Meander

A careless green woodpecker is trying to get off the subway, but some befuddled yokels are blocking the door, trying to figure out if this is their stop, stumbling upon a pile of dry cognate stones.

A spoiled or foppish townsman also meanders through the underground maze while chewing his innate bacon, his thick, succulent stems entirely abandoned as useless and misleading in the process or circumstances of being born.

A broadly "misshapen egg" joyously peals the plan for wandering in a unique way, like a “chawbacon” or “hayseed”: casually, and without urgent destination: rambling trepidly into a cock’s egg.

In spite of all this, a clumsy, heavy-footed, xeric shark , naïve and gullible in her 12-foot deep, 120,000 gallon tank, follows a winding or intricate (and citified) course into her nascent renaissance.

She roamed over the hills for hours.

Marx speaks

Friend Lina Kogan sends this apt quotation:

Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.

Karl Marx, 1867

a poet in the next room is a joke

Three quotations from feminist, poeticist, journalist, and (until he turned tail and became a McCarthyite) socialist Max Eastman:

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

Google has thoughtfully digitized his wonderful 1921 book, Enjoyment of Poetry. It’s definitely worth a perusal.

On his birthday, January 4 (he would have been 125),
I will be reading at the new Zinc Bar with my good friend Rick Snyder.

Sunday, January 4, 7:00 PM

Zinc Bar

82 W. Third Street
Between Thompson and Sullivan
New York, New York

Please note that this is a NEW LOCATION for the Zinc Bar.

Hope to see you there!

Eartha Kitt - I Want To Be Evil (Live Kaskad 1962)

Goodbye to Eartha, one of the greatest voices and entertainers ever. Missing you terribly already.

More from Emma

Ultimately, love is fatal and impossible; it is the embodiment of the human search and its meaninglessness. But without this desire to express, to love, to create and to destroy…we come to a standstill. In order to have knowledge we must leave the garden. It is in this beautiful misery of our condition that we must find the seeds of happiness. Impossibility is possibility. The most passionate and creative love is that which is doomed to exist among constants, forever fettered to the diametric forces of life. This love exists indeed a realm beyond reality, but without it we have only our ticking mortality and our impenetrable fate.

Fork

"Everybody's a comedian," quipped Lisa, unperturbed,
stressing that he meaning of "undulant" is broad enough
to describe both a dancer’s hips and a disease
marked by a fever that continually waxes and wanes.

In ornithological circles, "scapegrace" can also refer
to a loon with a red throat
used in medieval manuscripts
to indicate the contraction of Latin words ending in "-et"
the earliest meaning of which is
"to restore to friendship or harmony."

I Love Lucy is often seen as a touchstone
for comparison with today's TV comedy shows,
emphasizing the superficiality or insubstantiality of a thing.

Then a road that bifurcates splits in two, becoming a shop
filled with refrigerator magnets, back-scratchers,
snow globes, and other kickshaws,
all adorned with images of smiling pigs
also known as "shark suckers" or "suckerfish."

In the afternoon we walked through the idyllic gardens,
noting their prelapsarian charm.
Hungry paparazzi (long, thin, dark fishes)
attached themselves like remoras to celebrities.
The undulant foothills gradually gave way
to the craggy highlands for which Scotland is celebrated.

It’s something ike a test or criterion for determining the quality
or genuineness of a “thing,” (one extended sense of which
means "insolent, smart-alecky, or fresh")
rubbed, videlicet, on a piece of dark quartz or jasper
that then becomes a portrait, marble statue,
or wax figure representing a person.

“Furca,” as you can probably tell,
gave us our word “fork.”

They have autonomy, they are not marionettes

from Emma's presentation on art and feminism at the Brooklyn Museum, March 30th 2008.

There is good news: young women artists are revolutionary. They are making works that deal fervently with gender and sexuality, that deconstruct beauty standards, that unveil the veiled. They revel in the grotesque, the cosmetic, celebrity culture. They poke fun at themselves. They show us their obsession with the “feminine”, but it is pop essentialism, deadpan gender. They do not care if you think they are vapid sluts, clad in designer trends. They look with a female gaze, they have autonomy, they are not marionettes. They are, indeed, artists who are feminists. Young women thinkers will say they are gender revolutionary before they are feminist-identified, and just as they seek to explode the binaries of sex, they mix-media and ideology, creating a patchwork of consciousness that is as thoroughly contemporary as it is politically feminist.

