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Poem in Love with Myself
Poem that Takes an Hour to Upload
Poem of Forgotten Evenings
Poem of Coroners
sound of axes
and African retribution
I've pretended not to know you long enough
Africa
and I pretend
standing at this bus stop
in a coat
that resembles my father's
the bank father.
Long slender line reminds me that it's nearly Christmas.
Sort of: being there, or being awake. | These emissions: counter-examples of honesty. | Trying: being in the type. | When a figure named Wenderoth conspires: writing. | A calculated instance (among distrust): lost in Europe. | We thought it was Dutch: it was Flemish. | As in: where to go next. | Running out of drink, then: where is the fountain. | Trying: to angle the light. | Grossly spiritual, she takes a number: she is waiting. | Productive backslide: thinking back to terms. | I am here: you are there. | How many times have you been there: and I’ve choked. | A sliver of counter-honesty: spicy discussion. | Nonetheless, remembering: remembering. | The crowd was fucked: fucked. | Bouncing a ball: waiting for the next line. | Moment by the moment, the web was built: falters. | Later: taking a test. | That writer who wrote of love and fame: that writer who died. | Production ceased: of course. | Making noises with the pen: scratch, tap. | And when she turns to me: forgetting amnesty. | The life gets better, but the writing: worse. | Dialing up: tuning (getting) out. | Indecision is insufferable: then, the rain. | When the masculine forecloses: athletic poem. | A drop: then, sound. | Trying: negotiating a wave. | Thinking it was Cage, knowing finally: Eno. | Pacing back and forth, smoking, fidgeting: behavior. | Cars on the highway: moving forth into adventure. | When it bleeds: satire. | Scanning the crowd for the familiar: faces. | Two words together that make a dull story: theory. | Crying: public address. | Anticipating: public demonstrations. | When the polls close: catharsis of the new naive. | On the streets, garbage, dust: sediment. | I think: I have invented. | Blowing the nose into an ashtray: improbable dissent. | The pathology of getting it wrong: dada. | Tryng to circulate among nuance: flexing the Jamesian. | And when the table cleared, and the conversation ceased: my family. | Birds warble: morning. | Cheap jokes and laughing gas: community. | The image profoundly dithers: the site is ugly. | When the chips are finally counted: pragmatism. | No longer: puppet of stars. | No longer: victim of the contiguous. | No longer: angling to be a stable critic. | After a failure of short-term memory: renew the streets. | Every temp its turn: every type its torque.
There seems to be no shortage these days of quickie online book reviews since the advent of poetry blogs and the evolution of the "constant critic." So perhaps this is something you've never thought you didn't want to have, but I've folded all of the "little reviews" from 1998-2002 that used to be on arras.net into a single .pdf file. They've been returned to their pristine single-run-on-paragraph form which I think is more truthful to the style of the writing (and thinking) itself. I've deleted that section of the site since it hadn't been added to in years and it was getting musty -- this is a way to just put this set behind me. There are other reviews I just never revised enough to put on the site; some of these are still scattered around the internet, catch them if you can. Arras.net, in the meantime, is going through a wacko-Jacko facelift which you'll see early next year. Click on the Big Mouth -- a giant grenadier Albatrossia pectoralis -- to download:
[Here's another guy that has a Kinski fixation -- he does an amazing impersonation, but there's more to his act than that. He rides on the Kinski thing to both eviscerate and, in some oblique way, celebrate the more twisted sides of avant-gare (and Fantasy Island) machismo. He's been hilarious the two times I've seen him at the Little Theater events at Tonic (I'll be doing a bit there too, my own Kinski-inspired play, later in January), which, if you don't know about, is a good place to catch a sampling of the garage-experimental scene in Brooklyn and New York. Linas is kind of a cross between Andy Kaufman doing Mighty Mouse and the guys from Ween -- kind of conceptual, schoolboy-ish stuff that is nonetheless technically mind-blowing (I mean acting technique, not multimedia, which he uses sparingly) and terribly funny. He's got the Artaud-like Kinski poetry reading that you hear bits of in "My Best Fiend," the Herzog documentary, down cold.]
January 8-18 , 2003
The Club
Thursday - Saturday 10:00pm
Sunday 5:30pm
Tickets $15.00
Box: 212.475.7710
Linas Phillips makes his La MaMa debut with LINAS IS KINSKI, a piece about one of Germany's most famous actors. Mr. Phillips, a "young turk" from NYU's Experimental Theater wing, is "obsessed" (in his own words) with the late crazed German actor, and in this show, attempts to recreate what it would have felt like to see Kinski perform live. Beside his movies, which are well-known to Americans, Kinski sold out large stadiums with poetry recitals that lasted for hours. Phillips's script, performed overwhelmingly in English but occasionally in the original German, contains poetry that Kinski actually performed and texts compiled from interviews Kinski gave.
