back from West Virginia. my first time there was only 5 years ago, and I haven't been there that often, but I feel connected to WV. e'en tho I also feel like a foreigner. the trip goes like this: 95 to 90 to 84 to 81 to 68 to 79, after which it is 20 miles of hill and dale. Massachusetts and Connecticut are the boring parts of the journey, both states seem strictly like the suburbs. the landscape gets interesting in NY. I like that run down from Stormville to the Hudson, past the state pennitentiary with the terrific view. lovely river. we also crossed the Delaware and Susquehanna along the way. temperature was springlike in Massachusetts but in NY it was colder and a bejesus and persistent headwind greeted us. Pennsylvania is lovely, those rolling hills. you wonder why it aint more crowded. how does it happen that such large tracts of seemingly unused land remain? well, don't knock it. we stopped somewhere near Harrisburg, for once not doing a death march. cripes, it was even windier in Penn. a flake or 2 of snow sputtered thru the air. I do believe it was even windier the next day. we stopped for lunch in Hancock MD, a pretty little town and a friendly place. I'm thinking there was a Civil War engagement in Hancock but I lack that perfect expertise to aver vociferously such a fact. MD's another lovely looking place. the western part, the hills start getting sudden. there's a terrific gap in the mountain where the highway cuts thru, Sideling Hill, which is a thrill. view of a goodly expanse of the land around. zip thru the busy river port of Cumberland, home of Lindy "The Leash" England. I don't want to minimize her despicable crime, but the word scapegoat has floated into my brain. the final interstate leaves us but a few miles from the Sago Mine where 8 miners recently died. gas prices in MD and WV were some 30 cents more expensive than our typical commonWEALTH outlay. downright springlike in WV. buds were breaking, daffodils were a-shine in the sun (varmints don't eat daffodils). we stayed at the Conrad Motel in beautiful downtown Glenville. the brochure for the place adverts the proximity of restaurants, post office and even one of them there fancy dan ATMs. Glenville State sits atop the preposterously steep hill overlooking the town, so the town's "a-buzz" with activity. certes, the festival they have in the summer is worth the trip. they close off Main St and there's old-timey fiddlers and clog dancing and loads of food and crafts. we ate, as we usually do, at the Common Place. there's a Pizza Hut across the way, and a couple of other places (including a coffee shop!!!), and a dingy looking bar that we haven't tasted the pleasures of, nor likely ever will. the Common Place is a storefront diner with 2 rooms, smoking and non-smoking. everyone knows each other there, and we, even, are becoming "familiar". a couple of the waitresses are students at the college, which gave a continental freshness to the place. I kid you not. our reason for coming down was sad and goodbye. Beth's father left her the property where he lived. he grew up on the property, which afterwards went out of the family, but later was bought by her father and his brother. he retired to it after his wife died. we would love to hold onto to the farm but it is just beyond our means to do so. selling it is a painful loss for Beth. for Erin too. and I loved that plot of land as well. a couple of years ago we rented the place out to the son of our neighbours down there at chicken feed prices, happy to help out a young couple and have someone caretake the place. in a year they totally trashed the place, which is why we went down and fixed the pace up last fall. not far back of the house we discovered a disturbing sight: the bones of at least 8 deer. we thought at 1st that this was poaching, a gross sort of profligate poaching, like the buffalo hunters who took just the tongue or hump or whatever choice morsel and left the rest. a lot of hunting in WV is about getting food, it aint a Dick Cheney snotbag pigeon shoot. but there is a current in the state, the give up urge, a mirroring of the land rape by the oil/coal/gas companies. I mean, it is a funny place. you see shacks and mobile homes dumped in place in the most random, thoughtless and careless manner, and right next door are homes that are kept spic and span. there's the concept there of the Sears Roebuck home. which being ones that were bought with the proceeds from sale of mineral rights back to the gas companies. a penny rich/pound foolish situation, because there are places, including the one Beth owned, with FREE GAS!!! but it is part of the bifurcating of the populaion. some are plugging, some aint. that massacre of deer was all the wrong note to face, as we were trying to say goodbye. we learned, tho, that coyote had moved in. they were large coyote, which is to say dog/coyote crosses. such aren't wary of people. Beth found signs of bear too. it was an emotional time for Beth. we kinda dashed away. we motored up to Hancock again, for dinner. a young waitress was astonished by Erin. she was short and he a good 18" taller than her. that was funny to witness. guy with white hair came up to the table to ask if anyone had ever told me I looked like Christopher Reeve. there aint much conversation that can arise from that opening, especially as, of course, the answer is no. but thanks for asking. despite a few signs that were obviously fakes to throw off the unwary, we were able to locate a motel. we reversed our direction the next morning. the wind, again, was frore, and I do mean frore. lunch occured near Scranton at a truck stop. the restaurant had a section reserved for truckers. apparently you must provide proof of having a big rig. I don't have a big rig, sadly, but I am not going to lie about it. so we were in the non-trucker section and the waitress paid us no mind. didn't even call me sugar. I had a sandwich made with ham-cured salt. the potato chips, tho, were homemade: they deep-fried the buggers on the spot. on and on we went, until we reached Connecticut, where traffic tie ups are born. there is always a feeling of imminent stoppage on rt 84 in Connecticut. we hit a few such cloggings. they were of the sort that don't seem to have any instigation, nor do they clear for any apparent reason. so we got home at dinner time, to the relief of dog and cat. we have a girl come in and do for the pets. she's done so several times but has never seen our inter-dimensional feline. she's not the only one who thinks that our reference to cat ownership is fanciful if not psychotically inspired. and here I have chugged wordage for oh so long, and you know what? this is whence poetry springs. I don't mean inspirations of self-import but from the collisions, atomic gamboling. for see: love, and curiosity, and determination (a political canard, I suppose), and scrutiny, and bequeath, and into it. I don't blather this all just only for self advert, honest to gosharoony. of course I grok the blogwise radiation of intent. but intent is smaller than the action of the words. words take over, because they live that way. I'm tired of poetry always being poetry, when it could be any writing in the world of sun and moon. I see thought and active and radiant and then there's the touch. that touch, see, that means.

we leave for West Virginia tomorrow. try to keep it together until I get back sunday.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

we spent yesterday afternoon in Lowell, visiting Beth's cousin. he moved there recently, to a place right in the centre. Lowell's not far away but doesn't seem to be in a direction we go much. Beth's cousin lives in sight of Town Hall. atop the Town Hall is a bold eagle for a weathervane. for a city that has been utmostly seedy, it is making a comeback. those abandoned textile mills are now seen as condo conversion resource, or at least rentable to stores and brewpubs. the Lowell Spinners have a nifty new stadium: minor league teams are a sign of potential economic health for a town. we didn't really tour much. I'm sure there's a regular plgrimage to Kerouac's homestead. the scroll for On the Road is touring the country, and I can only expect it to make a stop in Lowell. Kerouac t-shirts were at the Barnes and Noble, which is really just Umass Lowell's bookstore. lots of big stone edifices fill the landscape. Beth's cousin lives in a former bank, above a bakery and a bar. we ate just down the street in an Indian resaurant. I believe Lowell has the largest Cambodian population outside of Phnom Penh. I also believe that Thoreau wrote about his adventures paddling down the Merrimack, and Concord, even this far and further, whilst ensconced at his Walden cabin. a trolley runs from the trolley museum to points unknown, at least by me. at intersections a man in the trolley hops off and waves a red flag to encourage cars to stop (of course this is only a suggestion). at one intersection a very cool, or out of it, young fellow, unhesitatingly crossed the street with no concern for the traffic around him. either that's god tempering the wind for the shorn sheep or, more likely, the power of drugs. all over the place are hip and/or ethnic restaurants. bare midriffs are the fashion no matter what the temperature. yesterday was a springlike, albeit breezy, day. a few weeks ago when Erin's mock trial team competed here, it was much colder yet the fashion held. I understand that some of the granite used locally (perhaps moreso in nearby Lawrence), for curbs and such, were taken from ancient standing stones in the area. some ways north in New Hampshire is a place called American Stonehenge (where the banshees live and they do live well), which still possesses some of the remaining standing stones, 1000s of years old. those elected war-funders haven't quite caught on about the distressing shape of the economy, so it is nice to see the grassroots effort to find vitality. or just get fucked again.

