A Walker Walking Too, Walker

Catchya a Carp

2011-04-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

Never actually do.
Stupid lily pad's
stupid. xxxxxxOr
the accuracy in
the baiting. What
of it--worms and
creamed kernels
of corn musked by
all the tackle's plastic
xxxxxxxxflies off
the hook's anyhow.
But I forget I'm sick
xxxxxof fishing. And I
forget I'm always sick
xxxxxxxxxxxxxfishing.
Of what--we are grateful
for life? A snap
(save) of the swivel
(me)--damn
bass stole the hard
hope of inadequate
tess. All's control,
supposing to be my
Canada, is minimal.
Supposing to be my own
great luff--a following
of an other's will.
The world allows us
to move: the catching of
a whale
xxxxxxin a lake. The fight
of it--but look! Two
red lighters on the floor
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxover there.

The First Winter Snow

2010-12-01T14:32:00.000-08:00

Oh, pretty girl, you have trapped

yourself in the wrong body. Twenty

extra pounds hang like a lumpy

tapestry on your perfect mammal nature.

Three months ago you were like a

deer staring at the first winter snow.

Now Aphrodite thumbs her nose at you

and tells stories behind your back.

-Richard Brautigan

Re: Wordsworth

2010-11-16T19:21:00.000-08:00

As I venture further into Wordsworth's 1805 Prelude I have noticed striking similarities and poetic aesthetic choices within it that many of my favorite, more contemporary poets continue to utilize (not to mention my own work). This could quite possibly be the greatest poem I have read to date. This poem seems to be, at least so far (I just finished Book 3 of 13), strictly procedural. What I mean is that Wordsworth's Prelude is a poem about the instance of its making. There is a presence of the present within the poem that is at play with the fact that the poem itself is referential to its own past as well as Wordsworth's. There is more poetic insight within this poem than an actual poem, and therein lies its strangeness--this is first and foremost a poem, but unlike his contemporaries and predecessors, Wordsworth's own poetic process is being evaluated throughout. It's a poem for poets--a proclamation of ambition and failure and success all at the same moment. The poem reads as if it were written in the 20th century at times and is as fresh today (to me) as it was in 1805. My appreciation for Wordsworth before diving into his work the past few months was marginal at best. I would encourage all of you to revisit those poets you may have, at some point, dismissed for whatever reason. There may be the greatest poem ever written awaiting you.

Some favorite portions:

And now it would content me to yield up

Those lofty hopes awhile, for present gifts

Of humbler industry. But, o dear friend,

The poet, gentle creature as he is,

Has like the lover his unruly times -

His fits when he is neither sick nor well,

Though no distress be near him but his own

Unmanageable thoughts. (Wordsworth, Prelude, Book I, Lines 142-149)

Ah me, that all

The terrors, all the early miseries,

Regrets, vexations, lassitudes, that all

The thoughts and feelings which have been infused

Into my mind, should ever have made up

The calm existence that is mine when I

Am worthy of myself. (Wordsworth, Prelude, Book I, Lines 355-361)

Back

2010-09-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

When we last left our hero...

Read as much Wordsworth as you can. So I'm taking the graduate seminar, "Wordsworth and His Circle" with Martin Corless-Smith. I was always intrigued by the romantics for their audacity to write poems to essentially save the world. There isn't that kind of poetics any longer, or if there is, I haven't come across it yet. An explanation for this, I will posit, stems from our(poets) lack of ambition. Ambition not only insofar as production and output of poems, but a lack of concern for the grandness of what a poem can be. I'm not saying this is a new end of mine by any means. However, it is interesting to read poems and read about poets, who at one point, believed poetry could achieve certain things that a variety of wars, genocides, and indifference seem to have swept away.

That being said, what is poetry? According to Martin, poetry is seen by many (and this was prefaced with the idea that poetry has in fact earned this reputation) as, "a parlor game for intellectuals." This, as far as I can tell, may indeed be the case. Who reads poems outside of poets? My stance on publishing is ambivalence and indifference. A poem is something that is and will always be regardless of whether it is published today, tomorrow, or the next decade. What do I get outside of some fleeting feeling of satisfaction from seeing my name/poem in print? My ultimate satisfaction is the poem. The poem will figure itself out eventually--both in its eventual becoming and being, as well as ultimate end point. Whatever dusty notebook/laptop/anthology/collection that might be.

Martin :)

Let's Get Together

2010-05-23T21:02:00.001-07:00

oh, this guy

2010-04-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

2010-04-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

Possibly and perhaps set out
to watch the clouding willows droop
though a storm returned the borrowed sky
tomorrow did not reply.

-N.H. Pritchard

Perspective

2010-03-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well- adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship. Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the e truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. -- D.F.W.

Mom Quotes

2010-02-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

I'm curious to see some of your (if there are actually any of you out there) favorite mom quotes.

Mom's are classic.

"I found what I believe to be, a marijuana" - my mom

the new and improved

2010-02-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

Kyle J Karate

Omar

2010-02-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite fictional characters.

{{{{{DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDU}}}}}}

2010-02-08T20:54:00.000-08:00

April 4, 2010. 8:00 p.m. The Bourbon Theater. Lincoln, Nebraska.

Hip Hop

2010-02-03T12:26:00.000-08:00

is better when it's more about, "Money, gear, drugs, guns, Goodyears" than your typical, disingenuous, socially conscious bull you hear in groups such as, Blue Scholars (I saw them recently--not impressed). Having a so called, "social conscious," regardless of artistic context, takes the art out of the social; it makes the artist more apparent than the art.

Raekwon's music, although likely exaggerated and embellished (but what good art isn't?), exposes much more of the hip hop culture than anything a group that editorializes their particular point of view could ever do.

Overtly politicized art is half art as far as I am concerned. Art can only reach as far as its fundamental limitations will allow. Therefore, art based in the ideas, policies, and consciouses of others' is art that only belongs to that artist insofar as they have developed these things for themselves.

Raekwon is an artIst. His songs grow past society's limitations in a way that use a sort of social artifice to recognize culture in a way that allows the product to be the product, as opposed to an auxiliary end to the producer. Right?

Some of my poems

2010-02-01T12:31:00.000-08:00

published here.

A Poet You Should Know Is

2010-01-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

Martha Ronk. While in Chicago last week I spent a fair amount of time at Powell's thumbing through their used poetry. I found a book called Why/Why Not.

Here's a sneak peak:

GETTING A HOLD

The foreign objects are related to the accent
adopted on moving to the coast or the slang she picked up later
slung across the countertop or the glassy essence she was
drinking from a transparent object she got in a pawnshop
which defines what it’s like to hold a cup.

Or water running through one’s hands.

She meant to bring him some as well
and an invitation to an occasion she couldn’t name
like “getting hold of yourself” is wrapping a hand around
or a way of phrasing a song too fast to catch the words.

Two more poems here.

Re: Vampire Weekend

2010-01-20T11:37:00.000-08:00

"They're good if you dig that Paul Simon rip off kind of thing. Which I do." - Paul

Meh.

Rotating Kitchen

2010-01-13T09:49:00.000-08:00

rotating kitchen from Zeger Reyers on Vimeo.

A State of Affairs

2010-01-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

Only 8.3% of Americans read poetry in 2008 (cha cha cha cha ch-eeck it out) That's approximately 25,000,000 people. I wonder how many of those people read something written within the last 10 years. Even within the last 50. Contemporary poetry, I would ASSUME, has a much different audience. 1%? It would be reassuring if it was even that.

with my poems I am purchased
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxtonight I believe this

vision rises like light to its wave

the exact moment a poem dies it takes root
- Tony Tost, from Elephant and Obelisk (Published here)

Graham Foust

2010-01-12T07:49:00.001-08:00

Graham Foust from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

St. Vincent

2010-01-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

Chicago Checklist:

2010-01-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

I'm going to Chicago (I've never been) on January 22, 2010 until January 26, 2010. I will be compiling a list of things I would like to see while I am there.

I'd like to check this place out, and hopefully have some sort of conversation with someone involved with this. This is the sort of thing I'm interested in pursuing at some point in my life.

As much as I dislike poetry readings, in general, it might be nice to expose myself to a variety of them, demographically. I feel like Chicago might be more engaging? That still will do nothing for my inability to pay attention (unless you're Peter Gizzi) to your poems. Maybe they'll have an overhead projector? I could think of worse things to do, however. I might want to check this out. ***EDIT-Judging by the quick google search of the poets reading, I'm not so sure.***

The Art Institute of Chicago appears to have some interesting exhibitions showing during my time there. This looks interesting, among other things. I don't know much about the Museum of Contemporary Art, but it could prove to be interesting?

I've heard good things about POWELLS, but have never had the opportunity to see what it's all about. If any of you have any book requests, let me know.

This is more of a blog for me to keep track of possibilities. Feel free to offer suggestions as, like I said, I've never been to Chicago.

