New York Times is Over If You Want It

via Phaneronoemikon {click here} :
Barrett Watten thankfully responds, in his unmatchably incisive way,
to the predictably hostile, clueless, small-minded,
dumbed -down obit for Jacques Derrida in the New York Times.
**********************************************************************
Topher Tunes Tiimes {click here}
I always enjoy Toph's photos and photo links- today he
linked to an excellent web-based photo site: check this out-
FILE-a collection of
unexpected photography {click here}
(once upon a very long time ago
*Life* had some great photographers-
this anagram title is likely a light reference
to that era)

Mark Wallace's *Haze* (Edge Books, 2004) reviewed
in *Rain Taxi* {click here}

"We live now in an empire which, in the name of reasons,
has stolen our lives away from us, but which will sell
them back to us at the cost of all that we have, if only
we can provide that empire with sufficient reason for
letting us live. Every time we speak of a reason, we
let the theft occur all over again, we participate in the theft."

Mark Wallace
"Reasons to Write"
*Haze*
Edge Books {click here}
Publisher- Rod Smith
***************************************************************
"INTROSPECTION

DOESN'T ANYBODY DO ANYTHING INTROSPECTIVE ANYMORE-
PURPLE VINES COVERED WITH WHITE FUZZ. LACKING, LEANING
...INTO THE SPIRITUAL MAW, THE ACCIDENTAL BLACK DOT."

from *V.IMP* by Nada Gordon
Faux Press {click here}
Publisher- Jack Kimball

Nada Gordon's weblog is
ululations {click here}

The End of An Era

It is very likely that this death will mark not only the death of
a unique thinker, Jacques Derrida,
but will mark the end of an era in a kind of reflective thinking
itself. Although many will attempt to sustain it,
when a unique thinker dies, a light goes out, despite
heroic attempts to keep that light alive. We have the
books to challenge us, but no longer the mind to inspire us.

So we remember, talk, read and mourn. And that is
no small consolation to be grateful for.

Jacques Derrida, dead at 74 {click here}

******************************
See Wood s lot {click here}
for an excellent collection of sources concerning Jacques Derrida

-Mark Woods also reminds us that today is John Lennon's birthday-
*****************************

One day you catch yourself realizing that
something which for a long time
preoccupied you no longer does.
And you let out a deep breath-
as if you'd been placed on the ground
by a giant.

published in *Theoretical Objects*
(Green Integer, 1999)

If you don't listen to everything, you don't hear anything.


from *Theoretical Objects*
(Green Integer, 1999)

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Thanks , in particular, to

Blindheit: Clarity is overrated ( Evelio) {click here}

Tributary (Allen Bramhall){click here}

DagZine (Gary Norris) {click here}

Bad With Titles (Jay Thomas) {click here}

Equanimity (Jordan Davis){click here}

and xvarenah (Michael Helsem) {click here}



for their very recent links, responsiveness and knd words concerning my work and
this blog.

Working so closely together, reading each others blogs,
responding to each others ideas and thoughts, in the
context of blogging over the past 20 months has entirely
changed my feeling about the field of writing.

My sincere and ongoing gratitude and appreciation goes out to the very many bloggers
whose writing has immeasurably enriched my life- and, hopefully,
will continue to do so for many years to come.

Special thanks also to
Alan DeNiro (Ptarmigan) {cllck here}
(coming soon *Red Giant*, a poetry collection oriented to science fiction),
Eratio (Gregory Vincent St.Thomasino) {click here},
and Charles Alexander (Chax Press) {click here}

The years are not numbers, they're more like letters spelling out a word.

notebook: 2/7/87
from *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

Life presents itself to us, all at once, at all times, in its entirety.

notebook: 7/18/88
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

“Time is on my side, yes it is…”


Why were the some of the best thinkers
in recent history (Freud, Einstein, Gertrude
Stein, Walter Benjamin, Bachelard,
Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, George Orwell to name a few)
so obsessed with time and duration?
This question has
been asked on countless occasions,
yet remains incompletely
answered. Each pointed to a factor:
Freud, the timeless unconscious, Stein,
the continuity of the present,
Benjamin the persistent mute call
of the physical remains of history,
Bachelard, the complexity of duration,
Tzara and Breton the magic, temporal
paradoxes of language, Orwell’s characters
who keep hopelessly searching for a forbidden past.

Yet more and more I am convinced these sensitive
observers were aware more than 50-100 years ago that
time itself was disappearing as a crucial factor in
life experience, outside of the realities of aging,
and the progressive consequences of individual lives.
What does it mean to say this?
What was impinging on their lives,
like everyone else’s, but especially on their
acute minds, not like everyone else’s, was that
the ever growing centralization of power, as
in the time of the ancient Egyptians, is bringing
time to a halt, because it is bringing actual social change
to a halt. Medical science increases the length of life,
but must desperately struggle to impinge on its
futilities with antidepressants and psychotherapy.
The eerie stillness of contemporary life was
frighteningly and touchingly symbolized, for example,
in the early science fiction film, The Day The Earth Stood Still {click here}
For some days, the alien technology brings all movement
on earth to a halt to make a point, that peace must be sought
and found, or the aliens will come to take
over the world to prevent it from destroying itself.
Another in an endless series of hopeful utopian fantasies.
Klaatu, the alien visitor explains: "I'm
impatient with stupidity, my people have learned
to live without it."{click here}

With power more and more concentrated in advertising and
corporations, the powers that be have not only brought
social change to a halt, but are gradually able to turn
back the clock to create a more and more convincing
social aura of timelessness. Perhaps this is why
psychedelic drugs became so popular in the sixties- to
help minds adapt to this mysterious and ever growing sense
that everything everywhere is more and more getting to be
the same frozen stillness all the time. For some moments,
terrifying bombs tear through the cold silence,
and total fear and bloodshed create a horrifying
sense of an event having occurred that will completely alter
the social fabric of reality; yes it has been brutally torn;
but soon it is “repaired” and the expectable sequences
of social events begin and end again. In reality, the
clock has stopped; time is over; individual thoughts
and expressions have been (apparently) rendered
meaningless by the inexorable “spin” of Big Brother
Military Corporatism/Media. People keep dying again
and again to give others the right to remain frozen in time,
without memories, without a sense of the possibility
of change, without a thought about what to say or do
because ideas themselves have been rendered
meaningless within the zeitgeist mindset.
For a second an event and an associated
nexus of ideas and associations breaks through
and the Big Picture is slightly askew and blurred
in the social mindset; for a moment the possibility of
change appears again. But change would mean
remembering what a social process was, what
duration was, what working together towards
something as a society was, what actually caring
about each other was. But that was yesterdays dream
when clocks still ticked, when to look at your watch
meant that something significant about to happen
was drawing near. In a day or two we will huddle
together around the hopeful warming fire of our
TV sets and watch a debate between a young,
brilliant activist politician and thinker and a stolid
defender of the timeless Pharaohs. The young will
again imagine refusing to lay another brick on
the pyramids, and the old will smile patiently and mockingly.

They know that time is on their side when they are
gradually, ever more successfully, rendering its reality meaningless.

Charles Bernstein and Carolee Schneeman
turned in exceptionally fine performances
Saturday at *The Bowery Poetry Club.*
Many of the usual BPC suspects were in attendance-
including curators Gary Sullivan and Nada Gordon -
the latter stunned the ample crowd by
comparing the widely admired
and discussed artist Schneeman to Leonardo
Da Vinci- among other things, this galvanized this
audience, jaded and used to fine comparisons; yet
the high bar was easily vaulted by these
two lions, and the audience was wowed by
their works, again and again.Gary
Sullivan introduced Charles by reading a poem on
brain surgery, certainly a Bernstein inspired work
My personal favorite by Carolee was a work,
in some ways comparable
to one of Charles', that dwelled on the various
linguistic uses of the word like, man, "like."
One of Charles' poems repeated a series of similies: love is like
love, water is like water, repetition is like repetition,
etc; since he read first, his "Like" poem preceded
Carolee's and they must have surprised each other.
Charmed by the wit of these two, the audience listened
raptly from the ourset applauding both readers frequently (hard to
believe they didn't arrange this stunning synchronicity
in advance). I wish I had taken more notes re: an
extremely moving new poem by Charles called,
I think, "The Arms of the Bricklayer." The title
reminded me of an earlier work of Bernstein's
called *The Lives of the Toll Takers." Anyway,
you can find it in the latest issue of *Ratapallax.*
Also on hand were copies of the reprint of
Charles' *The Sophist* which he read from
extensively and is now out by Salt Press.
Also in the audience were art notables Mimi
Gross, Kiki Smith, Susan Bee, and Toni Simon,
poet/art critic Connie Robins, art critic
Thomas McEvilley, and Filmaker/poets
Abigail Child and Marianne Shaneen
(who is hosting a benefit
tomorrow for the Critical Art Ensemble horribly and
unjust under attack by the Patriot Act crowd)
and Henry Hills were there,
dancer Sally Silvers, poets Bruce Andrews,
Rodrigo Toscano , Mitch
Highfill and Elizabeth Fodaski were also spotted,
as well as poet-blogger Alex Young,
And I almost forgot to mention witty Bob Perelman,

One more thing before going to sleep:
I have to mention that when I told Rob
Fitterman I had devoted a number of
posts here to his work recently, I instantly
became a lucky owner of his new book
*Metropolis XXX: The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire*,(Edge).
Does this have anything to do with the year
he and his family (his wife is the poet Kim Rosenfeld)
recently spent in Italy? We'll soon
see...

