The reading took place at Todd and Laura Sandvik’s home. They are amazing hosts. Always great food, liquid, sound, art.

I borrowed Chao Manhattan from Todd. Looking forward to watching it later today.

Passed around a little notebook and asked some fellow Lucipo poets to create a quick list of artists to check out.

The list:

1) Henry Darger

2) Stan Brakhage (Criterion collection)

3)Bunuel (obscure object of desire and discrete charm of the bourgeosie)

4) Marjorie Welish (‘The Windows Flew Open”)

5) Emmanuel Hocquerd “Theory of Tables”

Chris Vitiello read a fascinating play that felt like a cross betwee Beckett, Watten, and a David Cronenberg. Lots of poeple with holes and slime. A little bit Happy days a little bit eXistenZ. It takes place in a parking lot. He also projected a poem about words, meanings, ghosts on an led screen and read a poem that interrogated, crossed, and sometimes followed the projection on the screen.

Serge Falcoz Vigne (a visitor from Paris) read some poems from his collection Rue Mademoiselle Germain and some new poems written while visiting the US this week. He is the proprieter of a Parisian cafe and writes a new poem every month (ongoing for the last 10 years) and places the poem with the customers bill. Wax sealed. He read everything in French with very little translation by his girlfriend Samantha. It was interesting to hear poetry in a language I did not speak or read. Sound translation whipped around my head.

Pics above of the fan night

Read an essay by Marjorie Perloff last night called “After language Poetry: Innovation and its Theoretical Discontents.” It’s a really interesting essay.

She begins by talking about the semantic history of innovation. Innovation as sedition and treason esp. in 14th and 15th century. She then gives a short but good background on the innovations and theories of language writings. She mentions how Bruce Andrews called referentiality the misguided “search for the pot at the end of the rainbow, the commodity or ideology that brings fulfillment.”

So the very crude version goes a little something like this:

modernists react against the romantics

plain spoken lyric workshop mode reacts against the impersonal modernists

language poetics reacts against plain spoken lyric workshop mode with theory based heavily in Marxism.

So the the signifed as a commodity I can see. But can’t the signifier also become a commodity? A fetish?

Newness and innovation are vital to capitalism. Associative logic is certainly employed very nicely to market products.

So the plain spoken Sundance movies and the David Lynch surrealism exist side by side. Does one negate the other?

Then again, I find myself wondering about variety. The presentation of variety in Fence magazine versus the presentation of variety in say, Hambone.

I like a lot of the poems in Fence. They pick some good stuff. But for some reason (maybe Steve Evans has gotten to me) I find the eclectic mix disconcerting. Why?

Does Fence and Fence books employ newness and innovation in a similar way to say Downy? Does Fence make newness a commodity in and of itself?

Is it merely eclectic?

Chicago review is a “well-respected university lit journal” with a history of publishing innovative writing. It feels a lot different than Fence. I am not sure why after a year or two of reading fence I am more drawn to Combo, Hambone, Chicago Review. Some of the same poets publish in both Hambone and Fence.

Does presentation and production of art make a difference in meaning? Will I get something different out of reading a Kasey Mohammad poem in Fence versus reading the same poem in Hambone? If I am honest with myself, I would say yes. I think I might come away with a slightly different reading.

So what does all this mean? Is Fence evil?

I think the editors have the best of intentions. I don’t think they are making big bucks off Fence.

Anyway, this is an old debate, but I am still bothered by it.

I do believe in small productions networking with other small productions.

Cells over sales.

The bottom line does not have to lessen the quality of a given art, but it often does.

U2 sucks!

If you live anywhere near North Carolina you gotta check out Ken Rumble’s

Desert City Reading Series

The upcoming season (keep checking Ken’s blog for details) is going to be nothing short of spectacular.

I mean he’s bringing in the big ones (guns).

If I lived hundred miles away, I would make the drive for these readings.

Three cheers for the man who is putting the triad and triangle on the poetry map!

John Taggart’s _When the Saints_ is blowing me away. Stunning. Really. I am rolling. Flying. My head’s on fire.

Don’t need a pond.

I read a few pages and feel compelled to write. I am really really digging this shit.

This man knows how to use repeition unlike anyone I’ve read.

Listening to “Brilliant Corners” right now. Predictable I know, but Taggart and Monk are really juicing me up.

I traded in a free exam copy of some boring anthology and got $11. I wanna find some more Taggart.

Forget trying to get everything just right for my English 101 class.

This is why I live.

PHEWWWWW>>>>>>>>

AH>>>>>>>>

That’s all I wanted to say.

Back to Taggart.

I can’t believe summer is almost over. Time to read the books I am gonna teach. Which is gonna be hard since I just picked up a few cool books from Chapel Hill:

1) David Bromige _Birds of the West_

2) Peter Gizzi _Some Values of Landscape and Weather_

3) Lewis Warsh -Methods of Birth Control_

4) Lewis Warsh _Dreaming As One_

5) Joel Oppenheimer _The Love Bit_

6) Robert Creeley _Pieces_

7) John Taggart _When the Saints_

I would much rather sit down to a cup of a coffee and one of these books then my English 101 text (Literature for Composition).

Ordered a really cheap basic pda yesterday (2mb Palm Zire). Hope it works well enough to take roll, record grades, and keep track of my schedule. I don’t need anything more than that so I didn’t want to pay over $40.

When I look into purchasing some technology gadget it takes days because there are so many reviews and ebay, well, I feel like I have to track the average price for a day or two before beginning the hunt.

I a m excited about teaching intro to lit. Going to start the semester with Jesus’ Son and then move into Allen’s New American poetry anthology then Lisa Jarnot’s Ring of Fire, then Paddy Clarke HA HA HA, then some plays by Sander Hicks (The Breaking Manager).

Night one:

characters: a girl named Cami (ex-gilfriend of main character. Lived with main character after he left the Mormon church.)

Cami visits the main character and gives him chocolates. They both attend a Mormon service and the main character walks out with his fist in the air and she follows. They run away from the church arm in arm until the main character realizes she has popped out two children. He leaves.

(IRL: Cami is divorced with two children. She is staunch born again Christian)

Night two:

characters: a girl named Elissa (ex-girlfriend of main character. 1st love of main character. Main character thought he would marry her after returning from Mormon mission).

Elissa sneaks out of her house and meets main character in a large blue room. They meet in a corner near a dresser. Main character tells Elissa he knew she could make it. They hug. Then her parents call her for church. Main character also attends but insisits on wearing his most worn-out clothing (shorts with holes, white t-shirt, flip flops). They agree to meet and run away after church but she doesn’t show.

(IRL: Elissa is an active Mormon and married with two children)

Night three (last night/this morning):

Characters: a girl named Rebecca Winder (Main character developed a crush on her during Mormon choir practice at age 16. She said he would mature well)

Rebecca sneaks out of church service and meets main character at a large water fountain. Main character tells her he’s been looking for her and she says, “that was years ago” and “We were only children.” Main character tells her he always loved her chocolates. She disappears for a few days and returns with her mother and a curly wirley from the U.K. She links arms with her mother and they return to the church service. main character waits in church parking lot and searches mini vans. He cannot find her.

(IRL: I have no idea)

This Mormonism thing is painful and strange sometimes. AGH.

There seems to be a difference between death and ceasing to be.

I sometimes imagine death, but I cannot imagine ceasing to be.

More and more it feels like ceasing to be (rather than dying) is what will happen.

Should I fear ceasing to be?

It seems silly to fear ceasing to be since death and the life never really meet (they pass each other).

But that’s exactly what might be feared: the unimaginable.

As much as I tire of capitalism I sometimes find myself buying stuff (books, cds) to keep my current flowing. To keep from thinking too long on my own ceasing to be or filtering my thinking of ceasing via language.

When I think about ceasing to be I think images and emotions without words. I cannot write ceasing to be.

To plug is to prevent from leaving.

I plug the bathtub to take a bath but what if there’s no water?

Or does it matter? Do we need the correspondence theory of truth? Or do we leave all the enlightment baggage behind?

Finished the ms (Mouth Harp) yesterday. Feels really good to let it go. The title changed a few times from Never Mind the Beasts to Stigmata:Burger to Mouth Harp. Mouth Harp seems to really get at the heart of the ms.

Harp as meditative heaven instrument of the mouth and harp as

To dwell on or recur to a subject tediously or

monotonously in speaking or in writing; to refer to

something repeatedly or continually; — usually with on or

upon. “Harpings upon old themes.” –W. Irving.

Harping on what I am, Not what he knew I was.

–Shak.

It’s done but I will allow myself to do small tinkerings if needs be. The final poem in the manuscript might need a little tinkering. it’s called “Mouth Politics” (mouth as verb more than noun). I used some of the personal (my lost life as a Mormon).

Here it is:

Mouth Politics

1.

Waiting wet

for first time

broken in (broken out)

want oral but wouldn’t trade for eternal life.

Oral is not intercourse in the sense of the word.

Oral included sentences from three to fifteen years.

Oral temptation to fill up with things.

2.

Ms McKinney erstwhile Miss Wyoming (beauty queen):

A young Mormon missionary told today how an ex-beauty queen kidnapped him and then made oral to him while he was chained to a bed in a lonely cottage. Kirk Anderson, 21, said the girl, Joy McKinney, and her friend, Keith May, tied down his arms and legs with leather straps, padlocks, chains and rope, so that he was spread eagled. May then left the room while Miss McKinney tore off his blue silk pajamas. She grabbed his pajamas from around his neck and tore them from his body. She explained Kirk had to be tied up so he doesn’t feel guilty.

3.

French orals

mock orals

navigation orals

nocturnal orals

orals and topical

the politics of orals

Norfolk Mormons bait the orals

at least two of four orals.

This isn’t the first time the French have taken shots at the Mormons.

Just check out this chapter of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days.

Blind equalization for short burst no-nonsense real truth from genuine orals.

Oral B (lifelong gums) oral Ed therapy contra oral

oral intercept

oral accept (except).

no way out

(bout about to begin).

4.

dedicated Mormon helps bring value and service

at affordable price (build interest)

(I bear my testimony)

(testing testing . . . one two three . . . about me)

“a couple of ninth-graders in the heart of Mormon country . . . One teacher recalls a 10-year-old raising his hand to ask her to define oral sex. . . “

“Steps in Overcoming Oral Urges (an excerpt).”

“Two daughters testified, they were being required to perform oral sex upon

their father at least weekly.”

“Writing a sex book without sex imagery was a tricky job . . . we’re unsure, we don’t want to say the wrong thing, and we don’t want to stir interest inappropriately,”

says co-author Dr. Stephen Lamb, Salt Lake City gynecologist and active Mormon.

“The book’s only mention of oral sex is in the off limits area. “

“A Mormon church spokesman whose radio broadcasts often decried the evils

of sexual abuse has been arrested for investigation into allegations of sodomy

of a 14-year-old girl. The girl was taken to a parking lot behind a radio station, shown pornography, photographed in her underwear and told to perform oral sex.”

“Mental-health agencies in Utah are quietly fighting a sex-related mental-health epidemic among Mormon men and women.”

5.

I speak

(“not that which goeth into the mouth defileth but that which cometh out”)

problem self-

censorship

to speak of dreams

(censorship causes a distortion)

(the relationships were chalk-full)

like gross histories a fine voice is struck

swooned spooks (books) spine of dawn (drawn).

6.

Put your mobile where you mouth is

wash your kids mouth out with soap

heaven’s mouth at mouth of bay

heaven’s mouth narcissus qua narcissus

heaven’s mouth productions presents

heaven is in my mouth

vicious mouth to consume

(resume default states)

vicious froth mouth

(abandon all hope)

Vicious mouth mobile mouth

(never mind the beasts)

Comb the mouth (find) (groom)

out the mouth (spout) (sprout)

Mouth raw. Mouth off. Mouth in. Mouth garden. Mouth board.

Mouth search. Mouth ache.

Gnaw of heaven.

