So here’s the latest draft, dedicated now to Nick "Delicious Mental Soup" Piombino for being so appreciative and, for his middle-name which awes me, David “Absolutely Zero Cavities at Age 29” Hess. Hope the rest of you like this version, too (the research really challenged my intellectual capacities):
POST POST AVANT POEM
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
O Eileen!
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen Eileen
===============
Links to your left for WinePoetics please. And, if I may say, on behalf of Eileen, do indulge...
Distribution Automatique
Saturday, April 26
Ever swapped messages with another blogger unbeknownst to each other at the same time? This just happened between Eileen Tabios and me, at the same time she was emailing me that another poet had written to her about being smitten with blogging while she was reading my gushing love- words to Blogger. (Exchanging email posts unbeknownst to each other has also happened several times between me and Stephanie Young.) What does it all mean? Who knows, but lI'll add this little morsel immediately to that stack of blogger lore steadily piling up on the table. (You know my ideas about time/dimensional travel. Well, ahem, seems that Blogworld is the perfect place...)
I listened to a couple of audioblogs Jim Behrle made on the way to the group reading at MIT, which is apparently going great. Cori Copp basically refused to say much and so did Miles Champion and another friend of Jim's, who is doing something there with paint. Cori told Jim audioblogs are "corny" but I think she is being shy, as is Miles. I wish you guys would think of us bloggers out here who feel left out and this is our only chance to physically hear what is going on. I wish Miles or Cori, Mitch or Sam Truitt, or someone up there will read us some poems on an audioblog or at least talk to us. So I called Jim who had kindly left his phone number on his blog last week- which is how I called him at 7 am in Arizona and somehow he didn't mind! Jim called me back and said he would try harder to get some of these poets to audioblog for us. Hey, we're out here and waiting and willing to listen! Don't be shy. We love you!
My relationship to blogging is reaching critical mass (what is "critical mass?") What I mean is, not only am I blogging all the time, or reading blogs all the time, and responding to them, but now I am writing about blogging, emailing about blogging. pretty much thinking about blogging all the time and talking about it with anyone who will listen (if, in fact, there is anybody left who will still listen). What can I say? I am in love. Blogger, I'm your fool, your pet, your slave. Do what you will with me! I'm yours, utterly and completely.
My relationship to blogging is reaching critical mass (what is "critical mass?") What I mean is, not only am I blogging all the time, or reading blogs all the time, and responding to them, but now I am writing about blogging, emailing about blogging. pretty much thinking about blogging all the time and talking about it with anyone who will listen (if, in fact, there is anybody left who will still listen). What can I say? I am in love. Blogger, I'm your fool, your pet, your slave. Do what you will with me! I'm yours, utterly and completely.
9.5 Affinity between blogs based on when and where they are written? I know Jordan, Jim and I all write from work. I think Katie does too. Drew? Kasey and Jonathan I imagine in offices piled high with papers and notes and books. Maybe I am drawing in a pipe for one of them to smoke while they blog. It's a cartoon pipe. Kasey is puffing away on a cartoon pipe. Julia writes from home. Joe D from home. The skeptic: I don't know. Nada: home AND work? Gary - the same? Cori Copp's a mystery. Eileen, somewhere close to the wine cellar. Home. Nick: home, and very very late. Catherine and James from home, I'm sure of it. Catherine, during the day, because she works nights. James, nights, b/c he's in school during the day. David, where: at home. David, when: any freaking time of night or day praise the lord! Jack: I couldn't tell you. Same for most of the others, no direct psychic hits or details forthcoming on when and where.
(Stephanie Young)
(She calls it: "Well Nourished Moon")
Very late, indeed, Stephanie. Check this out:
(Stephanie Young)
(She calls it: "Well Nourished Moon")
Very late, indeed, Stephanie. Check this out:
Thoughts I could communicate to others, complete thoughts, that would not be confusing, would have to be similar in their construction of a sentence and would be subject to the same dynamics. They would contain a certain substance, a heaviness, set into motion against a receptive constellation of transforming elements, like an object dropped into a moving body of water or a chemical, like an acid, that would change it. But is it possible not to use language in this way, to ignore its laws and still speak? The dadaists found magic in the observation of the process of transposition. But how is it possible to build a poem around a fleeting thought? How can I restrain myself from transforming the language of thought into language that contains an image of what the mind and eye put together every day? If I stop short of saying it as I speak I might find myself muttering poetry.
Oct 17
The best thing is to be able to say in cases like this is "that was then and this is now." Although the mind can play games with fantasies of the relationship that's "there," to assert the truth, the opposite of the proposition being mostly true, then you can see it in "perspective," it being the taste of insanity, it isn't good for me. The main problem with the writing here I think is the "lead-ins" to the next written words, and a certain memory coincides with just that- I'm not sure why A decided not to meet- there could be something unpleasant or pleasant in that, I don't know. But for a long time the desire to "see" someone can become an obstacle to writing. The problem I have to figure out first is not what not to write about, a trick I often use, but, what prevents me from creating a lead-in to the next writing. Writing that contains that lead-in. Reading to find out what's undone. A string of beads needs a string. OK. If the string is the thought process itself- write down the thought itself and see how the narrative can correspond to a symbolic narrative- a transposed or transposable narrative- like taking a certain thought and changing the key. Sometimes, in that state, the accessibility is made possible of some strange power, which fires up the muse, which adds more energy to it, more amplitude, more depth. The thought of transposing thought. That juxtaposed against the theater of social existence. Alone with your body, its environment and your thought. The beach and the gulls and your receptivity to sound, the mind silently moving from itself to outside itself. Anxiety trips you up. A code transposed: not the literal thought that insists on its presence in the mind but the names of the objects of sight and memory coming up, swelling up, conjured up to take their place.But their rhythms have to be brought together, an arabesque or a period of counter-point. What else is there but cacaphony? This is one of the most knotty problems- how to convey cacaphony, the inevitable swelling of noise and confusion descending against harmony- even that harmony is forced and borders on lack of resolution. One possibility is to bend and sway- gestures easily adopted to fear. Another is to move as closely as possible to the origin of the sounds, immobile and silent so as not to upset or destroy the reality of that sequence. True, your own thoughts are the stream- how possibly disturb what they really are- they are what they have to be. But concentration and meditation suggest another possibility. Idea: A. writing a music story and my writing the word study.
