Friday, October 31, 2003
He expects to get out of this.
posted byJack 12:41 PM
The island is better without you.
posted byJack 5:51 AM
He holds the other so close his nipples stand up. This is how he votes.
posted byJack 5:49 AM
He writes to others but not you. You admire him for this.
You admire him?
posted byJack 5:46 AM
He's checking out women again.
posted byJack 5:45 AM
He had to have.
posted byJack 5:39 AM
For, against, he hasn't a clue.
posted byJack 5:21 AM
He voted against you.
posted byJack 4:37 AM
Thursday, October 30, 2003
At midnight he'll be hircine.
posted byJack 1:28 PM
Where can you meet guys like him? Gambado.
posted byJack 1:26 PM
He's imagining tonight's limited offer.
posted byJack 10:15 AM
With so few posts, he still wasn't voted off the island. In fact he was given the island. No wonder you were pissed.
posted byJack 10:12 AM
It's almost Halloween. He's thinking of Gerrit Lansing.
posted byJack 7:35 AM
He doesn't realize he's got no one to blame. Improbability hardly disturbs him. Or you.
posted byJack 7:32 AM
Twenty years ago -- I hear -- George Quasha and Chuck Stein wrote with computer screens turned down (to black). They were reaching for their muses.
Today that's the way he is.
posted byJack 7:25 AM
You're smirking.
posted byJack 7:24 AM
He thinks he can write. He thinks he writes better than you and his 'friends'.
posted byJack 7:13 AM
Not one word not purloined. Yay.
For example.
posted byJack 7:12 AM
It doesn't matter that he can't write? Why?
posted byJack 7:09 AM
Don't worry. We can patch this togeter to cohere in a meta.
posted byJack 7:05 AM
This could keep on happening as long as no one cared to read, much less read into, it.
posted byJack 7:01 AM
I knew he couldn't resist the chance (even when better writers than he would catch on).
posted byJack 6:56 AM
Ugliest uniform. That smirk when you're voted off the island.
posted byJack 6:53 AM
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Inside the tea pavilion, are we hardwired to eat? I am. I was born sporting a wormhole to kill the curse of the babe. I'm cheating wearing my spider web cap for courage holding a voodoo rattle. I call it my Britanicus sidekick and fender pang. It's so pure it allows the whole spectrum of color to enter and exit without interruption. Bad girls use something like it to smash animals on the manor. Here it's different, I'm not sure what the colors are, are they popping enough? Babe? Cross cousin? My nail-biting Yoplait? I'm staying central, the man who never forgets a pretty face, adapting to a life of headstrong fielders, curves and sinkers, and weightless powder finish. Not going out.
posted byJack 5:12 PM
Monday, October 27, 2003
The answers to Nick's Sunday quiz are true, all true.
posted byJack 6:54 PM
Friday, October 24, 2003
Sunset Colors
Revise exiles' free time, a lie
metro estate ushers habits or
snorts in a net all wheel drive
In the shadows of Hopi's highest peak
baby it's cold
be due get a move
affix the cause by Dinesen
The docks are so out to play
Tibetan for first blood
frontier work fitting a Tum for depressors
That sof' breakers move as diners
eat then hit the road
for roan effects, tow and last-line:
Japanese beyond the assets.
posted byJack 11:54 AM
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Oh, another link. Here's to John Latta for a string of posts that keep firing. Manages to talk about K.J. in ways that result in no tedium. Inserts Tom Clark's name maintaining (on a first read) neutrality. Understands the 80s & 90s!
posted byJack 7:26 AM
The link today is to Nick who argues that writers need to assume responsibility for supporting one another's work, one initiative to counter national trauma. I am sure he is right, even though the beast he speaks of resides in many 'pockets' of our culture, politics, as Nick points out, but also all the arts (not just poetry) and sciences (not just poetry). Can we beat this disease without resorting to spirituality? My Japanese doctors pray this is so.
posted byJack 6:26 AM
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
For Alan Davies
The most dangerous gift shop is the torrent
in her path, teacher says. Leo was dismissive
of Gertrude's writing. Without the sweet sous-prefect
she may not have got barbed.
Hunting is the lather of swing.
Remember thoughts?
What if it doesn't work. Then what?
