H Gould Enterprise now doing hypertext. the interaction between poetry and prose here (I write that as if I knew the difference between poetry and prose) is quite lively. like maybe Henry has entered an entirely knew field of inquiry, perhaps without even realizing it.

sic transit gloria and stuff

why's everyone talking about DeRita dying now? Curly Joe died 11 years ago. no, he wasn't the comic genius that Curly, nyuk nyuk nyuk woo woo woo woo, was, but he made his contribution. people talk about him being a philosopher and all, which I didn't know, but he filled in well with the Stooges. he'll be missed.

counting coup for profit

just another pork belly

I've become a commodity. or at least my blog has. content is no longer sine qua non. these are my stats, if the link works.

made it thru another debate. that is to say, I neglected my civic duty to run to Kenmore Square and overturn cars and break windows to celebrate with due solemnity the Red Sox winning the 1st round of playoffs. the candidates sitting on stools waiting for glassy-eyed white people to ask questions was a little awkward. so was ABC throwing Charlie what's his name out there as credible moderator. but the debate maintained a brisk pace. looked like a boxing match, in fact, with the candidates strutting back to their seats after each round. Kerry was much better spoken and prepared. he worked well with those people in charge of keeping things as unnatural as possible. I mean, he had all those don't-forget-to-mentions right at the tip of his tongue. so did Bush, but Bush wasn't so easy with the prep. I was dismayed and Beth left the room (to return soon) when Kerry showed that he was going for the hawk vote. the security moms and dads want to be sure we're out there fighting somebody, you know, to save us from, you know, terrorism. (our friend's parents, recently here from Israel, laughed at the police blotter in the local paper: you call that crime?). the debate should have been postponed due to equipment failure, what with the microphone implanted in GW's head obviously on the fritz. actually, I was sympathetic to the way he mispronounces and misspeaks. I mean, that might be neurological. at any rate, it is foolish to think that he's as dumb as he sounds. not to say he is brilliant. but stick him in a country club locker room, with a martini or a cigar in hand, free to be coarse and satiric, and I'm sure you'd see a diffrent guy. I'm not saying that Cheney doesn't pull the srings, only that to typify Bush as strictly a muttonhead is to risk underestimating him. JK was stalwart in at least presenting a sense of how he'd do things. Bush tried to sound paternalistic, he being president and all. the ploy didn't really work, for:

1)he's younger than Kerry, and besides, his grandfather Dick Cheney is really in charge,
2)he's shorter than Kerry (remember: vote your heart: vote for the taller candidate),
3)his years of public service is shorter (owning the Rangers doesn't count)

admirable chutzpah for Bush to suggest that he's the environmental candidate. like Cheney, Bush went after both Kerry and Edwards about showing up to vote, and Kerry just ignored that. Bush hit a snarl, so to speak, when he shouted down Charlie what's his name, who tried to ask a question but Bush wanted to follow up on Kerry's remarks. Kerry was much more at ease and capable. there's been too much farking around in Kerry's run for the roses, so it is good to see that he and his peeps are getting it together as we come to the last lap. Kerry is more than just another Democratic lump, à la Gore, I believe he can beat Bush. if he makes it to the presidency, however, he needs to be scruffed. none of this signing the blank check, as everyone did for Bush. let's hold these people accoutable for a change. and thus my thoughts on the debate. now I must break my fast then head into Boston to see if any cars remain to be burned. go SOX!!!

I've gone with a Silver navbar, as I am in a silvery mood. I wish I knew emoticon because I would like to know the emoticon for silvery.

Dante's grocery list, thanks to the unending scholarship at Lisablog. used to be Bread&Circus hereabouts. you could confirm social consciousness and find all natural organically grown pure and simple environmentally sane no animal testing fodder, for the satisfaction of your inner faded hippie, or health nut, or citizen of the People's Republic of Cambridge. that was then. now the small suite of stores has a natural ownership, and national goals, Whole Foods, better than Stop&Shop but the door to enlightenment is barely ajar. but wait! there's Beatrice now, thumbing thru Utne Reader...

just started reading Mark Young's Series Magritte blog (I hate the word blog, it sounds like a trend in the middle of a puddle). I like the idea of blog projects. I like the persistently crisp short lines here. I like Magritte. I shall read further.

