RE: Political Poetry

Excerpt from Wonkette.com today....Ms. Benincasa is the best!

"The new Medicare rule pays for voluntary annual consultations on end-of-life care along with the usual physical exam. It pays your doctor for the three minutes he spends answering the question, “So, Doc, what the fuck are my options if some crazy shit happens to me?” That’s it. That’s all. That’s the only fucking thing it does.


If there is such a thing as an unforgivable sin, surely it is the act of preventing a tormented being in the end stages of natural life from the merciful conclusion he or she expressly requested when of sound mind. Through willful ignorance, political calculation, or sheer stupidity, Sarah Palin and her idiot ideological cohorts want to eliminate the last bit of dignity many of us are allowed. And for that, if for nothing else, she is a fucking monster."



Sara Benincasa is the executive web director of Team Sarah/SarahPAC

RE: Have it good

RE: Read this again and again and again..............

RE:Post Cards to the Stars




As soon as I find the right image I will send these out:





Dear Rachel d l p,



I think we might agree in ways that are beyond my
comprehension. You know what I mean don’t you.

Yours.




Dear C A,



You just go ahead big guy. And don’t ever believe
everything you read. Not even for a minute.



Yours,




Dear Shannon,



I for one truly believe that you can do
successfully and pleasantly everything there is to do on
this planet by yourself. Period. You taught that.



Yours,



Dear D A,



Be very careful and take just a hint of advice
from an old person. Your head certainly can explode.
Believe me not them.



Yours,




Dear Tom of Kent,



You CANNOT answer a question with a question.
You need to go to couplet counseling man. No pun.


Yours,





Dear Heart Broke in Brooklyn,



In deep shit is not always a bad thing you know. That.
Follow your best thoughts and think like a kitten.
Too survive is priceless.



Yours,





Dear AB in OP,


When I read your latest I feel old, scared and vulnerable.
Not in that order and not a bad thing. Always. Well.
No. No really.



Yours,








Dear Everyone at St. Marks Poetry Project,


Quit sending me your magazine. It doesn’t make sense anymore.



Yours,

RE: Up against the wall

Join the fight, Operation Payback now has site back at Twitter who knows for how long....

@Anon_Operationn

Fitting that what may be final straw to Obama adminsistration is that they will soon be soon charging teenagers with terrorist activities and therefore defending  corperate entities who have crippled amerikan economy...MC and Visa and Citi....bring em all down. 

Where hope is now is in the basement of the parents house and these kids do indeed understand
that the hope they have is for a NEW WORLD ORDER.  bring it on.  freedom of speech or freedom to rip off the masses. 

P.S.  I have an empty basement if you dont mind a little cat crap. 

P.S.S.  Or we could ignore all this Wikinoise and debate:

conception vs flarf
mfa vs nyc
spilling your guts vs spilling the beans
poet laurates vs poet larryites
comments vs no comments
woe is me vs woe is me again
berrigan vs bunny lang
which would you rather vs what have you ever

RE: Could not have said it better...................

THIS IS PERFECT AND WAS POSTED ON THE HUFFINGTON POST TODAY


Aaron Sorkin Playwright, screenwriter and television writer

Posted: December 8, 2010 02:26 AM
In Her Defense, I'm Sure the Moose Had It Coming



"Unless you've never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation."



You're right, Sarah, we'll all just go fuck ourselves now.

The snotty quote was posted by Sarah Palin on (like all the great frontier women who've come before her) her Facebook page to respond to the criticism she knew and hoped would be coming after she hunted, killed and carved up a Caribou during a segment of her truly awful reality show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, broadcast on The-Now-Hilariously-Titled Learning Channel.

I eat meat, chicken and fish, have shoes and furniture made of leather, and PETA is not ever going to put me on the cover of their brochure and for these reasons Palin thinks it's hypocritical of me to find what she did heart-stoppingly disgusting. I don't think it is, and here's why.

Like 95% of the people I know, I don't have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don't relish the idea of torturing animals. I don't enjoy the fact that they're dead and I certainly don't want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn't do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart.

I'm able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don't watch snuff films and you make them. You weren't killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I've tried and tried and for the life of me, I can't make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I'm able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.

So I don't think I will save my condemnation, you phony pioneer girl. (I'm in film and television, Cruella, and there was an insert close-up of your manicure while you were roughing it in God's country. I know exactly how many feet off camera your hair and make-up trailer was.)

And you didn't just do it for fun and you didn't just do it for money. That was the first moose ever murdered for political gain. You knew there'd be a protest from PETA and you knew that would be an opportunity to hate on some people, you witless bully. What a uniter you'd be -- bringing the right together with the far right.

(Let me be the first to say that I abused cocaine and was arrested for it in April 2001. I want to be the first to say it so that when Palin's Army of Arrogant Assholes, bereft of any reasonable rebuttal, write it all over the internet tomorrow they will at best be the second.)

I eat meat, there are leather chairs in my office, Sarah Palin is deranged and The Learning Channel should be ashamed of itself.

RE: Hot off the ?

McCrary 'reviews'  Kaminski and Tills and Hay(na)Ku


GALATEA RESURRECTS ANNOUNCEMENT


We are pleased to announce the release of Galatea Resurrects' 15th Issue which presents 72 New Poetry Reviews as well as other feature presentations. The issue can be accessed directly at http://galatearesurrection15.blogspot.com . For convenience, the Table of Contents is cutnpasted below.

Enjoy!

