Mike Snider's questions here are usefully provocative but. I would answer no to all questions, however I am not interested in memorizing. I don't ask that poetry be with me like that (whereas it seems I do with music). and yet I have my love for poetry, however tainted it may be (poetry and/or my love for it). having Ashbery's lines in my head, or anyone's lines in my head, including my own lines, is not a use I ask of poetry. these questions assume that people read Ashbery without enjoyment. why assume that? if MS didn't assume that Ashbery's readers were stupid, could he come up with answers to these questions? that would be a useful exercise. we all have our criteria, really, we do. and I am not even denying that Ashbery's work tends to blur for me. Flow Chart, as I wrote earlier, dragged on for me. still, I can list Ashbery poems I like, and articulate why. and for his part in A Nest of Ninnies, kudos galore.

well, I'm going to be self-referential here, so you might wish to take precautions. because I am looking at the stuff on R/ckets & S/ntries, making me think. the Poetics list bubbles currently upon a query for serial poems. I think the correspondent sought long-in-the-making grand d'oeuvres like Cantos or Maximus, and people pulled out everything they could think of, sorta like. I think a serial poem might depend on chronology. someone cited Spicer's definition, but I don't know that. I like the effects of chronology, t any rate. much of my work leans on that. altho the recent series I did in NJ I intentionally took ome out of order. anyway, boring you (1st I imagine a reader, then imagine I bore him/her), looking at the chrono field of R&S. gives a graph of my experiences, I guess. for the most part not specified but still. a patch of poems that came after Beth and I went to WV to deal with her father's death, I wrote quite a lot. the facts of my life aren't interesting per se, we all have facts. but it is the conjunctive tension between them facts (which could be as mild as what I was reading) and my writing that is compelling. my writing, anyone's writing, coming out of that. sometimes I am 'heartfelt', sometimes ironic, sometimes oblique, sometimes flaky: different ways to deal with the facts. because it seems like facts instigate the writing. sometimes declarative, as in dealing with Beth's father's death. more often it is less definable, some adventure of language. I am not speaking of this particular to me. we write towards something definitive, not as in answers but something solid or complete or I dunno what. something. R&S was practice. I would get antsy to make at least one daily post, even if I didn't feel I had something to 'say'. I definitely believe in the practice of writing, with a novelist's kind of daily grind. not that I really work like that, I just like to see work done everyday, not waiting for those effusive, concentrated times. I haven't really looked at R&S (my gawd the typos and misspellings!!!), but I wouldn't want to cut it down. the weak poems have a point. I don't mean the reader must exult in that, I'm talking process still. I wrote this stuff casually, throwing it away really. I didn't review them much, was content to let them sail away. now I am pulling them back to shore. I wrote them, all right, but didn't invest in them in that way of writerly dedication, just wanted to get some work done.

"The Golden Rue Devils Bring" by Jeff Harrison

I gargantuan, they in the skies
yet lower they to the ground
with gold the moonless were golden, --
me: blooded for thee a sight to enjoy,
thee, Virginia, moonless thee


if ape thinks of a palace, behold,--
at the very-most least an aviary
for letters' newborn steeds!


I, more, I inched all drenched
blooded for thee a sight to enjoy
but glumly she bird then just die


* * * * *

I don't really know why I asked Jeff if I could post this one particularly, because so many of his poems interest me, and for that matter, quite a number of pieces by others on Wryting could be picked out. I like the language here, grand and slightly ludicrous. I divine that Jeff bears an interest in English poetry 17th to 19th century. I like the tension of the lines, with their defiantly firm yet skewed syntax, and implosive beat. I hear it declaimed slowly, portenously, I suppose. and Virginia, which he frequently mentions in his poems: a person, a place, a state of mind?

I've been reading Christophe Tarkos, who died recently. Roof released a selected of his work in 2000. he was only 40. his 1st book appeared in 1995. at the time of publication of this volume, he'd published 25 books. obviously the selection barely scratches the surface of that output. one might note a resemblance to the work of Alan Sondheim. really wound up, intense production. challenging and experimental. there's a solid intro by Chet Wiener, who is also one of the many translators involved, which include Stacy Doris and Norma Cole. great energy. Charles Bernstein wrote to the Poetics list: "Our poetry has suffered a blow. But Tarkos's work already shows a means for recovery." I dunno why people say things like that. obviously Tarkos gave us a ton of stuff, so that 1st sentence sounds overblown. and that's assuming Americans (if that is the 'we' he means) are that interested in what the French are doing. we should be, of course, but I don't think we are. I find Tarkos's work worthy of study, but the 2nd sentence sounds overblown too. I really hate eulogies.

I'm saving R/ckets & S/ntries to my hard drive. that means copy the archives and, maybe this is anal, reverse the chronological order, so that earliest post is 1st not last. Blogger should allow the choice. I like the project of R&S. it gave me a daily push. blogs are process. they depend on fairly regular postings. there's 600 pieces on R&S, but I get the feeling that once I stop adding to it (which I guess I have) it will lose relevance. same for this blog, for any blog. I'll probably deep six R&S once I've gutted it. I mean to start something else but I don't know what. how about a fuckin' crush list, something smarmy like that?

I may stop R/ckets & S/ntries, feeling like I've played it out. I sure didn't expect to write a talk blog (this here one). I want to try something different, tho I dunno what. R&S began with the name, that's how Blogger does things. and having that name, those words, I set forth. 600 some poems with R and/or S in mind as I wrote. I meant it as an exercise.

"...if what we mean by Flow Chart is a non-narrative experimental epic-length poem that is somehow about the thinking of such a poem into being, hermetically sealed behind the forehead."--Ange Mlinko at Minor American. that last phrase is especially apt.

another blog by Jukka. a presentation of mail art, which is a nifty form of collaboration, tho sooth to say I've never done it. I missed mimeo too. there are a lot of people out there just cranking away, making art. it's an affirmative energy. you know, I am taken by the large selection of blank books and journals at Barnes & Noble. people presumably are filling those things. poetry, diary, notes on the search for the Holy Grail or the map to Pirate Eddie's pirate treasure. I use those things occasionally, especially travelling. with mail art, the sense of audience is very specific. which digs into some of Henry's (and my) sense of poetic directive. that the interchange of mail art lessens the desperation of publication, for iut becoems a sharing between friends (or at least likeminded). gifts more than competitions. even tho there is no market for poetry in the sense of money, there's this highly driven marketplace, of people trying to be seen and heard. the drive of that scene can bend people. so that a need to please arises. I suppose this is the decorum of which Jonathan Mayhew speaks. some of that is zeitgeist, the mode of our listening in the current noise. mail art is a giddy pleasure, you can see that in Jukka's site, in Ross Priddle's. a comfortable sharing. vispo (which mail art is a part), as I was saying re Geof Huth, is playful. the play is serious. a great visual adventure.

beguiling Sapphos by Stephen Vincent. Armand Schwermer was joking some in The Tablets, part of their charm, but the sense of what is left out also resonates. as here with the Sapphos. the tautness, mouth agape, partially worded. that may be why I like the half bracket SV uses. visually it's unusual, not just the uncompletion, but that it faces left, as if containing nothing, not even the possibility. yet there is an outside to that boundary, where the poem words itself.

