Friday, February 28, 2003
Mary Rising Higgins.
Mary Rising Higgins is a retired primary school teacher who takes up old-timey free verse, mostly in the forms of neoclassically-eviscerated lines, long and short, and occasional prose-like paragraphs. Page 22 in her new book )locus TIDES(( begins:
[centered toward right margin]
topaz bird momentaneous here centers bend extremes live from speech box talismans take a turn salt in the wound contrapose
[flush left margin]
consider certain conditions to separate you from pain casual starting lines arrived in
[centered mid-page]
one among many quick build conflicts […]
We're in the middle of a 10-page poem titled "dripstone / model." This selection captures a scrupulosity of tone ("topaz bird", "wound contrapose") I might otherwise find repellant were there no offsetting force directing me to hold off judgment. With regard to diction, I can't say I admire her poetic "talisman," flirtation with cliché ("salt in the wound") or neologisms like "momentaneous." What keeps me reading is Higgins's metaconversation with the processing of these "casual starting lines" and "quick build conflicts." More, when I reread "here centers bend / extremes live," I begin to see this as notation from an intelligence making innumerable domestic 'starts,' dressing 'wounds,' etc. Six pages earlier, the poem opens: "light snow fall morning white and all / then counter with pepper to balance the heavily salted meat…" This is a recipe, of course, write what you see and think you see, spice with conflict, and talk about the seeing and seasoning.
Although the recipe seems limited, the question is, tasty? I find Higgins improves from page to page. For example, a too-literal knickknack reference, "a small dragon handled cup" (p 24) gets recycled as "heaven's brush dragon" (p 64), and then repurposed in this whoa-boy sentence: "Rag deep dragons transpire to catch shoulder perimeter outcomes" (p 91). In her second poem, "to measure," Higgins inserts a prose block subtitled ")APPROACH(" that starts: "Flyby visuals mandate. Direction of travel views differ through a part expected reflects from." This is a better-than-ok representation of partially obscured vision in motion. I enjoy contrasting this word-mobile with another from her final poem: "getting from here to there by / ghetto frame card cliche rifts." The second mobile moves with less fracture, but with more awareness of process ("cliche rifts") and self-critique ("ghetto frame card").
Higgins's ghetto is the Arizona desert. Such a place directs one's attention to sky, leaf, insects, and a number of bird species. It also provides space and vistas for the self-paring-down that seems very much a prerequisite to clearer thinking. In a prose block subtitled ")PERSPECTIVE(" Higgins discloses her own space and vista for making verse:
Up from technoshadow's metal fatigue. Attract shield. Somewhere around liaison stalk closer pares. Where it leads until it looks like a first-time point of light summit-fanned. It could follow even finer structures. Leonid starwound fountain. Coincidental plainsong departure. How you form and step out from inner speech. […]
I read Higgins with the feeling that she updates urges toward tonal perfection found in modernist poetry, not unlike a hermetic Marianne Moore, say. But there are elements of deeper if more confounding self-revelation coupled with egocentric language ("Leonid starwound fountain") that mark Higgins as our contemporary. Her "inner speech" is sometimes at the extremity of self-consciousness, often polyvalent, reminiscent in two ways, then, of Hannah Weiner:
[…] string scree-e-e-e-e how vigilance interferes the series of yelps a singing and we are prepared though not by messengers bigger and bigger pictures digest constructs of dreaming that way in mean verdance and you should be this way's dream photo not modernist the way you expect it […]
Higgins's muses seem mostly female. She includes six pages of "Notes" at the end of )locus TIDES(( that cite snippets of text borrowed from mostly women poets, Kathleen Fraser, Karen Mac Cormack, Sheila Murphy, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Susan Gervitz, Alice Notley, Kristin Prevallet, Julie Patton, and Elaine Equi among the more familiar names, as well as women poets from Arizona and a number of European countries. The text sampling reinforces the impression that Higgins is conversing with her own poetry in this sense by picking up distinctly feminine if not feminist pieces as "starting lines" to build her many kinds of "conflict."
