tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-210189282024-03-06T22:14:16.096-08:00Nomad Inkhyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-79396226071912731342010-02-06T11:18:00.000-08:002010-02-06T11:26:17.080-08:00just like i pictured it...New York has been a wild ride and a real tonic. Sabbatical Heaven, that is, etymologically, seventh heaven. I'm working feverishly on a wonderfully fun project with Adeena Karasick. My normally sluggish intellectual metabolism has been boosted by her intense wordplay mind, and i find myself putting together warped etymologies, mid-20th C. Euro- Jewish intellectual history, and textilic rhapsodies nonpareil. Also went to a class Alan Sondheim's teaching at the School for Visual Arts, we watched a movie on free jazz which was v inspiring. I learned that John Tchicai is half-Danish. It's nice to share something with such a creative soul. It was great listening to him talk in the movie, he sounded like my mother and all that side of the family when they venture into English. Then celebrated Alan's b-day w/ a feast made by Azure, and met Joanna and Eugene Lim, daughter and son-in-law. Also spent previous wkend w/ the Funkhouser-Hufnagel family unit in rural New Jersey, writing collabs way into the night which i then posted on Wrytings. They made pizza for the kids and for the grownups so i got my NY pizza fix in NJ. Now i'm plumping up around the middle, so must go back on walking regime. More to tell later, and fun night at Jean Franco's writing goofy groupoid poems at a party in honor of Nicanor Parra's daughter, the artist Catalina Parra. I took the opportunity to share the work of my host Walter Lew; everyone was most touched and impressed and asked where they cd get the books. Yay. More more more to tell tell tell, later later later.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-34090747279415672152010-01-24T09:06:00.000-08:002010-01-24T09:34:52.547-08:00time to catch upDear me, it's been almost a year? I keep forgetting my password and I just figured out how to get a new one. Duh.<br />I'm being a culture vulture in NYC interspersed with days of loneliness, traditional (i'm told) beginning-sabbatical depression (the transition to unstructured time), and lovely long walks throughout the Queens neighborhoods of Sunnyside, Astoria, Woodside, and so forth. I bared my brains under the El for a few hours the other day and traversed miles of pigeon-shit bespeckled sidewalk, smelling the fabulous smells of burning sugar and frying meat all along roosevelt avenue and digging the splashes of color from the sidewalk displays of the grocery and 99¢-&-up stores.<br /><br />Went to the Tuli Kupferberg benefit at St. Anne's Warehouse on Friday eve, with Eddie and couple of his friends, Ardele and Liss. The benefit was my kind of thing, homey and warm, with raw edges (lots of time between the sets to switch equipment, etc) and a high level of artistry. Kind of like when I went to the Vision Festival in the 1990s, it was all these world-class musicians performing at ear-splitting volume in a church basement that still had a shred of tinsel from the Christmas pageant draped over the curtain cable overhead, even though it was Memorial Day weekend. Anyway, the highlights were the Fugs, Peter Stampfel (of the late great Holy Modal Rounders, whom I remember listening to at night as a teen on Boston's "underground" radio station, WBCN and chuckling over "Boobs a Lot." He sang "Dook of the Beats," and I was chuckling along. Flutterbox was new to me, and great. Jolie Holland was uneven: first song powerful, second incomprehensible. John Hall, whom i'd just seen at the PoProj benefit marathon, was great but a bit over-amped. Laurie Anderson/John Zorn/Lou Reed were good but went on too long. Trance music. Melodic at times but mostly not. I liked it when they all played the same note at the same time. Gary Lucas powerful. Sonic Youth, again, first song great, second okay but not great. Who really cares. It was a benefit for the guy "who jumped off Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown..." or something like that. He didn't really walk away. He spend months in a body cast. So don't try this at home. There was a lot of love there, and I picked up a copy of Tuli's Teach Yourself Fucking and a commemorative t-shirt, since all the proceeds go to him. Shame on our health care system (and can i tell you how mortified I am on behalf of my home-state Massachusetts?), that the assembled efforts of the evening probably covered one minor "procedure" or one day of care, but it gave us an excuse to get together and experience art .<br /><br />Eddie was getting uncomfortable (cramped seats) and the luminaries were fading, so we left but it was a wonderful evening just the way i like it: homey, unpretentious and full of uneven bursts of brilliance and talent.<br /><br />Last night went to see Foofwa, Alan Sondheim and Azure Carter at New Dance Amsterdam, yet another overlapping but sufficiently-unfamiliar world. Again, homy feel of folks who know each other, combined with superamazing artistry. I know Alan as an internet theorist and poet, so it was exhilerating to see yet another side of his polymathic creativity: he played a range of unusual (except for one guitar) string instruments (strong instruments) while Foofwa danced and Azure sang. I'm not a dance person so i have no vocabulary for describing what I saw except to say it stimulated my brain and body; Foofwa is like the Iggy Pop of dance (intensity, channeling intense masculine energy) which from me is a high compliment. I loved his quote from John Cage: "I decided to not make choices but to ask questions." Too bad I left my I Ching in Minnesota. The audience was super-responsive and loved the show. As far as I cd tell.<br /><br />I went earlier in the week to a screening of Howl, Rob Epstein and Jeff Friedman's encomium to everybody's hero Allen G. James Franco was really excellent; not since his James Dean do I think he's had a role so worthy of his talents. (Not that i've seen all his films.) He caught Allen's vocal inflections and gestures, at least from when he was older. I don't know if he did that pedagogical thing with his finger as a younger man, but it resonated with the Allen I knew.