AUGUST 21, 2003: HISTORIC, NO LESS!

Bay Area Peeps -- do mark your calendars! A party to welcome David Hess, Donna de la Perriere and Joseph Lease will be held at my San Francisco abode on Thursday, August 21, 7 p.m. David is visiting the area for just a few days while Joseph will be teaching at CCAC this fall (haven't yet had a chance, but look forward, to meet/chat with Donna). Poems will be read, and any poet-peep attending also is invited to bring a poem to share. Stephanie Young also will help welcome all with her poems. E-mail me for more details on mah venue which shall include a guest bathroom decorated by a wallpaper installation of Ron Silliman poems.

In addition to wine and eats (I promise to limit my cooking inflictions and will rely on other less culinary-challenged sources) a special party favor will be available to attendees -- not the broadside mentioned in the announcement below, but a special version just for the party and to mark this LONG-AWAITED OCCASION (well, long-awaited by me who'll even descend gracefully, wings and all, from the mountain):

You've seen them meet and flirt on poetry blogland! Now come witness the in-person historic meeting of Mr. HeatheninHeat and Ms. WinePoetics! I promise .... not to behave.


MERITAGE PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT:

..............Hum
without purpose
like pain.
--from "Veins" by David Hess

Meritage Press is pleased to release its first poetry broadside, a signed and numbered limited edition featuring:

"Veins" -- a poem by David Hess

Designed by Eileen Tabios, incorporating drawings from her 2003 series "Enso/And So" (utilizing dregs from the 1988 Chateau Lafite, 1982 Monfortino and/or the 1985 Graham's)

For ordering information, e-mail MeritagePress@aol.com

David Hess lives in his hometown of St. Louis. He attended Brown University. A chapbook, Cage Dances, was published by Skanky Possum in 2001. Poems, essays and reviews have appeared in Jacket, Skanky Possum, Mungo vs. Ranger, Readme, Quid, VeRT and Shampoo. Http://heathensinheat.blogspot.com is where he currently likes to hold court.

Meritage Press seeks to expand fresh ways of featuring literary and other art forms. Reflecting how poets make instead of inherit language, the press is named after "meritage," a word created to describe the Bordeaux-style of wine-making that uses California-grown grapes. Meritage style combines the grapes of cabernet, cabernet franc and merlot to create a wine characterized by robustness in flavor, bouquet, color and body -- symbolizing the passion underlying the vision of Meritage’s artists. Meritage's other artists include John Yau, Archie Rand, Garrett Caples, Hu Xin, Luis H. Francia, and Nick Carbo.

Meritage Press will be the featured press at Boog City's September 11, 2003 Celebration for non-New York presses, curated by David Kirschenbaum, at ACA Galleries, New York City (await more details)!

FLATTENING MOUNTAINS

For the past few days, there have been a couple of guys working about the house installing various electronic gizmos, 99% of which I understand as much as I comprehend the oven.

So for the past few days, I'd go about tip-toeing around them, trying to stay out of their way because all the flashy silver components they were handling made me nervous (it's only a slight exagerration to say that it took me 6 months to master the On/Off switch when computers first arrived in my life). Anyway, today was their last day and one of them -- a sweet, earnest type -- tried to tell me what they've been doing. And I go every so often, Uh huh. Et al with a scrunched brow.

Finally, he looked at me and said -- this absolute stranger who knew nothing about me except what he may have gleaned through sideway glances over the past few days said -- "You know: you're psychologically fragile."

Moreover -- what does it say about me that I thought his comment was absolutely hilarious.....?

Alas, there's probably some truth to his observation: from the mouth of babes and all that (by the way, he was a babe though I naturally barely noticed such). That is, I suspect that it's partly because of what he called "psychological fragility" that I decided to hole up here on this mountain.

Sigh -- fragility: lookit what I wrote today:

FLATTENING MOUNTAINS

Battle becomes
not fighting into darkness

once lies arrive
as non-existent vocabulary

Foolish girl
ever-blathering about hair

forever circling
what darkens wingtips

Classrooms burned long ago
into black ash impotence

Now braid intangible
words into a lasso

Yank the damn sky
down!

When red stilettos
pierce a suddenly-blue floor

weep but
hold on to the tango

Elongate throat
for maximum exposure

to strangers and animals
baring glistening teeth

Sky bleeds. "So what?"
Drink its melted moons

Why do I know
what I do and do not know

I know the why
of "Why"

You don't say
"Love"

because
"Because"

Cobalt shall stain
your teeth

after you empty
my veins

We have discovered
vampires --

their urgent, amoral necessity

JIMJAM JAMS!!

Well now. So I woke my purty head up this morning to this:

I have now reached the apex of my blogging career. How, you ask? Eileen, aka Grand Mistress Supa'Flash of the CorpsePoetics JimJam, has quoted me and linked to this site. // Stand in awe.

Better than a jolt of coffee -- being called GRAND MISTRESS SUPA'FLASH OF THE CORPSEPOETICS JIMJAM. Dang -- where's that mirror: I wanna PREEEEN again!

JIMJAM.

giggle...

And to wake up to so many of you peeps reading me and clamoring with your lovely backchannels. I love it, of course. It's one reason I'll not put a site meter on this blog -- wouldn't want to make Ron and Jim bow their handsome forelocks (wink) in shame.

Sip. Morning coffee. Hills Brothers from a can. (As regards the choice, I'ma lazy, what can I say? But for the record, I do have a coffee grinder in the kitchen -- makes for another lovely tabletop sculpture, just like the rest of my Domestic Goddess accoutrements. Sip....)

Johanna's blog is still truncated this morning, and as it turns out [switch to wheedling tone] dear dreamy Stephen, I don't understand how to do that view thingie....But, anyway, Johanna -- I suspect that "novelist-turned-poet" you're referring to is the same person I bashed in a brilliant post, which I subsequently deleted from my blog because said bashing created negative energy. Sip.

Still, with that JIMJAM of a beginning, I'ma rousted!!!

Okay, she pushes up the invisible glasses on her tiny enchanting nose. What else here?

Well, on this topic close to poets' hearts, Sandy McIntosh speaks (in sensibility) for others when he writes about my prior post:

Re: calling oneself a poet. I went straight from six years of military school (in which literature, and especially poetry was marginalized, even in the honors curriculum) into Southampton College on Long Island, which at the time had local artists (such as, Willem deKooning) teaching basic arts classes. Though I'd begun writing poetry in high school, at Southampton I walked straight into the poetry community so smoothly that I considered it the natural thing, available to anybody. I was surrounded by writers, such as David Ignatow, H.R. Hays, Joseph Heller and Lanford Wilson in a community of writers. After the literary drought of military school this odd and engulfing community seemed the most natural thing. In fact, (and this is the point I want to make) it wasn't until I was working on my doctorate, attending a seminar taught by the sociologist, Michael Quinn Patton, that I woke up to the fact that not everyone lived in the same world as I did. At our first meeting we went around the table introducing ourselves and saying what we did for a living. Naturally, I introduced myself as a poet, which seemed to quiet the room. Months later, when Michael and I had become friends, he mentioned that when I'd introduced myself as a poet he'd thought I was making a joke. "No one is a 'poet'," he told me. "I mean, how do you get paid?"

Now, after years in a starker, less thrilling adult world of salaries and mortgages, I reluctantly manage to introduce myself as a writer, when people demand to know what I do. And to those I trust, I confide that I sometimes write poetry.

Interesting -- I'm sure there are others with opinions on this. One would think this would get to be a tired topic but it does so relate to poets' everydayness lifestyle....

JIMJAM.

Oh! JIM! Jim Behrle! Check out his drawing of CUPID POETICS!!!! Me, me, me with bow and arrow! Enchanting me. I should do a Neruda to write "An Ode To Myself."

And the best part of the drawing, Jim-Peep, was that I hadda keep biting my delectable tongue to suggest: Pleeeeeeze draw a wine glass in that angelic wingtip. Because I bet a big poker stake that, being a true sky-blue poet, you'd be able to figger that out without my help. And you did!!!

Aimee-sweetie: how can you possibly resist? Do you see how sweetly he draws you gila you?

(Just lissen to Momma, Aimee -- I picked you way before Billy Whats-His-Face evuh did a blurb -- wink.)

Okay. Back to my everydayness! Unpacking...and sending out more review copies for Barry Schwabsky's OPERA that, let me tell you, is already generating a buzz buzz buzzzzzzzzz!

Next up! My next Meritage Press project! Long-awaited information on The David Hess RocknRoll 2003 Broadside!

Bzzzzzzzz: JIMJAM! I am yours truly:

THE GRAND MISTRESS SUPA'FLASH OF THE CORPSEPOETICS JIMJAM!

As Johanna quite aptly puts it: "Stand in awe"!

And as the post ends, eight million peeps hear a resounding CRASH as the Corpse falls off her chair, right on her non-flesh-padded butt.

POLEAXED BY POLEMICS

Ergo, I gnaw.
--from Johanna's Rutabaga

Because my Blogger or server or whatever relevant Internet element was causing Johanna's Rutabaga blog to come up truncated on my screen for a few days, I only just saw this paragraph from her July 26 post:

Kasey wrote that some people on his links list don't publicly identify themselves as poets. I felt a pang of recognition there, mostly because I'm not as accomplished as probably all of the people I link to (those links should all be up in a few days) and because the name "poet" -- the title, the Word -- is one I'm gradually beginning to own. And that's a frightening prospect. Like the fabulous Eileen, I spent many years gathering the silence. Learning to identify myself as a poet is like an arranged marriage with the Elephant Man/Woman: "gross distortion masks the sun." Or its opposite, the truly ugly revealed by a bee.

I'm quoting it here because she called me "fabulous" -- yep: the boldface above is mine. Preeen. But now that I've quoted it, I suppose I should pay the price for preening by delivering some gems of wisdom on her thoughts. [Pause. Pregnant pause even.] Okay, that didn't work. So, let me just say:

I, too, used to avoid calling myself a "poet." When I began deliberately using the term, it was because I started sensing that if I called myself that word, it would enhance my poetry-writing. I suspect it did -- that ye olde writing one's reality thing. Which is to say, the psychological effects of *naming* can be significant.

But the logistics continue to be tortuous, of course, in a culture that marginalizes poetry. When I introduce myself as a poet, there are the usual variations to the question of my publication credentials as peeps seek to validate my claim that I'm a poet because, as one actually told me, "Anyone can be a poet; but what do you actually do?" But my favorite question to receive from the uninitiated is, "Have I read you?" To which I'm always tempted to respond, "I don't know -- can you read?"

Occasionally, when I take pity on a person clearly struggling to come up with something to say when faced by my revelation that I'm a poet, I mention my banking background. Whew -- banking: they can talk about it! Hey, how 'bout those, uh, ATM problems....

Yawn, indeed. And, this also is reminding me now of when I used to say that I'm a banker-turned-poet "just like T.S. Eliot." I used to cite that a lot, but no longer -- not since an incident that occurred the last time I lectured on poetry: I discussed my (at the time) postcolonial poetics and one of the students so detested what I said that in the student feedback form, he wrote, "You're no T.S. Eliot."

Well, I laugh now, but have to admit it stung a little when I first got that crit. At the time, I was just trying to joke that to be a poet, I thought one had to be a British banker, too, like T.S. Eliot. The joke fell flat because it seemed I got too "polemical" for some of the students. Another student wrote, "I had been enjoying reading the poems in your book; then I heard you talk about them and I don't enjoy them as much anymore."

Ick. Can you imagine?!! Well lick my wounds and live and learn.

Actually, Johanna, speaking of synchronicity (your July 28 post), I believe my favorite poetics essay is one related to how I feel poetry works like quantum physics (what is observed affects the result and that the world of a poem is a series of parallel universes) that was first published in the now-defunct literary journal Pen & Ink, before being reprinted in my most obscure book, Ecstatic Mutations. Sigh -- this is my fate: my best works shall collapse into obscurity. But as long as the articulation was fun while the wine flowed....right?

*****

Well, speaking of polemical poetics versus poems, my last (probably my last) Asian American (AA) anthology project is coming out any day (well, any week) now: Screaming Monkeys -- for which I served as poetry editor (Managing Editor Evelina M. Galang). Fabulous AA poets in there: Arthur Sze, Timothy Liu, John Yau, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Bino A. Realuyo, Nick Carbo, Marilyn Chin, Xue Di (as translated by Forrest Gander), Purvi Shah, Maiana Minahal, Vince Gotera, Maya Khosla, Pat Rosal, Luis Cabalquinto, Luba Halicki-Hoffman, Jon Pineda, Johnson Cheu, Lawson Fusao Inada, as well as non AA poets like Denise Duhamel and Molly McQuade. I know I've forgotten other poets' names -- don't shoot me! I'm in Napa unpacking my studio and my files (as well as my memory) are camouflaged in bubble-wrap within cardboard boxes!

Anyway, what interested me recently about Screaming Monkeys was my response to a brief essay I'd written to introduce the poems. As is often the case with anthologies, it took over 2 -- or is it over 3 -- years for the anthology to come out. A lot of things change over 2-3 years. During the recent "proofing" stages, I was compelled to delete my poetry editor's essay -- I did find it too polemical and I suppose I've become tired of *introducing* or talking *about* poems. Just let the damn poems speak for themselves! was my reaction to what I wrote. Granted, this may be a comment on how I did a lousy job with that first essay. But I also didn't feel like writing another essay.

Instead, I chose a poem to introduce the others' poems. Years of circling the poem, before finally falling on the lap of the poem. How far I've come to where I had begun....even as writing the next poem gets harder and harder....

But it's not a bad result. Some poet peeps keep ever-circling the poem, ignoring how the poem waits there with open arms. Meanwhile, I can personally attest: the poem's embrace is warm and loving.

HAIR AS INK
(--after recalling an artist who "draws" by using strands of her hair that she glues against paper)

At about 6 p.m. each day, I often walk up and down the mountain. But the house is located about one-third up the mountain and I usually head down. Not having gone far in the other direction which is quite steep terrain, I've never walked up to the top of the mountain so I don't know what's there. That is, I didn't know until today's walk: Rapunzel lives atop the mountain.

You see, the mountain is covered right now with grass the cover of "spun gold." Rapunzel's hair, loosened and fallen.

Whatdya know. I'ma living on a blonde mountain.

Whatever. Sip. 2001 Penfold chardonnay.

I've written two Rapunzel poems (they're in my book). The first sets Rapunzel atop her turret. The second relates to Rapunzel having cut her hair, braided it into a rope, then used the rope to escape from her turret.

Sip.

At 6:10 p.m. today, the mountain shifted in agreement: it must and will protect me.

And during my walk, I also saw a bird with a red head. A redhead.

I guess I'm technically a brunette even though, in my dreams, my hair is consistently blue.

Sky as hair.

I believe I am blathering because I am missing a poem I have yet to write.

I discarded three pens today.

When the ink is dry, I am ever teary-eyed.

DEAR AIMEE -- AS REGARDS JIM,

So my new stapler is not just encased in a lovely purplish/dark blue color that evokes both a lapis lazuli sky and the depths of an ocean, but it comes with staples of the same color!!!! So if I staple something and send such to someone, I'd be sending them a piece of the sky as well as the ocean!! Nifty, eh?

It's a blue as lovely as Aimee's blog-blouse which, come to think of it, she donned because she loves the ocean! Synchronicity -- such a lovely thing. Speaking of Aimee -- Sweetie, that Jim-peep fella. He seems ever so sweet and nice. I think it's wunnerful that he's quite smitten with you. Oh, who cares that he couldn't whiffle or wiffle or whaffle or whatever that ball in NYC? It's just a sports thingie. Now, do please give Jim more time than you would to any paltry novelist. After all: Jim is a POET!!!! [Imagine my wingtips beating my chest here a la Tarzan!] Sweetie -- Jim has my approval, and he didn't even have to bribe me to say something nice about him to you.

Jim? Ball's in your court. I'ma waiting for my bri...uh, my angelic drawing.

ILLUSION ILLUMINATED

Then I just opened the package to a brand new stapler. It was one of those teeny stapler thingies. It broke as soon as I deconstructed its packaging. I guess its covering was made from some sort of fragile plastic. I confess I bought it because it was colored a pretty translucent peach shade. This is what I deserve for forgetting that (at times) form needs to mirror content.

SUDDEN NON SEQUITUR

While unpacking more books, I suddenly missed my red camaro, souped up courtesy of the big brothers, trawling my teen streets. So many peeps had tried to steal that car's engine -- I kept returning to it with the hood half-way up and the robbery interrupted. Sweeeeet car. Probably boiled down now to a Richard Chamberlain table-top sculpture. Sweeeeet car -- my first car. Twenty-five years later and I am missing you.

What is making me sad here, today, now?

SIP

So, where was I before I was rudely interrupted and had to bash some tired paternalism?

Oh, yes! Riot A Go Go won the battle of the bands last Friday at Yerba Buena! Ye-ahhhhh!! The "Prizes," according to the comedic emcee were oral sex, for which said emcee claimed to have taken out all his teeth. However, the compassionate emcee added, the losing band members also may receive "conciliatory blowjobs" -- which sorta makes me think: what is a "conciliatory" blowjob versus....a non-conciliatory blowjob? Anyway....

The event occurred during opening night festivities for this show which I highly recommend! So, check it out! (Nick and ye wonderful Brutalists, sorry to miss your events as I'm busily broiling here in Napa, but this is worth visiting!) Also, Clare Rojas apparently is being checked out by Whitney Biennial curators -- finally. I can honestly say her work rules over many others I've seen at the Whitney. So someone at the Whitney -- please: wise up!

Now at Yerba Buena:

To Protect and Serve: the LAPD Archives, out of bounds (from near and afar): Yunhee Min and Pocket Atlas: Nick Ackerman, Dean Byington, Clare E. Rojas

YAWN

Recently, I got an e-mail from a poet based in the Philippines criticizing me for being a "cultural activist" instead of (in the context of his thoughts) being "just a poet." (Obviously, this poet doesn't read my blog but I know some of you pinoys peeps do!)

In response to his very presumptous words, many things went through my mind (those of you know me can just imagine some of them.) But let me just focus on one thing: note that this e-mail came from someone living in the Philippines. This country obviously is having its share of problems; for some elucidating thoughts on this, check out Sunny's The Wily Filipino blog.

Now, as I think about this poet's work, I realize that his poems don't address much of what's going on in the Philippines -- that they rarely relate to the country's ongoing problems (though back in the Marcos years perhaps he was as vocal as others). This is not something I challenge -- both because a poet should write whatever the poet wants to write and because I don't presume to second-guess the effect of living in an environment like the Philippines when I don't, in fact, live there. (This, obviously, is not a perspective that he, in turn, knows to respect since he can feel free to pontificate about my position as a poet and as a "Filipino-American.")

I suspect that this poet is using poetry to *escape* from the travails of his immediate environment. Before he questions why a Filipino poet (any Filipino artist) in the United States feels compelled to work as a cultural activist, he should open his eyes to what is going on minute by minute, second by second, immediately about him.

I know some who easily would conclude that for someone not to be a cultural activist when one is a Filipino living in the Philippines is a greater crime than a Filipino artist not being a cultural activist when one is living in the United States. I don't happen to believe as such. But, still...

Last but not least, Mr. Aesthete: if and when I want, I can write the pants off you anyway....so just back off.

