Monday, November 22, 2004

In preparation for our drive to Long Beach tomorrow and in acquiescence to Brighton's expressed "need" of a personal music device (discman, thank god he's not asking for an iPod), I purchased the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Soundtrack for him to listen to on my discman in the car. Brighton is almost 6 and somehow he's already one of the most sophisticated indie rockers I know. "Hey Dad, put on some rock 'n' roll." "Who do you want to hear?" "ummm...Modest Mouse (I only let him hear the clean songs) or D.C. For Cutie (I leave out the "Death Cab" part)." He wants to have a band when he's grown up, like 7.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

So now that I've gotten DSL again, found the sunshine amidst the most depressing wednesday and days following, and decided to forego giving up on this here blog, I might as well write something. I just moved back into San Francisco (YaY!) but in order to do so, must find a new home for my cats Palace & Radio aka The Brutal Kittens (Boo.) I've had three good prospects for taking them but each one backed out last minute. Any of you in the Bay Area want two awesome cats? Boo.

On another note, I'm reading this thursday with Joseph Lease in the innaugural reading of the Ecstatic Monkey Reading Series.

That's Thursday, Nov. 11th @ 7:30pm. StartSoma 672 South Van Ness at 18 th in San Francisco. $5-$10sliding scale suggested donation plus free alcoholic beverages such as wine and beer and a DJ spinning your favorite indie/new wave/electro so you can dance.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Once again, I find myself searching for a place to live. My heart's in San Francisco but my person is in Oakland...I'm hoping to go where the heart is.

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Amick has started a blog! I Don't Believe In Bodiless. Be nice or you'll have to deal with me.

Sunday night at Glenn Todd's beautiful

"Lower Pac Heights" home with Peter, looking at many of Arion Press' stunning books, some of which, Glenn had a hand in. One of which, John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror", printed on circular sheets of handmade paper, the poem's lines radiating out from a center as spokes and contained in a large film cannister. A series of 8 Diebenkorn etchings on one wall, Bruce Conner photograveures on another, I think I counted three Jess collages. Really just an amazing place. Peter's new book from Salt Periplum & Other Poems, a reprinting of his first book, Periplum or I the Blaze, which includes early chapbooks; "Hours of the Book" and "Music for Films".

So many readings this week. Brandon Brown and Larry Kearney this evening, Aaron Kiely and Suzanne Stein tomorrow, and Peter with Beverly Dahlen on Thursday. How to hear so much poetry!

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Cat Stevens deported from U.S. because he's on a Terror Alert watch list. What a "Wild World" indeed.

We couldn't *Do It* to rock music

Now that's just plain wrong. Since it's inception, rock 'n' roll has been synonymous with sex and sexuality. But then, both sex and rock are tools of the Devil. Is that not the most asinine thing you've ever heard? First off, The Devil? Come on. Secondly, since when are things which are enjoyable, "of the devil?" Bzzzzt. Wrong again. And rock and roll? Well, there's much less of an argument there, as there's so much devil worship in rock: Inxs' "the devil inside". So many false idols: i.e. Golden Earring. Etc. I hereby proclaim Do It to Rock Music and be free!

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Now THAT'S a HOTTT ASSS. or Me doing a front-flip on the trampoline at Alli's posted by James

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

I just received the proofs of Chris Stroffolino's Speculative Primitive and Cynthia Sailers' Lake Systems and they look HAWT!!! The books will be on my doorstep in the next week. Stay tuned for a HUGE BOOK RELEASE BASH!!!

Monday, August 23, 2004

Did you see Jim jump from Alli's roof to the trampoline? I did. Did you see Jim jump from Alli's roof to the trampoline sans clothing? Yep. Did you see Jim jump from Alli's roof to the trampoline donning a tight-fitting and short dress sans undergarments? Ugh. Yeah.

It changed my life and the way I see poetry. "Cook me a soy dog be-yah-tch."

Monday, August 23, 2004

Did you see Jim jump from Alli's roof to the trampoline? I did. Did you see Jim jump from Alli's roof to the trampoline sans clothing? Yep. Did you see Jim jump from Alli's roof to the trampoline donning a tight-fitting and short dress sans undergarments? Ugh. Yeah.

It changed my life and the way I see poetry. "Cook me a soy dog be-yah-tch."

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Went to see Maria Full of Grace last night with Jimmy and Steph, who laughed through the whole film. "This is the best vacation ever" Jimmy kept whispering. When, in fact, Maria's vacation was terribly depressing and strange. But that's what happens when one is a mule for a bottom rung Columbian druglord. The film was pretty good I thought but I do agree with Steph and Jim's assertion that it's akin to an afterschool special: Now kids, every time you blow coke, a sweet Columbian girl might have died bringing that shit into the country so don't blow coke. I agree. Coke is bad. I much prefer Pepsi.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Jordan mentions Steve Healey's new book on Coffee House Press, which is but one in what is becoming an ever more present sub-genre of "post-avant-youngster" poetry: Indie Rock Poetry. I can see myriad instances in which both indie rock and poetry correspond. Hell, some of us "New Brutalists" tried to put on "LitRock 2003" back in 2003, when we were at Mills College. We'd wanted to bring together indie musicians cum poets and poets cum indie musicians and those who were influenced in either artform by the other, to talk about it, read, and play music. Ultimately we failed due to the fact that no one wanted to help fund such a thing, and that was very sad.

I know Clover tried something similar at UC Davis but on a much smaller scale. Besides, he wears a Hole (Courtney Love's former band) shirt, which pretty much blows his indie cred even if he is wearing it ironically. No offense intended JC.

The editor of Sea.Lamb.

Press tells me the new chapbooks are going fast! Hearing that just tickles me purple. You can buy all three (Amick Boone's "Notes From Outside Sources." Dana Ward's "Standards." and my "Instrument"...that sounds bad, "my instrument." oh and it's so very bad)now at a discounted price of $10. Get 'em while they're HAWT.

Really great to hear all about the Moston Bassacre...I mean...The Boston Massacre. Wish I were there.

GREAT NEWS From Tougher Disguises!!!!

Chris Stroffolino's SPECULATIVE PRIMITIVE & Cynthia Sailers' LAKE SYSTEMS

Will be out by the first week of September! So stay tuned for a Bay Area release party. Details will soon be made available!!!!

Monday, August 02, 2004

Spent yesterday in Napa Valley tasting wines (some fabulous and some not so much), eating delectable food, and having an all around wonderful day. My lovely girlfriend Amick's parents are in town from Atlanta, so I drove the four of us up and thus opted out of many of the wine tastings in favor of our safety. I'm thinking I should move to Napa and start a winery. Good wine is a very pleasant thing.

