I don't seem to put poems on this site much now. I burden the collaborative blog Taking the Brim with some of what I write. here's yet another Fu Manchu poem. I've let myself write many poems featuring the sinister doctor.

another paint class at the adult daycare. the last time we did it, a woman produced 20 mostly monochromatic paintings (she's always very productive). someone had put them on the wall end to end. the person who did this did it logically, phasing from one colour to another. the thing is, that's how the woman painted them. I watched her go from black to blue to green in succeeding pictures. the result on the wall, a 20' long painting. and it has a sort of narrative to it. fascinating. today, this woman did vertical strips. lots of black but with other colours shadowing. and she's so happy and excited as she paints. I talked a lot with one woman. she really wants to paint but has that voice saying no. she's better educated than the others in the class but is very gracious and supportive. some of the people can be grumpy, or depressed, or just distracted. this woman asked me if it is more psychologically satisfying if you don't start with a plan. I said yes. she has the common problem of having all these models in mind that she feels she can't match. she was working the process of releasing that fears of inadequacy so she can do the painting she wants to do. one of the aides at the daycare started helping the woman by telling her what to paint, and even taking her hand and making the strokes. Beth took the aide aside and said don't help like that. yeah, we're not teaching technical skills. we're giving these people a chance to play. and it is necessary to go thru the process of breaking the resistance on your own. the woman who did the 20 footer was absolutely restricted when she 1st started doing our class.

Gary Sullivan points to this monster vid of rapper Ceza: zounds!!!. fast and faster, with, I assume, crisp enunciation (I give props to Bon Scott for being one of the few rock sceamers who enunciated). I find the speed ecstatic. there's a fair amount of music the excitement of which sits in the physical difficulty to produce it. certes, Ceza looks a bit knackered after his performance. but the performance is very musical as well as figuratively death-defying. the opposite end of the scale would be "Bells" by Albert Ayler (a link to which is to the right). I don't guess the technique of the trumpet or sax would overwhelm any half decent high school player, but the piece is 2 minutes of locked in joyful noise. I wrote recently of Silliman's lauding of Noah Eli Gordon's email-derived poem. Silliman kinda stops at concept, you ask me. if you want concept, read Love and Fame in New York by Ed Sanders. the book is full of wild, hilarious evocations of conceptual art. yet the idea is not the machine itself. I don't think that, as described, Gordon's poem is conceptual art. it is beyond concept, it is present. with Ceza's piece, well anyone can say, I'm gonna do it double (treble?) time. them tobacco auctioneers go lightning fast, and you might listen with amazement, but that isn't the same as the thing made by Ceza. or maybe it is. the point being it's not just idea but execution.

all was well...then Computer Troubles. well of course, I have 2 papers due soonestly. a couple years ago I had a paper to write and not only did my computer go down but so did Beth's. and just to make sure I got the message about technical intractibility, and hwo the gods have lined up against me, my electric typewriter went caput too. which just let me show how honking motivated I can be when time's running out. this time at least the hard drive seemed mechanically sound. I consulted Swami Yellow Pages, and got numerous possibilties for computer aid. several calls reached businesses disinclined to answer (I waited till 9am to begin my supplications), I assume they triangulated my phone number and recognized I wasn't a worthy or lucrative challenge. one saviour only made house calls, and that call cost 50 bucks, to which is added the actual cost of fixing sad machine. I found a local, residential even, number and went with that. the guy sounded sensible, and only charged dollar a mile, less than 5 miles away, to show up. he had that doctorly calm you look for. oh yes, I can do that. no, you haven't lost everything. seems like he was good with his word, for here I is. so okay, I'm getting a memory stick or some other save solution, because I can't be so self-ultimate all the time.

I have to wield the index finger for these compelling, strange photos. I mean particularly the ones under the rubric (it is a rubric, isn't it?) Detritus of War, oh and also Here's Mud in your Eye Mr Death. strange, unsettling, funny and exponential in their way. I love this sort of obsessive oddity, even the idea of making serious statements with GI Joe. I can't recall the guy's name--Herbert or Harold Gold, mebbe?--who was a part of the Golden Age of Pulp Sci Fi, in the 50s. he creatd a miniature town, photographed it and let writers use the town as backdrop for their stories. kinda cool. Donald's doing something like that, insinuating his action figures in his/our daily world.

