Internet-Paul-Legault

Hello, 2011. Now I can see you. And your books. Which include, thankfully:

2011-12-19T22:21:00.001-08:00

In the Common Dream of George Oppen by Joseph

Bradshaw

What Oppen didn't write in those 25 years he didn't.

The Persians by Aeschylus by Brandon Brown

Or is it? It is. But better.

Pro Magenta/Be Met by Cori Copp
2 poems, one mode, condensed.

Uncreative Writing by Kenneth Goldsmith

This is the book people will read if they want to know about Kenneth Goldsmtih forever.

The Wide Road by Carla Harryman and Lyn Hejinian

What they can't do (which isn't much) they can do together.

Mouth: Eats Color by Sawako Nakayasu and Chika Sagawa

Subtitled: "Translations, Anti-Translations, & Originals." Yes.

Goat in the Snow by Emily Pettit

Is probably the best person. Even though it's a book.

Found Poems by Bern Porter

That book by the nuclear scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project who, after the bomb, became a slightly crazed/very lovable/prolific postal-worker who founded the idea of Found Poetry. A re-release. A-ppropriately.

This Can't be Life by Dana Ward

What's there to say about a prophet?

One Sleeps the Other Doesn't by Jacqueline Waters

I couldn't get over the first poem until I couldn't get over the last poem.

++++++++Studying Hunger Journals by Bernadette Mayer (Station Hill Press); The Hermit by Laura Solomon (Ugly Duckling Presse); MOTES by Craig Dworkin (Roof Books); Anew: Complete Shorter Poetry by Louis Zukofsky (New Directions); The Hole by Thom Donovan (Displaced Press); Spring and All by William Carlos Williams, introduction by C.D. Wright (New Directions); No, I Will Be in the Woods by Michelle Taransky (Brave Men Press); You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake by Anna Moschovakis (Coffee House Press); Micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade (Wave Books) +++++++

My Brain

2011-11-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

I got my first CAT scan tonight. We also finally have the internet in my new apartment. Thus:

Poetry + Fashion

2011-10-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

Poetry is perhaps the genre most willing to be combined--with prose, visual arts, music, advertising, conversation, etc. Perhaps because it requires no more than a vague textual element--and sometimes less than that--to be included in its "ranks."

Then let us consider fashion as a realm to conquer, and seek out the successes of such a pursuit. Like Mallarmé's La Dernière Mode, for example—"one of French literature's greatest enigmas"—a fashion magazine written under multiple pseudonyms at the height of M.'s literary powers.

I lent my copy to a friend, but otherwise I would pepper in some quotations of Mme de Ponty on the seasonlessness of jewels. Or more on her theory that: "A fashionable woman does not suffer financial pressures, because Fashion has, precisely, full power to defeat them...The ‘bon ton’ of Fashion, which forbids it to propose anything aesthetically or morally disgraceful..."

Where do these fields combine, and what strange creatures reign over that glittery Venn intersection--?

Here's where it doesn't get exciting:
this Clothing Line --> Poetry Fashion

Here's where it gets exciting:
this Tumblr --> Fuckyeahmenswear

This is only a challenge in the sense that every question is—and challenges the answerer to appear before it, to mirror its punctuational ¿? with an exclamatory ¡!.

Former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland's letters seem to respond with an indirect answer:

"I am extremely disappointed to see that we have used practically no pearls at all in the past few issues...I speak of this very often -- and as soon as I stop speaking the pearls disappear...We are on the verge of a drastic emergency."

The poet Lawrence Giffin's "Spinoza's Ethics" seems to respond with a direct answer. And I'm going to respond to my temptation to include the full poem here, by doing that:

