there's been some thoughtful responses to flarf and its methods in the world out there, to go with the lameass monkey muddle from others. well, some inarticulateness ought to speak up too! so I snatch the opportunity. I've written maybe 100 poems within flarfian parametres. by flarfian I mean using various methods like Google searches to fashion texts that satisfy--to my mind at least--a sculptural sense of poetry. such processes are less linear than my usual close my eyes and type fast method of writing. flarf can be quite linear and narrative but the method of its production isn't (in my experience). I love taking a pile of words and doing something with it. the use of spellchecker, Babelfish and find and replace, along with the Googling, produces the ore, which then is refined. to me, Googling resembles beachcombing, where whatever I use as for the search is... oh wait, I'm slipping my metaphor, because I was about to say my search term was the hook. or trawl. I'm just looking for shiny things that catch my attention. and having caught it, I refine them. all righty. the fascinating thing is to be amidst all that expression. whether it is Britney or Rumsfeld, things are being talked about online. whatever my usage of this material, I am aware of the humanity in the words. the accusation that flarfists are making fun of the inarticulate just doesn't jibe with the sensation I get as I do searches. rather than mocking these articulations, I take them very seriously. I mean, how could one not? there's so much energy to these words. that's why they are of interest! in new context, these articulations meld into a strange new energy. the jarring dissonances are, indeed, musical in nature. a reader must remember that the context is new. the grossness and offense that one might perceive in some of the voicings must be understood within the poem's full context, not the inferred one of the source text. remembering, tra la, that poems are machines: you gotta have all the parts in place for it to work proper like. assertions of racism have been made against some flarf, Mike Magee's Asian Guys poem, for instance. it is fair to make the question. that discomfort is real. a power of flarf exists in the very witness of these offenses. I'm not taking the writer off the hook here. the reader's 1st duty is to determine if this poem is of interest. I've seen it in the twiddle that I've done, where the gathered weirdneses don't coalesce. a leering sort of interest might take over then. that's a failure in my book. or not in my book. the poem didn't survive the refining process... I don't know if that metaphor holds either but I'll pretend that it does. just as when I write, zippy zip, my usual way, and see the result as failed. what did I miss? where did I go wrong? flarf faces the same problems. balance, delicacy, degree. discomfort and impropriety have been mentioned as positions in flarf. I think flarf qua flarf (gotta love that qua) lives in the openness of possibility. but it's not just potty mouth, I don't see it so. in my own attempts, I've leaned more on the disjunctive oddities, cheek by jowl. alas nor am I as funny as many others. I don't think I can use the n-word and iothers such, I have my limits. I always want the possibility that any word or topic can be used in my work but I would shy away from some. I think some criticism of Mike's poem derives from a sense that he can't come at it from that direction. you fill in what 'it' and 'direction' mean in that sentence. I can only say, does the poem in its fullness say what you think. take a holistic view, maybe? really, poems don't say, they be. the misapplied familiarities and the disjunctions are troubling and difficult, and of course the blatant grossness that isn't softened at all. the assumption is that there's something worth fighting for, in all that midst. the procedures, they swtch the process around for me. rather than linear go, I'm forced to slow way down, hear each word in its peculiar situation. in my usual mode, I go back to see what I've down. when I go flarfy, I watch as the poem takes shape. I dunno how many of those 100 flarfisms that I've made that I would stand by. all of them in the sense of trying to learn something, but as pomes to stick in books with my name attached: it's a handful. working flarfily has been invigourating for me. I'm amazed how the poem writes itself. something unexpected turns up, changes what the poems doing, right before my eyes. it thrills to see that. I think attempting to write flarf has helped me to read it. hint hint. you know, see what's under the hood. nyway, these be some thoughts that have percolated up recently.

Jack Kimball and Christina Strong at the Demolicious Series. the Demolicious Series is definitely a bright spot in the Boston area poetry scene. it's comfortable, doesn't have the inner sanctum ambience that pervades so much around here. I decided to read at the open mic but that proved slightly challenging, insofar as I didn't want to take too much time, but my work tends to stretch out. and I write often in series. saturday I'd written 4 poems in a series that perhaps will go on, and liked what I wrote. I read this, the 1st piece, kinda long. it's still new so I didn't have the best reading bead on it. but enough about me. James Cook read 2 nice, thoughtful poems, and 2 others whose names I haven't managed to place in long term memory yet (both read at the Fitterman/Sloman reading), read several works that were quite good. then Jack read, entirely from a lengthy manuscript. the ms still hopes to find a publisher. why wouldn't it, frankly? the pieces were largely short, sketchy in a way. Jack employs a disjointedness (assuming disjointedness is something that can be employed) that is more like an abbreviation. as in gist. tone is delicately asserted. hearing Jack read probably is a good entrance to his work, so that you can catch hold of the tonal shifts. his poetry is one of voices, of varied sources. whether or not these sources are Googled, or if they are in his head, I don't know and definitely don't care. the shifts are precise and human. emotion bumps against emotion thru the work. I did not take notes and lack a useful memory, so I cannot quote. but I can say there were quite a few laughs, quite a few brilliant lines jumping out. consensus says that Jack read too long. okay, he did, except that it made sense, reading from a single work as he did. he skipped some poems, and all the prose parts of the manuscript, which Jack says are brilliant. what I heard held together, which is why I forgive his reading so much. Christina showed 2 movies that she made. both were powerful political assaults. in the 1st, we see clips from an early Our Gang, with the kids bracing for a play war, juxtaposed with Christina reading (on the soundrack) plus music. then a collage of CNN type talking heads and I know I'm not presenting the experience well. it was rivetting and thougthful. the 2nd film featured a lot of disturbing war clips, people dying very completely, with a terrible desensitived aura over all. and this coupled with those always hard to believe Bushisms that bubble from the fount with creepy ease. I like Christina's political thunder. it situates quite naturally in her work. the political voice of LANGUAGE poetry has often sounded like poli sci to me. to me, any fierceness has to be central and visceral, not brainy decoration. fire and thought together is what I saw in Christina's movies. so it was fun, good to have...

seems like, when I write/think about poetry, the interest isn't in meaning so much, in the way of looking for treasure. meaning, whatever that dawg is, seems like a process of consideration and combination. 2 books I've been reading lately, quite different from each other, bring up something in my brain. Mainstream by Michael Magee (Blaze Vox 2006), and The Secret Lives of Punctuations, Vol 1 by Eileen Tabios (xPress(ed) 2006). modus operandi. both books come from a specific practice, it fascinates me how that practice proceeds. with Mageee, okay, we know that he's writing flarf. real flarf, insofar that he numbers among the actual flarf writers who know and (in a sense) collaborate with each other. the issues of Google sculpting and outrageousness are worn tires, or what I mean is, you can stare at those issues and kinda not see the poems. which don't make no sense no how. Magee's work is not simple and direct. it's poetry, not opinion. I love the density of the work. the many sources that commingle and contribute produce a shifting landscape and a lovely ride. I am finding, as I read, that the work provides answers of a sort as to how to read. there is self-reflection (the poem reflecting on itself, not the poet) within the works. if reader would kindly see 3 dimensions in these sculptures, you know, other sides and aspects, it would be a generous offer. Eileen, kinda on that note, provides context and method in her rather lengthy book. I've noted earlier that in Bay Poetics varied types of works are cheek by jowl: prose, criticism and poetry. Eileen proceeds similarly. Eileen has a process that makes me think of Olson's sense of archive. genre distinctions are muted. there are poems, collaboration, and reflection in this book. I like how that works, all tied together. her thesis, to call it that, is a use of punctuation, a conscious controlling of the poem's space. I think this is a useful consideration, or what I mean, that punctuation isn't often seen in its larger meaning, or meaningfulness. I like to see the thinking of the artist, the active process, so these 2 books work for me. I just got Punctuations, just getting warm to its invitation. I've had Mainstream a l;ittle while, and I poke at it often. it is incredibly rich and challenging. a flarf canon, if we want to call it that, is developing--gee, Faux Press has published 3 of them (by Sullivan, Gordon and Larsen--and Mainstream is a hearty addition. I hope the word flarf doesn't become a stumbling point.

family and friends are encouraging me to get more of my work out there. this is not something I've much pursued but feel it is a real step that I should take. if you know of a publisher who might be interested in my work, or are one, I have manuscripts short and long to offer. please contact me.

  

  

this is Ben Friedlander's statement given at the OlsonNow All Nude and Paradoxical Heroin Addiction Show. I found Ben's talk engaging, clear and a nice antidote to that bloated gassy feeling. it aint my job to defend Olson, I can only advert the value I've found in my study (different from idolization) of his work. I would aver that endless remakes of Frank O'Hara are no more valuable than endless remakes of Olson. Ben (how'd I get so friendly?) marks some interesting trails one could follow. that I don't care much for T S Eliot (for instance) speaks of my taste, and my way of knowing. this fact doesn't really describe the team I'm on. okay, it marks my limitations, but I am not proud of my limitations. I think Ben Friedlander indicates some of the life still to be found in Olson's work, but if it don't work for you, that's okay too.

read one manga in which a girl in a castle-like house deals with ghosts. it's called Bizenghast, and I wonder if that is an allusion to the Gormenghast trilogy, a particularly roccoco bit of whatsis if there ever was (Dickens on acid). it's joky and weird and morbid all at once, all aimed at a younger crowd. acting like a 'rent, I'd probably (like that security guard yesterday) question how okay it might be for a young un to read this, but then I recall that I enjoyed those Charleston horror comic books, similar ilk. it just looks different from this end (old fart talking). still reading another manga, gangs and street shit. heavy. kinda Japanese Boyz n the Hood or such, young noirish. there's a lot of flourish in the artwork but I don't always get what's going on when words aren't backing up the picture. I must be hopeless.

of course Harvardtard is now (r). gonna make millions.

