On My Desk

John Ashbery, *Chinese Whispers*, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002
""If living is a hate crime, so be it.
But, hey- I was around when they invented the Cardiff giant.
I kid you not. God wanted you to know,
so you'd remember to love him..." (LITTLE SICK POEM)

Thomas Alan Brown, *The Aesthetics of Robert Schumann*, Greenwood, 1968
"The power of imagination is the prose of creative power [*Bildungkraft*] or fantasy. It is nothing but a highly intensified, brightly colored memory which animals also possess, since they dream and fear....but fantasy or creative power is something higher; it is the World-Soul of all souls and the elementary spirit of the remaining powers." (Schumann)

Ray DiPalma & Paul Vangelisti, *Uptown Vaunt*, Otis Laboratory Press, March 2007
"Elegaic in name only, there is no signature to accomodate the surcease of whatever future was lost in those years. Mornings there is the winter wren's 2-5 notes, followed by a trill, even when there may be no warning because finally you will blunder into dying as you've done about everything else. Just like the other night with one of those innumerable beautiful young women who approach you, the old master, even in spite of your caution, because she has a boyfriend who's building in his room a model of the Danube- until she will later understand."

Eli Drabman, *Daylight on the Wires* Vigilance Society
"[There was a wild place of limitation]/every kind of beast learned by heart/to fear it, to gallop full-throttle into/houses made/made from infinity's/nearness (because)her hair falls/into mud, becoming hoofprint, her gallop widens out, finding/voice (because) the fantasies/of gender, threnody, loose us /back upon the margins"

Patrick F.Durgin, *Imitation Poems*, ATTICUS/FINCH, 2007
"Is there anything to drink? Who am I speaking/with? Can I come home? Will you have me as I am?/How am I? How are you? Who built this ship? Is it/improper to ask? You're procrastinating, now. So kiss me."

Mitch Highfill, Rebis, Openmouth Press,2007
"Grind the brain with strong/vinegar or the urine of a young/boy until it turns black./Black as the heart consumed by hatred"

Mitch Highfill, United Artists Books, 1995
"COMFORTABLE BOMBING AUTHORIZATION
Civilian media damage crew formats
sagacious long face press return.
Conversation strategy needing public
casualities maimed massive children.
Well-fed suicide orchestrated
short plot provocation jaunty hours
opined death attitude"

Joseph Kanon, *Los Alamos*, Dell, 1997
"Santa Fe, however, was pretty. The adobes, which Connolly had never seen, seemed to draw in the sun, holding its light and color like dull penumbras of a flame."

Michael Lally, *Of*, Quiet Lion, 1999
"so here I am,back in LA
looking forward to reading
Elaine Equi's book & already
wondering why she doesn't
mention *me* in it- oh
wow- what is I'm still so
afraid of-
....& it's good, Elaine's book-
so direct & elusive at once
& the poems look like
poems so narrow & short"

Primo Levi, *The Drowned and the Saved*, Vintage, 1989
"Compassion and brutality can coexist in the same individual and in the same moment, despite all the logic; and for all that, compassion itself chides logic. There is no proportion between the pity we feel and the extent of the pain by which the pity is aroused: a single Anne Frank excites more emotion than the myriads who suffered as she did but whose image has remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is necessary that it be so. If we had to and were able to suffer the sufferings of everyone, we could not live."

C. J. Martin, *City*, Vigilance
"So CITY was mourning & they missed it,
mourning but not really answering.
A toy, a doll's eyes, for I have
a head now, too, were all manner--
instead they live upon have until now.
Not a dozen mourn on the road to Carna."

K. Silem Mohammad, Anne Boyer eds., *Abraham Lincoln#1* Spring/Summer 2007 (16 poets)
..."other people leave astral imprints, dead or alive in buildings
you can feel the bad energy from that person's thoughts
tasteless to refer too closely to a person's contact with the Reich/
I feel the rising nausea once again, faced with the appropriation of this terrifying muzzle/
bend down & touch lightly with my iips the white face in the coffin/
The Internet puts me in touch with thousands of them who act as my scouts" (Gary Sullivan)

Mode A, The Grand Piano, Part 3, 2007 (10 poets)
"The dilemma of memory, the demand of remembering to fix meaning has always troubled me. This has at times made me reluctant to continue with this project: when I was a child I threw away my diaries after I filled them up." (Carla Harryman)

Peter Ostwald, *Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius", Northeastern University, 1985
"Geniality, getting high, and originality are very closely elated concepts, generally speaking, at least all three are volcanoes, spewing lava, from which one or the other boldly goes forward. Geniality likes to erefct its temples in wine cellars, and getting high is like a handyman, or finally even the left hand itself. Originality is the foot. Besides, a youth wants to understand geniality differently than a man; genial men even hate genial youths for the most part, because both look at each other through reducing lenses. The logical, calcified blockhead would very much like to be genial, but he wheezes away like a fox with sour grapes....In other words, beauty may be (in mimicry of the sisters Grace and Charity), amost essential covering that entices us to geniality. Available for everything but fit for nothing- now like butterflies, flimsy, flitting, fluttering, flying, and fondling- now like elephants, sullen, slow, trampling, and crushing- now soft and gentle like virgins- now strong and wild like a lion woken from its slumber. Female delicacy and frivolity, male brutality and destructiveness- like a chameleon that assumes every color and shading-" (Schumann, June 1828)

Phyllis Rosenzweig, editor, Primary Writing 5/07 (2 poets)
"We can barely see what's out there
Overwhelmed as we are by repetition
Though I depend on it for what sense
Of continuity remains to me when
I see you I know I'm at work....
My skin is made of your decision
We write with paint on old newsprint
There are poets in the debris by the door
What comes in goes out
Hello name we say
What do you want?" (Laura Moriarty)

Wolfgang Schivelbusch, *The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning and Recovery*, Metropolitan, 2001
"The Frondists, who opposed French absolutism and, after their defeat, traded the sword for the pen, were typical "losers" of this reflective sort. The memoirs, and aphorisms of Saint-Simon and La Rochefoucauld were ultimately both a sublimated form of revenge and a social critque that led directly to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In the twentieth century, Russell Jacoby made a similar point about West European Marxism. Stumbling from one political defeat to the next, it retained a crucial potential- a flexibility, an openness, and a humanity- that Soviet Marxism, its twin brother, lost while triumphantly marching foward."

Mark Young, editor, Otoliths, issue five, part two; Southern Autumn, 2007 (15 poets)
"VANISHED INTO TIME THEORY
HAS MELTED POISONED METAPHOR
& TRANSPLANTED CRANIAL LIGHT" (Andrew Topel)

Contradicta



Envy would not be such a bad thing, except that we always envy the wrong ones.



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



To know how to begin things, and mostly see them through, yet still enjoy the suspense between, is a secret shared by few.


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--Nada--


simulated direct from--

ululations

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Invisible Notes

Peter Ciccariello

YVW, Nada

Drew Gardner's Poetics Orchestra

peformed on Sunday with poets Nada Gordon and Kimberly Lyons. There were readings as well by Gary Sullivan, Kimberly Lyons, Mitch Highfill, Brenda IIjima and others before and after sets with the Orchestra. Nada, who was in spectacular form yesterday at the BPC was brought back, not suprisingly, for an encore at the end of the Orchestra's second set.

I am going to try very hard not to sound overly melodramatic- I admit I sometimes have a tendency to exagerrate in favor of work I wish to be noticed- but I've had such an experience of watching a ripening talent like Nada's hit the stratosphere enough times in my life to know what it looks like, and a few of these were: Buddy Holly at the Brooklyn Paramount in 1958, Ted Berrigan at St Mark's in 1966, Blondie at CBGB's in 1975, and Holly Hughes at the Wow Cafe in 1985. If you weren't there, and probably you weren't, you should do everything in your power to watch Nada Gordon perform as soon as possible. Nada read mostly from her new book *Folly*, Her second set involved a section of her new Roof Book in which three girls rap while trying on clothes at Target, who somehow manage to teach each other-and us-more about life and postmodern philosophy than a barrel full of Derridas ever could hope to; she ended the set with a heartbreakingly funny, hypnotically repetitive recital of a part of a song made famous by none other than Dean Martin: "when the moon hits your eye." And I'm here to tell you the audience knew it did. Other awesome performances took place on the BPC stage yesterday as well: Gary Sullivan's grandmother was hilariously portrayed as doing things with her gastrointestinal system that would qualify her for a Barnum and Bailey acrobatic contract, and employed his voice in ways that made me sometimes wonder if he was channeling beings from another dimension and it all starts to remind me of a comic from my chlldhood called Plastic Man; Kimberly Lyons read some of her most deftly charged, nostalgically lyrical works excellently with the Orchestra as well (who were also in top form today, by the way, under Drew's able baton}; Mitch Highfill read with that terrific baritone voice of his from his upcoming "Abraham Lincoln" (from new publisher K. Silem Mohammad) chapbook *Mothlight* as well as one poem from his new chapbook-Rebis- just out from seasoned publisher Christina Strong's Openmouth Press, and Brenda Iijima surprised the audience with handstands, bravely defying ringing cellphones and crying babies with poetry that for moments still somehow transported me back to recent quiet states of reverie in the varied moods of Cape Cod's waves and clouds, partly, it seems, by means of her frequent mentions of sunscreen; Jill Stengel was followed by Sean Cole, whose wit and polished verbal pyrotechnics concluded this day of shining performances with the glittering bright finish it well deserved.

