I am adding Matt Walker's POTATO to my collection of favorite poems

Poet Matt Walker has a really delightful blog that I like to frequent. Yesterday I was browsing around and came across this poem:

POTATO

Sitting in the dark
With a potato
Or without a potato
Is scary

If you are afraid
Of the dark
Or potatoes
Or sitting

Nevertheless
I enjoy it
As do my relatives
As do my confidants

Once I mistook a
Potato for a bullet
A large bullet
Where'd this bullet

Come from I wondered
I was so glad
And relieved when
The Tooth Fairy

Emerged from her van
And entered my face
And ate the potato
I wish I could say

That all is well
I've lost my potato
The room is scary
More is coming


I love this poem. Walker wins me over when he goes from the line "As do my relatives" to "As do my confidants." That's the twist that separates a poem from just another thing. Because then the potato can become a large bullet. Because then the poem can do anything.

I do not have any better way to explain this separation other than a twist. Or to see it when it happens. I know when poems or other pieces of art do not have this necessary twist. All beautiful things have it. It is when the beauty is so great that it has entered the sublime realm and is likewise capable of hurting you. When something is capable of hurting you, it has twisted.

James Tate has a poem in his Selected which describes this twist perfectly, but unfortunately I can't find that book right now. It would be a shame for me to describe it, so I will just save it for another time and post it when I find the book.

(If you have his Selected, I think the poem is on page 43?)

I wanted also to take this opportunity to mention that Tate's Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee is a great new book. You should buy it when you get a chance.

Also, here is the story of a particular instance of carrot corruption: Aaron's Carrots: Disintegration is Told Best in Images

SOFA gallery

This is really super: Katie Geha's SOFA gallery

ON: Contemporary Practice

Finding literary journals that rise above the same old schtick is pretty hard these days, but I am happy to tell you about an amazing new journal called ON: Contemporary Practice (edited by Michael Cross, Thom Donovan, and Kyle Schlesinger). It features the work of contemporary poets writing about each other's poetics through original means. The editors define the project as such:

ON Contemporary Practice gathers writing about the practices or poetics of one’s contemporaries. While these writings may be highly anti-categorical or “hybrid,” they are ultimately for the cultivation and extension of critical discourse.

Looking at the first issue of ON, I have been delighted to see my contemporaries engaged in actual discourse (as opposed to the fluffy/vicious ways we usually talk about each other). It is quite an amazing endeavor these editors have undertaken and I am excited to devour this first issue and all other issues thereafter.

The first issue of ON features work by:

Taylor Brady, Brandon Brown, CAConrad, Jason Christie, Michael Cross, Thom Donovan, Eli Drabman, Rob Halpern, Jen Hofer, Alan Gilbert, Brenda Iijima, Andrew Levy, Edric Mesmer, Sawako Nakayasu, Tenney Nathanson, Richard Owens, Tim Peterson, Andrew Rippeon, Kyle Schlesinger, Jonathan Skinner, Dale Smith, Suzanne Stein, Ali Warren, Katie Yeats

Writing on:

Arakawa/Gins, Taylor Brady, CAConrad, Michael Cross, Beverly Dahlen, Michael deBeyer, Mark Dickinson, kari edwards, DJ/Rupture, Thom Donovan, Belle Gironda, Brenda Iijima, CJ Martin, Emily McVarish, Yedda Morrison, Hoa Nguyen, Sawako Nakayasu, Julie Patton, Lauren Shufran, Suzanne Stein, Dana Ward, Ali Warren

To buy the first issue on SPD, please follow this link: ON on SPD

You can also purchase ON through Cuneiform Press through the following means:

Cuneiform Press
214 N. Henry Street
Brooklyn, NY 11222
www.cuneiformpress.com

Copies are available for $12.00. Free shipping in the US for all orders placed through the publisher. Send checks to Kyle Schlesinger at the address above.

You can find out more information about ON (such as submission guidelines for their next issue) on their website.

Lonely Poems/Black Life

Love

"Stop telling me what U want me 2 hear
Stop telling me what U want me 2 fear
Stop trippin' on something U overheard
Love is winning without a word
Stop giving me Ur "wish list"
Love is free from all this

Like a bird flyin' over the hilltops
Love is like the sky, U know it never stops
From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks
Love is whatever... whatever... U want it 2 b

Love is not a game U can play on the floor
U gotta stop keepin' score
If U wanna, If U want 2 play me like U did b4
U better stop and walk out the door
U can skate around the issue if U like
But who's gonna get U high in the middle of the night?

