In late 2007 Fantagraphics is going to publish the story that I've been working on with Joe Kimball! I need to get busy. I'm behind the times when it comes to my knowledge of R. Crumb, Peter Bagge, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Dan Clowes, Joe Sacco, Chris Ware, Jessica Abel, Sophie Crumb, and Charles Burns. I know that Chris Ware lives in Oak Park. Clowes's GhostWorld is really super. Are comics the medium of the future? Here's a panel from the story.

Brodey

The Jim Brodey book Heart of Breath (Hard Press) contains some great, loose passages. There's a desperate, lonely quality to Brodey's poetry that makes me wonder if Brodey was nearly like the Lew Welch of the 2nd generation of New York School poets.


Bob Kaufman

Originator of the dense thought
Made lyrical this solitary
Wanderer of Brain St.

Succumbed to infinity
By bleak choice
Nominated in bliss

To rule a purple void
Wanderer of Brain St.
The calm & quiet explosions

Of natural chaos
Calm & exciting mentor
Of evangelical stroll

He the parent of his own body
Flesh of silence grilled
In an honesty only humans ignore

-JB

I'm traveling to the fine state of Wisconsin to give a reading tonight, which had me thinking about all the readings [David Trinidad, Mark Tardi, Brenda Cardenas, Antler, Raymond Bianchi, Kerri Sonnenberg, Paul Hoover, Ron Padgett, Eliot Weinberger, Brenda Iijima, Maxine Chernoff, Garin Cycholl, Daniel Borzutzky, Krista Franklin, Mary Margaret Sloan, Susie Timmons, Clayton Eshleman, Wanda Coleman, Gerald Stern, Philip Jenks, Simone Muench, Ira Cohen, Sheila E. Murphy, Gabriel Gudding, Joshua Beckman, Diane Wakoski, Tim Yu, Simon Pettet, Michael McClure, John Tipton, Roberto Harrison, Chris Glomski, Adam Fieled, Aaron Belz, Catherine Daly, Steve Halle, Robert Creeley, Vincent Katz, Duriel Harris, Daniel Nester, Douglas Rothschild, Kenneth Koch, Nathalie Stephens, Sterling Plumpp, Peter O’Leary, etc.] I've attended over the years. I've awarded these poets superlatives, but you can cast your own vote.

Most fashionable…Antler
Longest asides…Diane Wakoski, Robert Creeley
Most cryptic…Philip Jenks
Funniest…Ron Padgett, Aaron Belz
Sexiest…Gerald Stern (yes, kidding)
Most mathematical…Mark Tardi
Beastiest…Michael McClure
Grouchiest…Kenneth Koch
Most Likely to Succeed…Tim Yu
Psychedelic Award…Ira Cohen

Sal Paradise

For a mere $1,100 a month you can rent Jack Kerouac's birthplace and write your great American novel. At Superfight last night I had an interesting conversation with someone who noted that the gulf between art and anecdote is wide. At what point is a narrative taking on a life of its own? Kerouac, although faulted as being a "typewriter" by Truman Capote, excelled at turning his experiences into art. If objectivity is unattainable, wouldn't any attempt at writing prose be art? Not really, unless the craft involved pulls the reader in and immerses the reader in the experience. What causes immersion? Effective plot, believable dialogue, flashbacks, characterization, interesting description. The craft of writing brings a barebones story upward to another level. How effective the author was at his or her craft is another question. When critics disagree something new and important exists. Lowell, MA produced one of America's best storytellers.

Tonight I'll be at the Superfight. With all the events going on around Chicago, it's hard to pick sometimes. There's of course The Danny's reading series, the Discrete series, and the Red Rover series.

Last night it was good to go down to The Cafe to see my good friend, the inimitable Charlie Newman.



So my point is quit looking at Suicide Girls and do something constructive. Head down to Moxie and talk to Chris Gibson, publishing extraordinaire or take your pick. I was talking to Jessa the other night about how she doesn't have to work anymore. However, updating Book Slut probably requires a little bit of work.

