Art and Friends On A Serendipitous Sunday

Naps and strolls in Prospect Park on that lovely sunny Saturday (remember?)
prepared us well for the rigors of an art-filled Sunday in Queens. If you haven't
been out there lately, you must go soon! We began the day with a visit to our friend
Jean's gorgeous new studio-
Saturday was open studio day in this sunny,
beautifully designed collection of studios
at Jevenal Reis Studios- 43-01 22cd Street
(E or V train to 23rd St./Ely Ave.
#7 to 45th Road/Courthouse Square
G to Court Square)
(you take the same train to get to MOMA's PS 1
but after leaving the subway walk the opposite
direction to get to Jeval Reis Studios)-
walk north on 23rd Street (under the train
tracks) make a left on 44th Avenue
and right on 22 Street

Jean Foos

Images {click here}

In addition to work similar to the work you may view by clicking above,
Jean Foos has some exciting new work that includes printed fashion photos
which she has appropriated and painted over in her signature style.
You must see these witty and elegant works;
I hope she posts them on her site soon. Even better, we would love
to see them in a gallery & we wouldn't be at all suprised if a clever
curator saw this show and scooped them up!

From there we walked over to an opening at the Sculpture Center
for the grand opening of the Sculpture Center's new show
*Make It Now* a title with some double-edged meanings I thought
about a bit as we walked through this relatively recent site for new sculpture.
28 artists are shown here. The first floor is well worth the visit, even if only to
see the space if you haven't been here before. I should have been prepared
for the many synchroncities tha occurred on this Queens visit when I
realized that my favorite work in this show was by Charlie Foos!
This was a video he titled "Monument with Anthem". Probably it is the artist
who is sitting on a coin operated rocking horse in front of fairly delapidated
storefront. He is holding what is very likely a plastic or cardboard shield and
lance; an ancient cassette player sits on a pedestal playing Wagner's Sigfried Idyll
over and over- the tape skips and slows and speeds; the artist stares somewhat
glumly into the camera, while again and again he puts coins into the box so
that he can keep that wooden horse rocking. This work attraced me because
in addition to participating in the current plethora of works of art reflecting
and celebrating childhood (contemporary artists seemed determine to keep
their connection with their imaginations clear by holding on securely to those
fleeting freedoms -of thought and dream-of early life) this artist found a way
to gently laugh at himself and this trend towards cheap and simple materials,
toys and structures based on childhood pleasures. As I walked through the
show I marvelled at the almost total triumph of the artistic credos of such
contemporary giants as Richard Tuttle- whose philosophy of using inexpensive
materials in spontaneous and direct ways seems to now be pervasive among
younger artists- easily eclipsing the sculptural requirements of other ages demanding
such materials as marble, bronze and gleaming metals. The only exception to
this rule I have noted is in works like those of Timothy Hawkinson which require
extensive construction and use of electronic or electric machinery and gadgetry;
still, often in the case even of this work, artists like Charlie Foos stick to found
or discarded gadgets.

As we left the Sculpture Center lucky for us we ran into our friends, the poet
and art critic Connie Robins and her husband the sculptor Sal Romano.
Sal is known for his large sculptural installations employing metal constructions
and water. Recently at a visit to his studio I marvelled at a -for him- tiny work
which combined figurative and abstract elements, including a fish and triangles.
Sal and Connie decided to join us for a bit on our second visit to the giant
Greater New York 2005 show discussed below. On the way in we noticed that
a number of artists were carrying out large frames containing obviously recently ripped
paper with calligraphic type designs. As we entered the museum we ran into our
friend Jay Sanders, one of the curatorial assistants at the Maryann Boesky Gallery.
He and I chatted a bit about the current Sarah Sze show at Boesky (see sidebar)
and the fact that these ripped frames were used by a dance friend of his for a
performance that was ending at the very moment we walked in! Jay helped
Charles Bernstein curate the Poetry Plastique show we had the good fortune
to be part of in February 2001.

