The Year of the HUG

Someday

2009-03-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

Hopefully soon, we'll be back to posting. All the doin's have transpired, and there may be some extras commas floating face down in the water.

In the meaner whiles, there is fiction every Friday over at The Angry Hug.

Cheers

Sum Sum Summertime

2008-07-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

In case it wasn't obvious, not that I think there is anyone reading, its summer, we've taken the time to get laid off, hired elsewhere, vacay a bit, and softball. It has been glorious, we're batting really well (.671 last I figured) and all that. Also the summer is a depleted, vacuous time for literary-nesses. Not much happens, even in New York.

August comes however.

With it will be a hopeful return to the events and vagaries of which we will do our best to report in something resembling a coherent manner.

-YOH

Stretching Panties Reading

2008-05-27T09:56:00.000-07:00

Come celebrate the release of Stretching Panties magazine, an annual anthology of experimental writing (aka poetry), architecture and drawing!

A perfectly boozy way to memorialize the end of Memorial Day weekend, but two days later.

Wednesday, May 28, 7pm

Nightingale Lounge (a "sexy" lounge space), NYC

http://www.nightingalelounge.com

2-for-1 drinks 'til 8, $5 girly and manly drinks

Show off your tan. And be enthralled by the verbal stylistics of some of the contributors:

Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
Barry Denny
Rachel Livingston
Laura Hinton
Bakar Wilson
Sheila Maldonado
and more.

Dimensions Present Spectral Ghosts

2008-03-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

Why can't a person review a performance/reading event in which they participated? Well because it feels weird, like incest. Or if not quite that far afield, it is at the least not taboo in the good, healthy fun way.

Mostly it was just nice to be able to run a few concurrent linking ventures that actually equalled a real performance. I appreciate being able to work with all of the fine writers and artists who make up Dimensions and the Worldly and Infinitely Dimensional Workshop. The experience was excellent, so I'll take a moment to be slightly narcissistic about the experience.

Really everything that needed to happen got done. Everyone showed up and we had plenty of time to spare, which was surprising, considering how short we were expecting to be on time. But apparently we planned and rehearsed, those of who made, myself not among them on that final sunday, so we came out squeaky clean.

The Venue, Dixon Place, was rather ideal, if a little warm.

I was actually rather excited all day leading up to the night. I always get like that for whatever reason in front of a crowd, but there is nothing really for it other than to say I used to stutter and now in front of people I do not have this problem. It is when I am lounging and lazy that the tongue gets itself all in a huff and my mind is moving too fast for my lazy jaw to keep up. I don't think I am a great performer, but hell, I like the stage, and if I have my say and some time to go over things, I think I come across well, sometimes even interesting.

All of the pieces we performed were written largely, or at least conceived of in-class, and it is a blessing of living in New York and being able to attend workshops at the poetry project that such a group of people are there to be worked with. I feel like I was meant to be in that class, and to hear what these people have to say. I'm a better poet for it.

Well enough of my chortling. I have novels, comic books, essays, and of course a nagging epic to write, not to mention the thought of doing some drawing. I am without class (in the academic, creative sense) for some time, and hopefully remain so, thus allowing for more readings and more reviews of readings to come.

Thank you again to the Dimensions. Party in Brooklyn once I get a job.

Steal This Reading at East Coast Aliens, Greenpoint Brooklyn

2008-02-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

I showed up about 7:30, and then the fire marshall showed up 5 minutes later. I think this is the first time I've ever seen the fire marshall's called to a reading which wasn't being held in an abandoned warehouse (ESA is a nice, converted warehouse now artspace just down the street from my apartment which I didn't know existed until this reading came about). I saw Kristin Prevallet and Hoa Nguyen leaving, saying how crowded it was and how you couldn't talk. It seemed like they were right, so that was that for this guy.

I particularly had wanted to see Max Winter and Joyelle McSweeney read, as I am partial to the work of my fellow Goddardians do at Tarpauline Sky, but alas. Here is everything that would have happened:

Steal This Reading:
A Brooklyn Book Burning

Featuring 15 authors from 6 publishers:

C.D. Wright, Eleni Sikelianos, Graham Foust, Joyelle McSweeney, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Julie Doxsee, Max Winter, Adam Clay, Zachary Schomburg, Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Lily Brown, Rauan Klassnik, Cindy Savett, Jon Thompson, and Melanie Hubbard.

Hosted by Black Ocean, Cannibal Books, Free Verse Editions, Kitchen Press, Octopus, Tarpaulin Sky Press & Typo.

Jen Hofer and Dan Machlin Read at the Poetry Project

2008-01-31T03:46:00.000-08:00

Ah ha! A Reading is an amazing thing, maybe the best of things, and the moments last night listening for the first time to these two poets was, to put it in terms greatly under-expressing the quality of the event, worthwhile. No, we can do better. It was joyfully engaging.

