we watched Epic Movie yestreen. of particular interest to Erin, but the tv ads when it was in theatres looked funny: I was all for killing the evening with it. of course the ads cornered the humour available in the flick, but so it goes. I have a pretty heady tolerance for these 2-bit parodies, like Scary Movie (I've seen parts of at least 2), and so forth. EP is by no means as well crafted as the various movies by the creators of Airplane. instead, it survives with a throw it in the moat and see if anyone salutes motivation. so there's much that is stupid, lame, puerile, as well as a few hearty laughs. welladay! it begins by posing the idea that it has a plot. brief back stories parodying Snakes on the Plane, X-Men, Nacho Libre and DaVinci Code brings the 4 lead characters together. there's a disturbing outing into Willy Wonka land (despite Depp, I was in no mood to meet that film) then it's a scuffle largely with Narnia. one starts to feel the compelling sag of the originals. I mean, just a little undermining serves to send the whole mountain sliding. the cast is nameless, except for a few recognizable cameos like David Carradine and Fred Willard. some of the satire was no more than imitation. Nacho Libre looked no different from the original, and now I wonder if I really liked the original. and I've sat thru Narnia twice, but seeing it twisted a trifle, I wonder at that as well. it's rather fascinating to see these cinematic wonders without the lens of movie magic, i.e. big budget. a nice bit was the glorioso battle from Narnia. in EP, it hinges on one of our heroes finding the clicker from that Adam Sandler film from last year. he stops the evil army in its tracks then, with his family, proceeds to lay havoc on the frozen warriors. all this muddle seems potent with some sort of aesthetic intention. or it is a learning node. think of poetry as signs of the poetic. so much of the crudzoid poetry we meet daily consists of signals telling us that we are in the presence of poetry. lofty sentiments and rococco malarkey and the whole 9 yards. the appeal of crappy and/or minor movies situates in the deft insincerity in which they work. don't those Oscar-worthy movies that are cranked out yearly overflow with sweet crude quality sincerity? sincerity of the commonest manufacture. we deconstruct with the urge to discover the real thing beneath the crap. Fred Allen said something like, Hollywood is a place where you brush away the tinsel to see the real tinsel inside. our daily duty, in poetry, is something similar. we seek to eject the clunky weak contributions of imitated energy. I guess I'm saying that Epic Movie gives a view of that process.

been reading Stephen Vincent's new book, Walking Theory (Junction Press 2007). of which this current ramble mayn't be a review. because, 'istorin, find out for yourself, but really, the book causeth mental ramblings. so look: first poem is simply the route of a walk, Nathan Whiting-style. and further on Vincent goes divagation and ponder. I don't mean to be lame here, just thinking of methodology in the option of walking, walking. when I ran more assiduously, 80+ miles a week, I used to fairly regularly transcribe the runs afterwards. couldn't help it. what Stephen does is more mature and philosophic, a thoughtful sense of place, in time as well as in space. death is present here because death was present for Stephen as the work was written. death of brother and father, fading of mother. I can only say his work with his mother is exquisite, makes me sad at my own failings as my parents drew towards the edge. but I shan't go further here regarding Stephen's work, I'll save that for another time and when. I'm drawn into thoughts of Thoreau, for instance. who certainly had his own walking theory. I live near the centre of a circle of say 25 miles diameter, just guessing, that Thoreau covered. check out his journals, crisscrossing his world. he applied himself to the world as if it were new and wonderful. isn't that the treasure of poetry? not, say, in the emotions described or enacted, but in its language. death and its lack of mercy may likely be a topic or starting point for a poem, for a writing, anybody's, but that aint the news. the news is the juncture of language and the person. Thoreau, or Vincent, wander, and see. writing is a way of seeing. I don't know the details but Stephen makes walking a part of his writing process. and Thoreau, you can see him rise in the morning, step from his cabin and apply himself to the miles and landscape, to see specific eggs hatch, or buds break. you can stretch it to Berrigan or O'Hara, this will in the world. I mean, you can stretch it to any poet worth the name, but those 2 make nice pictures. wandering out there under whatever impetus, writing swift briefs of their momentum. think of Dickinson, more painstaking, perhaps, and much more local and constrained. and what is Silliman's BART but that same acceptance. it appears I have no focus at this time so let me hint just this vaguely at the resonances I hear in these varied. each day and its opportunity. and I offer Walking Theory as kindly exemplar of method and process, of a mature arrogation of the writing act.