On this vist I remembered a number of works I saw the first time around and
really enjoyed. Sal also pointed out a couple that I had missed! Among these
was a hilarious peformance installation by Jamie Isenstein. Sal called me
over to an inset frame hung on the wall with what appeared to be a
plastic or molded hand inside. Sal said "Wait and watch." After a few moments
the hand moved! Then after awhile it moved again! We all discussed whether it
was real and hesitated awhile and then touched it. Surely this was the living hand
of a woman- obviously the artist. Hurrying over to the wall label I noticed it said
"2003 Performance Installation with picture frame, picture light and hand- or "Will Return"
sign." Ha-ha! What a piece. When we visited the neighboring room we saw the door
where the artist could be let in to sit. Sal wondered what she might be doing
in there- watching videos- drinking a coke- who knows? In another room Sal pointed
out a piece I had walked right by last week without noticing and walked right by
again on Sunday. Karyn Oliver has installed a false vertical column right next to
a real horizontal column on the ceiling of this gallery room. The column sits on top
of an antique brown wooden coffee table right in the center of the room. More
artistic hijinx and hilarity- excellent! Another double-take type work that I noticed
on the first visit but forgot take notes on is Courtney Smith's marvelous "Psyche
Complexo" (2003) owned by the artist and Roebling Hall. This impressive work
lists the following constituants: I wardrobe, 1 vanity with mirror, 1 stool with cushion,
2 side tables with mirrors, and new chrome plated hardware. In this piece, the furniture
is split in two and rehinged together creating a mysterious and claustrophobic effect,
indeed capable of well representing complex psychological states,
redolant with associations and "remembrance of things past." Another visit to
Aida Rulova's DVD projection with sound installation "It had no feelings" (2003)
convinced both Toni and I that this was among the best works. The altered voice
track repeats a story of what must have been a psychological trauma, repeated
again and again- the visual part shows faces hidden in light and the repeated
phrase "a bag over my head" suggests a terrifying experience. This is a must see and
hear! A return visit to Anna Conway's startling painting discussed and linked to
below revealed two tiny rowboats near the huge puppet head floating in the ocean.
We liked the painting on this visit even more. The DVD concerning the violinist mentioned
below was by King/Diaz de Leon and was filmed in digital video 2003-2004. We watched
the entire approximately 8 minute piece through in its entirety again! Two more
paintings definitely worth checking out:
Wade Guyton's {click here}
"untitled" 2005- a striking
constructivist style painting -inkjet on printed linen 39'x 37" and Lisi Raskin's "In
The Town Where I Was Born" (2004- Guild and Grayshkul Gallery)- a room full
of computer and electronic gadgetry is depicted mostly in bright yellows using
crayons and colored markers, another of the many memorable works
in this show echoing and recalling childhood. Another of the many excellent
projected DVD's in this show that must be mentioned is Nebojsa Seric Shoba's
eerie "Let There Be Light" depicting computer animations looking very much like
the creation of the world via mud slides. On the second floor don't forget to see
and listen to David Moreno's subtle 2004 electronic music in his work "Steremo*. The
piece is beautifully placed in front of a window with view of the sky and an old
adjacent brick building. The speakers, mounted on bending metal supports,
wave and bob as the music emerges giving the impression that you can physically
see the sounds. This is a theme in a good number of the pieces in this
show- various types of synesthesia. Throughout this show there are many pieces
placed so that you might discover them in surprising ways in this enormous
space with so many windows, corners, and stairways. Bethany Bristow's
aptly named "Insinutate" i(2005) is constructed of multiple site specific materials
including melted glass, feathers and corn syrup is placed inconspicuously on
a gallery window ledge in a hallway on the second floor. And, as we were leaving
the show I noticed again and remembered being stuck by on the first visit,
outside the gallery on a large ledge in front of a window, Bozidar Brazda's surprising
and frightening piece made out of a dummy lying down on the ledge and a parachute
lying nearby, blowing open and closing probably by means of a wind machine placed
nearby- this work suggested to me the breathless excitements- and severe risks-
of the artist who must jump into the unknown to achieve his or her discoveries-
and who, like all of us, must someday return to the ground beneath their feet after
their extravagant flights into the stratosphere of the imagination.

After this we headed downtown to our favorite restaurant the Orlin Cafe
on East 8th Street. And who walks by after a bit? Two poet friends, Mike
Scharf and Drew Gardner, We talked about the show (Drew decided
he did not want to read these notes before seeing ths show). We had
a chance to chat with Drew about movies, his workshop at the
Poetry Project and the fact that he is now working on putting together a CD
(hopefully to be heard soon on My Vocabulary) of my reading at the BPC with
Lee Anne Brown and Ange Mlinko and Drew's Poetics Orchestra. This
was indeed a serendipitous ending to our Sunday of Art- serendipity
which extended to quickly catching the Q home to Park Slope so
we could grab a quick bite and as quickly crash
into bed exhausted. Strangely, I dreamt
of a strikingly actual Paul Auster giving me advice about publishers!

Anything You Can Do

the conversation continues....

Crowing, boasting, workshop critiques, MFA programs, fame, success and more on


Poesy Galore {click here}

*Writing is a fine thing*

"Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two
pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.

If you were able to write without making any alteration,
without revising, without republishing, would your
pleasure be increased? The ideal method is to polish yourself;
calmly and quietly to set about making yourself into a crystal."

