when I saw this poem by Tom Beckett I wondered who this Allen Bramhall is, I got good vibes from the name. well nemmind that, the poem speaks to my own idea of narrative. I appreciate Henny Youngman's jokes for their desperate succinctness. he removes the extraneous so that his jokes are almost entirely punchline (take my wife, please). I believe poems should propel themselves with the most eficient machinery. which isn't a call for short poems but dense, essential ones. the plots in novels most often are the fakest part. the logic of narrative shouldn't be so linear because that linear throb assumes too much by way of antecedents and motivation. thus the episodic jounce interests me more. momentary revelations. so the 14 parts of Tom's poem are expansion points. the narrative occurs within these points but also, more importantly within the realm defined by the title. where such questions as these occur: why is this called a sonnet? how are these 14 stories tied together? why do these stories seem to be answers to unasked questions? it's deftly done, because if these are boiled down from stories, what the reader gains is not a reconstitution of each story but a renewal of the terms of story. the starting point is revitalized with new possibiities. anyway, that's my riff.

Antic View is at its 101st installment and Captain Element is at its 3rd.

watched Warlock last night, a horror movie. I'd seen it before (as it turns out, not the beginning). I might've better warned Beth and Erin of its nature. I did recall some gory parts but what I'd enjoyed were the funny parts. it begins in Boston in 1691. a rather pleasant few minutes of evoking that place and time, then some Puritan yolks are seen marching to this stone tower. inside is a fellow in chains. he's the warlock, and he's to be executed. bursting in amidst this is a fellow wearing fur who I guess captured the warlock. came in to gloat. I didn't see any of this part on my previous viewing. well, as things would have it, the warlock manages to escape into a handy vortex, and the furry guy leaps after him. cut to present day (about 10 years ago). a young woman is roused in the night by a noise. this is Lori Singer, who I've seen somewhere or other but can't recall where. her brother played Beastmaster (I think), so, um, you know. anyway it's not Lori who rushes to investigate the noise, it's her character. her male roommate comes out from another room. he has his slippers and robe on. reminds me of 50s sitcoms when anything that happened in the night perforce causes people to get robe and slippers on before doing anything else. what's the point of escaping a burning building if you're not wearing your slippers? they see the warlock unconscious on the floor, he having crashed thru the window. they strike me as rather blase about his arrival. I think Lori, or Kassandra with a K, might've said something like welcome to California. still, it was more like, oh look. K wants to call the police but the roomie opts for compassion, so the warlock is bedded down. next morning K goes to work. roomie later gets up and makes breakfast. as he does so, warlock enters. played by Julian Sand, who I've seen elsewhere, with a similar exultation of creepy evil. he has a long blond ponytail, dressed in black and oozes sexy evil. the roomie chatters happily, perhaps a tiny bit interested in this streamlined piece of evil. warlock notices the roomie's ring. quite suddenly, warlock grabs a knife and chops off the ring finger. roomie cries but doesn't bleed. warlock calmly puts ring on. he then not so explicably kisses roomie roughly. by roughly I mean he bites roomie's tongue off and spits it into the hot frying pan. in case anyone hadn't caught the evil that was warlock. I don't, btw, recall a name attached to warlock. this roomie scene didn't quite please the others and it didn't zackly work the plot. anyway, later K discovers that her roommate has died. meanwhile, the warlock visits a fortune teller. he wants to talk with his father Zamiel. the fortuneteller fakes a visit, warlock says tut tut and then the fortuneteller, with visage altered horribly, channels, um, dad. who has a rough echoey voice, as evil incarnate often does. warlock must collect the three parts of the Grand Grimoir