Light hurts the eyes in a gloomy age.



from: notebooks: 11/19/87
published in my collection: *The Boundary of Blur* ((Roof, 1993)
*********************************************************

"I wish to stay
Without the engineered thought forms..."
Alex Cumberbatch

This just in-
he's back on line!
new blog name LX {click here}(Libretti Xzentriques?- perhaps)
with more of the provocative, engaging writing
I, and many others, have come to very much
look forward to from Alexander Cumberbatch:

"When to tree horror to cure acid racists constructions
Wishing subject of sorrows lynch mobs panic panaceas of purity"
********************************************************
"Never trust anyone over 30"
"Right on!"

A memoir from
Ron Silliman {click here} concerning a stirring, political era: 40 years ago
to be celebrated next week in Berkeley.

I'd like to say how disappointed I feel,
but discreetly I don't. I'd like to say how
proud I am that nonelheless I push on
but modestly I won't. Then the two cancel
each other out.


notebooks: 4/9/92
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

It is very possible that as human beings
we are accumulating illusions faster than
we are shedding them, despite our
well-intentioned efforts to reverse this
process.

notebook: 3/4/90
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof Books, 1993)

When In Rome...

It's a pleasure to travel,
albeit virtually, with the Never Neutral
Ernesto Priego {click here}

The greatest pleasure is to discover a system
in what appeared as only disconnected insights.

**

The solution to an idea is a feeling; the answer
to a feeling is a thought.

from *Theoretical Objects* (Green Integer, 1999)
****************************************************

"The Box"
a poem by Michael Z. Gates
involving memory, time, adolescence and sci-fi

Twists and Turns {click here}
****************************************************
"The freedom of conversation is being lost.
If it was earlier a matter of course for conversation
to take interest in one's partner, this is now replaced
by inquiry into the price of his shoes or his umbrella.
Irresistably intruding on any convivial exchange is
the theme of the conditions of life, of money. What this
theme involves is not so much the conccerns and
sorrows of individuals, in which they might be able
to help one another, as the overall picture. It is as if
one were trapped in a theatre and had to follow the
events on the stage whether one wanted to or not,
had to make them again and again, willingly or
unwillingly, the subject of one's thought and speech."

from *One-way Street*
*Imperial Panorama*
Walter Benjamin
translated by Edmund Jephcott and
Kingley Shorter
******************************************************
The Unbearable Lilghtness of Blogging

The eclipse of the personal in everyday life continues
apace since Benjamin's time. The mere mention
of some intimate issue causes the friend to
pull out his watch and hurry on. Or to change the
topic to some broader "social" issue; the "election," or the movies.
With blogging, the personal has been given new life:
on a one way street into the personal lives of countless,
often anonymous others; many of whom find the time to respond.

from *Automatic Manifesto #1*

...Must confess secrets, get attention. Must conceal
embarassments, create embarassments. Must
mystify, satisfy, entertain, beguile, charm, remember,
enlighten, soothe, relax, inspire, challenge, attract,
impress, confuse, enrapture, mobilize. I must
rebel, I must gather, I must disseminate, I must
canonize, be canonized. I must never be literal,
romanticize, hate too much or love too much,
or reveal my undesirable or questionable values.
I must not be ingenuous or native, too intellectual
or theoretical, too simplistic or bombastic, too
sententious or litigious. I must not be blank or silent,
outrageously moralistic. I must be more sexual, I
must not dwell on my personal identity, and never
get too involved with feelings. I must not think too
much about my audience. I must be spontaneous,
I must record faithfully the dialogues and events of
my time, like a combination tape recorder and
camera. I must be funny and use language in a witty,
inspired, telegraphic and rhythmic way. I must be aware
of the group process and not overly dwell on simplistic
psychological issues in enormous, repetitive, boring
detail as frequently as possible. I must use images,
images of life and death, of youthful sexuality, of
corporate power and greed- and, most of all,
naked violence. I must mention the police. I must
plunder my diary writings- but disguise them and
efface them. I must divide my text into ever more
digestible sub-headings. I must copy and plagiarize,
I must appropriate. I must create ironies, within
ironies, within ironies. I must reflect form. I must
create more snappy dialogue. I must be publicized
more, write more letters, be discussed more, be
anthologized more. I must be seen at fashionable
parties. I must befriend the famous, woo them, flatter
them, flirt with them. I must dress befitting my artistic
accomplishments. I must be calm, I must be cool, I must
conceal my emotional nature. I must not dwell on my
mistakes. I must be witty, I must be charming, I must learn
to ignore cheerfully accusations of literary imitation or
influence. I must not commit literary or social suicide.

I must create new forms, I must create new words, I must
allude to many levels, many literatures. I must go mad,
I must make sane. I must create, I must destroy. I must make
to live. I must let die.


first published in *Ribot* edited by Paul Vangelisti, 1994
published in *Theoretical Objects* (Green Integer, 1999)

You Can't Fool Mother Nature
(Paths of recent Florida Hurricanes
as compared with year 2000 voting patterns
for Gore and Bush)
Guaranteed to make you smile!
from Whimsy Speaks {click here}

Having heard only lies all our lives,
we must assume the truth is
unintelligible and start from there.
It's like panning for gold and not
knowing what gold is.

from my collection *Theoretical Objects*
(Green Integer, 1999)
********************************************

from "After A Lost Original"
in *After A Lost Original*
by David Shapiro (Overlook, 1994)

"When the translation and the original meet
The doubtful original and the strong mistranslation
The original feels lost like a triple pun
And the translation cries, Without me you are lost
Then be my dream, thin as the definition
Of a trance in a garden
The ambiguous friend responds, Perhaps I do astonish you
Like a boy confused with a butterfly's dream
But you are my dream now, after all..."
*****************************************************************
from "Drawing After Summer"
in *After A Lost Original*
by David Shapiro

"I saw the ruins of poetry, of a poetry
Of a parody and it was a late copy bright as candy
I approach your metal mouth, you put it close to me..."
******************************************

"These are days when no one should rely unduly on his
"competence." Strength lies in improvisations. All the
decisive blows are struck left-handed."

*Chinese Curios"- Walter Benjamin from *One-way Street*
*****************************************************************
"The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far
more than that of convictions, and of such facts as have
scarcely ever become the basis of convictions. Under these
conditions true literary activity cannot aspire to take place within
a literary framework- that is, rather, the habitual expression of
its sterility. Significant literary work can only come into being
in a strict alternation between action and writing; it must nurture
the inconspicuous forms that better fit its influence in
active communities than does the pretentious, universal
gesture of the book- its leaflets, brochures, articles and placards.
Only this prompt language shows itself actively equal to the moment..."

W.B. from One-way Street: *Filling Station*
*****************************************************************
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at
your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world
will quite freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no
choice, it will roll in ecstacy at your feet."

Kafka
Aphorisms (104)

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Blogs are rich in references, facts, presences,
responses, interactions, opinions, humor,
history, politics, poetry, prose, seriousness,
silliness, dailiness, discontinuity, irritations,
exultations- in other words, all things human
- but, thankfully- they are silent.
************************************************
The Sophist's Birthday

Originally published September 1, 1986 by Sun and Moon,
Charles Bernstein is celebrating the reissue of this classic
by Salt Publishing at

The Bowery Poetry Club
on Saturday, October 2cd
at 4 p.m..

In addition to readings from *The Sophist*
Bernstein will be reading "mostly new work."

The "official" announcement:


Saturday: 4:00 - 6:00 PM
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston, New York City
$5 admission goes to support the readers

The Segue Reading Series is made possible by the support of The Segue
Foundation. For more information, please visit www.segue.org/calendar,
http://bowerypoetry.com/midsection.htm or call (212) 614-0505. These events
are made possible in part, with public funds from The New York State Council
on the Arts, a state agencyCurators: Oct.-Nov. Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan,


OCTOBER 2 CHARLES BERNSTEIN and CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN
Charles Bernstein's The Sophist has just been reissued by Salt Publishing,
with an introduction by Ron Silliman. Controlling Interests was reissued
last Spring by Roof Books. Bernstein teaches at the Univ. of Pennsylvania.
His author page is at http://epc.buffalo.edu. Carolee Schneemann is a
multidisciplinary artist who has transformed the very definition of art,
especially with regard to integrations of the body, sexuality and
technology. Her video, film, painting, photography, performance art and
installation works have been widely shown in the United States and Europe.
In 2002, the MIT Press published Imaging Her Erotics ˆ Essays, Interviews,
Projects.

