Stephen Vincent's poetry settles in diurnal rhythm. picturesque, I think, is the right word. of course the point is not to write about someone else, it's to write about ME. still, Stephen has a walking rhythm, most evident in the two series: Walking Theory and Crossing the Millennium, which are both growing on his blog. aside from specific daily walk about poems, his book, Walking, has a lot of poems, 'set' in Africa, that have a notational approach that I equate with a daily sort of noticing, albeit exotic in its provencance. my writing is less calm than SV's, for it is often written, or ridden, quickly. I see SV pondering as he walks, maybe even making lines in his head. reminded of Nathan Whiting (I think his name is). Ron Silliman mentioned him recently. NW is a poet I've read in Michael Lally's None Of The Above anthology (and nowhere else). Whiting's poetry situated in the running he did. in my high mileage days I wrote quite a bit in such way. reliving the run. for distance running creates a slow projector for a running movie: you thru the streets and pathways. inside such running you are aware of the event before you, the unwinding movie. that sensibility stayed with me even if the poetry writ that way wasn't so special. SV has found a way to incorporate his walking with his writing. finding a meditative place. for time and event rush, dont they? currently I am weary, not writing well. I had to tell my father today that his sister was dead these 10 years. he'd forgotten, and was greatly saddened by the news. in witnessing my father's memory loss, I'm thinking of the streaming event which nonetheless throws up chunks of memory, the things that stay. anything can be important, or perhaps, everything is. SV, then, placing his gaze generally, and generously. I see this as well, differently, in Silliman's work, the strangely effervescent detail. my own work goes at a speed that, maybe I am kidding myself, maybe I am missing things. I depend a lot on the serial motive, how my vocabulary, by the reiteration of its 'use', and of my interests, clapping on to the exciting factor, how in working within these I see develope a Poetry. is this lazy of me? overconfident? naive? I suppose those questions don't matter, I'm just winging it. that's okay aint it? I'm trying to meditate daily, trying to see better. it is good example for me to see a meditative element in other writers. I mean sure, let the aliens or the Eternal Authours write the words, but consider what they gave and how it might mean in me. that's the work cut out for me.

weird 

it took quite a while to diddle up the flarfy Lohan piece yesterday. I know it's not technique like metre is, but it is working within a sensibility if not a format. I was, obviously, using found phrases, phrases I more or less sought, that would fit my 'idea'. writing thus rather than a point A to point B ride. I would like to read deeply but weariness and distraction don't allow it. flarf makes use of the superficial, which is where I am at this time. some years ago I wrote a story about Jennifer Love Hewitt meeting Satan, back when she was dating that Carson guy on Empty V. it was important that I 'have my facts straight' re JLH. I did similar with Lindsay Lohan. so searches, searches. into the belly of the beast, really. with JLH, it ws either pix or promo, little bio. I found lots more gossip wih LL, and bio, along with the other crap. aside from a biography of Grover Cleveland Alexander (the pitcher) that I'll never do, I've always wanted to do a bio of some 2nd rate celeb. with the facts straight, however funny my approach might be.

of such a continuing tiredness that I am not getting much read, nor writing a lot. my reading is of this and that, unfocussed, wishing I could read in depth b ut n ot just now. Davenport's stories, Pisan Cantos, Kora in Hell and Spring & All, Stephen Vincent's Walking (the book), Geshe Somebody's reading of the Heart Sutra. I gave myself a pretty good reading foundation after I left school. now I'm kinda withdrawing from that foundation (various senses possible in that phrase), not making deposits. which sounds like Paulo Freire but anyway. Steve Tills lists in teeny font the books he's wrassling with lately. I hope to hear more about his reading. even if I myself aint worth a damn as a reader currently.