The two started the reading off together, standing side by side after distributing gifts to the audience: small, massacred envelop wrapped tracts featuring a pair of poems. They read “re” , Dan opening, “Open to an empty run-down intersection of city, winter, 5 a.m.,”. Jen followed with “Open to an empty scuffed intersection of a city, summer, 5 a.m.”.

Hearing them read together, without having heard them before, precluded any deeper appreciation, but reflecting back there was the sense simply that she was pushing out, and he was pulling back. He was a sidebar, here in this instance, while she was fuller, looking outward while he glanced most often away and down. I'll have you know I was tired before I ever got to the reading, and it perked me up being in there. As they read I jotted down notes on what they said, and where possible I've corrected the quoting via references, but there are likely some errors. So deal.

Dan Machlin –editor Futurepoem Books

Dan’s first piece was entitled Letter 1. I was tired for the reading, yawning throughout because there was sleeping to take place but the reading was there first, a welcome barricade. The first words from his work that I managed to grasp were:

“If this is the sign of clarity
is it the priest’s death?”

There was something initial about the way he was reading, coming as it does in a voice in the shape of a poetic sound, but not crafted to the shape; born to it, fully ingrained and much removed from the pretentious character this voice, such a lynchpin in the reading of poetry, can embody. I don’t want to dissect the voice itself, anyone who’s been to more than 3 or 4 readings has heard plenty of variation. Machlin’s voice matches well when he puts forth,

“symbols, an alleyway, the comfort of exhaustion,”

and he highlights that initial quality, the ingrown conceit when he says.

“This is what the job entails,
this is what I was born into.”

The manner of Dan’s speaking becomes much closer to stillness in the next poem, Letter to D:

“I move behind in your hope”

and

“oh how this house whispers
beneath the dinner table”

The absence of strong intonations and accentuation of the words, while still being clear and crisp, by now brought me to notice Dan’s posture. Stiff and tall, his right arm hanging unmoving by his side, the left only holding up the pages of his work or setting them on the podium. He stood not out from behind the podium, and not behind, but kind of inbetween. In 5th Letter he introduces something new:

“And who is this “we” anyway—I was alone—tabulating the pros and cons of my history,”

This new element is brought fully to light in Letter of Critique with,

“millions never seek new forms and patterns”

This new voice is contemptuous, remaining detached out of a distaste for having even observed and commented. The machinery of the detached voice begins to break down, as one voice infects the other. Again in Critique, he states:

“This forced opposition between constancy and boredom”

In Letter Read While Walking Home the voices’ interconnectivity shows through. There are gaps and breaks in the phrasing, as if data were missing, or as if two channels were experiencing feedback from their similar frequencies. His experiments are sublte, using syllables in Antibodies as a formal constraint unrepresented consistently in the reading. His work does, as Stacy pointed out in her introduction, solve the mind-body problem with multiple bodies, seeing, as he writes,

“bodies, and the spare mechanics of thought.”

Jen Hofer –

A Google search for Jen comes up with a lot of material, so here and there, if you've been to a reading, you'll find some things that are echoing back. This echoing struck me, because I am attracted by echoes I guess at present in my own work, but also because of its place in the work she was sharing. That some of what had come before would be coming back when Palm Press releases One later this year along with some of Jen’s first lines, underscored what exactly was going to happen for the 30 or minutes she read,

“…to scream 'Law and Order’ as we kick down their doors.
Broken hinge more open or more broken…”

“…sutres to the wound will not hurt
best busted interests at heart…”

It told of how she was going to read, a bit about why, and it was going to make you feel like even though it was only going to be 30 minutes of time, it’d still be worth more than most rock concerts. It was already purely kinetic and civilly engaged, as it had been introduced to us, but the enunciation and the syncopation of it was rousing and desperate.

She had built a relentless, grinding machinery within the intonations of alliteration,

“The denotative sky
through its frame is sky.
Through its sky.
Is sky...
How the fast small birds.
Do not shatter.”

She was arguing against it in the kind of voice you'd use if you stood in front of tank with your hand out. She had moved out of the cinematic trope where a person yells at their own echo. She continued to argue,

"They form a habit.
I would say those clouds form a reference, not a pattern."

Straggling and Dragglings: Why I Keep Missing Readings

2007-11-13T19:57:00.000-08:00

Most of the time the font is too big, so I have to make it
smaller, but then I can't read what I've written.

