"I am not altogether honest when I write.
I find myself giving up my intentions
for beauty of phrase."...

"Inhibition, that is the problem. Always. Once
I've broken through, I'm back where I started
and another poem is needed to break through again."

Carl Rakosi
*Ex Cranium, Night"
Black Sparrow Press, Los Angeles
1975

The Breakfast Room

trembling flowers
hours
ours

Discussion on
Collage and depression (click here}via
wood s lot (Mark Woods) {click here}

Today, on our drive around Point
Reyes, Toni spotted a White Deer {click here}
*********************************

We interrupt our regular programming
to direct your attention to a crucial
discussion taking place right now on
p- ramblings (Bill Allegrezza)

We're goin' to San Francisco
San Francisco here we come...

to see the
Pacific Rim Sculptors Group
Annual Members Exhibition
July 22 thru August 27 at
the Atrium Gallery
600 Townsend Street @ 7th

Kenneth Baker, juror

Nikki Schrager
Jane Johnson
Peter Eller
Jane B. Grimm
Rene Dayan-Whitehead
Ralph Holker
Gina Telcocci
Susan Nutter
William D. Iaculla
Jane Burton
Nancy Ziegler-Nodelman
Deborah Colcotti
Karen Devich
Patricis Bengtson-Jones
Mel Lyons
Rebecca Fox
Vince Koloski
Leslie Cantor-Fallihee
Pamela Merory Dernham
Jia Jun Lu
******

Visiting Toni's friend Nikki Shrager
yesterday, we also met and enjoyed the
photographic work of Roy Berkowitz
who has tons of equipment for processing his
photos but has always worked with the same 35mm
toy camera!

Dog Days Narcissism

Karl-Merleau Marcuse (Semioanalysis Discoteche {click here} and Gary Sullivan (Elsewhere) {click here} take commentary for a much needed walk off the leash.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger

Bill Allegrezza (P-Ramblings) {click here}
A discussion on blogging and community gets kicked off on P-Ramblings.


It's Got A Back Beat You Can't Lose It

Silliman and Mayhew opine on CC's rhythms.
Silliman's Blog {click here}

*The New Brutalism Cabaret*

the play goes on right now on
The Well-Nourished Moon

featuring a playlet by
Del Ray Cross:
*Loretta*

Fresh from its world-wide premier performance
at the New Brutalism Cabaret on Sunday, July 18


The complete text of *The Poet Deflated* right now on
The Well-Nourished Moon (Stephanie Young)

a play by Cynthia Sailers and Brent Cunningham
featuring Taylor Brady, Stephanie Young, Brent
Cunningham, Cynthia Sailers, Brandon Brown,
and Shonna
***********************************************
New poem by Charles Bernstein on
Arm/Sasser{click here}
***********************************************

Gata likes the back of the couch for sleeping.  I might try the rest in a bit.

Right now on
Ironstone Whirligig {click here}
 

Fellow bloggers!
Do you know what day it is today?
Hint: which famous blogger
has the same birthday as Petrarch?

Yes, you guessed it!
It's Laura Willey, otherwise
known as Laurable

As Mr. Silliman noted on his blog
recently, we have not heard from
Laurable for awhile.

Happy Birthday Laurable!
We miss you.
**

After a beautiful day
on the Point Reyes
Pacific beaches
zipping around the highways
in our rented bright red
Touring convertible,
(by the way, I haven't seen
beaches this gorgeous since
going to Normandy and Brittany
in the 80's!)
top down, I am still thinking about
the New Brutalism Cabaret
on Sunday night. Images
of movement:

The audience and players staying
outside as long as possible
before the performance,
talking and enjoying the
cool summer air

Saying a quick "hi" to Juliana Spahr
(now teaching at Mills)
Bill Luoma, Mary Burger,
Taylor Brady, and Patrick Durgin
before the show

Del Ray Cross doing the
only actual "reading" in the whole show,
of his play "Loretta"
with just a touch of
Southern accent

Patrick Durgin's perfectly timed,
graceful, pantomimed
dancing with Jen Hofer
as he sang Fred Astaire
style. Patrick patiently asking
a few times for the CD for his
act to be started up

Tanya Brolaski standing rock
still, in mustache, cowboy boots
and complete Western outfit,
crooning Hank Williams style
singing along with her band
*The Cherries*.

Sean Finney, doing his Billy
Crystal style patter between
acts, complete with faux jokes,
holding the mike in his
hand

Brent Cunningham playing boring
academic poet Thackerey
somebody, attending yet another
poetry reading while automatons
Stephanie Young and Shonni stroke his
collar.

