Sometimes it's best to leave at the half...

Last night I made the journey downtown to the Chicago Small Press Showcase. And when I say journey, I mean, epic pain in the ass. First I missed the bus I was trying to make and waited an extra 10 min. out in the windy cold. The bus came around again and I jumped on, only to have it break down 2 blocks later, which was fortunately right next to the 47th street depot, or was it? The manager of the depot told the bus driver, "Try and make it back to 79th street, and we'll take care of it there." Ummm...what? So she kept on going and the bus broke down 5 more times on Lake Shore and finally reached its penultimate stop at the corner of Michigan and Roosevelt. So, I waited for another bus to come and pick me up, got on that bus, got off waaay too early and had to walk to walk four more blocks. All the while apologizing to my wife, who wasn't exactly thrilled about going to a poetry reading anyway. I felt like Charlie Brown, "Why is everything I do destined to be doomed?"

Anyway, we got to the SAIC, grabbed a couple of seats and prepared ourselves for three hours of poetry from 8 different small presses. I'd heard a few of the readers before, and had remembered liking them well enough, so I was kind of excited. Laura Sims and Larry Sawyer read somewhere in the first act and I've always enjoyed their irreverent, give-a-fuck attitude during readings, which more than not comes off as endearing and seems to say, "I really don't know why I'm up here and you're not." There was another poet that I like real well named Daniela Olszewska. Her poems can look like this:

Out of the Frying Pan

Four fires, some eggplants, a vague tile floor. And in this corner, they
are spicing the Slavic broth. A bubble-bell voice calls out from above,
“Don’t forget to cut off her tags!” A flash from the sharp shade of gun grey.
The stomach cut up into unequal pieces. They wrap it in rice paper
or cheesecloth. The girl patches get bathed in inorganic oils. A doctor
in a bird mask pushes mirror parts under the fingernails that are not quite
crisp yet. Look sweetheart! They made you a card in the shape of a brain.

Zombie: 24 Hours In The Life Of

Green glow, eel glow. I wake up.
Obliterate all traces of breadcrumbs.
Dig my way out up using an amethyst-
handled spoon. Don a dress made
of disco ball parts. Commit crimes
against nature; love myself tender.
Drink brain straight from the carton.
Exhibit self-diagnosing prowess.
Get hooked on phonics, the furtive
stroking of glossy covers.
Covet my neighbor's will.
Run for national office. Toothy brite.
Institute a tax on public displays
of precociousness. Institute a tax
on loaves and fishes. Spinning doctrine.
Place a crink in the public think tank.
Catalyze myself out of loop mode.
Perform telepathic abortions.
Raise snakes and hell for fun and profit.
Fall out of love with everyone taller than me.
Legally change name to animal/mineral/plant.
Denounce the ever expanding waistlines
of scientific inquiry. Denounce the backs
of eyeballs. Green glow, eel glow fade.

I was going to buy her book from dancing girl press, but saw a book by Kristy Odelius, and bought that one instead. I don't know why for sure, I suppose its because I think of her as this mythological creature...The Mysterious and Magical Odelius. It sounds believably greek. Anyway, I bought her book, "Bee Spit." It looks good, so I'm pretty stoked.

At this point in the evening their was a break, and when Laura Sims split, I should have taken that as a sign. The second half of the reading was full of old white people reading their blues/slam bullshit, and really being into it. One fucker even had a drum he beat on while he read his poem about drug habits. As much as I love Beat poetry, I hate that this is what it has become. It's a cartoon, it's fodder for satire, and these poets all bought into it. Besides the drum, there were no less than 3 mentions of Miles Davis, exactly 4 poems about Charles Bukowski, and each of them read an "anit-war" poem that had yelling in it.

I'm not one to dog on things I dislike, but the second half of the reading was miserable, and only added to my need to apologize to my wife for making her go with me. Long story short, check out dancing girl press, switchback books, and the Cracked Slab Anthology of Chicago Poetry for the New Century, "The City Visible."

Also, two weeks from today (April 12th, 2008) Matthew Zapruder and Forrest Gander will be reading translations for the Chicago Poetry Project at the Harold Washington Library. Cool.

It's not poetry, but it kicks ass

Ian Dury is my hero. I have good dreams only after I consider the possibility of being Ian Dury reincarnate. Ian Dury had a band called the Blockheads. Lucy was always calling Charlie Brown a blockhead. Charlie Brown and Ian Dury were about the same height. Ian Dury like being hit with sticks, here's proof.



I always love stumbling across things I forgot I loved. Anselm Berrigan and Marianne Moore are two of those things. If you don't already love them you should give it a shot. Berrigan is Ted Berrigan's son, and a great post-modern poet. Marianne Moore is John Milton Moore's daughter, and my favorite of all the modernists. Their books look like this:

Karate Chop of Love

Bredle vs. Tynes 2: Electric Boogaloo

Because I'm a big loser without much else to do, I can tell you that I've just finished both books that I received in the mail on Monday. The good news? I liked them both. The bad news? I've got more notes...

Tynes' book is awesome, her poems are these compact expanses of wilderness. Like a botanical garden or a woods out a corn field. Not that they necessarily have much to do with wilderness, but you should get my point. Her poems function like signs pointing us to a place we'd always wanted to go, but can never think of when we're planning trips. Like the House on the Rock, or the Biggest Frying Pan in the World. Tynes creates curiosities in her poems that draw you in, while also leaving you enough room to figure out the best way to get there.

Bredle's calling card, on the other hand, is as a planner. Though his poems are always surprising, when you are finished reading them, you can't help but feel the outcome was inevitable. Where Tynes' would surprise you with a bird and asks you consider it, Bredle throws Micheal Jordan at you and tells you to deal with it...there are bigger fish to fry. Fish like lost love, personal inadequacies, class, etc. In short, Bredle's book is a big beautiful list of shit to worry about, shit we should be worrying about, shit we don't usually worry about, and astroturf.

Tonight's also's:

The new Magic Numbers EP is awesome. There have been a lot of bands whose first records I've bought on hype alone and really liked (Kieser Chiefs, Umbrellas), but then felt relatively impartial to what they did after that. Not so with The Magic Numbers, my friends, they keep staying good, like Twinkies, or pickles.

There is a big reading at the SAIC this Friday, it should be cool. Here's some info:
SMALL PRESS SHOWCASE

Sponsored by The Poetry Center of Chicago
Friday, March 28, 2008, 7-10 pm
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago
Admission is free, though donations are welcome.

Participating Presses:

Answer Tag Home Press
Cracked Slab Books
Dancing Girl Press
Featherproof Books
Fractal Edge Press
March Abrazo Press
Puddin' Head Press
Switchback Books

Finally, I read today that marital spats can be good for your health. So, just to even myself out, I ate a shit ton of junk food and with greasy fingers grabbed onto my lover and trespassed where no man had trespassed before...the ear canal. (Any one else miss Will Ferrell on a weekly basis?)

Monday Night Slapdown: Bredle vs. Tynes

I was poking around Bredlemania last week and discovered that there was more Bredle to mania over. "Pain Fantasy" is available at Red Morning Press, and if one book just isn't enough, than I have good news...you can buy two for twenty dollars. I did, and boy was it great. There really is nothing quite like convincing yourself that spending more money is just like saving money. That said, I also bought Jen Tynes' "The End of Rude Handles."

