a fake mouse
and climbs the walls

sharp branches scrape
the roof

silent Boxing Day
without snow

1-1-06

I am flying to Korea. I am on a plane flying to Korea. I want to hold it between my hands. My soul houses a soul. The plane houses a few hundred people. Down below the world resembles an ice rink.

I am on a long flight from Chicago to Seoul. Altitude 38400 feet. Speed 466 MPH. Only five hours in the air and it feels like days. This is the fastest manner.

Traditional Korean meal on the plane washed down with Hite. I haven’t slept. Left at 8 am on December 31st. Now it is Jan 1st 10:17 AM. Where does time go? Time is first to go.

I think in the distance
It was raining and I don’t have an umbrella
Enough fish oil repels
The person on the left is eating raw cow tongue
The sexiest food creates an awkward movement

To get it right with standard meteorologists
the usual cart of drinks and the faces of people
returning from the toilet or waking after never really sleeping

What are you thinking? What do you think? What thinks?

I am not innocent but I am
not a spectator
This is a very expensive earnestness
And I am waiting for events to turn tacit
Two days in Korea and I’ve lost my validity

1-3-06

Setting the stage for recrowned lovers
start suffering
DAP
stop suffering
DAP

to tell something to someone MAKES difference

free up the ante. gas up. what hopes feel tenuous with a stance in silence. directions all go for a fuck. everywhere going and gone. when to stop is one last thing I neither wrote nor translated.

1-7-06

my first week in Korea was a whirlwind
a wet finger through the ringer
it’s nice to be foreign without looking for an emergency exit
sliding on the cold seat I can’t see straight
compositions of a dead lizard
disposition for abstract bananas
preparations for the elderly
shotguns shells on the Christmas tree
poetry block awareness
dissembling rebirth and recreation
trans port action against the odds and figuring out
four new moleskins

1-11-06

SEX WORKERS DEMAND BETTER WORKING CONDITIONS

Equanimity. An even field. Late for work and a new table is delivered by a man who speaks no English. Last week it was lost in Seoul. Today a lost key. This is a sketchy part of Incheon. Lots of neon and one-hour motels. The mob runs this place. Cheap pictures of girls littered on the ground. Equal to what? Can I be yr baby tonight? Bent bow before a nameless face. Everybody wants to go forever or be a cracked. My lady’s body / is just own reflection /even the entry is leased/What powers this emergency? There is love on the pillow and crust in my eye.

1-12-06

It is raining and Incheon lights reflect off the water. This is Incheon but more specifically Jakjeon. Jakjeon is a red light district.

There are children across from the brothels who attend the school where I work.

This is not a rough area
This is a rough area
For whom is this area rough?
All my areas were rougher than this area

I am white and stand out. I am tall and stand out. I wear my white headphones.

I take the elevator down in the morning. I walk through the red light district. Neon pops. There are castles with neon hearts. Characters indicate techniques and a “rest for your penis.”

I take the elevator up to Wonderland. I walk into the lounge. I wait. I watch. I teach.

I just back from Seoul. I love that city. So much energy. I picked up a nice leather briefcase for work and a beautiful Buddhist bell. Met some college students who wanted to practice their English with me. I saw three other white people in the whole city. It was a really great experience. But then I lost Vicky and Jimmy (my Korean hosts). Figuring out the subway back from Seoul was easy. But I got off at the Bus terminal and tried asking what bus to take for Wal Mart. I couldn’t communicate. So I walked around outside. I didn’t know my address and I forgot the name of our area. So I walked around trying to ask for Wal Mart. After many failed attempts I hailed a taxi and told them I wanted Wal mart. The taxi driver said “Wal Marte.” I said “yes Wal Mart.” So he took me on the freeway and 10,000 won later I was at Wal Mart. But it was the wrong one. I tried to explain I wanted “the other Wal Mart” but he didn’t understand. So he took me to the Juan train station and I asked around
and retraced my route and started over. I went back to the Bupyong station and got another train back to the bus terminal. I walked outside and just walked toward the lights asking if anyone spoke English. I found a twenty something Korean who wanted to help but did not speak English. He spoke Korean and I spoke English. After a lot of gesturing I managed to explain I was looking for a fancy restaurant by my apartment named Soporro. He seemed to understand and took me to a soup restaurant. He asked people on the street if they spoke English and pointed to me. We finally found someone that spoke a little English. I told him I wanted the Wal Mart around the corner from Soporro Japanese Restaurant. I gestured a lot with my hands to indicate it was a big restaurant and said “fancy” a lot. He said, “I get it but it’s far away. You need a taxi.” So he hailed a taxi and told him to take me to Soporro restaurant by Wal Mart. The taxi driver got on the freeway and it looked like the same route as the first time so I said, “no not that Wal Mart. Other Wal Mart.” But he thought he had it right and said, “Wal Mart and Soporro restaurant.” So after a lot of failed attempts to explain I ended up at a Chinese restaurant called Soporro which was across from the wrong Wal Mart. So I paid my 8,000 Won and just got out. I walked to the wrong Wal Mart and tried to find someone who understood a little English. I found a young guy and asked if there was another Wal Mart in Incheon. He found a supervisor and was very helpful. He wrote down the address of the other Wal Mart on a piece of cardboard so I could give it to a taxi driver. I really should have got out and went into that Wal Mart the first time. So I hailed another taxi and gave him the piece of cardboard with the address of the other Wal Mart in Korean. 8,000 Won later I was finally around the corner from my apartment at the right Wal Mart. It is now almost 2 AM and what would normally take about an hour on the subway ended up taking over five hours. I am drinking some warm tea and I am treasuring this piece of cardboard. It is going with me wherever I go. I am also going to learn some basic survival Korean and take my phrasebook with me no matter where I go.

So it was an experience. I am glad to be warm. I am just laughing it off.

Whew!

I’ve been in Korea for a week but it feels like years. I really like the Soju ( a hard rice based liquor). I have been teaching little kids this week but I will teach older kids soon in a program called GATE (gifted and talented education). It’s been really busy. Yesterday i worked from 9 AM and didn’t get home until 9 PM, but it should level out soon. The GATE program is an elite program and the school is developing the English program so it’s hectic right how.

I am also enjoying sitting on the floor with a nice cushion. It’s a lot more comfortable than I thought it would be. I went to a barber shop only to find it was a brothel and they didn’t like foreigners (there was a spinning pole that indicated a barber shop but that’s just a disguise. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Wal mart has helped me out. I’ve been there every night this week for supplies. But even Wal Mart is a strange experience in Korea. No one speaks English and it smells very strange.

I’m enjoying the school even with the long hours this week. The little kids are very eager. The food really is amazing. I’ve eaten a lot of BBQ pig intestines and feel great. The spicyness sits well with my bowels.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I’m going to visit Seoul. It should be interesting.

The little things make a difference. I just got a pillow from Wal Mart and I am in heaven. The school provided a rock for my head and it wasn’t good enough.

I should have some pictures soon. I will take my camera to Seoul tomorrow and hopefully get some cool pics.

I hope I will have time to write some poetry soon. I just have to keep reminding myself it’s only been a week since I wrote poetry. It really does feel like years.

Dried squid, pork, and octopus.

YUM YUM!!!

check out the latest issue of free verse. A nice section on experimental Irish poetry with some sections from my recently renamed manuscript CHAIN.

Free verse mag

Some interesting stories from my first week in Korea coming soon. Stay tuned.

I am moving to Korea in two weeks for a one year teaching contract. It is a very good deal. Free lodging, HEALTH BENEFITS, good pay. Plus a culture I am not at all familiar with. I posted my cv on an ESL job board and the next day I got six requests for phone interviews. Amazing. So less than two weeks later I have signed a contract and they are paying for my flight. I will teach elementary kids English in Incheon (right outside Seoul). 25 hours a week. No composition essays to grade. I will save about $14,000 for the year after my living expenses and potential travels to China, Japan etc. All around good deal.

I almost accepted a teaching job in Poland, but with a few outside bills it would be really tight. I am considering going to Poland and teaching later. I’ll see how the year goes, but I may just travel around eastern Europe after Korea and teach ESL. I need to see and experience a little more of the world now that I’ve lived in the U.S. for 18 years. The sad thing is I am going to drop off a shitload of poetry books at the Bookshop in chapel Hill because I am moving out permenantly and I can’t lug around all my books.