October 23
I would have to make a poem out of all the things I can't get myself to do. Where the fear comes in. A light blinks on and off with the words of that action- sell the desk. (the silence). The great thing is that I am still denying structure enough to feel enough urgency to make the mind move.The outside things are infinitely heavier.The mind moves.I awake and I hear somebody screaming "Police, police" and I thought "I am safe, I am safe." I didn't want to help. But the mind is a light thing, it moves across. One way signals.The mind translates the mind. But furniture is so heavy. What do I do with the big desk? Time is slower and slower within the imagination and things get heavier outside, the laundry is so fucking heavy and bulky desk and the pen itself. But the outside sounds are heavy and the pleasure comes from the outside slowly and even more slowly the outside comes from outside.The whole goddamn cast of characters have to be in balance. When not its frightening.Somethiing in the essential construction leaves spaces for the time between. Fair is fair but you better look out for yourself.Light is warm as waiting. Magically that's the carribean burning. I let you know or ask me. Colored paper burning, goes up in flames- there's plenty of room for that. Jay Gatsby, a lot of money, it may take him backwards but words are too large. The other language. Serious, deadpan, what next. Itching, what? Deep-rooted means not getting that, turn it around its still there. Something I know I don't know what memories are but an accumulation of details.Time is reversed as such- as you know these details. They may or may not offend you- each doesn't know the other's there. The idea of abundance. That is clear as no central image, no hesitation of abstraction, no peeking over the shoulder to be sure about what's there. Be very quiet, avoid the pronoun "you" are there.That's one way to take care of it. Thousands of other pillows for you to put your head on- a book, a conversation, air, creation forgives all that. Equal means a fight. So you see what was extracted as occult- it's blue. That can go on for a long time. Not that what you're sure of is not to be tripped up with what you're tripped up with. Your system has to get slower and faster- light shines through the cracks in the holes but something always keeps you dreaming. Their is a tiny voice that sometimes is off-key. The easiest thing is to go into language like it's a department store when you know what you want but don't stop to stay around. Something like that is always happening, you have to assume that. You have to assume it has to go faster or slower according to the route of minus one. We're all the same where that comes in. Like a memory with no assigned space. It was just there- not just for window dressing but that is the point of the whole thing. A condensed amount of time is what I needed. I was living a lot of the time for whatever there was of that. Don't have to like every word. Speak about television. Literary, erudite, feminine, mavelous, tough you appropriate what's there. Also language has to fit the emotions but that fit is easy. Harder to slip into and out of history. Such dense armatures. But I could anticipate several, flip through the many pictures, the timed delays pushing the whole system into highs and lows. Her brows.Talk about formalistic- the book was ok.Can you keep a secret? There's something I can't tell you yet. It's not an appeal.The laws of the lazy sleeper are generous. So and so's Johnny Guitar. Or made the remark.
But to move places with emotions is a kind of acting. You may expect what was really happening was different. But was that what that was? Having several notebooks for various occasions may contribute to some social use of my time but the room, my eyes, the flaking wall in the bathroom are convinced I have readers. Disappearing, invisible to me as I am to them, the content playing hide and seek with the bed. Am I as certain as that? You bet.
An anxiety attack and the rub is boredom. But there were rapturous moments: there were free light winds against soft long hair, there were light pleasures and dark questions, abysses of pain and loneliness of almost no light. Its enough to say that some light filters through. It's only writing. Something to occupy you for a moment. An exposure: five women. A longer exposure and the paper gradually darkens with details. An exposure? A long, light suddenly darkens.That tells you how to do it. Everything is so distant, -everything-. There is light you can see through.You know what I meant by that. I meant actual events. But the the events disappear and there is no event. Eventually. "I guess I'll talk to you eventually." Object constancy.
Suddenly it all just stops and I'm free- caught in the shower. Acted blindly. Take notice what's implied. It's a hidden code message for you.
A precise idea of what you are going to do before you do it. Zen? Sine Qua Non? Of what? So much of being draws me to its opposite. Endless pools of self-reflection, pain, the domain of death.
(1975)
Oct 17
The best thing is to be able to say in cases like this is "that was then and this is now." Although the mind can play games with fantasies of the relationship that's "there," to assert the truth, the opposite of the proposition being mostly true, then you can see it in "perspective," it being the taste of insanity, it isn't good for me. The main problem with the writing here I think is the "lead-ins" to the next written words, and a certain memory coincides with just that- I'm not sure why A decided not to meet- there could be something unpleasant or pleasant in that, I don't know. But for a long time the desire to "see" someone can become an obstacle to writing. The problem I have to figure out first is not what not to write about, a trick I often use, but, what prevents me from creating a lead-in to the next writing. Writing that contains that lead-in. Reading to find out what's undone. A string of beads needs a string. OK. If the string is the thought process itself- write down the thought itself and see how the narrative can correspond to a symbolic narrative- a transposed or transposable narrative- like taking a certain thought and changing the key. Sometimes, in that state, the accessibility is made possible of some strange power, which fires up the muse, which adds more energy to it, more amplitude, more depth. The thought of transposing thought. That juxtaposed against the theater of social existence. Alone with your body, its environment and your thought. The beach and the gulls and your receptivity to sound, the mind silently moving from itself to outside itself. Anxiety trips you up. A code transposed: not the literal thought that insists on its presence in the mind but the names of the objects of sight and memory coming up, swelling up, conjured up to take their place.But their rhythms have to be brought together, an arabesque or a period of counter-point. What else is there but cacaphony? This is one of the most knotty problems- how to convey cacaphony, the inevitable swelling of noise and confusion descending against harmony- even that harmony is forced and borders on lack of resolution. One possibility is to bend and sway- gestures easily adopted to fear. Another is to move as closely as possible to the origin of the sounds, immobile and silent so as not to upset or destroy the reality of that sequence. True, your own thoughts are the stream- how possibly disturb what they really are- they are what they have to be. But concentration and meditation suggest another possibility. Idea: A. writing a music story and my writing the word study.
October 23
I would have to make a poem out of all the things I can't get myself to do. Where the fear comes in. A light blinks on and off with the words of that action- sell the desk. (the silence). The great thing is that I am still denying structure enough to feel enough urgency to make the mind move.The outside things are infinitely heavier.The mind moves.I awake and I hear somebody screaming "Police, police" and I thought "I am safe, I am safe." I didn't want to help. But the mind is a light thing, it moves across. One way signals.The mind translates the mind. But furniture is so heavy. What do I do with the big desk? Time is slower and slower within the imagination and things get heavier outside, the laundry is so fucking heavy and bulky desk and the pen itself. But the outside sounds are heavy and the pleasure comes from the outside slowly and even more slowly the outside comes from outside.The whole goddamn cast of characters have to be in balance. When not its frightening.Somethiing in the essential construction leaves spaces for the time between. Fair is fair but you better look out for yourself.Light is warm as waiting. Magically that's the carribean burning. I let you know or ask me. Colored paper burning, goes up in flames- there's plenty of room for that. Jay Gatsby, a lot of money, it may take him backwards but words are too large. The other language. Serious, deadpan, what next. Itching, what? Deep-rooted means not getting that, turn it around its still there. Something I know I don't know what memories are but an accumulation of details.Time is reversed as such- as you know these details. They may or may not offend you- each doesn't know the other's there. The idea of abundance. That is clear as no central image, no hesitation of abstraction, no peeking over the shoulder to be sure about what's there. Be very quiet, avoid the pronoun "you" are there.That's one way to take care of it. Thousands of other pillows for you to put your head on- a book, a conversation, air, creation forgives all that. Equal means a fight. So you see what was extracted as occult- it's blue. That can go on for a long time. Not that what you're sure of is not to be tripped up with what you're tripped up with. Your system has to get slower and faster- light shines through the cracks in the holes but something always keeps you dreaming. Their is a tiny voice that sometimes is off-key. The easiest thing is to go into language like it's a department store when you know what you want but don't stop to stay around. Something like that is always happening, you have to assume that. You have to assume it has to go faster or slower according to the route of minus one. We're all the same where that comes in. Like a memory with no assigned space. It was just there- not just for window dressing but that is the point of the whole thing. A condensed amount of time is what I needed. I was living a lot of the time for whatever there was of that. Don't have to like every word. Speak about television. Literary, erudite, feminine, mavelous, tough you appropriate what's there. Also language has to fit the emotions but that fit is easy. Harder to slip into and out of history. Such dense armatures. But I could anticipate several, flip through the many pictures, the timed delays pushing the whole system into highs and lows. Her brows.Talk about formalistic- the book was ok.Can you keep a secret? There's something I can't tell you yet. It's not an appeal.The laws of the lazy sleeper are generous. So and so's Johnny Guitar. Or made the remark.
But to move places with emotions is a kind of acting. You may expect what was really happening was different. But was that what that was? Having several notebooks for various occasions may contribute to some social use of my time but the room, my eyes, the flaking wall in the bathroom are convinced I have readers. Disappearing, invisible to me as I am to them, the content playing hide and seek with the bed. Am I as certain as that? You bet.