Friday, July 30, 2004

Another Lunch Poem:

Clouds of America, it's time
to dissipate, to allow for gold.

Though blackbirds compliment
the grey with their tiny wingspan
and the wobbly green also.

Beauty adorns the corner
a backdrop to its honesty.

A voice accompanies a player piano
making blackletter easy on the eyes.

I understand every day isn't clear
or necessarily clean, but I envision
it a catastrophe to not be so.

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Having known about this as an impending project, I'm very excited to see it closer to realization. Peter Gizzi's Periplum and Other Poems, forthcoming from Salt Publishing, collects his first book, Periplum, as well as his chapbooks Hours of the Book, Music for Films, and some uncollected pieces that appeared in early issues of Oblek. This is a very important publication, as it brings together the early work of one of our premier lyricists, editors and thinkers.

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

I'm very excited that Sea.Lamb.Press. has reissued my chapbook Instrument, with an entirely new and awesome design, an extra poem on an insert (mini broadside) and in an edition of 100! They've also reprinted Dana Ward's Standards and done a chapbook of Amick Boone's Notes From Outside Sources, which is spectacular (she also happens to be my girlfriend). For some reason, Sea.Lamb.Press. is anonymously run and thus we don't know who is publishing these fine chapbooks. But they're really nice looking, full of great poems, and you can collect all three! Supposedly, they're going to publish 3 new chapbooks every three months (that's 12 a year!!!)and they're only publishing serial poems/long poems. Check them out!!!

Friday, July 23, 2004

In two hours, I'll be leaving work to meet Stephanie and Del and then drive to Santa Cruz. Kasey has invited us, as well as Patrick Durgin and LRSN, to speak to his summer term course on poetry about being "poets." I can imagine myself giving sad advice such as "brush up on your math skills." or "if you don't have a sugar mommy/daddy, I'd suggest you find one." or "ever consider being a plumber?" or "there's always law school." or "being a barista isn't that bad." Then I'll proclaim that "it isn't 'BAD' to write love poems...see, I do it...I'm the 'Romantic Poet for the Modern World'...excuse me while I weep." I guess I'm just really excited to go back to Santa Cruz and see how THE REGENTS have slashed and burned the redwood forest that was so shady and cool during my stay at SC as well as entering a building I never entered while there, Social Sciences 1.

Bon Voyage!

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Catfu's series of lunch poems, I thought I'd try my hand:

Here goes
really very little
between Maui
and Maine
and now
I'd prefer staying home
where I can watch
the gerbera daisy
forget to grow
and attach bodies
to the voices
of a young mother
and child next door.
Whose wailing
and affirmation
have out-noised me.
Everything dainty
as a thumbtack
or sweet-smelling
and girlish.
What foggy ghost
parade marched by
this morning
as I lay in bed
waiting for inspiration
same as every other.

Next Thursday, you should not miss:

Peter Gizzi & Beverly Dahlen
Thursday September 30
a talk by Peter Gizzi on Jack Spicer
@ the Poetry Center, 3:30 pm, free

and, Peter Gizzi & Beverly Dahlen reading
@ the Unitarian Center, 7:30 pm, $5 donation
1187 Franklin (& Geary)

You should try especially hard to make Peter's talk on Spicer. As I understand it, he is going to talk about Spicer's poetry in relation to California Junk/Funk Art, with a focus on the films of Bruce Conner. There really is no one (excepting perhaps our own Kevin Killian) who can talk about Jack Spicer the way Peter can.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

While waiting to meet Stephanie for lunch, the busking accordion player was playing "If You Think I'm Sexy!" ...and you want my body come on pretty baby...

I nodded and said, "why yes, I do think I'm sexy!"

Saturday, July 10, 2004

I'm sitting at my mom's computer, looking out over Puget Sound at the Easternmost point on Orcas Island. I actually miss being up here on Lummi Island, just off of Bellingham, Washington. But it has been overcast since Brighton and I arrived. He and I flew up from Oakland, so I could drop him off to hang with his grandparents for nearly a month. I return home tomorrow eve. I'm hoping to catch a nice king salmon to bring home and bbq. We didn't have any luck yesterday but Brighton did get to reel in a dogfish (a 3" shark) and 6 rock cod, one of which, he ate for dinner last night while the rest of us had steak. He's a pescal vegetarian, tho he's now really into turkey and hot dogs. Oh to be 5.

Tonight, a big family gathering with all my aunts and uncles (mom's side) who'll all ask me, I'm sure, "so, now what do you really do? Because poetry isn't a real job, right?..." Basically, I'll be judged. But then I'll insert some strategically placed "big words" into mundane comments on the state of things and they'll look at me as if I'm from another planet. I live in the Bay Area, so, I guess, I am.

I'll be back in Oakland and in action on Monday. "Peathe Out, Napoleon."

Friday, July 02, 2004

And now I'm drinking a diet coke, listening to some great dub reggae on KALX and editing Belly Dancing For Fitness! I think I'll learn how by the time I'm done.

I just got a new mouse for my computer at work! It's a fancy optical mouse (fancy compared to the one I just buried in a shoebox out front). I shall name him Eyesenhower. No, not after the president but after the poor kid I made fun of in third grade. He had very powerful glasses, which magnified his eyes to twice normal size. Thus, me, having been picked on by bigger kids for being a sissy (I liked The Smiths), picked on a smaller kid with great big eyes. Really, I just called him "Eyesenhower." He cried. I felt really terrible and then got a pink slip, which I flushed down the toilet instead of taking to the principal's office. So. Cheers to my new mouse "Eyesenhower" and to the kid I made fun of: May Lasik Surgery repair your glorious eyes!

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Again, I can't seem to get the form to come out right with these poems on the new Blogger interface, it just mangles the line. Basically, each line that carries over is supposed to be indented. But this is it. Amplifier in all it's finished glory.

AMPLIFIER


Is it too much to say, too brutal an obsession, to say that this is a system or love
under a persona, without shroud of rote obscurity.
It is something of impossible scale. An oblique penumbra I might call she who accepts
an arrow, someone else’s dream. O you look so impressive, through the hole
in the wall.
The empty space through which I see you, a lover in someone else’s hand, the space
of an hour or an hour within a life is more than you’ll ever know.
More than you can fill with the noise of excursion, the noise that inhabits our differences
and makes us weak with dancing.
I will work until the work is done, is electric, though the work is never really complete
not as long as life wades on into a sea of forms.
The easiest form in truth occupies the divine conundrum to be disproved
when all else is beleaguered by time.
One could say, no love in language better stated than muteness, everything in subtext
in what wasn’t said.