latest trip to Barnes and Noble. a buzzing place. I used to think hail to thee blithe little bookstores, but the romance of them has paled. I would just as soon see a mongo selection than a cat sleeping on the counter. liking cats tho I do. selection, price and coffee, woohoo. there were signs of Christmas, with giftie stuff in plain view. and a major rearrangement had occurred. I couldn't tell at 1st if the piped in music was faceless Christmas music or faceless regular music. I guess it was the latter. I went in with a vague hankering and didn't know where to look. if John Hodgman had a new book out, bingo! but I didn't see such a thing. I made my dutiful trip to the poetry section. came close to getting Creeley's collected from 75 on. the blurbs for it were mostly by dead people, Williams and Olson, for 2. really, it was just that it wasn't the vague thing I came in hankering for that kept me from that purchase. several editions of Howl. Ginsberg's mug showed up in a number of manifestations, on his own writing and as representative Beat in collections and histories. in my dotage I grow more fond of Ginsberg. certes, he's it for pizzazz in the poetry section. it really could be pumped, but I suppose that's a radicalism. it's just so faceless, all these poets who think they've made it because their strophes dedicated to chickadess (wee gaunt challengers of winter's froreness) or Saul Bellow were 1st published in Poetry. I think at the poetry section I encountered a guy on the phone. it was some serious conversation he engaged that I could happily have ignored, but he had no intention in denying me my public right to eavesdrop. I think he said the like of, I'm not the type of person to fuck people over. good on him! he moved on, only to be encountered in the psychology/self help area. which I immediately left. many editions of Walden, collect them all. I guess the big news is that Nicole Richey has a book. a copy was in the window and I saw it in the stacks. beneath the title are the words: a novel a novel a novel. I should do it marquee style: a novel a novel a novel a novel a novel. the point is, for the unwary, that the book is a novel. not a dissertation on eating disorders, nor a tell all about Lionel Richey's wardrobe nor even a discussion of Paris Hilton's contribution to shoe theory. nay, it is a fictionalistical story. of some sort. a ghastly glamour portrait of Nicole graces the cover. she appears to be made of shiny plastic. someday I will collect a few such oddities and um read them. I looked around for Fu Manchu books but found none. not sure where to look. what I took home from this experience is William Gaddis' last novel, a book on the Civil War by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (division leader of the Maine unit that held the flank at Little Round Top and even, sans ammunition, chased Johhny Reb down the hill in a moment of wartime esprit. also a package of little Moleskine notebooks, I like them Moleskines. the Gaddis is his last novel. I wonder if it aint a posthumously patched together item. it's very short. I really loved JR, still haven't read Frolic of their Own. he only wrote 4 novels, by gum. the regular price for this treasure is 25 smackers, which is ridiculous, tho hardcover at least. luckily it was cheaped to the max, thus my readiness to take a swing. I'm not big on posthumous discoveries. I read one by Hemingway, which someone likened to the work of Robert Benchley. negatory on that one. at the time, Benchley was pretty much ne plus ultra for me (sheen's a bit off now but he's still semi god). and Hemingway wasn't within a country mile of Benchley. good lord!!! so psyched enough to have the goods I got. I don't even know what Beth got. Erin I think scored something in the realm of D&D or Magic card. I go thru all this semi-literary stuff but jinkies, the past week Jack Kimball has perspicaciously written up at least 5 poetry readings that he attended. Boston is not entirely empty of sceneness, and I had ought to place my support more boldly. but a trip to B&N is a family thing, which beats rock, paper and scissors, hands down.

2:00 this morning we were awakened by Coyote! Coyote and his pards. they seemed to be right below our window, yapping something fierce. the cat took their presence seriously, wide-eyed with an implicit you sure that window's closed? expression. the dog was elsewhere, I don't know how he felt about the canine influx. I've heard Coyote distantly before but never in a surrounding the cabin sort of send out your kitty and we'll leave you alone way.

Silliman lauds a book by Noah Eli Gordon. I shan't commit a Silliman slicing. to read Ron's commentary usefully, any of it, you must hold in mind his need for taxonomy, hierarchy and relationship. critically speaking, there seems to be a < reddish herring < swimming hereabouts, tho. what activates Silliman in his post is Gordon's particular appropriation, to wit: he wrote the book by collecting together emails he had received. as a tactic, that doesn't sound edgy. appropriation is appropriation, which is currently the talk of the town, isn't it. Silliman cites Ed Friedman's collation of phone calls, so even he recognizes that the there there aint there regarding the newness of method. plenty of variants exist. which is not to say that Gordon's work can't be fresh. it does seem to depend on the reader knowing his tactic, however: Silliman quotes the explanation that Gordon gives for his method that introduces the work. does that info need to be in the foreground? and Silliman doesn't even quite agree with the method, he would like to see Gordon jumble his text. there's a point where methodology and poetry aren't the same thing. method is just a personal way to survive in the poetic.