Tonight there was a thing about women, and it seemed like the kind of thing
people who would like that kind of thing would like to attend,
and I considered myself one of those people, but I marked the calendar
and then forgot the address. I left it behind like a treasure map for someone
else to find,
maybe they made it there, but it would have been nice
to remember once I'd gotten out of the subway.

I would have seen Eileen Myles read
again and maybe would have found something to say about it
this time, but the awe would have remained. And I could have heard from Maggie Nelson
about the things we all were hearing,
and why, and where they founded all of this sound. And Wayne Koestenbaum
might have read from Hotel Theory, or Hotel Women, or both, and it would have been something I could have noted. Last time I waited too long and as I've mentioned, there was a lack in regards to the notes, and the notes which weren't would have shared this, that there was a great pleasure in discovering Rebecca Curtis. I discovered her sitting next to me. And tonight I could have brought a magazine with Kim Gordon and her husband on the cover, and I could write about it, like I wrote about him, or their guitar player, and then I would have only needed one more of the sonic youth and I would have been able to get out of this chair.

The chair has become uncomfortable.

But there was not the time.
There was not the time behind the book.
There was not the time within the project.
There was not the time for single parts gravity.
There was not the time for gypsy harpers.

Holding my eye in my hand
i move my legs, i rise to the balls
of my feet, and I take it on faith,
the show is in the bottle,
I just need to pop the cork.

It was a write-a-thon to beat all a-thons!

2007-06-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

You can read the original review and see some pictures here at Gather.com.

You know that rush, the pure thrill and exhilaration, you get when you’re in a crowd at a concert, right as you and everyone else realizes the band just started playing a song everyone knows and loves, and you just feel that up swell in momentum. Well it’s the same thing when you put a 100+ writers in a room and tell them to “Write Their A**es Off", and I know this because it just happened this past Saturday at the New York Center for Independent Publishing (formerly the Small Press Center) in New York City.

The New York Writer’s Coalition (NYWC), a non-profit organization which coordinates writing and outreach programs for at-risk teens, abused women, formerly incarcerated individuals, the homeless, and other over-looked elements of our population put together the Write You’re A** Off marathon, a seven hour tour de force of keystrokes, pen-strokes, scribbling, illegible handwriting, and lots and lots of coffee. By raising $27,000+ for the NYWC, the herd of writers who gathered in the library at 20 West 44th St, home of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesman, earned the chance to dedicate in true writerly fashion hour after hour of their Saturday to the most elusive of creative pursuits. Once NYWC founder Aaron Zimmerman gave everyone a bit of wherewithal regarding the space, poems were written, essays were crafted, and bits of flash fiction were ballyied about.

During lunch, Chris Baty, a man who, as founder of National Novel Writing Month, is to other writers what the Ultra-Athlete is to triathletes, took the stage as the guest of honor. He had been seated in the main hall all morning, at times tuned in through his earbuds to whatever music source he ran with on his laptop, writing away with a practiced objectivity; here was a man who knew writing marathons. He went from determined wordsmith to charming cheerleader with no more than a sip of water. He spoke and people laughed, and made you feel better than you already did about being in the room and taking part in the proceedings. He focused his pep talk around the importance of high-velocity writing, letting everything else slide for 30 days to focus on writing, and marathons of writing. He laid out three important reasons why a person should engage in the occasional furious bout of writing:

1.The more time you give yourself, the less likely you are do it

2.Writers are horrible at remembering how to write

3.Writing is a fantastic social activity

The business of writing that day found people filling the main lobby of the library, a balcony on the second floor, and classrooms on the fourth. They were seated around tables and desks upon which notebooks and laptop computers, pens, cups of coffee, ipods, and the tote bags of goodies all the participants received, part of the reward for raising the $100 in donations required for admission. They wrote and erased, talked, sipped, and snacked their way through paper and ink. Workshops were held throughout the day to offer refuge from the being there of having to inspire yourself. Prompts were announced at the beginning of each workshop and then you were off to the races for 20 minutes. Then guidelines were laid out and if you wanted to read your 20 minutes of brilliance you could, it was your choice. You had already done your part if you'd made it to that point. You raised money for a very worthy cause.

God Bless You Mr. Vonnegut

2007-04-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

For this:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind." --God Bless You Mr. Rosewater

and this

Requiem

When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the Grand Canyon,

“It is done.”

People did not like it here.

and this

eight rules for writing a short story (from Bagombo Snuff Box):

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

and finally, "Well if this isn't nice, what is."

You've done your part, fulfilled your duty. You've earned your rest, but ye will be missed.

Up is Up but So is Down at the Poetry Project

2007-01-28T08:03:00.000-08:00

Maggie Dubris
Wow.

Richard Hell
Wow.

Eileen Myles
Wow.

