reading "Creditors" by August Strindberg. it's kinda funny in a way that AS may not have intended, and yet. Strindberg bubbles with wound up misogynism, unpleasant yet somehow instructive. he plays these awful things upon himself. I haven't read Céline but infer that a similar thing occurs with him. maybe you could say the same of Bukowski. the play reminds me of Wilde's plays. the dialogue is too self-conscious to resemble 'real life', yet AS pokes at some real living energies. I also think of Baudelaire's dramatic view. for all of Strindberg's blitz there's some real nakedness here. there's always a goofy side to drama, one is always reminded of how the actors are faking up a storm, even as they may be hitting some dynamite chords.

Gary Sullivan mentions in an introduction to some works by Daniel Davidson (some of which is available online, but I can't now tell you where) how Daniel once sat by a highway ramp with a sign that read will vote Republican for food. a wonderful line and gesture, that comes to me just now.

Peterson/Bramhall collaboration

Tim Peterson and I did a collaboration together, which can be read at his blog.

hoka hey!

the final section (18) of Digital Cellular Phone now resides on my site, right here. remember, I only want poetry experts reading my work. please perform an honest self-evalution before attempting to use the link. poetry is serious business.

just make sure you check out Geof Huth's great visual poetry. very thoughtful critic as well. Lanny Quarles and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen have been producing neat visuals on their blogs as well.

plugola (and yet sincere...

note the books to be bought with good American money, as offered by MAG Press. I particularly point to Jeff Harrison's offering, which I have yet to read, but I am sure I've read many of the poems already (we're collaborating on an endless thingie, a nifty read for the year 3000). he's a great, varied, challenging writer and if this is his 1st book, something's gang a-gley in the lit world. Brent Bechtel has been posting fine stuff to Wrytings and Poetics, and I am sure his book wants to be your friend. of the others I cannot speak, but when is it wrong to take a flyer?

whatever you do, vote for me. vote my brown hair. vote those shoes, oh those shoes. vote no audience except traces. vote sides blending slightly and I haven't a difficult cough. vote the everyday and slide. vote welcome and vote island. vote on and on, crushingly, and you know your heroes. vote in pieces before the whole. vote of often times and the electric clutch. and tell me when you're done.

"You belong to lighter climates, not this
vermillion elocution that scrapes
words out of tepid fragrances"

I'd like Lewis Lacook more if he didn't make it look so easy. I mean, there's a lot of lovely lyric out there with his name attached. and he does so much else as well.

this is interesting: Stephen Vincent messin' with Zukofsky. well this just serves to remind me that I should take more time with Z. but I'm trying to work thru Beverly Dahlen!. it's quite an exercise that Stephen performs. I've mentioned earlier how I was riffing on the poems in Coolidge's On The Nameways ici. Stephen is working more closely, efforting it, whereas my little attempts were just spree. maybe it is not work for Stephen as it would be for me, we all have our methods. I have made translations of Hammurabi's Code and Martin Luther 99 Treatises, tho alas both are caught on a computer that cannot be accessed (along with a royal shitload of my writing, as it happens). I'm not gonna be an innovator but I think it's good exercise to try experiments. what SV does in this work is not exactly what Louis and Celia did with Catullus, but it represents a way of taking hold of the thing.

His poems appear regularly in textbooks and anthologies currently in use in secondary schools and college classrooms across the country. He also writes fiction and literary criticism and contributes regular books reviews to Georgia Review. He should really fit in as the regular Poet Laureate.

sad to hear that Ted Kooser killed Donald Allen.

I Just

hit the blog this link on Carl Annarummo's blog. what the hell have I done? k, I just done it to this one, too. whoopee. what firces shall be unleashed? dunno. well this is my chance to say go see Carl Annarummo read (at Wordsworth of the famous Aardvark Square, 7 of the clock upon the thirdest day of September). I've never done so and will not be able to, but his concise ponderings of a wobbly world seem like a fun bet. Mairead Byrne reads just now, and I'm missing that too. selah.

Jack Kimball scoots a mention of Ronald Firbank in the post that I point to below. bad me, there's one I haven't read. I know I've wanted to. John Latta has been reading and talking about, woof, I was about to write BS Skinner (haven't read him either) but I mean BS Johnson. plus Proust go look!. when the novel is written with what I'll call a poetic sense of form, it's an exciting thing. Woolf, Stein, Beckett, Flann O'Brien, and that other Irish guy. who'm I missing? Melville of course. even James. I think poets are fucked if they don't watch such folks. so Firbank's on my list. who's on your list?

k. penultimate Digital section up here. be the 18th person to check it out!!!

Beverly Dahlen makes me think of Gertrude Stein (also, for obvious reason, Babe Dahlen (baseball reference, you could look it up)). in the way that facts are presented, unornamented I think I want to say. (oh sorry, as I think on it, that's Babe Dahlgren but I guess you can still get what chimes for me). there's a way that both don't commit to their statements. your average dairy-fed Republican commits to a worldview that is completed with every statement. I'm afraid your liberal stir-fried Democrat does the same thing. taking a position of position. who needs these fucking conventions, frankly. both BD and GS seem to allow an unsettlement to occur. with BD, it's memory within which she writes, at least in A Reading. and it is 'her' memory, but it isn't just that. it's a familiarity, even if I cannot say why I connect. it's an agreeable indeterminate power, which is inclusive and generous. not in a soppy way, but resepctful. I know my writing is not like that of either Dahlen or Stein, it's just Bramhall, but if I aim at all, it is towards that inclusion.

another one of Jack Kimball's great launchings, and even at some length too. great stuff.

I often draws from my native Great Plains to depict the sweeping spaces and small-town life of rural America. then too, I writes a lot of nonsense.

look at my consequence!