days at the library

days library, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

two towering human monuments

two towering human monuments, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

DAYS POEM in a tree

DAYS POEM in a tree, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

I biked over to Walden Pond this morn, as witness the pictures below. yes, The DAYS POEM Whirled Tour continues. which I am taking way too seriously, but anyway. it's a lovely place, tho fences, crowds, 5 bucks to park year round, all combine to take some magic away. not that it was ever a retreat, a mile stroll into the village. a spa was on the shore in the late 19th century, and let's don't forget that train that preceded David Henry David's arrival there. I got to the pond around 8, and performed photographic rites at the Thoreau statue and replica cabin. as I finished assaulting the statue a man stepped from the cabin and immediately spoke with me, as if we were finishing a conversation. he remarked how Thoreau's journal was some 2 million words, which works out to roughly 250 a day. I said, about a page a day, typed. yes, he said, but some days he might not write so much, and some days it might not be good stuff. and the thing is, the guy seemed vaguely familiar, like he was a tv personality, I mean of the sort on public tv. across the street and down into the geologic bowl, plenty of swimmers were in the water or soon to be. I mean distance swimmers, most of whom wore wetsuits. water level was unusually high, I've never seen it so. I remember walking there when Erin was 12, and he saw a ballasted person walking chin deep in the water. which amused Erin greatly, he had to converse with the struggling exerciser. I had strong feelings of 1st being with Beth. we went to Walden a number of times that spring and summer. which was also when I was writing DAYS POEM. so the poem inhabits that space, sure enough. hence this effort to take silly photos en scene. I went to the site of Thoreau's cabin. a picture exists, I might even have posted it to this blog years ago, of Beth and me standing at this site. we enjoined some lucky passersby to place our image into posterity. gosh, was my hat on backwards, my mouth dumbly open? and did we not look like recent refugees from that vaunted turnip truck? yep. an impressive cairn built of pebbles stand on the site, including several rocks with writing on them, poems even. I added another pebble. Thoreau presents the portrait of himself in his doorway making jonnycakes. inside, a bed, a chair and a table. a pleasant simplification. the idea of Thoreau escaping is perverse. his experiment took care of most of his needs, tho of course it was back to mom with the laundry. okay, we all have our imperfections. his scouring of the landscape was a job and purpose. his declaration that all one needs for a home is a coffin-like box is hilarious but only partly exaggerated. I'm speaking of the writer life. he had access to books, and the natural world was plenty book for him. he had a journal and pen. he had his flute. and now I'm thinking that the Thoreau expert that I met either had his facts wrong or I misheard, because 2 million words doesn't seem a lot. the edition I have of his journal is some 5000 pages. what would it be, 100, 200 words a page? numbers, whatever. he didn't write form, if you get me. he was thinking aloud. thinking in a creative sense. he wasn't campaigning against earlier poets or novelists so much as ideas. more essence than form. I think aesthetic competitions get in our way. I mean the taxonomies, such as Ron Silliman imparts to the literature that he reads. think of Thoreau on his walks, ready to be interested by everything. Silliman, not to single him out, insists on boundaries. of course a poem is not a birch leaf or rainbow trout, and no one should have to love crappy poetry. but I sense a but. Thoreau allowed his curiosity, accepted it as vantage. what I learned from Robert Grenier, seeing him in action, is this 1st step of seeing the writing as poetry. I thought he was exceptionally generous to the writers in class. the poetry world is driven by attainment. some of which are plain ludicrous: poetry prizes, vetted university chairs, and the sincerest chuckles of getting it at readings. some are merely miserable, the castigation of writer X in favour of vaunted Y. we all do it. I don't want to anymore. not because of Thoreau but because I'm finding a loss in such limitations of view. Grenier, it struck me, was excited by poetry, language in that intensity. descriptive assessments don't get far. gatekeepers, feh! I guess this Thoreau I'm inspired by is my invention,romantic as we all romanticize. but it is to a purpose, which I think is displayed in DAYS POEM. just o round this back to the beginning point.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Wow! Totally Awesome BOOK!!!

