The fabulous Adam Atkinson (co-editor of Open Thread called me last night to inform of my Pushcart nomination! A pretty nice honor. Here's the ridiculous and uncharacteristically funny poem that's been nominated, which appeared last year in Open Thread Regional Review, vol.1.
Oh Bless Thy Fine-Feathered Healer
If faith is a choice, I’ll take the chicken.
Or, I’ll take the chicken on faith,
with extra faith and a side of fries.
I’d like my miracles to-go;
& my Disneyland wide-screen.
Let me bathe in gasoline.
Let me volunteer for war.
I’m talking about being hog-tied to the tracks
at high noon slathered in SPF zero.
Dead serious. Dead funny. Dead on arrival.
Dark times make for darker laughs.
Darker skin makes for airport security.
Tattoos make for airport security.
More than 8 fluid ounces makes for airport security.
Airport security makes for airport security.
I want chickens so free-range
that they’ve evolved into lizards.
Faith isn’t a choice
it’s primal, it’s the club of fire in the cave,
it’s the club the hot new club so exclusive you’re fucked
for not believing in the dance everyone’s doing,
not in a good way,
not in the way you’d like to be fucked but
FUCKED! like tornadoes
like lost keys in a foreign country,
like no passport, like climate change,
like totally mythically. Like Zeus himself might come
to fuck you with a lightning bolt,
while all the gods have a good laugh
then eat your charred ass for brunch.
Like the bible’s authors didn’t think you’d take
the first draft so goddamned seriously.
Like love is a whim. Like hate is an itch.
Like I’m going to believe this chicken is chicken
because the chicken in my soul tells me so.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
a poetfriend
My dear friend, Matthew Siegel, has a new website. I met Matt about three and a half years ago, at the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, which I would highly recommend to any undergraduate who is serious about writing. Matt's poems have always been instructive to me, as a poet who often writes about pain. I love his sense of humor, the simple intimacy of his voice. There is some unwavering clarity to many of his poems, even when expressing that which is most uncertain, most difficult. Here is one such poem:
Blood Work
The white sky is a gauze pad pressed
over my vein as the needle slips out.
The woman who draws from me smiles, she always
remembers me, no matter how skinny I might get.
No matter how dark the circles under my eyes become,
she remembers me and how easy my veins are
so visible, so thick that she doesn’t even have to tie my arm,
but she does, and takes the smaller one
the bigger one too easy. I don’t tell her
the best to take my blood was a different woman
who used to take blood from animals,
part the fur, find their blue tap and drain.
She lets me play with the test tubes of my blood
can you feel how warm they are? That’s how warm you are inside
and I nod, think about condoms, tissues,
all the things that contain us but cannot.
Blood Work
The white sky is a gauze pad pressed
over my vein as the needle slips out.
The woman who draws from me smiles, she always
remembers me, no matter how skinny I might get.
No matter how dark the circles under my eyes become,
she remembers me and how easy my veins are
so visible, so thick that she doesn’t even have to tie my arm,
but she does, and takes the smaller one
the bigger one too easy. I don’t tell her
the best to take my blood was a different woman
who used to take blood from animals,
part the fur, find their blue tap and drain.
She lets me play with the test tubes of my blood
can you feel how warm they are? That’s how warm you are inside
and I nod, think about condoms, tissues,
all the things that contain us but cannot.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Uncreate / Removement
A poem from my short series "Self-Portrait with Husk" is now up at 42opus.
I've been thinking a lot about over-exposure, image management, privacy, secrets, the reasons we lie. The difference in care between honesty & full disclosure. The notion of "values," the socially-constructed importance ascribed to having "values" that fit with the moral standard of the maladjusted mass. The superficiality of certainty and the things people do in the name of their belief system. I've been thinking about the idea of uncreation that my friend Anna talks about, in reference to old ideas & modes of being - my personal term for this might be removement.
Getting back into african dance.
Watching this movie again ASAP.
I've been thinking a lot about over-exposure, image management, privacy, secrets, the reasons we lie. The difference in care between honesty & full disclosure. The notion of "values," the socially-constructed importance ascribed to having "values" that fit with the moral standard of the maladjusted mass. The superficiality of certainty and the things people do in the name of their belief system. I've been thinking about the idea of uncreation that my friend Anna talks about, in reference to old ideas & modes of being - my personal term for this might be removement.
Getting back into african dance.
Watching this movie again ASAP.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Hungry Sphinx Reading Series
Next week I'll be featured at the Hungry Sphinx Reading series alongside the poet Jerome Crooks. I've never been to the series, but it's run by Carlow University undergraduates & I've been informed the cafe's quite cozy.
Tuesday, November 17th
8 pm - 10 pm
Open Mic follows feature
(Bean, if you're reading this, WINKWINK)
No cover / one drink minimum
Sphinx Cafe
401 Atwood St. (corner of Bates & Atwood)
412-621-1153
In other news, for the past two weeks I have been reading a few John Ashbery poems every morning while eating breakfast, pre-coffee. The effect is delightful.
Tuesday, November 17th
8 pm - 10 pm
Open Mic follows feature
(Bean, if you're reading this, WINKWINK)
No cover / one drink minimum
Sphinx Cafe
401 Atwood St. (corner of Bates & Atwood)
412-621-1153
In other news, for the past two weeks I have been reading a few John Ashbery poems every morning while eating breakfast, pre-coffee. The effect is delightful.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
tiny planets
My friend Kimberlyannjosephine Southwick, the editor-in-chief of Gigantic Sequins has asked me to be on staff as a poetry reader. Dear reader, do submit your work.
Late afternoon sun shines through something, throws tiny planets of light against the door frame. I choose not to know what the light catches.
Exactly how this afternoon feels:
Late afternoon sun shines through something, throws tiny planets of light against the door frame. I choose not to know what the light catches.
Exactly how this afternoon feels:
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
What did we learn?
Terrance Hayes gave me his favorite Lynda Hull poem yesterday (and later, lent me a collection). He was surprised that I had not been reading her work when I wrote some of the recent poems we were discussing - some of the movements, he said, are similar. I see now, how in "How It Works" I made similar syntactical choices, perhaps reached towards the same type of lyricism. But her poem is so lush (heady, sensual, some sort of richness that overwhelms) its movements something close to perfection. It's not often that a poem strikes me into a type of (weirdly erotic) burning silence (the best of what poetry can do?), but this was one of those times.
Black Mare
It snakes behind me, this invisible chain gang--
the aliases, your many faces peopling
that vast hotel, the past. What did we learn?
Every twenty minutes the elevated train,
the world shuddering beyond
the pane. It was never warm enough in winter.
The walls peeled, the color of corsages
Ruined in the air. Sweeping the floor,
my black wig on the chair. I never meant
to leave you in that hotel where the voices
of patrons long gone seemed to echo in the halls,
a scent of spoiled orchids. But this was never
an elegant hotel. The iron fretwork of the El
held each room in a deep corrosive bloom.
This was the bankrupt's last chance, the place
the gambler waits to learn his black mare's
leg snapped as she hurtled toward the finish line.
* * *
How did we live? Your face over my shoulder
was the shade of mahogany in the speckled
mirror bolted to the wall. It was never warm.
You arrived through a forest of needles,
The white mist of morphine, names for sleep
that never came. My black wig unfurled
across the battered chair. Your arms circled me
when I stood by the window. Downstairs
the clerk who read our palms broke the seal
on another deck of cards. She said you're my fate,
my sweet annihilating angel, every naked hotel room
I've ever checked out of. There's nothing
left of that, but even now when night pulls up
like a limousine, sea-blue, and I'm climbing the stairs,
keys in hand, I'll reach the landing and
you're there--the one lesson I never get right.
