Autotypist

On A Saturday Night Before I Leave My House

2011-09-17T20:50:00.003-04:00

Where do you stay?

When all the ticket buyers buying tickets say
I'm gonna go ahead and go. One is more
a destination person. One more like go ahead.
And go. Like say a wheel
or a wing I remember
getting carried away.

The one who does laundry meets the one who does dishes.
Who gets down with your demands,
who's short pennies for wishes.

One with too many choices meets the one who wants more.
Who drains the fuel from jets,
who knows what time is for.

How long do you stay?
One stays away. One stays behind.

I am trying to buy property:
it's a-guy-walks-into-a-house kinda joke.
Some even more real estate,
a jughead believer, I somehow build broke.

With a death grip she comes
down hard with a spike.
Time lived is the sum
of days that I "Like."

HAMMER a way

Shiny rims rolling under such chronic keep-on-truckers:
just jump, get off, or fall.
Drawn back, swing stilted like a stay-at-home sucker
punch potholes in the dry wall.

Where you go won't say where you stay;
I pound the hammer for punching stakes in.
Name a certain place along the way,
live there & wait for leaves to rake in.

That pickaxe you jacked,
I want it back to break ground.
Swing it hard to make place,
call it home, stay in town.

YOU'RE HOME. GET OFF. (for Theo Eliezer, Jac Currie, Aubrey Edwards, Erik Kiesewetter, Katie Darling, & Jamie Chiarello)

2011-08-13T20:47:00.002-04:00

I already have everything I want.

Living, now, is for making actual unrelenting joy of circumstances which I have both built and which have been built around me.
I have exaggerated all stereotypes and imagined even more. I, travel agent. Double back time-traveling agent. International travel is not worth the memories. Go home. It takes longer, costs less, and postcards can finally have pictures on both sides. I live the most fierce and turbulent life. A terrible plane ride. I'm on my way to where I can land. Or on my way to when the air might tear my wings off. Either way, I'll dive into a quiet. Kickback like 16-ton, lead eyeballs rolling back into a chicken wire hammock. Have a real hard rest.

I laugh so stupidly while my bicycle goes across town, past midnight, past my home.
I laugh at a world too stupid to know I've been playing marbles with its balls since I was 12.
I get ridiculous. This spectacle of self, diving hard from HA HA OH EM GEE HA HA to golden-studded sunglasses I snivel beneath & sob behind. Original Bawler, bitch. Fake bitch with a mouth full of mad ballers. They're not welling up. I'm swelling up. I come. I come with a soft focus option. Press this button. Not a trick.

I hate playing marbles. I hate life's balls, dropping like lead eyes that roll back inside a chicken wire hammock. I thought you were sexless or hermaphroditic. It's a lie, a smooth plastic mound; no orifice, no mind. You crazy. Tranny on my face while I ride through the dark, everyone will think I love you. Get off.

I love living. I want to live. Just live like an organism. Everyone saying they gonna do this gonna do that gonna do it do it do it to it.

Friends jammed up in internet traffic, I employ you, get off.

I dare you to set your alarm, wake, and spit on your sheets. Put your weight on your feet and make to move out. See if you can carry the weight of being loved by the place around you. Strap an electric collar on your dogged heart and fight the love of anything beyond the city limits.

Crushing. High School Crushing. Crushing like a cemetery dance.

Gravestone carving machines, punch this on a plaque for me: HE GOT OFF HERE.

I'm off to party with folks for the rest of all the years I have left, making friends of all the fish in one net, gutted with the same knife, breaded with the same flour, filleted and fried in the same oil, served up at the same table, smothered in the same sauce. All together consumed. We live this way for you. We have such unreasonable hope. Expectations. When will you come? I love everyone on their way here. I'll help you cut your heart out. I'll walk you to the fryer. Drop it in, and imagine how this ridiculous metaphor works. Home is stuck through with the cross stitch and lace making of good sentiment. I am also sure that Home is a fish fry. I've explained this above. That's why I want your heart in the fryer where my heart has been. Thin tall tongs to hold you under our long boiling oil; we share a fried taste. If you want to love all of us, if you think we should believe you, drop your balls in, let them roll back inside a chicken wire hammock, let them rest.

We wait and watch your plate. You're on your way. I smell it. I've always had that crispy heart-popping scent. Just sit down and drop your heart on the plate. Drop your balls, take the sauce. Drop your hair, drop your legs, it'll fit. I tell you, I invite you, I beg you to just drop your face on the plate and get off. Go home. Where you're special, where everyone wants a taste.

"New in NOLA" reading recorded

2010-11-02T21:09:00.003-04:00

My Reading on October 20 with Nik De Dominic, Sara Slaughter & Paul Killebrew at NOCCA in New Orleans. Curated by Anne Gisleson.

I got beat up Sunday Morning, The Poem.

2010-10-18T21:51:00.002-04:00

It was during this period that Claude first sensed his vocation to the religious life in the Society of Jesus. We know nothing of the motives which led to this decision. We do know, however, from one of his early notations, that he "had a terrible aversion for the life embraced". This affirmation is not hard to understand by any who are familiar with the life of Claude, for he was very close to his family and friends and much inclined to the arts and literature and an active social life. On the other hand, he was not a person to be led primarily by his sentiments.

Claude became noted for solid and serious sermons. They were ably directed at specific audiences and, faithful to their inspiration from the gospel, communicated to his listeners serenity and confidence in God.

His spiritual notes from this period allow one to follow step-by-step the battles and triumphs of the spirit, so extraordinarily attracted to everything human, yet so generous with God.

Claude dedicated his time to giving thorough instruction to the many who sought reconciliation with the Church they had abandoned. And even if there were great dangers, he had the consolation of seeing many reconciled to it, so that after a year he said: "I could write a book about the mercy of God I've seen Him exercise since I arrived here!"

-From the Vatican Website

I got beat up Sunday morning

'fore God woke up.

Just got down to New Orleans

Where I’ve learned to drink

from a half-full cup.

I got my zygomatic bones bruised.

I got my arms crossed ‘n’ wires fused.

I got off work and rode my bike to the Bywater.

Throw a cup of water at my face while the weather’s still warm.

Throw a glass bottle at my head while the air’s still thick enough to hear it coming.

Call me faggot while I’m still young enough to wear my pants so tight.

Get out of your truck and chase me down while the streets are still empty.

Pull me off my bike while I’m still happy to walk.

Punch my face once while I ask you why.

Punch my face twice while I ask you to stop.

Tear off my jacket while I wonder how long this will last.

Punch my face three times while I look at your friends looking at me.

Punch my face four times while it occurs to me “This is different.”

Those are your knuckles so devoted to my zygomatic bones.

Hard to turn the other cheek, face down.

I feel your fists loose faith, get softer.

Punch the back of my head once before you turn away while I imagine your license plate:

Romeo

Delta

Yankee

Lima

Uniform

Victor

RDY4LUV

It’s over. You left me there. You took nothing.

My bike’s busted. My buttons ripped off. My earrings beaten out.

I walk home. Oh I walk home.

A gay cop finds me on the corner of Esplanade and Dauphine.

I said a gay cop finds me on the corner of Esplanade and Dauphine.

He says we’re calling this in a 35. Hate Crime.

I said officer

I said I said officer

she don’t hate me, she just don’t love me.

My Zygomatic bones bruised.

Since you left me, I rode uptown in an ambulance.

I answered questions about my city, the year, and the president.

I said you can take your 10 grand CT Scan and shove it where the sun always shines.

Baby, I was discharged and a taxi took me home.

I got beat up Sunday morning

‘fore God woke up.

Just got down to New Orleans

Where I’ve learned to drink

from a half-full cup.

I got beaten up last night.

2010-10-17T21:39:00.004-04:00

I need to recount what happened to me last night, not for sympathy, but to make anyone who reads this into a witness, if only after the fact.

I got off work early, and by that I mean around 2:30 AM. I rode my bike downtown, stopped off at home to change shirts and grab a coat, then road further downtown to Saturn Bar for the Mod Dance Party. I'd yet to make it to the Mod Dance Party, as it's always on a Saturday, and I often work until 5 AM on Saturdays. I was glad to be out and it seemed to be shaping into a good night.

Once there, I danced a bit, saw some friends, had a few drinks. Then I took a ride back toward the Marigny for a late night snack, after which I planned on heading back to Saturn Bar. I was riding down St. Claude, as it seemed faster and safer then cutting through the neighborhoods that time of night.

Riding down St. Claude, a white pickup truck pulled up along side me and threw a cup of water at me. I was surprisingly unfazed. The truck pulled off. I passed them at the light. As they drove by again, they threw a glass bottle at me, missing me, it shattered against the wall. They yelled "Faggot" out the window then drove off. I decided it would be best to turn off St. Claude at the next street, but they pulled over at the intersection. I froze for a minute. One large fella got out of the car, shirtless and built like a brick wall. He was about 15 feet away. I said "What's going on?" He said nothing and kept walking toward me. I began to turn my bike around, putting my feet on the pedals, but it was still in 8th gear, and I couldn't get it moving fast enough. He ran at me.

He threw me off my bike and began to hit me. I said over and over again, "Why are you doing this?" His friends, 4 others, stood in a circle around us. One of them began to hit my legs. The big one kept hitting my face and my head. I tried to relax my body and not fight the blows. I didn't resist, except to say "Please stop." He ripped my jacket off and continued punching me while I was face down on the ground. A care driving the other direction began honking over and over again. The car flipped around at the next intersection and pulled along side me. The group of guys ran back to the car just before it arrived. They dragged my bike halfway back to their car, breaking the chain and wrecking the gears.

The woman rolled her window down and said how sorry she was, that she'd tried to keep honking so they'd head off. I told her, in my confused and beaten state that I appreciated it, that I'd be fine. When she took off, I saw the state of my bike. Still not clear headed, all I could do was start walking home with my bike. I went a few blocks to Esplanade and turned left. What happened had just begun to hit me... I began to fall apart, in pain, but more frustrated at the pointlessness of it. They hadn't even tried to steal anything.