<br /><br />The night before, I went to Nada Gordon's bday party. That was really lovely. Nada looked like a glamorous cream puff. It was fun to see folks, again, a nice homy (that's "homey," not "horny") group of sharp folks it's a balm to be around.<br />Also nice to see so much of Walter Lew, my in-and-out host here in Queens, and walk around the nabe with him yakkety-yakking.<br />Ok i'm exhausted. Good to be back, y'all.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-67950009455869311062009-04-07T12:13:00.000-07:002009-04-07T12:46:31.670-07:00text textile exile...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh2UcnBFblhgp5HXaOPfX7I5WYihjy7PrFXsWCqtS1mFUCqt0VyMNW_MQtFqwaTB6H0PH5bQJD7Crr5KMUpARvjYlvFykzf_nC1NOOtUDpuCpf1lzbtaj_Hpytocj9ebKZhRhiAQ/s1600-h/EM005004.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 387px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh2UcnBFblhgp5HXaOPfX7I5WYihjy7PrFXsWCqtS1mFUCqt0VyMNW_MQtFqwaTB6H0PH5bQJD7Crr5KMUpARvjYlvFykzf_nC1NOOtUDpuCpf1lzbtaj_Hpytocj9ebKZhRhiAQ/s400/EM005004.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322030897206792722" /></a><br /><br /><br />EM, for Emma Bernstein and Her Family: Charles, Susan, Felix<br />Phrases taken from Charles's and Felix's remarks at the funeral<br />click on image for closer detail.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGxAVsYkChWDYfuke5kgHJZVs6Tdw9keS5OEAM3IlvLEZ9uwVQWTTDOP8O0d82gaJ1MOT_YfpeZVXb9tHJRzKfj7Y8tWO9kQsXvzczyYF4E2H4I76OjCGkWCMMl0B2PjzQ71npSw/s1600-h/Terra+Divisa:002.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 392px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGxAVsYkChWDYfuke5kgHJZVs6Tdw9keS5OEAM3IlvLEZ9uwVQWTTDOP8O0d82gaJ1MOT_YfpeZVXb9tHJRzKfj7Y8tWO9kQsXvzczyYF4E2H4I76OjCGkWCMMl0B2PjzQ71npSw/s400/Terra+Divisa:002.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322032174673215250" /></a><br /><br />Terra Divisa/Terra Divina: for Iain Biggshyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-62461033591283915892009-01-15T11:25:00.001-08:002009-01-15T11:25:20.595-08:00my tribute to ron asheton, the late stoogeI first encountered Ron's presence and voice in the pages of Please Kill <br />Me, the wonderful oral history of US-based punk rock. His anecdotes were <br />vivid, wryly hilarious, insightful. He made me want to learn more. <br />Believe it or not, I had never listened to the Stooges before, though <br />i'd heard about them a bit, especially Iggy Pop. I instantly became an <br />iggiologist and Stooge freak at an advanced age, and it revolutionized <br />my life. I feel happier on a daily basis, I have more energy, I'm not <br />afraid to be more sassy and humorous and performative. The Stooges, one <br />could say, gave me my groove back. Ron's hypnotic guitar playing brings <br />me deep into myself and out into the world simultaneously. He plays <br />those riffs and it seems as if they have been in the world forever, but <br />they haven't. That, to me is the sign of genius: when something is <br />initiated into the world, like a three-chord riff, it suddenly seems so <br />obvious and right–natural even, as if ordained by the logic of natural <br />processes–but it never had existed before. That is the Stooge genius: it <br />sounds simple, but it is a whole concept, a unity, a total experience. <br />It's Life. And Ron Asheton, who gave so much to so many in not all that <br />many years, has made this enormous contribution to humanity.<br />My thoughts are with his friends and loved ones and colleagues as they <br />learn to fully internalize and pass on what he gave them.<br />deepest sympathies and warmest wishes.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-254824334668747772009-01-11T18:55:00.000-08:002009-01-11T18:59:22.674-08:00Ron Asheton RIPI feel sad; Ron Asheton, visionary guitarist and raconteur extraordinaire, died this past week. I haven't been able to get into my blog for almost a year, and then mIEKAL showed me how to set up an account...and reset password, etc.<br />And a couple of weeks ago Emma Bernstein died.<br />Now these are two people I never met but i feel as if they have touched my life: Emma through her father Charles, a wonderful, generous poet and colleague; Ron through reading his words in Please Kill Me and through being an Iggy Pop fan. In the last year i've become something of an Iggologist, and now this. Yes, I feel sad.<br />May all beings be at peace<br />May all beings be happy<br />May all beings be free from fear.<br />A lot has happened in the past year; i went to latvia; i got promoted to full prof with the help of my outstanding chairperson, i made some stuff, i wrote some stuff...<br />i feel better and better about being in the world, and now people are leaving the world, at least people as they've been.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-69064477081563359852008-01-12T16:24:00.000-08:002008-01-12T16:33:18.711-08:00expansion?what's expanding is my girth, as i recover from 10 days on the east coast 5 of which were spent sick in bed in the home of my childhood in newton centre MA.<br />what i'm hoping will expand is vision, creativity, energy, productivity, imagination, generosity, compassion, mindfulness.<br />the phone rings and i know it's long distance but i'm glued to the screen here...stymied by the fretfulness of available activities, i can always turn to this sort of reassuring diaristic writing, which soothes me.<br />i don't feel like evaluating dissertation projects, though they're asking me to log on to show i exist...<br />i don't feel like proofing mIEKAL's novel (i mean right this moment i don't feel like it; what i've read is actually great)<br />i shd go to the gym but i don't have time b4 i head off to leslie's bat mitzvah party (gorgeous happy-making time at the shul this morning, had a deep experience of my people, though i had no idea what the f*** anyone was saying, except i caught words like "moses" and "egypt" here and there...and the food was great, hence expanding girth etc)<br />i shd clean my room...