the totality of the work that opposes totality

On basketball and masculinity

2012-01-19T14:04:00.000-08:00

Reconfigurations has just published a found poem I wrote during last year's NBA playoffs, culled from ESPN's basketball blog Truehoop, which I read far more often than I should, on the theme of masculinity and disappearance. For some reason, the sports world becomes obsessed in the playoffs/during tournaments with players either 'disappearing' or 'showing up.' I was interested in how that mapped on various masculine tropes—so I set myself a project of taking a word from each line of that blog's feed for a few weeks, with those constellations of questions in mind.

Here's the poem.

Here's Truehoop.

Enjoy!

Proofs from Little Red Leaves

2011-11-15T09:18:00.001-08:00

... for the Ephemera issue & a chapbook designed Dawn Pendergast— holy cow, they are beautiful. I'm feeling very lucky to be working with such a talented artist.

Ephemera issue into the world next month, chapbook the following, as I understand it—ending 2011 and beginning 2012. Exciting stuff.

LRL site is here.

Three Sentences from September @ Poetic Labor Project

2011-10-03T09:49:00.001-07:00

"When I try to make a narrative out of it, my job history reflects a string of disillusioned attempts at how I can make money doing something that will help me be a better artist." - Ariel Goldberg

"But we're swamped with craploads of our own non-art work." - Kristen Gallagher

"fetishes using a grant to be anti-productive and a drag on the economy, i.e. not make commodity art, but converse in a leisurely way or wander or day dream or “research” or cruise" - Monica Peck

The whole report is rad. Needless to say I'm honored to be included. The whole is here.

The Calm Before the Stork

2011-09-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

I am going to try my hand at something like improvisational cultural criticism right now. No editing. I think.

I want to put a few things into play:

1) This morning after walking Sonia to drop her off at preschool, I was listening to the RZA-produced Kanye West song "Dark Fantasy," the kinda-title track off his much-lauded album that came out late last year. As I walked and listening, I was thinking about the refrain can we get much higher? in relation to two more things I want to put into play—

2) The Lil Wayne song "I Feel Like Dying" from The Drought is Over 2 (Tha Carter 3 Sessions), one of his 2007 mixtapes.

3) The continuingly spectacular decline of global capitalism.

4) The last piece I want to put into play is where the really bad pun of a title for this post comes from. This afternoon we are scheduled to induce birth for our second daughter, now twelve days overdue. The wait for her these past couple weeks has been a strange anticipatory quiet (and in the way of things in our family, included the death of a parent, Kate's stepfather). A calm, a waiting. I don't know if it's what makes me want to write. Maybe I just don't take time often enough lately to write about music. In any case, in a few hours my second daughter's birth will begin, if not before. So here we go.

1.

I'm watching the video for that Kayne West song now, for the first time. (Does anyone actually watch music videos on TV anymore? I'm guessing they don't.) It opens with a shot of what turns out to be a meteor, but on YouTube I first saw it as a shuttle launch or an oil well fire. Both symbols of a recent past that marks the present—an imagined future of the 1960s that involved various flying things and space travel; and the age of oil, that spectacular commodity.

But no, it's not oil burning, it's a meteor, which is in keeping with the weird latterday fairy-tale overtones of the video—slow-mo deer, forests, and Kanye in a fancy car. "I fantasized about this back in Chicago." The deer, you think? Or maybe Milton Friedman had this dream—millionaire on the open road. Anyway. Next shot of the meteor looks a little mushroom cloud. Another iteration of 20th century dreams of American self.

After about two minutes its clear that this video only has three elements—meteor, forest/car/Kayne, and deer. It's really leaning on the strings that the song really leans on to create its atmosphere. Meteor hits car. Trees hurt. Car/Kanye/deer are ok. Turns out the meteor was a female angel—I briefly hoped it was Nicky Minaj, but it wasn't—probably a lucifer reference there, since the devil shows up in the song in a chrysler lebaron—sucks to be the devil, I guess. Then Kanye shows up what he really fantasized about in Chicago—his moment of action movie slow-mo-walking-away-from-explosion-holding-passed-out-girl.

So it turns out the video is kind of boring—but what about that refrain? Can't get higher. And these lines: "Teacher how do you respond to students / refresh the page, restart the memory." There's something there. A death wish, a wish for renewal, for a clean slate. Wishing he could've been consumed by the meteor/shuttle/oil/20th century, back when there was a future and things were awesome. But instead he is forced to relive cliche moments from that century with these f**king deer that won't die.

