Monday, September 08, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Friday, August 08, 2008
Monday, August 04, 2008
Salacious Banter Occasional Reading Series : #3
Dustin Williamson & Ara Shirinyan
August 10th @ 6:30 (Reading will start at approximately 7:30)
900 S 5th. Fifth & Walker Walker's Point Milwaukee
As usual, some food and drink will be provided, but feel free to BYOB. Suggested Donation is $5. Please come even if you don't have $5, but try to have $5. Many of you will remember Dustin Williamson from his time here, when he served as Milwaukee Poetry's Premiere Boyish Provocateur. He now lives in Brooklyn where he occasionally rarely publishes books under the Rust Buckle imprint and spent much of the spring curating the Zinc Bar Reading Series. His chapbooks are Cab Ass'n (Lame House Press), Gorilla Dust (Open 24 Hours), Heavy Panda (Goodbye Better), and the newish Exhausted Grunts from Cannibal Books. Work can be found online at Dusie (http://www.dusie.org/williamson.html) and Rock Heals! (http://www.rockheals.com/archives/2008/01/weighted_down_b.html).
Ara Shirinyan was born in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia and now lives in Los Angeles, California. He co-curates readings at the quickly legendary LA club The Smell and, with his Make Now Press (makenow.org), publishes diverse works of poetry including three books from Kenneth Goldsmith and several written under Oulipian constraints. He is the author of Syria is in the World (Palm Press) and the just published Your Country Is Great (Afghanistan-Guyana) from Futurepoem Books. His Speech Genres 1-2 is available as part of UBUWEB's Publishing the Unpublishable Series here (pdf): http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_024_Shirinyan_Speech-Genres.pdf. If that's not enough, check out mp3's from his band Godzik Pink via Kill Rock Stars/5 Rue Christine: http://www.5rc.com/discography/ger013/index.htm.
Dustin Williamson & Ara Shirinyan
August 10th @ 6:30 (Reading will start at approximately 7:30)
900 S 5th. Fifth & Walker Walker's Point Milwaukee
As usual, some food and drink will be provided, but feel free to BYOB. Suggested Donation is $5. Please come even if you don't have $5, but try to have $5. Many of you will remember Dustin Williamson from his time here, when he served as Milwaukee Poetry's Premiere Boyish Provocateur. He now lives in Brooklyn where he occasionally rarely publishes books under the Rust Buckle imprint and spent much of the spring curating the Zinc Bar Reading Series. His chapbooks are Cab Ass'n (Lame House Press), Gorilla Dust (Open 24 Hours), Heavy Panda (Goodbye Better), and the newish Exhausted Grunts from Cannibal Books. Work can be found online at Dusie (http://www.dusie.org/williamson.html) and Rock Heals! (http://www.rockheals.com/archives/2008/01/weighted_down_b.html).
Ara Shirinyan was born in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia and now lives in Los Angeles, California. He co-curates readings at the quickly legendary LA club The Smell and, with his Make Now Press (makenow.org), publishes diverse works of poetry including three books from Kenneth Goldsmith and several written under Oulipian constraints. He is the author of Syria is in the World (Palm Press) and the just published Your Country Is Great (Afghanistan-Guyana) from Futurepoem Books. His Speech Genres 1-2 is available as part of UBUWEB's Publishing the Unpublishable Series here (pdf): http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_024_Shirinyan_Speech-Genres.pdf. If that's not enough, check out mp3's from his band Godzik Pink via Kill Rock Stars/5 Rue Christine: http://www.5rc.com/discography/ger013/index.htm.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Abraham Lincoln’s Uncircumcised Penis
too much of a Metalica urethra, though
to really matter;
We had the delicious cherries of Door County
sloshing around our Vicodin suppositories.
let’s face it: The only Joni Mitchell in town.
Zapping various organs along the
county line artifice;
a clown’s head got big and
we had to act.
Now there was a new Joni Mitchell in town
reeling down the grocery aisles
a real adventure in subterranean living;
and a lesson in bifurcated government forms
a subtle rash along the pubic area.
