No Host Tincture

splat zblat you talkin at?

Ma Ma Ma Root Canal

always chewing so carefully, yes
I do fear I may
fall into the basin of history at some point----------

High Brow Maintenance

Dear readers, I'm afraid the blogs haunt my dreams! Bad, no?

Also: "goat church".

Get yr sweat on, he said, fr chirst's sake, look out where yr going.







STACY! SZYMASZEK & SARAH BUCCHERI

Tuesday July 7th 8pm

Salacious Banter Sweathole
900 S. 5th St. (5th & Walker)
Enter on Walker (door now marked
LOBBY for your convenience)

There will be some food and drink, but feel free to BYOB.

Everyone knows and loves STACY SZYMASZEK. But if you happen to be one of the uninitiated, we'll save you a googling:
Stacy Szymaszek is the Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York City. Her work has appeared in Lvng, Aufgabe, antennae, Crayon, Xcp, 26 and online at The Cultural Society. She has also been featured online by Chicago Postmodern Poetry and Here Comes Everybody. She is the author of Some Mariners (EtherDome Press, 2004), Mutual Aid (gong press, 2004), There Were Hostilities (repair, 2005) and Pasolini Poems (Cy Press, 2005). She grew up in Milwaukee, WI.


Also beloved and beknown is SARAH BUCCHERI.
Sarah Buccheri was born and raised in suburban Chicago. After a stint in New York City, she now resides in Milwaukee, Wis. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s degree in film from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Aside from her film and video work, Sarah is a performer and collaboratively produces regular performance art evenings at Darling Hall, one of Milwaukee’s finest underground art spaces. She has performed at The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, Galapagos Art Space, and at a variety of venues across the U.S. Most recently, she toured with a new show titled EPHKLATCHEMERAL, a collaborative performance that premiered at Baltimore’s 5th Annual Transmodern Festival 2008.

Stacy will be celebrating the release of her new book HYPERGLOSSIA, just out from Litmus Press. Bring yr checkbook, dummy.

I don't get the use of "cutting edge" to describe so-called innovative or experimental art or writing. I think it's even worse than "post-avant". "Cutting edge" to me is where one found Depeche Mode CD's in the record store in 1992. Sorry.

Last night it rained very hard which was accompanied by alot of thunder. I had to put more than one receptacle under all the leaks in the ceiling, which included the light fixture. Is that really dangerous?

I've had a stomach ache and/or toothache for about 2 weeks now.

Another thing I don't get is the idea that writers need to have sufficiently adventurous lives. Like there is a quota. "I will not know what poetry is until I experience this, this and this." How about until you experience poetry? I think a writer could have what by most standards is a sedentary, normal life, and still produce great work.

Riders On The Blogs

Today I got up and opened my window and it was very beautiful outside. It was mild with a slight breeze.

I'm currently reading Silliman's Under. Like many other Silliman texts, it's kind of a narrative whirlwind/pool of keen particulates and wending detail-- kind of like a steadily tornado-ing text. He's always cited composers like Reich as an influence. In the reading of it, I find I get tricked by what seem to be 'personal' details strewn among details that seem clearly to not be 'personal' details. But the aesthetic is that it's all personal and that nothing is personal hence, no? Holding The Alphabet is kind of a nice hardy pleasure all it's own. Some of the daunting prospect of it's near Yellow Pages thickness is removed when you realize you have your whole life to read the book.

I must say I don't really get this new 'shitgaze' stuff. Alot of it just sounds to me like music that's so intentionally oblique and unintelligible as to be almost a forceful projection of jaded resignation, rather than say anger, fear, joy, lust... I mean music can be a vessel for a whole lot of emotions, come to think of it all emotions at various points, if that makes any sense. Apart from shitgaze, alot of Indie Rock seems to rely on this a-priori sense of a personal, solitary experience, a shared experience but shared in seperate spaces with pockets of media and groups of people; music that generates a vague projection of the experience of, well, growing up middle class and white.

I do like alot of lo fi stuff. Who knows maybe I'll change my mind in a couple months. And I grew up middle class and white. I love Pavement, Guided By Voices etc. So I may just be recognizing all that in my self.

Probably one of the reasons I wouldn't make for much of a music critic is that (besides really probably my almost compulsive like compulsory use of qualifiers in my own prose) I don't see any reason to take a position on most music in the pop realm. Though I guess I did do that in the paragraphs above.

Today I'm blogging but this may be just another prelude to another long silence. Who knows?

My own prose is a source of constant frustration for me. I post things here that I cringe at almost immediately after and have to force myself not to take down. A poetry blog like I once did might be more suitable, who knows. But I feel kinda like I already did that. Yeah they're still there, feel free to peruse.

Update: There's a pretty good chance I had a booger in my mustache the entire time I was asking my building manager whether he thinks the postal carrier would take outgoing Netflix just now.

Feel Like Makin' Blog

Someone who I knew-- a charming and wonderful person for sure --told me last week that I have a "cute little nose". So I have an idea for a sketch or short film, or performance piece that involves standing in front of mirror at 3 in the morning or some such time of angst and pointing in the mirror and saying over and over: "You got a cute little nose... a cute little nose... do you hear me a cute little nose."

This could possibly work as a way of getting myself pumped up before a reading. I've always thought I could use some kind of Dirk Diggler pre-performance ritual type thing.

I've been reading, in a completely non-linear way (this is half chalk-up-able to a short attention span) Jennifer Scappetone's From Dame Quickly. I really dig how it can go at a sort of half-tethered to syntax kind of way but also channel the various transmissions and mental debris of culture. The lyric is airtight, I think. Reminiscent a little maybe of LangPo from back in the day, but also a necessary update.

Also:

I dredge alledgedly
to repair and upgrade the Port of Umm Qasr
I edge legibly duty free
transrational contract drag
well I pledge alien
lesions will be doled

-- this feels like something I've thinking about trying to attempt myself, unless I completely misunderstand. And I feel like that would be ok, since the above from Delection Even, and the more projected pieces like Beauty, could be read just as much for sonic pleasure.

On Tuesday, I almost got hit by a car whilst trying to turn left onto Van Buren St. I was out pretty much in the middle of the street on my bike at a redlight waiting for the cars going in the perpindicular direction to pass, but one of em decided not to go straight like I'd planned for it to and it's left turn action almost took me out. Also I didn't have my lights on and it was raining and dark.

Today I realized my dental insurance is pretty much only useful if you're the kind of person who's been taking care of their teeth for years, and only need a cavity removed every once in a while and the occasional cleaning, and not if you need extensive oral surgery like I do. Shit.

Q: What does Lil Wayne play in his spare time.

A: Rock, paper, sizzurp.

Addendum: My attempt to connect Lil Wayne to sizzurp was either completely erroneous, or this joke was not funny. Though in my defense, I imagined an invisible "get it" behind the punch line that was designed to exempt me from any "bad joke blow back". But irony, like Jenga, often collapses under it's own weight. Just another example of that Hauser exceptionalism. -- 7-3-09

rob Peter to PayPal

Impending funnyness, uh, Great Job!

Get To Know Sprung Formal

This shit just makes me feel lucky, almost makes me feel paranoid, but in a good tingly way. I can't wait for my copy of Sprung Formal to arrive. I'm being a little impatient, I know. Actually I don't think I've gotten mail for like the last 3 days. Is that weird? Should I call the post office or something? But once again, you get such a fine assemblage of poets, writers and artist-type persons as Eirikur Orn Norodahl, Josef Kaplan, Brandon Brown, Alli Warren, Jasper Bernes, David Perry, Kari Frietag, Todd Colby, Sarah Luther, Linda Lay, Sarah Sarai, Nada Gordon, Sawako Nakayasu, Jordan Stempleman, Ryan Daley, Nathan Logan, Edwin Torres, James Meetze, Sarah Mangold, Alex Savage, Maurice Burford, Jess Rowan, Charlie Mylie, and in the mix you also get some stuff I did. You know this is gonna be good.