An anxiety attack and the rub is boredom. But there were rapturous moments: there were free light winds against soft long hair, there were light pleasures and dark questions, abysses of pain and loneliness of almost no light. Its enough to say that some light filters through. It's only writing. Something to occupy you for a moment. An exposure: five women. A longer exposure and the paper gradually darkens with details. An exposure? A long, light suddenly darkens.That tells you how to do it. Everything is so distant, -everything-. There is light you can see through.You know what I meant by that. I meant actual events. But the the events disappear and there is no event. Eventually. "I guess I'll talk to you eventually." Object constancy.
Suddenly it all just stops and I'm free- caught in the shower. Acted blindly. Take notice what's implied. It's a hidden code message for you.
A precise idea of what you are going to do before you do it. Zen? Sine Qua Non? Of what? So much of being draws me to its opposite. Endless pools of self-reflection, pain, the domain of death.
(1975)
Friday, April 25
"Who has not sat anxious before the curtain of his heart?" It's interesting how certain lines of poetry becomes touchstones for one's entire existence. Too often one thinks of them after the fact. Now the heartstrings are getting tugged in two directions: one towards the reading I am giving tonight, and the other towards this blog. I should be preparing for this reading, but what I want to do is write this blog. Aside: are we really getting used to the word "blog"? It's like a person's name. If you love the person, eventually you will become fond of the name. I expected this. Affections work like warmth, they permeate everything they touch. This is partly how Stephanie Young's writing emanates its charm, I think, gathering affections into a momentum that carried me, the reader, straight into the heart of the Mayakovsky site she recommended. I watched it open like a flower in stop time and thought about the Mayakovsky-Brik letters. Come on, you knew the blog would be an easy win tonight just like you knew you would come to love the word blog, even as many of us immediately grasped desperately for another term as we knew we could never totally love this word that looks and feels like a toadstool in the imagination. Nevertheless, an affection develops. Well, Stephanie, I have no idea how 19 postcards could vanish in thin air. I found out I could go down to the G.P.O., the general postoffice around Penn Station and file a form to see if your poems are in the postoffice letter morgue.(Another aside: this Rorem piece playing right now on WNYC -that sounds like a String Quartet- is lovely, haunting and, at moments, powerful. You can hear the way he loves Debussy in this music. I guess WNYC won't put the whole 5 hours on its site. Or maybe they will...) What do you say to a poet who has just found out that 19 of her postcard poems disappeared into thin air, when she wanted so much to see them get to their destination? Sure, we are poets and we know what happens to lost poems. They mutate into found poems, hundreds, thousands, of them. I won't say "millions" that's Jordan's. Oh yeah. That's where I came in, Rilke: "Who has not sat, etc..." Maybe the biggest challenge for a poet living in this godforsaken culture is to remember that the heart of the action is not on the material level. So I wanted to employ that idea in the service of reassuring Stephanie that something is lost but all is not lost. Sure she knows all is not lost, but these little tykes are gone and she was well on her way to loving them, I'm sure. That was the closest they ever got to me, or you. It's amazing what a person can put out there and how, when its manifested as a strong medium for the transfer of poetic energy, how palpable it is in every phoneme, in every phrase tossed off, as when reading "Well Nourished Moon." You were so surprised when I wrote to you and told you I had read the archives at your site. You said you put them there so you shouldn't be surprised if someone reads them, but it was as if I had walked into your room without knocking on the door. But little irritability, no annoyance, never any anger, not a trace, never in a hurry to disappoint, either, reluctant to criticize, to hurt, eager to share affections, interests, observations, one quickly emerging out of another. But who knows, maybe they'll still find the poems at the "dead letter office." You know I'm going to try. Why does the name summon up such anxiety? Dead letters. And how does one mourn for so many lost poems? Well, you write about it, the first thing you did, immediately, on WNM. This actually stunned me, it was stunning! Moments after I knew, everybody knew, well the few of us that read these things knew, but it was "public" anyway. Why was it then more sudden, more breathtaking? Obviously, it immediately ate away at whatever denial mechanisms I was mustering. And, it called out for a response, which I am doing right now, a blogged response! You said right away it would take a few days to get over this. Sure, I said all the right things in a quick email, that may have held you for some of the morning. But then...very hard to say goodbye to something that took so much work, and something you were sending to join someone else's work that you yourself had encouraged (my part of the collaboration). Hard not to be sad about this tonight. And it reminds me of the way Yahoo on your home computer ate so many of your letters. In your letter to me you said the post office had taken your postcards and "eaten them." Well that's a damn well nourished post office! Of course what I wanted to say was: "There will be many more, Stephanie." But it is not particularly helpful to try to cheer up someone who has such work to do to sadly let so many creations so carefully nourished go. And more so, because the poems themselves were messages and those messages may never make it to "sent mail." Anyway, Toni says it must be a bad alignment in the stars. In fact, Elaine Equi, whose mate, Jerome Sala I am reading with tonight, told me that two people she had been scheduled to read with over the next few days have called from California and cancelled out on her today. One was Cole Swenson and the other, Barbara Guest. So Elaine reads at the Zinc bar tonight at 6:30 with a surprise guest, I read with Jerome and Rachel Levitsky at 7:30 at the Ceres Gallery. And on Wednesday Elaine reads at the Poetry Project with a yet to be announced guest. There are like 10,000 poetry events tonight, including Jim Behrle's group reading at MIT in Boston. He posted a request on his blog that whoever gets his MIT group reading ad into the Poetics List first gets a prize. Well, everybody knows Jim works at Wordsworth in Boston so you can guess what the prize would be. So three people, including me posted and I was last. Stephanie! Maybe all of us Stephanie fans should do a poetic seance and try to pull these poems back out from the other dimensions where they went to escape us just now for some reason. So, what am I going to read tomorrow? Well for one thing, some poems from my part of our collaboration, that's for sure. I don't think Stephanie would mind very much if I closed this with a poem from my part of our collaboration:
I agree that fallen angels
exert a certain charm
Taste once as guest
the unforgettable funky must
of a public shelter on the street
and you'll watch your step
and carefully avoid
falling again into that
bottomless pit
and the fathomless
exoticism of square one
I agree that fallen angels
exert a certain charm
Taste once as guest
the unforgettable funky must
of a public shelter on the street
and you'll watch your step
and carefully avoid
falling again into that
bottomless pit
and the fathomless
exoticism of square one
Thursday, April 24
Tonight's the night! A Ned Rorem Celebration!
NYC is giving a five-hour-long broadcast of Ned's music, along with interviews, from Midnight to 5 AM on the evening of April 24-25. Be sure to tune in! Sarah Fishko's excellent hourlong interview with Ned on NPR is now available online.
"A priceless bird hides hardly fluttering in the cage of all our chests, a bird we are not allowed to see until the moment it decides to leave us and fly away forever. How could we have known it was starving inasmuch as we ignored its existence? So as not to become tiresome to others, I oblige them to fall in love with me."
"The entire sun belongs to that lizard stretched beneath it there."
"The poet always knows where he is going though he doesn't always know he knows. He works in showing what he didn't know he knew."
"Unfortunately I can't get it up for people with money. I'm as ashamed of using the key of C as of biting my fingernails or liking cake. For this is self- indulgence and the easiest way out. I am vaguely hysterical and frightfully calm; I have kissed my own lips (No, my own lips have kissed me.)"
"Order is the acceptance of incompatibility. Or: marriage is chaos accepted."
"What if I now were to say (to confess!) that this whole diary's been a hoax, a red herring, a fiction to make myself interesting! Would (could ) it, for that, be a hoax? Are my lies lies, and therefore the truth? Could I even know the answer? Do I? You'll never know!"
