I'm very pleased to announce that
I am the featured poet in the current
issue of *sidereality*
edited by
Clayton A. Couch.
My section includes my article "Confessions
of a Blog Artist" published
this past summer in *The Poetry Project Newletter*,
edited by Gary Sullivan and Nada Gordon
an interview by Lewis La Cook plus
Bill Marsh's blog report on -fait accompli-
originally published by
San Diego Poetry Guild.
The issue also includes some
of my collages and selections from
this blog. Plus writing and art by
over 50 other contributors!
I am eternally grateful
to all who assisted in each of these
projects, and especially to Clayton and Lewis.

"Hand me that thorazine/I want to read something
That has me in it/ As I am establishing/
I am even as I read/By glomming onto someone/
You offered (the tape's erased))/
Hello are you there/Hello is that you you/
Poetry the theory of heartbreak/
Precisely why one cannot/
Exactly what one wants/"

David Bromige
*T as in Tether*
"Defeat's Defears (2)"
Chax, 2002

The Jim Side "strikes back"

The Blue Kangeroo
follows through on
Mikarrhea's
list of movie montages inaugurated by
Porthole Redux.

**
Mike Snider
takes a stroll through
Blogland Park.

**

Am I really the last person
in the world to know that
Malcolm Davidson
(Eeksy-Peeksy)
lives in Gdansk, Poland?

**

There's more to the UK than
Tony Blair and Britney Spears-
check out william watkin's blog
.

**

Speaking of jolly olde England,
The Skeptic
weighs in on linebreaks and Raworth.

**
Two's Company

Crag Hill's Poetry Scorecard
eavesdrops while
Sheila Murphy and Tom Beckett
discuss poetic collaborations.

**

One Poetato

Alli Warren
knows The Ingredient
for a tasty poemm frite.

"Americans want to escape reality..."
This just in from Mexperimental...Heriberto Yepez

Yesterday Venepoetics discussed
the death of Satchidananda and life and death today under
Chavez in Venezuela. Like so many others, I was a denizen
of the Integral Yoga Institute in the 60's and 70's
and an admirer of Satchidananda,
whose gentle kindness
will be very much missed.

Yesterday, Gary Sullivan
made a convincing argument that Bruce Andrews' poetry is sadistic.
As an open admirer of Bruce's early writing, works such
as his classic "Wobbling" (Roof), and being well aware of his knowledgeable
and enlightened political viewpoints (we've walked together on peace marches,
read together at many readings, he was one of the editors of L=A==N=G=U=A=G=E,
a visible supporter of my own work, etc, etc), while not particularly relishing his work
in recent years, I've been reluctant to openly criticize it. I'm not particularly fond of
publicly criticizing anyone's poetry, because my hunch is that it is so hard to get
an audience for innovative poetry on the whole, and that it is better for contemporary
poets to avoid so much open conflict. Divide and conquer, as they say. As it is,
innovative poetry as yet does not find it easy to get much of a serious hearing,
and it is not that helpful for anyone to scare away scarce readers. And while
controversy does win attention, it often loses it quickly and
permanently after the fight is over.

When Bruce's writing first turned harsh, during the Reagan years,
it came across as extremely apropos. Yet I instantly disliked
the title "Give 'Em Enough Rope." Compare it to: "Stupid White Men."
It is vague and indirect. Who is being addressed? While I knew
what was meant, it also could be misread as just a harsh thing to say.
But at the time it was infuriating and very scary to see the
United States become a fascist state. But that was a long time ago,
and while it is more enraging and discouraging than ever to see cruel
Nazi types rise to power, it is no longer surprising. It is obvious to
everyone that the left (this anachronistic metaphor itself seems to be
coming into question) in this era needs strategy, clear and shrewd
thinking and less invective. To continue shouting and yelling
angry words has long become a banal and
unintelligent exercise serving only to increase despair and
hopelessness, and sometimes divide rather than unite otherwise
allied people in the long run. It just
isn't inspiring anymore to witness a brilliant poet
play the Terminator:-
unless he is planning to run for governor.
And Gary Sullivan's point, as painful
as it may be to accept for the aging
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group
(I can't help but smile and think of a recent
installation at the Whitney that
featured all the comic superheroes
quietly hanging out and dying in a nursing home)
that Bruce Andrews work may no longer
serve to awaken political outrage,
but instead may unconsciously be supplying covert
erotic pleasure, a release from
frustration, seems apt and well timed.
If Gary is correct, the work may then be diverting focus away
from objectives that might more
effectively lead to political conceptualization
and action. Bruce Andrews as dominatrix?
Bruce Andrews as sex spam?
I am quite sure the writer of the
*Sonnets (Memento Mori)* (This, 1980)
has more engaging things to offer.