I've said that I spot progress or improvement from page to page. I need to qualify this by restating what should be obvious, how satisfying many of the first and middle sections of )locus TIDES(( are. Still, her last page of poetry, another prose block, wildly confirms a deepening self-conciousness or progress, if you will: "Learning curve push skews through apple the orange transliterates. During that historic walk to the ATM dragging your plank of dark light, at whiplash collar check off the goal applies one time." I can't find a briefer example of Higgins's awareness of self-struggle -- dark light stands in as her 'conflict' in writing important-sounding poetry vs. the 'casual start' implicit in such a quotidian reference as the ATM. Indeed, her sense of struggle is summed up as a 'learning curve' that allows her to evoke not only the literal orange but also the skew(er)ed, transliterated apple. More fundamental, that struggle is also apparent in her realization that the goal for her is to capture this one event that happens only this "one time."
)locus TIDES((, Mary Rising Higgins. 2002. Potes & Poets Press. 14.00 ISBN 1-893541-78-9
posted byJack 12:50 PM
Thursday, February 27, 2003
Creeps3.
Enough?
posted byJack 8:46 AM
Creeps2.
Mr. President. Did you and your lady friend…
I never had sex…
With all due respect, sir, we have an affidavit…
I never had sex with tha…
Plus testimony from Secret Service agents…
I never had sex with that…wo…
If I can just play this video here…
I never had sex with that…woma…
We have samples of DNA, sir, showing the semen here is…
Depends on what your definition of is is…
posted byJack 8:37 AM
Creeps.
Creeps. Isn't that the gray-is-the-new-black media arts?
posted byJack 8:27 AM
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Unfinished Account.
I'm concentrating on getting my poem playlist tidy for a reading coming up in a couple of weeks. So I've entered a self-protective phase, maybe something similar to what Jordan has been writing the last few days: "Mounting anxiety about self-disclosure..." fur example. Easy to post poems when they have no place to go, but am holding back right now to protect a connection to anything I wind up reading in front of people a little later on. Hey, that doesn't make much sense.
Well, if I'm going to keep on entertaining myself (and that is always a goal for me in writing) I need to find out what these poems are about, formally. It's a little too close to the reading to work this out under the semi-public lamplight of a blog. That's my connection to Jordan's anxiety, I suppose, although I think Jordan is more preoccupied with personhood-striptease, whereas I can't even get that internal about my anxiety. I'm protecting procedure at this point. Procedure is such an obvious component to content, I feel, I want, in the end, to insert all sorts of 'evidence' of how I get to say the little I assert in a given piece. Like: I continue phoning my seven mistresses and keep the conversations going, not knowing which phrases I overhear will be inserted into my play within. But the insertions are after the phone calls, solitary events (I believe), sorting data, messing it up if that's ok, etc. (No, that part of the process is not entirely solitary, either, but I digress.) I have to lose the mistresses' phone numbers at odd points (like now), just to get closer to feeling solitary & to keep them and me interested, no?
Payphone = blog?
Maybe I can let a poem go I'll never read in public.
In relation to the poem Habermas I want quick execution shhhhhesh. Need but, shhh. That's execution. Need never bothered me.
In relation to the poem Habermas I want to hear what others say, but the last two lines are shiny architecture of matter.
Rawls poems me. And o, etc., etc.
That's truly bathetic. The poem has nothing (much) to do with current biases of mine. Like so many others, I'm fixated on the war, loss of democratic principles and governance procedures -- that word again, only this time writ extremely large. The snippet above carries stark references to the last liberal prime number among us, John Rawls, but how inarticulate and superficial to use him in this way. I'm conflicted whether to go into criteria for justice, question how these may apply to our historical moment (that phrase seems appropriate now). Perhaps these few lines are directions -- self-directions?? -- to confront Rawls poetically? Could this be amusing? More soon.
posted byJack 9:29 AM
Monday, February 24, 2003
Daddyo.
I've been asked by my French publisher to put together a new collected works, which I'm calling Daddyo (in French). I'm not a podium-kicking type, so I was a little put off singled out this way, thinking at first this has to be lame trickery from Kent Johnson or even Señor Hess, finally reasoning, however, I've done this to moi-même.
Warm-up.
