Tuesday, January 31, 2006
To My Meteorologist
“We’re all liars, our research shows.”
In the heart’s filthy season a very wet breed of snowflake is likely going in her pocket for change, finding a bullet from her knee, from her chair leg, from the window. An elevated leg like an elevated habit- there’s a lounge for that now “(because I say so).” I’m sovereign to a fault, watching a sunset full of credit. Wanting to be in like pregnancy and penguins, but devotedly viaduct in a nervy snow.
“We’re all liars, our research shows.”
In the heart’s filthy season a very wet breed of snowflake is likely going in her pocket for change, finding a bullet from her knee, from her chair leg, from the window. An elevated leg like an elevated habit- there’s a lounge for that now “(because I say so).” I’m sovereign to a fault, watching a sunset full of credit. Wanting to be in like pregnancy and penguins, but devotedly viaduct in a nervy snow.
Facts about ants..
If a man could run as fast for his size as an ant can, he could run as fast as a racehorse.
Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight.
Ants use their antenae not only for touch, but also for their sense of smell.
The ant has two eyes, each eye is made of many smaller eyes.
The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants.
Like all insects, the outside of their body is covered with a hard armour.
Ants are clean and tidy insects.
Some birds put ants in their feathers.
If a man could run as fast for his size as an ant can, he could run as fast as a racehorse.
Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight.
Ants use their antenae not only for touch, but also for their sense of smell.
The ant has two eyes, each eye is made of many smaller eyes.
The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants.
Like all insects, the outside of their body is covered with a hard armour.
Ants are clean and tidy insects.
Some birds put ants in their feathers.
my regards to office society..
sorry for jumping down your throats over all of writing is a faux truth; it feels like my molar's wearing a high heel.
sorry for jumping down your throats over all of writing is a faux truth; it feels like my molar's wearing a high heel.
Wobbly poem from the fall, reworked.. still wobbly
Once it was morning in 1900. Lintels boast of fireproof storage. It sounds coarse, but effing happens softly, closer to being vacated by a ghost that gives certain legs going out. It haunts the possibilities beneath certain clothes, a percentage of return on the rest of her to form a hold. To hold up the rest of her she must be in a baseball repose. But is it fireproven? Effing Sox, she yells. Calls it a cycle, but attempts fail to turn it up in any books on circulation, only hosts.
Once it was morning in 1900. Lintels boast of fireproof storage. It sounds coarse, but effing happens softly, closer to being vacated by a ghost that gives certain legs going out. It haunts the possibilities beneath certain clothes, a percentage of return on the rest of her to form a hold. To hold up the rest of her she must be in a baseball repose. But is it fireproven? Effing Sox, she yells. Calls it a cycle, but attempts fail to turn it up in any books on circulation, only hosts.
Monday, January 30, 2006
I’ve deleted my victorian victory whoop. without charisma, there’s still a lot of pretending to do. that I have a task, for example, at present. warriors of truth, look no farther than my cubicle.
“as far as I know”
thought I’d make banana bread but got slothful instead. slothful is a date with keifer sutherland, hagen das and bed. tired from the drugs and panic of more toothwerk and today the pain prevention cocktail was not at full tilt. is there another country where this practice is less medieval? swedes have nice teeth and a streak for humanism.
“as far as I know”
thought I’d make banana bread but got slothful instead. slothful is a date with keifer sutherland, hagen das and bed. tired from the drugs and panic of more toothwerk and today the pain prevention cocktail was not at full tilt. is there another country where this practice is less medieval? swedes have nice teeth and a streak for humanism.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Jeff's iMix!
A manuscript has spontaneously taken shape/occurred. It makes me realize that a year plus of frustrated, overwrought pieces, stops and starts, nothing that went together but each poem saddled as the first in a manuscript-length series was futile. Giving up writing poems altogether and writing daily, concrete jaunts with no looking back for connection has, it seems now glancing over my shoulder, shown some things resting well side by side, cohering most quantumly.
I-Ching says these are my months of youthful folly, Jeff's months of approach, avoid stagnation is the edict of both. Heard from Dawn who's suddenly living in Egypt head to toe. Looked at models, plans at the CAF, floating Vitoland, holy shit! Started learning German, toasted with mango to the murk (figure A).
The O/Frey flap reminds me of a frequent difficulty I had as a teacher- getting students to engage with a text beyond the level of tabloid, biographical echo. I wielded the "say 'the speaker' when referring to the use of 'I' instead of 'the writer'" rule like a nun-sharpened switch, but students' first question was still often "did that really happen?" and so many papers were speculative psychoanalysis of the authors based on their poems as much as I hammered on actual critical models the entire semester. Yes, Plath really put her head in an oven, now we have 2 hours and 45 minutes left to talk about her, so let's move on from that fact. When a reader's only criteria for literature is whether or not it sounds "real" -that creates a lot of Bukowski fans, but few/no resources to access a writer like Pound, or his present-day ken.
F's actions were dishonest, but is his audience's anger over being "duped" really a frustration over realizing just how dupable we are when cultural attention and tastes run toward an ever-higher bar of blood and guts shock value coupled with this voyeuristic desire for "truth"? Is betraying our voyeuristic trust different from betraying our other trusts, like our trust in the institutions of journalism, the legislative system? Perhaps, since we don't see Jayson Blair, Jack Ambramoff, Tom Delay... getting such a sensational public flogging.
The F incident is ultimately positive if it gets us talking about what our expectations and obligations should be as readers, and to what standard of truth we want to hold other aspects of the culture to account. Hopefully it was not just a moment of displaced cultural angst, a little venting of steam to be consigned to Trivial Pursuit cluedom.
