7:35

Pause Bubtton

2005-11-28T21:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/davies_pause.pdf

Pause Button
By Kevin Davies

I've been enjoying this little PDF chapbook
More on why tomorrow or the next

chestnut

2005-11-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

Wake up the feelers it’s time to go find

down the blades. Cut him off at the ankles.

Cut him off at the waist. Leave enough tackle

for the median lust; the frosted flicker.
Bordeom becomes the blunt object.

Flat board bruised forehead.

Nail through the temple and she shrieks.

With or without our whites we’ll go forth

in the flatbed full fuel free and fall.

With or without our whites we’ll go froth

in the latbed ull uel ree and all.
Ache up the eelers it’s time to go grind

round the shades. Shut sin offer the dangles.

Boredom becomes the blunt object.

Flat bored bruised ahead the median musk

mailed through the temple and he reeks.

Boredom becomes the blunt object.

Williams, meaning, and funk

2005-11-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

Where's the meaning in:

So much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

W.C.W.

There's more actual "meaning" in this example than I wanted, but it's what came off the top of my head. I think we can all agree that the substantive syntax here is limited. The stanzas however, are almost musical with a funky syncopation. I mean if you're looking for an emotive response here you're not going to get it. This is just some damn nice wordsmithing. A tight, trimmed down polaroid in full light shot from the hip. I don't think the fact that it this poem's literal, narrative meaning is almost nonexistent makes it any less effective. We're still allowed other facets to admire. We're still left with this funk, this image, all around economy of langauge that should knock the socks off an open-minded reader. The first time I read this poem I thought, "Did he really just do that with words?" Sometimes meaning can get in the way of the of apppreciating what it is we're observing whether it be a piece of art or anything else. There are these horse chestnuts I've been finding on campus lately. They're beautiful. They're smooth in the hand. They have a deep, rich wood grain. I like these chestnuts because they have a tactile beauty. The whole power of their beauty can only be experienced when you hold one in your hand. There's no meaning behind the beauty of these things. They just are what they are in your hand or in the ground. I think Williams' poem is like one of these chestnuts. You either pick it up and put it in your pocket or move on, but whatever you decide to do it doesn't change. It remains perfect.

2005-11-21T14:11:00.001-08:00

What looks natural about a given poem is actually the result of a number of procedures and assumptions about writing that the author may be more or less conscious of when composing. Those procedures and assumptions are in fact social constructions which have become conventions. Thus most Language poets attempt to remind us of the socially contrived basis of any writing. They do not do so, however, by abandoning modes of writing, for such an action is impossible. "Modes cannot be escaped," Bernstein continues, "but they can be taken for granted. They can also be meant" (p. 44). It is the mode-that-is-meant, so to speak, the exploration of the possibilities for meaning-production, which lies behind most Language poetry.
From George Hartley's "Textual Politics and the Language Poets"

Hartley has a point here. Most constructs of the poem, or of writing in general, are as involuntary as putting a period at the end of this sentence. Who, or what social construct is behind that period? When we read something like Silliman's Tjanting, we have to question what it is we're doing with language everyday. We have to scrutinize and redefine our terms. What is a sentence? What is a paragraph? Why can't I use a sentence like this, or that? If we all agree that language is organic and continuously in flux (i.e. LOL, and btw), then maybe the language poets are looking forward, predicting and interpreting that change. When I think of language poetry I think of those outlandish fashions that come streaming down New York's cutting-edge runways. Very few of us are going walk down the beach in his and hers acetate bathing suits. Nevertheless the design is conceptual. It comments on what is being done today, and what is on the horizon. Language poets are like this; one big, baroque fashion show commenting on how we communicate.

2005-11-21T14:11:00.000-08:00

2005-11-20T19:30:00.000-08:00

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

above is a paragraph

Silliman and the paragraph/stanza as vessle

2005-11-19T22:20:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about this idea of Silliman's that the paragraph is a unit of quantity, not logic or argument. I find this redfining of the paragraph interesting because it forces the writer to treat his page more like house. Silliman's idea seems so liberal at first glance in tossing "logic [and] argument" to the wind. But when you think about it this idea of the paragraph actually lends the writing some constraints. It's kind of like framing a house. Once you've laid out the bare bones it's pretty much the house it's going to be from there on out. What matters from that point on is what color you paint the walls. Sentences become sheets of drywall which render enclosures. Sentences become your pallet, trim work, wall hangings, windows, etc. Given Silliman's idea, I've been framing up recent poems with heavy-duty word-processing studs (columns, ridiculous margins etc.). I realize how literal I'm taking this, but it's kind of fun to look at your page a vessel that isn't quite as boundless as the usual ocean of white we normally give ourselves. It's kinda like building a great big cattle pen for all them range rovin' words (yee-haa! get along little doggies!) Its been a challenge and an excercise in letting go. Allowing a one-inch column to dictate line breaks is a humbling experience.

