for some reason, I am on the Poetics list, so have been witnessing the bubbling conversation concerning the publication and immediate cancellation of the book derived from the Here Comes Everybody blog of Lance Phillips. I don't know if I would've opined on the matter except that Eileen Tabios thoughtfully does so. her compelling issue concerns the translation of an online publication into print. (it can go the other way, the online version of Grenier's Sentences (link to the right) being an example). personally I lost interest in the HCE blog after a while. the answers (to the same questions) began to blur. still, I thought of it as a resource, to consult when a poet's work or just name came along. one thing the print version obviously could not supply is links. and speaking practically, if the print version was to retain the photos used on the blog, I don't know if it did or not, the book would be more expensive. so I have my doubts about the success of the project. maybe, as Eileen suggests, there is some contextualization in the print version, but the interviews simply lack the meat that Tom Beckett's Exchangevalue interviews have, and Tom has added context, in the form of poems by the interviewees. my point isn't to dump on HCE; I am, like Eileen, interested in the translation from one medium to another. part of that translation is how to make the book happen in an economically viable way. the idea of a suit sounds ludicrous, but I have no idea what sort of communication went on between the disgruntled poets and the editors. lesson one should be that nothing good can ever happen in not getting permissions. the internet fosters a feeling of open source. for me, I kinda feel that if I put it online, it is open game: I recognize that boundaries online are viscous. I don't advocate or even condone the swiping but see it as ingrained. so a lack of editorial due diligence, matched with a rather excessive protection of rights by the disgruntled, combines to make an online brouhaha. boy, those are rare.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

the last 2 nights we watched Mystery Science Theatre 3000, Erin having procured a set of 4 from the library. I love the show. the 2 main robots are wonderful, the way they exist as characters. I must say, tho, sometimes I would like to see the movies without the overlay. they seem so enticing in how they envision a world like our own, only twisted into a pathology. the way 'bad' movies can exist in their ineptitude is a very compelling artistic argument. one movie was a rip off of the Beach Blanket movies, with Tommy Kirk as Frankie Avalon, and no one really specified as Annette. the movie was called Catalina Caper. I assume it was made because someone had a place on Catalina and wanted to write it off, so why not make a movie. it's a recipe movie, with an involved plot, 'comic relief', bikinis and youth music all in roughly correct amounts. the titular caper is half-baked, okay, and the sub-plot half-hearted. Little Richard appears, singing one song, which being an imitation Little Richard song that himself co-wrote. part of the patchwork process included him vocalizing his trademark woo-oo, he hadn't forgotten that element in the 10 minutes it took him to write the song. however modest his effort, his appearance betokened a possibility, somewhere, of directed energy and purpose. the movie's view of teen mating rituals (granted, all the teens in the movie were at least 25) may give you a sense of the 60s. the dance sequences, of which there were many, came across as lustreless Bollywood. that lck of lustre was so monumental as to be beguiling in its misconception. how does one distort the life energy into such cosmic stasis, I ask you? the jungle rhythms of the Twist, the Swim and the Frug, or whatever the hell, are rather delicate perceptions. as the MST folks noted, it was as white a movie as could be imagined. the other movie we saw was called Creeping Terror. it enjoyed a bit more budget than Plan 9 from Outer Space but much less verve. a spaceship crashed on earth and a creature crawls out to terrorize the countryside. the monster resembled one of those Chinese dragons that dance around in parades. except extremely abstract in design, a gallimaufry of spare bits of stuff. thru out the movie the thing would creep along and attack people. everyone freezes in place, screams and awaits the inevitable trip into the maw. as noted by out MST heroes, the actors actually crawl into the mouth of the monster, being as the monster, as equipped, couldn't make that happen. that enervation is a disturbing denial of basic instincts but that's the reality of this movie. it's a shabbily practiced movie, but in that shabbiness resides a world. replace monster with Republican administration, or racism, or global warming, or you name it, and it makes more sense. it's another movie in which the jungle rhythms of the Twist threaten almost to impose energy in the flaccidity of the Real World. the movie ends with some malarkey about the alien race (that sent the monsters) someday coming to say hi. both of these movies are mildly crazy, only vaguely bear the illusion of realism, yet I would take that craziness over the clear-headed value of the usual Oscar winner.

file under just so you know: of the last 18 visitors to this backwater site, 6 arrived because of a search on the term fisher cat, which I have mentioned 2 or 3 times on this blog. lesson: if you want to Sillimanize your blog to a greater audience, mention fisher cats (members of the marten family).

I've been poking at Candor by Alan Davies (not to look a gift horse in the mouth). it's from Roof Books, 1990 or 91. it integrates poetry with criticism. I had to ask him if he wrote it chronologically or if he shuffled. I like to peek under the hood and see the process. not that I understand what's under the hood, I just like to see the gears engaging, and all the other possible aspects of the metaphor in process. Duncan, as will be recalled, went chronological, twining his various threads, one might think, because of the living intersections. Jack Kimball's Post~Twyla includes some criticism as well. in that work, they seem to provide a different metric. and Jack has said that he did shuffle the pieces in the book. the critical matter in Candor seems (to me, anyway) to arise from the particular reading at the time, whether haphazard or assiduously planned. I'd even say that the two works are on opposite (but I wouldn't suggest opposing) ends of the same seesaw. which is perhaps a pointless remark given that I've read so little of Alan's book. the book leads off with a rollicking shout out to all of Alan's homeys, yes, language-centered rap. in one sense, it's a jokey feat, but in another, it is quite an impressive chunk of aural beat. and that's as far as I'll speak of the book at this time, just had to exclaim my 1st taste of the wonder.

check out these rubbings (I forget the word for this) by David-Baptiste Chirot. click the images to enlarge.

Jack Kimball writes up the 4 readings on sunday here. I've noted his reading reviews before, so it's okay that this time I was one of the readers. I agree with Jack that the day had convivial energy. one reading in a funky gallery, another in a funky bar, and the in betweens in which conversation flowed. that's a scene. Beth, who lived for a time in Vancouver, loved the poetry scene there. she said the reading at the Plough and Stars resembled every night in Vancouver, lots of energy and interest. we greatly enjoyed the weekend. I appreciate Jack's effort at connecting the scene, suggesting that Boston need not be balkanized. Boston is not a wasteland, insofar as lots of poetry events and poetry series occur. sometimes it seems like a wasted land, but I can name at least 3 very good Boston reading series, tho admittedly I haven't attended a lot. Beth and I felt guilty leaving Erin alone for much of the weekend. anyway, Jack's effort, which he takes seriously (he asks for copies of the reading material from readings, the better to write about the performances), has a positive impact on The Scene, here.

1st of all, prose is not an opposition to poetry. I'm not sure how to define either term, frankly. you got any guesses? poetry? it is perhaps involved in music/sound, rollicks with image, contours the imagination, and resists. prose? it is lattice work, structuring effort. poetry is the condensation from, to and around words. much depends on the syntactical surprise, the sense of language shifting its stance before our eyes. think of how Dickinson wrenches hymn and doggerel into difficult blossoms. and into the 20th century, the desire/need to get into the space between words: the disjunctive. but our brains aren't just leaping machines, they also follow trails. I see prose as logical line. and yet, in my own prose, I dismay it with a curious sense of resolution. the inferred story one sees in my work is incomplete, not fully voiced, not limited. you could say this is my tactic but it isn't planned. it is how the writing occurs. one poem I read seems illustrative:

Le Voyage au Cafe

All openings proclaimed the new coffee. Simple story: new coffee had beat to the fragrance. Not a palm oil confusion could be found in the basic bliss. A crux coaxed the ball rolling. New dumps were seen in tracing growth thru effort and the catalogue. Old coffee was taken down, brewing on the side of trade. We won't trade any more, proclaimed the days of faster all of you. New coffee like a chain in space, a turnpike called west, a lovely expectation tilling field. New coffee sends shock, jets land on fog timber, the president wills for lasting: all this adheres to humps of future list our names. A drink of new coffee, collective bargaining agreement, a press toward natural, all the basics raveling in a guide of tourneys on the sly. Friends in this time reach over the fence, changing as change, kneeling quickly to result. With diffidence, fog happens to the trace, sonic in bud and back while reclaiming the destitute trump. Mirror hovers over patience like a docket filled with tools. Gesturing rings of sample toes as foot beams need a looming. Friends clump new coffee for the fettle whilst of choose. Chatter bug rambling farm reaps meme taste klatsch for all. Federation meantime matches nebulous parity toward the door. New coffee then plumply lights the hay as we gussy up the flow.

* * * * *

note how it begins declaratively, but shifts into Coolidge Beat. this is prose dangling helplessly. it is squeezed together, hurried and even to me strange. I write these comments from a respectful distance of amazement. I observe the writing thru me. as I read yesterday, I felt my words kinda shooting over people's heads. certainly not in the sense of being too intellectually grand, but that my strategy is unexpected. and my muttered explicatory comments were only hesitant guesses at the time, m0re confusing than helpful. all 3 of the other poets who read yesterday gave small compriseable chunks to the listeners. Alan's short bursting lines, Christina's distinct, pounding (and hilarious) gatherings, and the flickering recognitions of John (I think my earlier comments on his reading disserve him some). my prosy pieces are rather relentless in how they run out ahead. their density owes to some kind of physics I haven't worked out the vocabulary of yet. also, I don't believe it is easily seen how seriously I take Fu Manchu, Tarzan and space aliens. if you've read this far, I just want to say that this is no apologia or defense, it's a working out.

