Spending even a nanosecond in the Sedona area makes one want to stay here. The sunsets are really prime, because they're such a gumbo of colors. So far, I've done Cave Creek, Carefree, and Sedona and the weather's been pretty agreeable with temps in the upper seventies. I've successfully avoided the Crotalus Atrox, so far. If I can make it back to Illinois without that experience I'll be glad. Fortunately Fiesta Days has been going on here this weekend and the rodeo yesterday was a wild way to spend the afternoon. I broke down and shelled out the bucks to buy a western hat because the sun was really blazing. Afterward it seemed like a grande idea to drink a few cold ones at Harold's Corral after a dinner at the Horny Toad. Sedona is known for its hiking and spas. Both sound pretty enticing right now. I rode a big fat Yamaha--Harley lookalike. 1600 CCs plus Arizona sunshine equals nirvana.

Arizona elegans philipi --- Painted Desert Glossy Snake
Arizona occidentalis eburnata --- Desert Glossy Snake
Arizona occidentalis noctivaga --- Arizona Glossy Snake
Chilomeniscus cinctus --- Banded Sand Snake
Chionactis occipitalis annulata --- Colorado Desert Shovel-Nosed Snake
Chionactis occipitalis klauberi --- Tucson Shovel-Nose Snake
Chionactis occipitalis occipitalis --- Mojave Shovel-Nose Snake
Chionactis palarostris organica --- Organ Pipe Shovel-Nose Snake
Crotalus atrox --- Western Diamondback Rattlesnake
Crotalus cerastes cerastes --- Mojave Desert Sidewinder
Crotalus cerastes cercobombus --- Sonoran Desert Sidewinder
Crotalus cerastes laterorepens --- Colorado Desert Sidewinder
Crotalus lepidus klauberi --- Banded Rock Rattlesnake
Crotalus mitchelli pyrrhus --- Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake
Crotalus molosus molosus --- Black-tailed Rattlesnake
Crotalus pricei pricei --- Twin Spotted Rattlesnake
Crotalus scutulatus scutulatus --- Mojave Rattlesnake
Crotalus tigris --- Tiger Rattlesnake
Crotalus viridis abyssus --- Grand Canyon Rattlesnake
Crotalus viridis cerberus --- Arizona Black Rattlesnake
Crotalus viridis lutosus --- Great Basin Rattlesnake
Crotalus viridis nuntius --- Hopi Rattlesnake
Crotalus viridis viridis --- Prairie Rattlesnake
Crotalus willardi willardi --- Ridge-Nose Rattlesnake
Crotalus willardi obscurus --- New Mexico Ridge-Nose Rattlesnake
Diadophis punctatus regalis --- Regal Ring-Neck Snake
Gyalopion canum --- Western Hooknose Snake
Gyalopion quadrangulare --- Desert Hooknose Snake
Heterodon nasicus kennerlyi --- Mexican Hognose Snake
Hypsiglena torquata deserticola --- Desert Night Snake
Hypsiglena torquata ochrorhyncha --- Spotted Night Snake
Lampropeltis getula californiae --- California King Snake
Lampropeltis getula splendida --- Desert King Snake
Lampropeltis pyromelena pyromelena --- Arizona Mountain King Snake
Lampropeltis triangulum taylori --- Utah Milk Snake
Leptotyphlops dulcis dissectus --- New Mexican Blind Snake
Leptotyphlops humilis cahuilae --- Desert Blind Snake
Leptotyphlops humilis humilis --- Southwestern Blind Snake
Leptotyphlops humilis segregus --- Trans-Pecos Blind Snake
Leptotypholps humilis utahensis --- Utah Blind Snake
Lichanura trivirgata gracia --- Desert Rosy Boa
Lichanura trivirgata trivirgata --- Mexican Rosy Boa
Masticophis bilineatus bilineatus --- Sonoran Whipsnake
Masticophis flagellum cingulum --- Sonoran Coachwhip
Masticophis flagellum lineatulus --- Lined Coachwhip
Masticophis flagellum piceus --- Red Coachwhip
Masticophis taeniatus taeniatus --- Desert Striped Whipsnake
Micruroides euryxanthus euryxanthus --- Arizona Coral Snake
Oxybelis aeneus --- Mexican Vine Snake
Phyllorhynchus browni --- Saddled Leaf-Nosed Snake
Phyllorhynchus decurtatus --- Spotted Leaf-Nosed Snake
Pituophis catenifer affinis --- Sonoran Gopher Snake
Pituophis catenifer deserticola --- Great Basin Gopher Snake
Rhinocheilus lecontei lecontei --- Western Long-Nose Snake
Salvadora deserticola --- Big Bend Patch-Nose Snake
Salvadora grahamiae grahamiae --- Mountain Patch-Nose Snake
Salvadora hexalepis hexalepis --- Desert Patch-Nose Snake
Salvadora hexalepis mojavensis --- Mojave Patch-Nose Snake
Senticolis triaspis intermedia --- Green Rat Snake
Sistrurus catenatus edwardsi --- Desert Massasauga
Sonora semiannulata --- Ground Snake
Tantilla atriceps --- Mexican Black-headed Snake
Tantilla hobartsmithi --- Southwestern Black-headed Snake
Tantilla nigriceps --- Plains Black-headed Snake
Tantilla wilcoxi --- Chihuahuan Black-headed Snake
Tantilla yaquia --- Yaqui Black-headed Snake
Thamnophis elegans vagrans --- Wandering Garter Snake
Thamnophis marcianus --- Checkered Garter Snake
Thamnophis cyrtopsis --- Blackneck Garter Snake
Thamnophis eques megalops --- Northern Mexican Garter Snake
Thamnophis rufipunctatus --- Narrowheaded Garter Snake
Trimorphodon biscutatus lambda --- Sonoran Lyre Snake

"...only the most decisive episodes of my life as I can conceive it apart from its organic plan, and only insofar as it is at the mercy of chance--the merest as well as the greatest--temporarily escaping my control, admitting me to an almost forbidden world of sudden parallels, petrifying coincidences, and reflexes peculiar to each individual, of harmonies struck as though on the piano, flashes of light that would make you see, really see, if only they were not so much quicker than all the rest." Nadja, André Breton





This really interesting piece on Venus Khoury-Ghata is worth a read.










I'll be in Arizona for the next few days ... unless my flight is canceled.

It's been interesting to see how this story idea of mine is being illustrated by my friend Joe Kimball. Every new page that arrives in my e-mail is another surprise.

Etc.

Ugly ratios bloom
From a scientist's pen.




*



Inadvertently, the campers
Started WWIII.



*

Because of my violin training:
Several visitations.


*



Struck by a car, he shouted
“Fluuuuuuuk!”


*



A map of summer
Accomplishes nothing.



*




The well-tended path
Is to be avoided.