Having a thought is like cooking an egg:
the precision is all in the cracking.

Notebook: 1/1/88-2/13/88

**************************************************************
Pont de Looney -Tokes on Poetry- {Jacques Kimball) {clique here} is on hand to essay the droll habits of poet-collectors of poetry collectibles, as we enter the heart-pounding
yard-sale, flea market and tchachkee emporium season.
**************************************************************
"We live now in an empire which, in the name of reasons, has stolen our
lives away from us, but which will sell them back to us at the cost of all that we
have, if only we can provide that empire with sufficient reason for letting us
live. Every time we speak of a reason, we let the theft occur all over again, we
participate in the theft....If we lived in a world where poetry existed, who knows
what it might be? It's a question I ask myself when i'm writing the poetry I can't
be writing..."

Mark Wallace, "Reasons to Write"
from *Haze*
Edge Books {click here} 2004
***************************************************************
Lanny Quarles' new blog:
Boppo Blog {click here}
**
Baghdad Burning {click here}
is back
****************************************************************
Thinking more and more about
"the Worst of the Best of",
the "Mad Ave." aspect of the poetry world.

As Gary Norris puts it in DagZine {click here}:

"...poetry is not market-bound, left the market, for its own good,
catapulted itself back into language, left the everyday behind
which it is consistently, obsessively even, attempting to regain,
and now is quite frankly bound up within itself and its own
problems. This isn't a problem. It should be only the slavish
versifiers of lilting sounds and nonsense, those who wear
poet-masks of poets gone, who really care whether poetry
makes any sound sense in the market. The Poet Capitalists
have lost out, thankfully. The idealism is there, but the
idealist is an isolationist."

Beware, dear philospher, behind every argument is
the ghost of a philosopher come to haunt you.

Notebook: 4/21/89

Much appreciation to
Gary Norris (DagZine) {click here}

for his continued discussion of an aphorism posted recently
on *fait accompli*



**************************************************


Wood s lot (Mark Woods) {click here}
today: Marjorie Wellish interview (from *Conjunctions*); translations by
Murat Nemet -Nejat

So, when's someone going to interview Mark Woods?

"It takes two to speak the truth- one to speak,
and another to hear."

Henry David Thorieau

Online with
The Namedropper


f you haven't seen it yet, and missed it on that most necessary of all blogs
wood s lot {click here}
check out Brian Kim Stefans' interview with Monica de la Torre right now on
The Brooklyn Rail {click here}
***************************************************
by the way, Mr Stefans is now the editor of /Ubu Editions {click here}
which includes, among many other very good things,
speaking of Wittgenstein {click here}
Mr Ron Sillilman's classic
The Chinese Notebook {click here}
***************************************************
In other news, Kenneth Goldsmith, overall editor of UbuWeb {click here}
is now teaching some courses as a resident fellow at
U Penn {click here}
***************************************************
Wow! Just found out from
Chris Murray's Tex Files {click here}
that Sowako Nakayasu's terrific blog
Texture Notes {click here}
is back online, with a poem dedicated to the honeySwooners
Nada Gordon (Ululations} and Gary Sullivan {click here}
who are curating the exciting Segue Poetry Reading Series
at the Bowery Poetry Club {click here}
(Gary 's *Elsewhere* lists the full program through
January '05)- the program includes, among many other fine poets,
Sowako Nakayasu,
who also reads, with Dana Ward
(publisher of Cy Press, who brought out
James Meetze's {click here} chapbook *Serenades*)
on October 4 at
The Poetry Project {click here}

Most works could probably consist of one sentence
But since we're never patient enough to think of
most of the implications of even one sentence, the
author offers hundreds or thousands seducing and
flattering the reader into hanging around almost as
long as it would take to fully understand the one.


notebook: 3/7/90

Norman Fischer's *Slowly But Dearly*
is out from Chax Press.
Norman and I swapped our freshly
published books, with Charles Alexander
our publisher sitting close by-
at the Zukofsky conference
this past weekend.

A sample from *Return Trip*

"Undermined disinclinations toward increased speculation.
Detrimental focus on condign researches into fallen determinacies.
Old tricks for new dogs and new tricks are very disturbing.
Holding slowly down the primordial path with displaced urgencies of gloom."

Wow! Nicely put. Love that vocabulary! But now I have to look up "condign":
"condign" {click here}

Poetry encourages us to say things aloud-
or think them aloud- an action that tends
to jog memories.

Notebook: 3/22/89


(Many of the aphorisms recently
posted here were pubished in my
collection, *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

Somewhere between the need to connect
and the wish to express, language
missteps and compromises. This compromise
gradually undermines the initial impulse
to transcend the self. At all levels we more
or less misjudge how we might connect
with each other in order to protect ourselves.
Language is the document of this frustration
and dissatisfaction. Poetry is the written
result of the attempt to overcome this dilemma.

notebooki:3/4/90
**************************************************
Ernesto Priego (Never Neutral)
has won the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes Jóvenes
Creadores grant for essay writing for 2004-2005.
**************************************************

Katie Degentesh (Bloggedy Blog Blog) {click here} who unearths endless
sources of amusement in her fellow passengers on subways, ferries and busses,
this time spots a truly distinguished denizen of the Underground, underground.

Jay Thomas {click here} brooks no finality in the idea, broached here, and compellingly elaborated by Gary Norris (Dagzine) {click here} that "The final thought of thought is freedom from thought."

Only when you give yourself over to the dream
(thought, idea) does it fully open itself to you.
But then you are no longer the you that gave yourself.
This is why you hesitate.



notebook: 12/1/1991

My chapbook *Hegelian Honeymoon* (18 Haiku)
is just out from
Chax Press {click here};Thanks to
Charles Alexander, publisher!
***********************************************

DagZine (Gary Norris) {please click here!}
responded to a maxim recently published here
with a stirring *accompaniment." Right now
I can only respond with:

The final words when there are no more
words are: I am speechless!

(In this case, of course,
with surprise and delight.)

Sometimes, close-up, a piece of writing,
a solution to the puzzle seems all wrong.
Yet somewhere, someone touches me
and I touch back.

notebook: 10/31/87

Patiently observing a few of our
soft shoe shuffles on the themes of
"linking" and psychoanalysis -see As/Is {click here}(around Magritte's
*The Therapist* and Mark Young's
poem on that theme) we are delighted
to link to a new poem that Mr. Young has written
in response to our occasionally versified comments,
posted on his Series Magritte {click here}, and dedicated to yours truly!

Consciousness, that master poet, never
forgets that final touch, even when the heart
itself does.

notebook: 10/28/88
*******************************************
Thoughts for Voters - from Toni Simon

Toni feels that voters may have not fully considered the dangers and abuses
of one-party rule as seen historically...


"They've got the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and
increasingly the Supreme Court. What ever happened to checks and balances? To protect our democracy, vote for John Kerry.

Restore Checks and Balances
End one party rule:

A simple and obvious point which I haven't heard mentioned as a talking point by anyone…and time is running out. Direct to swing voters.

Don't know who to vote for?
Think all politicians are corrupt?
Consider this:

Use your vote to restore the balance of power
Republicans control every branch of government, even the judiciary. What we have now is the fox guarding the chicken coop.
We need the oversight of a 2-party system again. For this reason alone you should vote for a Democrat.

Many Americans don't vote because they think politicians are corrupt and want our money. We have a huge deficit and our tax money is being shoveled into the pockets of Republican party contributors.
Mention examples of scary one-party governments.
Give examples of corrupt power-grabbing by republicans.
'Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"
*******************************************************************
Tiime Travel Thoughts on 9/11

Thanks to Arlee Christian {click here}
for quoting, linking to and further considering
the powerful contemporary signficance of a passage from
Dreiser's *Jennie Gerhardt* (1911) quoted here on 9/09/04

An odd thing about human beings is
that they cannot truly rest until
they have done everything they can.

notebook: 8/22/91

The final thought of thought
is freedom from thought.

notebook: 1988

In order to do a new kind of thinking,
we learn to do a new kind of writing-
the *relationship* produces what is new,
like a new kind of speaking. Art combines,
where science atomizes.

1/1/88-2/13/88
********************************************
Ear Today


Cahiers de Corey {click here}

The pathos of life lies in the disparity
between the specific thing we are focused
on and the fact of life itself.

