New Titles from Fauxpress.com/e
Jim Behrle: Let Me Turn You On
Li Bloom: Cork & Fire
Alan Davies: from This Is Thinking
Brandon Downing: from Lake Antiquity
Michael Gottlieb: 12 Short Poems
Brenda Iijima: Lodge;
David Larsen: Do It In Tha Dirt
Kimberley Lyons: K in P (plus One)
Sawako Nakayasu: Nothing Fictional But the
Accuracy or Arrangement (She
Douglas Rothschild: A Trip to X-Towers
Marianne Shaneen: from The Peekaboo Theory
Click on New Titles.
For 2 dozen additional e-titles, click on Full Index.
9/26/03
9/25/03
9/24/03
For Brown
A lone eye
I've been searching
awake all morning
for that blue whale of a nightgown
with no sound
where there is none
other than the last of the nun, none
not even an I.
A morning bird flew by
with a consonant in its throat
or foot. It was a dud with a hurt.
It said "dad" and "no"
with no sound I alone see
and have done this to me.
So many things done after years of marriage
in the world of celebrating victory over husband
whose clean face I see in the morning – caped
with sounds. Sounds and light are best
together, like us. Can you bear the stillness?
Keep an eye out. The morning is over.
Repeat it until it becomes approval
spreading itself like "I don't know about you"
like a jewel or a painter's word for whale
A vibrating thing with no sound.
No, it's more like the blue while
I'm sleep.
A lone eye
I've been searching
awake all morning
for that blue whale of a nightgown
with no sound
where there is none
other than the last of the nun, none
not even an I.
A morning bird flew by
with a consonant in its throat
or foot. It was a dud with a hurt.
It said "dad" and "no"
with no sound I alone see
and have done this to me.
So many things done after years of marriage
in the world of celebrating victory over husband
whose clean face I see in the morning – caped
with sounds. Sounds and light are best
together, like us. Can you bear the stillness?
Keep an eye out. The morning is over.
Repeat it until it becomes approval
spreading itself like "I don't know about you"
like a jewel or a painter's word for whale
A vibrating thing with no sound.
No, it's more like the blue while
I'm sleep.
9/23/03
For Schuyler
Did I ever get the feeling
on the blackest day
I learned I did this before
in a previous tone of thought
I need to get pregnant?
We're a traditional gay
couple dazed with awe.
Awe, I wonder, a shift
in style as it were
or wished for, feeling
foot floppy, full
forming complete sentences
in Spanish! For the yet
to be to feel the wrap
of manana, one idea of sex
to shoot our own apples –
that's as close as I have
to lush, too-ennobling pulse.
Button the top, Antonio,
for good taste. Postwar
is thus. And I have a boy.
Times are really tough
but that isn't why.
Did I ever get the feeling
on the blackest day
I learned I did this before
in a previous tone of thought
I need to get pregnant?
We're a traditional gay
couple dazed with awe.
Awe, I wonder, a shift
in style as it were
or wished for, feeling
foot floppy, full
forming complete sentences
in Spanish! For the yet
to be to feel the wrap
of manana, one idea of sex
to shoot our own apples –
that's as close as I have
to lush, too-ennobling pulse.
Button the top, Antonio,
for good taste. Postwar
is thus. And I have a boy.
Times are really tough
but that isn't why.
9/22/03
9/19/03
Translated from Tabios.
Sheer Exuberance
Naked, hair trembling, I've had those books for years!
Where I saw a norm I once aspired to
In her pink swimsuit I now walk in her shoes
So I kick deeply but what I need is bitters
And Blake's Ulro and Beulah, a creamsicle with a makeover
Fingers, toes, skin run on helium
Of blood and flowers thrown over a confit
Beyond Eros and.. any nibbles, hon?
And as I swim I see where I go
Never stopping to think what I spare you
My numb hands and repeated motions just inside
Touching the transparent accessories
And in that icy, green appointment
I'm straightening everything I had switched back
For David Hockney.
Sheer Exuberance
Naked, hair trembling, I've had those books for years!
Where I saw a norm I once aspired to
In her pink swimsuit I now walk in her shoes
So I kick deeply but what I need is bitters
And Blake's Ulro and Beulah, a creamsicle with a makeover
Fingers, toes, skin run on helium
Of blood and flowers thrown over a confit
Beyond Eros and.. any nibbles, hon?
And as I swim I see where I go
Never stopping to think what I spare you
My numb hands and repeated motions just inside
Touching the transparent accessories
And in that icy, green appointment
I'm straightening everything I had switched back
For David Hockney.
9/17/03
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
9/16/03
Here is another thought experiment I'm timing for 20 minutes.
I've had a couple of cordial invites from Gary to read "Against Lineage," the essay from Spin Cycle in which the paragraph I discussed, below, appears. The essay kicks off with an assertion that "questions of lineage, canons, tradition, impose upon a particular poem (and even poet) a pre-existing grid," which ill serves poetry and functions more as an aid for "a more vulgar form of politics."
There are at least two lines of inquiry intimated in such an assertion. One would be to detail the vulgarity of politics (X?) vis a vis what I guess are rarer forms (of X??) in poetry. I'm not sure if that's what Chris means to imply, however, since the examples he supplies of behavior, behavior which could be loosely called politically motivated, are in the general domain of poets going about their human activities in nonspecifics. Chris's phrasing, I think, miscues the reader to expect a separation of domains, something like a nongeneralized poet/poem vs. politics. To the contrary, the potentially functional distinction between imposition of a grid on "a particular poem" and the use of a grid to benefit common politics is not illustrated, much less clarified.