The boys in their suits for swimming forget to drown in romance before entering
the water; they can only splash around, never knowing the difficulty in
staying afloat.
The sky above them is everything they might one day understand, the boys sing
their songs as if it were necessary, as if they knew the sea.
I was watching them and I was them, bundled in masculine nonchalance, asking,
was there ever a boy that I wasn’t?
I remember being so many that the quality of the copy wasn’t worth listening to
and I had to go back to the beginning, relive myself from scratch.
The boys are still swimming, still playing in the field with rocks, getting all banged up
over what they don’t yet know.
They’ll keep to themselves or one of them might venture out to where the water
is above his head.


Do you still leave the ruin of morning on your shocked lips, the charge
eagerly rushing through them as you sing?
This preserved form of quiet, maybe nicer a second later than it was made, when
noise equals love so complete that it feels.
Empathetic slant light coming through the shade to make a pattern, a current, feeding
the hum in the cabinet, that glossy embroidery of action.
Do you ever play the same note again and again, longing for some explosion within
the body as if music would make sense louder and more raw than a wound
if in a state of decay?
It is waiting for you to allow it a final escape into silence for sound to rise like sound
can—sorry, not sorry, this is the volume.
This is the escapade that makes one sing the natural noise of the perimeter
that reaches you in sleep.
The tympani heartbeat, the feeling electrified and tight involuntary decibels, making
one larger or louder than it is light inside this dark box.
The unwieldy illusion of song is rising from the wooden floor so be careful not
to salute the war-torn heart amidst city hostilities or sing too sadly above
your formal balustrades.


You look so alone tonight, amplified beautiful landscapes and horizons empty
around you.
Did you have a time or did you feel it in your gut, the resonating chord, the thread
strung through your each move.
Your body never stops, its amperes lighting up the room, filling everything
with indescribable sound, waves in your hair, evening in your eyes
as night falls on Oakland and I imagine you asleep.
I imagine myself happy—notes expanding—coming through the tarnished facade
only to devolve into silence.
There is a you and there is a song for you, just another love song because this body
feels like dancing, like nodding its head.
Because in everything there is intention in the way I ask to touch your lips, it is
the american way.
And now there is a song for you called Tonight the Way You Look Dying, and you
are not dying, nor are you present and it is day.


We go in, we go to places, we are saying “these are the words I so love to sing”
a deepness in the pictured air I feel windy.
I am a mark upon the metal heartstrings and I am a departure ongoing, always
in health a dirge for the accidental gentry.
I guess I wear a somber halo, for am more sensible in lament than in whimsy
like I will not see her famous hands again.
We thought the city would close its garden, lose its nighttime varnish and unveil
its myriad dispositions.
Look, a note rising into the stars, a bird singly disappearing from view into all
the flashing bulbs and neon golden signs flirtatious in the night.
We go, and are not going alone into the question, a pledge to do what was undone:
tie a bow around the plastic visage.


Our momentary lapse in adhesion only enough to realize that we had seized
the day and were continuing to seize it.
I had not felt such a perfect kiss and such impermanence in unison, in sound
as everything eventually fades because reality, Americanism, tells us so.
I cry at everything, don’t feel anything lapping at my feet, no watery child
to strike an impromptu pose.
That little death in each instant newly surprising and faltering, a little death for
every occasion, silence at the end of each.
To not be dead and not be song is to be alone as I was alone when I should
have been with you so please don’t wake me, I plan on sleeping in.
I aim to avoid the sun as it rises, to abolish the aubade or make it duller
to mimic the mournful song of birds outside my morning shoulder.
My only beloved, walking notes and nature sound: wind, muffler, jackhammer
there is no moment without feedback in nature.
When currents are conflicting and man-made sound is natural, there are vibrations
in the strings, rustling in the leaves, no difference in origin of clamor or
ideas in nature.
It is natural to play guitar to see events in any reality, what nature is: voice
in imitation of sound in nature.


I want to see her come in and sit down like she did with little noise,
as it’s hard to talk about her at all; she looks away when she listens
and doesn’t cross her legs.
She is a song is sound is an occurrence of appeal, moves closer to sound
resonant of poetry, right?
So far seems artificial, not legs slightly open but song in simultaneous play
as nature with legs both disconnected because uncrossed or
impossible to summarize.
Experience is an interpretation, not representation related to nature, sound,
attraction or the impact of legs in an event.
I don’t blame you for every chance, for an autograph so sad, for my belief
in maudlin encores and apologism; because they’re honest.
I want to be a good one, be a friend to the lonely mountain dawn in cry and rest
so don’t say sorry because I love you and can’t give you the words.


There’s no entity in anything, light coming over the stage an entity under
emotive duress.
It’s an open season point of view, a gesture in opposition to phenomena
that comes so brightly.
She is internal shapes like healing radical possibilities on edge, identified
by presence instead of her features, she don’t blame you for seeing her
in the nude.
My experience has likewise been blinded with sight so keep the lights low, so
you will see as I see the kindness in imagined spaces, her soft framed face
her horizon then obscured by fog or is foggy the horizon?
The small amplifier on stage makes big sound like purple light—horizon—
without hooks but voices to bring you in.
I am enamored with the voice leaving her face.
I never dreamed of the sea again.
Everything has something to be said for it but what of the aether?
What of the names given us at birth, no-names and the above?


Don’t be in love with the autograph of heroism, Okay, your thoughts so tender
and being made alive in witness a border of liminal marigolds.
The beach, a real border around the sea the salty madrigals are singing over:
a shoulder to cry on, no one is willing to share it.
The transience in calling from the outside or coming back, wanting to be clean
to have emotions in the overtones that shake this land with no direction
but ample time to slip away.
How different the late-night wreckage, to see the lovers in place of our hands
the sound shattered a wine glass like language can transform a room
with power or intent.
Or how quiet sitting on the floor Indian-style with legs in quiet, a sweet understated
face, no sound coming from it, breathing maybe.
But a sweet face does, it can brighten the corner of a room with presence, how I am
reminded to be accepting of death because I died in sleep from such a sweet face breathing noiselessly in explicit rest.
This memory revealed by a girl in the corner, brightening, but what is memory,
a palace in which to go some day in sleep with birdsong out the window
or at night, to join sleep with birdsong.



