My upcoming readings ...

Feb 1 - DVA Gallery, 2568 N. Lincoln, Chicago, 8pm

May 1 - Observable Books Reading Series, with Ken Rumble and Matt Freeman, 7260 Southwest Ave. (at Manchester) Maplewood, MO, 8pm

June 8 - Chicago Poetry Showcase, Printers Row Book Fair, 3-5pm

www.milkmag.org is included in the 2009 Colophon, Luxembourg journals exhibition.

I love rediscovering poems after I’ve forgotten that I wrote them. Here’s one from years ago on The East Village.

On the horizon: My interview with Malcolm McNeill on www.bigbridge.org. The topic: His collaboration with William S. Burroughs on the elusive book Ah Puch Is Here, life in seventies London, and the alchemy of high-stakes illustration.

DVA Gallery

Thanks, Charlie Newman, for scheduling my February 1 reading at DVA Gallery. Come on down. While you're there, buy a Shag lunchbox.

This blog is now 1 year old. Cake is forthcoming.

Thanks, Simone Muench, for the mention.

Whalen

The Poetry Foundation list of 2007 poetry best sellers is no shocker. It doesn’t logically follow that the best poetry ever written is necessarily being written right now simply because it seems that more poetry is being written now than ever before, but what explains the myopia of this list? My answer would be that the poetry of Billy Collins simply reinforces the expectations and prejudices of the reader and the public at large is not interested in reading poetry that requires anything more than minimal effort. Collins’ poetry never fails to lead the reader to an "aw-shucks" moment. Banalities should be used, if ever, as a starting point only. Poems should introduce the reader to something not seen before, not reinforce the commonplace and provide cornball reassurance. Charles Bukowski didn’t find his massive audience by dealing in banalities, but his uber-macho persona has succeeded in selling books where his poetry falls short of taking the art any farther than the hundreds of lesser well-known poets who are living right now and writing poems that are far more successful on many levels, technical and otherwise.

William Carlos Williams excelled at extracting valuable ore from everyday moments and distilling the quintessence of these thoughts and feelings into poetry. Every syllable in a poem by William Carlos Williams, or Emily Dickinson, is a counterpoint to the cacophony of everyday noise in life that seeks to deaden the senses. Collins would sooner cover the world in Formica rather than with what’s needed right now...granite.

According to Collins: ...I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I'm talking to, and I want to make sure I don't talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong.


* * *

It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack/of what is found there.

Asphodel, That Greeny Flower still serves as a prime example of how Williams could illuminate without leaving the reader behind. The universal aspect of what he wrote could be carried through in any language, because real insights are offered. The most effective humor in poetry always falls on the side of satire. A comedic element often exposes hypocrisy more memorably than anything. There’s nothing wrong with occasional poetry or appreciating humor or lightness of touch when that’s what works, but it appears that Collins’ efforts to spread an appreciation of poetry only served to spread an appreciation for himself.

Readers would be better off investing in the big new Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, or Frank O’Hara: Poems from the Tibor de Nagy Editions than picking up yet another book by an author such as Collins or Bukowski. In readers’ defense, there’s no resource out there to unmask charlatans and poets end up being the only audience for poets’ poets such as Whalen who of anyone writing in the last century was most deserving of a far wider audience.

Who Wants to Smell

We rub the suffering earth make it real
who wants to sexy the host ebulliently asks.
I like a rock music I like a heavy metal the contestant shouts.
We are just becoming visible
our surfaces are sure
and that we wait for answers
is fundamentally daring.

Get your New Year's resolution printed on Time's Square Confetti.

Here Comes My Meteor

Chucking the future
for a bygone shadow
leaving the antlers of
history on the table
as the only evidence
that nothing resembles
these particular shadows
as much as Happy Days
what will you
say to the man mirror
who grins like a
tortoise in a desert
can you Black & Decker
this economy
smiley face IM
Apollinaire knew in
Zone, life no longer
new car smelly
something so
perfect about a
block of ice in which
the zeitgeist
dances, suspended
like a Rx

Thanks for mentioning me on the Ploughshares blog, Kristy.

Silver Wonder Press

Silver Wonder Press here in Chicago has just released Lee Ranaldo's "Hello From the American Desert" with an introduction by New York poet Todd Colby. The Silver Wonder Web site is looking really good. My chapbook "Disharmonium" will be the next book published in Silver Wonder's chapbook series. Many thanks to Chris Gibson for the exceptional job he's doing with Silver Wonder -- it's definitely worth it to buy some of what's offered on the site. Silver Wonder rocks (literally). Have a look.