Notebook: 12/12/87
*******************************************
thanks to

Blindheit: clarity is overrated {click here}
for the link

Style is as much a question of undress
as it of dress. Letting down my guard, I
imagined saying things to people I would
never allow myself to say in everyday life.
In this fantasy, I usually pause for a moment of
intense satisfaction. It is life, not the imagination,
which is oblique and mysterious.


from notebooks:1/1/88-2/13/88

Sacred, Secret Haste

From word to word
A step to define
A moment. A sequence
Drawn from the life.
Yet between them, what
Thoughts, what gaps
From picture to
Habitation. Tilted
Towards remembrance,
What is still is real.
All the rest, beginnings,
Furtive grimaces, scratched
Surfaces from whispered
Conversations, an utterance
That encircled a night.
When, like a joke, sprinkles
Of images appear in one place
After another, unbidden,
Ungracious, unkempt. And
Breathing, full and radiant,
Painted simultaneously with their
Inception, fingers mount
Meanings against the sound of
Quick phrases, presences announce
Vanished emphases, particular
Nuances survive briefly before
Succumbing to a new flow of
Different days. Suspended, immaculate
A generation of reflected yearnings
Drops out of sight, replaced by
Long philosophical asides, yet
These too had a way of just reminding
One of an experience, and there again
Is life, frowning and gaping, sullen,
Unmoved, muscular, buoyant. But
Prefaces amount to pronouncements,
Noon sports new habitudes, and
A choral *allegro* echoes sweetly and
Quietly, now in the Nineteenth Century.
Poems? They must be plucked
Out of the in-between silences,
Huddled inside the inhalation
Before yet another anticipated
Listening. If it hadn't happened
Just the way it did
It wouldn't have happened
At all. Think of the looming
Times, the shadows of expectation
Leaning from their lonely cells
In dreams. Spoken from in there,
Something else, could yet be
Understood from what was left
Unsaid. O, like a stutter, like
A surprised exclamation, an
Involuntary gasp. Right
Up to it then, and not
Turn away. An utterly coherent
But vast and unconquerable beating,
Like a hand against a wall,
A foot against a bench, the
Insides establishing the rhythm
And the sound, uncomprehensible,
And the singing, in unison.

notebook: 8/6/86
Previously pubished in
*Avec*, edited by
Cydney Chadwick
***************************
"Secular Jewish Culture / Radical Poetic Practice"
Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 -- 7pm; $10 admission
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, Manhattan
a public forum with Paul Auster, Charles Bernstein (chair), Kathryn Hellerstein,
Stephen Paul Miller, Marjorie Perloff, Jerome Rothenberg
Tickets available from Ticketweb {click here} or the Box office: 917-606-8200. More informationCenter for Jewish History {click here}
What are the innovations and inventions of American Jewish poets, over the past century? Can we say that there is distinctly Jewish component to radical modernist and contemporary poetry? What is the relation of Jewish modernist and contemporary poets to the historical avant-garde and to contemporary innovative poetry? How does Jewish cultural life and ethnic and religious forms and traditions manifest themselves in the forms, styles, and approaches to radical American poetry? What role does a distinctly secular approach to Jewishness by poets and other Jewish artists mean for "radical Jewish culture"?

Steve Tills (Black Spring) {click here}
likes Neil Young-and Drew Gardner's {click here}
2001 chapbook *Student Studies*

Pant a looney take(s) on poetry {click here}
This time it's Gray Sullivan & Brandon Downing.
Makes you kinda wish you were there!

The Analogous Series {click here}
curated by Tim Peterson

Today:

Gary Sullivan and Brandon Downing!!!
*******************************************
Blogging gets older

Congrats to Jordan Davis
Million Poems {click here}
is two years old today.

Try to imagine blogworld without
JD. I can't.
******************************************
Same for
Bemsha Swing {click here}
that celebrated its second birthday last
Sunday.
*****************************************
Thanks to
Jay Thomas (Bad With Titles) {click here}
and, of course,
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino
the editor of
Eratio {click here}
for making this the nicest September 11th
in a very long time.

I am delighted to announce that
Eratio/Fall 2004 {click here}
edited by Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino
is now online including three pages from my photocollage novel
Free Fall {click here}
( or click on the horizontal diacritical mark above the E in Eratio)
as well as verbal/visual work by
Catherine Daly, William Compton and
Mark Young with Jukka Pekka-Kervinen (click on the other
diacritical marks)
Click on each letter and diacritical mark to view all the
work and for epigraphs and more information about the
webzine.

the issue includes writing by

Jack Foley 
Amari Hamadene 
Jake Berry 
Aamir Aziz 
Paul Hardacre 
Jonathan Minton 
Thomas Lowe Taylor 
Hazak Brozgold 
Laurie Price 
AnnMarie Eldon 
Eli Jones 
Danielle Grilli 
Sandra Simonds 
Elizabeth Kate Switaj 
Marcia Arrieta 
  Anne Boyer  
  Stan Mir 
  Dee Rimbaud
  Jeff Harrison
  Ian Randall Wilson
  Skip Fox 
  Jesse Glass
  Hugh Tribbey
  Robert Furze
  Brian Howe
  Scott Keeney
  Michael Estabrook
  Nick E. Melville
  Clayton A. Couch
  Steve Timm

After finishing reading Jenny Gerhardt, by Theodore Dreiser

Never fear anyone's pain or suffering, even your own.
It's like a lighthouse, a buoy in the harbor.
Thinking about it, wondering about it,
talking about it, trying to understand it, alleviate it or
end it may be the only way left
to look for and find a sense of direction.

Although it was a relief to learn that there have been
no West Nile Virus cases reported in New York
City so far this year, the dead bird
situation is dire in California, I just learned from
Harry K. Stammer

California West Nile Virus Statistics {click here}

A thorough read through of a lot of web sites re: mosquito bites
tells me that the use of Deet, whatever the toxicity danger, brings
the only protection and relief. Aloe is very soothing
to the bites and reduces the bumps, and it is helpful
to sleep with a sheet completely covering you.
***************************************************
Big Brother Uses Big Scare Tactics Once Again

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice," Mr. Cheney told a crowd of 350 people in Des Moines, "because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

Excuse me, but unless I'm mistaken, didn't 9/11 occur on your watch?
And while you're at it, ask yourself the question, why did half a million
New Yorkers come out and march against you? It happened here,
you bloated fool.
**************************************************
Jordan's right {click here} don't miss
Ron Silliman {click here}
today (hint: a moment involving censorship in poetry history that included Robert Duncan and Silliman and Jack Kimball, among others)

Murder by Numbers

The Ingredient {click here}
***********************
a related aphorism of my own:

The poetry of murder gave way to the murder of poetry.

"There are fanatics without ability, and then they are
really dangerous people."

[Notebook F- 1776-1779]

"You should never look for genuine Christian
convictions in a man who makes a parade of
his piety."

Notebook J-1789-1793

"You can make a good living from
soothsaying, but not from truth saying."

Notebook J

"I can never see anything wrong with
theorizing; it is an impulse of the soul
that can prove useful to us as soon as
we have accumulated sufficient experience.
Thus all the follies of theorizing we at
present commit could be impulses that find
their application only in the future."

Notebook K 1793-1796

"Man loves company, even if it is that
of a smouldering candle."

Notebook K

"Whisper, immortal muse, of the insanity
of the great."

Notebook L, 1796-1799

Georg Christoph Lichenberg
*Aphorisms*

translated by RJ Hollingdale
Penguin Books, 1990
*******************************
Norman Fischer & John High will be
Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery @ Bleecker
Tues., Sept 14, 9pm



Robert Grenier & Ken Irby
Read at Columbia University
602 Hamilton Hall.
Thurs., September 16, 8pm
Mr. Grenier will also slides of his
Drawing-Poems

Lots of mosquitoes around Park Slope lately,
my skin is allegic, so I'm an itchy guy. So far
no West Nile virus to worry about, and looking
around the www for info on spraying, turns
out that doesn't help in the long run. So, meanwhile,
itch cream and covering my body with
anti-mosquito spray.

What's all this got to do with poetry? Looking
through, today, Bob Holman's *Call Collect
of the Wild* (John MacRae, 1995) I found
this:

"A million years ago" Bob killed a mosquito
when high on LSD. 22 years later
He wrote.

*No Longer Killing Mosquitos*

here is the ending:

"...Today heavenly, above Lake Canandaiga,
Twenty-two years later, far from madding, no drugs, I sit
In a spot of nature and write this poem
So on a downed lodgepole pine, some calcified droppings,
By my feet- bear's? or human's? From the scat I carefully
Extract, using my pen, the carcass of a Daddy Longlegs
And watch as an ant carries it off. A caterpillar
Wriggles over my pants, and again with a pen
I lift it off and transport it, dangling,
To new oak leaf. At home, West 12th Street,
10014, my daughters are just getting back from school,
Elizabeth and I have been married 11 years,
I am writer-in-residence here at Gell House,
Finger Lakes. I am perched out behind
The hidden cabin, just above the tombstone
of the Gells. When mosquitos land,
I wave them gently on their way."

