Sprung Rhythm & Blues

Latest evidence of my wanderings can be found over on Flickr in The Ides of March.

There was something on NPR the other morning about some guy who has written a verse novel about werewolves in Los Angeles. I turned it off in disgust, I'm not sure why.

I was walking through Sheridan Square yesterday on my way to see Last Year in Marienbad at Film Forum when I saw the first harbinger of spring: the street festival. I did not, however, buy cheap socks or enjoy $1 Thai food.

Remember the advice of Jolie Holland, friends:

Springtime, springtime can kill you
Just like it did poor me
Don't you see we're all hurt the same way
So get out, get out of your house.

{gc}

Happy Easter, Bunnies!

Ain't That the Truth, Sister

Recognize the Poison of My Heart

I was going to write about The Kills' latest album, Midnight Boom, until I read that Portishead, a band which, along with the likes of Tricky and Massive Attack popularized a sub-genre of electronic music known as trip-hop, had released the video for "Machine Gun," their new single (released in advance of their forthcoming record, Third--their first full-length recording in ten years). The song, propelled by Geoff Barrow's flurry of sixteenth notes played on and distorted through a drum machine (lending the track something of an industrial feel), is slightly different than what one might expect to hear from this group, even though Beth Gibbon's strangely inviting voice is still quite present.

Third is out on April 29 via Mercury.

[dr]

alien sightings

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Two Poems by Linh Dinh

Caption

Before photography, people didn't exist.
Blow it up, I'm in the doctored details

In this picture, and this one, I'm in
Each photo, in the cool blur, in the

Brown cloud, my tiny head redrawn,
My splayed limbs cropped. I hammed.

I'm telling you, I've slept many times
With near celebrities. True, I'm lying

Face down, here, in the mud, my pants
stained with too much clarity. My bones

May dissolve in a toxic tub, but long
As this photo shall last, I won't fade.

*

Not Quite Symmetry

Broke, I'd like to borrow your lower half,
Wear it for a day, to make some coins. I'd

Love to enter you, snug, but not through
The usual channel. You can invade me,

Feel my convexity, as I'm ventilated
By your absence, there, in the crotch.

My eyes shaded by your eyelids, I'll
Conform to your nose's architecture,

Breathe this life through your nostrils.

--as published in the March 2008 issue of The Brooklyn Rail

MFA! MFA! MFA!

Anywhere But Here (2007); acetate, wood, wheels, rope, spray paint.

My brother, Steve, has applied for enrollment in the MFA in Painting program at Hunter College. He's passed through the first round of the screening process; his formal interview with the art department is today. Please wish him luck!

Bling Bling Clink Clink

Congratulations to Reagan and Benny from your GMC friends and family! Pass the Bombay Sapphire...

America: the beautiful, the bad and the ugly

The beauty of the suburbs is that you're not stuck without a place to say, buy condoms in an emergency and you can often see the stars. The bad thing about the suburbs is that you're stuck. The good thing about the car is that it enables us to travel far distances in order to say, have sex (and experience scenes such as the one in this famed Ruscha photo). The bad thing about the car, besides oil, is that it relegates us to our individual, private spheres (and makes us lazy and fat, thus creating the need for more roadside Waffle Houses--a vicious yet delicious cycle). Road trip anyone?

The Fall of Man

Like so many New Yorkers, I've been trying to make sense of the sex scandal in which Eliot Spitzer now finds himself, and which has left New York in something of a political limbo. At first, I reasoned that the scandal was about the widening gap between our private and public lives, as well as the puritanical view of sexuality so prevalent in this country. But then it occurred to me that I was being far too easy on the disgraced governor, and that the issue was much larger than the role conservative value systems play in our lives. What is actually important, I concluded, is that Mr. Spitzer, a politician who rose to power on a platform of integrity and a seeming desire to end corruption from Wall Street to Albany, abused his power and took advantage of the faith given by constituents--wrecking not just a promising political career, but also humiliating his family in the process. (His wife, Silda Spitzer, has appeared at both of the governor's press conferences this week; she was seen earlier today with heavy eyes; it was clear that she had been crying.)

I should say that I am surprised at these developments, but given the nature of the allegations and his take-no-prisoners approach to crime as attorney general, I should have seen it all along.

[d\r]

Of Mice and (Other Four-Legged Critters)

Dinosaur BBQ, the Grand Marquis Coterie's dining establishment of choice, was recently inspected by the NYC Department of Health, and subsequently received a number of stomach-churning citations, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility's food and/or non-food areas.

• Evidence of rats or live rats present in facility's food and/or non-food areas.

At eighteen violation points, the restaurant missed the threshold of twenty-eight points, which would have triggered an official "Notice of Violation." According to the Department of Health, "(t)he violation point total is above the average violation point total of 14, for all NYC restaurants on their most recent inspection."

So, who's up for some ribs?

*

"Forty years of solitude would have been enough." - Jorge Luis Borges on Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

*

The GMC Video of the Week is "Nasty Dan," by Johnny Cash. Featuring Oscar the Grouch, it is pretty much the best thing ever. Also, I'd like to think that the song is about me.

Thanks to GMC Category A member, Marquis de Modig, for this week's selection. High five!

*

I'm totally rocking the unironic ironic moustache right now. Photograph evidence of said facial hair configuration is not forthcoming. My apologies to all interested parties.

[d/r]

Rejection Guidelines

Don't blame bad timing (the "it's not you" routine
is tired). Don't invite us to send you something
else or say please try again (a video game death).
Don't say I like these but somehow they’re just
not quite there yet (Will they ever be ready?) No,
don't thank us for thinking of you. After all,
you are too busy, too good for paper and words.
Smoke our poems instead—reduce, reuse them!
Roll them up, put your lips to them, turn them
into a high. Inhale our burning ink, fill the room
with your laughter and smoke, tap, tap
our fallen images on your ashtrays.

Mea Culpa, Mea Ultima Culpa

Anyone who has been in a bookstore within the last ten years has noticed the surge in popularity of the memoir: from The Liars' Club to Persepolis and Fun Home, readers have taken to stories of drug addiction, physical abuse, sexual identity, and alcoholism - just to name a few of the tantalizing topics covered by memoirists - to the point where publishers have no choice but to respond. The troubling issue for writers, it seems, is how to tap into the demand for this kind of work without having to twist the truth, without having to stretch the details of their personal histories. Unfortunately, as publicly discredited authors like James Frey have noticed (his pseudo-memoir A Million Little Pieces, originally offered to publishers as a work of fiction, achieved notoriety after parts of the book were revealed to have been embellished), it may not be possible for the truth, that irrepressible notion so in demand by us all, to fit within the pages of a non-fiction manuscript--especially if one wants to see that manuscript sold.

