Saturday, November 06, 2004

I addend the following lovely quote, from Anny Ballardini, her translation of Arni Ibsen (and a translation of the full poem into Italian), to the previous post: "Here, at this meeting place of contrasts, poetry is born because poetry resolves contrasts, and shatters false integrity".
I think the handwringing explains why we still have the same presidente. I dislike Bush as well, but to say that he's the least moral person ever to have served as president of the United States is just making a big empty statement. I mean, oh boy, use of superlative: that's always a way to make a point. that's just the shit that made the debates such a shovelful. it is emotional rhetorical trickery. it's the sort of thing LANGUAGE theory called into question. personally I think Bush is driven by a moral code, and to deny that of him and of those who voted for him opens the doors of Congress wider for the conservative hordes. but okay, who cares what I say. maybe self-pity really is the solution.

Friday, November 05, 2004

anyone who wishes to be a faville for this blog, please email me your qualifications. I won't require you to faville each and every post, as Ron Silliman does, but I do want someone who will devote a goodly portion of time filling my comments boxes with windy, self-involved comment, the better to balance my own windy, self-involved posts. I'm sorry, but no kirby olsons needs reply.
cooperation extends to the left and right of where you thought. buddhist thinking tries to remember that everyone wants to be happy, doen't want to feel pain.
Skullbolt, credited to Bobby, aint bad. he, I assume he, aint a doctor of I Know Everything According to Professional Plaid Pants, or anything else that 'works', but the insistence of the writing intention evident on the blog works for me. a journal of activities and thoughts, with surprising heft. the surprise is expectation according to the usual full of shit. I mean it shouldn't b e surprising. the not so genuine article is pretty popular, that's one thing we would've won even if the election fell the other way, but we needn't use that as a standard. I mean, let's all shave our eyebrows and teach the republicans something. meanwhile, take a peek under or over the boundary lines, in case you missed something.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

I have stuff to DO but I need to... well it's like this... I was snide with Kasey, but the idea he posited just had off smells. 1st, I think pandering to the media is a bad deal. I mean making a show for them. a real goddamn pointed boycott is one thing, a look at me demonstration of whatever is another. it just seems effete to sit in your living room not enchanging gifts, and feeling like you've really got them by the sort hairs. it's nice to see some sense of doing something but: what were people gonna do if Kerry had won? did people think his election would've solved things? if you did, then I really don't think Bush's re-election makes a diff. it's just outsourcing the job at hand. I really don't know what to do except stick by my guns, and you stick by yours. as far as I am concerned, those are metaphorical guns. thinking in the buddhist terms of understanding others is useful, maybe all I have. demonizing doesn't work for me at all.
I hit the Next Blog button on Tributary and got to this. I love it.
well jeez, I guess I could forego Xmas shopping, but I don't want to turn into a Unitarian in the process. so who would get hurt if the economy goes skank? the same as are getting it now, maybe? as in: hit 'em where it hurts someone else most. I mean, I saw this episode, and you're right, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer DID save the day. still, this is escape mechanism. this is field of peanuts. this is mimic. this is let on on on the cold grey cold. Kasey: try again.

think it over, folks

this blog is the smart choice. where else can you read stupid opinions and immediate retractions, then retractions of my retractions, sort of? none of this sniffy I-know-what-I-like equaminity in the face of mediocrity stuff for me. I’m here to pull punches, and pull them I do. on this blog, you will read puh-lenty of spam diddled just enough to make it seem like art. that’s edgy art, cowpoke. and might I remind you that when I go oblique, it's because I have no clue what I'm writing. I'm not making any points, that's fer sure. are you looking for superficial commentary? I’m your man, and then some. not a day goes by when I don't make some ill-considered point, or just bore you with the obvious. are you curious to know what I read for ten minutes last night before falling asleep? I’m the one, the only one, who can tell you! I’ve posted mushroom spoor prints on this blog, with the implication that this is somehow art that I can take credit for. I’ve mentioned Robert Benchley here, who else does that? other blogs may never mention me but I've taken it as my driving urge to write piles about myself. I won't limit myself to the so-called 'interesting things' either. if I thought it, then it's worth posting. why, I’ve even made jokes about Ron Silliman: certainly no one else has ever thought to do that! of course, you can trust me to have figured out how to link to the same things you link to. we're simpatico, peeps. I even give you recommendations to read The Onion, as if you didn’t already. so all in all, this is the blog to read. other bloggers blog when they have something to say, but you won’t catch me waiting for that to happen. I’m on the ball, ready to post the 1st thing that comes to mind. it's about quantity, not quality. you need me, and don’t you forget it.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Alli Warren's blog in. those who cannot cut my mustard must perforce be relegated to Ron Silliman's list of blogs he is probably too busy to read.
get the whole Lil Choo Choo line of childrwen's books including:

The Lil Choo Choo That Exploded
The Lil Choo That Lost Out
The Lil Choo Choo Crushed by the Weight
The Lil Choo Choo and the Viscous Shadow
The Lil Choo Choo Fails Again
The Lil Choo Choo Feels Indifference
The Lil Choo Choo Against the Wall

all published by BadMe Books. Visit your bookseller today!!!
"having descried the nation
to write a Republic
in gloom on Watch-House Point"
--Charles Olson

by way of intro

it is time to remember a little more in time to be causative bramhall is real estate that piece in the middle bramhall is among the top making special contact and still not out of his shadow clarity along the lines of someone else bramhall is hitting his stride in the county of greater click for a list of other places nearby bramhall is a mini tony gwynn bramhall bucks country bramhall is a large village on the southern outskirts bramhall is once more flying a fact finding loss across a voting popular front bramhall is a name reckoned with pitches even beyond bramhall is a versatile following bramhall offers excellent amenities bramhall is also raising £2 million bramhall is a project bramhall is not simply a centre that is geared bramhall is made up bramhall is a solid drummer bramhall is located bramhall is a psychiatrist solo bramhall is 30yds on left bramhall is a conservationist bramhall is given bramhall is one of three in waters and is also doing plenty bramhall is a small estate bramhall is some differentiation bramhall is backed up by the smokestack bramhall is pleasant bramhall is anchored by core builder
bramhall is incredulous
bramhall is singing just to him or her
bramhall is introduced
bramhall is an inviting of holes from straightforward to very challenging
bramhall is a former peace
bramhall is on sabbatical
bramhall is heading towards
bramhall is aligning itself
bramhall is local in origin
bramhall is a senior
bramhall is on the mike
bramhall is inspired by his current
bramhall is president
bramhall is willing to present the portal project
bramhall is low level radiation campaign
bramhall is opening up
bramhall is playing pure classic
bramhall is not a researcher and did not have access to substantial funds or resources
bramhall is a rather boring place
bramhall is the courtyard front of the great hall
bramhall is a member of the single payer action network
bramhall is a former peace for three years in guatemala
bramhall is a well
bramhall is filling the gap left when he passed
bramhall is perhaps best known
bramhall is part overall satisfaction
bramhall is the railway for commuting
bramhall is making such a mark
bramhall is becoming attractive
bramhall is scheduled to appear
bramhall is one
bramhall is the first road as the home
bramhall is very conveniently placed
bramhall is currently undertaking a full private conversion
bramhall is a youthful veteran
bramhall is hitting a team
bramhall is a damn good tradition of Hendrix

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

I am finding this blog, as of Laura Carter, to move around, hence I shall look to it often, hence it goes in my links.
"The poem supreme addressed to
emptiness-- this is the courage