Brian Kim Stefan givesn us Howl One Letter At A Time. literally! brought to mind the great bit by the great great Bob & Ray, The Slow Talkers of America. in which Ray impatiently interviews a dedicated member of this club. BKS's piece is rather transfixing. there's a click as each letter appears, at irregular intervals. and it goes on.

rather than wiggle in the comments box, I'm just too LARGE for that, I'll write here concerning H Gould Enterprises's fitness tests for poetry, which I guess I'll quote:

"1. failure to acknowledge the difficult technical challenges to good writing in general."

Whitman and the Beats gave some people the idea that poetry just was a matter of exultant overflow. sometimes that works but a lot of time, burbling logorrhea results. I did that for years, god help me. doesn't seem like Rimbaud did tho. there's some lack of detachment in this failure, as in: attachment to the assumptions listed below.

"2. failure to recognize the serious themes of great poetry : magnanimity, justice, vision (Dantean terms).

less sure about this point. there's a lot of highly localized poetry about Me and My Feelings out there, but there seems to be plenty of poets who recognize the listed themes as essential to their work.

"3. assumption that poetry is a means and not an end : a means to social conformity & worldly success."

I sure enough believe this. I believe there's a poetry fast track out there, and a lot of riders, hungry nervous eaters. crush list be damned. I see a lot of anxiety about publication, and not just publication but right kind of publication, ie, not self-published, not online, but 'Real Publication'. people sweatin' their reps. there aren't many Dickinsons out there.

"4. assumption that poetry is a means and not an end : a means toward expressing sour, narrow-minded resentments, rather than exploring paths toward the amelioration of conflict & suffering."

I think a lot of poets express sour narrow-minded resentments, but I don't think Poetry does. which, I know, sounds rather stupid to say. what I mean is: I don't see that stuff so much in the poetry itself. and frankly, good old Berryman was full of that too, so was Pope, Pound, Byronshelleykeats, etc. the crummy poetry we read has more to do with the 3 other tests, perhaps especially #3.

comfort from The Onion: "Remember: Insomnia is only a problem if you are employed or have a reason to live."

Nada Gordon's smart. she got to the phrase "Keep transvaluing those values, people" before I did, andf I'm not saying I'd ever get there. transvalue, wow, a life in a river. I don't know what Ron Silliman means by "Specificity is perhaps the simplest test of a good writer". does this simple test actually perform adequately? fog bunion. RS's poetry is specific, and it is a lovely thing for it, but I am not sure what the weight of his hauling means. there seems to be enough written in the world by Someone about Joan or Johnny Situation. my love is three green tales in the often remained morning. Nada's smarts are not overlay, I guess that is where she loses Ron. Ron writes with mayonaise over the hunk of toothsome meat.

this is really neat. a child does art because it is fun. the meaning doesn't even need the word meaning to intrude, the work is done and there it is. IS. I know Geof Huth is serious, but at bottom, he's damn well having fun. he takes what-if-I, and does something with it. I think vispo depends on that strength of action. look at Jukka's sites, or Ross Priddles collation. the big poetry cartels ought to start taking notice.

Steve Tills is onto something. Stephen Ellis is a wonderful writer. a poetry of terrific energy. Stephen writes almost in run on sentences, but not in some drizzling excess way, but with spiralling intensity. a concatenation of propositions that don't resolve until the poem's end. the resolution itself is process, I think. thoughts, instigations and ramifications twisitng together into a Fulleresque energy knot. Tills makes a point that younger poets can't write thusly, a point I would shy from. tempering in the crucible, if that is where tempering occurs, strengthens, and Stephen's work shows evidence of crucible. I would say that experience more than age performs that tempering, witness, say, Rimbaud, who gives a pretty good sense of his visits to Hell. and from the opposite side, Wordsworth became a mushy fuddy duddy in his old age. the more important point is how rich, intense and powerful Stephen's writing is. the book Steve Tills discusses is unlikely to be available. I mean if you wrote to Stephen, he would send you a copy, but I don't know if the address there in Chauncey Ohio is current. Stephen's work is available at Alterran link to the right, and he has a book published by Spuyten Duvvel. recommended!.

in answering Laura Carter's plea about lineation I surprised myself in boldness and presumption. sure that we all have our ways and aims, and my prosiness won't necessarily serve another poet's needs. it is good to see such a question raised tho. one sees enough poetry the lines of which are just the product of wider margins (ie everything in Poetry Chicago). I have wondered why James Merrill bothered with the trick of metre in his ouija board poem, for the import of that work did not seem to be in how he managed metre. I got sick of his slickness, would have preferred prose looping the story out than his precise cleverness within a dull form. Amy Clampitt is my favourite bad poet for she writes a stultifying prose but soups it up by making it look like poetry. in truth her poetry consists of run on sentences and every punctuation mark she could find. the lines are convention, like capitalizing the 1st line. back in my typewriter days I used to send adding machine tape thru the machine. you know, like Kerouac, but he had wider paper. I got 2 or 3 words per line. sometimes forcing the issue that way helps rearrange your thinking. voicing the work helps too. you can do such things as counting syllables or words per line, why not. one wants to feel the poet thunk about the matter, that received wisdom didn't steal the day.

Tim Peterson hits a good one. I think I'm a philistine, being lax or slighting. I feel really "specific-to-a-life but inarticulate". and that it is my 'courage' as a writer that I can live (write) with that. beyond that, this piece/post by Tim lives in a tension of divergence and change that I admire. where the wrong word is right becaue of its right to be wrong. it's work, so far as I know, to write that way. I do sometimes, but don't know how to stay in that. to stay, ahhh, on message. well I am reminded to reread Tim's ebook (advert Faux/e Books)(and the others, it's a nice slew of recently released). this blog, may I remind you thousands of readers, is a work of process.