Anine Boston Day Three. today all three of us went. lovely day in Boston, bright and springy. Erin rushed to a workshop on Photoshop while Beth and I parked and moseyed in. looked in on the artist's gallery, where artists hawk their wares. there was someone who made metal bracelets and such. he had a chain mail vest on display, a handy piece of clothing. and I'm sure there are people hankering for it. I saw a tshirt that I misread as Harvardtard which just seemed too wonderful, so I got it. turns out it reads Narutarded, a pun on Naruta, an anime. but I stand by my reading, those Harvard Tards. we got a few other shirts. I also got a messenger bag with Samurai Champloo graphics. I don't know what Samurai Champloo is, but thought I came away a winner. Beth engaged the security guard at the convention hall entrance about the festival. he agreed that there was plenty of weird on display. he has a 12 year old who's mighty into anime. he was concerned with the sex and violence of some of them. I haven't seen much anime, nor manga neither, but I see a range of tastes. the offence of s&v depends on how stupidhead it is um done. there's a Japan=exotic equation that enters a bit. some of the exoticism is romantic, some an excuse for the lurid. I don't mean to generalize because I can see generalities here don't have much meaning. I mean, I was labouring to distinguish an anime crowd (being as I knew little about it), but that generality died on the vine. from what I've seen, not a lot, anime partakes varyingly of fantasy, sci fi, noir and other tributaries. as I looked at the crowd--and why do I sound so anthropolgical?--I wondered what was style and what was costume. I'm sure some percentage of the attendees to the con were let us say overly committed to some fantastic ideal. but mostly it looked like a lot of fun, and I'll reiterate that it seemed like a Phish concert in it's cheerful vibe of community fun. something bracing there for the younger ones, the teens, in that community. common language, common sensibility, a reassurance. I'll cease with the Oprah report. I feel strongly how teens need empowerment, a pat on the back okay. not to say my own efforts with a teenager have been shining, in fact I don't know how I can be so thick. but guilt aside, for now. Erin got these cat ears to wear, along with his sunglasses, wristband, headband, styling. yesterday, I asked Erin what character he'd dress up as, were he to do so, and he replied dude, I am a character. which he is, plus 6'4" and 250, a big sweet kid. Erin saw a chess match performance, kinda like the chess game in Harry Potter, with live pieces, while Beth and I savoured the sun and tall buildings around us. last bit was video awards. and then to home. I know I've transmitted my interest poorly here. it's fun to see the committed interest. plain enthusiasm is rare in the poetry crowd. cripes, I was introduced to Bruce Andrews once, and he gave me this competitive crapoo that was not indicated by anything I offered. some kind of careerist thwarting or poopoo on his shoes, ker-rist, where's the love? so, I suppose it's a boring question, why poetry is such a precious connection. I mean, why so scenic, if you get my drift? why the barriers? why isn't poetry exciting? why would the minority of Bruce Andrews feel so secure (where secure=insecure)? oh I know, anime and manga are highly commercial, to the yuck degree, but still. love's love, finally. I respect that love. I have my crankiness, and ignorance, my limitations, but I do feel I can support. I can hold back my anxious side to see the energy of excitement. I commend the excitement. I'm not an anime proselyte, but I appreciate the openness evidenced by those who do love anime. looking for that in poetry world.

just finished The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev and G Weston DeWalt. Boukreev being a participant in that tragic climbing season on Everest 10 years ago. I read Jon Krakauer's account last winter. shades of The Ring and the Book, the stories differ considerably. there's no question that when it came to rescue, Boukreev was the only one of the 2 expeditions to make an effort, and he brought 3 people in. this was after hitting the summit himself. the conditions, especially lack of oxygen, saps everyone, physically and mentally. so it's a push to lay blame. shits happens. Boukreev said that on a previous high altitude climb, he actually gained weight, even while his companions were losing as much as 20 pounds. the food he was eatng was much better than what he could get at home in Russia. it appears that commercial considerations played a negative part in events. language too was a roadblock. lingua franca, I take it, was English, in which many people, including Boukreev, were not strong. I'll bet there's some cultural confusiuon too, like what the Sherpas understood as their role. before the assault on the summit, there was a sighting of a star or something that the Sherpas read as a bad omen. astronomically speaking, nothing likwe that should've been in the sky. oh boy! I think it was Whymper attempting the Matterhorn who claimed to've seen glowing crosses in the sky. I believe in both a polar assault and I think one on the Matterhorn, when things were very rough, the expeditions would count off to make sure everyone was still there. in each case, they consistently counted one extra person. I haven't read that much mountaineering stuff, and have no interest in doing any of it, but it fascinates me. we had a neighbour when I was growing up, Woodrow Wilson Zayre, grandson of the president. he and 3 others made an illegal attempt on Everest. they snuck in, may not have used oxygen, got into trouble before reaching the summit and made a radical descent. Zayre called the technique anti-belaying, and explained that it was another word for plain old falling. but all survived. I recall the book by Zayre, Four Against the Mountain was pretty good. anyhoo.

I was just cycling down towards an intersection when I saw a widdershins car pass thru the intersection, rockily drive onto the sidewalk at a brisk speed, and run over something before stopping. water gushed from under the car, I dunno if that meant the car hit a hydrant. as I witnessed it I wondered if the driver had fainted or otherwise become incapacited before the accident, but the driver, a young woman looked shocked but aware. a couple of guys who'd been on a bench nearby came rushing up. I turned and saw the driver, in a band outfit, and an older woman get out of the car. presumbably that was a student driver. she burst into tears and was hugged by the woman. I didn't know what I could do to help but saw up ahead a police car coming along. I pointed towards the accident, which from a distance didn't look like one. the police car stopped and I told him that there was an accident up ahead. even as I watched the scene unfold I wasn't sure it ws an accident. reckless, or careless, perhaps, driving onto the sidewalk like that (the street is wide enough to accomodate parallel parking). the abrupt stop (by brakes, I think) convinced me that it was untoward.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Anime Boston day two. thankfully we'd gone thru the registration yesterday, today was mobbed. Erin wanted to see the anime music video presentation. he ran ahead of me in his eagerness. when I got there, I couldn't see him. I sat in for some of it, he saw the whole thing. people take animes and use music of their choosing to create vids. I dunno who did the music for the 1st one. I'd call it some form of metal. the bass could be felt in my chest. I guess it was actually drums that I heard but boosted to explosive levels, very assaultive. very noisy as there was little separation of sounds. I rather liked it all, and the flashing images, but I couldn't take a diet of it. ensuing vids were tamer, except for German metal stuff that sounded a bit TOO German, Tod Tod Tod. a lot of parental units were in evidence, and they were kindly putting with the assault. an Avril Lavigne song came on and I decided to move on. I came back later to hear Bon Jovi doing "Have a Nice Day". the band is quite tight but jeez, that song sounds like a Ratt tribute band. it wasn't just that it was 80s music, but that they worked so hard at it, really amped it. lame. there were Jesus Christs both yesterday and today. as well a character, I assume from some anime, who carries a large crucifex tied to his back. perhaps that'a some sort of symbolism. one fellow had the cross in a backpack, odd image. another common theme was the school girl look: short skirts, knee socks, pig tails. at an atm a fellow blurted why are you doing this to me?, speaking of Christ. his card wasn't getting read and he got exasperated quickly. he talked to the machine loudly until it finally got the message and relented to give him money. another fellow was having his picture taken, and he assumed his power pose, an Elvisy sort of stance, with one hand outstretched powerfully. you could practically see the emanation of a purple energy beam. without that purple energy beam, I think the guy would've been kinda dorky. but not to make fun of these people. as I said, the vibe was really good, playful and excited. another guy was dressed super cool, with a sharp jacket with sleeves pushed up, like totally 70s. he had a flattened, bent cigarette in his mouth, a subtle touch. the young women taking his pic were excited like he was a celeb, and he looked pleased. I watched several episodes of an anime, something to do about slaying a dragon. really not a lot of animation involved, mostly movement was suggested by a panning of the image. which was effective. Erin and I ate at the food court, which appeared something like a Hollywood commissary. a guy had his head thru a board, had an eyeball hanging and his intestines were squirming out of his abdomen. and yet he was eating lunch! Erin raced off (again) to an anime writing workshop. which was full up when I got there. and so forth. I got a manga, no wait I got two. would've gotten more but so many were series. one of the things that killed f and sf for me was the chance you'll discover that the book you just got is book 17 of the Greengrabiad, a fact not clear until you reach the end and discover it's not close to an end at all. a disturbing sight was a person pushing a wheelchair. in the wheelchair was someone dressed in a big foam rubber costume, looked like Picachu. seemed sad somehow.