that are scattered about. the world, all worlds, will cease to exist if he does so. but he'll get to live on with dad. to him, this is a good thing. dad offers the expedient of cutting out his (but alas her) eyes out, and they will lead warlock to the pages. that's another scene that would've been best left unseen by the others. okay so Redfern, the other guy swept into the vortex, appears. he gives K some helpful plot points. then he's hauled in by the police, who K called when she was more distrustful of weirdos from the past. then warlock returns, smashes a piece of furniture in which is hidden, it turns out, 1/3 of the Grimoir. he puts a spell on K that ages her 20 years a day. so now we have our quests. 1st she bails out Redfern. they must find the bracelet that warlock took from K so that the aging process can be reversed. additionally there's that detail about the Grimoir, end of the world, and all. here the movie actually gets pretty perky. K's Valley Girlness and anachronistic Puritan Redfern combine for some humour. Redfern has a compass that, using a stray drop of warlock's blood, can locate the malefactor. so now we needn't wonder whether ever the twain. all make their way to Colorado, where they find a Mennonite family that happens to have part of the Grimoir. oh wait, the creepy scene in which warlock talks up a child. this is a cinematic trick that's almost too much. innocent unsuspecting child and this fellow who we know can will do anything. it turns out warlock needs an unbaptised boy's rendered fat so that he (warlock) can fly. we see nothing of the murder but it hangs in our heads. and given that the murder is only to facilitate the movement of a character, the horridness is magnified and not compelling. well Redfern and warlock tussle. at one point, Redfern has his whip wrapped around warlock's ankle and is being dragged by the flying evilness. it looked like, as Erin said, Macy's parade. speaking of which, Big Bird on thursday, because of wind, was kept low to the ground and face down. rather an indignity. a weird shot of a commentator with Bird Bird being led by had a ceremonial smack, as if Big Bird were to be sacrificed. I mean, such a deed would be evil enough for warlock. anyway, Redfern almost gets warlock but warlock buzzes the Mennonite grandpa in the eyes with his X-Ray Vision, and Redfern cuts off battle to save him. K, now aged, has a weapon, at least. driving a brass nail into warlock's footprints will stab warlock. warlock, who's holed up in a boxcar, craftily puts a piece of wood on the soles of his feet to protect himself. K craftily bangs a nail into the impression of warlock's butt on the ground. that puts warlock in extremis, and K closes in for the kill, but then the train starts to move. K with her granny legs can't keep up. but she finds her bracelet, and so is youthed back to normal. okay now I think they only guess that part 3 is in Boston, so they fly back. warlock hides in the bilge or whatever the word is that I can't remember. the good guys confront the priest of the church who clues them in that the Grimoir is probably at the burial ground, it being hallowed ground. the word is hold, hold. then warlock visits the priest too. he inveigles the truth from him by threatening the child in the womb of the priest's servant. oddly, it sorta came across as if the child was the priest's. anyway, the final battle. they find the Grimoir but K realizes that the burial ground has been moved and that the ground is no longer hallowed. which means the warlock is free to come. which he does. fight fight fight. Redfern's ass is kicked and K's been thrown into the bay. warlock intones the grim words of the world's cessation, clouds develop, yikes. but K climbs from the bay with her syringes. see, it has been meetly established that she is diabetic. she stabs warlock in the neck with the syringes crying, try salt water, fuckbrain. it also having been meetly established that salt is anathema to evil incarnate. so warlock melts, clouds disappear and all's back to a proper whimper not a bang. Redfern and Kassandra with a K enjoy a chaste loving moment then Redfern is whisked back to his time. Kassandra finishes the movie by burying the Grimoir in the Bonneville salt flat. the end.