On Wednesday, October 8 Catherine Meng
issued a call for favorite movie montages. I felt a slight bristle of annoyance,
because this idea tempted me, and at the same time
I remembered a silent promise I made to myself
a long time ago that I would avoid mentioning
movies on my blog. Why? Because most social
conversations get around to this topic -and stay there
- for some very good reasons. I have loved the fact that
poetics blogs stick mainly to poetry, poetics, politics and books-
something you don't hear a lot about when you chat with people-
even at readings! (Maybe because one doesn't have the books
at hand to consult!). So I thought: great idea, but I am not going to give in.
But just now I read Michaela Cooper's
engrossing list, which, by the way, is like taking a mini-course in film.
(Would love to hear more about her screenplay). As it happens,
tonight Toni and I watched parts of the moving and beautiful
*On The Waterfront* as we switched back and forth to see
Jon Stewart interview Hillary Rodham Clinton
on *The Daily Show*. I plan to study Ms Cooper's list carefully
and try to put one of my own together. I will probably have to cheat
though and consult my copies of:
*Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner* (Paul M. Sammon),
*Film Noir* (edited by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward),
*House of Games* (the complete screenplay by David Mamet),
*Alphaville* by Jean-Luc Godard, *Weekend* by Jean-Luc Godard,
*L'Aventura* by Michaelangelo Antonioni and
*Antonioni* by Ian Cameron and Robin Wood.

**
You don't have to take the Fung Wah bus ($20)
to read "Other Jobs For Poets" on
The Jim Side

**

2/24-3/6/73

it

we found that not to be violent
was to be violent by moving the margins
that the assumption of an assumption
is an assumption pipedream of construction
pardon monsieur if I take your ticket
this way to the library of assurances
this way to letters things absence of
wonder at trees the configuration gets
cloudy the t achieves thought by shapes
rising from flesh for instance relax you must
remain unafraid of a negative image you will
take it & again song will assert itself you will
be lying awake aware of thinking gentle abstract
thoughts it will disturb you tumble your coffee
exactly as it was supposed to & take you over

night after night have i lain awake thinking
impossible impossilbe the t chart may be a
catalogue of negativities & my translator is
asleep i nudge him carefully and say teeth
teeth casually as if i don't mean it i always thought
i use to think i used to pretend to pretend yet all
that time i was imagining pretending
i got along that way for awhile imagining pretending
when it tapped me & said no images i really wasn't
afraid of that nor was i afraid of imagining imagining
same old abstractions i thought i think same old
consciousness ame old lined paper
this is the difference between a diary & dreams
it wishes to make friends but pretending imagining
pretending i was much too careful i was sure
it could rip me off so i rambled into a terrific boring
dance a heroic time long ago here in which i am
visited by the great spirit of opening my mouth
without words i can't refuse to say it so i crumble
it into a ball & heave it through a hole in the world
of my mouth same impersonal problems of the
personal same refractions magic & disapproval
ahead of memory it resembles the future & causes
a slip to be made in the cause of modern indifference

1992

Music

From the very first notes in a minor key
You could sense, follow and anticipate the eventual final chords.
And this is why the joy is always mixed with sadness.
And isn't part of the pleasure that these intense feelings
Shake us from our otherwise uncomprehending, hypocritical calm?
There was something in your letters that brought all of this
To mind, as I, optimistic as ever, read them here
On this sunny hilltop in Italy. And I am reminded
As I read them that they were not written to me, and
That when words well up first from the heart
And then from the throat and only out of fear form in the mouth
There is a hunger in the receiving of them that can be easily
Overlooked. Then comes the thought that too often
We want things to end, wanted them to begin in their endings,
Final out of the earliest of their subjugated necessities,
Torn from the foundations of houses, wedded to the oceans
Of origin, blued and oranged in the frightful neglect
Of future geometries.