  

  

  

  

Anime Boston, Day One. Erin and I went into the 1st day of Anime Boston, an anime convention. this is a mega event for Erin. I don't actually have much taste for animation, but can appreciate some. on the subway in, we both noticed 4 guys who were definitely on their way to the con. one had a headband with an emblem that Erin identified as pertaining to some anime and fingerless gloves and a long brown coat, tho it was warm. another wore a Matrix black coat, and looked like Keanu Reeves, albeit with hair at Bill and Ted length. changing from Red Line to Green got confusing to Intrepid Travellers but Erin saw the 4 anime guys and we got right. Erin asked if they were going to Anime Boston and they all hooted Yeah!!! and exchanged high fives. registration looked hectic. we had to get to the end of a very long line. we didn't pre-register. security bustled about making sure doorways were clear. it seemed hopeless but then someone came along and ushered a bloc of waiting folk and soon we too were ushered to registration. guy behind me called out rather despeerately, did anyone lose this?. it was a little Hello Kitty doll. I said not mine then thought of the woman ahead who'd been rummaging her bags. is this your Hello Kitty? I got to ask. why yes, it was. the event took place thru out the convention hall and in the Sheraton proper. we wandered around plenty. we caught the end of opening ceremonies, where we saw an actress who voices anime, and was the voice for Leia in the Japanese version of Star Wars. much excitement. I didn't mench that many at the convention dressed up anime style. I don't know the characters to be found in anime but I'm sure most of them were covered. as a rule, males wore a lot of clothes and the females wore little. the guys had long coats, cloaks, ninja outfits. anime women tend to wear short skirts or shorts so that's what the con ones wore. the vibe was a little like a Phish concert, that is to say, playful and good. quite a few preposterous weapons were lugged around by those willing to go that extra. outsized swords and scimitars, the coolness must wear off quick. I can imagine them taking public transit. some wore things like Darth Vader helmets and looked dorky. but the masked ninja tended to look cool, and others were masked such as really gave them an air of mystery. and there were goth vamps, and quite a few cross-dressing guys. a new world order of the hip and the nerd living together as one. I didn't take many pictures. taking pictures can distract from being there. plus, as an older geek, it felt a little pervy to be snapping pix. not that the crowd wasn't rather ecumenical in age, and people wanted to be photographed. spent a lot of time in the swag room, where Erin copped fingerless gloves and some manga and dvd. he had his karate headband on and means to wear his gee (I don't know how that's spelled) today. there was a lot of hair dye in evidence, in brilliant colours, giving an appropriately cartoonish effect. the swag room is full of avidity, which is odd to winess when there's so little there I wanted. many anime and manga from Japan, rarities. things like the trading cards, the jewelry and what not don't tempt me whatsoever, even tho I feel the eagerness all around me. I once went to a baseball card show, where people were more interested in the crispness of the card's edge than in what was on the card. I just like seeing pictures of Shoeless Joe or Old Hoss Radburn (I saw a team picture once with Old Hoss one of the team, and he's blatantly got his middle finger extended. this is a 19th century ballplayer we're talking here). we took in a panel by a manga producer, TokyoPop. under our chairs were pens that, when you pull them, make a fart sound. cool. this was in honour of a series of manga featuring these 2 boys who solve crimes or problems using their farts. true. for little children. this publisher produces new work and licenses stuff from Japan, Korea and Germany. a lot of sci fi and fantasy stuff, also edgy stuff. one was about a young woman who routinely cuts herself, which, it was explained, is a problem affecting 1% of the Japanese population. the crowd was eager for any and all info. I'd say there were as many teen girls as boys attending this panel, but quite a few older folk as well. they gave away manga, so I have one. I almost bought a few more, there were some cheapos in the swag room, but I was feeling a little weary of pouring the money out. maybe today, we're in for the weekend, tho maybe Beth will want to take my place sometime.

more Bay Poetics. certainly this anthology displays editorial acumen. Stephanie Young speaks of her selections as snapshots. as I said, you probably won't feel you grok the nature of anyone's work here from what is presented. surely your taste bud will be tickled, inciting you to see more, but I think that aspect is secondary to another, perhaps larger, aspect. Bay Poetics, wtf. okay, it's a region anchored by a couple of cities and lots of schools. more powerfully, it is a scene. I know that's a drastically icky word in most cases. in Boston, it sure means exclusion, not even hip exclusion. elsewhere it means righteous hipster. I infer, being no witness, that the Bay Area that Young sees differs from that twaddle. she's suggesting a community of writers, even a collaboration. there's no discernible Bay Area school here, just a good environment for poetry. I return to what Joseph Torra pointed out on saturday at the Olson event, that no local tenured professors attended. none could detach themselves from their Harvardy strictures, the ominous academic condition. or conditioning, I should say, the conditioning of canon. Harvard's just happy to have Dickinson as a cash cow. Eliot's still edgy here and, like, his early stuff is now public domain. so what I see in BP is a community sense, a place of poetry. both Garrett Caples and Andrew Joron have essays (essays!) that mention George Stevens, a Bay area decadent poet. Young placed the pieces contiguously, perhaps to suggest interrelationship (community), and perhaps to indicate some defining energy of the area. I don't mean to sound utopian, but I think some effort has been made Out There to make a living place for poetry. there is breath out there. here we have claustrophobic Groliers Bookshop, and Harvard looming over all.

check out this very cool ebook by Lewis Lacook

Mark Young's ezine (blogzine?) Otoliths has been neglectfully missing from my links.

how prithee can I read Bay Poetics when I haven't yet finished The DaVinci Code????? I've never much sought out bestseller material in my reading but I occasionally feel obliged. I read Love Story long ago, in about 20 minutes, just to say I did. saccharine aside, it's hard to believe someone who taught at Yale wrote it, it's so clumsily written. wait a sec, or maybe not so surprising. I mean, Harold Bloom's at Yale... bestsellers tend to market low rent controversies, which don't light my fire. DC's controversy is at least high rent. its peek at the origins of the Church are compelling, even titillating. there's an awful lot of exposition in this book, necessarily. I mean he can't assume people know anything about the Grail legends. Brown has resorted to long expositional scenes. those get confusing when they are flashback scenes. 2 things I can't fancy in novels is flashbacks and dreams. flashbacks tend to be too quaintly jarring, as well as less effective than when done in film. when writers write dreams, it is usually with a vivid label saying I'm being obvious here. and the dreams always read like crummy movie scripts rather than dreams. no dreams so far in DC. I get a little tired of these worlds where it makes sense for innocent people to run away from the cops, lie that'll help your cause. in DC, it is done across international borders and includes the idea that, having fended off a murderer, you should bring him along too. that's a quibble, of course I believe everything I'm reading is reasonable. why shouldn't I? I've been reading the internet for years, and everything is true there. Brown does everything he can to keep the plot moving. no doubt we'll see the movie too.

we bought and now have our copy of Bay Poetics. I'm pretty psyched. the vibes are good and that's pretty much all I'm going on at this moment. the book's regionalism is somewhat in quotes; participants are from all over, tho certainly some Bay area connection exists in all cases. I think the point is that everyone in the anthology fits in the Bay Area scene. the whereas consists simply in that no one really wants to say they are Boston poets. Boston poets? that means you are exclusive and clique-ish, doesn't it? it feels like that. me and Michael saturday felt that our quoroum could say that, at any rate. I thrum the pages of this book and feel its energy. honestly. maybe it's not Fiddler's Green there in the Bay area, but it seems pretty good from this distance. you won't say you've grokked any of the poets here represented if you read this book, but you will have a sense of what is happening. what's happening is wide and splendid. the book's 1st poem is a short untitled piece by Brenda Hillman. it's a poem you must read slowly, that's its pace. 23 words, stay with each one to inhale the essence (sorry, that sounds unduly phony--I only want to be duly phony) (but I am not being phony--sincerity still works). Stephanie Young (editor, I should've mentioned that up front) bravely and sensitively chose a quiet thoughtful thing to lead you into the book. I suppose the average age of the writers in this anthology is around 4 or 5 in dog years, but there's a goodly showing of older folk, Kyger, Vincent, Hejinian and so on. and connect with this: there's varied poetic styles, prose and a nice range of whatnot. brings to mind Olson's idea of achive. Chris Stroffolino's offering, following Hillman's, is a sort of reminiscence on music scenes. how curious! that's the extent of my actual reading, so far. Beth and I sought out the inestimable Jack Kimball today to procure this book, throwing our dwindling funds into his bottomless treasury (Jack lives in a castle made of sugar cubes and he owns the movie rights to NH's late lamented Old Man in the Mountain) BECAUSE this just seemed news that stays news. just shy of 500 pages, with a lot of names that I can attach a sense of work to. Boston, that squid-torturing pu pu platter of snotty ass, cannot produce an anthology such as this. the walls are too high. sad. sad. sad. Stephanie Young is the ace and deuce. so's Jack, but don't tell him. the preceding has been an unpaid skim review that forebodes further ruminations.

