I've been reading Alex Lemon's "Hallelujah Blackout" the last couple of days. It's good, but reads slightly disjointed. The range of styles Lemon uses (and has mastery of) is broad, but stacked next to one another in a text, the variations are often jarring. Before I go any further I want to emphasize that I really like every poem, it's their ordering that miffs me. For instance, Lemon writes some poems in an open, dreamy style where words and ideas are cross-hatched into a larger picture. Lemon also writes in wispy conversational style that could very well be your best friend describing his day. What becomes difficult is bouncing between these two (and other) styles, especially since the rules that the poems rely on change from one page to the next; empty space means one thing here and another over there, punctuation, capitalization, etc.
What this really got me thinking about, though, is the importance (too much?) I put on coherence within a manuscript. I like the idea of grouping similar poems into sections, or even writing poems with repeated ideas with the hope that a larger narrative emerges. My favorite examples of poets who do this are Matthew Rohrer, Mathias Svalina, Zachary Schomburg, Jack Spicer and Frank Stanford...each poem in their books is like another ingredient in a recipe; eggs, flour, sugar and butter...cake! And though in many cases the poems don't always look or feel like each other, there is always something tying one to the other, so that, when you finish the book, you are left with the feeling that you've read a book of poems and not a collection of poems.
Alex Lemon's book did not feel this way to me...in fact, it read a little more like samples of an Alex Lemon yet to come. So much so, that as we are perusing the poems, you almost need to stop and sniff a coffee bean between each one. Some of my favorite poems ever have been written by this man, so the jarring variety of styles was never too much to keep from carrying on, hoping that the next one might be a new favorite. But therein lies the problem, it became to easy to disregard the "book" and only focus on the poems...which maybe isn't a problem, I don' know.

The new issue of jubilat found its way to me this morning. I'll be finding my way to the toilet shortly. The toilet is where I do the bulk of my reading these days. It's the only place in my in-laws house that I can sit, have a bit of peace and loose my bowels.

My car was in the shop for 4 days and they didn't do anything to it. Yesterday I got tired of waiting and walked down there, went back behind the garage and took my car back. I don't know the legality of that particular situation, but 4 days for an oil change and a new tire seemed a bit much...that, and I'm a renegade.

I also got paid for my unused vacation days at work. I didn't know I had vacation days so I'd managed to accrue almost a months worth. I'm not unemployed, I'm on vacation...for one more week. Then I'm unemployed.

Last night I used every PayPal cent I had to pre-order a limited edition hardcover copy of Zachary Schomburg's new book. It's called Scary No Scary and you too can get it...but first, you must go here, because I can't do it for you. I would, in fact, The Man Suit has been my gift of choice for the last two years, but I think you should give it a shot yourself.

I'm reading in Cedar Falls, Iowa on July 25th. Details are forthcoming, i.e., do not yet exist.

I'm still looking for a place to live in Iowa City...have you heard of one?

On Tuesday, a big storm blew through the neighborhood, the poor bird above never realized that. I burried it. I think it was a bluejay, but I'm no orinthologist.

The most amazing thing about moving out of Chicago is remembering that there are such things as skies and they do super-cool tricks. These are just a few of the tricks they were doing last night.

In a Big Country

Iowa, on occasion, can fill you with awe. Clouds can be this pretty and then two hours later drop tornadoes like Mike D drops rhymes. Awesome...

In Iowa I drive like an asshole. In Iowa there is ample parking. In Iowa it only costs $28 to go to the vet. In Iowa you watch little league baseball games and tell kids to keep with it, turn hard and use two hands. In Iowa there is such a thing as fried cauliflower. In Iowa you finally have cell phone reception but still go outside to talk. In Iowa everybody wonders what you're doing there. In Iowa you tell them without actually answering there question. In Iowa your dog takes naps under trees while still, technically, on walks. In Iowa it is possible to buy 12-packs of Miller Lite tall boys without knowing it. In Iowa, after a few weeks, people will ask you to tell them again what you're doing in Iowa. In Iowa you always tell people to come and visit because there is no way to understand Iowa unless you're there, which is to say, come visit me in Iowa. In Iowa I will always have a place for you to stay.

Cannibal Books has a sale, you should check it out.

Moved away from Chicago this weekend and these are the things I was made to leave behind:

1. Hyde Park Records
2. Seminary Co-op Bookstore
3. Friends
4. The Blue Line
   
5. Reckless Records
6. The Med
7. My Apartment

My cast came off and what fell out was this:

CAConrad from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

RLM#9...go.

