categorically like Paris,
things that are cold

how to read to the stars when each has an equal

This week's earworm: Moon River

I don't know what direction
is today and suddenly
every character in the movies has
the same shortness of ease,
the many potential
outcomes to sleep between.

if this is writing/to the south

from one
of several
facing windows
the pieces that won't
together
forms to
cross a room
with aim out
of the frame
going for a
light or bell

This is a Camera Because You Can't Import a Camper

how in an hour, a single act of looking can swim, a vest full of mirrors. how not to leave footprints. art art anecdote art. a reason why we're all invisible. where your roadside assistance shimmers in the fumes.

Tokihiro Sato

Originally uploaded by .Kerri..

I didn't know of this artist's work until 2 weeks ago, but the Art Institute of Chicago has been showing an exhibition of his photographs and Jeff and I have been totally enchanted by them. Tonight Sato gave a lecture which, as it turned out, was given in Japanese, minimally and abstractly translated. I felt the auditorium growing frustrated with his 10 minute monolgues which the translator would distill into a few vague sentences. They exchanged jokes, he made animated gestures while the rest of us were left to ponder the slides of his images. At times he even moved the cursor arrow over a section of the image, apparently expounding upon it in great detail. I don't know which I enjoyed more- his images, and the sense I gathered of him as an artist who insisted on the work as sculpture of space and light, and primarily interested in process, or the hour and a half of language set adrift. Rightfully, it left the work to speak for itself. In the Q&A, anxious faculty of the School of the Art Institute pressed to know what the reflections of light "represented" to him: fireflies? marching pieces of string? Perhaps shielded from further insistance by the language rift, he was nevertheless steadfast: Representation is not his intention. All they represent is where he stood shining a light into the camera.

Mold Eating Beetles named after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld

"The new species are called Agathidium bushi, Agathidium cheneyi and Agathidium rumsfeldi... Other new species discovered at the same time were named after the scientists' wives, the Star Wars villain Darth Vader and the Greek words for 'ugly' and 'having prominent teeth'...

At least two former US presidents have species named after them, the Washington Times newspaper reports.

A deer, an elk and a lion are named after Theodore Roosevelt, while Abraham Lincoln has a wasp and a rose in his name."

the why maybe

with the speed of culture perpetuated by technology and its accesses (/excesses) and the (overly) imperative of artistic innovation, the state of things (art, music, poetry) seems like a sloppy piling on of hands (the schoolyard game to determine first dibs). maybe that's what's prompting all of these "after" poems--to acknowledge the inevitable pastiche, to make explicit my lack of patience, refinement.

Hey, so do the Cosmos

after Regis Bonvicino

a sober air does verbena
not as gone I am a dance behind curtains in corners
on that I rev am pedaled as

no arterial demonstration
may say I fear you
on nudity's account

not a tear in the fog
no cumulative nerve to circa
where I'll go minus cameras

Reductions of Disorder

4.

of your greatness
of the "modern style"
of the many people
of a generation
of the regions devastated
of our years
of our ledger
of the academic spirit
to the limit
on the occasion of
a new architecture

5.

more than watching
number entered

time that
ambush

the certain
has been

6.

or a visitor that entered
the senses

a product that
unspeakable

was history the builder
was history reflecting
in currents of glass

7.

planners immediately their own
opponents only in the years

that in implicit return
the physical consequences
sharpen the turn

Treatise on Style

Some memorable passages from Louis Aragon's Treatise on Style.

"I trample syntax because it must be trampled."

"Difficult is an epithet that can be applied only to the definite. That is why art is not difficult. Nor is it easy."

"What on earth is modern exegesis up to? ...out to rake the muck of metaphors...those sentence chasers."

"What is worth saying is worth saying twice and more."

"Dada is your knight...In its light, all your recent bad taste seems unforgivable and it sails from you like a little ship."

"We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later."

Reductions of Disorder

3.

towns and hearts
those hundred

habits
turning the same

constructions new
in all landscapes

age

will cover
its blankness

just looking into it

today the secret service is right down the street from where I live harrassing my alma mater over some didactic political art.

Six Corners performance

Jeff & Virgil
Originally uploaded by .Kerri..

As many times as I have seen/heard this piece, Six Corners, this was the first time I have seen it as it was intended: projected large with discrete action in 3 panels--and large it was. Coupled with the multichannel surround sound, I was swallowed whole.

