I talked about some books I enjoyed this year

A new Rabbit Light Movies is up. I like the look of this full length poem film by Zach. I dont know what it is exactly, but I see a lot of faces I know.


Im reading in New York next weekend with some friends from our MFA program at UMASS. That'll be good. We're on break now and I miss them.



Today is Dara Wier's birthday.

Happy Day Dara.

Here is one of my favorite poems of hers, taken from Fou (whatever happened to that magazine?)

Chinese Restaurant on Fire

There they were sitting in the shade of a twisty gingko only more it was he

and less it was she conversing, only is it conversing when one does all of the

listening and the other does all of the talking, it probably is in some and not

in all circumstances. These were the subjects and the subjects were many:

his recent move, his eating habits, his phone manners, his headaches, his

sleep apnea, his poor eating habits, his non-cooking ways, his laundry

phobia, his desire to have children, his house hunting activities, his failure to

receive results in this endeavor, his apartment complex, his mother’s

dependence, his inheritance, his brother’s mental ill-health, his wife’s long-

suffering, his several ambitions, his many good qualities, his friends in

important places, his past of dark and glamorous drug addiction, his bad

knees, his dental work, his plans for future projects, his preferences in

footwear, his reading habits, his fear of failing to succeed, his ambitions, his

history of past successes, his taste in music, his this that and the other which

went on uninterrupted as the smell of smoke accumulated and eventually

insisted on gaining her attention which did nothing to deter his continuing

his involvement with his it turned out to be nothing less than all he could

find in his mind at the time, each piece of it leading to another, while she

had by now looked in the direction from which the smell of smoke was

coming to see rising up out of the rooftop just over her shoulder Chinese

cooks frantically scrambling from out of what must have been some sort of

escape hatch, it looked as if they were ascending, smoke did this to them, it

created an aura of beauty around their danger and it looked as if they would

successfully free themselves in time to survive as he continued talking

though it had become difficult to hear him above noises of people running

and by now at least three different kinds of sirens so she said look the

restaurant is on fire and he ignored her and kept right on talking as if none of

this registered as he was so lost in his thoughts nothing could derail them or

stop their headlong streaking into the future where everything was in flames,

everything in ruins, uninhabitable.

Lilys book is finally available. You can get it here.

Julias book is finally out. You can get it here.

I couldnt be more excited about these books. These are two of my favorite poets out there right now and these are their first books.

If you live around my neck, come see Julia and Lily read with Cynthia King on Dec 19th at Flying Object in Hadley, MA. details here.

This event is one of the last Im going to put on in the area for a while. As of next year I'll be co-running the JUBILAT reading series at the Jones Library in Amherst.

JACKIE!

Buy Office Work by the beloved Jackie Clark, out now from Greying Ghost, and (maybe) receive a pamphlet of a poem by me called You Are On Fired.

JACKIE!

This weekend was for hero worship. I saw the "classic line up" of Guided by Voices. Did they play "Kicker of Elves?"

No.

But they did play this.

Not all Guided by Voices songs are about elf kicking. Something that has always irked me in critical treatment of the band is the focus on Pollard lyrics as some sort of fantastical theatre. When you name songs "Postal Blowfish" or "Zoo Pie," you can see this trend forming. There is even a GBV Song Title Generator. This is where poet Tony Tost found the title for his long poem, World Jelly. But this fantasy treatment has always been reductive. Look at the song Tractor Rape Chain, which at first glance looks ridiculous by title alone. But then there are the words

why is it every time i think about you
something that you have said or implied makes
me doubt you
then i look into your cynical eyes and i know it
as if it never meant anything to me

parallel lines on a slow decline - tractor rape chain
better yet, let's all get wet on the tractor rape chain
speed up, slow down, go all around in the end

in the first place it's probably just paranoia
but there's a ghost in my room
and he says i better run
it's a thing i know - it's a thing i believe in
won't you tell it to go away?

An anthemic charge against the dissolution of relationship, of once tender eye looks now gone jaded, of workman-like routine pushing two people in separate paths. It is very human, very familiar and very sad.

That same voice sings confidence to another utilitarian object (utility & work being one of the most persevering themes in Pollard's music & common for a man who worked for years as a forth grade teacher while trying to get his band noticed, only experiencing success when closely pushing forty. That and the fact Pollard has the hardest work ethic in indie rock, release 3-5 albums a year since GBV's 2004 dissolution) in My Valuable Hunting Knife, my favorite GBV song.

I want to start a new life
With my valuable hunting knife
She will shine like a new girl
And I want to shout out our love to the world
Everything I think about I think about
Everything I talk about I talk about
With you
But you don't know what I go through
You don't know

Days, they will turn into nights
But my valuable hunting knife
It will not rust through the tears
And it will not lose its appeal over years

Pollard's music has always been about world making. GBV came from, and continue to live, in their own world. But here is a voice in post traumatic desperation, making real what's not to find a reliable commitment to his cause, which is loneliness. This feeling is echoed throughout his best ars poetica, I am a Scientist.

