"Chicago" Poetry

Ray's comment raised some questions for me. If experimental poetry is in some renaissance in the city/region, is it being written from a specifically Midwestern viewpoint? Is experimental poetry "regional" in the U.S. any more? What schools of experimental poetry are there in the city and who are the poets associated with them? Do the different poetic groups in the city depend on economic or academic standing? Are different groups really open to each other? What experiments are being done here that are not being done other places?

Anyone want to offer an opinion?
posted by bill @ 10:22 PM 9 comments
9 Comments:

At 4:49 PM, Larry Sawyer said...
Random thoughts here...this recalls Kerri's comment re: shared geography vs. aesthetic differences? I think internal observers would probably be more aware of aesthetic differences and categorize along those lines and outside observers would tend to lump Chicago poets together according to shared geography. I personally think a little community building is a positive thing. I seem to note shared aesthetic allegiances among Iowa grads--not making a value judgment about it--and then, of course, there are divisions among the poets here, definitely, regarding stylistic and aesthetic allegiances. Perf poets being at one end of the continuum and page poets at the other? But setting it up as a dichotomy is simplification to an absurd level. There are many varying gradations inbetween. I've been living here for approximately 5 years now and feel much more at home than I initially did--I view bumping into the same groups of talented poets at various local venues as a blessing. I'm not one to quibble to the point of absurdity, most interesting poets I've met here are using collage tactics, colloquial language, somewhat surrealist juxtapositions, and various disparate elements mined from various media sources to make their work jump. I don't think many of the poets I admire around here worry much about whether their work is accessible, they operate on simultaneous levels of thought. I'm not sure many Chicago poets I know necessarily consider themselves "Chicago" poets either--seems limiting to apply the label. But this is America and marketing is key! Is there a craft vs. inspiration argument? It's possible to write oracular poetry that's also very experimental or else to write experimental poetry that seems perfectly comfortable to never leave the page. At some point any reading is a performance of some kind. One may choose to mutter barely audible poems but if the work is solid most audiences I know would still respond to it. Gabe Gudding recently gave a soft reading and was so masterful that one strained all the more to be sure to catch every word--is there a recipe for anti-performance? Can we figure that out and play off audience expectations? Is there now a Chicago school?

At 1:02 PM, Ray said...
I think that there are certainly some groups that have similar interests and concerns and then there are groups that are in dialogue some not.

Here is how I view Chicago poetic groups and some of these groups are in dialogue and some are not.
All of these groups have good poets and I think that it makes our city quite rich in poetic presences.

Here is my assessment of the subgroups within the "experimental" world of poetry in Chicago/Milwaukee anyone I left out please forgive me in advance.

Academic Experimental Poets:

Type of Poet: Tend to be full time professors or teachers.

These are poets who are marginally or completely experimental and can be interesting but who do live within an academic setting. This is the best marketed group in Chicago poetry.

S. Reddy
Arielle Greenberg
Tony Triglio
Dan Beachy Quick
Robyn Schiff
Bill Allegrezza

Non Academic Experimental Poets tend to be a little more daring than the academics but need to work harder on self marketing.

Type of Poet: Well educated but not teachers of poetry primarily

Chuck Stebelton
Kerri Sonnenberg
Jesse Seldess (Left us)
Mark Tardi
Ray Bianchi
Larry Sawyer
Roberto Harrison
Dave Pavilich

Hyde Park Poets/CPP/Danny's
a group that is very similar to the Academic Experimentals but they are either not academics or are Graduate Students and tend to be in dialogue with everyone. Strong Duncan influence here.

Matthias Regan
Eric Elstain
Peter O'Leary
John Tipton
Joel Craig
Michael O'Leary
Mary Margaret Sloan

UIC Poets, this group should be larger but I dont know all the name they are not experimental poets but they are not mainstream either there are many Steven's devotees they are more traditional and tend to use experimental forms and usages but are not easy to stereotype.

Kristy Odelius
Garin Cycholl
Simone Muench
Michael Anania
Mary Bittinger
Chris Glomski

Slam Poets/Hip Hop Poets

This is a mixed group some are totally Slam oriented and some are more talented and do other things two of my favorites in this group are Krista Franklin and Tychimba Jess

Therapeutic Poets

Finally there are a whole ocean of poets who could best be described as hobbiest poets or therapeutic poets and I dont know these poets well and much of their work is focused on self rather than poetry as art.

Dialogue

I think that all of these groups are in dialogue to a degree. There is not that much to say with the Therapeutic group since their concerns are different. I think that one area where all four "experimental groups" are weak is to be in dialogue with those poets like Krista Franklin and Tychimba Jess who are fine poets and who tend not to be from the same background a real outreach should happen on this front.