I also just purchased a 12 inch Powerbook so I will post to the blog about once a week while I am in Korea.

I am going to choose about five books of poetry for my trip (I am going to store about two boxes of poetry books while I am gone).

I have two questions:

1) If you could pick five books of poetry to take with you for a one year stint in another country, which five?

2) Anyone know any Korean poets of the experimental kind?

I am often feel like I have to have something great when maybe the great is right in front of me.

Innocent people suffer. The less innocent subsidize. Is this not the case? There was of course fierce resistance. A never-ending reflection the writer must smash. He was assassinated while saying Mass. Never happened even while it was happening. Is all this dead? The answer is yes. Language was employed to keep thought at bay. You may suffocate but it’s comfortable. The greatest show on the road. Lie back on these words. Impotent irrelevant and detained without process. We don’t do body counts. Blood is too dirty when making sincere speeches. Sucked up the nose and into the throat a 4 yr old asks, ““When do I get my arms back?”” The mutilated rot in their beds. Bullets are born. Full spectrum dominance means 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. The disempowered grow daily. God is good; God is great; my God is good. Fire from heaven and blood without fuss. We are not barbarians. Sickened shamed and angered without coherent force. Serious sincere curiously attractive. Writing is a naked activity and some of the whims are icy.

Listen to the speech here:

Harold Pinter’s Speech

After leaving the Mormon church, I immersed myself in Buddhism and Eastern Spirituality. But it become a problem when I mixed it up with stoicism. From an early age I experienced emotions as negative. I did cry. But anything male was very negative. I was not what you might call handy. I had bushy blond hair and was very sensitive. Girls liked me, but mostly as friends.

I’ve hid away my aggression for a long time.

I thought aggression was part of the bombs. A bomb blew off a guys legs. He was in a blue van. His legs looked like a piece of carpet on the street. A bloody piece of carpet. He was screaming and it affected me quite a bit.

I value compassion, but in cutting off “negative emotions” I might limit my ability for compassion.

I think I might have been happier when I believed in a still small voice. Now I am painfully self-conscious.

I write for immersion. Not in the sense of mind-numbing. But to lose myself. I don’t want self-expression. I want out of my self as much as possible. But I want awareness while out of my self.

I count my breaths but maybe it’s time to try other types of meditation.

I am afraid if I let in too much emotion, I will break down and not recover. Sounds dramatic I know. But there’s a lot lurking.

I would like to try some visualization. Maybe I’ll look into that.

Nihilism has been too strong a feeling for the last four or five months.

There is so much suffering out there and in here.

Since the still small voice told me Mormonism was the one and only true church and I now believe it was all bullshit, I have a difficult time trusting instincts, emotions etc.

Poetry is the place where I go to let go of my self-consciousness.

The still small voice has become a booming of many voices.

Art is an emptying out.

Never mind the beasts

I learned a lot this weekend

Especially about my life

The Atlanta Poets Group reminded me why art matters

There really is a difference between college poetry scenes and scenes outside the university (non career poets for one thing)

It was nice to finally meet Laura Carter in person

We spent some good time discussing the ceiling

The Eyedrum was a terrific space

A big warehouse with some fascinating art

It was a paradise at the home of John, Tracy, and Randy. Books everywhere

Some real jewels and some good trades

John Lowther is one hell of an intense and genuine fellow

Randy Prunty traded some Maurice Scully for my copy of Perhaps This is A Rescue Fantasy. YES!!!!

We all got a big packet of AGP books

I am very excited to dive in

But first I have to read 120 English 101 essays on waste/efficiency, “my generation,” and some essays on William Burroughs

Athens was a blast

I enjoy drinking again

I am too much in my head

I need to move out of my head

A little too much self-loathing

I’ve got to get out of my room and talk to people

Socializing can revitalize me

I don’t want to be a hermit anymore

Sabrina, Kristen, and Brian were great hosts

Sabrina Orah Mark was intense

I wanna check out her Babies

Check out our performance from Athens here (thanks Didi):

LUCIFER POETICS GROUP IN ATHENS

Also, here is an audio file of the Lucifer Poetics Group in Baltimore last summer (thanks Matthew Shindell):

LUCIFER POETICS GROUP IN BALTIMORE

On the lucipo listserv there was a recent spate of discussions about projects and individual poems. I tend to value the book over the individual poem. I can name my favourite books much easier than my favourite poems.

However, Carl Martin helped me with his critique of projects. A project can delude the writer into proclaimations of profoundness. This is not always the case of course (Duncan/Olsen are excluded from this critique for example). This made me rethink form. Form, especially in Post-Avant poetics, seems highly valued. Form and book length projects. Whereas a lot of mainstream poetics have collections of individual poems. This is not always true. There are always exceptions.

I wanted to center book two of Resident Alien around kings. I also structured it in groups of three (three line poems as snapshots). Now I am l not satisfied. I realize the king idea is a little forced in places. it’s forced because I want to make it thematically cohere. It’s helped a lot to let go of that. Revising, rethinking, reworking. My energy is back in full swing!

Going to try out some revisions and new poems from RA 2 this weekend in Athens and Georgia.

Sometimes I feel like all the profound spiritual poetry is a fraud/delusion etc. Other times I desperately seek it.

boredom is blocked energy

Mairead Byrne shows me the way beyond the page

I’m humped and it’s good to let off a load.

Another Lucifer Poetics roadtrip this weekend. We are going to read in Atlanta, GA and Athens, GA

I am very excited to meet some of the Atlanta Poets Group. I think Brian Howe and I are going to try out some of collaboration: This is the Motherfucking Remix.

Here are the details and lineup for Atlanta (if you are in the area come meet us, hang etc.)

Friday, Dec. 2nd
8 PM
EYEDRUM Suite 8, 290 MLK Jr. Drive SE, Atl, GA 30312
p. 404.522.0655
EYEDRUM
$4 donation

Ken Rumble
Julian Semilian
Todd Sandvik
Tim Earley
Brian Howe
Randall Williams
Marcus Slease
David Need
Ted Pope

I heard his name all the time growing up. I was always a Liverpool supporter, but I still pretended to be Georgie Best. As a young boy from Northern Ireland living in England, I was especially chuffed he was from Belfast.

Goodbye Georgie Best

feeling mighty fine this morning. It’s cold and rainy. My kind of weather. I’ve got one class for next semester. Hopefully I’ll pick up four or five more.

I’m going to use Rothenberg’s Technicians of the Sacred, Waldman’s Life or Death, and Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. An examination of spirtuality and the word.

I’m hoping to pick up some humanities courses at A&T university. Refresh my Greek gods.

Now I am going in the front room to watch Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia. I’ve been really enjoying watching the Hellraiser movies lately. Watching pain empties the brainpan.

More animal less human!

CHECK IT OUT:

miPO Radio

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My best sex was when it was prohibited. We hung pictures of Jesus on the ceiling to try and stay righteous. I ended up coming while looking at Jesus on the ceiling.

Maybe I need Jesus again!

BUY YR T-SHIRT HERE

Ever since Scott Pierce visited these parts, my forehead has felt strange. Every time I touch it, it feels like thin paper. Maybe rice paper?

In other news, I am writing some children’s passages for a freelance gig (thanks to Todd Sandvik). The audience is lower income African American boys with low reading comprehension. It’s really interesting toying around with sentence structures and seeing how it changes the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (under readability stats in Word).

Right now I am working on a short fiction piece about freedom fighters. I think it will take place just beyond a forest in a swamp.

Showed my Lit class Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy. They didn’t laugh. Why?

Serious playfulness is seriously needed among students!

Also, interesting to see the review of Pull my Daisy in the NY Times.

Gregory Korso?????

NY Times Review

I am really enjoying reading Amy King’s blog. I especially liked her statement about liking more personal poetry blogs. I’ve often felt I am not intellectual enough. Haven’t read enough. Everyone is smarter than me etc.

Wearing knowledge lightly.

Intelligence is a constant conflict (parent’s dropped out before high school level in Ireland and England). I mean I often feel guilty. I like the innocent stumbling. My head gets too full and I get too anxious.

Beer drinking and poetic discourse.

