notebook (untitled poem): 2/12/90

This isn't work, I insisted,
If it is work, I will not do it,
If it's work I cannot relate to it
Or will not relate to it,
This is mine and it can't be sold.
Outside it is raining
Outside it is night time
I listen to the whoosh of the cars passing
Nothing has changed for 15 years:
Books not alphabetized, an obscure order
I long ago forgot, an invisible
And fading order- importance vanishes here
And is built again on the outside by others-
But they have to strain or exagerrate things
to make it a saleable article
And I don't believe it, but a fiction nevertheless, no blame
That it makes this acceptable- a good you- rationalized
Approachable- things are harder & harder to hide,
My name is a made thing and a brand name
Making illegible articles, incomprehensible
Noplace to hide in the whole flourescent universe.
As soon as you hear this I am invisible to you
As soon as you answer I can't see you.
I close my eyes in the middle of the conversation
something is changing and I can't keep track of it.
Rousseau thought that he lived to keep the conversation going-
Try to relax- all we have is time.

FUTUREPOEM SPRING READING AT THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 Bowery @ Bleecker (Bowery between Houston & Bleecker),
F train to Second Ave | 6 train to Bleecker | 212-614-0505

SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., $5.00 admission (to support
the press)

PRESENTS

A FUTUREPOEM SPRING READING EXTRAVAGANZA

A Futurepoem Book Party and Reading by current and forthcoming FP
authors, editors and friends of the press including: Charles Bernstein,
Lewis Warsh, Jo Ann Wasserman, Merry Fortune, Garrett Kalleberg, Rachel
Levitsky, Kristin Prevallet, Dan Machlin, Heather Ramsdell, Virtual
Edwin Torres, And special guests: just-announced 04/05 authors: Michael
Ives & Shanxing Wang.

And stay on afterwards for Drew Gardner and Deborah Richards at the
Segue Series at 4:00 p.m.

notebook: 1980

Her schedule in the present (hospital, clinic,
parents, male friend she used to live with,
husband, etc.), classes, events- parties,
visits, concerts, films books she's reading
Her schedule- *then*

type the lists

t.v. programs she watches

make illustrative collage of *her* life
from magazines-

her *casual* observations
her *casual*, peripheral memories, feelings,
thoughts, reflections, beliefs
her *way* of talking to friends about her problems
what makes her cheerful
what saddens her
*how* she responds when people
give her advice, criticize her, praise her,
talk about themselves, tell her their
problems

her response to pain
what gives her pleasure
her strengths
her weaknesses
what she likes to look at
where she likes to go- how she likes to travel
her ways of dealing with loneliness
her attitudes towards people
he attitude towards money
how she sleeps
how she wakes
************
write about each seperately
write the events, then outline, then order (order
last)
*as* I live- use the events of the day as
material for specifics
************
the list- go to the list for *topics*
compound the topics

attitudes
feelings
ways of resolving
her ideas

thoughts that could create a structure

It wouldn't have to be one continuous
emotion- in fact, it could begin with her
angry or enraged- I could score the emotions
before each section of writing- it's emotions
not music- I could be precise about those-
she does not always have to be likeable or
understandable-
the music-
Her emotions
her fantasies
the situation "explained"


-My abstract writing as purely music

her memories- the beach, school
feelings
relationships
interests-
her clothes
her obsessions
her needs
her desires
her disappointments
her intelligence, her intellectual experiences-
I don't have to use all the details but I
have to know them-
bring *all* of my intelligence to bear on the
writing

describe her physically *completely*
her apartment completely
her car-
her neighborhood

I could base her character on F

How she feels physically during each
what she things about *as* she *does* each
use index cards in front of me as I write
because I can't hold it all in my mind

my resistance to really concentrating on writing-
the energy level need not be ecstatic as
when I write poetry-

Before I write- the topics on cards-
*don't worry* about fragmentation- that's
what stops me-
Not my mood, but the mood of the narrator-

I don't really feel like writing about you.
I still hate you too much.

It's my hate that stops me- if I write
& discharge the troublesome emotion or
find a way to discharge it, I'm free-
I no longer hve to worry about the
text- it will get written

notebook (untitled poem): 10/3/83


in the event of solitude
after a time of waiting
purer tones will follow

the precise hour
is vague
the time of collection
varied
after a pure stop
vanish
listen

place things back
put them in order
collect your thoughts
organize your time

disrupt the interval
bend time to follow
circle facts
with varied tones

in the surest interval
repetition is foregrounded
mostly by memory
this is precisely matched
to bring all the shrill tones
to a halt

freedom
is not a
counter-command
the release
is more than
the subtotal

characteristic in cities
is the primary concentration of value
what remains is more than
the simople dictation of virtues

to release what is there
it is insufficient to let go
or the secondary resonance
will occur out of phase

Notebook: 3-30-88

Energy a kind of
information-
therefore matter
a kind of information.

