For Ms. Brandi

Instead of poets, I will henceforth write about rabbits...

Anatomy of a Rabbit

I've never considered
his opening like flyleaves
(folio, quarto)
much of a science.
He is simply pulled apart.
Could something so easily got
be relished
a slender volume
tipped
from the shelf, sleekly even?
How could we be so lithe?
Hopping is a gesture
of self-deprecation, of loss,
like words erased before
entering utterance.
I warrant his hindlegs
are brash as a whistle,
a pulse one feels
in the ear,
prescient of touch.

BROADcast for blogland

I have been writing, forsooth! In fact, I am writing every day this month to honor National Poetry Month - which is almost over, so I figured I'd better suck it up and post something. THEN, I had the good fortune to be steered over yonder by another helpful, community-edifyin' sorta poet and voila! There I am. I love that, for once, my non-manness has afforded me a good turn. Cheers to Mr. Jaffe. To boot, each of those little numbers I've produced in my poem-a-day endeavor. If you'd like to read more, or are a glutton for punishment, I'll be glad to embarrass reveal myself further. I know you all like a good strip tease. Being that this is the Interwebs and all.

\\\\\\\\\\ <---kitty insisted on doing this. Is he trying to tell me something?

Anyway, despite the enormity of this place, viz the Interwebs, good music still comes from those curious little corners and one should mind them. And how!

Cowboy Song

A woman's love
is like
the morning dew

it's just as apt
to fall on

a radiant horseturd

as on a rose


- Ted Berrigan (who else?)

Mad props to all you cowboy poets.

It is hereby declared

ALL poetry readings should be like this.



In any case, Kate Greenstreet rocks my socks off.

How important is the Truth?

Non-fiction has really become the equivalent of reality television. I'll admit, I enjoy reading a great story that I know (or at least think) happens to be true. And if I've been sold a fact and find it a fiction, I do feel somewhat betrayed. Still, the betrayal doesn't negate my enjoyment of what I read (if I did, in fact, find it enjoyable).

Still more, I must be a freak of nature - this is not news really - because I find no more enjoyment in true-life accounts than I do in, say, the works of the Brontës. In fact, I often find that there's much more of truth in fiction than vice versa. It takes a deal more skill to peel such living characters from the ether as a Rochester or a Heathcliff and couch them in a living landscape.

To me, the difference between memoir/non-fiction and fiction/poetry (you know, I loves to lump) comes down to the difference between poetic reportage and the reportage of poesy. Namely, fiction takes a more intuitive marriage of personal experience and imagination. Because those living characters didn't REALLY come from the ether. They were culled from many places, people, lessons on human nature, suffering, longing, &c. And a bit from the ether, after all.


YET, the public (read: Oprah) clamours for THE REAL. Keep it real. Get real. Get fake, I say. It's more fun.

The publishing industry has been a bit naive about the whole thing. People lie to please, for personal gain, for fun, all the time. As the love of my life, Eddie Izzard, once said when we were kids, we lied our heads off! And it's true! What else can we expect in a culture that consistently rewards lying, which in turn programs our fragile spawn to lie?

This only underscores the difference between untruth and fiction, as fiction is its own, often purer truth. Or is it? POOF!

...

Also, Spitzer swallows.

That is all.

Ganked from the WomPo

Charlotte Allen is a horrible satirist, yes: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/29/AR2008022902992.html?nav=hcmodule

Rhonda Shearer probably takes her too seriously: http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-journalism-news-updates-126.php

But, this should certainly be taken seriously: http://www.thoughtbubbles.org/psychology/neuroscience_charlotte_allen/

All Hail Poet Hair

Robert Bly named Minnesota's first laureate.

I say, that's such fine hair as to warrant the crowning of laurels.

Garfield Minus Garfield

Jon Arbuckle is a great great poet.

A Human Poem

Robert Barry
Art Work (1970)

It is always changing. It has order. It doesn't have a specific place. Its boundaries are not fixed. It affects other things. It may be accessible but go unnoticed. Part of it may also be part of something else. Some of it is familiar. Some of it is strange. Knowing of it changes it.

Are Poets Human?

The first in an eleventy fishteenth-part series on the quintessence of poetical guts. Or, as my dear friend, the late Lord Russell might say, ARE God?

Frost comes out of the groovework

Forcefeeding the arts

Outside/inside

I love how meandering my way abroad these interwebs can bring about a confluence of otherwise discrete subjects and notions. I believe that in libraries, they call this serendipity, and it can be rather closely mimicked by shutting one's eyes and tipping random volumes from the shelf. Of course, neither of these procedures is particularly serendipitous after all. Algorithms and Dewey decimals aside, most of my wanderings lead me to the same question. Namely, how is it that one lives as a real person and as an artist simultaneously?