I started another blog, namely Captain Element. I would like to keep at it, thematic, but whether that's in the cards, I dunno. I am interested in narrative, just not so interested in stories. stories being the overdetermined part of narrative. the blog, if I persist, will be my adventure if not yours. my point here is the sort of flarfy goings on in these 2 pieces. I use the term flarfy carefully and warily. 1: flarf is not mine, I'm borrowing what I like. 2: I no more want to enclose my work than any others (tho I do both often enough). Kasey Mohammad writes of his interest in and preference for the unpoetic, or apathy for the poetic." that unpoetics feeds flarf, and not just flarf. the pop heroes and characters that I confiscate are these heightened, goosed, platitudes. I think flarf hovers on such like. I like the collision of the hoky, the stupid, and the intense. in a way--a screwy way, for sure--the racism in the Fu Manchu books, and Tarzan, and Robert E Howard, is a good thing. it's the serious, if warped, side of the general goofiness. so I'm reading now Corn & Smoke by Blaster Al Ackerman (Shattered Wig Press 2006). I traded my own book, Simple Theory, to Ric Royer for it, I believe they work in the same bookstore. goofy, hilarious, short prose pieces. some are narratives. I've seen Blaster Al's work in John Bennett's Lost and Found Times. the mainstream and the avant garde (I know, what the hell do those terms mean) often sound ALIKE and unimpressive and heard it before. the good energy of flarf is its grasp on the pervasive nuttiness. the bad energy, as Kasey points out is "when flarf simply becomes another item on the craft-based academic menu (this actually seems to be happening in some places), it loses a large part of its reason for existing." I guess I'm in the surprise me school of readership, or learn me something. Blaster Al--and were I to meet him, I'd sure enough say Blaster Al--is a subversive. flarf is interesting to the degree it wields subversion. the arts continually need subversion, it's the breath of change and growth for that which possesses the countering impulse to solidify (hey, let's all write Frank O'Hara New York poems!!!). so anyway, I see in my own 'tactic' with Fu Manchu et alia a comprehension of the unpoetic. at any rate, the prose style comprises squalid Victorian virtues and the avant's foot disjunctively in the next metre forever. that's what I see, anyhoo. the real tactic is impatient, and could we change the channel puh-LEASE!!!

a couple nights ago we popped over to the mall, really just for the Indian food at the food court. it being closer and cheaper than any other Indian alternative, and decent besides. and the mall is alit with seasons greetingness. the mighty food court sits beneath a glass rotunda with strings of white lights hanging down and blinking at a tastefully slow rate. on the floor under the rotunda is a mandala design. children invariably gather there and invent games that make use of the sections of the design, or they race around its perimeter. the chasing game was in full swing when a younger child happened in. she was too young to quite get the social thing and so raced about wildly, screaming and excited. a number of children were dressed in sunday best, having performed that Santa picture thing for grandma. Erin had some errand and dashed off. Beth and I strolled the fairly quiet mall. we parted when I wanted a look in the Apple store and Beth was drawn like a magnet to Crate and Barrel. those Apple toys sure are tempting, I'm embarrassed to say. embarrassed because I know I'm beguiled by the slickness. the store offers a bunch of tables on which are displayed the goods. I couldn't tell who might be store employees, a lot of people seemed wired in several senses of the word. I also don't know if I show fogy by seeing little need for a video iPod. I mean maybe seeing Kramer have a nutty on that 2 inch screen, but do I want to see Caribbean Pirates of the Penzance part 19, chapter 47, redux 99, the prequel, on it? I dunno. the new shuffle is pretty small, but you still got the wires. next stop implants, and William Gibson can rest. so then I toddle (because the crowd was small I had room to toddle) to Crate and Barrel. where Beth and I ogled the Christmas ornaments. if you like colour and glitter... tasteful in an overstated way. the colours are like magic in my eyes. Erin being in wander mode we repaired to Pottery Barn, where Erin knows he can find us. ornaments there were much subtler and refined. and heavy. give me the brighter colours. Erin didn't appear so I did reconnaissance. while walking the mall I noticed a woman sprawled on a short couch. it seemed early in the season to be wasted by shopping but I thought nothing more of it. naturally when I returned to PB Erin was there with Beth. we went down the mall again. the woman on the couch had slumped to the floor. I didn't noticed till I'd passed. several people were with her. it became obvious, once I could see (because a crowd gathered), that the woman was really unwell. she didn't appear conscious. people were saying, what should I do? a woman helping said call security. Beth more wisely advised call 911. the woman threw up, which was scary because she wasn't conscious. in situations such as this I feel, seeing things in hand, to step away discreetly and not be part of he staring. we moved on to make a quick purchase for Erin then came back, by which time EMTs were strapping her onto a gurney. hardly apropos but I'm reminded of when my mother had broken her hip. she and my father were going in for her first check up by the orthopedist since she came home. she wasn't that good using the walker then. going up the slight incline to the hospital she fell backwards. immediately doctors came out and said don't move. the ambulance had to be called, coming from the fire department 5 miles away, to move 100 yards up to the emergency ward. I get why that is, but it still doesn't impress my intuitive sense. anyway, today, Thanksgiving morning. the dog and I passed the still smouldering remnants of a bonfire, I guess to inspire the football team to take no prisoners. I don't know where they find that many witches to burn. I guess the game is in enemy territory.