Hand dribbling or Corpus Christi luxuriating
outward of the orange turnstile’s
dilapidary code;
coffee cups atop benches
with overpraised vocal chords etc.
When etcetera means instant boner
for the new Chief of the boner patrol,
an ebony Joni Mitchell.
And perforated oceans won’t stop us...
our own love might though, it’s on the way,
but the perforated oceans, with their
perforates
or gloom in the form of snail pie...
prob'ly not.
too much of a Metalica urethra, though
to really matter;
We had the delicious cherries of Door County
sloshing around our Vicodin suppositories.
let’s face it: The only Joni Mitchell in town.
Zapping various organs along the
county line artifice;
a clown’s head got big and
we had to act.
Now there was a new Joni Mitchell in town
reeling down the grocery aisles
a real adventure in subterranean living;
and a lesson in bifurcated government forms
a subtle rash along the pubic area.
Hand dribbling or Corpus Christi luxuriating
outward of the orange turnstile’s
dilapidary code;
coffee cups atop benches
with overpraised vocal chords etc.
When etcetera means instant boner
for the new Chief of the boner patrol,
an ebony Joni Mitchell.
And perforated oceans won’t stop us...
our own love might though, it’s on the way,
but the perforated oceans, with their
perforates
or gloom in the form of snail pie...
prob'ly not.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Mike Is Pathetic And Loves No Age, Finally, And Believes The Generation Right After His Is Probably The Emo Generation But He Likes People Who Sing Out of Tune (And He Knows Alot of Emo Dudes Are Way Not In Tune But He Likes Malkmus not-in-tune as Opposed to Conor Oberst not-in-tune, There's A Huge-ass Difference)
So how is this No Age band doing basicly the same thing that at least alot of other indie bands are doing, and yet their music is so fucking good?
Take "Cappo". Off-kilter guitar and drum stomping: Check. Loping teenlove tempo: Check. Two people in the band: Check. Sort of introspective lyrics: Check.
Sorry. It's not them, it's me.
But it all sounds so, I don't know, youthful. Kind of like if the Ramones were born 30 years later. No, if the Ramones grew up on Dinosaur Jr. No wait, if the Ramones grew up on Sonic Youth.
Oh and I only have half of Nouns. You know... and there's half of Weirdo Rippers, a more open-ended affair, psych-....
Man that one Flying Saucer Attack song "Come And Close My Eyes" used to really make me wish I had a girlfriend. It's one of those songs that makes you wish you had a girlfriend. Let's see, "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" that's another one. This can all be googled.
But "Come And Close My Eyes" is in a peculiar wish-I-had-a-girlfriend or WIHAG category, which is the post-apoclyptic wish-I-had-a-girlfriend category. Pretty much, listen to Sonic Youth say circa Sister and you get my drift.
Maybe someday all of our girlfriends and boyfriends will post-apocalyptic girlfriends and boyfriends is all I'm saying. And we can listen to No Age, then.
So how is this No Age band doing basicly the same thing that at least alot of other indie bands are doing, and yet their music is so fucking good?
Take "Cappo". Off-kilter guitar and drum stomping: Check. Loping teenlove tempo: Check. Two people in the band: Check. Sort of introspective lyrics: Check.
Sorry. It's not them, it's me.
But it all sounds so, I don't know, youthful. Kind of like if the Ramones were born 30 years later. No, if the Ramones grew up on Dinosaur Jr. No wait, if the Ramones grew up on Sonic Youth.
Oh and I only have half of Nouns. You know... and there's half of Weirdo Rippers, a more open-ended affair, psych-....
Man that one Flying Saucer Attack song "Come And Close My Eyes" used to really make me wish I had a girlfriend. It's one of those songs that makes you wish you had a girlfriend. Let's see, "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" that's another one. This can all be googled.
But "Come And Close My Eyes" is in a peculiar wish-I-had-a-girlfriend or WIHAG category, which is the post-apoclyptic wish-I-had-a-girlfriend category. Pretty much, listen to Sonic Youth say circa Sister and you get my drift.
