Monday, January 31, 2005

be donne with it

Winter was the world that spat it:
Winter took the day and cracked it;
And that that Winter did pack it,
I do be going inside and tracks it.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

re: view

This blogger's review of poet Patrick Herron's AMERICAN GODWAR COMPLEX is up at VERSE.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

maid public

This blogger's poems are aching the gradient at SLOPE #21 along with
Patrick Lawler, Stephanie Bolster, Jonathan Skinner, Thomas Heise, Sasha Steenser, Laura Solomon, Matt Hart, Jon Skuldt, Tara Rebele, Hugh Steinberg, Graham Foust, Michael Kelleher, Brian Clements, and John Vincent; plus new criticism: Joy Katz on Noelle Kocot, L.B. Thompson on Rebecca Wolff , Eric Gudas on Ilya Kaminsky, Alvis Minor on Gretchen Mattox, Amy Newlove Schroeder on Rachel Zucker

the bemoan behind the cursor

Doling out discomfort as the toll time tells,
My throat doth quote from the Book of Swells.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

all codes lead to roam

Here's a blog that lists some current journals and their contributors. No descriptive or evaluative review; just the facts ma'am. Where appropriate, the journal titles link to the journal's website. 'Tis has the makings of a goodly service, yes bloggerissimo?

No info avails about who doth blog the blog. This blogger thinks t'would be good to have address to which folks could send journals for review. Titles of works might be inneresting too--some kind o tasty teaser. Scanned cover art. Ahh--I can see it now, an online lit-mag bookstorish/reading room. One place to go to find them all and browse and buy one or two and some are free. Perhaps this will be, yes, plywood-ziggurat?

Saturday, January 22, 2005

the market behind the cursor

Today spent being a market "Who?--Her!" revising fliers for GCG mailings to bookstores and programs and such. Temperature 0 degrees. Rays departed to feel like -15. O my bloggerissimo, the hat's sway cold.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

gno

This blogger did goeth to the GNO reading group last night.

GNO--n a grrls who doth meet at night in the being of out and about and on the topic of poems. See: Micha Boyett, Sarah Harwell, Farah Marklevits, Elissa Nelson, Courtney Queeney, Imogene Wallenfels, & this blogger .

We talked till past the midnight hour on Maurice Manning's Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions. Pleasure taken in the ficitive characters/dramatic personae of the book, the book's projectness, in the ah-ha of recognition at repeated narrative elements across the poems, the exploration of form--lots of lots of sonnets yet along with tasty oddities like a proof, a complaint to the court, a condensed history with dates and such, among others. Agreed 'tis in many respects an ambitious book. Humor. Enjoyed. Yet made uneasy. The use of dialect ruffled my and some others others. Judge W. S. Merwin said that that was just what 'twas supposed to happen. That Manning uses the language of "Amos and Andy" to disturb the reader.

O my bloggerissimo, you decide. Here's a poem in which Lawerence Booth (the book's main character) imagines the words of his now dead friend describing Booth's harrowing childhood:

DREADFUL CHAPTER FIVE
De shivery blackberry winter day Law turn ten,
Stagger Lee Daddy come home singin drunk again,
say he got somethin extry special fer a boy name Law:
give him a ten-cent box a crackerjack--dat's all;
Mama holler in de kitchen, come see what she make,
an light nine s hinin candle on de ole birthday cake.
But Law run off yonder to de Injun Camp an cry,
hil lil heart so fretful sick he start thinkin sewercide;
he fetch a capgun to de sinkhole an kneel dere on de ground,
den pull de silver trigger an like de echo way it sound.
But Red Doggie whine an git his doggie self afraid,
den lick Law's teary face an save dat terrble day.
Red Doggie nuzzle Law an wag he tail all curl:
Law love he Doggie friend de best in dis wide world.


The character speaking these lines, Black Damon (read: demon, daemon, Damian) is of course an idea, a projection, like Berryman's Mr. Bones, and is meant to be read as such, rather than as a realistic representation. Yet, unlike Mr. Bones, this character lacks 'poetry'--speaks in clichés like "hil lil heart so fretful" and makes no very perceptive observations or interpretations.

THIS FROM THE YALE SITE SELLING THE BOOK:
"Manning's compelling poems take us on a wild ride through the life of a man child in the rual south. Presenting a cast of allegorical and symbolic, yet very real, characters, the poems have 'authority, daring, [and] a language of color and movement,' says series judge W.S. Merwin."