Another, more technical line of reasoning would be to outline in some detail how a canon, tradition, or lineage operates as a grid. But Chris does not examine this. Rather, Chris starts the essay by calling on a commonplace division (poetry/politics) that is not clearly defined. An empathetic reader will cut Chris some slack, but not when she reads this midway in the essay.
So there’s these two nuns ... I mean poles. There’s binaries, and dualisms that pose reductive dichotomies. They exist not only between individuals but also within them.
I couldn't agree more, except there is little recognition on Chris's part of how sloppy he's getting in his own praxis. Just as there is no unironic way to commend the following.
…I’d like to at least consider the possibility that the strictures and/or demands that many (if not all?) kinds of poetics makes on its writers can actually stifle to the point where the only "equalizing" outlet can be a kind of ostensibly non-poetic admission of a frustration and rage whose reality may "call into question" or "severely problematize" the very standards for which the poetry itself may be said to be speaking.
Chris is talking about poets' losing it, losing it in "non-poetic" ways that "call into question" (why the quotation marks?) the poets' "poetics" (disciplinary beliefs?). The language here is pas terrible, not so good. This passage is part of a paragraph in which Chris attempts to describe behavior without specifying the characters or the behavior, substituting these details by deploying weird phrasings like "severely problematize" and "ostensibly non-poetic admission." This is not a hot formula.
Fine, I'm 25 minutes into this, so what do I make of my entry into Chris's essay? I not so strangely agree with the thrust of his statements. This is a huge problem, for me, because I don't want to be preached to as a fellow traveler. I do travel with Chris, however (so to speak). I wish very much that this essay was not rushed through (as this response to it has been!). This sense of rushing and attendant carelessness are the final and lasting impressions. The essay digresses in ways that are not amusing or noteworthy. Chris ends the piece by pointing to his teaching practices breaking down hierarchies – an appeal that further underscores that we are traveling together – but the gesture does not *remotely* connect to the grid, vulgar politics, or particular poems. Things here are left too general for my tastes, illustrated in a final snippet appearing close to the middle of the essay.
When I read a Shakespeare play, I read the poetry of a cold hearted character and then the poetry of a sentimental character. It’s only on rare occasions that Shakespeare achieves that "synthesis" point. So why should other poets always be expected to?
"So"??
I've had a couple of cordial invites from Gary to read "Against Lineage," the essay from Spin Cycle in which the paragraph I discussed, below, appears. The essay kicks off with an assertion that "questions of lineage, canons, tradition, impose upon a particular poem (and even poet) a pre-existing grid," which ill serves poetry and functions more as an aid for "a more vulgar form of politics."
There are at least two lines of inquiry intimated in such an assertion. One would be to detail the vulgarity of politics (X?) vis a vis what I guess are rarer forms (of X??) in poetry. I'm not sure if that's what Chris means to imply, however, since the examples he supplies of behavior, behavior which could be loosely called politically motivated, are in the general domain of poets going about their human activities in nonspecifics. Chris's phrasing, I think, miscues the reader to expect a separation of domains, something like a nongeneralized poet/poem vs. politics. To the contrary, the potentially functional distinction between imposition of a grid on "a particular poem" and the use of a grid to benefit common politics is not illustrated, much less clarified.
Another, more technical line of reasoning would be to outline in some detail how a canon, tradition, or lineage operates as a grid. But Chris does not examine this. Rather, Chris starts the essay by calling on a commonplace division (poetry/politics) that is not clearly defined. An empathetic reader will cut Chris some slack, but not when she reads this midway in the essay.
So there’s these two nuns ... I mean poles. There’s binaries, and dualisms that pose reductive dichotomies. They exist not only between individuals but also within them.
I couldn't agree more, except there is little recognition on Chris's part of how sloppy he's getting in his own praxis. Just as there is no unironic way to commend the following.
…I’d like to at least consider the possibility that the strictures and/or demands that many (if not all?) kinds of poetics makes on its writers can actually stifle to the point where the only "equalizing" outlet can be a kind of ostensibly non-poetic admission of a frustration and rage whose reality may "call into question" or "severely problematize" the very standards for which the poetry itself may be said to be speaking.
Chris is talking about poets' losing it, losing it in "non-poetic" ways that "call into question" (why the quotation marks?) the poets' "poetics" (disciplinary beliefs?). The language here is pas terrible, not so good. This passage is part of a paragraph in which Chris attempts to describe behavior without specifying the characters or the behavior, substituting these details by deploying weird phrasings like "severely problematize" and "ostensibly non-poetic admission." This is not a hot formula.
Fine, I'm 25 minutes into this, so what do I make of my entry into Chris's essay? I not so strangely agree with the thrust of his statements. This is a huge problem, for me, because I don't want to be preached to as a fellow traveler. I do travel with Chris, however (so to speak). I wish very much that this essay was not rushed through (as this response to it has been!). This sense of rushing and attendant carelessness are the final and lasting impressions. The essay digresses in ways that are not amusing or noteworthy. Chris ends the piece by pointing to his teaching practices breaking down hierarchies – an appeal that further underscores that we are traveling together – but the gesture does not *remotely* connect to the grid, vulgar politics, or particular poems. Things here are left too general for my tastes, illustrated in a final snippet appearing close to the middle of the essay.