Though I'm not overly familiar with Tynes' work, I did really enjoy her collaborative chapbook from Octopus with Erika Howsare, and I also think quite highly of their press, horseless. At first glance, Tynes' poems seem to capture the feeling of being lost, well, not lost, but...like walking into your parent's house in the dark. You know where everything is, you just have to stop and think about it a bit. This same comfortable obtuseness is what makes these poems so enjoyable to read. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to reading the whole book.

In other news, I got an acceptance from The Concher over the weekend. It's a neat little journal from Ryan Flaherty and his partner Katie (whose last name escapes me at this moment) and their Two Poet Truffles outfit. I'll let you know when it comes out, and give you a full list of reasons to buy it that will both begin and end with, "because I'm in it."

Also, I've begun writing poems based in the world of Oregon Trail...watch out!

Check the post below this one to hear my dog snoring...it's like sleeping in a hotel room with my dad. I recorded it just to prove to her that she does snore (she never believed it before!), and then just to add an extra dash of embarrassment, I threw it up here.

Roxie Asleep on My Lap

I've liked this song 53 times so far.

I haven't heard a song that I could listen to over and over like this since the Bon Savants "Between the Moon and the Ocean." I'm ridiculously crazy about it. There was one night where I had on repeat for a good two hours and the next morning I played three more times on my way to work.

I basically played this song while I wrote my entire "Puddle Men" series...which is now in revisions and looking pretty good.

In case you're curious here's the Bon Savants song:



I also gained a dog last night. Her name is Bella and she has been pestered non-stop by my dog, Roxie. I think they are beginning to grow on each other, but all I've heard for the last 14 hours is snorting, heavy breathing, growling and the occasional bark, but enough about my neighbors having sex...OH!

Bad jokes aside, listen to both these songs and wish me luck with these fucking dogs.

Oh, and go to read Dorothea Lasky's poems on Octopus, they are too amazing...and while you're there do yourself the favor by reading Adam Clay's too, I've respected his work for awhile now, but I'm really beginning to fall in love with it...soon, we may push the beds together.

MY Lament

So now you will all find out that my interest in George Kalamaras wasn't totally without prompting. Some time ago the good editor of lament informed me that the poem he took of mine would be appearing opposite a respected American Surrealist and it was then I took interest...sorry, George, but I must say I love what you do and know plenty of others that do too.

So without further ado, click here to see George's poem first and then mine on page two:

http://lamentmag.blogspot.com/

Though I was worried at first, I think my poem stands up next to George's and that we manage to compliment each other well, but that's less me and George than it is fantastic editing on the part of Aaron McNally.

For Insurance Purposes

When I was a kid I used to take pictures of all my toys. Mostly of them fighting each other: G.I. Joe v. Cobra, He-Man v. Skeletor, my Cabbage Patch v. my brother's Cabbage Patch. My parents would get real angry and threaten to make me pay for film development. They never followed through and I never learned my lesson and so now I present to you the books I read last week v. the books I'm reading right now.

Aaron McNally's "Out of the Blue" eating Jason Bredle's "Standing in Line for the Beast."

Ted Berrigan's "Collected" collecting on George Kalamaras' "Borders My Bent Towards'" ass.
George Kalamaras' author photo pooping on Jason Bredle's author photo (though I really did like Bredle's book more).
What they looked like before I left them alone.

What Green did for Me

It was cold and the porta-potties were steamy...gross.

We walked down to the Bean to say hi and take pictures of ourselves taking pictures of ourselves. Can you find us?

Mythical Chicago Unicorns

They probably became unicorns because they drank the green water...this is gross too.

We went home and celebrated in traditional Irish fashion, we got pissed and then challenged each other to fist fights, but only casually.

This seems pretty tight

Thanks again to Facebook for allowing me to spend hours on the internet doing nothing. A positive side effect? I found this: tightjournal.blogspot.com. Normally when finding a journal I know nothing about I quick flip through the contributors and carry on: Tight 3 Featuring: Nora Almeida, Aaron Belz, David Berman, Sommer Browning, Michael Carr, Shanna Compton, Buck Downs, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Gabriel Gudding, Matt Hart, Mike Hauser, Katy Henriksen, Mark Horosky, David Huddle, Lisa Jarnot, Robert Kelly, Evan Kennedy, John Koethe, Maurice Manning, Chris Martin, Joseph Massey, James Meetze, Andrew Mister, Ryan Murphy, Jess Mynes, Daniel Nester, Cate Peebles, Arlo Quint, Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Sandra Simonds, Ed Skoog, Kathleen Winter, and Charles Wright

Did you catch it? Did you see what I saw? David (fucking) Berman! Is he finally writing poems again? Does anybody know for sure? 5 years ago, "Actual Air" practically made me shit my pants, and my one great regret in life is that I had a chance to see him read at that same time and I passed because I was too big of a pussy to take the train to a rock club. There are 3 pillars to my literary life, and they are: Howl, Actual Air, and The To Sound. To read new Berman poems would totally make my year...

So here is what I lay before you: if anyone knows for sure that new Berman poems are circulating through the small press world, let me know pronto, because this news is like fucking Christmas and I won't sleep much until 1) I read the poems myself, or 2) someone tells me that they are the same old poems, or hot new shit.

I'm waiting.

Kalamaras--because it's fun to spell!

That was George Kalamaras. He is a poet from Indiana. He looks like a hippie in pictures & thanks yogis in his books. For me to claim that I knew him 3 months ago would be a lie. I knew him 3 months ago. I found his book at Powell's. I bought it there too. My mother once told me that all George Kalamaras books deserve to have a home. I think David Duchovny mentioned it once too.

Other things to think about:

*Ezra Furman and the Harpoons is like Daniel Johnston if he was only uni-polar. Click, drag, left-click, google search. You'll be relieved you did.

*The new issue of 6X6 is splendid and at $3 a pop, you're stupid to not have it. Do you hear me? Stupid.

*Further Adventures Chapbooks and Pamphlets is running out of space for this year's run, so if you were thinking about submitting, do so soon, and do it here: furtheradventurespress@gmail.com

Presidential Busts with Jesus

I've been reading Jason Bredle's In Line for the Beast over the last few days, and the last few days have been pretty good. His poems are like rolling down a hill: you know that an end to the rolling will soon exist, but you have no idea when it will come, and in the mean time you've got nothing to do but roll, man, roll. Each of this poems delivers an entirely fulfilling ending that only afterwards seems inevitable. For you sports enthusiasts out there, imagine the bottom falling out of sinker just as you get all your momentum behind the bat. You know you're swinging at air, you know why you're swinging at air, but you still can't believe you're swinging at air.

Jason Bredle is the poet I've often imagined myself being...one who operates in the most colloquial of languages, but still managing to create an immediate and genuine response with the reader. His poems are so rapid fire its often easy to imagine yourself being talked at by two people simultaneously. Two people that happened upon you in a dead sprint, whom you are constantly reminding to breathe. It seems lame to call what Bredle does "stream of conscience," because that isn't really what he does, especially in the modern sense in which it was developed, but he does have a conversationally rambling tone to his voice that I really admire, and that seems authentic to me. In fact Mathias Svalina has a really good post on his blog regarding this exact phenomenon here: http://mathiassvalina.blogspot.com/2008/03/
i-was-talking-to-my-friend-dave-carillo.html#links

You should also check out his videos from the clean part reading series, heck, I'll even make it easy for you...

Long story short, go and look at Jason Bredle, but don't stare, it makes him nervous. As a matter of fact, maybe you should just go to his website, it can be found here: http://www.knifemachine.com/

He's also giving a reading here in Chicago, the info proper looks like this:
WEDNESDAY, 4.2.08, 8:00 PM
Reconstruction Room Series
at Black Rock Bar
3614 N. Damen Ave., Chicago, IL.