Modernity

And now of cell phone flashback with no narration, told in cell phone point of view was in cell phone here with halfway through cell phone season, cell phone comic's storyline is mostly referred to as INTERNET. Made no influence on most of cell phone comic, save however, so cell phone fact that it was a flashback to an entire cell phone year. When it did, Howard gave first story arc ended to get cell phone characters from cell phone first season. Tamed by high society, and some lesser user announced cell phone site changing cell phone INTERNET universe for his audience. Quite a shock when he of which is completely unrelated to cell phone original science-fiction space opera by cell phone name and dramatic heroic entrance speech. Maxim's weapon of choice doing "lotsa damage" with after cell phone cornball conclusion. Not being completely some filler comics in cell phone middle of ABDOMINIZER and once in a while when cell phone narration-snipped fellow (named Maxim) and was technically satisfied with cell phone way ABDOMINIZER turned out, but didn't feature Maxim or cell phone flashback. That storyline took place after cell phone first INTERNET, of filler comics. Reamer was also tres cell phone starring ABDOMINIZER. Cell phone lasted weeks and followed cell phone adventures of a young INTERNET supplemented by "I will punish you.” Comic back to it. Cell phone readme/setting of cell phone comic was characters from both INTERNET and ABDOMINIZER on and on with crucial references (cue sidekick), from definitely a fantasy world, but it was dotted. About cell phone weekdays things people do and say in cell phone future tense every cell phone for conclusions one could draw based on one shot: gag strips featuring a buxom vampire named Fluffy who had boring weekends—narrative. Instead, it followed a bad guy, with new comic, cell phone story now only runs with format changed. While still updated daily during cell phone site to return to a brand-new season of INTERNET (see Table 1).

Going Gentle Into That Good Night

It may be old news that poets die young, but many of the innovative American artists who have shaped the course of art history in America are now well into their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Think of

Philip Glass – 70
Michael McClure – 75
John Ashbery – 80
Ron Silliman – 60
Ron Padgett – 65
Judith Malina – 81
Ed Sanders – 68
Clayton Eshleman – 72
Alice Notley – 62
Taylor Mead – 83
Gerald Stern – 82
Clark Coolidge – 68
Rosmarie Waldrop – 72

Arthur Rimbaud, whose influence on literature, music, and art is inestimable died at the age of 37. The modern Chinese poet Gu Cheng (1956-1993) died relatively recently at the age of 37 as well. One of the more famous younger poets who died after a brief existence was Sylvia Plath who died aged 31. Plath left out cookies and milk and completely sealed the rooms between herself and her sleeping children with tape and then placed her head in the oven in her kitchen while the gas was turned on. The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died at the age of 39 after drinking 27 successive straight Scotch whiskys at the White Horse tavern in Manhattan. So, it doesn't seem that evidence does in fact show that poets live shorter lives than other types of writers. I just hope that the younger generation of writers and artists are prepared to take on that heavy responsibility whenever that time comes.

The Big Break

But then I remembered you said
I should be more Keanu and less Depp so then I
said something much more Keanuesque in reply I thought
and less Deppic to test you, but what came out was
misconstrued as mere Eastwood. Then an eruption within
me produced a glimmer of some terrific Baconesque charm,
slathered with a subtle varnish of Hasslehoffish implacability,
but you then requested a dash of Pittish vulnerability with my
Clintonic stoicism. So, I stuttered slightly to levy a hint
of hallucinatory Dick Van Patten Saturday-family-outing-leadership
to my brattish (nearly waifish) DiCaprios, and you shouted “too
damn Baldwin, amateur!” and I seamlessly launched into the
debauchery of my precision Billy Bob, pausing periodically to
season it with a bellicose Shatneresque bastardism and you fumed
“Bowie not Schwimmer, asshole!” and at this point my chic potpourri of
Farrellisms interspersed with nearly schizoid Denzels and nostalgic
Douglas Fairbanks, Jrs. brought the entire crew to tears as the
light was finally perfect, crossing my face on my best side producing
a halo effect of spellbound, yet majestically skittish, Nicholsons as I
just so happened to notice out of the acrimonious corner of my
James Earl Jones left eyelid that you were not at that precise
moment paying any particular attention to anything but your own
slightly Kubricked fingernail.

WP Reading, May 18

I'll be reading at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee on May 18. Will Alexander is reading the following night.

Woodland Pattern must have the best poetry selection in the Midwest, if not the nation, and the roster of poets who have appeared there over the years is industrial-strength kewl (Lyn Hejinian, Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Mac Low, Nathaniel Mackey, Eileen Myles, Ron Padgett, Simon Ortiz, Jerome Rothenberg, Ed Sanders, Ron Silliman, Eleni Sikelianos, Quincy Troupe, Karl Young, and John Zorn among many others). I hope to see you there. Maybe I'll finally get to see the Milwaukee museum of art.

Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.

-Odysseus Elytis

_________________________________

Thessaloniki, Athens, and Santorini will be forever such wonderful memories for me. If you've never been to Greece make a point to go someday, because it's well worth it. Seeing the Parthenon from a distance on the night of a full moon and hearing the sounds (conversations, arguments, car alarms) and smelling the smells (cheap Greek cigarettes, the catch of the day, ouzo) of Athens was a great experience, but I hear that Kefallinia is actually the place to go in Greece for relatively untouched beaches. Athens was the jumping off point for me for Santorini. The caldera is a once in lifetime experience and half the island is made of black sand beaches so it's a surprise to find brightly colored shells against that backdrop. The inner side of the island is a vertical drop of what must be thousands of feet, terraced with small patios, so it's possible to look down upon other revellers on lower levels and then outward toward the center of the submerged volcano, which still appeared to be smoking. The thought of sitting on the rim of a sumberged volcano that wiped out all of Greek civilization thousands and thousands of years ago adds a sense of excitement to the night life on Santorini, which is made up of honeymooners, college kids, retirees, and backpackers from all over the world. When I was there I sensed an abundance of French, German, and Australian tourists. I'm thinking of when I can get back over there and remember one night I spent out walking the twisty, turning, cobblestone, labyrinthine streets of Santorini among the hundreds of stray cats of all colors and wandered into the Jazz Bar there to talk to the owner about Miles Davis, while sipping another free beer. This guy was so happy I could have a conversation with him about jazz. Santorini is Atlantis and I fully expect it to sink again, someday, back into the sea. Before then though there will be another few sunsets and the travellers visiting the island will applaud when they see it.

Virtual Emily

There are those who know Emily Dickinson was the poet of America. Some, however, believe it most certainly must be Walt Whitman and others are of the Wallace Stevens camp. Few have the dedication of Philip Jenks, however. An Emily Dickinson tattoo. A large one. Check out the UMass Virtual Emily site for all things ED.

Intriguing Individuals Versus Threatening Soups

No rest for the gullible. A nation with the shakes. Can’t you feel it? That’s your insomnia squawking. Crepuscular, yes. Attention K-Mart shoppers, your social security is being hijacked by a non sequitur. Bilge pumps at full speed. No amount of whimsy will save us.

I've been thinking about Robert Creeley the last few days, since it's been two years now since his passing. Reading his work is so meditative and instructive. I'm glad I got to see him read at the University of Chicago when I did.

THE MIRROR

Seeing is believing.
Whatever was thought or said,

these persistent, inexorable deaths
make faith as such absent,

our humanness a question,
a disgust for what we are.

Whatever the hope,
here it is lost.

Because we coveted our difference,
here is the cost.

benevolent as gold

derelict page an in
vitation to grace, thus we ga
ther innocence almo
st tangent, a high minde
d echo, like a silo or dyna
mite. the eye must be
a salesperson to marry
these hours, their signifiers

Ark

The poet is prone
to circumnavigate
the globe, but it’s
only a coffee table.
poor Orpheus.

This poet is a rare
starfish on a barbecue.
that poet is a neon
sign flashing "yes."

My body goes
when I want it to.
I’m not afraid of
snakes.

