under review

  

I've had Musee Mechanique by Rodney Koeneke (Blaze Vox 2006) for a while, reading it in my poky fashion. I really liked Rouge State, his 1st book, from Pavement Saw (2003). here, he's doing these flarfistic modalities and executions that have been discussed and HOYed by the child himself (I mean Dan Hoy beginning to read). I think methodology has been overweighted, flarf-wise, insofar as Koeneke's pre-flarf work rings well and with amplitude, just like this consciously flarf-inflected work. I for one am tired of the debate re the political lines of making poems the right way. the right way appears in the poem as poem, live electric. see, it's just a wasting to need all this defensive intro, hoping for readers who will just handle the trouble as if it were worth it. I mean, a poem in sight, thus to comprise what it has. it is ever fucking thus, I know, this prevalent resistance, which is such a historical truism that it shouldn't need to be iterated. and yet boundaries, ugh, how we sanction their security. perhaps I could speak of the poems now. 1st lemme say that this book comes across somewhat as a companion volume to Mainstream by Michael Magee, insofar as both share a Blaze Voxian look, and they clearly endure with a flarfian metre. also, both have useful, thoughtful afterwords, removing smoke and mirrors from the equation. both credit the flarf list of the time, where a collaborative energy prevailed. but having said that, let me acknowledge that these are separate works that needn't be lumped. needn't, that is, unless you're working on your crappy grad thesis, good luck on that, or feeding Harold Bloom his latest 'ideas. I'm still at the superficial stage with this book. I do not want to be definitive, I've seen where that shit goes. I like the frisky multiples of distraction that bubble up in this book. the poet survives incoming, if you see what I mean. all the cultural shit and busy busyness. kitty + pizza, for instance, howe'er canst one make poem from that??? poem, is the reply. a section of poems is entitled On The Clamways, referring of course to On The Nameways by Clark Coolidge. which is a fun, snapping release by CC, after tome after relevant tome of big stuff. Koeneke rings the friskiness that Coolidge explored (language as immediacy), but scoots along as well with a preposterous clamminess. why clams??? and then you realize that clams are dirty, funny, unexpected. "And by the way, clam culture as it happens / Is ruled by this bitchy little number called 'Snappy / the Clam'." why yes! much variety imbeds itself in CLAM. notice how hilarity cues something dismal and politically crushing. notice how innocuousness borders on desperate, and desperate gives you republicans. I'm not chatting up Helen Vendler here, nor trying to formalize. I like the idea of the reading process as adventure, somewhat courageous (don't make a big deal of that, please), and possibly even enjoyable. I'm saying read with adventure, because here we have that exactly. so this isn't a review of Rodney Koeneke's 2nd poetry book, it is more an advocation of the reading process, which invites feelings of curiosity, openness and confusion. I needn't refer to Negative Capability, need I? a poem is music, surprise and hilarity, which is to say a healthful disaster of formalized expectation. approach, I'm saying, these poems thusly, and see what wiggles. I sound blurbish here, but I only want to suggest an evolving process begun. these poems are really really, and the book as well.

  

  

  

last year Jordan Davis posted a picture of his son looking out on a jostled, ramshackle view of things (the world). this photo seems to follow that one. a zigzag path, lines pointing every which way. the play area looks more like a stockade, and the path veers away. whereas the earlier picture showed wonder, this one shows rigidity and restriction. striking.

I like this reminiscence by Joel Sloman. rumination from a distance in time, tho time's got porous boundaries so... I think particularly for writers, because the word/thought thing (we think (a lot) in words), have this slippery what time is it quality to deal with. is this my thought now or it is from then: that sort of fluidity. I am fascinated by all my visual work (paintings and collage), even the crap, because of the immediacy and visceral effect of colour and form, whereas I choke on the crappy writing of (my) yore. I think that's in the nature of writing. when I used to enter Grolier, not often but always with anticipation, it was a stunning world of discovery. when I visited saturday, it was different. I put aside that the selection needs refreshment. I give Grolier a mulligan on that point, assuming that some funding will now be ultilized for improvement vis-a-vis. I now know the names better, whereas back in the day I'd have to pick up and peer thru a Mary Oliver book to see what up. so the magic... and yet... magic is the word, really, at the risk of sounding like some dread provocateur of poetry. in his post, you can see the younger Sloman struggling with... something. I recognize that. it took me a long time for my intelligence to catch up with the dynamic energy of writing. I wrote lots and lots but, you know, please don't look at it now. young writers (poets especially), unless they have a keen ability to imitate and pastiche (a legit learning means), must suffer thru a period of blurry amorphousness based on the sore point of what, exactly, a poem is. I envy those who seem so clear on the concept, but on the other hand, no I'm do not. I want to go as long as possible without firming up my definition of poetry. method is adventure or, you know, why bother. anyway, thanks to Joel for the madeleine.

