Um, Mr. Bush

Re: Offshore drilling

"The lifting of the moratorium — first announced by Mr. Bush’s father, President George Bush, in 1990 and extended by President Bill Clinton — will have no real impact because a Congressional moratorium on drilling enacted in 1981 and renewed annually remains in force. And there appears to be no consensus for lifting it in tandem with Mr. Bush’s action." AP News/7-15

Popularity

Hokusai braved the bad
weather of his own life
to create the great print
The Great Wave Off Kanagawa
which is sold today
at Spencer’s Gifts
at Woodfield Mall in
Schaumburg, IL

There's something about a good author photo that helps sell a book. Like it or not, I know my decisions at the bookstore, involve, in whatever minimal way, a quick face- and blurbcheck as I pick up a book of poetry for the first time. Who can resist the quick flip to scan the blurbs on a back cover before opening the book? I've read of judges of poetry contests who not only mask the names of entrants but who also refuse to look at the front and back covers of a book, in an effort at objectivity. Book covers with their author photos, blurbs, and in their general design, grab the interest and provide some brief context before taking the plunge. Which is the coolest author photo here? Hands down -- Ralph Ellison. (Blaise Cendrars, Jack Kerouac, Michelle Cahill, Umberto Eco)

The Forest of Did

Meet in the Forest of Did
and at the appropriate hour, see.

The heels of our shoes were coated
with algorithms, and our tongues wagged.

In one of our conversations I note
that you are very beautiful for a human.

I’m no longer operating that anyone.
These leaves know time each night.

Even with lime eyes, I’m still
able to recognize what sarcasm.

You may not know about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that was recently passed in Congress. The Act grants immunity to telecommunications companies (telecoms) regarding retroactive lawsuits. Because it was recently discovered that large telecommunications companies (e.g., AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, Verizon) have been spying on average Americans by turning over documentation of their phone and Internet habits, lawsuits were filed by those whose records were stolen—but because of new FISA legislation those lawsuits have been taken off the docket.

FISA in its current state is similar to measures that were championed by Vice President Cheney immediately after the events of 9/11.

In fact, FISA is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
________________

U.S. Constitution: Fourth Amendment --The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

________________

Without probable cause, FISA enables “government agencies” (a term that is so broad it’s nearly meaningless) with the help of telecoms to record phone conversations, text message exchanges, and e-mail exchanges without a warrant (which effectively eliminates the Judicial branch of our government from the process—a crucial checks-and-balances step in the process that limits the power of the Executive branch and provides necessary oversight). The very foundation of our democracy is built upon the premise that none are above the law.

In fact, the passage of FISA has much more to do with shielding the telecoms from lawsuits and less to do with stopping terrorism. At issue is the idea of securing warrants. Under the previous FISA legislation, which was passed in the 1970s, a warrant was necessary before law enforcement could view information such as e-mails or listen in to phone conversations. The process of obtaining a warrant for such purposes had been streamlined after the events of 9/11 considerably. In many cases, most observers had stated that a warrant under the old version of FISA could have been procured within 24 hours. If the surveillance that occurred prior to the decision to obtain a warrant was successful there would be no reason to believe that obtaining the warrant and waiting an additional 24 hours would present a problem. It’s been proven by intelligence agencies worldwide that any terrorist event on par with the events of 9/11 would take years to plan and stage, giving authorities ample time to detect the activities of terrorists and thwart their plans. FISA allows government agencies, at the behest of the Exective branch, to conduct searches with the help of the telecoms without judicial oversight. Essentially this makes law enforcement judge and jury, which is contrary to the principles on which the United States was founded. Imagine a situation whereby it is legal for law enforcement officials to enter your home unannounced and without a warrant. FISA enables a search of your virtual “home.” Not only are your communications with others fair game but also other vital information held on your computer or in your phone. Purchase histories, social security numbers, credit histories, medical histories, and other types of information can now be brought in with the FISA net without your knowledge. This information can now be shared with others without your knowledge. Those who defend FISA, or who would like to see even broader legislation, counter the defenders of the Fourth Amendment with scurrilous accusations meant to call into question one’s patriotism. But those who defend FISA without a critical eye are ignoring history. As Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The Founding Fathers of the United States knew that oversight, or checks-and-balances, was the only stopgap against the type of corruption that turns public servants into despots.

