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"A note to Pound in heaven: Only one mistake, Ezra! You should have talked to women"
--George Oppen, _Twenty Six Fragments_
Archives:
xoxo Hey, E-Mail Me! xoxo
ManY PoETiKaL HaTs LisT:
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Max Ernst's Hats of The Hat Makes the Man.
Jordan Davis' The Hat!
poetry. hks' smelly head baseball cap.
Samuel Beckett's Lucky's
Black bowler hat,
giving his oration
on what's questionable in mankind,
in *Waiting for 'God-ot'*.
my friend John Phillips's 1969
dove gray fedora w/ wild feather.
Bob Dylan's mystery lover's Panama Hat.
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Hell. Lewis LaCook's bowler hat(s).
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harry k stammer's fez. Cat
in the Hat's Hat & best
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crocheted hat with flames.
Harry K Stammer's tinseled berets.
Tex's 10 gallon Gary Cooper felt Stetson cowboy hat.
Jordan Davis's fedora.
Dali's High-heel Shoe Hat. Harry K Stammer's en-blog LAPD Hat
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are blue or green no logos nor captions.
Ma Skanky Possum 10's nighttime cap.
moose antler hat. propeller beenie hat.
doo rag. knit face mask hat. Bob Dylan's & photographer Laziz
Hamani's panama hats. Mark Weiss's Publisher's Hat.
Rebecca Loudon's Seattle-TX-Hats'n'boots.
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Dan Waber: ars poetica anthology
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|||AS/IS2|||
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YaY!! Eileen Tabios: Chatelaine Poetics !
Jill Jones: Ruby Street
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James Meetze: Brutal Kittens
Cassie Lewis: The Jetty
Joseph Mosconi's Harlequin Knights
Nada Gordon's Ululate
ultimate: Stephanie Young's First Well Nourished Moon
Steve Evans: Third Factory
Noah Eli Gordon's Human Verb
Jean Vengua's Blue Kangaroo
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Josh Corey's Cahiers de Corey
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UTA's Lit Mag: ZNine
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Malcolm Davidson's Tram Spark poems
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Aimee Nez's Gila Monster
BestMaX: Jim Behrle's jismblog
Cori Copp's Littleshirleybean
Jordan Davis: Million Poems
Eileen Tabios: Corpsepoetics [see Chatelaine above]
YaY! Liz's Thirdwish
Ultra Linking
Henry Gould's HG Poetics
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Friday, April 30, 2004
from student work in my UTA course, Engl. 4330, Poetry Writing Seminar--the parody assignment done during the week of reading Kent Johnson's/Alexandra Papaditsas's *Miseries of Poetry* (Skanky Possum Press, 2003) :
--by Leanna Ohnheiser
The Dog
--After John Donne's "The Flea"
Mark but this dog, and mark in this
How its barking is, though loud, remiss;
It sniffed thee first, and now sniffs me,
And in this dog our love will never be;
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
For this love which has no such worth,
Will not move heaven and earth,
And, alas, has ended before its birth.
Oh go, three lives saved in one dog's ban,
Where thou would never lose the man.
This dog is thou, not I, and this
Our marriage bed a coffin is;
As parents grudge, and well they should,
I shall not return love as thou hoped I would.
True, I have thoughts of killing,
Let that be a warning,
And blasphemy, my self undo.
Anxious and sudden, hast thou since
run from love's innocence?
Wherefore the poor dog guilty be?
Except in tail, which it flaunts for me?
Yet thou did fail, and I say'st that thou
Find'st thyself more pleasant for barking now;
'Tis true. Learn, then, how fake love's bark and bite can be;
How much chaste love was puppy tongued and flaunted by thee
Then lost, as ever thy dog has chased its tail 'round trees.
~~~~~copyright of Leanna Ohnheiser & edits by chris murray~~~~~~~
chris at
10:09 PM
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Had an email this afternoon from Tonio Savoradin about the expiration of his website, Savoradin, where for quite a while we all enjoyed lovely, fun, conversationally-based blogging, and lots of provocative poetry, as well as the feature of excerpts from all our poems. Truly, t'will be much missed, Tonio!
He kindly emailed to remind me to take down my link to the site since no one knows what kinds of weird uses it could be put to, by gosh only knows who, after Tonio has to leave it. So I have blocked my link, but left it in place with the words, Farewell, Tonio!
Hurry and get a new site, Tonio!
chris at
5:07 AM
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Thursday, April 29, 2004
2 from student work, UTA English 4330, the "Mean Poem Exercise" in collaboration:
--by Bridgit Cooper, Ricardo Garza, Jim Bratone:
Delicate Movement of Time is Troubled
Far in sacred consciousness, the baby lays and resigns from
Drift, in dream's negative space, slashing bright colors and shadow,
Twitching by the moonlight, shifting like trees do in autumn wind.
Sharp voices and wind slice through, etching promise in skin hollows
Of deep perspective, carving tense contours of coming years that
Echo contempt on the boy; she can only cry and console.
Words burn deep. Vapors rise. Translucent smoke bleeds holy on faith
Engraving a dove's figure stroking free from chiaroscuro,
But burdened by posture. She watches the arpeggio dance,
Setting pace for what is to come. Fast, although appearing slow,
December's moon, a lidless eye, peers past the sheltered clouds while
The delicate movement of time is troubled -- an adagio.
Waiting and watching, watching, waiting: she repents with ashen breath
And feels the urgent stars burn, drawing him clean of ocean flow
And betraying the sun for a land of gift and dark mezzo.
~~~~poem copyright of Bridgit Cooper, Ricardo Garza, Jim Bratone~~~~
* * *
--by Phyllis Halstead and Anita Fowler:
Presence & Imaginary Time
I met Stephen Hawking. While I was walking down the crowded, semi-
gloomy streets of Cambridge, he came rolling by in his unique
motorized chair that can speak. I told him I was a huge fan,
& that I had read all of his books. Of course, this was a lie.