Loading a lot of music into itunes today. Three days of music so far. Close to a hundred cds left to import. Just finished loading all Sunny Day Real Estate, The Fire Theft, Death Cab for Cutie. Now I think I am going to bring those cds to Gate City Noise and trade them in. I have gone off Sunny Day and Death Cab. Not sure what to get in their place.

I’ll have to a little online reading. Since I stopped my subscription to Magnet I haven’t kept up with the really new stuff. Any great albums in the last four months?

The headlong mad energy rush of beats and ny school poets really got me head spinning in new directions. Now I am reading Trevor Joyce in a small even pace. Both states are good (enjoyable). I do miss the mad spin though.

My whole system crashed a few days ago. Spent two days trying to save it (purchased the computer on ebay so who knows about previous owner?).

The good thing though is I erased the hard drive and did a fresh installation of jaguar (I had panther before).

My poems were on a keychain so I didn’t lose them.

I like Jaguar and Safari is working in blogger.

Interersting names: safari, panther, jaguar (tiger coming soon), blogger.

Sometimes a full system crash is a good thing ( as long as you back up the good shit).

I am enjoying Mark Ducharme’s _Infinity Subsections_ and Trevor Joyce’s _With the First Dream of Fire They Hunt the Cold_.

One more longish poem for the manuscript and I am done (no more mass fiddling only small tinkering).

At the Lucipo meeting on Saturday we talked about a lot of very interesting things. Such as: can the work of the critic interphere with the work of the poet (not necessarily assuming the two are seperate people)?

Also on the subject of book making (as discussed in Silliman’s post today): first order, second order. best word best order, best order any order? Uniform or jeans and a t-shirt or twelve different outfits tri-sexual etc.?

Hm….

decisions decisions

if you haven’t already, check out Shearsman Books. Especially MTC Cronin: Talking to Neruda’s Questions (it’s a free ebook).

Shearsman Books

I’ve been cutting reworking resequencing to make an interesting first book manuscript.

I had 70 pages now it’s down to 59 pages. (all in all I’ve cut about 78 poems over the years).

The poems I cut needed to be cut (too many flippant “NY school” poems for one manuscript), but I am wondering if 59 pages is not enough. Quite a few of the poems are 4-5 pages long. Can 59 pages turn into 69 pages when a book is bound by a publisher?

Hm . . .

I tried rescuing a few poems and made them much worse. I just had to let ’em go.

I wasn’t attached to the poems but I was attached to a few of the phrasings. (Reuse poems for parts).

Starting Lee Ann Brown’s _The Sleep that Changed Everything_. Her reading/performance at the Carrboro poetry festival was so amazing. I am excited to read her work on the page (with my reading voice mixed with her performance voice running in the background).

I don’t think there is any such thing as silent reading. There’s always a voice when reading. Even if it is not vocal.

Finished _Jones_ last night. I was amazed. The language of description, poetic diction (strewn), the poetics of place, recurring images. The book really felt effortless and haunting. Strands of narrative (the street gang, the uncurling cigarette, soggy newspaper). The images/descriptions are evocative and swirl around to create strands of a narrative. Disproves the notion of movements locking its practitioners into a lock step. The more I read of “Langpo” the more my expectations of Langpo changes. There are very real aesthetic differences between Ron Silliman and Michael Palmer. Such much variation in between and among the langpo scenes.

A little while ago I was also amazed when I sat down and read individual “beat” poets. Again, so much variation. I’ve found it much more worthwhile to read seperate collections from individual poets (versus selected or anthologies). Anthologies seem fine for a quick brouse (like most lit mags). I enjoyed reading through _An Anthology of new (American) poets. Brief introductions of poets can help me decide which poets/books I want to read in the near future

The new (American) poets anthology got me excited to find and read books by Peter Gizzi, Mark Nowak, Pam Rehm, Chris Stroffolino, and Mary Burger.

I am amazed excited thrilled. So much variation. Such a wide world out there. For so long I was looking through a well wiped window with a view of a well trimmed garden which was on the hillside behind a palace wall (i.e.the university).

Who does the legit says more about the legit that what is legit.

Language is large enough for a life of its own (have you ever been experienced?)

I am maximalist mind with minimalist heart.

I just finished cleaning out the cat litter (it’s a mega cat litter box). Cleaning out the cat litter box is much different than doing the litter. Doing the litter is all about scooping. Cleaning out is all about getting your hands poopy (I guess you could wear gloves, but I don’t like rubber gloves).

So after the cleaning out, I sat down and read Silliman’s _Lit_ which I enjoyed a whole hell of a lot more after cleaning out the litter. (onto _Jones_ next. I only have two letters of the alphabet).

I mean doing something I don’t like to do (or really want to do) helps me dig into things I do want (to do). teaching boring poetry (or reading boring poetry) makes me want to write interesting poetry. Not that the opposite isn’t more true. A little of what I don’t like/want to do goes a long way.

Today’s carrot was _Lit_.

(not all carrots are equal)

For some reason I don’t feel the lack of emotion so many of my instructors pegged as Langpo. I almost believed the “universal human values” bullshit line and rejected anything “the masses” would not understand. I come from a working class background (both of my parents did not finish high school) and often feel conflicted with my passion for knowledge. For a few years I tried to write poems I thought my family might halfway “get.” I don’t want to put on airs. Sometimes (or most of the time really) I feel very alienated from my relatives (not because I am a poor alienatied genius poet but because of my university education).

It just seems like when someone mentions the universal nature of such and such poetry it often means the message/meaning is reinforced by the dominant values of the culture. Not all dominant (or residual) values are worth their salt and I come to poetry for salt. For the great thaw.

I just received my issue of Fence magazine (spring/summer 2004) and Rebecca Wolff talks about how the Fence team responed after 9/11.

She writes, “And all I could think of to say was that I wanted more emotion in poetry. For crying out loud. Presuumably, that is all I’ve ever wanted.”

I used to feel the same conflict, but now I don’t understand. What is emotion? How do I put more of it into my poetry? How can I increase the chance of someone crying out loud after reading my poetry?

I feel a wide range of emotion after reading Rod Smith. I don’t really feel sad though. Is that what poets mean when they say they want more emotion in poetry (sadness). Does emotion=sadness? How narrow.

I want a range of emotion (in life art etc.). I want a range of philosophy (thinking about thinking). It seems so narrow to define emotion as sadness.

Does Philip Levine write for working class people because he writes “about” the working class? I certainly do not usually enjoy reading poetry “about” teaching freshman composition.

If 100 people/poets read my books with intensity (I have no books yet, but maybe at some point) it seems much better than 30,000 non-poets who skim the work and call it good because I just won the Nobel prize.

But I would never want to be called a poet’s poet. Please please not a poet’s poet.

I feel like I am always catching up. The Yasusada affair is now way past infancy. The twenty letters to The Believer in Typo 3 explore the issues quite well. The issues of authorship cut deep, so maybe everything hasn’t been said. So despite the possibility of repeating what others have said much better about Doubled Flowering, I have to write/think/ramble about it.

The issues of authorship are a constant subject in Yasusada’s writings.

Yasusada’s English assignment # 20 (his teacher is Mr. Rogers. A scottish guy who wears native garb in the classroom) is to write in the style of another. This is Yasusada’s reply:

“You kindly asked us to write in the voice of another. I believe, very frankly, that all writing is quite already passed through the voices or styles of many others. This, I believe in my heart is the very marrow of writing”

So Yasusada points out writing is always already in the voices of many people. The real author does not exist if real is taken as a first cause. Writing voice(s) are overdetermined.

The quote from Tzvetan Todorov (as a footnote) also interests me. “[The symbol] achieves the fusion of contraries; it is and it signifies at the same time.”

Is an author a symbol? An author is (object) and signifies (subject).

Yasusada likes Jack Spicer a lot. The last two lines from Yasusada’s transformed Spicer poem # 6 keeps swirling in my mind:

“The space around it/ Where the shadow and the mouth are one?”

The speaking subject has a real mouth and a shadow mouth. The space around the writing is where the real and shadow mouth are one. So the real and shadow mouth disappear.

Yasusada is and is not Kent Johnson or Tosa Motokiyu.

Does it matter?

Well, in terms of the aesthetics of the text I would say no. The writings stand as great no matter who wrote them. But who wrote them has far reaching consequences for capitalist ownership.

Rent to Own has very high interest.

currently on the eastern shore of maryland reading Doubled Flowering on a hammock.

Ah, this feels great. A shower, some sea air, new underwear, good book, and some tea.

Yesterday I traded in 35 books (Tate, Plath, biographies). In exchange I Purchased

1)Trevor Joyce’s With the First Dream of Fire They Hunt the Cold, a Body of Work 1966/2000

2) Doubled Flowering

3) Olsen’s The Maximus poems

So much to read. So many projects.

Finally get to visit home. Got two roundtrip tickets in December to Dublin for $674. Dec 16th – Dec 27th.

Never flown on Aer Lingus. Hope they have some decent pillows.

This was a great deal considering the last time I went home around Christmas it was $1100 on British Airways (for 1 ticket).

Tiffany and I are going to rent a nice small car and drive all over Ireland. 5 or 6 days in the south and 4 or 5 days in the north.

I immigrated to the U.S. when I was 12 (almost 13) and have never drove a car in another country (other than Canada). Should be fun.

I am ready for some Portadown chinese fish and chips (can’t beat their gravy).

My bookshelves are uncluttered. It feels good. About 30 more books of poetry to take to Chapel Hill. This time I want $ because Ken Rumble ordered some really really good poetry books for the Internationalist Bookstore.

Onward.

I just watched Cold Mountain (not a very good movie) and Fahrenheit 911. Both movies, combined with some of my experiences growing up in Portadown, caused a little mortality crisis and cognitive discomfort (hence this writing/grunting).

How do I want to die? Not by biological weapon, not by slow starvation, not by bullet, noose, or fire.

Will it ever be possible to handle power in a less cruel way?

It seem to me, the communities that handle power the best are small. It seems like size/nations are an issue.

I sometimes wonder what was gained by large nations discovering other cultures (+ and -).

On the + we learn (hopefully) cultural relativism. On the – we attempt to control and exterminate. Millions die so we can discover.

If we all believed the world was flat and continued to live in our own little corner of the world would we (and many others) enjoy a better quality of life?

And why so much money to explore Mars when we have so many alienated folks right here on planet earth?

What is America independent from? taxation without representation? No.

Tyranny? no.

But perhaps the degree of tyranny is a lot less than some other places, but that shouldn’t be an excuse.

I was wondering, will my future children fight in a revolution in say 30 years?

Some days I love living America (ok, most days. I enjoy a lot of great things in America.) Other days I wonder if we should move to Australia or Belgium.

later today I will eat some great ribs and watch fireworks. The ribs will be great and the company will be excellent, but I am unsure what I am really celebrating (perhaps celebrating to celebrate is enough).

Independence day may never arrive but do we keep working for it?

I think it’s about half way through summer break so I better start reading or re-reading the books I am gonna teach.

Just decided to use Lisa Jarnot’s Ring of Fire for my two sections of intro to lit. Should be interesting in combo with The New American Poetry Revised ( I will recontextualize and historize the selections) and Eileen Myles Cool for You.

My used mac system is almost complete. The studio crt display is supposed to arrive today. My eyes will be relieved.

I’ve been thinking about the term maximum. Dean Young talks about being maximalist. he says he includes everything (waste and all) rather than paring down (like Creeley etc.)

I just went through my books again to try and get some $ to watch Fahrenheit 911 tonight.

I realized I don’t really like Dean Young’s poetry anymore. My recent feast of Oppen, Paz, Jospeh Donahue, Rexroth, and Philip Whalen makes Dean Young’s poems feel like a plate of rubber chick peas.

So many jokes.

It’s smooth skating without cracks in the ice. Or if there is a crack the nice voice guides you through. The language doesn’t feel aware of itself. It’s like a joke with the same punchline (laugh now because this is so strange. Don’t you think strange is funny. Don’t you admire my voice guiding you through these strange worlds. Here’s a clown. There’s a strange man with an upside down hat. HA HA)

Dean Young reminds me of james tate who reminds me of Charles Simic of a lot of younger poets (esp ones who attended the Amherst program).