Get To Know Puppy Flowers

I have poems in the lamentably last issue of Chris Martin's great Puppy Flowers. I've been aware of Puppy Flowers as one of the really cool and unique Internet publications for several years. I remember for one seeing some poems by my great friend John Tyson, who I predict will make an LL Cool J-esque (don't call it a) comeback in the next few months. They should still be in the PF archives. But you have to look for 'em, and get to know Puppy Flowers in the process. The line-up for this issue though is pretty freakin' stellar in it's own right: Anselm Berrigan, Dorothea Lasky, CAConrad, Buck Downs, Cori Copp, Jason Morris, Corine Fitzpatrick, Andy Hughes, and Matthew Zapruder. I'm honored to have my stuff among theirs.

Favorite Vocalists: Part One

Stephen Malkmus-
I kind of want to say "Steve", or really "SM", because he wasn't really "Stephen Malkmus" with Pavement, which is what I'm thinking of. Malkmus' pouty, rubbery singing might the thing that really keeps me coming back to Pavement over and over. And I've actually not heard or read alot about his vocal style as a quality in their music, except for the "slacker" "not really trying" line. My friend Zack Pieper, who might also be one of my favorite vocalists, once made a remark about Malkmus coming into his own as a torch singer on Brighten The Corners. But for me, it's circa Crooked Rain Crooked Rain and Wowee Zowee more specifically "Heaven Is A Truck", "Rattled By The Rush", "Brinx Job" that get my tearducts a-flowin'.

Elizabeth Fraser-
For "Heaven Or Las Vegas", "Orange-Appled", "Sugar Hiccup" and more. Her voice gets softer, more sensual, and louder at the same time.

Mark E. Smith-
Yeah, The Fall. He was the James Brown, Fela Kuti, Duke Ellington, and Archie Bunker of post-punk. His memoir, Renegade, is a great read. I kind of want some leftover instrumental tracks from Hex Enduction Hour, or Grotesque (After The Gramme) for reading to.

Ariel Pink-
For "Strange Fires", "Oceans Of Weep" and more. One of my favorite live experiences is seeing Ariel Pink open for Animal Collective in 05. It reminded me of what I'd imagined a Suicide show might've been like, at least the experience of it: vocals reverbed to the point of unintelligibility, drums even more reverbed, like industrial music almost. You really got the sense this singer did not like you. And the keyboardist is grabbing the bassist's shirt for some reason. Like Bowie's voice in a blender at a pagan ceremony.

Brian Wilson-
Yeah it will start to feel really ridiculous if I try to remark on why every vocalist on this list is amazing. I mean, Brian Wilson. Nuff said. But ok, him doing "Wonderful", accompanied by harpsichord from the original Smile sessions, is one of the most beautiful things you'll hear in your life.

Billie Holiday-
"Detour Ahead", from some bootleg off a CD my mom once got in the mail from Bravo Network.

Damo Suzuki-
"Future Days" cooing. Best cooing in general.

Billie McKenzie-
"18 Carat Love Affair", not to mention very excellent lip-syncing there of.

Elliot Smith-
All the popular choices. Specifically, for one example at least, "No Name #3".

Rakim-
What do they say, flow? "I Ain't No Joke"

The Flamingos-
"I Only Have Eyes For You" 's bridge has the best, most bliss-inducing (for me anyway) moment in pop music.

Nick Drake-
For all of Pink Moon. Also, the strings on "River Man" (from Five Leaves Left) give a great vocal performance reminscent of Nick's own hum.

Joanna Newsom-
I have gotten some shit for my love of Joanna Newsom. 'Prententious lyrics?' So what, you only listen to Lou Reed? 'She plays the harp?' So what, you got a problem with Harpo Marx too? And Debussy's orchestration of Troi Gymonpedies?? 'Concept album?' So what, you have never honestly enjoyed a concept album? Not St. Pepper? Zen Arcade? Not any of them? She sings like a dolphin! For a second anyway, on "Only Skin". If you don't like that there's " "En Gallop" ".

Kate Bush-
"Hounds Of Love", "Big Sky". Just think of her as the person who existed so Joanna Newsom could exist. Also watch the video for "Unbelievable" on YouTube. And "Wuthering Heights", the version with just her dancing in a field.

Lil Wayne-
"I Feel Like Dying". Would it be a completely dumbass thing for me to say he's the Kurt Cobain of Hip Hop? Tricky with with more (er, utilized anyway) MC skills? (I love Tricky, at least early-Tricky, but...)

Calvin Johnson-
Calvin delivered the most amazing vocal performance I've ever seen in person a few years ago Milwaukee School Of Engineering's Todd Wehr Center. Alone on stage, swaying, sashaying, completely earnest, singing a capella "When Hearts Turn Blue". Beautiful.

Green Gartside-
"The Word Girl (Flesh & Blood)". Actually now I have a conundrum, because I think Green is my fav for cooing instead of Damo.

Katy-Jane Garside-
Incredible, scary vocals all throughout Daisy Chainsaw's music, but "Pink Flower" esp. the second half of the song is one of the peices of music I'm familiar with where the description 'terrifying and beautiful' might actually be apt.

Raekwon-
"Verbal Intercourse" and other classics off Only Built For Cuban Linx actually make it kind of a toss-up between Raekwon and Ghostface, but I've always liked Rae's flatter tone, which seems like it allows for a better verbiage to flow ratio, on Linx anyway.

Lou Reed-
Thinking of the Velvets I guess. "What Goes On", "Jesus". Feel like I should give props to Doug Yule for "Candy Says" too.

Matt Henriksen
Mike Hauser

Thursday, May 14th 8:00pm

900 S. 5th St.
(5th & Walker. Enter on Walker. One block south of National)
$5 suggested donation

As usual, there will be some food and drink, but really, feel free to bring your own.


Matthew Henriksen has two chapbooks forthcoming in 2009--Another Word from DoubleCross Press and Only Grows from Cue Editions--and compiled a selection of Frank Stanford's unpublished poetry and fiction to appear in Fulcrum Annual. He co-edits Typo and publishes Cannibal Books at his current home in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

This is his:

No Reality But the Ruined Idea of a God We Speak To

Gnat caught in the breath of a dismantled catechism

on a cracked pew in a cathedral by the sea,

restore with your nothing wings

the way to where I left my shoes.

No imagination but in your tiny, ruptured eyes

which may as well see no thing,

before a brain which cannot count,

behind the inverted cradle of my hands,

which in a moment or two

will dispatch what I forget.

Mike Hauser grew up in rural Wisconsin, and now lives in the near-Downtown area of Milwaukee. His books area Dirty Movies Late At Night (Rust Buckle Press), crets crets crets (Rust Buckle Press), Close Gauge Petcock, and Psychic Headset (Mitzvah Chaps). His poems have appeared in Rust Buckle, Gam, Burdock, Abraham Lincoln, The Hat and more. When he is not windsurfing, summering on the Cape, or taking a young Italian lover, he co-curates the Salacious Banter Reading Series with Karl Saffran.

"I got a single bed/Ain't no room for your sweet head"

I think that's how the chorus goes to "S-S-S-Single Bed" by Fox. Incidentally, the same dude also wrote "Under The Boardwalk". Anyway I guess this officially makes me a Simon Reynolds fanboy: 2 blog-prop occurences in 2 days.

