Author: Nada Gordon

I actually wore three different outfits today. One I didn’t photograph, but here are two of them:

Grayish-purple babydoll dress (Victoria’s Secret catalog ,ugh), accessorized with “newsprint” scarf, rosy mauve daypack, and new sunglasses. The seller on Canal St. wanted $25 for them, I said, “what are you crazy? I’ll give you $10.” He said no way so I started walking out, and finally we agreed on $12, which is not too bad given that it’s less than 50% of his initial quote. I like to think I drive a hard bargain, but I can’t imagine that his wholesale price was more than two or three dollars. Right? Oh, gee, excuse me, is my heritage showing?

To the Stain of Poetry Reading tonight (where I read with Julian Brolaski, Adam Fieled, Scott Hightower, Chris Stackhouse & David Wolach, thanks to organizer Amy King) I wore (you can’t quite see the skirt here; the completists among you will be disappointed, sorry):

Not sure why I so often fall into that “frame face with bird-shaped hands” pose: perhaps it’s a bellydance affectation. Photo by Brenda Iijima. I read LYRIC poems at the reading to psych out everyone who thinks of me as a mere Flarfist. Ha! A wonderful evening, with a rare sighting of Jeni Olin, here shown with Erica Kaufman: (Aren’t they gorgeous?)

Other gorgeous people I saw today:

I love her silver hair, the autumn tones, the shoulder ruffle, and the creative use of fabric direction here. She had an “I love Jesus” lanyard on as well.

I also think Gary looked gorgeous against this dramatically striped and graffiti’d pillar underneath the overpass in his Brahma (?) t-shirt and olive shorts:

Lots of sun today: sleepy. Analysis will have to wait.

Hot like a kitty
flat like a sound
crowded like a toolkit

vapidity of love as polemic,
I’m an eminent sore, sticking
out. Semiticism of rapid conversation:
sore caves, sore curves, sore flatness. soreness.
Porn girl looks up at camera for a sec, then gets back to business.
The misty mountains are misaligned. Explain.

Barack Obama drinks a Bud Lite.
Everything too meaningful, like panties
on a lamb (wilder). Lernen Sie Englisch, yeah, OK.
Millions old every month
confusing MIDRASH and MIDRIFF.
I cover my cleavage out of respect for others…

Like bobby pins on a yarmulke, these are
the days of our “lives”:
neurotic golden behavior as sought-for hornbill

EAT the candle
PRAY the html
love whimpering mightily

rocks tumble into hipsters
underwear now in a spoon.

mind asks for a different dogstar
because quiddity is so serviceable

and then I want quince. Jerking.

Today I’m wearing my “Exene dress.” Fine and sheer black cotton faux vintage, lined, with sheer puff sleeve and lace hem. Plastic faux-jet buttons and pintucks at front and above hem.

I saw X play live several times in the late 70s and early 80s. Exene always had these wonderful crow-like vintage dresses, sometimes in several layers,like a Heian jidai noble, and an assortment of bracelets,ivory and red and totally various, each so different from the other as to create strange orchestras of decoration on her arms.

I remember driving down from the Bay Area with friends to hang out in LA. We went to… what was that little club in Chinatown? The Germs played. Also maybe The Middle Class, and the Controllers? We had frozen beer for breakfast. Penelope of the Avengers teased me for some reason. We hung out with Billy Zoom, making fake snow angels on the living room floor. I remember I had on a Burgundy suede fringeg jacket. Hair dyed to match. A friend who dealt drugs wore a striped Johnny Rotten mohair sweater and brothel creepers. Did we actually eat anything? I can’t remember.

Anyway, I’m drunk on tawny port having helped Gary celebrate his birthday at St. Dymphnaa with Franklin and Jordan and Adeena. Since I almost never drink I feel weird. Now must post this before midnight for the integrity of the project, then try to sleep it off. Later!

The Wassaic Project Summer Festival Presents: “Segue Goes Country: Innovative Poets from the Tri-State Region” August 15, 2009, 3-5pm, @ Luther’s Livestock Auction Barn

Poetry by Bob Holman, Geoff Young, Stacy Syzmaszek, Gary Sullivan, Michael Gottlieb, & Nada Gordon presented by The Segue Foundation, publisher of Roof Books:

· Nada Gordon’s most recent poetry is Folly from Roof Books. Publishers Weekly dubbed her an “outrageously ludic punk priestess. She blogs avidly at http://ululate.blogspot.com

· Bob Holman’s most recent book is A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, a collaboration with Chuck Close; The Awesome Whatever is his new CD. He is the founder of the Bowery Poetry Club.

· Michael Gottlieb, the author of 14 books, lives in Lakeville, CT. Gottlieb’s latest, Memoir and Essay, was by hailed by Kasey Mohammed as “an immensely valuable document in the annals of Language writing and contemporary literary autobiography.”