Laura Carter seeks lineation expert. HEY!!! I can HELP! it's called forget about it: it is called prose. it is called prose until you hear it. it's called prose upon the full page. it's called tension carefully distributed in time. lines are part of the visual time that you hear. Dickinson carefully dropping a beat from the hymnal rhythm, and Creeley so relentless in the fete of pulse. I'm serious here. the craft is hearing, which sure was a slow process for me. altho Creeley's evidence always seemed a bright good clue. it was a slow great breakthru when I realized that I could just write prose and aim for writing well, and see how that makes a music. I practiced at that, even (or especially so) when I was writing wine descriptions for the wine store I worked at, public writing of that kind, and strove to tighten and function in the world of that. I don't think enough is said about just 'writing well'. just letting the music find itself. Olson reminded us that there's a right hand margin too, not simply in the sense of Whitman's surge but something of music too. wish yourself Elvin Jones or other drummer (rock drummer Dave Mattacks too) for some constructive DElineation of space. remember lines are visual as well as heard (herd?). practice. look at me giving advice, hahaha! but wait, how would Jordan Davis answer????? the stern post goes into the nexus channel, yes yes yes, and Kenneth Koch died on sunday.

another David Hess moment. "false is the idiom of sincerity", that's a good one. I consider my poetry political in a half-assed way. I am not as astute, let us say, as Kevin Magee. yet I can work in that. and look, the sincerity of my saying how half-assed I am also suggests that I am fully assed in these matters. false sure is the idiom of sincerity. into my ardent maturity I seem to be more oblique in my constitution of political. poetry doesn't need opinion, gets clogged with it, and yet, I do need opinions. as a writer, I need to plunk my feet somewhere, but poetry isn't guided that way. there's a part of me that 'cares', and there's a part that 'cares about caring'. it's a tricky negotiation of impulses, yet poetry is here and there thru all. probably more poetry is ruined by sincerity than insincerity. isn't flarf the poetry of insincerity or have I misread? Ed Dorn in fact was talking this matter of sincerity, regarding anti-war poetry, in one of the interviews I just read. some while ago David Kirschenbaum put forth a series of poems, perhaps on his blog, that were cards he wrote to his mother while she was ill. certainly there is love in this, but I found the idea disagreeable. you know, making hay with this emotional opportunity. when my mother was dying, sometime in her last week, I told myself I would not write a poem to her. I would not use the occasion. probably 12 hours after her death, I was writing that poem I forbid myself. at least I kept it to myself. I thought David's poems were flat, too dependent on that sincere element. sure there's a power to a parent's illness (Stephen Vincent just put up some Walking Theories to/with/about his mother that are lovely and touching), or the ghastly politics of war. I guess the writer must recognize the nature of her/his own sincerity, needs to be that alert. poetry doesn't need to be propaganda. one's sincerity pushes one towards propaganda.

all righty then. with the help of blogger's whimnsical sense of humour I managed to post the same thing 3 times, a personal record. cause for celebration!

back from the Jersey Shore. productively lazy the past week, tho I'm pretty tired now. read and wrote and made numerous walks on the beach. read Flow Chart by the Big A (Ashbery). the 1st lines, about the published city, made me want to jump for joy. it made me think of Crane at his best and St-John Perse (who I've read in French, tho not for years). we slip thru that big city there on rt 95 to get to Jersey. formerly we opted to avoid all that city stuff on our visits by slicing across NY to the corner of PA then cutting back thru NJ. a lovely farmland tour but quite long. well the reason for that route choice was traffic concerns, and sure we had a slow go in getting to and over the GW Bridge. and my point, as I ramble, is how lovely the city is. and so essential, like it or not. I found Flow Chart quite compelling for a while, then it seemed a little pointless. or not so much that but that it lacked tension. something to unify the memorable sentences. because I hear JA as a voice, a voice, in fact, I recognize in my own writing. I don't mean as influence (that's another matter) but a sense of place amidst shifting and loss. I'm just writin' when I write, but I note (afterwards) the address of my work, the tendency towards we, and see JA at that same um problem. I guess I caught the flow part of the poem, but not the chart. I felt a lack of handholds. I don't know how to love the whole poem, but some moments of it are thrilling. I also read (usefully) Hegel and Lenin, and produced 30 some poems circling around those (including JA) nodes. well bully for me! in fact I like the poems quite a bit. I also read Basil Bunting, which is still difficult for me. like ith Pound, I have to step over all sorts of allusions and references that are outside my ken. which means the work is cut out for me. I also read interviews with Ed Dorn. keeping up with poets is hard work, hard finding their works and hard affording it. I have nothing of Dorn's more recent than late 70s, I guess, which hardly represents. but I like him, whatever his errors. Gunslinger is a 1st class hunk of something. I 1st met it in Grenier's class, tho not more than a mention I'm guessing. me, I'm okay with narrative. feels like a terrible thing to admit in this new day but there we are. Mr Silliman reminds us that Grenier does not deny his debt to Lowell. I guess it is okay to go our merrie ways.

remember: Trib won't be soothing, blessing, saving you for the next week. you'll have to go it alone. I seem to be dunked in Lenin lately. try to get thru it all.

I guess I hate eulogies. Lucia Berlin lived in whatthefuck. this is stranded, not flim and flam work in a life of each moment. a writer who cleaned, who did for. this isn't touching but a lot of other words. a lot. she was good, good enough. I guess there was trouble to relate her. the schemes are in. Creeley weighs in with metronome. just some bourgeois damage. goodbye, if it's decent.

Lenin Doubt Supplied By Trial

Lenin was for toppling. he came out of the sunset, rather spare and included in something made like something. this is very indignity, said Lenin to comrade, but the address rose over frozen waters, seas forever denied access to party favours. this is choice as a colour told to be unknown, remarked Lenin, understood as a powder killed with kegs. our jury rigs steps of dance on trim lifting sustainment, said Lenin as natural as a candidate for porridge. how many clusters deny the very fact of the address? the people are twined by certain gummy shadows. a war grows over Iraq, called the war on Iran. Iran is a bed of nailed. its terror of function becomes the country’s side order of frying. Iraq as any one knows, remains a poor Iran station. Lenin has to adjust. the imperial buttress knows neighbours, relations, stumps of school chums. someone is able in burial, runt class. someone collides with the theory of colliding. Lenin matters as a judge for social chewing. what is wheat? what real rye will fill the federal bread? for instant cheer inside of numbered Presidential Library, and the extreme choice of furnishing scores of glum cadence, the voter popularity string swiftly digests the trash. this trash is a marvel, cries Lenin, the exhausted destiny of periods in sentences. jeers recorded for later were really clear in stopping reaction to endive. endive, said Lenin in one moment, will save us. yet the question of all that time, who are us? we were reading carefully for a flight while nothing seemed so rosy as the morning dew. how curious to read along these lines, said Lenin, at the back of the first book.