venerable Brattle Theatre in venerable Cambridge had an anime festival today. ongoing, it's a 24 hour affair, but Erin and I are content with our 9 1/2. the Brattle has for years been home to your basic hip showings of Bogart films and Rocky Horror Show: that sort of theatre. what I'm after saying is that the audience engages to the point of considerable comment during the flick. looked like a hardened crowd, people ready for the derby distance. probably not great attendance, at least so far. I liked the anime. visually, very cinematic and gratifying. I absolutely can't stand the sort of animation used in movies like Shrek, all that techno wizardry strikes me as lifeless. whereas what I saw yesterday had considerable zest and liveliness. and they have surprising depth. one featured a girl who said at the beginning that she woke the night before and realized that she was a god. with ensuing adventures in which indeed she was a god. but she's also smitten by the clueless boy with the cool spiky hair who doesn't quite get that she's there. Half-hearted cosplay (costume contest) occurred during one of the breaks. 3 entrants. one seemed to be a samurai geisha. another wore cargo pants, tube top and kerchief on her head, which is to say, not very identifiable as a character, altho she noted who she was dressed as. showing her stomach may have been the point for her. the winner wore black fatigues or jumpsuit, had blond spiky hair and wielded an outsized sword. One anime concerned two brothers fighting over their father's sword. this one also featured a school girl who goes back to their time, and occasionally returns to the present. she rides her bicycle everywhere, even in the air, and dynamically uses a particularly efficient bow and arrow. there were some wonderful filler shorts seeded thru out the event. one was a student film done by someone who went on to greater things (of which I know nothing). no dialogue, just zooming images. it featured your typical and ubiquitous young school girl in school uniform, but early on she transmogrifies into a Playboy bunny, and proceeds to do hyperkinetic laser battle with Darth Vader, and fly around on what I take to be Silver Surfer's surfboard, all the while with things exploding with nuclear wrath. just so odd. odder still was a live action music video. it featured five guys on stage singing. the group is possibly called Yatta. they wore just their Fruit of the Looms, with fig leaf over the crotch. it's a parody of boy bands and Village People and Menudo and poppy pop music. the five look like software developers but are all exultant smiles and sincere singing and mugging and eye contact with the crowd. the crowd is an odd blend of elders and children. the boys shake their skinny booties in some of the goofiest choreography possible, jumping, marching and kicking. cut into the live performance are the usual vid vignettes. one of which shows one of our heroes, in Yatta mufti, walking down a city sidewalk. he passes a young woman, who smiles at him. he turns with a sad look of yearning. out of the shadows come his four mates, grinning and supportive, and suddenly everything is fine again, lots of hppy reenforcement. there are no subtexts here, it's all uber text. I was quite entertained by everything shown during the event. at one point I left to call Beth and to walk around. which led me to the Grolier Bookstore, now safe to enter. a much calmer place than it used to be. whatever the shoplifting problem under previous ownership, the security archway took way too much acreage in such a small shop. glad to see that gone. I had no particular bees in my bonnet as to what I would look for, tho I don't know why I share personal bonnet information in such a public forum as this. I mainly just wanted to see if the coast were clear at the old poetry shop. what's not surprising but I am hopeful will change is that the selection had glaring holes. er um no Creeley, for one. the shop's latter years were not well funded, so selection kinda sorta didn't keep up with the times. I picked up a copy of Kirby Doyle's collected, priced at the 1986 price of 7 dollars that it entered the shop by. aint never read him. I also discovered Stops by Joel Sloman (Zoland 1999), one of the good people in the local arena. it has an introduction by Denise Levertov. he seems detached from the professorially inspired (or conspired) embargo on originality and verve that obtains in this fusty old town, yet seems like a supportive citizen in the best sense. I was glad to get his book. a guy in the shop needed help from the person working there. I didn't hear his entreaty but apparently he had the woman looking for some Bulgarian poet. eventually he said something that lit the idea of Bukowski in the woman's mind, and that proved to be what the guy wanted. no Bukowskian poetry was in attendance at the shop however so the guy was referred to Harvard Bookstore, right next door. another person wanted a poetry book from, as he said, the man who wrote Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, Richard Farina (Farina also wrote some lovely songs, too, buddy), but the shop lacked that as well. new ownership should sell off the dustier tomes (i. e. the ones I'm not interested in) and dedicate a handful of smackers to an A-Z overhaul. christ, should I send a letter listing books and authors to carry? I checked for Kasey Mohammad, Stephanie Young, Shanna Compton, as poets who ought and maybe could (they all seem to have some sort of distribution going) be on the shelves. and that I'd be interested in reading. none of them were to be found. see, I'm not crazy about SPD, at least so far as the D of the acronym goes. with our press, they were supposed to send our new publications to libraries as standing orders but oops, never happened. and little presses with micro budgets having to wait 6-9 months for proceeds from sales, yeesh. and hey the exorbitant cost of doing business with...okay, okay, don't get me started. Grolier is supposedly one of 2 poetry shops in the country. I say, send them 3 copies of your book, call it consignment if you like, just to freshen the selection as a material instance of a selection. which brings to mind what I'm told a certain poet does: sneaks copies of his books onto store shelves, with the idea that readers and orders would therefore occur. I didn't feel the kind of excitement I used to feel in the store, but I don't blame current ownership. around 6 Beth arrived and we convened for dinner at an Indian restaurant, then Erin bustled off to see Steam, a parody of anime, gaming, commercials and so on. I saw parts of it at Anime Boston. quite funny, tho many allusions and references exist well outside my ken. Beth and I wandered around Harvard and Brattle Squares. flashback the 60s and hippies and excitement. this wounded-seeming Asian fellow I'd noticed 3 years ago was there in front of the Harvard Coop, playing his 3-stringed instrument and looking very distant. I saw an older man in a couple of different places during the day. he had earphones, and just sat there rocking back and forth to the music. autistic, I would imagine. anyway we scurried home once Steam ended.