Also, wondering what Estonia is like this time of year. Damn sick of sweaty palms!

Is my forehead really paper?

I am reading Ann Waldman’s Kill or Cure. How could I have missed her? Also, David Meltzer’s David’s Copy.

The NY School and Beat aesthetics are endlessly fascinating.

Collage is not a fashion. Information and language mutates. Collage is a technique and can produce different results.

High/low was dismantled, but I still have that damn pipe-smoking British chap in my head.

Intelligent people spoke the Queen’s English.

I moved to England (Milton Keynes) and spoke with a Northern Irish accent. Sound tied to intelligence.

Maybe I should accept the luxuries I have instead of feeling guilty?

Guilt and religion. Fear and guilt. Knots and guilt.

I feel lonely somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

I will not commit myself to death just yet.

Melodramatic is too mellow. That’s the problem.

Human touch is NOT overrated.

Paper IS underrated.

Check out the audio of this strange performance last night at The Blue Door:

Randall Pelosi

Sarah Manguso and Julian Similian rocked at the DC.

Julian unleashed a gigantic snake and Sarah moved us elliptical.

Sarah was funny. Sometimes quirky. Sarah delved into love and death in non-ironic ways without shame!

Julian took us into letters from a far off country.

Then Scott Pierce read some great selections, one of which is due out next year from Spork Publishing (The Exploder)

I interviewed Scott for almost two hours on Thursday evening. An edited version of the interview and his reading will be available via Mipo radio soon.

Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, here are some pics from the Blue Door Reading

Check out my reviews of Mairead Byrne and kate Greenstreet at:

My Poetry Reviews

Also check out David Need’s second article on Rilke:

David Need’s article

Stacey Harwood’s and Michael Parker’s second article will be coming soon.

If you have a book/chap/journal you would like to have considered for a review, please stop by our guidelines.

http://www.mipoesias.com

Dan Albergotti read as part of the UNC Greensboro reading series. Check out the audio here:

Dan Albergotti Reading

Don’t forget you can subscribe to miPo Radio (and my audio) by clicking on the link to the right (subscribe via itunes) or by visiting the link in this post and subscribing via other routes.

Of course the audio subscription is free.

Some good readings already recorded and many more to come.

TEXT

this seems like a good reference tool for publishing etc.

check it out:

Poetry Resource page

Terrific readings last night at the Desert City and Blue Door Reading series (Randall Williams, John Taggart, and Joe Donahue). I recorded Joe Donahue’s reading for miPo Radio. I will also record various other readings in NC. You can listen to Joe’s reading (and subscribe via itunes etc.) by clicking here:

Joseph Donahue Reading at the Blue Door

CLICK HERE

I realize this distinction is too simple and needs a lot of asides etc. But I found it very helpful to read volume one and volume two of Jerome Rothenberg’s Poems for the millennium and compare it to say the latest Norton anthologies of poetry. Both the Norton and Rothenberg anthologies have some poets in common, but it seems to me the Norton is A LOT more narrow in terms of the possibilities of poetry.

The more contemporary poetry I read, the more I notice differences between SOQ and avant poetics. But I had to read a shitload of all kinds of poetry. Both wide and deep as they say. I think the poetry from these various traditions is much more than style.

Maybe those differences are challenged with the youngish poets whose work is published with Fence, Verse, Jubilat, Conduit and so on?

I am not sure, but I would lean toward saying no. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading some of the poets in these mags and books from these presses. Or that their poetry is somehow not as “good” because it doesn’t feel avant to me. I try to read books of poetry on their own terms. I am very familiar with a wide-range of poetry (Albert Goldbarth, Seamus Heaney, Dean Young, James Tate, Stephen Dobyns, Jorie Graham AND James Joyce, Bruce Andrews, Ron Silliman, Robert Duncan, Clark Coolidge, Zukofsky, Basil Bunting etc.

I also don’t exclude a poet or poetry if it doesn’t “fit” my idea of Post-Avant or SOQ. But I do think there are significant traditions behind both. I find almost all of the poetry at Barnes and Nobles uninteresting and most (not all) do seem to fit into SOQ (for lack of a better term). The Post-Avant and historical avant garde are much more diverse.

It makes me wonder a bit in terms of American politics. The common notion is the Republicans kicked ass because they managed a unified front whereas the Democrats had too many splinters and were less centralized.

In no way do I think so-called SOQ are like Republicans in terms of politics, but the structures might be similiar. I mean, the various avant and post-avants seem very decentralized and therefore less seen (small press history is essential to any study of the innovative traditions in poetry).

All in all, I think avant garde as a label sends up too many cardboard one-dimensional assumptions. Maybe innovative poetics is better? Ditto SOQ. Maybe the terms need to be more descriptive (and tentative) than evaluative?

Labels suck. They should be questioned. But no one reads poetry without all of their previous reading experiences.

I love Rennaisance English poetry and the Metaphysical poets. I also love The Canterbury Tales.

I think the assumptions of fads and “make it new” in terms of innovative/experimental poetry need constant re-evaluation.

The Romantics may be the first in the history of innovative poetics.

One big project of the historical avant garde is to narrow the distance between life and art.

As a whole, I don’t think this is the case with more mainstream practices.

Even the easy-going conversational poetry needs constant tweaking (Billy Collins uses language to break down the distinctions between life and art so does that mean he is part of the innovative tradition in poetry?)

There are a lot of poets slavishly imitating the romantics with their descriptive nature poetry etc. To my mind, that is not in the spirit of the romantics.

Yet, even the Romantics are diverse. In terms of canonization, can most folks name three poets who were NOT Romantics writing around the time of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats etc.?

Anyway, for me it’s about the possibilities of poetry. The sheer range of avant or post-avant practices really opens up possibilies for my life (and art).

I wanna question art constantly.

My new stuff IS better than my old stuff.

Damn, who was I kiddin!

I am reviewing books of poetry for MiPoesias magazine. Details are as follows:

REVIEWS: POETRY BOOKS, CHAPS AND JOURNALS

To be considered for a review, please send your printed material to

MiPoesias Magazine

C/O Marcus Slease

118 A South Mendenhall Street

Greensboro, NC 27403

Please note that NOT all printed material will be reviewed. Our reviews are based at our discretion.

ONLINE PUBLISHERS

Send your URL to our submission e-mail address and request your online publication to be reviewed on MiPoesias Magazine. Same policy applies as for print reviews.

Please visit MiPoesias. The newest issue features an excellent essay on Rilke by David Need and there’s lots of great audio. This is not your typical online poetry journal.

MiPOesias

Overall, I do believe in progress. It wakes me up in the morning. I think my poetics have moved in different directions over the past year or so and so I tucked away my first ms from about three years ago. But I am revisiting it and enjoying how different it is from Resident Alien. This ms, currently titled Mouth Harp, is much more image-driven and connects more to the period style (soft surrealism, juxtapositions of found language, humor via found language, absurdity etc.)

I am going to revise it this weekend and send it out to some first book contests in the near future. I think it might have a better chance of publication than Resident Alien at this point.

After finishing Tom Raworth’s collected poems, I really started questioning my assumptions about progress. I do believe in breakthroughs (which happen again and again in different contexts) but I don’t know if breakthroughs have to imply a kind-of linear progression.

Maybe a building/adding.

Here’s a little experiment (if anyone wants to try it)

1) take some poems by a poet you are not familiar with (this would have to be an older poet with a wide range of work)

2) shuffle the poems so the dates of publication are not linear (which may differ from the date of composition of course)

3) try to rearrange the poems by date of publication or periods (early, middle, and late)

Is it possible that early, middle, and late are mostly random categories? Or do they connect explicitly to both cultural context AND “maturity of style?”

I am thinking of Yeats. He starts with some Pre-Raphaelite inspired verse and then moves into “his own.” But his obsessions are quite constant (mysticism, cycles of history etc.)

But is Yeats one of the exceptions? In other words, do we divide an artists career into early, middle, and late or early/mature to reinforce our desire for progress and inviduality?

Or better yet, what is style? What does it mean?

I do want to get better.

Am I better today than 10 yrs ago?

My ideas are better, I think.

Hopefully you’ll hear something interesting if you tune in to my broadcast at miPO Radio.