Eileen Tabios
Editor, Galatea Resurrects (A Poetry Engagement)
++++
Issue No. 15 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dec. 7, 2010



EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
By Eileen Tabios


NEW REVIEWS

Camille Martin reviews SALINE by Kimberly Lyons

Patrick James Dunagan reviews DEAR SANDY, HELLO: LETTERS FROM TED TO SANDY BERRIGAN, Edited by Sandy Berrigan and Ron Padgett

Jon Curley reviews AUTOPSY TURVY by Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason

Eileen Tabios engages HAD SLAVES by Catherine Sasanov

John Herbert Cunningham reviews SELECTED POEMS OF GARCILASO DE LA VEGA, Edited and translated by John Dent-Young

Kathryn Stevenson reviews MONEY FOR SUNSETS by Elizabeth J. Colen

T.C. Marshall reviews VANCOUVER: A POEM by George Stanley and IN THE MILLENIUM by Barry McKinnon

Eric Dickey reviews AS IT TURNED OUT by Dmitry Golynko, Edited by Eugene Ostashevsky. Translated by Eugene Ostashevsky and Rebecca Bella with Simona Schneider

Peg Duthie engages THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF GRAVITY AND GRACE by Ernesto Priego

Patrick James Dunagan reviews UNTAM’D WING: RIFFS ON ROMANTIC POETRY by Jeffrey C. Robinson

Harry Thorne reviews NEIGHBOR by Rachel Levitsky

Michael Pollock engages "El Dorado" by Edgar Allan Poe, Spanish translation by Mario Murgia in EL CURVO Y OTROS POEMAS by Edgar Allan Poe, Edicion bilingue with Traduccion del proyecto Helbardot and Ilustraciones de Gustavo Abascal

Barbara Roether reviews FIRE EXIT by Robert Kelly

Allen Bramhall reviews SITUATIONS by Laura Carter

Eileen Tabios engages 1000 SONNETS by Tim Atkins

Eric Hoffman reviews ESCHATON by Michael Heller

Jon Curley reviews 100 NOTES ON VIOLENCE by Julie Carr

Genevieve Kaplan reviews NETS by Jen Bervin and THE MS OF M Y KIN by Janet Holmes

Aileen Ibardaloza reviews THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU PROJECT, Curated by Ivy Alvarez, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Ernesto Priego & Eileen Tabios and THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, VOL. II, Edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young

John Herbert Cunningham reviews COLLECTED POEMS by Dylan Thomas

Eileen Tabios engages 2ND NOTICE OF MODIFICATIONS TO TEXT OF PROPOSED REGULATIONS by John Bloomberg-Rissman

Allen Bramhall reviews NOT BLESSED by Harold Abramowitz

Moira Richards reviews A IS FOR ANNE by Penelope Scambly Schott

Peg Duthie engages "GOTHENBURG" FROM THREE GEOGAOPHIES: A MILKMAID'S GRIMOIRE by Arielle Guy

John Herbert Cunningham reviews DISJUNCTIVE POETICS: FROM GETRUDE STEIN AND LOUIS ZUKOFSKY TO SUSAN HOWE by Peter Quartermain

Rebecca Loudon reviews GOD DAMSEL by Reb Livingston

Eileen Tabios engages REQUIEM FOR THE ORCHARD by Oliver de la Paz

Kristi Castro reviews EDGE BY EDGE, collection of poetry chaps by Gladys Justin Carr, Heidi Hart, Emma Bolden, and Vivian Teter

Allen Bramhall reviews I-FORMATION BOOK 1 by Anne Gorrick

Lynn Behrendt reviews I-FORMATION BOOK 1 by Anne Gorrick

Eileen Tabios engages Lynn Behrendt's review of Anne Gorrick's I-FORMATION BOOK 1

Michael Caylo-Baradi reviews MISSPELL by Lars Palm

John Herbert Cunningham reviews PENURY by Myung Mi Kim

Albert B. Casuga reviews TRAJE DE BODA: POEMS by Aileen Ibardaloza

Richard Lopez reviews SOME SONNETS, Edited by Tim Wright

Eileen Tabios engages APPARITION POEMS by Adam Fieled

L.M. Freer reviews BEATS AT NAROPA: AN ANTHOLOGY, Edited by Anne Waldman and Laura Wright

Moira Richards reviews (MADE) by Cara Benson

Thomas Fink reviews DRUNKER/HOLDING EMBER by Raymond Farr

Edric Mesmer reviews ON SECRETS OF MY PRISON HOUSE by Geoffrey Gatza

Peg Duthie engages EATING HER WEDDING DRESS: A COLLECTION OF CLOTHING POEMS, Edited by Vasiliki Katsarou, Ruth O’Toole, and Ellen Foos

Eileen Tabios engages BEHAVE: CALIFORNIA RANT 66 by Steve Tills

Jim McCrary reviews MR. MAGOO by Steve Tills

Nicholas T. Spatafora reviews AUTOPSY TURVY by Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason

Margaret H. Johnson reviews MANHATTAN MAN (AND OTHER POEMS) by Jack Lynch

Eileen Tabios engages AT TROTSKY'S FUNERAL by Mark Young

Marianne Villanueva reviews ERNESTA, IN THE STYLE OF FLAMENCO by Sandy McIntosh

Hadas Yatom-Schwartz engages “Nathan, in the Ancient Language”, a poem in ERNESTA, IN THE STYLE OF THE FLAMENCO by Sandy McIntosh

Patrick James Dunagan reviews COLLECTED POEMS / GUSTAF SOBIN, Edited by Esther Sobin, Andrew Joron, Andrew Zawacki, and Ed Foster

Jon Curley reviews CLEANING THE MIRROR: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS by Joel Chace

Tom Beckett reviews CLEANING THE MIRROR: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS by Joel Chace

John Bloomberg-Rissman reviews AT THE FAIR by Tom Clark

Peg Duthie engages 32 SNAPSHOTS OF MARSEILLES by Guy Bennett

Jim McCrary reviews THE HAY(NA)KU FOR HAITI SERIES, Edited by Eileen Tabios

Kristina Marie Darling reviews THE FRENCH EXIT by Elisa Gabbert

Anny Ballardini reviews BRAINOGRAPHY by Evelyn Posamentier

Richard Lopez reviews 2ND NOTICE OF MODIFICATIONS TO TEXT OF PROPOSED REGULATIONS by John Bloomberg-Rissman