When I read a Shakespeare play, I read the poetry of a cold hearted character and then the poetry of a sentimental character. It’s only on rare occasions that Shakespeare achieves that "synthesis" point. So why should other poets always be expected to?
"So"??
Oops, Chris's sentence, below, paraphrasing Wallace Stevens is ok grammatically. I read his statement that 'claim' and 'value' of experiment were in question. (An interesting duo, that.) But, in rereading, I see the claim part of Chris's sentence is attached to the 'that' clause. Awkward phrasing might be the criticism here. But awkward of me not to see this in the first place.
I'd like to insert my reaction to one passage cited in a continuing discussion/disturbance regarding poets' prose. Here's a 10-minute thought experiment from me.
Gary highlights this paragraph from Spin Cycle by Chris Stroffolino as a "pretty clear" summary of Chris's argument.
If "experimentation" can spiral out so far it ceases to be experimental, does returning to "meaning" and "sentences" or traditional syntax (if not traditional "forms") thereby become more experimental? Or should we cease to hold "experimental" as a value and claim, with Wallace Stevens, that all poetry is experimental? How, then, may I separate the, er, wheat from the chaff? I may discover that what I thought I was reacting against is not really the tradition, or the Western Canon, but a reductive misreading of it.
This is not an argument. The paragraph comprises a trio of overtly rhetorical questions that lead to an unspectacular, mild (perhapsy) speculation that the writer could have been reductionist in his reactions to poems (mis)read in the past.
While I 'follow' some threads from once sentence to the next, I expect reasoned specificity to guide me more of the way to comprehending the expository linkages between the first sentence, for instance, and the second. What does Chris mean when he speaks of "returning" to meaning and (ironic in this context) sentences? How would return be rendered "experimental"? If the writer had been committed to detailing the potential meanings, examples, outcomes of return in the first sentence, then his erasure in the second sentence of the "value" and "claim" of "experimental" would seem far less evasive. As it stands, the force of the second sentence, via paraphrase of a poet who in fact wrote almost exclusively in sentences and always created meanings, is to render the tentative line of questioning in the first sentence unspecial. (Chris, again, signals no awareness of the top-heavy ironies of citing Wallace Stevens, first, within a sentence that does not parse grammatically, second.)
I'm not finding it enjoyable to work over this, especially so since Chris's poetry is a source of continual pleasure for me. He is one of the strongest practitioners of outrage alive. In contrast, my problem with the paragraph above is its exemplary middlebrow academic conservativism, with regard not only to its referencing generalized ideas (traditional syntax, Western Canon), but also to its refusal to do anything with them, much less advance beyond them.
Gary highlights this paragraph from Spin Cycle by Chris Stroffolino as a "pretty clear" summary of Chris's argument.
If "experimentation" can spiral out so far it ceases to be experimental, does returning to "meaning" and "sentences" or traditional syntax (if not traditional "forms") thereby become more experimental? Or should we cease to hold "experimental" as a value and claim, with Wallace Stevens, that all poetry is experimental? How, then, may I separate the, er, wheat from the chaff? I may discover that what I thought I was reacting against is not really the tradition, or the Western Canon, but a reductive misreading of it.
This is not an argument. The paragraph comprises a trio of overtly rhetorical questions that lead to an unspectacular, mild (perhapsy) speculation that the writer could have been reductionist in his reactions to poems (mis)read in the past.
While I 'follow' some threads from once sentence to the next, I expect reasoned specificity to guide me more of the way to comprehending the expository linkages between the first sentence, for instance, and the second. What does Chris mean when he speaks of "returning" to meaning and (ironic in this context) sentences? How would return be rendered "experimental"? If the writer had been committed to detailing the potential meanings, examples, outcomes of return in the first sentence, then his erasure in the second sentence of the "value" and "claim" of "experimental" would seem far less evasive. As it stands, the force of the second sentence, via paraphrase of a poet who in fact wrote almost exclusively in sentences and always created meanings, is to render the tentative line of questioning in the first sentence unspecial. (Chris, again, signals no awareness of the top-heavy ironies of citing Wallace Stevens, first, within a sentence that does not parse grammatically, second.)
I'm not finding it enjoyable to work over this, especially so since Chris's poetry is a source of continual pleasure for me. He is one of the strongest practitioners of outrage alive. In contrast, my problem with the paragraph above is its exemplary middlebrow academic conservativism, with regard not only to its referencing generalized ideas (traditional syntax, Western Canon), but also to its refusal to do anything with them, much less advance beyond them.
9/15/03
First it was Cori Copp, followed by a kind of default (because it wasn't announced) "I quit" by Marianne Shaneen. David Hess says he's hanging up the towel, and now Brian KS. I believe from now on it would be tidier if poet bloggers were to get permission to quit! I vote to appoint Nick Piombino, who happens to be ready for a job like this, I'm pretty sure, as our official poet-bloggers' Don't Pass-Go guy. If you think you're ready to pack it in, please seek counsel from Nick and get his ok.
9/12/03
The poet as a prose writer slips through loopholes to confront cool necessities.
It's disappointing, though, there are beat-up middle-of-the-road bad examples of prose on poetry. Let's turn away and forget them.
Keep them anonymous.
It's pointless to call out names or even cite examples, unless we're ready to meet our enthusiasms, tongue in the other's cheek (so to speak), and compose something at least as good as the poem under the scope.