Yes, this is an advertisement for Chicago. This city has made a Conscious Choice to clean up its act. Charles your magazine is looking good.

Oh, and there's the view at the Signature Room which is not bad.

Blogtopia

There are many poets out there still blogging, even though the phenomenon itself probably reached its high-water mark a few years ago. Belated congratulations to Amy King for winning the prize of poet laureate of the blogosphere. I check in on a regular basis, Amy. Maybe Ron Silliman will throw some more statistics out regarding the demographic. It seems most poet bloggers (and most poets) are professors, who use their blog to announce readings, new publications, and post photos.

Poets have to be self-promoting. Think of the two most famous examples. To whomever tunes in to read Me Tronome, thank you.

Have a look at Chicago Bloggers.

Here are some highly professional photos from the Borzutzky, Belz, McSweeney, Jameson, Gudding reading last Sunday. The power went out on the entire block halfway through the night, but it was impossible to not smile while these poets were reading.










The yeowling street musician who plays the keyboard at high volume on Milwaukee in front of Myopic even stayed home that night.

To-Do List

windows to the else
convertible conversations
four corners of maps
glimpsed shadows
naps
forgotten explanations
lawn mowers
lore of elders
lightning autumns
tabloid galaxies
card games involving dogs
magic lanterns
love songs
documentaries
muscle cars
barbeques
punctuation

Tonight at Myopic Books/Comedic Poetry

If you are in the Chicago area be sure to come down to Myopic books tonight at 6 pm. The bookstore in located at 1564 N. Milwaukee in Wicker Park.

We'll be featuring comedic poetry with a 2-hour reading by these poets:

Daniel Borzutzky, Joyelle McSweeney, Gabriel Gudding, A.D. Jameson, and Aaron Belz.

I'll keep bashing my head against the wall called "poetry." I mean I can't stop writing it.

Charles Simic has been one of my favorite writers. This quote works for me. "Poetry is no longer a matter of choice with me...as far back as I can remember there was a kind of dumbness in me, a need that sought expression. How it eventually materialized in the act of writing a poem, belongs to a biography which I have only been able to recount in a few successful poems."

Here's one ...


WAR

The trembling finger of a woman
Goes down the long list of casualties.

The list is long.

All our names are included.





James Tate's work has always been something I turn to ...


LATE HARVEST

I look up and see
a white buffalo
emerging from the
enormous red gates
of a cattle truck
lumbering into
the mouth of the sun.
The prairie chickens
do not seem to fear
me; neither do the
girls in cellophane
fields, near me, hear me
changing the flat tire
on my black tractor.
I consider screaming
to them; then, night comes.

Rhinoceros Confetti

As if there was a man who wore the
mask of a man and that man
noticed behind the mask that there
were shadows covering the earth
like semesters. The man realized he
had a lot to learn. So he studied the
tongues of the shadows as they
spoke a language he'd never heard.
At night they sang the most
intricately embroidered songs.

Perhaps there was a refrigerator in the
sky that he rode to forget himself,
this man who exhaled librarians.
Day and night he read the
silence, cutting his throat with
syllogisms. Butterflies burst forth from his
calamari as he ate it. He noted these
details lazily and continued with his
reverent stroking of the sun.

Geez

Egyptologists enact effluent entrances
grease easing the deceased eventually
mummies entombed even when leaping
knead evil December deals, festering clever
lackluster cities, expanding exhausting possibilities
each evening Eros escapes elegantly
ephedrine escapades erode extracted elegies
escrow grantees evidently evict elephants
excellent exceptions being inevitable
elliptical epigrams either erode ecstatic earnings
else economize eager edgy egged effects
ether escaping electromagnetic elements
entering embarrassing emerald embedded
emporiums emitting empty encyclopedias
engaging sneezing engineers en route
elsewhere entrusting entire epochs
en masse equally ere equivalent equations
erupt erotically exploiting exotic exile
excavating eventually, expect extinction

It's good to hear that the City Visible is now available from Cracked Slab Books. I'm glad to be included. Peter Gizzi writes "When Carl Sandburg asked in his Chicago Poems, close to a hundred years ago, for "a voice to speak to me in the day end, / A hand to touch me in the dark room / Breaking the long loneliness," little did he know his city would be so fully and livingly answered and so honored. Chicago is again transformed by poetry. Here in these myriad acts of imagination, the poets of The City Visible give to it again, in Shakespeare's terms, a local habitation and a name."