I had only ever read one. I later attended a
lecture he was presenting at King's College. I had never
done this before, and soon realized why. Imaginary time
is a new dimension at right angles to ordinary,
real time. The universe has no singularities in the
direction of time. Assuming this condition, there will be
no beginning or end to imaginary time... this is
why we recall events only from what we call "the past," &
not from "the future." Through the distance light travels, defined is
the meter, in 0.0000000000335640952 seconds, measured by a caesium clock.
It is because of all this that I am an English major.
~~~~~~~~poem copyright of Phyllis Halstead and Anita Fowler~~~~~~~~
chris at
10:48 PM
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"Arcadia St. (lady of the angels) ... mother me overcome (d) as fire... "
chris at
7:19 PM
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"Blue notation wired for readiness..."
chris at
6:53 PM
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fwd from kari edwards :
-- Tarpaulin Sky : Spring/Summer Issue(s) --
Dear TSky Friends & Readers,
V2n2&3 is online at
Tarpaulin Sky
and it is huge.
The Spring/Summer double issue features black & white photography by
Jason Huntzinger and includes new work from Jenny Boully, Julie Carr,
Mark Cunningham, William E. Dudley, Jamey Dunham, kari edwards,
Michael Gottlieb, Sojourner Hodges, Louis Jenkins, Jake Kennedy,
Jeffrey Levine, Norman Lock, Thorpe Moeckel, Eugene Ostashevsky,
Matthew Shindell, Sarah Sonner, Julianna Spallholz, Jane Sprague, and
John Warner.
Here's to Spring (& Summer!)
Editors
Lizzie Harris
Jonathan Livingston
Eireene Nealand
Christian Peet
chris at
7:18 AM
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
from Yvonne Caroutch (French/Mongolian poet and translator [of Montale and Ungaretti, among others] * :
The limb of forests rises up
behind the foliage stirring
Ghost people gravitate beneath the bark
assail your castles of nutmeg
Sublime thorn planted in scarlet time
Winged heel of the starry arcanum
House of sulfur and mercury
held spellbound by a feather
increased by what weight
on the scales of dreams
Logic at the triple stage
of this bleeding communion
It made the white rose of winds revolve
Nothing can ever cloud
its incorruptible retina
* * *
I come to you with the vertigoes of the source
numbed into stone
Standing up to death entwined in the grasses
we penetrate into an empire without contours
wide open to our disproportion
Silence holds its breath
in the midst of a motionless wind
and the riotings of mirrors
High walls patiently conquered by our rites
keep watch over our movements
We are monotonous stars
astonished insects in worlds of feathers
[translated by David Cloutier]
(223)
*in Barnstone (see below).
chris at
10:23 AM
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from Lucille Clifton * :
Cutting Greens
curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black,
the cutting board is black,
my hand
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.
(682)
* in the Barnstone anthology (see below).
~~~~copyright of everyone. everywhere. she say. ~~~~~
chris at
9:19 AM
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
From Muriel Rukeyser * :
Darkness Music
The days grow and the stars cross over
And my wild bed turns slowly among the stars.
(599)
Eyes of a Night-Time
On the roads at night I saw the glitter of eyes:
My dark around me let shine one ray; that black
allowed in their eyes : spangles in the cat's, air in
the moth's eye shine,
mosaic of the fly, ruby-eyed beetle, the eyes that never weep,
the horned toad sitting and its tear of blood,
fighters and prisoners in the forest, people
aware in this almost total dark, with the difference,
the one broad face of light.
Eyes on the road at night, sides of a road like rhyme;
the floor of the illumined shadow sea
and shallows with their assembling flash and show
of sight, root, holdfast, eyes of the brittle stars.
And your eyes in the shadowy red room,
scent of the forest entering, various time
calling and the light of wood along the ceiling
and over us birds calling and their circuit eyes.
And in our bodies the eyes of the dead and the living
giving us gifts at hand, the glitter of all their eyes.
(598-599)
* in Women Poets from Antiquity to Now, Aliki and Willis Barnstone, Eds. New York: Schocken Books, 1992.
chris at
7:34 PM
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From my students: the parody exercise :
Students in my poetry course really did some good reading last week, which was over Kent Johnson's and Alexandra Papditsas's *Miseries of Poetry* (Skanky Possum Press, 2003). So I had them throw their lots in with parody. Originally, in keeping with the historical energy that *Miseries* deals with, they were to choose something really, um, old... from which to build their parody: something prior to, say, 1950--and I was thinking they would want Victorian models. Um: I was really wrong (and I don't mind saying so, in fact am delighted, because then I get to see and learn workably, too).
They wanted full range of choice, and so I eased up on the timeline restrictions (!). Many of them chose work from the American moderns. Some chose from 18th century Brits. And some chose ancient work, such as the biblical psalms. It was delightfully diverse, and many were well done. So here is one (and I will continue to post from these and other assignments, over the next several weeks). I think the original poem it's drawn from will need no intro or naming :
So, this one is from Jim Bratone: (who offers this clarifying statement: "This parody is intended to mark some of the contrasts between versions of 'high modernism--purity, solemnity, formalism, universality, etc.--and some versions of 'postmodernism' which tend not to privilege these qualities."
OURS, POETICALLY
A poem should be palpable and brute
As a rabid malamute,
Dumb
As untried maxims and rules of thumb,
Grating as the incessant drone
Of an insurance salesman you can't escape from on the phone--
A poem should be mindless
As pop-ups online.
A poem should never mire in the slime
of perfect rhyme,
Leaving, as the rhyme disperses,
Sound by sound, room for sonic swerves,
But the rhyme returns and with it goes,
Line by line, any power to resist a doze--
A poem should never mire in the slime
Of perfect rhyme.