You can subscribe to my podcast on miPO radio via itunes, rss feed, or odeo here:

Marcus Slease miPO Radio

subscribe via odeo

Please check it out. I might call you soon for an interview, musical performance, or perhaps even a preparation headstand!

I can’t decide between Narcoleptic Lawn and King Gorged for book two of Resident Alien. Any thoughts?

Geraldine Monk

Geraldine Monk info

Review of Monk’s Noctivagations

Tom Raworth

Tom Raworth EPC page

Tom Raworth Homepage

video of Tom Raworth Reading

Maggie O’Sullivan

Maggie O’Sullivan info

Maggie O’Sullivan MP3 files

head:

by which information is transferred from an electrical signal to the recording medium, or vice versa

miPO radio is really kicking ass. Check out the latest shows (Asian-American poets, reading poetry by others, an interview with Rita Maria Martinez). I have a few recordings on the show of Resident Alien and a reading of Interregnum by Geraldine Monk. If you haven’t read Geraldine Monk check out her work. It’s coming from British Objectivism, ecopoetics, female Magic/ witches, shamanism etc.

Real language magic.

miPO Radio

What is the difference between a serial poem and a long poem?

I had a really great time reading/listening/chatting on Saturday.

Great to see close friends from Greensboro (Angie and Jake, Lori, Fay, Ezra) and lots of Lucifers:

I’ve always been interested in the ritual/chant aspects of language and a few years ago I wrote an MA poetry thesis on Nous, and Greek philosophy in general, which really tried to explore the relationships, and tensions, between the mind and body.

I used a lot of techniques from Jorie Graham’s Swarm and Cole Swenson’s Try. The language I used to enact this exploration was highly intellectualized and used a lot of abstractions via the specialized discourse of philosophy. I felt something vital was missing. I was very distant from the work.

So I turned my attention to more mainstream work and entered the MFA world and wrote lots of first person, narrative, epiphanic, and quirky narrative poetry. I felt I risked more in these poems, but I still felt unsatisfied with ignoring the intellectual aspects of my being.

It was the tail end of the Desert City Reading two years that turned everything around and helped me renegotiate the abstract/personal, the mind/body. Mark Wallace, Lorianne Graham, and Rod Smith read fast and weaved found language, humor, and speed (among many many other things) and I realized I needed to let go, relearn, and tumble. Velocity was the key.

My passion for more experimental poetry kicked in again and I went on a frantic quest of trading in hundreds of poetry books and really studying poetry from the historical avant garde and reading lots of experimental contemporary poetry. I also read a lot of books/anthologies about experimental poetry such as The World in Time and Space and Telling it Slant, Poetry On and Off the Page, A Poetics. This helped me to contextualize experimental poetry and see its sociohistorical roots etc.

The reading wasn’t systematic, but it was one big wave of total immersion.

Tom Raworth, Rod Smith, Mark Wallace, Maggie O’Sullivan, Lyn Hejinian, Clark Coolidge, Geraldine Monk, and Robert Duncan really opened up my field of possibilites unlike anything previously.

During this time Tony Tost, Brian Howe, Patrick Herron, Evie Shockley, Ken Rumble, Joseph Donahue, Brian Howe, Chris Vitiello, Randall Williams, Todd Sandvik, and I started to form a friendship (maybe a few others?) and Joe Donahue suggested a name inspired by a section in Pound’s cantos which said Lucifer fell in North Carolina. We had some small meetings that summer and then, more or less, Lucifer Poetics exploded. Lots of local “members,” a listserv, and various projects by individual members such as Patrick’s amazing Carrboro Poetry Festival, Tony’s Fascicle, Todd Sandvik’s Blue Door, and Ken’s Desert City Reading series all sparked an amazing energy. The energy is still going strong.

All of this energy and support helped me to reformulate my relationship to my intellect and body. It’s still a very big tension, but I’ve found a way to work it.

I’ve thought about this before, but I am realizing more and more the value of thinking of my self and my work in terms of waves and particles. The waves are a rush of sound mixed with philosophy and the particles are more conscious new sentences constructed via parataxis etc.

So when I started Campanology (now Resident Alien) I tried to immitate Tom Raworth, Clark Coolidge, Maggie O’Sullivan, and Rod Smith. When I read my work I read fast and focused on the qualities of sound (always been an obssession due in part to my lost Irish accent). I wanted to subvert the intellect in favor of sound.

Then on a reading tour with some the Lucifer Poetics Group last summer, I had a good stoned conversation with Rod Smith. He mentioned how quite a few younger poets were immitating the reading style of Tom Raworth and so I began to rethink or question that strategy in terms of my own work.

I realized I needed more subtle modulation. Speeding up, slowing down, luring my readers via waves of new sentences then exploding into sound particles.

I am still reformulating this strategy right now with book two of Resident Alien (currently titled King Gorged).

I suppose another way to get at this tension is the Apollonian and Dionysian on a personal and social level.

But it was the Desert City Reading Series that started this amazing journey. So it was a great honor to read in the series last Saturday with the fabulous Brenda Coultas,

I’ve got some samples from Resident Alien in the latest Mipo radio broadcast. Interesting radio programme (check it and subscribe to the podcast).

Here is the link to subscribe to iTunes:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=74194035

Here is the link for the web site:

http://miporadio.libsyn.com/

Here is a link to the show I appear in:

http://miporadio.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=21621

Here’s the poster Todd Sandvik made:

Perhaps many of you know this already, but I continue to find it fascinating. A society that uses sex to diffuse violence etc. A more equal relationship between males and females. Lots of diverse sexual practices.

Is it too late for us.

Lots of info on the Bonobo. Check it out:

Bonobos

our friends

watched the movie Crash last night. Really well done. Much better than Shortcuts or Magnolia etc. in weaving multiple plots and characters. The movie deals with race with compassion and complexity.

See it if you haven’t already.

I cried three times during the movie (which is very unusual for me).

Reading Mark Wallace’s Temporary Worker Rides a Subway and watched In the Realms of the Unreal and they triggered some strange neuron firings this morning.

I am in an airport full of Japanese folks. It’s a small airport. I am trying to get to Washington state (Bellingham to be exact) for a worker’s union meeting for the Vivian girls. I find some loud country folk in the corner of the airport and ask them where I am and they laugh and tell me “the center of the bum universe.” I show them my boarding pass and they scrutinize it and walk away shaking their heads. When I look down at my boarding pass it’s just a sketch of a little girl with a penis with the words HATE and LOVE scribbled on the side. When I go to the security checkpoint they tell me I am in Reno, Nevada and the airport will soon close due to a sandstorm and hand me a coupon for Krispy Cremes and a hot dog.

Then I am in Times Square in NY and it’s 1982 and people are breakdancing and keep asking me the time. Some small African American boys rapping tell me I am fading and to look for Daren in Milton Keynes (England).

So I am on a subway and everyone speaks via hand signs or small chalkboards. When they write on the chalkboard it’s in all caps and does not correspond to typical communication. They tell me this is the new age. The picture theory of the universe has retreated to the planet Kolob (a planet behind the sun where Joseph Smith thought god lived).

So off I go on a train with a six pack of Carling Black Label and holding hands with little blond girls singing “I’ve got friends in low places” (that Garth Brooks song).

I am now awake. I went straight to the computer in a haze and wrote this down.

Now I need some coffee.

Google the word “failure” and look at what’s first.

I am wondering what the ratio might be between ancient art celebrating the life giving powers of the penis versus ancient art celebrating the life giving powers of the vagina?

Sometimes I feel guilt for having a penis. I mean all the horrible history (the many relationships between violence and the penis both literally and symbolically).

But other times it feels good to celebrate the penis (as well as the vagina).

What a long complex history of shame and guilt about female and male genitals. Why? Power and pleasure. Religion.

It’s an ongoing struggle. Pleasure can be chaotic, animal-like and must be controlled via shame and guilt. The shame and guilt can often manifest in monstrous ways.

When a woman makes a joke about a big dick it is exciting and powerful. Much different than when a man makes the same joke of course. But I wonder what it would take for men to try on bragging about the vagina? What kind of language? Lick my hood?

I am wondering how the language of the female body can signify energy and motion and power without using the language of the dick banter? Is it possible?

