we've decided to make Walden Pond our go to place, it being convenient for said purpose. purchased a season ticket, even (good at all national parks. no reason really to consider it sanctified but the place is. sunday we decided to eat dinner there. well, the place was packed. in fact, it only just reopened when we arrived at 5:30: attendance at Walden's plush wateriness is strictly limited. so the only perch we could find was by the road to the boat ramp. a dusty place indeed. I took a dip and while doing so 2 pairs of mallards paddled close by. they moved purposefully toward I don't know what. not much after, they moved purposefully away. the sense of this idyllic postcard held fiercely in place (against the onslaught of blighty progress) is strong. but the sun, oh, it sinks into the trees to the west in spacious loveliness. I cannot tell you how uplifting it used to be to cycle by on my way home from work years ago. just that glimpse as I raced to the intersection with rt 2. yesterday we just swam. I don't really swim, to be honest. I never cottoned to the immediate collection of water in my ear. to be further honest, I am unnerved by the extent of nothingness below me when I go into deep water. fathomless death or some such. I think of Titanic and Perfect Storm and Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (I just refound that song, by Gordon Lightfoot. I'd assumed it was about some, say, 19th century disaster but in fact Lightfoot's song was tantamount to a news report, came out within a year of the sinking of the freighter on Lake Superior). so I don't swim so well. I took a movie recently of a swarm of swimmers plying their effort in a circumnavigation. nothing that Thoreau imagined, I wot. yesterday the water was like bathwater. mallards, 3 pair, were a mite annoyed at our appearance in their bailiwick. it is a poetry, you see, to see a place as a place, as a center, as something definitive. we live in a new place, as I have reported. it has a porch. the porch is all the world. when we first saw the porch, which looks onto the town green and the unavoidable Unitarian church, it was festooned with mock orange blossoms and a reliable sun-and-verdure motet. I'm not faking the poetry. we sit on the garden bench that I bought long ago, drink beer, and tune in to the traffic, the wrens and house sparrows in the mock orange and everywhere else, the failing sunlight, and gulping torrent of frog voices, etc: ferlies and marvels. is poetry a place? isn't Thoreau writing that poetry, as he rambles and preens about his wild land of theories? isn't Dickenson, in the flickering garden choices of her own written word? it is a blasting simplicity, and yet... I mean, even Faulkner, who could be a circus show, he does include that position of place within the structure of poetic response. yes, it all gets hokey, with Don Henley presiding over some vision of sanctified, and one wants to feel better than the eager touring parties who come merely to splash, yet that all goes beyond the point. the point is a drop of water. poetry, in that drop.

this blog has seen little of my consummate verbiage lately so I take this sunday evening to produce some brain-scrapings for your delectation. we have, as I did mench, moved, down the road a piece. we remain in the luxury of our boxes but made a goodly effort today at emptying a few. we situate across the street from the town green and the inescapable Unitarian church there. I was born into a Unitarian church but it gave me nothing, tho I liked the church building as a bright meditative space. my birthday was wednesday. I share it with Herman Melville, William Clark, and Jerry Garcia, probably others. there is no reason to associate myself with them, but let me anyway. Melville is a wonder, certainly in his greatness (Moby Dick) but also in his struggles. Lewis and Clark are a trope that has lost nothing for me. a sense of creative adventure in that journey. I'm planning to write a rockopera about the Corps of Discovery, done as an hommage to Jerry. Madonna would be wonderful as Sacagawea. yesterday was the birthday of Robert Grenier, Roger Clemens and Percy Bysshe Shelley. of course Clemens stinks, the greedy crumb bum, but the other 2 pulsate. one time at Franconia College I was in a room with Grenier and another person, just the 3 of us. somehow birthdays came up, and it was revealed that mine was 8/1, Grenier 8/4, and the other person 8/3. well I was born in the Year of the Dragon and according to all horoscopic evidence I'm a pretty wonderful person. you could look it up. we went to Walden twice today. 1st time, Beth and I circumambulated its verdant gleam. the 2nd time we brought foodstuffs at dinner time. the parking lot had just reopened when we arrived. attendance amidst the pond's coconut tanning creme aroma is kept strictly in hand. a sign explains the wherefore of the pond's high water level: porous pavement. rain seeps thru the pavement instead of running off. less erosion, thus. because of the rise in water level there remains little of what you'd call beach. benches that used to line the wall bordering part of the pond are now underwater. that's so freaky! I aint hardly read nuthin' lately, books have yet to be released from their limbo. in boxing books I happened upon Sound and Fury, which I am slowly rereading. Faulkner is so wound up in his mythology, which is a good and bad thing. his weak novels are caricatures, of Faulkner, of the South (a South he invented, or people believe he contributed to the American psyche). in S&F, he's clearer on the mythic extent, it feels close to home. when he overburdens the furious tragic element, and the dogma of Southern decrepitude, he sucks out loud, to put it baldly. yoiu can tell him I said so. in my edition, S&F is aptly offered with As I Lay Dying. which is a grisly comedy that should have been made into a film by some ardent and exacting filmmaker. I mean, it is funny the way Goodfellas is funny, and maybe Scorsese would be the one to do justice to this aweful and compelling story. Madonna would be great as the corpse. and my ramble report endeth here...

alien space pod hatching facility

alien space pod hatching facility, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

curb

curb, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

train time

train time, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

in the Good Taste is Timeless Dept., saw a kindergarten called Magic Touch. having remarked that, let's not go there.

we're in the midst of moving, just down the street but still, so I'm in no condition for one of my typically brilliant posts. in lieu of same, I offer Vanilla Fudge, part of my Youtube time wastage. they made a name for themselves in the 60s (harbinger of the 70, which led to the 80s, I believe) by whiteboying soul songs, substituting muscle for inflection. quite a few of their songs are in a time signature called sludge, but here we have a bit more energy. the drummer could give Bonzo Bonham a run for heavy hands. the drama tires me, tho, as does the singer's hand gestures. they give a pretty thunderous application of sound, but strangely anemic for all that flexing. I guess i should have pointed to this version. ah yes, Doc Strange on bass. god, it's like bad poetry. it's great to see such great dancing, too. this IS poetry, right here, fresh 2007 imitation soul. I mean, this kind of inflated crap's pretty common in the poetryworld, yes?

I meant to include this photo of Stephen Rodefer in the post below but couldn't find it on Ben Friedlander's Flickr account. and it was right there all along. as well as another pose in the same startling paisley pjs (does paisley grow?). I only know about Rodefer by way of unsubstantiated rumours, but the picture fits the impression that I've gleaned.

Stephen Rodefer's Four Lectures now online. the ardent hilarity situates some serious terms in poetry and language.

I offer thee this odd piece of 60s pop culture. closer to English music hall than rock music, id est not exactly the Yardbirds, but hey, the sudden channeling of Jerry (not Lee) Lewis, and that laugh...

Tom Beckett is the first publicly to take the gloves off with Days Poem. he notes his encounter here, his worthy blog. I am honoured by his notice. he is a serious, generous presence in the poetry world that counts, the one where words actively associate in their process, not merely in the social construct. aesthetics-wise, he and I may seem to stand at antipodes. does my flow seem exhaustive? whereas Tom metes out each word with deliberation. I see Tom caring for every word. I saw this in Robert Grenier, too, an implacable attention. I care too. my own attention, however, does not boil down like Tom's does. it bubbles up. I don't see this as conflict or contraries. DAYS POEM was written willfully as a marathon, an exercise of extent. tho it comprises 1000 pages, those pages are filled with scads of paragraph-sized bits. those bits are for you, if you will take them. aptly, Tom wrote his note on Thoreau's birthday, Thoreau, and Walden (his creation), being frequent visitors to DAYS POEM. a poem is a poem, a map, a membrane, a shock, suddenly, when day seemed ordinary. I can only proffer what I wrote. thanks to Tom for the touch. thanks again, too, to Eileen Tabios for taking the machine I gave her and letting it run. Eileen is too too.

