May 31, 2005

Mick and Dotty at Katalanche Press have posted a PDF version of the venerable Dachshund Magazine. Give it a read, if you have not. Also give all of their other chapbooks a read, if you have not.

May 25, 2005

My two cents: one of the problems manifest in this here blogosphere is that we can't really see/hear/smell/bask in each other's auras--it's harder to call someone a nitwit when you think they're hot/cute/handsome or whatever. That's why parties don't turn into the same sort of slap-fights as we find hereabouts (well, not *here*-abouts, I think my general tangentiality has long since exceeded anyone's ability to give a shit...). Flame wars are the dark side of the etherial community which the internet provides. The advent of the comment-box may have changed the tenor of the scene a little bit, made it a little less diaristic with the addition of the notion that someone can respond to what you are saying; enter the social dynamic sans the corporeality of actual society; and thus I guess begins some kind of demolition derby of little id-homunculi. A necessary evil I suppose, though it might be more fun to just play some online Unreal Torunament or something ("Look out, Quietude has a railgun!...) Yes, I am neglecting the aesthetic shibboleths at stake here. Mostly because I am generally freaking sick of them...
Does anyone else feel like we are being cursed by the gods? Who wants to help me build a cloudbuster?

If only I had a yard and a shed. ("What's he building in there?") Actually, I don't honestly want either a yard or a shed. OK, maybe a shed, on the roof of a skyscraper or something. As part of the Weed (no, not that kind) Liberation Front, I am ethically opposed to lawns...


May 24, 2005

I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. Once again it is Josh's fault....



(Note: links to get to this quiz not entirely 100% worksafe if you work in an uptight environment...)

May 20, 2005

I am having problems with my Yahoo email account. It seems that for the past few days, people have been receiving emails I sent during the past month or so at random intervals. So if I owe you an email and you never received it, please contact me. It seems to have been sporadic, so I have no idea which emails I have sent during the past month or so have reached their destination.

So if you are wondering what the hell my problem is, my problem is Yahoo!...

May 19, 2005

Sonaweb 3 is live.

Featuring new work by

Jennifer Firestone
Laura Hinton
Brenda Iijima
Eugene Lim
Sarah Rosenthal

"And if you're in the Brooklyn area on June 4, visit the Brooklyn Alternative Small Press Fair from
10-4 at Camp Friendship, 339 8th Street in Park Slope. Look for Sona Books--we'll be there.

All the best,

Jill Magi
Editor/Publisher"

May 18, 2005

Criminy, an allusion & a pastoral meditation. I'm hemorrhaging street cred like there's no today. Faith: that on the last scale the double-agent's heart is still light as a feather...

May 12, 2005

Kneel before ZOD!
Stuart Kelly reviews 4 Pressed Wafer chapbooks (Jack Evans's Work, Joe Torra's After the Chinese, Sean Cole's Itty City, and mine) in the most recent (or at least I think it's the most recent) Poetry Review from the UK.

This review of my 29 Cheeseburgers, which is one of the most generous and astute reviews I have received thusfar:

"29 Cheeseburgers is a more complex volume. Like a more
calorific Proustian madeleine, these "edged
circle[s] of nausea" conjure various losses.
Lamoureux has a quiet but convincing surrealism;
as he says "whenever tragedy smacks / I think of
smiling elves." The poetry reflects the
"constant crush of tongues" in the modern city:
Japanese cartoons and bureaucratic jargon,
advertising jingles and ouija board jinks. It's
an interzone, where you "can't tell the cafes
from the bars." Cutting thorugh the white noise
is a powerfully articulated vision of complex
emotions; a simultaneous blending of cynicism and
hopefulness. "Would that I were/ punk rock &
could/ care less about those girls". Evoking, as
in [Joe] Torra ['s "After the Chinese" from PW]
also involves admitting absence."
You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Postmodernist

100%

Cultural Creative

81%

Idealist

75%

Existentialist

69%

Materialist

69%

Modernist

63%

Romanticist

19%

Fundamentalist

13%

What is Your World View?
created with QuizFarm.com

May 11, 2005

Reading W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz and enjoying it immensely. To me it is demonstrative of what the tenets of Postmodernism (or Derrida's conception of history) look like when conveyed in modernist terms. It is a sort of slow-motion depiction of the moment of impact, those years and events which made Postmodernism necessary. It is powerful in the oblique way it addresses matters of utmost gravity (prison camps, fascism), as if one can no more look into the black sun directly than the real sun itself. Though looking at Amazon.com reviews (why do I do this?) and other criticism, people seem to have reacted to this novel as if it WERE nonlinear. Which is insane. It is completely linear, you could script it as a radio play, ableit the narrative contains many stories-within-stories (the Austerlitz character recounts most of them). But it is a NARRATIVE, which goes from point A to point B in an explicable fashion. Peoples' reactions to this book make me worried about what our reading public has come to expect--Cold Mountain and Stephen King ad infinitum? Sebald if explicity laying things out for the reader with Austerlitz's mouth, I think it provides a fabulous segue into pomo, were I teaching a course where I had to introduce pomo students unfamiliar with the concept, I would employ this text.