Almost everyone has, at some point in their life, read about when Lindsay Lohan at age 7 got to dress as garbage. well, a Poet is distinguished by the fact that she is a profound, well-written, wisdom-packed recording with the power to transform the way we think about things. I mean you have Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake hitting people now to indicate a certain degree of snobbishness. Lindsay is a lot like great teachers; the really great ones don't come along as often as we'd like since there is no apparent reason why authors should write anything else. the so-so ones make us work hard at their poems. The great ones lack coherence and are avant-garde for the sake of being avant-garde. Lindsay Lohan means well, mixing passages of easy verse with otherwise complex poetry. Lindsay has the advantage over great books that tend to be much, much shorter than she is. So short that, in many cases, they learn that our apartment complex has chef and maid services. It's just a matter of finding the "missing key". But Lindsay the first redheaded child ever signed by the prestigious Ford Modeling Agency is not a book or poem, nor even an electrical current. SHe juggles this horrible foot that was swelling with blood. She has a job, and a family, and they are broken largely according to conventional breath pauses. All of the elements of the poem are constructed of limited free time in which to read poetry. Because writing 'difficult' poems that 'just turn out that way' are, after all, much easier to write than poems which say something (perhaps something difficult), and say it well, with attention to the beauty of sound, and phrasing, and form. if you scream over and over again at the top of your lungs for a few minutes you end up writing easy poetry in long, sustained stretches. For this reason a small number of easy poems tend to fill Lindsay Lohan.

good racial issue of Onion this week ("Racial Harmony Achieved By Casting Of Black Actor As Teen Computer Whiz") but I especially like this line: "I will prepare for you a romantic meal comprised of succulent lobster from the finest sea". I suppose it is flarfy. I like the arabesque of its intention.

tell me about poetry's clarity

my father got lost yesterday, not for the 1st time. he didn't know where he was. he wants to return to his home in Cambridge, that he left so long ago. he recognized me as someone he knows but the concept of son escaped him. he rose several times in the night ready to get up. I rushed out of bed when I heard the front door open at 5:30 am. my father was looking out the door. he wanted to determine if it was time to get up, if it was morning. he suffers from a common disturbance among the elderly called sundowning. you can't tell him that it is night even with the darkness outside. I try to explain where he is but he just doesn't get it. he feels adrift and lost. then in the afternoon, he's back. he even felt as if he had been somewhere. and he was glad he was back. happy to see me and Beth and Erin, the cat and the dog.

clarity is a pretty excellent word. it says so much, and so clearly. it is like every effort brought into focus. it's the way words are so exact, and so are people. clarity is statement. the fewest words is no words. let's all try it at home!

my problem is that I didn't know Davenport's politics in reading him, so I kinda just stuck with the texts at hand. where did Silliman get the idea that Davenport was drawn to Pound's politics rather than Pound's poetics? I never got that impression from my reading of Davenport. I don't trust Silliman here. I don't feel Silliman has investigated his reactions towards Davenport deeply or honestly enough to lay his dislike for Davenport to Davenport's politics. it doesnt ring true. it doesn't ring true.

Tom Beckett returns with a new blog. Tom Does Interview. The Difficulties, which he edited, really helped me to come to grips with LANGUAGE poetry. I have issues dedicated to Bernstein, Susan Howe, Bromige and, for some reason, 2 copies of the Silliman issue. I remember being so excited by the Silliman issue that I got one for a friend. recommended blog, even with just one entry on it.

exhibit A 

Erin's fundraiser yesterday. it was Erin's idea, and him and his friend Orion did much of the prep for and running of it. certes I never did anything the like at the age, nor even conceived doing. don't ask the town to participate!. looking for a place to stage the thing. we didn't even ask about the space that our homeschool cooperative rents, as that organization is hardening into a school, and the word liability is a constant chorus. the place where Erin and his friends take karate was happy to provide the space. the head librarian was supportive, and an event probably can occur there, but she had to okay it with library trustees, so couldn't fit our rush schedule. Erin and his friends wanted to do one of these right away. they are already psyched about the next one. what it came down to is 16 kids (boys) gathering to play Magic cards. Erin paid for snacks and some small prizes. we didn't work hard scrounging for that sort of stuff. one time when I was working for the wine store a caller asked for freebies. Harvard Business School was doing a reunion dinner of some such. the caller wanted the store to supply the wine. he stated, as an attraction, that the participants represented a demographically exciting group. Harvard B School demographically exciting? demographically cheap, maybe. anyway (not anyhoo) $270 was collected for UNICEF, which Beth and Erin decided was the best place for the funds. I was pleased that the participants were interested in the sum collected, despite the distraction of Magic Card Fever. one of Erin's friends will set up a web site for the next event, and the scale will be much bigger. I took a lot of pictures. the karate studio has mirrors on three walls, so I couldn't resist taking shots with arty angles and reflections that would not be useful on the website or local newspaper article. hum dum de dum. I am not the least bit a gamer of any sort. these card games make my eyes cross. the rules are somewhat fluid, as new cards with new abilities constantly appear. the more you spend on cards the better player you can be, which is an American analogue, I should think. a feverish collector's interest rides with the gaming interest. these games seem to appeal exclusively to the Y chromosome. I don't infer that the game itself is especially for boys but the culture that attaches is kinda thick. anyway (not anyhoo) it's good to get some awareness going at this age. rather than build 20 year olds looking to kick Saddam's personal ass. a mental grip, that is, on a world that isn't a movie starring Rambo.