Henry Gould's blog, and huffy Henry himself, are going indescribable, what with detailed source citations of his works and proto-post-hippie reveries. his reveries, with their intersections, remind me of Guy Davenport's work. great stuff, unique. what the hell is poetry but language gone to uniqueness.

a short series of poems 'about' Brockton, Massachusetts. I wrote them 4 years ago. I really like them, if I may say that. I consciously had Olson in mind with these. but they are about a town that I do not, in fact, know much about. still, they are poems of place.

I would hate to consider Michael Moore as a pundit, but he's at least right in the idea of 1st evicting Bush and Cheney, who are demonstrably bad if you aren't on their board of self-interest, then slapping Kerry into shape. and remember, the representative from Cloud Cuckoo, Ralph Nader, is just an imaginary candidate. he could've been a viable candidate, back in double aught, but that possibility interfered with his own self interests. I feel sullied talking about any of these people, and this is the 1st time I ever thought lesser of 2 evils was a legitimate political response. times is bad, even a knucklehead like me can see that.

hey! lemme show you my photo album. my filing system (pile of stuff) disgorged these pix, all from the year 2000.

firstly, beth writing (not carving) our names on an elderly beech in back of the rude bridge that arched the flood, ie Concord or North Bridge. and did you know that there was nevera bridge there during Emerson's lifetime?

winter solstice 2000, wedding night. I'm testing to see if the alcohol content in the Joseph Perrier Champagne is okay. I believe it was. Erin was 6 or 7 inches shorter than me when this picture was taken, now he's that much taller. 9 days later, he and I were having a snowball fight in the 1st snowfall of the season. in stopping short due to a sneaky manuever on my part, he slipped, fell and broke his fibula in 3 places. the 3 of us spent the next 9 days in Boston Children's Hospital. he came home with 4 external pins sticking out of his thigh, which weren't removed until May. but he'sall right now.

himself on Concord Bridge. Beth and I exchanged marriage vows on this bridge. while we did so 2 pigeons performed mating rituals on the railing. the male strutted and puffed his chest, the female spun circles. fascinating, dead of winter.

and finally, Beth and me at the site of Thoreau's cabin. how did we come to look like such hayseeds. am I that dumb looking? this is our 1st picture together. we commandeered some other Waldenites to take our picture. we rushed to the quickie photo development. we got the pix then had to wonder when exactly we fell from the turnip truck. amazingly, I look even dumber in another picture in the set.

me n beth 

me 

me beth erin 

beth 

this following is a comment Jeff Harrison sent to me regarding Céline.

Neat to see you're reading Celine, Mort a Credit is very enjoyable. There is, I agree, a bit of distance in Celine; his humor bridges it a bit, but some see humor as distancing... humor shows the effort to bridge, to communicate / explain / relate / defend, I suppose, which may be his intention. I've read that the French version has a LOT more ellipsis points in it, and that the translators omitted a lot of them in an effort not to annoy the English-language reader, which is a shame. The ellipsis points method again provides a distancing / bridging paradox, as it presents itself as scattered thoughts or jotting but, to me, seems very written also... constant planned and off-hand decisions when to break the sentence with ellipsis points, kind of like enjambment... also the sentence itself, often a phrase or word, like a poem's line, seems often to be informed by this method.

until I put my nose into the book, what I knew about Céline was that he was anti-semitic, intense and and and. as with Burroughs, there's a certan readiness to plunge into grossness. I don't have the book handy, but in The Soft Machine, there's a passage of repellent grossness and violence, wild, vicious imaginings. but what Burroughs does is use cut ups to fragment the passage's narrative sense. this technique sends the acts thru a prism (emprisms) that brings language itself, and its grossness and violence, into view. something like that? seems like Céline does a similar basic reconsideration. in both, the work disturbs. it is a confrontational disturbance that asks the reader to consider his/her own sensibilities.

well look, I'll leave the evidence intact. that the 1st post concerning Nick Piombino got disappeared. I write another and post it. the 2nd one posts ahead of the disappeared 1st one. sneaky, tricksy Blogger.

Blogger's postophagic tendencies aren't new, but I'm still getting around the idea that just about everything I wrote in the last 5 years could be gone. totally gone, man. computer prob and back up screw up. I really feel hell just write more, but then I remember a few good things. and then I think, it's the writing not the written that really matters. if nothing else, if the loss is so, this will help me become self-ultimate. no point sweating it beyond what I can control.

I wrote a note about this line by Nick Piombino at his fete/fate Fait Accompli, but Blogger up and et it. suffice that I like its succinct clarity. I don't write succinctly, period. Nick's sentence does not exactly comprise a koan, but my mind runs on its given.

