John Ashbery


Riding home and just beating a storm I thought, Boy this is really some dusk-charged air!
___

And I rode past a car with a bumper sticker: this too shall pass.

I wonder if the car was referring to itself.

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a rock critic, and I had a guidance counselor who was sympathetic. Or at least seemed to want to help. So he first set me up with this publication called Maximum Ink. I was sent cd's by bands called Walt Mink, Humble Gods and lowercase. (Get it?) What I wrote for Walt Mink was something along the lines of "The next time you see Bob Dylan at a coffee shop, kick him in the balls and ask him to sing 'Never To Be Found' by the Meat Puppets and you have the sound of Walt Mink." About Humble Gods I think I made fun of their punk image and how they have a song where the singer says he has to carry a knife because people are out to get him. And I think I made some vague comparison between the singer for lowercase and Lou Barlow (but I think I was actually remembering Jason Lowenstein's voice) and someone's grandma. At some point before or after the magazine actually folded and didn't exist for a while, a person called me and asked me if I wanted to go to Milwaukee to review a band at The Rave, which was the city's 'alternative' venue. I didn't know how to even get to Milwaukee then, so I chickened out. I said something to the effect of 'homework', but I also managed to brag about this underground paper that me and a friend had distributed at school that day. He tried to act interested. In the course of the magazine disappearing and reappearing with a different editorship, I never bothered to get back into it. The reviews were never published either.

On another occasion, my guidance counseler got the number of magazine based out of Milwaukee called milk. Not to be confused with Milk Magazine online that's edited by the estimable Larry Sawyer out of Chicago. milk was run by some guys, and one of them I think now writes about music for the Onion. I called the office and of course I was very nervous. The outgoing message was "This is milk, blah blah..." It was literally an outgoing message that trailed off at the end. Looking back it's pretty funny. But in the state I was in, I did not react well. I actually launched into an obnoxious sarcastic rant about the fact that they had an answering machine. I seem to recall the phrase "really blasting off into 1980s guys!", and then at some point stopping myself or realizing what I'd done or something. My incoming message ended with me actually enquiring maybe they would want me to review records for them or something, and leaving my name and number. I never heard back.

There was controversy earlier in my high school tenure over a record review of Jon Spencer Blue Explosion, where I said the f word several times and made some allusion about getting pissed at someone for standing up in front of my seat at a porno theater. The school paper advisor and the editor were both pretty liberal and they allowed the f word and everything else. And they allowed the f word and the allusions to rape I put in a couple 'creative' pieces. This all got mention on The Mark Belling Show. He's a local conservative talk guy here in Milwaukee. And Slinger is a conservative place so you can imagine that enough parents were listening. And there was moral outrage. The paper's advisor and editor decided to make the next issue largely about this incident and the larger free speech issues at hand. And those were free speech issues because the paper would slowly become more and more subject to censorship under succeeding advisors. But my good friend at the time (hey there!) published an editorial called Jello Biafra The Oblivious Criminal, which ended as a diatribe about my taste in music. He compared it to a hobo walking into an opulent buffet and picking out one little crumb and praising that crumb as the best thing on the buffet. Jello Biafra was the name I published the creative pieces under. I guess they were sort of prose poems about my idea of some harsh reality elsewhere, but I didn't really know who Jello Biafra was. I just picked his name out of some magazine because I liked it. If you had handed me a Dead Kennedys tape I probably would've loved it. I was called into the principal's office and at some point after we agreed that I was going to clean up my act, he asked me what I was going to review next. I said I was writing a review of The Velvet Underground & Nico. He said, "The Velvet Underground? No one knows about them anymore do they?"

Picante Sauce of Yore

opened with charm
they are rebuilding something along it’s edges
not through port or hole
did you sup in lee
trevino’s rippling tent
muttering ‘New York City New York City’
until the hush built to a kind of ambient clatter
the white spheroids as stably aligned
as geese flying over marsh waters
in films demonstrating THE MYSTERY OF GOD?
both of our boats were absconded
into the lacey fog
and us in them still waving toward
some point along the shore
we remember as orange
and with jollity dreaming of eggs benedict
texas toast and maker’s mark whiskey
and dreaming of thighs and low interest rates
and dreaming at last of reality of the ruins of
San Antonio and the urine stains
among the casual artifacts of our youth

My new favorite band is Slowdive. This happened at around the tenth viewing of the below video for "Alison" last time. I would say it's about as good as shoegaze gets, which is very good. Something about the gently lolling chorus and the accompanying My Bloody Valentine-like searing guitar makes me wish I like didn't have a body or something. Know what I mean? Like really good music in this genre, MBV, early early Verve, Ride and yeah I'll include Cocteau Twins, it hangs in the air, barely existing and yet completely resonant. And the video's a pretty good approximation. There may some drug that can abbreviated to it's first letter involved. But what the hell do I know about that kinda thing? Oh yeah and two Slowdive songs appeared in The Doom Generation. The one at the credits, Blue Skied an' Clear, was also really good but then something on YouTube claimed to be it and it wasn't the song I remember. Check out "Allison".

Slowdive - Allison

Pony Boy

I once saw the Arcade Fire play in Milwaukee on bill that included The Unicorns (who I call the Hughnicorns) and my friends' band The Holy Mary Motor Club. I enjoyed The "A.F"s performance a great deal. I went up to the table where the girl in the band who dates the singer (not the girl in the band who wasn't dating the singer) was sitting, and handed her a piece of paper that had some kind of terrible poem with the word "fart" in it. This other person named Anthony was standing next to me. We were vaguely trash-talking Montreal to her. The next day I stood up in a wedding and read a poem about love, having been asked to do so. The person in the bride's party just read a Kenneth Koch poem. Which I should have done because Kenneth Koch probably knew more about love then I do. The sun just came out. I now have a new understanding of the title to one of Kenneth's early works, When The Sun Tries To Go On. It could be like in the show biz sense of "Sun! You're on!". In a way, Kenneth Koch was the Lorne Michaels of that poem. Enter sun stage left. Huh? Huh? And the clouds have weight problems and stage fright. Or is it I who has those issues? What if I owned a motorcycle, like a Honda Goldwing? Do you think people would call me Honda Hauser? "There goes Honda Hauser on his Goldwing, off to another night of crime fighting." If you would like to be rescued by a pudgey man on a Honda Goldwing, please leave a comment in the comment box. I have a friend who once said, "What if Jesus were a Cyclops?", and I laughed for nearly five minutes. We were at Dairy Queen, and I always think of seeing the film The Outsiders and how there's a scene where Pony Boy is eating some sort of Sloppy Joe-type sandwich. And I always wished because of that that you could get some kind of Sloppy Joe-type sandwich at Dairy Queen. I don't know about you but I think they have the best fast food burgers. The sun just started trying to come out again. If you disagree that Dairy Queen has the best fast food burgers, please leave a comment in the comment box. Sometimes when I am talking to a visiting poet, I think it might be less awkward if we were at Dairy Queen. I once wrote a poem that is as follows:

Bless You

We fall asleep
inside Dairy Queen

We wake up
outside Dairy Queen

If you think that is scary, please leave a comment in the comment box. Joe Massey was asking people to help him name a press, and I just thought of Pony Boy Press. I am laughing now, but I think I may actually use it at some point. Now the sun is behind a cloud again, but it looks as though at some point it won't be.