And for something only a little different

Here's a few poems from Zach Schomburg:

Gabcast! New Lakes Radio #35 - Love is When You Build a Boat from All the Eyelashes in the Ocean • Zachary Schomburg

read by Zachary Schomburg

Gabcast! New Lakes Radio #34 - I Know a Dead Wolf We Can Climb Inside and Beat • Zachary Schomburg

read by Zachary Schomburg






You should go here and check out everything else...it's pretty cool: http://newlakesaudioradio.blogspot.com/

I'm really into this whole recording of poems with your phone into gabcast. I think I might try it soon.

Here's a list of songs I really liked during the month of February

1. Out of Time by Jason Collett
2. Skinny Love by Bon Iver
3. No Coins by Cryptacize
4. Far Far by Yael Naim
5. Little 18 by Eric Matthews
6. See These Bones by Nada Surf
7. The Sweetest Tooth by Camphor
8. Flood Pt. 1 by The Acorn
9. I Saw the Light by State Bird
10. What Makes the Cherry Red by Christine Fellows
11. Brackish Water by The Lisps
12. Jet-Set Fleshtones by The Fleshtones
13. Private Life of a Cat by LK
14. In This City by Iglu & Hartly
15. Dreaming of the Plum Trees by White Hinterland

8.1

Diagram 8.1 is here! I've only gotten the chance to briefly peruse, but it looks like a good one, and Ander always has his head in a good place. I hope one day that my head can be in that place too.

Go. Read. Scheme. http://www.thediagram.com/

Promise me that someday you will allow me a big, "I told you so."

Poet of the week: Anthony McCann

First off, let me say that Anthony McCann could take a shit between two pieces of card stock and I'd still pay $14.95 for the goddamn thing as well as write a glowing review of it here. Secondly, and just in case that first statement didn't sell it quite enough, McCann is about as awesome as they come.

Though McCann's poetry can be beautiful, and often is, what is most alluring about it is its' ability to make you want to be around it. His poems are like the kid at the party who knows more than a little magic. The guy everybody wants to hear stories from, even if they've already heard them. There is a pure magnetism to his work that evolves into a hunger.

His language is simple. He's not wanting to wow you with poetic technique, though that's not to say that it isn't there, but his focus, it seems, is more on getting you to see a more whole world by twisting things that exist in it. His poems are constantly reminding me of that painting by Hans Hobein, where the two guys are standing in front of shit, but there is this weird flattened skull floating on the ground, here it is:

With out getting all lit-crit on that ass, this is best I can do to describe McCann's poetry. The only other thing I can do is show you a poem...and here that is:

Miami International Airport Hotel

1.

The alarm goes off---I'm still in the airport. Is it impossible to imagine my physical shape? I was dreaming of jobs again and of t-shirts that scream “Chicago!” And then I am absent, suddenly, accepting the fact: it remains impossible to imagine this hotel.

Are we inside the airport or are we clinging to its ribs?

At the elevator bank the walls are locked. The air piped in on rods of dust.

The doors open onto a square of grass.

To my right and to my left: two bright and empty hours.


There, that was pretty sweet, eh? You can this and other poems over at H_NGM_N, books at Wave and FENCE and of course the Machine Project.

#10

Octopus #10 is up...it's so awesome it'll make you question how Metallica's "Black Album" could have ever been awesome. And Metallica's "Black Album" WAS awesome, but #10 will make you dribble a bit in your pants.

That's right, complete loss of urine control.

http://www.octopusmagazine.com/

"This Elizabeth" will kick your Elizabeth's ass

So I just finished Lesley Yalen's "This Elizabeth," and it, my friends, is good. I've had many an argument regarding the necessity for poetry to be narrative. My point? It doesn't need to tell a story to take you on a journey. But that is neither here nor there. What is here is #2 in an edition of 200 (I'm slightly proud of that, if you can't tell) of Ms. Yalen's book, and it is surprisingly narrative in that way a good stand-up comedian is. Comedians don't just tell jokes, they create a space in which repetition and your everyday catch you totally off guard, they guide you into funny, carry you across the threshold to a place where a single idea or phrase can become the most hilarious thing you have ever heard.

And so it is with this poem. People, places and all sorts of other nouns keep popping in and out. All at once these street people, kitchen people, specialists and matinées appear both inconsequential and the sole reason the world keeps going. Yalen begs you to notice the mundane, but in pointing it out, she makes you realize how much awesomeness we never take out of our bags, makes you long for that awesomeness. The experience of reading her book is just like having three tubes of chapstick sitting in your change tray at home but having really chapped lips driving in your car to Minneapolis (I've never wanted anything so bad as any of those chapsticks as I did right then).

It's easy to call an artwork subtle, especially when we don't quite get it, but I feel like I get this book; its' purpose, its' goals, its' reason for being, and I have to say that the most amazing thing about this book is its' gentle nature...its' subtlety. Example, "A loved one is like a sound/ compounded over time/ by another sound"

My favorite poetry is poetry that isn't satisfied with the words we have to explain, well, everything. Yeah, I can say I love you, but what does that mean? It's a gesture, and one that does nothing to explain how I fell about you. Yalen's poetry is after a better explanation, she is taking a walk and lucky for us someone asked her how it was. But where a lesser person would say, "Oh, I saw homeless people, people chatting in their kitchens, a few signs, and the sky was blue and big," she gives us, "This Elizabeth."

You can buy it here: minushouse.wordpress.com

Please go and do it...I beg you.

Good News!

The Tiny Tour is back with a few more videos...from the fire escape. Honestly, I look forward to this as much as I do just to see where the next reading will be. You can see these people read, if you like; Thomas Devaney, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Dorothea Lasky, Michael Carr and Aaron Tieger. You can see it here: http://www.birdinsnow.com/ I would just do it, you got no real good reason not to.

Here's a carrot to get you going:


Dorothea Lasky, Fire Escape, The Tiny Tour from Dorothea Lasky on Vimeo.

Also, you'll notice a new link over on the sidebar...it's for a new journal called linebreak that I just found about today, thanks to The Lovely Arc. It looks cool, unfortunately, they seem to frown on prose poems, which is about all I write these days, but I would encourage you to submit. The thing I find most intriguing about their features is that they post audio recordings of someone other than the poet reading the poem. This interests me for two reasons: one, I, like every poet before, during and after me, am just enough of an egomaniac to desire to hear our words coming from other's mouths. Two, I don't think that I am a very good reader of poems and would like to hear how someone good reads my poems so I can just imitate them there after. Lazy? Yes. But also interesting to consider.

Also (again), I got the new issue of jubilat the other day, it's full of great poems as well as an awesome interview with Peter Gizzi. You know what you should do? You should totally go buy it!

Poet of the week (A new feature)

I don't know if this will stick, but since my fascination with certain poets is revolving, I thought maybe it would be nice to throw a name out there from the time to time, and then tell you where you can buy books and read poems.

This week: Mathias Svalina...why? Because the guy rules, that's why. He's the physical incarnation of a snow day. He's your new favorite bar. He's finding Ramones and Costello L.P.'s at the same garage sale.

I've started reading a lot of Svalina in the days after AWP. A few of his "Creation Myths," were in Handsome, some more were in Tarpaulin Sky, and then I just went ahead and bought the book from New Michigan Press (you should too, just go to www.thediagram.com, click on the chapbooks link and do a wee bit of scrolling, no big whoop).