Cesare Pavese
May 4, 1946
*The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950*
Walker and Company, 1961
translated by A, E, Murch

Don't Fence Me In


Greg Perry (Grapez) opines on poet ranking and hierarchies
*********************************************************************
The Blogger's Code

The discussion continues on

Tympan {click here}

Envy Eclipsed: Poesy Galore on Competition


Poesy Galore {kick here}
************************************************
Bemsha Swing continues to host a discussion on the virtues of poetry criticism by poets


Bemsha Swing {click here}

Poet, Be Not Proud

Interesting discussions about blogging, poetry, poet's
reputations and criticism over at Jonathan Mayhew's

Bemsha Swing {click here} and Timothy Yu's

Tympan {click here}. The comments sections are smokin'!
Anyway, we bloggers seemed to have gotten all hepped up about something or other
late at night. Hope you will check it out!
**********************************************
Singin' In The Rain

The latest interview on
E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S {click here} between
Mark Young and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen is a collaborative
poem in itself, chock full of information about this
excellent poet's ideas and ways of working.
***********************************************

If you haven't seen it yet, please don't miss our review below of
Greater New York 2005, the 160 artist group show now
on at MOMA's PS1 in Long Island City...

Saturday Double Feature

Toni had the idea yesterday that if were going to
go to Flux Factory to -hopefully- meet Grant
Bailie- at the Novel launch party at 7pm-
we might as well also go to PS 1 to see
Greater New York 2005- 160 New York
artists who have "emerged" since 2000-
which was nearby. This turned out to be a prescient
idea as Flux Factory was anything but easy to
get to. Our cab driver managed to barely
miss going over the Queensboro Bridge twice
trying to locate the Flux Factory. But we
did locate it in plenty of time. We also managed
to find the nearest N Train subway stop after
leaving the Flux Factory party. But Toni was
damn mad we didn't get a cab out of there!
We were disappointed to have to miss
Stan Apps and Douglas Rothschild at
the Bowery Poetry Club. Hopefully, another
blogger has filed- or will- file a reading report
on what must have been a dynamite reading!

Well, we did get to meet Grant Bailie-
and we do have good news. Here's a treat
for ::fait accompli:: readers. Two of the *Novel*
writers- so far- Grant Bailie and Laurie
Stone- have opened blogs in which they
promise to post excerpts of their novels.
These blogs are


Grant Bailie Novel Blogspot {click here}

and


Laurie Stone Novel Blogspot {click here}

After going to the blockbuster
Greater New York 2005 {click here}
we did get to meet Grant Bailie and Ranbir Sidhu
at the Flux Factory Launch. As Grant mentioned
in the interview below, he was anxious to get
started on the project. Flux Factory is a loft
building in Long Island City near Northern
Blvd where 15 artists and writers-in-residents
live and do their work. We were very pleased
to meet Grant- and Ranbir Sidhu at the launch party.
We're sure many - if not all of you- have had the
experience of meeting someone online and
finally getting to meet them in person. After a little bit of
party type waiting around, it was
a sheer delight to meet Grant- and Ranbir Sidhu.
We had spotted Grant chatting with someone
in the corner and fortunately had seen his photo
in the aforementioned interview (see below).
Fortunately we didn't need to ask him a whole
lot of questions about the project
that had already been fully answered in this very
recent interview (Grant was surprised to hear
it was already online). But we did find out that
the Flux Factory novelists involved in this project
can't leave the Factory- for long- for the entire month! Pretty
strict rules. We'll be following this project closely
here on ::fait accompli::. Best of luck to Grant
and to the other novelists participating in this
adventurous- and very rigorous- experiment in writing!

Can't resist mentioning that wandering around looking
for something to eat after visiting the amazing PS 1
massive group show we found an
excellent French restaurant in the
middle of this relatively deserted Queens area.
It is called *Tournesol* and it is located at
50-12 Vernon Blvd- but this won't help you find
it after visiting PS 1. We suggest calling for
instructions- and maybe even reservations
(we got there early but we were lucky to get a table)
(#7 train to Vernon-Jackson stop)
(718) 472-4355. Cool place.
*****************************************************
The PS 1 show is fortunately up until September 26.
We'll say right off the bat that we have never heard
Toni say she wanted to return to a group
show right after seeing one before this.
But even with several hours it was impossible to cover
this entire show. We hurriedly scribbled down a few
notes but missed the name on our favorite video in
the show- a video of a violin performance that is transformed
into a complex and rapidly mutating film, doubling and
quadrupling the image of the violinist along with constantly
accelerating the film and the music!
Here are a few favorites:

Oliver Michaels lyrical *Train* (2003-2004)
originally shown at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery.
This is a 13 minute film. The observer is a passenger
on a little train riding along the floor of a room which
disappears again and again into tiny mouse-hole
tunnels in the floorboards of the rooms only to emerge
into another room or somewhere in the surrounding
area.