Seize Song 10: Hope You Ride.

blog version

sometimes I don't feel like a poet IN ANY GENERALLY ACCEPTED WAY, but then I notice that the word front can change things. radicalize.

"everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads"--They Might Be Giants.

Joan Houlihan, the name rings a bell. it's the sort of bell you hear in a clumpy sort of landscape. you walk along, say, and suddenly, amidst a reverie of trees, you hear this bell. could the bell be friendly? could any bell be friendly??? of course you realize that bells can't be friendly in any generally accepted way. bells are just bells. they can't be rung by names, either. so I guess, really, the name Joan Houlihan rings no bell. a shame, I suppose.

Seize Song #9, totally fresh at _______, or click on the link to the right for the blog version (black background!!!).

a poem I posted to Trade Station. it consists of the words in the 1st panel of today's Rhymes With Orange comic strip, and some of the words in the final panel of today's Dilbert. when a method becomes methodical one enters into the world of repetition. today the authors in eternity used comic strips to get their poem across. the point would be to be open to possibilities. that a single way of writing doesn't exist. I don't need to explain my limitations but sometimes, even so, I notice a different means. yesterday John Bennett posted a poem with the occasional word spelled backwards. he has experimented with that a bit, but yesterday's poem really worked for me. the effect is of oblique emphasis. unscrambling the words you land on them longer than you might otherwise. interesting that one of the words used was nword, which itself has a life as a word, a highly charged one. I was about to post John's poem but I can't do the format, and tho Google archives Wryting (as Fiction of Philosophy), it is several weeks behind. anyway, I liked the poem that came my way today.

lovely sounding recipe but I tried all day and couldn't get the oven to 30%. 30% of what? I wonder what prison this child is incarcerated in and what's she in for.

John Latta on Davenport. I don't hate that Davenport's dead so much am as glad that he was alive.

my comments below on Davenport are wholly inadequate. I didn't want to be saying he gave 27 cents to every dime. I enjoyed his worked in the way I enjoy few, like O'Hara, say. and I learned from him. I know I did, tho that is so hard to identify let alone quantify. I still hate eulogies.

part 8 of Seize song here at my popup village. blogger version ici.

Guy Davenport just recently died. he was a writer I enjoyed reading greatly. I place him with Flann O'Brien as a writer that simply never a made a bad sentence. he comes to mind when I realize my writing's getting tortuous. helps me to keep each word in view. he bore his scholarship lightly. he was as comfortable with Ancient Greece as he was with North Carolina. his essays aren't just perceptive, they are invigourating. he has set me off reading many writers just by sharing hgis loving attention. his stories are wonderful modernist intersections, playful and wittily strange. I don't recall thru what agency his writings came to my attention. glad that it did.

thanks to Mark Young for linking to Seize Song, as well as supplying useful criticism. he quotes a bit, which, when I read it, reminded me of my own writing. I suspect that if I knew my writing better, I would write less freely. I don't think this is true of everyone but I have found it true for me.

If time restarts they
may present a
possible future, but in
this tableauxed moment
only the music
captures him.

Mark Young's poem stands by itself as a poem. with reference to the painting (I read the poems on Series Magritte before I check out the painting), the poem becomes an interpretation. I don't know Magritte's work well, recall that Jeff Beck's 2nd album bore a Magritte (was it apple head man?). I think of RM like Escher, as in: whoa, that's pretty whack! Magritte's both weird and compelling. this painting is not just a little disturbing, not as goofy as some of his works. Magritte's more dreamlike than nightmarish but so very odd.

