Saturday, September 13, 2003
Dale, are you kidding? Kasey, what about the other side of the coin? Nada, I doubt it. Gary, your argument doesn't quite hold water. Joan, don't be an ass. Ezra, get stuffed. Basho, you're really being ridiculous. Sappho, you are confused. Dante, give it up. Emily, put down that large knife!!!!
still awaiting an inundation of reponses to this blog. we're all together in commun ity, we poets. I'm just as important as Ron Silliman, if not less so. we are joined by this thing poetry, about which we akll agree is important. it's so important, reaal life important. it's where we go when we are being what we do.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
I should muse more about poetry. it'like s in my blood and all, I liek to write and be there when the words arrive. they are great to see adn seriously silly, like camels. I tell the words that we need to cross a desert and they go. because it's all special and yoiu can write it all down, at least if you are creative like me. there are minutes to spedn writing and so I did. do, I'm busy. so's teh cat. he just cornered a grasshopper. I;ve rel;eased the gfrasshopper to teh mute (good poem word!) night air. this morning I got rid of a big husky spider. it's all like writing poems, except poems dont' make as much sense.
blogger now has spell check so now all my posts will be spelled prefect!!!
almost forgot to mention today the weather has been FAIR adn COOL. earthshaking!!!
oh yeah in honour of 9/11n gwbush went down the rabbit hole again
2 years ago was september 11. 3 years ago was september 11, but yoiu get what I mean. if there are any more constitutional rights you want me to give up, just let me know.
true story: the back of my office chair seatinbg arrangement fell off!!! this is yet another example of the wild things that happen to poets who keepo web longs!!!!!
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
shit, I haven't been giving weather reports. okay okay, 14 miels NE of Boston it is clear and cool. feels liek FALL! I don't know what the goatfooted balloonman is up to at this point.
Katy Lederer's memoir has been reviewed in the NYTimes. that's a very incredible thing and everything. for he NYTimes is an arbiter. they don't review poetry much, becasue that's not important, so Katy snuck in with memoir. that's how to do it. tunnel into the bastion that way. it doesn't matte if the review is equivocal, becasue sure they spelled her name right. see how thimngs come togetehr in a wonderful way? nowwe can delight that one of ours, Katy the Poet, got reviewed in NYT. and we can congtratulate her and stuff, for a victory for Katy is a vicgtory for us all. becasue we're a community, us poets. all together, working to make poetry safe enough to get revieweed in teh New York TIMES. someday, by golly, someday! I leanred of this great news on the POETICS listserv, where average is tops.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
as a logn time poem maker, I can offer you nifty ways to make poems:
use a pen with ink, or perhaops a pencil. write them in a NOTEBOOK, or scraps of paoper as you walk alognwith your creative juices roiling inside you. try typing them out. it' s possible to use a computer, if the computer has a keyboard and something called a WORD PROCESSOR. that's how I work to create the works of art that is the lifeblood of me. usally I use a compuer. I sit down adn I type. when I am done, I save the work I just done. sometiems I use notebooks,a dn I write the poems down by hand. I just empty my mind and let i rip. if I don't like some bit that I wrote, I ofen delete it. that process is called rewriting. I like to look at thigns and say, hm, there's a poem there. then I turn on the creative juices and before you know it, tehre's a poem there. poems are everywhere, just like cheese is. I mean, I bet every country in the world has cheese, and they've gotr poems too!!! poems are univerfsal, like farts. everyone farts, yoi can't escape that fact, and poems are like that. I like thinkign aboiut poems adn stuff.
