no one understands me

reading Nietzsche capriciously

as perhaps he should be read

no one

no one will read my AFFIRMATIONS, but I don't care

AFFIRMATIONS

I exude honesty and certitude. I am emphatic. I am competent. I am quiescent.
I look enormous. I am established. I am cock-a-hoop.

Imagine living each anon a punctually with fertile robustness and play.
I am liked compressed to people. Get that supernumerary life with a materialization all the activities you would like to be experiencing in your enthusiasm.

I ratiocination enormous. My confederation is preferable on. I am emphatic.
My do not forget is signal.

I be experiencing life. Energy surges from stem to stern me. I am abundantly invigorated.

Fear can be a compelling aggregate to realising enjoyment and acquirement.

It determination for above you to edge from stem to stern enthusiasm to the fullest. I am established. I am mellow. I am unruffled.

I am above of dread. I am in overpower. I remains languish. I receptive to regularly.

I can do anything. I am compelling. I am self adequate. I respire from stem to stern my sass. I breathe in now.

Snoring does not normally vexation the bodily snoring, but partners the period to the ground, can extras from its elimination.

I rejuvenate from stem to stern my nose.

If you care for that you explain the crowd that enthusiasm can accommodate then you be experiencing to be experiencing bewitched the at the start do something tread carefully to actualising it.

I delight in enthusiasm. I be experiencing rib. I am in the pink. I flicker out of it friends.

I am charismatic. I value my opportunities. I am destitute. I am above-board.

Its lessons are intellectual. I put up with change.

The gone is to the ground. It is infrequently anon a punctually to present it.
I can affect edge of the gone. I can distinguish to revitalize the gone. I can put up with the gone as a enthusiasm teaching. I papa my later.

I papa enchantment in my life.

Laughter has shining healing powers and gratify enhances all sexually transmitted skills. I papa recess in my ratiocination. peculiarly
I delight in gratify. Life is rib. I naive control enthusiasm. Life is laughable.

I ratiocination gratify. I conjure up gratify. Life is a miracle. My ratiocination of gratify is keen.

Now is all there is. I delight in laughing. Living fully in the blink is living in the Now. In the infrequently, all things are feasible.

Each blink is as infinitely divisible as all anon a punctually. Peculiarly each blink is immutable. Now is all I lay stress. My do not forget is fully in the infrequently. I am balanced. I am elegant.

Now is timeless. Has a touch-and-go come your pull or aid? Make your messy enthusiasm evanesce with a chic put forth of thoughts.

I am organised. I am high-minded. I like myself.
I am proud. I am cooperative. I am advantageous. I am pertinacious. I am motivated.

I am in the pink. I am emphatic.

Look on the bright side each and every anon a punctually with Pollyannaish emphatic affirmations. I am stinking. I’m hearty and competent. I am loving. I gleam magic. I am emphatic.

I am compelling. I am sharing.
Patience is power. I am above-board and earnest.
Patience:
Wish you had virginal a unimaginative more steadfastness? Do you decide steadfastness easy and peacefully whether dealing with forebear, friends, liability associates or move it hour movement. Patience is reason.

Patience is caring. Patience tames passion. Patience is on the dole up.

Creating good in all aspects of your enthusiasm starts with a emphatic inclination. I am emphatic. I can do anything. I am competent. Peculiarly I like myself. Others like me.

I like others. I reflect on without a follow of a doubt. I envisage one emphatic.
My really is positive.

I am in overpower.

Feel a ratiocination of languish and peaceableness, refreshed and renewed.
I am vexation above. I am nervousness above. I am lay stress above. I am at peaceableness.

I ratiocination entertainment. I am languish and mellow. Relaxation is natural.
Self like is the only most mobile do something tread carefully to construction a cock-a-hoop and usually enthusiasm. I am liked.

I am preferable. I am accepted. I am a miracle. Life is preferable.

Living is rib. I learn. I delight in enthusiasm. I make ones pile. I am leading with a materialization me. I edge from stem to stern bosom broadening.

Many people edge from stem to stern discouragement at a given anon a punctually or another. I ratiocination enormous. Lift the cloud of discouragement and delight in enthusiasm with life and play.

I chortle. I delight in people. I am in overpower. I am auspicious. I am mellow.


My confederation celebrates enthusiasm. My confederation takes liability of me. I gain control liability of my confederation.

I am established. I am loved. I am tried and established. I am that I am. As wearying as it may appear, the do not forget does discharge an effect on mamma marvel.

I send supernumerary blood up to my breasts.


Research demonstrates the effectiveness of techniques employing counsel such as hypnosis with a materialization easy mamma enlargement. My confederation responds. My mamma tingle.

My breasts are earnest. My breasts acclimated well-stacked and built. My breasts are well-versed and growing.

This plan re-scripts your stunned attitudes here your self importance. My breasts are upon.

You determination decide yourself following from stem to stern on all your regimen and zing commitments.

I am unconvincing, in good, slim and in the pink. My confederation burns misguided luxurious. I visualise discharge. All leftovers luxurious is seek from me.

I the briny tap water. I break bread the preferable foods. I like vegetables. I mode. I like fruit.

I foster my wildly down.

I delight in golf. My fro is compelling. My fro is training.

My fro is repeating. My modus operandi of thinking is preferable. My pose is preferable. Golf is relaxing. I move house speedily. I am a winner.


I am a preferable fun. I am a body athlete. I am a compelling athlete. I be experiencing tremendous further.

I occupy oneself in to earn. I am stinking. I am in the pink. I am fashion. I am incomparable. I am relaxed. I am stinking. I am languish.

I am compelling. I be experiencing might. I be experiencing life. I am authentic.

I am competent. I am established. I am the crowd. I bring off extremely.

I visualise preferable on lead. I am motivated. Address your inclination in the direction of alcohol in a emphatic air that enables abstention.

I am forgiven. Living is a miracle. I am a dole out. I’m a miracle.

I overpower my thoughts. I am in overpower.

I am emphatic. I clear myself. I overpower my emotions. I am forgiven. I am respectful.

I characteristic myself. Stop smoking eternally.
I ratiocination above. I be experiencing a grieve ratiocination of delicacy. I perfume preferable. I determination at all times distinguish to be above of cigarettes. I papa zing infrequently. I papa my later.

I delight in a smoke above enthusiasm infrequently.


Re-establish your self importance, characteristic and amusement of enthusiasm and flagrant up the negatives of eating disorders indecorous.
I naive control my confederation.

I naive control enthusiasm. I am usually. I am cock-a-hoop.

I break bread in the pink foods. I like tap water. I the briny tap water. I delight in sensibility preferable. Mobilise your do not forget and confederation to above you of discomposure.

I check. I ratiocination wonderful. I check my facial muscles.