today's my father's birthday. he died 9 days after his birthday last year, on the last day of winter. the damn damn thing is, it was on that birthday that I realized that I could no longer care for him. it was too much for me, it was too much for Beth and Erin. and clearly, he was letting go. he wasn't eating or drinking, he wasn't talking. I was there, not my brothers, when my father was put in the ambulance and taken to hospice. you will notice the hurt in my words. caregiving seems to be a job in which you never feel like you did enough. Beth brought an autistic child along in the world, most of the time on her own. it should make you feel good that you accepted the responsibility and did your best. it doesn't work that way, tho. what sticks with me are those few times when I was frustrated with my father, when his confusions overwhelmed me. I should remember that most of the time I was patient, compassionate, understanding, that I saw the losses he was enduring and did my best to help him. yesterday, Beth mentioned that we should get some planters and start a container garden on the balcony. I felt sad because I used to help my father with his garden. he started vegetable gardening after he retired. I used to assist him in his later years. as he became physically less able to get about, I started doing the garden work. which worked out well, because he particularly enjoyed starting the seeds and tending the seedlings. and I discovered I enjoyed digging around in the soil. he used to anticipate excitedly the arrival (in December) of the seed catalogues, and the starting of seeds. it got, however, so that he was starting them way too early. and then it got so that he no longer could do the work properly. where I used to ask him questions how to proceed, suddenly (it seemed) I was now advising him. it was a strong memory, yesterday, when Beth brought up the planters, of carrying tomato seedlings around for my father, fetching water, asking him when I can finally plant them in the earth. and so forth. it's a mild, windows open afternoon, and spring is possible, even probable. it's okay to feel sad sometimes, it's okay to move on.

thanks to Chris Murray for letting me be so self-serving as to mention that Chris Murray mentioned Antic View in a positive way, on her own generous and percipient blog. in the midst of doing it (the Antic View blog) with Jeff Harrison, I am aware, on my side, of sliding into the unknown. and Jeff's thinking is different, is in fact more metaphysical than I would expect to grok, but this leads me. and so on. we are in a performance, sure, but I for one am so distracted by the wobbly vision of what the hell--from vocable to word to words working together--that I don't even notice my performance. and it is a patch of surprise in the greening way ahead just to hear myself thinking, let alone visit Jeff's thoughts. in the way of things, Jeff and I began a collaboration which has chugged along 3 or is it 4 years. gosh in a basket! I think we are letting ourselves learn. which is anything but mundane. the Antic View blog is some light on that. and I appreciate that some few have bothered to read and allowed themselves to hear. because I know both Jeff and I have paid the dues and are working on. it is in our words.

I got Kenneth Koch's collected from the library. I wish I had more time and focus to read it. When I got Berrigan's I knew I was facing that. it's funny that these 2 major collections came out at the same time, altho I suppose Christmas had something to do with that. both writers were adventurous, but that quality shows itself differently with each. I may be risking a stupid statement here--it would be my 1st ever--but Koch seemed to pretend to be a different writer with different works. here he's a formalist (I use that term only superficially), here he's a narrative writer, here he's an academic, etc. I'm pointing to the way he commits to his projects. this is exactly opposite to Olson, who with every genre, including letters and lectures, sounded the same, with stutters and madcap leaps and his oddball erudition. which I admire in him, just as I admire how Koch turns himsself over to the modus operandi. Koch was facile in the best sense. I have to say, tho, that I've never read his book length baseball poem. I have it but can't think of its title. I'm not sure what puts me off. I can put up with fitting one's words to the rhyme scheme or metre for writers 'back then', but such comes across as unnecessarily labourious nowadays. excuse me for saying. I'll read the book sometime. anyway, Berrigan's adventurism consists of throwing himself into situations of surprise. impulse drove him. perhaps I shall get Koch's book. I mean, of course it belongs on the shelf of anyopne serious about the art. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more extra stuff in the book. like appendices, notes, whatnot. I realize these are mostly just trappings, but I like trappings! it is a event book, as I've said before. it's a different event than Berrigan's because TB has been gone longer, and KK has a better publishing history than Berrigan. I imagine later editions will be plumped up as memory of Koch the person diminishes, and also as further scholarship digs up what it finds. anyhoo, random thoughts...

A Warren-style.

read Man in the High Castle and Vulcan's Hammer by Dick, Philip K. HC is an alternate history in which Axis, bold as love, defeats the other guys. PDK whips up a pretty well thought out vision of it. I don't know the history of alternate histories, as in: who did the 1st, but certes they weren't a bubbling subgenre for him as they are now. I read one by Harry Turtledove, in which the Confederates win the Civil War. HT knew his history, on that score it worked, but the South won because some nasty Boers went back in time to bequeath AK47s on the Rebs. I'm leery of time travel stories, holes always pop up in the logic, and hasn't the Star Trek franchise done every possible permutation? yet HT still managed to keep the historical characters on track. he made a useful commentary on teh war out of the novel, despite the clunkiness. Dick's read is quite sharp, if you ax me. I would have no prob seeing this in an English class, taken just that seriously. not, of course, to murder it with study guides or whatever mechanical rendering of its 'meaning'. he addresses racism and has a sensitive sense of cultural differences. Jonathan Lethem, in his essay on Dick (titled "You Don't Know Dick") cites VH as about as bad as it gets with Dick. turns out that aint so gosh darn bad. it's a short crisp novel. for the 1st 100 pages I couldn't see why Lethem would disparage it. things quickly fell apart as the plot culminated. it's a future world (set, it would seem, in the 1990s) in which world government has been given over to a super computer. totalitarianism for the common weal, just like, um, now. the computer has a bit of a (predictable) nutty and, in a nifty subtlety, the computer replaced by the latest one machinated against the newbie. unfortunately, at the 100 page mark (out of some 135) Dick starts rushing to finish. generic heroics, such as Tom Cruise might be party to, ensue. Lethem's right, it's pretty wobbly. still, in both books, the characters are quite fresh, thatis, they aren't the stiff drab pawns that Arthur C Clarke produces. what I like about Dick is how he keeps bobbing for the same apple, focuses on issues that matter to him. I started yet another one, something something Alphane Moon, which appears more satiric than others of his.

the Boston Globe--it's a little rag helping to minister to NYT's gazillions--today ran an op-ed (op for opportunistic, maybe, or operations?) decrying John Stewart and the Daily Show for... cynicism. the mean spirits from that show are taking the oomph out of our political system. see, people who would be great leaders (the writer cited Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as same, amazingly enough), are so disheartened by the cynicism put forth by the Daily Show that they never enter the fray. clearly, anyone so easily put off aint got the moxie to begin with. according to this authority, people are getting their news from DS, rather than from unbiased sources like, say, Fox News. which is malarkey. the blurb about the author of this slurp stated simply: graduated from Harvard College in 2005. I'm unclear why it's College rather than University but never mind that. Harvard's imprimatur sits smugly on the 2 bit opinions. as in: oo, this person must have a bead on the sitch. remember the Monty Python skit in which a fellow tries to convince someone that truly he (1st guy) is a psychiatrist by showing that he has a copy of Psychology Today and such. sounds similar here. yes, I went to Harvard, I even drank Guinness at the Plough and Stars. obviously I'm a smart young lad. and blah blah blah. and the Globe felt pleased to humour this genius. stupid. muy stupid.

*** self promo warning ***

to me, what Jeff and I are muddling around in with Antic View is something vigourous and thoughtful. if I may be so bold to say. speaking only for myself, but it's a matter of working outside my comfort zone, considering things I hadn't give direct thought to. we both work at writing, and facing it. just thought I should advert that much.

there are interesting poets in blog space as well, that is to say Tom Beckett's interviews, this time: Shanna Compton

the one note criticism of flarf should read what;s up at Jacket #30. is Kate Degentesh's father poem lovely? is Tarzan Peterson's piece funny? shit yeah!!!

last time I was at the bookstore (B&N), I saw that quite a few Woolf novels remain unread by me. I say that because I was thinking Orlando seems unusual in her oeuvre, but maybe I aint got a clear visual of that oeuvre. the narrative voice is light and nearly frothy, which aint no way how her other novels that I've read strike me. it's a more pop or mainstream voice. I don't mean that pejoratively. her it is consistent, politically. it's just not handled excellently. narrative tone is quite precise. I read a trilogy by Robertson Davies, I can't recall the name, which had a surreal quality reminiscent of O. I didn't like that trilogy a lot, there's a type of novelistic surrealism that is just plangent to my ear. O isn't really surreal, just of a slightly unusual reality. which she carries well enough. tho after O's sex change, I hear a more forceful note: VW making her point. certainly the dramatic situation is ripe for exploring sexual differences, but hearing V chirp into the narrative is a bit disappointing. tho I am glad she does so chirp. I think the problem is that she didn't let the book write itself. she had this pregnant conceit and wanted it to live brightly, but she forced the speaking. I still have a ways to go, but when I started hearing VW's intentions push thru, I got leery. it interests me that in novels, the mainstram can be quite varied and risky. whereas in poetry, the term mainstream is synonymous with stiff, regulated poetry. it seems to me there was a movie version of Mrs Dalloway, which there had ought, since the novel is so cinematic. I am also reading Man in the High Castle, which is a surprisingly thoughtful novel, from what I can see. Dick's an interesting writer, I'm glad I'm giving him an explore.

a public service annoucement

In the interest of belabouring the subject, here is some information about the flarfists.