F's actions were dishonest, but is his audience's anger over being "duped" really a frustration over realizing just how dupable we are when cultural attention and tastes run toward an ever-higher bar of blood and guts shock value coupled with this voyeuristic desire for "truth"? Is betraying our voyeuristic trust different from betraying our other trusts, like our trust in the institutions of journalism, the legislative system? Perhaps, since we don't see Jayson Blair, Jack Ambramoff, Tom Delay... getting such a sensational public flogging.
The F incident is ultimately positive if it gets us talking about what our expectations and obligations should be as readers, and to what standard of truth we want to hold other aspects of the culture to account. Hopefully it was not just a moment of displaced cultural angst, a little venting of steam to be consigned to Trivial Pursuit cluedom.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Thursday, January 26, 2006
"What are poems for? To pick rotten teeth.
What are books for? To throw at the heads of enemies."
(Linh Dinh)
Picked up a good one at lunch, Life Style.. will leave a nice, sparkly dent.
What are books for? To throw at the heads of enemies."
(Linh Dinh)
Picked up a good one at lunch, Life Style.. will leave a nice, sparkly dent.
Got our first look at the new(ish) Harris Theater last night for a Vermeer 4tet performance. The space is acoustically warm, though something about the denim-hard wall surfaces made me think of pointy shoulders and Pat Benetar. The lobby is striped with fluorescence like the donor’s passage under the stairs in the Seattle Public Library by Koolhaas. (Find my picture of that.) I’m with it/catching on to all such tanning bed decors, but there’s no escaping that it makes an odd setting for blue rinses and Romanticism. Anyhow, the music was mellifluous, played with the sensitivity of an ensemble of such experience. Began with a leafy Mozart piece that made me think of paintings by Rousseau for some reason, can’t quite find the relationship there, except the leafy. What we really went for was the Shostakovich (String Quartet No. 10 in A-flat major, Op. 118). The careening violins of the Mozart piece moments before were quickly under fire from the swollen, brooding low end. I was a bit nervous through the first movement as our audience neighbors decided to get flappy with papers, sinusitis. But the torrential, accusatory second movement shut everyone up. The third movement sounded more resigned, mournful, and the violins were given more opportunity for the prosaic, but the cello still asserted itself like an ancestor in the fertile earth. Then the viola was given a slightly jaunty bit while the violins droned beneath, which did offer a transition to a glint of sober light, plucky with levity. At the pinnacle of some violinic optimism, they were tackled by cello and viola and with a seemingly buffeting supervision took up the coda restrainedly, before tidily ending with an open question. This is, I guess, how someone without a music education hears this. Way off, perhaps, from the accuracy of mathy tonics, but I feel about them like I feel about math and floss. We left before the gilded Tchaikovsky could supplant the lingering dissonance. Supplanted anyway soon in the Jewel by Bizarre Love Triangle.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
happened upon a non-breaking space by jen bervin. stunning! tactile! luminous! rocked my dots per inch!
just found this. dig the fish title in lieu of my neglect and indecision, in less formal circles this work goes by "electrofish," but in the weighty land of publication that seemed too abouty. thanks daniel and chuck for inviting. i want these poems as locker pin-ups.
Everyone keeps telling me what a fantastic movie Brokeback Mountain is, and since busyness precludes us from seeing it anytime soon, I was content to pick up the book the other day, fascinated by its brevity, unfamiliar with the work of Annie Proulx. There is a poet’s sensibility for compression here as she fits 20 years of relationship into 50-odd pages, plus a few childhood flashbacks. And her prose style is so gloriously subtle as to not insult the reader’s intelligence as so much popular fiction seems eager to do. What interested me most was the dialogue- how deftly she fills in the characters of Ennis and Jack and the culture that surrounds and holds them in with such a fluency of dialect, humor and things left unsaid. Namely it’s the things unsaid, the octane of any early stage romance, but here anted up by a double dose of masculine reserve. I hope that in extending this bit of igneous prose the film doesn’t walk out every particulate into the temporal zoom of obvious.
I make no claim to stand behind any hotheaded notion fired off on these pages- migrant fancies all- but on this I will swear: I will not see the penguin movie. The very commercials for it, and spin-off car ads, so slay me with cuteness that an hour and half of the helpless, plodding cuties would surely be torment.
I make no claim to stand behind any hotheaded notion fired off on these pages- migrant fancies all- but on this I will swear: I will not see the penguin movie. The very commercials for it, and spin-off car ads, so slay me with cuteness that an hour and half of the helpless, plodding cuties would surely be torment.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Watched a girl airbrush a cake- another job I’d want, if just for one day. This is my favorite window behind the scenes, the porthole into bennison’s bakery. I’d like to see the porthole make a comeback in contemporary architecture. Oh the businesses to peep into… the cartographers, metallurgy…
*
Because I avoid consuming things that risk inclusion of bird or mammal or their extracts, I am otherwise a very curious eater, so today had a lotus seed cake- honestly delish- from my tea pusher, and earlier a “tamarind drink” at my lunching place, the latter requiring abandonment after causing my liver to skip a beat. J makes fun of my sugarless, bitty ways, like the shaming I got this weekend for offering people at intermission Slippery Elm. Incidentally eaten by our niece as a dare, the decidedly “like a raisin” Slippery Elm.
*
Because I avoid consuming things that risk inclusion of bird or mammal or their extracts, I am otherwise a very curious eater, so today had a lotus seed cake- honestly delish- from my tea pusher, and earlier a “tamarind drink” at my lunching place, the latter requiring abandonment after causing my liver to skip a beat. J makes fun of my sugarless, bitty ways, like the shaming I got this weekend for offering people at intermission Slippery Elm. Incidentally eaten by our niece as a dare, the decidedly “like a raisin” Slippery Elm.
what a relief discrete is off for february, because the juggernautic monthful at links hall is a resounding socks-snapper. just rent me a proximity room, cubby bear, taco bell, wrigley field. erin moure and ken goldsmith? swoon.
correction: no moure. it was a typo. but still.
correction: no moure. it was a typo. but still.