G.E. Schwartz reviews THE FUTURE IS HAPPY by Sarah Sarai

Kristina Marie Darling reviews TINDERBOX LAWN by Carol Guess

Eileen Tabios engages DIWATA by Barbara Jane Reyes

Peg Duthie engages DUTIES OF AN ENGLISH FOREIGN SECRETARY by Macgregor Card

John Bloomberg-Rissman reviews ADAMANTINE by Shin Yu Pai

Jeff Harrison reviews GRIEF SUITE by Bobbi Lurie

Allen Bramhall reviews OPULENCE by Stephen Ellis

Peg Duthie engages SPRING HAS COME: SPANISH LYRICAL POETRY FROM THE SONGBOOKS OF THE RENAISSANCE by Alvaro Cardona-Hine

Jim McCrary reviews CARRY CATASTROPHE by Megan Kaminski

Moira Richards reviews THEN, SOMETHING by Patricia Fargnoli

Eileen Tabios engages KING OF THE JUNGLE by Zvi A. Sesling

Genevieve Kaplan reviews POETS ON TEACHING: A SOURCEBOOK, Edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson


THE CRITIC WRITES POEMS

Kristina Marie Darling





FOCUS ON POETS

Tom Beckett interviews ANNE GORRICK



Thomas Fink interviews JOANNA FUHRMAN





FROM OFFLINE TO ONLINE: REPRINTED REVIEW

Lisa Bower reviews SKIRT FULL OF BLACK by Sun Yung Shin



Eric Dickey reviews LIGHT FROM A BULLET HOLE: POEMS NEW AND SELECTED, 1950–2008 by Ralph Salisbury





ADVERTISEMENT

Hay(na)ku for Haiti--a Haiti Relief Fundraiser





BACK COVER

No Deer Were Shot For These Shots!

RE:Post Cards to the Stars

As soon as I find the right image I will send these out:


Dear Rachel d l p,

I think we might agree in ways that are beyond my

comprehension. You know what I mean don’t you.

Yours.







Dear C A,

You just go ahead big guy. And don’t ever believe

everything you read. Not even for a minute.

Yours,





Dear Shannon,

I for one truly believe that you can do

successfully and pleasantly everything there is to do on

this planet by yourself. Period.  You taught that.

Yours,







Dear D A,

Be very careful and take just a hint of advice

from an old person. Your head certainly can explode.

Believe me not them.

Yours,







Dear Tom of Kent,

You CANNOT answer a question with a question.

You need to go to couplet counseling man. No pun.

Yours,







Dear Heart Broke in Brooklyn,

In deep shit is not always a bad thing you know. That.

Follow your best thoughts and think like a kitten.

Too survive is priceless.

Yours,







Dear AB in OP,

When I read your latest I feel old, scared and vulnerable.

Not in that order and not a bad thing. Always. Well.

No. No really.

Yours,






Dear Everyone at St. Marks Poetry Project,

Quit sending me your magazine. It doesn’t make sense anymore.

Yours,

Bad Man Bad Bad Bad

I know that looking into the past is not much popular and in some rooms made fun of....but look what can be found in our archives and what it does for us today.  Ms. Sexton was a giant....we should all have her grace and diction.  It is good to be reminded....to be humbled....to be fucked up.  I belong to a tribe called Hornet.  How ironc to be born a man and live in todays world and stand out and be struck down when called for.  You dont think I am talking about me do you.



HORNET

A red-hot needle

hangs out of him, he steers by it

as if it were a rudder, he

would get in the house any way he could

and then he would bounce from window

to ceiling, buzzing and looking for you.

Do not sleep for he is there wrapped in the curtain.

Do not sleep for he is there under the shelf.

Do not sleep for he wants to sew up your skin,

he want to leap into your body like a hammer

with a nail, do not sleep he wants to get into

your nose and make a transplant, he wants do not

sleep he wants to bury your fur and make

a nest of knives, he wants to slide under your

fingernail and push in a splinter, do not sleep

he wants to climb out of the toilet when you sit on it

and make a home in the embarrassed hair do not sleep

he wants you to walk into him as into a dark fire.



Anne Sexton

RE: Today

I miss my dead friends Paul Mariah and Ed Dorn today.  This morning.  Why is that today.  I wonder if
all since elections I am suffering from the culture of Amerika.  It makes me sick.  ALL of it.  Why these
two men (men) and now.  Perhaps something that they both held high and true....they both I think saw
the world which surrounded them with an awful clarity that few of us, very very few, can recognize and
put down in print.  THAT lifted them both into an extrodinary universe and they remain.  Remembering
now what they wrote and how.....each reacted to the same world surrounding them.....fucked up and evil
to the bone it was....they both recognized and yet they described for us to see a response.  Paul would (did) offer (me) you (anyone) an umbrella or a hum job...your choice....depending on the weather and he did it honestly.  Ed would (did)  offer  (me) you (anyone) a line of coke or a baseball bat...with equal human respnse to your wellbeing.  Believe me.  You can now take this and it is my treat.  Today. 

RE: NOW NOW NOW

IMPEACH SAM BROWNBACK

RE: Format

Part B


I just can’t believe if ever the thought you don’t know how

you have no idea idear you couldn’t possibly



Not much thrown up over a life time time to look back and

realize that nothing gained for lack of trying just substitutes

sweat for grit who needs that either



Just coming to terms with all that time wasted here sits one

pumped out hole in the spirit life trudging across across me like

three times twenty or some such mathematical possibility but

don’t now no don’t ask



Why it matters it matters not just because but just and all

solutions rendered seem pointless at least and dull now posted



Take all of this please if it is a moldy joke just gather up and walk

away before I have to write more



What’s more this dreams don’t matter no more just one after

another looking for a way out of one more too tight space that is

what is left



Saving the best for last aint like what I made it up to be.