Kevin Killian as Nico, creating true time
travel, returning us to the 60's, with
Geofrey Dyer in Lou Reed sunglasses
playing guitar

Rodney Koeneke reading "rap style" about a few
of his favorite and non-favorite
things with Lesley Poitier's excellent
electronic keyboard playing

Poet Judith Goldman and her band in black
belting out
anti-fascist lyrics, behind posters
with statistics telling us the true economic
and political situation in Amerika
today

The audience, joining in with
excited applause or whistling
or verbal response whenever
possible

James Meetze serving up beer
and all around good cheer.
Toni and I enjoying that cool
beer taking a seat in
the last row after the break

Being introduced, with Toni,
by Kevin K to Dodie
Bellamy after the show.
Kevin handing out some copies
of his and DB's magazine
Mirage (more on that issue coming
soon)

Talking with Kasey Mohammad about how
much we liked his
piece for Patrick and Jen,
him proud as a new father,
afterwards telling me and Toni about his
new tenure track job in
Oregon

Cynthia Sailers coming in from
back stage, out of costume after
her play *The Poet Deflated*

quick conversation with Tanya, out
of costume after the show

More, more New Brutalism Cabaret!

Bring it on!
Take it to the Apple!

We're getting out to Point Reyes
early today, so I don't have time
to tell you about the New Brutalism
Cabaret in all the detail it so richly
deserves. If you were there, you already
know how much fun it was, and how much
terrific talent took that ample stage
at 21 Grand last night. I'll just mention
now that when I told Tanya Brolaski
after the show how much I enjoyed
it she said that she knew that poets
had so many other talents and she wanted
this to be seen and experienced. By this
time she had removed the faux mustache that
had been part of her country singer costume
to sing with her terrific country band,
*The Cherries.*
There's much more to tell as the
evening consisted of
8 acts including a very hauntingly
charming Vaudvilllian
song and dance number by
Kasey Mohammad performed by
Patrick Durgin and Jen Hofer
(that reminded me somehow of
Fred Astaire and Ginger
Rogers), *The Poet Deflated* by
Cynthia Sailers and
Brent Cunningham,
a sharp satire of certain puffed up
male Academic poets, that included
Taylor Brady and Stephanie Young
as accomodating robot-
students, and a powerfully
stirring finale,
*The Force Majeur*, billed
as a "dystopic rock opera*,
with Judith Goldman, Maggie
Zurowsky, Joel Nickels
and Brandon Brown.
But there's so much more to
tell you about last evening,
including Kevin Killian
singing as Nico and Geoffrey
Dyer as Lou Reed and
Del Ray Cross reading his playlet
about Loretta Lynn, I'll
have to come back and tell you
more later. Stay tuned!
Back soon with more about
the New Brualism Cabaret.

"I never had a good idea that didn't start
with feeling. And a really good image
has never come to me except by accident.
My destiny lies in the hands of these two."

"I had an assignation with the spirit of man
but I was weak and in love with the spirit of
language and kept him waiting."

"The more impossible the problem, the more
poetical the possibilities. An ideal
situation."

Carl Rakosi
*Ex Cranium, Night*
Black Sparrow Press
Los Angeles, 1975

Putting the there
there
Tonight, Sunday, July 18
Oakland, California
The New Brutalism
Cabaret
21 Grand
7 pm

*Serendipity*, the amazing bookstore on
University in Berkeley, takes my breath
away, and on this occasion, a few dollars
also, but I didn't mind.

Both were Black Sparrow books, one by
Jackson Mac Low, *22 Light Poems*, gorgeous,
fascinating book from 1968 (I met Jackson
in 1967, in jail, but that's another story).

The other book, *Ex Cranium, Night* by
Carl Rakosi, was signed by the author to
the poet Stephen Rodefer. It contains this
powerful passage, a notion that, for me,
cannot be repeated too often:

"The practice of ranking poets as major or
minor, the bastard offspring of grading students,
freezes the poet in his tracks and makes him
a nobody if he is less than great. This situation
tempts him unduly into lofty postures,the breeding
ground of rhetoric and abstraction, and intimidates
his most precious asset, his individuality.

What does ranking have to do with poetry anyhow? The term, *major*,
when it is not a sales gimmick, is the
creation of those who like the power of dispensing
judgment and need a medium in which to display their
intellectual talent.

It has become a great plaything and a way to silence
poetry and put it away.