Monday, January 23, 2006
My first meme
(running with it from Bill)
Four jobs I want to have in my life:- Actually, 5..
1. Horticulturist- oh to diddle with plants in some great steamy conservatory.
2. Museum curator- oh to be alone in the galleries at night rearranging everything.
3. B&B operator in the Alps
4. Artisanal cheese maker- even better if it involves a bit of goat herding.
5. Movie house projectionist- but only in some haunted old theater with an organ, like the Music Box.
Four jobs I've had:
1. Potato Maestro: sliced open baked potatoes and added requested glop while sneaking nips of schnapps in a suburban mall trough.
2. Barista: explained inanely titled foods and beverages, distracted customers when biscuit-sized roaches publicly scuttled.
3. Office Nymph for a sleazy time-share realty co.: made out gift certificates for Dave & Busters in careful bubbly cursive to direct-marketing bait that endured hour-long sales pitch.
4. Jr. College Recruitment Aide: represented college at area carnivals, took cover in beer tents when twisters approached.
Four movies I could watch over and over:
1. Dreams (Kurasawa)
2. Meshes of the Afternoon
3. Man With a Movie Camera
4. Annie Hall
Four places I’ve lived:
1. Chicago
2. Phoenix
3. Portland, OR
4. Providence
Four novels I could read over and over:
1. The Last Days
2. Invisible Cities
3. something by Virginia Woolf I haven’t read yet
4. On the Road
Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Barcelona
2. Paris
3. Kennebunkport
4. Tombstone
Four favorite foods:
1. French bread and brie
2. Black bean tacos
3. Sushi
4. Super thin crust pizza with spinach and giardiniera on it
Four places I’d rather be:
1. Chichén Itzá
2. Amsterdam
3. Hokkaido
4. Somewhere between Seattle and Port Townsend
Four poems I can’t live without:
1. Jabberwocky
2. Song of the Chinchilla
3. Tender Buttons
4. The Sonnets (Berrigan)
are these last two cheating?
Four jobs I want to have in my life:- Actually, 5..
1. Horticulturist- oh to diddle with plants in some great steamy conservatory.
2. Museum curator- oh to be alone in the galleries at night rearranging everything.
3. B&B operator in the Alps
4. Artisanal cheese maker- even better if it involves a bit of goat herding.
5. Movie house projectionist- but only in some haunted old theater with an organ, like the Music Box.
Four jobs I've had:
1. Potato Maestro: sliced open baked potatoes and added requested glop while sneaking nips of schnapps in a suburban mall trough.
2. Barista: explained inanely titled foods and beverages, distracted customers when biscuit-sized roaches publicly scuttled.
3. Office Nymph for a sleazy time-share realty co.: made out gift certificates for Dave & Busters in careful bubbly cursive to direct-marketing bait that endured hour-long sales pitch.
4. Jr. College Recruitment Aide: represented college at area carnivals, took cover in beer tents when twisters approached.
Four movies I could watch over and over:
1. Dreams (Kurasawa)
2. Meshes of the Afternoon
3. Man With a Movie Camera
4. Annie Hall
Four places I’ve lived:
1. Chicago
2. Phoenix
3. Portland, OR
4. Providence
Four novels I could read over and over:
1. The Last Days
2. Invisible Cities
3. something by Virginia Woolf I haven’t read yet
4. On the Road
Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Barcelona
2. Paris
3. Kennebunkport
4. Tombstone
Four favorite foods:
1. French bread and brie
2. Black bean tacos
3. Sushi
4. Super thin crust pizza with spinach and giardiniera on it
Four places I’d rather be:
1. Chichén Itzá
2. Amsterdam
3. Hokkaido
4. Somewhere between Seattle and Port Townsend
Four poems I can’t live without:
1. Jabberwocky
2. Song of the Chinchilla
3. Tender Buttons
4. The Sonnets (Berrigan)
are these last two cheating?
yesterday realized: soupicide, weeping into my atelier tovar, in spite of a worsening astigmatism that has upped my irony script, I've still become a spewer of dorky old auntisms like, "whoa! double digits!"
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Dorothy was a tool of the Man
family in town, we went to see this yesterday. i have the hardest of times with musicals' schmaltz, and while no different- jazz hands!- the narrative surprised me.. clever in its pre, during/parallel and post "the musical oz you've known for years" weave. unexpected subtexts: sexual politic, alphaba, born green but otherwise good is called a perversion of nature. biggest surprise though was the critique of bush era fear-mongering, surveillance and all-smiles pagentry brand of fascism. palpable unease in the suburban families around me as this became clear, but heavy doses of corny repartee and jazz hands helped it go down- a phenomenon I'm fascinated by and so perceiving everywhere lately: see also good night and good luck's depiction of murrow interviewing liberace. one character even utters of empty social pagentry, "you've got to give the people what they want."
other times, very short on subtlety.. wicked's on stage "society"= a mob in the mold of the Simpsons' Springfield in its easily swayed, pitchfork bearing moments. one of the more bizarre moments is the tinman in stage left balcony mobilizing the town with hate speech, and a state-appointed history professor resembling hitler.
all that said, it was excellently sung and staged..
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Most non-Discrete days of the month I tend to think of the series as lumbering along, labored by continued uncertainties of space, funding, scheduling… but then the readers create an evening that reaffirms my idea of what’s possible/was heretofore unchartered in language/art and sets me firm in my poetry badge again. I don’t quite understand the coincidence that all my favorite poets happen to friends, but it’s the most fortunate of circumstances.