I left sorry that I had only been able to attend only one of the Boog City events, as this one well qualified for one the best sawbucks I've ever spent. And I keep reading that ubiquitous mag in newsprint form published by David Kirschenbaum with pleasure every time I find it..

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Ha-Ha America: Antonioni and the Importance of Being Earnest

New Beauty from the Old World

via wood s lot

Boog City Festival: The Penultimate Event

SUNDAY AUGUST 5, 1:30 P.M., 3:45 P.M.
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
NYC
$5 1:30 p.m.

The Future of Small Press Publishing
curated and moderated by Mitch Highfil
l
featuring David Baratier, editor Pavement Saw Press (Columbus, Ohio)
Bob Hershon, co-editor Hanging Loose Press
Brenda Iijima, editor Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs (Brooklyn)
Jill Stengel, editor a+bend press (Davis, Calif.)

Readings and musical performances
3:45 p.m.-The Poetics Orchestra
4:15 p.m.-Kimberly Lyons
4:30 p.m.-Gary Sullivan
4:45 p.m.-Brenda Iijima

5:00 p.m.- break

5:15 p.m.-The Poetics Orchestra
5:35 p.m.-Jill Stengel
5:55 p.m.-Mitch Highfill
6:10 p.m.-Nada Gordon
6:25 p.m.-Sean Cole

Directions: F/V to 2nd Ave., 6 to BleeckerVenue is at E.1st St.
_________________________________________________________________

Even Newer: Art as Comfort discussion continues onThe Newer Metaphysicals

Nicholas Manning said

"Nick, Suzanne, you'd know more about this than me, but I wonder if it wouldn't be also interesting to introduce someone like Piaget into this type of discussion: the idea of 'play' as a constructive psychic process, which may be another spin on "composition" as Nada sees it (not so much "straightening things out" as testing, trying, embodying).

I know that my mother, in her work with children in developmental psych, encourages them to use dolls, puppets and drawings to construct different images, symbologies, narratives, in ways which often deeply resemble poetic processes..."

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Young at Art

Otoliths 6

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Nada Gordon's *Folly* might be funny but art isn't easy: listen up

Critical Cities

Stan Apps: Jacket MagazineOn Nada Gordon's Tolerance

Art as Comfort- the discussion continues on
The New Metaphysical (Nicholas Manning)

Nada said:
"Healing as composition" But she was not sure she believed that.

suzanne said;

"I worked with 70 women
diagnosed with borderline personalitiy disorders
(many of them dual diagnosed with substance abuse
or bipolar)

I gave them amulets
from my medicine pouch
in the form of stories
made up specifically for them;
I told them
their "disorder" was really a perceptual one
and then they worked on altering their perceptions

off all meds
seldom calling the crisis line"

Happy Birthday, Gary Sullivan

Gary shares a birthday with Prino Levi (check out today's wood s lot), which is appropriate, in that Gary is one of the most compassionate people I have ever known.

I am also taking the occasion to proffer Elsewhere fait accompli's fourth Thinking Blogger award.

(Strange coincidence dep't: I was introduced to the writing of Primo Levi just yesterday, by Mira Schor, at Tim's Books, and read the amazing essay The Gray Zone very early this morning).

On My Desk

Ross Macdonald: The Galton Case, The Ferguson Affair, The Blue Hammer, The Underground Man, Black Money

Cornell Woolrich, Waltz Into Darkness



Last summer, when I was working away on the book version of *fait accompli* I happened to drop by the local used bookstore, Tim's, in Provincetown, and we got to talking about mysteries. I wanted to read something that was unusual for me, and easy, and as I never in my life read one of those, outside of Sherlock Holmes (which I loved), I thought I would try one. He recommended Raymond Chandler, I also found a Sue Grafton, and I was on my way. Grafton has written a series of easy to read mysteries, that are named according to the alphabet, (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, C is for Corpse, etc; the latest is S is for Silence). I also read all the Raymond Chandlers I could find. I know I don't have to tell you about those.

I might have read a couple of Ross Macdonald novels last summer, I don't remember; I have my list of about 20 novels I read then. Since I ride a subway to work, one train, I usually read a novel, at least I did up until I started using my Ipod, damn thing. This summer I've been reading Ross Macdonald quite a lot and Joseph Kanon, who I mentioned a few weeks ago - don't miss Alibi!- it's great (that one was a gift from Ray DiPalma, as well as The Good German). My recent interest in postwar Germany dates from my early childhood when I lived in Nurnberg and that amazing Weimar show at the Met last year.

But Ross Macdonald! The more I read him, the more I like him. Macdonald is not only psychologically acute- almost all his plots have to do with family dynamics- but his descriptions are superb, and often poetic to boot. Looking at the page as you read it, you feel like you are watching a movie screen as every sentence jumps out at you whole and transforms itself into a moment in the scene that is taking place. And somehow, the descriptions usually add to the suspense. ("The university had been built on an elevated spur of land that jutted into the sea and was narrowed at its base by a tidal slough. Almost surrounded by water and softened by blue haze, it looked from the distance like a medieval fortress town....Close-up, the buildings shed this romatic aspect. They were half-heartedly modern, cubes and oblongs and slabs that looked as if their architect had spent his life designing business buildings." [The Blue Hammer].

A recent visit to Tim's brought me Cornell Woolrich's great *Waltz into Darkness*- the author was suggested by an acquaintance who is up here, the artist Mira Schor. Waltz into Darkness takes place in the late 19th century in New Orleans and thereabouts. Woolrich is credited, for good reason, for inventing along with Hammett and Chandler, the noir genre. He wrote the story that the film Rear Window was based on. He had a tough life and ended up a recluse. This book is full of plot twists and turns, and is the kind of book I find myself at times exclaiming out loud, as if to the character I am reading about, "Don't do it!"

Great writing: "A vanishing point was bound to be reached eventually. It had been imminent for some time, if he'd only taken the trouble to make inventory. But he hadn't; perhaps he'd been afraid to, afraid in his own mind of the too-exact knowledge that that he would have derived from such a summing-up; the certainty of termination. Afraid of the chill that would have been cast upon their feasting, the shadow that would have dimmed their wine. There was always tomorrow, tomorrow, to make a reckoning. And tomorrow, there was always tomorrow still. And meanwhile the music swelled, and the waltz whirled ever faster, giving no pause for breath."

Anyway, time to go back to Ross Macdonald's *The Underground Man* See you later..."It was late on a Saturday afternoon, and the beach was littered with bodies. It was like a warning vision of the future, when every square foot of the world would be populated. I found a place to sit in the sand beside a youth with a guitar who lay propped against a girl's stomach. I could smell her sun-tan oil, and I felt as if everybody but me was paired off like animals in the dark....I got up and looked around me. Under the stratum of smoke which lay over the city, the air was harshly clear. The low sun was like a spinning yellow frisbee which I could almost reach out and catch..."

Nicholas and Nicholas continue their discussion on Manning's essay "Art as Comfort: Some Misgivings on a Therapeutic Poetics"

on The New Metaphysicals (Nicholas Manning)l

*fait accompli* third Thinking Blogger Award goes to wood s lot

Mark Woods is a blogger living in Canada whose blog I find to be the most valuable resource on the internet. Mallarme in a poem once imagined a newspaper composed of dreams. wood s lot is the ultimate time traveler's newspaper, bringing you news that stays news. It is the true come dream. On wood s lot you will celebrate Debussy's birthday or the latest essay by Kasey S. Mohammad on the crises of poetry or a series of articles on the subject of happiness. And it is a feast for the eye as well as the mind. It is almost unimaginable that someone could, on a daily basis, provide information that not only feeds the mind but feeds the spirit and the imagination, but this is what you will find constantly at wood s lot.

Our first two awards went to Ray Davis and Tom Beckett.
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The Newer Metaphysicals: Art as comfort: some misgivings on a therapeutic poetics. An excellent article by Nicholas Manning with two cents thrown in from Nicholas you-know-who.

Oh, What A Loverly Bunch of Coconuts

Coconut #9

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Adam Fieled, has guest edited OCHO 11/LuLu, a print poetry magazine produced by Didi Menendez of Mipoesias fame. Adam opens the issue with a sharp and touching introduction, which sets the tone for the entire issue: "This poetry is a tough gig, isn't it? We don't do it to become celebrities, because the machinery is not there to turn us into celebrities. I would like to think that the reasons for pursuing this ancient, contemporary, always relevant art form are spiritual." Read the whole introduction, and some of the poetry, and do consider purchasing it, by clicking on "preview this book" on the LuLu link above. The work in the issue matches the promises and premises of the introduction. There is an overall quality to this charming collection that has entirely its own character: not flip, not pretentious, not "different": merely and wholly pleasurable, considered, insightful, lyrical, imagistic, and, in that sense completely personal, present and absorbing. Check out the lovely cover by Hector Milia on the LuLu page, and click "preview this page" to look at the contents. Again: OCHO 11/LuLu.