The I in process, touching light to refer to as place or song from the heart
rising up to the sun which goes crazy instead of down.
I like to think the sun crazy in the sky, its two-dimensional exuberance having
evoked so many picnics.
Burning all night stars of sonic intervention, a small giggle, legs extended as if
to stretch what sound thumps along, aware of its own pace, its trust
in voices dispatched to ethereal heights?
We think of the world as endless if amplified, magnified birdsong a parenthetical
forest in which the wind is a testimony of endlessness.
Birdsong begins, becomes another bird’s reply, a bell, the virtue of time and final
engagement with time it takes her to extend and overlay her legs.
One barely across the other to project such meaning, on legs, of listening
to their friction, two specific legs like branches reaching for mobility.
What filler between birdsong and in the wind, slightly birdlike, a small falcon
attractive huntress whose legs are the means to an end.



This world in a wire attached to a magnet and a cone causing sound to expand
like one shaft of smoky sun coming into a forest, a ‘genesis’ of sensory
tradition arising from the soil seen from everywhere, here, at once.
Having been there and felt wind, I enact the arc, the pattern of its movement
but I don’t mean anything in particular.
Continually coming home to make noise in response to the loneliest season
when I am not paired off.
No legs to entwine in, no sound but breath what comes from the amplifier
and there are no songs about joy in spring, no bright tones other
than its color.
This until the breach of summer, the planets in whack and the feminine riddle
isn’t a riddle at all but a chance meeting.
The third time as plain as a charm in all its merriment, this metaphysical morning
when we woke, shafts of light or shafts of dark I cannot tell.
If trees were entering the apartment, the sound would be egregious, would be safely
distant or assuming egotism.
I forge ahead under a belief after many dreamed situations I find myself dreaming
in future tense as the present is perfect.
Here I am waving a sonic flag and singing our anthemic quickness, O fall in love
because it’s hazy and near.



With all these birds filling up such little space—if you listen—that’s how you sing
amazing grace or at least go on without character.
If she says it must be carefully unbound and folded into neat piles of notes, then it is
a symptom of anxiety.
I am talking about the color white, the lack of hue in your cheeks, actual color
where an expression once was.
That’s the light of truth shone on your face like the weather coming down all at once
with form and equilibrium dismantled by the opaque reflection in your eye
a cloud of dust.
The spectacle of the invisible world revealed in one ordinary blink, the world lacking
a substantial ideology other than urbanity.
You cascade beneath your dress a circle between bodies and pictures with no release
from this moment, this charm to which I am bound.

Monday, May 31, 2004

Avoiding a near collision at second, I fell awkwardly, thus my foot feels broken neatly across the top. Trying to throw out Bill Luoma at home from deep left, my right arm (having been dislocated and never properly healed) nearly comes out of the shoulder socket. Having spent most of the time hovering between shortstop and third, I rob Bill "Homer" (pronounced "Homah") Luoma of a line drive through the gap (though, by virtue of the aforementioned hovering between, the gap was filled), stopping the ball with my bare right hand positioned above my mitt and thus bruising the ball of my hand. Then after all was said and done, during our post-game yoga sessions, led by Diane, I tweaked my bad knee in some strange pose I didn't catch the name of. So it was a great season opener! Poets League Softball.

Awards are as follows:

The "We want a pitcher not a belly itcher" to Brandon "BIG LEFT" Brown.

The "Oatmeal Award for Good Effort" to Roger "Super" Snell for his outstanding fielding in Left.

The "Hey! Stephanie Don't Run!" to Stephanie "Pinch 'em" Young for her confusion while pinch running.

The "Jesus Christ Our Outfielders are Overworked and Tired" to Bill "Homer" Luoma for constantly making them hustle.

The "Wow Your Elbow Looks Like Hamburger Toughguy" to Taylor "Elbow" (aka. Bushman, Nipples & Baby Hustle) Brady for well, this one's self explanatory.

The "Keepin' it Cool Under Pressure" to David "Hard" Hadbawnik

The "Gee Thanks For Showing Up" to Alls Yous "Lazy Bums" Who Didn't.

The "I Can't Give Myself an Award Although I Rightfully Deserve One" to Me, James "Miracle" Meetze.

*There were others who deserve awards but because I don't know their last names, I can't then give them nicknames, thus making the whole award thing much less amusing. Next time, I promise.

Friday, May 28, 2004

Last night, Geoff and I playing guitar and Peter Gizzi singing back-up, doing the Gizzi dance, now that was fucking hilarious. His telling us of being 18 at a Pere Ubu show and having David Thomas sign his Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens.

FURNITURE GALLERY
for Peter Gizzi


Through it all, it was what they said that mattered when in the dingy apartment
or at the ballpark, or at the bar where the bartender looked away.
It was what they said that drove us to eek out our lives under this American
umbrella so full of soot.
What a treasure, this small belief in the possibility of greater things, these moments
made verbs: Sitting, playing, talking, making something bright in the dim
minute, a reading lamp illuminating a dusty page.
O so many waves beating against these full hearts, resting in these modern chairs
where it was what they said that mattered.
Getting there—aside the peach-bud maker, the earth-toned willow spears as props
—is less quixotic than say, bringing someone back from the dead.
How dark history and imagining its ghosts beneath the sun, ghosts in our homes
in the works of the dead at their wooden party merged with the present.
Outside there is a sideboard without a mirror, a davenport on the landing, here
an old mattress on the floor.
These things that matter less than what they said to us in our youthful nonchalance
that we are dressed in wrappers and dust-jackets, that we are cursed to sing
nimbly toward that which we’ve almost already sung.
April was just a reference to these preternatural blooms of May we consider so delicate
upon their stalks like waiting for an idea to organize itself and whatnot.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Saw CAT POWER last night at the Great American Music Hall. And boy was she good.

Awww man

Phish is calling it quits.
Now what are all those fried-egg-brained kids going to do? They're going to be on the friggin street corners selling post-show munchies "veggie burritos man...ganja treats!" Ahh. Why doesn't Phish buy an island with all their money and put those kids on it with all their tapes of all their shows and all their stupid prep-school hats. Ok. I had a phase where I grew dreadlocks, followed the Dead and then Jerry died and then I followed Phish for a couple years. I am not proud of it, however "fun" it was riding around in a VW bus with a bunch of stinky kids on a lot of acid, but hey! you've got to try everything a few times. Needless to say, I'm now entirely against hippie idealism and drug use. Besides, Phish lost their edge after "Billy Breathes".

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Went to see Jim Jarmusch's new/old Coffee and Cigarettes last night with Peter Gizzi, Aaron Kunin and Dan Fisher but we were out of luck.

40 minutes in to the feature, a series of vignettes filmed over what must be 20 some odd years, the projector went on the fritz. The theater offered consolation tickets as they should. Then YaY! the film came back! For 15 or 20 minutes and then got a little shakey and SIZZLE! It burned up right there, metling film projected on the big screen. Bummer we missed the vignettes featuring Bill Murray, RZA & GZA, Jack and Meg White, ALbert Molina and all the other great actors featured. It was by no means GOOD Jarmusch. It was OK in a film student way. The Iggy Pop/Tom Waits vignette was funnily rife with tension, Iggy seeming somewhat starstruck at having coffee w/ Waits.