· Poet and cartoonist Gary Sullivan is the author of PPL in a Depot, a Googled book of flarf plays, and the comic book series Elsewhere. He maintains a blog at http://garysullivan.blogspot.com.

· Stacy Szymaszek is the author of Emptied of All Ships and Hyperglossia from Litmus Press. She is the Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. A section of a new long poem “Hart Island” is forthcoming in limited edition from Albion Books.

· Geoff Young’s press, The Figures, published over 125 books of poetry, fiction, and art writing. His own recent books include Cerulean Embankments and Fickle Sonnets. His contemporary art gallery in Great Barrington has presented more than 60 shows.

Where: Luther’s Livestock Auction

35 Furnace Bank Rd, Wassaic NY 12592

Luther’s Livestock Auction walking distance of the Metro North Wassaic station.

By car coming North on 22, turn right on Furnace Brook Rd. and follow the crowd

More information: http://mta.info/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/arts/design/29wassaic.html?hp

Bakhtin and Vygotsky walk into a bar.

I’ll take a Pink Panty Pulldown, Vygotsky says, to herself.

Bakhtin orders a Sex on the Beach, with a twist of irony: “How many words does it take to have a context?”

Their eyes fill with sugar. They lift up their babydolls.

The barkeep asks, “What’s the meaning and purpose of cud?”

Bakhtin answers: In the absence of external restraints, it helps to manage the drive.

Vygotsky nods: Yes, a monument to a model of knowing… in foam.

Moral offense?

Or technical lapse?

Today’s look is earth tones + flamenco + a little glitter.

Copper tulle shrug with gold sequins and embroidery.
purpled gray sleeveless top with ruching
simple dark brown linen/polyester skirt with bias inset
coordinated bronze sequinned fitflops (not sure if these work, but they are hell of comfortable), beaded bracelets, faceted teardrop earrings, and facial expression

I have a special love for representational clothing. All clothing, as I have mentioned, signifies, but what I am calling representational clothing actually has TEXT or IMAGES printed on its fabric. The PRINK tank top and the t-shirt patchwork skirt I wore recently are two examples, as are these Japanese t-shirts:

Today’s handmade-by-yours-truly skirt features both text and images. The images are nostalgic cartoons, in the style of perhaps the 1930s, but some of the costumes depicted in them evoke the 1890s. The message is old-time kitsch as interpreted by the Japanese. I bought the fabric last summer in Shimokitazawa and have blogged about it before (I’m that into it, this fabric). It’s horrible not to live a few blocks away from that particular fabric store anymore. Note how the text, which is half-lisible (is that English?), half-sensical , surrounds the cartoon panels almost midrashically. (Is that English?)

I love how in this one the be-ribboned (festooned?) puppy is scampering up to get the love letter from the little girl:

It also satisfies (or titillates) my fairly serious (and fairly predictable) passion for roses. This rose is particularly well-formed. Most roses in novelty prints are prissy or blowsy. Not this one. It’s just about perfect:

You’ll note that the themes of the cartoon panels are “days of the week,” calling to mind marked underwear. As I have elsewhere stated my contempt for the quotidian, it may surprise you that I find this not only endearing, but positively transformative of said contempt into, yes, I think so, delight. I’m easy.

Here’s the ensemble, in which I am deceiving myself into thinking I am statuesque (more alchemy here).

But the punctum of the outfit, really, is the hair ornament, bought at a thrift store in Japan and featuring a beautiful camellia (or is it a rose? what do you think?) with red, pink, and silver petals, pink buds, and very traditional, like that on a formal Japanese envelope ornament, gold cording.

I suppose the theme today is “Japan.” I suppose I am missing Japan. I note that at this very moment I am, ironically, burning incense from the Gotokuji temple in my old neighborhood. Gotokuji’s pagoda:

and Gotokuji’s famous maneki neko:

Hello friends,

You might think that I would be tired already of writing about

… but really, I’m not. I had to get dressed again today, too. I would like to remind my more literarily-oriented readers, who may be tiring of this “thread” (ha!), that the two disciplines of dressing and poetry have ever so much in common.

Kennedy Fraser writes, in The Fashionable Mind:

Style is rarely glimpsed in times like these, which at best encourage its humble relative, good taste. [Open just about any poetry magazine and see for yourself.] While style and taste have been known to intermingle in the past [I would consider the poetry of Edwin Denby to slot in nicely here.], the currently widening gap between them reminds us once more of their fundamental enmity [right?]. The world of the merely tasteful – a trim edifice of bourgeois conformities, with narrow slots to be filled and straight lines to be toed – is bound to barricade itself, in the end, against style, which is individual, aristocratic, and reckless [I think you can guess what parallel I might draw in the world of letters here, except that I do object to the word “aristocratic.” Sometimes I just wish I could edit books that are already published.]. Taste concerns itself with broad, lifetime progress, and never makes mistakes; style moves by fits and starts and is occasionally glorious. Style differs from elegance, too, yet they often keep company, since elegance is generally regarded as a prime object in the quest for style. But elegance is static and hermetic [shall we say… Rilke?], and the moments of its attainment in a life of style are like so many cathedrals along the route of a comprehensive cultural tour. Style requires allegiance to a creed whose shifting nature makes it all the more demanding. But then style is more rewarding than the ways of elegance or taste, and it is surely closer to an art.

