Distribution Automatique

Saturday, December 27

Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 11:38:24 EST
From: Laura Elrick
Subject: Alan Davies and Tom Orange in NYC

SEGUE READING SERIES AT THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB

We are very disappointed to announce that Jeff Derksen, who had been
scheduled to read, will not be able to make it on Jan 3. However, the fantastic Alan
Davies will be reading with Tom Orange. Please come out and join us!

January 3: Alan Davies and Tom Orange

Alan Davies is author of many works including the poetry books Rave (Roof,
1994), Candor (O Books, 1990), Name (This, 1986) and Active 24 Hours (Roof).
Recent chapbooks include Sei Shonagon (Hole, 1995), and an untitled collaboration
with the photographer M. M. Winterford (Zasterle, 1994). Signage, a
collection of writings on and about poetry and poets was published in 1986 by Roof.
Originally from Canada, Davies has lived in Boston and is currently living in New
York.

Tom Orange co-curates the "in your ear" reading series at the District of
Columbia Arts Center. He maintains and edits the dcpoetry.com Website and
anthologies, and he teaches periodically in the English Department at Georgetown
University.
Notebook: 5/17/91

2.

Now that I've been barely able to stop
Things move with a start that smiles forbiddingly.
Don't disagree with yourselves
You have throats and necks
And decibels of silence no one can even save.
I yearn you in replicas
I take thousands of socks and heave
them at your eyeglasses
No refrain. No butter, either, in the urn,
No anxieties about people's atttudes,
No getting left out either. Sorry
My breath smells so bad. Sorry
I forgot your name and even what you said-
Forgive me- so long ago- embarassment
Slaps me around all day. Take the bus,
Or at least paste the ticket
On a piece of paper this year.
Ay caramba!
(If you want to understand this,
Don't read it.)

Friday, December 26

Merry Christmas and
Happy New Year in Many Languages {click here}



Happy Chanukah in Many Languages {click here}


Holiday Good Wishes in Arabic {click here}

Center for
Multicultural And Gender Studies
Holiday Information Page {click here}
2004 resolution number one: learn to appreciate
insults, especially poets' snobbery: after all,
what happens? You get pissed off and forget
about your *real* worries.

Thursday, December 25

Lost In Thought

"This prediliction for getting lost, this
was the sign beginning with which
all possibility opened."
Jean Fremon
*Distant Noise* (Avec)


The arcades, so many doors.
Images calling to me from behind those doors.
The increasing impersonality of stores-
Starbucks' tendency to offer an identical
experience everywhere.
As if there were a conscious attempt
to eliminate the necessity of thought.
Thought gradually becoming equal to
obedience.
The impossibility of thought, the
erosion of thought.
The retreat from thought.
Essential uncontrollability of thought.
Emotional turmoil associated with thought.
Looking for thoughts behind those doors,
faces, faces in thought.
Thoughts going on behind the faces.
Faces as doors that open and close.
Closure of thought, essential
immovability of thought.

Hurrying for thought,
hurriedness of thought,
thoughts interfering with
other thoughts,
paradox of thought,
contradictions of thought.
Thought's eddying quality,
essential opacity
and permeability of thought.
Instability, transformability,
peculiarity, parodoxical
pettiness of thought,
thought's dangers,
passivity of thought.
Levels of thought,
simultaneities,
coincidences, thought
within thought, intellectual
bias of thought, thought's
cul-de-sacs, detours,
stereotypes, one-way-streets,
reproducibility,
identifiability,
transferability,
capability of condensation,
thought's tendency to
unearth and sustain origins.
Widening access to
thought, translation of
thought, thought's
chasms, divides, its
rhetorical treacheries,
hypocricies, tendency
towards illusion or
deception, thought's
limits, its divides, its
vulnerability to confusion,
misunderstanding,
distortion,
mystification,
obfuscation,
its secrets, its
isolated character,
thought's asocial
transgressions,
thought's earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions,
tectonic shifts,
unclassifiability,
enigmatic
discontinuities,
its essential
privacy, its
constant gnawing
appetite for continual
metamorphosis,
further
development,
its tendency
to seek momentum,
its desire for
progeny,
for history,
for remembrance,
insistence on
truth, in private
its public
insistence on
verifiabilty,
thought's
connectivity,
its desire
to
universalize,
efface
identity,
thought's
definability,
its chameleon-like
tendency to
adapt to its
formal
presentations,
its charm
and amiability
when it
needs to
pursuade
or seduce,
thought's
ability to
invent its
own vocabulary,
or improvise
a language
by means of
accessible
materials,
thoughts
lightness, its
capacity to
be held
due
to the lack
of necessity
for material
enclosure,
thought's
phoenix-like
tendency to
defy
its
containments
thought's
meteoric
rise, thoughts
sputtering
demise

"Redemption depends on the tiny fissure in the continuous catastrophe."

Walter Benjamin, *Central Park*
Volume 4 Selected Writings
Harvard UP/Belknap 2003
Notebook: May 17, 1991

3.

