Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in henry crush's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
9:03 am	gadzooks! from today's merriam-webster's word of the day, "gadzookery": "Gadzooks . . . you astonish me!" cries Mr. Lenville in Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby. We won't accuse Dickens of gadzookery ("the bane of historical fiction," as historical novelist John Vernon called it in Newsday), because we assume people actually said "gadzooks" back in the 1830s. That mild oath is an old-fashioned euphemism, so it is thought, for "God's hooks" (a reference, supposedly, to the nails of the Crucifixion). Today's historical novelists must toe a fine line, avoiding expressions like "zounds" and "pshaw" and "tush" ("tushery" is a synonym of the newer "gadzookery," which first cropped up in the 1950s), as well as "gadzooks," while at the same time rejecting modern expressions such as "okay" and "nice." which makes me wonder: where would thomas pynchon be if any of this were true (or always true)? also, get a load of that lack of context in the final clause! your ray gonne r------------* (Comment on this)
Friday, April 24th, 2009
3:03 pm	finally a final decision After getting a deadline extension and grinding out research on and visits to Columbia, Brooklyn College and the New School, I accepted tNS' offer. Then I found out that a wait list space opened up at Brown. I was number two on the list. This bonus round of grad school admissions anxiety extended from 4/16 until today, when I received a curt email from Brown with the subject line: no more spaces. So there you have it. Incidentally, I tabbed over to gmail to receive the message right after finishing this poem, which is addressed to David Lehman (who teaches at the New School and wrote a book called The Last Avant-Garde, which is about the so-called New York School of poets). That must be some kind of sign. Cheers. The Last Avant-Garde   I’m rereading The Last Avant-Garde which I first read In 1998 the year it came out I was working in a New Age Bookstore where I tried to send people to Fiction & Poetry When they asked for Self Help & I want to tell you About teaching K-5 children at Alice M Waddington School To write poems or I mean writing poems with children At Alice M Waddington School “My Third Eye” which I started My Third eye can see the molecules in the air & the hands went up & the children took it from there & Claire wrote it all down starting most lines My third eye can see When we filled the page I asked someone to read it & gave the Oversized page to the first small girl who raised her hand She took it to her parents & pointed to molecules They helped her read molecules she read the rest by herself We wrote My Secret Power together we wrote When I Am the Rain On index cards we wrote I Wish which was materialistic we wrote Things That Aren’t True on index cards there were four groups Fifteen minutes each we did one index card poem to warm up One line on each index card & the children would bring them To the front of the classroom then go back & write more While Claire & I taped cards to an oversized sheet of paper After five minutes sometimes three if we forgot to start the timer Our station was The Poetry Race after all it was family poetry night At Alice M Waddington School after five or three minutes C & I would Read the index card poem trading lines or each reading a few lines Then we would do collaborative poems where they would raise Their hands when they had a line & collaborative poems where They would call out lines when they thought of them & C would write Everything she could & some of them always raised their hands & when each Oversized page was full we’d ask who wanted to read it & hands would dart Up & we’d pick two or three poets to trade off lines until the next group lined up at The library door we were in the library with short tables & chairs with Giant parents next to proportional children we sat up front on the radiator Taping oversized sheets to the whiteboard missing the blackboards of our Youth You had blackboards, right Claire?   What?   You had blackboards when You were a kid, right?   Yeah   Things That Aren’t true probably turned out best We didn’t want to call it Lies & freak out the parents but it was a Lie poem & I made sure to use the word Lies which Kenneth Koch prefers over Pretend or Suppose & especially Make Believe or Imaginary Things but he does also suggest Things That Aren’t True as the next best thing to Lies & that was in 1970 In Wishes, Lies and Dreams where he taught teachers to teach children to write Poetry which still works, his teaching by example, most examples coming from Poems written by Koch’s students it still works but kids are maybe more likely to Be materialistic in Wish poems & maybe parents are a little more squeamish about Lies though maybe they are more willing to tell lies to their kids these days   & I also want to tell you about The Circus because you mention in The Last Avant-Garde that when you teach Koch you like to ask students to read both Poems called The Circus in On the Great Atlantic Rainway & say which one is better & you know the right answer but your lips are sealed & I know the right answer Which is both poems are better because of each other the dream & the sentiment Need each other to be ecstatic & complete   & Frank O’Hara said instead of writing a poem he could pick up the phone I think That’s the way he said it when he also said you just go on your nerve which is always Worth repeating you just go on your nerve I kept thinking