This is the sound of one-handed typing...shhh

Eileen Myles hates poetry...and so do I. Well, at least what the wider public's imagination conjures when they care to think of of poetry. I hate being embarrassed, or even conscious, of people's reactions when I tell them I'm going to study poetry. I also hate having to talk to people about Maya Angelou. I hate Maya Angelou and am tired of working real hard to not make you feel ridiculous for liking Maya Angelou. And though I agree with most of Myles' post, I hate when people bite the hands feeding them. I hate the commercialization of the MFA, but I love that I'm getting one and so, anything I say towards that has no credibility. I respect Eileen Myles...think that she is the last great bastion of punk sensibility in poetry, but c'mon, you can't rail against literary journals and be associated with the only one sold in most B&N and thusly, the most recognized journal in our culture. That's like the rich guy telling you how to be a better Christian...

Anyway, I packed up all my books last night. Six boxes of nothing but poetry books. It was like the time I transferred all my cd's into those travel books and realized for the first time that I'd accumulated over 900 albums; storing them differently changes your perspective, and clues you in to just how mad you are about certain things.

How to Look Cool Sitting in a Car

If only I could convince her to wear a cowboy hat...

So for those that don't know, I'm moving out of Chicago in two weeks (TWO WEEKS, SHIT!) and into my in-laws house for a month or so. This is happening for two reasons; one, because Iowa City is a college town, no apartments worth moving into open up until August and two, because the University of Chicago is a giant piece of crap and terminated our lease two whole days after my wife graduates (tip: the University of Chicago is the place where dreams go to die, don't ever come here). This means that all my books will be packed in a box for the summer and so I've spent the last week sitting in front of my book shelf looking over every title and putting books aside. Last night, in a moment of drunken clarity I finalized what will be my "Summer Reading List." It is as follows:

1. Take It, Joshua Beckman (because I haven't gotten around to it yet)
2. The Glass Age, Cole Swensen (because I haven't read too much new Swensen, and I thought it might be a good thing to do before I try to study with her)
3. Lining, Lisa Fishman (I bought it awhile ago, but lost it in a shuffle of papers and have recently rediscovered it)
4. Hallelujah Blackout, Alex Lemon (he's been responsible for some of my favorite poems over the last year)
5. My Vocabulary Did This to Me, Jack Spicer (because I can't imagine a week without it)
6. The Ghost Soldiers, James Tate (it recently came out in paperback and was thus recently affordable to me)
7. The two Letter Machine chap books (Veglahn and Berrigan)
8. This Nest, Swift Passerine, Dan Beachy-Quick (he's "visiting" the workshop this fall and I want to have my bases covered)
9. Ours, Cole Swensen (same as the other Swensen book)
10. The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, Frank Stanford (I'm teaching it this fall and need to read it a few more times before that happens. Basically, if a student mentions a section of the book, I want to be able to envision its place in the whole text and to be able to turn to that page in the book)

and that's it.

Weather men are always wrong, especially in Chicago. In fact, if the weather man mentions rain, there is a better chance that it won't at all. Which makes me wonder if it's possible to be both critic and artist. Is it? Can you create the model and then take it apart to see why it works? In my own experience, the answer is no...at least, not simultaneously.
I don't know much about brain halves, outside of the fact that they exist and that one is creative and the other analytical, but I'm pretty sure that my brains work together like brothers; begrudgingly, and only then because they were told they couldn't play until the job was done. My best critiques usually come in times of drought, in the poetry sense, and conversely, when I'm writing poems almost everyday the only thing I see in the stuff I read is more poems, or ways I would make the poem better if it were mine (which, in itself is a critique, but never a sort of academic reading). But I can never seem to function in both modes at the same time, or even switch from one to the other very quickly, or even when I want to.
I've been thinking about this lately because I have to go back to school soon and I'd like to do better than I did last time, which means being able to pass all my examinations. I've always done well on course work, but you can usually choose when that gets done, it's those exams that worry me, especially as I move towards a career in academia.

It scares me, I think is what I'm really trying to say...

Happy Memorial Day. I mean that.

I'm getting a chapbook ready to send off to a few places by the end of the week. It's mostly made up of poems I've written to my friend Aaron McNally on his facebook page over the last few weeks. Is that cheating? Does that count as "already published poetry." Anyway, if you're friends with both Aaron and I, you've read every first draft.

Writing poems that way has been freeing for me. I don't know if it's having an exact idea of audience, or if it's the instant "publishing," or if it's simply the challenge of trying to write a poem for him everyday in the free seconds I have at work, or if it's all these things combined, but it has been great fun. And there's something about having to write everyday that makes your place in the world a little more interesting.

It's full on Spring here in Chicago...just in time for Summer.

I'm moving in 3 weeks and have hardly packed a thing.

I think the greatest discovery I've made in the last few weeks is the Goose Island Pub Pack; you get 3 bottles each of the Honker's Ale, 312, their IPA and the Summerland.

Last Friday I sat up until 4 am talking to a bald guy in a ladies wig about his divorce and drank 3 bottles each of Honker's Ale, 312, IPA and Summerland.

I got all my training materials to teach at the Workshop next Fall...this shit just got real, but I am really excited to be able to have an answer I'm proud of to the question, "What are you doing now?"