A poem should be sort of, you know, exact:
Not fact.
For all the history of grief,
An empty bottle and a bag of leaf.
For love,
A Dear John letter and pins stuck in an effigy--
A poem's 'should' may mean
but laughably.
---copyright of Jim Bratone---
chris at
10:11 AM
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Tim Morris sent me a link to a cool journal he found while reading around
(Tim, man, you're such a book-slut!--oh hey, Jessa, there goes your cool title poppin' up here, again...) --
anyway I thought I'd share it with y'all:
Welcome to DEAD MULE : brain fertilizer for the masses
chris at
3:23 AM
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Monday, April 26, 2004
My Fall Semester 2004 Writing Course: Electronic Poetry: Contemporary Discourse Communities & Experiments with Image+Text
For the next full-length semester (fall, 04), I'm teaching a senior-level course on electronic writing/poetry, and so am on the look-out for interesting stuff right now (actually I've had several emails from prospective students, who are already full of curiosity and their own insights on this branch of poetics and art). With that in mind, then, when I saw this post tonight, I was intrigued: the e - experimental poet and artist, mIEKAL aND, posted a link to Spidertangle dot net & Posted, over at suny buffalo list--this is visual poetry in archive (I believe) online & it rocks! Do have an eye-stroll through Posted. And if you are reading here because interested in my course, then please email me to let me know what you think, or if you have any questions.
chris at
7:23 AM
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Just in case you were wondering about commentators and parody of the aspirations of *avant* or *post-avant*...
--& a great answer from Ben, too!--
* * *
Also: But T, Hey: now I am getting really curious--maybe will send a poem: will those poem reviews you mention in the Saturday 4/24 post also be about things that are yummy?
chris at
4:02 AM
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Sunday, April 25, 2004
New Series at Texfiles: IMHumbleO
Once a week, starting today, I'm highlighting a note on what is, in my humble opinion, a best recent post to a blog of any kind. First up in the series:
DEBORAH PATILLO'S CHIMERA SONG BLOG-ROCKIN' POSTS : especially the post for today. Deborah has been a great reader of texfiles, and here are 4 ways (I don't know why but they all begin with A!) : astutely, accurately, appreciatively, and always in good humored fun and fine, share-able wit--all of which combine to make a readerly/writerly position I most admire. But I don't want to detract from how this is all about poetry writing, too: check out her dynamite poem, "Kiss, with Tongues."
Thanks, Deborah!
chris at
10:49 PM
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Added Update on Joan Houlihan's Roundtable: Ya know, I never thought of this crowd as meek, so I'm surprised at so few comments (but glad to see yours--thanks, Dale !) below from this usually lively, opinionated crowd...
& I want to clarify my post below: gendering as a factor in poetics is not the only consideration absent from the "dialogue" on "avant, post-avant, and beyond," or the roundtable, or the debate--whatever it is to be called--over at Joan Houlihan's Boston Comment. Ethnicity is another absent factor to be considered. I do not see the absence of these factors as a fault of the commentators so much as a problem of underlying assumptions in the questions. As moderator, Joan Houlihan is the one participant most able to address these issues, so that the participants could then respond. Yet she did not mention these factors of poetry today, at all.
chris at
7:30 PM
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**Update on the Joan Houlihan Roundtable & my Thursday email to her**:
Well, now that my *ACK!!* computer (scroll down for the furiocomputer eulogy) problem has settled somewhat, I can go ahead and post about what I have heard from--the, um... don't disturb the man behind the curtain!) Wizard-of-Oz-like--Joan Houlihan:
An email really so brief as to need no posting. Fair enough. Though I know from the proverbial grapevine--in talking with several other women poets--that Joan has been in touch with some of them, too, variously: on the questions of gendering (and the roundtable about what may be "avant" poetics), and on questions of the gender make-up of her roundtable.
Annie Finch let me know that Joan wrote the same thing to her about it, which is that for this roundtable she had invited 5 women to participate, and they all declined. I have heard somewhat indirectly and via backchannel from one of them, and the reasons for declining are that her work priorities are too demanding right now to attempt such a writing/commentator role as this roundtable would require. That is understandable and not so surprising. Indeed it would be a frequent problem is my guess, since most of us, no matter our gender orientations, can only give energy to poetry after spending our days and weeks working at other things in order to live. The so-called *day job* (also certainly a misnomer for most of us) is a draining thing not to be slipped up, and can leave a writer without wit one to then give to thinking and orchestrating something either poetic or about the poetic.
I do have one slight reservation about this matter of 5 people of one gender declining while what seems an over supply of another gender, apparently in over supply, or at the least, so readily available. I know that in the initial stages of planning for this last fall, at least two men of accomplishment declined, and probably more did so, as well. So I'm wondering why it seems that it was not difficult to find others to fill in yet not to find any more women who could or would. Just, as I say, a little tweak of a nagging question in my mind. Perhaps means nothing to all this, or perhaps it means that it was simpler for the men to commit the time and energy? Obviously this is slippery ground, and there is a range of possibilities. I'm just wondering. And even if plausible answers are supplied, I will still be likely to attribute this problem in some way to the problematics gender socialization processes, vis, prescribed gender roles in social structuring.
In her email Joan also invited me--and I presume the others she wrote to, as well--to devise a question about gendering and poetics. She says that she might use it if she puts together a next, similar roundtable. Well, I just might do that. But really, I think at this point there are many of us in poetry and poetics who could put together a productive question. In other words, the public point has been made, and so is not likely to fade away or to go unasked now. I am glad for that and for having a part in it.
In any case, I am thinking it over, as are several others, and I do want to say by way of attending to some threads of rhetorical good will, it was good of Joan Houlihan to ask.
chris at
5:34 AM
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ACK!!!!
My pc laptop crashed last night--absolute zero--I do not even want to think specifically about what and how much work was lost. I just want to cry and say ACK!!!