I just discovered this interesting e-book, a collaborative conversation between Alan Davies and Miles Champion. I found Alan very approachable concerning critical and poetic matter. he's thoughtful and committed but not mysterious. a seriously low rent dependence on personality smothers Poetry Land. and it is not just the chattering bloggers who stoop so, you see it in the academic world too. this competitive fol-de-rol is all cartoon quality dynamics that leave a pall of discouragement. when I earlier spoke of Davies being gallant, it was an assertion of his calm dedication to poetry, not that other stuff. Wikipedia says he's a buddhist, which I suspected from his conversation. I don't know if Wikipedia is accurate but it makes sense. anyway, I invite people to read the above e-book, and I hope to write more about Davies.

a full poetry weekend for Beth and Allen. saturday a dinner at the home of John and Andrew, who run (with others) the Demolicious Series. Alan Davies, Christina Strong and Jack Kimball also attended. Alan and Christina came up from the city together on the bus, and stayed with John and Andrew. Christina had a reading later, more anon. some gossip, some poetry talk, lots of conversation. as someone who allowed himself to be distant from the poetry happenings of this town, it is good to connect. it was pretty late for this child when we got home. the cat kindly let me sleep in till 6:30, but a mite weary nathless. we got to the reading just at 2:00. Michael, with whom I've had an email correspondence, and who is a hardened veteran of my previous reading, was outside the gallery. inside was empty. we helped set up chairs then went down the street so Beth could get some much needed coffee. tired as I was I also had adrenalin in my blood, so I partook of none. Joel Sloman, Christina and someone whose name I haven't retained read open mike. then me. should one review one's own reading? well I will. I practiced quite a bit, or at least, reading thru my selection of poems 2 or 3 times a day seems like a considerable bit of practice. I weeded out a few poems that I didn't feel I could read well. also, I aimed at no more than 20 minutes. I attempted the spectrum, which is not accomplishable in 20 minutes. I mean, I think my work is varied but anyway, any writer has a range to their work. as I read I became aware of the difficulty of prose. I really wonder what poetry is, but in sooth, I see the formal presence of poetry. I think my prose is poetic, that it is poetry, but it is difficult to hear aloud. at least, that was how I felt. my more narrative works seem to strain poetry's bounds. the last piece that I read is narrative, tho it may not be clear in the piece that my idea of narrative shies from resolution. I became aware that context was unclear. it was part of a series but maybe hung there weirdly. anyway, I managed dynamics as I read tho really, I don't want to modulate professionally, if you know what I mean. I seem to have a permanent ticklish cough which was something to deal with. and one of the proprietors of the gallery for some reason sat off to the side making random noises with things. I mean dropping things and such. it wasn't cruelly distracting but it put a part of my mind bemusedly wondering. she actually made her exit with a flourish while Alan read. obliviousness that could be bottled. I didn't feel connected to the audience, but maybe I was thinking too much. I should avoid thinking. at one point I heard myself intone poet voice. only briefly, and I noted it for the audience. I see what I write as an intimacy, not a performance (not to denigrate performance) and could feel myself not wanting to give into some need to convince the audience. I read selected poems from a couple of series, and realized that the context was confused. that's a difficulty I have with magazines, that much of my poems connect with others, and to present them without that context is a disservice. but fiddle-dee-dee. I had no sense how the audience really felt about my reading, which perhaps is a blindness on my part. but enough about me, if that is possible. Alan Davies read directly. he's a really nice person, friendly, gallant even, and uncompetitive. he lives in NYC but is from Canada (you can hear it in his accent, tho he's been in this country pretty much entirely since he was 17). Davies read Book 5 and Book 6. of what? his ongoing project, for which he has a working title that he would not reveal. Book 5 is published by Katalanche Press, Michael Carr proprietor. Katalanche also published a book by Mark Lamoureaux (sorry if I misspelled), that I reviewed at Galatea Resurrects. from the evidence the books are made with care and love. I will seek more offerings from the press. Book 6 is in manuscript. Davies is currently working on book 10. he read sitting down. Book 5 consists of 2 short-lined verses per page, 2 to 4 lines long. I thought of hay(na)ku, or even haiku, for each stands on its own tho they form a chain. he read in a direct, punchy but not overly processed way. Book 6 had longer lines and was more flowingly read. the effect in those cases is multi-layered. or twined threads, say. in Book 6 Davies uses a bold square to mark the line end. Davies writes by hand, I ask those sorts of question. listening to Book 6, I could imagine him travelling around with a notebook. that the poems seemed to inhabit a reactive space. later, a group of us--11, I think--went to a nearby restaurant. this is such a sweet thing, to convene so. I asked Alan about how he wrote and he showed me a 5x8 yellow notepad, which was his work for Book 10. he said he does write here and there but that's not the nature of his work. I was taken by the yellow pad, as in: not a notebook? I'm a notebook guy. he gave me his copy of Book 6, as well as 2 other books, that are currently still in the car. we hung at the restaurant for a while. Christina was to read at 7, so there was time to kill. it boiled down to Alan, Michael, Beth and I hunting down a bookstore. there's a notable used bookstore in Somerville to which we repaired. with the trip across town, hunt for parking, and walk down the street we hadn't much time in the store. then we aimed ourselves towards the Plough and Stars. it was noisy and jammed but we found seats. Christina read 1st. the 1st piece was a long, snappy and snapping thing. her work is mordant, funny and political. which doesn't seem to express the experience of hearing her work. I mean, her work doesn't shape around three adjectives so easily. googly voices appear, and assorted strains (several senses to the word). lots of energy. John Coletti followed. his work consists of short glints. I know that sounds like a lame description but it seems apt. poetic flashes. he intoned his work dryly with an effective filigree of tangential comment. I felt like his work stayed in one language tho. I must say that I have a dismay about poetry. divested, mostly, of the romantic idea, the byronic type who wanders lonely as a cloud, and much influenced by the Creeley firmly laid line and cadence, yet I suffer a sense, still, of limitation. which is why prose is important to me, with its shifting variances. I think my prose struggles in contention with the block of text as block of text, if you take my meaning. in the sense that each block of text looks the same, so the phanatopeia demands a visualizing effort on the reader/listener's part. anyone get me here? I saw Coletti's work floating free, yet its glintiness seemed ephemeral. tho there were lines that I would want to remember, if my brain weren't so porous. he had a good-natured performative relationship with his work. I don't mean to post him up as my problem, but in his work I see my own issues. so there that was. Christina gave me a copy of Anti-Star, from which she read. and then it was time to go home.

Official Reading Announcement

SUNDAY, APRIL 1
2:00 P.M.
OUT OF THE BLUE GALLERY
106 Prospect St.
Cambridge



ALAN DAVIES is the author of many books of poetry, including Name (This), Signage (Roof), Candor (O Books) and Rave (Roof), as well as an untitled collaboration with photographer Mark Winterford published by Zasterle. He has written many critical articles and book reviews, and has lectured here and abroad. He was twice a recipient of Canada Council Grants for the Arts. His big book called Life is forthcoming from O Books. He is at work on a lifelong project consisting of individual books, a couple of which have been published as chap books.



ALLEN BRAMHALL has lived in Massachusetts all his life. He attended microscopic Franconia College, where Robert Grenier taught him for a year and published his work in This 3. He next published 27 years later. He has one book published, the highly collectible Simple Theory (Potes & Poets Press), and another due from Meritage Press. He ruminates, asseverates, lollygags and flickers on his awesome blog Tributary. He also paints.

I haven't read a lot of Davies but I like the idea of a lifelong project. I agree, I shouldn't be allowed to write my bio. and yet... I like mentioning Franconia, because it's such a quirky note on one's resume. and Grenier made a strong impression on me that I feel the need to note. and the 27 year gap between publications says something, fill in the blank. and I take this blog seriously. the person who read the note at the last Demolicious reading had trouble with the list of verbs in the penultimate sentence. oh well. I'm a very good writer.

just to clarify my unclarity: Christina Strong and John Coletti read at The Plough and Stars (Cambridge) on April 1, at 7:00. I have a Plough and Stars story. I was there once many years ago when a patron, who had verily been enjoying himself, was now, er, cleaning the window from the outside. he looked, let us say, numerous sheets to the wind. I offer this not as being indicative of the establishment but just as a suggestion of local colour.