Meme Corner

Beckett's Best: this just in


Tom Beckett selected Shanna Compton for his Third Thinking Blogger award; his first two were given to Geof Huth and Eileen Tabios.

*fait accompli* will announce our third choice in a few days: our first two were awarded to Ray Davis (who graciously accepted it, though I found out just today he dislikes memes); and our second went to Tom Beckett.

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Another Great 8

Boynton

Contradicta



In the heart of your wound, find your path.



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


Suffering shouts, happiness whispers.

There's No Such Thing As Intelligence: A Catchy Tune

Some days back, Ray Davis mentioned the above post by Joseph Kugelmass that I'm still rereading. Even if I don't agree with all of his conclusions, I am still returning to many of his allusions. I enjoyed his defense of psychoanalytically informed critique, which he notices are sometimes today too easily dismissed by weighted, if not weighty arguments. And he refers also to a blog called Sour Duck, which I read today and enjoyed a bit of metablogging, something I haven't seen much of for a while:

Sour Duck admits to some ambivalence about the stylistic limitations of blog writing, but feels that, in this context, content makes it all worth it. Kind of like, say, relationships.

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Perusing Ray Davis' loglist

Acephalous (Scott Eric Kaufman)

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Mark Young's *Lunch Poem*
Gamma Ways

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First New Katie Degentesh Post in Two Months

Bloggedy-Blog Blog

Further comments on *There is No Such Thing as Intelligence* The Kugelmass Episodes

It’s hard to imagine a more passionate defender of “brilliance” than Bloom, so I can see why you you brought him in. But I still think his *The Anxiety of Influence*has a lot to offer.

Some of my thoughts about your essay come out of working as a school social worker in NY for 25 years. I often get the feeling that in schools, and in society in general, the less people recognize the given talents and abilities of others, the more shrewdness is a valued and admired substitute for thinking.What happens when there is no status to be earned by intellectual accomplishments, according to the common sense idea that “if you’re so smart why aren’t you rich?” I just finished reading Gissing’s *New Grub Street.* In part, it seems to me, the book is an indictment of contemporary culture’s inability to benefit from the talents of those who cannot transpose their intellectual abilities into saleable skills. What would Gissing say now? I’ll bet there are not a few poverty stricken bloggers out there; and who can make a living as an adjunct? Edwin Reardon, the main character in *New Grub Street* dies clearly as a result of disease brought on by malnutrition. He had written a couple of brilliant novels and waited too long to take a job as clerk because, if he didn’t work as a brilliant intellectual, how were people to know he was one? In a rational and responsible society, it seems to me, it would be considered unethical to underrate people because the visible results of their talents do not match who they are as persons. People would then appraise others according to what they have to offer, not according to what they have been able to sell in themselves.

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OCHO 11is available from LuLu.

as is our own

Free Fall

The publisher, Mark Young, had this to say about Free Fall:

gamma ways

Happy Birthday Tom Beckett!

Tom Beckett video on *The Continental Review*

Beckett's *Unprotected Texts* reviewed in the current Jacket (#33, July 2007)

Tom Beckett/poetry/Otoliths

Allen Bramhall on Tom Beckett

Tom Beckett/Steps/Meritage Press

Tom Beckett, curator/E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S The First XI
Interviews/Otoliths

Tom Beckett's e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e- v-a-l-u-e-s blog

hb t.b. Arroyo Chamisa

Tom Beckett is the recipient of our second Thinking Blogger Award (the first was Ray Davis). Tom's blog, Soluble Census, as well as his earlier blogs, have become mainstays of the literary blogging world. Tom is a true thinking blogger if there ever was one: his openness, knowledgeability and dedication to poetry and poetry blogging are legendary. In the stormy seas of contemporary poetry, Tom Beckett's blog is a lighthouse and it is our pleasure to have proffered this token of appreciation. (fait accompli/ 7/17/07)

Tom Beckett today awarded Soluble Census' second Thinking Blogger Award to Eileen Tabios (the first went to Geof Huth)

By George

I've just finished reading the remarkable novel "New Grub Street* by George Gissing. For the past few years I've been searching out early novels that reveal underlying factors leading to the reality of social life as it is lived today. I've been fascinated by the work of Flaubert. Dickens, Wharton, Dreiser, James, Maugham and Orwell, to name a few, partcularly Flaubert's *Sentimental Education*, Orwell's *Keep the Apidistra Flying*, Wharton's *House of Mirth*, Dickens' *David Copperfield*, Maugham's "Of Human Bondage*, Dreiser's *Sister Carrie.*, and James' "Washington Square*. I've been trying to trace themes and connections in these writers, and have been garnering impressions and ideas about prophetic and predictive qualities in the turn of the century and early 20th century realist novel.Any suggestions? Please write to me at nickpoetique@earthlink.net.

The remarkable influence of George Gissing on George Orwell is discussed in an interesting essay I found today on the George Gissing site.

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E ratio9 edited by Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino is just out.

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Veni, Vidi, Vici

Tom Beckett (Soluble Census) has chosen the pied piper of Vispo as the recipient of his first Thinking Blogger award.

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pseudopodium loglist

The second selection, in our ongoing perusal of Ray Davis' loglist is the wonderfully titled
Languor Management

Tom Marches On

Tom Beckett kindly responds and accepts our Thinking Blogger Award and promises to continue the meme.

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While The Boss is Out to Lunch

check out The Process of Avant-Garde Practice, a longish essay on William Watkins' Blog

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Rain, Rain Go Away

but until it does, check out Amy King's Links
which include tons of audio interviews she has conducted, including one with Elaine Equi

King of Brooklyn
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Too Warm? Take Off Your

July Jacket and read on...
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
If The Truth Be Told

Tracie Morris and Charles Bernstein sing a duet in
The Brooklyn Rail
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Rachel Maddow

our recent Provincetown neighbor interviews Steve Buscemi, our Park Slope neighbor
today on The Rachel Maddow Show | Air America Radio
Steve Buscemi will be in studio talking about his latest film

Tom Beckett

is the recipient of our second Thinking Blogger Award. Tom's blog, Soluble Census, as well as his earlier blogs, have become mainstays of the literary blogging world. Tom is a true thinking blogger if there ever was one: his openness, knowledgeability and dedication to poetry and poetry blogging are legendary. In the stormy seas of contemporary poetry, Tom Beckett's blog is a lighthouse and it is our pleasure to proffer this token of appreciation.

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pseudopodium loglist bloggers

The very first link we came across on the pseudopodium loglist is a gold nugget. Check outLink Machine

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On My Desk

Our New Orwell?

*Alibi* by Joseph Kanon

Multiple reviews of *Alibi*

*

Toni, an aficianado of 19th century novels loved *New Grub Street* by George Gissing

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Two More Great 8

Jean Vengua

Nicholas Manning

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Jean Vengua, in one of her 8 random facts, mentions she's read all of the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. I was reminded that my friend, the novelist Peter Straub, who has published many terrific novels in the horror genre, is the editor of the Library of America collection of The Tales of H.P. Lovecraft,

Anger at the Scale

Just as Katie Degentesh, pointedly critiques psychological tests in her book The Anger Scale, Kugelmass takes aim at the idea, and specifically, the culture of intelligence, in an essay Ray Davis notably mentions and links to it in his latest post, discussed below, possibly making an indirect critique of the notion of the award I had just presented him with! Enjoy, you geniuses: Kugelmass: There is No Such Thing As Intelligence.

I am not very much in agreement with Kugelmass' thesis. There may be no such thing as intelligence, per se, but there is such a thing as intelligent resourcefulness and this can be taught. Lets not drown the baby in the bathos, Mr. Kugelmass!! Also, check out K's arch reference to Harold Bloom's amazing book, *The Anxiety of Influence*. He seems to feel the A of I was written because Bloom could not create literature on his own (has he wanted to?), in the spirit of those who can do, and those who cannot, teach. Anyway, this is a fine and provocative essay, and our thanks to Ray Davis for pointing us to it.

Ray Davis

Whose blog pseudopodium recently celebrated its eighth birthday, and was our first choice for a Thinking Blogger award, has invited us to peruse his loglist in search of blogs worth thinking about. This is a fine recommendation for a veteran blogger to make, as in my own case, there has been a declining propensity to wade into the ever increasing ocean of new blogs. Happily, Ray takes the moment to talk a bit about himself, and in so doing, mentions Miranda Gaw, and Mark Woods. I see in my crystal ball another Thinking Blogger award coming into view. And who would deserve it more?

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Nobly Disheveled

ursprache

Kyle Schlesinger

has posted an interview he did with us at SUNY-Buffalo in 2000, published by Cuneiform in a chapbook edition of 100. It has not been otherwise published.

"What appeals to me about disrupting nar-
rative structure is the transgression of auto-
maticity. The “automatic” and the machine
gun are apt contemporary images for the
internally terrifying sensation of violence
exactly because 'reaction time' has been
effectively eliminated. No time for pity or
sympathy. Just plug’em. Simply stated: nar-
rative structure = violence. Or, as I put it in
The Boundary of Blur: The cutting edge of
narrative often turns to blood and is fasci-
nated by monsters."

