funny, I just noticed that Blogger got the date wrong. it has the year as 2005.

cool listening links. I was really excited listening to Charles Olson at Slought.org except, unless I err, that the files can only be streamed, which is inconvenient for files so long (tell me that I can save them, but it seems that if you can't sit thru it all at once, you have to start again). Penn Sound offers contemporary writers and others who are somewhat physically dead yet still pushing the rock up hill. I've been listening to jam bands off of Nugs.net (Widespread Panic is cool), and with these reading files, this is is the prosperity of internet. oo, now I don't recall where I found Laura Carter and Tont Tost reading online but, see, the very contemporary is available too. what's the downside of that?

further Seize Song

balancing act 

end of Boston 

echoes 

spectacle 

flower 

auld lanxiety

I don't think the coffee's going to get the job done. last minute we decided to buzz into Bawston to see the fireworks. drunk older couple where we got gas. older meaning somewhere between 41 and 63. the night is charged, and if they get somewhere, there they will be. we managed to avoid careering taxis and, say, do you think God tempers the wind to the shorn sheep ("It's dark, I'm drunk: I better step into the street without looking")? serendipity (a word that has now lost much of its serendipity) brought us to a parking lot on a wharf. a gneral murmur of horns and well-lit folks all around, but little had quiet partiers, thoughtful types. Erin adn I blew thru lots of virtual film catching the fireworks. at the last crackle of the bombarde we raced to the car, for if we waited we'd never get out of the lot. 4 years ago we saw refelctions of the fireworks off a window on the 10th floor of Children's Hospital. after whcih I was shooed from Erin's room (only one parent could remain in the room). and after attempting to sleep in a chair in the hallway, I finally found a gurney upon which to lay my head, sleep perchance to dream. ah memory.

I have an ongoing thing, just started, that I will be posting to my site. the 1st 3 parts are here. throng to the excitement!!!

a few poems of mine now up at The Poet's Corner. I link here to the site index, as it presents quite a roster of writers to scope out. 2 of the poems are from my book, the rest are pieces that mysteriously found their way onto my hard drive. thanks to Anny Ballardini for asking!

just to admit that I haven't a lot to say about the tsunami disaster. the press of blog's currency assumes immediacy of reaction. my reaction is numbness. I can't comprise the numbers. I feel like I should apologize for that. Erin is arranging a Magic card tournament, the proceeds of which will go to disaster relief.

bridge 

swampy snow 

this piece made me think of Jim Leftwich. or Doubt, which is the only booklength of his that I know (so much for my expertise, but honest, I never claimed). almost pulpit dissertations. I really like that. offhand I can think of Peter Ganick and Ric Carfagna as writers who have worked that way, thinking in an assertion of language. Ganick has said that his poetry is philosophy, in the sense (I assume) of working things thru. by assertion not to mean directive but clarifying. Eldon's pressing invention is also a sort of diversion or tangent, inventing a language as she goes. it is quite striking in its naturalness, tho I understand it as experimental play. I hear Joyce here, but that's a sort of training, I suppose. I mean of me if not of her. it's kind of gritty on her part to post something this long. I think the blog expectation struggles with that, or anyway, the distraction of the blog's format works against the poem. which obviously is not a criticism of her writing, but the medium. and yet, it is this fresh, diurnal medium that allows these experiments. blogs can be and are a lot of things. it is too bad that they have a shelf life. I put R&S (my other blog) into pdf formnat because I thought it was more than thrown away. the reader gotta get as serious as the various writers, what say? that's what I noticed with Alli Warren's blog, that her words stuck, were firm if not constant (what language except dead language (politics) is constant?). she's not glib but involved. I aim for that. not to say blogs aren't muchly written by the shovelful, but those of inventive means, or whose language attention doesn't accept medium boundaries: these are strike force ambient rich considerable. we should go there, you and I.

a stray thought that AnnMarie Eldon, as well as all Acolytes of Allen who read this exciting blog, might enjoy reading Jim Leftwich's work. I found reading his lengthy work Doubt an onspiring (oops, but sic!)experience. I find Leftwich to be an artist of such an energy and expanse that you feel both challenged and invited. I think there is a lot of stuff in Leftwich's work that one can take to one's own uses.

the comment to this post by Anon A Mouse asserts that AnnMarie Eldon's post is boring. Mouse hasn't the strong case of identifying him/herself, but what is boring anyway? it gets tricky, as it involves how much effort Mouse, or anyone, might put to the work in question. isn't there a semantic 'meaning' to the punctuation marks, just as exists with a conglomeration of letters? I will admit that the poetry I don't care for is that which I can't muster the effort for. take the average Robert Bly poem (and oddly enough, they are all average). when I've read them, and I earnestly did when I was scoping the landscape, I tired of knowing how these poems would perform themselves. I remember one book got to me, for it seemed like every poem was three numbered stanzas long. but it didn't seem like he worked within a form, more like he pooped out at the 3rd stanza. his numbering of the stanzas seemed like his way to push, but he just hadn't it in him. I deem that Mouse looks upon the punctuation of Eldon's poem and reads blahblahblah. which is one translation, but I don't get the feeling that it is an accurate one. the poem could be treated as code, in which each mark substitutes for a letter. or read the marks as we understand each to 'mean'. or savour the visual effect without regard to 'meaning'. I've been as guilty as Mouse with lazy attitude, but I try not to be smug about it. and it would be good to read any blog as a thing whereat one experiments.