A really terrific reading last night at The Nightlight in Chapel Hill. Some of the DC poets braved the highways and read some fascinating poetry. First up was Kathy Eisenhower. I was not familiar with her work so it was a very nice surprise (like going to a movie you’ve never seen the previews for and it turns out to be a real cracker!) Then Tom Orange with a nice selection and range of poems spanning eight years. A split between particle-based poetics and saturation-based poetics. Scattered atoms looking to hook up with other atoms or/and a nice thick porridge (not in taste but consistency etc.) Then Adam Good read from some really fascinating projects. One was a collab with his brother Patrick. They each had a recent issue of the New Yorker mag and performed some cut-ups. Then collab’ed on their cutups and made a mini epic novel called With All My Bones. I really enjoyed listening to how the language negotiated familiar waters and made them strange (worn metaphors etc.) I mean it suggests so much. Yes cutups have been done quite a bit, but the process is still very vital because the language is always shifting. There is an endless supply of mags, newspapers etc. to cutup and I think the results can vary widely. There is a tremendous amount of skill. The poet is very much a part of the process of selection and editing. A good ear and eye. A real attentiveness to the language. Adam and Patrick did a terrific job. After the Goods, Buck Downs read some poems from marijuana Softdrink and some newer and older work that haven’t make it to book form. A real interesting selection. Funny and witty and performed with real gusto and strangeness. If you haven’t read Buck Downs, check him out.

So I was well energies from the DC folks and after the reading Randall (a Lucifer Poetics original) opened up his 100 acre farm for a huge party. Mike Snider played some wonderful folk music (great Bob Dylan covers with the original voice of Mike Snider so it really became Dylan/Snider) Then a hip hop duo called The Living Dead who did a lot of freestyle. Really cool stuff. There was also a nice fire, lots of cardboard and paint for political signs (quite a few people did some interesting paintings/signs), really strong weed (Not from Randall. He doesn’t do it). A large crowd showed up. It was really was in the middle of the woods. All those political activists and people that seemed to care about forging various alternative communities.

There’s always a bit of hope aeh?

A really great night. If only this headache would skeedaddle.

Prepare to be blown away. This is a very promising literary journal (The best new lit journal I have ever witnessed whether print or online). Ambitious. Well-contextualized.

The very highest caliber (as in Sulfur, Jacket etc.)

Prepare to witness some history folks. If Fascicle keeps going for a while, it will be a part of small press history.

Here’s the announcement:

The first issue of Fascicle is here:

FASCICLE

The first issue features a special portfolio of Poems

on Poetry by Hebrew Poets from Spain & Provence (12th

– 15th c.) translated by Peter Cole.

Also featured are the first two Fascicle chapbooks,

Duncan’s Spiders by Paul White, and Quasi Flanders,

Quasi Extremadura by Andrés Ajens (translated by Erin

Mouré).

Issue one includes critical prose by Eliot Weinberger,

Clayton Eshleman, David Rosenberg, Jon Thompson, Tony

Tost, Thomas Basbøll, Graham Foust, Kent Johnson,

Mikhail Epstein, and Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz. Also:

Jonathan Mayhew on Eshleman’s reissued Conductors of

the Pit, and Tony Tost on recent releases.

Fascicle also has a unique feature, Local Poetry News

from 18 different locales/scenes.

There are also interviews with Joseph Donahue and

Standard Schaefer, as well as an extended dialogue

between Dale Smith and Alan Gilbert.

Fascicle also features work from: Fernando Pessoa (tr.

Daniels), Mary Burger, Joan Perucho (tr.

Billitteri/Friedlander), Urmuz (tr. Semilian), Geof

Huth, Coral Bracho (tr. Gander), Pamela Lu, Omar Pérez

(tr. Dykstra/Tejada), Linh Dinh, Rob Stanton, Kent

Johnson, Marcus Slease, Gherasim Luca (tr. Semilian),

Ana Cristina Cesar (tr. de la Torre), Du Fu (tr.

Klein), Mel Nichols, Ariane Dreyfus (tr. Nolan),

Thomas Basbøll, Martha Ronk, Gérard de Nerval (tr.

Lamoureux), Sextus Propertius (tr. Johnston), küçük

Iskender (tr. Nemet-Nejat), Eric Baus, Adam Good,

Stephen Jourdain (tr. K.Waldrop), Joseph Donahue,

Sophocles (tr. Tipton), Ece Ayhan (tr. Nemet-Nejat),

Ken Rumble, Evelyn Schlag (tr. Leeder), Tim Van Dyke,

Daniil Kharms (tr. Ostashevksy), Peter O’Leary, Cesar

Vallejo (tr. Eshleman), Ben Lerner, Li Shangyin (tr.

Klein), Carla Harryman, Lev Rubinshtein (tr.

Metres/Tulchinsky), Evie Shockley, FT Marinetti (tr.

Encke), Aaron McCollough, Anise Koltz (tr. Joris),

Chris Vitiello, Cheng Hui (tr. Bradley), Simon Pettet,

Sappho (tr. Vincent), David Berridge, Valerie Mejer

(tr. Giancola), Buck Downs, Astrid Lampe (tr. Nolan),

Philip Metres, Andrea Zanzotto (tr. Chambliss), José

Martí (tr. Weiss), Todd Sandvik, Dino Campana (tr.

Ballardini), Celal Silay (tr. Nemet-Nejat), Adam Clay,

Sagawa Chika (tr. Nakayasu), Shimon Ballas (tr.

Alcalay/Shelach), Tony Tost, Abe Hinako (tr. Sato),

Lara Glenum, César Marañón (tr. Suárez-Araúz), Ulf

Stolterfoht (tr. R.Waldrop), Mary Margaret Sloan,

Reina María Rodríguez (tr. Dykstra), Judith Goldman,

Rodrigo Garcia Lopes (tr. Daniels), Edna Sarah

Beardsley, José Kozer (tr. Weiss), Jerome Rothenberg,

Meredith Quartermain, Henry Parland (tr. Göranssen),

K. Silem Mohammad, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (tr.

Rothenberg), Standard Schaefer, Wen Yiduo (tr. Klein),

M. NourbeSe Philip, Abelardo Núñez de Arce (tr.

Suárez-Araúz), Alessandro Niero (tr. Sweet), Brent

Cunningham, Takarabe Toriko (tr. Sato), Noah Eli

Gordon, Nguyen Dang Thuong (tr. Dinh), Nishiwaki

Junzaburô (tr. Hirata), Stacy Szymaszek, Jaime Luis

Huenún (tr. Borzutzky), Matthew Henriksen, Bedri Rahmi

Eyüboglu (tr. Nemet-Nejat), Carlos A. Aguilera (tr.

Gudding), Semezdin Mehmedinovic (tr. Alcalay), Can

Yücel (tr. Nemet-Nejat), Tim Peterson, Amalia Iglesias

& Lola Velasco (tr. Mayhew), Salvatore Camilleri (tr.

Ballitteri/Friedlander).

Thanks,

Tony Tost, editor

Kent Johnson, contributing editor (translations)

Chris Vitiello & Ken Rumble, contributing editors

This just in from Michael Magee at Combo Books:

Hi everyone,

It is my distinct pleasure to announce the publication of
the latest Combo Book,

ALSO WITH MY THROAT I SHALL SWALLOW TEN
THOUSAND SWORDS: ARAKI YASUSADA’S LETTERS
IN ENGLISH.

Written under the pseudonym (or hypernym) Tosa
Motokiyu, edited by Kent Johnson and Javier Alvarez,
beautifully and painstakingly designed by Christian
Palino and Prototype Syndicate, perfectbound with a
gorgeous cover involving UV spot-lamination and other
things I don’t understand, you must get your hands on
this book!

It will be available momentarily from Small Press
Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org but you can also
order it (and put significantly more dough in the Combo
Books coffers!) by sending cash or check to:

Combo Books
c/o Michael Magee
7 Old West Wrentham Rd.
Cumberland, RI 02864

The price of the book is 12 dollars.

Here are some examples of advance praise for the
book and/or the Yasusada project generally:

“(The Yasusada Author) has done a brilliant job in
inventing a world at once ritualized and yet startlingly
modern, timeless yet documentary, archaized yet au
courant — a poetic world that satisfies out hunger for the
authentic, even though that autentic world is a perfect
simulacrum…Like Pound’s Homage to Sextus
Propertius, the Yasusada notebooks force us to go
back to the ‘originals’ so as to see what they really were
and how they have been transformed.”

