back from West Virginia. my first time there was only 5 years ago, and I haven't been there that often, but I feel connected to WV. e'en tho I also feel like a foreigner. the trip goes like this: 95 to 90 to 84 to 81 to 68 to 79, after which it is 20 miles of hill and dale. Massachusetts and Connecticut are the boring parts of the journey, both states seem strictly like the suburbs. the landscape gets interesting in NY. I like that run down from Stormville to the Hudson, past the state pennitentiary with the terrific view. lovely river. we also crossed the Delaware and Susquehanna along the way. temperature was springlike in Massachusetts but in NY it was colder and a bejesus and persistent headwind greeted us. Pennsylvania is lovely, those rolling hills. you wonder why it aint more crowded. how does it happen that such large tracts of seemingly unused land remain? well, don't knock it. we stopped somewhere near Harrisburg, for once not doing a death march. cripes, it was even windier in Penn. a flake or 2 of snow sputtered thru the air. I do believe it was even windier the next day. we stopped for lunch in Hancock MD, a pretty little town and a friendly place. I'm thinking there was a Civil War engagement in Hancock but I lack that perfect expertise to aver vociferously such a fact. MD's another lovely looking place. the western part, the hills start getting sudden. there's a terrific gap in the mountain where the highway cuts thru, Sideling Hill, which is a thrill. view of a goodly expanse of the land around. zip thru the busy river port of Cumberland, home of Lindy "The Leash" England. I don't want to minimize her despicable crime, but the word scapegoat has floated into my brain. the final interstate leaves us but a few miles from the Sago Mine where 8 miners recently died. gas prices in MD and WV were some 30 cents more expensive than our typical commonWEALTH outlay. downright springlike in WV. buds were breaking, daffodils were a-shine in the sun (varmints don't eat daffodils). we stayed at the Conrad Motel in beautiful downtown Glenville. the brochure for the place adverts the proximity of restaurants, post office and even one of them there fancy dan ATMs. Glenville State sits atop the preposterously steep hill overlooking the town, so the town's "a-buzz" with activity. certes, the festival they have in the summer is worth the trip. they close off Main St and there's old-timey fiddlers and clog dancing and loads of food and crafts. we ate, as we usually do, at the Common Place. there's a Pizza Hut across the way, and a couple of other places (including a coffee shop!!!), and a dingy looking bar that we haven't tasted the pleasures of, nor likely ever will. the Common Place is a storefront diner with 2 rooms, smoking and non-smoking. everyone knows each other there, and we, even, are becoming "familiar". a couple of the waitresses are students at the college, which gave a continental freshness to the place. I kid you not. our reason for coming down was sad and goodbye. Beth's father left her the property where he lived. he grew up on the property, which afterwards went out of the family, but later was bought by her father and his brother. he retired to it after his wife died. we would love to hold onto to the farm but it is just beyond our means to do so. selling it is a painful loss for Beth. for Erin too. and I loved that plot of land as well. a couple of years ago we rented the place out to the son of our neighbours down there at chicken feed prices, happy to help out a young couple and have someone caretake the place. in a year they totally trashed the place, which is why we went down and fixed the pace up last fall. not far back of the house we discovered a disturbing sight: the bones of at least 8 deer. we thought at 1st that this was poaching, a gross sort of profligate poaching, like the buffalo hunters who took just the tongue or hump or whatever choice morsel and left the rest. a lot of hunting in WV is about getting food, it aint a Dick Cheney snotbag pigeon shoot. but there is a current in the state, the give up urge, a mirroring of the land rape by the oil/coal/gas companies. I mean, it is a funny place. you see shacks and mobile homes dumped in place in the most random, thoughtless and careless manner, and right next door are homes that are kept spic and span. there's the concept there of the Sears Roebuck home. which being ones that were bought with the proceeds from sale of mineral rights back to the gas companies. a penny rich/pound foolish situation, because there are places, including the one Beth owned, with FREE GAS!!! but it is part of the bifurcating of the populaion. some are plugging, some aint. that massacre of deer was all the wrong note to face, as we were trying to say goodbye. we learned, tho, that coyote had moved in. they were large coyote, which is to say dog/coyote crosses. such aren't wary of people. Beth found signs of bear too. it was an emotional time for Beth. we kinda dashed away. we motored up to Hancock again, for dinner. a young waitress was astonished by Erin. she was short and he a good 18" taller than her. that was funny to witness. guy with white hair came up to the table to ask if anyone had ever told me I looked like Christopher Reeve. there aint much conversation that can arise from that opening, especially as, of course, the answer is no. but thanks for asking. despite a few signs that were obviously fakes to throw off the unwary, we were able to locate a motel. we reversed our direction the next morning. the wind, again, was frore, and I do mean frore. lunch occured near Scranton at a truck stop. the restaurant had a section reserved for truckers. apparently you must provide proof of having a big rig. I don't have a big rig, sadly, but I am not going to lie about it. so we were in the non-trucker section and the waitress paid us no mind. didn't even call me sugar. I had a sandwich made with ham-cured salt. the potato chips, tho, were homemade: they deep-fried the buggers on the spot. on and on we went, until we reached Connecticut, where traffic tie ups are born. there is always a feeling of imminent stoppage on rt 84 in Connecticut. we hit a few such cloggings. they were of the sort that don't seem to have any instigation, nor do they clear for any apparent reason. so we got home at dinner time, to the relief of dog and cat. we have a girl come in and do for the pets. she's done so several times but has never seen our inter-dimensional feline. she's not the only one who thinks that our reference to cat ownership is fanciful if not psychotically inspired. and here I have chugged wordage for oh so long, and you know what? this is whence poetry springs. I don't mean inspirations of self-import but from the collisions, atomic gamboling. for see: love, and curiosity, and determination (a political canard, I suppose), and scrutiny, and bequeath, and into it. I don't blather this all just only for self advert, honest to gosharoony. of course I grok the blogwise radiation of intent. but intent is smaller than the action of the words. words take over, because they live that way. I'm tired of poetry always being poetry, when it could be any writing in the world of sun and moon. I see thought and active and radiant and then there's the touch. that touch, see, that means.