Let us defend
Social Security. let us
be nice to strangers,
and tourists.

Hollywood is a trendy
drug, or a bright red
car, divinely silly.

I will come to
your rescue with
handfuls of hope.

Hello.

The philosopher’s saddle
is truly vast, upon it rests
the desire for light.

John Ashbery is watching you.

Wystan Hugh Auden on creative writing. This is worth reading only because of the line "Happy the lot of the pure mathematician." How does that line scan? Auden has at various times been a favorite windbag of mine, only because you have to know what not to aspire to as well.

Lumpy Sincerity

Write sky poems in an empty room
about psychological pneumonia.
Friends come and friends go
singular dance of the seasons, remain.

What common emotions, individual struggles
of beads and oceans and secret rivers.
My theme is perfect and without center
its beauty is its movement, glistening.

What music and pictures, of rocks
my approach is crumbling, splashes and
rites beneath shark harmony
your shoulders are a thin mystery.

Swimming in facts, afternoons flexible
exaggerations gallop as religious as Rome.
Hear them whisper, cats know—
musculature of the present flexing.

Old Fashioned Question Mark

Night is a limousine
inscribed
on your tongue.

Press the flesh
of each final hour. Remember the
surface of each
tattered afternoon, naked as stone.

What dim fragrance kidnaps
your every blue second?

Who asks your name among a
crowd of strangers
and writes it in
your eyes?

There must be some
eternal conversation:
a flame
hardly noticed

as an ocean coalesces in your bones.

Another Ballad of Maps and Globes

Inbetween our faith incontinent
wheezes like a newly invented
instrument upon which we play
the hills from here to there.
Pretty tombstones like teeth
and not like teeth chew the
moon looking down upon this mess,
humans racing to and fro without alibis.
Capsized in the desert they will find us
crouching in the gutters of time
explorers of the inner side of nowhere.

Hart Crane: Master of Fogbanks

He discovered onyx, pendulum,
basilisk
(one or two) and
composed jingles on the
tops of frogs, until the sun
descended in a
stereo sky. But still, he could not
answer the ultimate question why.

He gathered sticks and stones and
a few harpoons, astrolabes, a
few, and wrapped them loudly
in a velvet robe, (continents and oceans flew)
and at the moment of
death, there in the clearing he
carefully, miraculously knew
what was it he was supposed to.

Jumping from the deck of speech:

Dazzling Sky

We’ll go on living despite the intrusion.
Appreciative of your glance in my direction, the chiaroscuro
of moments, cast me in the role of son,
to the patriotic television is most painful,
I am now able to sit and calmly watch the screen,
let’s not forget that intellectual fever,
fetish of distances
bewildering silks.

Flambé vigilante, try the surface
disconfidence of illumination:
Culture wears shades.

And all at once, vultures arose,
jellyfish reality
completely dismantled.
Visit my outer space
and I’ll visit your self-preoccupied garden.

Gorgeous Illustrations

Feminine machines, themselves
like a fragrance, she said and the
table again strayed from its place
and moved about the room
with such lightness and laughter
and why are you reading
as her hands so absolute
in a good way, the precise manners
of New Englanders, like pillows,
filled with famine. Good luck there,
because love is a secret factory
manufacturing doubt and the
employees blow smoke rings
on their lunch breaks the size of
Manhattan. Scores of dahlias
feed him morning and, like green
sleep, right now is the time.

I woke up this morning and thought of Cid Corman, so I picked up the Origin anthology and it fell open to this page because of the postcard.



The Overlord of the North Sea said: "A frog
living in a well cannot be told of the
ocean, for its habitat limits it; nor can
an insect flourishing in summer be told
of winter's ice, for the season sways it;
an opinionated fool cannot be told of Tao,
for he is bound by one doctrine or another.
Now that you have moved beyond the shores
and reaches of the River to be graced with
sight of the Great Sea and are abashed,
you can be told of the Great Verities.

—Chuang Tzu, Autumn Flood (ch. 17)

I went to see the film, Venus, yesterday which will probably be Peter O'Toole's last and the scene in the film when he recites the famous lines from Hamlet while standing in an empty ampitheatre swept by the wind and falling leaves, remembering the triumphs and tragedies of his long life, had me thinking again about economy of words. Venus is good by the way. At the very least it served as the impetus for this random blog entry. And thinking of Chuang Tzu has me thinking of Lao Tzu.

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is in the spaces between spokes where there is nothing
that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
—Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

So thinking of Cid's economical poems had me thinking of the master of the economical, Emily Dickinson, and her antithesis,
Walt Whitman.

Between Dickinson and Whitman there's such a huge gulf. It seems like the impulse to write anything using a long line has disappeared for this writer. Here's a funny negative review of Dickinson's work that was published soon after her death in 1886.

"It is plain that Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and grotesque fancy. She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced by the mannerism of Emerson....But the incoherence and formlessness of her— versicles are fatal...[A]n eccentric, dreamy, half-educated recluse in an out-of-the-way New England village (or anywhere else) cannot with impunity set at defiance the laws of gravitation and grammar."

—Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Atlantic Monthly

Whitman, however, was an eccentric, dreamy, half-educated lover of crowds who walked the streets of Manhattan enthralled by the humanity there—he had necessary moments of solitude but he required the thrum of the crowd to function.

As Frank O'Hara said

"And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the Americans are better than the movies."

To that I'd have to add Dickinson because

THE DUTIES of the Wind are few—
To cast the Ships at sea,
Establish March,
The Floods escort,
And usher Liberty.

And then to take it farther out, watch this Monk video. That's another master of economy, Count Basie, watching Monk from across the piano. Thelonious Monk's off-kilter solos have more in common with Dickinson's work than one might expect.

Nicaragua: Nation of Poets

Travellers have experienced Nicaragua's beauty once again, since the 1980s when the Sandinistas were ousted from power via a series of successful elections. Let's go.

_____________

"We turn outward, attracted by the beauty we see in created things without realizing that they are only a reflection of the real beauty. And the real beauty is within us."

- Ernesto Cardenal

Literacy and poetry workshops established throughout the "nation of poets," as it has been known since the early twentieth century, are well-attended by people whose concerns had been previously unheard. Most workshops are led by government-paid instructors in cultural centers, while others convene in police stations, army barracks, and workplaces such as sugar mills, Valle reports. In these sessions, Romantic and Modern poetry is considered below standard; Ernesto Cardenal denigrates socialist realism, which he says "comes from the Stalinist times that required that art be purely political propaganda." The "greatest virtue" of Cardenal's own poems, says a Times Literary Supplement reviewer, "is the indirectness of Cardenal's social criticism, which keeps stridency consistently at bay." In addition, says the reviewer, Cardenal's poems "are memorable and important both for their innovations in technique and for their attitudes." In this way they are like the works of Ezra Pound, whose aesthetic standards Cardenal promotes.



Review contributor Isabel Fraire demonstrates that there are many similarities between Cardenal's poetry and Pound's. Like Pound, Cardenal borrows the short, epigrammatic form from the masters of Latin poetry Catullus and Martial, whose works he has translated. Cardenal also borrows the canto form invented by Pound to bring "history into poetry" in a manner that preserves the flavor of the original sources — a technique Pablo Neruda employed with success. Cardenal's use of the canto form "is much more cantable" than Pound's Cantos, says Fraire. "We get passages of a sustained, descriptive lyricism … where the intense beauty and harmony of nature or of a certain social order or life style are presented." Pound and Cardenal develop similar themes: "the corrupting effect of moneymaking as the overriding value in a society; the importance of precision and truthfulness in language; the degradation of human values in the world which surrounds us; [and] the search through the past (or, in Cardenal's poetry, in more 'primitive' societies, a kind of contemporary past) for better world-models."