when I sat in on Lucie Brock- Broido’s “yearlings” workshop & everyone read lyrical poems dripping with duende after She told them about feral poetry feral meaning not dripping with duende but salivating on The foliage gnawing its fingernails touching itself inappropriately like Frank Stanford Discarding his greasy jeans jumping in a lake wearing only a cock ring under another name As Forrest Gander under another name imagines it well instead of writing you email I can Just write a poem   & you quote Koch from your sophomore year at Columbia saying Ashbery is a happy Sisy phus who keeps approaching the nonexistent subject, the mystery that will never be revealed   & this poem is a thank you though not as good as Kenneth Koch but who cares hopefully Someone does. Current Mood: relieved Current Music: quasi, hot shit (Comment on this)
Monday, March 2nd, 2009
3:16 pm	re:search So far, I've gotten into The New School and Columbia (I did not get into Amherst). While I wait for more replies (three more schools pending), I'm reading writers who teach at TNS & C. I've been revisiting David Lehman (I like Operation Memory a little less than I used to, and I like Daily Mirror much more than I used to), and reading Shelley Jackson (digging her themed short stories in The Melancholy of Anatomy) and Lucie Brock-Broido (Trouble in Mind is a mandarin pleasure) for the first time. I recently read some work by program grads--I admire the shape and movement of Mark Lamoureux' poems, and one of my favorite new books is Farrah Field's gorgeous, plaintive Rising. I'm also looking for Elaine Equi's poetry. I've heard good things about her as a teacher at TNS. Right now I'm reading an essay she wrote for Jacket #7, in which she says: What does it mean to create something with no exchange value -- to work for free? Among other things, a sense of unreality and invisibility. Anyway, I just came over here because I wanted to post that snippet (b/c it's a question I've been asking myself in many ways for many years), and then I got sidetracked by context. Back to reading, while it snows out my window (I love being snowed in with books). (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 16th, 2009
5:46 pm	this happened today Every morning, Brix the cat makes a psychotic chittering sound at the birds she sees through the window. They perch on the neighbors' roof trim and swoop down in front of our window, while Brix freaks the fuck out. This happens snow and/or shine. The birds are old men on park benches. Brix is an incarcerated old-man killer with a view of park benches. All morning she chitters and shakes in her cell. Today I was making tea next to the window when I heard a THUMP and saw a dark, peripheral flash. Now the window looks like this: (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
4:01 pm	because i needed a break from my futile search for employment... 25 Things About Me on 2/4/2009   1. I lived in the Bay Area for about 17 years, and now that I have moved away, memories of my experiences there mingle in a way that makes me better understand how time is a human construct.   2. In 2006, I wrote a poem with the lines: i am suspicious of punctuation and caps, but I am drawn to them like grad school / which i have renounced but continue to consider / i invite you to throw dirty vegetables at me and never read my poems if i relent   3. I recently applied to six MFA poetry programs.   4. I haven’t had a job since September. See Thing 3.   5. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was in high school, but until now, I didn’t feel ready to teach.   6. I love thinking of names for things: bands, books, magazines, shops, people who already have names, essays, poems, animals, inanimate objects, cars, ideas, disorders, perversions, phenomena...   7. Between the ages of 9 & 18, I was on the football team. In high school, I carried a mini-cooler full of sandwiches every day because I had trouble gaining weight for football so I had to eat every chance I got (I was the smallest offensive lineman on the team). The most I ever weighed was 200 pounds, but that was probably for one day. Between my junior and senior football seasons, I got sick of eating, dropped 50 pounds, and was immediately benched when football started up again. I got in the game for one play all season, and our team, which was ranked number one in our region in preseason polls, completely shit the farm and didn’t make the playoffs. I’m still full.   8. I have a navel ring, a nipple ring, a tattoo of a snail above my left ankle, and a tattoo of Ignatz mouse throwing a brick on my left forearm.   9. I put down a deposit on a Providence apartment before I moved from California, based on a Craigslist post with four photos.   10. One of my first jobs was Deep Water Lifeguard at Raging Waters in San Dimas, California.   11. I convinced my parents to send me to an all-boys, Catholic high school named after a leper priest.   12. I write with my left hand and throw with my right hand.   13. My ears ring all the time after years of playing in bands and going to loud shows without wearing ear plugs.   14. I started wearing corrective glasses in my late twenties.   15. For most of my twenties, I had a large, unflattering, transparent, red-tinged, pubic-ly curly goatee, and in my early twenties I had long, curly hair as well.   16. Allen Ginsberg once affectionately tugged my goatee.   