use a pen with ink, or perhaops a pencil. write them in a NOTEBOOK, or scraps of paoper as you walk alognwith your creative juices roiling inside you. try typing them out. it' s possible to use a computer, if the computer has a keyboard and something called a WORD PROCESSOR. that's how I work to create the works of art that is the lifeblood of me. usally I use a compuer. I sit down adn I type. when I am done, I save the work I just done. sometiems I use notebooks,a dn I write the poems down by hand. I just empty my mind and let i rip. if I don't like some bit that I wrote, I ofen delete it. that process is called rewriting. I like to look at thigns and say, hm, there's a poem there. then I turn on the creative juices and before you know it, tehre's a poem there. poems are everywhere, just like cheese is. I mean, I bet every country in the world has cheese, and they've gotr poems too!!! poems are univerfsal, like farts. everyone farts, yoi can't escape that fact, and poems are like that. I like thinkign aboiut poems adn stuff.
some people note on their blog reference by others to that blog. I think those who do that must be very nervous eaters. and how much does the tick of each hit count weigh? there should be a standardized value to hit counts, so people can knkow just how much importance is involved. oh and too, don't the Golden ARCHES come to mind when hit counts are adverted? haha!
someone named Joan Hooligan, a big physical presence in the poetry world (my world!!)--critical mass, so to speak--got mixed up and decided she didn't like what she should like. becasue she is a critic and wrong she must be read backwards. at the end of that exercise, I'll bet tehre's a poem! a poem comes from anywheres. we're all together in this brinkmanship, writing poems from the edge of whatever abyss we find ourselves near on this day. those who are wrong went yesterday, that's simple enough. I saw a Phish concert, seemed like twice the age of everyone else there. bhut I could figure out the beat there, and could dance for 3 hours, so I guess it was all right. poetry's kinda funny in who won't listen and what. David Hess writes ordinary loudly. you'd think someone as critical as he is wouldn't sound like a borrower.
poetry should be at least as well written as Pirates of the Caribbean
a masters degree in poetry is a real godsend
writing in the morning is best becasue you are creative and can catch those creative glints that are like sprightly elves who dance upon dewdrops, messing with syntax and exploring the various causal modalities of speech
a masters degree in poetry is a real godsend
writing in the morning is best becasue you are creative and can catch those creative glints that are like sprightly elves who dance upon dewdrops, messing with syntax and exploring the various causal modalities of speech
Monday, September 08, 2003
some important things become dire with a principle, and that's why we write poetry. and we write becasue that president guy is full of poop, or synonyms thereof. we poets do our work because we like to lyric and make friends and connect network and stuff. we do our spec work when we have time in our busy schedule getting along and we read lots of books and things. I liek to think of writing poetry as the most important overrated thign I can do! that's about where my manifesto stands right now. poets ae the ear ache of the race!!
Sunday, September 07, 2003
the reason why I am referring to other blogs is becasue I am reading them adn all. that's why they are there!!! me and my good freinds in the blogging community have created a network in which we all say hey across the blogs, sharing values and what not. like hey Jim, thanks for the update on your new apartment!! and, that bit about Gary seeing a movie, it's good to kow that Gary saw that movie, becasue it really must've meant something to him. as I said, once I learn to do links, I'll really be connected.
Gary Sullivan asks on hsi blog if anyone saw a particular movie last year. I didn't, unfortunately. I'm sure, however, other people did. it just stans to reason that someone else did. by the way, I know I doa disservice to teh poetry blogging community by not supplying links to the poets and whatever that I make reference to. I haven't figured that part out yet. I will link like a felon once I learn that, dont' you worry. if you link to someone, they HAVE to link to yiou, it's l;iek a rule or somehting, which si cool. I can just FEEL the enlargemetn of my audience, as the links start pouring readerrs to my blog. I admit that I still have not received an inundation of responses to my blog yet. I dont' know what's up with that, some kind of gtechnical glitch or something. when the inundation happoens, it will be a mega thing.
it would be really super excellent if someone gathered all the poet stories from the blogs about what the various New york poets DID during the blackout! I get goosebumps thinkign aboiiut those thousands of pages of 1st person reportage!!!!! yoiu know, and then we ate tons of sushi, becasue the restaurant would just have to throw the stuff out. it's intresting stuff like this, or wars, or important moral thigns that bring the poetryu community togetehr.
