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

Wait...
Fuck all... that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the appeal of black metal?

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

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

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

Welcome to the future, poets!

I do "creepy" pretty well.

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

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

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

Thank you.

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