Proposed Titles for Daddyo
Une 18ème Lettre de Siècle 1951 2 Poésies de l'Ohara Monogatari 3 Poésies Au sujet de Kenneth Koch 3 Requiems Pour Un Jeune Oncle Vent de 34 Milles 3ème EL d'Avenue Un Avortement Au sujet de Courbet Adieu Au Normand, À la Fève Jour À Joan et Au Jean-Paul Aventures Dans La Vie Après Wyatt l'Après-midi Encore, John Keats, Ou Le Poteau du Basilic Agression Un avion sifflent (après Heine) Aix-en-Provence Tout Ce Gaz Alma Américain Anacrostic Animaux Variations d'Ann Arbor Réponse À Voznesensky et À Evtushenko l'Anthologie de Jours Isolés Inquiétude Appoggiaturas La Saison d'Abricot l'Arborétum Les Argonautes Comme prévu Cendres Samedi Après-midi Chez Joan À la Librairie de la Danse de Kamin Au Fond de la Décharge Il Y a Sorte d'Ome de Bugle Au Vieil Endroit Aubade Aus Einem Avril Autobiographia Literaria Avenue Maria Avenue A Baareld Ballade Ballade Numéro 4 Barbizon Les Baigneurs Salle de bains Partie de Plage Bière Pour Le Petit déjeuner Berdie Burnoose de la Facture l'École de la Facture de New York Biographia Letteraria Biotherm (pour facture Berkson) Le Théâtre de Camp d'Oiseau Birdie Blocs Territoire Bleu Les Alésages Boston Frères Cambridge Un Appareil-photo Cantate Capitaine Bada Capitaines Courageux Causerie d'A.f. Un Chardin Nécessitant Le Nettoyage Cheyenne Chez Jane Chicago Une Légende Chinoise Choses Passageres Carte de Noël Pour honorer Hartigan Un Hiver de Ville Les Nuages Vont Doucement Le Clown Clytemnestra Cohasset Colloque Sentimental Variations Commerciales Concert Champetre Cornkind Le Critique Colline de Corneille Danses Avant Le Mur Jour et nuit En 1952 Madame Died de Jour Cher Jap La mort Derange Sur Un Pont de L'adour Dialogues Dido Digression Sur Le Nombre L, 1948 Dolce Colloquio Rêve de Berlin Dérives D'une Chose Qui Affichent Berkson Noté Boire Le Batteur Jours Ducaux Mondrian Tôt Dès l'abord Dimanche Fleuve Est Pâques La Main d'Edwin Élégie (enthousiaste et en jours perdus d'excédent d'anguish) Élégie (eau salée. Et Visages Mourant) Facture d'Embarassing Approche Ennemie d'Avions Essai Sur Le Modèle F. (missive et promenade) I. #53 F.m.i. 6/25/61 F.o.i. F.y.i. (prix de Beaute) F.y.i. (la brasserie va au lac) Échecs de Ressort Fantaisie (sur les vers russes) pour Alfred Leslie Imagination Loin du DES Lilas et La Rue Pergolese de Porte Peinture Préférée Dans La Métropolitaine Février Torse femelle Premières Danses Cinq Poésies Jour de Drapeau Sonore Affectueux Pour Un Dauphin Pour Bob Rauschenberg Pour David Schubert Pour La Grace, Après Une Partie Pour Le Doyen de James Pour Janice et Kenneth Au Voyage Pour Poulenc Pendant La Nouvelle Année Chinoise et Pour La Facture Berkson Quatre Petites Élégies 1. Écrit Dans Le Sable À l'Île de l'Eau Quatre Petites Élégies 2. Peu d'élégie Quatre Petites Élégies 3. Doyen d'Orbite, 30 septembre 1955 Quatre Petites Élégies 4. Une Cérémonie Pour Un de Mes Morts Funnies Galanta Gamin Se lever en avant de quelqu'un (le soleil) Glazunoviana, Ou Jour Commémoratif Gli Amanti Midi de Bon Vendredi Au revoir À la Grande Île Principale Impeccable Central Grand Le Frelon Vert Gregory Corso : Essence Haine Avoir Un Coke Avec Vous Ici À New York Nous Avons Beaucoup d'Ennui Avec Heremaphrodite Hieronymus Bosch Une Colline Variations Historiques Un Hommage Hommage À Andre Gide Hommage Au Cap Mootch de Pasternak Hommage À Rrose Selavy Homosexualité Hôtel Particulier Hôtel Transylvanie Chambre Comment Les Roses Deviennent