Update (01/05):

FRI. 1/22/10 (10:00pm; $10)

The Empty Bottle & Polyvinyl present "The Joan of Arc Don't Mind Control Variety Show"

Featuring:
Josh Abrams related: DRMWPN, Town & Country
A Tundra
Disappears
Jeremy Boyle
Lites Alive
Matt Clark
Motel Smell
Owen
Pillars & Tongues
The Zoo Wheel
Tim Kinsella
Vacations
plus a special performance by Slick Conditions and other surprise special guests

Out last month on Polyvinyl, Don’t Mind Control is a collection of 18 exclusive songs curated by JOAN OF ARC front man TIM KINSELLA from bands that all feature members who have played in JOAN OF ARC at one point in the band’s lustrous history. The release features the prowess of over 41 musicians and a 24 page photo book documenting KINSELLA and Co’s history of making music together. Tonight is a celebration of musical friendships and partnerships in the Chicago indie music scene that have changed and flourished over the last fifteen years.

Akron/Family

2009-12-24T08:08:00.000-08:00

This band is in my top two favorite live acts I've ever seen (along with Do Make Say Think). I stumbled upon this high quality performance of them that I would suggest you check out if the mood strikes you.

Check out a bit of it here:

If you enjoyed that, check out the entire set here:

Interview here:

I saw these guys three times at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas last year. Shane and I traded whiskey shots with the drummer, where I drunkenly tried to make him promise to play in Lincoln over Omaha whenever they finally play in Nebraska. Still hasn't happened.

A Poem

2009-12-22T09:21:00.001-08:00

can start up or down. It begins in a way that any poet recognizes, and I think this poem by John Berryman actualizes that feeling, for me, in a way that might help you recognize your own feelings about a poem's beginnings.

Dream Song 29
by John Berryman

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry's ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody's missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

Winter Solstice

2009-12-21T09:56:00.001-08:00

Have a good one.

Backstage Sessions : AA Bondy - Black Rain, Black Rain from Hard to Find a Friend on Vimeo.

Thanks for the heads up, Jeff.

Envy

2009-12-16T08:05:00.001-08:00

I'm pretty sure this is my good friend Jeff's good friend. Maybe he could be my good friend some day.

"Not can poetry matter but poetry is matter."

A man after my own heart.

Up

2009-12-15T08:34:00.000-08:00

I rented this movie last week. While watching, I could not get John Ashbery out of my mind.

Aside from the brows, he and Carl Fredricksen are strikingly similar. The chin, the nose, and the BLUE eyes. I'll never forget Ashbery's eyes.

It might be a reach, but whatever.

Grizzly Bear

2009-12-04T08:46:00.001-08:00

Took me awhile to get into this band, but their new album, "Veckatimest" is pretty incredible. Check these out.

On One's Own Writing

2009-12-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

March 25, 1969

Dear Miss Batie,

Thank you for your letter. It is always pleasant to learn that someone takes an interest in a work which one enjoyed writing. In the past I have declined to comment on my own work: because, it seems to me, a poem is what it is; because a poem is itself a definition, and to try to redefine it is to be apt to falsify it; and because the author is the person least able to consider his work objectively. Though as for the last, one certainly has to try. However, I liked your letter, and I have a great curiosity about Vancouver, so I'll see if I can think of anything that may be of use to you.

Of the ideas you suggest, the one that seems closest to what I might think is that of "an art where everything is ambiguous until superimposed into an entity." To change your phrase somewhat, I know that I like an art where disparate elements form an entity. DeKooning's work, which I greatly admire, has less to do with it than that of Kurt Schwitter, whose collages are made of commercial bits and "found" pieces but which always compose a whole striking completeness.

I had no religious intention, though I see why a poem whose "idea," if we may call it such, is that of an essential harmony, or perhaps congruity is a better word, might suggest one. However, intention needn't enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don't see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others. In this case, though, I really can't see that purification comes in at all. Part of the point would seem to be that junk like the trucks and the lions, and things that matter, like flowers, the sea, a mother and her baby (in an ascending scale of value) have each its place, and that it is the world in its impurity which is so very beautiful and acceptable, if only because one has so little choice.

As for evocation/communication, I don't find the first separate from the second, though subsidiary to it. The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate. However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it. Someone, I believe, has said that "what a poem communicates is itself." This seems to me true.

I am not quite sure what you mean by the "development" of the poem. If you mean in the sense it's used in music, I hope it's there in the poem; anyway I have nothing to add to it. If you mean how I came to write it, well, let's see.

It was late February and I had very recently returned from Europe, where for the first time I had visited Palermo, and made an excursion to see the temples at Agrigento (where there were also wild snap-dragons in bloom among the lion colored drums of fallen columns), a rather dusty and disappointing affair at the time, but which was a pleasure to recollect. The day on which I wrote the poem I had been trying to write a poem in a regular form about (I think) Palermo, the Palazzo Abatelli, which has splendid carved stone ropes around its doors and windows, and the chapels decorated by Serpotta with clouds of plaster cherubs; the poem turned out to be laborious and flat, and looking out the window I saw that something marvelous was happening to the light, transforming everything. It then occurred to me that this happened more often than not (a beautiful sunset I mean) and that it was "a day like any other," which I put down as a title. The rest of the poem popped out of its own accord. Or so it seems now.

I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem. One tends to write beyond what's needed.

It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience). Often a poem "happens" to the writer exactly the same way it "happens" to someone who reads it.

As for stimuli, I hope you won't "perceive a similar response" in this instance, since what stimulated me to write was the apathy following on the disappointment of a wasted day. However, what seemed like waste then may have been warming up. Who knows? Not me.

- James Schuyler

I must see

2009-11-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

this movie.

Black Mountain

2009-11-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

Pink Mountaintops

Poetry Jokes

2009-11-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

A horse walks into a bar where Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound are drinking.

BARTENDER (to horse): Why the long face?

WHITMAN (to everyone): I, too, am a horse.

POUND (to Whitman): Shut the fuck up.

More here and here and here.

Movie

2009-11-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

Say what you will about Where the Wild Things Are, but I am going to say I came away from the movie satisfied. I think the film was directed more toward the generation that lifted the book up originally than the generation that is supposedly embracing it currently. That being said, the movie had it's failures, but it also had brilliant, fragile moments that walk the line between sentiment and genuine innocence. Like this:

I have little appreciation for sentiment, and I think the movie's failures, for me, stumbled a bit too far into it. The moments that didn't were wonderful.

James Gandolfini owned.

Halloween

2009-11-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

Mark Twain

Colonel Sanders

Kyle Crawford

I threw my "old man" costume together last minute. If there is any way I could look anywhere close to that during the geriatric period of my life, I would die a happy man.

Halloween = beer pong?

I played this game for the first time. It's not for me!

Halloween = DJ's + Japanese international students?

A cane is a necessary dance prop. I don't think the Japanese are as fond of Kyle antics as are Malaysians. (Based solely on my personal experience)

Halloween = abandoned warehouse party?

A creepy vibe would seem appropriate for a Halloween after hours party. But ehhh...

Halloween = Daylight Savings Time?

Nice.

Halloween = Witch?

I think so!

i have wasted my life?

2009-10-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

After being asked if he could provide a definition of religion and, if he could do that, to explain the relation between religion, that is, what a person believes, and morality, that is, the way he acts in accord with some notion of how he ought to act:

I can only go back to myself. I look around myself and I see every year that, no matter what people do to themselves and to one another, the spring constantly renews itself. This is a physical fact, not a metaphysical theory. I look at every spring and I respond to it very strongly. But I also notice that every year the spring is the same new spring and every year I am one year older. I have to ask the question: What is the relation between my brief and tragic life and this force in the universe that perpetually renews itself? I further believe that every human being asks this question. He cannot avoid asking it-it is forced upon him. And his answer to that question is his religion. If he says the relation between me and this thing is nothing, then his religion is nihilism. As for morality, what ought I to do? I wish I knew.

-Leo Tolstoy

I'm 24 which means I will eventually be 80

2009-10-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a man I know responded to an other's explanation of not necessarily desiring a piece of a poem to be understood by the reader by tossing the poem onto a table and saying, "ahhh, the myth of the inscrutable." I laughed.

I have pretty strong feelings about who the reader actually is(n't). I've said this to those close to me but haven't really publicized a clear poetic point to hint at my specific poetic intention. Until now.

No one will ever read any poem you (I) write.

Got it? Ok.

The man pressed the point by reiterating the other's point rhetorically, "You don't want them to understand it?--Then they won't. Simple as that." The "myth of them" is a major concern to me here. Who understands a poem anyway? People can understand a poem any way. Poetry is inherently inscrutable regardless of who is writing it because a poem is not a newspaper.

If a poem is entirely expository is it a poem? Forget definition. I'm saying that this myth of the inscrutable is what makes poetry poetry! Is conveying information the point of writing a poem? I hope not. That position seems like a relative of poet as the keeper of the golden sepulcher.

