The Introductory Lecture

Remember to Floss

2012-01-31T16:17:00.004-05:00

While waiting to go to the dentist, I am throwing up a quick blog post.

On February 11, I will be tabling at Coldhearted: A Pre-Valentine's Day Craft and Book Fair with Kimberly Southwick of Gigantic Sequins and Brian Warfield of Turtleneck Press. Details TBA on the Splitleaves site.

Also, Makeout Creek picked up four of my poems, which is kind of exciting. I don't use exclamation points very often, but this would be a good occasion to do so. (!)

Fingers are crossed that I remain in the "No Cavity Club".

Vaya

2012-01-10T11:47:00.003-05:00

I have a review of j/j hastain's fabulous we in my Trans up at Galatea Resurrects. Y'all can go read what I think, and find some commentary on great literature to curl up with on cold winter nights.

In other news, LETTERBOX took four of my poems for their forthcoming issue, printing in spring or early summer.

Thursday, the band I cut my teeth on, went out with a bang, playing a great final show in Philadelphia just before the New Year. And now, it seems my other love, At The Drive-In, is reuniting. That sound you just heard was me squealing like a five-year-old girl.

Oh, well.

2011-12-15T16:28:00.001-05:00

Splitleaves Press is on permanent hiatus.

My manuscript is not being published due to financial pressure on the publisher.

We'll always have Paris.

Conversation

2011-11-09T11:53:00.002-05:00

My friend j/j hastain and I have a new Inherent Fracture up online, a conversation regarding violist Nadia Sirota's album First Things First. You can check it out by clicking on this link here: http://inherentfracture.tumblr.com/

Speaking of j/j, I wrote a blurb for a womb-shaped wormhole (BlazeVOX [books], 2011):

j/j hastain is a seer. Writing from the liminal space between the ethereal and the corporeal, filled with bestiaries of the soul and spine-broken books, hastain has composed "an activist-narrative of place", where the body is but "a fretted tangle" to be worried apart, and then knotted again. Stitched in the language of sinew and fiber, a womb-shaped wormhole is transcendent, stretching past our mere genders, our temporal selves.

I make it a point to only write what I mean, so go buy the damn book, already. You can purchase it through SPD, or directly from the publisher here.

And, speaking of BlazeVOX [books] I may have some news to tell y'all. Or I may not. It's all up in the air. But, I promise, you'll know when I know.

Spam No. Fourteen

2011-11-06T11:09:00.000-05:00

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men turned their backs on Paris and trudged back along many roads
heart of his cousin, crushed as it was by the look of the old miser.
and Hebert came two years later.

Man For Himself

2011-10-07T15:08:00.004-04:00

So, the new issue of Scythe dropped a few weeks ago, and Joe and Chenelle Milford were kind enough to accept five of my poems for inclusion. You can read them here. Also, check out the work of Oliver de la Paz and Nate Pritts, while you're at it. You won't be disappointed!

Got a haircut the other day, looked at Anastacia's Antiques, stocked up on frozen meals at Whole Foods for when I'm too lazy to cook for myself. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking, but there's something depressing about doing it for one. In any case, the lady will be here soon. This time, permanently. Insert exclamation marks!

So, today, I'm stuck re-reading Kafka for class, (Overrated? I think so.) and will be heading to First Friday later tonight. My Dear Leader, Alex Paik, who cracked the whip when I interned there, will be showing some new work, Start to Move. Here's a sample to whet your appetite:

I hope to see your lovely faces there, at least for a little while. I'll be checking out early to listen to the Phillies' game. Now that Harry K. is gone, baseball on the radio reigns supreme. Fingers crossed for another Halladay playoff no-hitter.

Frankfurt am Maim

2011-08-30T07:55:00.003-04:00

One night, whilst walking in Grüneburgpark, Schopenhauer was stopped by a policeman who asked, "Who are you? What are you doing here?" Blowing on and rubbing his hands together to beat the autumnal chill, the philosopher replied: "Yes! Those are the questions!"

N.B.: This story is likely apocryphal.

While You Were Out:

2011-08-22T09:26:00.005-04:00

decomP's August issue dropped with a poem of mine in it. If you click the link, you can even find some audio of me reading it. I'm really pleased to be included alongside the likes of Eileen Hennessy and Matthew Salyers. Go read their pieces and leave nice comments or send them a friendly email.

Speaking of friendly emails, I received a very nice one from David Glen Smith, who also gave the piece in decomP a short little write-up on his blog. Thanks!

Last, but not least, on the publishing front, I had five (5) pieces picked up for the forthcoming issue of Scythe. It's run by Chenelle and Joe Milford. Yes, those folks, from the Joe Milford Poetry Show. I'll let you know when they're online.

Anyway, my trip South was amazing. I'm not much of a snapshot-taker, but these are some of the things the lady and I saw:

Going, Going, Gone

2011-07-28T08:27:00.003-04:00

Baseball season is in full swing and I am pretty pleased with the Phillies' five game lead over the Braves, coupled with the best record in the majors, last night's 2-1 loss to the Giants notwithstanding. I am less than thrilled that we are starting the always inconsistent Kyle Kendrick in the rubber-match tonight, but that's just how the rotation's shaken out. Anyway, there is nothing like listening to the game on the radio while I make dinner. If only we still had Harry Kalas with us…

Well, I'll soon be deep, deep in Braves territory. Actually, I'll even be in Atlanta, albeit briefly. I'll be spending a day or two in Chattanooga, Tennessee, meeting the girl's parents, before we disembark on an end of summer vacation. St. Mary's, Georgia, a few days camping on Cumberland Island, and a couple more in St. Augustine before I have to head up here to the Union, prepare for another semester. At least I can throw myself into something and try to make the time pass. Y'all won't be able to get in touch with me August 1 through 10. The mobile will be off and I'll be away from all computers, so don't even try.

Before I leave, though, I'll be reading with Toby Altman and Jacob Russell at Moonstone Arts Center. Check the sidebar for more information. I'll also have a poem and some audio up at decomP when I come back. I'll post the link then. Wouldn't want to give it away before the issue officially drops.

In incredibly mundane news, I am cutting all my hair off later today. It is too damn hot out. Every time I step outside it feels like I'm wearing a helmet.

An Epitaphorist

2011-07-15T09:47:00.004-04:00

I have not updated this page in a while, but I should note that my writing is still going strong, slow, but steady. I desperately need to revise a few poems into their final forms, fixing an enjambment here, a blank space there. I've a million ideas to set down, but right now am occupied by Antonio Machado's Selected Poems in Alan S. Trueblood's translation. It sings, and I do love bilingual editions of books.

So, I am reading that, and slowly falling back into routine after my love was here for a fortnight. Languorous days spent lounging in churchyards, or laying still in the grass by the Schuylkill River. They say it's a many-splendored thing, and they're right. We'll suffer through the distance until December, when a new semester starts and we'll live just a few blocks, not a few hundred miles, apart. For now, I'll content myself with making plans for early August with my Southern belle, and losing myself in Jesse Ball's new novel, The Curfew. There's a lovely interview up on The Millions website here, if you're interested.

Extra, Extra

2011-06-15T08:46:00.008-04:00

So, y'all, some newsworthy news: My friend Rachel Mason rolled into town last night along with her band, Little Band of Sailors. They've got a summer tour going through the Midwest and then a million shows in New York, so catch them if you can. Think PJ Harvey crossed with Laura Nyro. And some performance art. Needless to say, it was a great little concert.

decomP just accepted a poem of mine, which should be dropping in August. Those folks put together a splendid issue every other month, so I'm really pleased to be included.

Inherent Fracture with j/j is still going strong. We're preparing to drop another conversation/critique on you pretty soon. Stay tuned.

Lastly, if I fail to be prompt in returning your emails for the last week of June and into early July, please forgive me. I will try not to fall off the grid completely, but I will be entertaining a houseguest. If you know me well, then you know who I am talking about. If you are one of the people reading this blog from Pelotas, Brazil, or Vilnius, Lithuania, well, no offense, but I am not prepared to share such intimate details of my life with folks half-a-world away.

Inherent Fracture

2011-06-01T13:52:00.002-04:00

My friend j/j hastain and I have recently started what we are calling a "blog of critical engagement", over on Tumblr. We've christened it Inherent Fracture, like the Continental Divide that separates us, and the fiber-optic cables that bring us together. We'll be discussing books, film, music; in short, anything that two friends would sit down and discuss while our coffee grows cold. It'll be updated sporadically, but hopefully frequently. The conversations will be fractured, too, started and broken off in media res, so just imagine that you're eavesdropping from the next table, to figure out what these fools are so passionate about. And, anyway, you get what you pay for.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Benjamin.

2011-05-22T17:17:00.003-04:00

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Thank you for the histrionics.

What's Going Ahn

2011-05-03T12:54:00.003-04:00

Man, Big Star is definitely my go-to band on these warm spring days, especially "September Gurls". I've been listening to nothing but all morning.

Anyway, I apologize for the dearth of blog posts. I have been rather busy, lately. Not so much writing poetry (though there's been some of that) as taking every possible opportunity to view Terri Saulin's exhibition at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, entitled Night is a Girl. Now, they're opening the new space (same building, different floor) with Carolina Letham-Santa's work, which is a swell start, in my book.

So, what else: Talking back and forth with j/j hastain, and slowly but surely starting a collaborative review/critical engagement blog. Laying out j/j's chapbook for Splitleaves and writing a review of we in my Trans, forthcoming on Galatea Resurrects by the end of the year. I am uncomfortable with the term "review". "Critical reflection" seems to work much better and provides a more accurate description of what I am attempting to accomplish. Filling out market research surveys for a pittance. I have continued to send out the manuscript.

I will be mostly out of town this coming weekend, as my brother has a sizable role in his high school's play, and Sunday is Mother's Day. I suppose I'll see my Nan and my mother, among other Winkler/Hyman/Alamar dignitaries.

Oh! Next Saturday, May 14, I will be hosting another "Splitleaves Affair" with Jenn and Chris McCreary, Ryan Eckes, and Christophe Casamassima. More details are available at the Splitleaves site. Here is a flier:

Also, I really ought to get to Princeton's campus art museum for their Kurt Schwitter's exhibition before the end of June. Anyone want to join me?