There were supposed to be 5 readers at this event celebrating the release of the awesome Up is Up anthology. This made the reading unique in and of itself, but even more interesting was that I had seen each of these readers before, and the prospect of seeing all of them again was pretty exciting as they are all pretty incredible, and it still blew the doors off with only three of the five being there. It was a pretty evening all around.

I'm not even going to try and dissect these folk's readings at this point, because they are all so exacting and intricate. Let me just say these cats know what they are doing up there, and if you want to get a good, osmosial lesson in how to give a reading, I'd start looking for where they are going to be next (the Poetry Project is a good place to start). Maybe after I see each of them read a few more times, and can sit long enough to overcome my rapt awe at their coolness, I'll give a hand to trying to pick apart the mechanics.

As an aside, there appear to be some swell events coming up at Issue Project Room, which you folks likely all know as "The Silo".

Evelyn Reilly and Gregg Biglieri at The Poetry Project

2007-01-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

January 22, 2007

Evelyn Reilly

Evelyn opened her reading quoting Queequeg, "We cannibals must help these christians." Pointing toward the consumption of flesh in a tone suggesting its superiority and rationality, attributes to it welcoming finality in her exploration of the ecopoetical. This consumption continued into her first piece, reading, "the word was the part of the body that could change." She articulated both of those lines, savoring the morsels as she spoke them, caring about them as she committed them to voice. Each sound she struck created a gentle nudging to the "bodies body", to the ideas and the thoughts its imaged produced, and those that emanated from them.

As she wound the long lines out she stretched them like taffy, pulling ideas and lines in fluid, flowing snaps like the taffy-man at a fair whipping a long snake of cooling sugar to kneading it to the correct shape and consistency. She thickens the mouthful of these flailing tendrils with her repetition, slapping the strands of similarity together into mass yielding the singular product, "the body was part of the world that the word changed."

With "Broken Waters" Evelyn presented ecopoetics as stirring a pool translating language, idea, context, and thought. She stirred only the surface, here, gliding over the phrases to channel the listener's consciousness toward the meniscus of what she is doing, creating awareness of tension and the depths to which the over-arching structures were driving the concepts by pressing on the surface like a water-bug, and sharing it's condition, it's amnioticity.

Gregg Biglieri

Aliens, elfs, heart monitors, and infarctions are the terra-forming inhabitants of Gregg's reading, and the implications of a world made up solely of genuine absurdity and dismissing cynicism prompt him I would imagine to open most of his readings the way he did, saying, "I'll try to be funny." I respect that simply because I am always trying to be funny and I still haven't managed it. Gregg handles the condition, in the medical sense, of existence and makes it work well with a modulated, genial deadpan tone.

His voice lets the suddenness and motion of the ideas, images, and words happen in a their own arena, like coverage of the Olympics of Thought produced by an avant-garde film-maker, where you see each event in part, always at that moment to which is given weight by its revelation. Every moment is running, sometimes violently, toward you, and it is then cut away to another near collision. The unsettling feeling is not knowing what would have happened had you been left there. Gregg pauses, diligently, giving you the feeling of slowly being removed from the ground and put back down. He places the past and the future before you on a platter covered in velvet cloth, and just when whatever is beneath the cloth moves he pulls the whole ordeal away.

A sample of Gregg's work.

A New Year, A New Hug

2007-01-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

2006 has left us, and with it, the trappings of familiarity. 2007 stands before us, and we will march into it with obstinent, resolute resolve! No more will we be swayed by the cowering entrapments and accoutrements of reaction and larger contexts. NO MORE will the simple assessments of Poetry and Literary readings be drowned out in favor of vehement diatribe and bland satirical mockery. Just hop over to The Angry Hug (angryhug.blogspot.com) for that.

We admit, we got sorta sidetracked. There were elections, fires, poorly considered book deals, and a whole mess of the world eeking ever closer to possibly just up and quitting. Toothpicks wrapped in plastic with instructions on them were everywhere!

But onward, and maybe a step or two up, but nothing crazy. Just some good old fashioned critique of the reading of poetry.

And, as a, I was lame and could have made it to the Poetry Project's New Year's Reading Marathon but I just putzed around unpacking new stuff, we will repent, we will lay ourselves upon the alter of attrition (because we prefer a sense of guilt and fear induces obligation to simple resolutions), and we will do our darndest to review as many readings as possible this January. We've got 7 that we are planning on making, and hopefully more.

Now, to start things off, the Poetry Project reading given by Joanna Fuhrman and David Shapiro.

Joanna
Joanna Furman reads glancing up and this makes you wonder what she finds important. If you were standing and watching her the glance would have come over the rim of her glasses while she references Rilke and Apollo and right away the MC's words, how her poetry reveals surfaces and edges, comes in the open.