                                                           (smokin w/william-1991)



RE: Lovejoy by Phoebe Wayne

Just received new publication from c_L books, Portland.  Lovejoy by Phoebe
Wayne is tremedious work.  A somewhat difficult task to take up a person or anothers persons work and 'write about it'.  Well Ms. Wayne has and well she has done it.  Mazal Tov to her and James Yeary who made the book.

Here is Phoebe Wayne's blogsite and she talks abut the book:
http://onedocument.blogspot.com/

Here is James Yeary's website. 
http://catabolicguiltcalendar.blogspot.com/

Here are some lines from the book:

"The Lovejoy Columns are distant lost damaged personal

   and historical/social, Commercial from transit beginnings

          to development to art-commerce moment of all our

        bunched ideals frenzying over each face of glass and

 framed ditch.  Framed by park, salvaged industrial beams

                                             etc.  Framed by Real Estate."

RE: GO HERE NOW

http://mavieenbling2amemoir.blogspot.com/2010/10/ma-vie-en-bling-2-memoir.html



Call it what you will and you will.

Thanks AB and H.

RE: Ted Hughes WAS the worst poet of 20th Century

Lawrence Journal World, October 7, 2010 (AP London)

Proof found after all these years that Ted Hughes WAS THE WORST POET writing in the English language in 20th century.  Britian is all up after new poem is found 'detailing the day his wife Sylvia Plath committed suiside".    And it seems perhaps that this  may have contributed  ...his fucking poems were so terrible she had no escape.  Isnt that obvious now?  I dont even mean to belittle Ms. Plath here....what I am getting at is that perhaps she realized and that might have been part of her depression...what a great fake her husband was.  Here are some lines quoated from the newspaper this morning that were  on the Brit Tee Vee "...read in a dry quivering voice by actor Jonathan Pryce...". 

"...I lit my fire.  I had got out my papers. 
And I started to write when the telphone
jerked awake, in a jabbbering alarm,
remembering everything.

     It recovered in my hand,  a voice
like a selected weapon
or a measured injection coolly delivered
its four words deep into my ear.

     "Your wife is dead."

+++++++++++++++
Another reason why a whole lot of folks believe that poetry just doesnt matter and should remain locked in the closet of academia where it belongs.  Ugh.

RE: New

[i read somewhere about an anthology of end poems.......hopefully nowhere near that but it does enter into the conversation, dont it]



Part B




I just can’t believe

if ever the thought

you don’t know how

you have no idea

idear

you couldn’t possibly



Not much thrown up over a life

time

time to look back and realize

that

nothing gained for lack of

trying just substitutes sweat for grit

who needs that either




Just coming to terms with all

that time wasted

here sits one pumped out

hole in the spirit

life trudging across

across me like three times twenty

or some such mathomatical

possibility

but don’t now no don’t ask



Why it matters

it matters

not just because

but just

and all solutions rendered seem

pointless at least

and dull now posted




Take all of this

please

if it is a moldy joke

just gather up and walk away

before I have to write

more







What’s more

this

dreams don’t matter

no more

just one after another

looking for a way out

of one more too tight

space



that is what is left







Saving the best

for last

aint like what

I made it

up

to

be.

[resting in the pits at lake afton raceway as crew for River City Race Team, 1968]

RE: OMG

Me, Richard Lopez and Tavi Gevinson have the same hair color and cut now.  Is that cool?    I am so done.  Kaminski, Tabios are you guys in?

RE: Cleaning off shelves

I need suggestions as to what to do with some books.  Living in Sonoma County in the 70's and 80's it was impossible to not know Paul Mariah.  He was a gem, a beaut, a wild ass motherfucker.  But I have never heard or seen of any great collections or locations of his 'papers'.  Here is the deal:  I have a few publications from his press, Manroot.  Chapbooks (his and others), issues of Manroot magazine (including the Jack Spicer issue),  and a letter or two.  Stuff printed on his Chandler letter press up in Glen Ellyn, which I helped with.  Nothing valuable money wise...but you know.   I would rather they end up in a homeless shelter library than the basement of some university library "special collections" and if YOU would like to look through them and then pass them along...that would be great.  You dont have to be doing research on 'mid-century radical gay poetics' to have me give you these few items.  Really...you dont. 

Help me out.  I will box them up and send to you what I have.  Serious enquires only.

P.S.  I looked (searched) online for a pic of Paul and couldnt find one...sad eh.  Or maybe just not good  searching.  And I dont have a scanner...but I do have pics of dude

RE: Thot for the day

If ever I exhaust what is interior, perhaps something more 'avant'  will appear. 

Till then, I see no reason to use  machines, materials or science to enhance or better what I have to say. 

Is that ego? 

Am I lazy to not see beyond what imagines in my head? 

Perhaps.

Tomorrow Fox News announces The End of The World.

I will write about the Fox news mollusks who announce the EOW and the worms who believe them.

I will not write a goodbye poem and I will not write a poem to try and stop the end of world. 

My choice. 

Sorry if that disappoints some.

RE: Oxkutzcub

Swimming in heavy air

you go down
you go up
or you make a offer
it is impossible to find the bottom
although it is breathtaking
opaque doesnt even begin
refracted has no meaning
the fishduck is hyusterical
distance is multiplied by breath
you are very much the minority
in spite of your outfit
there may be something
to hang on to
bad idea
bad bad bad
all the new age is helpless
if you wanna go up - begin
there is a very good reason
to worship the sun
did i say the fishduck was hysterical
i cant breathe
what a relief
distance is only imagined
what a relief
there is a language beyond me

:RE: Really???

What is all this I am reading across the pages...what we need is more poetry, we can end the war with more poetry, we can stop the killing with more poetry, we love our laureates, what we need is more poets fighting to end the hunger, we need to stand up and make more poetry to end uh.......whatever.