9/1-9/6/94

Few have alluded to that delicious
Feeling of anticipation that continues long after
The act. Entire lilfetimes may have passed
In which ambiguous figures conducting vague activities
Habitually, repetitively, avoided recognizing
The the present is composed of so little that could
Properly be called current. Perhaps Freud,
In his effort to establish the primacy of memories
Best realized this frequent absence of texture to time
In the acknowledgement of so much repetition an absence
Of spontaneity. These edifying concepts have suppled an essential need
Though they have not settled this lingering issue of vacancy,
This annoying series of reminders that our postures
Of self-satisfaction have soothed, even supplanted
This urgent question of experience, this itch
Of dissatisfaction in so frequently finding ourselves
At the commencement of a scream that is, as yet,
Wordless. We prefer, of course, to regard
This neighboring cluster of anomalies, these chuckles
Of relief, that at times we can gather into a foam
What seems like a torrent of fizz, which just as quickly
Settled down to an even level of the liquid
We were just sipping as we turned the pages
Of a book that perhaps, in retrospect, we were reading
A bit too avidly, only noticed when we tried to explain
To a friend what was so wonderful, and could not find
A simple concrete example, but again pointed to the flow
Of the thing, to its variety of effects which produced certain
Particular sensations. But what, in fact, were these sensations
(Though, again, it is really too soon to be
Asking this question, when rushing has again replaced
An imaginably calmer, more sure footed excitement which, precisely,
Expected an actual future)? We can
Only conclude, alas, that the kind of time
We have so frequently imagined is probably not forthcoming,
And the best we can hope for is to better examine
What we've unconsciously dismissed as a poor replacement- yet
This, in fact, *is* experience, a reasonably
Typical concoction of anxiety, ecstacy, distraction, relief & despair,
All held together by wishes and hairpins,
Already falling apart at the moment that it started,
Zooming, booming , bursting, flaccid & odd,
Lying, standing, turning, stretching & bent,
Embarassed, victorious, diseased, cured, unifed & alone.

II.

If you were flying a kite
You'd depend on the vagueries of breeze
Without charting, plans or technical advice.
You raise it to the skies with a little exuberance
And hope for the best. It would be great if it were possible
To say this is not the condition of poetry
(And nearly everything else, along the way).
Only the the power to wait, to restrain one's feeling of irritation,
However it can be done, is worth anything.
Then everything else will take care of itself.

III.

Now it it is time to go down to the river
To feel the cool breeze against your face,
To watch the boats. There is a small garden,
There is a place to get something to drink.
Soon, it gets towards sunset. Together,
The cool air combined with the bright sun, feels great.
The trees against a blue sky look good too.

8/1970

even if my poems belong here only by dint of being dead leaves in my own imagination
dint dead leaves imagination
frustration.
trois images
in my white rainbow
coat my poem
possibly reads here

(some things
depend on how
much strength)

I am being born of some poetry
to have hunted in the antique cave
of the mind for certain metal objects

"poems are dead
leaves"
if nothing else

(1) state the situation clearly
(2) change everything immediately

mind feeding the mind
arguments
against action

there is no self-protecting device
*if it can't be done in five minutes
sometimes I won't want to do it*

Be patient
with
yourself

even if my poem belongs here by being dead leaves
even if
my
poem
belongs here
by
dint of
something
else

3/8/84

Seeing what has already been seen, the
"story" proceeds by twists and turns which,
on close inspection, do not connect. So much
so that an interval, when measured
closely, consists of varied units of time, different
types of time which can only be quantified in
comparatively gross terms.

There is an aspect of experience
which transcends what we know to be our
own identities. Identity is a construct which
we build as a topmost layer to fend off
the destructive potential of the
actuality. If the
identity is capable of mediating between
the exterior reality and the innermost
sensors of experience then this inmost
sensor is all the more enabled to function
smoothly despite the corrosive potential of the
actuality.

