"Suppose I was to postulate that being a writer is absolutely ludicrous"

is one of my favorite lines from Richard Foreman's current play
*The Gods Are Pounding My Head (AKA Lumberjack Messiah).*

Another line that makes me think: "In bad times the best that can
be done is to fail (is that what I believe. Even if I believe...)"

I kept jotting lines down from the play throughout, because in
this work, more than in any I can remember, Richard Foreman
appears to want to address the current circumstances
of life, in words, more directly than in any of his plays I can remember, going
back to the late 60's. "How can I activate my heart?" is another
line that surprised me. "Don't touch the big heart. Why can't
I see it?" "The action is elsewhere....Wake up into a world
where people are thin somehow." This line, which repeats
throughout the play, hits the nail on the head of contemporary
existence, for me. Also, throughout the play, two words are repeated
again and again, in varying contexts. These are: "tendency" and
"fidget."

Yet it's important to add that in this work, as in all his plays, words
and statements themselves are problematized. All of Foreman's plays,
perhaps a little less so in this one, make it clear that we
are always saying the same things, but these things are constantly
meaning something else. "We can never go into the future which
is behind us," and, "It's the world itself making these choices
on your behalf," are two paradoxes worthy of the description
"koan." The fact that everything said is also clearly directed to
himself makes this playwright worthy of the title philosopher, and this
line clinched it: "OK Richie, what do we do
with these things?"

Pancake People

Richard Foreman included some notes in the playbill that will
be quoted extensively here later when I have the time to write
more- in a rush right now. But think about this: "...today, I see
within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner
density with a new kind of self- evolving under the pressure of information
overload and the technology of the 'instantly available.' A new self
that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense
cultural inheritance- as we all become "pancake people"- spread
wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information
accessed by the mere touch of a button."

The Gods Are Pounding My Head (AKA Lumberjack Messiah)
by Richard Foreman is a joy to behold. Sadly, I have no time
to write about this further now, but if you do nothing else today-
call and make a reservation for this play- reputed to possibly
Foreman's final contribution in this form that he has been working
in since 1968- the completely live staged play- and towards
a form that includes more multimedia elements. We'll see about
that- but either way- make sure to see this wonderfully performed,
gorgeously staged, intensely thought-provoking work.

ontological-hysteric theater {click here}

"Winners"

"If, as is often said, you can't win, it is perhaps because
when you do you have so much to lose. To put it a
little gloomily winning could be called the mark of Abel.
It would be beautiful to photograph the winners of anything
from Nobel prize to booby prize, clutching trophy or money
or certificate, solemn or smiling or bloody, on the
precarious pinnacle of the human landscape."

Text for a project on winners from
Diane Arbus 1962 notebook (No. 8)

[Copied at the Diane Arbus show now
up at the Metropolitan Museum. A
must-see without doubt!]

*Blade Runner* Rides Again

I was at home sick with a aching, sneezy cold
on a gray, incessantly rainy day and
happened to have gotten to the library recently
and pulled a book off the shelf that wierdly
felt like I already knew all about it, and
in a way, I did. The book is resonant with
concepts of deja vu, and problematizes
memory in ways that Proust is famous for,
though sadly I find that eminent author impossible
to read. This book I found is the kind that
can make you glad you have a terrible cold, almost.

Also, if you're a Phillip K. Dick fan, or
a *Blade Runner* fan, you definitely will
want to check out

Los Angeles {click here} by Peter Moore Smith, a novel
I enjoyed almost, but not quite, as much as Grant Bailie's *Cloud 8* and
for similar reasons. First of all, it's a page turner, and secondly
it deals with a lonely figure whose effort to figure out love,
life and the world takes you into unexpected regions. In
this case that region is Los Angeles, a mythical Hollywood
that exists as much in the imagination of the world as it does
in the mind of the central character of this striking second novel.
The main character is an albino who is misogynistic, drug
and alcohol addicted, but, in his own way, as charming as Salinger's Holden
Caulfield. One of his quirks is leaving *Blade Runner* on
on his TV all the time, something I nearly did myself for many years
(the Ridley Scott movie came out in the early 80's).
Who knows, Angel may become this generation's "Catcher in the Rye"
(of course, this one is 30, not 16)
whose attitudes cut right through all the contemporary platitudes about
money, love, religion and politics. What happens is that rich, lonely albino Angel
(his father is a fabulously wealthy movie director) gets visited by
sultry, electrifying, black Angela, who then disappears,
making Angel (himself, a putative screen writer) a
Blade Runner in reverse; he has to find Angela to save her.
His travels take us through the underside of Hollywood as a metaphor
for contemporary existence, most pointedly, family, memory, and the agonizing
process of maturation. The tough, noir language is as irrisistible
as a second scotch on a lonely night. And it's as hard to book this book down
as it is for Angel to put a bottle of pills down; the trip is wild, and worth it.

That Chicago Sound

Elaine Equi, Kimberly Lyons and
Sharon Mesmer wrote to us regarding
our post *The Chicago School* in
reponse to Sharon Mesmer and Elaine
Equi's recent reading at the Bowery
Poetry Club. Elaine wrote:

"...I think you're right, there is a Chicago sound -- funny, talky, kind of
surreal (they were big there for a while)."

Kimberly Lyons sent us the following response.

"Hi Nick,
I'm sweating cuz such a casual remark to you bloggers leads to a thing. Keeps us on our toes!
Sure, I was a freshman and Elaine a senior so to speak at Columbia College. A few years later Sharon Mesmer, and Debbie Pintonelli and Connie Deanovitch came to Columbia. We all studied with Paul Hoover and in some sense Maxine Chernoff. But there wasn't a school. Not sure how much social interaction there was of any of the aforementioned parties until NYC. There certainly are shared concerns through time in the work and styles if you will among these writers and many more - but I know most of them would resist identification as "Chicago" writers.


Elaine E and Jerome S. were at one time part of and even originators of a scene that I think came off of a punk and performance and various literary affilitations . Their work and audiences became inclusive of LA cohorts that I think involved Amy Gerstler, David Trinidad and others. Once they moved east and after years of intensive individual work they are quite independent and have even individuated from each others work! I think their work now needs to be read in the context of the New York School, including Ron Padgett, Elmslie and Brainard; Lang( and 2nd generation lang po) including Bruce Andrews, Rob Fittterman, Rae Armentrout and many other affilitations that criss-cross coteries. Equi and Sala's early work did manifest that cluster of characteristics you listed --as does Sharon Mesmer's work. The divergences and sympathies among these writer's work would be a longer dialogue and reading. Worth doing.
The Chicago poetry scene and the style you allude to or are trying to define, takes its energy, I think, from Chicago's particular working class politics, African American culture (think of the avante garde African American jazz performers coming out of Chicago), comedy, and Chicago's longtime involvement with surrealism - from Breton's famous visit to Maxwell Street to the collecting of the Bergmans; the centerpiece of the Art Institute's Cornell collection. When I was a teen, it was big news when Franklin Rosemont's group threw flour all over Robert Bly at a reading at the Body Politic. The Chicago Imagist painters work also reflects these forces: Big Table magazine, The Little magazine, even Poetry and the Chicago Literary Review and vestiges of other literary scenes has energized activity- even in the ephemeral way of these histories. The brief presence of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley in Chicago instigated, I believe, a whole new opening up of styles and Barbara Barg, Susie Timmons, Bob Holman, Bob Rosenthal, Shelley Kraut's commitment to poetry and their later moving east. The 15 Chicago Poets group (my tag) are an intereresting constellation. Art Lange's Brilliant Corners, for instance, is a great unsung magazine. Anyway, this is a larger situation and I'm not making a claim for any of the writers' work mentioned as being subsumed in this context - more as being in an unavoidable relationship. My own and Sharon's work, as is evident from her great new collection of stories form Hanging Loose, I think remains haunted by the geography of the experience. The look and feel of things there....

yours, Kim"

Creeley Memorial Reading on The Radio

Matthew Shindell and James Meetze's new show
will open with readings from Robert Creeley
and some tributes from Timothy Yu and others
KSDT radio.org {click here}
on Sunday, April 3rd from 4-6 pm

via
wood s lot {click here}

Transitions

Learning, finding, understanding, unraveling, working through:
all require patience, that transitional music between one melody
and the next. Every success, no matter how large or small
requires it, not just to locate the switch that turns on the lightbulb of
inspiration, but to then find a way to illuminate the room and the landscape
that are to be transformed by the benefits of such enlightenment.
Even procrastination has within it a tiny germ of how
this kind of waiting ought to feel.

All this rushing around is destroying everything: affection, charm,
connection- every possible accomplishment. Contemporary life
never ceases to conspire to deflect us from the one activity that can't
fail to bring us closer to all that we most need and want: real thinking.