Wow! Totally Awesome BOOK!!!, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

not to out anyone, but Anny Ballardini wrote to say that she purchased a copy of Days Poem. yes, it is indiscreet of me to tell all. but in her message to me (hah! Days Poem's 1st incursion into Italy, Europe, anything to the right of Bedford, MA!!!) she referred to the poem as "Your Vocabularies". great, wonderful, lovely! I like that sense of active usage, that I write with "my" words. a writer on the Wryting list, Bob Brueckl, under-published yet astonishingly unique, frequently uses the words of other writers, most particularly those of John M Bennett. I don't know his process, but it is NOT a matter of quoting. Bob always credits the author from whom he mines the words, yet the poems always reverberate as original Brueckl's (id est: strange, lyrical, squalid, scatological and lovely). the possession of those words is fluid, is the point. so I believe that the words in DAYS POEM are mine as superluminary possessions that shine for the moment of the poem as mine. and you may use the same words as yours, even at the same time. !!!!! I guess it's a socialist possession, as the use and re-use is inexhaustible. anyway, thanks to Anny for her part in the potlatch that is poetry.

from Call Me Ish:

You can approach BIG America and spread yourself like a pancake, sing her stretch as Whitman did, be puffed up as we are over PRODUCTION. It's easy. THE AMERICAN WAY. Soft Turn out paper cups, lies flat on the brush. N.G.

Or recognize that our power is simply QUANTITY. Without considering purpose. That is, so long as we continue to be INGENIOUS about machines, and have the resources.

Or you can take an attitude, the creative vantage. See her as OBJECT in MOTION, something to be shaped, for use. It involves a first act of physics. You can observe POTENTIAL and VELOCITY separately, have to, to measure THE THING. You get approximate results. They are usable enough if you include the Uncertainty Principle, Heisenberg's law that you learn the speed at the cost of exact knowledge of the energy and the energy at the loss of exact knowledge of the speed.

I think this is wickedly wise stuff. doesn't that 3rd paragraph sound like a disquisition on language? America, that thing beyond country, is a language, as well as an implement. it is a political unit, of course, even as it slops over boundaries. but stop not there. you maybe heard of the investment turbine, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). bursting at the seams with the new working monster. not talking just poli sci or economics. here is language caught in people, or vice versa. a language of usage, and a usage of language. think of the recent examples in poetry. LANGUAGE poetry, which is so consciously political in its self-regard. or flarf, which is consciously apolitical it its sources. apolitical doesn't exist, of course, so naturally we have a cognitive intensity of concern in flarf's welcoming of the so-called inappropriate. I throw these out as examples of the merrie making to be confronted. I mean I go back to Olson, who I have been reading for 35 years. and he goes back to Melville. and Melville goes back. the news aint old, and it has something to do with how poetry aint a knick knack. it aint. it don't gotta be fraught with laboured points, but certainly it seems to live stronger in a confrontation of essential speech and action. love America? hate it? what's the point? sure there are American acts you can point to, either way, but the more majestic problem is the machine itself, and how it construes us. and by us, I mean every which person, creature, plant or entity humbled on this orb. how do we contain any of this in speech? how does speech become action? no doubt I'm way beyond myself here, but I just want to maintain that Olson aint ready for the back shelf, so far as I can see. and Moby Dick continues as a new and vital puzzlement.

