Assignment

Can you create a poem using 10 words from this spelling test?
Winner gets candy!

Weather Report by Tess Gallagher

The Romanian poets
under Ceausescu, Liliana
said, would codify opposition

to the despots in this manner: because
there was no gas and they were cold, everyone
was cold, all they had to do was write

how cold it is . . . so cold . . . and their
readers knew exactly what was meant.
No one had to go to jail
for that.

Liliana, in the dead of night
writing her poems
with gloves on.

I think I’ll take off my gloves.
It’s freezing in here.
There’s a glacier pressing on my heart.


From Dear Ghosts, by Tess Gallagher. All rights reserved. Copyright 2006.

Yes, But What Do You Do for a Living?

Well, this is what I used to do for a living:

Ghost Town Blues: Anthony Alston's Orphic Excavations

The check, as they say, is in the mail.

New York humidity has ruined me for the desert. I've got the mother of all sinus infections.

Did anyone go to the Mermaid Parade?

{gc}

Spring Quartet

[D | R]

No Good Deed Etc.

As a former journalist, I should know better than to talk to reporters. As this guy was talking to me, I knew precisely which quotes he would use, and correctly predicted the sniggering tone the story would take. I didn't think he would completely misunderstand the poem as well, but that should have been the most obivous prediction of all:

Poetic Justice Doesn't Get Much More Literal

Oh well.

I'm actually visiting Las Vegas for the next two or three weeks. Postcards are forthcoming.

{gc}

Fresh Platters

Here are a couple of records--including the newest by Supergrass--that are worth some of your precious time and money:

Supergrass - Diamond Hoo Ha - [Astralwerks/EMI; 2008]

Band of Horses - Cease to Begin - [Sub Pop; 2007]


Choice traxxx include:

Band of Horses - "Is There a Ghost," "No One's Gonna Love You"
Supergrass - "Diamond Hoo Ha Man," "Ghost of a Man," "When I Needed You"

[D | R]

Strictly for the Birds

As I was eating my lunch earlier today in a park just outside the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, I noticed a small bird just beyond my feet. I briefly considered throwing it a small piece of bread off the PB & J sandwich that LM had so kindly prepared for me, but thought against it. A few minutes later, I felt wings brushing up against my left hand, a sensation strange not only for its rarity, but also for its acute softness, quickly granted. I then looked down, again, at my feet, and saw that this same bird, a lark perhaps, had a sliver of bread in its beak. It then occurred to me that the avian interloper had just stolen a portion of a meal, so delicious and fresh, from its rightful owner. The bird, which much surely belong to a hitherto unknown species of animal prone to urban thievery, then flew into the waiting chasm of Trinity Place, where Alexander Hamilton must have called out to it from his grave.

*

The new EP by Brooklyn- and Chicago-based These Are Powers, Tarot Taro, suffers from ideas that are far too broad and loose, as though its creators were unable to agree on what chords to keep, on how to set their dirty impulses to tape (or Reason or whatever recording software the kids are using nowadays). But at least you can't say that their songs are devoid of spirit and drive; "Chipping Ice," for example, arguably the collection's best song, starts with an double-time snare drum pattern and just doesn't let up.

These Are Powers' abrasive energy, which can sound rather menacing, counts for plenty nowadays, whatwith positively dull bands like Low and Sigur Ros taking up precious space. The band, which features Pat Noecker (formerly of Liars) on bass, has previously released one full-length record, Terrific Seasons, which may or may not be terrific.

[D | R]

Transmigration

A few weeks ago, while waiting in LM's car, I turned on the radio, something I hadn't done in years. While running through signals of stations playing poor, mid-90's metal, alternative rock, and other sounds that only seem to exist on the far-left end of the dial, I heard a song done in the vallenato style, a type of folk music native to Colombia. I was instantly riveted, as though my brain was receiving a line through the aural conduit of my ancestral homeland. I've since discovered that the song, called "Eres" (Spanish for "you are"), is performed by Alejandro Fernandez, a Mexican pop singer. That last bit may not appear all that interesting, but I find it fascinating that there can be, in this world of light-speed communication, so many cross-cultural exchanges, so many opportunities for creativity to reinterpreted and reshaped.

The accompanying video, which has an overnight security guard going on a rampage of joy in an otherwise empty shopping mall, is also fun.

*

Perhaps it goes without saying, but human stupidity seems to know no bounds:

"Homosexuality...is the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism." - Sally Kern, Oklahoma State Representative, as quoted in Equality, the magazine of Human Rights Campaign.

*

Good night, and good luck...

[D | R]

Monday's Inferno

My friend Katy Lederer's new book of poetrty is coming out on BOA in October. Here's a link to the book's page.

I just had a poem accepted into the next issue of Rattle. That would be issue #30, which has a Cowboy/Western theme, though the poem they accepted is neither by nor about a cowboy (it does take place in the West, however).

Earlier today I had the worst bus ride since the final episode of M*A*S*H.

Album of the Week

A different kind of folk/indie/Americana/roots music album for the end of days; its "Where Is the Puzzle?" is the most moving song I've heard all year. Highly recommended!

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Lie Down In the Light - [Drag City]

The Assassination

It begins again, the nocturnal pulse.
It courses through the cables laid for it.
It mounts to the chandeliers and beats there, hotly.
We are too close. Too late, we would move back.
We are involved with the surge.

Now it bursts. Now it has been announced.
Now it is being soaked up by newspapers.
Now it is running through the streets.
The crowd has it. The woman selling carnations
And the man in the straw hat stand with it in their shoes.

Here is the red marquee it sheltered under.
Here is the ballroom, here
The sadly various orchestra led
By a single gesture. My arms open.
It enters. Look, we are dancing.

(June 5, 1968)

--Donald Justice

Quote of the Day

"When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses." - John F. Kennedy

A Race of Rhetoric

click here

I disagree that Clinton is a walkman and Obama is an iPod, but Dowd makes some interesting points about how she should have billed herself as the mother of change instead of the father of experience.
-LM

Swan Song

Bo Diddley (1928 - 2008)

Spoon June Moon Swoon

The teenagers who vandalised Robert Frost's cabin have received the ultimate punishment: a mandatory course in Frost's poetry.

Photos from my visit to the fabulous Telectroscope are available here.

Congrats again to everyone who has graduated, passed orals or had a poem published. Excelsior, True Believers!

{gc}

Quote of the Day

"At least since Emerson and Whitman, there's a cult of experience in American poetry. Our poets, when one comes right down to it, are always saying: This is what happened to me. This is what I saw and felt. Truth, they never get tired of reiterating, is not something that already exists in the world, but something that needs to be rediscovered almost daily." --Charles Simic

the world is your oyster, don't f*** it up

Memorial Day 2008

[DR]