A Geology of Groovy Patois

there’s only one way to rock
and that would be back-to-back
lexicon participle fracture

of course one would prefer
to have been asked
and given courtly shoes
to be hunted in

but hey that’s just me
I’m one of those
only-one-way-to-look-at-a-grease-stain-shaped-like-jesus
kinda guys

my friends have said I’m a kidder
or dead in the morning
but perky in the afternoon

warming up in the bullpen of love
Ned Yost is known to rest his head
on my knee

and everytime this happens
and the insert button is accidentally
depressed

we have to get up
drink coffee
pack our backpacks

and drive all the way
out to Watertown to
cheer this guy up

alone in bed
a certain slant of sunlight
away from feeling pretty ok

and he always said
“there’s only one way
to hunt for truffles”
and he would know

alternating between the resistance
to glossing one’s memory

and becoming an outright
candy-coated
lexicon of indifference to
shopping malls on the outskirts

which actually makes them
a little more fun

there are balloons
children in their pantaloons
who are really an inter-
ference within a much more

shrouded, desperate one

as inimitable as a of glass water
resting on the ledge of the air

as crystal clear as the light
between your thighs

which Rich say reek of
Honky Tonk Revenge Fantasies

but I think not

remember when we lost
Kip at the auto mall?

I’m taken back to those days
swimming through the aroma
of lemon grass

basking in total glow sperm
John Waters What-up moments
everywhere

we discover first that
out west Hardee’s becomes
Carl*s

with a splotchy star where
the asterisk would be

those days of kissing in stables
how recover those?

Justice,

I Guess This An Essay

It seems like whenever I read something in praise of Pavement, the writer is also quick to note that there are some Pavement tracks they definitely don't like. These devisive Pavement slay tracks have included "Hit The Plane Down", "Brinx Job" and "Fight This Generation". I don't dislike any of Pavement, that is I think it's beside the point. If you want concision, you really shouldn't be listening to them in the first place. To some extent I've always loved artists, be they Allen Ginsberg or Pavement, who are willing to fall on their faces once in a while. I think the greatest rock record of all time is probably The Raincoats. So that establishes that I like what others might call sloppiness. Why do I care why I like what I like tho? Especially since my taste doesn't make all that much sense to me anyway. I've always resisted liking things that I should like, just because I like these other things. I know that there are some people who are obsessives and have an encyclopedic knowledge of certain types of music or poetry or cuisine. But I've always kind of thought that I would never be one of those people (who I respect!), because after about 1 to 2 thirds of the way into the steeping process I just lose interest and move on to something else. I'm actually lucky to have been born when I was, because if I were kid now, I would probably be on every ADD drug under the sun. Which doesn't seem right. But I like to think that there are times when I can use this short attention span to my advantage, in making inroads toward post-avant membership (ha HA), or at least being willing to fall on my face in the process. And then there's sincerity. If I write something, I really don't see why anyone should go about investigating whether I meant it. But I do believe in two things I guess: one is devotion and the other is seriousness. This is how I understand devotion. Once I've published something, I will care about whether it's recieved to some extent by an audience that appreciates it and loves it, and I will also care about how it is recieved by that audience. As an addendum I also subscribe to a loose idea of being commited enough to the process that one is willing write things that are potentially stupid, embarrassing or even petty. This ties into how I understand seriousness, that once I've started writing I will follow that through or least investigate until the thing itself seems to be exhausted. Does this mean that I have to be exhausted? I don't know. For example as I write this, I'm not winded. But I'm interested in your response.

One of the most amazing readings of poetry I've ever heard in my life is here. I sat there listening to this, my mouth agape, like some joyfully retarded pumpkin. I think if I had actually been present at this reading, I would have caused some kind of scene. They would have asked me to leave, or stand outside, and I'd have had to spy on the rest of it, Creeley-peering-through-The-Cedar-Tavern-window style. So it's better that I was solitary in me room for it.

How Weird Is This?

A dream where I'm on tour with The Arcade Fire, and I think me and the blond one are like stranded in a McDonalds parking lot somewhere, until Marx comes by in his Hummer to pick us up, so we can catch up to the rest of the band on tour.

totally wired

Helium - XXX

Humor

I've been reading the Jacket discussion about humor in poetry, and apart from the entire thing getting bogged down in the question of what is "unintentionally bad" poetry, I've noticed that this and many other discussions of said topic seem to center on whether humor and poetry can be reconciled. But I like Kenneth Koch's quote, which can be read at right under the title of Jonathan Mayhew's blog: "The very existence of poetry should make us laugh. What is it all about? What is it for?" (Completely off-topic, I was never a student of Kenneth Koch's, but having an insight such as this must be a big part of what made him a great teacher.) Another idea Koch had was that the most absurd thing he could write was better than the most serious or solemn thing another poet could write, and so (my shakey interpretation anyway) we get a poetics of most absurd thought-best thought.

The problem with the perception of humor in poetry seems to be bound up in a tendency to approach humor from the perspective of seriousness. Whereas, as he himself points out, a person like Gary Sullivan came from humor to write works that, in the scariness of the truth that is illuminated, approach seriousness. Much the same way Lenny Bruce had material that was literally funny and scary. Thanks perhaps more to Kenneth Koch than anyone else, there is now a real indentifiable tradition of humor in American poetry.

Please understand that I'm not accusing the people were involved in that Jacket discussion of not having a sense of humor with relation to poetry, a sense of how humor relates to poetry, or a sense of how poetry in and of itself is humorous. But Silliman suggesting that (corrrect me if I'm wrong) humor has less staying power because it relies too much on a specific context, lit up a big WTF in my noggin, and seemed to steer the discussion for longer than it should have. If that's true, it would have to apply to all poetry.

The elements of humor, from irony to nonsequiter to satire to juxtaposition are so central to my own sense of poetry that I can't imagine what kind of dreadful tripe I'd be writing without them. And there's comedy abound in a work like Tjanting, tho not the same kind of humor in say The Simpsons. Coolidge? Hilarious. Rae Armantrout? Ditto. Likewise Berrigan, Ashbery, Notley, hell even Niedecker has a sense of humor, even if her work isn't always high-larious. (Though I could find some passages that are.) And of course there's Ron Padgett, who has the reputation of being a "funny poet". Two people on the guest list at my dream dinner would definitely be him and Steven Wright. Having no sense of humor is just not an option in poetry.

Sibylle Baier, Colour Green

Earlier this year, a friend lent me Colour Green by Sibylle Baier. Recorded from 1970-73 on a basic reel-to-reel machine after a trip through The Alps in Genoa, it's songs achieve a starkness that will make some recall a certain floppy-haired English songster who sang of pastel moons. Some may even say Sibylle Baier is the female version of this person, he of the Fruit Tree.