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2011-04-14T11:14:00.001-04:00

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April Showers, Writing Flowers

2011-04-05T10:49:00.005-04:00

I have four poems in the new Eccolinguistics, an excellent print-journal put out by Jared Schickling of Delete Press. You can subscribe (For free!) through the website. I'm pleased to be included in such an interesting project. All the work is, in a sense, in a dialogue with the other pieces, leading to edits I may not have pursued on my own. In any case, it's an honor to be placed next to j/j hastain, Cindy Savett, and Philip Metres, among others.

On Friday, I will be reading poetry and taking in some music and performance art at Bookspace, along with some friends and acquaintances from the Philadelphia and New York areas. It should be a pleasantly chaotic evening, hosted by my longtime partner-in-crime, Annie Plick. Just look at the flier:

Readings, folk music, aerial acrobatics, and visual art in my favorite Frankford Avenue warehouse. Come on out. I'll be reading selections from the manuscript, and maybe some new pieces, if I'm feeling confident. These events should be a performance, and not just a recitation. Hopefully, I am shuffling towards that goal with each passing day.

Where You'll Find Me (This Weekend)

2011-03-28T18:29:00.006-04:00

A brief run-down of what I'll be up to April 1, 2 and 3:

April Fools' Day is also First Friday, and Marginal Utility gallery has what looks to be an intriguing show by Richard Harrod. They promise "evocative prints that depict the imbroglio of man versus nature," with "wry wit". Allegedly, "the unknown and unsayable [will] pervade the most familiar objects such as a shower, a window shade, and a staircase." And, if it bores you, the new Machete won't. Up two flights, you can hit up Apple Jacks Studio, my friend Amanda Spitzfaden's space, where another pal, Leigh Seddon-Slingluff will be showing her work.

Speaking of Slingluff, on Saturday Jonathan and Leigh will be showing new work by Lauren Adams at their charming gallery, right by the M Room. Those two have a knack for curating great shows, so I wouldn't miss it. Unless you're a claustrophobe. In which case, the tight confines of the gallery might not be to your liking. Earlier in the day, though, you can find me in roughly the same neighborhood, at The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center's Second Annual Bookfair. It's free, so come on by, say, "Hello." I'll be holding down a table loaded with Splitleaves Press titles, including the new one by Christophe Casamassima, entitled Of. Heather Joi is responsible for the haunting cover art.

And, that brings us to Sunday. In case you're too lazy to check the "Upcoming Events" sidebar, I'll be reading at Moonstone Arts Center at three as part of Poetry Ink, a marathon reading of local writers. They're doing it in alphabetical order by first name this year, so you can catch me relatively early in the afternoon, but I recommend you stick around. There's always a surprise or five in a group that big.

See y'all around.

Onanism

2011-03-14T16:28:00.000-04:00

And some self-promotion: I will be reading at WineO on Tuesday, March 15 (tomorrow) with Debrah Morkun. Check the sidebar. I will also be hosting "A Splitleaves Affair" on Saturday, March 19 at Moonstone. Rauan Klassnik, Kim Gek Lin Short, Michelle Taransky, and Justin Marks will be reading. Click the link for details.

Spam No. Twelve

2011-03-14T05:45:00.000-04:00

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Family and Friends. Adieu my dear Betsy.

Let's Kill Off the Moonlight

2011-03-07T04:09:00.002-05:00

I think that's the title of a Marinetti manifesto. It applies here, in any case, after a week of sleepless nights. I'd be fine killing off the moonlight. The streetlamps. The rain in the gutter, the car back-starting.

I have been preoccupied, more so than usual, lately, with ideas about the future of the book, invented historiographies, Julian Jaynes' theories. I've had a lot of time to mull it all over. I recommend reading The Jaynesian and listening to James Bridle's dConstruct lecture from last summer. I have been doing a pleasant amount of revision, and am happy with where this next cycle of poems is going. No news yet on how Substrata, the manuscript, has been received.

A few more thing: See Martin McDonagh's (The Pillowman, The Lonesome West, et cetera) The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Plays and Players, if you're in Philly. Theatre Exile is one of the only companies around that consistently pushes audience's boundaries. I had the privilege of taking in a preview performance at the end of February, and I can stand behind all the positive press the production has received in CityPaper and elsewhere.

Make it to Jubilant Thicket this Sunday for Lauren Ireland, Brian Melton, and Nicholas DeBoer. Lovely people, all.

Check out Blood Pudding Press' offerings when you have the chance. Juliet Cook does some gorgeous work.

Spam No. Eleven

2011-02-22T17:36:00.000-05:00

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When I recovered, I was lying on my own bed, my sister, the scared
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continued to attack the Christians, and had taken Negropont, to the

WineO Reading - November 2, 2010

2011-02-19T19:30:00.003-05:00

Joshua Rosenzweig: Swell guy. Abbi Dion's fiancé, so even if I had anything negative to say about him (which I don't), I wouldn't. This is beginning to sound a bit cagey.

Anyway, point is, he sent me a recording of my reading at WineO on November 2, 2010. Yep, the same day Temple News filmed it. Following Abbi's introduction you can hear the definition of "a smattering of applause". You can listen to my lame banter about election day, Sheryl's raucous laughter (she was too close to the mic), and general bar noise, too.

Oh, yeah, I'm also reading some poems.

I (Don't) Heart New York

2011-02-13T14:40:00.003-05:00

Dear New York,

It's not you: It's me. Okay, well, it's definitely you, at least a little bit, but not as much as you think. It's cities in general that rub me the wrong way. I don't like the crush, the constant movement, the massive concentration of people. I'm not a "people person", and you definitely are. I mean, that alone should've ended our tryst from the get-go. Instead, I want stillness. I want quiet. I want to be able to hear the sound of my own exhalations when I walk around at dawn. Where I am now offers me some of that.

Your public transportation leaves a little to be desired. (Don't try so hard.) No, you are not London, where even the natives carry maps around in their satchels and purses. (Imagine that, Londoners not knowing the streets of their city!) But, neither are you Philadelphia, where our subway runs North and South along Broad and the El touches only Market and Frankford. Yes, we have the "spur", "trolleys", and "regional rail", but let's not mention them, please? And, wow, are you ever demanding! "Step back from the yellow line." "Do not lean against the doors." Take the G to the E, then walk around until you find what you're looking for. Our automated voices just say "Doors closing," and the station name. Yes, we like to wander, but we tend to have a direction in mind.

Honey, I know you're spread out: You've got your five kids to attend to, plus your red-headed step-child New Jersey, but when I can name every street from Fern Rock to Pattison, Baltimore to Cottman, well, we've issues, dear. I want to love you, but you can't seem to find the time between shuttling back and forth caring for them and paving over your history. And me, well, I'm a sentimental fool, keeping mansions in Fairmount preserved, erecting historical-marker signs for dead men no one even remembers, and packing friends' old tossed-off sketches and ancient manuscripts in storage. I like to look at them, sometimes, when I'm feeling lonely.

Now, you have so much going for you! Battery Park and Poets House and Saint Mark's are all great. I like a lot of your museums, and BAM and St. Ann's Warehouse, and sometimes even your vanity galleries in Chelsea are kind of okay. So, I lied about that last one, but, hey, I've heard Queens is nice! And you do manage. You do. You take care of my friends, like Christine in Greenpoint, Robby in Bed-Stuy, and Michael in TriBeCa. You even treat my brother in Jersey okay, so I guess I kind of owe you one. But it's not enough for me. I need to be more than your Saturday night. I want a Sunday kind of love.

It was wrong to string you along. But, there was so much potential, I thought we could make it work. I see now I was stubborn, but you can't say I didn't try. You get around, so I know you'll find someone new. It'll hurt to see you on his arm, but I want to stay friends. And, yes, I'll still bring you your cigarettes, since they're half-price here. You'll just need to remind me if you like lights or 100s. I never could get it straight.

If you need me, I'll be in Bartram's Garden or out in Mount Moriah.

Yours, always,

Benjamin

Temple News Videorama

2011-01-27T21:52:00.001-05:00

Back in November, Temple University News saw fit to cover the WineO reading series, as part of their focus on the arts in Philadelphia. Abbi Dion, host extraordinaire, and this humble poet, were both filmed and briefly quoted in the weekly campus paper. I'll scan that eventually. Here's the video. You can laugh at my glistening brow and raucous laughter:

Thanks to Ian Rose, Joe Russo, and Rachel Stewart for putting this together.

Find Me Friday(s)

2011-01-24T19:48:00.001-05:00

No news right now, but February 4, find me at Amanda Spitzfaden's studio, where she will be exhibiting some of her recent work.

Prior to that, I will be releasing a broadside, The Lung of the Poet by New York's genre-bending Michael Leong on Splitleaves Press. We're adding a PayPal button soon, I swear. But, for now, any orders postmarked or emailed to us by the end of the month will be cheaper than usual: Two dollars off every item. It's a good deal, when you realize that nothing we sell is more than ten dollars.

Anyway, the Friday after that, I'll be reading at Unnameable Books with Robert Snyderman, Jody Buchman, and Popahna Brandes. If you'd rather be at Pete's Candy Store that night, I'll understand, but that doesn't mean I won't hold it against you. I don't know. I guess I can let the first time slide.

Swamped

2011-01-12T13:20:00.003-05:00

Raft Magazine's second issue is online now. You can read (and listen) to five poems of mine: "Auger", "Witness", "Proclivities", "Chanced", and "Jejuned". These form a small section of my manuscript, still in process, still untitled.

I love an online journal that fully realizes the potential of the medium. Having audio is a Great Leap Forward, minus the starvation and agricultural catastrophe. While it's still a very young journal, editor Brian Seabolt has an eye for good writing, and I'm pleased to share the company of Jane Wong, Billy Cancel, and my friend, Debrah Morkun, who appeared in Issue One.

Reminder: I'll be reading in a month's time at Unnameable Books. Check the sidebar for more details. If you live in New York, well, I hope to see you there.

Spam No. Ten

2011-01-03T19:27:00.001-05:00

BuyDiscooutunedPhamrcaeuuticsOfHighh_qqluaiityInOurOniIinePhrmaacy.

Cis their brethren took them.
Have not more gift in taciturnity.
In the wreaths which the brows of our past years have worn.

Never Celebrated

2010-12-23T20:32:00.003-05:00

New year coming, and new expectations, I suppose. Compiling the manuscript. Scraping sheaves of paper from the cracked wood floor, shuffling, reshuffling, like a tarot deck. Here is The Hierophant, here is The Hanged Man. I will try to let go. I will cast words to the wind.