My wife got me a new pork pie hat yesterday. I hate hipsters, but occasionally they do some good things, like making pork pie hats trendy and easy to find again.

What the Heck Elk!

1. Last Friday I bought Bob Dylan's new record, watched Bob Dylan: No Direction Home and then when that was over turned on PBS only to find Bob Dylan's Newport performances.
2. All three of those things led to me talking like Bob Dylan for two whole days...
3. Bob Dylan's, "Together Through Life," is an okay Bob Dylan record, but a great anyone else record. It reminds me of state fairs, or old theme parks in September...it's dirty, stinky and falling apart, but you're totally glad you came.
4. Today I started packing, I packed up Further Adventures...all of it. I have two books left, so if you wanted one, buy it now.
5. When I was home for my grandpa's funeral, it was like a summer vacation appetizer; we grilled, drank beer and let the dog run free. It was hard to come back to work, especially for the dog.
   
6. This is a big month for open manuscript readings. Do you have one ready? Send it off...
7. One of the things I love about Bob Dylan is the fact that he used to buy people leather jackets to convince them to do stuff he wanted he wanted to do.
   

My gramps died the other day. He was a pretty tough dude, but then, who doesn't say that about their gramps. You spend an entire life building a family, how can the fruits of that labor not think their tree is the best their ever was? I love my gramps and think I'll miss him, once I hit the point where I realize I haven't seen him for awhile.
The question, I guess, is, what does a poet do in these situations? Well, for me, he gets asked to write the chincy poem inside the "remembrance folder." I've done it, and I think I like it (it covers the middle ground between what I do and what was expected...i.e. greeting card bullshit), but I'm going to sleep on it, do one more round of drafting tomorrow morning and hopefully send it off to be printed in the morning.
A part of me wishes I hadn't been asked to do that...to be that voice, but I also realize that as a writer (a practice that is weird and abstract to most honest, hard-working people), there was really nothing else I could offer and nothing else they could have asked of me and, ultimately, I'm happy to do it. To have your family flipping through all the "verses," and coming to the conclusion that they have a son/nephew/grandson that could do better, is humbling and for a guy as popular as my grandpa, quite an honor.
Anyway, the point is, I'm really not into occasional poetry and the pressure of writing a poem that may be the only poem a person ever reads is daunting, but the reward (for both me and my family) will hopefully be worthwhile.

Check you later Gramps, I guess it's my turn to buy the Mountain Dew.

Nate Slawson is bad motherfucker. Not only does he do this, but he also writes these. Nate's a friend of a friend whom I've only met a couple of times, but he can grow a wicked mustache and write totally rad poems. The odd for me about reading Slawson's poems, though, is that our styles are oddly familiar. He uses a bit more curse words than I do, but the phrasing is almost exact (i.e. long run-on sentences that take advantage of time-buying verbage to create space where there technically is none), and the things he chooses to write about isn't necessarily what I choose to write about, but the loose yet logical flow of ideas is also quite similar.

Appetizers are my favorite part of the meal and its a joy to share them with you...

you are a pharmacy

you have a hundred secret names & I am the world’s worst shoplifter.
you know what I mean? it’s like it’s 1992 & we’re so happy for cigarettes
& de la soul & lightning bugs & shit like that. sometimes I wish you knew
someone exactly like me who wasn’t so obsessed with your knuckles.
they make me hurt like alligator teeth. I want you to be all fists & bruises like
tiny sparrows on my face. I want you to be a handgun muzzled into my gut

I've always thought that I made more sense on paper, that my best ways of saying things aloud confused people and I get that same feeling from Slawson's poems...that, you can imagine hearing someone speaking this poem, but if spoken to you outside the context of poetry, you'd be pretty feaked out.

Something unrelated, I've totally fallen for the XYZ Affair.

Topic at hand...go read Nate Slawson's poetry and then go buy his books, his beautiful books and do what I did and wear the free pin everywhere.

Be inspired to whisper in your own projection booth

Joshua Marie Wilkinson has had a shit-ton of books released this year; this one, this one, this one, and not the least of which is this one, out on a little press close to my heart called further adventures. But now comes his third full-length, from Tupelo, The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth.

I have a tendency to gush on JMW quite often and have been forcing his books on my friends and co-workers for years, but I can say with complete seriousness that I have never met anyone who is as willing to give to the community as much as he is willing to take from it. The guy runs a lit mag, two small presses and a reading series, and let us not forget he teaches as well. If you love poetry at all, this is the kind of life you should aspire to...and to help Josh live his version of it, buy this book.

Accountability and Defensiveness

There has been talk all over the e-poetry community lately having to do with the odd defensiveness that older poetry teachers seem to hold against their younger counterparts. I find this to be totally wicked, but not unlike other strains of academe or any other profession, really. Those on top fight tooth and nail to stay there, even if it means having a total disregard for everyone below you. However, where I see these two fork away from each other is accountability.