necessary. This is something
quite different."
--Creeley, "The Dishonest Mailmen
Beth and I put our votes in around noon. instead of voting machines, we were given ballots to fill out. Beth forgot her reading glasses, but they supplied a magnifying sheet. there was no line, the process being much quicker. I would say by traffic out and around that turn out was good. been watching Peter Jennings and the box score, but I will, as I did with every Sox playoff and World Series game, hit the hay before anything is decided. it does make a difference who wins, but life goes on nathless. and whoever wins, it is about us saying no to shit. have to vote everyday. those are big fat words. I'd like to get some action into them, personally speaking.
having given short shrift to Creeley's For Love, I thought I would go back to it and refresh my jaundiced eye. and I'm afraid I found myself liking it much more than I expected. I think I've been suffering resistance flashback. honest to god I try to be open-minded but I know that I'm not. When I 1st read Creeley, I had the divvel of the time 'getting it'. his work (and that of Olson, Pound, Stein, Ashbery, even Dickinson) was stuck in my face, a different thing than what I imagined poetry to be. I was at that time, late teens, writing what was available to me, as one inspired to write poetry while not actually liking it. that is to say, I liked Marianne Moore for speaking up for the likes of me. somehow, I came to respect Creeley, and I can say I hear Creeley when I write in lines, that my sense of lines derives from his. his sense of relationship and other is tortured, and his expression thereof tortuous. you have to parse his thought the way you do Donne, or Dickinson. his is not an easy poetic syntax. Creeley is willing to go to utmost simplicty to confuse us, or me at least. I think of Zukofsky boiling down to syllable. Creeley boils down to word. that he means those words mightily, even when confused, angry, frightened. it leaves a lot on the reader. I think his music went more syllabic than metric in Pieces which statement no doubt needs to be explained. instead of wrestling his way out of received form, as seems often the case in the earlier work (and with Dickinson), he sticks with counting the beat of syllables. I don't mind trying to slough off influences, but I gotta keep my head straight.
Stephen, or I should say Steve, Vincent made public a reading he and another poet did on radio. which is an unclear sentence that means to say that a recording of said reading is available here (pissa long url). it's fun to hear this sort of thing, and we should all technologize ourselves so that we can easily make our own tapes and such. I declare that any time percussion and poetry come together, it's gonna sound Beat to my ears. but I have seen more movie versions of Beat hipster (60s movies and Maynard G Krebs) than any sort of actual article. and the percussion sounds right fine. I could do it!!! well, dunno if I could manage to speak and drum simultaneous, I'd have to choose one or tother. and the voices going back and forth. I'm leery of poetry performance at the same time that I like the idea. I saw LeeAnn Brown reset the ballad "Greenwood Sidee" (which I 1st heard done by Kaleidoscope: 1st person to write me with a shout out for Kaleidoscope wins my respect!!! (that's a rare prize)). her lyrics were about the woman who drove her two children into a lake to drown. the original ballad concerns something similar, and is a lot more interesting lyrically than what Brown sang, plus Brown was pretty low key in her singing. the effect was more like a 2nd rate singer/songwriter than a poet challenging form. I thought SV and company had something going as a whole, with the 2 voices and percussion, together and at odds. (I'll mention again Elvin Jones spiking Ginsberg's song version of "The Grey Monk": wowza what a drummer!). reminds me of a time while in high school, a friend and me in his garage. he had a tape recorder so we started making noise with whatever we could find, and yelling. at one point I found a rhythm while drumming on a paint can and our happening briefly coalesced into something rather wonderful. my friend titled the piece "Garage Garaldi Voodoo", whatever that might've meant tho it stuck in my head these 36 years later. and since I am on tangent, I might mention a party we had. I have quite a few different drums, congas, bongos, bodhran, and a nifty ceramic dhoumbek. unfailingly people pick these up for at least a good rattle. at this party all the adults gathered up drums and stayed with them. and the younger generation would periodically come downstairs from their Nintendo inspired dreams to ask what the heck we were doing. I think, if I were to do more readings, I might bring a drum along. Henry G admitted to bringing his trusty mouth harp to our joint reading, in case a different sort of sonic entertainment recommended itself. I believe in tangents, by the way.
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Monday, November 01, 2004

further opportunity

Dear Sir/Madam

May i use this opportunity to introduce my sense of sweaters? I am Mrs. Sarah Tami Savimbi. I am the wife to the late MR. GREAT JONAS SAVIMBI,the leader of the Angora Sweater Revolution, and a famous experimental sweaterist. We are known to Johnny UNITAS, famous football player who wears sweaters. My husband died while on active duty in the Sweater Revolution. This is an effort to liberate our people from coats and mere heavy shirts. I am contacting you with the believe that we will develop a cordial sweater relationship which will be beneficial to both cardigans and pullovers. I am currently in possession of Seventy Five Million United States sweaters, which i intend to use for sweatering purposes specifically in your sweater-fascinated country. The sweaters came about as a result of my late husband's inability to proceed without sweaters. Even his personal millinery hardware, which he contracted with South Africa Sweater Company, is sweater-rich and provoked. Since the start of our sweater war, the source of the funds in knitting the sweaters has been from the sales of rare experimental sweaters under our control. My son was the Secretary Of Sweaters, with cardigans particularly under the leadership of my late husband. My husband looked great in cardigans, and felt like jiffy! The sweaters were always exported to South Africa and part of the proceeds usually used in buying millinery hardware and knitting needles, of which God be praised. I traveled immediately to my late husband's sweater closet in South Africa and discovered the sum of SEVENTY FIVE MILLION SWEATERS hidden under his underground sweater closet. Due to my status as a refuge, i cannot invest these sweaters here in South Africa. I therefore seek your assistance in fluffing these sweaters outside South Africa. All necessary dry cleaning fluids has been used by me and i assure you that there is no risk of pilling on excellent sweaters. We will work modalities for the success of these sweaters. We promise to give you 10% of the total sweaters for experiment in sweater making and wearing. Your assistance and my family will remain 90% interested in pullovers for our featured sweater in your country, with almost the most best cardigans available to the few. I hope that this argyll pattern will interest you particularly. I will like you to contact my son who is presently in a sweater asylum in Europe suffering rare sweater disease. You can visit him on tuesday but avoid mohair at this time. You understand my plight with sweaters in my blood. Please i will like you to keep this sweater pattern for knitting later. My theory of sweaters is a later treat in all secrecy in whatever your decision will be while i await your response through the sweater security email address of my Son.


