$300

I'd scheduled 2 poets from Los Angeles to read in the Poetry & Pizza series next Friday, April 1. I was prepping their bios to send out to our email list when I got a note from one of them. She was bowing out. No reason given. (The other refused to make the trek alone.) Curiously, on her own website, there was another reading listed for April 1.

When I wrote back to her saying I was disappointed she 'fessed to the better offer. The other reading was giving her $300! Let's see. $300 hometown reading vs. reading in SF (hours away), no $, free pizza & soda but have to figure out how to lodge self for weekend. Now if you've oodles of integrity you say to yourself I made a committment, I have to honor my committment, say no to the money & the audience of people who know me, and climb in the car.

I'm not sure I have that much integrity either.

I did schedule a local boy, too. He'll come through, right?

comments on "Modern Witches", version 2

Days went by and I had a couple ideas. I could try it in form. Form seems to be good for humor. Since the generalizations about a group bug me I could recast it as musing on a specific (hypothetical?) witch. I may have had another idea but I'm not remembering it now.

The approach in version 2 below is a moving away from the Halloween witch, the Halloween cliches, toward the real fates of people accused of being witches. I'll have to brood on this some more.

Modern Witches, version 2

Do they burn the way they used to?
I understand they used to swim – or float, at least –
when everybody else went straight to the slimy bottom
and sat there, bubbles rising from the mouth and nostrils
until there wasn’t any more air to send back to air.

No doubt they fly. Everybody does these days.

updates at the poetry site

I finally did some updating at the LoveSettlement poetry site. The homestead.com program is not Mac compatible so if I do anything to the poetry site I have to do it at work, after five. Hang around the office after five? ... eehhh ...

But finally I did. The last "featured poem" was posted October 2003. I will no longer note the date of the "featured poem". Poems don't expire like milk or calendar pages but I don't want it so very obvious that I don't update the page frequently. The new "featured poem" will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, which means it'll be new to nearly everybody!

on someone else's blog

Teresa's favorite compliment.

blue blanket

From the weaver's booth at the Oak Park Fair Kent bought a blue blanket, a deep blue green fat stripe alternates with a slimmer sky blue. It doesn't have a tight weave. This is problematic as the cats seem to enjoy sitting on it.

You know how if a cat is feeling particular enjoyment he opens his paws, his claws splay out, then he tightens his paws and his claws curl under. In the tightened position he lifts his paw then lowers it spread.

The spreading paw extends the hooks which neatly capture one of the fat threads of the blanket, when the paw lifts the thread pulls up. Though we try to keep the cat boys happy elsewhere they do once in awhile get pleased with things while on the blanket.

comments on Roger Pao's blog

Here.

Excerpts:

Pao: "Why do people hate Asian-American poetry? One interesting critique often levied against Asian American poetry is its engagement in identity politics/ethnic studies -- that is an evil per se."

Me: "I read the Garret Hongo edited Open Boat. I enjoyed it. I find context interesting. I had previously read most of the poets in Open Boat elsewhere but reseeing them as 'Asian-American' poets rather than 'just poets' gave them a new context. I don't claim any great revelations but I see no reason not to present a collection like this, especially since many of the poets included seem to feel being in the company of other Asian American poets gives them something that otherwise dissipates among the mass of American poetry/ies.

I think this has been true of women included in anthologies of poetry by women. Or Native American poets.

And I know I feel ... empowered isn't quite the word ... encouraged? ... something anyway ... something I like when I read a book of poems by gay poets; being gay it's nice to be able to put myself in the context of other gay poets (whether I ever appear in such an anthology myself). I don't seem to love the work more frequently than in other sorts of anthologies but I do recognize familiar stances, ways of being or thinking or looking, strategies of disguise and allusion or revelation. And there are in such an anthology things to which the ol' white male het seems oblivious. I like the opportunity to have context available."

Pao: "I've wondered whether there is the same phenomenon in the publication of 'gay poetry' as there is in 'Asian-American poetry' of not sounding 'too gay' or 'too Asian-American.'"

Me: "Historically one must say that the only way to publish until quite recently was to de-gay one's writing. I'm sure it's still true that gay writers tone down the details, despite the many publishing out & prouds.

I don't seem to write erotic poetry, I don't even write very many autobiographical poems, and you won't find many of my poems addressing gay-specific issues, but I would be happy to be included in an anthology of gay poets ... you've asked, is it an asian-american poem if it's subject matter is not noticeably 'asian-american'? ... is it a gay poem? a male poem or female poem? While it's a mistake to declare the context more important than the art, the context provides the art's frame and many's the time the frame tells us much about ourselves and audience."

on & on & on & on & on

You'd owned Denny's domes doubt ten he wearing fever end you'd dust dough bite rid employing

writing them, he said, was conversing, he said, putting his hand to his forehead to his eyes to his ears to his cheeks until his head was covered, he said, with poets & their poems making it a noise every Wednesday

here in the arctic we have a splendid view of the eventual merchandise worn applicably newsworthily and adjusted in successive sea-shifts

inland outland knoll bowl sea flee hurries flurries mountain poutin' once tons held smelled hurt spurt difficulty if it's bulky

pow pow power

the future is looking back at you

no & no & no & no & no

You don't send any poems out anywhere in forever and you just go about reading poems and writing them, conversing with the poets & poems you like by writing poems, and the hurt of the nononos gradually, glacially, geologically fades until the mountain that once held back the inland sea has dwindled to a knoll and the sea hurries off to sea as though there were never any difficulty getting there, in fact here's all this power this power that could have been held back by nothing, power you can't imagine being held back no way, so out it goes. And you feel giddy and you think I'll never be rejected again, because the time between the last nononos and now you've gone idiotic, in a good way, you think, not so smart you can see the future realistically. Idiotic in that necessary way that allows you to do something dangerous, as though there's no possibility of being hurt and what is a nonono anyway but idiotic. It's idiocy all around, except for the intelligence of the yes, which you doubt when it happens because no one really knows. Except one knows there's nothing dangerous here, nothing.

Which is to say I sent Steve Mueske at three candles a batch of poems and he read them until he didn't want to anymore and wrote me back nonono. So I'm sending them to tryst.

The Rhythm Balance

"Living In Oblivion (The Living Mix)" Anything Box
"It's A Fine Day" Miss Jane
"Don't Stop" Brazilian Girls
"Torn" In Deep
"You're the One that I Want" Asia Gang
"I Can Feel Your Love" Felice Taylor
"The Heartache Is Gone" Bettye Swann
"I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" Paul Revere & The Raiders
"Home in Your Heart" Solomon Burke
"Alive And Amplified" The Mooney Suzuki
"Get Rhythm" Jawbone
"Michael & Anne" King Apparatus
"Balanco Da Canoa" Toinho de Alagoas
"Flotation Merengue" Blinky & The Roadmasters
"Mi Cuba" P18
"Frenazo" Tony Phillips
"Logozo" Sidestepper
"End Of The World Party" Medeski, Martin & Wood
"Hallelujah (excerpt)" CAN
"Sekusile" Dark City Sisters
"Let There Be Peace" Chris Murray
"#3" POTSHOT
"Fidelina" Alejo Durán


This is my latest mix. Like the last one I posted the songs are culled from sampler CDs. This time the songs tend to the dance, though that's not just contemporary American dancefloor & Eurodisco but Cuban, Brazilian, Reggae, and Ska, as well as some 60s soul.

Tell me why I ought to burn you a copy.

brushing

Sutra is licking his chest. He has a lot of hair and it's long. That is a small tongue. He has to go over his entire body with it.

bags of clothes

I bagged up clothes we've piled behind the front door. These were clothes we've been planning to get rid of, to donate to somebody. Kent was handing me stuff from the front closet, too. Golf clubs, skis. I rolled up the trench coat I wore in London 16 years ago. It's not something I wear around here and it's soiled and I'm done with it. We drove down to Goodwill on University ... and as Kent said, "We're walking out with less than we came with."

comments on "Modern Witches"

I remember performing this poem. I wrote it June 1984. The not yet twenty year old me. And I think it's fun. I see the way it's paced for performance. The ending is a little gift to the roomful of poets at every open mike.

This is of a genre of poetry I've decided I dislike. Generalizing about some group. Talkin' cute about 'em. In looking at a new version of an old poem there's always the question how much / what of my present poetics do I impose on the poet 20 years gone. I didn't think all that much of this poem at the time. I thought it was fun and I loved to hear people laugh and people laughed. If I heard somebody read this at an open today I would laugh. Did I ever send it out to a magazine? I doubt it. But who knows? Get the people enjoying themselves you think you got something good.