Trains hurtled by, extinguished somewhere
past the bend of midnight. The shuddering world.
Your arms around my waist. I never meant to leave.
* * *
Of all that, there's nothing left but a grid
of shadows the El tracks throw over the street,
the empty lot. Gone, the blistered sills,
voices that riled across each wall. Gone,
the naked bulb swinging from the ceiling,
that chicanery of light that made your face
a brief eclipse over mine. How did we live?
The mare broke down. I was your fate, that
yellow train, the plot of sleet, through dust
crusted on the pane. It wasn't warm enough.
What did we learn? All I have left of you
is this burnt place on my arm. So, I won't
forget you even when I'm nothing but
small change in the desk clerk's palm, nothing
but the pawn ticket crumpled in your pocket,
the one you'll never redeem. Whatever I meant
to say loses itself in the bend of winter
toward extinctions, this passion of shadows falling
like black orchids through the air. I never meant
to leave you there by the pane, that
terminal hotel, the world shuddering with trains.
Black Mare
It snakes behind me, this invisible chain gang--
the aliases, your many faces peopling
that vast hotel, the past. What did we learn?
Every twenty minutes the elevated train,
the world shuddering beyond
the pane. It was never warm enough in winter.
The walls peeled, the color of corsages
Ruined in the air. Sweeping the floor,
my black wig on the chair. I never meant
to leave you in that hotel where the voices
of patrons long gone seemed to echo in the halls,
a scent of spoiled orchids. But this was never
an elegant hotel. The iron fretwork of the El
held each room in a deep corrosive bloom.
This was the bankrupt's last chance, the place
the gambler waits to learn his black mare's
leg snapped as she hurtled toward the finish line.
* * *
How did we live? Your face over my shoulder
was the shade of mahogany in the speckled
mirror bolted to the wall. It was never warm.
You arrived through a forest of needles,
The white mist of morphine, names for sleep
that never came. My black wig unfurled
across the battered chair. Your arms circled me
when I stood by the window. Downstairs
the clerk who read our palms broke the seal
on another deck of cards. She said you're my fate,
my sweet annihilating angel, every naked hotel room
I've ever checked out of. There's nothing
left of that, but even now when night pulls up
like a limousine, sea-blue, and I'm climbing the stairs,
keys in hand, I'll reach the landing and
you're there--the one lesson I never get right.
Trains hurtled by, extinguished somewhere
past the bend of midnight. The shuddering world.
Your arms around my waist. I never meant to leave.
* * *
Of all that, there's nothing left but a grid
of shadows the El tracks throw over the street,
the empty lot. Gone, the blistered sills,
voices that riled across each wall. Gone,
the naked bulb swinging from the ceiling,
that chicanery of light that made your face
a brief eclipse over mine. How did we live?
The mare broke down. I was your fate, that
yellow train, the plot of sleet, through dust
crusted on the pane. It wasn't warm enough.
What did we learn? All I have left of you
is this burnt place on my arm. So, I won't
forget you even when I'm nothing but
small change in the desk clerk's palm, nothing
but the pawn ticket crumpled in your pocket,
the one you'll never redeem. Whatever I meant
to say loses itself in the bend of winter
toward extinctions, this passion of shadows falling
like black orchids through the air. I never meant
to leave you there by the pane, that
terminal hotel, the world shuddering with trains.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Whose woods these are I think I know
Today I am thinking of lovers & love & of all the power we ascribe to a notion we understand so little of. What does it mean even, to understand an emotion? Why do so many people want to "understand" art, mumbling, "I don't get it," when encountering contradiction? Isn't love so much like art? Does not the artist (by which I mean poet, painter, sculptor, dancer, etc) pour love and rage and confusion into their work, isn't all of it collage? How could we assume to understand the source, and then, again, what is it about understanding that's so valued in our culture?
One of my favorite poems has always been Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." When I was a child, my father recited the poem from memory so many times to me, at the most unlikely moments, that it has been beautifully burned into my mind. Here it it is:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The uncertainty in this poem is what's set into me, like a barb on some wild plant. "Whose woods these are I think I know," says the speaker, not asserting "I know the owner of these woods," but rather, opening with questioning, sleepy syntax, he says, "I think I know." And after the thinking, the deeper falling into assumption & observation. But even the observation comes with a kind of veil, no specific tree or pattern of snow or path is named. Only sound is truly specific - "the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake." Sound here is what seduces (and, arguably, always seduces in a Frost poem) for the reality is hard - the frozen lake, the vague dark woods, the isolation "without a farmhouse near" - this is no place to rest, and yet the speaker rests. Is it not so with art? With love? How do we (and why do we want to) understand such an impulse - to stop in an isolated place, to attempt actions we know are dangerous, to gaze at a car crash, to express love over and over to those that have already or could hurt us, to pour ourselves over a piece of art that is inexplicable, that offers no answers or trap doors to the inside?
What is it, in some of us, that desires risk?
One of my favorite poems has always been Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." When I was a child, my father recited the poem from memory so many times to me, at the most unlikely moments, that it has been beautifully burned into my mind. Here it it is:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The uncertainty in this poem is what's set into me, like a barb on some wild plant. "Whose woods these are I think I know," says the speaker, not asserting "I know the owner of these woods," but rather, opening with questioning, sleepy syntax, he says, "I think I know." And after the thinking, the deeper falling into assumption & observation. But even the observation comes with a kind of veil, no specific tree or pattern of snow or path is named. Only sound is truly specific - "the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake." Sound here is what seduces (and, arguably, always seduces in a Frost poem) for the reality is hard - the frozen lake, the vague dark woods, the isolation "without a farmhouse near" - this is no place to rest, and yet the speaker rests. Is it not so with art? With love? How do we (and why do we want to) understand such an impulse - to stop in an isolated place, to attempt actions we know are dangerous, to gaze at a car crash, to express love over and over to those that have already or could hurt us, to pour ourselves over a piece of art that is inexplicable, that offers no answers or trap doors to the inside?
What is it, in some of us, that desires risk?
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
the city is on my side
Is mercury in retrograde? In the past two weeks, both the coffeemaker and the car have died, smacking me with the realization of exactly how dependent I've been upon Things. As a result, each morning I have been walking down Edgewood Avenue to a tiny store, buying a cup of coffee and two plums for seventy-five cents, enjoying how bright the leaves become as they die. I'm also becoming re-acquainted with the public bus, my high school sweetheart. Yesterday I had a forty-five minute bus ride misadventure that took me into parts of Pittsburgh I've never seen. I read Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons & noticed that no one else on the bus was reading, although one lost kindred spirit was drinking from a paper bag bottle. He was lost in a different way than I; he didn't know where he was coming from.
A week on varying doses of new medication has me watching time move in a different way, anticipating, thinking back, sitting still. I have been staying up until 4 a.m.,reading Felisberto Hernandez, talking to friends in California, thinking how incredible it is that six people I deeply love were born in the same month, some on the same day.
I'm coming to enjoy living in Wilkinsburg in a different way - next month it will be a year since I've moved here. I love the urban farm a few blocks up, the curving abandoned apartment building where I can't help but envision a production of Kurt Weil's Street Scene. I love this room, its clutter, the books, the monsters, the cat, the dust, the ink, the plants, the revisions floating around as if they moved of their own accord...