2.

"Only once the drugs are done, I feel like dying." There's no video for this song, but that YouTube has a great picture of Lil Wayne looking like the drugs aren't done. Because he is more talented than Kanye, Lil Wayne actually formally messes with the death wish that is late capitalism. Check out what he rhymes with the refrain's 'dying' in the song: lying, flying, frying, buying. Or this couplet: "And violets are blue, roses are red / Daisies are yellow, the flowers are dead." The list of drugs to sustain the high lilting chorus, like the xanax might push the dead of Wayne's monotone into the bright rafters where the sample echoes. (And oh the magic of sampling: hard to believe that came from this.)

What I want to say is that both of these songs are about the moment just before the crash, the long intoxicated pause in the early hours before it is properly tomorrow, when things begin to spin and look beautiful-ugly, shiny with the sweat of it all falling apart. In that moment, in these songs, we hear the late 20th c., still the obsession of the early 21st: but wishing the high would last is knowing already that it's over. Only once the drugs, the $, the oil, the enlightenment, "America," the spectacle—only once it's all done, is the dying feeling of the morning of the new century.

3.

But that's a weird place to end something I'm writing on the day my daughter will begin her birth. And that's why I needed to include this fourth thing. Because, people, today we are still human. Today of all days we are truly human, we are alive and soon more of us, more of my family at least, will be. And tomorrow will be written by us people—it will have to be. So I am ending in this hopeful calm place—that we are alive, that we are human, that we can make something new. Gentle now. I insist. We love you, everyone, get up.

Online poetry resources

2011-07-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

I'm compiling some lists for Anna & Emma, two students about to enter the 9th grade, who are doing an independent study with me this summer on contemporary poetry. We've been reading Juliana Spahr's Well Then There Now, Joseph Lease's Testify, and Jennifer Moxley's The Line. They are some hardcore young people.

This first list is of online resources; it will be revised and updated. Coming soon: a list of great paper journals.

http://jacket2.org/
The single best place for all things relating to boundary-pushing poetry

http://english.utah.edu/eclipse/
Eclipse—lots of scans of older small-run books (language poets esp.); super useful

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/
The Electronic Poetry Center—lots of useful information on poets

http://ubuweb.com/
Amazing archive of sound/visual/avant-garde poetry

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/
Penn Sound—archive of recordings of poets

http://www.critiphoria.org/
Super strong collection of poets

http://littleredleaves.com/
Annual journal—really smart—also includes PDFs of chapbook-length projects

http://htmlgiant.com/
Lots of writing about writing—interesting articles—as well as creative work

http://www.alicebluereview.org/main.html
Fiction & poetry

http://www.durationpress.com/
International poetry

http://www.wombpoetry.com/
Poetry by women

http://www.deepoakland.org/
Site-based investigations, poetry & prose

http://disinhibitor.blogspot.com/
Poet Michael Cross’s blog—lots of great reviews of great books

www.actionyes.org
Politics & poetry

http://ecopoetics.wordpress.com/
Environment & poetry

http://www.thirdfactory.net/
Compiles an annual list of various peoples’ favorite poetry books/journals/etc.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/
Art & culture

http://blog.sfmoma.org/
Suzanne Stein at SF MOMA brings together some really smart people for this project

http://www.trickhouse.org
Beautifully designed, lots of beautiful work (Phoebe Wayne in the current issue is amazing)

http://www.onedit.net/
Poetry journal

http://www.raintaxi.com/
Good reviews

http://galatearesurrects.blogspot.com/
Good reviews

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/
Many good guest bloggers

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/
At one time the clearinghouse for poetry news, though no longer; still useful

http://www.shampoopoetry.com/
Lots of good poetry

http://stevenfama.blogspot.com/
Steven Fama writes long and smart reviews of lots of different poetry books

http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Chronic/index.html
Great press and paper journal, also publishes excellent work online

http://lemonhound.blogspot.com/
Good reviews by a range of writers

http://www.h-ngm-n.com/
Poetry and chapbooks

http://davidwolach.blogspot.com/
David Wolach's smart, smart blog

http://whof.blogspot.com/
Thom Donovan's likewise excellent blog—lots of great stuff on art & music as well as poetry

http://jupiter88poetry.blogspot.com/
A video journal run by the inimitable CA Conrad—he brings in some amazing folks

http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/
Speaking of CA Conrad, these poetry exercises are unlike anything else.

http://www.labday2010.blogspot.com/
Poets writing about work/labor—the paying kind

http://www.eveningwillcome.com/
New-ish, but very promising

http://petroleusepress.com/download
Longer projects

http://andrewkenower.typepad.com/
Recordings of live readings in the Bay Area

http://www.drunkenboat.com/
Art & culture

https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter
San Francisco State Poetry Center's Digital Archive

http://ww2.rediscov.com/sacknerarchives/Welcome.aspx
Visual & concrete poetry archive

http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/

HOW2—innovative poetry by women

Memory

2011-06-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

8th graders graduated yesterday at my work. A class I was very close to.

