check out this piece by Stephen Ellis. it has some of the burnt off visionary quality of Olson's very late poems, when O had spiraled from theoretical command and was staring, instead, at death and life. note Stephen's lines, and the beautiful anticipation of his enjambments. admirable.

I am advised that copies of RIOT ACT by Geoffrey Young will be given away at his reading, noted below, next saturday in Lowell. and it is a Bootstrap Press production. very exciting.

a few pictures below, and at my Flickr page, of Walden in fog. we went there yestermorn (id est Thanksgiving). the water was smooth and clear, surprisingly few people were around. less than a mile away Concord/Carlisle fought Bedford on the field of football. whoever won, God smiled on the winner. today, at my urging, we went to the mall. with no urge to buy anything, just look around. it was only slightly challenging to park. things were busy, that is, people were buying stuff. we did a tour last year and saw less purchases occur. the Apple Store was a-buzz. and there was a swarm of people working there. woohoo, buy Apple stock. Aeropostale appeared to be stuffed with eager young shoppers. Abercombrie and Fitch, however, looked like try to hard. are you taking notes here? at the entrance of A&F stood 2 models, I guess they were. one a gogo dancer and/or cheerleader in short skirt. the other a standard issue slouchy, skinny, hip male model type, with shirt unbuttoned and pants low, body hair removed. such a show is a swipe towards edginess for a suburban mall, but I think it means A&F has lost altitude. it was busy, and the thumping trance of music had its message, but it's like Starbucks, you can see the need for effort now. the poetry has turned to doggerel. Crate & Barrel scooted to its own separate building recently, so its space was filled with a Christmas Ornament shop. the same space held a Halloween shop up till a month ago. will it shift to something else in January? we have zero need for ornaments, in fact, the lower ceiling here means we have a superfluity of decorations, but there were some beauts calling to us, all glitter, shine, jolting colour and what. such are m 1st notes on this most telling of American whatever.

Geoff Young reads in Lowell,
to wit:

Geoffrey Young’s THE RIOT ACT: book release and reading
Saturday December 1st, 2007
3:00 p.m.
National Park Visitor Center
246 Market Street
Lowell, MA 01852

Geoff Young ran the terrific press The Figures for many years, whence came a raft of important books. he is also a wonderful poet and, as I understand, a deft reader. I am certain that this will be an awesome event (I think Bootstrap Press is involved).

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

DSCN9165, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

DSCN9160, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

John Latta's blog is crackling. his reading and views fit wonderfully into blog format. his doubtfulness is always well backed up. he isn't merely acerbic, tho he has a Dahlbergian whip. I guess I'm too tired to rattle on. I'm glad he's "out there". shamefully, I haven't read a book of his...

must... remedy... this...

a review, by Jeff Harrison, in Galatea Resurrects, of Days Poem.

I got For Girls & Others by Shanna Compton (Bloof Books 2007). hey hey, I'm others, I think. this is her 2nd collection, which is saying something, because the first, Down Spooky, is a pretty mature work. I'm guessing that Girls began with a plan whereas Spooky was collected, for whatever that observation is worth. Girls delivers of advice to/for girls, which being the actual words of advice (from cranky old books) and, more crunchingly, the cultural enclosures meted out. there's the theme of the book, for you English teachers. well, I don't read like that. that's the normative part of the tale. Shanna recontextualizes some 19th century advice to girls with a flarfian beat. I actually hear the persistent trawling of Robert Fitterman here, that method, I mean, not stylistic residue. I haven't read enough to provide a detailed map but there's a sense of sudden rescue to a number of her poems. for instance, "Awful White Wine", great title, wraps around an O'Hara-like flightiness. the last stanza then performs a shift, arabesque, what you will:

All night the cervix of Our Lord
glistens & slurps with an enlarged pink
fiddling sound. We're ready to ascend.

I mean, heigh ho, that's quite a turn, a coaxial collision of intentions. it's funny stuff, with a flarfy jolt and an undazed commitment. I was reading without pen in hand, so I haven't collected many quotations but I assure you that I bounced on numerous felicities. I mean to write further of this book, which I have only just met. my idea is to make a blog where I write more formally and at greater length than what you see here. in lieu of that project, let these few notes tempt you to read and even to own Shanna's latest. it's a handsome ton of energy.

I shot you, Elk, and then I said,
"I feel better now, because you're dead."


file under: Doggerel Will Save Us

extreme Walden

extreme Walden, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

fish 2

fish 2, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

mysterious crop circle

mysterious crop circle, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

if you seek more work by AHB to delight in, be bored or displeased by, or simply ignore, I have a new blog for some of my recent works, yclept Simple Theories. tra la.

I have three poems in Eoagh 4, here. the whole issue is replete, check it out. I don't know if e-journals give a greater sense than print of the ratiocinations and bifurcations but... well I will declare that they do. these many offerings gathered under the aegis, each writer with a direction and plan, explored by Reader. I know some of the people in the masthead by name, by work, by rep, or by nothing at all. whatever I know of them, I understand that they all consider their work important, carrying resonance. and Reader will be delighted by some work, bored or displeased by other, ignore still other. each writer performs this dedication to writing, then flips the work into a stream, where the competition begins. I guess one can worry about that.

my friend Michael wants us to meet up at this reading. we have friends coming over saturday, however, so it is no go. I remain interested.

but.

that picture.

of the dead elk.

bugs me.

is the guy with knife and gun Buck Downs? I realize, writing this, that I assume a lot as I wriggle with the inferences of the picture. no, I do not like the idea of hunting but, yes, I eat meat. file my judgments, which I shan't even enumerate here, under whatever. it is the poetry not the poet that is of interest, as is proven by all our faded heroes. still, killing an elk seems wasteful. I mean, the rare opportunity to see a elk, and then to plug it. I could be sadly unprepared to face the irony of this picture. it seems creepy as a promo picture, tho, doesn't it? I would still want to hear Downs read, and of course Eileen Myles, but a part of me would think of the elk.

I have a 4 gig iPod Nano now. I could expatiate on the technical wonder but instead will mention my nephew's great grandfather, who died some years back at the age of 101. he used to be so astonished at modern cars. his little car could barely make it up the hills of New Hampshire but that was quite the improvement over whatever 1st car he remembered. one day he extolled the raw power of his vehicle to my nephew, who was about 4. my nephew said with exasperation, face it, Grampie, it's a Vega. not really, it's a paradigm shift. so anyway, I have a day's worth of music on the pod, isn't that lovely. and then I started listening to podcasts, and this is quite a wonder. one more step onto the egalitarian slope. I have mostly just scoured iTunes for science or history podcasts but the potential exists for grander, personal usage. indeed, I'm thinking of reading Days Poem as a podcast. I'd be doing it even now but I'm working out the kinks of recording. the built in microphone of this laptop isn't getting my quiet voice well, and the other microphone I have seems to cause a hum. but I will get it out there. the poetry scene commitment to imprimatur is, frankly, just stones in the passway. we can publish ourselves in all manner of expression without waiting on editorial acceptance. let's not squawk about how self-serving this is. if you're going to write, you might as well air it out. the podcast, the blog, these are furtherances, as brilliant as you choose to make them.

I am excited, pleased and furthermore that Stephen Ellis now has A BLOG. Stephen is a terrific poet for whom politics and poetics are eternally, let us say grandly, entwined. I hope, as one does with every new blogger, that he sustains the project. his writing genuinely illuminates me.