Friday, July 30, 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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 2, 2004

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!