Thursday, December 16, 2010

"Let's be close..." / Book Just Out


"Let's be close Rope to mast, you Old light," is now a wad of actual mass, externalized brain, a commodity into the world. One may find/purchase it at the Blue & Yellow Dog Dog bookstore, here, or at Better Homes Through Poems here. It's also listed, floating forever, over there on the right-hand side of this page.

My thanks to poet-artist-friendo Meagen Crawford for doing the cover, and to the man in the director's chair, Raymond Farr.


Some magic tid-bits to entice:


/"I bet you drive all the dry riverboys wild..."


/"A space is by fierce influence..."


/"The people are savage about
the symmetry withdrawing into its sky a star's
bones are savage
about their night."


/"...boredom on the rock,
Boredom in the stars of neckline."


/"We are animals because the sailors never see us
spit out on the shore..."


/"...I don't tell you let's
not try to be the dead."


/"Then I fell into the rosebushes,
about the green ones:
they were looking at the red ones."




Tuesday, December 14, 2010

"Being someone who still dies in fires, All has the hour..." / Winter Poems Up at Blue & Yellow Dog


The Winter 2010 Issue of Blue & Yellow Dog just went up today. New work by Sheila Murphy, Joel Chace, and Philip Byron Oakes. Grab a scoopful of barnuts and read it here.



Also blowing wind at Silliman's writings on the substance and significance of the sentence. In his collections of essays, The New Sentence (Roof, 1987), Silliman characterizes his sentence, what he determines to be the primary unit of meaning not a fragment. Working toward contextualizing the sentence, not the poetic line, he takes into account the sentence as explored by Stein, Marx's ideas on exchange-value/use-value, and Derrida (even providing a point by point breakdown of his sentence's qualities). A heavy but nutritious dose: "Disappearance of the Word, Appearance of the World."

A magnificent piece on the matter is over at The Reading Experience 2.0: "The Horizon of The Sentence."


Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Get That Loot Kid, You Know My Function / Insulation Poems



As per the title of this venue, I've been chewing the fat of the voice. The assumed/conjured voice, rather. If agency is nowhere, or with the spooks (Spicer), or with me, who am I to unfold? If the "me" is not I, if the "I" ain't me, is a trick being played? Do we not enjoy tricks?


As a response to the charge that contemporary American literature is simply too insulated (Click-Me), I placed myself firmly within the equation of utility (user+subject=used subject) that develops away from utility toward exploitation. To see what's what, and... who's what. Stories of platform (you know, for conjuring over) I stuck with:


-33 Chilean miners trapped a half mile underground for 70 days.

-Red toxic sludge flood in Hungary.

-Mexican bicentennial amid nationwide drug war.


My response (American, to be sure) was firstly in the very approach. My efforts to keep informed of the Chilean miner situation involved simply reading the paper and collecting clippings, eyeing the telly, catching online updates (as they arrived at me, akin to how an average (?) American might've stumbled to them), discussing the stories with friends and strangers.


Secondly, the method of composing a response was a sort of conjuring, allowing the writing to respond for and about itself: several references to purchasing. Mentionings, also, of the agony of citizenship, beer, significant periods of time spent in alleys, fog horns, solitude, colonialism, blind dogs, elections, outsourcing dangerous industrial practices, crooked politicians, general and acute paranoia, rejection of the body as representative shell of character, insomnia, wondering where they buried Garcia Lorca.


I stuck with these stories for as long as they were carried by The NY Times, SF Chronicle, and USA Today.


What is ultimately, though not solely, fascinating is the fact that in the case of the miners, they began to exploit the system that championed their story, then marketed themselves to become compensated through it. Holla.


They became agents of their own exploits. Kardashians without ever having to... do whatever the Kardashians did to become The Kardashians. Had they and their dyer situation not been utilized, exploited to sell papers ( comment on mining conditions in the country, reflect the efficient leadership of the Chilean president, even showcase the global engineering technologies industry to the whole wide world ) they would not now have the opportunity to utilize, exploit that same audience to get that chedduh by selling interviews, sponsoring themselves out to various causes/products, signing autographs at malls, appearing on Letterman.




Friday, December 3, 2010

"I am a perfect cornfield I am a perfect cornfield..." / 'Baseball' in the next Otoliths



The next volume of Otoliths will feature a healthy sample from my long poem "I'm sorry , about Baseball." This extended piece commemorates my re-acquaintance with the game of baseball during the Fall of 2010, the second half of The Giants' World Series winning season. So there's fervor.

