latest mix

Luc Sante in the new New York Review of Books writes about mix tapes. "[T]he mix tape ... is one part Victorian flower album, one part commonplace book, one part collage, and one part recital."

Sometimes I just find the list of artists fascinating, as in my latest mix:
1. Adrift in Kerala ... Bob Holroyd
2. Patent Pending ... Lamplighter
3. Waiting for Conrad ... Shooglenifty
4. Big in Japan ... Tom Waits
5. Mustard ... Latin Playboys
6. Rockin' the Bronx ... Black 47
7. Goldrush ... The Herbalizer
8. Duria ... Ferdoos
9. Katami-Bushi ... Parsha Club
10. Electric Lady Land ... Fantastic Plastic Machine
11. If We Can Land a Man on the Moon, Surely I can Win Your Heart ... Beulah
12. Please ... The Hippos
13. Man with the Hex ... The Atomic Fireballs
14. Flame ... Sebadoh
15. Lipstick ... Imperial Teen
16. Don't Bring Me Down ... J Church
17. Murder (or a Heart Attack) ... Old 97s
18. Unholy Train ... Damnations, TX
19. Can't Stand It ... Wilco

Kent's version

without dog unhooked from leather leash heaving himself at the frisbee,
without brown bottles broken in the coals of old fires,
without any touching in the dark spaces of dunes,
no volleyball, no towel,

mine the only body in which wind
could warm itself cold with sea,

... the sea’s hem crackling yellow foam
... me the one in cotton

my tears the only other water
but for blood

... sand fleas, a lonesome gull,
... strewn and sanded wood,

but no one with a camera,
blanket, sunscreen bottle leaking

I was it

comments on version 3

I posted the first stanza of version 3 a few minutes ago, said to myself, "False start." So I went back and did some more work. Didn't I say I had to allow myself to make things worse?

"Interoceptor" version 3

without dog unhooked from leather leash heaving himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge,
without brown bottles broken in the coals of old fires,
without anyone touching in the dark spaces of dunes,
without volleyball, without towel,

mine the only body in which wind
could warm itself cold with sea,
my tears the only other water
but for blood -- in the sand fleas, in the lonesome gull,

yellow foam at the sea’s hem crackling
and me the one in cotton
among strewn and sanded wood,
not sharing this space with anyone with a camera,
no blanket, no sunscreen bottle leaking

I was it
day
one shore

"Kill your babies"

I found a couple places that attribute "Kill your babies" (regarding excising during revision the parts of the piece of which you are most fond) to William Faulkner. Not sure the sources are unimpeachable.

Josh Marshall characterizes the people running our country

A "combustible mix of poor judgment, rich ideological fantasy life and pervasive disrespect for the rule of a law." Here.

comments on version 2

I remember Richard Speakes commenting on the block thick look of my poems of the time. I began putting in stanza breaks more frequently after that. A stanza break really does give the eye relief. Since we're using lines here, might as well use stanza breaks to help highlight what the line is doing. Otherwise it's much like a block of prose with tight margins.

I like the poem's rush of lists so would like to keep that. I like the poem's sound play ("brown bottles broken in the coals of old fires" being a line of which I'm quite fond). Here I remember Robert Hass quoting another poet (or novelist?), "Kill your babies." Hass shook his head sadly. "He must have been a terrible teacher."

(I did a quick google search on "Kill your babies," and found instances where it occurs as writerly advice but the best attribution I saw was, "a writing teacher once told me.")

This version makes more sense than the first. I did lose some of the poem's forward rush. Which I miss.

"Interoceptor" version 2

The beach was splendid without anyone touching
in the dark spaces of dunes, without
brown bottles broken in the coals of old fires,

without the dog unhooked from leather leash heaving
himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge.
When I was the only body in which the wind

could warm itself cold with sea,
when my tears were the only other water
but for blood -- in the sand fleas, in the lonesome gull,

when yellow foam crackled at the thin hem of the sea
I was the only one in cotton, the only one

standing among strewn and sanded wood,
not sharing this space with anyone with a camera,
no volleyball, no blanket, towel or sunscreen bottle leaking.