Tim Yu was kind enough to send a few photos from the last couple of readings at Myopic. Don't miss the reading this Sunday, if you're in the Cheecago area--Aaron Belz, Gabriel Gudding, Joyelle McSweeney, Daniel Borzutzky, & AD Jameson. It will be good time.

For Guillaume Apollinaire

Fins of an ancient world, a burger
beneath the Eiffel tower a troupe of matadors
assess the lives of antique grocers
Romain lettuce peering out from automobiles
religion is resting still nude upon the grass
Europe of the soul, Christianity smells
of modern equations, Pope with your robes
reticent observer walking these streets
confessor of eggs and wallpaper
the prospect of these catalogs in the rain
25 cents for the adventures of policemen
divers beneath the shadows, your portrait
lends joy an obsolete moon, clarion of sun
director of beautiful dinosaurs, flesh trumpets
resound beneath the mural on the wall
JAMES INDUSTRY TONIGHT BULLFIGHT LONELINESS
streets of Paris resound in your mighty charms.

Violins of June, an encore of strange beautiful infants
white habits dancing in the glass
ancient friends among the pews, stained glass
pompadour of love and you there with your hours
blue casements of forgotten collage
amethyst profundity pronounces torch-lit red vents
gas creeping silently along the skin
eternity is honored among six branches
seven if you count resuscitation
Christ was an aviator to birds
landing on a record playing venerable hymns.

Oceans of Africa, fountains of mercurial blood,
forgive us of our sins this immaculate night of panthers
dripping instants, a siren awakes and calls your name
Paris dances, a foul maintenance man
roulette wheels spinning monasteries and short piers
dropping off into nothing but blackness.

Sad music of presidents regard the women beautiful
you are an orange or else the moon
a house, a table, the lips of a rose
you resemble a song, familiar as yourself
brilliant son of lost waters.

Here's most everything I've published on this blog recently under one title--The Dim Schizophrenia of Owls. For a limited time only, you get an all-access pass to my inner monologue, gratis.

You may have to wait a few seconds after clicking on the link, then double click "Download File" at the top left-hand corner of the page.

I hope you can make it up to Milwaukee for my reading at Woodland Pattern on May 18 at 7 pm. Here's an interesting article on the bookstore I found online.

_________________________________

Karl Gartung and Anne Kingsbury met when she was a teacher and he was her student. They moved to Milwaukee and in 1980 opened the Woodland Pattern Book Center. "We've always wanted not necessarily to be the biggest, just the best," she said. "I think what makes us a little different from other literary centers is that we've presented different art forms where it intersects with text or literature."

"I guess literature and the world where it crosses into other things—that's what we want to celebrate. We want to get past the idea that people are creative only in one thing. . . The poet Derek Walcott, for instance, is also a very accomplished painter."

So, the center, which stocks around 27,000 books for sale, has also curated art shows, hosted jazz musicians, held poetry readings, taught neighborhood children how to tell stories, given lessons in making books, invited major writers to read, invited obscure writers to read, and even reserved a section of its shelves for Wisconsin writers who have self-published their work.

While many smaller bookstores across the country have fallen victim to competition from mega chains such as Barnes & Noble, Woodland Pattern has survived—or "managed" as Kingsbury says—for three reasons.