I haven't done Youtube justice, what with musical groups to catch glimpses of (Moby Grape on Mike Douglas Show, where they are introduced, typical, as the Moby Grapes) but for the nonce, this bit about Led Zep. begins like a Monty Python skit, which, essentially, it is. the controlled, disdainful 'aesthetic' argument here is no different from any other representation of the new in the fuddy world. Led Zeppelin as the latest thing that the youths have come up with. the BBC tool is just playing along with the joke. this is exactly how poetry dies slowly, how the arts get boxed in. the taxonomists use their tried and true metric to measure the anomaly, having 1st determined that it is an anomaly. it's a defensive reaction, as if the walls will be overwhelmed by this new mutation. which, perhaps, they will. and is that so bad? but really, Led Zep doesn't cancel The Beatles, nor vice versa, and I daresay the Grecian Urn remains despite Charles Bernstein deciding to write poems. I HATE AESTHETICS.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

a friend gave me a copy of For the Time Being, an anthology edited by Tyler Doherty & Tom Morgan, and published by Bootstrap Press. it is 'about' journals and features many writers of interest: Joanne Kyger, Joel Sloman, Marcella Durand, Joseph Massey (and many more), id est: old and new. Bootstrap strikes me as a going concern, which the bleak metro Boston landscape could use, in spades. the press has just published A Book of Prophecies (did you follow the link above or did I waste my time throwing my html knowledge around???) and seems to be providing some local energy hereabouts. the press is based in Lowell, where falling apart and getting back together are just about synonymous. work the good up keep is what I say, or better still: carry on for the greater glory. I look forward to scraping my nose across the pages of this book.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Gary Sullivan's comic Elsewhere no. 3 arrived yesterday. a departure from previous numbers. 1 & 2 were impressionistic (I hate that word too but it seems appropriately descriptive in this case), #1 being trippy sights and sounds of Japan, #2 of Coney Island. #3 collects the comix Gary did for Rain Taxi. placed in an autobiographical vector, there is some similarity to that mordantly British and hilarious (if those two terms aren't synonymous) cartoonist whose name scandalously escapes me, partly in the humour but especially in the thick lines and consequential black patches. the cartoons revel in goofiness yet intersect with a "pure" poetry, that being the literature that drives us to words, rather than the aesthetic bickering and social compunction of the Poetry World. some of these cartoons are homages to poets, Paul Blackburn for instance, featuring portraits derived largely from well known photos. these portraits are very sweet, reflecting the sincerity even the worst of us carries for those writers who meant something to that burgeoning writer within us. some of the images Gary offers are wisecracks, like the one labeled "Stein Discovers Repetition" which shows her swallowed in a vertiginous maelstrom. or "O'Hara takes on NYC", with Frank, flying above rooftops, thinking "must... have lunch...with LeRoi... then write Pollock monograph... and catch Billie's last set...!!". which is a pretty good encapsulation of how we see him, now. the more localized historical bits, like about flarf, flounder some in a defensive mode. the loving distance isn't employed in these instances. put it this way, much of the pretty considerations and confrontations have been sweated off Creeley and Blackburn, whereas there really is a Poetry Project and whatever pull and tug that goes on there (of which I know little, only guess). the battles of flarf aren't so interesting, nor were the decades of Langpo battle, surely not when we can read the poetry instead. so there's that. there's brief mention here of Ernst Herbeck, Gary's translations of whom are really wonderful and to be looked for. anyway, that's my brief initial look. I just scanned my book trove to remind myself of the British cartoonist to whom I've related Gary: Glen Baxter. there is a visual similarity I think you can see, and they share a skewed autobiographical element, but never to make overmuch of comparisons. the comic is self-published and available thru Gary at Gary Sullivan World Headquarters. he's on a great and varied project with Elsewhere. I was about to write recommended but somehow I don't think anyone's on the edge of their seat waiting for my proclamation, and yet, I mean it as I see it.

we watched Epic Movie yestreen. of particular interest to Erin, but the tv ads when it was in theatres looked funny: I was all for killing the evening with it. of course the ads cornered the humour available in the flick, but so it goes. I have a pretty heady tolerance for these 2-bit parodies, like Scary Movie (I've seen parts of at least 2), and so forth. EP is by no means as well crafted as the various movies by the creators of Airplane. instead, it survives with a throw it in the moat and see if anyone salutes motivation. so there's much that is stupid, lame, puerile, as well as a few hearty laughs. welladay! it begins by posing the idea that it has a plot. brief back stories parodying Snakes on the Plane, X-Men, Nacho Libre and DaVinci Code brings the 4 lead characters together. there's a disturbing outing into Willy Wonka land (despite Depp, I was in no mood to meet that film) then it's a scuffle largely with Narnia. one starts to feel the compelling sag of the originals. I mean, just a little undermining serves to send the whole mountain sliding. the cast is nameless, except for a few recognizable cameos like David Carradine and Fred Willard. some of the satire was no more than imitation. Nacho Libre looked no different from the original, and now I wonder if I really liked the original. and I've sat thru Narnia twice, but seeing it twisted a trifle, I wonder at that as well. it's rather fascinating to see these cinematic wonders without the lens of movie magic, i.e. big budget. a nice bit was the glorioso battle from Narnia. in EP, it hinges on one of our heroes finding the clicker from that Adam Sandler film from last year. he stops the evil army in its tracks then, with his family, proceeds to lay havoc on the frozen warriors. all this muddle seems potent with some sort of aesthetic intention. or it is a learning node. think of poetry as signs of the poetic. so much of the crudzoid poetry we meet daily consists of signals telling us that we are in the presence of poetry. lofty sentiments and rococco malarkey and the whole 9 yards. the appeal of crappy and/or minor movies situates in the deft insincerity in which they work. don't those Oscar-worthy movies that are cranked out yearly overflow with sweet crude quality sincerity? sincerity of the commonest manufacture. we deconstruct with the urge to discover the real thing beneath the crap. Fred Allen said something like, Hollywood is a place where you brush away the tinsel to see the real tinsel inside. our daily duty, in poetry, is something similar. we seek to eject the clunky weak contributions of imitated energy. I guess I'm saying that Epic Movie gives a view of that process.

been reading Stephen Vincent's new book, Walking Theory (Junction Press 2007). of which this current ramble mayn't be a review. because, 'istorin, find out for yourself, but really, the book causeth mental ramblings. so look: first poem is simply the route of a walk, Nathan Whiting-style. and further on Vincent goes divagation and ponder. I don't mean to be lame here, just thinking of methodology in the option of walking, walking. when I ran more assiduously, 80+ miles a week, I used to fairly regularly transcribe the runs afterwards. couldn't help it. what Stephen does is more mature and philosophic, a thoughtful sense of place, in time as well as in space. death is present here because death was present for Stephen as the work was written. death of brother and father, fading of mother. I can only say his work with his mother is exquisite, makes me sad at my own failings as my parents drew towards the edge. but I shan't go further here regarding Stephen's work, I'll save that for another time and when. I'm drawn into thoughts of Thoreau, for instance. who certainly had his own walking theory. I live near the centre of a circle of say 25 miles diameter, just guessing, that Thoreau covered. check out his journals, crisscrossing his world. he applied himself to the world as if it were new and wonderful. isn't that the treasure of poetry? not, say, in the emotions described or enacted, but in its language. death and its lack of mercy may likely be a topic or starting point for a poem, for a writing, anybody's, but that aint the news. the news is the juncture of language and the person. Thoreau, or Vincent, wander, and see. writing is a way of seeing. I don't know the details but Stephen makes walking a part of his writing process. and Thoreau, you can see him rise in the morning, step from his cabin and apply himself to the miles and landscape, to see specific eggs hatch, or buds break. you can stretch it to Berrigan or O'Hara, this will in the world. I mean, you can stretch it to any poet worth the name, but those 2 make nice pictures. wandering out there under whatever impetus, writing swift briefs of their momentum. think of Dickinson, more painstaking, perhaps, and much more local and constrained. and what is Silliman's BART but that same acceptance. it appears I have no focus at this time so let me hint just this vaguely at the resonances I hear in these varied. each day and its opportunity. and I offer Walking Theory as kindly exemplar of method and process, of a mature arrogation of the writing act.

days at the library

days library, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

two towering human monuments

two towering human monuments, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

