watched Transformers yestreen. I'd seen the trailers and was sure that it would lack gumption, but then it just cried out to me. the trailer had it right. the movie consisted of constant robotic transformation and explosions. the stuff in between the transformations owed to Gremlins and Short Circuit. the movie at least brought the viewpoint down to a mildly likable character, the boy meets girl guy. boy meets robot, as well. the plot spun around autistically while the special effects confused the show. the transformations consisted of flashing movement that never clarified into anything the brain could hold steadily. and the action was a blur. I found myself checking my email and adding content to my new paranormal blog. I believe the door is open for a remake.

I watched the Fantastic Four movie, 2nd one is it? with Silver Surfer. when I say watched, that admittedly means that I missed a certain amount (most) due to sleep. still, I did see some of it. how much does one need to see, anyway? I saw the 1st one, and this one had the quality of being the 2nd one. it begins with the dopey premise of the FF being fab NY celebs. this seems unlikely because Reed's a nerd, Ben's a grump, and Sue's too well-grounded. only Johnny seems likely for such a trip. frankly, the dark night of the soul stuff that Marvel hit the jackpot with is exactly what turned me from comix. I never cottoned to the FF anyway. I'm not sure why except I will declare that Reed's stretchy super power is ridiculous. the computer-aided effects in the movie didn't help: he had cartoons for arms. it is funny to think how much silliness you can take, then there's a bit more and you just can't accept it. I can't wait to read the book, the physics of human torches. I had pretty well permanently stepped away from comics by the time Silver Surfer appeared. I got the impression that he was just another cosmic Hamlet moping thru the clouds. I hardly saw him in the movie last night. so anyway, Reed's stretching power is stupid. I am reminded of a Justice League of America comic from my fulsome youth. the story concerned a cadre of rejects who weren't up to Justice League snuff. JLA consisted of such youthful, lauded crimefighters as Super Boy, Super Girl, Ultra Boy, and Brainiac 5, in the year 3000 (SB and SG had to fly faster than light into the future to make the monthly JLA meetings and otherwise serve the organization). B5 was the 5th generation nephew of Brainiac, Superman's Nemesis. this fact could prove puzzling because Brainiac was an android, but there you go. anyhoo, the losers decided to form their own crimefighting unit, the Substitute Justice League of America. members all had super powers that were found wanting by the esteemed JLA. Chlorophyll Kid could make plants grow at an alarming rate. Polar Kid could freeze things with a beam from his hands. Night Girl had an array of super powers that, er, only worked at night. my favourite was Stone Boy who could turn to stone. unlike Ben Grimm, Stone Boy couldn't move in the lithic state. good defense, zero offense. in the comic, the JLA got into a 1st class pickle and whaddya think: the Substitutes form a rescue mission. everyone parachutes into the fray except Night Girl who, I believe, went to the night side of the planet and dug her way to the battle scene. impressive, but then, I recall Super Boy cut a planet in half, discarded the part that was engulfed in flames, took half of another planet, fused the two together. honestly, I read this, in 8 pages of stirring action. anyway, as they float down, Polar Boy barks out directions for everyone, including the immortal cry: and Stone Boy, you turn to stone!!!. even as a 10 year old, I thought as how Stone Boy in his lithic state might be more dense, thus heavy, thus too burdensome for his parachute. as in: why the heck doesn't he plummet like a stone? it was just that one bit of implausibility too much. not to leave you fretting, the Subbies saved the day and were awarded some recognition as 2nd rate super heroes. I am not aware that they ever appeared again in JLA activities.

I have allowed you to think, Tributarians (or the Multitude, as I like to call you), that I am keenly interested in poetry, shopping and the like. I am, certainly, but I am also committed to paranormal research!!!

 

I concur with Jack Kimball that Stephen Ellis's poetry should be read. Stephen's work possesses a momentum that requires repeated reading to make sense of. Stephen writes in what often seems like a run-on sentence, tho it's a run-on sentence with a driving spiral that grows clearer by its own insistence. the spiral grows clearer? the poem does, the energy does. happily, Stephen has, so far, embraced the blog space, is posting regularly. please attend.