Listenlight #4 seems to be alive. may still be in twiddle-mode, but it looks good and good to go. visual and textual poems. Jeff Harrison's 3 haiku are skewed koan-ish oddballs. in the good sense.

......................................now appearing....................................................................................................now not.....................................................................................

I recently had an urge to read Robert E Howard. yes, I 1st read him in high school. the firstest book I got was Conan of Cimmeria. it had the usual Frank Frazetta cover. it showed Conan giving battle against 2 red headed Vikingesque giants, in a frore mountain scene. yo dudes, not the place to wear shorts. the arm of one giant lay on the ground, having been surgically removed by Dr Conan. nearby lay the patented Frazetta wet dream: a scantily clad babe in a bikini. all the human figures, even the giants (I believe they were Frost Giants) were dwarfed by the mountains. it was that, indeed, that caught my eye: the insignificance of those 4 beings amidst the glorious snow clad mountains. the stories are okay, definitely full of momentum. I admire writing that gets where it is going in that way. both Tolkien and Howard offer their share of cleft skulls (in football, that would be called having your bell rung) but Howard made them sound brutal whereas Tolkien made them sound like good innings at cricket. I remember my friend and I talking with someone who was a leedle more into Conan than either of us. my friend pointed out the racism of the stories and the guy was offended plus amazed at the very idea. but of course there is an underlying yuck to the stories, one should keep that in mind, as a handy reminder of the actual inner child. I just read some stories in Wolfhead, non-Conan stories. one story was perfect H P Lovecraft. the protagonist is an obsessed ghost hunter. well I mean, he is hip to all the arcane texts and has to go to Hungary or thereabouts to locate the scene of some horror. which he does. and sees ghostly figures reenact a terrible human sacrifice. Howard was only 18 when he wrote it, which is impressive. there's something puerile about such stories but it bounds along with admirable verve. the cover of that book shows a hunky bodybuilder with sword, entwined in the grip of an anaconda-sized serpent, in a dungeon locale, and a fair, fallen maiden in the background. what might be my only Howard tome currently in ownership, Conan the Usurper, now sits before me. it features an even larger, way much larger, snake. Conan's wrists are bound by chains. he sits astride the snake, which turns to face him. we see the mighty warrior's well-toned lats and dorsals, no one can say he hasn't been pushimg the metal. in the background are demonish creatures, some skeletons, and a pile of skulls. well how's the big Cimmerian gonna get out of that one? (beam me up, Scotty). my favourite Frazetta cover shows Conan on a warhorse, in battle. he looks like he should be riding with 3 other nasty ass horseman, he's pretty intensely into his game. when it comes to zooming action literature, I'll take Fu Manchu. Jeff Harrison informs me that Sax Rohmer was well into alchemy. well well well. I'm sure Dr Fu Manchu has expertise in that arena. Rohmer basically took Sherlock Holmes and added a fantastic aspect. that is to say, Sir Denis Nayland-Smith = Holmes, and Dr Petrie = Dr Watson. Nayland-Smith brings to mind James Bond, but without the imperative to actually save the world. it's enough if he spins his primly but earnestly English wheels. which he does. the mad Dr has all the advantages: brains, evil, arcane skills. thru bumbling and the help of the good English god, plus a certain stalwart respect harboured by Fu Manchu for the English race, things turn out okay for the forces of good. Fu Manchu has a prediliction to locate his hide outs in wet places, dockside, or under the Thames. not that Sir Denis or Petrie think to look there 1st. all these writers, they get the job done. the superfluities are largely banished. okay, the hairs at the nape of Conan's neck will rise up in alarum, and such like, but really, they don't get in the way of the writing. maybe the mostest of errors for poetry makers is the less than adventitious interference of the poet. hi, it's me talking. I don't even know what a poetry of the non-interference would be like. like O'Hara, mebbe, e'en tho first person singular appears often enough. it's not the 'I' but the weight behind it. wait wait wait: what is the source of poetry...???

hey, Google can do other things than supply text for post-modern poetic avant gardiness!!! which is to say I did due diligence (or I did do diligence) and looked up Ric Royer. this search brought me here, thence to The Performance Thanatology Research Group, here. worth poking around all the links. I like this line from the thanafesto for PTRS: "The Performance Thanatology Research Society is a group of scholars dedicated to the advancement of a higher histrionics brought on by imminent finalities". higher histrionics, ah hah! see, I'm wavery about performativity. but I'm antsy about the enclosure of just standing there reading as well. Royer's piece was more theatre than poetry in the sense that it depended on the story that he (partly, mysteriously) unraveled, and his tonal shifts and nearing and distancing factors (how he inhabits the character space, and how he steps back). so like well anyway, he presented himself something as a lecturer, but, let us say, sans rostrum (he did have a table to sit at, but it wasn't raised. he made eye contact at times (pretty intimate room). his tie (which had an exquisite line drawing on it) was conspicuously loose, the ends nowhere near matching. I wear ties rarely, but when I do, I get the ends to match in length, which means it takes me half an hour to get it right. but the point is, out of the frumpy ordinariness (and it must be a shock for anyone to receive the charge of frumpy, I realize I wield a powerful word), he draws underbrush aside and reveals a revel. the flarfistas are well-documented in their dramatic exploits, keyed up humour: the works want it. histrionics depends on the specific work. I would avoid grave intonations except used ironically (and I took KSM's test, and know I know nothing about irony--maybe it is just the quality of being like iron). drama is hyper, or often enough. I don't want to sell or buy the poem, but join it. one of the best reading's I ever saw was by Michael Gizzi, whose delivery was crisp and dry, just perfect to the work. me, I have a stubborn inbred taciturnity to deal with. interestingly, after the reading I mentioned to Ric a book I've been reading, Trickster Makes the World by Lewis Hyde, and he said oh yeah. nice coinkydink. the book relate the Trickster figure (Coyote, Loki, Hermes, etc) to the art world, Ginsberg and Duchamps his particular exemplars. that idea of art as transgressive, alternative, subversive is a rich one.

saw James Cook and Ric Royer read at Demolicious. for open mike, Joel Sloman read a non-translation of Baudelaire, and 2 others whose names I didn't retain read. then Cook read, a long work that centered on maps and mapping. it touched the local and history and let's say cosmology. these are Olson issues of course, but I wouldn't want to limit the poem or my own interest in such by leaning on that too much. Cook read with a wide-eyed nervous energy. indeed, he apologized for having a conflict such that he and his brood dashed out the door to elsewhere just about as he finished. Ric Royer followed. he's currently from Baltimore, having done penance in Buffalo, and I'm not sure where else. I knew this would be a multimedia performance but that's all I knew. he started by showing a slide. it was a comparison shot of 2 pairs of girls celebrating a high school basketball win. both pictures were near identical, same pose, same braid, and the girls looked the same. Royer purported that these pictures were of Bloomfield wins a couple years apart. he also said that no one knows where the pictures came from. he then went into a long story about the Museum of Doubles, which collects unusual twinships and doublings. I was probably the last one in the room to suspect that he might be making stuff up. he treated us to a long consideration of the relationship (love) between the proprietors of the museum. I can give but a bare jot of what the piece was like. the story took tangents and weaved about. I thought of Flann O'Brien and other fantastical fictions. a mysterious gothic romanticism overhung the story. his delivery was great, erudite yet um distracted. distracted by some gleam, that is. he sat at a table as he performed, had a laptop with the text in front of him, which he consulted but mostly he spoke seemingly ad lib to the audience. he showed occasional slides, and had a few objects, like a 2-headed nickel. that nickel, he admitted later, was from a magic shop, not the Treasury as he had earlier purported. (yes, there was a lot of purporting going on). the performance was funny, offbeat, philosophical, sly and engaging. a cd and book are due out soon. he said the idea is to read and listen simultaneously, as small differences exist between the 2. near the end he spoke a passage into a small tape recorder, then backed the tape up and did the same passage in tandem. Jack Kimball attended, so I hope he can give a better description of what Royer did. next month Stein scholar Ulla Dybo reads. I believe she will read something she prepared specifically for the event. I look forward to that.

I took the dog out around 6:30 this morn (en Francais, il est un chien!!!). echoing nearby was a siren. then an amplified voice. and I really thought for a moment, it was some SWAT action. as if. someone's alarm had gone off. maybe a quarter mile away as crow flies. 1st the police siren, then the voice would come in:

BURGLARY! BURGLARY! BURGLARY!
you are trespassing in an area
protected by a security system

with exhortations to absquatulate post haste. the voice was firm, yet with an underlying franticness. I can imagine this guy huddled in his safe room (or under his bed), speaking into the microphone: go away now or we, all ten, I mean fifteen, of us will deal with you before the police get here. right guys? um we're all black belts, too, by the way. we moseyed on for 15 or so minutes then saw two police cars leave the station area speeding towards the alarm. less than 5 minutes later, they drove back to their half eaten doughnuts, and the alarm continued warning. we wandered out of hearing but it must've been 1/2 an hour of that warning before it was curtailed. Lew Welch writes in a letter I think of being on a winery tour when the guide shouted a warning to someone who was close to falling into a vat. and Welch says he would like that same dire immediacy in his writing. when alarms go off, we get an adrenalin jolt. but as they persist, it's just noise. I get what Welch means, it's the imperative that he seeks. when the word quality, its issuance (can I use that word?), is undeniable. not the message, but the word so alive in its wordness. if a miscreant or culprit actually broke into the building, the first vocal warning would dismay. the repetitions only provide guidance that little time remains to do pronto whatever made b & e worth attempting.

Fox News has O'Reilly vs Andrews available on their website. the clip wouldn't work for me yesterday but today I got thru. can't really recommend that you perseverate in a similar quest: O'Reilly's just awful. well, unless you bear a special appreciation for phlegm wads. there's little difference between him and Colbert, except that Colbert's thinking all the time whereas O'Reilly merely gestures the mighty right. he's all fustian but I guess you already know that. his discussions aren't interchange, they're just interjection. schmuck bomb boolean duality, my way or the highway. I couldn't last the whole clip.

in Jacket 30, David J.Alworth apes his professors using Robert Fitterman's Metropolis XXX as victim. crikey, is the aim to make poetry seem no fun at all? did someone tell him to use the word rebarative in his essay (and the adverbial form, as well)? he appears to have read around, is familiar with the lay of the poetic land, but, apparently not having pleasure as a measure for his reading experience, he just agitates about how to read the book. try one word at a time, or perhaps groupings, till you reach the point of the primal language's life. treat the poem as a path or even an experience. is it okay for me to set up such a picture? as a poem, as any text, as a progression into substance? I know I laughed when Fitterman read from the book, and I laughed when I read by my lonesome, so why does Alworth consider the book difficult, and I think by that he means recondite? Alworth obsesses on the idea of close reading, which I think may be a flinch. close reading... is that meaningful? it sounds like a challenge for the work to fit in a box. he spent 2 sentences to box up flarf, inappropriate and googling: c'est ca. taxonomy and limitation. I hate--ooo strong word--this kind of foam rubber criticism, spongy and repelling.

James Cook and Rick Royer read for Demolicious Series, 2pm Sunday, Cambridge. I think we can schedule it.

just got Cousins by Alli Warren (Lame House Press 2006). as always with new books, I want to express the 1st excitement and discovery. just a shine on the surface. this, the I assume self-published Hounds, and the Faux/e-book Yoke, plus blog, are the sum of my Alli Warren reading experience. I recommend all highly. the poetry locates in some free-spinning yet thoughtful warmth. free-spinning as in a jumbly expression, as if the final step in the writing were to put the poem in the dryer and let the forces comfortably wrinkle it up. not to sound too whack or facetious. does the picture of graceful stumbling help? these are my impressions as I read. the book's colourful brick-and-windows cover directs a stunning presence to the eye. the poems subtly follow suit. both the 1st and last poem in this slim chap is titled "My Factless Autobiography". that's not detachment, I infer, but deviation from distraction. there's thinking in these poems, calmly. I take this book as a single work, and just as long as it had ought to be, but I look forward to longer works, greater collections. I have #58 out of 100. visit here for your number.

Rodney Koeneke speaks en blog.

I found a book at the library called Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik. it essentially answers Strunk and White. I like Strunk and White, and periodically reread it. it is concise. this concision comes by way of rules, which can be taken wrongly, but I appreciate having the goods laid out quickly. as Plotnik points out, White breaks the rules all the time. so do I. I like having a sense of firmness in my head concerning writing. that is, a measure, even if I ignore or play against this measure. I don't know if I can make an exact correlation of weak prose means weak poetry, that is, if a poet can't write decent prose, the poetry may lack something as well. by whatever means one writes poetry, one wants to see a tightness, because a poem is more than a collection of words, it's a machine or entity in which its component words are tightly attached together. monolithic maybe... anyway, I think it is okay to refresh my grammar occasionally. Plotnik's book nicely balances Strunk and Whites formidable decrees. thought you'd like to know. I mean, think of Barrett Watten's crit writing with some life in it...