Most days, it feels I am writing towards a void. This chicken-scratch could go on, endless. "Under our heads, the world is a long drop and an ache," Charles Wright tells me. I place his book back on the shelf, between the bibles and Wittgenstein.

It's not all glum, all wind-whipped: There was a lunar eclipse, there are new calendars, and there are long-gone friends returned from the four corners. Peace on earth. Peace on earth. "All I want for Christmas is for everyone to be significantly worse off than they were before."

Nohow On

2010-11-24T07:39:00.004-05:00

I have been doing things like this, which you can buy here:

Cruelty by Jonathan Pogoda, published by Splitleaves Press.

I have also been suffering nosebleeds from the cold, and feel like I'm waking up with a mouth of blood each morning. It's like chewing on tinfoil without the attendant tactile pleasure.

Al-u-min-i-um

2010-11-12T12:08:00.004-05:00

Stuart Rome

FLO9-8-1, Turtle Tracks, Florida Everglades, 2009

Digital Print on aluminum-leaf paper

I have developed a new-found appreciation for Stuart Rome's photographs. Textural nature. A few might still be scattered around Gallery 339, up by Fitler Square. Check out that park, while you're at it. Head to Good Karma (not the one on Tenth Street, which feels like a warehouse), and Schuylkill River Park. Head back down Sansom. Record shop at Long in the Tooth. Say, "Hello," to Nick for me.

Just don't invite all your friends. Don't spoil it.

Electioneering

2010-11-01T01:37:00.004-04:00

You could check the sidebar, or you could just read this post. Either way, I'll be reading at WineO on Tuesday at eight. Election day. Vote, or don't. But, show up at 447 Poplar Street. It won't be too painful. I promise.

Thanks to Abbi Dion for putting it all together.

Spam No. Nine

2010-10-26T03:18:00.000-04:00

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Skin Graft Machinery

2010-10-17T00:59:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I call SEPTA customer service just to hear that soothing, automated woman read me the bus schedules for the following day. It's not that I intend to ride, much preferring my bike or the El, but that it's strangely intimate. I spoon my pillow, phone pressed against my ear, far too late to call whomever I'm seeing. And anyway, would she whisper, "Route 33, Penn's Landing to Tioga," or simply sweet-nothings? Would I smell hard plastic and electrical wiring, as circuits grow nervous and begin to emit heat, or her toothpaste and fading perfume?

The Apiary Blog

2010-10-12T14:04:00.008-04:00

Poems from The Apiary's blog are back up online. Huzzah for web archiving, scanners, and web hosting. Check them out here, or click the sidebar.

Update on Saturday, October 16, 2010:

Their blog is up and running again, so you can read those four poems properly and comfortably, not poorly scanned by yrs truly. Click.

Update on Sunday, October 17, 2010:

The formatting on the website's blog seems to elide my stanza breaks. Therefore, I am re-posting the scans from the original web page, before they switched servers. Click here or on the sidebar, s'il te plaît.

Update on Thursday, October 21, 2010:

Michelle Crouch is wonderful. She got them working again. I nominate her for secular sainthood. The poems are here, now, and baring any other calamities, will stay there. Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah.

Sympathy for the Devil

2010-10-12T07:53:00.000-04:00

Or, why I support the Westboro Baptist Church in Snyder v. Phelps:

Snyder admitted he could not hear the WBC during the funeral, and only suffered after viewing coverage of the protest and their online screeds. He had a clear choice not to view that material.

I believe in respecting the dead and the right of families to grieve, which is why I'm in favor of limits keeping protest outside the cemetery gates. This follows the same principle that makes animal-rights activists stand across the street from a lab owner's home when protesting. It's an anti-harassment measure, and is consistent with prior court rulings.

Saying protest does not fall "within the public interest" lead to the arrest of anti-war activists like Eugene Debs on trumped up charges of sedition during WWI. Not really a precedent I want SCOTUS to set again, after they rolled back those powers in Schenck v. United States ("clear and present danger") and Brandenburg v. Ohio ("imminent lawless action").

Of course, I find the WBC repulsive and have protested against them when they rolled through town. But, that doesn't change the facts of the case. I'm just hoping SCOTUS, in their opinion, says something to the effect of "You win, now go home, and thank god or whatever you believe in that you live in a country that tolerates and protects your vile speech."

Dull

2010-10-11T20:31:00.003-04:00

No more posts with any personality in them. This blog will be strictly "business only". Don't need my little complaint department popping up on Google.

Up. Date.

2010-09-28T19:54:00.003-04:00

Yes, I was here this weekend, despite being sick as a dog, despite nearly sweating through my sportcoat (tweed, if you must know), despite the horrid weather. I had reserved a table at Little Berlin's artist bookfair, and damn it, I was going. So, I went, and Splitleaves did quite well, thank you. Ran into Adam and his wife, Megan, as well as dear, old Brian, whom I had not seen in many moons. Or, rather, they ran into me, as I was seated.

Still ill, still miserable, still the definition of a wet-blanket. I did remember to buy food today, so there's that. Otherwise, I've mostly been sitting on the couch, listening to Moon Pix on headphones and reading the Marquis de Sade. 120 Days of Sodom. Brutal. I guess I'm in that kind of mood. I've even been lighting prayer candles.

Ironically, of course.

Languid

2010-09-12T10:58:00.005-04:00

All this coffee is wearing a hole in my budget, not to mention my stomach. But what else should I do from six a.m. to noon, on a Sunday, while it's spitting, threatening?

I've already rewritten some things, but can't anymore. My hand is too spidery. After a while, it all runs together. So, I'm listening to 764-HERO and reading the BBC.

Should probably finish Bishop and Lowell's correspondence for that paper I'm writing, but nothing feels necessary, let alone urgent.

Oh, Nova Scotia

2010-08-12T23:11:00.003-04:00

"My father... used to say talk is cheap but it takes money to buy rum."

- Alden Nowlan

From Gregory Cook's "An Interview with Alden Nowlan"

News, Fit to Print

2010-07-25T01:41:00.005-04:00

New poems are up at Counterexample Poetics. I'm pleased to be included in such an excellent online anthology. Thanks go out to Felino A. Soriano, for publishing the pieces. Check out the rest of the site while you're at it. I promise, it's worth it.

Splitleaves Press will be at R5 Productions' biannual "Punk Rock Flea Market" on Sunday, July 25, from ten a.m. to two p.m. Your dirt-cheap entry fee gets you air-conditioning and helps keep all-ages shows going in Philadelphia. Plus, you can pick up some great chapbooks and talk to me about literature. So, stop by 461 N. 9th Street. It's not like you have anything better to do.

Like "The Phold" of '64

2010-07-08T16:17:00.000-04:00

Motion landed me a losing streak.

Then again, so did stasis.

Read and Listen

2010-07-06T09:40:00.002-04:00

New poems up at The Apiary Corporation and Otoliths. The new issue of Otoliths goes live on August 1, with a print edition to follow, if you'd like to purchase it. I'm quite pleased to be included there: Past company includes Paul Siegell, Carlos Soto Román, and Felino Soriano. The Apiary, of course, is brand new and Philly-based. I'm in there with too many friends and acquaintances to mention. The print issue will be out before the fall, with my poems "Deluvian" and "Sighted".

As for readings, check the sidebar. I've got two on Sunday, for Splitleaves Press and Jubilant Thicket. Hope to see y'all at one of them!

Wherever

2010-06-25T12:51:00.003-04:00

Still reading and re-reading Julian Jaynes, I will get to other books eventually. Was made a present of the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, hardcover, First English Edition, "just because". Making a concerted effort to listen more, talk less. Must go to the Hirshhorn for the Yves Klein retrospective. Let everything I do be as willful as International Klein Blue.

Receiving letters from indeterminate addresses, handed far too many tracts at convenience stores. Skidded out during yesterday's storm, scraped my left side, my right hand, the soak destroyed a watch band. Power failed, cleaned up by church candles and votives.

How to Keep Busy Without Really Trying

2010-06-07T09:18:00.002-04:00

Or, an abbreviated list of things to do this week:

1. Watch the Flyers lose La Coupe Stanley on Wednesday. See them choke with me and relive the good old days when Philly sports teams let you down.

2. Hear me read poems, mostly new, at Mostly Books, with Kim Gek Lin Short and Jacob Russell on Friday. They're both swell.

3. Go to Tiger Strikes Asteroid and check out the new show, especially Mia Rosenthal's work, since you missed the opening on Friday. Note the new hours. While you're there, hit up Marginal Utility on the second floor, or if you don't feel like walking down two flights, bother Amanda in her studio and ask to see Jonathan Slingluff's paintings. Pet her cats. They're friendly.

4. Sunday, go to Moonstone/Robin's Books, for The Apiary reading. They picked up two of my poems for their new issue, which should be out sometime this summer. I'll let you know more when I know more.

5. Buy Michael Bernstein's new chapbook and read that. Also, read some Lorine Niedecker or George Perec. It beats watching the Phillies lose, and books don't care if you sweat all over them.

WineO Reading - April 27, 2010

2010-05-30T20:34:00.002-04:00

Audio files of my reading at WineO on April 27, 2010, with an introduction by the always wonderful Abbi Dion. Download or stream them, but remember that you're missing Patrick Lucy's reading from the same evening. Your loss.

Thanks to Abbi for the recording.

"_____ will be here in 20 minutes"

2010-05-17T11:25:00.003-04:00

Yes, like Walter Hopps I do get around to updating this page. Call it "A Protest Against Forgetting". I have been busy finding a place to live, at the gallery, working, and writing, of course. I have also been stuck in Kim Gek Lin Short's The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits and am excited to hear her read next week, and think I am reading with her in the beginning of June. I will update this space accordingly. In between her work, I have been reading Julian Jaynes. Again.

I am heading out the door soon to meet Matthew while he is in town, with brief stops at the pharmacy for vitamins and Printer's Place to reprint my chapbook. Yes, all the copies sold or were traded, often for a cup of coffee. Anyway, my "To Do" list this week consists of hunting down Jamie Townsend to give him copies of Specimen, Reflow, and Brandon Holmquest to do the same with his work. I need to clean the bathroom and do wash. I need to write Nicole and send her something for her birthday, which I have bought but need to mail to Georgia. I should probably nail down a date for the Splitleaves six-month reading, get some things framed, and paint the new place before I move in officially.

I will probably just spend a lot of time watching playoff hockey, baseball, and reading Sebald's After Nature. I will probably write and revise these inane poetries.