Jim Behrle digest: he moved!!! that's just the gist of his blog lately. it's a true story. believe me, tehre's plenty more tidbits almost more exciting!!!
DAVID HESS has stopped doing his blog. it's a shame when someone selflessly doing his own thing stops doing it. us in the poetry blog community are really emotionally feeling something about this loss. David has work to do and plus he's being harassed by someone, which si why he's quitting the blog. it seems so unfair. it's bad enough to have to work, but to be harassed and to lose your blog, it's really a lot to deal with. hey David, it's reallyu intersting about how you have to quit yoiur blog, but, yoiu know, keep up the good work or whatever!!
I wonder if anyoen among my many but nobn-inundating readers has more information concerning Emily Dickinson's cannabalism. it wqould be neat to get more info on that. to me, that a poet yoiu like is a cannibal: that's a pretty interesting tidbit. I'll bet Harvard, which owns Emily Dickinson, makes it real hard to get the lowdown on her cannabalism. tehre's a general looking down on cannbalism in thsi culture, nowadays, except among critics.
had I read Jordan Davis' blog a few days ago I could've wished him luck on some meetuing he had to DO, just call acreoss the blog aether to him: hey Jordan, goodluck!!! alas, the moment is passed. I hope he keeps us advised of the next meting or whatever for which he wants wishes of luck. this is the poetry community in action!!!
I admit i didn't write in my blog yesterday. I was too busy keeping my eye keen for LANGUAGE and experiences that would translate to poems and the like.I write everyday becasue it's my liefblood, like drinking coffee is for some people. I writre becasue I need something to do when i get up early int he morning. I write becasue I don't know, it's fun or something. just thought yoiu'd liek to know my inner workigns here. as I mentioned bnefore, I am a PUBLISHED writer.
a poet's work is neveR dung.
Friday, September 05, 2003
well this is what i am writing now. and this is what i am writing now. ooo, this is what I am writing nwo. successful blogging!!!
don't anyone worry about me, even tho Kasey has yet to quote me at all and Nada likewise and Jim Behrle hasn't enviously placed his name next to mine and wishedd to sleep with me and Ron Silliman hasn't advised the intellectual folk of my furitive butlectric presence on the edge of the scene. jeepers! fatuousness: the new relevancy.
here is where Emily Dickinson used to do much of her writing and here is where she bakld the gingerbread she uised to give to neighbourghoodchildren and here is hwere she kept her collection of severed heads...
the inundntion of responses to this blog just aint happening. aren't we connected? don't all those antennae of the race work? shit man. everyone's in their own sphere, for sure, and careering to small limits. but it seems like you got to do more than just writ elike an angel, you also got to tell people about it. you'd think sensitive poets would juyst KNOW that I am here creating scintillant word stuff. sheesh.
well, it looks like you can take the poem Adonais by SHelley and substitute the name Alan Dugan for Adonais. for that matter you can do the same with the elegy for a dead cat by Thomas Gray. Dugan as a good poet within the circuit he chose.
Thursday, September 04, 2003
poets who resemble pnut butter
ron silliman
nada gordon
w s merwin
poets who resemble topic sentences
john ashbery
jim behrle
bobo brazil
poets who resemble pixie sticks
alan sondheim
gump worsley
bebe reboso
poets who resemble windmills
stephen ellis
anyone named dre
ron silliman
nada gordon
w s merwin
poets who resemble topic sentences
john ashbery
jim behrle
bobo brazil
poets who resemble pixie sticks
alan sondheim
gump worsley
bebe reboso
poets who resemble windmills
stephen ellis
anyone named dre
just exactly who IS in charge of inundating blogs with apposite remarks and discussion and stuff anyway? it is HIGH time that the inundation should have begun here. heck I have NAMED NAMES and evderything, so obviously there's a conspiracy to keep me down, while the mega folk like Silliman and Gordon and Mohammad and Behrle say HI to each other across the blog lines and basically balkanize the poetry world. how very SOCIAL the cross pollination is, but wait, Rosa Parks is sitting at teh front of the bus...