I'm trying to remember "not-remember"
But I don't know what it is.
For one thing it oozes but this isn't important
What is important won't tell you anyway.
Secret smile, laughter that doesn't get dressed,
Disappearing intentions that later your find hiding in the satisfactions
Of breakfast. But now I'm late, I'm not even gone yet,
I'm running in syllables that also don't matter
And nobody bothers to rub their shoulders once in awhile.
This hasn't occured to its own progenitor
Who insists on editorializing instead of writing that ending.
That's not what I meant. In the wink of an eyelid
Sombody has already explained it in raised eyebrows
While I am only trying to get understood.
What an understatement! As they say
The best understatement is no understatement at all.
But is that being nice?

Wednesday, December 24

Happy Holidays from
*fait accompli*


C
Pine cones
Silver balls
Yellow Bell
Green Light

H

Tinsel
Red Light

R

Tinsel
Yellow Light

I

Green Ball
Green Light

S

Silver Ball
Red Light

T
pine cones
Blue Light

M

Tinsel
Yellow Light

A
Red Bulb
Green Light

S

Yellow bulb
Blue Light

T

Blue Bulb
Yellow light


R

Tinsel rope
Male Surfer

E

Yellow Light
Female Surfer

E


Red Bulb
Yellow Bulb

Planter with Red Foil
Tinsel Rope

Red and Brown and Green Basket (Autumn colors)

Present (yellow paper)

Present (blue paper)

Present (blue paper)

Present (yellow paper)

present (blue paper)

present (yellow paper)

Ribbon and maracas
on lower shelf







I'm determined to learn Spanish
and to improve my French. How?
By reading blogs in French and Spanish
every day. Why? Just look:
Heriberto Yepez {click here}

Media TIC {click here}
Notebook: May 17, 1991

4.

The crook is the seventh priest.
But this isn't what bothers me.
What kills me is that under the current
digestive system
One must not listen to two birds at one
time.
Two would be stone it they didn't look back
Burning a hole into the northwest curbs of them.
But such is language. And thus pain
Bangs its fists into the doors of courage
But no one answers because bravery forgot
What words to say, not having a drink in its hand
At the party it couldn't make itself go to
and thus read a book and fell asleep at 12.
The crook is off the hook now.


*******************************************
Looks like we'll be moving soon...
Checking the yellow pages...
Oz Moving and Storage {click here}

Tuesday, December 23

January 11. . .(it‚s a SUNDAY)
BELLADONNA* Traipses UPTOWN to the MAKOR Uptown/Downtown Arts Marathon
(i.e. read carefully, everything is going to be strange and different!)


January Belladonna* poets, MARCELLA DURAND, JOANNA FUHRMAN, JULIE PATTON and our very own ERICA KAUFMAN and RACHEL LEVITSKY will mix it up with the Makor Artists Networks (A Fusion of Art School and Jewish Studies) and some of downtown's most exciting performers!
The Marathon takes place on Sunday, January 11th from 12:00 Noon until 6:00 pm. NON STOP.
The UPTOWN/DOWNTOWN MAKOR MARATHON is: Performance, Poetry, Spoken Word, Music, Comics, Film, Video and Art, and Food. Featuring: Hourly Gallery Launches//Makor Comics Book Corner//Belladonna* poetry readings and book release// Bowery Poetry Club‚s Urbana National Poetry Slam Champs//Rooftop Films‚ daring new shorts//R. Sykoriak‚s "Carousel" Cartoon Slide Shows//Deep Dish Cabaret//DJ Raz Mesinai aka Badawi//Tribeca Performing Arts Center Artist-in-Residence Karen Sommers and Friends//Video Installations by Raul Vincent Enriquez//Writer and Performer Lisa Kron//Gallery art curated by Anat Litwin
Be the first in line for the High Noon DJ Bagel Brunch!

All events will take place at :
Makor/Steinhard Center of the 92nd Street Y
35 W 67th Street (btwn Columbus & Central Park West)

Admission is $20 All Day Pass for all day pass, Advance Tickets are $15 and can be purchased from www.makor.org or by calling Makor at 212-601-1000.
Poet discounts may be available.
Perfect Toast Every Time {click here}

Ok. I'll wait until midnight to
tell you where I found this link.

If you've been reading
*fait accompli* for awhile
you should be able to guess.
*****

12:21
Wednesday, December 24
(Tuesday December 23rd, of course
in Australia)
That Melbourne {click here} blogger, of course, is
Boynton {click here}


"A minor character in a
minor Shirley Temple film."

Notebook: 5/9/91

Suddenly

Everything is gradual
Suddenly
Everything is gradual
Again

Monday, December 22

I think a few bloggers are tired of their own formulas.
Improv out. {click here}

posted by Jack 2:48 PM

Jack! It's the holidays!
Chill out!
Save your strength for shopping:
tomorrow is Christmas eve
eve.

And by the way,
have a very, very happy...
same to all my readers...
"The free mind abhors competition. It sides
with its opponent.

It is too well aware that, though defeats
may lay us low, victories annhilate us.

A man who can overcome defeat will be wiped out,
disintegrated by victory.

The free mind loathes the two base thoughts implicit in
"victory" and "defeat."

All that hinders the mind from forming *all possible*
combinations of ideas debases it in its essential function-
which is that of forming them....