Tim Peterson alerted me that he writ a review of my (and Henry's) reading. it's a 'good' review, but it's not the good part that interests me so much, it is the view Tim's piece affords. one writes within some energy, is carried thereby, and altho there is collusion between reader and writer, there are also separate events involved as we 'get together'. or I am thinking of tributaries (HAH!!!) in their distant configuration then meeting in the greater river. I don't think too much about the engine parts of my writing. I mean, it is probably better if I leave my brain out of this so far as I can. Tim is obviously (look at Tim's consideration of Ashbery and O'Hara earlier on his blog) thoughtful about poetrty, in a way, actually, that I am not. I can lament as does Henry that we haven't had a lot of consideration of our work. Henry's work deserves consideration for it is serious, real work, and it is out and about. I've been rather hesitant, up till recently, to push my work into the public gleam. I beam a bit to think someone got 'something' from my writing, that's a natural, unavoidable reaction. but it is illuminating to see the how of that. I'm not self-advertising here so much as reveling in the process, the larger process that I haven't much participated in.

I liked this piece by Daniel Carter that appeared on Poetics today. it's a long breath and going. I know Daniel plays sax but I've never heard him play. a few tiems I've tried to riff on pieces by him, I think at TrAce online whatsis. it's a different line for me to follow.

well, Steve Tills adverts Ann Marie Eldon and I do also. "The arrogance of spilt toenail clippings".

see, I'm trying to explain the why of each link I provide. Christopher Rizzo is an energetic poetry guy. energetic in that he's doing stuff for poetry besides writing it. his writing is extremely energetic too. back in the day I supported poetry by buying it. it was the little I could do. I even gave money to presses. I haven't the money now to do that, and time constraints make going to readings difficult, so I must honour those who do the work.

this one cracked me up, a vision

risky business. I quite agree, altho that would be taking one cherished block of buzzing sound from the vocabulary of blurbers and reviewers. there's a photograph called "The Leap", I think. it shows Yves Klein making a headlong leap out a window, say 12 feet above the street. Superman without the buffer against gravity. now that artist takes a specific physical risk in his art. the commonest risk taken is the last named by Jonathan.

"Can't have paradise on Earth, when it's in heaven. Need a war we'll never win." -- David Hess

speaking of which: wrapped around enthusiasm is the proposal full of fall or spring, and settled to hedge in the green grass appetite. motivations are complex, reeking of jury duty and aubade, clusters from lint, translation, and random occurence in bedlam. a favouable calm withal, and a reefer truck to carry chilly things hither yon. what purpose is smarter than going over the road again, backwards, eyes closed, and full of surprises?

once again, the fellow playing that Chinese stringed instrument. in front of the Coop, Hahvud Squayah. well first I rushed by a guy asking for spare change, anxious to get to the reading. I didn't think what little I had in my wallet constituted spare at the time. then I recollected the quarters in my pocket, and those could be spare, since the parking metre had been fed. so I went back. the guy wasn't going to let me off easy. 'oh so you did have some money, my brother'. then the other guy playing away. staring into some distance that wasn't for me to know. okay, we were in a rush. coming back, slower, we listened a bit. I suppose he was still doing traditional Chinese music, but it sounded Celtic in my ear. Beth gave him some money and he smiled with such surprising animation. I just didn't think he had that in him anymore. he said 'thank you' and Beth said 'thank you'. Beth said she thought he was broken. the music's a rope to which he holds.

I think Nada Gordon's doctor has looked at her tongue long enough. but that's just to say I appreciate her blog and her writing. at one time, days of loggerhead, of constraint, perturbation of the path, my journal writing was pretty much my entire effort. that journal was basically a daily riff. I was writing some poetry then but not with fire. the journal began as a place to ponder my reading, but almost immediately I went a-field. music, movies, crappy tv shows. divagations on New Yorker ads and considerations on catalogues and what not. step one was to scribble in notebooks. step two was type it up. in typing I would ruthlessly cut what clanged disharmoniously or seemed uninteresting. a range of attention manifested. I had maybe 600 pages typed with lots more still to. then that whole project stopped, as I returned, somehow, all love, to poetry. still have the notebooks 'somewhere', and diskettes of the typing, maybe even print outs. well, now Tributary seems to fill that urge bit. I try to stay 'on message', id est, this will largely be about poetry as per AHB. my other blog, R/ckets&S/ntries is just plain writin'. I think of it as thematic, and as even one 'poem'. it is not a collection. it is written on the (blog)spot. I've yet to go to the trouble of saving it to my hard drive. I dunno why I've made such a tangent except to recognize the way a project like a blog can come and go. missing Nada's reports lately, you see, and Gary Sullivan's, and Kasey Mohammad is much less heard than ought, etc. it's not that I'm such a computer injection guy, but people have lulled me into expectation. and currently, I don't want a big project saying come on, as did Digital Cellular Phone...

"I want to be kind, like a shack in the forest, a river passes by, each bird pulls a position into play, the favour of a glint of summer on river surface or the ice that happens, time to help and heal and listen while the birds, again, the air is rich, a chord sounds perfectly, for time exists in dollops, then the still, the reaching, the elegant and playful, going on as going can be complete, I want this in a light of loving, come to passion, elect and give, this is a mantra for a day, when I am strong, and verses tell a story, and story leaves a place for moments in the glare, tell you there."

received and reading

Black Spring, Winter 2004

7 supportive bucks

theenk Books
P.O. Box 184
Shortsville, NY 14548-0184

Brent Bechtel
Catherine Daly
kari edwards
Stephen Ellis
Jim McCrary
Chris Murray
Layne Russell
Steve Tills

familiar names, I hope. I wish to advert particularly Stephen Ellis. he is hard to quote because he creates such Buckminster Fuller knots of interdependent energies that make extraction difficult, but which afford such wonderful rides. hah, poetry!

