Area Man

area man an important gold arm
vs. an example such as area man
or area man in a bittersweet glove
of wind like area man finally
succumbs offers succor to the asian markets
or paydirt in a plastic look
area man ooh yes
area man oh maybe lets stop
playing around
area man tongue us on our balconies
have a taste for birdflu area man you
recombinant mutant you
area man, man in an area
farther away yet toward where
the form fingers the function
the same principle as you reach
your robotic hand farther down through the prizebox
romance lies in wait for a housewarming
gift is a likely stunt
a lovelorn end table of promises
area man will never keep
only the cream of area man’s promise is real
only the measurement of luck
is one thing we’re out of
area man didn’t leave us any, let any out
area man takes me and you off his phone
he posts a grief along the tubes that draw up
the bingo machine being romantized
holler at you later
to pick up that area man
at the airport
save the zinfindel pasted
cards pasted F6 or try F8
younger than we struggled to believe
is area man having a brand new heart attack
a fascinating reception for his wake
along the coast
releasing the bubbles from the froth
from the ether from the freezeframe of the
world’s fantatstic grip and commodity fetish
sheltered reams of gold
punch up the imp in the cloud
the area man of the respectable courtship
sharkskin vs. the natural ways of man
what sounds as familiar later the vortex
was glanced into is all
an embroidery of prayers around
area man’s abode
the troubled psychedelia of his gait
later a pirate’s booty was shook
to shake out the fissionable material
the confirmed or most likely reducible
love which hangs from
area man’s hangnail lame as fuck
which is what we do in slo mo
the laughter of area man in sound booth
or mattress-coated suburban rec room
the softcore of sobriety society
the vague science of lucidity
the tame tune of newly washed hatchbacks
their glimmer in the sideways american morning show
a highly rated foot-race job
whistling on your gps
don’t name it’s location
melt it in your mouth
in your handmouth area man
poor means of your lovemaking area man

Sample

A Shamrock shake
hit the window of our love.
The window was already fogged up
from the heat of our lovemaking.
So what effect
would the cold, cheap
mass-produced Ice Cream drink
have on that?

if the squirrel is over there
then the Yanks are comin'
but if the scraps sink down in the verbiage, Ok,
Gregory Hines is not contributing to this improv at all

I say enough with the salty language and self-love
self-serving relief sorta thing

"Gregory Hines is not contributing to this improv at all"
this should be a line in a rap song...
hawking Capri pants by the Yangtze
Yes, I'm gender-exclusive if that means excluding all genders

it is love
makes us pant
in the skanky light
[Chromakey bluescreen] & green-screening the barges
antithetical verses overlaid
with a sad dobro remix

and non-Communist forces in the dobro talkback poll
contribute to the Shamrock Shake’s velocity

so then we’re left with this little conundrum:

At maximum velocity
the Shamrock Shake achieves the Look Of Love.
We want to know where it’s commerce went but
it’s nowhere where we can see in there;
full o’ tuft & whimsy wrestling with it’s own ridiculous
matriculation in the Look Of The Market Place.

another thing: Why are we now reaching back
farther than Gregory Hines in a Payton jersey and Hammer pants
farther than the man’s poor improv skills existing
in obviously stark contrast to the man’s gift for Tap

back to where, behind the greenscreening of barges
before and around (really just around) simultaneity
with the garbage masher function;
where there are web videos in the moonlight & 80’s teens tonguing:
back to where the future let us down again
put-zing around when we wanna take a day-trip to Wisconsin Dells
and express ourselves with go-carts & other tacky velocity?

One's thing's for sure. We're gonna be a hell of alot thinner.