But seriously this song is awesome. It's actually a disco song (er, in that niche sort of, right?) where the singer is lamenting how they'd love to fuck but they can't sleep with you because, hey it's just single bed and there's no fuckin for you! I feel that. I really do. [Do I, three hours later?]

Other thing I was thinking is that between this and the "video" for "18 Carat Love Affair", which I link to below just-scroll-down-whee-bit, a case could actually be made, by me, that lip-syncing can be way way better than so-called live performance-- more stylish, entertaining, fun to watch and thus actually an enhancement on the recorded product which is actually being presented as an accoutrement to the performance. At least in the context of a TV show, or some such.

And Noosha Fox's outfit is really beautiful and wonderful. Shame on the idiot host for dissing it at the end of the song! [Addendum: The outfit is actually kinda lame. I think what so bewitches me is Noosha's over-compensating gestural syncing-style.] Also, Noosha Fox shares a birthday with Ann Coulter. That almost makes me believe in Karma.

*

I'm starting to get an idea of what living in this not-so-well ventilated 3rd floor apartment is gonna be like during warmer temperatures, and I'm afraid the answer's gonna have to have to be alot more buck-naked Hauser. Sorry, Elaine and other neighbors... Also, while I'm on an avant-disco groove I might as well link to Can's biggest hit. They ain't Noosha Fox in the lip-syncing department, but hey, they're fucking Can! So, nuff said.

*

Having reservations about Silliman's Blog has become a reflexive accompanying response to reading Silliman's Blog: Thoughts?

T-Pain's plan to "change the world". "I'd turn everybody into a hershey's kiss." I mean, corny as hell, but you gotta kinda love it don't you?

Check out the amazing film/sound collages of Denorah de Jesus Rodriguez.

Hi There

[This portion deleted] this Tim And Eric video. "Free House For You, Jim" is pretty great too.

Lazy Bloggin Whilst Taking A Break From Watching The Making of Short Bus/Is There Magical Language Poetry?

Short Bus: I'm thinking this film has emotional sophistication. How come so few films today have genuine emotional sophistication? Er, Indie Films, anyway. For example, the other night, I watched Synecdoche, New York, and it's very good, it has a pretty awesome performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, I'm a huge Samantha Morton fan (you should see Morvern Callar) and the sequence in the final minutes, with the instructions and the dying, is quite beautiful, but emotionally it's pretty one-note. Like dread-dread-dread-whining- sex- dread- grey hair-dread-love-death. They all seem like different notes, but I think they're really all one-note. I mean, it's innovative and all, but at least Short Bus acknowledges that sexuality is a very very complicated thing. Not to set up an opposition or anything...

*

Oh yeah. The last week, I've had a headache pretty much the whole time. And on an unrelated note, I read The Future Of Memory by Bob Perelman, and I've been rereading Ketjak by Ron "Million Hits" Silliman and enjoying them both, particularly "The Heroes" from Perelman's book, which gave me flashes of what I sort of always thought Language Poetry could maybe be. I guess I'm still wrestling with those issues. Am I?

Anyway now I'm thinking, "Is there magical Language Poetry?" Is that a stupid question?

*

I went to the El Rey grocery store today with Elaine to buy El Rey chips, and noticed that the bag seems alot fuller than when I buy them at Pick n Save (yes that's the name of the Death Star chain of grocery stores in Milwauke, gimme break it's a freakin block from my house and it's open when I get off work). Should I be surprised that the El Rey chips that are sold at the actual grocery store named El Rey are essentially a better value than the ones sold at Pick n Save. Am I actually willing to believe that they save the best bags of chips for their own stores?

*

This is probably irresponsible blogging because 1: I'm drinking right now (so what?), and 2: I'm bringing up ideas without really expanding on them (I'm drinking right now), and 3: I'm now 31 years old. (I actually just thought to say that now because I haven't said it yet, in any official or public context.)

*

Is blogging "official".

*

Should I buy the new Robert Fitterman book? I was looking at it today and it actually looks pretty good.

Charm

I've been thinking about this post from Nada Gordon which addresses what one looks for in poetry, or maybe in a poet or poet's work or whatever. She says personality and style, and agrees with music as an addendum to the criteria. Coming up with a criteria like this is all about being put on the spot, as in having the question directly put to you, "What do you look for in poetry?". I have to give props that she performed under pressure like that. And I agree mostly with it. And who wouldn't respond to personality, style and a musical quality etc? But I've been thinking that I would definitely substitute or in any case put in my top 3 the quality of charm. Alot of the most intense interactions I find I have with poetry have to do with just being charmed in some way that I may or may not be able to put into words. An obvious (to me anyway) example of a poet whose work just exhibits so much personality, style, music, and charm (not to mention wit, nerve, sensitivity, alluring inscrutability) would be O'Hara. If ever there was a poet who I'd describe as irresistible, it's Frank O'Hara. But "charm" as an adjective to plug into an ideal poetry criteria seems like sort of, I don't know, untrustworthy. But not in a way that would distinguish it from any other quality that would appear in this or that criteria. When you try to articulate what to look for in something that you already nerdishly devote yourself to the pursuit of, there are bound to be exceptions upon exceptions upon contradictions enough to capsize the whole frickin criteria boat in pretty short time. But charm does hold up for me. As in I do want be charmed when I'm reading poetry, or put it this way-- if I'm faced with a complete lack of charm, then I'm gonna to have a really hard time finishing this book or poem or piece, or getting through this reading without just resorting to a complete mind-lapse into thoughts about artichoke dip, or sex, or some Marx Brothers bit, or Frank O'Hara, until it's finished and it's socially acceptable for me to leave. All of the other stuff-- my head getting lopped off, my soul being permanently scarred and deformed, my testes being stuck in a vice, me being told to change my life, well I'm thinking right now that none of that will work without charm. And since I peed and grabbed another beer, I've been thinking two things: 1. O'Hara is like the ultimate Criteria Poet, as in the variousness of his work (and he's sure not a "neglectorino" or anything) exhibits so many qualities that it makes it almost tempting in light of it to just advocate for a poetry that packs in as many qualities into as various a tapestry as possible, & 2. I should really try to expand on the whole charm thing or at least come up with some examples of charm in poetry within the next few days, which I'm too lazy to do right now. Thoughts?

What Have You Been Up To?

I've been out of pocket, just sort of working and coming home and watching stuff through all the sanctioned channels. And not eating meat and getting sudden feelings of displacement while frying an egg.

One thing I've been trying to figure out, which may already be the wrong tack, is how to write poetry. After, in the wake of, the full time working and not doing it before or after. Part of the problem might be easy access to those sanctioned channels over the internet, which can deflate the will toward making things. But I really have been trying to figure out how to start writing poetry again, or how to start writing poetry.

I've been trying not to lose my collected shit, or rather today thought I might because of the sudden displacement feeling whilst fixing an egg and potatoes meal before "work". "Work"s cushy I guess in that one can sit and read Joseph Ceravolo, and appreciate, maybe even in a smug sort of way, how poetry can help one not to lose one's collected shit, which I don't feel like I have the energy to withstand.

Just now I walked to Y Not II, and crossed Pleasant St. and heard the sewer running underneath the street and though about how I live in a city. Sat down in Y Not II and read Edwin Denby, and started to read Susie Timmons but thought how I always treat poetry like some buffet and I end up not concentrating on anything, so I kept reading Edwin Denby. I came home with one beer that tasted like the tap hadn't been cleaned in me. Though at the same time I'm thinking of the scene in the film Mister Lonely where Diego Luna's character thanks all of the things in his apartment just for being what they are and doing what they do, and thinking how maybe one should practice that a little maybe? So Thank You ruddy-tasting Blue Moon, for sitting in me in a nice comfy way even though you tasted ruddy, and Thank You Y Not II for being around me and having some other people in you while I sat in you, reading Edwin Denby.