If you fuck up almost anywhere else, you get sacked. Politics, business, newspapers, military, whatever; the fact is, you are held responsible for the shit that goes down on your watch. However, in poetry, what we have seen is a group that has watched it readership dwindle to almost nil, and yet still expect to hold on to their titles, their prestige and most importantly, their pay checks. They're allowed all this AND feel that they need to squash any and all poetry that deters from their own (thus keeping them the masters of the house).

The most unfortunate aspect is, though, that in order to come even remotely qualified to take their positions, we must first go through their classes...earn their degrees. It occurs to me that the only real way to buck the system is to allow a total collapse, just like the auto industry.

Perhaps only in the rubble of failure can we build a better poetry.

Robin Blaser 1925-2009

I've had a few conversations with Joshua Marie Wilkinson over the years. "Until the Lantern's Shaky Song," might just be the least strained and easy of them all (my fault, not his). This new chapbook, just out from cinematheque press, is made up of 26 poems/love letters written for Wilkinson's friends, lovers and confidants, and could just be the most intimate self-portrait this poet has ever released into the world.

Each poem in the book is essentially made up of two equal parts (1 part friend, 1 part Josh), giving us the equivalent of Wilkinson climbing inside the skin of each of these other writers (almost every poem, in my estimation, is "for" a fellow poet), and finding them to be, not ill-fitting, but like store bought Halloween costumes, you can always tell who's underneath. Thus, what we are left with is a collection of poems that really does play out a like a party; lots of voices, a little music and enough stories to keep you entertained for hours and hours. "Iowa is full of/ those water towers I can smell/ the grass & wake up I don't/ know where & I think of that Myles/ poem about being president & my phone/ is dead..."
I love "Poem for Joshua Beckman" for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I was there in Iowa City when those two rolled through town on the Poetry Bus. That does, however, lead to the one issue I foresee with this book...I wonder if it's possible to be lured to all the places Wilkinson would like to pull you to without knowing him, or the character's that dance all over these poems. In short, are these just "poems for my friends," or can they be for everyone?

That said, this is an amazing set of poems in an equally amazing package. It's really fun to see JMW try on all these different outfits and still overwhelm you with his atmospheric prowess, not to mention that every single line has the ability to teach you what adoration and love really are, and, much like the sketches Van Gogh would scribble into his letters, even if they are for someone else, it still feels good to imagine them being for you.

And, like sprinkles on top of a promise, the book comes with a cd of Wilkinson reading a selction of the poems...which is awesome, becuase it has always been live that JMW's poems expose themselves for what they really are...the master ramblings of one of the smartest poets working today.

Yesterday, I read this. I thought it was good. The concept is this: all games reflect, in someway, life skills that are, or were required as we age. Hide and go seek teaches us to hunt, Duck, duck, goose teaches us to understand the "abilities" pyramid and our place in it, and Capture the flag teaches us casualty, victory and other war-related topics. It's within this dynamic that Svalina crafts a whole series of games meant to teach the reader/player the skills they will need to survive in contemporary culture. Skills like how to alienate the classes, worship celebrities, be afraid, and deal with abandonment the moment you fail.
Most of the instructions are surprising in the best ways. A few never quite fully come together, but even in those rare instances, there is always a rule or two that you are happy to have read. There are also one or two games that stretch for something just out of reach, but keeps stretching nontheless. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this book, though, is just how many of these games seem completely viable...how many of them I wanted to go outside and play, how many of them inspired real, visceral reactions in me.
I'm a sucker for rules (much like Ralphie in "A Christmas Story," "but the bell rang...") and I'm also a sucker for Mathias Svalina. You should be too...

Swap Meet Saturday

Yesterday, Anne and I bought a completely unnecessary antique card catalogue, then we went for a walk up the lake into tourist country. We bought ice cream and pretended that we were just here for the weekend...we even had somebody take a picture of us in front of the lake (it didn't turn out so well, meaning I looked pale and squinty). Then we came home and grilled turkey brats and burgers. Then we watched Live Free or Die Hard, which is the only movie I've ever ditched a wedding reception for, so far. Then we went to bed because yesterday was a big day.

I wind up giving almost all my art away; drawings, poems, photographs (if you would be kind enough to allow me the belief that my pictures are in someway artistic). I'm able to do this for two reasons, one, I like not buying things for people and two, once I'm done with something, for better or worse, I'm pretty much done. I've been thinking about this lately because for the last week I've been writing and posting poems on my friend, Aaron McNally's facebook wall, and that is the sole reason they exist...as a method of redefining the purposes of that space. The poems themselves are statements, but their very being is a statement unto itself...
Anyway, this got me thinking about how seriously a lot of poets take themselves and their work, treating it like some kind of commodity that ultimately belongs in a type of showcase (be that book or journal). This is a bag of worms and I know it, but since nobody in America, well, 8% of America, reads poetry on a regular basis, who gives a shit. Odds are, more people will read those posted poems than will ever read a book I might someday have. What's the point then in acting like our work deserves some kind of higher honor than being self-published on facebook.
This idea is a few days late, but perhaps to keep the spirit of NaPoMo going, make all your facebook/blogging/e-mail dealings poetic, take advantage of the character limitations, space limitations, self-importance limitations. Write poems just for that person, just for that moment. You might be surprised.