This isn't a bad poem. Which makes it tricky. Tricky looking for a way in again. There are only little edits in the notebook. "calculate the witching hour" becomes "check the witching hour" ... "quantum theory and / toadstools" becomes "quantum theory and / the validity of home-growing toadstools" ... Otherwise it's as it hit the page. It's not something I'd include in a manuscript or send to an ezine. Not as it is. I just don't believe in it. It's ... inauthentic.

Modern Witches

Witches today use Black & Decker Power Lawn Mowers
and form co-ops
through which they secure freeze-dried eye of newt
at wholesale.
They install flood lights in their patios
and use teflon-coated cauldrons.
They invent spells on their word processors,
check the witching hour on their digital watches.
They take swimming lessons at the Y
and get their black cats at pet shops that certify feline racial purity.

They meet on Sunday nights and
over tea
they discuss hauntings
and dead relatives,
clairvoyance and
nuclear physics,
quantum theory and
the validity of home-growing toadstools.

Witches today hold down two careers,
witchery and secretarial work,
sorcery and politics,
magic and pornographic film editing,
voodoo and other things.

Witches are liberated,
but not loose.
Witches are close to the earth,
but many use pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizer.
Witches are very private
but do publish the occasional poem,
sometimes under an assumed name.

iced tea & apple

I like to come home and sit down, preferably outside, with a glass of iced tea (from the sun tea jug, no sugar) and a couple quarters of apple. This is when the weather's nice. When sitting outside is pleasant. And read some poems. Or just look out at the yard.

Ronnie & Jenny Go to War

1. "So Happy" Astropop 3
2. "Oh, Candy" The Hurricane Lamps
3. "Me And Mia" Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
4. "Misery" Partly Cloudy
5. "The Revolution Starts ... Now" Steve Earle
6. "Sweet Rain" Gene Loves Jezebel
7. "Between The Eyes" Love Battery
8. "Belly Laugh" Compulsion
9. "Tuck Me In" Alkaline Trio
10. "Yesterday Never Tomorrows" The Stills
11. "International War Criminal" The Slackers
12. "Interplanet Janet" Man Or Astro-man?
13. "All The Young Dudes" Mott The Hoople
14. "Sugar Blue" Jeff Finlin
15. "Rock & Rock Part 2" Gary Glitter
16. "Verb: That's What's Happening" Moby
17. "Nadir's Big Chance" Peter Hammill
18. "Love On Death Row" Chris Spedding
19. "Chicago Is Burning" The Lawrence Arms
20. "Wild, Wild Jayne" Groovie Ghoulies
21. "Foreign Land" SOFTBALL
22. "Jenny" Cretins
23. "Ronnie Is A Psycho" The Parasites

This is my latest mix CD. It's culled from hours of listening to sampler CDs (ones that come with music magazines like CMJ and MOJO) and odd compilations (the Schoolhouse Rock songs covered by alt artists) and the occasional soundtrack. It's mostly pop punk/rock. No electronica, ambient, country, hiphop or soul, not strictly. After listening to piles of sampler CDs I find I like more than I would've guessed. I always knew I liked a little something from every category and it's cool to find a few country and hiphop tracks in my mixes. Country and hiphop may be the two genres in which I'm least likely to find something that appeals to me but that doesn't mean nothing does.

Write to me and tell me why I ought to send you a copy.

What to do when the FBI shows up at the door

Step outside and close the door so they can't claim you've invited them in, says Ron.

marriage wins a round

California Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer has struck down as unconstitional (under the California State Constitution) the restriction of marriage to purely male-female couples. You can download a pdf of the decision from Lambda Legal.

Some excerpts:

"To say that all men and all women are treated the same in that each may not marry someone of the same gender [an argument submitted to the court in favor of upholding the restriction of marriage to mixed gender couples] misses the point. ... The argument that the marriage limitations are not discriminatory because they are gender neutral is similar to arguments in cases dealing with anti-miscegenation laws. ... [Quoting the US Supreme Court]: "'we reject the notion that mere "equal application" of a statute containing racial classifications is enough ...'"

"[T]he question to be answered is whether [an] individual is being denied equal protection because of his/her characteristics."

"[T]he starting point is that one can choose who to marry, and that choice cannot be limited by the state unless there is a legitimate governmental reason for doing so."

Tradition, the judge says, is not by itself sufficient "reason."

The news always says the decision will be appealed, which means nobody gets to get married even though to prevent them from marrying is so obviously not a state power and an abrogation of human rights. Hmf.

comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 4

Again the changes are few. I'm not at all sure I can get away the line, "A wall stands up for me." I like it and I think it's too clever and it fails by its cleverness but there's something appealing about its failure. Could be it's out of place.

I returned line breaks to the piece and the banal dialog was painfully exposed. The dialog works best, if it works well, in a doesn't-matter-who-says-it sort of way. I like the naturalness of it -- sounds like real people talking -- but this is a tiny universe and the things in this universe are huge because there are so few things in this universe. Reading it the umpteenth time I think it works. This way. As a prose paragraph. Read in a rush, without the concentration of attention line breaks invite.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating, version 4

Glenn! Dinchu hear me? A gust gets around my hair, been like that all day. Two girls, one dark, one fair. Hi. A wall stands up for me. I’m glad to see them. Really. Graduating Friday? No! Tomorrow! Seen any of the summer movies? One, but not really a “summer” movie. MariBeth stands beside me smiling, but she doesn’t say anything. Julie pulls her dark hair from her shoulders, lets it spill again from her hand. I want to be natural, but I’m unnatural. Doing anything? Well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter. She bites her bagel. Coming to graduation? Julie and MariBeth both are graduating, a year after me. A year. I’m eighteen? As they walk on I walk. I hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party? No. A wind blows between what I say, what they say, what Julie says. A wind blows between the fingers I’ve taken out of my pockets.

so beautiful

It was so beautiful yesterday. And it was warm this morning. I felt comfortable getting out of bed, the translation from covered to uncovered no shock to my skin. So I planned to have a sunny day.

And there was fog. High fog, but enough to blank out the view of San Francisco. When I stepped out on the porch wearing a Hawaiian shirt the cool of the air crept up the sleeves. Darn. I went back in to add a layer or two.

writing a book

C. Dale Young said, "I would have a meltdown if I sat down to work on a poem and had even a slight expectation nagging in the background that a new poem need conform to a 'book' or the idea of a book."

I commented, "If a project grabs hold of me, keeps generating. I bang on that iron fist that's got hold of my ankle till its fingers wiggle free at the joints and I end up sitting on a warped park bench wondering why I'm not dragging a growling metal critter down the street anymore and get to miss it."

Info Desk Blogging

Gosh, I haven't done "Info Desk Blogging" in ages. I used to have an hour each week on the Info Desk here at Berkeley Public Library but that hasn't been the case for months now. I sort of have a once-a-month hour, which would be this hour. The last few times I've been here it's been hectic.

When I wrote "Gosh" 15 minutes ago it'd been pretty darn quiet, then, of course, I got several calls and people coming to the desk with questions. The call I just hung up was from someone who was asking about Trouble in Paradise. We have 4 versions of something called Trouble in Paradise. Two of these are novels (by different authors) and two are movies (one from 1992, the other from 1932). The 1992 movie stars Raquel Welch and we own the VHS format. The caller wanted us to hold the 1932 version for him to pick up, "I called earlier and talked to someone in the Art & Music dept and she said it was there and it was VHS." The 1932 version we have is DVD format and it's checked out with two holds. The caller asked for Trouble in Paradise; the library owns four distinctly different items with that title; unfortunately the person in A&M the caller talked to didn't have it clear which Trouble the caller needed. So I had to disappoint him.

feathers

Got a call at the office. Kent had taken the day off, was calling from home having gotten back from some shopping. "Feathers," he said. In the side room. Feathers leading to a bird. Bloody and dead. K says when he came upon the bird Sundy followed him, paused to sniff it, but was otherwise done with it.

Update on Flash

Flash stopped chewing herself a week or two past. But she has these dry bald patches on her butt and tail where the hair seems to be thinking about growing back but hasn't made any committments.

dare I?

I've posted several times to my new Dare I Read? blog. Have been enjoying it. It's not meant to be a collection of book reviews. Rather, it's a collection of thoughts about what I've read.