A few block down Esplanade, a cop drove slowly by, I waved him down, not knowing what to say. He rolled down his window and I quickly recounted the basic scenario. I think he was especially effected by the story, as he was gay. He had me sit on a stoop and called it in. I told him that I was aware that there was little that could be done, seeing as how all I could say was that 5 white guys in a white truck beat me up. Because of the "Faggot" comment, it went on record as a hate crime. Soon, another cop showed up, one that I know from the Quarter and who comes into my work sometimes. They called in an EMT to check me out. The EMT was worried that I might have a slight concussion and that my jaw may have been broken. They all agreed that I should go to the hospital. I was very reluctant, as I don't have insurance, but I consented as I didn't feel clear headed enough to make a decision contrary to that which was being suggested.

I took the ambulance uptown to Touro Hospital. My friend Natasha came with me, as she was only a few blocks away. I was admitted and questioned and had vitals taken. I waited until the doctor came. He wanted to have CT Scan done, as he said an Xray wouldn't convey a broken jaw. I inquired about the expense and was given a $8,000 to $10,000 estimate. By this time, some of the swelling had gone down and I could open my mouth a little more. I decided to refuse any further care and had myself discharged with a prescription for some pain medication.

That was around 6:00 AM this morning. I went home and slept much of the day. I've now been awake for a few hours, feeling better, but still in shock about this having ever happened. I know the bruises will heal, the swelling will go down, and my jaw will hopefully be fine, but I'm shaken up, startled by loud noises, and disheartened. Little things: the buttons torn off my coat, the ear rings gone, beaten out of my ears, my bike with a few hundred dollars in damage.

I remember riding in the ambulance with the EMT. I turned to him and said "I guess I picked the wrong night to wear tight pants." He laughed.

We spoke of New Orleans, with its ups and downs, with its way ups and way downs... a frequent line of conversation around here. I told him that I was happy to take that bad with the good. A bruised face in this city is still better than the lifeless faces in so many other cities I've lived in.

I would like to write a poem about being beaten up in such a senseless way, but I don't know why I would write it. Perhaps later. For now, I have so little to say about it. I suppose I simply would like some folks to know that it happened.

I'm Reading This Month

2010-10-12T20:42:00.001-04:00

Creative Reading Series Fall 2010

New to New Orleans

October 20^th, 2010 Kirschman Artspace

NOCCA Riverfront

2800 Chartres St. NOLA 70117 www.nocca.com

Contact Anne Gisleson agisleson@nocca.com

7:00 to 8:30

Reception to follow.

New Orleans has always attracted writers and artists, and in the last few years, the city has seen another wave of literary newcomers. That got us thinking—why? We’re curious about what New Orleans has to offer them as writers and vice versa. On Wednesday October 20^th at 7:00, the NOCCA Creative Writing Department is showcasing four poets who are relatively new to town and we look forward to hearing their work and thoughts about their new home.

Nik De Dominic moved to New Orleans in May, 2009. Pushcart nominated, his work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Harpur Palate, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. He is an editor of The Offending Adam and an associate editor of the New Orleans Review. As a visiting instructor for Bard College, he teaches classes on thinking and writing inside Orleans Parish Prison.

Paul Killebrew was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. His first full-length collection, Flowers, was published by Canarium Books this year, and his long poem Inspector vs. Evader has recently been republished online by Ugly Duckling Presse. He moved to New Orleans in 2008 to take a job as a staff attorney with Innocence Project New Orleans, an nonprofit law office in the Bywater that represents innocent prisoners in Louisiana and Southern Mississippi who are sentenced to life without parole.

Sara Slaughter is a native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who moved to New Orleans in the summer of 2009. She is currently enrolled in the low-residency MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared in Helicon, The Honeyland Review, and a collection celebrating what would have been the 100^th birthday of Elizabeth Bishop.

Jeremy JF Thompson was born in Los Angeles, CA. He went to college at UCSB in Santa Barbara, CA. He went to Grad School at Mills College in Oakland, CA. Shortly after, he moved to Queens, NY, where he was an instructor at The Center for Book Arts. His book, AUTOGRAPHOGRAPHY, will be out in 2011 through Cuneiform Press. He runs Auto Types Press and blogs at autotypist.blogspot.com.

putt-putt gulf water park combo

2010-09-17T18:02:00.002-04:00

I'm up the neighborhood.

Oh yeah.

Back up the barbershop.

Pole dancing on the candy cane.

Try the #1 #2 #3 FADE.

Give it to me so I can look fresh.

Spanking new. I'm going to war.

Spartacus. Stallone. Whenever.

#ilosttheoneilove

The basket on my bicycle rattles as I ride.

I hear my haircut looking down at the basket bounce.

Lemonade Flash!

Snowball!

Play Money!

Go-Go!

Federal Spending!

Let's relax. Let's talk. If the music is soft

I spit out my gum.

Tired of chewing, I find people willing.

To the dirt on Dauphine I say

you John Lee Hooker.

Now let me brood over your horrible day.

Joke.

Orange Juice & Asphalt.

Pulp Friction.

Joke.

Grand Opening tomorrow.

Back by popular demand.

THINGS GRAND.

There's this postscript.

Cousin mosquito sucks.

To wit. Slap Stuck.

Get it?

The evening sun goes down.

the bitch slap baby bottle blues

2010-09-13T18:00:00.004-04:00

At the moment, I can recall every Monday I've spent in New Orleans. I remember moving here on a Sunday night. I remember my first morning waking up in the Monteleone Hotel. That was Monday #1.

'nother Monday waits in crowded wings

for 'nother Sunday to say she quits

while brother sister rock and sing:

twosomes that shimmy in sexless fits.

DEAD STOCK

rhythm blues

tax dues

rumor news

crossword clues

popular mechanics

my bicycle

swiffer pads

smack cracker urine

floods a souvenir crotch cup

big heart sausage slices

give my pie more power

I give you all my gas lights

I take off all your dance tights

I make up all our last nights

I memorize our slap fights

I'm silly with the south,

grip my face with your mouth.

I'm a stick-my-visa

-in-your-wasteband kind a tipper.

Crack your back against a levee,

get willy-nilly with my zipper.

I done got wise baby to the way these women doin'.

The city smells like a pack of pals purging. Or barf.

I done got wise baby to the way these women doin'.

The city sounds like a tarmac of tourists tweeting. Or flarf.

Ain't no reason to tell a tale that ain't true,

If you want a story baby I google it for you.

Cut up a Second Line with a 2 Live Krewe,

I got the bitch slap baby bottle blues.

PARADE, Part 2 (for Nada Gordon)

2010-09-09T21:31:00.004-04:00

Be where the thighs of marches

are stomping on your neck.

Be the electric battle axe barbaric

but unreal, old fashioned.

Be the stack of bills folded

in the fattest wallet snatched.

Be the rutty fingers fumbling

with twenty minutes of wet matches.

Be the popular belief in public

knowledge, collective shame.

Be the boogie woogie pianist

in a cave condemned and cool.

Be the exotic dancer buying

Sugar Daddies a dollar each.

Be all you can break with a bat,

scrub with a brush, or win with a bet.

Be where the soil sops up the oil

and love the winners leave behind.

PARADE, Part 1 (for Nada Gordon)

2010-09-09T17:59:00.004-04:00

There are 24 new hours on parade.

In defense of marching.

In the middle of my city.

I miss nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Confetti dumped from balconies onto streets filled with sunshine.

Rain on, Parade.

Confetti withering.

Phony wads of pulped pigmentation.

Funny dads who gulp perspiration.

Confetti is for fertility. Link.

For celebrations we want you wet and ready.

Programmatic and descriptive.

Parade. Outside your home. Parade.

Put your parade trash in the parade can.

Show me your parade face.

Full of paint.

Saints.

Sisters.

Service Industry Workers.

Seraphim.

Sanitation Specialists.

Society Sugar Babies.

Sweaty Sock Cops.

Sports Fans.

Smiling Soldiers.

Second Line Stompers.

Strippers.

Stripper Tippers.

Strong Men.

Salsa Dancers.

Strange Attractors.

Streaming Users.

Staff Counselors.

Storefront Beggars.

Salespeople.

Stiff Drinkers.

Storied Immortals.

Soft Porn Graduates.

Song Writers.

Shifty Crowd Pleasers.

Left. Left.

Left Right Left.

One. Two.

One Two Three.

Glitter, smaller than confetti, is universally shiny.

Such shiny sistered faces.

It sticks to my pillow. I'll split her

into however many it takes two

three four.

I split her in to march. Suddenly separate,

it takes several.

Home Is Where this Part Is

2010-08-29T18:24:00.005-04:00

One month has passed since I moved to New Orleans.

Cassie Smith, longtime co-conspirator and fabulous friend, is visiting me.

In my attempt to convince her (and most everyone) that New Orleans is the best place to call home, I have also managed to keep us out until 6:30 am, sweating away in the world's most exotic dive bars, where exhaustion can't find you, as you're held up by the sheets of smoke that stack and rise in every room. Should you need to get from point A to point B, say the bar to the bathroom, or the dance floor to the patio, the rolling and rousing 60's R&B, 70's Funk, or 100 years of Jazz will aid in your crossing.

I've begun managing and training bartenders at a new bar/ restaurant/ venue/ club/ art-space called Eiffel Society. We grow a large percentage of our herbs, vegetables and spices on premise. The cocktail menu is focused on house-made cordials, bitters and infusions, aided by the vision of Alan Walter of Iris. The space was once the restaurant built into the base of the Eiffel Tower. We've only just begun, but the potential and the ambition are there.

I have a reading at NOCCA in October, along with 4 other recently transplanted poets. I am trying to write about the heart in a way that hopefully a few people might understand. The heart as container, carrying blood and baggage, moving it from here to there, lest it sit and drain itself of oxygen and worth. I believe I am failing at this. I am failing at this in the wrong way. Or the heart as computer, to reboot upon freezing, to reboot upon downloading software updates. The heart as de facto icon for all emotion in and all emotion out. Home is where the heart is. Where people move in and move out. Where rent is split. Where walls are painted. Where furniture reluctantly rests on floors, unfixed and impermanent. Where you go when you're tired. Where you leave when you're tired. I want to discuss a kind of structural surgery, the impossibility of fusing together the anatomical heart and the drywall of a home. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. This sickness, where we learn to love what leaves, expending proportionately more energy to love someone whose distance away from us is measured in days passing. Not "days until," but "days since."

