Arrivederci, Modernismo

I'm just digging in to "Arrivederci, Modernismo" by Carter Ratcliff (Libellum, 2007). I'm glad Vincent Katz sends me the latest. His press Libellum and his journal Vanitas are both prime examples of why small press publishing is flourishing in the U.S.

Write to Vincent at 211 West 19th St., NYC, 10011 if you'd like to submit. Vanitas is a gorgeous magazine and Libellum is kewl.

Untranslatable Glyph with Clouds

-for Edwin Denby

When my eyes look for an end to form
we may find orange morning in the darling blood
when the sheets are wishes and the fan comes swarming
plunge your hands into sleep's enormous diagnosis.
I am your patient on that unspeakable floor
when the clock squirrels sanity I posture my ice
as we wish these things time is our breeze.
we leave our pillows upon the sea.

Basquiat book by Phoebe Hoban is not recommended.

This Sunday at Myopic Books

MYOPIC POETRY SERIES -- a weekly series of readings and occasional
poets' talks

Myopic Books in Chicago -- Sundays at 7:00 / 1564 N. Milwaukee Avenue,
2nd Floor


As part of the Printers' Ball Reading Series . . .

Sunday July 15 – Daniel Borzutzky, Becca Klaver, Brandi Homan, & Mark Tardi

Join us for this unique event at Myopic sponsored by POETRY. Poets will read groundbreaking selected work from the Poetry archive including Zukofsky, Ashbery, Eigner, Creeley, Stein, Sexton, Wakoski, & Berrigan . . . at random. Beverages will be served (and served again).



UPCOMING

Sunday July 22 - Evan Willner

Sunday August 12 - Jason Bredle

Sunday October 14 - Joshua Marie Wilkinson & Noah Eli Gordon

Myopic Books - 15 years of innovative poetry in Chicago

A few important days in the life of Holden Morrissey Caulfield, a tall, skinny, highly critical and depressed sixteen-year-old who academically flunked out of Pencey Prep boarding school. . . I was thinking recently about the most famous, least famous (yet brilliant) poets and writers, not necessarily neglecterinos. I was also thinking about what poets and writers are the most well-known in the eyes of the public at large. If someone on the streets of Manhattan were asked about The Great Gatsby or Shelley or Ron Silliman or Edgar Allen Poe or Bob Dylan or Frank O'Hara where is the line of demarcation? Odds are that the average Joe on the street could not name the author of The Catcher in the Rye, or the author of Howl, or the author of Harmonium. Does everyone need some knowledge of the main works of literature to have an informed opinion and who's to say? Certainly Salinger's mystique was cultivated by his genius as a writer but also because of his elusive qualities. [Garbolike, he just vants to be left alone.] Some great books have worked their magic on our social subconscious in very subtle ways. Some works really only register with other artists. In byegone days, Rod McKuen sold many books. My copy of Listen to the Warm was bought nearly as a gag gift yet didn't go unread. Some of my favorite "sleeper" artists include Ray Johnson.

Realpolitik

Maim scar decimate confuse obliterate
lie prevaricate confabulate tear shoot hang
bomb incinerate beat stab torture
blast burn muzzle cripple wound punish
vivisect torment crucify bully misinform
perplex obscure confound shame disgrace
fluster moider embroil disturb jumble
disturb discriminate antagonize bludgeon
scapegrace dictate domineer tyrannize
inflict terrorize disturb rape pillage
plunder ravage overrun sack spoil
maraud vandalize loot pervert humiliate
mortify supress evade mystify cover-up
deceive falsify devastate wash rinse repeat.

The Occasional Distant Emergencies

We are told that among that obscene
dawn there are hideous pleasures hiding.

A study in disregard is permanent. Yes,
poetry is boring, but my poem has cats.

My poem is a lobster catch, verbena, some
impudent wry perception involving the moon.

God, I’m sick of the moon and all it portends.
I’m sick of the moon appearing in poems.

In so many words, fuck off, moon.

O, my naked cheese cover yourself with
a cracker and bombard my lips with passion.

WITH BELZ ON

Aaron Belz mentioned me in a poem, which makes me feel honored.

Everybody Polka

The well-oiled machinery of night is a cackling jade huddled cellphonic masses
as a friend on the ceiling makes the most deceitful
bartender. Like Norse gods, weigh credit cards
spend retirement sums as large as trade deficits.
My compadre with the olive suspenders and ample bosom
lifts a glass of sarcasm to the heavens and launches an epistolic invective
that Chicago in all its blustery charm cannot fathom
although we in our
and they in their
and me and my ubershadow cannot
in this year of our political apathy
simply stand here amid the techno induced stupor
of these
and refrain from the thought that the
years are passing us like taken cabs as we,
stunned, pass from our daydreams into summer software.
In the stereo dark we are invisible as eyes
and long for stuff
because props make the man and the waves form a sea of
circumstance.

John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia recorded live in Spain is a spectacle. Paco de Lucia's playing has me thinking of duende. There's a moment on this clip during his first solo when the audience reacts and an electrical current runs through the room for a moment.

What interests me about the idea of duende is its nearly unidentifiable nature. From most definitions comes the idea that one can have duende without technical skill. Federico Garcia Lorca embodied duende because of his mystique and became the most oft quoted personage on the topic. "Thus duende is a power and not a behavior, it is a struggle and not a concept." Even so it's hard to resist thinking of it as a concept for the sake of discussion. The psychological state or mood produced by many of Lorca's poems embody duende in their searching, mysterious quality. It's the record of a life lived in the balance that's interesting, or a note played bent.




Black pony, big moon,
olives in my saddlebag.
Though I know these roads,
I’ll never reach Córdoba.

Through the plains, through wind,
black pony, red moon,
death watching me
from the high towers of Córdoba.