I saw three poets read over the weekend. I was struck by the potential, or inspiration (I know that's a hefty word), that these poets offered. both Geoff Young and Nick Montfort presented the working idea of constraint, constraint as a creative possibility. Geoff utilizing the sonnet as a form to obey and disobey illustrated a canny opportunity available in the conscious attention to process. I take it that he squeezed existing poems into the sonnet constraint. his sonnets don't behave as sonnets, as he himself said, and yet they do, as he also said. his sonnets adhere to sonnet form only in being 3 1/2 quatrains in length. yet they possess sonnet grace, let us say. let me state that the idea of free verse, somewhere along the way, transmogrified into lazy verse, where poems merely consist of adjectives busying about a few nouns, in celebration of hyped up emotion. rote poem. constraints demand more effort, and not rote effort, but creative problem solving, which is what Beth says art is. rhyme and metre got tired as poets mechanically obeyed the timeworn rules. metre and thyme are exquisite when the poet actually feels involved with these elements, with the constraint that these elements offer. going thru the motions, however, adds nothing vital to a work. Whitman, when he deigned to rhyme, shows the weakness of this duty: the music of a tin ear. Dickinson, or later, Creeley, take metre and rhyme, stare them down, and wriggle free. there is a wonderful value displayed here, a historical view pushed against a futuristic one. the wrench of wondering. Whitman had no time for metre and rhyme, except that they made him Tennysonian, so he just wasted his time pretending toward such poesy. these are lessons, friends. as to Mairead, her work spoke of vantage, or persona. the Flann O'Brien wisdom of absurdity that I heard in her work is a conscious stance (I don't mean to imply that it is from O'Brien, only that it reminds me of his work), a working program. I thought, how can I stand thus. well, I cannot, really, that's Mairead, not me. but a learning possibility exists, placing questions where I hadn't thought to put them. she read ripplingly well, so that the humour and skew made imperial sense. I really liked the sense of input and influence that came from these readings.

I'm like to wore out with a 2nd reading in 2 days: Nick Montfort and Mairead Byrne reading at Demolicious. Nick Montfort does digital whatsis at MIT. digital whatsis is a way of acknowledging the uncorralled nature of the art. his reading was lecture-like. he discussed each piece and the context was rather illustrative. he began with a vision piece, a video. Nick wrote the words and someone else did the filming. the aesthetic of the vid was Youtube. it consisted of disjointed, fuzzily rendered imagery. the voiceover favoured its own disconnection. the result was a calmly trippy sensation. after the vid, Nick read an array of pieces. all worked within declared limits. one, quite funny, was written entirely on the 2nd row of a keyboard. the last line: "you putter out rote poop." I don't mean to be brief but time is burning. Nick has a site with much on it, here.

Mairead gave a terrific reading as well. many of her poems, all from the same chapbook, were urgent sounding soliloquies. they were built on a goofy logic. "do you happen to know your height? boy, did I". I thought of Flann O'Brien because the absurdity she offered was so reasonable. I wish I had better notes but I opted to listen. I wish more had attended, it was a fine reading.