The Best Minds

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness, starving, hysterical, naked..."
Allen Ginsberg

"In art, there is all too much thinking about liking
and disliking."
Jackson Mac Low



For quite awhile now I’ve been postponing reading
*The Best American Poetry 2004* edited by Lyn Hejinian,
though I knew I would, inevitably. How could I ignore a
project like this from such a first-rate mind?
I took it home from the library today, and I dipped into it
and thought: this is going to be difficult. Of course, there are
the expectable ideas or reactions about not having been
included, any poet might feel this. But, as I read through it, I realized
a few of the reasons that I have had some problems reading
AND writing poetry, especially of late. For a very long time, especially since
9/11, I’ve noticed that I frequently avoid newspapers,
news broadcasts, sad movies and many other things
that might depress me. (By the way, my work as a
therapist does not at all affect me this way – on the
contrary, it is stimulating and interesting because I find
doing therapy intensely engrossing,
more and more over time, especially
because I enjoy learning and most of all following
and trying to assist the process of change.)

As soon as I began to read the book, it occurred
to me that a great deal of contemporary poetry continually
reflects on disillusionment and suffering, and not
a little of it, including much of my own recent work
focuses on the hardships of being a poet.
I am tired of thinking about this. I think about it
all the time. It feels like I have always thought
about this all the time. I closed the book and considered
writing a satiric parody of a contemporary poem. But
oh please, not that again! So I reopened the
book and continued reading here and there.

Then, as I paged through the book, I got an idea.
I thought of pulling out one sad, depressed, angry,
bitter or tragic line from each poem. At first I
did this in a provocative or critical way, but then
it became a way of reading the book with an eye
towards insight. While thinking about the work in
this way, I discovered that the book is, in fact,
very worthwhile reading, an absorbing assemblage
of poetic minds and approaches to writing
and thinking about poetry; and also, that the
overall selection does connect; and very beautifully
so. In this manner I forced myself to read each and every
poem completely , though quickly, in order to select the one
line or phrase from each work to include here.
It's interesting also to note, that
when I have read a book of poems in this way, I will
inevitably return to it, as I have made my acquaintance
now with the poems (and in a number of cases, the
poets), and I have become curious about getting to know
them better. (The obvious benefit of a useful anthology).
Finally, I constructed a title from two of the lines.
*****************************************************

“Going Toward Nothing”: “The Self-Stung Unfolding”

(Lines from The Best American Poetry of 2004, edited by Lyn Hejinian)




“she should have stayed in her little cage
shat on by her sisters above her” (15)

“Not some writhing in a tortuous canine presence” (17)

“tighten up your resumé sphincter living for a better suicide” (22)

“Almost all the words we’ve said to one another are gone” (26)

“bombing another car…you so hate” (29)

“Now see the damage” (31)

“We were going toward nothing/all along” (32)

“Does something for everyone mean nothing for anyone” (34)

“Memory is to life like a band-aid to a wound” (38)

“I know I’m fucked” (43)

“…he went ballistic” (45)

“’From those who have nothing, even what they have
will be taken away,’ I thought” (46)

“I am on a drive where a mirror has collapsed” (48)

“his face a glass that has shattered but not yet fallen” (51)

“…the city on the hill having failed us” (54)

“It is difficult to describe what we felt” (55)

“who’s pushing who?” (58)

“-your negligence constantly reminds-“ (59)

“and there’s plenty to be unhappy about” (61)

“*I am wretched*” (63)

“stunned from the sleep of a Nobody” (66)

“Inducing doubt and self-hatred in all you come into contact with” (71)

“sent out a feeble cry signifying
grief and confusion, et cetera” (73)

“its heartless calculation, its profound sadness” (78)

“something dirty, something you only do if you are sick and caught in deep clots of blood” (81)

“Adolf Hitler’s radio rant” (85)

“Desperate to see themselves as merry/
In the mirror they carry around with them” (88)

“I returned your book of poetry to the store/
I returned to the scene of the crime” (90)

“Molten days, because of lingering
Nothing’s personal, including yours” (93)

“I have lost the doves of Milan, floating politely” (94)

“Baby would be raped or murdered by now
kidnapped or placed in a holding cell at the police station…” (99)

“*I think I know, but the world’s still mum*” (109)

“Anything can happen under these conditions. Nuclear bombs, dirty/ bombs, small time random murder, and abduction” (117)

“and then everyone gone and not found” (123)

“the beginning of a sentient, formless life” (125)

“I am none but the king of sad persuasion” (126)

“I heard a voice saying ‘Blundering
Coma dancing wild ineptitude…” (131)

“The speculations of that secret self/
For whom to even try to talk to you is death” (134)

“…a replenished body
singing its way into doubletalk” (136)

“Dark passages wait for us…” (142)

“And still we did not speak, did
not know to whom to speak…” (146)

“…a republic of none, the one included/us,/
no one to speak it with, dumbstruck” (148)

“no longer dreaming plowing on through thick mud” (153)

“Perhaps Paul Celan is the crematorium built
especially for Language poets” (161)

“…frozen in terror” (169)

“Is bad weather coming/
how would we know/
Is bad weather coming
call everyone” (174)

“an era of night sweats, gasps and pants” (177)

“the paranoia I feel about all the award
winners
I’m like king of the losers again” ( 179)

“why is the president so popular? because he is vicious” (184)

‘Like an x-ray of infant bronchitis. Wrist slitting stuff” (186)

“Don’t invite me to your pity party.
Don’t call me up on your pity party line
and invite me over for punch and cookies.
I won’t come…” (187)

“terrible vision. I don’t think I can fall asleep” (188)

“a terror that being emperor in no matter how many other brains/can’t squash” (191)

“but nothing sticks, that doesn’t/
have to. Not memory;
not the naming…”(193)

“City of healers and cheaters” (195)

“Your themes/ are plein-air/ endless/ sad.” (197)

“jumping in flames from roaring height for a fooled god/
and his cow disease of long rotting memories” (198)

“Don’t look here for a view
the ice will just cream all over you
latency barometer zero” (201)

“on I trouble raped” (204)

“listen to me./ mirrordown./ these notions are halfbaked understand/
it’s just what’s right/ I’m tired just let me rest” (206)

“The melanoma on my skin
Resumes what’s wrong with me within” (207)

“In the injured house
made of local sun and stone-
In the city of numbers
Which everyone counts and hates and wants-“ (214)

“Lines link lives like words,
glances, an embrace, capable
entirely of administration, deceit,
want, need, the long sigh,
meaning evident to no one.” (223)

“*slowly, poetry had failed me*” (224)

“People are like ciphers. They say this. They say that.” (227)

“just a mistake- I scream outright at the likeness.” (228)

“…when the sky opens up/
and pelts the earth with a momentary lapse of crying.” (229)

“eighteen women in singular postures of
mourning along the sides of the sarphagus;” (231)

“The sudden pressure to
act normal was killing me.” (233)

“..inventing a paranoia into the sleepless
monster that is this bastard maggot poetry.” (236)

“Raucous how fun to rip it apart soon…
Poetry scene lurker as mass-popular unit.” (240)

“We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.” (241)

“And the chorus of tone-deaf guards is bellowing
Lock down and Body Search! Silence and Lights Out!” (243)

“Nothings undoing among the self-stung unfolding of things.” (244)

susan and connie

Susan Bee and Corinne Robins*
(Charles Bernstein in background)
taken at the Poetry Plastique show
at the Maryann Boesky Gallery
February 2001

*photo by Toni Simon

Poetry Radio Show with Matthew Shindell and James Meetze-Coming Soon!


Maximum Go in the Resulting Hogshead {click here}

Stacy Doris and Chet Weiner, The Ear Inn, January 1996

Chet Weiner and Stacy Doris at the Ear Inn,
January 1996*

*photo by Toni Simon

The Chicago School of Poetry

A google seach of the above phrase led me to a citation
on Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters
who were active from 1860-1914. I would like to propose
a more recent phenomenon that might be known as
the Chicago School, that includes Elaine Equi, Jerome
Sala, Sharon Mesmer, and Kimberly Lyons. Would welcome
hearing about others: please write me by clicking the
contact box above. I am
quite sure there are many others, and would love to
learn who they might be. Kimberly Lyons* and I got to
discussing this right after Sharon Mesmer's and shortly
before Elaine Equi's readings yesterday afternoon
at the Bowery Poetry Club. It happens that Kimberly
was studying in Chicago around the same time that
Jerome Sala, Elaine Equi and Sharon Mesmer
were writing and performing there. By now you must
surely know that Jerome Sala was challenged to having
the first known performance bout held in a boxing ring,
back in the 70's, certainly one of the earliest if not *the*
first inspirations for what is now known
as Slam Poetry (this will be documented, I learned from
Jerome in a book of interviews on Oral Poetry to be published
by Soft Skull Press, including an interview with him).

Although I am unable to list enough characteristics
right now to definitively elucidate the qualities of a possible
Chicago School of poetry, one of them would certainly be the presence
of sparking, provocative, witty, charming, and not infrequently
hilarious, paradoxical and/or shocking anecdote. Yet these
so-called anecdotes might be better described as parables
or even fables. In Mesmer's performance I am thinking
of one in particular that offers an account of an intimate
relationship in the 70's with the bass player of the Bay
City Rollers. Here, my own descriptive powers fail me.
Like an excellent film, I will be thinking about it for days.
But I will say the following about this reading as
well as Elaine Equi's reading yesterday:
amazing, awesome,breathtaking, brilliant,
fabulous, fantastic, magnificent,
marvelllous, outstanding, sensational, super,
superb, tremendous, wonderful. Got the idea?