This brought to mind something an old professor of mine, Dr. Marco Abel, conveyed,

I approach images—cinematic or otherwise—from the idea, articulated by Jean-Luc Godard, that images are first and foremost “just images, not just images.” Images have force and do things, but they do not—at least not primarily—bear or represent meaning. Images work by their constitutive intensities and affects rather than by representing something in a way that may or may not be just(ified). Hence the question to ask about an image is less, “What does it mean?” than “How does it work?” and “What does it do?”

These two questions provide so many more interesting answers than, "what does it mean." I don't think I know anything about anything. I don't have information to convey to you and even if I did I don't think I would use a poem to let you know about it. A poem is a way for me to figure IT out. Things. Ideas. These damn pronouns are all the same! You is actually I when it comes to who is reading a poem.

my poems

2009-10-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

Even the poems I initially think will be blogspot format friendly turn out not to be. I am so conscious of line breaks, even in blocks of text, that I can't sacrifice a word running over a line if that's not where it is supposed to go. And that's just the way it is. Maybe, I should write poems on blogspot so they will be formatted to blogspot's standards. But maybe I'm too selfish to give blogspot that much authority over my poems. I love poetry. A poem is a sovereign self.

Autobiography

2009-09-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

When I was a Junior in high school I was called a racist. I was sitting in the bleachers of my high school's gymnasium watching a Sophomore boys basketball game. The Holdrege Dusters' 10th graders were playing the Axtell Wildcats' Junior Varsity. While both teams were warming up, I was informed that two of Axtell's players were German foreign exchange students (they both had striking, blond hair). The game commenced and progressed. After some time, Axtell's team was severely behind and the game seemed to be in the Dusters' hands. With sheepish stares, the two German foreign exchange students sat at the end of the Wildcats' bench. I turned to a friend and stated, "They should put in the Germans." A girl sitting in front of me turned and said, "You're a racist, that was incredibly inappropriate," to which I replied, "Inappropriate? They're from Germany, aren't they?"

A Movie Based on a David Foster Wallace Book?

2009-09-16T08:09:00.001-07:00

Who knew Jim from The Office was into that sort of thing.

Accepting

2009-09-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

Fall.

One step closer to

2009-08-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

this,

Blow your hair back here.

This does not make me swoon

2009-08-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

Apparently Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie & The Postal Service) and Jay Farrar (Son Volt & Uncle Tupelo) are collaborating to create an album dedicated to Jack Kerouac, the lyrics of which being taken from Kerouac's novel Big Su. Read about it here. This, to me, is about the most drab, banal tribute possibly ever constructed.

Now to preface, I'm not the biggest Kerouac fan, although I sort of have to be an admirer of his for his accomplishments, but that's an entirely different conversation. That being said, from what I've read, Kerouac was an intellectual giant, an undeniable presence who, regardless of your feelings about his work, created work that was astonishingly new; It was the impetus, it was the vanguard, at least to a certain extent. Now, no offense to the two collaborators, but they're hardly Kerouac, and I'd venture to guess they would be the first to admit that. But to salvage words from a novel written in 1962 and juxtapose them against some of the most trite pop music being created today (as evidenced here) seems, if nothing else, a bit off.

I understand their desire to embody the feeling and presence of a man they obviously admire, but fulfilling that embodiment here goes only half way; the half which Kerouac realized himself with the words from Big Su. These songs will not embody Kerouac's philosophies/feelings/presence, if anything they will only attempt to diminish them. Luckily for Kerouac and those of us who have a respect for the new, these songs will likely only ping off the legitimacy of Kerouac's work. Maybe the album will be played in Urban Outfitters the next time I'm buying a pair of wayfarer sunglasses. That's my embodiment. I'm no Kerouac either.

The Devil

2009-08-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

played by Tom Waits. I'm into it.

I Stumbled Upon Myself

2009-08-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

I searched, "'Kyle Crawford' + Nebraska" on Google's News Archive search option and found a picture that I'm sure will interest those of you who know me. I was young, naive, a democrat, and an avid listener of mediocre indie-rock. Here I am registering people to vote. Yes that is my hair (on a tame day).

You have no idea how rare photos of me during this period of my life are. I could head-bang the shit out of that hair. (me on the right)

Oh Vollmann

2009-07-31T14:31:00.000-07:00

William T. Vollmann has a new book coming out. It's called Imperial, and it's weighty. It costs $55 and is 1,300 pages long — "so heavy, he observed recently, that if you dropped it, you’d break a toe."

Whores for Gloria was insanely beautiful and terrifying. The Atlas has more interest in it than any collection of stories I've ever picked up; a truly educational experience in some of the most banal, unexpectedly-interesting topics.

The New York Times explores his new book here. The man is his own.

"He acknowledged that the length of Imperial might cost him readers but said: 'I don’t care. It seems like the important thing in life is pleasing ourselves. The world doesn’t owe me a living, and if the world doesn’t want to buy my books, that’s my problem.'"

Yo La Tengo

2009-07-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

Yo La Tengo is coming to The Slowdown in Omaha on October 9, 2009. I feel like this blog occasionally turns into a perpetual advertising machine. Sorry. Yo La Tengo is one of the only bands I'd like to see in person at this point in my life. Listen to a track off of their new album that has not been released yet, here.

I'm going to post a couple blog friendly (format wise) poems soon. That should make up for it.

For Jeff and Jason and Sondra

2009-07-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

In the Carolinas

The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.
Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.
Already the new-born children interpret love
In the voices of mothers.

Timeless mother,
How is it that your aspic nipples
For once vent honey?

The pine tree sweetens my body
The white iris beautifies me.

- Wallace Stevens

Bantam in Pine-Woods

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.

You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

- Wallace Stevens

Both of these poems were included in Stevens' first collection of poems, Harmonium. According to Stevens' wikipedia page,"Most of Harmonium's poems were published between 1914 and 1923 in various magazines, so most are now in the public domain in America and similar jurisdictions, as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act affects only works first published after 1922."

So there you have it. You have no excuse. Check it out, those of you. So good.

100th Post!

2009-07-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

In honor of this 100th post (as arbitrary as that sounds), I'm going to plug some films that are either at The Ross currently, or are going to be there in the coming weeks. Apparently due to budget cuts at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, the future of The Ross is in jeopardy. I don't really know the specifics of the situation, nor do I really know what I (or anyone else for that matter) can do to help the cause. I do know, however, that going to see films there in the coming weeks couldn't hurt their cause, and might possibly even help. Given the no lose scenario I just set up for you, check out these titles:

Anvil: The Story of Anvil (showing June 26 - July 9)

- Essentially a 50/50 mix of Spinal Tap and The Wrestler. Supposed to be absolutely fantastic.

Whatever Works (showing July 3 - July 9)

- Woody Allen's new film starring Larry David. Intriguing if nothing else, right?

Moon (showing July 10 - July 23)

- I think I've mentioned this movie on this BLOG a couple months ago or so. Shenanigans on the moon. Shit is dramatic. Looks like a looker. Check out the trailer.

Tyson (showing July 24 - July 30)

- For the shear novelty of Mike Tyson I'm going to see this film. Dude bit someones ear off and has a tribal tattoo on his face. Gotta be some sort of crazy. Check out some of the interviews he has done on YouTube for a better understanding of his personality. He is an island.

World Flags

2009-06-30T08:05:00.000-07:00

Let's take a look at some of the world's best and worst flags.

Best (in no particular order):

Isle of Man (A British Crown Dependency) -

Turkmenistan -

Seychelles -

Saint Pierre and Miquelon (territorial overseas collectivity of France) -

Norfolk Island (territory of Australia) -

Nepal -

Macedonia -

Gibraltar (overseas territory of the U.K.) -

Bhutan -

Canada -

Mayotte (overseas collectivity of France) -

Worst (in no particular order):

Libya -

Monaco -

Indonesia -

Poland -

Let's discuss!

And yes, Indonesia and Monaco have very similar, lame flags.

EDIT: I forgot to add Saint Lucia's flag for all you Trekkies out there.

Myself vs. My self

2009-06-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

The incredible amount of thought that I think needs to go into writing something like a statement of purpose for the purpose of getting into graduate school is entirely laughable. Consider what this statement is actually trying to accomplish; this is what I am doing with my poetry, this is why I am doing these things, and this is why you should accept me into your creative writing program. How much thought and insight can go into a statement of 500 words or less?

It's a pitch. It's a plea. It's a sorry excuse for the justification of one's passion. How am I to narrow myself down, my work, my only confidence (albeit fleeting and fickle)? I'm honestly not quite sure right now. I think it will be one of those things where I'll write and write and write until I can pull enough from whatever it is I'm writing to fulfill whatever requirements are asked of me. I wonder if I could just write that I write to make people fall all over themselves. I write to make myself want to lick my own ears. I write to bust people's guts to the point they are clawing at language itself! Probably not. I don't even know what that means, but I want to scream it anyway.

I came upon this preface to Frank O'Hara's poems included in Donald Hall's New American Poetry which was comforting on numerous levels:

“I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven’t.

