btw, I was on vacation in june for three weeks. how'd you folks hold up?

Jim Behrle's cartoons about Ron Silliman's temporary (we can only hope!) disappearance from the blog scene are very funny. Darth Silliman, you are not my father!!! Silliman's bêtes blancs Curt Faville, Rae Armantrout adn Rachel Blau DuPlessis are in agitation that Ron's energy isn't behind them currently. yahonk! I felt so dumb in my roseate youth what with the writers I didn't get, a prodigious list. some who I didn't initially get, Olson for instance, nonetheless interested me. Pound aggravated me, but I worked my way thru that. the same way with Stein. Eliot just pissed me off, then bored me. etc. we create monsters with some of these people. or a tendency exists of setting up monolithic critical values. some poetry labelled LANGUAGE is just sucky stuff, okay? it happens. and yakking up critical storms just don't make things better. I found that even the writers I like mucho, say Olson, can be oppressive, even bullying, in the sense that they, finally, speak of their condition, and I as a writer am finding my own way. tra la.

I just wanted to say to everyone: I love your blog!!! yes, even you!!!

Nugs offers a Grateful Dead concert from 1971. guest starring Duane Allman. I love slide guitar and ole Duane had the chops for a certain kind of electric space out rock standard slide style that's pretty thrilling. worked well with Clapton, worked well with the Dead.

I notice on Carl Annarummo's deuxième blog that allen bramhall and henry gould will be amidst fair Cantabriggian traffic and oh wow, at Wordsworths to be precise, with a charming view of Brattle Street, and maybe just maybe a street performer, at 5:00, August 28, both of us fighting for the same microphone, New Old Poets on Display. I ran track for Mineola Prep, if you know what I'm saying. I only have one more poem to read-- how's my time?-- it's in 27 parts, part one...

later that same day...

Bernstein: Encrusted language resumes the dubious march toward...
Watten: Hold on a second, Charles, I believe you have reached a constriction in your approach.
Bernstein: I have no approach beyond the apposite infringement of detail.
Robinson: What do you mean by 'hold', Barrett? Clearly you don't mean physically...
Watten: Metaphor has become as normalized as breathing. The political contortions we accept as given fill us with a beaded sort of rancour.
Robinson: Oh, sure, you say that now.
Perelman: I believe I read somewhere that Truman Capote didn't believe in tea.
Robinson: Barrett, what do you mean by 'fill'? Should we accept that you meant something?
Hejinian: I want to hear more of Charles's sense of apposite infringement of detail. It seems to add a filigree to the pendulum of meaning as evidenced in this current conversation, and relating, of course to previous talks.
Perelman: I'm not sure of the plural for pendulum. Lyn, have you ever used the plural form of pendulum?

meanwhile...

a voice in me sez: put down the camera and...

Silliman poem 

moody, just finished combing my hair 

I went some 15 years without really talking writing with any writers. just the way I drifted from some friends and never put myself in the way of other writers. internet's several options have enabled me to enter a 'community' of writers. the most telling thing isn't my opinion but the writing I do. I very much read and struggled with the theory written by those associated with Langpo (half the known universe). really liked the poetry talks Bob Perelman edited (Writing/Talks, Southern Illinois University Press (I didn't know there were schools outside of Cambridge!) 1985):

"Watten: Okay Charles, I really think you should purge your vocabulary of phrases like 'structural linguistics from Saussure to Derrida.'
Bernstein: I should purge my...?
Watten: You shouldn't allow yourself to say that. And that would be the answer to the whole thing. I mean, if you know better...
Kit Robinson: Why can't he say that?
Watten: Because it's not only a provisional construction, but it's an illusory and unexamined construction that you in fact know better of."

...and the boys go on...

I wasn't meaning to go this direction, as there are more vital moments in this book nthan this goofy exchange, but gee, is that your language talking or what? did you bring your language and tell it the truth? can purge be purged? we may never know...

heck, now that I've started this links biz, oh the curse of learning a wee bit html or whatever, I keep adding more. each more means, hey, what about. ne'ertheless, Gary Sullivan is far better than me at being Gary Sullivan, I admit it, so visit his blog. I don't deserve an audience, my middle name is Horton.

shit, this blog stuff... I don't want to write no poems, I want to vent and dilate. I haven't turned my handsome nose towards The Sophist by C Bernstein in mucho years but it is locateable in the stacks and Ron Silliman has presented the case. whereas I have enjoyed and respected Silliman's work, Bernstein's has not gotten thru my aesthetic barriers. not sure why. my plump middle class values have been rattled by these two as well as by many more. why does Silliman go for me and Bernstein hasn't so much? should CB be worried? CB read a couple years ago at a Boston convocation, very well, especially a lengthy piece that, as I recall, went on to explain why it wasn't a poem (Matvei Yankelvitch's performance saturday kindled a similar if not greater fire). and I believe I'm trying to make a point here. you know, sometimes, I'm an asshole, sometimes dull, sometimes I know something. this very well could be the case with other people. christ, I don't love poetry, I love certain writing. even certain writing full of uncertainties... please visit my real wriitng sites, linked to the right. see if I have a bottom line.

where what is

Lisa Jarnot's blog is freakin'. I like Paul Blackburn. if I could've written like Robert Benchley when I was 16, I'd probably not trail into this world of poetry. it took me a long time to realize I love Gertrude Stein. Monty Python, Bob & Ray (which see, friends, which see). some aesthetic luck kept me from writing like a Beat. Robert Grenier was a fantastic influence on me, and not in the way you might think (this assertion may answer previous sentence). Charles olson in a real Gloucester subset. Ron Silliman's careful, honest weighing. reading George Butterick's Collected Poems today. something about Mrs Dalloway. America is Leaves of Grass. Baudelaire beats up a poor man. Beth, finally. I could go on.

I like this from Carl Annarummo's other blog:

introduced my poems
as "the dudes"

... I won't tell you why I like it. don't you like it?

I guess this is Carl Annarummo's new/replacement blog. I don't take change well.

thoonly

okay, fait accompli: I've put Nick Piombino's blog in my links. these are my links. Nick's blog is what a poetry blog should be: poetry, theory, resources. Carl Annarummo's is also what a poetry blog should be: quick flickering things in words. my blog now has pix of my cat.

tutelary spirit 

Nick Piombino linked to my comments on Bossacre. 1 thing: I guess I should link to his blog. mere gesture, as this blog is barely read (but notice that I keep cranking away: bonus points for persistence!). it's only fair to look like I am reciprocating, thoonly so little. I read his blog, of course. 2nd thing: how frozen my opinions seem. I'm not going after Aaron Kiely in my comments. I do not love poetry just for being poetry, so I am going to weigh what I like and dislike. AK's strengths as a poet are his humour and flakiness, both of which I take seriously. I do not take the statement in his poem seriously, that his heart is broken. such a phrase efforts to condition a response, and I choose not to repsond as prescribed. I've read quite a few reports re Bossacre and there has been little on the negative side. I guess because such events are social, first of all. as I said earlier, where Aaron gangs agley is where I stray as well. it's useful to me to cogitate upon such considerations. it's no reflection on the event or even the poet, and I may think differently tomorrow.

Nada feeling better, Tim on vacation, Lewis sleeping or something, Mairead n'est pas ici, Lisa away, and I'm screwing around with Erin's camera