Chris's comments on Jukka's vispo are sharp, and certainly better spoken than I could do. it is interesting to take Jukka's several blog projects together. there's a sense of experimention with them that I think of as more scientific than avant-garde. tho his interest is aesthetic, of course, there's a formal curiosity at work that strikes me as scientific. I mean nothing pejorative here, it's a close attention and a working. Jukka offers hypothetical questions such as, what are words without meaning, and, how much does syntax hold us together, then proceeds to experiment. the motivation is artistic in the sense of pleasure involved. as is pretty evident here, I have a stupid curiosity. I do not 'think it thru', I ride it. which is just another way.

lenin 

watched a documentary on They Might Be Giants last night. I love them. I even have a modest TMBG story. while working for the wine store years ago, I waited on a woman who's check read either Flansburgh or Linnell and who lived in Lincoln. I knew that the Johns hailed from Lincoln, so mentioned that the woman's name sounded familiar re TMBG. she was the mother of one. the boys had just been in Lincoln for their 10th reunion. which I suspect was less grim than Janis Joplin going to hers (check it out motherfuckers: I'm famous now). like Richard Thompson, their words have a literary feel. not so much that their songs are poems, which I think really not, but the care in the words chosen shows thru. I own none of their cds and am not expert in their ways but enjoy their work immensely. one song last night was about James Polk, based on the dry info you get in civics textbooks. another song I recall speaks of the sun as a glowing ball of gases, and the planets around it. the lyrics, in fact, come from a Golden Book kid's version of the universe. getting a band wasn't a bad thing. I continue to be leery of tape machines, drum machines (ick!!!) and keyboards that do everything. at least, in live performance, I will pass on that stuff. since I am speaking of music, Erin played a cd by a group called The Darkness. when he put it on I thought it was some 80s band, which is consistent with Erin's taste. I am sure the band listened heartily to AC/DC (as well they should). the vocals changed my assumption. the singer periodically switches into a weird falsetto that I've never heard the like. mostly it's true falsetto (huhn?), not screeching over the amps. pretty tasteful music, crisply done, but I would tire of it quickly.

reading an interview with August Kleinzahler in Capilano Review (out of Canada). he cites Bunting as a major influence. who does that? honestly, I haven't gotten far with Bunting, tho I see the tensile strength in his writing. impatience serves me ill. especially as Guy Davenport and Jonathan Williams make Bunting sound gorgeous. I mean to pull Bunting out soonestly and give a better reading. poetry qua poetry throws me sometimes, when the sound is so important as meaning. AK is rough on the LANGUAGE poets, McCafferty, George Bowering and others. the mood of sanctity often prevails, so that we let respectfulness replace a plain enjoyment. LANGUAGE poetry is good because it's supposed to be, etc. just after John Cage died, I attended a recital of 2 of his piano works. audience sat on folding chairs at New England Conservatory. those chairs squeaked with the slightest move, so you felt oppressed not to move. could hear 'real' piano music practiced elsewhere in the building. outside the noise of city traffic, including sirens (Harvard's Sanders Theatre is right across from the Cambridge fire station, if you want the occasional hell burst at the wrong moment. I witnessed such eruption during a delicate, lovely viola piece, but the violist kept playing). the piece was about 27 notes, played with utmost seriousness. the concert notes did not explain the method by which the pianist struck notes. the concert notes purplishly suggested these pieces were about death, which struck me as blurb talk. I mean yeah, in a boring way, death. I guess it's not the word 'death' that don't work in that asessment, it's the word 'about'. the generral constraint of the event was heavy. the squeaky chairs, the seriousness and respect. I felt like I should've stood up, like at a Quaker meeting, and declare that this was a political moment. we were all frozen in respect. I'm not ragging on Cage, for I think there is something there but the audience sat awed in a stupid way. the sense of environment in between the 27 piano notes shuld incldue a living audience, not cardbored (sic) pictures of intellect. it seems true that the LANGUAGE poets, those willing to use that aegis, have shown some intention of branding. a thing called Language Poetry is talked into existence, and it certainly has been sold. tho really, it's the critics of Langpo who buy, part of the industry. lines drawn, and off we go. I thought Bernstein was smart and funny last week, of course he is, but as I think, there's also something glib and self conscious in his work. I think AK is right to point at the L-Poets in this way. I have been improved by my immersion in Language poetry, but it has has been a distracting element in the landscape as well. anyone can be disjunctive, for god's sake. so, basically, I'm hooting with AK on this. and who cares, and yet, lalala...

Kevin Magee is such an intelligent poet. he's not just writing with schoolish smartness, and he's not just writing pretty, like we so often do. he writes intently within conviction. he reveals a dynamic relationship to the texts he uses and refers to, and his points don't seem to be just talk. I wish I had books of his, to wrestle with.

I liked this by Lanny Quarles but couldn't get Blogger to cooperate earlier (post damn it, POST!!!).

good point from David Hess. maybe in 4 years the Democrats will find a candidate with ethical charge. no, he was not a good candidate, only better than the alternative. yesterday a neurologist said a prescription drug could slow my father's memory decline, but could not 'improve' him. I think of Kerry as that drug: no wonder cure. does he really think an encore is available?

I hope The Legion (of my fans: the readership) has been dutifully viewing Ross Priddle's blog. what a grand variety of work by the many, variations on a theme. I particularly liked this by Priddle himself. cognizant erasure.

some of the Faux/e publications are pdf files, some html. I would sooner see all pdf but I dunno what exigencies might exist. I like the design of these works. in Tim Peterson's, the titles plant themselves all over the page. the text of Stephen Vincent's poems is blue highlighted. it occurs to me occasionally that my word processor easily allows for all this typographical messin' around, yet I rarely mess. 50 years ago Olson was advocating going weehah with the typewriter's potential. Susan Bee got me thinking in this avenue last week.

is flarf method or is it a name for something that looks like that? I only have a superficial sense of what it is. it seems like abject hilarity on the poetry field. I say abject to indicate some of flarf's sweat: not all fun and games. I pointed to KSM's piece a few posts down, and see it as genius. Gary Sullivan has produced pieces that are wonderful, and as I construe, flarf. but I must admit that I flinched to see the flarfiness of Michael Magee's collected plays at Faux/e. let me invoke the name SJ Perelman, who, I believe, harboured pretensions of literature, as in to write (but never did) the Great American Novel or some such (he was an advocate of Joyce)(the aim should've been to write the Great Irish Novel: there's the space of real engagement). or Flann O'Brien, who did write pissa 'literature'. I guess the bothering of me is the social highlight that flarf obtains. a determined shared code among friends. a school. argh. re flarf: earnest surprise isn't really surprise. I'm only partly criticising Magee's work. and I'm a little pissy.

well I can hardly keep up with Faux Press production, but check out Stephen Vincent's Sappho poems. a process is involved, including attention, respect, and ear. does that makes sense, or does that just sound like the rest of my ramblings? his work is a matter of looking into the eyes of the 'others' to see his own light. good!

I think I should inform the hordes of BramhallManiacs that my delightful blogs shall be quiescent next week while Beth, Erin and I party down with Beth's mother and aunt. yes, that means no new incisions into the deltoid muscle of PoetryTown, USA, no self conscious ramblings into 'intellect', no perceptive stumbles into grum studio, no news of dear old, no embarassingly ineffective self promotion, none of the joyful spray you've come to expect from Tributary, your one-stop Poetry Blog. sorry, folks, you will just have to go it alone next week. however, I must remind you that this would be an excellent time to read (of course I mean reread) the archives, take notes, ponder the intricacies of my thinking, study the poems and correlate their existence as compared to real poems from real poets, etc etc. yuh, I feel like I've given you enough stuff to get thru the comibg week. and I've warned you early, so that you won't bounce to this site on tuesday and say, hey, what up? and feel like the world done you wrong...

from Jack Kimball (la casa pantaloon), this could be rejoinder to almost anything someone might say to you: "Aren't we getting a little too attached to the lab specimens?" Jack should write a book or something.