“I don’t think of fame or posterity (as Keats so grandly and genuinely did), nor do I care about clarifying experiences for anyone or bettering (other than accidentally) anyone’s state or social relation, nor am I for any particular technical development in the American language simply because I find it necessary. What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don’t think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else, they are just there in whatever form I can find them. What is clear to me in my work is probably obscure to others, and vice versa. My formal ‘stance’ is found at the crossroads where what I know and can’t get meets what is left of that I know and can bear without hatred. I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry—all of the past you read is usually quite great—but it is a useful thorn to have in one’s side.

“It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.”

—Frank O’Hara—From New American Poetry 1945-1960 (Grove Press, 1960), and reprinted in Frank O’Hara: Standing Still and Walking in New York (Grey Fox Press, 1975), both edited by Donald Allen.

A video poem

2009-06-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Black Hole from Zachary Schomburg on Vimeo.

I met Zach briefly when he attended the University of Nebraska as a graduate student while I was there as an undergraduate. He was carrying around a workman's lunch pail that possibly had a matching thermos inside. I'm sure he does not remember my name, but he might possibly recognize my face if he saw me because of its recognizableness. This, of your poems, really shook me up. Thanks.

big time

2009-06-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

So in a previous issue of The Benefactor, a collection of songs was included from the record label, North Pole Records (based out of Portland, OR). The Benefactor recently had a reading in Portland and invited one of the artists included on said collection, Road Race, to perform. Check this kid out:

And by kid, I mean kid. He is 9. I like to think this is what my friend Justin Flowers was like at this age.

plug for a good band

2009-06-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

Deer Tick: To The City of Sin! TRAILER from indie outlaw on Vimeo.

Thursday, June 18, 2009. Deer Tick w/ UUVVWWZ and Manny Coon @ the Box Awesome in Lincoln, Nebraska. 9:00 p.m. Be there.

Warm weather

2009-05-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

calls for swimming and drinking and smiling and sailing.

Enjoy!

2009-05-15T23:22:00.001-07:00

fuck dean winters.

Robin Blaser,

2009-05-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

one of my favorite poets, has died.

1925-2009

Waiting for Hours

listen, kid,there isn't anything but art
and the effort to turn it into
the same discourse as
everything else is
scientific
anfelism, disguised as
who-dun-it after all
on art, I'm a kind of
Fibber McGee and Molly
talkin' over the horseshoe
found in 1901--and should
I find three more, we
could have a game in
the backyard--close
the closet, undisturbed by
the ten-foot pole we
wouldn't touch anything
by, if offered--oh--
the hours remind me of
thirty robins' dreams,
snowflakes as big as cigarette
papers

the best thing ever said about me
critically was 'alien exotica'
but I looked out of my eyes at
the piano shawl and wondered
how the fringe could move so
ceaselessly over the fat back
and that was supposed to stop me
dead in my tracks--my job--my
heart--and anything I ever told you
that you believed--wow--magic
and disgusting fun people, also

I'm living in the modern age

2009-05-05T07:46:00.001-07:00

?

If poems referencing The Odyssey or The Iliad were to cease from here on out, I'd be hard pressed to give a damn.

the beginning

2009-04-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start a weekely collaborative poem. I will post a line or two or three and you comment on this post adding/deleting as you feel necessary. Seriously. Anybody and everybody. Go:

I would welcome your handshake
however xxxxxx he’s the money

congratulations for the recovery
cheers to you.doc was recently
undeleted

felicitations!

dot.

hats off!

dot.

well done!

dot.

John Ashbery

2009-04-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

taken from this

Q. You are still writing poetry and last fall you had an exhibit of your collages at a Manhattan gallery. Could you please share some lessons of a long life?

A. I go back to Harvard and see all the same buildings and streets and rivers. It seems as though this was only a few months ago that I was there. I don't know that I have really accumulated any wisdom in my fourscore years. I feel as unprepared now as I was when I was a student. I guess I'm just an 80-year-old adolescent. Or 81.

I almost wept when I read Ashbery's answer.

An Ashbery collage:

Incredible

2009-04-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

We've all heard/heard of this band, but seriously watch this entire thing.

Then read this assessment of the band here and tell me what you think of them after you have done both. My impression of the band has definitely changed.

I'd watch it

2009-04-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

music in film

2009-04-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

An interesting take on the film industry's Frankenstein approach to adding music to a film in post-production by Will Oldham in an interview (read the interview here):

AVC: You mentioned talking to Richard Linklater and Caveh Zahedi about your ideas on movie music. Can you summarize those ideas?

WO: Well, for a while, it seemed like you were always seeing movies where all the music was determined by the music supervisors and their special relationships with certain record labels. And I just felt like, “Wow, I’ll bet they spent months or years writing this screenplay, and I’ll bet they spent months shooting this, and I’ll bet they spent months editing this, and now they’re spending no time at all picking these completely inappropriate songs with lyrics to put under a scene that has dialogue.” How does that even work? How can you have a song with someone singing lyrics under spoken dialogue and consider that mood-music, or supportive of the storyline? As somebody who likes music, when that happens, I tend to listen to the lyrics, which have nothing to do with the movie. And then I’m lost in the storyline. Not only is that a crime, but it’s a crime not to give people who are good at making music for movies the work. It’s like saying, “We don’t need you, even though you’re so much better at it than I am as a music supervisor.” Like the cancer that is that Darjeeling guy… what’s his name?

AVC: Wes Anderson?

WO: Yeah. His completely cancerous approach to using music is basically, “Here’s my iPod on shuffle, and here’s my movie.” The two are just thrown together. People are constantly contacting me saying, “I’ve been editing my movie, and I’ve been using your song in the editing process. What would it take to license the song?” And for me it’s like, “Regardless of what you’ve been doing, my song doesn’t belong in your movie.” That’s where the conversation should end. Music should be made for movies, you know?

I suppose I can see where Will Oldham is going with this. On the one hand, the music of a film is part of a film's language (yes, film is a language), and it helps set a scene's inflection. When we speak to each other, the inflection in our voices serves the purpose of projecting mood, tone, and feeling. In a movie, however, inflection would be nonexistent in a scene with no dialogue, leaving it up to the viewer to interpret or impose their understanding of feeling onto the movie. This, in and of itself, isn't necessarily a bad tool to use in some cases, at least in my mind. However, what makes a movie successful a lot of the time is how well a movie directs the viewer in terms of the feelings the movie itself is projecting.

It's easy for us to think of using familiar songs as a cop out in a way, but on the other hand, maybe that familiarity is something people like Wes Anderson are using to direct our feelings and perceptions of a movie. I would be hard pressed to find a more appropriate song to put in place of The Beatles, "Hey Jude," when Richie Tenenbaum frees his bird Mordecai in The Royal Tenenbaums. It was comforting and climactic all at the same time because it was so familiar.

I can agree with Will Oldham to a certain extent, but to say Wes Anderson doesn't put enough thought into his films is presumptuous at best.

song/video of the day

2009-04-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

Black Moth Super Rainbow's new album leaked on #it recently. It's called, "Eating Us." It's unbelievable.

I've decided

2009-04-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'm going skydiving this summer.

such a good show last night

2009-04-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

also

2009-04-04T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'll fear no death.

Kyle (me) and Jay (my brother)

not working at work (after lunch)

2009-04-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

I guess I should preface this post by saying my definition of art is NEBULOUS at best.

I was eating the most blah club sandwich of my life about an hour ago when I saw a woman strolling around the campus of the University taking pictures of windows. Incidentally, I saw this same woman taking pictures of the windows of the Wells Fargo building on my way to ingest this blah sandwich. This woman was not taking snapshots. No, this woman was using, what looked to be, an expensive SLR digital camera. This woman was a serious photographer. This woman was an artist. Or so it goes. This means of production, this technology we all brandish says something to me about art and about our generational artistic struggle that is to come.

We take from the earth and syphon it through box after box after box until the product is so filtered and abstracted that there is nothing else to call it but art. And that is alright. Or maybe it is wrong. That is not really my point. Point is, art is becoming less organic and more artificial through these lenses of technology. Automatic cameras, Flarf poetry, lasers, gadgets, robots, etc. I get the feeling that the long standing split between traditional and avant movements (forgive the crude dichotomy, it's just a blog) that have, until the last generation or two, been organically based, is rapidly being replaced with a split between organic (that is, structurally the products of humans, and often times directly influenced with a human hand) and artificial art (that is, products that are influenced largely by an electrical or artificial means). I will accept most anything as art, so what this means to me is largely peripheral (if it's good, it's good. No?). But while I was eating this sandwich I envisioned my generation taking stances on this idea, because let us face it, drama is inevitable with art.