Anyway that's what I've been up to. And you?

Please check out the new Abraham Lincoln, and the new issue of The Hat.

Salacious Banter #7

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR

CA CONRAD
MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI
AARON KUNIN

MONDAY, MARCH 9TH
FUN STARTS 7ish
READING STARTS 8ish

As usual, there'll be some food and drinks around but feel free to BYOB.

900 S 5th St.
5th & Walker (one block south of La Perla)
Enter under awning on Walker.
MILWAUKEE


CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia where he lives and writes with the PhillySound poets www.PhillySound.blogspot.com. His latest book The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009) received The Gil Ott Book Award. He is also the author of Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), (Soma)tic Midge (FAUX Press, 2008), and two forthcoming books, advanced ELVIS course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Press, 2009). He invites you to visit him online at www.CAConrad.blogspot.com


Aaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of a
collection of small poems about shame, Folding Ruler Star (Fence, 2005); a chapbook, Secret Architecture (Braincase, 2006); and a novel, The Mandarin (Fence, 2008). Another collection, The Sore Throat and Other Poems, is forthcoming. He is assistant professor of negative anthropology at Pomona College and lives in Los Angeles.


Magdelana Zurawski was born in Newark NJ and grew up in Edison NJ, but Providence RI feels like home because that's where she started writing and meeting writers and thinking of herself as a writer. Currently, she lives in Durham, NC, where she is studying 19th-century American literature at Duke. The Bruise, out now from Fiction Collective Two, is the winner of the 2006 Ronald Sukenick prize for innovative fiction. It is her first book.

Tour Schedule at http://fbman888.blogspot.com/

Two things of note, one involving a personal muse and one involving a personal hero. You figure it out.

Farms In Trouble are like finding a stack of rare books stacked outside an abandoned storefront whilst getting glare from the setting sun in your eye and the city breeze-warped music from an ice cream truck in your ear, then bending down to pick up some books and realizing too late a bee crawled into your soda can. That means they’re probably the best band in America for this time and for the future.

 

Activities Recordings compatriots Trash Crack do the best version of  “It’s A Man’s World” this side of The Residents. Like Neko Case backed by Sonic Youth on the shortest brightest day of a Nuclear Winter.

Ideal artist # 1:

T-Pain crossed with The Fall?

Jordan Davis reviews a book, previously mentioned on this blog, that makes me feel like everything I've ever written is completely inadequate, uh, in a good way.

Salacious Banter

John Coletti
Arlo Quint

Saturday February 7 8pm
900 S. 5th St.
$5 suggested donation

why, the reading's in Milwaukee, of course...
come early for fun & frivolity but bring some of your own too.

John Coletti is the author of books such as Physical Kind, from Boku Books and Portable Press at Yo Yo Labs, and recently Same Enemy Rainbow, from Fewer & Further Press. He edits The Poetry Project Newsletter and lives in Brooklyn. He co-edits Open 24 Hours Press with Greg Fuchs.

Arlo Quint works at the The Poetry Project at St Marks in the Bowery, and is the author such books as Photogenic Memory, from Lame House Press, and Days On End, from Open 24 Hours Press. We believe him to be a church-going lad.

Still Life With Lotion

I didn't really splurge on lotion.

Think what you will, but lotion is actually rather utilitarian!

It can coo, for christsake!!

Paralysis

I've been paralyzed from doing any kind of blogging outside event-posting, appreciative linking or solicitation of sponsorship for a certain worthy cause in the past few weeks. Maybe it's feelings of nervous chest-weirdness, but that hasn't stopped this particular activity recently. Most people have probably stopped checking this blog, I'd say 8 out of the 11 people who've read this blog have probably given up on it, and the rest are stalking me. I have an extremely irrational inner monologue. And I think it's the one I've had for awhile. And so when I start to blog, it turns into what is called "stinking thinking", and what else would I expect to come out. It's extremely hard to express this, because I don't want to bring anyone down, or creep anyone out. I'll read this in the future and cringe, though that's not so unusual. There is something either in the spontaneous nature of this activity, or in my own anticipation of how others will receive it that paralyzes most any expression of it, the thing, whatever this blog is for. I originally started doing this blog and eventually focusing mainly on it in lieu of another blog that's still up and has a large output that anyone could look at called dodo with the idea of developing my own critical writing, or having a body of critical writing. I think this blog for the most part fails in that respect. It has other qualities. Poetry, and other "arts" do have a huge impact on my life. Besides the people who I consider closest to me, they are the main influence on my life. But I find that when I try to write about poetry for instance, I am almost completely unable to articulate why it's so important. Which seems like it might be a good skill to have. I once heard the phrase "articulation anxiety", and without having any idea whether that phrase has a larger context or not (you're gonna tell me that it's from some writer who I'm totally embarrassed to be referencing), I think that's what it is. I promise not to take this post down, even though I'm no longer sure even now as I'm revising it a few minutes after the fact what it's for.

Salacious Banter

John Coletti
Arlo Quint

Saturday February 7 8pm
900 S. 5th St.
$5 suggested donation

why, the reading's in Milwaukee, of course...
come early for fun & frivolity but bring some of your own too.

John Coletti is the author of books such as Physical Kind, from Boku Books and Portable Press at Yo Yo Labs, and recently Same Enemy Rainbow, from Fewer & Further Press. He edits The Poetry Project Newsletter and lives in Brooklyn. He co-edits Open 24 Hours Press with Greg Fuchs.

Arlo Quint works at the The Poetry Project at St Marks in the Bowery, and is the author such books as Photogenic Memory, from Lame House Press, and Days On End, from Open 24 Hours Press. We believe him to be a church-going lad.

THE POEM OF THE FUTURE by Anne Boyer

I need your sponsorship in the Woodland Pattern poetry marathon and benefit. This would benefit one of the greatest bookstores in the country. Though no amount is too small, 35 bucks is nice and generous. This is an opportunity for you too! For I will write a love poem, yes, a love poem, for whomever so chooses to engage in sponsorship! Or if that makes you uncomfortable, it can be something of your choosing. I'll try not to break up any marriages or burden anyone with a burgeoning Hauser-obsession but I can't make any promises. Like John Candy's tail in the movie Spaceballs, the poetry tends to have a mind of it's own.

And here is a copy of the pledge sheet and a link to the event. They're asking for the pledges by the 26th. And as always I'm at flabscoresbig@yahoo.com.

Anne Boyer writes about the borderless internet, the Harriet blog and such.

One year at the Woodland Pattern Poetry Marathon, I felt compelled to try explain what flarf is to the audience. To see how I'll embarrass myself this year, and hear some authentic Saffran-Hauser banter, you'll just have to be in attendance. I'm reading in the 11 o'clock hour.

Rumors of a Gaustad-Saffran-Hauser recreation of this video are not true.

The Woodland Pattern Poetry Marathon 2009: this time it's blerrsonal.

(Slogan is not connected with Woodland Pattern.)

PS: I'll be at the Spicer reading too.

Here is the wonderful Activities compilation available in MP3 form. I lent my vocal talents to Nothing in that Drawer.

