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!

Yesterday I went to the beach

Yesterday I went to the beach:



I am living life in a way I never have before. I am sick of the old ways I used to live life. I want to believe in the picture above again. I don't think I have ever been alive and truly believed in the picture above.

When I was in college, I worked in the library with this wonderful woman named Mona. She told me that the world was full of people who would suck your joy out if you let them. It sounds like she was talking about vampires, but no I don't think she meant that. Joy is not blood. She said to protect your joy at all costs. I think we all should do that: protect joy. It needs protecting. It is not a very strong thing, very flimsy and serious and watery. It is not blood, so it doesn't go on forever, bringing life. But when it is around, I will surround it in my meaty hands (but not touch it, you should never touch it) and not let the darkness seep into it anymore. It is worth saving, like chance. Chance is worth saving, too.

Sometimes I look at blogs and I find things I like

I drank almost an entire bottle of Diet Mountain Dew today in order to finish an academic task I have been working incessantly on for the past week (and let's just say I haven't finished yet). Anyway, sometimes drinking lots of Dew makes me find blogs with poems that I like. I really like this poem by Kendra Grant Malone: "is it narcissistic that im attracted to you even though we look similar?"

It is a great thing when ass is the last word of a poem. This is not a rule, but a general observation.

It is kind of a rule that I am glad that geniuses like Bernadette Mayer wrote poems like this, so that we can all write poems that end in ass as much as we want to.

I will continue to look at blogs more to find more poems I like. People writing poems and posting them to blogs--I like that! The world wide web. Who would have thought.

Terrible Love

Here is the best news ever I could tell you: Ish Klein's first book is due out Feb. 9, 2009. It is called Union! and will be published by Canarium Books. Ish Klein is a genius. People say that sort of thing a lot about people, but I really mean it when I talk about Ish Klein. It is a true blessing to know her. Alice B. Toklas wrote (or we will say she did for the sake of argument) that there were three times in her life that she met a genius and each time she heard a bell. And she said, when she first met Gertrude Stein she heard a bell.

I first saw Ish Klein read when I had only lived in Philadelphia for two months, as she read for the Philadelphia leg of the Poetry Bus Tour. I didn't hear a bell that night cause that's not my thing, that's Alice B. Toklas' thing. Still, bell or no bell, she was so good, she scared me. For about 8 months after that, I would see her around town, but I was so scared of her genius that I would lose all ability to say anything and end up running away. One night, last summer, after having known who she was for 8 months, I went up to her at a party and introduced myself. She was very nice and I like her very much to this day.

I really like Alice B. Toklas.

I first read Gertrude Stein's Three Lives when I was 15. I was in San Diego visiting my Aunt Ardis. The day I read the book, I was swimming by myself in my aunt's pool, with a bunch of orange trees all around. That was a very important day for me.

The other day I went to a reading Molly's Bookstore in Philly's Italian Market. Molly Russakoff is a brilliant poet who ran the bookstore, but is now closing it in order to open up Project 360, an amazing educational venture for teens who feel like they don't have a place in the traditional school system (I will hopefully write more about Project 360 in a future post, as I think it is wonderful and people should donate money to it). Because the bookstore is closing, there was a closing reading. Books from the bookstore were very cheap at the reading and I bought a book called Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. Toklas. It seems like a really good book so far. At the reading, Ish Klein read the poem below. It knocked me so far off my feet that I can't stop thinking about it. In fact the poem below this post called "The Body" is written to Ish after hearing this poem by her. Here's Ish's phenomenal poem:

Act I: Against Death

Since we are ghosts,
since we are barely here but for pain and song and sad lights from our memories
making it out,

since we are brightest before death-
Wait ghost!
Wait friendly ghost! I’m running after which means I thought of running:

I watched myself do it
I had regret
I put it all on you.

You- the mobile ghost
You- the better ghost
You with your magic and who am I?

I am an angry friendly ghost. A ghost who wants to lose weight,
one who picks at skin and pulls out hair.
One who doesn’t haunt others but who haunts herself.

Ghost among ghosts!
You who are a weary ghost- who is hung over and scribbling out the fear-
The old buildings that we move through as we dodge machines.

Come here and be faithful to blood
to the fact that it pours constantly-
The collective blood that pays our way and says almost nothing.

I am haunting these people.
I think they are my friends.
Not well

am I doing this.
I am going to be forgotten.
I do hope that happens.

Maybe then I can change
maybe I can say,
You go here, do this do that:

first A, then B, then C
and I will be reliable
as for endeavor.

But always it is:
C! B?
fuck you A. I never needed A.

A is destroying my mind-
A is the devil and the devil wants to fuck and crawl out of me again;
to make me responsible for the end of it all.

A- the thing to do-
Avoid the devil
do the laundry.

Avoid the devil’s cameras.
Hi! I say. I smile.
behind the loudness, my evasion, the hangover, I am planning,

planning to get better.
I am figuring somewhere else.
I have been working on it.