we leave for West Virginia tomorrow. try to keep it together until I get back sunday.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

we spent yesterday afternoon in Lowell, visiting Beth's cousin. he moved there recently, to a place right in the centre. Lowell's not far away but doesn't seem to be in a direction we go much. Beth's cousin lives in sight of Town Hall. atop the Town Hall is a bold eagle for a weathervane. for a city that has been utmostly seedy, it is making a comeback. those abandoned textile mills are now seen as condo conversion resource, or at least rentable to stores and brewpubs. the Lowell Spinners have a nifty new stadium: minor league teams are a sign of potential economic health for a town. we didn't really tour much. I'm sure there's a regular plgrimage to Kerouac's homestead. the scroll for On the Road is touring the country, and I can only expect it to make a stop in Lowell. Kerouac t-shirts were at the Barnes and Noble, which is really just Umass Lowell's bookstore. lots of big stone edifices fill the landscape. Beth's cousin lives in a former bank, above a bakery and a bar. we ate just down the street in an Indian resaurant. I believe Lowell has the largest Cambodian population outside of Phnom Penh. I also believe that Thoreau wrote about his adventures paddling down the Merrimack, and Concord, even this far and further, whilst ensconced at his Walden cabin. a trolley runs from the trolley museum to points unknown, at least by me. at intersections a man in the trolley hops off and waves a red flag to encourage cars to stop (of course this is only a suggestion). at one intersection a very cool, or out of it, young fellow, unhesitatingly crossed the street with no concern for the traffic around him. either that's god tempering the wind for the shorn sheep or, more likely, the power of drugs. all over the place are hip and/or ethnic restaurants. bare midriffs are the fashion no matter what the temperature. yesterday was a springlike, albeit breezy, day. a few weeks ago when Erin's mock trial team competed here, it was much colder yet the fashion held. I understand that some of the granite used locally (perhaps moreso in nearby Lawrence), for curbs and such, were taken from ancient standing stones in the area. some ways north in New Hampshire is a place called American Stonehenge (where the banshees live and they do live well), which still possesses some of the remaining standing stones, 1000s of years old. those elected war-funders haven't quite caught on about the distressing shape of the economy, so it is nice to see the grassroots effort to find vitality. or just get fucked again.