a little more Olson Nowness. in the film, Pete Seeger (!) recounts how he met Olson, and how Olson inspired Woody Guthrie (!) to write Bound for Glory. John Malkovich (!) did some readings, no doubt to catch the eye of PBS. someone pointed out that the big Berkeley reading was within 3 days of when Dylan went electric at Newport: times of revolution. Kenneth Irby told me that Grenier brought Zukofsky up to Franconia, alas after I left. I thought it was something that Eigner made the trip. oh, during the open discussion a person spoke up about the Mumia situation. he made a modest attempt to connect Mumia to Olson (political activism) but really seemed more like spam.

saw the Olson Now fete yesterday. nice to see a little energy in Boston. among participants were Charles Bernstein, Gerrit Lansing, Fanny Howe, William Corbett, Ed Sanders, Kenneth Irby, Donald Byrd. Ben Friedlander gave a terrific, lucid talk. he brought up Olson's sense of archive, that O abandoned the idea of book for this larger possibility, one that can include letters, lectures, audio, essays, notes. to me, that's powerful. Ben related the archive to the internet. he also said archives are collaborative. we see that collaboration in how editors deal with dead poets, what to collect and how to collect it, but a wider possibility than that exists. Ben also said there's still lots and lots of stuff in the archives that hasn't been published. one final point, presented with a laugh, was his thought that the worst of Olson came from Pound and WCW. Fanny Howe said "the very name Maximus made me turn and run" (but she came back). Maureen McClane said "Charles Olson was a great trauma to me". Olson had a commanding presence. I think Corbett quoted someone who experiecned O in class, he'd fire you up and you'd be flying, then you'd realize you didn't know where you were going. that actual lack of coherence, if that's the word, saves O from being something completely bullying and grim. O's thesis, after all, was find out for yourelf. ie, don't copy him, discover your own way. which is what I've got from Olson. for me, a slow process of letting go. O famously divorced from 2 papas himself. the process of detaching oneself from one's literary parents is a difficult but important one. think of all of O'Hara's children. oh, Ben mentioned an essay that Olson wrote for an Ed Sanders publication. O was unsatisfied with it, and wrote (not rewrote) the same essay everyday for a week. which indicates process. Sanders said he still had that essay (as well the Chivas (er, was it Chivas?) bottle that Olson emptied during the Berkeley reading). Sanders said he still had the mimeo machine and plates, maybe he'll publish that essay yet. when Joseph Torra stood to say a few words and read some Olson, he 1st pointed out that in this place where universities are born, not one tenured local prof was in the audience. which is a sad word about Boston. Fanny Howe said "Boston is dead for writers". Michael Franco, who'd been a student at Berkeley, referred to "Projective Verse" as a training manual for reading Duncan. Ed Sanders spoke of Olson's shamanism, and of shamanistic transmission. I think he called Olson "post-theistic". an architect (who helped design Mass MOCA) recounted a class with I A Richards. he wondered why Pound was all but ignored at the time and Richards answered "well there's Pound crests and Pound troughs and you're in a Pound trough". Olson seems to have hit a permanent trough, but his relevancy doesn't seem lessened. the sense of him as authority and pandit certainly gets in the way, and for those seeking straightforward lucidities, Olson is a nut. but there's still so much to work with with Olson. and think how that era had such excitement in poetry! the Beats had pop star cachet, and events like Berkeley and Vancouver brought crowds and energy. wtf has happened since? I introduced myself to Ben Friedlander and Kenneth Irby, which maxed out my social boldness. when Grenier left Tufts to teach at Franconia, he urged Irby to take his old job, which he did. my father and aunt both went to Tufts, if that somehow completes the picture. I hung aferwards with someone I'd met online. we tailed a group including Kenneth Irby to a parking garage. if Irby shows up missing, we can supply some leads. I didn't mench the movie made by Vincent Ferrini's nephew, Polis is This. a close to finished product, hoping to find a PBS home. NEA twice denied grants because it wouldn't play in Iowa. how would they know? Olson's an odd enough character to play anywhere, you ask me. it's great to see the video of him. his style sense: fabulous. I forget who/where mentioned (might've been Corbett) walking down the street with Olson in the summertime. Olson had his sweater wrapped around his head. Olson's smoking a little clay pipe, and not a few instances in which he appears to be drunk or otherwise impaired. his accent gets me. I've lived here all my life and of course I've been subjected to television normal but I'm pretty sure my accent aint no how as broad as O's nor can I recall my parents, equally Massachusettsistic, sounding so. Olson had enough foibles for sure, tho how about just sticking with the writing foibles or such as influences the writing itself. despite all foibles I find him endearing. there were at least 8 Gloucester residents in attendence (participating, I mean), which is kind of odd. when Grenier taught at Tufts, he chose to live in Gloucester to be near Olson, despite a somewhat inconvenient commute. an Olson walk occurs today, but not for me. in the movie, a few shots showed signs, I'm assuming temps, with lines from Olson's work. kinda cool. oh yeah, a mail man saying, you know that book Maximus, me and my friends, we're all thru it. referring to an Olson mention of kids running in the streets. anyway, a good event, a hint of vitality in this stiff ass educational hotbed. it was noted that essentially no young people attended. don't they know Olson took drugs??? you wonder how it is that Corbett couldn't get any of his students to attend. sup wid dat?

I forgot to mention seeing Zukofsky's selected, edited by Charles Bernstein. forgive me, but it looks sparse. it's a wee frail hardback, with a design suggesting those Best-Loved Poems anthologies that you're supposed to carry around in your pocket while you wander lonely as a. all right, that's one thing. the idea of such a thin selection just didn't ring well. Ron Silliman has divagated lengthily on the subject of selecting Zukofsky, and he came away with about 3 bits missing from the oeuvre. like Olson, and in fact a lot of modernists, you don't think so much of individual poems but how the whole shit thinks. context matters with these writers. so for such writers, I say all or nothing. I suppose what Bernstein created fits neatly in a syllabus, and it amounts to another star on his cv. I think a more useful idea would be to republish Zukofsky's books as he prepared them. I know that when a poet dies, his/her work comes under a different understanding, that of oeuvre, and how the pieces fit together becoems a latter of editorial precision regarding date of composition or whatsis. Blackburn's collected went this way, with everything shifted to chronological order. Notley goes elsewise as best she can with Berrigan's collected, even repeating poems that B repeated in publication. I'm not that bothered by Blackburn's collected, but I can see the burn there. Z's selected made it to the end of aisle display, which was tragically weak (I don't recall seeing the 50th anniversary of Howl out there, for intance), and looked perfectly modest and unassuming. I don't think you can breed a new generation of Zukofsky lovers by giving them dainty samples. throw Big Blue in their path and perhaps they'll pick it up as they pick themselves up. or see if a PlayStation version can be made...

Barnes & Noble night. I used to dislike B&N but I've been inculcated. not without reservation. there were $1 books, 4 of which Beth swept up. cool and half. I got Moleskine's fancy-ass ruled journals. I have several of the hardbound journals, for various segregated usages, and these softbound charmers look good for who know what (if I indeed make th Charles Olson whatsis at MIT tomorrow, one of these cahiers coems with me). I hankered for pomes and sweated over the selection but got nuthin'. but the selection was better than. some not dead poets, even those of youth. I saw a book by Joshua Clover (UCal Press, so not a mystery), Sarah Manguso and Bill Knott. there was an effort to display the books all special-like tho octane levels vis-a-vis visual impact still wasn't exactly Da Vinci Code (which we got, Beth 1st). amongst the anthologies, of which there are many (too many, frankly), there was no Bay Poetics. I shall soon divest myself of the price of that book to own it, and feel that B&N had ought to be part of that process, as it sounds like whammer jammer. I dunno the appropriate incantation to make that happen, and, sadly, neither does SPD. someone should, tho. I wavered over Koch's collected, O'Hara's (I have his selected but do regard him as upwards of the best) and even, somehow (I've never really read her), Elizabeth Bishop. but really didn't want to buy semi-contemporary, I wanted full contemporary, non dead variety. look elsewhere, unless you consider Mary Oliver non-dead. I've gone this route before but criminy, B&N is so smart in other categories, whereas with poetry it's mostly just shovelsful of whatever's handy. as I snooped, a B&N psychopomp led a woman and young child to the poetry section. the girl was choosing the right Emily Dickinson book, went wow at the collected. and the mother was in the mode of: if my bright child says so. I finally copped nary a poem book, but relented to Naked Lunch because. at least there's some adventure there.

this piece by Stan Apps illustrates the possibilities of Google collage. the diversity of opinion that melds into this blur of voices. what a variety of articulations! Rob Fitterman's work explores similar territory. it's an uncomfortable experience, as funny or satiric as it might also be. such definitivness, yet all that definition seems for naught. Apps' piece also invokes a recontextualizing (gosh what an icky word!). every sentence could've been driven as the theme of this piece, as regular ole criticism (that is, reading this piece as straightforward crit, one could choose any sentence and ride that theme). that Apps supplies a whole bunch of themes performs a pounding on the brain: tear down the walls!!! okay, that's an old Jefferson Airplane song talking now. the point is the valid density of all this. a necessity resides in holding the varied narratives apart and respectfully secure, as people are apart, as are people are discrete. Maggie Zurawski chaunts on her blog about Mike Magee's poem, an earnest examination. I wouldn't argue her viewpoint except to suggest that she relies too much on one narrative possibility in the poem. the poem doesn't want to be channelled so severely. with Apps' piece, the pounding of the idea of flattens all opinion into a globby mass, despite how defining these opinions are. this is a tremendous sort of political unrest on display, I mean in such poetry as can embrace and comprise all this enterprise of bubbling. anyway, it's always good to take a look at just what sort of machine a poem might be.