so I started to (re)read both Call Me Ishmael and Moby Dick. I take Ish as exemplar in criticism, or how I want to involve myself therewith, at least. it's Olson's thorough involvement as a writer that makes it for me. that is, criticism as descriptor is only mildly useful to me, and this because my sense of taxonomy isn't particularly sharp. I like seeing Olson tussle familiarly with Melville. it's an energy exchange, and still highly charged. Moby Dick is dear to me as well. modernism became (as I see it, in that old century) a re-vision of boundaries. the poem as this deft enclosed field of posture, and the novel as romanticized neighbourhood of the unliving portrait: both these tributaries flexed into a repositioning stream. the nature of which slurs expectations. the interesting novels have released plot from its imperial directive. and poems aren't gems. MD is a poem, and why not. I think the stuck poems nowadays are practiced sessions with other poems, half-assed cloing experiments. you know, NY School Mach 99, LANGUAGE POETRY v 27. history, science, philosophy are saviours of both, allowing fresh air to instill, simply to instill. there's some critical lojinx going on, causing literature to turn into something slack and segregated rather than proficient and alive. art isn't decoration any more than it is a cv bullet. the arts are something integrally inside life, a communication and process and integration that doesn't just enrich but motivates and encourages. which is why the art maven naysayers as well as the blind eye provocateurs are so wrong. I know I'm screeding out, when I only want to remark the vivacity of both Melville and Olson in their astonished work of discovery. "What did happen to measure when the rigidities dissolved?" asked Olson in a Melville essay. kick ass, you tards, is the message, grown into the spring wind of lovely grass and leaves and hopeful flowers for a while.

Henry Gould's project (his oeuvre, I mean) has a comprehensiveness that certainly fits the modernist sway, but also points to an enveloping commitment that I find admirable. or put it this way, I don't care that 17 new poems arrived somehow (and now must be turned into a chaobook to announce on the Poetics listserv), that magic act doesn't get old, but still, what is it that you embrace beyond production? I like obsession, focus, dedication, tho not in the sense of chaffering venues to accept your poems. I like poems connecting to an active life of process, not just freshened manufacture. hail to thee blithe guy in Providence. I mean, this is going on before your/our eyes, O public eye, this growing work. part 2 of my ramble, vaguely connected, nods to Eileen Tabios's doctrinal acceptance. recognize, as some New York buzz bombs tiresomely can't, that the struggle is human and possible, even as poems sometimes occur. everyone's nervous about their 'wares', because poetry lacks mathematical assertion, or at least, poets so lack. you write 15,000 poems in a year and some hang around and some blow funk. where's the control? oh, it's on your nasty blog!!! not for Eileen, and this is a force to reckon with. not to say I'm a positivist. I'm just another ego in the ego room, so I feel cramped all the time. but in stray moments I remember that I've flailed and flailed, albeit not overly publicly. I have 1000 pages on potential display (Days Poem the marketing exercise), and when I look at it, it is new to me. I feel like the poem's relative, not author. I have no schematic by which the work developed. you know what I am saying. you write by accepting. you cannot, let us say, out think the poem, because the poem aint thinking, it's doing/making. the made/done thing. it is on the poet to be in the positionfor the poem. and the reader, good lord, you are on the same ride, too!