I was the body, large enough to remain unfilled,
my eyes taking in what daylight offered --
sea, shore, single sand grain the wind bore high,

and I filled myself continuously, building
with these materials the small version of everything.
And the sand held my feet and stone sand and burning stone
cold stone. All below burning and shifting and standing

kept me steady where I was, my clothes blowing,
my hands open, spread to catch and let slip
what crept to me, what flew by, what sang or screamed,
the ocean bending near and forward falling.

comments on "Interoceptor"

"Interoceptor" was published in The Tomcat, a poetry journal out of Petaluma CA that saw a few issues back in 1990 and thereabouts.

I like it. It needs work. How to change it to make it better? Throw out the fear of making it worse. This is probably what will happen at first. I'd like to see a version of "Interoceptor" I'm really proud of, instead of intrigued by but find slightly embarassing. I'm reminded of Renee Gladman introducing her reading last night by saying she was going to read a sex scene and she wasn't sure she was going to be able to say the word "pussy" without blushing. That kind of embarassment should be OK. Rather I'm thinking about the failed metaphors, the yellow foam like a shaken soft drink or the bricks of the wall of air. So I'll be attempting revisions and you'll see them here.

I haven't been to poetry readings much lately. I went last night to the Holloway Poetry Series on UC campus. Renee Gladman, Pamela Lu, and Chris Chen. Chris looked good with a shaved head. Renee remembered my "Hundred" piece from years ago. Pam read way too long. I wasn't going to say that because Pam said, "I read your blog!" and I want to say only nice things so people will like me. Fortunately I did enjoy "Ambient Parking Lots" (some of it very funny) so as too long poetry readings go it coulda bin wurs. And the torture chairs of the Maud Fife room didn't afflict me so bad this time because (a) I had a jacket thick enough to wad up for padding and (b) all that yoga has strengthened my back to the point I don't always have to lean my weight against an object outside my body. I asked Pam if I could excerpt from "Ambient Parking Lots" for HCR. My poetry pages are almost full.

Interoceptor

The beach was splendid without anyone touching
in the dark spaces of dunes, without brown bottles broken in the coals of old fires,
without the dog unhooked from leather leash heaving
himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge.
When I was the only body through which the wind
could rattle before reaching the earth,
when my tears were the only water besides the sea
and the blood in the sand fleas and the single gull,
when the yellow foam at the thin hem of the sea coming up
reminded me of a shaken soft drink or the top of the grapefruit juice,
and I was the only one in cotton, the only one
standing beside the strewn and sanded wood,
I was not sharing this space with anyone with a camera,
no volleyball, no blanket, towel or sunscreen bottle leaking,
when every little thing went through and into me and
not to or through or from anyone else –
that was not perfect,
but a certain great smallness.
My body felt large, my eyes big enough to take in
this section of the shore, my head to hold it,
my lungs to carry the bricks of the wall of air,
my feet to press down the grains that one to one to one to
rock to vein to liquid metal stayed down,
and there was I, in my body, in my clothes blowing,
open to the undersides of my fingers to the face,
the cliff, the elbows of the ocean bending.

poetry contests

I loathe contests. Especially contests for the publication of poetry. I'll give a pass to those that don't charge an entry fee, but then why call it a contest? Why not make it known your press is looking for poems then publish or celebrate those that you like the most? There's a new site that wants to blow the lid off the contest scam: Foetry!

Good luck.

When I spoke with Michael Martin yesterday morning (he in Amsterdam, me in Berkeley), he said every year he chooses work from his magazine to nominate for a Pushcart Prize. Having read the Pushcart anthology three or four years in a row (this was 15 years ago or so) I can't say as I understood Mike's agonizing over his choices. Sending work on to the Pushcart judges means you're giving your contributors another chance at publication, this time in a rather nifty-looking anthology. If anything gets in the anthology the magazine of first publication gets a little notice. Other than the silly "best" designation I don't see any harm or anything to agonize about. The editors of the Pushcart anthologies have their tastes, tastes which sometimes coincide with mine. What they publish is what they like, best or whatever. If I were a magazine editor I'd nominate some poems (or stories or ...), or I'd intend to, but I wouldn't have much expectation Bill Henderson would love what I love. I've seen other poets crow about "being nominated for a Pushcart Prize." Well, yay for them. It means the editor of the magazine that published the poem liked the poem a lot. Something like that happened to me.

why I haven't gotten an MFA

I've wondered about getting the MFA in poetry. I haven't agonized about it, exactly. But I have thought seriously ... mainly as a way to get connected to other poets and mentors who would further my poetic career. I so hate the whole marketing thing -- even to choosing poems to print out and put in an envelope, but most especially rejection -- that months will pass between flurries of sending out. What would change after two years of grad school and, likely, thousands of dollars of debt? Surely I'd gain that motivation for getting my poems out to the world. Surely, surely.