THE SOLID FIGURE

the pressure of not knowing but caring.

—Ann Lauterbach

Solid only as a photograph is the solidification of something mutable or movable
in time and the specificity of its form can be fleeting as we often shift.
She as a child outdoors and she with a child before a door and she wanting a child
for whom to make a bird in a landscape of statuary.
A child asleep and a man at his table by the sea, mere replicas of one another, she
would like to make a home for each in whatever available field.
If in a solid picture we would admire the light and shadow or the thing itself she
most desires—a place to rest and a body, warm beside her.
As it says, I am mutable and that’s true but a night that doesn’t change from violet
to black, solid as a photograph and migratory as a constellation of geese
is a knight not worth his rescue.
This symmetrical deal, its odd bird-forms of currency, a generous gift of urgency
that we will seal with an embrace at the door of the loneliest poet.
To say rendexvous means we’re playing at a gesture that would be our way of saying
a poet need not be alone to create a solid figure from the materials at hand.
Spread across the floor, her categorical images in beautiful disarray are not a sign of
being chaotic, no, they demonstrate a will to harness the chaos of the daily
milieu like rounding up children at nap-time.
Where we come together with paste, a starling among Romanesque colonnades
and a girl with her tiny girl-hand held aloft as if to say I am your perch.
We come together where the water seems to lengthen and a toy ship is but toy
on a roiling paper sea, where a boy atop a cliff sings the ship safely to
its harbor, the town borders it ablaze.
She is a solid thou, a siren without harmful intentions the way she softly calls
attention to this sad ambit, these western states uncrossable.

I AM AN IDIOT!

I have to completely re-typeset the Albuquerque and Central New Mexico chapter that I've been working on ALL day because somehow, a full page map disappeared. What a waste of time!!! Anyone want to pay me to complain about typesetting? I'm a professional.

THEM WHO ARE TOO CROWDED TO LISTEN

There is real pain in not having you
just as there is real pain in not having poetry.
—Spicer

Would they understand so simple a thing were it not born between two machines.
Or would they listen to your chest, hear the house that resides there, and be unable
to envision it furnished.
These wires connecting two distant voices are not the illness they might imagine.
I am writing this in lieu of a letter, to them who are too crowded to listen because
it is what I know to say.
If talk could afford to provide a cushion on which to sit, we could all be less
like narcissus and for a moment look away.
I sing the body acoustic so they may find what they will in these pockets of information
attached to a name, a face.
It’s ok. There is difficulty in what can’t be defined but when they arrive at a vision
the unstructured form that exists here could be made clear.
What should be silenced at the cost of language for fear of unknowing is the doubt
in language and its faculty.
Art is made of it, we listen to what the pictures say and we understand artifice
as a construct as this is a construct.
But what is said means everything for our words are not lightly thrown and when I say
I would do anything, I mean I would come to you as proof.
For now these machines are what keep us human. The grass we might walk on
is out front, the opal sky above, some magnolia trees providing shade.

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Again, I can't seem to get the form to come out right with these poems on the new Blogger interface, it just mangles the line. Basically, each line that carries over is supposed to be indented. But this is it. Amplifier in all it's finished glory.

AMPLIFIER


Is it too much to say, too brutal an obsession, to say that this is a system or love
under a persona, without shroud of rote obscurity.
It is something of impossible scale. An oblique penumbra I might call she who accepts
an arrow, someone else’s dream. O you look so impressive, through the hole
in the wall.
The empty space through which I see you, a lover in someone else’s hand, the space
of an hour or an hour within a life is more than you’ll ever know.
More than you can fill with the noise of excursion, the noise that inhabits our differences
and makes us weak with dancing.
I will work until the work is done, is electric, though the work is never really complete
not as long as life wades on into a sea of forms.
The easiest form in truth occupies the divine conundrum to be disproved
when all else is beleaguered by time.
One could say, no love in language better stated than muteness, everything in subtext
in what wasn’t said.


The boys in their suits for swimming forget to drown in romance before entering
the water; they can only splash around, never knowing the difficulty in
staying afloat.
The sky above them is everything they might one day understand, the boys sing
their songs as if it were necessary, as if they knew the sea.
I was watching them and I was them, bundled in masculine nonchalance, asking,
was there ever a boy that I wasn’t?
I remember being so many that the quality of the copy wasn’t worth listening to
and I had to go back to the beginning, relive myself from scratch.
The boys are still swimming, still playing in the field with rocks, getting all banged up
over what they don’t yet know.
They’ll keep to themselves or one of them might venture out to where the water
is above his head.


Do you still leave the ruin of morning on your shocked lips, the charge
eagerly rushing through them as you sing?
This preserved form of quiet, maybe nicer a second later than it was made, when
noise equals love so complete that it feels.
Empathetic slant light coming through the shade to make a pattern, a current, feeding
the hum in the cabinet, that glossy embroidery of action.
Do you ever play the same note again and again, longing for some explosion within
the body as if music would make sense louder and more raw than a wound
if in a state of decay?
It is waiting for you to allow it a final escape into silence for sound to rise like sound
can—sorry, not sorry, this is the volume.
This is the escapade that makes one sing the natural noise of the perimeter
that reaches you in sleep.
The tympani heartbeat, the feeling electrified and tight involuntary decibels, making
one larger or louder than it is light inside this dark box.
The unwieldy illusion of song is rising from the wooden floor so be careful not
to salute the war-torn heart amidst city hostilities or sing too sadly above
your formal balustrades.


You look so alone tonight, amplified beautiful landscapes and horizons empty
around you.
Did you have a time or did you feel it in your gut, the resonating chord, the thread
strung through your each move.
Your body never stops, its amperes lighting up the room, filling everything
with indescribable sound, waves in your hair, evening in your eyes
as night falls on Oakland and I imagine you asleep.
I imagine myself happy—notes expanding—coming through the tarnished facade
only to devolve into silence.
There is a you and there is a song for you, just another love song because this body
feels like dancing, like nodding its head.
Because in everything there is intention in the way I ask to touch your lips, it is
the american way.
And now there is a song for you called Tonight the Way You Look Dying, and you
are not dying, nor are you present and it is day.