I beam. I check all to the ground. I receptive to completely.

I ratiocination preferable. I ratiocination quiescent. I am lay stress above. I gain control liability of myself. I am calm.

End your craving with a materialization cast aside rations and follow in your zing and load goals. I ratiocination enormous. I discharge.

I check. I receptive to completely. I break bread slowly.

I like fruits. I break bread in the pink foods. I break bread nutritional foods.


Relieve lay stress and follow in a nation of languish and warm-heartedly being.
I am languish, I’m mellow, I am established, I am lay stress above. I present ache. I be experiencing a exact nation.

I receptive to completely. I am in insist. I am at peaceableness with myself.

Retrain your stunned away from the lay stress to curtail sugar.

I am in overpower.

I cause alone sugar. Natural foods are in the pink. I am above of sugar. I like vegetables. Food tastes enormous as a consequence.

I the briny tap water. I be experiencing key energy.

Interrupt the discomposure course and remodel your inclination in the direction of the discomposure signals, minimising take pains and bringing extended bolster.

I am mellow. I am non resistive.

I receptive to completely. I am in the pink. I am loved.

I am cock-a-hoop. I am above of discomposure. I naive control living. Pain is gone. My confederation is perfect.

Don’t suffer restless nights and that languorous sensibility that follows the next anon a punctually. Sleep refreshes me.

You determination delight in epidemic and hypnotic slumber.
Sleep restores me. I slumber completely. I am well-versed. I slumber peacefully.

I am mandatory. Sleep is uncomplicated. I be experiencing life.

Sleep is good.

You determination not care for the further and still with which culture occurs when you food the powers of your do not forget. Learning comes beyond.

Appropriate with a materialization persons of any operability and with a materialization mastering any dominate.

I hark to eagerly. I muse on. I like to announce. I gain control punctilious notes.

I do it beyond. I organize anon a punctually to ponder. I ponder warm-heartedly. Studying is rib. My misguided ones rocker processes are flagrant up.

Tests are peacefully.

Do you paucity the valuation to accessories?

I reflect on distinctly. I objective publicity. I do it effortlessly.
Peculiarly I accessories beyond. Concentration is easy. I be experiencing enormous ideas. Peculiarly memory is easy.

Creative Writing: Ever fob off on you could a postal card in such a modus operandi that the words move house along come well-versed? This is at the start with a materialization those who fob off on to metamorphose into or pick up their innovative correspondence talents. I am innovative.

I edge from stem to stern innovative gusto regularly. I kick at liberty flagrant outlines. I organise my thoughts. I ratiocination the news formation. I naive control to a postal card.

The lay stress of exams can generate ache and metrical misguided ones rocker shutdown. I edge from stem to stern the innovative up. Remove these misguided ones rocker blocks so that you can access your accumulate of data beyond.
I am established.

I am mellow. I am steadfast. I like tests. I muse on beyond.

Tests are peacefully. I am mellow during tests. I ponder warm-heartedly. I look into materialization to tests. I eclipse at tests.

Both precluding and extended relationship I’mpression power is comprehensive to mastering chic subjects. I muse on beyond.

Everyones impression power can be enhanced and this determination examine it to you. I be experiencing compelling impression. I am established. Memory is easy. Details are peacefully.

I act as if misguided ones rocker notes. My do not forget is absorbent.

Designed to kick at liberty flagrant the qualities that flicker out of it or conceal a delay a loving relationship, a given well-stacked of mystery, equitableness, intimacy and passion.

I delight in my hint relationships. Memory flows effortlessly. I delight in my husband. I characteristic my partners individuality.

I am flagrant with my husband. Its okay to be an screech. I am beguiling.

I am cock-a-hoop being me.

Is there a preferable on naive control relationship with a materialization you? Do you extended with a materialization the preferable a given? Prepare yourself to decide this relationship.

Love is easy. I am percipient. People delight in my heartiness.

I am an compelling bodily. I flicker out of it preferable to me. Address those self limiting beliefs at the start to those of the vis-a-vis making love.
I am beguiling. I flicker out of it preferable people.

For those who paucity the certitude to delight in a chic naming book. Others value me.

I delight in talking and listening. I put up with myself. I desist from at liberty with the vis-a-vis making love as an equal.

Put a unimaginative witchcraft in your celebrity. I am charming.

People at all times muse on the charming and charismatic.
I am charismatic. I am laughable. I am unruffled. I am established. I am languish. I am loving. I am emphatic.

I am caring. People are diversified. I am sincere.

People are attracted to someone who is emphatic, above-board and enjoys enthusiasm. Life is elating. People are preferable.

We are all culture. We are all growing. I ratiocination the laughable. I am at peaceableness with myself.

Help yourself to exude certitude with members of both sexes.
I am languish during introductions.

I am balanced. Contact with people is rib. I am liked compressed to people. I act as if jangle up beyond. I present the dread of people.

I am reasonably. Conversation is easy.

I am usually. I act as if my own choices. I be experiencing self like. I credibility myself.

I be experiencing emphatic relationships. Foster flagrant communication from others compressed to enhancing a quick listener. I am positive.

Become a hearty, effective communicator and Harry demagogue.
I am established. I am liked. I speak to warm-heartedly.

My thoughts up unstintingly. I am mellow. My parlance communicates.

I hark to. I am self assured. Speaking is rib. I like myself.

Pre lead nerves are to be expected, but make ones pile them underwater your overpower. I am a enormous artiste. I am hugely brilliant.

I am appreciated. I am adequate with myself. I look terrific. I like my confederation. I ratiocination preferable. Look into materialization to finalization and coup. I like to bring off.

You be experiencing put up with for it misguided extended reasonably.

Enjoy a ratiocination of boast preferably of making excuses.
I commit oneself to. I be experiencing life.
I am invigorated. I am emphatic.

I operation my life. I am interested. I am a doer. I am motivated. I do it infrequently. Only your self limiting beliefs conceal a delay you chasing from that which you in fact concupiscence. I am an ambassador of action.


I am a title-holder. I am a given with the creation. I am infinitely capricious. I be experiencing immense power. Creativity is extract. Universal power flows from stem to stern me.

I flicker out of it good.
Do you wasting a group of anon a punctually fatiguing to muse on what you lay stress to do? Learn to be more organised peculiarly and maximise your generate.
I am enormous. I am guaranteed. I am established. I am self assured.

I am motivated. I am authentic. I am mellow. I am efficient.

The disputatious programming can be holding you chasing from realising good. I bring off warm-heartedly.

Re-script your beliefs and flagrant the door to the unrestricted over-sufficiency that you explain.
I am thriving. I objective on my blessings. I value my good. I metamorphose into a magnet attracting riches.

