Month: May 2005

DON’T MISS THIS

Text/Styles

A poetry/fashion event
to benefit international garment workers
Sunday May 22 Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery) 8-10 pm
$5 donation

Featuring:

Kim Rosenfield 
Rob Fitterman  
Adeena Karasick
Shanna Compton  
Katie Degentesh 
Virginie Poitrasson
Tim Peterson
Christina Strong
Jack Kimball  
Marianne Shaneen  
Douglas Rothschild  
Brenda Iijima  
Tonya Foster  
Jordan Davis 
Meghan Cleary  
& (organizer/MC) Nada Gordon

Wear your favorite or most outstanding clothing. Bring clothes to sell for the benefit of garment workers worldwide. All proceeds will be donated to Cleanclothes.org,

It occurs to me, Jordan-with-whom-I totally-agree,that it’s not that poets want to be god, but that we are all, in fact, some form of little hyperactive gods and goddesses.

Language is still spells, after all.

and the word was with god, etc…

Drew’s workshop at the Poetry Project sounds absolutely terrific, not least because he’s teaching some of my very favorite writers. I was thinking of using some Opal Whitely in my fall Poetry Project workshop as well (thank you, Anselm) — he beat me to the punch!

My course description:

VERSions: Writing Our Enthusiasms

In this conclave you will investigate techniques to help you attain **maximally energized** writing and write exactly what you need to read. We’ll approach verse as versions (as in rewrites or cover tunes), animadversions (‘strong criticisms” of prevailing orders), subversions, controversy, perversions (including the violent sexiness of semantic & grammatical friction), reversions (examining and borrowing from really old sources), obversions (turns and alterations), aversions (“the poetics of disgust”),introversions (amniotic or private language, hypnosis), conversions (of our enthusiasms and obsessions into verbal artefacts), diversions (in the form of frivolous poetry “parlor games”), diversity (with special attention to “other” cultures), vertigo, conversions (collaborations) and even quaquaversions: “a dome-like dipping in all directions”. The reading list will be determined by conversation. Participants will: explore and articulate their poetic assumptions, share inspirations (including those outside of literature), learn to develop a “magpie poetics”, write at least one piece collaboratively, and enhance at least one poem with music, costume, props, or movement for performance (extroversion!). 

Play Air

This is to register my pleasure at reading Corina Copp’s new Belladonna chapbook, Play Air.

If I were anywhere near as megalomaniacal as some (qute mistakenly!) believe me to be, I might posit that the poetry in Play Air shows signs of my influence. But it’s far more likely that I read in Cori’s poems a kind of kindred sensibility.

Her writing lilts. It perambulates. It functions on a plane of cognition above and below logic. It’s so verbal that it’s almost pre-verbal, dreamy. On every page I find something that startles me in a good way, not in a straining-to-be-weird way. It feels weirdly “natural” — or naturally weird.

Random lines:

strained iridescent hares

“Ahoy, a long serene”

lone glee club in darkness,
Are You A Chorus?

Pillow meat, I say

…”Mmm” glance
over the eggnogg.

pink burst of smallish heat in my letters

Air + Nonsense = Endearing Sheets of it

tulle & half-red dilation

Plagues?
I always ask this. It means nothing since
who could impersonate a deer if I asked this?

It’s not procedural or researched or making any kind of strong statement that might stamp out its poetry. It’s subtle, but not ethereal floaty or evasive. It’s pitched for exactly what my ear wants to hear. It’s because her private language sounds an awful lot like my private language. Articulation. Thank you, Cori.

WHAT I BELIEVE

I’m a Jewess Orientalist from California.

Cotton is the fabric most similar to our psyches, because it’s the most resilient. Liquid plumber ruins the pipes.

I believe in the theory of trigger points and chronic pain. I believe in the gravitational pull of the moon, pop astrology. I think about cotton a lot.

I believe that cats are capable of a huge range of behaviors, emotions and perceptions, more than we usually imagine.

I like ablutions. I keep my problems in a hatbox on the armoir I bought on eBay for $500. Fish oil is enormously curative.

I was probably around five when my grandmother took me to temple for the first time, for Purim, I think. I had stories from the Old Testament with wonderful illustrations.

Esther is in my pantheon of heroines, along with Elizabeth I and Carla Harryman.

I believe in total eunuch action.

*

MORRIENTALISM

Rabbi Hillel invented Flarf on one leg. Or maybe it was Rabbi Akiva.

*

Often I am permitted to return to a mikvah.

This just in the email, from one “Tariq Ellison”:

Hallo, Ruby!

a crime bred awake. which coat paid you really? anxiously comfort began our dance along window. he oversaw an sweet chance since argument. accidentally. their grey news into whistle, that undershot hard, general east. Mason bit an sharp insurance. he stank Gunnar when dove her Bailey! she misgave cut wing, that offset perfectly… at map ridded heat, pen hand-rode about that feather since yellow air:

it thunderstruck that regular disgust save a free advertisement, that dowed hourly. some left polish prepaid per his turn; awake, acid mass. late steam education resold, they unslung eventually, solemnly, quickly. a loose window drew near his meal; quick, poor form. she fed this simple feather past my dependent engine, which wound sometimes. she hand-fed them happy. it thunderstruck red society, which cleped swiftly…

paid her present burst,
Ayana MINOR.

******************

How to crack the code? What sinister intent lies buried here?

I’M NOT RELIGIOUS, I’M A JEWESS

Judaism isn’t something I believe in nor something I practice. I sing songs — not prayers — and keep no sabbath but my own leisure. For me, Judaism is a beautiful bauble, passed down from my grandmother, I wear it every day, even when it clashes with my outfit.

*

I’M NOT

They say that one of the lost tribes went to India. Let me be lost with them. I would take my bicycle and ankle bracelet, wrap tfillin on the handlebars and ring the bell for Miriam. Whenever I ride through Boro Park — the traffic parts — I dream of a Moses played by Amitabh Bachchan.

In India they never eat their golden cows.

*

JEWESS

I sew from patterns and dispute for art’s sake.

*

Amitabh Bacharach I dream a little dream of you.