Saturday, August 06, 2005

Friday, August 05, 2005

Carl Annarummo changed the name of his blog to the arms and ears of smoke, one of the best blog names yet. a blog I enjoy under whatever aegis.
David Hess's nifty quick portrait of Joanne Kyger jibes with my assumption. I think it's in the letters of Lew Welch, Welch describing her hiking a mountain trail with a broken leg, in a cast that is, full of gusto (Kyger, not the cast). for some reason, it took me a while to stumble on a collection of John Wieners' work, and I have never done so with Kyger. so I have that in the offing. time is not serial.
my note on Mark Scroggins' blog sounds a little pre-emptive on my part, like I'm stuck with Olson/Zukofsky/Pound. I still find those writers useful. it seems like some writers took me a certain distance then we parted at the fork, which is not to say I don't still love them. Creeley and WCW guided me well, but I don't feel quite the charge I did when I met them when young. were the palisades of the pantheon still erect, they'd be there. I still go to them, in modesty and tribute, but less often now. the point of this note is to recognize (that's a word I use a lot: somebody give me another) changing tastes, so it seems. Olson had a bullying sort of charisma that magnetized many of his contemporaries, but I didn't start reading him till after his death, about a year after actually. I've wondered how Ginsberg's poetry will fare in future days, for a lot of it doesn't seem that great, really, and he sure had charisma. so I've noted a fade re Olson. which is why I was so excited to talk with Olson aficionado James Cook, the guy who doesn't blog enough, at that party last spring. I know I haven't been battered around enough by Stein, by Rimbaud, by Zukofsky even, still feel I've got some investigation to do before I freeze over completely.
I added Mark Scroggins' blog to my links because: 1) he's smart,
2)familiar with Olson/Zukofky/Pound

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Don't Blame the Reader

the intrinsic sense
of directing phones,
to which I'm off
in the bloom feature
of fettle, masked
argument of
Iraqi, burnished
lock over
tension drape, juiced
suddenness
while prancing,
stopgap economy
while dying,
stooped after effect
in regent time
spittle,
blushed season
after grating scene,
trusting gown
of looser frame,
bouncing integer
purporting
regicide,
glowing remarks
while sagging
poems, staggered
singly by excellent
swath, flipped
in kindling
drone, all for the
effort ranch,
the lubber detail,
the scrid in parlance,
the focus group
poppies: surely these
are reminiscent
of Digimon legend,
cartoon handicraft,
shitbucket mummery,
guff for the fancy,
doubling
of nothing...

hello phones
of plenty vending
network climbing:
I am near you...

NB: integral lines taken from Alli Warren
yes, Nada's parody is excellent. I also find her Laura Riding considerations well-thought and useful. and Alli Warren's furtherance. I am unwell read in Riding. I think of her some in the same way as Edward Dahlberg. they both possess a lengthy language, no 2 ways to say it. yet it crystallizes in a magma sort of way. might as well point to Mark Scroggins (several posts, and Henry Gould's interaction), a mench of Dahlberg. and Olson finally saying, you are not my father...

incipient haiku Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Henry Gould writes today: "Paterson : too much the willed effort? A rush job. Didn't soak the guitar wood long enough. Plays on the surface - drab, prosaic."I get a kick out of H Gould and his well-thought considerations. I think Henry well hits the nail head, and that's not to say I don't love WCW. Paterson has its moments but it is also WCW noticing the competition too much. his best work would be when he didn't need to soak the guitar wood for long (nice metaphor, btw). when he up and tries to accomplish something grand (say the 3 pieces in Imaginations other than Spring and All and Kora in Hell), the effort shows.
just to note that the inter view(s) at Antic View doggedly continue, 9 installments as of today.
a poem called Document Day. you can also access at my popup free blog site, here.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

honour platter

Picture of a universe with leaves drawn across carpets where last words struck a bargain.

Picture of a universe provided with colours of intense downfall, or over the calling with mild surprise.

Resumption of a picture in the universe when trees seek latterly and the effort of blossoms seems stung, loosened, a pearl of lode.

Tradition of resumption in each universe squeak and ferrying, thru tremendous altitudes and even the best answer back.

Squiring of universe conditions while even the least seems better in the perfection of staying. Kiss is a spring.

Picture in the universe forever enough.

Plaudits on reaching a universe in so many words.

Piously portraying the conduit and fray in terms of a universe of reaching.