Spam No. Eight

2010-04-30T11:46:00.002-04:00

pouring thumbs definitive barked echoed predicted ascent stupor skeletons CA coupons sustaining Kissing environmentalists absurdum disinfectant explanatory Roofs biochemists relishes melding biggest exhilarating clock asthma antiobama leaps Feed vicinity it permits barus neighboring Flora industrious same steadfastly Pelosis bare furry muddling foundations grappler reasons disrepair critically blazing censuses TWILIGHT undercut biased copper circulate Zernike solid festive roundabout logo referrals adhesives measurements apologize cabs fanfare warn Bedbug disdaining unite toasty placebo auction lost acres coaxed Bobby taped officer Obstacles coalition snapshots numerous structure Okla knocked pronuclei emblem averted girls swerved plug Lifestream winces generations convene groundwater hallway income Biogas Bushwick catapulted humorous salami dog remission Parking curried girth avenge incubators operational cubes freaks waiver Liebling graver Dark Filings glum largescale experts statutes

Mark Yr Calendars

2010-04-23T15:03:00.004-04:00

This Tuesday, April 27, at half-past seven in the evening, I will be reading at (one of) the best series in Philly. The doyenne of class and good taste, Ms. Abbi Dion, has invited me to read at WineO with the always [insert superlative] Patrick Lucy. There may be music. There may not be. Regardless, we will have a hootenanny.

So, come out. I'll have the few remaining copies of Whereupon on hand, but will be reading a bunch of new pieces written in the months since. See you there.

List for the Past Week No. Twelve

2010-04-17T13:52:00.004-04:00

Or, what makes this whole "living" thing bearable:

1. An oddly productive period of writing. Setting down for meditative sessions, finding the process less strained than usual. Revision still wags this dog, and I worry about it coming too easily. But I feel it properly, and Dennis Lee's essay on "Kinaesthetic Knowing" is a comfort.

2. Splitleaves, Debrah Morkun's new poetry, too many readings to attend, Berryman's Dream Song 159, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Friends having a rare Saturday off from work.

3. Baseball season. Zoo With Roy. The SEC doing what it should have done three years ago. Finally. Thanks for fiddling while Rome burned, guys.

4. Black coffee and cheap Fortunas. That Squeeze song.

5. Finding altars to the Mother Goddess in the thin strip of woods between suburban sprawl and a county road.

6. Urban decay with Annie. Places like this:

List for the Past Week No. Eleven

2010-04-07T14:59:00.005-04:00

1. Civilized debauchery and less sleep than usual. This means I am getting about one hour each night. I blame idiots gunning motorcycles at six a.m., strange houses / couches, dehydration, heat (in that order), and the usual insomnia.

2. I do not like this heat wave. It is not summer yet.

3. Exploring empty warehouses and the Reading Viaduct with Annie. I broke out the camera for the first time in ages. I mostly took pictures of wires and elevator shafts. I have little cuts and roadrash from clambering up and over. That does feel like summer.

4. Putting together Debrah Morkun's chapbook for Splitleaves and thinking too much about tarot cards because of it.

5. Excited to see her and Brandon Holmquest read at Blend tomorrow, and for the Heretical Texts reading Saturday.

6. Also excited about the goings-on at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. New members! Curating! List-making! Unfortunately our Tuesday meeting is making me miss Bob Perelman's The Alps. Goddamn.

7. Kyrgyzstan, goddamn. Who was telling me they had a sister teaching English there? Why did no one deliver the newspaper this morning?

In Step

2010-03-31T09:29:00.005-04:00

This Friday at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, come celebrate spring (it'll be seventy Fahrenheit, if the weatherman hasn't lied) and take this in:

Anne Schaefer's In Step, opening reception starting at six. A site-specific installation, she told me herself of plans to drop the ceiling and make one's immersion more complete. From the press release: "In her new installation, Anne Schaefer fuses dynamic color and pattern relationships with the unique dimensions of the gallery to create an immersive, patterned environment. The title of the piece references the main wall's stepped pattern, the act of creating a piece based on the dimensional constraints of the gallery, as well as the viewer's experience of being compelled to move around the space to the cadence of the pattern and color."

See you there.

Ruined Maps and Surgical Theatres

2010-03-19T13:58:00.005-04:00

Not doing enough. Never doing enough. Listening to Jawbreaker and Xenakis' Metastasis. Reading Rancière, Kōbō Abe, Dana Levin, Oppen.

neither in word
nor meaning but the small
selves haunting

"If It All Went Up in Smoke", he wrote, and I couldn't get to sleep this week so I watched a lot of Cassavetes. Shadows and Opening Night twice each. Got a lot of writing done between, found a lot of small hours, ones and fours on the clock, that felt like weeks, sweating and meditating, praying to my father's god until twelve lines appeared on the page. Physical poems. (Meta)physical poems.

Met Marion's cat, Hilda Doolittle. Bought a domain name, splitleaves.com, printed and bound Brandon Holmquest's Stereo Daguerreotype. I am excited to see them both tonight at Mostly Books, Marion and Brandon, I mean, and for Stan Mir's book-release party at Brickbat.

Man, Friday

2010-03-06T09:42:00.007-05:00

Woke up slightly buzzed and missing most of a pack of cigarettes. I suppose I must have smoked them, though I do remember giving one to a bloke on Arch in return for two dimes. I tried to palm the change back to him, but he refused. Adamantly. Vociferously. Otherwise, my memory of last night is fine: Nathan Pankratz's beautifully layered paintings at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, almost sonic in their intensity, Allison Reimus' claustrophobic interiors at Grizzly Grizzly, the new Machete, good crowds, running into Danny Snelson and Gregory Laynor, getting stumble-drunk with Sara, Jeff, and Andy once the gallery closed.

Ryat was playing by someone's studio, in the spot where there's usually an old piano. Instead, it was a jumble of laptops, effects pedals, and makeshift drum kits. Best local band? Probably. Ethereal vocals and improvisational electronics, but I might be biased. Christina sung phrases from my poem "Record" as one of their final songs, and goddamn, I am really looking forward to some more interdisciplinary experimentation once she returns from criss-crossing the continent.

Yes, you can still get a copy of Whereupon or Frank Sherlock's chapbook-with-the-long-title. Head over to Splitleaves or come and find me. I really ought to buy a domain name already. Anyway, working on poems printed on postcards for Brandon Holmquest, which is a thrill. Getting estimates from print shops and looking forward to hearing music from Glass, Reich, and Bryars tonight at the Annenberg. You can probably still get tickets, ya Neanderthal, you. Having my date with the woods tomorrow. Projected temperature: High of fifty-five.

Heavyweight January

2010-03-02T09:47:00.006-05:00

Today, Brandon Holmquest and Hailey Higdon at Wineo. Tomorrow, Laura Jaramillo, Laura Elrick, and Laura Neuman at Kelly Writers House. Thursday, AIDS Thrift. Friday, Nathan Pankratz's Calamity Jane opening at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Saturday, works by Phillip Glass, Gavin Bryars, and Steve Reich at The Annenberg. Work in between. I guess you can find me.

Sunday, barring a sub-zero windchill, I am going to the Pine Barrens, and I don't care if the loamy earth is buried under another foot of snow. It's been too long. I'm sick of woods so thin you can see through them, Fairmount Park, weeds struggling in the interstice between two blocks of concrete. I hate this goddamn city. Need scratches and sunburn and rinsing cedar water off me. Can't write with exhaust caught in my throat. Listening to a lot of Red Stars Theory. Calendar is still tacked to two months ago. "To Do" lists piling up.

Don't Forget Me in the Dimension You Choose to Live

2010-02-26T21:47:00.006-05:00

Frank Sherlock's chapbook-length poem, Don't Forget Me in the Dimension You Choose to Live, was released today. It's the second publication from Splitleaves Press. And, well, it's kind of exciting:

Eighteen pages. 8.5 x 11. Top-bound with wire. Speckled paper with laser-jet.

Limited edition of 50. $4.00.

List for the Past Week No. Ten

2010-02-11T11:43:00.003-05:00

Or, a list that does not include snow.

1. All appointments canceled. Unsure of today's situation regarding AIDS Thrift. Unsure of tomorrow's regarding Tiger Strikes Asteroid. I know that work has been cancelled until Monday.

2. I want to title a piece of music "The Unquestioned Answer", so as to make Ives toss and turn in his earthen bed. But, I can't write music, and the title seems a touch polemical. Nor do I want to tarnish his memory.

3. I have tickets for Florence and the Machine at the TLA on Easter Monday, works by Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, and Gavin Bryars presented by The Philadelphia Singers, Relâche, and Orchestra 2001 at The Annenberg Center on March 6, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing John Adams' City Noir and Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" Symphony on May 19 at the Kimmel Center. Tell me if you're interested. Otherwise, I suppose I'm going stag.

4. I've done too much laundry and stared at my notebook too long these past few days. When my eyes close, I see the clothes going 'round on a background of thin, grey lines and my spidery handwriting.

5. The government now talks openly about killing American citizens. I miss the good, ol' days of COINTELPRO. At least, back then, it was sort of a secret.

View From High Places

2010-02-03T13:41:00.008-05:00

Tonight, The City Real and Imagined at ICA. My friends Frank Sherlock and CA Conrad will be reading at eight, along with photographer Zoe Strauss.

Have sold about one-third of the chapbooks in one week. Contact me if you want one. We're also taking submissions, looking to publish more books and broadsides in the future. Email splitleaves@gmail.com if you've got something worthwhile.

AHN | VHS may have closed up, but Tiger Strikes Asteroid is still here:

Pictured: Carrie Scagna's "View From High Places"

From the press release: "Light, weightless, transparent. Carrie Scanga works with the temporality of tracing paper. The spaces she constructs are held together by the folds of paper - transforming through the duration of the exhibition. In View From High Places, Scanga incorporates printmaking - creating a unique marriage of 2D and 3D." Come see it this Friday at six o'clock.

People Who Died

2010-01-29T15:29:00.005-05:00

Éric Rohmer, Howard Zinn, J.D. Salinger, Jacques Martin.

January needs to be over.

I can't decide whether to put up a quotation, a drawing, or a film clip.

I guess I'll just go with the Jim Carroll song:

Whereupon

2010-01-23T18:55:00.003-05:00

My chapbook, Whereupon, was released by Splitleaves Press today.

http://splitleaves.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/whereupon-released/

Six poems. 4.25 x 5.5. Quarter-folded. Cream paper with laser-jet and lithograph.