What a bunch of malarkey.  Jeeze.  Like it would make shit difference if Billy Collins ran the fucking UN or Charles Bernstein was fucking poet laureate or whatnot or  if Susan Howe went to fucking Gainsesville Florida and read a fucking poem to the cracker racist asshole burning Korans it would make a fucking difference. 

Where in the fuck to people get the idea or even concept to even conceive and then write about the fact that poetry can do something in the world besides just be poetry?  What is this bullshit.

Here is the new movement.  Stop fucking around.  Read poetry.  Write poetry.  Fuck poetry if you want.  Just don't think that because YOU do poetry that it is somehow capable of changing anything.  Get a grip!

In case you havent noticed bumper stickers have and always will encourage more response than our little slim volume of poetry will or could ever.  Just realize that one thing.  You....should.....know....this....by....now.

The only way to celebrate poetry is to write it.  Period.  And even if every humanoid on the planet wrote poetry it would not, repeat not, make the planet a better place.  Trust me.

End of rant.

RE: This too

Tuito, Jalisco, Mexico -for Ed Dorn

The only difference between
Tuito, Jalisco, Mexico and
Oskaloosa, Jefferson County, Kansas is
oddly enough....the temperature.

Cowboying is global.  Pickup trucks local.


Sand Fleas...Boca de Tomatlan

Macho aside
today I enjoy the scars

I've got the kind of legs that 'show' defects.


Hola Narcolitas

Amazing how things change when
a black van pulls up and parks in front.

More amazing the items added to the menu as
the five enter

Less amazing but certainly more welcome
is the 'one of those' head moves the guitar
player gives Sue and I.  You know the one.....
"Adios, mi amigos..."

Damn and we wanted to hear Los Golendreas......

RE: Blog is dead?

So the blog is dead.  So I find reading some of the coastal mussing recently while puttering through
a blog roll.  My my.  And I was just...well that is always been the case.  Once in high school, for a few days, I had the coolest car in the lot....faded lime green '51 ford 2 door with extreme rake so bad it hit the ground in the front.  Ahh.  Well them were the days.  Now, not so cool.  Just another "elder", "senior", "silverback" whatever and fuck you too.  The only difference between me and you is years...sweetie....I got to meet and spend time with Paul Blackburn in McSorleys Tavern on East 7th St one long long smokey afternoon and many pints of ale.  You get the twitter and a smart phone.  Big deal, eh. 

So l guess a lot of folks will just close there comment boxes and then close there blogs.  Oh well everything else gets shorter every day.  I guess I should post a really cool picture up here everyday now so Silliman can just 'grab' it when he needs it....or maybe not.  Maybe I dont get a photo being dead on his sight....oh well.  Fuck that too.

Life is good now.  Tomatoes and fresh sweet corn.  Kittys are healthy.  Sue and I healthy.  What the fuck, eh.

Blogging isnt cool anymore.  Jeez.

Part B - for Richard Lopez

Part B




I just can’t believe

if ever the thought

you don’t know how

you have no idea

idear

you couldn’t possibly



Not much thrown up over a life

time

time to look back and realize

that

nothing gained for lack of

trying

just substitute sweat for grit

who needs that either


Just coming to terms with all

that time wasted

here sits one pumped out

hole in the spirit

life trudging across

across me like three times twenty

or some such mathomatical

possibility

but don’t now no don’t ask



Why it matters

it matters

not just because

but just

and all solutions rendered on

this eyepad space seem

pointless at least

and dull now printed


Take all of this

please

if it is a moldy joke

just gather up and walk away

before I have to write

more


What’s more

this

dream don’t matter

no more

just one after another

trying to find a way out

of one more to tight

space



Saving the best

for last

aint seeming like what

I made it

up

to

be.

RE: The Comment Box

Note to all commetors...I am getting closer and closer to decoding your marks in the comment box. Thanks for taking the time. Soon you will receive direct response ======== === ===.

RE: Winter's Bone

You need to see this movie. Then after watching the movie you will know why out here no one really gives a rats ass about the Tea Party. Other cultural and social congregations are a bit more...um...stressful when encountered at large. In other words, to get from or too Lawrence, Kansas....you have to go thru Oklahoma or Missouri for instance.....don't make a lot of eye contact. Imagine that instead of driving a car you are riding the subway...ha ha.

No really....it's all good times. Go ahead flash the peace sign at the lady with nutz on her truck.

RE: In the Mail Today

New issue of House Organ, published by Kenneth Warren, POB466, Youngstown, NY 14174 and ONLY available in print. Send him some $$.

Nice to share pages with Edward Mycue, Diane Di Prima and Richard Grossinger.....the 'invisible generation" Chas Plymell calls us.

I admire Warren for his continued putting out HO and his continued writing about Charles Olson and publishing Susan Maurer, Stephen Ellis and others.

from The Daily Dose (010110)

Oxycodone

To 'lose your mind' and discover that
it is wrapped in a rare and welcome
relief. Pain relief really does mean
'losing your mind' and is a rewarding
experience.

If you are going to spend
time with medication....you could do
worse.

=============================

No you cant have any. They are mine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I live in Kansas. You understand, no??

RE: Is Marjorie Perloff the Helen Thomas of PO

WELL IS SHE????????????????????????


Answer(s): who gives a shit.
who would notice.
who would take who's place.

If your an academic....choose from the above.

If your an un-academic....make up your own.

If your as flummoxed as I am....congratulations.

(Thanks to Ron Silliman for including links in his blog today to the ReThought Conf. Now can we move on?)

RE: Linked again

This here blog is linked in Ron Sillimans blog today. Can you find the reference?


http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

RE: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HELEN THOMAS WAS RIGHT PERIOD.

She has the freakin right to speak her fucking mind...be it altzimered or not...at least someone in the whitehouse spoke out against the racist, thug military junta running Isreal. Is that anti anything...not really.