today's my father's birthday. he died 9 days after his birthday last year, on the last day of winter. the damn damn thing is, it was on that birthday that I realized that I could no longer care for him. it was too much for me, it was too much for Beth and Erin. and clearly, he was letting go. he wasn't eating or drinking, he wasn't talking. I was there, not my brothers, when my father was put in the ambulance and taken to hospice. you will notice the hurt in my words. caregiving seems to be a job in which you never feel like you did enough. Beth brought an autistic child along in the world, most of the time on her own. it should make you feel good that you accepted the responsibility and did your best. it doesn't work that way, tho. what sticks with me are those few times when I was frustrated with my father, when his confusions overwhelmed me. I should remember that most of the time I was patient, compassionate, understanding, that I saw the losses he was enduring and did my best to help him. yesterday, Beth mentioned that we should get some planters and start a container garden on the balcony. I felt sad because I used to help my father with his garden. he started vegetable gardening after he retired. I used to assist him in his later years. as he became physically less able to get about, I started doing the garden work. which worked out well, because he particularly enjoyed starting the seeds and tending the seedlings. and I discovered I enjoyed digging around in the soil. he used to anticipate excitedly the arrival (in December) of the seed catalogues, and the starting of seeds. it got, however, so that he was starting them way too early. and then it got so that he no longer could do the work properly. where I used to ask him questions how to proceed, suddenly (it seemed) I was now advising him. it was a strong memory, yesterday, when Beth brought up the planters, of carrying tomato seedlings around for my father, fetching water, asking him when I can finally plant them in the earth. and so forth. it's a mild, windows open afternoon, and spring is possible, even probable. it's okay to feel sad sometimes, it's okay to move on.

thanks to Chris Murray for letting me be so self-serving as to mention that Chris Murray mentioned Antic View in a positive way, on her own generous and percipient blog. in the midst of doing it (the Antic View blog) with Jeff Harrison, I am aware, on my side, of sliding into the unknown. and Jeff's thinking is different, is in fact more metaphysical than I would expect to grok, but this leads me. and so on. we are in a performance, sure, but I for one am so distracted by the wobbly vision of what the hell--from vocable to word to words working together--that I don't even notice my performance. and it is a patch of surprise in the greening way ahead just to hear myself thinking, let alone visit Jeff's thoughts. in the way of things, Jeff and I began a collaboration which has chugged along 3 or is it 4 years. gosh in a basket! I think we are letting ourselves learn. which is anything but mundane. the Antic View blog is some light on that. and I appreciate that some few have bothered to read and allowed themselves to hear. because I know both Jeff and I have paid the dues and are working on. it is in our words.