Emily Dickinson reflected a clarification. I dreamed that she lived in a secret room in my house. she might've: there was room. and the inner workings of which she adverted, selected, trim into an instant. perhaps she mutters, and I am only ambulatory. the maze makes sense. we've seen how the maximum collides with astonishment, and every direction is a place. reverence simply names one place. Emily points (we call her Emily, just that near). Emily is dear, without being protective. her house is a maze, as we've heard, likewise that house in which I was raised. I grew timely, in one same small area. did someone say local is best? Emily's place was an intersection, which is easy to understand in the light of this November day. I think she tells me something but let's allow her to place words in their chosen clouds. events sparkle, because rain soaked the diurnal flower, now sun catches on. there are no real secrets, just places to turn to, as the time fits.

not to bore 'you' (reader?) but: the Stevens thing is response to the Wallace Stevens response (see below). the Gertrude thing tripped along after. and then I remembered me some whole bunch of poems I writ and a lot posted to lists. many were 'about' specific philosophers (Hegel, Kierkegaard, etc), which series branched to poets and painters too. some 25 poems as I recall. the funny thing being that I hadn't read any of the philosophers (I had read the poets). so it seemeth the only versions I might have are stuck on a computer that may be deadsville, so I just checked Google's archive of listservs. I guess they work went mainly to Subsubpoetics, which appears unarchived. what motivates me is curiosity more than a desperation about the loss. dum dum de dum.

further aesthetic

Gertrude Stein’s miffed register in loping settlements near a good river. how does that spell the love that bears at least three names (while people busily count)? streak across the implement sky, dawn action that has a rosy sentiment for the joy of word or two. the river’s handy because there was a day when Matisse and all the bones had to leave and Picasso hopped a train. in the share of telling all the times free from rage or blight, there’s ritual pulling out the blocks. we’re in there, held to high standards or the coaxing of good weed in the garden at your rightness. doesn’t this cheer up in time, sport of poems read across the face? a point of taking a noun along the road you go.

a Kasey S Mohammad classic. I didn't grok the method of production at the time, don't have flarf fully compressed into my little braincase even now, just loved the piece's sinuous wildness. it actually captured the list dynamics. flarf wears thin for me but this is a nifty piece. and BTW, you can only join Imitation Poetics if you're asked. keeps the bloodlines safe.

Something Aesthetically Pleasing

Wallace Stevens was a good Christian woman. we knew it. we slept until stars, that map, then reread the message. that Wallace Stevens, his emperor was insane. we weren’t, however, interested in language, only the time around it. that Wallace Stevens in that Hartford, he knew the reward in tumbling verse destitutions. we were worried to think of poetry again. it was book for a month of belonging, then steam rising, then clear attitude as political as marching into a room. it was a drain on the economy, which that celebrated Wallace Stevens fed into the machine. numbers clicked with resonant care. we wanted to have a tine on a fork, a serration of a knife, and oh the concave spoon beginning. is sense a portion of our trust? it could be, maybe must be: when we read into the territory and forget fear; when we deliberate in a political condition, and still say our names; when we indicate with a cousinlike approach to the literary mayhem. we stay tuned with the easiness. Wallace Stevens led all back-aches with precision. he elevated the common blackbird to auditory allusion. he screwed on the cap of a jar, in the clouds surrounding Mount Chocorua. he claims his pen name twice a day, while we read in the river. the water swells our books hideously, but we love the last word.

duly reporting 3 more e-books from Faux Press. I am particularly taken by Carl Annarummo's idiosyncratic chips from the larger diadem. seemingly mild little poems that don't go away. I prefer the real quirk, not the store bought kind.

sympathetic with Henry's outlook. of course I am pleased that I haven't shown up on Behrle's year end crush list yet: obviously I've got a high placing in the offing. being marginal in a marginal genre, wow, that's something for the self-image. for myself, I figure I've got a handle on my own integrity. I might as well take that as my point of pride. I have not applied myself to the appeal of public preferences. which is the underscore of Henry's remarks here and elsewhere. yeah but why bother to write what isn't going to be read? I don't know. that question doesn't seem to come up when I'm writing. I think I'll change the colour of the navbar.

finished reading some essays by Baudrillard on terrorism. he removes some over-inflected or outmoded presumptions from consideration, and isn't afraid to be outrageous. his outrageousness is a daring to speak beyond the niceness of discourse. he's not being offensive but daring. also reading CS Peirce, and Charles Bernstein's Content's Dream. oh and Barthes' take on pro wrestling. wrestling is gaudier than it used to be but it hasn't changed much otherwise since Barthes wrote almost 50 years ago. for a week, I won't be a caregiver, probably won't have to cook, won't blog, will have time to read. I look forward to that.

I like this poem, and swing at and with Stevens. I equate it more with Stephen Vincent's transgressions than my own twitting, as in Code of Law or the spam letters (which, I admit, I like, but I know they are lowball, playful entries). we borrow language from each other. we listen and hear what we hear. I don't see this poem as correction but an active relationship, as Vincent's with Zuk and Sappho. Casey Salagaj approaches Stevens while choosing another path, not exactly 'up to date', but like that. must be a good English class, that. I never, well well well, took a formal college English course. only a few years ago did I realize how vital Stevens is to my poetry world view, likewise with Stein. I like this poem as earnest of learning. I am 52 and officially got my bachelor's degree 2 weeks ago. I took the slow boat. I would like to've been 22 and capable of hearing Stevens (and Stein, and long list), but I had a lot to learn just to begin. at the Bernstein/Bee reading (thinking more of the Bernstein part), I at 22 would've had a hard time 'understanding'. I know I am hiking off from my original 'point' here, I'm just struck by the intelligence I see around, and which I lacked as younger person (maybe still lack). I would say Chris Murray has some good class there. I feel sometimes, well if I'm a writer, you too can be. I think that even while feeling that I am a definite and pointed and engine in life writer. I mean oh yeah I'm a bad ass, but also, how tenuous to think that there is a there there. anyway, good work Casey, good work Chris.

linearity or not at Bemsha Swing. brings to mind Sentences by Robert Grenier (url to online version to the right). of which Ron Silliman has written considerable and usefully. when I was at Franconia College, Grenier was writing the works of Sentences. he showed me a pile of his 5X8 cards and said 'I don't know what to do with them'. sometime later he displayed the cards on the walls of a hallway. that's still determined but allows one to browse and light upon poems in an order of your choosing, at least a little freer than a 'book'. that linearity is hard to fight. The Cantos are numbered, which tells you to read that way. but a more random read is possible, and probably a way not to get bogged. I like narrative but I guess with a post-Einstein sense of time. The Martyrology by bp nichol allows for multiple readings, set up like a hypertext. I think the inevitable ordering is a product of the reader, the reader's own need.