A week on varying doses of new medication has me watching time move in a different way, anticipating, thinking back, sitting still. I have been staying up until 4 a.m.,reading Felisberto Hernandez, talking to friends in California, thinking how incredible it is that six people I deeply love were born in the same month, some on the same day.
I'm coming to enjoy living in Wilkinsburg in a different way - next month it will be a year since I've moved here. I love the urban farm a few blocks up, the curving abandoned apartment building where I can't help but envision a production of Kurt Weil's Street Scene. I love this room, its clutter, the books, the monsters, the cat, the dust, the ink, the plants, the revisions floating around as if they moved of their own accord...
Sunday, September 13, 2009
RIP Jim Carroll 1950 - 2009
My first time alone in New York City, I was 17 & had just graduated from a high school. The last year had proved to be traumatic & I'd spent much of the spring skipping school, wandering around Pittsburgh & writing poems. My parents thought I was staying with friend on Long Island, but I'd made other arrangements to suit the wildfire in my head. One afternoon I wandered into a bookstore on St. Marks & picked up "Living at the Movies," by Jim Carroll. I'd never heard of Carroll before, but the title "Living at the Movies" had a similar tone to my mentor Jim Daniels' book "Places/Everyone." Then of course, on the cover of the book, this striking black & white portrait of a man whose eyes seemed to have the wildfire I kept in my head. I took the book to a park, where a love affair lasted all afternoon, and bloomed in my heart at the oddest moments, for years to come.
Fragment: Little N.Y. Ode
I sleep on a tar roof
scream into my songs,
into lazy floods of stars...
a white powder paddles through blood and heart
and
the sounds return
pure and easy...
the city is on my side.
Fragment: Little N.Y. Ode
I sleep on a tar roof
scream into my songs,
into lazy floods of stars...
a white powder paddles through blood and heart
and
the sounds return
pure and easy...
the city is on my side.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
I bring the sea in
From 'The Journal of Albion Moonlight' by Kenneth Patchen
I work in the shadow. I stab out and many words fail to land on the paper. I bang away at the stone. Nothing but the essential must go into writing - but everything is essential. I take you into my confidence. I told you that I hated novels. This is only party true, for I also love novels. I love even the cheapest, most debased novels. You make a mistake in thinking that I demand purity in everything. Don't forget that veterinaries have their place in the world. And pimps too. Even people who send schoolboys up in the bombing planes. There is a spot for everybody and everything. But this was nothing of my doing. Why should I exhaust myself shouting at a wooden Indian? What am I? a newspaper reporter? Why make a record of something that nobody can use? It is clearly my duty to come just at the right time, saying exactly the right thing. You have read many books. This book is reading you.
I exaggerate nothing. I am not a dealer in distortions. This is precisely the way I found the world. Imaginative people end by becoming tongue-tied. They talk above things. I operate from the inside. My feet never leave the ground. It is not my business that now and then the ground sinks away. I am heavy with the stars in my cap. I bring the sea in. I do no research whatever. Every problem to me is a problem of living. I make no attempt to translate. My speech is as much a part of my body as my arms and legs are. What have I to do with the cult of hallucination? Derangement is for the too-sane - everything under heaven cries to be arranged; I demand order and precision in what I do. The supreme cultivation of chaos has already been done...
I work in the shadow. I stab out and many words fail to land on the paper. I bang away at the stone. Nothing but the essential must go into writing - but everything is essential. I take you into my confidence. I told you that I hated novels. This is only party true, for I also love novels. I love even the cheapest, most debased novels. You make a mistake in thinking that I demand purity in everything. Don't forget that veterinaries have their place in the world. And pimps too. Even people who send schoolboys up in the bombing planes. There is a spot for everybody and everything. But this was nothing of my doing. Why should I exhaust myself shouting at a wooden Indian? What am I? a newspaper reporter? Why make a record of something that nobody can use? It is clearly my duty to come just at the right time, saying exactly the right thing. You have read many books. This book is reading you.
I exaggerate nothing. I am not a dealer in distortions. This is precisely the way I found the world. Imaginative people end by becoming tongue-tied. They talk above things. I operate from the inside. My feet never leave the ground. It is not my business that now and then the ground sinks away. I am heavy with the stars in my cap. I bring the sea in. I do no research whatever. Every problem to me is a problem of living. I make no attempt to translate. My speech is as much a part of my body as my arms and legs are. What have I to do with the cult of hallucination? Derangement is for the too-sane - everything under heaven cries to be arranged; I demand order and precision in what I do. The supreme cultivation of chaos has already been done...
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Pittsburgh IsReads (the official site) Hurrah!
I just received a very nice letter from Renee Alberts at the The Sunday Poetry and Reading Series at the Carnegie Library in Oakleand, asking me to submit poetry for an anthology of past readers. Celebrate the Arts Sundays is always a varied collection of marvels - every Sunday is a different sort of performance or experience but always 2-3 pm and free. Did I say free? Oh, indeed.
I just received a very nice letter from Renee Alberts at the The Sunday Poetry and Reading Series at the Carnegie Library in Oakleand, asking me to submit poetry for an anthology of past readers. Celebrate the Arts Sundays is always a varied collection of marvels - every Sunday is a different sort of performance or experience but always 2-3 pm and free. Did I say free? Oh, indeed.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
nifty
a poem of mine is part of the Pittsburgh edition of an outdoors journal called IsReads!
Here's Quakes,Revolutions on the door of James Simon's studio, where the Gist Street Reading Series is held. I'm frittered with excitement/honor to have my poem appear there.
here's a general article about IsReads in Poets & Writers. Pittsburgh isn't up on the IsReads site yet, but there's a Pittsburgh-specific Facebook page. I'm very curious to see where the other poems are... I think there are about 30 poems in total now posted all over the city. What a delight.
in other news: I am quite freckly from being in North Carolina for all of last week. No longer do I Victorian ghostie be. At the start of our journey we stayed on an inspiring farm. Later, I found a large white tooth on the beach.. everyone thinks it's from a dog, but I am choosing to let it be a mystery tooth.
Here's Quakes,Revolutions on the door of James Simon's studio, where the Gist Street Reading Series is held. I'm frittered with excitement/honor to have my poem appear there.
here's a general article about IsReads in Poets & Writers. Pittsburgh isn't up on the IsReads site yet, but there's a Pittsburgh-specific Facebook page. I'm very curious to see where the other poems are... I think there are about 30 poems in total now posted all over the city. What a delight.
in other news: I am quite freckly from being in North Carolina for all of last week. No longer do I Victorian ghostie be. At the start of our journey we stayed on an inspiring farm. Later, I found a large white tooth on the beach.. everyone thinks it's from a dog, but I am choosing to let it be a mystery tooth.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
wound / drown
He lies first, says the skinned chin & swollen eye's from play-fighting. Look at me, she says, take your sunglasses off. When he does, he looks in the passenger side mirror, looks away, replaces the glasses. The eye is nearly swollen shut, she's seen, she blinks a thousand times for strength, focuses on traffic lights, away from his thinning frame. What are you afraid of, he asks, and she says, I'm afraid that you're using again, I'm afraid there's something about you that you won't touch. He turns to watch pedestrians outside the hospital with a numb quiet, then it's time for his appointment & he's gone. He lies second, says okay, here's the truth: it's from falling face first on a metal dog crate, I'm sorry I lied. A dog crate shaped like a fist, she thinks, a fist shaped like a lie shaped like a resentment shaped like a raft on which one floats away from God. He's sleepless in all cities, sleepless in himself. He finds a new friend to disappear inside. She closes her hand, cries into dusk on a folding chair amidst strangers. Somebody gives her a tissue crushed into the pocket of a purse. Brother, she thinks, I cannot help you. Go where you must go. Come back if you can.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
desire, desire, desire ...