I credit Michael’s work with opening an avenue in my appreciation for work that takes on the conceits of beauty and lyricism within our post-everything literary moment.. which for me has had contemporary work carrying the family tree of the objectivists and L=A=etc. at the fore. Planting poems by James Tate and Carrie Comer in his readings is one way he opens the frame. He also read from a series of poems that were written as a correspondence in postcards with a friend. These pieces resonated with some of my own concerns in renegotiating the balance of form and craft with the spontaneity and candor that brings the work into being… and staying close to the latter in the interest of making art and life simultaneously lived things.
And Jesse’s reading.. it’s hard for me to begin to express my awe at the new work, so I’ll have to reiterate some of what I already blabbed at him and anyone else who would listen to me last night. I’ve heard him read a dozen times or more and it’s always such an assertively aural experience, I find myself listening with closed eyes. But last night’s piece- I don’t have the title here in front of me- created an additionally riveting visual component with his restrictive language bank used for the extensive poem affixed to the wall as an incomplete matrix of cards, one designated for each word used in the piece. As he read, he faced the cards and searched and tapped each one, a process that echoed the tensions of a Steve Benson performance. Moreover it got at the rub of what we find ourselves continually bumping up against— the proposition of making sense/expressing the incomprehensible in spite of the seemingly unlimited data of our time with a relatively limited medium. The nature of a poetry reading itself has long been criticized as a limited medium.. one reads a script from a page somewhat passively or perhaps in a dramatized “poet’s voice..” still it’s an non-spectacle. What Jesse’s presentation made possible was another layer of statement in the words he tapped/gestured toward but did not verbalize. These are just a few, cursory thoughts for what was, in my opinion, a watershed. Not to fly away with hyperbole, if anything I think I’ve understated the implications of this project. It’ll be exciting to see it develop and find more audiences in the future. Poor quality digital photographs to follow.
I credit Michael’s work with opening an avenue in my appreciation for work that takes on the conceits of beauty and lyricism within our post-everything literary moment.. which for me has had contemporary work carrying the family tree of the objectivists and L=A=etc. at the fore. Planting poems by James Tate and Carrie Comer in his readings is one way he opens the frame. He also read from a series of poems that were written as a correspondence in postcards with a friend. These pieces resonated with some of my own concerns in renegotiating the balance of form and craft with the spontaneity and candor that brings the work into being… and staying close to the latter in the interest of making art and life simultaneously lived things.
And Jesse’s reading.. it’s hard for me to begin to express my awe at the new work, so I’ll have to reiterate some of what I already blabbed at him and anyone else who would listen to me last night. I’ve heard him read a dozen times or more and it’s always such an assertively aural experience, I find myself listening with closed eyes. But last night’s piece- I don’t have the title here in front of me- created an additionally riveting visual component with his restrictive language bank used for the extensive poem affixed to the wall as an incomplete matrix of cards, one designated for each word used in the piece. As he read, he faced the cards and searched and tapped each one, a process that echoed the tensions of a Steve Benson performance. Moreover it got at the rub of what we find ourselves continually bumping up against— the proposition of making sense/expressing the incomprehensible in spite of the seemingly unlimited data of our time with a relatively limited medium. The nature of a poetry reading itself has long been criticized as a limited medium.. one reads a script from a page somewhat passively or perhaps in a dramatized “poet’s voice..” still it’s an non-spectacle. What Jesse’s presentation made possible was another layer of statement in the words he tapped/gestured toward but did not verbalize. These are just a few, cursory thoughts for what was, in my opinion, a watershed. Not to fly away with hyperbole, if anything I think I’ve understated the implications of this project. It’ll be exciting to see it develop and find more audiences in the future. Poor quality digital photographs to follow.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Discrete Series
tomorrow night's Discrete event is Jesse Seldess (passing through town, celebrating the almost-palpable release of Who Opens) and Michael Robins (masterful prose-poemismo).
it's at the spareroom and starts at 7 p.m.
i'll be the non-profit: bouncer ($5 suggested donation), book rep and mc.. j will be twiddling knobs
come by if you're around
it's at the spareroom and starts at 7 p.m.
i'll be the non-profit: bouncer ($5 suggested donation), book rep and mc.. j will be twiddling knobs
come by if you're around
Gouger operator and I have found a happy arrangement. Firstly, Xanax enables Novocain enables my imagination not to take off at every pitch change of instrumentation mouthbound. Secondly, if GO goes slowly and answers all my questions about which nerves effect what part of mouth, whether there's a chance of my ingesting mercury, and lets me inspect all bits of gouge and tooth itself post-gouge, I am much the better for it.
*
today: hairdryer goes down in a blaze of glory leaving me with a bad case of kristy mcnichol (and a dormant worry of house burning down, hope bean remembers how to call 911), babysitting a macro (enchanting breakneck runs of code) and catching up with the ipod, thinking about songs most played in 2005 (few if none actually from '05, maybe a list to come), a snake befriends a hamster, will see germans on the run jesse and leonie later at maiz and drink atole.
*
today: hairdryer goes down in a blaze of glory leaving me with a bad case of kristy mcnichol (and a dormant worry of house burning down, hope bean remembers how to call 911), babysitting a macro (enchanting breakneck runs of code) and catching up with the ipod, thinking about songs most played in 2005 (few if none actually from '05, maybe a list to come), a snake befriends a hamster, will see germans on the run jesse and leonie later at maiz and drink atole.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
onward spoilers..
but bumperstickers rarely tell you how.. this week’s: Don’t Worry, Be Hopi.
*
answer, or for a love poem: objects dropped together fall together.
*
That fog is kidding
False alarm, cold land
*
achilles
deposits
exposure
(uh oh, signs of the minim back.. those words in my head all week and don’t want more.. simply the rub)
*
after reading norma cole:
feeling no body, least
of all mine, a single point
though through with memory
*
arr. big poems. we want big.
*
working late, this conversation happens: goodnight, jeff. goodnight oprah.
