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!

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