I've developed various personae to assist with what would otherwise be rather tumultuous shifting. I consider them packing peanuts with very fine hairdos.

But try telling a for-real person that you've developed personae and they're bound raise an eyebrow. Yet, verily, I say unto thee, no artist I've spoken to sees this as bizarre, ridiculous, or the least bit anti-social. Because it's not - for anyone. Most people, unfortunately, feel a mite uncomfortable admitting to themselves that they are different people in their various capacities (at home, work, trolling on the interwebs, &c.). I'm often pompous enough to consider these poor souls mindlessly segmented. Though, this is not accurate, either; I should think we all bear this in mind.

It's the difference in comfort level at heart - artists don't feel like phoney baloneys shifting personae. This is not dishonesty, they acknowledge - it's the only real honesty! Every poem is likewise a person. Resultant cacophony. We're charged to make it counterpoint (though, if it ain't Baroque, don't fix it, as they say). I'm drawn to conceptual art, to what must seem to people who have their pulse on anything current in particular as the tired-old project.

My project, at present, is to fix a deadline and KEEP it. You see, I do after all have no grounding in reality whatever, and you have all been mightily fooled.

I've always been partial to unusual Valentines

Looks like Reed's got one from 1956.

Cool!

All of them?

I think everyone with the interwebs has heard about the Frosty manuscript and subsequent kerfuffle, but I always love Slate's little picture slideshows. Writers with ridiculous handwriting, par example.

I think if I had the patience or sticktoitiveness or whatever, I would totally be spending my days deciphering manuscripts. I'm caught between the technologies of handwriting and typing, as with most folks my age. Typographies can be beautiful, but not necessarily personal, though we try. For instance, Garamond is my font. It seemed like an implicit part of my workshop experience was discovering that fact. Every once in a while, I'll forget to default a poem to Garamond and it will end up in Times. It just feels...wrong.

I don't hand write that many poems, to be honest. I feel as though I should be a little ashamed of this. But I'm not. I do, however, journal extensively by hand, and my moleskine is mostly dominated by prose and personal reflection or - really - unbroken verse. I think I've become babied by the finality of a hard return, so when I try to feel my line breaks whilst writing by hand, my right pinky says no, see, there's nothing I can do for you here. It's all in the wrist. Typing, wrists are mostly stationary, floating, resigned to their immobility.

All this is to say that the physicality is such that I must versify with Mr. Qwerty or my pen. It's sort of like being ambidextrous, or in this case, not.

I'm not sure if it's still the case, but when I was learning French (about, er, six or so years ago), we had a culture lesson on handwriting analysis. Apparently, prospective employers expect(ed) one to submit a handwritten cover letter so they could tell what sort of bird/bloke you were from the way you swoop your Ys (I think very long tails on letters were supposed to be an indication of a healthy libido.)

Well, hello!

Here I am, you lucky people. It's been a crazy couple of months and sadly this beasty has fallen to the back burner. Hopefully I can be more diligent about it once I'm done teaching my comp class (final is this Wednesday, thank the deity of your choice!).

I've also taken up additional responsibilities at my "real" job, so I've been a bit preoccupied with that as well.

HOS has been going quite swimmingly - I look forward to my Thursdays with the ankle-biters.

I've got a piece coming out soon in Buffalo Carp, thanks to the incomparable Mr. Ryan Collins. And, I'll be reading at the next Manhattan's to-do on the 17th. I look forward to emerging from my shell once again...

O dear

I'm MIA for a couple of weeks and what do I come back to but THIS.

Not only is it my MFA thesis, naked for all to see, but it is horribly misnamed. I am utterly beet red, people.

I am thinking this is retribution from the God[dess] for not being feministy enough during my grad tenure. But seriously. This must be amended. To the bat-cave.

you, poet, priest of nothing

I suppose I'm going to have to start writing more theologically in this space, as D. has claimed that I do so over yonder.

It is true that I am attracted to poesy that bears the weight of theological implications, but I am more interested in how the weight is borne than why or to what end. Process, not product. Doubt and imperfection, our personal crutches, mundanities rendered concurrently meaningful and meaningless, or merely rendered.

I would like to say my identity as an Anglican is different from my identity as an Anglophile, but I don't know why this would be a necessary distinction.

After all, a denomination is scarcely more than whatever jacket we happen to fancy, draped over the same body.

I'm a magpie like anyone else (at least any other poet): I like shiny things; also, captivated by smells, sounds, kneeling, sitting, standing, kneeling again - a litany of word, thought, and motion. Anglican worship, I've begun to realize, is like a poetic form I'm drawn to occupy - to love and to subvert. Often, subversion is my means of loving. Just as submersion.