Spinoza's Ethics

Black stretch velvet of rayon, silk, and spandex (not shown) cropped to let the sequined scoopneck sleeveless shell of pure silk georgette peek out beneath the hem of black stretch silk and cheetah-print, ruffle-detailed fitted spandex of rose and tan French taffeta, beautifully hued russet, and gold brocade of polyester and rayon with a regal stand collar over classic short-sleeves in golden silk and chocolate polyester of rayon, wool, and spandex, black rayon, and silk burnout velvet with piano fringe, silk charmeuse sleeveless scoopneck shell, and Asian-print silk burnout velvet mandarin-collar and black silk velvet with multicolored beading on an emerald green classic skirtsuit of wool and silk with seaming, two-button detail, and softly curved lapels in sheer floral-print silk over a sleeveless silk dress in black with red border print on ivory pure silk with smocked waist and tie detail over fluid brown silk white cotton crochet bolero jacket with sequined edging and sheer white mesh lining of white sheer lace of rayon and nylon with portrait collar, scalloped edges, and three-quarter sleeves trimmed with black suede and taupe, pink, red, and green floral embroidery of petal-soft featherweight cashmere (specify Rain or Black) and sheer red silk over black elastic-waist silk of stonewashed cotton and spandex with multicolored rhinestones decorating silk chiffon with velvet ribbon inset detail and velvet back-slit rayon and silk (specify Chocolate or Black) or classic with pleated detail imported of triacetate and polyester camel and black scroll-print cashmere with cascading ruffle-edge detailing in Italian wool tissue crepe in dark ginger magnolia print on cotton and silk knit jewel-neck of Italian wool and beautifully draped cashmere double-faced wool in oatmeal and ivory in polyester, wool, and supple suede with seam detail (specify Red Maple, Chocolate, Cedar, or Black) of finely knit rayon and Lycra of viscose and wool of toffee melton mélange of pure Italian wool, wheat merino wool, camel hair, and spandex of rayon, nylon, and spandex in a supple suede panel-blocked three-button blazer with full lining printed matelassé of cotton and silk and white shantung pants of polyester and pima cotton with detail in a winter white mock-turtleneck of imported cotton and pink finely knit with black tulle ruffle trim, interlaced satin ribbon, scalloped edges, faux-pearl of cotton, and removable corsage detail of rayon leopard-print in pure camel and red lightweight ruffled-edge cashmere of whiskey brown knitted natural mink from China of wool, acrylic, and alpaca with black ribbed wooden-bead detail mesh inset of rayon and cotton across mahogany brown fluid full-leg pants with cheetah-print single-button long cardigan with brown trim and matching scarf and brown fit-and-flare pants of Italian leather encrusted with crystals and rose logo detailing on black quilted leather with detachable dyed rabbit-fur collar with scalloped trim, delicate smoking, and ruffles at the wrists of classic black stretch silk crepe detailing black rayon with ivory silk waterfall-hem turtleneck and autumn suiting must-haves in refined wool flannel pleated ivory and grey scroll-detailed chenille shirtdress of rayon, silk, wool, and Lycra in black crocodile-embossed leather white cotton voile shirt with stand collar and ruched detail of pumice and a geometric-print of pure silk and ribbon-cut brown leather pink cashmere with crystal kitty detail on a classic fisherman's sweater in plush cashmere with rolled-edge detail and baby-cable cashmere with ribbed sleeves and back over espresso wool knit asymmetrical top and matching pants and wheat bouclé shawl-collar micro-stretch jacket in chocolate godet-pleated crepe of pure Italian wool (specify Nouvaeau Blue, Camel, or Heathered Grey) in an oversized, deeply V'd boyfriend sweater (specify Malachite, Hazelnut Heather, or Black) with broken-cable detailing (specify Toffee Apple, Nori Green, or Wheat) with seam detail (specify Artichoke, Blood Orange, or Chanterelle) with contrast whipstitching (specify Plum/Garnet or Espresso/Putty) with a contrasting black bateau-neck underlayer in petal-soft cashmere with detachable hood and elasticized drawstring in a vibrant mix of colors and patterns complemented by hand embroidery and faux-coin accents of heathered black mélange linen glistening with cubic zirconia accessories beautifully draped in red and black dash print with twisted bodice detail.

The impossible outfit is the one most suited to the emperor. If we can't wear it, then it doesn't exist. Put it on.

Poems Up

2011-08-31T18:00:00.000-07:00

I have some "translations" of Apollinaire up at Notnostrums with these folks:

--there for the picking, if you want or haven't and want.

Essay

2011-08-04T21:05:00.001-07:00

by Bernadette Mayer

I guess it’s too late to live on the farm
I guess it’s too late to move to a farm
I guess it’s too late to start farming
I guess it’s too late to begin farming
I guess we’ll never have a farm
I guess we’re too old to do farming
I guess we couldn’t afford to buy a farm anyway
I guess we’re not suited to being farmers
I guess we’ll never have a farm now
I guess farming is not in the cards now
I guess Lewis wouldn’t make a good farmer
I guess I can’t expect we’ll ever have a farm now
I guess I’ll have to give up all my dreams of being a farmer
I guess I’ll never be a farmer now
We couldn’t get a farm anyway though Allen Ginsberg got one late in life
Maybe someday I’ll have a big garden
I guess farming is really out
Feeding the pigs and the chickens, walking between miles of rows of crops
I guess farming is just too difficult
We’ll never have a farm
Too much work and still to be poets
Who are the farmer poets
Was there ever a poet who had a self-sufficient farm
Flannery O’Connor raised peacocks
And Wendell Berry has a farm
Faulkner may have farmed a little
And Robert Frost had farmland
And someone told me Samuel Beckett farmed
Very few poets are real farmers
If William Carlos Williams could be a doctor and Charlie Vermont too,
Why not a poet who was also a farmer
Of course there was Brook Farm
And Virgil raised bees
Perhaps some poets of the past were overseers of farmers
I guess poets tend to live more momentarily
Than life on a farm would allow
You could never leave the farm to give a reading
Or to go to a lecture by Emerson in Concord
I don’t want to be a farmer but my mother was right
I should never have tried to rise out of the proletariat
Unless I can convince myself as Satan argues with Eve
That we are among a proletariat of poets of all the classes
Each ill-paid and surviving on nothing
Or on as little as one needs to survive
Steadfast as any farmer and fixed as the stars
Tenants of a vision we rent out endlessly

Web-Palaces

2011-07-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

Has it been long enough to claim antiquity from the nineties? Of course. It's been long enough to claim that from yesterday's status updates--context often evaporates faster than you can respond. But here I want to look into one specific relic, namely:

The above image is the logo for "Erin Marie's Poetry Palace!": http://www.cswnet.com/~erin/, a website dedicated to housing a collection of poems, jokes, and Fun Javascripts, like this Tic Tac Toe "app":I played it on 'Hard,' despite the warning. And, predictably, there was no winner.