Bedside pt 2

Black Spring Winter 2005, Lawrence (KS) issue
Vallejo, Posthumous Poems
The Thorn, David Larsen (no home should be without it!)
Ribbons of Light, D P Porreca
Hart Crane Complete
Simple Theory, Allen Bramhall (I'm actually trying to memorize some my pomes (pax Tympani Tim)
Upanishad, pt 1, Muller trans
Baudelaire's Brain, Ivan Arguelles
The Middle, Carla Harryman
The Republic, Pay d'Oh!!!
Berrigan's Collected (nhswi)
Reproduction of Empty Flagpole, Eileen Tabios
Enough Said, Philip Whalen
Imaginary House, Diane Ward
Anatomy of Melancholy, Sir Bob B

  

the seamy side of poetry... I like seeing the process 'in action'... WCW's postcard to Olson, of course: leave the dirt on the roots... Olson himself in those Maximus that are the barest of notes, suggestive of what he was researching...I wish we had Dickinson's fascicles (or if 'we' have them, I wish I did... with flarf, I get nervous/bugged by the criticism that can't get past the seams... Dan Hoy invented a generic unread 'flarf' poem and for that mattered imagined poet as well to criticise the motives and mayhem of his target: that's not really the seams, yet he thought he had landed a mighty solar plexus punch... I like to see the poem read as poem, not as simulacrum of some imagined critical event, some ploy of a critic in heat... the social and political occur in the poem, and need not be invented on the outside... when I wrote that I didn't want to talk about flarf qua flarf I did so so that I could use the word qua (of course) but also just to note that I wanted to start with what's on the page (or screen, whatev)...flarf has a collborative energy that I like, collaboration with those Googled souls as well as with each other flarfist... that 2nd bit of collaboration is very evident in, for instance, the New York poets (O'Hara et al.), and even those devilish LANGUAGE gazabos... that's pretty pissa stuff, that sharing and rebound... Dan Hoy did not exert himself to the point of sweating with his clumsy surgery upon flarf... the world is in the poem, and I don't mean that facetiously... with flarf, the process is up front, as also, say, Jackson Mac Low and his aleatoric work... note how carefully JML describes his method, that method is part of the poem, I mean should be read so... so when I read Mainstream with its Gidget colour scheme, I'm seeing these intersections, interjections, dare I say ejaculations, and various purposes, some of those purposes are Magee's, but like all good poetry, some of them are not, and the tussle in that midst is the point, of poetry, of reading, of taking this all seriously...

  

I thought I was the only one to acknowledge the importance of furniture stores but Carl Annarummo is sniffing the same territory. or is it furniture store as movie theatre? either way...

Jukka's xstream moved, I missed the memo. but check it out. many poets displayed but I want to mench particularly Bob BrueckL, whose work shows ferocious obsession and insistence. he often works with the texts of others, riffing in high gear. he makes an unusual beauty out of the scatological. which reminds me that I think it was Robert Burns who collected a scatological version of "Greensleeves". that seems so at odds

trying to follow along with Shanna Compton's rumination on process. I say follow along as I was trying to stick with the metaphor, which is to say, hold 2 things in mind at once. it's an evolved ability, isn't it? enough people think: flarf bad, liberal bad, etc, all simple and clear cut. she makes a useful consideration, I'm not down on that. I was struck by the realization that metaphors have to break down. at some point heart and love diverge, you can't make them be the same thing. as I read Shanna's thoughts I found myself waiting for when the sewing metaphor wouldn't fit the poetry process model she had. the brilliance of a metaphor is how long you can keep it in the air, which Shanna did pretty good. Donne's almost tortured in his relentless hold on his metaphor, it's exciting to watch him stay its course. some helpful pondering in Shanna's post. metaphors are good for turning a thing around for a diffrent angle.

2 great interviews by Tom Beckett at Will To Exchange: Jim McCrary and Gary Sullivan. I'll have to rummage around for work by McCrary--I think he shows up in some Olsonian issues of Grossinger's Io and that'd be all I gots--I feel close to his sensibility. as I read Sullivan's interview, I thought that it just provides more for critics to work with other than, you know, the poetry itself. someone's going to try to hang Gary by his own petard, e'en tho the only useful petard by which to hang a poet would be the poetry itself. I think what I liked about McCrary's interview, his pleasure in poetry. if critics 1st of all evinced a pleasure in poetry, as a kinda general thing and all, I'd feel better. Jordan Davis picks out the right nugget from Gary's interview, that if people expended as much energy against the empire as against the artists, well wouldn't that be jolly. both writers love poetry and are articulate, and as always, Tom's right in it.

I saw a full 20 minutes of The Brady Bunch yestreen. I truly watch little more than my daily doses of Daily Show/Colbert Report nowadays, with random History Channel sightings. I certainly have put in my tv time, I'm not painting a snob picture, just relating the current facts. so anyway, the Bradys are traveling. Mrs Brady's hugging littlest daughter and step son, who got lost in the wilderness. then the 2 charmers, Cindy and Bobby, steal hot dogs and beans from the sumptuous repast that Alice produced, to give to a runaway boy. Bobby's brilliant idea was to jam the hot dogs and beans into a flashlight!!! the runaway is an Indian, with bandana round his head. he ran away from his grandfather. wherefore? because he wants to be an astronaut. Greg and Peter find Cindy and Bobby, Mr Brady ominously arrives. he suggests that the runaway join them at their camp. he also said that Indian and astronaut are not mutually exclusive. but the next morning, the youngster is gone. and so then Alice is off to fetch water from the river, thinking about a generic 6'2" ranger with broad shoulders and a little grey at the temple, man of her dreams (now Alice), when she comes upon an Indian wearing a red shirt and with a feather in his hair. this is the boy's grandfather. then the boy arrives and then the familiy convenes then the Bunch attends a dance at Grandfather's tribe. he's Chief Something Something. Indians dance to the tom tom beat, then the chief renames all the Bradys then the Bradys join the dance then Mistah Kurtz appears. my goodness, this peyote is tasty!!!

Susan Howe blurbs for Mainstream: "Stuttering turns into syncopation in this edgily engaging collocation of accents, attitudes. occasions." that sounds right. a couple of poems already, "War Rhymes for Children" and "A Completed Portrait of Lee Greenwood" (yeah baby!!!) bring to my mind John Giorno's persistent, jerky rap. there's a Giorno poem in which he twines a bit of narrative with the words from a Doublemint Commercial (I think). memory's strained but the commercial's zinging, peppy words intruding on the narrative produced a weirdly dirty context. and Giorno's repetitions create an ominous fixation. I get a similar buzz from Magee here. you know how there's supposedly safety in pop culture, that Britney and Idol are all surface? the sort of attack Magee makes recognizes that Wolfkowitz and Negroponte are behind and underneath such havens. whoop! anywho... I'm just popping a few impressions out. I've been reading The Thorn by David Larsen (which you should buy from Faux Press, do) quite regularly, a bit almost daily. it grows and grows on me. I say that to suggest that poem books, good ones anyway, don't get done.

Death by Flarf

... oh not really, just opening grandly. I got Mainstream by Michael Magee (BlazeVOX 2006), so I must regale the 1st impression. so okay, that's James Dean getting oiled on the front cover. I've only just begun the ride with the book, but want to note the starting point. I like jumping in like this, yipping about what I see, right from the beginning. Magee supplies a useful afterword, a divagation on and about flarf. it sometimes seems as if artists should hear the Miranda Act before they bespeak their work. there's all this, oh but Gary said this, Kasey said this resistanceinstead of criticism of THE THING ITSELF. I speak generally; flarf is just a recent group that must bear up to this lazy ass critcism. I take writers' pronouncements on their work not as definitive, but as processual steps. any interesting artist is just guessing as to how to get along. artist statements are often useful and illuminating but really, read the poems then say something. Magee is thoughtful about his work and what it 'means' in that vaunted larger sense. he's not saving baby harp seals but neither is he poking holes in the ozone layer. he's writing, one piece at a time. I don't even really want to talk about flarf qua flarf, nor do I want to place an equal sign between Sullivan and Mohammad, Gardner and Degentesh, or whoever and the other one. what I know of Magee's work from reading it is a rupturing hilarity, 1st of all. that comedic spot on the flarf oeuvre is one of its easiest markings. a disjuptive interjection comes thru often, I see, in Magee's work. I just wrote disjuptive, that's portmanteau-speak for disjunctive and disruptive. what I would say is common among the flarf writers that I've witnessed: the voices, or tonal shift. it's not just a matter of disparate sources. it's just lame to worry that part overmuch. why so? because we all shift tone all the time. those sources are in our ear. we speak ironically, sarcastically, imitatively all the time. it's no biggie to write that way. disparate tones also appear in flarf. you've caught You Tube examples, right? kinda theatrical in the sense of shifting vocal appeal. do listen to flarf poets before handing them your cruel walking papers. I'm finding with Mainstream that I had ought to read aloud. reading to myself I convert the tones to one tone, a devilish flattening. this is not just a flarfian problem, but I entreat you to be wary particularly with flarf production because it works with the protean. and I will add that you might want to avoid the critical warfare concerning flarf because that's proving to be sleight of hand. screw the categories, read the poems.