I’ve been imagining the woods- not the city.
The woods and within the clearing
two castles.

They will dig me out from a whole.
I was sleeping inside a tree.
You see I killed myself before for love. I could not be found.

Others needed me and I did not care.
I needed me but I did not know it as I was essentially leaking
everything and the love and the pain it mixed

sand to glass inside- it broke and my glass with wine
broken- this is how I drank it.
This is what shocked my voice

this is the further tear along the front.
The front filling up with blood- ballooning with it.
It fears the air a bit.

It needs to keep moving.
Wary blood, how can I blame you.
I am dead.

I did kill myself. I must forgive everyone in pain.
I must give them everything to correct my mistake.
It isn’t easy . Sorry.

Well, the furies
You know- the furies who can cure them.?
They have many arms all weaponed, all holding edges and points to tear.

You can’t hug them from behind.
They roll with spikes out.
Who’s in there? What blood is in there? How can it be freed?

I am part of you furies.
I am a radiant of you too.
Let me take you in and care, let me sit you by my fire.

My sister in her car.
We will die now, I thought.
We’re together- it fits

I guess I’m ready
If this is love
it isn’t trusting.

Love you are allowed to be you.
You with frightened blood and plagued by cameras from beyond and dancing sort of.
You with no magic that has become a new magic of ticks and clicks. Hit it with a stick

Metal, it is now,
a moment! I have stopped
aware of my complete apparent lack of comfort.

Numbers. Points in the dark.
Heaven. Old time.
Shame. Shame the stupid soiled person, the actor.

You out there, there is a way.
A way to break out!
You mate with flames

You forgot-

you forget

You must have been

You must be:

A. Devil

B. Angel

C. Motion

D. Dog

E. Electric

F. Made by Men

C. Computer, broken circuits cutting other circuits


inside and around

outside holding you in.

Inside screaming


Your friends are keeping you here

They need someone too, Love.

LOVE TERRIBLE LOVE


LOVE TERRIBLE LOVE


STAY WITH ME

The Body

for Ish Klein

Eric says all my dreams are in my body
All my bad dreams
About betrayal
I don’t want to be in this body anymore
That holds all the betrayal of the universe
Its tissues bluing all day into blue-black
Blood balloon
One day all that blood will be dark and grey
I want to be an unearthly body instead of this one
I want to be a body that is free of dreams
The imagination
I never wanted the imagination within my legs and arms anyway
Blacking within it like forgotten light
Umbrella limbs full of potential light
I never wanted to be the person who tells you
That I believe in you
So that you never had to listen to anyone else
I never wanted
You to forget about me
Freeze me into arctic lust
Until I am never the body
That is amber in the sun
The people, I never wanted the people
To touch my body like they owned it
In dreams
On earth
In real life
I wanted people to believe in my body for once
Not my dreams
That you can walk through in wonderment
Because they are so beautiful
The whole world, the people
They never believed in my body
They only ever believed in their own bodies
Walking and talking
Through the world
Mimetic knights
The people
They only ever believed in their own similar bodies
Flattened pieces of videotape
Matted pictures, red and black
And twinned
The twinned heads and feet
The pickled noses, the twins
The people
Lost and adorned
They only ever believed in the things that were similar
They only ever believed in the cold

english bulldog puppies

These dogs make me want to live forever.

Talking fish

After reading this article, I don't want to eat fish anymore. And this after I just started eating fish again after two years of fishlessness.

Check it out:

Article about the sounds of fish

Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now (Live, 1970)

"But now its just another show
You leave em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away"

Suicide - Ghost Rider

Nelly Furtado Say it Right

This song is so sad.

Pinkberry Song

i wonder should i get it plain or green tea, doesn't matter to me
don't care how long i have to wait,
i like it in the rain, or in the winter time
like a burst of sunshine, good for my body, good for my mouth,
good for my mind, good with the family, good with the friend, with the lover, or alone
it's an obsession, pure and delightful, simple and heavenly
and guilt-free, yummy! pinkberry

iChat Screenshots-possible picture pool?

Hey, does anybody out there want to start an iChat screenshots picture pool on Flickr?

Here's what I have so far: iChat photos

Maybe there is one already. I can't imagine there wouldn't be. It would be cool to have a poetry one.

Deadpan poems in Glitterpony Magazine

Check out some more of my Deadpan collaboration with Thom Donovan in the latest issue of Glitterpony. Glitterpony is the brainchild of the fabulous Natalie Lyalin and the fabulous Jon Link, both Sagittariuses. I gotta stop. Sometime soon, I promise I'll stop. Soon.

Here are the poems: Deadpan poems in Glitterpony.