"Another gorgeous torture: lack of privacy. To be forever naked and alone within an illuminated plate-glass cell surrounded by an audience rotating 24 hours a day. But (not unironically) you are permitted any behavior.."
"A writer needn't go out and live , but stay home and invent, crying himself to sleep occasionally."
"The child says: when I grow up the important part will begin. As a grown-up he says: those first lost years were the important part."
Ned Rorem, from "The Paris Diary" (Braziller, 1967)
NYC is giving a five-hour-long broadcast of Ned's music, along with interviews, from Midnight to 5 AM on the evening of April 24-25. Be sure to tune in! Sarah Fishko's excellent hourlong interview with Ned on NPR is now available online.
"A priceless bird hides hardly fluttering in the cage of all our chests, a bird we are not allowed to see until the moment it decides to leave us and fly away forever. How could we have known it was starving inasmuch as we ignored its existence? So as not to become tiresome to others, I oblige them to fall in love with me."
"The entire sun belongs to that lizard stretched beneath it there."
"The poet always knows where he is going though he doesn't always know he knows. He works in showing what he didn't know he knew."
"Unfortunately I can't get it up for people with money. I'm as ashamed of using the key of C as of biting my fingernails or liking cake. For this is self- indulgence and the easiest way out. I am vaguely hysterical and frightfully calm; I have kissed my own lips (No, my own lips have kissed me.)"
"Order is the acceptance of incompatibility. Or: marriage is chaos accepted."
"What if I now were to say (to confess!) that this whole diary's been a hoax, a red herring, a fiction to make myself interesting! Would (could ) it, for that, be a hoax? Are my lies lies, and therefore the truth? Could I even know the answer? Do I? You'll never know!"
"Another gorgeous torture: lack of privacy. To be forever naked and alone within an illuminated plate-glass cell surrounded by an audience rotating 24 hours a day. But (not unironically) you are permitted any behavior.."
"A writer needn't go out and live , but stay home and invent, crying himself to sleep occasionally."
"The child says: when I grow up the important part will begin. As a grown-up he says: those first lost years were the important part."
Ned Rorem, from "The Paris Diary" (Braziller, 1967)
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 1851
Since most crimes are committed in a state of somnambulism, one might say that the function of the moral sense consists in wakening the dreadful dreamer in the nick of time.
Paul Valery, Tel Quel, 1941-1943.
To designate a dreamed world well, it is necessary to mark it with a happiness.
Gaston Bachelard
For every appetite, there is a world.
Gaston Bachelard
We are frustrated with the poverty of experience because our appetites exceed our needs. We call these appetites ambitions so we can keep on stuffing ourselves. And why not?
The sporadic and the occasional.
Harshness of survival.
Poetry is the romantic return to the "wilderness" of risky questions.The sense of risk in the forming of a romantic relationship is an example of this. To don the priest or priestess garb is more difficult in our time for a poet. And realistically, the churches of today with their texts well in place are open to new textual offering.
Love needs the image of committment, if not its hope or promise, to exist. But this is the unspoken in the domain (But this is the doman of the unspoken).
The successful person feels well supplied. So there are many bizarre forms of success- but they all have a quality in common.
(10/18-19/90)
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 1851
Since most crimes are committed in a state of somnambulism, one might say that the function of the moral sense consists in wakening the dreadful dreamer in the nick of time.
Paul Valery, Tel Quel, 1941-1943.
To designate a dreamed world well, it is necessary to mark it with a happiness.
Gaston Bachelard
For every appetite, there is a world.
Gaston Bachelard
We are frustrated with the poverty of experience because our appetites exceed our needs. We call these appetites ambitions so we can keep on stuffing ourselves. And why not?
The sporadic and the occasional.
Harshness of survival.
Poetry is the romantic return to the "wilderness" of risky questions.The sense of risk in the forming of a romantic relationship is an example of this. To don the priest or priestess garb is more difficult in our time for a poet. And realistically, the churches of today with their texts well in place are open to new textual offering.
Love needs the image of committment, if not its hope or promise, to exist. But this is the unspoken in the domain (But this is the doman of the unspoken).
The successful person feels well supplied. So there are many bizarre forms of success- but they all have a quality in common.
(10/18-19/90)
Four Nocturnes
1.
i.e. the mystical blue
that holds me to you
instead of deep breaths
longings that won't share
surroundings flake out
to the horizon of inhabitability
space is a translation of
name to name- possibility
provokes panic- no, I'm not
intractible, just here trying
to translate hieroglyphs of
pleasure into symbols of silence
2.
Silence- a good place to start out
from but deadening to the spirit
in large doses- see the way
it waits for you inside doubt
and delay- the way it waits to
double itself in the screams but can't
sound can erase it in spurts
like a plane going by in the sky
but hurt unfolds it carefully
and covers it your whole day
exhausted, you spread it even
further across your thoughts
3.
The one least worn
it goes inside
and far less warm
it tries to glide
to note its harm
and change its side
to wrap its form
and find its guide
4.
Emptiness
digs a hole
for
business.
Make way for the
cold intruder.
That's it,
pal.
(2/11/97)
1.
i.e. the mystical blue
that holds me to you
instead of deep breaths
longings that won't share
surroundings flake out
to the horizon of inhabitability
space is a translation of
name to name- possibility
provokes panic- no, I'm not
intractible, just here trying
to translate hieroglyphs of
pleasure into symbols of silence
2.
Silence- a good place to start out
from but deadening to the spirit
in large doses- see the way
it waits for you inside doubt
and delay- the way it waits to
double itself in the screams but can't
sound can erase it in spurts
like a plane going by in the sky
but hurt unfolds it carefully
and covers it your whole day
exhausted, you spread it even
further across your thoughts
3.
The one least worn
it goes inside
and far less warm
it tries to glide
to note its harm
and change its side
to wrap its form
and find its guide
4.
Emptiness
digs a hole
for
business.
Make way for the
cold intruder.
That's it,
pal.
(2/11/97)
Uncircle The Wagons
Speech
sucks.
Spoil
the
pattern and
start
again.
There's nothing
like you did
before, fumbling
for your keys,
thoughts, words
ideas, greetings,
papers, hopes.
Hear, don't
listen. Screw
the lecture $,
forget your plans.
Tear up the tickets,
turn off the radio
t.v., stove, lights,
doubts. Now
What?
Confuse, don't
use. Pattern
all wet, don the
device, let the
words unravel,
lower the
lead. It's
clearly unclear
now, you've
loosed it, you've
tossed it.
Savor, don't
save, linger
don't leave,
delve, don't
decide, forget
don't fortify,
roam, don't
reveal, loom
don't follow,
hold, don't
hurry, stay,
don't stand,
bend, don't
belong,
seem, don't
send, sing
don't announce,
imply, don't
display,
invite, don't
obey, contradict
don't correct,
caress, don't
convey- but
all is water
all is air,
all is time
all is gone,
all is felt
all is closed
all is spent
all is splattered
all is spleen
all is forgiven.
Don't be dreary,
demand, don't
demand, dream
don't dream, decide
don't evolve, revolt,
don't revolt, review.
Find the morning
Find the morning
Find the morning
(2/11/97)
Speech
sucks.
Spoil
the
pattern and
start
again.
There's nothing
like you did
before, fumbling
for your keys,
thoughts, words
ideas, greetings,
papers, hopes.
Hear, don't
listen. Screw
the lecture $,
forget your plans.
Tear up the tickets,
turn off the radio
t.v., stove, lights,
doubts. Now
What?
Confuse, don't
use. Pattern
all wet, don the
device, let the
words unravel,
lower the
lead. It's
clearly unclear
now, you've
loosed it, you've
tossed it.