I see now why some of the older generation of open form/avant garde poets have critiqued the younger generation for sloppy mismash.

Although, I do like sloppy mishmash via google.

Maybe sloppy mishmash is the wrong term. Smooth skating might be better.

No, that’s not right either. The use of surreal has its appeal via young alienation. But surreal by itself usually doesn’t move me.

So, time to keep moving. I’ve a stack of books to sell to the used bookstore:

1) three galway kinnell books (I am keeping the Book of Nightmares)

2) All robert pinsky

3) all Robert Hass

4) Michael Ryan’s God Hunger

5) Yannis Ritsos Selected poems

6) All Tony Hoagland (Sweet Ruin, Donkey Gospel, already sold the new one)

7) Actual Air by David Berman ( a decent book but I don’t need to hold onto it)

8) American Linden by Matthew Zapruder (can’t get into it. Feels very similar to a lot of recent books by poets in my age group).

9) Half-Finshed Heaven (Tomas Transtromer trans. by Robert Bly. I am not a fan of Bly, translations or otherwise)

It feels so good to get rid of books. The bookstore won’t take The Wantbone (it’s all marked up. So I put it in the recycling bin. It feels good to put a book of poetry in the recycling bin.

Is it really true that it is good and right to wash your hands for 2 minutes to kill maximum germs/bacteria etc.

I consider myself clean, but 2 minutes feels like a long time for the washing of hands.

Mr. Germ said 2 minutes but the following advice about public restrooms seems more reasonable:

Proper hand washing techniques

Proper hand washing techniques can stop up to 90% germs from spreading. Learn how.

Dirty hands kill people! When your mother told you to go wash up before you eat, she wasn’t just concerned about your tidy appearance at the table.

Well, maybe she was, but research is proving that her advice was medically sound. Proper hand washing can stop the spread of 99% of the germs that travel via droplets, and that covers a lot of nasty illnesses, including most flu viruses.

People who use public restrooms are especially susceptible to picking up germs left by others who don’t practice good hygiene, but so is anyone who picks up reading material at the library, shares a keyboard with someone else, even handles a pen at a checkout counter that’s been contaminated by someone with a virus.

One 1996 study of school children (published in Good Housekeeping, January, 1997) found that in schools where children scrubbed up thoroughly four times a day the absenteeism from colds and flu dropped nearly 70%.

Here’s how to use a public washroom and keep yourself safe from the nasties others may have left behind.

First, make sure that you have access to a paper towels before you begin. This might mean turning the crank on a roller dispenser even before you turn the water on.

Wet your hand thoroughly with warm water. IMPORTANT: DO NOT TOUCH THE FAUCET OR THE HANDLES WHILE YOUR HANDS ARE WET!

Let the water run if it doesn’t shut off automatically.

Work up a good lather with lots of soap. Experts say that a 15 second scrub is usually sufficient, but health care workers are trained to keep that lather working for 30 seconds. (This is about as long as it takes to sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star all the way through.)

Another guideline is to rub each area ten times: ten circles around each wrist, ten rubs on the back of your palms, ten rubs with fingers interlaced. Use your nails to scrub the palms of the other hand ten times; this gets lather under the nail tip, too, which is a favorite hiding spot for germs. Open your palms out as flat as you can, and work the lather into all those lines and crevices.

Pay special attention to the surface along the thumb/forefinger line. This, along with our palms, is the surface we use most often to pick things up and to shake hands.

When you are finished scrubbing, rinse thoroughly, letting the water run off your fingertips. Now grab a paper towel and dry thoroughly, all the while letting the water run. When your hands are dry, use a clean, dry paper towel to turn off the water. Use that same paper towel to handle the doorknob to leave the room, don’t toss it until the door is open.

(A dry paper towel is a better germ barrier than a wet one.)

If the restroom has a hot air dryer, use a tissue, a page from a magazine, or even your clothing to turn off the faucet and open the exit door.

If you have a choice, should you use an antibacterial soap? Experts disagree on this one. Some say yes, especially during flu and cold seasons or if someone in your family is ill. They say that not only does it kill germs on your hands, but leaves behind a barrier that slows the growth of bacteria.

Others disagree, saying it is the scrubbing that cleans hands and loosens germs that are then rinsed down the sink. They feel that the antibacterial soap gives a false sense of security and that people don’t put spend time actually cleaning their hands with it, especially since most of the antiseptic properties don’t become effective for ten to thirty minutes after use. If you do use a sanitizing soap, follow the same scrubbing procedure that you would with a regular soap.

Written by Diana Maree

Copyright 2002 by PageWise, Inc

Does anyone dream of old flings?

When I feel anxious about my mortality I have a dream about an old fling.

It takes place in 1990. I am 16 yrs. old and Mormon living in a small town named Hurricane.

My old fling shows up and has turned away from the Mormon church (I am 16 but have my current ex-Mormon 30 year old mind).

We usually say the word fuck a lot but don’t act on it.

I wake up strange.

Today I woke up and went outside to a big white blanket of fog.

The old fling connects to my old fling with Mormonism. Mormonism told me what to think.

It told me I had a ghost in my machine and I could create my own worlds as a future god (as god once was, man now is).

After many flings with various religions, I realized I had to be honest with myself.

I had to learn to live with uncertainty.

But I watched a strange movie called Mermaids last night and it made me realize my teenage years are gone. My closeness to my brother (we moved to America when he was 2. He was my only close friend for many years) only exists as memory.

Is memory good enough?

Is it better to keep moving? (moving is my constant after all. Moving both physical and intellectual).

How much should I indulge memory? Nostalgia? There’s so much to live for today, but is it good to remember where I come from? My foundations?

Or should I constantly seek to subvert, reformulate, shift my foundations? Is a foundation a foundation?

Do I search for my biological father?

I am happy when I am in the present (a cliche by now I know).

But the past is always running in the background. The past contains many strands (or is it a worm?) and I have yet to find a utility.

Old flings, first loves, leave imprints I can’t erase.

<a href="http://www.parenfaire.com/outdoor/CelticFling/Celticfling.htm&quot;

>Foundations?

Check out Fred Chappell’s review of Tony Tost’s _Invisible Bride_ in News & Observer:

<a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/lifestyles/story/1375244p-7498182c.html&quot;

>Invisble Bride Review

I didn’t realize the greatness of OS X and Mozilla. They are both so fast and clean and bright and precise.

One happy camper.

I wonder how and why the happy camper started? Does it imply at one time happy campers were rare?

I am teaching The New American poetry anthology in the fall (revised as The Postmoderns). Concerning the designation of schools/scenes, Butterick and Allen write:

“Those earlier designations, if they were anything more than terms of convenience, have been rendered obsolete and unnecessary by the poets’ subsequent activities and associations. Postmodern is a more encompassing designation, while still having its own precisions.”

I am wondering what makes Postmodern more precise than objectivist?

Does encompassing mean a nice wee plurality without context?

I worry about my encompassing desires. My flattening desires may have the backing of anti-hierarchal theorists, but I fear the expression and feeling of

“it’s all good.”

What might be lost? Schools/theories who needs ’em?

I do I do I do.

In the end it may all be bullshit, but in the meantime . . .

I don’t have to hate your school.

School may be the wrong word. Not the right association. Maybe scene.

As in Lucipo scene?

Scene might limit less than school.

The DC scene is one to envy!

By the way, check out Backwards City (links to the right). They are doing a special school issue soon.

New computer arrived yesterday. Waiting on the monitor today. A nice older G4 tower with 600MB RAM and a 40 Gig hard drive. Apple studio crt monitor coming soon.

Almost settled into the new apartment. it’s very quiet here. I love it. Nice view. Window AC in the study room (YES!).

On the Lucipo listserve some questions have arisen about the significance of poetry.

We have boatloads of theory about why x type of poetry matters more then Y type of poetry.

Sometimes I love theory. Sometimes I wonder if poetics is mostly (or all) a justification for pleasure. Even painful pleasure.

Does poetry really affect politics? Can poetry have any impact on “makiing the world a better place?”

I think the questions of consequence should be equally directed at the concept of “critical thinking.” I tend to read (and find pleasure) in poetry that uses language as thinking.

Thinking in language rather than thinking through language.

Is everything a text? Can all power struggles be reduced to language games?

Sometimes critical thinking may be an end in itself. Sometimes it may lead to action. To argue that critical thinking iis necessary for action seems false. To argue that poetry is needed for action seems false. Neither are sufficient. Neither are needed for political action.

On my good days, I think poetry really does have consequence beyond personal pleasure. Perhaps the consequences are stealthy (under the radar).

Billy Collins may have no more (or less) political influence/conquence than Rod Smith.

Then again I might be lazy. I may enjoy reading theory because I just want to think the world. In other words, maybe poetry is a safe type of political activism (or none at all).

Maybe I am simply a junkie for new ways of being/seeing/thinking.

This has been a week of moving prep. Tomorrow is the big moving day. My normal reading/writing schedule is way off track. So, hopefully monday I will have a new used powermac with new used studio crt monitor mac OS X and a new writing spot. I am eagar to get down and dirty again.

Thursday was a blast of Lucipo poets. Good on the spot improvs and unrehearsed play. Mr. Todd did a very remarkable reading of his long poem. He told the audience we were the frogs. It was scary story time. Some lines amazed me.

Lucipo is moving alright (I prefer a kind of mind moving but now and again a walk in the woods is quite good for the nerves as well).

Tony’s recent blog post about class issues and the romantic myth of the artist is very interesting. I have a lot of loans but I would rather have loans from attending school than from buying a fancy car etc.

I constantly remind myself I am damn lucky

Sure poetry is work (and play). What’s the difference between work and play?

Sure it’s not quite a profession. Maybe a professing.

After 14 years of fast food, department store clerking, and a shit load of telemarketing (I did meet my wife at a telemarketing company though) I am very very very lucky to teach and write.

I am so glad I am longer trying to convince people who do not have land to buy burpie seeds to meet my selling quota.

That’s not to say teaching/selling is cake. It can be draining. The politics of university life can interrupt writing space (mental space). As a lecturer or adjunct it can be very difficult if the university wants to save money by classifying you as part time and unworthy of health benefits (I finally have health benefits for the first time at the age of 30. But that’s a political issue across the board. Many people have much worse situations).

I am not on a royal cushion but I am doing something I love. I have passion. I hope other people might have a passion for working at a department store, climbing the ladder, selling stuff over the phone.

Am I still selling? Is this blog a marketing strategy. Do I want to climb the ladder and one day be like the ceo of poetry clogs/blogs?

But I am low on the pole. I’ll never be as good as the great bloggers.

How to win friends and influence people in the world of poetry blogs? HM>>>>>>

One things for sure: I am sick of poetry as stinky cheese. Here. Eat this. The French eat it all the time. It’s good for you.

I would rather hear/read poetry suggesting possibilities than poetry all neat and polished.

I like my lid open. Stiches naught or easily torn apart as opposed to seeming naught.

Is poetry a stay against confusion? For me it is. But only for a very brief time.

By tomorrow morning I’ll need to question words again.

I will need to be moved.

(Dedicated to the dead horse I kicked a few entries back. R.I.P.)

You see, my experience of life conflicts with my experiences in life.

I want experience as in not of.

I want to feel and experience the complications of my experiences in language.

In other words, I don’t want another romantic comedy.

Loving means letting go.

If I let go it’s not fully mine (precious) anymore.

Even the dead horse (precious) should be loved.

Without a dead horse my world is sketchy.

But there’s always another one around the corner.

What not:what is.

Or bad:good.

Or I don’t like to get my feet wet.

Overstanding beats understanding hands down.

The latest issue looks heavenly.

Check out the blog:

Verse Mag

Chris Murray (the trek and meme of American poetry) has featured me as texfiles poet of the week. (thank you Chris).

Texfiles

Watched a really good movie last night called The Barbarian Invasions. I am still processing it.

Some of the “Barbarian Invasions” in the movie= disease, capitalism, love, lust, terrorism, death . . .

At one point the dying father( who is a history professor and a socialist) responds to the young junkie’s comment about the universal nature of death (lots of people are dying as I type this) with “me, what about me.” (or something like that).