Best Regards
MRS SARAH TAMI SAVIMB
good bit on Bernadette Mayer at minor american, now co-starring Ange Mlinko. I know it became more difficult to write poetry the more I committed to that job that I didn't really like. I wrote, but as my time became more regulated, and eaten up, I found myself writing fictiony sorts of pieces, novels even (on the lines of A Nest of Ninnies. and journals. and it was okay to do so but I wasn't writing poetry. and when I did the big fuck you, I managed to get back to writing poetry. both AM and David Hess conjure the anthology of NY poetry edited by Padgett/Schapiro. which is rather dated, as most anthologies soonestly become. there were a few good writers and a lot of hangers on. the city as a school of poetry: come on, let's put more thought into these matters. the excitement and buzz happening coalescing into a dictum. see, that concept fell thru for me. I like Mlinko's phrase, the School of Ted Berrigan's Charisma, but you could substitute Mayer or O'Hara for Berrigan there. the School of Being Impressed. I was once in Grolier's bookstore reading a poem by Berrigan and somebody about being in Grolier's. I like Mayer, Berrigan and O'Hara a lot but the NY buddy system doesn't work as a school. the problem being the conviction that 'it' is happening in New York, but a declaration of what that 'it' is doesn't forthcome. or it's just being contiguous to all this (somebody's) energy. I'm talking here of that anthology. AM's point about Mayer as mentor is a different engine. to look at Mayer as a survivour of feminine snub, then to look at her work. I had a lot of difficulty lerning poetry, tho I understood early that poetry was what I had to write. so Olson's example of poetry that wasn't all this poemy stuff, instead a recharging of convictions, was a useful lesson for me. I'm sure it's not the same thing, quite, how Mayer means for women who write poetry, butI think there is something of the sort in tow. and so to escape the School of Updating Koch, trhe School of NY Bar Talk, the School of Connected Indolence, etc. by the bye, just occurred but: highly recommend Ed Sanders' Love and Fame in New York, about a slightly future NY art scene. devastating and hilarious.

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Jonathan Mayhew is reading Steve Benson's Blue Book. I like this book quite a bit. as JM notes, it invites a random reading. Benson carefully notes method of each work. I like to see that determination, with a random sense of play too. it doesn't seem like a book to read straight thru, as JM notes. Benson's methods seem based on function, how he goes about. he's not just treating the text, but his life in the making of it. I hope that doesn't sound stupid. one piece was written at a desk in the doorway of a room. that particular resonates for me.
I will take the corrective that slamming Creeley for lameness of metre and rhyme, as I do a few posts down, is a category error. Creeley writing thus is not to my taste, and that's the distinction to make. I shouldn't confound my taste with his intentions. there is, however, a category of clumsiness that engulfs all writers, in their youthful determination of their own boundaries. and among the postmodern (how did I get accredited to use such a term anyway?), you see plenty of early tilting with formal poetry, only to drop that for other comforts. admittedly I have dallied writing-wise only in the slightest way with metre and rhyme, tho I do not object to reading such. I read Creeley's early work and feel uncomfortable with his experiments. with the trippy coherence of Pieces, I thought he found himself. I first read For Love 30+ years ago (like my father, I am 93) and I found the poems in it to be dated. honest! I actually scribbled over "Ballad of the Despairing Husband". stupid as I am, I recognize resistance when I see it. but I don't know how to rescue that poem into my pleasure or respect. I think RC was still writing discrete units of work, whereas in Pieces, the process was more commanding, thereby tying one to another. I'm defending myself here, while accepting intelligent criticism. such juggling! I look up to see a bright silver moon.
John Tranter, in Here Comes Everybody interview:

"I’m a poet, and you can only know what poetry is and what your own poetry might be, by exposing yourself to a vast range of different poetry, which I have done for over forty years. Now I need less of that; the fuel tank is full enough for the journey I still have in front of me."

I feel the same way. I've made what has been a useful survey over the years, but I don't want to be spending my time with TS Eliot experiences, Eliot being a writer I don't much cotton to. I'm not closed to what's out there, just that there's so much to read, not just poetry, that I have to say basta at some points. peccavi.

JT also says: "I have come to the conclusion that philosophy is not of any help at all in the art and craft of writing; to the contrary, it gets in the way." I'll bet it does. the theory writing of the LANGUAGE poets seems antipodal or contrary to the work they actually produce. I've been reading Silliman's What again, and it's simply lovely with clarity. his prose is just as he describes in that recent post. but the theory talk of the Language beat is more than a little gummy. I didn't read philosophy or psychology at all when young, avoided that interference. now, those disciplines offer some interest to me. I read them as poetry, and not very well, but I am urged and excited to do so.