Also, Brenda says that anyone who wants to review the reading (Segue Reading on 1/13 with Frank Sherlock) will get a free book from Roof Books.

Speaking of reviews, I need reviewers and reviews for Boog City. Backchannel me if you are interested in reviewing something or you have a review to proffer. Generally speaking I only run reviews of chapbooks and/or "larger" books from small presses, but if you have a review of something 'mainstream' you are dying to see in print I could be persuaded if it is a good book or a good review (good reviews of bad books are fine, bad reviews of good books-not so much.) I have plenty of review copies to offer.

Come one, come all:

Frank Sherlock & Mark Lamoureux

Saturday, January 13th, 4-6 PM (please be punctual--we are starting on time!)
Segue Reading Series at The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, just north of Houston
New York, New York

Frank Sherlock is the author of Spring Diet of Flowers at Night, ISO, and 13, and has engaged in collaborative projects with CA Conrad, Jennifer Coleman and sound artist/DJ Alex Welsh. He is a contributing editor for XConnect: Writers for the Information Age.

Mark Lamoureux's first full-length book of poems, Astrometry Organon, is due out from Spuyten Duyvil/Meeting Eyes Bindery in early 2007. He is the editor of Cy Gist Press, a micropress focusing on ekphrastic poetry, and teaches English at Kingsborough Community College.

curated by Brenda Iijima & Evelyn Reilly

Back in the United States of Jetlag. 23 hours and counting, and I feel about ready to leave again...

As befits the birthplace of a civilization, Greece was beautiful and friendly. A place so old it is young again, the way an old human becomes an infant. No drastic catharsis as expected, but rather a place of subtleties--as in the way the innumerable mountains give way to horizons in gradated hues of blue or green depending on the weather. A city-dweller dropped in an always distant skyline--even at the pinnacle of the metropolis--gives way to a new perception of phenonmena and noumena--one's buglike blip on the long curve of the land and the vast expanse of everything after. A funeral stele persists in a museum--etched lists of names pawed at by scholars. Posterity is never what you think it will be. Even after gods die, it is their temples that remain, so it is with humans. A tiny candle burning in the roadside shrine in the hearty winds--somebody had to light it--someone keeps it burning. The boughs of xenia shade even the Ugly American while not so far away we enact televised murder. The man on the beach says Sophocles knew how things were always worse for the victor. "You don't look like an American" = "You don't seem so bad." Sour-faced guards at the Homeland Security checkpoint upon return remind me again that we're the Bad Guys now. Emblems & drastically enacted policies--rules, rules, rules. Immaculate smooth-stoned squares indicate it's not rules but people that pick up the trash. Further proof we are clots of rules and desires and not people. Nobody's trash blowing in tiny cyclones along the avenue.

If you happen to be interested, the inordinate amount of photos I took can be found here.

Happy New Year everyone.

Because I am a soulless self-promoting egomaniac: some poems at mustachioedandMipoesias. Both with pictures of monsters.

Back from the excellent Simonds/Olin reading to hear that Kari Edwards died this weekend. Terrible news; sleep well, Kari.

LOOK AT THE DOG WITH THE BEAN! He is happy!

Courtesy of LOOK AT THE FRIED EGGS! thisismycomputerblog.blogspot.com.

I always wondered why conventional astrology did not address the goose on my head.

Geb Engaging personality, sensitive, modest, occasionally narcissistic, but can rise above vanity. Colors: male: violet, female: rose Compatible Signs:Set, Horus Dates: Feb 12 - Feb 29, Aug 20 - Aug 31 Role: God of the earth Appearance: Green-skinned man, with leaves all over his body and a goose on his head. Sometimes he was shown laying on his side under his wife, the sky goddess Nut. Sacred animals: goose What is Your Egyptian Zodiac Sign? Designed by CyberWarlock of Warlock's Quizzles and Quandaries

Hey folks,

If you are around Brooklyn on November 17th, please come to the Burning Chair Reading Series in Brooklyn to hear me read from my new chapbook Traceland from Transmission Press; also come hear Julia Cohen and Africa Wayne.

BURNING CHAIR READING SERIES:

Julia Cohen, Mark Lamoureux, & Africa Wayne

The Fall Cafe
307 Smith Street
Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
Friday November 17, 7:30 PM
FREE

The subject came up again years later, this time in the context of another poet's response to my poems. She wanted to know why they couldn't be considered to be arbitrary arrangements of unrelated lines. This time I used a scientific analogy in my defense. I stated that like a chaotic system that appears random but that in reality is deterministic, obeying known or knowable laws, a poem might appear to be put together randomly and yet be--let's say--the (verbal) residue of a process that obeys laws, whether or not those laws are known to the poet.

Some Thoughts

Some things that my poetry isn't that nobody would say it is:

Minimalist
Funny
Quotidian
"Accessible"
Pastoral
Vernacular

Some things that my poetry isn't that people have said that it is:

Postmodern
Pretentious
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry
Gibberish
Flarf

Some things that my poetry is that nobody would say it is:

Basically modernist
Devotional
The result of possession by daemons
Sincere
Simple

Some things that my poetry is that people have said that it is:

Neo-classical
Sometimes influenced by Robert Duncan
Sometimes metaphysical
Sometimes concerned exclusively with surface
Rhetorical
The distress signal of a diseased mind
Angry
Political
Polemic
Synesthetic
Prone to frequent misspellings