So when the good socialist is faced with death self-preservation kicks in. It’s no longer mediocre medical care for everyone.

Medical care becomes less abstract when you are dying. Less an idea.

The estranged son in the movie is a millionaire capitalist involved with oil investments. But the son helps make his father more comfortable with his money (and gets around the medicare gridlock). The son gets our sympathy, afffection. He becomes the hero of the movie.

So Barbarian Invasions can be systems of thought that invade and challenge.

Barbarian=other. Other on a political (socialism and capitalism) and biological (disease, virus etc.) But ultimately the other is not seperate from the individual.

It is there all along.

Anyway, just some very quick thoughts. I watched The Barbarian Invasions as part of Cinematique Carolina at the Carolina Theatre. It was an amazing experience. Greensboro finally has a place for independent and foreign movies and you can purchase and drink beer/wine in the movie theatre. Next weeks movie is Sping, Summer, Winter …and Spring. Control Room and Life of Brian are playing in the next few weeks. They are also doing an Orson Welles Film Festival. I hope they keep this theatre alive. I am really excited to finally find a place in Greensboro to watch art house films. (Big thanks to Angie Decola for introducing me to Cinematique Carolina).

The Carolina Theatre also happens to be really really gorgeous inside:

Carolina Theatre

Here’s a poem that perhaps illustrates “the school of quietude.”

Abalone

(by Tony Leuzzi. BOA editions)

Lift the mollusk to your ear

and you will hear a cello weap

the neck of somber sea.

Press it closer to your ear

and you will hear an ardent bell

ring rills of water through your feet.

Pull it gently from your ear

and you will hear the pause

of tongues that fluttered once like wings.

So we have ear/hear. A cello weaping. The sea. Alliteration with “ring rills.” ‘Gently.” And a nice ephiphany/escape/romantic metaphor of tongues as once wings. Once being key since this is elegiac.

Anyone want to defend this poem?

What does this poem point toward?

I am all for the mystical/spirtual experience but . . .

Lisa Jarnot

wish you were here?:

Bloomsday Rejoyce

Tony is instigating a great conversation on the breakthrough or freedom narrative.

In the 20th century it was the narrative of freedom from meter. Now it might be the narrative of breaking out of the “official verse culture” or “school of quietude.”

It might be useful to know where “you” are coming from.

But a linear narrative is too simplistic.

Avant talk of shifting contexts and strain(s) of purity?

On a personal level, I keep catching myself wanting to indulge in the self-delusion of a conversion narrative.

I once read Thomas Lux, Stephen Dobyns, Robert Pinsky, Seamus Heaney but now I read/identify with Susan Howe, Rod Smith, Leslie Scalapino etc.

I once was lost but now I’m found.

But I know I am never found.

If I was found, I would not feel the urgency to write.

On the other hand.

I once listened to “mainstream: “top 40” music and thought it was good. I have since acquired more “discerning tastes.”

Yet, some “mainstream” music can be quite good. Never mind how we define the mainstream (is Radiohead mainstream?)

Art and religion have strong connections. Religion and politics have strong connections (despite attempts to seperate them).

Conversion narratives seem common among various art forms.

Again, Mark Wallace has a great essay on conversion narratives I wish I could quote from (but my books are packed for my move up the street in a couple of weeks).

Narrative was off limits in the avant world.

Alice Notely wrote Disobedience.

No form is off limits.

Wanda Coleman used an anthology of contemporary mainstream poetry and rewrote them.

So maybe not a third way or a fourth way. But thousands of ways. Not standing still. Not a voyage out only to discover/arrive back where you started.

Just a voyage.

The hero’s journey has problems because it is a simplistic narrative.

Conversion narratives have problems because they are simplistic.

The argument for clarity/transperancy in language has problems because language is overdetermined.

What does it mean to say (con)version. A con? A version?

Is the use of parathesis a period style or to demonstrate the complexity of language?

Can the use of parathesis become gimmick, become outdated, inaffective, abused, a typographical cliche?

Only in context. The parathesis itself is only given meaning(s) in context.

Is iambic pentameter the sound of war or the sound of the heart?

Context context context.

I once was lost but now I am found.

In two minutes I may be found again.

Stick to your guns until you acquire better ones.

I am tired of poetry. Too many expectations before I’ve even begun.

Would it be more effective to simply talk about language arts?

What is lost by the use of genre (including post-avant, avant, experimental)?

What is gained by the use of genre? (is it ONLY for marketing purposes?)

I’m off to the toilet (what does the use of the word of bathroom in American English disguise?)

When I read poetry that knocks off my socks I have two contradictory reactions:

1) stop writing poetry. Just read it. Die happy

2) Steal as much as possible and write like a madman

In all honesty I think I enjoy reading poetry more than writing it.

I mean I am more enraptured by other people’s good shit than my own feeble attempts.

I am speaking of World Well Broken

If you haven’t read it, (don’t want to say important, must read etc.

Then again I will. A MUST READ)

A must read. I like it when people say “a must read.” It doesn’t get under my skin.

I am not offended by passionate loves. I know I can disagree. As long as the person with the passionate love does not force their passionate love into a canon which is then force fed into little schoolkids who then grow up to fear, dislike, cannot decipher, uncode, poetry.

Some “must reads” might get under skin.

Anyway, World Well Broken is lyrical language both beautiful and crude. Indeterminate but not just any old indeterminate.

I’ve noticed (myself included) a lot of younger upcoming poets trying to come to terms with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E= poetics and assuming any indeterminate use of langauge is as good as any other.

Or my subjectivity and private language is just as good as anyone else’s.

I don’t think so. Some people arrange better.

Even with chance operations the obsessions of good poets leak through.

Some people also have more interesting inner lives and contradictions than others.

Yes, I realize reading the phone book could be a poem (a performance text) but there’s some skill involved.

Dare I say the word “craft.”

The word “craft” and “formalism” needs recontextualization. It’s is not limited to the workshop mfa world or “new formalism.”

Polyvocal, multiple, multipile, rent seck.

Dripping paint like Pollack is not the same as dripping paint?

Anyway, who knows what I am trying to say.

Off the cuff, typing not censoring. Trying to sort out, work through, live with my one-thousand contradictions.

Where to begin?

An amazing word dizzy weekend.

So many amazing performances.

First, the regrets:

1) Our cat Iris was rushed to the emergency room Sunday morning right before the second day of the festival due to convulsions and muscle spasms from Hartz flea medication. After some muscle relaxers, some more tubes down the throat, fluids, etc. she is finally doing better. I am definitely writing a letter to Hartz. The vets at the emergency clinic said they have seen a lot of severe reactions (and sometimes organ failure) from the use of Hartz products on cats and dogs. DAMN HARTZ!

2) For lack of funds I did not pick up anything translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat or grab anything by Linh Dinh.

3) I did not get a photo of Kasey Mohammad. He’s reading was sooooooo amaziiiiiinnnnnngggggg!

I also may have knocked someone’s glass of whiskey out of their hands while shaking hands with Kasey. Being in a slow daze, I let Kasey pay for a replacement drink for the stranger.

3) I did not get a picture or book of Mr. Brian Henry

Now for SOME of the amazements:

1) Chris Murray, Standard Schaefer, Kasey Mohammad, Chris Vitiello, Ken Rumble, and Lee Ann Brown performances knocked my socks off (as Ken Rumble would say). I am excited to see Kasey’s new book. Man. He can really ignite that flarf!

2) Patrick Heron and Lee Ann Brown sung most of their poems (from reading some of their poems on the page I was not expecting poem turned into song)

3) Joe Donahue. I am not blowing warm wind up anyone’s butt, but Joe’s reading did everything I always wanted poems to do. I was moved (in an extreme way) intellectually, non-rationally, rationally, emotionally, physically, and musically. In short, enraptured. I have not entered that level of rapture and awe at a poetry reading EVER!

4) Standard Schaefer. So open. So open. Intelligent without rubbing out the edges. Very generous with discounting (sometimes to $0) his book Nova.

5) Mark DuCharme was also intelligent, curious, engaging on many levels. I wish I could have spent more time bending my ear at the bar and continued to talk about Pound.

We had a little discussion about the Wrights. Not the wrights of the airplane but the various poet Wrights. A few people (Kasey, Tony, me) admitted to liking James Wright and surprisingly our avant-garde deodorant did not wear off. In other words we were still “in.”

Mark DuCharme’s favourite Wright was Jay Wright (which I am going to check out soon).

No one voted for Franz Wright or Charles Wright.

We also talked about lineage. Not to create a simplistic lock step lineage. Yet, Mark said he believed some sense of lineage is important. Knowing what you’re coming out/from/of.

I think I agree.

We briefly hit on Mark Wallace’s essay on the avant-garde as a conversion experience and broke down some of the problems of a conversion experience (simplistic linear narrative for one).

6) As usual Tony’s enthusiasm is amazing. His intellectual curiosity astounds and inspires! I want to tackle Pound, Duncan, Olson, Peter O’ Leary, Ronald Johnson, Kent Johnson. If you haven’t met him, find him and hang out for a while. You’ll know what I mean

7) Did I mention the singing of Lee Ann Brown?

8) I have so many new books, chapbooks. I am moving in a few weeks so I am clearing out a few boxes of books and heading to Raleigh next weekend to exchange them for credit at used bookstores.

My various reading projects are spiraling out of control.

Patrick Heron did such an amazing job. What a festival. AWP (or like conferences) have nothing on the Carrboro Poetry Festival. If possible, do not miss next year’s festival. Poetry festivals/readings don’t get much better than this.

I want more.

Tried hartz flea tick stuff for our cats last night (instead of the usual frontline). Now Iris has the shakes. Gotta take her into the vet in 30min. I guess frontline, advantage etc are worth the extra $.

The big Carborro poetry festival is about to kick off in a few hours. I going to help sell books (which might give an opportunity to get dibs).

Looks like we are going to move down the street into a cheaper place. Force us to get rid of stuff since it’s a two bedroom apartment instead of a house.

The movie House of Sand and Fog made me have the recurring dream of being in jail.

At least once a week I’m in jail or it’s the apocalypse.

Alright. I need a bagel and coffee before the drive to Carrboro.

Yeah festivals!

Tony’s blog makes me want to read Pound in the near future. I like to immerse myself. I am obsessive.

But I have to feel a kind of intuition in terms of timing.

I know full well what doesn’t grab me today may grab me in a year.

Illusions of canon (you must read Pound)?

Illusions of non-changing self (I will never get into Pound)?

I never want to stop exploring the possibilities of poetry. I like to try new things. I hope I don’t ever get to the point of comfortable writing (insert easy “mainstream” target here)

I sense the argument /discussion between Tony and Jim has something to do with author(ity).

(see how clever I am etc.)

I love the etc. I can’t stop using the etc. the etc. Just somehow took hold of me. Wait. Who started the etc. Maybe I’ve seen it somewhere. WHO started the etc? The etc. means there’s more. Means I know there’s more. Means I am cool off the hip causual etc.

I am going to say many “Beat” poets might be seminal to an understanding of certain types of contemporary poetry. Pound may be seminal to an understanding other types of contemporary poetry.

This all strikes me as religious.

Where’s god? Who am I? Where did I come from?

Which isn’t necessarily a “bad” thing. But it can dangerous. The myth of origins.

It’s also interesting to think about interpretation. Is it necessary to read X to understand Y? Well, what do we mean by understand?

Stand under etc.

Damn I love the etc. I wish I coined it!

Nice discussions going on in the blog world. The whole Jeff Clark review is interesting.

The idea of a negative review having a postive impact? A bad review or censorship can fuel the interest of a given poet/writer/artist etc.

Certainly this isn’t always the case.

I am wondering if blurbs should be negative.

Like

______ poetry is the most miserable, unintelligent, bullshit you will ever read.

I am also interested in what Tony is discussing.

The idea of reading seminal work.

