Never Mind the Beasts

From the intro to the Portable Beat Reader: “Earlier in the history of American literature, the novelist Henry James acknowledged in his biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne that “the best things come, as a general thing, from the talents that are…

Anyone else feel like they make decisions as all or nothing. I get rid of a lot of books in order to trade for books I want (trying to build my own canon) but I sometimes regret getting rid of…

This is my first year with March madness even though I have lived in the States for quite some time now. The Air Force/Carolina game last night was great. A push and pull. Play my kind of game no play…

My students connected much more to the innovative poetry than the traditional in my Irish Lit. class. I played Seamus Heaney for 20 min. Then some audio of Gabe Gudding reading from a Defense of Poetry, then Mairéad Byrne’s “The…

For outness is but the feeling of otherness (alterity) rendered intuitive, or alterity visually represented. –Coleridge. Just purchased Tony Tost’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0807129658-0&quot; >Invisible Bride last night. I’m only a little ways in, but I am hooked and altered. The alterity…

In my Irish lit class I am teaching from the penguin book of contemp. poetry. The usual poets. I am bored. So I logged onto the internet and played some poems in real audio of Lisa Jarnot and Wanda Coleman.…

Gotta guest teach an undergrad beginning poetry workshop in half an hour. Not sure what I’m going to say. All the poems are very stale, boring, cliched. Gotta talk about the difference between writing out your feelings in a journal…

Not sure about TV on the Radio. Some songs were quite interesting. My friends were not impressed. One friend said, “Fishbone meets Grateful Dead.” Another said, “a new and improved punkier version of Hootie and the Blowfish. A third good…

Going to see TV on the Radio tonight in Greensboro. I don’t have their cd. Only heard “staring at the sun.” I’ve heard good things about them. Hope they put on a jolly good show. Also going to see Leo/Pharmacists…

Just ran across an ad in APR for the new and improved poetry magazine with Pound’s “make it new” a crazy photograph of an electrified woman, and a quote from August Kleinzahler about poetry magazine being wide awake with its…

Aaron McCollough has a very thought provoking response to Ron’s poetry test. The rapid response (myself included) to Ron’s poetry test seemed in part motivated by approval. How smart can I sound so Ron will like me? Does Ron ever…

I picked up Joshua Clover’s Madonna anno domini. I hope to grab a copy of Joshua Corey’s Selah in the near future. It’s the c and the o. I’ll have to take a taste test of Selah and Madonna anno…

Traded in some Pinsky, some Steve Orlen, some Don Delillo, some Stephen Dobyns, some Thomas Lux at The Bookshop in Chapel Hill. In exchange I picked up: Philip Whalen’s Decompressions Gregory Corso’s Mindfield Denise Levertov’s O Taste and See Clark…

I was fascinated by the responses on Ron Silliman’s blog to the poetry test. The attempt to focus on the work of a writer is sometimes an attempt to increase the credability of the writer in question. Thereby increasing artistic…

We question the gatekeepers and if what they are guarding is worth the entry fee. Can we get rid of the gatekeepers? I’m suspicious of gatekeepers because I am often denied entry. So often I hear it’s harder to make…

So far I’ve spent $50 from Mr. Bush’s tax return on small press poetry and indie music. I am very excited by Wild Honey Press Ordered: Blackwards by Rosmarie Waldrop ($5.00 USD) Daylight Saving Sex by Randolph Healy ($5.00 USD)…

Mini vacation to Chapel Hill yesterday. Art musuem at UNC then The bookshop. Found about 16 books I wanted. Ended up getting: A Paradise of Poets by Jerome Rothenberg Voice Over by Elaine Equi Lit by Ron Silliman The Happy…

Rainy and sticky with lots of birds right now. I slept well. Watched American Splendor. I need to find some underground comics. I haven’t read comics since I was a little in Ireland. Loved Ajax. Traded Bob Hicok for the…

Returning Bob Hicok. He bored me after six poems. Per the suggestion of Aaron McCollough, I am going to order Shanna Compton’s Down Spooky. Liked the audio of “We the blind need pushing.” Picked up Sleeping with the Dictionary. I…

Wondering about the head/intellect. It’s all up there, but is it useful to pretend the ‘ole heart is something else? (All of a sudden I feel like that main character from Sex and the City typing on her mac). Playground…

reread Tony Tost’s Disarm the settlers at Typo and thinking about programs. My cousin visitied from Ireland two summers ago and found it really strange we kept introducing people as: this is so and so, he’s from the program. Which…

I am really digging Berstein’s “Artifice of Absorption.” I read parts of it a while back, but I wasn’t ready. Berstein says/writes: “Antiabsorptive does not necessarily mean nonentertaining . . . readers can be expected to enjoy a device that…

innovation, difference, and process become part of the machine of capitalism. The new, innovative food processor from GE etc. How can the new get over its specialness? I picked up Charles Bernstein’s A Poetics at the used book store and…

The local indep. music store (gate city noise) sent out an emergency email. They could go under in less than a month. So a big group of writers spent money on good music. I picked up: The Flaming Lips (The…