at the risk of sounding all buddhisty and all, I feel I ought to point again to Access to Insight. it provides n enormous amount of texts for Buddhist study, including a great deal of the Pali Canon in translation. texts, commentaries, even help with the Pali language itself, were you so scholarly minded. this is what the perfect world vision of the Internet would provide, back when we were dreaming about what the Internet could do. sensible navigation, visually clean and clear, it's simply a great repository of works. a companion site, Sutta Readings, provides readings. this is useful as much of this work originated orally, with reinforcing repetitions that you can find yourself skimming as you read. the frame of reference for both sites is Theravada Buddhism, but not exclusively.

I don't seem to put poems on this site much now. I burden the collaborative blog Taking the Brim with some of what I write. here's yet another Fu Manchu poem. I've let myself write many poems featuring the sinister doctor.

another paint class at the adult daycare. the last time we did it, a woman produced 20 mostly monochromatic paintings (she's always very productive). someone had put them on the wall end to end. the person who did this did it logically, phasing from one colour to another. the thing is, that's how the woman painted them. I watched her go from black to blue to green in succeeding pictures. the result on the wall, a 20' long painting. and it has a sort of narrative to it. fascinating. today, this woman did vertical strips. lots of black but with other colours shadowing. and she's so happy and excited as she paints. I talked a lot with one woman. she really wants to paint but has that voice saying no. she's better educated than the others in the class but is very gracious and supportive. some of the people can be grumpy, or depressed, or just distracted. this woman asked me if it is more psychologically satisfying if you don't start with a plan. I said yes. she has the common problem of having all these models in mind that she feels she can't match. she was working the process of releasing that fears of inadequacy so she can do the painting she wants to do. one of the aides at the daycare started helping the woman by telling her what to paint, and even taking her hand and making the strokes. Beth took the aide aside and said don't help like that. yeah, we're not teaching technical skills. we're giving these people a chance to play. and it is necessary to go thru the process of breaking the resistance on your own. the woman who did the 20 footer was absolutely restricted when she 1st started doing our class.

Gary Sullivan points to this monster vid of rapper Ceza: zounds!!!. fast and faster, with, I assume, crisp enunciation (I give props to Bon Scott for being one of the few rock sceamers who enunciated). I find the speed ecstatic. there's a fair amount of music the excitement of which sits in the physical difficulty to produce it. certes, Ceza looks a bit knackered after his performance. but the performance is very musical as well as figuratively death-defying. the opposite end of the scale would be "Bells" by Albert Ayler (a link to which is to the right). I don't guess the technique of the trumpet or sax would overwhelm any half decent high school player, but the piece is 2 minutes of locked in joyful noise. I wrote recently of Silliman's lauding of Noah Eli Gordon's email-derived poem. Silliman kinda stops at concept, you ask me. if you want concept, read Love and Fame in New York by Ed Sanders. the book is full of wild, hilarious evocations of conceptual art. yet the idea is not the machine itself. I don't think that, as described, Gordon's poem is conceptual art. it is beyond concept, it is present. with Ceza's piece, well anyone can say, I'm gonna do it double (treble?) time. them tobacco auctioneers go lightning fast, and you might listen with amazement, but that isn't the same as the thing made by Ceza. or maybe it is. the point being it's not just idea but execution.