Noires Comment Y arriver Le Chasseur Klaxons de Chasse J'aime La Manière Qu'elle Disparaît Une Image de Leda Image du Bouddha Prêchant En faveur de Son Temps Dans L'Hôpital Dans La Mémoire de Mes Sentiments ; À la Grace Hartigan Dans Les Films Intérieur (avec Jane) Invincibility Il Semble Loin Parti et Doux Maintenant Le Jade Madonna Jane À Douze Jane Éveillé Se baigner de Jane Je Voudrais Voir La Veste de Joe Anniversaire de Bouton de John Joseph Cornell Jove Katy Kitville La Par de L'amour Avait Passe Larry La Configuration du Roman des Associations Pousser des feuilles Par La Floride Le Liban Légende Étiquettes Jaunes de Les Les Luths Sortons Une Lettre Au Lapin Liebeslied La Vie Sur Terre La Lumière Avance Par Elle-même La Lumière Appuie Comme Lignes Pendant Certains Morceaux de Musique Lignes Pour Les Biscuits de Fortune Lignes À un Ami Enfoncé Lignes Tout en Lisant l'Image de Coleridge Lignes Écrites Dans Une Jeunesse Crue Lisztiana Lisztiana, Beaucoup Plus tard Peu d'élégie Pour Antonio Machado Journal intime de Voyage Locarno Louise Amour Amour (être perdu) l'Amoureux l'Heure de Déjeuner Macaronis Madrid Madrigal Pour Un Chat Mort Appelé Julia Manifeste Âne de Mary Desti Jeudi saint Samedi Mayakovsky Méditations En cas d'urgence Petit déjeuner Mélancolique Melmoth Le Wanderer Mémoire de Sergei O Mémoires de Facture Poésie Métaphysique Une Guitare Mexicaine Cimetière Militaire Un Soldat Moderne Matin La Mère du Drame Allemand S'élever de Montagne Mozart Chemisier Mme Bertha Burger Le MUSE Considéré En tant qu'Amoureux de Démon Musique Muy Bien Mon Coeur Ma Chaleur Naphte Nouvelles Particules du Soleil Newsboy Le Prochain Oiseau Vers l'Australie Pensées de Nuit Dans Le Village de Greenwich Nocturne Une Note À Harold Fondren Une Note À John Ashbery Maintenant que Je Suis À Madrid et Peux Penser Octobre Heure Octobre 26 1952 De 10:30 Ode (une idée de justice peut être précieuse) Ode (à Joseph Lesueur) sur la flèche ce Flieth par Day Ode Sur La Causalité Ode Sur La Convoitise Ode Sur Necrophilia Ode Le Jour de Saint Cecilia Ode À la Joie Ode à Michael Goldberg ('naissance de s et d'autres naissances) Ode À Tanaquil Leclercq Ode À Willem de Kooning Ode : Salut Aux Poèts Français de Nègre Le Vieux Machiniste Jardin Olive Sur Un Anniversaire de Kenneth Sur Une Montagne Sur Un Pasage En Watt de Beckett et Au sujet de Geo. Montgomery Sur Regarder La La Grande Jatte, Le Tsar Pleuré À nouveau Sur l'Anniversaire de Rachmaninoff Sur l'Anniversaire #158 De Rachmaninoff Sur l'Anniversaire #161 De Rachmaninoff Sur l'anniversaire de Rachmaninoff (Windows bleu, les dessus de toit bleus) Sur l'anniversaire de Rachmaninoff (je suis si heureux que des fleuves de Larry) Sur l'anniversaire de Rachmaninoff (vite ! Une Dernière Poésie Avant que J'aille) Sur Brithday de Rachmannoff et Au sujet d'Arshile Gorki Le Jour de Saint Adalgisa Sur Voir Washington des Fleuves de Larry Croiser Le Delaware Sur Le Chemin Au San Remo l'Opéra Oranges : 12 Pastorals Péché Original Donner sur Le Fleuve Crainte de Panique Un Dialogue Pastoral Un Dialogue Pastoral Port de Perle Poésie Personnelle Prose d'En de Petit Poeme Les Pipes de la Casserole Pistachier Au Chateau Noir Endroits Pour Le Salvador d'Oscar Une Pensée Plaisante de Whitehead Poésie Poésie Poésie Poésie Poésie (aux Chinamen de nuit sautez) Poésie Au Dessus de l'Échelon Poésie (toute la soudain tout le monde) Poésie (tous les miroirs dans le monde) Poésie (bien que je suis une demi-heure) Poésie (et demain matin à 8 heures à Springfield) Poésie (en tant que vous agenouillement) Poésie (dee Dum, Dee Dum, Dum Dum, Dee Da) Poésie (un dieu ! Amour ! Le soleil ! Toutes les Chères et Singulières Choses !) Poésie (la haine est seulement une de beaucoup de réponses) Poésie (il peut se reposer. Il L'a béni et L'a blessé) Poésie (il l'a aperçue à l'heure actuelle du rappel) Poésie (je ne suis pas sûr il y a un traitement) Poésie (je ne connais pas pendant que j'obtiens Wha