Anna Conway's stunning 2001 35"x 48" painting
titled *October 17th, 41 degrees 46 minutes
N. 70 degrees 31 minutes W.* The painting
depicts four puppet heads floating in a whirling ocean
storm, with a searchboat casting a beam on
each head in moody, continuous rain.

Anna Conway- *October 17th* {click here}

James Yamada's quirky, hilarious *Smoking at Home #1* (2005).
(wood, steel, DVD player, DVD, karaoke version of
Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" sung by Takayoshi
Nonaka, Mica Joshita and Hanayuki Hagashi, motors,
mirrors, cigarette smoke, cigarettes, laser, smoke
detector, misc. 30"x 30"x 18" plus pedstal).
This piece consists of a small wooden house constructed
out of wood and steel. The museum guard has to light a
match, put it inside the little house, which triggers a smoke
alarm- this starts up a small blue laser light show inside the tiny house
and the Johnny Cash song sung by the singers listed above.
The piece was originally shown at the Galleria Raucci in
Santamaria, Naples.
James Yamada-interview {click here}

Frank Magnotta's intricate, subtly detailed, surrealistic drawing *Breakout*
(2004 graphite on paper). An imploding, eroding, abandoned factory with broken
sign "OXY" falling off the side of the building, with a bent wire fence around it it.
Frank Magnotta at White Columns {click here}

Carol Bove's nostalgic, wistful *Adventures In Poetry* (2002) which
consists of a cheap, brown wood bookshelf with various books from
the 60's piled on it: Henry Miller, Freud's *Civilization and Its Discontents*,
The Radical Therapist, Quotations from Mao-Tse Tung, A Skeleton
Key to Finnigans Wake, the script for Michaelangelo Antonioni's *Blowup*,
Genet, The Communist Manifesto, Clockwork Orange
Carol Bove {click here}

Tobias Putrih's delicate, yet incredibly monumental cardboard sculptures,
called *Macula Series A & L* (2005) originally shown at the Max Protech
Gallery. These are biomorphic forms about 3-4 feet high and varying dimensions
around, made by cutting out thin slices of cardboard
attaching, stacking and sandwiching the pieces. The
sculptures are shown in one of the most beautifully lighted rooms in the museum,
with windows facing out on the skyline and the bridge.
You can see light through these gorgeous
cardboard sculptures, about 10 in all. Don't miss this work!!

Rico Gatson's 2001 film *Gunplay* . Sounds and images from
westerns are altered into bent and twisted, multiple, kaleidoscopic,
cartoon-like sequences, faintly reminiscent of op-art,
with sounds of gunshots and some of the lines repeating
thoughout. A witty must-see piece shown on one of the 3rd or 4th
floor staircases.

Rico Gatson- video still from Gun Play- Ronald Feldman Fine Arts {click here}

Peter Coffin's dreamlike installation piece,
*Untitled (Hollow Log with Model of the'
Universe)* A teepee in the sand, with
Neil Young-like 70's dancemix playing
inside. A mannikin with long hair, dressed in cowboy
clothes is standing in the sand looking out the
museum window onto a brick wall, with a couple of rusty beercans
lying at his feet. The piece made me think of Neil Young's
*Cowgirl in the Sand*

One of the most interesting aspects of this young
artists show is to consider what aspects of modern
and recent art is still of interest to them. Notably: Dada,
surrealism, collage, altered film and sound images and
filmed animation.
There are numerous apparent references to contemporary
artists such as Tony Oursler, Jenny Holzer, Carolee Schneeman,
Tim Hawkinson, Barbara Kruger and Vito Acconci, and many others, of course.
This is a fine opportunity to try to pick out which artists
and artistic techniques are being noticed and
seized on by more recent artists.
Nostalgia for the colorful, imaginative,
idealistic world of the 60's is clearly revealed
in many of the pieces.
But a good many of these works are more meditative
and consciously less "flashy" than their predecessors,
even when the earlier works are being echoed.
Still, preoccupation with fragmentation and discontinuity
continues apace as it has from the later 19th through the 20th century,
and much earlier, if you think of Bosch and Archimbaldo,
just to select two examples.
Very few 1980's influences seemed to be present,
thinking of the recent Lower East Side retrospective
at the Chelsea Museum: much more emphasis on technique.
Not so many pop references, a la Andy Warhol and when
they are referenced the allusions are embedded securely
within the formal techniques being employed.
Cut paper and cardboard, collage, mixed media,
and most notably gentle irony and humor are
constantly in evidence. We noted a work reflecting on
9/11 and another one concerned with the Lebanon car bombings.
We were impressed by the huge amount of excellent work
and the generally impressive qualities of of the work in this show:
profundity, social awareness, formal innovation, focus.
We'll identify many more works for discussion more closely on our
next visit.