Speaking to a grandmother of a student about her husband's recent death; I had sent that student Whitman's Hymn for Death from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd as it'd meant much to me during my mother's passing; esta abuela me dijo: "tu entiendes algo de la perdida" (o quizas me dijo "algo de la muerte"?); I responded with the story of the month between Sonia's birth & my mother's death. Things you can't forget.

I'm going to miss that class.

I found this poem & I can't remembering writing it. Did I write that? Is this poem mine? It's about some of my obsessions, so maybe it is.

& then it was asked—by the air, let’s say—
what do we do, painting pictures, seeking
the abstraction of to be in the contradictions
of the day? Or better: stand & shout. Or
better: make it pretty. Or better: don’t add
to heartache. Or better: tell a story of the
time you spent staring at the time & were
left empty of money, built of money, money
talks so talk more bucks. Better. Insipid to
wish for a home which didn’t bomb homes
with the $ spent to build it. Admit it. Air
asks. Sirens respond. Air empties. Sirens.

Hugs—

Dan

Interview

2011-02-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

Taiga's issue T has arrived, and is beautiful. New site for them too, here:

Taiga Journal

I did a short interview for them, as did erica lewis, my collaborator on the piece in the issue—and she has an interview up as well. Check potion!

Interview is here.

Physical iterations

2011-02-14T11:08:00.000-08:00

Bound materials & bodies—

Jen Hofer's class at California Institute of the Arts is talking W+S, among other Tiny Press Practices.

Taiga, returned from hiatus, has a new issue that includes a collaborative poem I wrote with Erica Lewis.

TRY, trying out a piece of the Great American Beatjack Vol. I.

Other Letters

2010-12-02T13:47:00.001-08:00

Thom Donovan has set out to do something that feels very much like a corollary to his work as part of the ON: Contemporary Practice editorial team. In Other Letters, his new site project, he wants to document the letters and emails that poets, writers, and artists exchange with each other. I'm honored to be featured in the inaugural post, with the incredibly generative series of emails Stephanie Young and I exchanged around the 880 project that is linked on the sidebar of the blog.

Onthology/audio feature

2010-11-24T11:15:00.001-08:00

Exciting news from Baltimore—Christophe Casamassima has me as a featured poet as part of his audio anthology project.

Check it out here.

Attention Span 2010, Dana Ward, props

2010-10-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

thanks, Dana, for the W+S shout out.

Check out Dana's list—and the whole (and wholly excellent) Attention Span 2010 at:

Dana's List.
The 2010 List.

In addition to Dana's I highly recommend the lists of Brent Cunningham, Jennifer Scappettone, Joshua Edwards, Barbara Jane Reyes (especially her take on Murillo's Up Jump the Boogie, very smart), Kevin Killian (love his reading of A Community Writing Itself), and Suzanne Stein.

So yeah, there's a lot to like.

The 30 Word Review

2010-09-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

New short-form review project:

The 30 Word Review

Sometimes I think I'm in love with painting—

2010-06-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

don't you?

Click here for a summer mix I made for any and all of you, on the amazing and excellent Dreams in Audio site.

Furniture Press chapbook

2010-06-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

Very exciting news this past week—Baltimore's Furniture Press will be publishing a poem of mine called "Seaming" (written for Sonia while she was in utero) as a stand-alone chapbook, as part of their fascinating and excellent PO25EM series, which (like our own dear W+S project) puts poetry physically into the world for free.

Check it out here. —A chapbook from Lars Palm is also part of the new run of the series; it's exciting to share the bill with him.

Also be sure to check out their link page—they're compiling quite an interesting list of people and projects.