Real? Hmmm. Authority? Hmmm. Certainly, Manning may be saying with the "DREADFUL" poems, many written in a flat dialect riddled with cliché, that representations by white folk of black folk are too often flat and riddled with cliché; yet, as Immy (I think it 'twas) pointed out, one doesn't make porn to point out how porn objectifies people. Does ye?

Perhaps we're meant to read this clichéd reductive dialect voice as one of the
"...Three feathered
strains of beauty fly[ing] circles in ...[the author's]...heart.
One, the image of the...[thing]... itself, a red-tailed
parcel of perfect pitch. Two, the smell
of the father pretending to be
a steel-eyed radius. Three, a terrible
Presence flapping around the room.

Is the Amos and Andy voice arising out of the oppressive patriarchal tradition, "the father pretending to be a steel-eyed radius"?

What say ye Bloggerissimo?




Wednesday, January 19, 2005

from the desk of wilma's butler

AN OBDURATE WEATHER
Hello with my ears forsaken of heat and a’grieved
Two siezed under hood; wind wails ye unrelieved.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

all codes lead to athens

O my bloggerissimo, I'm telling ye, them folks in Athens, GA is fine tooting! They got scene!

(sigh) this calls for a lonely cyber twang...

This one goes out to the ones I la of.
This one goes out to the ones I'm bereftingly snow-blind.
A simple talk to have over black coffee.
This one goes out to the ones with whom.
Fiiiiiiiiie here! Fly theeeeeeeeeere!
This one goes out to the ones wild was.

Monday, January 17, 2005

all codes lead to roam

O my bloggerissimo, meet sam,
sam, bloggerissimo ...

"hi my name is sam,
i draw pictures, from your titles."

Sunday, January 16, 2005

blue suede bouts-rimés

Hey bloggerissimo,

Do you ever dream of Piercings in June?
Arrive on stress?
Compose adversely to the moon?
Is your favorite period obsess?

Have a shimmery like a snake?
Are you leaf, limb, climb and moot?
Do you shave your cake
& eat its beaut?

Bloggerissimo, do you love a good juke as much as the next Garbo?
When asked to come in early, do you play
the hobo,
stray as home and take a day-

trip down the rhinestone?
O my bloggerissimo, do you too like the triste of your own cologne?

Yes? Excellent! Here's a gamely challenge from the good folks out on the COURT GREEN:
*************************************************************************
"For the Spring 2006 issue of the new poetry annual COURT GREEN, we are accepting submissions of bouts-rimés.

As Ron Padgett says in his Handbook of Poetic Forms, A bouts-rimés poem is created by one person's making up a list of rhymed words and giving it to another person, who in turn writes the lines that end with those rhymes, in the same order in which they were given. Various sources attribute the invention of bouts-rimés to the French poet Dulot in the seventeenth century. In 1701, Etienne Mallemans wrote a collection of sonnets whose rhymes were chosen by the Duchess of Maine. In the mid-1800s, brothers William Michael Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti experimented with bouts-rimés. In 1864, Alexandre Dumas curated a volume of bouts-rimés composed by 350 French poets -- all with the same rhymes.

In the spirit of Dumas's invitation, we are accepting submissions of bouts-rimés sonnets written with the following end-rhymes (in the following order):

June
stress
moon
obsess
snake
moot
cake
beaut
Garbo
play
hobo
day
rhinestone
cologne

All themes and subjects are welcome as long as your sonnet uses these end-rhymes in the order they appear above.

Submissions of bouts-rimés sonnets for consideration in the dossier can be sent through May 1, 2005: Tony Trigilio, COURT GREEN, English Department, Columbia College Chicago, 600 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60605. Email submissions are not accepted. Submissions without a self-addressed, stamped envelope will not be returned.

COURT GREEN is a new, nationally distributed journal co-edited by Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, and David Trinidad. Each issue will have a Dossier on a special topic or theme. The first issue is out now and features a Dossier on poetry on film, and includes poems by Ann Lauterbach, Michael Burkard, Elizabeth Willis, Maxine Kumin, Mary Szybist, Albert Goldbarth, Ron Padgett, Dodie Bellamy, Wayne Koestenbaum and others. Issue #2 (out by April 2005) features a Dossier on Lorine Niedecker.