At 5:00 PM, Larry Sawyer said...
What is considered "experimental" is a mutating concept, so it may be interesting if we make an attempt to define our terms. Is experimental: Olson’s poetics as “open field”; Pound’s emphasis on image above all else; the worldwide Surrealist emphasis on experimentation and bizarre juxtaposition; the Beats emphasis on controversial subject matter, raw presentation (i.e., first thought=best thought), and line length governed by breath unit; disruptive syntax and avoidance of the lyric of Language poetry; maximal actualism of poetry like that written by the late Jim Gustafson; talky-quirky, city surrealism of Frank O’Hara; abrupt variation in diction and tone (latinate and slangy words commingled) of the New York School? Does any of this apply any more?

Flarf? Certainly HTML and Internet use, not to mention the proliferation of the poetry workshop has affected the course of poetry in the United States. I usually assume that experimental does not include poetry that relies solely on contraversial subject matter with a disregard for craft. I've had Clayton Eshleman tell me that he goes through hundreds of drafts per poem. Cid Corman told me that producing a poem consists of excising all superfluous words. Is there a re-emergence of the lyric? Are sound poets being the most experimental. Obviously what was considered experimental in the days of the Don Allen anthology no longer applies, although I gained much from reading that book way back when. What's next is what I want to know. I'm genuinely amazed and constantly excited by this idea called poetry and all its permutations.


At 6:30 AM, Ray said...
Experimental is a throw away term. I prefer to look at contemporary poetics in the following way.

Out of the Pound tradition there is a profound use of many sources and a sense of history as poetry.

Pound's work comes out of that sense. So as contrasted with say Williams who was concerned with the everyday and using that to create new ways Pound and his followers are concerned with bringing our shared poetic history and a dialogue with other languages into the poetic conversation.

Duncan and the SF Ren people along with many Black Mountain poets do this well.

The best examples of this kind of poetics I have found recently is Chris Glomski's new book and Lisa Jarnot's Second Book (for its complexity).

I also think that there is a profound avant garde sense that does not desire this dialogue with other cultures or languages. This sense might be called Steven'sesque even though this is simplistic.

There are allot of 'experimental' poets who are not concerned with history or our poetic past or other languages but more with a sense of poets on a mission.

There are an aweful lot of these poets around. I think that it is easier to be this way since it requires less reading and can be more focused on self experiences in a non confessional way which also comes out of the Whitman tradition.

I think that to use contemporary MFA programs as a way to define the poetic 'tribes' so to speak is not helpful because it is too simple.

Chris Glomski for example went to Iowa MFA but his work is really aesthetically in the Pound/Black Mountain camp. He has much more in common with say Duncan than with Jorie Graham who was his teacher.

A poet like Garin Cycholl has many influences. His work could be a fusion of many things not least of which is a sense of the land and geography which is usually absent in contemporary poetics.

Another poet like Jesse Seldess has much owed to Stein and her sense of language and repetition and little to do with any aesthetic other than his own and Jesse went to Iowa as well.

So what is an experimental poet? My friend Joe Ahearn defined it this way and I cannot think of a clearer definition;

Concerned with Language non-confessional the postmodern sense that we can fuse traditional forms with non traditional forms fluidly.
a profound dialogue with other artforms. A dialogue with the actual and the non actual to create a new sense of language and poetry.

Regarding the internet I think the only difference between the Internet and years ago when poetry magazines were printed is a sense of access. Poets today can get their work out but the sheer volume of garbage has hurt the critical structure of poetry and I think that this has not been good for the artform the need for critical structures is the key thing needed for poetry. Someone needs to think about whether or not the poetry that is lauded is really interesting? I find allot of the poetry that is award winning boring and banal. I also find that allot of Post Language poets to be formulaic in their writing but they are getting published by intertia and reputation.


At 10:30 AM, Kerri said...
sorry i've been out of it lately. stil l waiting for a chance to collect my thoughts about last week's kenny goldsmith reading which i'll post here.

all of this vocabulary is very tricky, and part of what i want to say is that so-called experimental writers by my definition engage with the conceit that language is an imperfect system, an illusion of certainty that makes the whole endeavor of taking it up as one's artistic/expressive medium kind of absurd. writing that is not written with this (liberating? baggage?) in mind seems to lack a crucial dimension that I, as a reader, miss. This writing, that some may term non-experimental, conventional, school of quietude, etc. is best defined by my eye and ear as work that operates under the assumpion, the trust really, (in) of language as an authoritative tool. Authors that consider themselves masters of this medium, and masters of their readers' experience have always seemed to me a bit deluded.

similarly, i once attended a fundraiser for a local literary organization that situates itself within the traditions of identity/performance/declarative poetics. readings and mingling occured that made me and the fabulous and now in egypt dawn b. feel a little out of place. the director of the organization came over and asked us if we were poets, and then what KIND of poetry we wrote. that question still stumps me. dawn replied for the both of us, "postmodern." i'm not sure if this was any more definitive than "experimental" "for the page" or any other designation, but it seems the least problematic of all the terms kicked around so far/usually.