Seize Song Seven

Mark Young offered me the suggestion of using Blogger as a place to put Seize Song, to which I mean to make daily additions. to avoid the popups of my site as well as Blogger's anti-chronological presentation, he suggested one blog with daily links to the work, and one with the work itself. right now, I offer the Seize Song blog. the web site will continue. if this thing get 'done' I'll make a pdf available. for my fans, you understand. I put Digital Cellular Phone into pdf format but, haha, my free web host doesn't allow files greater than a meg (this one is 1.1 mb). if you're interested in DCP (the format's better than my rudimentary html work), email me, and I will spam you. anyway, thanks to Mark for the advice.

yeah, popups exist on my site. and I don't like 'em but it's the best I can do. I spent a long, long time entirely unread. I just wasn't connected to other writers. when I came to the internet 6 years ago, I began finding outlets for my writing. I posted to listservs, I entered correspondence with writers, and more recently, I started a blog (several, actually) and a web site. I suppose it looks like vanity press to publish via one's own website, but to me it's no more so than the vanity of seeking the editorial okay (The Shifted Flower wants three of my poems!!!). I think my writing is worth reading, which is kind of like saying I think my life is worth living. I love printed books but the cost of producing them isn't within my realm currently. and how many publishers seek 300+ page mss from little known writers? I have an 800 page ms, my best work yet, just waiting to be seen. so I have begun (slowly) learning a bit about doing it myself online. popups sure are not an aesthetic choice, they are practical. if having popups allows me to have an online presence, I'll accept it. I think my blog proves that I think about other writers, and support their efforts. it is actually a breakthru for me to push my own work. matters like whether I am 'not good enough' or that I 'haven't played the game' aren't important at all. some small part of my work is available, and people can choose to read or not. it is like this for all of us. I've gone years and years without anyone reading my work, so I can get by without audience. but that's not to say I don't wish to have one. as I've already said, I'm doing the best I can.

the Penn Sound audio files (linked to the right) are really exciting. listened to Stacy Doris, Berrigan, Olson. Berrigan does all of The Sonnets. great intro, in which he just riffs on how he came to write this grand d'oeuvre. Olson sounds like a previous generation. he reads in a dramatic way that sounds a little old-fashioned. his accent is sure New England, 'purer' maybe. than you'd here much now. my father was born 3 months afer Olson, in Cambridge, 50 miles east of Olson's Worcester, but the accents are different. it's a gold mine here. Blaser lectures on Olson, Hannah Weiner, Oppen, Reznikoff, Dorn's Gunslinger, and younger poets too.

Seize Song, part 6

things outside 

more Seize Song: As Drift Into Daylight. trying to get a daily rhythm of not just writing but posting to my site. by the way, don't regard them as popups, recognize them as GREAT MORTGAGE RATES!!!. um, the above title sounds kinda poetryish, doesn't it? I doesn't want to go that route.

filling in some blanks. 1st Slought Dot Org audio files. Olson's here, as I mentioned, and I just noticed Coltrane and Sun Ra interviews. looks like one of these sites where you do a lot of clicking afore you find the goods. some transcripts of the audio files, which is handy. 2nd: Spaceship Tumblers, more audio (L Carter, T Tost, as I did mench yesterday). I would ask for the text as well. I don't know the history of poetry readings in our modern sense. I know the Romantics would party down with poetry read and written, Whitman must've impressed his acolytes with his latest correction of the text, etc. Vachel Lindsay hit the circuit with his dramatic readings. what about Pound and the modernists? I suppose the Beats brought readings to popular public consumption. I read my work aloud now and then. sometimes to/for Beth, sometimes as part of the writing process. my own sense of reading wants the work to do the work, id est, I would prefer as the reader to temper performance. à la Michael Gizzi, who reads low key but crisp (low key I got but I'm probably not crisp). but I recognize other ways exist. anyway, stuff to listen to.

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.

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???