Reading a Frank Bidart interview from Chicago Review (fall 2001). He talks about how irony can be a kind of “sophicated armored writing.” Bidart says, “I like extreme art. So much middle of the road art is simply boring .…

Is honest searching for difference different than sinister specialness. When does specialness become sinister. Is it possible for extreme individualism to screw up a society? Maybe what I mean is beside the point rather than the point. (Ha. I’m clever.…

How can we know our victories? I hear a lot of complaints about the Iowa poets (I have participated sometimes) from the 1970’s. A kind of McPoem (ala Mr. Hall) narrative, easily digested etc. Now Iowa is on the other…

Wondering and worrying audience. The creation of audience versus the packaging of poetry for an audience. Writing for other poets versus writing for????? Sometimes non-readers of poetry (close friends) say they feel unintelligent because they don’t get process oriented poetry.…

Lorca’s “Imagination, Inspiration, Evasion” Reading a little Lorca in Jubilat #7 today. Lorca: “no one should say this is clear, because poetry is obscure. And no one should say this is obscure, because poetry is clear. . . we need…

American Poetry acccording to a few hundred students at UNCG: Most students in four different classes had friends who wrote poetry and read at coffee shops. Quite a few thought a poet was polite, agreeable. A nice dinner guest. Only…

What is the relationship between retire and tire? For and between also interest me. If I am between Irish nationalism and cosmopolitanism what am I for? or (as the small stirs indicate almost to the point of a dead horse)…

Swimming underwater today with head cold. I’ve been thinking a lot about period styles (conversational narrative etc.) Sebastian Matthews came last week and read some poems and part of the memoir. Did not enjoy it. William Matthews is ok, but…

I am looking at: a nice color plate of Dali’s Night and Day Clothes and listening to: Bonnie Prince Billy’s “wolf among wolves.” The combination is moving me. juxtapositions that buzz. Snow on the ground. Cold fingers. I don’t have…

Gotta read Yeats “The Twisting of the Rope” and prepare a lesson plan for it. A little Celtic Twilight lecture perhaps. Listening to Czech music. Jaromir Hohavica and Kapela. I am wondering about poetry and performance after listening to Craig…

The Boy with the Arab Strap Sleep the clock around kicks in the joy. A cup of coffee. re-reading Palmer’s At Passages. He is so amazing. Going to hear Craig Arnold read at 2pm today. Haven’t read any of his…

Boy with the arab strap is working for me this morning. Been thinking of ways I don’t want to go: 1) Foaming at the mouth 2) With a priest hovering over me 3)Tubes and a breathing machine 4) Unaware (i.e.…

Thin SASE in the mail yesterday. Thought: another rejection. But it was an acceptance from Conduit. happy evening. happy morning.

So the mac version of blogger is different. Not a split window. Maybe nicer. Watched Lost in Translation last night. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The inaudible whisper near the end. Most of the movie uses gestures more than…

Neck Popping feels good in the morning after a night of gorging on brick oven pizza, Guinness, Genache, coffee. Watched In America last night. Felt quite familiar. I came to America at the age of 12 from N. Ireland. It…

Moses and the wine part two. Or Jesus, the camel, and the death of fatherhood. If wavering is to stray then the narrow road requires flexible horses to get through the eye of the needle. If home is an interior…

Some Fragments soon to be made whole At the thumbshow my lover parades like a peacock. The minions are swept off their feet. Ash in the throat. Clean wind is the cosolation of my future. My lot behind twelve million…

Consciousness without reason? If consciousness requires reason, then before the Greeks invented reason, no one was conscious? (William Barrett’s argument in Irrational Man) I am struggling to understand and define the illogical in language. Is language inherently logical? Language and…

So, some great new books for christmas: Allen Grossman, The Long Classroom and How to Do Things with Tears and Of the Great House Joyelle McSweeney, The Red Bird Barbara Guest, The Location of Things, Archaics, The Open Skies Best…

Dream 1: Stuck in a village in the middle of the desert. The village resembles the salt lake city shopping village. White church in the hills. The village is full of prisoners and I am one of them. I ask…

Purchased an old imac (233, 160mb ram). I hope it works well when it arrives. Tired of laptops. Pulled in by the marketing/design of the old imacs. The macs are artistic outsiders. Form and content not seperate for the mac…

Went to a used bookstore today. I can’t seem to stay away. Almost always overwhelmed by boring poetry section. Then again in the last few weeks I did pick up: Nice to See You (Homage to Ted Berrigan) $2 The…

Implied narrative. Everything has an implied narrative. That’s what I hear. Some narratives are more implied than others. How do implied narratives within lyric poetry work differently than linear, straightforward narratives. Subjectivity? The energy of image. Image is static. Does…

“Images are not ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves.” (Robert Hass).

A t.v. show called “Jim’ll Fix It.” Boys and girls wrote letters to Jim explaining their fantasies like drinking a fresh bottle of milk while riding upside down in a roller coaster. Other winners included eating forty different kinds of…