I like this at fete/fate/Fait Accompli. it is not inscrutable like a koan, but still, it is a statement testing simplicity and depth. looking at the spare concentrations of Zukofsky and Niedecker, and also, you will notice, writers like Tom Beckett and Mark Young, who can write brief lines that are full of containment. my own art ('such as it is') consists of quantity, as I would say likewise of (without making too much of these comparisons) Stein, Silliman, Ashbery, Ganick. add Dickinson to the 1st group. I don't know what I am getting at, except noticing different means. I would like to write a succinct sentence such as Nick's.

stay interested!!!

visit:

Stephen Vincent's blog for more of his antonymical transliteration of Zukofsky;

Joel Weishaus's Forest Park for more of that fine work;

and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's XStream, which has new for you.

watched Cheney/Edwards. I don't watch such things often. I get discouraged, or I focus on some superficial thjing or... the superficial thing last night was Cheney's hand gestures. the CEO explaining things to stupid, and by stupid he doesn't just mean Edwards he means anyone who hasn't hopped onto the Bush/Cheney train to the fuck all of futures, id est non-CEOs. gestures by Edwards didn't bother me, they seemed simply the end of his sentences. Cheney seemed bullying with his gestures. Mr My Way or the Highway. Cheney seemed discomfited by Edwards' backtalk. in Cheney's outfit, there's a clear demarcation of power, which includes underlings biting their tongue. Cheney didn't speak well, like he didn't have to: he's the CEO, he lays down the law. Edwards the terrier/lawyer spoke well, but as the debate went on he seemed slicker. supposedly before the Reagan/Carter, Carter is looking over his notes whereas Dutch stands before a mirror practicing his face. Edwards sounded a bit overtrained, as in when he couldn't not mention Kerry's name. kudos to Cheney for even suggesting San Salvador as a success story effective democratic foreign policy. he might've added the Philippines, Nicaragua, Vietnam, etc... not only should you believe what he says but, damn it, you should like it. well, I will be voting for the lesser of evils, like the rest of the population that will bother, but I don't have to like it.

1st few pages of Death on the Installment Plan by Céline, the overworked dr fulminating at the indecent idea that someone needs medical help when he's tired, grouse grouse, but he goes anyway. the old softie. okay, so he aint the dr in The Plague. WCW tells of taking moments between patients to type poems, snatching them, one might say, from the busy day. Céline, you can imagine him using such time to blister the patients he had, the day he had, the life he has. his day is so wind up, or he so wound up within it, that when he writes, he releases the spring. just a guess but I think there's a distance in Céline. not that he aint saying fuck, and he probably meant whatever anti-semitism and such (I haven't hit any of that yet). I think of Rimbaud's world as imagined, and Burroughs's as crazed. dunno if I can fairly make that distinction. as intense as Rimbaud's hell is, it seems imaginatively controlled (imagine a ?question mark? after every statement I make here). whereas Burroughs rides a crazed vision. 'his' aliens and government are external in a way I think similar to Spicer's sense of aliens. I sense so far with Céline a cathartic energy in his writing. I think catharsis is overrated in writing. one must make a furious commitment to catharsis to make anything beyond a corny exaltation of one's opinion. I think you have to be a real shithead to get far using catharsis as an underlying principle in your art. Bukowski. but maybe Picasso too. I dunno. the confessional poets seem largely placcid and controlled, except for Berryman. Berryman's bad drunk snarl (as well his weeping in his whisky) is more engaging than the pampered confessions of Lowell. the confessional poets largely use their terrible lives, often to the point of creepiness (Lowell and the letters of his soon ex wife) . I guess it's more interesting when the lives use the poets, à la Berryman and Burroughs. both of whom act as barometres for their internal weather. anyway, my impression.

really,what's the right number of typos? leave them all in and call it my language.

blog list fills, now Mark Young adn Pelican Dreaming. poetry and thought and the mention of kookaburra. which seques to my latest bird story. my 'office' is in the cellar (I posted a pic of my desk in August sometime, for the excitement of all). heard a bird chirping as if inside here. well, we've had both a bat and a garden snake appear in this cellar, so I thunk it possible. in sooth, outside at a ground level window, a wren twittered holy heck and pecked the glass. my face was about 18" away. obviously the wren was po'd to share territory with its reflection. waving my hand several times finally kept the glass attacks at bay, but disgruntlement continued to be voiced. Thoreau saw such things every day. but I digress. I see that Mark has collaborated with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, which I haven't downloaded yet (links at his site), but look forward to.

this on time by Nick Piombino. I see my father losing time, or time losing him. frequently he wants to go home, which means 125 Fresh Pond Parkway, 2nd floor, Cambridge. where he last lived 60 years ago. time fluid and strange. and unsecured.