I had a conversation with a roommate of mine about art the other night where I found out she had some very strong feelings about what art is and what art is not. I mentioned Marcel Duchamp (and explained a bit about him and his ideas), and according to her, his creations were not art. Let's say we discount Marcel Duchamp's politics and artistic theory and place a toilet of his in a room. If we know nothing of Marcel Duchamp, is this art to us? Possibly. But because "we" do know something about this man, and because of where this toilet is generally placed, we assume it is art, because what do you call exhibits placed in an art gallery? Is this toilet art because of or in spite of the context in which it is placed and what surrounds it? Where you sit depends on where you stand, or so the saying goes. I guess I can actually see a valid argument in saying that if a piece of art is dependent upon its surrounding, or the motivation behind the artist, then it is not necessarily full art, maybe half art? Kenneth? It reminds me of New Criticism in Literature in that one should factor in an author's biography when analyzing that author's work instead of taking on the text by itself, without a frame of reference. I've always been very suspect of that approach, and assume it is for the same reasons why I am open to the possibility in the argument I just mentioned. As much as I appreciate people like Marcel Duchamp and the ideas he provided us with, I can see where people would be hesitant about it.

Technology seems to be blurring this line of what art is for some people and what art is not for some, even more. I guess it's good art to me if it affects me somehow. Either because of what it projects itself, or what I project onto it. I remember when I thought fractals were the coolest things ever in 5th grade. I guess that was the beginning of my fascination with artificial art that only briefly lifted the curtain on what would become a slight obsession later on in my life.

for some reason

2009-03-31T08:01:00.000-07:00

does nothing for me anymore.

So

2009-03-30T13:02:00.001-07:00

I was looking around the interweb today and stumbled upon a site of Aram Saroyan's "minimal poems." http://stevenfama.blogspot.com/2009/03/wow.html It's really interesting stuff. On the back jacket of one of these minimal poem books, Saroyan writes something that I have written about recently. It's great to feel like my mind is working around some of the same things that other respected writers worked around. Validation? I don't know. I do know that I will probably use what he wrote in a book of mine someday. An epigraph, perhaps. A-ram and is A-merica. It's true.

kill a man and celebrate in DALLAS!

2009-03-30T08:05:00.000-07:00

I have almost worked at my current job for a year. I am very tired and can understand why a lot of people lose themselves after working in a job that is both time consuming and unsatisfying for an extended period of time. I get the sense that I am slowly dissolving. I am Marty McFly and my hand is disappearing and it's only a matter of time before my entire arm is gone. Where is my ambition?

I'm going to write a poem a day. Accountability. If you want something, become it? I have an idea of the person/writer/musician I would eventually like to be. Becoming that/those is as simple as a forceful acceptance. I am accepting the fact that to become something I will have to work harder than I ever have. I am accepting the fact that prioritizing my life needs to be my biggest priority. How much time have I wasted fucking myself up on my free time? Something 24 years of life has taught me: All parties are essentially the same, especially if you have lived in the same town for over five years. Same people therefore same faces. Same drinks. Same conversations. Same same same same same same same.

Being creative IS difficult when you are so tired at the end of the day. HOWEVER, creativity is not dependent on anything other than an act. The simple act of DOING. I think I write at work because I feel guilty for not writing as much as I think I should while at home. It's so easy to take naps. It's so easy to watch 24 with your roommates. Everything is simple. Even LOVE!

I am anything.

"If you look close enough you can't tell where my nose ends and space begins." -Bernard Jaffe (I Heart Huckabees)

What I'm trying to say is prepare yourself for an explosion. I'm still here. I'll be around. My face is always here.

i'll take it

2009-03-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

Austin, TX:

Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 82. Calm wind becoming south southeast between 5 and 10 mph.

Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 52. Southeast wind between 5 and 10 mph becoming calm.

Thursday: Partly sunny, with a high near 82. Calm wind becoming east between 5 and 10 mph.

Thursday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 52. Southeast wind between 10 and 15 mph.

Friday: Partly sunny, with a high near 71. South southeast wind between 10 and 15 mph.

Friday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 54.

Saturday: Partly sunny, with a high near 74.

Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 57.

vs.

Lincoln, NE:

Wednesday: Partly sunny, with a high near 57. Breezy, with a north wind between 14 and 18 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph.

Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 33.

Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 55.

Thursday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 35.

Friday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 63.

Friday Night: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 42.

Saturday: A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 62.

Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 45. Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 65.

jason molina

2009-03-09T12:04:00.001-07:00

"Come on let's try and know whatever we try, we will be gone but not forever."

"April Not an Inventory but a Blizzard"

2009-03-03T22:01:00.000-08:00

I like him because he's funny he talks more like
me than like books or words: he likes my knowledge and
accepts its sources. I know that there are Channel swimmers
and that they keep warm with grease because of
an Esther Williams movie. We differ as to what kind
of grease it is I suggest bacon he says it's bear
really in the movie it was dark brown like grease from a car
Who's ever greased a car? Not him I find he prefers to white out
all the speech balloons in a Tarzan comic
and print in new words for the characters. Do you want
to do some? He says--No--We go to a movie where Raquel Welch
and Jim Brown are Mexican revolutionaries I make him
laugh he says something about a turning point in the plot
Do you mean, I say, when she said We shood have keeled him long ago?
Finally a man knows that I'm being funny

He's eleven years older than me and takes pills
I take some a few months later and write
I think it's eighty-three poems I forget about Plath and James Wright
he warns me about pills in a slantwise way See this
nose? he says. It's the ruins of civilization.

-Alice Notley

currently reading

2009-02-24T10:42:00.000-08:00

Whores for Gloria - William T. Vollmann

...and then they got to Gloria's grandmother's house and in the guestroom Gloria said what do you see? and Jimmy said I see a bed and a lamp and a dresser and Gloria said now turn out the lamp and we'll sit here and pretend we're watching movies all by ourselves now what movie are you watching? and Jimmy closed his eyes and saw a man trying to strangle Dinah and Dinah sobbing and struggling and pulling her knife out and stabbing the man deep in the chest so that his blood sprayed into her eyes and he came at her clutching at her to kill her laughing and bleeding and saying I am the Green River Killer and Dinah stabbed him again and again and he pushed her through the window and Gloria said why aren't you saying anything Jimmy why do you look so strange what movie do you see? and Jimmy said I see a movie about someone who likes people to walk on his face but that's because he's made out of grass and he likes it when the rain falls on his face so he can grow taller and greener, and Gloria said that's a good movie and Jimmy said what do you see? and Gloria said I don't know it's all stories and oh look here's grandmother's kaleidoscope now see how the pretty things keep getting changed into something else.

my speed metal office mate 2

2009-02-18T09:03:00.000-08:00

Ron (I've mentioned him before) sits next to me. He just got up, looked at the radio playing the same classic rock tunes we hear everyday, and changed the dial to 90.3 KRNU. "I'm so sick of hearing the same things." Ron is 55 years old and sits next to me. We're listening to Fleet Foxes right now and I can see Ron's foot tapping.

i can't

2009-02-03T08:49:00.000-08:00

tell you how often people ask me about my desktop at work.

I'll often tell people the truth: "Two of my favorite poets." to which, occasionally, people will ask if they were gay. "Yes!" I say smiling. The ambiguity of whether or not they were in a relationship (they were not) is left. It sort of just hangs in the air.

a new case?

2009-02-03T07:14:00.000-08:00

I was almost out the front of the door when a middle aged cashier picked up her intercom phone and casually said, "Code 44 to the front of the store." Code 44? I thought. I looked up and noticed a 14 to 15 year old, young, female employee grabbing a 13 to 14 year old, young man by his shirt and throwing him vigorously. Left, right, right a little more, this girl was really planted in, her stance was properly shoulder width apart; the kid she had in her control wasn't going anywhere. He was cornered in the entry way of Super Saver. The cashier continued to her passive pleas, "Code 44 to the front of the store." Slowly, an older male Super Saver employee jogged from the back of the store, reluctant to involve himself in the situation at hand. It was at that point, the cashier must have noticed the ridiculous amount of determination shown by the young, female employee desperately trying to hold on to this apparent shoplifter. She began raising her voice, "Code 44! Code 44 to the front of the store! CODE 44! CODE 44!" Out of nowhere, approximately seven large, male employees were sprinting past me toward the exhausted girl going above and beyond any possible expectations set forth for her by her employer. A scuffle ensued and the mob of Super Saver employees grabbing and holding the young man were out of my direct line of sight for an instant. I was standing directly in front of the exit. I turned to Carrie and said, "Code 44 must be code for 'All male employees to the front of the store.'" The mess of employees dragged the young man, along with a bottle of Southern Comfort (red label mind you--little punk) back into the store where I'm sure they were going to call the police. Kid wanted to have some fun, I guess. That young, female employee needs a raise. Or some time off.

listen to kyle bang

2009-01-30T06:50:00.000-08:00

I will admit, I had read no more than three poems by Mary Jo Bang before attending the reading she gave at Nebraska Wesleyan University last night. I had heard good things from some of my writer friends over the years. I was intrigued.

The reading began with an introduction that ended with the most appropriate phrase I think I've ever heard at a poetry reading, "Now let's listen to Mary Jo Bang." The playfulness of language was so apparent in the way Mary Jo was going to read by banging out poems. Whether or not this was her given name from birth isn't necessarily important, but it did cause me to question identity, generally and in the poet herself. An interesting device, intentional or otherwise, for a reader or listener who is just beginning to invest themselves in a poet's work.