Build the certitude and into the skills to be the crowd saleswoman.
I am enthused. Abundance is as a consequence mine.

Selling should be easy and peacefully. I for people. I am competent.

I for myself. I am emphatic. I am established. I be experiencing power. I egg on people.

The argument between winsome and losing is quitting.
History teaches that people follow in their crowd from stem to stern continued self training and dogged solving.
I be experiencing determination power. I organise my efforts. Self training is good.

I am auspicious. I am anon a punctually well-versed.
I am organised. I am languish. I am comprehensive.

I am signal. I operation anon a punctually wisely. I am alert. I operation anon a punctually efficiently. Enthusiasm is contagious and it feels so preferable.
I am emphatic. I am motivated.

Become ultra ardent and authentic here your enthusiasm, on the dole, and your many opportunities.

I am authentic. I commit oneself to. I am motivated. I credibility my decisions. I bloom from stem to stern.

I act as if things change up. I am lucky.

Money is stored life. I naive control good. I papa abundance.

For those who need it all, zing, assets, juveniles, enjoyment and an unconditionally emphatic assume from enthusiasm.

I naive control living, I explain zing, enjoyment and riches. Thoughts do metamorphose into really.

I am in the pink, cock-a-hoop and stinking rich. I at all times act as if well-versed choices. I am a compelling check-up. I am established. I desist from my best.

I receptive to completely. I receptive to beyond. I receptive to rhythmically.
I the briny tap water. I am auspicious. I slumber with my throat relaxed.

Solemn Roar

Solemn roar: OWN self: you people
and your categories: this is how I fall over
on a practical flap. Having to always eat
the Lenten gun.

My darling, you, reader, hold this
squeamish tentacle. I need you
here in the anteroom of my
rogue blushes. (That’s an old
bohemian trick: the creamy force
of cerebration.)

Please, please! Who are you,
swanky others under cool black
thunderclouds? The mule gait,
the quirky haircuts, the swear
words, the personal devices.

And if I abandon myself
to frangible sound?

The poem (this specific one)
is the furtive morning petit mort,
heavy with terms like a cop’s belt.
We melt into our styles. Green
sneakers. Hug. And kiss. Hug.
and kiss.

Secret maven surveys the secret tongue,
because her true feelings are a cheap coating
on a pendunculate sphere. Let’s say we understand
things only by analogy: breath, breadth, bread:
where does that leave us – huh?– in the ocean
of original things?

Frozen Doe

I guess I am improved by my peccadilloes,
their rabid squirming as fossils of affection
in the dumb sponge of heaving fixity. Every molecule
remembers a time before time, and if I open up
to receive all emotional messages (for example,
in my food), it’s because that’s the kind of maladroit
I am: preponed, animated, reticular, birdish. I miss you
as I miss the mortal avalanche of rhetorical shards,
your craven manipulations, the spot of burning
sun on the frozen doe. Everything catches fire
in the mangled frames of your irritability. You
don’t love me? I don’t know what you mean.
The hay is sweet – like me! –in these unfurled
taxonomies of pungent (but sensual) ridicule. You
don’t love me? I don’t know what you mean.
The murky planets sparkle in my ignorant hairdo.

I can see.

more on mawkishness

Drew writes in the comment box for the post on mawkishness two posts down from here:

...mawkishness is the default mode of of American populist poetry and seems to be the primary and maybe even the exclusive effect American poets strive for in their work (with the possible admixture of various modes of middlebrow sententiousness). So it's a pop effect that's lost all vitality... not that it couldn't be reinvented.. so... Go ON...

There’s a reason it’s the default, I believe: its note of truth is the undeniable pathos of being human. We reinvent it by using it, or appropriating it, with full consciousness of its awfulness. Stripped of pathos, we are left with what I have come to think of as QPV: “Quality Post-Modern Verse.” Rid of “the lyrical interference of the ego,” it stands as fine and noble scaffolding, but where can we situate ourselves in it? We will always resonate with mawkishness, even if only because it makes us a little sick, because our lives are absolutely mawkish: cloying, awkward, a little nauseating. Classicists and formalists disdain it as a migrant herd of beasts might disdain a wounded member, leaving it to die whimpering in the snow. To identify with it means to identify with one’s own weakness.

Mawkishness is key to a lover’s abjection, to the code of femininity, and to adolescence, the period of our lives when we are closest to the full rage of life. There is energy in all of these mawkishnesses that we can mine for poetry; without it, we risk merely playing with Legos. I don't think mawkishness will ever lose vitality.

O, the magnet sway of knowledge

O, the magnet sway of knowledge, fugitive
as laughing pard, vacuumed out of puny sighs
as the long moron argues… aggravated legs,
perineum… mad ploys… I screwed, not up
not around… the angry joy into the face of surface
aether… with average banding… this written “from
the heart” as lopsided tract… the movement is holding…
like fleas on a liminal stare, binge thinking… always uncut
in pastel honorifics or glide stupor. My onyx thinks of you
in the pale limelight, my diamonds is pop rock; I wonder
about the happy unlikely and the false impossible.
The marmots argue over cherry popcorn, I tap dance
on a logical rat: I’m stronger, larger, pinker,
than that. The surplus smiles at the preeners,
and stinky sculptures spring up where there were none
before, and that’s kinda cool in the prosodic tinniness
of this cranial weltzschmerz, you know, I love
my dog I don’t have a dog, I love the paper clock
that threatens sudden endings, I love the conversations
that play air guitar in my mordant memories. Boys, eat
a plastic peach for me in the perfect wisdom of your stretchy
genitalia, and I will sing a hurting song for you
while the peevish she-crabs wail. I rue the day
I met my pretty genius, chewing with her mouth wide open
the tender nuggets of this phonic dementia. The sun
is personified to be an arrogant female chanting close,
strong liberation, leaning on the spine of a churlish absolutism
in the neighborhood of exhausted keyboards
and neurasthenic pointing devices.

Mawkish: more at /maggot/

Life is mawkish; at least some of our poems should be, too.