FYI: links are listed in alphabetical order according to height, to quote Charles Stengel

Beat writing never attracted me, so I've been late catching up to a lot of it. Ginsberg isn't to my taste particularly. I feel Pound's commentary on Whitman (in "Pact") sums up my attitude towards Ginsberg, tho I think I am more favourably inclined towards AG than Pound was to Whitman. I can't really comment on Corso, have read so little. I remembe my surprise at how non-edgy "Marriage" was, tho a terrific poem. I didn't expect Coros to be so sentimental. I know I read Ferlinghetti in high school but remember zero about his work. ah well, City Lights Books is a good legacy. Snyder I've read quite a bit of and appreciate his sense of the world but his poetry seems 2nd rate. Whalen's poetry doesn't seem particularly good either but I admire his persistence. I remember nothing of whatever I've read of Di Prima. my forgetting says more about me as a reader, I'm really just noting that nothing leapt out at me when I read. gee, I haven't read enough Kyger but like her writing considerably. she seems like the solidest citizen of the lot. I'm fond of Lew Welch (he ran the 440 in 49 seconds!). his dalliance with zen is entirely hopeful in a way that provides a tension to his work. because he was so fucked up, yet this urge towards something... both Whalen and Snyder are mushy in their zenness. On The Road struck me as rather boring. anyway, I read it about 20 years after the window closed for hitchhiking cross country and like. I liked Visions of Cody, which doesn't seem as prosaic as OTR. I liked Cassady's The First Third, more for sociological purposes, the world he describes. and him showing up with the Pranksters is cool in a wistful crazy way, tho he writes clearly and 'well'. he had to play out this story. Burroughs I find engrossing for his commitment to whatever the hell it is, his crazy ass drugged, wrenched, drowning. Rimbaud of a different era. or maybe Céline, who I've not read but have Death on the Installemnt Plan in view here where I sit. I don't know what these sentences prove as I write them. Burroughs contends with language and the world in a way that most of the other Beats don't, really. that's of interest. I feel I should apologize for my poor reading.

new issuance of xStream Wryting Issue. I think I've said before that the point isn't so much individual works, but the sense of the whole. it is but isn't really a digest of the Wrytings list. I scanned thru the whole thing looking at the poetry field exhibited. words all over the screen, the letters and punctuation marks as much visual cues as verbal. and I keep thinking I ought to ruffle my own feathers, agitate the field in which I work (successful merging of metaphors). not that I am disappointed in the work of mine I see there, Jukka selected poems I am pleased with. I worry that I am not questioning enough. am I intense and intent enough as an artist? oh, probably not.

I don't remember how I stumbled on this by Burroughs. I've only read parts of Soft Machine, but I want to rectify that neglect. he's honking crazy, okay, but out of that... I mean, I want to write less rationally, see what up. anyway, here's a bit from the Burroughs piece, to be balanced against the Bush/Cheney ticket to ride:

To achieve independence from alien domination and to consolidate revolutionary gains, five steps are necessary:

1) PROCLAIM A NEW ERA AND SET UP A NEW CALENDAR,

2) REPLACE ALIEN LANGUAGE,

3) DESTROY OR NEUTRALIZE ALIEN GODS,

4) DESTROY ALIEN MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL,

5) TAKE LAND AND WEALTH FROM INDIVIDUAL ALIENS.

I may rid my links of Noam Chomsky and any other non-performers. the idea of Chomsky writing daily, or even weekly, missives appeals, but dropping the ball don't. Kasey never got on my list for that he wasn't in to it. blogs are about timeliness. Kasey's last post looks OLD. I understand time constraints, and fear of oppressive solipsism, and other hazards in the process. if it aint there it aint there (Why I Am Not A Painter).

I like this review of Hero that Josh Corey offers. the intersection of Pound into it indicates a way of thinking. the comparison is unforced. it's a poetic leap, not meaning eked. I've meant to see the film, having seen the trailers (attracted myself and knowing Erin be intersted as he's into martial arts). I used to watch a lot of tv, but made good of it by writing about it all, in whatever flip, deconstructionist, mulling manner came to me. there are some breezy essays by Dorn in which he takes in golf and tennis matches, treating of them in a cork on water way. I'd like to take in some 'weird' scene like a Trekkie convention, fashion show, Vegas show, and, you kow, neither accept nor deny.