nifty visual from Lanny Quarles

ILLRACKETAMBIENTALE (webmural)
for Victor Tausk

nifty graphic: big ass 2m version

260K version

121K version

Lanny and Jukka among many others work in visual and computer graphic ways that I haven't even attempted. what's my damage? why am I so lame? honest to god, I love to paint and collage, but I haven't found my way to the computer's visual potential. selah.

Kent Johnson is trying to get a play he just wrote, "Measure for Measure", produced. wish him luck! he's also translating the poems of Thomas Chatterton into English, which is an exciting event. oh, and he's just finishing a biography of Howard Hughes, which stems from a zillion interviews he had with the famous billionaire man of mystery.

I'm a few miles west of enfant and my terrible aint the interesting kind, so I point hypocrite Lecteur to le back-in-business, non-moribund Heathens in Heat de David Hess, a direct and lively critical voix.

I hear Kent Johnson will be translating some words by Gaelic poet Ossian. look forward to THAT!!!

"Someone could do a history poem (in Olson & WCW vein) based on investigations & juxtapositions of "democracy" as global phenomenon, as a project of states & multinational groupings - "democracy in Middle East/Asia/Africa/South America" etc. - juxtaposed, that is, with historical roots in New England local politics (sovereignty of the people out of village town meetings). What it all means to have a superpower on a democracy mission compared to the felt reality of actual civic life (what that used to mean, what it amounts to now).

(Been reading de Tocqueville lately.)" --Henry Gould

jeez, I'm into it. frankly, much of my interest in Olson concerns his indications in such directions. I've read a lot of the writers he bibliographized for Ed Dorn. I've had a couple public civcs lessons lately, one while poking around briefly in Salem (MA)last week (at the end of the 18th century Salem was the 6th largest city in the country and the richest per capita), and another from nat'l parks rangers on site at Hartwell Tavern in Lincoln. I wanted to jump into Locke and Federalist Papers and all that stuff. I am not a scholar by any means, whereas I surmise that Henry is, but this is in my mind, mayhap not exactly as Henry puts it. America the Poem (irony irony), and on.

John Latta refers to the 'Kent Johnson effect'. KJ leaves you questioning. OR you skip the questions. either way, it's a freeing thing. heck, it's merry making, what Kent is AT. I have a fondness for subversion of a certain sort, not being especially direct myself, and also finding polemics and action too often incompatible. I sure don't care much what's authentic. I'm probably more gullible than most, have fallen for a few of Kent's jokes. anyway, some of Whitman's really horse's ass stuff is pretty good. at least if you say okay, accept that he's taking that trip. I read the 1st Carlos Castenada book well before I'd heard any questions of his authenticity, and pretty well bought that farm. there's a lot of, you know, authentic crap out there that no one really needs to read. bad enough to be published in Poetry or APR. I mean sincerity out the wazoo and the like. Robert Lowell is all authentic, yet his poetry just seems so made up and canny. in The Dolphin and I forget the other book at the time, he quotes his ex-wife's letters. his writing looks perfectly crumbly, whereas Elizabeth Hardwick's letters are pungent and exalting in, dare I say, honesty. so I'm on Kent's team, if he'll have me. Latta references the New Poetry list, where some anti-Johnsonization has occurred. those college profs are a lot too lame. calling Forrest Gander Goosey one time, whee hah! sorry, but it's Leon 'Goose' Goslin, Washington Senators (etc) (you could look it up). I saw Forrest read once, and he was pretty good. rapped the lectern dramatically, which, surprisingly, worked.

Jacket, as Reader knows, has lots going for it. it enjoys the neatest design possible, especially if you, like me, aren't the biggest fan of reading off the screen. it is full of the modern and post-modern names that make poetry interesting. quite a stunning repository for Kent Johnsonish things, most lately a travelogue of a Bolivian tour with Forrest Gander, in the footsteps of Jaime Saenez. also a piece on Rakosi and Stevens, hey I have the collected poems of both those dudes. Kent Johnson will soon be appearing in a comments field near you. if he makes you nervous, perhaps you're up to something.

here's a picture of 'me' at Wordsworth the 28th and flight, span, bridge, potion, and what is available when dreaming or drowning. hello, etc...

quoting Jack Kimball blog here:

"Thanks for zilch. That's what men like my father, my father's age, were thinking, not saying it outright or not saying it much. Heads down, noses clean, hobos in bed a decade before the pill, a half a century before cialis. Bossing 24-seven, dreaming who're bossed, sexed out the top spot. You can phone him in but don't wimp. If you hang up, your throat's sliced. Your projects curtailed. A course of action by a player of zilch.