This world has more parrots than the jungles of Brazil."
**

Also saw the reprint of Ron Silliman's beautiful book
*Tjanting* in Moe's yesterday with preface by Barrett
Watten. Also, a copy of the first edition of Charles
Bernstein's *Controlling Interests* at a very good price.
**

Less advice, more response, support, encouragement and recognition.
**

The chickens were less fun yesterday; we
had to run around for half an hour forcing
them back in the pen. How quickly we living beings
become spoiled!

The Dream Bay

I am quietly certain
in a night's empty sound
that all that may
in its own way come to be
mine or yours or
anyone else's
may be found
or will one day
find an opening
and get its way
to me

And surely by
now the evening
bell has struck
if the sky has
turned brown
and the sun has
set black
and has
fallen into
the gray
and sunk
into the muck
for the dream
I had lost has suddenly
come back:

I fall the floating
spiral down
and sightless
see the moon
is cold
and know the way
somehow untold
to find a world
ungrown

Then running
unaware of night
unknown I pass
the line of day
to find a mist
the morning light
and touch
a clear blue bay

And if I said
I saw a face
in the wave
as I turned
in the dream's
own place
what sorrow tears
to have found
my way
with the sight
of the depths
of the bay

notebook (poem): circa 1964
**

The Year of The Chicken; or,
If You're Going to San Francisco
Be Sure To Wear Some Chicken Feathers
In Your Hair

As I looked out on the gorgeous
sunset over
the bay from our perch in the
Berkeley hills yesterday,
I remembered one of
my earliest poems,*The Dream Bay*
that I happened to have memorized.
I am attached to it, despite
the glaring influences of Blake,
Eliot, Housman, Gray, Poe,
Coleridge, and
other youthful favorites.
It's a joy to be here this
summer. Sorry to have missed
Jean Vengua, who seems to
have slipped away to Missouri.

The owner of the house has
added one responsibility this
year- the care of 6 chickens!
(I noticed the coincidental, recent
-synchronistic?-
encounter with a chicken referred
to on Katie D's {click here}
blog by the way.)
The chickens, who had been
given the run of the lower
part of the house, have
been placed in a pen in
the back yard. Our assignment
is to let them out of the
pen every day- so I guess
we are -"chicken sitting"-
replace their water and
straw, etc. This is more
fun then I expected. (Yet again
it was a relief to learn
that the rooster, afer some
local complaints, was recently
farmed out to a local suburban family.)
I noticed that the red
one kept running away from
the others, and Toni pointed out
it is the smallest. So I
gave it a little pep talk
(think big, don't let them
push you around,etc). Then it climbed
up on a log and stared down,
mightily, at the others.

Also, when Toni made dinner
she made you know what. When
she kept mentioning this in
front of our charges, I complained.
Doesn't she understand
chickens have feelings too?...
**

If you're in Oakland on
Sunday, hope to see you at
the Gala New Brutalist
Cabaret. For
details see the link on the
sidebar to your left.

Thanks to
Immolation.org {click here}
for the link
and kind comments about
*fait accompli* and
our EPC Blog List.

Love checking out new
blogs.

And, yes, the EPC Blog List
is due for an update.

Silenced

Without the employment of intensified focus, alternated with
a fully accepted loss of focus, nothing.

**
The "willing suspension of disbelief."

**

An equivalence, an attainment of balance between
the willingness to listen and the willingness
to speak; part and parcel of the greatest
conversation.

**

Cite meter, sight meter, site meter

**

Silenced by being unresponded to;
silenced by being echoed in a
resounding voice.

The meaninglessness of'
meaning.

**

Silenced by sarcasm.
Silenced by silence.

**

Silenced by indifference,
ridicule, deliberate
misinterpretation,
exclusion, prejudice,
gossip, group
formation, elitism,
Big Brotherism,
poverty, intimidation,
seduction.
**

Silenced by
Disenfranchisement {click here}
**

Silenced by
Martial law {click here}

**
Silenced by Critical indifference {click here}
**

Silenced by political manipulation {click here}
**

Silenced by the deafening roar of the
noise of bombing, war, shooting,
news reports, misinformation, disinformation,
fighting, arguing, moral indictment,
advertising, celebrity mongering,
hectoring, violent physical intrusion.
**

Silenced by exhaustion, physical
and psychological illness,
fear of death and death.
**

Silenced by lack of response,
silenced by being ranked
and sidelined.