Sibylle Baier doesn't appear to have been among an entrenched folk music or hipster culture. She did appear in the Wim Wenders film Alice in the Cities and it's speculated that "Wim" is about Wenders. A google search brings up as many hits detailing that one film appearance as her music career.

But the music sets itself apart, with a deliberate wistfullness, and a sober ken for the basic struggle of one's existence. One might say that Sibylle Baier doesn't sound like a very happy person, but that's honesty they're hearing, which involves alot of pain. Most people aren't willing to soberly face pain.

The bareness of the compositions (all but the final "Give Me A Smile" find Ms. Baier's voice accompanied only by herself on the Spanish guitar) belie a melodic inventiveness that brings to mind at some points Joni Mitchell, but less jazzy. "Softly", for instance, has a subtly acrobatic structure, a steady sing-song besieged by an almost lilting chorus of "my daughter my son one by one". The lyrics for the most part address simple encounters with friends and lovers, the fact of those quietly intense moments. One imagines a person alone in her kitchen fingering songs she wrote, keeping time with whatever's at hand, alone with various prospects and possibilities.

"Remember the Day" begins with the simple intonation "remember the day/ when I left home to buy some food/ myself in my painful february mood/ I did what I could". It goes on to describe the circumstances of a trip to Genoa, which brought her face to face with "the cold ocean", returning to "I did what I could". This countenance of one's own striving, besides bringing to mind any number of Robert Creeley poems, displays an exceptional kindness toward the self and the circumstances that bracket it throughout a life.

Though the music is soft, it evokes the muted after-effects of a harrowing experience. But maybe all of life is beautifully harrowing.

No song is more poignant than "The End", a document of a person quietly struggling with the end of a friendship, dealing in the plain facts of the situation and what can't be known on any other than a purely emotional level: "dear friend I cannot tell the reasons/ why we started well/ good time/ gave me some wine/ when you opened the door/ you seemed hurt/ didn't try to speak a word to me."

Sibylle Baier sings in a kind of breatheless way, albeit with a diction sometimes as plain as speech. When I hear Colour Green, I'm reminded of how lyrical song, whether in the context of music or poetry, can help a person who is otherwise very shy articulate themselves, even in detailing loss.

This record achieves a feeling like being completely alone, at say 3 in the morning. So naturally it's perfect for listening late at night. The final "Give me a Smile" is a nice lush composition with strings abound, but it also demonstrates that if the previous 13 songs were given that same ornamental treatment (compared to a single person with guitar anyway), their subtle genius might have sounded slightly less audible. Ultimately, with this kind of music, one wants just the person doing it. Quietly, bravely.

So I have home internet now. Which means that while I'm writing this I can be sitting comfortably in my room, listening to The Fall. Which is nice. And a special thanks to Dave for that.

Before today, I would have to go to the library if I wanted to blog. Which maybe seems like alot of trouble to go but hey I'm unemployed right now. So this 'home internet' thing may actually mean I'll have to find more or other reasons to leave the house. I'll just have to hang out at Woodland Pattern more, but I want to avoid being there while they have staff meetings because it's awkward. It just is.

Another perk is that I can spend more time viewing old issues of The Impercipient. Again, I am faced with the realization that I cannot hold Bill Luoma's jock. As I read his poems, I feel moved to say that Bill Luoma is the King of something. An as yet undefined medium or realm.

Keeping with the theme of Mike's new home internet, I can hear a little voice in my head whipsering "be careful". See how I added a little foreshadowing there?

I love Joe Massey. He is a terrifically great, but this was his idea.

Joe Massey is an asshole because he is also a master of dangling participles.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he is a brown and pink conduit of bliss.
Joe Massey is an asshole because of his many appearances as “dramatization Wilford Brimley” on Unsolved Mysteries.
Joe Massey is an asshole because his baking interferes with my transcendental meditation.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he once grabbed a bouquet of flowers I was arranging and threw it out the window yelling “Isn’t life beautiful?! Isn’t life beautiful?!”
Joe Massey is an asshole because he bathes in Faygo strawberry soda, then stands upwind naked from a troupe of girl scouts.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he is close to ending the Joe Massey War.
Joe Massey is an asshole because of his many nipples.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he once flooded his own bathroom with cherry wine and copies of For The Union Dead, thereby raising all the union dead and giving them my address.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he won’t cancel his subscription to Columbia House for Zombies.
Joe Massey is an asshole because like Joe Brainard, he listens to boring girl groups and like Ron Padgett, he is a tight-ass.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he has the ability to levitate.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he likes to climb statues of pioneer folk heroes in town squares and sprinkle “Massey-dust” on them, thereby raising from the dead all the Native Americans who died at their hand and, again, giving them my address.
Joe Massey is an asshole because his pubic hair contains much-needed roughage and essential inks.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he once posted a naked picture of himself smeared in Oreo Cookie and M&M Blizzard from Dairy Queen to The Internet Poetry List Serve.
Joe Massey is an asshole because the caption below read “carpe Massey!”
Joe Massey is an asshole because he writes poems that tickle my inner poetry buddy.
Joe Massey is an asshole because he understands what being an asshole really means.

Milwaukee

There is a campaign to put a statue of one of our city's great icons downtown. I shit you not.

I don't trust the idea of a presupposed audience in poetry. I think that if you read poetry, you are a part of it. I might for example watch The Sopranos and enjoy The Sopranos, but it is pretty much impossible for me to make an episode of The Sopranos myself. I would need to at the very least meet with David Chase, and the executives at HBO, who would then supply me with the huge amount of money and resources that make an episode of The Sopranos. (And of course the fact that The Sopranos is no longer existent as a tv show... well that's never here nor there.) A poem on the other hand, requires only a love of the form to make. How much more DIY can you get? So the idea that poetry must be made accessible to an audience, I've decided I don't trust that. In fact, I don't think any poet should ever consider the idea of an audience, or a casual on-looking concern, people who want to come and spend their money but still be firmly relegated to spectator status. Poetry is already accesible to the audience, to make and understand as one sees fit. Self-consciousness could be one reason a person won't send their poems to myriad mags, the way others do. It's even a perfectly valid one. And one might just have a complete lack of desire to do so. But self-consciousness shouldn't prevent an audience from writing their own poems, thereby becoming a part of it's 'community', or whatever word feels more comfortable for you. If poetry is a large part of your life, there's just no excuse to not write poems yourself.

To stay with The Sopranos, which I love by the way, during an episode one is set at a defined remove from the action. Maybe to root for who gets and doesn't get wacked, but they're specators. There is of course some richness in interpreting the many layers on which the show functions, but this is firmly outside what comprises the show. And of course, there's the perverse lust of distancing that comes from celebrity. There's certainly less of that in poetry, or on a smaller scale anyway. But the cobirthing of a work's meaning is more immediately accessible in poetry than anywhere else. On a certain level, the reader is experiencing the work along with the writer. Either voluntarily or not, they are a part of their own consciousness of it.