Growing in Spirit - C.P. Cavafy
He who hopes to grow in spirit
will have to transcend obedience & respect.
He will hold to some laws
but he will mostly violate
both law and custom, and go beyond
the established, inadequate norm.
Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.
He will not be afraid of the destructive act:
half the house will have to come down.
This way he will grow virtuously into wisdom.
I've been reading a slim volume of Cavafy and read this poem about ten times this morning in the gray kitchen light. An important guide & teacher from college, Richard Hoffman, has a stunning memoir entitled Half The House, but I'd forgotten that the title was taken from Cavafy.
Here is Patrick Wolf at Heaven (a London club that had accrued terrifying meaning over the past few years, terrifying in Rilke's sense; a place my imagination returns to repeatedly). Patrick Wolf is my age, a month younger than me. I love his awkward magic. I like to imagine that we'd get along. I'm still baffled as to why someone hasn't proposed to him a full-scale rock musical - I can see him writing an incredible love story... The song is from his new album "The Bachelor," Go get it.
He who hopes to grow in spirit
will have to transcend obedience & respect.
He will hold to some laws
but he will mostly violate
both law and custom, and go beyond
the established, inadequate norm.
Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.
He will not be afraid of the destructive act:
half the house will have to come down.
This way he will grow virtuously into wisdom.
I've been reading a slim volume of Cavafy and read this poem about ten times this morning in the gray kitchen light. An important guide & teacher from college, Richard Hoffman, has a stunning memoir entitled Half The House, but I'd forgotten that the title was taken from Cavafy.
Here is Patrick Wolf at Heaven (a London club that had accrued terrifying meaning over the past few years, terrifying in Rilke's sense; a place my imagination returns to repeatedly). Patrick Wolf is my age, a month younger than me. I love his awkward magic. I like to imagine that we'd get along. I'm still baffled as to why someone hasn't proposed to him a full-scale rock musical - I can see him writing an incredible love story... The song is from his new album "The Bachelor," Go get it.
Monday, July 6, 2009
summer recommendations
Fiction: the first show I was involved with in college was called "The Street of Crocodiles." I ran the light board - it was one of those ancient slide boards, no easy buttons. It was like playing an organ - the play was so deeply magical that there was a light shift at least every two minutes. Years later I came across something else called "The Street of Crocodiles" - a film by The Brothers Quay, with which I became similarly entranced. Eventually I was to find The Street of Crocodiles in it's (almost) original form - a book by Bruno Schulz, a Polish writer murdered by the Nazis. His work drips with sensation, with strange birds & light & honey, with thick tensions of realities co-mingling. Here is the opening of "The Street of Crocodiles," from the first story entitled "August":
In July my Father went to take the waters and left me, with my mother and elder brother, a prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days. Dizzy with light, we dipped into that enormous book of holidays, it's pages blazing with sunshine and scented with the sweet melting pulp of golden pears.
On those luminous mornings Adela returned from the market, like Pomona emerging from the flames of day, spilling from her basket the colorful beauty of the sun - the shiny pink cherries full of juice under their transparent skins, the mysterious black morellos that smelled so much better than they tasted; apricots in whose golden pulp lay the core of long afternoons. And next to that pure poetry of fruit, she unloaded sides of meat with they keyboard of ribs swollen with energy and strength and seaweeds of vegetables like dead octopuses and squids - the raw material of meals with a yet undefined taste, the vegetative and terrestrial ingredients of dinner, exuding a wild & rustic smell.
Schulz has received some attention lately; There is an article about him in the recent fiction issue of The New Yorker. I have been reading "Sanatorium Under The Sign of The Hourglass" - another deeply strange & entrancing book. His murder, and the frenzy of WW II, alas, swallowed the manuscript his last novel - a book apparently called "The Messiah," which no one had ever read....
Poetry: In my recent workshop with Mark Doty, he arrived one day with a box full of books to give away. HUZZZZZAH! A feeding frenzy ensued (or, rather, my insane urge to gather free things kicked in). One of the books I went home with was "Shells" by Craig Arnold, who earlier this year went missing on a volcanic Japanese island. I had never read his work before, and as I read shells, I'm struck by the loss of such a poet. I'm only in the middle of the book, reading & re-reading his poem "Grace," for Jeff Buckley. It's deeply refreshing to read someone who (if pressured to label), I'd call a narrative poet - I go adrift sometimes in the sea of ...what? Poems I can't find a heart in - poems that are all machine & no blood. (Thank you, Mark.)
Music: for dancing - Lady Gaga; for driving - Regina Spektor's new album 'Far'; for walks at dusk - Flying Club Cup by Beirut; for Sundays - quiet Velvet Underground songs
To Eat: Yogurt with honey; cherries
Thursday, July 2, 2009
notes on an unfamiliar process
It’s unnatural for me to write prose. In college fiction classes, I was caught in crafting the line, unable to move plot ahead effectively; pieces written in non-fiction classes proved largely masturbatory. “Stick to poetry,” I was told. And why not? My poetry had received awards, approval, no important criticism that had not proved useful. For five years I have stuck to poetry, published, received more awards, more approval, more important, useful criticism. One morning a few months ago I sat down with a cup of coffee to revise a prose poem & realized, with no mild terror, that the story required more prose than a poem’s worth.
I stopped myself at 9 pages of non-fiction, uncertain whether the piece was anything more than a very long journal entry, and sent the work off to a friend who teaches and writes fiction. On Tuesday, we had coffee, and I came with a retrospectively ridiculous assortment of questions that now feel superficial. “What is this piece about?” he asked. “Well it’s about, you know,” I said, “the impact of urban spaces on our psychologies… um.. how forced proximity affects our presentation of self, puts us on performance so much of the time that we forget the character behind the mask.. um..” I faltered, as his look of incredulity told me that I was full of shit. “You’ll do very well in an MFA program with language like that,” he said (and he would know, having graduated from the University of Pittsburgh’s MFA some time ago). We got down to business, or rather, he proceeded to talk about the basics of narrative, and I commenced to scribble down what he said.
I went home with a head full of possibility. My friend had pointed out that I’d omitted nearly every piece of conflict that might have made the piece more than “a lovely meditation.” Fear of (and actual) violence, feelings of betrayal, uncertain commitments, arguments, contested spaces… the story I’d been trying to tell is full of these types of things, but I’d somehow managed to leave all of it out. The piece had felt so risky to write in the first place that I’d neglected to write out the actual risks of the undercurrent human drama in what I imagined was going to be a more general piece … but the undercurrent story, my friend argued, is what’s interesting.
(an aside: after being in Amherst, MA for a week, my cat is much relieved to spend every possible moment on my lap, drooling, with her head jammed into my armpit. Sometimes it’s so weird to be a pet owner. How do I love this territorial ball of fur & teeth who bites me unexpectedly when I’m trying to go to sleep & spends every morning sitting immovable next to my head & meowing at regular intervals? Oh, affection is strange. It’s a shame the old lady’s remarkably anti-social towards other animals. Still want to have a little cat named Mr. Fahrenheit someday.)