Beneath the Eyelids—Storm

—after Robert Kelly

Meloncholia mise-en-scène,
aloof, these branches
droop
pushed upward no-
thing hums, these
Maskenstilleben
à la carte?

Look, to be
seen as if then to raze
from memory some
loam belonging
to speech starting
carousel of womb,
making sense
of time, sotto voce.

New chapbook on the way.

More info. on the Observable Books Reading Series.

Here's my holiday greeting to the city of Chicago in the Trib.

And an audio file of one of my poems read on Bob Marcacci's MiPo Radio. Happy holidays to readers of this blog. Thanks for checking in.

Even Without Bumpers

—for Lina



I love you as the fissipalmate foot of an Ibis loves the water.

I love yóu even when mísplaced accénts cause havóc.

As the fruit bat’s wingspan, reaching nearly five feet, slices the night air, dropping like the USS Missouri onto a plate of black rose petals, I love you.

I love you the way I love a fine cartouche.

I love your.

Forget About The Wild Swans at Coole

Most ancient toxicologist, sun,
wears a uniform called morning

left right left right left right
the armies are advancing

nectar of war in the shield’s reflection
the sunlight on the horizon

gazing into the dungeon of the possible
this prison we’ve constructed of longing.

Jan 3, Kate the Great's, Steve Halle, Adam Fieled, Melissa Severin, Larry Sawyer & Lina ramona Vitkauskas

I'll be reading Jan 3 at Kate the Great's bookstore, 5550 N. Broadway, Chicago, 7 pm with Steve Halle, Melissa Severin, Adam Fieled, and Lina ramona Vitkauskas. Nosh and sip refreshments too.

P.F.S. Post has an incredible array of poetry up including John Tranter, George Bowering, Amy King, Lars Palm, Daniel Nester, Noah Eli Gordon, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Steve Halle, Catherine Daly, Simone Muench, and Anselm Berrigan among others. Have a look if you've never done so.

And many thanks to Philadelphia poet Adam Fieled for P.F.S. Post and also for including us in his floating reading series.

Is MiPoesias the coolest magazine in existence? The team of editors here at Me Tronome think so. It's nice to see that chivalry isn't dead. That's Ken Rumble in the photo being helpful. I'll be reading with Ken in St. Louis in the near future in the Observable Books Reading Series. While you're online read some of the new poems up at milk.

Oscar Country for Old Men

Houston - we have Flarf, I mean lift-off.

Will Flarf be making an appearance this Sunday at Myopic books? It's possible. Come down to see what it's all about. THIS SUNDAY (Dec. 16) we have

Anne BOYER was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1973. She was raised in Salina, Kansas, and educated in the public universities of Kansas. She is the author of The Romance of Happy Workers (Coffee House Press, forthcoming 2008), Selected Dreams with a Note on Phrenology (Dusie Collectiv, 2007), and Anne Boyer’s Good Apocalypse (Effing Press, 2006). Along with K. Silem Mohammad, she edits the print journal Abraham Lincoln. She teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute and lives in Northeastern Kansas with her daughter Hazel and the cat Ulysses.

Michael CROSS edited Involuntary Vision: after Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (Avenue B, 2003), and is currently editing an anthology of the George Oppen Memorial Lectures at San Francisco State University. He publishes Atticus/Finch Chapbooks (www.atticusfinch.org), and his first book, in felt treeling, is forthcoming from Tucson, Arizona's Chax Press. He is currently a doctoral candidate at SUNY Buffalo.

K. Silem MOHAMMAD is the author of Breathalyzer (Edge Books, 2008), A Thousand Devils (Combo Books, 2004), and Deer Head Nation (Tougher Disguises, 2003). He has also co-edited and contributed to two books in Open Court's Popular Culture and Philosophy series: The Undead and Philosophy (2006) and Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy (2007). He co-edits the magazine Abraham Lincoln with Anne Boyer, and he maintains the popular poetics blog Lime Tree (lime-tree.blogspot.com).
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I have tickets for the upcoming Lebowski Fest here in Chicago. I can't wait to see No Country for Old Men. Javier Bardem is supposed to be the best screen psycho since Hannibel Lecter.