Beau idéal. Cumming. The fragrance!

Concision in the detailing of method is a catamaran of process.

This is how the morning began.

Wake up from images of classicism and rapid transit. It felt like a high school reunion, men with liver spots. Stacy Doris and a couple of younger guys with portfolios of collaged material, mostly text. That's the destination.

Getting there you wait in long lines for a trolley. Japanese are hardly speaking. I turned to a companion and asked if he was interested in how poetry's put together. It felt unwise.

Sweeping reductions were next. Romulus and Remus. Appetite and style, these are core elements of classicism and romanticism too. Appetite includes style but style directs taste and other pretences of appetite, vocabulary, 'learning,' degrees of influence. A she-wolf looks after style.

Some things are pure style. Syntax.

Boink.

The dudes with Doris reluctantly gave up their texts. One worshipped the other in the name of Quirinus. It seems unlikely any part of this legend is true. Almost certainly it is a copy.

A meta linguistic sequin.

Some bloggers are opening notebooks of drafts, compiling impressive archives of work. Recent example: last three entries from James Cook.

Jonathan's review templates earn the June Ern Malley Didn't Mean It But It's Amazingly Brilliant Anyway Award. Reading his formulae is like getting high on prescription pcb's while sweet-talking James McAuley (Geoffrey Hill?) and Harold Stewart (Jeremy Prynne??) to unhook the toeropes.

Dumbly You Blink

The aspen glitters in the wind what's your problem?
What's going on? Hose you off
Yeah, well, and that delights us
The leaf flutters, turning total crackpot

Thinks you know everything because that motion
In the heat of summer, one of those days
Protects its cells from drying out. Won this round but
Likewise the leaf if I weren't such a nice person

I could sit here all day
Gotta be kidding the gene pool,
Unbelievable, a wobbly stem. Kiss
My ass and the tree danced, jerk.

Do I have the name right?
Sorry, wrong guy. Can you hear me?
No, the tree capitalized showing us a thing
Or two, no, there are limits to saying

When there's a buzz, have a seat --
Love can't change what's wrong
If there's time only for one
You must be at least this

Taste of your own medicine in language
Fuck what the tree did.
Think you know everything,
Dance with me, calling my lawyer

If it happens again doing something
The door opens and you appear
Not quite as it turns out
Next to the image and the aspen in the wind.

Summer achieved. jack kimball your HOUNDS notes pretty much smackdown the whole *review uproar* -- doing. thanks for spending time with the silly little thing...

-- Alli

Hounds
Alli Warren
self-published 2005

A narrow, stodgy and often ostentatiously learned, pedestrian, callow youth with an unpromising future, not a voracious reader of fine literature, a painter without pictures, a radical without followers, a bloviater on par with the windiest, incapable of getting to the point, one who's cacography was really a mess, actually the other bloggers were beginning to gibe at him, you know, a devotee of just one model of probity, his thoughts a jumble of anecdotes, non sequiturs, and opinion, stymied by his roommates' sleeping habits ("That's why I'm awful"), his theorizing an enigma pointing to an impractical scheme for critical improvement ("I have love / in my stomach"), seemingly founder of a new sect claiming its way leads to prose utopia, guided by his bias toward the indefeasible correctness of his own ideas about poetry, a raddled oldster in spirit ("First the damp / and rocky areas must go"), an inestimable adjuvant poisoner of young minds, a Babbit like his forefathers, working only to keep his fellow bloggers down, the value of his ideas negatively affected by their propinquity to "South Dakota," "fuckhead and lacks" and rank monody, rooted to the superlative for prope and thus conveyor of a strong sense of distaff bizarre, former lover of Michael York, myrmidon of laconic types, jackleg poet who bribed council members, the one whose work is described as ear candy, phantasm and troglodyte in character, lacking cachet, ineluctably subtragic ("Garden party vegetable cock"), one who glommed from teenagers ("yanked from them / hills a premonition"), lightheaded, sans bona fides, a practitioner of syncretic forms of mind control, found on a dark November night haring in a rented car through the New England countryside ("trunk full of fiddles"), given to apophasis, wasteful project manager, one whose froth was like another room in a clement imagination, not his, his was a quixotic indecourous embarrassment raising hackles among locals ("vapid immortality"), his letters to the editor referring to 'the sorry state of publishing,' one whose Panglossian ("indolent / citizens should give thanks") habit of looking at the world was troublesome and excessive, a flummoxer, one whose dark clothing and tight bun gave him a melange of zany comedy and self-importance, awkward, incongruous, overblown, incapable of a simple, cognizable act ("helping others get off"), small beer, petulant on the sofa, suer of polluters inspissating legal logjams, lachrymose versifier, nonsalient, beguiler of none, violent in speech, defiler of lit cliques, one who committed verbicide daily, persistently mollycoddled, footless demeaner of post-language, the least puissant rocker on earth, a banana for brains.