This weekend I'm going to this:
















and then I'm going to watch this about 500 more times (I can't speak for the song, as I haven't yet watched it with the sound on, I hope it doesn't suck):

Articles of interest (to me, in the very least)

Helen Adam and Jack Spicer on the Harriet blog

Against Readings (and okay article on how literary criticism isn't doing itself any favors)

End of the University?

Today's me mum's birthday

and my dog is very excited. Standing on the couch excited. She knows that tonight, my dad take my mom out to a cheap Chinese restaurant with paper place mats and plastic on the seats and a Spanish speaking man who was taught to write tickets in Chinese, she assumes, not knowing any Chinese herself, because that is exactly what my mom will want. Then sometime after that at least one, if not all her sons will call her to wish her a happy birthday and carry on about other, non-birthday topics, which will also be what my mom wants.

My dog loves when my mom gets what she wants because my mom always gives my dog what she wants, like bacon, eggs, steak, or whatever else my mom has cooked and my dog can smell.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I have a tendency to save up all my errands for nice days...

Joshua Beckman...

...read last night at the New Wave Cafe here in Chicago. It was really pretty rad. The place was packed, phones were ringing, machines were machining and at one point JB mentioned that he felt more like he was on the set of a "coffee shop" than an actual coffee shop..."or maybe a brain," he said. This was the third or fourth time I've seen him read, but the first I've gotten the chance to chat with him for few minutes afterwards (I gave him a copy of the JMW/LBP chapbook, I hope he likes it).
JB's new book, Take it, totally kicks ass and for me is a kind of return to the Beckman that I fell in love with in, Your Time Has Come...equally reliant on both image and language, those devices build each other up, rather than stand in opposition to one another. I honestly wasn't going to buy this book, but after the reading I felt as though I had no choice...best 10 bones I'll spend this week, unless I end up going to the Empty Bottle on Friday to see Noah and the Whale, in which case it will easily be a toss up.

Is it just me, or has "novelist" become one of the grossest words you can possibly hear in a day? It's the Las Vegas of words; conceptually not that bad, but practically, the absolute last thing I want to hear anyone talk about. I hate it, I really do. I don't want to hear about your novel, about how you're writing a novel, about your ideas for a future novel and never, never read from an early chapter in your latest novel...especially if you've published absolutely no novels to date. Guess what? Anybody with a word processor can be a "novelist," all it takes after that is the clueless chutzpah to talk about it in polite company.

Also, here is a list of things I don't want to hear about when you get back from Las Vegas: gambling (every story is exactly the same and ends in only one of two ways), the clubs (they're designed to be the coolest place you've ever been), the strip (same as the clubs), the word "Vegas," all the things you had comped, the heat, and finally, the shopping.

Anyway...you should come to see Joshua Beckman tonight.

An old favorite of mine, W.S. Merwin, just won his second Pulitzer Prize. The value of the Pulitzer in contemporary poetry (the persons they choose, the works those persons write and how well those works represent the others being created around it) seems low, but who wouldn't want to die as a two-time Pulitzer winner?

A few quick hits:

• Joshua Beckman Reading in Chicago -- RLL

  Tuesday April 21st 2009 8pm

  Host:

  Rabbit Light Movies

  Location:	New Wave Coffee
  Street:	2557 N. Milwaukee Ave.
  City:	Chicago, IL

• I've been growing increasingly excited about moving out of Chicago, not really because I have beef with the city, but...well, after two years I feel like we've fought to a draw and it's time to call it.
  
• That said, I'm beginning to freak out. Not just about moving, but about my writing, the workshop, my age...everything. As Jack Spicer once said, "I am dissatisfied with my poetry./ I am dissatisfied with my sex life./ I am dissatisfied with the angels I believe in." I think I get that, really, for the first time ever.
  
• I need to call my friends, I've been really bad about that lately, but it's time to be good.
• I want to see this show: Your Pal, Cliff: Selections fromt the H.C. Westermann Study Collection.
• I've been writing a lot lately, but as I mentioned, am not into it at all. I think I need to go back and just revise the shit out of my last two years worth of poems and try to envision where and how it can make a difference.
  

Would you take this course?

Creative Writing (08C:023:SCC), Wednesday, 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm in 424 North Hall.

Do you like your art a little rough around the edges? Uncomfortable even? This course focuses on the poems, fictions and non-fictions that are hard to swallow. Through reading, writing and discussion (lots and lots of discussion) we will tackle the places and spaces our writing veers towards when no one else is looking. Using Frank Stanford’s epic masterpiece “The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You,” as a source text, we will learn to control these urges and to use them in artful and insightful ways while also discovering our unique voices and the methods with which to insert them into the wider conversation that is creative writing. Grades will be based on participation and final portfolio.