Kerry's speech in 1971 {click here}

Harlequin Knights {click here} Portrait of John Kerry, April 1971- by Elizabeth Peyton

Why is Texas
#1 In Executions? {click here}

As a child I was an army brat, so my family constantly
traveled. Libraries became my refuge, especially soon
after arriving at a new army fort. But still I've been surprised
by how much time I've been spending at the Brooklyn
Public Library at Grand Army Plaza here in Park Slope.
One of the great things about visiting libraries is that
I am more likely to borrow a book that I probably wouldn't
buy. On my last visit, I managed to score a whole stack
of Jonathan Lethem novels (I'm reading novels more now
that I am commuting to Manhattan to my office). I've gone
through all of these in a few weeks and
have enjoyed every one of them
immensely, especially *Motherless Brooklyn*, *Amnesia
Moon*, and *She Crawled Across the Table*. Using
a gift card I recently bought his big new book *Fortress
of Solitude.*

Patiently going through a good portion of the fiction section,
after realizing there were few Jonathan Lethem novels left
for me to read, except for *Kafka Americana*, which is a collaboration,
I came across Andrei Codrescu's new novel
*Wakefield*, which I took out, and a Brazilian novel called
*Turbulence*. And then I happened to notice *Jennie Gerhardt*
(1911) by Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945).
The happy coincidence of the Labor
Day weekend opened up time for a book that is just the right
fare for Labor Day during a time of U.S. right-wing domination.
Like his most famous book, *Sister Carrie*, Dreiser's fiction powerfully
reveals the vulnerabllties of poverty, not from a moral, but from
a social viewpoint. Perhaps it might be fair to say that
Dreiser is America's Emile Zola, or even, as in
the passage below, our Walter Benjamin. Here is a taste of
*Jennie Gerhardt*:

""We live in an age in which the impact of
materialized forces is well nigh irresistable: the
spiritual nature is overwhelmed by the shock. The
tremendous and complicated development of our
material civilisation, the multiplicity, and variety
of our social forms, the depth, sublety, and sophistry
of our imaginative impressions, gathered, remultiplied,
and disseminated by such agencies as the railroad,
the express and the post office, the telephone, the
telegraph, the newspaper, and, in short, the whole
machinery of social intercourse- these elements of
existence combine to produce what may be termed
a kaleidoscopic glitter, a dazzling and confusing
phantasmagoria of life that wearies and stultifies the
mental and moral nature. It induces a sort of intellectual
fatigue through which we see the ranks of the victims
of insomnia, melancholia, and insanity constantly recruited.
Our modern brain-pan does not seem capable as yet
of receiving, sorting, and storing the vast army of
facts and impressions which present themselves daily.
The white light of publicity is too white. We are weighed
upon by too many things. It is as if the wisdom of the
infinite were struggling to beat itself into finite and
cup-big minds."

Engaging, witty, enlightening and practical aphorisms mostly about
"indiosyncratic" writing from the late Ron Sukenick (1932-2004)
Electronic Book Review {click here}
via Wood s lot (Mark Woods) {click here}
**********************************
"Dogs

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make make a fool
of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but
he will make a fool of himself too."

from *Samuel Butler's Notebooks*
EP Dutton
Edited by Georfrey Keynes and Brian Hill
*********************************
Bemsha Swing (Jonathan Mayhew)
had its second birthday today. Sheez- seems like yesterday JM wrote to
me explaining how to copy a link from my template in order to
display it on a post.

Bunch of us bloggers started out around that same time. Doesn't seem
like one to two years, not at all.

Anyway, here's hoping Jon's having a swingin' "blog birthday", listening to a little
Getz or Mingus, or whatever.

"In which all dreams founder . In
which an image explodes on the tundra.
In which dialogues are primitives. In
which the indestructible
invisible. In which Aristotelian
hash. In which art imitates
government. In which sex is
proprietary. In which Big Buddha
is watching you. In which we put the self-
evident truths on hold. In which
duplication. In which you in the name
of suffering. In which I garnish your
celery. In which twigs. In which
medicine, status. In which we are
enjoying an emergency. In which hardly
a man is now absurd. In which black
September. In which a sixth sense
stamp. In which ten dollars will
break you. In which butterflies *in
toto.* In which no man's land is
an island. In which tradition is what
they put together yesterday. In which
wall-to-wall Montparnasse. In which
old left shoes. In which elitist scribes.
In which wave actions off Okinawa. In
which mad foolscap. In which all this
is solitary melts into air. In which
apostasy & apogee. In which the map
of genesis. In which corn stalks. In which
detumescent bulbs. In which caricature
meets parody. In which hermetic
seals. In which decentralization, talking
turtles. In which chills, cells. In which the
score is left for the newspaper. In which
3 balls for a nickel watch the milk crates
fall. In which post-time. In which gasoline.
In which hierarchy on every level. In
actress makes perfect. In which reflections.
In which Czechs and Balinese. In which
a street instead of a testament. In
which multiples of unions. In which goods,
news, shambles, In which the fetishistic
tools of the intuitionist. In which the small
coin of concrete questions. In which sum
pelicans. In which blue Dahlias. In which
the invention of sound. In which Yule,
Bryn Mawr. In which structuralism, tic-
tock-toe. In which vaginal *detente*.
In which Te Deum. In which rig & wig
genitalia. In which bazooka music. In
which catharsis in residence. In
which closets, TV. In which just
positions. In which a liaison officer.
In which the collective & the many.
In which LIttle Egypt, agitprop. In
which a rhythm & blues brass band.
In which epiphanies for the old guy.
In which *ibid*, 2 spoons. In which
goods and value. In which the grapes
of Ra. In which the road to riches, the
march of dimes. In which any serenade.
In which El Deco."

Frank Kuenstler
*In Which*
(from section 12)
Cairn Editions, 1994
116 pages
michaelobrien@mindspring.com
*************************************
This just in with work by and an
interview with Robert Creeley:
MiPoesias New England Edition {click here}
An earlier edition (April), edited by
David Trinidad contains work by and
an interview with Elaine Equi and work
by Jerome Sala
MIPo-guest editor
David Trinidad {click here}
*************************************
Two upcoming conferences
"Secular Jewish Culture / Radical Poetic Practice"
Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 -- 7pm; $10 admission
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, Manhattan
a public forum with Paul Auster, Charles Bernstein (chair), Kathryn Hellerstein,
Stephen Paul Miller, Marjorie Perloff, Jerome Rothenberg
Tickets available from www.ticketweb.com or the Box office: 917-606-8200. More information www.cjh.org .
What are the innovations and inventions of American Jewish poets, over the past century? Can we say that there is distinctly Jewish component to radical modernist and contemporary poetry? What is the relation of Jewish modernist and contemporary poets to the historical avant-garde and to contemporary innovative poetry? How does Jewish cultural life and ethnic and religious forms and traditions manifest themselves in the forms, styles, and approaches to radical American poetry? What role does a distinctly secular approach to Jewishness by poets and other Jewish artists mean for "radical Jewish culture"?


& keep in mind ...

The Louis Zukofsky Centennial Conference
Columbia University & Barnard College
Friday, Sept. 17 to Sunday, Sept. 19, 2004
registration is free but required
Program and registration information:
Zukofsky conference {click here}

The bravest person in the United States explains why
Democrats should not be scared-
USA Today-
Michael Moore reviews the RNC {click here}

Loneliness ...images! 21 August {click here}
via Media TIC {click here}

this journal blug {click here}
today cited a significant typo on a recent post here.
Why wouldn't a blog that calls itself a blug
not appreciate a typo that might deserve to become a manifesto:

"alll forms of arf (at least indirectly) refer to all forms of media"
(see 4th note below on Friday, Sept 3rd.)

In any case, I have at last been outed for my
secret persona as a dog

How smarf of you, Brother Tom
**********************************
Today, on the subway going out to Jackson Heights
(second home to Sullivan and Gordon):
with Gary, Nada, Kathy, Toni and Tom (Orange)

Nada: Aren't all my remarks ironic?
Gary: I hope not.

No irony when I mention the
the fabulous food & shopping out there
First time I ever visited this fascinating,
diverse, effervesent neighborhood.
Can't wait to see the Bollywood DVDs
and listen to the many Indian & Pakistani movie music
CD's & cassettes I bought (none over $10; most under $4) on
Gary's recommendation ; Toni
looks sparky in her new Indian outfit.

What a day...

By the way, Tom is working on a dissertation about
Clark Coolidge's poetry- can't wait to see that-
I mentioned to him I am right now reading Coolidge's
*The Rova Improvisations* (Sun and Moon) after
quite a long respite from reading (but not collecting)
Coolidge books- I confessed to reading Coolidge
at least weekly, if not more often, since the late
60's- and decided I had to give at last at least
a few other authors a try....