Most flarfists are7 feet tall. The exceptions are 8 feet tall.

Flarfist ability to communicate with space aliens should be noted, but whether or not they are in league with the Space Emperor, the solar system's most feared cosmic dictator, remains to be seen.

All flarfists possess an uncanny ability to fix washing machines. For some reason, however, none of them can fix dryers.

Veteran flarfists can be identified by their plumage, which they keep in their sock drawers. Neophyte flarfists have no plumage.

Flarfists enjoy teleporting themselves hither and yon, as a pastime, and as a way of getting away from “it all”.

Flarfists do not eat redwood trees.

Flarfists do not believe in snow. To become a flarfist, you must declare your disbelief in snow. In making this declaration, however, it is deemed all right to lie.

Beth went out for lunch with a friend, which meant going to a home furnishings type store. not to deny me the experience, she and I went back, as there was the perfect lighting fixture for her sister. place called Home Expo, which we've passed by often but never entered. it is Home Depot's swank showroom, warehouse size but way more comfy. or not, if sensory overload bugs you. faux room after faux room, world without end. just by the door as a display of soft bathtubs. whee hah! I had the camera with me because Beth wanted to send her sister pix of the perfect lighting fixture, to get her okay. the pictures below, as you might guess, are evidence of our excursion. I was weirding out there, especially in the hive with all the lights. it was tremendously busy, visually. you should check it out. on acid.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

knocked off Philip K Dick's Cosmic Puppets. my library request arrived and I dived right in. I'm not sure you'd call this fantasy or horror, whichever sells best, I suppose. or, say, it is Twilight Zone by way of Lovecraft. I would guess that Dick read Lovecraft, just as I would guess that King read Dick. you can see it, in both cases. so: a guy returns to the town where he was born, only to discover it gone, replaced by a completely different town. what the dilly-o? he and we discover that a fake town has been superimposed over the original. shades of Maya, all is illusion! the town's a batteground, we learn, of two god's with Lovecraftian names. Dick doesn't slog in quite the psychological muck as Lovecraft (presumbably Lovecraft and Poe were absinthe drinkers: that's my guess), so the story's lss unnerving than what ole H.P dreamt up. still, there's an apocalyptic note, even tho the story ends happy. I'm sure Lovecraft could never produce a happy ending. I wouldn't call it a great story but it sticks with me, as has his other 2 novels that I've read. Dick might've extended it beyond the 140 pages, but King couldn't've done this story in less than 400 pages. have I mentioned before my belief that novelists should not exceed 200 pages per novel unless certified by a qualified judge (me, for instance). I read something by Clive Barker than hearkens a bit to this story, only Barker went some several hundred pages longer, and kinda lost track of characters along the way. plugging thru Dick seems like a worthy enterprise, and not just to keep tabs on pop culture.

just a leedle more on Ratcliffe. his lines hang there, in mental space, translucent. you might think Grenier or Silliman: "the phone, having heard", "driving off in a car, which is blue", "light slanting on the table, grass". Grenier in the boiled phrases, Silliman in the diurnal observation. Ratcliffe quotes Heidegger at the beginning: "Whatever lingers awhile becomes present as it lingers in the jointure which arranges presencing jointly between a twofold absence". lingers awhile made me think of Whitman as I typed. I have to grapple with H's twofold absence, but I think Ratcliffe is hitting on the layers and simultaneity with the quote. Whitman's sense of self cosnciousness and obliteration enters in, as well. anyhoo...

last night I decided to grab a poetry book at random. (without looking) I glommed onto Idea's Mirror by Stephen Ratcliffe (Poets & Poets 1999). I have quite a few poetry books but I don't read a great deal of poetry now. I used to. I think I wanted to "know the field". now I know the field's too big to contain. I also aint sure I get the definition of poetry qua poetry. I don't think I want to secure the perimeter, if you get my clever drift. I enjoy adventure tho. the point I am wandering around seems to be my dislike of poetry that is "just poetry". eh? I mean, it often seems as if there were something gravely normative about even experimental poetry. I want my head to explode when I read poetry, or colours to drift together in some grace of harmony, or something extraordinary. I don't have patience, it is true. there's a poem by Brenda Coultas in Fascicle 2, where the first line made me wonder: should Kentucky be referred to as they? to the degree that that seems like a matter of poet and editor not paying attention... and the poem went where expected. well, just to say, I saw Brenda read a few years ago, dry and kinda mumbly, and I thought she was terrific. I'm talking my dilemma. there are times enough I could pass that 1st line infraction by, or even scour it for some glint. Fascicle as a whole bothers me just by being too much. its vision doesn't sustain me. not that it would make me feel better if it were some New Young Poets Against the War on Advertising anthology. I admire Fascicle's breadth but can't wait for all of it to coalesce. at what point did I lose you? I meant to speak of Ratcliffe's book, now I fear I've stoked the expectation that Idea's Mirror is a saviour. it is, in a sense. it drew me in. hey, it's like proto-flarf, man!!! just kidding. I've only scanned it previously, it wants a slower read. it consists of 144 pages of double-spaced lines, with no sections. the lines are short. each one has a single comma in it. there's no other punctuation. each line can stand discrete as well as link to the next line. in this, it calls to mind how a simple counting drill like hay(na)ku introdcues concatenation. one is both led on and urged to stay in the phrase. this work, then, is one long poem, and one long sentence. I just noticed that each page has 12 lines, so with 144 pages, there are 12 cubed lines. calling Ron Silliman!!! it's pissa hard to quote from this thing, you necessarily have to cut a chunk of the snake, but I'll slice a morsel natheless:

...............how words

subject, green of eyes

in sunlight, certain as that

meaning certain, that one



notice that you read subject 1st as a verb, then as a noun. you simultaneously read the enjambed phrase and the linear one. whoa, double helix! I think the remarks I made earlier, they reflect a sense of poetry glut. some while ago, Catherine Daly ragged on chapbooks on her blog (not that there are any chapbooks on her blog), calling them mere calling cards. she made harsh argument but I have to agree that chaps tend toward incompleteness or thinness: like, incomprehensive gatherings of work until a real book is made. I don't mean chaps can't be complete. I thought Alli Warren's Hounds a terrific, complete work. that's what I want to see. Ratcliffe's work here is complete. it's not a buncha poems. I'm overwhelmed by Fascicle's bits and pieces. I really don't want to read works in mags or anthologies with the word from in front of the title. I want to spend the afternoon with Idea's Mirror. there, I said it.

you might want an expert view on flarf

reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf. it's a bio of the real star of the Lord of the Rings flicks. and by the way, I have Woolf's bio of Elizabeth Browning's dog, but haven't read it. if I had Philip Dick's prose writing purpose I'd take 3 weeks off and write a bio of, I dunno, Pumpsie Green, Colonel Klink, Haley Duff, Amy Clampitt, it doesn'tmatter who but digin and down. so far, Orlando is spritely, but I am sure a morbid, downcast note will arise. according to my morbidometer, Woolf ranks with Thomas Mann in languourously overwhelming sense of collapse and decay. that's not including Hawthorne, who's in the sedate New Englander divsion, an entirely separate category. I don't mean to squeeze Woolf into a critical box, I like her a lot. one gleans a certain fragility in Woolf, but not in her writing. it seems to me that writing The Waves was an act of considerable physical effort. To the Lighthouse, as well. a fascinating, wiry toughness to her. I think of Dickinson in her near solitude and in comes Higginson. and while not the brightest lightbulb in the silverware drawer, he notices this energy emanating but not fully escaping from her. more than he could handle. Woolf wasn't like that, she had snooty class distinction to fall back on, but she was more brilliant than those around her. The Bloomsbury Group seems more like a distraction, social padding, than a vital artistic congress. overwhelmed in a tenuous world, she plugged on. I suppose I'm getting into glib territories of easy definition. just meant to evoke some spirit of respect toward her shadow, while wondering why the nattering at Lucipo luridly engages me a bit. gosh, they worry (with some distinct exceptions) the little things.