I suppose the thing I’ve begun to wonder is : how much information is necessary? I’m used to non-fiction works by Joan Didion, Denis Johnson, Albert Goldbarth and.. not much else. I’ve read a few addiction memoirs here & there (mostly terrible), and read Neruda’s memoirs a few years back. I don’t think I’m trying to write simply memoir though - what I love about Goldbarth’s book (owch, owch, cat claws owch) “Many Circles” is that he weaves so much information & so many influences into each essay. In my favorite essay “The Space,” Goldbarth writes space itself into the piece - he leaves room for the reader to connect things how they will, depending on their own associations & understandings. I’ve read that essay a dozen times or more & find something different each time. Goldbarth doesn’t leave himself out of the picture, but he doesn’t focus on himself as a protagonist in the way that a piece of fiction might; shards of Goldbarth's personal stories in 'The Space' are only important insofar that they provides solid human ground for the reader to relate to as an example for the types of distance Goldbarth's interested in. He cites Jung and Bly and anthropology and all sorts of other things for the reader to sink their teeth into, but it seems there's still something about the personal, the written "I" that remains important, cathartic....
(questions to be continued)
Non-fiction writers or readers : any book recommendations?
I stopped myself at 9 pages of non-fiction, uncertain whether the piece was anything more than a very long journal entry, and sent the work off to a friend who teaches and writes fiction. On Tuesday, we had coffee, and I came with a retrospectively ridiculous assortment of questions that now feel superficial. “What is this piece about?” he asked. “Well it’s about, you know,” I said, “the impact of urban spaces on our psychologies… um.. how forced proximity affects our presentation of self, puts us on performance so much of the time that we forget the character behind the mask.. um..” I faltered, as his look of incredulity told me that I was full of shit. “You’ll do very well in an MFA program with language like that,” he said (and he would know, having graduated from the University of Pittsburgh’s MFA some time ago). We got down to business, or rather, he proceeded to talk about the basics of narrative, and I commenced to scribble down what he said.
I went home with a head full of possibility. My friend had pointed out that I’d omitted nearly every piece of conflict that might have made the piece more than “a lovely meditation.” Fear of (and actual) violence, feelings of betrayal, uncertain commitments, arguments, contested spaces… the story I’d been trying to tell is full of these types of things, but I’d somehow managed to leave all of it out. The piece had felt so risky to write in the first place that I’d neglected to write out the actual risks of the undercurrent human drama in what I imagined was going to be a more general piece … but the undercurrent story, my friend argued, is what’s interesting.
(an aside: after being in Amherst, MA for a week, my cat is much relieved to spend every possible moment on my lap, drooling, with her head jammed into my armpit. Sometimes it’s so weird to be a pet owner. How do I love this territorial ball of fur & teeth who bites me unexpectedly when I’m trying to go to sleep & spends every morning sitting immovable next to my head & meowing at regular intervals? Oh, affection is strange. It’s a shame the old lady’s remarkably anti-social towards other animals. Still want to have a little cat named Mr. Fahrenheit someday.)
I suppose the thing I’ve begun to wonder is : how much information is necessary? I’m used to non-fiction works by Joan Didion, Denis Johnson, Albert Goldbarth and.. not much else. I’ve read a few addiction memoirs here & there (mostly terrible), and read Neruda’s memoirs a few years back. I don’t think I’m trying to write simply memoir though - what I love about Goldbarth’s book (owch, owch, cat claws owch) “Many Circles” is that he weaves so much information & so many influences into each essay. In my favorite essay “The Space,” Goldbarth writes space itself into the piece - he leaves room for the reader to connect things how they will, depending on their own associations & understandings. I’ve read that essay a dozen times or more & find something different each time. Goldbarth doesn’t leave himself out of the picture, but he doesn’t focus on himself as a protagonist in the way that a piece of fiction might; shards of Goldbarth's personal stories in 'The Space' are only important insofar that they provides solid human ground for the reader to relate to as an example for the types of distance Goldbarth's interested in. He cites Jung and Bly and anthropology and all sorts of other things for the reader to sink their teeth into, but it seems there's still something about the personal, the written "I" that remains important, cathartic....
(questions to be continued)
Non-fiction writers or readers : any book recommendations?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
A few selections left from Portrait of the Years !
A few selections from my photograph & poem project Portrait of the Years are still for sale! (with the exception of the ocean picture, which has been spoken for, and the hands/flower petals, which sold at the most recent Art All Night)
You can find the online version of these works here, here, here, and here. Or, just scroll through the journal itself, if that's how you roll.
Each physical work is 8 & 1/2'' x 11''. The gallery price was $80.00 each, and the midwife who bought the hands/flowers one gave me a generous $100, but I'm willing to barter...
Monday, June 29, 2009
Here's a poem by Jack Gilbert that chimes with my feelings about returning to Pittsburgh and "real life."
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
brief notes from amherst
- Finally, at Juniper. Left Pittsburgh at 5:30 a.m. last Sunday, drove through a rainy sunrise listening to Patrick Wolf's new album, "The Bachelor." My experience here thus far is proving immensely refreshing - provocative & productive. Today I walked into town & bought a small Cavafy & Gertrude Stein's "Tender Hooks." Amherst Books has a fantastic used section. Also bought, on instinct, "Inside the Blood Factory" by Diane Wakoski, a poet whom I've never heard of.
- Hello solitude, my sweet.
- I've been thinking a lot about Nan Goldin again, the poetry in her photography, the intersection of private acts & the catching movement of art. Particularly thinking about her photographs of couples & of those where her subjects are isolated & naked.
The obviously sensual or erotic is too easily gazed at as mere spectacle, body as artifact, alien. There's a subtlety to desire. When I wait through my initial responses (arousal, an experience of beauty) I find something uncomfortable or frightening...and, OH - ! Rilke, perhaps this is what you meant... ...
- Hello solitude, my sweet.
- I've been thinking a lot about Nan Goldin again, the poetry in her photography, the intersection of private acts & the catching movement of art. Particularly thinking about her photographs of couples & of those where her subjects are isolated & naked.
The obviously sensual or erotic is too easily gazed at as mere spectacle, body as artifact, alien. There's a subtlety to desire. When I wait through my initial responses (arousal, an experience of beauty) I find something uncomfortable or frightening...and, OH - ! Rilke, perhaps this is what you meant... ...
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
I've been accepted to the Juniper Summer Writing Institute!
Couldn't be more excited. Taking a little trip afterward to Boston to see dear Thomas F Johnston & tumble around the favorite haunts. Crossing my fingers that I'll be able to get into a workshop with Mark Doty, who has been one of my favorite poets since high school. Actually, I'm quite star-struck around him, having seen him at AWP & mumbled something incoherent about his book "My Alexandria."
update, 6/5: will have workshop with Doty. !!!
Couldn't be more excited. Taking a little trip afterward to Boston to see dear Thomas F Johnston & tumble around the favorite haunts. Crossing my fingers that I'll be able to get into a workshop with Mark Doty, who has been one of my favorite poets since high school. Actually, I'm quite star-struck around him, having seen him at AWP & mumbled something incoherent about his book "My Alexandria."
update, 6/5: will have workshop with Doty. !!!
Friday, April 3, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
loving: Patti Smith
last night my love gave me a book of patti smith's photographs. it's the first time anyone's ever given me a book of photographs ! it's a beautiful, beautiful book. i've been involved with patti smith & kevin shields' The Coral Sea too lately. her inflection can change light. this album should be required listening for anybody planning to get in front of a microphone to read poetry.
go, now, listen
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Murakami Madness
... meaning that mid-March, momentum maniacal, I embraced the multitudes that make Haruki Murakami, Murakami. Had been reading Murakami before then, but in March it's become a compulsion.