another painting class at the adult daycare. usually we've had 4-8 people in the class, this time at least 15. it was a very energetic time. perhaps 1/3 are really anxious to paint, another third is mildly interested (or bored with other activities) and the rest are pretty much pushed to join us. man, you just want to see them get interested. my father reached a point where he was interested in very little, or couldn't sustain interest. getting stuff from the supply room, I found a man sitting there alone. sometimes people choose to go in there to work on arts and crafts by themselves but he was just sitting there. a tape of The Honeymooners was put on in the big room, so I engaged himn a little about that, memories of watching the show on saturday nights when I was very little. he brightened up, agreed, but didn't go into the other room. two women have been in all our clases. they used to be close, but one is growing generally distant and depressed. the other is a lively woman, very enthusiastic and supportive. she used to have a lot of trouble starting anything, would feel incapable of doing anything. she now starts in pretty quickly. her husband has goten her paints, and frames her work. obviously he realizes the value of the engagement. the other regular has grown distant, as I've said. still taken by painting, at which she's quite adept. she did a gloomy black smudge for her 1st painting, then several nice flower pictures. then she starts worrying about going home. an incredibly gleeful woman with Down's syndrome had a ball painting. she did a couple of scenes with house and dog and trees, her own world. she's deaf, and hard to understand but it was lovely to see her so happy and involved. at the same table was a crabby woman who had nothing nice to say about anyone. she thought she'd seen me around town, and seemed disparaging when I said I lived up north. also at that table was a depressed woman who couldn't get into gear. she showed me her ring, which she said was her mother's. then she said that her mother died last night, and so did her father. which I doubt, but the deaths clearly were close by. the other one at that table did an absolutely lovely scene of a tree. the tree was black with green foliage, the sky blue, the ground green. she had the good taste to leave a white horizontal band: she didn't overpaint it. I would frame the picture, it had that much presence, the sensation of somewhere that she knew. one other woman painted an apple tree with fruit on the ground, then what at 1st seemed a separate picture, a garden of what I took to be tulips. I thought she had a diptich going, but she brought the two images together with a green field. she said she woke with that image. previously she did a picture of 2 people on a bench looking out at a lake and beyond that a mountain. she dreamed that image. others were less successful. I tell them to choose the colour they like best. and they do, but need to be pushed, and even so will give up. one fellow, a regular, routinely and happily does horizonal lines. this time he did black swirling lines and then he did boxes and other shapes. another man does these small designs with dots, fastidious. he continually says he doesn't know what to do but he keeps at it. others didn't engage a whole lot. one woman was doubtful of her ability but willing to try. a sudden sea change, tho, and she not only struggled to put paint on paper, she announced that it was all bullshit. as we were leaving I found her rummaging the closet for her coat. which, she said, had been stolen. I told a person that the woman needed her coat. the person replied, no she doesn't, it's not time to go. but the woman was anxious and distressed and wanted to go home. I saw that enough with my father, which was especially bad since he was home, and where he wanted to go was 60 years ago. I took up painting 4 years ago what image to I do most? trees. a lot of these people do trees. something to connect with. even the crabby woman, and other distraught ones, thank us when we leave.

thanks to Eileen Tabios for taking my critique of critique seriously. I sound a bit as if I want to remove aesthetics from the enjoyment of poetry, but I'm not so foolish as to make such a claim (not yet at least, but there's always tomorrow). Joan Houlihan, for instance, strikes me as mischief in the critical world because her criticisms are just exercises in ascerbic style. The game's rigged, she's looking to make merrie on those swarthy betes noires that she has discovered in the park where she plays with poetry. That sort of criticism is absolutely discountable, it can only be judged by jab count. Win the battle, lose the war. Perhaps I overvalue my enthusiasm, but I'd rather jump up and down about recent books by Spahr and Fitterman than bitch about those that snuff the candle. My stance has something to do with the feeling that as a critic, I'm a pancake short of a picnic. I don't aim for comprehensiveness in my reading, I just want to pop a wheelie. I can't save poetry, but I can share my pleasures in it. That seems like the best pro bono I can manage.

negative criticism doesn't work except to define boundaries, limits, points of challenge. failed challenge, that is, in which the critic admits that he/she can't cross the bridge. and negative as in leaning on the perceived awry. you don't define by the negative, right? it says more of the critic than the work, showing how far the critic's light goes (or doesn't). the arts can't be protected, in the sense that bad art will be made however one might howl. the legislature can't touch that one. the only answer is the work itself. WCW speaks of his dismay when he saw that Eliot was being taken seriously. WCW thought Eliot's work was antipodal to his own. and there's something there, but no legislation exists to call forth here. one can promote the validity of a certain work but pointing out the invalidity just bespeaks a boat you may've missed. people I respect like Eliot but I can't take the trip. nothing righteous there, tho it is always made so. and the negative reactions often consist of personality conflict, low grade duality crap. those negative reactions often partake of a momentum to continue in the ascerbic vein, so that it ends up a masquerade. totally nominal critque, and goodbye.

Mark Scroggins ruminates on his study of Zukofsky. I don't have strong scholarship muscles, tend to wander rather than focus (which I think is valid as well), but I do have an Olson shelf which has been much confronted. that sense of familiarity with a writer is a pleasure. I've been dipping into Berrigan right along since I got his collected. with TB, I'm not even at the pretend level of scholarship that I have with Olson. I'm taken with his variety, and his ability to push an idea somewhere. TB inspires me, which sounds flabby, but I only mean that his excitement to produce poetry is contagious. and you do feel the intensity of necessity, of life in the poetic realm. in depth study is a taste of that.

the Demolicious poetry series has Peter Ganick on tap today in Cambridge. we can't attend but we enjoyed our previous experience. the crowd's interested, knowledgeable and varied, what more to ask? I saw Peter read 3 years ago at the Bowery Club, part of the release reading for Faux Press. Faux released cds by Peter, Wanda Phipps and Edwin Torres and all 3 read. a reading of unusual dynamics. Wanda, on 1st, had her band with her. Peter read next, in a dry, understated way. Edwin finished with a theatrical, lively presentation. it was like the Red Sox's pitching staff, a knuckleballer between 2 flamethrowers. it worked quite well. next month Jack Kimball and Christina Strong will read.

nice kitty... last night we were outside and heard this alarming sound in the woods nearby. a sharp, urgent barking cry. with some googling (but without making a poem!) and putting things together, we determined twas a fisher cat. neither cat nor fisher, it is a critter in the marten family. recently returned to these environs, and known to be a ferocious hunter. Beth saw one recently. it sat upon a rock. the cry sounded fierce but in fact is a mating call. translated, it says, I like chardonnay, cappuccino with a shot and a half of hazelnut and sunset strolls on beaches. and also eating stray kitties.

I think I had ought point to Lanny Quarles' blog, the name for which I can't even scratch up a mental pronunciation. it's amazing how much stuff heaps up. not all his stuff, either. he has a couple times posted works of mine that I sent to the Wryting list, and does this with other Wryting list writrs, and elsewhere. plus the weird visuals and such and so forth. it's a nice usage of the medium. the 2 lists that I'm on are safe places to present work insofar as if no one likes it, they keep quiet. in contradistinction to, say, the Poetics list, where snotty ass ewww reactions are typical. Lanny uses his blog to present new work, work that he likes, and things that he stumbled on. it all races, and that's good.

another trip to IKEA but the world has changed. no mile long line to the parking lot. nay, we parked in the cavernous parking garage. Beth had looked online for what we needed, a bookshelf solution for Erin. up the escalator into the flow. that enforced look-at-everything floorplan of the store is obnoxious. not that the siren calls affect me much. Beth, on the other hand, is intrigued by the peripheral splendours: chair solutions, lighting solutions, napkin solutions. we found and looked at the bookshelf solutions. an accessory solution was actually out of stock: oversold as the tag said. queried a store associate (I forget IKEA's particular euphemism for employee) for possibly a clock radio but was informed that IKEA carries no electronics solutions. he made it sound as if this little store hadn't the room. I was thinking clock radio solutions would make sense vis-à-vis the general bedroom solutions the store offers but no. eventually, after passing by every piece of IKEA merchandise that hasn't currently been oversold, we came to the self serve merchandise pickup. here you supply yourself with carts that veer terribly to one side. we did NOT find all the bookshelf solutions we sought. actually, I guess it was a small bedside table solution that came up blank, leastwise in the particular designer colour that would have solved our particularly idiom of colour design necessity. then to check out. Beth acquiesced to the lure of paper napkin solution and, whimsically, a string of dragonfly lights solution. our modest 4 item purchase allowed us to utilize the self serve checkout solution. somewhat brusque advice from the store associates helped us with the upc reader (hold it 4" from the label) and the slow but not balky credit card dealy. then merely negotiate the veering cart thru a maze of darting people, and between cars (there are no walk thrus in the garage). now, we had to hustle home, for we had SHAKESPEARE (famous English literary hero) to partake of. as Beth noted, if you build it they will come was proved as, so far as I can tell, there's no direct way to reach IKEA, leastwise coming from our direction. so we gots a little lost, but home in time to collect Erin, who for some reason had no interest in an IKEA visitation. the play was by the homeschool cooperative, to which we. 12th Night. I enjoy this play much more than Winters Tale and Much Ado, previous productions. to me, it's enough that they remember their lines, but a number of the performers inflected and filled out their roles. the boy who played Feste was quite playful and funny. the teenage girl who played Toby Belch was whip smart with the funny lines, great timing. few of the kids enunciated well and most of them squeaked a bit, so it was hard to follow at times. but it was a lively production, and entertaining. thus my full featured cultural day.