Limited edition of 75. $3.00 from the site by mail order, $2.00 in person.

Small and Getting Smaller

2010-01-20T00:10:00.004-05:00

I left The Wooden Shoe yesterday. I found nine months of discrimination and disapprobation tough to handle. I think it will be for the best. I hope so, at least.

I have decided to start a small press. The first work published will be my own, though I will eventually put out work from other writers. I am laying out a six poem chapbook. One sheet of paper will be printed on both sides, then folded into quarters, creating a front and back cover, two inside pages, and, once unfolded, a broadside of four poems. They will be numbered in an edition of seventy-five, I think. I will post pictures when it's completed and begin accepting ideas from avant-garde writers and text artists.

Today, Wednesday

2010-01-13T15:18:00.000-05:00

Looking at old issues of ArtForum, thanks to Tim, in between rereading Lolita. The last time I picked that book up, I was fourteen. Given how much I like Speak, Memory, I think it deserves another chance. In the meantime, Tim is kicking my ass in some weird version of online Scrabble that I cannot get used to; eight tiles and different letter values. At least, that's my excuse for why he has a forty point advantage. Oh! And he's played it ten times more than I have. That helps.

I usually shy away from "the internet literature magazine blog of the future", but this article, about "Moves" in Contemporary Poetry was worth my time. Thank god I'm not guilty of any of these egregious clichés, but perhaps it just means I'm terribly out of touch. "Better a disaster than a lack of being"? Sure, Alain Badiou had something else in mind when he wrote that, but I'll apply it where I please.

Headed to International House tonight. I must confess I am more interested in the Maya Deren and Bruce Conner shorts preceding the main program than anything else. Except seeing Sasha for the first time in awhile, of course.

I will find cheap server space if it kills me. This online arts journal will get off the ground. I've finally figured out Dreamweaver. Huzzah.

List for the Past Week No. Nine

2010-01-04T20:50:00.003-05:00

Or, things I have been particularly enamored of lately:

1. The idea of starting an online arts journal.

2. Letterpress.

3. W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn.

4. Frozen bogs in Wharton State Forest.

5. The visage of Jean-Pierre Léaud.

6. Using "mobile vulgus" in place of the contraction "mob".

7. Zapatero as Mr. Bean.

S.O.S.

2009-12-27T20:09:00.001-05:00

I'm listening to a seven-inch called Learning the Morse Code. It's a recitation of dots and dashes, spelling out letters and common acronyms. It's hypnotic, and it's often a few moments before I realize Side A has ended; it's time to flip the vinyl over, place the needle by the first groove, begin again.

Tomorrow brings a deinstallation at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Coffee at Higher Grounds, hopefully running into Marion. Then sitting on the fire escape of the gallery, reading Bishop, smoking too much, (A dime for every time I've said, "I'll quit,"...) 'til ten a.m. Getting in to the city early, trying to avoid being run off the road on my bicycle again. Avoiding rush hour is exigent.

I need new cleats on the heels of my boots, vitamins, blood tests. The last can wait; I swore to help Alicia clean house before her New Year's party.

Like Some Passage to India

2009-12-19T19:28:00.003-05:00

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

- E.M. Forster, from "The Raison d'être of Criticism in the Arts" (1947)

This page is slowly becoming a sad repository for quotations from my reading, occasionally rediscovered on Bookslut. There really isn't much more to my life right now, with the notebook propped open to its last clean page, just in time to end the decade. Wish I could write some fin de siècle, but I was born in the wrong century. I have a head cold and there is such snow outside that even the CBC reported on it. Hilarious. I couldn't work at the gallery yesterday and felt like a terrible human being, calling Alex to beg off. Taking DayQuil and sweating today. Reading the Times. I owe Brooks two beers now, one for every Dangerous Ponies show I said I'd go to but missed. And he looks so good in drag! Anyway, I can't do much more right now than listen to Dvořák's second, Istvan Kertesz conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, found for fifty cents in the basement of Repo Records. So I play it in the garage on a horrible, portable turntable, stamping out cigarettes in time to the wind lashing the panes. This is the time for year's-end lists, but I am not in the mood to make them. I want nothing to do with anything.

The Endless Process of Applying Oneself

2009-12-12T10:58:00.004-05:00

Now that all those goddamn applications are out of the way, I should probably get working on applying for a summer residency at Pyramid Atlantic. Alexis told me about the place, and it sounds like something I would want to do. Paper making, letter-pressing, printmaking, book-binding. End up with a limited edition, maybe fifty, maybe one-hundred and fifty. Sounds like a good project, and beats the hell out of laying out a chapbook at Kinko's. I feel like I should have something I could alternately sell or give away to other poets or artists. Something that won't end up next to the toilet, or buried in the magazine rack under Architectural Digest, as it's hand-made, and no one would be that callous, I hope.

Watching Old Joy again and reading Auden's translation of Goldoni's libretto for Arcifanfaro, King of Fools; or It's Always Too Late to Learn. Yes, that is the complete title. Yes, I know it makes me sound like an upper-crust, condescending twit, but I can't help that. I watch a baseball game and care about the batter's strikeout-to-plate-appearance-ratio and the pitcher's WHIP. This is why they don't like me in sports bars.

Writing is going well, still, but I have to confine it to my home and freezing churchyards (twenty degrees this week). I cannot escape Xmas music, and if I hear "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" with its vaguely racist lyrics about "Eskimos" one more time, in one more coffeehouse, I swear I will stick a pneumatic drill in each of my eardrums. It's almost as bad as hearing Tony Blair try to defend the occupation of Iraq ad nauseam.

Waiting for people to come home from Chicago, Boston, Bryn Mawr, and Toledo. Waiting for this miserable decade to end, so that someone can finally name it.

Once the Dogs Have Quit Their Barking

2009-12-03T04:54:00.008-05:00

The dead came back from Jerusalem, where they found not what they sought. They prayed me let them in and besought my word, and thus I began my teaching.

- C.G. Jung, "Sermo I" from Septum Sermones ad Mortuous (1916) -

Running on caffeine, nicotine, and the vessel dream. Holding on by the skin of my yellow, country teeth. Busy few days ahead. Work, AIDS Thrift, mailing Starla her money from consigned zines sold, First Friday reception for Sandra Burns and Christina Day at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, doctor, watching Eyes Without a Face, Marion Bell reading at Fergies. Counter-protesting Westboro Baptist (to which I will not link), starting Time's Arrow, work, Brooks' band Dangerous Ponies at Space 1026 on Tuesday. And, as always, writing, revising, nitpicking, sweaty palms and a trance cadence, this fever I can't ever break and wouldn't want to if I could.

Philosophical Pick-Up Lines

2009-11-16T00:19:00.002-05:00

It began as a joke last summer between my friend Matthew and I, while sitting on a bench outside the Rodin, drinking birch beer and eating horrible veggie burgers. But, I still think of another silly line now and again. This afternoon on PATCO, sun streaming in and reading Debord, I looked across the aisle and thought, "Society's a spectacle, so let's perform." Other notables I'll never, ever use:

- "I've got the Being if you've got the Time."

- "How about letting your existence precede my essence?"

- "Being with you is a categorical imperative."

- "I've got a Nietzsche I'd like you to fill."

- "Make Pangloss right."

- "Let's express what Freud said we repress."

Use them on philosophy undergrads, and creep them out in ten seconds flat.

Summary

2009-11-14T07:05:00.002-05:00

Days revolve around doctors appointments, AIDS Thrift, The Shoe. Dog walking and clerking in that law office for pocket money. Reading Žižek's In Defense of Lost Causes. All of a sudden The Book Trader has what I'm looking for, and I came home Wednesday, my bag stuffed full to bursting. There's a stack on my nightstand high as the bedside lamp. Received beautiful letters from beautiful friends, but I wish I knew how to respond. Writing comes slowly though inexorable as death. I'm pleased with the content, not the pace. As for death, I found I've made my peace with it, if only it would make its peace with me.

Dinner with colleagues last night, showed up buzzed. Was coerced into a grumbled-sung rendition of "Sweet Caroline". I'm sure there's a photograph on the internet, somewhere. Left early and took the El, wound up at some punk house, couldn't find the basement or the band. Got pissed and half-a-pack was bummed off me in an hour. Someone, then stumbled home with pants rain-soaked for the last train east.

I'll probably be here on Sunday. It's been a while since I've seen Greg or Sarah, and I need to try out some of this new material. Oh, and more pieces "held for future publication" at annual journals. Look for my name in early 2011. Damn these "space limitations" and "publishing schedules".

Patch and Plot

2009-11-04T19:31:00.003-05:00

So I am very excited about this First Friday, more so than others. The number one reason is that it promises to be a good time, as always, with camaraderie and no pretension, at Copy, Vox Populi, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, AHN | VHS, and Stockbridge. You can get a beer and chat and play pool and people watch and share a smoke with a wonderful stranger (who turns out to be one of the artists exhibiting) from the fourth floor fire escape. But that's a given. I guess the true reason I am excited is that I am an intern / lackey at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a turn of events I am attributing to the wonderful Alex Paik and his munificence. I helped him and Timothy install the show on Sunday, and was incredibly impressed by the work. Check out his piece, "Golem" along the right-hand wall, the concentric semi-circles forming a humanoid shape, layered over the repetitive grammar lessons of a Hebrew school primer. Let it sneak up on you. In Tim's words: "The golem was activated by one phrase, and deactivated by a similar phrase." Never has the strike of a lamed across the page been so poignant.

Also, if you show up, you can hang out with me. I'm helping with set up and clean up. Surprise me. It'll be fun, I promise.

Transmitter

2009-10-12T23:24:00.005-04:00

More rejection letters in the mail, but none today. The only good thing about Christopher Columbus is that he makes the government stop working.

Cynthia Arrieu-King's reading on Saturday was like a trip to the chiropractor. She worked the knots out of my own poems, and I found myself scribbling half the night. Old ideas are like underused muscles, stretching and straining. With time, they become defined. I'm looking forward to reading her chapbook The Small Anything City when it arrives. For now, I'm going with Piaget's The Language and Thought of the Child, having just finished Ivan Klíma's No Saints or Angels. There's a beautiful passage which I can't find again, and a line running through the book, describing all our lives as the blink of Time's eye.

Brought Sasha along with me. Enjoyed her company, chatting, always. The shops along Fabric Row were closed, though the tattoo parlors seemed welcoming, bright neon on a crisp fall night. Antique and junk dealers were out in force against the setting sun. She bought old keys for a project, I got a weathered wooden box that smelled like the smoked fish it once held, and what I imagine Nova Scotia has by way of possibility. Perhaps this coming summer.