One page collects a selection of "Young American Poets and Their Poetry," including Gerald Costanzo, Gibbons Ruark, and W. S. Di Piero. A young Daniel Mark Epstein begins one of the poems presented there, "At the Millinery Shop":

She wants what no clerk in the city can bring her,
a hat that will make up her mind.

I wish I had one of those. Because then I might be able to decide whether I should try to describe the uncanny nature of the text-box on Erin's home page that fills as you scroll over a new link. After the field is populated, you can use your cursor to adjust the text. But it changes as soon as the mouse moves to something else. The interaction is more ephemeral than a google search, and yet it is still an interaction--with Erin.

This has, perhaps, a purer beauty. While the poet fades, his or her work scatters, multiplies, lives on, emits nothing, prophesies.

This site is, by necessity, out-of-date. And that is where its blessedness roots--in this little palace, where time shifts visibly. Ye Olde Poesie is often blessed in the same way. Look at it >

Sea Ranch Popsickle Island

2011-07-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

In case you're wondering what the words in this subject line mean, let me tell you:

FRIDAY

Sea Ranch, issue 3 (a biannual journal (featuring a bipolar collection (of two poets (Chris Martin & me)))) is out and coming out tomorrow @ Friday @ 7:00 p.m. @ Unnameable Books, thanks to the duo (Alan Felsenthal & Ben Estes) over at The Song Cave.

SATURDAY

Popsickle 2011, Brooklyn's 2nd annual summer literary festival, is going (though it deserves a more active verb and preposition) down on Saturday from 1-8pm @ the Gowanus Ballroom with too many good ones to name (like Lonely Christopher, Dottie Lasky, Paul Foster Johnson—to name a few.

A will happen immediately following the 7:45pm reading finale slot with Ariana Reines, Jason Daniel Schwartz & me. What else would you want*?

NEXT SATURDAY

July 30 New York Poetry Festival on Governor's Island. Enough said/TMI.

*A bookfair? Well, there will be one of those there too.

The Other Poems

2011-07-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

Speaking of the future of American poetry (I can begin with this prepositional statement, because it is always what one was previously speaking of, if only metaphorically), in the near future of it, this new Fence book will be out.

I've made the obligatory Book Trailer, and so I present it to you herewith:

Timothy Donnelly writes:

With The Other Poems Paul Legault has produced a brilliant sonnet sequence that calls to mind the dizzying cinema of Busby Berkeley as much as it does the inexhaustibly inventive rhetorical contraptions of Shakespeare or Sidney. Rustling together a cast of hundreds as disparate as Sartre, Dolly Parton, The Little Chair under Water, Québec, Caliban, and Women with Unconventionally Long Hair, Legault has staged a spectacular form of existential sketch comedy that, for all its slapstick bleakness, proves surprisingly intent on “exploring joy and its intricacies.” Even as its characters drop such deflated zingers as “The duality of progress will deter us, / but from what exactly?” or else announce, with art-house taedium vitae, “I am going to watch a movie for a class. / Then I will eventually grow old and die,” the ultimate objective of The Other Poems is the pursuit of its own happiness—one cobbled together with extraordinary resourcefulness, spirit, ingenuity, and focus—and to show, by example, how we might each of us bask in the Klieg lights of our own devising.

You can do this*, if you want:

*Another this that you could do is ask for a free Advanced Reader's Copy [[from] fence.fencebooks@gmail.com]**
**Sometimes if someone does that he or she does something with it but doesn't have to.

Ventrakl by Christian Hawkey

2011-07-02T21:47:00.000-07:00

If you read the subject of this post and thought it might be about what I think about Christian Hawkey's new book, Ventrakl, and want to know what that is, you can do that by checking out this review on Jacket2.

I don't like that that rhymes, but I'm too tired* to do anything about it.**

*<--I went to the beach today
**Apparently not too tired to make this .gif

Everybook

2011-06-27T21:10:00.000-07:00

Poets House* is the kind of place I start to feel guilty about if I haven't gone to it in a while. It's like visiting your grandma's (the more intense one's) house, except she isn't there, and you can just hang out in her library, and feel a general wave of encouragement, and get your dose of that everything-is-ok feeling.

So, for those of you, like me, who have been neglectful, or who have not been neglectful because you don't yet know about Poets House (that's a different kind of larger metro-neglect) tomorrow night is the launch of its 2011 SHOWCASE which, based on last year's numbers, will feature more than 2,000 books of poetry—all published this year.

Not only will they be there, I'll be there too** And everybody else.

Maggie, the librarian, is waiting for you. You're waiting for you.

*Plug: I'll be part of the showcase reading on Th. 7/14
** Plug 2: Not only that, but once this launches, you'll be able to search their online directory and find everything still there, waiting for you at Poets House .

John Ashbery Round-Up

2011-05-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

I don't even know. I don't expect to.