I see the only person who's commented there has been my brother (hey d!), so I'd guess I'm getting few visitors. I haven't investigated stats services. When last I looked into free webstats a couple years ago there wasn't much available. I suppose I should look again. When last I had semi-decent stats for my poetry blog ages ago I would check them obsessively ... oh look someone entered "idiotic poems" in google then came to my site! 3 people visited in one hour following the link from my poem on that poetry bulletin board! Wow. ...

It's more relaxing not to be obsessed. People will find their way to Dare I Read? or they won't.

I do occasionally comment on other poetry blogs. That's probably how I get the visitors who turn up here. LoveSettlement has been blogrolled. I ought to put up a blogroll. It seems polite. Plus there are several blogs I read that I'd be happy to recommend to other readers. Postings about them slide off the main page and who has time to poke around the archive?

Sutra sleeping

When I'm at the computer and Sutra is on my lap he likes to rest his chin on the keyboard tray as he snoozes. This means I have to type gently.

award-winning poet

Paul Guest at his blog says he didn't win a contest. "Joan Houlihan has won The Green Rose Prize for her manuscript Cincture. Which is cool. Many sincere congratulations to Joan." Joan? Oh, yeah. Joan. Proves you don't have to have a brain to win a poetry contest. Or a sensibility. Or taste. Or be nice.

Guest goes on to grump, "But, damn it all, my manuscript was in that pile with hers. Over the last two years, its pulled in several finalist spots in great competitions: the Brittingham; the Beatrice Hawley; the Levis Prize; and so on and so forth."

Fuck that. Contests are stupid. They don't have to be corrupt to be stupid. Publishers fuss about how poetry doesn't pay for itself, that it's not unreasonable to ask poets so few of whom seem to buy poetry to help subsidize the publication of books of poems via contest entry fees, that contests give valuable publicity to an unknown press, that contests usually only break even anyway what with paying the celebrity judge(s) or whatever so entrants' fees aren't some super windfall, that contests often send out the winning book to all the losers thus the fee actually returns something of value to the entrant, that fill in your justification here. Said John Martin founder of Black Sparrow Press, "My whole thing was [that] I would publish only what I really liked myself, and there's got to be two or three thousand people in the world who would agree with me." I don't recall having heard that Black Sparrow ever ran a contest.

Is it unfair to quote a literary press success story when few presses do anything but eat from the publisher's pocket? Probably. But I wonder how publishers who can't make money off their books can push on, putting all their hearts into getting to press (& distributed & reviewed &c) books not that they themselves discovered and delighted in and drove them but books that some celebrity judge (no matter how admired) got paid to choose out of a leaning tower of payors.

comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 3

Hardly worth posting this as a new version. A few small edits.

I may have sweated over the dialog, getting it as close to what we really said as I could, but it's banal. Without the punctuation it is difficult to tell who says what. Is this an advantage? Does it matter who says what? The words could have been said by anybody, really.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating, version 3

Glenn! Dinchu hear me? A gust gets into my hair, windy like that all day. Two girls, one dark, one fair. Hi. I let a wall stand for me. I’m glad to see them, really. Graduating Friday? No! Tomorrow! Seen any of the summer movies? One, but not really a “summer” movie. MariBeth stands beside me smiling, but doesn’t say anything. Julie pulls her dark hair from her shoulders, lets it spill again from her hand. I want to be natural, but I’m unnatural. Doing anything? Well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter. She bites her bagel. Coming to graduation? Julie and MariBeth both are graduating, a year after me. A year. I’m eighteen? As they walk on I walk. I hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party? No. A wind blows between what I say, what they say, what Julie says. A wind blows between the fingers I’ve taken out of my pockets.

Ah! ooh ooh. ah eee.

Sounds I make when Sundy turns his whiskered fast-breathing little nose into my ear when he's cozy on my shoulder.

wow

Double congratulations to Mr. C. Dale Young who has scheduled his wedding/committment ceremony and whose blog has achieved 10,000 visitors in its 2-month life. I wonder if he's seen an uptick in sales of his book?

I've been enjoying Dale's blog. It's lighter than Ron Silliman's. And I've been finding other interesting poet bloggers via Dale's blogroll. (Unlike Ron's the blogroll at Dale's blog is cozy and small. And I'm not on it.)

Maybe someday I'll read their poetry even.

comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 2

It was time to work on this. I posted it. I said to myself, here you go, Glenn. Go to it. So.

I didn't have a sense the line breaks were doing anything for the scene. So I took them out. That's all I did. Didn't change anything else. I'd been thinking the dialog effective. I actually remember sweating over the dialog. 20 years later I remember sweating over this dialog. How curious. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to capture what actually happened. I don't always want to do that. I did this time.

Once the piece was a prose paragraph I started excising the parts that displeased. I rather like the current result. Quiet and simple. I think that was what I wanted in the first place.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating, version 2

Glenn! Didn’tchu hear me? A gust gets into my hair that’s been stirring the day up. It’s been windy like that. Two girls, one dark, one fair. My back to the wall. Hi! I’m glad to see them, really. Graduating Friday? No! Tomorrow! Seen any of the summer movies? One, but not really a “summer” movie. MariBeth stands beside me smiling, but doesn’t say anything. Julie pulls her dark hair from her shoulders and lets it spill again from her hand. I want to be natural, but I’m unnatural. Doing anything? Well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter. She bites her bagel. Coming to graduation? Julie and MariBeth both are graduating, ayear after me. A year. I’m eighteen? Are they younger than me? As they walk on I walk. I hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party? No. A wind blows between what I say, what they say, what Julie says. A wind blows between the fingers I’ve taken out of my pockets.

it's raining, it's cold and windy

When better to watch a Morrissey video. "Do you hate me? Do you hate me?"

Thanks for the link, Talk Talk.

Meanwhile Paula's feeling "Dissatisfied." As she says, "Have you ever felt dissatisfied, thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself? ... [W]hatever I write, draw, shoot seems of no importance. Cheer up, Paula ... Would someone to blame help more?"

AB 1825 Sex Harassment Trainer

Kent has started up a new blog, too. AB 1825 Sex Harassment Trainer ... You know how it is, you work at the day job and you have ideas, ideas there's no place for at the day job. It's not that this is info he doesn't deal with at work. It is. But it's packaged in a particular way there and on the new blog he can pour out all this stuff he's picked up that doesn't fit the mold the day job requires. So. Cool. He's enthusiastic.

Meanwhile I had a huge surge of anxiety about the booklog. In a swoon I collapsed upon the bed, tucked my knees under my chin and sobbed.

OK. You know I didn't. Not that I haven't ever done that sort of thing. Boy howdy! But the surge of anxiety part, that happened. What if ... people don't like it? Don't like MEEEE??? ... Waaaaah! ...

Sniffle.

Leave me now. Read about Koko's nipple obsession. (Yes, that's the sort of thing you'll read about AB 1825 Sex Harassment Trainer ... Are you getting this google spider?) ...

Dare I Read?

I have started a new blog. It's called Dare I Read? and it's my booklog. I've been keeping a booklog for years. It's not reviews so much as it's notes on books so I don't forget them entirely. This could be interesting. Or not. Anyway, I've started it up and it's totally an experiment and everything's very preliminary but if I waited until it was perfect it'd never happen.

When I started the LoveSettlement blog the templates were very basic and I've hardly changed a thing. Obvious, right? But now the simplest templates come with comments and fancier graphics so we'll see how they work on Dare I Read? and if they work there I might be able to get over my trembling terror at change and incorporate them here.

weather report

brr.

Overcast. Chilly. Doesn't look like it'll rain. Weather report has it raining on the weekend.

What with the Monday holiday and taking today off I had a three day work week. A long week. By the end of the day my head's in a fog. Last weekend was a bust, despite the 3 days. I had 2 headaches and Kent was feeling low, too. Aren't there always so many things to do?

I put in a load of wash. I typed up a writing project.

Piles of shite to sort, and action needs be taken on some of it. What about selling Mom's house? Well?

Cats are underfoot. Sundy just bounded across the room. I'm not sure if it was to attack his brother.

hate

Kelli Russell Agodon has posted Marvin Bell's "32 Statements About Poetry".

#8 struck me: "Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate." I guess the advice here is to put ugly stuff in the poem, stuff you know some reader will loathe. Fact is, of course, it takes no effort to produce something someone will hate. Soon's you've put a word on paper someone will scorn it.

male gaze

"I look straight into men's eyes. Not with desire, but with the interest of one human being in another. To a straight guy, for whom that sort of relationship with a woman is complex and blurred, a stranger's unashamed and direct gaze is sexual. It's the gaze of the prostitute." Eleanor Brown

library down

The Berkeley Public Library has been having computer troubles for three weeks now. Sometimes just the internet is down. Sometimes everything's fine. Other times all the computers are kaput and when you go to the check-out desk the desk clerks have to write down the barcodes of the books you want to check out; when the computer comes up they'll rush to enter as many barcodes into the system as they can before the computer goes down. This also means the library catalog is down most the time so you can't look up anything. More than one patron has said, "Don't you wish you'd kept the card catalog?"

