Holland Carter reviews Emma Bee Bernstein show at the Janet Kurnatowski gallery curated by Phong Bui and Linnea Kniaz

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Jacket 2 Inaugural Issue

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The Importance of the Personal:Glenda Burgess on Jane Lazarre's Some Place Quite Unknown

Ego Surfing

My friend the late poet genius Jackson Mac Low used to call googling yourself "ego surfing." Every now and then I still do this to see what bloggers might have linked to on this site. Technorati used to tell me this more easily, but now I have to page through the links to fait accompli on Google.

Thanks to all who have linked here recently! Here is a selection I came across tonight....
* * * *

And One For You Also

I WAS NEVER YOUNG (Summer Brown [Scout]


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Where Truth Falls Short

Solvitur Ambulando (Marina Bell)


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Link to Contradicta Quote from Rob Brezsny's Horoscope Blog on blogbabel

“Tutti i tuoi desideri sanno dove andare”, scrive il poeta Nick Piombino, “ma devi dirgli di aprire gli occhi.”

Pisces

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Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology Quote from Contradicta (Scroll to bottom of page to Pisces)

All your feelings

Free Will Astrology Home Page

* * *

open.

regarder of the cries of the world

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Man Carrying Thing (Wallace Stevens quotes from Subject to Change (in Boundary of Blur [Roof])

Giant Sloth

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News Relating to and from Pensioners (UK)

Free Fall

Books Received


Charles Bernstein-The Attack of the Difficult Poems

Contradicta



No matter how well you get things tied up, eventually parts of it, or all, will start to unravel. The trick is not to let yourself unravel.



* * *


The solution to some problems is so obvious and simple one can only suppose it was the injury that caused them that made them so mesmerizing


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Five former artistic directors of the Poetry Project chat and recall their experiences: Bernadette Mayer, Ed Friedman, Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, Ron Padgett: Directors Talk

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Argotist Online

E-Books

Happy 92cd Birthday Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A Coney Island of the MInd--Googlebooks


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by Lynn Behrendt

Sunday, March 20

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"The task is not primarily to "think up" a story, but to penetrate the story, to discard the elements that are merely shell, or husk, and that give apparent form to the story but actually obscure its essence. In other words, the problem to is transcend the givens of a narrative."

Reality Hunger, a Manifesto
David Shields, Vintage Books
February 2011

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Nico Vassilakis, Letters Part 1


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Two Anti-Bullying Efforts

Stop Bullying.gov


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The Official PCCC Wisconsin Recall Campaign

Act Blue

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Three Quarks Daily

via wood s lot

Slope Weather
(poet) reporters: Sandra Doller, Lucas Farrell, Lisa Fishman,
Rick Meier, Sara Mumolo, Brandon Shimoda, Jared Stanley)

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Tom Beckett's sensitive, insightful and moving reviews of Lynn Behrendt's 2 new, beautiful chapbooks from Dusie:
L'AMOUR Fou

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Books Received

2 Gorgeous chapbooks from Lynn Behrendt

This is the story of Things that Happened (Dusie, 2011)

"Could military strategy, gourmet coffee
and genocide be a story? Is that the story
about the way the world is?
This is not a story about the magical

ray-gun of one rogue investor.
This story is a systematic failure
that we are experiencing.
The American mainstream."

* * *

ACQUIESCENCE (DUSIE, 2011)

"we've got this crippled
notion of time and space

and it wounds me
makes me its slave"

Books Received

A new book by Elaine Equi is cause for a celebration!

Just out: Click and Clone (Coffee House Press)

"I live in a clock in a corner of the future
beneath its glass gears and weightless weight-
in a room I share with numerous holograms

space being at a premium
and privacy (as we know it) a thing of the past."....

(from 'A Woman Trapped in an Aerosol Mist")

Elaine Equi on Penn Sound

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Just out by Chris Mason: Hum Who Hiccup (Narrow House)

"Hail, Library,
where homeless men
and women sit,
with the world's words:
you shelter vast
volumes of love.
I will meet you
down in the stacks."

(from Homeric Hums)

Chris Mason on Penn Sound

thanks to Chris and Elaine for sending the books!

Contradicta




Often without apparent purpose, without measure, without boundaries, without pause, imprecise yet utterly human and inexplicable: feelings.


* * * *


We must find the Prague in progress.

Today is fait accompli's 8th birthday!

Toni and I felt like rushing out this morning to go watch Christian Marclay's wonderful new movie The Clock again today at the Paula Cooper gallery, which we watched this time for 7 straight hours, and I still didn't feel like leaving, as Marclay's film comprises some of the best time travel I've ever witnessed, a true fait accompli synchronicity!