Reposted

Saturday, June 11, 2005

The description from the Anthology Film Archives website of the aforementioned Emma's Dilemma:

EMMA'S DILEMMA
1997-2005, DV, ca. 90 min.
Introduced by Ken Jacobs.

Henry Hills' EMMA'S DILEMMA reinvents the portrait for the age of digital reproduction. In a series of probes into the images and essences of such downtown luminaries as Richard Foreman, Ken Jacobs, Tony Oursler, Carolee Schneemann, and Fiona Templeton, Hills' cinematic inventions literally turn the screen upside down and inside out. In this epic journey into the picaresque, we follow Emma, our intrepid protagonist, from her pre-teen innocence to her late teen-attitude, as she learns about the downtown art scene firsthand. In the process, Hills reimagines the art of video in a style that achieves the density, complexity, and visual richness of his best films. The premiere full-evening screening of this experimental extravaganza (which includes NERVOUS KEN as well as KING RICHARD, a portrait of Richard Foreman which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival).

This completely absorbing film is presided over by a petal-faced precocious ingénue (Emma Bernstein) who just happens to be the daughter of one of the most influential poets (on me anyway) of our time. Henry was absolutely right to choose as a subject her mind in her extraordinary face. His camera closed in on every feature, revealing her every expression as articulate and, well, adorable. The interviewees never once seemed to be talking down to her, and it was always fascinating to watch how she registered people’s responses to her perspicacious queries.

That the video – correctly speaking it’s a video, not a film – alternated between reportage and highly manipulated techniques was not only not jarring, but seemed absolutely balanced – a solution, if you will, of “Henry’s dilemma. “ One person said over dinner afterwards – was it Bradley Eros?—that the hypnotic “experimental” sections actually gave one time to process the thought-provoking information in the straighter sections. And even though I am not a devotee of experimental film, I thought the techniques Henry used were wild and beautiful. Afterwards, everyone talked particularly about the amazing Esheresque effect he had used on the movement of Ken Jacob’s hands. I also loved especially what he did with Julie Patton’s voice. In this way, many of the interviews (some of which were with a few of the most brilliant people I have ever encountered – Carolee Schneemann! Richard Foreman!) were imitative homages.

I felt very moved to be present at the opening, with so many of the people interviewed present, and where there was a very vibrant feeling of a tangle of pulsing creativities. Charles B.’s mother (Andy Warhol’s “Countess”) in her hat ringed by Mexican dolls. Noted choreographer Sally Silvers behind me. Carolee in front of me. Nick and Toni in the front row. Laura and Rodrigo up in the back. I had one of those rare (these days) feelings of gratitude (I’ve grown so tired and cynical) to be here, among these people.

I told Henry afterwards that it was the best non-Indian movie I'd seen in a loooooooooong time. Do not, I repeat, do not miss this film, should it come our way again any time soon, if only to see the final shots of Felix Bernstein hamming it up in a tutu. Wow.

Portrait of Emma Bee Bernstein by Charles Bernstein, 8-29-07

Oh, Emma...beautiful Emma...

Tristan Tzara on Conceptual Poetry

I don't believe... in the mechanical elements of art, which are neither the regulation of the beautiful, nor its control, nor its consequence; but which we would be more likely to find at the peak of the intersection of two parallel lines, or in a submarine formation of stars and transchromatic aeroplanes. In the blood of stones, perhaps, in the obscurity of cellular metals, and of cryptograms, and in the surge of images under the bark of trees.

Style

The style of a poem is the armor we wear.

Jack Spicer, as quoted in a review in this week's Time Out New York
(p. 97... also find a pic and callout of K. Killian!)

hikikomori

word of the day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 20, 2008 is:

undulant • \UN-juh-lunt\ • adjective
1 : rising and falling in waves *2 : having a wavy form, outline, or surface

Example sentence:
The undulant foothills gradually give way to the craggy highlands for which Scotland is celebrated.

Did you know?
"Unda," Latin for "wave," ripples through the history of words such as "abound," "inundate," "redound," "surround," and, of course, "undulant," which first showed up in print in English around 1822. (The adjective "undulate," a synonym of "undulant," is almost 200 years older but rarely used today. The far more common verb "undulate" has several meanings including "to form or move in waves.") The meaning of "undulant" is broad enough to describe both a dancer’s hips and a disease marked by a fever that continually waxes and wanes.