Curtis Faville wonders what kind of comment he can make about a mystery writer........

been reading Sappho's Immortal Daughters by Margaret Williamson, published by Harvard University Press. I don't know how much of that information is actually correct, not having the book at hand, but I think I've ballparked it. it's about the perplexing variety of attitudes and understandings of Sappho over the many years. every era has its own Sappho. which is true of any writer that lasts the ages but piquantly so in Sappho's case. no wonder Stephen Vincent has been producing his Sapphic transitions. how Sappho's poems got to us is fascinating.

Black Spring Online. I bleeve I wrote a bit about this mag (print version) last summer. hte lineup:

Stephen Ellis (featured poet)

kari edwards

Jim McCrary

Steve Tills

Brent Bechtel.

Catherine Daly

Chris Murray

Layne Rusell

a good selection of writers. I want to particularly note Stephen Ellis's work. he's a friend, but I don't hear much from him lately. check out the poem "Hymn". this came to me as a printed postcard sometime ago. it shows the Ellis Method. I'm sure there's a Greek term for the rhetorical device that begins the poem; I love the effect. a looping and/or spiralling. I think of his work as inhabiting sentences tho if you could parse what he's done here, god love you. it's a tense running machine that he makes. oh, Chris Murray uses the word fricative in the poem "Baker's Dozen @ Lovin",confirming my sense that it is a dirty word: "in personal fricative".

I've done some writing/art classes at the homeschool cooperative to which we belong. this is how I met Isaac, who was 8 when we met and now is 10. a very serious writer. his writing does a lot of processing of events in his life. his father left home for another woman, Isaac's recently suffered seizures. in his grand oeuvre (so far), there's a character called Lillist, who murders the protagonist's father, and the son strives to avenge the death. she's a witch. she gets killed but keeps coming back. ouch. later stories have been more diffuse, and include many murders and deaths. neither Beth or I have been able to do a class with him this fall. the person teaching him now is worried about his plagiarism, which is a terrible thing to do to him. he's always been honest about his source matrial. Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sherlock Holmes are all obvious sources. his usage is no different from Tolkien's usage of material. Isaac takes elements and makes them his own. he shouldn't be made guilty about the influence these works have on him. especially if you take the matter of Art out of consideration. he writes from a tremendous necessity. anything that might forestall that can only be detrimental. but as I say, he's original, no matter if he commandeers elemenst from other books and movies. I read a piece yesterday, more clearly a poem than most of his work. you get the residue of some painful story amidst a language of dire need. he said it came from the movie House of Mirth. which I recognized as am Edith Wharton novel, tho I haven't read it. you cannot glean the plot of the novel/movie from his poem, but the poem bears an incredible sense of love and loss. I wish I could make a copy of the poem. it's not the work of a child but a poet. his spelling is creative (think Lt William Clark), often hard to make out. I'd worry more about that than his originality, but I wouldn't even worry about that.

Buddha call

"When I took the ether my consciousness amounted to this: I put my finger on myself in order to keep the place, otherwise I should never have returned to this world"
--H D Thoreau, 1/26/1856

"If an ignoramus, or an empty fool, pretend to criticize this thing or the other, you may properly confute him; but name him rarely, for fear of soiling your writings. If you are attacked on your style, never answer, your work alone should reply"--Voltaire

Carla Harryman comments herself a distance from Ron Silliman's grand crayon marks. it is patently unfair to pit her against Brian Kim Stefans, good cop/bad cop. there's a Dylan Thomas quip about comparitive literature, to wit: compared to what? which is nicer, this unicycle or that box of matches? today Ron tells us that Devin Johnston "may just be the poet most deeply committed to the idea of repose, stillness & subtlety in American poetry since Tom Meyer." and his balloons are made of fir trees. superlative can be pretty stupid. who is 2nd best at all that? who is third? what league is this where these stats make sense? Silliman use cement in his criticism, to hold firmly, unbeatable, forever and a day. regarding his comments about BKS, Silliman did not go gingerly into that good criticism but leapt with a flunking splash. you call that a system? holy cow!!!