DAYS POEM in a tree

DAYS POEM in a tree, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

I biked over to Walden Pond this morn, as witness the pictures below. yes, The DAYS POEM Whirled Tour continues. which I am taking way too seriously, but anyway. it's a lovely place, tho fences, crowds, 5 bucks to park year round, all combine to take some magic away. not that it was ever a retreat, a mile stroll into the village. a spa was on the shore in the late 19th century, and let's don't forget that train that preceded David Henry David's arrival there. I got to the pond around 8, and performed photographic rites at the Thoreau statue and replica cabin. as I finished assaulting the statue a man stepped from the cabin and immediately spoke with me, as if we were finishing a conversation. he remarked how Thoreau's journal was some 2 million words, which works out to roughly 250 a day. I said, about a page a day, typed. yes, he said, but some days he might not write so much, and some days it might not be good stuff. and the thing is, the guy seemed vaguely familiar, like he was a tv personality, I mean of the sort on public tv. across the street and down into the geologic bowl, plenty of swimmers were in the water or soon to be. I mean distance swimmers, most of whom wore wetsuits. water level was unusually high, I've never seen it so. I remember walking there when Erin was 12, and he saw a ballasted person walking chin deep in the water. which amused Erin greatly, he had to converse with the struggling exerciser. I had strong feelings of 1st being with Beth. we went to Walden a number of times that spring and summer. which was also when I was writing DAYS POEM. so the poem inhabits that space, sure enough. hence this effort to take silly photos en scene. I went to the site of Thoreau's cabin. a picture exists, I might even have posted it to this blog years ago, of Beth and me standing at this site. we enjoined some lucky passersby to place our image into posterity. gosh, was my hat on backwards, my mouth dumbly open? and did we not look like recent refugees from that vaunted turnip truck? yep. an impressive cairn built of pebbles stand on the site, including several rocks with writing on them, poems even. I added another pebble. Thoreau presents the portrait of himself in his doorway making jonnycakes. inside, a bed, a chair and a table. a pleasant simplification. the idea of Thoreau escaping is perverse. his experiment took care of most of his needs, tho of course it was back to mom with the laundry. okay, we all have our imperfections. his scouring of the landscape was a job and purpose. his declaration that all one needs for a home is a coffin-like box is hilarious but only partly exaggerated. I'm speaking of the writer life. he had access to books, and the natural world was plenty book for him. he had a journal and pen. he had his flute. and now I'm thinking that the Thoreau expert that I met either had his facts wrong or I misheard, because 2 million words doesn't seem a lot. the edition I have of his journal is some 5000 pages. what would it be, 100, 200 words a page? numbers, whatever. he didn't write form, if you get me. he was thinking aloud. thinking in a creative sense. he wasn't campaigning against earlier poets or novelists so much as ideas. more essence than form. I think aesthetic competitions get in our way. I mean the taxonomies, such as Ron Silliman imparts to the literature that he reads. think of Thoreau on his walks, ready to be interested by everything. Silliman, not to single him out, insists on boundaries. of course a poem is not a birch leaf or rainbow trout, and no one should have to love crappy poetry. but I sense a but. Thoreau allowed his curiosity, accepted it as vantage. what I learned from Robert Grenier, seeing him in action, is this 1st step of seeing the writing as poetry. I thought he was exceptionally generous to the writers in class. the poetry world is driven by attainment. some of which are plain ludicrous: poetry prizes, vetted university chairs, and the sincerest chuckles of getting it at readings. some are merely miserable, the castigation of writer X in favour of vaunted Y. we all do it. I don't want to anymore. not because of Thoreau but because I'm finding a loss in such limitations of view. Grenier, it struck me, was excited by poetry, language in that intensity. descriptive assessments don't get far. gatekeepers, feh! I guess this Thoreau I'm inspired by is my invention,romantic as we all romanticize. but it is to a purpose, which I think is displayed in DAYS POEM. just o round this back to the beginning point.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Wow! Totally Awesome BOOK!!!

Wow! Totally Awesome BOOK!!!, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

not to out anyone, but Anny Ballardini wrote to say that she purchased a copy of Days Poem. yes, it is indiscreet of me to tell all. but in her message to me (hah! Days Poem's 1st incursion into Italy, Europe, anything to the right of Bedford, MA!!!) she referred to the poem as "Your Vocabularies". great, wonderful, lovely! I like that sense of active usage, that I write with "my" words. a writer on the Wryting list, Bob Brueckl, under-published yet astonishingly unique, frequently uses the words of other writers, most particularly those of John M Bennett. I don't know his process, but it is NOT a matter of quoting. Bob always credits the author from whom he mines the words, yet the poems always reverberate as original Brueckl's (id est: strange, lyrical, squalid, scatological and lovely). the possession of those words is fluid, is the point. so I believe that the words in DAYS POEM are mine as superluminary possessions that shine for the moment of the poem as mine. and you may use the same words as yours, even at the same time. !!!!! I guess it's a socialist possession, as the use and re-use is inexhaustible. anyway, thanks to Anny for her part in the potlatch that is poetry.

from Call Me Ish:

You can approach BIG America and spread yourself like a pancake, sing her stretch as Whitman did, be puffed up as we are over PRODUCTION. It's easy. THE AMERICAN WAY. Soft Turn out paper cups, lies flat on the brush. N.G.

Or recognize that our power is simply QUANTITY. Without considering purpose. That is, so long as we continue to be INGENIOUS about machines, and have the resources.

Or you can take an attitude, the creative vantage. See her as OBJECT in MOTION, something to be shaped, for use. It involves a first act of physics. You can observe POTENTIAL and VELOCITY separately, have to, to measure THE THING. You get approximate results. They are usable enough if you include the Uncertainty Principle, Heisenberg's law that you learn the speed at the cost of exact knowledge of the energy and the energy at the loss of exact knowledge of the speed.

I think this is wickedly wise stuff. doesn't that 3rd paragraph sound like a disquisition on language? America, that thing beyond country, is a language, as well as an implement. it is a political unit, of course, even as it slops over boundaries. but stop not there. you maybe heard of the investment turbine, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). bursting at the seams with the new working monster. not talking just poli sci or economics. here is language caught in people, or vice versa. a language of usage, and a usage of language. think of the recent examples in poetry. LANGUAGE poetry, which is so consciously political in its self-regard. or flarf, which is consciously apolitical it its sources. apolitical doesn't exist, of course, so naturally we have a cognitive intensity of concern in flarf's welcoming of the so-called inappropriate. I throw these out as examples of the merrie making to be confronted. I mean I go back to Olson, who I have been reading for 35 years. and he goes back to Melville. and Melville goes back. the news aint old, and it has something to do with how poetry aint a knick knack. it aint. it don't gotta be fraught with laboured points, but certainly it seems to live stronger in a confrontation of essential speech and action. love America? hate it? what's the point? sure there are American acts you can point to, either way, but the more majestic problem is the machine itself, and how it construes us. and by us, I mean every which person, creature, plant or entity humbled on this orb. how do we contain any of this in speech? how does speech become action? no doubt I'm way beyond myself here, but I just want to maintain that Olson aint ready for the back shelf, so far as I can see. and Moby Dick continues as a new and vital puzzlement.

so I started to (re)read both Call Me Ishmael and Moby Dick. I take Ish as exemplar in criticism, or how I want to involve myself therewith, at least. it's Olson's thorough involvement as a writer that makes it for me. that is, criticism as descriptor is only mildly useful to me, and this because my sense of taxonomy isn't particularly sharp. I like seeing Olson tussle familiarly with Melville. it's an energy exchange, and still highly charged. Moby Dick is dear to me as well. modernism became (as I see it, in that old century) a re-vision of boundaries. the poem as this deft enclosed field of posture, and the novel as romanticized neighbourhood of the unliving portrait: both these tributaries flexed into a repositioning stream. the nature of which slurs expectations. the interesting novels have released plot from its imperial directive. and poems aren't gems. MD is a poem, and why not. I think the stuck poems nowadays are practiced sessions with other poems, half-assed cloing experiments. you know, NY School Mach 99, LANGUAGE POETRY v 27. history, science, philosophy are saviours of both, allowing fresh air to instill, simply to instill. there's some critical lojinx going on, causing literature to turn into something slack and segregated rather than proficient and alive. art isn't decoration any more than it is a cv bullet. the arts are something integrally inside life, a communication and process and integration that doesn't just enrich but motivates and encourages. which is why the art maven naysayers as well as the blind eye provocateurs are so wrong. I know I'm screeding out, when I only want to remark the vivacity of both Melville and Olson in their astonished work of discovery. "What did happen to measure when the rigidities dissolved?" asked Olson in a Melville essay. kick ass, you tards, is the message, grown into the spring wind of lovely grass and leaves and hopeful flowers for a while.

Henry Gould's project (his oeuvre, I mean) has a comprehensiveness that certainly fits the modernist sway, but also points to an enveloping commitment that I find admirable. or put it this way, I don't care that 17 new poems arrived somehow (and now must be turned into a chaobook to announce on the Poetics listserv), that magic act doesn't get old, but still, what is it that you embrace beyond production? I like obsession, focus, dedication, tho not in the sense of chaffering venues to accept your poems. I like poems connecting to an active life of process, not just freshened manufacture. hail to thee blithe guy in Providence. I mean, this is going on before your/our eyes, O public eye, this growing work. part 2 of my ramble, vaguely connected, nods to Eileen Tabios's doctrinal acceptance. recognize, as some New York buzz bombs tiresomely can't, that the struggle is human and possible, even as poems sometimes occur. everyone's nervous about their 'wares', because poetry lacks mathematical assertion, or at least, poets so lack. you write 15,000 poems in a year and some hang around and some blow funk. where's the control? oh, it's on your nasty blog!!! not for Eileen, and this is a force to reckon with. not to say I'm a positivist. I'm just another ego in the ego room, so I feel cramped all the time. but in stray moments I remember that I've flailed and flailed, albeit not overly publicly. I have 1000 pages on potential display (Days Poem the marketing exercise), and when I look at it, it is new to me. I feel like the poem's relative, not author. I have no schematic by which the work developed. you know what I am saying. you write by accepting. you cannot, let us say, out think the poem, because the poem aint thinking, it's doing/making. the made/done thing. it is on the poet to be in the positionfor the poem. and the reader, good lord, you are on the same ride, too!