Now, since December, I've read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, After Dark, Kafka on the Shore, Dance Dance Dance, & am 3/4 of the way through Norwegian Wood. The last three have been read in quick succession. What is it about Murakami that makes his work entirely readable yet compelling? Perhaps it's that, as a poet, I notice that his lines themselves are not beautiful. Murakami's a storyteller & a philosopher, but he's not in love with sound. Unlike fiction writers such as Saramago or Faulkner, who use both the line & language to move their stories, Murakami doesn't depend on beauty, doesn't depend on the smaller scale - a real powerhouse of a plot-driven writer. And perhaps what makes him compelling is that those plots are sometimes so shockingly strange and twisted and dark that there's really no way of telling what is going to happen next. Murakami's not a writer of logical conclusion. Although I didn't love After Dark or Dance Dance Dance, there was also never a moment when I thought "Oh, of course X is going to happen next." Murakami's also one of those writers whose images creep into your dreams. Not always a good thing, but a testament to the fact that he's mined those places in the human psyche of irrational fear, nightmare, & whatever it is in us that desires the supernatural.
More Murakami
Monday, February 16, 2009
AWP report !
This fragmented report is brought to you in part by Ramen noodles, which is all I can afford to eat right now after spending 5 dizzying days in Chicago.
and so - - - here we go - - - - >
* a panel of poets writing memoir, in which the inimitable & heartbreaking Nick Flynn read from his forthcoming work "The Ticking is the Bomb," alongside Carolyn Forche reading from her forthcoming work, "The Horse on our Balcony." I wept openly.
* a panel entitled "Where Parallel Lines Meet: Discussing Relations Among Our Various Contemporary Poetries" with Richard Silberg, Mark Doty, Rusty Morrison, Charles Harper Webb, Matthew Zapruder and Nickole Brown. While I very much want to study with Mark Doty someday, Nickole Brown .. .. I don't know if I have words for her yet. A changing force. I'd never even heard of her before AWP and now I want to read everything she's ever written, though saying that doesn't say enough. I bought her book "Sister," blushed to the core while she signed it.
* bought Noelle Kocot's new book, Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books)
* was happy to see Adam Atkinson at the Open Thread/Weave Magazine table & pick up a copy of Open Thread's first issue. So glossy & delicious. Happy to be published with them.
* was stopped in my tracks / recognized twice - once by Jeremy Schmall & once by Lillian Bertram, talented internet poet friends whom I've never met in person. Guess all those digital self-portraits have a use. Jeremy gave me a copy of The Agriculture Reader & I became enamored with this publication on the train back to Pittsburgh
* realized that I love The Dog Whisperer & the National Geographic channel's nature programs, partially because they contain hilariously mortifying stock footage of dramatic reenactments.
* realized that I will need to visit Josh in Boys-Town when it is warm enough to flounce around in something ridiculous to go dancing at the gay bars.
* realized (again) that the best part of Henry Miller is always Anais Nin.
Happy to be home.
and so - - - here we go - - - - >
* a panel of poets writing memoir, in which the inimitable & heartbreaking Nick Flynn read from his forthcoming work "The Ticking is the Bomb," alongside Carolyn Forche reading from her forthcoming work, "The Horse on our Balcony." I wept openly.
* a panel entitled "Where Parallel Lines Meet: Discussing Relations Among Our Various Contemporary Poetries" with Richard Silberg, Mark Doty, Rusty Morrison, Charles Harper Webb, Matthew Zapruder and Nickole Brown. While I very much want to study with Mark Doty someday, Nickole Brown .. .. I don't know if I have words for her yet. A changing force. I'd never even heard of her before AWP and now I want to read everything she's ever written, though saying that doesn't say enough. I bought her book "Sister," blushed to the core while she signed it.
* bought Noelle Kocot's new book, Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books)
* was happy to see Adam Atkinson at the Open Thread/Weave Magazine table & pick up a copy of Open Thread's first issue. So glossy & delicious. Happy to be published with them.
* was stopped in my tracks / recognized twice - once by Jeremy Schmall & once by Lillian Bertram, talented internet poet friends whom I've never met in person. Guess all those digital self-portraits have a use. Jeremy gave me a copy of The Agriculture Reader & I became enamored with this publication on the train back to Pittsburgh
* realized that I love The Dog Whisperer & the National Geographic channel's nature programs, partially because they contain hilariously mortifying stock footage of dramatic reenactments.
* realized that I will need to visit Josh in Boys-Town when it is warm enough to flounce around in something ridiculous to go dancing at the gay bars.
* realized (again) that the best part of Henry Miller is always Anais Nin.
Happy to be home.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Six Degree Reading
"the Six Degree Reading hopes to embrace poets from several of Pittsburgh's disparate poetry micro-communities, and collapse those six degrees to zero, connecting those whose paths not have crossed..." - Renee Alberts, curator of the series
featuring: Michelle Stoner, Sophie Klahr, Jason Kirin, Jerome Crooks, Holly Coleman, Nikki Allen, and Renée Alberts
Saturday, February 7th,
7:oo pm, $5
Most Wanted Fine Art
5015 Penn Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15224
featuring: Michelle Stoner, Sophie Klahr, Jason Kirin, Jerome Crooks, Holly Coleman, Nikki Allen, and Renée Alberts
Saturday, February 7th,
7:oo pm, $5
Most Wanted Fine Art
5015 Penn Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15224
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
recommendations for winter
(note: I won't write "real" reviews here - I seem to be opposed to writing critical analyses.....I'm saving those for my next adventure in academia. I'd rather write impressions & encouragements towards art that I love. There's enough strong critical opinions out there in blog-land to choke a wildebeest. moving right along...)
poetry:
I've recently finished Allison Titus' chapbook, instructions from the narwhal. Titus keeps a syntax precise & unexpected, keeps her hand steady on the strange lens. Reading these poems, one has the sensation of peering into a miniature railroad set & being hit with the realization that it is you & your life depicted in the desolate landscape, & with small mechanical movement lights will go on in the tiny house to reveal interior movements so obscure you didn't realize could be captured. & yes, so familiar.
A poem of mine will appear in the Open Thread Regional Review, Vol. 1, sometime in January. A celebratory release event is sure to happen - details to follow. For more information on Open Thread, and how you can become involved, please direct your attention here.
fiction:
Re-read Jose Saramago's All the Names. This was one of the first Saramago books I'd encountered, after Blindness. These days, I refuse to be without Saramago's influence for too many months at a time. Why is it that even his tangents seem urgent? Perhaps it is because Saramago's investment in the narrative never ceases, the tangent is a part of the stream of consciousness is part of the necessity. Because the story would not be the same without it, because the tangent is not a sideways gesture for Saramago, is part of the whole; while not linear, is not disconnected. I love Saramago because he is at once the most innovative & the most traditional of storytellers. Very much looking forward to reading his newest work Death With Interruptions.
poetry:
I've recently finished Allison Titus' chapbook, instructions from the narwhal. Titus keeps a syntax precise & unexpected, keeps her hand steady on the strange lens. Reading these poems, one has the sensation of peering into a miniature railroad set & being hit with the realization that it is you & your life depicted in the desolate landscape, & with small mechanical movement lights will go on in the tiny house to reveal interior movements so obscure you didn't realize could be captured. & yes, so familiar.