Finally, for Señor Hess.
posted byJack 8:49 AM
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Blog Chatter.
Just picked up on a couple talked-past ideas.
Foaming hull. (For bloggers in need of formatting and reconstruction.)
Oy Señor Hess. Not to put ya in foaming hull, but you're a much, much better blog writer than formal essayist. That piece on Watten (and Reznikoff??) is a slew of text-lifts from a galaxy that is not ours. Are you really not in Vegas?
Let's start a collection and send our favorite crank blogger to Cornell?
Inspiration or daily penance? The minute I decided there was no poem in it, I stopped blogging right then. It was December 2000 or maybe January 03, something strangely warming about the sorbet, I lost my place in that new Player Registry and messed up on so many art world sales I had to find other work.
Here, Ok?
Nada, love, let's have your own wrap on your reading last nite.
posted byJack 9:05 AM
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Two Views of Brandenburg Gate.


posted byJack 7:04 AM
Saturday, February 15, 2003
War Poem from Another County.
Kent Johnson sends this "at O hour minus a few ticks."
Baghdad
Oh, little crown of iron forged to likeness of imam's face, what are you doing in this circle of flaming inspectors and bakers?
And little burnt dinner all set to be eaten (and crispy girl all dressed with scarf for school), what are you doing near this shovel for dung-digging, hissing like ice-cubes in ruins of little museum?
And little shell of bank on which flakes of assets fall, can't I still withdraw my bonds for baby?
Good night moon. Good night socks and good night cuckoo clocks.
Good night little bedpans and a trough where once there was an inn (urn of dashed pride), what are you doing beside little wheelbarrow beside some fried chickens?
And you, ridiculous wheels spinning on mailman's truck, truck with ashes of letter from crispy girl all dressed with scarf for school, why do you seem like American experimental poets going nowhere on little exercise bikes?
Good night barbells and ballet dancer's shoes under plastered ceilings of Saddam Music Hall.
Good night bladder of Helen Vendler and a jar from Tennessee. (though what are these doing here in Baghdad?)
Good night blackened ibis and some keys. Good night, good night.
(And little mosque popped open like a can, which same as factory of flypaper has blown outward, covering the shape of man with it (with mosque): He stumbles up Martyr's Promenade. What does it matter who is speaking, he murmurs and mutters, head a little bit on fire. Good night to you too.)
Good night moon. Good night poor people who shall inherit the moon.
Good night first editions of Das Kapital, Novum Organum, The Symbolic Affinities between Poetry Blogs and Oil Wells, and the Koran.
Good night nobody.
Good night Mr. Kent, good night, for now you must soon wake up and rub your eyes and know that you are dead.