Summer Babe In This World Of Poor Mutts
Malkmus/Ceravolo

I saw your girlfriend’s sub-equal brightness
Everywhere we look there’s just another meal
but she waits there panting
the restaurant is never gonna come
Everytime I sit around I find
Everywhere I look I’m across
Ixtpalapa green canal
you’re my summer babe
gone in in in flew
with a plastic-tipped cigar

I fight and fight in the levee wash
I got alot of things
I want to sell but
collected someting warm like friends
a picture of not here babe
passes through me babe

everytime I sit I find I am a
white summer man-babe

I leapt at the caribou in lust
the fruit-covered
tripod of despair is
still there
won’t break the door
Yes! they end on the shore

I got a heavy load
not a gorged begin
to an orgy
ex-magician still knows
the tricks
never rides home
in the levee wash

beneath the tides
or fruit-covered nails
in in in lust

I am the only one searching for you
and you do not know it
I got style
as my hair stands

miles and miles
lice in heaven

so much Oak that
it’s wasted
in the shade
in the levee wash

I’m peeking out
and you do not know it
the pattern’s torn
and you’re leavin

I’ve got style
Bow wow wow
and you do not know it
this pattern’s torn
and your leave in
in in in the levee wash

you do not know it
I am the only one searching for you
I am with you forever
between style
as destroyed as moving

Some Notions Of Lovemaking

I wouldn’t eat that if you were you
or if you were me you wouldn’t eat me
in the fashionable US horizontal band
placating Other Species • Mold and Lumber •
when you expect to make love or book a conference center
just make love then book a conference center
to get health authorized be of an active orientation

use iron-on FDIC love
to ensure making love gets you regular
keeps you in the loop
helps you make more Americans make love
in some easy Euro show-through step-by-step process
stitch in order to exercise PCI DSS and ID Theft
gets you more regular than human really

if getting regular is as human as making love
lovers handling customer card data with kit gloves
you can have a major impact on almost invisible fabrics
but if you’ve never done it before with a provisional cast-on
before us making love in the open air
all legal and ethical requirements leak refrigerant across industries
all of your notion patterns and quilting make a difficult love happen

Drapery Fabric, Upholstery Fabric, Bridal & Dancewear Fabric, Faux Fur
but the use of these opinions is no substitute for a kind of legal love-making
to help Boston’s disadvantaged students to quilt baskets and zippers
Wet-ring vacuum pumps generate additional water flow
which in turn compensates for the lack of love-making in forlorn area codes
here’s a link to interfacing large and varied notions
including Simplicity through reasonable love-making

a female witness to a pocket watch theft once made love in arrears
quilting patterns and coaching an invitation away from the skankier cast-on
minimal or managing a large selection of art supplies and zig zag machines
the best place to comparison shop for a man’s notion
used to be a bunch of barely visible AEQS online shops
which now applies to all parts of a project
to quickly wind any thread or yarn into a delicate torpor

as making love is a delicate proposition
so bottom line requirements behoove our arreared fantasies
to open up shop in the cybernetic casting of small sensuality-tinged
quilting or zig-zagging methods into a demarcated sigh or request
bloom colors may vary from a functionality and scalability
scarcely remanded for the synthetic-based mud we once were using
recently imple- mented emerging from a more basic need

which finds us tenderly coaching and quilting the market
cornering the handbags and duffelbags of emotional commerce
which compose the notion we’re after
utopian since the breakfast and a notion toward growth to boot
the right delivery system thresholds environmentally sustainable
not to mention adorable curvy obsession in the atmosphere
unabashed as an ambulance passing through the movies

you will need if you want to make more notions
a process for love-making that does not disregard bottom line requirements
some goo that offers a site for quilting
not to mention on the whole an air of familiarity and friendliness
whelming patterned notions against making love on quilts
bedspreads and drapery aching in the stern notion that is established
a kind of yet supple believability as lovers on swings in the park at night

agreeing I wouldn’t eat that if or before I were you
swinging in the late years of an empire subsumed by bottom line requirements
a yet not to mention compostable compunction believing in itself
establishing lights as a mere drapery transposing very human disgust
not to mention lust for a notion that won’t give
an embroidery we can in an orderly fashion carry with us through the desert
divining important predicted ribbon from a market

