THEY MEAN TO WIN WIMBLEDON

I'm up to page 161 in Infinite Jest. I've already lost track of where I'm supposed to be for #infsum. I'll probably still be reading it next summer.

Kenneth Koch lecture at Naropa, June 26, 1979

Just learned about this Archive.org site. Found the following. Always good to hear his voice....

LOOK HOW WIDE THIS T-SHIRT IS

IT GOES ALL THE WAY FROM ME TO THE DOOR

HOROSCOPE


What a pretty chart.
Can I get a what-what.
Here's what it looks like for me:

I woke up mad today,
Made a riskful offer,
Got an obstructed view.

You'd think with our proximity to Canada
That the coloured plaster will match.

We will see in a week
To a time we will not see,
Enjoying the cooler temperatures,
Hoping for that upgrade today,
Homer Simpson quotes to guide you
To a successful career. Don't know why,
Not what I expected. Wow...

Huge crowd on the hill.
Happy Canada Day.

Look at this poem by

Arthur Vogelsang, from Left Wing of a Bird:

The Red City


The glue fell out of the book, 1801.
She said in the book,
"I carved a tiny pumpkin for Halloween 2001."
A sound remains over 200 years, choking of course.
Or there's no sound, there's a Polaroid:
An eyedropper towers above a squash.
Tinfoil is spread in front of its face—
To make it blush more she says
Than the little piece of cut candle inside can.