A translation of Ashbery's poem, "Daffy Duck in Hollywood"

I guess.

John—in what David Lehman calls "party mode."

This is dark.

Some Poems

2011-03-31T20:50:00.000-07:00

I've got some poems up on The Awl—which apparently should not be italicized.

Celebrity Poets

2011-03-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

A few questions: Can we hurry up and sell-out already? Do we have to have sold-out in a different medium in order to write a marketable book of poetry? Did you know that Billy Collins's first book of poetry was called Poker Face?

Or, as Anne Carson suggests, I'm not sure if we can avoid it. We've already sold out--and were willing to do it for free. Or, rather, for true love:

Do we have to go back to being romantics again in order to secure a larger audience? Or is that itself the problem?

That primal dove that rises above the golden heap will be our mascot! We will race forward into a new era of the essence distilled. Spring shall be our flag and Death shall be what happens to these leaves that we notice, most acutely, in autumn. O, forlorn departments, weep for me. O, dire merchant, spurn us. Let us keep us in the arms of poesie.

Is there another sort of love that the masses love?

Q: What does everyone love?
A: Yoko Ono.

Oh, Yoko:

(I'm sorry about that. Rinse:
)

I've been having this circular conversation a lot lately. My solution is this poem:

If you would like to give me money, please interact with this "poem." I am not actively asking for money except in the sense that I am the poet putting on the persona of one seeking money. I ask your assistance in language, but not in actuality. The 'I' of this poem is not 'I.'

The Other Poems

2011-03-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

For the sake of your radar, I just wanted to announce that my second book received the Fence Modern Poets Series Prize and will be coming out this Fall 2011 from, well, Fence Books.

Things you may want to potentially know / do:

1. There's a cover. / Look at it.

2. There are some sample poems. / Read them.

3. Marjorie Perloff likes it. / Like it.

JUPITER 88

2011-02-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Jupiter. Also: Jupiter.

Elizabeth Bishop Round-Up

2011-02-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

Who gave this man a key to her house?

Blame it on the Amelie soundtrack or the legos, but I'm moved.

Aw, look at those old fruitcakes.

This makes me extremely nervous.

"It's a literary reference."

Elegy

2011-01-16T14:50:00.001-08:00

According to the internet—a lot of things these days seem to fall appropriately under that prepositional phrase—the best way to deal with the loss of a pet is through uncomfortable puns and poorly written poetry:

Time to Go

The time has come I think you know
the Lord is calling so I must go
I love you so much; I wish it wasn't so
I wish I could stay; I don't want to go

I actually find the repetition of 'go' in this stanza effective and uncomfortably moving.

I guess that uncomfortability is one of the internet's main themes. For example, I am now going to post a tribute video for my cat, which you will feel guilty for not watching all the way through, even though it is uncomfortably long:

Just for those of you who might have to face the same burden of grief that I have learned to bear forth after the lost of my cat Buster, I wanted to recommend Christopher Smart's tribute to his cat Jeoffry*. I know you know it already. Memory is useful in these times.

The autobiographical nature persistent in the work of amateur poets universally suggests poetry's utility as an art of emotional export. The autobiographical nature persistent in the work of our masters is a comfort in the face of the possible death/rebirth of poetry.

If you feel up for the former sometimes, me too:

The Lord is calling now I must go
but before I go I want you to know
I know it hurts to lose a friend
but I'll always be with you even to the end.**

*I would also like to remind that audience that this is a section from Smart's larger insane masterpiece Jubilate Agno. It's good.
**written by John Quealy

10 for '10

2010-12-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

A round-up of some of the most striking experimental translations of the year:

Ventrakl by Christian Hawkey

One of the more interesting books of 2010 in general, Hawkey's writings-through/with/around the notoriously hermetic verse of Austrian poet George Trakl takes Jack Spicer's ideas in After Lorca, detonates them, and fills in the gaps with archival photographs, biographical information, imagined interviews, and poems that expose the originality of their "translator."

O Resplandor by Erin Mouré

One of Christian Hawkey's favorite books of the year, this work by Canadian poet Erin Mouré accomplishes the same feat as her Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person—in which she adds another persona to Pessoa's retinue, setting the original Portuguese against a specifically North American-based English. Here, she takes on the work of numerous poets and poems—with titles, charmingly enough, like "The Paul Celan Translations by Erín Moure." Read an interview with Erin >

Tracelanguage by Mark Goldstein

More Bookthug Publishing here. More Celan here—and, at the same time, less of it. Mark Goldstein's second collection of homophonic translations from the German (his last being After Rilke) removes Celan in order to replace him with a series of short lyrics—what Goldstein calls "a transtranslation"—infested with the ur-poet.

5 Meters of Poems by Carlos Oquendo de Amat, translated by Alejandro de Acosta and Joshua Beckman

The original poems being a critical avant-garde text from the Peruvian modernist, pair that with Beckman's playful sense of the lyric and Ugly Duckling's gorgeous accordion-foldout printing, and you get a beautiful example of why reappropriation/translation is the key to all poetic growth.