Here's what kills me about his poems...Svalina manages to share head space with an 8 year-old kid who is able to have complex thougts, but hasn't yet learned to express them out loud, and as such, is made to find slightly round-about ways of letting you on. In this way, his creation myths share the function of ALL creation myths...a simple explanation for the things we have no explanation for.

Here is a taste:

Creation Myth

There was a big puddle of honey & millions of ants surrounded
the puddle & after the ants came the mice whose faces grew
sticky with honey, honey dripping from their long whiskers
& after the mice came the dogs who lapped at the honey until
their fur was matted & coated with honey & after the dogs
came the bears who spooned up big handfuls of honey with
their stony paws & after the bears came the humans but by
then all the honey had been eaten.

The humans stood in the spot where the honey puddle had been
& looked at each other & cried. One of them invented speaking
& they all complained about how much they were looking
forward to the honey & one of them invented the plough &
they built a farm on the spot where the honey puddle had been
& one of them invented guns & they went out into the world
& shot all the mice, dogs & bears.

The ants watched all of this from their anthill. They patted
their swollen bellies. They laughed at the humans & their
complicated objects. They passed bowls of honey around the
crowd & drank deep of the honey & passed out from too much
honey. So they did not see the humans inventing a new kind of
ant that feeds on honey-eating ants.

Once the ant-eating ants ate all the ants they turned on the
humans & ate all the humans. Once the ant-eating ants ate
all the humans they turned on each other & ate each other.

Eventually there was only one ant-eating ant alive, the only
creature alive in the world. He returned to the spot where the
honey puddle had been, sat down & watched the sunset over
the foothills & then ate his own thorax.


Now that you've been properly convinced go and visit Mathias' blog where you can find all things related to Mathias. That's here: http://mathiassvalina.blogspot.com/

Thus ends our first weekly poet profile...I'll get better at this as I go, I hope.

Everyone Else is Doing It.

Okay, so I'm trying something new. You can check it out here:

http://furtheradventurespress.blogspot.com/

I'm going to leave it at that...here are some poems from someone(s) I like...alot:



I keep stealing videos from Rabbit Light Movies, maybe you should go there and see them all first hand.

On a side note, if you ever been in one of the Rabbit Light Movies I highly encourage you to submit to my new "thing."

I've mentioned this before, but, Sommer Browning is my new favorite poet

How totally awesome is she...I raved about a poem of hers not too long ago and yesterday I finally got her book from horseless in the mail...I read it immediately. It's prolly my awesomest book (to paraphrase a favorite t-shirt). The book is called Vale Tudo. It's about Ultimate Fighting, Walt Whitman and consumer culture...exactly. You can by it from Jen Tynes for only $6 and it comes with a collectible card.

This just reminds me of what a good job Jen does with all those books. The format she has chosen really plays with your expectations of what will be inside...shit, I'd recommend going to the website and buying everything you can.

On a side note, after three months of unemployment and then three months of working and working to get caught up, these are the first two records I buy: the Juno soundtrack (because I'm a 17 year-old girl, and Kate Nash's "Made of Bricks," mostly for the same reason, but also because I have a tendency to love anything with a British accent.

Greetings from Series A

Okay, so tonight I saw Betsy Wheeler and Joshua Marie Wilkinson read down at the Hyde Park Art Center and these are the results:

I LOVE Betsy's new book "Start Here." Imagine your best friend calling you at 3:00 in the morning to tell you how crazy he is about this new girl. That is what reading this book is like. The poem is at once beautiful, desperate, cute, innocent and yet from a voice that you know knows better. It simultaneously makes you long to love like that again and yet, be so glad you don't have to love like that again. The poem did great things for me and I want it to do great things for you as well.

What do I always say at this point? Why don't you go to: http://smallanchorpress.com/about.html and drop a few coins on this book. The poem is great and book itself is gorgeous; letter pressed AND silk screened.

I also realized something about reading, in general, while listening (and watching) JMW. That man loves his poems. You can see it in his eyes and his hands. You can hear it in his voice. Even after years, he still loves his poems! I should be so lucky...

I can't believe I'd never pieced this together before, but watching JMW read is like watching a musician when he realizes he is tearing shit up. Like watching Jordan. Like watching your feet be totally in sync with whatever is playing on your iPod. He finds that groove that goes hand in hand with doing something you feel lucky to be doing. His eyes shift and project mood. His hands twitch when something good is coming up. His voice sounds both tired and excited all at once.

What can I say...at least I figured out WHAT to work on. Now the question is how?

Merry President's Day...

I hope you enjoyed your day off, or if you were like me, your day at work minus the reward of mail when you got home. The fellow having a sit just North of here is one Millard Fillmore...he was a president and according to this picture quite unevenly skin-toned.

A few poetry related things: Tomorrow, come on down to good old Hyde Park and watch Betsy Wheeler and Joshua Marie Wilkinson hawk their wares at the Hyde Park Art Center. I'll be there, if you don't know me, ask around...I'll be happy to say hi. The reading starts at 7 and if you live anywhere else but Hyde Park...I'd leave early. I've been looking forward to this reading for quite awhile, and have no doubts that it will live up to my self-imposed hype.

Also, I found a 1st ed. copy of Frank O'Hara's "Lunch Poems" at the antiquarian book store last Saturday. I bought it for only $8 (what a deal!) and it used to belong to Ralph J. Miller Jr. I know this because his name is inside the front cover. I think I'll write my name just below his, that way neither of us will lose it.

Last Friday I spent the evening at the Checkerboard Lounge with a friend and her parents...inevitably the question regarding, "what kind" of poetry I write came up. I have to say, that is the hardest question in the history of questions to answer. It's a question only non-poets will ask, which, I guess, makes it not so difficult (figuring they don't really give a shit, they're just trying to be polite), but I always try, like an idiot, to answer them. And my answers fizzle down into a puddle of mumbo-jumbo that make me sound as though I'm making the whole, I'm a poet thing up.

Which I am...

Friday Night Walk Down

By following the images south you can virtually re-live my walk home last night. It was sunny and not too cold. I walked past Nichols Park and saw a mostly eaten pigeon (which makes me wonder WHAT is eating all these pigeons?), I deposited my paycheck at the bank, but got in trouble for taking pictures of that and was made to delete them. I walked down my street. I walked up to apartment building. I walked in to my apartment and found my dog sleeping in my dirty laundry (if you look close you will see that she had been INSIDE that shirt and crawling out through the neck hole). It was a weird day.

I think you should watch this...

Wasn't that awesome? Now, go and blow some coin on these fucking kick ass books! If you buy theirs, they'll buy yours, and if you don't have one yet, by the time you do, you'll have loads of people who owe you book buying favors!

Walking to Work...

This morning I walked to work. There was nothing extraordinary about this. It was cold. It was bright. There were snow angels in the park, which brought me relief...knowing they got away. I was walking to work this morning and listening to Jen Bervin read from, "A Non-Breaking Space." It made walking to work feel like being an angel stuck in snow, but then, finally getting away.

You can click on the title of this post to read it yourself, or if you want to be more like me you can download it, and others, here:

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Segue-BPC.html

I know I've mentioned this before, but you really should spend some time in Pennsound's website, it's free, most links are downloadable, and it's chalk full of great poetry.

Go.

Listen.

Tell me what you liked best...we can start conversations, it'll be fun, I promise.