In this sense, the social construct of
time itself is dependent on the deepest
and longest lasting collaborative venture.
[this paragraph deleted in the notebook]
*

Time is a human construct. To grasp
its deepest meaning experientially is one
of the highest challenges of being. Einstein's...
[next page not yet located]

:: fait accompli ::
spellbound speculations- time travel

(((((BLOGLINK)))))(((((CRUSH)))))((((((LIST)))) (New Links) (Unchanged-posted 9/25/03)

((((((THESE))))(((((BLOGS)))))(((((ARE)))))((((((HOT))))))

Stick Poet Superhero

Brand New Insects

Super Deluxe Good Poems

The Philly Sound

Allodox

Venepoetics

Savoradin.com

[nonlinear poetry]

My Thoughts Thinking Through Nick Moudry

Kill Me Again

Rockets and Sentries

Automobile Xerox

TJ Desc

Derailed Commodity...Alexander Trimble Young

la photo du jour

Poop Chute...Brooke Nelson

This Journal

Poetry Hut...Jully Dybka

Semioanalysis Discoteche

Surf Poetry Collaborative

Fishblog

Squirrels In My Attic

Mosses from an Old Manse

Finish Your Phrase

******

I attended a terrific reading today
at the Bowery Poetry Club given by
two of my all-time favorite poets,
Lynne Dreyer and Steve McCaffery.
Lynne is from DC and Steve is from
Toronto (teaches at York U) and both
read great new work. Bob Holman,the
owner and master poetry impresario
met me at the door with a kind reference
to my continued presence here in blogland.
Lynne read first, introduced by Nada Gordon,
and these exciting readings would have been
worth going to just to listen to Nada's introduction.
Nada must be a great teacher because she is so
easy to listen to at a podium (maybe a few of you
old time bloggers remember the phrase
"kick the podium" and what that signifiies).
She had great things to say about Lynne's work
but I don't remember most of them because
I was unfortunately too busy being jealous of how
relaxed she is onstage, and thinking how I wish
I could be like that when I read- especially
since I will be standing in exactly the same spot
there in two weeks (please come if you can.) I do
remember that she mentioned that Lynne
hasn't published much since her Roof book
*White Museum* that came out in 1986. Lynne
read truly moving, great new work, including a piece
that dealt sensitively and lyrically with her feelings
about her hiatus from writing and how she felt about
writing now (excited and gratified, I think).
My bet is that her piece "Keeper" will show up
in print sometime soon.

Steve McCaffery read a number of hilarious and
brilliantly witty works including one that he said
dealt with his feelings about entering into
male menopause. The piece was riotously funny,
and kept the packed audience laughing throughout.
It included the unforgettable line
(afterwards he admitted to me it was one of his
own favorites): "I'm too nervous to die."Another
favorite line:"A pocket quide to architecture
or an architectural guide to pockets." There was
another line I won't quote now because I'm saving
it to use when I begin my reading in two weeks.

At this point I want to mention that
Maryann Shaneen was sitting next to me
for part of the reading and I noticed her
taking lots of notes. I assumed she would
blog those notes or I would have copied out more
of Lynne's lines. I have read Lynne's books
*Tamoka*, *Stampede*
and *Lamplights Used To Feed The Deer* literally dozens of
times, (collected in her Roof Book *The White Museum*).
Her books are still the most likely writing I would turn
to in a time of personal stress.
Does this mean a comeback for
Froth?
Let's hope so, because Maryann is a fine writer and
Froth is a great blog. I'm seriously hoping to see a report
on this reading by Maryann tomorrow morning on
Froth because
I miss Maryann in Blogland and I know I'm not the only one.

Audience members included Lytle Shaw, Emilie Clarke,
Jackson Mac Low, Douglas Rothschild, Laura Willey (!),
Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Sally Silvers,
Liz Fodaski, Cori Copp (who was present when
outside at the break Mitch Highfill asked me
what I would be reading at the BPC in two weeks
and when I mentioned that I would start with
my new haikus, her mouth dropped- I tried to
explain that they weren't *typical* haikus, but
I'm not sure that helped), Ann Tardos,
Alex Trimble Young (!), Rob Fitterman, Kim Rosenfeld,
Drew Gardner (!), Sam Truitt, Abigail Child, Miles Champion,
Michael Coffey, Brian Kim Stefans, Ulla Dydo, Cole Heinowitz
and, no doubt, at least two dozen luminaries
I have not yet met, but hope to soon!