from Keeping Up With Elliott

hand on his arm
a stuatue
rake your neck
sturn out them
zakc som check
that what you ome to
expect
needle
in the hay
little
int he
needle
in the
hay
swaering your closed
beg down your toes
know what did
two idio kid
don’t havea clue
calling me out
your pulling in hime
thorugh
needle
in theya
nidle
in they ahy
needle in the ahy
hele a n bus
nearly theyere
disturbing ythe tree
falling out six and out
six and my teath
donw
down
staris to the movies gonna
make it ok
taknig thein cure so i can
be quiet wherever
i wnat so me alone
you atouth
bpurnd that i’m getting good
marks

your hadn on his heart
his static chamr
ram our neck
call in some friend try to
cash some check back what
come to expect
needle in the
heya
eneel
in the hay
neddle in the hey
swear in your cltheos
pick down your toes
a reaction say
know what ou did
you idiot
kid
you don’t havea
clue
sometimes just cet gauta
in the eye your pullin me thorugh
helen a bus
hear me touch me
when disturbing a tree
falling out sixth aond howard
dead sweat i my teeth
down down
stairs
to the movies
ai can
be myself and i adona’t
wanna talk takin ga ure
so i can quiet whereever
i wal so leavie
me alon4e you ought to beparoijnd
that i’m getting good
marks
neeafdl;ae
in thy ahe
needle in the heya
needle in the hay
needl ein the ahe
needle in the hay
needle in they

neddle
in in
your hand on his heart
his dad charmed rack your neck
sturngin a out a fee
call i n some friend
zack didnt come that s what
come to expect needl;e
aoint he y
nedle
in they
needle in the
hay
needle in they hay
swearin gthe clothes pick
down the toes say know what
did
to idiot kid who dont
havea clue
so omeotimea
you ust get couaght in the ire
needle in the hay
needl in they ah
needle ian they
a
needl ein theyah
helena bus
fear lee touching his dirt in three
falling out six and out
dead sweat in my theth
walkd
wlaklk
wkalk
donw
donw
down
starings
to the movies gonna make i tok
take it cure so i can quiet so
leave me alone
ou roughta
be purond that i’m gettin ggood
marks
needl eian the
hay
needle in they ahy
needle in they hay
needla
intey
needl in the hay
nedle
ainti
needl eith inhay
needle in theahuy
needle in theahay

No Ideas But In Pangs

through our gestures
taking up space
we present impression
how illustrious tucked
judged it takes
according to a happening—we
Poundian, scrunching toes
taken with one woman, the woman
I don’t know if that answers anything
deeply engrained nightmare scenario
micro-expressions (sorry PBS)
high-culture “mirroring” ticks
men at a frenetically (panicky?)—pop culture, y’know
My Two Sons
they’re not around as much
retreating to the restroom (unlike fiddling)
The Best American Poetry
pad assures not a comprimise
your ideas the mimicking present tense
yourself allows a sort of hobby
cross pile gait
mixes the poetic and the quotidian
doctrinaire first impression
holding many attended cues
growing or broadening, mmm boy...
...and note the difference
try to do still-watch voice, unlike
fiddling—the person you are sitting across from
having alot more to do, um
...scrunching your toes in order to get ahead
a grim picture...
you don’t neccesarilly shut down
tend to point, panic, Watergate, Vietnam
um well we are at a meeting and pay attention
videotaping presentations—Gestures are terrific
Capital H history
point and see no reaction
point and see no reaction
we can’t read what’s happening in your work
tonight we tend to coach
work ethic we tend to sprawl out
an inch or pike I guess I should say
projected through many parents, materials
A: its a mistake, the rhetoric
misinterpreted as sessions
a cue from ancient times
intimidating expunged variety
beforehand “mirroring” to communicate
videotaping impact
specifically tucked into a Volvo
better that I taught them than that I didn’t
55% percent of that ankle
is a cue from ancient times
brilliant so frustration
unwieldy materials neatly Unlimited
present tense says of the table
hadn’t your hands unarmed
imposing laughing firm totally have been
a random tactic grateful to the other people
honorable Calvinist body language
alot of neural RAM
William Carlos Williams made an early decision
that non-verbal fresh flirting
was in fact reconaisance
are an are are only a nerve
I’ve lost my Avant Garde card in the laundry
all that kind of thing
a table upon us of taking up
perfect hygiene and all
visual ticks common to women
people in San Fransisco absorbed it
if they only are common, unarmed
post-Language conference table—
a cue from ancient times
we can’t read general truth
right next to
above the shoulder