I would like to own up to all the poets I can’t get into or haven’t read who might be seminal to _____

(perhaps only for now; perhaps forever):

Ezra Pound (can’t get into yet)

Zukofsky (maybe later)

Olson (can’t get into yet)

Robert Duncan (I have a selected. Can’t get into it yet)

Jack Spicer (want to read him but haven’t yet)

Dante’s Divine Comedy (only read the Inferno trans. by Robert Pinsky)

Ted Berrigan (only read a few of his poems)

Allen Ginsberg (only a few anthologized poems)

Ron Silliman (I have Jones and Lit but can’t get into them yet)

Charles Berstein (only read a few anthologized pieces and A Poetics)

Ronald Johnson (I haven’t read him yet. This one’s a yet for sure. But it seems like everyone has read Ronald Johnson)

Alright, better stop. I could go on for quite a while.

Do I consider myself “well read?” I read poetry for four or five hours almost everyday.

Maybe I am not reading the serious, brightest, and the best?

How many “greats” are there?

Again, I agree with giving the big names multiple attempts.

But I am not sure if reading a certain list of great poets is necessary to write “great” poems.

The kneejerk might be either:

a) Pound is great because most of the good innovative poets say so (even though I haven’t read much of his work)

or

b) Pound sucks because most of the older generation of innovative poets love him (even though I haven’t read much of his work)

If Tony’s main point is to not automatically dismiss a poet without having read them, I agree.

I have experienced the “not ready for this yet” many times.

I am more curious about the term/idea of seminal.

How/who/what makes a poet’s work seminal?

Seminal:

1. a. Of or pertaining to the seed or semen of men and animals (applied Phys. and Anat. to structures adapted to contain or convey semen); of the nature of semen.

2. With reference to plants: Pertaining to or of the nature of seed. Bot. Of organs or structures: Serving to contain the seed.

3. gen. Of or pertaining to the seed or reproductive elements existing in organic bodies, or attributed in pre-scientific belief to inorganic substances. Formerly often in seminal power, virtue: the power of producing offspring.

4. fig.    a. Having the properties of seed; containing the possibility of future development. Also, freq. used of books, work, etc., which are highly original and influential; more loosely: important, central to the development or understanding of a subject.

 

What is central to an understanding of the subject of poetry?

What a weekend. The whirl keeps on going. Thursday bachelor party. Friday rehersal dinner. Saturday wedding, reception (with open bar and amazing food then a stretched limo ride back to Greensboro). I’ve never worn a tux before (never went to prom etc.) It was a lot of fun.

Adam and Melissa are two graduates of the Greensboro MFA program. They met in their second year and fell in mad love.

On Saturday morning before the wedding I played some ultimate frisbee. I was the 2nd oldest player (not that I’m old). I turned too quickly and heard my ankle go pop.

Never really had an ankle injury. So I sat down for a while. Felt fine so I went back in. Sprinted down the field. Had a great game.

The a little later the swelling started. Wrapped the ankle. Went to the wedding. Escorted people to their seats. Wore a nice tux. Drank a lot at the open bar. Danced to the band (they played some good Van Morrison and Michael Jackson).

Next day. Big swelling. So I got an ace bandage and wrapped it. Now it’s a balloon but it doesn’t really hurt.

Watching my ankle swell is a fascinating. Much rather have an ankle pop then the flu.

Here are a few pics from the wedding. More will come soon:

Adam and Melissa’s Wedding

My good friend Hardy gave me his bookstore credit before he left town. Picked up:

Armenian Papers: poems 1954-1984 by Harry Matthews

The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry edited by Paul Auster

Zizek: a critical introduction by Ian Parker

So far, no poop behind the t.v.

My fingers are crossed for the scent eraser!

It was great to meet Tim Botta and hear some of his poetry. He read a poem about the box Joseph Cornell never made. He also read a Pantoum and Villanelle. He is workin the language all right. Some great obsessions/ repititions throughout the performance. And performance it was. No nice quiet poetry voice. All guts and gusto. Yeah!

Speaking of the no box. I need to run to the store and find some kind of chemical that erases the scent of cat poop. Our cat Mona keeps pooping behind the television. The vet said she may have negative memories of the litter box. It must be recent. We’ve had her for over three years and she’s never pooped outside the litter box (unless it was for revenge. One time she pooped in my shoe because there were ants in her food and she must have thought I put them there). Maybe she had a recent bad bowel movement in the litter box and connected the pain of the movement to the litter box itself. That would be understandable. Now how can I convince her it’s not the litter box. A little treat waiting for her when she climbs out of the litter box?

HMMMMMMMMM

Poetry festival coming soon. Only two weekends away. Excited about the Lucipo chapbook for the festival. I am so lucky to live near Carborro. GO Lucipo!

Just returned from the eastern shore. Wow. What a time. We canoed to an island and hung out for the day. Lots of toads. A few water moccasins. A wide open sky full of stars. Mushrooms.

I am excited about the next few weeks. The Tony Tost/Open Eye Reading Series returns this evening with “the prose stylings of Jeff Rehnlund & the poetry of Tim Botta.”

Should be cool.

The Lucipo collective is putting out a chapbook in time for the poetry festival in two weeks. Some great folks in the collective (me, Tony Tost, Tim Botta, Ken Rumble, Evie Shockley, Joseph Donahue, Patrick Heron and many more. About 19 of us I believe).

Just scored some free literary journals from the MFA office. They are weeding out hundreds of them. Most of the lit journals were boring but I scored:

Mudfish Two

Mudfish Three

Hambone 13

Sulfur 6, 19, 20, 21

and a special issue on David Antin in The Review of Contemporary Fiction

My reading lists will not stop growing!

Reading John Yau’s Borrowed Love Poems right now.

AMAZING!

During April/May the following poets floored me:

John Yau

Mark Wallace

Rod Smith

K. Silem Mohammad

David Antin

So, in terms of placing my energy. Do I attempt to read everything those poets wrote or continue reading a variety of contemporary books of poetry?

Both of course.

But which one deserves more time/energy?

Hm . . . . . .

Telling it Slant (edited by Mark Wallace and Steven Marks) is amazing.

I am thrilled by the essay Avant-Garde without Agonism by Daniel Barbiero:

The emerging avant-garde as refusing to particpate in us vs.them.

Everything is useful.

A nonagonistic openess to the past.

Verwindung: to distort and to use to advantage.

The past as an enabling constraint.

To give up the notion of avant-garde as linear progression.

Instead of “make it new” it’s now “make it anew”.

The emerging avant-garde motivated by a genuine breakthrough.

The question hinted at but not addressed in the essay is: can the idea of an avant-garde exist without a linear progression? What does an advance guard advance toward?

And this relationship to the past sounds like “postmodernism.” Are “we” still in postmodernism? Not post-post modernism?

By the way, how can we determine who is and is not “in” “postmodernism?”

The term postmodernism is very tricky. The term avant-garde is very tricky.

In fact, every term is very tricky.

The idea of a period style was made possible by the historical avant-garde.

So the critique I keep hearing from poets working more within the “mainstream literary tradition” is that “avant-garde poetry” is doing the same thing it did in the early 20th century. This is a critique of novelty. But the emerging avant-garde, at least from reading Mark Wallace and Daniel Barbiero, is not interested in novelty. At least not novelty in the same sense as the historical avant-garde.

A fad, a fashion ascribed to avant-garde poetry (poetics) is a nice twist since the concept of a fad, fashion is exactly what was revealed via avant-garde poetics.

The art for art sake allowed the emergence of an avant-garde to critique the institution(s) of art.

So in a very broad sense if the avant-garde is involved in a critique of the institution of art what happens when the instituion of art (or more specifically poetry) is itself a marginal institution?

Are avant-garde poetics an institution or a genre? Or both? Can an institution also be a genre?

What the hell is a genre?

What qualifies as an institution?

A new journal put together by some great folks here in Greensboro. Check it out at:

Backwards City

I am enjoying Burger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde.

Only read the foreword yesterday by Jochen Schulte-Sasse:

The historical avant-garde as an assault on the autonomy of art.

True and false vs. right and wrong.

Adorno’s critique of the culture industry as a “circle of manipulation and retroactive need.”

However, the question is whether the attempt to dominate cultural life is successful?

“Poststructuralism excludes from the start the possibility that there might exist a material organization of social reality external to language and imprinted on our psyche (and physical being), written into our existence via the mechanisms of material as well as cultural reproduction.”

In other words:

“Just as the play of signifiers contradicts and undermines any claim of possessing a well-defined, conceptually unequivocal, logocentric discourse, so material experience may contradict and undermine the prevalent ideology of a historical situtation.”

So, “if material, unarticulated experiences exist, and if their effect is a psychic tension . . . then different degrees of verbal approximation and, thus, of conscious understanding are possible.”

A poetics of unarticulated experience seems to depend on access to the public sphere of production.

“The ideological ruptures in every historical situtation enable us to develop alternatives of thought that do approximate an understanding of experience.”

Both Adorno and Derrida’s theories are limiting because “they take capitalist, bourgeois society to be closed, a monolith without ruptures that allow intervening practice.”

Breton: “Experience has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge.”

So to give “voice” to “experience” via ideological ruptures.

The poetics of experience as not mimetic/empirical.

Experience as a rupture.

Jochen: “it is not the opposition between cognition as copy and cognition as production that is at stake but the question regarding the preconditions of cognition that are embedded in social development.”

Some new music from friends:

Wilco A Ghost is Born

Velvet Underground Fully Loaded

Pixies Come On Pilgrim

Mates of State My Solo Project

Built to Spill The Normal Years

The Fire Theft

Some Arab Strap (I need to stick it in the computer and find the tracks/album)

Helping my friend Hardy Gieske move back home in a few days. He is going to move home (Eastern Shore of Maryland) for the summer then move to Brooklyn in the fall to tutor kids in math. He’s an amazing fiction writer.

Arab Strap is playing now and some far it makes me want to go back to bed.

I think I need some Fire Theft to get me moving. I was a big Sunny Day Real Estate fan a while back. Hoping The Fire Theft continues the range of the last two Sunny Day albums.

In the back of my mind I keep wondering how trivial I am.

I mean talking about music with the thought of the terrors in/of the world.

Going to read Peter Burger’s Theory of the Avant Garde today.

I’ve got so many gaps. So many many gaps.

Just returned from the woods. All night party for graduating artists in visual arts. Huge bonfire. Hundreds of people. Sculptures hanging from the trees in the woods. The guy hired a live DJ and built a log cabin in the woods. Works part time as a tree doctor.

The visual artists dress better than the poets/writers etc.

I’ve got to get better clothes from a vintage shop somewhere in North Carolina.

Met some strange people in the woods.

The sculptures in the trees were amazing. The log cabin was painted in various bright happy colors with old time porch and handmade chairs, tables etc.

Lots of homemade food. A real mix of folks. Dancers. Psuedo hippies. Muscians with spikes on their arms (post-punk. Punk’s not dead?). Quite a few natives of these parts with Appalachian/Ulster Scottish language patterns

(now that can be fascinating. Comparing the Ulster Protestant/Glasgow/Irish mix with the southern Scottish mountain mix).

They are not that similar. Just a few things here and there.

origins origins.

damn origins.

Sometimes I desire to go into the woods. But I love the city as well.

Classic split I suppose. City/chaos, woods/peace.

But then there’s the city full of birds and parks and trees to sit peacefully under.

So really it’s not city vs. woods. I want the woods in the city. Not sure if the city works in the woods.

I’m a little skeptical of pig farms and collective hemp making etc.

I read somewhere in someone’s essay in Telling it Slant that the new punks will be optimistic.

When I think optomistic movements I think Gary Synder and the hippies. What will the new optimism look like?

I’m so full of spelling mistakes this morning. I better eat some eggs, ceral, sweep the floor, go the bookstores, read some Telling It Slant and New (American) Poetry.

Brenda Coultas amazes me. I am enraptured. I am glad the Life of Brian is being re-released in theatres to combat Mel Gibson.

I’ve got Day of the Dead to watch this weekend in anticipation of watching the remake of Dawn of the Dead.

Also got Hit Me by the people that brought us Secretary.

Alright time for the eggs and alka seltzer.

