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.