<br />i shd cut 22,000 words from my ms<br />i shd write another letter of rec<br />i shd send a condolence card to my mother's friend Pia <br />i shd...uh, nominate someone for something<br />argh.<br />all i feel like doing is...writing in this little space, my comfort zone, and reading yet another bio of iggy, who is also a taurus. <br />what-evah!<br />all of these things will get done except the cleaning of the room. who really cares?<br />so, i feel better, energized, already, having written my banal little confession, sweetly packaged in bloggy pyjamas and sent off to bed in cyberspace.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-26114345593359143182007-12-16T11:39:00.000-08:002007-12-16T12:09:24.473-08:00fin de semestre blues...sleeping, sleeping, reading silly rock and roll bios, latest was Tearing Down the Wall of Sound, about Phil Spector, who is interesting as a demented diasporoid, and about whom i did a bit of work in a paper on Adeena Karasick...but lots has been going on. First, Renee Gladman and Carla Harryman came to give a reading under the auspices of VG:Voices from the Gaps and the UMN's Institute for Advanced Study. They were terrific; Renee read 2 pieces, one about a woman dying from being hit by a car, losing blood and observing the activity swirling around her in response to the accident, the other a brilliant piece about orientation, disorientation, trying to get from one place to another in a city without using the handdrawn map in her back pocket, just asking strangers and trying to reconcile all the crazy and familiar things people say in response to being asked directions. Carla gave a spirited and equally brilliant reading of 3 of her Adorno's Noise hybrid essays; the first a breakneck speed Acker-esque (in theme if not in style) piece about being fucked/bullied by the President; the second a long piece that ranged over the galaxy system ("McBasin") to a meditation on a fiber-sculpture woman corpse by a woman artist that resonated strongly with Renee's first piece, then...anyway it went all over the place to v impressive effect. The last piece, which was somewhat blurred by a lot of folks needing to leave, was a speedy word-salad pirouette through...can't remember as well. Anyway the house was packed, it was good, and Adam Schrag manned our new camcorder ably. Then the next day Dhana-Marie Branton interviewed Renee really well in the VG basement office and we took her to the VG class where, though she felt it was a bit awkward (she thought she'd be reading from her work), she answered student questions about The Activist, a book that I teach a lot and that Maddy Chakraborty had put on her syllabus at my suggestion (thanks, Maddy). Then we had Ethiopian food and I took her to the Ashbery bridge by the walker art center.<br />THEN the following night we had our Samuel Beckett 101 Celebration in the English Dept (we missed the centennary and thought 101 sounded better anyway. It was amazing, 23 languages being read (including English), excerpts from Godot, The Unnameable and other yummy Beckett snippets. Here's the playlist:<br /><br />1. Bulgarian: Stoyan Tchaprazov<br /><br />2-3. Chinese/Japanese: Leo Chen, Leo's friend Toshi<br /><br />4. Danish: Ole Gram<br /><br />5. Dutch: Jenneke Oosterhoff and friends<br /><br />6. English: Richard Rose<br /> Philip Bratnober<br /> David Bernstein<br /> Kevin Riordan<br /> Richard Rose<br /><br />7. Finnish: Susan Larsen<br /> <br />8. French: Christophe Wall-Romana, April Knutson and Maria Brewer Pascale Crépon, Amy Kamel, Mira Reinberg<br /><br />9-10. French/Latin: Robert St Clair, Steve Jackson<br /><br />11. German: Rembert Heuser<br /><br />12. Greek: Tom Lewis<br /><br />13. Hungarian: Maria Bales<br /><br />14-15. Irish/Korean: Annmarie Lawless, Eunjoo Kim, Jewon Woo<br /><br />16. Mongolian: Lisa Fink<br /><br />17. Russian: Masha Zavialova, Sasha Zavialova and Kesh Zavialov<br /><br />18. Spanish: Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, Joanna O’Connell<br /><br />19-20. Swedish/Norwegian: Susan Larsen<br /><br />21. New Guinea Tokpisin: Steve Winduo<br /><br />22. Turkish: Ayca Ulken<br /><br />23. Urdu: Bali Sahota<br /><br />Ryo Yamaguchi made t-shirts saying "I can't go on, I'll go on," which sold out in minutes (i was wearing mine and sliced it up a bit punkish, and had a great time mc-ing) and we had a cake with the same line, plus a huge thing of Jameson's, a six-pack of Guinness, lots of dried fruit, wine, cheese, challah, nuts, chips, salmon, etc., a really great hospitable spread that kept everyone happy, thanks to our generous dept chair Paula Rabinowitz, whose husband David Bernstein did a mean Krapp, bottle-uncorking sound effects and all. The eerie thing was, when he was doing his Krapp, the video From Silence to Silence, which was playing (silently, of course) on the other side of the room showed a famous Beckettian actor also doing Krapp. The synchrony was fabulous. It was really well-organized thanks to our genius loci, our low-key inhouse genius, terri sutton. It was a really high-energy evening, capped off by a mass reading of the last 2 pages of The Unnameable loud enough to rouse the dead. We were, in fact, honoring our spiritual/literary ancestors, and I think it must have made Sam (if I may) happy. it was, as i told folks in an email later, Beckettastic. There were about 75 people there (Paula counted). It's becoming a tradition (last year it was Howl@50 that started everything). Who will we "do" next year? Dickinson? Stein? Sappho? I'm rooting for a chick, but we'll see what the weather brings.<br /><br />That was last Friday night. Saturday was a party for the MCBA "winter book," which this year was Vispoeology, an anthology of visual poetry concocted, i mean compiled by Scott Helmes, Tom Cassidy and John Bennett, stalwarts on the scene. mIEKAL and Camille came into town to celebrate and for mIEKAL to perform his masterpiece of spam-generated playwrighting, Neologism Hospital Theatre. I got to play Dr. Grace Butts, and the next day or so got the best pseudo-doctor spam name in history in my in-box: Dr. Whalen Bump. Anyway it was a lot of fun getting to be part of the festivities and then partying at the after-party and going for a big sushi meal beforehand.