The Collabo, and how I've gone from "ehh" to "whoah"

Here's what I love about collaborative work: No other methodology has the ability to capture the way our mind's work, our minds working, our minds workings. Collaborative poems react. React to the writers, react to their poems, react to each word. Our brains, or at least their processes, are nothing more than reactions. And they are never, NEVER, singular reactions. Do we catch or do we duck? Do we cross, or do we wait? Do we cross and then catch?

Collaborative poems (done right) capture this, not indecision, but UNdecision. That moment just before our minds are made and we turn left; that moment when possibility and chance are the only thing is the only thing on our minds. That, ultimately, is why I love collaborative work...so much of it is out of your hands, and yet, just as much is in them.

Yes, decisions must finally be made, but the art of the collaborative poem is in how you manage to stretch it out without being indecisive, or without being invasive in that process. It's the artful mapping of the decision itself. That conversation we all have with ourselves every second of every day, but with just enough embellishment to make it interesting again.

An off-the-cuff list of my favorite collaborations:

*T.S. Eliot's, "The Wasteland" (never would have been what it was without Pound's extensive involvement)
*Friedrich Kerksieck and Aaron James McNally's "Postcard Poems"
*Jen Tynes and Erika Howsare's, "The Ohio System"
*NEG and JMW's "Figures for a Darkroom Voice"
*and this poem by Eric Baus, Noah Eli Gordon, Nick Moudry, and Sara Veglahn

�Charles Shively�

Come back from easy Chicago. Chicago is new. It is not old. I like your
pants. I like all pants. I also hate everything. Come back from easy Chicago
I mean. The road signs will always be just that, just nostalgic to hear a
song say that radios are everywhere in reticent Chicago, opening just
enough, just a few more notes: I like your paths. It�s funny, though,
because I also hate everything. I try not to effect my objects. The way to
describe it is �I am writing to grow old.� Just because what I�m writing has
a face, it�s not required to have expressions, and I don�t care how long of
a sentence I�m expected to fulfill. I�ve gone days without saying anything
and gotten all the way here only to start from the beginning. All these
eyes going after each other isn�t interesting. Nothing is interesting. I
hate it. Just face it, your tooth is coming out. Symbolic form. Whatever.
In the Chicago I left, pale light, the fountain in the courtyard running,
everything you put in the vault comes out covered in dust. I knew what you
meant, even if you were mocking me. My tooth, too, is falling out. Why did
your pants displace my beautiful beautiful braincase? My tooth, too, is
falling out (a different one). No one�s mocking anyone. I can�t help that.
Every song is about itself, gasping for air or waiting on a ferry. It�s been
snowing all day in Massachusetts & we don�t even talk about war here, too
busy listening to the radio I suppose. There�s nothing on the radio. I hate
mirrors. Hunting bees. These are hunting bees. Where will they go in the
snow? Where does anything go? There are road signs along the road, days
multiplying the boredom. Sometimes there are reasons to sleep. Where does
sleep go when there is no reason to sleep? I have found a reason to sleep,
writing in a way that tells me I just turned my am around, writing to �from
inside what time it is.� I hate snow but it�s addictive. I love adding to
everything, going bad or around or inside or mirroring some kind of honesty,
if that�s the right word. Thinking in absolutes or left underneath a
ladder, I�d wonder which was a way to say it without any background noise.
Nothing in the city changes but the street signs. I am eating snow. You
are eating snow. I took a bus around the river. I couldn�t even see it, the
windows were too dirty. While you went there, I went away too. Smoke means
something is burning, you said to the only lie inside the poem. The poem is
about love during wartime, about tackling itself. I caught a fish once in
the Chicago River. You told me not to eat it, so I ate snow; you told me not
to eat that too. I couldn�t tell where the voice was leaking into the
cistern. I never hear anything right. See? I�ve gone all wrong again.
There are bits of paper sticking out of my pocket, but I�m ambivalent about
it. Building mountains from yarn or trying to see how long it takes to dry the
clay into another worn down penny left on the tracks where the train hasn�t
run in years. I�m ambivalent about the way I look. And sound. What welds
each note to the air. What cleanly embraces a long sliding gaze. In your
mouth, Charles Shively, I see there is a corncob pipe! I sweat a lot and
have never liked fishing. I quote myself, removing the quotation marks. Or
so they say. Stamped in.

The only video I've found from Steal This Reading (so far)

Okay, so having this as the only moving picture document isn't exactly a travesty as Julie Doxsee's poetry is pretty amazing, that and she crushes tin cans just by entering the room (as witnessed by me and my tin can friends). I just wish there were more...if anyone has clips of Graham Foust's or Zach Schomburg's reading, please send them my way. Regardless, there is this...


Julie Doxsee at Steal This Reading from Octopus Books on Vimeo.

And I also wanted to share with you a poem by Sommer Browning I read in Black Ocean's "Handsome" mag. This poem is awesome for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is its stance on the disappearance of art from our everyday. Not because someone is taking it from us, but because we are so willing to let it go, so willing to celebrate kiosk banking. I bank from kiosks. Kiosks built into beautiful old brick buildings that will be lucky to ever recover.

I don't know the rules on putting this here, but what the hell...

PAY-PER-VIEW DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY.

Some of you will never go to Long Island. Some of you will but will never go to Walt Whitman Mall. Some of you will enter Walt Whitman Mall and head straight for Foot Locker. So let me tell you about the facade of Walt Whitman Mall, how it's carved with passages from Leaves of Grass, how the blocky Emigrant Savings Bank sign is bolted to the poem. A child said what is the grass? Fetching it Emigrant Savings Bank to me with full hands. How could I answer Get more money for your money the child? ...I do not know what it is any more than he.

Tell me that doesn't kick ass!

Experimental Shmexperimental

Poetry has long been littered with unfair assessments and ridiculous labels. "Experimental," I think, is one of those. I don't believe in experimental things in general (it's the assumption that the creator of the "experiment" has not idea what she is doing...hence the need for experiments, i.e., lets see if this works), but in terms of art it just seems stupid. The labeling of poetry as anything but plain ol' poetry, is just a way to pronounce it as an other, an other apart from what we are comfortable with.

I've spent the last three years, or so, working to develop a voice and style that I felt captured the sentiment of what I was needing to say. I would have no problems calling the poems I wrote during those years experimental, because in fact, they were. I was experimenting with the absurd. I was experimenting with form, function. I was experimenting with my own ideas of what a poem needed to be...those were experiments, but now that I have found a poetry that works for me, these particular results are not really experimental because I know what they are doing and why they are doing it. Yes, I still do experiment, but those poems rarely ever see the light of day.

Mostly, though, it's the othering effect of the label that perturbs me most. We have our mainstream journals and we have our "experimental" journals. We have reading series and we have "experimental" reading series. We have poems that expect to understand, and we have "experimental" poems that we deem okay to not understand. And why? Because they're experimental, we obviously weren't meant to "get them."

Ultimately, the goals of both factions are the same...to inhabit space in a readers conscience. To become part of their mental vernacular. To affect their thought process if only temporarily. This is what we ALL do, we just have different ways of doing it. The best analogy I can think of is this; There are millions of English speakers in the world and each of them can tell you how the sun sets, but which one of them are you more likely to listen to?

As a brief side note, I think I'm really going to like to the new Nada Surf record.

Also, go to www.pilotpoetry.com and buy everything you can, and since they are out of McNally and Kerksiecks's postcards, if you really want to see one, e-mail me and I will be more than happy to send one along...they are awesome.

It's a blog that gives worms to ex-girlfriends. You guys just don't get it, do you?