FOR THE BIRDS: ULTIMATELY, FOR THE LOVERS

This weekend, Corpse tasted and recommends:

1998, 1999, 2000 Jones Family cabernet
1998 CNP Vieux Telegraph

More importantly, on Saturday, I discovered a tiny bird right outside my studio here in St. Helena. I thought it was dead, but it was only playing dead because it noticed me approach -- oh, that teeny quivering breast! Obviously, something was wrong as it couldn't fly away. I bent down and crooned at it, asking how I might help. I lightly stroked its fur to show I wouldn't hurt it. But then I realized that I was probably scaring this bird which was small enough to sit within my palm -- from a scale standpoint, I must have been like a mountain looming over it.

So I left it to enter my studio where I found a little container, filled it with water, went back out and put it in front of the bird, then walked away back into my studio. I peered at it from my studio window and was sad to see that it wouldn't drink -- it's over 100 degrees in the afternoons here. I called Tom and we opened an umbrella so that it would always be in the shade; the bird was small enough to be fried if it just stayed there on the concrete under the Napa sun.

I was relieved some hours later that the bird was gone -- that whatever had prevented it from flying away was no longer an impediment. And I was also glad because, hopefully, the bird then would tell the other birds that I would never harm them -- so that they can come play with me. I can see my future: growing my hair long enough to blanket this mountain where I shall frolic with its creatures as I sing poems to their twitchy ears....

....I must persuade the animals I won't hurt them. Today, as I drove along the road, three deer saw me and swiftly ran away. But to get away from me, they had to run through a neighbor's barbed wire fence -- I hope the wires didn't scratch them.

Dear Bird: Please spread the word --

in Rene Char's words

INVITATION

J'appelle les amours qui roues et suivis par la faulx de l'ete, au soir embaument l'air de leur blanche inaction.

Il n'y a plus de cauchemar, douce insomnie perpetuelle. Il n'y a plus d'aversion. Que la pause d'un bal dont l'entree est partout dans les nuees du ciel.

Je viens avant la rumeur des fontaines, au final du tailleur de pierre.

Sur ma lyre mille ans pesent moins qu'un mort.

J'appelle les amants.

from "ADVENTURES OF A WIFE"
GIFT

This weekend, Tom surprised me by giving me an unexpected gift. I looked at the very lovely gift. In shock, I said, "You're not having an affair, right? Cause I'd heard that some men become very generous to their wives when they're having an affair."

He looked at me. Sighed (albeit with fondness). Then said, "No, I'm not having an affair. But if this gives me a pass, let me know."

I don't know what stymied him more. My initial response, or that I laughed long and hard at his reply.

DRAWING INSTEAD OF WRITING WORDS

Today, I picked up a drawing I'd had framed. It's a diptych, comprised of two pieces of white butcher paper that originally had layered the tables at All Season's Cafe in Calistoga. The drawing was done in collaboration with Max Gimblett ; we began it over lunch and finished it back at my studio with Tom and local artist Nami also contributing. Max did some of his motifs like the quatrefoil as well as calligraphic gestures. I did text -- and part of the challenge was writing text that looks like its meaning. So, on the upper left corner is the phrase "Hawks flutter...." and I tried to draw those words to evoke ... fluttering hawks. You can see it over my bed if you come over for the Poets' Party I'm having on August 21 and judge for yourself. It's also for sale, by the way. The price: $2.5 million.

(Oh, stop: the price is a metaphor for art's pricelessness...)

Anyway, I'm interested in doing more projects like this, where one draws instead of writes words. It's been done before but, for me, my interest in this approach reflects my sense that poems bear bodies.

Creature-poems -- like the ones swinging now from my hairtips. I keep thinking I should cut my hair -- they're getting really straggly at the ends. But the poems -- they love to swing on them. And the poems -- I don't say "No" to them now.

I give up fighting the poems. Have at me, poems: my hands desire to be your mirrors.

Of course: may the glass melt...

TODAY, OVER LUNCH

while waiting for my yummy wonton soup to cool, a revelation crept up on me. I started thinking about where I am at this point in my life....and suddenly felt the unexpectedness of being where I am today. Where I am, who I am, what matters create my immediate environ -- all are totally a SURPRISE.

...sudden upsurge through veins...

I am glad my life has surprised me.

...sudden upsurge of wings flickering briefly at, before just as briefly disappearing from, corner of vision...

And this surprise is all due to Poetry.

Revelation, then a *quickening* -- my hair thickened into velvet. Soon, the price Poetry has exacted shall cease to be a cost. Soon, soon, soon....

And Thou -- who are you waiting for me now?

TIP FOR STARVING POETRY PUBLISHERS AND STARVING WRITERS

"Poetry economics" -- what an oxymoron. Anyway:

So, like, when you buy that bubble-wrap encased envelope for sending out books, your local Staples (or other office supply stores) might sell them for something like $8.99 per pack of twelve. But what works equally well are those same bubble-wrap encased envelopes for sending out videos; at my Staples, that's $2.99 for a six-pack. So, on a twelve-pack basis, that's a savings of $3.10 per twelve mailers.

The peeps who'll appreciate this very worthwhile tip will....appreciate. I adored discovering this because I just sent out over a hundred review and comp copies of Barry Schwabsky's book, OPERA (soon to be distributed by Small Press Distribution!). (Such a lovely, lovely book, she croons.) You see, Barry is vacationing on some beach while I am slaving away on his behalf as his publisher.

Do you see how I suffer for Poetry?

Sip. Morning coffee.

Okay, enough angst: back to more books begging to be cradled in my warm and loving arms....

Oh, but -- flutter lashes -- because I so adore you all, here's one last tip du jour: as my yoga teacher said last night when my hand reached to poke at the darkening sky whilst bending sideways for the Triangle Pose:

"POINT WITH INTENTION!"

BASEBALL AND SEX (AKA, POST DURING UNPACKING BREAK)

Grump. Of all things, for some reason the emerald-eyed hubby decided to read my blog today (slow day at the office, Hon? Tsk. Tsk. Go make that rain!* We got a mortgage, you know!). So, Tom reads my blog and alerts me: apparently my token baseball post (of July 17) is, he sez, "riddled with errors."

Groan, I think. I gotta think about sports again? But he won't tell me what my mistakes are because, he sez, if I'ma being read by "eight million peeps," I should receive word from one of youse, sooner or later. Well, speaking of synchronicity (Yes! Li, Auster's Red Notebook is fabuloso!), Mets fan David Kirschenbaum pipes up this evening to e-mail:

you were talking about the Red Sox and you said:

"and then we get to the World Series against the Yankees. YaY, YaY, YaY!!"

Nope. They're both in the american league this couldn't, and didn't, happen. It was the Mets.

us mets fans want our team to get its due lady.

:)

david

Oh, whatever. So I got the teams wrong. Ooops; I shouldn't say that as I'm running for President (per Clayton Couch's editorial "Summer of Discontent"). Harrumph. Lady says, Thanks David! Now I can go back to the hubby and proclaim: "My peeps took care of me, thank you very much!" This, of course, doesn't mean you baseball fans shouldn't vote me into the White House, okay?

Sip. Penfolds (a different variety; still doing research for my upcoming Aug. 21 soiree for Heathen, Joseph Lease, Donna de la Perriere, Stephanie Young et al).

Anyway, I also wanted to say that something totally unexpected -- but so wonderful I just must share it with you all -- occurred while having to unpack and then reorganize books. With hindsight, my mind also must have been going through my "library" of poems and, today, mentally organized from such *inventory* a new poetry collection. I'm very excited over it and its title (and I'm sorry I don't know how to do accents on blog) is:

Menage A Trois

Corpse bares already bared teeth at eight million peeps, then shyly asks, batting lashes (not balls): "Do you like my title?"

The dark-winged angels pause their poker play and look down at the long-lashed Corpse. "Pathetic," one says. "Yep," says another. "An obvious tactic: distract from one's mistake by bringing up sex."

Corpse looks up. "How dare you!" she exclaims in high dudgeon (did I spell dudgeon right here?). "I really do have a new poetry collection called Menage A Trois!"

Angels sniff and ignore her.

Corpse starts jumping up and down. "But I do, I do! If you want to see some of the poems in it, you can even check it out over at my Enheduanna e-chap series!"

Up and down. Up and down. Corpse jumps up and down. But the angels only keep playing poker, though, as this blog post thankfully fades into oblivion, one of them could be heard to say, "Huh. So that's the sound of a skeleton rattling...."


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*"rainmaker" is sometimes used in the business world to mean one who brings in new clients

"THE BRIDGE" -- A BOOK AND ALSO AN ARS POETICA AS REGARDS THIS "ILLICIT LOVE"

Murat Nemet-Nejat sent me a copy of his first book, THE BRIDGE, which was published in 1977 by Martin Brian & O'Keefe (London). In the midst of an unpacking break, I thought I'd read Part One, only to end up reading the whole book -- 71 pages - at one sitting. There goes the unpacking schedule.

The thing is, I assume this book is no longer widely available, and a quick check on Amazon does say that it's out of print. It makes me sad a little: for a poet to get a book out -- which we all know is difficult enough -- and then the book ends up not receiving the attention it deserves (by the way, I didn't speak with Murat before writing this post so I am assuming that that's what happened to the book, rather than end up reprinted in some BEST OF WORLD LIT ANTHOLOGY type of collection where it deserves to be). Anyway, I am only "sad a little" because I know fame isn't the point. Plus, Murat once told me that his "problem" (which actually is something I share) is that he's "lazy" about getting his work out there, much preferring to spend the time writing new work. Which is not to say his work is not available online; Peeps -- it's worth doing a Google search on this guy for some fabulous poems and critical essays.

But I do wish for THE BRIDGE to be more well known, if only perhaps to have prevented so much of the same ol, same ol type of "immigrant poems" that have been written (and of which I inevitably became aware when I was more active in the Asian American literary movement). While Murat addressed the immigrant theme, his focus remained on poetry: he created a fresh way of using narrative and the lyric to create, really, a novel in verse form. It's not an approach that's done often relative to compilations of stand-alone verses -- here, I marvel specifically over how he uses (quoted) dialogue while still maintaining what makes this work a poem: a sense of writing *space.*

That space contains, for me, partly a dank emptiness -- as if I'm alone in a gravel courtyard right after a rain and dusk has just fallen. Which is to say, it's an evocative space -- aptly fitting THE BRIDGE's subject matter, described by the book jacket as "the author...himself experienced the personal battle between memory, family consciousness and present-day experience in the U.S." Murat was born in Istanbul but is of Persian origin; he has lived in New York and New England since leaving Turkey.

There's a sense of distance as Murat explores how to bridge back towards his childhood -- a distance that makes me think of tears dammed, their shedding refused for the more difficult task of simply forging backward, hence forward, from what once was and can never be fully lived again. From Part One:

Dostoevski knew no more of the gray color of cobblestones
Than I know of the gray sinew of the river,
Charmed by its snaky yearning, I cherish its residence in my soul,
Nourished by its schemes.
I walk musing,
A stranger had offered me--one murky night--
The Brooklyn Birdge
Whose arches spin inward as a mad calendar
Of time

A stranger stumbled on nothing, on the flat street;
Then the earth swallowed him;
Now the sidewalks, pregnant with loneliness, pout
As a repugnant friend,
Concern themselves with nothing, but themselves;
I had thought them more lasting in their crowded moments.

The years go on
As the stone lasts
As a sad marigold
In my mind sits.

When I later would read that the Brooklyn Bridge's salesman was the protagonist's/poetic persona's father, I felt an absolute sense of devastation (that space of betrayal by one's parent?) that is impossible for me to articulate. So much is implied in that juxtaposition -- and probably there in what is not explicitly stated also lies the source of muscularity (of steel) that forbids the entry of the tiniest bit of sentimentality. (It's an admirable effect given how the immigrant theme does so often lend itself to sentimentality). This excerpt from Part III exemplifies this, as well as hints at the novelistic type of layers within the work:

The husband and his wife finally showed.
He had just left his first wife
To marry his student, an eager archaeologist,
Who had fallen in love with his style across the desk,
His intellectual charm.
It was like having a student in the kitchen,
Caught off key.

With all his politeness,
All his careful nudging of her through doors,
He always thought she was a silly girl from Long Island.

An awful party.
Disgusted with shyness, he released
His coat from under the pile,
Ginger not to drop his wallet.

Late at night only philosophers remained:
"Beethoven's penis created music.
He put his music where his heart is
And his penis in his mouth."

*****

Murat adeptly captures the complications of parenting and being parented -- easily eliciting the reader's empathy because so much of our humanity plays out through and from the parent-child roles. From Part Five, here's an excerpt that touches on a brother's sudden fear as regards the father:

"i was playing with my friend, spent the
afternoon on a boat, swimming,
just past midnight we were going
fishing
then my brother came
it was the right moonlight where the big fish are caught
mackerels, sardines"

When I said to him "you have to come back home"
he did not dare ask why

The above excerpt, and others, serve to make more powerful the subsequent discovery of a couplet like this as the protagonist refers to the same father:

once--dozing off--he even let me hold his hand.
the sun burst in my eyes.

*****

Murat's "Bridge," however, is also a poem because it doesn't remain a path back to Murat's specific history. It is a poem because it also bridges towards the reader to evoke empathy based on the reader's particular experiences. In my case, I was also moved by this excerpt from Part II, for evoking something that I know is (an unreconciled) part of my own immigrant (hi)story:

"I am ready for dinner now."
The grandfather had come from seeing his friends.
"Juliana, I shall be away for two or three days."
"Do you think you should. For
A piece of land. Let them have it. They are
Relatives.
"Daughter, you do not know what owning something means.
I'll wash myself before dinner is ready."

My grandparents in the Philippines had worked very hard to acquire what little land they owned (they did not inherit land; they worked for the money required to acquire that land). My parents inherited some of that land. They still own that land. But I (and my brothers) who long ago came to this country, the U.S., are indifferent to that land which remains primarily theoretical to us, I think -- that land is not something we anticipate as some sort of inheritance. In fact, I suspect my mother is not focused either on owning the land -- it's just that she feels she must address the ownership issue (as a matter of psychological legacy) because she did witness how hard her parents worked in order to "own" that land.

The mountain where I now reside has taught me that land cannot be "owned." We are as temporary on it as poets are temporary presences within this space that we have called Poetry.

Nonetheless, I am here now. And I am grateful Murat wrote these words that now sing me back to the presence of more books agitating to come out of their boxy cells and be cradled in my arms....on their way to my bookshelves where their titled spines shall perpetually hover over my hair as my head shall age bent over yet another pad or the keyboard in a, for me, fully-"illicit" love affair attempting to make more of their brothers and sisters: more books:

I write this poem to you, my friend, the river,
Undaunted by the perfect bridge over you
Flowing, bearing yachts in your cool bed.

We had soft moments together, evenings,
When, silent, I walked along your steps, home,
Unseeing even your lights; yet knowing.

My wife is little to me after twelve years,
Only look to my coffee, ready, without bread,
Placed on the glossy kitchen table.

So, soft river, as one of your boats,
Know your silent admirer,
I confess my half-illicit love.

ADVANCE MEA CULPA TO THOSE WHO SHALL NOT BE ABLE TO CARESS MY SOFT, LOVELY SKIN

And where my writing studio is, there do I reside.

And the reason I moved my studio from San Francisco to this mountain in Napa is because I'm transitioning to the next phase required by Missie "Bust My Ass Why Dontcha" Poetry. Peeps, you are looking at a future hermit....

Poetry Practice as the Art of Silence....

Someday, I shall be pure cyberspace song....all words....black text punching through the whiteness of your eyes, the whiteness of your computer screens....

Picture me a long-haired woman trawling her hems up and down a mountain crooning at the hawks who appear even at dawn for her....

My hair shall whiten on this mountain. When I loosen one to fall off the mountain, the peeps in the valley shall look up and see the tail of a falling star....

Oh, it's not happening anytime soon....I just felt like being melodramatic this morning.

Sip. Morning coffee. Okay! Back to the boxes of books!!!!

CONTENT ON THE FLY

I adore my eight million peeps for reading me and I don't want to ignore you all when I'm actually in the midst of major unpacking of books, books, books....which is slow going because I keep having to pause and read something in my hand. Like, I keep ignoring the boxes of books to return repeatedly to Paul Auster's essay collection The Art of Hunger -- it was one of those books on my to-read stack and as the stack kept rising I must have just forgotten about it. But after having to pack and now unpack said stack, some of those books remind me of their presence and, Peeps: I am just inhaling Auster. Beyond the narrative, just incredibly beautiful diction!

Why did I leave it uncracked for so long?! I really wanted to just hang plaigarism laws and type out Auster's entire essay on Sir Walter Raleigh -- something that actually provided succor in the aftermath of the deaths of Reetika Vazirani and her son Jehan. Then Auster on Celan. Then Auster on Bronk. Then Auster on Laura Riding....stacks of books await my hands to lift them up onto bookshelves. I whisper, "Wait: I am reading Paul Auster...."

Then the BLOG, ever-greedy and ever-capacious....

More content. Like Michelle Bautista taking a break from preparing for an upcoming martial arts demonstration next weekend at Sonoma State University to write:

"Read your latest post. Your olive tree is a grumpy old coot, but the trimming will do it some good. It helps even out the weight of the fruit and helps concentrate on producing more fruit instead of giving resources to old dead unproductive branches. But I've known men you have to drag kicking and screaming to the barber shop. you would think it would kill them!"

Thanks for chiming in, Gura. Speaking of killing (but not really, of course), I'ma gonna be reading poems on August 2 while ducking my pretty head every so often to avoid Michelle's long sword and/or stick as she does Kali! Michelle -- post some info on your blog, please, on venue and details.

More content. Thomas Fink also writes in -- such a kind sweetie you are, Tom -- to say:

"I've just finished reading the poetry of BABAYLAN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FILIPINA AMERICAN WRITERS, and the work that you and Nick (Carbo) selected that I was most excited to be introduced to was poetry by Shirley Ancheta, Fatima Lim-Wilson, Farah Montes, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and especially Catalina Cariaga. While I wasn't in the mood to read the fiction on this go-round, I saw that you included Jessica Hagedorn's marvelous "Tenement Lover," which I taught in a lit class several years ago. Congrats to you and Nick for putting together such a terrific anthology."

Yep, there certainly are plenty of undiscovered Pinay poets out there, Tom! Thanks for writing; I'll pass the word on to the Babaylans.

Last but not least for today, here's where I'm gonna be this Friday evening -- punk rocking with Nova et al of Riot A Go Go and then checking out Peggy Honeywell!!! Not to mention the art show involving deservedly up-and-coming artist Clare Rojas, among others! Here's info for this recommended event:

To Protect and Serve: the LAPD Archives, out of bounds (from near and afar): Yunhee Min and Pocket Atlas: Nick Ackerman, Dean Byington, Clare E. Rojas

Fri, Jul 25, 8–11 pm • Grand Lobby & Galleries (Yerba Buena Arts Center)
$10 in advance, $12 at the door*
FREE for Members and a guest

Celebrate the Opening of exhibitions featuring LA and SF–based artwork with a NorCal-SoCal rock showcase and 80s glitz. Get a "Totally LA" Glama-Rama makeover and then get ready to shake it as LA's The Sharp Ease and SF's Riot A-Go-Go rock off in a "Battle of the Bands", followed by a sonic fusion of folk acoustic rock by local Peggy Honeywell (a.k.a. Clare E. Rojas).

"MR. CIGAR" -- MY OLIVE TREE

It's a staring match. Been that way for days since I wrote my last post. So far, no one's blinking. Me against those Poetry Angels. We've all had our wingtips on our waists and been staring bleakly at each other.