We go in, we go to places, we are saying “these are the words I so love to sing”
a deepness in the pictured air I feel windy.
I am a mark upon the metal heartstrings and I am a departure ongoing, always
in health a dirge for the accidental gentry.
I guess I wear a somber halo, for am more sensible in lament than in whimsy
like I will not see her famous hands again.
We thought the city would close its garden, lose its nighttime varnish and unveil
its myriad dispositions.
Look, a note rising into the stars, a bird singly disappearing from view into all
the flashing bulbs and neon golden signs flirtatious in the night.
We go, and are not going alone into the question, a pledge to do what was undone:
tie a bow around the plastic visage.


Our momentary lapse in adhesion only enough to realize that we had seized
the day and were continuing to seize it.
I had not felt such a perfect kiss and such impermanence in unison, in sound
as everything eventually fades because reality, Americanism, tells us so.
I cry at everything, don’t feel anything lapping at my feet, no watery child
to strike an impromptu pose.
That little death in each instant newly surprising and faltering, a little death for
every occasion, silence at the end of each.
To not be dead and not be song is to be alone as I was alone when I should
have been with you so please don’t wake me, I plan on sleeping in.
I aim to avoid the sun as it rises, to abolish the aubade or make it duller
to mimic the mournful song of birds outside my morning shoulder.
My only beloved, walking notes and nature sound: wind, muffler, jackhammer
there is no moment without feedback in nature.
When currents are conflicting and man-made sound is natural, there are vibrations
in the strings, rustling in the leaves, no difference in origin of clamor or
ideas in nature.
It is natural to play guitar to see events in any reality, what nature is: voice
in imitation of sound in nature.


I want to see her come in and sit down like she did with little noise,
as it’s hard to talk about her at all; she looks away when she listens
and doesn’t cross her legs.
She is a song is sound is an occurrence of appeal, moves closer to sound
resonant of poetry, right?
So far seems artificial, not legs slightly open but song in simultaneous play
as nature with legs both disconnected because uncrossed or
impossible to summarize.
Experience is an interpretation, not representation related to nature, sound,
attraction or the impact of legs in an event.
I don’t blame you for every chance, for an autograph so sad, for my belief
in maudlin encores and apologism; because they’re honest.
I want to be a good one, be a friend to the lonely mountain dawn in cry and rest
so don’t say sorry because I love you and can’t give you the words.


There’s no entity in anything, light coming over the stage an entity under
emotive duress.
It’s an open season point of view, a gesture in opposition to phenomena
that comes so brightly.
She is internal shapes like healing radical possibilities on edge, identified
by presence instead of her features, she don’t blame you for seeing her
in the nude.
My experience has likewise been blinded with sight so keep the lights low, so
you will see as I see the kindness in imagined spaces, her soft framed face
her horizon then obscured by fog or is foggy the horizon?
The small amplifier on stage makes big sound like purple light—horizon—
without hooks but voices to bring you in.
I am enamored with the voice leaving her face.
I never dreamed of the sea again.
Everything has something to be said for it but what of the aether?
What of the names given us at birth, no-names and the above?


Don’t be in love with the autograph of heroism, Okay, your thoughts so tender
and being made alive in witness a border of liminal marigolds.
The beach, a real border around the sea the salty madrigals are singing over:
a shoulder to cry on, no one is willing to share it.
The transience in calling from the outside or coming back, wanting to be clean
to have emotions in the overtones that shake this land with no direction
but ample time to slip away.
How different the late-night wreckage, to see the lovers in place of our hands
the sound shattered a wine glass like language can transform a room
with power or intent.
Or how quiet sitting on the floor Indian-style with legs in quiet, a sweet understated
face, no sound coming from it, breathing maybe.
But a sweet face does, it can brighten the corner of a room with presence, how I am
reminded to be accepting of death because I died in sleep from such a sweet face breathing noiselessly in explicit rest.
This memory revealed by a girl in the corner, brightening, but what is memory,
a palace in which to go some day in sleep with birdsong out the window
or at night, to join sleep with birdsong.



The I in process, touching light to refer to as place or song from the heart
rising up to the sun which goes crazy instead of down.
I like to think the sun crazy in the sky, its two-dimensional exuberance having
evoked so many picnics.
Burning all night stars of sonic intervention, a small giggle, legs extended as if
to stretch what sound thumps along, aware of its own pace, its trust
in voices dispatched to ethereal heights?
We think of the world as endless if amplified, magnified birdsong a parenthetical
forest in which the wind is a testimony of endlessness.
Birdsong begins, becomes another bird’s reply, a bell, the virtue of time and final
engagement with time it takes her to extend and overlay her legs.
One barely across the other to project such meaning, on legs, of listening
to their friction, two specific legs like branches reaching for mobility.
What filler between birdsong and in the wind, slightly birdlike, a small falcon
attractive huntress whose legs are the means to an end.



This world in a wire attached to a magnet and a cone causing sound to expand
like one shaft of smoky sun coming into a forest, a ‘genesis’ of sensory
tradition arising from the soil seen from everywhere, here, at once.
Having been there and felt wind, I enact the arc, the pattern of its movement
but I don’t mean anything in particular.
Continually coming home to make noise in response to the loneliest season
when I am not paired off.
No legs to entwine in, no sound but breath what comes from the amplifier
and there are no songs about joy in spring, no bright tones other
than its color.
This until the breach of summer, the planets in whack and the feminine riddle
isn’t a riddle at all but a chance meeting.
The third time as plain as a charm in all its merriment, this metaphysical morning
when we woke, shafts of light or shafts of dark I cannot tell.
If trees were entering the apartment, the sound would be egregious, would be safely
distant or assuming egotism.
I forge ahead under a belief after many dreamed situations I find myself dreaming
in future tense as the present is perfect.
Here I am waving a sonic flag and singing our anthemic quickness, O fall in love
because it’s hazy and near.



With all these birds filling up such little space—if you listen—that’s how you sing
amazing grace or at least go on without character.
If she says it must be carefully unbound and folded into neat piles of notes, then it is
a symptom of anxiety.
I am talking about the color white, the lack of hue in your cheeks, actual color
where an expression once was.
That’s the light of truth shone on your face like the weather coming down all at once
with form and equilibrium dismantled by the opaque reflection in your eye
a cloud of dust.
The spectacle of the invisible world revealed in one ordinary blink, the world lacking
a substantial ideology other than urbanity.
You cascade beneath your dress a circle between bodies and pictures with no release
from this moment, this charm to which I am bound.

Friday, April 30, 2004

Well, I can't figure out how to format this so the lines that carry over are indented like they're supposed to be but you get the gist. Spent all day working on this one.