Or… if I may use the term loosely (sorry, Ben): a poetics. Taste is modernist: style is avant-garde (thanks to Rob for a related insight). Style (we all know this) emerges without regard to class or status (and as such is democratic, not aristocratic: just take a look around you on any vehicle of public transportation); taste and elegance assume at least some kind of status quo. I am not interested in elegance at all. In fact, it makes me a little sick. I don’t object to a modicum, a smidgeon really, of taste, just to keep society from collapsing altogether. Style, on the other hand, is paramount.

Speaking of Paramount, I took my students to The Museum of the Moving Image today. Here are some of the entities I merged with there:

Two of the style icons pictured above I long ago adopted as my personal compasses. Can you guess which ones?

Today’s ensemble features a breezy (it’s 87 degrees outside and muggy) bias cut seersucker skirt whose deep pink and periwinkle stripes combine to make a fine lavender. Note the semi-elliptical insets at either side and the oversized patch pockets. The tank top is a neat little bit of self-promo: that’s the cover of Folly. Slightly puffed sleeves on the midriff cardigan help protect against ubiquitous air-conditioning. Shoes by… Harley Davidson!

Since I seem mostly to choose photos in which my eyes are downcast (what’s that about, I wonder?) I leave you today with something a bit more confrontational:

Weekend style report:

The best look I saw all this weekend was “shirtless with bunny” as you can see here.

The grass at Korean Arts Village wore us. Dig Rob’s fedora! And Kim’s 60s daisy dress with Ray-Bans and preppie Minnetonkas! Gary’s in purple (my influence).

I converse with one of the village elders, who wears a simulacrum of homespun.

Here, Coco (who is thinking to change her last name to either Duchamp or Ono) is wearing a faux-batik print jersey dress in robin-egg blue, perfect for a summer romp in the country. I am also in jersey, in gaudy solids. We played Beatles trivia on the car ride back to the city; we are just about tied, I think. I couldn’t name the number of McCartney’s children (including the adoptees), and she didn’t instantly come up with “Apple Scruffs.”

Rob and I discussed poetic motivation at length. I’m not sure whether we agreed to disagree or whether we decided we were describing different sides of the same coin.

I insisted that since our society gives back so little to poets, that I cling to certain appealing (to me) aspects of the poet myth: the milieu, the conversations, the sensitive antennae, the embroilments. I maintained that we are “special people” who really are more observant, who perceive more intensely, than the average member of the hoi polloi. Rob felt that was not necessarily so, and opined that it is our main task to make work that is relevant to the contemporary situation using the materials of the culture around us. I agreed that form is primary, but that it is our particular challenge to make forms that are adequate to the intensities of our motivation, which starts for me as a kind of rhythmic itch that I suppose I could call emotional, the spontaneous overflow of powerful…you know the rest. That’s why I insisted on describing myself as a lyric poet. A lyre is a musical instrument. The strings vibrate. There’s something to that, and also to the sense of being able to enter a state of sonic excitation (I dragged the old “radio” metaphor out of the closet here)… that drugginess, to me, is what it’s all about. If it is intellective, or if there is critique in what comes out, for me that is more or less of a by-product.

No one in the car (although Coco didn’t mention her stance on this) quite agreed that this was how it worked for them. How about you guys?

I am only posting the outfit from Saturday as Rob and Kim had issues with their water tank and no one had a shower on Sunday morning. It’s the right thing to do, I think, even though I am wondering about what the constraints of this project should be. Is it like birth control pills, that if I skip a day I expose myself (or my project) to some sort of compromise?

Today, back to the 50s thing: Taffeta plaid with pink and gray undertones, coral lace bolero. Rain is forecast on and off all week, and it occurs to me that taffeta is the perfect fabric for the rain, even though I will sweat a little. Dress bought in Manhattan Chinatown for I think $30, on East Broadway. I have entirely forgotten the provenance of the bolero, but I think I’ve kept it around for a couple of decades.

Too much garbage? What if there
wasn’t enough fruit jelly
Up your body (havoc!)

“Too much sauce! That is spaghetti
with anchovies and olives tomato
soup! Blasphemy!”

Posts of this kind will not
be permitted in this carnival. …
Aloha! I am leaving paradise next week.

Notice that the aggressor is not wearing
too much padding and taking a substantial
amount of hits without getting hurt!

BTW I don’t dislike Aloha,
we don’t wear grass skirts and … i
drink too much and cry a lot but dance often

What is the meaning of “too much metal can destroy you”?
Gold fabrics won’t work, because they shimmer too much,
and there’s WAY too much rice, in comparison to spam

and the head is disproportionately big: