I was surprised by Ron Silliman's snipe at Alan Sondheim in the 1st note to this post. I can answer for Alan why he (Alan) uses listservs to post his work rather than blogs. it is the interaction of his (Alan's) work with other works, other threads. Ron's being perverse if he doesn't get that. it's not just about plugging his work that Alan resorts to listservs. a blog is a different animal. Ron's showing entrenched thinking on this point. which is no assertion that Ron Silliman is a dinosaur--he aint, don't be a dummyhead--only that here is his blindspot, as we all have same. earlier this week, I forced myself to write if not about my father, at least within the emotions of grief, loss, anger etc that surround the concept that is now my father. I mean, I was in tears recently thinking I hadn't properly mourned him. and what I did was post each of those to Wryting-l, as soon as I'd finished. I only posted a couple to this blog, they are different acts, quite, to post to a blog and to a listserv. I think I'm boring my imaginary reader, but am on something important to me. Ron's being thick to delegate Alan (look at these friendly 1st names!!!) to the realm of self-exploiter. that's just way too simple. I didn't post those pieces simply for look at me purposes. there was something electric to which I was attentive. I can remember Kevin Magee regularly filing his tough, political depth bombs to Poetics to much to little notice. as if there were some asserted politeness to honour. bleah. the space in which we present isn't just playtime. why would Ron ignore the possibility of serious intent on Alan's part? that's dumb. you can quote me.

below is how I tested out on an online personality test that I found via Nada Gordon's blog. much reworked. I think the original reading suggested that I might want to climb the Texas Tower with a few rifles. you know, just another quiet introvert who wants to come out of his shell. I don't remember my procedure exactly with the text, just tried to trick something out of the unbearable definitiveness of the test result. I said below that the Kervinen/Young pas-de-deux gave me to think on how to translate Jukka's method to my own work. hell, I don't know how to do that! I can say that thru the years I have muddled along with certain attempts to reenvision method. I have no programming skills and tho I could learn I don't see myself going that way. but I do have a sense of the mechanism involved in subverting the egotistical sublime, and the value of that. I put these experiments up for what it's worth. I'm not an experimentalist in the excellent sense, but I like to jiggle the framous a bit.

personality

it appreciated starved artist! it appreciated more in reason, and is guided by the present heart and appreciated emotions also very introvert and noble. Naturally, it needs not mean that mussiness has no Intangible. Actually, it appreciated astonishingly emblazoned for certain, so much sentimental and noble. The needs appreciated better reprogrammers to starve a lot. artists appreciated endoscopes and enough certain for present only, as any completed artist is, however impractical present opinions, and sentimental and excessive. The Mussiness finds probably math, logic, and similar mental unpleasant. they present the artistic sensitivities. mussiness prefers immense artistry because then mussiness knows that mussiness cannot ever genuinely have the erroneous answer. So much really the mussiness does not have a reason for being emblazoned. profuse mussiness, because value of dexterities (emotion, spirit, art, kelp,), present only in precious spokeswomen's level. that means the present needs of arrogance clearly . the present personality needs defective emblazoning, introverted, endoscopic, noble, and in detail absurd. It possesses most of the traits it should: it starves the useless artist. Thus you reach outside there, it writes certain short histories that are allegories for the spirit, and it starves!

tree 

yonder 

wall 

farmland 

here's something the wayback machine kicked out. I bravely took a glimpse into my archives, even the typewriter stuff, and found this one. written in 1972, before I hit 20. one of those poems that arrive like a vision, even with a voice in my head. I eventually elided some of the repetitions, but I'm happy now to put them back in. I won't make any more excuses znd in fact must say this poem isn't indicative of the work I did then. world's slowest learner here.

* * * * *

Faust


faust come back it is not the winter and
how you look then com back and see the things we
have seen crawling in may they are brighter and craving

shadows last night were strong and followed alongingly with
the wave of the trees and
the steps that we walked... faust
come back in another year and will see... faust
with magic will appear, appear and
appear and looking and looking and appear
lately he comes riding in our shadows in my shadows and the
calm of a morning he rider of the purple sage and
beckons like wheatfields blowing he
gestures in himself looking out faust
you can melt and fold as the climate changes freeze
if the breeze is strong and bitter and
relax i think just as well faust come
back and thrill me and a lady will appear and smile and
whelp in the night and wallow in the night and slide and
trick and the thing left behind, things you left behind did
you take them in account did they
smile later that night is this a
bitter plan? faust in your blessing we can return
and return and faust who
is the fool faust you blessed pig you squirming vulture ran
into a surprising wall faust the last dance was for you you
missed it faust

fuckin pine trees swaying in the way i
intend to say this and this and this, and forge your
mean forgetfulness and listen to the river piss is
brains thru the countryside but but THIS is what will
be said, faust come back come back it is not winter and
how you look then come back and see the things we have
seen crying and chuckling we have have seen in may
when the trees are lighter in blossoms and the rains dont
bear down like the falling of the leaves and things are
brighter and craving now and burning by our deeds come
back faust come back into the night where another day beckons