I read a 2nd Philip K Dick novel, Mary and the Giant. surprise, it aint scifi at all. it's a mainstreamer, writ when he was in his 20s, published posthumously. I read a while afore grokking that nothing science fictiony would occur. that expectation perhaps added an aura of mystery or boding to the book. Mary is a young woman living in a small California town, anxious to expand her world. hm, sounds familiar. yet Dick plays it small, as opposed to, say, the movie Picnic. she's a good character, anxious and intense, giddy and desperate. and a little wacky. somehow, oddly, I'm reminded of the novels of Barbara Pym. Pym's novels (that I've read) have featured single women (in one, that single woman even refers to herself as a spinster) of a certain age. the conflict, I guess you would say, is between an urge to marry and a need to maintain their identity. what I like about Pym is the plainness of the plot, little pyrotechnics. and the case for integrity. which Mary makes in her novel. Mary is more charged--her father's abusive, her finance is a dud--but things don't sink to the plangent novelisms of 2nd rate absurdity and surrealism. I might be unclear what I like, because I sound like a newspaper review. put it this way: I hate stupid ass novels, just as I hate emotionally searng Hollywood movies: such malarkey. I'm thinking about Dick as someone who cranked out a lot of work, and am interested in how that procedure resonates. I look at Henry James the same way (not that I want to compare James and Dick), the sense of oeuvre, and how it continues with each work. it's a matter of integrity, tho I don't mean with a capital I. it's all part of some elemental push. I'm just making a stab, here. will seek out more PKD work.

URGENT
a poem by Bjørn Magnhildøen

Dear Friend i read through your profile and must say i am, truely
impressed with all i see, I don't want you to feel sorry for me,
because, I believe everyone finds peace in the end. My name is a
merchant of Omani nationality but presently residing. I have been
diagnosed it has defiled all forms of, and right now I have only about
a few months, according to. I have not particularly lived so, as I
never really . Though I am very, I was never, I was always . But now I
regret. I have. I want. I want. So far, I have. Now that my . I once.
Hence, I do not. The last. I have. I have.

* * * * *

Bjørn posted this to the Wryting-L list. I like its disjunction and the cut up feel, it possesses a rhythm of almost coming forth. the familiarity of its (presumed) source causes the reader to fill in what is not actually in the words. aside from those points, the piece reminds me of my father. as his ability to speak decayed, as his memory declined. which is terrible, we ae our language. one wants one's love to survive even such.

Business Op (A Play)

Hello.

Hi, Sir.

How are you today?

Fine. And you?

I am well. I know you will definitely take this as a deceptive meeting, because of the swindle news we hear everyday.

Isn't that terrible? Sometimes, I get emails, and I swear, they're some kind of scam or something. I mean, it's like I shouldn't believe everything I read!

It's awful, but I am on the up and up, as you can plainly see.

You have an honest face.

Are you interested in Diesel Engine Parts?

Of course.

Let me first of all inform you, I got your name from a mail directory.

Those are so useful.

Telephone communication can not be suitable enough to communicate to you at first.

Telephone's are so impersonal compared with emails.

I decided to meet you for a permission to go ahead for you have to agree with me that this is the easiest way to communicate with you.

Well, of course, I certainly permit you to go ahead for me to agree with you that it is the easiest way.

I wanted us to meet face to face to build confidence andto sign a binding agreement that will bind u together before transferring the money to any accountof your choice where the fund will be safe. Beforewe fly to your country for withdrawal, sharing andinvestments.

You sent me an email, so I know you can be trusted.

Good. I am revealing this to youwith believe in God that you will never let me down inthis business, you are the first and the only personthat I am contacting for this business, so pleasereply urgently so that I will inform you the next stepto take urgently.

I'm honoured.

Send also your private telephone andfax number including the full details of the accountto be used for the deposit.

You'll probably also need my social security number.

Yes, include that as well, too.

Certainly.

Do you enjoy Diesel Engine Parts? Nozzle, Plunger and Delivery Valve and so on?

Yes.

Excellent. Here's the deal in a nutshell. I am Barrister David Walker, a personal attorney to authority handed over to me in transfer of money of an American oil merchant For his last oil deal with my boss Pytor Illyich Tchaikovsky.

What? The famous composer? I thought he was dead.

Not really.

No? Hm.

We are a professional manufacturer of diesel engine parts.

I love diesel engine parts.

Who doesn't? Already funds have left the shore of Russia to a Vault Company.

I'm confused. Funds for diesel engine parts?

I am not prepared to tell but all the items qualities (you get my drift) are the best in the world market.

I see. Is there more to this story?

Yes. While I was “on the process”, My Boss got arrested for his Involvement in politics by financing the leading and opposing political parties: the Union of Right Forces, Led by Boris Movements, and a liberal Bloke in the social democratic party, Igor Stravinsky.

The composer? I thought he was dead.

Not exactly. He proposes a treat for President Vladimir Putin, Second Tenure Russian president.

Stravinsky does? Interesting, to say the least. I hadn't thought Stravinsky was particularly one to propose treats. Is Putin the one with the blotch on his head?

I'm afraid I can tell you no more.

Okay. What sort of treat does Stravinsky propose?

It's a surprise.

I'd like to see the look on Putin's face.

Perhaps you will, perhaps you will. And now I wish to propose something to you.

Me?

I have a profiling amount in an excess of US$36M (thirty six million dollars) which I seek your Partnership in accommodating for me.

Okay.

IT IS PERFECTELY SAFE WITH NO RISK INVOLVED,AND IT IS NOT SUBJECT TO ANY ENQUIRY, AS MY PARTNERS WILL BE HANDLING THE CLAIMS DIRECTLY ON YOUR BEHALF.

Very cool, altho I'm not exactly sure what you...

You will be rewarded with 30% of The total sum for your partnership.

Ah! Excellent!

Our Fudiciary agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your check as soon as you contact him.

Neat.

your deposit certificate will be sent to you by Administrative Remittance Operation Manager Bangkok,Thailand.

You don't say! And just last week I got news that I won the lottery sponsored by Sultan of Brunei, Bill Gates of Microsoft and his associates to encourage the use of internet and computers world wide.

Such good luck!

I'm gonna get me an iPod.

Get the one you can do video with. It's awesome.

Exactly the one I want.

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning informations confidential till your claims is processed and your cheque delivered to your nominated address through an approved delivery officer
appointed specially for this program.

Sounds fair.

All I need from you is to stand as the beneficiary of the Above quoted Sum and I will re-profile the funds with your full name and address, which will enable The vault Company release the sum to you, as well as the aforementioned treat posed for Putin.

Wow!! And the price is exciting!!! Re-profile away, my friend.

I personally have decided to use this Sum to relocate to Asia continent and never to be connected to any of Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky's compositions.

Had a bad experience with his music, eh?

My parents made me play a Sugar Plum fairy when I was a kid.

Ugh! Too cruel. What about Stravinsky's stuff?

Complete bummer. I need only say the words “Rites of Spring”.

I'm totally off the Russian stuff, too.

Well, as soon as I confirm your readiness to conclude the transaction with me, I Will provide you with the details and also send to the security company a power attorney authorizing you to claim the funds as the beneficiary to Mr. Mikhail Tchaikovsky.

Who is Mr. Mikhail Tchaikovsky?

Pyotr's brother.

He's alive, too? He must be 150 years old. What is he, night of the living dead?

Oh, nothing of the kind. No, no, far from it. He's totally cool, unlike his brother, so don't worry.

Okay.

We can supply BOSCH, DENSO, ZEXEL, DELPHI, CAT, CUMMINS, STANADYNE, LUCAS, DPA, DPC and YANMAR and so on.

Great! I'm sure you know best.

I am aware of the risks involved in this proposal, therefore I ask that you consider the factors above and keep it strictly confidential to avoid the Prussian government from confiscating the funds.

Prussians! Jeez, I didn't know there was a Prussian government anymore.

It's all very hush hush. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need further information. Warmest Regards, sir. Thanksgiving is a great day!!