Houri Series

houri12.gif, originally uploaded by Ululate.

My Houri Series continues apace. Click on the flickr badge at right to see it.

On Mónica de la Torre's PUBLIC DOMAIN and Kim Rosenfield's re: evolution

Kim

Mónica with ? and Rosa Alcala

Snow is falling snow on snow here at Pratt Institute, where my classes have finished and I’m impatient to not be here but rather at home working on the plethora of projects that taunt me constantly with their charms. Will there ever be a life that consists solely of working on projects? I think of Peter-in-Mexico’s statement that he is not “a real writer.” What does it mean, indeed, to be “a real writer?” Shouldn’t it be that writing is pretty much all what one is obliged to do? It’s not that I mind my obligations… so much… but I can’t help but wonder what a life would be like devoted entirely to the realization of one’s poesis and techné. One manages to do an awful lot interstitially, but maybe not quite enough to completely form what one dreams of forming. “One.” Well, I mean me. It could be a kind of problem with my internal pacing. If I were only more deliberative and less generative, I could fully realize fewer visions better, but I suppose one can’t wish to be what one is just not. I mean me.

Even if I can’t be fulltime at the business of making stuff, I can still rejoice a little at the lovely pleasure of being surrounded by inventive and brilliant peers, whose very existence and productions serve to make being here on this planet and in this city exciting. There are so many good reasons to be a poet, but one of the best, for me, is the privilege of the company of other poets. How stimulating they are! How pensive! How intricate! And what is more fun than to attend a book party in the middle of the Fabric District, already a kind of heaven for me, celebrating three luminescent stars in the poetry firmament?

The party to which I’m referring was held last Monday upstairs from a Chinese restaurant called Chef Yu, and celebrated new books by Tan Lin, Kim Rosenfield, and Mónica de la Torre. I only had enough money to buy Kim’s and Monica’s books (although I later found out Gary already had the latter in his possession, so it turns out I could have bought at least one of the two Tan was selling, alas), so these are the two I will discuss on this snowy afternoon:

re: evolution Kim Rosenfield Les Figues
Public Domain Mónica de la Torre Roof Books

I should stress that I adore Tan’s writing, have read both Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe and Blipsoak engagedly (as to the latter, even though I personally have no desire to create poems that are remotely ambient, I think it’s an interesting notion), and FULLY INTEND to purchase his two new books in the near future.

Physically, Kim’s and Mónica’s books are quite different. Mónica’s has a big, light yellow sans-serif title, and also the signature size and glossiness of a Roof book, its cover showing “film strips” of a painting? a photo? moving from, to me, right to left, beginning with an image in color of a person walking down the street about to be engulfed in a cloud, and as the images move towards the left the more the color desaturates and the cloud engulfs. Kim’s book, from the front, anyway, has the Frenchified simplicity for which les figues design is known… it is narrow and rectangular, dark gray with delicate text in a bright turquoise double bordered by two frames, one thick, the other not. On the reverse side, no blurbs, thank goddesses, but a manipulated photo plus drawing of very disorienting and disordered architecture (just the way I like it).

The covers and design qualities of the books speak to their content. Mónica’s is in a way a friendlier book, a bit broader in its humor and perhaps more easily entered for the uninitiated. Kim’s is more blatantly intellectual, a little subtler and harder to characterize. Still, both books are notable for a kind of lightheartedness, especially in approach to materials. And this lightheartedness, interestingly, pervades despite the profundity of the themes each book addresses. In Kim’s case, those themes are evolution, gender, and science (particularly evolutionary science) as it interacts with art. In Mónica’s case, the overriding theme is identity, although there are several sub-themes such as linguistic identity, obsession, war, music, and names.