Savor, don't
save, linger
don't leave,
delve, don't
decide, forget
don't fortify,
roam, don't
reveal, loom
don't follow,
hold, don't
hurry, stay,
don't stand,
bend, don't
belong,
seem, don't
send, sing
don't announce,
imply, don't
display,
invite, don't
obey, contradict
don't correct,
caress, don't
convey- but
all is water
all is air,
all is time
all is gone,
all is felt
all is closed
all is spent
all is splattered
all is spleen
all is forgiven.
Don't be dreary,
demand, don't
demand, dream
don't dream, decide
don't evolve, revolt,
don't revolt, review.
Find the morning
Find the morning
Find the morning
(2/11/97)
Wednesday, April 23
This just in from WinePoetics:
Speaking of vintners, I was reminded this weekend of a wine store sign Nick Piombino thoughtfully noted to share:
"Sign outside a wine store (For Eileen Tabios): "There are large bodies of water separating us, and small amounts of wine to bring us together."
Thanks Nick -- I hadn't seen this slogan before (btw, I loved your two audioblogs!). And it may as well be the epigraph to this very amazing tale I'm about to share.
Thanks, Eileen. I'll mention to Michael Burakoff that you liked the audioblogs from his CD "The Crimson Format"
See the links to your left for Eileen Tabios.
Speaking of vintners, I was reminded this weekend of a wine store sign Nick Piombino thoughtfully noted to share:
"Sign outside a wine store (For Eileen Tabios): "There are large bodies of water separating us, and small amounts of wine to bring us together."
Thanks Nick -- I hadn't seen this slogan before (btw, I loved your two audioblogs!). And it may as well be the epigraph to this very amazing tale I'm about to share.
Thanks, Eileen. I'll mention to Michael Burakoff that you liked the audioblogs from his CD "The Crimson Format"
See the links to your left for Eileen Tabios.
By the way, when I was speaking on the phone- at length- with Jack Kimball the other day up in Mass, he mentioned that I had mispelled Katie Degentesh's name on my links. I have it spelled, as you can see, with a "d" instead of a "t."(He liked Katie's blog piece on "Ruts.") Jack is the publisher of Faux Press, including new books by "our" Jordan Davis, Nada Gordon and a new book by Alice Notley. Now here is a guy who I'm sure does an incredible job on proof reading since he remembered a one letter error on my links bar! Sheeesh! I also have "Katy" instead of "Katie." Sorry, Katie, and go, Jack! What was that saying, God is in the details?
John Erhardt (the Skeptic) is leaving for Montreal for a week, but left us some Patchen poems and this nice little note. .
: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 ::
late night email exchange with Nick. And I mean late. Nick, what were you doing up? What was I doing up? Why did I drink so much by myself? Hmm?
Anyway, he mentions Stephanie’s manuscript today, which I believe I have read (or I’ve read parts of it, sitting here, in my desk drawer, with the same title that he mentions). I, too, endorse “Telling the Future Off.”
So go to hell, future.
*
See John Erhardt, links to your left, please.
Thanks, John. Have a great trip to Montreal
: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 ::
late night email exchange with Nick. And I mean late. Nick, what were you doing up? What was I doing up? Why did I drink so much by myself? Hmm?
Anyway, he mentions Stephanie’s manuscript today, which I believe I have read (or I’ve read parts of it, sitting here, in my desk drawer, with the same title that he mentions). I, too, endorse “Telling the Future Off.”
So go to hell, future.
*
See John Erhardt, links to your left, please.
Thanks, John. Have a great trip to Montreal
The Brocade City might be a place for pleasure,
But it’s far better to hurry home.
The road to Shu is hard, harder than climbing to the heavens.
Sideways, I look westward and heave a long sigh.
posted by sandra 8:41 AM
Thanks, Sandra. I truly needed that poem this morning!
Links to your left - see Sandra's Poems for the complete text of one of her favorite Li Po poems.
But it’s far better to hurry home.
The road to Shu is hard, harder than climbing to the heavens.
Sideways, I look westward and heave a long sigh.
posted by sandra 8:41 AM
Thanks, Sandra. I truly needed that poem this morning!
Links to your left - see Sandra's Poems for the complete text of one of her favorite Li Po poems.
Jack Kimball discussed our phone call yesterday on his blog Pantaloons. He told you what I said but he didn't tell you what he said. I hope he won't mind if I mention he is the owner of a coffee shop called "Taste" in Newton, Mass right near Bob and Beryl's place in Arlington. I was sorry that my inept attempts to retrieve my emails up there led to getting Jack's letter late and so there was no time to visit his place. I might have gotten a free cup of coffee. But instead I heard all about what I think will be a terrific article coming out in the next "Poetry Project Newsletter" edited by Nada and Gary. His article covers the issue of a poet's career, a topic dear to my heart. We also talked, among other things, about Lytle Shaw's terrific "Lobe" which I happened to have brought up to Arlington with me, along with Stephanie Young's terrific ms.tentatively titled "Telling The Future Off."
Still debating with myself the ultimate meaning of "bad login." I see this as a suggestive mistake, and read it as if it were a tarot spread or an i-ching reading. But I'm not going to let this stop me. Corina Copp has written to me and lets say, strongly suggested I announce my upcoming reading at the Ceres Gallery. I guess I should since she thought it was happening tomorrow. And I'm hoping she will come!
I hope you all won't think I am blatantly careerist. Sorry to all my friends who live far away, which is a good proportion of you bloggers. But anyway...
Poets for Choice
A Benefit fo Planned Parenhood of New York
April 25 7:30 p.m.
Coordinated by Corinne Robins and Carol Goebel
Rachel Levitsky
Nick PIombino
Jerome Sala
Suggested donation $8.00
Cere Gallery 584-88 #306
New York 10012 (212)226-4725
Hope you can come!
I hope you all won't think I am blatantly careerist. Sorry to all my friends who live far away, which is a good proportion of you bloggers. But anyway...
Poets for Choice
A Benefit fo Planned Parenhood of New York
April 25 7:30 p.m.
Coordinated by Corinne Robins and Carol Goebel
Rachel Levitsky
Nick PIombino
Jerome Sala
Suggested donation $8.00
Cere Gallery 584-88 #306
New York 10012 (212)226-4725
Hope you can come!
Tuesday, April 22
An Hour With Ned Rorem
"People who've read my writing have usually never heard my music, and vice versa..." says Ned Rorem, one of America's greatest composers, and author of fifteen volumes of published diaries. "These two parallel, schizophrenic people never quite meet," he continues, "they're both inside of me, as answers to two different needs."
An Hour With Ned Rorem, the result of several long, recorded conversations between Sara Fishko and Mr. Rorem, will feature Rorem's eccentric, often dogmatic ideas, illustrated by excerpts from his, and others', music and writing. Rorem's views on Sondheim, Streisand, Piaf, Poulenc the Beatles and Beethoven never fail to amuse.