And the poetry should stay under the scope to convey the origins of the prose writer's empathy. We can look at prosody, lexicon, lulls in syntax, semantic trademarks and such to support and attack a few priorities of more abstract data like theory, strategy and biography.
Frequently occurring words or phrases of more than four syllables would be routinely defined. Superlatives starved or, if needed, expressed exclusively by way of a Romance or Altaic language.
Elaborated analysis required.
It's disappointing, though, there are beat-up middle-of-the-road bad examples of prose on poetry. Let's turn away and forget them.
Keep them anonymous.
It's pointless to call out names or even cite examples, unless we're ready to meet our enthusiasms, tongue in the other's cheek (so to speak), and compose something at least as good as the poem under the scope.
And the poetry should stay under the scope to convey the origins of the prose writer's empathy. We can look at prosody, lexicon, lulls in syntax, semantic trademarks and such to support and attack a few priorities of more abstract data like theory, strategy and biography.
Frequently occurring words or phrases of more than four syllables would be routinely defined. Superlatives starved or, if needed, expressed exclusively by way of a Romance or Altaic language.
Elaborated analysis required.
#5. I'm sinking. But then would I fraternize with a guy who worships at a hamster ampitheatre?
(Yes.)
(Yes.)
9/10/03
I'm opening here on pure adrenaline. It's that damn tooth ache, honneur aux marquis. So, until I'm through with dental work, and without further ado ... Here's my latest Ballingwood poster that came with the DVD I scooped from the trash 'assembled' at the front of the Kristy Kreme on Flatbush and 11th. It's a flash from the 50s, and believe it!
The writing, acting, and direction in (on?) Island of Desire are just magnificent. Linda Darnell takes the then-naive Tab Hunter under her wing, and the story takes off from there. What's definitive about this flick is that you can see Tab maturing right in front of you (or, you know, on the screen), breaking out of his hormonal shell, tapping his inner adolescent for real human sustenance, gaining his sea legs so to speak, finding his true voice as a movie idol under the tutelage of the much older Linda. And what a babe she is for her rickety age, maybe 33 or 34. Here's the cool part. Right in the middle of what might have been an uncomfortable love denouement with teary Tab squirming in a dark corner of their boudoir, Linda breaks out in incoherent fado (deep song in case you don't know that term from reading Lorca – check it out!)! She blasts all my expectations for what might have been just darn boring traditional movie narrative. Wow. And when Tab no longer needs to struggle against the here and now by retreating into trickster smiles that reek of infomercial stiffness and silliness, the action between these two animals becomes almost unbearably nail-biting. In a strange turnaround near the end, Tab invites two teen sailors into his house. "You're the first guys to follow me home, and only 3 hours ago I was balling Linda. It's hard to believe. My gracious, this is wonderful." It's twists like this that make me forget my 5 cartoon projects and 7 translation deadlines, not to mention my root canal. Thanks, Tab! And you, too, Linda!
Whooee. About my translations of Tu Fu, his great great great great great grandson Winston Fu writes me this morning:
I thought you might be interested to know that your own syntactical structures and imagistic initiatives superimposed on my ancestor's original texts bear little resemblance to authentic rendering of Tu Fu's impulses for writing poems. I have the impression you are off, completely off, the mark. Reading these pieces of yours gives me strange feelings and chills, maybe like those associated with repeatedly stepping on something squishy – not repulsive, exactly, but not charming, either. Yours.
Thanks, Winston! I thought the facticity of my intervention was pretty obvious but just in case it isn't: I'm not actually translating Tu Fu. I'm entering into a cross-dimensional trance state/shadow dance with him, a trance dance that in weird ways is being played out and digitalized right now, here and now, and then archived for a larger and ongoing project I'd loosely describe as my cine-document, in which I get to call the shots. Anyway, I envy the way your ancestor – as you put it – dresses his thoughts in far out imagery, and I also admire the way he dresses himself. Those scrolls dripping his sleeves into inkpots are sweet, and stir me in my own work. Thanks again, Winston.
Major obsession: Film makers Marcel Ophuls and Frederick Wiseman used to swim at home! When exercise is a pleasure, I guess, fitness is easy.
Lastly, can I say enough about Susumu Kuwabata and his page-turner Frontier Researches on Materials Chemistry? Okay, enough of "places want us to go home to them."
The writing, acting, and direction in (on?) Island of Desire are just magnificent. Linda Darnell takes the then-naive Tab Hunter under her wing, and the story takes off from there. What's definitive about this flick is that you can see Tab maturing right in front of you (or, you know, on the screen), breaking out of his hormonal shell, tapping his inner adolescent for real human sustenance, gaining his sea legs so to speak, finding his true voice as a movie idol under the tutelage of the much older Linda. And what a babe she is for her rickety age, maybe 33 or 34. Here's the cool part. Right in the middle of what might have been an uncomfortable love denouement with teary Tab squirming in a dark corner of their boudoir, Linda breaks out in incoherent fado (deep song in case you don't know that term from reading Lorca – check it out!)! She blasts all my expectations for what might have been just darn boring traditional movie narrative. Wow. And when Tab no longer needs to struggle against the here and now by retreating into trickster smiles that reek of infomercial stiffness and silliness, the action between these two animals becomes almost unbearably nail-biting. In a strange turnaround near the end, Tab invites two teen sailors into his house. "You're the first guys to follow me home, and only 3 hours ago I was balling Linda. It's hard to believe. My gracious, this is wonderful." It's twists like this that make me forget my 5 cartoon projects and 7 translation deadlines, not to mention my root canal. Thanks, Tab! And you, too, Linda!