Ray Davis Receives The Thinking Blogger Award

I've been thinking about the Thinking Blogger award. Having received this distinction the other day from Michael Lally, I've decided to pass it on to Ray Davis for his pseudopodium which recently reached its eighth birthday.


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from a Letter from Debussy to Robert Godet, 18 December 1911

"Talking of organization, I haven't managed so far to find what I want for my two Poe stories...They smell of the lamp and you can see the 'seams.' The longer I go on, the more I detest the sort of intentional disorder whose aim is merely to deceive the ear. The same goes for bizarre, intriguing harmonies which are no more than parlour-games...How much has first to be discovered, then supressed, before one can reach the naked flesh of emotion...pure instinct ought to warn us, anyway, that textures and colours are no more than illusory disguises."

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The Best of 8 Random Facts

Tom Beckett's Soluble Census
(It is rumored that Tom Beckett will soon receive a Thinking Blogger Award).

Ron Silliman announces The Age of Huts has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize

Speaking of classics, at his Zinc Bar reading, on Sunday, June 17 (Father's Day), Ron Silliman made the amazing announcement that his UC Berkeley Book, *The Age of Huts* has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize! Hear it for yourself (Ron reads second, after Jessica Smith). It is unclear at the moment whether this means that *Huts* is now a finalist-or was submitted by UC Berkeley for consideration as a nominated finalist- but either way, this is breaking poetry news!

Ron Silliman and Jessica Smith reading at the Zinc Bar

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New listings on our homepage at the Electronic Poetry Center
New
our EPC homepage("New" is under Online Works)

Classic

It is, of course, hard to predict what poems from our era will be seen in the future as classics. Yet it was no surprise to me that when I posted James Sherry's haunting poem "She'll Be Comin' Round" awhile back there were many appreciative comments and links posted on blogs. Here is James Sherry reading what I predict will be one of the poems that will be remembered in most future anthologies of today's poetry:

James Sherry reading "She'll Be Comin Round" via Penn Sound

We've Been Nominated!

by Michael Lally on his Lally's Alley blog for the Thinking Blogger Award, which we deeply appreciate. Check out Michael's other nominees. His blog, quickly becoming an online favorite, was nominated and he was asked to nominate five bloggers himself. Poet Michael Lally is also a successful film and tv actor.

Vengua's Velvet Voyage

Jean Vengua's excellent new book of poetry will include our blurb on its cover. Check it out on her blog

Okir

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Two Art Shows in Provincetown we visited last night were

Moby Dick, the chapters, Timothy Woodman, which continues at the Albert Merola Gallery, 124 Commercial Street, until July 19. Philip Hoare's new book about Melville *Leviathan* will be published in 2008. Timothy Woodman created the cover which is composed of coloful painted panels, each with a symbol for a chapter from the book.

Our friend Elizabeth Fodaski was there with her children and her husband, the artist Richard Baker. Liz told us she recently completed her MFA, studying with Elaine Equi and David Lehman. Liz is the author of fracas.

and

the Provincetown Art Associationwhich now features an ambitious full retrospective of work by the late artist Jim Hansen.

We were invited to these shows by Mira Schor, who, with Susan Bee, edited M/E/A/N/I/N/G which is now available online at M/E/A/N/I/N/G

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Close Listening

edited by Charles Bernstein was published in 1988. Google has placed the entire book online. One of the essays, mostly about found poetry, is our The Aural Ellipsis and the Nature of Listening in Contemporary Poetry. You can read it here:
Close Listening

The Music of Mallarme

""His aim....is to use words in such a harmonious combination as will suggest to the reader a mood or a condition *which is not mentioned in the text,* but is nevertheless paramount in the poet's mind at the moment of composition." That sums it up. I create music and give that name not to the music one can extract by the euphonious juxtaposition of words, this primary condition is self-evident; but the beyond, which is magically produced by certain dispositions of the word; where the word, moreover, is merely a means of material communication with the reader, like the notes of the piano. Truly, between the lines and above the glance, that communication is achieved in all purity, without the intervention of the catgut strings and the pistons of an orchestra, which is already industrial. Yet it's the same thing as an orchestra, but as literature, meaning silently. Poets throughout the ages have never done anything else, the only thing is that today it's amusing to be aware of it. Use Music in the Greek sense, meaning, basically, Idea or the rhythm between connections; in that case it's more divine than in the public or symphonic expression. This is very poorly expressed, in chatting, but you seize my meaning, or rather you have seized it throughout that fine study which you must keep as it is, intact. The only quibble I have to make is on obscurity; no, my dear poet, except through awkwardness or clumsiness, I'm not obscure, from the moment the reader seeks in my poetry what I ennumerate above, or the manifestation of an art which uses- let us say incidentally, I know the profound reason for this- language; and of course I become obscure if the reader makes the mistake of thinking he's opening a newspaper!"

From the Letters of Mallarme
February, 1893

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

Important message forwarded by Ray DiPalma

Federal Trade Commission Do Not Call Registry
 
        REMINDER.... 12 days from today, all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls. .. YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS. They will count towards you monthly minutes.
 
        To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone:
        888-382-1222.  It is the National DO NOT CALL Registry.  It will only take a minute of your time.  It blocks your number for five (5) years.
 
        You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked.  You cannot call from a different phone number.
  
        HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.  It takes about 20 seconds.

Someone visited fait accompli and translated it into

Chinese

The Contrapuntal Conversation

The character of literature is essentially choral. If a voice is lacking, we hear that silence as part of a specific literary texture. New points of view are consistently arriving on the scene, just as familiar characters are making their exit. Our practiced, sensitive listening carefully tracks this contrapuntal conversation, and cannot fail to detect any lacuna. As voices rise and fall, every silence and dissonance makes its statement and is, at least subliminally, eventually recognized and identified.

In honor of Gary Sullivan's Murphy's Laws of Poetry
on Elsewhere

we present the
Seven Ages of Poetry

20-Fanatic
30-Ecstatic
40-Emphatic
50-Erratic
60-Sporadic
70-Bureaucratic
80-ick

Thanks to Mark Young, publisher of Otoliths Books,
who had this to say about our new book *Free Fall* on

Gamma Ways

Breaking News: Rachel Maddow Live and In Person

When Toni and I, on vacation, were walking into town yesterday, Toni decided to pet a puppy walking by. The owner warned Toni that the little thing liked to bite, and in fact the puppy tried to go for Toni's pearl necklace. As we were leaving Toni noticed that this person looked a lot like Rachel Maddow. She, in fact, was Rachel Maddow, and we got to tell her we are major fans, watching and listening to her with great pleasure and admiration on tv on the Keith Olbermann show , the Tucker Carlson show and recently with Paula Zahn. Rachel, of course has a nightly show on Air America: Rachel Maddow on wikipedia She is just as friendly, warm and easy to talk to as she seems to be on radio and tv. She was with her girlfriend Susan and seemed a bit skeptical that she could, as Toni and I hoped she might. soon have a network tv show of her own. She did claim we made her day and she certainly made ours.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
a kari edwards memorial was held at the Zinc bar on 6/25/07

Check out Tim Peterson's excellent piece on kari edwards on: mappemunde

Contradicta



Feelings are not the threat, or shouldn't be. To the extent that at times I feel gratitude and affection, I should expect to feel outrage and antipathy at other times. Indifference is the true threat, the outcome of deadening.



**


Someone responds, I respond. If you ignore me, how can I fail, eventually, to ignore you? Nevertheless, each of us is aware the other is out there, somewhere.

Kate meets Katie: Degentesh on *Every Other Day*

The ongoing first book interview series features The Anger Scale

On My Desk

*the tiny*, issue 3, edited by Gina Myers and Gabriella Torres. Contact thetiny@gmail.com
[Additional info on ordering *the tiny* from paypal at the end of today's post-plus list of contributors, upcoming reading &&
the tiny]


The third issue of this popular and admired poetry journal features a cover by Andrew Mister (issues 1 and 2 featured covers by James Meetz and David Shapiro). This one isn't tiny, in fact it is the largest issue yet, 159 pages with about 50 contributors. Interspersed among the poems by poets who are decidedly not the "usual suspects", at least in the lineups I am used to looking at, are a few quite witty and lively essays and interviews about writing and the poetry scene, made all the more appealing by coming from voices not so often heard before. Given all this, *fait acccompli* is extremely honored to announce that a selection of our *contradicta* is here handsomely included in a poetry magazine for the first time.

from *P(r)etty Sonnets* by Anthony Hawley:

"XVL

they came swaggering, not knowing just how fast
i wish I could write what was said
caterpillar, junebug towards the graveled surface
of every article in the closet
are there any coats like a dalmatian's
bandonian in the desert we are lost each other in
oh cabelleros
when will it be done
when the laundry
seedpods whirled to give the impression of having whorls"

from Mike Hauser and Dustin Williamson *Talking Shop*

"MH: I do think that to write poetry (assuming one has spent time reading and processing the poetry of others) is to create a piece of culture. Speaking anthropo-something- ly the instinct to share would have come with the act of creating then, right? Not that I want to show you everything I write. That's not necessarily what creating an audience means. To me it's sort of like giving something to another person as a gift, so it exists as an entity apart from your own peception of it. But still part of your "receipts for existence."....And maybe then, paradoxically there has to be some level of isolation. I remember a Phillip Whalen poem (I think one to Bill Berkson) where he is basically saying how there are so many people around that one can't get anything done. But that's funcitionalty, or the lack thereof when one is surrounded by distractions. I mean a sort of maybe self-imposed isolation. Maybe an isolation that the poem imposes on itself."