If you only get out to see one show this year, make sure it's this one! Placebo Sunrise, their bit from I think two years ago now, was a stunner -- do a web search, I'm sure some reviews will show up -- and from what I hear they just get better and better. Kind of acrobatic, brainy, irreverent, gothic spooky narratives, etc., but also one of those rare shows in which depth-of-field becomes a plaything of the gods. But don't take my word for it -- go to the show and prove me wrong!
The National Theater of the United States of America presents
What’s That On My HEAD?!?
created and performed bythe NTUSA
Stage Management by Rollo Royce
Lighting Design by Ben Kato
Costume Design by Kirstin Tobiasson
Sound by Jody Elff and Porkhed Stu
5 Glorious Weeks!
January 8 to February 8
Show runs Thursday-Sunday at 8 pm
Special Matinee Show on Sunday, January 11 at 2 pm
at the NEST arts complex
88 Front Street (corner of Washington) in DUMBO, Brooklyn
A, C, F, 2 and 3 trains, first stops in Brooklyn
YOU PAY!
$15!
Seating is Limited! MAKE reservations! call 212.615.6607.
For all other inquiries call 718.852.6807.
www.ntusa.org
[Another result of the recent visit of the two space Canadiens. And with a photo by Sylvia Plachy to boot!]
The Village Voice: Books: Crystal Method by Ed Park
Just finished reading this one last week -- given to me by its editor, Darren Wershler-Henry, a sort of cornucopic chuckle-patch of diverse, earth-shaking cultural products, on his most recent trip to New York.
This book is so great and beautifully, apparently effortlessly, written -- the VV actually used the word "disgustingly" to describe the feeling one gets, as a writer, reading such amazing prose, but I'd be risking a revolt to agree -- I can't help but think a "best poetry book of year" huzzah andor encomium would be forthcoming were one to edit out the narrative continuities (and maybe some of the bits about losing weight), letting the flow of the Proustian rambles take centerstage.
Some of it reads like part of Rimbaud's Illuminations, and the longish autobiographical film treatment, "A Child of No Qualities," riffing off the title of Robert Musil's famous novel, suggests what Maddin could do were he to devote a book to a single work. Not that I would want to see a halt in the production of the films, which include Careful (one of Ashbery's all-time favorites, I hear), Archangel, Tales from the Gimli Hospital (just caught that on tape), Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, and the amazing 5-minute pseudo Soviet agit-prop Heart of the World (the cover image of the book is of the heroine in that film).
Here's a slice from one of his reviews for the Village Voice -- I don't know if Maddin included the unedited version of this piece or the version that I am presently copping from the VV's website. (I can't help but think that J.H. Prynne's next chapbook is going to be called "Unprecedented Posture of Prurience Enmarbled.")
"Savagely lashed by her own tresses while Destiny blasts her soul, the diva cries out for vengeance, cries out with her entire body, and this is what is most spectacular about the diva film—the vocabulary of the body! Aided only in part by as many as 30 drool-inducing costume changes per film, the diva's body twists and ripples in endless metamorphoses expressing wave upon wave of inner tumult. Ever so slowly—for the film's time is the diva's time!—and in a fashion completely alien to our New World eyes, do the torso and its limbs strain toward an unprecedented posture of prurience enmarbled, and upon achieving this shocking pose, move on to the next astonishing attitude, unfurling the fingers first, languidly allowing these digits to splay about the face and the bosom of the diva and in so doing inscribe upon those marvelous surfaces the plots of all stories from all times.
During the screenings you can't help imagining you sit next to Wayne Koestenbaum, that great curator of history's taxidermied opera divas, chronicler of their conduct, and exegete of their every signifier. You pretend you've introduced him to these florid films and by doing so you've struck him dumb. The cine-diva's vocabulary smites him with its vastness, strangeness, and uncanny accessibility—like hieroglyphics made suddenly readable."
This is of the slighter journalistic pieces in the book -- the best and perhaps most developed is his story on the filming of the Osmond's biopic in Winnipeg -- you can probably find that online also -- in which he strikes a peculiarly intimate friendship with the actor that plays the young Donny. BTW, I ran into Wayne Koestenbaum in the elevator today and discovered he's an occasional "anonymous" reader of FSC (which, in case you haven't noticed, is somewhat more lively recently, both with my activity and that of the avenging spam).
Well, I still have my De Kooning to aspire to (jerk)
— with a cursed lorgnette — no real rudder
philosophy. I can have all those features (impaled on a stake,
runner up in the gubernatorial campaign
in NYC) — blending in when the volume control
of all their heads
is tipped toward ten.