Now comes word that another recently published and praised memoir, Love and Consequences by Margaret P. Jones, is fabricated; its writer has been exposed as a fraud. Jones, the nom de plume of a certain Margaret Seltzer, writes the story of having grown up in a foster home in South-Central Los Angeles, sold drugs, and was part American Indian (no one cay say that Americans don't appreciate the exotic). It turns out, however, that Ms. Seltzer grew up under entirely different circumstances, and that the details as expressed in her work were nothing more than lies.

In the end, what are our responsibilities as writers, whether or not we choose to write non-fiction? Is there room for the "truth" in the memoir/autobiography? Should readers care if writers take artistic license for the sake of creating compelling stories? And why do readers keep returning to these books?

Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04fake.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
http://www.slate.com/id/2134203/

*

The GMC Video of the Week is "Ready for the Floor," by Hot Chip. The song, taken from the band's newly-released third album, Made in the Dark, is an absolute banger, replete with slinky, hip-shaking rhythms that are sure to make the kids dance with wanton abandon. The album itself features a handful tracks that can only be described as balladry at its beautiful best, especially when set in contrast to the bleeps and other percolating sounds that are heard on songs like "Hold On" and "Don't Dance."

Besides, how can you go wrong with a video that features the lead singer as the Joker?

http://www.hotchip.co.uk/site/

*

Only twenty days and counting until Opening Day in Major League Baseball. I've got my MATTINGLY - #23 t-shirt all ready to go!

http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp

[D | R]

Footnotes on the Body

1. a spike of ice formed when water dripping or falling from another object freezes.

2. Furniture and photos are divorced from the attic. Does the movement of dust mean they are dead?

3. One thing the great poet confessed before biting into her doughnut: a good poem writes itself as if it doesn't care--never let on that within this finite space, your whole being is heavy with a need to emote infinitely. (Jenny Boully)

4. I am wet from waiting for a bus.

5. Thus, when the bizarrely costumed criminal known as _____________ appeared upon the scene later that same day, wielding a unique weapon capable of instantly ________ moisture in the air, _________ presumed he was actually _________, who had stolen __________ invention.

6. A man and his son

7. Recall the dream. The turtle does not like to be on his back
because that way he cannot carry.

8. The cries next door are both quieter and louder than before.
Somehow they made a chute too narrow for my garbage. Hoist.

9. Why should I kill myself worrying when I’ll end up just as dead? (Antonio Ricci)

10. Beluga whales craft long slow waves. The strain that follows the moan.

11. Set in post-World War II Rome, “The Bicycle Thief” tells a simple story well, relying for its impact on gritty realism and emotional verity. (Culture Vulture)

12. The man was caught lying in an alley by a citizen.

13. My icicle got stolen. It is vital for my job. Ladri. Ladri.

14. I. Spy with my little eye...

15. The chair and the bench are missing their stuffing. The holster, upholster.

16. The height of a sail, signals echo from ship to ship.

17. Marigolds! The marigolds were particularly lovely that year.

18. No need to reply to this mast of messages.

19. The yellowing of this photo. Sometimes saying the word lilac suggests a woman in white.

20. This plot synopsis is empty. Add a synopsis.

Dedo’s Notebooks

(Modigliani’s words are interspersed with those of Lunia Czechowska, who sat for one of his last portraits, not long before he died. This 1907 snapshot from his notebook is translated below.)

What I am searching for is neither the real nor the unreal, but the Subconscious, the mystery of what is Instinctive in the human Race.

He painted with such passion and fervor that the picture fell from the easel onto his head when he bent forward to try to view it close up.

I am also trying to formulate with the greatest lucidity the truths of art and life I have discerned scattered among the beauties of Rome, and as their inner meaning becomes clear to me I shall seek to reveal and rearrange their composition, I could almost say metaphysical architecture, to create out of it my truth of life, beauty and art.

This startled me. He was sorry to have frightened me and so smiled at me gently and began singing Italian songs to make me forget the incident.

We others (excuse the plural) have different rights from normal people, for we have different needs which place us above their morality. It is our duty never to be consumed by the sacrificial fire. Your real duty is to save your dream. Beauty too has some painful duties: these produce, however, the noblest achievements of the soul.

As a sitter you had the impression that your soul was being dissected.

To do any work, I must have a living person. I must be able to see him opposite me…

I can still see him standing before me now with his short sleeves and his tousled hair as he attempted to capture my features on the canvas.

Isn’t this the aim of friendship: to shape and exalt the will according to its bent, to reveal each to the other and to ourselves? Goodbye.

While I was preparing dinner, he asked me to lift my head for a few moments and by the light of a candle, he drew a beautiful sketch on which he wrote:

La Vita ~ un Dono: dei pochi ai molti: di Coloro che Sanno e che banno a Coloro che non Sanno e che non banno.

Life is a Gift: from the few to the many; from Those who Know and have to Those who do not Know and have not.

The Sincerest Form

I wish to be congratulated on my ability to hit "View Wireless Networks" fifty times before I finally manage to piggyback on to someone else's wifi (favorite wifi network name in my hood: "Fucking Pay For It." Second favorite: "We ARE Fucking Paying For It.")

*

Cat Power's version of Michael Hurley's "Werewolf Song" is a very weak sister compared to Hurley's original.

*

Green Mountains Review say they liked "Honeymoon W/Smoke" and to try again. The Indiana Review just says keep trying. So it goes.

*

After seeing El Orfanato (by myself, alas), my sincere desire to make horror movies is stronger, and farther out of reach, than ever.

*

Currently in rotation:

The Mountain Goats, Heretic Pride
Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta
Ben Webster, At the Renaissance
Mahler's Sixth

*

A limousine driver, whose name I cannot remember, once said:

"The most important thing is concentration. Like, when you write a poem, you concentrate on the freaking poem, right? When they drive, most people do driving, twenty-per cent; good-looking girls on the side of the road, thirty per cent; and then coffee--of course, very much coffee--twenty-five per cent. What I am doing--fuck everything else--I am focussing on driving."

{gc}

The View from Here

Winter Tash

Let It Snow

Just found out that I don't have to trek over to Teaneck to teach; thanks to this fabulous winter weather, the campus of Fairleigh-Dickinson University is closed.

