Clockcleaner

I have no idea how I slept on Clockcleaner for so long. I should have listened to my mom when she told me about I would like them. Watch this video of "Missing Dick"



I've a new poem up at The Pedestal. Work also coming soon in No Tell Motel & Puerto del Sol. Got my contributor copy of Caketrain the other day. Pretty fancy, but kinda lackluster after that Clockcleaner song.

Extremely well put together magazine: Harp&Alter. Read this

Black Lawrence Press has decided to put out Julia Cohen's first book Triggermoon Triggermoon. What a good decision. Congratulations Julia. I will be waiting for it.

A solid poem by Carl at the new Lamination Colony. Write Carl to tell him he should write more poems. Write Blake Butler to tell him thanks for the new issue of Lamination Colony.

Sub-Lit and The Pedestal have accepted a sum of four poems.
Thanks MO & AA.

Someone should review SIR! for New Pages.


I want this for Christmas and everyday after.

Safe Mode - Music for Torture

From the Guardian

Music that has been used to torture at Guantanamo Bay include :

• AC/DC - Hell's Bells
• AC/DC - Shoot to Thrill
• Aerosmith
• Barney the Purple Dinosaur - theme tune
• Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive
• Britney Spears
• Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
• Christina Aguilera - Dirrty
• David Gray - Babylon
• Deicide - Fuck Your God
• Don McLean - American Pie
• Dope - Die MF Die
• Dope - Take Your Best Shot
• Dr. Dre
• Drowning Pools - Bodies
• Eminem - Kim
• Eminem - Slim Shady
• Eminem - White America
• Li'l Kim
• Limp Bizkit
• Matchbox Twenty - Gold
• Meat Loaf
• Metallica - Enter Sandman
• Neil Diamond - America
• Nine Inch Nails - March of the Pigs
• Nine Inch Nails - Mr. Self-Destruct
• Prince - Raspberry Beret
• Queen - We are The Champions
• Rage Against the Machine - Killing in the Name Of
• Red Hot Chilli Peppers
• Saliva - Click Click Boom
• Sesame Street - theme tune
• Tupac - All Eyes on Me

Games

Mathias Svalina has been writing these awesome poems about childrens games. You can see them up at the new Glitterpony and Sleeping Fish. They remind me of Vasko Popa and his poems on games. See?

Nobody rests

This one constantly shifts his eyes
Hangs them on his head
And whether he wants it or not starts walking
backwards
He puts them on the soles of his feet
And whether he wants it or not returns walking
on his head

This one turns into an ear
He hears all that won't let itself be heard
But he grows bored
Yearns to turn again into himself
But without eyes he can't see how

That one bares all his faces
One after the other he throws them over the roof
The last one he throws under his feet
And sinks his head into his hands

This one stretches his sight
Stretches it from thumb to thumb
Walks over it walks
First slow then fast
Then faster and faster

That one plays with his head
Juggles it in the air
Meets it with his index finger
Or doesn't meet it at all

Nobody rests

When I was a kid I didn't have games. I raked leaves and ate chicken fingers for fun. I'm not good at writing themed poems, or poem that belong to a larger body. My poems are like fingernails you bite off and forget about until they grow back.

I took the GRE's today. After wards I felt mugged. I don't have a barometer on what a good score should be. Tonight I'm going to listen to Whitehouse. Maybe watch House. Maybe spend money. Maybe then I'll know.

Keyhole

Keyhole Magazine has published a poem of mine called Silent Spring. Its an older poem. Peter has also accepted two poems for the Nashville is Reads project, where small broadsides are printed and posted on street signs and walls around the city. I've been to Nashville. I like it there. I'm glad to have an ambassador in Nashville, even when it becomes wet and falls into a gutter.

I have two new poems coming from Rain Fade as well. Rain Fade is a fresh little magazine that's already posted some interesting poems by K. Silem Mohammad, Mike Young, and Juliet Cook. I like the way it cooks. Submit.

I sometimes wonder if its obnoxious to post announcements about your poetry. Then I remember that I am in a lonely vacuum and a blog is not the place to practice modest.y I'm not going to lie. This blog exists because I want you to read my poems. I am here to indulge.