Listen to the special
Music master list for
"An Hour With Ned Rorem"
1)Rorem: 11 Studies for 11 Players, (Allegretto)
Various chamber players
New World, 80445
2) John Alden Carpenter, Skyscrapers
Kenneth Klein cond. London Symph. Orch
EMI 49263
3) Arnold Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire
Simon Rattle cond. Nash Ensemble
Chandos 6534
4) Rorem, 1st of 3 barcarolles
Leon Fleischer, piano
Philips 456775
5) Rorem Dance Suite (Overture)
Goldina/Loumbrozo, pianists
Phoenix USA PHCD138
6) Leonard Bernstein, Clarinet Sonata
Stoltzman, clarinet/Vallecillo, piano
RCA Victor 09026-62685
7) Rorem, Violin Concerto
Kremer, violin/Bernstein cond. NY Phil
DG 429 231
8) Virgil Thomson, Five Ladies for Violin and Piano
Leventhal, violin/Tomassini, piano
NorthEastern NR240-CD
9) Rorem, 11 Studies for 11 Players (Fugato)
See #1
10) Rorem, Early in the Morning (Poem by Rober Hillyer)
Donald Gramm, Rorem at the piano
Columbia LP MS 6561
11) Rorem, Spring and Fall (Poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Gramm/Rorem, as above
12) Rorem, O You Whom I Often and Silently Come (Whitman)
Regina Sarfaty/Rorem, as above
13) Rorem, Spring (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Phyllis Curtin/Rorem, as above
14) Rorem, To You (Walt Whitman)
Gramm/Rorem, as above
15) Break: Rorem, 6 Variations for 2 Pianos
Clinton/Narboni, pianists
Vanguard, SVC 106
16) Rorem, String Quartet
Emerson String Quartet
DG 289 453 506
17) The Beatles, 3 songs from Beatles Anthology, Capitol/EMI
18) Rorem, Piano Concerto for Left Hand and Orchestra
Graffman, piano/Previn cond. Curtis Orchestra
New World Records 80445 (CD)
19) Claude Debussy, Beau Soir
From 'Classical Barbra,' Barbra Streisand
with Ogerman cond. Columbia Sym. Orch
Columbia LP 33452
20) Edith Piaf, L'escale
from 'La Vie en Rose'
Replay Music RMCD 4103
21) Rorem, Evidence of Things Not Seen (Hymn for Evening)
NY Festival of Song
New World 80575
22) Rorem, Early in the Morning
Susan Graham/ Malcolm Martineau
Erato 80222
23) Closing, same as # 1
visit Fishko Files
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So I was just thinking that the time has come for fait accompli to write about Ned Rorem. So I went into his website and found this:
NYC is giving a five-hour-long broadcast of Ned's music, along with interviews, from Midnight to 5 AM on the evening of April 24-25. Be sure to tune in! Sarah Fishko's excellent hourlong interview with Ned on NPR is now available online. Click here to listen to it.
I'll follow this with more information on the website.link.
Are we really supposed to pretend that we don't care about publishing, about being read and listened to, about having a job we're not completely alienated from, about desiring creature comforts and the means to raise a family? Are we really expected to wear a corset of puritanical hypocrisy under our nouveau bohemian straitjackets? Yet of course I'm extremely sensitive to charges of selling out, as I'm extremely sensitive to most charges, even trumped-up ones—I
Josh Corey
John Erhardt praised this piece on his blog so I just read it. Gee, Josh, I wish you had thought about these issues and given me the same permission when you were reviewing my book "Theoretical Objects" on your blog awhile back. You kind of tore into me since I happened to write a lot about recognition and response and the writer's career in my book. Of course, in your case you've been writing for a few years, at most. For me it's been over 30. But I guess you felt I didn't deserve to focus a bit on these issues so much in my book. You also seemed to have bypassed the tone in my book which was meant to be at least ironic or sarcastic or hopefully funny. Also, in your review, you hardly mentioned the many other topics i wrote about in this book of over 140 pages. Still, I appreciated very much your attention to my book on your blog, even if it was a homework assignment. Anyway, you compared me to Emerson and I appreciated that!
Josh Corey
John Erhardt praised this piece on his blog so I just read it. Gee, Josh, I wish you had thought about these issues and given me the same permission when you were reviewing my book "Theoretical Objects" on your blog awhile back. You kind of tore into me since I happened to write a lot about recognition and response and the writer's career in my book. Of course, in your case you've been writing for a few years, at most. For me it's been over 30. But I guess you felt I didn't deserve to focus a bit on these issues so much in my book. You also seemed to have bypassed the tone in my book which was meant to be at least ironic or sarcastic or hopefully funny. Also, in your review, you hardly mentioned the many other topics i wrote about in this book of over 140 pages. Still, I appreciated very much your attention to my book on your blog, even if it was a homework assignment. Anyway, you compared me to Emerson and I appreciated that!
Thanks, Stephanie, for announcing the eventual publication of our postcard project! I'm enjoying working on this collaboration with you immensely!
I've posted some new links including the terrific Language Hat, Eeksy-Peeksy, Julia's poems and Katie Degendesh. I read these blogs every day.
Yesterday, Joseph Duemer wrote about his adventure in trying to rescue a Downy Woodpecker. For a city dweller like me this is an exciting and unusual adventure to read about indeed! Don't miss it!
Links to your left, please.
I've posted some new links including the terrific Language Hat, Eeksy-Peeksy, Julia's poems and Katie Degendesh. I read these blogs every day.
Yesterday, Joseph Duemer wrote about his adventure in trying to rescue a Downy Woodpecker. For a city dweller like me this is an exciting and unusual adventure to read about indeed! Don't miss it!
Links to your left, please.
Monday, April 21
Heriberto Yepez is working on a grant application to be able to write an introduction to Langpo poetics and then post-Langpo poetics. It's nice to have Heriberto back in English. Go into his now closed Tijuana Poetics blog, scroll down and click on his former Spanish and now bi-lingual blog Border Blogger 2. English is in yellow. Links to your left, please.
I guess Stephanie didn't like the sound quality of my audblogs. I know what she means. I thought these were pretty good considering the primitive method used- putting a phone in front of a speaker!- the poor sound quality of audblogs and their brevity have kept me away until now. I thought the music box one was kind of nice, sort of suggesting an old or partly broken toy, and how the memories of childhood never come through that pure and clear, but often in hesitant fragments and flashes. I also liked the idea of introducing Michael's music along with my mini-review of his cd. Anyway, Stephanie's been so nice so many times to me and
-fait accompli- she can easily afford to complain about something she didn't enjoy.
I hope she won't mind if I mention that we've been working on a postcard project together this month. She's told me some are on the way, but I've been away and I haven't seen them yet. I'm hoping our project -my group to be tentively titled "Uncircle the Wagons"- will be published as a chapbook in the attractive series of postcard books that include one by Stephanie and Cassie Lewis and another by Stephanie and Del Ray Cross.
-fait accompli- she can easily afford to complain about something she didn't enjoy.
I hope she won't mind if I mention that we've been working on a postcard project together this month. She's told me some are on the way, but I've been away and I haven't seen them yet. I'm hoping our project -my group to be tentively titled "Uncircle the Wagons"- will be published as a chapbook in the attractive series of postcard books that include one by Stephanie and Cassie Lewis and another by Stephanie and Del Ray Cross.
Cori does it again (monday, april 21) ::
As I was walking downstairs at work, I came across a woman kneeling on the staircase, with a lot of stuff heaped everywhere, and she looked at me and said "Oh, maybe I'll go outside!" I said, "Do you need some help?" She said, uncovering a box with the label "Kentucky Fried Chicken..." "No, I just need somewhere to eat my chicken!" Well, hell yeah, you're my kind of weirdo.
:: Cori 12:32 PM [+] ::
...
(from *Little Shirley Bean* LInks to your left, please)
As I was walking downstairs at work, I came across a woman kneeling on the staircase, with a lot of stuff heaped everywhere, and she looked at me and said "Oh, maybe I'll go outside!" I said, "Do you need some help?" She said, uncovering a box with the label "Kentucky Fried Chicken..." "No, I just need somewhere to eat my chicken!" Well, hell yeah, you're my kind of weirdo.
:: Cori 12:32 PM [+] ::
...
(from *Little Shirley Bean* LInks to your left, please)
Laura and Jordan both linked -fait accompli- today but when you click on these links you get a dead end street at Blogspot. Laurable, who is eternally and forever adorable, is the only one who will ever figure this out. Blogspot, you are chock full of charming kinks but I love you anyway!
