Big Changes!!!

with the idea of increasing here at the Green Blog, I had some focus group work done. turns out poetry, writing, and yard sales are right out as blog topics. from now on , my name is Tombstone, I will be wearing a black eye patch, and this blog will be all over Apple computers. email me for the address to send MacBooks, iPods, iPhone, and any other merchandise. ad astra, etc.

 

 

 

I watched Iron Man last night. I'd seen favourable reviews, which I do not think it lived up to. Robert Downey did. the movie was definitely a turn for him. I used to read the comic but IM was well down the list of favourite characters. initially his suit looked more like a robot, was bulkier. then some space age metal was developed so that it looked like the usual lycra.

the movie begins with Tony Stark touring Afghanistan in an armoured car, checking out the playground for the weapons he sells. frankly, this was just about redux of the fun parts of Less Than Zero. Tony Stark, is just riffing charmingly. well, this is war time: the car gets attacked and Stark gets wounded. this brings on an awkward flashback, to set the table plotwise. the arms industry is in his blood. as is the Playboy lifestyle. the morning after his viciously unlikely one night stand with a reporter, Gymneth Paltrow arrives. I had forgotten that she was in the film and I had forgotten about Pepper Potts. I would not have cast her because she is cool and elegant, and Pepper is more like Della Street. but Paltrow plays it well. putting capable actors into these movies works every time. Jeff Bridges was stuck with Mr McNasty. I like him but there was nowhere to go with the role unless he went all Christopher Walken, which would have been nice. I mean let Walken do it, or Anjelina's father (I forget his name). so, wounded Stark is captured, and in fact kept alive by another prisoner who hooks Stark up to a car battery. not too unlikely, prisoners in a cave. the Afghani warlord wants Stark to build the nasty missile that Stark demo'd earlier. instead, they build a robot outfit. thus Iron Man. well, Stark gets out, and decides that the weapons industry is a poor place for his creative impulses.

back home, Stark demands a hamburger, but gets a McDonald's instead. at the news conference, he munches that and has the gathered press sit on the floor. which just rang so silly. Stark's insistence on leaving weapon making behind brings bad guy Bridges into the open. Stark develops his IM rig while Bridges sets up the dramatic finale. took a long time to get to the IM part. it's a franchise, I realize, but it is a long wait for the story to find its cheese. it is entertaining, because Downey is so comfortable playing above and below the role. R2D2 and C3PO appear in spirit with a robotic whatsis that does funny stuff and a poncy computer voice that advises Stark. the denouement is stupid, with Bridges in a Transformer-like robosuit. no effort involved here.

having the real world, Afghanistan, bump against this crap was a bad risk. what's stopping IM from selectively killing off all the bad elements there except his complicated relationship with Pepper. Samuel Jackson arrives after the credits to enlist IM against some heinous evil, you know, a guy in tights, chapter2. once that's cleared up, IM can save the Middle East.

now, is it a propos of me to write now a few words about the recent Apple press con? it is available from iTunes. I was curious what the buzzmaking machine does when it is doing. I do not own a Mac, nor have I used one much, but I am attracted. and I got an iPod without thought that other mp3 players exist. Steve Jobs is Mr Cool in black turtleneck. he's just selling the latest merchandise, you know. my god, what is so gorgeous about a track pad? Tony Stark creates a totally smoove robosuit, not just power but slick design. thus Apple. Apple renders as a slack superficiality with this ultimate design stuff. Jobs brought highranking Apple folks on stage, the core of his desmesne, haha. and the press is rapt. didn't they realize they were machined? well I do not have in me right now to paint it clearer, but I connect IM with Jobs up there selling the latest Apple confections. which I want, of course.

this post by Jack Kimball is a poignant look at an effed up climate. I started to riff on this but maybe I should just mouse out. I am aware that I am so, so, so here, thus unreliable.