Antagonists are merely polarities of one and the same
system, a system that itself is changeful and will pass
away...

It feels that fits of anger grievances-like joys- are so
many losses of freedom; as the creaks and tremors of a
motor and so many losses of its driving power...

Our whole existence is an injustice; our
intelligence an offense *per se*- perhaps the most cruelly
resented of all."

Paul Valery
*Analects*
"Odds and Ends"

*****

The Final Destruction of the Nobodies


The prevalence of manipulation and
counter-manipulation with its raw,
constantly mutating,
increasingly virulent forms of propaganda
via group persuasion is a direct
outcome of the continuous,
ever increasingly fragmented, divided
and traumatized
condition of humanity.
It is easy enough, particularly when outraged by
an abuser, to disconnect someone's
use of power from their inner or outer
felt vulnerabilities- the ultimate source
of such driven, compulsive need to control.
The "powerful"
always know how to disguise
their feelings of anxiety and insecurity.
Feelings of outrage of the victims of
power struggles serve the interests of the
exploiters of power struggles. Manipulative,
power- oriented people require the use of divide
and conquer strategies. Nations, systems,
poems, ideas, people
have to be "bad" or "good," "in" or "out."
The knee-jerk application
of "oedipal" interpretations misses this point,
because this interpretation focuses on
power struggle which is what the powerful
and would be powerful always want. Whether
such people are generals, politicians, nurses,
corporate bosses or poet- leaders, what
the powerful always want is to encourage power struggle
and a constant focus on issues of control and authority.
The powerful almost always win in a power
struggle. What is lost in a power struggle?
The usual victims of power struggles are autonomy,
caring, sensitivity, thought, revery,
contemplativeness, composure,
freedom, independence, overview,
philosophical awareness. The "winners" of power
struggles are the manipulative users of them.
"Winners" and "losers" alternate roles in a
never-ending game of sado-masochistic
musical chairs. All the players of the game
are both winners and losers. The better
one becomes at losing, the better one
becomes at a winning.

In fact, probably nearly
every third or fourth grader
is capable of recognizing, if not
comprehending, that
the underlying cause of all
power struggle is insecurity.
This knowledge doesn't stop
anybody who wants
power from using manipulation.
The person who
indulges in manipulation is a person who
has learned to fake caring and
interest and
to substitute constant goal- oriented
behavior on their own behalf, or on
the behalf of their group of supporters.
Such people
come across as having leadership potential,
sometimes charisma and charm.
especially if they surround themselves with
an aura of infinite energy and available resources,
personal or social. Leaders like this
extend a false
hope of coherence during an
incoherent era.

It's an exhilarating thing to see when
people work together on their
own behalf. All too often,
power seeking individuals exploit
what they see as weakness in
people they are competing with.
They will isolate competitors, exclude them,
fail to acknowledge their accomplishments,
dismiss or criticize or ridicule them socially,
all in the spirit of furthering their own
little circle, aspiring to empower themselves
and their sub-group of supporters.
In any case, the idea of independence
must be connected with the idea of
isolation of disempowerment. This way
the individuals participating in the circle of
winning and losing are the new winners,
the new conquerors, the new aspirants
filled with hopes for victory. "Let the
marginalized and the separate take
notice!" their gestures signal.
"You are not one of us! You
will be forgotten and ignored.
Your bad work and bad ideas are nothing.
You are 'little unimportant people.'
We are the big people deserving of
ever-increasing acknowledgement and
respectful gestures."

The cycle is endlessly reborn
with each new would-be person of power.
"You know what you have to do. Now go for it!"
There's no time for snivelling sympathy and so-called
"humanism." We all know such are the pawns
of the powerful. "Only we initiates know the true
political, religious, philosophical or aesthetic truth,"
they assure themselves.
"And we are a closed group.
No one who doesn't closely follow our private
signals and codes will be recognized
and permitted to be
one of us. They’d better
join us in our power play and also be the conquerors.
The others will just be out there by themselves
deluding themselves that they are some bodies.
When we insiders know they are nothing and nobody.
They are nobodies."

Sunday, December 21

from *The Notebooks of Samuel Butler (1835-1902)*


"Ideas"

"They are like shadows-substantial enough until we try
to grasp them."



"Expression"

"The fact that every mental state is intensified by
expression is of a piece with the fact that nothing
has any existence at all save in its expression."



"Development"

"All things are like exposed photographic plates that have
no visible image on them till they have been developed."



"Acquired Characteristics"

"If there is any truth in the theory that these are inherited
- and who can doubt it?-the eye and the finger are but
the aspiration, or word, made manifest in flesh."


"Physical and Spiritual"

"The bodies of many abandoned undertakings lie rotting
unburied up and down the country and their ghosts haunt
the law courts."


"Trail and Writing"

"Before the invention of writing the range of one man's
influence over another was limited to the range of sight,
sound and scent; besides this there was trail, of many kinds.
Trail unintentionally left is, as it were, hidden sight. Left
intentionally, it is the unit of literature. It is the first mode
of writing, from which grew that power of extending men's
influence over one another by the help of written symbols of
all kinds without which the development of modern
civilization would have been impossible."