saw Geoff Young read in Lowell yesterday afternoon. Lowell was rather chilly, the wind really quite frore. the venue was the Lowell visitor centre, part of the national park in downtown Lowell. nice place for a reading, a small theatre where, presumably, presentations about Lowell's textile history happen. Bootstrap Press presented the reading to announce the publication of Geoff Young's latest book, The Riot Act. I was going to link to Bootstrap's site but Geoff's book has yet to appear there. well, go anyway to Bootstrap's site here, check out the catalogue. I did the reading alone, Beth taking the opportunity to visit with her cousin who lives down the street. in the visitor's centre I saw a likely character standing at the door and inquired if he was Derek. of course he wasn't, he was Ryan, the other proprietor of Bootstrap. that's Derek Fenner and Ryan Gallagher, just to be clear. Ryan came from Lowell and both went to Naropa, but I guess I get ahead of myself. Ryan pointed to a pile of books on a table and said take one, a copy of Geoff's book. eventually my friend Michael showed up. he's a friend of Geoff's. so I got to meet Geoff before the reading. a pretty good crowd attended. I could name names but that tends to sound icky, it's like counting coup. suffice to say they were there. before Geoff stood to read, Derek gave a brief history of the press. I was surprised to learn that it began in 1998, out in Colorado. I think they've been gaining momenmtum lately. its bestseller is, unsurprisingly, the recent Wieners book that Michael Carr edited. I await my copy from Amazon. I also have Derek's book, which is red. Ryan's introduction included the line, not sure if original to him: there's a fine line between attending a poetry, and not. Geoff read terrifically. he's an engaging person, charming. he reads with a patient measure. his poems often have a sort of dope slap humour. he began by reading a series of short works from, I think ,Pockets of Wheat, little nibbles of poetic insight, I guess you'd say. occasional poems might be the right term. I note this line, from some poem he read: "sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge". he read from all 3 sections of The Riot Act. the 1st section offered what he called sonnets. they're all 14 lines long, but aren't otherwise too restrictive as to sonnet form. he said that he retrofitted material into these sonnets. he hunted out work that he'd written and redid them. that's an interesting approach, to rewrite like that. reframing the poem allows one to concentrate the poem's energy. wrangling what you've written into a new form gives a different angle to what you wrote. a thoughtful exercise that worked well for Geoff. as usual, I didn't take great notes, just doodles, but there was this line, with its quiet logical mayhem: "poetry's the coconut that under the drowned sailor's head finally sprouts". why yes! I should mention that the book has a cover by Eric Fischl, who also did the one for Tottering State. in both cases a spooky detached image. Geoff's book looked like one from The Figures because of the Fischl cover. and gosh, it was neat getting a copy, to read along with the poet. as Geoff said, all readings should have free books. it was a very nice event. a group of about 12 retired to a restaurant for a beer. I told Geoff, honestly, that it was an honour to meet him finally. it was like with Tom Beckett, receiving books from them for 20 plus years, now finally to meet the person. in both cases, I 1st knew them as editors, later as consummate poets. Tom Beckett notes in a comment below that Tom Fink interviewed Geoff Young for Exchange Values. I don't think the 2nd series of collected interviews, in which this Young interview appears, is out yet from Otoliths (Geoff had a copy, tho), but that's something to look forward to. I wanted to get back to Beth and her cousin so I scooted before the others went in to dinner. I will state publicly, with embarrassment, that in my rush I didn't pay for my Guinness. peccavi, and I will make good to whoever picked up the tab.

some good readings locally this weekend, which I hope to attend. Erin got scary sick earlier this week, scary because of the terrible pneumonia he had in January. scary enough to visit the emergency room at midnight, but he's okay. but if I don't get to the readings, it's because this team sticks together. but anyway, being hopeful:

as mentioned previously, Geoff Young in Lowell tomorrow, Bootstrap Press production. Bootstrap has some vigour going, nice to see the effort. and Geoff Young, as I wrote earlier, supplied me, thru his press The Figures, with many classics. Tottering States by Tom Raworth: is that an awesome book or what? and his own poetry is liovely (lively and lovely: not a typo).

on sunday Nick Montfort and Mairead Byrne read at Demolicious. I think Mairead's poetry might be called gnomic. I write that without knowing really what gnomic means, but I imagine a tightly made curving statement, where statement means anything but direct articulation (which is for Republicans, when they're drunk and mean), i. e. the space between words. it says in Montfort's bio that he wrote a 500 page poem in one day. well, okay, that's impressive. I love ridiculous projects, tho I don't mean ridiculous, unless it means gnomic, and if gnomic means some sort of twisting wrangling intention with a mist of fulfillment... so I dunno if I will make either event, but feel dutybound to mark them on the map.