Beryl has "airport" so I'm blogging at a table on their cool new deck facing the backyard now in warm, bright sunlight, with Michael, Bob (Beryl's husband) and Toni and we're listening to Jimmy Hendrix- Michael's favorite (this guy is 18, remember!)
Ah, Henrix on the blues, Jordan, what do you think of that? What was all that on your blog about Rush?
I agree wth what David said about blogging : of it but not in it, or was it in it, but not of it? Blogging is so flexible and elastic!
Jim, hey, I know Toni is going to want to go straight to the train station from here tomorrow. Are you on vacation this whole week here? Not going to work tomorrow? What time do you arrive? What are you doing in Arizona, anyway?
Mike just put an early hip-hop tape on.
Beryl has "airport" so I'm blogging at a table on their cool new deck facing the backyard now in warm, bright sunlight, with Michael, Bob (Beryl's husband) and Toni and we're listening to Jimmy Hendrix- Michael's favorite (this guy is 18, remember!)
Ah, Henrix on the blues, Jordan, what do you think of that? What was all that on your blog about Rush?
I agree wth what David said about blogging : of it but not in it, or was it in it, but not of it? Blogging is so flexible and elastic!
Jim, hey, I know Toni is going to want to go straight to the train station from here tomorrow. Are you on vacation this whole week here? Not going to work tomorrow? What time do you arrive? What are you doing in Arizona, anyway?
Mike just put an early hip-hop tape on.
I am planning to post more excerpts from Michael Burakoff's new cd as soon as I can set up an audblog account.
This weekend I am reading an ms. from Stephanie Young tentatively titled: "Telling the Future Off." Some very intriguing titles, that are also affirmations including: "TODAY I ANNOUNCE MY WILLINGNESS TO ALLOW LOVING EXPERIENCE INTO MY LIFE," "TODAY I CAN RELAX AND LET GO," "TODAY I BID GOODBYE TO THE PAST," "TODAY I TRAVEL FOR BUSINESS." Very much enjoying this book! I also brought along with me Lytle Shaw's absorbing "Lobe" (Roof Books, 2003) "Far down from everything good/in Oberammergau"; "'I prefer not to, he began again'"
This weekend I am reading an ms. from Stephanie Young tentatively titled: "Telling the Future Off." Some very intriguing titles, that are also affirmations including: "TODAY I ANNOUNCE MY WILLINGNESS TO ALLOW LOVING EXPERIENCE INTO MY LIFE," "TODAY I CAN RELAX AND LET GO," "TODAY I BID GOODBYE TO THE PAST," "TODAY I TRAVEL FOR BUSINESS." Very much enjoying this book! I also brought along with me Lytle Shaw's absorbing "Lobe" (Roof Books, 2003) "Far down from everything good/in Oberammergau"; "'I prefer not to, he began again'"
Sunday, April 20
Now we're listening to Michael Burakoff's (Beryl's 18 year old son's) gorgeous new CD- "Crimson Format." (thecrimsonformat@aol.com).
Great rhythmic electronic music, incredibly easy and pleasant to listen to, though sublty complex and varied containing innumerable moments of odd and shimmering sonic landscapes. LIke Michael himself, there is much charm and not a little whimsicality and humor. Michael has collaged sounds from many elements of his childhood using old tapes. Also, he creates his own instruments, for example, taking apart a music box and programming his own melodies. Michael's obsession is to create electronic instruments out of children's toy electronic instruments.There are 12 cuts, including 1)crows and concrete; 2)orion; 3)primer; 4)phoneme; 5)ruby; 6)the crimson format; 7)wash; 8)heliotaxis; 9)sysyphalus; 10)sertraline; 11)winter for the animals; 12) chrysalis and the cold outside. A musical remembrance of things past, Michael has also incorporated musical instruments from the collection of his grandfather Bill Simon, the jazz saxophonist and music critic, who wrote about and befriended Tony Scott, the great jazz clarinetist, who created the famous "Music for Zen Meditation" in the 60's and frequently recorded with Billie Holiday. My favorite cut on the album is "winter for the animals." Until now, Mike's work has been completely instrumental but on this cut he sings with a light sweetness and a haunting strangeness akin to Neil Young, evoking the aching dreams and nostalgia for and of childhood.
Great rhythmic electronic music, incredibly easy and pleasant to listen to, though sublty complex and varied containing innumerable moments of odd and shimmering sonic landscapes. LIke Michael himself, there is much charm and not a little whimsicality and humor. Michael has collaged sounds from many elements of his childhood using old tapes. Also, he creates his own instruments, for example, taking apart a music box and programming his own melodies. Michael's obsession is to create electronic instruments out of children's toy electronic instruments.There are 12 cuts, including 1)crows and concrete; 2)orion; 3)primer; 4)phoneme; 5)ruby; 6)the crimson format; 7)wash; 8)heliotaxis; 9)sysyphalus; 10)sertraline; 11)winter for the animals; 12) chrysalis and the cold outside. A musical remembrance of things past, Michael has also incorporated musical instruments from the collection of his grandfather Bill Simon, the jazz saxophonist and music critic, who wrote about and befriended Tony Scott, the great jazz clarinetist, who created the famous "Music for Zen Meditation" in the 60's and frequently recorded with Billie Holiday. My favorite cut on the album is "winter for the animals." Until now, Mike's work has been completely instrumental but on this cut he sings with a light sweetness and a haunting strangeness akin to Neil Young, evoking the aching dreams and nostalgia for and of childhood.
I'm in Arlington, Massachusetts visiting Toni's sister Beryl. It's her 50th birthday and we have some serious celebrating to do. So far the weather has been gorgeous, and right now it's almost 7 am and it's going to be a beautiful day today also. So first we went down to the reservoir -Toni and Beryl took a walk by themselves, then I joined them and then went off by myself to commune with a stream and some ducks. Beryl had the day all planned out. First we went to the Gardner Museum. It was just too beautiful out and the museum was too crowded- and with my usual claustrophobia I just didn't want to go inside- there was a park across the street so I hung out with two Canadian Geese at another stream and listened to my Rush CD - which I love. I wrote out the words to "Miracles":
"I wasn't walking on water, I was standing on a reef when the tide came in/ swept beneath the surface/lost without a trace/no hope at all/no hope at all/O Sweet Miracle (three times) then O Sweet Miracle of life/ I wasn't walking with angels I was talking to myself/rising up to the surface/raging against the night/starlit night/O Sweet Miracle (3 times) O sweet miracle of life/ I wasn't praying for magic I was hiding in plain sight/rising up from the surface/to fly into the light/into the light/O sweet miracle (3 times) love's sweet mirace of life"
I realize it's very corny, but if you can, listen to the song I think it't pretty great. Actually, I don't know the title of the album because someone gave me a copy of it.
So after about 2 hours Toni and Beryl came out of the museum and we on to our next planned event which was a 3D Imax movie-"Ocean Wonderland." This was fun except for the screaming kids and the crowdedness. I kept reaching out for the fish as they swam nearby just to tease Toni. The best part was an incredibly huge sunken ship where millions of fish make their home. As we were leaving, I heard over an usher's walkie talkie: "Does anybody know if Stephanie is still here?" That was a bit eerie. My blogger family seems to be everywhere! I would be visiting with Jim Behrle this weekend if he wasn't in Arizona, and also I have to miss the gala group reading here next weekend that includes Nada, Gary, possibly Drew, Carolyn Crumpacker and many Boston poets I would have loved to meet. But, as it happens, next weekend I am giving a reading in Manhattan at the Ceres Gallery on Friday night with the amazing Jerome Sala- one of the fathers of Slam Poetry and Rachel Levitsky.