Now I'm on a new computer (a fortunate part of my job as director of the UTA Writing Center is that I can get a loaner computer quickly), but I can't find my way around very well on it and I keep losing things. ACK!!!
chris at
2:04 AM
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Friday, April 23, 2004
More Rock-on Work from Alan Sondheim ! **
Regular readers here know I am a great fan of Alan's innovative work, and now and then post here something new of his. This one is particularly telling, I think, for the many things it brings together most effortlessly (in the rhetorical sense), or another way to say this might be to consider it a fusion. Alan makes this one very clear as to its origins as a dictionary entry used by translators. Dictionary entries are often intriguing for the cultural baggage they carry or project, and a bi-lingual, older dictionary brings together several planes of rhetorical intersection simultaneously. So I thought this piece from Alan particularly resonant (as are many of his works). I first read it at the SUNY Buffalo Poetics list--a prose-poem text & j-peg illustration posted by Alan last night. His title for this fusion of historical definition, re-defiinition on several planes that enhance the cultural and aesthetic resonances, is Hack --and do check out his many other fascinating arts and fusions of mode at the above link to his website, as well as the double-starred info noted below with Alan's email address and his other website links.
Abaction, the stealing of a number of cattle at once.
here we are cooperating. this person has cooperated with me.
i have hacked the computer of this person. i have warned
this person i have hacked this person. Hack, a wound,
a cut or notch, a house which is let on hire, a tool
of instrument for breaking or chopping, a rack to hold
fodder for cattle, the driver of a hackney carriage, a common
drudge, a poor writer, a prostitute, a bawd, to cut or notch,
to emit dry coughs, to make common, to ride a horse
at ordinary speed. Hackery, the Indian bullock-cart.
Hack
* definitions from Bhargava's Standard Illustrated Dictionary of the English
Language, Anglo-Hindi Edition, 1965.
** Alan's email is sondheim@panix.com
His innovative, influential work and philosophical thought can be found on these websites :
Portal.Nikuko
Philosophy and Psychology of the Internet
Trace Projects and Museums
Thanks, Alan!
~~~~~~~Hack words & image copyright of Alan Sondheim~~~~~/c m~~~
chris at
9:45 PM
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On Joan Houlihan's *Boston Comment* Roundtable:
I see that the idea of a roundtable on ideas of "avant, post-avant" did not fizzle out completely after last fall's hoopla over Joan Houlihan's hasty and irresponsible commentary about what might constitute experimental writing and poetics. She has put together something of a debate: Roundtable.
Joe Amato on the Buffalo Poetics list today posted a notice about it, adding a parenthetical remark that it is an all male group of commentators "(all men, i know)" : which I take to mean not so much that he knows them all, but that this group is a lopsided configuration in terms of gender & power relations.
It's good--instructive, thus, valuable--to question that kind of situation, so I wrote to Joan to ask about it:
Joan,
Interesting to see your revival of this idea of a roundtable on such subject matter, especially after the same idea fizzled on Webdelsol's end last fall.
But I'm curious: why have no women, feminist, or transfeminist thinkers and writers been included (other than yourself, of course) in this forum?
Then again, feminist influences and even the current manifestations of feminist thought in transfeminism, seem not to matter much to the "avant, post-avant, and beyond," and in repetitious, recycled ways that might seem very familiar to anyone studying how gender and power politics worked in U. S., male-dominated political groups of the 1930s and then again in the 1960s-70s.
Certainly someone in the roundtable can speak to that?
Chris Murray
http://texfiles.blogspot.com
chris at
4:31 AM
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from Tom Clark, Cold Spring: A Diary (Skanky Possum, 2000) :
4th day
Two weeks later it's tomorrow.
So many long days.
Spring rain.
The old fucks
are still quacking
to their notebooks.
Someone is out there.
Spring rain -- smoke --
someone in here is living.
* * *
5th day
This isn't inferential.
Smoke leaps through the wall
in drops.
* * *
6th day
A haunted house
in the spring rain
fills up with smoke
from a boat passing
on the night river,
with the cabin door open
and the t.v. on.
* * *
7th day
Smoke oozing through
the wall.
Mind falling in the rain.
Spinning in smoke.
Standing broken
and helpless,
old fucks
with heads
against the wall,
in the spring rain.
* * *
For Ed Dorn
The passes over & through which I've
been driven by Edward
are bright & shining, in
my mind. The prairie
dog we visited, in my mind
now that you've died
(8.30 P.M. PST
12/10/99
is a man alone,
in a long coat,
on a dusty prairie,
walking on water
because the desert is now closed.
1.28 A.M.
12/11/99
chris at
3:07 AM
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Thursday, April 22, 2004
From Meritage Press--sent two days ago to my AOL email & if this seems a little bit of old news now, it's because I don't check that address but a few times per week, so just now got it.
That should not deter anyone from saying with all due excitement & happy fervor, YaY ! ! Finally !
So do get crankin' on those poems, folks :
THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY: A SUBMISSIONS CALL
Meritage Press is pleased to announce a Submissions Call for THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, co-edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young. Deadline: December 31, 2004.
Send submissions (cutnpasted in body of e-mail) to MeritagePress@aol.com.
Submissions are limited to no more than ten (10) hay(na)ku per poet
* * *
"Cameron was a counter. He vomited nineteen times to San Francisco. He liked to count everything."
--from The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan, as quoted June 10, 2003 at WinePoetics Blogspot (see link just below here).
The "hay(na)ku" is a Filipino and diasporic poetic form conceptualized by Eileen Tabios, as inspired by the character "Cameron" in Richard Brautigan's novel The Hawkline Monster and Jack Kerouac's thoughts on the "American haiku." More information on the hay(na)ku's background is available in the June 2003 posts at Tabios' former blog, Wine Poetics, as well as at the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Center.