Versal Rock Steady

2010-05-25T13:19:00.001-07:00

I have a minute here while waiting for a class to vacate a room so I can see if I left my waterbottle there while talking to them about this Clipse video. During this minute I want to write, briefly, to say that Versal #8 arrived from Amsterdam yesterday, and it is amazingly beautiful. It is up there with the most impressive journals I have had the pleasure of being part of. I'll write more, maybe about how fucking awesome Brandon Shimoda's piece is, or about Editor Megan Garr's intro on the translocal which I was immediately fascinated by, when I'm back with the journal, which traveled with me yesterday but today did not.

For now, I just wanted to shout some props out there into the ether.

and since I made it here...

2010-05-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

Writing about Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind." How there's only states of mind left, not states, when it comes to empire. The last gasp of the rap of American hegemony. The true end of the 20th century, the American century; thus the black and white, thus the Sinatra references, thus the vested heights for the final verse, thus the cloudy and overwhelming nostalgia of the whole thing. A dirge for place, for the era when place mattered, for the version of capital accumulation in which seats of power were physical and not financial, for the tangibility of monuments. "The upper-crust landmarks [Jay-Z] now references are a far cry from the grimy Marcy Projects sights that he once detailed, something that perhaps is to be expected from the self-described 'new Sinatra'" sez USA Today, by which Steve Jones really means that white people miss the financial bubble too, so we're feelin' it.

"Long live the world trade"—as in the best art the song gets it, precisely, and precisely does not. It is the living long of world trade as a system—of the age of globalization, we might say, or postmodernism, others might scoff—which sculpts all of the above. It was the spectacular death of the physical version, of the towers, that marked one version of the end of the American century. So it does and does not live long, just like the New York City of the video, in enough b&w for a Sinatra box set (I would've guessed sepia, though perhaps the case can be made that sepia intones 19th c., ceding the 20th to b&w). When, at the end of the video, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys spark into bright color, on a glowing red staircase in Times Square, they read not as suddenly contemporary, but rather just laconically aware that the second half of the 20th century is also over. "These streets will make you feel brand new, bright lights will inspire you," croons the hook, but it sounds like a plea. Alas, "make it new" was a directive for a different day; the song isn't about youth and vitality, and it isn't a song for graduations or bar mitzvahs. "Empire State of Mind" is a song for a retirement party, for the end of a good run, a song to remember you by. It marks, as I said, the true end of the 20th century—when New York as a place, when place as a meaningful marker and America as the center of something, finally shut down. It was Ford who said Drop Dead, but Obama presides now as the whistle signals the end of the shift.

This is where the conclusion, the final coda, of this dissertation begins—not at the beginning of the end, but at its end. The moment when art recorded again the ages-old historical inevitability that all empires shudder to a finale. Welcome to the 21st century! (And who else could be coming up the bright red staircase but China?)

Shout out from Silliman

2010-04-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

Le Grande Dame de poetry blogging has links to my Bruce Andrews interview and With + Stand's Lisa Robertson issue in his 4/6/10 post. That's right, two links, and both in the top ten. I'm Sillifamous. Thank you, Ron Ron.

Shout out to Brent @ SPD for the heads up!

202/200

2010-03-15T13:05:00.001-07:00

With + Stand's spraypainting Party was insanely productive. 202 out of a possible 200 issues were created. Sonia was slightly afraid of all the painters and tapers and staplers. Good times were had. A huge thanks to everyone.

Deactivation vs. deletion

2010-02-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

This is a topic that I'm sure people have covered in greater detail in other parts of the interwebs, and if I cared more I would research and post links, but I don't really.

My two-week experiment with facebook ended this morning, after a bizarre comment that was posted to my 'wall' by a 'friend'. I showed it to Kate and we agreed that any facebook is probably too much facebook. I have deactivated my account, which is apparently as close as I'm allowed to get to deleting it. Because you never know when you'll want to come back. Kind of like all those old friends and former partners and estranged family members that facebook 'connects' you to. It's the 'you never know' network—maybe you'll want to actually be friends with those people again, or rekindle that old flame, or talk to those family members—on some level you're pretty sure you won't, but YOU NEVER KNOW. Sort of like how gmail doesn't actually delete anything—you never know when you'll want to read that email you thought you threw away. In the age of digital reproduction, there is no reason to end anything. The false infinity of capitalism.

Anyway, facebook people should know it's nothing personal. Ha.

In other, significantly more exciting/interesting news, I just got word from editor Megan Garr that Versal Magazine of Amsterdam will be publishing a poem of mine called "Cottage industry" in their 8th issue this spring. I'm honored to be a part of Versal—it's a gorgeous magazine, from what I've seen of it (which is only one issue, but it was lovely!), and I dig their collective exploration of the notion of the 'translocal'. Cottage industry is also one of my favorite poems that I've ever written, so it's exciting for me to think about seeing it in print. They'll be having a release party in Amsterdam in May—wouldn't it be nice if Kate, Sonia and I could somehow make that trip...? Day dreaming; stay tuned.