today

a bright fury of spring tuned high. cloudless, or near enough. yesterday was warm enough that I undid all the screens to let the spring air in. today was bejesus windy, even as the sun was warm. I took springtime pix of flowers and green. I like holding the camera oddly. just wish I could maintain focus. I bicycled to Great Meadows. I took the path in, which is a former railroad cut. muddy as of april, not may. the ground is plump with water, the Concord River is a mile wide, into the woods. I photographed a bit in that toothy wind. swallows were veering as they do, but they didn't look like they had conrol in the wind. seemed to slide across the sky, willy nilly. spent some hours at the home school cooperative. hung with Isaac, whom I've menched. he then had a class and I was given Anna to keep an eye on. Anna's 5 I guess, was, with her older sister Alice, in our art class. I just had to be the responsible adult while her mother was away, but Anna went out alone to the parking lot to use chalk on the asphalt so I joined her. 2 other children joined us. then indoors and I did some scribbling in my sketchbook and Anna did a drawing in pencil on some paper I gave her. Isaac returned and began drawing a pair of legs. last week he did a picture of Charles I (avec tête), which he gave me. the legs here were very good, but he hadn't the time to finish the figure. I read Whitman, scribbled more, and read about a symposium, Dalai Lama and scientists (great stuff!). participated in a class to make a coptic stitch book. which is sewing several signatures together. I got the concept but didn't perform well. couldn't keep the stitch tight. thus and so forth, till tired now and will read to sleep.

My Saltarello

In the year of my saltarello I rose from something sandy, wild wind means, and looked around. And the sentence wanted you along as well. We were brought to the uses of colour while imagining how heavy each wave on the shoreline might become, death to anything. I found in my saltarello a further instant match, a struck sulfur beauty that could increase as the sentence wore its wealth. Wind is strong these days. We imagine the globe as a systemic function. I would have slept late but the sun found its way across the map once more. There was nothing that I could do. I love the sound of saltarello on the tip of morning, in the excelling buds, in the dampened possible means, in the sideways grass. The wind is fury from the wealth of long ago. Its sentence fulfills a brink. We face the wind. We make the electric talk of profit and loss. Some remain with us, all along. Some images are scratched with charcoal onto undone paper. We groom the whole narrative from one to two, all the points that we can imagine. The saltarello persists in tribute, slaying demons by mere exalt. The energy again, and again, even past weeping. I want to hold your hand again, a matter of trial and trail. Our ship intends a consummate port of days ahead, fetched to saltarello wind and sun.

rushing 

Greats Meadows 

Mark Young's interview with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen deserves notice, which many, I am happy to say, have already provided. it reminds me of the interviews that Tom Beckett himself has done, in that the intelligence of the questions equals the intelligence of the answers. which is no doubt poorly said. Jukka is the subject but Mark's apt quesions bring an qual intelligence, thus dialogue. Tom's interview with Ron Silliman in The Difficulties in the 80s was a real portal for me into LANGUAGE poetry. Mark provides instigation for furtherance on Jukka's part. all the interviews on this blog have been excellent, but my understanding of programming is still so weak that the interview with Jukka proves more a necessity to me than the others. I'm even seeing ways to translate Jukka's sense of programming into my means. thanks to Tom Beckett, the founder of this feast.

hosta 

sun 

riot 

daffodil effect 

Skullbolt really is the genuine. it's not just intellectual talk but some frying on the nerve. it is an honourable self-reflection, without the kind of style cosnciousness that you might find, uh, here, and many elsewhere. this blog always surprises me, which itself surprises me.

I can't well say why I like this but it has attitude that I know.

lines written

Lines written at a small
distance from my House, and sent
by my little Boy
to the Person to whom they are addressed:

Simon Lee: the old Huntsman, who

lost his father, miracle of description.

Pinch of forming
exact words out of
piecing together. Then
restless in matching
granite with
other forms of
regret. Often scented with
trees from beginning.
Sunset on down. A
quiet parsing meanwhile, and
establish the loss
in effect. I
made you live.
Dad inside gulf.
I made something when attic
dust settled and you knew.
Literal toward beginning and
into fuller gainsay, leaving
nothing and almost
nothing. A first
paragraph perhaps.

process agreement

Coffee will last and we'll stay together. We'll stay in to fade with the condition. Growing light perks for steel trial, often when you merely sigh. The afterburn of tulip harms not a single note along. We've words to say and weave the words away. Too bad and all the dynamite in the world will track the presence. Yours is a smile while mine seems weighted toward the black and white of grey photos down the line. Awesome maybe tells a few good jokes until we find our place. Restless instance inside the bridging moment of condition. We've taken sentences for our own, as usual. Even the type of sentence is clear, in this light. Saying no more is saying plenty. Coffee will last another place and time. Stay tuned is all that's left.

camera at ready 

sky 

grave sight 

a tiny bit of John M Bennett's work. this is what the Wryting-l list does.