I'll be reading at the Out of the Blue Gallery, 106 Prospect St in Cambridge this coming sunday, April 1. Alan Davies reads as well. can 2 different spellings exist in the same temporal space? I think Christina Strong and someone else read at Plough and Stars, just down the road on Mass Ave, at 7:00, but I can't find the lowdown so I'm not sure. there will be Guinness there even if the poets aren't, but frankly, I think I'm remembering right. maybe the King of Boston Poetry will appear in the audiences (great anticipation).

boy, if Sparta only had a Pop Warner football team... I am not keen on how computer-generated effects seem so lifeless. I have an active distaste for the sort of animation used with Shrek. the effect is anemic and the opposite of engrossing for me. 300 was effective but the cartoon quality intruded frequently. the giant that the Persians unleashed was a bit ridiculous. he pulls a sword from his bicep during the showdown then pulls one from his eye. decapitation fazed him a bit, however. I liked the scene in Troy when Achilles goes one on one with a similar, albeit less Orc-like, giant (mano against mano as the Joker says in the 1st Batman). a Texas death match in which the winner wins the field for his team. Achilles Pitt runs towards the giant, who was created in one of Vince McMahon's steroid factories. the giant throws spears which Achilles deflects. when they are about to clash, Achilles makes this nifty leaping kick feint that brings him in position to drill his sword into the back of the giant's neck. game, set match. in 300, closeups were used to distraction. reminded of JFK. Oliver Stone stuck the camera up everyone's nose except his hero Garrison, a cheesy ploy. it seemed more random in 300, like it seemed like a good idea at the time. I found it a cluttering technique. now, did the Persians really wear silver masks? I don't think it is necessary to add cream cheese to the historical artifact. that is, I don't think you can make up stuff more fascinating than the historical record. I doubt that the survivour of the 300 would really have given such a boring speech prior to the Armageddon with the Persians at the end. still, without having seen the graphic novel, I'd say the movie did it justice. it translated the effects into cinema in a way that would satisfy fans of graphic novels. it satisfied me well enough.

just back from 300. I wasn't completely unaware about it, but didn't realize, for instance, that it was so gory. its stylized presentation was fairly effective tho it seems like a movie that'll look dated in a couple years. what was the name of that comic book style recent thriller with Gwyneth Paltrow and that actor who isn't so famous as maybe could? 300 looked like that. I liked that other movie well enough tho, er, I fell asleep. I'd forgotten till the closing credits that the movie derived from a graphic novel. it certainly looked like it had. and it also resembled those front story features to video games that set up the boop-boop-boop-blast-blast of the game itself. I think the effort to make the movie look like a comic book took some of the bran out of the story. there's some heart in the movie but a general cheesiness largely overwhelms it. it played to the 14 year old boy in the audience, which, in this case, means the cheap seats. it was wicked how he cut that dude's head off!!!. the endless prattle about freedom sounded like Braveheart. neither movie was really about that, tho I don't mean to say I didn't like either. in fact, the movie had a number of quotes of or allusions to other movies. the late scene in the wheatfield hearkened to Gladiator (I liked that movie: we almost watched again tonight, except Erin voted no). the hunchback seemed like Golum to some extent. the rhino and elephants in battle looked like Lord of the Rings. the movie opted for some rococo comic bookiness that was engrossing if a trifle whack. Leonidas climbs a rocky pinnacle to reach the oracle, his cloak fluttering comic bookly in the wind. the oracle is attended by men who all look like Robert the Bruce's leprous father. the oracle's veils flutter with mesmerizing pointlessness. well, it was supposed to be sensuous, but I felt like a cat watching television as those veils swirled. the Persians, woo boy, were they decadent. from the 1st emissary who appears, it is one hubris-filled snooty pants after another. all of whom get what for in spades by the mighty Spartans. the whole point of the movie was to get our boys in place to do battle. wow, there was a shot of the Persian fleet getting devastated by a storm, which was historically in the wrong place, that was wonderful. straight off the canvas of any number of vast romantically-conceived paintings. yow! the battle scenes were a blur of energy. definitely began as graphic novel. blood spattered about gracefully. the battles in Braveheart largely looked fun. you know, you pull the arrow out of your eye, drink some ale and slap your comrade on your back. the Spartans weren't going to have that much of fun, they were too workmanlike. tho they liked their job. every shiny pectoral muscle had a scar as token of satisfying satisfying puritan work ethic. the battle scenes got a bit wearying, no dynamics, it's all high gear in slo-mo. a great scene was the rain of arrows on the 300. whoooosh, tho, hey, kind of taken from Braveheart, what? Xerxes reminded me of Ra in Stargate, tho played by an angry RuPaul. the soundtrack took steroids but was effective. there's an Imax version available, but I don't think I have the constitution. regarding upcoming cinema temptations: 2 horror flicks that look dully disturbing, Will Ferrell's next one (I'm in),and something else that was loud.

a little giddy because I just emended a Wikipedia entry. an article on Franconia College mentioned notable faculty, but didn't mention Robert Grenier. now's not the time but I should write more about the school. as far as Wikipedia goes, I have seen errors or skewed viewpoints that I could correct or balance, but I'm not into the necessity that much. the concept of Wikipedia is of course audacious, being open to abuse. not that Encyclopedia Britannica couldn't be abused as well. Wikipedia is a quick easy first step, and one that encompasses popular culture. like, do you think there's an article on Simon Cowell? anyway, I felt duty-bound to give Grenier his due.

this post by Tom Beckett caught my attention (well, they all do, but). I know a boy, must be 11 now, who likewise holds writing instruments in a fist. he writes and draws, it seems, constantly. he suffers seizures, to which I hadn't thought to attribute that grip until now. the grip I guess helps obviate the physical difficulties of his neurological dismay. Erin suffered seizures after immunization (those 2 facts are true but the scientific (western) community disputes the correlation). it was a long, long road of physical therapy, various mental exercises and homeopathy to come back from that. a heroic effort by Erin and Beth. in the process of that therapy Erin, a natural righty became a lefty. I think it has to do with rewiring Erin so that a different part of his brain manages motor control. don't quote me on this. Erin loves to write, and does so with impressive verve and ease--he has always had a distinctive voice--yet he cannot write with a pencil. that is, it is just about painful for him. which obviously is a handicap, tho schools and scholastic testing agencies and such will make allowances. all this makes me want to say, perhaps obviously and tritely, that every child is a special needs child. being part of the homeschool community, we see many children afflicted with uniqueness. I say afflicted because in the public school setting they are often cast out: dweebs, weirdos, misfits. public school perforce aims for the average student, but you look at your child, or anyone's, and realize that there is no average. it is not true that homeschoolers are typical socially backward, if anything I'd declare the opposite (for one thing, they are used to dealing with adults). I don't mean to rail against public schools nor suggest that everyone should homeschool. Tom's fist grip is an adaptation to a specific physical need. one must be wary of the adaptations children make in school that are forced on them. it wasn't so long ago, for instance, that lefties were forced if not to use their right hand, at least to use the right hand grip when writing. anyway, so I ruminate.

Days PoemCover, Volume 1

Days PoemCover, Volume 1, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Days Poem Cover, Volume 2

Days Poem Cover, Volume 2, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Erin's finishing up the cover designs for Days Poem, volumes 1 and 2 (and that's all the volumes there are or will be). I did the art but don't know enough about Photoshop (or in this case, its freeware, open source substitute, The Gimp) to get text on. the covers look great, very colourful. Beth long ago had the idea of using a painting she saw, of men on a raft going down a river, a nicely apt image for the poem. we've been unable to find the specific painting. George Caleb Bingham has one that's close. rights issues, of course, are involved as well. so I'm happy to use my own work. and it's nice having Erin's effort involved. I will post the 2 images when Erin finishes, because I think they look awesome and I'm excited about the book. save your nickels.

saw not one but 2 George Hamilton movies: Love at First Bite and Zorro the Gay Blade. we actually went to Barnes and Noble in search for Apocalypto. reviews of which I haven't seen, but it being set in pre-Colombian Central America and my having seen the trailers, it looks engaging. yes, I realize Mel Gibson can go over the top. the dvd is not available till may, but Beth saw the 2 Hamilton movies, of which she had fond recollection. LAFB was the lesser movie. Hamilton plays Dracula, who comes to NYC to secure the affection of Susan St James. Hamilton's good-natured, somewhat preening acceptance of his roles is a transmogrification of corny. it doesn't come across as hammy because he's having so much fun. I particularly enjoyed Richard Benjamin, who took his usual earnest neurotic and added a fun squirrelly touch. the movie seemed dated for several reasons. the iconic disco era stuff, like the de rigueur disco scene itself, were included to highlight the movie's freshness. not so fresh now. likewise all the current stars, like Susan St James and Arte Johnson (who was pretty good, actually), as well as the cameos by Sherman Hemsley and Isabelle Sanford: these folk seem out of date now. Hamilton doesn't. Zorro The Gay Blade was much stronger. GH plays Zorro's son. his father bequeathed mask and cape to him and Hamilton takes over the duties. the other actors don't seem as dated, maybe because they are better at what they do. Ron Liebman as the evil alcalde gets to snap and shout thru out the movie. Hamilton enjoys playing with a broad barely fathomable accent. his Zorro sustains an injury, but luckily his long lost brother shows up to take over duties. this is Hamilton as well. he's flamboyantly poncy and just plain silly. he eschews the black costume for various colourful, fringed and beaded substitutes. Kasey Mohammad writes on his blog about how disappointing his recent viewing of Blazing Saddles was. je connais. a lot of movies, especially comedies I think, hold up poorly over time. partly, it is because the performers aren't able to get out of the era. I mean, Susan St James simply doesn't arise above the late 70s and 80s. she's a worm hole back to then. so is Richard Benjamin, but at least there's a tweak to his role that provided a revivifying flair. there was a Mel Brooks collection available at B&N. I've seen 4 of the 6 movies and have no inclination to see any again. even tho I thought the films were mostly really funny. their edge has dulled, their freshness dissipated. there's a bit of Shakespearian gender juggling in Zorro, with the Gay Blade dressed as a woman fending off the alcalde and dressed as Zorro fending off Lauren Hutton. both brothers enter the realm of mock heroic. anyway, both movies are pleasantly cute and Zorro holds up quite well.