Gawd!!! Jack Kimall's been busy

among the balls that I've dropped is not keeping up with Stephen Vincent's series Tenderly, which is a utilization (is that the right word?) of Stein's Tender Buttons. Stephen works an interesting method. a means of enduring respectfully within the work of certain writers. why that verb endure? he faces, confronts, lives with... specificially Zukofsky, Sappho, Stein, so far, that I know of. both critical and collaborative. he assays, which is the genuine article we all should (equal that is to the real itself). Stein maybe nervoused me up more than any writer when I was young and stupid. Tender Buttons, tho, came a-brimming. I think I'm vaguing out here but I really caught something with Buttons. not that I even tried to accomodate the possibility, back then when I first read. it was too magical, Stein's processing of words into things or vice versa. I have to mark how unready I was for such discovery. I was absurdly ignorant when school force fed me these instigations. maybe I'm a brighter candle than I want to admit, because I took on the registry of proprioceptive response which is WORD. I went against my own prosaicness, when I saw the flow of Stein's urge. does anyone else admit to a nakedness when in the lights of different arts bearing? I don't think I've ever writ an oh well blubba blubba response to words as poetry. I've been stupid but Ive managed to halt at the point of freeze up. still, I envy the seeming readiness of Stephen Vincent, in collecting the energy. on the other hand, I''m not as stupid as you, categorizer. I plant difficulty as my challenge, not my duty to cover up. you ought to listen, readership, beneath the equivocations here. poetry enjoys the mystery of living tension. tension is the movement of living entirely. entity right in the word. okay, haul all this rumination back to TENDERLY. words are real employment of active essential in a... in what, exactly? in what one can comprise, as Reader. well yeah, okay. I commend Stephen's work into in. simply that. continuing the Steinian... what's your haul?