I am feeling frustrated about not only my life, but about the poetry world in general. So I post about how I have lost my job and my confidence, and don't know where to send my poems. And about how I don't perform well at job interviews, and clam up at receptions following poetry readings. I voice suspicion about the nature of publishing in poetry, and especially about the nature of small press publishing in poetry. I apologize for no apparent reason to certain people, who I state that I feel I've let down. I decide to end on a more positive note however, and become earnest about the fact that I am a poet. And that this has something to do with the known universe. This is really the part that's hard, the part that puts a lump in my throat I can't remove.

Poet Laureate Inaugural Speech

Let me first say that I am honored
to be among you and to have been
named Poet Laureate
but on this day I am also ambivalent
oh so ambivalent to accept it
you see I don’t want to be one
of the snobs
I don’t want to be inducted into some
secret fraternity
I want to be
among my audience
who are my public
my role to constantly unveil
what I, in my humble analysis
have found to be
eternity
boy, do I wanna bring poetry to the people
for they need it so much
like they also need someone
to show them the light in their eyes
to show them the brief
yet entirely meaningful succor
that poetry affords us
and yes
they need it in a language they can understand
as well
a poetry of relatable experiences
with an eye beyond the mere contrivance
of form
with an eye
to the emulatable code of
humble pleasure, morality
and yes, life lessons
poems to be read by an audience
in airports, in line at fast-food drive-thrus
(I know one poet named Walt
who’d have loved that particular
modern luxury)
and in line at Church
to be read in traffic jams and football games and
DSL and all the
ethnic niches
that add such flavor to this great land
poetry needs an ambassador
a tall dark-haired man, who is well-spoken
with good social graces, well-trimmed nose hair
and an attractive wife
someone whom powerful men will again
be proud to have shared a clambake
and sunny boat ride with
during National Poetry Month

so let’s have no more of this
inwardly-directed sniveling
no more of this intentional difficulty
let’s have a poetry that reminds us
of the eternal truths
the truths that never stop being truths
a poetry of
when the going gets tough the tough get
tender
you see, I believe poetry should
be at least as
urgently entertaining as our best
televised culture
which though well-meaning-well
we abuse and unknowingly allow
the sophists into
to subvert and
self-consciously adorn
with their neuroses
their refusal to be clear
and yes, their resentment
of their audience
who after all
are you
like any other cherished tradition
we must guide and protect poetry
from subversive elements
from willful obscurity
and from itself, if necessary
we don’t want a poetry
that talks down
that condescends us
we seek a poetry
that transcends, and yet
makes poignant
our daily lives
our struggles and our triumphs

after all
if someone writes a poem in the forest
do you hear them?

The Strokes

edited so that a mighty saltlick
might portion the bargain hunters
grief as massage left in the sun
freeze dried assays own lap in erotica
moves into town next to my yard uh uh

this city is sleazy
you will note the potted geraniums, their garrulous look
you got the look
paunchy grandparents in slender dinette moments
tracing their calligraphy of smoke

some door I bought huh?
I ought to have saved all those suspenders, not to mention
their accompanying adjectives outsourced to endless nameless
chat shows, as the credits play

said enterprise is angry mist among rocks & water
investing such glancework and tansy as the yellow
arboretum lost you in some tick ticking green chest suit

they say that the animals can hear brighter kinds of
music culture than humans, collected poems rage as vegetable
juicer pro

infomersh is an important aspect of their humanity
I mean their culture I mean why don’t
young hip hop kids wear culture no more?

those bouncing backpacks in frizzy light
will have their revenge
we are all guilty of attitude adjustment to save energy
in our couches like glittering complacent mob wives

let truck wheels do their thang
shake it like yr being attacked by bees

we were out here a couple years ago
and found ourselves in a cave telling our troubles to steve wilkos

threatening espies tick ticking the blurred shrubberies along our tour
lastly mormon or not you must count down on fat
the beav, displaced lawnmowers

as a couple saved their price in deluxe
cornholio magnate invites them into a barn
hissing bugs yet the ripeness is a plunged sack of oranges

luck in this context would seem to befriend a warning
context of bushels flipping the public

where have all the game day meals gone?

Dream

I've always dreamed of being in a band of misfits where we play our instruments by not learning how to play our instruments.

Hi

I'm a recovering leaping poet

September

September Burger

The Classics

Sound of a thousand babies clearing their throats.

Coasting

Between 27% and 67%, is coasting.

I blog about a topic that is of interest to you, or perhaps just pose a question that stimulates you and you comment. Now you are over-heated, so you go into an adjacent room to drink Fresca. There's no Fresca, but you are still thirsty. You drink tap water, and stare out the window at a squirrel, which fills you with righteous indignation. You are Henry Rollins. You come back to your laptop, and you decide to visit your friend's blog. And they blog first how they have been masturbating alot recently, and then about Charles Olson. Next you go to visit Charles Olson's blog, and Charles Olson is blogging about diarhea. He's become a shut-in, one of the grown ups. You go to your other friend's blog to cool off. You are looking at flickr pictures of your friend with Terrence Trent D'arby in Cancun. You are thirsty again. You get up to leave the house to buy Fresca.

On the question of accessibility, I'm reminded (of all things) of the blurb Alice Notley has on the back of Bill Luoma's Works & Days. She writes basicly (I don't have it handy) that a book should be readable. This seems to tie in with how easily a work can be accessed by it's audience, that is understood on some level. Music is more visceral in how one interfaces with it than books are. And maybe a poem read aloud is more visceral, more directly involving the senses, than one that simply appears on the page, but only on a superficial level. The question is whether one's internal understanding of a poem, how they interface with it, produces a visceral effect. But I haven't heard yet, no pun intended, how poetry can produce the same effect one feels from hearing an extremely abrasive piece of music, which physically engages one regardless of any emotional or intellectual content it might have.

Some intitial thoughts on Strawberry Jam: The first song, "Peace Bone", sounds like Daniel Johnston. It's also built initially around what sounds like an extremely mangled recording of Wendy Carlos' interpretation of the lone ranger theme that appeared in A Clockwork Orange. There's a conspicuous dearth of Panda Bear, with exception to some harmonizing and the last song, "Derek". The sound has a much brighter, clearer sheen. Animal Collective albums have steadily flirted more and more with song-based forms, without following the stereotypical indie career arc of starting out obscure than "selling out"; they have gotten more accessible however. This sounds maybe the least like a horror movie of all AC records; less screaming, less of a sense of build-up in the song structures, less slashing dynamics. The accessibility seems to come from a sense of things being more to the point.

On Sunday I sat and watched old episodes of Masters of The Universe with friends. And though that nostalgic appreciation for it was there, it was interesting how none of us could really remember much of anything about it, except for the characters. This could be because Masters of The Universe was a character-driven series, or maybe the toys were better than their televised manifestion. (The movie, with Dolph Lundgren, is good for a few laughs.) More likely it was because we just couldn't remember. I mean listening to some punk band from your teenage years is one thing, but man, Masters of The Universe?