all was well...then Computer Troubles. well of course, I have 2 papers due soonestly. a couple years ago I had a paper to write and not only did my computer go down but so did Beth's. and just to make sure I got the message about technical intractibility, and hwo the gods have lined up against me, my electric typewriter went caput too. which just let me show how honking motivated I can be when time's running out. this time at least the hard drive seemed mechanically sound. I consulted Swami Yellow Pages, and got numerous possibilties for computer aid. several calls reached businesses disinclined to answer (I waited till 9am to begin my supplications), I assume they triangulated my phone number and recognized I wasn't a worthy or lucrative challenge. one saviour only made house calls, and that call cost 50 bucks, to which is added the actual cost of fixing sad machine. I found a local, residential even, number and went with that. the guy sounded sensible, and only charged dollar a mile, less than 5 miles away, to show up. he had that doctorly calm you look for. oh yes, I can do that. no, you haven't lost everything. seems like he was good with his word, for here I is. so okay, I'm getting a memory stick or some other save solution, because I can't be so self-ultimate all the time.

I have to wield the index finger for these compelling, strange photos. I mean particularly the ones under the rubric (it is a rubric, isn't it?) Detritus of War, oh and also Here's Mud in your Eye Mr Death. strange, unsettling, funny and exponential in their way. I love this sort of obsessive oddity, even the idea of making serious statements with GI Joe. I can't recall the guy's name--Herbert or Harold Gold, mebbe?--who was a part of the Golden Age of Pulp Sci Fi, in the 50s. he creatd a miniature town, photographed it and let writers use the town as backdrop for their stories. kinda cool. Donald's doing something like that, insinuating his action figures in his/our daily world.

latest trip to Barnes and Noble. a buzzing place. I used to think hail to thee blithe little bookstores, but the romance of them has paled. I would just as soon see a mongo selection than a cat sleeping on the counter. liking cats tho I do. selection, price and coffee, woohoo. there were signs of Christmas, with giftie stuff in plain view. and a major rearrangement had occurred. I couldn't tell at 1st if the piped in music was faceless Christmas music or faceless regular music. I guess it was the latter. I went in with a vague hankering and didn't know where to look. if John Hodgman had a new book out, bingo! but I didn't see such a thing. I made my dutiful trip to the poetry section. came close to getting Creeley's collected from 75 on. the blurbs for it were mostly by dead people, Williams and Olson, for 2. really, it was just that it wasn't the vague thing I came in hankering for that kept me from that purchase. several editions of Howl. Ginsberg's mug showed up in a number of manifestations, on his own writing and as representative Beat in collections and histories. in my dotage I grow more fond of Ginsberg. certes, he's it for pizzazz in the poetry section. it really could be pumped, but I suppose that's a radicalism. it's just so faceless, all these poets who think they've made it because their strophes dedicated to chickadess (wee gaunt challengers of winter's froreness) or Saul Bellow were 1st published in Poetry. I think at the poetry section I encountered a guy on the phone. it was some serious conversation he engaged that I could happily have ignored, but he had no intention in denying me my public right to eavesdrop. I think he said the like of, I'm not the type of person to fuck people over. good on him! he moved on, only to be encountered in the psychology/self help area. which I immediately left. many editions of Walden, collect them all. I guess the big news is that Nicole Richey has a book. a copy was in the window and I saw it in the stacks. beneath the title are the words: a novel a novel a novel. I should do it marquee style: a novel a novel a novel a novel a novel. the point is, for the unwary, that the book is a novel. not a dissertation on eating disorders, nor a tell all about Lionel Richey's wardrobe nor even a discussion of Paris Hilton's contribution to shoe theory. nay, it is a fictionalistical story. of some sort. a ghastly glamour portrait of Nicole graces the cover. she appears to be made of shiny plastic. someday I will collect a few such oddities and um read them. I looked around for Fu Manchu books but found none. not sure where to look. what I took home from this experience is William Gaddis' last novel, a book on the Civil War by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (division leader of the Maine unit that held the flank at Little Round Top and even, sans ammunition, chased Johhny Reb down the hill in a moment of wartime esprit. also a package of little Moleskine notebooks, I like them Moleskines. the Gaddis is his last novel. I wonder if it aint a posthumously patched together item. it's very short. I really loved JR, still haven't read Frolic of their Own. he only wrote 4 novels, by gum. the regular price for this treasure is 25 smackers, which is ridiculous, tho hardcover at least. luckily it was cheaped to the max, thus my readiness to take a swing. I'm not big on posthumous discoveries. I read one by Hemingway, which someone likened to the work of Robert Benchley. negatory on that one. at the time, Benchley was pretty much ne plus ultra for me (sheen's a bit off now but he's still semi god). and Hemingway wasn't within a country mile of Benchley. good lord!!! so psyched enough to have the goods I got. I don't even know what Beth got. Erin I think scored something in the realm of D&D or Magic card. I go thru all this semi-literary stuff but jinkies, the past week Jack Kimball has perspicaciously written up at least 5 poetry readings that he attended. Boston is not entirely empty of sceneness, and I had ought to place my support more boldly. but a trip to B&N is a family thing, which beats rock, paper and scissors, hands down.