*
misread: cozy thumbport
*
last night made lazy okayu:
microwave 1 precooked and then frozen “rice bomb”
boil some water
into that wave a beaten egg or two
into that dump a packet of kikkoman’s wakame soup
dice up some scallions for the top (most laborious)
throw it all in a bowl with some pickled plums
*
next session with the gouger today. what the hell’s this xanax supposed to do? I’d be better off with a spliff.
*
answer, or for a love poem: objects dropped together fall together.
*
That fog is kidding
False alarm, cold land
*
achilles
deposits
exposure
(uh oh, signs of the minim back.. those words in my head all week and don’t want more.. simply the rub)
*
after reading norma cole:
feeling no body, least
of all mine, a single point
though through with memory
*
arr. big poems. we want big.
*
working late, this conversation happens: goodnight, jeff. goodnight oprah.
*
misread: cozy thumbport
*
last night made lazy okayu:
microwave 1 precooked and then frozen “rice bomb”
boil some water
into that wave a beaten egg or two
into that dump a packet of kikkoman’s wakame soup
dice up some scallions for the top (most laborious)
throw it all in a bowl with some pickled plums
*
next session with the gouger today. what the hell’s this xanax supposed to do? I’d be better off with a spliff.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
as i was saying...
Sunday, January 15, 2006
i spend all week with destinations not yesterday colder than the sun let on and only to the art institute to continue a walk warm for minutes the object became don't stop unless we find the painting "that makes it all worth it" was leger as much as iceskating and creme brulee.
(the contemporary galleries had all been changed for the heavy handed awards, except for the totally empty room, perfect, under heavy guard.)
(it was a leger canvas as much as it took him six years.)
(the contemporary galleries had all been changed for the heavy handed awards, except for the totally empty room, perfect, under heavy guard.)
(it was a leger canvas as much as it took him six years.)
Friday, January 13, 2006
To my future postcard--
PhotoShop me there, like a Heaven expose, oh bright outlaw. To my applied force, give me the power of fuss. Gravity does work on the children on the hill; Let’s let me method through. Amok, it’s tracery, not the boss of me saving my caps lock for your red sugar sprinkles underneath. A louder you could single out the hours singing the music of thieves. Feel the up when remembering when that year was license new, like a free breakfast,
eggs made to order,
Love, Your Building
PhotoShop me there, like a Heaven expose, oh bright outlaw. To my applied force, give me the power of fuss. Gravity does work on the children on the hill; Let’s let me method through. Amok, it’s tracery, not the boss of me saving my caps lock for your red sugar sprinkles underneath. A louder you could single out the hours singing the music of thieves. Feel the up when remembering when that year was license new, like a free breakfast,
eggs made to order,
Love, Your Building
Of the Octopi… some beauts by Anne B. Her Science reminds me how I stopped loving it when we had to kill things. Homework became chloroform and peg boards. Made my yard a slaughter I never played in again. I’ve owed it to every grasshopper since. Only later was phobia the guilty plea. Worked us up to frogs and worms. College demanded I root through a cat for anatomy and the prof didn’t hear my PETA this and that. Forced my hand. Thought “Art would never do that.”
Thursday, January 12, 2006
now this soothes my day of oral inadequacy: my mudra got 2 votes in the factory roundup. more precious than a speeding pushcart.
Just a kvetch or two more. More happy/neutral proto-poemtry coming soon. Also soon to be broken: anti-soc. cave snooze, or, my accomplished indoorsmanship. It’s winter, it’s Chicago, and therefore chronic. Hi.
**
I know I owe people things. Jordan, I owe you your Discrete CD. I owe the Unpleasant Event Schedule some tweaked photos since July. I owe one of my ladies from my last job a thank you note for mailing me a tablespoon of granola. I owe my knitting friend a robot. I owe The Duck an oil change. I owe a lot of people better introductions than I’ve been able to muster lately. I owe people who don’t know it emails saying every which way I loved their books.
**
I know I owe people things. Jordan, I owe you your Discrete CD. I owe the Unpleasant Event Schedule some tweaked photos since July. I owe one of my ladies from my last job a thank you note for mailing me a tablespoon of granola. I owe my knitting friend a robot. I owe The Duck an oil change. I owe a lot of people better introductions than I’ve been able to muster lately. I owe people who don’t know it emails saying every which way I loved their books.
Another dentistry matinee. Enough Novocain to flatten a horse and I still felt the gouger. With every round, “maybe you need just a little bit more” (x4), a chance to “relax” while it kicked in. Relax and listen to the light chatter with the next patient who just got her Master’s in Biology, a black-belt in Tae Kwon Do and has beautiful, well-cared for teeth. I hate her. She talks of a ski trip and uses bad grammar. But even the bad grammar doesn’t stop me from hating her because she sounds like a morning person. I hate all morning people.. those jogging, detail-oriented, math-loving flossers. Hate them. And as I sat there it felt like there was an open window where my cheek and jaw should be. And yet as soon as the gouger made contact.. thrash. I’m told to come back in a week on Xanax. It's a palindrome at least.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
How can so many people feel betrayed by revelations of fictionalized nonfiction and ghostwriters and not some very big fibs that mired us in a war? Personally, I care more that Niger never had nukes making eyes at Iraq than whether or not James Frey had anesthesia with his root canal. With a citizenry that creates more of a market for nonfiction than fiction and that seems to have an insatiable appetite for reality TV, why does Carl Rove still have job?
i'm thinking of drive times and email and not ready through this morning's late start when through my window a neighbor asks after her. the same. we don't know. i don't feel like saying so i half do. she consoles the hood of my car with a pat pat as she goes. laughing my foot off the brake, but then mahalia comes on the radio with her "i am a pilgrim."
