Dance

in the brambles
of the mind
there
to
a
soft gathering
we go

but of our
lapses
and
what shore-
line at the
edge of
sight

this, a
moment upon
which we

To the Nearly Living

I am summoned from my bed
to the ancient city of the dead



Over the archway
to the doorway
we float upon a myth.
Howling toad called race,
disappear in the assurance of immortality.
Stricken match called consciousness,
cool yourself upon the coals
that this knowledge of our similar teeth
allows us all to eat the same caves.

Favola

There are lives awaiting bread
An empty village in the sun
Knowledge has a face
The water takes her time

There is a gift inside your eyes
There is a mirror in the breeze
A quick philosophy to stones
The water takes her time

There is a luster to the earth
And an echo in the vine
There is such envy in the clouds
The water takes her time.

Metropolis

As heretical coat hanger
looks like Michael Jordan
summer of was and slushies
shudders in the early stages
I can’t believe you brain-
checked Madonna but look
la belle dame sans merci
faints accordingly at the Met
zilch version diabolized
thanks your moral authority for
another ukulele election night
basic needs go unmet but
city poignant weird big
middle finger glowing
Ross and Chandler implode
$2,300 is cheap for a brutish
erstwhile facsimile else
we quarter each other and,
cues blazing, become
lifeless bulldozers at O.K. Corral.
Lights, or fists, awaken.

It's surprising -- reading a Guardian article and finding they've linked their Philip Lamantia reference to a page on milkmag.org.

Chicago Tribune - Printers' Row Book Fair
@ Dearborn & Polk

Sunday, June 8
Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Stage
From 12:30 - 6:00 pm / Maxine Kumin, Li-Young Lee, Sonya Arko, Margaret Brady, Esteban Colon, Larry O. Dean, Kristin LaTour, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Patricia McMillen, Erika Mikkalo, Raul Nino, Ron Offen, Donna Pecore and Larry Sawyer.

I'm last in the lineup and understand that we're closing the show.

Invitation

Ether of calm
in the summer’s soft
yolk, I’ve known shadows
and freshly killed customs
walked among panthers and seasons.
I’ve known hope
its idiot coals
and followed their rivals
those dark wicker jackals.

Stood among years
in a fringe of
nervy lightning -
constructed worlds
from the tea of
that dissonance.
I’ve launched ribbons
too ripe for sleeping,
split rotten gardens
and slept conveniently inside.

Seriously

Shelf of islands, my books are antennae.
Let the movies turn your topsoil.
Insects and endorphins allow grief
and wings for every eye drawer, as
often I strip the preening lamp of strays
and fence the morning from its doves.
What beautiful ocean still hums and lies?
What calendar pours all our days?
Seize for me the viscous world and
juice again a summer's sun.

Myopic Books Poetry Series

All readings at Myopic begin at 7 pm.







Location:
1564 N. Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60622

Contact:
773.862.4882

Schedule:
Sunday, May 25 - Hadara Bar-Nadav & Ray Bianchi
Sunday, June 1 - Jennifer Karmin, Amina Cain, & special guests
Sunday, June 8 - Garin Cycholl & Juan Manuel Sanchez
Sunday, June 22 - Abraham Smith & Steve Timm
Sunday, September 21 - Mark Yakich
Sunday, October 12 - Michael Rothenberg & David Meltzer (in conjunction
with the Poetry Center of Chicago)
Sunday, October 19 - Brenda Iijima

If you're interested in hearing some of my work, I'll be reading my poetry on Sunday, June 8, as part of the Printers' Row Book Fair. I'm looking forward to hearing Augusten Burroughs.

When: 4-6 pm
Where: Chicago Tribune, Printers' Row Book Fair, Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Tent

Bill Berkson Reading @ Myopic Books, Sunday May 18

Don't miss Bill Berkson and Philip Metres reading at Myopic Books this weekend.

All readings begin at 7pm.

Myopic Books
1564 N. Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60622

Disharmonium, a new chapbook, is forthcoming from Silver Wonder Press with cover by Amy Evans McClure.

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz calculates that the war in Iraq is costing Americans $25 billion each month and is tied to the nation’s current economic crisis.

This is the war that was described as a "mission accomplished" by George W. Bush, who has also said that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11.