The Dickinson Composites by Jen Bervin

I haven't been able to fork up the $2,000 to get a hold of one of these titleless boxes of Emily Dickinson's punctuation marks sewed into quilts and documented herewith, but it's clearly one of the more interesting transcreations of the year—the unpublished become the nearly unpublishable published (by Granary Books).

The Microscripts by Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky

Speaking of the unpublishable, these densely packed texts were written on strips of paper in a shorthand less than 2 millimeters high, presumed to be undecodifiable until an insane critic came in and unraveled the code. Bernofsky unravels them further into the short poem-stories they are and are not.

Meddle English by Caroline Bergvall

Selected works are tricky, but Bergvall's oeuvre is so expansive that it invites this sort of wrangling for the purposes of new readers of this seminal, yet still in many ways overlooked, conceptual poet. Her abbreviated versions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales would make you run to get the original if they weren't so transfixing in their own rite. But there's more, and then more than that.

Johnny 23 by Charles Burns

When I asked Charles Burns to sign my copy of this limited edition copy of Johnny 23 written in Alien script at the Brooklyn Comic-Con, I called it a translation, and he specifically said it wasn't. Nonetheless it belongs on this list. Whether you're an avid fan of children's cereal/boy-girl-scout decoders or not, there's still a distinct pleasure to be derived from invented nerd-languages. And the draftsmanship is typically amazing.

The Book of Genesis by R. Crumb

"It's hard to draw God," says the famed illustrator R. Crumb regarding his recent adaptation of the Bible. If the original text didn't strike the fear of the grand creator into you, then this comic-master's black and white sketched version will catch you up on why the God of the Jews is the dark source of beauty itself. Technically, this is a late 2009 publication. Whatever—it's timeless.

A Hemingway Reader by Robert Fitterman

Though Rob the Plagiarist was published in 2009 as well, Fitterman recently republished it, along with the rest of his collected works, on his website. "A Hemingway Reader" was in said book, but here it is on its own—in all its compiled-Hemingway-sentences-from-The-Sun-Also-Rises-that-begin-in-the-first-person glory. The above link is a .pdf, so put it on your iPad and get ready for the future of literature.

BOMB

2010-12-20T15:26:00.000-08:00

An interview with Paul Legault.

Yup.

Don't Ask

2010-12-19T18:31:00.000-08:00

A political response is by far the most difficult type of response in the arts, in that it makes its subject the dull roar of government and its constituents who are as bored as any with the idea of their constituency.

That said, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was officially reformed hereby marking a future rid of that odd discourse of quiet interrogation and hesitant response. And I respond.

As my friend Nick remarked: "well as long as there's don't ask don't tell then don't ask anything." This was the premise for the blog, "Don't Ask"—in which miscellaneous New Yorker cartoons are paired with said caption—now officially done not asking.

Thank you. Don't ask.

How To

2010-12-13T20:34:00.000-08:00

I recently discovered the somewhat obvious fact that anyone can write a wikiHow article.

The most accomplished masterwork of instruction housed on their database that I've come across thus far is this elegant exploration of postmodern ennui:

How to Write Instructions*

This might be the new form of our generation. As much as I don't want to dig too deep into the pit of similarities shared by the wiki-entry and its precedent, the sonnet—I particularly enjoy wikiHow's 'Warning' section and how it functions as a sort of volta.

I wrote one called:

How to Start a Prominent New Business**

It begins:

1. Buy a lot of ties.

Consider this an invitation for poetry to explain the world to itself.*** Virgil was a guide. We are scientists.

*Based on work by Marilyn Haight, Lily A, Sondra C, BR, Dave Crosby, Manchurian President, Wingrider and Savannah, wikiHow user(s) Horses4Ever, Flickety, Paintsaint, Mypinkphone, Lillian May, Tikuko and BoldStepFixer and Anonymous.
**Flagged for deletion before I finished this post. Admittedly, this is not about starting a prominent new business.
***Which reminds me. Emily Pettit has a new book called How.

Reading-a-thon

2010-12-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

(Everything is better when you add 'a-thon' to it.)

If you haven't checked out the sidebar, then you might not have noticed the upcoming a-thon.

1. Thursday - A joint reading of a collaborative reworking of Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno with Simone Kearney at the Gowanus Studio Space. There will be animals and a David-Lynch-themed slideshow.
2. Friday - I won a $50 prize, and now I'm going to read my prize-winning poems at a reading featuring the Birdsong gang and a band named PAPS.
3. Saturday - Simone-Kearney-Collab #2 at the Thierry-Goldberg Projects with that Bianca Stone and a collaborative Moby Dick erasure. There will be whales, but then there won't be whales.

If you come to all three, you will become suspect. If you go to one, I will see you there. If you don't, then we will drift apart but not irremediably so but reading-wise-ly so until about 2011.

I didn't make a scrapbook of fall readings, but if I did it would look something like this:

What I Want for Christmas

2010-11-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

Because now that you know, who knows?

1) The Grand Piano Box-set, $90

The laundry is done. Go pick it up.

2) Wave Books Annual Subscription, $75/$295

This laundry service provides free delivery and one-year plans.

3) Ugly Duckling Presse Subscription, $12/$150

Your laundry has been turned into beautiful paper versions of your clothes that you prefer to the originals.