Prufrock and facial expressions add stress to what she is saying, moving you in a line like you are walking along some invisible barrier. She will speak in a clear, high tone making declarations and stating what is known and absolute, then drop her voice and add a crunching and cracking saturation to her words as she draws out a long, fault-line of comparisons growing in ironic strength and taking everything she has said in a new direction.

The clear and bright remains hopeful, while the real and its reality is given a low, broken end, but her glances cause you to question which side to throw your hat onto. Those hopeful points get both deadpan, straight stares and the second-star-to-the-right, eye-rolling that makes you think she's laughing at you on the behind the round clarity in her voice. Reality comes off as too much of a joke when she's letting it seep out around the seats but occasionally she's glancing up toward the sky asking, rhetorically, "What, this is it?"

Joanna's reading takes you back and forth between the plateau and the plain. He poems are the jeep on the trail letting you see all those edges and how it all stacks up beneath the sky.

David
David began his reading referencing a song, in remembrance for departed friends, and immediately in contrast to Joanna there is no breaking, no disharmony, in his voice. His reading has only a few edges, and they will be used to great effect, but the entirety of his words become like a snow drift, only because you don't want to say A Wave for so many reasons, but mostly because it feels to easy to use, to cheap and frequently used.

David's lack of restraint is noticeable. He is willing to go all the way, unwilling to let gravity or the limits of the lungs stand in his way. He makes better use of repetition than advertising and marketers do, dropping sameness purposefully so that his poems can climb higher, like sandbags from a hot air balloon. He brings his voice back down, lower but just as clear, to add weight to his descriptions.

His words ring out of the front of his mouth, keeping everything up front, and again you think of the wave. You have to see the front of it to see it all. You think of water in a Buddhist sense, of its serenity and softness, and its potential for strength. His voice rocks from side to side like winding river, surprising you with the turns his words take.

YOTH in twilight.

2006-12-20T18:47:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a year, or some amount of time akin to a year, and I've learned a few things.

No, that's not true, but we did put up some posts and do stuff. Stuff, what kind of Stuff? The kind where you are sitting at home all safe and secure and suddenly I'm there, doing stuff? No, not that kind of stuff. I guess it was Poetry stuff.

I learned of and almost instantly rejected flarf! We left a few rooms slightly less clean than when we started. Then decided a shopping cart struck to a wall would look descent in the right sort of room and if that were true maybe someone will pull down a little bit of the light flarftastic.

I went to things, and saw them, and occasionally talked to people about them, and that sort of inspired the blog. The talking part, because there are a lot of books, and the books are good. We love the big lugs, er, books, book-lugs, uh, things with pages full of this stuff only better crafted and more coherent.

I got angry a lot, then we got angry, and the angry took over once, and them more and more, and now, well, now it is itself. So aught 7 will see The Year of the Hug marching onward in glorious glory, regaling you all with a little bit, hopefully slightly more than last year, of what is good and fun and happening in the world of literary readings. And side by side will be the Angry Hug, the ranting, scratching, huge bitey fang laden assessment of all that just can't wait for December 23rd. It's 2007, and we're gonna do stuff!

Oh Irony, I would slap your face if I weren't so enthralled by your eyes!

2006-09-28T23:11:00.000-07:00

Quoting the report by AP reporter Lolita C. Baldor,

"In his first extensive remarks about a recent U.S. intelligence report saying the threat of terrorism has risen, Rumsfeld told reporters at a NATO' meeting that, in general, the value of intelligence reports can be uneven, and "sometimes it's just flat wrong."

Really!? You're kidding Rummy. You're always such a kidder. Just a big, fat kidder you are you kidder Rummy. Intelligence reports... uneven!? Just flat WRONG!? NOOOOOOOO!

NOOOOOOOOOOOO! Whaaaaaaaaaaah!?

You mean to tell me that intelligence reports aren't scrupulously verified and reverified, that top, expert analysts don't pour over each and every shed of material to ensure the highest accuracy of information, confirming to the smallest detail the veracity of sources, and delivered in as clear, concise, and precise terms as possible with the utmost of conviction to their righteousness.

Say it isn't so.

What does this mean Rummy? Are we to no longer rely on the intelligence of the government? What happens when a nation develops Weapons of Mass Destruction, how will we know they have them or not, unless we rely on our intelligence.

Lead us Rummy. Makes US, the U.S., the golden wonder of oh so right rightness we once were!

Oh Rummy, you could be so beautiful if you weren't covered in the excrement issuing from every pore and oriface of your body.

The choosiest choices were choosing choice

2006-09-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

What the?! Where is this? Oh ho yeah, thats right. Its my choice (if there is any justice in the world it will be) and I choose:

Gore/Obama 2008!

