Helium - XXX

Humor

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

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

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

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

Sibylle Baier, Colour Green

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Milwaukee

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

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

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

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

Poet Laureate Inaugural Speech

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

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

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

The Strokes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

where have all the game day meals gone?

Dream

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

Hi

I'm a recovering leaping poet

September

September Burger

The Classics

Sound of a thousand babies clearing their throats.

Coasting

Between 27% and 67%, is coasting.

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

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

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

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

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