RIP Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)

As the White House prepares to host the Dalai Lama, I started to wonder what the result of that meeting might be. No one right now can think of the Dalai Lama, without thinking of the Chinese government. I think it’s horrible that China is hosting the Olympic games. Like any other scenario involving politics, the
Dalai Lama’s visit is primarily symbolic. But because the Chinese government is ridiculously sensitive whenever their track record of criminal infringement on human rights is brought into the light, they take the Dalai Lama’s visit to the United States as an insult. Governments that lock up citizens without hesitation for assembling, speaking out against human rights violations, and that generally advocate a complete disregard for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness typically don’t act so shocked when they are criticized for doing so. These types of governments usually level similar criticisms against their critics as a defensive measure, but Chinese officials opt to feign surprise and make statements of bewilderment when anyone points up the fact that they are evil.

How many would truly enjoy watching the Olympics if they knew that construction of the Olympics site was the result of forced relocations?

China is one of the world’s oldest civilizations, and I state clearly that a criticism of communist China’s government is not a criticism against the Chinese people. This is the nation that in a bygone era invented paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.

It’s important to ask “which China?” when discussing contemporary China too, because it’s a land of so many different peoples. But according to a Web site run by the Chinese government everything is fine. They will deal with the “Tibet problem” by simply locking up anyone who questions. There are now reports that the Chinese government has threatened the lives of lawyers who wish to represent Tibetans accused of acts of vandalism. This is the country that manufactures a sizeable portion of nearly every product that Americans buy. Most will be blind to these facts when confronted by the spectacle of the Olympics. China would have us believe that they are similar to other nations who favor government by the people and who respect the rule of law, but China is very different. The Olympics in Beijing in August is China’s opportunity to show the world that what they’re doing is ok. The Chinese method of governing people is far from ok. In what can only be described as an item for the “huh?’ department, the tagline for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing is “One world, one dream.” I have to wonder what, or whose, dream is being promoted because torture and imprisonment is more correctly referred to as the stuff of nightmare.

Here's another source for lists. I can't vouch for all of them, because I only had a chance to skim, but they seem worth a glance.

Also Simon DeDeo reviews the latest Myopic Books reading.

I'm still thinking of lists, so I'll add my list of the day.

_______________________

Top 10 Worst Book Titles, Descending Order

10. Globalization: The Golden Years
9. A Brief History of the Panty
8. The Birdwatcher’s Guide to Killing Lots of, Well, Birds
7. People Really, Really Like Me: A Concise Macroeconomics of Arrogance (Fully Illustrated and Newly Expanded Know-it-All Edition)
6. Earn Extra Income with that Back Hoe Now, or Later
5. Jackanapes Abroad: Tips Every U.S. Embassy Staffer Should Know
4. Dick Cheney’s Really Just a Big Sweetie
3. Kiss Your Ass Goodbye: A History of Mining in America
2. Win at Chess (by Creating a Diversion While Losing at Chess)
1. Uzbekistan: Feel the Magic

What We've Had so Far

"Gathering Threat"

"Axis of Evil"

"Slam Dunk"

"Shock and Awe"

"Mission Accomplished"

"Last Throes"

"Adapt to Win"

"Stay the Course"

"New Way Forward"

"The Surge"

"The Pause"

_________________________________________________
I thought I'd post this as a found poem, but it's also a list. These are the catch-phrases that the Bush administration has used to describe the situation in Iraq, in the order of their appearance. "The Pause" is the most recent strategy being promoted.

“Motivated by a force that is vocalized but not wholly comprehensible, the lyric insists on being heard in spite of the fact that it cannot make itself fit conventional codes of meaning. To whatever extent it employs everyday discourse—and even the more esoteric discourses of politics or religion—its aim is to point outside any accountable meaning, to provoke the reception of an excess of meaning. ‘Lyric’ does not suggest an inattention to the material aspects of language or to the possibility of double voicing by which works of art can critique their own formulations.” From Elizabeth Willis's essay "The Arena in the Garden: Some Thoughts on the Late Lyric” in Telling it Slant: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s. Ed. Mark Wallace and Steven Marks. University of Alabama Press, 2002.