I guess in Technical Services where I work (no, Tech Services has nothing to do with keeping the computers running, it's where books are ordered, received, cataloged and those nice plastic covers put on) the computers have been up more often than the ones at the public service desks, so I've been (ugh) relatively lucky. Supposedly the problems plaguing the network for the last two weeks got fixed; then on the Monday holiday a power outage burned out a couple hard drives (or something). Though the computers were up today they weren't up to much. The later the day got the slower the computer on my desk got. And the back-up disk only captured activity up to Thursday night, thus everything entered into the computers on Friday was lost. That didn't affect me, but my supervisor was sure moanin'.

It's been seriously unfun, y'know?

poets bloggin'

"I was the guest speaker at a software conference in Sidney and got fired in the US while in Australia, so I spent 5 weeks living in a hotel, reading Pynchon and feeding the larakeets on the lanai." link

"I looked down at the controls: the power light was out. I toggled the switch but nothing happened. The chair was dead. That didn't stop me from trying the switch several more times, though. Almost immediately, I knew what I was looking at, besides the wall: five and a half hours until Steve would show up. And five and a half hours it was." link

"If you are thinking about welding, forget it. Poems do not weld. A highly skilled person can braze a poem together, but the high heat can distort it and can be expensive. I recommend 'gluing' poems together." link

Anagrams of names of poets' blogs ... includes "Therapist With a Dream Inside: I Am the Pirate’s Hardiest Wind" link

comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 1

This is another 20 year old poem. It's from that "Blue & Yellow Sun/Work Journal Part 2" from which I've taken my last couple poems-to-revise. Poor me. I was a depressed kid. What? You're surprised?

I'm posting this one because I like elements of it, it embarasses me a little, and I don't see what to do with it.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating

“Glenn! Didn’tchu hear me?”

The day is whipped with a whisk.
A gust pulls my hair,
flicks my forehead with stray strands.
Two girls, “young women”
one dark haired, tan skin,
the other fair, rippling white-fleece hair.
My back to the wall. “Hi!”

As always I step back nonphysically,
though I am glad to see them.
We converse
graduating Friday?
No! Tomorrow!
Seen any of the summer movies?
one, but not really a “summer” movie.
MariBeth stands beside me smiling,
saying little,
while Julie pulls her hair back
from her shoulders.

I want to be natural,
not tumbling over inside.
Hands clutch, unclutch in pockets.
doing anything?
well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter
munches on her cream cheese slathered bagel.
The wall offers little support
as I rest my back.

coming to graduation?
Julie and MariBeth both are graduating,
only a year from my formal exit.
It’s a cliché, but can it be a year?
They still seem so young
but I feel no older or more mature.
Am I really eighteen?
They are ready to leave.
I tag along.

i hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party?
no.
The subject dilutes in the wind.
We are wandering down Main.
they hold up more conversational weight
than I.
I exist in a limbo world; isolated.
My words filter through the void,
I am an incredible distance from them,
when should i be holding on?
already I let go.

Flash

Flashy is chewing her butt raw. We've dosed her & the cats with flea meds, both internally & externally. Hope that shuts down the irritation that's causing her to gnaw her fur off. Poor girl. Besides the flea-specific potions Kent bought some anti-itch sprays at the pet store. The sprays seem to have a lot of tea tree oil in them, which at least doesn't smell bad. They haven't done magic, though. Today when K & I got home from an aborted trip to SF (BART train got stuck at MacArthur station for an indefinite delay -- "at least 20 minutes," the announcement said, sounding optimistic -- we hopped out and took a bus back to Berkeley) we found Flash had chewed another hole in her fur, her exposed skin inflamed. As with barking and trash raiding she knows we don't want her chewing herself so only really gets down to serious gnawing when we're away.

gannon

The Gannon Story has been bubbling up for a couple weeks now. "Jeff Gannon" is nom de video of the man in the White House press room who asked George W. Bush that weird softball question recently, the one that accused Democrats of being "out of touch with reality." Gannon's sort of noise fills up the private rooms where Republicans let down their hair, and gets noted with indignant gasps on lefty weblogs or op-eds but seldom gets disseminated from such august settings as the media room of the White House. My favorite coinage so far tags the story, "Propagannon"; this man smelled of the dirty-tricks propaganda campaigns of Bush behind-the-scenes man Karl Rove. Or, anyway, some diarists at dailykos decided to run "Gannon" in Google and see what came up. And things came up!

You have to know already the context for this post, but it's a nice thumbnail of the "gay underground", the closeted men who know that being out would get in the way of their hobnobbing with the powerful, so they're not out, sometimes married, and often verbally bash out gays, either because they are self-hating or as a calculated distraction. Padraig (at the link) says, "I know Gay men of a certain age and income who routinely excoriate "the fags" ... But since the lights are out in the orgy rooms, good Republicans are happy to just overlook and pretend not to see. It is the public avowal of affection that makes them crazy over the gay marriage issue. ... I personally am sick and tired of being told that my only option is to have a lavender marriage with an understanding lesbian or a loveless marriage with an unsuspecting woman while trolling public toilets and internet chat rooms on the side. [Typical Republican alternatives to same sex marriage]"

For that context go to the "Jeff Gannon" page at dkosopedia.

po biz

Are you interested in the poetry business? As a writer of poems and one who would be happy to see a few of those in print it's my job to be, I guess. But reading about how many thousands of poems jostle in the slush that washes up on the desk of every harried poetry editor, especially when an editor says something like this, "I have 61 submissions [3-6 poems in each submission] I need to read, a combination of submissions that passed our initial readers, submissions from previous contributors, and submissions from very established poets. Although one can always dream big, it is unlikely I will find more than maybe 2 or 3 poems in this stack to publish."

[Full disclosure. *And, no, I haven't seen nearly so many poems.]

Then there are contests. I don't like contests. I don't think they are a good idea. I have entered contests -- yes, I wanted to be a Yale Younger Poet! I just think a publisher shouldn't publish the best but what he likes the most, what he loves, what he has fallen in love with, what he can't live without, what he has to show the whole goddamn world, what he is willing to sacrifice for, because with poetry publishers rarely break even let alone make bucks.

On his blog Steve Mueske posts correspondence with a suspicious poet on whether the new contest Steve is sponsoring is rigged. I know Steve a teeny tiny bit from an online workshop and from publishing one of his poems in the latest issue of Hogtown Creek Review. He's a very good writer and his three candles is worth reading. Now he's getting into the publishing of real books. The poet who wins his contest will be fortunate.

reviews

I haven't been reading it much lately but I discovered Rhubarb is Susan, a blog that reviews individual poems plucked from ezines and if anyone is curious about such a project it's quite readable.

we have poems

Kent took my back-up Zip disk to work and transferred its load of poems and other writings to one of those little flash memories plug-ins, which he brought home and poked into the USB port. Nearly everything that I'd typed into the PC was on that disk. OK. We're in business.

a shuffle of ten

1. "Bamako City" Malian Musicians & Damon Albarn

2. "Scottish Rite Temple Stomp" Ninian Hawick

3. "Get Up and Go" The Go-Gos

4. "American Pie" Don McLean

5. "Jack Names the Planets" Ash

6. "Miss Dandys" Bandit Queen

7. "Laid (live)" James

8. "364" 7th Betty

9. "Worked Up So Sexual" The Faint

10. "Speeding" The Go-Gos


Curious, I thought I'd deleted the Go-Gos from my iPod. Oh, I see. I only deleted the playlist for the Go-Gos. They must still be in the library. Hm. Gotta fix that. I don't hate the Go-Gos or anything. I just didn't much like this selection of Go-Gos' songs so I deleted them all (I thought) to make room for other stuff.

poets bloggin'

I am pleased to see two names that became familiar to me via poetry bulletins boards are now blogging:

Amy Unsworth ... in her latest post Amy asks if she should be working harder on getting her work out, "Should I be more motivated to submit? When I'm in the mood where I hear time's winged chariot, I get annoyed because I haven't been submitting. But for the last few months I haven't felt motivated to get the work out. Writing alone is enough."