<br />Then a few days' lull and then the grand finale, dinner with my graduate seminar chez moi, i cooked all day sunday and monday and tuesday, that was really fun: cream of leak and potato soup with CSA leeks and potatoes, squash soup w/ coconut milk and ground pumpkin seeds, cilantro humus, mesclun salad w/ pears, red onion and feta, good cheeses, 2 kinds of bread pudding with whipped cream and ice cream, coffee, roast free-range chicken: they brought: really good cheese and bread, brownies, walnut cranberry pie, cherry pie, cookies, rotisserie and southern fried deli chicken, wine, and other delicious things. They talked about their final papers and read some sample paragraphs. It was exciting and fun and afterwards I've barely been able to move, sleeping and reading silly rock bios, and continuing to look at iggy pop videos online and draw inspiration from his manic creativity and smart id.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-62737242902969194642007-12-03T06:58:00.000-08:002007-12-03T07:01:02.185-08:00live down/noodling aroundan offering based on a line of spam from mIEKAL aND<br /><br />Do wispy clouds give you a different feeling from thick cumulus clouds?<br /><br />Your tear-stained harp, your cotton robe<br />the feathered strings that knit you up<br />do whispers make a different and less cumbersome cloth?<br /><br />Does the texture get all up in your heart?<br />What makes an instrument corded or smooth?<br />How do you work under water?<br />The amniosis you crave, the gnosis you endure.<br /><br />How can you play with those ice-manacles on<br />How is your heart spread out like an orphaned glottule<br />What do you do when the red line appears under your word, at your feet<br />What is this impetuous flight into the volcano’s molt<br /><br />Your thin shift aflutter<br />Your torn-string heart<br />Your feathered feet<br />Your dying voice<br /><br />Your silver chains<br />Your bereft throb<br />Your bleeding mask<br />Your fallow melt<br />Your gallows smile<br />Your hollow cloudhyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-87330017803141336372007-11-29T10:13:00.000-08:002007-11-29T10:20:37.184-08:00rock starEarth is my rock/star, melting fire and stone. When Chris Funkhouser remarked that Thich Nhat Hanh was a "rock star," i felt like, oh no he isn't, he's the exact opposite. But of course Chris is right; Thay gets up in front of thousands of people, gets his ego out of the way (if he has any left after all these years of discipline) and channels pure compassionate, life-giving energy. When I watch powerful music performances, something is also being channeled, something more human: creativity, sexuality, spiritual yearning embodied in a variety of modes: anger, lust, passion, joy, cynicism, etc. A good performance is a condensed version of what it is to be human. Watching Iggy's "Passenger" on youtube brought this home to me in an anguished and joyful way; you see the gamut of emotion and exhaustion, duty, disciplined performance, seduction, sweetness, despair, maskedness, etc., in a compressed time/space that is exceptionally powerful. What do Iggy and Thay have in common. It seems a bit absurd to even ask the question, but the way life and death interpenetrate, and the desire to calm desire...iggy my rock of gutterality, thay my star of aspiration: iggy my star incandescent, thay my rock of stability.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-87640537674272507772007-08-21T07:28:00.001-07:002007-08-21T07:35:15.703-07:00ah, sunny but briskwind is up today, but in a little-ripply way rather than a big-waves way. the treetwigs are stirring vigorously. i burned my kale for the 3rd time last night, i just can't seem to get it right. what will i try today? cukes and red pepper salad, can't go wrong w/ that, nothing to cook on an unfamiliar electric stove. what is the etymology of "stove" anyway. i'll have to check but am afraid to leave my post here in blogland to check lest i lose this little passage, humble as it is. the cape is so mobbed in august, i miss the beautiful desolation (angelic, even) of the winter months, but it's paradise anyway. i wonder how much i'll have to weed my garden when i get back, after a month of dereliction...esp the polygonum and the stuff that comes up between the paving bricks on the walkways, oh and the garlic chives that take over everything...well i will have plenty of occupational therapy in the weeding mode when i get back, and i've got something already on the loom, plenty to do. xo for now! mdhyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-23313569538534043482007-08-20T14:10:00.000-07:002007-08-20T14:16:15.620-07:00"your training is to enjoy every moment of your life!"that is what thich nhat hanh said to the kids during a dharma talk at the retreat i just got back from. I will be taking it to heart, so stay tuned. today i got up early and ate my breakfast looking at the still still sea. so amazingly beautiful, with imaginative cloud formations constellating and reconstellating as they moved with fat purpose across the sky in a counter-intuitive direction. it was alternately cloudy and sunny throughout the day, now pretty cloudy but fairly still and heavy-leaved air, in fact entirely overcast so one can't speak properly of individual clouds but a white-gray wash across the whole of the sky. A few twigs laden with green twitch with anticipation of the next big thing, the raindrop or little wind gust headed its way. all aflutter with excitement, contained in serenity. Life is quite beautiful. I got my ms in the mail today, wow, i haven't quite taken that in, better not to, i guess. nothin' i can do now, it's just past 5:00 and the mail's gone out. love to all, mdhyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-46549138237319373832007-08-08T08:48:00.000-07:002007-08-08T08:56:15.454-07:00caped weatherovercast but so mild and windy, humid, the paper in the printer gets all wavy after just half an hour's exposure to the cape air. lush lush lush, with fat unripe green concord grapes growing wild everywhere. proofread 400pp ms again, and again found plenty of errors, wish that were