4) Translating Translating Apollinaire, $120

Your laundry is one of the premier works of experimental translation in the 20th century.

5) Mes inscriptions, 1934-1944, $54.71

The laundry metaphor has stopped making sense. Nonetheless, I want this.

6) Le pays où tot est permis, $--

I scanned my rare library's copy of this back in the day, since it's impossible to find physically. Thus it's up to Santa to find it. Or, you can download it here thanks to Avant que j'oublie.

7) Cash
8) Cash 4 Gold
9) Love

10) Protection from Krampus, Santa's evil brother.

Amen.

Family Portrait

2010-10-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

Here'a Anna Rabinowitz, Norma Cole, Craig Santos Perez, and me at Books and Bookshelves last Wednesday in San Francisco for Omnidawn's fall launch:

Yes, this is an adorable family. And, yes, Craig is holding Spam Lite.

And as long as we're indulging in some back-to-work-after-a-week's-vacation-Monday-bourgeois-nostalgia-for-idleness, how about a slideshow from said trip:

The confessional poets have given way to a new breed of confessional poet-bloggers. Or worse. Or a little better.

Emily Dickinson As

2010-10-14T16:00:00.001-07:00

I recently completed a series of portraits of Emily Dickinson. I feel like that is a pretty dangerously boring sentence to write without backing it up, so here they are:

Emily Dickinson knitting while kayaking through a lavafall

Emily Dickinson playing cards with dogs

Emily Dickinson in a factory, with Ezra Pound on a leash

Emily Dickinson as an astronaut baseball-player in a bathroom

Emily Dickinson as Catwoman in Boston Commons

Emily Dickinson riding on a hunting dog at sunset

Emily Dickinson as a centaur in the ocean

Emily Dickinson as a mermaid

I think they have something to do with this.

Walt Whitman Round-up

2010-09-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

SUPERMACHINE issue #2

2010-09-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be at a reading of SUPERMACHINE issue #2 on Tuesday, September 10.

Click on the SUPERMACHINE for more info about said reading. If you'd like.

7:30pm, Sept. 10, 2010

The Schoolhouse
330 Ellery St
Brooklyn, NY 11206

With all these:

Macgregor Card
Chris Cheney
Lonely Christopher
Corina Copp
Jon Cotner
Joanna Penn Cooper
Anne Cecelia Holmes
Lauren Ireland
Simone Kearney
Dorothea Lasky
Emily Pettit
Christie Ann Reynolds
Matvei Yankelevich
Matthew Yeager

Apollinaire's Birthday

2010-08-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

"Seigneur que t'ai-je fait Vois Je suis unicorne"

"Watson, come here! I want to see you!"

2010-08-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

I recently co-founded a poetry translation journal, called Telephone, and it's officially in print.

Basically, we take a single foreign poet and have his or her work interpreted repeatedly by a team of poet-translators who may or may not be familiar with the original language. It's an experiment, though one with a past--and a future. And said future arrived in a box at my office yesterday.

The first issue features the work of Berlin poet Uljana Wolf, translated by Mary Jo Bang, Robert Fitterman, Matthea Harvey, Christian Hawkey, Erin Moure, and, and...

Read it >

#1 Cutest Poet

2010-08-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

The finalists include:

Maya Angelou (with Grover), a perplexed John Ashbery, a very pleased-looking Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Marie Ponsot with a bow.

But the prize goes to...Anne Stevenson?

Watch this, and tell me you don't want one. Impossible.

I don't care whether you like her poetry or T. S. Eliot, but after seeing this, you should realize that she is hands-down the cutest poet on the market. I want to squeal.

Pokerface Vs. "Poker Face"

2010-08-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

Billy Collins's first book of poetry was called Pokerface (Kenmore Press, 1977).

And she stole your look.

Harmonium vs. Harmonium

2010-07-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

"There is a man whose work makes most of the rest of us quail" says Hart Crane—on poems from Wallace Stevens's debut, Harmonium.

Listen up>

VS.

"Brilliant. Alarming. Majestic. Bewitching. Gothic. Melancholy. Cryptic. These words and countless more describe Vanessa Carlton's sophomore album 'Harmonium,'" says Amazon reviewer Rudy Palma on Carlton's collection of the same name.

Listen up >

The similarities are too many to enumerate, so I will leave you to be the judge. Which one of these Harmoniums is the key to unlocking the mysteries that lie past the thresholds of contemporary poetics—that lead off through the cellar door to an underground system of roots and influences which have shaped what we write today?

W. S.: "It is the huge, high harmony that sounds / A little and a little, suddenly, / By means of a separate sense."
V. C.: "Ohh ohh ohh / Ohh ohh ohh / Gotta get a little / Gotta get a little"

Popsickle was going to happen. Then it did.

2010-07-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was good. Popsickle, the self-proclaimed "first monster literary festival" in Bushwick happened. I felt like we were sitting inside of a hot bucket—i.e. the hot bucket that it is contemporary Brooklyn (i.e. Bushwick) poetry.

How about some highlights.