On reading four lines from Hounds: "My lover was a new machine / and headless / so I only had / a bit to chop."

(a) Talk shows with no host.

(b) Heliports amid the wash of copters.

(c) Prep courses for perfect comebacks to a reporter's squirtgun.

What are poetry blogs?

It cuts all ways, nah? Anti-literary prequalifications for the ideal, a-poetic reviewer levels the field for the charismatically unqualified. Come, observer-non-participant, speak your way to a soothing, open-ended, ill-fated status quo.

Let's see, who said it better?

I paid for this mic and I'm going to speak.

Critical standards are for essentialists.

Which is to say, keep gabbing.

I agree, that first question, immediately below, sounds aggressive. Let's reconsider it along lines of the reviewer limiting discussion to what he knows, minus all the secret procedures that make his own work 'of the best.' Not to stay solipsistic, I expect a critic to surpass her knowledge as she wipes brains (hers and her readers) clean with the poetry under scrutiny. To expect and get less from critics can still be interesting but never a full "responding to what is in front of them," as Drew puts it, today.

It would also be comforting to finish a review (as either its writer or reader) with a sense that the critic does not hold an unspoken pact with (a) the poet; (b) the poet's adversaries; (c) el diablo.

Siesta time.

Review questions for Friday.

How to estimate value(s) of the critic who praises only work she feels is inferior to her own? A kind of intrepid strategy (is that cartoon thinking??) to keep the discussion down at her level?

In the blogosphere a positive name drop is as good as laying down a line of thought about a poet or a poetry. True or half-true?

Lists of things. How 'argumentative'??

Parallels between the rockets Hoerman and De Deo? (This one is for avid blog readers.)

Selp-published is cool. This week in any case. Mine is the third mention today of Alli Warren's Hounds. It's worth privatizing a set of thoughts to, and ripe for review. True or of course?

What space is there between being mean and lap-dogging? Expound, please.

We orient to the ethereal. I see 20
years of paper. What's this about?
Percentages shift the ease,
Flower guy balling police. Spazmat's
connected d*Face. Managing triumph
begins at Carnegie.

Beyond very pure violence, we
grew up watching celestas wax dim
shopping bodies, comic biker mags
& both water contemporaries dangling
      & centerfolding every shadow, apart
from what's divvied up

Following stars on stage to bend swagger & call
in options sustaining the force field bed
            O underground
20 official records collapse like a situation
we had with the meretricious
            secret belief in blurring.

So you can't repair the vivid astro.
Ask why we find this grueling & meaningful.
We love it how duty calls. A nonesuch scenario.
For now nothing claims these days
& the season & its welkin of interruptions,
aren't we? I mean in the highest sense.

Moving to the state of whopper values.

Jordan, your Tim Davis review reference is provocative! If Friends of The Poet Not Worshipedly Reviewed, Inc. write, call, etc. to speak against a critic or his editor, that's an exercise in cultural Soprano-ship?

Just the fact that there's a tenet of game theory in play may be a huge step toward insight.