We are definitely returning to this show next
weekend - so more on these artists next week-
there are a number of artists, such as
Mika Rothenberg and Aida Rulova, and numerous others
-whose names we missed- we need
to consider further. No doubt a number of
works will jump out at us only after a
second visit- which we plan to make
after going to view the work of
Jean Foos- studio #403
May 14 and May 15 open studio
at Jevenal Reis Studios- 43-01 22cd Street
L.I.C. 646-403-9584
E or V train to 23rd St./Ely Ave.
#7 to 45th Road/Courthouse Square
G to Court Square

walk north on 23rd Street (under the train
tracks) make a left on 44th Avenue
and right on 22 Street

Jean Foos

Images {click here}

Tom Beckett is Still Editing His MiPoesias Issue

but not for long:

How to send Tom Beckett work for MiPoesias {click here}

Facing the Gallows at Flux Factory


An interview with Grant Bailie about his upcoming month's
"monk like" devotion to Art {click here}
*****************************************************************
::fait accompli:: review of

*Cloud 8* by Grant Bailie {click here}
****************************************************************
FLUX FACTORY

is at 38-38 43rd Street in Long Island City, Queens. It now encompasses 7,500 square feet and the population of Flux Factory has grown to approximately fifty individuals internationally.

take the #7 train at Times Square/42cd Street
to 40th Street/Lowery Street stop and
walk 5 blocks

Take A Bow



Grant Bailie, author of *Cloud 8*, Laurie Stone and
Ranbir Sidhu will participate in a unique writing
experiment over the next month-writing a complete
novel on the spot. Opening party
at Flux Factory this Saturday, May 7th 7-10pm {click here}
****************************************************************
Tickets have just gone on sale for *Shadowtime*,
an opera about Walter Benjamin, libretto
by Charles Bernstein

Shadowtime {click here}
****************************************************************
Bowery Poetry Club
Saturday, May 7 2005
4:00pm

Segue: DOUGLAS ROTHSCHILD and STAN APPS $5

Douglas Rothschild is the creator and host of “The Poetry Game Show”
currently running at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York.
He has also served as Curator of the Zinc Bar Reading Series
and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, and is a
Co-Founder of Subpress. His books include
The Minor Arcana (Bivouac/subpress) and MatchBook (Situation).
He lives in Albany, NY.

Stan Apps was born in Canada and has lived in Texas and California.
He has recently published poems in Mirage#4/Period(Ical).
His chapbook, Barbara Bush’s Visit on Behalf of the Chosen One
(umbrellad devil press) was performed by the Oracular Vagina Collective at
L.A.’s Inshallah Gallery. Stan has a blog (refried ORACLE phone)
and a few collaborative blogs, such as bed bird bed
(whereisericbara.blogspot.com) with Marco Saenz,
and genius nieces (geniusnieces.blogspot.com) with
Ara Shirinyan. A chapbook is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse.

Life and Art on the Suny/Buffalo Poetics List

Awhile ago, a discussion that, for once,
wasn’t about the list itself emerged on the
poetics list. It is about the life versus the
work of the poet. Some of the remarks
a few days ago inspired me to
scribble the following.

You can read the listserv by clicking here:

Poetics List Archives {click here}

To contribute to the discussion, follow the instructions for
subscribing. At the present time, the list is calling for
writing on poetry and poetics; we would
love to see many more reviews of books, chapbooks
and blogs by contemporary writers as well as focused commentary on
related issues.
.
Anyway, here’s
my brief recent offering:


on the life versus the work of a poet

Obviously, over time, poets' works and lives
are interwoven in the public imagination, and are occasionally
seen together as representative of an era and even have been
claimed by some to usher in an artistic era. In this case, the
"humanity" of the poet is looked at closely. Think of Mallarme
in this light; few ardent readers have not read about and
visualized his famous "Tuesday night" soirees, attended
by such luminaries as Debussy. Mallarme and
Baudelaire's interest in the visual arts
have been a great influence on countless subsequent poets.
A fascinating example of this tendency are the oft-cited
discussions of Walter Benjamin on Baudelaire. Baudelaire's
way of handling his poverty, and the fact that his poetry
remained largely unrecognized in his lifetime helped to
create the very concept of the "bohemian" lifestyle.
Think of how Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein are
depicted not only in the light of their works, but their lives.
The "imperfections" of an artist's life might later be seen as an
opening for liberating possibilities for the lifestyles of countless
others. My favorite book on this is Shattuck's *The Banquet Years.*
Despite the earnest and sincere efforts on the part of
many critics and theorists to separate poets' lives
from their works, readers of poetry and people
on the whole generally connect the two. Who
hasn't thought about the implications of Kafka asking, shortly
before he died, that his writing be destroyed by his best friend,
who, thankfully, disregarded this? There are so many
examples of such anecdotes that shape the
way we regard a writer's works.