Okay, so really this is a blog about poets and poet culture, which is just as ridiculous as giving worms to your ex-girlfriend, but as I love to say..."it is what it is."



As it is, I wanted to pass along something that I've enjoyed quite a bit lately...beer. This particular beer is called, "The Poet Oatmeal Stout." Every writer needs a drink to call their own, and until you find what that is, this beer will get it done. It's just trendy enough to impress your hipster friends, just expensive enough to impress your beer snob friends, and just pretentious enough that everyone will believe you when you mention that you've gotta get home and write, when really, you've come to the conclusion that this whole scene is dead and you'd be better off in bed.

I think I like the idea of "poet culture." Don't be fooled, it does exist, but mostly outside any actual group of writers. Its that imagined life you dream of when you first entertain the idea of writing, its that Beat/S.F. Renaissance vibe...its mostly lame, but it is what gets us into writing in the first place, so perhaps not all that bad. There were a lot of young writers at AWP that fell, or were falling into this pretty hard. Mostly they were cute and harmless and buying a shit ton of not so great books.

God bless'em.

Salons that actually make you beautiful

I had a life once, really, and in that life I used to host readings in my apartment. People would come. It was BYOB (which my dad used to tell me meant; this isn't a party for kids). People would drink their beer. People except my lovely friend in this picture, who was pregnant and wrote only poems about pregnancy when she was pregnant. She said it was a craving.

Anyway, people would read poems...it was nice.


The rest of us would listen and politely applaud, but only when appropriate. One night only one person showed up. We got drunk (nobody to share our beer with, you see). We stayed until quite late reading William Carlos Williams' "Paterson" to each other. We had modernist fantasies. Which reminds me...I saw a poster the other day that said, "Mo' Dernity, Mo' Problems." I laughed at it. But not in a mean way. I think the poster still felt pretty good about itself.

Anyway, the point of all this is to illustrate the importance of not always GOING to poetry readings. Sometimes the most excellent thing you can do is BRING a poetry reading home. This is why I like Dottie Lasky's "Tiny Tour" so much...home is a good place for poetry. It makes sense at home, at least more sense than it does at a contemporary coffee shop. Yes, I get the historical thread tying poetry to them, but its a dead scene, man. And now that poetry isn't welcome in most other performing areas, home allows you to make a place for it, fill that place with good people, and to get it out there. Plus, you only need two things; a stool, and a music stand, and almost everybody has those things lying around...right?

Five Things

1. Eric Baus being surprised that someone (me) recognized him. Our conversation could have been tracked by that White Stripes song...you know the one. He gave me his e-mail address, but the question remains; what does one say to an author they love so dearly.

2. is for $2 subscriptions to jubilat, they even let me renew for that - and I was able to buy jubilat #5 again (my 3rd one), the Jack Spicer letters in that issue will literally change your life, yes, exactly like the Shins song in Garden State. It is that reason that I've had to buy it twice after receiving it once as a gift from my friend A.McN.

3. Zachary Schomburg running off with L.P.'s copy of "The Mansuit," and him replying, "Huh...really didn't see that coming," immediately prior to our cab showing up, and me trying to explain to a non-native speaking driver precisely what was taking place. Do not fret, all was returned and the inscription finally placed inside will forever lead to a great story.

4. Me reading Jonah Winter's "Book Reports" out loud to my unwilling suitemates. Sure, they might not have cared, but did Jesus stop when nobody cared? I believe my point is made. As a side note...please go buy that book, if you do and are disappointed I will personally buy it from you for exactly what you paid. That's called a guarantee, and I'm not even selling medicinal tonic.

5. Steal This Reading. It was like Woodstock, but for poets. The fire department even tried to shut it down! So many awesome readings, so many awesome people, and I even got the chance to make an asshole of myself by sitting right in front of the projection screen the only reading it was used in...no way to salvage that one, but it's better to be "that guy" than no one at all.

New York City and How it Rocks...

AWP is over and I'm back home trying to get used to not being drunk and sitting up 'til 4 in the morning geeking out over poetry and its writers. I got to see about 25 to 30 readings spread out over 13-14 hours. Steal This Reading was probably the greatest poetry related thing ever (5 of my favorite readers and $3 beer + lots of other good poetry too). I bought WAY too many books, but don't regret a single one. Jonah Winter's "Book Reports" is about the most genius writing I've ever seen...as is everything released by Black Ocean books. Oh, and what Betsy Wheeler did with Joshua Marie Wilkinson's "Book of Clover, Flashlights and Milk," is awesome...I highly recommend picking it up before you can't any more. The experience of reading that text is too cool for words, and once I figure out what exactly its doing to me, I'll let you know.

Rabbit Light Movies #6

Joshua Marie Wilkinson's "Rabbit Light Movies" is up with a new episode of sweet little poemfilms that'll make you smile even when the temperature drops forty degrees in the span of a few hours. My favorites, so far, are Jason Bredle and Julia Cohen and Mathias Svalina reading from the new collaborative chapbook called, "When We Broke the Microscope," and published by my friend, Friedrich Kerksieck, available for purchase at: www.smallfirespress.com. In fact, the book itself makes an uncredited cameo at the bottom of the screen for much of the film.

The thing I love most about Bredle's video is the life it takes on all by itself, becoming not just a filmed poetry reading, but a glimpse into the poems particular place in the world. Watching Bredle react to passersby, in what looks to be Lincoln Park here in Chicago, is precious to say the least. What plays out on his face is amazing, the realization that poem and place are not at all compatible, but the fact that he MUST do it (as evidenced in Wilkinson's "Take 67" at the outset of the film) driving him forward.

The film, in its few minutes turns out to the actual separation between the poet in the privacy of his workspace, and the poet in public. What is more than easy to say there can become virtually unsayable someplace else.

Watch it, you'll love it too.



And now for 12 really good songs I found for free in the month of January:

1. Mr. Pitiful, by Matt Costa
2. Bag of Hammers, by Thao
3. Electric Bird, by Sia
4. Rockist Part 1, by School of Language
5. Today (SP cover), by Ben Kweller
6. The March, by Astra Heights
7. Next to Argyle, by Scissors for Lefty
8. On and On, by The Bell
9. Seeds of Night, by The Cave Singers
10. Paper Aeroplane, by Angus and Julia Stone
11. Glue Girls, by Somebody Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
12. Safe Tomorrow Sun, by Surrounded

See you in NY!

Poems Forthcoming This Year (So Far)

Okay, so when I started this thing up again I didn't want its focus to be on MY poetry, but I've had an amazing year so far and I have to let someone know; even if that someone is the readership of this blog. That said, look for me, or rather, my poems, in these places in the coming months:

lament, The Daily Palette, and H_NGM_N, which is huge and a placement that I am very proud of. Personally, I hold that particular journal in the upper echelon of contemporary poetry, so to be a part of it is really something special.

Also, I'm in the process of recording some more poems and hope to have those up here soon.

Be on the look out next week as this blog travels to NYC for AWP.

AWP Shopping List

Black Ocean's new Journal, "Handsome"--I think there is a good chance this will be my new favorite journal, it's got these guys in it: Lily Brown, Sommer Browning, Paula Cisewski, Adam Clay, John Colburn, Jeff Downey, Julie Doxsee, Sarah Fox, Kate Greenstreet, Sarah Goldstein, Joshua Harmon, Annaliese Jakimides, Rauan Klassnik, Gabriella Klein Lindsey, Greg Koehler, Marcia LeBeau, Michael Macklin, Adam Peterson, Joshua Poteat, Mary Ruefle, Tomaz Salamun, Marisa Siegel, Brandon Shimoda, Peter Jay Shippy, Mathias Svalina, Jocko Weyland, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Barbara Yien and Jake Adam York. Why wouldn't I buy this?
Joshua Marie Wilkinson's, "The Book of Flashlights, Clover & Milk"--From what I've heard, this book is going to be beautiful, and from what I've read, it's going to be awesome.