The Official Days Poem Publication Site!

additional exclamation points available upon request

you may notice, in the picture below of DAYS POEM--the book, the reading experience--posing on the stone pointing to Emerson's grave, that someone (not me) placed a dime on top. now, to be frank, I was already creeping myself out taking these pix (and yet...). the dime doesn't seem such a nice gesture. I was creeped out further at Alcott's grave, which had a goodly sprinkling of pennies on the grave itself. I didn't even want to enter DAYS POEM into that image. grave as wishing well? or are the pennies for the ferryman? little late for that. I certainly mean to take a photo op at Walden, which DAYS POEM mentions frequently, and I may even have written some of it there.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

good taste is timeless

a delightful view

a delightful view, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

DAYS POEM Promotional Tour

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

DAYS POEM Promotional Tour

-- DAYS POEM--

the book is now in hand. I have seen it. I carried it to the Indian restaurant this evening, Erin and Beth took pictures of waiters at the restaurant holding it. it's for real!!! it looks awesome, thanks to Erin who designed the cover (from a couple of my paintings) and to Shanna Compton, who provided emergency tech help. the visceral thrill of the book in hand suffuses me. last year I offered EILEEN TABIOS a manuscript, which--gracious!--she accepted. in some casual aside I mentioned a certain extra long manuscript that I had. unexpectedly, this piqued her interest, she asked to see said ms, she accepted that, and so the story goes. a publisher willing to publish 1000 pages of an un(der)known: this is money where your mouth is territory. I sound way too glib here, because I think this is miraculous. certes, I can thank the changing publishing model, Lulu et al., that makes the commitment less egregious. but it is still a mighty commitment (to poetry, to possibility). I am thankful to Eileen for giving this poem an opportunity to be seen. this is not just a bullet on my cv, this is proof against my own innate hopelessness re the mechanics of the poetry world. so, promote promote promote, because the poem is beautiful, if you will trust the conduit to say so. so...

To celebrate the release of Days Poem, Meritage Press is pleased to offer the following SPECIAL OFFER:

To order a single volume, a 20% discount and free shipping/handling (about a $3.00 value) for a single-volume price of $22.40

To order both volumes, a 25% discount and free shipping handling for a 2-volume price of $42.00

This offer will be good through June 30, 2007...and is expected to be the least expensive rate for purchasing the book(s). Please send checks made out to "Meritage Press" and mail to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

to the right are urls to the books, if you love the internets.

so we were there, watching Pirates yestreen. if I were writing whilst in the theatre, I might've leaned on excoriation, but I'm cooler now. it's a hard film to deconstruct (Kasey Mohhamd makes a good stab), because it's just so crowded. so anyway, three of the theatres at the plex offered Pirates. we got there earlier than expected and saw a rash, good word, of plain ole tv commercials. no explosions. then we got the usual trailers. Live Free or Die Hard signals the apocalypse. I know all those cars flipping into the air will draw the crowds but Bruce Willis tops my Go Away list. as to Pirates, I just kept facing the situation I experienced. instead of watching the movie, I watched myself watch the movie, as one minor dividend of the avid whole. it begins with an apparent clip from Tale of Two Cities and a fake sense of import, then lets the camera find Keira. it was a greater relief, tho, when Barbossa appears. the character and the performance strike the right note, finally, of over the top and grim weird. then the movie feels on track, somewhat. Johnny on the Bonneville salt flat gives us some trippy fun. then our gang of heroes and villains agglutinate into various configurations until the movie ends. I don't think you can watch this movie without considering Disney's stocks. the larger picture, that is. it's like a contest to be the greatest moneymaking scheme ever. it looms with an American value of enterprise. there were moments when I viscerally felt the theme park ride whence the franchise grew. all the sensory input as we sat there, safe from any thoughts. the formerly comedic pirate duo were largely drained of fun but instead placed as placards along the way toward that bottom line in black. placards, what could possibly be writ on such placards? something along the lines of give up, submit, stop worrying. whatever. Calypso and Davy Jones basically disappear in a weird refusal to tie up loose ends, suggesting, I suppose, an intention to make a 4th Pirates. the maelstrom battle was a lot of jiggled string in front of a young cat. the movie ends wistfully, in the sense that it doesn't want to stop making money. well, that's enough for this movie. it really agitated me as I watched but that has worn off, and not much else remains. aptly, today's word of the day is sequacious.

watched Jet Li's Fearless the other night. I've seen a few martial arts flicks here and there but hardly know the genre. years ago saw one in Chinatown, which somehow made the experience more authentic. the plot in that one centered on an invasion of China by Japan. it was alarmingly complete in its annihilation, only one character in the movie survived. armies, villages, royal families: everyone but the hero bought the farm. Fearless began with a prose prologue, something about the West coming to the East. as part of that, Jet fights various matches with Westerners. he fights and humiliates a guy with a lance, one with a sword, and a boxer in separate matches. what I don't care for in action films is the dramatic randomness of the affliction. combatants inflict 18 seemingly similar blows that merely distract the opponent, then one throws the same blow, which is the killer. and furthermore, no one gets tired. this lack of physical basis bothers me. I don't mind the impossible physics that occurs, tho the sweeping angles in which these acts are filmed are what carry the day. after defeating three westerners Jet enters an hour long flashback. flashbacks should last no more than 7 minutes tops in my universe, Coppola and Godfather 2 take note. the principle being that the longer the less flashy. so we go back to Jet as a child. he watches his father compete in the village matches. his father throws what would be the winning blow but holds it before contact. doing this in moral rightness. his opponent not so minded takes the reprieve and boffs Jet's father, who loses. this inspires Jet to fight the son of the winner, who thrashes Jet. Jet vows never to lose again. so he grows to a proud young man and is the young lion of village matches. he tries to goad the village champ into a fight but that fighter is too lofty to deign. but then one of Jet's many hangers on is killed by this Master Chin. Jet seeks hotheaded revenge. cue swirling crashing fight. Jet wins, Master Chin dies. next morning, after drunken victory night, Jet returns homes to find his mother and daughter murdered. he seeks revenge but reaching Master Chin's home finds cowering children and wife. Jet skips revenge. then he learns that Master Chin was defending his wife's honour against the hanger on's blandishments. Jet's dark night of the soul. he goes off on a boat, which sinks, and he's pulled ashore somewhere. befriended by a blind woman, he stays in the village for years. then he finally goes back to his old home to expiate his sins. learned his lesson. and with some effort, the flashback concludes. he has one more opponent to fight, a feller from Japan. I don't know if money's on the line or political power or what but a bad element wants Jet to lose. his opponent is honourable. the 1st round is a tie. Jet is fed bad tea. he's dying. the opponent wants to stop but Jet refuses. Jet's dying. they fight, full tilt. Jet's dying. it looks like Jet's dead then Jet throws a perfect blow, yet holds back. the opponent recognizes the moment and, despite the bad influences, concedes defeat. Jet dies, tho the last scene shows him cavorting in the moonlight with the blind woman. oh I forgot an extra match, in which Jet tangles with a steroided westerner named Hercules. same large person as was Achilles 1st victim in Troy. Jet saves Herc when, in knocking the big feller from the ring, Hercules almost lands on some spikes. honourable Jet.

just saw Night at the Museum, the Ben Stiller star vehicle. a patented cute movie but nothing wrong with that. it was likable, which seems like asking a lot of a movie lately. that is to say, if they add more soap opera to Spidey--yes I know that it's original to the comic--I'll squeak, and if they minimize Johnny Depp any more in Pirates, as apparently, squawk. and so forth. I'll take likable, and don't brain me with fx. so what would be the inspiration of this but Bill and Ted? anachronisms come to life. a lot of shorthand in the plot and 'development', just don't worry it. Robin Williams was absolutely smarmy (where'd his career go???) as the visionary--they actually called him visionary--Teddy Roosevelt. well yes he was visionary, in the empire-building slaughter sense, okay. thanks for dropping by, pal. Owen Wilson, legally enjoined to appear in all Stiller flicks, was Owen Wilson, tho a little tightly kept in. I like that they had Sacagawea, a real yet vanished historical presence, tho they had to create an icky love match with Robin Roosevelt. broad humour, special effects, and at the end a brief, lovely, graceful dance step by Dick van Dyck. more impressive, no doubt, in a theatre but good enough on the telly.

Alan Sondheim posted this link to a John Cage television performance to the Wryting list. it is wonderful in many ways, certainly foremost seeing Cage perform and talk. when people dismiss the new, they so often fail to recognize the degree to which they are intrigued and pulled in. here, people are thinking this is crazy, not music, but they're laughing, reacting with surprise at some of the sounds (the goose call, for instance), and otherwise quite into it. I love how Cage earnestly explains the work around for a snafu that arose because a union squabble prevented the 5 radios that he needed from being plugged in.

DAYS POEM, really released!!!>

just pressing the fact that DAYS POEM has served its time in Gremlin World and now wishes to be addressed as a living breath of Published Poetry

MERITAGE PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

Dear Poetry Lover,
As a result of some last minute refinement of the project, DAYS POEM by Allen Bramhall has further plumped up its page count. Volume I is now 510 pages, vs the original 494 pages; Volume II went up by one more page to 442 pages. As these refinements distracted as from further promoting the project, Meritage Press is pleased to re-release its RELEASE OFFER, described below, with a new deadline for sending orders:

Meritage Press

A SPECIAL RELEASE OFFER!