watched Nacho Libre last night. an odd movie. it's a Jack Black star vehicle, obviously. I don't think I've seen a Black movie previously tho it seems like I'm pretty familiar with him. he reminds me of Belushi but I have to say I also thought of Lou Costello last night, too. Costello being more innocent. Belushi's physical comedy is pretty plangent. I occasionally laugh but more often feel oppressed. Black has a lighter touch. people have spoken well of Nacho Libre but I found myself distracted by its normative impulses. are we supposed to buy this guy as a priest? perhaps it shouldn't matter but the pieties are fake yet at times dwelt upon. it doesn't hold up. the idea of this priest as a wrestler is rather sweet and it works. but when he becomes coarse it twists things out of shape. I liked the evocation of Mexican wrestling. I have to admit I've never seen one of those films in which masked wrestlers go about the world fighting crime. they sound so weird as to be pure, like how old time wrestling had a purity that Vince McMahon's empire savvy has completely crushed. the movie's narrative is straightforward but presented choppily, the scenes being more like set pieces. the movie's odd visual reality was nice. I just found myself trying to compute what perhaps I hadn't ought to compute. Nacho was hot for the nun at 1st sight, but sweet for her as well. there's a scene in which she's in her room wearing a diaphanous nightgown and doing her hair, typical nun stuff. Nacho shows up and they comically and chastely eat toast together. just hard to get a grip on intentions here, filmmaking wise. at the end it is all too obvious. Nacho must fight and defeat the great wrestler, and it is no better than Rocky. altho what inspires him to victory is the sight of one of the orphans wearing a wrestling mask. from there it is Moe, Larry the cheese, righteous victory for the underdog. another movie came to mind as being more successful. Three Amigos. yes, a Lorne Michaels movie, but still. Steve Martin and Chevy Chase were still at the height of their smug insincerity, so the normative bullshit never had a chance. them and Martin Short bounced off each other nicely. some surreal moments added to the effect, like the desert scene where critters sing. Nacho Libre wasn't surreal but it tended toward a pleasant oddity. at the end, of course, the orphans are saved. Nacho and the nun are still of the cloth but the carnal element has not gone away. I liked how comfortably the movie went and 'did' Mexico. nothing of the Hollywood soundstage here, nor any imports except for Jack himself. that's how to do a low budget.

I can't say that I know what a subprime is but it sounds like now is the time to get one.

I came upon this blog by Michael Carr and enjoyed it. I liked the poems and I especially liked the captioned photos. I think I met Michael after Demolicious reading, but if I did it amounted only to a nod. yeah, the Bramhall charm in action.

I have a book at lulu.com. specifically, Open Elegy. it consists of 5 elegiac poems and 12 pages. 6 bucks. $4.77 goes to Lulu for production costs. Lulu's fee is 25% of whatever profit I choose to take. I could take zero profit and Lulu would take zero fee, but I felt guilty about that, so I put my profit at 98 cents, giving Lulu 25. if I buy 100 copies the production cost goes down a buck 50 or so. per unit, as they say. I'll think on it. the point of this isn't profit of course. if profit shows up, I'll send it to:

'A 'A ARTS
c/o J. Spahr
5000 MacArthur Blvd.
Oakland, CA 94613

the Frank Sherlock fund, that is. my parents are dead, meaning the one sale I could count on isn't available, so I will reach into my non-profiteering pocket as well. but as I said, the point's not the profit, tho I don't mean to be brusque about the charity. this project isn't really about the broadcasting of my work, tho that potential sounds nice. really, it's just the see and feel of a work put together and ready to go into the world. which is the spell of DIY. it so happens Jeff Harrison and I are discussing publication issues at Antic View. I have a heinously lax publication history. Jeff has a fair amount of work available, and he's quite satisfied with online venues. so anyway, this is the current adventure.

reading Eoagh 3. it is a massive collection., which, it seems, is where online mags are. discuss pros and cons, if you wish. an impressive selection of writings, themed on Queering the Language. I wanted to point to this piece by John Mercuri Dooley. it is about gay marriage, sure enough you can see that is it. but it is not strictly an opinion. I relate what John does with this piece to Charles Reznikoff's Testimony: taking public documents and seeing into their poetry. I don't know how John arrived at the final texts but an act of telescoping occurs. he produces an odd weighting of import. sure there's a point here, a political stance. at the same time, you have to read this piece for its anguish of language. I have to say anguish, because what arises is both a blurring of individuality of the people involved, and an emphasizing of same. each couple has its own story, yet a larger sense says they all relate. the facts of each marriage detail choices made by the couples. but again, I mean to point to the language. it is chopped up, stuttering. each couple, one infers, looks for the right detail of imagery, personal definition. the stuttering is so human and plain, so grappling with a meaning that has to be utterly personal even tho it is so common and shared.

we saw Talladega Nights last night. saw the trailer before some movie, and thought it was funny, but didn't know if that were the extent of the movie. it was really pretty good. I don't think I've seen a Will Farrell movie. I've seen, and liked, him on SNL, and I think he's had small parts here and there. unlike other SNL alum, his presence is less categorized. he seems neither branded or constrained. one doesn't expect him to carry a movie but in fact, if this movie bears the truth, he can. his pairing with John Reilly was excellent. I take Reilly as an actor rather than a comedian. he provides a subtle strength. okay, that's a mushy thing to say. I guess I mean he takes on his role intelligently, thoughtfully, yet without losing freshness. the best scene was around the dinner table. everyone except the grandfather is saying outrageous things. it's such a bent reality. I lost interest a bit as the normative plot unveiled itself. perhaps it's necessary as something to hang the antics on, but it can't be relied on for tension, tho we are expected to fall for the plot turns. Sasha Baron-Cohen was scary as the French racer. SBC really inhabits roles. he carries a disturbing intensity. you saw it in Borat, but of course that whole movie meant to disturb and outrage. his character in Talladega was more on the order of Snidely Whiplash, yet SBC's intensity wants to burst thru such a limitation. anyway, what I thought would be a Will Ferrell vehicle proved to be a much fuller cinematic experience.

just got My Angie Dickinson by Michael Magee (Zasterle 2006). pretty excited to get it. I'm not unfamiliar with it, as its material used to be available from the My Angie Dickinson blog. that right there is a nifty feature of the work: its initial appearance on the web. that highlights the nature of its provenance. Magee (as he explains in his intro) googled phrases from Emily Dickinson along with the name Angie Dickinson to produce the texts. that's a classic collision of pop and high culture. and perhaps classic flarf strategy. aw gee, I dunno from strategy, really, I want to see poems work in the space they've created. I don't want to hang up on method, tho I'm interested in means of production. the truly actualistical flarf books that I've read have been strong, stronger, really, than the flabby critical activity surrounding the work. I hate critical shorthand, the branding sort. again, that's why Silliman's boolean School o' Q versus Righteous bugs me. becasue he recognizes the School o' better than Q, and the Not Quite Righteous. I would as soon avoid the term flarf, it just tempts people, lazy ilk, to fill in blanks with assumptions. or the interesting irritation is covered with critical nacre... yuh well, up with metaphor. the point of any manifesto is as starting point. you make manifest some crucial point, then move on. that's why I like Virginia Woolf's novels: she chose a working method with each one and ran with the experiment. looking at the books that carry the flraf label, one sees a rangy spectrum of work, and that had ought to be how it goes. anywho, I think it's canny sending Emily thru the Angie prism (it's not strictly that, but that captures the colour). things I like here: it's nice to see Emily's dashes deployed by someone else; the design (credit Christian Palino), including the cover, is really effective; once again Magee provides useful, uncryptical talking points about the work. I find tenderness here and thoughtfulness, balanced against the goofy weirdness. I'm psyched to have this book.