As one might guess, I strive for positive mosaics when speed reading colleague poets, but that strategy alone is wearying. And (to use your term) kickass prose composition, complete with thesis, counterthesis, and so on, can't be counted on, either. At least half the hack spin-offs I read are expositorily clean attempting to argue a point -- admittedly, that point is often reducible to ax-grinding, enforcement of collegiality or enmity. Fabulous prose, sure, mosaic (a pile of impressions, citations??), but let's raise the bar. To resonate with the poetry is such an ugly phrase, only a practiced musician, thespian or poet can get away with it. To figure out how you think about others' poetry as you write about it is fairly stupid, except when you deploy invention techniques that are hallmarks of classical composition. To merge poetry and prose is against all the rules, and may be another procedural breakthrough, especially for those who have been disciplined to follow directions and not get caught. Simple to say, but the review should be as interesting as the reviewed, without getting in the way.

A jumbled response to the state of criticism. Alaska?

Hawaii?

I'll admit a degree from Capella U. sounds attractive.

Late coming to Chris Vitello's reports on Carrboro. Scroll to 5/26 & 5/23.

Corrective: Sasha Frerre-Jones is referenced with he. Not part of the body politic of NYC, I've never seen much less met the male poet much less the music critic. So the most immediate post for 6/9, below, has been touched up. The points natch remain. Like her.

The Hat 6
Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar, Editors
Spring 2005

New Yorker music critic Sasha Frerre-Jones syncopates as he senses Jack White of White Stripes may be "weighted" with "mysterious information" warbling into "jumpy" highs, voices "a noisy future and a long-gone American past," yet "never overstays his welcome" delivering "the kind of pain that country song writers spend years trying to perfect." The poet Frerre-Jones heightens that sense of inexplicable intensity with a deeper tendency to syncope, almost conversationally: "We have to leave, so jobs are off," "words are silver and creeped," "perhaps, indeed, crazy," "heft rounds itself up." And he adds this long, great breath, "I was plenty half-settled when you got up in the bunk and started ooching. The fuck." Frerre-Jones's nine poems are among the obvious surprises in The Hat 6. Rachel Loden is another as she makes it plausible for women to call up male beauty "like historians." Meanwhile Ange Mlinko maintains "a pugilist insistence on quiet" inserted into a "shambles" of talking woodwinds (under water), names of flowers (needled), earache (panached), and pillows (hiding sunscreen). Frerre-Jones, Loden, Mlinko, and others in 6 demonstrate that the surfaces of language require information from the jumpy future or mysterious past to represent an otherwise now, something one merely text production-crazed might overlook. In three lines -- not to overstay her welcome, remember -- Jeni Olin waves in an ubiquitous, pain-killer Ave Maria and heartsick but stimulated Jew -- o pilot -- floating across "The Gillete sky." Olin images her poetry out of abandoned personae decimating capitalism or whatever, a cool woman's prodigious, felt cadence. Another sonic boost comes from Jennifer Knox: "I love to masturbate, especially / After a poem of mine's accepted in / A literary magazine. Shit --" This sounds less syncopated than "wicked creepy" Frerre-Jones, and less perfect-punched than Olin, but Knox has got the mystic, suburban drawl down to a pity-pat: "I've been thinking I should / tip the Domino's kid more than a buck on 14. Should I?" That's "crazy good," Frerre-Jones says, more urbanely. Michael Scharf keeps going crazy good, too, in "Contract Law," seizing the givens and extracting services from "the other side." And the sweet ear of Nada Gordon's 'rhymes' "elephants, and so on" with "OUD or BANJO." As Alli Warren "crosses surfaces" with "a submarine, a fundraising fishfry," I realize this is heaven, and there are a few more surprises than can be outlined in this space, and therefore there are many more kudos due editors Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar for all the great information in 6.

Tony Towle's Memoir (2001) is a genuine sleeper. There are more sales and more buzz about it in 2005 than last year, than the year before last, and so on. It compares favorably with more recent bios that, all together, recall, instructively, how we truly behave.

I'm not claiming credit for noting this (credit goes here), but life is good for the mammalian subspecies pen shopper.