Clark Coolidge {click here }EPC Home Page

Notes at the Ed Ruscha show at the Whitney:

First thoughts: language as a sound form
a the same time (simultaneously)
a material, visual (visualizable) form
**
gas stations (1962)-time travel
**
Work (1992)
*Waves of Technology*

Innumerable subtle references
to film and filmaking
**
Due to the preponderance of technology
alll forms of arf (at least indirectly) refer to all forms of media
{thought of my- "Distrlbution automatique and *Le Reve* collages (Poetry Plastique show-
see Electronic Poetry Center pdf of the catalogue
includes an an image of my *Le Reve*)
**
individual words as "film clips"
(literally- drawings of words
clipped and three dimensionally
standing on their edges)
**
25 versions of *The End*
at the end of the show
**
Ed Ruscha
at the Hirschorn {click here}
reference- Dick Higgens, *Intermedia*
essay-manifesto 1966
(fading of the idea of the "specific" genre standing
alone
**
Dick Higgins Intermedia Essay (1966){click here}

Happy Birthday Abigail Cook. Congrats to the proud parents.
Ironstone Whirligig (Amanda Cook) {click here}


While mom rests up, the proud father fill us in:

Polis Is Eyes {James Cook}
*******************************************************************************
from A to Z

With the Zukofsky centenary looming, time to
bone up on the Big A

Stephen Vincent's transliteration of A {click here}

"To speak softly and be heard"

In an era of the clamor of unrelenting attacks,
with hatreds igniting nearly everywhere you look,
is it still possible to write love poetry that counts?
You bet it is- check out
*Serenades* by James Meetze
from Cy Press, in 2003.( I
understand there may be
a few copies available right now-
Cy Press {click here})

"The slender world a bed, love, breeze in the morning
a place to rest our heads.
Have I told you I want to make silence a city
in which to live and write without sirens or drunkeness?
Silence is never completely quiet but enough so
to speak softly and be heard.
To sing softly is to carry the burden of song.
Lights of things we have or things we have
In light of the obdurate summer."

James Meetze
***************************************************
"Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dreame,
It was a theame
For reason, much too strong for phantasie,
Therefore thou wakd'st me wisely; yet
My Dreame thou brok'st not, but continued'st it,
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreams truths; and fables histories;
Enter these armes, for since thou thoughtst it best,
Not to dreame all my dreame, let's act the rest.
As lightning or a Tapers light ,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd mee;
Yet I thought thee
(For thou lovest truth) an Angell, at first sight..."

John Donne
(1571-1631)
*The dreame.*

"Cold

IT'S COLD- CONCRETELY COLD
IN STONE COLD KILLER COLD NYC
AND ME- CAUGHT COLD HAND -IN AMERICA
CAUGHT BETWEEN-COLD RAIN-COLD WIND-AND
OLD COLD FRIENDS-WHO DIG-THEIR AMERICAN
COLD PSYCHIC PAIN-IT'S-SO DAMN-COLD-DAMP DIRTY
COLD-TURNS ME OLD-CUTS MY BLACK BEAUTY AND SOUL
CAUGHT UP-IN THE-FOLD OF-COLD AMERICA"


from*TEDUCATION*
selected poems by Ted Joans
Coffee House Press, 1999

[dashes(-) signify spaces
in the original text]

Ted Joans in Paris with
Nick Piombino, Toni Simon, Charles Borkhuis and Laura Corsiglia {click here}

Haiku for
Poets of Paranoia

Throwing
a
depressed
pall
over
all that is

Your
vague
accusations
**********************
Wednesday Sept 1, 2004

5-7pm: POETS FOR PEACE reading:
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (Between Blecker and Houston), NYC 10012

7pm: Poetry Superhero March to St. Mark's Church: "Keep the World Safe
for Poetry!"

8pm: DEMO: A demonstration in words. A poetry reading on the RNC,
President Bush and the crisis in Iraq.
St. Mark's Church, 131 E. 10th St. & 2nd Ave., NYC.

All events are free!

Poets for Peace Readers include: Bethany Spiers, Cat Tyc, Tomomi
“Suh-Bay” Sano, P.A. Weisman, Mark Lamoureoux, Christina Strong, Chris
Bullock, Christopher Stackhouse, Merry Fortune, Steve Dalachinsky,
David Kirschenbaum, Erica Kaufman, Betsy Andrews, Regie Cabico, Corie
Feiner, Brenda Iijima, Fred Arcoleo, Aaron Kiely, Sherry A. Brennan,
Gina Myers, Eve B. Packer, Eliot Katz, Tom Savage, Raymond J. Arendt,
Cynthia Kraman, Susan Brennan, Alicia Ostriker, Paul Johnson, E. Tracy
Grinnell, Anne Waldman

Demo Readers include:
Sonia Sanchez, Grace Paley, Carl Hancock Rux, Sapphire, Katha Pollitt,
Mark Doty, Anne Waldman, Cornelius Eady, Vijay Seshadri, Hettie Jones,
Hal Sirowitz, Bob Holman, Grace Schulman, Eileen Myles, Marie Ponsot,
Robert Polito, John Yau, Rodrigo Toscano, Carol Mirakove, Greg Fuchs,
Anselm Berrigan, Laura Elrick, Bruce Andrews, Kathy Engel, Zero Boy,
John Coletti and Kristin Prevallet
*****************************************************************************
Enjoy
BELLADONNA*
with

Latasha N. Nevada Diggs & Joan Retallack

Friday, September 3, 7PM at SEGAL THEATER,
The Graduate Center, CUNY,
365 5th Avenue at 34th Street
A $7-10 donation is suggested.

Join us to celebrate the first fabulous night of our 5th Anniversary season
with two dynamic, super-expansive, multi-genre artists who challenge the
dimensions of words at a NEW location: the beautiful SEGAL THEATER-CUNY GRAD
CENTER (5th Ave/34th)˜only blocks from most trains.

Writer and vocalist, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs explores sound through a myriad
of macaronic verse, language and electronic vocal processing. She has
worked and traveled with many creative beings and her literary and sound
works have been published and recorded in projects ranging from Asian
fetishes to Euro-House. A fellow of the Cave Canem Workshop for African
American Poets, Latasha is a 2004 Caldera Artist in Residence, 2003 Zora
Neale Hurston recipient from Naropa Institute, a 2002 Harvestworks Digital
Media Arts Center artist in residence, as well as a 2003 New York Foundation
for the Arts fellow. She is the author of two chap-books, Ichi-Ban: from
the files of negríta muñeca linda and Ni-ban: Villa Misería and the producer
and writer for the experimental audio project, Televisíon. She is the lead
electronic vocalist for the Zappa-esque jam band, Yohimbe Brothers, fronted
by Vernon Reid and DJ Logic and The Beat Kids, fronted by Guillermo E.
Brown. She lives in Harlem.

Joan Retallack‚s most recent books are Memnoir (Post-Apollo Press) and The
Poethical Wager˜a volume of essays (University of California Press). Other
poetry by Retallack includes Mongrelisme: A Difficult Manual for Desperate
Times (Paradigm Press), How To Do Things With Words (Sun & Moon Classics),
AFTERRIMAGES (Wesleyan University Press), and Errata 5uite (Edge Books)
which won the Columbia award for poetry in 1994. She received the 1996
America Award in Belles-Lettres for MUSICAGE: John Cage in Conversation with
Joan Retallack (Wesleyan University Press) and a Lannan Foundation Literary
Grant in 1998ˆ99. Her WESTORN CIV CONT'D: an open book was produced at
Pyramid Atlantic Studios in 1995-96˜with inadvertent funding from the
National Endowment for the Arts˜and is still in progress. She is currently
finishing a volume on Gertrude Stein and starting a time-bracketed project
with the working title „The Reinvention of Truth.‰ Retallack teaches at Bard
College.

Belladonna* is a feminist/innovative reading and publication series that
promotes the work of women writers who are adventurous, experimental,
politically involved, multi-form, multicultural, multi-gendered,
unpredictable, dangerous with language (to the death machinery). In its five
year history, Belladonna* has featured such writers as Leslie Scalapino,
Alice Notley, Erica Hunt, Fanny Howe, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Cecilia Vicuña,
Lisa Jarnot, Camille Roy, Nicole Brossard, Abigail Child, Norma Cole, Lynne
Tillman and Carla Harryman among many other experimental and hybrid women
writers. Beyond being a platform for women writers, the curators promote
work that is experimental in form, connects with other art forms, and is
socially/politically active in content. Alongside the readings, Belladonna*
supports its artists by publishing commemorative pamphlets of their work on
the night of the event. Please contact us (Rachel Levitsky and Erica
Kaufman) at belladonnaseries@yahoo.com to receive a catalog and be placed on
our list. http://www.durationpress.com/belladonna.