I found on the ground a printout of someone's potential order from Toys "R: Us, to wit: Ruthless 3-Pack Series 4: Melian/Nitro/Mercury (our price: $19.99). Free Wrestlemania Action Figure $7.99 value when you buy $30 or more of eligible products. just to complete the temptation, as if that weren't enough, pictures of the 3 action figures. the pictures aren't much for details, but I can glean that Melian wears a red 2-piece suit reminiscent of Wonder Woman, except that she seems to be wearing preposterously large furry white boots (mukluks?); Nitro and Mercury wear matching pants, no shirt, all important wrist bands. you can imagine the fightin' fury of these 3. are they forces of good or evil? I don't know. how readily do they bring foreign objects into the ring? I can't guess, tho Melian's boots represent great hiding place (refs would never look there). do they hate Vince McMahon? of course they do. whew!!! I used to watch the cheesy old wrestling that McMahon's father used to produce. which used to seem sporty in its way. I haven't watched in a few years because the prescribed 'roid rage intensity enacts a dull blow to the senses. in the old days there was a sort of tasteful racism, homophobia and general xenophobia on display, as everpresent keynote to the proceedings. now, from what I glean (can I glean twice in the same post?) from the occasional ads that I see, it is just straightforward bludgeoning. the phobias aren't constrained to the murky depths but indiscriminately wielded as simple anger gone cunningly wild. more overt, that is, but less political. which is weird, I admit. outrage in the arts, I'm swerving to say, wants to be innocent, actually. the internets are wild with calculated spew, which really seem like part of some canny anger management program: say your outrageousness here in the safety of listserv, blog or chatroom, and be normal where it counts. when I've done googly poems, I've wanted to be tender towards the compliant voices that I find. I can't always do that, but I recognize that the satiric element of writing like flarf has limited possibilities. you think of the kid who might be salivating to get these action figures. something is uncomplicatedly genuine in the desire to attach to these characters and the whole wrestling world. I have no idea what one does with these action figures. pose them around your room I guess, or maybe enact (I've used that word twice now, too) desperate wrestling dramas. that would never have interested me long. McMahon's such a jugular-seeking capitalist that there's no sense of play whatsoever in his sports entertainment realm. the troubling blur that exists between real and fake in wrestling is used to thwack the paying customer. the public wants both, desperately. antic flarf doesn't dance far, it needs a soul. what's interesting is language filtered thru an innocent perspective, and the collective reach of empathy. the phobias of the olden days in wrestling were more defensible than the arch calculation of the present day. the scale now is barely human, graded steeply towards the greedy turbine. artistic outrage is an alarm clock set for not long.

Tom Beckett does what all bloggers ought to do: list why he links to the blogs that he does (here). his encapsulations are spot on. Tom's thoughtfulness, acuity and humour are all appreciated, especially amidst the usual rumours of backbiting and such in the precious poetry world. of course I invite you to run your eye down to my name, where he says that I'm a volcano about to explode. that's a sharp observation. I was wickedly slow to "get it" as a poet, and wickedly slow to present it to the world. yet I think I'm worth hearing, worth reading, on the plain of pure merit (if such exists). I think of my poem Days Poem, due out soon from Meritage Press, as being capable of knocking people down. and I don't mean because it tallies 2 volumes and nearly 1000 pages, but that it arises from 30+ years of maneuvering between earnest study, humble effort and fierce dedication. this I see in Tom's work, as poet, as editor, as interviewer, as blogger of positive influence. he doesn't get enough credit. with Unprotected Texts he adds further proof of his accomplishments. I believe Days Poems does likewise for me. it's about time, for both of us...

just back from seeing Sean Cole and Susan Landers read. we got there on time but Susan, who took the train up from NYC, was late, so a search party dashed off to South Station to fetch her. meanwhile, back at the ranch, the reading started with open mike. mostly the same people who read every time. it's a pleasant homespun sort of feature to the Demolicious readings. I thought to bring a poem but finally didn't. after the 4 open mike readers, Sean read (at Demolicious, the local poet reads 1st). Sean's a very good and I'd say under-appreciated poet. he's at ease in front of a crowd but there's a nervous energy nonetheless. I think it takes him a bit to hear his voice and feel the rhythm of his work. his work comprises a general narrative. it is peopled, let us say. it seems to be "about" him and someone else, her, even. his poems are conversational and dialectical. they are also funny. odd but effective juxtapositions just wring laughs and earnest inquiry out of reader/listener. as he warmed up he became more physically tuned in, which translates into kinetic harmonies (id est, he moves his head and hands in harmony to the poem). I'm not picking on a tic but observing where he really syncs in to his work. one of the later poems that he read was a tour-de-force in which the humour and energy combined. Ive heard humour defined as a logical disaster, and that's how I regard his work. Susan arrived during Sean's reading so he didn't have to stretch. Susan read in a carefully enunciated way. conversationally, I noticed, she speaks quickly, so care is evident in her reading. the main work she read from is a translation (of sorts) of Dante's bestseller. by translation she means several things. she does literal translation (tho she professed not to know Italian), as well as the sort of translation the Zukofskys applied to Catullus. a further translation occurred by shifting the English into new terms. the massiveness of Dante's work is, of course, awesome, and her work had something of a feat about it. she brought some politically sharpened news into the work, and that was wickedly effective. she didn't want to simply people Hell with those she doesn't like, as Dante did. where she seemed closest to channeling Dante seemed the best. I felt that when I saw her read before, where she cleaved closest to Stein, she was strongest. I think, and I must emphasize the surmise factor here, that the agony of influence is still being worked out. it is a sign of maturity to turn from the influences. the next step, the most difficult, is integration. she spoke (afterwards) of discovering Dante as she wrote this work. I believe she said this was her 1st reading of Dante. I don't know if she planned to treat the entire Commedia, but she stopped whilst still in purgatory (she has a publisher for the work, tho I don't know who). she found herself too self-conscious in her treatment, or that's how I translate her explanation. I think she's on the edge of something, is what I'm rattling on about. and I must reiterate the surmiseyness of what I've just written. some of us (and it could have been any of us) convened for apres reading feed. and this is a nice part of the reading experience. conversation allowed Susan to expatiate on her work, and later, Sean read some of his poems again. Sean's one of Boston's poets who didn't toddle off to New York's hotbed of fame and connection. surely more of the non ex-pats hereabouts could've crammed the Out of the Blue Gallery t hear him read. another point would be to note Jack Kimball's contribution to the Boston scene. Jack attends a lot of readings locally. and he writes about them. he cadged copies of Sean's poems, the better to write about the reading, and I believe he worked out something similar with Susan. so his reportage includes academic study. this is utmostly valuable, a real angle on the work. so there's my report.

I twiddled a series of poems into a chapbook at lulu.com yesterday. mostly just to see how the process goes. I ordered a copy to look at, and if it feels okay, I'll offer to readership. I own a number of books produced by Lulu, so I'm not concerned about print quality, I'm tuned more to the work itself. self-publish brings up several issues, some of which are bugaboos. the 1st is the matter of editorial judgment. we all know that our critical eye mayn't always see clearly when regarding our own work. Lulu (I haven't explored the other self-publish players) is free, insofar as you can set up all the books you want. tempting to stick everything into print. anyone wishing to see the printed product, however, including you, must place the nickel down. it's a bit spendy ordering a single book, so to scale the thing more comfortably, you may want to buy in quantity. Lulu and its pards are valid resources, tho. so I want to see if what I thunk was a book is so when I get it in my hands. the 2nd issue about diy is the need for imprimatur, that it somehow lacks coolness to publish your own work. especially in publish or die land. that attitude strikes me as loathsome. it seems like an artist had ought to control the means of production. working with Lulu is not the same as printing it out yourself, poking thru the cover stocks, sewing the cover and what not, but you do enter deeper into the process of production. Beth and I framed a few of our own pictures (that we did, I mean) last year. that's akin to publishing. the further step, requiring knowledge and wherewithal, would be to do the framing ourselves. those works have been placed into the world by the act of framing them. they're on the wall. you have work you think deserves being seen, and so do I. why wait for an editor to select what you have submitted? I like typesetting, using different fonts to make a good visual impression. because I knew a leedle (not a lot) about computers and word processors some years ago at work, someone asked me to help him with a project of his. he knew negative zero about computers but had all these arty ideas of how to format his work. much of what he wanted couldn't be accomplished within the strictures of the word processor's functionality then. I think something crucial sits within that disconnection he had from how things happened. I mean, I can hum a great bass line but I never learned the rather important skill of fingering the bass. the kid in the basement labouriously going blum blum blum has it all over me. Beth says art is creative problem solving. bringing forth work for others to see or hear is yet another problem to solve. a huge problem for me has been putting my work in front of people. only in the last few years have I efforted that aspect of the writer's drama. writing is more than just getting the words down. writing includes its presentation.

Sean Cole and Susan Landers read at the Demolicious series this sunday, 2pm, Out of the Blue Gallery in Cambridge. I've seen both read. Cole is a genuinely funny poet. not just snort ah hah poetry reading funny, but skewed revelation suddenly presented makes you laugh funny. I thought Landers had a strong Stein element to her writing. she led off her reading with a wonderful piece by Stein; possibly that shaded my assessment. not to say influence by Stein is bad, I just don't want to present unneeded borders. oh, I really will read next month at the same venue, with Alan Davies.