1. The heat index:

2. The organizations representing organization:

BIRDS OF LACE, BODY ACTUALIZED CONTROL, BUSHWICKBK, THE BUSHWICK READING SERIES,CROWD, HTMLGIANT, MARKET HOTEL, POETRY TIME, STAIN, SUPERMACHINE, UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE

3. A poem by Emily Pettit—from her collaborative chapbook, Cock Fight—that goes:

I have this to say, Something was going to happen
and then it did. Our gestures exceeded
the speed of light. They were practical
efforts. Practical efforts, such as raising chickens.
Such as, someone buying many hotels!
Such as, standing and standing. Processing
information in your sleep. When you build
a fire in the snow it's a speculative treatment
of certain problems. I feel better when I feel
better. Let me explain the agreement. Or else
you explain impossible colors. Impossible
colors are a catastrophic visual failure
and not impossible. Not a ship sinking. A shore
out of shape. Some things will get lost. A neck.
The circle running. A true yellow blue.
There are always competing signals from one
system to another. There are options regarding
the ice. We can lick it or cross it. Further information
when you want it. Information always blinking.
A chime that rang. I fluctuate by night. I fluctuate
by night. In my head is a station where you
practice landing.

4. Egg Pizza.

5. That damn train in the window.

Mayakovsky's Birthday

2010-07-18T21:24:00.000-07:00

Поздравляю с Днем Рождения
(Congratulations with your birthday.)

"A Cloud in Pants?" you ask ?
July 19, 1893.

"Poetry" by Revlon

2010-07-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

I don't know what is more beautiful about this. That this wig is named "Poetry," (presumably after the Marianne Moore poem) that the color of this wig is "Champagne Blush" (a veritable surrealist haiku), or that it costs (~~$225.00~~) $157.50 to own.

BUY NOW >

Naming something poetry is this easy, whether we'd like to believe so or not. Here she is, the goddess-muse, a red streak laboring across the Amazonian sky, teeth flashing their way forth like those unforgotten minions of the deep sea who lead their ways off to its center. If I buy this wig, and wear it whenever I write, what will I be deemed to be?

Answer: Poet.

If one is called to strive for beauty, then, Keats would argue, one should also strive for truth.

Where is the beauty in beauty products? In their design, yes, but, presumably, in their end result.

Truthfully, Revlon and I are set to the same creative grindstone. Truthfully, they've done a better job than me at grinding out said ineffable beauty. Luckily, they are providing me with this easy way to put on beauty like a hat. A hat that appears to be real. That turns reality, perpetually, like Wordsworth turning his crystal daffodils between two facing mirrors in the dusklight of yore. Real truth folds on itself.

I can only offer my humble gratitude. Revlon, vous me maître.

Some of these.

2010-07-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

I've got three poems in the new issue of The Offending ~~Adam~~.

Read them and weep, or remain unmoved.

Mary Oliver Round-up

2010-07-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

Alex Katz's Frank O'Hara

2010-07-05T21:09:00.000-07:00

14th Street is drunken and credulous,
53 rd tries to tremble but is too at rest. The good

love a park and the inept a railway station,
and there are the divine ones who drag themselves up

and down the lengthening shadow of an Abyssinian head
in the dust, trailing their long elegant heels of hot air

crying to confuse the brave "It's a summer day,
and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world."

With an emphasis on summer.

William Blake Round-up

2010-05-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Cowboy Up.

2010-05-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

2 reasons I'm mad at Arizona:

1. The obvious.
2. Cowboy Poetry.

(Mad that I haven't heard about its recent renaissance until now!) The now I'm referring to being: Baxter Black.

Heralded by the NY Times as "probably the nation's most successful living poet," Baxter makes you rethink the meaning of success, not to mention the meaning of poetry. He works on the edge of that terrain of contemporary poetry where obscurity and clarity meet, or, as he puts it:

"between the Gila River and the Gila monster, the Mexican border and the Border Patrol and between the horse and the cow---where the action is."

EXHIBIT A: Baxter Black

I notice the influence of Ed Dorn's Gunslinger in his work, paired with a rigorous ethical integrity reminiscent of that of William Blake or Christopher Smart. Find out more (before the evidence provided below scares you off from reading more about this poetry which fulfills Whitman's dreams for America by creating a truly national aesthetic. One which speaks for itself.)

EXHIBIT B: Video : "AS SEEN ON 'BAXTER BLACK FROM OUT THERE'"

EXHIBIT C: Cowboy living room.

Bloomberg likes poetry.

2010-04-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

But does poetry like Bloomberg?
Sure. Why not? Poetry takes all the attention it can get. Here's an original poem by the man himself:

"Hope" NYC
By Mike Bloomberg

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That makes our City soar
It will take us to the future
As it's carried us before

Hope is the thing with feathers
That travels all our streets
It sings in every language
It sometimes even tweets

And though we may not see it
It perches everywhere
In new shops and small businesses
In every schoolroom chair

It could be our famous pigeon
Or fabled red-tailed hawk
Hope is the thing with feathers
That flies throughout New YAWK

So, basically, Hope (quote-unquote) is a giant bird that lives in New York City, and is also a time-machine.

I'm sorry, Emily. We didn't mean to make you cry. God Bless, New York. I hope everyone had a happy Poem in Your Pocket Day.