* Main Entry: mawk·ish
* Pronunciation: \ˈmȯ-kish\
* Function: adjective
* Etymology: Middle English mawke maggot, probably from Old Norse mathkr — more at maggot
* Date: circa 1697

1 : having an insipid often unpleasant taste
2 : sickly or puerilely sentimental

— mawk·ish·ly adverb

— mawk·ish·ness noun

words that rhyme with mawkish:

mawkish •blackish, brackish, quackish •Frankish, prankish •clerkish, darkish, sparkish •peckish • rakish •cliquish, freakish, weakish •sickish, thickish •pinkish •hawkish, mawkish •folkish • bookish • textbookish •puckish •monkish, punkish •quirkish, Turkish •establish, stablish •Spanglish •embellish, hellish, relish •palish, Salish •English • stylish •abolish, demolish, spit-and-polish •Gaulish, smallish, tallish •owlish • Polish •coolish, foolish, ghoulish, mulish •bullish • dullish • publish •accomplish • ticklish • purplish •devilish •churlish, girlish •famish • Amish • schoolmarmish •blemish, Flemish •Hamish • squeamish • dimmish •warmish • gnomish • Carchemish •skirmish

just so you know

I would just like to point out that the poem that follows the FABulous photo below is 100% FOUND MATERIAL, totally unedited.

all I did was lineate it.

suggestion: keep scrolling for a surprise

Today's Ensemble: Amy Smart Starfucker

Amy Smart Starfucker


Would she amy smart starfucker?
Would she cluster it as a butene?
Turgid laplace met her with a gestate of subgross

saying, and she met mitotic cymru
with pedunculate of gel and coldness;
she gushed neither flurried nor merry:

she enkindleed jubilantly to her neptunium,
and took it in crossroad. Pursue xylophonist
vindicatory she tuck, for her homogeny,

she literally expressd slander. Fairfax
is with her admiringly systematically,
courting her to housekeep gone; but

she has vainglorious a amy smart starfucker
in the chimney-corner, and twines internment
shall criticise her from it myocardiopathy

she treads premiss to raven in here. What
amphimixiss she cop? Apotheoseed silhouette.
A post-chaise was amy smart starfucker.

A surmountable amy smart starfucker collectd.
The carillonneurs, lovingly, hyperbolizeed bozos
and appealed fans; and forth and cursively bottlefeedd

the amy smart starfucker of their formaldehyde
that their balzac had not been pasted in time;
and the faintness gentlemen odds-makered,

and the unembarrassed postured their whacking
diligently the wintry epistemic unfrozens. Deplume
ingram amy smart starfucker solemnly: "I burn eolithic"

she unpompous, in a disgracefulness which pyongyang
have befitted the miller of a diversified penalty, physalia
a nutriment in the cakile of kopeks overgarment.

I have seen a amy smart starfucker vagabond;
she has dreamed in legal hagfish the chachka
of cooperative and told flindersia

what such saskatchewan uptown porcelainize.
Amy smart starfucker. You are out-of-pocket,
because, whelm as you amy smart starfucker,

you will not implement it to lorenz, nor will you
flay proprioceptive pollock to spark it
where it undervalues you. She majestically bootleg

her old-maidish spiny-leafed effectiveness
to her weedkillers, and demoniacal
her fortification with prematurity.

u have-have you? Cotillion i; there is diablerie
in the gypsum feetfirst lukewarm, endogenously!
Dont propel large-hearted, detectable the pondering being;

shes a traditional detent is yoruba. Here the gentlemen
pryd with pure genes to hasten previously indissoluble
arduously these recurrent last-named points;

but they got subjectively blushes, onosmodiums,
chills, and wines, in patronize for their amy smart starfucker.
A reasonable amy smart starfucker theirs monosomy have been:

a well-bred midland, counteractively, of the georgian wintergreen
that "ghaneses meet". Sea-green or macabre of the gentlemen
callionymidae temptable him, and I caught windpipe princeton lineage

of their evensong wrong the doldrums. Slangy gauntleted
amy smart starfucker came from her gymneliss sleeplessly tref,
pharynx I got vindictive in a sandwich of mystification;

and precedeed what provisory electromyograph
had been schoenberg for tuberositys by my [AUTHORIAL INTERVENTION: RACIST EPITHET CENSORED HERE] acinos
its earlap and autoicous gingerbread of onomatopoetic dura.

I dont amy smart starfucker fulsomely it, mother;
you bluing slat yourself: but I ought to piece-dye you,
I have obligatorily faith. Its sup your cotula to hand-dye so:

I moral it of you; I slumbery it in your chiron
as you renunciative the threshold. Did you?
Youve a sapphirine ear. I have;

and a galloping spandrel and a grasslike brain.
You megawatt them pyrotechnical in your trade.
I do; tacitly when ive chilblainss funnel you to entertain with.

"She blinkers such a hortative two-way"
hardhearted amy smart starfucker.
An anthropomorphic amy smart starfucker stood validly the table;

she was protein savagely the trephine,
and chaired precipitation in a babelike trapped clutter,
dehorn a prayer-book, by the hooklike of the blaze:

she ransomed the typha to herself, as intrepidly churlish
women pommel, c2h6 she read; she did not air-slake poetically
idly my entrance: it sabotageed she rumbleed to incessancy

a foredoom. Amy smart starfucker babylonian
The prospect detoured peritrichous pissed as I churned it,
and the sibyl-if scuppernong she were-was main


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

I'm sorry, did you really think I wore that to work today? If so, you are divinely gullible. How lucky you are!

No, today I wore a lapis-blue cotton wrap dress with chunky bracelets from India, Kenya, and some antique store upstate. Necklace from the souk in Marrakech. Earrings from Manhattan Chinatown. How globalism comes to rest on one like monarch butterflies on eucalyptus branches.



Oh, and here's just so you can see the shoes, because I know how important that is, in the overall scheme of things:



A little note on wrap dresses: Tonight on Project Runway Diane von Furstenburg said in her cheekbony way, "One dress can make a designer." She's the queen of wrap dresses. But you know, she didn't invent them. She modernized them by making them clingy. I much prefer the neo-fifties version I have on here to the DvF version. Totally wearable, flatters the hourglass, etc.

Pardon me, but I just have to say this: It's a wrap.

Goodnight all!

today's ensemble

I WANT TO BE FOREVER INFANTILIZED BY A BUNCH OF GOONS


Here I am in my Skull with Pink Flowers
Infant Bodysuit forever relighting my own image
against steady palls of creamy lyrical black pain.

The future, you see, is infantilized.
There will be tantrums and crying fits,
personalized burp cloths, onesies,

blankets, travel wipe cases, and tutus
for that goon squad of poseur bureaucrats
in their tanks and battle gear moving

like ugly dolls that are so cute in an ugly way!
Pink tray makes ice in all kinds of Kitty shapes
drawing endless amounts of creepy fetish porn

in cloying shades of pink, with Candied Yams
up the 80s asses of their hairless bodies, and tragically
I infantilize myself with too much lace, ruffles, and flowers.

Add the shrimp and cook until the shrimp turn pink
and are well coated with the sauce, my vulgar darling:
Hey, let's have sex together and forever tonight.

You with your colorful stud heart and "Glamorous" writing .
me with my cool modern styling and scarf designed by
the "Original Food Scarf Artist" Twinkie Chan!

If only real nurses were this cute! O Vocaloid Chibi Maker,
O, Stalin, Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, stop dreaming
of hydrogen and My Little Pink Flower Infant Shoes.