"All night long
I was a Eumolpidae
as I slept
putting things together
which had not previously
fit"--Charles Olson, MaxPoems2

Code of Law

Code of Law now online here at my site.

code of law = something I done last winter, prior to a certain little computer going belly up. it's a modern realization of Hammurabi's Code. I thought they were gone but discoverr that they are archived by Google as posts to Wryting list. I did about 150 with I think 100 still to go. dunno if I'll bother, or how much I'll post but, like, I'm in my own little world. I can do anything!

code of law

1. If anyone made jelly of another, putting a cranberry upon him, but he cannot prove it, then he that made jelly of him shall be put on television.

2. If anyone bring a mackerel against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river like a partridge, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his crayons. But if the river prove that the accused is not a partridge, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put on television, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the cranberries that had belonged to his accuser.

3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elderberry bushes, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to on television.

4. If he satisfy the elderberry bushes to impose a fine of pumpkins or mackerel, he shall receive the fine that the action produces.

5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision, and present his judgment in writing; if later error shall appear on his television, and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly removed from the television studio, and never again shall he sit there to render judgment on the commercials that may be broadcast.

6. If any one steal the cranberries of a temple or of the court, he shall be put on television, and also the one who receives the cranberries from him shall be put on television, even the nightly news.

7. If any one buy from the Bunsen burner or vacuum cleaner of another man, or without witnesses or a contract speak to pieces of silver or gold, or play Monopoly with a male or female slave, or an ox or a sheep, a complete asshole or anything beginning with the letter 'q', or if he take it in charge to speak of Rush Limbaugh's courage, he is considered slightly off and shall be put on television.

8. If anyone steal puddles or piles of damp leaves, or an ascot, or a picture of a pig or a goat, if it belong to a god or to the court, the thief shall pay thirtyfold therefor; if they belonged to a freed man of the king orof a sports star he shall pay tenfold; if the thief has nothing with which to pay the thief shall be put on television.

9. If anyone lose an article or pronoun, and find it in the possession of another: if the person in whose possession the article or pronoun is found say "A puddle sold it to me, I paid for it before witnesses," and if the owner of the article or pronoun say, "I will bring witnesses who know my underwear," then shall the purchaser bring the merchant who sold it to him, and the witnesses before whom he bought it, and the owner shall bring witnesses who can identify his property and his underwear, and bring also a keg of beer. The judge shall examine their testimony -- both of the witnesses before whom the price was paid, and of the witnesses who identify the lost article or pronoun on oath, then open the keg of beer. The merchant is then proved to be a thief and shall be put on television. The owner of the lost article or pronoun receives his grammatical necessities, and he who bought it receives the money he paid from the estate of the merchant.

10. If the purchaser does not bring the merchant and the witnesses before whom he bought the article or pronoun, but its owner bring witnesses who identify it, then the buyer is the thief and shall be put on television, and the owner receives the lost article or pronoun.

ceci n'est pas un amendment

first and ten
meant Congress
shall make no
crane.

law respecting
an establishment of
ore prohibiting
free exercise:

thereof abridging
the freedom of
crane.

the press right
of people peaceably
assembles
to petition
for a dress
of grievances.

maybe I should make a dictionary of typos. how to correctly misspell and mistype words.

my notes are scribbly from last night, as in, I wonder what I thought of that...

Bernstein read a lengthy war poem. you could say it was an anti-war poem but I think that's a weighted subjectivity that serves merely to simplify. I don't think that's Bernstein's point. it was a list poem, war is, war does. "war is the extension of prose by other means" was a good line. somewhere along the way he said (not in that poem) "paintbrush is the forest of society". from the Drucker/Bee artist book: "Becky her best friend for life was in mega trouble", with an accompanying children's book girl image. Bee's work is full of sweetly alarming points of odd recognition. noir and fifties ads combining in a feminist vision. Bee said her work has been described as "feminist assemblage" which I guess she didn't disagree with but flinches some from the determined nature of such a phrase. it seems like the nature of Bernstein's work that nuggets jump out of the disjuncive mass. there's a lot of play ("the puppy is the father to the dog") and sudden pile ons": "efficiency without reason is desperation". sometimes the work seems too facile, sometimes too hard. I think he thinks too much. Bee really didn't have to explain much, you could see that the pleasure is as she said, in bright colours and odd, weird images. with Bernstein, it's a little like he has to explain why funny is funny.

back from Bee/Bernstein thing. the event was at MIT, which I understand is a famous college or something. it's not in a part of Cambridge that I know well. I got directions to the reading from whatever online map function. these directions invented at least 2 roads that could not be found. you have to admire the spirit of enterprise to do such a thing, but it made Beth and me cranky. of course we consulted passersby, who mostly hadn't heard of MIT. we arrived a bit late but luckily the event started fashionably late. we missed nothing. Susan Bee began by showing slides of some of her work and discussing it. I appreciated her low key sense of artist, at least as presented. she repeatedly spoke of her pleasure in weird images and garish colours. I think it gets down to that simplicity. that the larger statements that artists make about their work--transformative, disintegrative, whatever those words are--are secondary to teh pleasure of colour and sound and shape. even Barett Watten ha a core of monosyllabic responses. Bee's work, which tends toward assemblage and collage, is funny, pleasing, strange and amiably disturbing. I tried to take notes but that's a matter of choosing to hear everything or write down some. she showed collaboartions with Bernstein, Susan Howe, Johanna Drucker and, not yet published, Jerome Rothenberg. her work with Howe challenged her for she and Howe differed on how to do things. no disagreeably so, but Howe, working in a largely historical mode or reference, had a specificity that Bee didn't quite grok. understood but wasn't ruled by. which was an interesting point to consider. I enjoyed her work and its possibilities. I like narrative art, which hers is. she uses a grid to separate elements, much like a comic strip. Bernstein read a bit of his words in their collaborations, then we took a break. bathroom sequences were set in motion. 2 doors set side by side, that didn't look bathroomesque. only close up could one see the words men and women. if that is indicative of MIT thinking, the school may need a semiotic overhaul. Bernstein's set included slides of f his work with the artist Richard Tuttle, including a translations into 3-d of a Bernstein poem. he read several poems while sildes of Bee's works were displayed. this worked quite well. Bernstein sat in back (where the light was better), so we weren't distracted by him and could enter the visual/verbal experience more wholly. he read a considerable portion of the libretto from one of his operas, I think the one about Walter Benjamin. it was a good performance. he's exceptionally funny, which is never bad, but also professorial. it's a heady combo of qualities. his reading is well-rehearsed and articulated. a refrain in the libretto sounded like either made up words or foreign at the least. he enunciated carefully and rhythmically. I'll have to write more later, as I am sleepy, but I found myself wanting to do different work after seeing these two. it was a nice event. the audience was weighted young. why aren't more older people attending? this may have something to do with Boston's poetry scene. parochial attitudes abound here. the reading lasted 2 hours, which is generous. in 2 weeks David Shapiro and Peter Gizzi swing in. that should be a whizbang. if we can get there, we will. I'll try to write better tomorrow.