Monday, January 09, 2006
always this time of year poetry makes me dizzy. perhaps a seasonal affective disorder. picking up and putting down two nonfictions. in between found terra firma in air the trees.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Thought I found a way to get one of my tawdry bourgeois pleasures paid for when the chiro recommended a massage from a therapist that works out of her office. Supposedly covered by insurance, etc. But instead of a day at the spa this was bootcamp. First, I walk in, wearing my calm brow induced by the swoony sandalwood smell given off by the office, its furniture and people, extend my hand to this erect spit of a woman who immediately commences in manually adjusting my stance while mirroring for my instruction a grotesque contortedness that apparently is my normal standing posture. This until I feel like an overcombed second grade class photo. After subduing my pesky trapezius onto the table and readying myself for a little relax, I'm told that I’m a rabbit- like the one that hid behind a tree to escape the hunter and held its breath so as not to be heard. The story concludes with the rabbit essentially imploding from the combined lack of oxygen/circulation and its coursing adrenaline. I beg your pardon? Breathe! She commanded and executed some eagle claw kung fu move on my heart. Interesting sensation, chakra rug burn. Feeling slightly more pliant but the lectures continue: you’ll have to learn to walk all over again. I like new age pillow talk as much as the next guy, but by now I really wanted to assert that it’s just a crick in the neck from a cat nabbing my pillow in the night and please please let me dig in peace the pre-renaissance boyz2men issuing from one sandalwood-scented boombox.
lovely: new word to me, mayoralty. as in, i don't even want to fathom a non-daly mayoralty. the aldermen will be so amok with their "i'll give you this bus pass with $10 on it for $5" shenanigans that garbage won't get picked up again until 2024.
*
and another thing.. Canadians, I love ye, but pretty please do not return to your former American workplaces to visit and say, "I'm making a killing freelancing and health insurance is only $50 a month." Godblessit!
*
which reminds me of my current favorite graffiti: jesus saves/money on car insurance
*
and another thing.. Canadians, I love ye, but pretty please do not return to your former American workplaces to visit and say, "I'm making a killing freelancing and health insurance is only $50 a month." Godblessit!
*
which reminds me of my current favorite graffiti: jesus saves/money on car insurance
A Week in Prevention:
Watched Window Water Baby Moving, requested a euphemism for “needle,” ate pad thai with a numb upper mouth, smiled “like [I’d] been botoxed,” had my eyes dyed yellow, scanned my own retina, had sono-electrical device applied to left shoulder-neckular area that made me laugh at a left arm jutting wildly, had two consecutive nights’ dreams of burglars and one of planting a garden of pickles, twice let my legs elipse.
Watched Window Water Baby Moving, requested a euphemism for “needle,” ate pad thai with a numb upper mouth, smiled “like [I’d] been botoxed,” had my eyes dyed yellow, scanned my own retina, had sono-electrical device applied to left shoulder-neckular area that made me laugh at a left arm jutting wildly, had two consecutive nights’ dreams of burglars and one of planting a garden of pickles, twice let my legs elipse.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Dreamt I came home and found a burglar in the house. He had taken down the Christmas tree and put everything nicely away, but left the door open and almost set astray our kit pack (worried, infuriating). Luckily the kits didn't know what to do and were all lined up in the living room looking quizzically. Me yelling with all my neck, I've called the fucking police (lie), what the fuck are you doing in my house? The burglar resembled a Scramble champ wunderkint (as an adult) and said very calmy that it was all explained on "this sticker," which he unpeeled from a sheet and stuck on a table in front of me as if he had just been sweeping the chimney or some such thing. On the sticker was a barcode. Woke up hoppin mad.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
gas it to the lunch galette and wrap my tinny neck -no place-
looks worth -yard or no yard- naming names misread
those complexions that air can take -walks in- burbias deep end.
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"I could never be a vegan."
*
hip hip, the domino sleeze.
looks worth -yard or no yard- naming names misread
those complexions that air can take -walks in- burbias deep end.
*
"I could never be a vegan."
*
hip hip, the domino sleeze.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
guy behind me in line at the grocery store looks like andy warhol and asks me why the great pyramid of carrots in produce. who eats them all he wonders. why that many? i never see them take any away and yet they stay so fresh. i can only shrug about superiority.
watched a documentary program about ronald reagan last night then this morning the radio alarm says in a russian voice- about the ukraine accused of stealing russia’s gas i reckon/slept through- “this is a wake up call” and all resistance to 6 a.m. moot with reminders of “strategic buildups” and my cold war kid years.
watched a documentary program about ronald reagan last night then this morning the radio alarm says in a russian voice- about the ukraine accused of stealing russia’s gas i reckon/slept through- “this is a wake up call” and all resistance to 6 a.m. moot with reminders of “strategic buildups” and my cold war kid years.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
2006 Books Read
Air the Tress- Larry Eigner
Matinees- Ange Mlinko
Spinoza in Her Youth- Norma Cole
Blue Collar Holiday- Jeni Olin
Quasi Flanders, Quasi Extremadura- Andres Ajens, Erin Moure trans.