runic message at Walden

runic message at Walden, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

mysteries of the universe

potential jigsaw puzzle

potential jigsaw puzzle, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

found things

found things, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

me

me, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

I was given a copy of Space, by Clark Coolidge. 1st edition, even. it was published in 1970, by Harper Row. imagine a world in which big publishers publish someone like Coolidge. the cover is by Jasper Johns. I can't recall if I owned this book or not. a number of books I got when at Franconia College have, thru the attrition of years, I guess, went gone. but it is familiar to me. Stein, specifically Tender Buttons, was an important disrupting influence on me. and Coolidge... my 1st year at Franconia, there were no poetry classes. the creative writing class was taught by a fiction writer who, in fact, was a pretty good poetry critic but was natheless uncomfortable at it. so Franconia got a poetry teacher, namely Robert Grenier. it was my 2nd year at Franconia, then, that my reading of poetry got focused. the particularly meddlesome writers for me were Stein and Ashbery (Tennis Court Oath), and then Coolidge. the poems in Space look typewriterly. with a typewriter, you could readily move the carriage to where you want it. of course you can do that with computers, but there's a rectilinear mind controlling computers, which can be an encumbrance, and you don't have the physical connection of placing the word where you want. I was surprised, when Coolidge came to the college to read, that he gave such a zesty reading. it put what he did with his disjunctive, curtailed work into a living context rather than just theoretical. from the music of his words you caught the meaning, if meaning exists in the word meaning. the front and back flaps favour the reader with some surprisingly useful salient map points for reading Coolidge. when it states that syntax has been removed, however, that's got to be examined. the syntax of good English has been devastated, no doubt, but syntax remains. even a narrative, if you want to look. I would hazard the guess that Coolidge utilized overheard, and decontextualized, conversation, just as Grenier did so often. the current age may be a bit fuddy duddy in its landscape. I mean a NY stream and a LANGUAGE stream have combined into the normative nowadays. this book suggests a giddy experimentation that takes of the past more than the networked present. a relique such as this is a vital reminder of the urgent process. I actually got into Coolidge more when he shifted to the high-density prose that typifies so many of those great books that The Figures published in the 80s and 90s. it really is a waste of time to keep bonking on bogus anthologies like Best American Poetry. a more thorough study of foundation work seems much more appropriate. Coolidge, it stuns me to realize, is one of our older poets now, age 68. he has an enormous amount of work published, which I'm sure has yet to be well-traced critically. as with Stein, his contribution seeped into me. my earliest confrontations with both writers was uncomfortable and dismaying. yet I see their lessons in my work, or at least, I see the meaning of their lessons.

check out this piece by Stephen Ellis. it has some of the burnt off visionary quality of Olson's very late poems, when O had spiraled from theoretical command and was staring, instead, at death and life. note Stephen's lines, and the beautiful anticipation of his enjambments. admirable.

I am advised that copies of RIOT ACT by Geoffrey Young will be given away at his reading, noted below, next saturday in Lowell. and it is a Bootstrap Press production. very exciting.

a few pictures below, and at my Flickr page, of Walden in fog. we went there yestermorn (id est Thanksgiving). the water was smooth and clear, surprisingly few people were around. less than a mile away Concord/Carlisle fought Bedford on the field of football. whoever won, God smiled on the winner. today, at my urging, we went to the mall. with no urge to buy anything, just look around. it was only slightly challenging to park. things were busy, that is, people were buying stuff. we did a tour last year and saw less purchases occur. the Apple Store was a-buzz. and there was a swarm of people working there. woohoo, buy Apple stock. Aeropostale appeared to be stuffed with eager young shoppers. Abercombrie and Fitch, however, looked like try to hard. are you taking notes here? at the entrance of A&F stood 2 models, I guess they were. one a gogo dancer and/or cheerleader in short skirt. the other a standard issue slouchy, skinny, hip male model type, with shirt unbuttoned and pants low, body hair removed. such a show is a swipe towards edginess for a suburban mall, but I think it means A&F has lost altitude. it was busy, and the thumping trance of music had its message, but it's like Starbucks, you can see the need for effort now. the poetry has turned to doggerel. Crate & Barrel scooted to its own separate building recently, so its space was filled with a Christmas Ornament shop. the same space held a Halloween shop up till a month ago. will it shift to something else in January? we have zero need for ornaments, in fact, the lower ceiling here means we have a superfluity of decorations, but there were some beauts calling to us, all glitter, shine, jolting colour and what. such are m 1st notes on this most telling of American whatever.

Geoff Young reads in Lowell,
to wit:

Geoffrey Young’s THE RIOT ACT: book release and reading
Saturday December 1st, 2007
3:00 p.m.
National Park Visitor Center
246 Market Street
Lowell, MA 01852

Geoff Young ran the terrific press The Figures for many years, whence came a raft of important books. he is also a wonderful poet and, as I understand, a deft reader. I am certain that this will be an awesome event (I think Bootstrap Press is involved).

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.