I hope no one ever says "get out your popcorn" in reference to this blog.

I wonder if there'll be a trend of begrudgingly liking James Wright. "Well it's not that bad." That kind of thing. I've written a little about how much I used to like his poems. He's definitely still one of those poets a student who doesn't know anything about contemporary poetry encounters first. Jonathan Mayhew makes a pretty good point here about the translated feel of the poetry. Those poets, from what I can tell, were obsessed with the idea that the only deep poets were Lorca, Vallejo, Rilke and a few others. Kind of a reverse xenophobia. But it seems people like Robret Bly made an artificial connection between these poets. Almost an ideology, which in part became the men's movement. There's a line in Robert Bly, that's like beating you over the head-- "innerness, innerness, innerness". Until one dissappears up one's own asshole? I dunno. You can't say that LV&R, though they became the flagships of "leaping poetry" are all from the same school. I don't know if they ever even met. Maybe Lorca met Vallejo at some point. I know Neruda met Lorca. We can probably thank Robert Bly for the instant association between Lorca and Duende. Of course I was guilty of all these things. In the end, there's something to be said for just taking James Wright's poems as "their own thing". I don't think art happens in a vacuum either, but sometimes the "own thing" approach allows one to do a more close reading. That's only one of the many angles from which one can approach a poem, but an important one once a person has already been inundated with so much background knowledge.

Wait...
Fuck all... that?

Will you please reply? In no time? Like, Richard-Dreyfuss-obnoxious right now?

Wha-the-fuck 'm I gonna do t'day?

If this blog were focused on donuts, it would be called Maybe I'm A Glazed. Is that the worst joke you've heard all day? Why or why not?

Do you feel that your poetry is like a cream pie headed for your face?

What is it with me and making almost identically-sized blocks of text? Is that a talent? Or better yet, my superpower? Ron's superpower is generating blocks of text that gradually increase in size, and mine is generating blocks of text that stay the same size.

Concerning the heavy duty shit being brewed up poetically at lime tree (and I say that mostly out of trying to diffuse just how blown away I am by some of the ideas Kasey is getting at, or that I think he's getting at), I have a whole bunch opinions just waiting to be articulated, though the wait could be anywhere between 5 minutes and 5 years. I have to say however that there is a certain characteristic that maybe could be called obscurity I tend to find very attractive in all kinds of art. Alot of times the term "willful obscurity" is used to detract from poetry. But I don't really care if I understand something right away. I like it when something gives me the feeling of being taken to an unfamiliar place. And I don't know whether this person is going to offer me a ride back to point A or not. There's alot to more to catachresis, I suspect, than making a poetics from "not making sense", it does keep bringing me back to the idea that sometimes art does nessecarilly have to eschew sense, for the sake of breaking new ground, unfettered from repeating itself. Poets repeat themselves alot of course, but poems they make definitely have the capability of repeating themselves less.
________

And I thought of the part in the Dylan documentary, where Bobby Neuworth claims that everyone's criteria back then was whether a piece of art or an artist had anything to say. Not that I'm constantly obsessing over Bobby Neuworth's aesthetics but I've heard this idea before and it's always kind of irritated me. I really don't care whether a poem has anything to say, that is in order for me to get some enjoyment out of it, it doesn't need to have a message like telling one to seize the day or commiserate with small furry mammals or go do the dishes. I'm with Frank, I don't care if you eat your vegetables. That is, the enjoyment you get out of something I make has nothing to do with whether you eat your vegetables. I can appreciate that kind of thing as a thematic element, like in alot of hip hop songs that contain a 'moral' or a 'lesson'. By all means, 'protect ya neck'. But it isn't essential that art tell you to do that, or anything else. It doesn't need to justify it's existence that way. I don't care whether this or that is 'earned'. "it doesn't matter whether we think the poet "really means" them; what matters is whether they get in our heads and make things happen there." Yep.

I have always hated the Monday-holidays: Labor Day, Memorial Day etc. I hate the 4th of July, because even though it doesn't fall on a Monday, the same thing happens. Which is, nothing. None of my friends are ever really willing to "get together" on these days, because I dunno we're just all too jaded or something like that. But it isn't the fault of any of my friends that I don't have a good time on these "holidays". And in truth, I'm probably much more jaded than any of them, at least in terms of constantly being sarcastic, distant and always sort of being on the margin of the whole social circumstance. And that's probably by choice though I do get lonely like anyone else.

In a literal sense, the reason I hate Monday holidays is the fact that libraries shut down. So I'm left with one less way to get myself out of the house. And it's not just that one day, it's the three day weekend where I always seem to slowly sink down into a morass of fidgety depression and anxiety.

Do you ever imagine that your poetry is like a tank, and you're driving around in it, but not like to destroy things? Just that it is that awesome?

The dream I had last night about trying to help Alice Notley find a bagel is based in something that really happened, when she stayed at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Milwaukee.

Last night I saw "Blades of Glory" and while it's not upto "Anchorman" standards (it doesn't have that cast, for one thing), I have to say that "I'll get inside your face" as a retort to "Get out of my face" is one of the funniest things I've seen in any movie recently.

Leonard Cohen named his daughter "Lorca". Should I name my daughter "Lord Alfred Tennyson"?

What is the appeal of black metal?

A dream where I had to go back to my dishwashing job, where somehow I was obligated to and there was no way to get out of it. And looking in The Sports Section at an article about how Steven Wright is actually a really great athlete. There's a picture accompanying the article that shows Steven Wright's rifle-like tennis swing. And also an article about a local couple who were involved in the Avant Garde in the 1930s and 40s, posing nude with their parts strategically covered. And I'm yelling at Ross in my father's living room, loudly complaining that there's no way I'm going back to that job. He's trying to explain to me how the person they have now comes in late, calls himself "Mr. Bumblebut" and uses the wrong exit to leave. And I'm getting really upset but then I wake up. And I'm very relieved.

My job interview at the Journal Sentinel was cut short today when it was determined that I only type 34 wpm. If I were Alice Notley I might have gotten that job! I guess that joke's not very funny. Just recalling how she once she said types very fast. I wonder what the words-per-minute on Alma is.

Ater that I went straight to try and secure Food Share assistance. It was... "sprinkling"?

Welcome to the future, poets!

I do "creepy" pretty well.

We are nearing the end of summer, when the blogging is dumb and the living, it's easy.

I have posted a possible a first step in my search for an antidote to 2 dollar word-itis here.

But I'd love to see some more monosyllabic coupons.

Thank you.

Somewhere in another dimension there may be a an alternate "bizarro" version of this blog, that is filled with all the entries I started and decided to abort. It may still be called unreliable zygote, or may have come under a gravely intense bout of influence by Billy Crystal movies, and have the title "baby fishpants".