A Two-Volume Poetry Collection by Allen Bramhall:
DAYS POEM, Vol. I
510 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9709-1798-0
Price: $28.00

DAYS POEM, Vol. II
442 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9709-1799-7
Price: $28.00

Meritage Press (www.meritagepress.com) is delighted to announce a RELEASE SPECIAL OFFER for a unique and ambitious two-volume collection by Allen Bramhall: DAYS POEM. Mr. Bramhall describes his project with:

"Begun casually, the writing of Days Poem quickly grew into a daily necessity to write, even to plug onward. In this way, it resembles a journal or novel, tho it claims neither genre as its own. It started with an idea of writing large and embracing extent. It settled (and unsettled) itself within the compelling philosophical argument that it is what it is. The thrill of relentlessness and perseverance pushed it until, you know, it came to an end. As the writer of these pages, I wanted to play with hobos, and bears, and Tarzan & Jane, and Walden Pond, and all the words in between. I wanted a little amazement in every day."


BIO: Allen Bramhall was born by the banks of the Concord River in 1952 and has lived in Massachusetts ever since. He was educated at Franconia College and Lesley University, and in non-academic places as well. / Simple Theory / (Potes & Poets Press) was his first book. He maintains a blog called Tributary (http://tribute-airy.blogspot.com/), and a life with Beth and Erin.

To celebrate the release of Days Poem, Meritage Press is pleased to offer the following SPECIAL OFFER:

To order a single volume, a 20% discount and free shipping/handling (about a $3.00 value) for a single-volume price of $22.40

To order both volumes, a 25% discount and free shipping handling for a 2-volume price of $42.00

This offer will be good through June 30, 2007...and is expected to be the least expensive rate for purchasing the book(s). Please send checks made out to "Meritage Press" and mail to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

This offer is good throughout the United States; Meritage Press will take international orders but will have to adjust shipping/handling costs. If you wish to place an international order, or have any other queries, please email MeritagePress@aol.com

Beyond the expiry of this RELEASE OFFER, Days Poem will be available through the publisher (email MeritagePress@aol.com) or you can order through Meritage Press' Lulu account at:

Days Poem, Vol 1

Days Poem, Vol 2

FOR MORE INFO: Meritage Press

oh hi, just back from the ballet. true. someone Beth knows in our homeschool cooperative, learning that Beth likes dance, invited us. she and her husband go regularly. I believe she danced for a well known dance company, at any rate she's involved with dance even now. I've been to ballet once, for The Nutcracker many years ago. for that performance, I sat something like 3 miles away (I didn't measure accurately). despite that, it was a compelling spectacle. this evening we were an easy tomato toss from the orchestra pit: great seats. the Wang Center was renovated in the 90s, I think. you enter into this little concourse that's just crazy with sculpture and painted ceilings and all sorts of gold-leaf gimcrack. it looked like Versailles. Beth said it was like being in a Faberge egg. I love that. I love that intensity of atmosphere. this concourse, whatever it's called, was packed with people who were in various refreshment lines. I just wanted to stare up at the cherubim on the ceiling. wouldn't you? I can't speak of the dance particularly. certain moves are obviously difficult, athletic, physically demanding, which are easy to appreciate. I don't particularly care about the lines and such. oh, the ballet was Giselle. the 1st act featured really lovely autumnal colours, especially a lot of pumpkin orange. my other ballet experience may be the only other time I've witnessed really full tilt theatrical scenery and costumes. at intermission we sallied forth into the concourse, tho I guess I should use the word lobby. Beth wanted a glass of wine so I gallantly stood in the theoretical line, which was constantly interrupted by people going somewhere, or just kind of taking space in a talkative way. the 3 oz tipple of white Bordeaux was 7 bucks, which, friends, is roughly the treatment you expect in a dark alley. and I'm pretty sure the bartender thought I was a brown shoe, or maybe a map with an X on it. it's the same honour as drinking weasel piss beer at Fenway for whatever a cup. is it a Puritan necessity to remove the pleasure from pleasure? minor point. now, I went for the full thrill of my grey suit, which I don't wear often. this definitely is part of that Puritan necessity, and I learned it from my father. yet I was surprised at how casually many dressed, tho plenty did dress up. by the way, the seats were as roomy as Fenway, which is to say not. Giselle was like The Nutcracker in that the first act was the story and the 2nd act was the mushroom trip. I have to read the synopsis again but star-crossed lovers and such, and Giselle dies. 2nd act features ghostly spirits, who mediate a bit, sweep the bad suitor to hell and allow the good one to posture histrionically. really, it's great visual stuff, moody, engrossing and weird. very 19th century. everyone was hitting laudanum back then, washed down with absinthe. I like the music quite a bit, tho I don't recall the composer. my glance thru the scorecard has yet to find mention of the composer's name. I wish things like ballet and symphony and opera weren't such rare experiences. tho jinkies, some years ago someone I know got freebie Celtic tickets and invited me along. the Celts were in their apparently permanent post-Bird crappiness. we sat somewhat back of the basket, low but at an angle that only allowed good view of one basket. the PA was full throttle hype-noise. it was the fakest fun you could imagine. and those seats cost 75 American dollars. I cannot think of a bigger waste of funds. so whatever the ballet tickets cost, there was some reward. I quibble not at all. please contribute to the Allen and Beth Want to Go to Ballet All the Time Fund.

I just read a book on the Crusades, a history of pleasant, reasonable people acting pleasant and reasonable, and got a hankering to read more of the Knights Templar. I walked over to the library in the rain yestreen in search of a simple history. I came home with a motley crew. one is the book that Dan Brown was accused of plagiarizing for Da Vinci Code, one is about the secret society at Yale, Skull and Bones, and one seems to connect the Trilateral Commission, Freemasons, and pyramids. nothing overly scholarly here, one might infer. well inferred. truth up, I'm not into conspiracy. I think of the JFK conspiracy connoisseurs in Slacker (could Linklater make another movie half as good?). connections turn into torrents of implacable force, without the supple initiative of Guy Davenport's linkages. I feel no satisfaction in grassy knoll, whate'er the truth. it just doesn't seem to matter. the book from which D-Code was bestsellerized came out in 1982. what gets me is how utterly new all this stuff became under the force of Brown's book. presumably millions of living humans had already been titillated by the possibility of J Christ, family man, and all the rest of it. yet D-Code hit like a revelation, didn't it? curious. I don't even want to read the one in which freemasons and pyramids unite in some totalitarian death match. so long as I know who poisoned the wells, blah blah blah. the Skull and Bones book may actually be reasonable reportage, in a New Yorker sort of way. it's no stretch to think that networking occurs. what the hell is "information"? isn't that a prime consideration, writer-wise? things "happen", then language "interprets". and poetry is a working within the concepts of language, yet is not "informative". try on a conspiracy, in which vital force presses drastic distinctions. language becomes unified idea, a political dreariness of import. LANGPO is disappointing in its academic view of politics, as if political motives were only for the overly educated. so they tripped about with language... I'm not attacking LANGUAGE poetry, which greatly influenced my own understanding of poetry, but the political veneer in which some of it has been wrapped has proven pale, classroom activism. which is to say, point blank, that political activism is active language. not activating language, which is what we call bad poetry anyway, but language in its active life. poetry is not the same as hype, tho even poets need publicists.

hey, I belong in an alphabet with famous people! (This index)

having now read a lick of IN RI, I point to its purchaseability, namely here. not that I've DYI'd up a storm myself, but that vertical integration of the creative process seems important, especially as opposed to the Please Please Me School of Poetry, which transcends SOQ, Langpo, Flarf and you name it. what I mean is that the critical onslaught suits categories and shrinkage, but not me, for one. any effort to disengage from those terms is applaudable. look: one of my hands is applauding even now! I ramp up this verbiage for more specific reason, tho. Henry takes us into early colonial history, Roger Williams, Salem Witch trials and such. I'm keen on those areas of concerns, those seedlings. I would say Henry cavorts with a quite graceful reading of Crane and Olson, by which I mean, a guarded sense of romance within a historical context: hard facts and poetic wonder. he's on record about Crane, I'm less sure of any Olson claim, but the point isn't what his antecedents are, but a vision of the neighbourhood in which he wanders. I really like the size of the book too, seems about 5x8. I did indeed pocket it, and read it during enforced waiting. I have yet to declaim the Italian version, that demands more private circs than Starbucks, but to that I look forward. so 2 reasons to try the book: that its DYI deployment is worthy of support (as all such efforts had ought to be), and just that the unique nature of this tributary to the big river is worth a read. or you could follow the crowd.