Cat Power: The Moon

"the moon is not only beautiful
it is so far away
the moon is not only ice cold
it is here to stay"

Very Small Movies

Yesterday, I communicated via puppets with some friends on ichat way into the night:



But before that I went to a party with my work friends and I had to walk for what seemed like a very long time by myself on a woodsy street. I made this movie because I wanted to remember the feeling of walking by myself on the street:



And then after I made the movie, I started thinking about other very short movies I have randomly made within the last year. Here are a few below:



That one I made when Laura and I were in Ithaca, NY and this nice woman was driving us to the train station. Below is one from the same trip when we were on the bus:



Here are some dogs in NY:



And then here are some water ripples in a pond:



I have some more, but I'll spare you the overload. Still, looking at them has made me consider how much the lack of a regular performative element in them might have something to do with their being tied to the natural world in some way (animals, trees). Anyway, very small movies really interest me lately. Making very small movies seems to be some way to capture the memory moments of a life that are actually important and don't have much to do with performance, except the performance of the everyday. Still, the everyday has a style and very small movies show this style, this joy of living. I don't think there is anything I could say about them that wouldn't seem extremely naive and simplistic to anyone with any expertise in film, but I have noticed that video sites like youtube and vimeo have more than likely bred an explosion of many short movies (under 30 seconds). When visiting the youtube channels of my poetry peers for instance, I have noticed that many of them seem interested in capturing moments in very short movies that have no obvious narrative, are wholly quotidian in their beauty. As well, there are probably millions of very small movies on sites like youtube, such as the millions of movies of cute moments between people and their dogs (I have looked at all of these, I think). Still, why is capturing and archiving these small moments so important to us as a culture? I don't know why, but the possible answers seem fascinating.

This interests me too because I've been working on an ethnography this past Spring of an after-school science program and very often in an attempt to capture unperformative moments of the children's learning, I have taken very short movies of their interactions. In capturing the social aspects of a learning event, it seems that a culmination of very short movies might show more about their learning than weeding through a continuous record. The performance is in the off and on switch, but the players, often unaware of the small moments being captured, are more true to the real life I want to better understand to aid learning in the future within these short movies.

What matters in a human life is not always the very dramatic moments that are infused with high meaning. We know this. What makes life good is being content through an accumulation of very small moments. Gorky knew this always. We have always known this all along. Still, the materials of this, in very short moving pictures, haunt me in a way that my memories haunt me. Because the past goes into a hole in the universe we can never fully capture, even as the past is the very thing that gives any existence at all any meaning.

No, that is not entirely true. I mean the future gives meaning, too.

When I was talking about this with EB this morning, he told me about the Early Edison films and how they captured very small moments as people experimented with the medium of film. Here is a snippet of them:



That kiss is amazing. Still, it is not these moments that I am thinking of now exactly, although they are related and beautiful. I am thinking of the moments up until the limit that make the limit +1. These are the moments that important to the poetry of our time.

Rock Star - N.E.R.D.

"You think the way you lives okay
You think posing
Will save the day
You think we don't see
That you're running
Better call your boys
'Cause I'm coming"

"I guess
You ain't heard that we swallow guys
It's too damn late to apologize
Will you see the mantle or will you see the skies

It's almost over now
It's almost over now"

Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead

James Taylor - Something In the Way She Moves - Live Concert

"Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning,
And I find myself careening
Into places where I should not let me go.
-- she has the power to go where no one else can find me,
Yes, and to silently remind me
Of the happiness and good times that I know, you know."

Grease - You Are The One That I Want

"If you're filled
with affection
you're too shy to convey,
meditate in my direction.
Feel your way."

Bob Dylan - Simple Twist of Fate (1975)

"They walked along by the old canal
A little confused, I remember well
And stopped into a strange hotel with a neon burnin' bright.
He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train
Moving with a simple twist of fate."

Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero/No Limit

"My love she speaks like silence,
Without ideals or violence,
She doesn't have to say she's faithful,
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire.
People carry roses,
Make promises by the hours,
My love she laughs like the flowers,
Valentines can't buy her."

Two great things I saw yesterday

I saw Giant #3 by Zhang Huan in a gallery yesterday (I wish I remembered the name of the gallery). Here are some pictures of it. If you click on those images, you can see them better.

I was not expecting it to be so big. It must be at least 100 feet if you stretched the thing from end to end. The whole giant is made out of animal hides, tacked together, hooves and all. I think art should punch you in the face from time to time. That thing really knocked me out.

In the exhibit, there was some text by Huan about how conceptual art does not serve him and how social realism always serves what his body wants to say. I am completely misquoting him and probably misrepresenting him, too. But whatever he said, I loved.

Also, in another gallery, I saw this painting "You Can't Stop and Smell the Roses with Amphetamine Psychosis" by Larry Johnson.


I think the painting is actually called "Untitled (Courtney Love)." I have always liked her. Anyway, I detest drugs, but something about those woods in the painting gives me the creeps in the best possible way. I have always been a sucker for art about psychological dysfunction. I think because this is the stuff that is the fucking truth.