First, it has never strayed from its niche; it remains a powerhouse of poetry and small presses. Second, as a long-time non-profit center that actively takes its programs to the community, it has been fortunate enough to find some support from arts boards and private foundations each year. And third, because Kingsbury and her husband, Karl Gartung, both passionate book and art lovers, doggedly refuse to let the tiny store they turned into a non-profit book center founder.

"We started with less than a thousand books," Kingsbury said. "One thing that really helped us was that Truck Distribution, which distributed small press literature, let us take books on consignment. For quite a few years we were able to build our inventory with that. It allowed us to build with books we hadn't heard about.

In 1980, Paul Metcalf gave the store's first poetry reading, Tom Palazzolo was the first visiting filmmaker, Laurie Anderson was the first performance artist, and Milwaukeean Jill Sebastian was the first exhibiting visual artist.

Since then, the center has brought in a host of artists and writers, among them such exiles as Chinese poet Bei Dao, and in 1995 it organized its first poetry marathon with 90 Milwaukee writers participating.

Its work has been noticed; the center is now considered one of the foremost stores for poetry, especially new poetry, in the nation.

"The reputation of Woodland Pattern is itself national in scope, and I know of no other center—anywhere in the U.S.—that has carried on a more intricate and demanding program in the literary arts," wrote writer Jerome Rothenberg in 1989.

Deflated Parade

I.


How many pesos make a sparrow?

Attention shoppers
my mind’s oven bakes excuses.

I love these ingredients
gathered before me:
there’s no junta quite like it.

Doo wap groups mock me:
enough charm to persuade perspective
to give up and collapse.

The earth is slowing down.

Each moment is a coin,
a coyote in the belly.




II.

Sprouting spring jackets of
cashmere

replete with suede lapels
look so perfect on the cattle

plowing the boulevard.

There is also the oft-told tale of "Ern Malley," a poet who was invented by James McAuley and Harold Stewart who spent an afternoon in 1943 synthesizing quotations and extracts from various sources in order to perpetrate a hoax on Max Harris, the editor of a literary magazine they scoffed at. When Harris found out he'd been the butt of their creative joke, he was understandably upset but also bemused. He realized that what they'd done was remarkable. A few passages in the "Ern Malley" poem (titled "The Darkening Ecliptic") are unintentionally brilliant. This is one of the more famous, from their poem "Durer: Innsbruck, 1495"

I had often, cowled in the slumbrous heavy air,
Closed my inanimate lids to find it real,
As I knew it would be, the colourful spires
And painted roofs, the high snows glimpsed at the back,
All reversed in the quiet reflecting waters—
Not knowing then that Durer perceived it too.
Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men’s dream,
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
The black swan of trespass on alien waters.


However great poems are written it seems unavoidable that there must be some element, conceptual or otherwise, that provides a glimpse of something unique. Even if it was entirely accidental that the experiments of McAuley and Stewart that afternoon proved successful beyond their dreams, the fact remains that their efforts were not only noticed, but that their creation (not only the poem but the fictional poet) will be remembered forever. In a very post-modern way "Ern Malley" launched the literary world headlong into the future.

Disassembled Shadow

Sans attitude these delicious American cities, like
herds of clinics scampering over the plains,
shove revolutionary nostalgia up in my grill.
The furniture inside your head, Scandinavian cool,
won’t keep the jagged peanut of the abyss, however,
from calling you collect at some wee hour.

You may need some saucin' up. Jazz does it. The last show I saw, at the Green Mill, was David Liebman I believe. I love the Green Mill, but they will shush you repeatedly. What's so wrong with a little conversation?

Anyway, I've started another blog, called Environs, where I'll jot down my thoughts on jazz.