Interesting trunk! Overall ranking: a good supplemental trunk for the study of Westward Expansion. In the surfing room a message appears on the screen: a fatal error has occurred please relaunch internet explorer version 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 meanwhile the breasts feel like burnt biscuits and the neon blinks BURNY BISCUIT and the sign says CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH REAL AUDIO: “tell me about your first time.” and the voice says: “We were puttering checking my terrified or not terrified finding the wet spot fully heated poor ventilation we knew the biscuits were burnt.” and the sign says: CLICK HERE FOR INSTANT ACCESS another voice says: KEEP YOUR BLOSSOM SPECIAL WITH NEW PILL FOR PROMISE KEEPERS REAL AUDIO: “leafeater jazz” “indented erasure” “headstands for the fearful” the new and improved magnetic shoe and do you want the ultimate anti-establishment hairdo? import exceeds export “no problem” trunk too small “no problem” the line that begins and begins free lunch big boat jolly be good times arollin milk rage let me triple size that (s)long what a beautiful swan purple pill for hearburn yellow pill for allegy white pill for head with various affects like chasing tail waffle nut blueberry pancakes the banner of wisdom says if a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts he will scrutinize it closely and so on

The poems never publish the way I type them (line breaks etc.)

Ah well. Only rough ones anyway.

He is, in all modesty and honesty, “just doing his job”—insuring that what we really think, and what we actually say, is a tight fit. Attention to details. Honesty. Integrity. Timeliness. Complete satisfaction. In all honesty, there’s too much “fluff’ here – and I don’t care purp is straight honesty.

She will really admire your honesty and cautious personality given which contrary to the Horatio Alger myth anti-Americans always reward greedy and ruthless individuals over those who aspire to honesty, integrity and hard work .

(NOTE: The summary for this Japanese page contains characters that cannot be correctly displayed in this language/character set).

Follow the steps below to begin POG (come back to items I can’t live without: “Lukewarm water, good coffee, friendship, Butterfinger A Pot of Gold Coffee a wide range of hot beverage choice from standard to gourmet products).

Each player starts with four POG designer series.

We discussed our POG “Family Night” which will be on Dec. 4th cthulhu-philes love a good cock or dogfight and so do billions of kids now thanks to the latest POG-like rage.

(In other words: kids — make sure you get your parent’s permission before you begin play).

Thanks must also DEFINITELY NOT GO to my other roommate, laughing boy MARK, who never made any coffee or cleared the trash in the kitchen.

Blue Raiders survived and achieved, this season could be the cornerstone of many great things to come.

We were reading toward Bethlehem suffice it to say we were tired elephants so we were reading toward Bethlehem looking for new streaks across the sky. We were reading toward Bethlehem with wet blankets and a mop looking for new insurrections suffice it to say religion stinks.

But really we were reading toward Bethlehem because we did not want the skin of the farmer

because we left doctor Sunday on the side of the road with a briefcase full of dead facts.

We were reading toward Bethlehem as part of a seminar on special problems for honest mystics.

We were reading toward Bethlehem with old texts. The old texts pointed toward Bethlehem.

Suffice it to say we were reading toward Bethlehem and our innocence drowned

suffice it to say we were reading toward Bethlehem and we fell apart

suffice it to say we loved the rocking rattle face goo goo ga ga wet beast moment.

Suffice it to say slouching.

We were reading toward Bethlehem slugging through old texts toward Bethlehem

with insurrections toward Bethlehem suffice it to say reading toward Bethlehem

in love with the lion.

Had a great Lucipo meeting yesterday with Evie Shockley, Tony Tost, and Ken Rumble.

The discussions helped me replay with my poem that plays with the Second Coming.

I want many second comings. I am not satisfied with one Apocalypse.

Here’s the rough work/rough beast:

Of Our Cranial Love for the Lion

Suffice it to say

religion stinks

and we were tired elephants

so we headed toward Bethlehem looking for new

streaks across the sky.

We were heading toward Bethlehem with wet blankets

and a mop.

We were looking for new insurrections of

unto you.

But really we were heading toward Bethlehem

because we did not want the skin of the farmer

because we left doctor Sunday on the side of the road with a briefcase full

of dead facts.

We were heading toward Bethlehem as part of a seminar

on special problems for honest mystics.

We were heading toward Bethlehem with old texts.

The old texts pointed toward Bethlehem.

Suffice it to say

we were heading toward Bethlehem and our innocence drowned

suffice it to say

we were heading toward Bethlehem and we fell apart

suffice it to say

we loved the rocking the rattle the face the goo goo ga ga the wet beast moment come round.

We were heading without map

slouching and sloughing

toward.

We were sludging through

old texts toward Bethlehem

with insurrections in mind

come round heading

to say

in love with the lion.

The Dallas Hockaday position did not work out. They wanted someone to teach two classes and I need full time work.

I am excited to stay here in NC for a while though. We got a great group of poets in the area and things are rockin.

Took another kind of trip last night. My first time. Colors will never be the same.

Going to go watch a movie called Downtown 81 (about Basquiat). I am looking forward to seeing how NY used to be. I think it will be an interesting contrast to my recent trip to NY. Ny was really clean. I wanted to find the lower east side and hunt down where the old hipster poets used to live. But I couldn’t find my way out of Chinatown. Also wanted to see what the Nuyorican cafe is all about. Another trip perhaps.

Excited to plan a trip back home to Ireland since I don’t have to worry about moving to Texas. It will nice to see all my relatives and have a nice steak and kidney pie.

Check out some pics from the May 5th party on my street. Good salsa etc.

Carr Street Party

What a whirl after my return from NY. Busy grading.

Check out some pics from NY:

NY Trip

long drive, stiff legs. Very enjoyable trip. Tired as. Ate in the meat packing district last night hung out in Chelsea. Great exhibits. Liked the little jumping men on stone tablets and chocolate hip hop. Then we went to McSorleys again and had many rounds then a few bars in the east village and at 1am decided to see Times Square. Times Square got old very very quickly. Like Las Vegas. Which gets old very quickly. Times Square made me ready to drive back to Lamberton. Driving in NY is a much different experience than walking.

Went back to St. Marks bookstore last night (it really can’t get any better than st. marks bookstore). Spent the last of my birthday money. NY requires some serious $$$$. It will take a while to recover.

Got:

Kenning cd (readings by Leslie Scalapino, Bernstein, Ginsberg, Bruce Andrews, Hannah Weiner and many others)

The Bowery Project by Brenda Coultras (a little chapbook about the area. Haven’t really looked at it yet)

Now, I need some time to read. But gotta get up and grade some exams.

Ah well. Great days of reading to come.

wow. i am exhausted. But what a time yesterday. Drank a lot of rounds at McSorleys and got the t-shirt. I am was disappointed in the poetry selection at The Strand. Found two great bookstores. One was connected to a housing project with homeless people with HIV/Aids victims. One of the highlights yesterday was St.marks bookstore. WAY WAY better selection of poetry than The Strand. Picked up:

Geoffrey Dyer The Dirty Halo of Everything

Joseph Lease The Room

Lisa Jarnot Ring of Fire

Clark Coolidge Mesh

Noah Eli Gordon The Frequencies

St. Mark’s. WOW what history.

I’ll put up pictures when I return. Going to hit the Whitney exhibit today and some galleries in Chelsea. Maybe Times Square.

took 11 hours to drive from Greensboro, NC to Lambertville, NJ. Long day yesterday. Drank a few pints to sleep.

It’s 6:24AM and we are about to hit the road. Catching a train into NY (YEAH). Our friend/host has to work today so we are just going to tackle the city on our own. I guess we’ll figure it out. Wanna visit the Strand so maybe it’s village day today.

Off i go. I can’t believe I am about to see NY city.

Tony Tost started a reading series at the open eye cafe where he works. Great crowd last night. Tony and Brian really spread the word. A really really refreshing change to the university reading venue. A lot more energy, more informal. Yes. Ah. Feels soooooo gooooooooood

Things are happening. WOW. Things are really heating up in these parts in terms of non-mainstream poetics.

check out some pics from the reading last night. Some are blury cause I just got this digital camera and often forget to hold the button halfway to allow it to adjust to the light etc.

check ’em out:

Open Eye Cafe Reading Series

Driving to NY city tomorrow. Hope to hit the bowery poetry club on saturday and visit the Strand, McSorleys and some art in Chelsea.

OH YEAH!!!!

Now I gotta get back to grading essays on Irish nationalism.

Rainy day and a Monday. However, while giving a test on Irish drama I read some Haze by Mark Wallace.

I feel much better knowing the issues a little more clearly without simple solutions or binaries and it implicates and situates.

The idea of the pure has been driving me up the wall. It is refreshing to see some honesty about avant garde marketing. Perhaps a different kind than some other kinds but marketing nonetheless.

“Poetry Marketing” and “Avant Garde Deoderant” touch and explore the heated issue of branding as mentioned on Silliman’s blog a while back.

“Communal Perversities” is so biting funny. I bit my lip to keep the silence as my students wrote about Irish identity (and hopefully remembered the limitations of the English/Irish binary).

Knowledge and private property. Knowledge as action/activity.

Progress and the word “derivative”: when I was in the indie cd store about a year ago I asked if Interpol was derivative of Joy Division. The cool young owner of the store said sure. It took him a while to realize the negative use of the word derivative.

One comment I heard a lot in the Greensboro MFA program from professors is the “avant garde” isn’t doing anything new. They are doing the same thing they did forty years ago. I also heard a lot of poets say they couldn’t get into my poems because they didn’t have a taste for “language poetry.” I wasn’t writing from the langpo tradition by I was exploring philosophy and language. Everything innovative=pretencious=academic=language poetry.

hazed?

The easy going conversational first person epiphany lyric poems are anything but academic.

O my.

What does academic mean? A style or a power? Can a style be academic?

So I read all of Stephen Dobyns and James Tate and wrote nice little fables which many more poets loved. I mean who doesn’t want to be loved and accepted. I don’t want to stink (as Mark Wallace puts it in “avant garde deoderant”). I mean the mfa workshop was supposed to represent an ideal audience (they all payed big bucks and sacrificed to learn “the craft”) so if they didn’t “get it” who would?

So I wrote an MFA thesis with transcendence, beauty, lyric with a whole lot of Irish themes because everyone knows how marketable an “Irish” poet can be. etc. etc. etc.

But it only took me a summer to recover from the MFA “program.”

Thank whoever for Carborro.

“On Cognitive Limits” helps me resee the practice and theory of knowledge as activity rather than accumulation.

Are innovative poetic practices going to overthrow tyranny?

I think writing as helping writer and audience to realize their complex interaction with language is much better way to describe the great hope.

Got to find out about the multiplicity of forms.

HAZE

Ken Rumble rocks. He’s really working it here in NC. What an amazing reading last night. All three poets distinct in delivery.

Mark Wallace was very generous, warm, gorgeous in his reading. from “Reasons to Write”:

“If I / keep writing poetry, it’s only because, in a world of reasons, poetry has long / since stopped being possible. If I keep writing poetry, it’s only because I can’t / be writing poetry at all.”

He ran out of Haze so I purchased his reading copy.

Lorraine Graham’s “Some Epistles” begins with:

“Your head is a balloon / decapitation does not begin / in thought-the feature of / radiant anger is that / it cannot fill up this balloon.”

Rod Smith’s bite took my head off. Well-delivered with unsettling humor.

Drinks and talk of Bernstein and why people attack him as a person more than his theories/practice.

Rod Smith talked a lot about his excitement with the work of K. Silem Mohammad. A great surprise coming in June to Carrboro. Rod said his delivery is supposed to be amazing. I am gearing up.

Talked about the roundtable discussion at Boston Comment. Rod Smith read about toads and frogs. I am still unsure whether I am a toad or a frog. “Ted’s Head” hurt me good.

It was great to speak with Joe Donahue. Talked a little about the term Avant Garde.

Not sure. Innovative, experimental, avant garde. The idea of avant garde as not a good term because it always requires an enemy. But isn’t there always an enemy.

The other day someone said,

The “avant garde” cannot exist without “mainstream,” but the “mainstream” can exist without “avant garde.”