the word as virus

2005-11-19T08:35:00.000-08:00

W.S. Burroughs says the word is a virus. By definition the virus is any organism that exists solely to self-replicate. I would say he means this as a metaphore if I believed he did, but I don't. Consider the source. I wonder if we can think of truly new forms of poetry as novel mutations of that virus. I think what we talk about when we talk about false sentiment in the New Yorker poems are simply a constant strain of the virus with which we've all been infected for centuries. When we look at something by Jennifer Knox we must think, "hmmm, this is new, I don't think there's a vaccine for this kind of thing. " I think truly successful and progressive poetry is defined by words being put together in such a manner that they signal a coming pandemic; something incurable that assails the immune systems of generally health, upstanding poems the world over.

2005-11-16T20:29:00.000-08:00

...listening to Manu Chao on headphones
while writing a poem and watching the World
Series without a remote control (v.#243)

The players celebrate a world series win
and he celebrates getting the lid off a jar of pickles.
He convinces himself it's the little victories.

The veternarian has put the dog in diapers
to deal with a "severe bowel condition." They loved

that dog so much twenty years ago.

Ten bucks in the classifieds. A little farm
out Dairy Highway. Woman selling the dogs,
one under each arm
and two at her feet
smelled alarmingly of marijuana, and they both liked that.
Named the little mutt Mary Jane, took it for walks
to shit in the neighbor's lawn. That was back when

no one picked up after shitting dogs.

That was back when you could just let your dog
shit on a stranger's lawn and nobody gave a damn.

That was back when people threw their styrofoam
Big Mac shells out the car window like they were
scarves in the wind. He hates himself being

sentimental over those days. Back then,

the salad days, when the world series
was worth watching and he ate
whatever he wanted.

black water compost

2005-11-16T20:15:00.000-08:00

How with the fires along the shore she
decides we'll row the black waters and row
the black and waters row the rest of the way
until tomorrow freezes that warm lake dry again.

Moon light away the world beneath our bags of sleep
until tomorrow freezes that warm lake dry again.

Run-off the fertilizer grows new grass and new grass grows
and grows open the reflection of fishless skies
above a waterless lake without water
until tomorrow when where you've decided we'd row

is nothing more than one green meadow boat-grave
with no wake to speak of beyond the lawn mower tracks.

Bag up the black water compost honey, she says, bag it up.

turn ons

2005-11-16T16:47:00.000-08:00

God her plugged in ipod makes him hard.
All the way down the bottom of the Grand Canyon her ipod
displays 214 digital pictures of him posing with her ipod
in front of 1 sick Buffalo at Henry Vilas Zoo.
Her ipod's the reason his cell vibrates and barks like a Golden
Retriever every time she just calls to say
her great big Orangutan heart loves him like an arboreal ape.

Compton/Knox

2005-11-02T17:45:00.000-08:00

Loving the language of these two most recent poets Jennifer Knox and Shana Compton. I like it like that. I like it like a great big stew of textures, tastes, sounds etc. Meaning. Of course meaning tags along like a three-legged dog. Of course our brains come beating the syntactical bush for context, coherence, cohesion. But is that all we are? Can't we just, every once in awhile, go completely blind and feel around in the dark for the sheer whatever of it? And no, I don't believe these two books to be just pure "sheer whatever." Both Knox and Compton tear a certain amount of tradition to shreds in order that a new 3-season porch can be added onto the great and hallowed industrial complex of POETRY! Makes it a more livable place doesn't it? Smells better too.

Spahr and Burger

2005-11-01T22:05:00.000-08:00

I guess I've been hesitating to comment on Juliana Spahr and Mary Burger because I'm not really sure where to put them. And I know that's maybe a strange way to start this out, but it's kind of where I'm at with it all. I was really blown away by Sonny. I mean I just sat down, opened up that book, read it, put it down, and went, "Damn." And I had to lay there for a while with my hands folded across my chest, and the book on the floor, and just wonder where the Hell poetry went while I was away from it. And Juliana's book too, that was great. Better than a movie. And I know how ridiculous that sounds. I know how awful that sounds. Just the comparison itself is awful. But I also know how true that is for me. Better than a movie. These little books. Little mini-press books, and better than a movie, I thought, wow. Buy one, read it in two sittings, and it's about the cost of going to see two movies. Better because you can chew on it in between readings, and maybe for days, weeks, months afterward. So I was kind of reintroduced to this very relevant, topical, smart, funny, witty, weird, strange, new world of poetry and language that I think gives me hope that all the good ones aren't dead. New incantatory prayers for the world, I think. I'm going to keep turning these two over in my head, and I'll be more specific in future references. This was more of a general wow-poetry-isn't-dead-after-all statement. And on from here...

