(a birthday poem for Rod Smith by Rob Fitterman, Nada Gordon, and John Keats)
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness This page doesn’t seem to have anything on it… and it’s like shoved in here, it’s like blank… totally… what’s up with that? Who are these coming to the sacrifice? What’s the deal with all of this birth stuff? I got a frowsy slab on that… perky smoke… dug blastocyte… happy, happy boughs. Now you’re telling me that Baltimore is north of Washington. And it’s not that the phenomenology of being doesn’t always already posit the teleological construct of dialectic ratiocination WHILE-U-WAIT. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! Passive-aggressive Sacagawea. Dude, that is like so speech-based. Frogs can do that! Look it up! I don’t do rent. Mean-spirited leaf blower. Canary-shaped. Lead’st thou that heifer blowing at the skies. Dear Eyeware Manufacturer: How do you expect me to remove these glasses from the plastic-tied packaging? I get all my guilt by osmosis. More happy love! more happy, happy love! It’s more Perdue than the other way around. Meaningless, tireless, bunny-less. Military-industrial breakfast special? A heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d. These are the toxic waste containers lined with Douglas Firs I was telling you about. My bong hurts. Chicken parts in my long johns of marble men and maidens overwrought. If you’re wearing mirror sunglasses and walking down the street the other direction, do you still go through the same changes? What’s the deal with having to pee?—there’s only one lederhosen in that pastry basket, honey. Cold pastoral! Gonna line me some toxic waste containers with processed cheese. That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know, darlin’. See ya Spring Semester.
OK, so early Sunday morning woke up, grabbed my bag, and made it a little early to Penn Station, early enough to run into Sean Cole and his musical instrument en route to Boston: how lovely, to run into Sean Cole early on a Sunday morning in NYC! Then Rob showed up in a pink and purple tie and black lo-top converses and we got on the train, full of discoursing and gossips and opinions, and then we wrote a poem for Rod Smith, whose birthday it was. Both Rob and I decided to write in the voice of Rod, and Rob had the cool idea of snagging some lines from Ode to a Grecian Urn, which I was able to summon up with a few caresses of my iPhone. The poem’s great, I’ve asked Rob for his perm to post it here. In the meantime:
Upon arrival Buck Downs and Maureen Thorson met us and whisked us off to an Indian buffet where we amusedly watched the Keep Fucking That Chicken video, again, courtesy of my iPhone.
I was devoured by several vicious mosquitoes with more energy than hungry I even brought to my pakoras, which were not half bad, and now my calves are polka-dotted, oh dear. From the restaurant we jammed over to the DC Arts Center, one of my favorite places to read. In attendance so many wonderful poets: Cathy Eisenhower, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Lynne Dreyer, P. Inman, Tina Darragh, Chris Nealon, Mel Nichols, Rod Smith, M. Magnus and daughter Hero, Kareem Estefan and Isabel, and several others…
Tina Darragh, P. Inman, and Rob
Buck gave Rob a beautiful introduction trumpeting Rob’s joyful connoisseurship, mentioning a Portugese restaurant Rob had taken him to many years before on a trip to NYC. Rob read three pieces: an incisive and also very funny piece on failure that called up all of the pitfalls and problematics of conceptual work; his legendary “This Window Makes Me Feel”; and his Ben Kessler project, inspired by Vito Acconci’s stalker piece, in which he follows and corresponds with several Ben Kesslers (as well as friends of the Bens) online. He was enthusiastically applauded after each piece.
I was up next, cracking jokes about how it was so nice to be there, coming from a big city (hee hee), and putting “y’all” on the ends of sentences just like them, and saying I fancy myself a bit of a chameleon. I read several poems from my new Loquela as vigorously as I could, starting with the weird shorter poems, moving into the flarfy “Apex of the O” piece, then finishing with more extended passionate rushes. It was fun and kind of exhausting. I swigged water, saying it’s so tiring to be a romantic poet, all you proceduralists have it easy. That was kind of a joke.
We finished the evening’s entertainment by reading our poem to Rod off of Rob’s laptop. We winged the reading like total pros, not just alternating but sometimes echoing. sometimes doubling or emphasizing. This made me terrifically happy, and I reckon Rod was happy, too.
Then off to The Reef a few doors down where Hero drew me a wonderful portrait of me from the back (a bunch of hair). She was SO cool: her ambition, she said, since the age of two, has been to go to Mars. I’m guessing she’s maybe ten now? Eleven? I had lovely conversations with Maureen and Tina and Cathy and Lynne and many others.
Mel whisked us to our hotel, and dig this: THERE WAS A FOUR-PERSON HOT TUB IN MY ROOM! You KNOW I took advantage of it, and I’ll be darned if I didn’t feel like Hugh Hefner, aww yeah. Instantly thought to remodel my apartment with a FOUR-PERSON HOT TUB in my living room.