I had a few free moments right before the reading to
run over to the St Mark's Book Shop at 31Third
Avenue, near East 10th Street. Fortunately,
this is only a very short walk to the Bowery
Poetry Club, at Bowery near Houston Street,
so the two activities make for a great double
feature. One of the books I purchased was
*The Frequencies: a poem* by Noah Eli Gordon.
from James Meetze's Tougher Disguises Press
in 2003. In the very first poem, Noah Eli Gordon
writes: "It might be adding amnesia to my
watering can, but the saddest thing in the world
is someone's to-do list stuffed in the pocket of
my new thrift-store coat." When I read that line last
night after getting home after the readings, and
after dinner with Jerome and Elaine and after
going to the St Mark's Bookstore a second
time yesterday, I remembered a haunting
poem that Elaine read yesterday which I can't
quote precisely but was dedicated to Joe Brainard
and said something to the extent that one should always
leave something undone on one's to-do list
so that one feels there is always something left
to do. Oh, I wish I had written out the one about
the seasons that went something like: Winter is
fortitude, Spring is longitude, Summer is turpitude,
Fall is gratitude (this is only a paraphrase of sorts,
but it went on beautifully like this for a few rounds).

Elaine Equi {click here}


Coming soon at the Zinc Bar: A book party
for a new book of stories by Sharon Mesmer from
Hanging Loose Press {click here}


Sharon Mesmer {click here}


*This is from Kimberly Lyons' new book *Saline* (Instance Press, 2005):
"At night, with a fever, the smell is of my own tongue,
swollen and of a washrag. Peppermint pink
stripped, it feels alien and particular as though my skin had
detached and was being reapplied in rough strokes by a
hovering woman. She is shushing but I'm not sure who
is making noises or why."
*********************************
Thanks to Jordan Stempleman (Growing
Nation) {click here}

for writing to us about
The Poetry Center
of Chicago {click here}

*********************************
Gina Myers was at Elaine's reading
also.

A Sad Day For Sad Birds {click here}

This Just In: Films on UBUWEB

UBU WEB {click here}
[Caveat: UBUWEB recommends downloading rather tthan streaming
these films, as they are large files]

III.5 *Pacis Amor deus est, pacem veneramur amantes*

"The god of peace is Love, we lovers venerate peace:
Hard battles with my mistress suffice for me.
My heart is not consumed for hateful gold,
My thirst doesn't drink from cups of precious stone,
Fat Campania's not ploughed for me by a thousand yoke.
I get no bronzes from your ruin, hapless Corinth.

O primal earth Prometheus unluckily shaped-
Too little prepared, he began to work on our hearts:
Skilfully ordering bodies, he did not look to the mind.
From the first there should have been a straight path
For the soul: now we are tempest-tossed far out to sea:
We seek out enemies, and join fresh wars to wars.
You shall carry no riches to Acheron's waters:
Naked, fool, you'll be borne on hell's ferry.
Victor and victim shades are mingles as equals:
Consul Marius, you sit by the captive Jugurtha.
Lydian Croesus does not stand off from Dulichian Irus:
The death is best which comes at fate's appointed hour.
I am glad that in early youth I worshipped Helicon,
And linked my hands in the Muses' choral dance:
I am glad that plenteous Bacchus enchains my mind,
And always to wreathe my head in vernal roses.
When heavy age has interrupted Venus
And age's white has brindled my black hair,
Then may it please me to study's nature's ways:
Which god controls by art our home this world;
How comes the rising sun, how sinks, and how each month,
Horns brought together, the moon returns to the full;
Whence winds overmatch the deep, what Eurus snatches
At with his squall, whence the clouds' perennial water;
If a day shall come which undermines world-fortresses;
Why the shining bow imbibes the water of rain;
Why Perrhaebian Pindus' summits shook
And the sun has mourned, horses draped in black;
Why Bootes is late to turn his oxen and cart,
Or the Pleiads group their fiery dance so close;
Or why the deep main does not exceed its bounds;
Or why the whole year passes in four sections;
If underground are tortured Giants; gods' laws;
If Tisiphone's head is maddened with black snakes;
Alcmaeon's Furies, Phineus' hunger,
The wheel, the rock, the thirst amid the waters;
If Cerberus guards with triple jaws the pit
Of hell; nine acres too strait for Tityus:
Or fictions have come down to hapless folk,
And no alarms can be beyond the pyre.

Such going is what is left to me. You
Who welcome war, fetch Crassus' standards home."

from *Propertius/The Poems*
translated by W.G. Shepherd
Penguin Books, 1985

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

::fait accompli:: is proud to announce
we have been banned by *foetry*!

Now, get this: the foetry blog links to my name-here's the link on Google:

Foetry :: View topic - A new Blog!
... some-combination just haven't seemed like the types that would have run a blog with
a blogroll that included Jordan Davis, Jim Behrle, Nick Piombino, Josh Corey ...
foetry.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=2296& - 58k - Cached - Similar pages

and then bans me from visiting it even though I've never attempted
to visit the blog...But we're in excellent company!

Here's the link:

LISTSERV

foetry {click here}

from *The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950*
Cesare Pavese

"12 August (1940)

Love and poetry are mysteriously linked, because both
are a desire for self-expression, for talk and communication,
no matter with whom. An orgiastic desire for which there is
no substitute. Wine can induce a fictitious state of the same
sort, and, in fact, a drunkard talks and talks and talks."

"14 August (1940)

A man succeeds in completing a work only when his
qualities transcend that work."....

"10th October (1940)

There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering
full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack
exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its
bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while
its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot,
do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you,
and so relieve the pain of the first. Real suffering is made up
of many thoughts. You can think only one thought at a time,
so learn how to dodge from one to another, and you will
relieve each pain in turn."

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

"What I hear whispered, I whisper to you."


Ketih Waldrop
*Semiramis if I Remember
(Self-Portrait As Mask)*
Avec, 2001

Vispo Show at the Durban Segini Gallery, Miami, Florida {click here}

Spring In This World Of Poor Mutts

was the title of a book of poetry by the superb poet
Joe Ceravolo. Early this morning, at about 7:30 am,
the first moment of Spring, the vernal equinox, occurred.
What poet does not respond to the coming of Spring
without a little song in the heart? Lots of songs were in the air
yesterday at the Bowery Poetry Club where we went to hear and see
Tim Peterson and Brenda Iijima. Tim, whose
blog is Mappemunde {click here},
and who sponsors the Analogous series (see the blog for details,
Lyn Hejinian and Emilie Clarke are presenting today, in Cambridge, Mass),
has had two chapbooks published, one titled Cumulous from
Brenda Iijima’s Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, and the other
from Jack Kimball’s ebook faux press, Trinkets Crushed In A Blender.
On Saturday, Tim, in a ringing, clear, yet sensitive and lyrical voice,
read mostly from his chapbook Cumulous. His reading style put these
absorbing works in a fine light: syncopated, sure, the line enjambments
came through strikingly, criss-crossing each other, and creating a layered effect
of meanings and juxtapositions. We hope he comes back soon, as some
who unfortunately may have missed this program, deserve another
chance to hear him. Brenda, who is a painter as well as a poet,
read works from her recent book
around sea- O Books {click here}.
My copy was purchased directly from Brenda at her reading a few months back at the Zinc Bar, and
I obtained one whose cover was graced by a painting she added by hand;
she had brought a number of copies, each with a unique cover.
As a publisher and as a poet, Brenda reveals an inventive
outpouring and wide range of thought-provoking ideas and
interests. Her unmatchable determination and fortitude were
revealed on this occasion by the fact that she read in spite of a
terrible case of the flu. Still, in an aside, she had the focus to talk
about a recent article concerning the thought processes of animals,
and wondered aloud if the poem she was about to read were channeled
to her by the local birds!
Noted in the audience were poets Rodrigo Toscano,
Mark Weiss and Mitch Highfill, as well as bloggers
Xtina Strong and Drew Gardner.

The emcee, Charles Borkhuis accompanied a few of us
to one of the BPC poets’ favorite local Indian restaurants
Haveli, where Toni and I had to content ourselves with
appetizers because we had reservations so soon nearby
at PS 122 for Fiona Templeton’s, workshop version of a few
acts from her play-in-progress Medead. Before we left,
Mitch Highfill gave Toni and I a copy of Kimberly Lyons’
new book Saline from Instance Press, in Boulder. Colorado,
with a cover designed by Brenda Iijima and Anna Moschovakis.
The title is taken from the concluding prose poem:
“Like perpendicular shadows, people grab one another
suddenly in affection. Rattle drawers throwing everything
to the floor while looking for keys or something bought at a
drugstore or something found behind papers on a high shelf.
A person might scream in pain or seem beset with some feeling
while looking for this. People laugh so hard they kick their boots
on the floor and tears come to their eyes.”