So avant garde is more dependent on “mainstream” than “Mainstream” on “avant garde.”

But within “mainstream” and “avant garde” are many many streams.

So let’s talk oceans or perhaps planets.

Tony Tost and Leigh. What a great pair.

I don’t want to grade comp papers today. I want to immerse myself in Rod Smith, Lorraine Graham, and Mark Wallace.

Maybe that’s my motivation to grade good but fast. Yes fast. Got to stop feeling guilty for doing poetry while on the “job.”

Right now, I am dancing on the ceiling.

Only managed to click a few shots due to severe case of awe.

Here’s a couple of pics of the readers and Joe Donahue. I will get more, much more, pics at the Patrick Heron poetry conference in June.

check out the pics dated April 25th:

desert city reading series

Woke up at 4am today. Choices choices choices.

Got a letter requesting a phone interview for a position teaching English at an all-girls school in Dallas, TX called Hockaday.

I know nothing about Texas except the stereotypes.

I know nothing about girls prep schools.

The website mentions the faculty are writers, composers, visual artists etc.

Not sure. Maybe a phone interview wouldn’t hurt.

So the 5 AM writing time continues.

I’ve often heard advice to wake up with not fully formed critical apparatus or coffee stimulant and write without censoring.

Doesn’t this assume the critical/creative split?

For me, the early morning writing requires a bit of coffee.

It’s more about not worrying about day to day concerns at 5 AM.

I decided to read some of Bernstein’s A Poetics before beginning a poem and it opened me up much more than the more typical “poetic” text.

All sorts of thoughts bum rushing me.

Concerning captivity narratives:

“Once captured, by what seemed from outside/ as everything to be feared, all that is / destructive, one may never be able to return / or may not wish to.”

Over and over I’ve heard my former friends (many years ago) explain why I should not leave the Mormon church. There’s nothing out there they said. The world is scary without Mormonism.

Is escape different from freedom?

My drive toward poetry is for freedom, not escape.

“The problem/ with escapist literature is that it offers no escape, / narratively reinforcing our captivity” (Bernstein 75).

I am really fascinated by the erotics of the text (as Bernstein says, “When was your first textual encounter”). Never really read Bataille but according to Bernstein:

“In Bataille’s analysis, disgust and nausea / are necessary preconditions for the most intense / feelings of sexual pleasure that result from / transgressing the inhibitions that create / repellence.”

So poetry using antiabsorptive strategies (socially disruptive, anticonventional) for absorptive/erotic ends.

If a text is fully antiaborptive then it repels the reader if it is fully absorptive the reader does not have a participatory role (as said by Ron Silliman via Bernstein).

So the claim of the poet for the common person (Billy Collins etc.) is the claim of absorption as participatory democracy. Yet, a text that relies mainly on absorption is anything but partcipatory. The common poet is the poet of domination and captivity.

But hold on. What about “common” poet as lowest “common” denominator. Is it possible to have a popular poet who does not swing for passivity and captivity?

I can think of plenty of movies that rely on absorptive and antiabsorptive techniques and are “popular.”

Is it possible for poetry to do the same? Or is the visual appeal of movies

stronger than the appeal of written/spoken language with suggestions of image etc.?

I heard someone say they are more interested in poetry/poetics than poems (maybe Ron Silliman). Maybe that’s my beef with those boring academic anthologies for intro to lit. It’s all safe, uncontested etc.

I’ve often wondered why the popular songs goes

“o say can you see.”

In other words, is seeing different from saying. Is poetry different than movies?

What strange mixed tapes on my desk. I’ve been dipping in and out of these various texts:

1) Bernstein A Poetics

2) Mark Wallace Complications from Standing in a Circle

3) Rod Smith Music or Honesty

4) Frank Stanford The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You

5) Jack Kerouac Book of Blues

I am in awe of Mark Wallace’s Complications from Standing in a Circle.

I’m off to breakfast and the morning show.

I am very excited about the reading this Saturday in Carborro, NC. Listening to Mark Wallace via Real Audio right now. Excited to hear him live.

Just got

Complications from Standing in A Circle by Mark Wallace

and

Music or Honesty by Rod Smith

Wanna read them before the reading. But I got comp essays to grade. AGH!!!!

On another note: I can’t stop re-reading Deer Head Nation. Read some before sleep and wake up at 5am wanting to write. This is a new strategy. 5 am writing. Thanks to K. Silem Mohammad for waking me up!!!!

Spooky. I never really thought about that word until Deer Head Nation. Then Shanna Compton’s Down Spooky.

Spooky.

Just listen to the way the word sounds.

The new schedule requires a brief nap before teaching begins. So off I go. My futon. Good dreams ahead! I’ll keep Mark Wallace rolling on the real audio as I drift into the in-between state.

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>Fotola

Wish I could have made it to Raleigh on Saturday to hear Aaron and hit the used bookstores. Sounded like a great time.

I am wondering about the idea of artists getting better. To my ears R.E.M’s first and second (Murmur and Reckoning) are their best albums.

Seems like this may be true of some poets.

How can we know we are NOT deceiving ourselves with thoughts of improving? Does life get better? Is better always a deception?

For every progress there’s a slow slip back. The world a better place for our efforts?

Well, maybe we need the idea of progress. Deception. Hope. Maybe it’s all matter.

I smell bubble gum. Orange flavored. Bubbalicious.

A few months after I landed in America I started eating Now and Laters and trying to breakdance. We ate Hamburger helper every night. But it was all for the promise of a better life.

For my parents that promise quickly turned into mere survival.

But when I think of my life it does seem to improve. I like where my head is now versus even four years ago. I hope to live in a hip co-op happy town by the sea with a dog and a stick and maybe two kids on my shoulders etc.

I suppose the point of progress is that it never ends but I have to look carefully at what drives the progress what drives the chariot.

Deep sea diving with Frank Stanford.

At first my ears kept popping and I had to surface a lot for air (not used to holding my breath for so long).

But now I can stay down much longer.

The ocean wow what an ocean.

What’s going to happen after I finish?

I’m 116 pages in.

Holy shit.

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 23.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

My nearest book was an anthology of Irish drama (since I am grading).

The sentence:

“Now thrust the swords into the flame, and pray.”

You know sometimes I get swept up in reactionary rhetoric.

Sometimes I don’t do my research and assume way too much.

This is the case with my entry on Foetry on Monday.

First, the heresay of unfair judging. As many bloggers have pointed out we have to be careful not to let resentment and rumor get the best of us.

So, I need to apologize for misrepresenting Verse press. Verse press has a number of poets without MFA’s and only three of their poets went to Iowa. I assumed way too much. I jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Iowa bashing without first doing my research.

My impression of Fence books may also be incorrect.

Thanks to Brian Henry for setting the record straight.

Had a great time hanging out with Tony Tost and his girlfriend Leigh. We ate on a balcony overlooking the big city of Greensboro and speculated about whether or not the passing clouds would break into storm. The talk of clouds seemed appropriate before Tony’s reading at the Green Bean.

Tony started by reading some new poems. I am excited to see them on paper. The use of footnotes in his new poems were fascinating. The footnote for head sticks out for some reason.

A few of the highlights for me were: the beard poem (pg.17 in Invisible Bride) and the absolutely take-the-roof-off “unawares.” I want to re-read that poem at least fifty times.

Tony and I did a little book swap. He borrowed the Geographics and My Life and I borrowed Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I love You. I want to jump into Frank Stanford. The thickness/denseness intrigues me rather than repels me. But I haven’t started reading yet. Maybe I need to be locked away for a few days and just read it straight through.

Leigh was intrigued by some trimmed plants to the side of our house. Apparently Tony and Leigh have a nice house in the country with an organic garden left behind by the former tenant. Sounds like an exciting gardening adventure.

Naming, discovering, eating.

For a large part of the night leigh was engaged in a conversation with a poet about international economics/political science. From what I could tell (I was engaged in conversation about A.R. Ammons among other things) it seemed like the conversation did not allow for listening on the part of the poet (especially since Leigh obviously knows a lot more about the subject. She’s doing a Phd in it). Sometimes people like to pretend to know more than they know. Although, I get frustrated with that stance. Hopefully Leigh wasn’t too annoyed.

I’ve a bit of buzz at the back of my head this morning. A little beer; a little absinthe. I can still taste the absinthe. Unfilted absinthe with bits of wormwood floating around.

The reading altered, intrigued, lit, astonished, knocked me for six. If Tony comes anywhere near a town where you live, drive drive drive. Your head will be altered permenantly.

Received an interesting email from a guy named Aaron Lundstrom about creature comforts and beautiful narcotics.

I’ve been mulling.

I am not sure an outright dismisal of popular culture is effective.

I think self-righteousness can be just as scary as television.

I think television can be a creature comfort and narcotic and perhaps prevent political action. But a little narcotics and a little creature comfort go a long way. In my mind, it’s, as always, a matter of how much.

I think my frustration with a lot of mainstream (if it’s still the mainstream) poetry is it’s level of comfort. I rarely read poetry for solace or comfort but for questions.

I watch a few hours of television every week (Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusaism, and Angel).

However, I do worry about reality television and sitcoms. Laughtracks scare me. And as for reality. . .

I turned on the television on Sunday to an ad for a television movie about how America responded to 9/11. I think it was called Homeland Security. It was undisguised propaganda. They didn’t even disguise it as art!

and so on . . .

Just ordered the books I am gonna use for my classes in the fall.

For my two sections of English 101:

1) Confronting Capitalism edited by Eddie Yuen, George Katsiaficas, Daniel Burton-Rose (Soft Skull Press)

2) Snark, Inc,: A Corporate Fable by Brian Cage (Soft Skull Press)

Think we’ll also watch Fight Club, American Beauty, and Being John Malkovich

For my two sections of introduction to Lit:

1) Cool for You by Eileen Myles (Soft Skull Press)

2) The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry edited by Donald Allen (Grove Press)

3) Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson (Harper)

4) The Breaking Manager by Sander Hicks (Soft Skull Press)

5) Final Girl by Daphne Gottlieb (Soft Skull Press)

I want to shake things up in the fall. Tired of teaching stale anthologies.

I am going to attempt a theme based English 101 class next fall on counter culture. Include movies that deal with the idea of counter culture and revolution such as Fight Club, The Matrix (part two).

Longman has an anthology of counter culture essays (mostly from the sixties). Just ordered Daphne Gottlieb’s Final Girl and thinking of using it for the 101 class as well.

Still trying to decide what books to use for intro to lit. Don’t want to use one of those boring intro to lit. anthologies (Norton etc.) I am thinking:

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson (for the short story)

The Postmoderns ed. Donald Allen (for the poetry section)

On the Road (for the novel section)

not sure what to do for the drama section yet.

Mostly Freshman, so it’s tricky to work out challenge versus shut down.

Just finished Albert Mobilio’s The Geographics. Rocked my socks. One of the best books I’ve read.

Not sure what it is. I can’t put my finger on it yet.

I wouldn’t rule out music based on the label. However, I am cautious when I see the ever present Warner Brothers label on indie music, but I love Built to Spill and The Shins. So I should I continue to purchase albums by them even if it means supporting Warner Brothers?

Big presses do publish some amazing work. Kenneth Koch, John Yau, Alice Notley for example. So maybe I am just off the mark and really pumped up by The Geographics and want to project my amazement onto all small small presses. However, in my mind, Built to Spill lost a lot of edge as they moved into a big label. Some of the songs were overproduced etc.

Does the same thing tend to happen in the poetry world?

The raw gets over-cooked.

I really don’t see the point (other than tenure and professionalism) of publishing in various “well-respected” university journals or the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review etc.

Duration Press is host to a lot of risk taking presses.

The names of a lot of the small small presses say, most of the time, this will not give you tenure. This is not official sounding etc.

O, and just to clarify my last post, I love Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School. Opened up a lot possibilities for me.

So, onto Lyn Hejinian’s My Life and Howe’s Singularities.

The Kills are rocking me this morning. I’ve been contemplating the idea of information overload (esp. image overload) and poetry either resisting or accelerating the overload.