This might be my first true Snow Day since, oh, 1978.

In honor, I reproduce Louis MacNeice's most anthologized poem, "Snow."


The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes --
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands--
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Cold Spells

I would like to be congratulated for being the last person in the known universe to have acquired a high-speed internet connection, which is pure genius. I can now download all sorts of songs, recipes, and instructions for constructing ray-guns without having to wait for what feels like weeks.

*

Cat Power's version of "New York, New York" (simply "New York") makes me tremble: If this is emotional tyranny, then I don't want freedom.

*

cold-drill, the journal of the MFA program at Boise State University, has accepted "This Medicine May Cause Blurred Vision" for publication.

*

After seeing Il Postino again (with Laura, this time), that terribly sweet film about love and exile, I remain convinced that poetry does have some sort of purpose, that it does, indeed, have a place in the lives of the [un]common, the now.

*

Currently in rotation:

Sons & Daughters - "Chains"
Bruce Springsteen - "Radio Nowhere"
Paul Westerberg - "High Time"
Asian Dub Foundation - "Naxalite"

*

The poet, whose name I cannot recall at the moment, says:

We love what we cannot know...

[d | r]

Tragically Poet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P3FLz3Ky08

Winter Trees

The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing.
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Wasit-deep in history.

Full of wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietas?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but easing nothing.

Sylvia Plath

(Paradise Pond at Smith College, Plath's alma mater and home of her manuscripts, letters, and general memorabilia.)

T. Rex Tuesday?

the new improved Honda Accord coterie needs to reunite over cornbread

and certain crispy fried tomatoes

and beer

what say ye? meet me at the bar at 5:30...

Top Dawg!

Today is a good day. My favorite hound won Best in Show at Westminster...Uno is the first beagle to ever win the 100-year-old canine competition.

No longer an Underdog--Uno beat out two neatly primped poodles, a top Sealyham terrier, a sleek Weimaraner, a lively Australian shepherd and a sprightly Akita.

"He's perfect, he was a 10," Jones said. "He does cuteness well."

Precocious as he was precious, Uno celebrated by chewing on the microphones of reporters who tried to interview his winning crew.

A toy poodle that began the night with 108 best in show prizes stood in Uno's way.

Formally known as K-Run's Park Me in First, Uno came into this competition wagging his white-tipped tail with 32 best in show ribbons overall. He already had become the first beagle to win the hound group since 1939.

Uno breezed in the 15-inch beagle category Monday morning, then took the group several hours later. So while other dogs tried to reach the final ring Tuesday, Uno went on a brisk walk around Manhattan and took a nap beneath his warm, fuzzy blanket.

But when it came time to show, Uno was as ready as ever. He looked around and soaked up the cheers while parading around the ring, the ovation becoming more thunderous with every step. When he made his final stop in front of Jones, Uno went to town. Rather than rely on his golden brown, pleading eyes, he began baying over and over.

Years from now, it'll be known as the "ah-roo!" heard 'round the ring.

The Most Dangerous Direction

reindeer hair and burnt juniper form ribbons tied to the mountains

at night the Duca leave their deer in a sheltered enclosure to protect
them from the cold and wolves

before healing others they must first heal themselves to prove they are
true shamans

the peaks of the mountains rise up behind the hunters

Tsuyan has a second soul
the back of her tent will be cut
to let her body out

the animal has been wounded but it is too late in the day to go after him

the ancestors penetrate the past lives with the present

she appeases the forces of nature by sprinkling tea in all corners

the communists destroyed our idols
so I learned how to tie magic knots
they bound the rivers and mountains
where the ancestors reside

the duca resorted to abstraction

the tea is a nutritious soup with milk and butter and spiced with a salt
which the reindeer cannot resist

her headdress is decorated with rooster feathers, a suit of armor

when all the stars are out it means that the ancestors are present
she strattles the drum as her spirit joins the others waiting for her

a demon has removed an arrow

she points the stick at someone
the message is whispered and veiled in mysterious metaphors

if it is wounded it will go hide in the trees
if it doesn’t snow the dogs will follow the trail

salt preserves the sweetness and connection
the babies are tied to their kin

no shaman has been able to pacify this unpredictable demon

her remains will be hung on a tree
nestled in a house for immortals
her things will be placed nearby within reach
thus she will continue to watch over her people

the hunters have to choose between heading for the pass or going
through the valley

they study the shoulder blade of a charred lamb

the oracle was right
the moose is still in the snow looking up
the dogs pull at its fur

the hunter stabs its back begging for forgiveness
her trance is over

the bone marrow alone is enough to feed a man for an entire day and
the meat for three weeks

otherwise the ghost of the moose will leave black tracks on their trail a curse

the camp moves on as dictated by the reindeer
the most dangerous direction is north

the sun never warms it
the winds rise from it

and the black sky of the dead circles the mountain

{lm}

"Shopping" Poem

I am looking for a map and one more day.
I am looking for a friend in a land of mines.
I am looking for a man with dish-pan hands.
I am looking for a truffle in the Piedmont dirt.
I am looking for a crop circle inside of the mall.
I am looking for a beagle to take home the blue.
I am looking for a bridge that is pretty in the fall.
I am looking for a sign of movement in the wood.
I am looking for a license plate that starts with EVR.
I am looking for a ferris wheel that glows in the dark.
I am looking for a snowball to pour sugar over and lick.
I am looking for a kettle filled with oolong and darjeeling.
I am looking for a set of ten fingers and twenty warm toes.
I am looking for a cat named two-bit to comb its matted fur.
I am looking for a variety of fruit with flesh that sticks to the pit.

{lm}

Girl in the War

Peter said to Paul you know all those words we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go
But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun
I got a girl in the war man I wonder what it is we done

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul the only thing I know to do
Is turn up the music and pray that she makes it through

Because the keys to the Kingdom got lost inside the Kingdom
And the angels fly around in there but we can’t see them
I got a girl in the war Paul I know that they can here me yell
If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell
If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain


--Josh Ritter

My Baby Done Left Me (I Got the Grand Marquis Blues)

She rolled away this morning
she didn't even say one word
Oh she rolled away this morning
she didn't even say one word

Was it something I said girl
or something you heard?

I feel like screamin' and cryin'
but that wouldn't do no good
I feel like screamin' and cryin'
but that wouldn't do no good

She took all my money, 
you know I knew she would. 

