THE PERSIAN



Observe as my bristles re-hue under

the moon of the theory of the moon.



A million demerits for misuse of the field, a beady

look around the mouth.  The directrix requires you

worship her yellow hair.  



At last, duckling, I've no use for you & no

stomach to concur the whiteness of the snow,



You must say "palm frond"

when referring to the palm fronds, we have 

a word for that pose & we think you know what 

it is.  



even in light of the lashes of the fraction's big

radium divider, the fury of the demon denominator:



I, Rasputin, thinker of substandard thoughts

beseech you varied  narrators:

	

Nothing's quite as real as how you

	remember the dream, eh, mon chere?



I am the Green Man and my ideas

are green.  I will learn to go slower,



	The purpose has pretty 

	legs if you watch it dance.



Porpoise, remonstrance: everything



depends of the lapels of that orgy

& the colorful speech of professional

sports. 



Forget all about the extra fingers & 

the wan fragments of time, tied to the chicken

you push me out of the tree.

Well, Xmas was, well, Xmas. Not an awful lot to report about that. Saw my mom and my aunt and my cousin, which was nice. Hung out in Tolland, CT which was for the most part boring. On Satuday I went to visit my father and the evening culminated in a shouting match about our beloved President and how dad, a devout atheist, can support a man who's religious beliefs color his every decision and who is eroding the division between church and state faster than you can say "Spanish Inquision."

The 26th was a big improvement, however, as Rachel, Xtina, mom and I stopped in at the inimitable Shady Glen for a post-holiday repast.

And then came back to CT where I more or less sat on my ass until Tues PM when at long last the blog coasts united and I was able to hang out in person at long last with bloggy soul-sister Cat Meng for nourishing BBQ and McNeill's Oatmeal Stout to bring me back to my days in VT.

Rachel's parents in town yesterday and we all went to the MFA. Was underwhelmed by the Josef Sudek show which was poorly curated and even more poorly documented. The MFA continues to be my least favorite museum in Boston, if not anywhere. It's fun to see their Asian collections, lovingly pilfered from Asia for the enjoyment of white Bostonians, but they do a really poor job for the most part with contemporary work.

Soon we are off to New York City until the end of the vacation. If any of you New Yorkers want to hang out over the next few days, give me a ring. Especially if you know of something exciting going on tomorrow night. We will be at the Po Project marathon on Saturday, but apart from that, it's anyone's guess...

Some a**hole in South Carolina thinks I'm boring. Lest anyone think that the "a**shole" part is sour grapes, that valuation comes more from the "cold-hearted, Neanderthalic murder of one million helpless babies every year" from the former piece than the "boring and stodgy" critique of me in the latter. Criticism from some quarters is as good as a compliment...

I will post a synopsis (and pictures) of my holiday later...

December 16 , Thursday, 7:30PM, 2004
Director's Eye with Paul Chan
COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE

BAGHDAD IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER Pt.1 51min, 16mm, 1990
Director: Paul Chan


B.I.N.P.O. is an ambient video essay of life in Baghdad before the invasion and occupation. Men dance, women draw and sufis sing as they await the coming of another war. In seven languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish). Subtitled in English. World Premiere at the 2003 MOMA Documentary Fortnight. Part II, website, online at www.nationalphilistine.com/baghdad Notes, gifts, promises, paintings, trash, and other ephemera from the city which is now hardly a city. What if Walter Benjamin didn't kill himself, learned html, bought a camera, and thought himself useful enough to work in an impending war zone?

Paul Chan is an artist and director of National Philistine, an online aesthetic think tank. Chan is a 2003 Rockefeller Foundation new media arts fellow. He is represented by the Greene Naftali Gallery in New York. His video work is distributed by Video Data Bank and his new media work can be seen at www.nationalphilistine.com Chan spent one month (Dec 2002-Jan 2003) in Baghdad as a member of the Iraq peace team, a project of Voices in the Wilderness, the Nobel Peace prize nominated group working to end the sanctions against Iraq. The goals of IPT are to rally support for resisting the war (and now occupation) on Iraq and publicize the effects of the ongoing US assault on Iraqi civilians.

Hallmarks of Geezerhood

"Since the 25 age, our physical structure tardily halts makes
a weighty internal secretion known as Individual Increase Hormone.
The reduction of it, which regulates levels of another internal secretions
in the body is directly responsible for all of the most
prevalent hallmarks of geezerhood, such as wrinkles, white hair,
subsided power, and lessened intimate role."

At last know the real me.

GAMERS Release reading at the Bowery Poetry Club

Saturday, December 4 at 9:00 p.m.
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (at Bleecker, across from CBGBs)
Manhattan
$7

Featuring contributors Daniel Nester, Luis Jaramillo, Shannon Holman, Maureen Thorson, K. Thor Jensen, Mark Lamoureux & Katie Degentesh, plus original video-game sound-effect music by Drew Gardner and video-game themed cover tunes by Daniel Nester & Gene Cawley. Classic Atari tournament for GAMERS t-shirts and signed copies, plus an Atari 2600 console doorprize. Limited edition video-game themed art on display by GAMERS cover artist Charles Orr. Hosted by editor Shanna Compton.

Have been a lazybones blogger these days. Mired in work and not-work and overall malaise. I guess I am depressed, as befits the month of Saturn, I suppose...

ACRUX



A few nicks in the pate of

this the 3rd millennium & the

	stupor of 

this adolescent nation.  In the



name of hooligans or grosbeak

	or by the power of 



some latent prophet or the spangled

	helix, in these the hours



of our gross need, (4 or 5 fires 

in the archives): please invoke 



	some musty diety 

	or new limned 

	rupture savior.  We

	beseech,  by way of

this gurgled 



invocation through alien

red mucus, apples of lead

bubbles,the  rusty paps 

of our tampered olivine nurturers ,

	our fruit trees wither



in the shadow of the cross.



& I will bear every inverted

	little t upon my brow



or in bosom or bowel, & whom

must we adumbrate in this wasted

season, the monarch-winged Morningstar?

What prophet of inversion, what

	liquor of the firebringer's

ravenpecked liver engorges my

	scratched lips, unwinged



drooping shoulders, leady bristling

	clot of a heart 

		in this dark apex, Golgotha-stained

bruise-tinted night of tortured reason?



Our tomes, our hovels 

our every outpost or dojo

	encumbered by the wattle of the NAME that

unwholesome embryo ( & 

	I weep for each of your

	raped words, each of your

	flogged tenets, no son of man,

		those tongues are the 

		spleen's speech as 

			are these--I shall

never forget).



	Pox the blessors of the grey

	howitzers of capital,

	middlebrow 

	genuflectors, I expel 



negating seed over your 

fleshless texts. No brutal

	tongue this new speech of 

the aeon, no less holy



	& no bolt cast,

	no thing scourged

	or punished.



You backwards soldiers of 

	attrition, schism-bearers:



I whisper each of your names

to the slaughtered lambs, each 

of your sightless effigies

not set ablaze but burning

	with the tepid

	flames of its own lack.



I bid every dead thing return

	before your supposed rapture &

	sing the song of its nature, weep

for its lost flesh so belabored



by the base law of these petty

	somnambulists.

COR CAROLI



The worst of it is a waning

cloud of monsters (pink locusts)



that chip away at



the tensile strength of

daylight's anchors.



Perhaps there's something to be said

here after all.



What things occur on 

the milky stage of a room? This is all

the province of the drooling

envelopes of death--



Still she folds 

around him like an origami

box.



Still less time for speaking

at the toes 

of the century.  Its

kick, kick, turn:



I in the warm globe 

of I's falsified identities.

All the braided towers

& their sequined wrestling

masks look down on

this ancestral Twister.



The sweeping glee

of the kliegs, wry irony

expelled from the exposition.



	You seekers &

	dreamers, my 

	flaxen pedestrians



huddle 'round the

touch-pads,



a kind of gooey equity

goes right for a motherfucker's eyes.



Scalpel, chisel,

get this parser exhumed.



The lonely king, the goofy

	scepter



heard the sirens

& their phoneme parcels--



All agree this night

is very rich 

& it downsizes me.



	A bible of

barren pharmaceuticals

	& rogue brands.



I will love you

	while the hummers hum

	& the hissers hiss



& there's been biomorphic muck

fecund on the bottom of the ninth

	for years

		now.

My good friend the fantastic poet Jason Arthur Wood wrote this elegy for Yasser Arafat back in 2002 when he was under siege. While the circumstances of his death may be different, I think it still holds true today.

CITIZEN, DARKENING

April 16 -- 29, 2002





i.