The Shoe's new store is officially ribbon-cut. 704 South Street. Look for me there a lot this week, shelving books and acclimating. Friday I'm meeting Beth again, Saturday an artist's bookfair at Little Berlin. Trying to break all my bad habits at once. Looking forward to failing. Quitting is the easiest thing there is.

List for the Past Week No. Eight

2009-10-06T20:33:00.006-04:00

1. Keep forgetting to try American Spirits. Keep forgetting to Netflix John Waters' oeuvre. I'll write it on my forehead backwards if I have to do it.

2. Met Beth at The Last Drop on Friday. Talked about process. She's writing me a reference. Killed time, headed North.

4. Half-lost myself in those tunnels around Eleventh and Wood. Perfect spot for a mugging. Trash strewn everywhere, sat on a rotting crate and wrote. Remarkably peaceful, despite being by a trestle and those boarded factories.

4. Met Luren Jenison from Copy Gallery. I was unfashionably on time, so we talked, had a drink on the balcony. Check her space out next time you're at Vox. It's the one that's tucked into the doorway, by the bathroom. Don't pass it by, jerk.

5. Was offered an internship at Tiger Strikes Asteroid that I am really hoping will work out, since my hopes of gainful employment are diminishing. Unemployment is reaching towards ten percent. Will have to keep doing odd jobs for pocket change. Winter coming, snow shoveling. Combined with finance committee work at The Shoe, regular staffing, and maybe helping AIDS Thrift, I could actually be busy.

6. Reading Rudolf Arnheim's Film as Art, which comes across as incredibly dated.

7. I'll be at the Israeli refusenik talk at Penn, and Chapterhouse for the usual reading series. Cynthia Arrieu-King, Lawrence Giffin, and Chris Hosea.

Every Shining Time You Arrive

2009-10-02T00:51:00.001-04:00

It's official. After much speculation over recrimination, degradation, indoctrination, internal friction, Sunny Day Real Estate is a band, again. Last night, I saw their bodies, blood, and mine ears have heard the glory of the coming of a chord. Jeremy Enigk, Dan Hoerner, Nate Mendel, and William Goldsmith kept us waiting outside The Trocadero, which my Pop maintains was a burlesque club back in his day, on a crisp fall evening. The Jealous Sound opened. Met some lovely folks from Rowan in line, and then we crushed and rushed against the stage, singing.

The band played most of Diary and LP2, a few cuts from How It Feels to Be Something On, and the much-heralded, still-unnamed new song. They thanked the crowd profusely, showered us with fulsome praise between each number, apologized for making us wait nearly a decade. I think we gave the love right back to them; the crowd knew every lick and lyric, and they played the longest encore I've heard in quite some time. My voice is sore to shot and head is pounding, but it was worth it.

If only I hadn't hemorrhaged my wallet over the past five years, scouring the internet for seven-inches and imports! All those rarities I lovingly collected are now being reissued as bonus tracks to the albums. At least I can say I own Thief, Steal Me a Peach, with its attendant beautiful songs and packaging, as those rough cuts are still buried in a vault somewhere.

So, tomorrow, coffee at The Last Drop with Beth, talking shop and plans and catching up, then my usual gallery crawling, haunting the balconies and studios of the Khmer Building. I'm particularly excited for this at Tiger Strikes Asteroid:

Click it to read it, or just show up. See you there.

Spam No. Seven

2009-09-22T17:19:00.002-04:00

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In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

2009-09-16T01:26:00.003-04:00

I don't sleep much anymore, but when I do, I dream of Anna.

She shifts, nervous, in a red dress, barefoot and stockingless, spider-veined flesh. Slant sun beneath a rotten trestle, new mud and knotgrass. Her faceless, nameless stillborns cling to flimsy fabric. Her visage is bent, has always been bent, around an invisible object. It was the cancer that took her, a year before my birth. Here lies my middle name, "Aaron", masculinised.

In dreams we whisper from a distance half-an-acre far. We find a détente. There is no reason for moving, neither forwards, nor backwards. This is how we meet.

Goings-On

2009-09-10T12:19:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, another rejection letter in the post. Bill, bank statement. Took the train in, out of rides on the fare card. Walked. Rain spitting, dried off in The Last Drop. Realized I left the window open at home, could expect wet wash. Three cups, a half pack of cigarettes. Need a job. Read some essays on The Rose. Got up.

Spent the morning poring over a poem I'm calling "Deluvian". Sat in the Fourth and Pine burial ground. To say "Old Pine Street Church" would be repetitious. Was freezing through a sweater, hand shaking as I crossed out lines, chicken-scratched in new ones, enjambed. Read aloud to myself. Might have looked homeless. Dripped ash on summer's flotsam. Last dandelion, church tracts, a crinkled leaf, maybe.

Bought Coltrane's '61 Village Vanguard recordings, Behan's complete plays at AIDS Thrift. Upset Kris at work, she stormed out, came back later. Said, said, said. Took a break, awkward conversation with Sarah, who I forgot lived in the area. Congratulated her on Friday's performance. Said I'd send along poems soon. I ought to, it's on the "To Do" list. She went to the market, I went back inside. A boy came and paid for a two-dollar book he admitted to stealing from the table in front. Then he bought a raffle ticket for the move in October. Karmic exercises.

Only by chancing the ridiculous, can I hope for the sublime. Only by discovering that which is true within myself, can I hope to be understood by others.

I regard myself as an expressionist as well as a symbolist. If expressionism implies emotional impact, I can realize it only by restraint and ultimate refinement.

- Jay DeFeo, 1959

Statement in Sixteen Americans exhibition catalogue

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Batona (Back to Nature)

2009-09-01T23:41:00.007-04:00

Writing is going well, though my notebook's been balanced on flat rocks, my knees, for the past few days. Have been trudging through sugar sands, skin stained with cedar water. Maybe found some bog iron, put it in my pocket. It can be a new talisman, like the chip of Vermont granite, an Absecon seashell, always with me. The nights are cold already, and I wish I'd brought the liner for the sleeping sack, another sweater, but that's all over now.

Got home today, showered, did wash, opened The Pine Barrens by John McPhee. Got the mail. Two new rejection letters. Maybe the writing is not going so well, or maybe, as journals are fond of saying it just "does not meet [their] needs at this time." No correspondence from Nashville, and I wonder if that's all over now, too. All may be said and done. First love, friend, confidante, drift apart. So it goes.

So I go, the next few days, time with the family, et cetera, then Friday. In(Visible) Keepsakes at Zagar's Garden, the NPP and "the birth of a poem, the burial of another," with Patrick Lucy, Sarah Heady, wonderful people. Then off, northbound to the galleries in the Khmer building, with spirits free, or at least cheap, at Vox Populi, all the rest. Should be a good week.

Poetry Jumped as His Father Fired

2009-08-26T10:54:00.008-04:00

John Berryman discussing Tolstoy, "Henry", the structure of the Dream Songs, mail, and poetics with Al Alvarez. I ought to grow my beard. In closing, he reads Dream Song Number 14 in a Dublin café, circa 1967:

Lament for an Inanimate Object

2009-08-21T22:18:00.001-04:00

Today, my bicycle decided to quit on me. This is the twenty-year old bike my father gave me, twenty-four gears and not a whit of difference between them. Once upon a time, it may have been a mountain bike. I received it, worn and dusty from the back of the garage, upon entering junior high. At the time, he joked: "Don't say I never gave you anything." I couldn't downshift on Evesham's hills, but it didn't matter.

This was the same bike whose paint chipped, flaked, wore from a jet black to spring-storm grey. The same bike plastered with parking lot stickers and registration tags along its frame, from The Enclave in Atlantic City, circa 1990, to the summer arts program I attended for three weeks the summer I was fifteen, skidding down the foothills of southern Vermont, leaving tracks in the mud where teachers found me, sneaking off for cigarettes and sloppy kisses.

I probably sunk more money into it than most people do with cars. I've bought innumerable brake pads, a wear item, though for the past year I've been halt-stopping with my feet; a few pairs of shocks, though that soon proved fruitless, as the bike didn't take to them; new grips for the handlebars after thousands of blisters; a fresh set of pedals; a seat when the old one tore open; front and back reflectors each time flying gravel or a miscreant decided they'd be fun to break; lock holders and locks; sundry nuts and bolts; two chains; a rim; more patch kits than I care to admit, from all that riding by construction sites; two new tires; a front wheel when some derelict cut the spokes, in a failed attempt to steal it; more money for help putting all this together than I'd like to remember.

I salvaged all I could, dug out the Pentax, took pictures for posterity. Now it's lying curbside 'til Tuesday, it's last ride, in the back of some truck to the city dump.

Weaker Than

2009-08-15T23:26:00.000-04:00

Going to Pittsburgh for the G20 summit seems less and less feasible the more I think about it, which bums me out a little bit. Patrick, from resistg20.org, came and spoke at The Shoe this evening. The turn-out was amazing, the shop was packed, and there was a great Q & A, a real give-and-take. People seemed excited. But, for me, the logistics just aren't working out. I don't own a car, I can't get a ride from any friends, and it'll be hell trying to find somewhere to squat for three days, with the requisite extra shirt, sleeping bag, kit of first-aid. I think I'm throwing in the towel on this one. Weak. Weak.

After the talk, Dan and I roamed Fabric Row, Queen's Village. Everything was closing early, even on a Saturday, and the girl at AIDS Thrift was giving me far too much sass. You know, more than she usually gives me when I browse for forever and spend a measly five dollars. Don't make it all so cheap, then, guys! I almost bought some bookends, but decided against it. I like to fill the shelves completely.

So Dan and I sat outside of Grindstone, telling people that "No, that parking meter's broken, try the one down the street." Hopped on PATCO at Ninth and Locust and he gave me a ride home, blasting Propagandhi down five-sixty-one, loud enough to wake the dead at Coffin's Corner.

We may go hiking later this week, try and cover the Batona trail in a day, lugging our out-of-shape bodies through the sugar sands, past cedar lakes.

List for the Past Week No. Seven

2009-08-12T00:54:00.000-04:00

1. First Friday was especially fun this time, bouncing between galleries (Space 1026, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Vox Populi, AHN | VHS). Cheap spirits and good people, new and old, and really amazing work. Check out Kate Stewart's les abattoirs at Vox Populi before the end of the month. Maybe go to Adelina Vlas' talk on the thirtieth at three p.m. She's the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Department of Redundancy Department.