Some of this screaming from Tan Dun seems to reflect
this impassiveness, cathartic but recorded,
so I can imagine this tempestuous
ritual is also something being listened to by Bob
Mould, in Cleveland — insensate.
For your pleasure: try the Mount Rushmore posture
for any longer than 15 years, and see if
the revelation of narcissism is something that suits
Devandra any more
than it suits
you — true details
deflect, the untrue are absorbed
— natch.
We were impressed by his Frank O’Hara imitations
on the plane, though it sounded like French soufflé
fed through a Kaos box — and given
an “Asian mom” perm.
“I never seen this room looking so good.”
AAA:
Another American Artist
in 200 cubits or less marks shadows
with copper-wire pigeon toes, the “not-me” syndrome
(“not-me shadows, not me asylum!”)
and revisits the Star Wars trash compacter scene
by suggesting Olive Oil’s
knees are stronger than
iron — and were first imagined by Alfred Hitchcock
skimming through Clayton Eshlemen’s palindrome bin.
“My little idea is in pieces until I finish this work.”
My idea
is in parts. I’d take up a samovar
and play whist there with the Marx
Brothers while everyone and I
My idea is a heart in the basement
UNTER DEM LINOLEUM
“p-thuck! p-thuck! p-thuck!” (a purring sound)
(echoes of Philip Guston) other terrestrial hauntings
decaptivated by Fisher-Price
joys,
now that the idea of the flood has subsided.
Is this what it’s like
to sleep in a pile
of corpses?
I woke up because my dentures were dirty
and all the thinking was like 1975.
She was there. So was
she. And she was there. We called her
Flexible Mitten.
The pose of the “pulse in Soho” makes my
hair follicles screech, but that’s before
I was disabused
of the inevitability
(houses made of Saran Wrap)
— of the inevitability of death.
I can’t say I feel much better now.
When they had that hinge joint installed
in the putter, I was the star
of a TV series that took place
in the Bronx
but was secretly filmed
in Toronto — why’d they do that?
As the days grow longer
I become emphatic 7.
A little melancholy,
a little tragedy,
a little Zoloft
adds to a man’s character.
A little heart-cutting strings means
that your cosmopolitan Tourette’s
hasn’t entirely alienated you from those
who might love
you.
It’s like a famous rapper’s style
that’s somehow mellowed in the plastic
wrap
but is good snuggling music.
I just cooked three different
dishes of the “white trash”
variety,
like Uh-ma used to make.
I’ll bring them to work, I’ll mix them all up,
I’ll be richly contented.
He learned the seven Gracias
in the Countess Second’s
flat. The reality principle changed the face
of religious discipline: tossed up girls
with Aquinas buttocks.
Afterwards,
spilled Cosmos made patterns
of roses in the pool. Raoul Vaneigem
ended up on one of those Iraqi playing cards.
To be free,
and ice skating! Marvel of the furry
caterpillar scooting across
fragrant, come-and-get-em lawns.
We are saddened.
Communist floes icened
his face. Our country pays Puritanism
to heave out doubt.
We are the floridas of Tulsa,
but we are the cavities of the Future!
Dear Brian,
Just read your piece on Pound. I especially appreciate your critique of the "state of things" in the final paragraph. Most important and useful to point out this "with us or against" mentality prevelant on both sides of the verse culture divide.
On the one hand, the avant-garde (in general) re-gardes the "official verse culture" as some sort of monolithic, programmatic, homogeneous whole, which attitude eschews the whole issue of having to take account the actual work of the "mainstream" (whatever that means in poetry), allowing readers (by which I mean our generation of poets, who've grown up with the divide as more or less a given) to simply write off the majority of American poetry in favor paying close attention to a small faction within the broader scheme.
On the other hand, many "mainstream" poets tend toward the same behavior, smugly assured of their genius and the inherent "quality" of their work by legions of editors and academics whose job it is to "authorize" authors for popular consumption. Many of them don't even know a single avant-garde poet by name, and many use the same dismissive gesture directed at them by the avants through equally homegeonizing terms such as "language poetry" or even "avant-garde."
But what is the value of this division? Is it politically efficacious? Is it intellectually ethical? One can't read everything, but must one choose what to read based solely on what you aptly term "cultural allegiance"?
What has been attractive to me about "difficult" work (which need not necessarily mean "avant-garde," cf. Ed Roberson or Yusef Komunyakaa) is that it attempts to deal with complexity on its own terms. Perhaps a better word for complexity would be "irreducibility." Difficult poetry seeks the irreducible, which might itself be defined as "untranslatable complexity."
