I fear that Karl Merleau-Marcuse betook himself too heavily of the powers of ABBA. serious mojo at work there, not to be taken lightly.

I'm writing this entry from the top of Mount Olympus, where, I should say, the view's terrif.

it's about time

I just gave myself the award for Best Blog. Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair. I couldn't've done it without me.

Henry Gould states on his blog that he will not repeat not be reading Wordsworth at Wordsworth on saturday, 'our' reading. which leaves the task to me.

when oft to stream the delicate repose
and wending cloudlike o'er the rustic lea,
sweet Lucy, soft of breath and in fell throes,
performs an outdoor appendectomy

opportunity teaching

This fall instituted will lead a Paulo Freire, which will meet 11 Tuesdays in my South. Arrive lime flavoured garden during indoor drill thru intending to go.

Institute means faction, nonfaction, prosit, poet, wry cross-genre (and cross gander) including but not anything edgy to present that feels too rind of orange risky or sexy fustian or queer for academic. The buds are awful in the mountain boundary rating. The totally open-ended five people present a week, scheduling that the weak people usually bring in something less copies. For everybody, we critique it that longer pieces are also okay, but they need to be handed ahead of people. Each student typically gets time. Institute critiques the classes lots and lots. Personal attention takes place in my South, which comes complete.

Institute’s latest book, Pink’s Team, a collection of force fitting fiction, meuble memoir, and my memoiresque cat, was in June. Suspect thought’s press, dozens have daily read away. My vampire letters of University of Wisconsin teaches creative writing at SF State. Institute also taught at Institute. I'm the winner.

Institute you're interested about etc, you know anybody, please pass them. Past classes have quickly, if so you're interested. Treat an ounce with you liquor demon about a next time policing.

Thank doting, skip to my faction.

"Yet I don't see myself so much as reclusive as unfortunately faced with nothing to be reclusive from."--from a comment by Geof Huth on Ron Silliman's hitpoint enriched blog. Geof speaks specifically of the visual poetry non-scene, there being no hubs of likeminded. I guess I feel similarly, tho for me it's merely that I haven't pressed myself into the scene. do I really have to do that to be read? types are not men.

16th section (of 18) of Digital Cellular Phone now up but please don't go there unless someone you respect tells you to

At The Beginning with AHB, the Langpo Experience

here’s the true story. in 1972, Barrett Watten came to Franconia College, in Franconia New Hampshire. this tiny ‘experimental’ hippie college sat on a mountainside just north of Franconia Notch, site of the geologic outcropping of stone called the Old Man in the Mountains (rest in pieces). legendary poet Robert Grenier (pre-legend) taught at this college, using strange writings by such writers as Charles Olson, Gertrude Stein, Louis Zukofsky to bedazzle and confuse youthful students of the so called poetic art. Barrett came to visit Robert, ostensibly, as my investigations determined, to develop the 3rd issue of This. a buzz flickered thru the tiny school’s keen community of poets, all ten of them. Anselm Hollo, at another time, visited our school, tho I caught only a glimpse of him, as he smoked his thin cigar. Larry Eigner had visited, even to sit with us round a cafeteria table and talk poetry. I knew thru all these machinations and others (such as Robert posting his index card poems on a hallway wall) that something was ‘up’. Barrett sat in on one of our classes, literally. in the corner, coolly, not saying anything. he did not betray his mission. sources indicated, however, that there was more going on than two fellow experimental poets meeting in the deep places of New Hampshire, much more. secret meetings between these two powerhouse post-modernist influences were in the books. their plans to change the face of literature was in process. there was no way I could access these meetings, for my cover was as a common semi-serious student as much concerned with Quicksilver Messenger Service (they would never, alas, top their “Happy Trails” album) as I was with poems of one word—e.g. lighght–perhaps even more so. luckily I was able to, let us say, get wind of a few facts. having written a publishable poem of a certain experimental sort, I’d worked my way into a position of trust amongst the inner sanctum. This 3 would even have a place for me! and I was trusted enough to have dinner with visiting important poet John Ashbery at Grenier’s post-modern headquarters, and being introduced (three times) to poet-hero Robert Creeley at a post reading party. people, I was there at the beginning!!! the furtive joys of a nEw WritiNG were being sown. the bloody revolt against mainstream poetry, the sanctity of certification thru viable academic dialogue, the scads of really dope books written by feverish undergrads with awesome degrees on their minds were bringing avant garde (or is that avant grade?) back into the present where we can see it: all 'this' had yet to happen at this point in time. but the world was turning. yes, and it was my good fortune not to get reviewed or noticed or published or whatever till years and years later I decided, what the fuck, I’ll just use this internet shit to get my work before a public that, like, well, may or may not care that much, but anyway, you know, here it is and all…

my father in dementia or Alzheimer's losing mooring, where is where. asks: did you know Eleanor Bramhall (id est: my mother). confusion in the brain itself, language on the outside. where are we? and worse: what are you doing to me? this confusion. words as improper tools. "my language did this to me". he came back, and he knew he came back (what happened?) with Ravel's Bolero and even drumming together, bang the drum.

newspaper articles about my poet laureateness who is there

this is cool:

"In utopia forget who you are.