*deadly nightshade, a cardiac and respiratory stimulant, having purplish-red
flowers and black berries

Belladonna* readings happen monthly between September and June

_________________________________________________________________

Heathens in Heat {click here} recognizes just how tough all this can be

Received from *Serendipity*, Berkeley, CA

*A Curriculum of the Soul #11
Novalis' 'Subjects'*
by
Robert Dalke

"The strict method is merely study-should not
become printed- one should write only in free,
unbound style for the public, and only the
strict demonstration- the systematic perfection
thereby possess.
One must not write uncertainty etc.,anxious etc.
-muddled, endless- but precise-clear-
solid- with apodictic, tacit suppositions.
-A solidly precise man also makes a beneficent
and decisive and lasting expression.
The scientific style loves the strange word-
therefore not journalistic. Eccentric and concen-
tric constitutions.
(Very changeable-quiet-persistant.)"
****************************************
Getting upset about a "bad meme" concerning
Aristotle. Now there's *breaking news* I can get with!
Mike Snider's Formal Blog and Sonnetarium {click here}

Jean Vengua said she wrote this The Nightjar {click here} shortly before reading this:
re: the Phases of the Moon {click here}

But perhaps I had already read this from Okir {click here}
**********************
Some posters Toni and
I (Kim Lyons marched with us)
spotted at today's
protest march past Madison Square
Garden (site of the RNC convention)
against the Bush/Cheney
agenda:

I will not coorporate.
**
Bush/Cheney: What *lies* ahead?
**
Just say no to *carbs*

C(heney)
A(shcroft)
R(umsfeld)
B(ush)
**
Democracy and
Empire don't mix!
**
Osama Still Has His Job
Do you?
**
Impeach Bush.org
**
Fight Homelessness
Evict Bush
**
No Draft No Way.org
click here
**
take back the future.org
**
Leave no Billionaire
Behind
**
No Dick
No Bush
No Colin
(many variations on
this)
**
Stop
Expoiting
9-11
**

"You had almost forgotten the tranquil moon above the
empty streets. Every year, the beauties of nature reveal
themselves anew, and the emotion they evoke is always: 'You had
almost forgotten...'

The difficulty of art is to present things you know well
in such a way that they are surprising. If you did not know
them well, you would not be sufficiently interested in them
re treat them in a way that makes them surprising.

The delight of art: perceiving that one's own way of
life can determine a method of expression."

Cesare Pavese
*The Burning Brand*
Diaries 1935-1950

Every night this month, I've been struck,
even dazed, by the loveliness of the
of the phases of the moon.

A constant pleasure: to realize, without yet comprehending
the specifics, that some specific understanding is
unfolding; to notice it instead, in the little forward
and backward emotional fluctuations; what used to
be called, in a more sympathetic literary/ philosophical
era, spirit.

The connected pleasure of discovering parallel insights
in others. Why diaries, journals, blogs, have for so long
completely enthralled me. Why psychoanalysis and
psychotherapy have almost always done the same.

Pavese realized, or hoped, he could piece together
an understanding, a grip on life out of such insights.
What a moving struggle to see so sadly end in suicide.

The phases of the moon: the necessity of priorities;
the necessity of occasionally forgetting them; the
inexorable, yet paradoxical companionship of the
inevitable. On the verge of Aurelius' stoical,
transcendent insight:
to find calm and solace, even reassurance
in all the cycles,
large and small, not disappointment.
Why? Because this is , in fact,
what life is composed of, and life
is all we have.

Two quotes from Marcus Aurelius:

"Always remember the saying of
Heraclitus: that the death of earth
is to become water, and the death of
water to become air, and the death
of air is to become fire, and reversely.
And think too of those who forget
whither the way leads, and that people
quarrel with that with which they are
most constantly in communion, the reason
which governs the universe; and the things
which they daily meet with seem to them
strange: and consider that we ought
not to act and speak as if we were
asleep, for even in sleep we seem
to act and speak; and that we ought
not, like children who learn from their
parents, simply to act and speak as
we have been taught."

*************

"There is no nature which is inferior
to art, for the arts imitate the nature
of things. But if this is so, that nature
which is the most perfect and the most
comprehensive of all natures cannot
fall short of the skill of art. Now all arts
do the inferior things for the sake of the
superior; therefore the universal nature
does so too. And, indeed, hence is the
origin of justice, and in justice the other
virtues have their foundation: for justice
will not be observed if we either care for
middle things [things indifferent], or are
easily deceived and careless and
changeable."

This just in from Toni Simon:

"Last night, after seeing the overrated Brancusi exhibit we went down to the Cafe Orlin for dinner. The new poll numbers had put me in a bad mood. So we're sitting outside eating dinner when suddenly hundreds and hundreds of bicyclists ride by yelling fuck Bush. It went by for half an hour- like a dream. I'm thinking this is freedom-we still live in a democracy and there's still hope. Soon the riot police and helicopters arrived however at 9th and 2nd ave. and arrested 250, confiscating their bicycles. The sidewalks were jammed with people yelling let them go. Second ave was blocked off with police buses, vans and cars-bicycle riders being handcuffed in the middle of the street-your tax dollars at work. By the time we got home the phony AP news report blaming the protesters was in place."
**************************************************************************
::fait accompli:: summer reruns
Thursday, August 28, 2003

:: Thursday, August 28 ::

Thanks to Mikarrhea...Michaela Cooper for mentioning -fait accompli- and welcome to Blogland! It appears she has the requisite sense of humor to survive in this strange new world.
Here are a few more of my favorite aphorisms:

"There is hardly any grief that an
hour's reading will not dissipate."
Montesquieu, -Mes Pensees- 1722-55

"To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others."
Albert Camus, -The Fall-, 1956

"There is a certain distance at which
each person we know is naturally
placed from us. It varies with each,
and we must not attempt to alter
it. We may clasp him who is close,
and we are not to pull closer to him who
is more remote."
Mark Rutherford, -More Pages from a Journal-, 1910

"What a fine comedy this world would
be if one did not play a part in it."
Diderot, -Letters to Sophie Vollard-

"if only we could treat ourselves
as we treat other men, looking at their
withdrawn faces and crediting them with
some mysterious, irresistable power. Instead,
we know all our own thoughts, our misgivings,
and we are reduced to hoping for some
unconscious force to surge up from our
inmost being and act with a subtlety all its own."
Cesare Pavese-This Business of Living: Diaries-1935-1950

:: Nick Piombino 9:26 AM [+] ::
. . . . . .

8/1/99 Amsterdam
Homo Sapiens Non Urinat In Ventum

8/10/99
inching
anticipation
foresight foretaste forethought forewarning
preconception premonition prescience
presentiment
prolepsis

8/12
Almost immediately, "The
Music Lesson" transposed itself
from a narrative into a series
of brief episodes in the
form of a series of aphorisms.
The first of which is: don't
expect the student to be in
any hurry for the lesson.
Perhaps if he or she rushed to
it we might expect them to be
too eager, too accomodating.
The teacher wants good students, not
necessarily compliant ones.

8/16/99
What makes change so
difficult? I've a mind to
smooth out some rough edges,
but there is always this
resistance. My behavior- or
the connection between how I
take action and how I am
feeling, it's this equation I
would like to adjust. Part of
this, I see is related to the
unpredictability of the external
conditions at any given moment.
I overreact, or rigidly react
to these external conditions as
if they were human, that is,
purposeful. This is, of course, the
theme of "Zen In The Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance" as I
remember. I ought to rereread
this book.
As I understand, and develop, what
I enjoy reading, I better understand
what I want to write. I remember
Fielding once suggesting that
the difficulty I have is not so
much with how I react to people
but how I respond to how
they respond to me. So
this is where neutrality
to outcomes comes in.
The automatic reaction
to disappointment, for
example, is to feel
frustrated. My reaction frequently
contains the need to reveal,
and often even to
sustain this frustration.
Maybe part of this urge is
to examine the feelings- and,
if it's a wound, to sort
of pick at the scab, or
press the bruise. But another
side of this is to take
offence- to be displeased and
to express the displeasure.
Getting better is feeling
better, feeling better is having
more, having more is having
more to give.
Wincing- why so much?
Asking for something, asking for
support; "something hurt me- help me."
Memories imply a break
with what took place in
the past. But there was no
break. Day after day, every day
since the first you have been
who you are. To remember you
need only look at what you
are doing at any given moment.
Probably you were doing something
very similar to what you are
doing right now back then.
Maybe a few details have changed,
something you used to do into
a different version of what you
were doing back then.
Misunderstandings can only
come from unmet needs.
Each understanding is like a
rung on the ladder. Yet
every day you have to find
the impetus to climb the
ladder again. First the
ladder- and then the
climbing. Then seeing
something-then more ladders,
more climbing.
So- how to manage this
annoyance- disappointment
thing better. This is what I was
studying with stoicism and
Seneca. These annoyance-
disappointment spells have
actually wasted an awful lot
of time in my life.