I watched the end of Kong on TV, admiring Naomi Watts, and spent a slumbery night free of galloping cats, freeway noise, spousal snores etc. Woke up to eat raisin bread and rubbery hard-boiled eggs at the breakfast buffet, then Rob and I rode the train to the Washington Mall. We looked at Phillip Guston pictures at the National Gallery, then met Buck at the Holocaust Museum. I had never been there. I thought the exhibits were amazing, but we had to rush through as time was getting short, and it was very strange indeed to rush through the Holocaust. As we left, the museum guard cheerily called out, “Come back again!” What was up with that?
Here’s Rob in front of the Washington Monument, which, since it is almost invisible in the photo, we were convinced was shielded by a hi-tech cloaking device!
So, back to hotel and then onto George Mason University for our second gig: “Poetry Goes to the Movies.” Saw Cathy Cook’s lovely film, Immortal Cupboard: In Search of Lorine Niedecker. I was to perform my Navrang benshi… minutes before I went on, I looked at my script which I had hurriedly printed out and (arrgh) the lines were running into each other in several cases… different version of Word on my work computer? Anyway… I had to blur and fudge and make do a little, but the audience seemed pleased anyway: I had to release all perfectionism… I showed my Corndog Guy movie and oh, there was much laughter. Read three flarfy poems including “I WANT TO BE INFANTILIZED BY A BUNCH OF GOONS.”
Then Rob did a multifaceted PowerPoint presentation with sections from his “War, the Musical,” (his collaboration with Dirk Rountree, who also provided the images, eerie collages that made clever use of Macintosh icons as design elements). Standout themes from his presentation: Colin Powell, E.T., James Brown Duck (and a whole litany of other ducks), Sbarro. A marvelously orchestral piece.
The audience seemed stunned afterwards. There were no questions for our joint Q and A. Did they hate us? Or were they just too confused? Anyway we had to run to get our train back to New York. Wheeling our bags so fast we almost flew: our driver was waiting: later I told Rob, that was like being the Beatles escaping from Shea Stadium! A cheeseburger on the train home, and a serious nap. Big adventure! Today so zonked I could hardly function, or only just barely enough for this writeup.
In the interests of sleep, then, I’m signing off… with more reports to come of the Advancing Feminist Poetics conference this Thursday and Friday. Beware the Advancing Feminists!
I am a lady who, no matter whether from illness or age, have lost the flowing ringlets that once played in graceful negligence around my neck. I have lost them in reality, but only in reality – for, thanks to the perfection to which our peruke-makers have carried their delightful art, I can still in appearance, vie with the flaunting misses who have not yet met so unkind a fortune in this respect as myself. I intreat your permission to ask, through the medium of the Morning Chronicle, the advice of some of your correspondents, on the dilemma in which a late circumstance has placed us. You are to know, sir, that I am come to town but for a few days, and am dying to see the inside of Covent Garden Theatre; but, before I venture there, I must beg to be informed, in wigs of what colours, how many curls, &c. a lady may risk her presence at that place, without danger of being taken out by these horrid Bow-Street people. That I may not be in such jeopardy, from wearing an illegal wig, or be debarred the pleasure of giving my friends in the country a description of the splendid edifice, I intreat an early answer from some of your polite correspondents; and trust that you will excuse the intrusion, which proceeds from the extreme anxiety of
Poetry season is Here Now, and it opened with a bang, for me at least, last night at the Zinc Bar with the stunning triple bill of Drew Gardner, Dana Ward, and Gary Sullivan. Drew opened, reading meditative poems about, among other things, wanting to explode. In the vid below he reads a Shakespeare rewrite. Dana read first an extraordinary dream thing, (it had, I mean, “dream” in the title, but whether it was an actual “dream narrative” is doubtful, as it was too riveting)and then an extended utterly masterful prose piece that interwove the role of the poet, toxicity, the story of a friend’s suicide, and a riff on a film about Joy Division. Gary read a number of shorter pieces, including a list of clown names, a wicked poem to Drew (in the middle of which G. cracked up), and a twisted version of “I Remember.” All poets were applauded with great enthusiasm.
Attendees included: LRSN, Anneliese Chen, Sharon Mesmer, David Borchardt, Katie,Degentesh, Sara Wintz, MacGregor Card, Nick Piombino, Toni Simon, Brandon Downing, Karen Weiser, a Spanish translator/poet/painter whose name I have forgotten, Kim Lyons organizer & introducer, and a few others: apologies if I have not mentioned you or do not know you.
This is the season for fashion sightings. This trio on the corner of MacDougal and West 3rd happily posed for me. I love everything about them, but especially the orange tabi footwear with the “cloven” effect.