As illustrated by Oliver de Paz's hay(na)ku below, the hay(na)ku is a tercet where the first line consists of one word, the second line of two words, and the third line of three words:
Dogs
tongues loll.
Emphatic earth sponges.
--Oliver de la Paz
For this anthology project, variations on the hay(na)ku are also acceptable, e.g. hay(na)ku sequences where the poem consists of more than one tercet; reverse hay(na)ku where the lines unfold as three words, two words and one word; and any other such variations as the poet may propose. Hay(na)ku in non-English languages are also acceptable, as long as they are submitted with English translations.
For examples of hay(na)ku, feel free to check out the Hay(na)ku Blog.
THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY will be published either in book form or as an e-book. If the latter, authors will receive contributors' copies. Expected release date will be in 2005.
BIOS OF EDITORS:
Jean Vengua lives in Santa Cruz California. She is co-editor with Elizabeth Pisares of Tulitos Press. Her poetry has been published in various print and online journals and anthologies, including Proliferation, We (print and audio CD), Babaylan, Returning a Borrowed Tongue, Moria, Sidereality, Interlope and X-Stream. As Jean N. V. Gier, her introduction "Variations on a Circle in Blue," appears in Eileen Tabios's book of short stories, Behind the Blue Canvas; other essays appear in Jouvert (N.C.S.U.), Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Cultural Criticism (U.C. Berkeley), and Geopolitics of the Visual: Essays on Philippine Film Cultures. "Flux & Abilidad: Notes on a Filipino American Poetics," is forthcoming in PinoyPoetics, edited by Nick Carbo. She maintains the blog "Okir."
Mark Young is a New Zealander who has lived in Australia for a number of years. He was published widely in both countries during the 1960s & the first half of the '70s, but then drifted away from writing for almost 25 years. A request to include some of his poems in the anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975 was the prompt that got him back writing again. In the last few years his poems have appeared in both print & electronic journals from Alba to xStream & many places in between. His books include New Zealand Art 1950-1967 (1968), Blues for New Lovers (1969) & The right foot of the giant (1999). He has two weblogs, Pelican Dreaming, which is his main one, & Series Magritte, which is an on-going series of poems inspired by the great Surrealist painter. There is also an author's page at the New Zealand electronic poetry centre.
chris at
7:38 PM
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Earth Day: don't forget to be in the green, Y'all ...
chris at
8:38 AM
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Times like this I really wish I could be in Chicago! Go to this reading if you are in the area, it promises to be great :
*Poetry Reading*
YaY !!
Li Bloom
Sunday April 25
7pm Chicago time,
at Myopic Books.
Note from the very generous spirited Li:
"If you're there say hello!
Or if you can't be there, still say hello!"--
Well, yes! Hello, Li! Best to you for a wonderful reading.
chris at
12:11 AM
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Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Check out *Transfeminism: Let Her Rip*--Yeah...
chris at
7:44 PM
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I just had an email from Clayton Eshleman regarding this good, developing news:
The latest issue of Jacket Magazine (# 25--which is still *under construction,* as it were; current issue is # 22, which this link opens on) contains a fine review of Clayton's Juniper Fuse (a page from the book's intro is here). Note this mini-review by The New Yorker last month (scroll down the linked page), and see Clayton's website for more details and updates: Clayton Eshleman). And Jacket 25 has published one of Clayton's poems--so do not miss this issue! :
The new, in-depth review of Clayton Eshleman's Juniper Fuse (Wesleyan UP, 2003) links it with several current threads of philosphy and poetry. The review, entitled "The Poet in the Caves," by Wilson Baldridge, includes a detailed photograph from the book (which has an abundance of photos--definitely of great interest right now), depicting the Lascaux caves that are the subject of the book's fusions in ways of knowing and being--and which provide the material for Eshleman's analysis and poetic exploration--what he has suggested might be a "new form for a long poem"--of these originary sites of human writing, metaphoric thinking, thus of art: the fullsome import of originary * cave walls.* (Not hard to hear echoes of an Irigaray in this, as well, I think.)
Baldrige writes: "While taking into account the positions of noted prehistorians and archeologists, Eshleman generously gives us the artist’s view, with his eye for decoding imagery: he shares his vision of the 'nearly invisible visible,' of the 'other side of nature”'(to quote Rilke after Eshleman) in order to show that 'Upper Paleolithic cave imagery is a language upon which all subsequent mythology has been built”'([section 5 of Juniper Fuse]; cf. “The Black Goddess” [210-214])."
& from Eshelman's poetry in Juniper Fuse: " ‘Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-exploding, magic-circumstantial or it will not be’/ The exploding and the fixed at 30,000 B. P., / the Aurignacian ‘hydrogen jukebox’ "(199).
& check out Clayton's poem, "Sheela-na-Gig."
Check this entire issue out as it develops: Go, Jacket!
chris at
11:01 AM
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from Sean Serrell's Flingdump Scattershot :
The Game
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Text:
"The hermetic closing of the thing." ["El cierre hermetico de la cosa."]--Jaime Saenz, Immanent Visitor: "De el pasar el cometa". Translated by Kent Johnson and Forrest Gander (U of Calif Press, 2002), pp. 23, 93.