Whooee. About my translations of Tu Fu, his great great great great great grandson Winston Fu writes me this morning:
I thought you might be interested to know that your own syntactical structures and imagistic initiatives superimposed on my ancestor's original texts bear little resemblance to authentic rendering of Tu Fu's impulses for writing poems. I have the impression you are off, completely off, the mark. Reading these pieces of yours gives me strange feelings and chills, maybe like those associated with repeatedly stepping on something squishy – not repulsive, exactly, but not charming, either. Yours.
Thanks, Winston! I thought the facticity of my intervention was pretty obvious but just in case it isn't: I'm not actually translating Tu Fu. I'm entering into a cross-dimensional trance state/shadow dance with him, a trance dance that in weird ways is being played out and digitalized right now, here and now, and then archived for a larger and ongoing project I'd loosely describe as my cine-document, in which I get to call the shots. Anyway, I envy the way your ancestor – as you put it – dresses his thoughts in far out imagery, and I also admire the way he dresses himself. Those scrolls dripping his sleeves into inkpots are sweet, and stir me in my own work. Thanks again, Winston.
Major obsession: Film makers Marcel Ophuls and Frederick Wiseman used to swim at home! When exercise is a pleasure, I guess, fitness is easy.
Lastly, can I say enough about Susumu Kuwabata and his page-turner Frontier Researches on Materials Chemistry? Okay, enough of "places want us to go home to them."
9/8/03
Rewrite someone else's writing apportioned without. Look, it's not you. It's me. Maybe something formidable, some huge pile of creepy opening lines, goo and plastic maybe. Try that weird, skeevy guy who's always picking through the communal joke pool.
Get a group of words, then form these words into a piece – oohh, aah, oohh, aaaa-aaaaaaah, ooh, oohh, aaaaah, etc. Whatever girls doing things with boys will allow. Let them have (or demand!) their own form. Let them build a huge sewer treatment plant behind the pull-over where they're making out, updating their will.
Use words in a set way. Well, I finally did. I told the boss you said he should go to hell.
Never listen to poets or other writers unless they appear in dreams, suffering from cunning, secondhand compassion, opening the fridge. Lee Ann loved me and sometimes I loved her too. Never explain your words.
Set up multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank situations. Tonight I can write the saddest lines because she's _______ horny, spiraling, eclipsed. Play with considering every word an 'object' unless no heart was planted in her body. Unless the toddlers' boutique sells whips and chains in the back. Unless you focus her sexual energy on sex.
Eliminate material systematically. Put priorities behind you. When the piece you've written has been 'ultimately' reduced, read it backwards, sex on energy, sexual, her focus, unless you back the in-chains, etc.
Pick any word at random. Vouchsafing. Let mind play freely around it until a few ideas have passed through. All access. All weekend. All gourmet. I'm horny, she repeated. Then seize on vouchsafing her publicly on the grid.
Systematically type over handwriting, derange and eliminate the use of the language. Ignoring alternative energy is no alternative. Fossil fuels are going to remain the major source of energy for the foreseeable future, but we are also working on new technologies to handle hypochondria that should benefit many who do not suffer from it.
One day my performative drive went down, using phrases relating to one subject, thinking about another. Aficionados of the Drudge Report may notice striking parallels. This is pushing metaphor and simile as far as you can. Over the years I've developed a network of sycophants but like no one you can trust. Would you care to hold until I do?
Experiment with theft and plagiarism. A confession: I'd like to achieve immortality through my art but I want to know it before I die. Take an idea and spend a few days creating a surrounding, an atmosphere, where everything that comes up is "in relation." Did I say I loves you? I meant to say Sergei Prokofiev.
Sergei's is the story of someone I knew. He was in my class during the senior year of high school. He constructed a sonata as though the notes were three-dimensional marvels (like sausages) in space. He printed them on cards when necessary. I write as I think. I just stare until something comes through. His grades were good and he was athletic. He had leadership qualities. He was good looking and he could sing. I could never imagine what was going on in his mind but, then, there was no faulting him. How few friends he had! I'm glad I came to see his bride walk past us in the rain. I must be a complete idiot. I don't understand this at all. I'll reread the brochure.
Cut-ups, paste-ups. Today's class deifying a sheet of geese bisques, a nervy anise-induced memoir. The water tower shaped like a topiary, it's exactly as you think, halfway back to the u-turn, stolid tsarina, all twisted steel and sex appeal, as the butterflies used to intimate as they destroyed your sestina. The butterflies're out on parole. A receptionist will see you now. I'm taking the loot and going to deep right field. I'd actually vote for you if I lived in a democracy.
Attempt tape recorder work. Car trips. Pronounce your dire predictions in this space. What have you beside your sack of parrots? You're snooty and sell antiques? It's better in masks, like Monet – I use colors redolent of nature and juxtapose them to mingle in the eye, though for fuck's sakes, not to create illusions of atmospheric light. It's writing of course even when I'm speaking of the mind's future. Tell me this is the future after the coke is de-harvested. Oh, look! this is the light of ginseng-in-autumn, not the light that says let's go out and rehearse too much and then get wasted on belief. I'm standing on the long shadow of nipples on the gravel path. I am at work.
Note what happens. Walking away burns more calories.
Get a friend or two to write for you, pretending they are you.