For me, "biography" or published biographies do not represent
the totality of the continued cultural presence of anyone,
particularly their crucial cultural "imago," least of all that of a poet.
There was a life lived; it is experienced and remembered in
certain ways; there were words written, and things said; these are
initially experienced in a cultural context and then recorded
and remembered in certain ways. Most people who become
fascinated with a book or a movie eventually want to know
everything they can learn about the person who wrote
the book or made the movie. This is because the movie has
caused them to think about the experience we call "life."
Countless memoirs and biographies continue to appear
about Sylvia Plath, for example. Most of her readers do not
content themselves with rereading her poems.
They want to know more. A better example might be the record
made of the life of Wallace Stevens, "Parts of a World Remembered",
where nearly every living person who knew Wallace Stevens
at all was interviewed. Paul Celan's poetry is loved, treasured even,
but the reality of his cultural presence evolved not only from the publication
of the poems themselves. These reflected things thought and spoken by an actual
living person. Celan is a "character" is the ongoing cinema we call "real life."
JW's [list member's] statement, for me, somewhat discounts this aspect
of dream in so-called "real life." There are no such sharp distinctions in the life
of art, in either its creation or its reception. Check out D.A. Levy's
*Translating Tradition* concerning Paul Celan, for example.
The cultural role of Celan grows more complex and interwoven with the lives of countless people each and every day. This isn't only because of the poems.
Pavese is another great example. Poet suicides go to the heart
of the issue we are discussing here. Their final acts are just as much
a "statement" as anything that was written or said by them.
Their works and their lives constitute a total "statement." We
don't just read, we feel, we empathize, we have antipathies,
we react, we identify. Writing and reading poetry, or any literature,
or significantly experiencing any work of art, is also partly
an adventure in personal insight and transformation.
It is utterly "personal", even when contemporary life at the
moment is less and less so. Poetry and poets and all artists
struggle to enliven the personal, individual aspect of living.
I would imagine at one time people talked about poetry-
even here on the list the still do sometimes- the way now
almost everyone talks about movies, movie actors, directors, etc. *Blade
Runner* is a cultural touchstone in every detail now. Book after
book keeps appearing offering more and more information, opinion
and insight. At one time the same thing happened with Byron.
Such discussion is not just for the purpose of intellectual
understanding. It is part and parcel of cultural experience,
in the sense that culture is a work in process, wherein artistic
works and lives are interventions in the process, interventions
towards change, nor "progress" but mutative transformation.
Andy Warhol played off these blurry boundaries between art
and life more or less constantly. He carried a tape recorder
around he called his companion and published he diaries
and journals even though he was mainly a visual artist. He did
this with humor and irony; nevertheless the presence of living
people was crucial; out of this he created his films in which his
"stars" were very deliberately people in the act of living their lives,
also trying to become *stars* themselves. OK, they were underpaid
but that's another story.

The Dada poets, and in a more diluted way, the surrealists
were out to make just this point. But in a literary culture obsessed
with critique and evaluation of a poet's book's "greatness",
it is only the actual product that counts, not the person who creates it.
In art the story is different; everything counts.
******************************************************************************
Drew Gardner on Tim Hawkinson


Overlap (Drew Gardner)

Echo Zone

"When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but
to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the
printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake
an echo in a zone we have already made our own- the place
where we live- and the vibration enables us to find fresh
starting points within ourselves.

What a great thought it is that all *effort* is futile! It
is sufficient just to let our ego blossom, go along with it, take
it by the hand as though it were someone else, have faith
that we are more important than we realized."


Cesare Pavese
3rd December, 1938
*The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950*
Walker and Company, 1961, p.139

Now at a Tributary near you {click here}

Allan Bramhall's blog is getting to be addictive.
Today he opines on the first issue of Gary Sullivan's
new comic *Elsewhere*

"Rarely remembering it was Congreve who said
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.

Rarely remembering that it was Congreve who said
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

In the same play."