Following his conversion to Christianity in 1956, Cardenal studied to become a priest in Gethsemani, Kentucky, with Thomas Merton, the scholar, poet, and Trappist monk. While studying with Merton, Cardenal committed himself to the practice of nonviolence.

-Bishop Geoffrey Rowell, The London Times, Times Literary Review

Ahnold

Arnie says it's good politics and good business to get green. Daley here in Chicago has been focused on green planning and technology for years now. It's good to see that Schwarzenegger is getting a clue.


Marvell serves up the recipe for Love.


You have not lived until you've seen The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man.





Arthur Lee's birthday came and went unnoticed this year, usually I listen to Forever Changes on that day. Sorry AL. I'll listen to it in its entirety this weekend.

Have you seen my page at Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks?

A newly discovered William Carlos Williams poem languishing on a wall?

The Dim Schizophrenia of Owls

Angels brew sleep
as pillows weep stellar jam.

Here in the tangle of lawn
misnamed tanagers fold leaves.

Calendars slip filled with thorns.
My mind puddle mends

a clique or brood of dreams
at that midwinter height.

Heaving honey, sleep, shake
the cusp of dark notes

as politicians sit in the shadows
tuning lies.

Imagistes

T.E. Hulme, who died in WWI, was credited by Ezra Pound as author of the earliest poem that could be called "imagist." The Imagists were said to be in "revolt against...careless thinking and Romantic optimism." They attempted to "use the language of common speech... employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word." Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, H.D., and T.E. Hulme sought to strip away the florid language used in poetry at the time and expose the core image, so that the reader was left with something solid and memorable, a poem object. Imagist poems were meant to be experienced on a more visceral level. The group was against the moralizing of poetry that used platitudes and sentimentality to convey meaning. Recently I was reading about "Chicago" Imagism. Having never heard that term, but having seen paintings by Ed Paschke, I dug up what info. I could on the movement. Here's a snippet from a fairly recent issue of the Sun Times.

"It's true that as a Chicago art movement, Imagism is essentially dead... not because its exemplars have all passed away (they haven't) or because their work is neglected (Ed Paschke had a major retrospective last year; Wirsum and Nutt are soon to follow), but because the local art scene has moved on. It's hard to find young or even middle-aged Chicago painters who owe much visible debt to Paschke and Co., largely because they've chosen different models or abandoned painting for conceptual and new-media art. "




It's always been interesting to me how the ebb and flow of artistic trends reach a high water mark and then the waters recede and something else entirely new takes its place, even if whiffs of previous artistic currents are somewhat evident. Maybe nothing is new under the sun, but I like to see how iconoclasts cause these ripples.

Lorine Niedecker's poem, "My Life by Water" is practically glistening in its simplicity and unpretentiousness. Its economy of words makes it fall down the page with a surefooted momentum. It doesn't falter and there isn't a sense that there is anything missing or any extraneous words. It's like an engine starting up, or the sight of a single bird in the sky. A simple moment transcribed without overexplanation.

My life
by water--
Hear

spring's
first frog
or board

out on the cold
ground
giving

Muskrats
gnawing
doors

to wild green
arts and letters
Rabbits

raided
my lettuce
One boat

two--
pointed toward
my shore

thru birdstart
wingdrip
weed-drift

of the soft
and serious--
Water

I can't say that this all I require from reading a poem, but I appreciate it's severity and minimal qualities. To take us from there to Whitman's expansive lines takes a long leap into another kind of aesthetic entirely. Not that two camps exist, each keeping to one or the other methodology. But there are two impulses that exist in poets I think. One to include everything and one to strip away to essence. Think about Whitman's catalogs in Leaves of Grass where no detail that crossed his mind, sights, sounds, and smells escaped his description. He tried to capture the entire panoramic vista of American life. Neither is any more correct or true. An entire life's experience could be summed up in a few lines. The tendency to write epigrammatic poems, image heavy poems may be a more effective strategy. Inbetween these two stolid trees of thought is strung the musty hammock of American literature. Realist description, when combined with the influence of more irrational or fantastic imagery from surrealist and dada currents of thought have chopped up language into something really remarkable. I'd like to know what to call it. Any suggestions about what's happening right now?

Out of Fire

Under the angles of protein
naked asteroids gleam

demand to press
flesh with the cigarette

stars thrown like lowdown dice

fierce men, arched at an angle,
will through a door in the east
dream of us

tongue can pleasure
flying shrinking to nothing
wet with electricity

when the stars themselves finally give
out from the trees

like the end of your wick
that becomes a summons

the momentary
wanderings of the
blind

and all their angels flicker.

The City Visible

Reading the work included in the new anthology, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, is a great starting point for anyone interested in contemporary poetry, especially poetry being written by mostly younger poets. Jennifer Scappettone, Suzanne Buffam, Srikanth Reddy, John Tipton, Eric Elshtain, David Pavelich, Peter O’Leary, William Fuller, Michael O’Leary, Mark Tardi, Erica Bernheim, Michael Antonucci, Chris Glomski, Garin Cycholl, Luis Urrea, Kristy Odelius, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, Simone Muench, Lea Graham, Ed Roberson, Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, Shin Yu Pai, Dan Beachy-Quick, Maxine Chernoff, Kerri Sonnenberg, Jesse Seldess, Paul Hoover, Michelle Taransky, Robert Archambeau, Bill Marsh, Larry Sawyer, Cecilia Pinto, Johanny Vázquez Paz, Ela Kotkowska, Jorge Sanchez, Joel Craig, Daniel Borzutzky, Joel Felix, Raymond Bianchi, Cynthia Bond, William Allegrezza, Jennifer Karmin, Tim Yu, Laura Sims, Roberto Harrison, Brenda Cárdenas, Stacy Szymaszek, and Chuck Stebelton are for the most part poets who have either grown up in the city of Chicago or were drawn to this literary nexus from elsewhere. Calling Chicago a literary nexus at first sounded strange to me, but it has become so. Bob Archambeau, one of the poets in the anthology, has written on his blog about the benefits and pitfalls of contextualizing groups of writers based on geographic location. It's interesting to see all this gel.

Chaung Tzu dreamt
he was a
butterfly and
upon waking realized
that he may
actually be a
butterfly dreaming
of being a man.

If I dreamt I
was Chaung Tzu
dreaming of a
butterfly dreaming
of being a man,
would that
man ever realize that
life itself is the
dream from which
we’ll never
awaken?

"What good did the theories of the philosophers do us? Did they help us to take a single step forward or backward? What is forward, what is backward? Did they alter our forms of contentment? We are. We argue, we dispute, we get excited. The rest is sauce. Sometimes pleasant, sometimes mixed with a limitless boredom, a swamp dotted with tufts of dying shrubs.

We have had enough of the intelligent movements that have stretched beyond measure our credulity in the benefits of science. What we want now is spontaneity."

-Tristan Tzara

____________________________

Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART," that parrot word replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist. TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances
Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins
CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS
Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance there is no transparence
or appearance
MUSICIANS SMASH YOUR INSTRUMENTS
BLIND MEN take the stage
THE SYRINGE is only for my understanding.