A chap who told me he used to install colossal pipe organs in the 1970's remarked that it was nice to see composers thinking of sound enveloping an audience as he had done in his line of work.

This was one of those wonderful programs of electronic pieces played in an auditorium intended for chamber music. Instead of humans with bows taking bows, the room is darkened and the acoustical clouds quiver with synthetic sound.

Many people see the problem with electronic music performance as there being little or no actual "performance." And I'll admit, I've been to plenty of shows where the performer could have been checking his email for all I knew. But Jeff has long contended that there is performative tension even in that electronic performace which appears to have little or no live component--it's in the potential for failure.

Heavy Rotation

Colleen

Reductions of Disorder

after Le Corbusier

1.

what is past
the natural elements

of our ends
this building

height possesses
directionless between

our means
soundly

cells
regenerate

surely
a fragment of

effort
each

2.

this extinct
fire

an imperative
land

here
probably

the rewards were
sleeping with a sound

that distributed
history. less

who recognized
twentieth centuries

more sands
brought to follow.

Name poem for Creeley

to be lore
to treble

or rely.
to robe
or

or try.
let error
leer. let
Bly err.

eye yr
tree
yr reel
byte
by byte.

Discrete Series 4/8/05

Discrete Series 4/8/05
Originally uploaded by .Kerri..

Leonie, David Pavelich and Jesse Seldess at last night's event. David shared an article at the beginning of his reading that scientists suspect reading or listening to poetry may cause intense cerebral activity. So tonight is going to blow your minds he promised/deduced. An electro squirrel in the left speaker during the first half of his reading hinted at that... Corey Mead read next after a cautionary note to the audience from Jesse that Corey is despicable and conniving. We were not to believe anything he said. Steve Timm brought the evening to a close with his sonically dense work, particularly a Blonk-style improvization. Always striking the range of verbal utterance that is non-language and yet how much it can communicate/does.

A Poem for Martha

there is
where
you are

soon
believing
there is
a key-

moving
spirit

in a room
where water
stands

for a field
of gulls

there is
entry
and exit into

pools where
your sight is
not at home

After Maso, after Kahlo, after March 31

“the self—
its thousand consolations”
--Carole Maso

Try to keep it wordless. A woolen keepsake—horse or deer. She wound enough for four limbs and now I’m left to decide. It does not boil down.

The photographic record begins here. Missing: I am holding two mint ice cream cones away from an August noon; wearing my EKG remnants at a party just after turning blue; Brenda stalking grasses in a roadside meadow; Anti-Bush cars, curbs, lightposts; the Brooklyn Bridge; November and 2004.

Rain inside the loft the only source of light. They sneak back to the window for a kiss, projecting their shadows onto the performance.

Only a few items can remain active in this field. To choose which will be lost.

Dear Shannon,
Thank you for lending me your forest
and for the dream it has made.

**

How do we spend a rainy evening? Plunking piano, drawing doors of breath.

“…from the height

heat and light”

I like the dampness and the chill—in it things are growing
(on medians little green crowns)

How entry and exit are beyond reporting. The end of life hidden. We put it in another building. To have it done already. Maria’s baby overdue. Antoinette’s passing overdue. Kahlo again and again. Creeley yesterday only. Just nine months ago she was running the store. Gave me her luggage saying 'Kennedy was president then.'

“we dream for a moment of something whole”

the lake enough like a sea but the sound of trains
instead of boats.

**

“dark courtyards and order”

a black cat watches me read this, centers
herself above the page.

**
'you’ll have to explain your poetry to me sometime'

(so the job has come to enter the poem)

Try to dispel—'liar'. I leave and my world is restored. From everywhere else outside my body there are separate laws, victories and lore. There I am: a saint, a child, suspicious, fed kolacky, rumored pregnant.

Never before crossed days off the calendar like so many cans of peaches to be gotten from the store. I wish I were counting towards. I am tidying the threads of others, for others, things that rupture, things that infect, things to prevent: daylight savings time, a missing newspaper, memories of a dog being shot. Three hours later, still winded—'you’re calling me a liar.' The days made through.

“Each mark a door
Each word a boat.”

Four brown square packages ready to be mailed to say 'thank you and how soon can I visit you again?'

Memories gone. We must have thieves.