The unfortunate aspect of poetry readings, at least for myself, is that they are extremely distracting. Not necessarily because of things going on in one's periphery, rather the poems and the poet specifically. If I hear a line that interests me, it distracts my ability to focus on the next line. Missteps by the poet and a poet retracing their steps by re-reading a line without the appropriate breath all kick my attention around in ways that lose the poem. These distractions are magnified if a listener has not invested themselves in a poet beforehand.

Regardless, Mary Jo Bang mentioned her interest in experimenting with language (dare I say artifice?). But an aspect of her poetics that interested me even more was her interest in the combination of experiment and narrative. Not necessarily narrative in the way one would think of a traditional narrative poem, but rather the ability to affect a reader with some sort of conclusive feeling at the end of a poem that ties human experience together. The ability to satisfy both, feelings of bewilderment and excitement through the playfulness of language, as well as a connection to a reader in some sort of living way, is something that has interested and influenced my own writing.

Mary Jo Bang likely directs a reader more so than other poets more vested in a "Language School" approach. By directs, I'm trying to get across an idea of a reader following words, phrases, and sentences in a way that one might possibly follow a friend's voice in a conversation about baseball. My interaction with something like Lyn Hejinian's texts, on the other hand, are limiting in certain ways, but unconfined in other ways. Words are limited in their ability to produce a sort of meaning that hold traditional society's standards of utility. However because those standards are denied, a reader is freed to experience the poem for what it is, nothing more than a rock or a tree, as it were. Mary Jo Bang's texts, from what I heard last night, are similar to this to a point. She does seem to utilize language's traditional standards more so than some of her contemporaries, however, but I think she does it in a way that does miss the mark of an extremely daring poetry. Where along this spectrum of utility a poet places themselves is a question one needs to answer in order to understand a poet's poetics and approach.

Maybe it's because I've been reading and editing so many poems lately, but there were times during the reading where I had the desire to bounce some things off of the poet. I started thinking about the periods of a poet's life and how, eventually, one will likely reach a point where input from others isn't necessarily expected, or possibly even appreciated. I understand that workshops aren't at a very high level of priority for poets who have been writing for a long period of time, and even less of a priority for those few poets whose poetry has been validated as much as a poet such as Mary Jo bang. When she says a poem is finished, I guess her poem is finished. After it is in a book, it isn't polite to say, "did you ever think about doing this?" But if Walt Whitman can mess with Leaves of Grass a gazillion times after it was originally published, I don't see why I couldn't when the time comes. I guess I just don't know how it works. I'm afraid to grow up and lose all of my friends and have everyone around me too afraid to tell me when something does not work. Always tell me. Please.

thursdays are for friends

2009-01-29T07:58:00.000-08:00

I met with Marco yesterday (tall German professor friend not large black and white cat). Marco applied to 13 or 14 schools after his undergraduate work. Let me repeat that, Marco applied to 13 or 14 schools after his undergraduate work. ! Out of those 13 or 14 schools, he was accepted into 3. Time to start saving money for application fees? Most likely. My naivety regarding the grad school application process was glaring last evening. I'm glad this is January and not October. That's what I'm saying.

What would an attempt at an a-signifying poetry look like, DJ Spooky? I guess that's sort of what I'm interested in right now. But when I think about my brain, I think about how dumb it is. "Language is about force not representation!" Well yeah. But how do I explain that to my mother? WWJBD?

While watching the first episode of 24 I've ever seen, Mallory mentioned how much more of a badass Jack Bauer is than Jason Bourne. I've only seen one of the Bourne movies, but he seemed pretty badass. This argument will always eventually lead into the Keiffer Southerland v. Matt Damon argument. According to Bennie, Keiffer Southerland can neck down a fair amount of booze. This is where the argument stops at my house. It's all laughing from there. I wonder what their political affiliations are. Keifer and Jack, and Matt and Jason.

Read these:

A Heap of Language

I switch on the light and clear
the table. You come from the ocean
and dry yourself. Inside us, apologies inch
their way around. Most of what we say will hardly matter.

*

Poem with Trademark for a Plastic Disk Thrown From Person to Person in a Game

Fuck magic.

I throw
a Frisbee and it goes

right to you.

- Graham Foust

Season 2 of

2009-01-23T11:36:00.001-08:00

AMC's Breaking Bad

premieres March 8, 2009

!

ppppppppp

2009-01-21T08:20:00.000-08:00

Milk - A
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - B-
Slumdog Millionaire - C-
Gran Torino - F
Glory - B

Characters are more important than story. That is all the justification I am giving right now. Good acting can also help a film tremendously.

poor poor noodle

2009-01-15T07:22:00.001-08:00

I was reading about teaching poetry over at Ron Silliman's BLOG, and a lot was talked about the process of writing and how changing, even slightly, certain things about your process could greatly affect the product produced. Something was mentioned about Robert Creeley saying that changing the means of producing your work can help relieve writer's block (if you write mainly from a computer, switch to a notebook.)

I almost exclusively write poems sitting at a computer--either at my office (my state poetry grant, as I like to call it at times) or cramped at my desk in the corner of my room, typing away poems on my laptop. Recently, however, I bought two (they came in a pair) moleskin pocket size notebooks to carry with me. I don't know if I did this because I actually wanted to try to write "en route," or rather, felt obligated as a writer to carry a notebook and pen around with me. Regardless, I now carry around a notebook. As of this morning, I have written on three pages. Two of those pages are a drunken poem I wrote at Duffy's one night sitting at the end of the bar (god, could have i been any more obvious?) that nothing will ever come of. The other page is a short poem that I could, eventually, do something with.

I think the computer itself has become some sort of reference, in and of itself, for my writing. It's the means of production and a lot of my writing, at least lately, calls attention to that process of production. I'm unfamiliar with creativity through a blank piece of paper. I realize that they are the SAME words, but the computer doesn't make them so permanent (although thinking about it, that kind of seems backwards.) On a computer my words are clean and legible; I can minimize the window to make them go away! Whereas on a piece of paper, they are usually messy and never stop staring up at me. There is a certain level of anxiety that goes along with writing, not to mention carrying the words around with you that you often times so desperately want to get away from. I think I am simply choosing the easy way out, the lesser anxious feeling. I do not want to continue this. I need to see what comes out of THAT anxiety.

Tonight, I'm going to read William Blake and try to figure out why my eyes hurt when I move them.

why not, buy a goddamn big car

2009-01-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

I've been reading your poems, don't worry.

Anyone own Lost in Translation? I'd like to borrow it, should your answer be "yes." This is the INTERNET. I'm lost in communication. It's like what do these words even mean, man? srsly.

My office mate just said, "set you up to fail." We're all failing, kid. Don't worry about it.

stein stein stein!

2008-12-24T06:39:00.000-08:00

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/12/steinopera/

My friend Anthony moved away.

I'm not going home for Christmas.

I think that tonight, Christmas Eve, will be a relieving experience. Sometimes just giving in to things is so much easier. Why be principled? Why even care about things? I thought indifference would lead to a more "open to experience" attitude, and in some ways it has. I guess involvement is sort of overwhelming. I am reserved to a certain place.

I watched Home Alone last night. I watched Home Alone 2 last week. Try getting through the second Home Alone, I dare you. The first Home Alone is timeless, well made, dare I say original. Rehashing is always annoying, writing things that hit with an audience the first time around for a second time just to solicit a similar response is dishonest. I suppose one could argue that within the first script, the repeated, outrageous scream scenes were sort of put in for the same reason, and they probably were. Held within itself, within the same entity, however, just plays differently. I'll call it endearing.

Things I'm currently/would like to be working on:

- poems (writing, reading, editing)
- screen play
- critical essays on the movie "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and Do Make Say Think's song, "Bound to Be That Way"
- organizing my things

Alcohol does not make me a more interesting person/writer. I get loud and sad when I drink, sometimes both at the same time. The context in which one alters him/herself greatly influences the results produced. My context is uncertainty. I roll the dice every time.

I guess I'm more interested in the process of things themselves rather than the actual thing, that includes a poem. I've been reading so many poor poems lately. Their focus is on experience and telling a tale. Fuck stories. Your biography is uninteresting, I don't care how interesting it is. Your writing is the experience I want. That's what I'd like to produce for you as well.