I have no idea what Johnson's painting has to do with this Livejournal entry. I still don't understand what Livejournal is. Do people still really use that? I think I missed this part of the internet.

I have noticed that Livejournal seems to give license to people acting inordinately goofy or sad and wonder why that is.

Just wanted to share some beauty with you. Hope you'll check these artists and their work out more today.

Renting Babies

Dear EB,

You can rent babies!

Look: Renting Babies

DL

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

UPDATE!! on Savage Grace, the movie

So, I finally saw Savage Grace. And while fellow natural redhead Julianne Moore, the greatest and most beautiful actress alive today, can do no real wrong in my eyes, I found the movie so profoundly disturbing in the worst possible ways that it has given me horrific dreams for days. Listen, I thought the movie was going to be about bakelite. I love bakelite. This movie is more about insanity than bakelite. The combination sounds cool, but I have had my fill of insanity for a lifetime. And it wasn't a combination really. Where was the bakelite? I wanted to see at least a couple of people wearing bakelite and I didn't. So, I can't really recommend this movie, although it is not bad per se. And if you are into movies about insanity, I suggest seeing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest instead. If you are into bakelite, I suggest finding the people who are still selling it for cheap at yard sales because they don't yet understand its magical/economic worth.

Also, in other entertainment news, I would like to take this opportunity to say "In Your Face!" to the doubters and haters in England who didn't want Jay-Z to be in the Glastonbury festival cause they thought hip-hop is not rock. Hip-hop is everything. Just look at these sales: In Your Face Sales for Jay-Z in England.

And then, take a listen to the master: Amazing Jay-Z song.

You are not dead

I would love you if you were dead
But you are not dead you are alive
You body ringing in me, ringing true
Ringing true, not like a blue nerve net
Encased in glass
Not a red rubber heart encased in glass
Not a burned out body encased in glass
But a real thing, a soft thing
A soft and wild thing
I am so glad I left the world
And found the wildness beyond in you
I am so glad I was brave enough
To leave the place in me that was not wild
To go into the cave of life that is not dead

Style is Joy: Listen to this today

Listen to Bhanu Kapil today.

Style is Joy, cont.

Style is Joy. As it says:

"One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form."

"Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work."

Both of these gems are by The God of All Writing--Flaubert. All hail fellow fire sign, Gustave Flaubert, The God of All Writing.

More Style is Joy to come. Oh, more to come.

New reviews of AWE, famous coupling, and CA Conrad's Somatic Poetry Exercises

Check out a new review of my book AWE in InDigest Magazine.

Thanks so much InDigest Magazine and Jess Grover!!

Also, the wonderful Katie Fowley reviewed AWE in the recent Rain Taxi. Thanks Katie!!

Also, yeah, while you're at it, check out this site of famous astrological couples. I did!


(Can you believe that a Pisces woman and an Aquarius man could be happy forever AND make salad dressing--Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward? I could not.)

(I could believe that Hall and Oates are Libra/Aries though (you have to scroll down a bit.) That picture looks just like my buddy Laura and me--Libra/Aries.)

Also, you'd be remiss not to check out CA Conrad's latest Somatic Poetry Exercise (dedicated to genius Ish Klein) and follow it to the letter to write some beautiful poems. Write some garbage poems! Stop talking to people and write poems!! That's what I tell myself a lot. So, I guess that's what I'll tell you. But really I am telling that to myself. All day long.

Poems in The American Poetry Review

I have poems in the July/August 2008 issue of the The American Poetry Review, as part of a special Philadelphia poets section. Please check them out when you can. I think it is cool that this section came out at the same time as the awesome FANZINE Phillysound feature. Philadelphia is such an amazing place for a poet to live.

Phillysound on FANZINE

There is a Phillysound feature on FANZINE out. It is curated by CA Conrad and hosted by Thom Donovan. I think FANZINE is a really super site and Conrad and Thom have done an amazing job on the feature.

Here are my poems in the section. The first poem can be found in my chapbook, Tourmaline, put out recently by the great Transmission Press.

Tourmalines are very important to me. Sometimes I think about and look endlessly at pictures of watermelon tourmalines online. I have a necklace of them too, but I never wear it. I don't know why, but it is something about it being too powerful. Because tourmalines can come in so many colors, there is no way to ever get one clear, singular view of a piece of one and thus, in its raw forms, it is forever an image of simultaneity, in some ways too duality. To me, God and the world, the self and the world, are always in a state of togetherness and simultaneity. Even nothingness is always in state of oneness with somethingness, which is why people who believe in complete nothingness are wrong. The world is futile always just as it is meaningful, and so forth--spirit and object consistently and constantly circling one being (see quotations and poem below, and also the grey cat video). Of all the magical rocks in the universe, tourmalines might be my favorite.