We're all mad. We're mad with each other.

"Write more poems!' they hector.

I'ma like -- "Shove off, you black-winged greedy blood-suckers of mah blood! I'm in mourning here!"

"Commitment costs -- you damn well know that!," they say to me" -- these fallen angels. If I could, I'da ripped their wings off with mah teeth.

Sigh.

Anyway, today, I sniffed at them all and ignored them. I just traipsed down the mountain with a huge goblet of Penfold chardonnay in one hand (no lie: I'm tasting...uh, researching, wine for my upcoming soiree/reading/party for David "My Younger Man" Hess -- who's going to be joined by Bay Area newcomers Joseph Lease and Donna de la Perriere, as well as our lovely local Stephanie Young, y'all!) and went on over to croon at my Olive Tree.

You see, I just had the farmer-neighbor prune said olive tree. It hadn't been pruned in nearly 100 years! Imagine that!

But the Olive Tree -- it had its own thoughts. It looked at me cooing over one of its newly stubby branches and snorted: "Yo, Shorty! Did I ask for a bloody haircut?!!!!"

At first, I thought it was the wine (Oh, ye winepoetics, indeed, Henry!). But, no, it really was the Olive Tree. Dang -- it was grumpy!!!

"Uh," I wittily replied.

"Woman, if I'da wanted a haircut, I'da banged on your door and said so, ya hear?!!!" Olive Tree said.

"Oooooooh, I'm so soooooo....ry!" I replied with full abjectness! (And, by the way, I loathe anything abject so, this is to say, I really was sorry that I trimmed Mr. Olive Tree -- whom I quickly realized was a proverbial old coot or geezer -- against its wishes!)

"But, Dude -- you are a man, right? -- the farmer next door said I should trim you and you'd give me better olives next year!!" I tried to explain.

Olive Tree looked at me. Harrrumphed.

I tried to soothe the Olive Tree by changing the subject: "Well, now, should we name you? What would you like to be named?"

Olive Tree just kept staring at me. Its bark is wrinkled so I knew it was furrowing its brow at me (metaphorically, that is). "Oh yeah," Olive Tree grumped. "I heard about that."

"Heard about what?" I said.

"That you like to name trees -- what an idiotic idea!"

I dithered a bit, then mustered, "Well, Sapphire doesn't seem to mind."

Olive Tree looked at me, then sez what I already know: "Sapphire is a young oak tree you saved from a banal nursery over in Los Angeles. You coulda named her 'Ass' or 'Kumquat' and it'd still be grateful that you plucked her out of that petri dish called BOREDOM NURSERY and plunked her down on a mountain where all trees should be!"

Once more, I wittily mustered, "Uh."

Olive Tree snorted.

Hung my head. Whispered, "I'm sorry. I'ma just a New Yorker -- I don't know what to do with all this nature stuff, you know...."

Sniffle....

"Oh, for crying out loud....!" Olive Tree was exasperated. "Don't cry, goddamit! I can't stand fallen angels who cry!"

I looked at Olive Tree through the silver shimmer of my tears. My long lashes must have been quite fetching with said silver glimmer shimmering forth their sheen....

"You think I'm an angel?" I needily ask.

Olive Tree snorted again. I started crying again. And the soft-hearted Olive Tree pleaded again for me to stop crying.

And that's how I got to name my Olive Tree...because Olive Tree said I can name him if I just stopped shedding my tears.

Sip. Penfold (research for David!). My Olive Tree's name is "Mr. Cigar."

SILENCE


Sometimes
--after Reetika, for all poets

when angels weep
their eyes leak
blind white salamanders

albinos
hurting themselves
as they scamper about

inevitably crashing
against edges
or stumbling into holes

When they reach
my ankles
they climb up

clamber through
stigmata on palms
to enter my fingers

typing poems
about
form = content

and its opposite
delicquescence
into silence


Prize-Winning Poet, Infant Son Found Dead
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:51 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police are investigating an apparent murder-suicide involving a prize-winning poet who is thought to have slit her young son's wrist and then her own.

Reetika Vazirani, 40, and her 2-year-old son, Jehan, were found lying next to each other in a pool of blood in the dining room of a house where Vazirani was house-sitting, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Investigators found a note with references to the boy's father, Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, the newspaper said.

Neighbors and friends said there had been signs that Vazirani was distraught. She had sought out a meeting with a priest and borrowed a Bible.

Neighbors said the woman and the child were house-sitting for University of Maryland professor Howard Norman, who is vacationing with his wife at their summer home in Vermont.

Officials said one of the woman's co-workers went to the home and discovered the bodies. Police on Thursday called the deaths an apparent murder-suicide, although an official ruling had not yet been made.Denise King-Miller, a friend, said Vazirani had spoken to her about personal problems, some involving her relationship with Komunyakaa, a Princeton University professor.

"Her conversation with me was really about how she was going to move forward,'' King-Miller told the Post.Before 8 a.m. Wednesday, King-Miller said, Vazirani left her a voice mail saying, ``I think I'm going to hurt myself.''

King-Miller said she got the message later and tried to call Vazirani every hour, but got no answer.

Another friend visited the house before 4:30 p.m. and found the bodies lying next to one another on the floor with two large kitchen knives nearby.

Vazirani was a poet who used verse to describe her experience as a child and as an Indian immigrant. Her works were published in several poetry journals in addition to her books. She won the 2003 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for her second book, ``World Hotel,'' and a Barnard New Women Poets Prize for her first, ``White Elephants.'' Komunyakaa won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his book ``Neon Vernacular.''

THE SPORTING LIFE (AKA: VOTE FOR ME, BASEBALL FANS!!!!)

Well, so: should I stop blogging?

BWAHAHAHAHAHA....Ooops. Sorry, just amusing myself. Gary, please stay....I love jogging by your blog. In fact, I often pause behind the bush (oh, you didn't know there's a bush by your blog-house? Angel nods head up and down, Uh huh, uh huh), peek through your window and whenever you got that Bollywood movie thing going on, interrupt my jog to watch surreptitiously through the glass. Boy ("whew, not child"), those costumes!


Sigh. What I do with myself. Corpse scrunches her cheek, then realizes she has no flesh on said cheek. Sigh again.

Corpse perks up. Oh, but I still have my lovely long lashes!!!! Flutters lashes at screen. Eight million peeps are charmed!

Yadda.

Anyway, this is what I did with myself recently. But, first, let me tell you whose fault it was: Thomas Fink. Yep, Corpse nods fleshless but still enchanting chin up and down at the screen: You see, Tom read my post about the hubby giving me a gym membership and wrote in response:

Congrats on gym membership. But treadmill running can be stultifying, di ba*? Other activities in the gym, like weight training on the universal, may be more salubrious and less obviating. Real running can be more fun than treadmilitarism. Before injuring my hamstring yesterday, I did several sessions of time trials with a stop watch at several distances. Some were pathetic but showing improvement in current conditioning; example: at 49 (2003) I ran 7:36.88 for 1500 meters (almost a mile), whereas at 20 (1974), I ran 5:16.6. In1976 I triple jumped 48' 7", whereas now I merely hope to get in shape to beat my 13rd yr old child and jump 31' or 32'. Since you probably never posted times in your Barnard years, anything you run would be a personal record.

[*"di ba" is a Tagalog phrase that can be translated in this context as "is that not right?" don't even ask me what a white boy is doing going around spouting "di ba" -- oh! it must be my influence!!!]

Well, so I got Tom's e-mail, and, yah, thought I'd time myself the next time I got on the treadmill so I can have a "personal record" that doesn't threaten to land me in jail. So there I was on my second membership visit to the gym. Peeked in. This time, the guy who was about to get on a treadmill next to the one I favor looked about a quarter of the age of the guy I went up against the last time, which is to say he was about two-thirds my age.

Nonetheless, I perkily entered and perkily got on the treadmill. He and I began jogging together within 30 seconds of each other. And we go. Jog, jog....and I began pushing the miles-per-hour button up and up, mindful that I'm after a personal record. I'ma also, I suppose, feeling confident because of my prior experience on the treadmill when I knew I outran the geezer.

The thing with being a corpse is that you have a skull as a head, which is to say the brain has long leaked out. I don't know what I was thinking. The guy -- unlike the first one -- was young and in decent shape. Why'd I go up against him? We made like two sportscars who ended up next to each other in front of a red light. As soon as it turned green, we moved.....

...and moved. Jog, jog. Thirty (okay, 15) minutes later, I was gasping as I'd obviously began running too fast. But I was still just a half-pace behind, it seemed, whatever speed he chose. So, forgetting that corpse-dom requires the release of pride, I stepped up my pace even more. I kept up that increased pace for 15 seconds (I counted) and then hit the "cool down" button. I was wiped. Two minutes later, the last minute spent in a slow walk while he judiciously kept his eyes fixated ahead even as a large grin revealed itself on his ugly lips (actually, he was probably handsome but my begrudging eyes were quite....begrudging at the moment), I stepped off the treadmill and slunk away.....

....towards the water cooler which I swiftly emptied through 100 refills of a teeny paper cup (why are those cups so dang tiny anyway?!).

I believe I had ambitions for weights et al....but, fughetabout it, I hit the ladies' locker room, showered, tinkled out half the water cooler, then picked up the paper and went to have lunch. Hamburger and, yah, slap on some extra cheese, for chrissakes!

Now, all this is reminding me now of my other sport memories: all one of them. It just occured to me that I should share that, too, since I am running for President of the United States and I believe beisbol, uh, baseball is the national sport....So gather round for my baseball story! Don't ever let anyone call me un-American!!

So, Tom the hubby is a Massachusetts lad. Grew up in Lexington. Yadda. This is to say that he is a life-long fan of the Boston Red Sox. Well, one day, Tom meets a Filipino -- that's me -- who's ever been apathetic (not antipathetic, apathetic (wink)) to the sport.

He drags me kicking and screaming into following baseball that season, oh so deliberately dim in my memory, of 1986. Ah, 1986. Anyway, I began dutifully watching and games with him -- and lo and behold, as the 1986 season unfolded it began to seem as if the Sox (actually, do you say "Sox" or "Red Sox" or Socks or ....) might actually throw off the dreaded Curse of the Bambino!!!! Sox win, Sox win....yadda.....and then we get to the World Series against the Yankees. YaY, YaY, YaY!!

Bill Buckner. No need to say anymore: minimalism is best here....

But suffice it to say that that 1986 experience -- the climax like being thrown off an extremely high cliff so that you'll have enough time to realize and anticipate the pain when your body finally lands on the sharply-edged boulders awaiting the end of your fall below -- totally soured me off baseball. I vowed never to follow it again.

Flash forward to sometime in the early 1990s. Now, I am an exceedingly good-natured Corpse but, sometimes, nothing grates my hipbones more than being forced into the role of "Corporate Spouse" (AS I TOO OFTEN AM NOWADAYS!!!! oh, oooops; forgot the hubby doesn't read my blog). As a "Corporate Spouse," I often must accompany my husband to these events where he socializes with clients, other attorneys, etc. And, sometime in the early 1990s, the hubby proclaims I gotta go with him to a baseball game.

I threaten divorce. He doesn't blink (indeed, the cad mutters, "I wish..." then grins, just joking. Funny, ain't he.) Yeah, yeah, he sez, but he sez I had to go coz this client, Mike, was from some big deal investment bank and said client was being accompanied by his fiancee Roseanne whom I had to help entertain. I spout off a string of obscenities. I even threaten to read poetry. Nothing doing, I am dragged to the game (albeit with a new pair of shoes).

So there I was on a bright sunny day watching the Red Sox vs. the Yankees. Now, this also happened to be my FIRST ever LIVE baseball game. I gotta tell you: it's different from watching it on TV!!! (The majority of 8 million peeps think, No shit, Sherlock.) The weather was fine, the crowd was in a rare mood -- both teams, as I understand it, were actually playing quite awfully .... but in that so bad way that it got to be really funny. And I'm amidst Yankee fans who are spouting off the infamous New York edgy humor left, right and center with non-discriminatory insults.

The insults were the key. I started joining in with the crowd with letting off one zinger after another. But here's the thing. (Unlike today when I am a baseball expert because I am a candidate for President of the United States), I knew absolutely nothing about baseball. But I wanted to hurl out insults, too! So Roseanne would whisper some detail or another in my ear, and I'd swiftly alchemize that into a bon mot, and slug out said bon mot over the crowd -- quite often amusing my neighbors, which only encouraged me more, of course.

Roseanne and I go along in that fashion for a while: she'd say something about the next player going to bat, I'd hurl out the insult...yadda. Then, WADE BOGGS strolls up towards home plate swinging a bat. Roseanne whispers in my ear that PEOPLE magazine just had an article about Mr. Boggs -- some difficulty with his wife, or ex-wife. File info in my brain. So I forget which pitch it was on, bug Boggs connects and hits a high one up into center outfield area.

The ball goes high so it'll take a while to land. A Yankee outfielder has already ran to where he anticipates the ball will fall and is waiting there with his mitt to catch it. But, of course, just in case he doesn't catch the ball, Boggs is rounding the bases, too. The crowd is on its feet awaiting the outcome. Well, just as Boggs reaches second base, the outfielder catches the ball and Boggs is OUT!

Boggs now starts to jog back to the dugout, which is to say, he starts jogging towards our direction as we were seated right behind third base. Meanwhile, the standing crowd simultaneously deflates and everyone sits back down. That anticlimactic moment momentarily generates a silence across the stadium. That silence must have lasted all of 2-3 seconds, but that hiatus was enough for me to yell out to EVERYONE's ears as Boggs approached my seat:

THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR CHEATING ON YOUR WIFE!!!!!!

Another second of astonished silence, then the ENTIRE STADIUM erupted into laughter. Boggs actually stopped mid-field, then started looking over towards my direction with an extremely angry "Who said that?" look on his suddenly very scarey, large and getting-ever-larger face.

And that rolling camera? You know that rolling camera that often goes over the crowd and shows images on a huge screen for everyone else on the stadium to see? It suddenly started peering over our area. By the way, when I came up with my zinger, I also momentarily confused baseball with football so that when I uttered my bon mot I raised both hands up to the sky in that ye old "Touchdown!" sign. And there I was, naked for all to see while Boggs and the camera looked for me.

All pleased with myself, I look over to my companions, only to see that Tom, Mike and Roseanne are literally on their knees hiding their faces. Uh, oh. That's when I realized I'd better duck, too. I ducked....and the rest of our Yankee fan neighbors repaid me for the entertainment I inadvertently provided by not pointing me out.

Sip. Morning coffee. Well, the good thing about that event, though, is that Tom has never ever again dragged me to a baseball game. Sip.

But, lookit: if you vote me into the White House, I promise I shall assiduously follow the game, even volunteer to sing the National Anthem at the appropriate time.

Did I tell you of my singing voice?

But, look, until then, I'm perfectly willing to play outfield for the Bay Area Team -- I got wings, ya know, which is to say: no one is better positioned to go soaring up after those would-be homeruns. Do I need to add that I am particularly ravishing when I fly?

THE SUBSTANCE OF FORM: ONE VERSION

A reader might grapple with the more elliptical writings--their mixtures of prose and poetry, fragmented sentence structure, and disjunctive imagery--and ask, "Why not just say it in plain English?" One brief answer is that such discontinuous forms of prose get at the discontinuity of human experience in a very necessary way, just as an abstract painting may call up impressions associatively and make completely different kinds of demands on the viewer from those made by realistic representations, bringing up new ways of seeing and thinking.
--from Introduction to The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood

Thanks for the feedback, Peeps, on my prior post. One of you speak for others when you wrote:

hi eileen, i just read yr blog post abt yr parents/family. it's been making me think more and more abt distances and intimacies, public and private personae as writers, and the battles against our upbringing we choose to take on. i'd be very interested in reading what you write when, as you say, when (rather than "if") you get around to writing about your family. // my parents had previously hoped i'd outgrow this [poetry] past-time and marry R. of the house and white picket fence.

If my post makes just one of you feel less alone, well, that was part of my intent -- notwithstanding the nervousness I admit to having done such a personal post because....this blog thing -- there's an illusion I'm speaking to intimates. Huh, come to think of it, maybe you are now since I've sucked you all into my charm. Hmmmm: does 8 million suffice to get me into the White House? (I have been quite surprised at how this blog thing evolved for me when, originally, I had intended it as a one-month fundraising tool.) Anyways....

But just to correlate this topic (no, not the White House, this family thing) to some other topics recently addressed by Brian Kim Stefans and Timothy Yu, undoubtedly my background is one reason why my writings fairly quickly ceased to fit an "Asian American" paradigm that revolves around stories about family. That, though, is not such a bad thing -- not just on the individual level of not yet having the capacity to address well my particular family but also because, gads, I'da sure hate for my work to become "recognizeable" Asian American literature.

And this part of my personal history affects my poetic FORM. On one level, if I wasn't able to obey my parents, why would I pay obeisance to anyone else -- including those positing the "rules" of Poetry (and that includes what the publicly dominant canon posits Poetry to be).

Poetic form is on my mind at the moment because, last night, I attended a book launch/reading for The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood co-edited by Patricia Dienstfrey and Brenda Hillman (Wesleyan University Press, 2003). Readers from the book's 32 poets were the co-editors as well as Frances Phillips, Kathleen Fraser, Camille Roy and Norma Cole. Here's a bit of background as regards my enthusiasm for this book.

Last year, I gave a visiting lecture at a local university which sourced a frustrating but unsurprising experience for me. In discussing my work, I had spoken about how I was moved to use the prose poem's long lines to reflect the inspiration of paintings -- specifically gesture-laden brushstrokes that would seem to continue past the physical edges of a painting. Morever, I spoke about how my poems were ekphrasis exercises because the visual art inspiration was a means for me to rely less on my personality; in turn, such desire to separate myself from the language of those poems reflected my unease with English as it had been used long ago to solidify colonialism in the Philippines. (I've gone past these poetics, by the way, but that's a story for another post.)

A few students challenged my conclusion that my poems -- by not containing (overtly) political narrative references -- were "political." It's not the first time I've met that reaction (I even get it from other Filipinos). It reflects the old story of how people judge poems based on (narrative) content only, disregarding form. Okay, this assumes a separation between form and content -- which may not be the case but that's a story for another post; I think you all get my drift here. (Gee: are each of my subsequent paragraphs going to contain the aside, "That's a story for another post"? So many stories underlie -- lie -- any one story, eh?)

Anyway, as someone who's faced skepticism as regards something that I actually feel is quite basic to (because it's just such a core concern of) poetry -- FORM -- I welcome The Grand Permission. Though I am not a parent, I know I'm going to find reading this book worthwhile because the vision underlying this collection of essays includes a deliberate focus on motherhood's effect on poetic FORM (which may or may not be immediately discernible, and even as such poetics may or may not require identification by a reader in order to enjoy the subject poems).

I haven't read all of the anthology's essays as I write this, but enough examples were given at last night's reading at Clean Well Lighted Books. Patricia Dienstfrey, for one, said (and I'll quote the same thoughts more from her Introduction for clarity):

In approaching this project, we could have asked writers to consider how motherhood serves as subject matter for their writing, thus carrying on a conversation that began three decades ago. But because of our own interests in the writing process and because of the richness of the materials on this subject that came out of the conference, we chose instead to ask authors to reflect on the relationship between the life of mothering and the development of poetic form, inviting them to examine the cross-influences of these two subjects.....