2:00 this morning we were awakened by Coyote! Coyote and his pards. they seemed to be right below our window, yapping something fierce. the cat took their presence seriously, wide-eyed with an implicit you sure that window's closed? expression. the dog was elsewhere, I don't know how he felt about the canine influx. I've heard Coyote distantly before but never in a surrounding the cabin sort of send out your kitty and we'll leave you alone way.

Silliman lauds a book by Noah Eli Gordon. I shan't commit a Silliman slicing. to read Ron's commentary usefully, any of it, you must hold in mind his need for taxonomy, hierarchy and relationship. critically speaking, there seems to be a < reddish herring < swimming hereabouts, tho. what activates Silliman in his post is Gordon's particular appropriation, to wit: he wrote the book by collecting together emails he had received. as a tactic, that doesn't sound edgy. appropriation is appropriation, which is currently the talk of the town, isn't it. Silliman cites Ed Friedman's collation of phone calls, so even he recognizes that the there there aint there regarding the newness of method. plenty of variants exist. which is not to say that Gordon's work can't be fresh. it does seem to depend on the reader knowing his tactic, however: Silliman quotes the explanation that Gordon gives for his method that introduces the work. does that info need to be in the foreground? and Silliman doesn't even quite agree with the method, he would like to see Gordon jumble his text. there's a point where methodology and poetry aren't the same thing. method is just a personal way to survive in the poetic.

Listenlight #4 seems to be alive. may still be in twiddle-mode, but it looks good and good to go. visual and textual poems. Jeff Harrison's 3 haiku are skewed koan-ish oddballs. in the good sense.

......................................now appearing....................................................................................................now not.....................................................................................