2. Reading Erich Fromm's Man For Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics. I'm half-way through. Below is the exact edition I am reading, for all of two dollars and fourteen cents. Oh, I love my bookstore's discount bin.

Just finished reading Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us. There is a reason why her poem, "The Colonel", is so frequently anthologized, even if it's not her best.

3. I caught one of those bloody summer colds, probably from Annie, probably from my weakened immune system. Oh, insomnia! Sniffles, DayQuil, too many tissues.

4. Endless shift tonight at The Wooden Shoe, training a new volunteer, talking with a group up for the weekend from Baltimore. I am falling off my feet and have no clue why I am writing this now, Dear Reader. I should try to sleep.

5. G-20 Consult on Saturday.

Dallas, Weather Station

2009-08-07T11:09:00.007-04:00

Dallas was dull. Hot and dull. I went to their modern art museum, which was lacking, and then the building where Kennedy was shot. It offered a rather unambiguous portrait of his presidency. Exhibits might have used the word "evil" in un-ironic fashion. I don't really remember. I might have been dehydrated. Needless to say, I did not go to the beautiful state park pictured on the "Visit Dallas!" website. Everything was bigger in Texas, though. Especially waistlines.

I'm leaving, missing Broken Social Scene tonight, which could have, maybe, redeemed this trip. If all goes well and the plane doesn't crash and burn, I'll be back in time to get to some galleries. It is First Friday, after all. I'll be at AHN | VHS:

Check S.P. Weather Station for details. See you there.

You?

2009-08-06T04:44:00.001-04:00

The only correct answer is "Yes."

There are no correct answers.

How Now, Brown Cow?

2009-08-02T22:20:00.020-04:00

"How can I, who have not the strength to hold to my own past, hope to save the past of someone else?"

From Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea

List for the Past Week No. Six

2009-08-01T15:50:00.006-04:00

1. Made some changes to this page today, mostly regarding the colors, but I also fooled around with the header. I guess I like it better, now. That said, I wouldn't mind some input from those of you who are more aesthetically inclined.

2. First day of sun in half a week. So, while the potholes are still puddles ankle-deep, I took a bike ride out to the point. Or at least I wished I did. I'm so goddamn tired all the time, I've barely the energy to read, to write, to keep appointments, to ring up costumers' books. I need to shower, shave in the rust-spotted mirror.

3. I don't think I can drive at night anymore. The oncoming headlights give me such headaches, make me so dizzy I'd slump but for the seatbelt. It's like getting an EEG again. Deep breaths, I steady myself, take my shirt sleeve and wipe my brow of sweat. Asphalt is a better friend than gravel, for certain.

4. Saw Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours last night, at the second-run theatre on Tilton Road. I was shocked they had that sort of film playing. Juliette Binoche's presence may have had something to do with it. So I sat, cozy, with half a dozen other people for the only showing. I was surprised by how much they'd cleaned the place up. It no longer reeked of burnt popcorn, the seats were gum-free, there were no smashed condom machines in the restroom. By the way, the movie was just more than fair. Well-acted, and the sibling conflict was interesting, though I felt the maid's plight in the sold estate (with a beautifully understated performance by Isabelle Sadoyan) to be much more fascinating. The tangled plot lines, specifically the grandchildren's troubles, detracted from what could have been.

5. Have felt like there's a Gordian knot in my head, another in my stomach. I'd like my Alexander the Great, please. The end will justify the means.

Bridge a Gap

2009-07-31T17:47:00.007-04:00

It is incredibly cold and rainy for July, and has been for the better part of this week. As I write this, I am huddled under an afghan, wearing jeans and my favorite Yoko Devereaux shirt, layered over a long-sleeved jersey. It's a shame they are going out of business, but that's the poor economy for you.

Speaking of the poor economy, there is actually some decent news: GDP only contracted one-percent last quarter! Hurrah! Let's gamble on the market! Party like it's 1929! This does not mean that I am able to actually find any real employment, but at least I have my savings and earn enough to cover train-fare and books. I would just like to have a little money that I'm not afraid to touch, something to travel on this gap year.

And speaking of the gap year, it's been a failure so far. Ostensibly, it's purpose was to take some time off, get better. I'm hardly doing a bang-up job of that. Also, while I've been reading and writing a ton, publishing (or getting pieces held over for "future publication"), and volunteering at the Shoe, I was hoping for a few picaresque adventures.

So far, my only jaunts have been rather short: Obligatory weekends at the Jersey Shore, a camping trip to Bushkill, two days in Baltimore. Nice, but hardly exciting compared to friends who've summered in Portland, Barcelona, Amsterdam, San Francisco. The best I can hope for is on two upcoming trips. I'll be in Dallas for a few days next week. I think I'll rent a convertible, and hope someone shoots at me. Then I'm heading out to Pittsburgh for G20, which should be a riot, literally.

Anyway, I have a new schedule now, which is better than the old, scattered, every-week-a-change deal. I'm only tied up Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, from three o'clock on. This is pretty swell, I think. I can actually plan things now.

Reading, watching, listening: Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre, and The Weakerthans' Fallow.

Remembrance of Things to Come

2009-07-27T22:26:00.005-04:00

Today I failed to keep another appointment. I did not bathe, I did not dress, I did not take PATCO to the city. I did not pick up paperwork, I did not pick up the records I'd ordered from Long in the Tooth. Nothing can be tested and nothing can be done. The burns my skin collected have been healing.

Last night I thought I might sleep, but ended up dazed, listening to Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa (Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra performing, Saulius Sondeckis conducting). I saw the sun rise again, and again, and again, and again. I read the paper and drank half-a-pot of coffee, then retired to bed. I decided to lay there until early evening, reading Said's The End of the Peace Process when my eyes could focus, tracing the ceiling's spider cracks when they could not.

Around eight I took some black letters, a slate-blue shirt, ironed on LE SOUVENIR D'UN AVENIR, the apostrophe cut from an "X" I won't need. I have been fascinated by the nudes of Denise Bellon, the slope of an arm, curve of a breast.

Return

2009-07-24T23:46:00.005-04:00

So, this little, nearly-two-week break from blogging paid off! Without the myriad and sundry distractions of the internet, I got some solid revision done, some pieces out in the post (or into editors' inboxes), and penned more new writing than I have in some time. I won't even mention the fact that I finally finished Being and Time.

I shouldn't have taken such a long break, though. I forgot to advertise a few things in this space for The Wooden Shoe. We've had a garage sale, and as always, People's Movie Night on Saturdays. But, today was pretty special: We were treated to a reading by The New Philadelphia Poets, an awesome group who will be presenting a collaborative work called In(visible) Keepsakes as part of the Fringe Festival. Details are being kept secret, but if it's anything like the reading tonight, it promises to be a memorable experience in The Magic Gardens on 10th and South. Patrick Lucy, Gregory Bem, Sarah Heady, and Angel Hogan shouldn't fail to disappoint. From the Festival's website:

Come witness the birth of a poem, the burial of another, and the wedding of word, music, and image as the New Philadelphia Poets locate a collective tongue in the city of brotherly love. Featuring poetic fortunes, imbibements, and prizes, In(visible) Keepsakes is an ecstatic celebration of language and community.

It was really a memorable evening, and raised some serious cash for The Shoe's moving fund. I'm getting really excited about this. We should have a much larger event space, not to mention more room for books, records, zines, and the other ephemera we carry. Stop by! Donate! I'm getting to be a shill.

After the reading, there was an open-mic. James shouted an old Irish folksong, a young man free-styled, a woman named Aisha with a lovely voice sung, and I got the guts to read a piece. I won't lie that I wasn't nervous as hell, given the fact that my poems are all part of a tremendously long cycle and are an attempt at deconstruction, utilizing what I call the "natural language" of the mind. I felt sure the poem, "Totemic", currently under consideration at Mimesis, would bomb. But, lo and behold, it got a positive reception. Who knows? Maybe my poems are more accessible than I thought, abstruse theory, Jewish eschatology, and all.

I'll be away this weekend, hiking and camping in Bushkill Falls and the Delaware Water Gap area, but I'll try to post a bit more, at least to advertise events for The Shoe. We need all the help we can get with the move to 7th and South in the fall.

Hiatus

2009-07-11T20:24:00.002-04:00

Self-explanatory. No more lists of minutiae. No more elisions.

Praxis over theory. Commitment over promises. Twofold.

List For the Past Week No. Five

2009-07-09T18:14:00.006-04:00

1. Art Museum yesterday with Matthew. Hadn't been there in the longest time, but they still haven't restored Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Oh, well. A pleasant day, even if the Japanese tea garden was underwhelming. Conversation revolved around Hiroshi Teshigahara, hiking, and Heidegger.

2. Reading the above-mentioned's Being and Time. I will probably take it in portions, breaking it up with Charles Wright's new book, Sestets, and Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us, which I got at Island Half-Price Books for $1, considerably less than the MSRP. I'm thinking of limiting my reading to theory and poetry.

3. I have continued to be pleased with what I'm writing, and a few pieces have been held over at a certain regional-journal. I am not saying which, in case I'm disappointed in the future.

4. I still cannot hold a job for any significant period, which is sometimes my own fault, sometimes the fault of the dreadful economy.

5. Continental philosophy pick-up lines are running through my head. "I'll be the 'I' to your 'Thou'," though they hardly make sense.

6. I will probably be at the Flea Market both days this weekend, if only to buy Sasha's photographs on Saturday and to help with The Shoe's table on Sunday. Plans with Laila for the middle of the coming week. Continuing to meet with doctors about my exhaustion, or whatever it is they like to call it.

Going Postal

2009-07-02T20:23:00.000-04:00

I've been sending out lots of postcards lately. Most are handmade, with lace, bristol board, old photographs I bought at Mostly Books. The "three for a dollar" bin is wonderful. I hope my brother enjoys his picture of the championship team, All-Women's Wheelchair-Basketball League, 1967. Strangely, both coaches were standing. I forgot to scan it before I mailed it, so I have nothing to share with y'all. You'll just have to go to the store itself, on Fifth and Bainbridge, across from AIDS Thrift. I found Lou Reed's Berlin the same day, mint, first-pressing, and a blue-white poplin button-down. It's all for charity!