I never had the GM blues
as bad as this before
No i never had the GM blues
quite as bad as this before

My parking spot's empty now
people I can't rest no more

My baby done left me
out in the cold
My baby done left me
yeah out in the cold

They swept the street behind her
as she got up and rolled

My baby done left me
and she won't come home
My baby done left me
no she won't come home

I said where you going baby
she said I'm free to roam

A Diminutive Poem

I. Purge

“With so much nausea and diarrhea, I thought for two days that I was dying,” said an unidentified Chinese man after eating a frozen dumpling.
“They tasted bitter. I felt dizzy some 30 seconds after I had them and collapsed," said an 18-year-old boy. Five minutes later his 51-year-old father's body started twitching.
The 47-year-old mother could not walk or talk.
“My whole body was paralyzed and my eyes kept watering,” she said. “I don’t want to buy frozen food anymore.”

II. Remember

Japanese researchers have implanted a semiconductor camera inside the hippocampus of a mouse’s brain. The mouse recalled the trauma of his birth and a blue light appeared on a screen. The mouse, now with a mighty headache, will be allowed to walk soon. He does not yet have Parkinson's.

III. Absence

It is the end of January. The mixture of moisture and cold air did not climax enough to produce snow this month in New York City. It was the first time in 75 years. Perhaps there will be a dance of flakes in February. Hold out your tongues.

IV. Bloom

In a frequently fractious farming town, riots broke out yesterday when suspects were arrested for the illegal sale of flowers.

V. Flash

Pandora’s heart beat so fast and loud, that it seemed for a moment to drown all other sounds.

VI. Hope

Should she open the box?

{lm}

And Now, Some Good News

The editors at The Strip, the new literary journal of the graduate creative writing program at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, have been kind enough to accept four poems for publication, including "Narrative," Call Me Father, Call Me Wanting," "The Cartographer," and "Trust."

Now, if I can just get this life business sorted out...

[dr]

The End of an Era

I regret to inform you all that the Grand Marquis breathed its last breath yesterday. It put up a good fight but finally gave up and was officially pronounced dead at 12:02 pm. It took me as far as the beach and went peacefully while parked in the Brooklyn sun. It will find its new home on Monday in junkyard heaven, where the proceeds for its organs and scrap metal will be donated to Cars for Kids. In the meantime, I wish I could have it towed to Raccuglia & Sons Funeral Home, to be paid respect and for a final viewing. I would drape daisies and rosaries over it, and the car radio, if it were working, would play Brown Skin Lady and You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore, concluding with the soundtrack to The Royal Tennenbaums. We would smoke cigars as we listened. The MC would of course be GC, and he would ask if anyone would like to share any memories, the family would greatly appreciate it. After the mass, everyone would follow the white stretch limo stocked with Courvoisier to the junkyard, where Lionel Richie would deliver a tear-jerking elegy, titled "The Power and Girth of My V-8". Following a post-funeral luncheon at my house, the crowd would disperse, and I would proceed to join the downtrodden straphangers with my head up, knowing that it is in a better place and is not suffering anymore. I feel guilty saying this but it will be replaced, hopefully next month, by a 12-year younger, shorter black model that gets kick-ass gas mileage. I will miss it. I will miss its heavy doors that I sometimes had to kick closed, I will miss its windows that never opened when the cops pulled me over, I will miss its cocky old man outbursts, I will miss the junk in its trunk. It had a solid sense of humor. It had irony. It wanted me to tell you it loved you all, and has left something for each of you. For Gregory, it has left its plush back seat and joystick. For Reagan, it has left its disco ball and bevy of double-lined plastic bags. For Danny, it has left its cigar lighter and car radio face plate. For me, it has left its flaccid hood ornament. To honor its memory, I will have its signature three-lined insignia that was once on its grill tattooed on my ass.

Sigur Ros' takk: a found poem

track titles
icelandic | english translation | english pronunciation

takk | thank you | tahk [long a, as in "father"]
glósóli | glowing sole | glow-soul-ih [i as in "hit]
hoppípolla | hopping into puddles | hopp-ee-poddla [both o's are long, as in "aw". a is short in "man"]
með blóðnasir | i have a nosebleed | meth blothe-nasir [th as in "breathe". a is long as in "father"]
sé lest | i see a train | s-ye lest [ye as in "yet"]
sæglópur | lost at sea | sie-glope-urr [sie as in "tie". urr as in purr, r's rolled]
mílanó | milan | milano [accent on first syllable]
gong | gong | gong
andvari | zephyr | andvari [accent on first syllable. both a's are short like "man"]
svo hljótt | so quietly | svo hl-yote [o in "svo" is long as in "saw"]
heysátan | haystack | heys-ow-dan ["ow" as in "owl". a is short as in "man]

Poetry Book Titles...

We must choose carefully how we title our collections. Can you add to this list of sample book titles, boys and girls?

Express Lane Poems
Bounce like Rubber, Stick like Glue
Brazilian Wax
Onion Rings and Gin
Check all that Apply
Do Not Reply to this Message
The Google Bots are Coming to Get You
S.A.S.E.
I Got Your Poems Right Here
How Now Brown Cow?: Poems of the Colombo-American Diaspora
Death Death Death Death Goose
Bitch Bitch Bitch Bitch Duck
Pow right in the kissa.
Light Bathroom Reading
Toilet Paper Scissors
Remove Before Wearing
Occupied by Pi
Pet Therapy for Your Dog
Pack of Bazookas
Bail Me Out! and other aphorisms by Paris Hilton
Post No Bills
I’m Tired of Your Elbow in My Boob
Dearth of Girth
Release the Safety
Is this Supposed to Feel Good?
Raise Questions, Kittens
Punctum Lacrimales
That Night in Reno...
Prison Love Letters
The Circumference of Your Finger
Crackalack Attack

quote of the day by Linh Dinh

“I see violence as a common misfortune and, by extension, fate. It’s what awaits each one of us just around the corner. One cannot think seriously about life without contemplating the destruction of the body. Born in Vietnam, I was baptized early into this awareness. As an adult in Philadelphia, I had many opportunities to gather my bloody evidences.”

Heartbreak Mountain

Ode to WCW

The Blue Shuttlecock

so much depends
upon

a blue shuttle
cock

sliced with fore
hand

below the white
net.


The Popped Corn Kernel

so much depends
upon

a popped corn
kernel

greased with fake
butter

beneath the big
screen.