The word "form" appears frequently in these pages. As we use it here, we refer to the features of style and structure in a piece of writing, and to an ineffable quality of mental life that shapes a work of art. Some of these shaping aspects might be technical: the measure of lines and stanzas, the choice of whether or not to use conventional sentences or asyntactical disjunctions, blips, lurchings, fragments. Form in a poem alludes to nearly everything that makes the poem unique: sound, space, meter, streess, choice of genre, diction, and revisionary puntuation. It might include aspects of lineation and imagery."

Patricia then shared her specific experience as to how a book that suited her mornings of children playing nearby was Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers (gads: I love this juxtaposition) which was written while Genet was a prisoner. The relationship was not just because of the constraints posed by being an inmate or by being a mother (albeit the latter by choice). Patricia quoted Genet's statement that reflects living in a prison inhabited exclusively by males, "I lived in the midst of an infinity of holes in the form of men." As Patricia explained, "His image of men as holes formed a compression, a radiance, a postmodern desire that destroyes its object, a presence-in-absence. There was much in Genet's writing that, given the hold that linearity still had on my mind, I found liberating."

Part of that liberation relates to how children playing facilitated "a sense of overlapping times" as Patricia also remembered a childhood incident. When she was two years old, she came to "know a word before [she] could talk." Through a window, she witnessed a boy and girl playing with each other. And in witnessing them, the word she "breathed out in excitement, was 'romance,' on the glass an 'O' suspended over the scene." That "O" -- symbolic for a circular rather than linear time -- moves from imagery to sound. Thus, in her book The Woman Without Experiences, an excerpt is:

... ... ... Sound. ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ..Wound ...
... ... Round ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... Found...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... Bound ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

I could go on and on about Patricia's talk and approach to this issue (I love the way her brain works) but I obviously can't get into it here at length; but more information on her "O" is here.

Brenda Hillman shared motherhood's effect on her form (as related to metaphor), as also influenced by a divorce which meant sharing custody of her daughter. As she puts it:

Realizing that a mysterious quadrant of my daughter's week would take place apart from me, I began to perceive phenomena differently. During this time, we all sufered in ways specific to our own lives. I cannot represent my child's experience of this time, only my own. One coping mechanism was to study each perception as it formed at the site of her disappearance and the moment of her return. This led to a new epistemology. It seemed crucial to pay attention to the micromovements of the thought-language-space-shape continuum so that such a reality might become bearable. A new set of betweenesses happened in language as her body came and went through time and distance. Individual words fell apart. Colors became letters. Yellow was plural, was daughters of yellow. Red was too much. Words like "see" "you" "soon" grated themselves into the air. A poetic method, which had heretofore been based on waiting for insight, suddenly had to accommodate process, an indeterminate physics, a philosophy that combined spiritual searching with detached looking. In this procedure of baffled decenteredness, my daughter and I shared a method of across.

To love metaphor is to exist in a state of becoming, and also paradoxically, to render the heart lucky and indistinct. To live in metaphor is to be eternally hopeful in relation to a missing term. It is to acknowledge that the element is missing because of the world's need, and the mind's, because one has entered into a permanent contract with the unknown. The acceptance of incompleteness is energy.

Another example was offered by Frances Phillips who shared how a baby's rhythm -- the "rhythm of rocking, walking, burping" -- affected her lines:

She is busy. She moves in a quick, rocking, intent manner, leaning into her movements. She is the mistress of little stuff -- pennies, ribbons, jacks -- and they are everywhere. I compose short, stocky sentences:

Here we go.
Up we go.
No more.
All gone.
Round and round.
Bye-bye.

Frances' example allows me to return to the story of my lecture that I'd found frustrating. If you look at Frances' poem (or excerpt of poem), you need not know of motherhood's influence to appreciate this pithy poem. Yet, presumably, she would not have come to write that way had she not translated a toddler's rhythm into poetic form. Similarly, to experience my poems I don't think a reader needs to know of my love for abstract expressionism -- those gestural brushstrokes that I translated into long lines -- or how I viewed ekphrasis as a postcolonial method; but without these "poetics," I may not have written in the prose poem form.

The discussions on form make this book far more interesting than had it been what some people might expect from such an anthology: the difficulties of the writing life when one also is a mother. Sure, it includes that -- how can it not? But the emphasis on form makes this book ultimately about poetry, making it of interest to an audience beyond those interested in motherhood even as it does not dismiss motherhood.

I know some of you peeps are also on the Suny Buffalo Poetics List and so you might recall a little discussion about this book by Stephen Vincent, Arielle Greenberg, among others. In response to some of their questions, the title of the book is actually inspired by a man: Henri Michaux who once said that, as a poet, he's not a surrealist but surrealism gave him "the grand permission." And, I haven't read the book thoroughly yet but the mothers here include the divorced, lesbian, adoptive, single parents and dual parents.

In any event, whatever you think generally about the topic of "poetry and mothering" -- and I think there's at least one poet in the book itself who questions such an implied causal effect between mothering and language -- I would be surprised if your criticism, if any, would include that this project (which took 7 years to make) was not worthwhile.

PARENTING ONE'S SELF

can mean partly to parent one's parents.

Just finished Joelle Fraser's memoir The Teritory of Men. Reading it was like tip-toeing through glass shards. Heart-wrenching book that made me think, Perhaps one's relationship with one's parent(s) is the most difficult challenge in relationships (at least for me). A romance or love affair presents an immediacy that compels attention. Once one is past childhood, one's relationship with one's parents -- if it was difficult enough (of course it's "difficult" like many other relationships, but if it goes past a threshold of difficulty?) -- need not be addressed. It can be relegated to memory.

(Sadly observing: I keep using "one" rather than "I" here in this post....)

There are two types of parents, Fraser notes aptly. The parent of the past (usually childhood) and the parent the adult child now has. Very different.

I'm 42 years old. I have yet to address the parents of my past.

I suddenly recall one source of frustration -- extreme frustration -- for me as a child. That I must always obey whatever they said because whatever decisions they decided for me were made out of a clear wish to do what's good for me. And when mistakes are made, it's okay because their motivation was always positive -- how can one challenge the *intent* to do well, after all?

My parents' primary "mistake" was that of tentativeness -- they were extremely risk averse.

It's one reason that I am dubious about their happiness for whatever I have achieved as a writer. Because they never would have supported my decision to be a writer. At age 35, when I became a writer, they could afford however to profess total support because they considered my husband a "safety net" against all that the writing life might expose me to (poverty, etc).

I resent them.

I believe in the sincerity of their joy whenever they receive one of my books. In fact, my mother agitates that I don't tell her enough of my work -- that she is interested in a copy of anything that I write.

But I rarely give her copies of anything I write except my actual books. I don't think she should be a participant in my process that, for me, is extremely hard and which I know she would not have wanted for me were it not for the fact that I am married to someone who she feels can protect me. I resent her lack of faith (though she undoubtedly would not characterize it that way -- and perhaps I shouldn't be characterizing it that way).

My father is passive in this dialogue.

Perhaps someday I'll write about all this. Right now, I'd rather deal with the parents of the present: the ones who have forgotten that the primary lesson they taught their children was to avoid risks. To be any sort of artist is to take risks.

One of my brothers was a genius, smarter than the rest of the kids put together. My parents, first generation immigrants (which certainly can excuse some of their ignorance as to how to deal with logistics of this country), dissuaded him from attending college because they didn't understand the "student loan" concept and didn't want to put their child in debt. I watched my extremely smart brother slowly die of boredom (the light ever-receding from his eyes) as, after high school, he started working as a clerk at a local bank. For distraction: pick-up basketball games on weekends, when I knew he wasn't even really into that game. He died in a car accident after one of those games. I was in college where (no thanks to my parents) I'd gone to escape from my parents. When I received the phone call, I remember thinking at one point, "I'm glad because this life wasn't the one he wanted or deserved. Perhaps he'll get another chance elsewhere."

Perhaps someday I'll write about my parents: about how much I loathe who they were while they were parenting me.

My parents -- on those rare occasions that I write a poem I immediately like and want to show somebody, they are on the the bottom of the list with whom I'd think to share that poem. In fact, they're not even on that list.

But I don't know if I will -- I am not sure I'd survive the necessary fragility I must allow for myself in order to do that.

That's why I appreciate memoirs like Fraser's The Territory of Men. She called the writing process a "healing" for her. Good for her.

*****

P.S. Who am I kidding? Of course I'm going to write about my parents someday. It's going to kill me ten thousand times. But I'll have to do it. Because I also already know -- and goddamit it, I do know -- to do so would make me a better poet.

LAPIS LAZULI

I move my studio this weekend from San Francisco to Napa. The turmoil of packing books into boxes has been very difficult on my angels. We like being surrounded by books. Now, the shelves are empty and I'm all covered with fallen black feathers. Let me tell you, bald spots on wings are not pretty. What's interesting -- having seen this before -- is that when the feathers grow back on angelic wings they sometimes grow out white. The first time I noticed the white feathers, my eyes also latched onto their dark neighbors. I realized then that what I had thought to be all-black feathers actually contained undersides of dark blue. Color of storm-racked sky revealed because white clarifies black. But though contrast can clarify vision, rupture is often the source of contrast. To move a library is to lose at least one book. How has evolution arrived to this "pained living"? Lingering on my lips: zinfandel over-fortified into port: o, strained milk of prunes sheathed over my tongue. Which comes first: wisdom or its loss?

THE WORLD'S OLDEST PROFESSION

So I just got my first letter as regards my Presidential campaign. From a poet:

"i will vote for you. can u mandate america to find me a husband? that's all i need. thank you."

Sigh.

Corpse perks up. Oh, but you know, I should start giving reasons for why I should be President of the United States, right? Okay, here's one: Because I'm a poet, I would be better at calling a whore a "whore" -- cough, I mean, a spade a "spade." I certainly can do it better than these two who clearly have no idea which metaphor they are manifesting here:

"Madam President, for all you have done to make our world safer, America thanks you."
--President George W. Bush, to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the White House during her state visit in May.

"I appreciate the help of President Bush in our work to alleviate poverty and other socio-economic ills from which terrorism draws its strength."
--President Arroyo, who received more than $4 billion in U.S. "aid."

CORPSEPOETICS: A POETICS

Once, I experienced dawn over Benares. I was seated on a small boat trawling the banks of the Ganges as a multitude engaged with the river. I took at least a roll's worth of photographs. When I returned to the U.S., I discovered that none of the photographs came through.

I was about 26 or 27 years old when I visited India. I've long mourned those "lost" photographs.

It wasn't until this year (about 15 years later) that I understood why my photographs didn't develop -- couldn't have developed -- into images. None of the pictures could capture what made the Ganges special to me: a feeling then of immersion in some type of warmth -- like floating within a sunlit void.

I am compelled to share this because I have just heard yet another poet attempt to define Poetry.

I also share that though I struggle to articulate that "warmth" I first felt by the Ganges, I sense it was a foretelling of my future that is now present.

And I also sense that warmth -- its quickening -- to be...ancient.

How can words ever articulate this blank image that is, yet, pure warmth....and pure joy?

Joy!

First, one doesn't try.

RECIPE FOR A BLOG POST (#2):
BEGIN WITH CLEAVAGE AND END WITH THE PRESIDENCY

Timothy reminds me of my wise-crack that bloggers compete for Best Blog Report on Ron Silliman. I don't know -- right now, my vote goes to Jim Behrle's "Astral Projection" report. But, Jim-peep, that wasn't my blouse or non-blouse you wuz lookin' at. Hon, it's called "CLEAVAGE." Now, I know and sympathize that it's....been a while....but, just to remind you: CLEAVAGE. Granted, it wasn't that, uh, deep....but, still: CLEAVAGE.

Speaking of young poets after my cleavage, David Hess will be touring the Bay Area and he claims his juice is that it's "Poetry this time." (Ah, Chris -- dontcha just love these young uns!! YaY! Cough: that is, it's such a responsibility being an "older woman"....it'da almost drive me to drink were I not already, uh, drinkin'). So, check out the HeathensinHeat blog for David's schedule (and I'm sure more specific venue details are forthcoming), but, yah, I'ma gonna host a party for him that Thursday, August 21. Wine will be served a-plenty. Bring your own beer or water if you're not into wine. What David didn't mention on his post, though, is that, cough: there's a price for attending the party. Towit:

I'ma thinking of cooking. Consequently (and if you read my blog, there may be a consequence or two), you need to plan to eat whatever I cook as well.

But, hey, like I said. There'll be wine a-plenty.

And don't forget to bring a poem or 2 to read: OPEN MIKE with DAVID HESS in my COFFIN!!!!

Okay, that's 'nuff for now, Kids. I gotta go back to my Presidential campaign. The grassroots support began in South Carolina, swiftly spread to North Carolina, and of course gathered immediate support as well in California. Here's my grassroots' ... uh....roots:

The war in Iraq, which was about oil and wasn't about WMDs (straight from the elephant's -- Paul Wolfowitz's -- mouth), has supposedly come to an end, despite the ever-increasing violence; George Tenet is in the process of poking out his eyes for the good of his vacuous, fundo-redneck leader's reputation; said airhead leader has just completed a trip -- thank you, U.S. taxpayers -- to the continent of Africa, for the express purpose of convincing us all that he indeed has compassion for Charles Taylor and the diamond cartels; astronomers have just discovered a 12.7-billion-year-old gas giant orbiting a neutron star, explicitly raising the prospect that Earth-like worlds -- and perhaps, organic intelligence -- developed far earlier in the universe's history than had been theorized previously; Britney Spears is not -- imagine that -- a virgin; and Ron Silliman argues that "there really is no third way" in poetry.

In response to these events, I'm reading Wole Soyinka and dreaming of waging a write-in campaign for the '04 U.S. Presidential election. Who would I write in? Why, a poet of course! For if a poet can run the NEA, then why not the whole country? Now, how to determine a good write-in candidate is the tricky part. I like the way Amiri Baraka isn't afraid to shoot his mouth off (as on Bill O'Reilly's show some months back) on national TV, but perhaps his views are a tad bit extreme. Charles Bernstein seems to be a good builder of coalitions -- we need those -- and networks, but I don't know if Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court would appreciate his sense of humor. Dana Gioia...ah, he just needs to stay with the NEA. John Ashbery? Extremely interesting domestic views, but I'm not sold on his foreign policy agenda. Jorie Graham has the capacity to be one of the more intelligent Presidents the U.S. has ever seen, but you've got to wonder if she'll appeal to the people -- will they feel her pain?

Frankly, I'm leaning towards writing in one of sidereality's own...Eileen Tabios. Here's why: 1) she's a wine connoisseur and would help to wean U.S. Americans off of light beer, thereby creating a more civilized society; 2) she's in touch with her inner corpse, possessing a point-of-view which could lead to exciting changes in the healthcare system; 3) she's a very generous person, and yet doesn't overspend her cultural capital (we USers need some fiscal discipline); 4) she might poll well with Hispanic and Asian-American voters; 5) she runs her own publishing house, and knows when to delegate authority; and 6) like most good poets, she'd be able to write excellent, well-phrased speeches (no more haphazard, off-the-cuff "Axis-of-Evil" lines).
--from "Summer of Discontent," an editorial by Sidereality Editor & Publisher Clayton A. Couch

THE ABORTED FASHION REPORT

Someone said, Let there be light. Instead, there was Us
--Mary Burger

The expansion of genre much faster than the expansion of readers.....green goose poop
--Ron Silliman

I didn't wear the blouse -- the one I mentioned earlier that I had bought for the Mary Burger/Ron Silliman reading last night in Oakland. It was silk and it was hot and silk in heat is only good for being ripped off before....ya know....Sip (morning coffee)....

But what's interesting is that Ron's shirt was of a very very very similar black-and-white print. And I kept thinking, Geez, had I worn that blouse ..... peeps might start hazarding thoughts on my poetic "lineage"....

Still, Ron wore black pants while I wore a black top so we shared the same black-and-white motif. This would come to have utmost relevance later when, during the car drive home from the reading, the Tom the hubby would turn to Eileen and say, "You know -- Ron Silliman writes poems like you do."

Do note the phrasing, peeps: Mr. From-The-Mouth-of-Babes says Ron writes like I do, not the other way around. Now, Tom knows even less about poetry than I do so I'm sure Tom had no idea that the notion that Ron Silliman writes like Eileen Tabios -- rather than the other way around -- just might set some tweed-basted critics hopping from one foot to another. In any event, since you write like I do, Ron Sweetie, anytime you need a "blurb," just throw a holler over here and I'll be sure to try to clear up the calendar....

Sip. Anyway, to continue. Of course, much as I adore black, in that pleasantly tropical atmosphere of 21 Grand, I'da much rather have worn something the color of Kevin Killian's shirt: a blazingly lovely shade of pink that brought sunset into the room. And that material that looked quite cooler than the cotton draped over my enchanting self -- what was that, Kevin? Linen of sorts?

Timothy Yu sported quite a fetching hairstyle, hair mussed up just so a la Ryan Seacrest, the host of "American Idol." (Yea, I've seen that show -- your point is?!) Of course, the hair-raising mighta been the heat.....Heat: causes so many things to rise, dontcha think, Fellow Meat-Eater?....Sip.

It was very moving to see Ron acknowledge a guy in the audience for having been the first to publish him! I didn't catch the name but this perspicacious fella wore an attractive straw hat with a band (would that be fedora?)

Apparently, Catherine Meng was there but since she is shy (I purrrfectly understand that, Catherine; I, myself, am quite shy -- shift glare at the 8 million peeps who choke back their laughs), we didn't meet. But Catherine had socks "blown off." (Well, but I really am shy which is why I'm now miffed, reading Kasey's report, that I didn't get a chance to meet all the poet-peeps that apparently were in the audience because I didn't circulate....with the problem, too, being that I still don't know the faces of the names I admire....)

So, lookit -- I could post a report on the reading instead of posting a fashion commentary but I've got a speech to write. Apparently, I am officially Sidereality's write-in candidate for President of the United States.

BONK!!!

Corpse rubs her bony head and glares at the angel who threw a poker chip at her. Oh, okay, okay! I'll post a report on the reading. Geeeez, Corpse mutters, One would think this blog is not about me! And I was about to write a fantabulous Call for Candidates for my Attorney General.....

Her bony knuckles begin to type:

Well, I wore black satin summer sandals which, whenever I looked down, offered a pleasing sheen that helped obviate the lackluster image of my unpainted toenails. Across the room, I noticed Kasey growing a quite debonair field of stubble that nicely met his closely-cropped hair. Stephanie's sleeveless shirt nicely emphasized her yoga-hewn upper arms, and, yes, her new hairstyle of which I'd heard much of is ravishing ravishing ravishing....BONK AGAIN!!

What? Corpse yells up at the angel with mother-of-pearl eyes. Okay, okay....here's a report on a poetry reading....here, you content-hungry peeps:

MARY BURGER:
She wore loose pants in some sort of wine-colored....okay. Some ravishing work from this lady as she continues her path of ever investigating narrativity. In fact, looking now at my notes, I notice that I wrote a hay(na)ku in response to her first poem mentioning she whom I mention below:

Yoko
Ono is
"state of mind"

Here's a "word-cloud" (love that phrase which I'm stealing from Garrett Hongo) of my favorite clouds from Mary's reading (with the caveat that anything I quote from Mary or Ron may not be accurate verbatim):

Judgments on superficiality....eliminating choices just to make things more concise....
This rage is not a belief....to rage is to eliminate belief...a fetish....a shiny fetish
Even something as unregulated as a curve throws it off.....white telephone
If the thing you are measuring is not the thing you intended to measure you may never figure that out
Their knowing knowing is part of living...