The Police- Synchronicity

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The Last Vispo

Introducing...

Didi Menendez' Portraits of Poets Blog.

PLease check out her portrait of yours truly and many others!

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Christian Marclay's 24 Hour Movie of Film Clips
Free at the Paula Cooper Gallery

An Interview with Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay has created a unique mode of cinematic time travel. The film consists of 24 hours of film clips from films across the decades. Each clip contains one or more references to the time at the moment of screening. This is a wonderful kind of "fait accompli" overlapping. Just as I blogged from across the decades, using a day in my journals corresponding to the day I was blogging, the Marclay film uses moments of films with explicit references on clocks and watches from across the temporal spectrum of films corresponding to the current moment of time. As might be expected, and occurred with fait accompli, the synchronicities are constant, and fascinating. I loved it! This is a unique don't miss opportunity. I was also delighted to see, as Toni and I left the theater (we came back after dinner) the amazing artist Fred Tomaselli, who showed recently at the Brooklyn Museum, had signed the book just before me.

* * * * *

EOAGH Issue Six Peripheral Writing edited by Tan Linl

The New Book From Argotist Online is
Evelyn Posamentier's Royal Blue Car


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SEGUE PRESENTS: 

KRISTEN GALLAGHER + 
STAN APPS

This Saturday, Feburary 5th 

SEGUE READING SERIES 
BPC
4 PM 
$6 


KRISTEN GALLAGHER (born Henry Lawrence Garfield; February 13, 1961) is an American singer-songwriter, stand-up comedian, spoken word artist, writer, publisher, actor, radio DJ, and activist.

STAN APPS is currently a law student at NYU.  His newest paper book, The World as Phone Bill, is a collection of essays on contemporary poetry, eternal verities, assorted universals and a particular or three.  His newest e-book, This Club Will Have Anyone, is available as a download or randomized website from Gauss PDF.  Other books are available from Slack Buddha, Make Now, or Les Figues Press.

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Keith is Twittering the Obama SOTU address Olbermann

* * * * *


Nick Piombino and Lisa Robertson at the Poetry Project

Thanks to all who came to my presentation with Toni Simon at the Poetry Project on Wednesday night. If I may say so myself, it was a blast!

Toni and I will be presenting this show again at the Bowery Poetry Club on April 30th, this time on the same bill with Pierre Joris.


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Macy Blackman's new album Don't You Just Know It is 16 sides of rockin' jazz/blues excellence. Got a taste for some good blues? Click on a side of Chicken Shack--open 24 hours a day...

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Shampoo 38

I will be reading at the Poetry Project with Lisa Robertson in one week
on Wednesday January 19 at 8pm
Toni Simon will be projecting her drawings based on her collage illustrations from
Contradicta

Nick Piombino (with art by Toni Simon) and Lisa Robertson Wednesday Jan 19 at the Poetry Project
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Mimi's Visit

Mimi (Gross), Toni and I visited the Brooklyn Museum today. Both Mimi and Toni love African and Egyptian art and Mimi had many very interesting things to tell us about both. There was a discussion about whether to describe the colorful figure and animal paintings on mummies as cartoon-y (Toni) or cartoon-like (Mimi). The word cartonnage (as I was writing this) was discovered to appear in one of Toni's collages in our collaborative book Contradicta. We had also found this word in a caption regarding one of the mummies. At first, when I saw it in the caption about the mummy, I thought the word was "cartoonage." I had hoped this might settle the debate about the cartoon-y word. Then, we all visited the Feminist Pop-art Show.

Mimi told me about two links of hers. One is the link to the foundation (where she is president of the board) concerning her father Chaim Gross' art and art collection. The other is a link to an art-making course she is now teaching in Baltimore.

The Oddness of Parts

Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation

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This is Visual Poetry by Nico Vassilakis

Astrological Contradicta (Village Voice January 5 Free Will Astrology)

Pisces

Free Will Astrology (Rob Brezsny)

Thanks to Ernesto-Livon Grosman for alerting me to this link.

At a Park Slope New Year's Day Party I had the Good Fortune to Meet

Itzik Gottesman, formerly a Professor of Yiddish Literature, now associate editor at the Yiddish Forward, whose blog is called Yiddish Song of the Week


"Oy, fishelekh in vaser, zey iz fil beser.
Bay zey iz nit keyn untersheyd, fin klener biz tsu greser.
Oy, fishelekh in vaser, zey iz fil beser.
Bay zey iz nit keyn untersheyd, fun klener biz tsu greser".

"O the fish in water, they have it much better.
They don‘t make a difference
between the smaller ones and bigger ones".