Kim’s book is bracketed by essays on the work: an introduction by Sianne Ngai, and (count ‘em) two afterwords, one an “analysis” and the other a “research paper,” all of which lend a fascinated validity to the slippery text. I have heard Kim read from this work a few times now, and I must say that I love what her performance brings to the work, as bits are sung (and the text is scored for that), and other bits are deliberately hesitated through, or read with great aplomb. Reading the book inside my head feels a little different, a little colder, but there is something I like about that coolness. It’s what Sianne refers to when she writes in the (gorgeous) introduction that, “nothing could be less like a Joseph Cornell box than a poem by Kim Rosenfield,” or when she describes this writing as (citing Laura Mulvery) being “anti-fetishistic.” (Again, this, like “ambient poetics,” is not necessarily a quality I strive for in my own work, but it interests me, particularly insofar as it refuses both preciousness and a too-heavy signifying.) I’m not sure I want to surround re:evolution with much more commentary, especially given that so much of it is so thoughtfully (much more so than I can accommodate in a blogspace, especially in a post composed on a snowy day after finals at work) part of the book’s actual “theoretical surround,” but I would like to quote a couple of my favorite passages, which are naturally some of the most hilarious. They are de (re) contextualized, but then so is everything else in this collaged book, so I hope that won’t matter too much. This one had me screaming “eww!” at her recent reading at the BPC:

I saw some spittle, the most disgusting that I had ever seen and I had to put my tongue and lips upon it. The act was so nauseating that I could not control myself and my heart beat so violently that I thought it would burst every vein in me and that I would vomit blood. I continued doing that as long as my heart revolted, and it was rather long.

I don’t mean to suggest that anything I quote from re:evolution typifies it in any way. I don’t actually think it’s typifiable, despite being concerned with science and taxonomies in its content. I mentioned as much to Kim after her BPC reading, that I was still trying to figure out what the limits of the text are, and she of course countered by asking whether it needed limits. Well, that’s a very good question, and one that I will leave rhetorical. Here’s another favorite passage, somewhat similar in mood to the one above but again not typical of the book per se:

The extraverts will dominate the sexual scene. The young extraverts will come running into the early dawn from their empty rooms out into the clean open, their naked bodies still sluggish and unkempt, unbeautiful in their bed-besprinkled sleepiness, all ready for a hectic plunge into the river of life, in their crude immersion revealing no special exquisiteness of body or grace of motion as swimmers in the river of life, a little polluting the fresh dawn of day by their noisy assassination of the day’s wonder and beauty. Strange fishes in the awkward contortions of the day’s wonder and beauty. Strange fishes in their glad way through the exhilarating waters of life.

[perfect place for a pee break here!]

Every page of re: evolution brings a surprise – nothing is predictable – and the same can be said for Public Domain. With both a variety of appropriated sources and a variety of formal approaches, these books keep changing the music the reader dances to, and I applaud both DJs for never boring me. Thank you for no homogeneity!

Mónica’s musical range runs the gamut from detournements to Zukofsyesque, often macaronic, sound-centered poems, vispos that are also performance texts, co-interviews on language acquisition ( a wonderful collaboration with Sujin Lee that incidentally speaks to my profession as an ESL teacher), a partially erased text culled from letters to the editor, a whole almost Arabically vowelless page of text that seems to address war, a wonderful carnival of emails (with photos!) regarding “other” Mónica de la Torres, oh and very very much more. You will love this book and you will love Kim’s book, too, please buy and enjoy them both.

I haven’t told you yet, though, what is perhaps my favorite piece in Mónica’s book, a section of poems & texts entitled The Crush. All the pieces in this section deal with an infatuation – real? imagined? : “I have a crush on a musician, or is it his music.” I do so want to ask Mónica if this “really happened,” but of course, that’s beside the point. “This piece is therapeutic,” she writes, and, “If this piece seems adolescent to you, there you go.” It doesn’t matter if it’s real, but it’s convincing, it’s pathos-funny, it mimics the forms of obsession, and emerges as almost Yoko Onoesque conceptual art:

Tell one of our mutual friends that an acquaintance of mine wants to do an interview with Blank for the publication that I work for, and needs to contact him. Once I have his contact info, write him a letter for every pice of music that he’s ever composed, performed, or produced, each one revolving around the idea of air. Write it on a surface on which it will disintegrate ¬ a block of ice, sand, on the sidewalk with a watering can – take a picture, and fax it to him.

[and note that this is only one of the brilliant schemes that emerges in this list of how to move through her obsession]

Just to give some sense, also, of the phonemic sensuality of this book as well, I quote from another poem in this section (beautifully footnoted, “Lists could turn into lisps”) entitled “Telephone Cryptomessage”:

oh yo be
in co.,
cougar sweet
they roof,
fir, oh moon
o’ mere wrong
coo, no, totter

I need to say it loud: I love both of these books, and their authors. I’m thrilled to have such entertaining, ingenious virtuoso sisters writing in the same city as me, no less. Run, don’t walk, to the websites of les figues and Roof Books, or SPD if these books are stocked there, and get these in your backpacks. You will surely be amused and enriched by the experience of reading them.