Or it was a whim in 1801 to celebrate a couple of centuries,
To just flat out do something for 2001,
So far away, so science fiction.
How many grandmothers ago, five? six?
A cousin is dead, to the south, in the Cleveland National Forest,
The last of the clan, except for one,
Who has carved a pumpkin in 1801
Or a tiny one for Halloween 2001,
Warm yellow meat, odor of fresh glue.


~~~~~~

Isn't it weird? (I don't know what the rules are about typing up copywrighted material, so, uh...consider this a "review", I guess. (Blah blah blah, really good book, yadda yadda yadda...let's see, it's published by Sarabande, it costs $12.95... there, it's a review.)) I don't know who's who where or what in this poem and that's what I like about it. I like not knowing what "the red city" is, or what this book with the glue is he's talking about, or what happened in the Cleveland National Forest. (What happens in the Cleveland National Forest stays in the Cleveland National Forest.) And what's with the "or" here: "Who has carved a pumpkin in 1801 / Or a tiny one for Halloween 2001"? When is what going on, who, where? What dimension does this pumpkin exist in? Quantum mechanics seem to be involved somehow.

Some people complain when they don't understand what's going on in a poem, or when there's a reference they don't get. They say it's alienating or elitist or something. Like they need every little thing explained to them in a poem in a direct no-nonsense way or they start crying. Boring. Not knowing stuff is like "white space" of the mind. Gaps are fun because you can fill them in. I mean, not with exact words or specific thoughts, but it's like, room to move around in, room for your mind.... I don't like closed poems—I'm not necessarily even talking about endings—but poems where every seat in the auditorium is full—full of the poet—and there's nowhere for your own mind to take a seat and join in on the experience, interact, like you're really inside it.... Poems with thought-gaps are a lot less alienating than poems without them, it seems to me....

I have finished reading Left Wing of a Bird, by Arthur Vogelsang

So it's been four months since I finished a book. This makes eight for the year. The goal is 150.

It's a really good book.

8 down, 142 to go.

I heart this...

A newcomer's view of flarf, a blog post that starts with flarf and sugues seemlessly into some thoughts about A.O. Scott, heroism, and something called the Antiochian Archdiocese. Ch-ch-ch-check it out.

6/27/09

11:25 p.m. Manhattan Diner

sitting down to eat after getting

back from Brooklyn took forever

construction on the L line

shuttle buses, that whole thing

very hungry now alone here

waiter just brought my Coke

I ordered a burger deluxe

this place is the best 24-

hour diner in the city

"except for all the others"

—Winston Churchill

the reading in Brooklyn 

was good, it was Joshua 

Marie Wilkinson, Lily Brown 

and Mathias Svalina who

along with Julia Cohen has

just been traded to Denver

for a first round draft pick

12 million dollars cash and

a poet to be named later

Well, what's-his-face seems to have apologized, or pretended to. I wouldn't call his sincerity into question if this apology hadn't come so abruptly. Seems like maybe he just wants the whole thing to disappear. Well, it's a bit late for that. Hopefully he's at least feeling a modicum of shame. Hopefully people who used to visit his site will start to ignore him and visit instead Kristy Bowen's Chicago Poetry Calendar.

What sexist creepism looks like

It looks like this. 

It also looks like this (read the comments).

After reading those, be sure to check out my new site, Chicago's Poetry Calendar, the official site of Chicago poetry. (You'll only get what that means if you read the previous links. So read them.)

And be sure to let C. J. Laity know what you think about his vicious and boneheaded attacks.  

This soooo does not do it justice!

The best for (almost) last

Cool! Surprise!

Happy!

Did you know that the state quarters program isn't stopping with the states? Nope, this year is the year for D.C. (above, represented by Duke Ellington at his piano—the best "state" quarter yet!), Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands, of whose existence I was not even aware before this night.

I've kissed mermaids, rode the El Niño
Walked the sand with the crustaceans
Could find my way to Mariana
On a wave of mutilation...

(I wonder what Duke would have thought of the Pixies....

"If it sounds good, it is good."

Palin thinks she's the Virgin Mary

"Recently we learned of a malicious DESECRATION of a photo of the Governor and baby Trig that has become an iconic representation of a mother's love for a special needs child," Palin spokeswoman Meghan Stapelton said in a statement provided to CNN.

(emphasis miiiiiiine)

Slavoj Žižek gives capitalism a shot

I don't know anything about Slavoj Žižek, but something inside me tells me this is very funny. Check it out.

Oh, and the other thing I did 2day besides hook you up with that hott link just now, was to learn from some tweeter that "garlic scapes" is "such a popular search term, [he's] getting three hits a min from people Googling them."

Garlic scapes. Garlic scapes. Mad hits. Garlic scapes.

Notes to self and others

TWO READINGS COMING VERY SOON

READING ONE*

*ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY READING LILY BROWN MATHIAS SVALINA JOSHUA MARIE WILKINSON + VIDEOS BY BRANDON DOWNING JUNE 27 8PM SPACESPACE 390 SENECA AVENUE