Now let's get small, until my next choice:

A Palm Press Subscription, the best deal in poetry!

Just wanted to put those out there, let'em stew your juices por une momento before we sing teeth toward the largess of the scrawl and scribble, poetry READINGS!

I've dragged myself to two in the last little while, and I'm deficient in the send-up of the first, which was my first in a long little while seeing as everyone was trying to beat the heat (myself in a much more, less cool, literal way), and I found myself out of practice. But number 2 was number one for the Poetry Project this season, and I am membered up and everything. The actual reviews/comments/word-spills coming soon, and be on the lookout for yet another blog coming soon.

Thank all the gods of our shared heavens for Keith Olberman!

2006-09-04T00:23:00.000-07:00

He is true and good, and speaks to us, for us, in hope.

Keith Olberman Gives Rumsfeld What For.

As we come sliding in on a wing and a prayer, I stutter.

2006-08-31T01:21:00.000-07:00

HAhahahahahahahaharhumph!

Realized tonight the series of short shorts/flash fiction I had started writing were sitting on the floor of my room next to my bed, all of which was against the wall that burnt out in the fire. So those are gone. It wasn't a ton, but I had maybe 16 stories, maybe 3 good ones with 4 or 5 with potential. First of the pieces I've realized I lost. I know there are other things, some manuscript drafts, but I have others of those, though not with the notes from myself and my advisors.

I'll start over this morning. I am writing them on the backs of these error reports our company shoots through to one another (formally they are the means of telling someone they need to do their job right. I think of them as TPS reports). I wonder if it seems too clever, but I just hate seeing the paper go to waste.

Just read Cat's Eye, Atwood, again. It's quiet and subtle and instead of bowling you over it slowly forces you down into tall, soft grass where you can take a nice long think. picked up Apocalypse Culture and a first paperback edition of Fight Club. Zeitgeist anyone? Reread Grendal for the second time this summer, then onto another run at Beowulf, and then a few other interpretations of the story as I prepare the Graphic novel. It's set on Mars. It's fun to write, thats the basic impulse.

Just finished Volume 7 of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. In the last 5 months I've finished that, Promethea, and The Sandman. Sandman I sort of skipped through over the years, picking off storyarcs here and there, but I started it with the first and ended with the last, in as much as the story of the King of Dreams has a last story.

Guess what the thread at the end of each was? No really, guess, then go out and read them, for the following reasons:
1.They will give you a decades worth of reading suggestions. Allusions abound!
2.They will deepen your appreciation for Sequential Art, Graphic Novels, Graphic Storytelling, and Comic Books.
3.They will help you find beauty in thoughts and ideas you never thought could hold beauty.
4.If you let them, they will give you keys to a new world. If you really want to, they will help become Invisible.
5.They will probably help save the world. How can you not want to read the books that are going to help save the world?

Barbelith.

Unable to connect

2006-07-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a draught and a half on the reading front. I was familiar with the phenomenon from the upstateblishment, but here in The City? This is supposed to be The City. Readings here are supposed to be like ever-vigilant beacons of nobility and super-sonic capery, so I guess just a me bit for those of you who know or don't know me(which I'm guessing is very, very few of my readers[if I don't know you, hey, say hi or something. I'll write you a letter]).

Working on a yet unnamed graphic novel I was asked to write. It's pretty good stuff, and I'm learning about some interesting cultural curiosities. It's nice working on somebody else's story for a change. I'm glad to really able to be very free, free-er than I have been in a while with my own stuff. Hopefully this will get publisherized, and if you have any interest in helping that happen, drop me a note.

Re-working more of the second novel. Anyone I have promised to show this too, sorry. I'm weird with this one. I want you to love it!

Considering re-working The Monument of Vice, my poetry manuscript. There, its copywrited now too, although I should find out if its out there anywhere. Nope. Hello original title with copywrite. Cha-ching! *(does awesome kick-bring-it-on-fist-pull-down combo).

Thinking about updating the profile with something. A weird song just came on. Bloodbook on the Half Shell - Danielson. I keep wondering if thats a karate kid reference. The Paper Chase will make you stand up and kick! New album SOOO good, and live: Fantasterbatory!

Applying for grants and fellowships, working out the project to work on with artist friend thereby transforming the reality of collaboration, and should be starting some work at a writing center soon. Re-reading a friends poetry manuscript so I can give her a good, fresh assessment of it, and also too include a number of links to some contests she should go out and win with it.

The Invisibles will transform you. King Mob Lives!

Worried about the middle east. hoping that if things go from worst to all out "Oh-shit-ness", that at the very least someone develops super-human abilities to stop the global destruction. I'm serious.