[Aside: this quote was changed from the original version
of this post, which was completed and then unfortunately
bleeped out, due to so-called “instability” in the functioning
of blogger. The quote beautifully reflected my
response to this experience]

Then we hurried over to PS 122. “Medea on the Argo”
and “Medea in Corinth” by
Fiona Templeton {click here}
were shown as parts of a
development workshop by the Mabou Mines
Resident artist program for 2004-2005.
The cast included: Amelie Champagne Lyons as Medea in
Aia, Clarinda MacLow aas Medea on the Argo,
Theo Stockman played Jason, Jackson Loo was Orpheus,
Anna Kohler played Medea in Corinth and Valda Setterfield
was "Medea returns and bird". The latter referred to the bird
sounds created by Valda Setterfield during the first part, a
moving, eerie musical accompaniment to most of the
first act evoking a lonely sea voyage. Clarinda MacLow
was electrifying as Medea in this part, bringing together
a powerful portrayal of Medea’s insanity with a rendering
of Fiona Templeton’s poignant poetry that will be
long remembered by all who were there.
Between the acts during a break,
Toni mentioned that she thought of
Clarinda MacLow’s father, the late Jackson Mac Low’s
poetry performances, during most of the first act, and,
though I hadn’t thought of this, I knew exactly what she meant.
Clarinda has certainly had much experience hearing and seeing poetry
read by one of the greatest poets of her generation, her father the late
Jackson Mac Low. Still, her own performance
work revealed astonishing originality
and penetrating insight into human emotions and conflict.

Anna Kohler’s Medea dominated the second half,
and was also powerful. Much of her performance
took place on a platform moved by pulleys and her mastery
of Templeton’s poetry was also impressive.
I was reminded of how astonished I was seeing
Mac Wellman’s plays some years ago, when actors
were able to memorize page after page of
highly disjunctive poetry and work with their roles
as if they were speaking ordinary language.
Anna Kohler created her Medea masterfully,
portraying the character’s motivations and conflicts
with convincing psychological reality,
without losing any of the haunting,
yet forceful and stirring aspects of Templeton’s poetry.
“What, unraveling already?”, she says at one point,
as her character’s personality dissolves
in the agonistic atmosphere
of her homicidal conflicts. Templeton’s poetry, in the speeches of her
characters demands to know, again and again:
what do our words really say
about what we are experiencing and wishing
or trying to say to one another?
At just the moment when I was writing that last comment
on my playbill, Medea (Anna Kohler) was saying:
“A baby is an easy word to say. It’s a hard eared basket case.”
At another point Medea says to the chorus:
“If it’s not true how do we know so much about it?”
The chorus answers in one voice: “It was told!”
It was told indeed, and told well and masterfully
by Fiona Templeton & cast.

And, thankfully, there’s more to come: The playbill tell us:
"Watch for more this summer at The Ice Factory, with Valda Setterfield as Medea:
Ice Factory {click here}

"Be big."

Ted Berrigan
from *Bean Spasms*

*****************
Remembered Poem- Ted
Berrigan on the EPC {click here}

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger

Well, no one's "passed the stick" to poor lonely
::fait accompli:: so, we are going to crash the party
and say that: the book we would save from the
fires of the Fahrenheit flames is: *Voices* by
Antonio Porchia.

Reading: right now mainly:

*How To Make A Living As A Poet* by Gary Mex Glazner,
Soft Skull Press, 2005. Due to the fact that Soft Skull is
about to publish by my good friend Jerome Sala's new book
of poems

Look Slimmer Instantly {click here},

and that I am an admirer of Soft Skull's general attitude and politics, I gladlly accepted an emailed offer of a review copy of How To Make A Living As A Poet {click here}, even though the title kind of made me wonder about it. You remember hearing about Gary Mex Glazner, I am sure. He's the guy that left 45,000 copies of his book on guest pillows in hotels all over the country awhile back.. Actually, the book is a collection of quite interesting interviews with poets, including one with that human dynamo, the owner-operator of the Bowery Poetry Club, Bob Holman. The book must have been in process for years, as the interview was done when Bob was just getting the place into shape: "I love this point, where it's got paper on the windows like it's just meant to write on and also cause I'm so scared it's not going to work at all. There's so much that's been done over the last couple of years. There's so much left to do. .." There are numerous other interviews, including those of Sherman Alexie, Janine Pommy Vega, and Naomi Shihab Nye who titles her piece: "The Word Career Does Not Fit My Whole Way Of Thinking About Poetry , but the Word Devotion Does*- a terrific piece. There are numerous other interesting chapters, including Glazner's cogent advice on how Poetry magazine might best spend their 100 million dollar bequest. Anyway, despite the faux ad agency hype title, this is a book well worth its modest price of $15.

I quite realize I haven't been asked, but I'l tell you anyway that I'm also reading: *The House of Mirth* by Edith Wharton, and just finished reading *Jane Eyre*. I'm on a kick of reading novels by women writers, so if you have any suggestions please let me know: nickpoetique@earthlink.net.

Desert island books? *V.imp* by Nada Gordon; David Copperfield; The Tennis Court Oath-Ashbery; Theodore Dreiser-Jennie Gerhardt; Bernadette Mayer,-Studying Hunger; Frank Kuenstler-Lens; Charles Bernstein- Republics of Reality; Barrett Watten-Bad History; Carla Harryman-Under the Bridge; Joe Ceravolo-Fits of Dawn; Phillip K. Dick-Time Out of Joint; kari edwards-Day in the Life of P; David Bromige-Desire; Ron Silliman-Tjanting; Jackson Mac Low-Twenties; Walter Benjamin-Selected Writings; Orwell-1984; Grant Baille-Cloud 8; Finnigan's Wake; Joan Retallack -Errata Suite; Jerome Sala- Raw Deal;Tom Phillips -Humament; Elaine Equi -Views without Rooms; Allen Ginsberg-Howl; Cesare Pavese -The Burning Brand; Cesar Vallejo-Trilce. Ann Lauterbach-If In Time; I mean, there's plenty of room on a desert island, right?

I'll leave you with this line from *The House of Mirth*:

"The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group
of human automata who go through life without neglecting to
perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets."

You come to the delicate portion, which
is the center of the machine. You get
there by feeling your way, beause your
eyes are no good to you there. Your feelers
fly in the air. You touch the delicate part
with your feelings-feelers, and the whole
machine moves.



Notebook: 10/29/88
from: The Boundary of Blur
(Roof, 1993)

Machine Envy

Human beings have become so mechanized it is hard to
resist the conjecture that they suffer from conscious and
unconscious machine-envy. The situation of the artwork in the
"age of mechanical reproduction" is striking
not only as a result of the decline of the work's
aura, as Walter Benjamin postulated, but in the
decline of the auras of human beings
themselves; this includes such qualities, for example,
that formerly might have been experienced as
exquisitely and uniquely human;
the tendency to make mistakes, for example ("To err is human,
to forgive divine.")

The more beautiful and efficient machines become,
the more people admire them, want to have them
and, it seems , want to be like them. As humans are
incredible mimes (the monkey-see monkey-do aspect of people
is as irritating at it is compelling, irresistible and unavoidable) we
should not be surprised that just as machines are made to
perfectly suit our needs, that we are more than willing to
accomodate ourselves to them and emulate them.
Once recognized, it is hard
to not see machine-envy everywhere.
Like everyone else,
the contemporary artist, poet and novelist is tempted to embody
their unmatchably utilitarian powers that include the power
to infinitely sustain apparently unstoppable production, to make
every product comprise identical and perfect value, and to have them be
nearly universally available. The machine
made object is a safe bet to be exactly like every other copy
of the same type- so that once an individual obtains one, his or her
particular version contains exactly the same qualities as anyone else's
examples of this object. The vast majority of machine made
products, instead of being made to last indefinitely, are made to
last a predictable period of time (few would buy a used car over
100,000 miles old, for example). The disposibility or aging of products
is compensated for by the immediate availability of an identical
copy. People can now rest assured that their resources are basically
of equal value as everyone else's, as long as they own identical
technology embodies identical qualities; the implications for
the frighteningly expansive growth of automatism and conformism are anxiety-
provoking; but then there is the equally as rapid expansion of the tranquilizing
advantages of conformism; including the exciting mirroring
of manufactured perfection; thus the breathless excitement, and forbidden-fruit
qualities of cloning. In anticipation of the "magnificent" coming
final triumph of machines, people are impelled to become as
much alike as possible, and as much like perfect machines as possible,
and whatever conceivable morsels of difference
that might continue to exist must be more than countered by fierce
insistence on conformity in some other realm.
Even the celebration of
difference must be manifested and
discussed in a remorselessly similar
vocabulary and manner.


One method of emulating machines for
artists is by means of constant
and prodigious output: steady,
predictable, ample production,
where each object or copy is of equal
complexity and precision with every other; I think
of such artists as Picasso and Dali in this
regard, but there are countless others,
including some whose works themselves are
meant to conceal
the presence of the hand
and resemble machine made products.
Contemporary artists and writers are also
expected to continuously produce works that,
while functioning as interchangeable parts,
must somehow achieve at the same
time the aura of uniqueness. What, in the
art work, can this "uniqueness"
inhabit if not the design of the work?
Uniqueness of conception is not
machine-like enough. The artwork must
be brilliantly novel in its
design or formal qualities, or it must rival the
machine in the smoothness and appeal
of its inventiveness. Such art, in its perfecting of
risk-free, recognizably robotic, manufactured
forms of charming inventiveness,
participates in an
automated, inevitable obliteration or
taming of all eccentricity,
even as it ostensibly celebrates
uniqueness and individuality.