Maybe someday all of our girlfriends and boyfriends will post-apocalyptic girlfriends and boyfriends is all I'm saying. And we can listen to No Age, then.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Salacious Banter Update
I haven't informed Karl of this yet, but Salacious Banter Readings from now on are going to take place here.
I haven't informed Karl of this yet, but Salacious Banter Readings from now on are going to take place here.
Dream Punt
I've always been fascinated and perplexed by how to act. As in the "...don't know how to act", "how you gonna act".
I'm gonna go out on sort of a limb here and put forth the idea that whatever this "knowing how to act" is, that knowing how to act is a way to get your work published, whatever genre. Publishing in the Small Press world is essentially knowing how to move in within groups, how to connect and get one's work published is it not? So I've been thinking that getting the work placed is a social skill. So does that mean that whoever happens to have been influenced by Robert Creeley and was the Prom Queen in High School is bound to have the most chapbooks published?
There is a part of me that dismisses even the premise of that question, and another part of me that thinks that's an exaggeration but says Yes that's kind of the case. But what kind of a person carries around some supposed wounds from High School and applies them to poetry? What could that possibly be other then some kind of passive-aggressive projection.
I've figured out by this point that there are certain basic steps in getting the work published if you don't wanna go the Emily Dickinson route.
1. Correspondences: write to writers; saying what tho? omigodyourworkissoimportanttome? How did you write your books? How did your work get published? How is Bob Perelman?
2. Publishing in a number of literary magazines, thereby letting others get acquainted slowly at their speed with your work, letting them wade into the pool of You waistdeep. (But then is a person their work? Of course not. Goddamit... Fuckit...)
And yet I'm still kind of perplexed at how all this happens, but I'm actually not, I'm just angry at it. I don't know.
I've always been fascinated and perplexed by how to act. As in the "...don't know how to act", "how you gonna act".
I'm gonna go out on sort of a limb here and put forth the idea that whatever this "knowing how to act" is, that knowing how to act is a way to get your work published, whatever genre. Publishing in the Small Press world is essentially knowing how to move in within groups, how to connect and get one's work published is it not? So I've been thinking that getting the work placed is a social skill. So does that mean that whoever happens to have been influenced by Robert Creeley and was the Prom Queen in High School is bound to have the most chapbooks published?
There is a part of me that dismisses even the premise of that question, and another part of me that thinks that's an exaggeration but says Yes that's kind of the case. But what kind of a person carries around some supposed wounds from High School and applies them to poetry? What could that possibly be other then some kind of passive-aggressive projection.
I've figured out by this point that there are certain basic steps in getting the work published if you don't wanna go the Emily Dickinson route.
1. Correspondences: write to writers; saying what tho? omigodyourworkissoimportanttome? How did you write your books? How did your work get published? How is Bob Perelman?
2. Publishing in a number of literary magazines, thereby letting others get acquainted slowly at their speed with your work, letting them wade into the pool of You waistdeep. (But then is a person their work? Of course not. Goddamit... Fuckit...)