Frank Matagrano ... In posts so far Frank has excerpted from articles on Deep Throat (the Watergate source), the benefits of a wok's breath (wok hay), and prescription drugs. But he also notes an acceptance of two poems by a literary magazine.

sending poems out

I have not sent any poems out anywhere in ... months? Maybe years.

I only have a few on the Mac, the computer with internet access. I can print out poems from the PC. I tell myself I'll do that. There are certainly places I could be (ought to be?) sending work.

But last night I decided to send some stuff out and I wasn't up to the whole printing and self-addressing and stamping so it would have to be a literary ezine. I quickly wrote a note and grabbed 3/4 of the poems on the Mac (which would be 6 poems for those who want to know) and copied 'em to the email to send to Poetry Superhighway.

Featured poet of the week? Me?

random blog sentences

"This seems like something I would like to do with my life. Write a great book and then hide in an apartment in new york." link ... how funny. the preceding sentence has been edited out of the post to which I linked. The post, having been edited, changed its URL. Now the only place these words appear on the web is here. Whatever!

"people left, got new shoes, came home, had fun" link

"two guys playing a $25,000 match of Pong" link

"Albert got the idea that he could weigh his mice. So he brought them down one at the time and put them on our scale. And then he wrote down how much each one weighed." link

ALL SENTENCES FOUND BY HITTING THE "NEXT BLOG" BUTTON AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE.

this year

I didn't go to City Hall. But many did.

SF marriages

The marriages at SF City Hall. A year ago.

scary rabbit

My brother David has occasionally been creating his own renditions of movie monsters, particularly the ones that could have been realized better in their bad movies.

"Night of the Lepus is a bad movie. Well, not a bad movie so much as a bad execution of a silly idea. ... But think about it - giant jack rabbits hungering for your flesh? Giant carnivorous beasts that move as fast as panthers and can leap a twelve foot wall?" Scary!

Hogtown Creek Review

Hogtown Creek Review is now available at Cody's in Berkeley.

It's supposed to be in Moe's, too. But I can't find it on the shelf. I left 3 copies with Owen, the poetry buyer, when I was at Moe's for the Ron Silliman/Kit Robinson reading.

comments on "Love" version 5

I don't like version 5 as much as version 4. I've been thinking version 4 is the final version. But I wanted to try again after I achieved a final version. I haven't done that before. Plus I find version 5 interesting. I think its argument is better constructed than version 1. There were things (many things) version 4 left behind and I wanted to give the other elements another chance.

"Love", version 5

The sky likes love.
Love always rides there with the moon.
The stars are jealous.

I dream about love between the stars.
The sky is passionate with me.
Stars love passion more than they love me.
Love vanishes like stars in the sky.

Stars love the way I love.
Love loves love in the sky.
In the sky love pursues love to the stars.
Still I love love.

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the love in the stars in the sky.
I love the way the stars love the sky.
I love the sky.

see the clever birdie

crow fashions tool to get yums

summary judgment

Judge Doris Ling-Cohan of a New York Supreme Court (unlike the US Supreme Court, the New York Supreme Court is a lower-level court; the NY Court of Appeals is the court that has the last word in NY) ruled on summary judgment that the state of New York must begin issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Being as Kent's a lawyer and reads & writes about court decisions as part of his job I asked him how significant he thought it was that the judge ruled on summary judgment. Kent shrugged. "You have a trial when the facts are disputed."

In her opinion Judge Ling-Cohan says, "Defendant [the City Clerk of New York] does not dispute that plaintiffs [the same sex couples currently suing to be allowed to marry] are serious, committed couples, devoted to building lives together as families, whose relationships are no different from those of married couples. In fact, [the city clerk] acknowledges that same-sex couples can establish committed, loving relationships and can be fine parents. Since both sides agree that there are no material facts in dispute, summary judgment is appropriate."

Further the judge finds, "[The city clerk] does not dispute that plaintiffs and their children suffer serious burdens by being excluded from civil marriage. Marriage provides an extensive legal structure that protects the couple and any children." She goes on to list several of these, including joint income tax filing, joint property ownership, collecting on life insurance, presumed relation to children, inheritance, etc. I downloaded the pdf of the decision. The pdf is available at the Lambda Legal site.

The judge stayed her order for 30 days. Even if there had been no appeal (and the mayor of New York City has already appealed) there weren't going to be any gay marriages right away. Some surprise. Anyway, Kent seems not to find the summary judgment aspect particularly significant, at least as regards the eventual outcome. At this point it's this judge's opinion and nothing has changed really, not for anyone who wants to get married.

comments on "Love" version 4

ah yes, even more "brutal" ...

"Love", version 4

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the sky.
I love the sky in the stars in the sky.
I love the stars in the sky in the sky in the stars.
I love the sky in the sky in the stars.
In the stars I love the sky in the stars.
I love stars in sky in the stars’ sky.
I love the sky, the stars, and the stars.
I love the sky in stars.

fingerspelling

I've studied sign language. My hands are frequently in motion anyway so some years ago I decided to incorporate fingerspelling into my fidgets. If my hand was going to be jiggling or fiddling it might as well be improving my manual alphabet at the same time. I'll fingerspell signs as I pass them, fingerspell words as they pass through my head. When this will come in handy, who knows, it's not like many people can read fingerspelling.

the sun king

When I hear an American soldier has died in Iraq I picture him kneeling blindfolded on the White House lawn while George W. Bush plugs him in the back of the head.

Last night Kent said, "Bush would never be able to do that."

And I said, "He could. Easily. Maybe he'd need a couple authority figures standing beside him, a Dick Cheney, a Donald Rumsfeld. But he would do it. And feel good about it. Day after day."

Kent had been watching a special on Auschwitz and was impressed again by the way ordinary men were essential to the running of the factories of death. He saw one interviewed, a man who processed the goods stolen from the people shipped to the camps, the man volunteered an interview to contradict the Holocaust-deniers. It really happened, he wanted to say. It happened and I helped it happen. Was I ever prosecuted? No. Few were.

Funny Bush's assertion that democracy is essential, that freedom is what America is bringing to Iraq. I don't believe him. He is no fan of democracy. He's not interested in it here.

Fact is, I'm okay with the notion that democracy can be/ought to be spread around ... that a benevolent military power might even effect positive change with guns. There are certainly evil dictators that need taking down. But it'll only work when the power that forces change is ... not stupid. Is truthful. Is generous. Is thoughtful. Is ... wise? Wise. That'd be something. Wise would mean such military might is used rarely and then carefully, thinking far into the future about what changes it brings -- both to the liberated people and to the liberators.

The American people in sending Bush back to the White House chose the sun king, the lord that feasts on human hearts ... in order that the sun come up tomorrow? And the American people decided his hunger could be fed with a few troops a day.

pwoermd of the day

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepuh?

misc

sore from lifting weights at the gym ... one of the personal trainers was helping a new member set up his routine, I worked out around them, the trainer said to me, "you're doing good, nice form." ... I followed a woman onto a thigh machine and had to reduce the weight by 5 pounds; later I followed her on an arm machine and she looked all worn down so I said, "if it makes you feel any better I had to reduce the weight when I sat down after you at the thigh machine." she blinked, then said, "I guess that makes me feel a little better."

kent gives me updates on "24", which I don't watch. I prefer k's updates to watching the show.

kent made a mix CD last night and listened to it today, "it's really tough to get a mix just right."

went to a meeting this morning to learn about the library's newest Electronic Resources. what comes to mind when you see the phrase "Electronic Resources"? me, I get stuck on the "electronic" part, then I think these "resources" must have to do with electronics or computers or something ... but it seems these are reference databases the library subscribes to. dictionaries, encyclopedias, indexes to periodicals and associations. during the meeting I suggested renaming the page, instead of "Electronic Resources" howabout oh maybe "Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, Indexes, etc."?

influence

C. Dale Young wonders about his "voice": "When I first started seriously writing poems, I spent a lot of time worrying about 'voice.' So many people, especially in graduate school, had a running discussion about finding one's voice. I became a little paranoid about it. Listening to them, I knew I didn't want to become an imitation of a poet I liked. I went so far as to never read one book of poetry at a time because I feared I would start emulating that poet. I always read two books around the same time, hoping to offset the other. So, I would read Sylvia Plath next to George Herbert, Marianne Moore next to John Donne, John Ashbery next to Whitman. ...

Recently, a friend of mine read the galleys for my new book. In a phone conversation, he reported: 'Your work is all about shadow.' My response: 'What are you talking about?'"

I posted the following in Comments: "Several years ago I thought to myself, the poem I'm writing today sounds like it's in the style of a poet I read a month ago. I wasn't sure whether that excited me (hey, I can write that sort of poem, too!) or if it made me nervous (anybody can see this is just an imitation of so-and-so).