[Source "texts" are "Seven Common Body Language Mistakes" off the A.P., and Bob Perelman's Studio 111 session with Charles Bernstein on PennSound]

Sample

it was like, Hey Weird Baby Boy Name
the rains down in Africa
can't keep ammo in stock
"hurry boy she's waiting..." No, No,
N-O to the enjambed blooper reel indices
combined with the talking Kangaroo Wall Street Journal
the emotionally determined tablature winks,,,

it's supposed to sit out on my porch tonight
but it mayn't diarhea
or the hooligans in our bloodline reunite us
be dapperer than making out before
but still romantically briefed and clinging
to your out-sourced sighs
O let me go down and learn
working toward an advanced curriculum
in this fucked-up pluri-felt of feelings
ridiculous images flood the boat in two
hand-held MP3 bridge quivers
and the longer voice-activated
the non-essentialist orgasms

_____ said all your moves are in volumes
you are volume-centric
& I say volume-concentric
I hear the rains down in Africa just like you

Sample

& I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues
that this laughable demeanor may tuck in
to yet more desert meals
Never Be Stumped For A Tree Shot
Each UXO/mine secret
section of code to embed
v.32bis 14.4kbps onto the image
the bear climbing the ladder out of the skate pool
...is love, even if the Fixed-Core guide wires loose
all sensation for their stems
spinning on the filmic pier in my dreams...
only post-dream description available was
crypto-keyed, rudely-withdrawn pregnant art
& I got a piece of it stuck under an application
for an absentee... I keep a starving pit-bull
and put on a pair of easier-for-you-to-enjoy
steering wheel fluid--harvesting absolutely
the most offensive visor from the portal

Sample

recieved a supple examination
of my strudel del fuego
in the keening light
spying on the movements
relaying signs and sighs
which softened up the lieu
not vexed and finally

do the squirrel's healthful paws
at my window
signal "Goodbye to you"?
can they in some way mask
my unhealthful intentions around the
dissemination of these songs?
are the squirrel and the ladder-climbing bear
both finally waving "Goodbye to you"
releasing some booster-chair endorphins
we had not experienced since
early days at the Ponderosa?

Sample

Al Swanky
comes through the saloon door
just ever week or so to surmise
getting lost in your eyes
then says "Goodbye to you"

so long ago
wanted far too much
to ever let you go
in the ever-wilding goggle-light
these Hazmat suits were exchanged
for Classical Gas Hinkty Licks
his perennially awful plastic surgery
licks the earmuffs off smarty jones
who so long ago said
Goodbye to capitalization
as a rebuke to it's coarse
& gender'd nature

Sample

like, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers
make a trip to FedEx
in those days that we took for
a steer or a whole hog
whether or not running as based
on her text messages [espn]
expand the liver space
for the Stella to enter
with it's impression
of a feeble corrections officer

this won't happen overnight:
skull-faced Hawaiians on deep dives
kindly seperating the flannel sheets
from the chaffe: 1. your fab shoes
send healthy thoughts out to all my buddies
and Thank You! 2. the real, ill Santa
escorted an employee to the Airport Lounge
then to Old Country Buffet
where the eggs are not violently detested

out from under the porch
by the local bodega, kickin' it Mel Gibson in Ransom-style
nobody touch my fuckin' eye-mask bondage kit!
(it's lyrical / skype-ready)
the Jonas Brothers arrived in a package from Greece
to rock the house
not to mention make rock 'n' roll childish
stripped of each of it's lamented
LenDale Attributes

finally showed the decorum
of writing code in the nude

Sample

was never more turbo
than a sinkhole
sunrising the moon'd
quasi-Rick Flair
jostling effects
For the extent of the duration of the televisual feast
In the televisual environment
I lay pants out
on the nostrum I catch
from the televised
public corn sizzurp roads
gathered in the tin pails
too think-y or like yeah
yeah I know suckling nights
are nosing around spending
the money

so you see
dude was hogging the tapas
I was trying to cross the street
against the glare
forgiving angular bus sounds
that had reached my window
which was the city "blowin' through"
ruffling NetFlix wrappers
used as makeshift condoms
dieting in exotic localles
with the coffee that was
out of my depth