this blog is 4 1/2 years old. that is not an even number so I should not be looking back. but I still feel charged to speak of what I have gotten from this blog. everyday, I am stopped by people who say, aren't you the author of Tributary? naturally I say that I am, because I am. I write this blog full of vested insight, and old school content, and original typos that only I can produce. I write it completely. ok, I have someone who helps me with the adverbs but that is only because I am so busy as an international blogger, and who cares about adverbs anyway? I write tributary for you, The Fans. some of my fans say, can't you do more hard hitting accounts of yard sales. others want more lighthearted ruminations on death. I try to please all but it is not easy. sometimes I do not even want to write this blog, tho millions depend on me to supply them with cunning turns of phrase, whimsical assertions of fact, powerhouse criticism and all the other goodness one can find here. sometimes I just want to hang out with the cast of Cheers discussing the virtues of mentholated cigarettes. rarely do I dodge my duty and give Ted Danson and the gang a call. instead, I bear down, and effort a new posting of scintillant perspective and wit. Dear Reader, I have to admit, it gives me great joy giving YOU great joy. as I sit at Starbucks or the local library, listening to the chortles of pleasure and gasps of enlightenment as people read my latest words of wisdom, I feel a sense of satisfaction. I know that in my little way, I have made the world a better place. so thank you, Dear Reader, for being there (and there, and there, and there...). I vow that over the next 4 1/2 years I will continue to provide you intelligent posts full of delight and links to Youtube. I want to continue to earn the ardour that you have given me since post one. so once again, I say Thanks!!!

autumn always urges me to read English Romantics, I guess because the poems are so landscapey, and of a climate at least somewhat akin to New England. this has been a preternatural New England fall weekend, the colours seeming transcendent, with a similar emotional heft as when the spring flowers bloom. but one sees, alas, bumblebees doggedly gathering in the dahlias, still collecting pollen, but frail now, chilled and worn. I wonder a lot about Halloween and its appeal. the decorations arrive with the same early rush as Christmas now. people are going to pretty fancy lengths to decorate appropriately for the holiday, if I can call it that. Pottery Barn has a Halloween-inspired dinner table displayed, hi-gear accouterments like silver skulls at each place setting. apparently a market exists even for lavish dinner parties of a Halloweenish nature. I would not have thunk it. I guess I do not like Halloween because there is no thought behind it, no measure. a semi-ironic play with horror, and the opportunity to dress up, cosplay. but no acknowledgment of a Golden Bough dimension to the proceedings, just arch reference to scary. it seems like this time of harvest and fade deserves better attention, at least in the way that Thanksgiving or Christmas offer lip service to the underpinnings. bumblebees are dying with Puritan work ethic, and people are just sending unheeded consultations from the unconscious. well I guess I'm a poopypants, but there is such a poetic savour to this time, that the corny exultation of effect that is Halloween seems a poor substitute for the due confrontation. monsters... a remarkably chilling yard display that I saw years ago consisted of a life size human figure standing in the yard holding a rake or shovel. it just looked like an old man standing there, but somehow the inference was easy that his wife or a neighbourhood child was buried somewhere in the yard, or some other evil intention fulfilled. a damn sight more chilling than those gravestones for Frank N Stein. but what is the purpose or proposal of such a display? or how does that display fit anything we find necessary. I do not say it doesn't, I just ask how. poetry lives in a world of glum lack of horizon much of the time: centralized evocations of self-explanation, verbal pomade for some radiated trend, or other weak entries to the communal trough. Halloween grips us, it seems, but it has not made its vocabulary known. perhaps there's some reading to do.