Go with what makes me angry. A time and place of my choosing.
A story, plum, wouldn't you rather a sedative?
Exhale the rhythms – nobody talks like this –
my cowpoke aim – off-rhyme? –
fear is no wife to the llama's rant
when I think of the yet undreamed-of
loopholes in a topic –
Yours in occupied France, apple plum,
carpet steak, calm seen, same old
same old
Coffee cup steam tropic
white mounted to clear
ice pink with blue cream
& yellow cone paid in full.
I trained at my mother's barbecues.
Perfunctory filling in that goes Maxine
at the edges. Galleries now feel
more like lofts with a learning curve.
Black and Negro is a distraction, the choice
to write raped as made sport of is just wrong.
A dozen two-frame houses of pine frames clad
wasn't on the list but I'll add it.
Act gathered.
posted byJack 8:31 AM
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Around these parts, prominent cultural constituents are organized around glamour. The bases for glamour that matter to me are beauty and prodigious talent. There is also capital which filters through these bases and by itself constitutes another basis for glamour or, more, the outing of glamour, power.
Talent and beauty enjoy definable powers in their own right, but it's difficult to conceive of these properties as taking anything like their 'full effect' without addictive capital. Without the fiduciary and public relations apparatus attached to a Lakers contract, one alternative for a glamour-bent Kobe Bryant after high school might have been to move to New York to take up dance or modeling. Or, more generic, he may have gone to a not-so-great college to become a teacher, journalist or salesman. But 'all the pieces came together' for Bryant in and right after high school, and now he's a super athlete whose talents are in the public domain and in many aspects glamorously so.
Bryant's life up to now is a template for what our culture offers people of talent and beauty. An enabling first step toward the top glamour-laden rungs is to sign up with a culturally powerful institution. If your abilities are in team sports, this is a no-brainer. But the team/institution analogy applies to innumerable intellectual and commercial enterprises. For artists, writers, and musicians, associations with teachers and contemporaries, as well as affiliations with schools and traditions, matter a lot.
The more capital that enters the team/institution identity(ies), the more latitude you have to fuck things up. For every one of the exquisite Flowers by Andy Warhol we have dozens of Seahorses and Diamond Dust Shoes. Only two or three minutes out of 60 make Queer Eye worth it. And, let me see now. Hasn't there been an understanding for 40 years – no matter the Administration in DC – drugs are ok for rockers who sell product.
That addictive latitude our culture affords the glamorous shrinks to Valkyrie-like torment – virtually overnight – when a question of common decency has to be raised. $140 million for a policeman of the Stock Exchange, oh, really? The author of Rush Lumbaugh's Afghanistan Strategy Page takes it up the ass to get more prescription drugs. Jesus, I can't begin to imagine that.
My point about Kobe Bryant is not to suggest that mighty do fall. He hasn't fallen yet, and I believe (in an old-fashioned civics-class way) he is innocent until proven otherwise. My point is that the prescribed alternative to the glamour we hook into with the likes of Kobe Bryant, Andy Warhol, and Carson Kressley is another brand of fanatacism that's even more addictive, and with no known cure. Religion.
posted byJack 8:25 AM
Monday, October 20, 2003
What I failed to clarify, earlier, is that it's kind of impossible to give audible encouragement for an entire state team in MLB. Yippee, Arizona v. Hey, Santa Fe (if it had, say, a team).
Go go Colorado?
So it's Kick Ass, Miami (please).
[End of special pleading.]