A quick note: I want to use this quick note to say that you should read The Golden Age Of Paraphernalia by Kevin Davies. Besides having just about the coolest title in a long time, I can't think of a better book with which to think about the current dwindling "golden age" we're experiencing. I also propose a reading group that would groupthink through its intertwining sequences together. But since that might not happen, I'll say that The Golden Age Of Paraphernalia offers the best of a certain kind of reading experience, which is to open to a random page and begin reading. It's like the most invigorating episode of getting lost in an old city imaginable. Following one sequential route until that route intersects with, and consequently is interrupted by, another sequential route, before the resumption of another street precedes the resumption of the street you were following to begin with, but which has changed somehow and isn't going where you expected it to. And in two parts of the city there are large shopping centers with their multiple levels of by turns colloquial and/or narrative language recanting several disastrous and historically omnipotent scenarios, which together form a force field demarcated by radiant neon signs that give you a shock if you touch them. Get the idea? Allow me to end this quick note by (apologies to the author) mangling one passage from Duckwalking a Perimeter:

That place

   where
 when you go there
they have to cast you out

Run On Review: 7 Pounds

Will Smith is a mysterious sexy sad man who lurks Anton Chigurh-style throughout the proceedings stalking Rosario Dawson throughout a hospital slipping past receptionists and stopping closing elevator doors with a black briefcase showing up next to her bed several minutes after recieving a cellphone call from her in order to determine that she's a good person so that he can give her a 6 month extension on the balance of back taxes she owes the IRS after showing up in her backyard to feed her vegan Great Dane raw meat but before eventually fixing her vintage printing press during a subsequent break-in which precedes sleeping with her which then directly precedes him sprinting in a salmon-colored shirt through the rain to call his friend [dude from saving Private Ryan who's like a cross between Gary Busey and Michael Douglas] who's been instructed to forcably convince the people at the hospital to give the now dead from jellyfish-induced suicide Will Smith's heart to the suffering from congenital heart failure Rosario Dawson and his eyes to a vision impaired Woody Harrelson so the two can subsequently hook up after a childrens chorus recital once Rosario Dawson has found the world's greatest sundress and Woody Harrelson has a better haircut.

I Don't Know What The Fuck To Read

I don't know what the fuck to read. I thought about maybe a list of the year's best books, that were in my general purview of poetry reading habits. But I'm drawing a total fucking blank as to what could further my education, give me a deeper understanding of geopolitical events, teach me how to grow a victory garden, or understand current poetics. This is because I don't know what the fuck to read. If I had any idea what the fuck to read, I'd be reading that right now wouldn't I? I once read a few pages into Ulysses, a little of The Cantos, a smattering of Remembrance Of Things Past. Not knowing what the fuck to read, I was doomed not to finish those books. I read some of The Bible once. And an entire book of Dennis Miller's rants, when I didn't have cable, a long time ago. I also made Suddenly Salad in a fry pan. And I lived in Jackson, Wisconsin. There is a Jackson, Wisconsin. At around the time in my life when I lived there I read the wrong translation of Rimbaud, the one you're not supposed to read, but hey, I don't know what the fuck to read.

Not knowing what the fuck to read has left me it seems with 2 options. I can join the police force or holler at you over the Telecommunications that Homeland Security provides. It's not Homeland Security's fault that I don't know what the fuck to read. They don't teach me what to read, but I knew that already! In order to enjoy what I'm reading, I need to know that I was supposed to have been reading it. Know what I mean?

And finally I can't rely on nature to tell me what to read. It doesn't tell me. When I try to read it, it kind of snickers all in a round. Like the drinking songs of nature are God's ontological drinking songs.

Reading has no point in The Real Deal of today's multiple meltdown scenarios either. Trying to figure out which meltdown to read is like trying to take a big crap in the woods, and Armed Guerrillas are all around, snickering at you. They're humming the drinking songs. And the drinking songs were reinvented from Nature.

The deeper a person gets into not knowing what the fuck to read, the more they can actually enjoy reading on a cellular level. If they have a reliable network of Armed Guerrillas at their disposal that is... Sometimes when I look into the sunset, I feel a fatter sunset is emerging. A more tactile one than where I attended the Universities, which also failed to show the correct reading material. The reading materials of this sunset appear to be vast and large, have acne scars that are weeping uncontrollably. Those acne scars function as time-stopping goofs, skips within the network of reading that proliferates in a consuming consciousness, until it becomes obsolete. In each acne scar is a dictionary of diagrams. And each diagram is a diagram of a person's reading habits, updated each time one of the poor weeping pores blinks an eye.

Art Tasers Monthly
by Weldon Gardner Hunter & Mike Hauser

What happens when "Marche" asks "Umm, a didgeridoo./ Why?", and April calls back "o innocent importune booger!!/ create!"?

What happens is Art Tasers Monthly, a collaboration I did with the very gifted poet and flaneur about Vancouver, Weldon Gardner Hunter, that I also happen to be very proud of. I have a few copies, just out from Ruining Your Vacation Press. I might take them to Woodland to put on consignment. But hey make me an offer. Or try RuiningYVPress@gmail.com.

Also out is Meal Ticket #1, featuring the same Mr. Hunter, Lindsay Colahan, Brittney Dennison, and Ryan Clark, also most likely hit-up-able through RuiningYVPress.gmail.com.

I happen to have friends who are great musicians, as well as friends who are great poets. (And friends who are hilarious, sexy, contrarian, slinky etc.) My great friend Zack Pieper happens to be both of those from the first sentence. And on both the poetic and musical tips are these two awesome debuts from two seperate projects in just the last few months. Should I decide which one I like more? I ask myself this only for a second. It'll probably just be a case of diurnal promiscuity. I'll probably listen to The Trusty Knife more often in the morning (my morning, which is 11 or so), and Farms In Trouble later at night. That's the trend that's developing anyway. The Trusty cd while not yet posted, is available, so get on their asses about that too.

Riverwest Currency.

Mike's Plans for The Afternoon

Back to you, Karl!

New Vernacular

Person 1: How are you?

Person 2: Hangin' in there like vintage kitties!

Possible Futures

You might find yourself fighting John Cougar Mellencamp to the death for a hunk of bread.

Logged In

Now that I've logged in I have nothing to say.

Thanksgiving

My father used the word 'usurious' in a sentence. This is one way in which he's similar to Ezra Pound.

Does anybody know how to get spyware off of a PC? Help old Mike out.

I was told today my building has "The Cadillac" of heating systems. So maybe this could be another incentive for members of the opposite gender to visit my apartment. My last apartment, I dunno, "The Hyundai" of heating systems? I'm just happy this one's an automatic.

My apartment is cold, my hands are dry.

My credit score's probably closer to how long creationists think the world has existed.

Talking Points

Because of how my hair lays after a bath, I might briefly have a mullet today.

How does one study tableaus?

And now today its that newish Beyonce song where it's like "if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it." Directed at Jay-Z? I don't keep up with these things.

[It wouldn't have been directed at Jay-Z because he did put a ring on it.-- MH, 1-17-09]

This morning I have this admittedly terrible song in my head. What do you do in these situations? Resistance only makes it worse. I think every song by Extreme is an encoded message compelling me to go to Target.

And please don't say "22 mg of Morrisey STAT" or something like that because that doesn't work either. Maybe 23 hours of Kenneth Anger films...

Coda: I just took a bath and I realized that was an actual ad for Target wasn't it? This is an extremely depressing development.

Salacious Banter

Lewis Warsh
John Koethe

Thursday, November 13
8pm

900 S 5th.
5th & Walker Walker's Point
Milwaukee
Food and drinks provided
Suggested donation: 5 dollars

Lewis Warsh has been a luminary on New York’s writing scene for 40 years. With Anne Waldman, he co-edited Angel Hair Books and Press, an important catalyst in the "mimeo revolution" of the 1960s and publisher of Alice Notley, Philip Whalen, Bernadette Mayer and Ron Padgett among others. The Angel Hair Anthology, brought out by Granary Books in 2001, was also co-edited with Waldman. Since 1977 he has edited United Artists Books.