This is not despair. This is not tragedy. My first love is living. The heart, before all else, is an advocate of life. Rather, this is grief or mourning. I want to dance blindly and awkwardly, breaking down my inhibitions. I want to accept the unsystematic occurrence of crying that comes as I walk through my apartment door, or when the food is brought to the table, or when fixing the chain on my bike. I want to let it happen. I have so much belief, and I would trade the world that I know for a place to put it.

Cygnus Operandi

2010-08-16T16:40:00.005-04:00

... and the only sadness is living without you...

You and I have been happy; we haven't been happy just once, we've been happy a thousand times. The chances that the spring, that's for everyone, like in the popular songs, may belong to us too -- the chances are pretty bright at this time because as usual, I can carry most of contemporary literary opinion, liquidated, in the hollow of my hand -- and when I do, I see the swan floating on it and -- I find it to be you and you only. But swan, float lightly because you are a swan, because by the exquisite curve of your neck the gods gave you some special favor, and even though you fractured it running against some man-made bridge, it healed and you sailed onward. Forget the past -- what you can of it, and turn about and swim back home to me, to your haven forever and ever -- even though it may seem like a dark cave at times and lit with torches of fury; it is the best refuge for you -- turn gently in the waters through which you move and sail back.

- Excerpt from F. Scott Fitzgerald's letter to Zelda Fitzgerald, April 26, 1934

swan that can sail back

exquisite curve of swan's neck

swan with fractured neck

Old New Orleans

2010-08-12T22:49:00.005-04:00

After 3 weeks, New Orleans has begun to register as my home. I've spent most of my time shopping for furniture, painting, and generally decorating my 200 yr old shotgun a few houses in from the Cat's Meow on the corner of St. Peter and Bourbon in the French Quarter.

I frequently ride my bike to Mimi's in the Marigny. On Wednesdays, I listen to the Cash-like sounds of Gal Holiday and The Honky Tonk Revue. On Fridays, it's DJ Matty's Alligator Chomp Chomp Swamp Pop Dance Party. And Mondays, the sweet stomping sounds of Meschiya Lake and The Little Big Horns. Never a dull moment at Mimi's.

Then there's Frenchmen Street, with the likes of The Cottonmouth Kings and the Loose Marbles pounding out hours and hours of jazz at The Spotted Cat and D.B.A.

Having travelled the world and the states extensively as a child and an adult, I can assure you that there is no other U.S. city that feels more like a country unto itself.

Coming here has been and continues to be the best of a bad situation. Save for circumstances beyond my control, there is nowhere else I'd rather be. If your life seems like a little bit of hell, then New Orleans is the closest thing to heaven on earth. Don't think I'm simply star struck in my honeymoon with this city... I am well aware that this is also the city of heat, heartache and hangovers, AKA the blues.

The blues is about how to keep moving, how one foot follows the other, even when your heartbeat slows to a thump a minute. And jazz is about the body dancing rebelliously and spasmodically, even when the mind has somehow escaped the room through 2-ft thick masonry walls.

Highlights:

-Orchestrated a tasting room/ Russian experience for Tales of the Cocktail

-Performed as a panelist for the Tales of the Cocktail seminar, I Hate Vodka, I Love Vodka

-Hosted a housewarming party attended by the local milliner (hatter to all the mimis, fifis and post-debutantes, the city's premier bar man who showed up dressed as a knight, a one-time crust lord and freight train hopper turned bespoke bombshell ukellele virtuoso, a film industry costume designer whose best costumes are in her own closet, the local art world's premier designer who's also the hippest version of a southern gentleman dixie has yet to know, and my new band mate, a Floridian surfer girl turned soulful sardonic southland essayist, non-fictionist, and culinary critic.

-Began playing music again. Wrote several songs. Formed the Yankee Fire Band, starring myself on banjo, Gwendolyn Knapp on guitar, and the General (my drum machine).

-Ordered a hot sausage poboy (dressed + grilled onions and american cheese) from Gene's.

-Ordered far too many late night roast beef poboys from Quartermasters.

-Purchased a custom-made rolling bar from Greg's on Decatur.

-Purchased two old 70's paintings by "Richter" of clowns; they seem to me to be studies of what Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten might look like as sad clowns.

-Read the Confederacy of Dunces.

-Danced my ass off to Johnny Cash covers, the Cottonmouth Kings, the Little Big Horns, and whatever the hell happened to be on the juke up at the Saint.

-Attended White Linen Night, NOLA's annual opening of the art season, where everyone's clad in their whites, and the galleries get hotter than a creole kitchen on a friday night at 9.

-Got on my knees and prayed for everything from a job to salvation in St. Louis Cathedral.

-Began consulting for a new Garden District bar.

-Began talks of working for Bols Genever as a New Orleans rep.

-Purchased and actually enjoyed poems from 3 typewriter wielding street poets.

-Chatted with a stripper for an hour about the details of raising wolf-dogs.

-Saw a man weeping while taking brutal swings at another fellow yelling "I told you so" on Bourbon street.

-Heard Journey playing at The Cat's Meow karaoke bar more times then the band ever played that damn song. You know the song.

-Attended a No Wave house show in the Treme.

-Had a meandering birthday party, starting at Desperado's (the pizza place, not the strip club).

-Found a place that makes the best Egg-In-A-Hole I've ever experienced.

It's the laziest kind of busy I've ever been, and my soul is grateful for it.

Now I turn my attention to poetics and performance. I've a handful of leads regarding the locations of readings and various literary groups. I suspect that I'm about to delve into the rebirth of local lyricism. I'm actually enthused.

Here are some pics of my home:

2010-08-11T23:29:00.001-04:00

It's my birthday. Wild Turkey, rocks.

Happy whatever. Cheers.

Location:Royal St,New Orleans,United States

Pending

2010-08-06T23:12:00.000-04:00

Cold Apple Pie and half a glass of milk while the rain separates me from my bike.

Location:Royal St,New Orleans,United States

All over you

2010-08-06T22:47:00.001-04:00

Like spots on a cat.

Lit

2010-08-03T23:00:00.001-04:00

For you, Memory: won't you ever fail?

Location:Frenchmen St,New Orleans,United States

New in New Orleans

2010-08-03T22:54:00.001-04:00

Baby, I've been here before, I've seen this room, I've walked this floor...

Location:Frenchmen St,New Orleans,United States

Poetry Search, Part 2: 103 Map Search Results for Poetry Characterized Differently by an Assortment of Commonly Associated Adjectives

2010-05-25T00:57:00.008-04:00

Task: Search for the word "poetry" preceded by various adjectives that are often used in conjunction with it.

Technique: This map is created by saving to Google My Maps the first location listed after having performed a location search for the word "poetry" preceded by an adjective. In every case, the words are paired together and placed between quotation marks. Example: "good poetry"

Duration: 10:25 pm – 11:17 pm

Date: May 24, 2010

Search Engine: Google Map Search

Browser: Safari 4.0.5

View Places for Poetry in a larger map for easier navigation.

Following the link above or any of the links below will open the public map "Places for Poetry."

The following 84 of 103 searches issued results:

self-published poetry

Google responds, “We could not understand the location” for the following 19 searches:

conceptualist poetry

confessionalist poetry

expensive poetry

gurlesque poetry

instructional poetry

least favorite poetry

meaningless poetry

neoformalist poetry

objectivist poetry

oulipo poetry

projectivist poetry

quietist poetry

stolen poetry

theoretical poetry

transcendental poetry

trendy poetry

uncreative poetry

unpopular poetry

vispo poetry

103 Image Search Results for Poetry Characterized Differently by an Assortment of Commonly Associated Adjectives

2010-05-18T21:39:00.036-04:00

Task: Search for the word "poetry" preceded by various adjectives that are often used in conjunction with it.

Technique: These images are obtained by saving the first image listed after having performed an image search for the word "poetry" preceded by an adjective. In every case, the words are paired together and placed between quotation marks. Example: "good poetry"

Duration: 8:15 pm – 9:22 pm

Date: May 18, 2010

Search Engine: Google Image Search

Browser: Safari 4.0.5

Result Organization System: Alphabetic

What this might be:

-A crude snapshot of the current visual vocabulary of poetry as a term or an idea.

-A comparative survey of the complexities created by the desire to or necessity of pairing words with images.

-A demonstration that sometimes reveals unexpected relationships between locution and context.

-A compromised investigation of the complications faced when typifying classifications of poetry with images.

-A partial insight into which attributes or classifications of poetry are identified by certain visual components of the work, such as a photo of the author, a photo of the cover of a book, a photo of a page of poetry, a poem represented in digital form, an advertisement for a reading, a photo of a reading or a seminar, a painting or other work of art associated with the time/ affiliation of the poetry, or a painting or other work of art intended to suggest some other visual association, to name a few.

-An example of how basic, familiar, and historical qualifiers become increasingly less effective as a result of overuse.

-A simple examination of how an image search can yield poor results by favoring image popularity and freshness over relevant association.

-An example of how some things not conventionally related to poetry are being described as or compared to poetry.

-An enactment of my complicity in the solidification of these image search results as associated with their corresponding word-combination queries.