chris at
9:23 AM
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As promised (yesterday!) something on Beckett's Bromige Issue (thanks, Tom!--it's come out as a poem riff, and still to be tinkered with)
Dear Bromige Issue:
Riveted having. Riveted having said how. The black & white. How language can never sweater a weather of all promised, of riveted, to con. To contrast? Things!pattern become ski-thing V necked with Oh can it be? Tie grayscale guesses: pink on button-down collar in epochal lawn chair of summer afternoons & trim beard a sign of chin given to poetry with the longish hair in a seventies moment tho it may have been sixties or even wind history tighter to who knows--eighties so nice to have such latitude? Where the hands fold as if waiting for godot (really the faint smile the smile classic mona lisa like) giving that away, a smile always a thing to be given away since one cannot ever see ones own smile but in narcissistic mimic mirror--or pond, minnows carrying it awry on minute silver backs, the staging the drama of it all too chaplin or greek but never as dear as the ones given away to others out of need for a sharing that WILL MATTER such as this foto even if the undergrowth curls innocuously as it seems & has curled its own seem here, too. Itself--is the strangest term, no? So like time, the image, all that telescoping lenticular or out. Legs of the chair even if the subjecty does not mind or is fully cognizant of that implic the green of it all about to overtake but not really how would that? This is pure picnic of structures or shoulder of summer north & cool wist of harbor or harboring of firefly nights given to collecting & canning jars, lids as doors to the Sartrean empty (a joke no doubt), diffused of light & more light (enjambment goes here for a differance) where now i must turn the foto from its side angle to try head-on again to head into its eye & knowing smile standing above the inevitable letterings, letterings i admit to trafficking in with so full a posse feathering as ink to blotter inside: The Difficulties: David Bromige Issue
* On The Difficulties: David Bromige Issue (edited by Tom Beckett), fantasia on the riveting cover foto.
~~~~~this poem is copyright of chris murray~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
7:18 AM
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Just got a new email from the Blogger tie-in with Google: Gmail.
So, when that UTA mail goes down again, which it does periodically, write to me at
chris.murray@gmail.google.com
Well, I mean, if you are inclined to write to me...
but then, if that is so, then please do so anytime--don't wait for a UTA email problem!
chris at
5:46 AM
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
from Pablo Neruda * :
XII
Yo quiero que despierte
la luz encarcelada:
flor mineral, acude
a mi conducta:
los parpados levantan la cortina
del largo tiempo espeso
hasta que aquellos ojos enterrados
vuelvan a ser y ver su transparencia.
(32)
* * *
[as translated by James Nolan:]
XII
I want the light
locked inside to awaken:
crystalline flower,
wake as I do:
eyelids raise the curtain
of endless earthen time
until deeply buried eyes
flash clear enough again
to see their own clarity.
(33)
*Las piedras del cielo (Stones of the Sky). Copper Canyon, 1987.
chris at
7:44 PM
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from M. Foucault * :
on Bataille & the eye: "The eye is mirror and lamp... . It is the figure of being in the act of transgressing its own limit. The eye, in a philosophy of reflection, derives from its capacity to observe the power of becoming always more interior to itself. Lying behind each eye that sees, there exists a more tenuous one... ." (45)
* Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: "Preface to Transgression," translated by Daniel Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.
chris at
7:06 PM
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"Carney" " ... fingertip leer..."
chris at
6:56 PM
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I just want to say my WoWs about this, from "some nonsense because my dad likes watching O'reilly":
...hardly time enough
to shape an interior
alphabet of your own,
much less inform him and his
of the requisite eccentrics
their pocket book
literacies presume to unabridge... "
For, oh my: how do we ever talk to fathers once they are known to be that figural thing?
It must be we do it like this--
and so have to (is there melting like a sound curving around the light--light is so straight edged--corners in all this?)
talk around them, the way similarly, sound--thank goodness for such an option--will outdo or complement, or even combine with light?
And i do mean the entire poem, it's just that for me--subjectively and after readings in theories of subjectivity, also somewhat objectively--(even if of course all such is always already arguable) the crux of this piece occurs right here in this excerpt, since it takes off into contradictory yet problematizing cultural and textual directions. Like physics being ontological and episteme, also a form of knowing. This is when, in this poem, readers can begin to realize that what is being discussed here is not limited to the perspective of only one being. So very significant to hear that, right now, whereas even five or ten years ago it would not have seemed materially important. We had a more solid I then. Nice that now it is not so monumental?
cm
Thanks, Steve Tills, for this meditation, giving more reason for meditation.
chris at
7:14 AM
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Monday, April 19, 2004
Falluja
by Jo Wilding, of Circus 2 Iraq :
US snipers in Falluja shoot unarmed man in the back, old woman with white
flag, children fleeing their homes and the ambulance that we were going
in to fetch a woman in premature labour.
Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway east to Falluja. A
stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that's not burnt,
stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha
and Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of people and a few
possessions, heading the other way... "--April 11th Report
* Thanks go to Martin Jay Walker of Poetry & Etc. for sharing this.*
chris at
6:48 PM
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The evening has escaped my watch and will soon morph to new dawn ...
Look tomorrow evening for a few words on Bromige and Tom Beckett's 1987 The Difficulties.
But if you're looking to hear about the Poetry_Heat Reading with Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen, then scroll down two entries here. Thanks.
chris at
10:34 AM
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Books Received:
--Hoa Nguyen, *Add Some Blue* (Backwoods Broadsides, 2004, Sylvester Pollet, Ed.)
--Tom Clark and Ann Waldman, *Zombie Dawn* (Skanky Possum, 2003)
--Sotere Torregian, * "I Must Go" (She Said) "Because My Pizza's Cold" * (Skanky Possum, 2002)
--Tom Clark, *Cold Spring* (Skanky Possum, 2000)
chris at
10:27 AM
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Report on the Poetry_Heat Reading, 17 April 04, with Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen at UTA:
An absolute pleasure it was to host Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen along with their beautiful children, Keaton who will be three this year (that is, Keaton-the-cat, which temporary tranformation he inhabited after he found face-painting at the Fort Worth arts festival yesterday with his parents and infant brother, and so this morning at the Coffee Haus on Center St. over the toast and grownups with espresso, was still in full cat mode: bewhiskered with raised brows and gracefully pouncing to explore everything and everyone in range of his gaze), and Waylon Hart (at present the most mellow of infants, small but bright eyed, a searching being, now just an eyelash away from having crested on the horizon of womb, newborn).