RE: An a lotta good on her

WTF. The New Yorker. Last issue Rae Armantrout and this time Jennifer L. Knox. I will now cancel my subscriptions to Poetry, Jacket, Bridge, No Tell Motel, Exquisite Corpse, Shampoo and all those other boring 'literary' mags. At least the New Yorker they also talk about shit like movies and food and stuff like that not just the poetics of Billy Collins vs Kenny Goldsomething or other. What more is it that two of the greatest poets in Amerka land in The New Yorker.

Just makes ya feel all girly girl dont it.

RE:Please forward often

GAZILLION REASONS WHY NURSE JACKIE IS BETTER THEN FLARF OR CONCEPTUAL POETRY

ONE THRU 999BAZILLION - EDIE FALCO

REMAINING REASON:

Ken Goldsmith and Gary Sullivan and other remaining Concepularfs
would do well to fuck there local pharmacist in exchange for free oxycodone (synthetic heroin).

Flarf and Conceptual would be funnier, sexier, longer lasting and have a better chance of getting renewed for another season.

RE: Ron Silliman Rocks

Reading Annie Dillard's book An American Childhood, published 1987 and found the following on page 144 where she recalls her tween years studying rocks:

"I thought to specialize in interesting names. In Massachusett and Connecticut, collectors found a mineral called sillimanite, named for a Yale professor. My specialized collection would feature sillimanite, radio opal, yowah huts, and agaty potch."

Who knew.

RE: JOMOPO

RAT
TRAP
MAYA



RAT
MAT
OVAN

RAT
SCAT
POVA

RAT
MUTT
OVID

RAT
CAT
MESA

RAT
CAN
SPRAY

RE: WSB and me

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/05/william-s-burroughs-shoots-william-shakespear/

Someone told me this vid was up on Harriet. Will likely be the only trace of me on that site.

I am in jean jacket helping put up the target backstop in background and my voice on tape couple times. One of many many times I went shooting with William in 1980's. This location up north of Lawrence close to Tonganoxie. Looks like Jose Ferez had brought Ralph Steadman into town. He had William shoot a drawing of Shakespeare. Never saw that target again. Later the two of them 'collaborated' on a print. Steadman made the print and sent it to Lawrence and William shot and signed it. I guess that is collabortion. William was generious whenever, people wanted him to shoot something and there were lots of them. Left to his own desires, William shot targets...paper NRA targets and made notes on them of weapon used etc. Others came around and made stuff for him to shoot....wooden things, t-shirts, books, art stuff out of paper and metal...all of which he did as asked but never did he make stuff to shoot unless it was someone else's suggestion. Oh he shot pumpkins, beer cans, bottles, spray paint cans...yes...but not other stuff . The only time I saw him get somewhat engaged was when S. Clay Wilson brought some targets he had drawn for William to shoot. They were pretty crude and funny drawings.

Note that William is explaining to Steadman how to load a magazine for a pistol...and it is very important to know how many rounds go in and how many come out...especially when you are at a range with lots of folks. Forgeting a round in the chamber is how a lot of folks get shot. William was about safety and being aware. My theory as to why William was somewhat obsessed with target shooting was that he was trying to improve his aim every since the day he shot his wife.

I like what he did with the target...he walked right up to it and acted like he was gonna pop Shakespeare in the forehead, then turned and paced back as if in a dual...which is pretty funny....which William was always. Of course he knew and often quoted from Shakes.

Those days out in the country shooting were the best...and when he had old friends with him like George Kaull the sculpture it was a classy afternoon. Shooting, a drink to "steady your hand"more shooting, inside for a joint and some nosh. Back to town. We never did get stopped and that was probably a good thing...two 80 plus year old guys with sacks full of guns, vodka, pot and ammo along with a couple layabout 50 somethings. Humm. It was a big deal...a phone call to me "Jim lets go shooting. Call George and see if he can go." Picking up William, making sure the cats were fed and settled, making sure to have the vod and coke or go to store, check ammo, stop and buy more, check targets, load van, pick up George. Crackers and cheese. Drive our to location. Set out all the guns and ammo and set up stuff. Fix drinks. etc. etc.

There were the high points like S. Clay Wilson and Hunter Thompson who came to shoot and the low points mostly ahole band persons who more than anything wanted a picture of them and WSB shooting. William was mostly a good host. But never talked much about it afterward.

Once some over amped chicago punk guitar player spotted a snake in the grass and yelled to someone to shoot it. William moving as quickly as he could, totterd over and yelled: "Don't fucking shoot it. For gods sake. Leave it alone."

RE: Poem here

http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/

Southern autumn issue of Otolith from the master in Australia. Longish poem from Laos trip last year visiable among a lot of other very much interesting writings.

RE: Galater #14 up now

Eileen has put together another great issue. Great pictures all over the site! I reviewed some chap books.

http://galatearesurrection14.blogspot.com/

RE: Today what I wrote

I am old…I remember shit

This is a conception.
This is a confession.
This is a emotional memory.
Do not read this.
There were no Jews in 20 miles I was born.
Or blacks.
Who knew no Jews. Or why.
After the fact. There were no signs.
Nothing.
Then or now ( check I don’t care)
And nothing out of the very very ordinary was known for sure.
No one went anywhere. Without an invitation.
There is nothing to go back for.
Nothing found writing this.
You can look it up.

RE: House Party Quintana Roo

On the recent solstice day 30,000 people went to Chichen Itza thinking that if THEY showed up the clouds would disappear and the 'snake' shadow would trip down the pyramid. NOT. Ha ha. We were doing some beach time and were on the way to the corner store we got invited to a wedding anniversary party. The band was messing with some serious beats. Too bad but they didn't have Cd's for sale but what a great sax player. Didn't seem like anyone was concerned about the world coming to an end. The ladies were more interested in getting me to join them dancing. One guy kept telling me something about a harp but it took me a really long time to figure it out. Something in Alaska. Later at the internet cafe I found out what he meant...HAARP in Alaska (google this shit!!!) . Holy Crap. That is some insane stuff. And he was right...a lot more real and scary than some fucked up white interpretation of a Maya Codex.

