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...

cool photos by Peter Ciccariello, who also has a blog for his digital artwork here. I particularly like this one. I don't do a great deal of adjusting my pictures but if I thought in terms of the printed picture, I would do more. right now, I just hope there's some presence in the images. I have yet to print out a photo on good paper because I've yet to commit to photography to that extent. I will someday, when time and money.

as I walked the dog today I noticed a flock of starlings rushing thru the air. they headed directly towards a large oak, i. e. 'the scene', and settled in the treetop. the birds kept pouring in, until that first batch of birds, with a Malthusian inspiration, uproosted themselves away towards another tree/scene. the flow continued for a good 60 seconds with only brief breaks. I thought, whoa! that's a lot of contemporary poets! they were all, of course, voicing their starling opinions simultaneously. I don't speak starling but so much chatter must reach babelian levels just by sheer numbers. anyway, the contemporary starlings traveled on, then all was quiet, and peaceful.

Kasey Mohammad posted this link to the Bay Poetics discussion blog. nt really a discussion, it is Tom Orange's collation of commentary on the anthology Bay Poetics (Faux Press 2006). I like the idea of a presentation of different views (even mine are included, scraped from this very receptacle that you read now). the anthology is a particularly good subject for such treatment, being, what, a palimpsest or multiplicity. it has its manyness for one to sift thru. the blog, by being there, suggests an alternative to bouncing off to the next book, i. e., sticking with it. it hasn't the poetics intent of New American Poetry, but it is a substantial something that had ought to have a large audience. which almost leads me to wonder what is this generation's Howl or Cantos (poem everyone reads). I said it almost leads me to wonder. my comments used the occasion to consider poetry scene, Boston having its difficulties in that arena, whereas the Bay area. and I should reiterate that Stephanie Young is a reckon withable force, having edited this anthology, and writ the lovely Telling the Future Off (Tougher Disguises 2005), 2 awesome recent additions to the world as we know it. if she can play the solo for Freebird, well, we've got a trifecta. rock on.

sunday we drove around exurbanly. we came to a railroad crossing just as the gates lowered. a guy stood in the street with a camera. the train proved to be a freight rather than the more usual commuter. the guy was taking pictures. I realized I had a camera, so I took pictures of him. here's the link to my Flickr proof. he wasn't the only one who apparently knew the scheduled visit of this train, as several others also stood there waiting and watching. trains do kind of excite me. one regularly passes Walden Pond. rather than feel like an intrusion, it seems like another natural creature of the woods. and if it don't seem fit to have trains buzzing Walden, a train first came thru there a year before Thoreau went to Walden. file this under easily amused, I guess.

Erin got a chance to do lighting for a local play group. no experience needed. he liked doing it well enough to commit to doing more, even if it means missing one or two Halloween parties (at least he went to one last night, as a 6'5" ninja elf!!! (great costume, and he had the 6'5" part down pat)). we arrived to pick him up early, and watched the tail end of the production. Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods. I don't know who this production group is, but it's professional to the degree that even Erin will get a little money. when we came in, standing in the doorway, actually, 2 characters were talking. then they started singing. which is standard for musicals but always seems so odd (I think of that character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who wants to burst into song but his father always clamps down). I don't know why I assumed they would sing flat, but they didn't. a pianist played live backstage but it still seemed a hearty trick to sing in such circs, especially as the music isn't all that catchy. I barely get drama and definitely don't get musicals. I mean the one character is sitting disconsolately while the other sings advice. can't... wraop... around... that... I don't know the play but it is something of a collision between 4 fairy tales. the wife of the giant that Jack slew has come for revenge, and there's Cinderella, Rapunzel and what all. at one point, Prince Charming comes in from the back of the hall near where we eventually sat, singing grandly. it's all rather alarming for my delicate sensibilty. a nice camraderie amongst the troupe, and the director called out the lightning folks or a good job. Erin was in charge of a tracking spotlight. I don't know what sort of set, if any, the production will have. I once saw a bare bones production of The Magic Flute, with 3 musicians playing onstage, costumes but no set, and much of the action occurred thru out the audience. that worked well. I also saw Nutcracker long ago, and it is impressive, even to say magical, to see all that theatrical whizbang.