K. Silem Mohammad reads at Columbia University in December 2008

Obama Jello

Jello Biafra's open letter to Barack Obama.

20 Questions

I’ve taken a cue from Ron and answered H.L. Hix’s 20 Questions questionnaire from the Best American Poetry blog.

1. What poet should be in Obama's cabinet, and in what role?

Adeena Karasick as Secretary of Hermeneutics and Sensuality

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

Michael Brownstein’s World on Fire. It’s both alarmist and utopian.

3. What other poetry-related blog or website should I check out?

PennSound

4. Who is the most exciting young/new poet I've never heard of, but whose work I ought to find and read?

Margaret Christakos/ K. Lorraine Graham/ Lacey Hunter

5. What's the funniest poem you've read lately? What was the last poem that made you cry?

The funniest poem I read lately was one of K. Silem Mohammad’s unpublished Sonnagrams: With lines like, "Wise fools who rub the curly heads of state" and “The UFOs in Limbo hover way low;/ In Purgatory, langue's denied parole,” how can I but laugh?

Poems tend not to make me cry unless they are either by or for me. Sometimes I will cry (a little, or just “inside”) while writing them, but that’s just indulgent.

6. William or Dorothy? Robert or Elizabeth Barrett? Moore or Bishop? Dunbar or Cullen?
"Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully" or "No ideas but in things"? Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas or Tender Buttons?

Which Dorothy? Oz Dorothy? You don’t mean Dorothea? Anyway, Oz Dorothy.

O, Elizabeth Barrett, absolutely. Aurora Leigh is one of my favorite poems, not to mention the sonnets.

Moore, for sure.

Dunbar, because I like the mannerisms.

I’ll take both quotations, please; as a real poet, I am comfortable dwelling in ambiguity.

Tender Buttons, but that’s just predictable.

7. Robert Lowell wrote a poem called "Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid"; What supposedly immortal poem puts you to sleep?

Uh… lots of them. Maybe The Cantos?

8. Even for poetry books, the contract has a provision for movie rights. What poetry book should they make into a movie? Who should direct it, and why? Who should star in it?

I always thought Swoon should be a movie, but that doesn’t count, right?

How about Hannah Weiner’s Open House? Directed by Jack Smith? I can’t think about the stars.

9. What lines from a poem you first read years ago still haunt you now?

“Such hills as hive me waste away/ in the refulgent concatenations of failed display.” from Charles Bernstein’s "Foreign Body Sensation."

10. What poem do you love, love, love, but don't understand?

Stacy Doris’ Conference (a book, really, rather than a poem per se). I don’t care that I don’t understand it, because I love love love it.

11. If the official organ of the AWP were not the Chronicle but were the Enquirer, what would some of the headlines be?

Oh god, who cares.

12. If you were making a scandal rag for poetry in the grocery store checkout stands, what fictitious poetry love triangle would you make up to outsell that tired Hollywood story of Angelina and Brad and Jen?

Hmm. I like the idea of Mirabai involved with Larry Eigner and the Baron de Rothschild.

13. This is the Best American Poetry blog. What's the best non-American poetry you've read lately?

The subtitles to the gender-bending Shaw Bros. Film, “The Three Smiles”
I made a poem out of them.

14. We read poems in journals and books, we hear them in readings and on audio files. Sometimes we get them in unusual ways: on buses or in subway cars. How would you like to encounter your next poem?

I’d like to see one appropriated on a t-shirt of strange English on a clothing rack in a discount store in a Tokyo suburb.

15. What poem would you like to hear the main character bust out singing in a Bollywood film? What would be the name of the movie? What would be the scene in which it was sung?

CHICKS DIG WAR
CHICKS DIG WAR

This would be Helen prancing around in a fluorescent green tiger outfit with Lata’s voice coming out of her. She would be twirling a variety of weapons as part of her cabaret act.

16. Do you have a (clean) joke involving poetry you'd like to share?

Q. How many flarf poets does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Squid.

That's not funny.

17. Tell the truth: is it a poetry book you keep in the john, or some other genre (john-re)?

Gary keeps his own book, How to Proceed in the Arts, in the john. We also have a lot of cinema magazines and old New Yorkers and Harpers, as well as one of those illustrated easy guides to Derrida. I maybe have a belly dance magazine in there, too.