-Can I bring a small computer/books?
-Can I bring my own food?
-Can I leave for a few hours if I need to?
-I am expected to participate three times a day?
-Do I fill out forms and then you write back/call?"

--David Hess (his blog)

we're pretty eager out here aren't we?

Mode Z

Could we have those trees cleared out of the way?
And those houses, volcanoes, empires? The natural
panorama is false, the shadows it casts are so many
useless platitudes. Everything is suspect. Even
clouds of the same sky are the same. Close the door
is voluntary death. There is one color, not any.

Prove to me now that you have finally undermined
your heroes. In fits of distraction the walls cover
themselves with portraits. Types are not men. Admit
that your studies are over. Limit yourself to your
memoirs. Identity is only natural. Now become
the person in your life. Start writing autobiography

--Barrett Watten, 1-10 (This Press, 1980)

how L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E*y is that? I think it is lovely. "Types are not men".

Just Like A Real Italian Kid by Michael Gizzi (The Figures 1990). a thin chap full of. memoir but in a cursive yet direct prose. telescopic leaps and nugget finds. I really like this. I saw him read at the Boston Group Grope of 2000, and thought that was as good as reading gets. measured, quietly sly, very commanded. I don't think I got M Gizzi till I heard him. I heard several readers at the Boston Massacre (NEGordon, for one) who built up similarly impressive heads of steam, but were scattershot compared to Gizzi. virtuoso slinging is still slinging.

also reading Metropolis by Robert Fitterman (Sun&Moon 2000). reminds me of Ark, by Ronald Johnson for how it varies stylistically as needed. it also reminded me of Stacy Doris's work, in its energy. what I know of SD's work, it's a generous havoc, wild and comedic. Fitterman's work paces differently, more leisurely and with less eruption. both SD and RF are very New York not in the sense of That School and the myriad copiers, but in the presence of the city. we came up 95 from New Jersey lst june going wow, the Jersey marshes, wow Brooklyn Heights, wow the skyline, wow the George Washington Bridge. that New York. oh, I also thought of Hart Crane as I read RF. Nick Piombinio offers some links to further bits of Metropolis. I recommend that you apply yourself in that way.

reading Walking by Stephen Vincent (Junction Press, 1993), which includes precursors to his "Walking Theory" poems. I think the writing is attention. there are myriad ways to accomplish that. I see Blackburn or Wieners as immersion. I think SV observes more quietly. Both Wieners (I'm thinking I may be the only poet in the Boston area who never met JW)and Blackburn, as to the natures, get beat about, retaining keel enough to hold the writing up or upright. SV stands in moments (note to self: how does one write about poetry without soundign blurbish?), plucking petals to float. and I mean that. "African Cycle" begins with this list:

Kill the cow
Drink the milk
Climb the tree
Break the branch
Scale the mountain
Split the rock
Pick the fruit
Throw the apple
Mine the metal
Burn the copper
Open the bucket
Fling the paint
Pick the cotton
Eat the seeds
Steal the pants
Rip the seam
Burn the house
Use the flame
Call an ancestor
Bury his name

I esp like "Steal the pants". it's all process. by the bye, the titles to Irish dance tunes can often evoke neat images and feeling, "Rip the Calico", "Toss the Feathers". anyway, I'm just poking long, it's how I read nowadays.

"Homosexual Tearfully Admits To Being Governor Of New Jersey"--The Onion of 08/18/04. must put Onion into links. in the 70s the National Lampoon could sometimes rise above puerile and sophomoric. one memorable piece had a page of pictures of 'revolutionaries', Jane Fonda, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Jerry Rubin, with captions what they were up to lately. Fonda going fom war protest to thigh-trimming, etc. I think at the top there was a banner: When It Coems To Revolution. on the next page was a Chinese Revolutionary-style poster of the writers of the mag, with the banner: We're All You've Got Left. humour is a constant revolution. altho you think of all those comedians who seemed edgy or even funny, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldbeg, Billy Crystal, Michael Keaton, who signed on to the floor show, got serious, and are full of crap. selah and all that.

how come poetry is a simple map and we're all so lost? well, it's late august, on that map and elsewhere, and we're not above being low, or too small to think big, or other numbers added at random. I don't have an occasion for saying anything beyond saying anything. sometimes I think I've done something.

I was just reading O'Hara's Personism, but still I dunno if this by Mairead Byrne aint Personistic. something direct and person-able. I can't quantify what O'Hara does, and god help me, I think I can do it sometimes. this piece by Mairead touches that 'thing'.

turns out that Kent Johnson wrote MY book Simple Theory, from which I will probably read at Wordsworth (in Cambridge) next saturday around 5pm, (EDT), the selfsame book that is available from SPD, a great gift, by the way. I mean wow, that Kent Johnson sure is a trickster to fool even me!!!

check Jukka's post at nonlinear for yesterday (thursday 8/19). a pleasing curve in the southeast quadrant. 'fucking' kinda top centre. over to the west, 'samba'. I have nothing clever or illuminating to say here, just am taken by the texture and depth that treats the eye.