Previous works of poetry, fiction and autobiography include Inseperable: Poems 1995-2005, Touch Of The Whip and The Maharajah's Son. Of the poetry collection, The Origin Of The World, Robert Creeley wrote: “Given the complexity of this world and all the myriad people who are in it, these poems are poignantly articulate experiments, which reach out endlessly, day or night, so as to feel another is still there too. If one could ever doubt, Lewis Warsh proves again that the world exists, even after all is said and done.” Here's a link to his website: http://www.lewiswarsh.org/


John Koethe has been placed by many critics in the tradition of Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery. Robert Huddleston wrote this of his work: "he can show us as few other contemporary poets can into an oneiric world of magnificent austerity."

Some of his books are The Late Wisconsin Spring, Falling Water, North Point North and his latest Sally’s Hair published in 2007 from Harper-Collins. He has taught Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1973. More at Koethe’s page at The Poetry Foundation Website.

"On the other other hand, "Area Man" by Nothing in that Drawer is simply unlistenable" or ?

Cronenbergian or Lynchian?

I had a dream where I'm like passing everyone else on the freeway in a large SUV and there's a new Aaliyah song playing that goes "He said, You should try this dick it's never been touched. I said, What you think yo' hands don't count?"

Check it.

Salacious Banter

Brenda Iijima
Brandon Downing

Saturday, October 18
7:30ish
Reading starts at 8

900 S 5th. Fifth & Walker Walker's Point Milwaukee
As usual, some food and drink will be provided, but feel free to BYOB. Suggested Donation is $5. Please come even if you don't have $5, but try to have $5.

Brenda Iijima’s publications include Around Sea (O Books), Animate, Inanimate Aims (Litmus Press), If Not Metaphoric (Ashanta Press), and recently Rabbit Lesson (Fewer & Further Press). She lives in Brooklyn and edits Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs.

Brandon Downing’s publications include The Shirt Weapon (Germ Monographs), Dark Brandon (Faux Press), and Dark Brandon, a DVD. Photographic work can be viewed at http://www.brandondowning.org/. He lives in New York City.

Questions, concerns: flabscoresbig@yahoo.com

John Coletti is one of my favorite poets. I told Jess Mynes I might camp out on his lawn for the release of this, but I guess I'll have to wait for my copy in the mail like everyone else.

Scouting a location for my infamous "Marin Tinkle" in March of 2003.

(courtesy: David Dannenblog's design skills and bottomless well of humor)

How can I prevent my wages from being garnished?

But what about The Ultimate Warrior's sound poems?

"That guy can dance."

Salacious Banter Occasional Reading Series : #3

Dustin Williamson & Ara Shirinyan
August 10th @ 6:30 (Reading will start at approximately 7:30)

900 S 5th. Fifth & Walker Walker's Point Milwaukee

As usual, some food and drink will be provided, but feel free to BYOB. Suggested Donation is $5. Please come even if you don't have $5, but try to have $5. Many of you will remember Dustin Williamson from his time here, when he served as Milwaukee Poetry's Premiere Boyish Provocateur. He now lives in Brooklyn where he occasionally rarely publishes books under the Rust Buckle imprint and spent much of the spring curating the Zinc Bar Reading Series. His chapbooks are Cab Ass'n (Lame House Press), Gorilla Dust (Open 24 Hours), Heavy Panda (Goodbye Better), and the newish Exhausted Grunts from Cannibal Books. Work can be found online at Dusie (http://www.dusie.org/williamson.html) and Rock Heals! (http://www.rockheals.com/archives/2008/01/weighted_down_b.html).

Ara Shirinyan was born in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia and now lives in Los Angeles, California. He co-curates readings at the quickly legendary LA club The Smell and, with his Make Now Press (makenow.org), publishes diverse works of poetry including three books from Kenneth Goldsmith and several written under Oulipian constraints. He is the author of Syria is in the World (Palm Press) and the just published Your Country Is Great (Afghanistan-Guyana) from Futurepoem Books. His Speech Genres 1-2 is available as part of UBUWEB's Publishing the Unpublishable Series here (pdf): http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_024_Shirinyan_Speech-Genres.pdf. If that's not enough, check out mp3's from his band Godzik Pink via Kill Rock Stars/5 Rue Christine: http://www.5rc.com/discography/ger013/index.htm.

Abraham Lincoln’s Uncircumcised Penis

too much of a Metalica urethra, though
to really matter;

We had the delicious cherries of Door County
sloshing around our Vicodin suppositories.

let’s face it: The only Joni Mitchell in town.

Zapping various organs along the

county line artifice;

a clown’s head got big and
we had to act.

Now there was a new Joni Mitchell in town
reeling down the grocery aisles
a real adventure in subterranean living;

and a lesson in bifurcated government forms
a subtle rash along the pubic area.

Hand dribbling or Corpus Christi luxuriating
outward of the orange turnstile’s
dilapidary code;

coffee cups atop benches
with overpraised vocal chords etc.

When etcetera means instant boner

for the new Chief of the boner patrol,
an ebony Joni Mitchell.

And perforated oceans won’t stop us...

our own love might though, it’s on the way,
but the perforated oceans, with their
perforates

or gloom in the form of snail pie...

prob'ly not.

Sigh.

Watch Your Mouth

I like the idea of stopping a conversation by saying "Watch your mouth!".

Mike Is Pathetic And Loves No Age, Finally, And Believes The Generation Right After His Is Probably The Emo Generation But He Likes People Who Sing Out of Tune (And He Knows Alot of Emo Dudes Are Way Not In Tune But He Likes Malkmus not-in-tune as Opposed to Conor Oberst not-in-tune, There's A Huge-ass Difference)

So how is this No Age band doing basicly the same thing that at least alot of other indie bands are doing, and yet their music is so fucking good?

Take "Cappo". Off-kilter guitar and drum stomping: Check. Loping teenlove tempo: Check. Two people in the band: Check. Sort of introspective lyrics: Check.

Sorry. It's not them, it's me.

But it all sounds so, I don't know, youthful. Kind of like if the Ramones were born 30 years later. No, if the Ramones grew up on Dinosaur Jr. No wait, if the Ramones grew up on Sonic Youth.

Oh and I only have half of Nouns. You know... and there's half of Weirdo Rippers, a more open-ended affair, psych-....

Man that one Flying Saucer Attack song "Come And Close My Eyes" used to really make me wish I had a girlfriend. It's one of those songs that makes you wish you had a girlfriend. Let's see, "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" that's another one. This can all be googled.

But "Come And Close My Eyes" is in a peculiar wish-I-had-a-girlfriend or WIHAG category, which is the post-apoclyptic wish-I-had-a-girlfriend category. Pretty much, listen to Sonic Youth say circa Sister and you get my drift.

Maybe someday all of our girlfriends and boyfriends will post-apocalyptic girlfriends and boyfriends is all I'm saying. And we can listen to No Age, then.

Salacious Banter Update

I haven't informed Karl of this yet, but Salacious Banter Readings from now on are going to take place here.

Dream Punt

I've always been fascinated and perplexed by how to act. As in the "...don't know how to act", "how you gonna act".