we had a yard sale today. I spent 25 bucks on an ad in the local paper, then took an ad on Craigslist. I know Craigslist is legit, but it is hard not to think that an ad for a yard sale there will bring people interested in Star Trek-themed threesomes or some such, because didn't I know the code??? happily, it appears only yard sale enthusiasts came by. and sure that enthusiasts they are. I set the time for 8-12, but I knew someone would appear by 7:30. which was the case, if not earlier. I was still hauling stuff out. the ads listed books (a modest thinning), furniture, clothing and, what the heck, outsider art. meaning that which I myself created. I weeded some of my more egregious paintings, honest experiments, and just piled them up. wouldn't you know it, one of the 1st people to arrive asked to see the outsider art. fairly speaking, I do not think you can consciously create outsider art, you have to be oblivious to that idea. so to use the term, I was applying marketing rather than a description. I like my visual work, tho cognizant of its limitations. and as I noted, this was not my A stuff. the woman looked thru the pile of stuff with interest and by gum selected 5. when she asked the price I said a dollar a piece. so that is my first sale, woo hoo. Beth got rid of a lot of jewelry. most of the people who came were older folk for whom yard sales apparently are a regular entertainment. one woman was interested in a silver whatsis. almost everything was selling for a buck but that does not mean that one should not be cautious. she asked if we had toothpaste. I think the letters H=U=H-N appeared on my forehead, because she directly explained that she wanted the toothpaste to polish the item. if it polished up okay, she would divest herself of that dollar. I fetched toothpaste and she said, oh, Tom's of Maine, that might not work. and I nodded knowingly and said, probably not abrasive enough, and she said yeah. but luckily it did indeed polish the item, and she bought it, and several other things. by 9:00 it seemed like the game was up. it was a brisk but electrifyingly bright and intense autumn morning. one man bought largely of the poetry books. I only got rid of ones that had been succeeded by collected editions, or a few books that I had multiple copies of, and a few stinkers (nothing by you, Dear Writing Reader). one other guy bought poetry books. it is a reassuring pleasure to see poetry books find an audience. a man asked how much for my stamp collection. Beth said 10 bucks, the guy said, would you take 8. Beth said no, so the guy turned away. a while later he handed her 10 bucks. I think of the bartering scene in Life of Brian, the formal code. there is a chance that my collection could have been worth something at one time. I had a number of older stamps that I found (age 10) amongst family papers and stuff. and my friend in high school gave me his collection, which he claimed contained some international rarities. last spring we investigated the possibility of selling this marvelous collection (realize that in my infinite 10 year old wisdom, I might have a time or 2, used Scotch Tape to affix my stamps in my album, but still), only to be told that there was ZERO market for stamps outside of a precious few. we pulled back a number of items, a table that belonged to Beth's father, a chair of my father. I had a book, that was in my parents' collection, that was about the hurricane of 1938 in the northeast. this was a devastating storm that arrived without warning. a car pulled up and an elderly man got out with difficulty from the passenger side. the driver jolted me by superficially resembling my oldest brother. I will only allude to familial rupture here, tho perhaps that is a reference. the guy was taking his father out for a run at some yard sales and what not. let us just say that the aforementioned rupture had some little to do with sons and fathers, and expect no foot notes. this elderly man picked up the hurricane book. I knew it would be of interest. I said, I am sure you remember that hurricane. I did not say it loud enough, even tho my father was deaf, but the son said, oh yes, he remembers. I mentioned that my father drove home from work in that storm, drove a co-worker home. he remembered driving along Storrow Drive in Cambridge, alongside the Charles River, and seeing trees being flattened in the wind. the man asked for the price and I took his dollar. Beth did not realize that this book was in our collection, and wanted the book, but saw the value it held for the old man. a pleasant chatty woman poked thru the goods and conversed with us. the mailman had just delivered the mail, in which was a letter from Christian Children's Fund (we sponsor a child). Beth mentioned that the US now has THREE CCF offices, the only 1st world country that partakes of CCF (which is shameful, is it not?). Beth explained that she was not christian, but appreciated the work CCF does. the woman said, I'm not Christian either, I am a Catholic. which effectively shows how a fundamentalist concept of Christianity has absconded with the norm. a woman and young daughter looked at a bed that we had. I slept in it as a child and it was not new to me. Erin also slept in it, when he was still of plausible size to fit it. it was the sort of thing we wanted rid of, it just takes space, and which did not seem likely to move. but the woman was excited to find it, what with the economy, etc. she wanted to come back with her husband, which happily happened. he wanted to put it together to make sure the pieces all worked. situation proved green. they packed the springs on the roof of their car, yikes, tied it with electrical cord, and presumably got it home. earlier a car arrived with a couple and a young woman with, perhaps, Downs syndrome. she was very direct, and entertained by everything. she wore a highly decorated bicycle helmet. at the same time an older man arrived on his bicycle. he too looked thru things while wearing his helmet. Beth asked, are you here for the bookcase? the young woman's father was pleased to find a book on mechanical drawing, and handed me a dollar. the young woman said to me loudly, he's a real wise guy, and laughed. the man gave me a quick look to see how I took her behavivour. so that is how the front part of the day went. and yes, we recouped the price of the ad. the sale precluded our going to Lowell, where there was a gathering of poets and presses. I hope to hear a report.