I’ve heard on many occassions that poetry helps a person slow down. But I am not sure I want to slow down if slow down means:

1) pastoral freeze frame of nullifying nature (“nature” is anything but slow)

2) the aesthetic gaze/glaze

3) dense but good for you (i.e. Heaney porridge)

However, if slow down means:

1) Wow, what a interesting construction (image, syntax etc.)

2) I’ve read this twice for speed; now it’s time to read once for close and slow.

Then I can dig it.

Overwise, gimme speed. Energy.

On another note:

Substance is throwing me for a loop. As in:

“This novel Blood and Guts in High School has no substance. It’s got nude drawings and strange dream maps. Just a shock gimmick.”

“Kurt Vonnegut has pictures.”

“But Vonnegut has substance.”

How can “I” acquire substance? What makes substance apparent? Do some combinations of letters contain more substance than other combinations? Is substance related to sustenance?

Is substance related to character? As in: “that fella over there has real substance.”

A kind of feel me up feel me down?

A sub stance?

Subjective substance?

Subjective Substance

Turned 30 yesterday. Got a Nikon coolpix camera. Spent all morning playing with it instead of preparing a lesson plan on Kierkegaard.

Got some music. The new Modest Mouse, Dr. Eugene Chadbourne, and The Kills.

Went to a show at Gate City Noise and heard a band called Robotnicka. Most of the members were from France and they wore strange costumes. The keyboardist was a bear with fake fur and a bear head and carpet down his back, the lead singer was a soft bunny (nothing resembling the Playboy bunny), the drummer wore boxers and taped his chest. They sang banjo electronic french folk disco songs. They also sang songs about the commodore 64 and the game Ninja 2. Sometimes we sang along even though it was in French and I didn’t know what the words meant. It was an experience. A great happening.

Interesting contrast this weekend. My friend’s parent’s came down this weekend and they love Billy Collins. They are both doctors and extremely nice.

So first, I went to the beat conference and watched Pull My Daisy and heard David Amram and Michael McClure. I was a little skeptical about the popular appeal of the beats in terms of fashion etc. I went up to a white haired gentleman before the reading and timidly asked for a signature. I folded my hands and spoke in a gentle voice. Humility before a giant etc. He said he could spare a few minutes to sign my book. So I pulled out September Blackberries and he looked at me funny and said, “I think you want Michael McClure to sign that.” How embarrassing. All that humility for the wrong man.

Michael McClure and David Amram were fab. He reads really well. Sometimes I felt a little uneasy about the almost cliched spirituality, but all in all I felt alive and all. David Amram was especially amazing. Good crowd.

Then Sunday came and in honor of Randall Jarrell and National Poetry Month Greensboro organized the first annual Randall Jarrell conference. As I entered the packed theater I received a sticker saying Poetry GSO. The airport code of Greensboro. On the program it talked about Billy Collins being the first poet since Robert Frost to appeal to both the people and the critics. It also listed all the poet laureates for all the local high schools. The high school poet laureates were honored at the beginning of the event. Which might not be so bad. Eventually, if not already, the term laureate will cease to carry elitism.

I was fascinated by the response of Billy’s poetry. One of the guys behind me called out the lines before Billy said them (says a lot since he said he’d never read a lick of Billy Collins).

The huge audience laughed at every line of every Billy Collins poem. One of my friends said he is really interested in the combination of tragedy and comedy. But it was all comedy. Where’s the tragedy? The moments of surface level sentiment were meant to take the listeners from laughing to crying?

Then again, what’s the matter with some laughter?

He got a long standing ovation.

So, I am interested in the function of Billy Collins. Sure some may claim Collins is AM radio and that they have more sophicated “tastes.” Some do not appreciate the politics behind the poetry of Billy Collins. But many friends who are fiction writers said they enjoyed Billy’s reading because it didn’t make them feel stupid. They didn’t have to preface their comments with “I’m not an expert, but. . .”

I hate that preface.

My wife suggested that perhaps Billy Collins might work for a 6th grade introduction to contemporary poetry.

When I first heard Billy Collins a few years ago on NRP I was taken by his easy going voice. I wanted to fling open the windows, put up my feet, smoke a cigar, and sigh with contentment.

Why should I resent Billy Collins the person. He’s doing the same thing he did before fame. He seems like a really nice fella.

Is it possible to attack the poetry without attacking the poet?

Oh, dear me. All manner of hero worship.

Found a really cool site called Titanic Operas: poetry and new materialities.

check it out at



Titanic operas

Just decided to teach as a full time lecturer for another year. I enjoy teaching. There are plenty of great poets who do not/did not compromise their poetry for “professional” reasons. I am writing more than I ever have while teaching full time. So it works.

Really looking forward to the beat conference on Saturday in Chapel Hill.

Just picked up John Ashberry’s Rivers and Mountains and Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island for $1.

Also snagged Jeff Clark’s The Little Door Slides Back. Never heard of Jeff Clark. I like surprises.

Onto The Geographics tomorrow.

Post-Avant by Daniel Zimmerman was really interesting. Unlike anything else I’ve read. A lot of complex formalism. Rhyme schemes. Very elaborate. I especially liked “Bard Fodder”

Avant Guarde formalism as one strand of post-avant?

Josh Corey’s notes from the AWP conference are fascinating.

The MFA as a gated community. As post-MFA I can see this. However, the “avant guarde” feels like a gated community as well.

When will we get a new noun?

I teach full time as a lecturer and I feel more and more drawn to work outside the academy. I get bored with the intro to lit classes and I don’t want to teach in the typical workshop MFA world. I do feel grateful to have a job doing something I actually enjoy. Teaching four classes a semester and earning more than I’ve ever earned after eight years of university (a little over $20,000/year and benefits). But I’ve seen a lot of “edgy” poets compromise in order to appear legit get tenure appear professional etc. As a whole, strange sounding journals don’t sound as professional as a journal with a university attached to it. The so and so review. I realize there are some exceptions to this, but they are few and far between.

I don’t want to compromise just to appear professional.

I came to Greensboro with a more “experimental” background in poetics. Did an MA with a lot of theory. Greensboro is very traditional and I was tired of people saying they didn’t get my poetry. So I wrote hundreds of narrative poems with a little twist of the absurd (Stephen Dobyns like). And people enjoyed them. I wrote my MFA thesis in the opposite direction (aesthetically and politically) of my MA thesis. MA thesis was influenced by such ideas and poets as Paul Celan, deconstructive practices, pre-socratic philosophy, Cole Swenson, Gustav Sorbin, various mystical traditions.

Then I came to Greensboro. Sold all my theory books and all my Sun and Moon, Evergreen Reviews and wanted to write with more “emotion.” That was the charge against the experimental/avant guarde. Did not contain enough emotion, too cold etc. I wanted people in the workshop (or at least one or two to “like” my work).

Now I am re-ignited with some of the experimental strain. But I am not writing narrative poetry (in the traditional sense) or all out abstract philosophical poetry. I am somewhere in between.

That’s one of the charges against Fence right? The charge against a lot of younger poets. Verse press etc.

But again I find myself swinging more and more. I can’t stand being lukewarm. I engorged myself in existentialist philosophy for four years and I came away with the strong desire to commit to my choices. To passionately commit to my choices. Not the what but the how.

I am interviewing with a textbook company at the end of the week. I received an appointment as a full time lecturer again next year at UNCG but editing sounds interesting. It’s 9 to 5. But it’s not telemarketing. I did telemarketing all through my undergrad days selling Allstate life insurance and Burpie flower seeds.

The textbook company is small. Two close friends and the boss who studied with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa in the 70’s. My friend Angie Decola said the company might want to delve into some literary criticism and are always looking for freelance writers to write textbooks for them.

Maybe I will go back to university teaching at some point but I want a community outside of the university (blogland and the Desert City Reading series are my hopes).

I am bored stiff with the “mainstream” of all the little university journals.

Are we in need of new nouns?

Something other than avant guarde.

Saw an anthlogy of British poetry edited by Charles Simic called the New British Poetry. It’s full of the old British poetry.

The other anthology is called Other and is full of New British poetry. Sound familiar?

My friend Dan returned with goodies from AWP:

Poker by Tomaz Salamun (ugly ducking press. really well made)

Fa(r)ther Down: Songs from the Allegy Trials by Arielle Greenberg (New Michigan press)

Post-Avant by Daniel Zimmerman (Pavement Saw Press)

I just started Post-Avant. Very impressed so far. I hadn’t even heard of Daniel Zimmerman until today.

Also picked up a free poster of Iron and Wine (Our Endless Numbered Days).

Got to stop listing books. Slow down and actually start reading them.

I am crossing my fingers for a job editing textbooks next year.

Now it’s time to teach Ciaran Carson and Medbh McGuckian in my Irish Lit. class.

Great games over the weekend.

Go Duke!

Obessions. Yeah obessions.

I am redoing my library like I used to redo my hair. I would grow it for a few months then shave it bald. All go then start from scratch.

Here a beard gone tomorrow.

So I took more books into the Bookshop. Ate some Greek stuff at the Med. cafe. Traded in more Seamus Heaney and Stephen Dobyns. Picked up:

New American Poetry (Donald Allen)

Collected Patchen (New Directions)

My Life, Lyn Hejinian

Scratching the Beat Surface, Michael McClure

Speed of Life, Edward Kleinschmidt Mayes

The Geographics, Albert Mobilio

School of Fish, Eileen Myles

Sleepwalker’s Fate, Tom Clark

My good friend Dan Albergotti is coming back from AWP today. I gave him a list and $40 for the bookfair. Hoping to get some Aaron Tieger and Tomaz Salamun from Ugly Duckling Press.

Tony’s talk of deer and walks and spots and reinventing the pastoral made me want some silence. My ever present constant chatterbrain. His post even suggested he has a dog to play fetch with.

I do love my two cats though. But fetch and a dog would also be nice.

I gotta go out back to the parking lot and read now. It’s somewhat quiet.

Met a few poets and scholars at the bookshop in Chapel Hill yesterday. In particular a real nice guy named Joe Donahue who teaches at Duke. He told me about a reading series in carborro at the Sizl art gallery. In April Rod Smith is coming to read. Maybe Carborro is my saviour. Greensboro is very very boring.

Traded in 12 Seamus Heaney books (kept his selected). Got $50 in credit and picked up:

David Antin, Code of Flag behavior (Black Sparrow press)

Joane Kyger, Again

Alice Notley, the descent of Alette

Diana Wakoski, Greed/parts 8,9,1 (Black Sparrow Press)

Michael McLure, September Blackberries and The New Book/A Book of Torture (Evergreen Original)

Dapne Gottlied, Why Things Burn (Soft Skull Press)

Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 (Wesleyan)

Caesar Vallejo (Trans. Clayton Eschleman), Spain, Take This Cup From Me, (Evergreen)

Gill ott, Public Domain

Great finds. Going back to Chapel Hill today to turn in Natasha Trethewey’s Domestic Work, some David Lee pig poems, and Seamus Heaney’s Finders Keepers. Maybe Stephen Dobyn’s Best Words Best Order. None of those old orders speak to/for/against me. Not to mention the title of Heaney’s book of ciritcism sums up his politics/aesthetic. Finders keepers indeed.

Think I might grab a Tony Trowle book or Lisa Lubasch’s How Many More of Them Are. Don’t know anything about Lubasch or Trowle but I’ve heard their names somewhere.

The race begins. Restructuring my library. Still got plenty of the old chaps in my head. The intro to the anthology Other really chimed for me. Seamus Heaney does not speak for me as a citizen of N. Ireland. I’ve got too many voices in my head not to mention a few lost accents.

It’s time to get jiggy with the times.

Excited to get the new Modest Mouse CD and bootleg. The cd is being released spot dead on my b-day. April 6th 2004. Only heard “float on.” Liked it. Hope it’s as good as the Moon. Their albums declined after the moon.

Couldn’t finish watching Incubus last night. felt like the 7th seal. good the first or second time but then gets old.

Watched Charlie Chaplin right before bed. The Gold Rush. Good to go to bed with Charlie Chaplin in my head. I love the bum rub. He even eats his shoe.

Modest Mouse