May Toad

as a general rules, all poetry confuses me. my earliest writing model would be Robert Benchley. his pieces had some frail subject and anchor, but the interest was in just where/how he went. that's all I saw for the writing I would do, get somewhere in an interesting way. I didn't like poetry, thanks. but I wasn't interested in writing the next Lord of the Rings, and it was beyond my ken to think I could write non-fiction. so I looked at Benchley's pieces and thought if I wrote something like that, it would be poetry. at any rate, I had a teacher who got us to question what a poem was. I learned from that that a poem wasn't just [fill in the blank]. that was freedom in my face, but it took a long time to learn to use that freedom. and the bottom line is that freedom aint. so a breakthru a few years ago, in a rupturing time for me. I just let myself write sentences, in boring prose blocks. sans by your leave from Olson, not trying to extract Stein, didn't ask Ashbery for hints. much befuddled thru the years by LANGUAGE writing but also much intrigued. so all this bubbling around until I just let something go. and hung on to what was left. so I meant méthode above in particular as with writing with Jeff Harrison. with whom I share a sense, I think, of narrative. of a forward energy, not to deny other directions. my metre is simple: the sentence. if written with care to sound and an eye to the balances and intrigues that go on. not to say that syntax can't be messed with, and telescopings. dissonance is a comparative term, right? Jeff and I tend to repeat and return to what interests us. he often, perhaps you've noticed, mentions Virginia. which can be a place, a person, a state of mind, or maybe other things. West Virginia has impressed itself upon me in maybe similar way, tho I did not consciously try to emulate Jeff. Beth's father lived in West Virginia, died there, by his own hand. Olson and Thoreau give me local. in WV, the world is particular. an abundant land stripped of resource. and that's why all these West Virginians are slogging it in military service, leftovers from the grand gathering and affluence society. Beth's father, to whom I dedicate, was highly intelligent and socially concerned. he saw the world, not just what he wanted from it. such a terrible misuse exists. fuck the Republicans, and the Democratic slump too. the land that is WV is an intensity that just about shocks me, those swooping hills and twisting river hollows. b>bejesus!!!. and four square Appalachian poverty, a mean hard life. I know I wander here, but think I have a point somewhere in my excursion. Jeff's in one place, a couple thousand miles from 'my' place, if we want to be literal to matter (and if we understand physics in a flatland way). there are different sounds, but the agreement comes in somehow. Jeff has absorbed his share of English lit, maybe so have I. Keats really believed in that land of Poetry and Myths and the land of his poem. so did Dickinson, and Olson right to the death. I don't know if Jeff is at all as equivocal as I am. despite my equivocation about poetry, that it can be effete fancy schmancy code play and who cares, I believe in poetry in the way I think JH does. method is just another word for integrity, or trying to keep it there. yeah, a little recognition would be nice (holy shit, David Hess links to everything I have online: I am modest before that), but I've lived without it and it aint so bad. it's a step here and there. it's never a fulfillment to follow all the rules.

here's a link to some work by Jeff Harrison. I like his work quite a bit. there is a lot available online, certainly his pretty daily contribuitions to Poetics and Wrytings, and elsewhere. he and I have been doing a collaboration for the past 18 months. it's getting long, it doesnt seem to stop. I've been remiss in not putting up a link to his work.

H Gould pome

"If You Could See That Porch"

If there is something blue
between acloud and a painting
the full sense of a silent moment
appears suddenly like rain.
It goes over the land
it sings a tune you learned too
standing on the wet porch.
Little clowns in yellow raincoats
the laugh of a hidden yard
a girl in blue goes by
the big world raining
in those yellow raincoats,
the thing you always forget
because morning is full of birds.

--from Stone, by Henry Gould

I like this for the Proustian memory. the poem is succinct without slight and is tuned directly. personally I miss the few commas that could've been supplied. I generally feel use all appropriate punctuation or don't use any. (once, on the strength of Apollinaire's example ("Zone" specifically), I rewrote a poem without punctuation, as proper punctuation seemed to be confusing things). the poem works natheless. the deal is, got some books from Henry, and he got mine. I hadn't read him really, as I don't read off computer well. sometimes the academy gets in the way, and what I mean is, there's always a list of right answers, yeah, you've got to read them. but we've all got our tastes as well as our scholarship. and some writers are off the path. aren't there enough writers who sound like NY school or LANGUAge or what the heck. it's okay to enjoy what you enjoy. which is one of the simplest things that I learned last. I'm thinking of the stern Silliman visage that Jim Behrle has coupled with the word OBEY. I have no doubt that Ron Silliman loves poetry, and in fact a wide range of styles, but gosh he souns like a rules-committee-of-one has just met.

I have in my possession a picture of the young Henry Gould, and it's a cracker. it is the back cover photo of his book Stone (Copper Beech Press, 1979). he sits on a bed in a spare room. the bed appears to be a mattress on crates. he has a chunky old Royal typewriter, which sets upon another crate. pensive artist reads his latest limnings. which kinda brings to mind the great word picture of O'Hara on the backcover of Lunch Poems. I'll bet things are more cluttered now, and the Royal a memory...

latest xstream has some work of mine withal. but it really isn't about singular voices but the effect of all together. a simulation of the Wryting-L experience, or just the way bits make a whole.