8/17/99
I just understood that sometimes
I interpret some unfortunate
experience as if it were a reflection of my
destiny and therefore- somehow- as
a reflection on my self-worth or value.
An example. this year, in the
school I work in there was a
considerable amount of construction
work. This bothered my hearing because
of a hearing condition I have
called tinnitus. Once I speculated
that a very loud construction
project which took place
right next to another school
I worked in over 10 years ago
caused my problem. When they drove
in the foundation it sounded like
explosions. A year later
the ear noises started. So
these misfortunes get grouped
under bad luck surrounding
construction nearby me. Then,
when there is a much quieter
construction project right
acorss from me in Amsterdam,
it all gets clustered
under "bad luck I get
around construction projects."
And somehow this bad luck
is deserved. The fact
that it feels deserved depresses
me. But, in actuality, the
amount of focus I give
something is chosen by me,
not the external environment.
This is Seneca's message.
Yesterday I tried to push through
this. I am very interested in
mastering this and it seems like
an extremely valuable project.
*
I realized, listening to
Debussy the last few days-
but it also applies to the
Beethoven I've been listening
to: to create according to
very basic kinds of
steps, and gradually to allow
the feelings to overtake me,
and then watch what happens
next. This often involves
considerable waiting. All through
the years I've noticed there are
times I do not write. Many
years ago I might have
gotten upset about these
periods. At times I
can even shed the mantle
of "writer." Why wear
this interest so loudly like a
uniform? It is more interesting
to change identities sometimes,
like costumes. We all do
this naturally, to some
extent, in everyday life.
At a job or professional
activity we have to don this
mantle or we
will not be able to accomplish
very much. Often this
question is one of setting limits
with other people. If we
fail to set these limits,
we will be unable to
manage our activities vis-a
vis other people.
Even the Beethoven- simple steps,
one progressing naturally from
the previous one and the next one.
But, compared with Debussy,
Beethoven is very forceably
moving forward with each step
and sequence of steps. These
middle quartets glide easily
between moods- but there
are rarely the "complete
silences" I hear in Debussy.
The more smoothly one can
change the masks, the quicker
can things move forward. The
times of waiting are clothes-
changing periods. Or sometimes,
with me, it is a stubborn
refusal to don any mask at
all.
In a mirage, I can
don any costume at will.
It may seem so, but I
am not dressing hurriedly.
No, because I am thinking
about what I want to wear.
I knew where my hatred of
uniforms comes from. It
comes from my father.
Since he was a soldier,
an officer, he wore a
uniform every day. I
think he loved them so
much, that when he retired
the only activity he could
enjoy was managing the
uniforms for students
in an army training
program [ROTC, at City College of New York,
in the early 60's].
What is the impatience ever
about? It is about equating
procedures with rigid uniforms,
unconsciously. But certainly
because I've dwelled so long
in a horror of uniforms, that
I can certainly detect the
rigid aspects of "uniform"
behavior- particularly of
importance to me in writing,
but I also detect it frequently
in other areas of being.

:: Nick Piombino 1:45 AM [+] ::

Wasgonna

My father used to like to tease me with
this word, whever I said I "was gonna"
do something and never got around
to it.

I've been telling myself for awhile now
that sometime I'm going to spend a whole
day reading the links on
:::wood s lot::: the fitful tracings of a portal (Mark Woods) {click here}
I've been thinking about how much I rely on this
blog for blogland sustenance. And finally
last night I got around to looking at just
a few of the dozens of great links there.

One that caught my eye is called
the future of the book {click here}.
It mentions an upcoming conference on that topic
in China. Another featured an interview with
Ronald Sukenik, but unfortunately I can't find it
right now.

But I know I'll keep reading this
amazingly informative blog everyday
and one day I'll get around to checking
out Mark Woods' voluminous resources.

(By the way, "the fitful tracings of a portal"-
you knew it, didn't you?
is a quote from Wallace Stevens.)

The Bully's Cycle of Intimidation

Isn't it interesting that individuals or groups who
like to frequently warn tend to be
the same ones who frequently
threaten?

The Cycle

Patronize, preach, pressure

Cajole, carp, criticize

Scold, warn, threaten, deprive, punish

Begin again.
******************************************

Caterina {click here} takes time out for
Oliver Sacks
******************************************
::fait accompli:: summer reruns
August 26, 2003

"In everything there is an unexplored
element because we are prone by habit
to use our eyes only in combination
with the memory of what others before us
have thought about the thing we are looking at.
The most insignificant thing contains some
little unknown element. We must find it."
Maupassant, Preface to Pierre et Jean, 1887

:: Nick Piombino 10:41 PM [+] ::
. . . . . .

Afterglow

"Spoke, spoke.
Was, was."
Paul Celan

The real is impenetrable.
Every day we accept the given reports.
Sun, gray skies, rain.
In back of the house the metal swing is rusting.
The day is so hot nothing moves.
Even time doesn't move.
Escape the official remarks and expressions.
Into what? Green? Or eyes?
Words don't welcome, but they are warm,
Warmer than voices. The whole extent.
The whole object or memory.
Continuance.
Contrivance: echoes.
Universe: all bare.
Wonders: caring.
Hands.
6/4/93

:: Nick Piombino 8:19 PM [+] ::
**********************************************
Are the derangements of modernism
still efficacious? While still fascinating,
and occasionally shockingly
and powerfully beautiful,
can they release us from the fun-house
mirrors of contemporary disinformation?
Is it still revolutionary to counter lies and deceit
with chaos and confusion?
Is atonality, for example,
still more forceful, more
authentic than
melody or silence?

Those who live life as if
it could never be
protected or protective enough,
who feel obliged to endlessly repeat sad
warnings, remind all and any of terrible events
and scoff at "childish,"
dreams and joys, who live for
becoming tough and "realistic",
who constantly long to be no longer afraid, may never
come to understand, with
Antonio Porchia that:

"When one does not love the impossible,
one does not love anything."

Thanks to Lanny Quarles
for linking

phaneronoemikon {click here}
to my poem
*Career of the Poet*

Career of the Poet

(written for, and first published on
As Is {click here})

The poet, lying in silver, athwart.
The poet, O moon begotten.
The poet, in sadness abetted.
The poet, mad in shadow.
The poet, being seeming.
The poet, impolitic observed.
The poet, breath curator.
The poet, imperative antidote.
The poet, lost in thought, finding the lost thought.
The poet, missing in inaction.
The poet, savorer of sustenance.
The poet, systematization of nuance.
The poet, monarch of forgotten will.
The poet, static statistician.
The poet, anticipation of bartered dream, battered dream.
The poet, treasures of iincomprehension.
The poet, gold plated listlessness.
The poet, cusp of denouments.
The poet, pain stinginess.
The poet, temporal derangement.
The poet, courageous loneliness.
The poet, deconstruction of doubt.
The poet, tireless critic of rusty reasoning.
The poet, proverbial delays.
The poet, maximal mutations.
The poet, trilling scientist.
The poet, Collected Embraces.
The poet, algebraic admonishment.
The poet, anonymous advocate.
The poet, stillborn stabs.
The poet, contradictory confessions.
The poet, temptation loyalty.
The poet, hybrid hubris.
The poet, grammatical glissandoes.
The poet, hilarious hesitations.
The poet, manic musings.
The poet, career hypnosis.
The poet, lapsed logician.
The poet, priestess of possibilities
The poet, hope insurance.
The poet, jack of all thoughts.
The poet, subtlty action hero.
The poet, stabilized incongruity.
The poet, endangered eternities.
The poet, infinity infiltrator.
The poet, rhythm rhetoritician.
The poet, melodic ministrations.
The poet, luck enticement.
The poet, to be continued.

(pencilled note on top of page): A last page

Stet

What I didn't tell you is that I can sit for literally hundreds, maybe
thousands of hours totally amazed that it all turned out this way.

Maybe that just means I can't "respectfully dismiss" anything, but maybe Frank
O'Hara was right always addressing what he says to some person. A party
line, who's going to be let in on the conversation. Even if I resort to gulls,
to seashores and sandy beaches and tormented love affairs it is all part of the
news I was telling you about. A mix, I better steer clear of the phenomenological
phrases. He thinks maybe I meant get it wrecked trying to prove its validity.
I can see by your face that you're directly involved in this. It's not that
I'm being purely let outside...it's just that. The magazines. All or none
personal reference. A machine. Lots of space. Don't call. You did it. I
sat by and watched. Me a terrible person. Do something bad, in the abstactness
of language constantly referring to its own nouns I died inside a suit trying
to make it longer. Stuck. In the laundromat, can't.

An. It by getting sevens. Of happened. One ace seven door. Dry like a lick.


I've been stuck for what seems like thousands and thoughsends of days.

No language in the exact color I want it. But I notice by the intent that
the thousands of empty hours are not an accretion. It is the one frozen
second of a poem.

I have for 17 years cast in the frozen composition of one poem. The poem and
the hours and the lifeless sentences are static. Frozen slice of composition.
Terror of the end phrase in the immobillity of finite meanings.

No definition.

The map belongs to me. It is my map., my words, my borrowed typwriter.
I don't want to meet sentences I want to meet people. Your sentences are
people and your conversation is included in this conversation. Stereotyped
fiction. A tape.

Another night that my heart won't go there. Another day that I'm not permitted
near the city.

Today I was angry at everyone.

Notebook: circa 1975-77

The Tao of Blogging

"Blog This!" ?

Yes, but only
if and when
I feel like it.

from *Diaries: Robert Musil
1899-1942
Translated by Philip Payne
edited by Mark Mirsky

"62) I have a minimal need to
communicate: I am a deviation
from the standard type of writer."

Notebook: 33: 1937 to about
the end of 1941
p. 451
Basic Books, 1999