18. Can you name every teacher you had in elementary school? Did any of them make you memorize a poem? What poem(s)?

I can name nearly every teacher. I don’t remember ever having been made to do anything. I did memorize some poems, though, voluntarily. "Jabberwocky" comes to mind.

19. If you got to choose the next U.S. Poet Laureate, who (excluding of course the obvious candidates, you and me) would it be? Of former U.S. Poet Laureates, who did such a great job that he/she should get a second term? Next election cycle, what poet should run for President? Why her or him?

I can think of many poets who I would be thrilled to see as Poet Laureates, but I really think it should be Clark Coolidge, partly because his name sounds so presidential. Also because we could then have a “spontaneous bop presidency.” I know that’s from Kerouac initially, but it gets transmuted ever so much more interestingly in Coolidge.

No second terms.

Hmm… presidential candidates… maybe Bill Bissett? Or Julie Patton?

20. Insert your own question here.

Why do we exist?

Houri Series

houri1.gif, originally uploaded by Ululate.

What would be of most benefit to this sad girl with the scared eyes? Is she from a reform congregation? Is she one of those feminists? "The women do not need to dance because they are on a higher level than the men." He squinted a little, trying to hit the right note with this hostile, melancholy American Jewess. He hoped to. "Do angels need to dance?"

I am tired of putting my head onto the bodies in masterpieces for now, so I am starting the Houri Series, which allows me to be exhibitionistic while "commenting on" orientalism, Levantine subjecthood, gender, dance kinetics, etc. The textual additions and Photoshop filters help to make this art, one hopes.

More at flickr, and more to come, unless the PC police get me first.

Have You Never Been Mellow?

It occurs to me that if someone asked me that question, I would have to reply,

"No. I. Have. Never. Been. Mellow."

KOBAYASHI SACHIKO - JINSEI IROIRO

I'm in such an enka mood! Let's karaoke!

命くれない 瀬川瑛子

Inochi Kurenai
as sung by Segawa Eiko

Unprofessional (after Rudyard Kipling)

On what system is this dam’ dynamo of our universe wound?

On what he called ‘muckings’ (like a walrus affronted)?

That’s eye-strain! The big voice quavered:

‘I’ve been trying to disentangle the minor interferences
by returning once more to the legitimate drama of cultures.’

‘Midnight? Oh, certainly, but I’ll have to warn my anaesthetist
and reverently return some lenses to their velvet shrines.’

A doe with a plum-coloured saddle is squeaking.
She strives desperately to work through the wires
with semitransparent hand-like forefeet.

‘In convulsion?’

‘She’s not! She’s all astray,
external to this swab of culture which we call our world.
We’re in for a wildish time. She’s a woman—not a white mouse!’

Still, he jerked it up, his palm beneath her chin – with male horror.

Then came the explosion of natural human wrath, and
now she goes about like a smiling sheep.

‘It wasn’t worth it,’ was the light answer. ‘Just hysteria’…
when like a string she relaxed:

the vacuoles—the empty centres—do not take stain,
the vasts of the Ultimate Heavens
fizzing in spirals

singing, "Time Sucks, but Space is Okay."

Kevin Killian naked and interviewed.

This morning

light sound of hail on the air conditioner


and this funny headline:


Cowboys Sink Teeth Into Giants, Who Show Signs of Vulnerability

Current mood: Arcimboldo

Current mood: Duchamp

Current mood: Utamaro

Current mood: Mars (Velazquez again)

Captain Smartypants sings Dreidel

Happy Hanukkah everyone!

Flarf vs. Conceptual Poetry

My comment isn't showing up on the Harriet blog, but here's my take on the two dollar bills:

I like how Flarf gets feminized in the binary. It has both tits and mysterious folds. Awww yeah baybee!



-- Post From My iPhone

Apex of the O

Well its been a while since I have posted anything personal. Thats because I had to do some things for school that were pretty stressful.

The fact is, though, I Am Obsessed With Natural Hair

And I am obsessed with this piñata. This Pinata is so chilled it never even changes out of these stripy pajamas.

I am also Obsessed with Blinkies! Blinkies is my new passion. I have learned how to make them but I don't have a bunch yet, so I am mixing them in with the others.

I am obsessed with twilight am i weird?