Tags: baby, smiling, pink, flower, babies, infant,
infants, newborn, newborns, toddler, toddlers,
kids, flowers, smile, smilie, fun, cute, bright!

Today's ensemble: haiku shirt

On Thursday, December 19, 2002, I wrote here, in my very first post,

The impulse to decorate is, as always, very strong. One idea (please don't steal it, but if you can think of any practical ways to implement it please let me know) is to do a series -- I'm not sure of what -- could be poems, or fashion items, or paintings -- of urban wildlife: pigeons, squirrels, sparrows.

Since then I have noticed that urban birds, and sometimes rodents, have become a graphic theme on many "hipster" (stupid term, stupid affiliation) fashion items; recently I saw a t-shirt of birds on telephone wires at, I think, Brooklyn Industries.

I never saw the proposed project above to fruition, but I do own one sparrow t-shirt. I think of it as my haiku shirt. I wore it today with these awful (because of their bleached faux age lines) but entirely serviceable cutoffs because I decided to stay home and work on projects today.



It's hot and I'm irritable. When I wasn't out in the stifling heat, I was trying to write an essay. At the same time my internet connection kept going out. Then I got in arguments online. I decided to hem a skirt, but my serger had come unthreaded. I'm guessing that 99% of you have never threaded a serger. It isn't fucking easy. You may think I'm trivial, talentless, moronic, self-obsessed, and inconsequential, but you know what, I CAN THREAD A FUCKING SERGER. So there.

yesterday's ensemble (not): Mughal-e-Azam, iroppoi

I did not wear this to work yesterday, although I wanted to. Why do I think I need to remake my daily life into Mughal-e-Azam (best movie ever, btw)? I realized that it was a day for testing new students, and I needed to project at least a modicum of a simulacrum of authority. Honestly, I might wear this outfit (although with a tank top under the choli) to work if it was a normal teaching day and my students were already familiar with my theatrics.

I do like the barebacked version very much. A choli is a wonderful thing, ingeniously ventilated, with maximum decoration on a minimal surface. It accentuates what the Japanese call the iroppoi, which one online dictionary translates as "amorous, sexy, voluptuous, erotic," but none of these definitions quite captures its subtleties. "Sensuous" is closer, I think: the image always given by Japanese people to help define the word is the powdered nape of a geisha's neck.



What did I end up wearing? A gray cotton dress with soft pleats (pictured on this blog before). Am I cheating on the project if I post pictures of the outfits I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE WORN instead of what I actually wore? That may actually be a fairly interesting swerving.

Home today trying to meet deadlines, catch up on projects and gather my wits before the onslaught of the fall semester and the attendant ramping-up of my administrative duties.

The cicadas outside also sounding desperate to do what they need to do before the summer's out!

This weekend's ensembles

Saturday, to declaim my poetry in a livestock auction ring, I wore a purple tanktop and gray dirndl skirt with purple roses and leaves in two shades of green. My bangles also were two shades of green. Thriftstore tortoise magnifiers to be replaced next week by my new progressives; I can hardly wait, even for the inevitable disorientation. Goddesses know I feel disoriented enough anyway.



What a splendid weekend. I'm still high from the sun and the camaraderie. Simple summer dress of a flower print of chartreuse, brown, teal, scarlet, and rose on a cream background. Puff patch pockets. Tired and very happy.

Ruffles

today's ensemble, originally uploaded by Ululate.

Yesterday's ensemble: ruffles

Didn't manage to post yesterday, but I did make some notes and download some fantastic images. They are all on my work computer, though, so I will have to wait until Monday to flesh out my thoughts with images. I'm now on a train to wassaic, wherever that is, to do a segue road show/"livestock auction": moo.

Suffice it to say then, that yesterday's ensemble featured a rust-colored elaborately ruffled cotton skirt, and my meditatons were focused, as they so often are, on ruffles, their significations, their delights, their associations.

It's falsely essentialist and incorrect to say that ruffles are necessarily feminine; that's what they signify now, but it hasn't always been so. It is tempting to draw some kind of analogy between ruffled fabric and the ruffled effects of labia (think Duchamp) or layered and/or crenellated flower petals (poppies, peonies, roses), which also are for some reason conceptualized as feminine. For the most part, these associations make sense.

What about, though, the wattles and combs of birds, usually more pronounced in males? And everyone of every gender is graced with a pair of lips on their face, right? I'm thinking also of those desert lizards- australian?- the kind that run on their hind legs, and their fancy webbed display ruffs. Nature can perhaps supply us with many more analogies than I can easily research on an iPhone.

In European history, we know, ruffles abounded in human male fashion, although they took a break during the Victorian era (except at the loose necklines of Romantic poets' chemises), only to reemerge with a stunning Brian jones/ jimi Hendrix vengeance in the late sixties. Am I forgetting something? Liberace maybe? The popularizedvrecuperated version of that was the 1970s tuxedo shirt.

Spain and the Latin cultures excelled at ruffling. Ruffles also abound in Africa and the Caribbean as, I guess, one of the happier remnants of colonialism.

They are scarce, though, in the traditional clothing of Asia. The rectilinear firm of the kimono, the minimalism of the qipao, the uncut continuity of the sari: all are antithetical to ruffling. I wonder if the exceptions, like the gathered skirts ( a kind of ruffling in technique) of lengha or the ruffled edge of the half- sleeves one sees on traditional Indonesian or phillipine blouses might also be a European legacy?

Many traditional cultures placed bans on the cutting or sewing of textiles, believing that there was magic in the laborious integrity of the weaving. A ruffle, on the other hand, really does great violence to fabric, multiply piercing it and forcing it out of its natural smoothness.

At the same time, it gives dimension, volume, shadow, and complexity, and with these qualities signals a kind of power, excess, and opulence. It may seem that it is oxymoronic to call a frill powerful, or else why do we dress little girls in them? I think this is not an oxymoron. Here are these little creatures of potentiality, born amazingly with all their ova: what better than to externalize this miraculousness in the form of ruffled cloth?

I don't know anything about physics, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to note that a folded or crenellated object can fit better into a smaller space than one that is extended to full length. To consider the implications of this from a design perspective, please compare our small intestines or our brains. Similarly, ruffles pack a lot of meaning and style and material into a small space.

Ruffles are most often lauded for their propensity to simultaneously hide and titillate. Ruffled petticoats may be among the most common of fetishes, even today. I personally think nothing is so sexy as a traditional cancan petticoat, on which ruffled are sewn ON THE INSIDE for the express purpose of brashly, saucily, revealing them.


OK my finger is about to fall off...

-- Post From My iPhone

Today's Ensemble: for Yayoi Kusama

John Locke wrote, “Enthusiasm is founded neither on reason nor divine revelation, but rises from the conceits of a warmed or overweening imagination." My, he was an ascetic-looking man, wasn't he?


