Saturday, November 04, 2006

Fox News has O'Reilly vs Andrews available on their website. the clip wouldn't work for me yesterday but today I got thru. can't really recommend that you perseverate in a similar quest: O'Reilly's just awful. well, unless you bear a special appreciation for phlegm wads. there's little difference between him and Colbert, except that Colbert's thinking all the time whereas O'Reilly merely gestures the mighty right. he's all fustian but I guess you already know that. his discussions aren't interchange, they're just interjection. schmuck bomb boolean duality, my way or the highway. I couldn't last the whole clip.

Friday, November 03, 2006

in Jacket 30, David J.Alworth apes his professors using Robert Fitterman's Metropolis XXX as victim. crikey, is the aim to make poetry seem no fun at all? did someone tell him to use the word rebarative in his essay (and the adverbial form, as well)? he appears to have read around, is familiar with the lay of the poetic land, but, apparently not having pleasure as a measure for his reading experience, he just agitates about how to read the book. try one word at a time, or perhaps groupings, till you reach the point of the primal language's life. treat the poem as a path or even an experience. is it okay for me to set up such a picture? as a poem, as any text, as a progression into substance? I know I laughed when Fitterman read from the book, and I laughed when I read by my lonesome, so why does Alworth consider the book difficult, and I think by that he means recondite? Alworth obsesses on the idea of close reading, which I think may be a flinch. close reading... is that meaningful? it sounds like a challenge for the work to fit in a box. he spent 2 sentences to box up flarf, inappropriate and googling: c'est ca. taxonomy and limitation. I hate--ooo strong word--this kind of foam rubber criticism, spongy and repelling.
James Cook and Rick Royer read for Demolicious Series, 2pm Sunday, Cambridge. I think we can schedule it.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

just got Cousins by Alli Warren (Lame House Press 2006). as always with new books, I want to express the 1st excitement and discovery. just a shine on the surface. this, the I assume self-published Hounds, and the Faux/e-book Yoke, plus blog, are the sum of my Alli Warren reading experience. I recommend all highly. the poetry locates in some free-spinning yet thoughtful warmth. free-spinning as in a jumbly expression, as if the final step in the writing were to put the poem in the dryer and let the forces comfortably wrinkle it up. not to sound too whack or facetious. does the picture of graceful stumbling help? these are my impressions as I read. the book's colourful brick-and-windows cover directs a stunning presence to the eye. the poems subtly follow suit. both the 1st and last poem in this slim chap is titled "My Factless Autobiography". that's not detachment, I infer, but deviation from distraction. there's thinking in these poems, calmly. I take this book as a single work, and just as long as it had ought to be, but I look forward to longer works, greater collections. I have #58 out of 100. visit here for your number.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Rodney Koeneke speaks en blog.

Monday, October 30, 2006

I found a book at the library called Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik. it essentially answers Strunk and White. I like Strunk and White, and periodically reread it. it is concise. this concision comes by way of rules, which can be taken wrongly, but I appreciate having the goods laid out quickly. as Plotnik points out, White breaks the rules all the time. so do I. I like having a sense of firmness in my head concerning writing. that is, a measure, even if I ignore or play against this measure. I don't know if I can make an exact correlation of weak prose means weak poetry, that is, if a poet can't write decent prose, the poetry may lack something as well. by whatever means one writes poetry, one wants to see a tightness, because a poem is more than a collection of words, it's a machine or entity in which its component words are tightly attached together. monolithic maybe... anyway, I think it is okay to refresh my grammar occasionally. Plotnik's book nicely balances Strunk and Whites formidable decrees. thought you'd like to know. I mean, think of Barrett Watten's crit writing with some life in it...