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."