Uh huh. Daniel Nestor has a post about the consequences of his stint at NYU. (If the preceding link doesn't get you to Nestor's blog, try this; it's the April 11 post.) I don't know Nestor's poetry but here's some fine disgruntled snarking about his former teachers:

My praise of these teachers ends with their poems. As part of the NYU creative writing program, Olds, Kinnell and Levine were all uniformly uninterested in students, limited their time to a minmum of access for fear of being "overwhelmed" by their students (that was a word we heard a lot), and most damningly, were not not empathetic with what students were doing in their poems. The only way to hold the interest of any of these teachers was to write a poem in their own style, except worse, so as to make them feel good, as well as give them something to say to improve it (i.e., make it one of their poems).

[...]

I remember once when a student asked Galway Kinnell what we should do when we get out of grad school -- should we apply for teaching jobs, send poems to journals?
Kinnell paused, looked at the ceiling -- dreaming, no doubt, about his garden's new Spring sprouts in his Vermont house, where he would haul ass to the day after this last workshop -- and said to "just be a poet" after grad school.

Har har.

At UC Berkeley I took an undergraduate workshop with Robert Hass and I know I tried to emulate Hass somewhat. Mostly unconscious, I think. I didn't realize how constricted my poetry had been until I was in Lyn Hejinian's workshop. I liked Lyn much more as a teacher. But I have no bitterness about Robert Hass. He struck me as a sweet man, honestly interested in his students. His reputation and those other students who were trying to be like him had something to do with what happened to my poetry.

more on the "controversy" I mentioned yesterday

The blogger who got in trouble for his lack of sympathy for the lynched mercenaries in Iraq runs Daily Kos, a site I visit frequently. There's a full rundown of the fallout of Kos' comments at The Blogging of the President. An excerpt:

When I produced the call-in talk radio radio pilot 'The Blogging of the President', I noticed some interesting similarities between talk radio and blogs. Call-in talk radio is organized around authentic conversation, and so are blogs; Howard Stern and Atrios have similar levels of devotion among their audiences, because they each connect and seem trustworthy. There is however one key difference between blogs and talk radio; blogs create memory, whereas talk radio and cable punditry destroys it by turning opinion and analysis into an ethereal product.

have headache, will feel yucky

I liked that revision thing. I'll do it again.

Is there anything in the news these days that would make one happy? Lynchings in Iraq? One blogger I read regularly has no sympathy because the Americans killed were highly paid mercenaries and the US response will probably result in more (American & noncombatant Iraqi) deaths. When I saw the pictures of the charred bodies hung from a bridge with happy children dancing beneath, it put me in mind of classic American lynchings. Used to be there was a lively postcard trade in such images. Regardless of whether the killed are innocents or criminals I don't want to see crowds exulting over tormented human bodies. I followed as closely as I could the news of the Tiananmen protests and when the Chinese army started to kill people it was no surprise (and, yes, I felt a sense of satisfaction) when crowds managed to strike back and set fire to troop carriers or drag a soldier from a bus and rip him apart. Can we all agree this stuff is bad? ...

I haven't gone to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. A film about Jesus wouldn't be high on my to-see list anyway, that it's a film of him being brutalized does drop it further down that list. On the other hand, I am thinking about seeing the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Zombies. They're already dead.

did I answer the question?

I think I didn't really answer the question, "Why do I think the poem finished?"