Anyway, I digress, but I do hope you will check out the great Phillysound poems up on FANZINE today. I don't think any of them have to do with tourmalines.

Duality, outside and in

"Word's a sentence before it's a word."
--Ron Silliman

"What in this world
Keep us from tearing apart
No matter where I go I hear
The beating of your heart
I think about you
When the night is cold and dark
No one can move me
The way that you do
Nothing erases the feeling between me and you"
--Cyndi Lauper

"“Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them”
--L.S. Vygotsky

“He who gets nearer the sun is leader, the aristocrat of aristocrats, or he who, like Dostoievsky, gets nearest the moon of our non-being.”
--D.H. Lawrence

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them

--D.H. Lawrence

Duslo falls asleep

Skin

"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SKIN!"
--Bhanu Kapil

"And there was a booming above you
That night, black airplanes flew over the sea
And they were lowing and shifting like
Beached whales
Shelled snails
As you strained and you squinted to see
The retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry

You froze in your sand shoal
Prayed for your poor soul
Sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl
And when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke
My sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke

Then there was a silence you took to mean something:
Mean, run, sing
For alive you will evermore be
And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin'
Has gone east
While you're left to explain them to me
Released from their hairless and blind cavalry

With your hands in your pockets, stubbily running
To where I'm unfresh, undressed and yawning
Well, what is this craziness? This crazy talking?
You caught some small death when you were sleepwalking

It was a dark dream, darlin', it's over
The firebreather is beneath the clover
Beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever
A toothless hound-dog choking on a feather

But I took my fishingpole (fearing your fever)
Down to the swimminghole, where there grows bitter herb
That blooms but one day a year by the riverside - I'd bring it here:
Apply it gently
To the love you've lent me

While the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed
And the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze
And I watched how the water was kneading so neatly
Gone treacly
Nearly slowed to a stop in this heat
- frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath

Press on me: we are restless things
Webs of seaweed are swaddling
You call upon the dusk
Of the musk of a squid
Shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib

Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes
I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!
Smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened
Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking

And when the fire moves away
Fire moves away, son
Why would you say
I was the last one?

Scrape your knee; it is only skin
Makes the sound of violins
When you cut my hair, and leave the birds the trimmings
I am the happiest woman among all women"

--Joanna Newsom, "Only Skin"

$10 student rate to adopt an endangered sloth!

The evercaring Jason Z. just told me about an agency that rescues endangered sloths. For just $10 (a student rate) you can adopt a sloth! Here is the information: Save a Sloth

So, for $10, this is what you get in addition to saving a sloth:

"Package includes:
* 8X10 color photo of the sloth you will be adopting.
* Color information card about the type, and a personal history of your sloth.
* 8X111/2 Sloth Adoption Certificate.
* Annual issue of the 'Buttercup Newsletter'.
* individual wallet size photo cards of adoptive sloth with student's name."

Sloths are pretty fucking awesome in my view. If you don't believe me, then watch this video:

Cool baby sloth

Isn't it great how they put their arms over and under like that?

And then look at this video: Another cool baby sloth video

I love the sloth named Taz in that one.

This video made me sad when I watched it, especially for the first 40 seconds: Swimming sloth video

I don't think that sloth meant to be swimming. I think he was lost. He looked like me when I haven't eaten all day and am wandering around H&M. Anyway, it is nice when they save the sloth and bring him to a tree. (Sorry to give it away if you haven't watched the whole thing yet.)

Anyway, everyone should adopt a sloth.

Look What I Can Do Animals

This is my favorite toy artist of all time: Look What I Can Do

This is her Etsy shop: Browse and buy beautiful animals

And this is her great blog

I found out about her through looking at the pics from one of my favorite blogs ever: Bits and Bobbins

Oh, I am so glad I found out about her.

I am going to go look at her creatures now and dream of a room filled with them. Now that would be a great room for a poetry reading.

None of it matters

None of it matters, lost one
In the world
None of it matters
I went from water to waterfall
Green world to red world
I went from a world full of deer
To a world full of bears
The tissued world
To a world that was off set
I set the curtains
They said, Set the curtains
So I set the curtains
I spent August in bed
In the same clothes
I kept on the same clothes
For ten weeks
I changed my outfits
Five times a day
And no one listened
I got lost, I got found again
I was always lost
I will always be lost
I will never win at this game
I will never
Be the speaking thing they made me to be
I am not pronouns
Nor am I all of them
I am no I
I wander
And it doesn’t matter
I stay the course
I am a star-filled night
Among the unforgivable
I live within a grey world
Within a pretty one
Within one they made for me
I help you find your books
I made the books
I made them, world I held within me
It was no help
I looked at the world with dark eyes
In front of a grey house
I was always lost
In that house
I was always lost, a zero
Am I lost for good?
Shoot I don’t know
Mathematical laundress
Of the forgotten egret
I am
Glue me to ten sheets of paper
So that my skin sticks upon them
Write six blue letters upon my skin
I am all object
Throw me around the sky
And I will glisten, a red ball
Floating over buildings and boats
And the sun itself
Hang me on the moon
I am funny-shaped so far away
Stick me where the bunnies go
Let me lay there with them
And those awful ears upon me
Who knows within them
The secrets I will tell

Fight the Smears site

This is a great site: Obama's Fight the Smears site.