And last but not least from the "Semiotics of the Rubber Duck":

There were two of them because it felt more companionable to have a pair.

So, speaking of the second half of the pair: RON SILLIMAN

By the way, peeps, I was the one who got the last available copy there of his Tjanting, along with R. There was a threat of a tussle at the back of the room as another fellow clearly had his eye on Tjanting, but I ignored him with Tjanting in my quivering hands, making sure to seemingly ignore his presence (he who wanted my -- MY! -- Tjanting) by schmoooozing arduously with Stephen Vincent as we appreciated Mary Burger's photo chapbook on the Sierras....

Then, with my copy of The New Sentence that I'd brought to the reading, I took the three books up front to Ron Silliman where I finally met the guy for the first time. Nervously -- but naturally looking quite perky from all visible manifestations of myself -- I go up to him and introduce myself:

Eileen: I'm Eileen Tabios [a brilliant first statement to the guy, don't you peeps think?]

Ron: I guessed that's who you are [thereby flustering me]

Eileen: Oh, would you sign my books? [causing a nearby youngster to giggle, "Oh you're going to sign books?" Actually, I found that moving -- the idea of a poet's child looking up at his/her parent in a new light as said child witnesses how that parent so affected someone that his/her parent's autograph is being requested.....It should happen to all poet-parents!]

Ron: I don't have a pen [Eileen, ever-prepared for such a momentous occasion as this, swiftly zips out a pen.]

Ron: You know, I have a question for you about the photograph of your book [whilst signing my books]

Eileen [so flustered that she asked, and now is hoping it didn't come off as obnoxious]: Which book? [Yah, like, I have a million books out there, ya know....]

Ron: The photograph of your book. It looks like a rose hip on a thorn....[See said book cover here.....]

But seriously, I was also moved that Ron remembered my book and so, at this point, I degenerate into babbling at Ron over a multitude of topics for the few minutes left before his reading was due to start and never again let him had another word in....Well, you all know how that goes, right -- like when you want a conversation to go well and so you end up talking more than is prudent? I started with talking about the photographer of my book's cover to, at one point, reciting to him the entirety of Homer's Odyssey (or so it now feels like that in my shamed memory)....oh, I do recall something about how he managed to interject in that he used to live in the Bay Area -- which I had not known or forgotten about, which made me think, Oh, shit. Should I have known that -- thereby leading me to tell him, "Oh. Well, you know, I'm still catching up on things that I probably should know about peeps in the poetry world" because, you know, I didn't want him to think that if I didn't know that salient point about him, it was not because he was not famous enough but simply because I was too ignorant....

Pause. Inhale/Exhale....while eight million peeps look at her with much profound pity and astonishment.

Corpse hangs her head. Yes, I know. Some words that are written should never actually be said out loud. But I was so nervous I said it -- I actually uttered "peeps" to Ron Silliman.

But THANK GOD THANK GOD I did not at all mention Robert Lowell during my totally incapacitated bladder, uh, blather!!!

Inhale/Exhale. Well, so my notes from the evening say that Ron began with a poem in which, two seconds into it, he SANG!!!! The guy who's come off like the Darth Vader of Poetry Blogland to some irrepressible young poet-peeps bloody well sang the line

"limbo limbo limbo"

This image of Ron singing "limbo limbo limbo" shall never fall through the sieves of my memory, particularly since (cough) it is somewhat (but not totally) true that, as he put it in another line that was aptly a crowd-pleaser:

"he looks just like his website"

I won't repeat all the wonderful lines I took down from his reading into my notebook as that would make this post's length shut down our already fragile BLOGGER. But I will say that his expanse made me respond in many different ways, as in, from my scribbles throughout the evening:

--such, such ENERGY!!!

-- this guy's an abstract expressionist -- at the line along the lines of "green yellow pus sores on an old man's leg: a linoleum pattern" (though, in car ride, Tom would say more like a pop artist a la Warhol....truth to both, I think)

-- the jump from abstract to physical, reminds me of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge....

Oh, okay, okay: I must at least post these wonderful lines from his VOG (used to be Voice Over Guy and is now Voice of God):

Even though the text is floating, the page will not float

As regards "Compliant Engineering," our life is a blurb

An aftertaste of honey-flavored pretzel lingers in my beard

A Kentucky Beauty Queen is like a tornado: both will end up in a trailer park

A world in which Strom Thurmond outlives Kathy Acker....the next story shall surely bring snow

These and so many other lines explain why, at one point, I looked over at the crowd and notice the row where seated was Del Ray Cross, Kasey, Timothy, Stephanie -- they all shared the same look on their faces: UTTER ENTHRALLMENT. It was nice to see.

Okay, now shit. Ron is all fine and good and generous and, in person, is much better looking than his blog. But I can't remain in this mode -- it's a matter of politics that I should ever only be permanently enthralled with myself. So, let me recuperate MY -- that's MY -- blog from Sillimania. It's about me, peeps, not Ron. So let me end with this:

Notwithstanding my rather understated wardrobe of last night (black top and jeans), I hope Ron has the taste to conclude that I am just as gorgeous as I say I am. After all, I put on red lipstick. What more can you ask from a corpse?

Now, if you'll all excuse me: I've got a presidential campaign to begin. Ah, dear United States -- I promise to wear fabulous clothes as I seek to colonize you.

EMBEDDED AND EMBODIED POETRY

I gained 10 pounds when I was being Ms. WinePoetics because I had to drink more wine than normal in order to write the 2,000-plus pages of my prior blog's theme and wine is very caloric.

Now, my hair keeps getting longer but I really need to get a haircut because the tips are fraying but the problem is that there are little poem-critters skittling all over my studio floor, begging me to keep growing my hair as they love to jump up to grab my hairtips and swing, to and fro, yelling out that Tarzan scream.

Of course, there are advantages to physical poems -- they also rub my brow when I have headaches, trying to soothe those furrows. "What's with the furrows?" the poems ask. "We're not trying to plant wheat there, you know...."

Midnight approaching. Soon my day begins....black wings beginning to flutter.

Soon, soon....

A BLESSING

I'ma jumping up and down in between typing! Wanna know who I slept with last night?

They humor her:

YES!!! Eight million peeps dutifully say.

Actually, it's a what. It's a book!

A significant portion of her peep constituency groan and return to reading porn.

No, no!!! the Corpse insists. Don't go! I am very excited over this!

Peeps sigh. Go on, then! one irritated one says on behalf of all.

I just got a copy fedexed to me by the printer's. The latest book I've published! It's just beautiful....so beautiful I cried!! See my wet long lashes?

And, for a moment, eight million computer screens get streaked. When the peeps finally wipe off their screens, they see:

OPERA: Poems 1981-2002 by Barry Schwabsky

It's beautiful, peeps! It's only the third book I've published so this is major, ya know!!!!

Here's an example of what made David Shapiro, Juliana Spahr, John Yau and Geoffrey O'Brien hiccup in their sweet-smelling breaths! (Uh....so to speak...) This poem was initially written as the text for a limited edition book of prints by Luisa Rabbia, published by Edizioni Canopo (Prato, Italy):


Drafts (of Water)


A drowning breath, Luisa,
begins the poem
of our making

and unmaking -- night drifting
between two days. The sea
was calm, its music impossibly

translated. Flames
curl like waves, or was it
waves curl like flames?


*

Travel homeward
seemed to
dream, such
strange relationship
made no
grace of
misgiving. When
the door
with its
beautiful narrator
shook her head
then proceeded
“Our
other
selves, being similar
but
away,
remain
awake to
the sparks,”
united, then untied.


*

Hello again but in reverse
to the far-flung alarm
of stars through a window.

This sleep whose disheveled night
untunes your island, Luisa.

Silver eyes and hair and
the roaring heavens your definitions of water
pretermit.

*

Impossibly-translated water, Luisa:

Water impossibly-translated as “the path
that leads away from itself.” What the knight saw
could be implausibly translated as “I study,
I make out your face through my stare.”
Even the most imperfectly rendered water
flows downward, widening, wearing away its ground
in the void.


*

Unless patterns pursue themselves like waves, Luisa,
unless patterns…unless they
pursue themselves….unless
waves…but let me put it this way:
sea-light will not be cajoled, Luisa,

into sufficient confusion
except on condition you explain realism at the dinner table:
subscription to water
wilderness of water
rivers fluctuating in quarter tones
reservoir to be read as temporary relief from insomnia

and the same assuming your place in the book
of perpetually writhing liquid.


*

He eyes her eyes,
starminded.


*
Sleeping ends by distracting
itself. Drunken eye-journeys
arouse a sealed lid.

Begin
comparing notes
on pleasure, passing birds
from hand to hand.


*

What one dreams
the other describes:
a drowned water,
unmade breath.

Mischievous weather
we’ve been having,
hey Luisa? Flooded distances

impossibly translated
on this drier tongue
as the capitol of mists.


=========

Isn't that a beaut of a poem? There's more!!!! in the book!!!!! And now, I'm obsessing with the press release I plan to send out with review copies. I've inflicted prior versions on you peeps before. Here's the latest for more information on this ethereal and groundbreaking book, according to my absolutely non-biased perspective as its publisher:

Meritage Press Announcement:

OPERA: Poems 1981-2002
By Barry Schwabsky
ISBN No.: 0970917929
Price: $14.00
Release Date: November 2003
Contact: MeritagePress@aol.com, www.MeritagePress.com
Meritage Press (St. Helena and San Francisco, CA)

Meritage Press is pleased to announce the publication of OPERA, the first book-length collection of poems by Barry Schwabsky. Written over a 21-year-period, OPERA presents a compelling, often ecstatic, poetic body of work by a writer who has been more visible over the past two decades as a respected art critic. Mr. Schwabsky was first published as a college undergraduate in POETRY magazine; subsequently, he published his work in various journals as well as in two chapbooks, the last being Fate/Seen In The Dark in 1985 through the respected poetry publisher, Burning Deck. Over the last decade, however, he has circulated his poems informally or published them only as limited-edition poet-artist collaborations. OPERA now allows Mr. Schwabsky's poetry to be accessible to the larger public.

Reflecting his primarily private poetic development, Mr. Schwabsky has created a poetry that transcends the schools and categories that sprung up within the poetry world of recent decades -- also observed by various poet-critics offering advance words on OPERA. David Shapiro says Mr. Schwabsky's poems are "born of a strange encounter between American poetry and European masters such as Celan and Novalis [that] always surprises me by its exploratory investigations." John Yau says, "Imagine poems written by Sir Walter Raleigh after he has read Wittgenstein and Lorine Neidecker, listened to bands whose names weren't in the air …and learned more about contemporary art than anyone thought possible, and you might get a sense of the compactness of these poems, an airy abstract density unlike anyone else's." Geoffrey O'Brien, meanwhile, says, "These might be choruses and arias from some lost Venetian music drama of the early 1600s…transmuted over the intervening centuries of silence into a software program for a new species of lyrical electronica."

Mr. Schwabsky is a well-known art critic for such publications as Artforum (where he is co-editor of international reviews), Art in America, Tema Celeste, and the London Review of Books and the author of The Widening Circle: Consequences of Modernism in Contemporary Art (Cambridge University Press) as well as co-author of Jessica Stockholder (Phaidon Press), Gillian Wearing: Mass Observation (Merrell Publishers), and Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting (Phaidon Press), among others. He also works as a curator and teacher, having taught at Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Arts, New York University, Yale University, and Goldsmiths College, University of London. Born in Paterson, New Jersey, he currently resides in London. Inevitably, Mr. Schwabsky's activities as an art critic has affected his poems as reflected in an elegant exactitude to his form: in his poems, each word earns its presence.

BEGINNER'S POETICS

Before switching from WinePoetics to CorpsePoetics, I had thought of other themes before settling on finding "a love six feet under." Here's some that I can recall this morning:

Dubious Poetics

Void Poetics

Slut Poetics

Rock Climbing Poetics [the next issue of Sidereality will feature my poem on *rock climbing ars poetica* -- thanks Clayton!]

Waterfall Poetics

Green Mango Poetics

Bagoong [pungent fish sauce] Poetics

High Heels Poetics

Flat-Chested Poetics

Durian Poetics

Teddy Bear Poetics

Missing Link Poetics

Poverty Poetics

Toe Cleavage Poetics

Poetaster's Poetics

Elbow Poetics

Poker Poetics [definitely still a candidate]

Trophy Wife Poetics [aka Boredom Poetics]

If I Were A Man Poetics [I guess, this woulda meant I'd have posted on Lowell by now -- as a Corpse, though, may I say that as regards Lowell: he's no St. John of the Cross]

Yawn. Sip. (Morning coffee.)

So, okay: let me end with....St. John of the Cross: an excerpt from his "The Dark Night."

From
"Some of the imperfections of pride possessed by beginners"

1. These beginners feel so fervent and diligent in their spiritual exercises that a certain kind of secret pride is generated in them, which begets a complacency with themselves and their accomplishments, despite the fact that holy works do of their very nature cause humility. Then they develop a desire somewhat vain -- at times very vain -- to speak of spiritual things in others' presence, and sometimes even to instruct rather than be instructed; in their hearts they condemn others who do not seem to have the kind of devotion they would like them to have...

2. The devil, desiring the growth of pride and presumption in these beginners, often increases their fervor and readiness to perform such works, and other ones, too. For he is quite aware of the fact that all these works and virtues are not only worthless for them, but even become vices. Some of these persons become so evil-minded that they do not want anyone except themselves to appear holy; and so by both word and deed, they condemn and detract others whenever the occasion arises, seeing the little more in their neighbor's eye, and failing to consider the beam in their own eye; they strain at the other's gnat and swallow their own camel.

[I like that line: "they strain at the other's gnat and swallow their own camel."]

3. And when at times their spiritual directors, their confessors or superiors, disapprove their spirit and method of procedure, they feel that these directors do not understand, or perhaps that this failure to approve derives from a lack of holiness, since they want these directors to regard their conduct with esteem and praise. So they quickly search for some other spiritual adviser more to their liking, someone who will congratulate them and be impressed by their deeds....Frequently, in their presumption, they make many resolutions but accomplish very little. Sometimes....they experience raptures, more often in public than in private, and they are quite pleased, and often eager, for others to take notice of these.

WUSS

During my period years back of submitting to every single journal across the country, I submitted poems that were rejected by The New Yorker. That "full disclosure" out of the way, lemme continue:

Timothy writes: "I can't believe the New Yorker actually has a poetry intern. I can't decide whether to be pleased that the NYer actually thinks that poetry is worth bothering to have an intern for, or depressed that there is someone out there willing to be paid nothing to read New Yorker poetry all day long."

This reminds me of my experience with an intern from The New Yorker. I was helping out at a poetry press, and fielded a phone call. Said intern. He wanted to request a copy of this book which had just received a prize and was being published by the press. I said the book's not out yet. He replied, "Oh." Amicably, we hung up.

A few minutes later, the intern called again. He must have received some clarification from someone back at The New Yorker, and now he knew to ask for a copy of the manuscript. He said The New Yorker was interested in publishing some of the prize-winning poems....and, THUS, [ALL-CAP EMPHASIS MINE] would then be interested in seeing The New Yorker in the "Acknowledgments" section of the published book.

Yadda.

And I thought....what a wussy wussy way for a journal to choose the poems it would publish -- that it first wanted the imprimatur of a contest prize recipient rather than making its way through the tons of submissions it receives because, AFTER ALL [ALL-CAP EMPHASIS MINE AGAIN], it professes an open-submission policy (or did the last time I paid attention to it) that I have to believe includes more poems worthy of publishing than what actually appears on their pages (or as I know some of you peeps believe, more worthy than what the public ends up reading on their pages).

But then, this is the same rag that published Steve Martin's brain dead article on "The Wily Filipino," isn't it -- thus spurring .... Revenge. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Sunny....)

CORPSE FLUTTERS LONG LASHES

"But if I make it to San Francisco, my arms and legs and everything in between will be reserved for the Eileen. So forget about it, Kevin Killian."
--Heathen In Heat

Ya know, while playing Domestic Goddess returning bed linen (yawn) at Macy's earlier this week, I bought a blouse for Ron Silliman's upcoming reading in Oakland. It was 40% off the already doubly-reduced price at 80% of 16% off....yadda, something like that. Silk blouse. For my first time meeting you, David Sweetie, I.....

won't wear that blouse.

from (PHYSICAL) NOTES ON THE HEART/MIND THING:
ODE TO MY BELLY

On the blog, I mostly try to write posts on things that come up as my days (and nights) unfold, rather than conceive of topics ahead of time (though I do that, too). For me, the former approach is partly a way of making sure I pay attention. So this morning, I just got an e-mail from Barry Schwabsky on his latest art review available at the London Review of Books website: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n13/schw01_.html. It's a review of a retrospective of Bridget Riley's paintings at Tate Britain.

I think his article -- regardless of your interest in Riley -- may be of interest to some of you out there (including you peeps with whom I've had backchanneled discussions) who may be mulling over heart vs mind as regards feeling. (I'm also reminded here of James Meetze who posted July 6 on "love" to say, in part: "Part of my desire to continually write about love/emotion is that I feel the divergence from it, perhaps beginning with high modernism and peaking in Language poetry or the surrounding strict intellectualism of much lauded post-modern poetics, fails to engage with the very natural human condition that is feeling in relation to thinking, not solely thinking.")

I'd been nudged earlier this week to address this by two signs from the universe (whose dots of synchronicity I'ma now gonna try to connect as, I consider such line-drawings between dots to be part of my job as a poet). The first was when an editor suggested I amended a book review I'd submitted to replace reference to heart (vs mind) as a source of feelings. My reference was probably too shallowly-done in that article, but I think the larger issue is more complicated than the suggested binary, as reminded by the second sign -- an excerpt from a recently-read (and luminous) novel, Unless by Carol Shields:

Her views often surprise me, though I like to think I know her well, and despite the forty years between us. Dr. Westerman: poet, essayist, feminist survivor, holder of twenty-seven honorary degrees. "It might be better," I said once, pointing to a place in her first volume of memoirs and trying not to sound overly expository," to use the word BRAIN here instead of HEART."

She gave me a swift questioning look, the blue-veined eyelids sliding up. Now what? I explained that referring to the heart as the seat of feeling has been out of fashion for some time, condemned by critics as being fey, thought to be precious. She considered this for a second, then smiled at me with querulous affection, and placed her hand on her breast. "But this is where I feel pain,' she said. "And tenderness."


See, I am posting on this issue because I'm actually uncertain on it. I'm thinking that the mind certainly generates feelings, and there is also what James describes as "feeling in relation to thinking, not solely thinking." But I do also think that feeling is physical, thus the heart's very literal involvement. Indeed, many of my poems have been birthed initially from feeling a simmer in my belly -- thus, for me, anticipating that the poem that's going to come out is likely to be more *effective* than others that did not first generate that very palpable sensation.

By the way, I don't actually read as much about the physical role of the body in poem-making -- is there a reason for this (aside, perhaps, from my limited reading range)? If my memory serves me correctly, only one other poet (whose name I won't mention because it might politicize this topic, given some hot discussions out there on poetry blogland) ever has mentioned the body as a factor in his process....