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

READING TWO*

*FOURTH OF JULY MUUMUU HOUSE AMERICA FREEDOM MALIA SASHA BOOK RELEASE FIREWORKS HOTDOG 1812 DORITOS SADDAM HUSSEIN GM OUTER SPACE FRANCE EPCOT CENTER READING ZACHARY GERMAN BRANDON SCOTT GORRELL ABIGAIL LLOYD JULY 4th 4PM SPACESPACE (ROOFTOP) 390 SENECA AVENUE

BRING YOUR FLAG

In which I bitch and moan in a grating, tiresome, hipper-than-thou tone of voice about the American Hybrid anthology

Just kidding. Looks like a pretty good line-up to me. Ignore the whiners. I'm not really an anthology guy—I'm more likely just to seek out the individual books of the various poets at the library—but as anthologies go, it looks 2B better than most.

SIGNALS


Fireflies are old-fashioned.
That's what they want you to think.
The truth is much more
Open to interpretation and the elements.

Stars, not to be outdone, ask you
To consider them when planning your evening,
Assuming you have one to plan.
If not, you may need to apply pressure to secure
Adequate funding. It dries up rapidly
Around here, owing to the arid climate.

The good news is you can see
For miles, and miles like to be noticed.
Once I stood on top of my house
And even though trees blocked my view,
I could still sense that I was about to be
Introduced to a way of listening that had until then
For unknown reasons evaded my awareness.

Tacky and trite, maybe, I don't know, but that's the way
It happened, to me and no one else, no one,
At least, within earshot. And then,
There is the distinct possibility
I imagined the whole thing: the house, the wind,
The spaces between, everything. If
That's the case, I'm not sure
I want to be associated with any actions taken
On my behalf, any one of which could lead
To problems down the line, errant signals sending
Two trains onto a single track
In the middle of a badly timed fog.

Well I meant to read from Infinite Jest today but I didn't get around to it. Today is the first day of Infinite Summer. I got caught in the rain, which was nice, but I was stuck under scaffolding for like half an hour.

In which I pick up, think, knock, forget, decide, abandon, try to keep, look around, see, love, and prefer

Picked up Tony Towle's "Autobiography" and Other Poems at the Strand. They weren't doing bag checks! Are they not doing bag checks anymore ever? 2ruth btold, I think I'll miss that, if it is indeed a permanent change, since now everybody's gonna be walking around in those narrow aisles with their backpacks on knocking over stuff and bumping into folks. I knocked over a David Markson book with my bulging bag, for example. I picked it up, but it was a clear signal that this wearing-the-backpack-in-the-store thing was going to cause a lot of problems. But I don't know, maybe they were just shorthanded 2nite and so didn't—but no I don't think they were...the counter top of the bag check station was piled with books and merch that hadn't been there b4. Like it looked like a pretty permanent new setup....

I forget which David Markson book it was.... In other book nooz, I've just this evening decided to abandon probably for good Lydia Millet's Everyone's Pretty. This brings my "currently-reading" tally to 144, down from 145 (Towle). Trying to keep it under a GROSS here. I should be able to finish one poetry book tonight.

This Towle book is from 1977 and is brown, with Robert Motherwell art on the cover. It's slightly sticky, in that way that 32-year-old books can be. Why don't they make brown books anymore? Is it considered an unattractive color for some strange reason? Looking around cursorily at my boox right now I see that maybe only three or four are mostly brown. I love books from the seventies. Book design was at its best in the 60's and 70's, then it sucked hard in the 80's as we all know, then it started to improve but still kind of sucked in the 90's, and then in the last few years people really seem to have come to their senses book-design-wise. Mostly. I still prefer the ultra cool cover-art and fonts of the 60's and 70's, which most of the time meant something pretty simple, cool like Miles Davis cool, or colorful cool like...I don't know, whoever. But of course, the reason books are looking good today again is because what was old is new again and what was blue is true again. Not just blue, but you know, I did that cuz of the rhyme.

So apparently even though I can now get channel 13 DTV since I rescanned, I can now no longer get channel 11 for some reason. Oh well. It's more, much more, than a fair trade-off....

POEM

Tonight, rain is 

tearing into a number 

in an equation having 

to do with molecular decay.

(This afternoon, a ghost

I would like to believe in 

invented what would come 

to be known as 

"looking outside, seeing only shadows" 

and fell into a mild stupor.)

Why would you click "no"?

From the CNN website, today's poll:

Quick Vote

Would you like to live on the moon?

Yes 23% 3589
No 77% 12200

Total Votes: 15789

This is not a scientific poll

Now, I ask you, gentle people, why in the world would anyone not like to live on the moon? And even if you looked at it from a pragmatic perspective—because, you know, living on the moon right now, in reality, would suck hard for a lot of reasons—how devoid of wonder, humor, and imagination do you have to be to actually choose "no" in a casual online poll? Listen, people, no one is actually asking you to live on the moon! Your answer is not binding!