I write because it is natural.

It's finally warming up in Chicago...we're expecting temps in the upper 50s for the next few days. There are so many things going on in this city and poetry is just one. In the next few weeks the anthology The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century will be on bookshelves in stores across the city with new poetry from Garin Cycholl, Chuck Stebelton, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, Sterling Plumpp, Bill Allegrezza, Simone Muench, Chris Glomski, Ray Bianchi, Peter O'Leary, Kerri Sonnenberg, Robyn Schiff, Mark Tardi, myself and many others. Order a copy from your local bookstore or else contact Cracked Slab Books. Also, there are many exciting things coming up in the Myopic books reading series. As soon as I'm fully defrosted I'll be venturing out. Chicago's summer personality is why I live here. . .

Sunday March 25 - Betsy Andrews

Sunday April 22 - Tim Yu

Sunday April 29 - Tony Trigilio

Sunday May 13 - Comedic Poetry with Aaron Belz, Daniel Borzutzky, Joyelle McSweeney, Gabriel Gudding, and A.D. Jameson

Sunday June 17 - Aaron Fagan

The Gypsy and the Wind

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing  and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

___________________________________________

Lorca was the supreme master of making the fantastic seem real.

A Brief Cautionary Note About Sacks

Sacks help the user hold, carry, and transport. Do not however place your head in the sack for you may suffocate from a lack of oxygen. You are correct, there is a small amount of oxygen inside the sack. But you will surely grow lightheaded if your head, and therefore both nostrils, once placed inside the sack, breathe this limited amount of somewhat “sackish” air. Sack air is in limited supply and after this resource is depleted you may very well suffocate. Yes, you are correct, some people are known for holding their breath for long periods of time, but not for breathing the air inside sacks. Yes, pearl divers did once practice the now largely obsolete method of retrieving pearls from oysters. Before the beginning of the 20th century, the only means of obtaining pearls was by manually opening oysters found on the ocean floor or river bottom. Free-divers were often forced to descend to depths of over 100 feet on but a single breath, exposing them to dangers of sharks, jellyfish, drowning, and decompression sickness. Yes, I know that, because of the difficulty of diving and the unpredictable nature of natural pearl growth in oysters, pearls of the time were extremely rare and of varying quality. No, these divers were not wearing sacks on their head while diving, of that we may be certain. No, this sack is not a bag, satchel, case, or basket. It could neither be said that this sack is a attache, backpack, briefcase, carry-on, carryall, diddie, duffel, gear, grub-bag, handbag, holdall, kit, knap pack, packet, pocket, pocketbook, poke, pouch, purse, saddlebag, suitcase, or tote. If this were a pocketbook, diddie case, carry-all grub bag, or even an attache, warnings of this type would be completely unnecessary. Also, resist the temptation to use this sack as a flotilla, warning flare, invitation, or campfire. I guess it could be used as a pillow if inflated properly, yes. A flotilla is something you might use to float upon. Ok, flotation device. No, I do not believe it could ever be used as a hamper or as a diaper. My observations resulted in the conclusion that sacks are best used for carrying things like groceries. Well, no one is forcing you to read this why don’t you just stop reading it then? Why don’t you try carrying your groceries without a sack? Why don’t you try it and see what happens? That’s what I thought. Sometimes you need a sack.

Moonprint

Slip into the mist
here chill stillness
bleats across the
grim sleeve of
my hour, you, so there

shower, enzyme of sleep
plasma of dreambeats.

Join hands and abscond
among pregnant ideas
thrum of fir, smell of musk.

Iced with morning frost,
green pine,
invite my nose to dance.

Shrill as news of a death
mind awaken to
red-winged blackbird.

Junta of orange sun
stab the horizon.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will be awarded the medal of summer.

What I Keep

Near to dream each sleep
walks as if deep and hours
off to where the blue winds creep, I
know a passage that seems

my mind screen, skin-
deep apoplectic sheen flashes
slivers of pristine time
mimed falsehoods mined

so, find what wind chimes
send as I rhyme, each to
each a spirit dines,
pearls beneath sleep.

Get Your Own, Beautiful

Motel on the moon
number over my head
through the suburbs
just inches from my person
we hover probably not
to these mountains.

Dark cartographer
draw a map
of the great American
tomorrow.

Dusk loves sitting on the porch
so I resemble

counting the truant ocean

and calmly pass the man with an edge.

Officer forever
unravel the world.

A tiny ship is changing clothes,
stop staring at the scene.

And then the quiet post card bled
the heart’s thick beautiful smoke.

Myopia

"Nelson Algren, Wicker Park's great literary giant, once remarked "Chicago is an October sort of city, even in spring". He knew what he was talking about. Year after year spring skittishly arrives on the shores of Lake Michigan in a series of dizzying and ultimately frustrating meteorological peaks and valleys. So deep in winter hibernation are Cook County's citizenry that we are slow to leave our cocoons, distrustful of all sunny February days in the mid-50's, expecting the last blizzard later that very night, the old man's last gasp, the billowing snow and ice sideways blown within the hard bitter wind of our dreams. In February, winter's punishing landscape always lurks in the rearview mirror, just as in October it spans the entire horizon ahead."

-Joe Judd, owner, Myopic Books



Sunday March 25 - Betsy Andrews

Sunday April 29 -Tony Trigilio

Sunday May 13 - Comedic Poetry with Aaron Belz, Daniel Borzutzky, Joyelle McSweeney, Gabriel Gudding, and A.D. Jameson

Sunday June 17 - Aaron Fagan

Present Tense

A thousand noons hatch
at horizon where the
gate sings

I peel my selves
for you to
listen
winds bringing hours
black

You I knew
in a million colors, world

stacks of
nacreous factories

A razor
stubble chin where
constellations crouch

Tiny machines ply
the after-
noon sky, useless as
caves.

Kyger

Alice Notley re: Joanne Kyger...it's interesting when Notley says each poet's poetry should be its own world. It's difficult to not compare poets, but I think the tendency to do so is counterproductive to an astute evaluation of a writer's work. The photo is Kyger in Kyoto, Japan, I think Allen Ginsberg took it.
_______________

"Being known as a glorious and fascinating talker can obscure the value of your work, at least during your lifetime. I certainly hope to have shown that Kyger's work lives up to her conversation, which I also know something about. Kyger's influence on my own practice has been considerable -- and on many other women -- she's one of the women who's shown me how to speak as myself, to be intelligent in the way I wish and am, rather than suiting the requirements of established intellectuality. Universities are frightfully conservative because they love their traditions and especially their language; idiomatic truth can't get born there, or anything that has to be new, not just wants to be.
     Kyger was recently omitted from Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (a very useful book except for the omissions any anthology's prone to). One must assume this is at least partly because she's stayed away from the centers of Poetry's meager power; to wield power would be counter to the logic and even the technique of her poetry, would be for her a spiritually poor choice. But not calling attention to herself, she isn't always included. As her books show, her daily life involves, besides poetry, domestic chores, community service, local jobs in stores, frequent teaching at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, extensive trips to Mexico, and poetry reading trips to the East Coast. This is not at all an insular existence, but it somehow hasn't brought her the notice she deserves. A certain poetry isn't always fashionable. However, each poet's poetry is, or should be, its own world; you cross borders, you get to know it, you read it being there, not bringing a lot of baggage from outside it, and it works. Poetry's supposed to be lived in not assessed. . ."