The Wood Toothpick

so much depends
upon

a wood tooth
pick

lodged between bi-
cuspids

within the pink
canal.


The Pink Snowflake

so much depends
upon

a pink snow
flake

still in Sheep
Meadow

below the red
sun.

Relayed by Carrier Pigeon

1) "It is hard to get heavy objects up in the air; a strong desire to do so is necessary, and a strong driving force to keep them aloft. Some poets sit in airplanes on the ground, raising their arms, sure that they're flying. Some poets ascend for a period of time, then come down again; we have a great many stranded planes." --Elizabeth Bishop (from her notebooks)

2) One of my paper airplanes, "You Give Me Fever," has been accepted for publication in Pearl.

{gc}

It's a Gas!

Neon, that is. Being a poet, eh.

Frank O'Hara Writes a Blurb for Danny Rivera

Danny Rivera writes poems of great mystery and longing, or so he would like you to believe. Rivera could use some time in the real world, out there with the working folk that propel this city, with the types that know a thing or two about strategizing at dominoes, about la vida profunda. He might also want to spend a few successive days at the movies, where he can take a look at characters neither dressed in wire-rimmed glasses and tweed jackets, nor with silk scarves around their necks like swans on a final visit to shore. He should sit in the back row of the Lyceum Theater on 42nd and 7th, that line of seating that never seems to get a visit from an usher, and gauge people's reactions - the slow gasps, moving as though confetti unleashed on that first victory parade along Broadway, especially - to the cowboy, the samurai, and the sad-sad bettor at the racetrack. All he has to do is observe, carefully at that, and learn to live accordingly.

In the meantime, I'll sit here, behind this green Olivetti and with poems by Pierre Reverdy in my pocket, awaiting the time that Rivera wakes up to what he already knows, to what he already feels.

one potato, two potato...

de riv in red ribbon

Why I love/hate New York.

So it's about 4:20 in the morning and I'm fully immersed in R.E.M sleep. I am slowly jarred out of my dreams (and my memory of my dreams) by some very close-sounding music and cackling. I'm confused. Are the Swedes next door throwing a raging party? Is someone blasting their TV? It gets louder. It's coming from outside, 3 stories down. But this is not the usual local teenagers yelling at midnight. I'm pissed. I stumble out of bed to the window and look down. Directly below my bedroom window is a scene out of my dreams or a Fellini movie. There are about 5 couples, dressed in dark outfits, dancing on the sidewalk, dancing some kind of strange ethnic ballroom dance, with their giant van blasting the craziest instrumental music I've ever heard, some kind of traditional Greek or Hebrew party music. Are you kidding me? What kind of music is this? The song is repetitive and strangely hypnotic. And too loud. This cannot go on. And just as I ponder shouting out of the window like an old italian widow (but realize that would be futile as they could never hear me), the music fades. And just like that, the couples rush back into their car like a chinese fire drill and speed off into the dawn.

This was not a dream.

Are these the party roosters who christen the sidewalks of those who are getting old?

The Top Musical Recordings of 2007, an Unbiased Assessment

1. Interpol - Our Love to Admire - [Capitol]

Once maligned for sounding too much like Joy Division - thanks to Paul Banks' morose vocals - Interpol has truly come into its own with this record, on which the band reveals a maturity in massive, sprawling tracks like Our Love's closer, "The Lighthouse." While the comparison's to Manchester's finest will always dog them, Interpol's newest should mark the beginning of some very interesting (important?) music.

2. Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English - [XL]

Moving away from the grime scene in which he made his name, Maths + English finds Dizzee Rascal, a rapper who describes the dystopia that is East London in all its violent, bloody glory, expanding his musical palette to include the funk and rock samples on which old-school hip-hop was founded. What remains strange, though, is Rascal's ambivalence about the gangster lifestyle - he turns from praising the murderers he knows to later questioning those same people - making it difficult to get an idea of the very young man (he's only 21) behind the microphone. What's important, I suppose, is that he still able to write and produce songs that leaves most of his contemporaries by the wayside. [Thanks to Anne for a copy of this record, which was not released on disc in the States.]

3. Daft Punk - Alive 2007 - [Virgin]

Playing out like a flawless mixtape (featuring songs from their debut, including "Around the World" to the track featured on an iPod commercial), Alive 2007 is the result of Daft Punk's most recent world tour, and it's clear that those who weren't at their shows missed out on the concert event of the year.

While I do not like the idea of live records taking a spot on these kinds of lists, Alive is just too fucking good not to be considered for one.

4. Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions - [Domino]

Von Sudenfed includes the German production duo Mouse on Mars and Mark E. Smith of the Fall. On paper, this pairing sounds nothing but strange and unusual; however, on record, the mixture of scattershot electro-beats and Smith's seemingly drugged/drunken, off-the-cuff vocals work to great effect.

5. Bad Religion - New Maps of Hell - [Epitaph]

Once and always a stalwart of California's punk scene, Bad Religion - which for some reason finds it necessary to have not two but three guitarists - has returned with their best record since The Gray Race (not to mention Stranger than Fiction, my favorite punk record of the 90's). While their lyrics remain focused on the anti-establishment, anti-religion themes that they've covered since the early 80's, New Maps of Hell is something of a resurgence: it is loud, brash, and entirely unapologetic. In a word, rad.

Honorable Mentions:

Radiohead - In Rainbows - [TBD]

Battles - Mirrored - [Warp]

Black Dice - Load Blown - [Paw Tracks]
Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block - [V2 Scandinavia]
Kylie Minogue - X - [Capitol]

What did you listen to this year? Are there any albums that should be added to this list?

New Year on Dartmoor

This is newness: every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you
Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There's no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat.

--Yet another Plath

The smile of the snow is white

Plath's "Nick and the Candlestick" spliced with "Wintering"

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

At the heart of the house
Next to the last tenant's rancid jam
and the bottles of empty glitters--
Sir So-and-so's gin.

The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs...

This is the room I have never been in
This is the room I could never breathe in.
The black bunched in there like a bat,
No light
But the torch and its faint

raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Chinese yellow on appalling objects--
Black asininity. Decay.
Possession.
It is they who own me.
Neither cruel nor indifferent,

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Only ignorant.
This is the time of hanging on for the bees--the bees
So slow I hardly know them,
Filing like soldiers
To the syrup tin

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish -
Christ! they are panes of ice,

To make up for the honey I've taken.
Tate and Lyle keeps them going, The refined snow.
It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.
They take it. The cold sets in.

