The "Grain" of the Poet's Voice

PENNsound {click here}

Tsunami Relief {click here}

Distribution Automatique, 1980

Distribution Automatique

I made this photocollage in 1980.
I happened to be living here in
Park Slope at the time, on Garfield
Place, right
around the corner from where
I live now,

Soon after, I was invited by
Susan Bee to show this
collage at the Wordworks Show
at P. S. 122, which included
Susan, Johanna Drucker and
others.

At the top you can see a small metal
box, which probably contained hypodermic
needles. Other collage elements are
pasted inside the box, top and bottom.
This little box was found on the ground
in Marrakesh, Morocco,
where I visited for a few
months in 1969 (not long after
making my first collage, shown
below). Many of the elements in
the collage were from magazines I
had saved from the hourse I lived
in as a child in Bay Ridge in the late 1950's.
These were turn of the century French
photomagazines.

The title, *Distribution Automatique* anticipates,
in a sense, today's weblogs. I was exploring
the interelationship of various kind of media,
and imagining a future telecommunication environment
that encompasses, intercombines and transmits media and time periods
by means of "automatic" distrilbution. Not
long ago, Google decided to post on the web all copyright
free books that might be made available.
The collage contains pieces of film, recording
tape, photos, a section
of a vinyl record, and other materials.

Poetry In The Air

Spaceship Tumblers {click here}
Poetry readings online edited by Tony Tost. This first broadcast includes
Tony Tost, Laura Carter, Aaron McCollough, Marcus Slease, Zachary Schomberg,
Matthew Henrikson, Chris Vitiello, Ken Rumble, Adam Clay, Lane Phillips,
Brent Cunningham.

Brief audio posts on quick-load mp3's (you don't have to close
the window to play them). A real treat!
*************************************************
Word-turner

With fiction, occasionally you come across a
page turner (like Grant Bailie's *Cloud 8* discussed
here recently); and with poetry you sometrimes,
gratefully, come across a "word-turner". Such
is the case with this new piece
*Citation without source* from
XZENTRICK LIBRETTI
(Alex Cumberbatch) {click here}

Ululations (Nada Gordon) mourns the losses due to the tsunami.

When I got home tonight, Toni reminded me
of - and showed me- the print we have
had hanging for many years, *Behind the Waves, Off The Coast
of Kanagawa*, from *Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji Series*
by Hokusai. On the way home, very sadly reading about the
reported 68,000 dead; and the fears of coming disease threatening to
vastly increase the dimensions of this terrible disaster.

After Toni showed me the Hokusai print,
something told me to open *ululations* (above).
******************************************************
Extra Extra
{click here} reporting on-site regarding the tsunami (and other things)
from Sri Lanka, is in the running for best blog in the country...

thanks to Twists and Turns {click here}
for the link...

r.i.p. Susan Sontag


wood s lot {click here}, as always, an excellent resource,
offers some material regarding her crucial contributions.

After a year that can only be decribed as a cultural tsunami,
part of the world is now left devastated by an actual one.
We can only hope 2005 will be a better year-
and that ain't asking for much...
*******************************************
If the Truth Be Told

Speaking of essential blogs,
Caterina {click here}
quotes Charles Baxter on "deniability" in contemporary life...think lie,
think Nixon...

Allen Ginsberg and Ezra Pound in Portofino, about 1966

Allen Ginsberg and Ezra Pound in Portofino, about 1966
Originally uploaded by fait accompli.

Rapallo, 1968

A photo of me holding my first collage,
taken in Rapallo in the fall of 1968.
My second collage is leaning against
the wall behind me to the left