plenty of eros. mairead byrne will come up sometime in the next few days for lunch and chat abt poetry etc... that'll be nice. i'm so close to providence but rarely get down there, time slips by here...picked up a pound of mussels for dinner last night, they were -bummer! -kinda boring. wonder why. i've never had boring mussels before. the kale, on the other hand, just sauteed w/ a bit of onion, garlic, olive oil and water, was divine. and the mushy peach was redeemed by a few drops of honey and some of the real-but-fake-ish light-cream whipped-cream-from-a-spray-can left by the previous visitors. ah, mushy peach were paradise enow! the night before, dinner w/ celia and jerry brown's son and friends from london, jeffrey/kit baked a divine pasta dish w/ red peppers, organic ground lamb from mike brown's farm, and a bechamel/parmesan crust that was to die for. i had 2 helpings, and was reassured to learn from my sister that the leading diet experts recommend one meal a week reprieve. well that was it, as i also had a slice of mango-raspberry pie with aforementioned fake-ish whipped cream for dessert. that's it for now, folks. i can't go on i'll go on...xo, mdhyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-458243248711979182007-08-07T14:08:00.001-07:002007-08-07T14:15:01.406-07:00foggy woods hole dayspent the morning with joanne moore, the grand-niece of Yiddish poet Manileib Brahinsky, mother of Anna Malmude, and grandmother of James Davis. she regaled me with tales of her Yiddish New York bohemian childhood, her saintly grandmother and her audition, at age 8, with Balanchine to go to his ballet school after her Isadora Duncan training with the daughter of one of Manileib's mistresses. Her dad picked up Balanchine in his cab and asked where his daughter (joanne) shd go to ballet classes and B said when she turns 8 (she was 6 and already knew she needed some technique) send her to me. so he did and she went to balanchine's ballet school for 9 years. now she lives in woods hole and served me fabulous bagel-bottoms from H&R with butter, cream cheese and lox!!! v decadent. we walked from her charming cottage into woods hole so shd cd buy cigarettes and then looked in the liberty house for nice clothes, then went to the aquarium to visit the seals, but they were summering in new bedford so the seal-pool was drained. it was a great walk in sleepy, muggy weather, with great coffee at her house with real light cream (as opposed to the fat-free halfnhalf i found in the fridge when i arrived...<br />what a nice day, and tomorrow the poet mairead byrne arrives...summer's great!hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-49136399178301897282007-08-04T14:59:00.001-07:002007-08-04T15:06:47.274-07:00hello my invisible and unknown dearskilling my wrists in wifi land, but loving it, here i am at the Coffee Obsession in Falmouth MA, wearing my favorite summer dress and answering email. v touched by everyone's concern abt the Mpls bridge disaster. i was on a plane to boston when disaster struck, and learned about it the next morning when my mother showed me the front page of the Boston Globe. Wow. a Dramatic Rendition in drawing, not photography. It's right by school, so i was a bit beside myself not knowing about my colleagues and friends. Now it turns out just about everyone's ok. I mean, as far as i know, the folks i know are doing all right. but what a wake-up call, in many ways. It's remarkable how distant i feel from it, though, once i learned that no one i know was affected, and that there were in fact so few fatalities. Is that screwed up? <br />The cape is lush, i'm not usually here in august. everything jungly and overgrown, it looks healthy, not dried-out like mpls. the water's warm, i've been in twice and there's no body-gasp when the water gets mid-midriff as there usually is. It's strange to transition into a rhythm of sloth and slowness; i spent most of today proofreading my ms for missing em-dashes and other typos. it'll take a while to get it out the door, i have to bring myself to revisit the introduction after having reread it and seen the overall lay of the land. ok, i'm just chilling. happy vacationing. a bit isolated but x funkhouser will be down here for a day, and then i've got a few poet friends around...gotta scare them up. over and out...hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-38841855703552013572007-07-25T13:49:00.000-07:002007-07-25T13:54:36.808-07:00ah, againagainwhat a wonderful feeling to be back in blogland. after various kinds of frustration i finally, thanks to my beneficent workplace, have an uptodate laptop and here i am at my cafe, working and taking a break from working by blogging, looking out at the 95 degree weather (i rode my bike over here, what folly but it beats sitting in a sauna-fied car) from the imaginary cafe with the real airconditioning in it...how wonderful to feel i can actually write something without having my wrists stick to the keyboard from humidity internal and ext.<br />i have suddenly gotten shy about loggin my blog, who knows who is checking in to read it, and i'm so overprotective that it's having this undesired effect, i feel that someone's looking over my shoulder and i can't be spontaneous. gotta shake that inhibition or this will be just as stultifying as any other obligatory activity.