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Now they ball in a mass,
Black
Mind against all that white.
The smile of the snow is white.
It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Into which, on warm days,
They can only carry their dead.

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady

(They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.)

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.

Winter is for women--
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanis walnut,

The blood blooms clean
In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs -

Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

The bees are flying. They taste the spring.

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

Plath takes on new meaning this century

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks ---
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

--Sylvia Plath, 1961

Paul McCarthy: Chocolate Santa with Butt Plug

Paul McCarthy's latest show, currently running at Maccarone (630 Greenwich Street) through 24 December, employs themes that the artist has been discussing for decades: unbridled sexuality, iconography in popular culture, the role of fame in public life, politics, and the nature of violence. His new show continues a number of these themes, if only in a manner that can only be described as charming. For this show McCarthy turned the gallery into a fully-functioning chocolate factory, in which workers, under the direction of master chocolatier Peter P. Greweling, produce 1-lbs Santas composed entirely of, well, chocolate. However, McCarthy's edible version of the holiday icon, sold at $100 a piece and packaged in boxes filled with shredded copies of Artforum, is accompanied by a molded butt plug, that most democratic and accessible of sex toys. (Do we really need another reason to eat in bed?) McCarthy, of course, has always been interested in psychological disruption, shock treatments, and in exploring base desires--as well as the impulses that drive them. Using foodstuffs to explore these themes (like mayonnaise, hot dogs, and ketchup), McCarthy makes it a point to jar us out of our emotional and physical havens, as if to reinforce the notion that comfort has no place in the modern world, and that even our most precious of cultural artifacts are subject to corruption. Collectors, get your checkbooks ready.

http://www.peterpaulchocolates.com
http://www.maccarone.net
http://www.ubu.com/film/mccarthy.html

My true nemesis is Rachael Ray

She is currently interviewing and having coffee with John Cusack.
She is not a trained chef and cooks like I do, yet gets to dine with leading men like this...
The difference is I would not sell out and support Dunkin Donuts...I would keep it real and do commercials for Illy Espresso.
I am currently eating Danish sugar cookies for breakfast and watching daytime television. (Edgy just stole one of my cookies and ran off with it.) Where is the justice?

Wow Poem from Slate

The World War Speaks

When I was born, two incisors
had already come through the gum.
They gave me a silver bell to chew on,
brought me home in a wicker basket,
and kept me by the stove's coal heat.
Every morning my mother boiled
a huge vat of mustard greens,
steam drifting over to my crib and
after a few hours, souring into a gas.
I breathed it all in. I began to walk
so they fitted me with braces.
I began to run, so they fitted me
with books: Mars, hydrogen, Mongolia.
I learned to dig a deeper kind of ditch.
I learned to start a fire in three minutes.
I learned to sharpen a pencil into
a bayonet. Sometimes at night
I'd sneak into the house of our neighbors,
into the hall outside their bedroom,
and watch as they moved over each
other like slow, moonlit fish.
Sometimes my mother would comb
my father's hair with her fingertips,
but that was it. They wanted an only
child: the child to end all children.

--Sandra Beasley

i didn't eat your Ho Hos

happy holidays...buy a fake tree today

So THAT'S what happened to my manuscript...

From Scott Donaldson’s excellent biography, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet’s Life (2007):

Neither Robinson nor Peabody understood how the fates—and human frailty—were conspiring to prevent publication of Captain Craig. Normally, EAR would have received proofs early in 1901. He did not and could not, for on a cold winter’s night a member of the staff at Small, Maynard paid a visit to a Boston brothel, left the manuscript behind, and quite forgot about it. Robinson wanted the script back for revision, and the publishers were forced to stall him while they turned the office upside down in a futile search for it. Months went by before springtime, with the sap rising, lured the erring staffer back to the whorehouse. There the madam presented him with the manuscript she had carefully preserved.

Unfortunately, Small, Maynard had by then gone into receivership and decided not to publish Captain Craig after all.

SNOW

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window
was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes--
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of
your hands--
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

--Louis MacNeice

Why I Love Jack Black

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkWKvMCzqA

WBOR

You're listening to WBOR Lite FM, where we play the safest, most insipid reggae this side of Kingston. Up next, “Red, Red Wine” by UB40...

*

"Superstars of Asian ladyboy scene invite you to the backstage for some fun."

I suspect that the term "backstage" is some sort of euphemism.

*

"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona.” - George F. Will

*

Up next on WBOR Lite FM, some music to do some light house cleaning, or, perhaps, get an early start on preparing those taxes. But first, a check of local traffic conditions...

*

We are interested in shock - in convulsion. We are obsessed with the failed attempt at producing objects with a vertiginous obscenity attached to them; in being purely gratuitous and rejecting critical worth. But even more, we are interested in how even the most abject object is recuperated to 'use value'. We are interested in the redemptive value of transgression, and how morality is squeezed from sin. We fantasize about producing things with zero cultural value, to produce aesthetic inertia - a series of works of art to be consumed and then forgotten.

I find it terribly funny that the Chapman Brothers (Jake & Dinos), those English rabble-rousers of the modern art scene, have desecrated prints of Goya's Disasters of War by drawing clown faces all over them. The official title of such subversive acts against the establishment? Well, Insult to Injury, of course.

And speaking of the Chapman Brothers, somebody needs to get me their book, Unholy Libel, for Christmas.

*

This is WBOR Lite FM, where we play the music most suited for hibiscus planting. Or needlework. Yeah, needlework. Ah, how relaxing. And now, a ballad from America's princess of lite-pop, Celine Dion in duet with Whitney Houston...

disney world is highly disturbing...

Let Us Go Then, You and I... No, Really, We Gotta Go

Poems by myself and Mr. Rivera are now appearing on the Smyles & Fish Poetron.

I am wrongly identified as a "Spanish Diplomat" (everyone knows I serve at the pleasure of the Queen of Portugal). Mr. Rivera is identified as someone who can't keep a secret (true--don't tell him the combination to the wall safe... SERIOUSLY, DON'T TELL HIM!).

Mr. Rivera is also the author of a review now posted in the Editors' Journal at The One Three Eight.

Does anyone at all read this except for ourselves and our significant others?