The setting, by the way, for the above
meditation was the
Tim Hawkinson {click here}
show at the Whitney, if you haven't
already guessed. I had been thinking
about this for awhile now, and these
thoughts came to mind so quickly
as I perused Hawkinson's engaging works,
that one of the security guards
noticed me trying to squeeze an
inordinate number of words on the back of
a receipt and thankfully offered me a few
pages of notepaper with the name
*Whitney* in green caps on the top.
Someone had already
written on one sheet the following
sentence: "How often do you change the pen?"
It took me a little time to
figure out that probably this was a question
someone wanted to address Tim
Hawkinson with, as one of his fascinating
machines was a device for writing his
signature over and over on identical slips of
paper and dropping them to the floor.
The visitors were asked by a guard to
kindly return these copies of
Hawkinson's signature to the ground (of course,
mine made it into my pocket, to join the equally
enigmatic little pieces of orange
cloth that I received recently at a visit to Christo
and Jeanne-Claude's Gates).

Well, if you haven't yet gone, I highly recommend you
visit the Hawkinson show. Some
of my favorite pieces of his were not there-
including a few that I saw some years back in the
cavernous rooms at the Ace Gallery.
The piece in this show that most impressed
me was one that he titled *Magdalen*.
I usually don't avail myself of audio guides
at art shows, but this one had the voice of the
artist and I wanted to hear it so
I took one. *Magdalen* was constructed in 2003 of
"paper, wire, string, foam rubber
and caulking (painted black)." On the tape
Hawkinson says: " Magdalen is a little
different from the other work. My nephew calls
it a monster tire blowout and it
refers to the retread tires you see
discarded along the freeway. The tentacles
formed by the steel and radial reinforcements
and so forth led to this kind of dragon-
like quality I was really interested in. And then, when it was
nearly getting to be completed it kind of reminded me
of this stature of Donnatello where she
appears with matted hair...her wretchedness kind of
reminded me of this piece... " I stood and
stared for a long time at
this huge, cartoon-like
semblance of a blown-out tire transformed into a
walking monster (it also reminded me
of a wonderfully frightening, tentacled
"technozoic" *Medusa* (1990)
Toni Simon {click here} once painted,)
Hawkinson is
brilliant in his manner of transforming
materials in unexpected ways that indirectly
reminds me of Richard Tuttle. In one piece
he used dog chews to create a hanging
skeleton that strangely whistles,
like an owner, in some spirit space,
aimlessly whistling for her dog.
One of the things I most enjoyed about Hawkinson's
show is his obvious ambivalence
towards machines.
While he obviously enjoys
inventing, constructing and playing with
them, many of these works also encompass an
almost mournful suggestion that we might enjoy our
mechanical side much more if we could
see and emulate the more "human" aspect of machines,
in their constructiveness and in their
destructiveness.

Then we went downstairs and
looked at the Cy Twombly show, an aesthetic
that is about as different from Hawkinson as
one could possibly be. It was
hard to look at this graceful, almost
awkwardly childlike, understated, quiet,
unassuming work as appreciatively as
I usually do after the histrionics
of Hawkinson. After a few turns around the
room I remembered what I liked so much
about Twombly. As he himself put it in
a drawing dated 1990: "The image contains
a primordial freshness ideas can never claim."

This show stands as an antithesis and balm to
the intense, huge, labyrinthal paradoxes of Hawkinson's
work. I liked both, but in this context, in a way,
I appreciated the Hawkinson even more, because
as much as beautiful images can offer inner relief
and peace, only insight into the dangers
of completely succumbing to the
intoxicating, seductive charm of our
powerful machines
might, hopefully, protect us from
completely abandoning our complex
humanity in favor of ease, pleasure and power.
This is all the more possible, Hawkinson seems
to suggest, if we take a more literally hands-on
attitude towards our machines by thinking about
them with greater imagination and making things
with and out of them that reflect
some of our uniquely human qualities: humor,
whimsicality, empathy, generosity.


A trip to the basement, searching for restrooms
and coffee landed us in the gift shop.
I was charmed, but now forewarned, when
I noticed a tiny item on sale for $135 called
"Desktop Ball Bearings and Crank" described
as follows: "Constructed out of aluminum and
brass, this tilted platform provides endless amusement.
Turning the crank carries the ball bearings
to the top...", etc. "Endless", eh?

"We are truly fed up
with mental machines of peace & war
nuclear monoxide brains, cancerous computers
motors sucking our hearts of blood
that once sang the choruses of natural birds!
We've had enough dynamos and derricks
thud-thud-thudding valves & pulleys
of the Devil Mankin's invention/And soon
if they aren't *silenced*
and we survive the sacrifical altars
of the automobile god and the vulvas of steel
spitting molecular madness

if the complete crowd-manacled Machine
isn't *dissolved, back into the Earth*
from where its elements were stolen/
*we shall call on*
the Great Ocean Wave
Neter of waters
and the king of Atlantis & his snake-spirits
otherwise known as/Orcus/Dagon & Drack!
to send up calamitous tidal waves
-a thousand feel high if need be-
to bury all the monster metal cities
and their billion, bullioned wheels of chemical death!..."

(from *VOICE OF EARTH MEDIUMS*
*Selected Poems 1943-1966*, City Lights #20
1967)

Phillip Lamantia
10/23/27- 3/11/05

Gary Sullivan's Koan

Question

What was the last poem you read that made you question a previously held
belief?

Send poem title, author, and belief-in-question to:

gpsullivan at hotmail dot com

I'm compiling a list that I'll post on my blog in a couple of days. Feel
free to pass this question along to others.

Thanks,

Gary

Poems About Autism

The following link from ::fait accompli:: is included in the
site Poem About Autism {click here}

7/21/01 Things resting in their place {click here}

A poem from the Autism site by Daniel Janes (1985-2003) Dark Matter {click here}
*****************************************
We received the following correction from reader DW regarding yesterday's post on Bob Marley:

"That piece was actually written by Haille Selassie the emperor of Ethiopa who said it during a speech at the United Nations in NYC. Bob Marley accepted no credit for it but set it to music and the titled the song War! "

Bob Marley on Racism and War

A member of the poetics list posted this link to Bob Marley's powerful
indictment against racism and war:

Bob Marley {click here}

Tim Yu on *Why I (Finally) Quit The Poetics List*

Tympan {click here}

Online Exhition- Dudley House, Harvard University
2005: Infinity {click here}

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

I've had occasion to mention that the Grand Army Plaza
branch of the Brooklyn Public Library is just a short
walk through Prospect Park from where I live now. Also,
since I've been travelling by subway to my Manhattan
office, I've gotten back into reading fiction, which is
the perfect activity for a train ride. Once or twice, I've
been so focused on my book, I've missed my stop.

Today I was browsing the "new fiction" shelves,
which has become a second home for me. Reading
fiction has somewhat cut into my blog time and
has almost completely eliminated watching t.v.- an
activity I never liked much anyway (except for the
Jon Stewart show, of course).

I noticed the woman checking out the shelf next
to me had a book in her hand I had just read and
checked back in a few days ago. The book,
*The Society of Others* is by William Nicholson,
the author of *Shadowlands*, one of Anthony
Hopkins' more run-of-the-mill movies,
(I take books out of the library by the dozen
and read only a handful of them). But this one
I read in a night or two, and then promptly forgot
about. But when I saw the book in my library
neighbor's hand, I blurted out: "That's a fabulous
book." She said, "Thank you," in a demure, but
grateful way, and we went back to our separate
searches. But then I thought about what I had just said
(I hadn't realized how much I had enjoyed the book)
and I thought about a few other things too.

I thought about the fact that books, libraries
and bookstores have always been my life's
blood, my home away from home. I noticed
I had dwelled on this a bit in my recent interview
with Tom Beckett. I realized, as I thought about
this further, that books, for me, are essentially
links, a way back to other people. They are a way
of being with people, thinking about them, wondering
about them, while also being somewhat away from
them. The are a bridge, Toni reminded me, and then
I thought again of Donald Winnicott's concept of
the "transitional object." Books are such objects
in the best possible way, because they offer
both a refuge and a mode of connection,
disconnection and reconnection,
and a center for concentration
and contemplation of self and others

Anyway, you can check out the first chapter of
the book at First Chapters-NY Times {click here}


2.

Gary, Nada, Toni and I enjoyed a day together at
Central Park this past Sunday checking out the Christo/Jeanne-Claude Gates. On the way up there on the train, Gary helped
me figure out how to use my
(relatively) new digital camera, since
he has a very similar one of the same brand. It was
fun to do this and I mentioned to him that I wondered
why it was that it is so much easier to figure things out
like this with someone else. Gary remarked simply-
"That's just the way it is. People need to do things like
this with other people." There it is again- just about
everything we do, everything we have and enjoy or love (also)
serves as a bridge, as a gate between us. Maybe it's
true, as someone said, that "good fences make good neighbors."
But the fact is, one of the most fascinating aspects
of it all is how these things
reconnect us; as Gary said, "this is how people are."
Gary reminded me also on this trip
that he had mentioned me among
his "influences"-I appreciated this-
and was reminded how much I had enjoyed Gary's
blog about the history of his influences, including
some photos of the books that had
been important to him, as well as a photo
of Nada.