Rosa Parks's eccentricity
makes it easy to underestimate
Norman Mailer.

Here's where we work
it's not fun it's work.
As I was saying, lanterns were swaying.

Haiku

You totally screwed up.
If we were Love Boat
you'd be Julie.

Back in bed, she lay huddled with her knees pulled up inside her nightdress. 10 million pieces!

Still lugging their filigreed train, the arts of Japan's exploding subculture. Just kidding.

I brought a salami to the butcher's = Russel Crowe stars with Renee Zellweger as his faithful wife.

Time to whisper back to Nick Piombino and Mark Young for liking May 31. Thanks.

En[T]ry

Talking Chimp was the featured beast in the movie "Barfly."

Six-inch plush Talking Chimp screams when you squeeze him, an "Animal Talker.".

The talking chimp wrote the interlude for a solo record player.

Cinematic artifice can be stifling, especially when it seems a talking chimp in itself.

Talking Chimp is the one creative writers turn to for information, advice and how to pronounce a few words, mama, papa, cup and up, by the use of positive reinforcements.

Congressman, you need a talking chimp.

Talking chimp does all his [her] own stunts.

What is talking Chimp to you?

Here, meet the Talking Chimp Advisory Board, the [creative] think tank that is helping us on our journey to simplicity.

What if we stow the talking chimp for five seconds.

Upon his release Talking Chimp left the country and went to Oxford.

Talking Chimp competes with aliens who take the most menial jobs.

The old man Ekornes introduced himself as a talking chimp.

Somewhere out there there's a flowering space unhurried in its gathering of the first talking chimp.

A lot of the jihad commanders were talking Chimp.

Still lugging his filigreed train, Talking Chimp emerges with his cell phones.

We've been taking a little harder look at talking Chimp.

Unexpectedly, Talking Chimp took me home to meet his family.

Talking Chimp has been with a lot of gentle creatures wearing jeans and racing through the woods, building paranoia.

If you get close enough to Talking Chimp's cage, he'll throw dirt, food -- anything he can find -- while his companion, Tarzania [Ekornes], makes loud sounds that resemble what some call a "raspberry."

Talking Chimp is a sloppy signer.

It's special working with Talking Chimp because he's so smart.

Talking Chimp is reading Tsvetayeva's essay, "Art in the Light of Consciousness."

Talking Chimp can improve erections for guys.

Due to the proliferation of comment spam, Talking Chimp had to close comments on this entry.

I watched a video of a talking chimp, but he only produced vowel sounds from his larynx implant device.

Talking Chimp thought you'd be pleased.

"Let's not do this, let's not make hurting each other impossible to resist," the [T]alking [C]himp said, unable to stop himself.

The next morning [a t]alking [c]himp walked up the shortcut through the garden on his [her] way back from buying hair dye.

A truffle and goat-cheese pizza, for all its ambition, felt contrived next to a [the] talking chimp.

The Talking Mallard Dog Toys sound as good as they look, they can speak for themselves, and they sound so authentic you and your pet will think they're Talking Chimp.

The tale of Talking Chimp is the story of the planets cooling slowly after ages of rain and the seas bearing memory.

Talking Chimp endangers the ecosystem.

I have been an on-and-off listener to this list for several years... this is my first contribution... I found a link to an article about scientists saying they now have trained a talking chimp and I was wondering if anyone's been following the story, and what are your takes on it?

I think I'm having talking Chimp stress disorder.

Spa services await you in[, T]alking Chimp.[!]

Vampire Talking Dog Toys are as good as they look and sound so authentic you and your pet will think they're real, and with each squeeze you can watch the plush, colorful toys come to life talking Chimp.

I'm shopping my talking chimp around.

We are only a step away from the electronic avant-garde of Talking Chimp.

Talking Chimp makes it look easy.

Tyler the Turkey says "Gobble, gobble, gobble, I'm talking Chimp now!"

Talking Chimp spent almost 40 years teaching at Bryn Mawr.

On doit apprendre le code de HTML pour les accents français. Quoi qu'il arrive, accueillez à bord!