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read at Wordsworth

so if Kent Johnson gave a reading, who actually would read? hahaha, ok ok, never mind. I (moi-même) gave a reading yestreen at not with Wordsworth. this was my 1st public venture. and I wasn't too nervous for, well, I guess I accept my competency as a writer. that acceptance aint easily come by. I think I just outlasted my equivocation. plus I simply got better over the years. so I felt I had good material. and I was up there not to show my heart or such, but just present this work. so okay, I had no rhythm in the 1st poem I read, an untitled thing that introduces my site More Guff. if you notice a predominance of 'w's and 'r's in the piece, so did I, Elmer Fudd style. it's a wittle twicky, but appropriate as 1st poem. I read the Barrett Watten poem "Mode Z" that I posted here earlier. it's a lovely political poem that cannot be skewered on any LANGUAGE petard. I think I'm guilty of some Franco-American malfeasance with that last sentence but you get my drift. mostly read from Simple Theory, my book and all. I thought of reading one of my Duino Elegy translations but chickened out because of their length and they're a little tricky. I didn't know if nerves would be a prob. they weren't. I also thought of reading Frank O'Hara's poem about his encounter with the sun on Fire Island but didn't get around to typing it out. I didn't want to shuffle with books and stuff, so I had what I would read typed out. I chose not to overstay my welcome so I kept my reading short. Jim and Lucie, my former employers in the wine business, attended. that's not from where you expect support, but they have, indeed, been quite supportive of me over the years. of course Beth was there. so I had me a claque. and I met Tim Peterson, with whom I have emailed a little bit. inestimable Henry Gould read after me. it was nice to meet him and hear him. Henry forges an unusual path. he writes in a comfortable formality. by comfortable I mean capable. when you read the crap in Poetry, it's not that these writers often write in rhyme and metre, it's that they don't do it well that sinks the damn ship. and the allusions and references all seem by the numbers. Henry's thinking all the way, and just weird enough. his taste is eclectic and it comes thru in his work. the rush for modernity cannot erase what earlier writers have done. it would be foolish to ignore Keats, or Clare or whoever. Bach still flies even après Coltrane blest this earth. and so on. there are plenty enough writers of Beat poetry or O'Haraesque musings, let's make our own adventures. after the reading Beth and I went out for drinks with Henry, Tim Peterson and Tim's parents. Henry, Beth and I plugged on after the Petersons left. I guess I'm making a little reading sound important, but it was important. neither Henry or I have done many readings. this was my first, as I said. Beth has been part of poetry scenes out west, but I never have. it's a charge to get out in the world this way. to see writers in three dimensions. Christopher Rizzo introduced himself. I read some of his work that he offered on his blog. I didn't hear him at Bossacre but the streaming energy of his work probably rings vividly when read aloud. I thought the long piece that Noah Gordon read at Bossacre was a piece by Christopher. in fact it was Noah's, but the muscular reading that Noah gave would surely work with Christopher's work. I guess I just made transit to tangent. I dunno if hearing a poet read is de rigeuer (how the hell do you spell that? nothing looks right) but it does help give entrance. I've mentioned how illuminating it was to hear Michael Gizzi read his own work. anyway, thanks to Jim Behrle for finding me and Henry. plenty of noteworthy readings ahead, Mairead Byrne for one, and Carl Annarummo. maybe someday Sillimandias himself. getting to these things is always a logistical matter but honest I would like to.

fergit the code tawk, le's speak natchel

but sof', whut lurks up side John-Boyson's haid? phone call fum Perloff. direckives haf gotten loose. back t'haidquarters t'confab wif Silliman, as enny fool kin plainly see. someone leaked out th' rules but they got misread, cuss it all t' tarnation. when yo' stan' up at a poetry read, doesn't set down, as enny fool kin plainly see. stan' on an' on, this hyar is rule one. all other rules is rule one. af'er th' effeckive wo'ds haf been used, stop, doesn't keep usin' th' used ones. this hyar is rule one. it is only bein' nice. ajunts in th' field haf died fo' our on account o'. time fo' a noos flash: Ajunt Gioia brin's a posy wif secret instruckshuns. th' wawk is in th' field, cuss it all t' tarnation. th' field is about, as usual, ah reckon. readin' this hyar will hafta be rule one, too.

colour day 

Geo. Washington 

disturbance as king 

that translator reminds me of Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow. Mezz was on the edge of the jazz scene in the 40s or so. I never heard him play, but his autobiography is an energized thing. WCW even spotted it as a American classic of a sort. which I might dispute, but in the back Mezz serves to teach jive to the reader, and it's fascinating.

thank goodness (or badness, whatever) for people who want us to have enriching fun, namely a translator, check it OUT.

I dunno how Carl Annarummo got a picture of me, or why it's on his blog, but don't I look grand?

Behave by STEVE TILLS

aka California Rant 66 (dPress 2004, no mailing address, try www.dpress.net). I like something different. each rant is part of more rant. good enough. feet planted, sort of. 1st of these, #67, is in and around Ezra Pound. who continues, and we should with him, difficult as that may be. Rant 69 (some are left out) is for not to David Bromige. it sounds corrective, so you wonder about the preposition. I guess these poems are identified moments, with stance, and understood as such. an open process, which is always laudable. full declarations with a recognition of the impulse and the possible undermining thereof. we all have things to say, but we don't need permanent walls. it's okay to be equivocal. anyway, nice flavour.

Walden

I'm a localist, and Walden's right there. I remember the non-beautiful concrete wharf from which one could jump into the water. that's gone, which is better for the eyes, but let's not strike up the flag of Purity. a fence to define the territory of Walden, of course, it's a national treasure after all. a little less easy to accept is the fence around much of he pond at water level, and also preventing wandering into the woods in many places. I know this is to lessen the wear of use, but it does clang a bit against the conception of Walden that WALDEN brings. it's not like Walden hasn't been used a long time. ice houses, and a grand spa sort of place were features of Walden long ago. the commuter train may rattle the respectful visitor, but trains predate Thoreau's venture to the pond. when my legs were springier I used run to and around the pond. now it's impracticable because there are often so many stepping westward on the thin path, just not much room for galloping runners. and god forbid mountain bikes. the pure products of America go crazy, you bet. I used to bike to work, taking a long route so that I could glimpse the pond twice in the day, and feel that refreshment. catch it as the sun goes down. there's a facsimile hut, but it's up by the parking lot, where Thoreau used to park his Mazda. the actual hut site had a hell of a view, especially with fewer trees than now. beanfields, try to imagine them there now. and I frequently think of himself in his doorway, frying up johnnycakes, reading the Baghavad-Gita, writing in his journal. everything was worth seeing, worth invesigating even. I suppose romanticizing is a natural twitch. when I brush aside the ambitious crap, which I can't help, I see my work in that light, of just proceeding in the day with what I have. next stop, bodhisattva, and I'm only partly kidding. one has to respect one's own sense of hope and mission, even as one works to avoid its mastery.

current fad of facts

I'm kind of a fat guy meeting with the rules committee, if you must know. I'm a brick short of a license to kill, so I'm staying into something less apportioned. I'm meaning the need for exactitude, reaching certainty by the usual route. I've averaged out homespun with a bar tab. I'm not even interested in clumping the annoying one who shows too nervous, after all these years. that's not a problem, that's life. I'm not very social, as perhaps you'll see. other lists will just show other lists, otherwise nature takes hold. you've heard this before, etc.

yesterday was a rush that scooted me past reading, writing or not watching the Sox at Fenway, thus noted a piece by Tim Peterson re O'Hara but didn't read intake then. and I see that he must've corrected its mirage into something worth another look, after Bizarro is done.