I am a lost soul I shoot myself with rock n roll The hole I dig is bottomless But nothing else could set me free

Sometimes it is just for the music. But GBV's best songs - Teenage FBI, Game of Pricks, Smothered in Hugs, The Official Ironman Rally Song, Don't Stop Now, Blimps Go 90, Exit Flagger, Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory - wear their self conscious loneliness for anyone to see. It is what I will always remember them for.

***

I need a camera. I went to this great restaurant with this great person. I would have liked to have shown you the fried Brussels sprouts. I would like to have shown you the copy of Macgregor Card's THE GERM #1 I found in a used record shop.

Im reading tonight with Elaine Kahn at this place. Why don't you look at the menu? Its a pretty good menu. Details are not on the menu, they are here

New from Brave Men Press - Jennifer Denrow - FROM CALIFORNIA, ON

FROM CALIFORNIA, ON
Jennifer Denrow

Shaped in inventive diction that reflects her disjunction, Jennifer Denrow knows what we encounter won't ever answer back. In this singular narrative of a trip through known bucolics, she charts the inadequacies of experience in a voice that stranges; aware of itself and its beautiful incapability. She tells us “everyone who sees us insists that we are here” but only through its lasting impression does From California, On think itself possible.

Jennifer Denrow is the author of California, out soon from Four Way Books. She is also the author of two chapbooks, A Knee for a Life (Horseless Press) & From California, On.

Cover letterpressed with black ink on blue paper.
Printed in a limited edition of 85.
22 pages.

read sample poems

$9

Buy it along with the Limited Edition Coinside

$11.50

Visit us at Brave Men Press

Please pass the word around on your blogs, Facebook, or by email. We count on your generosity to help us keep going.



I completely love this book. When I first read it, I was very affected, and continue to be so. It is a pleasure to help put it out. And Emily made the just-right cover, package,etc. Very happy. I know you will enjoy it.

FORTHCOMING from BRAVE MEN PRESS - chapbooks by Chris Martin , Lily Brown, Ben Kopel, Michelle Taransky & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

H_NGM_N

I've a new poem in H_NGM_N.

In fact, a lot of people do.

I made this for your autumn.

#


The Groupies – primitive
Charlie Feathers – Can’t Hardly Stand It
Carl Perkins – Honey Don’t
The Rumblers – Boss
The Cramps – Fever
The Sonics – The Witch
Elvis – Blue Moon
Howlin Wolf – Smokestack Lightning
Link Wray – Fire and Brimstone
Scott Walker - Jackie

new absence

A new issue of Absent.
Below is a great landscaper from Josh Harmon.



Also New Poems by Rauan Klassnik at last weeks' NO TELL MOTEL.




Saw High on Fire last night. In describing, I should say things like "I got my brain blasted through my face melt" but it was more like "hugged by a sweating teddy bear"




My last cat has gone. Willy. He disappeared a week ago into the woods. I hate the woods. It never gives back.

Bernadette Mayer was all eyes

Studying Hunger

Sharon Van Etten came to town the other day. She carried us away with her. We brought her back to our place. She's touring a ton and you should meet her halfway.



Bought this album the other day. Les Ralliezes Denudes An extreme feedbacker, better than Fushitusha.

From another blog

There are no official recordings, they never recorded in a studio (?) Les Rallizes Dénudés are quite possibly the only rock group that can be genuinely described as revolutionary and not only because their bass player took part in a airplane hijack!

I’m not surprised to read their sound was originally inspired by the Velvets groundbreaking 1967 noisefest “White Light White Heat”.

Just look at that guy. And the title. Who could pass it up. Not me. Not you.

A new Octomom is up.

Look at this Jennifer Denrow

The people come from themselves. They’re the operations they couldn’t afford. On the other side of the room, they are dressed like clouds. We give them the personal history of wind. When it gets too loud, we shut the door and never go back. The room sits empty for months, filling up with the sound of each drama. We stop imagining what’s happening in the room, and later forget there was ever a room to begin with. Our participation in each other still occurs, but slowly, forgetfully.

Now look at this Jennifer Denrow.


(More on that soon)

Congrats to SIR! contributors Chris DeWeese & Rebecca Farivar. Octopus Books will be putting out their first this year.

SIR! has its next issue all lined up. But I dont know HTML. I need an HTML Giant to help put this issue into one piece. Its not too much and I am pretty demandless. If you can help, please contact me.

Im Not A Witch

Its been...a while.

I've lost a some things these past few months.
My partner & love.
My home.

My ability run without coughing.

Some people I like died.