And yet I'm still kind of perplexed at how all this happens, but I'm actually not, I'm just angry at it. I don't know.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
After Lisa Jarnot and George Michael
I think there’s something you should know
I think there’s a shadow over your face
from the sweater-print I think it’s time
I told you so
I think that all we have to do now is take
these lies and make them true and make these dreams
into transactions of faith and make these wishes
closer to you and better by me and wish for
the transmutation of the sweater to tell us
something beautiful about the weather at the zoo
and the fashion show and
something beautiful about the weather
in Air Force One and the weather on the tarmac
and the sun which leans in to confide
it’s thoughts about box office records
and quilting in the south and laughter on the fringe
the mania of thus on city buses
feels like the road to heaven looks like
the road to hell and thus the failure
to make us laugh or make us dance
our failure to quilt and sing and
make love in otherwise unorthodox ways
that logs on and simultaneously out
I think I’m back down to earth on this
I think we’re through with singing in the rain
I think there’s someone with a transfer
I think we better ask somebody
I think there’s something you should know
I think there’s a shadow over your face
from the sweater-print I think it’s time
I told you so
I think that all we have to do now is take
these lies and make them true and make these dreams
into transactions of faith and make these wishes
closer to you and better by me and wish for
the transmutation of the sweater to tell us
something beautiful about the weather at the zoo
and the fashion show and
something beautiful about the weather
in Air Force One and the weather on the tarmac
and the sun which leans in to confide
it’s thoughts about box office records
and quilting in the south and laughter on the fringe
the mania of thus on city buses
feels like the road to heaven looks like
the road to hell and thus the failure
to make us laugh or make us dance
our failure to quilt and sing and
make love in otherwise unorthodox ways
that logs on and simultaneously out
I think I’m back down to earth on this
I think we’re through with singing in the rain
I think there’s someone with a transfer
I think we better ask somebody
Thursday, July 17, 2008
After Lisa Jarnot and Scritti Politti
where the money flows toward
the ocean where the money is ready for love
because of the 1980s
that the world is mystifying
and conspicuously passionate
fortifying and with an emphasis on production
leafless done down
bloodless all but the most delicious sequins
comma holding tanks for
conscious elegies rammed forth
by teenage boys and the aunts
and sickly farm implements
and the animals that operate their
solar panoptic contingency
where the money flows toward
the ocean where the money is ready for love
in the ocean and the sequined tears
and the poor old boats
or said contingency in homage
and the brain which is key which is
mysterious and says perverted things
that flood the oil tankers with love that flood
the oil tankers with artificial snare hits
where the money flows toward
the ocean where the money is ready for love
because of the 1980s
that the world is mystifying
and conspicuously passionate
fortifying and with an emphasis on production
leafless done down
bloodless all but the most delicious sequins
comma holding tanks for
conscious elegies rammed forth
by teenage boys and the aunts
and sickly farm implements
and the animals that operate their
solar panoptic contingency
where the money flows toward
the ocean where the money is ready for love
in the ocean and the sequined tears
and the poor old boats
or said contingency in homage
and the brain which is key which is
mysterious and says perverted things
that flood the oil tankers with love that flood
the oil tankers with artificial snare hits
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics
I don't know I'm thinking about a crustal abbreviation now for the text. Or the poetics of that smurf-dandy secretion are here already.
Knowing tools or like function. An excitable sex position or classic SNL quote, but either way a bumpkins foot stool for thinkin' rowdy stuff round said secretion. Militant anyway attention span of the already always there wayward passive clicker finger.
To surmise, write poems in war crouch and gangsta slouch.
I don't know I'm thinking about a crustal abbreviation now for the text. Or the poetics of that smurf-dandy secretion are here already.
Knowing tools or like function. An excitable sex position or classic SNL quote, but either way a bumpkins foot stool for thinkin' rowdy stuff round said secretion. Militant anyway attention span of the already always there wayward passive clicker finger.
To surmise, write poems in war crouch and gangsta slouch.
Monday, June 30, 2008
How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics
As ridiculous as the dream where Rowdy Roddy Piper is telling Robert Creeley to stop making friends.
Into feelings burgled without and not-in the bounds of your Grandma's depression. Builds bleek food conspiracies into hovelable cock-eyed clinching fingers.
A man stood a bison or weathering his top-spin of simpression. Dupression. Synechdotion.
Happy birthday envelope.
Cold climbing down through a gender specificity.
Joints pooling there corners and curlicues and trying pass on the traditions of haberdashery.
As ridiculous as the dream where Rowdy Roddy Piper is telling Robert Creeley to stop making friends.
Into feelings burgled without and not-in the bounds of your Grandma's depression. Builds bleek food conspiracies into hovelable cock-eyed clinching fingers.
A man stood a bison or weathering his top-spin of simpression. Dupression. Synechdotion.
Happy birthday envelope.
Cold climbing down through a gender specificity.
Joints pooling there corners and curlicues and trying pass on the traditions of haberdashery.
How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics
It is hard to imagine how poetry in it's own mind. In what wondering filling up glances nervous-like Your Grocer's Shelves.
