Poetry Dance this weekend

I have been working with Kathryn TeBordo and her Workshop for Potential Movement for a few months now to make a dance out of my poems. This weekend this dance will occur for all to see.

Here are some showtimes.

Here is a great write-up about the project on the Live Arts Festival blog.

Here is some more information about the show.

In the show, the sublime is something called Eagle. But the poems do not go into the sublime, they go into the dance. I go into nothing because I am simply a physical medium to the words.

diode poems

I have some new poems in diode magazine and here they are: DL's poems in diode.

I say new poems, but at least one of those poems is over a year old. I don't know if that is new or not.

Also, recently I saw a movie by Esra Ersen called "Growing Old (Dis)gracefully" (I may have messed that title up) at the Bard College Art Museum. I could not stop watching it and fell in love with the main character, Helen, who was so full of life. Check it out or this artist's other work (which I am not familiar with) if you can.

Here are two pictures of a real, dead dragonfly:





Here is a picture that Eric Baus took because he always captures the moments in life that are blissfully sad:

A good voice

This group is so good:



Diddy's voice is like a glorious midnight in their song.

Any song that voice graces is going to be good.

Don't forget this great song from 1996:



You know when he says "Let's go"? Yeah, that's what you have to say when the whole thing starts. That's why I'm his loyal fan. Cause he knows what to say and how to say it right.

Laura Solomon's Blue and Red Things

Laura Solomon's Blue and Red Things is featured on Silliman's Blog today. Read about it here.

I like how Silliman talks about the power and seriousness in her poems. Both are everpresent. I also like how Phillip Metres calls her work "post-apocalyptic pastoral" in the comments. That's a great description of what is important in Solomon's poems, I think, if she wouldn't mind me saying so.

One time Laura Solomon read me a poem and in my mind I saw a forest of translucent, light grey trees. It is an image I have never forgotten and which I consistently associate with her poems, particularly this collection, Blue and Red Things. The image in my mind is kind of the image on the cover of her book, but different. The image in my mind is more jelly-like, more tactile. It is very hard to explain. Anyway, nonetheless, the image I might call a group of post-apocalyptic trees.

(For more Solomon, check out her reading in the bathroom leg of The Tiny Tour. Hers is the 3rd video down.)

Open galleries

I think open galleries on the internet are really cool, like this one: Museum of Computer Art Virtual Gallery It is good to give people a space to show their work when the site has space to. The internet should be an infinite collective, I think.

It just occurred to me that I could never end a string of things I would like to show on an open thing like a blog. The world is infinite with beautiful things. At some point though we all have to stop showing. I never get sick of it though. I could never get sick of collecting the things that humans make. Is that a kind of humanist hoarding? So be it.

I went to the Bard College Art Museum this weekend and saw this great movie installation by Johanna Billing called Magical World and thought it was beautiful. It was so sad, too.

I think the best contemporary poetry today is the kind that gets its formal structure from hip hop. That is what I try to emulate, at least.

I shouldn't talk in absolutes. But it is our time, a time of American absolutism. We will get over it soon. I hope.

Still, I really mean what I say about hip hop. This song by B.I.G. has been embedded in my brain for the last 10 years:



Also, like hip hop, the poet Nick Moudry, who I went to school with many years ago, has taught me more than I could ever articulate about formal structure in poetry. He was featured on the Omnidawn Blog in June. Here's his poem: "Still-life."
Here's another poem of his called "Imitations of Life."

I have a poem by him called "New ode" that is covered in green acetate for safe-keeping hanging on my wall. Last night, my brother, it being his last night in town, and Conrad and I ate coconut sorbet and I read Nick's poem to them. It had been a long time since I had read it out loud. It is still one of the best poems I have ever read.

The other day I sprained my neck but I kept a stick-to-your-skin heating pad on my neck for 8 hours or more and now my sprain is all but gone. How does that work?

I have decided that I think blogs are really really odd. This is a really weird time we are in, you know.

This is a video of a favorite song of mine:


I like how that guy screams in the beginning of the video.