Like a bird flyin' over the hilltops
Love is like the sky, U know it never stops
From the abudance of the heart the mouth speaks
Love is whatever... whatever... U want it 2 b

I c U standing with Ur back on the wall
U better, better get Ur hands up and clap if that's all
and uh, if U don't wanna get Urs, then let me get mine
See, ain't gonna b no drama 'cause we have a good time

What's the point of giving me ultimatums?
Smiling at my friends when U really hate 'em
Trying 2 convince me that eye should 2...
what's the point?

Stop worryin' about what people say
When it ain't gonna stop them anyway
Love can do anything if U try
Come on... Spread Ur wings... Let's fly, fly so high

flyin' over the hilltops
Love is like the sky, U know it never stops
From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks
Love is whatever... whatever... whatever...

Like a bird flyin' over the hilltops
Love is like the sky, U know it never stops
From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks
Love is whatever... whatever... U want it 2 b

Whatever U want it 2 B
alright
let's skate

I c U standing with Ur back on the wall
Better get Ur hands up and clap if that's all
If U don't wanna get Urs, then let me get mine
See, ain't gonna b no drama 'cause we have a good time

Bounce
aww, shake that thing, c'mon
ahh, bounce it baby
aww, shake that thing c'mon
good god"

--"Love," Prince



Good-bye sweet chair!

Some new poems

I have some new poems in some super journals:

DL's poems in Womb Poetry

DL's poem in Absent Magazine

Check them out.

"We are a see through love
Seeing through sun and haze
I see through to the totally clear end

If you appear within the seconds of
the word imagination
If you appear the word allows a man to
see to those appearance
If you appear what's airy
sends a friend to my imagination
The kind of town where it's a sin
to be inside and outside for them
Around the side of the house where
the side that you can get up on it
When every inter-call decides awell
that's up to go off

We are a see through love
Seeing through sun and haze
I see through to the totally clear end

It's well to know that since it gives a name
you get to grow up with him
I finish all supposed where it's a good time
floating where so much up
The Kind of love that I can only find in my imagination
The Kind of heart that I can only have in my imagination

We are see through love
Seeing through sun and haze"

-Arthur Russell, "See Through Love"

Arts and Education Issue of the Urban Ed Journal

Please submit to the upcoming arts and education issue of the wonderful Urban Ed journal.

Their announcement is as follows:

Volume 6, Issue 2 - Arts and Education

The Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education Journal is now accepting submissions for the upcoming issue, which will focus on the topic of arts in education. Whether included in the classroom curriculum, supplied by visiting artists, or incorporated into afterschool and community-based programming, integrated and discipline-based arts education is widely perceived by both researchers and practitioners to be a public and private good. In this issue, the journal seeks to elaborate the discussion of arts in education in urban areas. How is the relationship between arts and education understood and practiced in urban areas? On the one hand, educators understand how arts serve as a platform to engage students and foster growth; on the other hand, issues of funding, time management, and local and national school mandates often limit the integration and implementation of arts. How do educators, students, and parents negotiate these factors as they bring arts into learning environments?

This is a broad topic, with both "arts" and "education" understood as including but not limited to visual, performing, creative, and expressive arts in K-12, college, university, and community contexts. We encourage researchers, graduate students, practitioners, policy makers, and youth to publish studies in progress, as well as findings from completed research and reflections on practice. We welcome submissions that present content in creative ways through multimedia formats. Submissions must follow the style outlined in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2001, 5th edition). Please complete the submission form found on our website and e-mail it along with your submission to journal@gse.upenn.edu.

Submission due date: February 15, 2009

Visit Urban Ed Journal for more information.

The Entertainer, You're Only Human, You're My Home (Selections from Billy Joel)

Don't worry, the moon will rise wherever you go.
--Mary Jo Bang, "How to Leave a Prairie"


I.

"I am the entertainer

I come to do my show

You've heard my latest record

It's been on the radio

Ah, it took me years to write it

They were the best years of my life

It was a beautiful song

But it ran too long

If you're gonna have a hit

You gotta make it fit

So they cut it down to 3:05"


II.

"It's not always easy to be living in this world of pain

You're gonna be crashing into stone walls again and again

It's alright

It's alright

Though you feel your heart break

You're only human

You're gonna have to deal with heartache"


III.