So's Veterans Day. Best regards.

when I 1st read Dan Hoy's piece on flarf in Jacket two-nine, I noted clumsy style and laboured logic. as I think on't, I wonder why it was even published. its snooty expert tone is just bluff, right down to a dick-wagging accusation of dick-wagging. what it does do is tap into an area of animus. it hit the controversy nerve, which I imagine is the editorial impetus for publishing it. whatever valid points Hoy might've made are lost in lameness. that lameness reflects upon Jacket. doesn't it?

gee willikers, we went to see The Pink Panther! look, it's a day out with the fam. I didn't mind the movie, it didn't bore me, tho it wasn't inspired. just as we were coming to the steps of the theatre, a boy leaped over a bannister in front of us. it looked like a snow or skateboard move, a daring jump, and he landed with aplomb, and not a plop. another boy wanted to follow suit but luckily one of his confederates halted his leap until coast was slightly clear. the energy of that group was palpable. the previews were for a slew of offensively dumbass flicks. David Spader, that other SNL guy, and even Jon Lovitz in some crap about nerds showing up the bullies. shot to the groin, fart, hahaha. Tim Allen zzzzzz. I hate the look of cgi cartoons, and the formula now in play for any animation: cutesy, glib with jokes over the head of children, blub blub. I went wide eyed as PP came on, as it had some wide angle shots that are fascinating for being wide angle shots. Steve Martin's okay as Clousseau. he's funny. he's not crazy, like Seller, tho. there's something pathological about Peter Sellers, his intensity, the way he goes away in a role. to the point of discomfiting the audience. which is fascinating. Martin was funny but one can't escape that much of what went on was stupid. the destruction inherent in slapstick wears on me. Clousseu's aide was played by Jean Reno, who's really good. he looks like a lug but somehow comes across as fresh. I recollect him in The Professional, teamed with very young Natalie Portman. able to give way to the child star and the comedian without disappearing. the best laugh came when, dressed in camouflage leotards, Martin and Reno dance to convince someone that they are Beyoncá's dancers. 2 of the unlikeliest. there were a couple of moments when Beyoncá was red herringed as a culprit but basically exonerated for being too pretty. a moment of halfhearted suspense, then a long camera shot of her face, and all doubt passes. that's about the level of the film. movies can be so absurd in scale. this thing cost millions to make, careers are on the line, a team of McClellans are needed to handle the logistics, and the result is a trifle. at least we didn't pay more for the popcorn than the movie.

last one to get the joke is a rotten egg. so the KJ blog was actually created by KSM. not my fault, I never got the memo. I don't think it'd be a bad idea if Kent came out of the little bitty commetns boxes and rip it rightly. I also think detergent is an interesting word.

  

what does Ron Silliman generally charge for renting out his blog?

Kent Johnson, agent provocateur to the stars, has his own blog. he's out of the comments box! which seems a shift competent of some angle that I aint quite got grasp of. sure, there's Blogger = Google = in bed with China: for shame, Kent! and reification, oh my god!!! truly there's wtf on all sides. time to get bagged.

maybe I'm easily amused, but here's a list of 700 hobo names, read by John Hodgman with guitar accompaniment.

I finished both the Lethem and the Dick, which, somehow, is a phrase I've always wanted to write. I'm a Lethem expert now, of course, what with this novel (Fortress of Solitude, his short collection of essays, and that other novel I don't remember well (hi, I'm Harold Bloom!). FOS is very autobiographical. I glean this from his essays. it seems like he put the whole ding dong in, which is profligate. it's a vast pile of material with which he works, I mean comix and music scene and writing and growing up Brooklyn, and he shunted it all into one novel. I don't think he let the novel find itself, he kept steering it into these personal salients. 'keenly obsreved' is a phrase I am sure entered blurbs if not reviews of this book, and it is. but it's a clutter of expiations. it kinda drones on, sorry. there's an offstage fantasticness in which Dylan and Mingus (catchy names) become (alternately) a superhero named Aeroman, and can fly. this is handled low key, which is disappointing. the plot remains plangent in its directive toward novel ending. I write about this here because I discern an artistic attitude. I mean heck, Lethem credits Yaddo in the back of the book. which is to say, it was written on the conveyor belt. the mainstream in novels will take just about anything (unlike in poetry), any flipping of techniques and style, but the dead end is at the call of the next one. you get your Yaddo imperative, write up a storm, package it and send it off as job lot. it's not the writer community paradise I'm writing against, it's how the visit there becomes a hack into machinery. Lethem erred, 1st, in revealing his trick (in his essays), but too in shooting his wad. seems like he went thorough on all the close issues, crisply dealing with them. now what, and plenty so. at Yaddo or the like he can talk technique and theory and all the bells ringing to get the conversion down. his life, that is. by the end, Mingus' story was like Buddenbrooks (mucho depressing), Dylan's is wistrful whiny, and the hammer come down. it was all mapped out precise and Lethem rode it. you're probably not getting me here, but I see a large issue. as full and honest as the book is, I think Lethem dodged something. the plot was that rumbling noise you hear, getting closer and then, splat, it lands as a lump. urgent call to V Woolf. please.

as to Philip K Dick, gee, I wanna read more. I read A Scanner Darkly. there was only one other Dick novel available at my library, I have it in my possession now. ASD aint a great novel, nor great scifi (not the same thing), but I like his progression. he was a hack, no doubt avaricious and all that, but something pushed him into areas, I think. the book is a bunch of vignette's within a drug scene. most of the dialogue is stoner talk, ambling and odd. the plot doesn't really give much away. I like pointlessness in fiction. it's always a let down when you grok what the write's up to. Lethem assisted Dick's executor, was quite involved with Dick's work. FOS betrays little of the inspired influence of Dick. inspired as in keep the typewriter hot with your typing as you weird out. don't block the story's progress by thinking about it. let the characters make their own decisions. etc. I have no idea if this was a representaive Dick novel. it wasn't great, but I regard its tensile strength greater han FOS.

we saw Firewall last night. it was Erin's night so he and his friend chose. of the films available at the time, only this and Pink Panther were likely, and the boys weren't to be sucked in by PP. remember when Steve Martin seemed edgey? now he's doing remakes. Firewall drew a good crowd. wait, 1st the trailers. well, there's Da Vinci Code (as in Da Vinci Code Rulz!!!). I haven't read the book. I get the idea from the trailer that DVC is of the Exorcist school. hyper something, at any rate. Tom Hanks is a god!!! another movie seems to be about the end of Maya or Aztec culture, looked pretty vivid. I don't remember what other movies are coming, the explosions in my head distracted me. so Firewall, a Harrison Ford vehicle. I got nothing against Ford. he's looking a little wore out but not seedy (j'ever see Tony Curtis in latter years?). the plot's got him as dad to 2 great kids, hubby to the awesomest wife, living in San Simeon by the Puget Sound surrounded by the glow of money. he developes banking systems, so you know the excitement level will never abate. the plot is that the Dark Side kidnaps his family to convince him to help them with a heist of the banks he works for. despite the subtle hint that not playing ball with the criminal element would result in harm to the family, Ford 3 or 4 times tries to subvert the evildoers. head evildoer is a crisp English guy who progresses to raging maniac by the end. the tensions are as expected. I went along well enough. nicely creepy scene in which the cool bad guy gives peanut laden cookie to the peanut-allergic son, while avidly watching the Flintstiones. don't worry, the boy's all right. so's the dog, which I thought would be sacrificed to the purpose of utter tragedy. like the movie The Firm, the greatest excitement occurs at the computer: can't you type any faster??? the end gets pretty fuzzy. Ford climbs some rooftops, runs (which he doesn't do well, always ran hunched forward, now particularly so (now Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans: he could run), rehires his secretary. there's a point where he's trying to find his family. luckily deus ex machina comes along and reminds him that the dog (with the family) has fortuitously a gps in its collar. so Ford manages to find his family, blow up his car, get the shit beat out of him, and drive a pickaxe into the back of the last baddest guy. which elicted howls of laughter from a righteous crowd. except from the whimpering young child in the audience, who suffered seeing mommies and kids getting beat on. final shot is of nuclear family striding away from the wreckage, beaten but unbeaten. as Erin's friend said, just to remind you that this is a Hollywood picture. it warn't bad, albeit perfunctory.