Speaking of K Silem Mohammad, he has a movie diary blog. I like KSM's taste. It runs extremely similar to mine. He watches lots of movies starring Anna Farris. He watches old noir. He is my Ebert.

Recently watched movies -

The Bridge
Synedoche, NY
Funny Ha Ha
The Kingdom: series one
Spaced: complete television series
Benny's Video
Iron Man

I was so utterly ravaged by the solipsism in Synedoche, NY. I have never seen a more perilously self indulgent film. The Brown Bunny is a close runner up, but at least there is a memorable blow job scene and Gordon Lightfoot on the soundtrack. There were a some imaginative and brave ideas - the confusion of alternate reality mixing with reality, an endless play with a scope that is seemingly infinite, the tiny paintings - but all of these flashes of intrigue were lost and corrupted in the neuroses of the director/writer. The presence of the director/writer, to me, was felt in every frame, kind of like a trauma of a rape victim. His tendency to lapse into surrealism I thought was amateurish and without merit. During Phillip Seymor Hoffman's attempts at the degradation of loneliness (again), I felt as if I were a child being coerced with candy into a strangers' van, totally exploited and undervalued as a viewer. And like a lover who slaps their girlfriend then regrets it out loud, the end, no matter how apologetic and willfully poignant, does not justify the means.
Is this the mind that scribbled Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich? Was Adaptation a warning sign? Apparently. Synedoche, NY was not a film I hated. As someone who once ate film and breathed in a celluloid dark, for all my weird tastes ,this,I can honestly say, was a film I believe should never have been made. Duped. Totally duped.

Anyway....

SIR! received a lot of submissions this past week. Its impressive how many people are writing today, and with a certain sense of humor. If you've been thinking about submitting, please don't hesitate to send work.

Pronouncements

A review I wrote of Nin Andrews has been posted on this months New Pages. Unfortunately I would only recommend this book if you were a teacher with a class like the one from Dangerous Minds. If you are a teacher with a class like Last House on the Left, I recommend pre ordering Blake Butler's new novella, EVER. An excerpt can be found at Unsaid and probably 40 other journals. None more prolific than Blake. Use ten minutes to watch these moody films made by Derek White for the book.

SIR! contributor Nathan Logan has a new chapbook out called Holly From Muncie. Nate creates some nice worlds filled with terrified children- read his work in SIR! and in No Colony.

Who is William Minor?

Who is Bill Hicok?

Yesterday I joined a gym so I could run during the wintertime and watch more CNN.

When you Google the words "Matthew Klane" it will ask you if you meant "Matthew Kline." Say no. You meant Matthew Klane.
I saw Matthew Klane read the other week. It was something generous. I am still thinking about it. His new book is called B . Matthew is behind Flim Forum. He is an experimental writer and reader. I am usually suspicious of this type of language poetry, but Matthew quickens the pulse with humor and intelligence. Read a poem of his here. Read it very slowly.

SIR! is now open to submissions

SIR! will be taking submissions from December to January for an upcoming February issue. There is no outright emphasis on content or form, but we remain enthusiastic about poetry of all sorts. Flash fiction is accepted, but again, we are mostly looking for poetry. Send 3-6 of your latest and best inventions. You may send them in the body of an email, or as a WORD or RTF attachment. Translations very welcome. Simultaneous submissions are accepted. Please include a short cover letter and a bio. Submissions without any sort of bio will be deleted.

Send all work to - sir.editor@gmail.com

If I Had Money

Black Ocean are having a Black Friday sale.

On November 28th, from 12:01am to 11:59pm, buy any book priced $11.95 or more and get a second title of your choice FREE (offer does not apply to issues of Handsome). Just write in a note on the PayPal order page which title you’d like to receive. And, as always: Free Shipping! Go to http://www.blackocean.org/catalog.html to place your orders. Support independent publishing and have a very handsome holiday.

B.O. are responsible for Zach Schomburg's The Man Suit and Rauan Klassnik's Holy Land. If you don't own either of these books, now is the time to help yourself.

If you're not familiar with Rauan's shattering work, read some poems from the first issue of SIR! and some in the new issue of Coconut.