115th episode of Antic View. delving, directing and divagating for your consternational pleasure. I look at this thing as critically as I can and believe that, over its breadth and in its depth, it lights some fires. [Dept. of Telling You So]

saw a book about AC/DC at the library yesterday that I had to take home. I love this sort of stuff. I mean, why don't I have a 10,000 page poem about Angus and Malcolm? not tht I've drowned myself in their music, but I appreciate what they do. I have a terribly low tolerance for shouty singers and for screechy ones, yet I can handle both Bon Scott and Brian Johnson no prob. there's always a nice tension between the 2 guitars. the biographers grant Malcolm, rhythm guitarist, a certain genius status, which I've kind of suspected all along. he seems to be the one holding the pieces in place. so that's what I'm reading, along with the Louis Menand book about William James, Wendell Holmes, Charles Peirce and John Dewey, a separate Dewey book, and I'm hankering to read more than the intro to a book about Magellan's circumnavigation.

spatial oddity

spatial oddity, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

mainstream, movies, limetree... I seem to be a-twirl in thoughts. pre-blog I kept a journal that was mostly reactions to anything. the clear intention when I started was to write about my reading. I ditched that immediately and started writing about whatever came to me: music, movies, commercials, weather. it also became more public in its voice than I expected. I saw it as something I would publish, tho I've made no attempt except to type roughly half of it out (600 pages) (I wrote it in notebooks). I bring up that journal because it suggests both methodology and license. movies are mainstream because everyone feels that they can comment on movies. whereas poetry is approached with awe, whether by those who don't read it or those who feel they can be critical scourges. I think Ron Silliman makes things murky with his School of Quietude vs Real Poetry dichotomy. the idea that SoQ is mainstream is to equate the Shawsheen River with the Mississippi. er, the Shawsheen runs thru town and will at its occasional pleasure flood a few basements. you don't see no Huck Finns on rafts on the Shawsheen, if you get my drift. I really should say, poetry-wise, there aint no stream. remember Maya Angelou's poem for one of Clinton's inaugurations? refried Whitman, and what would you expect? it's an occasion of affirmation and such, not poetry. what she wrote only pretended to be a poem, because who has time for poems when celebrating? the Academy Awards sanction not quality work so much as the image of quality work. comedies don't foster that sense of seriousness. the recent Pink Panther was laboured but the sight of Steve Martin and particularly Jean Reno dancing in leotards somehow makes up for all the by rote stuff in the movie. I don't see how poetry can become mainstream. the guilty pleasures of poetry consist mainly in chimey rhythm and rhyme. I mean, the wit of limericks seems (to me, anyway) to serve the satisfying thud of the rhymes. long ago I saw a parade. following the horses was a clown with broom and scoop. the clown wore a sign: Pooper Scooper. this was received as great wit, with people laughing and commenting. which brings to mind one of Baudelaire's little prose pieces in which a drunk speaks grandly to a donkey. alliteration and assonance, I guess the phrase is a poem. its not like poetry is necessarily so forbidding. Koch and O'Hara for sure are entertaining. movies enter by way of a big hole in the head whereas poetry seems to be more osmotic. the difference between the 2 modalities shouldn't be dismissed. which is where I think Silliman gets it wrong. well, I can't focus right now, that's for sure.

Kasey Mohammad lists top movies as well as other movie lists, starting here and moving on. movies are a funny artform. much more deconstructed than poetry. that is, you don't often get people pushing the metaphysical virtues of Ogden Nash's work, but it's different for movies. are Plan 9 from Outer Space or Wizard of Oz hokum or what? the answer is that the borders aren't clear at all. there are far fewer guilty pleasures in poetry. I like Whitman seriously, yet some of his expansiveness is just ludicrous. yet I 'buy' it: that would be an example of a poetic guilty pleasure. I suppose you can count limericks and clerihus or whatever as potential guilty pleasures, but that's more quirky than anything. whereas everyone has choices for guilty pleasure movies. I call Monty Python and the Holy Grail my favourite because it doesn't seem to wear out. the coconut carrying swallow debate, the sight of the knights a-horse, etc: these have yet to get old for me. I don't keep up with movies at all now, tho I try to think about what few I see. I like reading Kasey's takes because there seems to be a virtue to all movies. I suppose because movies are so culturally motivated that they cannot help reflecting something essential about 'us'. whereas poetry most times is pretty insular and personal, so that the cultural mirror is less intense.

funny that we go to the mall for Indian food. it is cheap and potentially quicker than the nearby restaurants. unless you wander... green is the new green this spring. entering the mall via Sears, and their Lands End display shoots green to the eye. Mall was pretty quiet e'en tho there were collections of networking teens that had likely been there all day. brilliant marketing minds aced out a way to quiet the foodcourt. the area under the central dome of the place, which used to be wide open and perfect for small children to run around in, now had a "snack center". this was a gathering of whatchacall gumball machines. coin in the slot, turn the handle, and receive a handful of savoury candy or refreshing gum. or just some shit. it's a glitzy set up yet seems like why bother. television screens appeared in the Food Court and thru out the mall around Christmas time. you cannot hear them, as Erin pointed out, so what do you get? flashing images of product and apparent promo for movies and CBS shows. yes, I did catch that CBS had somehow tied up this marketing advantage. at one of the Food Court choice there's a tv screen on which is shown demonstration of their baked goods being made. I could watch for hours. we stopped, again, at the Coach store. I saw a young teenage girl purchasing something. later I heard her father asking, are you happy with your purchase? and she obviously was. nothing comes cheap there, and as I continue to feel, the goods seem for older patrons. that is, according to my peccable sense of fashion flux. which is to say, Coach is doing something right: that got willing customers. their stock is bubbling, if you want to know. we learned that Coach changes its array of merchandise every 4-6 weeks. visit often. Macy's can hold onto items longer than the Coach store itself. I brought home a catalogue, which brims with crisp pictures of handbags and a grimly sultry model. Coach makes collars for your dog, not mine, if you're interested. they also make shoes, for which I have zero aesthetic. I just want to wear running shoes, and not even the fancy hi-tech ones. I will say I'm not keen on wedgies, if that's what they're called. walking on a wedge of wood... nah... Williams Sonoma, a foodie heaven, loads up on all the special cookware that you need. I liked the set of small square plates with green chopsticks and these ceramic snow peas to rest your chopsticks on. also a stainless steel fortune cookie that opens up so that you can put a cookie, or maybe just a fortune, inside. or how about serving bowls in the shape of those white cartons for takeout Chinese food. especially nifty was the air fresheners, hand cremes and dish soaps made from exotic essential oils. wasabi and green tea, ginger, meyers lemon, French (none of your English) lavender, ginger almond, pink grapefruit. neato. we used to visit a candle store, not Yankee Candle with its awful artificial smell, but ones made from much purer ingredients. I could sniff those for hours. the olfactory sense evokes images and feelings so readily. I should tell Marcel Proust about that. Crate and Barrel had lots of fresh looking geegaws. lots of green, as I noted earlier in Sears. while we were there, Erin came in to borrow Beth's phone because he was mid-conversation with a friend when his phone's battery hit E. large, oddly grim photographic portraits of Jack Nicholson, Angelina Jolie and Christopher Walken were displayed in the mall, adverting something or other. Nicholson's looked like a mug shot, Walken looked crazy and Jolie looked stressed. and so forth. we bought nothing, but we sure wish the economy well.

this is a perfectly silly picture, and it starts with how cats cannot, in all their wisdom, BE silly. this cat rules the entire cat structure thing, all of it, the full universe of that cat structure thing. okay, I admit I am infinitely amused by cats and dogs being cats and dogs, and how we don't differ so super much.

DSCN5889, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

we watched Little Miss Sunshine yestreen. I had it in my head that it was an Oscar nominee, which I find that it is, yet couldn't/can't grasp how that could be. it was a cute picture, but not noteworthy. not that I harbour any respect for the Oscars as a sign of quality, but still. a tried and true collection of quirky characters that eventually get along by movie's end. let's see, heroin addict grandpa, suicidal Proust scholar, vow of silence son. mom and dad are just a bit tense and dysfunctional. patented road trip, to get the daughter to a Little Miss Sunshine contest. grandpa dies en route and rather than stay and fill out paperwork, thereby missing the contest, they steal the body. it worked comedically but jinkies, I expect that sort of plot development from the 3 Stooges. a leedle unbelieveable. the contest itself is one of those beauty contests for pedophiles, which is disturbing. our heroine is not cut from the same cloth, being a little chubby, and not glitzed up like her competition. her routine is an antic dance rendering of Super Freak, which outrages the judges, tho I don't know why. to support her, her family jump on stage and join her. sort of funny but too much a script writer's idea, and not the present scriptwriter but whoever millennia ago who 1st came up with it. the movie didn't resolve all issues, which is a good thing. I think putting these characters together in a less crucial plot would be more endearing. the movie wants them all to stand up as moral tropes or what not. which just sputters.

just seems like I had ought to link to Monty Python scripts.

now this is gnihtemos. my left brain slips right into my right when I go to this site.

I review Down Spooky in Galatea Resurrects. here is my review. I very much appreciate Eileen's project, making views on recent books available in a galumphing quantity and necessity. you can go to issue two for a Down Spooky review by Josh Corey. the more views the merrier. I think I said what I felt about DS, and I like my writing's swift comfort. there, I said it. I will always be amazed at how writing happens thru me. anyway, it looks like plenty of splendid in this issue, and it's useful splendid too.

by way of Halvard Johnson, this funny Youtube clip.