Jonathan Lethem's essay collection made me want to read a novel by him, and by Philip K Dick as well, so I found one by each at the library. and I'm reading both now, as well as something by Rollo May on myths. Lethem's book is Fortress of Solitude, and it already shows some of the qualities I don't like in novels. for one, the title evokes something splendid to me, I don't mean as Superman's sanctuary. that image of Superman maundering around in his super igloo is strained to say the least. oh dear oh. the title just sounds phantastic to me, so that the obvious autobiography nature of the story seems a let down. his essays set the scene a little too well for the novel: growing up in Brooklyn, painter father, love of Jack Kirby, etc. the concerns of the essays are transplanted into the novel disappointingly. it feels too enclosed. I've read only a third of the book so maybe it will come around. as to PKD, it's an odd book. it concerns the drug culture and efforts to quash it. it's set in a contemporary world tho with some scifi scienceyness. it's rather gritty and compelling. the diappointment I'm already feeling with Lethem's book is that the obsessions he writes of in his essays are transmuted into something less interesting and more workmanlike. but, still reading. Dick aint adding that exta layer of thinking on, he's just riding the urge to write like a nut. it's a blizzardy day, so it'll be a groove just to zone out with the reading. I feel I may be turning toward different reading for a while, more fiction. get some new light.

via Kasey Mohammad, I came to this interview with David Larsen. note that the interviewee begins the interview.

the Albert Ayler site that I've had in my links changed address. hie thee here. it's a terrific resource, with biography, discography and even some mp3 downloads. I highly recommend the charming piece called "Bells", with its childlike joy and magic simplicity.

reading a small collection of essays by Jonathan Lethem. I read one of his novels, the name escapes. it was a merger of scifi and noir detective, futuristic Raymond Chandler. alas I remember nothing more than that, tho I think I liked it. in my (and Lethem's) defense, that was a time when I was chain reading fiction, and the impressions kinda blur. Lethem's essays obsess about such as Jack Kirby, Philip K Dick and John Wayne's movie The Searchers. it's fun to follow his literate goofiness along those trails. which indeed is what charmed me about Stephanie Young's recent post, not that goofy is the right descriptor in her case. I did follow Kirby a bit, back in the day, but I never rose to brandish the Comix banner. so called underground comix is another thing, I really liked R Crumb, S Clay Wilson and a few others of those ilk, but the cosmic soap operas of Marvel/DC were too commerically bred for me. Lethem's great with The Searchers, a movie that takes a certain obsessiveness to appreciate. John Ford's films all seem to bobble between a sort of authentic look at historic times and the most ham-fisted of Hollywood crap. you can't just say a movie of his is one thing, for the other will intrude upon your assumption. which I suppose is just another example of what happens to pure American products. in this sense, The Searchers could be Wayne/Ford's ultimate film. as to Dick, I don't know if I've ever read his work, and I don't know why. I like these crank it out types, less so the Stephen King types who (speaking specifically of King) are also a little to mercantile for my taste. one summer I read, shit, 13 King novels. almost all of them were too long ('Salem's Lot being an exception). his works are plausibly not too long, if your escapist impetus is strong. I was reading King I won't say thoughtfully but at least aware technically, and I was kinda in a rush, readingwise (hence my vagueness about Lethem's novel), so I languished when King tread water, which he consistently did. he knows his book should be 500 pages long, so that's what he supplies. King's a professional not just in getting the words onto paper, but in marketing (I mean, credit to the whole SK machine), whereas Dick was a sweatin' hack. but in hackitude he flourished. an idea arises, he writes a story, he mails it out. piston pump. I'm assuming all this. Lethem is careful to reiterate that Dick's writing isn't always of the best. it's the energy, don't you see. the obsession, which Lethem possesses too. I had ought to read another Lethem novel, see what he can do for me. there's a point in way too many contemporary novels when a sitch evolves and must run its course. ick. then the novelist starts reading the rulebook. then what I liked about the book, say the character simply in life, disappears in the hype of finishing the novel's course. or I guess to say, I like aimless novels. the way James wanders around in thick reflection and dependent clauses until he looks at his watch and finishes in a 3 page rush. those 3 pages are a nod to completion, it is the previous meander that is the thing we want to hold. so that's that, I guess.

I don't want to go all hornet's nest on Dan Hoy, it's an ultimately (that is, finally) minor fuss. but I enjoyed Stephanie Young's take, which is only partly about Hoy. whose career has been supersized, I guess, if the balloon don't break, if the vandals don't steal the handle. I point to this post not as back up of my opinion, or that sort of thing, just in following her, even unto the parentheses she dodges into when the thought occurs. she manages to posit a number of points that one could run with, and does so in a chemically reactive way, rather than the usual superball bounce (Kent Johnson being axample of that phenomenon).

Erin belongs to the Mock Trial team that our homeschool cooperative put together. Mock Trial is a national competition of high school age competitors who formally try cases. the cases, I believe, are actual ones. there've been 2 trials so far. actual attorneys (scoring pro bono points) coach the teams. each team supplies lawyers to try the case, and whatever witnesses for their side. there's real lawyering being done, as well as acting. Erin, so far, is just an understudy. only half the team gets to participate in a trial. the 1st trial was in a small local law school. it was fascinating. the 4 (2 boys, 2 girls) lawyers for our team dressed the part, in suits. the girls on the other team all dressed neatly but not in suits. the one boy on that team of attoprneys wore a suit but took the jacket off. that's a points off offense, which the judge noted. the case was a civil suit, someone wanted to collected damages because they got into a traffic accident while using a gps. our side defended. probably the highlight of the trial was when the plaintiff's attorney cross-examined one of the defense's witnesses. the girl who played the witness was very relaxed in her role (a girl on the other side had gotten the giggles and could barely finish), and quite hosile. she wasn't about to give up any incriminating information. which in fact is exactly how the expert witness in the OUI trial we saw recently acted. the attorney was tenacious and it was exciting to watch. I thought the attorney got knocked back on her heels a bit but the judge afterwards commended her performance. one of our attorneys was keen to object, even pointing out to the judge some Mock Trial rules that the judge didn't know, and he had the boy on the ohter side totally flustered. the judge was kindly about that. he didn't score the boy well, but he empathized aferwards. it seemed tense as we watched but in fact our team won by a large margin (each performer is rated on a 1-10 scale). the 2nd trial wasn't even close. the other side at least dressed lawyerly, but they weren't well-practiced. the one who did the closing argument got completely lost. I grant nerves, and wouldn't want to be overly critical, but she'd already done at least one trial before with the same closing, AND she was reading it. the other team didn't object once. something that I noticed, and maybe this is the point of this post, is how the homescholers seemed more mature than the high schoolers. or maybe maturity isn't the right word. I think I perceived a social ceiling over the head of the highschoolers: the school hierarchy. the molding and manipulation that goes on. the implicit weight of judments: what does my teacher think of me, my coach, the popular kids, what, even, do the dorks think. it's all lumped on the backs on every student. everyone is judged, but the homeschoolers inhabit a much less rigid structural system of judgment. the first team that we faced was pretty sharp but a sense of their own freedom was lacking. it seemed telling that one of the team in the 2nd trial was on her cellphone as soon as the trial (not the competition) ended. the Pavlov bell rings and it is time to move on. it is worth at least considering the alternative to public school, admitting the obvious failings thereof. not to proselytize nor to assume homescholing is for everyone. Erin has Asperger's, a high function sort of autism. how does the gristmill deal with that sort of child? fill in he blank.

Ron Silliman sometime back mentioned the Lucipo listserv and presented Ken Rumble's thoughtful history of the list. the level of discourse is not universally high there (where is it high, btw?), tho I leave you to ascertain for yourself. there seem to be some advocates for the Boring School of Poetry there. you'd think that would be a hard sell. anyway, it's a lively list, and if you send me an email, I'll send you a coded message telling you who I like and who I don't.