Accept it -- a realignment from along-

side or against or without -- as necessary.  Witness 




action as gesture rendered 

upon itself.  Hope: for to bear witness; 

for to bleed; for to wait out this




summonsing.  Where this came to wake had been 

a wave in stalled motion, this land.  What formed within

only a membrane (stranded) felt as a flesh 

somehow (permeated in substance) multiplied 

with facets.  Then a retracting -- as if under-





ii.

scored.  Settled farther inland (this fullness of 

sound brought from the bed 

of a river, the back of a throat)  

then before (one voice).  Assumed form 

as only shapes, only emboldened gray shapes, 




calculating themselves, disguised 

by a sliding, themselves

into a direction, themselves becoming an allowance,




becoming a merging, as another 

awakening.  Only shaped (formed 

in the back of this throat), only folding





iii.

over onto itself only.  Then river only.  Then speaking with 

the dead (our dead).  Then soon-to-be-

storied-to-forget.  Withdraw, then

(I have grown impatient in this space)(there is no more space)

redoubt.  In these hands one thin voice takes hold.  Only




(legion, only)





iv

(an exacting of the observed)(neither desperation, neither hope)(from within the


 confines of a presence)(from one narrow eye)(watching another closed narrowing)
(from form entering into the walls)(can seem to hold)(no, cannot, not now)(exacting 


one slight eye to better)(one slight chording of vision)(these notes are not precise)


(these notes form)(from nothing)(fullness of voice)(formulate a promise, citizen,)

(darkening,)

 



v.

(as that which cannot be undertaken; your voice wanted in approach closer

to the back of your throat -- motion held down by this by action -- in impatient

waiting cast across an impatient spanning -- patiently make time wind through- 

out -- create space into the absence of which you can place only voice, only raised

in contagion, settled upon the press of wanting -- to do this only now, to make 

this count -- until wanting is beyond symbol, until wanting is the only 

column, is the wanting which has brought you here and brought you here 

again -- one man, blindly, given the chance they would watch you through this space,)




(always watch you crossing this space you have been reduced to, two walls, these 

sounds breaking, one floor upon which whichever one of you -- you, speaking; 

you, spoken -- they were looking for, drawn within a coiling, an emptied stair-

case, an arranging of cycles, hollow energy's hollowed gathering places, a reality 

designed of geographic, become an understanding stripped of incidence -- only by 

your name gathered in a superstition are these charges the air implicates)

 



vi.

then, on the seventh day, did you resist.  All along 

its wake -- waves crested in a a pass-

age -- you extended 

motion ("I hope I will be a martyr"), extended

one hand into one throat ("in the Holy Land.") and produced 




an avalanche of voice, one cacophony 

(these notes are not sounding) above all others (as

they were meant) as I have placed (to sound) ourselves 

here, where they cannot help




but find us.  Sleep -- as there is time to awaken, there is time





vii.

(upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence)

(a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence)

(for the people shall not perish from the earth)



--Jason Arthur Wood

Fuck the South

Courtesy of Aaron, this is absolutely brilliant.

Apologies to my buddy Todd and David Hess and anyone else behind enemy lines...

Courtesy of Shanna C., We're all very, very sorry, world.

ANSER

Recombinant incumbent rips a mutant future,

a little rabid grace to brook 

	environs like a fleshwound;

pay no mind to the clinking bronze 

	armor, these armored

characters who lurch & strut like 

	zombies filled with

		purple methane.




The curve of the earth shall realign

	the piles, the aeon divorces

the pink fizz of the end of the empire.




Red to blue hand to fist




	mouth to mouth-- 

a storm of dust, cloud 

	of locusts is a tenacious apocryphal

raven for these craven old boys, please




bow to the graven vulpine image

	of a fanged nymph,

you funky armies:

	listen to Wilhelm's revenant

beat 

	the inexorable steel drum.

Perseverers, please remain ithyphallic

as the cabin pressure adjusts to you.

Att'n NYC peeps:

Zinc Bar Talk/Reading Series Presents:

Sunday Nov. 14th @ Zinc Bar, 7 PM (90 W. Houston St., corner of LaGuardia Pl)
Albert Flynn de Silva & Mark Lamoureux


Albert Flynn DeSilver's recent work has appeared in New American Writing, Volt, The Canary, Crowd, and soon, an Anthology of Bay Area Poetry published by Faux Press. There is also a new book "Some Nature" published mysteriously by something called "The Non-Existent Press." You have to wear a special helmet to read the book (sold separately).


As for the talk, I plan on talking about "Emptiness & Form in Poetry" (still thinking of a good long & pretentious title) and reading a bit from "(a) chiasmus" this new work written around Richard Serra's "Torqued Ellipses." I'll probably go back and forth between talk and poem. Does this sound ok??

***

Mark Lamoureux descended from ordinary earthmen. During adolescence, he developed certain preternatural abilities enabling his works to appear in such places as Jubilat, Fulcrum, Shampoo, Carve, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, and others. His appearance may be hideous to ordinary humans, but in his heart he is the managing editor of Fulcrum Annual. Together with Ugly Duckling Presse he unleashed a chapbook, City/Temple in the fall of 2003 and 29 Cheeseburgers with Pressed Wafer in the winter of 2004.


"I will be adumbrating the life & work of Wilhelm Reich as they relate to a selection of work from my own Astrometry Organon. I will be reading from Reich's work & my own."

I guess the rat-bastard has already gotten to work on his plan for public schools in the U.S.

In case you were wondering,here is a chart depticting the red/blue to IQ ratio of our once-proud "Nation."

Nothing else to say about this.

Today is a black day. Worse than 9/11; the loss of life will be greater and the damage to this country will be greater.

Condolences to everyone as we mourn the next 4 years of our lives.

C'mon New Englanders, let's join my Quebecois ancestors and fucking seceed...

Anybody who knows me well enough knows of my intense disdain for The New Yorker, but I was shocked today to look at the cover of my boss's copy and find that I really, really love the cover. A perfect illustration of modern pathos/lonliness, breathtaking in every aspect. Upon looking inside at the illustrator I see...Of course!...It's Adrian Tomine of Optic Nerve fame, which was a brilliant comic and he is a brilliant comics artist.

Be sure to take a look at the New Yorker cover for this week. Better yet, tear off the cover and throw the rest of the flaccid and irrelevant waste of glossy paper away.

Attempting to maintain a veneer of calm and composure, though I feel periodically short of breath, panicked. Trying to remain optimistic. Unsure how anybody can be thinking about anything else today apart from this election. Well, anybody in the U.S. at least. Though I suppose if I lived elsewhere I would be concerned with the results given that the entire fate of the world part of the mix. The cycle of violence spills into other countries as we have seen with the Madrid Bombing and the hostages in Iraq, etc. etc. Thus the rest of the world is involved. If only the rest of the world shared our prerogative or hubris for monitoring the elections of other countries. I would feel better with a 3rd party monitoring these elections. The conditions of the last one were certainly such that the U.S. would have intervened, had it been happening on someone else's soil.

If you can think of a deity, pray to it.

Good news for any Bush supporters who cross my path in the next 32 hours.

There are a couple of narrative sections in Astrometry Organon which provide a kind of skeletal framework or context of the rest of the stuff. This is one of them, my own retelling of the Perseus/Andromeda/Cetus myth.

MENKAR




Said beauty shackled by 

	maternal hubris, a blithe

flicker in the great dark

	creature's eye as

gorged on ruin it lumbered 

	toward she splayed

on rocks, unabashed, as tho

	the matriarch can't know

what beauty's for, or even 

	chains, for that matter for what

are chains but mute reminders

	of the terror of circumstance,

what horror or what folly

	or coy indifference of she

who took the base beast between her

	lips, real horrorshow, & that

happy demon who curdled &

	with a shrug snapped those

same chains, & there on those

	rocks she felt the kiss

of the suckers on the small of her 

	back as the razed lands wept

for the spoils of arrogance

	& then the one hotter than said

nereids heaved the whole muddle 

	away under the rocking 

of that negator, liberator 

	never a father's kin, a karma

lumberer, what beauty knows

	is how trite conflict melts

in the crucible of a red sigh 

	& the creature knew what

beauty knows, who knew naught

	but struggle now naught

but love, the 2 of them there

	like a fuming reactor as it

is said the parched land would be renewed

	by those groans, transgression

erased by beauty & its double

	entwined on porous rock, until

Perseus, prig, came with blows

	of his father's father's 

father's sword: pretty jock

	darling of Athena who cleaved

the purring beast in 2 &

	so she savage beauty let fall

the bruised tentacle

	from between her breasts

& took her place with him though in

	her slept still the seed of the Other &

slept beside him who belonged 

	to the land & its wars 

& she who belonged to no-one 

	& the ghost of the monster 

who belonged to her & to the porous

	stones & the screaming waves

of the sea.

A shadow of things to come.

It's not the terrorists we should fear on election day, it's the incumbent administration...

Rachel and I were walking through Coolidge Corner on the way to the Video Balagan on Thursday night when we passed a man, perhaps arabic, probably in his mid-50's or so standing on the street. He had a shaggy, grayish beard. He was speaking loudly, but not yelling to people who were passing by.

"Please, who want my 4 poems. Please take my 4 poems. Who want my 4 poems."

People were doing their best to ignore him, as I did, as anyone does, accustomed to blocking out such requests which so frequently occur on city streets. A few seconds later though, I found myself turning around and walking back.

"I want your 4 poems." I said.

The man exitedly began taking the photocopied sheets out of the pile and handing them to me. And proceeding with what I knew would come next.

"Please. Thank you. Take my 4 poems. Can you make a donation. I am homeless. Please copy the poems and give to your friends. Please."

I gave him $3 and thanked him.

"Thank you." Turning to walk away I walked a short distance up the street and a few moments later he followed after.

"Wait. You have all 4?"

We counted all 4.

"Thank you, God bless you. Give them to your friends."

