I'm just remembering working on my first issue of Nexus with my friend Mark Knapke as assistant editor. I remember sitting in the Nexus office in the middle of many nights laying out pages and spending hours on the phone talking to various people amazed that I had a big budget and could make endless long distance phone calls. I remember calling Morocco to try to get Paul Bowles on the phone because someone had given me what was supposed to be his number and hearing a soft voice so unintelligible that I hung up. The Nexus magazine that I edited is not to be confused with the new age fluff mag of the same name. Nexus the poetry journal was founded in 1967.

Those who appeared in Nexus vol. 33, no. 1 include the following:

Hakim Bey, John Brandi, Ken Brown, David Chorlton, Ira Cohen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Henri Ford, Allan Graubard, Renee Gregorio, Paul Grillo, Gabor Gyukics, Maggie Jaffe, WB Keckler, Nancy Levant, Angus MacLise, Gerard Malanga, Sheila E. Murphy, Simon Perchik, Jean Marc Sens, Gustaf Sobin, Sparrow, Tetsuya Taguchi, Janine Pommy Vega, Paul Violi, Ken Wainio, Nan Watkins, AD Winans, Taylor Mead, Tuli Kupferberg, Ronnie Burk, Philip Glass Interview

Video recording was invented in 1956 as an intermediary in live broadcast television. It was a cheap means to pre-record and edit regularly scheduled programs taped from live events. Roughly twelve years later, conceptual and minimalist artists would take an interest in the medium, making “artist videos” at a time when there was no such thing as a video artist. Michel Auder is an exception. He chose video as his primary means of expression well before video was accepted as a practice in its own right.

Born in Soisson, France, in 1945, Auder began making films at the age of 18. As an aspiring young filmmaker, he fell under the influence of the French New Wave and experimental cinema, most notably Jean-Luc Godard and Andy Warhol. In 1969, Auder met and eventually married Viva, one of Warhol’s principal talents. A year later, they moved to New York where Auder has since resided. That same year, he purchased a Sony Portapak, one of the first commercially available video cameras. Since 1970 he has persistently documented the people, places and events that are his life.
 
The label “video artist” was applied retroactively when Auder began exhibiting his work in 1980. At that time he produced a series of discreet works, some of which were from scripted biographical material and others that were video collages appropriating material from television. As technology improved and access to editing facilities increased, Auder’s skills as an auteur became more apparent. He is a consummate voyeur, one who literally reads scenes of intimacy, exchange and daily life as verses of poetry unto themselves.

Meanwhile

Going on boats
morning’s candelabra
splinters light
across water.


Horizon
an eyelid.

Daily fireworks, roof
of stars
give way to
blue.


Frozen oranges,
erupt
from the palm of my hand.


*


You have
come so far
and somehow
the call
was heard, as
a telephone
ringing
on the moon.


Don’t
worry, we
are marooned
in a
nevertheless city,

I’ll unzip
the buildings,

release the
birds.

Kentucky

You are coatless Kentucky
You are drunk and disorderly
Your lawns however are immaculate
Your women are chatty, horny
You don’t pick up the check
You're the home of Johnny Depp
You are peppered with horses
Your eyes are barbeque pits
and I’m ok with that.

Frank Sherlock Needs Your Help

Amy King writes:

Philly poet and host of the La Tazza Reading Series, Frank Sherlock, recently suffered a heart attack and kidney failure, among other anomalies, during a very brief window of time that he was without health insurance. It’s one of those crap shoot moments, folks. Anyway, he’s a good guy for sure, young (early 30’s), and a poet who encourages and supports poets — all feats I’m a fan of. He has run that series for a good long time now (I read in it years ago) and gets a much deserved “A” in my book. He needs cash and books and good words sent his way for recovery.


Thanks to the generosity of Juliana Spahr you can now send checks for the Frank Sherlock EMERGENCY FUND which will be tax deductible!

'A 'A ARTS
c/o J. Spahr
5000 MacArthur Blvd.
Oakland, CA 94613

CHECKS SHOULD BE MADE OUT TO "'A 'A ARTS"
and these checks will be tax deductible.