How to hide green poetry grocer reducer, or find fissionable material for that matter, is poetry's Poetica Ashante Sashe. Poetry grounds finite observations inside little baby human dryers.
That's fucked up. Or that's come into it's weatherable ass-face architecture.
And in blank spots finding new avenue cloisters banana talk spores through forms or reprisal. A ticket god, y'see.
Human squirrel!
It is hard to imagine how poetry in it's own mind. In what wondering filling up glances nervous-like Your Grocer's Shelves.
How to hide green poetry grocer reducer, or find fissionable material for that matter, is poetry's Poetica Ashante Sashe. Poetry grounds finite observations inside little baby human dryers.
That's fucked up. Or that's come into it's weatherable ass-face architecture.
And in blank spots finding new avenue cloisters banana talk spores through forms or reprisal. A ticket god, y'see.
Human squirrel!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics
Poetry in Social Star Wars is ultra-complex Jedi training in Jedi training relationships between Jedi jumpsuits in Jedi perpindicular spaces where you earn the right to help so & so hem in so & so's ultra spandex proto-Jedi more fixedly within the globo-not-fascistic-utra-cool-Jedi realm.
Poetry in Social Star Wars is ultra-complex Jedi training in Jedi training relationships between Jedi jumpsuits in Jedi perpindicular spaces where you earn the right to help so & so hem in so & so's ultra spandex proto-Jedi more fixedly within the globo-not-fascistic-utra-cool-Jedi realm.
How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics
This blog has become steadily more opaque. Which has been become its format. Which is me trying to articulate myself then essentially musing on some idea of what is essentially dicking around.
If dicking around brings up the rear, it takes on whole other connotations. It could become ego-trippin. But if I ego trip for awhile I seem to invariably end up out of my depth.
Standing tall on the wings of my dreams. Slouching under poetry's wing, which smells like curry and old spice.
TO BE CONTINUED
This blog has become steadily more opaque. Which has been become its format. Which is me trying to articulate myself then essentially musing on some idea of what is essentially dicking around.
If dicking around brings up the rear, it takes on whole other connotations. It could become ego-trippin. But if I ego trip for awhile I seem to invariably end up out of my depth.
Standing tall on the wings of my dreams. Slouching under poetry's wing, which smells like curry and old spice.
TO BE CONTINUED
Saturday, June 28, 2008
How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics
Is there an alienation effect in the company of poets?
In other words, should a poet not be "chummy" with their audience? Making it all a little inside? A little too inside?
A little tutu aboard a whaling ship?
Poets should probably talk to their audience without assumptions. But don't assume we don't know who Jack Spicer is jack-ass! And conversely, Don't assume we know who Jack Spicer is jack-ass!
Just explain who Jack Spicer is and then say, 'y' know... Jack Spicer' And be prepared for Jack Spicer to stop talking to you.
The audience does not want to see the poet talking to other poets, they want to see the poet talking to other poets.
Like, flip it around on em. Yeah, and since you're using a whole bunch of words I don't understand, I'm gonna go ahead and take that as an insult.
This is directed at anyone where I've ever woken with their hand in my pants, when it should be in my poems. This is implicated in my style. It is an assumed Spicerian eye-roll. On a Spicerian California roll.
Is there an alienation effect in the company of poets?
In other words, should a poet not be "chummy" with their audience? Making it all a little inside? A little too inside?
A little tutu aboard a whaling ship?
Poets should probably talk to their audience without assumptions. But don't assume we don't know who Jack Spicer is jack-ass! And conversely, Don't assume we know who Jack Spicer is jack-ass!
Just explain who Jack Spicer is and then say, 'y' know... Jack Spicer' And be prepared for Jack Spicer to stop talking to you.
The audience does not want to see the poet talking to other poets, they want to see the poet talking to other poets.
Like, flip it around on em. Yeah, and since you're using a whole bunch of words I don't understand, I'm gonna go ahead and take that as an insult.
This is directed at anyone where I've ever woken with their hand in my pants, when it should be in my poems. This is implicated in my style. It is an assumed Spicerian eye-roll. On a Spicerian California roll.
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