17. I never lived in Pittsburgh, but I miss it all the time. I also miss Oakland, where I lived for most of my time in the Bay Area.   18. I met my girlfriend C. while visiting friends in Pittsburgh in 2007, and the night before I was supposed to fly home, I called the airline and cancelled my flight so I could stay with her for a few more days.   19. I have a Parker Arrow pen, still in its plastic case, which slides into its original paper case, which my best friend gave to me in second grade. Inside the paper case is a sticker with my grade-school (or maybe junior high) locker combination: 36-22-12. I wonder what happened to Steven Chang, who skipped a bunch of grades and disappeared from my peerhood.   20. I have several of each: favorite poets, fiction writers, bands, books, albums, etc.   21. I used to love wheat beer, but now I kind of hate it. I love hoppy IPAs.   22. I have large record, book and comics collections and no savings.   23. I usually don’t remember my dreams, and most other people’s dreams bore the shit out of me. Except flying dreams: I sometimes remember mine, and I like to hear people describe how they fly in their dreams.   24. I’m usually kind of confused.   25. I don’t believe in God or the stock market. Current Music: swell maps (Comment on this)
Friday, January 30th, 2009
3:06 pm	check it out, yinz guys i've been periodically contributing to pittsburgh's own new yinzer, a nifty online lit mag. in the new issue, i contributed to a james crumley tribute. have a look at the mag, and check out the tribute in the "between the lines" section, won't you? also, if you haven't read crumley's the last good kiss, and you like hardboiled fiction, hit the bookstore/library, dude. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 26th, 2009
1:46 pm	It Hurts My Dream Returned last night from a trip to Brooklyn, where C. and I stayed with G. & M. and had drinks with K. We also saw The Wrestler*, which hurt our dreams** considerably, and was awesome and is now recommended. It was a good trip; a road trip. When we got home, we settled in, pet the kitty, turned on the heat, and I started cutting garlic and broccoli for dinner. That’s when the dropsy began. My hands were a little sticky from peeling garlic, and they were numb with cold (I often find that I can’t really feel my hands this winter), and as I was cutting broccoli off the crown, the knife fell out of my right hand and the blade struck the base of my left pointer finger. Fortunately, it’s a nice, sharp paring knife, so it passed cleanly through the skin, stopping at the knuckle bone, and caused me no pain at all (but, then, refer to last aside about lack of sensation in hands). It was one of those deep, neat, momentarily bloodless cuts. I was very matter-of fact about it, asking C. (who was in the next room) to rinse the knife and finish cutting the broccoli (the water had started to boil, and the oven was just about ready for Buffalo wyngs) while I bandaged my hand. That’s that. Some Bactine squirts, Band-Aid selection (awkward location/orientation of wound), a little running water and tissue, and I was ready for dinner. This morning there was more fumbling, but even less blood. None, actually. I was again multi-tasking a meal, with soy milk heating on the stove for oatmeal***, while I prepared grapefruit with the special, curved grapefruit knife. Fortunately, you don’t have to anticipate an injury involving that knife, which would make a messier incision, since it’s dull and serrated and looks just like a not-so-assiduously maintained implement of torture.**** OK, so I compartmentalize one half of the grapefruit with the knife, and I’m about to cut into the other half when I realize we use the grapefruit bowls as all-purpose serving bowls, and that I need them for the oatmeal, which is now ready to be served. I get excited when the oatmeal is ready, in part because it’s got blueberries and bananas in it, and also because it’s still sort of boiling even though I’ve turned off the stove, and if the soy milk evaporates or gets any more absorbed by the oats, we will pass beyond the point of oatmeal perfection. So I pull the grapefruit halves out of the bowls, set the halves on the table (we won’t eat them until after we finish our steaming oatmeal, since there’s no looming deadline on the freshness of the grapefruit), and shuffle over to the sink to rinse the grapefruit juice out of the bowls. I rinse, and then I flip the bowls over in each hand and shake them briskly, and the one in my left, bandaged hand pops out of my grasp and crashes into the sink, breaking into several pieces and startling C. and B.***** A minor commotion of fur, confused cries and recriminations (inflected with pre-tea tone immodulation on both sides—the kettle has come to a boil, but I have yet to rinse the filter, etc.) ensue, and I realize that I have now without a doubt come down with a case of dropsy. In short, yes, I’m reading David Foster Wallace again. Your Raymond Gonne r--------------------* *We are all the Ram. **Have you seen Blue Velvet recently enough to recall the scene in which Laura Dern cries in her little-girl room while clutching her rotary phone, making that terrible rubber-band-mouth face, and says It hurts... It hurts my dream!? I saw this movie recently, for the first time since it was the most recent David Lynch film, and that line stuck out as something new and incredible, and I’ve been wringing all kinds of 2-D meaning out of it wrt my own life since then. Also, it’s become a little song I sing, which goes: It    hurts my                    dream ***We’ve been calling it porridge, because Let’s have some porridge! is more fun to say than How about some oatmeal? ****As opposed something plucked out of a meticulously arranged, shining array of implements revealed with a flourish of velvet at the start of a filmic torture scene. *****B. the cat, who has presumably by this time completely forgotten that we had been away for two days. Current Mood: dropsy Current Music: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Lyre of Orpheus (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