Last week's catastrophe deserves a bubble gum ice cream cone.

2005-11-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

If he could love her with the alphabet he would,
but chaotic theatres of war and world events have torn
out his chest, and pulled the white rabbit of Peter
Jennings's Death from the Marlboro man's magic ten gallon hat.

He has dreams of loving her hidden hollows with open Hs, cajoling
up her secret sap with feathered Ss and the tickling toes of Ts.
But last week an earthquake swallowed all of his lovely linguistics
and he's ignorant of sign-language or Swahili.

vroooooom

2005-11-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

He wishez sheez bringing him to understand
consciousness as spark-plugz, but it's the ignitionz got him
seeing We as a big block V8 Them.
Blue exhaust of dreemz burning sleep oilz
chokez awake a litter of pupeez in the back seat.
He wishez sheez daring him to cloze his eyez and look in the trunk.

2005-10-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

“Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice” (Joyce Carol Oates)

putting a face to an evil, viscious bastard (that's poetry)

2005-10-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

In a file photo Exxon Mobil Corp. Chairman and CEO Lee Raymond chortles during a news conference in the Land of OZ, Wednesday, May 25, 2005. Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest publicly traded oil company in the world, on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005, said they made a "SHIT LOAD" off of all the Munchkins in Munchkinland. Revenue grew to $100.72 billion from $76.38 billion in the prior-year period. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)

2005-10-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

whatshwants

Shwantstoconsider the slow repayment
of a sleep debt this Summer.

Shwantstoassemble enough silk pillows, psycilocybin, and sex
to complete the task.

Shwantstosmile, Shwantstofuck, Shwantsto-
sipupshannandoahandskidaddledownshore
for the longest nap in history.

2005-10-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

Offended by the price of two stanzas at Home Depot,
she goes to Wal Mart to pick him up a coupl'a half ton
lonely woods with a reversible distant horizon and interchangeable
Darkstormynights. The required signature really pisses her off.
It's not like she's making narcotics out of poly-acrylic rivers,
and rotatable metaphores of grandfather's hands.
Employee or not, Rita oughta know her better than that.
All shopped out, she'll ride the orange, coin-op horse
beneath the ubiquitous WAL MART sign for hours.
Galloping through quarter after quarter, she dreams
of someday owning her very own 52" high-
definition prose poem with Dolby Surround Sound.

2005-10-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

seeds

I slept with the pallid-skinned babies
in a moonlit crib made of pumpkin shell.
Where we hold hearts, they house fledgling
birds, necks stretched, straining for the worm of life.
All night long, we slept, and the warmth we kept
for one another was like the heat of a womb
needing itself past birth and into the cold nest of death.

waiting it out

2005-10-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

Chainsong round hungry necks of blood-dogs
sweating out their mouths in the backyard pen.

Beneath the sodden leaflap and fire of late season Oaks
a somber-suited evangelical uses his bible as an umbrella.

in his head

2005-10-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

He goes to bed without a radio in his head;
no news, music, jesus, money, or sports,
just the squelch of sleep like two hot-
wired pennies behind his lids.
Tomorrow without a radio in his head
he'll dream of her and her and her
and Ok-la-la-home-on-the-range
beneath a thundering sky of frozen nickels.
And the night after that, and after that,
still no tran-sis-sis-tor in his head,
he'll be praying for the stringy stuff,
the cl-ass-ass-i-cal notions he'd
normally nod off to..........................................

2005-10-11T23:13:00.000-07:00

I wish I had written this poem, but I definitely don't wish I was John Berryman. He's dead.

Dream Song #1

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,--a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

John Berryman
Listen to Berryman read this poem:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15206

2005-10-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

"...we cut up the Bible, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, our own writing, anything in sight. We made thousands of cut-ups. When you cut and rearrange words on the page, new words emerge. And words change meaning."

--William S. Burroughs from his essay It Belongs to the Cucumbers

2005-10-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

halftime

The smell of the absence of wood meant
a hole had been drilled just deep enough
to peg with a bullet.

fifteen-two...four-and-a-pair-is-six

While he worked they played cowboys and indians
beneath the muffled sounds of Cowboys, Redskins,
on the red, lead-painted basement floor
strewn with shavings, empty herring jars,
half-crushed beer cans, and Lincoln Logs.

fifteen-two...four-and-knobs-is-five

Now there's a proof of workmanship echoed
in the game between them: Having taught
them to count is most important.