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-84120724109124950462007-06-28T20:27:00.000-07:002007-06-28T20:33:08.628-07:00frustrationDear God, let me see if i can post an entry without losing it this time. last time was an exercise in frustration and sent me into a bit of a tailspin; it feels like a major defeat to spend time writing and have it disappear despite my best efforts to post. makes me want to not share any writing at all. are those gunshots or firecrackers in the near dark distance? the neighborhood's going downhill again, my middle-aged gay male couple neighbors are moving out b/c they can't take in anymore. i'm worried abt who might move in. cars idling in the alley, then speeding off; unfamiliar teenagers with ravaged looks sauntering down the alley; crazed-looking women ringing my doorbell and asking for $16 to "call a locksmith cuz i locked my keys in the car..." let's see if this'll post. my lilies are out, beautiful, and roses too, and some things i don't know the names of... first meal of the summer w/ sonja and andy, my CSA share-mates; it was dreamy, the grilled zucchini like candy, the sugar snap peas like candy...green candy nonstop in the languorous back yard...hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-44007113395504237952007-05-05T05:57:00.000-07:002007-05-05T06:05:21.202-07:00just checking inat last! after weeks of struggle with password, username confusion, it seems i've stumbled into the proper combination after several visits to the "forgot your password?" site and so forth. it's spring in full swing now. magnolias come and gone, lilacs out, other people's fruit-tree blossoms going crazy. it is one of my favorite things to drive through a slightly run-down neighborhood and be amazed by the cherry-blossoming trees lining the streets with glory and dark pinkness. yesterday, the first rainy day in some time, gave me the opportunity to make a savory bread pudding while reading someone's ms on queer poetries and napping (is there a relationship? well yes.) the ms is smart but turgid and it's taken way too long to read. joseph lease was just in town for a very successful set of events; two readings, one at Magers and Quinn bookstore and one at the U, and a lunch w/ grad students that was incredibly helpful to many of them, plus to me. this past week has been a series of dinners with friends/colleagues i haven't gotten together with all year, and belated birthday treats. i am pretty burnt out, and next week to nyc for a panel at the bowery poetry club, which i'm excited about b/c i've never been there, believe it or not. happy cinco de mayo!<br />walter lew was here, latasha diggs, other folks...it's been quite the year, i've had such a great year!hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-76446219452884523212007-03-31T14:01:00.000-07:002007-03-31T14:28:42.098-07:00rainy day womenwell at least one woman, myself, and a soggy three-day rain extravaganza here. green things are coming up and i've no chance to pull them out of the ground, the squilla, dandelions, grass, in places i don't want them, and then other exciting things: tulip leaves, iris leaf-spears, fat fuzzy buds on the magnolias, and of course the yellow willow greening with leaf-buds. did home repair type stuff: a new bedroom shade cut a little too narrow; new batteries for the kitchen clocks and the thermostat, new black ink cartridge and pens from Office Max where a nice official looking boy approaches me in the soggy parking lot. I think i'm parked wrong, in a handicapped spot maybe, but he says, "Hi, I represent Jesus Christ and I wonder if you know the story and would like to learn about it." I told him I was Jewish, let's just split the difference. "Live and let live," I said, shaking his hand and wishing him a good day. Then off to drop lots of $$ on a black ink cartridge. And a few $$ at the dollar store, on sardines. mmm. a nice high protein, high calcium snack, high calorie too tho. <br />kamau brathwaite and anne waldman both visited here last weekend. Kamau read at the Loft as part of our Art as Knowing conf., sponsored by the English Dept (thanks to my chair, paula rabinowitz, who has supported all my efforts to bring groovy folks to campus); Anne as part of the Bob Dylan conference. Kamau did his shadda thing, amazing life/poetics story that always blows everybody away. He seemed to b energized by his performance and the audience response. See Aldon Nielsen's Heatstrings blog for some nice photos; Aldon was in town for the Dylan conf and had the sense to come a day early to catch Kamau. It was wonderful; immediately after the standing ovation initiated by JOtis Powell!, Douglas Ewart and I think John Wright and Bill Cottman, Kamau was surrounded by young folks –the few Jamaican students at the U, other postcolonial folks all animatedly telling him how much he was telling their stories. Then he signed books standing at the podium for about an hour. The daughter of family friends, Rachel Mordecai, one of our doctoral students who was in town to defend her wonderful dissertation on Jamaica in the 1970s, was there; they had never met but they got to meet in mpls of all places, and he read a poem he'd originally written for/dedicated to her mother, the poet Pamela Mordecai, and rededicated to Rachel for the evening. It was a marvelous event; Kamau was introduced by my lovely colleague Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley in black and white high heeled sandals and a brilliant outfit to match, both selected by her consort Kale Fajardo. She looked smashing and gave an intro that identified Prof Brathwaite as a "master drummer" in service of the "master of the drum," whose daughter she also identified herself as. After the intro Kamau nodded and murmured, "Good." After all of that KB, Omi, Kale and I went to Peninsula, a Malaysian restaurant on Nicollet –of course i got turned around and so KB and i got there late –and we had fish with a strange shrimp paste and lovely sweet mango tofu. It was a nice mellow time and i got home at midnight. The Art as Knowing conf itself was excellent; the next morning Douglas Ewart woke us all up with a dazzling multi-instrumental and multi-media musical tour-de-force. The previous day, Alan Read from England had given a highly suggestive and evocative paper and Ricardo Dominguez entertained us with his amazing virtual Zapatista nano-tech "actions" narratives. Sunday Anne Waldman read some of her Bob Dylan shaman poetry from the Rolling Thunder Revue inspired by Dylan's looking like a kachina doll in whiteface (though i think the intended effect was commedia dell'arte, but whatever), and gave an encyclopedic if somewhat nervous (though charmingly so) paper on Dylan and the Beats, which everyone was v happy with. Her performances are always masterful, as are Kamau's (at least the ones i've seen; i've seen anne far more often), though it was endearing to see her a bit insecure abt her academic creds. Greil Marcus (is it "grail" or "greel"?) also gave a good talk abt hibbing high school. I hung a bit w/ Aldon and his grad school pal Richard Flynn, but spent most of my time w/ Joanna, my pal and ex-across-the-hall neighbor, and her friend Leslie who was up from Louisiana for the conf. Later J, L and J's sweet daughter Rosemary (whom i've known since conception and thus feel a bond with) had dinner at Quang. It was really very nice; Rosemary read a book about Faerieland while J, L and I yakked and scarfed down deepfried shrimp and sweet potato balls, and sea bass soup, their sunday special. mmm.