The Official Days Poem Publication Site!

additional exclamation points available upon request

you may notice, in the picture below of DAYS POEM--the book, the reading experience--posing on the stone pointing to Emerson's grave, that someone (not me) placed a dime on top. now, to be frank, I was already creeping myself out taking these pix (and yet...). the dime doesn't seem such a nice gesture. I was creeped out further at Alcott's grave, which had a goodly sprinkling of pennies on the grave itself. I didn't even want to enter DAYS POEM into that image. grave as wishing well? or are the pennies for the ferryman? little late for that. I certainly mean to take a photo op at Walden, which DAYS POEM mentions frequently, and I may even have written some of it there.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

good taste is timeless

a delightful view

a delightful view, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

DAYS POEM Promotional Tour

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

DAYS POEM Promotional Tour

-- DAYS POEM--

the book is now in hand. I have seen it. I carried it to the Indian restaurant this evening, Erin and Beth took pictures of waiters at the restaurant holding it. it's for real!!! it looks awesome, thanks to Erin who designed the cover (from a couple of my paintings) and to Shanna Compton, who provided emergency tech help. the visceral thrill of the book in hand suffuses me. last year I offered EILEEN TABIOS a manuscript, which--gracious!--she accepted. in some casual aside I mentioned a certain extra long manuscript that I had. unexpectedly, this piqued her interest, she asked to see said ms, she accepted that, and so the story goes. a publisher willing to publish 1000 pages of an un(der)known: this is money where your mouth is territory. I sound way too glib here, because I think this is miraculous. certes, I can thank the changing publishing model, Lulu et al., that makes the commitment less egregious. but it is still a mighty commitment (to poetry, to possibility). I am thankful to Eileen for giving this poem an opportunity to be seen. this is not just a bullet on my cv, this is proof against my own innate hopelessness re the mechanics of the poetry world. so, promote promote promote, because the poem is beautiful, if you will trust the conduit to say so. so...

To celebrate the release of Days Poem, Meritage Press is pleased to offer the following SPECIAL OFFER:

To order a single volume, a 20% discount and free shipping/handling (about a $3.00 value) for a single-volume price of $22.40

To order both volumes, a 25% discount and free shipping handling for a 2-volume price of $42.00

This offer will be good through June 30, 2007...and is expected to be the least expensive rate for purchasing the book(s). Please send checks made out to "Meritage Press" and mail to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

to the right are urls to the books, if you love the internets.

so we were there, watching Pirates yestreen. if I were writing whilst in the theatre, I might've leaned on excoriation, but I'm cooler now. it's a hard film to deconstruct (Kasey Mohhamd makes a good stab), because it's just so crowded. so anyway, three of the theatres at the plex offered Pirates. we got there earlier than expected and saw a rash, good word, of plain ole tv commercials. no explosions. then we got the usual trailers. Live Free or Die Hard signals the apocalypse. I know all those cars flipping into the air will draw the crowds but Bruce Willis tops my Go Away list. as to Pirates, I just kept facing the situation I experienced. instead of watching the movie, I watched myself watch the movie, as one minor dividend of the avid whole. it begins with an apparent clip from Tale of Two Cities and a fake sense of import, then lets the camera find Keira. it was a greater relief, tho, when Barbossa appears. the character and the performance strike the right note, finally, of over the top and grim weird. then the movie feels on track, somewhat. Johnny on the Bonneville salt flat gives us some trippy fun. then our gang of heroes and villains agglutinate into various configurations until the movie ends. I don't think you can watch this movie without considering Disney's stocks. the larger picture, that is. it's like a contest to be the greatest moneymaking scheme ever. it looms with an American value of enterprise. there were moments when I viscerally felt the theme park ride whence the franchise grew. all the sensory input as we sat there, safe from any thoughts. the formerly comedic pirate duo were largely drained of fun but instead placed as placards along the way toward that bottom line in black. placards, what could possibly be writ on such placards? something along the lines of give up, submit, stop worrying. whatever. Calypso and Davy Jones basically disappear in a weird refusal to tie up loose ends, suggesting, I suppose, an intention to make a 4th Pirates. the maelstrom battle was a lot of jiggled string in front of a young cat. the movie ends wistfully, in the sense that it doesn't want to stop making money. well, that's enough for this movie. it really agitated me as I watched but that has worn off, and not much else remains. aptly, today's word of the day is sequacious.