In transition time, people wear odd combinations to wonderful effect, like over-the-knee boots with twill shorts, or sleeveless mohair sweaters. Please note also the uniform (tangerine bowtie! pink pants!) of the man selling ices from his little unicorn cart.
Me I’m still posing for you.
points to notice: bubble skirt, Indian shibori scarf, fake leather jacket that actually looks (I think) cool, big ol’ boots, print skirt with contrast hem, ruffle wrap top, noseless overexposed mask face, etc.
I’m a little late on the uptake, having got off the track of my ululations thanks to the beginning of the semester and all its concomitant exigencies, but it’s not too late, I hope, to acknowledge and respond to Laura’s superb post on prosody and dressing.
She refers to Robert Kocik’s work on his Prosodic Body site. He has what he calls an extended definition of prosody here, but it’s actually extremely abbreviated compared to his essay, “Prosodic Body”, that appeared in the most recent Crayon magazine. I do wish I could link to it. In my perfect world everything would be available BOTH online and in paper. It is certainly one of the most exciting essays on poetics I’ve read recently, partly because, as Laura mentions, its sweeping scope (‘prosody is everything”), but also because of what Gary called (after I had enthusiastically recommended he read it), its rigor. Well, rigor is not a word I like very much; I find it prosodically disturbing, maybe too mechanical. The essay is rigorous, but more than that it is vigorous and inventive.
He begins by tracing two possible etymologies of the word prosody (did I mention how much I love the word? It enacts itself. I want to roll around in it as much as I want to roll around in what it represents… whatever that might be). He then explores how words might be medicinal: pharmakons? He poses a number of questions to make one consider the relationship of a work’s prosody-form to its psycho/somato/semanto-affects. But you see, he does this beautifully; summarizing (especially in the awkward way I do it, because I hate summarizing, I’m much too impatient) butchers it, so you really should just go and read it. At first reading I remember thinking that it was a little kooky the way Gins and Arakawa (whose work I love, by the way, and with whom Kocik is associated)’s work is kooky: Fourieran, utopian, nice for dreamers but hello what is the real world application. Then I read it again , and then again, and realized that, no, in fact his argument is logical, not just visionary, and I’ve thought these things a million times, although I haven’t articulated them in his vigorous and inventive way. I don’t mean by that to neutralize the originality of his ideas, but rather to praise them for the way they round out with argument what most of us, I guess, already know by poetic intuition.
But, yes, well, prosody is everything: what he calls “the ploy of tension/relaxation”: day and night, zeroes and ones, black intervals between film frames, breathing, and the rhythms of digestion, movement, and sex. I apologize for being too obvious here, but prosody seems to me to be very obvious since it’s what we live in. These are all binaries, not the sort one complains about, but the practically primordial given facts. Prosody is not just binaristic, but, as shape, and as shape as sound, is given to all sorts of parallelisms, tangents, and, as Laura points out, repetitions.
She rightly points out that my outfits are “always the same but always different.” Today’s outfit is especially always the same, in that I could probably do several variations of it each time using entirely different items in my possession. That is because I am attached to certain sets of signifiers that today’s outfit, and the countless others like it, sends forth. I did take to heart, though, her comment that my poses tend to be the same, so I will try to be more inventive in my poses henceforth, more modern dance and less hi I’m posing. The only problem is that then one sees the pose more than the clothes, and I thought the clothes should be the point of this. Well anyway.
The embroidered skirt quotes the skirts of the women I imagine to be my ancestresses back in the shtetls: diasporan nostalgia. A full skirt is absolutely the most feminine signifier of any fashion item, although maybe not the sexiest. The length of this one, above the knee, says playful and juvenile despite the chronological and hormonal reality, so: fantasy, but not a kinky one. This is me fiercely asserting my youth in age. What are you going to do about it? I suppose the little heart barrettes (can you see them?) do the same thing. Heart barrettes. Black tights. It’s the first day cool enough to wear black tights. God I LOVE black tights, especially at the beginning of the season (by February I’ve had enough); my mother tells me she went to college with 26 cashmere sweaters and came home a beatnik, wearing… black tights. So I suppose I’m quoting my converted mother-as-beatnik here. New Docs to break in, even chunkier than normal pairs: fuck yeah. Again, the first day that it’s been cool enough to go there. I’ve said this before, but the way the Docs speak to the little skirt just makes me incredibly happy. Yet another variation of the ¾ sleeve cardigan, in a jewel tone to complement the jewel tone of the skirt. In my Fourier world, everything would be a complementary jewel tone: garnet, sapphire, emerald, topaz, peridot, ruby, etc. No pastels. And then the glasses, the goddamn glasses, well, I don’t know, do I look smart? Anyway, this is my semiosis and my prosody today.
Otohime 