But that afternoon was spent celebrating a happy marriage. There were lots of the little 8 oz bottles of chilled Sol waiting. Party on. Sorry the vid is so short, no battery, but you get a taste.

RE:Part II Barbara Guest and Gregory Corso

So here is the first half of An Emphasis Falls on Reality. Under it is a link to an article at How2 by Elizebeth Robinson who does a great job talking about Ms. Guest. Much better than I could.

What I can say is that with these two posts, naming Corso and Guest, I am not saying either is the greatest or best or number 1 etc etc, just that, too me, the are representative of a period my life has traveled through. They represent the New York poets....whatever that means. Okay, maybe what that means is that they are two I will return too. And I don't need to argue for any others. Nuff said.











Barbara Guesstfrom Fair Realism (1989)


AN EMPHASIS FALLS ON REALITY


Cloud fields change into furniture

furniture metamorphizes into fields

an emphasis falls on reality.



"It snowed toward morning," a barcarole

the words stretched severely



silhouettes they arrived in trenchant cut

the face of lilies...





I was envious of fair realism.



I desired sunrise to revise itself

as apparition, majestic in evocativeness,

two fountains traced nearby on a lawn....



you recall treatments

of 'being' and 'nothingness'

illuminations ap

tto appear from variable directions -

they are orderly as motors

floating on the waterway,



so silence is pictorial

when silence is real.


http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_2/guest/robinson.html

RE: Buying a shirt.

We were in Yucatan state not long ago and stopped at a store front shirt factory in a small town near Izamal. I bought a really cool guayabera in a shrimp color. The young woman standing next to me picked it out for this rather large gringo person. I don't speak Maya and she didn't speak much Spanish...didn't matter. Something made me ask Sue to take a picture of us. Now looking at the picture I see how very beautiful her expression is and that it seems to say she knows a lot about a lot of stuff...besides making shirts. I think she is the face of the future of our planet...and her look gives me compassion and comfort that everything might just be alright. Her sister (?) in green and her mom (?)seem amused too. Well ...we were all having a good time.

I think this is a picture I will return to.....it is a comfort. For me.

RE: Reaction to M ENTAL TEKST

They just keep pouring in:


Richard Lopez on his blog from Sacramento, CA:


... also jim mccrary's got a new chap out. this is serious don't miss shit, m ental tekst. i've read it three times now and i'll also want to write a bit about it in the very close future. mccrary fucking rocks, no doubt about it and this is high-quality meta-critical post-lyric writing. go to his blog, you can find it at the bottom of my links, and leave comments asking for copies. now.


James Yeary on his blog from Portland says:

M ENTAL TEKST by Jim McCrary
Hmmm. Poetry of Critique. & closes the integral: speech=music. But in a Dee Dee Ramone kind of fashion. Great Surrealist opener...



Eileen Tabios on hir blog from NorCal says:

M ENTAL TEKST, poems by Jim McCrary
(witty and rollickin'!!)

RE: Pop quiz

Today Ron Sillimans blog content has two (2) links to this blog. Can you find them?

Signed
Bored in Kansas

You Tube Vids I'd Like to See

Phila, Pa.

Officer Nedlicks dash cam was running clear during a recent late night traffic stop. Nedlick stopped the car for suspision of DUI. When he approached vehicle, the driver ID'd himself as Ron Silliman, poet and blogger and mumbled something about "celebrating 2 million visitors". Nedlick asked him to move to rear of car and take a field sobriety test. The fireworks began when Nedlick ask suspect to "...recite the alphabet backwards" As officer Nedlick later recalled: " All of a sudden this guy starts shouting out words in some language I never knew existed...it was like he had been waiting all his life for me to test him!!! I didn't know whether to taser him or let him go or call for backup help from someone with an advanced degree!"

All the above was confirmed by rookie officer Dizzy Vendler who arrived on scene shortly after
suspect Silliman reached the letter N shouting "Non" over and over again.

No citation was issued. Suspect was released and promised to send the officers his blog address as a thank you.

www.youtube/silliman/philly/vendler/trafficstop/silliness

RE: The "New York School"

Part I.

I think, in the long run, two poets will remain as most representative of 20/21 century NYC poetics, so called.

Gregory Corso and Barbara Guest....not necessarily in that order. But those are the results of an interior poll taken recently here.

Well what about, ummm, FOH? Sorry...buried by twitter. Paul Blackburn.....you know that makes me sad too...he was Frankie's equal, straight but equal. Alice Notley...well she sure deserves it...who knows...all best luck. Jimmy and Allen and Sir John and Kenny and all the rest....ah........well nope. Not gonna happen. Why? No legs. Period.

For now...read this: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/gasoline-the-imaginary-and-the-pure-gregory-corso/

RE: This just out

RE: Read what?

Someone told me to read Fredereck Seidel. I looked at Poetry Foundation site. Fuck that. Sorry. No time. Still reading S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriquez, Joyce Former and Lyn Chevely. Real vispo, real funny poetry with good pictures. Call me old school. It is gross or it is crap. Know the difference and ye shall be entertained no end. Read a bad poet who says pussy a lot and well you just read a bad poet who says pussy a lot. I am old enough to remember first hearing Lenore Kandel which is why a bit later when someone shoved Frank O'Hare at me I got over it before too long. Sorry Frankie. I reread Kandel when she died last October....pretty good poems for sure.

This is the kinda stuff you think about when you find yourself 68 years old. You should be so lucky.

RE: Reading in Lawrence

It was great...both of them were great.

Not that I got all of it. Am I too old, to un urban, to not well read, too not using enough social networking devices...ah ha. Perhaps that.

The jokes were funny, no doubt. Making fun of old white guys always is...hey wait a minute.

So...two poets from afar come and performed. Was a welcome relief to the Olympics for sure.

A good nite.

RE: Thanks, Crag.