Folks were kind of less casual then. You know what I said? To the bank people. I don't want to pay for any of it."

tie politics closely to body of work and thinking, in time to mention of moment, here and now, a possible score and collaboration... are people numbered well now, patience, scoring, riducule, and the weird flow of time. etc, I love you.

poetry isn't music, but it has
it's
sway and way

Henry likes C Milosz, Mayhew doesn't. it's the matter of translation. I feel like I miss too much when I read English writing itself. translation is a danger and tangle. I wonder how Dickinson or Whitman could be translated. or Olson. translation is invention, or, for the crappy translaters of Neruda, say, translation is a mixture of herbs, tinctures and omigawd. hello, here is your pelican.

some cool texts here. Sheila Murphy, Jeff Harrison, Ric Carfagna, Peter Ganick, Eileen Tabios: do we forget how wonderful it is to have access?

I believe I get one MORE hit on my blog per day than does Ron Silliman(r), but I'm a cool guy and am happy to share my hit points with others. I neglected to make a permanent link to JPK's Xstream, tho I did point to it some while ago. so now that's taken care of, to the right but also here. the auto issue is a particularly intersting aspect of Xstream.

shroom print 

the blog links on Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's Nonlinear blog have slipped into the visuals. at least with my browser, etc, but it looks neat. text invasion; where's the boundaries; marching words; nothing stays still: yelp!

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's other blog. it's in Englishbut then you think, what the hell is English. both because English is a particularly fluid langauge with lots of imports, but also the boundaries of languages themselves are less defined and 'safe' than we would like to think. interesting stuff here.

Digital Cellular Phone now has part fifteen up for anxious and non-anxious eyes alike

the 1st shitload

titled: "Entitlement"


Don’t Close That Please

a referendum
slick tale
modes of English
while trying
other front
whose interest
envelopes
the possible
farce?
a tree over
the house
secures something


Mountain Burgundy

red possibles almost
pile the matter
in shelving
of the topmost
branching dignity
couldn’t’ squirm
for lack of
horizon


Greens Sensible

it’s an oval
I mean it’s an
oval piece of
green amber
Celtic thingie


Cat Examines Door

already with
against on for
responsibility
pitches


Smoke Fiddles

the famous
Appalachian devil
wants a piece of


Do You Dire My Hair?

beer in the
middle
of taking
in an
image
of getting
crowded


Love Train

England
folks
China too
on board
on thru


Lift Your Talk Off

final laughs
sled not at
all the time
lost dedicated
sample
your school
out look
reeds loam
and advantage


Noting At A Lot

piles thru out
is mercy
to succumb
to a vocabulary
full of
succumb


Itch Terrifically

a moment
with a
thumb


Singular Theory

over here
the hands need
a local date
and secret
tales balancing
just enough
dog


Not Interfering With A Dog

it looked good
couldn’t tell a
further difference
mumbles about
a little picture


Trust Conceives a Death

I went a rope
full of
I walk alone
closer mumble
the nature
“I have so much
to do
gum on
my shoe”


Cabal Delivery

read enough to
try again
thanks to evil


Explaining Sensible

why am I
Madame Blavatsky
they wondered
in great bundles
locked in truck


Wordsworth Customer Service

Desire
is a good
start
don’t you
think?


Mere Assassination Books

long typing quarries
each success
perfects fantasy
of floppy thinking
on top of
proven pavement

since july 31, been writing short poems in a notebook,lickety split. I start with a title then scribble a few words. last week while watching GOLF for god's sake, I wrote a bunch. I wrote during the Masaacre and traveling hither and yon. I will focus on this thing. a different breath.

I finished (stopped) Digital Cellular Phone (honest I want you to go here) yesterday. I realize this isn't an announcement of the same weight as announcing that The Alphabet is done, but then, I didn't write The Alphabet. DGP is 384 pages in Word, and 4 more sections still need to be put on line. I see the thing as a poem. not, that is, a collection of pieces, tho it can be read that way, and that's likely how I would read. serial pieces, so one should keep that in mind as a fact of it, however one wants to take it. I will probably produce a pdf file for the thing, if it's not too awkward to work with something this size. I'm writing to myself here, aren't I? the poemn is for BETH, I dunno how it could be otherwise but I guess you don't have to worry about that. I also dedicate it to her father, who died last year in West Virginia. a kind of act of. both the for and to are personal made public, but I guess, without clearly knowing why, that it is more than that too. maybe you could trust me that far.