3.

One of the books I took out earlier today was:
*The Unbearable Lightness of Being*
by Milan Kundera. The least I could do is read
the book, the title of which
I've been enjoying for years - and have recently have
been, in a way, (respectfully) parodying, for this column,
as you can see.

4.

Time to go- the Jon Stewart show
is on now.

Interview with Tom Beckett

Please check out the current edition of
e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s {click here}; Tom Beckett and I have been
hard at work on this interview for awhile now,
and I hope you like it. I have to mention that despite
that fact that I was a most difficult interviewee, Tom
stayed the course, remaining staunchly at the helm
through thick and thin. I must say I appreciate his dedication and
fortitude immensely. Thanks, Tom!

Opening "The Gates"

Although Toni was very enthusiastic about the Christo
and Jeanne-Claude Gates on our first two visits,
today's jaunt finally left me ebullant as well. Toni had
heard that the Harlem Meer (up around West 110th Street) is
one of the most beautiful spots for viewing the Gates in the park.
The sun breaking through clouds, looking out
across a huge open area covered with snow,
with the venerable Central Park residences serving as a backdrop,
the Gates stuttered across the snow, like orange frames in a silent movie,
while we excitedly discussed our responses, when suddenly
one of the long pointer-with-green-tennis ball bearing
guides came up from behind and spoke to us. Had we received
one of the small pieces of cloth being given out,
(we had asked a few guides, unsuccessfully for these)
and had we taken a picture of
Christo himself? She handed us each one of the
sought-after little golden squares of the vinyl material
that forms the cloth part of the gates, saying that when
it's over, all that will be left are are the photos, the little pieces of
material and our memories. We never caught sight of Christo,
but we did learn that all the materials will be recycled.
The guide explained that Christo wants the memories and
photos to be the only physical remains of the artwork.
I admire this, just as I admired Robert Smithson's work, like his Sprial Jetty,
made to be exerienced and understood outside the gallery and museum system
then to disappear into time and philosophical musings.
Toni and I had shared plenty of these (Toni liked that I called the Gates
"philosophy in a bottle"); plenty more discussions like this,
I am sure, will keep taking place during and well
after the disappearance of the 23 miles of columns,
their golden pennants rustling in the wind.

Then Toni took me to the Art =/ Functional Design show at the
Cooper-Hewitt. Toni was disappointed that most of the
Albers furniture pieces were taken off view due to "problems with the humidity."
Toni is a textile designer and explained that
Annie Albers is her textile design mentor and guide.
We were delightfully
surprised to discover in this show numerous examples of Richard Tuttle's
drop dead beautiful furniture designs, as well as
striking pieces by Scott Burton, Dan Flavin, Sol Lewitt and
Rachel Whitehead. I spent some time copying out some of the
thought-provoking quotations printed
on the wall as accompaniying inspiration
to the show. Sorry that we went only on the
Friday before the closing. But if you haven't been,
hurry over soon: you have until Sunday.
On the wall at the design show were the words of Richard Tuttle,
Scott Burton, Joseph Albers,
Oscar Wilde, and others.
Albers: "Thinking in situations is just as important as thinking
in conclusions."

And Wilde:

"I have found that all ugly things are made by
those who strive to make something beautiful,
and that all beautiful things
are made by those who strive to make something useful."


The Wilde quote brought me back to our conversation obout the
towering, time and culture defying/defining/expanding artistic accomplishment
of Frederick Law Olmstead and this current tribute
in the form of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates.
What I loved about the Conceptual Art movement of the 70's connects
not only to the Gates and to the ideals behind the Minimalist design show-
but in part has to do with what I most loved about the 60's themselves. For a brief
moment, the less material, more generous, spiritual side
of recent social and artistic movements were in the ascendent.
The Gates, after a quite a bit of looking, and quite of bit of
walking, a little luck with the weather (hadn't Christo said that the orange
was meant to been seen against crystal reflections of the snow?)
and a willingness to let some of the cynicism, billiousness and jadedness of our own
relatively narrow era subside in order to allow those orange vibes to
penetrate the eyes and soul, leading, hopefully, to an opening
of The Gates. These gates are surely the same as the famed Blakian "doors
of perception", not merely the Gates so temporarily hammered into the
Central park pavement, but the ones that reside,
more or less permanently, in all of us.

Maybe a trifle corny for the year 2005, but, as Blake put it,
echoed by Aldous Huxley, and, more recently, by Jim Morrison:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed,
every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite."

Anyway, two more days for both shows.

There's Always A First Time

Since you're reading this online, of course
you probably have, but if you never have
try publishing online- we think you'll enjoy it.

Tom Beckett's issue of MiPoesias- submission page {click here}

ENJOY

BELLADONNA**

with Lyn Hejinian

READING her work...and TALKING with Anne Waldman
*
Thursday February 24, 7:00 p.m.
back at ZINC BAR
90 W. Houston Street, NYC (btwn LaGuardia/Thompson, below Zamir fur shop)
A $4-$10 donation

Drunken Boat #7

Ravi Shankar, editor of *Drunken Boat*, just
posted a terrific international edition of this
online mag; includes quicktime videos,
sound art, web art, still photography, prose, poetry
and translations.

Right now at Drunken Boat #7 {click here}

(via SUNY/Buffalo Poetics list)
*************************************************************
Poetry Movie

Mark Young's witty contribution to

As/Is {click here}

"You are always telling a dream. When do you dream it?"

Antonio Porchia



from *Voices*
translated by
WS Merwin

Visual Poetry Show Opens at Dudley House March 3rd

One of my photocollages will be included in the upcoming show in Cambridge, Mass which will be posted as a website on March 3rd as well. Click the url below to see the website for last year's show, which included work by Miekel And, Nico Vassilakis, John M. Bennett, Michael Basinski, August Highland, Steve Dalachinsky and others.

Dudley House at Harvard Visual Poetry Exhibition {click here}
********************************************************
Against Interpretation

Susan Sontag {click here}

We recently posted a quote from Yeats' poem *Second Coming* and a few words about the poem that
led to some interesting discussion among the blogs. A google search on Yeats and the poem
led to some interesting information. For one thing, it is one
of the most frequently posted poems (no surprise, considering its relevance). While some of
the interpretations, based on Yeats' own life and ideas were valuable, one of the links brought to mind the famous Sontag essay , worth reviewing; also in honor of her recent passing,we felt it worthwhile to take a moment to recall Sontag's many important contributions.

"The Hardest Working Husband In America"

Adding a cool and touching photo,
Michael Gates offers a few words about Arthur Miller
right now on
Twists and Turns {click here}

re: The Centre Will Not Hold

In addition to a thoughtful response from
a reader, Jordan Stempleton posted the
following response to our Yeats discussion
on his fine blog, Growing Nation {click here}

The Centre Will Not Hold

These lines from Yeats preoccupy me lately
(lots of other people are thinking about them also, I’m quite sure)

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity..."

Who knows why, but even when this poem, or
what it is telling me, creates quite a
degree of dark anxiety, it helps to see, in such
a poem, words that encompass a great degree
of how it feels to exist right now in a confused
and confusing world...

Today I thought about the line: "the best
lack all conviction." The difficulty in experiencing
so much ambivalence (example: I like where I
live but I despise and fear many
of this nation's governmental policies) is that
it becomes so necessary to seriously question,
repeatedly, all my basic convictions. This, in
turn, makes feeling whole hearted about anything
more and more difficult. This is the challenge
of this amazing poem, and even
more, the incredibly challenging
contemporary existential situation
it so succinctly describes

Everything for Everybody

Every now and then, a link appears
on my site meter that
jumps out at me. Today I noticed

eye peasant-written creation links {click here}.

and sure, especially around
::fait accompli's:: birthday time,
I was happy to see we were listed.

But also, something about that list of links, and
also probably because I'm reading
Bob Dylan's autobiography right now, I was
reminded of something that only could have happened
in the 60's called
Everything for Everybody {click here}.
Everything for Everybody
was an idea that
reeked of hope, that sent
out good vibes whenever
you saw the name.

I also thought of it because I noted
Josh Corey's (Cahiers de Corey) {click here}
disappointment to see so many blogs close
down recently.
Blogging reminds me a lot of
*Everything for Everybody* because
nearly anyone
who wants to can participate,
and because the emphasis is
on freely giving and sharing; just the thought
of it seems an impossibility right now, but,
there it is, and here we are! The point is to
enjoy it while we have it, and welcome new
bloggers and blogs. And that's the idea behind
eye peasant-written creation links {click here}.
As in the 60's- we are everywhere! So just
let them find us!

Today is Our Second Birthday!


::fait accompli:: opened on 2/11/03 with this post

first post {click here}

Thanks for your links and responses, and for reading
::fait accompli::

write to us at: nickpoetique@earthlink.net
or click on the word *contact*
on the welcome bar above

snail mail, including books or magazines
to be listed or reviewed to:
680 West End Avenue, Suite lF
New York, NY 10025

Paging Dr. Mayhew, paging Dr. Mayhew!

of Bemsha Swing {click here}.

