Akron/Family

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

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

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

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

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

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

On One's Own Writing

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

this movie.

Black Mountain

Pink Mountaintops

Poetry Jokes

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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

Accepting

Fall.

One step closer to

this,

Blow your hair back here.

This does not make me swoon

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

played by Tom Waits. I'm into it.

I Stumbled Upon Myself

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

calls for swimming and drinking and smiling and sailing.



Enjoy!

fuck dean winters.

Robin Blaser,

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

?

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

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

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

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

music in film

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

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

I've decided

I'm going skydiving this summer.

such a good show last night

also

I'll fear no death.


Kyle (me) and Jay (my brother)

not working at work (after lunch)

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

does nothing for me anymore.

So

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!

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

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

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

"April Not an Inventory but a Blizzard"

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

AMC's Breaking Bad

premieres March 8, 2009



!

ppppppppp

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

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

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.