We are grateful to them for making the effort to trek over here to Arlington (a four hour drive: with small children, a trip no doubt given to a few complications) from their home in Austin, in order to spend some time here with our creative writing students during the presentation on Friday (given at the UTA Writing Center by Dale and Hoa, on small press publishing), and then to give an outstanding poetry reading last night at the University Center's Concho Room, along with two other poets, Arlington's David Bart (co-editor of the Dallas-area journal *Illya's Honey*), and Jacquelyn Taylor, whose work is some of the strongest and most innovative in my poetry course (Engl. 4330) this semester.
Jacquelyn read first, ending with a particular favorite of mine, her sestina that is woven around the story of two youngsters who inadvertently knock from their mother's knick-knack shelf a figurine of Jesus ("oh why did it have to be Jesus?--why not the clown?), which causes Jesus to break to pieces ("I watched Him descending..."), and causes the speaker no little imagined grief of conscience. The poem is spectacular, especially given that it is a first-time effort with this complex form, which work on Jacquelyn's part yields for us at least a seven-varietal Jesus--a promise that not even the Bible, with its own four square books, has (arguably) not culturally performed nor fullfilled. In this poem, though, Jesus is indeed amazing if not exactly reborn in the usual, expected sensibility...
David read next and gave a fine acquittal of his complexly, deeply imaged and layered poems. He closed his reading with a moving poem, a narrative about a girl of six who shows up at school with a black eye caused by what sounds at first an innocent accident, but which grows ominously resonant later when the teacher-persona, who is narrating the story, attends the funeral of the child's mother, who had died suddenly. The poem is as open-ended in terms of concrete conclusions to be drawn, as is any typical child abuse case where all evidence seems nebulous and/or derived from heresay. The poem may be most ominous exactly because it takes this horrific situation and makes poetry exactly mimetic in its taxing of such. Wonderfully striking during this reading was the persistent reminder that children are a strong presence in life--as evidenced by Keaton at play toward the back of the room, and Waylon periodically stirring while at Hoa's breast.
After settling Keaton with some cookies, Dale read. He'd selected pieces from some of the new work he has lately been posting to the Possum Pouch. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to hear these aloud: they overflow with lived experience of everyday family life woven with thoughts of the literary and philosophical, of lyrical love and longing, of caring interrelations between father-husband speaker and all members of family. I see these, which Dale speaks of as his daily "notes," as merging lyrical poetics with experience in the most meaningful of ways. We seldom see this done so well, given that much in the way of the prose poem deals more with the bright lights, as it were, of postmodernity. Yet here is what is both postmodernity in form and in substance, which is to say, the substance of commonplace, real life, made wondrously full of mystery once again by the poet's imagining--really a form of giving and sharing. Pay attention to this work: it will be well remembered and spoken of as representative of an innovative, especially viable, poetry for our time. Here is a sample from what was read--Dale is a gracious, powerfully attuned reader--aloud for us:
These days soon open us, the earth-bound babe preparing for that head-down descent. Out the shaft into air and light. And there's the pressure to make more money. Be a good parent in a sadistic culture craving a flesh-flayed Christ action hero of the American Death Cult. And the earth closes up for good somewhere. The tomb's shut tight. Seek an exit by the blast of trumpeting angels. A polytheism of things, like this buzzing plastic toy my son fondles so lightly in bath water. Death is a germ we carry, loaded into the cells at birth. Note to self: cf. Bergson on mind and matter. How the purple octopus takes me by its fat tentacles to a year ago when K moved quite differently, with less physical authority, in the water or on dry land. The goofy smiling octopus spits water from its mouth. We're delighted. We seek delight.--Dale Smith, "Black Stone 3"
Oh--that the "day" can "open" not itself so much, but "us": yes--in terms of having a reading life, do not be satisfied with only this excerpt as example. Instead, do "Seek delight" : There is an abundance of such exquisite wovenness of life with perceptive and penetrating thought about what it means to be in the world right now--this world right now--via Dale's inviting, innovative approach to the poetic of the everyday (Dale mentioned he has been reading Walter Benjamin lately: I cannot wait to see what might result from that conjunction--Benjamin being one of my all time favorite thinkers & writers), really a form of not so much 'writing about life' as it is *writing_for_life* : go to the link several lines above, to the Possum Pouch and read more.
So now it came Hoa's turn, which order of reading they had chosen together. As anyone who has had the fortunate experience of getting to know Hoa will surely witness, she has a powerfully quiet voice-- really, more a form of aural presence, an effect that is wholly supported and sustained by her embodiment within a given space. Quite riveting. I think she is mostly unaware of this, so I do not want to dwell to long on it, only to note that it is there and rounds out the rhetorical presence and effect of her reading. In conversational talking during their stay here (conversations I was so happy to have!), Hoa and Dale had mentioned some of the poetic influences they admire, which they refer to at times by the resonant term, "magus." I will venture to say that neither one of them lacks that same quality of presence--a very persuasive thing, and a pleasure to behold indeed. So that is the term that comes to mind right now as I recall Hoa beginning and revving into her reading. Right from the start, the audience was lost--in the best of ways, to, by, and through, the poetry in combination with this significant rhetorical presence. Hushed yet immensely powerful. I say, in this regard, do not ever miss the opportunity to hear Dale and Hoa read if you have the chance... .
Hoa began with poems from *Your Ancient See Through* (subpress collective, 2002), first, with "Baked Alaska"--a poem that, she commented by way of introduction, reflects on how we take land culturally, materially, to name and consume it--in much the same way we blithely desire, create recipes for, concoct and consume such things as the famed dessert by the above same name :
It is possible You can
take whole parts of land chunk
of ice cream (pink) ice cream
mysterious meringue
Stuff it in a hot box hot How
is the trick of it baking
igloos with kin inside
They are they not real ice
cream white and pink
It's complicated
--Hoa Nguyen, *Your Ancient See Through*
To what degree, this poem asks, are we willing and/or able to stop/ or not, our displacing of the real onto the conveniently imaginary? Well... indeed, it is "complicated" in and beyond us, historically and materially, even when awareness is acute.