"absurdist poetry"

"academic poetry"

"accessible poetry"

"amateur poetry"

"anthologized poetry"

"award-winning poetry"

"bad poetry"

"basic poetry"

"beat poetry"

"best poetry"

"best-selling poetry"

"boring poetry"

"challenging poetry"

"cheap poetry"

"classical poetry"

"classic poetry"

"conceptualist poetry"

"conceptual poetry"

"concrete poetry"

"confessionalist poetry"

"confessional poetry"

"contemporary poetry"

"cool poetry"

"creative poetry"

"dadaist poetry"

"easy poetry"

"ethnic poetry"

"expensive poetry"

"experimental poetry"

"fake poetry"

"famous poetry"

"favorite poetry"

"feminist poetry"

"flarf poetry"

"found poetry"

"future poetry"

"futurist poetry"

"good poetry"

"great poetry"

"gurlesque poetry"

"hypertextual poetry"

"imagist poetry"

"important poetry"

"infamous poetry"

"instructional poetry"

"language poetry"

"least favorite poetry"

"love poetry"

"major poetry"

"meaningful poetry"

"meaningless poetry"

"mfa poetry"

"modernist poetry"

"modern poetry"

"multicultural poetry"

"neoformalist poetry"

"new poetry"

"normal poetry"

"objectivist poetry"

"old poetry"

"oulipo poetry"

"philosophical poetry"

"poetry"

"political poetry"

"popular poetry"

"postcolonial poetry"

"powerful poetry"

"practical poetry"

"professional poetry"

"projectivist poetry"

"published poetry"

"quietist poetry"

"rare poetry"

"real poetry"

"recent poetry"

"religious poetry"

"renaissance poetry"

"romantic poetry"

"self-published poetry"

"serious poetry"

"silly poetry"

"slam poetry"

"small press poetry"

"spiritual poetry"

"stolen poetry"

"strange poetry"

"street poetry"

"student poetry"

"surrealist poetry"

"symbolist poetry"

"theoretical poetry"

"transcendental poetry"

"trendy poetry"

"true poetry"

"uncreative poetry"

"universal poetry"

"unpopular poetry"

"unpublished poetry"

"vispo poetry"

"visual poetry"

"weak poetry"

"workshop poetry"

"written poetry"

P||R||O||J||E||C||T||I||O||N||S Premier, May 16

2010-05-18T06:01:00.008-04:00

The premier event of P||R||O||J||E||C||T||I||O||N||S, a series curated by Paolo Javier and myself, was held at The Bowery Poetry Club on Sunday night, May 16.

The introduction to the series:

This performance series is an active intersection between moving text and moving image:

1. text moving sonically through space

2. image moving on the surface of a screen

The fundamental scenario presents one or more present persons utilizing words &/or sounds &/or movement to mediate both spatially and conceptually between images on a screen and a live audience.

Historical practices related to this series:

Benshi (Japan), Pyônsa (Korea), Benzi (Taiwan), Gavrilov Translations (USSR), Lector (Poland)

Contemporary practices related to this series:

Movietelling, Neo-Benshi, Voiceover, Redubbing, Gag Dub, Resubtitling

In the last 5 years, these practices have emerged in clusters throughout the world, owing in part to practitioners’ frustrations with the limitations of certain mediums, and in part to the collective social urge to confront and appropriate the onslaught of information and media that now overwhelms us.

Our hope is that this series might become a hub, an intersection for practitioners already stretching and breaking the bounds within their own mediums and communities. We will showcase poets, film-makers, musicians, performance artists, scholars, critics, editors, and other producers and managers of meaning and form.

For more information on this series, please see the P||R||O||J||E||C||T||I||O||N||S Facebook page.

Also, Nada Gordon has written a wonderful review of the premier.

The next event in the series will be held on June 20.

Featuring the following Practitioners:

Danny Snelson

James Copeland

Kate Eichhorn

Chapbook as Art Object

2010-05-06T23:16:00.010-04:00

On May 3rd & 4th, as part of The Annual Chapbook Festival held at The Graduate Center, CUNY, I participated in a panel discussion entitled Chapbook as Art Object.

The panel was moderated by Sarah Nicholls of The Center for Book Arts, and the panelists included Roni Gross & myself.

The same panel took place on both days, the second of which I recorded.

What follows is an audio record of this panel, as well as the notes which I generated in response to the initial questions that Sarah Nicholls sent to the panelists.

General Introduction by Sarah Nicholls

Roni Gross Introduction

Jeremy J F Thompson Introduction

Panel Discussion

QUESTIONS & NOTES

How can publishing help foster a conversation between the visual and the verbal?

Publishers need to perform.

Publishing is, at its foundation, the primary form of archiving and documentation.

Publishers need to constantly consider and reconsider the relationships between publishing as an industry and publishing as an increasingly everyday practice that is becoming more and more democratized.

Blog & Twitter publishing vs. Trade Book Publishing.

The intersection of publishing as a tool or platform for fostering conversations between the visual and the verbal is most identifiable within networks of blogs that resemble communities, sharing topical interests and adopting comparable forms of writing/blogging. Within these networks, tools of visual communication via text and image correspond with a verbal tone of conversation, a dialogue between practitioners, conscious of, but not limited to, a private language.

How do you approach collaboration? Do you think of publishing as a social activity?

Collaboration, within the context of art, generally refers to the artifacts produced as a result of practitioners approaching each other.

I hope with my collaborations to produce artifacts that openly and blatantly point up the process while rendering the artifact increasingly valueless as the process becomes increasingly understood.

Collaboration is best practiced when the collaborators operate within the context of a defined role or practice (i.e. editor/ writer, curator/ artist, composer/ musician). This is not to say that the traditional hierarchies suggested by the professional and commercial practices of these collaborations should be maintained, but rather that such hierarchies allow for a shared entry point of mutual, though generalized, identification.

Collaboration is asking someone a question that imposes a context on someone willing to respond within that context. Their response may also involve a disregard of the imposed context.

Publishing is not a social activity, but publishing needs to be a social activity.

Publishers, like editors, curators, and other authoritative and facilitating administrators are responsible for the way generated data is organized. The organization of this data is the art of our century. This realization places more responsibility on publishers, equalizing the relationship between publisher and writer, data and data placement.

Example: TAN LIN’s EDIT event, wherein editors outnumber writers, 17 to 1.

What kind of relationship do you want to foster with a reader? How do you do this?

I want the reader to approach a text as an intermediary. In the same way that an editor, instructor, or publisher is an intermediary. I hope the reader will acknowledge the text as an artifact document, as well as information that needs to be mitigated and interrogated. I have done this with varying degrees of success by adopting language and images sourced from the internet, some of which I edit, and some of which I merely recontextualize through selectivity and placement. Much of this language, either immediately or over time, is recognizable to the reader by virtue of their being predisposed to linguistic devices and tropes which are ever present on the internet, and recognizable through the readers presupposed use of email, forums, rss feeds, blogs, and twitter posts. I also sometimes seek to accomplish this activation of the reader by creating very identifiable artifices within narrative (Autographography). These artifices are similar to the kind of cues one finds in 1^st person video games, wherein an object they are meant to interact with is singled out by some characteristic, while also being an acceptable part of the scenario. For example, if I am playing a 1^st person shooter, such as Bioshock, I identify tools I can add to my toolset by looking for anything that has a glimmer of light that passes over it every few seconds. While these are meant for my use, they are also logically part of the narrative, in that they are located in places presumed natural, such energy-giving canned food located in an old abandoned kitchen. In the context of my own writing, I attempt to create similar devices by creating immediate contradiction or obvious lies. One line say that a woman named Carolyn answers the door wearing boots, and the next line says she does so wearing slippers. This is that glimmering image object that alerts the reader to the possibility of falseness, thereby inviting them to challenge every line.

What kind of relationships are you interested in in the form of the work you make, or the work you enjoy? What is your relationship to the word "handmade"?

I desire the form of the work I make to be conscious of the content therein. This is nothing new. But I complicate this by adding constraints, such as the cost of materials and production. I am not an advocate of Artists’ Books, with the exception of those that directly explore and implore the process by which they are made. (Sarah’s recent book). But this is a rare exception. Most Artists’ Books don’t advocate reading. They so often resort to over-worked studies of stagnant collage, resulting in an effect that fails in aspiring toward the kind of media collision one experiences by way of juxtaposing disparate words entered into a search engine in order to experience and organize the results. That said, the problem is not so much with the form of Artists’ Books, as the examples of the form suggest an almost indefinable collective practice, but with the practitioners of the form, who, for the most part, tend to cling to fleeting notions of tangibility, physicality, and costly product as virtues of their work.

Chapbooks should be cheap. Period. This is my opinion as a reader, not a practitioner, and the reader of today more than ever is the ultimate authority and publishing agent.

My relationship with the handmade is tenuous. I am quite capable with my hands. I have a love of precision and micro-craft. I enjoy detailed constructions and elaborate design. But in terms of professing an ethics of aesthetics, I will not privilege the handmade over the readymade, the mass produced, the formless, or the downloadable.

Within all practices, there is not now, and nor has there ever been, a need to protect or preserve any particular form. A form preserves itself by virtue of its use. If people stop reading codex bound books, then the use of the form expires, which is not to say that the form itself expires. Technologies can never expire, so long as their existence is archived. There is nothing to fear from new publishing technologies. I do not understand why so many seem to cling in desperation to outmoded forms, when those very same forms were brought into existence out of necessity, destroying and outmoding the technologies preceding them. The keyboard has not replaced the pen, but rather, the pen was designed with the promise and hope of the keyboard in mind.

What is not handmade? Is a chapbook, letterpressed, and handbound handmade? If so, how much of said

chapbook must be made by hand? Should the paper be handmade? Should the type and the presses also be hand made? Should the ink be handmade? Should the staples or thread be handmade? Is this issue actually a quantitative one? Are we really saying that we prefer evidence of hands making? Otherwise, what is not handmade? Hands make everything.

What effect does scale have? Materials? Medium?

In the information age, scale is effect. This is not the same as Bigger is better. Bigger, in fact, is bigger. If social networking has taught us anything it is that the publishing of information should not thought about in terms of how many, so much as to whom. First we must determine a readership group. This can be done in a number of ways, but the fact is, that most of the work is already done for us. Again, I turn to blogs as an example. Readership is the sum of those who already “read” us a plus those whom we have access to and whom we want to ‘read’ us. Once Readership is determined, you must then divide that sum by the qty available, which is determined by resources, cost, and time. The remainder determines scale. This process also aids in determining materials and medium, as they are directly related to readership, resources, cost and time.