I probably wont even sing tonight, but I'll wish the entire time I could. We'll drive and look at lights like everyone else and be everyone else. I need to call my mom tonight and tomorrow. She'll like that.

life update

2008-12-22T07:56:00.000-08:00

I met with the editors of The Benefactor Magazine (www.thebenefactormagazine.com) this last Saturday (at Tico's in Lincoln) to discuss poetry/art/the carting of individuals in cattle cars to be killed, as China is the new black these days--Americans are apparently the unnecessary portion of this planet. We also discussed the possibility of me becoming their poetry editor. They gave me a CD-R with the latest submitted poetry on it to edit and assess. I think that I officially accepted the position, however I'm not sure it came across that way. What I'm saying is that I am the poetry editor of The Benefactor. Submit, friends!

sharing others' poems

2008-12-19T11:49:00.000-08:00

Kenneth Koch's "Paradiso"

There is no way not to be excited
When what you have been disillusioned by raises its head
From its arms and seems to want to talk to you again.
You forget home and family
And set off on foot or in your automobile
And go to where you believe this form of reality
May dwell. Not finding it there, you refuse
Any further contact
Until you are back again trying to forget
The only thing that moved you (it seems) and gave what you forever will have
But in the form of a disillusion.
Yet often, looking toward the horizon
There—inimical to you?—is that something you have never found
And that, without those who came before you, you could never have imagined.
How could you have thought there was one person who could make you
Happy and that happiness was not the uneven
Phenomenon you have known it to be? Why do you keep believing in this
Reality so dependent on the time allowed it
That it has less to do with your exile from the age you are
Than from everything else life promised that you could do?

Frank O'Hara's "As Planned"

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

Frank O'Hara's "My Heart"

I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!", all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

James Schuyler's "Closed Gentian Distances"

A nothing day full of
wild beauty and the
timer pings. Roll up
the silver off the bay
take down the clouds
sort the spruce and
send to laundry marked,
more starch. Goodbye
golden- and silver-
rod, asters, bayberry
crisp in elegance.
Little fish stream
by, a river in water.

probably not what you're thinking

2008-12-18T07:07:00.000-08:00

This is how I feel

and have felt for awhile now

*Lines I will eventually steal and put in something:

I want your picture, but not yours.

My epilepsy
loved it.

new york, anyone?

2008-12-15T07:25:00.000-08:00

So one of my favorite poets is giving a reading in New York on Wednesday, where she will be reading my favorite of her books. Damn.

"Midwinter Day: A 30th Anniversary Reading Wednesday, 8:00 pm
Bernadette Mayer wrote Midwinter Day three decades ago on December 22, 1978; please join her and some special guests as they read selections from this epic work. Readers include: Bernadette Mayer, Philip Good, Marie Warsh, Lewis Warsh, Barbara Epler, Jamey Jones, Peggy DeCoursey, Lee Ann Brown, Scott Satterwaite, Bill de Noyelles and Brenda Coultas."

- http://www.poetryproject.com/calendar.php

I'm thinking about writing Bernadette a letter. I just need some paper, something to say, and her address. Jeff told me she gave away (or sold) a bunch of her books (from her library, not necessarily books she wrote) to some book store in Amherst, MA. He said there were some gems among them, her name written on the inside covers.

What's going on Bernadette?
That's what I'd ask her.

w

2008-12-12T12:35:00.000-08:00

"...there will be an additional paid holiday for State employees on Friday, December 26, 2008. On December 12th, President Bush signed an executive order to excuse federal employees from duty for the day after Christmas, Friday, December 26, 2008.

According to Nebraska State Statute 84-1001 (3), 'For purposes of this section, paid holidays shall include all of the days enumerated in section 25-2221 and all days declared by law or proclamation of the President or Governor to be holidays.'"

Who ever said George W. Bush was a bad President?

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

blogspot friendly poems (no absurd line breaks) to share

2008-12-02T19:24:00.000-08:00

1, 2, 3, 4, Fyfe
for Justin

behooved to know
a hoof has its hoofs
and hooves, for one
leg is no damn good
without the other
leg and leg and leg,
four, and four stands
in there, four stands
in mud but these
fences, sir, have
plenty of posts dug
in mud, poor boots
are aching, those
battle wounds, those
wires, those barbs
will catch you
standing too close
to blue, buried
in the ripe dust
and wine in the shit
just bend it and smile
it's ok to smell it here
they say it's money
they say it's the smell
of money

Passive Brass

I'm supposed
to read a poem
with my mouth
to you, friend,
I'm not
the bell of a
ring but bright
past the lip--
a horn
xxxxxI am
an eye reader,
reader, and eat
yellow sound
with ears
and my brain,
my reference
reads to thumb
pages inside
my head, a fan,
a face and diction--
air between the image
and the mouth
hangs
holding eyes
on my page,
my body.

titles are for sucka's

2008-11-14T08:49:00.000-08:00

I came across the flyer's I made for Czar Omega's last show:

They're a little too sentimental for my taste.

Yeah. Fuck sentiment.

I wrote some notes on a poem of Justin's that I still haven't given to him (or he still hasn't picked up). But I wrote something that I'd like to share with everyone. Regardless of context, I wrote, "As a reader I don't want to be told things, especially about things that aren't concrete, physical things, and as a poet we should never assume we know anything our readers don't, should we? We are revealers of truth, not fabricators--we act as subtle directors."

It's strange that I don't necessarily like imposing anything on a reader, but for some reason think I can impose something on myself, let alone another writer. It's only meant to be an open dialogue for the acquiring of poetic knowledge. I don't have any, so I'm taking suggestions.

perspective.

2008-11-04T09:04:00.000-08:00

"Did You Write Any Poems?"

IN APRIL 1968 students occupied six buildings of Columbia [University, New York] to protest the university administration’s complicity in the Vietnam War and their insistence on building a new gym in Morningside Park despite the objections of Harlem, the city government, faculty, students. With other writers from the Columbia Review I spent nearly a week in President Kirk’s office in Low Library before getting beaten up by the cops in the final bust. The days in Low Commune were deliciously utopian — with approximately 125 students making decisions through participatory democracy, changing the world by example — and dangerous, despite our stance of non-violence. The right-wing students charged the building several times, setting up a blockade to prevent the anti-war students from sending in supplies. Fists began to fly, and the scene around the building roiled with constant near riots. The faculty decided to set up their own line in an attempt to prevent the situation from getting even more out of hand. Professors took turns standing on the lawn outside the building beneath the second-story windows to keep the right-wing students from charging Low Library and, attempting some parity, to keep the left-wing students from bringing supplies to the communards. It was not an easy time to be a professor at Columbia. To be arbiters, intermediaries between the students and the administration, was an impossible task during such polarization. After the “bust” bloodied over a thousand students, the faculty realized that the administration held them in almost as much contempt as they regarded the students, and most of them ended up joining the strike that followed the beatings and mass arrests. In the midst of Low’s occupation and siege, I was assigned to a shift to stand guard at one of the windows. Behind me and out of sight was one of those tall poles with a hook used for opening the tall windows — a possible weapon if indeed the “jocks” and other right-wingers made their charge. On the grass below stood the line of professors, and among them was Kenneth Koch, doing his stint on the faculty cordon. He looked up at me, smiled in his affable way, didn’t preach or wail or gnash his teeth, and he offered a friendly wave at me and the other editors of the literary magazine, Les Gottesman and Alan Senauke. He couldn’t keep from enjoying himself, couldn’t take things too seriously, which was in its own way very unnerving. But it was good to see him, in all his goofiness, and we waved back. He had thrown his lot in with the rest of the feeble faculty, which saddened us, although we couldn’t be mad at him. His humor lent him some transcendent grace. “Did you write any poems?” he chuckled up at us. No, we hadn’t. We set right off to punch out a bunch of spontaneous three-way collaboration poems, each of us taking a turn on the typewriter we had liberated from President’ Kirk’s secretary. So terrible, so embarrassingly idiotic were these poems that we threw them away almost immediately. The muse of Andre Breton and Tristan Tzara and Frank O’Hara had failed us, and moment-to-moment rhapsodic bop would sound only like Allen Ginsberg, and there was only one Allen Ginsberg. We couldn’t bear to write tedious Fight-Team-Fight anthems or lugubrious, boring manifestos. All we could knock out was intense, manic gibberish when what was needed was something entirely new written in a language no one had yet invented. Still, I marveled at Koch’s sweetness, his unwillingness to change his peaceable demeanor in the face of chaos and violence, his chuckle, and his question, “Did you write any poems?” I’ve always remembered that moment, and at other tough times I recall the question. Throughout my life, it has formed a kind of mantra. Driving headfirst off a cliff, hard knocks on the Indian reservation, wrestling with COINTELPRO, whirr of printing press, bombs in Beirut, broke, evictions, whiffing tear gas while taking a shit in Gaza — whenever there was conflict and danger, I would remember Kenneth Koch’s chuckle, see his sweet grin, and I would recall the pleasures of peace: “Did you write any poems?”

- Hilton Obenzinge

Christmas List

2008-10-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

1. Missy Elliott's discography (yes, i would like someone to buy me every one of her albums)

2. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

3. The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975

4. The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005

5. The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser

6. The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser

7. Collected Poems by James Schuyler

shoes

2008-10-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about getting some new shoes. Between these two:

They are the same shoe, I just can't pick between the two colors. I'm also thinking about buying some new dress shoes.

What do you think? I think they're pretty classy.

what do you think? should i?