Seventy-seven per cent. Unreal.

These are the same people who deny diplomas to kids who blow kisses to their moms. You know the type. Sadly, now that I think about it, that 77% seems pretty accurate.

In which I read, walk, use terms, love, laugh internally, reflect, look forward

Resumed reading Denis with one n Denis Johnson's Already Dead. I read some of it yesterday walking around in the park. It was perfect weather for reading a book set in California. Overcast, summermoist, room temp. Walked along the part of the park that runs alongside train tracks. It occurred to me that you could shoot a movie of two people walking along those tracks, with the trees in the background, and it could stand in for rural Missouri or something. You could shoot an entire feature film in New York without ever showing a building, if you really wanted to. That would be an interesting thing to do conceptually, if I'm using that term right. Like, "Look at the great expense we went to to shoot this in Manhattan, when it could have been done for a fraction of the cost in Nowheresville, MO, with the same basic stuff on screen." Not sure what the point of such a concept would be, but there you go.

Anyway, still loving AD, even though I laugh internally every time I reflect on the fact it was inspired by a poem by the insufferable Bill Knott. (Bill Knott himself being insufferable, not his poetry, which I'm pretty neutral about.) Got about 70-some pages left. Looking forward to reading more of Denis with one n Denis Johnson "in future" (we used to say "in the future", but now we say "in future", apparently). I've read Jesus' Son, so I'm thinking the next will be Angels.

Even Slower Poetry has arrived...

From the Even Slower Poetry Manifesto:

These aspirations are informed in many ways by other "slow" movements such
as the Slow Laundry movement. Slow Laundry is an idea: a way of cleaning your
clothes using hot water and soap, and a way of falling asleep while you're doing
it. It is a global, grassroots movement with hundreds of members around the
world who link the pleasure of clean laundry with a commitment to rarely leaving the house. Even Slower Poetry, likewise, shares with such movements a commitment to understanding the means of promotion and distribution of plastic things that you're not sure where they came from or what they're for, but it's probably better not to throw them away. DAMN--I'm taking these bad boys down to Kinko's.

Although some may claim that Even Slower Poetry and other Slow Mind
Movements are yuppie fads designed by people with adequate wealth to fund such
endeavors, those of us practicing a slow poetics are not always complete Yuppies
24/7. Just sometimes. We're actually kind of dull, angry hippies with gigantic
chips on our shoulders and some extra discretionary income that we're not sure
what to do with without feeling white guilt. Joy comes about through fulfilling
the plan of Poetry and having the power of the Poem moving in your life and
knowing when you die that you are going to finally see your name in the Don
Allen Anthology.

May this glorious new sapling take root and blossom into a blooming blossoming weeping willow of Poetry salvation.

At some point during the weekend I did twenty-five push-ups, consecutively. It's Wednesday and I can still feel them, in the muscles of the under-arm area. It's not pleasant lifting my arms in the shower or to reach for things. Lifting things doesn't help. Lifting boxes full of paper helps even less. I hope whatever muscles I destroyed grow back.

Pound in Indiana

"Sometimes when he came to our house I was exceedingly glad to see him. But by
the time he had stayed from four on Sunday afternoon till twelve or one at
night, and had crawled all over the sofa and stuck his feet up against the wall
and otherwise engaged in unnecessary contortions, I was at least glad to see him
go." —Rollo Walter Brown, a faculty colleague of Ezra Pound at Wabash College.

That's from an article by James Longenbach I might very well one day read in its entirety.

One of Ezra Pound's unnecessary contortions (reenactment).

GRAPE INQUIRY

Should I berate that homonym? What would the master of ceremonies say? "You look like you could use a food-borne illness." Too late, I was already born of food, born to pieces. That was a while ago. Since then I have asked, once, for ham in a militaristic shed. But that got translated as "clams" and you know how that goes. (It goes swell, despite one's initial misgivings.) Slowly, then, or quickly, whatever's best, take a bite of bold potatoes soaked in timely wine. Inform me, if you feel like it, how many grapes fit inside a hollow moon. (Not necessarily the Moon.)

MONTH (REQUIRED). REQUEST GRAPES.


I separate homonyms? These
are the owners? "They
were eating, as might
be caused by disease."

However, not all were
born, the food, the
number of births. This
is the time. I

was back to hangar
ham military said. But
the "dog" must be
translated and how. (Despite

the fact that doubt
is gone, the same
enthusiasm.) This is simple,
that right time best

wine too quickly or
raw potatoes. Appropriate for
certain types of co-months,
if not the clause.

A Gross of Books, or, How I Read

