Dec 31, 2005

Resolution completed ahead of schedule: finished realphabetizing and entering my books into Library Thing. Or rather, all of my books that have ISBNs. I am planning on entering all of the stuff that is in my chapbook archive, but this will involve a considerable amount of manual entry, so it is a project for another day!

Links to my library on the bar at the left.

Happy New Year.

Dec 30, 2005

New Year's resolution #2: I will post the call for submissions for the first (well, technically, second) Cy Gist Press chapbook (very) early in 2006. Those of you privy to my intended first endeavor should know that that one has been postponed due to various SNAFUs, but I am hoping the one I am going to do instead should be just as much goofy fun.

Dec 29, 2005

New Year's resolution, to extensively update links section to make all links current and bid a fond farewell to inactives... So if I dissed you in 2005, hopefully I will make good in 2006. In my defense, I am generally more space cadet than jerk...

Dec 26, 2005

Forest of Ghosts

Forest of Ghosts




Dec 21, 2005

Et tu, Johnny, et tu?

Dec 20, 2005

Nice walk over the Queensboro bridge to work this morning. In parka at a steady clip, not so cold at all. NYC bikers don't look where they are going, either. Something about this city and the wheel turns people into angry zombies. Nevertheless, not altogether unpleasant, and it actually seemed a little shorter than the walk from Cambridge into downtown Boston, which I used to do for fun back in the day. Admittedly, in the spring, summer and fall, but still...

The Fat Cats should be grateful for the opportunity to lose a few pounds.
New York, High 34, Low 25. Currently 23, Sunny, Class War.

Dec 18, 2005

Following the "elections," we couldn't wait to put our Dick in Iraq...

Dec 15, 2005

My new favorite movie is Aeon Flux. Seriously. I will write something more intelligent about it later, but I found it to be absolutely brilliant and gorgeous. An action movie for PoMo theory wonks. Baudrillard meets Logan's Run. Supplanting the latter as my favorite dystopia. Film critics seem to have universally hated it, if that's not an endorsement...

UNFAIREST WHEEL

Over the dark trellis
hit 7 doves & win
a proboscis somnambulist
in the closedown
palace of fun the sweat-
filled little cars
pause before the monkey
automata scrying
kin crowd the thoroughfare
where wanton palm
the fried eyes suspicious
conversations aboard
the Matterhorn implore
the geek with the blunderbuss
Give a guy a goose-
head and he'll follow you
to the dolor booths, or back
along the lovely paved
avenue She's 18 & time
to get underwritten
I am the holes
in the tickets They all
line up to go
upside-down I saw you
under there with a limp
net
Have been busy with end-of-semester shenanigans. More soon.

In the meantime be sure to check out Sean Cole's new December Project from Boog Literature. Quite possibly the best thing ever to come out of December.

Dec 8, 2005


SATURNALIA

That the ghosts who haunt our lives
shan't buckle under the sun of this earth

in the snow in the high stations above
the boulevard waking to quicksand

the joiner of this life a grifter of balsa
roods picker of locks
in woolen mitts the chill
unlocks the gusts of his breath

barefoot winter light

reflects the pasty skies
in fisheyed vestments where the Black
Sun hovers above this world

of fact we love a ship of oars
& no crew they crash

into our cabals the white anchors
of the falling snow


Dec 6, 2005

I have 3 poems up at Unpleasant Event Schedule. Thanks, Dan!

Dec 5, 2005

In the spirit of Tony Tost's list (and in solidarity so he doesn't have to take all that sh*t completely alone) I have compiled my own "Poets who I seem to like considerably less than my peers for nebulously defined reasons," and "Poets who I seem to enjoy considerably more than my peers for nebulously defined reasons" lists. Note that this list has to do mainly with "unexpected" tastes. E.g. I like Ashbery, Zukovsky, Spicer, Baudelaire, and others about as much as you would expect, or that I am "supposed" to. So these lists refer to personal preferences which may (or may not) surprise people. I have made the "enjoy considerably more" list longer because I think I like more work than I am ambiguous about. I think the usefulness of a list like this is that it helps to dispel stereotypes. Keep in mind that the focus in the first list is "less than others," and *NOT* "not at all." I use "in English" to refer to poets in translation who I am able to read in the original (e.g. French).

Work I seem to enjoy less than my peers for nebulously defined reasons (with all due respect):

1. David Shapiro (sorry, everyone!)
2. Frank O'Hara (or at least my favorites tend to differ considerably from others')
3. Emily Dickinson
4. Allen Ginsberg
5. W. H. Auden
6. Susan Howe
7. Gary Snyder
8. Han-Shan
9. John Godfrey's prose poems
10. Arthur Rimbaud in English

Work I seem to enjoy more than my peers for nebulously defined reasons:

1. Eleni Sikelianos (one of our greatest poets, as far as I'm concerned)
2. Bruce Andrews
3. Walt Whitman
4. Fanny Howe
5. Annie Finch
6. James Schuyler
7. Dorothy Parker
8. Keith Douglas
9. John Godfrey's verse poems
10. James Thomson
11. Jim Harrison
12. Laura Riding
13. Edmond Jabes in English
14. Li Ch'ing-Chao
15. James Merrill
16. Michael Palmer
17. Basil Bunting
18. Homer (but never those crappy prose translations)

Dec 4, 2005

Dance dance dance to the radio



Do yourself a favor and check out Scott Glassman's December podcast over at 30 days.

Dec 3, 2005

Extremely busy week filled largely with temping, going right from work to school to home to sleep. Thus not much blogging. Next week should not be so busy so I should be able to say more. In the meantime, check out my essay in Fulcrum 4.