-- Kent Johnson
posted byJack 7:19 AM
Friday, February 14, 2003
That Honest Shed. He's surer Insured In all thermo matters, Refills an election beast-
Shill running this street, Which hams, "goo. Do buy! Isn't HUD that honest shed now?" The hated tune's an outer cray-
Fish, slick in foam. To him, horror Is often hearsay. Best sup and play hung mien, As sins uncon the Bengali,
Alles Freundes. Shaved gin Fronts as treat, canned or cobbed. He shorts his, qualifies In this, sighs, or falls off.
posted byJack 7:46 AM
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
A War Poem.
Dreamlike class struggle is no one's financing walk into shear. Proportion turns over desire for no government so this is some level from the front door version, the edge to common sight in slow arrest at the dawn of a new jury. Boardrooms fill with the Nixo-Beat where the flowers are. The egg whites in a spare, bubby zeal to wipe out traitors more, not properly issued to commentary, altering the best snooze clinic in a suppo-pow.
The accidental has flight school wipe. Coordinates everywhere, and or, the squirm of it, the advent, set alone too. Ax it. There isn't even an "it's rippled!" where similar buzzing length and breadth end describing the bed turned down if you're awake to spar in fusing speakers like where the writ is in use to put on my car keys. It's not that stages of violence pine for brilliant shape, grief of a ceiling failing its semblance. Prime shots clear the air enough by comparison. A question knows form is neither.
posted byJack 1:00 PM
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Entelechy.
It's February, lots of snow. We're on our way out of this place after a short film in which Jacques Derrida says the eyes never age. Even as I resist it, I draw closer to the 17th century scroll occupied by three Heian lords, unadorned fabric staked to the ground as their backdrop, a blend of tarp and a silk threadbare enough to tie up the breeze. In the middle of the film Jacques recalls his mama crying, "You have a pain in your mother." A covariant on how a thin fabric constitutes the eyes' hold over the place and over the physical moment depicted in the scroll. Before this or maybe after, Janet goes into the ladies room as I watch the ice coating steps to the garden outside the cafeteria. That courtyard, one of a pair, was more striking when it was inaccessible from the coffee area. I remember it emptier than today, emptier in its conservative, Olmsted taste, not just empty in feeling, even with more snow and the ivy along one wall opposite me more indistinguishable then, the trees fuller, weaker somehow than they are now. Perhaps younger trees were inserted? But I take in this courtyard as it is and hold it as Janet comes back and we ride the escalator somewhere else.
posted byJack 7:30 AM
Saturday, February 08, 2003
Storms.
the States United storms into into States the storms United United storms into the States into the United States storms States the into United storms States into United the storms United States the storms into States United storms the into storms the into States United storms United into States the into United the storms States into storms States the United States United into the storms the United storms States into the United States into storms storms the into States United into States United storms the the States storms into United the storms United into States into United the States storms States into the United storms States storms United into the storms the into United States United the States into storms
posted byJack 7:13 AM
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
US Makes a Case for War.

posted byJack 2:00 PM
Sunday, February 02, 2003
Parasomnia as Speech.
Dreamlike class struggle is not sure discourse products remain action.
A new clip starts. Another force writes the edge of dippers in slag. In the end government theory grows up on a farm in Minnesota, goes on chomping pork, trusts no governing.
Rants on the ear rule speakers' aims symbolically, sometimes, like when jurors read jurors' obligations where the writ is the observance and therefore recourse to the great narratives prescribing the observance.
Mother Nature is the focus. One afternoon while napping I read this confusional book. We were at the dawn of a golden age of reader response, Chip writes, the entire room filled with wine.
It's not that oblique. Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl. My conspicuous, shabby desire is to wipe out the parts already hit. Clean up what's not there, not properly inside possums of unknowing you already did what I bellowed for.
Anyway, the best snooze clinic in a supporting role has a steady girl now. She has flight school whipped. We have downtown everywhere. Coordinates everywhere, and apt to lapse into vibrancy for the squirm of it, the adventure, the five-hour walk from the B2 exit. There isn't even a front door. We're in this world. It's rippled where similar destruction and hope befall dharmic arousal, the length and breadth of mourning it away.
Owning a tavern for a while posits a second love describing the points of its chief, unimmaculate obligation. So this is different for us. I'm awake at some level, and put on my shirt, go to my purse and get my car keys.
posted byJack 10:25 AM
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