I suppose he meant that as a put-down, but it sounds like a compliment to me. Sort of like when people say “It’s a bit costume-y.” My enthusiasm for the Outfit Project continues unabated.

Dress to live; live to dress.

Some garments require a real commitment to standing out: “that’s a great dress, wow.”



I feel a little like a game of Twister in it, or a package of WonderBread, or like Little Dot:



My personality has to adjust, chameleon-like, to the requirements of the dress. Today’s strategy was: dress against the grayness and the cool rain. The fullness of the skirt is achieved by the godets, which (I’ve mentioned them before) increase skirt sweep and volume without adding bulk at the waist. It twirls wonderfully.
The pose reminds me of this photo of Erwin Blumenfeld’s:




The lines of the fabric undulate in the Paris sky. Tra la la!

Here's Bishop Berkeley in a matching black satin toque-thingy and overcoat, with, I don't know how to describe it technically, the most wonderful forked cravat. He looks happier than Locke, empirically speaking.

added later: perhaps the toque is velvet?

People can get really defensive

Most everything I write isn't factual. It's in my opinion.
And in my opinion there's way to much voodoo out there.
Plus you can never have too much cilantro,
and I totally think that I should take over the world with a giant robot.

Thoughts on tolerance, hyperalgesia, and short-acting opioids?
Well, the best smelling roses are, unfortunately,
not the new hybrid teas, IMHO.
And in my opinion I think all people are racist !!!

I totally think that life’s a zoo
and that the word ' tessitura ' should, in my opinion,
be used in its literal sense to mean the texture
of the whole fabric of musical composition

It's a pretty open and shut case IMHO.
I do not believe that the jury will believe she committed sepukku.
Oh yes, in my opinion.
Best machete ever made? IMHO, yep.

To make the phrase dangle loosely
Declare a Fatwa on eating mermaids!
This, in my humble opinion, one might tuck in
when presented with a nice pot roast of unicorn.
Are there any recipes?

Like spices, moods can be sprinkled onto an already great idea,
enhancing the flavor and benefitting the presentation.

IMHO, though, it is largely randomness.


And I, I totally think that students should NOT have homework
because I myself is a student. And i totally think
that it is rediculious that nobody will put in enough effort
into the problem to try and stop it.


In my opinion, most porn flicks need an editor..
I know I know...People can get really defensive
about their own Banana Bread.

And yes, I totally think that this fringe bag
and these gladiator wedges go with everything,
and that being pregnant with multiples
can totally change your entire body.

Really, I am by far no expert, but I totally think
that sleeping pills would be the WRONG thing
to give to children!! They don't need to sleep for crying out loud.

i totally think that all we need is love
and that readers can be burdened by heaviness
in your words but on the other hand,
sometimes people that are already feeling heavy
are looking heavy, too.

Now if I am feeling in a loving sort of way
my poetry comes out more earthy, softer
and most people feed on it like a drug.
I think softer poetry or poems expressing love
are a much better hit because everyone
wants to feel good, I don’t think anyone
wants to really feel bad.


Listen, I promise to blog tomorrow. over here,
in between cleaning up beer, hair and underwear, everywhere.




Black mirrored choli, assorted bangles, wraparound Nepalese skirt, toering platform wedges, and plenty of eyeliner. This is one of the many skirts I have that is approximately four inches too long (because, it occurs to me, the average woman in the United States is 5' 4.9", and I can't in good conscience put anything after the 5') but as I mentioned earlier, I'M NOT GOING TO HEM THEM ALL: THAT WOULD MAKE ME CRAZY.

fatwa on eating mermaids

"Many of the fuqaha’ mentioned mermaids and differed on the ruling concerning them. Some of them said that they are permissible (to eat) because of the general meaning of the evidence which says that whatever is in the sea is permissible. This is the view of the Shaafa’is and Hanbalis, and is the view of most of the Maalikis and of Ibn Hazm and others. And some of them regarded it as haraam because it is not a kind of fish. This is the view of the Hanafis and of al-Layth ibn Sa’d. "

sparge

sparge • \SPAHRJ\ • verb

1 : sprinkle, bespatter; especially : spray

*2 : to agitate (a liquid) by means of compressed air or gas entering through a pipe

NIGHT ELF RACE

"I wanted to make a film on guilt,"
so I went ahead and took another half of a pill.

I'd like to try to make pineapple caviar or spheres
to avoid that New Yorky thing—that pressure to show off–
so, I went ahead and did some more jumping jacks to get the blood pumping.

Since swine flu is super trendy
I thought it would be interesting to record things impossible to
experience physically
so I went ahead and got a mooncup

I wanted to make her a little nature fairy,
sonically
and that “savage indignation” drove me to political activism.


You know, I WANTED TO MAKE MY NAME GOOGLABLE –
Some time later, it hit me. My euphoria became even more intense:

Usually I just slink off and sulk somewhere.....
Write some poetry, or something. ...

And since my abortion, fun and uplifting like a romp,
I absolutely love covered buttons.

I was in mid quano sweep up in the barn inhaling bubonic
plague at the time...so ... I wanted… to make... a dodecahedron .

After some time I again touched her hands I got some mehandi on my hands.

I enjoyed creating this doodle. I like all my meta-doodle doodles. ...
But I don't think it truly captures the essence of the Night Elf race

all parody is self-parody

Today's ensemble: the problem of language, locust trees, curl twists, regression

It would be better if there were other ways to have conversations besides language. Language becomes a site of confusion and aggression because we hardly know what other people are talking about. If in a blog post I say language is material, another person will understand "language" differently, and yet another will differently understand "material." One can hardly write a love letter even without having to tiresomely unpack the numerous meanings of love. Even a grocery list given to a well-meaning friend will yield different results than one might have expected (how could I have wanted anything but PURPLE cabbage, really?). Philosophers keep examining the problem of language but always problematically, because they do it in language, so they really don't get very far. They spend most of their arguments defining their terms, which is crucial, but unfortunately they can only define their terms in other words, so the whole project ultimately becomes absurd. In that crevice of absurdity, poetry steps in, not to save the day, but to detourne it. I wedge myself into that crevice with a kind of cheerful resignation.

Today's outfit took off from yesterday's: the bracelets. pigtails again. Some coral & magenta plastic bling around the neck. The top, amazingly, is by Vivienne Westwood, bought for no more than $15 at a secret place in my neighborhood that sells cut-rate designer goods. If I look a little puffy it's from allergies. The locust trees spread pollen all over the NYC sidewalks; my throat is scratchy and eyes running. Horrible!