6:21 pm	new yore This is how we found it alone in the cold city with respect to the in-laws broken not halved In the last scene we recall silence depending on everything we see the glinting instruments gambol and stomp, drapes waving at false walls. Who has not arrived, who is missing who has sent us regards (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 21st, 2008
4:11 pm	2008 Playlist Blitzen Trapper, Furr This isn’t a top ten and it isn’t about newness, but there is some order to my list. Albums I’ve been listening to more recently are at the top, and when in doubt (or in case of a lack of distinction), I floated stuff that feels newer. I noticed Blitzen Trapper because it toured with Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, and after ignoring BT because I didn’t like the name, I finally checked out last year’s Wild Mountain Nation. If this was December 2007, I knew about this album, and I were ranking favorite albums of the year, Wild Mountain Nation would be at or near the top. It’s an album equally influenced by rock-cut-up early and kick-out-the-long-hair-in-three-stages late Pavement, which is right-E-O with me. I picked up Furr along with WMN after listening to snippets of the latter (former) on All Music Guide. At first, Furr sounded tamed but also hippy-ish, and I preferred the angular half-ass-ery of WMN. Eventually, as WMN started to sound less strange and exhilarating, I spent more time with Furr, and I tell ya: It’s a grower. If you like Terror Twilight as well (if not as much) as Wowee Zowee, you’ll probably dig both of these albums. No Age, Nouns It occurs to me that there’s a whole lot of old even in the new albums on this list. There seems to be a lot of that going around the indie rockosphere. I’m still getting into this one, but I know it’s already getting into me. If Times New Viking buries pop craft below screeching fuzz, No Age has a better topsoil. I usually don’t make it to side two of TNV’s Take It Off, but I get closer to the end of Nouns each time I listen to it, mostly because the first few songs are a dreamy, powerful wash that carries me along. There’s plenty of harshness mixed with the pleasant haze, and each of those elements makes me leave and brings me back. I keep changing my mind about the vocals (tiring/catchy), but they’re planted at just the right depth to grow on me. I just decided I want this on vinyl. My birthday is January 19. The Fall, Imperial Wax Solvent Better than the last one (Reformation Post TLC), which wasn’t bad. The Fall (or MES, anyway) seems to be revisiting the early ’90s—not the one most of us (and most bands) lived in, but the one the Fall lived in when it released Extricate, Shift-Work, and Code: Selfish. This is a good thing (the middle album is the weak link in that trio, but the other two are marvelous, dark, dark and funny). IWS is dark, dark and funny. Also, I’d rather listen to it than talk about it. Wittgenstein concluded his TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS a little something like this: What we cannot speak about we must pass over is silence. MES concludes Imperial Wax Solvent by muttering “Believe me kids, I’ve been through it all,” which is to say he knows of what he speaks—whatever the hell he’s talking about. Lambchop, OH (Ohio) I like this album, even though I get really embarrassed for Kurt Wagner when he refers to Talk Like a Pirate Day. Come on, man. I’ve been indulging in Nixon nostalgia, and when this came out I thought: How come I never checked out anything else by Lambchop? Dude is like 50, so they obviously have dozens of albums. So I went to All Music Guide, made a list of three older Lambchop albums that sounded worthwhile, and I’ve been listening to those ones more than I’ve been listening to this one. But I like this one. I’d much rather listen to an Ohio album by Kurt Wagner than Sufjan Stevens, who’s probably singing Christmas songs right now. Dungen, 4 Gustav Ejstes (yes, I had to look up his name) is unstoppable, so don’t try to stop him. When I first heard this, I was disappointed because I thought it was too easy on the ears. Then I listened more closely and found the rock right there in front of my nose. First impressions, schmirst imscheschins—I mistook easy listening for awesome production. Unlike Tapes ’n Tapes (c.f. Walk It Off), Dungen’s material is worthy of its remarkable production. Also, Dungen looked within for its sound (Ejstes produced and engineered the album, and some bird told me* he did it on Pro Tools). *i.e., I will not bother to substantiate this—I’ve got more write-ups to write up, and what difference does it make? Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! I got this late because I waited for the vinyl. Nick Cave is one of those dudes whom I do not like to listen to in his digital guise. It’s a sign of respect. Just when I thought Nick was going gently into that good cave, he put out Grinderman and then this. OK, after Grinderman I pretty much knew this was gonna be good once I saw all the exclams. I like Nick Cave’s midlife crisis! Brightblack Morning Light, Motion to Rejoin Slow and low, that is the tempo. Nabob and Rabob manage to be cool while living in a yurt (with those names). Destroyer, Trouble in Dreams Most likely to be one of my favorite albums of the last two years a year from now. By this point, you like Destroyer or you don’t. If neither, listen to this. As with other albums on this list, I was mildly disappointed for the first few listens, but then TiD sunk its fukin talons in me. “Since... Since you’ve been gone / Me and the king have been steadily growing apart / He lives down the hall.” By now this album feels like classic Destroyer, and I’m already forgetting if certain lines are from this one or the one before it. Fleet Foxes, S/T Still sounds like My Morning Jacket, though MMJ no longer sounds like MMJ. (Fuck you, Evil Urges, though, based on my experience with several favorites on this list, I should prob give you another listen, since I couldn’t get through one listen before blowing your cocaine disco off my iPod.) So this is like a good new MMJ album. With a Brueghel cover. Magnetic Fields, Distortion I hate California girls.* *Do not take this personally. I’m only singing. Beach House, Devotion Used to sound like My Morning Jacket, until I heard Fleet Foxes and Evil Urges. Watched a Juan’s Basement performance on Ptichfork, and Victoria Legrand’s hipster-on-the-nod singing style kinda ruined this album for me. But I fondly remember the good days. Watching David Berman on the same show also killed the Silver Jew’s latest effort (though “Aloysius, Bluegrass Drummer” is as much to blame for the demise of Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea), so perhaps I should not watch that show anymore. Sun Kil Moon, April Mark Kozelek just makes good music. Most of his songs go I’m very drunk and very, very sad, which is fine with me. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Real Emotional Trash Pig Liberation II (or PL III, if Face the Truth was PL II). Also, like Wowee Zowee (and other good albums like Quasi’s Field Studies and Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods), RET is three-sided. Notice that Janet Weiss drummed on three of these triple-siders. If you care about Malkmus (still), you already know this album, and if not, you won’t bother, so why bother? Breeders, Mountain Battles Better than Title TK (probably), which wasn’t bad. Includes a song in German and a song in Spanish, and the German one is probably better, but the best ones on the album are in English. Not to be jingoistic. REISSUES: Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper Captain Van Vliet was upset about the final mix of this, the Magic Band’s second effort, recorded as a double album in 1967. Apparently, the mix master went rogue and made some LSD-laced edits, and Van Vliet described the results as “psychedelic bromo-seltzer” (he was especially displeased with the liberal application of the phasing effect). This same villain (whom shall be extra vilified by remaining nameless) absconded with the group’s tour earnings, stranding them with a hotel bill in London, and for good measure, he re-labeled the album Strictly Personal and released it as a two-sider. The Magic Band went on to record (as quasi-captives of Van Vliet) the sublimely freaky Trout Mask Replica. That album’s renown led to a botched issue of some Brown Wrapper sessions which did little to restore the album to its intended form. Only now, over 40 years after the fact, has the gatefold It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper finally arrived. Talk about snail mail. If you have a record player and a heap of curiosity, this is worth 30 bucks, even during the Great Recession. Pavement, Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creed Edition The reissue of Pavement’s fourth album proper, along with loads of b-sides, live tracks and other goodies (the deluxe deluxe edition includes a previously unreleased live vinyl album), is a revelation in a way the other Pavement reissues have not been. Anyone with any inclination toward Pavement’s music knows the first three albums are top-of-the-’90s-heap affairs (even if some folks might balk at the random rules of Wowee Zowee or key the polish on Crooked Rain X2), but there’s a general consensus that Pavement is coming down the mountain (or getting over the hill) by 1997. The strength of the assembled b-sides from the period belie this notion. Pavement is still Pavement as it leans into the end (or, rather, as we see it leanin’ in a parking lot), and the difference in the band’s words and guitar on the a-sides suggests that it was onto something else here. Maybe Pavement was always onto something else, never repeating itself from album to album. Perhaps there’s more continuity between the collected b-sides than there is among the collected a-sides, and this has something to do with the high regard for those b-sides, which many listeners consider to be Pavement’s best material. OK, so what is Pavement on about on Brighten the Corners? Whatever it is, Pavement has by this time taken nonsense to a whole ’nother level while still remaining amiable (and asserting with a shrug that non-sense is a kind of sense). Also, there is something like rapping from Mister Malkmus. Re: the last two sentences, please refer to “Blue Hawaiian,” which begins, in a speak-sing, “A welcome to my friends,” and goes on to promise that “this slap is a gift / cause your cheeks have lost their luster,” then announces, “tape machine needs to be aligned.” And I sing along: Kiss me into the past. This time I know what I have.   too new to me to say yet, but sounds good: Vivian Girls, S/T Crystal Stilts, S/T Deerhunter, Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill   haven’t heard it but I’ll likely like it when I get to it because lately I like last year’s In Advance of the Broken Arm: Marnie Stern, This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is it and It Is It and That Is That Current Mood: snowy Current Music: snow (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