PLEASE MAKE A NOTE THAT YOUR CHECK IS FOR FRANK SHERLOCK.
Your donations are very much appreciated.

Ice Cubes Rising from My Glass

Exotic trigonometry
coaxe the possibilities.

Love the phrase "cool million."

Not oft understood
a figure of speech cartoons.

Sunday, glare from the front pages.

When I rise to refill my glass,
real life goes on despite reality television.

Television, quip quixotically.

Into my fantastically
real mouth enters

the cold suburban reality
that there are no more.

Graffito

Describe your chokehold
on my gaze?

The decision clinical
let me paraphrase

that you are new every morning
blowing fresh
breeze of unease

Disturbing to the status quo
you and I know
but even as I eternally so

such a one as you

We are discontinuous pages
in some unwrit book

every hieroglyphic
look.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

This is the only blog where you'll see Mick Jagger painting...I mean a Mick Jagger painting.

these _______ gaps aren't
in
our conversation
don’t they
_________ resemble anything
but
themselves________
and we pause to let
it

the _______ wash
over us

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" made an impression on me. Frost admitted late in his life that he repeated the last line only because he couldn't think of anything else.



Stopping By ___________* On A Snowy Evening

Whose ___________ these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his _____________ fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the ___________ and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The ___________ are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.



*Popeye's chicken, Jewel, Navy Pier, Crobar, La Creperie,
Simon's, Giordano's, Myopic books, Buckingham fountain,
Uptown, Danny's, Union Station, Park West, Resi's,
the Hungry Brain, Funky Buddha, Velvet Lounge,
Holiday Club

I Have Passed Along

A quiet desert as if

Robert Frost were my horse

You are my snowy woods

I mostly smile

Way to Pamela Anderson

Dare we not say you are gauche
gazing out from between the bars of the television screen
betwixt lip jobs Pamela Anderson pouts
the beach beneath her feet
all the world her magazine, she coos
trying to suddenly remember her line
as the sun licks the horizon a final time and descends
“Way to Pamela, Pamela Anderson!” someone
on the beach shouts. Pamela Anderson cannot
figure out if it’s condescension she’s
hearing or sarcasm. She raises an arm
and waves back yelling jubilantly,
“Thank you, anonymous beach person!”

Here's some other recent work up at the MiPOesias site. Thanks to the editor, Amy King. I think it's about 20 below outside right now, so I've been imagining that I'm dreaming all this. I really live in Southern California.

My poem A Heaven Beside Me is read on MiPO radio. Thank you to the host, Bob Marcacci.

It's the last piece read at the very end of the show.

Rghit

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.

Bird & Diz

Language Lariat

We must dance it
nude upon the Alps of meaning
we pirouette and tumble
upon beartraps stumble
for the air is spiny
clear and clean
if all goes well
life resembles a magazine’s
cover? But she soon
discovered it’s not
like that at all
(Summer devolves
into Fall and Winter
then comes slouching)
words can be graves
but also roses and
whenever life loses
its sheen polish
a question and let it
serve as a platter
beyond our fears.

Here's a few new poems up at Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks. No, they're not love poems.

There's a scene in 8 1/2 (that's La Dolce Vita) in which Marcello Mastroianni's character, Guido, listens to a critic's analysis and then he ends up throwing the results on the ground. When he scrambles over to pick it up after a second thought we are shown the visual representation of how most minds function. Going back and forth from feelings of independence to feelings of insecurity, ebb and flow, is a fact of life. Facing the mirror is no easy feat however. But being completely honest with oneself is the only path to freedom from our preconceptions.


Guido is a salad of confusion. He's torn between what he used to be and what he might become, and on all sides advice is offered from those who think they know what's best for him. Philosophical advice comes from critics, advice comes from his wife, advice comes from friends, advice comes from everyone with an opinion, but at the end of the day he forces his own subjectivity outward in an artistic gesture that seems futile. But in this act of creating he ultimately triumphs over futility and makes a lasting statement that outlives impermanance.