Chopin Nocturne 27 (Number 1) Artur Rubinstein

Old Crap Mulch Pile- Steve Tills (Black Spring)

Poem 12-04-08- Steve Tills
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Recent dreams by Chris Tiefel, Ryan Vine, Stan Apps, Anne Boyer, Brian Salchert, Robert Kelly and Anne Gorrick on
Annandale Dream Gazette

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-from Ron Silliman's Blog Thursday, December 18
"3. What other poetry-related blog or website should I check out?

There are so many. But let's point to The Annandale Dream Gazette, the only site I know of devoted to the unconscious of poets."

Contradicta




When things get too complicated the starting point disappears into the tangled pile leaving me in confusion with glum stares.




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Count one friend for every time you admitted you were wrong.

Contradicta




The successful marvel at what they know and what they've done. The wise are inspired by what they don't know and haven't done.



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Monsters detract from our willingness to find something to like in everyone. Maybe we shouldn't let them do that.

Two Dreams

Annandale Dream Gazette

Thanks to Lynn Behrendt

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Jan Peerce singing Bluebird of Happiness (You Tube)

Marinetti's Birthday on

Radio Godot Dec 22

Jordan Davis reads Drew Gardner- Lemon Hound

via ululations

Jacob Russell on Silliman's Alphabet

" What is sadder than the small book of well-wrought
poems, none spilling over to the next page even, each pretending to its own completeness."

Ron Silliman: The Alphabet. ZYXT, 985

LIfe by Ernst Herbeck translated by Gary Sullivan and Oya Ataman

"Life

The life of the chickens is red.
The seism of compassion is red.
Life is beautiful.
Seism of the hearts in the body of dogs.
The life of the heart is dear.
The life makes the heavens heer.
Life would like to be longer.
may love live slower.
slowest life is long."


read more on Gary Sullivan's Ernst Herbeck site

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Il Pleut by Apollinaire conceived by Gregory Vincent St Thomasino, digitalized by Mary Ann Sullivan

Il Pleut

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Derailing The Sublime: On Alan Davies Odes

Joe Brainard's Pyjamas

via Pantaloons

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In October 2008, Stephen McLaughlin, Gregory Laynor, and Vladimir Zykov published Issue 1, a 3,785-page document featuring almost as many poets. The pdf was posted at forgodot.com. The poems were produced by a poem generator called Erika, or Erica T. Carter.

The ISSUE 2 document is a collection of the blog posts and comments that responded to the project and/or responded to responses about the project and/or responded to issues that were raised within the discussion (419 pages).

Issue 2

via Pantaloons

MiPoesias

Some Recent Links

Green Integer Blog-Contradicta, with collages by Toni Simon

Venepoetics (Guillermo Parra)-Contradicta translated into Spanish

Gregory Laynor- poem beginning with a line from Nick Piombino

Gregory Laynor-poem ending with a line from Nick PIombinol

Stan Apps on Sarcasm

"There are few legitimate responses to a world in which idealistic narratives are repeatedly used to devastate communities, where devastation is routinely applauded as long as it is for the sake of ideals. With ideals like these we don’t need enemies..."