had an urge to visit Grolier Poetry Bookshop today, but it is closed on sundays. under previous ownership, we weren't allowed to bring Erin in. he was 12, and gave no evidence of being trouble. that's what the Grolier experience devolved to. anyway, in lieu, a visit to B&N. I almost got away with no purchase, until I saw a book, Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde. the front cover blurb says the book "celebrates the need for the kind of paintings, music, books and ideas that society initially finds unpleasant". my 1st thought was flarf. I'm not doing my Gary Snyder imitation here. Hyde himself writes "trickster is a boundary-crosser". I think that works well as an aspect of flarf. not to limit it to flarf, but I think flarf can reasonably be viewed in such terms. just as last night, the puppet porno in Team America was really, really disturbing, even as it was hilarious (Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore et alia getting slaughtered was not, btw, disturbing, it was just a good hearty laugh). I don't know how far I want to develope this idea, but I do see a use in the outrageous and in boundary crossing. it is certainly true that that which makes us uncomfortable should at least be examined. the recent reaction to Mike Magee's Asian Guys poem has been useful when it has been seen as queries on the border. squeaks of propriety do not work with trickster, that much I've gleaned from my forays into the literature. the discomfort of flarf, which also includes its disjointedness, and its silliness and triviality of subject, produces areas of consideration. irritation can be good. Trickster pulls our chain, removes safety net, makes things serious after all. that initial discomfort bespeaks areas of restriction. those areas of consternation are areas of illuminations. so I'm reading Hyde's book now, that's what I'm doing.

  

  

... and speaking of flarf. 2nd issue of Gary Sullivan's Elsewhere arrived yesterday. front and back covers are really lovely, dude check it out. the colour scheme is bluish grey mainly, very compelling. the back cover shows this Mickey Mouse sort of character, a doll maybe, with an electrical cord wrapped around its head. for some reason. those 2 images pretty much encapsulate what's inside. the words are by Nada Gordon, kaleidoscopic impressions. the 2 took a bus trip to Coney Island, Gary took photos from which the drawings were developed. it's like Walt Whitman took acid then welcomed all that he saw. or make that Frank O'Hara. there's a gracious acceptance in what could seem jostling and foreign. the drawings inside (b&w) possess a heavy line, weird weighty modules. almost emblems, that is. there's one Crumbian image of a fellow with not just eyes popping out of his skull but everything else, teeth, brains everything. that nod to Crumb fits perfectly. while neither Sullivan or Gordon show the snideness that Crumb does (I love Crumb), a sense of swimming the human stream is shared. I'm glad to see comix stretching its form. I mean continue stretching. I guess I never cottoned to Marvel's soap opera necessity. having read 3 manga recently, thus making me an expert, I can speak of the cinematic quality of manga, which is a nice breath to take. everything is interesting. people, words, things. I'm suddenly thinking Stein. in Tender Buttons, she tries to see ordinariness. note the fantastic lengths she must go. our seeing is language. this comic is what Gary and Nada saw. comprised, but not explained (death lives in explanation). I'm being rather general in my comments here. the comic is not at my side at the moment, I'm going by my memory of reading it thru last night. the effect of it is a disjointedness but not an unsettling. read Gary's account of the MOCCA (comix convention, I presume). the same sort of fun commitment displayed as I witnessed at the anime festival. dunno why poetry can't be fun like that. flarf, being funny, wanting to be funny, takes a positive step. the the point is not that poetry should be funny, just not so precious and headache. Knopfitude, that draggy condition of sunless poetry. poetry as an excuse to vent. I think I can accept many means, but not that end. which is why we listen to music, perhaps. and turn to visual. come on Poetry, kick out the jams.

we watched Team America yesterday. holy crap!!! it's the marionette movie produced by the South Park team. I guess there's nothing more to say. sure, it's weird to see puppets all serious like, in an action flick. my memory contains Supercar, featuring that arch-nemesis Master Spy, but this movie is on a much grander scale. 1st class marionettes, quite expressive. early on there's a martial arts scene, a mighty showdown. when the 2 opponents close on each other, they just flail absurdly, like puppets. it is hilarious. Team America members manage to blow up almost everything in sight, which gets the ire of Hollywood liberals led by Alex Baldwin. who, it turns out, are under the sway of Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. denouement of the movie features the slaughtering of these liberals. hooray! you know about that bad taste aspect of flarf. naturally, this movie went for the same thrum. there's an extended, graphic sex scene that is so perfectly absurd (puppets pooping and peeing on each other, OMFG!!!). later, the dramatic lowpoint for Our Hero, there's an extended puking scene. in both cases, the score is lush with all dramatic markers in place. it's a weird sort of genius, lighthearted and unsettling.

