"Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage."

*Vanishing Point*
David Markson
Shoemaker & Hoard
2004

You can't always get what you want,
but sometimes you can!
Check out Jonathan Mayhew's {click here}
translation of Heriberto Yepez's powerful writing.
****
And while you're there,
read Jonathan Mayhew's
latest poem just below.

Do you like, or love, Rilke's Duino Elegies?
Then read Allen Bramhall's parodies, quietly titled
*Songs* {click here}
Very funny!

This just in from
David Nemeth: Nemski.com {click here}
ALex Cumberbatch
exzentrick libretti {click here}
is back online.
***
Coming soon on
Nemski.com:
homophonic translation
experiments a la
Charles Bernstein
***
August may be the hottest month:
Mark Lamoureux on
Verse {click here}
***
Saying goodbye to Catier-Bresson, aged 95,
Boynton {click here}
style.
***
By the way, at Patrick 'Durgin''s
Berkeley goodbye barbecue
last week, David Larsen told
me he has a book due soon from
Jack Kimball's Faux Press {click here}
which published
Nada Gordon's gorgeous
*v.imp*

"poetry...I too
my head...won't go into it.
The movement is bird. Sure, all's dire,
but look! What comes out! Dark as grapes,
but sounding, hot-hot-persisting in wanting
to be wanted."

Learning Spanish is one of the
many important things to do when
there is never enough time.

Clearly, Babel Fish is not much
of a translator, but who is when
it comes to poetry?

Here is a brief passage from
a much longer post that needs real
translating desperately:
from e.n.s.a.m.b.l.e. (Herberto Yepez) {click here}

I cannot let write like who cannot leave the alcoholism. I have tried the love and the academy, the Gestalt psycotherapy and the Tecate beer, the aphorism and zen, the photography and the bicycle, but nothing. I always return, I add more text to a work that it wanted to consist of one joint done of pure pieces of silence. But I cannot. Whenever I write a word comes an intermediate silence, it is certain, but soon other words come, too many. If somebody observes and listens to well this text it can give account of this. But also extrañ can be given account of something enough: in all text there are many words but also much silence, many empty syllables, syllables of silence that they avoid that all the language becomes a single word and, simultaneously, that silence is a secret triumph. But that triumph is not mine, because whenever I want to write an empty syllable leaves a word to me. To write is a lost battle. #
*************************************************************************
The most recent issue of the magazine
*Verse*, devoted to prose, contains an
interview with Charles North {click here} and {click here}
in which he says:
"...I agree that the American poetry scene is dominated
by "false reputations." Why this is the case is probably
a combination of things: the Establishment is in the
business of award-giving, critics (there are exceptions
of course) seem more comfortable with already
established names, the most interesting poetry
by and large (and I don't think I am saying anything
particulary radical) is published by small, and sometimes
very small, presses--again, it's the unhealthy ideas
in the air that seem to be received with no resistance.
I don't believe populism is the only way to go, though
I know it's unfashionable in some circles to say that.
By the way, Ashbery's book *Other Traditions* (his
Norton lectures at Harvard) deals with negelected poets
like the wonderful David Schubert and John Wheelright.
The big anthoogies used by the colleges-ironically
Norton is one of the chief culprits- are part of the problem.
Did you know they dropped Schuyler from the second
edition of their *Anthology of Modern Poetry*? You need
to look at anthologies like Sun & Moon's *From The Other
Side of the Century* to get a sense of what some of the
"other traditions" are and how exciting they are."

After a couple of weeks in weather's minor keys,
Zeus relented and let Berkeley offer us a sunny farewell.

Tributary (Allen Bramhall){click here} discusses the Boston Poetry Marathon in detail

"milk and honey within easy reach
Honesty & it passes
on from its objects those exquisites"

*The Petrarch Project*
Rychard Bromige
and David Denner
dPress
2004
Sebastopol

****
*Thanks For The Memory*
Bemsha Swing {click here}
Jonathan Mayhew, Serendipity and time travel
****
It's been freezing
and foggy here in Berkeley for two weeks
and it's nice to look at somewhere sunny
Topher's Tunes Times {click here}
*****
Listen to all the warnings
and still your heart will have its say.

Gary Sullivan (Elsewhere) focusses on Jerome Sala's Selected Poems.

A bit of silence here on *fait accompli*
due to computer problems in the house
we are staying in here in the Berkeley hills.
Tried twice to write about a visit to
Serendipity, the amazing bookstore on
University near Chestnut. The owner
and I chatted a bit, then the next
day at a goodbye party for Patrick
Durgin and Andrea (hurray! Patrick
completed his dissertation and defends
it in August) who are moving back
to Minnesota. At their party at the
Berkeley Rose garden, Laura Moriarty
told me (first, that she is completing
a science fiction novel!Wow! can't wait
to see this) but second, that Peter B. Howard,
Serendipity's owner, was one of the
founders of SPD. At the store I found
an amazing collection, tøtally amazing
collection of literary books,including
a cache of books by David Bromige, and
naturally I purchased a number of these.
OK, I also bought an early edition of
Wallace Stevens, which was expensive,
but I could do it because Steve Clay
in New York recently sold some of
my books when we moved to Brooklyn.
More stuff to do today on our next
to last day in Berkeley, so must sign
off now. Don't even have time right
now to get the update on the Cambridge
Poetry Massacre.

More soon!