<br />well that's it for now; enough procrastination. i've finally started in on a prayer shawl for Eli, the youngest son of college friends in Western Mass.: he specified purple, black and silver in addition to the raw silk i get from Henry's Attic. MMMMM. i love working with silk.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-43504943385285990012007-02-24T14:57:00.000-08:002007-02-24T15:06:20.864-08:00snoweventfestivalWe're having a snow event, as they euphemistically refer to this three-day, three-wave, three-pronged attack of the frosty precipitate. Snow's blowing sideways, heavily, "heavy snow, blowing snow" tonight, "we've had freezing drizzle ..." "late tonight and tomorrow..." "regional snow tonight"..."3-8 inches by tomorrow" and here comes Prairie Home Companion on NPR. This wd be a good time to go to the gym, just as GK starts up his opening song about the old piano down the avenue. Its tones are muffled tonight. Tonight? It's only just 5:00 in the afternoon, a Saturday afternoon, and i've been noodling with some school service stuff and skimming the batch of papers i got from my ugrad class. Mostly look pretty good, pretty imaginative. Started a new weaving thing, before i get into Eli's tallis, that's Dorothy's son (Dorothy my old Hampshire College friend); i ordered the silk today from Henry's Attic and bought a cone of silver metallic. I've got the black and purple so that'll cut down on my "out of pocket" so to speak. Last night lovely meal at Barbette's w/ Joanna: we split baby turnips, a beet-apple salad w/ horseradish cream and little sprinkly fried onions like toasted coconut on top, and then a lemongrass basil steak that was truly yummo-licious. and then, of course, a creme brulée. Some v nice things happening: Poetix Collaborative funded, perhaps a personal work related good-thing i'm not at liberty to disclose yet, and an IAS fellowship for next spring. Ahhh, a little breathing space to think that what i do *does* show up on the map occasionally. Ok off to the gym before the GK narrative draws me in.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-16965450793106752812007-02-18T07:05:00.000-08:002007-02-18T07:15:11.055-08:00morning again, nothing needs to be done...that's a line from peter orlovsky. but it's not quite true. i've got a number of "tasks," some oppressively impossible, some pleasant except while i'm contemplating doing them i'm invaded by anxious thoughts about the oppressively impossible ones, and writing this is bringing me no relief so i'll change the subjext, the substance, the introject, the retroject, the gesture, the jester (can i change the jester?), the hexxer. can i? i feel hexxed by my own mind. maybe if i did some of those pleasant tasks rather than simply contemplating them i'd get some traction, make some headway, get someplace.<br />it's gray, warmer than it's been, car finally functioning again, and of course while it makes life easier, it doesn't lift the heavy melancholy of february and understimulation. trying to find meaning in color, started a bright scarf for mIEKAL, and making nice "headway" on my x-stitch "text, textile, exile" but while it's soothing to do it also means i'm not doing the other things...writing this !@#$#@! introduction to this book, the same introduction i've been trying to write for 10 years, here let me introduce you to my book, it's shy but rewarding to spend time with, its name is Bagel Shop Jazz: Poetics for a Post-Literary "America" and it's been leading a reclusive, elusive existence for about 10 years, making occasional appearances piecemeal in this journal or that, possibly you've seen part of it in this edited anthology or that, like i say in its totality its a shy beastie. well this intro will get done, you all out there in cyberspace are my witnesses. it's like, what to wear for an important occasion? just throw something on. just to get out the door.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-72244127539635417402007-02-13T17:06:00.000-08:002007-02-09T19:28:13.821-08:00momentusA moment. Making a nest of time. Here in the night office, fluorescent light reflected in the shadeless windowpane, colliding with the rounded planes of a steel sculpture outdoors. a few mornings ago i heard a terrific breakingcracking noise somewhere in the house, but haven't been able to identify a broken pipe anywhere...afraid of what'll happen during the spring thaw...don't know how to turn my water off. Barrett Watten came to give a talk and a reading last weekend, it was v stimulating and fun, lots of different people coming across my radar, in the department, at home, going to the Weisman to the Dylan exhibit, going to the Walker, making a turkey, setting up the room for a digital screening of some of BW's poems, hanging a sheet for projection, arranging the chairs, all kinds of material domestic arrangements that are not part of my everyday life...have my classes been suffering from my slight seasonal depression and exhaustion? v possibly...i'm in a room an office with four sides, how unimaginative is that, and yet does that force a level of interiority on me, an onus to create an imaginative world that moves and vibrates in a way my spatial-exterior world does not? in my grad class we just finished talking (sort of) about Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge's Endocrinology. Body as book book as body, as building, as map. Book as world. As outside so inside. but is it abject.hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-74431293397762849292007-02-05T14:28:00.000-08:002007-02-05T14:35:20.828-08:00more belower than belowThe ultimate mn frustration: my car won't