At 11:05 AM, Kerri said...
let me go back to a few of bill's initial questions, good ones. just when one thinks they can provisionally resolve the issue of what constitutes the "experimental" there's another issue of what constitutes regionality to a poetic school. i think it's more difficult than 10, 20, 30 years ago for geographic locales to develop a sense of poetic school because a. americans are very migratory, poets even more so, i.e. how many poets in sf or ny are born and raised in either place? are midwesterners more rooted to a sense of place? a lot of us seem to have a hard time leaving this region.. what keeps us here? (our highly developed "family values?"!) b. the post ww2 growth of the college industry that brought education to outposts that typically are not urban centers, or other traditionally artist communities. u.s. poets relying on these insitutions for work take on a nomadic lifestyle as a result, and add an interesting dimension creatively to one's sense of place. c. a unique sense of place is increasingly hard to come by in much of the country where the franchise landscape makes houston look like rockford (il) look like mesa (az) look like... a dearth of places, mostly older cities like chicago and ny, seem poised to blunt this homogeneity at the level of their local culture and thereby have more to offer writers/artists taking up questions of place in their work.


At 9:12 PM, Larry Sawyer said...
More random and forgive me if I stray too far from, ahem, the topic at hand, but I found an interesting Pound quote that had me thinking a bit more about the nature of what could be called "experimental."

--As for experiment: the claim is that without constant experiment literature dies. Experiment is one of the elements necessary to its life. Experiment aims at writing that will have a relation to the present analogous to the relation which past masterwork had to the life of its time.--

This reminded me of Ray's comment that there are experimental poets here in Chicago relatively unconcerned with the history of poetry or history in general. To understand the relationship that past masterworks had to the life of its time would require some understanding of the social context in which these texts were written. I think to a certain extent the attitudes of some younger poets, including their ambivalence regarding poetry of the past, reflects our consumerist culture where something that has only existed for five or so years is considered "old." It may be that it's natural that personal taste guides one to read only what one likes, consuming only the new, versus expending the effort it would require to study omniverously the poetries of the distant past or world poetries. I admit that writing poetry has shortened my attention span but it has not decreased my interest level.

It may be, going in another direction here, that poets who have no understanding that language in itself is a faulty construct and that narrative is at best a fallacy will forever write confessional or therapeutic poetry but by increasing their knowledge of what has come before and subverting it they may begin this process of renewal that could be called experimentation. I do see that there is a group of poets here in Chicago interested in innovation who understand that mere stylistic effect is not enough and that a focus on the malleability and plasticity of language must be grounded in an understanding of history, or at least literary history, in order for a work to have real social relevance. I think it may be that an awareness of all this is a distinctly Chicago viewpoint right now among poets here who are attempting something different in their writing, only because there may have been a lack of this viewpoint in this city until fairly recently, thus a "renaissance."

There are poets across the nation attempting something similar but there is a confluence of individuals here who are bent on innovation and they all seem to be of the same age range? The common denominator is aesthetic standpoint in a general sense versus using the locale of the city of Chicago as subject matter in the work. It may just be happenstance that so many interesting poets are now calling Chicago home.


At 11:49 AM, Kerri said...
The review of Ted Berrigan's Collected in the Poetry Project Newsletter has been reprinted on Silliman's blog today and it strikes me as relevant to some of the points Ray has brought up on the definition of innovation in poetry, the role of class and employment sector one's in poetics and poetry community, the role of history in innovation, etc.

I thought this bit was of particular interest, probably because "unkempt" sounds like a fitting description of my own activity.

Quote is from film critic/artist Manny Farber: "Good work usually arises usually arises where the creators... seem to have no ambitions towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn’t anywhere or for anything. A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.”



