thinking on, Jim Behrle's snipe at Ron Silliman concerning Experimental Poetry begs the question what Behrle himself adds to Experimental. Behrle's poetry is not 'new', not in that questing sense, and neither is mine. I think Ron Silliman has been extremely persistent on the question of form and discovery via experiment. saying that Behrle isn't particularly experiemental, or that I am not, is a descriptive not a qualitative evaluation. I'm content to be less than clever in experimentation if I can do what I do well and better. to suggest that Silliman is somehow old hat is to miss something pretty large.

jinkies! nice one!!!

the way 

sum books 

cat picturing 

Beth reading 

book light 

cat consideration exercise 

Mowgli "at it" 

cat type ghost 

got any weed, man? 

Erin in the little room 

living roooom 

Alan Sondheim queried Poetics list about whether anyone is reading his work. well, he knows some do, for whenever a brouhaha developes, thrice yearly like clockwork, concerning his steady posting habits, he always gets plenty of defenders. okay, I am assuming he asks this sincerely in the sense of not being a voice or avatar. one person asked simply, why worry it. writers may get a glimmer of what readers get from their work, but response aint really a given. and why should the reader's reaction matter? I could credit Alan with with bringing in a nervous voice to his proceedings. I believe he is needy, however. I message ruled him because I don't want to feel guilty for not reading him thoroughly. taking a break from Sondheim. I have read plenty of his work.

4 years ago, winter solstice, Beth and I were married. we were married at home. prior to that we went to North Bridge in Concord and exchanged vows. we read a couple of poems that I wrote, and one that Sheila Murphy wrote (these were also used in the actual ceremony). a pair of squirrels frisked about in mating merriment nearby. 2 pigeons did likewise. the male strutted while the female danced circles. 9 days later, penultimate day of the millennium, Erin and I had a snowball fight in the first serious snow of the year. I snuck up on him, causing him to stop suddenly and change direction. he slipped and fell directly on his knee. he broke his femur in 3 places. the 3 of us spent the next 9 days in Boston Children's Hospital. Erin endured a lot of pain. 3 external pins were placed in his thigh. because he was still growing (still is), a cast wasn't appropriate. the pins were steel rods thru to the bone, leaving open wounds. twice daily till May, these pins and the wounds had to be cleaned to prevent infection. well, while in the hospital, one pin site began to look, as the surgeon said, soupy. at that time the ambulance to bring Erin home was on the way but had to be cancelled and another surgery done. the bad pin was removed and 2 replaced it. the wound was plugged with bandage. the intern (not the surgeon, who was cool), came to look at the bad pin site. he said to Erin, this is going to feel unusual. then the intern pulled the bandage from the wound, several feet of it. Beth and I held Erin, who was screaming. Jesus! Erin had a morphine drip that he could control (regulated so he couldn't OD). one time he called out, "Beth! Allen! look what I can do". he was bringing his finger to his nose and going cross-eyed. slightly whacked out. another time he said, "this morphine is pretty good stuff!". Beth and I said "uh oh". today Beth and I go to Concord Bridge, the one Emerson called Rude (tho he never saw this bridge, nor any bridge at that locale), to renew our vows.

do you know who my monogram is?

I AM LONELY WITHOUT YOUR BOOK FREELY IN MY HANDS.

this book is semi-important on the ramparts of esoteric current by the next pool delivery. this book is free like the wind when you park your park there. this book is a reaction to my needing a good read or something else easily squandered, dear and all. this book is something like can you see my payemnt?

let's keep the economy of poetry strictly elite.

review requests!!! give me the fuckin' book free. give me a paragraph on leeches. hey, I'll be great advertisement. truly, this is lean kabobs.

whether Ron Silliman has removed comments from his blog or the comments box provider is cuurently down, either way: what about CURTIS???. I hope he's okay. is he lost in the ozone, or limbo, or is it like in The Matrix, or that early Arthur C Clarke story??? Curtis, if you make it out, please tell us all!!!