I would distinguish this term from the related "negative capability" in that it points away from the subjectivity of the artist in the production of art (or the spectator in its appreciation of art) and toward the orientation of the work itself. Irreducibility is that complexity (of being, not NECESSARILY of linguistic difficulty) which resides in the work, not as static form, but as that which lives.
I admire Pound (cautiously) precisely because he understands in his work that complexity is comprised of "variety, optimism and excitement," not of ideological fealty, academic sanction, eshatological ennui or transgression as a value in and for itself.
One of the most moving and interesting things I have heard from the Pound cult of the 50's was Jackson Mac Low talking about admiring Pound's works despite his fascism. At 85, he said found himself still wrestling with this apparent contradiction. That, my friend, is negative capability, to stay optimistically IN the complexity, in the irreducibility, knowing it will not, cannot, ever be resolved.
Truly,
Mike
I don't know why I find this site so amusing. Some of the ugliest, most expressionistic creatures I've ever seen, can't believe we're sharing the same planet! I look forward to seeing the new IMAX Volcanoes of the Deep Sea very soon -- better than the new Matrix! I predict that there will be a new fad, like there was in the early 20th century for African masks and other forms of neo-Orientalism, based on these photographs and others like them -- you heard it here first.
http://people.whitman.edu/%7Eyancey/midwater.html
I never heard of this site before, but there're tons of readings here, including my strange bit from E-poetry 2001 where I basically read the stock quotes from Kenny Goldsmith's Day while the Dreamlife was projected.
http://www.factoryschool.org/content/sounds/havanaglen.html
[Here's a Christmas poem I distributed -- or attempted to distribute -- in lieu of gifts 12 or so years ago when I was broke and America was waging war on Iraq. Nothing much has changed, so I guess it's still relevant. I was reading a lot of Auden at the time as you can probably tell. There's also a touch of misanthropy (I tried to save it with the saccharine final lines) which held me back from actually making copies for my relatives, so no one's actually seen this poem except my old school chum Thomas Crofts. Happy Xmas!]
IF this Christmas you feel
nothing but unique gall
at ceremonies which seem
the indecipherable sum
to a human mathematic:
the human mind is stuck
in Thought’s thorns and pricks
--might as well get him socks!
If through winter’s mist
shouts the routine Must
and pleasures for the kids
don’t taunt experienced heads
like color for a sister’s
nightgown, or dear brother’s
difficult taste in hats
or brand-names for the aunts
If for the special racket
you finger the vacant pocket
swear one time you had it
now some bureaucrat’s got it
to finance a mutual war
--if in department store
your spiteful credit card
whispers what you most feared
If you have marked dissent
of a conscience sorely bent
by measures you have taken
to service each guest wine
--though not wine for a king
the mind now fully swung
to conclude the season’s ill
with a long, long-distance call
--Then, presuppose a pass
a lucky, explored course
between the gift of chance
and awkward social science
--a poem is what you mean:
the riddle of deliberate man
whether object or good dead
is solved by the schemer’s word.
[Brenda Ijima set me up with this gig... I'll probably read from a new sequence called "Pasha Noise," which if you've heard it before is quite different now, and maybe discuss Pound's Mauberley, since my poem's quasi-based on that one.]
CASPER JONES CAFE READING/TALKING/MEDIA SERIES
PLEASE COME!
TUESDAY DECEMBER 9, 7:00 PM, AT CASPER JONES CAFE IN BROOKLYN
___
Brian Kim Stefans is the author of Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics (Atelos, 2003)
Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs published his lastest collection of poems JAI-LAI FOR AUTOCRATS on the ocassion of Stefans' talk/reading at Casper Jones. Stefans writes numerous reviews, many of which can be found on his blog: Free Space Comix (www.arras.net/weblog). He lives in Brooklyn.
Sue Landers is the author of 248 mgs., a panic picnic (O Books, 2003)
This book explores the emotional and socio-political lives of a cast of characters based on autobiography, but devised by sound. Some characters are the same character under different names. The book's claustrophobic tercets combined with spiraling repetition help foreground the importance of artifice and code, the very elements the book's characters undermine, complicate, and expose. The code is a score. To sound out the story.
"This is a daring and contemporary voice that speaks of pills, guns, and of shame. The story is captivating, the echoes of recurring themes and stanzas are haunting: this book is a blast"--Anne Tardos.
She is also is co-editor of the magazine Pom2. She lives in Brooklyn.
Casper Jones House Cafe Bar Lounge
440 Bergen Street
between 5th Ave. & Flatbush Ave.
Parkslope, Brooklyn
(718) 399-8741
take the Q train to 7th Ave or the 2/3 train to Bergen Street
Contact Brenda Iijima or Alan Sondheim for further information.
Brenda Iijima: yoyolabs@hotmail.com
Alan Sondheim: sondheim@panix.com