Author: Nada Gordon

skirt artist entertainer ESL teacher poet
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Yesterday, Laurable reminds us, was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s birthday. EBB is one of my most-loved poets and perhaps the one I most physically resemble! Laurable says EBB was the first poet to write love poems in English from a woman’s perspective. I’m wondering, can this be true? What about Anne Bradstreet? Or is she considered to have written duty poems instead of love poems?

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Jim Behrle writes in:

I didn’t know about your condition, sorry.

–Jim

Benediction granted.

The ironic thing is: The pain’s cause is writing! and writing exacerbates it! and I can’t stop myself!

Maybe someday it will totally go away? Or will it keep influencing my work as Hannah Weiner and Larry Eigner’s respective conditions did theirs?… not that mine is at all comparable in terms of severity…

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I also had to include a few poems for his class reader. I chose

The Ecstasy by John Donne

Grind by Diane Ward

Women by Clark Coolidge

Love Songs I – XIII by Mina Loy

If You by Robert Creeley

Gary’s letter poem to me beginning Brilliant wind conflicts the absorb …

and I would have sent five trillion others if I’d had any more time.

He wanted us to suggest some critical readings as well — I suggested anything by Tristan Tzara!

Oh gee oh gosh, this really makes me want to teach a poetry class.

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Kasey, bless his heart, is going to teach my book V. Imp. next semester. He wanted me to write a statement of poetics so here it is:

V. Imp. is “very important” (marginally, or as [musical] notation) but in shorthand, because not enough time or languor. V. Imp.‘s defining gesture is kicking — podiums, authority — kicking up at barriers and limits, or kicking legs up sideways in the air á la Dick Van Dyke, an important early influence. V. Imp. — serious fluff or frivolous gravitas? It’s “oscillating bimbo poetics”. The poems are my odalisques and I am their master (this is revenge for centuries of the inverse). They yearn hungrily –at the moon?– out the arched windows of the palace; the tinkling fountains, the caged birds (their pretty familiars) do not soothe them. They know there is more to experience. Anyway, forget everything you ever learned about poetry. If you don’t know anything about poetry, just forget what you don’t know. Then we can begin. The writing takes my hand (and by extension, both our heads) in another absurdly orientalist gesture, flying us about through squalor and pulchritude, delighted with its own stupid wit. “No money in buffoonerie” — oh well. Change “peace state” to “war state” : ululate. It’s urban, psychic, lexical spelunking, the old Romantic impulse but jerkier and more twisted, clumsy, raging when not just campy. Total drama: opera, porn, Bollywood, and old musicals: each word has a bared midriff and thrusting pelvis. Poetry (not mine) has become sickeningly reasonable despite the pulsating metropoli and deep illogic of everything. The “uses” of poetry more frangible… than tangible. Remember: the striped fish is still in the blank space but its jaw yammers up and down. Exercise of autonomy, rhythm in amber, song of my elf…

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Jim Behrle is abrasive, is alienating me. Abrasion is distinct from insurrection.

I’m not convinced anyone will be talking about my poetry in 20 years (much less talking about anything, the way things are going these days), but if they are I think that yes, the effects of analgesics will be discussed as a significant influence.

I have a chronic pain condition — wheee! See my play, “PtArmIgaN”, for more information.

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Anselm Berrigan discloses:

In 1980 eddie me my mother and my father lived in boulder from, I think, february through july or august. My father had been asked to teach, but really to mediate the naropa poetry wars, as he was friends with all sides…

but I’m writing in the interest of information to tell you about two things: 1) the time I made him five sandwiches in a row, and when I refused to interrupt whatever playing I was doing to make a sixth, he got mad and yelled at me, tho he raised his gigantic (to me) naked body out of bed and made his own sandwich. and apologised a little later. 2) he used to send me to this store to get things, like the paper, pepsi, cigarettes, and certain kinds of danishes. one time I brought home donuts because i didn’t like raisins and they were in the only available kind of danish. and then he yelled at me, and I felt bad and cried. and then he apologised a little later. and ate a lot of donuts (he was not really a yeller tho’). Not drugs, I know. but then there was one time, in new york, where I asked my mother to help me with some kind of science homework when I was seven. she gave me this funny look and said go ask your father. I thought he was asleep, but she insisted I ask him. so i did, and he woke up and proceeded to ask me to bring him a screwdriver, which I did, and then he proceeded to take apart the telephone. this had nothing to do with my homework. I think my mother wanted me to interrupt whatever state he was in. he was not in such states too often in my interactions with him, which were very very frequent until he died. but the ones i remember are pretty damn funny, to me. no particular reason for me to tell you this, but I liked your note about him, and its better than thinking about war for a few minutes….