[Also, upcoming:

1) A blog post about ON: Contemporary Practice #2. I've begun reading through and continue to be blown away by this magazine. It's like having a great conversation with a bunch of smart poets. Learning so much, and loving every minute of it.

2) News about With + Stand's Lisa Robertson Issue, which is going to shatter all records.

Soon soon.]

ON reading

2010-02-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

Moe's Books on Wednesday, reading for a release of ON: Contemporary Practice's second issue. The mag offers writers writing about other writers; the first issue was a genuine pleasure, and I'm sure the second will be too, thought-provoking and lovely.

Reflecting

2010-01-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

[Shout out to kewzoo's flickr stream for the photo!]

Ten reflections on Impersonal Space with Dana Motherfucking Gioia:

1) Became much more personal/mantra-like than I expected. Isolated, walking those streets. This felt like failing (for the same reasons as below, a worry over a recreation of personal/reflective lyric space, rather than exploded public), though it was interesting to experience.

2) Walked the same route, a loop between the CCA Writing Center and the ReBar installation (was that the name of that group…?). Most electricity/static/energy when encountering groups.

3) Decided, based on availability, to read Gioia’s book of essays, rather than poems. This also seemed appropriate given that I bought the book at the talk he gave where I first had the idea to do this performance. Started with “Can Poetry Matter?” expecting to read several essays (business and poetry, and notes on the new formalism).

4) The text stretched out—the single essay took the entire hour.

5) I found the switch to prose pretty fascinating. People would walk by and the looks on their faces suggested that the normative syntax of the essay seemed even more disorienting than poetry would have. The mad wanderers jabber in poetry; prose as a jeremiad is somehow out of place. This was excellent and generative for me.

6) The content of the essay worked pretty well—the call for a more public role for poetry made public and somehow shamed by being screeched at the streets. At times I couldn’t help bursting into laughter at some of the ridiculous claims, but this didn’t feel out of place. Some knowing laughter as I approached groups.

7) Given the context of the event, impersonal space invading was drained of its aggression. Not sure if this is good or bad; made it easier, in some ways.

8) Decided, spur of the moment/while in performance, to ‘leaflet’ car windows with the ‘business card’ I printed, which said:

Dana Motherfucking Gioia
Poetry CEO

Google me, Barbara!
dana.gioia@aspeninstitute.org

It’d be interesting to know what the afterlives of those scraps of paper might be.

9) The ‘impersonal space’ element would work much better when there’s more street traffic. A kind of tunnel vision ensues, reading and walking simultaneously, making it hard to ‘aim,’ as it were. With more traffic, one could bumble around side to side and still be a personal space invader. But catching the locations of individuals or small groups in my peripheral vision was hard to do. This is interesting to me—the movement/text/intervention into public were somehow not able to coexist as a trio. I worry that the effect was a kind of recreation of the lyric space, and felt like a failing of the piece. I’d like to try a similar project on a larger scale, in a more public public—something where a group of people read a variety of essays on poetics while walking circuits around some place, perhaps Union Square or some other shopping district. The overlapping ideas/voices and intersections between individuals and their experiences of the texts could be great—a kind of disembodied seminar.

10) The book burning was great. It didn’t feel monosyllabically political or aggressive, as I had worried. In some ways the most purely aesthetic moment of the entire process. Meditative in an unexpected way, too, watching the pages curl. Someone compared the new artifact to birch bark.

All in all, a fascinating and thoughtful afternoon. My only complaint was that I would’ve liked to see/participate in more of the performances…

I will be performing as Dana Motherfucking Gioia @...

2010-01-21T08:47:00.000-08:00

Small Press Traffic's Poet's Theater 2010. Come Sunday. Get schooled.

Further notes on the relationship(s) between art and money

2009-12-14T10:25:00.001-08:00

A recent NYTimes profile of graffiti artist BNE contains this gem:

“I don’t see other graffiti writers as my competition anymore,” B.N.E. said. “Now I’m going up against the Tommy Hilfigers, Starbucks, Pepsi. You have these billion-dollar companies, and I’ve got to look at their logos every day. Why can’t I put mine up?”

The answer to his question could be multiple: because he puts his 'logo' up illegally (as a coworker groused not all that long ago), rather than buying space in our lives to display it, as Pepsi and Starbucks very lawfully do; because he occasionally puts 'BNE' on products that the BNE does not describe or in other ways attach to, as in the above picture; because his logo has no product it is selling; or because the ostensible product, 'BNE' himself, seems to resist being sold.

In all of the above cases, but particularly the last three, the relationship between the art object and capital is problematized. Generally, the buying public prefers, say, the Thomas Kincaide approach, wherein art exists only for and in tandem with their consumption (and even formally adopts the glow of dollars as its organizing principle—the famous 'painter of light' moniker as easily could be 'painter of capital'). Even 'high art,' spins inexorably toward consumability, as in Gabriel Orozco's move from margin to center, visible in the move from empty shoe boxes to painting with gold leaf.

I would posit that this is more the source of my coworker's discomfort than the legal/illegal issue. When art forces us to think about the relationship between the aesthetic and capital, rather than simply accepting it as an unspoken and unexamined law of the world, it makes us uncomfortable. Because in pointing up that particular relationship, the art object also forces us to become aware of the patterning of our own existence, the way that dollars script our movements as directly as they do "Thomas Kincaide's" factory of paintbrushes. This is also the answer to BNE's question about his own logo. Ask Gabriel, BNE, what happens to the artists at the margins—the centripetal logic of capital will begin with gallery shows just like the one the Times (an organ of centrism if it is anything) is using as its raison d' profile.

When your own logo is a billion-dollar brand though, will you have won?

For earlier notes on this question, see 2008's "On the definition of art"

Today

2009-12-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

1913

2009-08-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

Just got word that a piece of mine ("The The Weather Project") responding to Olafur Eliasson's 2003-2004 Tate Modern installation "The Weather Project" will be included in 2010's issue 4 of 1913: a journal of forms.

Very exciting. 1913 is one of the most beautiful journals in existence. It's an honor to be part of the project.

Meanwhile, at other blogspots...

2009-08-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

With + Stand puts out the call for its much-anticipated Lisa Robertson issue.

Dig it.

Israeli gesture

2009-06-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

The Paper of Record has as its electronic lead this morning:

As Obama Begins Trip, Arabs Want Israeli Gesture

I can't help but read gesture for its primary definition, a movement of the body/hand to express an idea or emotion. So I did a Google image search for Israeli gesture... Here's my Flarf photo essay. I call it "A tank is apparently a good platform for an Israeli Gesture"

The Winning Order

2009-06-02T10:58:00.001-07:00

For $102.59, or $2.59 funds laid out, I just ordered from SPD:

The Sophist, Charles Bernstein, Salt reprint.
Clampdown, Jennifer Moxley, Flood editions.
8x8x7, Colin Smith, Krupskaya books.
Debbie: an epic, Lisa Robertson, New Star books.
The Weather, Lisa Robertson, New Star books.
The Men, Lisa Robertson, Book Thug.

Thank you SPD for this gift certificate; thank you Yao Ming for the inspiration; and thank you Zack Tuck for taking my order. I apologize if my head cold made me sound less excited than I am. I am excited. I am coming to get these excellent books on Friday. This is my excited face:

Chn mthrfckrs wht

2009-05-28T17:26:00.000-07:00

SPD's contests have now won me an Anne Boyer book AND a $100 gift certificate. This time for a poem about Yao Ming in which all the words are misspelled.

Living large.

Reality

2009-05-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

"Reality is too complicated to be fully expressed by poetry – or any other art form."

So said Jerome Sala at the Best American Poetry blog last month.

At first blush, most sane people would agree. After all, how to press into words or paint or ones and zeros or any other medium the infinite complexity of, say, global capital (my own favorite quest), or even just the blogosphere, or the sixty-something-million registered cars in the U.S., or the particles emitted by those cars, or the microscopic creatures killed by those particles, or the less-than-microscopic creatures affected by those microscopic deaths, or, or, or... Just ask Juliana Spahr—it's a list that does nothing but expand.

Still, while Sala goes to Hegel, I go to Adorno, my favorite roadmap for my favorite quest. And so I find myself worrying somewhat less about the intent to express reality—holding no illusions about my brain's ability to contain such sublime totalities in model form—than about the inevitability of refraction and reflection.

This to say: my poems do not express reality because I will them to do so; reality, refracted, sets their forms. And if my poems are any good, and I leave that to others to determine, it is because they point up the distance between what my brain expresses and what reality forms.