Jennifer L. Knox's, "Drunk by Noon"--Any book that you'd be inclined to hide from your mother is a book worth owning (now that you don't live with your mother). Knox's poems capture our naughtiest hopes, like when a friend tells you about a gruesome accident they saw and you think, "Man, I've never seen anything that cool."

Dorothea's Lasky's "AWE"--I'm actually a little embarrassed to not have already read this book. Lasky is a poet who seems to have no interest in being a poet. You can't call Lasky a poet, but you can say that there is a poet called Dorothea Lasky.

Further Proof that Eric Baus is a Master of the Universe from here on known as Bausto

Yesterday, while I was busy pretending to be an attendee, Weird Deer posted a hotline call from Eric Baus titled, "Our Common Cloud," and it, my friends, is good. There are many times that I read a poem and think, "Damn, if only I'd written that first" (In fact, that very thing happened today while I was reading Aaron Fagan's poem about Ben Hecht, whose Chicago home is three houses down from my apartment, and whose name has been floating around my poems for months). Baus' poems, though, are out of this world. His ability to take ideas that bounce in and out of our heads everyday and turn them into quarters freshly pulled from our ears borders on being unfair. We are all quite familiar with the beauty of newly fallen snow and the utter disappointment of that same snow the next morning, but when Baus says, "It hurt to see the same snow twice," we see that it is an experience we undervalue greatly. And so it is with all of Baus' work. His poems are like watching somebody with an acute sense of taste eat, no matter how hard I try, my food will never taste that good.
There is a sense of jealousy and foolishness that come along with reading (or hearing) these poems, and I don't mean that to be seen in a negative light. It's the kind of jealousy and foolishness that makes us admire what has made us feel that way. In a sense, it's our retired farmer grandfathers laughing at us when we tell them we want to be poets...they really don't care if we're poets or not, but they know we have no idea what a luxury that desire is.

A few "One more thing's"

Tonight, my dog disguised herself as a half-eaten pigeon when I wasn't paying attention. I will lie awake dreaming of steaming rectum.

Cat Power's new album good enough to buy, but not her best. Matt Costa's new record is also good enough to buy.

If you want to hear the poem this post was based on click the title, it is linked to the mp3. I suggest you download it and listen to it on repeat about twenty times.

Series A Reading Featuring Kimberly Lojek & Aaron Fagan

Tonight, down at the Hyde Park Art Center, was the year's first Series A reading. Nine people showed up: 2 readers, 4 friends of readers, 1 radio tech, 1 curator, and me. Needless to say, I quickly became a curiosity, but that's neither here nor there.

The Series A readings is put together by poet, Bill Allegrezza, who, after recently having a baby, handed the reigns over to local writer, Kristy Odelius (whose poems I am quickly becoming enamored with, you can read them here: http://members.aol.com/kodelius/poems.html). Odelius pieced together an interesting union of voices in Kim Lojek and Aaron Fagan, Midwest, East Coast and both leaning towards the momentary.

Lojek's poems often leave you feeling scattered. Having read everything I could find online, I was excited to hear her read them herself. Her sentence structure is stuttering, and most times, hearing the poet perform the poems sheds light onto the rhythm, and opens up interpretation a bit. The thing was, though, you couldn't hear her...at all. I was sitting 6 feet from her and had to lean in, then take off my stocking hat, then turn my head. What I did hear was great, and fortunately, I was able to pick up on the cadence of her voice, even if I couldn't pick out every word. Definitely find some of her work, she's a good ol' Iowan, and on the cutting edge of "experimental" verse.

Aaron Fagan's voice carried a bit more and he read a great poem called, "Monopoly, Toledo" (which can be read here: http://faganism.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_archive.html, directly under the looney tunes poem). I don't know if it was because I knew he was from New York, but his poems seemed very New York School to me. The referencing of artists, odd spaces, abstract conversations, and how all those things build up a nice little surrealist package. He had thick, dark hair that he combed straight back, making him look like he might be from the Jersey school, but that joke was lame and I'm already sorry I did it.

Anywho, check out as many of these fine people's poems as you can...but you don't have to take my word for it!

lament: Poetry Disguised as Newsletter

A new poetry journal is up and running over at , and I must say that it is more (in so many ways) than I had anticipated. This month features Nick Moudry and Dan Fisher in the most auspicious duet I've read all year (including too, a good portion of last year). Moudry's poems have consistently inspired me to be a better writer, artist and Iowan.

Here, though, is the most exciting tangible of lament; it is a single sheet, one poet per side, easy to digest pamphlet. If you so desired you could carry it in your back pocket, tape it to the wall by your toilet, or sneak it in with work papers and read it while your assumes you are busy with one of her assignments. The point is this, no longer do you have to carry with you a "volume" to read poetry. No longer is the consumption of poetry relegated to the bag carriers of the world.

It is widely believed that the only people reading poetry with any regularity are the poets themselves, it is my hope that a literary journal in this form will change that. Lofty, yes, but also doable, I think. Cheap to produce, convenient to carry with you, and totally enjoyable.

Matthew Zapruder: Fringe Poetry Series

Click on the title of this post and be amazed by a new Zapruder Film. The introduction is ridiculously long; I don't really get the desire to critically acclaim in introductions, there is no bravado in doing so, I mean, can you imagine some one coming out onto a stage and going, "Led Zeppelin are the writers of 10 albums and numerous side projects. Their music is a thundering announcement that what we need is never what we want..." and so on. It'd be preposterous, so why do we insist on doing it to authors?
Anyway, the aspect of Zapruder's reading style that I've always tried to imitate is its unassumingness. His poems, when read off the page, are often withholding (i.e., the poems continually replace specific, expected words/ideas, with other word/ideas that don't just turn our expectations on their ears, they remove the ears altogether), but his ease of tone while reading them aloud conditions you to believe that he is having a conversation with you, or that he is passing on fatherly advice. It is a sincerity in his cadence and timbre, the feeling that if he didn't have a microphone, you might not even notice what he was doing. I respect that greatly, and hope that my future readings can sound like Zapruder.

"Big Time" Matthew Zapruder & the best explanation of "writer's life" ever

"One thing I learned for myself, and try to communicate to poets who seem to be having a hard time with the whole idea of being a poet as opposed to a so-called productive member of society, is that like every job, being a poet has its very predictable occupational hazards. If you’re going to be a carpenter you will have to get up early and lug stuff around a lot and occasionally whack your thumb with a hammer; if you want to be an academic, you’ll have to deal with a lot of garbage to get tenure; and if you’re a poet, you’re going to feel like a loser staring at a piece of paper all day while everyone else is at their “real” jobs. Your parents are going to be worried, you’re going to have to move around a lot, and people are always going to be confessing to you that they don’t really understand anything you’ve just said. If you can’t handle those things—and there’s nothing wrong with wanting a more stable life, one that doesn’t require so much explanation to others and yourself—then you shouldn’t be a professional poet."

PennSound...you'll love it too.