Recent Library Aquisitions

Autumn Sonata - George Trakl
Gathering Up The Bones - Gregory Orr
Collected Poems - George Bataille
Collected Poems - Tomaz Saluman

A Piano in the Woods

Where I grew up, they found a piano in the woods. It had a stool and it was in tune.

Baby Burrito

Congratulations to Chad & Emily Reynolds who on Nov 7th successfully created a human, Emmett Charles Reynolds. I hope if anyone grows up to be the real life John Conner, it's this guy.

Read this fantastic article on Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift, that appeared in this past weeks NYTimes. A primer for thoughts on gift economy in the arts and an understanding why we poor ourselves over poetry. I haven't yet read the book (I will) but it seems a belief system I could get behind.

In the article the author talks about Hyde's refutation to Emerson's "Self Reliance," prompting me to got back and read the entire essay this afternoon. Man, there is some shit in there.

Thanks to all who visited SIR! over the past five days. We've had more than 900 visitors so far. This is in large part due to all those who blogged about it. Thank you one and all. I particularly like this sweet rendition of the floating heads motif by Rauan Klassnik-


I'll be taking submissions for the next issue come December 1st. I ask you to send poetry.

Another installation of Chris Tonelli's sentient gravitron over at Verse Daily.

I have a lot of poems out in the world right now. I wish some of them would come back to me dressed up in an editors design. Two are soon to appear in Anti- and Gander Press Review.

I'm working on essays for grad school applications. I'm writing an essay on Croatian poet Slavko Mihalic who I wrote about here. I've searched pretty extensively but have only come up with his 36 page chapbook of selected poems, Atlantis, as the only resource of his work translated into English. Biographical information on him is scant as well. I wonder if this is a poor subject to pursue, to speculate on certain details because the information is not readily translatable. Is it a poor choice to analyze a selected poems that cannot be filled with context, or even a date of authorship? I would choose to focus on the words themselves, but much of it is informed as a reaction to the politics and conditions of the time. It seems arrogant and halved not to consider them, to find out where the poet himself was at the time. I guess I need to learn Croatian.

I hate this part.

SIR! Issue 1

After wrong turns and long evenings, I am proud to announce the debut issue of SIR!
a new online literary journal of poetry and prose - The flagship issue is jammed with 23 contributors of varying temperaments and styles. It includes - Chad Reynolds, Noah Falck, Blake Butler, Ryan Walsh (of the band Hallelujah the Hills), Scott Garson,Mike Young, Juliet Cook, Brooklyn Copeland, Rauan Klassnik, Peter Berghoef, Elisa Gabbert, Carl Annarummo, Peter Schwartz, Zachary Schomburg & Emily Kendal Frey, Sean Kilpatrick, Julia Cohen,Charles Lennox, Shane Jones, Spencer Troxell, Brandon Hobson, Nicolle Elizabeth, Nathan Logan, and William Walsh.

We ask you to please tell your friends about SIR! by blogging, email, or by cordless telephone.
This is vital for our continuation and motivation to get up in the morning.
Currently we are not accepting submissions .
We will be accepting submissions for for Issue 2 come December 1st.

VISIT SIR! HERE

This issue would not have been possible were it not for the gracious patience of the contributors
and the hard work of Emily Goodale who designed the issue.

If you have any feedback, I would love to know what you think.
sir.editor@gmail.com
sir-magazine.org
www.eunuchsblues.blogspot.com

Often I find myself surrounded by political disillusionment. After Bush, it is understandable. It is, in fact, fine. But it can also screw up convictions, especially for someone like me who is a natural cynic and contrarian who so badly wants to be optimistic upon occasion. Well the is week the air conditioning has been replaced by actual air. So for all cynics who feel unchanged after Tuesdays' wake, this optimistic poem seems appropriate.

Try To Praise The Mutilated World

Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.


Translated by Renata Gorczynski

The danger is that we live in a world where there’s irony on one side and fundamentalism (religious, political) on the other. Between them the space is rather small, but it’s my space.” - A.Z.

Readings

Tonight - Kim Chinquee & Michael Kimball at the Dire Literary Series.

Monday - Peter Markus in RI.