–Marjorie Perloff

“These pidgin English fantasies of poetic mastery are
awful and incredible. Like Frank O’Hara’s ‘poem in
blackface’ they give us pause by giving delight. The
delight, dear reader, is a ruse.It’s the pause that
constitutes their gift.”

–Ben Friedlander

“Here in America, where even our best experimental
writers seem to be constructing gigantic monuments to
their own talents and are eager to lie beside
Wordsworth in some canonical garden, (the Yasusada)
project, whatever it ultimately is or ends up having
been, strikes me as either the most moving, unsettling
and important thing going on right now, or as the most
egregious and dangerous self-delusion in American
letters.”

–Tony Tost

“Joyce and Stein gave us an idea of how the ego talked,
Mallarme and Proust the superego. Now, for the first
time in our era, an unearthing of Araki Yasusada’s
shattering letters and sublime
poem-fragments…shows us how ego and superego
would talk to each other, if only they spoke the same
language.”

–David Rosenberg

Finished reading Robert Kelly’s Runes and now reading Clark Coolidge’s Odes of Roba and a selection of poems from Maureen Owen’s The No-Travel’s Journal.

So ancient places have invaded my mind. Runes/ruins (as Kelly says in the intro to his book), ancient Rome and objects recontextualized and worn on the body (Owen manages to re-invigorate the list poem).

I read and write for the next buzz, the next fix. I am writing/reading for the perfect fix which will never arrive. I am reading/writing to set the world in motion, to rewrite the world and my experiences. The world must be recased. I read/write in order to learn and relearn how to pay attention (a never ending process).

I’ve come to realize how some writers use parataxis better than others. What I mean by better is with an aim toward the social nexus of language. Rather than just seeing all the postmodern (and New Sentence) parataxis as cool and hip, the really great ones use it for reasons, dare I say purposes. Not the same kind of attempt for authorial control as most school of Quietude poetry, but certainly not a complete absence of the author either. I suppose a completely random computer generated text (say a google tool without any imput from the writer) might take the author out of the equation if they don’t tinker or re-arrange anything. But I am happen to find value in some authorial control. Not just mimicing the aesthetics of any given avant garde practice without a solid immersion in the historical/cultural implications or goals of such practices. I’m not saying everyone needs to know a whole lot of theory in order to write interesting poetry, but it is quite easy to spot a poem that is unaware of it’s process/techniques.

Anyway. I must erase everything (but not before inscribing). As Kelly writes in Runes: “A Word is anything that can be erased.”

I just finished reading Kent Johnson’s _Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz_ and it woke me up. I’ve been a bit sluggish (two weeks of only bits of writing). One of the things I found most compelling in Kent’s book is how the speaker is implicated in horrors of war/torture etc. (both post-avant and school of quietude are equally taken to task)

Duncan and Levertov had a falling out over Levertov’s anti-Vietnam poetry. He argued he wasn’t against “political” poetry, but he believed Levertov’s anti-war poetry fell short because the speaker was outside of what she/he was critiquing. Kent’s poems do a great job of asking how poetry matters in a time of war (not to be confused with Gioia’s book). He takes to task people and poets who attempt a self-rightous outsider stance (i.e. Berstein’s reaction to Sam Hamill’s Poets Against the War site (and anthology). Berstein complains of the self-righteous stance of poems with unquestioning political content (perhaps in a similar way to Duncan back in the day). But the irony of his own self-righteous stance (the moral presumptions of poems with overtly political content) is not discussed or acknowledged. Bernstein is a very intelligent man and perhaps is aware of this. But I think it is very healthy to challenge this assumption and re-open the debate of poetry in a time of war (even if it means losing good friends much like Duncan lost the close friendship of Levertov).

Another aspect of Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz that I find compelling is how the poems feel lived/experienced. I know Kent was/is not a soldier in Iraq etc but I get a sense of lived experience in the poems. Perhaps Kent has experienced some of the horrors of war? I think I remember reading (was it in Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz?) that he witnessed a bit of literal war.

The book is very consistent in its call for an honest look at ourselves as writers and persons. How the poems are constructed are not neglected for “content.” Kent/the speaker walks a razor-thin tightrope between nihilism and hope (as did all the great post WWII European existentialists).

All I can say is thank you. I really needed this book right now. It is an ongoing struggle to unite life/art (the common failure of the avant garde). Kent continues this vital and always unfinished project of the avant garde. He uses letters and emails and tackles (literally) current issues of terrorism and complicity and patriotism and blindness etc. Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz helps me remember the interconnectedness of writing/ethics/the body/life.

The semester starts on Monday and I just picked up four classes (just wish adjunct status included benefits). I don’t like to do the same class twice, so I’ve immersed myself in readings for my classes.

Joe Donahue gave me some great advice on teaching a class on the beats. So my topics in British and American Lit class is on beat lit with particular attention to Burroughs and Kerouac (I’m using The Portable Beat Reader, Word Virus, and the Portable Jack Kerouac).

I am really sucked into Burroughs hard-boiled complex matrix of personal and public insights. The surreal elements are very real (in true surreal fashion) and come straight outta lived experience.

I’ve been thinking about authenticity. Burroughs lends authenticity to stories and personal narratives of junk and junkies because his body experienced it (not just imagination). But this is hairy. Can a non-junkie write convincingly about junkies?

I suppose it’s possible but it seems a little rare. I am also re-reading Brenda Coultas’ A Handmade Musuem (I’m really thrilled to read with her this September) and her experiments with public character are lived out (she dives in dumpsters etc.) But what would happen to my reading experiences if I found out she had never even been to Bowery?

Is authenticity mostly on the side of the reader/audience rather than the writer/artist?

And yet authentic as lived experience seems off as well. Is the mind a lived experience? A “lived experience” seems to perpetuate the old Gk. mind/body debacle.

It’s all lived experience. It’s also all body experience (since the mind IS the body). So perhaps types of experiences. Or the veracity of ones imagination. Virtual reality/imagination creates the possible conditions but yr minds gotta do the rest.

No, I don’t believe that. There’s a difference between imagining war and being in war. Saving Private Ryan and D-day on screen IS NOT the same as being there. Sensation overload (even with surround sound) cannot equal the experience of being there.

Maybe it’s because imagination is mostly visual and being there uses more senses?

Ah shit. I am hung over and tired (got really pissed the other night) and my fingers keep slipping between keys and I am just one big knot (not) in my neck and intellect!

1) Ken Rumble getting ready to wet willy Randall (his morning wake-up call. (Wish I looked that sexy w/out my shirt on)

2) Todd and Laura with punk rock legend Mickey (he toured with the sex pistols back in the day. Now he sells his outsider art)

1) Molly engaged in conversation

2) a famous Philly politician

3) sign for the Italian market

4) Brian Howe Waking up (Molly let us sleep in her room in the bookstore. A very kind and energetic and fascinating person)

5) Todd and Laura waking up

1) Marcus points to the deli in Brooklyn (our morning after meeting spot for the journey to Ithaca)

2) I met my good friend Hardy Gieske in Brooklyn (he recently relocated)

3) Our reading space in Pete’s Candy Store

Brian Howe leaves our cabin of infinity (we had some good stony talk about infinity in there). Marcus Slease and Ken Rumble hug as brothers as they contemplate the long 14 hour drive back to NC.

While boundaries are often permeable, I think it’s quite clear these poets fit the school of quietude. Or perhaps the school of safety or the school of predictability. Top 40 music without the same amount of $$$:

Fishhouse Poets

Jack Kerouac, The Bobblehead

Lowell Massachusetts native Jack Kerouac is getting bobbleheaded – Boston Red Sox single-A affiliate Lowell Spinners will be giving out 1000 Jack Kerouac bobbleheads on August 21, as part of Jack Kerouac night.

The bobblehead doll itself is about 8 inches tall. The figurine sports a full head of black hair and stands on a copy of On the Road, pen and notebook in hand.