The rest is the inventory of what's left:
A hospital bed, empty rooms, a vacuum full of dust,
a burned light bulb above the workbench,
box of playing cards, police scanner, jar of pens, oil cans,
13 fishing poles, 2 tackle boxes;

4 generations who know how to count
the perfect hand, and grandma's inevitable death
fifteen-two...four-and-that-is-all-there-ain't-no-more
in the living room, alone, the way she wanted it.

on the health of superstition

2005-10-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

Today, for instance, we talk of "matter." We describe its physical properties. We conduct laboratory experiments to demonstrate some of its aspects. But the word "matter" remains a dry, inhuman, and purely intellectual concept, without any psychic significance for us. How different was the former image of matter--the Great Mother--that could encompass and express the profound emotional meaning of Mother Earth. In the same way, what was the spirit is now identified with the intellect and thus ceases to be the Father of it All. It has degenerated to the limited ego-thoughts of man; the immense emotional energy expressed in the image of "Our Father" vanishes into the sand of an intellectual desert.

--Carl Gustav Jung

I just couldn't resist posting this...

2005-10-08T20:07:00.001-07:00

So I'm writing this paper tonight and making an allusion to Lucky Charms. I wanted to get the order of the marshmallows right (purple hearts, yellow moons, etc.), so I looked up Lucky Charms on the Internet. This is what I found. My conclusions: Life is too short. Screw Total, I'll have a big, sugary bowl of Lucky Charms.

Creator of Lucky Charms Cereal Killed in Car Crash

RICHFIELD, Minnesota (AP) -- The creator of Lucky Charms cereal and his wife were killed in a Minnesota traffic accident on their way to visit their comatose daughter, who died two days later.

For years, John Holahan shared the story of Lucky Charms -- toasted oat cereal with marshmallow bits -- with students in his hometown of Annandale as a lesson in creativity and marketing.

He recalled stumbling upon orange marshmallow peanuts while brainstorming in 1963, cutting them up and then sprinkling them over Cheerios.

"I knew we had a winner," he said.

2005-10-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

An insectile mind is fostered by the shrinking size of our technology.

2005-10-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

She thinks herself into a boat,
and Sundays, ashore, tries to describe
the feeling to me with a phrase
that comes out sounding something like,
"...to calm the pasture clover."

From this I'm to remember a river,
perhaps the portaging of an isthmus,
and our time as floatee and floater.

2005-10-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

"This is also not a condemnation of those who have read and enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. I too indulge myself in nights of Kraft macaroni and cheese every once in a while, and I am happy, bloated and tired, but happy." -Radder

Interesting how you're able to maintain the diction and style of Sontag's intellectual snobbery, while at the same time shy away from what you believe would be her claim: We just all a buncha dumb Americans. I submit the idea of escape as a valuable, essential part of surviving the very real PAIN that is everywhere around us. The Da Vinci Code was a piece of Fiction. A meaningful one, probably not. Interesting, maybe. Entertaining, yes. And as far as Dan Brown's level of intelligence... who cares.

2005-10-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

The Green Bay Packers lost tonight. Nothing I can do about it. Nothing at all.

2005-10-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

"This woman is a not a judge, has never been a judge, and her position on major issues is largely unknown; that is why I'm nominating her to the Supreme Court of the United States."
G.W.

news potpourri

2005-10-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

Cheney warned against
early withdrawal from Bush
who was adamant about invading
a woman with major issues
that are largely unknown
to cardinals reaffirming
the celibacy rule and insisting
access to the Eucharist is a gift
and not a right for Catholics on the left

Isn't this scary?

2005-10-02T19:24:00.000-07:00

2005-10-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

for crows in trees along the interstate

Enough.
subtlety presisting in the surface tension
holding all twelve wax wrappers afloat
tomorrow the convenience store
holding all twelve wax wrappers afloat
will be held at one gun's point.

2005-09-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

The bulbous compass bobs on the Buick's 40-acre swath of dash
indicating trips embarked upon in previously forgotten cars will need retelling.
A fleshing out of certain shades of light for a nervous passenger may be required.
Indescribable collisions will need unwrapping.
An important redrawing of uncertain places will have to take place;
places where having been is as good as going to be.
For instance, a time a tide recedes and subconsciously twenty years later,
an aversion remains to the sound of a 50-year-old recording of Hank Williams'
favorite guitar, through one weak speaker, broadcast out of Amarillo,
understood through one good ear.

2005-09-29T19:40:00.000-07:00

it's 7:35