Check it out and spread the word.

I love these pandas

I love this story

This is so beautiful: picture of a long love
Another picture of them

Article on Poets on Painters

There is a great new article on Travis Nichols and Katie Geha's Poets on Painters project out today.

Click here to read the article.

Cast embedments in Clear Resin

I could watch this all day.

Leonard Cohen Hallelujah (Style is joy!)

Hey, hey, hey:
Style is joy!

"You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah"

Kate Bush-Wuthering Heights

"Ooh! Let me have it.
Let me grab your soul away.
Ooh! Let me have it.
Let me grab your soul away."

Kate Bush - Sat in Your Lap

"Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap.
Some say that knowledge is ho-ho-ho-ho.

I want to be a lawyer.
I want to be a scholar.
But I really can't be bothered.
Ooh, just gimme it quick, gimme it, gimme gimme gimme gimme!

Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho.
Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho.
Some say that heaven is hell.
Some say that hell is heaven.

I must admit, just when I think I'm king,
(I just begin.)
Just when I think I'm king, I must admit,
(I just begin.)
Just when I think everything's going great,
(I just begin,)
Hey, I get the break,
Hey, I'm gonna take it all--
(I just begin.)
When I'm king--
(-- just begin.)"

Stevie Nicks - Rooms On Fire

Always, this will always be my favorite song.

"Lovestoned," Justin Timberlake

Those flashing lights come from everywhere
The way they hit her I just stop and stare
She's got me love stoned
I think I'm love stoned
She's got me love stoned

I think that she knows, think that she knows, oh, oh
I think that she knows, think that she knows, oh, oh


Those flashing lights come from everywhere
The way they hit her I just stop and stare
I'm love stoned from everywhere and she knows
I think that she knows
Think that she knows, oh, oh

And now I walk around without a care
She's got me hooked
It just ain't fair, but I...
I'm love stoned and I could swear
That she knows
Think that she knows, oh, oh
She knows, she knows, oh, oh

CAConrad's (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises

CA Conrad's new Wolf Recording exercise on his (Soma)tic Poetry exercises page is just amazing! Check it out: Conrad's poetry exercises

Within the exercise, he asks the following questions of us: "How do you fit into the world you see? How you do not fit into the world? Wolves worry about such things all the time, making certain to understand where they fit."
These are really important questions to answer while you are writing a poem.

Also, I think the instincts and ideas behind his creation of the page are wondrous--to give exercises "free to everyone who want to write some poetry." There needs to be more pages like this. And until there are, I am so glad that CA Conrad continues to do his great and generous work. It is just what this world needs.

Also, I love this song: Lovestoned
Whenever I get to 3:30 in the song, I think of a woman all dressed up like a black butterfly gracefully dancing through Justin Timberlake's city streets.

Weird Deer has Deadpan today

Check out Weird Deer today for some of my Deadpan collaboration with Thom Donovan.

Memorizing things

I am working on an ongoing poetry/dance collaboration with Kathryn TeBordo, the most recent iteration of which will be a duet poetry/dance duet this Saturday in Philadelphia. Anyway, yesterday we were working on the thing and especially practicing memorizing the poems, so that we could say them in unison while dancing. And while memorizing with her, I realized that it has been a long time since I have memorized anything. Long ago, in 9th grade Latin class, I memorized declension endings with a kind of urgent passion I can still remember. I like to memorize things, like poems and lyrics to songs, because to me knowing means truly knowing if there is a drive to do so. The act of memorizing the poems with Kathryn made me think about how in schools it used to be quite customary for students to memorize poems and how this is basically a practice out of favor now (or one that has no space in most struggling public schools). Still, the experiential act of memorizing the constructed words of the poems yesterday was especially magical to me and worth noting here. In a poem, there is a space (and I mean space, as there are spatial relations in a poem's syntax) that one can walk through while reading. It is a deliberate space, as any piece of writing is. But more so than any other writing, a poem makes most obvious the object relations of words to themselves and to the world around them. When one puts in the work of memorizing poems, they become more in tune with the material state of words, their specific and magical states within specific poems. This is good. Schools should do more of this, but not in the way that they do so now. Now so, schools test memory by simple binary relationships of questions to right answers (I am thinking of NCLB testing most specifically). The right answer is simply the construction of things that are beautiful. Once you begin to know that, you can know anything. Or more so, you are well on your way to knowing.