Submissions of poetry for the regular section of the magazine are welcome, in addition to Dossier submissions. If you would like to submit poems for the regular section, our reading period is February 1-May 1 of each year, to the same address above.

If questions come up, email Tony Trigilio at ttrigilio@colum.edu."
*************************************************************************
This blogger hath read the first isse of COURT GREEN with much pleased her. O my bloggerissimo, put on your blue suede bouts-rimés & let's bowl!


Saturday, January 15, 2005

in the nows


Conpubelations to performance artist Tara Rebele whose first book And I'm Not Jenny will femmepower Not Jennies everywhere and is forthcoming from Slope Editions! O my bloggerissimo, are you a Not Jenny? If so, click here to hear from yer sister. If ye are a Jenny, feck off why don'tcha? Unless of course, yer my good friend environmental activist attorney poet violist happy-head carrying Jenny Culler. For those of you who don't know her, she's the one true Not Jenny Jenny.

Anythewhos, this blogger's looking forward to hearing all that Tara Rebele has to say for herselves on her new Not Jenny blog.

Ha-ha-hurrah! That's Lit in the nows for true delight!

from the desk of wilma's butler

The nebulae of my happiness A Eyes, A Nose, a traitorous line, ago's awe.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

in the nows


Thanks Robin Reagler for the remind here to get on lover to the latest issue of the international collaboration Born.

Writers in this issue:
Michele Glazer Portland, Oregon
Bob Hicok Blacksburg, Virginia
Lisa Marie Brodsky Madison, Wisconsin
Farah Marklevits Cortland, New York
Sommer Browning Tucson, Arizona

Artists in this issue:
Zoltan Lehoczki Budapest, Hungary
Fluorescent Hill Quebec, Canada
Below the Sea Montreal, Canada
Preloaded London, United Kingdom
Bill Klingensmith Rochester, New York
Keith Harper Seattle, Washington
Ferris Plock San Francisco, California

Ha-ha and hurrah! That's Lit in the nows for true delight!


maid public

Hello my bloggerissimo! This blogger's body hath done its work and so thinketh she's back on her feets. Well, gluttually, back on her arse at the compute here.

Anythewho what when and where, this blogger's poems can be found in the exciting company of art by Amy Kohut, poems by Christopher Nealon, Arda Collins, Brian Henry, Graham Foust, this blogger's own self, Julie Doxsee, Kate Greenstreet, Kathleen Ossip, Mark DuCharme, Nathan Hoks, Eric Elshtain, Julia Cohen, Standard Schaefer, Michael Ruby, Barry Schwabsky, Carolyn Guinzio, Elizabeth Switaj, Carrie Hein, Betsy Wheeler, Michael Schavio, Joseph Bienvenu, Estela Eaton, Christopher Tonelli; and book reviews of Dan Beachy-Quick and Deborah Meadows, Sagawa Chika, Robyn Schiff, and William Waltz. All this at the current issue of GutCult.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

moan behind the cursor

O my bloggerissimo, this blogger is zick a hen. Much gargoyling of salt and lying phone on the couch. (sigh)

Saturday, January 01, 2005

conpubelations!

Conpubelations to Lara Glenum! She who has written THE HOUNDS OF NO and thusly to "Hang Sentimentality on the gallows of Emergency..." has been selected as the first release of
a press to be launched by that action packed literary duo o' dynamoes Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Goransson.

Here 'tis a taster, a teaser o' THE HOUNDS OF NO:

CRUSHIFIX

We need some beef-relief. I think we’ll drink
His cream. I think we’ll starve & roseate
A morphic resonance the size (I think)
Of die. Swans can cream, too, inebriate

Of why. Do only we disjoin our lungs?
Will the howls overreach me before we
Can take off our skin & let it be hung
On a mannequin, spritely fitted? “I

Traffic no cadavers,” said the owl
& ate my demi-monde. (“Why go trilling
Into? & spuriously creaming!?”) Our skull-bowl
Is a fountain of electrodes, killing

Nothing, nothing. If he is swan & roseate,
We ovulate skeletons & language cremate.


O conpubelations Lara! Hurray! Hurrah! HerLara!

every code leads to roam

Happy New Years O my bloggerissimo and many happy internet resources to ye! For e.g. click out PENNSOUND Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing's Audio Archive. Reading in the year with Lyn Hejinian ringing from Happily, Ted Berrigan ringng them sonnets and get Read "A" for the Louis Zukofsky Centennial Conference. Cheers!