3-31-88

Scene:
Musician in
subway is ragged
and pathetic. Gradually
he draws an impressive
crowd- and is
surrounded by an air
of serene confidence.

6/25/88

To give things a
name is to personify
them to some degree,
because we call
persons by names,
which also tends to
rob- in our perceptions
of them- persons
of their thingness.

But an identity is
something that has
thingnesss but is not
a thing

Because they are so familiar
to me the Catskill mountains are
just mountains.
It is a place to
be in the mountains
as much as it is
a place in the mountains (that has
its "own" locale-
and character.)

Why am I so
reisistant to the
specificity of place?
I easily get lost.
Do I like it?

8/23/88

The emphasis
this year
should be *flow.* Flow
over *particularity*.

Musa McKim by Phillip
Guston {click here}

January 10, 1973

Dear Bernadette,

You asked about the sources for Bunting Ideas last night
and in my excitement about what was going on I didn't really
get it together to remember it all after I came home from
my office where I typed up Bunting Ideas during my lunch hour
(it was a long one!) i wrote out a list of sources- the
world of silence is the book by max picard that ron padgett
read from at the recent poetry reading in the greene street
loft ive had that book around for years and never have been
able to decide whether i liked it or not it is a very strange
and interesting book ... the table of contents goes the ego
and silence knowledge and silence things and silence history and
silence world of myth images and silence love and silence and
so on...at the workshop ron padgett told us that he hadnt been
writing i think for 6 months (i think he meant poetry) so that
fitted in nicely...when I have times that i cant
write sometimes i have trouble haring what people say and
it really feels like a world of silence...i don't like it so
much and once wrote a poem against silence...for a long time it was
my favorite word...X once sent me a book by john cage
titled silence and he sent it anonymously...also sonnet xivii
by Ted Berrigan...ideas of order at key west by Wallace Stevens
you asked about the war image coming from another poem and I
looked at the list when I came home and saw the hollow men by
TS Eliot...but i changed in my mind "not with a bang but a
whimper" to "whisper" also as I said last night ron padgetts
spontaneous poem about the anonymous poets poem b52s bomb people
b83s bomb pretzels he said if he were to write it it would
go something like that...also as i was writing i thought about
a poem by Jack Foss in Locus Solus iii-iv

The Categorical Avoidance

To say you are like this
or this is like you
is to begin the comparison
and you would become
less like any other thing;
and would become relatively pale
and absolutely die,
belonging finally everywhere
metaphorically (p242)

[correction: this poem is by
Musa McKim]

there was someting else...oh yes...i appreciate your encouragement
to write prose as I have been planning to drop out (from social
work) for awhile and write poetry and a book about psychoanalysis
and poetry...X has been encouraging me for a year now to write
about poetry and i think i can work it into a sort of fictional
literary journal (did you ever read *The Burning Brand* by Cesar Pavese?)
im so excited about publishing the basil poems with you...I wrote
to my analyst (alan grossman) yesterday morning saying that if it
were to be published i might want to dedicate Bunting Ideas
to the memory of my father who was a career soldier and fought
in africa and italy during world war II... he died of a heart
attack on October 2, 1972 During the war
he received the Bronze Star

Well I dont know how to express my gratitude for
your encouragement except to say that Bunting Ideas is especially a
gift from me and you to you and everyone

"Sometimes my inability
to understand spoken English frustrates me"- from a new puppet
slide show on Ululations (Nada Gordon) {click here}

Notebook: 4/1/88

The lustre of
something new.

The reader
brings something
dead to life.
For me,
learning to read
got connected to
ancientness,
particularly thoughts
about mummies,
pyramids, and
most of all,
ancient hieroglyphic
tablets.

I'm able to glance
through such books
as Bridges to
Infinity or Playing
and Reality by
Winnicott by
realizing the entire
span of thought of
one person is
just as much
an example of a
kind of unravelling.

Reality is like
a suit of clothes
or a dress hanging
in a closet. It
tends to sustain
itself much longer
than it keeps
its lustre, therefore
giving dissolution
a measure of
respectability.

The universe ages
gracefully and
stormily, just
like the individual.

[B hated
paper with lines-
which I love-
probably
because it remnded
her that her
mother was not
"straight" with her
in some way.]

Titanic Operas {click here}