Bedside Books

periodically I will list the books laying by my bed. it doesn't mean so much what I am reading as what's new, what I wish to read, and what gets left there by the myterious creature or force that does that sort of thing. and so, 1st sighting in what promises to be a super exciting... you know...thing...:

Fitterman, Rob: Metropolis XXX--Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Harryman, Carla: The Middle
Young, Mark: Betabet
Berrigan, Ted: Collected
Arguelles, Ivan: Baudelaire's Brain
Vallejo, Ceasar: Posthumous Poems
Parcelli, Carlo: Fern-Parallelismus
Niedecker, Lorine: Collected
Play-Doh: The Republic
Burton, Robert: Anatomy of Melancholy
Delany, Samuel: Trouble on Triton
Porreca, DP: Ribbons of Light, plus
4 working notebooks

  

  

3 months ago I downloaded Mark Young's ebook Betabet, which I have only recently begun to read. the book is a lovely intersection of. of what? it seems like of the personal and the political. I've been reading Lorine Niedecker lately, wherein a similar intersection occurs. in neither case is the personal congested with advert. nor is the political tempered by aught but a looking stance. which is to say, there is no inflation of these qualities. both work with a rather stern measure, lines meted out, so to say. I've been reading Creeley lately too, those impossibly thoughtful lines that have burned themselves into my brain (I mean the measure of those lines). all three are so firm and intent on those short unbreakable lines that they made. Mark has been among the champions, if that's the right word, of hay(na)ku, a simple poetic form that insists on a icy crisp measure. I'm fascinated by this. the point is not simple dogmatic counting with hay(na)ku, nor the certainty of the line by the 3 writers. haul it back to Olson, and that curious sense of breath that he tried to make clear. a monadic feeling of the line. I find disjunction is a means of finding the monadic, or even exploiting it. the sternly formed lines of the writers here under discussion are isolations of sense, of seeing. the disjunctions that I use assert similarly. I work most often within the context of the sentence, so the disjunctions are hard stopping places and adjustments. what I see in Mark Young's work (and the others I mention) is burnt off completeness. the fluttery extra stuff is made gone. I appreciate this turn away from the egoistic. I don't know why I have to be so tortured trying to write of this. I recommend Betabet. available also as POD. btw, I discovered I have to print things out if I want to read them well.

I know I meant to link to Shanna Compmton's DIY ages ago, but seems like I didn't. the gist: make your own book. if the residents of the empyrean won't do the work, it's still pub if you do it. hand them out, sell them for bundles, quit complaining.

by Erin: Mowgli en fuego

  

amend that epiphany:

flarf is theatrical

voices are inhabited, Dustin Hoffman isn't really Tootsie...

aw gee,it's always a debate of what versus what. I'm old, so I met LANGUAGE poetry at the beginning. it was a bump in the road that made me curious. what exactly was jostling me? in my investigation I learned a lot, got cramped and bullied, worked my way thru to some Bramhall distinction of the poetic process. flarf qua flarf belongs to a handful of people. these people (shall I name them?) have done their own working thru. it's not just about Google, it's not just about bad taste. that handful of people found an engine that they decided they could use. this is pretty normal art type stuff. the way people have reacted is so Rolling Stone magazine. or god damn Time. binaries, and social compotes, and ideological mayhem. Kent Johnson: tie the head on straight!. elevation of side issues, personality spats, trenchant dicta: poetry burns this stuff for breakfast. I'm on the flarf list, I see flarf happening in real time, I add to the pile, it's just association with the language. there's a lot of grabbing, punching and confusion in the scrum. then the ball is freed. watch the ball, damn it!

flarf is theatre

Lanny Quarles copped this poem by SHeila Murphy from the Wryting list. is that the best title just about ever?

  

  

I got hooked by University of California Press's bonzo sale, to wit:

Creeley's Collected--30 years missing from the real collection, but it includes several books I don't have, and inspires me to go back to this source!!!

Paul Klee's diaries--a favourite painter, and I love journals

Lorine Niedecker's collected--she's wonderful, really. you might think of her as complementary to Zukofsky, and there's something to that, but there's something about surviving in her work, finding a voice despite impossibleness. I just happened on this nifty nugget:

Van Gogh could see
twenty-seven varieties
of black
in cap-
italism

Olson's collected prose--he's always been a college for me, and tho I have much of the stuff here, I didn't have Call Me Ishmael

complete posthumous poetry of Cesar Vallejo (Eshleman/Barcia)--Vallejo has always interested me but I haven't read a great deal. am I right in thinking Spanish translations are often terrible? maybe I associate all Spanish translations with Robert Bly. I feel I can trust Eshleman to some extent, at least. this is by no means an expert opinion.

Juliana Spahr's This Connection of Everyone with Lungs--courtesy Jack Kimball's enthusiasm (I seem to be stalking Jack, don't I?). I was pulled in immediately. powerful reaction to 9/11.

Lenin Body Surfs for Certain

Lenin groaned on the way to new groaning, which was the same as writing home from the war inside. that war—labeled Iraq with pictures of Iran—shows you just how much a little might be. A little fit for saying how the waves bend over certain experiments in human nature, letting force imply a coarse determination. But what, pray tell, is Lenin's best relation to current events? He's sworn to uphold the letter of grey branches in a plush circumstance of rain. Isn't that a dilly, where dilly means something extended, and where the verb to be needs a way to sprout future entanglements. Can this sort of language foster more brunt along the lines of asking wedded couples to strike the ground with every pledge? Can we see thru such social constant while still looking for Anne Frank? Wasn't Anne Frank a retard, or dork, or just fairly unattractive? I keep forgetting. Lenin, for sure, was not charming at all: he couldn't endure the fees. He just laid out a plump nostrum, and the singers began. That singing finished Anne Frank. Her part was worn. We still love Anne, and Lenin's awful nice in gabardine. More tunes can be relayed, as we circle investment on the map. That's our next target of approximation. To simulate is to cool the project to the point of almost current effect. Our program begins now.

I 1st looked at Jack's post noted below with my Blog Scan(tm) glasses on, and phrases leapt out. that was my 1st excitement. having read it thru, in order, I'll call it a tour-de-force. the piece is well wound up. it is satiric, roman-a-cleffy (I surmise, tho I don't hold the clef), but where the thing goes oblique from that is where that I find the most interest. its hyped-up Hollywood energy goes athwart language gone wry as well as awry. a tussle of sequencing, bombardment, and humanness proves a piece of the puzzle. Jack's looking at a certain pizzazziness that's been providing comfort for well too long. monadic self-congratulation in crowds secures the well-featured world. really impressive.

I went to the trouble of reformatting Jack's recent pieces into chronological order. worth doing. maybe Blogger someday will make it easy to go old to new, or maybe I gots to learn how myself...

I've just scanned this so far but Jack's got something totally wtf as the youngest member of this household might put it.

Really Bad Movies reminded me of Plan 9 from Outer Space. I used to own the tape but that went gone. ah, but I searched the library network and bingo. so Beth and I watched it yesterday, Beth for the 1st time. too much is said about how bad it is. it sure is amateurish. but it also has a weird integrity. Wood was really serious ablut what he was doing. and the movie is oddly compelling, despite bad everything. right off the bat, with bizzaro Criswell, these sterling words are voiced: future events such as these shall be with us in the future. hmm, yes, I think I see what you mean. how about the line the detective gets to speak: Clay is dead--murdered--and somebody is responsible. or the dialogue in which Jeff tells his wife that he saw a flying saucer, and she replies, flying saucers! you mean the kind from up there? and Jeff answers, yes, or their counterpart. huhn??? and this plan 9, in which the dead are risen to, well, it's like, uh, somehow this'll help. the dialogue seems quite random, like Wood was listening to a bunch of movies or conversations as he wrote. quite flarfy, really. I've compared Plan 9 to Coppola's Dracula. of course Coppola had an enormous budget, and he knows cinematography. which just means the lameness of that movie are the more appalling. I don't think Dracula is more compelling to watch than Plan 9. you don't get cops scratching their heads with their revolvers in Dracula, that's for darn sure. nor flying hubcaps neither.

poem by Lanny Quarles

From the Ragged Breasts of Onlookers

Anne Frankensteinlageryetimedusaqualung
whose dick chaineys swing like welks
whose bush is putrid banana slugs
whose colon pals are luminous barnacle sausages
stuffed with Volkswagen assclowns with squidbeard mudra-applets
whose ivory tower moustache tentacles (sojourn, sojourn!)
are like a jungle gem for jaded jingles jangling in their angling oogles

O Doktor Jekyll-jelly-doom Breasted Concentration Camp
you genre of queer hyena soccer hooliganeshas (robo-retards!)
hoboing amongsth sad veteran's of psyd-chic Vars,

Ye Thrice Bullock'd Buskers of
THE NEW EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN (Crayon Redeemer Armor made of Heiligenacht naughty snakes!)
come lately from your Nabi-Nazi-hutch-puch-punchinutella smeared tribadic thropsiers
to dangle your labial petticoat instruction manuals
into my motley-brained fool's paradise

What have YOU to offer ME~!