making a concerted effort to see Susan Bee/Charles Bernstein tonight as part of Tim Peterson's Analogous Series. I saw Bernstein read a couple years ago. the main thing he read was a piece that explained why it wasn't a poem. he's an entertaining reader. I don't require entertainment, I'm just describing what I saw. I actually rather dislike Edwin Torres for his entertainment quality. his poetry isn't particularly memorable (not for me, at least), yet he's got all this charismatic power pushing it across. too slick. my world view has no place for slick, sorry. Bernstein read comfortably when I saw him, and it happened to be a funny piece.

this slice pretty much defines my working sense of poetry. I have contended always with poetry. that sounds like one of those statements to give interviewers, fine sounding but kind of full of emptiness. I think poetry should be at least as i9nteresting as Sir Denis Nayland-Smith tracking Dr Fu Manchu to the evil doctor's latest hide out, typically in a dank basement near the Thames. some readers are problem solvers, some read comprehensively. I am neither type of reader, and my writing resumes from that. I don't like noticing cunning, I don't like noticing the working. I believe this is a matter of taste, not a weakness on my part, nor an indictment against those who read that way. I write hopefully, that 'something' will show up. I read that way too. my interest in philosophy seems to be that the Philosophic Quest is so impractical and impossible that the words are found to be cut loose from 'normal' meaning, or maybe any meaning at all. so I read hopefully, to find the island of sense. and poetry is like that. confounding yet inviting. who said, he wants to say something, but is saying it anyhow? that phrase attaches in my mind to either Creeley or Williams. I like it for it underscores poetry's survival despite our attempts to make it. think of super-conscious writers like Ginsberg and Whitman, whose best poetry derives from when they are least clear on their intentions.

Skullbolt comes thru with I don't know what in intersection, but I like the integrity remaining. there are writers out there without snotty ass pretension like I have. yet it's real in life.

yesterday we again taught painting at an adult daycare. 2 of the 4 participants were regulars. the other 2 were Russians, recently arrived or what, and their interpreter. the activities director goofed and scheduled us on Veterans Day, when a celebration was planned. we'd've gotten more participants otherwise. I dunno what up with the Russians. the interpreter led the Russians, holding their hands to assist the strokes. I was reluctant to interfere with this because of the confusion with language but that's not what Beth or I want to do, lead people like that. our 2 regulars were Judy, who is motivated and prolific, and Julia, who can't get started but is tremendously enthusiastic. both were encouraging to the Russians. I did a lollipop tree and that inspired the woman, Galina, to do some lollipop trees, and a forest scene. the scene included Russian mushrooms, the interpreter explained to me. Beth did lollipop trees herself, really lollipops in a nifty design. Jakov did a scene with himself, including his cane, his house, his daughter, his daughter's car, and the interpreter. Galina did a 2nd that was a lake in Russia. I asked where the Russians came from. the interpreter said Russia. what part of Russia? yes, Russia. the cold part? yes, Russia. are the winters long? Jakov said hah! winter! then muttered something that the interpreter translated as winters are 6 months long. the interpreter guided Julia, and frankly that was good. Julia's so self-deprecating. it's sad, because it is because of loss of function. her memory is slipping, and the realization hurts. I haven't met her husband but know that he has been busily supportive of her painting, getting her supplies and framing her work and such. she showed me something she was working on at home, a sketch of a vase and flowers which she was carefully adding colour to. quite nice, and I wanted Beth to see. but when Beth was free to look, the painting was gone. Julia had no idea where it went. Jakov worked busily, then when he was done, he sat back and read a Russian newspaper. Galina reached a surfeit of painting and politely excused herself. Judy only did 2 paintings then joined the Veterans Day festivities. those festivities began with Sousa music. I heard some of the men explain where they served during WW2. Beth heard a guy give a speech about blowing the Iraqis to hell. a man who hasn't been in our class told me about the art he's done, proud in a fascinated way. he wanted us to see something he'd just finished and given to one of the helpers there. turns out he gave it to another helper, who had already left. a number of people said goodbye when we left. my father gets a van ride to and from the center (not the same one) when he goes. I doubt my father is particularly social on the ride (he used to be gregarious) but a woman who sounds like Marge Simpson's mother typically bellows as my father makes his way from the van, nice and easy Otis, take your time. the day before I did a little painting with 2 girls at the homeschool cooperative. Beth had arranged to tutor the girls in watercolour but was busy wednesday so I sat with the girls and we messed around. they are sisters, 7 and 6. they'd been in our collage class last spring. bright kids. the older one earned summa cum laude in national Latin tests. their parents are a bit in overdrive (and surprise, the father recently suffered a massive heart attack) so the girls are really pressed to do work. they take piano lessons, step dancing lessons, latin, german. Beth has been adamant to instill in them that painting at least is just for fun. we used some fake fruit as subjects. once I'd messed up my attempt I started doodling with colours. this fascinated the younger girl, and she proceeded to experiment a-plenty, including dunking the painted paper in water. I really like teaching if this sort of thing is teaching. this cooperative we're part of is becoming a formal school. those Russians didn't need someone pushing their hands, and homeschoolers don't need that thrust to success.

Beth and I spent some money at Barnes and Noble yestreen. I don't even look at poetry there. I've got the kind f classics they are loaded with, and am not interested in the popular contemporary stuff offered. I'll bet the last poetry book I got there was Melvin Tolson. Beth likes to look at everything. I don't want to be distracted by biographies and history, which I'll read from the library. the funny thing, then, is that the only section I really look at is philosophy. how did that occur? I've been looking to read Peirce and Husserl but neither of them were available at B&N. I almost got Aristotle's Politics, but that wasn't special enough: I could fetch it online. or I could read the Metaphysics, which I own. I was pleased to see Baudrillard, who I've never read. both Beth and I got interested, so we got a couple of his works, and that's what I'm reading. I also got Locke's Essay on Human Understanding (B&N offers a cheap edition of their own). I plan just to read and sleep for the week we are at Beth's mother's for Thanksgiving.philosophy is so WEIRD. bigod, I don't get it hardly, and would never argue it with anyone. it is language in a funny place, self-referential yet floating off somewhere. that's poetry, so far as my poor machine can make it. I'm a shallow person, as my millions of fans realize, so philosophy is by no means arcana that I swim in while explaining god to my toes. philosophy is words sripped of lots of the in the way stuff, so that other barriers can form. what??? Tim Peterson asaked about people's guilty reading pleasures. I read (not recently actually) Fu Manchu novels and don't feel guilty. what the hell, they are loaded with wound up energy. racist, yes, and that's the tinge of guilt. but I don't feel guilty at the spectacle, plus remembering Berrigan's reading voracity, which I admire. really, my guilty pleasure would be philosophy, for its pretense of serious explication.