David Markson
*This Is Not A Novel*
Counterpoint, 2001
pps. 97-98


Review of David Markson's latest book *Vanishing Point* {click here}


Remarks by Congreve {click here}

ON'T MISS THIS
Text/Styles
A poetry/fashion event
to benefit international garment workers
Sunday May 22 Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery) 8-10 pm
$5 donation
Featuring:

Kim Rosenfield 
Rob Fitterman  
Adeena Karasick
Shanna Compton  
Katie Degentesh 
Virginie Poitrasson
Tim Peterson
Christina Strong
Jack Kimball  
Marianne Shaneen  
Douglas Rothschild  
Brenda Iijima  
Tonya Foster  
Jordan Davis 
Meghan Cleary  
& (organizer/MC) Nada Gordon
Wear your favorite or most outstanding clothing. Bring clothes to sell for the benefit of garment workers worldwide. All proceeds will be donated to Cleanclothes.org, #
*******************************************************
The Latest on PennSound Audio
(via Suny/Buff poetics list)

"Since out launch on January 1, we have added many new files, and continue
to do so on a weekly basis. We are developing a fully functioning catalog,
but this will take at least one more year. We are also beginning to create
links to author sound files from EPC author pages. In the meantime, we have
installed a quick search feature, which, combined with our "singles" index,
will help to locate most of our files.

PennSound {click here}

Recent additions to our "featured authors" include a selected poems of John
Wieners and Fanny Howe, and readings by Lyn Hejinian, Adrienne Rich,
Barrett Watten, Norman Fischer, Robert Creeley, Myung Mi Kim, and talks by
Ron Silliman and Leevhi Lehto.

On our "Series" pages, in addition to the new Studio 111 shows, we have
added "Poetic Brooklyn," produced by Susan Brennan, which features readings
by Anja Mutic, Matvei Yankelevich, Arielle Greenberg, Vijay Sheshadri,
Julien Poirier, and Filip Marinovic.

Also at "series", we have added a new season of Cross Cultural Poetics,
Leonard Schwartz's radio interviews/readings. New programs feature Robin
Blaser, Meredeith Quartermain, and Peter Quatermain, from Vancouver;
Richard Seiburth, who talks about, and reads from, his extraordinary
translation of Buchner's Lenz; and John Taggart on "Peace on Earth". Other
programs feature Trevor Joyce, Khaled Mattawa, Rodrigo Toscano, Charles
Borkhuis, Russell Banks, Joseph Donahue, Albert Mobillio, John O'Leary,
Wang Ping Stacy Doris, Ed Foster, Nada Gorden, Maxine Chernoff, Rita Wong,
Wang Ping, Mark Wallace, and more.

We have also just launched PennSound/Classics, with readings of Pope and
Swift by John Richetti and David Wallace reading Chaucer.

I also want to recommend a marvellous Rockdrill CD series of selected
poems, from Birkbeck (UK)
*Robert Creeley: 'I Know a Man', poems 1945-1975
* Robert Creeley: 'Just in Time', poems 1976-1998
* Lee Harwood: 'The Chart Table', poems 1965-2002
* Tom Raworth: 'Ace', poems 1966-1979
* Tom Raworth: 'Writing', poems 1980-2003
* Jerome Rothenberg: 'Sightings', poems 1960-1983
* Jerome Rothenberg: 'Seedings', poems 1984-2003
You can order these from Carcanet's web site:
go to http://www.carcanet.co.uk/search2.html
and put "rockdrill" in the title box"

(from Charles Bernstein)

French Bloggers Meeting in New York,
May 28 {click here}

"30th November" (1938)
"I) There are two stages in writing a novel. The first
is as though a sheet of water were becoming opaque and
dark with mud; there is a violent movement, upheaval, foam;
then there is a calm, a period of quiescence; the quivering
water grows still, begins to clear and suddenly is transparent
again. The depths and the sky reflected in them are
motionless.

The novel comes into existence quietly, during this
elimination of all motion and every impurity. Remember:
it happened quietly.

II) So a novel is born; the agitated water trembles,
grows clear and then is still. There are two stages: I)
cloudy and disturbed, II) Calm and serene."

Cesare Pavese
*The Burning Brand*
Walker and Company, 1961
p. 138

French Bloggers Meet in NY May 28

Drew Gardner and Katie Degentesh

Drew Gardner and Katie Degentesh

March 2003 at the
March Against the War In Iraq

[photo by Toni Simon-
click on photo to see
enlarged version on
*flikr*]
********************
One of the poems read on Sunday's *My Vocabulary* was
a tribute to Drew Gardner's poem, published in his book
*Sugar Pill* (Krupskaya) titled *Drew's Atlantic Sky*
published in

Slope 17 {click here}
********************
Katie Degentesh's blog is

Bloggedy Blog Blog {click here}

Drew Gardner's blog is

Overlap {click here}

Put Another Nickel In

"In the nickelodeon
all I want is lovin' you
and music, music, music"

Matthew Shindell has created a most
unusual poetry show and it was
a blast to read on it. In between
each of my audioblog sets
he interpolated and interwove
some terrific songs, creating
an interesting emotional texture.
The playlist is already
available on

My Vocabulary {click here}
Be sure to stay tuned
for updates on coming
shows.

By the way, while he was listening
to the My Vocabulary show,
Brother Tom Murphy blogged
it, including a link
to my poem *Silenced*!
Check it out, and thanks Tom!