Brokeback Mountain- Annie Proulx
A Non-Breaking Space-Jen Bervin
From the Atelier Tovar-Guy Maddin
Borderless Bodies-Linh Dinh
The Blue Notebook- Daniil Kharms
That We Come to a Consensus-Noah Eli Gordon & Sara Vaglahn
Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939- Virginia Nicholson
The Best of My Love- Aaron Kiely
Nets- Jen Bervin
Break Every Rule- Carole Maso
Eye Against Eye- Forrest Gander
Petroleum Hat- Drew Gardner
Paul Pfeiffer-Fitzpatrick, Farver, eds. MIT/MCA catalogue
Dark Brandon-Brandon Downing
The Weather- Lisa Robertson
The Concerto Form-Anthony Hawley
now/time- p. inman
Corrections- Laura Sims
from The Book of Edgar- Corey Mead
Strategics- Steve Timm
Increment (a family romance)- Lisa Samuels
Workers of the Word, Unite and Fight- Mark Nowak
The Activist- Renee Gladman
Telling the Future Off- Stephanie Young
Perspective Would Have Us- Erica Carpenter
The Will to Sickness- Gerhard Roth
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
A panic that can still come upon me- Peter Gizzi
Momentary Songs- George Albon
Under That Silky Roof- Elizabeth Robinson
Beat Roots- Anne Waldman
Response- Juliana Spahr
Intimate Journals- Nicole Brossard
Daydream Mechanics- Nicole Brossard
Magazine Cypress #4
Flight Test- Lewis Warsh
Shut Up Shut Down- Mark Nowak
things of each possible relation hashing against one another- Juliana Spahr
Speculations descending therefrom- K. Lorraine Graham
A City a Cloud- Elizabeth Workman
Picture of the Basket- Sarah Mangold
Scrawl Read-Susana Gardner
Coast- John Sakkis
Pieces of the Sky-Greg Fuchs
Heart on a Tripod- Kaia Sand
Monsters- K. Silem Mohammad
New Translations- Osip Mandelstam
The Immoralist- Andre Gide
Matinees- Ange Mlinko
Spinoza in Her Youth- Norma Cole
Blue Collar Holiday- Jeni Olin
Quasi Flanders, Quasi Extremadura- Andres Ajens, Erin Moure trans.
Brokeback Mountain- Annie Proulx
A Non-Breaking Space-Jen Bervin
From the Atelier Tovar-Guy Maddin
Borderless Bodies-Linh Dinh
The Blue Notebook- Daniil Kharms
That We Come to a Consensus-Noah Eli Gordon & Sara Vaglahn
Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939- Virginia Nicholson
The Best of My Love- Aaron Kiely
Nets- Jen Bervin
Break Every Rule- Carole Maso
Eye Against Eye- Forrest Gander
Petroleum Hat- Drew Gardner
Paul Pfeiffer-Fitzpatrick, Farver, eds. MIT/MCA catalogue
Dark Brandon-Brandon Downing
The Weather- Lisa Robertson
The Concerto Form-Anthony Hawley
now/time- p. inman
Corrections- Laura Sims
from The Book of Edgar- Corey Mead
Strategics- Steve Timm
Increment (a family romance)- Lisa Samuels
Workers of the Word, Unite and Fight- Mark Nowak
The Activist- Renee Gladman
Telling the Future Off- Stephanie Young
Perspective Would Have Us- Erica Carpenter
The Will to Sickness- Gerhard Roth
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
A panic that can still come upon me- Peter Gizzi
Momentary Songs- George Albon
Under That Silky Roof- Elizabeth Robinson
Beat Roots- Anne Waldman
Response- Juliana Spahr
Intimate Journals- Nicole Brossard
Daydream Mechanics- Nicole Brossard
Magazine Cypress #4
Flight Test- Lewis Warsh
Shut Up Shut Down- Mark Nowak
things of each possible relation hashing against one another- Juliana Spahr
Speculations descending therefrom- K. Lorraine Graham
A City a Cloud- Elizabeth Workman
Picture of the Basket- Sarah Mangold
Scrawl Read-Susana Gardner
Coast- John Sakkis
Pieces of the Sky-Greg Fuchs
Heart on a Tripod- Kaia Sand
Monsters- K. Silem Mohammad
New Translations- Osip Mandelstam
The Immoralist- Andre Gide
2005 Books Read
Books read 2005: - (rule: only those finished)
p- poetry
pc-poetry chapbook
f-fiction
n-nonfiction
o-other, hybrid/cross genre
Mansfield Park- Jane Austen (f)
Devil in the White City- Erik Larsen (n)
In Contact- Jesse Seldess (pc)
Eight Short Stories- Virginia Woolf (f)
Home: A History of an Idea- Witold Rybinski (n)
Airport Music-Mark Tardi (pc)
Blood Money- Dashell Hammitt (f)
The Sleep That Changed Everything- Lee Ann Brown (p)
Of The Frame- E. Tracy Grinnell (pc)
The False Sun Recordings- James Wagner (p)
Beauty is Convulsive- Carole Maso (o)
Around Sea- Brenda Iijima (p)
Bus- Roberto Harrison (pc)
Oh- Cole Swensen (p)
The To Sound- Eric Baus (p)
The daVinci Code- Dan Brown (f)
Devotional Cinema- Nathaniel Dorsky (n)
0.10- Craig Watson (p)
Mani- Roberto Harrison (pc)
Blindsight- Rosmarie Waldrop (p)
Red Juice- Hoa Nguyen (pc)
Eureka Slough- Joseph Massey (pc)
O New York- Trey Sager (pc)
Meteoric Flowers- Elizabeth Willis (pc)
Leave the Room to Itself- Graham Foust (p)
In the Absent Everyday- Tsering Whangpo Dhompa (p)
Precious- Chuck Stebelton (pc)
Often Capital- Jennifer Moxley (p)
And So On- Patrick Durgin (pc)
Pollux- Pam Rehm (pc)
It’s Alive She Says- Cole Swensen (pc)
Emptied of All Ships- Stacy Szymaszek (p)
There Were Hostilities- Stacy Szymaszek (pc)
The Flaneur- Edmund White (n)
29 Microlectures in Proximity of Performance- Matthew Goulish (o)
Blueprint-Rick Snyder (pc)
Who Opens-Jesse Seldess (p)