out 

tired artist type 

wooden collage fish 

Alli Warren's blog has stuck in my head, not in the sense of meaning so much as the writing's electric means. I am not a good reader, and know that there's a lot of meaning out there that I didn't and won't get. but I am a writer, and I guess I read as one. I am reading her ebook, Yoke, which Faux/e (link to right) published recently. it's been on my computer, waiting. this is quick writing, as maybe I am quick sometimes (I mean no faux comparisons). Tim Peterson is quick too, for that matter (an autre Faux/e), turns on a dime. his critical work can be dazzling with that quickness, but I digress, and so should you. quickness might suggest cleverness, and cleverness is nice, and Warren is clever, but I detect something further to point to. she allows herself to write 1st person, which I for one have tried to avoid. knowing my weakness. and she can dash with wit without presenting a torture or picture of drama. the book's 1st poem, "The Defense Rests", begins thus:

"Call in the rocketships and plenty of rocketfuel
We’ll go on living in spite of logic"

which I might compare to O'Hara but I could also say that S J Perelman had the zest to begin his pieces with similar sudden mise en scène. I am not up to in depth at this time (or ever, to be honest), just want to indicate. it seems like there is language between and amidst us, which is interesting to observe. I don't read off the screen well, find myself too easily distracted, else I'd've discovered this writing sooner. as it was, it seeped in, from her blog. many of her lines can stand alone, tho without a sense of disruption or disjunction. I guess the reader's eye adapts to her speed. despite the speed, there is no blur. that's the artistry (argh, what a word!) to which I would especially point. so okay, that's the best I can do for now. I better get dogged about reading the Faux/e line, and other available offerings, just to catch up.

the 3 recent posts concerning David Hess's sister are really powerful. "there is no correct feeling," "I remember the eyes and not the heart staring at me." he writes here in an icy way, and I mean that in a good way. burning cold in the observation to temper the heat of his (anyone's) distracting emotion. the emotion is there, but not played. makes me think of Keats' words about the Egotistical Sublime. if David were looking for "a way to go" (maybe he's already going), this would be a direction.

regarding 3 posts down: when I use the word 'emblematic', it's code for saying that I am on a line of thinking. that is to say, following a path not seeing the map. to be comprehensive, to be fair, necessitates a sense of the map as well as the path. the countryside. the forest and the trees, blah blah. it is useful to probe, to go one way, but it is not 'the picture'. Jim Behrle is no emblem, and neither am I. not even Silliman, Dickinson, Mayer, Pound, Stein etc etc... 2 people, who I won't out, reminded me of this. I will add in my defense, as I have before, that everything I say here bears an implied question mark.

it looks like I successfully uploaded (oh the joy of using such a word!) the pdf version of R/ckets & S/ntries to my site. the file is 848 mb. please alert me if you discover some intriguing screw up. remember, I'm interestd only in intriguing screw ups.

I like this one by Jukka a lot. it should have sound. sense and counter sense, or some such.

I worked for a wine store for a long time. one of the death knell signs I encountered in the biz (from which I am long since gone) was the rise of wine writer Robert Parker (a separate blowhard from the mystery writer of the same name). Parker cannily used a 100-point scoring system to rate wines. that act took the words away: he made wine criticism quantifiable. this system proved so successful that the Wine Spectator (a real rag if ever, the Rolling Stone of wine) started 100 point scoring too. customers began seeking only 90+ wines, as if that scoring system could account for personal taste. if you read a wine's description from these eminent sources, and compared the descriptions to the scores, you'd often see a disparity. I can recall Parker awarding a perfect 100 to a wine (1990 Château Margaux, I think) that he described as having the consistency of motor oil. sounds savoury, eh? if any wine were the consistency of motor oil, which there isn't, Margaux would not be the one. but who cares, he gave it 100. naturally I have a boring point to this notice of Parker. Jim Behrle may be joking about crush lists but if so, the joke is dead and dead. unfortunately, I think people take that shit seriously. any playfulness of the exploit has oozed away by now, and we're left with these names vying with each other. like it is a privilege to make the list. I am not interested in poetry as a mild social event that will go away. I mean the dependence on the social network to make it stay around. are you interested in that? judging mostly from her blog (I haven't read a lot of her poetry yet), Alli Warren writes with an idiosyncratic and committed language. that right there is more than Behrle offers about her or anyone. is this dumbing down or a prank gone on too long? Behrle's creepy list seems emblematic of the lazy critical sense that could let a Robert Parker dictate taste (and prices!) in the wine world. Behrle squawks about Silliman's opinions from on high, but Silliman writes within a poetic engagement, not some smarmy social swirl. not that it matters, after all, one way or tother. luckily enough, poetry escapes us all.