Required texts:

The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, Frank Stanford, ISBN 0-0918786-50-9.

Additional handouts supplied by instructor.

*They decided to go with option 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------

8C:098 Poetry Writing (rejected)

…and reading, and re-writing, and dialogue, and finally, poetics. This course is designed around the idea that poetry isn’t just the poem, but an on-going conversation. We will read books. We will discuss books. Then, we will write books. Over the course of the semester you will be asked to write, shape and present you very own chapbook. Also, you will be asked to assist others in writing, shaping and presenting theirs. Ultimately, this course will help you to enter the conversation, not with a series of disconnected interjections, but with a sound, cohesive statement. Grades will bases on participation and chapbook.

Required texts:

The Singing Knives, Frank Stanford, ISBN: 978-0-918786-55-5.

Creation Myths, Mathias Svalina, ISBN: 978-0-9791501-9-7.

Twentieth-Century American Poetics, Dana Gioia, David Mason, ISBN: 0072414723

Additional handouts supplied by instructor.

U of I asked to come up with a few course descriptions...these are the classes I've been dreaming of teaching, and teaching in my dreams.

*update

Review: Zachary Schomburg's The Pond

Ponds serve as a marker. A marker of wealth. A marker of geography. A marker of personal history. But in the case of Zachary Schomburg's "The Pond," it is a marker of a clear, but subtle shift in one of contemporary poetry's most exciting voices. Where Schomburg's first full length collection, "The Man Suit," reappropriated James Tate for the wandering and curious, "The Pond" reads more like a discovery, albeit one you'd only share with your best friend/lover. There are moments in this book that are so bold and yet so innocent your face blushes as a sense of embarrassment creeps into your toes;

I'll show you the cave
where all the bats come from.
You'll show me that place
between your knees
where my hand goes.

The single most amazing aspect of this book though, is Schomburg's awareness of that fact...and his subsequent use of this awareness to turn you from voyeur to active participant.

Where many other poems by many other poets would place the audience in their usual role as onlooker, Schomburg's poems pull out the chair for you, invite you to sit, and the invitation is so cordial that every time he mentions "you" or "we" the reader is almost made to squeal with excitement. You are the one chosen to hear all these secrets, you are the one he loves, we are going to have quite the adventure figuring this world out. And though it has never been Schomburg's tenor to alienate the reader with dense language and general poet's trickery, the simpleness of these poems increases your need to connect with them...their eagerness to speak to you demands an equal eagerness to listen attentively, caringly.

It's in this way that "The Pond" becomes more like a reflecting pool. This collection is decidedly Zachary Schomburg and yet, it is decidedly me, decidedly you. The magic of these poems doesn't necessarily take place within the printed words, but in the space between what those words are meant to symbolize and how those symbols are acknowledged in the brain. Meaning, when Schomburg mentions "the pond," I envision a specific pond (it's the one in front of my aunt's house), as do you, and Schomburg does nothing to stop it, in fact, these poems only work when you imagine that pond, at which point, you are no longer being asked to play in Zachary Schomburg's world, rather, you unknowingly invite him to play in yours.

You spend most of the day in the pond.
Every time you blink your eyelashes fall out
and then quickly grow back.
I spend all day collecting them.
They're what I make boats out of.
We like to ride bikes and fly kites together.

It's in these spaces where our brains infuse Schomburg's lines into our actual memories, like a lie you've told one too many times, and though it might feel a little creepy to admit, isn't this what we all really desire in our poetry? To have it be lived by someone? To be a marker of some kind somewhere? Jack Spicer used to mention magic everytime he talked about poetry, and "The Pond" is as close to a magical experience as I've ever had reading poems. To be honest, it is the book that made me reconsider my stance on both magic and poetry...

Congratuations Zach, James Tate might be the master illusionist, but I'll take the wonder of a good coin-in-the-ear any day. Besides, you can only see illusions so many times before you figure them out, but done right, when a magician holds that coin to your eyes, your first instinct will always be to reach back into your ear.

I've been trying to think of reasons to go to the lumber yard

Build your own press...check it!

Because I thought this was pretty rad

I Am In the Air Right Now from Greg Lytle on Vimeo.

Though it is Poetry Month, I seem to be hearing and reading a lot more grumbling about poetry than I do hurrahs...which is okay. I grumble about poetry all the time and have been for years, so its good to see a community of grumblers sprouting up at long last. After all, ever major movement (or political revolution, it I may) began with a quiet, but passionate grumble.

In many ways, contemporary poetry works like a Ponzi scheme operated by the academic world. We keep investing all our energies with the promise of a lasting payoff only to see our overall wealth of talent drained completely dry and for the benefit of just a few. The problem, though, is that we have no other options; if you want to write poetry in America you are inescapably linked to academia (the only other option being arts communities, but even then, good luck getting those folks to a poetry reading). I want to write poetry, and so I bought into the system, and am now, or will soon be, rather, in pursuit of that big, promised payoff.