So, I bought twelve photos, black-and-whites of factory workers and fishing trips, Dylan Thomas's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, a book of short stories on his early life, and Gogol's Diary of a Madman. Daniel bought some ancient National Geographics for his Paige and far too many Communist Party pamphlets from the '40s. I couldn't convince him to sit and play a game of chess in the dusty back room with me. It may have had something to do with his confusion as to which way the knights moved, which way the bishops. Or maybe he'd watched The Seventh Seal, finally, after all my endless harping on the virtues of Bergman. I'd be wary, too. He would have gone "gentle into that good night", anyway.

So, to get to my point: Give me your address and I'll send you a note. I need something to do with my time. Paid employment is scarce, I can only be at The Wooden Shoe so many times a week, and I'm not sleeping. Last night I re-watched La Chinoise, finished Malamud's The Natural. Dawn came and I rode my bike to hike the woods behind Johnson's Farm. No tick bites, but some more thistle scratches to add to my collection. The writing's going well, but in lieu of a steady job, I'll take postcarding as an auxiliary hobby.

List for The Past Week No. Four

2009-06-26T21:02:00.003-04:00

1. This will not be a list, because there is really only one thing to say.

2. I did not go to Maryland because there was no "old friend". There was no friend anywhere, so I stayed home. I tried to write, to read, to enjoy a long walk in Wharton State Park. I failed miserably. I am not sure whether to emphasize "failed" or "miserably". I am not sleeping. I am worrying temporality and universality. I am worried the road will flood come another storm, which I hear fast-approaching as it's growing dark. I am acquainting myself with the people I've always wanted, needed to meet, but I find I'd rather play Grieg's Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16, Eugene Ormandy conducting, Phillipe Entremont, pianist, and then the record's needle hissing in the final groove, too tired to get up, shut it off. I can't move anymore, much less open my mouth, form fricatives, approximates, to talk.

Amateur Cartography

2009-06-25T22:45:00.007-04:00

The wash machine is running and I am trying, really trying, to map the mind's grammar. After two years of writing poetry in it, adopting it, this odd idiom, I figure some ground rules are in order. The first ground rule is that there are no rules. Phoneme, syllabicated half-line forming perfect iambs, thought in image. Past tense, subjunctive. The past subjunctive. No pronouns, no prepositions, but then sometimes, yes, sometimes no, no. And this is just mapping my own mind. This is like star-gazing. Where one sees Ursa Major, the other sees the Big Dipper. A constellation or an asterism after star-spinning in the back yard, summer, sixteen, close to drunk on stolen beers. What it is doesn't matter but that it's there.

Taking as my premise that thought does not begin and end with language, that there is something to express beyond it, I have used language to reach for it. It might be easier to dance or paint, but I can't do those things. Another analogy. While I recall very little of my Calculus work, I do remember, most vividly, Mr. Sal Marchi stretching his hand out across the table-top, veins like wood grain and the gaudy diamonds in his wedding band glinting in the morn-light, forefinger and thumb so close to touching, gasping that such-and-such a problem was not about an answer. It was about getting "this close", he gestured, "this close", forefinger, thumb, arm still outstretched and now reeking-speaking coffee breath, "this close" to that clock on the wall, "you can see it, but you can't touch it" across the room.

So, I write, getting as close as I can to a new language with this old one, this tired mutt that won't hunt no more, these thoughts on gods and faiths and loves and sins and redemptions that never come. These gray areas of the gray matter, the watermarks wallpapered over, and the color that can't be named to describe the stain. "This close". I ran out of graph-paper an hour ago.

List for the Past Week No. Three

2009-06-23T06:12:00.007-04:00

1. Things are okay. This is not optimism, but rather a firm adjustment to the status quo. Come next week I will be complaining again about some buzzing in my head, my lack of sleep, or a fresh problem ad nauseam.

2. Work at The Wooden Shoe is swell. It's a good environment to spend a few hours every week. The people I've met (Sarah, Chris, Amy, Briton) couldn't be nicer, though I feel like a kid whose just been moved to the adult's table. I'm on a tall chair now, but my feet are swinging back and forth, not touching the floor. And every time I speak it's a pip. Squeak.

3. Still no paid employment, but I've a feeling that should change soon.

4. Test scores rolling in left and right. All of them are good, thank you. This will make the whole application / over-hyped "MOST IMPORTANT DECISION OF YOUR LIFE" process much easier.

5. Pleased as punch with my writing, lately. Still working on the same themes, the same cycle, but bringing it closer to what I'd initially envisioned. I know now ("New Now Know How"?) that it will never reach fruition, but I'm fine with this laboring. Philadelphia Stories and Bombay Gin sent rejection letters, but I only lost my appetite for a couple of days.

6. Seeing Tiny Vipers at First Unitarian tonight. Seated chapel show. Incredibly excited for the new album in July. Here's the first single, via Stereogum: "Dreamer"

7. Headed to Cambridge, Maryland for a couple of days. It should be alright, down by the bay, with some friends I haven't seen in an age.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

2009-06-13T03:24:00.006-04:00

A week away from the internet helped. Finished an old piece, started a new one. Same old themes, same old song and dance routine, but I won't complain. I'm producing again, and I like what's coming, letter by letter, from my pen. That's what matters, then, even if the effort, the strain, takes an obvious toll.

I guess it's later today, at this point, but Theatre Exile is having a flea market at Thirteenth and Reed, just south of the Ellsworth-Federal stop. I'm hoping for a classic flea market. Struck-through stamps by the box, wheat-pennies. I want to make bookmarks again, and a bracelet. I'm feeling crafty. Maybe it's just excess energy from the No-Doz I've been forced to eat, in an effort to keep lucid during daylight hours. Maybe it's the great recording I picked up at Long In The Tooth Wednesday. Nostalgia in Times Square / The Immortal 1959 Sessions by Mingus. My god. My god. My god.

An amazing version of "Open Letter to Duke" that alternately makes me want to sit, blissed, headphones pressed with hands against my head, and do something, build a shed, arrange the hydrangeas that bloomed in the backyard, plan that trip to Gibraltar I've always wanted, no matter if it drains my funds. Maybe something more adventurous. Drive to Centralia, glimpse an underground mine fire. Go spelunking and burn to death. Who the hell knows.

Umm, err.

2009-06-05T10:44:00.006-04:00

Christ Jesus, it is raining again, because, you know, we need more Schuylkill River Whitefish and sewers backing up. I don't mind the wet, the damp. That's fine, I guess. I do mind waking up with blood on my pillow, my left ear smeared and caked. An indentation, the fabric stained. Nicks in my cheek, a fitful three hours.

So, I am waiting for The Wooden Shoe to call and tell me when I am to be indoctrinated and can stock their 501(c)3 shelves, free. I offered to do it two days a week. They seemed unsatisfied, but I need to actually educate myself, in between making money, in between helping them.

I have been reading Charles Wright more than usual lately. From Buffalo Yoga's "There Is a Balm in Gilead":

I write, as I said before, to untie myself, to stand clear,
To extricate an absence,
The ultimate hush of language
(fricative, verb and phoneme),
The silence that turns the silence off.

---

I'm going to avoid this blog for a while, now. My writing has been stagnant. I'm turning the computer off, cutting out distractions. Its always worked before.

Qualifications

2009-06-03T10:17:00.008-04:00

Y'all probably know of A Softer World by now, but the folks behind it, Joey Comeau and Emily Horne, were in town yesterday. Joey was promoting his new novel, Overqualified, and Emily was tagging along, waving her oriental fan furiously in the back of The Wooden Shoe. Both of them were kind enough to stay and chat a bit, though Joey seemed mobbed by fan-girls and was desperately in search of candy. Emily was swell, listened to my dreams of one day achieving dual-citizenship and living on PEI, from which she hails, and talked me through the idea of studying at Dalhousie. Likelihood of this happening is slim, but ...

... S'wonderful. S'marvelous. I sent her a "thank you" email, because, honestly, she told me more about Halifax-as-a-college-town than I ever would have known.

So, that was very nice, and a pleasant evening, but things are still rough here at headquarters. Head. Quarters. Each quadrant is a mess, still. I have watched the sun rise three days in a row, and it is growing more and more unpleasant. Mine eyes have seen the glory. Mine eyes are also hepatic-red slits. My body is clammy even when I sit next to the air-conditioner bolted in my window, and I spent the majority of this morning curled, foetal, willing my breathing to slow. I believe I qualify for a sleep-study. I believe I qualify for a lot of studies, but now I'm flattering myself.

Here

2009-05-30T00:32:00.004-04:00

Wariness. Weariness. I've nary a clue what to say, yet feel the need to document my existence, as if to aver that "Yes," when looked at from a distance, the quotidian has meaning. The days seem to run together and have for as long as I can recall. Even poems in this endless cycle have begun to blur. Some of it was intentional, as I paced the same bedrooms and backlots. Recited tautologies. I had a vague idea that I was searching for the intangible mind, and that the closest I could ever get was through those lines. Instead, I've crossed out more this month of May than written since the new year.

It's tempting to repeat the old canard: Art's not begot from illness, but in spite of it. Even that could offer cold comfort as the days get warmer, the body clammy and the mind sluggish. And the last remnants memory destroys.

In lieu of anything meaningful I drag myself from bed, shake off chouchen, struggle to keep appointments. I cut my hair and let the sink clog for the hell of it. I buy brassy blind-spotted mirrors in junk shops. They line my desk until I hang them high enough I cannot see I haven't shaved this week.

Spam No. Six

2009-05-29T21:21:00.001-04:00

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Project Future No. Two

2009-05-22T20:49:00.004-04:00

1. Familiarize myself with the works of H.P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge, so that I can attend a meeting at the United Lodge of Theosophists without feeling completely lost. They have a rather charming, unpretentious building around Twentieth and Chestnut streets, replete with a welcoming wooden sign in the window. I hear they are rather nonjudgemental, and will let new members simply listen, but I'd rather not feel foolish unless it is an absolute desideratum.

2. Find a job that is more fulfilling than filing, copying, and typing the answers to written interrogatories, in addition to providing more hours, and more steady hours. Zero one week and three the next is not really providing me with pocket money.

3. Keep picking up loose change on the sidewalk. This week's count: Three dollars and twenty-eight cents. This is two cups of coffee. This is reason enough to continue, even if my back aches from collecting pennies.

4. Try not to have a total farmer's tan this summer.

5. Get around to typing final copies and sending out the past five month's worth of poems, before it feels like a chore, and before most journals shut down until September. This will take place in the immediate future.

Spam No. Five

2009-05-19T23:30:00.001-04:00

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