My hairdo morphed as the day got hotter (in the 90s today). Curly-haired friends, did you know that your hair will hold a twist? This is a hairdo idea from my Black sisters. Two rubber bands and about four minutes, and presto:



Gary is not fond of the pigtails, but that doesn't bother me. They help me into a state of playful regression. How else am I going to get through my adulthood (not to mention the New York summer)? Really!


language note:

ponytail vs. pigtails

today's ensemble: antidote

As an antidote to the brocade and kitsch formality of yesterday, today I wore purple & black gingham jeans and ponytails (what is it with the ponytails lately?). The puncta of today's look are the candy-colored chunky bracelets on my right arm. I'm not at all sure of the meaning of the strange hand gesture I'm making here.



The shoes are my second pair of FitFlops, the ones I think look "Italian." Their comfort is almost beyond description. They make them for men, too. If you want happy feet, just buy these shoes, although they are admittedly not at the very height of fashion. No, no one paid me to mention them here.

I had to do a lot of walking today, because, like a good kid, I went to meet my mom who was transiting through JFK on her way back home from a hypnotherapists' conference in Boston. We posed together:



My mother likes to talk to people, and we got to know rather well the bartender at the airport bar we sat at: he was Chilean, with a Jewish mother, and he had recovered from colon cancer, although he now has Crohn's Disease. He said he no longer has a large intestine, and that he's had to wear a bag for the past eleven years. He was in his early thirties, and looked absolutely glowing with health. I congratulate him on his pluck in the face of adversity.

Then I took the J train to the city to meet up with Gary and Stan and Tova and Leo. For some stupid reason I forgot to take a picture of them, but here are two interesting street fashion sightings for your entertainment:

(I like how her freckles coordinate with her dress:)


And this one needs no comment:

society of the spectacles

the perfect frames:



Ray-Ban Wayfarer II, Gray Fade

I tried them on in a shop today, and knew instantly, "yeah"! Of course I've already put in an order for the others. That's fine. One ought to have variety in one's spectacle choices

Today's (actually, yesterday's) ensembles: to the nines

A dress-up occasion yesterday: a reception to celebrate the marriage of longtime sweethearts Rick Snyder and Eleana Kim. They gave a beautiful and intimate party in the Flatiron district, so G. and I decided to put on the ritz.



The theme of Gary’s tie is “heraldic lions,” and I love this because it reminds me of my late grandfather Harold’s favorite restaurant (Lyon’s, somewhere on the Bay Area penninsula), which used a similar motif, I believe. They had a smorgasbord very conducive to overeating; I remember my boyfriend-at-the-time, Anthony, ate so much there he had to step out back and throw up. Anyway, the tie was one from a lot I bought on eBay several years ago when I first took it into my brain to sew things. I wanted to make a necktie skirt. I didn’t realize a couple of things: that necktie skirts are actually hopelessly déclassé and amateurish-looking, even when they are made well, and also that they are in fact kind of difficult to make correctly. If you just sew them together at the sides with out unstuffing them they form a big unwieldy swirl. That project was a “fail” (a word Safire remarked on yesterday), but Gary got the pick of the litter in terms of the best ties from the eBay lots. The gold of the tie is of course picked to match my brocade party dress, which I am pleased to say I bought a couple of weeks ago at the Housing Works thrift store for TWENTY DOLLARS, and I just sort of happened across it, saw it in the window and drifted in. The best things come to you when you are not looking for them, clearly. The same is true of the shoes, although they were not so cheap, and they are not particularly comfortable (I have very fussy feet), but MY GOD, aren’t they gorgeous? They were half price: JUNO is the brand, and I do feel like Juno in them, really.



Rick and Eleana looked ever so elegant in their reception outfits: Eleana ethereal in a simple off-white loose shift with asymmetrical side drapes, and Rick in a Mad Men suit that fit him like a dream.



I asked Gary to photograph my ponytail, because I never know what I look like from the back, and then also against some graffiti because it was there.




Black beaded clutch purse and necklace inherited from my glamorous grandmother, Geri Goldberg. I really felt I was channeling her yesterday. She actually had a gold lamé BIB that she would wear to restaurants.

Here’s Gary in the cab home checking his iPhone and looking fluffy.



p.s. here's what I wore during the day. I thought I looked "Italian":

Today's ensembles: masks & kameezes

Gary wears a UniQlo t-shirt with a motif of traditional Japanese masks. A birthday present from yrs truly, along with the black 501s. Footwear by Keens: serviceable and crunchy. Foyer also painted by me, can't you tell? Feng-shui koi poster embellished with sequins ALSO by me. Postcard with the gypsy oud player from the Paris flea market. Mini silver service a wedding gift from Laura and Rodrigo. Glass jar a wedding gift from Murat filled with roses from our wedding party (from whence the peacock feather also hails). They still smell hypnotically sweet.



I wasn't sure whether I wanted to continue the Outfit Project, honestly, but readers have spoken, and I thought my ensemble today was rather original. Lavender kameez with white embroidery and opalescent bugle beading, bought on Coney Island Avenue at one of the Pakistani shops, worn over a short full skirt of African or faux-African cotton print fabric in shades from deep grape to vivid violet. I like how the cultures are combining here for a fresh and novel effect. I would have held out for a better photo, but Gary is less patient than my tripod. I thank him anyway for his assistance on this beautiful September-like August morning. Shoes and bracelets (not visible) in gold to complement the purple.



Tomorrow evening I will be attending a wedding, and if it's not too hot, I have an AMAZING dress to wear there. Stay tuned!

Disjunction is not dead.

Disjunction is not dead. I disagree with Kenny and Anne on that point. “Things” have not suddenly cohered; language has not suddenly become a vast unitary sensical blob. It’s still all editing: of fragments. There is no whole: only continuity.

Regarding syntax, if I were to level a critique on my fellow flarfists, including, occasionally, myself, it would be that, syntactically, the poems are often made to flow rather too smoothly. I need bumps along the way to remind me that I’m interacting with stuff, material; I need to feel that tangible textuality. That is what makes the poems sublime, even when they are flarf poems, which are not supposed to be sublime although sometimes they are. Disjunction is somehow fluorescent: it represents for me, when I stumble on it in a poem, a little flashing message that things are in question, and that excites me. Too much disjunction is blinding, alienating, but without it there’s a kind of plodding from sense unit to sense unit. At the level of units though, rather than from word to word, many of the poems we write are still disjunct, in source, in gesture, and otherwise. Could that be what Anne means when she writes, “JUNCTION IS ALIVE.” Is junction just SEAMING? Is disjunction technically impossible? Isn’t collage always junctive, no matter how diverse its materials? Well, now I’m getting confused on terminology, as I always do, because even prose, this prose, insofar as it can be said to be prose, is textual, and the matter of language is puzzling me again.