As always, the BPC was on a tight schedule,
and as we left, Keith Waldop was on his way
in to read some translations in the following BPC event.

Next week's reading, October 11, again curated by
Nada Gordon (!) and Gary Sullivan(!),
is titled "In Others' Words: Parody and Pastiche" and will include
Charles Bernstein, Jack Kimball, Brendan Lorber, Michael Magee,
Brandon Downing, and Benjamin Friedlander.

And the BPC beat goes on...

11/29/85

Large print into smaller and smaller print=
significant into less and less significant. Mallarme-
different types of print set in varied ways on and
around the surface of the page. Find the intuitive,
the prophetic in the specific details. Maybe it will
smell (for example) like very old paper. So, this
poem composed of large type and then smaller and
smaller type, like a newspaper with large type and
smaller and smaller type restores some of the powers of
the pictographic aspect of language. Speculation:
that the combinatory aspects of the
inguistic and sensory stimuli of experience
can point to a field of untapped or less
tapped resources that could be a source of
a tremendous release of energy. It's possible
that this "resounding" meaning merely indicates
that something is "more" for now only because
it is an emphasis not yet exhausted by
experience. In this sense, boredom with something
more indicates that its power to stimulate is
over for *now*, it isn't necessarily a comment
on the limits of its usefulness. Time=timing.
In this sense, what we experience as time
may be a kind of "space" for the changing
of a choice of materials. Substance accumulates
differently thru knowledge.

One parameter: simulaneity of already combined experiences
another parameter: an individual sensory experience
(duration of one sensory experience)

9/91-2/92

The Phases of The Moon

Life has been engulfed by words
Only silence moves me
An ironic sun
A black hole of incomprehension
And passion evaporates into
Transparent calm
There are no complete entities
Only systems in flux
Breathless and stunned states
The precipice of change

But only when I've placed the silences
(Continual recurrence of the idea of the whole)
At equal distances
Each guarded by its separate host
The person and the transcendent object
For sytactical freedom
For isolation in the individual signature
Not beginning, not ending
Social security for primal insecurity
A tap-root to androgynous species
Combines of doubt bunched into selves
Which is the spontaneous experience
Which is so much less obvious in the daydream
Or the fantasy
Can equivalence of movement calm
Which appraises situations
With a watchful eye to sufficiency

The excitement would be
Waves on the sea
A changing and moving part
On the surface of a medium
Suitable for living within
Troubled by storms above
It watches, distant

You repeat yourself
Said the publisher
Very well then I repeat myself
I am large, I contain Gertrude
And I contain multitudes

You can easily be too thin or too rich
But you can never be too slow
*Che chelida manina*
What cold hands you have

It proceeds
Of itself
Pain and pleasure
Fall away from it
Like rain
Whether outside circles it
Or inside inhabits it
It continues in the names
And goes on, undressed or in
Full regalia
And it's good to have one foot in
And one foot out
Sometimes

Let them breathe
Take from the beginning
The soggy apples that Fall
Dropped pointlessly
On the concrete
Gifted hands, etching a first name
Feeling the too-much which here
Is almost not quite enough
Which snits this world
Its clothes are not on so straight
That you can understand the words
Because you have the book
Things know their range from centuries
Of ignorance
This half is full
What comes before appreciates its place
Let them move
The things done

There are certain things that can't be felt
By feeling
There are other things that can't be said
By saying
There are little things that can't be sung
By singing
There are bigger things that can't be touched
By touching
There are sad things that can't be wept
By weeping
There are complex things that can't be thought
By thinking
There are delicious things that can't be drunk
By drinking

Fundamentally nothing has changed
The mind resists awakening
One morning the stem says sing
Next day it speaks philosophy
Or is it that words are more than what they mean
The shy master of ceremonies (language)
Introduces them
This is impossible: no, stay
Someone is shaking me
The glass is half emtpy
Here's the tee-shirt
Here's the scale
Here's the light