Where will poetry be in 10 years? Who can say...my hope is that grassroots movements like the small press revolution will keep growing, that people like Janaka Stucky will keep finding new and innovative ways to fund and promote the art, that poetry will become a little dangerous again. I think that there are enough of us who have decided to make our own fortunes that this just could happen. There are scads of poets living and working outside of academia, and these voices are quickly becoming the voices recognized as contemporary poetry. They are voices that aren't being called upon to fill job requirements, in fact, they are voices that exist despite job requirements, motivated by no other desire than to make poetry that people want to read, or, in the very least, that we want to read again later. They are voices that don't have to exist, but do, and its these voices that I hope will shape the poetry our children read...that is, if our children will read poetry: Poetry dies in latest U.S. culture

This dream wasn't as random as some of the others I have. I've been writing poems about fixing pigs like old motorcycles. I usually write just before and just after sleeping. Dreams about pig building seem inevitable then, I guess. This picture is kind of gross. Really gross. I like drawing gross things. It's easier than drawing pretty things. Clean things.

I read this today in CA Conrad's "the Book of Frank," and it reminded me of what I was drawing at the time (I was drawing this, by the way):

"no blood flowed
so he gained little satisfaction
ripping off her head"

I'm glad that I looked for those lines. I've been meaning to swap this book out of my bag for about 2 weeks now, but kept on forgetting. I've read parts of this book 3 times. I've read the other parts 4-5 times. About every third page (on average) is now dogeared. I really liked it, which I've mentioned earlier, but think it could have been only about 2/3 as long as it is. So many of the poems are so tight, so forceful, that ones that fall just left really stick out. But don't let that sway you from reading this book immediately...I found great guilty joy reading it, especially surrounded by all the suits at the U of C business school (which is where I go for lunch).

It's dark out, but still feels cloudy...

I'm pretty sure I'm doing this on Friday

A Special Reading with Raul Zurita and Daniel Borzutzky

Start: Friday, April 3, 2009 - 7:00pm

Time: Doors open at 7:00PM, Reading begins at 7:30PM.
Cost: Free admission, all ages.
Location: Instituto Cervantes, 31 West Ohio Street, Chicago

Raul Zurita was born in Santiago, Chile in 1951. He started out studying mathematics before turning to poetry. His early work is a ferocious response to Augusto Pinochet's 1973 military coup. Like many other Chileans, Zurita was arrested and tortured. When he was released, he helped to form a radical artistic group CADA, and he became renowned for his provocative and intensely physical public performances. In the early 80’s, Zurita famously sky-wrote passages from his poem, The New Life, over Manhattan and later (still during the reign of Pinochet) he bulldozed the phrase Ni Pena Ni Miedo (Without Pain Or Fear) into the Atacama Desert, where it can still be seen because children in the neighboring town bring shovels into the desert and turn over the sand in the letters. For fifteen years, Zurita worked on a trilogy which is considered one of the signal poetic achievements in Latin American poetry: Purgatory appeared in 1979, Ante-paradise in 1982, and The New Life in 1993. Raul Zurita is one of the most renowned contemporary Latin American poets, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Poetry Prize of Chile. Translations of Purgatory and Anteparadise were published in the United States in the 80’s. Three new books, INRI, translated by William Rowe, Song of the Disappeared Love, translated by Daniel Borzutzky, and Purgatory, translated by Anna Deeny, are forthcoming from, respectively, Merick Press, Action Books, and The University of California Press. His books of poems include, among others: El Sermon de la Montana; Areas Verdes; Purgatorio; Anteparadiso; El Paraiso Esta Vacio – Canto a Su Amor, Desaparecido, El Amor de Chile, La Vida Nueva, In Memoriam

I heard DB read some of these translations last summer and they were fucking A-mazing. I've never been to a reading with both translator and translated before, though I always thought it would be cool to see one where they stand side by side and read the poem simultaneously (just like in the books). Zurita's been on my need to buy list for awhile, making clear the major design flaw in said list (it's in alphabetical order). This should be totally rad and I'm totally going.

It's True

SCARY

"Almost as an afterthought, the report also noted that the number of adults reading poetry had continued to decline, bringing poetry's readership to its lowest point in at least 16 years."

Read it here.

My in-laws came this weekend. That means, it was crappy and cold in Chicago. No fail. Every time. Lake Michigan was grumpy. The sky was secretive. A taxi driver said, "bitch," 17 times in 9 blocks. Whoa.

Poetry later. Pictures now.