Get a group of words, then form these words into a piece – oohh, aah, oohh, aaaa-aaaaaaah, ooh, oohh, aaaaah, etc. Whatever girls doing things with boys will allow. Let them have (or demand!) their own form. Let them build a huge sewer treatment plant behind the pull-over where they're making out, updating their will.
Use words in a set way. Well, I finally did. I told the boss you said he should go to hell.
Never listen to poets or other writers unless they appear in dreams, suffering from cunning, secondhand compassion, opening the fridge. Lee Ann loved me and sometimes I loved her too. Never explain your words.
Set up multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank situations. Tonight I can write the saddest lines because she's _______ horny, spiraling, eclipsed. Play with considering every word an 'object' unless no heart was planted in her body. Unless the toddlers' boutique sells whips and chains in the back. Unless you focus her sexual energy on sex.
Eliminate material systematically. Put priorities behind you. When the piece you've written has been 'ultimately' reduced, read it backwards, sex on energy, sexual, her focus, unless you back the in-chains, etc.
Pick any word at random. Vouchsafing. Let mind play freely around it until a few ideas have passed through. All access. All weekend. All gourmet. I'm horny, she repeated. Then seize on vouchsafing her publicly on the grid.
Systematically type over handwriting, derange and eliminate the use of the language. Ignoring alternative energy is no alternative. Fossil fuels are going to remain the major source of energy for the foreseeable future, but we are also working on new technologies to handle hypochondria that should benefit many who do not suffer from it.
One day my performative drive went down, using phrases relating to one subject, thinking about another. Aficionados of the Drudge Report may notice striking parallels. This is pushing metaphor and simile as far as you can. Over the years I've developed a network of sycophants but like no one you can trust. Would you care to hold until I do?
Experiment with theft and plagiarism. A confession: I'd like to achieve immortality through my art but I want to know it before I die. Take an idea and spend a few days creating a surrounding, an atmosphere, where everything that comes up is "in relation." Did I say I loves you? I meant to say Sergei Prokofiev.
Sergei's is the story of someone I knew. He was in my class during the senior year of high school. He constructed a sonata as though the notes were three-dimensional marvels (like sausages) in space. He printed them on cards when necessary. I write as I think. I just stare until something comes through. His grades were good and he was athletic. He had leadership qualities. He was good looking and he could sing. I could never imagine what was going on in his mind but, then, there was no faulting him. How few friends he had! I'm glad I came to see his bride walk past us in the rain. I must be a complete idiot. I don't understand this at all. I'll reread the brochure.
Cut-ups, paste-ups. Today's class deifying a sheet of geese bisques, a nervy anise-induced memoir. The water tower shaped like a topiary, it's exactly as you think, halfway back to the u-turn, stolid tsarina, all twisted steel and sex appeal, as the butterflies used to intimate as they destroyed your sestina. The butterflies're out on parole. A receptionist will see you now. I'm taking the loot and going to deep right field. I'd actually vote for you if I lived in a democracy.
Attempt tape recorder work. Car trips. Pronounce your dire predictions in this space. What have you beside your sack of parrots? You're snooty and sell antiques? It's better in masks, like Monet – I use colors redolent of nature and juxtapose them to mingle in the eye, though for fuck's sakes, not to create illusions of atmospheric light. It's writing of course even when I'm speaking of the mind's future. Tell me this is the future after the coke is de-harvested. Oh, look! this is the light of ginseng-in-autumn, not the light that says let's go out and rehearse too much and then get wasted on belief. I'm standing on the long shadow of nipples on the gravel path. I am at work.
Note what happens. Walking away burns more calories.
Get a friend or two to write for you, pretending they are you.
9/7/03
9/5/03
Translated from Sigo.
I am thrown into an absolute – take a wild guess.
The words are two holes carved into the Earth,
appearing with such speed they reflect the world
as it is, and images I don't care about. It sounds
like a very intense area, innocent as the remains
of not granting my own wishes the past months
return, and it took less than a month – the show
aired July 29, his discharge became official
Aug. 19. All the lines I have said end at some
stupid little place in…don't know the words. Oh,
grow up! I thought of hearing my own shaved,
tattooed and uninhibited written in my notebook.
Who dealt this mess? See above. Keep dreaming.
I am thrown into an absolute – take a wild guess.
The words are two holes carved into the Earth,
appearing with such speed they reflect the world
as it is, and images I don't care about. It sounds
like a very intense area, innocent as the remains
of not granting my own wishes the past months
return, and it took less than a month – the show
aired July 29, his discharge became official
Aug. 19. All the lines I have said end at some
stupid little place in…don't know the words. Oh,
grow up! I thought of hearing my own shaved,
tattooed and uninhibited written in my notebook.
Who dealt this mess? See above. Keep dreaming.
Forgotten Argument – or Lost – Smothered
"I think the Al Qaeda threat is very serious," Stephen Van Evera [political scientist, MIT] told me. We were a long, long way from the corridors of power – sitting on a park bench in Lexington, Massachusetts. "We used to believe there was no such thing as Al Qaeda…They're very skillful. They combine high patience and training capacity and motivation. I was very shocked by 9/11. We're in a struggle to the death with these people. They'd bring in nuclear weapons here, if they could. I think this could be the highest threat to our national security ever: a non-deterrable enemy that may acquire weapons of mass destruction."