Now memorize this song: I Just Want to Love You video because it is good.

Can I Get A...

Closet leg of The Tiny Tour up on Birdinsnow

Check out the closet leg of the Tiny Tour up on birdinsnow.com today. It features Eric Baus, Ish Klein, and me.

Mariah Carey - Say Somethin'

孔雀舞 - Peacock Dance

Awe seen in blue and yellow

manic/depression

Jeff Mangum, "Holland, 1945"

The dialogue here of sounds in Mangum's performance is more than simple duende as we have come to know it (is duende ever simple?), but instead is what EB always talks about in terms of the split of a voice (is this what you mean EB?) into something that is more an authentic self than a voice all whole, in its more mundane and everyday parts. I know it is in this splitting sound in Mangum that rises the song into oblivion (or takes it from there for us––which is the same difference). Jay-Z (below) has the split too, but it is more in his beat than in his voice.

Jay-Z, "Lost One"

May 30th, people! Get ready!

The best movie ever made will be out on May 30th, 2008. If you need me on that day, you can find me at your local cineplex, bawling my eyes out, laughing and yuckin' it up, taking notes on Julianne Moore's exact shade of hair color, sketching her outfits, and writing an entire book of poems about this movie. If you call to ask me a question on this day, my only answer to you will be "why." So, get your glad bags on and get ready for this movie, cause the world is not ready for a movie such as this one, but I am hoping that you are.

More sadness and longing from Camilla Schofield (or what we have all come to expect from her)

Milla, I really like your drawings from yesterday:





Could you draw these people sometime: Spiritual Love?

(Check out more of Camilla Schofield's One Doodle Every Day project here.)

Madonna Material Girl

The Magnetic Fields - All You Ever Do Is Walk Away

Love is Like a Bottle of Gin

Albert Camus in Algeria

Fear Not
(James Hampton)

Poor man's vision
Sleeping in a garage
Message revealed
Fear not

Where there is no vision
People perish

Throne of the third heaven
This is love
Fear not

Quiet men often keep secrets
Timing is everything

Pieces left
Pieces right
Holy ordinary
Fear not

Junk revelation
Tinfoil miracle
State of eternity

Where there is no vision
People perish

--Jones Purcell

Louise Nevelson with Hilton Kramer at The Guggenheim

"If the artist feels he must do everything it's folk art."

"The recognition of what you see is as important as what you do."

Staggering and horrible, but in the horror lies the how

For a school project, my friend Quinn found the statistics below about Philadelphia public schools. In 2007:

119 schools have no vocal music teacher (44% of the district's schools)
109 schools (41%) lack an art teacher

That's just Philadelphia and these numbers are on the rise.

Education itself, as an idea, has been on my mind for a few years now. And I just keep wondering: What is the purpose of our educational system these days? How are we educating anybody when we cut arts funding? Who and how are we educating anyone in our current system? I still believe that equal access to quality education is the key to a just society and the arts are key to a healthy educational system (for a whole host of reasons to innumerable to mention here.) So, it always follows for me that access to the arts for everyone is the key to a just society. It's plain and simple. We need to get back to this reality somehow. How is the question. Will I try to figure out this how? Yes, yes I will, I will try. Will you try to help me? I hope so. I need your help, now more than ever.

In the horror of anything, we can find the how. If we face the horror, we will find the how, as complex and mighty as it is to the horror. That is the truth. Do you want to live in a world where people have no idea what art is? Do you want to leave behind a world where people have no way to validate what they instinctively make (art) as worthwhile, as worthy as any endeavor? Artists, I am talking to you. Your art will mean nothing if we do not begin to train again the young artists in our schools today. You were young once, too. You went to school at some point. Do you remember the first teacher who made you feel like making art was important? For 41% of the schools in Philadelphia, hundreds, probably thousands, of students will never know what that’s like if we don’t try to take some action now.

I don’t know what the how is, but I do know to get there we need to face the fact that there is a problem. It seems like a lot of policymakers don't think there is a problem, but there is one. And action to take? Maybe just a real conversation among artists would be a start. I don't think that I am starting that conversation very well here, but maybe you can start some conversations among yourselves, and that would be a start, a good start. I would like that a lot.

A few months ago, I watched some kids make the encaustic pieces below in a Philadelphia school. My favorite is the joker one, cause while the boy was making it, he was looking at his favorite playing card, The Joker, dredged up from deep inside his pocket. The Imagination was with him then. I know The Imagination pretty well myself. It has been my friend since I was a young girl in a public school art class. I'm so glad this particularly wonderful boy has made friends with The Imagination early on. It is never too early to go to the other side. The other side is where real learning occurs. And learning, real learning––that's the point of everything.

Here's The Joker, seen in wax:

Gnarls Barkley - Run

Gwen Stefani- 4 in the morning

I love when glamorous people are sad.