HALCYON DAYS
Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be
—Dryden

Barriers of green against our forward motion impair our speech with calm.
There are barriers of green between us, quiet and simple forms in one dimension.
The day the barriers of green went up we watched them and grew smaller
in comparison to the way they rose, penetrating the skyline.
Among the shadows beneath barriers of green a small bird with a blue crest
makes a display of anxiety due to its displacement.
The shadows are angles beneath barriers of green and they are cool, there is
a slight breeze and an implicit whisper in the halcyon days of our youth.
The sea becomes pond-like against barriers of green like an orphic mirror fogged
up with warm breath from the face of someone passing through.
I wonder, do I love anybody’s barriers of green more than these I have to love
for now while there are other and greater barriers between the sea
and giant mirrors in the dust.
When time arrives I can fell these barriers of green they will fall gently into the sea
or into the desert depending upon the wind.
But we observed these objects going up these barriers of green going up during
the winter solstice while the blue-crested bird laid her eggs beneath.
Awakened by a feeling on a finger of sand barriers of green boxed us in to our
uncomfortable affair, uncomfortable only in the getting away, so to wake
without barriers in the unruffled pause behind a storm of certainty.
To find a site of comfort, the past in the barriers of green in the past and only
a future to collage from pieces of the present.
Something that seemed at first inert is now in motion outside barriers of green
whose green is the green of eyes and not the green of random chance.
What is in motion is the possibility or potential that far outweighs barriers of
green that would keep us empurpled in shadow and on either side.
Potential achieved but for a difficult task that is arriving at a moment barriers
of green could not grow around so to prevent the calm desired.
A calm in which amidst our arms we rest quietly in brooding winter stations
barriers of green could not enclose.
In winter and kept warm in entanglement, a possibility arises that we advance
upon leaving barriers of green.

Monday, April 26, 2004

Since Stephanie is too modest to report on the gossip surrounding her own reading, I'll do it, since I'm not too modest to report on the gossip surrounding mine. Or ours.

First, allow me to say just how genuinely great Dana Ward is. Dana exists completely outside (with the exception of visits to his friends in NYC, Boston, and his new friends in the Bay Area) a poetry scene. Cincinnati is a veritable void, according to Dana, for poetry. Yet, there he is, publishing Magazine Cypress, Chapbooks (mine included) and writing poetry so lush and vibrant it screams far beyond his hushed voice. Dana is a New Brutalist in the most core ways (that is, according to my rubric). Dana is the most excited and exciting guest we've had in a long while. So, Dana Ward, I salute you my new friend.

Dana, Stephanie and I rolled to the reading in a convertible beetle with the top down and the Beach Boys blaring! It must've been well over 80 degrees yesterday. With a box full of books, magazines, chapbooks, and fresh from a brand new mobile press, Sea.Lamb.Press, Dana's Standards. Rodney Koe[r]neke arrived like an italian runway model just having finished a shoot; his high-collared shirt half-open and shades gleaming in the sun and during the short break, he lit a cigar. Taylor Brady in a ringer T-shirt and faux-slacks. Tanya Brolaski easily the most stylish person on the planet, featuring amber aviators that polished the tip of her western-chic ensemb. Dan Fisher also sporting black aviators and a slick western-chic ensemb. Cynthia Sailers with gorgeous long hair and in all black, ever the chanteuse. Trevor Calvert (late, having walked from JapanTown) in a black tuxedo-shirt and jeans. Del Ray Cross in a fabulous pieced-together airplane t-shirt. Sean Finney simply showing the world his man-pelt between the flaps of his patterned button-up. There were more but I will stop here.

I will say Stephanie's and Dana's readings were astonishingly good. Someone else can vouch for my own. What followed the reading shall not be repeated. I will say only this: It was pure Dionysian joy.

Just received two new books!

Prageeta Sharma's The Opening Question (winner of the Fence Modern Poets Prize)
and
Brenda Iijima's gorgeous GOLD! chapbook Color and its Antecedents (published in Thailand by Yen Agat Books).

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Just got back from an interview at Fortune Magazine! I think it went well. I'm calling the position "Poetry Editor" but it's really just advertising. Wish me luck! Tomorrow I interview for the "Poetry Editor" position at Time Magazine!

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Ryan Murphy mentioned this article by Hank Lazer from the Boston Review The People's Poetry, which pretty succinctly, for a compressed article on a huge topic, approaches a State of Current Poetry. I'd say more but I'm at work typesetting "Hidden Arizona"

Friday, April 16, 2004

After looking through the results (and finding so many great looking Danish Poets) to Jordan's question, What do Danish Poet's look like? I have come to the conclusion that we (american bloggers) must engage in a group correspondence with the Danish poets. Might we find our northern European counterparts?

Jordan

Kevin Killian

Stephanie

Taylor Brady

Cat Meng

Gary

Sara Manguso

Me (tho I'm not sure if this is a man but the hair is right)

These are just knee jerk responses to these people's photos.

The Game

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"The heroine is introduced/ to shame me with / her impeccible pedigree."

-- Julie Kalendek fromMake in Our Fortunes

Ok. Chris Stroffolino really does need yr love.

I took him to the hospital today for surgery, after carrying him down the stairs from his apartment. I then put him into a wheelchair I stole from a legless homeless person and wheeled him up into the hospital. They postponed his surgery til Saturday. He's in A LOT of pain. Can't get out of bed. If you live anywhere near the Bay Area, I suggest you visit him as all he can now do is talk to people.

He hasn't lost his sense of humor though. The hospital was Kaiser Permanente "French Campus" and we discovered that the "French" part of the name is after Napoleon Bone-apart! Ha ha. Get it.

Someone told him to "Break a leg" at the Continuous Peasant show tonight. He took it literally.

GIVE CHRIS YOUR LOVE, YOUR KIND VOICES, AND YOUR COMPANY. IT'LL HELP HIM HEAL QUICKER.

Friday, January 23, 2004

Just got home from seeing The Death of Meyerhold (which, by the way, if you haven't seen it, I pity your artistic soul--that is if you live in the bay area and were able to attend) and am utterly too stunned to write about it critically. It's that GOOD! I did find it funny that Stephanie had written about Clive (Mayakovsky, et. al.) not reading reviews. Seems to me like a darn fine practice. Whatever those reviews say, he's fantastic as is the whole cast. Meyerhold was particularly stunning and Shostakovich was a neurotic, OCD ridden, laugh riot. Stanislavsky and Babanova were equally empassioned performances too. I don't really go to the theater. After this, I do.

If this ain't the truest thing I ever heard! (well, except for the vegetarian part).

Results...: "
You are Percy Bysshe Shelley! Famous for your
dreamy abstraction and your quirky verse,
you're the model 'sensitive poet.' A
vegetarian socialist with great personal charm
and a definite way with the love poem, you
remain an idol for female readers. There are
dozens of cute anecdotes about you, and I love
you.