Michael Gizzi ("May you keep this memory, the one you’ll never see.")
Tony Curtis
Arthur Penn

It was an endless summer


But I did gain some hair, pack-a-day habit, a new apartment, poems.



Horseless Press is going to put out a collection of my poems called THE CONSTITUTION.

I've never been able to commit to a sustained thought in words before. Not well anyhow. THE CONSTITUTION was meant to begin from a source poem and everything thereafter would be an amendment to that original idea, turning over and over. Its also an examination of a moral constitution, what it is to have one, what mine is. I'm excited about these poems.

Horseless recently put out a book by Jennifer Denrow. You should get that here. Murphy Brown makes an appearance. The next book by Brave Men comes in a few weeks from Jen and it is just astounding. She's got a big diction.


Excited too Greying Ghost will be pamphletting a poem of mine called YOU ARE ON FIRED. (I dont mean these announcements as a gloat but a repeat to convince myself I still have a shadow. Like shadowboxing.) Sam Starkweather has some new SELF HELP POEMS, some of which you can see here

and here

The perfect drug is one you only experience once, and the rest of your life is spent chasing that feeling. After McCain’s concession speech I didn’t think I could get any higher. But when he was standing in front of 100,000 people talking about the transitive properties of hope, it felt like I was at a once-in-a-lifetime rock concert. The movie we had all been waiting for was finally before us and impossibly, was better than we imagined, and with each newly delivered line, it kept getting better. There, sitting in my car in the dark, listening to that voice coming from the radio, I achieved absolute belief, and it had nothing to do with politics or humanity or any of that shit, it was simply the fact that language did this.

Sam also runs BIRDS LLC who're putting out some good books together.

	Either Way I'm Celebrating Poems and Comics by Sommer Browning
	The Kings of the F**king Sea Poems by Dan Boehl, Images by Jonathan Marshall
	Goat in the Snow Poems by Emily Pettit

I joined Twitter, to kill time, but mainly just to read Vag Talk ("Just discovered the woman-centric channel OXYGEN. It's all of the content of Ass Sluts 5, minus the sex." )

I was lucky to be part of some nice readings this summer with Janaka Stucky, Julie Doxsee, Josh Harmon, Emily Pettit, Dottie Lasky & Sarah Goldstein. That felt good. That was my vacation. I didnt take pictures, but thank you to them for letting me play.

I'm reading NOV 3rd in Northampton with Elaine Kahn. Its at the Green Steet Cafe, which is a nice place. They comp you food and drink if you read, for each reader, as well as plus one. If you'd like to be my plus one please wheeze at me.

A lot of things in the Northampton area. Song Cave has put out new chapbooks by Macgregor Card, CD Wright, and Geoffrey G Obrien. Also Sea Ranch.

Zach Savich has new collection of poems from Colorado University Press, which was much better than I anticipated. Plus the cover is pretty. Rachel Glaser & Mike Young both have books out from Publishing Genius. There' s a great new record store. And there's this place.

The next Deep Moat Reading Series will be on NOV 20th, featuring Jeremy Sigler, Damon Krukowski (!) and Alex Phillips.

This is a lot. I wish I could remember more about myself.


Pieces of a poem by CS Ward. I like its patience.

And I am bad at naming
But, every so often

I am given a green grace
Like rusty books burning

Smells coming over the mountains
And then I can just listen

To small wings
I normally wouldn't hear

I've a poem in the Typo. Thank you Adam and Matt. You can also find this poem in The Black Eye.

Here is the funniest video from 1987

It is time to tell you i have four blows in the new Softblow. They're from a manuscript called I WASH MY FACE IN THE SOUND OF WATER RUNNING.

Long month. My brother got married. I spent time in RI with this fine leafmouth. Some time at home with friends. My mom had an art show. Patrick played his first show in a long time. I read in NYC with John Murillo. And though I lived there for 7 years, I read in Boston for the first time with Emily & Josh, thanks to Jessica Bozek.Eat. Slept. Saw Danzig & the Celtics lose big.

Here is something i relate to. Its about returning to something you once knew. Young Brian was an underexplored metalhead. I learned to play guitar by memorizing Ride The Lightning.

Then I discovered indie rock & punk when things were just getting good and I seriously think it ruined me. Young Brian died for a while. But now he's back and this is what he's been June listening to.

Megadeth - Peace Sells...But Who's Buying
Nachtmystium - Addicts: Black Meddle 2
Leviathan - Massive Consparicy Against All Mankind
Von - Satanic Blood Angel
Trouble - Psalm 9
Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengence
Danzig - Deth Red Sabaoth
Whiplash- Ticket to Mayhem
Cave in - Until Your Heart Stops
Suicidal Tendencies - s/t
Metallica - Kill Em All
Dismember -...Like An Evflowing Stream
Darkthrone - F.O.A.D


Have you checked out the Eclipse. A great collection of L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E po online. Clark Coolidge, Lyn Hejinian, Bernadette Mayer, Bruce Andrews. All great stuff from unaffordable paraphernalia.