Anyway-- yes, anyway! -- when Barry covered Riley's exhibition, he partly said:

[S]he was reclaiming the Renaissance understanding of painting as 'una cosa mentale', in Leonardo's words, and of drawing as the essence of the artist's work -- an understanding down-played ever since the Impressionists. Riley synthesised the intellectualism of the Renaissance with the Impressionists' realisation that perception, too, is a mental activity.

But then Barry also observed and wrote:

A definite change in the emotional tenor of her work took place around 1981, when she began to use oil with the series of what she calls 'Egyptian palette' paintings: stripe paintings quite different in character from those of the previous decade -- much more open, atmospheric and habitable, composed rather than structured. In a conversation published in 1990, she speaks of the change as follows: 'I used to build up to sensation, accumulating tension until it released a perceptual experience. Now I try to take sensation as the guiding line and build, with the relationships it demands, a plastic fabric which has no other raison d'être except to accommodate the sensation it solicits.' Riley seems to be saying that in the 1960s and 1970s she was working primarily on structure -- always looking for the moment when a structural effect would become a vivid sensation, but without knowing in advance just what this would be; and that more recently she had begun with a specific visual sensation in mind, and looked for the structure that would support it.

This distinction, between building up to a sensation and working from it, may sound like something of greater importance to the artist than to the viewer, but that's not how it turns out. Instead, because the desired effect is preconceived, the more recent paintings are invested with a noticeably lower degree of tension. The cycle of 'repose, disturbance and repose' in the earlier work turns out to have derived its power from the fact that it reflected the painter's anxiety about the unpredictable making of the paintings -- after so much planning, this is still an all-or-nothing wager. Can it be that Riley was a sort of hands-off expressionist? Her recent paintings display less vulnerability, and are the less overpowering for it.


I should note here, because it could appear so from the above text, that I don't think Riley's later approach is equivalent to my belly sensation as a start for poem-writing since I still rely on the uncertainty subsequent to my....belly thingie...

But what I mostly find interesting here is Barry's conclusion that because Riley's "paintings display less vulnerability," they are "less overpowering." This makes absolute sense to me: knowledge generates emotion and passion. But knowledge is both process and object. If knowledge doesn't open up to uncertainty, the results can be emotions/passions whose attractions can be "less overpowering." Intuition, both mental and physical, thus, can be a mother lode for intellectualism. For uncertainty is something one feels whereas, when one (merely) intellectually recognizes uncertainty it no longer becomes ... uncertain?

*****

Such blather ... I can *feel* the angels overhead becoming impatient. (I fear they're either gonna throw a poker chip or pee again....)


*****

Of course, I'm probably saying nothing new....besides that my belly simmers before I start some of my poems. Maybe my simmering belly was my point all along. Hmmmm.

*****

I think I'm hungry now.

*****

P.S. Speaking of art, I appreciated Noah Eli Gordon's recent presentation of Peter Gregorio's paintings on his Human Verb Blog. Nicely done!

RECIPE FOR A POST: BEGIN WITH POPCORN, TOSS IN GUMMY BEARS, AND COME UP WITH GRACE THROUGH THE ABSENTED LINE-BREAK

I know I said in the prior post that I am not a big fan of popcorn. What I omitted to say is that there is one manner through which I absolutely adore popcorn; I was reminded of it when I read David K.'s post that mentioned "gummies." Anyway, I love popcorn when you take that movie bucket, drench it with butter and salt, and mix it all up with gummy bears. It sounds absolutely disgusting, and it is. But it is gloriously disgusting -- I learned it from a Canadian friend with whom I once movie-d. She said, as I tell you now, "It sounds absolutely disgusting, and it is. But it is gloriously disgusting."

Now, not only am I not a big popcorn person, but I'm also not into gummy bears. But the combination -- in both taste and texture-contrasts between the teeth -- is simply glorious, transcendent even. Try it -- and don't forget to drench the whole thing with butter and salt....

What does this have to do with poetics? asks the disgusted majority of her eight million peeps in an attempt to change the subject. Corpse looks at them all with pity. This is a lesson on context, peeps. Context! Is not context inherent in poetics?!!

The disgusted majority reluctantly nods up and down, but their stomachs remain queasy.

The empathetic Corpse feels their queasy bellies. So the Corpse with the soft, albeit rotted (from a fleshly standpoint) heart, decides to move to another topic. Cheerfully, she pipes up: Next thought!

The sound of relief emanating through her computer screen is like a wind-ly sussurus across a rice field .... or something like that. Anyway: next thought!

So, when I had written my July 8 post on the quality of grace and Frank O'Hara (scroll down), I began it with an epigraph from O'Hara's poem "In Memory of My Feelings." And I'd always remembered the line(s) I quoted as "Grace/ to be born and live as variously as possible...." -- and that is, in fact, how it appears in the Donald Allen anthology The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara.

For my post's epigraph, I'd made it appear as "Grace to be born and live" as I felt that this version more aptly reflects the context of the post. But I do remember pausing to think about how it felt a bit weird to revise that line. Still, I thought that it was poetically viable (so to speak). I liked its feel (I thought it had a certain oooomph this way): "Grace to be born and live."

Well, guess what? I'm still reading through Joe LeSueur's memoir Digressions on Some Poems By Frank O'Hara. But I have just gotten to Page 101 where LeSueur reveals that the way the lines are broken on O'Hara's headstone is as follows:

Grace to be born and live
as variously as possible.

I had not known this fact. Peeps, when I read that in LeSueur's book, it was a moment.

The way O'Hara originally wrote the poem, with "Grace" being a one-word line, partly reflects the poem's dedicatee, painter Grace Hartigan. In contrast, to set the word "Grace" within the line as used on his headstone and on my blog, is to amend the context to reflect the quality and nature of grace. It is through O'Hara's quality of living -- including his poems -- that he lives long after his mortal death. I'm glad my blog version on the line mirrors what's on O'Hara's headstone.

Perhaps I'm being too fanciful. But, for me, in that moment of reading about the version inscripted on O'Hara's headstone, all felt right in the universe: all felt well and balanced as regards whatever it is that I'm attempting with Poetry. It was a very nice moment.

WHILE WAITING FOR UPS

I took Jim's test again -- this time, deliberately answering the questions with my "second choice" answers. My "first choice" answers had shown me to be Jordan Davis. According to my second choice answers, I am Ron Silliman.

Thank you Jim. It's hot here, and I don't have the intellectual energy to do anything but practice corpse-dom -- like your test: it's about awareness but easy awareness, like the popping of popcorn into one's mouth (to conflate a couple of peeps' ideas on corpse-dom). Ya see, if I were too aware, I'd mention that I'm not a big popcorn eater....

Anyway, thanks All for the shout-outs on the "Grace" (and O'Hara, Plath et al) post. Stephanie, Sweetie, you might notice that I deleted -- for the second time!! -- my earlier post (though it remains alluded to in my Comment at Brian's Free Space Comix) where I assessed Maxine Hong Kingston's To Be A Poet. I just couldn't handle the *negative energy* on my blog....and when I was reminded of O'Hara's graceful approach to other poets, I took it as a sign....

Corpse-dom is against the negative.

Oh! The UPS man is here! And, yes, he's wearing brown as usual. Sigh: so heartening to see certain things remain constant! Brown is such an underrated color, you see -- one reason I like Jack's shirt.

ONLINE AMUSEMENTS

According to Jim's Test, I'm Jordan Davis.

Meanwhile, another amusing online thingie; try it before Google fixes its site!

1) Go to Google.com;

2) Type in (but don't hit return): "weapons of mass destruction";

3) Hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button, instead of the normal "Google search" button;

4) READ what appears to be a normal error message carefully.

THE DIFFICULTY (AND SUPREME IRONY) OF WHAT SHOULD BE EASY IN THE POETRY WORLD: GRACE

"Grace to be born and live"
--Frank O'Hara

So, I want to tell a story. But before I do so, I gotta tell you more about the hubby. Notwithstanding my series "Adventures of a Wife" (that, if you don't get my wacko sense of humor, may make it seem like I'm coping with something occasionally arduous or irritating), Tom is actually a fabulous person. He's not only a supremely nice guy, but also brilliant: a renaissance man. He's the sharpest attorney among his peers, but also discerning and discriminating in taste (look at who he married, after all) across a variety of disciplines: from art and architecture to history to billiards to math to the barbecue grill .... as the phrase goes, "et al."

He absolutely deserves me....

Sip.....the 1996 Williams Selyem Pinot Noir (Sonoma Coast) Coastland Vineyards.

Anyway, Tom was telling a story to our friend Kurt his weekend that I remembered while reading Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath, a memoir by Jillian Becker. Basically, Tom said that as a teenager he once met a lady who taught him to stay away from a certain discipline. Now, as a teen, Tom was more in shape (cough) than he is now (though still devastatingly cute -- he's got cat eyes!) and was a fabulous skier. But one day, he ended up riding the ski lift with another skier.... and they got to talking....then got to racing down the slope. There was less than one second of a difference between their times. But in that infinitesimal span, there existed the difference between Tom (whose skiing prowess decorates my ski jacket with tons of championship pins that I pin on just coz they're pretty) and someone who would end up winning the Silver Medal in the Olympics as that lady later accomplished. At that moment of finishing less than a second behind her, Tom realized he might as well go to college rather than go for his youthful dream of becoming a professional skier. Even half a second, in skiing, can be...an eternity.

So, Tom's tale is on my mind because of this excerpt from Becker's book as regards Plath:

When I read her poems for the first time -- late at night, cover to cover in a copy of Colossus that she gave me -- I suffered a bereavement: one of my most cherished hopes, that I might become a poet, quietly died. I could write verse -- had even composed some lines in a dream that had still seemed good in the morning -- but realized that night that I was not and would not be a poet. Did I envy Sylvia her gift? Yes, deeply, but I didn't grudge it.

I think more people can "write verse" than be poets. Based on the above excerpt, I have to believe Becker made the wise choice when she gave up on her poems. She didn't seem to learn from something else that Plath told her: "Poetry is not a competition" -- like skiing.

Synchronistically, after reading Becker's memoir, I began reading Joe LaSeur's memoir Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara. Here's the relevant excerpt:

Frank may have written in a casual, offhand way, but he also took his work seriously and had a high regard for it. By that I mean he had enormous confidence, and that was why he was so indifferent about being published, so free of envy, and so generous in the support of poets he admired. When an attack was leveled against Allen Ginsberg at a Wagner College symposium in 1962, Frank came to Allen's defense with an argument that was both persuasive and impassioned. As I recall, it was implied by someone in the audience that Allen's poetry didn't merit the attention it received. But Frank wasn't bothered by Allen's fame any more than he was by his own lack of it. [//]

At the same time he rarely put down poetry he didn't like, and this attitude held for the work of the poets who won all the prizes. "It'll slip into oblivion without my help," he said once, then immediately began praising several poets whose recent work he admired. "But what about your work?" I asked at length. He looked at me as thought he didn't understand the question. "What about it?" he said. "I mean," I said, "how do you think it stacks up against their stuff?" Very simply and without elaborating, he said, "There's nobody writing better poetry than I am." ....His confidence was so great that Paul Goodman interpreted it as downright arrogance. That was funny coming from Paul, though he may have had a point. But Frank's arrogance, if indeed it existed, was free of smugness, vanity, and petty ambition.

*****

Much to my surprise, I recently met a poet who made me come close to being affected the way Becker was by Plath's poems. I realized that this particular poet had a certain talent for something that I probably won't ever do as well. It's all well and good to say that we all have different skills from each other. But this poet actually made me wonder, albeit for just a few moments, whether I should give up -- though it's probably inaccurate to attribute that thought solely to his impact as I also happened then to be deep in soul-searching over (my) Poetry and its demands. Nonetheless, this poet, made me pause. And he is someone writing some breathtaking work which the world has not yet discovered.

This poet effected something never done by the any other poet, including still-live poets who works have educated and inspired me -- those whom I might call "teachers" and whose works still often awe me. This poet, who actually made me think about stopping in deference to the talent I saw in him, is someone who occasionally solicits my opinion on his works-in-progress. Once, he even addressed me as "Boss" -- which, while jokingly done, is a sign I can interpret that he respects my opinions.

Here is the *Supreme Irony*: he has no clue how great he is. He is my teacher, and not the other way around. But in my teacher's humility lies the potential for ever-more great poems beyond what he already has fumbled his way to achieving.

Grace, to me, can occur through humility as well as its opposite -- the humility of this poet I will not name (for a variety of reasons), or the confidence displayed by O'Hara because it does not translate to "smugness, vanity, and petty ambition."

Let me end by sharing a recent entry from my diary (not this blog, my real diary!) dated July 6, 2003:

I SEE A POET BEING RUINED BY A BOOK

He was writing wonderful poems. They were getting published in a variety of respected literary journals. He was approaching 70 years of age and had never seen a book published in the U.S.

I thought it time that he saw such a book released, and so I helped facilitate the publication of his book.

With that book, he became arrogant, self-centered and occasionally mean to other poets. He had always said that publication is not important; but he obviously thought having a book -- which many poets had been delighted to see for him -- allowed him to throw his weight around. Prior to his book, he had been ever-generous and compassionate to others, especially other poets.

Recently, I received an e-mail from a young poet about him; the e-mail said, "screw showin this ungrateful s.o.b. any more respect. call him out as he deserves to be...there's a shitload of things me n a bunch of the younger poets have been dyin to call him for the LONGEST time, but on their behalf i urge you to let him have it...I AM FURIOUS!!!"

Mea culpa. A poet is NOT god. Dark Angels -- perhaps I should not have interfered with the particular trajectory his own poems had formed for him. Is it a coincidence that this poet has began repeating himself in his work -- no longer displaying the freshly luminous insights that had made me wish to see him publish a book?

Yet a book is nothing relative to one's relationships with other human beings.

Poetry, to the extent I can articulate it this evening, is a Life, not a collection of bound pages. Oh, Poetry's Dark Angels -- please don't let a mere book ruin a life that, once, illumined the world with the radiance of Grace.

BOOK REVIEW

The Cloud of Knowable Things
Poems By Elaine Equi
Coffee House Press (2003)


But The True

Let the edges
of diamond facets
fray

MOOD DEL DIA

from CLYFFORD STILL STUDIES
    (after PH-185, Oil on canvas 1945)

On Incurable Infidelities

You are concerned about the palpability of the quiver, and I recognize--for I do not ride horses for the motion between my thighs but for moments of ascension as when heels dig firmly into air and face lifts to form ship’s prow over rabid equine eyes
          which allows me now to concede with nary a flinch: I have betrayed my inheritance by refusing to pin my hair up each morning--this same point being able to be made had I admitted I wear silk against intimate parts of my body for your fingers, there, will explore--but I am tired of obfuscations
          though the glint in your eye, yes, defines the stab that would pin down a monarch butterfly--its fragile dust of cinnamon pollen--
          oh: these days that harpoon my heart with longing for a child’s unstinting laughter--as in this moment when I am beset by a strange woman’s “How ‘bout those Mets!” as I straddle a stool in a Chelsea bar,
          or other moments more direct to the point: that is whenever light must break--as it consistently must--to penetrate water or wash against implacable walls
          --you are often implacable--
          I am often obtuse, even when self-defense is not called for--was it “an arrow or a song”?
          --if I could offer you the world I would, though perhaps my generosity stems, too, from your reliable wisdom in rejecting all my offers as we both know I do not earn what money I spend with a profligacy unmatched throughout the history of cruel-eyed courtesans--
          you shortcut my blather to note, you, on the other hand, would never offer me something each person can only learn on their own:
          shadows are tangible, wrath resonates across the borders of centuries, fate might not contain redemption, loneliness always meets its vessel, shadows are tangible
          (a lost mote of pollen dilutes the day as well as, someday, empty a lake whose existence you know only from a rumor in a lost ancient tome)
          --and, though no longer aggrieved,
          I am constrained by my unerring ability to empathize
          with broken light--
          this incurable addiction to grief--the whole clawing at the breast and prostrating atop a cold, stone floor in front of a crucifix--
          riven, then “whip me, Mama, so I can feel”
          --a boy mutilates himself to generate scabs for the collection he keeps in a forgotten father’s cigar box
          --this incurable addiction to that mocking twist to your lips, this incurable addiction to infidelities—oh: to Infidelity


===========

Thanks, Clayton, for first publishing this in Sidereality.

SNIFF: AT LEAST THE DIM SUM WAS GOOD
(FROM "ADVENTURES OF A WIFE")


     Corpse cheerfully shows up at the Hubby’s office for lunch.
     Said Hubby looks her up and down. Fond twinkle enters his eyes as he says, “I was going to take you to this nice seafood restaurant, but the way you’re dressed, dim sum will have to do.”
     Corpse looks down at herself: silver loafers, blue jeans, grey t-shirt, and oversized grey sweater almost down to her knees.
     No make-up. Uncut hair that’s become increasingly straggly. Fraying black canvas bag.
     Wanting seafood, Corpse whines, “But no one can see the holes in my socks….”


WHY I FAILED AS A “BRIGHT, YOUNG THING”

“Good causes often need a gimmick -- a goosing, if you will -- to open the good hearts (and wallets) of attendees. Couture is perfect”

“’Casual’, as inspired by David Beckham: a pair of jeans stone-washed and frayed at the knees, unironed printed silk shirt, all-purpose white linen blazer”

“The role of clothing in society has long been pondered by everyone -- from the Greeks to Diana Vreeland”

“Dolce & Gabbana prefers swimming briefs to be more demure, with a teddy bear embroidered in the rear”

“Asian-influenced girly prints in bright colors”

“Based on jockey wear, his new collection is lighter and tighter than anything seen on the runway”

“Members of the San Francisco edition of ‘Bright Young Things’ greeted each other with the traditional ‘Hello, darling’ double air-kiss maneuver”

“At about $2,400, it is a look best suited for the single-digit in size (this crowd, natch!)”

“The spring-summer 2004 man likes his pants low and loose, his jackets crumpled and his shoes comfortable. Shoulder-length hair gathered at the back completes the picture”

          (Digress to recall a poem by Sam Truitt that notes
          low-waisted pants require a special way of walking....)

“Tuleh -- that flirty, feminine, slightly retro, oh-so-coveted New York label that has become the uniform of hip societistas world-wide -- was in the house!”

“Bird feathers worn with low-waisted silk jodhpur pants”

“Her Manolo Blahniks turned into sponges on the luncheon lawn”

“A sheer caftan replaces the stiff shirt under a gray silk tuxedo”

“Though referring to 'society,’ not ‘Society,” even Mark Twain got it long ago when he (m)uttered, ‘Naked people have little or no influence in society.’”

SHE BARES SKELETAL TEETH TO SAY

Hi David! And she waves as she jogs through blogland...

FUG

Didn't turn out the way I thought. You in lorgnettes now. "Fugacious" roots itself in the notion of fleeing. Low-waisted silk johdpurs. Fingers twitch from stumbling on kinship between "refuge" and "subterfuge." Couture ala David Beckham. From a botanist's persective, our conclusion is as plant parts that wither before typical deadline. And what's this about you preferring cities speared by palm trees -- what's this with such gauzed up relation to evanescence?

THE CORPSE EATS POPCORN

"Speechlessness" (or corpse-dom) is such a subtle criticism of the poem ["Steps"]. In the poem I was trying to create an "innocent" state of experience which is partly possible through the eye (eating popcorn and watching a movie) as words surround you.
--Murat Nemet-Nejat

I'm enjoying some wonderful correspondence with Murat, who also offers his own take on corpse-dom, per above. And it occurs to this cheerful corpse (I'ma often cheered by poems and Murat's been sending some deliriously and thrillingly booootiful ones), that a post made up of other's words is my equivalent of "eating popcorn and watching a movie [of] words surround[ing]" me!

So, Peeps, here are a couple of guest poets! First, Tom Beckett honors me by sharing a "poem" he wrote after reading my "Mud Fog" poem in the prior post. I put "poem" in scare quotes because Tom says he doesn't consider it a poem so much as "a contribution towards a poetics of looking and looking again." Thanks modest Tom -- I love vision-poetics, and I also liked how you characterize your "contribution" as "an exercise to rearrange the furniture"! Heeeeere's Tom!

Mudslide

He excludes
lavender.
Translation
is overdone.
A vocabulary
of flan.
Silver bullets
attacked
by prostitutes'
discourse
of glass.
Twin eyes
of memory:
You prefer me
as cobblestones
lead
to themselves.

Tom, Sweetie (anyone who reveals they read me is at risk of being called "Sweetie!"), you might notice I amended my earlier draft to change the word "twin" to "troika" -- but I think your poe....uh, contribution, stands on its own for giving a reader pleasure. (It is, too, a poem!)

Then, here is a poem by Jean Gier, commissioned by Ms. CorpsePoetics after I had a brilliant idea. And my brilliant idea was that Gary Sullivan had a .... brilliant idea. That is, I was very much struck by his idea of "Spam Poems" -- given the ubiquity of spam, I immediately thought after reading his July 2 posts that, yes: that's a....brilliant idea! So Gary posted a couple of examples, and here is another by Jean who -- after I nudged her about the idea -- was similarly taken by the concept:


YOU WILL BECOME


It works: sk you will be very glad you did/DEEDEERYM
It works: Checkout the vivid girls pzk Watch the 2 of US


HAVE FUN: Women want it come to us EARLY
HAVE FUN: What type of music do you like?


You will become: unsecured platinum, 2 of US
You will become: your bills there is a way out


Watch: the 2 of us Go at it ; ) I can’t believe you forgot
Watch: for your well being here; size she will appreciate


Re: Immediate need, for Home Mailers at cashmailing
Re: Cr’eate your P’R, O bi 2 w-e-bsite, White Dorothy2


You will: become what you have just eaten, Dulcea Mounsey
You will: but it’s true! “Jonas” Shuttleswort


Checkout: Cars-N-Trucks. Watch the 2 of US
Checkout: AVERY BOSTIC, All…Overher. FACE…


Women: want it come to us. The added thickness
Women: vivid girls pzk, what you have just eaten


Don’t pass this up: I can’t believe you forgot
Don’t pass this up: for your well being here


Thanks Jean! Now, peeps -- I know we all have a spam poem in us! Wanna see mine? (But of course you do!). It's pure corpse-dom -- the writing is during that Svasana state that Tanya Brolaski has described on Stephanie's blog as "being aware but not too aware...." Here, I'ma gonna write it up in hay(na)ku form-- the Double, Half-Ziggurat variation:

MY SPAM POEM

Sex
Sex Sex
Sex Sex Viagra

Sex
Sex Sex
"Lengthen Your Penis!"

Mud Fog

He excludes translation.
"Lavender! So overdone!"
A vocabulary of silver bullets.
Attacked by a flan.
Discourse of prostitutes.
Troika eyes of glass.
You prefer me as memory.

Cobblestones lead to themselves.

ON CONTINUING THE GAZE

Deborah! We were at Napa Valley Writers' Conference together? No, we never met because I only did the conference because I had just moved to Napa Valley and was looking for excuses to come down from the mountain, and because of Forrest Gander, whose session I took! Deep Inhale/Exhale. So I also didn't socialized much with others at the conference because after each session, I'da just go back to the house....but of course if you ever meet me, you'd feel comfy with me. I'ma all sweetness, uh, Sweetie!

(Speaking of Forrest, I remember when he suggested as regards my prose poems that I try a more paratactic approach. But in response, I replied that the use of "complete sentences" was critical to my postcolonial poetics -- I won't go into that now except to say that Forrest swiftly nodded and dropped the suggestion. He got it right away. Now, given the parataxis in Forrest's own poems, I'd always appreciated how he never sought to enforce a writing style -- that he himself has adopted -- on me. Forrest Gander: a BIG poet, too big ever to be threatened by diversity. It's why, years later, I asked him to be one of my "blurbers" and I'm very grateful he consented....)

Anyway, I've tried things like workshops and writers' conferences because, as someone with almost no (if not absolutely zero) formal training in writing, there was a period of time when I felt that I should try these things that other writers do. Like, shortly after leaving banking to be a writer, I signed up for one of these poetry workshops at a midtown library in Manhattan. Did a couple of sessions....then walked out after the poet-instructor told me that I should write shorter poems because "shorter poems are easier."

I may have been -- and still may be a dufus on poetry -- but my gut just told me that that poet was a major ass; that shorter poems are not necessarily easier; and that, in any event, the whole point to Poetry was not *ease.*

So I decided the workshop experience was not for me (and neither are writers' conferences).

But I digress....Sip. I digress as I'ma sipping a glass of the 1996 Behrens & Hitchcock Oakville Merlot. Tom and a buddy, Kurt, just popped by the studio as I write this. I allowed them to give me some wine, gracious one that I am, then duly ignored them to return to you, my 8 million peeps. The good thing about being in front of a computer is that a witness can't really tell (unless s/he looks over my shoulder) whether I'm in the middle of working or wasting my time (which is blogging? well, you know...sip).

Anyway, one of my most memorable, uh, memories from Napa Valley Writers Conference took place during its first day. I was driving there from the house.....and had my very first (and, to date, only) flat tire ever. I pulled over, all worried because I'd never changed a tire before and also because I didn't want to be late.

I pulled over right in front of a guy who was selling cherries from the back of his pick-up truck. He came over and without even batting an eyelash -- and I noticed he had lashes as long as mine -- proceeded to change my tire. Nor would he take anything for payment. Just smiled and waved me on. I don't believe he said a single word during our interaction. But he figured out that I didn't know anything about my car -- including where the jack and spare tire were so that he found all that for me as I muttered confusedly about not knowing if I even had a spare tire.

The thing is, he had eyes of a color I had never seen or seen since. They were sort of like pale emeralds, though that doesn't adequately describe the color. As for the color of his hair, I don't know how to describe it except as "sunset." I've always believed that that person was, in reality, an alien -- specifically a fallen angel who swooped down to my aid. Oh -- and he had a kickass body...nice biceps (yah, of course I'd notice....).

Later, I'd understand why I had to have that flat tire experience. It taught me to join Triple AAA for safety (and I very much appreciate "safety" in all of its contexts given where, cough, I tend to, um, go....) and that angel would pop up in a paragraph from a poem I entitled "The Continuance of the Gaze" -- through the color green:

Still, I must not forego the delight of neutrality. How the totality of white allows a canvas to reveal the chaos of color, the pulse of a shade, the flux of meaning. Too often, I am histrionic, thereby creating my own chains. I know the imperatives of my desire and pain are colored green, like the glimmer of Antarctic berg ice exposed by the shear of mountain glaciers. Somehow, the ice survives intact and rides out into the South Atlantic Ocean--a broken rib of emerald from a maternal continent! Still, I must not forego the wisdom of neutrality, even if the best I can muster is jade: still green, but with an unperturbed face.

STRATEGY AS POETICS (ONE VERSION)

These are tough times in wine country. Prices have fallen and there's a surplus of grapes on the market. The vintner who'd already paid for the grapes of one of my farmer-neighbors didn't even bother to harvest the grapes as he didn't think he could cover his costs this year of making wine (thus, letting the grapes fall for the benefit of the deer and wild turkey who take refuge on my land because I may be the only one on the mountain who won't allow hunting -- not a popularity-making move around here, btw....). But when times are tough, there exists opportunities.

I just met a local negociant -- a peep who acquires grape juice from other wineries and then bottles said grape juice under a different label that he resells on the open market. From the negociant's standpoint, this is a cheaper way to be a winemaker than to make it from scratch (starting with finding the land, planting the grapes, waiting to harvest etc). From the winery's standpoint, it allows them to dispose of grape juice (avoiding the costs of bottling and marketing), particularly in a market such as the current one where there's a glut. But even when the market is strong, some wineries sell off the grape juice for other reasons -- perhaps if its quality doesn't come up to their desired standards or if they wish to produce no more than a certain quantity of bottles a year.

From the consumer's standpoint -- according to this negociant, the first among his ilk I've spoken with at length -- the benefit is more availability at cheaper prices. We were having our discussion while tasting some of the wines produced under this negociant's label; during the tasting, he pointed to his merlot and said, "I sell that for about $30 a bottle, but it's usually bottled by _______ Winery which sells theirs for $65 a bottle."

So, if you know the etymology of the wine in the negociant's label to be a premier wine, you presumably just found a bargain. Negociants don't necessarily just accept the grape juice they buy; they may tinker with it, depending on how they feel they can improve the taste. But this $30/65 bottle was bottled from juice bought as is because, the negociant said, he felt it already was good.

Well, it was good. But it wasn't as good as other $25-$30 bottles out there -- e.g. the yummy productions at Behrens & Hitchcock -- and I wasn't moved to buy it just because it otherwise would cost me $65. Apparently, though, enough peeps don't share my reaction so that the negociant typically sells out his offerings. Why? He only has about 100 cases or so to dispose of and there are enough pockets of ignorance about wine so that he can place his bottles.

I try to be knowledgeable about wine. Based on the little I know, I'd say a fair price for the negociant's merlot would be $15-$20 a bottle (and that's with giving it a premium associated with Napa Valley grapes). Actually, some of you peeps might recall that Italian I kept drinking last year that retailed for $8 a bottle which I actually thought was more yummy than this one (I can't recall the name at the moment but it's okay as I think it's no longer available anyway).

But the negociant talks a good talk. He's also spiffed up the look of his bottle and label for a very elegant presentation. I'm sure he'll always manage to sell out his limited productions.

This is a development I also observe in the poetry and art worlds.

But where the negociant's strategy would fail -- and as has failed in the poetry and art worlds -- is when you try to take this game beyond a limited number of people. When you start trying to address a "large" audience (however such large-ness may be defined under varying contexts), you discover the adage:

You can't fool all of the people all of the time.

INVITATION: LOVE'S FIRST GASPS

I began my poem blog "Love's Last Gasps" with the idea of making non-trite poems from a theme that's engendered much triteness. The problem -- though this is a good result result insofar as I wish no membrane between me and the poem -- is that in order for me to write about love dying, I had to experience....love dying.

Eh. It was okay for a while (and I did get a few interesting poems out of it). But since love don't actually happen to be dying around me, why live that downer of an experience?

But I still want to try to create non-trite poems from a theme that's inspired much triteness. So, as of this moment, "Love's Last Gasps" just became "Love's First Gasps" -- the blog is now on the birth (whether first time or renewals) of love. (For convenience, it will still have the same URL addy of http://lovelastgasps.blogspot.)

Why the change? Simple. If I'ma gonna have to live the poem before I write it, I'd rather live Love Growing.

As Amanda Hass, an artist I met over a July 4 barbecue, notes on her wonderful web site AmandaHaas.com, as regards her "Residue 1999" series (bold-faced emphasis mine):

The drawings are made under a 10x magnifying lens using finely sanded 0.3mm graphite leads to capture detail. The leads snap easily, often just by breathing. A by-product of working in this fragile and vulnerable space (established between the sanding of leads and the breaking of leads) is the involuntary markmaking onto paper caused by snapping graphite. Which, then, become the real marks in these realist drawings -- those recording details of an existing object [blog theme being the "object" here] or those reflecting experience of the maker?

Peeps, were I to continue living "Love's Last Gasps," I might wreak havoc on my personal life. So, instead, you are invited to join me in living the poetry of expanding Love at

LOVE'S FIRST GASPS!

The Radiant Corpse Ever-Radiating Love
(which, as James reminds me, is never trite)

WHAT POETRY IS

Adda laeng maymaysa nga "Poetry" -- Isu ket am amin.


[Note to Self: Toast yourself over the barbecue lunch for being generous with The Non-Secretive Secret.]

SURREPTITIOUS GREY

No one should upbraid corpses.

The French take their hats off to them.
--from "A-13" by Louis Zukofsky


Thanks to Stephen Kirbach for the Zukofsky reference. And, after receiving his hay(na)ku tokens of appreciation: John Yau and Archie Rand's 100 More Jokes From The Book of the Dead and my Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole, Stephen writes:

Hi Eileen,

I ... unexpectedly found a bunch of time to look through [the books] when I went to pick up my son (promptly at six) north of here at Mars Hill College and ended up waiting for almost an hour and a half. Though I've decided to read your book in order, front to rear, and read the Greek section with much pleasure, I did skip ahead to read "Grey, Surreptitiously," as my son's name is Grey, and this despite spell check, I might add.

Anyway, we've had much rain this week from that tropical storm Bill down in the gulf, and as I read your piece and looked out at the cloud mass and mountains while they emerged and receded into this vapor, I was reminded of why my kid ended up with this color as a name.

He was born at home in Tenino, Washington, not far from Olympia (where I lived for 9 years), back in 1986. While this area has a reputation for dumping lots of rain (true at times), it is, as usual, an exaggeration since many days are simply rainless when cloudy, while conversely, late summer and early autumn are usually cloudless and quite wonderful. But I never much minded the rain anyway and still don't. It brings out the colors and smells; the sound is soothing, and visually, those low heavy clouds can be quite stunning when one is surrounded by mountains.

Olympia sits on Budd inlet wherein the Deschutes River drains, what must have once been an amazing estuary now turned into a kind of recreational pond or small lake before crossing under the bridge to the west side and into the tidal broth.

In any case, I went to the ocean often, about an hour's drive west toward Aberdeen/Hoquiam and Grays Harbor, or further to turn north and find what were more remote stretches along the Olympic peninsula, or even beyond the Quinault Indian
reservation to up around Hoh. A bunch of friends would pile into somebody's car on a whim, and off we'd go at any hour, day or night for adventure.

These beaches always struck me as quite primeval, cold year round and constantly windy, grey and blue and dark green with Sitka spruce all hunkered down, branches all twisted inland, fern undergrowth or thick with salal, a leafy evergreen with edible berries like bruises, crow feathers and the feathers of gulls foreshortened with incredibly stiff shafts as compared to those found back around Oly, massive tree trunks stripped of bark flung up into stacks like tinker toys and entangled as such at the highest of tide lines over and into which we'd scramble to get to the shifty and final edge of this harder world. And the sand here was blue/grey, and the sky here was blue/grey to black and sometimes slashed by rainbows (once one rainbow literally broke all around me in droplets of crystal which I simply entered streaming with rain neither standing on land nor immersed in the magnetic sea which receded), and so was the water with greens, but none the same as another and constantly changing, and the clouds could turn into the faces of gods. More often than not I ended up soaked and clothing seemed superfluous, an afterthought from another epoch, and so frequently I'd fling these off in order to live more closely not only to this place, but so too to myself, and quickly thus flung headfirst into a wave, skull crushed frigid under this gritty grey surf and then thus ejected numbed to the bone, skin shrunk tight and nerve quiver pervasive.

So it was when I lived in that place which was never easy to leave and learned of the nuances of blue/black which are otherwise known as grey, and I thought of all this yesterday while reading your book.

Best,
Stephen

============

Oyez, oyez. The poem engenders experience. Thanks for sharing, Stephen. And, when queried on the grey spelling, Stephen adds, "I just think "grey" with an "e" has more subtlety and elegance. It's nicer to gaze upon, etc."

I agree! And when I first started appreciating the word GREY with a passion, I naturally thought, too, of the color. And it had occurred to me that that's one of those colors we frequently overlook. Well, as someone with a vested interest in recuperating those things that are, uh, frequently overlooked, I naturally wrote a poem in homage to grey.

It's a poem I've enjoyed reading out loud, too, because in whatever setting I may find myself, I can usually point to a grey something in the room, turn the audience's attention to that and say something like, "What would a frequently overlooked color like that grey say, if grey could talk?" One favorite was pointing to an unwritten blackboard because it's rectangular field evokes a grey monochrome painting; once, I pointed to a grey lead pipe just beneath the ceiling. Anyway, if grey could talk, I thought it might say something like the poem "Grey, Surreptitiously" that caught Stephen's eye -- I've always adored how color can ramble and blather as well, if not better, than I can. And, for grey, a color presumed frequently as pale, pallid or diluted. I'll cutnpaste the poem here now in a reproduction dedicated to Stephen's son: Grey Kirbach.


Grey, Surreptitiously

Sometimes I am not tired. And I begin to pace the perimeter of Manhattan. I am always drawn to the East River, how the water is consistently grey and this sensibility mists over the entire East Side: it swathes the total territory in a wool suit. And it makes me recall interchangeable cities in Eastern Europe where the only spots of color are offered by tiny pastries silently waiting behind glass. Afterwards, I finish with memories of museum exhibits salvaging dusty armors from the crusades of a different century.

I am surprised that I linger in this part of the city, that the river's surface loses its drabness to enfold me like cashmere. Unexpectedly, patchouli and cinnabar begin to linger in the air though I see no one dodging my careful steps. I feel the birth of pearls in tropical ocean beds tended by boys burnt by the sun. Then I feel one pearl's inexplicable caress in the hollow between my breasts.

A woman rounds a bend and sees me. I pause by a white birch tree stripped by winter of its leaves. She smiles as she approaches. I wish to feel my fingers loosening her jeweled combs. Already, I can feel her hair curl shyly against my fingers like the breaking of surreptitious surf. No words would be spoken, but a window from an anonymous building would open to loosen the faint tinkling of piano notes. They would be plucked from the highest scale.

My fingers would turn blue in the cold. They would freeze in their fraught pose, laid against a stranger's scented cheek while her hair would continue to flutter in a faint breeze. And her lashes would trap a beginning snow. And her life-generating breaths would occur through parted lips. And her eyes, too, would be the deadening of a river: translucent and grey.

SEARCHING FOR A DIFFERENT ENDING THAN FROM JOSE GARCIA VILLA'S

approaches ark of covenant.........covenant of ark approaches
--from "Half-Dome With Symmetrical Angels by Alice Notley

Lovely Stephanie posts on Svasana. I wrote a long response to her post. I'm not sharing it here cause Blogger's Big Post deleted it. I erased my own response. All those words failed to grasp what I want to say.

[A few hours later...she tries again:]

I fear, dear Stephanie and my other 7,999,999 peeps, that Poetry seems to be bringing me closer and closer to wordlessness (Oh, stop lurking here, Laura Riding Jackson!).

Recall Jose Garcia Villa who stopped writing for decades before he died, after writing the kind of poems to which I've aspired: poems of fire, fire, fire....

17

I can no more hear Love's
Voice. No more moves
The mouth of her. Birds
No more sing. Words
I speak return lonely.
Flowers I pick turn ghostly.
Fire that I burn glows
Pale. No more blows
The wind. Time tells
No more truth. Bells
Ring no more in me.
I am all alone singly.
Lonely rests my head.
-- O my god! I am dead.