He went on, "Defining it as a broad war on terror was a tremendous mistake. It should have been a war on Al Qaeda. Don't take your eye off the ball. Subordinate every other policy to it, including the policies toward Russia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Iraq. Instead, the Administration defined it as a broad war on terror, including groups that have never taken a swing at the United States and never will. It leads to a loss of focus. Al Qaeda escapes through the cracks. And you make enemies of the people you need against Al Qaeda. There are large risks in a war against Iraq. There could be a lengthy, televised public slaughtering of Muslims by Americans. A wide imperial rampage through the Middle East – what do you do after you win? We're not out of Bosnia and Kosovo yet, and Iraq is much bigger. It's a huge occupation and reconstruction, We aren't good at this."
…
Barry Posen, Van Evera's colleague at MIT, who specializes in military analysis, maintained that the mop-up campaign in Afghanistan had been severely hampered by American unwillingness to use ground forces, because of fear of casualties and because current American military doctrine overstresses the benefits of air power. "It looks like we missed a number of opportunities," he said, "and the reason was that we didn't want to take risks. Tora Bora was a disaster, universally acknowledge as such, and never explained. The idea that casualty aversion could play a role here – it's extraordinary. If that's true, something's really wrong. The American people would have paid hundreds of dead to get the Al Qaeda leaders. Or it was pure incompetence – using drones and a bunch of mercenaries and bombs in a cordon operation. We couldn't have done a worse job. We should have put in every Ranger in range. There's no excuse. This is very weird. Then they have this second chance, Operation Anaconda" – the American effort to encircle Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shah-e-Kot Valley, in eastern Afghanistan, last March [2001]. "My sense is, it was the toughest of the Al Qaeda hard cases, very good and gutsy. The commander" – Major General Franklin Hagenbeck – "didn't know what he was doing. He didn't take enough artillery. And there was too much reliance on the Afghans. And, it's clear, they were kerfuffled afterward. They went to the Brits for more troops" – England flew in seventeen hundred marines as reinforcements – "and the commander was relieved," by Lieutenant General Dan McNeill. "They knew something was wrong. Opportunity No. 2 was missed. My guess is, most of them got away. So this is disturbing – a war on terror that doesn't focus on the terrorists."
-- Nicholas Lemann
"The War on What?" The New Yorker Sept. 16, 2002
"I think the Al Qaeda threat is very serious," Stephen Van Evera [political scientist, MIT] told me. We were a long, long way from the corridors of power – sitting on a park bench in Lexington, Massachusetts. "We used to believe there was no such thing as Al Qaeda…They're very skillful. They combine high patience and training capacity and motivation. I was very shocked by 9/11. We're in a struggle to the death with these people. They'd bring in nuclear weapons here, if they could. I think this could be the highest threat to our national security ever: a non-deterrable enemy that may acquire weapons of mass destruction."
He went on, "Defining it as a broad war on terror was a tremendous mistake. It should have been a war on Al Qaeda. Don't take your eye off the ball. Subordinate every other policy to it, including the policies toward Russia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Iraq. Instead, the Administration defined it as a broad war on terror, including groups that have never taken a swing at the United States and never will. It leads to a loss of focus. Al Qaeda escapes through the cracks. And you make enemies of the people you need against Al Qaeda. There are large risks in a war against Iraq. There could be a lengthy, televised public slaughtering of Muslims by Americans. A wide imperial rampage through the Middle East – what do you do after you win? We're not out of Bosnia and Kosovo yet, and Iraq is much bigger. It's a huge occupation and reconstruction, We aren't good at this."
…
Barry Posen, Van Evera's colleague at MIT, who specializes in military analysis, maintained that the mop-up campaign in Afghanistan had been severely hampered by American unwillingness to use ground forces, because of fear of casualties and because current American military doctrine overstresses the benefits of air power. "It looks like we missed a number of opportunities," he said, "and the reason was that we didn't want to take risks. Tora Bora was a disaster, universally acknowledge as such, and never explained. The idea that casualty aversion could play a role here – it's extraordinary. If that's true, something's really wrong. The American people would have paid hundreds of dead to get the Al Qaeda leaders. Or it was pure incompetence – using drones and a bunch of mercenaries and bombs in a cordon operation. We couldn't have done a worse job. We should have put in every Ranger in range. There's no excuse. This is very weird. Then they have this second chance, Operation Anaconda" – the American effort to encircle Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shah-e-Kot Valley, in eastern Afghanistan, last March [2001]. "My sense is, it was the toughest of the Al Qaeda hard cases, very good and gutsy. The commander" – Major General Franklin Hagenbeck – "didn't know what he was doing. He didn't take enough artillery. And there was too much reliance on the Afghans. And, it's clear, they were kerfuffled afterward. They went to the Brits for more troops" – England flew in seventeen hundred marines as reinforcements – "and the commander was relieved," by Lieutenant General Dan McNeill. "They knew something was wrong. Opportunity No. 2 was missed. My guess is, most of them got away. So this is disturbing – a war on terror that doesn't focus on the terrorists."
-- Nicholas Lemann
"The War on What?" The New Yorker Sept. 16, 2002
9/3/03
Translated from the Merwin.