Most of us writerly folk have a hard time imagining poetry as anything but an intimate interaction between reader and print. Consumption of poems, then, is usually relegated to quiet, out-of-the-way places like our own homes, the corners of coffee shops, or, if we are feeling particularly adventurous, a darkened booth at a local pub with only 1-2 other people in it. And when we do go to readings there is always an awkwardness regarding reception of the poems as they come; do we applaud after each one? do we wait until after whole reading is done? Why do we keep with us this idea of stoic respect for the writer audibly practicing his craft?
I think its two things, one, we don't go to enough readings to ever establish a new audience mentality,(when I hosted readings at a rock club I used to encourage those in attendance to treat it like a rock show, but it was tough to get people to do it), and two, that hearing poetry aloud is such a foreign experience our brains don't quite know what to do. But there is a way to remedy the situation. Go to PennSound...hear poetry.
PennSound is an ever expanding library of audio clips from poets past and present, and a few who are both (is anyone else shocked John Ashbery is still alive?). Most links can be downloaded from the site to your favorite mp3 player, so you don't even have to fully give up the secrecy of poetic interaction! A few recommendations: the entire Jack Spicer collection, its one of the few places to find his poems right now, and his lectures are kick-ass. also, Anselm Berrigan's reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. And if you really want to try something, play them out loud.

Play this out loud too...

Beckman Reading O'Hara's "Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)"

I love this poem for many reasons, but mostly because it will be forever linked to my friend A.M., who read it to me late one night over cheap beer, cheaper wine and an excellent block of cheese.

Things I Accidentally Said Outloud While Walking Home.

1. "I feel at home in poems that estrange me from language." Poems that convince me I've yet to actually learn how to properly divulge my secrets. Poems that make me feel like I don't leave my apartment enough. Poems that are proof I don't leave my apartment enough.

2. "The only beard worth growing is a white one." There is a homeless guy in the park I walk by everyday who knows my name but never asks me for money. His beard is beautiful and if clouds were made wisps, they would all look like that man's face.

3. "Leaf Slop up my slacks." I've never seen anything quite like it, but rather than blow away, a pile of leaves soaked up rain water, froze and now repeats the process as the temperature fluctuates. Its one of the most despicable phenomenon I've ever been privy to.

And finally here is a poem I've read out loud...

One of my favs, reading on the Tiny Tour

Letterpressed Ways to Spend Your Time & Money

For those of you in the Cedar Falls area on January 31, go see Aaron McNally read from his new book, "Out of the Blue." He will be doing so at Bought Again Books as part of the Final Thursday reading series. It's been a tough month; school started up, Christmas is over, it's cold. Go watch Aaron perform his heart out, buy his book (see it here http://caveworkspress.com), and while you're there, peruse the poetry shelf and find something else to buy too. There are lots of things to spend money on, you should try poetry for once.
Speaking of which, Friedrich Kerksieck of Small Fires Press will be selling his wares at the AWP Book Fair in NYC January 31-February 2. If you give him money and point he will give you something in return...not to bad a deal if you ask me. Also, if you can't make it to NYC you can visit his website, which I've linked to the right, and buy stuff there. He works really hard and turns out beautiful products, not to mention great poetry. (I'll be reviewing his latest release here in the coming days)
AND, if you do happen to be in NYC instead of Cedar Falls on the 31st, you must come to this reading...it is the only possible "make-up" for not seeing Aaron. It is, "Steal This Reading," Thursday. January 31. East Coast Aliens Studio w/CD Wright, Eleni Sikelianos, Rauan Klassnik, Julie Doxsee, Graham Foust, Joyelle McSweeney, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Max Winter, Adam Clay, Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Lily Brown, Melanie Hubbard, Cindy Savett, and Jon Thompson, 7-11pm. New York, NY. Bring money & buy their books too, especially Adam Clay, but especially Joshua Marie Wilkinson.

Okay, here's a poem...

Eric Baus Reading One of My Top 5 Poems Ever.

Baus' poems never cease to startle me. We've all questioned nouns, verbs, adjectives, even adverbs, and all with good reason, but how many of us have ever dared to question conjunctions? At first glance, most of Baus' lines appear to be incomplete thoughts, but look again, and you'll see the very idea of language/communication becoming suspect. In fact, what is seen is the most desperate rendering of unrequited love imaginable: that of poet and language.

No matter how hard the poet tries, she will never...never be able to know language, to be able to make it do for us what we dream it doing. That relationship is one sided my friend.

Language, she is a bitter mistress.

I don't know...I suggest you read as much Baus as you can.

The most awesome thing ever?

Dorothea Lasky, Bedroom, Tiny Tour from Dorothea Lasky on Vimeo.

John Ashbery on Frank O'Hara's ability to do anything!

Last Spring a friend played me Tom Waits' "Rain Dogs" and I couldn't believe I'd spent 29 years without it. It's as close to a perfect record as I have ever heard, from the wider concept, to the instrumentation that is so foreign you'd think you had never heard a song before in whole life. I listened to all or part of it every day for a solid 3 months.
It was, at the time an obsession and now I've found a new one, Frank O'Hara. I got about half way through his collected before I stopped and read John Asbery's introduction. In short, it was like looking at a put-together puzzle and wondering why you ever thought it was so hard. I won't get into too much explication, but instead leave a few choice quotes to you:

On the avant-garde, "The actual mechanics of the method escaped me then as it does now; what mattered was that chance elements could combine to produce so beautiful and cogent a work. It was a further, perhaps for us ultimate proof not so much of 'Anything goes' but 'Anything can come out.'"

Without O'Hara, "there probably wouldn't be a young generation of poets committed to poetry as something living rather than an academic parlor game."

O'Hara's surrealist vernacular created a "remarkable new poetry--both modest and monumental, with something basically usable about it--not only for poets in search of a voice of their own but for the reader who turns to poetry as a last resort in trying to juggle the contradictory components of modern life into something like a livable space."

And of course, as poem...

Joshua and Noah reading from "Figures for A Darkroom Voice."

I've been meaning to share this for a while, but hadn't really been blogging, so if I hadn't already told you about this, here you go:

The Importance of Complete Experience (or Lack Thereof)

It seems to me that experience in poetry has little to do with the experience being related to in the poem itself. It's selfish, really, but I don't care what the speaker is or has gone through, unless they can offer me the experience first hand. The question then becomes, how do we do that?
Well, it is my opinion that it is only possible through the altering of perception. As Viktor Shklovsky says in his article, "Art as Technique," "Art exists so that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things...Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.” Poetry, as an art form, should adhere to these standards as well, but it always seems that the idea of a "literature" keeps blocking us from doing so.
Though we'd all admit that literature is artful, are we all willing to experience it as we do art in a museum?

I'd argue that we do not. That, unlike all other arts that are not presented to us in book form, we desire to have literature do the work for us. We want it to tell us a story, to take us to different worlds, to show us things outside our everyday. And while that may appear similar to Shklovsky's purpose, it is nothing more than novelty, like going to see a circus sideshow to gain an appreciation of your own humanity.
Our own experiences are never as complete as the novel, or the epic, or the biography desire to be, and so we do not experience them in the way we experience art. We view these experiences as second-hand knowledge and often congratulate those authors for re-creating those experiences so thoroughly.

Poetry, though, has the chance, not to do this, but to instead create new experiences between author and audience, to offer, as Jack Spicer said, "a narrative which refuses to adopt an imposed story line." In short, it's the creation of a space in which a reader has the ability or option of creating a new experience by way of their interaction with the world created in the poem.

This was brief, but this is also a blog, and who has the time. Here's a poem:

I found this today while walking the dog. It's what happens when you don't recycle...

Here's to soda heaven.