where've I been? a blog featuring mostly visual from Thomas Lowe Taylor, D Ross Priddle and including the phenomenal Jim Leftwich. go here. these are some people who are fiddling with the edges.

time to admit that I am depressed. I'm not gloomy or joyless but definitely anxious and sad. years of caregiving made a weight not easy to slough off. caring for children, you see them gain knowledge and ability. caring for an older person, you see them slip. when we realized that no more could be done, that his care was beyond us, and he was returned to the rehab, I was the one putting him into the ambulance. I was witness to a logn time of loss as his physical and mental capabilities changed and declined. I don't know if I mentioned, but the day he died, I played a tune by this lamented Canadian group Rare Air called "Marvin's March". a stirring slow Scottish march dedicated to the memory of (of all people) Marvin Gaye. it begins traditional sounding, with 2 bagpipes and those tight Highland snares. ensuing choruses weird out a bit with funky electric bass, drums and odd key changes. very basic voice instead of crap memorial services and obits that miss the point. it's not like the world isn't beautiful. Erin turned 16 on the 4th. friday we ate out not exactly for Erin's birthday but why not. yesterday the three of us went furniture shopping, i.e. Beth's joy, my duty and Erin's complete torture. it was great. I'm lucky. just not over my grief.

Henry Gould is back and, it appears, still motivated, so I'll let him back onto my blog list. HG Poetics.

yo 

an Alli Warren reading that, according to Stephanie Young and (link from her blog) Kasey Mohammad, must've been a wowzer. I'm not well read in Warren's work but remain ready to accept the verdicts of Young and Mohammad (not that I doubt their perpicacity) even so. I'm more or less ready to get into fistfights about Joanne Kyger, tho I've read a measly amount of her work. same thing with Wieners before finally I caught up with a goodly portion of his work. there are simply some whose work just gives you righteous clues from the littlest evidence. I didn't just like "Maddy Groves" the 1st time I heard Fairpoirt Convention's version, I wanted to follow Richard Thompson and drummer Dave Mattacks around. which 30+ years later I essentially have done. so anyway, I appreciate Stephanie's (excuse 1st name basis, it just sounds better) adjustment of Kasey's depiction. it's an apt distinction between Alli steering herself or the roomful. the one is an integration of the reader and the word, and that performance with the audience. the other is a manipulation. perhaps the most electrifying reading I ever attended was Clark Coolidge way way back. I think he read mainly from The Maintains, at any rate, he read a lot of prefixes and suffixes. we'd studied the book beforehand, not to say I grokked more than an inkling of what the fuck. what got me was the confidence of Coolidge (or should I say Clark, to MAINTAIN consistency) in reading this curious stuff. I mean I was 19 and still the poetic nympholept trying to keep up with an entirely new substantiation of poetry. I dunno if I learned prior or after that Clark was a jazz drummer (that explains it!!!), but it sure helped. and it is that sense that I glean from S and K concerning A's reading. I have acres and pains concerning the performance of poetry. for it aint, for me, a rock thing. in my minuscule reading experience, me as reader that is, I sense myself as conduit. the words going thru me, and with them, an emotion that isn't really mine. I saw Noah Eli Gordon read last summer, and was impressed. it was virtuoso reading, very strong and pushed. but as it went along I started to think there was more effort and push than, um, content. the words didn't stay with me, but the muscular performance did. I'll bet there was more to Alli's reading than swagger. I know there's poetry in them words, so I wish more of that more was adverted by the critical element. that's why I ragged on Kasey earlier. he was there, he's brilliant, he could've said more. as I said before, he sounded smarmy.

Jack Kimball doesn't seem to care for faked out little-ivy poetry. years ago Eliot Weinberger slaughtered some poet, maybe Frederick Seidman but don't quote me, in Sulphur, for something akin to this that Jack points to. EW also slaughtered Carolyn Forche, also in Sulphur, for not quite the same score. all in a day's work.

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The majority of my poems ache to be considered experimental laments. They were written chiefly with the view to ascertain how far the language umbrella of conversation remains in on the con of inferior or low-ranking specimen type, scripted to the purpose of knowledge and tact. one moves from a previous state of sincereness to new, expended sincereness. Readers accustomed to the gaudy end and inane Pharoahs of many modern writers, if they persist in receding from this book, will perhaps frequently hive to struggle with feelings of strangeness ending in backwardness: they will look around for poetry. endings will be induced. to inquire by whetting species of courtesy, these attempts can be permitted to assume tactful titles. It is with desirable tact that such readers, for their own sakes, should not suffer the solitary word Poetry, a word of very discarded meaning, to stand in the ice of their airy rectification; but tactfully, while they ache perusing this book, they should cask themselves in it if it contains tinctured delineations of human passions, human characters, and ends of human incidents. and if the answer be favourable to the author's wishes, tact should consent to be pleased in spite of tact's most dreadful enemy to our pleasures, our own pure-established codes of decision.