posted byJack 1:14 PM
Candidate most in need of a blog of her/his own (for a variety of reasons), nominations:
Larry Fagin
Joan Houlihan
Robert Grenier
Alan Sondheim
Lyn Hejinian
posted byJack 12:59 PM
Best potential for merger blogs, nominations:
K S Mohammad & Carl Annarummo ~ Mollusks in My Attic
Tanya Brolaski & Ron Silliman ~ Swimming for Ron
James Meetze & Eileen Tabios ~ Tougher than Corpse
Nada Gordon & Nick Piombino ~ Ululation Accompli
Aaron Tieger & Chickee Chickston ~ Fish Deluxe
posted byJack 12:43 PM
Best love affair (smouldering, suppressed) between blogs, nominations:
Nick Piombino & Corina Copp
Henry Gould & David Hess
Eileen Tabios & David Hess
Nada Gordon & Nick Piombino
Jimmy Behrle & Corina Copp
posted byJack 12:18 PM
Best love affair (ongoing) between blogs, nominations:
Li Bloom & Nick Piombino
Alli Warren & K S Mohammad
Eileen Tabios & Tim Yu
Nada Gordon & Nick Piombino
Laura Willey & Jimmy Behrle
posted byJack 12:11 PM
Nonspecifically best blog (because 'out of clearly defined category'), nominations:
Malcom Davidson
Joseph Deumer
Bill Marsh's Dead Letter
Nashi
Camille Roy
posted byJack 11:45 AM
Best hipper-than-thou blog, nominations:
Chris Sullivan's Slight
Caterina Fake
Marianne Shaneen
Julia Mayhew
Heriberto Yepez (in Eng. & Spn.)
posted byJack 7:48 AM
Best reportage blog, nominations:
Dale Smith
Steve Evans
Nick Piombino
Stephanie Young
K S Mohammad
posted byJack 7:47 AM
Best friend of bloggers & blogging blog, nominations:
Nick Piombino
K S Mohammad
Jordan Davis
Laura Willey
Gary Sullivan
posted byJack 7:47 AM
Best totally unusual blog, nominations:
Gary Sullivan's Ernst Herbeck
Sawako Nakayasu
Bill Marsh's D-aries
Allen Bramhall
Julia Mayhew
posted byJack 7:45 AM
Best blog prose style, nominations:
B K Stefans
Tim Yu
Katie Degentesh
Gary Sullivan
Drew Gardner
posted byJack 7:44 AM
Best blog commitment to purely expository prose, nominations:
Ron Silliman
Bill Marsh's SDPD
Eileen Tabios
B K Stefans
David Cameron
Best blast after blast blog, nominations:
Carl Annarummo
Jimmy Behrle
Chicky Chickston
Nada Gordon
David Hess
Best seemingly usual unusual blog, nominations:
Craig Hill
Christina Strong
Peter Culley
Chris Lott
Joe London
posted byJack 7:42 AM
Read with Tim Peterson at Wordsworth Sunday. Tim chose selections from his YoYoLabs chap, "Cumulus," long lines of unscary propositions maneuvered by the oddly justified choice of verb (past partciples, often): "souped-up sand dunes," e.g. The reading started at the tail of The Head of the Charles, and transport/parking looked unpromising. Still there was a good turnout, Joel Sloman, Christina Strong, Michael Franco, Ruth Lepson, a dozen or more others. Surprised to find George Stanley hanging around in Cambridge. He found hints of Neruda in both Tim's and my pieces. He read back specific parts to prove his case. Thanks, Jimmy, for this and all the other readings. You're making fall a tolerable season again in Beantown.
posted byJack 5:19 AM
Waiting for a run-down on Corina and Nick's readings.
posted byJack 5:17 AM
This should end in Florida. Fitting. Fingers almost crossed.
posted byJack 5:15 AM
Friday, October 17, 2003
There's a management problem everytime I look.
It's curious that whole states get their own MLB teams -- and not even the puny ones, but big places like Minnesota and Arizona, and the truly huge ones that belong to Bush, Texas, for gosh sakes, Florida. Anyway.
Go Miami!
posted byJack 7:41 AM
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Only a few of the original blogger faithful are up to the task these days. An impression is forming that a few others are burning out. Not as many and far briefer posts, bigger spaces between posts. Indeed, a collective malaise swooping down as from the north country via Labrador.
The impression is poet-blog-wide. For bloggers who usually write in prose, for the poesie bloggers, even for those somewhere in-between. Maybe it's the playoffs, combined with tedious midsemester chores, autumn temps, the wind!
Of course, we have the serious precedents of some popular bloggers signing off. And others pulling back from their earlier, gabbier postings. An indication of what I'm intimating is the dimunition today of cross-post chatter, linkages to others, etc. Simultaneous, though, the number of poet bloggers has climbed into the hundreds. That might be contributing to the snob end of the malaise in that the cachet attached to a small tally of poets blogging has worn off.
