1998

Thanks to Geof Huth- dbqp visualizing poetics {click here}
for his review of our collage *1998* in the Dudley House *Infinity Show *
(see sidebar)
******************************************************

Wisdom: does it consist of little more than accepting how long it takes for
something to actually 'happen'? If satisfaction is the measure this is easy to see.
*
Perfection is a kind of surface. Wholeness must be bounded by a shell or skin. To be a unit is to have an outside and an inside.
*
Place your bets, then laugh. And the game comes to an end so soon!
*
In case you might forget, exagerrate.
*
Adhering to the world by means of glue, ideas are useful mainly when they're wet. But the dry remains fascinate.
*
Reality is like a sea.
*
The world contains many thoughts and few images.


from *The Boundary of Blur*
Roof, 1993

Marianne Shaneen

Marianne Shaneen

"the heart of the inanimate camera got bigger and bigger hungrier and hungrier
it ate the town, it ate Africa, then America, then it ate General Electric
what happens off-screen
gives intimations of an artificial night
lightbulbs break, shattered sugar spills between frames
sweetening the oscilloscopic palindrome grist
of whirling circles in the night consumed by fire
wearing a film ring that measures the dose of radiation
the sun suffers from psychologically-induced blindness
Prometheus puts his eyes over his hands
last words *more light*"

from *Lucent Amnesis*
Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs
2005

Tonight!
Come hear Marianne Shaneen read at Bar Reis

this from Marianne Shaneen:

Hope to see you on Tuesday....
here are directions to Bar Reis

take the F, N or R train to the “4th Ave. & 9th St.” stop in Brooklyn (Park Slope). go 1 block to 5th Ave, turn left and walk two blocks down 5th avenue, it’s between 5th and 6th Streets. (375 5th Ave).

Dear friends, come celebrate your refusal to pay taxes this year with a great reading...
I’d love to see you,
happy spring!
Marianne

The BBR Reading Series
PRESENTS

Marianne Shaneen
&
Christopher Stackhouse

Tuesday April 12, 8pm
Bar Reis
375 5th Avenue
(btwn 5th & 6th Streets)
BROOKLYN
718-832-5716
(F train to 4th and 9th)

Marianne Shaneen is a writer and filmmaker. Her new chapbook Lucent Amnesis has just been released from Yo-Yo Labs.
Her poems and fictions have appeared in Crayon, The Hat, Snare, The Beehive Hypermedia Journal, Faux/e, and are forthcoming in VANITAS.
Recent publications include “Inhabiting the Impossible”, an essay in INTERFACES (ed. Jean-Michel Rabaté) on the architectural poetics of Madeline Gins and Arakawa. Her essay on the occult and avant garde cinema is forthcoming in the book Monstrous Adaptations from Manchester University Press.
She recently organized a benefit for the Critical Art Ensemble and co-curates the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema film screening series in NYC.
She’s currently making a documentary film and lives in Brooklyn.

***

Christopher Stackhouse's images and text have been published in Bridge Magazine, Aufgabe, Fence, Hambone, nocturnes (re) view of the literary arts, The Village Voice, NY Arts, Swerve, and Big Fish. His drawings with the text-in-dialogue of writer John Keene was published in the limited edition artist book *Seismosis* by The Center For Book Arts in 2003. He is a poetry editor for Fence Magazine. He curates and hosts The Friday Night Series at The Poetry Project in St. Mark's Church, and The First Tuesdays Readings at A Taste of Art Cafe/Gallery in New York City.
Stackhouse, a father of two daughters, lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
***

Swooning

Blogger's been down for awhile, plus I've
been spending a lot of time at Brighton
Beach, enjoying the first sunshine I've
seen and felt as long as I can remember!

Today, Gary Sullivan delivered my copy
of his new comic *Elsewhere* and, not
only is it "interesting" as is said of so many works
of this type, but it is actually funny! And brilliant. All the
words and images were found on Nada and Gary's
honeymoon in Tokyo.
It is a joy to have and to look at, and
a fascinating read.
If you liked *Swoon*, the courtship, you'll
love *Elsewhere*, the honeymoon.
Go to Elsewhere {click here} and order it right now. You'll be so glad you did.

Had a chance to view Nico Vassilakis'
new poetry movie, *Concrete: Movies*
As soon as you've finished writing
your check for Gary's comic, write
one for Nico's movie dvd. It consists
of 5 movies, 51 minutes, some in color, some in
black and white, one with sound, some
with letters, some with numbers, some
with lines, some where you can see
the hand handling a pen and drawing,
all completely abstract and non-narrative.
Now, you've got clear picture of this dvd,
right? No way. You have to see this
excellent film to believe it. All for $8!
Write to
Nico Vassilakis
3046 61st Avenue SW
Seattle, WA 98116
shoehorns@msn.com

Also coming soon, a few words about:

*Lucent Amnesis* by Maryanne Shaneen (Portable Press, 2005)
*Indigo Bunting* by Bernadette Mayer (Zasterle, 2004)
*Artificial Lure* by Clayton Couch (Effing Press, 2005)
*Private Lemonade* by John Godfrey (Adventures in Poetry, 2003)
*The Frequencies* by Noah Eli Gordon (Tougher Disguises, 2003)
*Youth, A Crevice* (and other chapbooks) by Brother Tom Murphy (Cat Press, 2005)
*To Be Sung* by Michael Kelleher (BlazeVox, 2005)
*Folding Architecture* by Sophia Vyzoviti (Ginko Press, 2003)
*Interfaces: Architecture Against Death* by Arakawa and Gins (Holy Cross University, 2 Volumes, 2003)

Now let's see if Blogger is actually working again!

"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}