Dr Jonathan Mayhew says he got his Ph.D. in Comparative Lit and he knows what he's talking about; he says Bruce Andrews is a hip-hop artist. Well, he may be right. Although i read every word Bruce wrote in the 70's, I read him now about as often as i listen to hip-hop, maybe less, because I hear hip-hop sometimes walking down the street, and on the subway, and I read an Andrews poem now if I come across it for about as long as I willingly listen to hip-hop- about 3 seconds. Except, of course, on the Dave Chappelle show. That is different. But if what you need is kick-ass writing, and you like it in- your-face, then BA is the poet for you.

Also, Dr Mayhew told us he didn't much care for Karl Shapiro, who gave him his only B in college. Now, he tells me, he doesn't remember what he said about KS. I took out a book of Karl Shapiro's essays recently from the library and it made me want to vomit. Possibly the most dogmatic, narrow-minded baloney I've read in years. Glad I didn't buy it.

Keep those prescriptions coming, Dr Mayhew!
*******************************************************
I Sure As Hell Need A Laugh Department

Donald Barthelme on the Rise of Capitalism

Barthelme {click here}

via wood s lot {click here}

*still. harmless enough*
*here. and here*
*tattoos .all kinds*
(all from *finish your phrase*2003)
*first line index.03*

are three stunning page turner chapbooks by Brother Tom Murphy whose
finish your phrase {click here} remains one of the most compulsively readable weblogs on the internet. Prescribed for all that ails you. Read one, three times a day, and call me in the morning!

published by
Cat Press
999 mclinley avenue
mundelein, illinois 60060

(from *here. and here*)

"can you for once give up the lines...a ploy
to convince no one...that yr modern enough...
unsingable lines...without artsong credentials...
lines...sizzling to waukegan...taking no chances...
in a book...yr theory went blue...and coughed blood"

Tympan {click here} is back
with a long awaited update from Tim Yu. I'll let him tell you all about it himself,
but I am glad to congratulate him and applaud the good news about
his wife Robin.

This just in from Heriberto Yepez:

"Remember that piece you wrote on your blog and I translated for a magazine? The mag is now out--really cool one--and your piece is in it. You can see a fragment of it in the mag's web:

Bush, la represion sexual y la politica dela paranoia {click here}


Saludos!,
h."
________

Heriberto Yepez'
post on
Mexperimental {click here}

Bush and The Politics of Paranoia as posted
on ::fait accompli::
November 7, 2004

Bush and the Politics of Paranoia {click here}

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be
kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
- Henry James
*************************************************************

Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in
life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the
graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved.
The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the
door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff
around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured
by these.
- Susan B. Anthony

"Face face face face back back back back"

is a paraphrase from a line from a poem read by Sean Killian
yesterday afternoon at the Bowery Poetry Club.
An average crowd, on an average cold winter
day in downtown New York. But this reading was anything
but average. This was one of those
readings that will be remembered by nearly
everyone who was there, the kind of reading
that gets a tag like "legendary." The poem I
have in mind (Sean read many fine ones) he
claimed to have written yesterday. It talked
about dogs, it talked about the death by poisoning of Robert
Johnson. But out of nowhere, and very suddenly,
the audience found itself in a completely other
dimension. But what the hell, you hadda be there.

Laura Moriarty, who read from her latest book, which
she had on hand, *Self-Destruction*
(fascinating poems indeed, can't wait to
immerse myself in them again), also read from a science-fiction
novel she has written and a complex and absorbing
work that encompassed an inventive approach to
poetry criticism and poetics.

Poetry luminaries in the audience included Ann Waldman, Anne Tardos,
Mitch Highfill, Tom Kelley, Adeena Karasik,
Alex Young, Drew Gardner , Corinne Robins,
and Bruce Andrews. And of course, and especially Bob Holman-
who has indeed created a legend- named very simply
the Bowery Poetry Club.

"25th April (1936)


Today, nothing."



(*The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950*
Cesare Pavese
Walker and Company, NY, 1961)

"We must love one another or die"
W.H. Auden

Soft! by Rupert Thomson

Rupert Thomson is a British writer whose book *Soft!* (1998) I came
across browsing the fiction shelves of the Grand Army
Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. When I
returned *Soft!* today, I took out another stack of
books including the immediately very readable *Goest*
by Cole Swenson, which I remember got nominated last
year for an impressive literary prize. I also came across
a new translation of the Proust classic *Swann's Way* by
Lydia Davis. I figured I would try to get through
this fuzzy-wuzzy book again after many misfires.
Maybe having once or twice briefly met the translator might
help me to get through it. No doubt I am am severely
shocking the inveterate Proust fans who read *fait accompli*
But you must see how persistent I am about literary classics.
There are numerous others I haven't gotten through that
I can also shock you with, including all of Dante. I can see
you shaking your head now with disbelief. I also took out
*Anthropology of an American Girl* by H. T. Hamann,
a book I got hooked on so quickly I missed my subway
stop on the way to my office today, and almost missed
it again coming home.

Well, I really liked *Soft!* by Rupert Thomson and will
be hunting down his other books as soon as possible This is
not a gentle book,in that it involves murder and suicide,
fraud and manipulation, but I admire the way it combines
various fictional techniques and has the one quality
I demand of any writing I like a lot: unclassifiability. Come
to think of it, I like that adjective better than "experimental"
or "language", because as soon as I am aware that writing
is pretentiously experimental or
languagy I no longer like it, say, the way I might have
in the late 70's or even the 80's. Soft! is inventive,
not experimental, though I read an interview with Thomson
who urged writers to remain experimental. Evidently he
was approached to turn one of his books into a film script
and refused. But that was 1999 and maybe he's changed his
mind by now. He quotes Louse Bourgeois as urging
writers to trust the unconcious. But clearly Thomson
is quite aware that the unconcious has a dark side
as well.

In *Soft!* a group of soft drink company executives decide to try a new twist
on publicizing a product. They put out an offer to pay
subjects for a sleep experiment and then plant subliminal
ideas in their minds about loving the drink. One of the subjects
of this experiment, who needed the money for a dress to go to a
wedding, becomes totally obsessed with Soft! drinking it
constantly and obsessed with its color logo: orange. When she is about to
be interviewed by a reporter he
mysteriously disappears. One of the most intriguing aspects of
this book is that each section is devoted to a tracking one character
in depth, whose life you learn about very deeply, even in
aspects that do not contribute directly to the plot. One reviewer
rebuked this technique but I admired it greatly. Each character
is from a vastly different background from
the other and is explored and patiently followed in great detail.
Glade is a waitress hopelessly in love with a wealthy American
who is coldly cruel to her. Barker, a professional bouncer who is
employed to track and murder Glade, has had numerous
futile relationships. Logan, who invents the advertising
stunt, never seems to be able to connect with anyone. By
closely tracking his characters' inability to experience human
closeness, Thomson evokes a world in which power,
greed and violence stealthily, yet inevitably, come to
live in the void where love won't grow:- or suddenly, volcanically, erupt
out of it.

Santa Clause

Dagzine {click here} picks up the gauntlet, and marches into the lists against the mighty

Mike Snider's Formal Blog and Sonnetarium {click here}.

Now, I'm really beginning to wonder...what is the irresistible appeal in debating this gentleman pictured on his blog harmlessly plucking a guitar (or is it a mandolin?) and sporting a lengthy white beard? Is it because *sonnetarium* sounds so much like
*sanitarium*? Have we never left the Magic Mountain after all? Hmmmm......

*Weather Underground*

seemed like an appropriate movie to watch while the snowy
weather overground was so beautiful and lyrical
to contemplate from the vantage point of a safe, warm, snug apartment.
Storms and violence are never far away- the weather people who advocated violence as a response to war tried to justify their actions as the only possible way to call attention to the passivity and helplessness of the individual in face of an implacable government determined to rule the world. Mark Rudd, who led many a demonstration that I participated in around Columbia U in the late 60's, turned himself in and is now a teacher in a community college. He still feels the situation in the world
vis -a- vis the United States has not changed; he admits he
doesn't know what to do. When he was younger he clearly passionately
believed in revolution, as did all of his fellow SDS weather people.
Nearly every one of the participants in the movie seemed deeply saddened
by what they did and what they believed caused them do what they did.
Most of the members of the weather underground didn't do serious
jail time because of the illegal tactics used by the FBI to try and capture them. The ones who did go to jail for long periods were involved in violent political actions way after they left this group. One went to jail for
life. Three were famously killed by their own bomb in a townhouse
in the West Village in downtown Manhattan.

After this I read Allen Bramhall's poem *Seize Song*. I enjoyed it
it and somehow it helped me to feel a little better after thinking so much about the many chaotic contradictions and conflicts, paradoxes and confusions so pointedly evoked by this movie.

I think if I couldn't enjoy reading the way I do I would go out of my mind.