Ay! What a long road.
Ay! What a brave pony.
Ay! Death, you will take me,
on the road to Córdoba.

Córdoba,
distant and alone.

Mlekowoz Cafe in Krakow.

Yes, I struck incredible Floridas
That mingled flowers with the eyes of panthers
In skins of men! And rainbows bridled green
Herds beneath the horizon of seas.

-AR

__________________

If the voice of Charles Baudelaire isn't the voice of modern poetry it is probably the voice of Arthur Rimbaud. I prefer Rimbaud and admit that his prose poetry is not something I return to on a regular basis. I almost view him in a light similar to Whitman in that his writing forms some shadowy foundation upon which everyone else works. The unique qualities inherent in the works of these two are inaccessible and shouldn't be imitated. There is the spirit of Rimbaud in Lidija Dimkovska's Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers that I really like. Nothing in it resembles imitation though and that's what's so interesting about it.

All the energy being expended over Salmon Rushdie's new award seems ridiculous to me. I've never read the Satanic Verses and probably never will. Someone should tell the crazed protesters that all literary awards contests are rigged anyway. Mr. Rushdie, just when you thought it was safe. Wait, weren't you just on Conan O'Brien the other night? You were knighted? WTH

Silliman does a good job contextualizing The City Visible but I don't get Chicago's reputation as the Rodney Dangerfield of cities. I guess there are poets who move to New York to feed off its literary history to give themselves some of sort of credibility because of their new mailing address. I thought the Internet had done away with all that. I couldn't care less if a writer is from New York or Akron --if I think the work is important.

Ok. Now this has me really wondering. Yikes.

And here I am reading in character as David Hasselhoff.

It's good to see some reviews of The City Visible out there. Even Ron Silliman is talking about it now. OMG.

Someday I hope to see the Great Firewall of China, the pyramids in Egypt, and Notre Dame. Oh yeah, the great firewall just keeps people in China from looking at Flickr, which I thought was a harmless, photo-sharing site. I'm glad the Chinese gov't is there to squelch free speech, it's not like they're up to any wrongdoing themselves.

I'm really enjoying Lidija Dimkovska's Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers lately. It's worth ordering from Ugly Duckling Press.

A Heaven Beside Me

A heaven beside me is
revolving, a planet a window
a façade of confusion.
Poor landscape
a mouse with a pipe
playing electric ocarina
isolates my psyche.
What an uncanny picnic
this sparkling silver air.
Like a first date or
skyscraper juggling a desert
there is a beauty to ice that
only a statue understands.
O silence,
how we must
squeeze restaurants
of their conversations.

Assemblage

And the moon upon the sea

upon the surface of an eye

a traveler in the dark

lost along the way

rides upon a wind

each day heaves a green sigh

invisible as a scent

omnipresent as time.

The story about the closing of Antioch College has me thinking of Rod Serling. Serling was one of Antioch's more famous alums, along with Coretta Scott King, Rick Ocasek (rock group, The Cars), Sylvia Nasar (author, A Beautiful Mind), and Mark Strand (poet). The year or so I lived in Yellow Springs is a good memory, so I'm wondering how Antioch's closure will affect the town. When I make occasional trips home I usually stop in the laid-back oasis of Yellow Springs for a saunter through Glen Helen and a stop in Ye Olde Trail Tavern for a bite. The ultra-serious Dave Chappelle is Yellow Springs' most famous resident these days. Years ago when I lived in Yellow Springs I ended up at a gathering at the house where Serling had lived during his Antioch days. I had to go upstairs to see the room where he stayed. The homeowner had tried to keep the room as Serling had kept it and some of the belongings were supposedly those he'd left before his move to California. I wasn't surprised to find much Shakespeare.

"The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."

June 17, Chuck Stebelton & Aaron Fagan, Myopic Books

Don't miss Aaron Fagan and Chuck Stebelton, June 17 at Myopic Books @ 7pm.



Myopic Books
1564 N. Milwaukee
Wicker Park
Chicago

Life at Kentucky Fried Chicken

Once I saw in a backroom that there was
a room behind that which was behind that room.
When I told everybody that the backroom wasn’t
really the hindmost room in the building and that
in fact there was another smaller room inbetween
the room they thought was the backroom and the
actual backroom they didn’t believe me.
Not only that, I was sent to the backroom, their
idea of it anyway, as a sort of punishment. They
asked me to think really hard about why
they thought it was necessary to send me
to the backroom and that questioning the
location of the backroom was something
that just wasn’t done. I walked off and thought
"I wonder if anyone has ever mentioned this
as a comment in the suggestion box"
so I went over and unlocked it and
inside was a note that read "this food sucks.”

Why So Enormous

There is a logic to breathing that I know so well
here is the darkness where the mirrors hide.
Where are you waking, walking so?
The city is a Smith & Wesson covered in noon.
There I discover the parallel moon.
The light, crazy ivy, is oblivious to waves.
It covers our hummingbirds in delirious flames.
My pizza is a plaza where I meet no one.
The silence there is a tribe of ice.
My shoes ache as I wait for the bill.
A woman files her nails with a miniature spell.
The sky is so wide that I’m offered a slice.
Soon we will march upon a desert and hum.
My pizza is a plaza where I meet no one.

Oh Yeah

And another thing

a candle balanced
precariously on my tongue

could be mistaken for the
pronunciation of your name

or mine, it's all the
same to me whether
you kill me with the
kind salutation that I am

of your race
among whales
and fish of the sea.

And these
air bubbles between us
pay attention
we breathe the
same air

are microcosms
in the gaps of our conversation

what lotus blooms, where all are lost in space

chasm, greet me
as I open usual doors

these stars, galaxies
when you advertise
familiar
pavement into speech.