And, lest you think, this is blasphemous, his executor thinks it’s a great idea. John Sampas, executor and brother of Kerouac’s third wife, says, “Besides being an author, he was an all-around guy. He was a great sports enthusiast, too. Certainly, Jack would love it.” The Lowell Spinners’ official site. [Via MeFi]

Bobbleheads we’d like to see: J.D. Salinger, Patricia Highsmith, Thomas Pynchon, and Haruki Murakami.

(Posted by Jen Chung)

What an amazing trip with the Lucifer Poetics Group. I am exhausted but very happy. Brian Howe has a nice report at:

Slatherpus

Mike Snider has a brief account of the Baltimore reading here:

Mike Snider’s Report

Greg Deslie has some pics from the Ithaca reading:

Poetry Space

and some pics from Reb Livingston (from the Baltimore reading)

Baltimore Pics

It is also rumored Matthew Shindell may have a recording of the reading in Baltimore for his poetry radio show My Vocabulary. LOOK OUT!

I’ll post some pics soon. Once my mac mini arrives in the mail.

I am trying to find a server to store mp3 files for podcasting. So do not subscribe to never mind the beasts on itunes yet. For some reason it’s just a pdf file right now.

A Selection from RA

You can subscribe to my rss feed for audio (just click the link)

But, better yet, subscribe to the Never Mind the Beasts podcast via itunes (within a day or two). Just search for Never Mind the Beasts under podcasts in itunes.

The podcast will feature post avant poetry, music, special guests, live shows etc.

should be fun times.

More soon.

I’m going on a reading trip with the Lucifer Poetics Group.

Come see us if you’re in any of the areas.

Here’s our tour schedule:

Baltimore: Wednesday, July 27, 7pm — Red

Emma’s Bookstore:

800 St. Paul Street

Baltimore

410-230-0450

http://www.redemmas.org/

readers:

Cell #2:

Randall Williams

David Need

Ken Rumble

Cell #1:

Marcus Slease

Brian Howe

Todd Sandvik

Cell #3:

Reb Livingston

Matthew Shindell

Mike Snider

Philly: Thursday, July 28th, 7pm: Molly’s

Cafe & Bookstore:

1010 South 9th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19147

(215) 923-3367

http://mollysbooks.com/opening.html

Cell #1

Brian Howe

Todd Sandvik

Marcus Slease

Cell #2

David Need

Randall Williams

Ken Rumble

NYC: Friday, July 29th, 6:00 PM

Pete’s Candy Store

709 Lorimer Street

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 11211

(718) 302 – 3770

http://www.petescandystore.com/home2.html

Cell #1

Todd Sandvik

Brian Howe

Marcus Slease

Cell #2

David Need

Randall Williams

Ken Rumble

read luciwork from non-traveling lucis???

Ithaca: Saturday, July 30th: West End

Reading Series (details to come)

Cell #1

Brian Howe

Todd Sandvik

Marcus Slease

Cell #2

Greg Delisle

Randall Williams

David Need

Ken Rumble

Sunday, July 31st: return home

If you like a good mix of critical consciousness (politics, well-situated damn amazing poetry) then check out the spanking new issue of:

Your Black Eye

This is one of best sites I’ve ever come across. Some great hip hop podcasts and street art from around the world. The power of artist collectives.

check it out:

Wooster Collective

The poet and music critic Brian Howe has created a blog combining both his passions. Really interesting first post comparing hip hop to contemporary poetry in its expansiveness (not in the new formalist sense).

check it out:

SLATHERPUS

Part One of Stephen Jonas’ Selected Poems (Talisman House) is titled Exercises for the Ear and Part Three is titled Orgasms/Dominations. These titled capture the amazing fusions and poles of Jonas’ work. Jonas accomplishes a fusion unlike any poet I’ve ever read. The urgency and passion of the language is tempered with cool classical grace. You could spend hours tracing the various allusions and references. In this first part I did see a lot of Pound and Williams as heavy influences. Derivative in the non-perjorative sense. (why is this a bad word in poetry and not in music?) But while images are important, they are not central in the same way as Pound and Williams by way of Imagism. Some of the anti-semitism of Pound leaks in, but it did not distract from my fascination with how Jonas’ uses the line and incorporates various dictions and neologisms. The language comes off as hipster (beatlike) but the allusions run deep.

Jonas was self-educated (an autodidact) and his poetry has elements of projective verse (spatial poetics, breathline, heavy enjambment with some Olsen/Creeley tricks like yr for your and so on). His poetry differs considerably from someone like Lyn Hejinian, but to my mind they are similar in their investigative/probing approach to language and knowledge.

The tone of Jonas’ poems are almost always conversational (read speech/bardic/Beat) but the lines delay and mutiply. Jonas sculpts his lines in the classical sense rather than letting them ride and accumulate in the bardic sense (i.e. Ginsberg). But like Ginsberg the language is jazzy and comes out of a world of junkies and hipsters.

I wanted to give some samples here, but they would not do justice to the work since the spatial dynamics/typography are vital. As a young poet I’ve really grabbed a lot from Jonas (most of it still raw and unarticulated if you couldn’t already tell). Here’s a few (among many yet to be realized):

1) the tension of the line for a delay-and-scatter effect

2) momentum via chewed-up language

3) strenuous thinking via “non-elevated” diction

4) Derivative as a vital component for new ways of thinking/being

NOTE:

A little more on #4. It is common practice (common wisdom) for a reviewer to say so and so is like X and influence leads to originality and so on. But what I mean by STRONG influence is really trying on the whole kit and cargo(hat, gloves, scarf, socks, underwear, mouth, nose, eyes, ears, place of composition and so on) Jonas takes Creeley, Olson, Williams, and Pound and spits ’em out like nothin I’ve ever seen or heard.

Just picked up some books from the bookshop in Chapel Hill and Internationalist Books. All via trade credit (with $40 in store credit left):

1) Dalachinsky (Ugly duckling Presse)

2) Xing by Ron Silliman (Factory School)

3) Runes by Robert Kelly (OtherWind Press)

4) The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson (Jargon Corinth Books)

5) American Rush by Maureen Owen (Talisman House)

6) Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire (Wesleyan University Press)

7) A California Journal by Robert Kelly (a BIG VENUS Publication)

8) The Germ (Spring 2000)

Just finished reading Stephen Jonas’ Selected Poems and it helped me rearrange and rethink my entire ms. One of those life-changing books. I cannot recommend it enough. Jonas absorbed Pound, Olson, and Spicer in a fascinating way.
Linebreaks (time and the line) for the gritty hipster.

“Technology does not serve so much as modify; it simultaneously promises and threatens change.”
(Steve McCaffery)

I’ve been reading scattershot about sound and music and space.

I am especially intrigued by the idea of low frequency sounds in Gothic churches. Low frequency sounds (bass) immerses the participant more than high frequency sounds due to a lack of origin. In the gothic church the acoustics emphasized low frequency sounds without a direct point of origin (circum nowhere centre everywhere etc.) A much more communal experience.

This contrasts with the concert performance. We have an orchestra (or whatever) separated from the spectators and with a point of origin.

This concept of low frequency versus high frequency also resonates with today’s home stereo:

“Home stereo privileges low frequency (bass effects) which have longer wavelengths and less influenced by diffraction. These sounds are spatially directionality and difficult to localize as a specific sound source. They are of the nature of floating signifiers producing their own acoustic environment instantly and placing a listener within it.” (Steve McCaffery writing about Marshall McLuhran)

Does the ipod connect back to the concert performance on an even smaller scale? A personal space rather than a communal experience? The marketing, for various reasons, certainly emphasizes extreme individuality. While I enjoy my ipod, I do wonder if it robs us of some aspects of a communal experience?

The internet is another consideration in terms of sound/space.

The fusion of pun and music (of which Joyce is the master) is “a chordal resonance of a contradiction” and a “polyphony of indecision.”

Since the pun connects to music and time connects to space how does the pun connect to space? In other words, what are the spatial dynamics of a pun?

With constant sound around us, the ipod (and the car stereo if the windows are up?) creates a limited kind of freedom of choice. A way to block out the beeping truck and listen to the hot new music of Interpol etc.

I use the ipod as a private listening space mostly in bed before I fall asleep (I like to dream with words rather than images) and the blue hour (2:30PM-4:00PM). At other times I want either silence (which has become a commodity in itself) or a house filled with sound without a localized point of origin (music from various speakers filling the house, the sound of the voice inside my head as a I read, the sound of my vocalized voice as I read, the sound of people walking the hallway next door, the sounds of my cats as they snore, scratch, and speak etc.)