I owe it all to you 10,000, each one that takes a word from where I wrote it.

but soft, what lurks up side Johnson's head? phone call from Perloff. directives have gotten loose. back to headquarters to confab with Silliman. someone leaked out the rules but they got misread. when you stand up at a poetry read, don't sit down. stand on and on, this is rule one. all other rules are rule one. after the effective words have been used, stop, don't keep using the used ones. this is rule one. it is only being nice. agents in the field have died for our since. time for a news flash: Agent Gioia brings a posy with secret instructions. the work is in the field. the field is about, as usual. reading this will have to be rule one, too.

hi, I'm teaching my career move, first with a response letter on Poetics concerning something obvious but it's my name on the line. next the dole comment there and there, my name amidst further names, into several namings. and I will be teaching my class everything concerning what you listen sometimes. I am bold even to say this in a mirage of poetry at function, but I just had to say.

but will I feel better about myself when I start adding comments to Ron Silliman's blog?

I wish to continue delighting in a world in which Ron Silliman and Kent Johnson, I forget which one of them is Beelzebub, acquire the song plus dance to inspire a generation and the poetics said generation must employ. I want to be in the heartburn of that feast, I want to be located somewhere near now, and all the radical embellishments of continuing in the social train of thought. basically, I want. I see a future in which everything that's present is accounted for.

Blogger's cranky today, crying for a little WD40.

both Tills and Murray mention Thoreau. I love Thoreau as a writer, as a persistent step around these parts, and as a moral voice, ggod damn it. and Walden too, the pond, held captive by Park Service admittedly much needed fences. visit his gravesite and you will see letters and other crap left by fans: Dear Henry, I'm wonderful too!!! Thoreau's attention is palpable, his basis sensible. tell me that aint poetic.

reading Inner Revolution (Shambala, I think (book not handy) 1998) by Robert Thurman. when I started this blog, I found that buddhism was my main topic. because buddhism itself was growing more important for me. a good long streak in which all I wanted to read was buddhist texts. that was, I realize, preparation for practice. and when I say practice, I mean meditating but not well and trying to take the lessons out of the books and into my life. sorry if this sounds like hokum. anyway, Thurman's book is a consideration of buddhism as an active answer to the world around. pointing to how buddhism can be political. buddhism's pretty simple, in that it sums up well with the 4 Noble Truths (I suppose most religions and philosophical systems can likewise be made simple). all the surrounding literature tries to get those 4 Truths across, likewise the practice of buddhism. I don't want to talk about it, I just want to see buddhism working. Thurman's book seeks to enliven buddhism to the political world we know. which is powerful. I can only say that reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Thurman's translation) at the burial of Beth's father, meant something to us.

Steve Tills has an informative blog.
come to that, so does Steve Evans and
Chris Murray. all three will be glad to know that I know this.

okay, I'm still using the old poetics, which I guess I believe has served me well. when the realization hits that I'm doing it all wrong, that improvements have been made in the very conception of poetry and all the arts, that'll be very cool. until then, same old from AHB. sorry.

the amity continues! Kent Johnson and Ron Silliman worked thru the night (sans rulebook, alas) and were able to delineate a completely new poetics. I am sure I speak for everyone when I say that the chance to work within this new conceptual blandishment will be an excitement of untellable delight and importance. come the revolution, there will be no pencils!

I did, after all, write a post about George Butterick's Collected Poerms yesterday, but Blogger ate my scintillating. I don't want anyone to think I'm not trying.

BAD NEWS!!!

the Johnson-Silliman rulebook just floated off into space. I feel chill, lonely, broken. I may never write literature now.

latest info

Kent Johnson and Ron Silliman have begun talks to CHANGE LITERATURE as we know it. don't ask questions: do as they say. this is bigger than big.

I fear that Karl Merleau-Marcuse betook himself too heavily of the powers of ABBA. serious mojo at work there, not to be taken lightly.

I'm writing this entry from the top of Mount Olympus, where, I should say, the view's terrif.

it's about time

I just gave myself the award for Best Blog. Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair. I couldn't've done it without me.

Henry Gould states on his blog that he will not repeat not be reading Wordsworth at Wordsworth on saturday, 'our' reading. which leaves the task to me.

when oft to stream the delicate repose
and wending cloudlike o'er the rustic lea,
sweet Lucy, soft of breath and in fell throes,
performs an outdoor appendectomy

opportunity teaching

This fall instituted will lead a Paulo Freire, which will meet 11 Tuesdays in my South. Arrive lime flavoured garden during indoor drill thru intending to go.

Institute means faction, nonfaction, prosit, poet, wry cross-genre (and cross gander) including but not anything edgy to present that feels too rind of orange risky or sexy fustian or queer for academic. The buds are awful in the mountain boundary rating. The totally open-ended five people present a week, scheduling that the weak people usually bring in something less copies. For everybody, we critique it that longer pieces are also okay, but they need to be handed ahead of people. Each student typically gets time. Institute critiques the classes lots and lots. Personal attention takes place in my South, which comes complete.