The name on the poems is Ali Nikoonizad. Here are Mr. Nikoonizad's poems, as promised to him. The lines are all centered on the page, but I don't know how to do that in blogger:

CRY

Two orders fight in the mind
I'm very tired for my mind
Bad order, good order in the mind
What to do to these orders in the mind?
Do you have a good mind?
A ling time ago now, I don't have a good mind.
I'm sure, a very long time ago, we have a good person.
That person had and has a very good mind.
I said, "God, please give to me, give to him or her, give to
everybody, a good mind."
I don't like to do my bad order mind.

-Ali Nikoonizad

COPING

One, Two, THree
Check, check, check it out
Anything make you lazy
No good!
Wake up!
Open your eyes
Check it out
Find a good teacher
Find a good girlfriend
Hey, you too lady
If you want to find a good teacher
Find a good boyfriend
Yes, yes!
Please listen good
Find something good
Thinking good
Talking good
Doing good
Loving good
I want to say again
Please, look around good,
Generation before make a lot good
Check it out!
I need to check it out
You need to check it out
For make something good!
I know, you know
I'm sure God all the time
God is very very good!
Yeah check this out Please if you would.

-Ali Nikoonizad

Please check this out
Please don't say God don't make myself
I believe you, I believe yourself
I believe God, Yeah! I believe God
I am sure, I am very sure
God made you and God made me
God bless your side and yourself
God bless my side and myself
I need, I say God bless your generation and
the next generation. Amen

-Ali Nikoonizad

MY FRIEND WALTER

After God name. I need call God's Name.
I love God. I love God's name.
I have some best friend.
His name is Walter.
Very good, very kind is Walter.
Anytime I see him, he talks kind to me.
If I'm talking for something good,
show me nice face, Walter.
Yeah! Very good, very kind is Walter.
My friend, you want some friend, just like Walter?
Please make yourself just like Walter.
You see everybody is just like Walter.
God bless,
Amen!

-Ali Nikoonizad

Yesiree folks, Dubya is scarier than Dr. Octopus, Sauron, Leatherface, Zombies, Natural Disaster and Satan.

And he's REAL. Believe it folks.

And somebody tell Schilling to shut the hell up. Aren't there any Democrats on the team? C'mon, guys, speak up, or are you too busy getting laid?...

I think I see a stately pleasure dome down there...

Somebody should do a broadside/chapbook of Perry's BoSox poems to commemorate the Sox going to the series.

Daisy Fried gave an excellent reading at MIT last night. Her work is pretty much narrative/elegiac but there is something very compelling about it. It is almost prose, but also somehow inherently poetic. Refreshing to remember that the Confessionals have not totally ruined this mode for all time. I don't always like poems that feel so...human...but in this instance the poems adumbrate the joys and sublimities of being so. There's also something very sexy about them, I suppose something to do with their unselfconscious humanity. Anyway, check out her book She Didn't Mean to Do It if you haven't.

OK higher powers, now you just have to put John Kerry in the whitehouse and I'll stop it with the "you don't exist" stuff.

For a little while, at least.

The guy who thought of this should be sainted. I totally want one also.

If I'm not allowed to smoke in restaurants I should be able to ask them to turn off the TV as this is "polluting" MY "space" in the same manner that smoke does... Before you say "but Mark, TV doesn't kill you," think about FOX NEWS and ask yourself how many people TV kills...

New on "I Have Twice Your Power":

GUYS IN ARMOR

I finally updated the freaking links. Please take the pins out of the voodoo dolls. Thanks.

Just in time for the elections is Christina Strong's Utopian Politics from Faux Press. Dubya would say she is "left of the mainstream."

While I am not a big fan of baseball or formal verse, I am finding something charming about the formal poems Greg Perry has been writing about the playoffs. Maybe it is the occasional aspect of the subject as I have always thought occasional poems to be particularly suited to verse forms for some reason (perhaps the ritual quality to it), or the fact that baseball itself to me feels a highly formalized and nuanced spectacle, despite its everyman sort of exterior. Any game is a repetition of familiar signs, symbols and events, even though each game is different; in this way formal verse is similar insofar as it repeats oft-handled structures and tropes. The juxtaposition of the slightly rareified context of formal verse and the more or less non-rareified context of baseball is sort of compelling as well.

Let it not be said that I'm not capable of thinking outside my own box. I consider formal verse to be a pretty limited endeavor, but improvisation within limitations is really what art is all about. I think it's infrequent for folks to happen upon truly successful formal verse, but these baseball poems seem like a likely candidate.

By way of the previous quiz, this quiz which is even funnier...


Which Nigerian spammer are You?

Thanks to Brian for this dorkiest of dorkiness.



Which OS are You?

Favorite quote from "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence":

"This is no time for poetics, we're almost out of ammunition."

While the image of a one-armed geisha sex robot wielding an assault rifle is certainly compelling, I found the film to be a little disappointing, albeit extremely visually beautiful.

ALPHA SEXTANTIS



Attenuated wobbles into autumn:




	I did once love

	the winter stars,




a woman in an 

exoskeleton, mundane




events aboard spacecraft;




	this equation into

	which Go figures

	more often than chess




whom the early surrealists loved.




One body among all bodies

	sweats, breathes




as though high places did

	not birth conifers;




the forgotten tend toward

	pristine expression--




bring this news to Ghengis:

	the masses




do not enjoy birds no more.

Aaron lays into poetry magazine. Woo-hoo! It's like when Yoda takes out his lightsaber in AOTC...

Kind of like eating chili peppers, ice cream, and oranges in rapid succession: a cursory glance at the New Yorker, a look at the Academy of American Poets website and this article have me feeling all disgruntled about literature.

Why don't I remember any of this nonsense from when I signed up for this job, anyway?

Speaking of heroes, please check out the newest installment of "I Have Twice Your Power":


Guys Who Are On Fire.

I just saw "Hero" this weekend also, and I agree with Josh's distress that this film is ultimately a celebration of fascism. His reference to Pound is appropriate also. What to do with art which is formally intereting, if not beautiful, but which has an execrable message?

A good deal of the response to this question depends on context. The relative success of "Hero" troubles me at this time given that we are presently struggling against the tides of fascism in this very country. The image of the just but iron-fisted leader who's inhumane policies are enacted for the good of some amorphous concept of "nation," and the idea of peace secured through violence are not ones that I care to have floating around the zeitgeist presently.

That said, it was an entertaining film. But troublesome insofar as I'm concered about its effect on an audience (U.S. citizens) who have a hard time separating fantasy from reality...

I swear I will actually be at this one!!!:

FULCRUM 3 LAUNCH READING
Sunday, Oct. 3 at 5 p.m.
MIT, Room 6-120, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
Landis Everson, Peter Gizzi, Don Share, Katia Kapovich, Ben
Mazer, Philip Nikolayev, Fan Ogilvie, Mark Lamoureux, John
Hennessy (introduced by Bill Corbett)

DIRECTIONS: Enter MIT at main entrance at 77 Mass Ave. and
walk to the end of the Infinite Corridor taking your last
right. Halfway down there is a foyer on the left and across
from it is 6-120.

Celebrating the publication of Fulcrum 3

Fri. Oct. 1 at 8 p.m.
Amherst Books, 8 Main St, Amherst, MA
Landis Everson, Ben Mazer, Katia Kapovich, Philip Nikolayev,
Mark Lamoureux, John Hennessy

Anybody want to drive me to Amherst tomorrow night?

New Frontiers in Egomania

As befits my obsession with preserving every single mark on paper I've ever made (Is it any wonder my girlfriend is an archivist?), when I was visiting my Mom in CT back in August I unearthed a big stash of comics that I had drawn when I was about 10 or 11 or so. I know how much you all love comics, so... I made a blog to house the comics. There are a TON of them, so I'll be posting them periodically grouped by various themes, along with transcriptions as at 10 years old I could neither draw nor spell.

I know this is of paramount interest to all of you so go on over to I HAVE TWICE YOUR POWER and look into my 10-year-old mind...it was a pretty scary place...

Whoop, There It Is

Buy It!!!

See Dad, all those hours playing Atari were good for something.

Now if I can just write something about 70s Anime, all of my geekery will be backed up by legitimate scholarship...

"You got to be able to speak clearly in order to make this world a more peaceful place," Bush said. "

Somebody should learn him some English and some foreign policy...

So I hope to see you NYC people at the Fulcrum 3 release reading at the KGB on Saturday (tomorrow) at 6:00 PM. Following the reading, I'm planning on heading over to the BPC to see the astonishing Kid Beyond and apparently several other beat-boxes.

(Attempting to preface human beat-boxes is probably a bad idea, but what can you do...)

If only it were the last Fulcrum reading at the KGB which featured Billy Collins, whose beat-boxing skills are well known as is his proficiency with kung-fu, utilizing his prehensile tail and his natural abilities as a citizen of Krypton.

Say hello to my old pal Cheryl Clark.

OK, I lied, I will post something singular and interesting tomorrow.

Go, Kofi!

Golden Oreos contain all of that great Vienna Finger taste without that peculiar Vienna Finger shape.

Though I am uncertain as to how they differ from the white Hyrdrox.

These are the important questions of the day.

I promise to post something interesting, or at least singular, this evening...