from Jill Magi *My Penelope/Uraveling as Writing (notes on recent writings and visual works)*

"Even poetry drafts become too stable as I open up the computer document, noticing that it already resembles a printed page. Again, I thnk of H.D."....I know, I feel/the meaning that words hide...." When language is too much, I want something to actually touch and reshape. So I push old, nearly discarded book pages and maps away from their bindings and frames, arranging the markers of the written word into something illegible, visual. Noticeably incomplete, with signs of wear and tear, personal use, and distress."

from Kristy Bowen, *In the night theatre*

"there are far too many entrances
and exits. The girls who love
black shoes and vodka come and go
in the blue light, hiking up their skirts
and running their fingers along the edge
of the butter dish.They are easily subdued,
seduced by surgical pins and bottle glass.
Now we'd call them *nervy, a piece*"

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Gary Sullivan, *elsewhere* no. 3, $3.95 contact garypsullivan@gmail.com

Whap! Blam! Smash! This is the greatest issue yet in this terrific series of comics by the man who is bringing contemporary poetry and poetry culture the kind of humor it has long been desperately in need of. This issue features a selection from Gary's ongoing comic *The New Life* which has been appearing for ten years in *Rain Taxi Review of Books*. The mag opens with a useful and able introduction by Eric Lorberer, the editor of Rain Taxi. Included are comic potraits of such greats as Keats, Bernadette Mayer, Diane Di Prima, Paul Blackburn, WCW, Jackson Mac Low, and Robert Creeley. Less known geniuses are also featured in cameos, such as Jerome Sala, Rodney Koeneke, Sheila Murphy, Drew Gardner and Ernst Herbeck, I luciously enjoyed and laughed at loud reading the histories and spoofs of flarf, the language school and possibly most of all the saga of *Swoon*, Gary's legendary courtship of contemporary poetry'superstar Nada Gordon, who on Gary's pages emerges as a glamorous and zany composite of, let us say, Gracie Allen and Marlene Dietrich. There are serious strips too, including those on 9/11 and the bombing of Iraq. In these timely comics, which transcend into the timeless zone that Mallarme termied "pure poetry", Gary combines a razor edged observational wit with huge humanity and affectionate humor, a rare combination in an era where comedy swings wildly between, let us say, the ham and the hamster. And finally, frankly, I advise you to quickly buy this issue. It is incredibly collectible.

more...Gary Sullivan's play *Mozart and Salieri*, and a play by Simon Pettet are being performed this weekend at Medicine Show. Check Elsewhere; also paypal info for *Elsewhere #3*


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Yesterday evening John Coletti (who, by the way opens the issue of *the tiny* discussed above ("i miss you with tomatoes/over your eyes tatooed valentines/on your trachea zippering/each of my ungainly comments"), (and who, I am told, is the new editor of the PP Newsletter-something tells me he will be great at this- as were, say, Jerome Sala and Nada and Gary- I already want to get some stuff in there) read with Simon Pettet. Coletti, of course, is not the first poet to appear to be inhabited by the spirit of Ted Berrigan (Anselm, the former and now retired head of the Project for many years, was present)-did we also feel the presence of the ghost of Jim Brody, I heard it whispered? Who cares, he immediately won me over by talking affectionately about his three times a week therapy, and seemed to admire his therapist, who apparently insisted that JC talk about his reading, much to the poet's chagrin. Anyway, I like the guy fine, as apparently do many others, to wit the packed house at the BPC. But let's face it, the star of the show was Simon Pettet whose reading mesmerized me. And although I am a long standing denizen and citizen of the L=A school of poetry, I cut my poetic teeth in two workshops given by Ted Berrigan and one by Bernadette Mayer. I will not say I escaped unscathed, but I will admit I beamed throughout this reading lit up inside with tons of nostalgia. This was boosted by the presence in the room of the likes of Michael Lally, Marshall Reese and Nora Ligorano, and Basil and Martha King. Simon read from his lovely *Selected Poetry* and his latest contribution, *More Winnowed Fragments*. Simon gets away marvelously with reading his poems twice, and, as I said to him afterwards, you listen to 'em the first time but you feel 'em the second. Simon claims his poems are eternal and no doubt his instinct is correct. He's loveable and generous and as addictive and sweet as Haagen Daz in the summertime.

"EVERGREEN

I come to you
as an eternal person

and tho' I am loathe to go

Here is the calling card of my
immense proximity

and here is *your* calling card

and here is a pine cone

so redolent

You left it
over at my place"

(Selected Poems, Talisman House)


**

"There is a cruel, messianic, dim, tribal instransigence

That gains you nothing.

There is a bull-headed childish baby-tantrum

That can unleash untold consequences

I am appalled by the darkening of the sky"

*More Winnowed Fragments*, Talsman House

**


more...Michael Lally reviews the reading on lally's alley

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Fuhgetaboud a Condo, Buy some Property on The Moon!

Lunar Luxury

*If you lived here, you'd be home by now"
A lunar development from Eldritch Brothers, a Palmer Subsidiary
by Ligorano/Reese 2007

The New Moon
"the odyssey is just beginning
for the discerning few,
who yearn to leave the Earth Behind...."


"If you lived here, you'd be home by now," DVD, 2007

Keep the Change

curated by Meridith McNeal
Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation

Nathan Cummings Foundation
475 Tenth Avenue, 14th Floor
New York, New York 10018

June 21, 2007 - September 14, 2007

Opening Thursday, June 28, 2007, 6- 8 PM

RSVP for this event by Monday, June 25

tel 646 485-1284

AND

New Prints 2007/Summer-SILKSCREEN

International Print Center New York
526 West 26th Street, Room 824
New York, NY 10001

June 29, 2007 - August 3, 2007

Opening Thursday, June 28, 2007, 6- 8 PM

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Addional info on The Tiny

the tiny #3 features work by Andrea Baker, Ellen Baxt, Edmund
Berrigan, Mark Bibbins, Daniel Borzutzky, Kristy Bowen, Joseph
Bradshaw, John Coletti, Rachel Conrad, Crystal Curry, Michelle
Detorie, Julia Drescher, Will Edmiston, Bonnie Emerick, Betsy Fagin,
Paul Fattaruso, Peter Gizzi, Scott Glassman, Sarah Goldstein, Garth
Graeper & Jason Sheridan, Eryn Green, Kristen Hanlon, Mike Hauser,
Anthony Hawley, Anne Heide, Brenda Iijima, Greg Koehler, Rodney
Koeneke, Michael Koshkin, Tim Lantz & Mark Yakich, Lauren Levin, Jill
Magi, C.J. Martin, Joseph Massey, Kristi Maxwell, Ange Mlinko, Michael
Montlack, Marci Nelligan, Nick Piombino, Billy Ramsell, F. Daniel
Rzicznek, Brandon Shimoda, Logan Ryan Smith, Maggie Smith, Chad
Sweeney, Derek White, Dustin Williamson, and Devon Wootten, with cover
art by Andrew Mister.

the tiny is available for purchase for $12.00 by clicking on the
PayPal link below, or by sending a check made out to Gina Myers or
Gabriella Torres to the tiny, 95 Verona St. #4, Brooklyn, NY 11231.

Paypal: the tiny-paypal


Also, please look for a number of upcoming tiny events, including
October 19th at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church.

Mallarme: Transpositions of Reading



from Stephane Mallarme to
Georges Rodenbach 28 June, 1892


"Your human history, at times so erudite, evaporates; and the city, in the form of a vast phantom, continues, or recovers consciousness through the characters, and all that's done with a subtle certainty which instills a very pure effect. All the modern experiments in reading seek to make the poem end as a novel, and the novel as a poem, but there's no doubt the writer is hampered by too many separate items if his juxtaposition is less exact than yours is here: and if he lacks your magic."

**

from Stephane Mallarmet to
Emile Zola 18 March 1876

"A book whose special aesthetics are in absolute harmony with whatever mode of reading its readers may adopt is a masterpiece."

On My Desk


Kate Greenstreet, *Rushes*
above/ground press

"The characters are introduced.
She seems unaware of him and in a kind of trance.
The stems are magnified by water."

Chelsea: Enclosures


Figuring this may be our last chance of the season, Toni and I headed out for a jaunt to Chelsea this past Saturday. We didn't expect much: the latest buzz had it that nothing much was happening this month. In fact, there were few people to be seen as we trudged the long streets between 10th and 11th avenues in quest of transcendence, or maybe just an aesthetic jolt. To my delighted surprise, we had plenty of memorable art to see. What follows is a sketch of that very satisfying day.