Not Right Now-Renee Gladman (f/o/c)
Untitled, Woman on the Ground- Renee Galdman (f/o/c)
Juice- Renee Gladman (f/o)
Pure Descent- Elizabeth Robinson (p)
Color and Its Antecedants- Brenda Iijima (o)
The Dolch Stanzas- Kit Robinson (p/c)
The Poetics of the Exclamation Point-Eleni Sikelianos (p/c)
American Pastoral- Philip Roth (f)
The Beauty of the Husband- Anne Carson (o)
This Connection of Everyone with Lungs- Juliana Spahr (p)
Nuclear- Juliana Spahr (pc)
Under Albany- Ron Silliman (p/o)
Nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she- Sawako Nakayasu (p)
Interpreter of Maladies- Jhumpa Lahiri (f)
Inner China- Eva Sjodin (f)
The Little Prince- Antoine de Saint Exupery (f)
Starred Wire- Ange Mlinko (p)
Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You- Juliana Spahr (p)
Stats:
Poetry volumes read: 17
Poetry chapbooks read: 18
Fiction (novels or collections) read: 8
Non-fiction volumes read: 4
Other/cross-genre volumes read: 5
Fiction or cross-genre chapbooks: 2
Authors female: 30
Authors male: 25
p- poetry
pc-poetry chapbook
f-fiction
n-nonfiction
o-other, hybrid/cross genre
Mansfield Park- Jane Austen (f)
Devil in the White City- Erik Larsen (n)
In Contact- Jesse Seldess (pc)
Eight Short Stories- Virginia Woolf (f)
Home: A History of an Idea- Witold Rybinski (n)
Airport Music-Mark Tardi (pc)
Blood Money- Dashell Hammitt (f)
The Sleep That Changed Everything- Lee Ann Brown (p)
Of The Frame- E. Tracy Grinnell (pc)
The False Sun Recordings- James Wagner (p)
Beauty is Convulsive- Carole Maso (o)
Around Sea- Brenda Iijima (p)
Bus- Roberto Harrison (pc)
Oh- Cole Swensen (p)
The To Sound- Eric Baus (p)
The daVinci Code- Dan Brown (f)
Devotional Cinema- Nathaniel Dorsky (n)
0.10- Craig Watson (p)
Mani- Roberto Harrison (pc)
Blindsight- Rosmarie Waldrop (p)
Red Juice- Hoa Nguyen (pc)
Eureka Slough- Joseph Massey (pc)
O New York- Trey Sager (pc)
Meteoric Flowers- Elizabeth Willis (pc)
Leave the Room to Itself- Graham Foust (p)
In the Absent Everyday- Tsering Whangpo Dhompa (p)
Precious- Chuck Stebelton (pc)
Often Capital- Jennifer Moxley (p)
And So On- Patrick Durgin (pc)
Pollux- Pam Rehm (pc)
It’s Alive She Says- Cole Swensen (pc)
Emptied of All Ships- Stacy Szymaszek (p)
There Were Hostilities- Stacy Szymaszek (pc)
The Flaneur- Edmund White (n)
29 Microlectures in Proximity of Performance- Matthew Goulish (o)
Blueprint-Rick Snyder (pc)
Who Opens-Jesse Seldess (p)
Not Right Now-Renee Gladman (f/o/c)
Untitled, Woman on the Ground- Renee Galdman (f/o/c)
Juice- Renee Gladman (f/o)
Pure Descent- Elizabeth Robinson (p)
Color and Its Antecedants- Brenda Iijima (o)
The Dolch Stanzas- Kit Robinson (p/c)
The Poetics of the Exclamation Point-Eleni Sikelianos (p/c)
American Pastoral- Philip Roth (f)
The Beauty of the Husband- Anne Carson (o)
This Connection of Everyone with Lungs- Juliana Spahr (p)
Nuclear- Juliana Spahr (pc)
Under Albany- Ron Silliman (p/o)
Nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she- Sawako Nakayasu (p)
Interpreter of Maladies- Jhumpa Lahiri (f)
Inner China- Eva Sjodin (f)
The Little Prince- Antoine de Saint Exupery (f)
Starred Wire- Ange Mlinko (p)
Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You- Juliana Spahr (p)
Stats:
Poetry volumes read: 17
Poetry chapbooks read: 18
Fiction (novels or collections) read: 8
Non-fiction volumes read: 4
Other/cross-genre volumes read: 5
Fiction or cross-genre chapbooks: 2
Authors female: 30
Authors male: 25
2006 Movies Viewed List
Godfather 1&2
Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage)
Broken Flowers
Cat’s Cradle (Brakhage)
Fist of Legend
Raging Bull
(not entirely) Jaws 2
Dear Frankie
Grizzly Man
The Aristocrats
The Secret of My Success
Hustle & Flow
Thumbsucker
Walk the Line
The Constant Gardener
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Amelie
Capote
A History of Violence
The Squid and the Whale
Memoirs of a Geisha
Everything is Illuminated
The Prizewinner of Defiance, OH
Brokeback Mt.
All the Vermeers in NY
Match Point
A Prairie Home Companion
Wordplay
Syriana
The Farmer's Wife
Habla Con Ella
Fearless
V for Vendetta
Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage)
Broken Flowers
Cat’s Cradle (Brakhage)
Fist of Legend
Raging Bull
(not entirely) Jaws 2
Dear Frankie
Grizzly Man
The Aristocrats
The Secret of My Success
Hustle & Flow
Thumbsucker
Walk the Line
The Constant Gardener
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Amelie
Capote
A History of Violence
The Squid and the Whale
Memoirs of a Geisha
Everything is Illuminated
The Prizewinner of Defiance, OH
Brokeback Mt.
All the Vermeers in NY
Match Point
A Prairie Home Companion
Wordplay
Syriana
The Farmer's Wife
Habla Con Ella
Fearless
V for Vendetta
favorite boxings...indiavision cd
video iPod sugar cookies
why paint cats?
evel knievel dvd
picture of my grandmother being pulled in a cart by a goat
video iPod sugar cookies
why paint cats?
evel knievel dvd
picture of my grandmother being pulled in a cart by a goat