I have been slacking on the blog a bit. It has been a busy couple of weeks. Some new projects in the works, however, and I will resume regular blogging as soon as I have something to say besides, "Boy am I busy"...

Celebrating the publication of Fulcrum 3

Sat. Sept. 25 at 6-9 p.m.
KGB Bar, 85 East 4th St (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), NYC
Landis Everson, Glyn Maxwell, Katia Kapovich, Ben Mazer,
Philip Nikolayev, Mark Lamoureux, John Hennessy

Landis Everson was an inner member of the Berkeley
Renaissance of the late 1940s, the fourth intimate of the
famed Spicer-Duncan-Blaser circle. To Jack Spicer he was a
myth and a god. To Robert Duncan he was the Poet King. John
Ashbery admired his poetry in New York in the early 1950s,
and published selections in Locus Solus in 1962 (Everson's
last appearance in print until now!). In 1960 Everson
participated in a pivotal three-person weekly Sunday poetry
group with Spicer and Blaser in San Francisco. While Spicer
was writing Homage to Creeley, Everson was composing Postcard
from Eden and The Little Ghosts I Played With, two great
sequences which now appear in print for the first time in
Fulcrum 3, in The Berkeley Renaissance, edited by Ben Mazer.
Fulcrum is proud to present Landis Everson's first public
appearances in over forty years.

John Hennessy's poems have recently appeared or are
forthcoming in Fulcrum, The Sewanee Review, Salt, The Yale
Review, LIT, and Ontario Review. He teaches at UMass Amherst.

Katia Kapovich's collection of English language poetry is
Gogol in Rome (Salt, 2004). She is also a well-known Russian
poet.

Mark Lamoureux's chapbooks are CITY/TEMPLE (Ugly Ducking
Presse, 2003) and 29 CHEESEBURGERS (Pressed Wafer, 2004).

Glyn Maxwell, born in Hertfordshire, England, now lives in NY
City. His several books of poetry include The Breakage and
The Nerve (both Houghton Mifflin). He is the poetry editor of
The New Republic and teaches at Princeton and Columbia.

Ben Mazer's chapbook selection of poetry, with cover art by
Mary Fabilli, is forthcoming from Fulcrum this fall. He is
the editor of The Berkeley Renaissance (Fulcrum, 2004) and
The Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom (Handsel, 2005).

Philip Nikolayev's latest book of poetry is Monkey Time, 2001
Verse Prize winner. His new collection is forthcoming from
Salt.

Fulcrum: an annual of poetry and aesthetics, Number Three,
2004, edited by Philip Nikolayev and Katia Kapovich.

510 pp., perfectbound
Publication date: September 21

FULCRUM 3: SPECIAL FEATURES

An Anthology of the Berkeley Renaissance, edited by Ben
Mazer, featuring work by Mary Fabilli, Jack Spicer, Robin
Blaser, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Landis Everson, plus
artwork & photos

We Who Live in Darkness: Poems from New Zealand by 21 Leading
Poets, edited by Gregory O'Brien

Fulcrum Debate: Joan Houlihan and Chris Stroffolino

Artwork by Konstantin Simun

CONTRIBUTIONS by Bill Berkson, David Baratier, Alison
Croggon, Fred D'Aguiar, Arjen Duinker, Michael Farrell, Annie
Finch, Edwin Frank, Peter Gizzi, Joe Green, Jeffrey Harrison,
John Hennessy, Bruce Holsapple, Joan Houlihan, Coral Hull,
Kabir, David Kennedy, John Kinsella, Mark Lamoureux, Glyn
Maxwell, Ben Mazer, Andrew McCord, Richard McKane, Ange
Mlinko, Richard Murphy, Vivek Narayanan, Gregory O'Brien, Fan
Ogilvie, Simon Perchik, Mai Van Phan, Peter Richards, Michael
Rothenberg, Tomaz Salamun, Don Share, Chris Stroffolino, Jeet
Thayil, Mark Weiss, Harriet Zinnes, and many others.

SUBSCRIPTION rates in the US are $15 per issue for
individuals, $30 for institutions. Iternational subscriptions
are $20 and $40 per issue, respectively. Send check or money
order drawn in US currency and payable to Fulcrum Annual to
Fulcrum, 334 Harvard Street, Suite D-2, Cambridge, MA 02139.

PREORDER Fulcrum 3 now! Fulcrum 2 sold out in 2 months and is
reviewed in Jacket at

http://jacketmagazine.com/25/kam-fulcr.html

QUERIES: editor@fulcrumpoetry.com

With the looming Monkey Awards, now is probably not the time to post a moronic quiz.

Though this blog has been moronic quiz free for many months. And I kind of like this one. Blame it on Tieger....


Captain Beefheart... you are one of the first
modern fucked-up geniuses. When it comes to
creating, you rank right up there with the
likes of James Mangan, John Wilmot and Edvard
Munch.


Which fucked-up genius composer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Balagan Experimental Film Program starts tonight at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Boston:

Thursday, September 9, 7:30PM
Balagan starts its season with a program of recent shorts from the local filmmakers:
New England Beat (http://coolidge.org/balagan/new_england_fall2004.html)
Among the artists featured are: Robert Todd, Alfred Guzzetti, Bob Harris, Saul Levine, Nancy Andrews, Ann Steuernagel, Alice Cox.

We will program 10 shows for this season (http://coolidge.org/balagan/current.html).
Among the programs are: Echoes from the Flaherty Seminar - in person ? Margarita DeLaVega, the executive director of the Flaherty Seminar (September 23 , 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM); Filmmakers from the West Coast: Matt McCormick - in person (October 14 , 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM), Bushwacked II (October 28, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM), Balagan collaborates with Boston Jewish Film Festival (November 11, 2004, Thursday, 7:30PM) and others.

The BIG BALAGAN of the season (October 20 and 21) will host two lecture/screenings with Peter Kubelka and we are honored to welcome Peter in person. Please, save those two dates to meet this legendary filmmaker, film theorist and curator who will come to Boston from Austria to share his films and thoughts about film medium. For more information about this program, please visit the website.

Feeling lucky tonight, for friends, for stability in romantic matters, for art on the walls, for my books and relative success.

Viewed from a certain angle, the Sword of Damocles disappears...

MIRFAK

Summer ending as a life does, those
invisible stars sputter & deign to fall
like metal balls into a wooden maze,
the angel rotor of amassing hours
swirling stolid firmament like the glowing loci
of a ferris-wheel, no recourse but
to cement the spine to the world's rough
skin, its gloss as even grapes fall
from the arbor. Every bright, every dark
thing must go this way, every vessicle
aswell for the turning year, the falling
sky, the silver pupa of a sleeping bag
oceanside as the steam of mussels at last,
alas, alights for good: the sun, bastard,
growing wan, the land seeping toward
those countries of night: black Saturn
bower of the lady abhorrent:

Tho you, hero, stuck fast to the glue
that holds the whole welter together:
no firebringer or mere mellifluous
surfer, you compass-needle, bion-
rider--every verebra aglint with Elmo's
fire, cavern-lighter, you holy naked
infant smiting binaries weak as
fruit, no god or no rigid mortal:
spasm-ghost, you are meat, a damp wind,
an electric worm who crawls along
the curves of god's old name.

I should mention that the thinking of Wilhelm Reich has influenced the poems of late.

I swear I am working on something for the tag poems, I have been delayed by computer shenanigans...

Best of luck to all the readers at the various Poets Against the War and DEMO readings tonight, wish I could be there.

But given that BOTH, yes BOTH of my Macs are out of comission and need to be repaired, I don't think I'm going to be doing any extraneous travelling anytime soon...

Aaron's post to Gate of Horn reminds me of a nightmare I had about 10 years ago that I made into a poem (the poem is 10 years old also), so I posted it there.

#30, Death Row, Huntsville, Texas: James Vernon Allridge III's Last Meal


Allridge requested a last meal

of a double-meat bacon cheeseburger w/

lettuce, tomatoes & salad dressing.

He also requested shoestring french fries w/

ketchup, banana pudding or

banana pudding ice cream, watermelon or

white seedless grapes.

"I am sorry," he said.

Congratulations to James and Amanda Cook who just gave birth to Abigail Faulkner Asling Cook!

I bet James looks like this.

All I wanted was a Pangyric,

Just one Pangyric.

Or, in the words of NEG:

"I am destroying the body in order to bring out the text" .

NEG gets a certificate with wings and one of those shark-tooth necklaces.

Can I have my certifacte now?

I want an orange one.

Write your poems in a small yellow notebook;

Find a puppy;

Give the puppy some Puppy Chow or a nice piece of steak;

Remember, all poems are political.

When sitting down to write, wear mirrorshades, a brown leather jacket, and a Slayer "Reign in Hell" T-shirt;

Who the man?;

You the man.

The Egyptians would refrain from writing the names of insects, animals, spritis when they transcribed religious passages on the underside of coffin-lids because mentioning these things in the passages would cause the soul to be forever plagued by them in the afterlife;

Try writing your poems on the underside of your coffin-lid;

Now you can get laid forever.

When giving a poetry reading it is often helpful to pretend that the audience is dead;

this will make the reader a little dead also;

now everyone can begin to try to enjoy the poems.

OK, can we charge them with noise pollution next?