Super Sunday, of which I witnessed nary a lick. Beth and I went in to Boston, however. 1st stop: yet another furniture store, where both hard candies and Hershey Kisses(tm) were available. I'm easily amused. I had my camera so took pictures of the house on Fresh Pond Parkway my father grew up in as we passed. a kinda perfunctory act, but he mentioned life there so often that it is sort of a shrine. seemed like a perfect spring day, sunny, perhaps 50. scads of runners in shorts running along the Charles. we crossed on Mass Ave, over the bridge. Beth wanted to see Newbery St, one of the places in Boston where i imagine it's possible you'll hear the word chichi spoken. we didn't, tho. parked near the Ritz, strolled down the street. lacking furniture stores, we opted for art galleries. the 1st we came to wasn't open. me, I'd figure sunday was a good day to be open. maybe sunday they keep the hoi polloi out so that they can serve chardonnay and pigs-in-a-blanket to the high rollers. je ne sais pas. next door was open. I flinched on entering, expexting a snotty welcome (or none at all) but surprisingly we were welcomed in every gallery. this 1st one had drawings by Matisse and Dali and I guess lithographs by Rembrandt. we got several of each, they'll look great in the bathroom. by the nature of the place, I'd guess their expected clientele would be on the stuffy side but the offered sculptures were, each one, lulus. florid, hokey, over the top. I couldn't even bring myself to look at them carefully, they were just too busy. I don't know if they were all by the same person. they were marbles of human figures, females mostly, with leaves and birds and whatnot. top heavy creations balanced on one hand or whatever. hightoned equivalents to velvet portraits of Elvis. I can see some oil money lunkhead sticking one of these things in the foyer as a warning of what money can buy. and no doubt the piece's price would be mentioned in any discussion of its artistic merits. I really do believe in to each his/her own but as I said, the things were simply too busy for me even to look at, let alone grok. that gallery may've been the one that had a Pissaro oil, and one in pastel. I loved looking at the brush strokes, a feature I miss in books, where the translation of the image naturally loses something. I read a fascinating description of a Monet by a writer named Ball (David?). a very detailed and close up (microscopic) discussion of Monet's brush strokes. I like seeing that level of a painting. the next gallery was better still. a lovely Chagall in pastel, a bunch of Picasso ink drawings and other this and that. a series of prints with highly charged colours that reminded me of psychedelic album covers. another artist only does paintings of no more than 2"x3". art that fits pocket or purse. Beth asked a question of someone there, and he readily engaged. I worked in a wine store for a long time, and I didn't care if you bought Mouton-Rothschild or Soave, but customers often apologized if they weren't prepared to pay a lot. I felt like that, but the guy wasn't putting that over on me. he guy spent a lot of time talking with Beth (I roamed, and pocketed the offered hard candies). the next gallery had some weirdly glum pastels. they seemed to depict a world of pollution, which is not a subject you think pastels are made for. Beth was particularly taken by the work of a French artist. his paintings are both intense and distressed. several portaits of women that really bear down. the best perhaps was a scene in an ancient city (Pompeii, Beth wondered). some of the figure wear togas, some pants. one figure is on the ground. all very enigmatic but quite compelling. again Beth asked questions. the woman who answered was much more sales-oriented tho not obnoxiously. she said, take the ancient scene home and try it out. man, I'd hate to do that. err, the cat somehow.... the cat could, too. or I'd stumble as I carried it. or a meteorite thru the window. I think that ws he last gallery. Beth skipped into a curtain store which was too crowded and way too sensory-overloaded for me, I stayed outside. it was a day of indecently unseasonable warmth for Henry Aaron's Birthday. and the SuperBowl? I just didn't cae enough. certainly I could miss the hype in my face.

home of hey now the language beast

One city after another discards language for the more vital infidelities, those that can't lightly be named. Thus poetry, hounded by the principles of mayhem--which are resident in ticklish parlours of pleasantries (try to decide why)--invites disaster by writing essays concerned with dragon lore and cellphone history, thoughtless of priceless readership.

Cellphones, august with the sulfurous approval of righteous dragons, seems pent up for destruction. All words go thru this channel, to wire up a concern and prove, again, that dragons need dough to live, even big bucks, just like your excellency. So how, prithee, do we break this mode of thought in the dull morning exactly?

Often we are drafted into humdrum wartime exercises, finding couth in all manner of tricking those religious beings who push us forward. There is no nicer dragon than the one oh my god it has ruby eyes of fire and makes dreams seem like wasted youth! Yet can you calm down? No. Religion amasses fairly, sold with proper consideration, and kept by the door for moments of real need. If we were really taken by poetry, we wouldn't be so afraid of the dragon's swooping presence.

Our fears, see, grow up in archetypal normalcy, having to do particularly with doesn't that creaking sound on the stairs make you think of other features of fear? And so language trumps our every super hand, as if the cellphone weren't a vital vortex into which the pure language, like aces up the sleeve, flows. Enter the field now, await the dragon's next batch of carnal proclivities that will once again send us to windows screeching for medicine, the more unguent the better.

Slowly, the essential characteristics appear soluble, like trams of which we've heard. As we ride in charming rattle, our cellphone rings. Conversation will touch modes of inheritance, until we reach our stop. Some teens are louder than the very moment you said hello, but that energy isn't shared. You are appealed to: can you justify a dragon? You look to your cellphone's palette of potent functions, even text messaging and music downloads. It fits in pocket or purse with slim efficiency, ringing you up alert at movie theatre or elsewhere with the pressure of news, joyful emphasis of someone who knows you. Does poetry so survive its inadequacy that it can share such bountiful imbroglio? Dragons march on the town, securing ramparts and otherwise making the most of movie history. Language next will fall. It will be your fault, pilgrim, you and your ranking behaviour behind these frail fortress walls.

evenings are for theorists

When vital endeavour squeezes off the town, voted tough by ignorance, and what the hell smells of everything known to come along, then does the dragon lurch from lair of darker than you want to know, to become a poetry such as when you call home, home is a vague tilled field.

Late histories assert of dragons as taller than guesses, skipping gravity as if it were a complaint and being very full of language, tho it seems like fire.

This sort of cellphone, clamped onto the ear while disaster accepts our pleas, shortchanges announcements and maybe poetry is the key.

Eminent charges for expressing self-doubt become a way to eke out or even thru (if possible) with bold upright or perhaps a musical squeak, telling folks of your admirable degree and easy pace.

Awesome post upon which notorious examples are spiffy, unvanquished, laughing at turgid or praising it, and still leaving news for the forward minded, this post has been excavated from the primal brain, which went every which way but loose.

Not letting self-doubt be more than the full complete impetus for pulling the poetry in from the cellphone heaven whereat it resides, then does the dragon become a kind of an act of. Sleep trips many verses that were ignored primarily for their toasted repose, now shows up as best friends and nations of the dammed.

A pile of money awaits the winner of succulent contests, and in the ear of the many a new language starts to perk. This becomes throb and throb is a rhyme.

Deliberate evenings, marked by relentless following of sunsets, predate nights and the scuffy attitude of mornings. All these are times when the dragon full of words starts the sky's fires and exacts just enough spittle as to emphasize a ripe whistle, which then, across decades of mileage, succumbs to the glamour of the newest cellphone.

And we theorize bothersome ideas that conclude with ringing bells and whistles, shuddering with moody mayhem concerning the reputed worth of dying to say more, yet honestly inveigling sight unseen the choosy hump day workaholic tribunal set up in collegiate sport for the safety of even wild cellphones, that are dragons in disguise.

We must loosen our grip on a society without poetry, reeks the cellphone in promenade across the mighty dragon's back. The dragon returns from bleating about how language strictly speaking composes itself in our lives, almost.

And even a writer, a poet, tooled to the latest cellphone, brightly assays a dragon past quenching those rumbling fires of eek we're doomed and the hero, arrived at logically defined and thru patient rendering of factual matter into all sorts of gimcrack, dates the newest cellphone to tricks of the trade, including doomy speeches towards, about and so much praising for the dragon.

Beyond that, history's just a lot of work.

self hone dragon poetry lower

The cellphone, which is poetry, flies into the fullest empyrean, reeking of dragon that rips off archetypal.
That cellphone hits on something really flame from the mouth, wily eyes, ravage landscape sort of prime dizzying effect.
That phone of something certainly has made its depth charge as much as flying thru the air scary.
We need id and ego on the boat, says captain in charge of what's that ahead it looks strange and possibly dangerous call in the troops.
The people want poetry near the ledge, almost owing to something that they read about archetypally,
hence the dragon.
Dragon lore fits prime eddy of literary sequence threshed from the straw base stubblefield of which the dragon knows so much.
Dragon makes a struggle of poetry into the air above the village where those who till and reap and run around in circles cite other examples of similar scary times, well-based in times of lore.
What's up with this cellphone that needs to be poetry all the time, even leaving the church school or movie theatre and tell your friends just that?
The poetry, which is ardent cellphone in the need of passing quick text messages to the one over there, giggly, is something thru the space of time.
The cellphone, prominent and you can tell that the camera will be a boost to sales, absolutely any moment could be photographed sent and saved.
What's better than to prove poetry as a vehicle for the survival of cellphones, personally together as we get around to studying some theory in between poems and dragon attacks?
Finally a document named poetry comes into the forest of cellphones where dragons lurk mighty and prevailing wind, but the poetry public, they are not quite so loose.