_________________________________
I've always liked this quote. Some of the more interesting contemporary lyric poetry "cannot make itself fit conventional codes of meaning" but also plays off the readers expectations of what these codes might mean. Diaristic, or personal narrative poetry, that isn't critical of first person, or self-referential in some occasional ironic way, has always been problematic for me, or else just boring.

Louise Glück comes to mind as a poet that falls into this "hugely boring" category. Helen Vendler notes that Glück’s poems invite the reader’s participation by asking us to “fill out the story, substitute ourselves for the fictive personages, invent a scenario from which the speaker can solve the allegory. . .” But it's this kind of pseudo-psychological agreement with the audience that convinces me that those who gravitate to this kind of poetry should really be reading a novel. "Inventing a scenario" is not similar to the "willing suspension of disbelief" required of reading poetry that presents a challenge to the imagination. It's just a sign of banal writing.

The List Poem

In the list poem the poet, or writer, in a very Duchampian way drags the reader into making certain associations based on the context provided by the list.

Marcel Duchamp, by placing a hat rack on a string and hanging it from the ceiling took an object and rechristened it as something else entirely, an activity at which he excelled. It’s easy to see when looking up that the wooden hat rack, suspended, has taken on a life of its own. Duchamp was the source of so many artistic currents it’s difficult to keep track, but that would make a good list. His 1936 “Coeurs Volants,” for example prefigured Op Art by decades.

List poems hang from a contextual ceiling of sorts and, taken together as a group, these disparate items sometimes have an unpretentiousness to them that’s really unique because they exist minus all the aesthetic baggage of the typical poem. The only rules are that there are no “rules” to writing a good list. I guess the structure should exist as a numbered, vertical series versus a list separated by punctuation written as a paragraph only because that could be misconstrued as a catalog. Rhyme can sometimes hold a list together, or not, and it sometimes helps for the list to either ascend or descend into a culmination of some topic or else to devolve into near chaos, so that it’s understood why the ultimate item belongs there and nowhere else on the list. The pressure to provide some gradation as the list progresses can lead to either laughs or a rejection of the list, because it’s nearly impossible to read an effective list without judging the list against a mental tally of what the reader supposes is the “real” or more authentic order, based on his or her own experiences and preferences. Examples include James Tate's "The List of Famous Hats" and Ted Berrigan's "Ten Things I do Every Day." Christopher Smart’s “Jubilate Agno” was written between 1758 and 1763, largely while Smart bided his time in a madhouse. “Jubilate Agno” is only a list in the sense that nearly all the lines begin with “For” or “Let.” And where else could we find one of the best lines of poetry in existence?

Tho' toad I am the object of man's hate.
Yet better am I than a reprobate, who has the worst of prospects.

Other examples include James Tate's "The List of Famous Hats" and Ted Berrigan's "Ten Things I Do Every Day." Listverse.com is a good source of lists, but not necessarily list poems, serious or otherwise. Send me a list poem as a comment and I’ll put it up.

Here’s one from Listverse.com

Top Ten Books that Changed America
10. Leaves of Grass
9. The Clansman
8. The Grapes of Wrath
7. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
6. Silent Spring
5. Native Son
4. A Vindication of the Rights of Women
3. The Jungle
2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
1. Common Sense

This top top ten all-time rock performances is complete with You Tube clips, which is a nice touch, although The Ramones playing “Commando” on any given night at CBGBs in the late 70s should be included, or Bob Dylan playing “Maggie’s Farm” at Newport. My top ten rock/jazz/reggae moments?

10. Lou Reed, Chicago, IL (Navy Pier)
9. Brainiac, Dayton, OH (Canal Street Tavern)
8. Samla Mammas Manna, Chicago, IL (Schubas)
7. Kiss, Dayton, OH (Hara Arena)
6. Beenie Man, Negril, Jamaica (Bourbon Beach)
5. Elvis Costello, Chicago, IL (Grant Park)
4. Pharoah Sanders, Chicago, IL (Jazz Showcase)
3. English Beat, Chicago, IL (Abbey Pub)
2. Sonic Youth, Cincinnati, OH (Bogart’s)
1. Arthur Lee/Love, Chicago, IL (Park West)