The fear marketing used by the Bush Administration to advance their agenda has worked. Bush’s time in office has been marked by an aggressive push to increase the power of the Executive and the FISA legislation recently passed is another step in that direction. Most nations on earth do not enjoy the civil liberties that we take for granted. Even most highly industrialized nations in this technological age do not hold the idea of the rule of law dear.

“…an unprecedented campaign (Strange Bedfellows) [began] Tuesday to hold Democratic lawmakers accountable for caving in to the Bush administration on domestic spying. A group of high-profile progressives and libertarian Republicans are rolling out a new political action committee called Accountability Now to channel widespread anger over pending legislation (FISA) that would legalize much of the president's warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans, and grant retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the spying when it was still illegal.” —Providence Journal


Barack Obama’s recent vote for passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) after it was revised is being called a cave-in by the far left and merely a compromise by others. Obama can’t be viewed as soft on national defense if he wishes to succeed in his bid for the presidency and this is a step in that direction. I hope that he follows through on his claim to provide the kind of oversight necessary to keep FISA legitimate. Throughout American history, politicians on both sides of the aisle have used various forms of domestic spying as a tool to advance their agendas. That’s why recent FISA legislation is such a loss for average Americans. FISA proponents have sold it as a vote for the fight against terrorism when the existing legislation wasn’t in true need of an overhaul. The new FISA legislation opens the floodgates to every kind of potential violation of privacy.

The true danger of wiretapping lies in its lure of invisibility. Bush’s version of FISA places the telecoms above the law.

And some of this makes me think of one of the best British TV shows ever—The Prisoner. Not just because Patrick McGoohan drove a Lotus Seven, but because of the kooky dialog and the swinging Sixties sets.

Just don’t be surprised if someday you are asked for “information.” [Where am I? In “the village.” What do you want? Information. ]

Philip Metres just turned 38 and so did I, so I was glad to find his entry from a few days ago about Leaves of Grass. I do the same thing—bring out Leaves of Grass to read occasionally to help commemorate milestones or else to just enjoy how my response to the book changes over the years. I can’t think of a book that’s more American. After finding this article on Silliman’s blog, I had to write something. Is Leaves more of a question or an answer? Can it be both? Leaves of Grass evokes some sense of inspired awareness, but not a simplistic religious pluralism. It isn’t that Whitman calls for us to worship what is around us, but he does make the case for a spirituality that hinges on our awareness of the interrelatedness of ourselves and our surroundings. Does a greater awareness mean greater freedom? Or is a heightened awareness of ourselves and the world we live in just another, albeit more elaborate, illusion? At its core the book celebrates existence in a way that hasn’t been seen since. I don’t see Walt Whitman as a prophet necessarily (but if anyone else does, I do agree he wore it well and suffered a bit from vanity but what poet doesn’t), but he points the way to what might be the only way to truly exit the modern condition. In the mid 1950s Jean-Paul Sartre (in the play "No Exit" I believe) formulated an opposite perspective and even went so far as to famously exclaim “hell is other people,” but Leaves of Grass conquers its literary “competition” through quiet persistence. It seems to just get better with age. Whitman reworked Leaves tirelessly. The book went through eleven successive editions until the time of Whitman's death in 1892, by which time 283 poems had been added. Jim Morrison once proclaimed himself an "erotic politician" but I think that applies more to Walt Whitman. There's more sex in Leaves of Grass than nearly any other book in the American literary canon, but Whitman takes us there through his spirituality. It's dangerous and still just really, really good.