Jack Kimball was whimsical enough to mention my exurbian locale on his blog. a sort of confirmation occurred just minutes ago when Erin called Beth and me to the window, to see out back five (5) hulking wild turkeys. Beth had thrown a supply of sunflower seed around out there, on the theory that the squirrels were gonna get it anyway. the turkeys were feasting. I've seen a few turkeys around about but nothing this big. I figure 25 pound at the very least. they had some modest disputes over who got the choicest tidbits. they were unconcerned about the 4 of us goggling out the window. eventually I went outside and watched them. they knew they could take me so they paid little attention. they insouciantly marched into the next yard with a swagger that said if there aint food out they'll be banging on the door. I've seen deer often enough around here, hear coyote regularly and see their scat. a moose recently strode thru town, and a bear has been photographed, tho I didn't get to see these last 2. cheap thrills.

further use of the Stefan needle. I think Silliman went a little too boolean on this one.

Ron Silliman twice uses the phrase "went to publish" today. since he did so twice, I'll assume that this isn't a typo for "went on to", tho I know I can be pretty steadfast about making the same errors again (teh teh teh, etc). its a curious verb choice. destination publish. well, it's not curious, a lot of people see Fiddler's Green in the very essence of publication, but Ron doesn't seem of that anxiety. by the way, me no mess with BK Stefan: hilarious response.

I don't write metric poetry but Mike Snider's discussion of enjambment has been useful. there are skills involved in poetry, not juts lucky inspiration. I think in terms of enjambment when I write in lines, how the syntactial event slides over the end line. I got that from Creeley, not to blame him or anything for my failings. of course, Pound told me to read Robert Browning like prose. that was a help, kept me from galloping past the meaning.

Brian Kim Stefan in the Blue corner and Ron Silliman in the Red. Ron started it. then Brian made return of the blow with right good will. Ron sounds a little out of his water. I am not comfortable outside the book and page, a lot to do with my ignorance but I think we can allow for taste. it's good to look at one's own resistance. the presentation of Harryman's poem didn't really add much to it, as I see it. there's not enough evidence given by Ron to make his point. anyhoo, interesting to see lances crossed. there's new stuff going on out there.

bedad, David Hess sends us somewhere different. I read this book lo these many many, under the spell of Steeleye Span and some of the weird ass elf-laden folk songs they rendered. wow, tho, we're talking the scholar Evans-Wentz, who was possibly the 1st to translate prime Tibetan buddhist texts into English. some of the accounts in this are spooky. there's an Irish tune called Port na bPucai (don't trust me on getting the Gaelic right) which comes with the story that a fellow fell asleep on a elvish mound, a sort of portal to their world. when he woke he had this tune in his head. another tune, a well known one called "The Gold Ring", supposedly was given to a man by the elves when he returned a gold ring to them. I find this stuff fascinating tho it's been a while since I gave it any study. I am reminded of the picture book by Terry Jones (of Monty Python), which purports to be the journal of a woman who collects specimen of the wee folk. squashed between the pages are some of her prize acquisition. quite bizarre.

nice list of titles at xpressed, including just released ones. I've been reading Lives of the Eminent Assyrians by Jeff Harrison. a number of these poems showed up on the Wryting list but I am stunned to see how many there really are. yet another busy writer. much of his writing is narrative-infused, but these poems invoke an experimentation with statement. I think what that blurby-sounding phrase means is a jamming together of phrases to find something out of that. these poems have short lines, and the only punctuation Jeff uses is the virgule. the virgule incites a sense of balancing in my mind. not quite equation, but separating 2 elements of a whole. I recently mentioned Stephen Vincent's canny use of the half bracket. of course I, like you, have lately been giving Jackson Mac Low a read, and he uses some interesting punctuation. I really like these various usages. Jeff and I have been writing a long thing together in fits-like-a-glove mode for nearing 2 years. this work forces me to try different ways of proceeding. Assyrians challenges me now, in the sense of exciting me, to try a less narrative approach. those virgules perform, as I said, a balancing of elements (like either/or). the slash also firmly demarcates a phrase, yet at the same time, allows for serial reading. you can thus read severally: one-line poems, poems that fit between the slashes, poems that fit the page (each poem is a page long-- they all seem about the same length, so I wonder if a procedure is involved), and a 164 page poem. I'll have to print the lot out to get a better look. in august I ended Digital, and just recently capped off Rockets & Sentries. I've been happy to go without long project for a bit but now want to start again. and I want to step out of my usual. my reading time has been squeezed lately but I jumped to look at Jeff's work (among many attractions) because of a kinship I feel. I hope i can write uintelligently of other titles later. plumb tired now.