A poem of mine will appear in the Open Thread Regional Review, Vol. 1, sometime in January. A celebratory release event is sure to happen - details to follow. For more information on Open Thread, and how you can become involved, please direct your attention here.
fiction:
Re-read Jose Saramago's All the Names. This was one of the first Saramago books I'd encountered, after Blindness. These days, I refuse to be without Saramago's influence for too many months at a time. Why is it that even his tangents seem urgent? Perhaps it is because Saramago's investment in the narrative never ceases, the tangent is a part of the stream of consciousness is part of the necessity. Because the story would not be the same without it, because the tangent is not a sideways gesture for Saramago, is part of the whole; while not linear, is not disconnected. I love Saramago because he is at once the most innovative & the most traditional of storytellers. Very much looking forward to reading his newest work Death With Interruptions.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
some summer recommendations
Fiction: In a letter to his two eldest sons, Henry James Sr. wrote that "the natural inheritance of any one who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters." It is from this quote that Jose Donoso lifted the title for his stammering, labyrinthian novel The Obscene Bird of Night, which I am currently reading & recommend. A very disturbing read, but provocative & of worth if only as a study in unreliable/multiple narratives in a single voice.
Poetry: While reading Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular, I thought immediately of Michael Ondaantje's Coming Through Slaughter,which if you have never read, you should buy, immediately. Ondaatje & Komunyakaa both possess an innate sense of musicality, & although their subject matter may not always hold conversation, their rhythms will. Some readers inexperienced with Ondaatje, will find thwarted their expectations regarding "normal" forms of fiction. However, if these imaginary readers are poets, then perhaps they'll be as delighted as I. Komunyakaa, although I've read his work before, continues to surprise & teach me; this time around, I find him to be a much more surreal author than before, particularly in poems such as "Looking a Mad Dog Dead In the Eye."
Music: I have been obsessed with Johnny Cash records & with nearly obscure 1960's girl groups & personalities like Evie Sands
Film: The other night I saw Youth Without Youth, a film by Francis Ford Coppola based on a novella by Mircea Eliade the late University of Chicago professor, philosopher & historian. Eliade's theories have been useful & illuminating to me in the past, but I've never read one of his novels, much less seen a movie based on one of his novels. The film was gorgeous - just enough magic & heartache - &, in my opinion, a damn interesting story, even for a slightly heavy lean on metaphysics. But hey, you gotta give Coppola some credit: it's hard to film metaphysics.
Visual Art: Despite getting slammed by notable voices such as The New York Times, the 55th Carnegie International exhibition is really quite wonderful. Works by artists such as Cao Fei and Friedrich Kunath give the show an element of necessary whimsy... actually, the prevalence of whimsical gestures at the exhibition overall struck an almost political chord regarding things like routine, rules, regulations & procedures. A worthwhile show which will be up until November. I think I'll go again.
Movement: Swimming.
Food: Watermelon.
Sleeping: Not so much.
Poetry: While reading Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular, I thought immediately of Michael Ondaantje's Coming Through Slaughter,which if you have never read, you should buy, immediately. Ondaatje & Komunyakaa both possess an innate sense of musicality, & although their subject matter may not always hold conversation, their rhythms will. Some readers inexperienced with Ondaatje, will find thwarted their expectations regarding "normal" forms of fiction. However, if these imaginary readers are poets, then perhaps they'll be as delighted as I. Komunyakaa, although I've read his work before, continues to surprise & teach me; this time around, I find him to be a much more surreal author than before, particularly in poems such as "Looking a Mad Dog Dead In the Eye."
Music: I have been obsessed with Johnny Cash records & with nearly obscure 1960's girl groups & personalities like Evie Sands
Film: The other night I saw Youth Without Youth, a film by Francis Ford Coppola based on a novella by Mircea Eliade the late University of Chicago professor, philosopher & historian. Eliade's theories have been useful & illuminating to me in the past, but I've never read one of his novels, much less seen a movie based on one of his novels. The film was gorgeous - just enough magic & heartache - &, in my opinion, a damn interesting story, even for a slightly heavy lean on metaphysics. But hey, you gotta give Coppola some credit: it's hard to film metaphysics.
Visual Art: Despite getting slammed by notable voices such as The New York Times, the 55th Carnegie International exhibition is really quite wonderful. Works by artists such as Cao Fei and Friedrich Kunath give the show an element of necessary whimsy... actually, the prevalence of whimsical gestures at the exhibition overall struck an almost political chord regarding things like routine, rules, regulations & procedures. A worthwhile show which will be up until November. I think I'll go again.
Movement: Swimming.
Food: Watermelon.
Sleeping: Not so much.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Come read with me this Sunday!
Since my dear friend Betsy Wheeler's careers are colliding in mysterious ways, she won't be able to read her poems with me as planned this Sunday at the library. But maybe you can!
From I'll be reading from 2 - 2:30, & there will be a half hour "open mic," in the quiet reading room at the Carnegie Library's main branch in Oakland. It should be an interesting time, & hey, like I said, a great free Father's Day gift, whether your dad is a writer himself or a proud patron. Hope to see you there!
(for further information on this reading series, see the previous post..)
From I'll be reading from 2 - 2:30, & there will be a half hour "open mic," in the quiet reading room at the Carnegie Library's main branch in Oakland. It should be an interesting time, & hey, like I said, a great free Father's Day gift, whether your dad is a writer himself or a proud patron. Hope to see you there!
(for further information on this reading series, see the previous post..)
Thursday, May 1, 2008
excited ! : Myself & my dear friend Betsy Wheeler will be reading together on Sunday June 15 at the sunday poetry & reading series, from 2-3 p.m. Betsy's not from the 'burgh, so it's going to be an extra treat. for you and me both. AND it's father's day that sunday, so it's going to be an extra treat for you, and me, and my dad. who introduced me to poetry in the first place but that's another story..
Sunday Poetry & Reading Series: A free monthly series
featuring readings from academic, experimental and
spoken-word Pittsburgh poets and writers.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Main First Floor - Quiet Reading Room
2 - 3 p.m.
For more information, call 412.622.3151 or visit www.carnegielibrary.org.
from the press release: other up-coming sunday offerings at the CLP:
Sunday ❘ 5 • 18 ❘ 2 pm ❘ Terrance Hayes
Terrance Hayes is the author of Hip Logic, Wind in a Box and Muscular Music and has been the recipient of many honors and awards including a National Poetry Series award, a Pushcart Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University.
Sunday ❘ 7 • 20 ❘ 2 pm ❘ The Typewriter Girls
The Typewriter Girls are decadent intellectuals with an uncanny penchant for monkey breeding. Descendants of the Cabaret Voltaire, their Dada-bred performances feature comedy, music, and poetry, and in the words of Comte de Lautreamont, embody the concept that “poetry must be made by all.”
Sunday ❘ 8 • 17 ❘ 2 pm ❘ Heather McNaugher
Heather McNaugher is an Assistant Professor of English at Chatham University’s MFA program. Her chapbook, Panic & Joy, was published this spring by Finishing Line Press.‘
Sunday Poetry & Reading Series: A free monthly series
featuring readings from academic, experimental and
spoken-word Pittsburgh poets and writers.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Main First Floor - Quiet Reading Room
2 - 3 p.m.
For more information, call 412.622.3151 or visit www.carnegielibrary.org.
from the press release: other up-coming sunday offerings at the CLP:
Sunday ❘ 5 • 18 ❘ 2 pm ❘ Terrance Hayes
Terrance Hayes is the author of Hip Logic, Wind in a Box and Muscular Music and has been the recipient of many honors and awards including a National Poetry Series award, a Pushcart Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University.