I have produced a broadside that was incredibly time consuming, costly, and resource-laden, for an immediate readership of some 100 people. That is, 100 people posses the artifact. But the process, as well as the artifact, is documented online, reaching hundreds more. In some ways, the online experience is more comprehensive, in that it is associated with an explanation, context, story and commentary. It may lack the physicality of the object, but for now, most readers within this community are acquainted with “reality” of physically experiencing said object. I would call this an anomalous, transitionary art form, in that it’s reception and distribution is cross-platform, while unable to exist wholly in either. It is readers and institutions that are encouraging this practice, out of their desire to experience objects, while the object, and they themselves, are locked into fixed spatial locations. Art forms and media of all kinds are now and will continue to participate in this practice throughout our lifetimes, as we transition ever rapidly from one platform to the next. To illustrate this, let me suggest that it is impossible to see a film on YouTube. Even video, is not available on YouTube. In fact, one can only view flash on you tube. This has lead several practitioners to struggle for new language, sometimes resorting to the most obvious and surprisingly antiquated of terms “Moving Images”

What kind of audience do you hope to find with the work you produce?

I think much of this has been discussed, though I’ll attempt to say more. Today’s practitioners must look for audiences who are looking for them. This is not as simple as supply and demand, in that readers aren’t demanding, but rather, asking questions. In asking these questions, they are practitioners. I am their audience when coming upon their questions. I am not inclined to answer their question, per se, but to convert them into my readership by exploring other forms that their questions might take, forms that I am practiced in the construction of.

What effect does edition size/ price point/ economics of production have on your expectations of the work? Poetry audiences have very different expectations about the price of a book of poetry as compared to the expectations that an art audience might have of an artist's work. How does that complicate making work that has a foot in both worlds?

If a work is too expensive for its form, then my expectations are too great to warrant my addressing the work at all. I tend toward evaluating what is too expensive through analyses of the works process and materials, which can be difficult without actually addressing the work. A problematic exception is a painting, which must be viewed with regard to the paintings location. I find it almost impossible to access a painting or any artifact that is placed within a commercial gallery. All information is in code, be it language, symbols, shapes or colors, and the code that most prevails in galleries are numbers, preceded by dollar signs and followed by decimals and zeros. As a code, numbers dominate and aggressively overwhelm, evaluating the work before and after you do. There are, of course, books and texts in galleries, but more often than not, these are non-commercial spaces. Artists’ Books tend to be deemed fiscally accessible, usually by the artists themselves, and in relation to other forms of fine art or gallery art. Many of these books are priced out according to time and resources applied, and there’s generally little if no room for profit. That said, I still find these books less offensive as underpriced art object, and more offensive as overpriced books. The offense lies in the mingling of conflicting ambitions: to produce an artifact intended for distribution and reading and to produce an artifact, the distribution of which is limited by price and scale, rather than by interest. That fact is, 9 out of 10 artists books I’ve seen could be reproduced at a fraction of the price. These practitioners argue that additional value is lost in such reproduction, but I have yet to hear an argument that succeeded in going beyond the fetishistic overreliance on physicality. It is not that these books are not capable of prompting a valuable experience, but that their cost cripples their perception in a time where new efficient mediums are accomplishing similar tasks in a more affective way.

Chapbook is a word that finds its root in old English, intended to mean Cheap Book. The original chapbooks were sold by street peddlers, not so long after the invention of the press. They were almanacs, joke books, instructional volumes, and religious tracts, all meant to inform and entertain. In this sense, I would argue that I am more of a traditionalist than any material-loving craftsperson, in that I am interested in production and distribution of cheap books, and I am willing to entertain and engage in any practice which will further my cause. The chapbook is not an art object, it is an information object. I allow that chapbooks are art, in so much as all of its materials, form and content, are information, and the publishing and distribution of information is an art. It is when the materials of form and content fail to produce information, or when that information is redundant or mismanaged, or when the cost of that information exceeds its use that the chapbook becomes nothing more than another useless piece of gallery art. If such a practice were to become widespread, libraries would become galleries, and we’d find ourselves back in the dark ages, petitioning scribes and monks for a few minutes at a table to sit and view the pages of one of their sacred tomes.

The problem with addressing the issues of having your “foot in both worlds” in regard to publishing texts that exist within the realms of poetry and art is not directly related to the respective expectations of fiscal value associated with these practices. Rather, this discrepancy is just a symptom of a far greater problem, though it does suggest a means by which to demonstrate the actual conflict. The issue at hand might best be described as solidified commercial modalities, a problem born of practitioners asking what to do with their book, rather than wondering who will want to read their book. This conundrum takes place well before any artifact is produced; it is born into the foundation of the manufacturing process, giving rise to troubling titles like “book artist,” the semantics of which suggest that there are books made by non-artists. This further solidifies the already terrifying 20^th century polarization of practitioner titles: fine artist vs. artist, writer vs. artist, author vs. writer, poet vs. writer, blogger vs. journalist, academic vs. scholar, theorist vs. philosopher, etc etc ad nauseum.

Albeit, some of these distinctions point toward viable differences in practice, but even those are so generalized and ignorant of the necessary subcategories beneath them that the distinction must become what it should have been in the first place: a discussion. The fact that time is limited by design always has and always will encourage categorical distinction, but the commercialization and institutionalizing of these distinctions has brought us a century of consequences, not the least of which are those imposed on and embraced by various kinds of information generators and managers. First came the desire for information, followed faster and faster by the invention of information technologies, followed by the demand for information technologies, resulting in the endless proliferation of technologically produced and distributed information, arriving at a society of both self and institutionally trained practitioners, all producing, managing information differently. Amidst this chaos, the bureaucratic innovators stand out as the social engineers of our time. Abandoning last century’s task of divining and amplifying wholesale demand in the name of issuing the best and then the better supply of said demands, these new bureaucrats now specialize in providing an ever evolving supply of monetized interfaces for personalized networking. In short, we generate the supply and demand, and they facilitate the process. It doesn’t sound half bad until you consider the few caveats they’ve imposed. Mainly, categorical streamlining. Relying upon our collective craving for simplified communication, they’ve created tags clouds, prioritized search parameters, quantitatively legitimized categories. It’s our majority voice screaming back at us. It’s telling us that a book (or any product) must initially be defined by what we have to give for it. The subtext is, that all products, and therefore all information, are categorically situated and defined by their price. It begins with logical material deductions, such as hardback vs. paperback. Then scale and availability come into play, turning limited supply into limited edition. Finally, once we’ve begun to drink the water, we’re ready for that absurd leap, which no industry exemplifies so well as the arts. This is the stage where quality and value but heads semantically. Association, origin, and age turn dust into glitter. It is here where the art comes to qualify object, and in doing so, invites the unmitigated speculation of potential value. Art was never worth Ten Grand until someone paid that much for it.

The Poet and the Artist are two commercialities at odds. They are characters in a farce that pits against each other two unlikely roommates of different genders, classes, ethnicities, sexualities and nationalities. We watch and participate as hilarity, calamity, and tragedy ensue. When a cultural barrier is finally breached, we revel in having witnessed the first hope of their eventually discovered commonalities. The categories that we demand result in the solidification of such categories for the sake of commerce. In turn, these solidified categories redefine the systems of production, streamlining them for the sake of more effective commerce. The demand for redefinition is then no longer limited to that of systems of production, but also to the systems that shape and educated the producers. This is the point where the Poet and the Artist are born. When a poet is struggling to exist between the forums of poetry and art, frustrated by the economic values, among other things, enforced by the two forums, he should realize that he is at a crossroads. There is a moment when one steps out from one forum and into another, that the space in between is occupied. He can try to straddle, while straining himself to conceive of working titles like “art poet,” or he can realize that this struggle does not describe his inability to fit within these forums, but the forums inability to facilitate him. The poet should retire, forfeit his dreams of art making, and devote himself to becoming a practitioner.

Tan Lin's Factory

2010-04-24T19:22:00.008-04:00

On Wednesday, Mashinka & I were EDITors of & at Tan Lin’s Day-Long Publishing event, “Handmade book, PDF, lulu.com Appendix, Powerpoint, Kanban Board/Post-its, Blurbs, Dual Language (Chinese/English) Edition, micro lecture, Selectric II interview, wine/cheese reception, Q&A (Xerox) and a film.” Organized and orchestrated as part of Danny Snelson’s “EDIT: Processing Writing Technologies,” this event was quite possibly the first instance of simultaneous, collaborative, on-demand text generation, editing and publishing.

Tan Lin gave me the task of documenting the various tools of editing and mediation, to be organized, edited and contextualized with corresponding essays. Given the time constraint, and the state of active eventfulness which prevailed, I focused myself on gathering data, armed with an Alphasmart Neo wordprocessor, a Sony digital audio recorder, a Panasonic Lumix digital camera, and 2 FlipMino HD Video Reorders.

I began by focusing on locating, inputting and photographing the myriad of technological devices that were littered throughout the Kelly Writers House, UPenn, where the event was located. My initial sweep included:

Kanban Board

Sharpie Permanent Markers, Multicolor

Post-It Notes, Multi color

Anchor Extension Speaker for adjacent room

Kingston USB Thumb Drive 4gig x2

M (?) USB Thumb Drive 512mb

HP Laser Jet 1320 (printer)

Brother WP-3400 Typewriter

Canon Pixma MP210 (inkjet printer)

Mac G5 Tower w/ Dell LCD screen (for monitoring live event feed)

Canon HDV CMOS 1080i (Digital video camera)

Smith-Corona Electra 120 (Typewriter)

Eee PC 1005HA (netbook)

Macbook Black

HP Deskjet F4480 (inkjet printer)

IBM Selectric II

Sony IC Recorder ICD-UX70 (DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDER)

Flip Mino HD X2 (pocket video recorder)

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 (digital camera)

Logitech Cordless Desktop Pro Keyboard

Rock Mobile Disk (External Hard Drive)

SONY HDV Cassette Video Recorder

MACKIE 1402-VLZ PRO 14-channel mic/line mixer

Extron (rack mounted video controller)

DENON DN-T620 Precision Audio Component/ CD/Cassette Combi-deck

Middle Atlanctic Products, Inc. PD-915R Power Center (amp) Rack mounted

Audio Technica ATW-T28 mic (x6)

SONY FWD-50PX2 Flat Panel Display

IBM Selectric II

JBL Wall Mounted Speakers

Sandisk 4gig USB Thumb Drive

HP 2gig USB Thumb Drive

Lexar 2gig USB Thumb Drive

Blackberry Curve 8300 T Mobile

Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS Digital Elph (camera)

Panasonic sp 60 min DV Cassettes

Dell Inspiron 8000 Laptop

Macbook Pro

Office Depot Copy Paper Standard White Paper 20 pound, 92 us Brightness

Alphasmart Neo Word Processor

The group of some 15 -20 editors had been organized into 6 groups stationed in various rooms. Their tasks ranged from editing and organizing a bibliography from a large stack of source material to designing alternative covers for Tan Lin’s Seven Controlled Vocabularies.