At last new content on gate of horn, the dreams of John Mulrooney.

Do not let this man go to sleep.

Fulcrum 2 reviewed in Jacket by Ilya Kaminsky here.

Issue 3 is due out by September 25 (provided none of us has a nervous breakdown by Wednesday...) Lots of exciting stuff coming up in this one...

In other news...

I received a porno spam from someone named "Count Fuckula."

Could be an interesting Halloween costume...

Apparently according to the Catholic Church, people alleric to Wheat are also damned. Way to go Catholicism, it's always great to alienate little kids with terminal illnessness. Jesus would be so proud of you...

Blogger's block...

THE GOD OF DAY HAD GONE DOWN UPON HIM, Stan Brakhage

Reeds	rushes

blue	canvas

firefly	eyes



mobile	motes

Will o' the wisp	jig	slop

		finger	pattern



foam	organs



		ghost boat



cloud form

&

	foam shadow eye



hair mote digital wave

	timbre



fire	bubble

		ball

		scrape	Draco	stars

	air

lens	vertigo	horizon	lantern



			wake	walking

			steeple

chimera	cell	tussle

bright	muddle

penscratch	scry

		shift

rising	bird	down

		shine	puddle

		red

gazelle	line	tango

		strata

throttle	huddle	missive

camera	votive		angle

		blackberry



		sheen

grape	light	Shasta

		river

		ice

		pinion



floral	epoch

	eclipse

	rerhizome	axiom

			moon	governor

stripe

	horse water

aorta bubble



black	silk

	nation	shape



shift	strata



shell	contour

launch	prison	open

		stutter

		eagle

bale

			maw

	eye	tantrum

		tantra



flower		muscle	light

				shoal

runner	curler		mower



		tumult	breaker

		cage		flannel



earlobe	wire	ocean

			Friend

flower	girth

water	current	gulf

	remnant

gooseneck	S	dips

		echo

		suture

	swirl	lesson



molten	castle	bubble

		Sutra



		lampblack



wick	shore

		ship	pestle





level	split

gradient	shadow

		cover



sad	margin

rattle

	slough

tramp		splash

		

		gravel

silver

		isthmus



Nessie		column	sparkle

tumor		fellow



tirade		flora

		to

		sleep

		next

		to

		the

		sea

	leopard

	

	flame	gate

fluid	flat	hills



	siphon

		Disco

		Duck

THE MAMMALS OF VICTORIA, Stan Brakhage

Ocean	quiver

	static

water	synthesis

light	mote	wink

water	rush	fire

dim	glow	shoal

wake

	filament

		handprint

vulcan

	ripple	for

piss	blur

	sublime	schism



	window

	spirit



advance	rhythm

dark		sparkle

dark		dark

			blood

water	shadow	texture

	viscous

	


runs

r 	smoke	phantom

o

l	cenotaph

l

i	light finger schema

n		cellular

g

	lit point vertigo

I'M GOING TO CONNECTICUT AND I'M BRINGING A...

I'm off to CT for about 4 days tomorrow morning (tremendously exciting way to spend my vacation, I know...) so expect more sporadic than usual blogging. As any of you who have spend any time in CT know, there's absolutely nothing to do in CT whatsoever, so I'm hoping to catch up on my elephantine reading list. In an act of unparallelled pretentiousness, I'll give my reading list (for all of you who are saying :"What!?! That bastard hasn't read my book YET!" Rest assured the situation will be rectified by Friday.

CT READING LIST:

Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich Charles Rycroft
Aufgabe 3
Serenades James Meetze
Down Spooky Shanna Compton
Schema Alli Warren
Sky Journal from Land hassen
Sky Journal from Sea hassen
North/South John Cotter and Shafer Hall
What Belongs in the Circle Noah Eli Gordon
Belladonna Bilingue 1 & 2
N+1 Number 1
Simulacra and Simulation Jean Baudrillard

My chances of getting through all of it while simulatenously resetting all of my Mom's VCR, phone, oven, etc. clocks are next to nil, I realize... But it's best to aim high and get halfway there...

Apparently, redheads get in for free this Sunday at the London Zoo...

They are obviously too uptight in the U.K. to appreciate the true grandeur of the redhead...

Keep the redheaded monkey comments to yourself, smartassess...

Thanks to everyone who came to Geof Huth's memorable reading/performance at Gallery 108 last night. A fine time was had by all. It was great to hear Geof's embellishments of his visual work and readings of some of his "textual" poems as well.

Thanks as always to Christopher Rizzo for preparing a beautiful pamphlet/broadside of pwoermds for the occasion.

I have some poems up at the Verse Magazine weblog.

Tonight at Gallery 108

Thursday, August 5th 7PM:

Geof Huth presents:

Eyear: an indiscriminate series of poems spoken
and seen

Gallery 108
108 Beacon St., Somerville, MA
Contact: Mark Lamoureux, Maudite Productions
617.460.0118
Free and open to the public.

Please do not miss this rare opportunity to see
the work of Geof Huth, visual artist and poet and
visual poet.

Geof will be presenting a selection of aural and
visual work, in addition visual works will be
displayed on the gallery walls.

Geof Huth is a writer of textual and visual
poetry. The latter includes any poetry written
for the page and enhanced by the shape of the
text, the addition of images, or other visual
augmentations. His textual poetry has appeared in
many journals including "The American Poetry
Review," "Hiram Poetry Review," "Mid-American
Review," and "Poetry Northwest."

His visual poetry has appeared in
exhibitions across the world and many small
magazines including "Chimera," "Emigre," "The
Little Magazine," "Lost and Found Times,"
"Score," and upcoming in "LIT." He writes
frequently about visual poetry, especially on his
weblog, dbqp: visualizing poetics. His chapbooks
include Analphabet, The Dreams of the
Fishwife, ghostlight, Peristyle, To a Small
Stream of Water (or Ditch), and wreadings.

Huth recently edited &2: an/thology of pwoermds,
the first anthology of one-word poems. He
received a B.A. in English from Vanderbilt
University and an M.A. in creative writing from
Syracuse University. His micropress dbqp
publishes minimalist, visual, and conceptual
poetry.

This Just In from Credible Intelligence Sources

Oh my God! When the date turns over, all the computers are going to crash, airplanes will fall out of the sky! Chaos!

Do you have enough bottled water? The millenium is coming!

Beware Y2K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If anybody's got a car and some free time Thursday afternoon around 4:30, I could use a hand with some stuff...

OK, I am out of Grim Littles now. I'll send out all the requests I got yesterday today. Rizzo may still have some, but I'm all out!...

Here is a list of high-end hot dog places in New England...

God forbid I should start writing about hot dogs, thus condemning myself as "that guy who writes about meat," condemning myself to critics and PETA alike.

I swear my next book will be "29 Green Salads"...

If anyone wants a copy of "Grim Little," the lovely collaborative broadside/chap that Chris Rizzo's Anchorite Press produced, email me and I will send one to you.

Well, it is the Monday after the illustrious Boston Poetry Massacre. A good time was had by all. Many, many fantastic readers, new faces and old. It was great to finally meet a number of bloggers in person for the first time, and also a number of non-bloggers for the first time, too. Picked up any number of interesting chapbooks.

I noted that there were far more folks who stayed for relatively the entire weekend than ever before. Which is very nice, it gave the weekend a very cohesive and communal feel.

Come To Day 1

Come to day 1 of the illustrious Boston Poetry Massachre.

Highlights include: EVERYONE.

7:00 Sean Cole
7:12 Sara Veglahn
7:24 David Kirschenbaum
7:36 Chad Parenteau
7:48 Shin Yu Pai
break
8:12 Guillermo Juan Parra
8:24 Jim Dunn
8:36 Gina Myers
8:48 John Mulrooney
9:00 Shanna Compton
break
9:24 Christopher Rizzo
9:36 Dana Ward
9:48 Cole Heinowitz

Info for August 5 Geof Huth reading posted to the Maudite Productions blog.

Will my mug bring people to the Massacre? Perhaps some extra folks with torches and pitchforks... I need to stop terrorizing the poor townsfolk in the remote hours of the night with my glowering visage and hideous laugh. If they would just keep the bars open past 1AM...

Thanks to Jimmy for representing in the Improper Bostonian and elsewhere. I should point out that Rachel took this ubiquitous photo of me (in the body I occupy after the dawn has come...).

It's interesting to note that The New Yorker can make even Gary Snyder suck (as evinced by his poen "No Shadow" in the current issue).

What do people say to themselves? "I'm famous, and this poem really sucks. I think I'll send it to the New Yorker..."

Shanna is like one of those yellow smiley faces, except not annoying.

If ever one is in need of cheering up, Brand New Insects is a good place to start!...

My father and other critics are gonna love this. Neocon anti-intellectuals are going to have a field day.

But the important question (before we drag out the pit-bulls and cattle-prods) is: "Is it formal verse or post-avant?" BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

In case you're wondering, that was said with a good deal of bilious irony. Pardon me, I am ornery today. Weary of conflicts of all sorts. (I realize that life and art cannot exist without conflicts, but they can also exist without dogma...)

I should stop yammering about this stuff and write some goddamn poems.

It's about 10:15 AM. I got sick of the DNC about a half an hour ago. So that means, about 45 minutes in, I'm sick of it. The reality of it and the subject of it.