Miss Hoover Will Say "The Children Are Right to Laugh at You"

a small volunteer team started methodically counting all poets reported killed in thinly settled Kentucky alone by Dan Hoy, who laughs, then spouts off a litany of self-aggrandizing rhetorical questions demanding a return to a tortured life with outrageous problems: “This is my sandbox, I'm not allowed to go in the deep end”

when Dan Hoy had the poets killed, how did he do it?

by baptism
by an Israeli helicopter
by his junk diet
by bears
by a booby-trapped mobile telephone
by a CIA spy plane
by falling trees
by Death
by legal abortions
by an avalanche on the crête de Lachat in the Lauzière range close to the ski resort of Valmorel
by drought
By Hammer
by One of the latest Palestinian children
by Americans
by a falling banana
by Palestinians and 707 Palestinian children
By Suicide Attack In Iraq
by rebels backed by Uganda
by prejudice
by contempt
By Hype
by security forces
by police at his middle school

poets, friends, remember the time you said Snagglepuss was outside?

NB: the name Joan Houlihan can be substituted for Dan Hoy depending on bete noir preference

Beth and I visited not one but 2 furniture stores yesterday, roughly 2 more than I really need. I don't mind furniture stores per se, but they represent big sensory overload for me. well 1st we hit Panera, where the soft pseudo-jazz stylings lull you into your coffee and bagel. it pleased me to see a Panera in West Virginia last year, there seems so few little pleasures in WV. I mean, we were in Spencer WV once. the big place to go to for a special time was McDonald's, which had 3 televisions for your viewing enjoyment/transfixation/narcotizing. at Panera you can at least expect to get something more robust than brown water when you ask for coffee, WV being a bleak outpost for coffee aficionados. after Panera was a visit to Ethan Allen, and soft rock sounds piped over the sound system. too much to look at, and we have no immediate needs. hard to figure old portraits that you figure should be hanging on castle walls. in one rather frumpy livingroom arrangement, the display books were the Hardy Boys. a nice touch at Ikea is that the prop books are in Swedish. to get me to enter Thomasville down the road, beth suggested that we hit Barnes and Noble after. Thomasville store was better lit than EA but not much different otherwise (to these critical eyes). bowls of hard candy were my main points of interest and--score!!!--a bowl of Hershey Kisses(tm). a crappy rock station sounded merely obnoxious, not the music but the dopey patter of the djs. tho I must admit that that old song by Melissa Etheridge gets on my nerves. it's almost inexplicable why she starts yelling in the song. I can explic, however: it's a show of passion and sincerity, but it sounds like phony shit. I was glad to leave. B&N was its same old self. trying not to spend heedlessly, I avoid a lot of areas of consideration. in fact, I spent little time downstairs at all. Beth, on the other hand, can stand there and read, which I can't do. she found a book that had postcards from anonymous people who detailed secrets they've never told. unnerving to say the least. someone pees in her husband's coffee when she's mad at him. others carry tremendous guilt for some little acts or failings. a little is funny, a lot disturbing. I looked at books by Jung, but I must admit that I got a lot to go thru as it is. the poetry section looked bleary. the highlight table seemed better than what was displayed at Christmas. Berrigan, for one. I get the feeling, tho, that someone thinks they ordered too many of that. I saw Legitimate Dangers (misnomer alert), which looks like smell. author photos and CVs accommpany the poetry, which suggests to me sleight of hand: look at this not the poetry. I can't remember where I read it, but apparently Dante Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne lived together for a time. and one of them had the idea--alas, never fulfilled--of getting an elephant to clean the windows. that's the sort of thing I want to read in one's bio, not where you went to school or what forgetable magazine you've been published in. please, tell me about your window cleaning elephant. in my absolutely hurried scan of the anthology I detected no aesthetic, which is to say, no compelling idea to make me want to buy it. it was just a bunch of poems, hey hey hey. I don't know why people buy anthologies except for teaching purposes. few rise up to more than targets for potshots like this. I glanced briefly at the philosophy section. B&N has put out affordable editions of a lot of philosophy classics in the public domain. I wasn't hankering to buy anything however. nothing new from Terry Pratchett, Beth's passion (I've read the 1st 20 or so Disc Worlds but nothing since). it seems Gertrude Stein wrote only 2 books, Alice B Toklas's autobiography and Three Lives. there were at least 3 editions of On the Road, makes no sense to me. nor the 23,000 editions of Lord of the Rings. I'll leave the thinking to the folks in marketing. Beth almost got a Tony Hillerman and a Robert Ludlum but threw them back when she saw a history of the French and Indian Wars, which is my cup of tea as well. that book represented our swag for the day.

I invoked John Ashbery in previous post, which I'm sure if Sean Finney saw, would exasperate, as if he were a subdivision of JA. I do such likening all the time, it's a manner of handhold for me, but I know it could be read as a confinement. I don't mean Finney is channelling, nor am I even suggesting that Finney might feel that connection. I've managed to package him in Ashberian wrapper nonetheless, which is not my intent. misuse of such likening can be egregious, as Dan Hoy helpfully illustrates in Jacket 28. he lumps flarfists together, he lumps Googlers together, all within the sofa soft confines of Boolean critique. I worked for a company that was bought by Harvard MBAs, who decision-treed the company to its least functionability, and Hoy proceeds similarly. how he glommed onto such a moral tone in the circs is beyond me, but I wasn't really going to go clout on him here. still, when he directs his inquest to the point of phrases like "dick-waving", I think animus took his scooter. returning to Finney, I had a slow entrance to his work just as I had a slow entrance to Brandon Downing's. I don't need to bring up any wattage concerns I may have about myself, I actually do not mind my tentativeness towards poetry. the untentative, the utterly definite, like Hoy, are the ones who do the damage. part of my difficulty to enter the work of Downing and Finney stems from a whirling few months, having moved and made big changes. my concentration level is piss poor. and I'm still burying my father. so I'm having trouble making the leaps that both Finney and Downing do so well. I just want to wave my wand (ce n'est pas mon dick) to function up a welcoming glow for you around these two writers, as the pleasures that have gotten thru my fog are genuine and tough.

I've been reading The Obedient Door by Sean Finney (Meritage 2005) for a while now. pathetically, really, but my reading focus has perforce been elsewhere, so I'm just reading mere morsels at a time. I like the work and think Ashbery's blurb "cheerfully slipshod" says something accurate and appealing about Finney's work. I don't want to prove further how critically lame-o I am, so nothing in depth here, but i want to note 2 things. 1st just to mench at least a hint (and this is not to suggest teammates or that sort of lazy critical round up) of Ashbery to the work, specifically a voice rising from what? the clutter and confusion? works for me. the 2nd thing is simply to quote a line, from the poem "Row Out": "Pupil-tired she was of my guts for ambition." it reads like 2 separate sentences deciding to merge and get along. it seems like a wistful declaration but that awkward (slipshod) word order brings a screwy poetic delight. to me, anyway. it's not exactly like folksy locutions that you might hear like throw me down the stairs my hat or throw me over the pencil, but it does bring a disaster that unsettles, but pleases too, in a humourous yet unnerving way. enough for the present. now it's back to more hommages a Joan Houlihan...

some lovely visual works by John M Bennett. there's something fascinating about letters, which we usually miss because we are too busy looking at the word. the rest of Dan Waber's site, Logolalia, offers a rich and fascinating variety of works. I officially recommend his site.

I enjoyed this interview with Ron Padgett. the historicity bubbles up, his connection to long dead artists like Berrigan and Brainard, not that he isn't vital now. LANGUAGE poets carry a sort of apres le deluge feeling, not speaking of the work but the now firmly formed reputations of its actual members. even flarf and younger groups are developing this Aspern Papers aura. Olson died less than a year before I 1st heard of him. what does this add up to? the boundaries of time and age are pretty permeable, I guess. at least, they ought to be. Kyger seems pretty vital now, tho her generation is dying off. I liked hearing Padgett declare that he recently went back and read all of Marvell (not the comix) and plans on revisiting Herbert. there is no such thing as today's poetry. not to say there are no fat Elvis's out there, sliding.

Patrick Herron worries it. it is always surprising how deaf we all are to our own defensiveness. does, and can, Patrick's post prove something? he lays too much emphasis on the originality of his procedure. procedure is just a road to the place. I could go on, but won't.