I've been reading, overhearing and actively participating in a lot of conversations about poetry criticism lately. The main points of which seems to be:

• Criticism of contemporary poetry is largely ineffective, whether it be fanboy lovefests or Comic Book Guy "worst poem ever" disregard.
• Thus, criticism is rarely careful critiques based solely on the work; the product of tools and choices "mastered" by the poet.
• People write poetry. Few people read poetry. Fewer people read poetry criticism. About 3 people are writing it. We are losing this critical language, our ability to express it as well as our ability to work over it in our heads.
• Poetry book reviews are trying too hard to be like NY Times book reviews, meaning the focus of the reviews that are being written is often on the reviewer's ability to review, rather than on the important work done in the book...or, they come across like infomercials, "Now with 50% more lyric power!"

There are many reasons that we are suffering this critical downfall, not the least of which are:

• Academic fallout. Now that all poets are MFA trained, once they leave the rigors of the the academic world, its easy to revel in he ease of the pop-critical thumbs up, thumbs down.
• The Internet makes it possible to say anything without any real thought and from a safe distance...I blog, I get it, I've said some things here that I would never say in "real" life to real people. I'm trying to be more thoughtful with that, to imagine possible reactions and to address them in my original statement, but I've only got my brain.
• The flipside to this is the assumption that a bad review for one book equates a bad review for all of poetry, and why kick they guy while he's down. With so few readers, why try to convince more people to not pick up a book of poetry. Your mom told you about this a long time ago, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
  
• The poetry world is so small, soo small, that's it hard to be critical without being critical of your friends, or at most, of your friends' friends.
  

Now, the only solutions for this that I can see, is that we, as a community of writers, need to be more honest and thorough and knowledgeable with our criticism. That if we don't like something, we say so, but that we state so sincerely and with reason. That we realize that we no longer have the privilege of simple likes and dislikes. That we must carry ourselves with a literacy that at times will seem elitist, but with the hope that it will trickle down to credibility in a society that has no place for poems, that it will make worthy our art for those we hope to have read it. We are not the "everyman" and our poems no longer the voice of the people. But maybe, maybe, if we work hard to convince our wider world that we and what we do is worth their time, than maybe we can regain a foothold in society's cultural biology...maybe.

Zapruder's critical criticism

Black Ocean's critical conditions

We saw everything good.

I'm not good at growing hair, but I could use a haircut now. I don't remember my last haircut, but I do remember talking to the barber about counterfeit money. I don't worry too much about counterfeit money, and I don't like worrying about my hair, which is why I like getting haircuts from this barber...I leave with less worry than when I go in.

Have you read CA Conrad's new book? I couldn't afford it when I bought it, but I also figured I couldn't afford to not buy it, so my consumer instinct won out. Conrad would be one of the writers involved with the violence I mentioned yesterday, but failed to mention yesterday, though his focus seems to be much more on sexual violence and language that perpetuates it and allows it. Yet, the violence in "The Book of Frank," is eerily juvenile and has a way of making you feel sympathetic towards Frank...you know, in his heart, that Frank is not scheming, manipulative or inherently violent, he just doesn't know any better. Thus you are left with sense that punishment is not the proper course, rather you want to sit him down. Talk. Tell him "no." This idea is one that Conrad occasionally makes reference to;

Frank's diary
returned
by mail
when he'd
lost it on
a bus

"Dear Boy come to Jesus"
penciled in the margin
for 108 pages

There is a "normal" world outside these poems, but much like "Bonnie and Clyde," you grow hesitant to be a part of it, instead leaning much more towards Frank's world and the innocence, however crooked, from which it is seen.

afterthought...I also like how Conrad basically spelled cock on the cover (CAC)

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about violence: violent acts, violent imagery, both physical and mental violence, as well as the point where frivolous playfulness turns to regrettable violence, those times when games end because someone is bleeding, on fire, or both. Violent images and circumstances are becoming more and more prevalent in poetry, at least in the sense of being only a part of where the poem happens and not the explicit happening in the poem...which seems very reflective of our world. I know for me personally, this has taken the shape of all the horrific things I see just walking to and from work here in the south side of Chicago; at least they used to seem horrific before they became routine. All the homeless in the park and the very public manner they perform what we consider to be private acts. Gun shots. People screaming at no one in particular. Aggressive police officers. Etc. Etc.
Anyway, what I guess I'm getting at is that I've noticed that these things are becoming the backdrop for my poems...that my usual themes are still intact, but that where once these themes played out in very natural and serene settings, now they take place in very dense spaces made up of this violence. The only problem with this, that I only recently discovered, is that I'm still trying to figure out how to negotiate these spaces. How to not lose voice inside them. How to not be as overwhelmed by them in my poems as I am in real life...or at least how to express that overwhelmed-ness in an artful and interesting way.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that I am alone in this, or even the first to address it, as I've read really good poems that manage to embody these ideas without being manipulated by them, i.e., Mathias Svalina's, "Play" poems, or the new Aase Berg collection, "With Deer" from Black Ocean. The problem with me though, is that soon I'll be moving back to Iowa where these daily horrors will once again become horrific and outside of the daily fabric, and therefore, outside the scope of my poems.

I think I'm going to write as much as I can everyday between now and June.