Sunday ❘ 7 • 20 ❘ 2 pm ❘ The Typewriter Girls
The Typewriter Girls are decadent intellectuals with an uncanny penchant for monkey breeding. Descendants of the Cabaret Voltaire, their Dada-bred performances feature comedy, music, and poetry, and in the words of Comte de Lautreamont, embody the concept that “poetry must be made by all.”
Sunday ❘ 8 • 17 ❘ 2 pm ❘ Heather McNaugher
Heather McNaugher is an Assistant Professor of English at Chatham University’s MFA program. Her chapbook, Panic & Joy, was published this spring by Finishing Line Press.‘
Friday, April 25, 2008
here's Terrance Hayes( an invaluable critic, excellent poet & an all around interesting person) on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, reading his work in the neighborhood I grew up in. The coffee shop he's filmed in, and outside of, is the The Union Project, which used to offer a weirdly delicious sandwich called something self-explanatory like 'The Cheesy Pickle,' but now also offers things like yoga classes, ceramics classes & a reading series...
Sunday, March 30, 2008
New Experiment/Exercise
I've started a new poem experiment/exercise called
The Question of Books.
Come, befriend me, find out if I keep it up.
This thing is inspired by, & in honor of Pablo Neruda's last collection "The Book of Questions," which I'm currently reading a few poems from every day when I wake up. Find out more about Neruda, this book, and the guidelines of my experiment in the "user info" you'll find in the above link. also, hey, wow, good morning spring...
The Question of Books.
Come, befriend me, find out if I keep it up.
This thing is inspired by, & in honor of Pablo Neruda's last collection "The Book of Questions," which I'm currently reading a few poems from every day when I wake up. Find out more about Neruda, this book, and the guidelines of my experiment in the "user info" you'll find in the above link. also, hey, wow, good morning spring...
Sunday, March 9, 2008
a steal
A number of selections from my photograph & poem project Portrait of the Years are for sale! (with the exception of the ocean picture, which has been spoken for.)
You can find the online version of these works here, here, here, and here. Or, just scroll through the journal itself, if that's how you roll.
Each physical work is 8 & 1/2'' x 11''. The gallery price was $80.00 each, but I'm willing to do a trade of some sort.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Apparition, by Zachary Rossman
Recently, I received his zine entitled Greetings from Poltergeist Mountain. I don't know what it means, only that it's delicious.
Monday, February 4, 2008
AAIEE AWP
Yesterday, swollen with florescence, I returned from my first AWP conference in NYC. Quite overwhelming but generally lovely and A STACK OF BOOKS.I swooned a little when Maurice Manning read. And swooned a little hearing Jules Feiffer too. Saw Times Square for the first time at night, from the 32nd floor. Found reversals sweetly on many levels, but that's another story and i don't even know if anyone reads this blog.
p.s. Oh HEY I have a poem in the forthcoming Pebble Lake Review.
p.s. Oh HEY I have a poem in the forthcoming Pebble Lake Review.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
On Friday, January 18th, at 7:30 P.M.
I will be reading poems alongside Sten Carlson and Dan Remein at Choice Cuts, the Slaughterhouse Gallery Reading Series, down in Lawrenceville, a convenient 10 minute walk from my house. Your presence would be delightful.
and afterwards, perhaps, there will be tea & Scrabble?
I will be reading poems alongside Sten Carlson and Dan Remein at Choice Cuts, the Slaughterhouse Gallery Reading Series, down in Lawrenceville, a convenient 10 minute walk from my house. Your presence would be delightful.
and afterwards, perhaps, there will be tea & Scrabble?
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
"He likes his mysteries deadpan. 'Whatever I hoped to believe,' he writes in his title sequence, 'I never imagined/ the pitfall of consolation.' If we can give up on consolation, there may be room for something more promising. "
read more from Adam Phillipps' review of John Burnside's Gift Songs.
read more from Adam Phillipps' review of John Burnside's Gift Songs.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
________ Versus Recovery
My debut chapbook, "_______ Versus Recovery" is now available for purchase from Pilot Books!
What's being said about the book:
"The poetry of Sophie Klahr is both restless and arresting. Setting experiment versus convention, nearness versus distance, doom versus redemption, she tests the meanings/margins of the psyche as fearlessly as she does the margins/meanings of the poem itself. These poems don’t just glow, they illuminate."
- Terrance Hayes
"Sophie Klahr’s _________Versus Recovery is a startlingly original debut. Klahr digs deep—the raw, honest emotion and drama of this long poem explode out from the electric images, the vibrant incantations. There’s sparks flying all over the place here. "
- Jim Daniels
...& in the Pittsburgh City Paper.
What's being said about the book:
"The poetry of Sophie Klahr is both restless and arresting. Setting experiment versus convention, nearness versus distance, doom versus redemption, she tests the meanings/margins of the psyche as fearlessly as she does the margins/meanings of the poem itself. These poems don’t just glow, they illuminate."
- Terrance Hayes
"Sophie Klahr’s _________Versus Recovery is a startlingly original debut. Klahr digs deep—the raw, honest emotion and drama of this long poem explode out from the electric images, the vibrant incantations. There’s sparks flying all over the place here. "
- Jim Daniels
...& in the Pittsburgh City Paper.
Friday, October 19, 2007
The Blogger Show
Woo hoo!
I've been asked to participate in "The Blogger Show" which is the joint project of a number of galleries in Pittsburgh and New York, namely The Agni Gallery, The Digging Pitt & The Panza Gallery. I'll be transferring five pieces from my online journal of poems and photographs into a physical medium, to be shown at the Panza Gallery in Millvale, PA. The public reception is December 15th.
A concept that's come to my attention in the past few weeks, as I've become involved in this show, has been that of an "art narrative"... which would be another way of saying, what we talk about when we talk about art (wink to Raymond Carver), or maybe even, how we talk when we talk about art. The following is from (of course) a critic's blog: "Our entire understanding of Western art is largely the result of a discourse that has taken place over the past decades across a variety of locations and media: artists' studios, galleries, museums, newspapers, arts journals and bars. Within the past five years another medium has entered this discourse: online weblogs, or blogs."
Read more about the concept and participants of the exhibition at The Blogger Show.
An online preview of the show's participants, including myself, is available here.
I've been asked to participate in "The Blogger Show" which is the joint project of a number of galleries in Pittsburgh and New York, namely The Agni Gallery, The Digging Pitt & The Panza Gallery. I'll be transferring five pieces from my online journal of poems and photographs into a physical medium, to be shown at the Panza Gallery in Millvale, PA. The public reception is December 15th.
A concept that's come to my attention in the past few weeks, as I've become involved in this show, has been that of an "art narrative"... which would be another way of saying, what we talk about when we talk about art (wink to Raymond Carver), or maybe even, how we talk when we talk about art. The following is from (of course) a critic's blog: "Our entire understanding of Western art is largely the result of a discourse that has taken place over the past decades across a variety of locations and media: artists' studios, galleries, museums, newspapers, arts journals and bars. Within the past five years another medium has entered this discourse: online weblogs, or blogs."
Read more about the concept and participants of the exhibition at The Blogger Show.
An online preview of the show's participants, including myself, is available here.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
You're invited!
BLUES, SUGAR, BONES:
A reading of poems by Carolyn Elliot,
Anne Marie Rooney, and Sophie Klahr,
who will read from her new chapbook
"_____Versus Recovery" (Pilot Books, 2007).
Free of charge. Adventures to follow.
November 9th, 8 P.M.
ModernFormations Gallery & Performance Space,
4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh PA.
Friday, September 28, 2007
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