I was there when Granada moored its Blind Emily
Dick-in-Sun to the Logan's Run Fatima Hand
so holy red jew'ld
wrapped in candied hogsnout and bitter gut-lace,
so fete-shrimp'd for the horking pons

O ye Tiny Gnaouan biscuit peddlers
whom stars love
I cannot fry Mohammad in effigy
in Jimmy Dean
as somebody has put a delete key squarely in the forehead
of your absent faith

Flibbigibbeted in Direct Mailings!

O dry waterless tongue of exquisite beauty!

so faithful to Heather LockLear
so certain of her G-spot
and S-spot
and D-spont:

God, I am in your way.
Push me aside, and make this day,
this
Chubby Checker Istanbul Strip Club
with Anne Frankenstein Yeti Medusa Aqualung hash boys
painted by Runnabeegle "Bosch-und-Loam" Marais..

noticed last night that the door was open, and the dog... he's part German shepherd and part husky and that means he wants to see what's over there, and there, and there... that put me in a panic and I called the troops. while Beth and I scurried about, Erin just ran out barefoot. by the time I got out, Erin was carrying Brownie (that's Next County Brownie). Brownie had ventured into a particularly muddy area, which I didn't realize until Erin put him down and the dog ran inside and with muddy feet, anointing the carpet wonderfully. oh the jolly fun. Brownie knows exactly how to get home, his homing sense is perfect, it's just a matter of when. under previous ownership, his owner found him inside a restaurant dumpster, having the time of his life. one time I ran to the nearby farm for some dinner essential and noticed by the side of the road this very dog. just sitting there? I wasn't aware that he'd snuck out. usually in such circs and runs away, just to make the experience so much more fun, but this time he remained where he was. when I got up to him, I saw a gash in his shoulder, and thought he'd been in a fight, unlikely as that would be. then I saw that he favoured a leg. then I saw that that leg dangled. okay, so he'd gotten hit by a car. he was patched up expensively, complete with splint. one week later, he espied an open door and sure enough, off he limped. luckily Beth was out there to corral him. an earlier adventure occurred over the 4th of July weekend. I tied him outside not realizing that his line was unanchored. so he wandered off per orders. I ran around looking for him. I went to neighbouring homes to get permission to look in their yards but because of the holiday, no one was around. so I was skulking about like a criminal. finally I thought I heard something nearby. a neighbour has a rabbit hutch and there I found the arch criminal. he had wrapped the line that was still attached to him around the leg of the hutch. he stared at the unavailable rabbits and yipped forlornly. when he saw me, there was a look of relief, as in, finally some help getting the rabbits. so there's some of my dog adventures, read 'em and weep.

Lenin Body Surfs for Certain

Lenin groaned on the way to new groaning, which was he same as writing home from the war inside. that war—labeled Iraq with pictures of Iran—shows you just how much a little might be. A little fit for saying how the waves bend over certain experiments in human nature, letting force imply a coarse determination. But what, pray tell, is Lenin's best relation to current events? He's sworn to uphold the letter of grey branches in a plush circumstance of rain. Isn't that a dilly, where dilly means something extended, and where the verb to be needs a way to sprout future entanglements. Can this sort of language foster more brunt along the lines of asking wedded couples to strike the ground with every pledge? Can we see thru such social constant while still looking for Anne Frank? Wasn't Anne Frank a retard, or dork, or just fairly unattractive? I keep forgetting. Lenin, for sure, was not charming at all: he couldn't endure the fees. He just laid out a plump nostrum, and the singers began. That singing finished Anne Frank. Her part was worn. We still love Anne, and Lenin's awful nice in gabardine. More tunes can be relayed, as we circle investment on the map. That's our next target of approximation. To simulate is to cool the project to the point of almost current effect. Our program begins now.

I neglected an important detail from yesterday. I wandered off to a quiet part of the student union, where I found vending machines. one offered ice cream, those crappy items you might find in an ice cream truck. of course I had to have one. having standards, I chose the least crappy of those crappy ice creams. after accepting my money the machine slowly (that is to say, with building anticipation) positioned this black tube above the appropriate bin. I was wondering how it would collect the ice cream then realized that that tube was a vacuum cleaner and would grasp the ice cream that way. oh lordy, I was excited. the tube went down, the machine made more noise and out came my delectable, which was brought over to the opening and unceremoniously dropped. wow! the trail mix I got for Erin was merely shoved from its display perch once I'd paid. as to the water I got, the machine helpfully displayed the message vending whilst it pecuniously stowed the money and dropped the bottle. just so you know that vending had occurred at the vending machine, which are well known to vend.

but hey, Flarf festival in NYC, Magic the Gathering Tournament in Bawston. Erin and I made the journey, to wit: commuter train to subway to shuttle out to Umass Boston, with Boston Harbour as backdrop. I love that there commuter train, I truly do. the bells start ringing at the crossings, then you hear the bell of the train, then the mythic creature hies into sight, then the whoosh as it decelerates, and we can board. and 2 minutes after embarking, there's Walden Pond out the window. which absolutely always excites me. at Porter Square we catch the subway. to reach the subway, one can take an absurdly long escalator down. I usually opt for the stairs but didn't this time. looking straight down it disconcertingly looks like we're moving horizontally. which causes a vertiginous wobble in my brain, I can't speak for anyone else. the tournament was at Umass's student union, this enormous new edifice, specifically in the cafeteria. it was a while before Erin's flight began, affording him plenty of time to survey the cards on sale. this stuff is fairly well out of my ken. I'm not a gamer by any stripe. Magic the Gathering throws me because for every rule, there seems to be a card that countermands that rule, and new ones always on the way. it's just too fluid for me. the crowd was older than I expected, college age more, with quite a few well older than that. and totally into it. while the temptation exists to think of a standard Magic type aficionada--you know: nerd--in sooth it's not that easy. yuh, there were quite a few there who look like they subsist on soda and don't get much sun, but there were many enough that don't fit the category at all. and there were a few females, so there's an outside chance that another generation of Magic enthusiasts may be born. sorry, just kidding. the common denominator was intense focus. those there to play can spend hours ogling cards, explaining to each other how particular cards work, and various strategic finepoints. once Erin got into his game I roamed. I had a notebook and just parked one place or another and wrote. eventually I stepped outside. I passed near a trash container, on which sat a seagull (herring gull). I was as close as 3 feet from it when it finally decided to move away a little. its confrere, bigger, was busy with a piece of trash. it would perspicaciously shake and chew the thing then drop it on the ground. finally a bit of food flew out, which the bird immediately consumed. the smaller bird watched in awe. the bigger bird went back to work on the rubbish until a much larger morsel, of a doughnut, became the prize. both of them continued at this work. they fluttered onto the trash container and snatched bits of trash out, to then be dealt with. it was like panning for gold. the larger one found something that rustled and I thought score!!!, but it proved to be a crushed cup with ice in it. I spent 15 minutes watching these 2 birds. I'm sorry they are eating doughnuts and french fries but it was fascinating to witness their endeavour. this reminds me of the botanist Edgar Anderson, a great deal of whose study into plants occurred in a vacant lot in St Louis. somewhere along the line a fellow asked if Erin wanted to trade cards. this is a feature of Magic card collecting. they went thru each other's available trades and picked out a few. they wrangled, discussed and came to an agreement. I'm sure there are instances of bad blood from these trades but my observation of this scene saw a sort of collabortive effort. I used to play a lot of pickup basketball games. no refs, of course, so if you felt that you were fouled you called it. it was surprisingly rare, no matter how tense the game, that anyone questioned such calls. I guess it's like that with these trades. Erin dashed off after completing the trade. after a while the fellow, who had remained at the table, said, hey where's he gone? he left his cards. this is an Erin trait, we're glad he brought his coat home. the guy handed me the box saying he'd lost his collection at one of these events. as Erin did last year. the guy could've horked them, as I was no more aware of their remaining there as was Erin. so that was nice. it was a fun trip, and we didn't even get lost.

I don't need to link to Jordan Davis's for chrissakes, whereat link to pictures of living flarfists on the hoof can be found. same goes for Nada Gordon. flarf is very expensive to produce: those Google searches do not grow on trees.