The set goal for this event was to produce and print a variety of books to be individually bound, collected and packaged in a handmade portfolio as an accompaniment to 7CV.

I went from group to group, first simply video documenting their actions and interactions with the devices they were using to edit, transfer, research, input, and design their texts. I repeated rounds, each time investigating further, asking questions:

What word processor are you using?

How many gigs does that thumb drive hold?

Which translation program are you using?

What fonts are you using?

Which printer will you print this on?

What program are you using to format these images in?

What problems are you having?

What MP3 player are you using?

What are you listening to?

How long will this task take you?

Why are you using Google Docs?

Why are you using text edit?

This process sometimes segued into miniature interviews, wherein the editor would turn momentarily from their task to more fully discuss their challenges. Almost every obstacle, though articulated in relation to content, pertained specifically to technological challenges.

In isolating and controlling the editing and publishing process through the constraints of time and place, this event focused attention on the more phenomenological aspects of handling and organizing data. The necessary physicality of each task made seemingly equivalent the practices of making meaning and executing technical operations.

I will explore this relationship in more detail in an essay entitled, “Technological Index,” which will adopt as its format the brevity and bullet-point style of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. Culling from several pages of notes regarding the processes of each editorial group, as well as from information collected from 35 video clips and many more photographs, I’ll index and contextualize each technological item in relationship to both its general and event-specific use.

Learn more about this event:

EDIT Press Release

Thom Donovan's Poetics of Distribution, Metadata as Poesis: Tan Lin’s 7CV @ EDIT: Processing Network Publishing

Katherine Elaine Sander's Tan Lin (BOMB Magazine)

Pwoermd #1

2010-04-18T20:55:00.003-04:00

comckputailer

PoetHero®: Better Reading Through Gaming

2010-04-12T20:51:00.010-04:00

PoetHero, Be a Poet... GamePlaying from Carlos González Tardón on Vimeo.

Another show stopper from Carlos Gonzalez Tardon.

Based on GuitarHero and the countless Hero/Dance games that followed, PoetHero® is possibly the best way to read a poem!

What Gertrude Stein went to great lengths to accomplish, PoetHero® can do in just a few weeks of daily gameplay: PoetHero® is the ultimate tool for generating reader attentiveness!

Re-wiring for re-reading!

Now available on PoetHero® Gaming System, PS3, XBox 360, Wii, iPad, iPhone, Android, PSP, & Nintendo DS!

A glimpse of what's coming your way:

PoetHero® Romanticists® (Rely on intuition and natural emotion to recreate images of the sublime!)

PoetHero® Transcendentalists® (Rated Teen for excessive metaphors, obscurity for obscurity's sake, and mysticism.)

PoetHero® Symbolists® (Rated Adults Only 18+ for the authors' associations with crime, homosexuality, and nefarious worlds.)

PoetHero® Modernists® (Includes Ezra Pound's Tips & Tricks Guide!)

PoetHero® Imagists® (Beat the game to learn the true essence of things!)

PoetHero® Objectivists® (Now no longer subject to critical neglect!)
PoetHero® Beats® (PoetHero® discourages the use of amphetamines, hallucinogens, and open emotion.)
PoetHero® Confessionalists® (Rated Mature 17+ for detailed personal accounts of illness, sexuality, and despondence.)
PoetHero® Projectivists® (Use the PoetHero® Olsonizer® (not included) to determine your breath line!)
PoetHero® SF Renaissance® (A group of poets in San Francisco or a consciousness-altering poetic movement... you decide!)
PoetHero® SLAM® (With the PoetHero® Slamicrophone® you can SLAM along!)
PoetHero® Quietists® (Though all included poems are autonomous and authentic, PoetHero® is not responsible should you not identify with the poems.)
PoetHero® Neoformalists® (An endless horde of rhyming meaningful aesthetics to choose from!)
PoetHero® L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E® (Play in Customizable Reader- or Author-preferred poem interpretation settings!)

In the works for 2012:
PoetHero® Multiculturalists, Multilinguists & Postcolonialists® (Includes automatic translator!)
PoetHero® Dadaists, Futurists, Absurdists, Surrealists & Vorticists® (All in one game!)
PoetHero® Oulipo® (Additional Constraints are available in our Extended Play Pack!)
PoetHero® Transrealists® (Soon to be a Major SciFi Motion Picture!)

And don't forget our contemporary series:
PoetHero® PoLangPo® (An introduction to the lasting effects of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E on contemporary poetics!)
PoetHero® RonSilliman.blogspot.com® (The Popular Must-Read RSS Feed for Poets is one of our Best Selling Games!)
PoetHero® Flarfists® (Must have PoetHero® Gaming System V.2 with Internet Connection!)
PoetHero® Conceptualists® (Given the size of this game, it is not available to play, but you can read about it online!)
PoetHero® MFA FUBU® (Includes Multiplayer Workshop Mode! Sign on with your Student ID! Look for special offers on your University's Listserv!)
PoetHero® More Quietists® (Over twice as many Quietists as our original release, so you're bound to find something you identify with!) (Though all included poems are autonomous and authentic, PoetHero® is not responsible should you not identify with the poems.)
PoetHero® Pluralaestheticians® (Now you can learn performance, math, charts, science, computers, languages and Poetry too!)
PoetHero® Infra-Verbalists® (This introduction, which includes Joyce's Thunderwords and Cummings's colloquial jamming, will prepare you for the eventual release of PwoermdHero®!)
PoetHero® Hypertextualists® (Including click-through word-links for more Multipage Browser Action!)

And coming just in time for Christmas, the folks at PoetHero® Gaming are pleased to announce:
VisPoHero® (Colors! Shapes! & Words! Narrated by guest designer, Geof Huth.)
Now accepting submissions for PoetHero® Hypertextualists® & VisPoHero®!
.........................................................
PoetHero®: Better Reading Through Gaming

how to play games with words

2010-04-12T16:58:00.006-04:00

Emerging Poetry and Videogames from Carlos González Tardón on Vimeo.

My friend Narbeh works in the video gaming industry.

He visited our home this past weekend and brought with him several video games.

I haven't played video games since I was in college.

As a child, I was given video games to play at the recommendation of our family psychiatrist.

She told my parents that it would improve my hand-eye coordination and help me learn to focus.

This past weekend we played Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Brutal Legend.

These games are far more advanced than the games I played in college and as a child.

They are certainly more visually advanced, owing to the evolution of technology.

They are also far more conceptually advanced, paying special attention to the possibilities of a character's capacity to choose given a variety of seemingly unstable contexts.

Playing these games prompted me to consider their relationship with the ever evolving state of information and information management.

I would like to use video games as a context for visual, performative, and performed language.

Because everyone is a welcome player within a game, the context provides a closed narrative system to operate comfortably within.

If language is visually and/or sonically juxtaposed with these contexts, the narrative system is reopened.

Aside from the juxtaposition or transposing of language, other devices may be used to redefine these systems parameters.

By virtue of their potential use or misuse, these devices suggest the possibility of opening up a closed system.

Once open, the implementation of one or more of these devices creates a new closed system, while continuing to suggest the possibility of an open system because the source system (closed narrative game) is recognizable as such, as are the devices attempting to open up and interface with the source system.

Devices and elements to consider when opening, interfacing with, and re-closing a closed narrative system (video game):

-language that is sonically and/or visually juxtaposed onto the screen or in the vicinity of the screen respectively

-other juxtaposed mediums such as the visuals and/or sounds of other games, the visuals and/or sounds of other video or flash media, still images, and live or recorded audio of any kind

-the presence of one or more live narrators, performers, or other mediators

-the presence of an audience

-the mode of presentation as it relates to the audience (flash on a web browser, projection on a screen, etc)

-the presence or lack thereof live gamers, whether present or on-line

-time and timing as it relates to duration and isolation (relevant in relation to pre-recording an excerpt of game action, or in relation to determining when to cut in and cut out of live game action)

-the number of gamers if given a multiplayer platform

-the scripted and/or live collaboration of the gamer(s) and the other interfacing/transposing practitioner(s) (narrators, performers, video makers, editors, etc)

This is an initial and partial list which relates exclusively to formalistic devices and elements. A more comprehensive list would be necessary once addressing thematic and topical considerations, which would often be generated by the already defined content of the closed narrative system (video game). Alternatively, a text could be generated by some other means and then applied to an appropriate video game.

In either case, the practitioner must decide how and why the video game is to be used. A text might be generated with the intent of "casting" it with game characters operating in a way that is possible but not essential to the closed narrative system of the game. For instance, in most any given multi-player first-person shooter, such as Metal Gear Solid or Halo, there is always the possibility of navigating all the players to one position (all on one screen) and assigning roles to the characters/players that can be fulfilled entirely in that one position (on one screen). In this case, the video game is being more referenced than played, though some games are largely defined by what their characters/players can do rather than where they can go. Despite this, I would still suggest that this multiplayer-on-one-screen scenario is more akin to a staged theatrical platform, wherein texts could even be generated without prior knowledge of the game, though, depending on the audience's ability to recognize the game or at least the scenario of the game (historical war, swat team, post-nuclear wasteland, etc), the plot is contextualized respectively.