Let me not to the marrow squash of true mine fields
Admit imperialism. Love is not love
Which alters when it alternative medicine finds,
Or bends with the recounter to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed marketer
That looks on temptation and is never shaken;
It is the star-chamber to every wandering barley,
Whose wraith’s unknown, although his heirloom be taken.
Love's not timeshare’s fool, though rosy lipoprotein and chefs
Within his bending sickness’s compendium come:
Love alters not with his brief houseboat and weeping willow,
But bears it out even to the edge of door knobs.
If this be erysipelas and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no managing editor ever loved.

____________

I occasionally like to perform the Oulipian N+7 routine on canonical poems as my own personal seventh-inning stretch. The ingenious methods of the Oulipans (of which Raymond Queneau famously said—“Oulipans: rats who build the labyrinth from which they plan to escape.") become apparent only in the process of applying their constraints. Shakespeare can become something entirely now: instead of the assignment or chore it is to many. I sent my Oulipian constraint, the "witch hunt," to Harry Mathews , who commented that it made sense in theory but he'd need to see it in practice. I'm still working on it. Plus, I get to include the history of the seventh-inning stretch, according to Wikipedia anyway. That's Queneau at the photomat having some fun.


“The origin of the seventh inning stretch is the story of Brother Jasper of Mary, F.S.C., the man credited with bringing baseball to Manhattan College in the late 1800s. Being the Prefect of Discipline as well as the coach of the team, it fell to Brother Jasper to supervise the student fans at every home game. On one particularly hot and muggy day in 1882, during the seventh inning against a semi-pro team called the Metropolitans, the Prefect noticed his charges becoming restless. To break the tension, he called a time-out in the game and instructed everyone in the bleachers to stand up and unwind. It worked so well he began calling for a seventh-inning rest period at every game. The Manhattan College custom spread to the major leagues after the New York Giants were charmed by it at an exhibition game, and the rest is history.” —Wikipedia

My chapbook Disharmonium is now available at the Silver Wonder Press Web site. Sometimes I look in the rearview mirror and think about the many poems I've written and why. I never felt as though writing poetry was a choice on my part. I remember first reading poets such as Ed Sanders, Clayton Eshleman, Blaise Cendrars, Arthur Rimbaud, Emily Dickinson, Gregory Corso, Harry Matthews, Aram Saroyan, Anne Sexton, Ted Berrigan, Guillaume Apollinaire, and others and thinking "that's who I am," not "that's what I want to do." The daily struggle of rewriting a poem only to leave it in frustration, perhaps coming back to it on another day, is what I know to be the writing life--if there is one. Some come fully formed from an overheard conversation, or a half-remembered dream, and some bubble up from the memory as if they can no longer exist in the deeper imagination and must either exist on the page as something separate from me, or they disappear and are replaced by other ideas. Poetry has allowed me to meet myself halfway and try to define what I find there. When I look in the rearview mirror I don't see the Atomium in Brussels, but it makes a good photo. Thanks for listening.

I'll be reading a section of the novel On the Road, Wednesday, November 5th at Columbia College .

Time: 8:00 pm
Place: Columbia College,
Conaway Center, 1104 S. Wabash
Chicago

Babel Fruit

Thanks to Ren Powell for inclusion of some work from my new chapbook Disharmonium at Babel Fruit.

What softening deep

stews night

hears the invi-
tation of the rain
in dust-bin mind:


climbs your
hindsight: reclines there


(inside the ear.

I sleep then eat details

first person is served in New York
not in Chicago, we sigh
high on the loveliness of time,
the way it billows
purling, streets
deep as Lethe,

fields of concrete
with quests,
occasional cops
who gallop by

lights singing
the street is a
June thesis on ease.

Like Woody Allen
in Bananas, I want
1,000 deli sandwiches
chips no fries though
at Billy Goat.

Traipsing Western
later we use the
aleph* to scan
all directions simultaneously
on the lookout
for stray poets.

Ed Dorn’s Illinois,
lag and sway
drunk on summer
er days.
I’d like to live to
70, too, I guess.