The latest of Hoa's work is contained in the recent and lovely broadside, Add Some Blue (Backwoods Broadsides Chaplet Series, 2004; Sylvester Pollet, Ed.). We had a bit of conversation about these, in which the question of the place of narrative in contemporary poetry arose. I have some ambivalence about it, I admitted. Hoa has had some, too. But finding a place for it again in the work is an enlightening part of the work and process of writing, as is demonstrated by how it enters ever-so-lightly yet with incisive impact in these new poems. Here is an excerpt from one, "They Sell You What Disappears" :
They sell you what disappears it's a vague "they"
maybe a capital T who are they and mostly
poorly paid in China...
What disappears is vague I can't trade for much
I can cook teach you cooking ferment
bread or poetry I can sell my plasma
... We are guilty
bringing in sacks of food bought on credit
--Hoa Nguyen, Add Some Blue
Here are echoes, say, of Adrienne Rich, for one, in the allusion to "bread and poetry," and here are streamlined narrative fusions. Furthermore, here is the story, and a loaded, potentially devastating one, at that: The last thing left to quantify is our plasma (already fast becoming a premium international commodity, no?--if you have doubts, look it up on the stock exchange page of your comfortable, complacent, everyday newspaper: what does a vat of human blood sell for these days, anyway?)--if the trend continues, it may be that soon we will have no plasma-credit left. The poem is here more than realistic, so cannot be passed off as a Cassandra-like impossible artifact of seem or mythic entanglings. This is a story that is real.
Keaton, however, has the last word: he provided sound effects with a constant babble of music and word--lovely, lively, & unusual for a poetry reading. He was very active while Hoa read, playing about her feet and around her presence throughout. Hoa and Dale explained in conversation with me the evening before the reading what their parenting approach entails: total physical commitment: the children stay in bodily proximity to both the parents, all the time (or as much as possible). I was happy to see that it includes poetry readings, having gone through raising my own three by similar means, including bringing them to many poetry readings: Bernstein, Howard, Yevtushenko, Ashbery. They listened and colored things--in more ways than one.
Many books were sold and signed after the reading, always a welcome way to end a reading. And to our great pleasure once again, several of us found our way with Dale and Hoa to a fine dinner at an excellent pasta restaurant, Birra Poretti's, including a nice bottle of Pinot Noir. I am so pleased: I truly cannot think of a more enjoyable evening ever than this one had in Arlington over poetry. Bravo, with hugs & kisses to you all, Hoa and Dale!
chris at
5:14 AM
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I'm going for a walk right now, which takes me about an hour, but when I return, 2 important things I want to blog:
1. a Report on the terrific Poetry_Heat reading with Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen
2. & as promised, a few words on the Bromige issue of Tom Beckett's The Difficulties
chris at
5:08 AM
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Sunday, April 18, 2004
My newest (cm) :
Cloud Cooling Sun on Skin
--for DTM--
Arthur [Rimbaud] picks up its heart...
--Chus Pato, * m-Tala*--translated by Erin Moure
cloud & the ways so numerous sun
brush indelible love an emmanuel
on ear.
or to eye: observe the roller coaster across the free
way drive itself from love to inane
scream
joy as a way of
love, height a jail driving the clouds on.
become steel runner flash--
love
like that.
loud as love proverbial
tornado roar, that loud:
loud with load
picking up speed
exponentially
where yes is two fire engine
red vehicles turning
to dust right before italicized
aqueous represents clear eyes
on the meta page love
materialize love as of balls
of fleece, creme
of color soaking
the seat
& covered
by droplets of undyed
pistachio sized
wine comes one drop
wine two drop
on the love
driver's
thigh
cm 18 April 04
~~~~~~~~~~copyright of chris murray~~~~~ O~O\ ~~~~~~~~~~
chris at
9:00 PM
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Saturday, April 17, 2004
Received:
The Difficulties: David Bromige Issue. V.3, N.1 Tom Beckett, Editor (on initial glance this issue is facinating!--I can't wait till later this evening, after our Poetry_Heat reading with Dale and Hoa, to read through it more closely--thanks, Tom!) [Vicerally Press, 1987] . Here is the list of contributors discussing Bromige in conjunction with the sizeable section by David Bromige: Michael Davidson, Ron Silliman, Tom Sharp, Charles Bernstein, Rae Armantrout, Bruce Andrews, A.L. Nielsen, Stephen Ratcliffe, Bill Vartnaw, Stephen Tills, Carl Jensen, Michael Anderson, Robert Grenier, Barbara Weber.
chris at
8:20 PM
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Thursday, April 15, 2004
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Announcing: 2 Events
Poetry_Heat Series
University of Texas, Arlington
1. a presentation on small press publishing
Dale Smith & Hoa Nguyen of Skanky Possum Press and Journal
2:30 p.m., Friday, April 16
at the UTA Writing Center
Central Library 4th Floor
* * *
2. An Evening of Poetry
* Dale Smith & Hoa Nguyen *
with Arlington poet, David Bart
and UTA student poet, Jacquelyn Taylor
7 p.m., Saturday, 17 April
University Center, Concho Room, 2nd Floor
Poetry_Heat series is sponsored by the UTA Writing Center,
Chris Murray, Director
Kristina Graham, Administrative Assistant
We hope to see you there!
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chris at
1:28 AM
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Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Terrific :
Just heard from my good friend Kent Johnson: all the letters to the journal, The Believer, regarding the controversial article about authorship and personae (ie., Yasusada)
are now posted here, at Typo 3 :
Kent: You Rock !
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