This is just one example of interfacing with a closed narrative source (video game) in a way that is not largely dependent upon the closed narrative of the game itself. This is non-narrative-dependent-video-game-to-external-source-text interfacing.

A practitioner can also opt to create or use a video-game-narrative-dependent text source in an effort to confront, create and employ Relational Gaming Aesthetics.

This practice takes as its theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of character relations and their social context within a given closed narrative source (video game).

This dependency is defined by the practitioner's willingness to take for granted the general game player's desire to succeed within the game, as well as the advertised ambitions and capabilities of the player's character and that of the programmed characters within the game. This dependency does not negate the possibility of revising and/or appropriating the narrative of the video game, but rather, by virtue of the practitioner's foreknowledge of the narrative, invites interpretations of intentional misunderstanding and misuse. The transparent juxtaposition of one narrative over another allows them to exist simultaneously for both practitioner and audience. It is between and through this parallel narrative that critical friction can be asserted and observed.

I've just begun to seek out documented examples of these practices, such as the clip at the top of this post, but I have yet to see a live performance of anything like it. I am considering a performance of this nature for the Fall season of P||R||O||J||E||C||T||I||O||N||S. I'm looking for other practitioners to collaborate with.

Some Gaming experience required.

Note: Gamers are acquainted with poetry.

CAPTURE EVERYDAY MOMENTS

2010-04-12T15:13:00.003-04:00

The 2010 Whitney Biennial as seen through SemioSpectacles

Welcome to the Future of Neutralism

2010-04-09T15:40:00.005-04:00

In a room by herself w/ honey and locust hors d'oeuvres I heard a voice in the data and a light came out from the plasma saying no neutralism no sprayed blank jism, but spit upwards while sitting in middle of a fresh white cube and wait and wait for returns.

Whitney Biennial Everyday Live Less or Build More

2010-04-09T14:49:00.009-04:00

Platformed Seeable Exemplifier Excerpt w/ Description:

Best Copyright Super Inspirator:

Backdoor Biennial

2010-04-08T19:18:00.001-04:00

This at the Whitney
"Brick in Your Face" 2009. 1 of 17.
Munal Daneba

Letters to NoWear

2010-04-07T16:27:00.002-04:00

Spectacularist Mashinka Firunts Adovcates Variations on VisPo Vogue

Marian Prophecy New Car Smell

2010-04-07T14:57:00.005-04:00

when I saw her there were 5 of us she was on a hill it was getting dark and she futured

Start the Practice Death

2010-04-07T13:57:00.006-04:00

The Prayer is Sharp.

The Prayer is Prown.

The Prayer is Rent.

If you need to Hail Mary

Touch This Ampersand & Pretend

D. radiodurans

2010-04-06T18:20:00.003-04:00

his poem could outlast the human race

RRRRRRR as in R

2010-04-06T17:47:00.006-04:00

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Faceerasure #1

2010-04-06T12:46:00.007-04:00

Blackface twin reverb demo

A few super reverbs

6L6 Groove Tube

The vintage sound

Twins become the new classic we know today

Super Reverb Deluxe Reverb Vibroverb

Tubescreamer

Very Rare Better Coils & Transformers output Tranny

That Leo used when he ran out of Schumacher Trannies. Slightly

Dual Showman Twin Hum Half a Twin

Replica of the Blackface Super Reverb

What’s a twin reverb with a silver face worth?

Reverb Reissue Custom Cosmetic Features Were Retained

Blackface-style normal channel and thick

Boogie Hiwatt Maestro Echoplex Deluxe Super lead

Showman Power

Tilt-back legs and blackface cosmetics

This is it the classic sound modified to blackface specs

TALKIE TUMB TUMB: silence is golden zaum zaum

2010-03-09T12:25:00.002-05:00

Description for upcoming piece in Semiospectacle:

Prepare yourself as The Tramp goes Camp!
Listen Up when Silent Pictures show their Word’s Worth!
Friend, in Hard Times like THESE, you Need a Voice!
A Voice Needs Words! NO! A Voice WANTS Words!
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

“MONEESSSCANCOSWHAYOUDUNHAVE” – Trammph

A language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey. James Baldwin

Deliberate Speech

2010-03-04T09:57:00.002-05:00

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

conceptually problematic or refreshingly instructive, I welcome this

Semiospectacle: A Literary Revue

2010-02-26T18:17:00.006-05:00

Mashinka is curating the following show, in which I and several of my favorite performers and poets will be presenting:

TO RESERVE TICKETS, PLEASE VISIT: PS122.ORG.

This verbal varieté strategizes the explicitly semiotic spectacle in a multimedia showcase of live art representing an encounter between the academic lecture hall, the poet’s theater, and the vaudeville house. Its players cut across the disciplinary boundaries of scholarship, pedagogy, cabaret, poetics, and performance in an investigation of linguistic mechanisms of spectacular identity formation. Linguistic illusionists expose the parlor trick of transparent speech, conjuring floating signifiers that levitate forty-four feet above the floor. Costumes sewn from three million majuscules burst at the semes. The auditorium oscillates between reading room and performatorium. The linguistic turn transmogrifies into a shimmy. Curated by Mashinka Firunts.

CO-SPONSORED BY: UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE. Ugly Duckling Presse is a nonprofit art & publishing collective focusing on new poetry, translations, lost works, and artist's books. The Presse favors emerging, international, and forgotten writers with well-defined formal or conceptual projects that are difficult to place at other presses. Its publications employ a variety of handmade elements, calling attention to the labor and history of bookmaking.

STENO POOL: AN INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE Featuring:
Leesa Abahuni | Nicole Abahuni | Jen Zak | Matt Jones | Kristen Rhea van Liew | Fyodor Pavlov | Lawrence Gullo | Kyle Hittmeier | Lindsay Comstock

CODEXKAMMER: A FUNCTIONAL LENDING LIBRARY
MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT BY: Grandpa Musselman & His Syncopators
INTERTITULAR TAP BY: The Minsky Sisters
ONE-MINUTE CURATORIAL MICRO-LECTURES BY Mashinka Foxtrot Firunts

MARCH 22ND, FREE
Performance Space 122
150 First Avenue (at 9th Street)
Doors Open at 7:30, Staged Performance Commences at 8PM
Reception To Follow

SEMIOSPECTACLE WEBSITE
PERFORMANCE SPACE 122 RESERVATIONS PAGE
FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE

I AM READING AT THE EOAGH ISSUE 5 LAUNCH

2009-09-30T23:29:00.004-04:00

EOAGH Issue 5
First Launch Event

SATURDAY, OCT 3 @8 PM
Unnameable Books
600 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn

This event is co-sponsored by Chax Press

8:00 Amy King
8:15 Jeremy James Thompson
8:30 Mark Lamoureux
8:45 Christie Ann Reynolds
9:00 Eric Lindley
9:15 Bill Marsh
9:30 Adeena Karasick
9:45 Matthew Rotando

Amy King is the author of I'm the Man Who Loves You and, and forthcoming, I Want to Make You Safe and Slaves to do These Things. She curates the Brooklyn-based reading series, The Stain of Poetry. For more information, please visit amyking.org.

Jeremy James Thompson is an instructor at New York's Center for Book Arts, as well as curator of the reading series TEXTFORM. His work focuses on the process of collaboration, the reinvention of propaganda, and the defining of a practical avant-garde.

Mark Lamoureux lives in Astoria, NY. He is the author of Astronomy Organon (Blazevox) and 5 chapbooks. In 2006 he started Cy Gist Press, a micropress focusing on ekphrastic poetry.

Christie Ann Reynolds is a native New Yorker. She is the 2009 winner of The New School Chapbook Contest, chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy. Her first full-length manuscript will be published by Black Maze Books in the summer of 2010. She lives on the undetermined border of Queens and Brooklyn.

Eric Lindley loves language like a baby loves life; that is, fearfully, perversely, inscrutably, and currently working as a robot-builder, electro-folk musician, and psycholinguist.

Bill Marsh co-directs Factory School and edits the Heretical Texts series. He also curates NoDiff.com, a social networking site for his students at Queensborough Community College.

Adeena Karasick is a poet, media-artist and the award-winning author of six books of poetry and poetic theory, most recently Amuse Bouche: Tasty Treats for the Mouth (Talonbooks 2009).

Matthew Rotando's first book of poems, The Comeback's Exoskeleton, (with a foreward by Tim Peterson) is available from Upset Press. He is a member of POG, a collective of artists and poets in Tucson, Arizona.

I AM READING TOMORROW (MONDAY) AT ST. MARKS' POETRY PROJECT

2009-03-22T15:25:00.001-04:00

As part of the Poetry Project Reading Series curated by Kyle Schlesinger, Karen Randall & I will be reading on

MONDAY, MARCH 23rd, at 8 PM.

You might say that both Karen & I exercise implementing & synthesizing the textual visual, (textu(r)al).

I hope you will come see/hear us read.

See Below for more information:

Karen Randall is an artist who works in the media of words, digital collage (both sound and visual), oil painting, and letterpress printing/artist’s books. She is the daughter of an astrophysicist & grew up playing with primitive computers, a very cool chemistry set from the 50s, building short wave radios and a telescope, while also painting & writing poetry. She has taught hands-on science in the Chicago public schools, literary studies in western MA, and letterpress printing at the Center for the Book in NY and at Naropa. She developed four-color printing process as a means of combining the fluidity of contemporary digital imagery with the luminous qualities of ink layered on Japanese papers. Her work has been collected by numerous colleges, institutions and private collectors including the Library of Congress. Images of her work can be seen on line at www.propolispress.com.

Jeremy James Thompson is an instructor at New York’s Center for Book Arts as well as a curator for their New Voices reading series. His work focuses on the process of collaboration, the reinvention of propaganda, and the defining of a practical avant-garde. Through his own Auto Types Press, he has produced collaborative prints with poets including, Edwin Torres, Joan Retallack, David Lehman and Charles Bernstein. His texts and typographic works are published in collections and journals including Cricket Online Review, Pinstripe Fedora, The Houston Literary Review, The Bucky Monkey, Lamination Colony, WORK, and Viz. Inter-Arts, a Trans-Genre Anthology. He blogs about movietelling, typography and poetics at autotypist.blogspot.com.