{gc}

Movie Movie

No Country for Old Men is an excellent Western Noir, and quite faithful to Cormac McCarthy's grim vision. I was thinking about it in terms of the classic Western tropes and realized that it's basically Shane, except for the fact that Shane never shows up. Then I realized that Javier Bardem's stone cold killer is Shane, walking into the sunset with a broken arm, a force that even the universe cannot kill. Kudos to the Coen Brothers--this makes up for their utterly misguided remake of The Ladykillers.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a crackerjack example of the crime-gone-wrong genre, but the real reason to see it is for its painful delineation of a family that lost its way long ago. Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is stunning, but then his character is the crux of the whole tragedy: a man who, as he puts it to his drug dealer at the Trump Tower (!), "doesn't add up," and who doesn't understand why this is so. Kudos to Sidney Lumet, who can knock this sort of ball out of the park at 83.

The Darjeeling Limited is another fine example of Wes Anderson's sensibility, and even with its flaws (it becomes fairly pedestrian after the bravua funeral/flashback sequence) is pretty enjoyable. If for no other reason, Anderson should continue to make films for the soundtracks they inspire.

{gc}

Rocky Rococo, at Your Cervix...

Never trust a man in a fez.

Recent Records of Note

Black Dice - Load Blown - [Paw Tracks]



The Darjeeling Limited: Original Soundtrack - [Abcko]

Party Party

nuts and bolts!

LAME DUDE WITH NO COSTUME

The Grand Marquis Coterie: We Put the Cult in Culture

Score!

Righteous Ruminations

The following may point to just how naive I am, but I find it wrong that Nissan, in all its corporate wisdom, has licensed a song performed by The Clash, a cover of the roots reggae standard "Pressure Drop," for use in one of its commercials. Given the nature of the products the company sells, including the SUV prominently featured in its latest advertisement, wouldn't it have made more sense for the carmaker to use, say, "Rock the Casbah" or "Bankrobber," instead?

Oh, the irony, the bitter, bitter irony.

*

"The center is not the center." - Derrida

*

I love quoting dead French philosophers because, in all frankness, the practice makes me feel closer to common folk.

*

My Daddy was a bankrobber,

but he never hurt nobody.

He just loved to live that way,

and he loved to steal your money.

So we came to jazz it up,

we never loved a shovel.

Break your back to earn your pay,

and don't forget to grovel...

*

The Grand Marquis Coterie "Song of the Week!" honors go to Teenage Fanclub for "Speed of Light." Yeah!

*

One of the more curious headlines on the Internet: "Dating Advice: 'Help, I'm Falling For a Priest.'" Uh, is this supposed to be news?

*

It must be pretty obvious to those who know me, but I am getting old. As in, I can see at least two gray hairs on my head, and that shit is pissing me off old. But if only that were the last sign proving that the ravages of age are upon me! You see, if I sit down for more than fifteen minutes, I end up having a dull pain in the left side of my hip. When I stand up to walk around, I feel as though someone had just place a two-ton slab across my body. Such is the terror that has befallen me, but I shall perservere through all attacks against my youth!

*

We had chicken for dinner tonight. What did you have?

Ghouls and Goblins

What should I be for Halloween?? -LM

Definition of the Day

draw - to pull out to full or greater length; make by attenuating; stretch: to draw filaments of molten glass.

Sledge!

you could have a steam train
if you'd just lay down your tracks
you could have an aeroplane flying
if you bring your blue sky back

all you do is call me
I'll be anything you need

you could have a big dipper
going up and down, all around the bends
you could have a bumper car, bumping
this amusement never ends

I want to be your sledgehammer
why don't you call my name
oh let me be your sledgehammer
this will be my testimony
show me round your fruitcage
'cuz I will be your honey bee
open up your fruitcage
where the fruit is as sweet as can be

I want to be your sledgehammer
why don't you call my name
you'd better call the sledgehammer
put your mind at rest
I'm going to be-the sledgehammer
this can be my testimony
I'm your sledgehammer
let there be no doubt about it

sledge sledge sledgehammer

I've kicked the habit
shed my skin
this is the new stuff
I go dancing in, we go dancing in
oh won't you show for me
and I will show for you
show for me, I will show for you
yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do mean you
only you
you've been coming through
going to build that power
build, build up that power, hey
I've been feeding the rhythm
I've been feeding the rhythm
going to feel that power, build in you
come on, come on, help me do
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
I've been feeding the rhythm
I've been feeding the rhythm
it's what we're doing, doing
all day and night

--Peter Gabriel

Poem of the Day

The Letter

I am not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
good care of myself. The weather is perfect.
I read and walk all day and then walk to the sea.
I expect to swim soon. For now I am content.
I am not sure what I hope for. I feel I am
doing my best. It reminds me of when I was
sixteen dreaming of Lorca, the gentle trees outside
and the creek. Perhaps poetry replaces something
in me that others receive more naturally.
Perhaps my happiness proves a weakness in my life.
Even my failures in poetry please me.
Time is very different here. It is very good
to be away from public ambition.
I sweep and wash, cook and shop.
Sometimes I go into town in the evening
and have pastry with custard. Sometimes I sit
at a table by the harbor and drink half a beer.

--Linda Gregg, from The Sacraments of Desire [Graywolf Press].

Wild Boys, 1984

The wild boys are calling on their way back from the fire
in august moon's surrender to a dust cloud on the rise
wild boys fallen far from glory
reckless and so hungered on the razors edge you trail
because there's murder by the roadside in a sore afraid new world

they tried to break us, looks like they'll try again

wild boys never lose it
wild boys never chose this way
wild boys never close your eyes
wild boys always shine

you got sirens for a welcome there's bloodstain for your pain
and your telephone been ringing wile you're dancing in the rain
wild boys wonder where is glory
where is all you angels now the figureheads have fell
and lovers war with arrows over secrets they could tell

they tried to tame you looks like they'll try again

wild boys never lose it
wild boys never chose this way
wild boys never close your eyes
wild boys always shine

--Duran Duran

Jean Valentine poem in The New Yorker

On a Passenger Ferry
by Jean Valentine

(For Grace Paley)

The deck is big, and crowded. In one corner,
an old woman, sick, on chemo, not in pain, is
writing in an elementary-school notebook.
Nobody else saw her, but I saw her.
I had seen her before. Her round, kind face,
smiling and still as a photograph
outside a window—


The New Yorker
September 24, 2007

Poem

Mango

Delicious slivers of mango
cut like long tongues--so it's as if we eat
our passion, this longing

sticky like the afterglow of our sex,
with skin the reddish mottle of mango skin.
How often had I eaten these alone

bought at some Upper West Side bodega
and cut open with a pocket knife,
sitting at Riverside park, sunset

orange in the Hudson below:
sunset orange with a knife in it,
bleeding orange in my hands.