just a quick note re Henry Gould, whose In Re now is my possession. this is not a review, I haven't read a lick of it yet, but I want to note once again the project that Henry has launched upon. it is a grandiose scheme of history and reminiscence and mystic whatsis. he's taking the modernist Big Poem into strange lands that bow to formality yet tweak it. that's a rasty encapsulation that I offer only as a stepping stone into the river, whoop. this here book includes an en face translation into Italian by Anny Ballardini, which right there makes a fetchingly different turn on expectation, and don't forget to call it collaboration. I've dabbled in Italian enough to like reading it aloud, not so much understanding (comprehension is overblown), but look: that added music. Henry speaks on his blog on the size of the book: truly pocket-sized. I have a few Dell editions, notably Whitman, that do fit in pocket, and that's a treat that I make use of. like, my last jury duty, I had Whitman with me on the train, and waiting in the jury pool. so I'm really thrilled to have this addition to my Gould library, and look forward to my swim. and with a glancing ref to Shanna Compton's dyi theory, I want to laud Henry's own Do It Yourself.

final post of the sand mandala. we arrived as Tenzin and others readied for the dismantling. the school wanted the dismantling to occur outside where there was more room for the students to see. it's a boy's school. I thought it was co-ed as girls were around. the table was carried thru the doorway and students gathered round. some of the faculty spoke a few enriching words then Tenzin gave a glimmer of Buddhist precepts. then he chanted a prayer and while ringing a bell he used a tool to cut the lines of the mandala then invited boys to take a brush and sweep the sand into the centre of the table. now, I don't want to get all exotic about this, the temptation is there, but a sense of the life of the work was very evident. in seeing it created, in how he approached it: you could think of it as a world. after the ceremony the sand was to be taken to the Concord River, the selfsame by which I was born. we went there with a woman and her son who we know. the sky pended imminent thumper. the site where Tenzin would release the sand was where we had encountered the winter solstice celebration on our wedding anniversary last year. a place that native Americans were said to hold dear, and where colonists pastured their cattle. Tenzin sat at the river's edge and chanted then took the jar of sand and, ringing a bell and chanting, poured it here and there into the water. rain fell as he did so. when he finished, the windows of heaven opened, with thunder and lightning. a release, I should say, that seemed quite a propos. pictures at 11.

we made another visit to the sand mandala. when we arrived, no one was around. soon Tenzin scuttled in and got back to work.it's a slow process requiring patience. people came in and out. several students addressed him familiarly. classes, no doubt, were brought to him. one faculty member, presumably, asked if she could ask a question. to wit: Tenzin what am I going to do without you. having become used to the sound of his scraping funnels, and his presence... yes yes yes, lovely. it wasn't too far from flirting. I guess he'd heard it before. he gave her sermon about accepting the moment and not grasping. he was a pretty funny fellow. yesterday Erin said, I have 3 questions for you, and he repeated oh three, as if it were amazing. chuckling as he said it. and he answered everything Erin threw at him. I asked about a repeated figure on the mandala, which was in every outer segment. he explained. a bit after, I noticed one of the segments lacked the symbol. I waited till a break in his work to point that out. he'd been talking about contentment, being able to die happy, so I said, when he began to fill in the lapse, now I can die happy. I admit to having an inclination towards buddhism, but very little practice. you think of Jim Behrle going all Holden Caulfield worrying about phonies, feh, that nervous reputation chatter. what's more interesting is being present and letting the moment. I mean, reading an agenda, that's a pretty slow beat to dance to. whereas what is poetry but reading a life of language in some present when one writes. the chuckle above that seems so pale and worthless. I say seem, I only mean how it strikes me.

okay so here's the cartoon that came to me. two people standing, dressed as firefighters. one holds some sort of contraption. a human head can be seen on the ground near a headless corpse. the head has a befuddled expression. the one without the contraption says to the other, 'I said the Jaws of Life, Jenkins, not the Jaws of Death'. great, huh? you will note the canny use of the name Jenkins, this being one of the official names to be used in cartoon punchlines. nota bene, in style this cartoon would be drawn Thurberesquely. like in his cartoon in which a fencer lops off his opponent's head, crying 'touche', the point is bloodlessness, and the feeling that severed heads can be plopped back into place. I woke in the middle of the night with this cartoon in my head.

Ven. Tenzin Yignyen

Ven. Tenzin Yignyen, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

altar

deities

applying sand with funnel (Chakpu)

etc

just saw a Tibetan sand mandala in production. the work of Ven. Tenzin Yignyen, who currently teaches at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. he was set up in a room at a starchy private school in Concord. a pissa nice art facility, as it happens. he was in a room with lots of paintings on the wall. plus some masks that resembled, to my mind, Tibetan deities. the work of students. I took pictures, which was okay with him, but Blogger wasn't into it, and they landed on my blog with a great deal of extra space, so I removed them and will try otherwise. his work began monday, setting up and chanting. a couple of thangka were on the wall and below that a table with unlit candles and glasses of saffron tea. offerings. Beth and Erin saw a much larger mandala done in Boise, which 6 monks worked on. it was a healing mandala. here the table was a bit larger than a card table, and the mandala itself maybe as much as 42" across. a compassion mandala. when we arrived a boy was sitting nearby playing guitar. other students came and went. the person from who we learned of the event, a homeschooler, arrived with her son. we stayed for about an hour. we'll try to make a visit tomorrow, and on friday, when it is dismantled. for an artist, the sense of impermanence is difficult. we all have glimmers that we lose, and you never know when something might get lost. or as the resident dog has done in periods of nervous distress (worries of abandonment), namely, eaten paintings by both Beth and me. there's a certain egolessness in art, in its creation, yet when the work is complete and free to bumble about the world, we tend to become more possessive. my work. so it goes. Stephen Vincent's mother seems to be facing these issues now, both holding on, at times, and letting go. that wish to stay, that urge to go.

Stephen Vincent faces the aging parent with equanimity, as this post attests. what more can I comment? in my own test, I was wearied by the daily grind of it, of the father who is the child to the man. one does what one can. I learned something larger than me in serving the father, or the moment. in serving the mother, differently and long ago. I cannot presume some right way, but I see language at overwhelming mercy of the imperative. that our words won't hold all we want, that life strides past. language isn't mastered.

I cycled to Great Meadows yesterday. it's a Nat'l Wildlife Preserve not far away. Thoreau mentions it on page 1 of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack. a dike runs down the middle of it, with water on both sides. 2 Canada geese looked like they might block my way but they sashayed away when I approached. I saw what I briefly thought might be white domestic geese up ahead but realized it was a pair of swans. one was in the water and the other on shore and both paid me no never mind. I got as close as 5' from them. seemed like I could get closer, but thoughts of their rows of razor sharp teeth, and of being just one more victim of murderous swans, I kept back. lots of pictures, tho. even some movies of some other swans in flight. they make an odd, raspy metallic sound as they fly. is it their wings or their breathing? as graceful as they are on water, they stumble with take offs and landings. they launch by running on the top of the water till they can pull themselves into the air. they glide into landings, stick their feet out and crash into the water. when I showed Beth some of the pix, she wanted to go over. I hadn't seen swans there before. we got back out there, with Erin, around 5, with the sun at a slant to the west across the water. Beth took lots of nice pictures and Erin picture and some excellent movies. all hail the digital camera. we saw a great blue heron in the distance. as we watched a crowd of barking geese hounded the bird and it flew grandly away. a goose on the path was intent on browse for food, so I got close. at the too close point it gave me quite a look, and I backed off.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Lowell canal

Lowell canal, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Erin's spring formal last night, an effort to give homeschoolers a promish event. Erin was buffed up in his suit, looked great. he has a properly matched tie but chose to where one of mine, derived from a painting by Henri Rousseau. of course he couldn't possibly button the top button for fear of asphyxiation. no age restriction really to this event, as befits homeschooling philosophy, so it wasn't so valedictory as I imagine (never having prommed) most proms are. the parents seemed generally giddier than the kids. in essence the parents put the show on, cooking and decorating and what not. the theme was Mexican, which I didn't get until I realized that it was Cinco de Mayo. anyone ever hear the Coronas radio ad with the jingle that proclaimed "it's the drinko of Cinco de Mayo"? man, you've got to have a finger on the sensitive button to limn lines like that. the dj was playing fairly drippy Mexican music. not likely to inspire. we left before much blending began, and the dj did turn on the real music eventually. one boy wore a t-shirt and had his tie on backwards. another wore a tux and vampire teeth. there was one girl, expressly boho in jeans and I think beret, and a few goth types. a cool, drama club boy with long hair, he played Mercutio in the recent production, wore a dark green jacket, navy velour bellbottoms, a deep green polo shirt and shades. we picked Erin up at midnight, with "Stairway to Heaven" properly loud. I used to think it was a mighty song, but it doesn't hold up so well. Jimmy Page sucks as a soloist, for all his other genius, and squeal me no Robert Plant, I'm afraid. I don't know how many of these kids would go to their proms were they in public school. many, I believe, would be marginalized in the public school hierarchy. think of Janis Joplin going back to her high school ten years later, as Janis Joplin. the most common question by public school parents is about how homeschoolers socialize. in fact, homeschooling parents spend their time finding ways to get their kids into social situations. and not just dumping them off to sports teams, clubs and other organized configurations, but much more varied possibilities. there are fewer compartments into which homeschoolers are put, nerd type, cheerleader type, jock type, victim type. I didn't have a gruesome time in public school, but I didn't flourish either. in the 7 years in which Erin has been in my life I have been able to reexamine the experience. my last 2 years of high school, I was a serious if not adept writer, yet I had no sense that what I did was anything but extracurricular. the school's literary journal was for those who joined in. it was a club, and those imitative scrids that were published were part of a potlatch economy. it demands a step back to see the burden of the social complex on public school students, how so much of the school experience is about normalizing kids. well, I've orated enough. Erin's a unique, wonderful young man. we should honour the idiosyncrasies not try to erase them, which I believe is what homeschooling aims at.