I've added Joel Sloman to my links.

coupla recently arrived poem books at the library. by Franz Wright and Dan Chiasson. both published by Alfred Knopf, and I guess it is Knopfiness that they exhibit. you know, thin, airy books, lots of blank, air of solemnity. what ways to kill poetry has Knopf not thought of? I'm being tactile here, and the thing doesn't want to be touched. somehow Knopf read Darwin while other publishers of poetry were what, reading poetry? Chiasson's production was granted by several fellowships or what all, including kind and beneficent Harvard. I don't begrudge the free money, but how much support does a little poem book need? I mean time to whip this creation up? it's the work of down time. honest to god, Chiasson needed support for his hobby? for this glib plain by the book stuff? Wright's book is another matter. this guy, clearly, has seen some shit. there's some real kick to it. I just wonder as I read why is it Poetry. okay, it is poetry because the work is broken into lines. broken is the right word. those lines are purely visual, and even there the critical valve barely holds. why must Wright be so slavish to format? he is a poet. he's got a smacked up Bukowski rawness that can't be faked. I mean, I dunno the living truth of his persistent dark night of the soul, but it rings like he means it. but what is the art of poetry to him? I mean that he should formalize what is so sore and needful in him. Knopf is no help. they just want precious, but I think Wright is working with crucial. but that sense of proper format (poetry by the numbers), ugh.

I am obliged to to pass along this link

I got Not Even Dogs by Ernesto Priego (Meritage 2005). a collection of hay(na)ku. the hay(na)ku format is simple to the point of wicked simple (one word line, then 2 word, then 3 word, or turn that upside down). its value consists in how it places emphasis on each word. or put better, each word is weight bearing. Priego uses the form here exclusively as a stanza. altho the form presents a haiku-ish potential as a brief meditative measure, it also links nicely. Priego writes easily within the format. a micro/macro simultaneity occurs (sorry for that lump of a phrase), in which one reads the poem as a whole, but also looks to each stanza discretely, poems within poems. one poem hangs on a sore throat (I infer):

Maybe
the cactus
in your throat

Doesn't
let you
sleep at all

the poem ends with the question:

whadda
want to
say without pain.

so there's this physical sense (or demand) of writing. but verses jump out singularly for me:

Rough
and dirty
in your throat

Get
in there
like a desert

The
green, black,
dusty present pain

A
white page
full of sand

(I just noticed that Ernesto capitalizes the 1st word of each stanzas, which, let us say, defines porous limits). see, the verses can be read out of order, as you find them, but also narratively. I learned an emphatic attention from Robert Grenier (not to say I utilize it well, just that he provided a rich exemplar), in which the reader gives every word all chances to, um, mean something. consider all definitions, yup, peer at etymology, okay doke, but also, perhaps weirder, be prepared to see lack in black, age in page. look at all possibilities. I think Ernesto Priego possesses that attention. that he is bilingual adds a consternation and question, in the sense that he has these 2 languages, but Poetry is his mother tongue. that sounds like a floppy statement but give me a chance. the Wryting list to which I belong is small but its members are from all over the globe. posts are mostly in English, but it is English inflected by all these languages, including programming. Poetry then is the lingua franca. Ernesto's language is largely ordinary and conversational. which is sneaky, because his words reveal such depth and perception. I want to note the book design by Michelle Bautista. the central colums oif the poems are offset by larger boldface repetitions of the 1st stanza. this demarcates the poems from each other and is visually gratifying. I mean, even if my description doesn't zackly make it sound so. lovely book.