7:15 pm	lolbrix (Comment on this)
Monday, December 1st, 2008
1:50 pm	Talking to Myself to You I'm reading a 1985 interview with Ashbery, in which he says "It just seems that people will do almost anything rather than read a poem and try and come to terms with it, you know." This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my dad, when I called him to say I'm applying to MFA poetry programs. He said something like "I've been meaning to call you about the little green book of poems you sent, but I wasn't sure what to say about it." Then he told me something that sounded familiar but amplified: I don't know what you're talking about, and you seem to be writing for yourself. When I was working on KS, he used to tell me that he thought we were creating a magazine for ourselves. We used to say that too, but he meant that we weren't trying to reach anyone outside of a narrow group of people who agreed with us and/or knew what we were talking about. So his critique of my latest chapbook suggests that I'm spiraling ever inward, if not to self-referentiality, then to a private language or discourse with myself. Did he say I'm talking to myself? Not quite. But I suppose he means I am not talking to him, and by extension, I am not communicating with... well, anyone. I probably sound more annoyed than I am. I was bemused (though unsurprised), and I wanted to take his criticism, however abstract, seriously. I suggested that his reference point is my previous chapbooks, and since the new poems are a departure from a more narrative (and expressly lyrical) voice, it makes sense that the new poems confuse him and even put him off. (This is a gentle way of saying: Dad, you don’t read any poetry except mine, so, yes, you can blame me for your confusion.) I also told him that I’ve been revising the green-book poems (we never mentioned the title, Grammar Politics, which suggests subject matter we do not discuss) extensively since I assembled the chapbook, because I’m considering several of them for my application portfolio(s). I said something about figuring out what I’m doing, or going to school to figure out where I’m headed in my poems, and he said something like: In those poems, it seems like you don’t know where you’re going. I wish I could paraphrase that as “you don’t know where you are in the poems,” which sounds like something approaching a poetics, but what he actually said is somewhere between those two statements, and qualified by the following: You don’t know what you’re doing.# Not that my dad thinks I don’t know what I’m doing. He’d probably rather say he doesn’t know what I’m doing. In my poetry. I’m sure what matters to him is that we both know I’m trying to go to graduate school. So I’ve been thinking about what he said as a check to what I’ve been doing in my poems. I don’t want to leave the reader out; an element of seduction is vital to even the most irrational poem (Ashbery, from elsewhere: “I firmly believe in the irrationality—as opposed to incoherence—of poetry”). In short, I want the poem to be worthwhile just as I want it to take place. After our conversation, I thought about how I to write a straightforward poem to describe the mode in which I’m writing, but also illustrate it. At a reading that week, I jotted down a potential title, Talking to Myself to You. After the reading, there was a wine reception, and I had a funny, truncated interaction with Thinglish (the genial awkwardness of which I attribute to the general atmosphere of Literary Arts gatherings): How are you? Good. How are you? Good. .... .... The next day, I wrote this poem (this is a slightly revised version): Talking to Myself to You We do not speak every day to each other we speak but do not talk as we do in our heads, alone with each in mind. We say hello and hello, and sometimes nod and that is all. We continue in silence. Anyway, this is an inversion of a response to the request* Ashbery declined. No paraphrase is intended. Your Ray Gonne r------------* # And on rereading this, I think he actually said “That makes sense, because in those poems it seems like you don’t know what you’re trying to say.” * John Tranter: I remember buying a book called Singular Voices by Stephen Berg: it was an anthology where each poet contributed a poem and then wrote an explanatory article to go after it. Berg mentioned in his introduction that you had declined to provide a poem and an explanatory article, and that you were going to write an essay about why you’d declined. Did you ever write the essay? John Ashbery: No, I never did it, and at some point he stopped asking me about it so I guess he realized that I didn’t really want to do it. It just seems that people will do almost anything rather than read a poem and try and come to terms with it, you know. A statement from the poet about what he meant in the poem is considered to be very helpful, but my point is that it really isn’t going to help anybody since it’s just a paraphrase, operating at some distance. And it’s rather annoying to be asked to do something like that, especially by a poet, who should know better. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
