might as well quote Stephanie Young all the way: The thing about hardly posting here is now I'm self conscious about posting the above paragraph b.c. it sounds kind of crazy I mean erratic to me. I think I'm a writer who has to contextualize one erratic thing inside another erratic thing etc. Which then generates more writing, really it's a crass way to get things done, that is, push them down the page until I can't see them anymore. I love the last 2 sentence, and the final phrase especially. works for me.

night snow 

zowie 

sky bolt 

deer pee 

grass 

I feel like such a goofball with the camera. everywhere I look, I could take a pic. to the left in Bend is Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Thoreau sleeps. if you drop by, do what everyone else does: leave an evergreen bough and a slurpy hunk of prose about how much Henry's example has guided your life. Henry will appreciate your kind words. somewhere in there is a large marble structure featuring a woman in a flowing Greekish robe. I assumed at 1st that she was the Virgin Mary, but then I considered that her breasts were bared, so she must be a Greek goddess. the structure was erected by a man in honour of his three brothers who died in the Civil War. one of whom was at Andersonville. it's not tacky at all, I find the site quite moving.

a new blog from Tom Beckett to replace the vanishing one. and may he continue to continue.

Bedford tree 

constant 

snow big deal 

traditional winter tree 

pole 

bend 

treason Concord 

----------------------------- 

Ratchet Up

I'm thinking I will write something someday, in the day of grains. It won't be posh or the gravelly residue of effect (where you live some days) but a motion after trading. isn't that a picture, pristine as closing, or do I just streak with fast into, knowing that gradually has a distance? we could have an electric rifling thru of page after page after page, written in neat logarithm, thrift being the world's care for tradition. and you and me, together, crust and puncture, but also roads after dark for a kiss of slight bending. the reading will be crow over tool trees, buttering hawk crunch with an effective marionette. but you, your porous literal alphabet has been baking, baking inside a looser christian basis, whereas mine, the stretch down the road over which, your meaning seems largely muttered for clearing. could we agree that poetry names a few things that we have not yet stoned? look to the whales when the next wave gives in. we are friends.

something that Nick Piombino brings up in his interview with Tom Beckett: the historical sense of LANGUAGE poetry. Nick appears a lively chap yet he predates LANGUAGE poetry, as do I. LANGUAGE is so entrenched now, as a concept, let us say, that it takes an effort to realize it is only a few years old. I mean, don't you get an Aspern Papers sense of the old days, when Bernstein and Andrews et al. were re-creating (hyphen optional) the poetry landscape? if this were pop music, langpo would've been swept out long ago, and 15 new shining traditions would've marched in and out. but oddly, friend and foe alike got stuck on LANGUAGE. in the 70s, when I was a worse writer than I am now, the lessons I gleaned from LANGUAGE writers, both poetry and theory, were useful and inspiring to me. even if I've since had to shake off the weight of influence, as one does. I think the L-Word should be thrown out at this point, for people now obscess on the group thing, and the fighting is just getting tired. I demur at the idea of a revolution, it is just a generational churning, but good things came from the L bubbling. for which thanks, now let's keep on chugging.

flag daze 

boundary 

I found this by Jeff Harrison on my hard drive yesterday. I must've downloaded it long ago but never looked at it. ah, so Bramhall has a method!!! well, okay, finally, I read it, and enjoyed it quite a bit. Jeff's work varies considerably in mode, yet retains a focal tension. my immediate sensation when reading this work, was of reading the Greek Anthology. I mean, simply, the collection of ancient Greek texts that have come down to us. there's a cultural grip to Jeff's work, his 'take' on the world, which coincides with the inferred cultural take of those Greek fragements. and with Apollo's Bastards, the poems seem fragmentary (if one could decide of what they are fragments), yet persistent. there's a use of repetition that stops before obsession. this creates a tension and drive to the series as a whole. the poems are arranged humbly and small in the midst of each page's white space. they seem singular yet run together. Jeff tells me, having paid me 45 million dollars (payable in unmarked bills) to say nice things about him, that Apollo's Bastards was the 1st work of his to appear online. thank heavens for the internet, that work gets out there, that might otherwise lanquish in some slush pile. I would've taken a mere one million dollars to write about Apollo's Bastards, because it's really fine work. check out the rest of Blaze Vox's selection here. perhaps I'll write about some of that, following receipt of $45 million, of course.

big house 

I thought Foetry.com was dead months ago, as in, you know: remind me again why I'd be concerned, but I suppose beating that dead horse makes one feel better.

I think I will remember the phrase: Blessings on the Big Empty. loss is so literal, isn't it?

just listening to some lovely early 16th century sacred music by a Spanish composer I couldn't catch the name of. I love that stuff. I grew up in a Unitarian-Universalist church, that is to say, Religion Lite. services were boring and pointless except that the music could sometimes be good. the main auditorium, if that's the right word, was well lit with large windows, simple in a New England way. that, at least, worked, for there was a meditative quiet there, unencumbered by the drone of the minister. overall, a joyless, perfunctory experience. none of the energy of the music I just listened to. the only Catholic mass I've ever attended (not counting on tv, which I admit have drawn me in on numerous occasions) was for a friend who died. Arthur was French-Canadian, and part of that community locally. all the hymns were sung in French, with lots gusto. it was still a social framework, but at least the religion had some zest to it. of course you can get evangelical desperation masking as joy: I'm Okay But You're In Trouble. you have been given the order to praise. an insolent Republican dividing line. that guy at Starbucks inviting people to join his social network. or are you... the other side...?

I couldn't post pix last week because of computer probs, so they seem like old news now. mostly taken in a moving car, with or without the window rolled down. I wish I could've gotten a decent shot of the hovering gulls, there were so many of them and only 10-12 feet above my head. I completely missed a flight of geese coming in for a landing. delta flight pattern almost not moving as they descended into the wind. geese in the air always draw my attention, not that they are rare. I got ratty unfocussed pix because the wind blew so hard I couldn't stand still, because I was shivering, and because fog, snow and windblown sand all conspired to make photos difficult. it was great!

arty pic 

green house 

Hampton Beach 

heading north