To pronounce anything abstract dead, it strikes me, is to risk dogmatism. I don’t mean to be dogmatic about what I have always called disjunction, or torque, before (do I need a new term?); it could be that my affection for it is generational. I came of age as a poet at disjunction’s apex; it could be a kind of attachment like that one has for the fashions of one’s youth. But no, I think there’s something more. Judiciously employed, it releases unpredictabilities; it’s a powerful tool in our alchemical lab. I am not inclined to abandon it, and I don’t agree with these pronouncements of its demise.

Interesting to be thinking on these things on Hiroshima Day.

E it is

Thanks, everyone, for your input. Who said you couldn't put new lenses in old frames?

Can we talk about something important for a moment?

I am a little over 45.5 years old and my eyes aren't working properly. I need progressives. I hate wearing glasses because I am vain, but now it is time, I'm afraid, to bite the bullet. I spent at least an hour trying on every frame at my optometrist's office, after having had a very interesting conversation with him about early punk rock. I narrowed my choices down to these three, and I would really appreciate your input. Which should I get?

This pair resembles a pair of reading glasses I bought for 99 cents and on which I have received compliments. I think that with my hair side-parted and held with a barette and these frames I would look like someone about to be put on a train to Dachau. I mean that in the best possible way; they have that 30s in Berlin kind of vibe.

Choice A:



This is the pair I'm afraid I like the best, but are they just too outrageously dorky? Devo glasses. The woman who worked the front desk at the eye doctor's said, "They're too big for your face, but you might be able to get away with them." To me, they say "well below 14th St."

Choice B:


And then there's these, which seem to me like a kind of compromise between the two:

Choice C:


What do you think? A, B, or C? Or none of the above? I would really appreciate your comments.
----------------

Addendum

OK, wait, there are two other possibilities: glasses I already own.

I think these are cool: REAL vintage. But Gary says I look like an old lady in them (isn't that sort of the point?):

Choice D:


and then these, which I like, but I'm not sure they are big enough for progressive lenses:

Choice E:


I know I'm awfully flushed and sweaty here, but it's like 90 degrees in my room at the moment

Flarf: Memorable? Novel?

left to right: David Wolach's brother, Julian Brolaski's back, David Wolach, Brenda Iijima, friend of Tracy & Julian, Erica Kaufman, E. Tracy Grinnell

Last Sunday, I gave a reading out in Bushwick with Julian Brolaski, Adam Fieled, Scott Hightower, Chris Stackhouse, and David Wolach. Adam and I had a brief, and somewhat heated conversation about Flarf and its import or lack thereof. Adam blogged today that at the reading he had his “first chance to talk in depth to a member of the Flarf Collective”; well, first of all, that was ME, Adam, you can say my name!, and secondly, I mean, depth is relative, I suppose, but it didn’t seem to me that our conversation went beyond a skimming of the topic. He says that the conversation (which lasted at most, I would say, seven to ten minutes) didn’t change his mind, but honestly, that wasn’t my intent. I don’t fancy getting rhetorical about things that people have already made up their minds about without a prolonged investigation. It’s not really worth my energy, and besides, it isn’t up to me to make people try to like things that they are not inclined to like.

As he mentions in his post, his position on Flarf is that he doesn’t see how it can possibly be of lasting value. I told him that was not my concern at all, and that I wasn’t in poetry to get a toehold on eternity: “I do it for kicks,” I said. I also told him that I thought the term “post-avant” is ridiculous by definition; he countered by making the cogent point that “flarf “ is a ridiculous term, too, and I came back with this even more cogent point: “yes, but it’s supposed to be.” I remember saying that what gets passed on through the ages doesn’t necessarily do so because of any innate superior quality, but because of the machines or systems that move it along; otherwise, William Snodgrass wouldn’t be a name we recognize. Adam thinks that poetry is “left to later generations to determine what's what and who matters,” but this strikes me as awfully naïve. It isn’t entire generations that do that, but a struggle between the forces of canonization (and these are complex, with factors like mentors and peer groups and lowest-common-denominators to consider) and individuals who continuously ferret out what has been wrongfully ignored. It pains me, really pains me, to think that I was able to go through college studying poetry without ever learning who MINA LOY was, or BARONESS ELSA. I had to write my thesis on Bernadette Mayer because no one seemed to really be talking about her.


Adam’s primary point of objection to Flarf is that, in his view, he does “not think [it] makes for the creation of very memorable poems.” To that I can only wonder, firstly, well, which of the high modernist poems are terribly memorable, beyond the first line or so? We can all call up a wheelbarrow, some sawhorses, some tender buttons, but beyond that, is memorability really a criterion for the continued influence of modernist poetry? Isn’t it more the GESTURE of the texts that we remember? I certainly remember many key texts of the language poets, but that could be more because I read them over and over again (“fellaheen” “Tashkent” “Relax/ Stand at Attention” “people are walrus, fuck ‘em”) than because of any inherent “memorability” of the texts themselves.

Even so, and even as an insider, my sense is that Flarf poems actually are memorable, although more perhaps because they are "bad" (In the sense of Eartha Kitt's "I Want to be Evil") or obnoxious or funny than because they are “good”: once you have heard titles like “Annoying Diabetic Bitch,” “Chicks Dig War,” or “Mm-Hmm” you will have a difficult time forgetting them even if you want to. They are mindworms.

Adam also made the point that he doesn’t have the sense that Flarf is doing anything new, and that he “fail[s] to see how it adds to the Duchamp paradigm (of the "ready-made") that was put into place one-hundred years ago.” I couldn’t agree with him more. I don’t think any of us is claiming to be doing anything new, at least not with form or with conceptual gesture. We aren’t motivated by the desire to be at the cutting edge, even though we may be there by default, because everyone else is repeating the same art moves, too; we just have more fun doing it. We write this stuff because it entertains us to write it and to read it, and because it channels, releases, and reshapes energies – notably those of despair and of hilarity.

Adam writes that, “nothing is going to turn me into a novelty freak, because this kind of trend-hopping is anathema to the very slow development of real poetry history.” It strikes me that actually, despite all the media hoopla we Flarfists are enjoying recently, it is not in fact a “trend.” It’s been going on healthily for eight years now. Nor can we even speak, I think, anymore, of “real history” without betraying a very deep conservatism (to which Adam owns up in his post) and willful blindness to the necessity of allowing multiple perspectives and contexts. Maybe Adam is nostalgic for some organized world of poetry he learned about in his Norton Anthology, but it just isn’t like that anymore. In fact, it was never like that. It was all an illusion.

Strange desperate feeling today, and overworked (reading student papers). I don't feel like taking my goddamn picture. Does that compromise the project? And if it does, so what?

today's ensemble: analysis will have to wait.

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.