"When you look into my eyes
And you see the crazy gypsy in my soul
It always comes as a surprise
When I feel my withered roots begin to grow
Well
I never had a place that I could call my very own
But that's alright
my love
'cause you're my home
When you touch my weary head
And you tell me ev'rything will be alright
You say
Use my body for your bed
And my love will keep you warm throughout the night
Well I'll never be a stranger and I'll never be alone
Wherever we're together
That's my home
Home can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike
Indiana's early morning dew
High up in the hills of California
Home is just another word for you
If I travel all my life
And I never get to stop and settle down
Long as I have you by my side
There's a roof above and good walls all around
You're my castle
You're my cabin and my instant pleasure dome
I need you in my house 'cause you're my home"

I am not lame for liking Coldplay

People are always wanting more of something. I have been reading all these articles about creativity lately and the consensus is that more of it would be good in our schools. Still, what does more mean? People often want more money, but then they are often unsure of what to do with it. I think this is how hoarding develops. The allotment of things is what is important with resources. For example, the times in my life when I have wanted more love endlessly were the times when the wrong kind of love was available.

In other words, I have decided that the people I know who think I am lame for liking Coldplay are the same people I know who nothing meaningful about art. I make my own decisions about what kind of art I like because I know a lot about what kind of art is important to our time.

I do not think Coldplay is particularly important to our time, but I do think it is nice to listen to on the train when you need a gentle Pisces voice to counteract the harsh world.

I read with Tao Lin a few weeks ago in a poetry reading. He’s obviously a genius. Every writer and poet alive today should worship the ground he walks on. But I guess most people already know to do so.

I hope he doesn’t mind me putting him so close to Coldplay.

This is a poem I wrote for George Bush:

The Liar

Worse than The Fool
The Liar is always coming at me
With his various masks
He is a man I will never marry
Carrying black pails against the sea
The seawind betrays him
For his guilt and sameness
And haunting, he always haunts
The Liar is a false fool, I watch his lips
And they are fruit-like, but bitten
And I watch them and they are ugly
Like the day from which I came
And they are nothing
Magic lips I see
And there is no one on this earth worth living for
The Liar is bent towards the sun
I have no faith in him and who does
Have faith in a man
Who is no more than an alien

I actually don’t think all Republicans are evil. That’s because I am humanist and I have known some Republicans in my time who actually wanted to help people. My dad was one of those people.

Nevertheless, McCain/Bush is no humanist. Mostly in part because he is too old to understand humanism. Old age and youth (not always mind you) can cloud humanism because there are other needs when you are on either side of death. Humanism is for us adults, in the prime, ready to take action.

And just like this, as Obama said recently, we need adults in the White House, not children.

Hillary Clinton is a Republican Humanist. I still love her.

It is no matter. I’d take a slightly corrupt Democrat-Republican-Humanist over a Bush-McCain Republican anyday.

We need to fight Sarah Palin/John McCain. They are not what this world needs. We need to fight, as adults, for the world.

We need to forget about George Bush/John McCain Republicans that are betting that we have the TV on with the sound down.

I care about sound. So do you, I think.

We are a country where charisma matters a lot. George Bush and Sarah Palin look awfully good on TV with the sound down. They are good-looking. Don’t deny it. That’s the problem, looking good, deadpan-style, with no sound. The American deadpan is only important when you have the sound on—that’s when you see our depth. But unfortunately that’s the way a lot of Americans watch TV, with the sound down, while doing something. This soundlessness undercuts everything this country is good for. Still, there is an inherent tension between what looks good and the sound of it that happens when we watch TV in this country with the sound off. Which is what a lot of Americans do, cause we are a busy and lonely people and we need company—a soundless company that doesn’t make a fuss. And I don’t think that’s good per se, but I do think it is a practice that elucidates an implicitly American relationship to charisma that does not involve sound. If want to win this election, we need to understand this soundless relationship immediately.

The other week I saw one of my old students and when I did, I thought of a class I had a few years back. It was a class in poetry by women (don’t get me started on why I don’t agree with sequestering women poets like that, but it is a necessary practice if we want our poems read). One of the girls in the class was mad at me about something. I think I was critiquing her poem and she was fuming at me. And then she exclaimed: “Oh Dottie, you don’t know anything about the real experimental poetry that is going on these days.” I remember being a little pissed off, but also in love with her spunk.

And the truth is, I probably didn’t. I don’t think I am an experimental poet.