______________



*Aleph or Alef, is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the number 1 in Hebrew. Its esoteric meaning in Judaic Kabbalah, as denoted in the theological treaty Sefer-ha-Bahir, relates to the origin of the universe, the "primordial one that contains all numbers".

I'll be performing at Brown Rice with Daniel Godston (pictured) on Monday, July 21.

Time:
To be announced.
Location:
4432 N Kedzie Ave
Chicago IL 60625

I'll be one of the featured readers at Brothers K coffeehouse, at Main and Hinman in Evanston on November 21 at 6:30pm. Come out to hear some of my new poetry.

Talisman

There you will glimpse the portal to the self and cherish it. Your excuses were nailed to a tree then resurrected.

You well know about my penchant for dismay. This night is a lamp in the moon.

The doors of autumn are rusting. What miracle plays hide-and-seek with the afternoon?


__________________


She walks half-mad statues. A thick smoke of reckoning collides against her sky. Where he’d lost it.

Close the ghostly curtains of dimes.

Every tremor in the sea is an exploration of eternity.

You left your heart at the theater and never went back for it.

Scenes from summer, like a frieze. A reef of pillows lines the bed.

Solemn hour of newborns, birds insult the air. My lust is a picturesque pier.

How to describe a life’s cleavage? There is a silly hymn called ecstasy with white, aquatic eyes.


__________________



There are bridges in my pores and blades in my blood.

The legendary beauty is a transparency of the first magnitude. Of circular robes and occasional stars.

Blueish is the sky of artifice above the ruins of history.

Scissor arpeggios from your favorite song. Tread water in his memory.

Lunch on Time's jambalaya.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky

—after Lorca


Foist the molten day
upward into surf and let it
drown there, in the greenest
eye. Shine the moon, so
due for cleaning.

Let's liaison in the fire.

8 Wikipedos

Elena Yevgenyevna Dostay,
the Russian archer,
shot not arrows
but Freedom.



My woebeg-one
what have you d-one,
like a country s-ong
about an archeoastronomer.



Hey you, why not try
latent semantic analysis?
Just the sandwich,
not the meal.



The secret cheese that
powers Hollywood
comes in two varieties,
blockbuster and huh.



Tom Clancy, your
Debt of Honor—
stop writing
prosthetic fiction.



Footballer Hugo Gatti
nicknamed “El Loco”
was known for achique
& plain weirdness.



Shibata Zeshin
did nothing much to
stand out from
his contemporaries.




Bronx martyr
last of the Mo-ricans,
Carlito Brigante
in Carlito’s Way.





Österdalälven,
future sports drink
& also beautiful
river in Sweden.



______________________________
Wikipedo : Term coined by the author to describe a new type of poetry written using the “random article” feature on Wikipedia, our modern-day equivalent to the oracle at Delphi. Short poems meant to be written, and forgotten, as quickly as possible.

Nice to be included in this collage with such good company. This image is from the Here Comes Everybody blog--a great resource filled with many interesting interviews. Too bad that the print version was sidelined due to copyright disagreements among the interviewees.

I'm working on a series of ekphrastic poems with the photographer Jelena Glazova. This is the second in the series. The photo is an image of a woman dancing -- blurred. It's interesting as I write these that they begin based in the image and then find their own path of associations, without much of an explicit meaning --

________________

This is a melody, composed of flesh,
that shreds each moment of specificity.
But North of what nowhere is this night?
What cavern inside us did we mine of dream?
What guides the lips that dine upon our
minds? Eaten to ward off superstition,
our fingers visited the origin of myth—
transfixed. A limousine or shadow calls
to us to dance like gristle, incognito.
Your tongue pronounces whims
uncontrollable (as through our lives we fell).
Blurred bones twist like wan guitars
in the mists of transparent speech. Yes, you
are out of reach. I orchid against you, are
you listening, but tropic climes deride us.
Train your eyes to quit their leash.

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