Read more:
elective annoyance

Notes from Underground


Life as it is lived today underground at times feels impersonal to the point of sterility. This atmosphere results not only from the dire warnings loudly and constantly announced over the loudspeakers in every car, contrasted with wistful advertisements recommending schools for dental assistants or college degrees, but also the atmosphere of trauma within which we have regularly lived has dampened nearly any sort of spirit of connectedness that might be mustered. No one can remain light for very long under these conditions, while the efforts of the nightly tv comics elicit more of a sense of generosity and determination than shared hilarity. The homeless on the train asking for change this week seemed a notch more desperate than usual. Maybe it's just the full moon. Obama's promises of hope notwithstanding, now hovering on the edges of the future, even spontaneous pleasantness and brief polite interchanges, while intensely welcome, still feel strangely alien, or even surreal, after a few moments. Next to me, near my seat, two very small children cling to a vertical metal supporting bar and act themselves, that is, very silly. The parents smile warmly towards them and chat about quitting caffeine. The wackier the children behave, the more serious the passengers become, certainly not annoyed, since the kids were not in the least bit being disturbing. The children were happy, that was all. These moments reveal our social conditions far more than any news broadcast will ever be able to encompass. I think about the bank teller that I go to regularly who demanded I rewrite my signature to match my ATM card even to withdraw a small sum of money and the man who asked for five dollars for the seat he has vacated in Barnes and Noble. It was a try at a joke, and my silence made him add; "Only in New York." Crossing the street in Brooklyn after leaving the train station a car cuts me off rudely. As we hurtle towards a holiday unlike few in many decades in New York, it will be awhile until we feel the emotions that we might expect after such a startlingly uplifting election. I think about my visit with my old friend Alan today and how the conversation, once again, turned towards the Weimar era. We talked about novels by Alan Furst, Tana French, Joseph Kanon and Candace Bushnell that point up moral ambiguities in times like these, recent and long ago. On the bus home, I think the subway is a good metaphor for how I see this period. For the moment, most emotions have gone underground, and as we move inexorably down a dark tunnel, over a route we know all too well, while images of light at the end of that tunnel have yet to appear, we think about them as they have been suggested, yet we seem to endlessly slow before arriving anywhere, holding mainly to an attitude set to endure what is likely to remain a bumpy ride for quite some time.

Green Integer Review- Contradicta collaboration with Toni Simon


Green Integer Review



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Nada Gordon Decorates The World

Ululations

Phillip K. Dick Predicted a Black President

In 1966, Phillip K. Dick published The Crack in Space which had, as one of its characters, a black Presidential candidate, Jim Briskin.

From Phillip K. Dick's 1966 novel The Crack in Space:

"But it was inevitable. Sooner or later, there would be a Negro president....'I don't agree with you,' Briskin said, 'I think there'll always be a hate organization like CLEAN, and there'll always be people to support it.' After all, CLEAN had a point. they did not want to see a Negro president, and wasn't it their right to feel like that? Some people did, some people didn't; that was perfectly natural. And, he thought, why should we pretend race is not the issue? It is, really. I am a Negro. Verne Engel is factually correct. The real question was: how large a percentage of the electorate suported CLEAN's views? Certainly, CLEAN did not hurt his feelings; he could not be wounded; he had experienced too much already in his years as a newsclown. In my years, he thought to himself acidly, as an American Negro.
A small boy, white, appeared at the booth, with a pen and a tablet of paper. 'Mr Briskin, can I get your autograph?'"

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Otoliths issue 11

"Debt springs eternal in the human bank"

"Interior Demolition" (mp3 on Penn Sound)
[From Light Street, Zasterle Press, 1996]

Interior Demolition

Contradicta




When there is little crisis fear is a problem; when there is nothing but crisis fear is a beacon.





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What can easily be said puts people at ease but is rarely believable.

Contradicta




Beauty goes from what you are to who you are or it just fades away.





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Happiness is not the lack of sadness; it is what sadness learns to wear in order to shine.

Contradicta


There are parts of ourselves that allow no effect, either from ourselves on the world, or the world on us. These parts are the hinges on which we allow the portals between ourselves and life to swing, open or closed, as need be.




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Nothing is the place in which everything breathes or stands, moves or falls.

Anny Ballardini's Fall Folio

"Don’t blame me!... It all started on Alan Sondheim’s WRYTING-L list. Dirk Vekemans has to be blamed. His Autumnal poem made the long list of answers that followed. I therefore had the idea of gathering the poems. Not only, I also forwarded an invitation to the WOM-PO and New Poetry List, and to several chosen Poets. Here is the Harvest in its colorful unfolding. I do hope you will all enjoy it."

fieralingue

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Nico Vassilakis on Mike Burakoff's video of Free Fall

Verse in the eye

When you’re drawn to focus. When you’re moved to veer. The trigger’s pulled before you know the question’s near. So ask what looking gives you and twist the eyes reply. The function of its thinking immediate, yes, immediate. This the staring won’t deny. Your brain answers while swerves align, as-best-it-can-it-should, that it knows a further capsule driven, I say driven, further into focus. That your eyes dart here and there as things of interest do & that coming here and leaving have left a stain on you.