Deficiency Cordons

2006-06-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

I have no real post, mostly because we seem to have entered the dread summer-reading-lull and I just spent some much needed time laking and subsequently drinking in the lake while laking.

This is the first thing I wrote after leaving the lake.

deficiency district of New Hyborneo taking in the Slazer-Silico brine. like the water made naneuro-flesh. work the grav-skids.

you’re on the ocean for 47 hours. thank the runner-lids on your eyes that you stayed awake when the technalgea surfaced

I'm reading Neuromancer and Povel simultaneously.

Waking Weekend Wanderlust?

2006-06-06T01:59:00.000-07:00

Go here:

Friday in gear

then go here:

Saturday, no bear.

You'll see me, but I won't see you.

Say it to make it true

2006-06-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

Again and again and again in recent months I have been noting the need for oration to make a more forceful comeback, which is I hope going to be, as I have said, a purpose of this blog. I'm hoping to as much as possible present writers who give strong readings, and I continue to be more concretely convinced of this necessity and of how much can be learned and imparted through it.

The lecture I attended tonight was a prime example of a speaker's much needed taking of a class in public speaking. While the presenter, who I shall hold anonymous (I'm building, not tearing down after all), was competent, insightful to a point, and exceedingly familiar with the material (as was I), I could not help but feel that his combination of largely rudimentary points could have come across more strongly if he were an effective orator.

Now while I suppose on some level his being a scholar may allow for the less than evocative presentation, his confuddlement (confounded + befuddled) at the slow egress of the audience as he pushed into his first and then second hour is less avowable. Perhaps this is simply my infamiliarity with NYC free lectures, but you begin taking up that much time without being compelling beyond the subject matter then there are going to be folk walking out. Just the way it is. Thinking about some of the readings I'd seen in the last few years which really made me into the oration-fascist I am slowly becoming: Sam Delaney, Jessica Hagadorn, Leslie Lee, , Thom Metzger, Greg Pardlo (some of the those the blog was not timely enough for), in comparison to the reading tonight, I saw too that there is a lack of completeness in poor oration.

Too not have spent the time going over, even once inside your head, that which you plan to vocalize to an audience, you are not considering the reader/listener as a component in your work. You are leaving out the notion of audience and at that point everything you write becomes an exercise in self-satisfaction. Thinking back on it now, this was one of my greatest dissatisfactions with open-mics: that a majority of the work, and the entire purpose of readings, was an endevour self-gratification.

So please, take the time, read it outload. Stand in front of the mirror, hide under blankets, go off and find a cave behind the house, just pop those lips a bit (or as my brother likes to say, "lick some spit").

Straining the exogenesis

2006-06-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

Well this certainly got away from me. April got away from me, and May was supposed to be the turn around, and now somehow it's June. That's the crazy old world for you, spinning away toward the infinity you don't have the stamina to reach.

But enough of that, can't waste too much time on it, not if I am actually going to make it to a reading at some point here. I've been investing in the culture never the less, even if I haven't put in the face time.

Before my recent prolonged computer fast, I had gleefully downloaded a number of pdfs of Chain past issues in order to leisurely enjoy the multitudes of voices the thick journal provided. Many of them clocked in well over 200 pages, so to download them for free and enjoy them without paper cost was of course satisfying.

When my computer crashed, I lost these and numerous other pdfs I had downloaded, and when I got back up and running, I begin seeking the pdfs out again. Reaching the chain website, which I had not readily linked to on yours truly, I wondered about for a bit. Looking at the pages, trying to find out if Chain Links was near to launch, I discovered the archives page, which I don't think I had come to before, and I suddenly realized there was a tiny bit of karma involving itself here.

It seems the editors were not offering the pdfs for free. Carefully explaining the rationale, they had put up the pdfs on an honor system, asking that if anyone chooses to download that they then send compensation.

I had downloaded like 8 of the issues.

I had never sent them a dime.

My computer crashed.

The site says no one has ever sent them a dime, let alone the $10 they ask for.

Since I got the compy back up and running, I downloaded issue 10. I sent them $10 and hopefully the universe will spin a little less wobbly on its axis.

I also recommend issues 3, 6, and 8, just on personal preferrence.

Rexque Futurus

2006-05-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, f%ck this. I just wrote an entire post and the damn page refreshed itself and erased the whole bloody thing.

I cannot tell you how discouraging that is. It was a fine post at that, very intended toward the overall feel of poetry reading appreciation which is what I am trying to build the blog toward, discussing the Ecstatic Peace reading at the Poetry Project hosted by Thurston Moore. It was quite a good posting on a quite good reading, speaking of Richard Hell, whose voice suggests the offspring of Carl from Sling Blade and Anthony Hopkins. Then I wrote a few things about Charles Plymell, on the weight of his years of experience with the Beats to the Hippy to the present and on his fine oration, one aspect of the art which a few years ago seemed to be fading.