--Gerry LaFemina

Originally published in the Winter 2004-2005 issue of The Southeast Review.

Spinner

Some recent records of note:

Liars - Liars - [Mute]

I'm not entirely convinced that Liars, one of my favorite bands, have written a cohesive, fully-realized record with this, their fourth release, but that particular truth may not matter, given that the new songs are more about mood and tone, as opposed to ideas. Having said that, it is best that would-be listeners not overlook Liars for what it is: a document of a daring, risk-taking music prepared by a band interested not in pleasing its audience, but in circumventing tired norms.

The tracks to which my ear is especially drawn include: "Leather Prowler"; "Sailing to Byzantium"; "Clear Island"; and "Protection," a song that can best be described as haunting (a falsetto has never sounded so right), and which is probably the best album-closer that I've heard in the last five years.

I will take your Polaroid / You will show me how to drink...

M.I.A. - Kala - [XL]

It has a good beat and you can dance to it.

from "Stars" by McGrath

We are human and our form is a corruption of starlight
poured like heavy syrup into soft-skinned molds,
like decorative soaps, or candles.

Like the stars we burn fiercely, reluctantly,
as a dragon consumes its golden hoard.

Of my eyes, of my skin, the stars shall know nothing.


--Campbell McGrath, a selection from his forthcoming Seven Notebooks, published in mipoesias.com

Writing Tips

1. Parenthetical Remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
2. Don't use no double negatives.
3. Proofread carefully to see if any words out or mispeld something.
4. Eschew obfuscation.
5. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
6. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Avoid cliches like the plague (they're old hat).
9. Be more or less specific.

Close, But No Fine, Hand-Rolled, Imported Cuban Cigar

Dear Danny _________:

Thank you for sending us "The Cartographer." We really enjoyed this piece, but it didn't work for (esteemed literary journal) right now. We hope that you will continue to send us your work.

Sincerely,
The Editors of (esteemed literary journal)

I love Google translate this page

Linee di Florinda Fusco, from www.editricezona.it/linee.htm:

“Like clearly enunciated sin from the frontispiece, those collections from the Fusco are `lines here', not “backs”, or “poetries” (even if the proposed tiration wants obviously to be offered like vicaria regarding such alternatives). `A line' is something of other (not “less”, even if is fuor of doubt the tone `in minor') regarding a back. But in what consists this difference? Or, said otherwise, and perhaps little better: what characterizes `a line' of the Fusco and of it it determines its same leggibilità? They said, a lot in order to express to me with a formula, the coincidence and nearly the superimposition, between `the capacity' of its development on the page (just in the sense of the amount of oral materials, of images etc that every `line' transports to the just inner) and its ritmica necessity. The prosodia, insomma, it is a category of analysis that with `the lines' works little: you notice yourself, in so far as, the nearly absolute lack of the enjambement, that is the ritmica figure that than more every other denunciation the collision between prosodiche requests and syntactic requests. For against, those turn out amplify all to you mark them (lines white women, inner spaziature to the back, paginations to step: and then also parenthesis, italics etc) that they stretch to isolate every single `line' or fragment of it like unit in sure measure self-sufficient person.” (from the famous one of Mark Berisso).

to have a north wind to two ropes (I could perhaps be raised)
I dredge in the water the shapes of I dredge in the water

the body that wheel (a grooved pleasure)

to prepare itself in the bottom of the sand/to imitate the shapes of the water

misurala as you can you remove the coat and misurala with the body

sordamente
the minimum sinks to articulate
glacial states of waking and generations
to go up or to wait for to touch the field

to have the just words to mistake with the words
to try the force points
to float like the north wind

(not there is certainty in repairing
in the repair broken one is something much
of untied frozen cut I confirm
broken one is something much
I want to say that the center is various from the side
the repair is maceration)

to soil the face of black
to be based to a small table in station

Brooklyn Book Festival

The second annual Brooklyn Book Festival will take place this Sunday, September 16 in various venues throughout the borough, and is due to feature a number of interesting poets/writers, including: Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kimiko Hahn, A.M. Homes, and many others. Of the gathering, Marty Marokowitz, Brooklyn borough president, writes:

Greetings,

The second annual Brooklyn Book Festival on September 16, 2007 is a book lover’s dream come true! The festival presents exciting and innovative fiction and non-fiction programs with author discussions and readings—come early to get a seat! Nearly 100 booksellers and thousands of books will fill beautiful Borough Hall Plaza and Columbus Park. You can hear a poetry slam, participate in a define-a-thon, and have your favorite book signed by the author. Children can hear their best-loved books read at the Target Children’s Pavilion; teenagers will find sports, fantasy, graphic novels and more at the Independence Community Foundation Youth Pavilion. The Brooklyn Book Festival is a best seller! See you there!

http://www.brooklynbookfestival.org/

Wow Poem by Anne Carson

Poem: ‘Triple Sonnet of the Plush Pony’

Anne Carson

I
Do you think of your saliva as a personal possession or as something you can sell?
What about tears? What about semen? Linguists tell
us to use the terms alienable and inalienable
to make this distinction intelligible.
E.g. English speakers call both blood and faeces alienable on a normal day
but saliva, sweat, tears and bowels they do not give away.
Bananas and buttocks, in Papua New Guinea, belong to the inalienable class
while genitalia and skin of banana are not held onto nearly so fast.

Such thinking will affect how a word like rape is defined
or how sorcerers aim their spells or how you feel in your mind
when you address animals. Of course cows and cats,
sheep, pigs, donkeys, dogs and rats
depend on their owner to keep or dispose.
But your pony you cannot sensibly classify with those.

II
Another thee.
A summer’s day.
Double vantage me.
Never to repay.
And Will in overplus.
Making addition thus –
your pony is all these to you – and more:
he can detect the smell of danger

and will not take you through a door
if there is doom or pain there.
So at the end of his life if you want to sell him for meat
you’ll have to change the pronoun with which you greet
at dawn his shaggy head,
at dawn his shaggy head.

III
A body in the dawn.
A body in the cold.
A body its breath.
Its breath a plume.
A dance a plume.
A dance not thou.
A thou, a thee.
Thou, breath.

There stands.
Breath, plume.
How cold is.
A dawn is.
How still stands.
Thy breath.