There are certain poems I've written that sound most characteristic of my own 'voice'. There are times I think all my poems sound the same. A teacher once said one of my poems seemed typical of me and I said, 'What's typical for me?' A sort of meditative, contemplative poem, he said. I had to think about that."

Kent and I ate our brunch at on Chester's deck this morning. We were able to see San Francisco clearly, despite a quite usual thin haze. Young has a nice post today about the weather where he is: "Outside, the sun is out and the light is that gauzy light you see in San Francisco many times during the year. All that salt water in the air refracting the light and the hills partitioning up this light so that everything glows as if in a very well-planned fish bowl. Out over Golden Gate Park, the Marin Headlands, grey but somewhat golden from the sea's reflected light. And off to the left, the breakers landing at Ocean Beach while two teenage boys are running along the tops of the dunes. Out by the Cliff House, a red kite. And everywhere, the sound of the Pacific, the dim roar one hears in a shell held to one's ear."

Why do I suspect that "gauzy light" is as much smog as "salt water in the air refracting the light"?

comments on "Love" version 3

I restricted this version to these words: love star sky I dream moon

OK. You got me. I didn't. I may yet.

"Love", version 3

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the sky, the way the sky loves stars.

Stars love the sky.
Stars love the way the sky loves stars.

The sky loves stars more than I.
I love stars and I love sky.

I dream about love between stars.
In the sky there are stars and stars.

Stars love stars.
There is one sky, one love, one me.

There is one dream the moon turns.
And in this dream I love and sky.

Rice defines herself

Last week I heard an excerpt from the Senate confirmation hearings for Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. California Senator Barbara Boxer said, after having run through a list of Rice's statements in the lead up to war, "Your loyalty to the mission [invading Iraq] ... overwhelmed your respect for the truth."

To which Rice replied, "I'd like to [discuss this] in such a way that it does not impugn my integrity."

That night the local PBS station was airing some sort of guide on buying antiques. The show's host demonstrated how to ask a dealer questions about a piece of interest. Ask where the dealer acquired the piece, what he knows about its history, has he himself made any repairs, etc. The host pulled out a drawer and pointed out a hidden repair to the back end of the drawer. The dealer nodded, made a couple additional comments ... When he'd walked away the host said to the camera (I'm paraphrasing), "That dealer was honest and upfront. He answered my questions quickly and matter-of-factly. Beware the dealer who says, when you point out a flaw in the piece (and a possible contradiction in what he's so far told you), 'Are you trying to impugn my integrity?'"

Japanglish

In David Chadwick's tale about moving to Japan to study Zen, Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure in Japan, he spends a couple pages on the ways the Japanese use English; it's a dash of the exotic. A lady's dress shop called Infect. A coffee shop called Guns and Coffee.

Chadwick taught English. He copied down these slogans from student Tshirts:

Pay close attention to various objects and be calm

for the player who demands the ultimate best sensitive comfortable fat fashion good things exist throughout time

Here's something printed on one of the notebooks he bought: please use this note book politely, and use up the last sheet. And then please use your brains everyday.

Dear Emily

In her poem "Dear Emily Dickinson" Cathleen Calbert asks Ms D lots of questions ("... how would you classify yourself? / Agoraphobic? Anorexic? New England eccentric? / ... / Did you have trouble rhyming? / ... Were you thinking -- / in gaps?"), and ends her poem with "... I've read every one / of your goddamned poems, / and I still don't know what they mean."

It always baffles me when I see people who otherwise fume about obscurity in poetry call Emily Dickinson a favorite. I've been gradually working my way through Dickinson's complete poems, I've been working on it for years now, likely I'll be working on it for years yet. Dickinson intrigues me. She really is like no one else. But her poems read like riddles. And they seem to me so fierce, a philosopher's work, as difficult to read as the thoughts they contain. Sure there are the anthology pieces. Dickinson wrote many many poems and many are easy, even goopy in their bees and sunsets sentimentality, but the more typical Dickinson, I'd say, is:

poem numbered 868

They ask but our Delight --
The Darlings of the Soil
And grant us all their Countenance
For a penurious smile.

What are the "Darlings"? Flowers? I'm tempted to say worms. And why is the smile "penurious"? Is it begrudging? Is it the smile of the poverty-stricken?

Then there's, poem #870

Finding is the first Act,
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"
Fourth, no Discovery --
Fifth, no Crew --
Finally, no Golden Fleece --
Jason -- sham -- too

Is this a version of the Hollywood formula -- boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-gets-girl-back? ... Maybe boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-never-really-had-girl-in-the-first-place ... boy was even deluding himself that he met a girl? And boy doesn't exist either? It's a fucking movie! Stumble out into the daylight and take your popcorn with you!

Ron Silliman

Being as I've been reading Ron's blog almost daily (it's a nice break from the political blogs I otherwise obsessively visit & revisit), and he did quote me on his blog, something like, "What the hell are you talking about, Ron?", I hied myself over to Telegraph Ave for his reading. He lives in Philadelphia. I'm not sure what brought him to Berkeley, other than the Moe's reading (he gave another reading or two while in the area). I'm sure I've seen Ron read before. At least once. But I didn't remember his reading style. Turns out he's above average as a poet-performer. He read about farting underwater and punned and riffed off pop culture & politics, one long jumble of a piece.

Kit Robinson, who read first, writes in a similar vein (Ron said, "Whenever I hear Kit he reads poems I wish I'd written.") but he read with little inflection. I was sleepy (having woken in the middle of the night last night and not been able to get back to sleep) so I yawned and yawned during Kit's reading. Ron's reading was sprightly enough to wake me.

comments on "Love", version 2

I wrote version 2 last night. Right fresh it seemed clever and funny. Aged a day I'm finding it faux naif. Too cute. The original version is brutal, you might say, in that it forces variations even when they're absurd, the variations limited to a few words. Version 2 gets love-eyed and stars dance like fairies in it, reaches for a pretty metaphysics, less bounded loses tension.

"Love" version 2

"Love as a Matter for Stars"


I love the stars.
I love the sky which provides a place for stars.
I love the sky, most all the time.

The sky loves its stars, why not?
The stars love each other, love each other times one billion trillion.
The stars love!

The sky loves its stars more than I.
Stars would love me if I were a star, especially if I were a big star.
In the sky love is all over, filling up the space between stars, filling up the stars.
Is there room for anything else? No! Love is always expanding.

When I wake up in the middle of the night I discover I’ve been dreaming about love between stars.
It’s very hot, this love. I have to take off my sweaty shirt.
Even though it’s cold in space love doesn’t shiver.

Love rides a sunbeam, when it’s relaxing, when it doesn’t want to get anywhere fast.
Otherwise love is already there, where love would go if it weren’t there.

Love is sitting on the moon watching me.
I want to be there, too! I’m envious.
I would hop up and down in lunar gravity, holding onto love.
Then, because you have to, I’d let go, whee! And we’d both fall down.

comments on "Love"

"Love" is from the Tales of the Blue & Yellow Sun notebook. But not the Blue & Yellow Sun section. After I grew tired of the Blue & Yellow Sun stuff the notebook sat around partially filled and I began a notebook which I titled Tales of Nothing in Particular. It was my first work journal and it was there I started using the method I've continued using for 20 years now. I start a poem in the notebook, then write on it until it's finished or I don't want to write on it further. When next I open the notebook I either do some tweaking of the poems already in it, continue the last poem I was writing, or start a new one. If a poem wants extensive revision or an older poem wants additions I would type the poem then do revisions on the typed version. Since I've had the computer I've done most revision on the computer. In the last couple years I've done serial poems in the notebook. Used to be it was rare for me to extend a poem; it was always a new poem I was writing, even if the new poem was a sequel or variation on the theme of the poem last written. These days I seem to do a lot of variation on a theme in the bounds of what I think of as a single poem. I'm now willing to allow the poem a lot of range.

In "Love" I was trying out a lot of variation on a single idea. I think it works pretty well. Maybe it's fine as it is. When I was reading it in the notebook another version started bubbling around it so I quickly typed up the original then started pursuing the new.

"Love"

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the love in the stars in the sky.
I love the way the stars love the sky.
I love the sky.
Stars love the way I love.
Love loves love in the sky.
In the sky love pursues love to the stars.
Still I love love.
I dream about love between the stars.
The sky is passionate with me.
Stars love passion more than they love me.
Love vanishes like stars in the sky.
The sky likes love.
Love always rides there with the moon.
The stars are jealous.

my job

A friend asked me about the state of my job. "I haven't read anything about it lately on your blog."