The Poetry Project at St. Marks Cathedral is Located in the East Village at:

131 E. 10th St., New York, NY

(through the gate and around the back)

NOW FOR THIS NEW THING

2008-09-22T15:31:00.007-04:00

I've returned from an internet absence largely compelled by the process of moving house, beginning a new job in an entirely new industry, the arrival and departure of a number of house guests, and the other miscellany.

I've announced my return with new Fall Colors, because the virtual seasons are otherwise difficult to detect.

NOW FOR THIS NEW THING: my honest engine reason for not posting anything for some long while has been my inability to determine how to proceed. There are different ways of saying the same and different things. Saying things differently. So an ongoing presentation determining the difference is the solution. I'll be posting in different colors:

White facts & white opinions.

Pink poetic or abstract.

Light blue nearly meaningless.

1 Week ago, I went to Brooklyn to investigate The Poetry Brothel, a gallery/ club of sorts. Its run by folks calling themselves The Madame and Tennessee Pink. The fundamental concept is a venue offering rooms laden with pillows and fabrics, wherein poetry is read to you by poets dressed in sexier than usual garb. It all suggested more 80's & 90's theater than any kind of discernible poetics, though I'm told they're mostly students from the New School MFA Program. $10 buys you admission, a gold plastic coin good for a private reading with a Poetry Whore (fresh from The Madame's Finishing School for Poetry Whores), and a green plastic coin for Absinthe (still the official drink of olympic poetry!). Also included, The Poetry Brothel program, which amounts to a list of cast (character) biographies, acknowledgements, and advertisements for 3 workshops:

A Finishing School for Poetry Whores: "geared toward the development of a poetry "whore" persona through the writing and workshopping of a small body of poetry for this alter-ego."

Theories of Poetic Enunciation: participants "focus on finding the more resonant qualities of our own voices," beginning with a study of the poetry of the "great masters."

Tarot and Poetry: "poets in this workshop will come to understand ways to incorporate into their work the still, small voice that is so easily hushed and disregarded in daily life."

These are six-week sessions. Want more? "all of our instructors are also available for private, one-on-one consultations. These are recommended for those with an existing body of poetic work and a desire for some length, indepth feedback on it. Consultation Fee: $100 per 2 hours."

My blog reading fee is $600 per post read (& it's still a better deal).

So maybe most poets are no longer nearly so eccentric as history suggests certain dead poets were. That's no reason to go running around charging people to develop stock strange artists. These workshopped poetic personas consist of 1 paragraph bio descriptions, toting pre-war stylings, exoticism, orientalism, EVEN MODERNISM. Each one has a list of influences beneath: Arthur Rimbaud, William Shakespeare, Wallace Stevens, Bly, Hass, Kunitz, William Carlos Williams, Silvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Frank O'Hara, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, John Ashbery, Charles Bukowski, Walt Whiman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H Auden, Russel Edson, Robert Creeley, Anne Waldman, Margaret Atwood, Ezra Pound, Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, and Salinger.

This would not be my starting line-up. It almost reads like a "Much Loved Poets and Writers" coffee table collection. Hard-bound. Massive. Shiny. Black.

Though, amongst the lot of them, they also managed to include: Gertrude Stein, e.e. cummings, William Burroughs, James Joyce, Richard Brautigan, Lyn Hejinian, Alice Notely, and Anna Akhmatova.

Other odd notables included: Tom Waits, Marilyn Monroe, and Edith Piaf.

What I liked (& would like to see at other poetry events):

-inclosed front patio replete with odd lounging furniture and friendly faces

-a charming well-dressed Maitre'De

-alcohol besides wine

-an accordion player serenading between acts

-art on the walls

-attractive environs

-the idea of private readings within a larger reading

-generally friendly and approachable people

-a large constituent of women reading and listening

-Queer Friendly

What I didn't like (& am even somewhat vexed by);

-bad accents (it only makes it more difficult to care about what is being said)

-costumes (as opposed developing your "character" and subsequent aesthetic within the parameters of day to day living)

-absinthe (I love the drink, but it comes with so much baggage, and they were more interested in the baggage than the drink).

- "Poetry Whores" (as a title, the result is neither sexy enough, nor exploitive enough. Think School of Quietude in fishnet stockings and patent leather heels). Cheesecake Gluck!

- temperature (too hot to contemplate so much personal narrative)

Perhaps if the focus were set more upon the "poetry" and less upon the "brothel." Perhaps if there were less emphasis on kitsch Lit history, and more upon the spirit of experiment with venue, text and performance.

Should have gone to TIM PETERSON the should've shid. I saw peterson on youtube smash his club on IOWA's creative MFAce. It made sense. I think he's as intelligent as he sounds, but he has strong feelings about some poets he knows.

PAOLO JAVIER left to teach in Miami, an associate prof on perm VAY-K. Many people visit my blog in search of PAOLO JAVIER. Keep Coming.

ITTk looks like a dumb truck full of TT. TTap Dance. Ta Ta Tap Tap ap laPDAnce LAPDance. Ignant words doggy up my flexis mooch. Up in their towel wrapped a fat sperm whale.

To gurlesque, make bugwords CUM! THIP! CRISH! PHUSH! Prack ... to star in John McC[[l]]ain and William Moor Lie Hard with a Variance.

New Voices, LMFAO, Geof Huth, WORK#4

2008-08-03T19:34:00.003-04:00

It seems that recently I have witnessed more events than there have been days in which to do so.

NEW VOICES

The story begins on Wednesday evening, July 23rd at the Center for Book Arts. I curated the inauguration of a new reading series misleadingly titled New Voices (the participating readers are well beyond "new," as they are all recognized and published within their communities). The title was predesignated by the Center for Book Arts, but in its defense, I suspect the desire was to employ "New" as an adjective in the service of Progress, as in New Perspectives... fresh, surprising, etc.

Taking into account my own reaction, that of the readers, and those of the audience, I am sure that the work presented did come off as Fresh & Surprising. Much of it still remands so in my memory. The reading was (audio) recorded, and hopefully will make its way on to Penn Sound, courtesy of Danny Snelson.

I had a conversation or two with each of the readers that night, and some of us went out for a drink after the event. Many of them shared my enthusiasm for continuing to develop a community of printers, booksmiths and poets: actually any artists interested in the tensions and cooperations evident in text-based mediums at every stage: words, and words as they are placed and then found on a surface.

I have already begun to keep in touch with several of them, and I believe that the correspondence between us will be vital in encouraging the presence and longevity of the community I have suggested above. That said, I'd also like to see the Center for Book Arts become a more central hub for readings and other text-inclusive performative events.

My primary interest is in the intersection of stunning writing and the possibility of the book as structure. Cuneiform does not ascribe to any particular school or canon, and remains committed to publishing enduring (and ephemeral) works that negotiate the critical imagination and poetic exploration. We aspire to maintain a zeal for experimentation and fascination with the intersection of meaning and form with each publication.
-Kyle Schlesinger, Cuneiform Press

In essence, I would like to apply these goals toward the continued formation of a community, marked by events such as readings and exhibitions of ephemera.

OMG! releases Paolo Javier's LMFAO

On the evening of Friday, July 25th, at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's projects space, DIY press, OMG!, released Paolo's idiomatic cut'n'paste, graphic no-vella LMFAO. I wish I could describe it in detail, but I am currently in Los Angeles, and the book is in New York. But I will say that his performance at the release reading was the 2nd impressive presentation of his I've witnessed. It was both conceptual and lyrical, managing and narrating text composed for other purposes by other people. When it came to the poems from his new book, he simply slowly passed over each powerpoint page without reading aloud. More on that text once I've my eyes on it again.

Meeting Geof Huth in Astoria, NY

The night before I left for Los Angeles, I sat at my computer, reading this post by Geof Huth, a well-known practitioner and collector of visual poetries. The post discusses some ruminations on what (or how) the visual poet sees, and it also lists the location whereat the thought was had, that being, Astoria, NY: my home. I immediately responded with my own thoughts on the relevance of such ruminations within Astoria, revealing my living there as well. He responded in turn, and within minutes, I was greeting he and his wife out on the corner of 27th st & 30th Ave. It is a rare thing when a blog post leads to a handshake, and it takes the outward warmth of a fellow like Goef Huth to initiate such a handshake.

I only recently finished reading his collected pwoermds, and had been having many discussions about them with my wife as well as other poets. Goef Huth's passion for & habit of photographing graffiti and other found texts has rubbed off on me since first discovering it some months ago. Also, and most importantly, his sandglyphs and fidgetglyphs have refreshed my otherwise tired understanding of experiential poetics. His practice suggests the renewed capacity for an immediate poetics, but one that is still meditative and concerned with its social and political implications. I'm speaking now in these broad strokes, but it's mostly out of excitement. I hope some insight can be gleaned from my explanation. At the very least, I hope I've incited some interest in investigating his work further.

We discussed locations and origins. We discussed his touring and reading. He seemed always excited about his work. He is committed, and has found a way to always be practicing, collecting, arranging. It was a real pleasure to meet him.

He gave me a copy of his "audience handout" (which is actually a well designed chapbook).
He gave me a copy of his hot-off-the-press book, Longfellow Memoranda.

I will discuss them soon.

He has also written a description of this encounter.

WORK #4 is online.
David Horton, diligent as ever, has posted another issue of WORK on the Internet.
I have work in Issue #4 (now online).

Charles Bernstein's Every True Religion is Bound to Fail

2008-07-16T21:04:00.004-04:00

I've finally forced the broadside onto the internet. It's up at Bernstein's blog, as well as included in Ron Silliman's recent list of links.

Read about the collaborative manufacturing of the broadside: here.

Read about Bernstein's reading at the event the broadside was produced for: here.

Click image for full-scale version.