I am also interested in the moving pictorial frame. Like the concert hall as a mostly static interchange with a point of origin, the gallery with framed pictures offers a kind of limited experience. As many have suggested, this differs from the early paintings on cave walls which were closer to movies than the static pictorial form. The light from the fire in the cave made the pictures move, change (much like the light from a projector).

poetry as:

1) quest

2) questioning

3) to write:to right

4) striking out

FROM MY NOTEBOOK:

“Surrealism once promised to tell us about the unconscious, but finished up trapped by its chosen objects of desire, peddling porngraphic thrills to the connoisseur.”
(author unknown)

Raworth’s poetry as a kind of “street-level Modernism.”

REMIXED AND RESAMPLED:

Veiled comrades, there are other ways to publication. In certain ways, the culture we negotiate claims tacit as total understanding. Someday it might become possible to wire father his own paints, canvas, and brushes. Merit makes us blind to dintinctions of quality.

SOME QUESTIONS:

1) What is a method of operation and how does it differ from a mere method?

2) Is imaginationa type of experience or experience itself?

3) At what point might life become parasitic of art?

A QUOTE FROM Miles Champion’s Don’t Know Alan

“Style is to things what mood is to feelings.”

SOME MORE REMIXES:

A slip of the tongue might be described as hygenic fraud, a sort of tactical growth in order to think. A sentence does not answer the future but every phoneme might be seized for inspection. I’m behind the weather to remind me what happens. The wheels of welfare both compose and impose and a pun is a mental work of art. Complex systems loop attentions (intentions).

After some serious revisions, Campanology has now become Resident Alien. Resident Alien has a good chunk of Campanology, but the frame is a lot stronger (sequencing etc.) Resident Alien also circles the ms (as in saucer) in various ways.

Resident Alien = my personal political status in the U.S.

Resident Alien = a lot of people’s psychological status (I assume)

Resident Alien= mind/body split. Is the body our home? Do you ever feel like a resident alien in your dying body?

Resident Alien= language as grounded. precise. “concrete” etc. Also language as strange via sound.

And many more. The bells/sounds are the residents in part of the ms, but they are also the aliens.

Nadja by Andre Breton helped me reformulate my ideas.

Some very good revisions today. It helps to get Campanology rejected by contests. Makes me reorganize, resee, rethink.

So. Campanology is now divided into three sections:

section 1: Resident Alien
Section 2: Shem/Sham
Section 3: Sprog

Section 1 now contains the first 25 pages of a previous ms called Resident Alien. The previous ms Resident Alien has now merged with the ms Narcolepetic Lawn.

Narcoleptic Lawn is organized as five parts with five sections and still has a ways to go.

A little mind trick:

when I think I am working on a new ms right after “finishing” the previous, a realize how the new ms is really an extension of the previous.

I am also reseeing my music. Music is the most abstract of the arts. So, I am looking for ways to reorganzie my use of sound. Balancing it with image. Considering various ways of using diction and breaking the line. I am also using philosophy/rhetoric and exploring the spaces between sentences. The sentences have a less forceful music but are still very compressed (i.e. not “prose”)

This conception helps with revising Campanology:

music = wave
image= particle
line= ?

all three merge throughout the manuscript. Right now I am revising with an eye toward particles and the line. I think the music will clear itself once I tighten these other elements.

This process of composing Campanology was like going out to sea for two very intense years and everytime I thought I saw land, I later realized it was not land at all.

Now I am finally back. The waves have stopped rocking for a little while. It’s nice to have my feet on the earth again!

I think I prefer shorter trips on the sea. At least for a little while. I wonder what it would be like to compose completely on land?

Selected Quotes of Ernest Fenolossa:

“The eye sees noun and verb as one: things in motion, motion in things.”

“Motion leaks everywhere, like electricity from an exposed wire . . . there could be no complete sentence . . . save one which it would take all time to pronounce.”

“Thought deals with no bloodless concepts but watches things move under its microscope.”

“Metaphor was piled upon metaphor in quasi-geological strata.”

“poetry agrees with science and not with logic.”

really interesting . . . check it out:

Fenollosa, Pound and the Chinese Character

While examining dildos and butt plugs and books on the female orgasm at Adam and Eve’s, I met a colon cleansing salesman. He claimed a lot for his kit. The price was steep. The colon was an obsession growing up. Quite regular analysis/discussion of the consistency, length, and color of stools to indicate health. Lots of books on colon cleansing systems in my house etc. In other words I am no stranger to the claims of colon cleansing.

Well, this guy claimed his colon cleanser was much more adanced than the system of Jason Winter (another colon cleansing guy with books to boot). He claimed it cleaned you so well, you may experience milk in your stools. But not just any milk mind you. We’re talking about milk from long ago. As in breast or bottled milk from your younger days. Has anyone out there experienced shitting milk? If so, did you experience a sense of relief, nostalgia etc. ?

In case you’re wondering, try this (you’ll be changed I promise):

Easy to carry to Todd and Laura’s house after gorging on beer, moonshine, the great bone etc.

A message from Aaron McCollough:

Dear Kind Hearted Readers of GutCult:

I’m pleased to announce the release of the Summer 2005 issue of GutCult (www.gutcult.com). I hope you will come by and spend some of your psychic capital on getting to know the poems and poets that make up this new edition. Also, please distribute this message wherever you think it might find sympathetic readers

Poets featured in this issue are:

Anne Gorrick
Devin Johnston
Donna Stonecipher
K. Silem Mohammad
Chris Vitiello
Timothy David Orme
Sawanko Nakayasu
Peter Jay Shippy
Lauren Haldeman
Ken Rumble
Jon Thompson
Catherine Cafferty
Bruce Covey
Dustin Hellberg
Simon DeDeo
Mark Lamoureux
Anthony Hawley
Gareth Lee
Jennifer Tynes
Marc Rahe
Nick Twemlow
Brian Lucas
Antonio Facchino

A Review of David Meiklejohn’s Plots by Brian Howe
A Review of Three Chapbooks from Ugly Duckling Presse by Chris Vitiello

Keep an eye on GutCult in the coming year, as a new look is planned for Winter 2006.

check it out here:
GutCult

This just in from Del Ray Cross:

SHAMPOO issue 24, the FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY EXTRAVAGANZA,
is now hot off the shelf and ready for your shower.

Rinse and repeat and repeat with poetry by Alli Warren, Amanda Laughtland, Anselm Berrigan, Beth Woodcome, Bill Berkson, Brent Cunningham, C. S. Carrier, Carolyn Gregory, Cassie Lewis, Catherine Meng, Cedar Sigo, Charles Bernstein, Chris Stroffolino, Christopher Wells, Clark Coolidge, Cynthia Sailers, Dan Beachy-Quick, Del Ray Cross, Denise Duhamel, Eileen Tabios, Elaine Equi, Eric Raanan Fischman, Geoffrey Cruickshank- Hagenbuckle, Harvey Goldner, Jack Kimball, Janean Williams, Jennifer Dannenberg, Jim Behrle, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Jonathan Hayes, Joseph Torra, Justin Chin, K. Silem Mohammad, kari edwards, Kathleen Miller, Katina Douveas, Kevin Killian, Kit Robinson, Leslie Scalapino, Michael Farrell, Michael Magee, Michael Robins, Michelle Trigleth, Norma Cole, Otto Chan, Paolo Javier, Phil Crippen, Robert Gluck, Ron Padgett, Ron Silliman, Ronald Palmer, S.J. Holland-Batt, Sean Cole, Shane Allison, Solidad Decosta,
Stephanie Young, Stephen Vincent, Sung-san Hong, Therese Marie Bachand, Tim Yu, Timothy Liu, Tina Celona, William Corbett, and Yedda Morrison; plus LatherLicious ShampooArt by Ronald Palmer and Otto Chan.

What better way to thank you all for five great years of SHAMPOO pleasure!

Scrub-it-cuz-you-lub-it,

Del Ray Cross, Editor
SHAMPOO
clean hair / good poetry

Talk about action-packed. Check it out:

Shampoo