I think I have 2 dollar word-itis. Can I write a poem with no 2 dollar words in it? Please leave some monosyllabic coupons in the comment box below.

I'm not good at knowing whether someone is joking. You might say, "Hey Mike, go fuck yourself." And I experience at least one moment of not-knowing.

This is funny because on New Year's Eve of last year, I became surly and drunk at the same time and I started yelling people's names out and then flipping them off whilst they looked back at me.

A few years ago, actually like eight years ago, I was with my friends Justin and Clay and one of them said that when you insult someone sarcastically, which we did alot, you actually mean it a little bit. So I don't know what it says about my personality, but I always take it a little personally when I shouldn't. I should say, "Ah fuck you, jagoff" or "Yeah well ya mutha didn't think so" or just "Ahhhh..."

All celebrities are weird and have weird twinkles in their weird eyes. You begin to think that they will bite you. But they won't. Their eyes reason with you as if you were some wild badger, raising Tom Hanks' iPod, in the wild. Their celebrity eyes totally glow in the NBA night. Which is/was their want. They are standing "at the crossroads", bottle of water, confidence bestowed by Tom Hanks. Their eyes leak iPod courage that is really neat. We're talking scarves, bandanas, babuschukas. Hot Pockets! Mellow grande appreciation of the foreform, Garrison Keiller's deft twaddle, radio knobs stabbed in corn cobs. Celebrity eyes floating down from Haven reassure you, appreciate you in value. Celebrity eyes glowing weirdly in streams and fibre optics, middle of night. Tom Hanks' car goes by on nerve. Cerebral cortex microwave. The celebrity eyes will close shortly, please save their work to a disc, they will appreciate in value. Weird weird nunchuck of green gables.

Why do I feel like someone out there is about to 'break it' to me? Please be gentle!

I'm SPOOKED

Today the library called me telling me that they had my floppy disc and I should come and pick it up. I thought this was a little weird, since I know I'm way too disorganized to have written my name on the disc, though I did remember leaving it. So the people at the library, many of whom I know and once worked along side must have gone into and found my resume with my info and called me based off of that. But then I get the disc and my name and number are written on it, only unmistakably in a handwriting that ain't mine. So I'm wondering if they did that. Maybe. I wait for a computer to open up. I go sit down, and I look at the disc. Now I remember this disc and I remember that I only put one document on it, my resume. But now there are three documents. One is a note to me from the person who found it, telling me that I seem like a great guy but resume is too wordy so they rewrote it. They also tell me in bold lettering that they mean me no harm. And I'm like, what? There's harm in question? Thanks for the reassurance I guess. So this person who means me no harm happens to know where I live... Hmm... Oh and they signed the end of their message, "your guardian angel on earth, S."

I guess this is what it took to get me to stop leaving discs at the library, so thanks S.

By the way, my resume does look more concise and professional now, so I guess, thanks for that too S.

So I'm minding my business, riding my bike, loving my bike in two worlds really, when whose playing in front of Beans & Barley but Perry Farrell, Mr. Lollapalooza himself. I'm all like, "Dude fuck dude.", so I stop, pull down my pants to get his attention and I'm all like flipping him off and yelling "Dude you suck, dude! Just quit dude!". And then I'm all eating a kielbasa no licking out the remains of my Dannon yogurt and Perry Farrell is on stage just like, "Oh my god! This fat truthteller does have my number! I say, old boy! I'm going back to Venice!" And I just yell, "Beyatch!", and that's it. I'm loving Beans & Barley in two worlds, and eating out this kielbasa, totally throwing "metal fingers". You know...

Then Perry Farrell all of sudden jumps off the stage and next thing I know, dude's fuckin suplexing me like I'm some fuckin cornish game corndog dude. And then I'm layin there with fuckin asphault encrusted yogurt all over my face, and Perry Ferrell's all back on stage and he's flying down, a tap-tapping his elbow, which is The Flying Elbow smash. I'm like "No!" The impact of Perry Ferrell's elbow was hard and fast, but then I look and I'm like "Whoah, dude hit his forehead on one of the lights!" So now's my oppurtunity, I smear yogurt and organic cream pie all up in his face, and he collapses and I collapse. In his arms. And now me and Perry Ferrell are loving each in two organic cream pie worlds, totally making out. He's buying me a plane ticket, one way. I'm like, "Dude, I've just been really frustrated and shit." And he's like, "No need to apologize old boy!"

TO BE CONTINUED

Who knew cooking a damn bratwurst could be so difficult.

______

propositions are integrated within
jet up to electric dog status
we pat on you on the back
your ears prick up
we call you hitler
and then kick you around like homogenized milk

-- The Fall

The reader is not Mark E. Smith. I wonder who it is.

______

A piece of paper was left next to this computer with "GNOSSIENNE 1" written on it.

Anne's right. To name something 'blue eyed soul' is more ironic than dumb. Is it that it's easier to be ironic than it is to be dumb? Dumb is hard. And easy at the same time.

And now I'm excited about gerunds. What is about that decade? I came in right at the end, so the 70s are somewhat of a mystery to me. But I do know that gerunds are rife for satire. Here are some gerundic titles:


Shoving The Hoarse Marsh

Spooning David Lehman

Spooning David Lehman In Two Worlds

Gathering The Wet Butts

Gathering The Wet Butts On Sunday

Gathering The Wet Butts On Sunday At Noon Because The Green Bay Packers Don't Play Until Three

Humping The Well

Cloning The Sheep For Jesus

Peering Into The Taco's Heart

Shlupping Around Venice With Andy Rooney

Loving Andy Rooney In Two Worlds

Diving Into The Pool

Fussing Over Procedure

Sweating Like Roger Ebert (not mine)

Breakdancing In The Afterlife

Fluting Miscreant Oboes

Shucking The Early Corn

Glancing Toward Midnight

So the list of albums, which can scrolled down to, is starting to get perhaps obnoxiously long. Probably no longer a 'desert island' collection. But I like trying to remember all these albums. I'm kind of ashamed to say I no longer own the majority of em. Moving to Milwaukee with no money in 2000 nessecitated selling alot of the 3-400 disc collection I had. Is Milwaukee worth trading all that music for? I guess. So the list is kind of a pasty nerd version of that Willie Nelson song. For All The Music I've Loved Before. And I'm serious about the last one on that list, tho it's strictly a sentimental attachment that goes back to my early adolescence. I can't really justify it any other way.

Is this the dumbest name [above] I could have given this blog? For some reason I'm really into the idea of giving this blog the dumbest name possible without resorting to like 'poogie poo poo party pants' or something like that. I mean naming a blog after the genre of music Hall & Oates play is pretty dumb right?

Today as I was crossing an intersection on my bike, I heard one of the passengers in a pickup truck waiting to cross utter the phrase "moron on a bike". That's funny!

Mairead Byrne is a very very funny person.

There needs to be more flirting on this blog, besides just me with myself.

Actually on second thought, forget it. Flirting does me no good.

Well it's looks like all the blogs are closin up for the day.