Are you jealous of my pictures: Pics of people in The Yellow Marshmallow


?

?

You shouldn't be so jealous.

Jealousy destroys tolerance, and the destruction of tolerance is the destruction of all love.

Here's a song about love sung by a true performer:

Compost tea

My brother is in town. After he made some compost tea:


(Yes, that is the tea.)


He showed me this video by Jens Lekman:



which I really liked. The snow erases everything. It is the physical sublime.

The other day I wrote an essay about how being late is not a moral issue. I still feel that way today. Sometimes people try to put things that are not in the moral realm into it in order to make them feel like they have strengths. Being late is not a strength, it is a choice based on a series of conditions, some present, some past, a few future. Like Kierkegaard, I think we should watch what traits of others we ascribe to the moral realm. Doing so too hastily breeds intolerance, which is the death of all love.

Here's a better picture of the compost tea:



The song in the video is called "Black Cab."

He also took weird pictures of some the stuff around my apartment:





I want those to be gigantic posters in my room. I think EB is a photographic genius. He can literally make a dead bird look beautiful: EB's birds

Even though the time is gone, I still remember the time I spent on the beach a few weeks ago. I felt right there and am sad not to be there. Here's a video I took of the seaweed:



Also, I like reading this: Interview with Juliana Spahr from 2005. I love Juliana Spahr. One time I wrote her this poem:

Death of (no Life of) the Human

for Juliana Spahr

We are all here together
Insecure or not
It is our party
To play in
They are our hearts to mention
The world would not exist without us, o us!
I feel connected to everyone (everything) with lungs
The green springs of the air we breathe in
Are spongy and delightful
And I am not a racist
Nor am I not a fascist
I am not anything as much as I am nothing
Floating so floatily in the mid-Spring air
The white wind touching my wrists and ankles
And everything loving me, o that I exist
And breathe in this air
There would be no air to breathe
Without us to breathe it

I like her because she's a humanist. Oh but who isn't these days. Oh but she's a real one.

I wrote her another poem once about being in a dark park, but I never finished it in the right way. Sometimes you write a poem and you just lose it before it is done. Usually it's because someone calls you to annoy you before you can get the poem out. I wish those people who always ruin my poems would wait to call when I am lonely, which is a lot of the time. I am more the person people want me to be when I am lonely, but I am never lonely when I am writing a poem. There are always too many people around. I wonder if everyone who is a poet feels that way. I wonder if everyone who is an artist feels that way.

Human Thing

Love

Apologize, Timbaland Featuring One Republic

I'm holding on a rope
Got me 10 feet off the ground
I'm hearin' what you say but I just can't make a sound
You tell me that you need me then you go and cut me down
But wait
You tell me that you're sorry didn't think I'd turn around and say:

That it's too late to apologize
It's too late
I said it's too late to apologize
It's too late

I'd take another chance, take a fall, take a shot for you
I need you like a heart needs a beat, it's nothing new
Yeah, yea
I loved you with a fire red now it's turning blue
And you say
Sorry, like the angel heaven let me think was you
But I'm afraid

It's too late to apologize
It's too late
I said it's too late to apologize
It's too late

It's too late to apologize
It's too late
I said it's too late to apologize
It's too late

I'm holding on a rope
Got me 10 feet off the ground

A favorite poem for what is a rainy day

It is rainy where I am. Here is one of my favorite poems in honor of a rainy day. This poem is not about rain. It about the day after the day that it rains.

I know the truth - give up all other truths!

I know the truth - give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look - it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

-Marina Tsvetaeva

Trying to be all cool and organized

My reading page is sort of updated for the fall: List of readings I will be in this fall. I don't have all the details for all the readings, but I thought I would put some of them up in case anybody is going to be the areas I will be in. Thanks for considering coming to a reading of mine in advance.

Speaking of things that are organized well, here is one of my top ten favorite websites of the last 5 years: We Love Colors

I am reading in NYC on 8/23, so come see me if you are free

Here's a reading I am going to be in with John Beer and Macgregor Card on 8/23:

Poetry Time reading

Come to the reading if you are in the NYC area!