Boo hoo, we'll have to get used to the cacophony. Blogging if not poetry is democratic.
posted byJack 10:54 AM
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Reading
Did Frank have an affair with any of the straight and nominally straight painters who used to come by? Hard to say, he was awfully discreet...
I met Rasputina on the street
a chop of a vegetable, she
barely julienned...
(go pope go pope)
Un jour, je me trouvai sur la plate-forme d'un autobus violet.
Danzig is the Wallace Stevens of evil
posted byJack 6:42 AM
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
General Motors or General Electric? The kid who stays in the picture.
posted byJack 12:01 PM
Rome or Amsterdam? They are coming toward us, three figures with arms entwined, and there is a sense they are floating just above the street.
posted byJack 11:56 AM
Mustache color or toxic gloom? Circus lineup.
posted byJack 10:54 AM
Perfect job or perfect mate? Othello's guitarist.
posted byJack 8:30 AM
Freedom or security? Marx collaborator stud fee.
posted byJack 7:52 AM
Ambition or love? Wolfed down jazz crap.
posted byJack 6:56 AM
Monday, October 13, 2003
Germanic perfume: quirk can openings pave over big bunny.
posted byJack 8:12 AM
Ornamental shrubs: they sometimes have presidents' names.
posted byJack 8:09 AM
Intrinsic inferiority: the Dukes of Zoroaster.
posted byJack 8:06 AM
Luxury value: the rainforest.
posted byJack 7:36 AM
Federal Asian: form follows $.
posted byJack 7:28 AM
Just get by the comic bits; each is a lone entity in a world dominated by luxury groups.
posted byJack 6:57 AM
Soft and contemporary
no smoking no alcohol keep quiet
come play littering in the bag
keep it clean
town fair tire
keep your luggage don't forget
your belonging the full weight
and darkness of tragedy 10 minutes
break during trip & on the way
without delay.
posted byJack 6:47 AM
Friday, October 10, 2003
For Cedar Sigo
Straights gotta realize Swedes ramble
like Dutch later, shiny
child of smoke, you know how
good mi Carlo keeps up with the pool?
float over your nozzle to query
a correspondent's thoughtlessness
Getting to point throws me into absolute
-- take a wild guess. Hint: evil
stars are shivers carved in dirt
reflecting the world as it is
with images you don't care about
Not much jitters, your heart is rapped
anytime in the creation
the blame for passive groans
fired up to affirm fajita in snatches
opera and shush.
posted byJack 6:44 AM
Thursday, October 09, 2003
5-2
posted byJack 4:58 AM
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
What is the President talking about, and when will he know it?
posted byJack 9:38 AM
Monday, October 06, 2003
I'd like to know who leaked so we can find the leaker.
posted byJack 1:09 PM
Friday, October 03, 2003
Genny inflatable snowmen with motor appearing soon on a lawn near you.
posted byJack 11:37 AM
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Mushroom wise woman, or, poet. (Your choice, Dale.)
posted byJack 1:30 PM
Such dumb terns. (Eileen! Who else?)
posted byJack 1:18 PM
Give literature a hand. (Nick, Nick!)
posted byJack 1:04 PM
I live not far from their butt trying to walk uphill. (Take care, Henry.)
posted byJack 11:55 AM
Deer head in bed. (Thanks, Katie.)
posted byJack 11:48 AM
Keats to lay Hunt. (Bless you, Peter.)
posted byJack 11:42 AM
The fishes around a hollow brook. (Thank you, Tanya.)
posted byJack 11:35 AM
Autumn has broken its nose. (Sure thing, Allen.)
posted byJack 11:31 AM
Cloudy over work. (Got it, Carl.)
posted byJack 11:30 AM
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Zeitgeist. The shit's in the air, and it's more than me and global capital and Karl Rove.
Mean, mean Jeff Jullich, for one, whipping out his high-school scansion plan to beat detractors of faint sentiment and derivative prosody. Old King Bill Knott quick to defend Sharon Olds's accessible anti-poem. What's that, an Eliotonian twitch? But the worst, the worst is Nate Dorward's espousal of jazz & poetry! "I'm quite fond of Steve Swallow's settings of Creeley." That phrasing so swings it belongs at an education summit among wives of ex-soviets.
posted byJack 4:55 AM
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