always excellent critical thinking at Rodney Koeneke's blog, I especially like his Issue 1 cogitations.

I noticed that Hulu has Slacker on its menu. Hulu could become an internet force, free movies/tv shows (NBC, etc) with minimal commercial interference. I have seen Slacker bunches of time, and it has never worn thin. there is absolutely zero star power amongst its performers, and in that sense seems like reality tv, albeit of a trompe d'oeil sort. the director, Richard Linklater leads off in the concatenated vignettes. he riffs philosophically to a disinterested cab driver, and sets the picture's tone. not that 1st time viewers have a read on the tone, or anything, yet. Linklater's character moves out of the scene and the camera picks up another person and story line, and this occurs thru out the film, a la Mrs Dalloway. it is a compelling device, as the narrative is handed from one character to the next. the vignettes are steeped in ordinariness and recognition, but an underlying anarchy bubbles up frequently. the characters in their commonness are immensely involving. the movie should be dated, it is so 90s, but that is not how I have ever felt it. in a low key way, this is a movie homage to Woolf and Joyce, without being artsy at all. I have seen dazed and Confused and that one with Ethan Hawke and Julia Delpy moping improvisationally (the 1st not the 2nd movie), and both had their moments but neither were a patch on Slacker. the movie ends like a student film, really just letting the camera run until the audience understands that the movie is over. things have been so rich prior to that that I forgive the lameness.

the Issue 1 controversy has gone further than I expected. aren't people used to such exercises yet, they pop up often enough? at least Jack Kimball went to the trouble of googling the perps, which added dimension to the project. you know, to find out about it. why take offense? really, what is the argument? studying one's points of resistance is ALWAYS useful. reveling in them is just small. I mean, to take this project strictly as an affront lacks scope. to lob such a wad into the affray is at least interesting, if only in the sense of seeing if anyone salutes, and to act all plaintiffy is to reveal a terse Republican heart. I imagine that everyone listed in Issue 1 has embarrassed themselves online to a greater degree than any possible wound from this public spectacle. I know I have. to view the internet as a place of sanctified boundaries is really to misread the document entirely. yo, 1997 went thataway, so come up for air. how off has Ron Silliman or anyone else been ripped with this? to me, complaining about the appropriation is more like poopypants talking. I DIDN'T WRITE THIS GARBAGE I WROTE MY OWN GARBAGE, etc, till the puddle is no more.