I made a point about how certain pieces lent themselves to or where enhanced by a reading, and others, such as William's The Red WheelBarrow, did not.

For what it's worth, I did not discuss the other readers, Byron Coley, Christina Carter, Elisa Ambrosio, and of course Mr. Sonic Youth himself in the original post.

I will do so now. They each brought a differant matter to the table, and rounded out the evening to make it a broad selection of readers. Coley read from a novel in progress, a funny, intriguing story of a young man entering the rock and roll world. Christina's reading was small and quiet, holding tight to the pieces she read. Elisa's reading was very energized as she took the microphone in hand and leaned into the podium like she couldn't get close enough to the audience. I'm on the lookout for a longer reading from her. Thurston finally, although Richard was the last reader, is a showman, a seasoned performer, and stands next to the fully extended microphone stand ready to make you listen. He is so at home in front of people he knows want to hear him it gives his recitation an exactness, a concreteness, many writers and poets can't find.

It was a cool reading overall, in the very deliberate use of the word "cool" sort-of-way that cool should be. It was cool said while letting smoke escape your lips. Cool the way the girl sitting in the dark corner of the bar raises her glass to toast your selection on the jukebox. It was poetry and rock and roll, and that is always cool.
Hic Jacet Arthurus
-WADO

The Excitement of Growing Up-Coming

2006-05-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

Been away again on the voyages of being and doing, albeit lacking slightly on the having, and well I have nothing much to offer nice, round thoughts on, I am excited about a couple of things at the moment and would like to plug them.

The first is the impending arrival of the first bout of my Palm Press subscription. The books Palm puts out are fantastic, and the subscription is a deal the likes of which even Bacon couldn't put up. Check out what the 2006 has in store at the link at left.

Next is the reading on Wednesday May 3rd at the Poetry Project featuring Ecstatic Peace editors Bryon Coley and Thurston Moore among others. This is exciting since the latter also happens to play lead guitar for Sonic Youth, and it just sounds like coolness will be in the house in a big way, and since this will be the first reading I'm hitting in like 2 months, it has taken residence in the realm of kismet as a righteously good time.

Finally, I checked out Tarpualin Sky today and saw the website was updated, only instead of featuring some nicely righteous artwork, it was a rather subdued main page, with only a fairly striking font to contemplate.

I instantly thought of the White Album.

I'm guessing the reason for the shift in look for this issue is the beginning of the T-Sky Press, and the release of their first book, Jenny Boully's [one love affair]*. This is a great moment, when a great journal begins to put out great work. I won't try and say that its gotten any easier to navigate the world of contemporary poetry, but there are times when you can count on a great piece to land in your mailbox and this is one of them. I've got my order all ready to send.

Peace

Seething in the primordial

2006-04-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I finished something, not so much in the "oh look, I never have to work on that again" sort of way, but in the, "I'm too tired to work on this anymore," sort of experience. All I can do now is sit back, make a few phone calls late at night, and hope that in the end there is some sort of parade. Oh I love a parade.

So being done, I get to do my favorite thing in the whole wide world. Take a day off before starting something else. So that was today. I took a shower, and then tried to brush my teeth. Unfortunately, I was still pretty tired and my toothpaste tube quite strongly resembles my shaving lotion tube. Mango-vanilla shaving lotion just does not leave your mouth feeling all that fresh. So Wednesday, for all its humpy promises, would prove askew.

I did make one insight which i am pleased with however, regarding an earlier post which I cannot remember the name of. Anyway, I rant a bit against the New Yorker for publishing a good too many poets of reknown, and I want to amend that, because it seems harsh, but I still think its fair(fair as a criticism, unfair that they do so). The problem is one of appreciation. We've a bit too much of it. I know Frank O'Hara is a great poet. Anyone who knows anything about poetry knows Frank O'hara is a great poet. What I don't know, is who the next cornerstone of the next peotic school is going to be (actually I sort of do, its Jonathan Skinner with his Ecopoetics).

What The New Yorker's brutal insistence on not publishing more new poetry and less old poetry is they are not really interested in poetry. They don't have that feel for finding what is new, and more importantly, having the stones to say what is good and what is not. There are not many people today who are willing to say anything is either too good or too bad. When the New Yorker chooses to offer Elizabeth Bishop as a selection, it isn't because they are making this revolutionary case that her work should be read, the vast number of books of and about her work does that, it is because they don't know what's good today, and are unwilling to hang their hat on judgement of new work. They're just going to wait 30 years for todays classics to be regarded as classics.