Institute’s latest book, Pink’s Team, a collection of force fitting fiction, meuble memoir, and my memoiresque cat, was in June. Suspect thought’s press, dozens have daily read away. My vampire letters of University of Wisconsin teaches creative writing at SF State. Institute also taught at Institute. I'm the winner.

Institute you're interested about etc, you know anybody, please pass them. Past classes have quickly, if so you're interested. Treat an ounce with you liquor demon about a next time policing.

Thank doting, skip to my faction.

"Yet I don't see myself so much as reclusive as unfortunately faced with nothing to be reclusive from."--from a comment by Geof Huth on Ron Silliman's hitpoint enriched blog. Geof speaks specifically of the visual poetry non-scene, there being no hubs of likeminded. I guess I feel similarly, tho for me it's merely that I haven't pressed myself into the scene. do I really have to do that to be read? types are not men.

16th section (of 18) of Digital Cellular Phone now up but please don't go there unless someone you respect tells you to

At The Beginning with AHB, the Langpo Experience

here’s the true story. in 1972, Barrett Watten came to Franconia College, in Franconia New Hampshire. this tiny ‘experimental’ hippie college sat on a mountainside just north of Franconia Notch, site of the geologic outcropping of stone called the Old Man in the Mountains (rest in pieces). legendary poet Robert Grenier (pre-legend) taught at this college, using strange writings by such writers as Charles Olson, Gertrude Stein, Louis Zukofsky to bedazzle and confuse youthful students of the so called poetic art. Barrett came to visit Robert, ostensibly, as my investigations determined, to develop the 3rd issue of This. a buzz flickered thru the tiny school’s keen community of poets, all ten of them. Anselm Hollo, at another time, visited our school, tho I caught only a glimpse of him, as he smoked his thin cigar. Larry Eigner had visited, even to sit with us round a cafeteria table and talk poetry. I knew thru all these machinations and others (such as Robert posting his index card poems on a hallway wall) that something was ‘up’. Barrett sat in on one of our classes, literally. in the corner, coolly, not saying anything. he did not betray his mission. sources indicated, however, that there was more going on than two fellow experimental poets meeting in the deep places of New Hampshire, much more. secret meetings between these two powerhouse post-modernist influences were in the books. their plans to change the face of literature was in process. there was no way I could access these meetings, for my cover was as a common semi-serious student as much concerned with Quicksilver Messenger Service (they would never, alas, top their “Happy Trails” album) as I was with poems of one word—e.g. lighght–perhaps even more so. luckily I was able to, let us say, get wind of a few facts. having written a publishable poem of a certain experimental sort, I’d worked my way into a position of trust amongst the inner sanctum. This 3 would even have a place for me! and I was trusted enough to have dinner with visiting important poet John Ashbery at Grenier’s post-modern headquarters, and being introduced (three times) to poet-hero Robert Creeley at a post reading party. people, I was there at the beginning!!! the furtive joys of a nEw WritiNG were being sown. the bloody revolt against mainstream poetry, the sanctity of certification thru viable academic dialogue, the scads of really dope books written by feverish undergrads with awesome degrees on their minds were bringing avant garde (or is that avant grade?) back into the present where we can see it: all 'this' had yet to happen at this point in time. but the world was turning. yes, and it was my good fortune not to get reviewed or noticed or published or whatever till years and years later I decided, what the fuck, I’ll just use this internet shit to get my work before a public that, like, well, may or may not care that much, but anyway, you know, here it is and all…

my father in dementia or Alzheimer's losing mooring, where is where. asks: did you know Eleanor Bramhall (id est: my mother). confusion in the brain itself, language on the outside. where are we? and worse: what are you doing to me? this confusion. words as improper tools. "my language did this to me". he came back, and he knew he came back (what happened?) with Ravel's Bolero and even drumming together, bang the drum.

newspaper articles about my poet laureateness who is there

this is cool:

"In utopia forget who you are.

-Can I bring a small computer/books?
-Can I bring my own food?
-Can I leave for a few hours if I need to?
-I am expected to participate three times a day?
-Do I fill out forms and then you write back/call?"

--David Hess (his blog)

we're pretty eager out here aren't we?

Mode Z

Could we have those trees cleared out of the way?
And those houses, volcanoes, empires? The natural
panorama is false, the shadows it casts are so many
useless platitudes. Everything is suspect. Even
clouds of the same sky are the same. Close the door
is voluntary death. There is one color, not any.

Prove to me now that you have finally undermined
your heroes. In fits of distraction the walls cover
themselves with portraits. Types are not men. Admit
that your studies are over. Limit yourself to your
memoirs. Identity is only natural. Now become
the person in your life. Start writing autobiography

--Barrett Watten, 1-10 (This Press, 1980)

how L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E*y is that? I think it is lovely. "Types are not men".

Just Like A Real Italian Kid by Michael Gizzi (The Figures 1990). a thin chap full of. memoir but in a cursive yet direct prose. telescopic leaps and nugget finds. I really like this. I saw him read at the Boston Group Grope of 2000, and thought that was as good as reading gets. measured, quietly sly, very commanded. I don't think I got M Gizzi till I heard him. I heard several readers at the Boston Massacre (NEGordon, for one) who built up similarly impressive heads of steam, but were scattershot compared to Gizzi. virtuoso slinging is still slinging.

also reading Metropolis by Robert Fitterman (Sun&Moon 2000). reminds me of Ark, by Ronald Johnson for how it varies stylistically as needed. it also reminded me of Stacy Doris's work, in its energy. what I know of SD's work, it's a generous havoc, wild and comedic. Fitterman's work paces differently, more leisurely and with less eruption. both SD and RF are very New York not in the sense of That School and the myriad copiers, but in the presence of the city. we came up 95 from New Jersey lst june going wow, the Jersey marshes, wow Brooklyn Heights, wow the skyline, wow the George Washington Bridge. that New York. oh, I also thought of Hart Crane as I read RF. Nick Piombinio offers some links to further bits of Metropolis. I recommend that you apply yourself in that way.