I guess I wouldn't take this blog along with me on a desert island if no one has the energy to inundate me with responses to it. I'd take the phone book and then I could spend hours thinking: if I had a phone I could call this person, adn this person, and this person...
clearly someone, or some THING, has been waylaying the inundation of responses to this blog. I'm no techie so I don't know how it's done but there's no doubt that an inundation should have occurred by now, three whole days into the project. people must be put back on their heels when they read the insightful thoughts that glint thru my writing. I suppose jealosy is natural. I want to mellow down easy here. hey Kasey, you've got a great blog. I'd link to it, if only I knoew how!!!
oh by the way, I have a poem book myself, published by Potes & Poets Press (a real poetry press) with a blurb by Jack Kimball (a real poet and a real smart guy) adn available at Small Press Distribution (a real non-profit for distributing small press publications), so all together I'm up there. so basically, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and, like, despair!
Poets I Would Like to Spendf the Day Watching "Pirates of the Caribbean" with:
John Milton
Christina Rossetti
Amy Clampitt (is she still dead?)
Sylvia Plath
Jim Behrle (if he doesn't wear the fake nose)
Horace
Hart Crane
Thomas Chatterton
John Milton
Christina Rossetti
Amy Clampitt (is she still dead?)
Sylvia Plath
Jim Behrle (if he doesn't wear the fake nose)
Horace
Hart Crane
Thomas Chatterton
say Emily, it seems to me we no longer have the pleasure of the good Colonel Higginson's company. why is this?
oh father, I've grown fed up with Colonel Higginson
~Emily Dickinson versus Jason and Freddy: The Final Showdoqwn!~
oh father, I've grown fed up with Colonel Higginson
~Emily Dickinson versus Jason and Freddy: The Final Showdoqwn!~
whzt if they gave a poetry reading and nobody came? THEY ALREADY DID!!!
Ron and Kasey adn Nada and all the rest must be spending a bit too much time on their oqwn blogs if they haven't gotten around to inundating me with their responses to mine. hey Kasey, I plan to use the word asymptote on my blog real soon! and guess what, everyobne, I wsa reading Wittgenstein last night. I guess that says somethign abouit how serious I am!
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Funny Boens are he chcolate snack cakes with the pnut butter creme filling, taht I mentioned earlier. I guess the strain of dealing with an innundation of responses to this blog that hasn't quite happened yet must be messing with my mind, if I'm going to forget the name of Funny Bones. anyway, I'll bet I'm not the only one who has written odes to Funny Bones: they are JUST THAT GOOD!!!
the inundation of responses to this blog have been a little short of the inundation I expected. I like the sense of keen participation I get whenever I imagine someone reading this blog. I can just imagine the frisson felt by the reader as they recognize a fellow true Poetic Voice that's asking the questions that need to be asked adn answering the questions that need to be asked. I got to get one of those counters so I can keep abreast of the inundation of readers who have yet to muster their responses to my blog. just counting the love! this is what I mean by community: me sitting here writing out my innermost thoughts and theories while an innundation of appreciative responses awaits in the very near future.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
someday I will beguile my myriad readers with what's in my collection of cds. hint: if you like Xmas songs, you're in for a treat! I should also work out a list of all the scifi adn mysteries I've read, and sitcoms I"ve seen. and magazins I've scanned at doctors waiting rooms. and a listing of my favcourite snacks. and a SCINTILATING discussion weighing the pros and cons of RingDingsversus those choclate cakes with teh pnut butter fillings. will I have the cojones to advert my colour preference? I dunno. but to isolate those factors that make me unique will be a great challaenge adn lots of fun.