Demolicious Valedictory: we went to the last Demolicious reading. John Mercuri Dooley and Andrew Richardson are shuttering the series after 4 years. the annals will show that the 1st reading that we made was Rob Fitterman's. we went to many, as best as we could. this was the 1st time that we attended an event at the new home, the Pierre Menard Gallery, much closer to Harvard Sq and Yard. a tonier place, and more comfortable as a reading venue. this was not strictly a reading but a multi-media event. 1st up was Jean-Claude Charles, and when I say Jean-Claude, I am afraid I might mean Jean-Paul. I did not take notes and there are no readily available info sources (more on that later). Jean Dash is a musician and sound artist, a doctoral candidate at Harvard. he is from France. he came equipped with a bass clarinet and a laptop. I guess I have never met a bass clarinet in person. Charles 1st played a solo excerpted from a larger piece. he said what the other instrumentation was but I forget. he made simply extraordinary sounds with the clarinet, overblowing and trilling and such. it had the sort of unclenched fascination as electronic music can have. he followed that with more of a demonstration. using an audio program, which he explained, he coupled his live playing with hacked sounds of his output. the program would select audio ranges and whatnot. it was really wonderful and vitally strange. I would love to hear more. following him was a film maker, tho I guess there's a more accurate term since film is not in the equation. his name escapes me as well. he showed 2 pieces. the 1st was called My Hustler Boyfriend. this held an immediate inside joke since the boyfriend in question was portrayed by stalwart Demolicious attendee Cedric. it consisted mostly of stills with a voiceover. it was an arch paean to the boyfriend and their hustler lifestyle. the 2nd piece was also rather arch, a satiric look at America. it was pleasantly heavy handed. the name of the 3rd performer is, consistently, not readily available in my brain pan. I trusted the Demolicious web site to have such like available (more on that later). (this just in: Vanessa place is the poet's name, and the musician is Jean-FRANCOIS Charles. thanks to Boston Poetry Collective for the info). she read from a lengthy novel. she asked for two numbers to be called out. those were the pages she would read, plus what she chose to read. she began by reading the copyright page, every bit of it. then page 17 was read by John, then she read a page or more. this page consisted largely of synonyms for female genitalia. she had quim, I believe, which I first read in Auden's commonplace book, but not pen wiper, which likewise I learned from the honourable WHA. she read this part vigourously, like Beat poetry. Joel Sloman read a page, then she read the last page backwards then forwards. the two pages were torn from a copy of the book, not the one she read from. they would not, as she said, ever be rad again. well,I do not know if she took the pages back, to ensure that they would remain unread. I liked her presentation but did not absorb much of the text. I am keenly interested in novels that bump against the boundaries but I would have to read her work to get a fair idea. the final piece was an excerpt from a film by Jonas Mekas. it was a piece about Utopia. it consisted by Mekas talking to the camera. he sat at a table and rattled on philosophically. his ramble was loosely bound, so I had trouble staying with him. beyond that... he wore a brimmed hat and resembled, at least in my mind, Studs Terkel, but with a Lithuanian accent rather than Chicagoan, or whatever it is Studs speaks. as Mekas spoke he began gesturing with his right hand. due to camera placement, the hand seemed overly large. and because the elbow was out of frame, the arm did not seem attached to Mekas. additionally, light glaring on his hand produced a plastic effect. the result was that it looked like this intruding fake hand was entering the picture. the sight of this completely fried me, I was in tears laughing. Beth and I sat with Jack Kimball at the back of the room, and I think we were the only ones to laugh, at least at 1st. I did not make clear that he sat low at the table. at one point he lowered his head, so that his hat completely obscured his face. I did not want to be snide but the absurdity of these bits was overwhelming. and so ended Demolicious' run, and the environs of Boston are the poorer for it. John Mulrooney, who seemingly has attended every reading that I have been to, and clearly more besides, still runs a poetry reading series. William Corbett has a series too, I believe, but I am thinking that he's stones in the passway for this poetry scene. so we gots ourselves something close to a wasteland now. both Armantrout and Ashbery read this tuesday, tho different venues and essentially competing, so Boston CAN get readings together. but it is a yank that one must choose between these two poets (which I shan't alas attend, it's a school night). what would kick out the jams here? Demolicious certainly was a noble effort. but really, the Demolicious web site is not updated often enough, nor is it content rich enough to keep you hooked. John espoused disappointment at the meager turn outs for Demolicious. this aint the 50s, when readings were like rock concerts. people who came to Demolicious were serious, tho, weren't just there for photo op. after-reading gatherings were vital connections that I appreciated. it is too bad that Demolicious could not keep going. it is not like NYC isn't balkanized, from what I hear, and other scenes probably have their hobble. Boston lacks a central force (it aint Corbett, I know), and those barriers called universities rarely supply anything close to generous gumption. the result is a spacious landscape of not much. Jack Kimball, Beth and I performed post mortems at a nearby Cambridge restaurant. then home to this report.