I know you shouldn't start judging a work until you've finished reading it, which is pretty much why I do it. I like to see some issues as I read. Sorrentino's book is kicking ass at this point in my reading, about a quarter of the way thru. he does indeed have the sort of story in a story in a story frame that Flann O'Brien used. as he urges the story along he's commenting on the contaption that is the novel, the occasionally silly demand of plot and characterization. sometimes it reads like a roman a clef, other times the characters just seem like types. Sorrentino reaches a snide hilarity, prickly and indiscreet. rather relentlessly so, you might think Smollett. it feels like he decided as he wrote to trash his characters rather than just paint them. I'm fine with that, tho I did earlier note my discomfort with authors who don't like their characters. I guess if the author can unfurl an acid tongue as well as Sorrentino, it's okay. tho really, he lets the characters skewer themselves. I hate the attitude of keen portraiture in fiction, the sort of refiend work that wins awards. authors of such seem so uninvested when they effort such precision, as if the author can't get dirty. even Proust gets dirty, because he's so crazily focused on the people of his milieu, focused, curious, envious, and enamoured of. this book isn't as wild as Love and Fame in New York by Ed Sanders, with which it shares similarities. Sanders cranks invention by setting the story slightly in the future. Sorrentino ushers current types (circa 60s) thru his book. so much so that the book at times feels dated. I don't know all references, but even those that I do sound of a period. references to WCW, for instance, sound like what references to Creeley must sound today, an accepted master yet still vigourous (the writing at least). soon the honourifics will tone down with Creeley and emphasis will be given more to his human frailities. I mean, drunken fistfights with Pollock sound cool now, but when the big critical bio appears, we'll be treated to a pattern. this is an important step in the bio industry. that and What's this I hear about Creeley and the American Nazi party?. but I digress. Sorrentino seems lighthearted (in a grouchy way) about the process and procession of the novel. the novel as a form suffers so many plangencies, especially the one where you're supposed to feel better, learn more about the human condition, etc etc, GAH!!! like a poem, the novel does not want to be directed. as Sorrentino comments and footnotes, he allows lateral movement on the path. that is, he shifts his gaze away from that pinpoin goal THE THEME, you know: Moby Dick is about Man's Inhumanity to Man. please, let us all eschew straight lines.

reading Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino. yeah, because he died. I've never read him except, I'm sure, a few poems long ago. just another gap. I think poets should write novels, that the quality of poetry that one can bring to this craggy form might allow for something unique. possibly because novelists are fitted for plot first of all, and plot is often the most perfunctory aspect of a novel (like melody versus harmony). a sense of poetry in the writer seems a good idea. by sense of poetry I don't mean flowery language, that kind of well-weathered simulation, I mean the sense of open form and possibility that poetry is. James Schuyler's novels effortless avoid plotpush strictures, allowing for some amazing subtleties. Sorrentino's novel brings these thoughts up because he seems to confront the assumed necessities of the genre. he does this with asides by the narrator and footnotes by the author's. does separation exist between the two? I'm working on that one. the 1st chapter carefully portrays one of the characters. the tone is wry, yes, but also a bit untouchably superiour. the narrator participates in the story (barely, as yet), so this superiourity can work, tho as yet I find it tiresome. it's hard to read fiction in which the author shows little sympathy for the characters. I'm not yet sure how far that goes here, just an impression so far. the 2nd chapter takes on another character, 1st character's husband. I kinda want to skip these surgeries. I guess I want Sorrentino to weird out in the manner of Flann O'Brien. the author photo (window to the soul) suggests that he mightn't: full sideburns, studious glasses, and a dark turtleneck, circa 1971. if only he had a rapier scar on his cheek. I realize that I approach this book at a critically clumsy angle, but I defend my right to be tired of perfunctory novels (and poetry too, but that's another matter). narrative isn't dead, it just needs to be seen differently. narrative is not as simple as a conveyor belt. that Sorrentino can mention Spicer, Williams, O'Hara is a right step. you know, an alternate reality where people like the aforesaid can actually matter. jeepers, Stephen King makes passing notice of Creeley and Olson here and there in his novels. horror has the advantage of being of a different world. domestic novels really make my eyeballs squeak, unless someone has the grace and subtlety of Schuyler.