First off, we headed for the Pavel Zoubok Gallery, a diminutive affair at 533 West 23rd Street, the perfect scale for its mandate which is to show only collages. The show up now (which continues until August 10), is *In Context- collage & abstraction" This is a fine show- an available treat is a small catalogue for $10, with all color plates from this show. Many favorites in this show, Schwitters, Villegle, Nevelson, Amy Silliman, Tworkov and numerous surprises. A highly recommended show and gallery.

There's a fine show up at the A.I.R. Gallery (511 W. 25th Street) this month, work by an acquaintance of mine and Toni's, Joan Snitzer. The show opened on May 29 and continues until June 23, so you'll have to hurry. These are light and airy abstractions with lots of open space to move the eyes around in and not a little bit of finely delicate line drawing to guide the way. If you like Cy Twombly (who doesn't?) you'll very likely enjoy these too, but I'm not trying to say these paintings are in any way derivative. I found them delightful, sophisticated and charming and look foward to seeing wherever Joan Snitzer decides to go from here.

Moving on, as they so often say these days, and with Toni as my guide I have to because she covers a lot of ground quickly on a visit to Chelsea. In a day of very fine shows this one at the Betty Cunningham Gallery (541 W. 25th Street) was a knockout. Titled "It's All Spiritual: Art from Tribal Cultures", the show consists of pieces that originate from tribal cultures in the Americas, Africa, Indonesia, Polynesia, Melanesia and China, dating from 1100 BC to the early 20th Century. The show was curated by Alan Steele. The excellence of the curating was obvious in noting how incredibly interesting and engaging each and every piece was, very much including the 19th and early 20th Century pieces. Toni remarked how you can see in this show where so much contemporary art derives from; this and the sheer spiritual magic of the show was palpable the minute you starting examining the pieces closely. This is a show that should be the envy of museum curators everywhere. One of the standouts was a group of tiny figures reminiscent of Giacometti, dating from the 12th to 16th Century Djenne culture. The show closes on July 27th and is a must see.

I learned about the book parties at the Cue Art Foundation (511 W. 25th Street) only this year, to the surprise of my friend Charles North, but at least and at last enjoyed quite a few this year. This month at the gallery I liked nearly all the work I saw but particularly the work of Andrew Scott Ross, which, like the 12th to 16th Century piece at Betty Cunningham discussed above was a work consisting of tiny upright figures but these were placed in a miniature mountain landscape constructed out of gray cardstock. Especially after the Djenne piece mentioned above, this piece was haunting and revelatory. But there are other excellent works in this group show as well, including a fantastical painting of two figures in golden flowing robes that open out into biomorphic forms (Shalini Bhat) and some lovely abstractions by Emmy Cho and Maya Onada. Believe it or not, these are MFA award winners (the Joan Mitchell Foundation)- and you can pick up a nicely printed free catalogue at the show. Very satisfying!

Two more shows that follow today's theme of "enclosures." There's Dustin Yellin's impressive, biomorphic "Suspended Animations" at the Robert Miller Gallery (524 W. 26th Street). From the show notes: "For his second exhibition at the gallery, Yellin presents large scale, cast resin sculptures. Some tower over eight feet in height. His works, reminiscent of insects and plants captured in amber, are a fusion of sculpture and drawing. The illusion of encapsulated specimens in suspension is achieved by layering drawings in acrylic or India ink on resin. Yellin builds his drawings, sometimes as many as two hundred, one on top of the next, in precise orientations. The overlap and transparency of each layer reult in an astounding effect of three dimensionality."

I also enjoyed, at the George Adams Gallery (525 West 26th Street) new paintings by Sandy Winters. These are figurative paintings of a fantastical nature, that reminded me slightly of the work of Susan Bee. Hanging from trees are plastic bubbles that enclose strange unidentifiable, yet somehow recognizable drawings of creatures: a familiar landscape is thus converted into a kind of animated dramscape that is cartoonlike yet eerie in a through-the-lookinglass way.

All in all, Toni's Saturday Chelsea tour reminded me that even when your friends tell you nothing is happening in Chelsea right now, if you look closely-and have an artist as a super guide- you may still find yourself astounded.

Two Summer Recommendations

Toni and I are off to Chelsea today, but last night's jaunts are worth telling you about. We saw
The Shapes of Space at the Guggenheim and Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare Theater in Central Park. Total cost: $2 with $7 more for the chicken sandwich we ate during the en'tracte at the play.

Both events were very enjoyable. They led to a lively discussion regarding Ontology. The R & J is the first in 40 years in the park. Mercutio and Juliet were terrific and all the parts were played well.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

An Invitation from Simon Pettet

Friday June 22 at 7.00 pm.


You are cordially invited...


SIMON PETTET and
JOHN COLETTI

will be reading

at the Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery, NYC 10012 (212.614.050)
between. Bleecker & Houston,
(F or V to 2nd Ave / 6 to Bleecker Street )

For Farfalla Press Free Broadsides for the first 50 attendees! -

Blogkatie Blog


Another Katie Degentesh type subway experience. Heading for Manhattan on the #3 train I kept trying to read my book and getting interrupted by these long spiels by the conductor over the loudspeaker system. Just as I began getting bored with his cloying and cheerful "have a nice day" he added: "As the hotdog man said to the Zen Master, 'make me one with everything.'

New review of *fait accompli* (Factory School)

venepoetics

I am deeply grateful to Guillermo Parra for the work he has put into this special review.

Contradicta


Among the greatest sources of happiness is to possess the means within to resist unhappiness.

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

Without the capacity to distinguish the trivial from the crucial, wisdom is useless.

Contradicta


The novice plays to the invited guests, the master plays to the gallery.

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

Listen well to the disputes of the philosophers within yourself, but never sit at their feet.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thanks to Jordan Stempleman for the link to
Otoliths new releases including *Free Fall*
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
to Lally's Alley for Another quote
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
to This cruellest month for the link to James Sherry's classic "She''ll be comin' round
and to
Limetree for the same.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Something Worth Fighting For
Taking on Alzheimer's

*Free Fall* is now available through the

Otoliths storefront

Some images from *Free Fall*
E-ratio #4
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Sheila Murphy interviews Peter Ganick on Ex-Val

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Brooklyn's, In Fact, New York's Best Bookstore Now Has A Blog

Adam's Books

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This just in from Mark Young in Rockhampton, Australia

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

They have been delayed a little by production problems, but Otoliths is pleased to announce the balance of its quarterly round of books — Nick Piombino's by now legendary "visual collage novel" Free Fall, Sheila E. Murphy's first integrated linear & visual collection The Case of the Lost Objective (Case) & Rochelle Ratner's memoir / found text / poetry journal Leads.



Free Fall

Nick Piombino

168 pages, full color

ISBN: 978-0-9803-6590-0

Otoliths 2007

$35.95 + p&h

URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/755973

"Free Fall was created in several steps beginning in July, 2001 when I collected a stack of advertising posters off buildings on the streets of Amsterdam. The serendipity of a period of rain had caused many of the ads to blur and run and to have already partially removed themselves from the walls. In a series of visits I tore down quite a number of them, and before coming back to the US, made a selection. Once back in New York I xeroxed a number of copies of the poster fragments in order to work out mock-ups of the collages, and purchased a 5"X7" artist's sketch book to paste them into. Over the years, since creating my first collages in the late 60's in Rapallo, Italy, I had begun several collage books, none of them completed, so I had some idea of what I wanted to do. I did further xeroxing in Provincetown, Mass. in August. Sitting outside a small cottage near the Wellfleet bay, I made the entire series of 154 collages in about a month. For this edition, the collages were scanned in during March and early April, 2007.



The creation of Free Fall was bookended by two tragic events. The first was the suicide of a popular musician in Holland, Herman Brood, shortly before I arrived in Amsterdam. About ten days after the completion of Free Fall came the events of 9/11.



Based on the art of its streets, Free Fall insistently invokes the celebratory character of this tolerant, life affirming city." Nick Piombino



The Case of the Lost Objective (Case)

Sheila E. Murphy

84 pages, color

ISBN: 978-0-9803-6592-4

Otoliths 2007

$20.00 + p&h

URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/840898


This vibrant collection of new work by Sheila E. Murphy encompasses both lineated and prose poems. In addition, for the first time, selected prints of Murphy's visual poetry, some included in private collections and in gallery exhibitions, are presented in book format. The range of work within these pages attests to the versatility and depth of this poet, and invites being read aloud to reveal the full range of perception and innovative use of language.



Leads

Rochelle Ratner

128 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9803-6591-7

Otoliths 2007

$12.50 + p&h

URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/830227

"The germs of this book began in 1977, when I visited friends in London. As a child, I'd been told I had a speech impediment, but I vehemently refused voice lessons. Then, in a London pub, talking with a friend from the Lancashire/Yorkshire border, it was almost as if I fitted in at last. Without realizing it, I'd probably inherited aspects of my grandmother's accent. And I'd never missed her as much as I did at that moment. That was when I began planning a trip to Leeds, where my grandmother was born and spent her childhood. I knew I had to write about it, and began a series of poems as the journey took shape. Once there, I copied from books and records I'd found in the Leeds library. I began writing down what people said. What I hadn't expected was that, as I later tried to shape the materials, I would find other peoples' words more powerful than my own. Poem? Journal? Memoir? Found text? Think of Olson's Maximus or Paul Metcalf's writings." Rochelle Ratner



They join two other books the other books brought out in this round, Tom Beckett's curation of E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S: the First XI Interviews which was launched early in response to popular demand, & Mark Young's Falsely Goethe, a collection of 101 "day poems".