Rick Shaw Rickshaw

Dude, so sorry that half-wolf half-centipede ate your girlfriend's dad's face off!

Rodefer


How much Rodefer for a Klondike Bar?

New Poems
by Mike Hauser

single black portable CD player playing "Hot Blooded" out of an open 1st floor window onto an empty sidewalk

____

Two Questions

Who the fuck are these people?

Am I going the right way?

____

Personal Poem


Coldplay song playing

in the laundromat.

There's just me &

another guy in this

laundromat.

And that song

what the fuck's it called?

"Spinners"? "Engine"? "Crops"?

"Archer Daniels Midland"?

"I Heart Monsanto"?

It's the one my mom

really likes, and other people

I know who I think like it

would love to hear it right now,

and then, oh great!, I think I like

it too! And yet, and yet

I feel kind of like

violated by it.

Like this Coldplay song,

whose title I can't remember,

and that is playing in the laundromat

where just me and this guy are waiting

for our clothes,

it's like it's not just

moving me, but,

forcibly moving me.

____


guy in car
makes pecking motion
while turning left
and telling off
guy in other car

____

It always sounds to me like the guy in Nickelback should see a doctor.

(Yeah, Ear Nose And Throat Doctor!)

____

Journey

I feel like there should be an HBO series about Journey's career.

____

"can you hear me runnin?"

Are we supposed to take this literally?

Like, are we supposed to hear the singer's shoes?

____

Hey Karl

some guy named Ronald wants to talk to you.

Dude posts loner crum-bum videos on the wires we agree to as the Werewolf gluten.

High-larious! Dude's timing within the performative (who knew?!) space of this Op-Ed piece is just priceless. "My Doberman pinscher ate the kindergartner's bratwurst." I mean, just, oh my god. I can't take it.

this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do

Jared White
Farrah Field

Thursday July 23rd 8pm







Salacious Banter Sweatbox
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.

Farrah Field’s first book of poems, Rising, won Four Way Books’ 2007 Levis Prize. Her poems have appeared in many publications including the Mississippi Review, Margie, The Massachusetts Review, Pool, Typo, Harp & Altar, 42Opus, La Petite Zine, Sojourn, Pebble Lake Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Fulcrum, and The Pinch. She lives in Brooklyn and blogs at adultish.blogspot.com.

Jared White was born in Boston, and has lived in Brooklyn for about eight years, during which time he received an MFA in poetry from Columbia, as well as playing a fair amount of music, mostly on the piano. His poems have appeared journals in print (Another Chicago Magazine, Barrow Street, Cannibal, Fulcrum) and online journals (Coconut, Horse Less Review, Word For / Word, Verse). He also published essays on poetry and music, most recently in Harp & Altar, Open Letters, and Poets Off Poetry. He was awarded a University Writing Prize from the Academy of American Poets. A chapbook of poems, entitled Yellowcake, was in Cannibal Books' Narwhal compendium. His very occasional blog, No No Yes No Yes, can be found at jaredswhite.blogspot.com.

YOUR RECENT ACTIVITY

07/19 You watched

Dana Gould: Let Me Put...

07/19 You watched

The Wackness

07/18 You watched

Paul Mooney: Analyzing White America

07/18 You watched

Bunny Shorts: 3: Brokeback Mountain

07/18 You watched

Bunny Shorts: 3: A Christmas Story

07/18 You watched

Another 48 Hrs.

Wienermobile crashes.

This was also in that notebook:

I have never been one of the men.