I'll never win the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award because I'm not writing metered poetry. I have written a few sestinas, sonnets, and a villanelle or two and don't find that those particular forms are all that annoying. What is it about the word experiments of the Oulipo that is so interesting, while the adherence to strict form of the neo-Formalists is so boring? It must be the fact that innovators in art lead us forward. Beginning any new piece of writing is an ascent into the unknown, but those who rely on form and meter to the degree of absurdity seem to misunderstand what art is. Some of the best poems have an organic nature that is undefinable. Many poets today are indebted to Jules Laforgue, who invented free verse, or vers libre. A main influence on Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Laforgue, along with Arthur Rimbaud, blazed a new trail with his writing and took poetry in a new direction entirely. Paul Verlaine said, "Take eloquence and wring its neck." That sounds a little extreme, but the goal is not always harmony. Writing that veers too far from the rhythms of the coversational comes off as sounding too stilted--forced. Poetry is the deep conversation.

ORBITING PLANET YOU

If I could fondle your anesthetic, and

tell the forest leaves to quit their labors

then among autumn clocks I would quince.

Question: Are there enough thieves in

your ocean to echo twelve years?

And my shimmering voices wonder

about the quality of your amber.

But here in my studio of dreams

your heart is a candelabra of dice.

Sunday April 29th @ Myopic Books, 7 pm

Simone MUENCH's most recent book Lampblack & Ash received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry (Sarabande Books, 2005), and was an editor’s choice for The New York Times Book Review. Orange Girl, a chapbook, is forthcoming in July 07 from dancing girl press. She has poems forthcoming in Iowa Review, LUNA, Dusie, Swink and the anthology The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century. She received her Ph.D from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is director of the Writing Program at Lewis University. Currently, she serves on the advisory board for Switchback Books, and is a contributing editor to Sharkforum.



Tony TRIGILIO is the author of the poetry collection, THE LAMA'S ENGLISH LESSONS (Three Candles Press). Recent poems are published or forthcoming in journals such as BIG BRIDGE, BLACK CLOCK, CREAM CITY REVIEW, DENVER QUARTERLY, DIAGRAM, LA PETITE ZINE, NEW ORLEANS REVIEW and NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. He is Co-Editor of the annual poetry journal COURT GREEN. He teaches poetry and literature at Columbia College Chicago, where he also directs the Creative Writing-Poetry Program.

Amulet

What makes the morning mutable?
Sleep
is a tundra,

an entire academy seeking the kiln of
waking.

Some neck package / read fine print.

There is a secret paradise in many faces.

Springtime is a gift.

Clarity is like thunder (in the hills).

Sadness is a radish on the salad of life:
put it off to the side.

I’m jealous of my own lungs as
they breathe your delicious air.

Like Forgotten Maps

There may come a day
when all poets will congeal.

All poets will blister.
All poets will harden, igneous

from the magma of days.
From the blue lava called night

will come a time when
like forgotten maps

their tongues will be striped
and cold as empty homes.

These flocks of winter birds
these poets will

fill prescriptions
for a new leather

and ride out the day
on the slim backs of nouns.

These poets will lounge
like sand and grasses

on undiscovered beaches
where you will choose to wander.

Remember who it was
you might have been.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

The Chinese government is now policing bad grammar. I can safely say that any attempts on my part to speak Chinese would be pretty horrible. Maybe offenders should use poetic license as their defense.

Edward Weston has always been one of my favorite photographers. The composition of his shots and the skill with which he demonstrates the interplay between light and shadow is nothing short of sublime. Man Ray, Weegee, and Henri Cartier-Bresson were pretty good too. I used to be much more interested in photography before I started writing poetry. Here are a few of mine. I have an ancient Mamiya and a Pentax, but they don't see much action anymore.

The first poem that really made an impression on me was The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens.

When read aloud it really comes alive. It's nearly a sound portrait.

____________________________________________


CALL the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
 
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

In Fact

Wonderful white icebergs wan and weeping,
there is an expansiveness, an
expressiveness I cannot, nameless, define.

This movie asks the big questions.
Would you share your popcorn with my notebook?

Outside myself surrounded by the nowhere of survival.
Convivial doves stick to the sky.
They like pancakes refuse to move me.

Streetlights careen full throttle.
Barracudas waltz by. Icing by Calvin Klein.

Silent cities.
I lost my glove inside my eye.

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.