* * * *

Builder Levy

Builder Levy, who I met tonight, has been photographing in Appalachia for 40 years

* * * *

Contradicta



Usually your feelings know things long before your mind does. So, mostly what your thoughts need to do is to tell you to be patient.



* * *


For some, even an attempt to leave themselves alone might constitute an unprecedented approach to a previously unknown internal territory.

Happy 2011 New Year Poem from

NIcole Peyrefitte and Pierre Joris

Eric Ewazen, American composer

I went to a concert this afternoon at the Brooklyn Public Library. Eric Ewazen's String Quintet
(Sinfonia for Strings) was performed by Harumi Rhodes, Adela Pena, Ah LIng Neu and Roberta Cooper. I found a work online by Ewazen whose music is certainly worth learning more about.

Eric Ewazen Down a River of Time and other mp3's


A duet for our time, of
anguish

* * * * *

A Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality

Keepaway Kickstarter

This just in!

Keepaway raised over $10, 000 for their new album, just in time!


* * * * *

Contradicta


Even as you live, to live is to remember to live.




* * *



Everything in contemporary culture tends to become a popularity contest. Nothing wrong with this, except that the truth is rarely popular.



* * * * *

Moonshine

This just in from Kimberly Lyons


"Come in and enjoy!
take a break from toil & trial,
all the wear & tear of holiday prep:
LUNAR CHANDELIER PRESS announces
         a book signing/reading
                  BY VYT BAKAITIS
                     LYNN BEHRENDT
                   AND JOE ELLIOT
          to take place from 2:00 p.m.
      this Saturday 18 December 2010
at Unnameable Books: 600 Vanderbilt Ave
(between Dean St & St Marks Ave), in Brooklyn NY

yours, Kimberly Lyons"
646-438-5559



* * * * *

Lunar Chandelier Press

had its debut reading tonight at the Poetry Project. Of the three books presented I am most familiar with Joe Elliot's Homework. When I edited OCHO 21 I had the immense good fortune to choose from a large portion of the as yet unedited manuscript of this book. I can say that my most immediate feeling was sadness at not having chosen to edit a magazine much sooner and I could now see why so many of my poet friends had done exactly that with a good portion of their time over the years. When I was asked to write a blurb for the book I was delighted and honored but soon realized what a daunting task it would be, having already experienced so many waves of emotion about Elliot's powerful work. When I brought the book home tonight and began rereading it I got a glimmer of just how strongly his work had affected me, not only by way of enjoyment and admiration, but viscerally and very personally. The thoughts and feelings I am driving at here are somewhat summarized in the blurb I wrote for Joe's book, available on the Lunar Chandelier website (above), and, in a shortened version, on the back of the book. More of that some other time, hopefully soon.

I have had a couple of days to begin reading Lynn Behrendt's new book and I am impressed and excited about that book as well. My first thought was that my reaction to q quick read of parts of this book reminded me of my reaction to hearing and reading Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, over 40 years ago. This response might have had to do with these lines:

"I am a language vole too.
I got glue
in my vagina"

(from the poem The Ulna Slash Uvula Laid Bare Lingual Age)

I had the same sudden feeling reading this poem two nights ago of a manifesto of an impending poetic movement as when I read Berrigan's sonnets for the first time. And I think, in particular of these lines:

"baffling combustions are everywhere/graying the faces of virgins/ aching to be fucked/we fondle their snatches/and O, I am afraid!/The poem on the page/ will not kneel/for everything comes to it/gratuitously"

Now, I've thought in recent and not so recent years how sexist these lines must sound now, since the "we" obviously refers to men, and therefore hints of a predatory male conspiracy. But reading it then, I don't believe that is how it struck me. Berrigan's Sonnets deftly wove such sexual and sensual longing within a lyrical, complexly rhythmic, linguistic thread of philosophical and literary intellectuality, wit, self-effacement as well as countless other emotions and observations blended with numerous fragments of conscious and unconscious, fantasy experience. I feel the same in Lynn's poem- the poem continues with variations on the original words much the way Berrigan's Sonnets turn lines again and again around and within themselves.

Behrendt's poem continues:

"It's me and thee and analog glee-
lingo vogue
in isotope tetrameters"

and later:

"You're one alluvial egg
you lover of lingo slag
a lovely oval lung"

and later:

"how long , lonely little Anglo?
I'm venial Eve hitting a gog
in a dollar store lounge"


The final reader tonight was Vyt Bakaitis, whose book I have not yet seen, but whose reading evoked countless memories of New York School charisma. His wit, charm and lyricism pulled in the whole room, and by extension, the world outside the room.

The whole evening left my mind virtually swinging from, and with, the Lunar Chandelier.

* * * * *

Debussy plays Debussy- You Tube