I'm gonna go out on sort of a limb here and put forth the idea that whatever this "knowing how to act" is, that knowing how to act is a way to get your work published, whatever genre. Publishing in the Small Press world is essentially knowing how to move in within groups, how to connect and get one's work published is it not? So I've been thinking that getting the work placed is a social skill. So does that mean that whoever happens to have been influenced by Robert Creeley and was the Prom Queen in High School is bound to have the most chapbooks published?

There is a part of me that dismisses even the premise of that question, and another part of me that thinks that's an exaggeration but says Yes that's kind of the case. But what kind of a person carries around some supposed wounds from High School and applies them to poetry? What could that possibly be other then some kind of passive-aggressive projection.

I've figured out by this point that there are certain basic steps in getting the work published if you don't wanna go the Emily Dickinson route.

1. Correspondences: write to writers; saying what tho? omigodyourworkissoimportanttome? How did you write your books? How did your work get published? How is Bob Perelman?

2. Publishing in a number of literary magazines, thereby letting others get acquainted slowly at their speed with your work, letting them wade into the pool of You waistdeep. (But then is a person their work? Of course not. Goddamit... Fuckit...)

And yet I'm still kind of perplexed at how all this happens, but I'm actually not, I'm just angry at it. I don't know.

After Lisa Jarnot and George Michael

I think there’s something you should know
I think there’s a shadow over your face
from the sweater-print I think it’s time
I told you so

I think that all we have to do now is take
these lies and make them true and make these dreams
into transactions of faith and make these wishes
closer to you and better by me and wish for
the transmutation of the sweater to tell us

something beautiful about the weather at the zoo
and the fashion show and
something beautiful about the weather
in Air Force One and the weather on the tarmac
and the sun which leans in to confide

it’s thoughts about box office records
and quilting in the south and laughter on the fringe

the mania of thus on city buses
feels like the road to heaven looks like
the road to hell and thus the failure
to make us laugh or make us dance
our failure to quilt and sing and
make love in otherwise unorthodox ways

that logs on and simultaneously out
I think I’m back down to earth on this
I think we’re through with singing in the rain
I think there’s someone with a transfer
I think we better ask somebody

After Lisa Jarnot and Scritti Politti

where the money flows toward
the ocean where the money is ready for love

because of the 1980s
that the world is mystifying
and conspicuously passionate
fortifying and with an emphasis on production

leafless done down
bloodless all but the most delicious sequins

comma holding tanks for
conscious elegies rammed forth
by teenage boys and the aunts
and sickly farm implements
and the animals that operate their

solar panoptic contingency
where the money flows toward
the ocean where the money is ready for love
in the ocean and the sequined tears

and the poor old boats
or said contingency in homage
and the brain which is key which is
mysterious and says perverted things

that flood the oil tankers with love that flood
the oil tankers with artificial snare hits

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

I don't know I'm thinking about a crustal abbreviation now for the text. Or the poetics of that smurf-dandy secretion are here already.

Knowing tools or like function. An excitable sex position or classic SNL quote, but either way a bumpkins foot stool for thinkin' rowdy stuff round said secretion. Militant anyway attention span of the already always there wayward passive clicker finger.

To surmise, write poems in war crouch and gangsta slouch.

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

As ridiculous as the dream where Rowdy Roddy Piper is telling Robert Creeley to stop making friends.

Into feelings burgled without and not-in the bounds of your Grandma's depression. Builds bleek food conspiracies into hovelable cock-eyed clinching fingers.

A man stood a bison or weathering his top-spin of simpression. Dupression. Synechdotion.

Happy birthday envelope.

Cold climbing down through a gender specificity.

Joints pooling there corners and curlicues and trying pass on the traditions of haberdashery.

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

It is hard to imagine how poetry in it's own mind. In what wondering filling up glances nervous-like Your Grocer's Shelves.

How to hide green poetry grocer reducer, or find fissionable material for that matter, is poetry's Poetica Ashante Sashe. Poetry grounds finite observations inside little baby human dryers.

That's fucked up. Or that's come into it's weatherable ass-face architecture.

And in blank spots finding new avenue cloisters banana talk spores through forms or reprisal. A ticket god, y'see.

Human squirrel!

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

In the near constant-gathering coming up poetry will who-knows what it thinks in it's own mind.

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

Poetry in Social Star Wars is ultra-complex Jedi training in Jedi training relationships between Jedi jumpsuits in Jedi perpindicular spaces where you earn the right to help so & so hem in so & so's ultra spandex proto-Jedi more fixedly within the globo-not-fascistic-utra-cool-Jedi realm.

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

This blog has become steadily more opaque. Which has been become its format. Which is me trying to articulate myself then essentially musing on some idea of what is essentially dicking around.

If dicking around brings up the rear, it takes on whole other connotations. It could become ego-trippin. But if I ego trip for awhile I seem to invariably end up out of my depth.

Standing tall on the wings of my dreams. Slouching under poetry's wing, which smells like curry and old spice.

TO BE CONTINUED

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

Is there an alienation effect in the company of poets?

In other words, should a poet not be "chummy" with their audience? Making it all a little inside? A little too inside?

A little tutu aboard a whaling ship?

Poets should probably talk to their audience without assumptions. But don't assume we don't know who Jack Spicer is jack-ass! And conversely, Don't assume we know who Jack Spicer is jack-ass!

Just explain who Jack Spicer is and then say, 'y' know... Jack Spicer' And be prepared for Jack Spicer to stop talking to you.

The audience does not want to see the poet talking to other poets, they want to see the poet talking to other poets.

Like, flip it around on em. Yeah, and since you're using a whole bunch of words I don't understand, I'm gonna go ahead and take that as an insult.

This is directed at anyone where I've ever woken with their hand in my pants, when it should be in my poems. This is implicated in my style. It is an assumed Spicerian eye-roll. On a Spicerian California roll.

Does poetry have to have an indentifiable matrix to be written about?

Salacious Banter Reading Series
Thursday, June 26th

Jess Mynes
Michael Carr
Dana Ward

Food & Drinks @ 6:30
Reading Promptly @ 7:30
900 S 5th St.(5th & Walker / Enter on Walker)
Milwaukee

salaciousbanter AT gmail DOT com

French Coat

Aphasia is a byword of patience
a trick feeling, to have compensated
in odds of disturbance. Consent
and mingled popularity

become details to
handsome mercy, the aritillery of
the women in my life. A person of
quality will understand

showing judicious license therefore
not be treated with indifference,
maybe you would have
overt concern if there's such
thing as compulsion. Being welcomed

in a large city gets cold
in my eyes, relying on selective help
one might not credibly avoid.

2.
As sober bait I mustn't be qualified
projecting on what may have
happened within an aquifer. They abandon
the parking or add dependent on enough

double access; the welfare of
a personal condition makes it worth
replying believably or a credible
witness's safety. Waiting for a stretch in the
kitchen while outside

someone is sent to guide them to the
address. Immediate
response gets in the way of visible
excess, as a voluntary buffer
I was determined to listen. Behind on

new year the empathy lines
seem punctured because of
foreign movies.