I enjoy Kasey Mohammad's movie encapsulations, especially lately an apparent attempt to review the entire Hammer Films oeuvre. remember when these were on every saturday afternoon, and you chose to pass them by and watch or do something worthwhile instead? I haven't seen one of them in at least half a gazillion years but now I yearn. what these films offer, and a lot of films likewise, is how the movie experience as viewer's receive it is nothing like what the filmmakers intended. where the film is supposed to be terrifying, you're laughing, where it's supposed to be lovely, you're creeped out. author function, author function. you, as a viewer, feel a release in these movies, you're untethered. you're clearly part of the generative process. whereas in poetry, don't we feel constricted as we read? the tactics by which poets try to waylay the interpretative imperative, I mean all the processes of disengagement (from) that have arisen in the this 'modern' era, to release poetry into its own world and not some critical containment, these tactics are essential in the fight. a pall of complacency hangs over poetry. it's not just academic-sclerosis, the freezing of poetry into controlled intellectual dollops, it's also emotional-sclerosis, in which poetry is seen as an outlet for emotion, and other sclerotic events as well. whereas movies can bust a move on us, or we on them. I think Citizen Kane is the corniest movie around but even in that corniness there's some power or effect that's close to the door of transcendence. I don't know what to do about poetry except open myself up to weirdness and dismay. I mean that's the ticket, rather than remain guarded or controlled. so I take these Hammer film reviews by Kasey seriously, as visions of poetry unbound. go ahead and laugh.

Erin's birthday yesterday, the big One Eight. he was eleven when Beth and I married. seems like yesterday, yet so much has passed in our lives, the three of us. I guess I don't have the words right now to speak further. we will have a party for Erin next week. he goes to a Spring Formal tonight, homeschoolers en masse. yesterday, well, we made our way to Barnes & Noble, the default place to go. for some reason, I looked avidly at the leather bound journals. I used to think such were la-de-dah, and preferred to stick with spiral bound notebooks for my limning needs. Beth got me interested in using bound journals, which I do occasionally now. one's writing changes with milieu, so to speak. I noted that Alan Davies carried a small yellow lined notepad, which, personally, I would avoid for the pages being easily detachable. but that could be an advantage. do you have funny little ways? I hate taking pages out of a spiral notebook. like it matters. but someone asks, can I have a piece of paper and I'm holding a notebook, and I'm like, er. honestly. so those journals with the wrap around leather flap and the leather tie thing seem so cool. but in sooth such notebooks are no more handy than, so I gave the temptation a pass. B&N seems like a wise and knowing place, as you scan about. quite a large display, and handy, of books on poker, for example. finger on the cultural pulse. check out the eye-popping displays and you can see where we stand. a friend of mine long ago remarked about The Gong Show that it gave us a comprehensive view of ourselves. so it's poker, and how to cook Cajun, and pilates, etc. okay, I find this fascinating. I was quite tempted by a book on gladiators. I mean, that's the weird part of history. I saw a finely wrought book about a mountain climber who, a blurbist wrote, made the most elegant climb of Everest. I don't even fathom what that means. it was an expensively produced book aimed, I wot, at a particular audience. I'm fascinated by Everest but there's a point past which I don't want to go, armchair traveler-wise. the poetry section remains dull. I should be tempted by the David Shapiro selected but it was a hardback with that kind of pre-emptive brusqueness that larger poetry publishers inveigh upon their books. it's a dust-attracting quality that puts me off. what????? I mean the smell of poetry books at the library, where they moulder unread. this has nothing to do with Shapiro, who I've hardly read. and yet, maybe it does. maybe I want my poetry books to be crappy editions, that I can scribble in, that don't have 2" margins, that... okay, I'm raving. I saw a book by Harryette Mullen, who people hold in higher regard than I do, I guess. I find her work ordinary, which, I know, is harsh. every poetry book at B&N looks tired, or nearly so. UCal came out with a paperback edition of Berrigan's collected, which, honestly, looks more attractive to me than the luscious hardback. it's smaller, handier and just seems more right. that's sort of what I mean about the Shapiro. B&N has a lot of manga but displays them wretchedly. they only show the spines, which are crowded and hard to read, so it's difficult to see what's what. I hate how you had ought to buy all 10 of the series, for just $99.99. I did see one 'starring' Avril Lavigne, who is described as a 'rebel rocker'. I don't think so but you may disagree. Beth found the graphic novel version of 300. it just lacked the splendid ridiculousness of the movie. the bloodletting, and falling into space and Rupaul as Xerxes: all that is much more visceral and effective in the movie. anyway, Erin something D&D, Beth some gifts plus a book on religion and a Terry Pratchett that somehow she'd missed and me nuthin'. we ate out at the cheap Italian restaurant in town. this restaurant supplies the center of town with the exquisite smell of garlic, tho that garlic doesn't seem to show up in any dishes. the place is always packed. we arranged Happy Birthday to be sung by the waitresses when dessert came. drove around after dinner. headed dreictly towards the radiant orb. what, are you stepping westward? into the New England countryside. some horsy towns, some factory owns. I love New England's factories, set by rivers. most are no longer factories but condos or otherwise used. busy little towns. and for garden artistry, just plant daffodils. pests don't mess with daffodil, and they flourish. yesterday, it seems, the season popped. verdure starting in the trees, blossoms, and bonanza of bulbs a-bloom. tis fine. drove past the hospital where my grandmother died 30 years agone. I remember the nearby apple orchards blooming at the time. I remember, too, several trips to her place to deal with her effects. on one of these trips there was the young Paul Tsongas on the campaign trail. him and another person walking along the road, chatting up whoever would meet with them. and on the way back, there they were, still plodding on, coats off on a warm spring day. Congress, Senate, a feint at the presidency, now the Tsongas Center in Lowell, as memory. anyway, the scraggly and other virtues of apple trees make them my favourite. if I must choose. the Concord River, spread very wide, looked lovely in the gloaming. then home to the nuclear dog, cat and fish.

I take my role as Boston Poet Laureate seriously, which is why I peer so carefully into the mailbox for the free books. when I say seriously, I mean I know there will be poets coming after me, aiming to kill me so that they may take my laurel crown (which, free advice, you hadn't ought to wear to bed). so with that elegant preamble, it behooves me to note that there seems to be a recent photo of the young Elizabeth Browning on Nada Gordon's blog (the cover to Foreignn Bodie). she's also correct to cite Lanny Quarles as Laureate of Comment Boxes, comments from Mars in the bestest sense. I have Folly (Roof 2007), and it is lovely and varied and deserving of far more time than I can manage it or any reading now. I think Ive said this before, but the books by known flarfists that I've read are less easily definable (prone to cubby hole) than the critico-chattery crowd might think. and let me just advert Henry Gould's publishing project. admittedly I down't own all of his book, but I have bought some and recommend all. it's a blow against empire, the publishing claque. a topic the BPL can get growly about.

In The Know: Do You Remember Life Before The Segway?

I guess I'm a nostalgia guy, I was much touched

in the interest of self interest, but then, any self-promotion on my part redounds to the office of Boston Poet Laureate, and thus to Poetry in general, here's one eprson who gets it. we didn't just have a beer together, he bought. certainly I should expect free books in recompense for my being Boston Poet Laureate, but Robert Graves notes in The White Goddess that the traditional stipend for a poet was sherry or sack. sounds good, but I will by no means turn my nose up at a rum and umbrella concoction, should that be what you wish to reward me with, or even a foofy whipcreamy thing from Starbucks. not forgetting the free books. anyway, David's blog is a fun read. aside from his basebally one, he has a quirkier one: Werner Herz blog.

as Boston Poet Laureate I went to the cast party for the Shakespeare productions by our homeschool cooperative. to be honest, I went incognito. can't always be attracting hordes of people who want to meet the BPL, you know, the scene phonies, foets, ambitious power couples of poetry and the like. we showed up as the final production wound down, then helped clean the place up for its normal usage. the cast party happened in a house in the hinterlands. everyone was supplied with Google-inspired directions. about a mile down the road we saw a road that wasn't where Google believed it should be. staunchly, we followed Google's advice. we all know that Google and Mapquest make up street names and distances, and the whole online map industry has been arranged to a fare-thee-well by the big oil cartels. thus we seemed to be getting lost. so we're feeling a desperate, pay-at-the-pump lostness, when lo, up ahead, a bunch of cars parked by the road. we'd found companions in our quest. it added up to 8 cars gathered at the spot. a leadership type was on the phone, and also had the advice of an off duty policeman who'd happened by. steeled by clearer information, and the knowledge that we probably wouldn't need to eat our dead, the convoy moved on. rather humourously, we soon passed the former site of the homeschool cooperative. which, you know, could have been used as a landmark. it was just a few miles and 2 turns from there. the party consisted of just about 100 people. there was a piano, an organ and a drum set that were played most of the night, and a centrally-located pool table that maintained a crowd of avid players. the noise level, I'm trying to say, was considerable. I did speak with Juliet, the one I saw perform, because she noted in the scorecard that she does morris dancing. her voice is high and soft such that it seems inadequate for stagework but she manages to project and enunciate onstage. very talented. eventually we left for home, and found it, no prob.