Is rote rejection also the rhetoric of violence? Just a harmless question. It is a snake with two heads. They argue which will swallow the tail.

I am sick of the war, the land war and the culture war. Ask the Venezuelans about the terror of the binary. My thoughts are with Guillermo in Florida, writing and reading, reading and writing (see post of about a week ago), and with Aaron soon to depart from this city.

Saw Lorca's "House of Bernarda Alba" last night on the Chelsea waterfront last night with Rachel, James and Amanda. More on that later. I think Lorca would have approved of the very pregnant Amanda squatting on the ground and knitting during the performance.

Women in black and white, Othello (the old kids' game and not the play) pieces nauseously flipping. Straw in her hair, the prettiest daughter dangles in her room. That is the object lesson of the binary. The poet as Adela Alba's green dress...

On the subject of outdoor stuff:

TheatreZone presents
Lorca in the Park
Free! in English & the Spanish original.

The House of Bernarda Alba/
La Casa de Bernarda Alba
by Federico Garcia Lorca

Lorca creates an explosion of desire, jealousy, despair,
and passion.

July 21-August 1, 7:30, FREE!
Mary O'Malley Park, Commandant's Way, on the Chelsea
Waterfront
(Admiral's Hill)
Bring your blankets or lawn chairs and join us on the pier!
Rain location: Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet
St., Chelsea Square (decision made by 6:00)

English performances are Thurs. July 22, Fri. July 23,
Sun. July 25, Sat. July 31

Spanish performances are Wed. July 21, Sat. July 24, Fri.
July 30, Sun. Aug. 1

Directions and Information: www.theatrezone.org or
617/887-2336

TheatreZone presents our 2nd annual Lorca in the Park,
free performances of The House of Bernarda Alba /La Casa de
Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca in Mary O'Malley Park, alternating
between performances in English and the Spanish original.

This powerful drama of seduction and betrayal, set in rural Spain, is a study in family relationships under the strain of culturally and socially imposed sexual taboos. When Bernarda Alba's husband dies, she strives to contain the passions of her five unmarried daughters, but desire prevails in a dramatic culmination of madness and violence.

R and I went to see the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's "Much Ado About Nothing" on the Common last night. They seemed to do a fairly good job of it. I'm not terribly familiar with this play, so I don't know if the slapstick elements were a reinterpretation or not, but they seemed to work. Oddly enough, I have always preferred the comedies to the tragedies, which is strange given my tragic temprament. Shakespeare himself seems to have a more comic mind, however. The play was certainly appropriate for a summer night under a honey-colored crescent moon. I could imagine the same set there in the dead of winter for a tragedy, but that would be expensive and ludicrous. Which would also be appropriate.

Anyway, it's around for a couple more weeks and I recommend checking it out. It is, after all, free...

After Jenny H

Check out this rad image Chris Rizzo made in reference to my poem "From Jenny Haniver" at the surf poetry collaborative. (This poem would go on to become Cheeseburger #17 of 29 Cheeseburgers, so you folks watching at home can follow along...) The Jenny Haniver project itself is not defunct, however, although its pretty far from existing presently.

Uh, to everyone I sent that arts petition email to, I guess it was a hoax. Boy do I feel stupid...

It is interesting to note that the thing has been circulating now for almost TEN YEARS! That's pretty bizarre. Someone should start an email exquisite corpse and see how long it will live for. That would be really interesting, actually. Maybe I'll do it...

"What does a writer do against the unrelenting spread of ignorance and violence in the wake of most human endeavors? A writer writes and reads."

Amen, brother Guillermo.

The going-away reading for Aaron seemed to go over very well. People in general seemed enthusiastic (to put it understatedly) about our respective readings. I thought we complemented each other very well, Aaron's quiet grace acting contrapuntally to my usual psychobilly freakout... The party (thanks to Chris and Em for all the help) was pretty fun also. I haven't had a party for many years, so it was nice that it all went rather smoothly. I have posted some photos from the reading and the party here. There are more, but again I only post photos of those folks who I know explicitly do not mind to have their images appear here.

AARON, CHEWING; ME, SMOKING; RACHEL, LOOKING PRETTY (Thanks to Bibliogal for the photos)

AARON AND CHRIS HAVE SOME REAL ESTATE ON MARS TO SELL YOU CHEAP (Thanks to Bibliogal for photos)

FAMINE, PESTILENCE AND HANGNAIL (thanks to Bibliogal for photos)

I READ (thanks to Bibliogal for photos)

AARON READS (thanks to Bibliogal for the photos)

 
Hope to see some of you tonight.
 
Not much else doing right now.
 

Because it's always good to have a friend in Canada, I have added Fictions of Deleuze and Guattari to the blogroll.

Montreal is one of my favorite cities on earth. Though you should be careful, Cliff, come December you may have a sudden influx of houseguests...

A note to all you Canadians: PLEASE INVADE SOON. Please?

I'm also a fan of D & G.

Come One, Come All

Wha?

AP Poll: Bush Seen Decisive, Kerry Smart

OK, since when do we value anything BESIDES intelligence in our elected leaders? The only other thing I can think of is charisma, and we all know Dubya is about as charismatic as an autistic proctologist. He's "DECISIVE," yes he DECIDED to surreptitiously invade another country for specious reasons, he DECIDED to declare war on abortion and civil rights, he DECIDED to perhaps irredeemably mangle the economy. Yes, he's as dumb as a box of rocks, but he's DECISIVE.

Why am I not afforded this same luxury? Well, maybe it was DUMB to run up those thousands of dollars of debt on my credit cards in my 20's, but it was DECISIVE, so I'm fit to be president, right? I can spend egregious amounts of money on ridiculous things also... (But I don't kill anyone in the process...)

Let us pray that we can ixnay Governor Bush before the man has a chance to DECIDE on anything else, and at least put someone who is ostensibly "smart," most likely fairly charismatic (mark my words, if we manage to elect him, I will personally write an ODE TO HIS HAIR) and at the very least apparently a human being into office.

This post is rife with capital letters. Not sure why I'm feeling compelled to capitalize here...

Happy Blogday to Me

<[[[[[[-[[[[0{:}0]]]]-]]]]]]> turns 1 today!

Happy Blogday, <[[[[[[-[[[[0{:}0]]]]-]]]]]]>. What a year it's been. Exciting things I discussed before are still in the works.

Here's one of the first posts (of note) back in 2003, the infamous "Ghost City" post:

"LET'S TALK ABOUT THE INTERNET

Ok, on the one hand doing this is giving me a slightly sick feeling inside. On the other hand, what else was I going to do this afternoon? Write? HA!

One of the reasons why I've been reluctant to enter this whole morass of blogging is that I've become very concerned recently about the influence this whole blogging phenomenon is having on our little community. The other night at Charlie's Kitchen, somebody made a joke that we would soon all be sitting around a table blogging to wireless-connected laptops and not actually speaking to one another. Now that will never happen, but I do believe that the internet is having some sort of effect on how people interact socially.

I don't know whose concept it is, but in urban planning there's this concept of "soft city" vs. "hard city". The hard city is the physical reality of any given city: it's buildings, roads, etc. The soft city is any given person's experience of the city, e.g., where they work, how they walk to work, the places they frequent, etc. A "city" is lots of soft cities imposed on one unalterable hard city.

I'm thinking that the net and net-related space represent a third kind of city within that framework, let's call it a "ghost city," because it doesn't really exist. Like the soft city, each person's ghost city is unique, we all visit different websites, blogs, etc. And indeed therein is formed a community of sorts. Within this community one finds people from one's own soft city, but also others not within that sphere, people you don't know, from far away, etc. There's a danger to the ghost city that I haven't quite figured out yet.

Within the ghost city, it is possible to find a kind of ghost intimacy, a feeling of connection with others which is real, but also slightly surreal. It's easy to get sucked into chat rooms, etc. and have a feeling of communion with other people, or to read blogs, etc. and get a sense like you are interacting/communicating with a given person. However, like ghosts, the "people" there are insubstantial, you're not talking to X person, you're not visiting X person when you visit their blog. And no, you're not having sex with X person, either... However, it is easy to fall into that ghost intimacy and think that you're connecting...

As the ghost city grows, does the soft city shrink? Anyone?"

Bizarro Mark Number 2

Not to be confused with the Mark Lamoureux of countertop shoppe fame:

"(7/22/2002)--The popping sound of enemy gunfire from outside bounced off the walls of the second story room as Spc. Mark Lamourex crouched against the doorway with his rifle at the ready. His sleepless eyes scanned the darkened corridors of the old building as the battered American squad protected a room that three soldiers had given their lives to clear.

Even with his cold hands tightly gripping his weapon, Lamourex applied a gentle pressure to the trigger and waited for a foreign soldier to enter his crosshairs."

From the National Guard site.

See, this is what happens to me when you misspell my last name...

Disc Jockey Arrested for On-Air Gag

OK, so only a moron walks into a convenience store with a ski-mask... But arresting him for a "terrorist threat"? Since when do terrorists jack convenience stores? Since when are terrorists that stupid?

I don't know if I'd argue with the criminalization of abject stupidity, but given that it isn't illegal yet (we'd have to indict the entire current administration), it seems like arresting the guy is a little worrisome.