Michael Jackson question: I am obsessed with Michael Jackson. Does anyone know a song I can do for a dance about being obsessed with Michael Jackson?

Why I am obsessed with my doctor? - Why I am obsessed with my doctor? ... Why I am obsessed with my doctor?

I am terribly obsessed with the Carpenters. Ever since I saw Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, I've been obsessing on the Carpenters.

Maybe it’s because I am obsessed with the grammar of others.

I am obsessed with guns. I think they look so AWESOME I collect as many models as I can. And on TV when a gun is shown for not even half a second, I will immediately know what it is. I only need to see a small portion of it to know! Any one else like me?

Me, I am obsessed with Yorkie Talk
I love everyone here! I have met so many nice people! I am obsessed with this forum. My friends, in lecture, catch me browsing this website instead of paying attention to the professor... and I smile and say "I love these people!" Thank you for being wonderful. People are so very kind here and we all share love of Yorkies. If I wasn't so tight-up with work, I would spend a lot more time right here with you guys.

I am obsessed with hipsterdom. I don't know why, or what to do about it. I am not a hipster. I never have been.

‘I am obsessed with Aishwarya’

Delhi girl Shweta Bhardwaj, who has been tagged as the ‘desi Lara Croft’ because of her action scenes in Mission Istanbul, says she is obsessed with Aishwarya Rai. “I am obsessed with her and was very sad to know that she got married,” said the 21-year-old, adding “If I would have been a boy, I would have definitely married her.”

I am obsessed with women's breasts - and it's becoming a problem. When a woman talks to me I can't help myself staring at her chest.

I am not "obsessed with the underworld," though - I am obsessed with my heart.

What am I obsessed with? I am Obsessed with buggys
Check out dunebuggy.com. Just about anything about dune buggies can be found there.

I have to tell you I am obsessed with my childhood. I never pooped. I'm serious, I hated pooing, I never did it. I refused to poo as child.

How to say I am obsessed with you my darling. How do you say I am obsessed with you my darling in different languages translation.

I am obsessed with WALNUTS!! I've got to quit buying them!!!!!! :eek: oh and also I am obsessed with devilled eggs.

I am obsessed with submissive males and couples the kinkier the better

Hi
I am obsessed with chickens, lemons, and not spelling words corecty.

I dont smoke
i have a dog named bingo
i am scared of computer pop-ups
i have parakeets
1 sun condor
favorite food = PASTA

what are you obsessed with? (so grateful to be Mormon!)
I am obsessed with lotion and vaseline. Seriously. I cannot go very long without lotioning my hands and feet. And the vaseline?

My relationship with the number 23 began several years ago. I was first introduced to the magick number in the early '90's via Psychick TV. They where a well know underground band from the U.K. who did some pretty funky things. The lead singer Genesis P. Orridge (yes that really was his name) has some really interesting theory on this number. In short he pointed out to me that 23 is not like all of the other numbers out there. While my take on 23 is a little different than his, I am obsessed with the number 23 because I see it frequently in a variety of random and rather ordinary situations. I see the number so often that it simply does not make sense, and cannot rationally be explained. This situation then in turn reminds me that everything doesn't make sense in the world. That there are some things which are beyond our understanding. This then leads to a state of not-knowing where you simply don't try and understanding something (whether that be a person, a situation or an event) but simply be with it. This quality of not knowing or unexplaining is a liberating feeling / experience. To be able to abandon the habitual need to understand everything then allows each one of us to authentically experience the world free of preconceived notions. This is the mind state I want to be in all of the time, but generally only occasionally touch on. So by noticing the number 23 when it appears this serves as a reminder to shift my consciousness, to pay attention and to be more present. At the same time in reminds me of the sheer fallibility of conceptualization. To understand something is to define it in your own terms, rather than experience this same thing in its own terms. When I can abide in this naked awareness I can then experience the world in the most authentic, joyful and freeing manner possible.

I am obsessed with Hillary.

I am also obsessed with how much I hate Yoshinoya Beef Bowl.

As I walked out, they both jumped on me, and we had a threesome that night. Now I am obsessed with threesomes. They are so much fun! Go threesomes!

I am obsessed with serendipity, the color orange and the number 9.

Obsessed with Bones: "The Skull in the Sculpture" :
It is GORGEOUS and I am OBSESSED with it!