The other day I reached page 144 of Infinite Jest. On that same day I realized that I am currently reading 144 books. That's one (1) gross. A gross of books. People say you should focus on one book at a time. I wouldn't be able to do that. Sometimes you're not in the mood to read a certain kind of book. It might be fine for one day, but not for the next. Different books require different levels of concentration too. When I read I need to be able to think exactly what the author was thinking, or else I can't go on. It's like every thought, every chain of thoughts, have these cavities with specific contours that I have to fill like a hand goes in a glove. I have to put myself in the mind of the author/character, and if something doesn't seem to follow logically from the previous thought, then I can't go on until I try to figure out what the author or character is thinking. Sometimes I have to force it and I continue reading but I feel uncomfortable. This can stop me for up to twenty or thirty minutes on a single page. This is why it takes me so long to read.

That's how it is with (conventional) prose. With poetry it's not a problem since things don't have to follow logically. Well, in certain kinds of poems it can be a small problem, but still not a big problem.

My goal is to lower that number from 144 as close as I can to zero before I start reading any new books. That's not realistic, so what I might do instead is finish two, start one (no more than one). That way the number goes down, but I still get to start new books.

Another reason it takes me so long to read is because I have trouble trusting page numbers. I worry that when I turn a page I'll accidentally pull one too many, or that there's a printing problem and pages got left out. That's happened to me twice now, so it's become a compulsion, flipping the corner of the page back and forth for several minutes before I can continue. I'm getting better with this though.

Still trying to decide whether to start Ulysses tomorrow.

John Ashbery on Pierre Martory's The Landscapist

Away We Go was good.

My sister went to India and brought me this:

Twitter channels Joe Brainard

THE NEW THONG


1.

So, here's the story: 

I was at Wal-Mart with 

my husband 

buying various 

socks and underwear 

stocking stuffer gifts, 

including the NEW 

Carefree Thong 

Pantiliner *FREE* 

6-PACK.

2.

We had numerous 

little boys and girls 

come up to have 

their picture taken 

with the new Thong Girl

while their Dads 

checked out her 

Playboy portfolio!

3.

I received an email 

a couple of weeks 

ago from an actress 

who had seen a 

posting for auditions for 

the new Thong Girl. 

She said she was from Los Angeles.

4.

These are toe thongs—

an anklet that connects 

to a toe ring—

and apparently they 

are the chic way to go.

5.

Tube socks: the new thong?

Leave it to model Gisele 

Bündchen to turn a pair 

of $3 athletic socks 

into the sexiest item.

6.

If location is

everything, 

then the new 

Thong Ta Airport 

Hotel & Resort 

has it all! This 

affordable hotel 

is next to 

Suvarnabhumi 

International Airport.

7.

And of course, we'll have 

a booth set up and

we'll be selling all 

of our Thong Girl 

merchandise, 

including the new 

Thong Girl tee shirts.

8.

Cheekini is the 

new thong! I 

was brought into 

a whole new 

world last weekend 

when I got 

myself my first 

(and second) 

pair of cheekinis.

9.

Slimming down 

the front and back 

triangles until 

the garment shed 

one-eighth of an ounce, 

she finally got the 

new thong to fit.

10.

The mystery has been solved:

“People will buy 

any article of 

clothing if we 

create enough 

controversy and jack 

the price up enough.”

11.

This with-

out a doubt 

has to be 

the greatest 

invention 

in clothing 

since the push-up bra.


12.

The “New Thong Fem” 

is perfect for 

sophisticated ladies.

13.

The hair shirt is the new thong. 

This time the plot begins 

with money. Two K Street 

fixers, a lobbyist named 

Jack Abramoff and a

flack named Michael Scanlon

capture the gladiator trend 

this season in COLOR with 

the New Thong Gladiator sandals 

in every color of the rainbow.

14.

The New Thong Fem 

is perfect for 

a walk at the park or the beach. 

This style perfectly fits 

the contours of your soles.

15.

Thong made krathongs from condoms 

and floated them in pools of water.

16.

Traffic will be 

transferred 

onto the new Thong 

Lane Bridge. 

The slip road 

closure allows all 

the associated works 

for the new Thong Lane.

17.

The new thong has 

a lower rise, 

and the back is made of that same 

stretch sateen as the bra.

Good grief!

18.

Maybe they could try naming the pandas more creatively.


19.

Everyone's talking about

the day Marc Jacobs graces 

the world with a sample sale,

the skinny on the new thong 

that has every It Girl blushing.

20.

Pray for the new 

Thong Chai church 

and for the other Hmong 

communities who 

are interested in 

starting churches. Pray 

for Krista and Aaron 

as they begin.

21.

SLOW IS THE NEW 

FAST = right is the 

new wrong + naked is 

the new thong. BE 

MY WOMAN BE MY 

MAN = hetero + homo + 

disco + techno + gogo.

John David California is the fake Fredrik Colting, or

Fredrik Colting is the real John David California (Salinger sequel dude).

Another literary hoax? Dude, that is sooo 2006! Check it out.

The very

perceptive Nicholas Manning uses my thoughts as a launching point for some further thoughts along the lines of my thoughts. Check it out.

So, Paul Siegell has informed me of his new poem-video, now up at YouTube. Check it out.