Stephen Vincent's mother publishes a poem. this is wonderful. the poem is fascinating, and her talk as well. oracular. talking with someone with dementia or Alzheimer's is unnerving yet it feels like a visit to an oracle as well. I'm reading a book by James Hillman on aging and death, The Force of Character. I think his point that how character plays out as one ages, as one suffers the inevitable losses, is the real measure. as opposed to "beating death". you know, in the oldest person to climb Mt Everest sense. not exactly a propos, but Ravel's Bolero came on the radio yesterday. I've always enjoyed it. I used to play it for my father when he'd get confused or sad. being a favourite of his as well. he remembers it as being highly controversial. some Brahmin-type older woman that he knew gave up her tickets to the Boston Pops because they had the temerity to include such unconscionable wildness in their repetoire. it proving probably the Pops' biggest hit. there were times, and they grew more frequent, when my father would lose his mooring. Bolero, or Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall, were the most reliable ropes to throw, tho they couldn't always assuage his dismay. it is all wrong to worry it this way, but it's hard not to fret that I couldn't find other means of relief and connection. the point, finally, was his drawing away, a process I could at best ease, not stop.

we had thunk to go out yesterday, maybe a museum, but a slow start to the day (none of us is at physical acme right now) precluded that, so we visited Barnes and Noble. give 'em credit, they've made the bookstore an event. the place was packed. the parking lot, fairly large and without the piles of snow you might find other years, was a system of carefully shifting cars in and out. I must say, I get excited just going to the library, there's always something that will interest and surprise me. this B&N is large, a 2 story, castle-like structure. at the entrance stood someone proffering samples of cocoa and some sweet thing that she daubed with whipped cream. I passed. a toddler had his spoon of sweet, which he immediately dropped. and cried forlornly. so the father revisited the cornucopia. we roamed around per usual. I now make a habit of looking at mountaineering books. particularly Everest. I think I've now read 6 books with accounts of the 1996 disaster on the mountain. can't get enough. one book was titled something like Greatest Mountain Disasters of all Time. it's not all like that, the appeal, but certes it plays in. Beth got a new book on Sir John Franklin's tragic polar ordeal. Franklin led an expedition in 1840 something to the Arctic, seeking a passage thru. all were lost, tho the last didn't die till some 6 years after they got trapped up there. the interesting discovery is that one cause of troubles was the LEAD-lined cans of food that the expedition depended on. there's exactly a zillion history and biography books I'd grab, which is hard to focus. I depend on Beth to select. I owe a lot to Beth. I never read psychology or philosophy, not usefully, till I met her. she encouraged my interest. and while I'm going well I dunno over a book, she says get it. I did quickly grab the new translation of Tibetan Book of the Dead, 1st complete translation into English, which the Dalai Lama ordered done. when Beth's father died in 2003, we felt we had to do something, tho he requested no service. at the gravesite, on a beautiful autumn morning at an incredibly beautiful hillside in West Virginia, Beth and I read from the Thurman translation. just us, Beth's uncle, the funeral director and three very local looking gravediggers were there. it was a moving experience. anyway, I look forward to that. Beth urged me to get this other Tibetan Buddhist work, I don't even remember the name of it. translated by Jeffrey Hopkins, who has done translations for the Dalai Lama. I flinched because it was so long and recondite looking. yet got it. Beth got a book by the Dalai Lama, about the meeting of Buddhism and science. it is a poor imagination that cannot (for example) comprise creationist myths and Big Bang simultaneously. I don't believe they cancel each other. the DL has the wisdom to accept truth, truth in the sense of things explained within a system. his moral strictures centre on empathy and compassion rather than dogma. science, of course, can be as rigidly fundamental as any religion. the DL's stancce is very illuminating and compelling. we got a couple of books on US history, one pre-Revolution, which both Beth and I are fascinated by. the poetry section, by and large, feh. the only possible this time was a New Directions collection of Rosmarie Waldrop. no offense but she's kinda dry, and if I got poetry yesterday, it would have to be wet. I like poetry because it is adventurous, yet B&N's selection of sameness just feels oppressive. phooey to 80 page books and serious author photos and Creative Writing Program imprimatur. those boring people on the Poetics list are promulgating these weak little publishing entities. let's make them stop. anyhoo, got a few minutes now to read...

Christo starts out small

Christo starts out small, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

fridge and rag

fridge and rag, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

self portrait #2,003,452

self portrait #2,003,452, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

blaze

blaze, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Google supplies me with People headlines on my start page, so I saw where Anna Nicole Smith died. I don't really want to write about it. the story, no longer life, seems simply sad, Shakespearian in the relentless tragic path. her child has what 3 claimants to fatherhood, wow. I don't want to go there. I'm interested in pop icons, hence letting Google pepper me with People headlines, but I can't invest. Katie Loves Calling Tom Hubby: ook, I thought that was Couric and Werner (Werner being part owner of the Red Sox), and I don't even know if that coupling still pertains. what about the breakup of Mischa and that nude rock star? never heard of him, and she's on some show I've never seen. a while back I saw 20 minutes of that Paris and Nicole Simple Life in which, oddly, the nasty closedminded heelbeelies managed to make our heroines sympathetic. 2 bit culture war. I hate the snotty ass regard towards rural folk that exists, as if we were all NY dicks, but this show somehow scripted the simple folk into subpar enclosure. so now Nicole has cool anorexia and Paris, well, she's a smooth machine. I have no idea how I'll feel if she wakes up dead sometime with a needle in her arm, or whatever likely scenario. I mean, I have used Paris in my writing in a thingie way but not ANS, ceptin' here. maybe Paris is too smart to get caught in the gulley when the flash flood occurs, which ANS definitely wasn't. tho I don't want to use the word smart, instinctive maybe is better. ANS never lost the trailer park. Hugh Hefner said something about how the whole Playboy family is saddened. Playboy? family? no doubt the fam will get over it. I found ANS fetchingly goofy and sincere. she fits right into the mold of out of scale victim with Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland (and I think we can invite Liza with a Z into the rarefied group. good lord, it seems like only yesterday...). and maybe Williams had it wrong, or his insight needs adjustment. because these pure products of America don't seem so crazy, it's the people around them. think of daddy #3 for ANS' daughter: Prince Asshole of Zsa Zsa Gaboria. wtf, as Erin would say. that's where I stop wanting to listen. I really meant not to write on this, but look how I got swallowed. and what of Tom Cruise? I dunno. his publicists have made it so life can't sour for him, I guess.

hey, I like this one. with photography, it's often cool when you can't figure out what the image is or how produced. yet Photoshop possibility sorta thwarts that. it's a needless muddle to get into, but admittedly, there's a pleasure in that bit of puzzling that enters into a picture's how 'bout that. and it shouldn't take away from a Photoshopped image that trickery was afoot. there's a certain amount of bullshit in appreciation, I guess, I mean self bullshitting. reminded of James Thurber's piece on his own cartoons. he wrote something like: people ask me if I do my cartoons by moonlight or underwater, and when they hear that I don't they lose interest. anyway, bottom line, nice photo.

as I bethought me of memoirs this morn, I realized how ready made the syllabus was, for those inclined. and these are writers that could be squeezed into terms of avant garditude, rather than those of a broader net. I used the word dogged with Silliman, meaning it in the bestest sense, as Proust was dogged, neurasthenia be damned. no factoid is too dull, obscure or meaningless, if that comes across right. what I've always liked in Ron's work, starting with Bart is the precise detail. an unjudgmental effort to include. that's a validity of memoir, that trust in the life in the littlest bit. it fascinates me that Whitman and Thoreau met. neither was armoured with glory at the time, they were not living reputations but a couple of writers meeting warily... not sure where I'm going here... in a way, memoir's a test: can you find a path thru?

I'm reading Under Albany by Ron Silliman. which I am enjoying. more normative than I expected, but that's okay. I also figured it should be 9000 pages, but maybe it is part 1 in a 17 million piece expansion on everything Silliman ever wrote, due out in January 2723. I mean, he's a dogged writer, for one thing, and isn't the idea of The Project part of the zeitgeist? not to be flippant. Tom Raworth's A Serial Biography came to mind, not so much for approach but for scatter of memories. of course Hejinian's My Life, Dahlen's A Reading. lengthy list, really, and for good reason. keying the artist in the work. I differentiate these works, which I'll call memoir, from autobiography. autobiography, as I define, is more linear and narrative in approach. which can be good but I think less valuable than the memoir approach. I cannot think offhand of a poet autobiography of any resonance, tho probably some will strike me later, or you could refresh my dotty memory. I see memoir as processual, or, the process part is what intrigues me. you think of Proust and his Wayback Machine and do you remember the dress you wore 25 years ago?. memoir is in all of us, writers or not. usefully in us. you have to get beyond the idea both of importance and unimportance. these skewed assertions of facts, dancing in palimpsest, have vital essence and smack. UA shows the same detailed advance as Silliman's blog. I could see taking all the personal notes on his blog, about himself, and the positioning within his world, and make of them a furtherance of this book. his blog is a curious blend of critical and personal, where his critical becomes perhaps too personally regulatory, while the personal is oddly free. I mean, I like that blend, but in a way, I could see the two urges separated as well. UA being an example of that separation. I think...