I am obsessed with prehistory. Especially veloceraptors. I am obsessed with prehistory.

I am OBSESSED with jumpsuits and rompers, I can see why you would be hoarding them :)

Ohh, I am obsessed with figs! Figs! Figs!

I am obsessed with creativity and mosaics. i am obsessed with duck too!

YUM! onigiri!As usual, i am obsessed with cuteness and peace and what-not, but recently this pas week, i’ve come to be obsessed with ONIGIRI! it all started while i was reading Fruits Basket (duh!!! everything starts with Fruits Basket!) and the word ONIGIRI poped up every single page!! of course, knowing the superior knowledge of Fruits Basket, i though to myself “onigiri must be something really cool!” . well, as it turns out, onigiri IS something really cool!! It can be kawaii, cute AND nummy all at the same time! this was very exciting for me, so i went on an online surch for onigiri and how to buy it. well, turns out you have to be in San Fran, NYC or Asia to get these cause they don’t last very long…but you can make them!! i don’t know why i like onigiri some much, and yet, i haven’t even eaten one–i can’t find any sea weed at super target.. LOL–but you have to admit this is and AMAZING invention!! rice is so good, asian food is so good, sandwiches are so good, school lunches are SO BAD!!! so just take an onigiri with you!!! YUMMY! :)

My friends think I am obsessed with the topic of stuttering. I probably am. I go to continuous conferences on stuttering and have many friends and colleagues who stutter.

I am obsessed with pizza and believe that all pizza is good, but not all pizza should be called pizza.

I am obsessed with large squids. The boobs chapter was my favorite to write because (a) I am obsessed with my own and will talk about them at any juncture.

I Am Obsessed with Your Obsession. Lately I've been obsessed, and I'm starting to get obsessed about it. Not just my own obsessions but other peoples'.

I am obsessed with pure data. That's right. I love using pure data. It's my favorite hobby. I work on it more than anything, including schoolwork.

K.Silem Mohammad & Kenneth Goldsmith: "Relevance"

Kasey and Kenny discuss poetic relevance at El Quijote bar in Manhattan on December 6, 2008.

"Good Poet!"

Jordan reads Drew.

Kreppusonnettan (IMF! IMF! OMG! OMG!)

Superstar sound poet Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl writes:

Iceland’s independence hero, Jón Sigurðsson, performs the Crisis Sonnet, by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl - written in response to the IMF coming to Iceland.

IMF and OMG and LOL should be recognizable to english speakers. The FME is the Icelandic Financial surveillance authorities, and FIT is what you pay as a fine for using your bankcard when you don’t have any money in your account - as well as being a guesthouse/prison for people who come to Iceland asking for political asylum.

Flarf plus

Pictured: K. Silem Mohammad, Brandon Downing, yrs truly, Gary Sullivan, Jordan Davis, Drew Gardner, and "Uncle" Bruce Andrews, on the occasion of Kasey's (K. Silem's) INCREDIBLY hard-rocking reading at Columbia University last night.

The FIne Romance of the Three Smiles

A pomegranate that no one admired
I can only sigh and pity myself

Nightingale’s speech in the scented garden
Sitting down and scrutinizing him

Seeing he is so refined
It seems such a perfect match

An unmissable match made in heaven.
Don’t you recognize me, sister?

Three smiles at Hiqiu locked me in love
Three locks of love shackling my soul.

Mistake me not for a wanton man,
my love for you are sincere

I ponder as I grind the ink,
How many would pursue me like that?

His poetry and painting are splendid
A scholar like him is good

The young masters ordered me to get ginseng
We’ll seal our love in the Peony Pavilion

Autumn Fragrance, don’t go!
He dares to entice my pageboy.

Skowly pacing her lotus steps
Heart beating wildly

In shyness and glad beauty,
She takes the seal with joy and fear

The fine romance of the three smiles
Will be passed on for all posterity

TORN

Torn over extra frozen embryos.

Bernadette Mayer reads at the Bowery Poetry Club, 11/22/08

Current mood: David

Current mood: Velazquez

Main Entry:

pro·lix

Pronunciation:

\prō-ˈliks, ˈprō-(ˌ)\

Function:

adjective

Etymology:

Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French prolix, from Latin prolixus extended, from pro- forward + liquēre to be fluid — more at liquid

Date:

15th century

1 : unduly prolonged or drawn out : too long 2 : marked by or using an excess of words