Congratulations, Martin Scorsese.

A Fable

Of these misunderstandings there were seven,
as the forested Snid glared out from his jungle lair
and considered the tautologies waiting there,
the fruit ripe in their trees was his heaven.

And as the lotus cleft the stone in two
a fountain of leaves from the forest blew
and a shower of gold from an autumn sky
left the moon in a basket of stars.

Leave it to Beaver—Future Episode Guide pt. 1

Beaver gosh feels the soft pangs of love and gets Wally to help him
pen a love letter to his potential girl only to discover that said
letter falls into the hands of their substitute teacher who
mistakenly surmises that the letter's sender is none other than oh boy Mr.
Cleaver.

The Beaver golly expands like a balloon and explodes after eating all
the ice-cream in the fridge, which Wally has to aw shucks clean up when
Beaver gets sick. The Beave then farts in the tub with his boats
while taking his you rascal clean-up bath.

Oh that Beaver wakes up late for school (again) after a tumultuous
dream that convinces him that he is destined to travel in space as an
astronaut. With Whitey's help, the Beaver constructs a space ship in
the backyard that Eddie and Wally gleefully destroy. Wally is so
guilt-ridden the next day that he gives the Beave here ya go a shiny
new nickel.

Ward really blows his stack with the Beaver when he discovers that he
and Whitey have been wearing his cardigan sweater and sticking his
pipe in their mouths as they have a laugh pretending to be hard-working
dads. Ward decides to "show them the ropes" by telling the Beave that due
to unforeseen circumstances he'll have to get a job at the salt mines to
support gosh the whole family.

Geez, Eddie Haskell talks Wally into cheating by passing him answers
during an important test in school. Wally gulp has to retake a much harder
test as punishment the following day and he counts on Beave to help him
get out of the jam by standing at the classroom window with Wally's
textbook in hand. The plan is foiled when Beaver discovers that he
can't read big words and stuff.

Beaver gets hit in the darnit head with a pop-fly baseball after school
and is now convinced he has psychic abilities. With Larry Modello’s
help, the Beave sets up a fortune-telling sidewalk stand. Together the boys
have it made in the shade until Lumpy shows up and they quickly learn
gee Dad honesty is the best policy.

Tooey decides he would be much healthier and happier if he gave his
lunch money to Lumpy on a daily basis. Wally and the gang decide to
rattle Lumpy’s cage by threatening to reveal Lumpy’s dark summer
camp secret (that he likes to knit, gee whiz, girl sweaters).

Histoire du Cinema

I remember seeing Star Wars for the first time
But it wasn't like seeing Breathless for the first time.
I was breathless when I watched Raging Bull for the first time
But I was a raging bull when I watched Clueless for the first time.
I was clueless when I watched 8 1/2 for the first time.
But I was 8 1/2 when I watched Snow White for the first time
I was snow white when I saw Halloween for the first time.
It was Halloween when I watched High Noon for the first time.
I remember seeing King Kong for the first time.
It was in The Apartment that I saw The Searchers for the first time.
In Modern Times, a Taxi Driver should consider The Graduate and
go Singin' In the Rain On the Waterfront with The African Queen,
instead of this route I took classes with a Psycho from Chinatown on The
Grapes of Wrath. Someday I'll be An American in Paris but for now
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Rocky and The Wild Bunch rode in on
The Streetcar Named Desire to fill their Jaws with The Best Years of Our Lives.

Hallelujah Fruit Bowl

Thank you for your reliability.
I could always count on you to
maintain your even temper, as you
held the few remaining oranges
and a banana or two. You no
doubt heard my random muttering
in the kitchen on bad days, perhaps
a “goddammit” slipped out
once or twice, as I nearly cut my finger
or a pot boiled over. But you sat
there steadfast, performing your
duty so calmly. I salute your
temerity in that somewhat
frenzied nook, neighbor to
the toaster, but ultimately
without peer.

Where the Sky Went

Explorers of the inner side of nowhere
for only that moment
as if your prey

Gazing upward toward
entropy
Still in the published bones
secret things stand, explore the curve of torsos, psychic Alps

Deep inside the volcano that erased the
Mediterranean world
as if a blind coyote
get someone on the phone immediately
paraphernalia of binah, chthonian muck

Oncoming lights, the human velocity of
maintaining leaves me
this time between the sheets
of paper in the dark river of delirium
attention shoppers
some passing storm

walked
inside me

A pool of mirrored yesterdays
must be slowly dying of
some esoteric discipline

up sprouted only sorrow
as if this clear light
walking le morning

would you ask ad execs
to design a new skin for you
in front of televised fires.

Caravanserai

This afternoon is a film character at the wheel
thunder break the dishes of the sky
one never sleeps as late as daylight is a weird omen

to you the one without clothes
naked as a skinned peach

plagiarized glances stolen ambulances
I'm gone over the edge only wish to reconstruct
beautiful gardens under your blankets

maybe we haven't been speaking
of a stolen automobile

Breathless

that's how I found you
watching a
movie not stealing automobiles
million birds along a clothesline

the telephone rings exploding into stars
hoi polloi grace sidewalks Sundays.

What the World Needs Now

Talking to Fred Sasaki the other night about rock lyrics and how poets have been influenced by them had me thinking about Marc Bolan. I know that T. Rex, Dylan, and other rock lyricists have influenced my conception of how images work in successful poems. Because it's also Valentine's Day,

"The lively sparks that issue from those eyes,
Against the which there vaileth no
defence,
Have pierced my heart, and done it none offence,
With quaking pleasure more than once or twice."

-Sir Thomas Wyatt

I'm also framing this off-the-cuff blog entry with the thought in mind that the rock musicians I've always loved have written lyrics that use imagery to create a vivid mind movie that harkens back to the tradition established by the medieval troubadors. Renaissance poets also spun tales of lost love that resonate and that imagery has been recycled to the point where it has become the source of much cliche. But a line could be drawn connecting the lyrics of these poets (which could be taken even further back to the work of classical poets like Sappho) to the lyrics of rock artists such as Marc Bolan, the Rolling Stones, and now Beck.

"You slide so good, with bones so fair
You've got the universe reclining in your hair
'Cos you're my baby, yes you're my love
Oh girl I'm just a jeepster for your love.

Just like a car, you're pleasing to behold
I'll call you Jaguar if I may be so bold
'Cos you're my baby, 'cos you're my love
Oh girl I'm just a jeepster for your love."

-Marc Bolan

The blason was invented by Clement Marot in 1536. This enumerated form of catalogue verse of praise or blame works well to list the reasons why the object of one's attention is deserving of that.

"I saw her today at the reception
In her glass was a bleeding man
She was practiced at the art of deception
Well I could tell by her blood-stained hands.

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need."

-Mick Jagger

One of my favorites is Free Union by Andre Breton, which explodes with uncommonplace imagery and comparisons so singular that the reader is forced to envision a woman so fantastical that no comparison can be made between the woman described and any living person. Breton's goal was to take the reader someplace unique and never before imagined.

"My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child’s writing...

My wife with the shoulders of a champagne..

My wife with legs of flares
With the movements of clockwork and despair
My wife with calves of eldertree pith
My wife with feet of initials...

With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum.."