I just realized that I get a 20% discount from Kinkos with my Harvard ID card. So all you folks with printing projects, I can get you 20% off!

Am considering acquiring a bookshelf exclusively for the "to read" pile. Sigh.

In other news, the blog turns 1 next week. In the spirit of dogged idolatry (don't panic, Tim, I'm just making a self-effacing joke) I have something "exciting" planned...

"We've got better vision, better ideas, real plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening to America -- and we've got better hair," Kerry said, laughing."

I'm no Kerry yesman, but I have to admit I find something vaguely endearing about the above statement. At face value it's sort of puerile and shallow, but, I think Kerry's willingness to say something like that demonstrates that he has a command of the nuances of speech and public rhetoric that Dubya lacks, e.g. he's capable of saying something that has text and subtext, and that he has a sense of humor, another trait seemingly surgically removed from our current fearless leader at birth along with his heart, his brain, and I'm willing to wager, his genitals (since there's been no-one in history so desperately in need of getting laid).

The statement is interesting insofar as it is self-deprecating on the one hand, and on the other hand, quite true. Kerry's playing with a signifier, a hairdo as representing one's cultural placement or stance--in being willing to address this aspect of his own character Kerry is demonstrating that he knows something about American culture and is not cut off from the concerns of the everyman. Political posturing is easy, but I think such subtle gestures evince the true nature of the person in question. It's in this way that Dubya so often resembles a kind of antagonistic robot or smug zombie, he's cut off from humanity and incapable of feigning that connection (just as he's incapable of feigning a facility for the English language or foreign policy.)

Kerry is growing on me a little bit. Obviously, I've planned to vote for the Democratic candidate in this election since about December 2000, but at this rate I'll be cringing a little less as I do so. A little less. It still feels like opting for the blow on the head instead of the kick in the balls, but...

CARVE 3 READING PHOTOS (Courtesy Shin Yu Pai)

CHRIS RIZZO & SEAN COLE

CARVE 3 READING PHOTOS (Courtesy Shin Yu Pai)

SHIN YU & KORT

CARVE 3 READING PHOTOS (Courtesy Shin Yu Pai)

ME LOOKING SWEATY READING CATHERINE MENG'S "TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT"

CARVE 3 RELEASE PARTY PHOTOS (coutesy of Shin Yu Pai)

JOHN MULROONEY & ME GETTING INTO TROUBLE

CARVE 3 RELEASE PARTY PHOTOS (coutesy of Shin Yu Pai)

AARON TIEGER, BIBLIOGAL AND SEAN COLE BUSTING A MOVE

CARVE 3 RELEASE PARTY PHOTOS (coutesy of Shin Yu Pai)

C

IS FOR CHRIS RIZZO WHO ROCKED THE HOUSE.

Am slowly unburying myself at work. Had a pleasant holiday weekend at the ICA with R and then Gloucester with the Gloucester crew. The Kai Althoff exhibit at the ICA is fantastic and I recommend going to see it if you are in Boston.

Shin Yu sent some photos of the Carve 3 release event which I will post shortly (thanks Shin Yu!).

Err...no, the OTHER Stockholm Syndrome...

Though I think John M. and Co. should just steal the name back. The other crew don't exactly look like the litigating type.

But they could be a bunch of entertainment lawyers, for all I know. Who plays in jam bands anyway? (Besides IT professionals (no offense to you non Jam-band playing IT professionals) and Marketing Majors (same disclaimer)?)

I can't believe that people are still drawing tippy.

When I was in grade school I remember the bus driver had her rendition of Tippy hanging above the dash. Which even then for some reason I found to be moving and profound somehow...

Jean is right, I should make the trek out to the west coast sometime. I haven't been out there in about 10 years.

The thing about coastal towns is that they seem to be rather timeless, whatever new face gets placed on their facades, their old identity as a port town, the places where most of the people living on this continent first set foot, ergo a gateway to the rest of the world. The polar opposite of the homogenous "heartland" by way of their remoteness from the same. Is it any wonder that our coasts are the strongholds of progressivism? The sea makes us remember the rest of the world and the rest of history...

Lord of Melancholy

I have almost unburied myself of the absurd amounts of work I have had. All of you to whom I owe emails/correspondance/etc. will get them soon. Sorry that I've dropped off the face of the earth, but just a lot of projects reaching their apogee all at once.

Additionally, I bought a stereo amplifier for ten bucks from a yard sale over the weekend, which I hooked up to an old turntable my roommate had lying around and some speakers, so I now once again have the ability to listen to vinyl, which I haven't had in a good four or five years.

My vinyl collection consists mostly of classical music I picked up from radio and library going-out-of-business sales and tons of mid-90's Emo (Maximilian Colby, anyone?) Also, of course, my copy of "Pac Man Fever" (alas, if I had only had the record player around as I was finishing my article for Soft Skull's Gamers) which I suppose I will wait until I have some time alone in the apartment to listen to. Most of the music has been on ice for so long, that it feels almost new. Apart from "Christmas in the Stars," the Star Wars Christmas album, which becomes cemented in my head every December and which I would pay money to have surgically removed and all memory of it erased from my brain (22 years of "What Can You Get a Wookie for Christmas when He Already Owns a Comb?" is penance enough for whatever I did wrong in those past lives, right?...)

Listening to old Shotmaker, Maximilian Colby and Halal Shedad records I find myself astonished that rock music exists which doesn't sound like the Jam, Joy Division or the Rolling Stones, which seem to the the 3 primary modes of late. Some of that unintelligible shrieking feels textural in the way that improvised music is, and nice to hear from a time when when fey art school boys were still allowed to play like Celtic Frost...

I couldn't be happier with how the Maudite Productions Michael County/Jim Dunn and (Dear Old) Stockholm Syndrome event went on Saturday. It is the first time I've tried to pair up improvisational music and written words, and I think it went pretty well. Both Mike can Jim were particularly suited to the environment, I think. Ostensibly there is a recording of a portion of it, so I will keep you faithful readers informed.

In other news, it's summer and time to start beach-schemeing. Nothing says summer like fried food and obnoxious crowds. I will shamelessly admit, however, that I love cheesy beach towns in the summer. The cheesier the better. My favorite is Salisbury Beach, but I don't think I'll be going there this summer, as it is too haunted. This is a problem with such towns, they become occupied by ghosts too quickly.

By sometime in August, the Spangler BBQ will have lost its novelty. However, today it was exciting to get a cheeseburger from the grill to the tune of "Our Lips are Sealed." The guy who runs the grill seems to have a habit of talking copiously to the food in front of him. "Ah its a lonely cheeseburger, come to daddy." It's a little alarming that every year they get a black guy to do the grill. Given that there are a lot of black guys on the Restaura staff, this could be merely coincidental. I guess, also, it takes a certain amount of machismo to want to stand in front of that hot grill at high noon on the hottest days of the year. You probably would not see my scrawny white ass doing such a thing. They really ought to have a tip jar for the BBQ guy.

This all makes me want to listen to "They Smoke the Barbeque" by Pere Ubu. Which is actually a fantastic song:

"I lie awake
I was waiting for the clouds to break
No doubt you've heard
about the door in through the Northern Pole
It's hard to believe
Are there people really living underneath?
I hear they live on fruit and air
I hear they love ole Yogi Bear
I hear they're good at parking cars
I hear they want to be like we are

They'll move next door
They'll be a part of the neighborhood
But as sad as we are
the company must love misery
Now that we're on the downside of forever
I fear hard times are beginning
for real

I hear their sky is pink all day
I hear they love ole Yogi Bear
I hear they sneak around at night
I hear they want to be like we are
We stay up late
We're waiting for the clouds to break
Through the barbeque smoke
men from Mars?
It's no joke!
We're not alone
and eager eyes watch the sky
My new buddies and me
we say
Misery must love company"

Barbeque and Martians. It doesn't get any better than that!...

I believe that it is functionally impossible to consume enough hot dogs to feel like you've actually had lunch.

CBS Joins Reality Hunt for New INXS Singer

Kind of makes you realize why Michael Hutchence decided to leave. & his ghost still can't get any respect.

"Here come the world
With the look in its eye
Future uncertain but certainly slight
Look at the faces
Listen to the bells
It's hard to believe we need a place called hell"

Thanks to Graywyvern for pointing to my Nemesis poem.

Great reading by Dan Bouchard and Ron Silliman last night. I especially liked the cage match betwen Behrle and Silliman. I never knew Silliman could shoot beams from his eyes like that. I didn't know there was a tiny little alien who operates the Jim Behrle robot exoskeleton, either.

The things you learn.

Added James Meetze's Brutal Kittens and the Verse Magazine Blog to links.

Happy Father's Day to the fathers out there: Geof , Greg, Mike, James M., Jordan, and the father-to-be James C. as well as anyone I'm unaware of or have forgotten.

Thanks to Brian for this:

Bush and Zombie Reagan need more brains

Zombies are always funny.

Would someone please tell Yahoo! that their "improved" email, despite the added storage, is a piece of dookie!!!

It's driving me crazy. If this continues, I'm going to have to change to another service (maybe actually start using my comcast POP account); I'd rather not do this given that my email address has not changed in 6 years...

In those 6 years Yahoo has been fairly realiable, but since this upgrade it's been spotty, at best. Don't they test these things before they go live with them?