social notes for a busy week

I refused to help Adam find Colby and Liza after Liza had me give Adam a note stating that she and Colby will never return to Pine Valley. Greenlee and I wondered if Kendall had been poisoning Greenlee. Babe, Jamie and James are in New Orleans. I continued to let Mike think that Simon and I are happily married. After surviving a plane crash, Rafi and I found shelter in a mine shaft. I'm using a hypnotized Emily to taunt Rosanna over losing Cabot. I assured Tom Ridge that he is part of the family after Ridge lamented that he doesn't feel part of the Forrester or Marrone families. My friend Paige agreed to flirt with Deacon in an attempt to cheat on Jackie. It was learned that the mystery person secretly injecting me with drugs is working for Tony. I insisted that Chloe get treatment to restore her beauty and singing voice from a doctor near Salem. Billie and I searched Tony's castle for our daughter. I crashed my car while trying to call Luke via cellphone to tell him that Laura is still alive. Working with me, Connor took Nikolas's place before Nikolas could be taken back to prison. I allowed Kristina to spend time with Sonny. I unknowingly shot at “Ruth” (Harley in disguise), and Harley fell off abridge when the railing gave way. I was angry that Michelle used the cellphone that I gave her to call Danny instead of Ed, whom Sebastian thinks can cure him. I caught up with Babe, who along with Jamie had kidnapped baby Ace (James, who is really Babe's son). I continued to hide my memory loss. I took Todd to a mountain cabin after shooting him in his legs. I was stunned when Ethan admitted that he slept with Theresa, which means that the baby Theresa gave birth to could be Ethan and Theresa's child. I plot to get a semi-conscious Alistair to tell me the one-word secret that could end Luis and Sheridan's love. I urged Nikki to tell Bobby that Bobby is the brother of the boy Nikki accidentally killed when they were children. I refused when Nick tried to get me to return to work at Newman Enterprises. I gave Britney Spears a job.

Jim Behrle writes today on his blog: "That Ron Silliman is to Experimental Poetry as Ralph Nader is to American Politics: once useful and revolutionary, now merely in it for himself and an obstacle to real change. But that could just be the Mountain Dew talking." that just takes the blog stuff too seriously. even tho he sometimes sounds like it, Silliman is not etching that blog of his in stone. he's just throwing shit out, just as I do, and Jim Behrle does. it's Silliman's poetry that is the point, the cynosure of interest. Silliman's criticism helps define for him the poetry he writes. you see the same mechanism in Henry Gould's agitation, as well: battering away at bêtes noires while turning the beam inward. it's part of the process, and we readers needn't take it seriously in the sense of drawing lines. beating up on Silliman is low entertainment (tho those are Jim's funniest comix). people have been gunning for Ron Silliman for a long time. I certainly haven't worked under such scrutiny. Silliman self-promotes of course and I dunno who doesn't. Behrle's blog has proven a good career move, so he should talk. the comparison to Nader doesn't work for me, as I never saw Nader as a revolutionary. he was a lawyer, he did what lawyers do. Ron Silliman still works his curiosity. he has a large blindspot, which is a common failing, but he remains a key experimental figure.

When Did George Jetson Become My Neighbour?

perhaps you are hip to this already. I'm using Acrobat Reader to look at the pdf file I just made. lo, there's a feature called Read Out Loud. HAL 2001 reads it in a voice capable of some inflection. he gets confused by some words and spellings, and insists on pronouncing each asterisk that I use in rows of five to separate poems, but it's pretty listenable.

the lesson is simple: do it yourself. so much of my work goes long to very long, because of the serial thing I run with. I have a manuscript that runs 800 pages in Word. a bit much for a chapbook. and tho validation from some publisher is an inescapable angst, I don't plan to let that issue clog my arteries.

I'm putting R/ckets & Sentries into pdf format. the blog format works while in process but the backwards chronology gets a bit dippy when entries no longer occur. I've removed date stamps and am twiddling with formatting. when I finish I will remove the blog. blogs that are quiescent are lifeless. if anyone, haha, wants a copy, I will send it, but it'll be heap big file. what I further mean to do is print and bind it (somehow) and offer it to the suckers out there. seriously, this seems like a nifty project. I have no skills in this way, so I'll have to make 'em up!!!

day 2 and Curtis still scrambles: post modern, language inspired mystery writer? what madness is Ron up to, and how should I respond???