I'm interested in your body fat.

Miscommunication

You look down, but I'm up here.

I'm in the mood for Kenneth Anger and Nashville Skyline.

Tom Petty

Why do people listen to Tom Petty?

There is an episode of Strangers With Candy in which all Flatpoint High students are assigned to submit a photo that illustrates what free speech means to them. So Gerri submits a nude photo of herself with legs spread wide. But upon seeing this photo, Principal Blackman exclaims 'Snatch it down!'. Well, ever the defendant of free speech, Mr. Jellineck offers a 'censorship' story of his own, in which he had some paintings on display, but no one bought any of them. So he convinces Jerri to go on a 'hunger strike', which consists of her sitting in the school display case until they 'win'. And once Principal Blackman offers to buy one of Jellineck's leaf collages, Jellineck considers the battle won. Jerri however refuses to end her hunger strike, which was a stipulation in Blackman and Jellineck's deal. Jellineck is outraged at Gerri's uncooperativeness and lashes out, "Why are you censoring me Gerri?!"

I want to know your favorite albums. Or least favorite. Or just what albums knocked you on your asses. Here is a list in no particular order. Ok so I'm getting a little carried away...

Pavement- Slanted & Enchanted
Beach Boys- Pet Sounds
Beatles- The White Album
The Raincoats- The Raincoats
Erik Satie- Played by Ciccolini
My Bloody Valentine- Loveless
Wu Tang Clan- Enter The 36 Chambers
Aphex Twin- I Care Because You Do
Aphex Twin- Ambient Works Vol II
Panda Bear- Person Pitch
Charles Mingus- Pithecanthropus Erectus
Pavement- Crooked Rain Crooked Rain
Billie Holiday- As Time Goes By (a generic CD my Mom got in the mail from the Bravo Network for some reason, but the recordings are amazing)
Nick Drake- Pink Moon
Elliot Smith- XO
Sonic Youth- Daydream Nation
Public Enemy- It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
Eric B & Rakim- Paid in Full
Van Morrison- Astral Weeks
Rolling Stones- Exile on Main Street
Can- Future Days
Love- Forever Changes
Zombies- Singles Collection
Mercury Rev- See You On The Other Side
Pavement- Brighten The Corners
Velvet Underground- Velvet Underground
Husker Du- New Day Rising
The Stooges- Funhouse
Lisa Germano- Happiness
Nas- Illmatic
Suicide- Suicide
Sonic Youth- Experimental Jet Set Trash & No Star
Joanna Newsom- The Milk Eyed Mender
Animal Collective- Sung Tongs
Animal Collective- Feels
Panda Bear- Young Prayer
Charles Mingus- The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady
A Tribe Called Quest- The Low End Theory
Lee 'Scratch' Perry- Arkology
The Fall- A Sides
Tricky- Maxinquaye
Plug- Drum & Bass For Papa
Wagon Christ- Tally Ho
Dances With Wolves- Soundtrack

Another poet I dug closely in my Serious Midwestern Young Man phase was James Wright. And when I read his poems I still like them on some level. I don't know if liking something is a problem or not. The guy has an ear for poetry. Listen to this:

Two athletes
Are dancing in the cathedral
Of the wind

Sonically that's pretty beautiful. Even if the line breaks are a little clunky. It's from "Spring Images", which can be found in The Branch Will Not Break.

I was heavily influenced by stuff like this for awhile. I tried to write a poem called "Inviolate Child", that was filled with long, mellifluous lines about a kid who lived under a tree in my Dad's backyard or something. I eventually abandoned the project.

Have you ever had a teacher, who inspired you at the time, and you needed that, but then you look back and realize that you are now in complete disagreement with much of what they said. For example, "you should read Robert Bly", which I did, and so for awhile I was one of those aspiring faux deep image poets, all hung up on 'image' and such.

An important breaking away point for me was reading The Sonnets, which somehow fit in with my weird worldview and nascent buddhism, I liked it immediately. But The Sonnets also allowed me to see all these other tributaries in plain view from where my writing currently was. To my mind it had some 'leaping', actually a dazzling, breathtaking, heartbreaking amount of 'leaping', but it was also much more free in it's associations and syntax then most work I was into at the time. And eventually of course, I came to realize that the whole concept of 'leaping' is actually pretty questionable, and that the whole deep image thing was basically an appropriation of the 'raw' by the 'cooked'.

I have serious 'earworm' from that Tegan and Sara song from last night's Conan. Even tho it's obviously snugly in the category of what I have pompously referred to, among friends, whilst enduring Iron & Wine, or getting snagged on any number of Grey's Anatomyesque tv dramas, relationship music. I don't quite know what it is, but I feel a palpable difference between music that is responding to or invoking a feeling of love (say to use an obvious example, Pet Sounds, or perhaps ironically but not reallly ironically, Loveless), and that music that to me just sounds like two Generation Y hipster-yuppies who live in say Williamsburg, Brooklyn or on the East Side of Milwaukee having a fight. A type of music that more than anything just alienates me, maybe from lack of that kind of experience. But seriously, there is a vein of 'indie' music come along in the last decade that resembles James Taylor and Carly Simon in sentiment and sound, no?

But all that said, the chorus of 'I just want back into your head' is at least not too cliched, and that terse piano line is about a good a hook as I've heard in a long time. And I find the way they sing way less grating actually than the Iron & Wine wispy-hope-you've-never-heard-Nick Drake mode of earnestness. You can interpret this in whatever way you like, but I think a woman's perspective is just more interesting when it comes to this proto-Garden State type Indie Rock.

Getting back into this album-- oh my GOD is it hot!

"There are blue shadows between people, there's a comfortable forest of legs."
-from Waltzing Matilda, "My Bodyguard", by Alice Notley

I'd have to say that Zodiac is one the best "Hollywood" films I've seen in a long time. It's just so meticulous. By far the best approximation of a period I've seen in a film. As for the chemistry between Mark Ruffalo's raspy bulldog cop and Jake Gyllenhall's boy scout with whiskers, it's maybe the lone weakpoint. Gyllenhall's earnestness just ain't as fun to watch as Ruffalo's slow boil. Robert Downey Jr plays a character who's exactly what you would expect a character played by Robert Downey Jr to be like- whimsical, cranky, jokey, flippant (as in flipping bird while leaving San Fransisco Chronicle copy room etc). But he hardly phones it in, and no one else does either in a cast that includes two of my favorite character actors, Elias Koteas and Philip Baker Hall. And there's also some of the best use of music in a film I've witnessed, especially in the murder scenes that are almost as well executed as HItchcock. And that opening song is by Three Dog Night? Does that I mean like them now? Oh well.

Fatables.

Shouldn't athletes just be allowed to do whatever drugs they want?

I know the arguement get's made that they're 'role models', but these 'role models' are already multi-multi-millionares living in a country where most of their fans will soon be looking at the concept of upward mobility as a quaint notion from the past.