My face lies actionless, feminine flower.
I am covered (face) by the moon.

Perfectly still, 'cept for the water.

[It sounds like someone sliced the speaker's face off. Also, the poem assigns the movement of the water to my person. So in this poem I'm essentially an X Men hero, called No Face, who can make water move at will. But now that I think of it there has to be one like that already right? Right? So anyway yeah I think I really did write in those days with myself in mind as the "I" of each poem. I can only chalk that up to some kind of milk & OJ combo of alot of Frank O'Hara "I do this I do that" poems and James Wright "I'm crossing the meadow to go touch that horse" poems that were in my system. Now I've moved onto writing poems that sound vaguely like the work of a serial killer. I'm like creepy wine, as I age.]

This is a list in a notebook from about 2000/2001 that had "Poets" written at the top:

Grace Schulman
Claudia Keelan
new Komunyaakaa book
W.H. Auden
Spanish Surrealists
Marianne Moore
Li Po
Rilke
Reverdy, Jacob, Apollonaire
Sappho
August Kleinzaller
Cathy Song

Spill Proof

I will go live somewhere near a lady's neck.

pending slump

unbeknownst

Dream

Going around the compound with a huge load we had to dump somewhere.

Baths

like what if they just stopped working?

Poets date, continue dating, and date on into the turkey in the sky.

also:

The Shampoo Thief
The Milk Man
The Vampire Panic Attack
The Doo Wop Werewolf
The Shoegazer
The Sour Cream & Chive
The Llama Twist
The Lending R. Kelly Some Clark Coolidge Books
The Cowboy Hat Purchase

[Many of these dances will require what seems at first an almost balletic amount of pantomime. Several are said to have been developed by at least marginally deranged and/or sadistic people. But as the student masters more and more of them, they begin to see that these dances taken as a self-reflexive unity, compose an act of incredible love, and demonstrate the acute sensitivity to pain and rhythm human animals possess. It is said that the more dances a human can learn, the more enlightened that human will be.]

Zack's apartment, where Zack films me while I demonstrate such dances sweeping the nation as:

The Jaywalk
The Noodle
The Princeton Ponce
The Sidewinder
The Big Unit
The Lil Sneeze
The Tired Houdini
The Filibuster
The Rump Rumination (slow simmer)
The Doleful Booty
The Let's Not Tell Roger Daltry We're Partying Over Here
The Funnel Cake
The Carpet Roller
The Tarp Trot
The No Money Down
The Grape
The Greek Translation
The Gifter
The Platonic Introducer
The Pancake Flip
The Caterpillar Kip
The Wan Wiggle (cough syrup)
The Ask Me No Questions I Tell You No Lies
The Civil War Enactment
The Grant Proposal
The How Did I Get Here
The Bruce Dern
The Put Away
The Buffet Breakdown
The Janesville Jumping Jack
The Lord Of The Prance
The Snorkel
The Unsolicited
The Cake Tease

Boy The Bodies Of Vegetables

hey I'm an inveterate newsguy s' why'd you pluck all my stuff stuff?

Feel like I need a little nod from all the poets who dress terribly.
Feel like I need a little love from all the poets who dress so fine.
I'm cultivating this here Masters Of The Universe museum in my little sticker book.
I feel like I cd maybe get some o' these fresh & clean poets to look in it.
Feel like they might find something they like.

Sexual Glasnost

Tear down this zipper!

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.

Contemporary Device

ain't s'posed to show my panic attacks on touch screen
more than willowy only dancing pigment demarcation

single tear on the Rewind button

Declaration Of Independence

in hot pants woven
not t' mention stroven

Rejection Letter

the obligatory Everyparent shows ire

Hey Gerber

Annie's Naturals think I'm stupid

Tallahassee Kid

cute sounds pierce floorboards

when that passion screw gets on the eggs
my tie gets caught in the drive thru

Mayday Malone

lovely noon towels.

Corner Aisle

good gobbers! it dishes on my Mercurochrome!!
Oh heavens to Feng Shui...

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.