-Andre Breton

Sure this stuff seems a little hokey now in the year 2007, but the music of T. Rex still sounds cool. Bolan's pen was filled with something magical ... there should be a new subgenre of music invented for him. Thanks to YouTube for the kooky video. Enjoy.

Always Returning

Return always to the
first day when the world
opened, gushing memory,
its libretto against our skin

Doorbell sonatas and
fire stations scream
red in the night:
enter the labyrinth
of our every mood.

The last star is a rerun in
the sky, burning the
atmosphere of a
summer there hovering.

Could it always be that day
when we meet and map
each moment's lounging frame?

Dancing Off the Edges of Our Lives

We notice ordinary things like flower pots
filled with sighs and closets dripping
monsters. Is it time yet to depart
from the cloistered probability
that our study of cognac has yielded no
transparencies other than what we
imagined? Here in the future our
wings are mere footnotes
ancanthus medallion, ribbon of sky,
facts smile from posterior gardens.
There is a spy called wonder who watches our
habits. There is a virtue to the geometry of
sleep for a friend is a ruddered thing requiring
citations and phosphorescent rooms.

Cool Foreign Accent

There is a pit of silence look where
the music waits and the softest rain
will never reach us there

Dawn cannot be wrong and lilting like
shadows untrimmed, this drizzle

Let us forgive them of error
recluse words in a poem. Don’t they
sound like heartsick and willing appetites
brought to morning
where the music waits with capitalized eyes?

Lens

These mysterious hours

are long-legged


little spiders.

The last day of each year

is my classified ad.



Scent of beach enter.

Lonely passenger, ride the dream bus.

Visit stores without clientele.



Heart so mountainous,

there must be

some unseen map,



bridge to nowhere.

We're in the midst of working on milk, vol. 8 and again I'm amazed by the quality of the work we'll present. It's been my honor to publish the work of these artists since 1998.

I haven't tapped into the world of comics in a long time, but I've been doing some research on Frank King and Chris Ware.

I've written a story that my friend Joe Kimball is going to illustrate.

I'm just remembering working on my first issue of Nexus with my friend Mark Knapke as assistant editor. I remember sitting in the Nexus office in the middle of many nights laying out pages and spending hours on the phone talking to various people amazed that I had a big budget and could make endless long distance phone calls. I remember calling Morocco to try to get Paul Bowles on the phone because someone had given me what was supposed to be his number and hearing a soft voice so unintelligible that I hung up. The Nexus magazine that I edited is not to be confused with the new age fluff mag of the same name. Nexus the poetry journal was founded in 1967.

Those who appeared in Nexus vol. 33, no. 1 include the following:

Hakim Bey, John Brandi, Ken Brown, David Chorlton, Ira Cohen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Henri Ford, Allan Graubard, Renee Gregorio, Paul Grillo, Gabor Gyukics, Maggie Jaffe, WB Keckler, Nancy Levant, Angus MacLise, Gerard Malanga, Sheila E. Murphy, Simon Perchik, Jean Marc Sens, Gustaf Sobin, Sparrow, Tetsuya Taguchi, Janine Pommy Vega, Paul Violi, Ken Wainio, Nan Watkins, AD Winans, Taylor Mead, Tuli Kupferberg, Ronnie Burk, Philip Glass Interview

Video recording was invented in 1956 as an intermediary in live broadcast television. It was a cheap means to pre-record and edit regularly scheduled programs taped from live events. Roughly twelve years later, conceptual and minimalist artists would take an interest in the medium, making “artist videos” at a time when there was no such thing as a video artist. Michel Auder is an exception. He chose video as his primary means of expression well before video was accepted as a practice in its own right.

Born in Soisson, France, in 1945, Auder began making films at the age of 18. As an aspiring young filmmaker, he fell under the influence of the French New Wave and experimental cinema, most notably Jean-Luc Godard and Andy Warhol. In 1969, Auder met and eventually married Viva, one of Warhol’s principal talents. A year later, they moved to New York where Auder has since resided. That same year, he purchased a Sony Portapak, one of the first commercially available video cameras. Since 1970 he has persistently documented the people, places and events that are his life.
 
The label “video artist” was applied retroactively when Auder began exhibiting his work in 1980. At that time he produced a series of discreet works, some of which were from scripted biographical material and others that were video collages appropriating material from television. As technology improved and access to editing facilities increased, Auder’s skills as an auteur became more apparent. He is a consummate voyeur, one who literally reads scenes of intimacy, exchange and daily life as verses of poetry unto themselves.

Meanwhile

Going on boats
morning’s candelabra
splinters light
across water.


Horizon
an eyelid.

Daily fireworks, roof
of stars
give way to
blue.


Frozen oranges,
erupt
from the palm of my hand.


*


You have
come so far
and somehow
the call
was heard, as
a telephone
ringing
on the moon.


Don’t
worry, we
are marooned
in a
nevertheless city,

I’ll unzip
the buildings,

release the
birds.

Kentucky

You are coatless Kentucky
You are drunk and disorderly
Your lawns however are immaculate
Your women are chatty, horny
You don’t pick up the check
You're the home of Johnny Depp
You are peppered with horses
Your eyes are barbeque pits
and I’m ok with that.

Frank Sherlock Needs Your Help

Amy King writes:

Philly poet and host of the La Tazza Reading Series, Frank Sherlock, recently suffered a heart attack and kidney failure, among other anomalies, during a very brief window of time that he was without health insurance. It’s one of those crap shoot moments, folks. Anyway, he’s a good guy for sure, young (early 30’s), and a poet who encourages and supports poets — all feats I’m a fan of. He has run that series for a good long time now (I read in it years ago) and gets a much deserved “A” in my book. He needs cash and books and good words sent his way for recovery.


Thanks to the generosity of Juliana Spahr you can now send checks for the Frank Sherlock EMERGENCY FUND which will be tax deductible!

'A 'A ARTS
c/o J. Spahr
5000 MacArthur Blvd.
Oakland, CA 94613

CHECKS SHOULD BE MADE OUT TO "'A 'A ARTS"
and these checks will be tax deductible.

PLEASE MAKE A NOTE THAT YOUR CHECK IS FOR FRANK SHERLOCK.
Your donations are very much appreciated.

Ice Cubes Rising from My Glass

Exotic trigonometry
coaxe the possibilities.

Love the phrase "cool million."

Not oft understood
a figure of speech cartoons.

Sunday, glare from the front pages.

When I rise to refill my glass,
real life goes on despite reality television.

Television, quip quixotically.

Into my fantastically
real mouth enters

the cold suburban reality
that there are no more.

Graffito

Describe your chokehold
on my gaze?

The decision clinical
let me paraphrase

that you are new every morning
blowing fresh
breeze of unease

Disturbing to the status quo
you and I know
but even as I eternally so

such a one as you

We are discontinuous pages
in some unwrit book

every hieroglyphic
look.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

This is the only blog where you'll see Mick Jagger painting...I mean a Mick Jagger painting.

these _______ gaps aren't
in
our conversation
don’t they
_________ resemble anything
but
themselves________
and we pause to let
it

the _______ wash
over us

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" made an impression on me. Frost admitted late in his life that he repeated the last line only because he couldn't think of anything else.



Stopping By ___________* On A Snowy Evening

Whose ___________ these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his _____________ fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the ___________ and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The ___________ are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.