May 9, 2005

KILL YR ARCHONS

Some cultures locate the heart as the seat of consciousness. Others make no distinction between poetry and prose. Dithyrambs, folks, and hymns. We need new categories, new terminology, new structures. Kuhn's shattering crystal. Raw or cooked or hot or cold or left or right or up or down, why is this pigpile so adamant? Saxifrage breaks the rocks but what cuts a diamond? Alien alloy. But I am an onanistic Deleuzian...
The Robert Creeley memorial reading was, well, memorable.

May 6, 2005

I have been sick with food poisioning for a few days. A word of advice: if you ever find yourself asking yourself if an item in your freezer has been there too long to eat--don't eat it! The gamble isn't worth it. It really felt as if an alien was going to burst out of my stomach.

While I was sick I read Eleni Sikelianos's The Book of Jon, while our backgrounds are somewhat different, I could relate pretty explicitly to the world from whence this book comes--a kind of poisonous vernacular. And also the subject matter: the father as an unreachable, doomed anti-hero. Sikelianos engages with the subject matter in a vital fashion, interacting with it on its own terms, but never becoming poisoned by its refulgent mediocrities. A kind of postmodern rethinking of "On the Road," peering unflinchingly at the realities behind the myth of "rugged American individualism." Though it atones all involved with its reaching, a kind of absolution by way of narrative blurring, an alchemy that turns plastic fake wood panelling into gold...
I added a list of funny links to the left. "JOKES!... I GET JOKES!"

May 3, 2005

I did a few more film poems at the Video Balagan Choreographing Cinema event at the MFA this weekend.

These are all done during the films, in the dark, writing on a square notepad. I try to recreate the spacing in word documents as best I can. Using the PRE tag does not quite capture the actual appearance, but it is close enough.

(They won't display correctly in Internet Explorer. Say 'fuck you' to the man and download Firefox (link at the bottom of my blog)...)


ROSA--Peter Greenaway

Bartok chasm


pneumatic pinwheel

cinema fragments

dissect

hook caesura

stuttering mirror

& propelled

collision
delta vectors



crab sideways tumble

Budapest
chandelier
pinion
exuent

KAZUO OHNO--Daniel Schmid

trail barcarole

shadow fold shrinking

bloom
white to orange or red

aisle creep

* * * *

cobalt lust lantern
blade

bluejay cavern


* * * *
harbor extant
Nereid-shadow
cloud pillar
shelter birds

grasp edifice

* * * *

shiny & carol flying

bridge

obelisk ascent

* * * *
bower
leaves
livre
face
drop




CLOWN--Irina Evteeva

Moon noose

flatfoot raven

cosmos comrade

a fly buzzed

bison speech history errant

fish mouth chrysalis

Herculean shoals

brown prow spectre

figurehead
cherish
boats such angels

or

cupid
clock
locomotive snow

loss parade

sea self rain




DOM SVOBODE--Saso Podgorsek

Line company
this wall

vodka random

bad sneakers-- bad building

alleycat concur

catacomb

ice ballet breath
stop


Tuba

* * * *

Corner fire need
dirt pirouette



rose chorale
chthonic composition
element


Bowler lawn

crane shyster

shrub furies

propaganda tombeats

buckle crane

smokestack pastoral

cruciform

diamond
suspension

choreograph
braided
line
cycle



GOD--Konstantin Broznit

Shiva twitch

imortal fly sure

limb riot

scripture
tumble




HEART OF THE WORLD--Guy Madden

Cadaver Christ
triangle


dead world
heart

JEEZUS!

tragic bangs

BIG CIGAR!

treachery
surgery

M C
O I
V N
I E
E M
S A




LOVESONG--Stan Brakhage

Capillary view atrium

flux ganglia origin

honey cloud collision

refractory ecto-

cosm rapport wash

petrol

rain bug

collusion back

elation carapace

plastic heart chamber

taffy sutra

chalice layer foyer

spermata

Zoroastrian comma blur

radio membrane passion

lichen syrup burr


rotunda ribcage scorch

pestle

prism plasm proto

zoan ecstatic

spinal lapse traffic

figure flutter

erasure solo map

blossom slime

sludge stanza

strophe


pause

tendon rain


damp rush rush pupa leaves



left open


orifice bloom cousin

fountain charge flotsam

fecund bliss token

dark swimming

fire

basin, resin

blink
fraction


ink tumble

stained back black

glass tunnel light

iris mask

ochre dance

tension
suite




ELLIS ISLAND--Meredith Monk

Inner aria lapse


* * * *

Chain throng cadre

suture culture
houseboat dumping

variegated
stick waiting
haunch traffic

cotton threshold

manes rest

white divider
Hasidic stairs

Name bingo

#79

Fauna erasure

glottal stop

past dance chair trance

ceilidh queue

dismorphic century