reading Walking by Stephen Vincent (Junction Press, 1993), which includes precursors to his "Walking Theory" poems. I think the writing is attention. there are myriad ways to accomplish that. I see Blackburn or Wieners as immersion. I think SV observes more quietly. Both Wieners (I'm thinking I may be the only poet in the Boston area who never met JW)and Blackburn, as to the natures, get beat about, retaining keel enough to hold the writing up or upright. SV stands in moments (note to self: how does one write about poetry without soundign blurbish?), plucking petals to float. and I mean that. "African Cycle" begins with this list:

Kill the cow
Drink the milk
Climb the tree
Break the branch
Scale the mountain
Split the rock
Pick the fruit
Throw the apple
Mine the metal
Burn the copper
Open the bucket
Fling the paint
Pick the cotton
Eat the seeds
Steal the pants
Rip the seam
Burn the house
Use the flame
Call an ancestor
Bury his name

I esp like "Steal the pants". it's all process. by the bye, the titles to Irish dance tunes can often evoke neat images and feeling, "Rip the Calico", "Toss the Feathers". anyway, I'm just poking long, it's how I read nowadays.

"Homosexual Tearfully Admits To Being Governor Of New Jersey"--The Onion of 08/18/04. must put Onion into links. in the 70s the National Lampoon could sometimes rise above puerile and sophomoric. one memorable piece had a page of pictures of 'revolutionaries', Jane Fonda, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Jerry Rubin, with captions what they were up to lately. Fonda going fom war protest to thigh-trimming, etc. I think at the top there was a banner: When It Coems To Revolution. on the next page was a Chinese Revolutionary-style poster of the writers of the mag, with the banner: We're All You've Got Left. humour is a constant revolution. altho you think of all those comedians who seemed edgy or even funny, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldbeg, Billy Crystal, Michael Keaton, who signed on to the floor show, got serious, and are full of crap. selah and all that.

how come poetry is a simple map and we're all so lost? well, it's late august, on that map and elsewhere, and we're not above being low, or too small to think big, or other numbers added at random. I don't have an occasion for saying anything beyond saying anything. sometimes I think I've done something.

I was just reading O'Hara's Personism, but still I dunno if this by Mairead Byrne aint Personistic. something direct and person-able. I can't quantify what O'Hara does, and god help me, I think I can do it sometimes. this piece by Mairead touches that 'thing'.

turns out that Kent Johnson wrote MY book Simple Theory, from which I will probably read at Wordsworth (in Cambridge) next saturday around 5pm, (EDT), the selfsame book that is available from SPD, a great gift, by the way. I mean wow, that Kent Johnson sure is a trickster to fool even me!!!

check Jukka's post at nonlinear for yesterday (thursday 8/19). a pleasing curve in the southeast quadrant. 'fucking' kinda top centre. over to the west, 'samba'. I have nothing clever or illuminating to say here, just am taken by the texture and depth that treats the eye.

nifty visual from Lanny Quarles

ILLRACKETAMBIENTALE (webmural)
for Victor Tausk

nifty graphic: big ass 2m version

260K version

121K version

Lanny and Jukka among many others work in visual and computer graphic ways that I haven't even attempted. what's my damage? why am I so lame? honest to god, I love to paint and collage, but I haven't found my way to the computer's visual potential. selah.

Kent Johnson is trying to get a play he just wrote, "Measure for Measure", produced. wish him luck! he's also translating the poems of Thomas Chatterton into English, which is an exciting event. oh, and he's just finishing a biography of Howard Hughes, which stems from a zillion interviews he had with the famous billionaire man of mystery.

I'm a few miles west of enfant and my terrible aint the interesting kind, so I point hypocrite Lecteur to le back-in-business, non-moribund Heathens in Heat de David Hess, a direct and lively critical voix.

I hear Kent Johnson will be translating some words by Gaelic poet Ossian. look forward to THAT!!!

"Someone could do a history poem (in Olson & WCW vein) based on investigations & juxtapositions of "democracy" as global phenomenon, as a project of states & multinational groupings - "democracy in Middle East/Asia/Africa/South America" etc. - juxtaposed, that is, with historical roots in New England local politics (sovereignty of the people out of village town meetings). What it all means to have a superpower on a democracy mission compared to the felt reality of actual civic life (what that used to mean, what it amounts to now).

(Been reading de Tocqueville lately.)" --Henry Gould

jeez, I'm into it. frankly, much of my interest in Olson concerns his indications in such directions. I've read a lot of the writers he bibliographized for Ed Dorn. I've had a couple public civcs lessons lately, one while poking around briefly in Salem (MA)last week (at the end of the 18th century Salem was the 6th largest city in the country and the richest per capita), and another from nat'l parks rangers on site at Hartwell Tavern in Lincoln. I wanted to jump into Locke and Federalist Papers and all that stuff. I am not a scholar by any means, whereas I surmise that Henry is, but this is in my mind, mayhap not exactly as Henry puts it. America the Poem (irony irony), and on.

John Latta refers to the 'Kent Johnson effect'. KJ leaves you questioning. OR you skip the questions. either way, it's a freeing thing. heck, it's merry making, what Kent is AT. I have a fondness for subversion of a certain sort, not being especially direct myself, and also finding polemics and action too often incompatible. I sure don't care much what's authentic. I'm probably more gullible than most, have fallen for a few of Kent's jokes. anyway, some of Whitman's really horse's ass stuff is pretty good. at least if you say okay, accept that he's taking that trip. I read the 1st Carlos Castenada book well before I'd heard any questions of his authenticity, and pretty well bought that farm. there's a lot of, you know, authentic crap out there that no one really needs to read. bad enough to be published in Poetry or APR. I mean sincerity out the wazoo and the like. Robert Lowell is all authentic, yet his poetry just seems so made up and canny. in The Dolphin and I forget the other book at the time, he quotes his ex-wife's letters. his writing looks perfectly crumbly, whereas Elizabeth Hardwick's letters are pungent and exalting in, dare I say, honesty. so I'm on Kent's team, if he'll have me. Latta references the New Poetry list, where some anti-Johnsonization has occurred. those college profs are a lot too lame. calling Forrest Gander Goosey one time, whee hah! sorry, but it's Leon 'Goose' Goslin, Washington Senators (etc) (you could look it up). I saw Forrest read once, and he was pretty good. rapped the lectern dramatically, which, surprisingly, worked.