I haven't been talking about the library because, frankly, I've been waiting to find out something definite about it. Will I still be working there at the start of the new fiscal year this summer? Until this week I'd thought my chances quite good -- lay-offs depend not only on whom or what positions the library administration wants to terminate or eliminate but also on union seniority rules. My seniority in my job classification is fairly low but since I'm fulltime I've actually banked a relatively large amount of seniority since most jobs in my class are parttime. But the rules are complicated, it seems. And is the administration doing a bunch of job reclassifications? Can person with 20 years experience in parttime position X job classificaton U, where position X is being eliminated, bump person with 2 years experience in position Y job classification V, where position Y is fulltime and job classifications U and V have different requirements?

I'm told there is going to be a special meeting of the Board of Library Trustees this Wednesday. The Board has to approve the administration's proposals and supposedly the board isn't just a rubberstamp but actually curious and skeptical.

lunch hour

Just read through Robert Ullman's comics diary Lunch Hour Comics.

Ullman tried to do a brief comic a day, the production of the day's piece to take no more than an hour. These are simple, nicely drawn moments. Ullman even allows himself a couple, I-can't-think-of-anything strips. Ullman's cartoon version of himself is cute. For a reason that's not compelling (to see if I can?) I've decided to post to this blog every day. This means there are going to be plenty of days in which I think, as Ullman does on his diary of 3/9/04, he's drawing a four-panel grid in his spiral bound sketchbook, a cup of coffee on a napkin on the round table (in a cafe?), his chin resting on an elbow, "It's only taken about a week of this to determine that my life is pretty boring."

pwoermd of the day

eadacheadacheadach

deleted

I leave joky comments on people's blogs. When I go back they've been deleted. On this blog all objectionable comments are pre-deleted.

am I really reading this many books?

What's in my stack of active reading:

A Few Perfect Hours ... and other stories from Southesast Asia and Central Europe, a comic-art travelogue by Josh Neufeld

The Adventures of Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, a graphic novel by Chris Ware

Purgatorial, poems by Dale Jensen

What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hip-hop, edited by Gary Gach

In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall's famous account of watching the Chimpanzees at Gombe Stream

The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report by Timothy Ferris

Between the Palms: a collection of Gay Travel Erotica edited by Michael T. Luongo

The Best American Poetry 2004, guest editor Lyn Hejinian

Red Mars, a science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, vol 1: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude, edited by Jerome Rothenberg & Pierre Joris

The New York Trilogy, three short novels by Paul Auster

Plus the book I read in the tiny window of my lunch hour during the week: Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure in Japan by David Chadwick

There are other books I've started but haven't been reading lately. One or more of the above may actually be in that category (or may soon be). Let's not mention magazines and blogs, newspapers and correspondence.

Poetry Walked

The reading was good -- that Berkeley Rep has a nice sound system, except, that is, for the inevitable but unplanned-for tango with the microphone stand. This poet is tall, that poet is short. But is there anybody adjusting the mic for the difference? And, since there isn't anybody to do it for them, do the poets figure out how to do it themselves? Or do they stand on tiptoe, fumble the mic loose from its grip, or hunch over? Yeah. Well.

Not every poet scheduled was able to make it. The man who wrote "Puff, the Magic Dragon", Lenny Lipton, was supposed to croon the song in the first part of the evening but came late. When he did get up on stage he brought along the lyrics. "I wrote this 41 years ago," he said. Most the audience knew the words. Oddly, I got teary. And that song has always annoyed me. It's a death sentence for the imagination.

I gave copies of Hogtown Creek Review to Robert Hass, Lyn Hejinian, and Judy Grahn. Hass brightened when I went up to him, he's such a nice man, quickly introducing his wife, Brenda (Hillman, also a poet), and I gave my name saving Bob from having to remember it. (Like I would blame him for that!) Lyn recognized one of the names on the cover (Niloufar) and when I said I wondered why they chose to put Niloufar on the cover when she was just the translator, Lyn shrugged, "The translator so often doesn't even get a credit." Judy Grahn was at a table in the lobby when I was shuffling out through the crowd. I thrust the anthology under her nose for autograph. The woman seated next to Judy was saying how much she enjoyed Grahn's Another Mother Tongue, a work of historiography on gay roles. I said, "Ms. Grahn, I read Another Mother Tongue at a time in my life when it was very important to me." Judy paused, touched, and took my hand.

Lucy Day, who has sent poems for HCR to my PO Box, said hi, and I thanked her for sending poems and said I wasn't sure if there would be another issue. I'd let her know. Hope springs eternal, eh?

I've started Lyn's number of Best American Poetry, not out long.

Poetry Walk

The poems have been in the sidewalk for a year and a half now and I still haven't read them all. I remember passing Robert Hass one morning on my way to work. He was holding a cup of coffee and mingling with several other middle-aged-ish, intellectual-looking folks at the corner of Addison & Shattuck. That yellow do-not-cross-this-line tape was stretched between fold-out traffic barriers. Workers were doing something to the sidewalk, I could see.

The poems are all collected now in a paperback anthology. I bought the book at a library event, a trial heat, one might say, to today's 2 hour plus reading with "Robert Hass, Opal Palmer Adisa, Ivan Arguelles, Alfred Arteaga, Chana Bloch, Joshua Clover, Lucha Corpi, Jean Day, Lucille Lang Day, Patricia Dienstfrey, Marcia Falk, Jack and Adelle Foley, Gloria Frym, Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Griffin, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Alice Jones, Joyce Jenkins, Ron Loewinsohn, Jack Marshall, David Meltzer, Adam David Miller, Laura Moriarty, Michael Palmer, Jim Powell, Stephen Ratcliffe, John Roberts, Kit Robinson, James Schevill, Richard Silberg, Carol Snow, Julia Vinograd, and Dean Young." I haven't read the book yet, either. But don't I got lotsa books to read? How many sidewalks?

Blogarama

I listed my site.

titanic

I washed a big pile of dishes. What I had in the 5-CD changer: Jeff Buckley's Grace, which Kent bought today at Amoeba (K has been playing Buckley's version of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" for days), John Wesley Harding's The Confessions of St. Ace, Hapa (their self-titled first release), Pansy Division's Total Entertainment, and Jill Sobule's Happy Town.

A pleasing mix.

Have been checking in on Nasa's page of pictures from Saturn, particularly the new ones of Titan.

I haven't posted a new version of the Blue & Yellow Sun poem because I haven't done a new version of it. I started typing into the computer all the Blue & Yellow Sun poems (& stories), thinking I'd do a global revision, but there are a lot of them.

pwoermds

Ron Silliman talks about Geof Huth's anthology of pwoermds, the term one of many Huth seems to have coined or adjusted the meaning of. "Pwoermds" reminds me of one of my brother David's coinages, "Switagern" which is a griffin-like beast whose front portion is swan and whose back portion is tiger. Note that both Geof & David use every letter from the two source words when creating a new one. Ron doesn't seem much impressed by the pwoermd ... "a comprehensive anthology of literary minimalism – from the one-letter poems of Joyce Holland’s Alphabet Anthology up to, say, haiku – would generally reveal pwoermds to be the weakest mode therein." I don't know what all is in the Huth anthology (I could probably buy the damn thing, yeah?) but I wonder if Huth has included poems associated with American haiku, like the ones I saw in Cor van den Heuvel's Haiku Anthology, "foalmosteady", being a favorite of mine (foal+almost+steady). (Consulting my notebook I see I encountered "foalmosteady" by Emily Romano in the magazine Modern Haiku edited by Robert Spiess, not in the Haiku Anthology. However, in the Haiku Anthology one would see some by Marlene Mountain, including, "sn wfl k s")

In Silliman's comments I threw in a pwoermd, riffing off one by John Byrum, "UTTER":

UDTER

Senorita Beche

Senorita Beche travels the coast.

good Chinese food

If you are in Berkeley and you want Chinese food eat at Mandarin Garden. Mandarin Garden used to be called Yu Ying. Yu Ying River? Or just Yu Ying? I think they changed the name at the recommendation of a consultant. We've yet to order something we don't like. They have prompt delivery, too.

Around the corner there's Long Life Vegi House, which is also good. When I was attending UC Berkeley my mother would visit once a month and take me to lunch at Long Life Vegi. She would tell the waiters how great everything was, how she came all the way from Sebastopol for their food. When I'd graduated and was finally making some money I would pay and insist she be the one to take home any leftovers. Finally, sick of the place, I insisted we eat other places.