I got Kenneth Koch's collected from the library. I wish I had more time and focus to read it. When I got Berrigan's I knew I was facing that. it's funny that these 2 major collections came out at the same time, altho I suppose Christmas had something to do with that. both writers were adventurous, but that quality shows itself differently with each. I may be risking a stupid statement here--it would be my 1st ever--but Koch seemed to pretend to be a different writer with different works. here he's a formalist (I use that term only superficially), here he's a narrative writer, here he's an academic, etc. I'm pointing to the way he commits to his projects. this is exactly opposite to Olson, who with every genre, including letters and lectures, sounded the same, with stutters and madcap leaps and his oddball erudition. which I admire in him, just as I admire how Koch turns himsself over to the modus operandi. Koch was facile in the best sense. I have to say, tho, that I've never read his book length baseball poem. I have it but can't think of its title. I'm not sure what puts me off. I can put up with fitting one's words to the rhyme scheme or metre for writers 'back then', but such comes across as unnecessarily labourious nowadays. excuse me for saying. I'll read the book sometime. anyway, Berrigan's adventurism consists of throwing himself into situations of surprise. impulse drove him. perhaps I shall get Koch's book. I mean, of course it belongs on the shelf of anyopne serious about the art. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more extra stuff in the book. like appendices, notes, whatnot. I realize these are mostly just trappings, but I like trappings! it is a event book, as I've said before. it's a different event than Berrigan's because TB has been gone longer, and KK has a better publishing history than Berrigan. I imagine later editions will be plumped up as memory of Koch the person diminishes, and also as further scholarship digs up what it finds. anyhoo, random thoughts...

A Warren-style.

read Man in the High Castle and Vulcan's Hammer by Dick, Philip K. HC is an alternate history in which Axis, bold as love, defeats the other guys. PDK whips up a pretty well thought out vision of it. I don't know the history of alternate histories, as in: who did the 1st, but certes they weren't a bubbling subgenre for him as they are now. I read one by Harry Turtledove, in which the Confederates win the Civil War. HT knew his history, on that score it worked, but the South won because some nasty Boers went back in time to bequeath AK47s on the Rebs. I'm leery of time travel stories, holes always pop up in the logic, and hasn't the Star Trek franchise done every possible permutation? yet HT still managed to keep the historical characters on track. he made a useful commentary on teh war out of the novel, despite the clunkiness. Dick's read is quite sharp, if you ax me. I would have no prob seeing this in an English class, taken just that seriously. not, of course, to murder it with study guides or whatever mechanical rendering of its 'meaning'. he addresses racism and has a sensitive sense of cultural differences. Jonathan Lethem, in his essay on Dick (titled "You Don't Know Dick") cites VH as about as bad as it gets with Dick. turns out that aint so gosh darn bad. it's a short crisp novel. for the 1st 100 pages I couldn't see why Lethem would disparage it. things quickly fell apart as the plot culminated. it's a future world (set, it would seem, in the 1990s) in which world government has been given over to a super computer. totalitarianism for the common weal, just like, um, now. the computer has a bit of a (predictable) nutty and, in a nifty subtlety, the computer replaced by the latest one machinated against the newbie. unfortunately, at the 100 page mark (out of some 135) Dick starts rushing to finish. generic heroics, such as Tom Cruise might be party to, ensue. Lethem's right, it's pretty wobbly. still, in both books, the characters are quite fresh, thatis, they aren't the stiff drab pawns that Arthur C Clarke produces. what I like about Dick is how he keeps bobbing for the same apple, focuses on issues that matter to him. I started yet another one, something something Alphane Moon, which appears more satiric than others of his.

the Boston Globe--it's a little rag helping to minister to NYT's gazillions--today ran an op-ed (op for opportunistic, maybe, or operations?) decrying John Stewart and the Daily Show for... cynicism. the mean spirits from that show are taking the oomph out of our political system. see, people who would be great leaders (the writer cited Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as same, amazingly enough), are so disheartened by the cynicism put forth by the Daily Show that they never enter the fray. clearly, anyone so easily put off aint got the moxie to begin with. according to this authority, people are getting their news from DS, rather than from unbiased sources like, say, Fox News. which is malarkey. the blurb about the author of this slurp stated simply: graduated from Harvard College in 2005. I'm unclear why it's College rather than University but never mind that. Harvard's imprimatur sits smugly on the 2 bit opinions. as in: oo, this person must have a bead on the sitch. remember the Monty Python skit in which a fellow tries to convince someone that truly he (1st guy) is a psychiatrist by showing that he has a copy of Psychology Today and such. sounds similar here. yes, I went to Harvard, I even drank Guinness at the Plough and Stars. obviously I'm a smart young lad. and blah blah blah. and the Globe felt pleased to humour this genius. stupid. muy stupid.