Jacket, as Reader knows, has lots going for it. it enjoys the neatest design possible, especially if you, like me, aren't the biggest fan of reading off the screen. it is full of the modern and post-modern names that make poetry interesting. quite a stunning repository for Kent Johnsonish things, most lately a travelogue of a Bolivian tour with Forrest Gander, in the footsteps of Jaime Saenez. also a piece on Rakosi and Stevens, hey I have the collected poems of both those dudes. Kent Johnson will soon be appearing in a comments field near you. if he makes you nervous, perhaps you're up to something.

here's a picture of 'me' at Wordsworth the 28th and flight, span, bridge, potion, and what is available when dreaming or drowning. hello, etc...

quoting Jack Kimball blog here:

"Thanks for zilch. That's what men like my father, my father's age, were thinking, not saying it outright or not saying it much. Heads down, noses clean, hobos in bed a decade before the pill, a half a century before cialis. Bossing 24-seven, dreaming who're bossed, sexed out the top spot. You can phone him in but don't wimp. If you hang up, your throat's sliced. Your projects curtailed. A course of action by a player of zilch.

Folks were kind of less casual then. You know what I said? To the bank people. I don't want to pay for any of it."

tie politics closely to body of work and thinking, in time to mention of moment, here and now, a possible score and collaboration... are people numbered well now, patience, scoring, riducule, and the weird flow of time. etc, I love you.

poetry isn't music, but it has
it's
sway and way

Henry likes C Milosz, Mayhew doesn't. it's the matter of translation. I feel like I miss too much when I read English writing itself. translation is a danger and tangle. I wonder how Dickinson or Whitman could be translated. or Olson. translation is invention, or, for the crappy translaters of Neruda, say, translation is a mixture of herbs, tinctures and omigawd. hello, here is your pelican.

some cool texts here. Sheila Murphy, Jeff Harrison, Ric Carfagna, Peter Ganick, Eileen Tabios: do we forget how wonderful it is to have access?

I believe I get one MORE hit on my blog per day than does Ron Silliman(r), but I'm a cool guy and am happy to share my hit points with others. I neglected to make a permanent link to JPK's Xstream, tho I did point to it some while ago. so now that's taken care of, to the right but also here. the auto issue is a particularly intersting aspect of Xstream.

shroom print 

the blog links on Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's Nonlinear blog have slipped into the visuals. at least with my browser, etc, but it looks neat. text invasion; where's the boundaries; marching words; nothing stays still: yelp!

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's other blog. it's in Englishbut then you think, what the hell is English. both because English is a particularly fluid langauge with lots of imports, but also the boundaries of languages themselves are less defined and 'safe' than we would like to think. interesting stuff here.

Digital Cellular Phone now has part fifteen up for anxious and non-anxious eyes alike

the 1st shitload

titled: "Entitlement"


Don’t Close That Please

a referendum
slick tale
modes of English
while trying
other front
whose interest
envelopes
the possible
farce?
a tree over
the house
secures something


Mountain Burgundy

red possibles almost
pile the matter
in shelving
of the topmost
branching dignity
couldn’t’ squirm
for lack of
horizon


Greens Sensible

it’s an oval
I mean it’s an
oval piece of
green amber
Celtic thingie


Cat Examines Door

already with
against on for
responsibility
pitches


Smoke Fiddles

the famous
Appalachian devil
wants a piece of


Do You Dire My Hair?

beer in the
middle
of taking
in an
image
of getting
crowded


Love Train

England
folks
China too
on board
on thru


Lift Your Talk Off

final laughs
sled not at
all the time
lost dedicated
sample
your school
out look
reeds loam
and advantage


Noting At A Lot

piles thru out
is mercy
to succumb
to a vocabulary
full of
succumb


Itch Terrifically

a moment
with a
thumb


Singular Theory

over here
the hands need
a local date
and secret
tales balancing
just enough
dog


Not Interfering With A Dog

it looked good
couldn’t tell a
further difference
mumbles about
a little picture


Trust Conceives a Death

I went a rope
full of
I walk alone
closer mumble
the nature
“I have so much
to do
gum on
my shoe”


Cabal Delivery

read enough to
try again
thanks to evil


Explaining Sensible

why am I
Madame Blavatsky
they wondered
in great bundles
locked in truck


Wordsworth Customer Service

Desire
is a good
start
don’t you
think?


Mere Assassination Books

long typing quarries
each success
perfects fantasy
of floppy thinking
on top of
proven pavement

since july 31, been writing short poems in a notebook,lickety split. I start with a title then scribble a few words. last week while watching GOLF for god's sake, I wrote a bunch. I wrote during the Masaacre and traveling hither and yon. I will focus on this thing. a different breath.

I finished (stopped) Digital Cellular Phone (honest I want you to go here) yesterday. I realize this isn't an announcement of the same weight as announcing that The Alphabet is done, but then, I didn't write The Alphabet. DGP is 384 pages in Word, and 4 more sections still need to be put on line. I see the thing as a poem. not, that is, a collection of pieces, tho it can be read that way, and that's likely how I would read. serial pieces, so one should keep that in mind as a fact of it, however one wants to take it. I will probably produce a pdf file for the thing, if it's not too awkward to work with something this size. I'm writing to myself here, aren't I? the poemn is for BETH, I dunno how it could be otherwise but I guess you don't have to worry about that. I also dedicate it to her father, who died last year in West Virginia. a kind of act of. both the for and to are personal made public, but I guess, without clearly knowing why, that it is more than that too. maybe you could trust me that far.