What does a reader want?
The mind dances or regrets
Sounds silence such questions
And words of enigmatic calm
Which make time perish without a will
And something gone- a thing afraid

The agonizing problem
The unspeakable exaltation
The lip service
The paradox of the simultaneous occurrence
Of contradictory realizations
The old moon

What is reading?
Opposites contract
Allowing a subtraction of content
From the object of the declaration
The half moon
Sleight of hand (not slight of hand)
The disappearance (or silence)
Represents disappointment
Watch his face
He avoids embarassment

Here-or where
(We're here)
What we're? What's this?
That's who
That's when

Don't you see how things
Return to us
Sometimes even more so
When we push them away?
If they want to remain
Their shapes resemble ours
But the intentions are similarly hidden
The new moon

The sense that everything's prearranged
Grows out of an appreciation of proportions
The attributes of a sunset are encircled immediately
By other, equally important reflections
This is where time comes in, when there is some
Uncanny that words lead out in front of our sentences
I more than take note
More than something to endure, to admire
Very light hues of reddish yellow
A long line and branches against blue
Which one- but that is a question
Barges-racks-patience
Something that fits into something else
At first, a smile
Quiet, mysterious strings and only that
Then the piano in very soft chords
Each moment absorbed and counter-absorbed
Tubas, and then amulets

The full moon
But all is forgiven in this particular turn
The phases behind a fragment in front
Explanation or exploration
Yet even the facsimile of the event
Had a real present quality which gave it
A lingering past-tense kind of absence
Don't you agree? That we're only thinking
In voices separated out from a cohesive memory
Shattered, syballine
The fact of its mistakeness was not yet
Or only the central thing'
Yet only an uttterance
An open door
A spray, a figure
Far up, over and out
A synchrony, a symphony
Entranced in finding yourself there
Settled in and already gone
The place already part of the next thing
Unfolding, simple presence of a feeling
A delicacy, a warmth I usually associate with music
Memory, next to memory, next to memory

Two things unbelievable together
The human ability to tolerate
And time
More than two, but it doesn't
Matter
The great pleasure of remembering
Blankness of waiting
Incomparable combination
Unnecessary to be so scared about survival
But this too is part of it
The fear and the daring
Pushing us forward
Blankness and memories
Providing the ballast
And exhiliration the wind
And travelled there by its lightness
And by reaction
And bubbled over
Such excruciating times
A storm of locusts
And remembering hard because of pain
Images returning gradually in snatches
Rest, rest

I shall prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
The valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no beyond
I shall prove beyond a shadow of the valley of doubt
I shall fear no doubt
Thy proof and thy shadow
They doubt me
They comfort me

haven't tried playing "Stay Up Later Than Nick" in a while. Well, two words: job market.
posted by Tim | 2:10 AM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hope you find a job you like, Tim. Anyway, at 2:10 AM you may have beaten me, partly because the weather's still nice so I want to get up earlier, partly because now I'm just as likely to blog in the morning, as long as I blog before all those office bloggers get to work.

Weekends? Fuhgetaboudit, work bloggers expect to be paid to blog. But shhhhh, don't tell the boss!

"Get a horse!" Derailed Commodity...Alexander Trimble Young explains why he can't read a poem online.

Now, how do those fandangled typewriters work, anyway, and where did I put that quill pen?

Oops, gotta go take that goshdurned record off the turntable, it's skipping again.

Dad, what's a record?

10/2/99

From the standpoint of true
happiness all of the usual
props for enjoyment stand out
as superfluous.

An idea for a sentence
or an idea for a new
category of sentences.

Observe yourself in your
round of lesser events.
You move again and
again, from place to
place. Look at it as if
you don't know how you
got there. Now, what
does this mean.


10/4/99

"You know much better than
me what is customary in
this land."

The failed poems streak
like falling stars across
the sky of understanding.
This is why a poem must
wear a mask.The poem
that announces itself
risks not being
heard because somehow
it speaks out of turn.

It's hard to get people
to read what you write.
Keep writing anyway.