Which Major Romantic Poet Would You Be (if You Were a Major Romantic Poet)?

I couldn't sleep last night.

Kept watching the clock until I got up for work at 7:30. I've now drank a large mug of strong coffee and my eyes are still heavy. This will be a very long day. Very long indeed.

So, after a response from Erika Meitner, new visiting asst.

Prof of literature (primarily, I take it, poetry) at UCSC, I now feel inclined to further explain my obvious oversight in stating that the poetry scene at UCSC is "sad" as I put it. My observation was informed, and it was falacious, primarily by comparing nostalgia with what I saw or, rather, didn't see. What I saw were students prepared with questions, reading along, albeit from their class reader, in Some Values of Landscape and Weather during Peter's reading. There was a buzz in the room. It was like the quote-un-quote prodigal son had returned, though he had returned to neices and nephews that hadn't yet been born when he frist left.

What I missed, what made the picture exude sadness, was the seeming lack of knowledge of past and current poetic communities and, if it was in fact there, a dearth of energy being put into community building. As Kasey mentioned, "[Peter] and his spouse [Elizabeth] Willis are two of the most benevolently powerful forces at work in contemporary poetry.? We need more community-builders like them!" Emphasis on "community-builders!" What Peter instilled in us as young, wayward and aspiring poets was that we first needed to be aware of our poetic heritage and second, we needed to band together as brothers & sisters fighting for the same cause. What happened was Geoffrey Dyer, Eli Drabman, Robert Paredez and myself really took this to heart. We became what our peers called "Peter's Boys" because we were thirsty for poetry and for learning and for new experiences whether it be poetry, visual art, music, film, theory, fiction ad infinitum and there was a fountain from which we drank. The girls in the program, somewhat in reaction to us boys, produced "Drugstore Makeup," a one issue journal of most all the female poets in the program and held an outdoor reading, with a megaphone, costumes and it was really amazing. It was a spectacle of substance and assertion. They formed their parallel community, and though these two burgeoning groups of young poets weren't necessarily "exclusive" -- as we did study together, hang out together, sleep together, etc.-- we were competitive. Geoff, Eli and myself moved on to Mills, to work with Liz Willis and Stephen Ratcliffe, and we received the best poetic education money could buy. Needless to say, my sadness as it were, was because I didn't see our dopplegangers, I didn't feel the friendly and constructive competition and I didn't really observe the "community." I'm sure they're there and I'm sure they're working just as hard as we did. I didn't mean to assert that poetry was gone at UCSC, just that I didn't see what I had remembered being there. For that, I apoligize. But, Erika, please take a page from Peter's book (not that I know you haven't already) show your kids poetic communities, show them how mimeo-magazines were really just friends publishing friends, show them The Spicer Circle, The New York School (all its generations), L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, The Beats, hell, even The New Brutalists. Show them these and they will find theirs.

Reading Report on Peter Gizzi in Santa Cruz last night and Ending on a Note about SC

Beginning with an informal Q&A/reception with mostly undergraduate creative writing students, Peter answered such questions as "Who do both cars and death appear so frequently in your poetry?" To which he answered "I don't write about anything, really, I write into, through and out of things, like I'm a political subject, a citizen...I don't write about Pres. Bush or the war but I write about being baffled by such things. I write from a sense of bafflement."

Upstairs to faithful old Kresge 159 (the room at UCSC where all the readings are held) and a standing room only crowd what must've been nearly 150+ in attendance. Luckily I had set aside seats in the second row for Dan Fisher, myself, Kasey got in there and some old friends from my UCSC days.

A warm but mostly factual introduction by Nate Mackey "If you'll forgive me, I'm going to take some language from sports 'Man...this guy can write!.'"

Peter begins with a new poem, the title of which is slipping my mind here, a continuation of his reworking of the "conditional if" most present in the poem Chateau If from both FIN AMOR, which I published, and in the new full-length collection; "If love if then if now if the flowers of if the conditional if the arrows of the condition of if..." He said "I thought I was done with that but I suppose not but hopefully I soon will be." He then read from the book, beginning at the beginning and ending at the end. The "suite" of poems, A History of the Lyric is phenomenal, just phenomenal.

We (Dan Fisher & I) realized how Peter says the same thing at each of his readings, almost to the point of it being humorous. "Edgar Poe...That's what they call Edgar Allan Poe in France, I think it's more interesting, he sounds like a gunfighter." "This is a Santa Cruz poem, The Deep End, what I affectionately called Santa Cruz..." And so on.

If you don't yet own a copy of Some Values of Landscape and Weather (Wesleyan) you'd damn well better get one. It's really one of the finest books written in the past few years, or ever, really.

Santa Cruz is a sad place now in relation to poetry. Yes, there were a LOT of people in attendance, but mostly, they were forced to attend as part of a new conglomerate creative writing introduction course with something like 100 students in a class. It seems as if there is no one teaching poetry workshops any more, as if the students are walking around aimlessly without direction. Under Gizzi, UC Santa Cruz breathed poetry, was organized. There would be poets sitting in the courtyard at Kresge, smoking and talking poetry, and Peter would often be talking with them. Now it is empty. Kasey doesn't teach workshops, which is a major oversight or rather, failure on the part of the creative writing dept. But he's there. And Alli is there with him. All in all, Alli was the only serious poet/student I saw. Maybe that's my oversight? I'm not sure. But it felt very sad to be there and have it be so lacking in life. Those of us who were lucky enough to get degrees from Santa Cruz between the years of 1995 and 2001 really have something to be thankful for. We passed into, through and out of one of the greatest learning environments for poetry that, as far as I know, has ever existed.

On the well-nourished moon you can also find this:

I'm reading this instead of typesetting "The Alchemist's Path," which I think is a load of New-age Hooey. Actually, a large percentage of what I typeset at work is a bunch of new-age hooey.

Thanks for loaning me the book. I'll iron out the crease you put in the corner of the page on which the poem you wanted me most to read is found. I am a purist when it comes to books. Yep that's right. If I catch anyone writing in, folding pages of, or otherwise defacing their tomes, I will let it be known that I find such acts apalling.

I also Just read Kasey's Lecture on Peter Gizzi. It's pretty well informed and best, mentions me (well at least it indirectly mentions me, though I'm sure that Kasey meant to include a number of P.G.'s other students as well).

in stephanie's comments box as it relates to her post.

Stephanie is the coolest friend ever.

Not only did she give me a ride home from work yesterday (because my car is in the shop) but she went WAAAAY out of her way to pick me up and bring me to work this morning. I'll tell you, it's the sign of a very fine person it is. Plus, she's one of my very favorite poets.