My poems (since the period in which I wrote my book) are less about heat and more about .... something else. They're (for me) more intellectual than those that I blindly wrote in my beginning years as a poet. But I felt I'd tapped into some archetypal strain back in those early years. (Whenever writing those poems, I literally felt myself at night surfing through the Milky Way -- the stars more lovely up close, even as they flood the eyes with blinding, lovely blinding light.) My more recent poems often lack this connection, therefore, they lack ... an urgency, an urgency that I miss. The poems I'm writing now often seem pale relative to what I hope to do. And I don't think words are my answer to this....yes, problem.

Though I don't know what the answer is.

In the wealth of coverage on Garcia Villa, I encountered many peeps questioning why he stopped writing poems. But from the beginning of my encounter with Garcia Villa's poems, I'd always thought it logical that he might stop -- though I wasn't able (and still am not able) to articulate why. Except for: How long, after all, can one write white heat without becoming white heat?

Stephanie said:

Savasana is a retreat between bouts of exhaustion. Also a state of continuous rebirth that may be 'employed' again and again. What does this mean for one's poetic practice?

At the moment, I am hoping it's my path back to words, to poems.

*****

Without words, how else might I share my latest revelation: the significance of black wings on angels. So many years of blindness here. Years of being surrounded by them -- teasing them on their passion for poker. But never seeing the color of their wings. Black. Here's an excerpt from "Half-Dome With Symmetrical Angels," an Alice Notley poem that I'd had pinned up on the bulletin board in my studio since St. Marks Poetry Project sent it out as a Holiday broadside in December 1997. Today, I finally -- I think -- started to understand it.

...........................................I
Reign where one least looks....Looks least one where reigns
...........................................I
......The scarlet light.........................Light scarlet the
.....................................Danger
....................Or angel......................Angel or
Just some meaning.................................Meaning or
.....................Grey fit hind sight hind fit grey

.......................-- oh red glint glint red oh
..........................through & through --

MORNING

The hubby is sending me e-mails begging me to go downtown and lunch with him. Sigh. Of course he is....

Corpse perks up.

Say! Did I tell you content-hungry peeps about that moment at the treadmill?


THAT MOMENT AT THE TREADMILL

I don't believe I've yet told you 8 million peeps that I just celebrated my 16th wedding anniversary. And perhaps I am mentioning it belatedly because it took me a while to *process* the implications of the hubby's very generous gift.

"What did he give you?" 8 million peeps chime, causing AOL to die. After she managed to get back on line, the Long-Lashed One replies:

a gym membership.


Sip. (Morning coffee)

So there I was a couple of weeks ago using my "gift" for the first time. I woke up that morning and drove to said gym about 5 minutes away to get onto the treadmill. (What do you mean I should have jogged there? Oh shut up!)

I'ma actually feeling perky as I bounded -- bounded! -- up the stairs to the gym which is on the second floor of its building. Before entering the gym, I pause a few feet from its entrance and peep in. All guys. Dang, I think -- they all look like they should be my Dad!

So, okay, I crossed the threshold. Wall of mirrors. I catch sight of myself. Dang, I think -- I look like I should be my Mom!

So, okay -- obviously, I have a different mental picture of myself than what actually peers back at me dubiously from mirrors.

Then: that moment at the treadmill.

Two treadmills side by side. In front of one, a guy is wiping his neck with a towel; he's preparing to get on. I approach the other treadmill and get on. I feel him dart a glance at me. As I'm punching in the keys to start the treadmill, he's still wiping his already very dry neck. Anyway, I start jogging on the treadmill. A few minutes later, he gets on and starts jogging, too.

And a few minutes go by and we're jogging away. And the thing is, I notice how we seem to have almost exactly the same rhythm, which implies we're jogging at about the same settings of speed and incline on the treadmill. Jog, jog, jog. Five minutes go by and all is well. Ten minutes go by and all is well. Towards fifteen minutes, I can sense his stride starting to slow while yours truly is still all a-perky and robust.

But the other thing is, I had an appointment that morning so I couldn't really stay long at the gym. So just after 15 minutes, I had to stop and get off the treadmill to make said appointment. Being a person of much compassion, I was much relieved that I had to leave because, ya know, I could have jogged for five hours and not feel the slightest winded at all. Sip.

And I was relieved to leave because I just knew that shortly after I'd leave the gym, the poor now-wheezing guy would be able to stop and get off the treadmill. You all -- or some of you all -- know what I mean, right? If a guy and a girl begin jogging at the same time on adjoining treadmills, the girl must get off first otherwise said guy might feel his masculinity threatened.

Whatever. As I said, I'm a person of much compassion.

Sip.

============

Oh, so speaking of compassion, Yes, yes you oenophiles. I haven't forgotten all about youse. I still love youse. Haven't umpteen poets written about how, One can never really leave behind the past -- much as one might try? Anyway, here are some wine recommendations from this past weekend when I was at COPIA's Slow Food Tasting lunch. There was a set-up there of wines made from the charbono grape. I'd not heard or tasted of this wine before, and that's because it is rare. Although some vines still exist in France and Italy, according to hand-outs by Tofanelli Vineyard and Shypoke, Charbono as a varietal wine is produced only in California. And, incredibly, half of the state's acreage (about 40 acres) are found within a three mile radius from Calistoga in Napa Valley. Every one of the winemakers is literally a neighbor!

Charbono wines make for excellent food wines; medium-bodied and, at its best, elegant. I have production numbers for some of them; by the number of cases produced, you can tell these are really boutique. Here are the ones I tasted and liked:

2000 and 2001 Tofanelli (grape supplier to Turley, btw). I liked the 2001 better -- had bigger fruit. Makes about 160 cases a year.
2001 Chameleon. Only 505 cases produced.
2001 On The Edge
2000 Summers Estate Charbono

Check them out -- these are all friendly peeps!

CONVERSATIONS

# 1
Tom at beginning of dinner tonight: We're not going to have a TV for a while.

Me, who rarely watches TV, thinks Yawn but diplomatically verbalizes: Why not?

Tom: There's a six-month back-log for plasma screens.

Me, stifling said Yawn: How come?

Tom: According to the salesperson, "THE U.S. GOVERNMENT" has bought every one of NEC's plasma monitors available in the country.

We look at each other. Tom in a WRY tone: One would think we're at war.


# 2
The Radiant Corpse to Chris: Why, thank you Sweetie! "Wary Star" -- now that's a good line too!


# 3

Ms. CorpsePoetics to You-Know-Who-You-Are: Cultural capital need not be based on compliments; it's based on attention.


# 4
The Radiant Corpse to Li: Why, thank you Sweetie! "Corpsedelic" -- now that's a good line too!


# 5:

Ms. CorpsePoetics to Josh: Hope you enjoyed Barbara Guest's poems....meanwhile, it's Murat NemeT-Nejat. Not "Nemen" -- take it from, cough, THE expert on Murat Nemet-Nejat (What? Some of you peeps hadn't heard of him before? Which rocks have y'all been under?!!) Anyway, Murat Nemet-Nejat e-mailed me more poems today along with an absolutely gracious note. Murat Nemet-Nejat: I am currently riding the waves beneath his "harbor" poems....at one point, he writes: "reaching for bitter oranges, I became a bitter orange". Ah. Exactly, Poet With Three Names Ending In A "T"!


# 6:
Tom in the middle of dinner tonight: My secretary was reading your WinePoetics print-outs today.

Me (eagerly): Did she think it was funny?

Tom (a look of surprise dawning across his face): Why....Ye...e...s, actually she did.

Then Tom gives me that look again; that look that translates into "Who is this woman I married?"

Me smirks at his look and scarfs up another chicken wing (salted and peppered and then deep-fried, garnished with green chilis).


# 7:
Congratulations to Elizabeth Treadwell Jackson, new mommy to a wonderful girl with a lovely name: Ivy Rae. Welcome, Ivy Rae!


# 8:
Towards end of dinner, I crack my fortune cookie for my ... uh....fortune. Pick up teensy slip to read: "You display the wonderful traits of charm and courtesy."

I nearly press the slip on Tom's nose, exclaiming: Lookit, lookit.

Tom lookit my fortune...then rolls his eyes.

Then Tom cracks his cookie for his fortune. Reads out loud to me: "You will soon get something special because of your charm."

I give Tom something special for his charm: I die laughing into corpse-dom.


*****

G'night Peeps. Midnight is about 10 minutes away as I finish this post. My day is about to begin...

WAYS OF SEEING, THEN PRACTICING POETRY (Part III)

Nonetheless, though Tuttle may wish not to intervene with the nature of his materials, he realizes that the artist cannot avoid making one's mark. By revealing evidence of his art-making -- such as a small drawing at the bottom of the painting and faint pencil marks from outlining the rectangular form -- Tuttle refuses to promote the illusion that art can be separated totally from the ego of even the most humble artist. Consequently, Tuttle suggests that the desire to see as clearly as possible is not the same as an unmediated process. None of us can avoid bearing psychological baggage as we make our way through the world.

But if Tuttle's concerns are irreconcilable -- this impossible desire to look at the world with as little bias as possible -- Tuttle's response is one of perseverance. Perhaps he gives himself an impossible goal because success is not the goal so much as the process of understanding his environment. Rather than creating an abstract doodle at the bottom of the painting, Tuttle draws tiny boxes stacked like a pyramid, some squares empty while others contain parallel vertical or slanted lines. The image relates to the larger shapes in the painting by emphasizing the lines of the fir and the geometric shapes that depict yellow and green -- which is to say, there is something pre-existing, not imaginary, whose nature Tuttle is attempting to understand. Additionally, by making the drawing very tiny, he makes his mark an accentuation to the primary imagery of the painting, rather than a distraction through a more powerful or larger image.

In "Overlap A3," Tuttle's perseverance is rewarded through how the fir's surface allows him to engage with his long-time interest in the line. By not attempting to hide the evidence of his art-making, Tuttle allows the viewer to see or sense the process through which "Overlap A3" is made. As a result, the viewer can witness how, in making a drawing to enhance the underlying nature of the painting's overall imagery, Tuttle extends his desired investigation of the line from the fir's linear elements to a later discovery of the nature of the painting's edge. That is, by adding the pyramid-like shape of boxes at the bottom of the painting, Tuttle enables the bottom edge to evoke a horizon. Formally, the effect deepens the space of the painting so that the yellow and green shapes seem to float in mid-air. Equally significant, Tuttle's process reveals that we need not ascribe meaning to external objects -- they possess their own meanings, just as the painting's material -- its edge -- can offer a horizon without our needing to draw its line.

By featuring a horizon without having to draw its line, Tuttle also depicts how we may achieve our goals by being open to all of life's possibilities. We might achieve our goals through circuitous paths. Life need not unfold, Tuttle suggests, on the shortest -- straightest -- path that would seem most efficient for connecting two points like a starting point and a destination. The process reminds me of a story I once heard about John Cage. Cage was looking for mushrooms in a particular town. Upon finding the store that sold mushrooms, he discovered that it was next door to a store that sold musical scores, including one for which he long had been searching. Delightedly, Cage observed then how mushrooms, too, play an important role in his music.

Just as a painting unfolds through process as much as based on the artist's intention, we change our minds as our lives progress -- a theme Tuttle also depicts through how the yellow and green bleed beyond the rectangular and triangular shapes. By depicting geometric forms that do not contain their colors, Tuttle notes the illusion of believing that life will unfold according to our prescriptions or desires. Life is more fragile and unpredictable, with moments of rupture, just as the green triangle sunders, or moments of mystery, just as the fir's darker grains evoke shadows against the yellow rectangle.

The work's title, too, contains several possibilities of significance. Because the two colors do not mix, they overlap only if we believe they do. One might look at the yellow and green forms and -- as facilitated by how Tuttle activates space into several layers - determine that the green triangle is not overlapping with, but actually slipping away from, the yellow rectangle. The sense of a departing green triangle combined with the yellow rectangle's shadows that offer the reference to, but not the reality of, some being, reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges' poem "The Moon." Specifically, I recall the line, "There is such loneliness in that gold."

What we see, and interpret from what we see, affects our subsequent acts. Ultimately, Tuttle suggests that attention -- like life and art -- is not just a moment but also a procedure. To see what may otherwise remain the hidden natures of things and ourselves is a matter of attention as process. Attention is significant for it has consequences -- for instance, loneliness might need to be recognized before it can be alleviated. It also requires a process to shift from seeing the darker wood sections as shadows and instead consider them as, say, dust -- which is to say, it requires prolonged attention to recognize more possibilities within our environment, to see how there can be several layers of meaning synonymous with a single image.

If, for instance, one sees the darker fir sections within the yellow rectangle as dust instead of shadows, a different Borges poem comes to mind, "The Alchemist." Specifically, I think of certain lines that are about invisible possibilities:

He knows that gold, that Proteus, is lurking
in all chance happenings, like destiny;
he knows it hides in the dust along the way

WAYS OF SEEING, THEN PRACTICING POETRY (Part II)

And I also wanted to share my essay on Richard Tuttle on my blog because I consider it written while practicing Corpse-dom, that is, I didn't want to be me looking *at* a painting; I wanted to move myself out of the way and be-come the painting. What does that mean? I'm not entirely sure, but in this essay it may have to do with the poetry in psychology -- in the past, I have dared to call it "alchemy":


On "Overlap A3," 2000 by Richard Tuttle

How many things,
Files, doorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails,
Serve us like slaves who never say a word,
--from "Things" by Jorge Luis Borges

Rather than creating something whose existence can be ascribed to his creativity and effort, Tuttle seems more interested in acknowledging the nature of what already exists. Because so many things remain unseen, it also seems apt that Tuttle's materials include those that are often overlooked: debris, shadows, light and mundane objects such as string, nails, bits of aluminum and cardboard pieces. "Overlap A3" offers another approach in featuring Tuttle's investigation of the forms and lines of various materials before they become contextualized as components of made objects.

Tuttle applies acrylic sparingly on a square piece of fir. The light application allows the wood's vertical lines to surface through the painting's white wash. In effect, Tuttle creates a series of lines without having to draw them. The white paint covers the fir's surface but the top and bottom wooden remain discernible. With his approach, Tuttle not only draws attention to the fir's (linear) elements but, by not densely painting over the wood, he indicates respect for what exists outside of himself. By creating a painting -- art -- through "found" material, Tuttle notes how everything deserves the respect of being seen.

By using "found" material, Tuttle notes that life itself can be art. Since art, however, is a process as much as it is a particular manifestation, Tuttle suggests, as Proust did, that the best life is the examined life. Tuttle bolsters his suggestion for attentiveness through the scale of the work. The 15-inch square encourages the viewer to draw closer, effecting an intimate relationship between the viewer's looking and the painting's physicality.

Tuttle proposes that we consider the world with as few preconceptions or bias as possible. When he inserts two nails at the upper corners of the painting and allows their heads to remain as marks on the painting, he not only formally activates the painting's surface from ground to space -- thus enlivening the image -- but he also uses the nature of another material to create the dark circles. Nails are not just nails -- which is to say, life's multi-layered nature may not be captured totally by appearances.

The work's title may refer to the center of the painting that contains a yellow rectangle whose bottom right corner is slightly overlapped by a green triangle. By letting the triangle's green dominate the overlap, Tuttle creates another layer of space by implying that the yellow triangle is beneath the green triangle. In addition to creating a spatial layer that prevents the forms from being static, Tuttle avoids changing the nature of yellow and green -- indicating his respect for the colors' attributes. By not superimposing (an act by) himself on the colors, Tuttle can see or understand them better for he can see them for what they are: the green remains green and the yellow remains yellow. Tuttle indicates that respect is necessary for being able to discern (aspects of) the true nature of what exists in one's environment.

WAYS OF SEEING, THEN PRACTICING POETRY (Part I)

"Remember alchemy"
--from Artnet.com's July Horoscope for Virgos like Ms. CorpsePoetics


"I have a sense that poets have always looked to painters for a certain kind of inspiration. There's a little passage from a poem by Yeats, "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory," that goes like this:

We dreamed that a great painters had been born
To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn,
To that stern colour and that delicate line
That are our secret discipline
Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might.

Even though the "we" is not necessarily a group of poets, I think it means that, too. I think the painter's art is the poet's "secret discipline." In part it goes back to the materiality of words I mentioned. O'Hara once gave a lecture in which he talked about the design of a poem. He felt that form was interior dimension while design was the exterior dimension of the poem's structure. Poets who are not sympathetic to the visual arts neglect design, or are less conscious of it."
--from "Poets and Art," an essay by Barry Schwabsky


I've just finished reading and looking at Barbara Guest's most recent book, Durer in the Window, Reflexions on Art (Roof Books). By collecting a selection of Guest's writings (essays and poems) on art from the 1950s to 2000, the grouping allows us to glean hints of how Guest's interests in the visual have affected her poems. To me, I could see a relationship as described by poet/art critic Barry Schwabsky in his 1984 essay I excerpt above -- and I think it is in the discernment of such a relationship that makes this book more than just a collection of individually intriguing works.

At the moment, however, I'm most fascinated by an essay Guest wrote on "Overlap A3" by Richard Tuttle (the "Notes and Citations" suggests this essay is first published in this book). In writing about this painting, Guest chose to focus on the color green, as evinced by the essay's title: "The Color Green in the Art Work of Richard Tuttle."

I also have written on Tuttle's "Overlap A3." I chose to focus on other matters, as shown below in a section of my review (from my book MY ROMANCE-- see link at right). I think it's always interesting to compare what more than one person has to say on the same work; an image of Tuttle's painting is reproduced at Anthony Meier Gallery's website. I'll share some excerpts from Guest's essay, followed by my review. You should get Durer for a fuller comparison as I can't print Guest's entire essay, whereas I am printing a more comprehensive excerpt from mine.

"Green is ... a serious color, slightly morose, somewhat intellectual. It is often found among the grays of countryside. It refuses to meddle with charm. Often green seems preoccupied, thoughtful. ... Green has trouble with the heavens, being practical.

Green is willing to labor, and often works into the night when other colors dim their lights.

When Richard Tuttle is painting, I examine the surface he works on to see if it is a hilly terrain, requiring the labor of green to maintain the spirit of the artist, to declare it is in on earth he labors. Green often comes to the aid of the artist in a difficult situation, when the canvas refuses to speak.

A refusal now causes Tuttle to summon green....Green can hold a picture together; it has the power of adhesion."

Guest then continues to conclude: "Color initiates form.....Color remains [Tuttle's] alphabet."

The primary image of "Overlap A3" is basically a white square in whose center lies a yellow rectangle with a green triangle along its bottom right edge. Guest focused her commentary on the pleasant surprise that is this painting's color diction. Her essay reminds me how difficult it is to see everything as I can't say I paid as much attention to the green, even as I recall that I genuinely was trying to see as much as I could of that painting.

Due to "Big Post" constraints, I'll post the excerpt from my essay in a two additional posts on this topic (Part II and III).

PHONE CALL FROM THE REAL OENOPHILE IN THE FAMILY

So Tom is printing out my 2-3,000 pages of WinePoetics blather at his office (summer editing project: WINEPOETICS: AN ALCOBIOGRAPHY). He just called, having glanced at a stray page in the printer. I apparently told that story about Richard Nixon surreptitiously drinking fine wine during state dinners and serving plonk to his guests. But when I told the story, I apparently said Nixon typically drank Margaux. Tom says, "Nixon preferred the Haut Brion, not the Margaux."

The corpse peers through long lashes at the phone. Then she places her still un-caffeined lips closer to said phone to whisper, "You called just to tell me that?"

He sez, "The error was offensive to me."

Corpse hangs up phone and returns to being a corpse. She'd had a long night fluttering her black wings over the planet. Oh you peeps -- so much to do!