2008-10-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

Please indicate in your submission whether or not you'd like criticism in the case that we decline publication your work.

For some reason, this statement makes me leery of start-up, online journals. While I appreciate an informed, objective eye and new perspectives regarding the successes or failures of my writing, I feel like as a writer, I deserve exactly that--an informed, objective perspective of poetic merit. Shouldn't the editors of these "start-up," online journals provide some sort of legitimizing statement as to their credentials, or does a flashy website assume some sort of legitimacy?

Regarding the specific journal where this particular statement was taken, maybe it's the absence (obviously unintentional) of the preposition of between publication and your that makes me hesitant to submit. Or maybe it's my persistent insecurity? Or is it my love affair with poetry that makes me feel like I have more poetic exposure than the editors of these start ups? Should that matter--obviously not. I might read a lot of poetry, but I still don't know anything about it. Maybe I know a little bit. Shit (see persistent insecurity). When am I allowed to feel comfortable to show the world what I think I know? And when will I feel comfortable enough to accept everything that I do not (which is everything)?

My poetry is an argument for uncertainty. I am not yet knowledgeable. I cannot interject a point or idea into a line. "No ideas but in things." The lines are my providers. I need my poetry to teach me about light and about the weight of this earth.

a father for no fathers again and another one

2008-10-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

No interval of manner
Your body in the sun.
You? A solid, this that the dress
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhinsisted,
Your face unaccented, your mouth a mouth?
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjPractical knees:
It is you who truly
Excel the vegetable,
The fitting of grasses—more bare than
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjthat.
Pointedly bent, your elbow on a car-edge
Incognito as summer
Among mechanics.

- George Oppen, from Discrete Series: "Town, a town ..."

I will lift the light out of it too, George.

My goodness.

In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the morning

2008-10-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

I met Peter Gizzi today. He recommended I read George Oppen which I will definitely be doing. He also recommended I read Abraham Lincoln. Yes, Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Gizzi recited verse from memory and dazzled us with his knowledge of 19th Century Americanism in relation to the Moderns and subsequently its relationship to people like John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara.

I see the poets of the New York School as pioneers (duh) in their ability to eclipse experience with their imaginations; a sort of funneling of realistic experience through the guise of a twisted imagination. No longer was experience the focus. Imagination was emphasized for some of the early moderns (see Dickinson and Williams), but for some reason it was not until the likes of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch that we (at least for me) were able to see a transformation of imagination rooted in experience but turned in a way that wasn't everyday but was still somehow familiar. I know a lot of people cite O'Hara as the "do this do that" poet where everyday experience was emphasized, but there is something so much more to it than that.

A reproduction of nature is not and should not be the focus of art. Abstract expressionism acts as a god in the fact that it is creation in the most fundamental sense of the word. Using materials around you to produce something that is not currently present. Nothing Pollock or de Kooning created existed before the paint was applied to it. The wheelbarrow was there for Williams just as a taxi was there for O'Hara. Williams got people to recognize and appreciate what they were not recognizing and appreciating, whereas O'Hara got people to be excited about the things they were recognizing all the time. This is O'Hara's imagination at work. Yes, Frank O'Hara is a god in the same sense that Pollock and de Kooning were.

Peter Gizzi talked about poetry constantly looking back at the vacuum of history. One's experience is what a writer draws from for their subjects, whether physically experienced, overheard, read, etc. Where will my imagination take the experiences I've had and/or possess? That is my ultimate curiosity for my life and my writing. What will I do that no one has done? Will I? Can I?

It is appealing to me that writing is a continual present and future action while the physical act of reading is one of the past--words are going past you as you are reading this for instance, but as I am typing this words are appearing and currently are and will be after this word and this word and this one too. Gertrude Stein stated that "For a long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everyone accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling." What is avant garde? What can I make that will reject anything without immediately being accepted for that rejection? What can I do that is new? David Lehman states, "If we are all postmodernists, we are none of us avant-garde, for postmodernism is the institutionalization of the avant-garde." Can one create something new without being "avant garde?" I guess so?

But for the same reason political poetry is suspect, wouldn't anything rooted in tradition be so as well? Art based on and pursued because of the ideas and beliefs and agendas of others is half art to me. Most political poetry is attempting to further the agenda of someone else, and is, therefore, not inherently original to that author. Does that apply to anything outside of the avant garde? What is the avant garde. Fuck. !

I should have asked Peter Gizzi.

rockets, houston rockets that is (reasons for not growing out my beard)

2008-09-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

I just finished a king size Snickers. I ate the entire thing in one sitting. Wes told me yesterday that after he got back from his vacation a couple weeks ago his sweaty arm pit problem (he has had for years and years) mysteriously disappeared. What I'm saying is maybe my recent trip to Colorado reacquired my taste for sweets, particularly chocolate. I had a chocolate craving less than ten minutes ago and got up from my desk and bought a Snickers. Me. My stomach gets upset if I eat a "fun size" Snickers. I feel fine. I feel GREAT. This is a biological change. This is interesting.

I set up a saving plan on my Wells Fargo online account. In 21 months I hope to have $4000 dollars saved for a trip to Europe. I have quite a few friends who live there and have family there so I think including the plane ticket, $4000 would be enough to spend a month or two or three across the sea. More? Less? I have no idea. I guess since I know people who I could stay with, my only expense would be getting from one place to another and food and booze. Trains can't cost all that much can they? I hope my life falls the way I'm passively attempting to direct it to. I want to save up some money and travel and that means I need to put off my life another year. Yeah. I want to write and find out about my writing recklessly before any sort of formal direction reels me in. But maybe formal direction would scatter me about? Work work work for 21 more months then run run run around in Europe then I can start my academic life back up. I could see myself becoming a perpetual student. MFA then maybe a Ph.D. in physics. I'll write moon poetry when I'm older, you'll see.

It's very patchy.

San Francisco, Nebraska

2008-09-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

Where was I supposed to pay my five dollars to get over the Bay Bridge? I don't remember the last time it was THIS foggy outside. I desire nothing more than a sterile environment. I am sick. I am in a continual state of sickness and every place I sleep feels infested with dander as the cats run the roost these days. I want to check myself into a hospital and sleep at an incline.

I bought a tea at Scooter's and while the barista was making it, I was suspicious of his process. He put the tea flakes directly into the cup and filled it up with hot water. I'm not a fan of Nestea, the freeze-dried shit or whatever but knew that the tea he was using wasn't that. What was he doing? I looked at the lid and noticed that it was a "Filter Lid." The opening has this filter thing covering that doesn't allow the tea flakes to get into your mouth but allows the tea steeped water to. Is this new? I don't go to coffee shops or anything like that, and in the event that I do, I usually buy juice. It doesn't matter.

I'm also very suspicious of any social or political statement made through the use of one's own body. You people take yourselves very seriously. Write something to persuade me because your interesting body hair is uninteresting to me. It's all just very tired. I am very tired. I am sympathetic to feminism and have read Mina Loy, but regardless of how much you try, you are always going to be an object of desire for some freaky dude who's into whatever it is you're into and will rebel against it as well. This is more because of you than anything else though. But you already knew that. And everyone else just doesn't care what you do. I don't care, I'm just very suspicious. Live and let live. I'll shut up.

I wrote my friend Jeff a letter but didn't have ink for my printer so I don't know how relevant it is anymore. I'll send it anyhow. I need to buy some ink. I've been thinking about you a lot Jeff and I hope everything is going alright. Sometimes I write because I think that you're writing too. "I'm not gay or nothin'."

16th century poetry and the world is definitely a vampire

2008-09-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

Maybe this makes me an asshole, but this is the most peculiar pairing ever.

On the who you might know link thinger on facebook I clicked on some random guy who I actually didn't know and under his favorite books section it said,

"Poets: John Donne and Billy Corgan (of smashing pumpkins) and, of course Emily Dickinson"

...

That is just ridiculous. Almost to the point of awesomeness. It is awesome, actually. Yes. It definitely is. I'm going to facebook befriend him because of it.

No.

I probably wont.
But would if I were that guy.

my speed metal office mate

2008-09-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at my desk just now, or I guess I still am, but a second ago while I was sitting at my desk my office mate Ron walked by and said I could change the radio station if I wanted. We were, and currently still are, listening to the Eagle waiting to hear a Neil Young song so we can call in and win tickets to his concert in Omaha. Considering our intentions I, of course, said "Nah, I like oldies." Ron is an older guy, probably in his late 40's possibly early 50's, so when I said "oldies," it made me feel kind of awkward so I repeated it. "Oldies." He turned to me and said, "Yeah, most of those songs I was listening to when I was playing in bands in high school and college." I blinked a few times and turned to him and asked, "You were in bands, Ron?" He nodded. I asked him what he "did" in his bands and he said, "partied." We both laughed and he said that he played guitar. I then asked what kind of band it was and he turned to me and replied, "speed metal," and slowly turned his attention back to his computer and continued typing. His full back tattoo that I keep hearing about is making more and more sense everyday. I love Ron.