I recently had an urge to read Robert E Howard. yes, I 1st read him in high school. the firstest book I got was Conan of Cimmeria. it had the usual Frank Frazetta cover. it showed Conan giving battle against 2 red headed Vikingesque giants, in a frore mountain scene. yo dudes, not the place to wear shorts. the arm of one giant lay on the ground, having been surgically removed by Dr Conan. nearby lay the patented Frazetta wet dream: a scantily clad babe in a bikini. all the human figures, even the giants (I believe they were Frost Giants) were dwarfed by the mountains. it was that, indeed, that caught my eye: the insignificance of those 4 beings amidst the glorious snow clad mountains. the stories are okay, definitely full of momentum. I admire writing that gets where it is going in that way. both Tolkien and Howard offer their share of cleft skulls (in football, that would be called having your bell rung) but Howard made them sound brutal whereas Tolkien made them sound like good innings at cricket. I remember my friend and I talking with someone who was a leedle more into Conan than either of us. my friend pointed out the racism of the stories and the guy was offended plus amazed at the very idea. but of course there is an underlying yuck to the stories, one should keep that in mind, as a handy reminder of the actual inner child. I just read some stories in Wolfhead, non-Conan stories. one story was perfect H P Lovecraft. the protagonist is an obsessed ghost hunter. well I mean, he is hip to all the arcane texts and has to go to Hungary or thereabouts to locate the scene of some horror. which he does. and sees ghostly figures reenact a terrible human sacrifice. Howard was only 18 when he wrote it, which is impressive. there's something puerile about such stories but it bounds along with admirable verve. the cover of that book shows a hunky bodybuilder with sword, entwined in the grip of an anaconda-sized serpent, in a dungeon locale, and a fair, fallen maiden in the background. what might be my only Howard tome currently in ownership, Conan the Usurper, now sits before me. it features an even larger, way much larger, snake. Conan's wrists are bound by chains. he sits astride the snake, which turns to face him. we see the mighty warrior's well-toned lats and dorsals, no one can say he hasn't been pushimg the metal. in the background are demonish creatures, some skeletons, and a pile of skulls. well how's the big Cimmerian gonna get out of that one? (beam me up, Scotty). my favourite Frazetta cover shows Conan on a warhorse, in battle. he looks like he should be riding with 3 other nasty ass horseman, he's pretty intensely into his game. when it comes to zooming action literature, I'll take Fu Manchu. Jeff Harrison informs me that Sax Rohmer was well into alchemy. well well well. I'm sure Dr Fu Manchu has expertise in that arena. Rohmer basically took Sherlock Holmes and added a fantastic aspect. that is to say, Sir Denis Nayland-Smith = Holmes, and Dr Petrie = Dr Watson. Nayland-Smith brings to mind James Bond, but without the imperative to actually save the world. it's enough if he spins his primly but earnestly English wheels. which he does. the mad Dr has all the advantages: brains, evil, arcane skills. thru bumbling and the help of the good English god, plus a certain stalwart respect harboured by Fu Manchu for the English race, things turn out okay for the forces of good. Fu Manchu has a prediliction to locate his hide outs in wet places, dockside, or under the Thames. not that Sir Denis or Petrie think to look there 1st. all these writers, they get the job done. the superfluities are largely banished. okay, the hairs at the nape of Conan's neck will rise up in alarum, and such like, but really, they don't get in the way of the writing. maybe the mostest of errors for poetry makers is the less than adventitious interference of the poet. hi, it's me talking. I don't even know what a poetry of the non-interference would be like. like O'Hara, mebbe, e'en tho first person singular appears often enough. it's not the 'I' but the weight behind it. wait wait wait: what is the source of poetry...???

hey, Google can do other things than supply text for post-modern poetic avant gardiness!!! which is to say I did due diligence (or I did do diligence) and looked up Ric Royer. this search brought me here, thence to The Performance Thanatology Research Group, here. worth poking around all the links. I like this line from the thanafesto for PTRS: "The Performance Thanatology Research Society is a group of scholars dedicated to the advancement of a higher histrionics brought on by imminent finalities". higher histrionics, ah hah! see, I'm wavery about performativity. but I'm antsy about the enclosure of just standing there reading as well. Royer's piece was more theatre than poetry in the sense that it depended on the story that he (partly, mysteriously) unraveled, and his tonal shifts and nearing and distancing factors (how he inhabits the character space, and how he steps back). so like well anyway, he presented himself something as a lecturer, but, let us say, sans rostrum (he did have a table to sit at, but it wasn't raised. he made eye contact at times (pretty intimate room). his tie (which had an exquisite line drawing on it) was conspicuously loose, the ends nowhere near matching. I wear ties rarely, but when I do, I get the ends to match in length, which means it takes me half an hour to get it right. but the point is, out of the frumpy ordinariness (and it must be a shock for anyone to receive the charge of frumpy, I realize I wield a powerful word), he draws underbrush aside and reveals a revel. the flarfistas are well-documented in their dramatic exploits, keyed up humour: the works want it. histrionics depends on the specific work. I would avoid grave intonations except used ironically (and I took KSM's test, and know I know nothing about irony--maybe it is just the quality of being like iron). drama is hyper, or often enough. I don't want to sell or buy the poem, but join it. one of the best reading's I ever saw was by Michael Gizzi, whose delivery was crisp and dry, just perfect to the work. me, I have a stubborn inbred taciturnity to deal with. interestingly, after the reading I mentioned to Ric a book I've been reading, Trickster Makes the World by Lewis Hyde, and he said oh yeah. nice coinkydink. the book relate the Trickster figure (Coyote, Loki, Hermes, etc) to the art world, Ginsberg and Duchamps his particular exemplars. that idea of art as transgressive, alternative, subversive is a rich one.