Bob Dylan - Shelter From The Storm (1976 Hard Rain)

Juvenile - Back That Ass Up

Missy Elliott - She's A Bitch

Stop what you are doing right now and go to Weird Deer immediately

Go to Weird Deer right now and listen to Monica Fambrough's poem "Don't You Think Salt is Pretty." Go here to listen.

And if that is actually a question posed to me the reader, yes I DO think salt is pretty.

Thank you, Aaron, for writing me this poem

Tourmaline Sunday night
Aaron Tieger


I am writing this because
I crave the tactile pleasure
of purple ink on blue paper
or my lost black pen on white paper
or a pencil in the margin of a book
for a class I’d skip
to stay in bed & read
another book

It is Sunday night
and I am scared to go to bed
because I am scared to wake up
and put on my clothes and creep
to work like all
the other creeps. I ate too
much sugar & tried
to distract myself from feeling
like shit by feeling
like shit but it
didn’t work & now I feel
like shit. This world
scares me because every time
I see the road my lights
go out & I wake
& am lost & wondering
about the car
but when I find the car my keys
don’t fit & I know I have to find
another car & it takes me so long
with cars & I want to just walk or
better stay home but you need
a car so I find a car I like
OK & I buy the car & get
my plates & get the bill
for the excise tax which
I never pay & now I have car
that’s new to me but old
enough that little things
like wipers
go wrong & if the wipers
go wrong what’s stopping the brakes
or lights from going just
when the road comes
up in the dark
tonight

I am writing this tonight
because my friend Dottie’s
in my head reading poems
very loudly. Dottie reads
loudly it is like a dagger
of soul driving into
your soul when she talks about flowers
& birds & yes
her breasts. My heart runs
the way DL writes & if
I could I would tell her to make
a poem in which I am a hot
little bird on a greenhouse roof
& inside the greenhouse a bucket
of ice melts with a bottle of ambition
floating amidst the plants & warming
up to the point of melting

I am writing this tonight
I am using a lot of words more
than is my wont I don’t
think I am saying much I could maybe
trim a bit down but I’m trying
to distract myself and meditate
on the scratch of ink on a page
like skin the thin skin over a heart
that knows not what it knows
more words
footsteps on the ceiling cat snores
there is an endless amount of objective
correlative in my apartment alone
I think I have written myself down & maybe
can boil this
all down:

Dottie,
It’s Sunday night.
I hate my job. I love
your book.

____________________________________________

This one's for you:

Mariah Carey - Get Your Number (High Quality)

Brandy Afrodisiac

Willis on PennSound today

Yay, one of my favorite poets is featured on PennSound today! You have to listen to Elizabeth Willis:

EW's page on PennSound

Electric Six - Dance Commander

This guy is me every night.

"Go red go red, laugh white."

-Stein, Tender Buttons

Phil Collins - Sussudio

Grand canyon

Things to read, watch, and do

Read this

Watch this

Do this

Now listen to the sweet Gemini sounds of Stevie Nicks and Kanye West below.

Stevie Nicks-Rhiannon

Kanye West Flashing Lights

Kanye West Homecoming

Madonna ft. Justin Timberlake 4 Minutes (Offical Video)

Yes!!!!! I have been waiting for this for weeks!!

"If you feel it, it must be real."
Oh yes, that is so true!

M.I.A. - Jimmy

INXS-never tear us apart rk2

Rocky Top, TN

By Dolly Parton

"Wish that I was on ole Rocky Top,
Down in the Tennessee hills.
Ain't no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top,
Ain't no telephone bills.

Once I had me a man on Rocky Top,
Half bear the other half cat.
Well he was as wild as a mink, but he was sweet as soda pop,
I often think about that.

Rocky Top, you'll always be
Home sweet home to me.
Good ole Rocky Top,
Rocky top Tennessee, Rocky Top Tennessee.

Now once two strangers climbed on Rocky Top,
Lookin' for a moonshine still.
Strangers ain't come down from Rocky Top,
Some they never will.

Did you know corn don't grow at all on Rocky Top,
The dirt's too rocky by far.
And that's why all the folks on Rocky Top
Get their corn from a jar.

Rocky Top, you'll always be
Home sweet home to me.
Good ole Rocky Top,
Rocky Top Tennessee, Rocky Top Tennessee.

Now I've had years of cramped up city life,
Trapped like a duck in a pen.
All I know is it's a dang burn pity life
Can't be simple again.

Rocky Top, you'll always be
Home sweet home to me.
Good ole Rocky Top,
Rocky top Tennessee, Rocky Top Tennessee.

Rocky Top Tennessee, Rocky Top Tennessee.
Rocky Top Tennesee eee eee eee.
Rock-ee-topp."

Beautiful baby shoes

Find gorgeous dollbaby shoes here.

James Hampton

I love James Hampton's artwork.

Some more information about him can be found here. Enjoy and happy Spring!