--Michael Carr

Salacious Banter Reading Series
Thursday, June 26th

Jess Mynes
Michael Carr
Dana Ward

Food & Drinks @ 6:30
Reading Promptly @ 7:30
900 S 5th St.(5th & Walker / Enter on Walker)
Milwaukee

salaciousbanter AT gmail DOT com

Aphids 

for Publico 2003-2008

"not sinking into the ground, mysteriously,
but in the Roman sewers, forever, our home town"

--George Stanley

Aphids are
whatever feeds on the
emptied momentum that
tastes of white pine. Bang it
in your car b-bang it
in your truck
The Easter
LV on a Luis Vuitton bag
explodes with engorging neutrinos and I
see its dove-meat that's gene-spliced to soft Beijing leather.
False fathers husbands believers--moonshine
pours through the dikes, Animiniacs
who? They're the false husbands fathers, believers
aphids leave honeydew
crucibles deep in their features until they're
like astrolabes tending immobile stars.
But you can't judge the Universe
wounded pride blooming like lake district summer
flushed soft & fast down the fucking brass ring.
Golden retrievers explode in the verdure
who can put dogs back together?
Big Dad in Valhalla
the boatman named Sex,
Rasputina
my collar & tag start to hurt.
Tell me dad what should I do with my pleasure?
destroy it, confirming its own malign life
or embrace it by means of
deformative play? It ends well, in war
you learn how to catalogue ships in the dark
describing the plant lice that feed on couture,
where, because we are impure & live
our reveries aren't overcome. But they are
dad I saw the raw data, the tombs flaring
various prismatic fires
their Oceanside camps between Clay St. & Main,
sweating a vicious armada.
No dad we won't eat you
the lights in the Mediterranean, lights in the high
blocks of Over-the-Rhine,
we've been here a long time
amid the Emerald City, amid the walls of Troy
Penelope Nokia Telephone
rings many suitors
with fabulous answers & lies
whisper comely things through the receiver. Hello?
dad the aphids invaded my
arm daddy what should I do I would chill
son &, drink. Recreational love-making
inside a project space
"dusted"
in theory & fact.

Yet later
the aphids have gone
& the goddamn garden goes
on with the imporous
posture of some
politician

I come to this altar piece
Clear eyed and mean
from deep in the mind of a parasite
teasing your dad for his ambulant lock
derive in reverse
a real Sasquach without any
frothing pulling teething
in the mouth. Its only the North Pole honey
its only the summerless agony
how will we
remember
how will I remember
this

I cried again
in school today, they
asked me my feelings for Polaroid pictures
for me they're Victorian things
fairy tale mice with a
sun-ruined Cheshire life gutted
color wheel light for their unstable sign.
I saw their tombs in the dawn (basically)
cradle with all of its blisters in tact
beckons like bubble wrap, pop
the encasements of that
& the honeydew pours out in torrents of pixels
floriated like love's will in "Asphodel", nothing
to drink in what's now just decor.
Sutter Home here
in your Venice, the many-canaled
hollowed out neural city
lasciviously broken
sobriety
comes
down like the church yard nativity, piece
by delirious piece
until there is goose-flesh
all over the Virgin.
I feel it too
in the end of the song
& the lights coming up at last call, that
panic.


-Dana Ward

Why The Simpsons Will Never Get Old

"Texas Cheesecake Depository"

november

Web's sheer
above leaves
spasms to breeze
witch hazel buds blister
blossom yellow pinwheels
sewn threads
lack reluctance
fall forth to froth
of verdant fallen

Morning sky steeps
to smother seconds
after sunrise wash
ashes November snow

white animate
scatter shot

Then again later

sunny

Sunset 4:23


-- Jess Mynes

Salacious Banter Reading Series, situated snugly in Milwaukee's beery underside, checks in with reading number 2 on Thursday June 26 at 7:30pm, as Jess Mynes, Michael Carr, and Dana Ward invade the Saffran Loft Manse bearing an incense of poetry and rapscallionry, with much jollity to follow.

For more fleshed out deet's on the event, check here.

Meanwhile I'm gonna be posting some nuggets from these pote's respective troves in the coming days:

Segway Invite

lets go rent segways
and act all badass

insulting my credit debt and such
as we look over our shoulders

checking for the cops
and for my loan officers

the whole while snorting lines
from The Godfather

such as “You talkin to me!”
“Attica!” “Who is your

daddy and what does he do?”
You know em all and

you can recite them all
but only to geese because

these geese are tripping balls
and you know that in this state

in front of anyone else
You lose your composure

You start sweating, comparing Kenneth
Koch with “duende”

and I have to warn you again
not to go around doing that in front

of the bigshots at the Universitay.

Check it.

Out of Pocket


I been hangin around

without the exact change

in the orbit of what

to lay down

around and in

money troubles being

a close second

within 2/3 of ecstatic

depreciation

just the waiting for

who cares how many

really desperate postal workers

to deliver issue

3 of TIGHT

to my door starring

me and Lisa Jarnot

dodging the weather cells

and drinking the drinks

with specially made shoes

to bump up trouble

by losing thoughts

to the mumbling of

the corrupt referee

who comes around again

having lost alot of money

on the lilacs in spring

I mean wouldn't it be funny if...

Now that he has the nomination, Obama unveiled an androgenous Ziggy Stardust-like alter ego, named like Lance Chlorozone or Jill Absinthe or something...

Pullover

I wear a pullover.
It's not quite "summer"
temperatures here in
Milwaukee yet, so I have
this grey pullover I wear around.

What I was thinking today
is that this pullover might
make me a more peaceful person.
It looks non-threatening
to say the least.

And I can't imagine, say,
yelling at a person
in this pullover, or
beating someone in this
pullover,

or imagine telling someone off
and abruptly pulling it
over my head in an angry
motion before leaving the room.
I can't do it.

How To Become a Poet

First you will need to hand me your card. You should have a card. Come on, just gimme your card!

There are many ways to become a poet. There is no absolute way to become a poet. I believe this.

Hey, you, siddown. Yeah you buddy! (Index and middle finger pointing at own eyes then addressee.)

Now look out that window. That is what John Ashbery would call Nature’s Filmstrip, and he should know. (Pointing at window.)

But in Alabama, the tusks are looser. Here is a picture of Groucho Marx. He became a poet by accident, he stepped in some vaudville!

Now get out your protracters. No seriously. I’m going to teach you all about the geometry of poetry first, before we jointly go into hysterics.

O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody?

Sorry, sorry. (laughter) OK now look at these pictures. This is how poets dress.

Notice the craftsmanship, the finely cut hemlines. You will all eventually feel this sensual and freely espousable. OK get out your hankies and popcorn, people.

Now this is a city. You must move to it, and circulate. Here is a diagram of the heart, some arteries and ventricles.

Notice how the white blood cells can only interact with the red blood cells under certain well-defined circumstances. If you want to be serious about poetry, you will have to open gmail accounts. Open to page 34 of your gmail accounts.

Now these are trees. Trees are our enemies. When you look at trees you should see only one thing, potential poems.

Now I’m going to hand this picture around. I want you to look at it closely, what do you see? That’s right, a sweaty-toothed madman!

And what does he have on that leash, look at it closely. That’s right, W.H.! It’s a pooch!

And why do we need to know about a pooch? Because when you write a poem, the pooch is what you don’t want to fuck. Don’t fuck the pooch, people!

Now let’s learn about the history of poets. First there was Homer, a righteous dude. He had some 40,000 quadragesimal tattoos, all of ladies.

Who can tell me who this is? Oh sorry, that’s Scarlett Johansen. Anybody hear that album, where she does the Tom Waits covers?

I heard it’s not that bad, actually. Now this is Walt Whitman. He became a wealthy real estate magnate, and founded the Charlotte Hornets.

Here is another, of Emily Dickinson. This was before she became Storm from the X Men. She was still on Kill Rock Stars.

And last but not least, take some time out each day. Look at plants and sexy people. A poet always knows who is sexy, and who is plant!

Now go out there and be poets. Burn like origami in the feverish gloaming! Burn like origami in the feverish gloaming?

Kid: Hey it's the dude from Superbad. Hey I loved you in Superbad!
Me: Thank you!

Jeez...

Hairdresser

Stairway to Stardom (1981) - Gloria Huddle