Livestock
Some who are still alive
Get the point
Grew up found a cache
And when they could barely walk
Ran with this
Pasture sea green wood
With the sheep bringing post-its
And crumbs and all the green trees
Came to the gate to find something
And keep it from blowing up
One time boys who have this
Close to finding it again
In the upland sick
The day of the fair set a goal
And proved it was met
Saw young grass spin and now
The hell with it
It came from the Bible
For a woman they knew
And killed her with a rock
Their green voices
Went down on the day
In the gospel flowering honeysuckle
The mingled blood the metal collar
They'd never reveal
Their roots taught the word wages
Picking on the circus in flames
They saw now dancing taking in
The mysterious crop circles
With a real sky
Packing in the senses in spring
The day their mother and the woman
They were pointing at
Came woof feeling like such
An ass wanting to talk
There were those on earth
Watching a tv show underneath them
And there they go
I walked out past the pig pen
Guilty of embroidery dabbled
Eleven years to hide from an asteroid
In orbit far from the cantankerous
Talking trees and the first pigs had seen
Nothing in the shadow dead wood
Thrown out on the track
The mission to summer
That day babbled under the apples and dew
Near dusk near a path to a brook
As we ran with a shot gun
The fever just never broke
Livestock
Some who are still alive
Get the point
Grew up found a cache
And when they could barely walk
Ran with this
Pasture sea green wood
With the sheep bringing post-its
And crumbs and all the green trees
Came to the gate to find something
And keep it from blowing up
One time boys who have this
Close to finding it again
In the upland sick
The day of the fair set a goal
And proved it was met
Saw young grass spin and now
The hell with it
It came from the Bible
For a woman they knew
And killed her with a rock
Their green voices
Went down on the day
In the gospel flowering honeysuckle
The mingled blood the metal collar
They'd never reveal
Their roots taught the word wages
Picking on the circus in flames
They saw now dancing taking in
The mysterious crop circles
With a real sky
Packing in the senses in spring
The day their mother and the woman
They were pointing at
Came woof feeling like such
An ass wanting to talk
There were those on earth
Watching a tv show underneath them
And there they go
I walked out past the pig pen
Guilty of embroidery dabbled
Eleven years to hide from an asteroid
In orbit far from the cantankerous
Talking trees and the first pigs had seen
Nothing in the shadow dead wood
Thrown out on the track
The mission to summer
That day babbled under the apples and dew
Near dusk near a path to a brook
As we ran with a shot gun
The fever just never broke
9/2/03
9/1/03
Translated from ashes.
Aces Wet
What is it? how happy is a habeas on the cocoa tin
that makes the government want to prosecute
as though there could be nothing in the world
but the fullest extent of the law, and as though to confirm
this, today I'm announcing I've decided to get out
and display my gold medals from my devotion to pols
whose judges had the good sense to be pretty fair props
but don't seem to work for me anymore?
All love's bright-bad sweetness – here I feel free –
gleams in laureate pastilles keening b/w clouds,
but the crowd's valve's shut by someone – a fibrous mist
takes my mind off baseball, their stubborn cheeks
and flaxen hair. Nothing further or more ambitious
than the plenary sport where Francophobes eat
Francophiles, jitters for the next phrase to exploit fully
Who to watch? What new celeb's drug thrown in
is this commemorated in blazing script to interdict?
En scene the torches extinguished with pinot grigio
to live again in the middle of a live feed where geese…
No, shit attorneys – turn down that white noise machine!
Who controls this anger management whatever? They've
had their way with me and it's not at all what I've been
expecting phenomenally. I am as I was before.
There are three courses of action for how that was.
Always it's nightfall when I call you Aces. Second,
in a wood some paths are descended, chief, big guy,
and looking out Franklin scorned the intuitive leaps
that led Watson and Crick to a necessity that was
at the beginning as, 3, everyone is telling me I'm
a collectible. Further up there's fog but it's nice
I can't explain it. We should be home soon, it's just
a funny feeling, nearest a dry hearth awaiting us
while being googled. What if I am a drifter
returning with a new season of enthusiasms, could
you still like me, could you vote I liked it except
for you? Lie down with me coming through. Pardon
me. Emergency. Anyway, excuse me. Pardon.
Aces Wet
What is it? how happy is a habeas on the cocoa tin
that makes the government want to prosecute
as though there could be nothing in the world
but the fullest extent of the law, and as though to confirm
this, today I'm announcing I've decided to get out
and display my gold medals from my devotion to pols
whose judges had the good sense to be pretty fair props
but don't seem to work for me anymore?
All love's bright-bad sweetness – here I feel free –
gleams in laureate pastilles keening b/w clouds,
but the crowd's valve's shut by someone – a fibrous mist
takes my mind off baseball, their stubborn cheeks
and flaxen hair. Nothing further or more ambitious
than the plenary sport where Francophobes eat
Francophiles, jitters for the next phrase to exploit fully
Who to watch? What new celeb's drug thrown in
is this commemorated in blazing script to interdict?
En scene the torches extinguished with pinot grigio
to live again in the middle of a live feed where geese…
No, shit attorneys – turn down that white noise machine!
Who controls this anger management whatever? They've
had their way with me and it's not at all what I've been
expecting phenomenally. I am as I was before.
There are three courses of action for how that was.
Always it's nightfall when I call you Aces. Second,
in a wood some paths are descended, chief, big guy,
and looking out Franklin scorned the intuitive leaps
that led Watson and Crick to a necessity that was
at the beginning as, 3, everyone is telling me I'm
a collectible. Further up there's fog but it's nice
I can't explain it. We should be home soon, it's just
a funny feeling, nearest a dry hearth awaiting us
while being googled. What if I am a drifter
returning with a new season of enthusiasms, could
you still like me, could you vote I liked it except
for you? Lie down with me coming through. Pardon
me. Emergency. Anyway, excuse me. Pardon.
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