When a poem doesn't seem finished it has a missing piece quality, a where's-the-rest-of-me gap. This is talking back from a result. I say it seems finished. I look at it and try to figure out why it seems finished where the other versions were unfinished.

what you end up with

I ended up with something I like. Whether it rose up from the depths as my metaphor had it when I was struggling with version 5 or whether it was the stone that broke its surface that allowed a reformation into a thing that seemed right, dunno. There have been times I've revised a poem where it seemed I was merely clearing away junk that was obscuring what the poem really was. There have been other times, and I think this was one of those, where the poem just didn't have the right chemical bonds and needed to be smashed in order for the parts to shift around and find their true complements.

Here's the question. Are these the same poem?:


1.

Let me hold your hand.
Let me hold your hand somewhere.
Somewhere in the house.
In the house on the beach with the rain falling.
The rain falling like coins from a slot machine, splashing.
Splashing onto, out of, splashing against.
The riches of splashing, the gold of the river, the silver.
Silver without light, the hard sharp edge of worth.
What's worth it, what's worth darkness, what's the crash out of darkness.

Let me hold your hand.
Let me hold your hand where it is in the cold room in your lap.


2.

Crash upsets the table of values.
Echoes caught on one wall, struggle there.

The dent in the seat cushion begins its rise.

Wealth of one shadow.

The full room, made of old materials.

Light, thrown from the body, bunches on the floor.

Window, open a crack, lets in color
rain has been going over.

River responds to this stone.

Offer me the hand that is colder.


*

I'm not at all sure they're the same poem. That the second owes its existence to the first isn't the answer. The second is exploring territory I've lately been poking about -- the juxtaposition of elements that are related by leaps of imagination. The first, written roughly 7 years ago, is part of what I was doing then -- building elements one from the next via repetition of words from the preceding line. The latest version (#2 above) has no repetition. #2 does include some of the imagery from #1 -- rain, cold, river, hand. "Crash" has gone from "crash out of darkness" to "Crash upsets the table of values" ... and from the end of the poem to the beginning. Then one might do a reading for meaning, right? Do the poems share a meaning? Both seem to seek a human grounding -- the held hand -- in a dark/shadowed, cold, broken (crash, splashing against, struggle, thrown) world.

Why do I think the poem finished? I do think it finished. I'm quite happy with it. That happened all of a sudden. Less than a half an hour after the poem seemed nowhere. The final version is largely the same as the version immediately preceding. Of the final version's 10 lines 8 are exactly or almost the same as lines in the preceding version. Yet they seem different to me. Is it that the order has been changed? That's part of it. "Offer me the hand that is colder," is now the last line. In the preceding version three lines followed it. It seems to me the final version echoes the first version in the request for the hand, that it seems most appropriate it be the poem's last need.

Is it the white space I've allowed in? In the final version most of the lines are also stanzas. In the preceding version there are three 4-line stanzas. The images, the propositions have space to assert themselves, be independent. In the larger stanzas the lines seemed more hurried, their connections forced. The final version emphasizes the parts, the brokenness. It wants more attention on the effects of each line.

version 6

Crash upsets the table of values.
Echoes caught on one wall, struggle there.

The dent in the seat cushion begins its rise.

Wealth of one shadow.

The full room, made of old materials.

Light, thrown from the body, bunches on the floor.

Window, open a crack, lets in color
rain has been going over.

River responds to this stone.

Offer me the hand that is colder.

comments on 5th version

This seems to me just fiddling. I was feeling something coming up in version 4. Then Jack offered his collage thingy. And I liked it about as much as anything I'd done. I toyed with his changes. Present tense. Eliminating these words, those words.

Something's gotta come from inside this. If there's anything inside it's gotta bring its body up. I feel like I'm flicking a fishing line across a dark pond. So far I've made some mildly diverting ripples but I've not attracted any living creatures. Time to heave in a stone?

fifth version?

Worth darkness.
Crash upsets the table of values.
The dent in the seat cushion begins its rise.
Light, thrown from the body, bunches on the floor.

Echoes caught on one wall, struggle there.
Wealth of one shadow.
Window, open a crack, lets in the color
the rain has been going over.

Offer me the hand that is colder.
The cold room, put together out of old materials,
maintains this position.
A river knows its stones.

picking at Jack's version

The dent in the seat cushion begins its rise.
Light, thrown from the body, bunches on the floor.
Echoes caught on one wall, struggle there.

Somewhere in the house
you’ve propped one hand open.

Outside, the rain takes its usual position,
which is worth what it’s worth.