anotehr Lanny Quarles visual. it doesn't fit my computer screen, alas, but I like the Jones Very severe old dude to the right, the smeary area to the left and the whole as it lives. I recollect a cartoon in which a plump matron of the arts declares to a starving artist: I wish I had time to dabble in the arts. I wish I was working more visually, it grides my heart that I don't, and yet Lanny does, while producing lots of writing as well. don't even bring up Jim Leftwich, who overflows. I'm not serious enough.

couple things at Bemsha Swing. the Shapiro poem he mentions, "On Learning that your Favorite Poet is a Homosexual", sounds like a parody. there's a whole "On Blah Blah Blah" genre of poems, creakily going way back, and in fact intentionally hearkening so, and this poem would be the 'modern' entry. not that it is parodic, I'm sure, and I'm not ignoring the cruelty inherent. such a poem nowadays would be tantamount to someone like Ron Silliman saying some female poet's photo is flat out sexy, or something just as unlikely. I know zero about KS, maybe negative zero for I'm pretty sure I don't like him, but I haven't read him. I hardly read any of that crowd. my initial immersion in poetry was almost immediately into post-modern, just the way it happened. while I had culture shock with the PMs, whenever I read those Oscar William sor Louis Untermeyer anthology entries from the 40s and 50s, I wondered why they bothered writing their poems, and why anyone took notice. I don't know if Berryman is read much outside of Grand Fenwick but declare he ought to be. I don't especially enjoy him but do get off on his cage rattling. he's got style. Lowell's just too dusty for me, fretted over extrusions. tho hey, Grenier studied with Lowell, of all the. I've mentioned it before, going over Lowell's "Skunk Island" in class with Grenier, syllable by syllable as if it were a Zukofsky poem. we weren't reading it as Lowell's poem, but Grenier's translation of it, I guess. that whole area of poetry, tho, that whole crew, just never reached me, nor could I reach it. I guess I'm just riffing here.

I like this image at Lanny's, spread across my eyes, but if you need utility, use it to explain the current political situation in the USA. we're all in there: isn't that neat? but I don't mean to make crass use of Lanny's work. I see in his image the little boundaries committing to a larger response system, a mapping.

I am emblem of butter knife. seek the chance that I got it right, ye of haphazard gizzards and punctilio of the best brands. I made turns over radar roads, just to buy home made rye bread at stop closing. pieces thru out look trade, and will have to do.

I don't think the maps are helping the situation but here's mine (my perfect description will supply you with the entire picture: season of trees almost after the grey but ending into the sedge of river, you were there. temperate daze and until the water goes down, yet over there parched as month of useful something. under the impression that all is lost, it seems like any other day. more so the branches floating past, and more so people meet a number. while settled that poetry sinks, we get onto the merest boat, understandable if effortless. you wren't listening, I wasn't listening, the river hit the sea. patience doesn't answer anything in the end, but at the beginning.

recent colourful mapology, of which the Poetics list is certainly full, seems to avoid the sense of class struggle obtaining in the discussion of recent events. I've looked at the Poetics list as the 1st place where class discussions can go on between consenting intellectuals. yet here we have a class issue roaring, and people are a avoiding the implications. gosh darn! I think an awful lot of emotion is replacing intellect right now. I've seen this site linked to several times (thus it is my turn to do so). I almost like it for its expletives, but the rant is too much like the real thing, or maybe it really is the real thing. I'm suspicious of sure people. taking each other's moral pulse is a way to shit up the discussion. I believe it is true, as buddhists have it, that everyone wants to be happy, doesn't want to feel pain. often, the differences we notice are not moral ones, but practical ones: how to deal with the problems. I mean, personally, I don't know how to win a war, don't know how to avoid one, don't know how to run a government. I've got theories, I suppsoe, but no surety. maintaining my integrity in my own little life is hard enough. that integrity has little to do with the map or the colours on it. I believe in compassion. I believe in understanding. I don't believe that tolerance is something one can expect without offering it as well. Fuck the North too, let's look at the ball as a whole.

I'm enjoying Stephen Vincent's Sappho translations, or transgressions. I am interested in how the original's structure (or ghosts thereof) remains in these, in Stephen's Zukofsky translations, and in my mess up with Rilke. I am inspired to tangent. the English song "Greensleeves" is much recognizble. I find it funny that the lovely melody has a grand range of lyrics. aside from Vaugh Williams' Fantasia (I love Williams), there's the courtly love song (alas my love you do me wrong) and the Xmas song (What Child Is This). one version celebrates New Year's Day with, as I recall, pre-Christian overtones. one version, by Odetta, concerns a camp follower. there's even a scatological version that I think Robert Burns collected. memories of the Classic Anthology flavour these poems that translate something otehr than word for word 'meaning'. by the way, I enjoy the running threads of Stephen's blog. reminds me of Duncan's twinings. well, you get the same on my blog: Faville jokes, um, reworked African spam proposals, and I'm sure other stuff tho nothign coems to mind...

the Buddists speak of the Middle Way. they don't realize that everything is black & white, clearly demarcated. you must listen to me because I am from a hi-IQ blue state.

even nw the Kerry team is looking for ways to 'build on that'.

tv's way ahead of David Hess's suggestion. Paris and Nicole already sent to the hinters to see hicks 1st hand, and, what I saw last night, switching moms, in which an angry rich mom trades places with an angry poor mom, with all the merriment you can imagine. angry dad, angry kids, angry class structure, hahaha. well, watch out for me, I'm from a hi-IQ state, a blue state. if I ever tell it like it is, it'll have to hurt.

beyond that, I'm looking at Jukka's most recent blog, Terminate and Stay Resident (which see), as and implosion and filtering. all these daily words (and concepts) seem to be sent in, arrive, from the various everywheres that surround us, and create contexts and anti-contexts. feeling that way myself. it's quite nice.

I mean serious.

I don't know why I am saying this, but I think it is time that Kasey Mohammad threw off the cloak and got serious.

I don't think my signposts mean anything but new x-stream publications now online. Jukka has yet another blog that I just discovered with the nifty title terminate and stay resident. that and Minor American are my 2 favourite blog names. there will be a quiz later on my blog name preferences, so try to remember what I told you.

wow! great visual poetry here, or visual visual, what the hell, how comfortable are you in the terms. you look at at it and see something.

what a rhetorical fudge factor to consider in view of recent added up into spare parts and now this. chubby language drills want a little cubby hole inquest, fussing surely on the track. ordinary people talkiing onto the shelf again. it is the absolute last of everything again.

effete don't fail me now

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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

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"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

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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further opportunity

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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.

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.