2:02 pm	yes we did i want to share an email i just sent to a former teacher of mine who challenged me last week to do something in the final days leading up to the election: We did it! It feels so good to say "President Barack Obama," especially after superstitiously avoiding such utterances for the last few weeks. Since last night, I've been repeating it aloud. I want to thank you for encouraging me last week to do anything I could in the final days of the election. On Sunday I joined some friends on a trip to New Hampshire to go door-to-door and ask people to vote for Obama. It was at several moments discouraging, as some people refused to answer their doors, or told us they had made up their minds and didn't want to talk about it. Other people told us they supported Obama, and we encouraged them to vote on Tuesday (actually, I encouraged everyone I met to get out and vote, even if they were not voting for Obama). We went to several neighborhoods, and I saw parts of my country I had never seen. It was in many ways a difficult day, and there were moments in which I felt sick with worry, but I'm so glad I did it, and when New Hampshire was called for Obama, I felt like I helped make it possible, even if I didn't have to knock on doors to make it happen. Last night I was so excited I didn't know what to do with myself. Today the tears have finally come. I am proud, again, of America. Current Mood: emotional (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 13th, 2008
11:16 pm	rip dfw big bummer. i just read that david foster wallace hanged himself last night, and his wife found the body. we need all the eloquence and intelligence we can muster right now, and the american iq just took a hit. fuck. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
7:29 pm	greetings, those who give a (aka used to be so mean) here i am, not-gone, sitting in fat tuesday, a “new orleans” style bar in the pittsburgh airport. my 5:20pm jet to jfk was cancelled* at about 4, and i had to buy a more expensive flight on american in order to get to ny tonight so i can get back to work tomorrow. with time on my hands—checked in at 5 for an 8:30 flight—i sought whiskey and a table. generous pgh offers free internets, and fat tues offers doubles for +$2. now i’m onto sam adams—don’t want to wobble too hard into dehydration. the music in this place is just as terrible as you’d expect, but moments ago i downloaded paul westerberg’s 49:00, which goes for 49 cents, and i’m about to shove these little speakers into my ears... there. horrible music obliterated; middle-aged racket initiated. first minute is nice and good. warm guitars, friendly voice, relaxed vibe.   4 days in pgh treated me well. got to help c pack and ship her stuff, so all our kept crap will be united in providence. saw a quasi-acoustic workshop set at the double wide grill, which had two rows of craft beers on tap. i drank uncounted pints and felt really good. nice too see faces i recognize from years back, those faces full of pleasant suprise to see me. nice also to hear workshop’s words. pittsburgh, you are ok. last night, after dropping c’s possessions at a remote industrial park, got a ride from c to jloucks’ house. spent the evening mostly in the basement at the table near the kegerator drinking big hop and singing with jl and scott while one or the other played guitar. felt so good i’m not too bothered by today’s hassles.   this westerberg album is damned good, by the way. one single track of 44 or so minutes (pw is still such a slouch that he can’t quite manage 49 mins on an album called 49:00, and when i heard about it i immediately knew that would be the case, and wld not have it any other wy), modest recording, scrappy and lovely and sincere, the old uncle showing hootenanny how it’s done. should be enough to let you know whether it’s worth your 49 cents plus attention.   any friend of yours is a friend of mine. this is a terrific policy. a soul-affirming, easy-going philosophy. got a job in nyc during high season, when shitty hotels cost $200/night, and c’s friend and her bf put me up all last week, and i’m headed back there for 4 more nights. i worried about overstaying my welcome but finally realized that c’s friend genuinely takes this maxim to heart. so: the world is fucked with greed, dispassion, etc, but people, some of them, are essentially good.   baseball players, tho, are generally assholes. shared a plane with some teenaged minor-leaguers on the way to pgh, and they were a right bunch of little pricks. let me just leave it at that, except for this, which is directed at them: fuck you, you twerpy, misogynous, self-absorbed creeps-in-training—redeem yourselves or make life worse for everyone.   westerberg is in danger of becoming relevant again. that’s it for my review; make up yr own minds.   your ray gonne r----------*   * fuck you jet blue. also: take trains, people. take buses. stay home and take the internet. airlines are completely fucked. Current Mood: waylaid Current Music: paul westerberg (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