 

 

 

who I knew as Stephen Ellis remains in the poem

I feel guilty for all the recent books that I have gotten--living authors, poetry espesh--that I have not writ about. blogs are just that tool for quick reports, if not more in depth, and my blog, completely free of trans fats, is simply waiting for more and ever more content. I hope to rectify this lack of public noticing, and at the least present more assiduously some thoughts on what I have read/am reading, etc. so one more chapbook from Faux Press:

Subsistence Equipment by Brenda Iijima.

as I mentioned with Orizaba by Stacy Szymaszek, design of these chaps is similar. Faux Press delivers a consistent concept, let us say, which connects the writers by way of editorial choice. it works, and as I have said previously, the design makes these chaps inform and connect to each other, tho they were not written with that in mind.

Iijima's work is an unnumbered chunk of text with no titles or headings. such blocks of text are forbidding to some extent, at least for those of us who get nervous without footholds. I write that while having writ my share of forbidding blocks of text. reader must find a way in. in is in the words here, simply enough, perhaps rhythm and sound.

first line:

Struggling city skeletal intermingle serial order existence

little punctuation in this work. I am disconcerted by occasional punctuation but this is not worth being anal about. but it does make me think why this lone comma.

each line is capitalized. authors make choices.

mostly regular spacing but with some extensions, exalted breaths.

the sense of verbal monolith breaks down as one reads/speaks and respects the words. as I read, the felicities unveil. it is a text. I take it as an exercise, as, say, Midwinter Day by Bernadette Mayer. where the press of text forward, over the 'long haul', instigates the poem. the poem converses. I could imagine that Iijima, like Mayer, wrote the text in one day, with that as the stated goal when beginning. if not, there natheless remains a sense of process. I also think of Coolidge as I read, in the sense of translating sensory experience into word alignments, which is not the same as description. you could say that what Iijima writes is her state of mind, but it is the idea of stating that does not seem accurate, I guess because of the musicality that I hear. 'what felt through the cracks is want' is punny but it rattles interest by sounding a familiar note that is not exactly what we hear. this sort of partial transmogrification happens thru out the poem, part of Iijima's hearing, and more like a penitent pun than straightforward exercise. 'ratcheted up to strangest denominator'. the title seems pretty canny.

lines come from anywhere, it seems:

'American career girl cleavage'

'Tally ho leeward below the kneeling'

'At the real place 96 degrees hot day to do this'

'Separate events from time'

I am fishing these lines out randomly. I should be clear that this is not the reading. Iijima's metric is almost entirely three-lined stanzas, tho lines of varying length. one steps first at the level of line, the syntactical oddity and picture conveyed. how these lines combine is the reader's larger work, which I can only suggest at this time that one should do. the grand involvement of lines into stanzas and stanzas into poem are the work of work, and time. to which I recommend thee. and me.

of course, I am proud to be an American...

one further book, which just indicates how lax I have been in writing this marvelous and useful blog, to wit:

The Complete Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus translated by Ryan Gallagher, published by Bootstrap Press. he is one of the proprietors of the press. I have, or perhaps had--maybe I deep-sixed it--a wretched translation of Catullus. I do not recall the translator but his crime was his choice to bring Catullus' slang to the present age. I think the translator's sense of the present age's slang was archaic or anachronistic, and certainly the ear was not good. the effect was merely goofy.

I am no Latin scholar so I can only read the poems for their sense of freshness. they seem like poems not exercises, which is always the first endeavour in translation, at least in readership's view. Gallagher includes an extensive and useful afterward about his process. he cites the Catullus that the Zukofskys produced. now, Gallaghher, does not attempt a homophonic translation, but I can see how he placed the lines in his head and worked them into poetry. he makes the translation process a very present one, with the sense of writing rather than rewriting. I get that sense out of Paul Blackburn's translations. or let me say, I do NOT get that sense from the army of translators who have latched onto Neruda, Bly et al., who seem relentless in producing what even I, barely voiced in Spanish, can see is mangled versions of the originals. Gallagher's translations are unlaboured, respect the language into which they have been translated, and live. the Latin originals are placed at the back of the book. I would prefer seeing them en face, the better to compare, but that's a choice. buy the book, support the press that wants to live in Lowell.