So after the movie, Beryl took us to the best seafood restaurant I've ever been to in my life: "Legal Sea Foods." It was a little strange to eat so much fish after watching so many of them swim around in the movie. I had a coupla Newcastle dark ales and I got a little rowdy with the waitress, who said we were the most entertaining table that night- man, that place was crowded! I had an amazing spicy shellfish stew called Cioppa or something like that. It came with lots of gravy, French bread and jasmine rice. The waitress works in a Middle School and I mentioned that Beryl has two teenage sons. She said she thought that girls were more difficult and I said, yeah, they're always in a panic about something. When I worked in a middle school frequently a teenage girl would show up in the psychologist's office on Friday at 3 pm to say she was suicidal, which meant that the crisis team could not leave until the matter was settled. The waitress thought I had had two too many beers when I tried to imitate a suicidal teenager in Spanish. Then we left, and I came home and very kindly Beryl leant me her Apple laptop on which I'm writing to you now. I read all lthe blogs last night -including the very gracious acceptance by Bill Marsh recently of the fait accompli oxymoron of the year award! - and early this morning read David Hess' first thing as often he blogs either late the night before or early in the morning. Today he said he was doing a "NIck Piombino" by offering some notebook writings. Hey David, these were great, I want to see more.
Anyway, yesterday, sitting at the reservoir, I wrote this blog:
Not long after getting involved with literature, I got into the habit of wandering off the beaten path. You have to understand that I read a lot, because I was an only child until I was 13 when my brother Richard was born. My parents and I lived in Nurnberg, Germany when I was a kid, and then we moved to San Francisco,where I attended some great schools. My only constant friends in my childhood were books, and I liked to have a lot of friends and I liked to meet a lot of different types of people (still do, which is why I am a therapist and social worker) only at that time I met them all in books. What are books, anyway, but people. The ideas have been pretty much the same since day #1: you live, you love, you work, you die. So much for subject matter. Because of the endless similarities, I got interested in non-narrative elements. I got interested in these because they varied the mix. Varying the mix moved prosaic elements closer to poetry. When you study the matter closely you realize that there are non-narrative elements in all poetry. Especially all very interesting poetry. I haven't knowingly read any Flarf but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the deal is in admitting nonsense elements - which are closely allied with non-narrative elements. Non-narrative elements can always be translated back into narrative elements via associations. Toni was poking some sticks into the ground in a circle at the reservoir. She called this her "monument to the future."As she did so, she was talking about Seth's ideas of the far future. So I said "So you want to stick around to see the far future." I had translated her action into its original form: a thought- a wish to experience the future. Non-narrative elements work like this, increasing the range of interpretability.
My friend David Hess has a beef with so-called Language poetry, but I think if we talked more about the techniques and less about this group of people who focused on these techniques it would be more useful. Anyway, David seems to have discovered that instead of spicing up the mix with non-narrative elements you can use a lot of wit, humor and even sarcasm. The problem with sarcasm is that when it is too biting, like too many red hot peppers, it burns people's palates and sometimes they don't want return to the restaurant. I, for one, love hot peppers, so I usually really enjoy David's writing. But I worry sometimes when people get their feelings hurt.
"I wasn't walking on water, I was standing on a reef when the tide came in/ swept beneath the surface/lost without a trace/no hope at all/no hope at all/O Sweet Miracle (three times) then O Sweet Miracle of life/ I wasn't walking with angels I was talking to myself/rising up to the surface/raging against the night/starlit night/O Sweet Miracle (3 times) O sweet miracle of life/ I wasn't praying for magic I was hiding in plain sight/rising up from the surface/to fly into the light/into the light/O sweet miracle (3 times) love's sweet mirace of life"
I realize it's very corny, but if you can, listen to the song I think it't pretty great. Actually, I don't know the title of the album because someone gave me a copy of it.
So after about 2 hours Toni and Beryl came out of the museum and we on to our next planned event which was a 3D Imax movie-"Ocean Wonderland." This was fun except for the screaming kids and the crowdedness. I kept reaching out for the fish as they swam nearby just to tease Toni. The best part was an incredibly huge sunken ship where millions of fish make their home. As we were leaving, I heard over an usher's walkie talkie: "Does anybody know if Stephanie is still here?" That was a bit eerie. My blogger family seems to be everywhere! I would be visiting with Jim Behrle this weekend if he wasn't in Arizona, and also I have to miss the gala group reading here next weekend that includes Nada, Gary, possibly Drew, Carolyn Crumpacker and many Boston poets I would have loved to meet. But, as it happens, next weekend I am giving a reading in Manhattan at the Ceres Gallery on Friday night with the amazing Jerome Sala- one of the fathers of Slam Poetry and Rachel Levitsky.
So after the movie, Beryl took us to the best seafood restaurant I've ever been to in my life: "Legal Sea Foods." It was a little strange to eat so much fish after watching so many of them swim around in the movie. I had a coupla Newcastle dark ales and I got a little rowdy with the waitress, who said we were the most entertaining table that night- man, that place was crowded! I had an amazing spicy shellfish stew called Cioppa or something like that. It came with lots of gravy, French bread and jasmine rice. The waitress works in a Middle School and I mentioned that Beryl has two teenage sons. She said she thought that girls were more difficult and I said, yeah, they're always in a panic about something. When I worked in a middle school frequently a teenage girl would show up in the psychologist's office on Friday at 3 pm to say she was suicidal, which meant that the crisis team could not leave until the matter was settled. The waitress thought I had had two too many beers when I tried to imitate a suicidal teenager in Spanish. Then we left, and I came home and very kindly Beryl leant me her Apple laptop on which I'm writing to you now. I read all lthe blogs last night -including the very gracious acceptance by Bill Marsh recently of the fait accompli oxymoron of the year award! - and early this morning read David Hess' first thing as often he blogs either late the night before or early in the morning. Today he said he was doing a "NIck Piombino" by offering some notebook writings. Hey David, these were great, I want to see more.
Anyway, yesterday, sitting at the reservoir, I wrote this blog:
Not long after getting involved with literature, I got into the habit of wandering off the beaten path. You have to understand that I read a lot, because I was an only child until I was 13 when my brother Richard was born. My parents and I lived in Nurnberg, Germany when I was a kid, and then we moved to San Francisco,where I attended some great schools. My only constant friends in my childhood were books, and I liked to have a lot of friends and I liked to meet a lot of different types of people (still do, which is why I am a therapist and social worker) only at that time I met them all in books. What are books, anyway, but people. The ideas have been pretty much the same since day #1: you live, you love, you work, you die. So much for subject matter. Because of the endless similarities, I got interested in non-narrative elements. I got interested in these because they varied the mix. Varying the mix moved prosaic elements closer to poetry. When you study the matter closely you realize that there are non-narrative elements in all poetry. Especially all very interesting poetry. I haven't knowingly read any Flarf but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the deal is in admitting nonsense elements - which are closely allied with non-narrative elements. Non-narrative elements can always be translated back into narrative elements via associations. Toni was poking some sticks into the ground in a circle at the reservoir. She called this her "monument to the future."As she did so, she was talking about Seth's ideas of the far future. So I said "So you want to stick around to see the far future." I had translated her action into its original form: a thought- a wish to experience the future. Non-narrative elements work like this, increasing the range of interpretability.
My friend David Hess has a beef with so-called Language poetry, but I think if we talked more about the techniques and less about this group of people who focused on these techniques it would be more useful. Anyway, David seems to have discovered that instead of spicing up the mix with non-narrative elements you can use a lot of wit, humor and even sarcasm. The problem with sarcasm is that when it is too biting, like too many red hot peppers, it burns people's palates and sometimes they don't want return to the restaurant. I, for one, love hot peppers, so I usually really enjoy David's writing. But I worry sometimes when people get their feelings hurt.
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