10:58 pm	we didn’t go to dallas i’m no stranger to feeling like an asshole, but today i feel the need to say: ok, fort worth, texas, perhaps i was unfair in my rash judgement upon my arrival here wednesday. it was hot, the city was low and sprawling, the freeways were nearly indistinguishable from the roads, and so on. my hotel room was small, and there was a moldy smell upon entry. the locals were bloated. i saw no wildlife whatsoever. the potatoes were not cooked, the restaurant was empty and did not serve alcohol. i didn’t want to be here in the first place. i just moved to providence, rhode island, and was finally starting to feel at home, finally felt on the verge of making friends, maybe even playing music again, and i didn’t want to go to texas at the start of the summer to measure an abandoned warehouse (without air conditioning, about to become a church). what i’m saying is that i was surprised in a sort of smug way to learn that fort worth has a celebrated vegan restaurant, spiral diner. i went there yesterday, i returned today, and it’s fucking marvelous. also, today i found lone star comics, which also rules. so, fort worth, i’m sorry. you are not a complete wasteland. clearly there is intelligent life here (even if a counter person at spiral diner has a tattoo on his forearm, situated so that it can be read when you are facing him, that says “-eating meat is cruel and selfish.”).   ok, i don’t like it here. but i acknowledge that as a passerthrough of town, i don’t know what i’m talking about. i would not have guessed that a comics store as cool as lone star would exist here. but the best comics stores surprise you with their locations, i’ve found. like rah-coco’s collectables, a comics shop in a part of providence that makes you feel decidedly off the map. i ramble. i’m listening to all hail west texas in a fort worth crossland economy studio, trading swigs of water with swigs of beer. tonight i read the final issue of local, one of the best comics i’ve ever come across (thanks to rogue reporter). i also stepped away from a close elevator encounter with two aromatically evident drunks at this very hotel, and spent most of the day in my room, chugging water and recuperating from days that ended with 90-degree sunsets.  and but: good vegan diner, nice comics shop.   your, ray gonne r----------* Current Music: mountain goats (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
2:41 pm	what would pavement have done? i've been drinking coffee (mostly single-shot lattes, but for the last year or so i'd limited my caffeine intake to tea ) this month while preparing to move, and this morning's two-shot breakroom (ahh, the breakroom) latte has me feeling pretty good. which makes me wonder: is not drinking coffee anything like being on the wrong anti-depressant medication? also, i just made this up (shouts to my fellow iota ro nus, since i cribbed this from my latest item in our newsletter): next time you're feeling ambivalent, unsure whether to blow it off or just blow it, or just act like you're blowing it off or blowing it, ask yourself: wwphd? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
12:49 pm	(2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
12:17 pm	poems here & there, sat 4/26 i'm moving to providence in may, and i'm happy to say that i'll get the chance to read again at pegasus. it's the first time i'll read with claire, and i'm thrilled that kaya agreed to join the bill. please come out if you're in town! Pegasus Downtown will host Poems Here & There, a consideration of place, on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 7:30pm. The event will conclude Pegasus Downtown's celebration of National Poetry Month. Poems Here & There will feature readings by five poets with a range of residential relationships to the Bay Area: JEFF T. JOHNSON (The Short-Timer) was a founding editor of Kitchen Sink. He is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including The Record Room. His poetry has been featured on KPFA's The Writers' Block, A Voice Box, and Kate Greenstreet's Every Other Day. He has lived in the Bay Area for 17 years, and is moving to Providence, RI in May. KAYA OAKES (The Lifelong Resident) is an East Bay native currently living in Emeryville. She earned her MFA in creative writing at St. Mary's College of California. She was a founding editor of Kitchen Sink. Her first book of poetry, Telegraph, received the Transcontinental Poetry Prize from Pavement Saw Press. Kaya's poems have previously appeared in VOLT, Conduit, Shampoo, Tarpaulin Sky, and other journals. She teaches writing at UC Berkeley. CLAIRE DONATO (The Visitor) is from Pittsburgh, PA. She has resided in Oakland for the past four months and assists with several projects at McSweeney's in San Francisco. Her poems have recently appeared in Shampoo, Caketrain, and Lamination Colony. Claire is moving to Providence, RI in May and will begin her MFA in Literary Arts at Brown University in the fall. JESSE NATHAN (The Transplant) is an associate editor at McSweeney's in San Francisco. His poetry, fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Geez, Adbusters, McSweeney's, The Believer, Visions, East Bay Express and The San Francisco Chronicle. Though he was born in Berkeley, he spent much of his childhood in Kansas, and he returned to Berkeley last June. JARED HAWKLEY (The Phoner) comes to Poems Here & There by telephone. He seriously considered living in the Bay Area, but for reasons that will someday become clear, he finally sighed, nodded once, and drove a van to Michigan. Currently, Jared works at 826 Michigan in Ann Arbor. He resides in a suburb of Ypsilanti. Pegasus Downtown is located at 2349 Shattuck Avenue; Berkeley, CA 94704. Tel: 510-649-1320. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
2:23 pm	alt! methodically bang on something for klaus dinger, cause he ain't banging on nothing no more. Current Mood: thirsty Current Music: neu! 2 (Comment on this)
Monday, March 17th, 2008
9:33 pm	are you listening to the pogues? i am listening to the pogues. we ought to remember more than once a year that rum sodomy & the lash is a fantastic drinking companion. (1 Comment |Comment on this)