somewhere in the midst of Ron Silliman congratulating for good taste his conjectured one millionth visitant Ron makes a good point. (note: the preceding was de rigueur acerbic commentary). he writes, try writing 200 MLA papers in a year. meaning, it aint easy. and yet, as Ron notes, those MLA type papers need be no better than blogged insights. I am finishing my own MLA type paper. it is an endeavour of left brain logical work, carefully following lines. I think I write well, but it is a whole conscious effort. I've had to learn to accept the formalities and work within them, whereas I just naturally fell into the right brain creative jumps of poetry and blogging. with this thesis, I battle to follow a logical trail. at the same time, I must fight to keep the formalities at bay, not let them commandeer the writing. MLA papers present a method, one often useful. likewise the blog, in its inventive capriciousness. I'm much more naturally attuned to the blog manner, but I have learned, I believe, to manage in the MLA mode. I've found that the Poetics list is a large failure because those posting rarely understand the nature of the medium. the Poetics list is not a classroom discussion. to say it is for discussion is to use a metaphor, not a wholly accurate one. Ron speaks of that metaphor in his posting. listserv and blog are about sniping, and showboating, and speechifying. they are good for that. their mechanics do not serve discussion well. deal with it. blogs can be ideas in action. sloppy and bullshitty maybe, but the form is loose and forgiving. MLA theses are not. careful, footnoted arguments work with MLA theses. blogs will be read by more people than theses. the underworld of listserv and blog, should not be forgotten, that backchannel network. I'm sure the point of MLA convetions is less to do with presenting papers as to schmooz with colleagues. blogs and listservs have the schmooz more or less built in. I write properly skittery bloggishness here, stumbling and stuttering around some ideas. it is always meant as an invitation.

now 110 installments of Antic View available for reading or citing in uniquely thoughtful masters theses.

well, it is a chilly Super Monday. I largely spent the Day itself sleeping. congestion came on in my chest and I felt achey, so I took the opportunity just to lay low. I used to look forward to being sick because then I could just stay in bed and read. of course when I did get sick, I'd want to sleep. or my concentration wasn't up for much. somewhat like that yesterday. I read several non-Conan stories by Robert E Howard. there's a historical element in these stories that I like. he's really hung up on race, in the you know, Hitler had some interesting ideas school of philosophy. but if you want to read about cloven skulls, REH is your man. I also read Geography of America, by Stein, a Tony Hillermann mystery, a buddhist text, Berrigan, and I wrote and doodled. I read, napped, switched books, napped. I also watched the better portion of 13th Warrior. it's a movie based on a Michael Crichton book, and sort of recounts Beowulf. I saw nary a noodle of THE SUPER BOWL. it held no glamourie for me. I assumed the Bears would win, tho would not have bet, because defense means a lot. but I was never going to say Manning could not win the big one. sometimes the crap of Superbowl is intriguing but I didn't have the energy for it yesterday. and I don't care who plays Halftime, they diminish.

this is a section from my rawther long work, Days Poem, which Meritage Press will soon publish in 2 steroid-inspired volumes. I just happed upon this bit today and liked it. I have etched my own writing manner into the world's glass, or something such. excuse me while I believe in myself.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Jack Kimball riffs nicely on Bawston. I've lived this sub and/or exurban distance from Boston all, really all, my life but I'm no expert on the place. I like the physical place. as a thinktank, it smells too much like something. why would college town USA be so parochial and insular? not that I can't see difficulties in New York's competitive edge. saw this funky push on Poetics list to establish a poet laureate of Bean Town. needed? nah. it's one more parochial touch. unless, like, they made John Wieners PL, because I take it he ground into and with the town in a way that a PL ought, but aint likely to. otherwise, it is channeled cartoon, like Jack says. a Jetson style moving walkway at Logan presents welcome messages by Mayor Tom Menino and Ted uh uh Kennedy the uh senior uh uh senator of the great uh uh uh state of uh MuhMassaMassachusetts. forever. awk! the place is entrenched. re the Cartoon Network ad campaign, in the Boston Globe, someone described finding one of the gizmos. she said she saw this thing, it had lights and all, and an alarm clock attached to it. it looked like a bomb to her. she picked it up... no shortage of brains her. anyway, I'm wondering what a PL would in fact accomplish. at some state of the city address this poet could downside the message to something all the folks could understand, something like that, I suppose. my own observacation, Bill Corbett would just maintain the academic boundaries. the many schools in the area are rough on the culture.

a grate picture

a grate picture, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

lit tree

lit tree, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

more pods from otherwhere

more pods from otherwhere, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

yield

yield, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

John Dooley, head not hanging down, supplied me with this url for his Mubet project. and don't forget to rememberize to visitate Otolith #4, another eager selection of varied stuff.

some work by John Mercuri Dooley. John's the co-curator of the Demolicious Reading series. I didn't realize or forgot that he had work available for view. I really like this work, like the idea behind it. he keeps adding lines in alphabetical order, the piece continually mutates. amkes me think you could take a text and set it in alphabetical order, a Kenny Goldsmith kind of thing. John started writing only recently, I forget how recently. I started when I was 16, which doesn't strike me as especially early (a friend of mine was writing stories and making comix at 8). I'm fascinated by those who come late to writing, just as it still fascinates me that I started painting only 5 years ago. anyway, check the archive at No Tell Motel for more of John's work, as well as loads by everyone else.

I found 14 Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I think the age bracket for these is older than Pokemon and younger than Magic. I mean, you give your kid brother your Pokemon cards when you've stepped up to Yu-Gi-Oh. I find these card games recondite to the point of arcane. numbers, images, Japanese characters and 1-point type all deliver key info for those tuned in and have their glasses handy. which I don't and am not. but dude, check it out: Chaos Sorcerer, atk 2000, def 2000. compare that to candy ass White Magician Pikeru: atk 1200, def 0. that's zero, the big O. wtf? I have 3 trap cards (purple): Call of the Haunted, Magic Cylinder, and Spell Shield Type-8. I like how scientificky that Type-8 sounds, and heck, who wouldn't want a Magic Cylinder. great at parties, no doubt. I have 8 spell cards (green). Lightning Vortex must be enjoyable, maybe play some Blue Oyster Cult. Mage Power, mm hmm. Magical Dimension, sure. Mystical Space Typhoon sounds 60s to me, something Owsley might've opened the doors to. a couple of alarming ones: Premature Burial and Dragged Down Into the Grave. PB shows an electric zombie with only right arm and head free, a colourful flash intimating the sinking tho in truth it looks like the victim is climbing out. DDITG looks like someone backflipping into the psychedelic grave (break on thru to the other side) but on closer inspection one sees a big hand pulling the acrobat in. there are 7 brown cards (6 dark, 1 light) that bear no general title but all are characters. Princess Pikeru differs from White Magician Pikeru by having a hefty 800 more atk. still gonna get pwned with 0 def, tho. Mythical Beast Cerberus scintillates bad news but both atk and def are 1400. Magician of Faith sounds nice but gimmie a break: atk 300 / def 400. looks like a jester tho the staff looks good enough for Tarot. Gemini Elf pictures I guess a boy elf and a girl elf, long eared, and maybe a mite incestuous. "Elf twins that alternate their attacks". organized elf twins, that would be. one of the spell cards is Nobleman of Cross Out. an editor!!! and in sooth: "Destroy 1 face down monster and remove it from play." coolio!!!

Erin's mock trail team competed for the 1st time this season. Erin got to be the 1st one to speak, as he gave the prosecution's opening remarks. I haven't witnessed this sort of thing before, Erin performing, so I found I was nervous. being as sick as he's been, he hasn't had the best opportunity to prepare. nonetheless he did great. he's an excellent writer, so his remarks were sharp, but he also gave them a good rendition. that he's 6'5" and wearing a suit, instead of his usual black t-shirts with rude remarks, makes for an impressive presence. there are 3 seasoned vets on the team, the rest are newbies (Erin and a couple of others were on the team last year but without roles). I've noticed it before, but it's worth speaking of again, the difference between homeschoolers and public schoolers. you can see the social yoke on the public kids, the way they react amongst each other and towards their coach. a smirking submissiveness. both the team and those who came with them joke sardonically thru out the trial. the homeschoolers are no more serious, just more focused. not crunched by the hierarchy. I'm not laying anything on the kids themselves, just pointing out how much effort and energy is wasted for the sake of school hierarchy. and also who gets left behind. the big red herring about homeschooling is socialization. like the socialization of high school (jock beat up nerd ha ha) is so cool. anyway, at least in populated areas, homeschoolers work out ways to socialize. homeschooling aint for all, but it is not just about fundamentalists concerned that someone will mention Darwin. anyway, proud of Erin, my family.

watched Inconvenient Truth last night, a largely intelligent presentation. he has a nice, surprising, self-deprecating humour. I was astonished how well he did on Saturday Night Live, comfortable and sly with good timing. Gee Double You got nuthin but that phony folksy smirk. but anyway. nice use of visuals in the lecture. even tho the idea that he said he invented the internet has been deprecated, Gore still comes off as being overly concerned about being a central figure. whatever leadership he showed in the environmental cause is beside the point, and playing up that leadership is pernicious to the cause. you know, oh that Gore. nearly 40 years ago I saw Allen Ginsberg explaining to Merv Griffin that the greenhouse effect was doing bad things, so Gore aint the only one in the fight. he pulled the heartstrings a few times. I'm sure the near death of his son rocked him, but maybe we don't need to know that his son's travail somehow sharpened his environmental concerns. and did it take the death of his sister to convince him that tobacco is a bad thing? that stuff aside, tho. the science was well done. even tho the conclusions might make you crap your pants, the ecological interplay is fascinating. for dessert, watch Day After Tomorrow, or whatever it is called. yikes!