I'm just wondsering how I will handle the inundation of responses to my blog, once the mysterious tech prob with this blog is worked out. I have to have time to limn my poetyry, I can't be refuting Silliman all day long, no matter how much he needs my advice. and while Nada, too, will want my crisp attention, I have to think of my own career machine, the thign that got me to where I am. so I might have to blow off some of the inundating emails, not becasue I'm snooty but because my 1st order of business is to cerate a poetry both palapable and real. isn't that right?
yes, I am cookign up a real sweat about the new poet laureate. the [poet], with little reluctance, takes the opportunity of the rebellion to punish the delinquents, to clear out the suspects, and to strengthen himself in the weakest places. sounds like Beefalo or any other big poetry school. maybe, just maybe, the new laureate will get to sopeak a few words on NPR.
Moby Grape has a song called Omaha adn it's not about Omaha at ALL!!! it's from the pschedelic 60s and sounds liek happy punk, 2 and a half minute speed burn. I like to listen to specific old stuff cause I'm old adn lifeless. poetry readings are not neccessarily venues for a lot of energy. I want to do a poetry reading at which I'll shuffle thru my papers confusedly and read my poems as if I'd never seen them befoe. that sure would be unusual, huhn? I've never been to a poetry slam but if indeed the audience at tiems will do such as snapping fingers to indicate displeasure at a poet's eading, well it sounds rude at first but maybe that's what is needed. the young Charlie Parker got gonged at a KC after hours jam. good enough for him, good enlough for me.
I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with this blog, for I started it about a day ago and yet no one has inundated me with praise and commentary. sometiems the way the poetry community can be about takign sides and ignoring what they dont' udnerstand that it is literally like omigod. I mean, conformity is in charge. like hey, you mean you DON"T have a Masters Degree in literature? how forsworn can you BE???
of course, when I speak of Emily Dickinson's cannabalism, I don't want to sound too judgmental about someone's lifestyle. we all have our quirks. on the other hand, Ezra Pound had a well-documented monstrous side, not to be ignored. his anti-Semitism seemed a contradiction to what his poetic work was about.
Monday, September 01, 2003
I started this blog more than 8 hours ago and nobody has writen to me yet. could it be that no one is willing to take up the cudgel against any of my arguments? or is it that the poetry community has let me down? hey Kasey, can you hear me now?? well, I'm outraged by what Silliman wrote on his blog last tuesday, and if I could put links into the text like everyone else does, I'd put one to what he wrote right HERE. then I woukld dissect it, point by point, till I won. and taht would be super great blogging.
I guess what I'm saying about Emily Dickinson is, if you found out that she was a cannibal, it might affect yoiur view of her poetry a bit. it would me. we tend to invest in the person behind the poem. on the other hand, I'm not sure it would help my perception of Jeffrey DAhmer were I to learn that he played the lute and wrote madrigals.
is what you hear at poetry slams poetry? ask an expert!
I've always thought that Coventry Patmore was a great name for a poet.
wouldn't it be interesting if Emily Dickinson it turned out she was a cannibal? I mean I'm not saying she was, but it would be intersting if that's what was discovered. I wonder if cannibalism and poetry are necessarily mutually exclusive categories?
I've been reading Pound's Cantos lately. if it hasn't been said befoe, let me say it: that's one crazy ass poem there.
isn't it funny how important good typing skills is for a writer? if you aren't a good typer you end up writing stuff yoiu didn't write. sometiems I go back over what I've written and clean it up but I don't want to loose all that initial energy of writing. a lot of tiems, the mistakes are better than what I meant, which is funny, isnt' it? if I spell somethign wrong then oh will, basically.
they gave a poetry reading the other day, and a hockey game broke out (joke!)
it is Labour Day, by the way, but I don't take the day off. I write everyday. I don't want to miss something interesting in my head because I took the day off.
it's such a lonely thing to sit here staring at the Create New Post thing at my blog. I mean it is daunting to look at that blank and expectant place where words can go, and in fact now the space isn't blank, so that's cool. writing is a lot like typing!