***

Silenced by the economics,
the driving insistence,
the gender conflicts
of sexuality.
**

Slenced by discrimination.
**

Silenced by one-upsmanship,
competitiveness,
exclusion by means of
critical categorization,
moral sanctions
badgering.
**
Silenced by starvation,
physical or
psychological
**

Silenced by confusion,
inarticulateness, lack
of vocabulary,language
skills, numbness,
shock.
**

Silenced by lack of
social skills, sense of
irony and humor.
**

Silenced by address unknown,
nonlisted number, code 404
blog not found.
**

Silenced by "lack of
sufficient funds", "we
are sending this bill
to our credit department",
"account closed."
**
Silenced by, "please
leave a message,"
"your call is valuable
to us please stay
on the line."
**
Silenced by "line
forms here", by
"sold out", by "bus out
of service"
"last stop."
**
Silenced by
"how are you?",
"congratulations",
"happy birthday"
"what's new?"
"what's happening"
""I'm so jealous!"
""Guess what?"
**
Silenced by
"Anything
you can do I can
do better,
**
Silenced by
"Award-winning
poet"
**
Silenced by
the short list
**
Silenced by
"no refunds"
**
Silenced by
"toilet only
for customers"
**
Silenced by
"whatever"

Eternal dissatisfaction leads to little productivity,
not mastery and perfection

Without patience, nothing.
Without joy, nothing.
**
Tonight, read Kathleen Fraser, *Twentieth Century*
a+bend press, 2000

still reading: David Markson, *Vanishing Point*,
Shoemaker & Hoard, 2000

Jordan Davis & Sarah Manguso, editors,
*Free Radicalls: American Poets Before Their First Books*,
subpress, 2004

Gary Sullivan & Nada Gordon, *Swoon*, Granary Books, 2001

Jonathan Lethem, *Motherless Brooklyn*, Vintage Contemporaries, 1999

Douglas Messerli, *First Words*, Green Integer, 2004

Tom Beckett, *Vanishing Points of Resemblance*, Generator Press, 2004

Maria Damon & Miekel And, *Literature Nation*, Potes & Poets, 2003

Charles Alexander, *Arc of Light/Dark Matter*, Chax, 1992

editors Nanos Valaoritis & Thanasis Maskaleris, *An Anthology
of Modern Greek Poetry*, Talisman House, 2003

Andrew Levy & Bob Harrison, editors,
*Crayon 4th Issue*, 2004, (includes Laura Elrick,
Rodrigo Toscano, Tina Darragh, Heriberto Yepez,
Norman Fischer, Drew Gardner)

Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin, 1938-1940, volume 4, Harvard UP, 2003

Joel Sloman, *Cuban Journal: A Poet in the Venceremos Brigade, 1970*,
Zoland Books, 2000

Frank Kuenstler, *A.I.R.*, unpublished manuscript
Frank Kuensler, *In Which*, Cairn Editions, 1994

An act of writing is an occurance
Of experience. What is foregrounded
Are the minute particulars of being,
The chancy accidents of furthered demonstration,
Not the broad strokes, the grand organ stops of
History droning the deep notes endlessly through time,
Mendeleyev, Paine, Valery, Confucious, Trotsky.
The longer the time, the larger the name,
And eventually this name is also a word,
Another wave. But here, in the measurable intervals,
Still at the side of memory, the hands
Of pictured people feel still the treasures of smell,
Affording the great ideas the basic emphasis of presence
Yet granting attention its honored focus on immediacy.
Ring the bell, knock loudly, shake the curtains,
This rustling soon ends. Now listen. Do you still
Hear the names, or are you already digesting the nuances
Of noon, the adventure's hankering, the tingling
Push of pleasure's waiting gate? And walk, and ride
And sing, and touch.

Notebook: 8/20/86

Books Gratefully Received

Douglas Messerli, *First Words*,
Green Integer #147, 2004

Kier Peters, *A Dog Tries To Kiss The Sky*
Green Integer #89, 2003,(7 Short Plays)

Tom Beckett, *How Say*
Backwoods Broadsides Chaplet
Series #64

Tom Beckett, *Vanishing Points of
Resemblance*, Generator Press
2004

Kiosk 2004 {click here}
edited by Gordon Hadfield, Sasha Steensen, & Kyle Schlesinger.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
(The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging)

The Boohbah Zone {click here}
brought to you by the inimitable
ululations (Nada Gordon)
**
Types of Divination {click here}
via Caterina {click here}
**
then I googled "inimitable" and got this:
The Marx Brothers {click here}