like Napoleon snatching the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, I rather precipitously grabbed the mantle of Boston Poet Laureate. I mean I'm like, what should a poet laureate of anywhere do, and more specifically the Boston one? worth a few thinks. I'm pretty sure I should get lots of free books, poetry ones, I suppose, tho I'm open to most anything. and I guess I'll promote poetry or whatever. I mean hey, poetry's great!!! anyway, if you got any ideas what I, as your Boston Poet Laureate, should do, in terms of being Boston Poet Laureate and all, send them to me, along with the free books, of course. I'm here to serve.

got a goodly chance to read Tom Beckett's books yestreen. Erin had to arrive early and while he and Beth were putting together costume and makeup, Allen was left with his book. it appears Tom collected chaps together, at any rate the sections are thematic and weave together over all. one notes a doggedness in the work, effort in the sense of concentration. which carries several applicable senses. Tom boils his work down, or pares it. it is rarely discursive or expansive. the 1st series of poems centres on a conceit of the zombie. the poems essentially define zombie, this idea belonging to Tom. the effect of reading the many poems about zombie produces a wider area of concern. wider, that is, than one expects as one begins to read. the sexuality that Tom manifests arises as an active force on language, not simply a bodily function. and of the imagination, I should add. what seem like observant dollops expand into a much wider territory. so zombie begins as an idea, a way to start a poem, a conceit, but the iterations and Tom's unblinking gaze push thru the boundaries of clauses into a much larger thing, made thing. thus the poem is in fact the series, and as I read, I will see that the series all, together, make a poem. Tom's interviews seem so perfectly a companion volume that I should always carry them together. the interviews, not all done by Tom, stay on message as regards poetry and process. the book makes the translation from online to print because it has life as a handbook. what is a handbook? one to carry with. inveterate dog walker here, so I like to have books that can be consulted in moments. to touch that energy. Olson's grandest implement for me was and remains the energy transfer. I feel the same sort of heat in these interviews. I get ideas how others have proceeded, thus maybe how I can. I reiterate that a writing class could do worse than use this book as a tool for discussion if not inspiration. so there are my beginnings with Tom Beckett's two wonderful new books. I hope you try your own path.

saw Erin's 2nd performance of Shakespeare. I reiterate that glitches do not mar a performance. if someone loses a line, or some miscue occurs, it is part of what theatre is. there's no cut, take 2, and we should accept that. at one point the lights went on while 2 of the crew were onstage. it was when Juliet lay dead. it looked like the crew members had been teleported in, so it drew a laugh. one tune played thru out the performance is called "Beginning of the World", a bright little dance number. I think I managed to identify Juliet and Montague as sisters, but the scorecard clearly indicates otherwise. I'm still at the stage with the play where I fumble with who's a Montague and who a Capulet. not that I mind missing having read the play in HS. I believe I read Merchant of Venice in school, and saw the Marlon Brando version of J Caesar, the rest I read/saw on my own. I mean the rest of the 15 or so plays that I know. I almost got R&J out last night, but it would only have been an item upon which to dream. Juliet the actress fulfilled the youthful forlorn tragic dynamism, the seriousness of her adolescent terms. she always gave her lines dynamics, which I think is a considerable feat. the other players didn't really touch her in terms of music and ability to speak her lines with such naturalness. props to Erin, who took care to read his lines with a slow, ominous pace, a slow burn at times. one doesn't want him portrayed as Snidely Whiplash, because the weight of the tragedy should be spread over all. a person I no more than nod to made a point of coming to me and saying how good Erin was, and specifically noting Erin's pacing. I can barely watch Erin, for fear of glitch or miscue, which perhaps puts the lie to my earlier assertion. yet I needn't worry, if I just allowed brain to lead the way. I think the humour in Shakespeare's plays is in some sense easier to play, tho suggesting ease is a disservice. even tho the japing doesn't always makes sense, words used oddly to current ears, the players catch the rhythm and enjoy the times of flourish. whereas the tragic scenes can be pretty overwhelming, the poetry hardly willing to let a human voice peep thru. gotta read the full text now.

the new Boston Poet Laureate approves

just received, with much excitement, 2 books by Tom Beckett:
Unprotected Text (Meritage 2006 and Eileen Tabio), and
E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S (Otoliths 2005, 2006, 2007 and Mark Young).

double huzza for all involved, and primarily for Tom.

Tom's publication from the 80s, The Difficulties, was my main school for coming to grips with Language poetry. exchangevalues essentially carries on that work, tho less strictly with the L-word as contemporary in general. I have of course read the blog from which these interviews by Tom and others were taken. an absolutely useful text to read again and again. just to up the ante, work by those interviewed has been included. I can see this book being an excellent teaching tool, because points of consideration and confrontation arise on every page. more volumes from the project are in store, so spread the word.

Tom's work as editor has somewhat overshadowed the poetic oeuvre that Tom has quietly built. in this sense I'm reminded of George Butterick, whose Collected Poems is a quirky unexpected delight. I have several of Tom's little publications and look forward to reading his work en masse in perfect bound splendour (including a bold orange cover). in my quick scan I see hay(na)ku, prose, short lines, long ones. more to be said when more has been read. let me just enjoy the satisfied glow of 2 new publications by worthy Tom (any relation to our hero Josh?) Beckett.

New! Boston Poet Laureate

the Boston Poet Laureate issue has hung over the heads of good Bostonians for long enough. it'll distract us from Manny being Manny and Dice K, so in the interest of keeping the peace, and meanwhile scoring a well-earned career plum, I've grabbed the title. if you have any questions for the Boston Poet Laureate, or just wish to stand in my glow, please write me.

saw the production of Romeo and Juliet in which Erin played Tybalt. I'd never read the play, nor scene a production, but of course, one absorbs it. well, I read the manga yesterday, which used Shakespeare's words, tho not all of them. bowdlerizing Shakespeare is a common enough pastime. this is the 4th Shakespeare production by our homeschool cooperative, 1st for Erin. these productions go the mile as far as production values. a lot of work goes into costumes. I think it is excessive except that it gives the kids a chance to dress up. Erin's entrance was great. he's so big and his costume was angry red and he was all bold and ragey. the audience went whoop. swordplay with what are officially called boffers. the age range of the players is 6-17. some of the younger ones are grinning and staring at the audience. the audience is almost entirely parental, even tho there's a drive to post notices everywhere. if one likes theatre, one had ought to scope out such productions even lacking a child in it. just as you can see interesting sports events on the high school, little league and such level. I mean, it gives you a sense of proportion to see these events in these more intimate venues, and the occasional amaze when someone exceeds your expectations. Juliet in this production was remarkably good. a 13 year old girl, she gave great expression to her lines, and respected the music too. and without apparent effort. I'm amazed that these kids remember their lines. to really inhabit them is bonus. Romeo was also played by a 13 year old. his mother directed, and his 3 younger brothers and his older sister also had minor roles. he and his sister were in Mock Trial with Erin. his sister is very good in theatre and Mock Trial. the boy seems a little hyper active, so it seems like a feat to play Romeo. which he did quite well. an issue arose before production about whether R&J were appropriate for younger kids. there were issues even with the kissing, which in sooth were ever so chaste. as Beth noted, their farewell kissing after their newlywed night was quick on the order of see ya. some but not all the dirty bits were removed. as I said, Bowdler's legacy lives. the swordplay went on nicely and Erin died dramatically. Juliet's older sister played Capulet and was also very good. at Paris' death, Romeo dragged him from the byre. in doing so Paris' head cracked against the byre. Romeo tried to lower Paris' head to the floor but released early, so thok as cranium hit cement. Romeo's last kiss of Juliet was done with his butt facing the audience, something the director ought to rectify. not to hang on those sorts of things, but I think that's part of theatre that one can embrace. just as with low budget movies, as opposed to slick, adipose high budget productions. the curtain call had a neat touch. Mercutio and whatsisname step out then suddenly turn, draw swords and Erin burst thru the curtain with his sword drawn. I repeat, at 6'5" with hat and bold panache, and magenta red costume, he made a statement. Erin has one more performance this week. there are two different casts, and 4 performances total. I congratulated one boy I knew and asked him if he had fun. definitely he said no. Mercutio had a better role. which is true, that looked like fun.