Otoliths is a quarterly e-zine that presents a varied and international cast of writers and artists that I've been eyeballing for some time. Due out in February, issue #20 is sure to be gansta, east and west coasts, no matter how you roll.




Wednesday, December 1, 2010

(Blue & Yellow Dog Titles)


Available soon: Matthew Johnstone’s Let’s be close Rope to mast, you Old light,
Adam Fieled’s Equations, and
Richard Kostelanetz’s chap book FICT IONS.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

"The Skeleton May Perform"




After finishing up The Baseball Poem I'm dealing with another (different and successive) thing: Basketball. In particular, with Basketball's Kevin Garnett. For a number of reasons that I hope to define and explore within the writing itself.

Both recent subjects of writing have included the word 'ball'. Actually: placement of the ball, by men, to certain places, amongst other men attempting to (re)acquire and/or stop the progress of the ball. The newest writing a continuation, extension of the old.

Media usurped Classic. For the contemporary, the surging popularity of Jersey Shore, Dancing With The Stars, The OC, Twitter manifestos, Justin Bieber seems to have displaced relevance (for Duncan, Pound, Olson) of an Odysseus-type as idol-celebrity-hero. Odysseus is not, cannot be an agreed upon, or shared, facet of collective knowledge. There is no exchange centered around Odysseus now.





Here's the opening of, for the time being, "T h e
S k e l e t o n M a y P e r f o r m":







Since I am the chronicler, to wait



down the


statue's foam


where last I remember

a gold wood


a green earth enter it




so,

Ruthless head,


the skull is not a

delicate thing


Rims

enchant,



wingspan


and lightness




Last avian beauty,



he taking even hilltops.


I know the movements of a



them


small fists, pearls

of slut

opposition,


and your



rookies


sift




Old bedouin,

they're sifters




(Tell Bill I pursue the stolen

thing, the curve of the fit in

snares, a past hinged, the tree

its old branches that go out to


new leaves.)



Saturday, October 30, 2010

"Let's Be Close Rope to mast, you Old Light" / Plus Insulation Poems






Saintly Raymond Farr and his Blue & Yellow Dog Press will be publishing my collection of poems entitled, "Let's be close Rope to mast, you Old light". "Rope to mast" will be available for purchase at the Blue & Yellow Dog bookstore in November sometime. Friend, poet, artist Meagen Crawford has agreed to art the cover and I'm ever so peached about it.


One might check
Blue & Yellow Dog




In the meantime, I'm finishing up the Insulation Poems.



Here's a chunk of one:




Only one man throws his

hat.

Discernible self,

inwardmost country.


Intimate layout,

twisting the change of distance.

Collect every worthy limb,

be covered, and cover.


Held past myth.


I met no one

singing this migration song.



Have a citizen's throat,


monument keep me.


I force

the divergence of myself upon it,



swimming through animals who

do not enjoy being swam through.




Friday, September 10, 2010

"Looking for the big spider..." / Two poems in SHAMPOO's next outing



O y e , two poems will very soonly be out with the shining 10th anniversary edition of SHAMPOO. # 38 will contain "Do not stare the ridge" and "Razor in the car/ Please make it look like early morning".


V a m o s : # 38



Saturday, September 4, 2010

"I'm sorry , about Baseball"




Here's a read of the current project, "I'm sorry , about Baseball":





Fooled, in threatening of placement, a form in

the rust, of refusal

from the vast plate these gods will not

flee, everything marched into

responds by shining, never entered twice

wreckage, mended elements into a

fabric, When you are careless it is

written down.



Kept to the earth in its consistent

mechanics, grew to fill the circle

Protection not defense, ease

filled me savage coterie being uncovered,

Every general plays

a piece of music his self, let this be

Accumulated smaller systems,

a collection be made of

everything, even space and leisure a

small bird might get into.



Friday, August 27, 2010

"Body washed like a thief..." / Two poems out by Anemone Sidecar


"Anne Sexton" and "The stars think I have a job but I do not." are to be among Anemone Sidecar's 12th or 13th chapter, due out near the end of the year.

Here's chapter 9.



Monday, July 5, 2010

"See you at the pig races..." / Poems in Blue & Yellow Dog's next production


Blue & Yellow Dog's next issue, their 3rd, will feature a lifetime-supply-of-pretzel-M&Ms-sized offering of my poems. B&Y Dog #3 should be online December-ish, and in print March-ish.

Here's what they do: The Spring 2010 Issue.





Wednesday, April 28, 2010

"Taken no picture,opium blue..." / New poems in Projector II


A couple of poems will soon be out and included in Projector's second production. Here is issue 1.