Kent and I have probably eaten more times at Mandarin Garden than I ate at Long Life Vegi. And I still like the food. Not that I hate the food at Long Life. I'd eat there again, I suppose. Their gluten-based chicken simalcrum is pretty decent. And it has a certain atmosphere. A very Chinese-restaurant bustle.

money money

I've seen dollar bills stamped "Queer Money" to demonstrate how money passes through the hands of queers, too. A pre-wheresgeorge hint of what dirty (or pious) fingers have fiddled with the corners of your Abe. Didn't I used to suck on pennies? Yeah. They tasted best.

Now there's a gay charity, Rainbow World Fund. Their "mission is to promote LGBT philanthropy in the area of world humanitarian relief." This way people in blighted countries will think, Hey, those weird Western ways sure work for me! Well, as the button on the cap ever on Julia Vinograd's head has it, you gotta be "Weird and proud".

Money from our movement. Tsunami relief or Subaru.

We've had a five dollar bill sitting on the desk for ... weeks? We can't quite bear to spend it, I guess. There's a mash note across the Lincoln Memorial:

EDEN,

Don't worry
I wouldn't
wish myself
on anyone
either but
sometimes
two wrongs
do make a
right.
[heart]
Alekzi [?]
689-9604

all three

All three animals are in the room. Both cats are settled on the back of the couch, facing away from me. The dog is on the floor behind my chair, licking a paw.

I phoned the US District Court in Oakland tonight. No jury duty this time, but call again later this month at such-n-such a time ... this is the 2nd time I've been put off. How many times can they do that?

Kent is watching the start of the new season of "24".

cold & rainy

Looks ugly out the window.

Went last night to Poetry & Pizza, the reading series I help run. Both readers were very good. I talked afterward with Shola Wolpe. She's got several readings in the area. A real variety of venues: coffee shop, pub, radio, bookstore. That's saturation! I hope she sells a lot of books. She lives in Los Angeles but (as you can see by her calendar of readings) she gets around. Even if somebody else (her publisher?) does the bulk of the work setting up readings this is still a lot of work, a big committment of time & energy. Most of these places don't pay (P&P doesn't, but you do get free food). She performs her work well (and the writing is sharp) so I was not surprised she sold several books last night. Shola seems to have done a lot of travelling in her life; it must not cause her anxiety the way it does me. I enjoy travel, but every time I go anywhere I feel doomed. Mildly doomed.

The Best Poems of 2004

Every time I read a book of poems I stuff in the back a batch of placemarks. When I read a poem I quite like, one that I want to revisit, explore, I pop a placemark in next to it. I return to the poem a few times, reading it carefully, sometimes aloud. If after 5 readings or so I still don't want to leave the poem behind I hand copy the poem into a looseleaf notebook. By hand copying the poem I incorporate it into my body of work -- I've written it, after all. At the end of the year I read aloud all the poems I copied out in that year. This year I didn't get around to the reading until Tuesday night. Here's the list of poems:

"Mom told me to grow up and win the Nobel Prize" by Val Gerstle

"I Remember Clearly" by Imre Oravecz

"Theorem" by Walter Conrad Arensberg

"You say, 'I will come'" by Lady Otomo

"My long white hair is framed by green mountains" by Han-shan Te-ch'ing

"mountain sounds carry a chill wisdom" by Shih-Shu

"Written in the Year of the Parrot" by John Yau

"Hangover" by Jeffrey Conway

"A Week in the Life of the Ethnically Indeterminate" by Elena Georgiou

"As From a Quiver of Arrows" by Carl Phillips

"My Body" by Joan Larkin

"The Cow-Boy" by Vicente Huidobro

"Lovely Childhood" by Gottfried Benn

"People" by Hans Arp

two dinosaur haiku, "Fluxist Poem #5", "Friday", "Beautiful Cowards", and "You" by Sparrow

"Instinct" by Edith Sodergran

"Shhh", "Teeth", and "Heaven" by Billy Merrell

"I tie my Hat - I crease by Shawl", "Because I could not stop for Death -", and "Four Trees - upon a solitary Acre -" by Emily Dickinson

Office of Marriage Security

I'm listening to Morrissey: "America ... where the President / is never black, female, or gay / ... you've got nothing to say to me" ... Morrissey, didn't he make a big thing of his celibacy and refuse to respond to questions about his sexuality? A webpage of FAQs about Morrissey quotes Mr M thus, "'I refuse to recognize the terms hetero-, bi-, and homo-sexual. Everybody has exactly the same sexual needs. People are just sexual, the prefix is immaterial.'" So, uh, whatever.

Meanwhile great champion of marriage Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, has announced the dissolution of his marriage. Isn't he Catholic? As a Christmas greeting this year we got a smiling picture of twins and a note that their parents, the Oakland City Attorney, John Russo and wife Chris are splitting. I remember John was contemptuous of Mayor (& former California governor) Jerry Brown's silence when Newsom got SF City Hall into the nondiscriminatory marriage business. John has gay people in his office in Oakland so hosted a party with wedding cake with same sex couple(s) perched atop. Some of his religiously-objecting coworkers disapproved and he says he shrugged, "Who am I to judge anyone's marriage?" Was this his second marriage? Or his third?

There ought to be a Proposition on the ballot! Establish an Office of Marriage Security. Along with a lovely marriage certificate suitable for framing every marrying couple will be issued handcuffs to symbolize the seriousness of the union. The key would be retained by the state. Marriages would be automatically dissolved that do not produce children, as this is a primary argument for restricting marriages to male/female couples. Health care providers must turn over to the state any evidence of infertility, including injury, menopause, congenital reasons, etc. A sheriff's deputy would be empowered to turn up at the couple's home upon invalidation of the marriage; he would bring the key to the handcuffs and unlock them, thus ending the marriage. If it has been determined that the couple entered into the marriage in full knowledge of their ineligibility all property of the marriage must be taken by the state.

As marriages must be heterogeneous the Proposition ought to include requirements for mix of religion (Jews cannot marry Jews, Muslims are not allowed to marry Muslims, Christians cannot marry Christians -- exceptions can be made in the case of sects that hate each other, preferably to the point of warfare or other abuse), mix of race (this is self-explanatory, isn't it?), mix of age, mix of height and weight, etc.

Mars is for the cars

Just watched PBS's NOVA, an update on the robots rolling around Mars, Spirit and Opportunity, and what they've found. Water! No, they haven't found water. They've found rocks that were influenced by water for thousands or millions of years. How long ago? Billions of years ago? At their website Nova has a narrated slide show that's worth seeing.

Life? Could there have been life in that water?

tonight's menu

fish - basa basa - (I think that was what it was called) - white flesh, mild flavor - fried with olive oil and a tangerine-shiitake sauce (from a jar)

green beans and carrots fried with the fish

fettucine pasta fried in the pan with a little more sauce after the fish & veggies removed

a salad sharing the plate: roma tomato slices, cherry tomatoes, shredded purple cabbage, red leaf lettuce torn, grated carrot, chunks of cucumber, sprout mix - doused with an Italian vinegarette (from a bottle)

while it was cooking I stood in the kitchen (which was cozier than the rest of the chilly house) and read four pages of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars: "[W]hat she could sense behind his reserve was some kind of triumph, as if he had won something and she had lost. That Puritan streak in Americans, that sense that sex was wrong and something that men had to trick women into."

then we ate ... I'm getting to enjoy cooking fish, it's simple and quick and easy to clean up and it tastes dern good

nice salad, too

poems to listen to

If you want to sample some poems being spoke: Spaceship Tumblers

links

Pennsound, a site to listen to poems.

Spider Tangle -- this seems to be a collection of what Geof Huth calls "visual poems", which seems to be distinct from "poems" ... I'm still developing my thinking on the idea of "visual poems"; they seem more like abstract paintings than language, but inherent in the definition is that the piece must include the material of language presentation -- letters or things that look reminiscent of letters or punctuation or words or things that look like they could be/could once have been words.

what I'm reading

These are the books that I'm actively working my way through:

Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe

King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard

The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report Timothy Ferris

New Blood edited by Neil Astley (an anthology of poetry)

Poems for the Millennium: the University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry vol. 1: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris

What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop edited by Gary Gach


Books I've started and will get back to shortly (probably when I finish, or get bored with, one of the above):

Dora, Doralina a novel by Rachel de Queiroz

Red Mars a science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson


There are other books that I plan eventually to get back to, some I'll pick up where I left off, others I'll start again from the beginning. I won't list these.