The First XI Interviews .

Tom Beckett (Curator)

252 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9775604-9-3
Otoliths, 2007

$16.95 + p&h

URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/778361





Tom Beckett's E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S website has become, since its inception in 2005, an important source of information on contemporary poetry and poetics. This book brings together the first eleven interviews from the on-going series, augmented by bionotes and almost one hundred pages of self-selected examples of the interviewees' work.



The interviewees (some of whom later reappear as interviewers) are Crag Hill, Thomas Fink, Nick Piombino, Sheila E. Murphy, Eileen Tabios, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, K. Silem Mohammad, Geof Huth, Barbara Jane Reyes, Paolo Javier, Stephen Paul Miller and Jean Vengua.The other interviewers are Tom Beckett, Ron Silliman and Mark Young.





Falsely Goethe

Mark Young

108 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9803-6593-1

Otoliths 2007

$10.00 + p&h

URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/830205



Day fifty



Today the
postman brought
me "Ventriloquism
for Dummies".


"As a matter of fact, I can't remember laughing as much reading any book of poetry before, especially not any book of putative light verse. These poems, though, are not just about joking when they joke; the jokes are, like the one above, tiny metaphysical statements. They unwrap language, reality, even pop culture (a beast a bit different from reality, even if related to it). The shortest of these joke-poems are as perfect, intellectual, and literary as the best Stephen Wright one-liners. The joke-poem is an instant of insight, a Zen koan." Geof Huth, from a post at dbqp:visualizing poetics .





These & other Otoliths books, including print copies of the e-zine are avaliable from The Otoliths Storefront .

On My Desk

Michael Lally's *March 18, 2003*
(a couple of brief quotes}

"...Is that why now it's life I'm obsessed with?
Or is that because when I watched
the second plane crash into the second tower on TV
a thin blue tube hung from my urethra,
attached to a clear plastic bag, the remnant of a
cancer operation the week before,
unaware an old friend was on that flight,
at that moment incinerated,
a woman who was kind to me when
she didn't need to be?
How many people have died
before you got a chance to tell them what you meant to?
Does it seem there's
not enough
sometimes because it is
too much?
Haven't I said and written more than once
that poetry saved my life?
Did it for you?
Wasn't it the only thing that could stop the war
in my heart and head
over where I thought I was being led
by the clan and neighborhood
and extended family of cops
I was born into a the beginning of another war
when the prognosis was bleak for *our* side?....
Did anyone ever discuss how we obliterated
Dresden,for no strategic reason, or caused
more civilian death and devastation there and
in the fire bombing of Tokyo than with
the atom bombs we dropped?
Why didn't I know that General Electric
got off with a fine and hand slaps
for colluding with the Nazis or that IBM set up
the Nazi record keeping or that we refused
to bomb the railroad tracks that carried the
freight cars full of Jews to their destruction?"

from *March 18, 2003*
a poem for peace
Drawings by Alex Katz
59 pages
Edizione Charta, Milano, 2006
first published by Libellum Books

Michael Lally had some kind words to say recently about the book version of *fait accompli* on his blog
Lally's Alley.
It was also an occasion for a, classic Lally riff- well worth reading- on his ideas and personal experiences concerning poetry, poetics and poetry communities.

Vanishing Texts

Beckett's *Unprotected Texts* are rapidly vanshing-get 'em while you can [via Soluble Census]

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I'll be reading on Thursday, June 7th at 7:30 at the Ceres Gallery 547 West 27th Street NY NY 10001 (212) 947-6100 with Corinne Robins. The gallery is featuring the excellent work of Carol Goebel.


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On My Desk

When I received my library copy of The Selected Letters of Stephane Mallarme, I opened it to a letter to Odilon Redon. Mallarme wrote to Redon on February 2, 1885: "A highly mysterious sympathy made you depict in that delicious mad hermit the poor little man who, in the depths of my soul, I'd like to be; and I'll hang this drawing on its own on a wall of my memory so I can judge the others in a more disinterested way. The head of Dream, that marsh flower, illuminates, with a light known to herself alone and which cannot be pronounced, the whole tragic lantern of ordinary existence..."

**

Yesterday I happned to visit Mercer Street Books & records (206 Mercer Street) and walked straight into *To Myself: Notes on LIfe, Art and Letters* by Odilon Redon, Braziller, 1986. Lately I've been obsessed with the music of Robert Schumann. If you've never heard the early piano works of Schumann, like Papillons, op.2 and Davidsbundler-Tanze, op. 8, you have a major treat waiting for you. I opened the book to this passage (about Schumann): "'Be a noble artist', Schuman said, 'and all the rest will be given to you.' It is because he was noble himself if one understands by "noble" the absolute unselfishness, generosity, expansion and the vivid exuberance of a full and strong soul. Schumann has given his fruit: he has given it, as the apple-tree gives apples witout personal wishes, and without regrets. He has given his heart and his thought, his works, his life in the same way as those who suffer for others, and therein lies the supreme grace, the characteristic sign of profound genius. One cann say this about everybody; one could not say this about somebody like Berlioz, for example...(December, 1915)

By the way, Debussy wrote of Berlioz in *Monsieur Croche* his book of articles about music: "Incidentally, the work of Berlioz, through he pre-occupation with color and incident, became at once a subject for artists; one might even say without irony that Berlioz has always been the favorite musician of those who do not know much about music."

**

St,-John Perse, *On Poetry*, translated by W.H. Auden, Bollingen Series. (Nobel prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1960. "Poetry rarely received public homage. The gulf between poetic creation and the activities of a society subjected to material bondage grows ever wider,..the poet keeps us in touch with the permanance and unity of Being. And his messsage is one of optimism. To him, one law of harmony govers the whole world of things. Nothing can occur there which by its nature is incommensuable with man. The worst catastrophes of history are but seasonal rhythms in a vaster cycle of repetitions and renewals. The Furies who cross the stage, torches high, do but throw light upon one moment in the immense plot as it unfolds itself through time. Growing civilizations do not perish from the pangs of one autumn; they mrerely shed their leaves. Inertia is the only mortal dange. Poet is he who breaks for us the bonds of habit."

Contradicta




Every moment offers its part of a nimble, affectionate melody that counters contentious disharmony.


****



But once in a while play a strong, harsh chord to discourage the bullies.



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Dreamers of the World, Unite


pseudpodium


Ray Davis has some kind words to say about *fait accompli*, blog and book.


Ray: gather ye damn rosebuds, put together a book and get it published!

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"SHE'LL BE COMING' ROUND"

by James Sherry



She'll be comin' round the mountain when the shell sometimes is empty
She'll be comin' sometimes and the shell is an evasion,
when she comes round the mountain
to put in an appearnce
and this is the introduction we're all trying' to come 'round to.

She'll be drivin' six white and well-bred young mares,
She''ll be trying' to be comin', when one of the horses slips on a curve,
but the traces hold her up
like a beautiful horse about to describe
the great vehicle she'll conduct, when she comes.

And we'll all go out to meet her when the well is dry and cracked
and the water is too neutral to hold
even a chance encounter when we're tryin' to be comin'
and breathe too much or that's what I
heard when tryin' too hard to meet her, when she comes.

And we'll all have chicken and dumplings in a context
of the human shell, water in the trough,
the gopher holds, how hot leather is in the desert mining town
except to the horses,
when she comes."

from *Part Songs* by James Sherry
Roof Books, 1978

On My Desk

Selected Letters of Stephane Mallarme, edited and translated by Rosemary LLoyd, Univ of Chicago, 1988

"Leo d'Orfer 27 June, 1884

It's a real punch, momentarily blinding, that abrupt demand of yours: "Define Poetry." Bruised,I stutter:

*Poetry is the expression, in human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the aspects of existence: in this way it confers authenticity on our time on earth and constitutes the only perpetual task there is.*

Farewell, but you owe me an apology."

"Paul Verlaine 8 December 1884

Of course. [Verlaine had written Mallarme apologizing for not sending a free copy of his book of poems,* Jadis et naguere*, but explaining that the publisher opposed such a move on the grounds that even for a poet the cost was not too high. Verlaine asked Mallarme to explain this to their mutural friends]. Basically the poet has no other choice; and his destiny becomes too ironic by far if he has to provide free copies to the hundred readers who would otherwise allow him- I won't say to live!- but to have bread or cigars. In future this will have to become standard practice between colleagues, and, something that's tacitly understood".

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George Burns, *Gracie, A Love Story*, GP PUtnam's Sons, 1988

"Sex is certainly a very important part of any marriage. Gracie and I had a wonderful life together, and a wonderful marriage, and sex was part of it, but not the major part. Probably the most important thing about sex is that it helps sell a lot of books. I have to be honest. I was a lousy lover. Fortunately Gracie married me for laughs, not for sex. Of course she got both of them- when we had sex, she laughed.