Quoting my dissertation prospectus, quoting our man Adorno thrice:

“[Aesthetic form] is the nonviolent synthesis of the diffuse that nevertheless preserves it as what it is in its divergences and contradictions, and for this reason form is actually an unfolding of truth.”

“History in artworks is not something made, and history alone frees the work from being merely something posited or manufactured: Truth content is not external to history but rather its crystallization in the works.”

This is to say, aesthetic form is history—the contradictions of social life at a given moment in history, visible in the form of an artwork as “ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other.”

Grinding, cousin. Just thought I'd remind y'all.

Cracking up

2009-04-11T19:56:00.001-07:00

My Cousin is a Rock Star: a photo essay

2009-04-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

Strix Vega rocked the Starry Plough on March 28th 2009 and the stars, my cousin Andy, were out. The iPhone blurriness captured the twinkles. My only regret: no gong-banging shots!

Effluvia

2009-03-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

1) The Canessa Reading was great. W+S is glowing about it. You can tell when you peek into the garage at night.

2) Craig in Australia.

3) Not enough sleep.

Happening: lately & soon

2009-03-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was a beast, with the excellent Marxist Working Group's excellent conference Friday/Saturday on Crisis Contradiction and Contestation in Postwar Economy and Culture (that's a mouthful!), Saturday night to Petaloo for Tami's bday bash @ Stephanie's, then Monday (is Monday the weekend?) to the CAIS meeting at Head Royce's ski-lodge of a campus, which felt rather over-steeped in dollars.

So, now back at school thinking toward the week, with much prep work looming for W+S if it's to take shape before Saturday's reading.

And speaking of! W+S goes live and direct, thanks to Erica Lewis and the Canessa Gallery.

Details here.

For the price of a single burrito, so much poetry!

Jacket 36

2009-02-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

announces itself.

As ever, the one-stop shop for real discussions of poetry.

My review of doble-Mlinko's there, of course.

Anyway, initial response: can we just call this the Rachel Blau DuPlessis issue? She's present and accounted in articles on Oppen, Guest, Creeley, and herself. That's some serious representation. Late-mid-century, where you at?!

Meanwhile, at other blogspots...

2009-02-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

W+S preps the red issue.

BFFs

2008-12-29T11:24:00.000-08:00

Me & 2666. When I'm home and not sitting in a cafe procrastinating, I'll post some quotes that have caught my ear/mind. But I just had to say it: we're BFFs. This book rocks my world.

Orderly bankruptcy vs. Disorderly collapse

2008-12-18T13:48:00.000-08:00

In this NYTimes article I was struck (as I often am) by the use of language. In this case, it's the antistasis that strikes a chord. Usually the propaganda machine is pretty good at producing distinct difference-- you know, Hope(TM) vs. McSame, or Maverick(TM) vs. Palling Around With Terrorists-- or more significantly, words like insurgent, terrorist, enemy combatant, instead of troops, soldiers, or even something simple like 'fighters' (maybe in fear of any echo of 'freedom'?). But here, the propaganda machine seems as lost as the rest of the country. But here it's just X Bankruptcy vs. Dis-X Collapse. And when you get right down to it, that's not the most inspirational choice of words, any more than it is the most inspirational choice.

O for the days when nothing was an option!

Books variously...

2008-11-29T09:03:00.001-08:00

making me happy / blowing my mind, the latest (per Tami's request!):

1) 2666. After Savage Detectives, the first novel I'd maybe ever read that was written like poets write, Bolano became my new favorite novelist. This one's a beast. 200 pages in (of what, 900+?), it makes me feel good about writing.

2) Bird & Forest, Brent Cunningham. I know, this one's a few years old now, but I found it in a used book store in Mountain View (!) then read it on the train while on a field trip with 42 8th graders. It's a sweet book, wandery.

3) Picture Palace, Stephanie Young.

and the other newbie from ingirumimusnocteetcomsumimurigni:

4) Action Kylie, Kevin Killian.

These two are too new for me to have a complete sense of them yet, but I've been enjoying the process. & ingirumimusnocteetcomsumimurigni is the only press out there that only publishes poetry that I care about. That's not a surprise to anyone, but I'm glad they're out there.

Q: What happens when...

2008-11-25T07:53:00.000-08:00

a contest with three winners has only four entries?

A: I get a free book.

I'll take Anne Boyer's The Romance of Happy Workers, thank you much.