start, even w/ a jumpstart from kelly next door and a visit from triple-AAA with strong jumper cables. Something's wrong. Again. With this car I got because my mother knew this mechanic who bought this car at an auction and so on. Never a quarter-year without trouble. Anyway i'm here, at home, now going to get it towed to Sayid my nice mechanic. It's bright sunshine but well below zero, and with a wind-chill to boot, in the -20s. I canceled my class, that was the responsible thing to do, many of them take buses or ride bikes year-round, it's not safe, it's a night class. you can get frostbite waiting for a bus in this weather, they say exposed flesh can freeze after 10 minutes at -30. Anyway i'm trying to keep my spirits up by having carol meet me at sayid's and then we'll have dinner at the longfellow grill, where i've never eaten but it looks nice-ish. not super-nice, but nice-ish. i made some cornbread, a Cooking Light recipe i've made before, and friday night i'll marinate the turkey in bourbon and etc. Barrett Watten's coming for a talk and a reading and i'm hosting a potluck chez moi b4 the reading... so gearing up to make the turkey, etc. i just need my car to work!!!hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-41696127157806046632007-02-03T19:23:00.000-08:002007-02-03T19:30:42.968-08:00below below below below belowit's 30 below 0 with the windchill. dangerous to go out, not to get the mail etc, but to go for a walk, etc. for more than 10 minutes or so. so i stayed in, did laundry, read some of Rachel Blau DuPlessis's Blue Studio and went to the gym (yes, my car started). Last night went to the "preview party" of the bob dylan exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum, it was really fun people-watching and looking at all the weird artifacts. you could push a button and hear marlene dietrich's cover of "Blowin' in the Wind," and watch great outtakes from Eat the Document etc. It was noisy and crowded so it was hard to hear stuff, for example a tape of bob zimmerman age 15 playing music in his livingroom w/ friend john bucklen. but what you cd hear was unmistakably the future bob dylan. his english teacher was there, we chatted, his favorite poet is wordsworth, his favorite poet to teach is loren eisley! they served mini-hamburgers, awful-looking pale french fries, and beer or bottled water. i think they were thinking "Hibbing MN" for the food, but it only underscored why Bob Dylan left Hibbing. However, they had commissioned a chocolatier to design special chocolates for the event and those were really good. i listened to spider john koerner and tony glover playing and singing old American folk music. Now how the heck do i PUBLISH this post?????hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-3195228082104592872007-02-02T15:11:00.000-08:002007-02-02T15:17:49.109-08:00back at last thank god a'mighty...ah, finally switched to the google thing on my office computer. it wont work at home but now i'm home free. nice talks this afternoon by colleagues katherine scheil, michael hancher and jani scandura, in increasing levels of complexity and narrative tension they made a fine sequence, tho' i overate on the chocolates, cookies etc provided by the department. they talked about archives, which i presented as arch-hives, based on a paper on Adeena Karasick i'd done in which i talk about bees, the letter B (beit) and the archive as beehive ("Beehive yourself, maria!" exclaimed Adeena delightfully when we did a joint presentation back in October). i got in the erotical aspects of archive fever, the throbbing of activity and desire for the goldmine motherlode, etc. it was fun, having Adeena in my back burner as it were as i introduced these speakers. now off to the gym and then to the opening of the bob-dylan's-early-years gallery opening at the weisman...looking fwd...to seeing spider john koerner and tony glover. it's around zero degrees, far less w/ wind-chill, but i feel all femmy in my flouncy floral skirt and pink sweater, the bldgs are overheated here at school (unlike my underheated home) what will we do to contribute to the slowing of global warming? how can we, living as we do in mpls, the minne-apple or little siberia???hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21018928.post-1169505444619967162007-01-22T14:27:00.000-08:002007-01-22T14:37:24.633-08:00so much hassle on the blog...they're trying to get me to switch to something they're calling "your new BLOGGER account," that involves "cookies," google, and java. coffee and treats? i doubt it. but it hampers my ability to log in when i've got a few peaceful snowy moments at home and restricts me to my office computer here at work. i've got genet on the brain, immersed in Miracle of the Rose over the weekend and throughout the previous week, having assigned in for a class...wonder how they'll respond, i'm curious. and watched "Un Chant D'Amour" on ubuweb (thank you Kenny Goldsmith!!!), which is beautiful, beautiful but sometimes laughably melodramatic or romantic; the two men frolicking in the verdant woods together, the one chasing the other...it moves me the way adolescent excess, especially my own, moves me. today i got some great clothes from my sister and from Lisa Arrastia, and i feel like a million buckeroonies getting ready to teach my 2nd class. life floats by dreamlike, veering strangely between feelings of overwhelming business and melancholic or happy torpor...sometimes within moments of each other. The sky looks like wallpaper scrolling by framed by my office window, identical thin-shaved clouds, as if big fat cumuli were sliced on a mandoline and placed like tiles across the sky, which, fortunately, is blue and gold after a few days of snowy blankness. These moments of self/nature reflection are supposed to be anathema to what they call "post-modern" poets, but i can't deny the feeling of peace that a few moments of objective correlating and breathing do a lot to ground me. ok that's it; i can't go on i'll go on. that sentence will be on the cake for our next year's Samuel Beckett 101 celebration...hyperpoesiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15240366879903941080noreply@blogger.com0