There is even Rae Armantrout's first book, Extremities.

The bird that can sing and will not sing must be made to sing.

My Two Dads (Ben E & I) are putting on a reading tomorrow night with Macgregor Card, Chris Martin, & Matthew Klane. All details here

***

On Friday Im making it in Brooklyn at the Earshot Reading Series. Please come, or EG will black eye everyone.

7:30 PM @ Rose Live Music w/ John Murillo. Mike Soto, Samantha K. Smith & Martin Rock. invite

***

Poets for Living Waters--------a good stop for thought.

Larry Fagin* I'll Be Seeing You: Poems 1962-1976 (Full Court Press, 1978)

An Ideal Life

When the sun shines
I'm up witht he birds
orange blue red green

bath breakfast walk
across the city
visit and talk

with P, C M, & E
home again write
rest and read

A light lunch
letters to D
K, F, R & T

records and the radio
a substantial dinner
go to a show

Back home exercise
smoke some dope
close my eyes

Do You know Anna Swir?

I Knocked My Head against the Wall

by Anna Swir

As a child

I put my finger in the fire

to become

a saint.

As a teenager

every day I would knock my head against the wall.

As a young girl

I went out through a window of a garret

to the roof

in order to jump.

As a woman

I had lice all over my body.

They cracked when I was ironing my sweater.

I waited sixty minutes

to be executed.

I was hungry for six years.

Then I bore a child,

they were carving me

without putting me to sleep.

Then a thunderbolt killed me

three times and I had to rise from the dead three times

without anyone’s help.

Now I am resting

after three resurrections.

***

All poets are matchstick men.

The Best Spring into Summer Poetry Book

Jon Woodward * Rain (Wave Books, 2006)

but the house sparrows
are mating again each on top
of the other or sideways
flapping and chirping they're so
immodest so indiscriminate with each

other although it doesn't look
like it actually feels good
it looks like some voltage
is making them do it
but they do it regardless

and you don't see them
screaming in pain unless that's
what all that chirping is
we meanwhile couldn't have asked
for all our free will

Jon,

I am thinking of opening a hot dog cart.

Please advise.

Here is a book I've read four times, now available from Octopus

How by Emily Pettit
Staple-bound
Edition of 200

26 pages
$8 (includes shipping)

There is also a new issue of Saltgrass starring Lisa Jarnot, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Natalie Lyalin, Sandra Simonds, Laura Eve Engel, Tristan Tzara, Gabe Durham, Maged Zaher, Jennifer
Denrow, Catherine Meng, and Mark Yakick.

Jennifer Denrow's chapbook FROM CALIFORNIA, ON will be the next release from Brave Men Press this fall. Some of those poems appear in the issue. Get a sneak.




I blurbed a book. This book. My first blurb. Luckily I didnt have to lie. I loved the book. It is Bird Any Damn Kind by Lucas Farrell, just out on Caketrain Books. Read pieces and buy here

Last Night You Showed Me Larry Fagin

Twelve Poems

A balloon
is going up
filled with problems.

When I think
of the thought
machines

I whistle
softly
to myself.

*

Self

In my pale
face
is a grim

mask,
but I have
to laugh.

My arm
is a bone —
I

love
it
so.

*

a red
tin pan
of tan
doom

*

Gravity
pulls
me
down

so
hard
I
can

only
say
my
name.

*

"When my head
goes too fast
I get out
and walk."

*

The evil eye
is ridiculous,
but it exists.

*

Personal

I'd like
to keep
myself

out
of this. . .
this. . .

whatever
you
call it.

*

It's too easy
to say
yes,
now—

difficult
to think,
say,
now.

*

I get
the idea
I can die
anytime,
then
I forget
it.

*

When a tree falls
on your head,
it says yes
or no.

*

I walk
you walk
we walk

through
each
other

into
our
selves

Have you read The Black Eye? If you have, would you mind sharing your thoughts on Good Reads?

***

I've got some books to read.





Nate Pritts * Unrequited Sonnets :Bird to Feather (self released chapbook, 2010) -
Written in one day November 2009

"It's Novemeber, it's Syracuse.
It's Dear Hearther: Hello. You'r in Chicago. Phillip Sydney
is dead & I'm lonley without you. Matt is lonely since
his foot broke loose. He is filled with phlox. He is howling
for his foot. Gabi is lonely. Gina is in Saginaw. Annie
is in Tucson & Matt's on narcotics in Cinncinat. I'll show you
I'm better. Dear Feather: I'm thinking about words.



Michael O'brien* Sleeping & Walking (Flood, 2007)

"work against correspondence, the
world is not a
book, everything is
not something else, you
could look it up"

We had a BBQ then a reading in the Backyard