At 12:12 PM, Kerri said...
on the charge that a lot of poetry being written today is not concerned with history, i disagree. while overt quoting from the iliad may have fallen out of f(l)avor, my sense is that there is more history, literary and, uh, the regular kind, pressed into allusion than i credit myself with being able to detect.

kind of like how the colbert report expresses a progressive viewpoint through the manufactured lens of a conservative slant, i think a lot of postmodern poets advance a keen knowledge and sensitivity to history with the informed structures they build on top of it. If I spend enough time I can usually find it peeking through the shutters, or perhaps history is more appropriately the hvac system in this scenario/contemporary practice.

maybe i just want to be talking about the colbert report and architecture and this has been a fiendish tangent. apologies.

Post a Comment

I found an old photo I'd taken of Ira Cohen inside St. John the Divine in New York. The definition of poet's corner is expanded, however, when Ira's in the frame. He's a photographer, poet, filmmaker, and provocateur. Cheers.

Queasy Century Seeks Quiet Home

Call me future tense. Your docent is a few potatoes short of a full harvest. Up doesn't help much in the dark when the furnace is calling. Finally call it a night and snuggle up next to another tomorrow. I haven't been here for awhile, even though a delicate situation requires delicacy and this is no longer a poem about anything other than the fact that I've opened another Tuesday. Crouching under the couch are other reasons why it's been icy all along. He’s a phony fire hydrant of a man. My arms of dynamite are pushing up through neighboring gardens. The vortex of our collective future is calling my name and I hear Italian tenors serenading nightly. No. That was just my stomach again. Can't you hear the gears of remembrance? Something has changed drastically. Someday I will—my shoes rise up impetuously and disappointingly, still. For this or that or the other reason. It doesn't matter. It would appear that my thoughts have taken me elsewhere, anywhere but here. Dazzle all with Gregorian chants, but meanwhile ordinary sticks eye me suspiciously from their own cramped boxes. You try to sort it all out, pay the bills, bang out a poem. Airline stewardesses are so post office. Sometimes adding it all became too complicated to be just one person all the time.

Times Ten

Puck hid from Oberon as long as he could, but in Wrigleyville the crowd erupts like a shook up can of Old Style. My Ivanka, how I love thee and the plastic horse you rode in on. Troubadour, derived from occitan trobador, literally means “finder.” O haughty life, crowned with darkness, my boredom is prehistoric going back millennia. The receding hairline of history. My lassitude is pouched like bored kangaroos traipsing imaginary outbacks. This kind of collective apathy forms an entire dull universe where dimming stars are encircled by galactic yawns. Yes, it is quite uncertain here on planet shrug.

It’s Just That Simple

That must be some Hawaii.

Would tasting the lava be wise?

You tell me no and go into the house.

Stranger, who led me like Dante to salvation?

Let me leave you here to eat the flowers.

Best wishes said the gameshow host.

At the picnic we ate cellular phones.

That’s what it’s like being in love (I guess).

Each moment: pregnant with expectation.

Might one word sum it up completely?

Let’s lead a life of modern conveniences and

every so often stand on our heads.

Let’s barbecue all of our envy and anger.

Currently reading...Heart of the Breath/Jim Brodey, The City Visible/anthology, Allegrezza & Bianchi, eds., Notebook of a Return to a Native Land/Aime Cesaire, trans. Clayton Eshleman, The Collected Poems/Octavio Paz, Anne Sexton/The Complete Poems


“Sexton once explained, ‘I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life.’ Though many people, consciously or unconsciously, resist treating Sexton as an intellectual (a fact that has something to do with her high school education and early self-image as ‘a buried self’ who only knew how to ‘diaper babies and make white sauce’), her incessant drive to uncover ‘another truth’ has everything to do with the cycle described by Wittgenstein: ‘When you bump against the limits of your own honesty it is as though your thoughts get into a whirlpool, an infinite regress: You can say what you like, it takes you no further.’ Sexton's poetry is fixated on this language-game: she was, I think, both totally seduced by the Oedipal narrative of discovering ‘the awful truth,’ and totally aware of the impossibility of such a venture.”

—Maggie Nelson

Skirting

Break out the ego cleats

my wife is lightning:

tomorrow’s surf board.

O stanzaic nation

wake the blue, brilliant

crescendo of French horns

anointed.

A free double feature

about Death Valley,

she eternals me.

In the lens there is a great distance

lounging

beautiful as a volunteer.

Demure, all nerve

the farthest music still audible,

we hail a taxi made of bamboo.

Here (in the Cathedral of Now)

you
cannot hear the breezes
in the
belfries of your heart
still
submerged,
from your last vacation
On the brand new phone
called Life, we are getting nearer.
In the deli of the soul
My ineffable melodies
once so trivial,


who knows what time it is?

The television is a
candle


heartaches
with the centrifugal force of an
afternoon


the wall
swims through your


feather.

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.

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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

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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.