Yesterday I was listening to 'Range Life', and this line just hit me like a gut punch, which it always does.

'school's out, what did you expect?'

This just somehow completely encapsulates life for me. And not just cause I'm not attending school. Maybe it's that the line's preceded by:

'but I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame

don't worry, we're in no hurry'

Since Malkmus is saying 'but I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame', the bridge of 'don't worry, we're in no hurry/ school's out, what did you expect?' could maybe be looked at as a response, maybe even like a Greek chorus of... no, no, I won't say slackers, but people who're somewhat drifting thru life. But then there's the response-within-a-response of 'school's out, what did you expect?'

The tone of the song ultimately seems like one of exasperation, 'if I could settle down, then I would settle down'.

Does anyone else like Freaks & Geeks? Wasn't the way it ended kind of lame? I mean c'mon, a Deadhead?!?

I think the posts on this blog fall into two categories, with some exceptions of course. One category is where I attempt to write a certain kind of prose, say in the area of poetics or criticism. And the other is usually a one-sentence explanation of why for whatever reason I'm just not up for an 'attempt'. Today I guess I was up for one of those attempts.

One of the most fascinating things to me about Clark Coolidge's work is the ark of his career. It's seems like one can divide it into roughly these phases: 1) in the late 60s, the early work, radically disjunctive, sort of word nuggets that form short jigsaw narratives like in Space, 2) in the early 70s, longer endlessly recombinatory works like in Polaroid, The Maintains and to somewhat of an ebbing-back-into-narrative-mode extent, Quartz Hearts, 3) in the late 70s, the more narrative Solution Passage, Mine: The One That Enters The Stories, 4)in the 80s, serial texts like At Egypt, and The Crystal Text. But it's also evident that as the work progresses, Coolidge is able to utelize all these various modes in more of an overlapping way. This 'career-ark' mutates to somewhat of an extent. On The Nameways Vol. 2, for example, utelizes disjunction, narrative and seriality. A Collected Coolidge, tho it would probably have to more than one volume, would go a long toward putting all this into focus.

I get hogtied in self-examination. You can definitely do that too much. But then I feel as tho I've let alot of people down, including myself. So now what, do I just write more poems? I mean I'm sitting here and I have a life. You're sitting there, and you have a life. But the thought tends to go something more like, "I'm sitting here, and you're over there working." I think work is important but I can never quite trust it. Last night I watched Manufacturing Consent again, and Chomsky said something like, "I just don't think people should have to rent themselves out in order to live." And then of course the response is always, "Ha ha, well yes Mr. Chomsky but you are a little naive about the world." Tom Wolfe in his fucking dandy suit endlessly placing everything in an imaginary context, and then still having the nerve to call what someone like Chomsky says 'patent nonsense'. So what is work? And where is this all going? And why do I feel like Sarah Jessica Parker, posting questions on my blog? I suppose I am naive. My left arm hurts.

We want poems that show us how much of the world?

For some reason I really want to listen to Phil Collins right now. The library is closing.

WHOAH!!!

Looking forward to appearing, sans glasses, in this film.

Ah... AH CRAP!!

John Coletti's wikipedia page.

Something that occured to me last night:

Would humans have domesticated animals if clothes hadn't been invented?

I mean, would you feel comfortable with a kitten your lap if you were naked?

Five Simpsons episodes and leftover shrimp fried rice. Eat out your hearts workaday types, or umm are they hiring there?

Some kind of weird sinus thing here, like I just squirted water out of my nose or something.

Today as I was crossing the Locust St bridge, I saw two DPW workers standing next to a red fire hydrant vomiting yellow water from it's mouth.

Crying while dialing the phone. Crying while drinking water. Crying near a zebra. Crying while smoking. Crying while quitting smoking. Crying while looking at candy. Crying while it's raining. Crying in a barn. Crying backchannel. Crying while sleeping.

WAH WAH WAH!

WAH WAH WAH!

etc.

Crying while eating a peanut butter sandwich means.... get help?

_____


Last night Calvin Johnson moved me and 40-50 others upto, and past the point of tears. He's one of the most incredible performers I've ever seen in my life. He did a capella versions of a couple songs, interpretive dancing while singing.

_____

The Trusty Knife are also amazing to me, whatever that phrase means. After spending most of my night upto that point feeling sorry for myself and passive-aggresively interacting with others, they started in on "Long Distance Song". I'd heard it, but this time I got this burning feeling while listening to it, that I am lying to myself, that I don't even have the ability to be truthful with myself, and that in fact we're all lying to ourselves.

Time for me to write about The Tiny, which I'm in, but never mind that. This is the only magazine I can think of where in every issue I like almost every piece at least a little. And Gina Myers and Gabriella Torres hit a home run by placing John Coletti's amazing work up front:

I miss you with tomatoes

over your eyes tattoed valentines

on your trachea zippering

each of my ungainly comments

Just about every Coletti masterwork blows my head off with a nonchalant cosmic whoosh. Detail woven with sensory perception, joined to a kind of emotional pull that's stitched into it so intricately you almost feel it on a subconscious level.

it's getting dark

in masculine wilderness

American Hydrant

little high, little low

Coletti's work never shys away from apparent obscurity, but the ink-blotter feel of the poem is always a product of devotion. A reader can feel as though they're in strange territory, but it is never unfreindly territory. Obliqueness need not be a cold thing, and one can see Malkmus, Ceravolo, Dickinson etc, for further proof.

C.J. Martin's poem here does a neat job of addressing the act of making art, without seperating art from life:

BUSHEL MECHANISM -
else than mechanical draft,
if to increase the between
(touch & thing):
this means drafts, chances.

I'm very allured by passages like this, which almost combine the sensiblities of Emily Dickinson and early Clark Coolidge. And The Tiny specializes in this kind of modern lyric steez.

Also great in this issue is work by Edmund Berrigan, Joseph Massey, Brenda Iijima, Andrea Baker, Dustin Williamson, many more. The Tiny is a contender. Dig it!

I watched Wild Style for the first time last night, and yes it was good. That time period, late 70s early 80s, also presented in Style Wars among other films, was a pretty major ferment of creativity. But you probably don't need me to tell you that. Wild Style can easily be forgiven for abruptly turning into a concert film at the end, since the music is so fucking inspiring. I keep thinking, even tho alot of poets have been listening to hip hop since the start, maybe poetry hasn't fully explored the possibilities of that culture. Or maybe in some way poetry shuns them, for not wanting to seem "performancey". After that we watched Wu Tang's "comeback concert" from a few years ago, which tho very sloppy, has some of the old flava. I always saw Wu Tang as one of few cases where the feeling of it being a throwback- certain bounce to the ounce, a large crew, tag team MCing- was a good thing. I think the music's aged better than groups like Jurrasic 5 to say the least. Not to mention how the old skoolness of it was balanced out by RZA's incredibly innovative production. And there's the very sad and heartwarming recurrence of Ghostface trying to cheer up ODB, who's literally slumped down on the side of the stage for most of it.