Books & wonderfuls

Erica Hunt's Time Slips / Right / Before Your Eyes
&
Carla Harryman's Open Box

Get 'em!

For my b-day (2 weeks back) C- gave me the following:














antique bee smoker &

















(home) hand-made card

















& in other news, my chapbook Mock Martyrs / Abound was accepted by dancing girl press & C-'s chapbook Lo, Bittern is due out (around the same time) from Atticus/Finch. C- also busted some gecko(?) eggs (lodged in the smoke detector & therefore showered down when he took it off to check its problematic beeping), they've mown the cornfield down, I finished my syllabus & an unsatisfying poem sequence, & we're leaking money. We also watched Inland Empire, which was 'enjoyable' -- the 'girl behind the marketplace' indeed.

Saw Mueck @ the Fort Worth Modern

Somewhat terrifying, but exhilarating. I *loved* that almost every single one of the sculptures looked completely suspicious of the viewer &, frankly, kinda pissed off at the viewer as well. The only piece I did not enjoy was "Dead Dad" - theoretically, I understand it, but in the end, it's not just theoretical & it just seemed wrong.

Curating Niedecker for Hex

Here are my words for the set for hex press:

Niedecker set: (using the Penberthy Collected)
1st die:
1. pearl-flowered (from "Wintergreen Ridge", begins p. 247)
2. pond ( " "Paean to Place", begins p. 261)
3. wades ( " [I knew a clean man], p. 208)
4. hotly ( " "The Graves", p. 175)
5. landless ( " [Nearly landless ...], p. 138)
6. monster ( " [A monster owl], p.102)


2nd die:
1. things ("Paean to Place", begins p. 261)
2. overdear ([I am sick with the Time's buying sickness], p. 157)
3. maybe ([Paul], p. 137)
4. question's ([What bird would light], p. 137)
5. muddy ([I knew a clean man], p. 208)
6. bomb

3rd die:
1. community ("Wintergreen Ridge", begins p. 247)
2. digests ("Wintergreen Ridge", begins p. 247)
3. unbought ("Paean to Place", begins p. 261)
4. violets ( "Thomas Jefferson Inside", p. 291)
5. clean-sung ([They live a cool distance], p. 160)
6. street ("(L.Z.)", p. 125)

4th die:
1. factory-long ("Wintergreen Ridge", begins p. 247)
2. buckled ("Paean to Place", begins p. 261)
3. birdstart ("My Life by Water", p. 238)
4. violin ("Paean to Place", begins p. 261)
5. handshake ("Easter Greeting", p. 223)
6. disappearing ([To Paul now old enough to read], pp. 146-7)

5th die:
1. love-over-the-fence ([Human bean], p. 243)
2. solitary ("Paean to Place", begins p. 261)

3. dictaphone ([Keen and lovely man moved as in a dance], p. 169)
4. gawks ("Wintergreen Ridge", begins p. 247)
5. human ("Easter Greeting", p. 223)
6. knife ("Violin Debut", p. 161)

6th die:
1. spoon-tapped ("Paean to Place", begins p. 261)
2. women ("Wintergreen Ridge", begins p. 247)
3. thru ("van Gogh", p. 108)
4. generator ([Can knowledge be conveyed that isn't felt], p. 150)
5. disowns ("Shelter", p. 247)
6. machines ("Wintergreen Ridge", begins p. 247)

Captain Ideas

So, I have a lot of ideas for really cool stuff that I will never/can never follow through with, but I thought I'd post 'em fer grabs. Here are some recent/remembered ones:

1. A course entitled "The Game"-- The primary texts would be The Wire & The Sopranos, & would include readings from Marxist critics, Foucault, etc. I had some other texts, & if I remember them, I'll add later. From David Simon: " Thematically, it's [The Wire] about the very simple idea that, in this Postmodern world of ours, human beings—all of us—are worth less. We're worth less every day, despite the fact that some of us are achieving more and more. It's the triumph of capitalism."

2. Art installation 1: giant ribs (preferably big, like an elephant's, & from a natural death) with a multi-tiered & lavishly decorated cake placed in the middle....

3. Art installation 2: a ginormous cut-out steel tree silhouette the color of dark dusk (blackish-blue) w/ no leaves & off each branch a clear plastic bag with a single goldfish ( to be given away the day of 'opening'- or whatever you call it -obviously i'm not an artiste:). the lighting should be paramount to this too, but i don't think i could describe it....

More laterz.....

Today I found...

Kristy Bowen's poems in dusie that I thoroughly *loved*

(I think I will try & do this once a day-- I don't get online as much as some, but as it's summer, I get bored easily & will make the effort...)

Reading...

"It is always easy to mock 'distress,' but we are its contemporaries; we are at the endpoint of what Nous, ratio, & Logos, still today the framework for what we are, cannot have failed to show: that murder is the first thing to count on, and elimination the surest means of identification. Today, everywhere, against this black but 'enlightened' background, remaining reality is disappearing in the mire of a 'globalized' world. Nothing, not even the most obvious phenomena, not even the purest, most wrenching love, can escape this era's shadow: a cancer of the subject, whether in the ego or in the masses..." --Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Poetry As Experience

& & &

"The year of Herman Melville's birth was the year pauperism bacame a visible feature of American urban life. After the war of 1812, a new strident nationalism had replaced the classical republicanism of the Founding Fathers, ushering in an era of individualism that made commitment to the 'common good' seem old-fashioned and naive." --Laurie Robertson-Lorant, Melville: A Biography

An meine Schwester (reverse order)

for her b-day...

inside the envelope, mini books with folklore in them taken from a dictionary....i'd love to do individual projects based on each and every entry, but oh well...

the three individuals are on 2x2 canvases...

Our new bookcase

C- built it with his g-pa & then we stained it...

Something to drool over

Check out this beautiful, wonderfully satisfying photo on flickr

We came home from gardenville with all these plants, & in the process of potting them, disturbed this little 'un-- I only noticed cause it started writhing around at the top of the potting soil bag-- C- hopefully moved it to a better spot 'to let him finish what he needs to do', but, all my natural morbidities aside, it *really* disturbed me....so here is a pic of the face shrouded-- somehow, i *know* i will be paying for this one...

collecting the dead (from a just-mown field) moan

so, they just mowed the huge field behind our house (which was **full** of waist high grass & wildflowers and teeming, you might say, with all sorts) and i found this skeleton while talking with Michelle-- I thought it was a huge grasshopper (for some reason) & of course C- pointed out that it's probably a squirrel.....these are the sorrows of a renter i suppose, but if he (the mowerguy) had come near the firewheels in front of my house, i mighta had to put my foot down....

systematic sew (r)

C- thinks these are cheese but I like so so what:)

"Eight Fish Under Water"

Today, when not watching TV on DVD (where/when is The Wire s.4?? I need thee!) reading essays in Agnes Martin: Works On Paper, a book which is apparently out of print

Thank Mike for Libraries

"...refusal of exhaustive description...a relentlessly limited vocabulary...small scale....small scale...a love of grids....small scale...heartbreakingly tactile & intimate in the openess of the ground....[address the quiet of the mind instead]....Art may be losing the artist's hand...but for [her] painting still carries moral weight......more perfection than possible......and so cannot be reached by theory alone..."

Koala Bees Means...

Yesterday, I heard this on NPR...If you listen to the very end of the story, they play recordings of Koala males bellowing songs in order to convey where their boundaries lie -- make what comparisons you wish - I know I did - but it's really quite fantastic (the koala's bellows, I mean)

Aphids, Always