Seize Song {click here}

100 things we didn't know this time last year...BBC News {click here}
******************************************
Mike Snyder and Jonathan Mayhew- when a literary fray erupts between two of our most intrepid poetics blog commentators-need I say more?
MS's Formal Blog and Sonnetarium {click here}

Who Owns the Words?

The Thought

Can the sheer love of words
exist in its own right?
In poetry, it almost seems
possible, but for the fact that
words so quickly uncover
things within that long to
emerge into the light as well.
So much is stored in words,
so much remembered, thought,
contemplated, repeated, imagined.
I tried to write a poem to
allow the mere sounding
of words. Then I realized I
could not remain, or they
could not remain, in that
isolated realm for long. I
tried to see the words for
what they are, mere objects.
But the moment I identify them in
their specificity another door is
opened. Once opened, a whole
cast of characters, an entire
regalia or troupe, arrives
en masse. This entourage
once on the scene, appears unwilling
to stay still. The characters begin
to perform, and as they perform, they
transform and so do the onlookers.
This seems germane not only to
what words are, but also to
what they want to be. Everything
and everyone is an actor,
and plays a part in thought and life.
The words not only form
an essential procession, or march, but
they skip, amble, stumble,
jump, hide and reappear in
turn. What began as a quote
for an occasion became a
thought that returned, at intervals,
for a lifetime. If the quotes
themselves have characters,
they have also faces, hands and
feet. They evidently
have settled in for good. They are
friends, acquaintances,
rivals, enemies. When I was
young, I found them
to be interesting, eccentric strangers.
They will never seem so again.

**************
Who Owns the Words?

The Poem

dreams-Freud
ice cream- Stevens
center- Yeats
Christmas- Dickens
tomorrow-Shakespeare
and the anthologies
broadcast
aspersion
clever
immediate
span
burst
let
right
resume
mayhem- Child
begin again- Mayer
sonnet- Berrigan
lost
seem
beg
remain
mint-mist-mystery
low
chemical
sin
love-Anonymous
dispersion
beneath
treasure
steam
herald
gleam
underneath
seeming
just
great-glad
allow
abandon
twist
personify
admit
treasure
impersonate
sting
relent
pursue
plagiarize
presume
stigma-Bernstein
stigma- Goffman
reveal
unjust
permit
forgive

"25th October

Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
If we think of the future, we always see it unrolling itself
in a monotonous progression. We forget that the past is
a multicolored chaos of generations. This can help
console us for the terrors inspired by the "technical and
totalitarian barbarization" of the future. In the next hundred
years it may well happen that we have a sequence of at
least three moments; and the human spirit will be able to
live consecutively in the streets, in prison, and in the papers.
The same can be said of one's personal future."

"26th October

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 faults, our misgivings, and are reduced to hoping for
some unconscious force to surge up from our inmost being
and act with a subtlety all its own."
(1938)


Cesare Pavese
*The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1959"
Walker and Company
1961

Emerging Points of Interest

Some readers of weblogs may not know
that Tom Beckett edited an important
journal in the heyday of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
poetry called *The Difficulties*. Each issue
contained an interview about, and work
by and about a poet. These poets included
Jackson Mac Low, Susan Howe, David
Bromige, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman
and others. By the way, he may stil have
some copies left of some of these issues.

Recently I was distressed to learn that
Beckett decided to cease publication of
his popular blog Unprotected Texts {click here}
(formerly *Vanishing Points of
Interest*) But I am extremely happy to report that
he has returned with a new blog which
promises to be a most exciting addition
to the Blogosphere- and it opens with
an interview with a most engaging
figure most blog readers are by now happily familiar
with, Crag Hill, who has this, among many
other interesting things. to say about poetry
and visual poetry in particular:


"I worry that there are fewer and fewer readers who want to look, to leaf through bookstores seething with books, to linger in the stacks of libraries, to seek out a way of looking at the world through language that shakes the mental foundations they live upon. I worry about poets and editors who do not read poetry outside their established circles. I worry about poets who do not read."

Right now on E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S {click here}

Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver

In my senior year in college I needed to increase
my income in order to afford an apartment.
I had been working in the Night
Division office at the college for a couple of dollars
an hour to pay for books, pens, paper, the minimal
wardrobe of a college student,
food (usually consumed with friends in the student cafeteria
or cheap restaurants), endless cups of coffee, and, of
course, the bookish person's standby
in that era, the perpetual cigarette
(given up long ago).. Usually
I slept in the filthy fraternity house bunks (Delta
Kappa Epsilon- I joined because it was one of the
few fraternities at the"subway Harvard" that had
a place to sleep- the initiation, of course,
was stupid and horrible.) Lucky for me, I had a friend-Bart
Craig-whose aunts (they were nannies) let us use
their apartment for free when they were working.
Why didn't I appreciate then how kind this was, though
I did feel really lucky to get away from that
horrid fraternity house littered with beer bottles,
mold and dust that was over a hundred years old.

When I was living in Florida as a high school
senior I got my driver's license- at that time
you could get them at age 17, after taking a
course in driver's ed. I still remember the film
*Death On the Highway*, with its frightening
photos of highway deaths, including a set
of triplets whose heads,
as a result of some horribly gruesome
nightmare of a highway crash,
had been detached from their bodies,
dangling from some phone or electricity highwires. This terrified
me, as it was obviously meant to, and I became
an incredibly cautious driver. I'm a little looser
now when I drive a car, but not much.

Although at first I was understandably
quite anxious about what I
was facing, as soon as I got the hang of it,
I came to love my taxi driving job.
Anyway, there was no choice:
I was getting married and I needed the money.
I worked from a garage
in the Bronx filled with interesting types of old-
timers with lots of complaints and stories to tell.
At first I drove my cab down Park Avenue thinking
rich people would give me bigger tips. They
didn't, and it was my first lesson in Capitalism,
why the rich get richer, etc. Also, Park Avenue
was simpler, since I could figure out the trips very
easily. Soon I learned that the "fares" (as they
were called) like to give you the trip instructions,
so it was rarely a problem finding how to get to a destination.
I was only beaten out of a fare once, when someone
took me to Queens and never came out of the house
to bring me the promised money. I was never robbed,
even though soon after I started- which was in the
summer-no air conditioners then- I switched to nights
because of the heat and the traffic.

The most interesting customer I ever had was the then famous
psychic and astrologer Jeanne
Dixon, who predicted the Nixon presidency as we drove
along-fortunately for me it was a long drive in heavy traffic.
She didn't make any personal predictions, but she was
astute about politics and very charming. I also
had a famous actress in my cab once
who complained about the traffic
when I got her to her play late. I can't remember who
it was now. There's a restaurant in the East 20's
and Madison, which is still there, where taxi drivers
like to eat, day and night. Whenever I pass by there
I think of these halcyon days in the mid- 60's. I was rarely
bored or lonely, but I did come to strongly dislike drivers from
New Jersey. To this day, if I notice someone driving
strangely I think to myself "Jersey driver" and usually
I am right (as I did then, I quickly check the
license plate; no offense to my friend the
philosopher and former Dean of Humanities at
CCNY, Martin Tamny, who lives in New Jersey
and is an excellent driver-he and his wife Myrna
gave me a couch to sleep on when I left home as a
Freshman-but that is another story).
One of the things that toughened me up
and prepared me for a realistic
attitude towards life in New York was
having to drive through masses of pedestrians. You
learn to drive towards them like you didn't care if you
ran them over-this was very difficult for me as I was
shy and tender-hearted, but soon I learned
that they always automatically move
out of the way without a thought or blinking of an eyelid.

My next job after this was to be a social worker for
Jewish Family Services which I found interesting,
but I still missed the cab driving job. In a way, I still do, though
drivers now have to advance a lot of money to rent
their cabs and only earn the amount they make over
the cost. Obviously, it pays to own your own cab,
but naturally this is rare, as the "medallions"
or ownership rights now
cost a fortune and are limited in number.
This is a great job if you enjoy
talking to people and hate having a boss.
But now it is terribly dangerous due to the frequency of
robberies.

Fasten your brain belts and climb on the time machine
right now on

Boynton {click here}

*1998*

*1998*

This collage was made on a 5x7"
canvas out of black and white
newsprint found in Greece.
The pieces are folded
and pasted to create a
three dimensional
effect. The collage was
published in Juliana Spahr
and Jena Osman's magazine
*Chain*

Contemporary Film Animation


William Kentridge, the great South African artist/filmaker, has work on display
right now at the Metropolitan Museum.

Kentridge at the Met {click here}

William Kentridge {click here} (scroll down)

William Kentridge {click here}
**********
When I saw the Aztec show at the Guggenheim, the Aztec sculptures reminded
me of a lot of animated figures in science fiction movies. You have to see these
sculptures!

You have until Mid-February to see the
amazing Aztec Show at the Guggenheim {click here}
Reduced price after 5 pm on Friday {click here}
********

The Brothers Quay

I couldn't think of contemporary animation without thinking
of The Brothers Quay {click here}. Check out these gorgeous downloads. Wow!
********

Abigail Child

And while we're on the subject of innovative contemporary filmakers,
check out the recently completed homepage of

Abigail Child {click here}
Abilgail Child film clips {click here}

The "Grain" of the Poet's Voice

PENNsound {click here}