On the sudden, and the unaccountable

2008-11-03T08:41:00.000-08:00

Dave Kehr's on over at the Paper of Record about the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

What catches my attention are the first two paragraphs:

GROWING old is a subject American movies have largely avoided since the 1980s, when the commercial triumphs of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas made it clear that there was money to be made in never-never land — that world of the adolescent imagination where no one ever matures and death exists only as a punch line. It surely means something that Leo McCarey’s 1937 “Make Way for Tomorrow,” the most deeply moving Hollywood film about old age, has never been released on DVD in the United States and has not been seen on television in many years.

But suddenly and unaccountably, here is “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a big-budget studio film, set to open Christmas Day, whose central theme is human mortality, a theme the film explores using the same special effects technology, now extended into the digital realm, that American movies have used for so long to keep us trapped in perpetual childhood.

In the 1980s, there was no death. Just like there was no society, see-- neoliberalism arching its back in the morning of a new day. What Kehr is recording is ideology-- which states that the current state is the natural and final state of human existence. The only end (or death) possible was the end of history.

But if history is not over, crises are neither sudden nor unaccountable. The question is not, then, where does this sudden willingness to talk about death come from, but rather: what does the system gain by considering its mortality?

I'd label it a production of a kind of false consciousness, whereby the average world citizen is convinced that the death of the system is in fact equal to their own death.

Which is to say, Mr. Kehr is just parroting the ideology of today as blindly as he is that of the 1980s.

As my friend Jane Dark once so eloquently put it, file under critics not doing their job.

Socialism is the new Socialism

2008-10-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

The Fifth Obama International

The Libertarian Wet Dream: Taxes = Socialism

Socialist Terrorist-- watch out!

Bonus!: Unadorned makeup

Bonus #2!: White people high-fiving themselves in anticipation.

My best friend is a black president, yo!

Symbol management

2008-10-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

Presidential campaigns are big machines built to try and direct information flows. Managing symbols, from slogans to hair cuts to flag pins. The people that are interpellated by these campaigns find themselves part of the information flow-- dems using the phrase 'erratic' or repubs saying Obama is 'inexperienced' or 'a terrorist' are just the little pictures that all together make a big picture, part of the collage of symbols being managed. The campaigns work hard to make sure the symbol projects a kind of coherence.

So it's interesting to run into pictures like this one, from nytimes.com, which seems strangely incoherent in its deployment of 'plumbers' below the Obama mask, next to the Palin:

Perhaps it's just a reminder that there remains some distance between people and symbols, that information, like life, is always resistant even at its most administered.

Which is a little bit like saying yes, there's a reason to write poetry.

Worth noting

2008-10-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

My bank got bought by your bank.

Still, mentioning Dick Cheney does not a political poem make.

Fin de cycle?

2008-10-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

Jasper Bernes & Joshua Clover are both wondering about endings, of late. JB thinks maybe we can put an end date on Neoliberalism, which most days would be reason to do a little jig. JC sees us trying to buy apocalypse-insurance.

Alas, none of it's good news. But really, who had plans for the future anyway?

Fired up

2008-09-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

Staples+ducttape+spraypaint+awesome poetry = W+S #2. I'm proud, I'm excited.

On the definition of socialism...

2008-09-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

Texas Congressman Jeb Hensarling:

“My fear is that taxpayers will be left with the mother of all debts, the federal government becomes the lender and guarantor of last resort, and our nation finds itself on the slippery slope to socialism.”

To compare,

Shock Doctrine author and anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein:

"This is socialism for the rich. Look, if we're socializing things, let's nationalize something profitable. Let's go for Exxon. They're socializing junk!"

Mad slippery, yo!

My take: watch The Take.

Argentino, heal thyself.

'Mass culture is unadorned make-up'

2008-09-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

"What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is "all it does" - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it." - David Foster Wallace

I might prefer 'determining' over 'discerning,' having a different sense of the subject/object relationship in play.

Nevertheless, his obit runs in the entertainment section of the Culture Industry's daily.

And so it goes.

On the definition of art...

2008-09-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

The tattoo on Steiner's back has been sold for almost $215,000 to a collector who has the right to remove it after he dies. Delvoye says bluntly that this is one yardstick that makes the tattoo an artwork, rather than just another tattoo.

"It's art because it got sold," Delvoye says.

To compare:

"To me," he said recently, in a rare interview, "once money changes hands for art, it becomes a fraudulent activity."

Welcome note

2008-07-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

links to online works; thoughts on poetics; dissertation effluvia; etc.