"The dice of the intellect are loaded."

2010-04-08T12:54:00.001-07:00

I'm not at the 2010 AWP Conference, so I am sadly unable to live-blog it with the best of them. Instead, I would like to submit my humble proposal for next year's event—

Why the 2011 AWP Conference should be held in Vegas:

1. Death: Poets love death. And Vegas is where things go to die.
2. The Riviera: It could really use the business.
3. Fanny Packs: You're already wearing them.
4. High Levels of Oxygenation: To help keep you awake through the inevitable Q & A's.
5. Poetry Nightclub: - "Vegas’s premier hip hop destination...You never know who you’ll see drop by or who’s canoodling in the secluded corners of this aesthetically pleasing night spot." Apparently. Anybody could be canoodling.
6. Donald Revell: Who doesn't at least kind of like Donald Revell? He's a nice guy. He lives in Vegas.
7. Craps: I'm officially addicted to Craps.
8. Cirque du Soleil: If you like the AWP Conference, we also recommend: Cirque du Soleil.
9. The Eternal Mysteries of Life: Where else do all literary terms, all forms attempting to approximate life and life's approximation in language--synechdoche, hyperbole, literalism, metonymy, foreshadowing, antithesis--come to such a direct point as at the peak of the replica of the Eiffel Tower outside of the replica of Paris so aptly named Paris?
10. Joan Rivers: - Engh? I mean, I ran out of reasons. But need I say more?

This is what the carpet looks like at the AWP Conference. It also gives you a good sense of what the coffee tastes like at the AWP Conference. A little overdone and "tangy."

The carpet design team calls this pattern 'Half-way to Vegas.'

The Madeleine Poems

2010-03-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

Buying things that don't exist is what poetry is all about.

So why not purchase The Madeleine Poems while it's still just a fresh idea—separate from all the hassles that are inevitably part of being a physical object?*

To be fair, I will include Ezra Pound's argument against pre-ordering The Madeleine Poems—or any book for that matter—in the form of a harangue.

Listen here >

with usura

hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
harpes et luthes
or where virgin receiveth message
and halo projects from incision,

with usura

seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly

I can offer you no harpes et luthes, but I can offer you some advanced praise and sample poems. Do think it over carefully before making your final decision.

"Into the restless profusion..."

*DISCLAIMER: Ezra Pound might consider this Usura.

Poetry/Wizardry

2010-03-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

Wizards have long been at the heart of every real shift in American poetics.

This is why I'm glad that the National Book Association has recently recognized one of our best wizards, Keith Waldrop, as Best Wizard 2010.

(Click the wizard to submit your wizard poetry.)

(Guess which one is the wizard .)

Married to the famous lady-wizard, Rosmarie Waldrop, Keith is proud to represent this class of human being that has done so much work for the dark arts of poetry.

(Waldrop has officially reclaimed the title of "Wizard of Poetry" from Ghostface Killah.)

From Walt Whitman, King of the Wizards, to the wizard-poet Charles Olson, we salute you.

A Journey of Love

2010-03-13T16:38:00.000-08:00

After visiting the website, trulysexypoet.com, I've been wondering: what is truly sexy poetry? It's either this or something else.

I'm leaning towards the latter.

The word 'truly' is what makes me most uncomfortable. It's the confidence with which they proclaim this both sexy and truly sexy that makes me second-guess myself. Either way, I'm glad it's part of the landscape of contemporary American poetry.

"They do not think whom they souse with spray."

2010-03-10T22:33:00.000-08:00

Once again.

Who's that man?

2010-03-09T22:16:00.000-08:00

To all you poets out there who were looking forward to old age merely so that you could grow a beard, run around naked, strewing butterflies and writing erotic love letters to Abraham Lincoln, look the death of your dreams in it's cold dead face:

Darrel Blaine Ford is a Walt Whitman impersonator of great renown, posing here with the inimitable, somewhat uncomfortable-looking Billy Collins. If you're getting married, having a birthday, or just planning to go bathe with some other young men and need a 28th...don't look for him under your bootsoles, he has an e-mail address: waltwhitmanofli@aol.com.

But just in case you thought this was indicative of a larger trend that you've been missing out on, you're right.

The greats have returned to the 21st Century and are available for one-on-one conversations, including: Galileo, Mother Goose, Amelia Earhart, Sojourner Truth (!!NEW!!), Abraham Lincoln, and much more.

Hold up.

2010-03-06T19:16:00.000-08:00

Joe Brainard, Frank O'Hara, Joe LeSueur and Frank Lima (standing).
Elwyn Chamberlain, 1964.

What I want for Christmas.

2010-03-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

Granary Books has recently put up the entirety of Robert Creeley's library for sale--leading me and each of my co-workers to shell out $25-300 bucks for a piece of Bobby's books.

If you would like to donate money so that I can buy this naked picture of Joe Brainard, I will kindy repost it to this site. For this extensive purpose, I am now going to look into a PayPal account.

Paul Legault is on the Internet

2010-03-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

Once again.

Internet-Paul-Legault is different than Paul Legault

2008-10-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

Point taken, Internet-Paul-Legault.