saw James Cook and Ric Royer read at Demolicious. for open mike, Joel Sloman read a non-translation of Baudelaire, and 2 others whose names I didn't retain read. then Cook read, a long work that centered on maps and mapping. it touched the local and history and let's say cosmology. these are Olson issues of course, but I wouldn't want to limit the poem or my own interest in such by leaning on that too much. Cook read with a wide-eyed nervous energy. indeed, he apologized for having a conflict such that he and his brood dashed out the door to elsewhere just about as he finished. Ric Royer followed. he's currently from Baltimore, having done penance in Buffalo, and I'm not sure where else. I knew this would be a multimedia performance but that's all I knew. he started by showing a slide. it was a comparison shot of 2 pairs of girls celebrating a high school basketball win. both pictures were near identical, same pose, same braid, and the girls looked the same. Royer purported that these pictures were of Bloomfield wins a couple years apart. he also said that no one knows where the pictures came from. he then went into a long story about the Museum of Doubles, which collects unusual twinships and doublings. I was probably the last one in the room to suspect that he might be making stuff up. he treated us to a long consideration of the relationship (love) between the proprietors of the museum. I can give but a bare jot of what the piece was like. the story took tangents and weaved about. I thought of Flann O'Brien and other fantastical fictions. a mysterious gothic romanticism overhung the story. his delivery was great, erudite yet um distracted. distracted by some gleam, that is. he sat at a table as he performed, had a laptop with the text in front of him, which he consulted but mostly he spoke seemingly ad lib to the audience. he showed occasional slides, and had a few objects, like a 2-headed nickel. that nickel, he admitted later, was from a magic shop, not the Treasury as he had earlier purported. (yes, there was a lot of purporting going on). the performance was funny, offbeat, philosophical, sly and engaging. a cd and book are due out soon. he said the idea is to read and listen simultaneously, as small differences exist between the 2. near the end he spoke a passage into a small tape recorder, then backed the tape up and did the same passage in tandem. Jack Kimball attended, so I hope he can give a better description of what Royer did. next month Stein scholar Ulla Dybo reads. I believe she will read something she prepared specifically for the event. I look forward to that.

I took the dog out around 6:30 this morn (en Francais, il est un chien!!!). echoing nearby was a siren. then an amplified voice. and I really thought for a moment, it was some SWAT action. as if. someone's alarm had gone off. maybe a quarter mile away as crow flies. 1st the police siren, then the voice would come in:

BURGLARY! BURGLARY! BURGLARY!
you are trespassing in an area
protected by a security system

with exhortations to absquatulate post haste. the voice was firm, yet with an underlying franticness. I can imagine this guy huddled in his safe room (or under his bed), speaking into the microphone: go away now or we, all ten, I mean fifteen, of us will deal with you before the police get here. right guys? um we're all black belts, too, by the way. we moseyed on for 15 or so minutes then saw two police cars leave the station area speeding towards the alarm. less than 5 minutes later, they drove back to their half eaten doughnuts, and the alarm continued warning. we wandered out of hearing but it must've been 1/2 an hour of that warning before it was curtailed. Lew Welch writes in a letter I think of being on a winery tour when the guide shouted a warning to someone who was close to falling into a vat. and Welch says he would like that same dire immediacy in his writing. when alarms go off, we get an adrenalin jolt. but as they persist, it's just noise. I get what Welch means, it's the imperative that he seeks. when the word quality, its issuance (can I use that word?), is undeniable. not the message, but the word so alive in its wordness. if a miscreant or culprit actually broke into the building, the first vocal warning would dismay. the repetitions only provide guidance that little time remains to do pronto whatever made b & e worth attempting.