A debt all the while, as the last on a universe knows.

bee sip Posted by Picasa
I'm not going to get my good friend Jack Kimball mad.
hey, how do you get this orgasmatron to work?
Mark Young said it before I could. more Leftwich and Kervinen. unlike with most of the blogs on my list, I do not go to Jukka's sites daily. I like to take them in a gulp.
I hadn't ought to have opined concerning the controversy in the post below. just more fizzle. for the record, as if there were a record, as if there were a readership (both are wild assumptions, but we all carry on), I appreciate what both Gary Sullivan and Kent Johnson write, both the poetry and the critical stuff (if there's any purpose to drawing that line). cross-blog conversations, with comments box sidelights, is some weird ass forum. j'ever notice? day one here at Tributary, the thought was I'd stay clear of that. admittedly I still like reading it, just don't see the whirling resolve. that was my point in writing below.

Monday, August 01, 2005

I like Kent Johnson well enough, tho never met him beyond a few emails (almost did a couple times tho). I am not jazzy enough for his fierce notice, but I recognize that he's a force and entity Out There, poking away. subversive at times, I like subversion. to me, Poet as Hero goes only so far. I know my own whingeing tendencies at times, having been very solo in the enterprise, to the point of feeling wonderful for the heroic persistence sans acclaim or even input from others that I managed, for years. but so what. Kent's political views shouldn't becloud the nature of his work. we generally agree, wide-minded poets that we are, that Iraqi slaughter is a bad thing, and the machine moving this country here likewise, and so on. in poetry, I don't think those moral points score extra. that's all part of the poem's entrails, not the live thing itself. Kent often uses the political anger well, which can be categorized as technique, which is not to suggest that the feelings aren't sincere. I don't want to take sides, yuck, but find Gary Sullivan's responses at his blog and in comments at Chris Murray's Texfiles(does anyone else see the difficulty of the medium here?) to be useful, poetically charged. I found no attack in his words, and so what about attacks anyway. Mr Johnson makes his own attacks often enough, this is what's on the board. odd for someone who has questioned the poet's identity to be himself trapped by the one inferred by the public. Nada Gordon wondering whether that Korean writer who posted to Poetics might just be a Johnsonian hoax. Kent is of many aspects, kinda human that way.

heads up

a serious side to me will start to emerge and, if I go with it, there is nothing I can't accomplish this year. altho some of the prospects may be overwhelming, I'll keep working toward my goals and progress will be made. I won't take chances while traveling, playing sports or operating machines.
acknowleged and concurred with, what Ron Silliman says is true, the disagreeable read from the bottom nature of Blogger. more crucially, what's the colour of your iPod?
Mark Young mentions reading Cape Cod by Thoreau, accent on 1st syllable, like I for one pronounce thorough. well 1st he mentions the US writers he aint never read, which brings the thought of assumptions of canon. he mentions never having read Faulkner, who I like tho don't entirely trust. Faulkner's viewpoint and milieu are foreign enough for me, perhaps moreso for non-American. Young said he came to Hawthorne (and Poe) by way of his taste for fantasy. that would be considered the backdoor. I remember reading The Scarlet Letter in high school, offical front door. the teaching itself seemed to be a dour puritanical rite. I suspect a school reading in other parts of the country, let alone the world, might focus differently. The House of Seven Gables reads like a fantasy or ghost story tho it really has no fantasy in it. the death of the antagonist at the end brings to mind the death at the end of Buddenbrooks, a long morbid consideration. sure I'm rambling here. I'm enjoying the chance to write on some writers to whom I feel close, and who, luckily, I didn't turn against in school. the Cape that Thoreau writes of has much in common with the present place, and much not. Provincetown still is a spit of sand well into the ocean, but the terraforming effort to vitalize that sand with trees and gardens, and a congestion of buildings has given an almost illusory effect to the place. as if erosion didn't exist, and the sands of time are staying put. on Memorial Day every year we used to drive down to Provincetown and tend the family cemetery plots. in those days, the Cape had no tourist trade between september and june. now the place is full to the brim at all times, a great place to study traffic and its effects. it is interesting to note, as Mark does, such great, canonical works that one has not read. Don Quixote is my downfall. it's nice to pass by the condensed version, Thoreau the hermit (given all the conversations with friends and strangers that he notes, obviously was quite chummy), Hawthorne the puritanical moralist (he flaired with the fantastical), and so on. and Dickinson was not a tender poet of delicate flowers, she was in her way ferocious and ambitious. and so forth. anyway, pondering on this. a couple years ago, I read Walden in class (adult learners). a large schism between those who loved it and those who plainly and vociferously hated it. a commenter to Mark's post associates with that latter category. the magnetic opposition iof those 2 views interests me.
at 7:51 this morning, I turn 53. birthday shared by Lt. William Clark, Herman Melville, Jerry Garcia. I'm sure you see the pattern there.

Sunday, July 31, 2005