I used to be one, I think I have intentionally tried not to be so in the last five years of my life. I am not sure what got me on the path of trying, but I do know that a lot of what is considered experimentalism in poetry today bores me. I just don’t see the risk in it. Of course, too, a lot of so-called non-experimental poetry being written today bores me, too. I believe in experimental poetry, but not as a dogmatic definition of being brave in a poem. I think a lot of poets are brave and I love the poets who are writing these days who are intensely fearless. I would like to get back to being brave.

I think being brave is a lot about being forced to be so.

One time a supervisor of mine in an arts studio where I worked told me plainly, as I was planning a public art project, “what you give them is important.” That was probably the most important thing a person has ever said to me regarding curriculum.

What circumstances you give a person is of the utmost importance to their experience. In education, this is not only the objects or ideas you give them to manipulate, it is also the world you give them to manipulate the objects and ideas in.

It is certainly not a new idea to think that social justice is married to providing people with proper education. What is proper is certainly up for debate. What is not proper is another four years of George Bush-style policies, another four years of the purposeless, soundless allotment of more. Or bravery for the sake of it. Or of a soundless beauty that masks death.

First and foremost, we don’t need people like Sarah Palin dictating educational policy. Just because you like children or can have them doesn’t mean you know one “goddamn” thing about the way people learn. It doesn’t even ensure that you care.

The weird sounds in Jeff Mangum’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea sound like a train slowing down, as its wheels caress and rub the tracks. It is a sad sound. The pain I feel when I listen to that CD is like the pain I feel when I press on a fresh bruise. Over and over again it is the same dull ache.

I will never get over that album. Soft silly music is meaningful, magical.

I was thinking about Hillary Clinton the other day and I wrote her this poem:

Hillary Clinton

Daughter of Chicago
Businessmen and teachers
She was born
She was smart
She grew up
With dreams
In Midwestern scenery
She met Bill Clinton
O Bill Clinton
This poem isn’t about you
I am a feminist
Like every other woman
Of my generation
Even though you
Can’t tell, much has
Been already done
For example, some men
Have a range of
Emotions you can count on
Abby Walton too
Once played me a song
Called Old Old Fashioned
Hillary Clinton speaks
And it sounds like the soft
Soft static in that song
Laura if we were one thing
It might look something
Like a blue-green dragon
You might disagree with me
About the color
In the morning the sky is grey
It is grey a grey grey sky
I can’t count on the sky
Mother, mother, mother
Mother, mother
I like the way you were
Once round and full
And healthy
And the black night
Wasn’t seeping in our dreams
Hillary Clinton
I know when I see you
I am seeing a little girl
Who knew
She could be president


In other news, I think Danity Kane is my new favorite band:



“When the red light comes on, I transform”

Do they mean burning by that? No, I don’t think so. These women have too much glorious flat affect to let you see them burn.

Here’s another one:



A rule that is not hard to learn is that when Puffy starts talking at the beginning of something, it’s going to be good.

I think someday we poets should get him to grace a reading for us.

I love him:



“You know what time it is? Report to the dance floor.”

“You are the only one I want to talk to. But I don’t want to rush.”

“She diggin my style, my swag, my suede, my swerve
My way with words, the Boy’s absurd for sure
You can't fall til my aura called
I make miracles like I walked on water
What you want mama order, it's on my tab
I'm so bad with that cash, I dropped the whole bag
Where you at girl?”

Order books

Order Jordan Stempleman's book.

Order Poker if you don't already have it.

It would be hilarious if the world's future wasn't at stake

McCain doesn't want Barbie to speak cause they have to order a new microchip for her.

Tell me the poo is not genius

Read this and you will be happy finally with your mortal coil:

Genius drawing by Camilla Schofield

Darkness Everywhere

"Caution: to prevent electric shock do not remove cover
No user-serviceable parts insde Refer servicing to qualified
service personnel"
Let this be the epitaph for my heart Cupid put too much poison in the dart
This is the epitaph for my heart because it's gone, gone gone
and life goes on and on anon and death goes on, world without end
and you're not my friend Who will mourn the passing of my heart
Will its little droppings climb the pop chart Who'll take its ashes and,
singing, fling them from the top of the Brill Building And life goes on,
and dawn, and dawn and death goes on, world without end and you're
not my friend"

-"Epitaph for my Heart," Magnetic Fields

Feelings are a new form of nothingness

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.