This Journal Blug {click here}

For those of you who missed the
show, hopefully I'll have the
links or mp3's available
on a site for you to listen to soon.

For now, as we say here in blogland,
it's a fait accompli.

***
....Ron's complete reading,
portions of which were broadcast today
on *My Vocabulary* is available
on his PennSound site at

Silliman on PennSound {click here}

One More Time

Had an interesting, enjoyable conversation
with Matt Shindell, who is a history of science graduate
student at UCSD, after recording the audioblogs
due to be broadcast here today at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time
(is that what you call it?) Either way, we hope
you have the time to tune in to hear me and
Ron Silliman. Click on
KSDT Radio {click here}
at 7pm (if you live in the East)
or 4 PM (if you live in the West)
or sometime in between if you
live in between!

Or click on:

My Vocabulary {click here}
which will lead you to
the link for the station.
*My Vocabulary* is a new
blog sponsored by Matthew Shindell and
James Meetze, offering readings on
the UCSD college radio station at 4pm
Pacific Standard Time on Sundays.
Last week's show featured
Keith Waldrop and Rosemarie Waldeop.

Immortalized in Song

A one and a two and
Jonathan Mayhew Is In Town [click here]

Words by Nick Piombino; Song by Joe Massey

"My Vocabulary did this to me"

is a famous quote from Jack Spicer,
purportedly uttered on his deathbed.

My Vocabulary {click here} is a new
blog sponsored by Matthew Shindell and
James Meetze, offering readings on
the UCSD college radio station at 4pm
Pacific Standard Time on Sundays.
This coming Sunday, April 24,
as announced here yesterday, we have been
asked to read, as has Ron Silliman.

Our sincere apologies for the shameless
self-promotion; we were unable to
post this link earlier due to blogger posting
problems.

I will mostly be
reading works originally
published on blogs and webzines,
including poems from my Chax chapbook,
*Hegelian Honeymoon*;
you may also be hearing some poems
from the PennSound website.

Hope you can tune in!

On The Radio

We are excited and delighted to
announce that we'll be reading,
with Ron Silliman, on Sunday,
April 24 at 4 P.M. on KSDT Radio {click here}


The show, hosted by Matthew Shindell
and James Meetze, has recently featured
Keith Waldrop and Rosemarie Waldrop
as well as the late great Robert Creeley.

"The image persists
Of a childhood
Filled with happiness.

Don't ask why..."

Mike Keller
*To Be Sung*

BlazeVox [books]

Forever Yours

One of the greatest pleasures of poetry is this art's
tendency to sustain or revive earlier forms. Although
poets everywhere are mourning the passing on of the
master lyric poet Robert Creeley, there is no need to be concerned about the death of the lyric form he so ably represented. Poets
like Elaine Equi and Mike Kelleher sing on.

Mike Keller's *To Be Sung* (BlazeVox [books], 2005) arrives on
the scene at a welcome moment. These compressed, short,
singing lyrics will be enjoyed by many Creeley fans. Creeley
himself wrote on the blurb: "Michael Kelleher's deft poems
have often a wry poignance and sing the old songs with
fresh particulars. So it's as ever where we are that
counts, and that's where these poems are, always."

Recalling another 20th century master of the short form,
Paul Celan, Kelleher writes:

"The glacial
Center
Radiates

Outward
Preserving
A few

Footprints
Frozen
In retreat."

Well, it's Spring, the weather's warm and
we're heading for Brighton Beach.
Think
I'l take
Kelleher's little
book
with
me.

Jonathan Mayhew, whose blog Bemsha Swing
a favorite, is in town. Toni and me met him for coffee with
Gary Sullivan (Elsewhere) at the Mozart Cafe
(cool place with live piano music) on
West 70th St yesterday afternoon.
Jonathan lives in St Louis Mo,
and commutes to his teaching job in Kansas. Right
new he is on a sabbatical. He had his arms full
of books he bought at the Gotham Book Mart and
gifts he received from David Shapiro. Then we
all went to Central Park and had sandwiches
(bought from *Big Nick's* Burger Joint) at
Strawberry Fields. Julia Mayhew {click here},
also a poet-blogger,
was unable to join her father due to a busy schedule at
home. Next stop for Jonathan: a reading by blogger
Jordan Davis (Equanimity)
today, and back home on Tuesday.
It was a delight to meet Jonathan, whose blog
we read daily. Jonathan and me go back a long
way: he taught me (by email) how to post links! Jonathan,
come back soon!
************************************************
Excellent report from Robert Adamson on a visit to Sydney, Australia by Robert Creeley in 1976 in Jacket {click here}
************************************************
Hundreds of
Fragments of Classical Literature Deciphered {click here}

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}

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?