*** self promo warning ***

to me, what Jeff and I are muddling around in with Antic View is something vigourous and thoughtful. if I may be so bold to say. speaking only for myself, but it's a matter of working outside my comfort zone, considering things I hadn't give direct thought to. we both work at writing, and facing it. just thought I should advert that much.

there are interesting poets in blog space as well, that is to say Tom Beckett's interviews, this time: Shanna Compton

the one note criticism of flarf should read what;s up at Jacket #30. is Kate Degentesh's father poem lovely? is Tarzan Peterson's piece funny? shit yeah!!!

last time I was at the bookstore (B&N), I saw that quite a few Woolf novels remain unread by me. I say that because I was thinking Orlando seems unusual in her oeuvre, but maybe I aint got a clear visual of that oeuvre. the narrative voice is light and nearly frothy, which aint no way how her other novels that I've read strike me. it's a more pop or mainstream voice. I don't mean that pejoratively. her it is consistent, politically. it's just not handled excellently. narrative tone is quite precise. I read a trilogy by Robertson Davies, I can't recall the name, which had a surreal quality reminiscent of O. I didn't like that trilogy a lot, there's a type of novelistic surrealism that is just plangent to my ear. O isn't really surreal, just of a slightly unusual reality. which she carries well enough. tho after O's sex change, I hear a more forceful note: VW making her point. certainly the dramatic situation is ripe for exploring sexual differences, but hearing V chirp into the narrative is a bit disappointing. tho I am glad she does so chirp. I think the problem is that she didn't let the book write itself. she had this pregnant conceit and wanted it to live brightly, but she forced the speaking. I still have a ways to go, but when I started hearing VW's intentions push thru, I got leery. it interests me that in novels, the mainstram can be quite varied and risky. whereas in poetry, the term mainstream is synonymous with stiff, regulated poetry. it seems to me there was a movie version of Mrs Dalloway, which there had ought, since the novel is so cinematic. I am also reading Man in the High Castle, which is a surprisingly thoughtful novel, from what I can see. Dick's an interesting writer, I'm glad I'm giving him an explore.

a public service annoucement

In the interest of belabouring the subject, here is some information about the flarfists.

Most flarfists are7 feet tall. The exceptions are 8 feet tall.

Flarfist ability to communicate with space aliens should be noted, but whether or not they are in league with the Space Emperor, the solar system's most feared cosmic dictator, remains to be seen.

All flarfists possess an uncanny ability to fix washing machines. For some reason, however, none of them can fix dryers.

Veteran flarfists can be identified by their plumage, which they keep in their sock drawers. Neophyte flarfists have no plumage.

Flarfists enjoy teleporting themselves hither and yon, as a pastime, and as a way of getting away from “it all”.

Flarfists do not eat redwood trees.

Flarfists do not believe in snow. To become a flarfist, you must declare your disbelief in snow. In making this declaration, however, it is deemed all right to lie.

Beth went out for lunch with a friend, which meant going to a home furnishings type store. not to deny me the experience, she and I went back, as there was the perfect lighting fixture for her sister. place called Home Expo, which we've passed by often but never entered. it is Home Depot's swank showroom, warehouse size but way more comfy. or not, if sensory overload bugs you. faux room after faux room, world without end. just by the door as a display of soft bathtubs. whee hah! I had the camera with me because Beth wanted to send her sister pix of the perfect lighting fixture, to get her okay. the pictures below, as you might guess, are evidence of our excursion. I was weirding out there, especially in the hive with all the lights. it was tremendously busy, visually. you should check it out. on acid.