76th installment of Antic View

  

  

  

okay, I'm up to pop culture speed regarding Da Vinci Code, having absorbed the movie yestreen. before I'd seen/read, I assumed the movie would outstrip the book (having seen the explosion laden trailer) but hafta say otherwise now. we arrived way early, thus sat thru many repetitions of the loop of items on the screen prior to the previews. the something to look at that we early birds needed. to wit, a still from King Kong (did that movie sink or swim? I neve paid attention), a still from Ferris Buehler's Day Off, a still from Ray (did you know Jamie Fox wore eye prosthetics that made him blind for 14 hours a day? can you comprehend any reason why?), a tantalzing picture of an X-Men promotion featuring a limited edition Harley, and then, long tympani roll, a reminder that a snack bar exists in the complex and happy to displace funds from your grasp. each screen shot had different music. it went on and on. we were Da Vinci Code all the way, btw, tho Erin would have opted for X-Men. 2 theatres in the complex were movie-less. praps that's renovation but I feel just spooky enough about the economy to wonder about downturn. of course, why should I worry, I have 15,000,000 shares of Vonage. anyway, the future bodes more movies with explosions, surprisingly enough. personally I'm coocoo for Cocoa Crisps. the new James Bond, you know, whatever. I was struck that it didn't look like a James Bond movie. it had IMAXy breadth and a more frantic pace than earlier renditions, not to say combustion wasn't the co-star. Adam Sandler has a new movie to hate. talk about code, someone break the Sandler code for me. also upcoming a film from M Night Shyamalan. I quite liked that Shyamalan crop circle movie with Mel Gibson. the spookiness is very intimate and personal in it, in the way, somewhat at least, of Lovecraft. this new one, who can tell from previews, but it looked disturbing. something about a female what, ghost? mermaid? in a hotel swimming pool (Erin aptly spoke the phrase 'watery tart'). more definitively Lovecraftian, it would seem. anyway, we stayed to watch the feature too. at least with an Opie/Gump production, money's gonna be spent. and you could see it on the screen. that's enough to satisfy me. it's too hard to boil novels down to 2 hour movies, I knew that from the beginning. Hanks is at the point, careerwise, where he's just too much. the accolades, the niceness, the earnestness, all that overwhelms anything he might do on the screen. he postured some, seemed to be gliding. he should do dinner theatre as a change of pace. I like how in movies, if the lead plays a teacher, especially a prof, when he (always he, I think) shows off his teacherliness in lecture, his audience is always gape-mouthed morons. the arrival of Sophie in both book and movie just don't work. in the movie it is roughly her only pro-active moment. the rest of the way, Hanks does all the sleuthy thinking, which is not the case in the book. the monk Silas is an oddly sympathetic character in both movie and book. he wears his cilice tighter than I do. he should have been shown reading Gerard Manley Hopkins. the creepy side of the Church fascinates me. there were some brief visual evocations of the Crusades and pagan Constantinople that made me wish for a movie based on that. in Coppola's goofy Dracula, there's a short scene that shows the beginning of Vlad's impaling career (for some reason, he wears armour made from corn chips). I'd rather see more of that than the histrionic carnage that FFC served. the escape of the dynamic duo is so usual. you'd think escaping duos would trip over each other. especially when, as in DVC, you got characters (Sophie) driving down a Paris sidewalk backwards. I suspect if you haven't read the book, much would confuse you in the movie. finally, our heroes end up with Sir Leigh, which is to say, Gandalf gets to step centerstage and take a playful turn as a dotty Englishman. Hanks doesn't really let go of the earnest bit so he doesn't get to play along. he's capable but I think Opie believed that with such a serious subject, due resepct must be shown. yawn. things swirl to a finish, in which neither Sophie or Gump die whatesover. but wait, there's more! and this more seems anticlimactic. the final mystery must be broached and, yawn, is. Hanks kneeling down reverently at the end is one all star fake moment. here's a sop to those who thought this movie was sacrilegious. religion? Hollywood? come on! there's a kind of now what at the end of things here, like, can anything be made of this trust me royal line? Brown's next book, and it better be a doozy.

I noticed this working flarf post at Stan Apps' blog after I wrote my ruminations below. as a general rule you can say he's working the lucid side of the street (i.e. over there, but that don't mean I can't wave. I have't yet read the Standard Shaeffer fuss a bit earlier on his blog (not been able to read blogs heartily lately) but it looks like fun. anyhoo.

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?