Gracie and I always had a nice time together, but after we'd made love she never gave me a standing ovation. In our marriage- I suspect in every marriage- the really important things became, "How do you feel?" "Is the soup hot?" "Want to see a movie tonight?" These are the things that keep a marriage together."

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Poetry on You Tube by Nico Vassilakis from the

Continental Review

and

DIPTYCHS a book of visual poetry is out from Otoliths.

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New poem by Ray DiPalma from The Harvard Review

Rae Armantrout and Elaine Equi

read at the BPC on Saturday, hosted by Tim Peterson and Erika Kauffman. This was the last reading of the season. When I arrived I found standing outside at the door Michael Lally, Anne Waldman, Jerome Sala, and Elaine Equi. Soon after, Abigail Child and others arrived. Plenty of people were inside already. After a few minutes of chatting Tim Peterson came to the door and waved us in. I needed to ask Michael for his New Jersey address as he has a particularly important cameo in my book *fait accompli* and I wanted to mail him a copy. This was surely one of the best readings of the year, if not the decade. Both readers read from new books. The place was packed. Elaine and Rae are close friends and have no doubt been following each others work closely for many years. Both write gnomic, terse poems of infinite wit, shrewd social critique and verbal grace; Rae seems to draw more from irony and Elaine from pop culture but these are only surface qualities. Hearing them together, you realize how much their combined work encompasses what is most treasured and loved in contemporary poetry:aphoristic insight, humor, pungent, but not complaining, satire, compressed imagery and sophisticated, imagistic word play. And this isn't even half of it. There is also not a small amount of tough love and self mockery. I could go on and on but they don't and that is one of the things we like best about them, no? Rae is a fairly infrequent visitor so may I share with you the inscription I wrote in the copy of my new book, I brought for her? OK, I will, thanks:

Dear Rae: Listening to your reading I thought of two things I wanted to tell you about your poetry. 1) It is sharp, but it doesn't wound, so this is maybe one of the reasons why my mind allows your words to go in so deep. 2) One of your poems says that you heard a couple bickering and why not. I am married to poetry and we have plenty to bicker about- and why not? Love, Nick

Next BPC reading is in October.

Contradicta






There is no firm feeling of accomplishment until your friend has emphatically explained to you all the reasons you should have it.




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



It is one thing to appropriate some ideas here and there, but it is completely another to lack the means to discover your own.

Support Small Presses and Magazines:

It's Not Too Late To Sign The Petition To

Stamp Out the Rate Hikes
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Peter Manson's Links

On My Desk


Paul Gauguin, *Noa Noa* , NIcholas L Brown, 1919

"Tehura, immobile, naked, lying face downward flat on the bed with the eyes inordinately large with fear. She looked at me, and seemed not to recognize me, As for myself I stood for some moments strangely uncertain. A contagion emanated from the terror of Tehura. I had the illusion that a phosphorescent light was streaming from her staring eyes. Never had I seen her so beautiful, so tremulously beautiful. And then in this half-light which was surely peopled for her with dangerous appariations, I was afraid to make any movement which might increase the child's paroxysm of fright. How could I know what at that moment I might seem to her? Might she not with my frightened face take me for one of the demons and specters, one of the Tupapaus, with which the legends of her race people sleepless nights? Did i really know who in truth she was herself? The intensity of fright which had dominated her as the result of the physical and moral power of her superstitions had transformed her into a strange being, entirely different from anything I had known heretofore."

****

Sylvia Plath reads-, Caedmon, 50 minute cassette

The Poetry of Sylvia Plath/Stanford




****

Anne Sexton: the voice of the poet, 60 minute cassette, 64 page book

"Tonight I will learn to love you twice;
learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.
Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America back to live like a prim thing
on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come
here,to the suburbs of Boston to see the blue-nose
world go drunk each night, to see the handsome
children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close
on Friday on Symphony. And I tell you,
you will tip your boot feet out of that hall,
rocking from its sour sound, out onto
the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall
and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by
to mumble your guilty love while your ears die."

Anne Sexton reads


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Ernesto Priego, who makes his home in Mexico City, now a student in Britain, opines on mouth-watering
Fish and Chips, a la Roland Barthes


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Mark Young, who makes his home in Australia, muses on the oddities of discovering John Cage's *X writings* at book fair in Rockhampton, and takes note of how much I am enjoying his *Falsely Goethe* (Otoliths). By the way, when Kimberly Lyons, Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan were visiting here last (speaking of mouth watering) to feast on Toni's awesome baked chicken and fries, and store bought Key Lime pie-at the moment Gary was talking about Tom Beckett, Kim had opened Mark's book to his poem that refers to Tom's *Unprotected Texts* gamma ways

(from *Falsely Goethe* by Mark Young)
"*Day twenty-one*

Today the
postman brought
me Tom Beckett's *Unprotected
Texts*. Special delivery.
Bubble wrapped
inside a plain
brown envelope. I
opened it up. That
print smell was
wonderful."


""Day ninety-six*

Today the
postman brought
me a new edition of *The
Selected Works of
Signumd Freud.* It's
full of what
appear at first glance
typos- though on
reflection perhaps
deliberate. Esp. when
you find such lines as
'...he dreamt his
mother fucked
him into bed.'"

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New on Penn Sound

On My Desk


Cesar Vallejo, *Aphorisms*, translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler, Green Integer, 2002

**

"I love plants for the root, not for the flower."

**

"Nature creates eternity of substance. Art creates eternity of form."

**

"My simple anarchy, my great pain composed of joys."

**

"Aviation in air, in water and spirit. Its laws are different in all three cases. The spirit soars the more it weighs and sinks into itself. The heavier the spirit, the higher and farther it flies."

**

"CAREFUL with the human substance of poetry."

**


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Frank Hlton, *Baudelaire in Chains: A portrait of the artist as a drug addict*, Peter Owen, 2004

"'There are moments when I'm seized by a desire to sleep for ever; but I cannot sleep anymore, because I'm always thinking...So, to sum up, it has been *demonstrated* to me this year that I could really earn money, and with application and persistence, a lot of money. But the disorders already mentioned, unceasing poverty, a new deficit to make up, the wearing away of my energy by little worries and finally, in a word, my tendency to reverie have nullified everything.' For reverie, read 'opium'. The former is a favourity euphemism for the drug among all the literary opium users of the time. For Baudelaire, it means a phantom world of dreams and plans and projects for poems,plays, articles, novels, stories- all revolving endlessly in his mind, repetitively listed among his papers but rarely developed beyond that point."

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Tom Beckett on Prime Time

Nicholas Manning announces "The Continental Review: videos of and by poets; the first issue includes a video by Tom Beckett.

a loaf of bread, mark woods' blog, a jug of wine and thou beside me singing in the wilderness; ah wilderness were paradise enow

**

*fait accompli*, the book: Four Years in the Making, with a cast of about six; me, Toni Simon, Gary Sullivan, Bill Marsh and Octavia Davis, iwth an assist from Nada Gordon- and, now, hopefully, you, the readers, who have visited or clicked on this blog, over 300,000 times since February, 2003


*fait accompli* has been available for free for over four years. If you feel an urge to support this blog, please consider buying a copy of the book based on it, published by Factory School, titled *fait accompli* If you don't find it at your bookstore you can buy it from Small Press Distribution or Factory School. Based on many of the responses I have been receiving so far, I feel confident you will appreciate having it.

Contradicta





Sadness offers a hundred words and explanations while happiness has but few and is inexplicable.





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




It is easier to lose love than passion, but it is sadder to lose passion.

Contradicta


Rise above the petty thoughts which viewed as pains will unite into chains.



**********



Anger, hurt and cruelty are helpless without each other.




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Penn Sounds Radio Buzz

Charles Bernstein interviewed re: Penn Sound on San Francisco radio

On My Desk

Again, from Mark Young's terrific *Falsely Goethe*, Otloliths

"Day Fifteen

The pretend gypsy
who is also a
genuine mother
figure tells me
that a storm
composed of the
active ingrediets
from soft handwash
lotions is brewing
again. Expect
more of the same,
she says, unless I
can deliver to her
a 1950's-themed stereo-
scopic 3D extravaganza
of America's entry
into racing's victory
circles within the
next three days. She
also says she has
messages from
all our ancestors."

Otoliths Lulu Storefront
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Did you know David Shapiro was a child prodigy on violin and still plays?

from David Shapiro, New and Selected Poems, (1965-2006),The Overlook Press, 2007

*Friday Night Quartet*: 1, ST. BARNABAS

"My mother said
All surgeons want to do is surge.
And as one took the staples from her skull
She said, Neurosurgeons are not nice.

Mostly blind and leaning against a wall
She told my father, Irv, you can be replaced
God forbid I should sit where I want to sit,
And what's wrong with this chair pray?

Sitting and crying, she said
This is not Chekhovian
Or Tolstoyan David.
This is annoying.

Lying on the angiogram cot, strapped down and hot and bloody,
My mother said, The worst words in the English language
Are these David- Don't move.
And what do you think the best words are: Here's some water.

My mother said,
I'm not wavery because I have a wall
And I love it-
Walls are convenient because they don't move...."

David Shapiro Overlook Press