From Crag Hills blog:

http://scorecard.typepad.com/


February 09, 2010
Continuing Availability: Jim McCrary's All That
This collection of chapbooks, McCrary’s first full-length book, spans over twenty years of the author’s efforts. Channeling William Carlos Williams, Ed Dorn, Robert Grenier, Joanne Kyger and others on and within the airwaves, McCrary has created a body of poems that snips and snaps, chuckles and guffaws, tugs and strokes, kisses and bites.

Steve Tills puts it this way: “Jim has devoted his spirit and heart to pursuits decidedly antithetical to self-aggrandizement. Quietly, he has followed a most courageous lineage of others also both gentle and careful in their approach to telling the truth and making it uniquely compelling. You’ll sometimes recognize that lineage when you take up All That. You’ll frequently marvel at the quiet, substantive authenticity McCrary has achieved in the sometimes lonesome but always deeply communal turns his truly individuated, unequivocally human poeming has taken.”

Or as K. Silem Mohammad puts it: “Out of the wild Kansas plains comes a howling wind, and in that wind is a howling wolf, and in that wolf is a howling lamb, and in that lamb is a Russian doll with another Russion doll inside it, and inside that one another one, and inside that one a plastic pill bottle because one of the dolls got broken, and in that bottle one last Russian doll, and in that last doll another howling wind–and here we go all over again. Somewhere in there, probably around the first wind and the wolf, is the poetry of Jim McCrary, which is really really really really good.”

All That
Including interview excerpt with Tom Beckett
171 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9798478-0-6
CONTACT AND ORDERING INFORMATION:
ManyPenny Press
1111 E. Fifth St.
Moscow,ID
83843
$15.95 + $3 postage
Make checks payable to Crag Hill

Bookstores should contact Crag Hill at cahill@wsu.edu to arrange for discounts.

If you would like to order on-line,
go to: http://www.lulu.com/content/4363355

RE: What a great photo!

Silliman has a great photo (http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/) of Marilyn Monroe and Carl Sandburg sharing a cig (joint) and a whiskey back in the day. Both seem to be in great spirit of joy together. Beautiful each one.

Imagine a pic of say, oh Nada Gordan and Billy Collins sharing a doobie and vodka, laughing hysterically in corner of Zinc bar. Or the late great kari edwards and Ted Koozer canoodling with 44oz's of O'Duels's and a line of coke?

Other couples come to mind?

RE: Ken Irby Reading at KU

The Intent On. And Ken standing at a podium before a large window with grey snow spitting Kansas afternoon heading to dusk read. Not all the 672 pages from this collection of his work...but most of an hour. From poem written in 1962 and until a poem writ in 2006, if memory serves. It wasa pleasure, a reminder of Ken's talent, wit, thoughtfulness and the awareness of a man who I am pleased to know, if at slight distance. Ken remembers and writes it down. Oh...there are a lot of folks gonna write a lot more about this book...fine by me. The other day I heard it read by Ken for most of an hour. There is something in that. For sure. A winter gift.

RE: Is it me?

Been spending a good bit of time online lately....checking blogs, following links, hitting publishers and journals and other stuff in the poetics universe. Now I am left with the overwhelming impression that re-acting and reacting and acting and over re acting to each others productions (in the widest definition)is the most common pastime in the poetics universe. Do folks really give a fuck, give a rats ass, give a crap that much about what the 'other' is or is not doing. To spell it out for a change: What the Fuck? I am really unable to make up my mind if these folks that are in dialogue over this and that are taking themselves seriously.

Nothing original in this: I know what I like. That is what matters. I can recognize it. I can recognise not it and turn away.

Blah blah blah.

Maybe something in this. When I came up it took time and cost money to find and purchace and get ahold of and follow what everyone was doing across the space. You had to track someone down and send them $ and hope something came back. Or find a store or a friend. Seems like one didn't waste time or money on something one had problems with. Heard Bly once and never again spent time or money on THAT!

Blah blah blah.

RE: Ken Irby Reading new Collected

Ken Irby's new book The Intent On (collected 1962-2006) is out and he, Ken, will be reading it from 4-5:30pm on Feb 4th at the Union Bookstore on Campus. If you see this you should go.

Following Ken's signing and reading, George Kimball and George Forman will be talking in the whatever building that is just north of union. Check a KU schedule somewhere.

Unless of course the union catches fire.

RE: Thinking about these ladies today

Sue and I were in Laos a year ago and this photo taken late January at Wat Phu southern part of country That's me on far right looking like a ghost. A 5th century ruins of temples on high hill overlooking Mekong Valley. It was a long walk up and it was hot. These and other women were selling flowers, incense and other 'gifts' to honor what was still going on at this place. It was an amazing spot to sit a spell and these ladies showed no offence from my joining them for a bit of a rest. Fat old white guy who was not chewing beetle like any aware person would be and they were. I guess just a moment ago reading some of the poetry blogs I click thru every day...reading the doomer/gloomer stuff from a couple folks.....all that....(bury your gold friends) seems so, well, off the track I guess. Maybe since I am turning 69 this year, I can somehow relate to these women (not really, I know that)

only, and I mean that, only that we have all lived a long time and know damn well what lies ahead and that future cannot be made worse by minute fluxuations in financials. We are going to move along to something/somewhere else. Period. So....now, here today in the what, 15th day the temp hasnt gone above freezing ...I recall and I stare at this photo and recall being on top of some world so unknown to me that all I could do was not think about it and just look down over the old stone, the valley, the river below...I could do what these ladies were doing...but for sure not keep up with them.

Well that is what travel is...not being here. No more.

RE: Note to P. Smith

Hi Patti,

Geez I tried to stay up to watch the documentary on PBS last night and lasted pretty far into it. But, alas, not till the end. Almost. But not all of it. Was great though came on too late at nite. Forgive me. It wasnt desire that sent me to bed. Couldnt stay awake. That simple.

McCrary