I can't wait till someone dfisagrees with me and writes and I can write in my blog showing them that I am write or maybe just quote them and because it gives a rich texture to a blog to have quotes. I wish I knew how to do links. links are how poets link to each other. that's part of the community thing. if you link to me, I link to you, and hand in hand we gain a greater audience.
so like I said (whew I just came back from bicycling and am still sweating: excuse my stink!!), poetry is a commuinity thing. we all take words or even parts of words, the interesting parts, and make poems that reflect whatever and so forth. and it's communal because if you want me to read your stuff you have to read mine, it's only fair. potlatch society, right? altho there people like Robert Creeley, say, who doesn't have to read other people's stuff becasue people already read his stuff, but maybe he reads other people stuff even so. so it's a tight knit group of isolatoes, that's the poetry scene. we're in our writers tower all day writing our poems and theoizing about how peoms can get good, not an easy task, and then we get together and share our poems. we gain strength from the community we make!
here is a list of POETS I HAVE MET!!
Robert Grenier
Alan Dugan
Larry Eigner
Robert Creeley
John Ashbery
Sheila Murphy
Peter Ganick
Jack Kimball
Wanda Phipps
Anselm Berrigan
Edwin Torres (sort of)
Bruce Andrews
I was / this / close to meeting Nada Gordon (true sttory!) which I guess means I was / this / close to meeting Gary Sullivan
Stephen Ellis
Patrick Herron
Jim Behlre
if I think fo any other poets I have met, I'll be sure to put them on gthe ole blog
I once write to Ron Silliman and he wrote back!
I've met ogtehrs but they weren't famous or they haven't been published
here is a list of POETS I HAVE MET!!
Robert Grenier
Alan Dugan
Larry Eigner
Robert Creeley
John Ashbery
Sheila Murphy
Peter Ganick
Jack Kimball
Wanda Phipps
Anselm Berrigan
Edwin Torres (sort of)
Bruce Andrews
I was / this / close to meeting Nada Gordon (true sttory!) which I guess means I was / this / close to meeting Gary Sullivan
Stephen Ellis
Patrick Herron
Jim Behlre
if I think fo any other poets I have met, I'll be sure to put them on gthe ole blog
I once write to Ron Silliman and he wrote back!
I've met ogtehrs but they weren't famous or they haven't been published
someday I want to do a poetry reading, and read all my stuff backwards. it woukd be especially really cool if I was famous when I did it, and everyone would trip on how I was reading backwardsds. I mean, if I wasn't famous adn I read backwards, peoplke wouild think he always writews that way. liekit was my style the same as all those jimbos who write liek Frank O'Hra.
I'm listening to the Grateful Dead do Dark Star. it's a terrific space jam and it gets me thinking creative thoughts. I like letting myt mind go and write.
it's not really like five in the morning, even tho I like to write in teh early morning when I am creative. I don't know how to get the time stamp right. blogs are fun but hey sure are confusing.
when I write, I liek to think of myself as a cup of coffee. sometimes I'm hot and sometimes I am cool.
poetry is a community thijng, don't you think. I mean it's like we're all writing stuff and brilliant and all, and we share it together like friends. it's fun to be impressed by the writing of other person, someone who might even be a genius. I don't know if I am a genius, it doesn't really matter, because I have to write no matter if I am a genius or not. I think a lot of writers are lime that.
HI! my name is ALLEN BRAMHALL, and I am a POET! if you want to drop me a line and tell me stuff about poetry, like what's my favorite poem or whatever, my addy is bramhall52@earthlink.net. I've been a poet a long time. I guess I was a born to be a poet, even tho sometimes poetry is boring. I will share poems with you and opinions about stuff and everything. be sure to check my blog alomst everyday because I might whenever the idea comes to me.