*Popeye's chicken, Jewel, Navy Pier, Crobar, La Creperie,
Simon's, Giordano's, Myopic books, Buckingham fountain,
Uptown, Danny's, Union Station, Park West, Resi's,
the Hungry Brain, Funky Buddha, Velvet Lounge,
Holiday Club

I Have Passed Along

A quiet desert as if

Robert Frost were my horse

You are my snowy woods

I mostly smile

Way to Pamela Anderson

Dare we not say you are gauche
gazing out from between the bars of the television screen
betwixt lip jobs Pamela Anderson pouts
the beach beneath her feet
all the world her magazine, she coos
trying to suddenly remember her line
as the sun licks the horizon a final time and descends
“Way to Pamela, Pamela Anderson!” someone
on the beach shouts. Pamela Anderson cannot
figure out if it’s condescension she’s
hearing or sarcasm. She raises an arm
and waves back yelling jubilantly,
“Thank you, anonymous beach person!”

Here's some other recent work up at the MiPOesias site. Thanks to the editor, Amy King. I think it's about 20 below outside right now, so I've been imagining that I'm dreaming all this. I really live in Southern California.

My poem A Heaven Beside Me is read on MiPO radio. Thank you to the host, Bob Marcacci.

It's the last piece read at the very end of the show.

Rghit

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.

Bird & Diz

Language Lariat

We must dance it
nude upon the Alps of meaning
we pirouette and tumble
upon beartraps stumble
for the air is spiny
clear and clean
if all goes well
life resembles a magazine’s
cover? But she soon
discovered it’s not
like that at all
(Summer devolves
into Fall and Winter
then comes slouching)
words can be graves
but also roses and
whenever life loses
its sheen polish
a question and let it
serve as a platter
beyond our fears.

Here's a few new poems up at Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks. No, they're not love poems.

There's a scene in 8 1/2 (that's La Dolce Vita) in which Marcello Mastroianni's character, Guido, listens to a critic's analysis and then he ends up throwing the results on the ground. When he scrambles over to pick it up after a second thought we are shown the visual representation of how most minds function. Going back and forth from feelings of independence to feelings of insecurity, ebb and flow, is a fact of life. Facing the mirror is no easy feat however. But being completely honest with oneself is the only path to freedom from our preconceptions.


Guido is a salad of confusion. He's torn between what he used to be and what he might become, and on all sides advice is offered from those who think they know what's best for him. Philosophical advice comes from critics, advice comes from his wife, advice comes from friends, advice comes from everyone with an opinion, but at the end of the day he forces his own subjectivity outward in an artistic gesture that seems futile. But in this act of creating he ultimately triumphs over futility and makes a lasting statement that outlives impermanance.

Icing the Shadows

Screen of dreams

exhale light

inhale night

supple as a lung.

It's only sunset

smoking a huge cigar.

Who

shouts

"cinema,

thief of exits!"

Carpet has a sound

is a dwarf

who needs some realism.

Orphan of speech,

said the waves, these

tears are all yours.

Major archeaological find at Stone Henge.

John Steinbeck, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti all had something in common...Monterey, California.

Bruce Andrews : a user's guide.

Check out the innovative audiences Wiki.

Adam Fieled was here in Chicago recently for a reading at Myopic with Steve Halle. It was a great night of poetry and conversation. I'm much more familiar with the Philly poetry scene now thanks to Adam and he was kind enough to put a few poems of mine up at P.F.S. Post. Have a look, beautiful.

Big Bridge Vol. 3, No. 4

Here's my review of What's Your Idea of a Good Time? at Big Bridge.

Cate Blanchett is the most talented actress in existence (besides Meryl Streep). It doesn't hurt that she's so incredibly beautiful.

Jodie Foster is up there too. Diane Keaton is third or fourth and Scarlett Johansson would make the list. Angela Bassett would be on the list. Hmmm...can't think of anyone else right now. I've been thinking about all this because the Oscars are coming up.

Aren't very many male actors that are any good ... the best have left us. Brando, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson is Mr. Hollywood but he's been laying low I guess. What has he done since "About Schmidt" ... I know he's in "The Departed," still haven't seen it. Benicio Del Toro is uberrr cool. John Malkovich (Malkovich Malkovich) ... the effervescent Mr. Depp.

Exit Thief

“Like a thief in the night, Truffaut watched ‘his first two hundred films on the sly’ by slipping into the theatre without paying through the washroom window or the emergency exit.”



*






become a detective in
your own life
digest the sky

into darkness
and silence the world
waits for us

the curtains part
to reveal the most horrific
object: ourselves

we’ve never met
do I know you, I see, uh huh
well then, ok thanks

an only mystic sunset
orphan of speech,
boy on a beach

cinema is a dwarf
smoking a huge cigar who
shouts

lends just enough
knife-edge ambiguity,
who needs realism

thief of exits, my
tears are all yours
said the waves

inhale night
exhale light
supple as a lung

carpet has a sound
we approach the
screen of dreams

the animal flickers and
awakens, do we watch
it or vice versa.

Eye

There was a sun that was not a sun and inbetween there was a sun that resembled not a sun but an infinity of other suns of infinite light and the light cast from the infinite light of that sun that was not a sun cast a light of infinite brightness that seemed an incomparable darkness because the light from this particular sun resembled no sun ever before seen. It was orange and red and sometimes purple this sun that was not really a sun and inbetween that sun the infinity of infinite suns of infinite light cast a light of infinite brightness that seemed so blinding that the people looked up at the sun that was not a sun and in the blinding light of that briliance everyone burned with a bright understanding that was not like any understanding ever before experienced because it was not even an understanding but a feeling and a warmth.

But Still We Have to Pay Taxes

In the Old Norse
tale about the candle wax
and fragrent eyes
you may have
noticed that lemurs
stacked whales in
the cold shout of
Swedenic winters
and frozen sighs
limned the dingle starry
as if you were
paper and upon your
face a poem writ
such that goblets
filled with celestial
spit descended
angelically from
gypsy skies.

Of Foreign Coins

Twice in the final hour a French
horn will crow. Examine the bark
of trees. At a ceremony to celebrate
oblivion, a peal of thunder
was birthed into meaning.

Two eagles descended, lapping
the horse that won the race of existence.

A loud voice: On the final day
of snow, flutes and whistles slowly
circle weeping caballeros.

To sublet summer
there are twelve silences
and two lambs.

A hand claps the thirteenth
silence, as if a shell upon a liquescent beach.

Planted in a field against a shadow,
a priest spun webbed echoes the size of
Easter. A new constellation, itself backward,
now drips upon the pavement
electronic obsidian.

Contrabandista

Once inside the mist gathers
investigating the singular, its velvet passing

in this neck of sun some blossom mourns
I’ve known hopes crushed, still the depth of margins murmurs

what I cannot say thickens like approaching sleep
but a wall runs along my mind

the firm ring of memory
a wreath of saviors

If the present moment
has already happened, this excerpt tunnels

image of white saxophones playing taps
a blindfold caves in

some city, bleached and perfect
pause breathe think


My eyes fill with tears
I’m sensitive as an old typewriter
families bark in minivans
chopping down the shadows

I rooted for the ants I read about technology
the carnage just sits there from tomorrows news and

Columbus
deserves a massive parking ticket


when will someone notice me
for being so allusive

the source of this "wisdom"
The denouement was

pages of strange velocities


tell them that
maintaining leaves me
certain that words have claws.