From the Amazon.com entry for the Triplets of Belleville DVD. Now why would the French poke fun at such erudite folks as this guy:

"Two stars: A good song, June 13, 2004
Reviewer: A viewer from Denver, CO

Didn't like the American jabs, particulaly by the french, although if it wasn't by the french it would be funny. But before you have time to relax and laugh theirs another joke at our expense. The statue of liberty wasn't voluptious, she was fat to represent "Bellville?" The sound effexts were interesting, the story obviouse, the animation was good. "

Happy Birthday *Rachel* !!!

and Noah Eli Gordon too, apparently. (I always knew I liked that guy!...)

It is unusual that my workslife intersects with my "real" life in any way, but this link off of the HBS intranet site about Bloomsday, the Joyce estate, readings, archives and intellectual property. It raises some interesting issues.

Maudite Productions is in need of an LCD Computer-Projection screen. Does anyone know where I might procure one of these?

Violation of Objective Correlative

Shaking my fists at the gods in anger!

This corn muffin is decidedly inedible...

All
skin &
bones, I is

I'm ashamed to say it, but sometimes I get annoyed by the daily MoveOn.org emails. Yes, yes! We're surrounded by evil, but please let me eat my lunch...

The Maudite readings have been going very well. Attendance for each event has been better than I expected (knock on wood). This weekend was no exception, fine readings by Shin Yu Pai, Jess Mynes, Christopher Rizzo, Sean Cole and Aaron standing in for Lori Lubeski; also, it was a pleasure to read the excellent work of Catherine Meng out loud to an audience. Thanks to everyone who read or attended. In two weeks will be the first Maudite event featuring live music, so hopefully this will go as smoothly as the others have, with the addition of sound equipment to worry about.

I'm glad to be doing things for poetry/other poets lately, because I haven't been writing that much, and at least this way I stay engaged and my temporary little hiatus does not lead to too much alienation from the medium. My saturnian termprament is still racing (if the god of melancholy can race) to catch up with the benign changes in my life these days. I'm perfectly capable of writing when I'm happy, but have grown somewhat out of practice with that particular mode, so there's a bit of a lag as the eyes readjust to a different lens. I don't necessarily write happy work when I myself am otherwise happy, but the source of the work shifts a bit somehow, if not the actual product. It does allow me to address subjects I am interested in writing about but have not been able to access from the proper frame of mind; but there is still the figuring out which frame fits.

Happy Birthday Jordan

(While he may look like Legendary God-giant Ideon, today he is the Birthday Robot in honor of Equanimity).

I was looking for a picture of a million poems but I couldn't find one.

A rough week and a half for music: Steve Lacy, Robert Quine, Ray Charles. Unfortunately eclipsed, of course, by more high profile cadavers.

Morissey said it so you don't have to.

Overall the score for the week looks like:

GOOD GUYS: -3

BAD GUYS: -1

You out-of-towners have no reason to wait until saturday to order up a copy of CARVE 3, from the fishblog.

O land of my ancestors, how I love you!

"Paris Goes After SUVs"

"Bulky four-by-fours could be banned from clogging up the chic streets of Paris after a top official in the capital's left-wing government described them as a polluting "caricature of a car" unsuited to city life."

Deux Chevaux for everyone! Make cheese not war!

Old bad senile President dead, let's move on. I don't think I've ever seen Americans pay attention to ANYTHING for this long.

June 12, 2004:

Carve Magazine Release Reading & Party

GALLERY 108
108 Beacon Street, Somerville, MA
8 PM

Contact: Mark Lamoureux, Maudite Productions 617.460.0118

Carve Magaizne presents a reading and party in honor of the release of CARVE 3, featuring:

Shin Yu Pai (Boston, MA)
Jess Mynes (Wendell, MA)
Catherine A. Meng (Berkeley, CA)
Christopher Rizzo (Boston, MA)
Sean Cole (Greater Boston, MA)
Lori Lubeski (Brookline, MA)
Emily Belz (Cambridge, MA) (cover artist)

CARVE is a small magazine devoted to publishing under-the-radar poetry. Each
issue is $5 (subs $20/4), available from Aaron Tieger, 51 Prentiss St. #7,
Cambridge MA 02140.
Appearing: Shin Yu Pai, Jess Mynes, Catherine Meng (as read by Mark Lamoureux),
Sean Cole, and Lori Lubeski (as read by Aaron Tieger).

Refreshments! Free and open to the public!

Further info: mark_lamoureux@yahoo.com/mauditepro.blogspot.com
or atieger@yahoo.com/fishblog.blogspot.com

The Sitemeter is certainly reflecting my reticence in posting here. As soon as I am less swamped with work, I'll get back to being interesting and exciting. Until then...are you a Dark Unicorn or a Mermaid?

Sue Me

I know it's much cooler to bicker endlessly about tenuously defined points or tender bits of semantics, but I thought it might be time, given the current blogging zeitgeist, for a moronic Quizilla quiz. A return to the heady days of December, 2003...


You're like a Dark Unicorn!


?? Which Mythical Creature Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

Generally speaking, I consider it unwise to speak ill of the dead. Particularly the recently dead.

My childhood dreams were full of mushroom clouds and the fears of poverty. But who knows what hell a man enters when his mind's eaten away and an earthly body becomes a prison. Age brings even those old devils down, as it will come for everyone, as death will come for everyone.

It is no longer an affair of this world, how Mr. Reagan's heart will weigh against the feather of Maat and it's not our sun in that sunset he goes into now.

Good luck, Ronald...

Strange and Ghostly

*I* didn't even put him up to that description, either...

"Please join us for a strange and ghostly Anti-Reading
at this sweet gallery in Somerville. See below.

- Matvei

> Maudite Productions hosts Loudmouth Collective and
Ugly Duckling Presse

> June 5, 2004: Anti-Reading

> GALLERY 108
108 Beacon Street, Somerville, MA

> 8 PM

> Contact: Mark Lamoureux, Maudite Productions
617.460.0112

PS -
We will have hard-to-get-in-Boston UDP books on hand
for sale, too.

>
> Loudmouth Collective began, ironically, with one
> member, James Hoff, sometime in the late
> winter/early spring of 2001. The collective's goal
> was to publish (chap)books of new work by some of
> the bright and underrated talents within the margins
> of the writing world. Furthermore, each publication
> would strive to challenge the typical physical
> appearance of the (chap)book.
>
> By March 2001, Hoff had been joined by Ryan Haley
> and preparations had begun for the Anti-Readings,
> which were to be organized with the assistance of
> the members of Ugly Ducking Presse. Anti-Readings
> quickly became the major focus of Loudmouth
> activities for the next year; culminating in a
> triumphant Poetry Project Anti-Reading in March
> 2002.
>
> During 2003, Loudmouth Collective had a
> retrospective show at Berlin's Elefant + Ship, a
> performance during the Virginia Festival of the
> Book, the premiere screening of Joel Schlemowitz's
> documentary Loudmouth Collective/Ugly Duckling
> Presse/Anti-Reading, and the release of Steve
> Dalachinsky's Trial and Error in Paris and Edmund
> Berrigan's I Feel Tractor.
> >
> Saturday, June 5, at Gallery 108 in Somerville,
> Massachusetts, Loudmouth Collective founder James
> Hoff and Ugly Duckling Presse members Matvei
> Yanklevitch and Anna Moschovakis will be presenting
> another Anti-Reading.
>
> For more information please see the
Maudite Productions Blog
>
=====
The UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE workshop
70 WASHINGTON STREET, GROUND FLOOR
BROOKLYN, NY 11201

www.UglyDucklingPresse.org open by appointment, 718-852-5529"

I rarely think of myself as being influenced by particular poets so much as I think of myself as being influenced by particular poems. I rarely think of the poets themselves as entities. In fact, the flesh and blood entity that produced the poem is fairly irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. Whatever the societal transgressions said entity perpetrates are between said entity and the society in question, to be resolved as is the custom of that society. How this manifests itself in the work is irrelevant, since, we needn't assume that any given piece of writing is "true" or "autobiographical," or that it is the author's fleshly voice. Insofar as a work stands in for an author metonymically we can think of these works as specters of the author, but what sins can a book commit? A work of literature cannot change or influence society, it can only change or influence people who in turn change or influence society, and it is more or less impossible to assess how any given work will affect a person. Gerard Manley Hopkins inspires me to want to smash the state moreso than Ginsberg et. al. ever did. I find politically-motivated work charming, and I enjoy it, but it is quixotic. I for one an enamoured of the quixotic, but to insist that every writer/person/whoever participate in that quixoticism is utterly preposterous.

I enjoy the "Four Quartets" and "Murder in the Cathedral," but not so much the "Wasteland," or much other Eliot for that matter. With Pound it is even more individual: particular poems, particular Cantos. Do these people influence me? Not really, or at least not this afternoon. Stan Brakhage influences me, Louise Brooks influences me, Matthew Shipp influences me, "Space Invaders" influences me, Bruce Andrews influences me, Longfellow influences me, Madonna influences me, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum, by 5:00 PM next Friday, this list will most likely have changed drastically...

OK this is my opening song and dance. A more coherent piece with footnotes will appear later lest it be said that I'm merely shooting from the hip here...