i don't remember my dreams very often. the past week i've been going to bed early, and thus caught up on much needed shut-eye. so last night's snooze brought a dream, a doozy, only that i remember just a piece of it. i think i was writing a draft of a poem, then was either at eileen's house or a restaurant, and ms chatelaine was showing me the menu for dinner. anna was there, and nicholas was soundly asleep. and and there were a few other poets seated at the dinner table, but fuck-all if i can't recall the rest.

must've been a great meal for i woke up soundly. nope, i don't think about interpreting dreams. i simply accept them, and this was a nice one for it involved food, friends, poetry and my family.

anyway, check out these poems by irish poet billy mills posted by sam ward. i googled mills, whom i've read only in richard caddel's and peter quartermain's anthology of british and irish experimental poetry, and find this essay which touches upon a subject i've been thinking about lately. how do we, as poets, as human beings, live in the world and not totally fuck it up.

like fer sure, like totally

good god i'm fucking tired. fired up the laptop to work on my interview with the poet douglas blazek, then nicholas wasn't ready for beddy-bye, then etc. etc. so i write a few emails, get my chap, poems and a few other things ready for tomorrow's post, and then want to write something approximating sense about my survey. but hell, maybe it is the beer. drinking right now mendocino brewing company's eye of the hawk select ale. surprisingly good, with a slight sweetish after taste. good enough for a second bottle.

what i'm interested in re: my survey is how poets consider themselves, their writing, and their communities in our global cultures. and how the thoughts of regions are changing because of globalization. me, i delight in it, and have long thought of myself, for what it's worth, a global citizen. guillermo parra's response opens up another vein for another topic: the notion of major and minor writers and writing, and the idea of a canon.

the mail brought some good stuff, the latest fuck! with excellent textual and visual poems by joel lipman, fhole which is overall fucking excellent and typical girl by donna kuhn, a packed collection of some of the sweetest abstract writing. all very good shit. the diy zines fhole and fuck! are vital and what helps, in my humble opinion, keep the art alive.

i've long wanted to write poems with the visceral immediacy of mc5's 'kick out the jams'.

and do check out martin edmond's blog. the guy is something like a genius. check out this post here. he is another voyager in our global village.

does any know how to get in touch with randy prunty, or if no, let the dude know i love his texts.

vincent van gogh wrote somewhere in a letter to his brother theo that he often felt a stranger on earth. me, i often feel like a tourist on earth.

word to yr mother

a survey

1)
how would you define
yrself as a poet

given where you live
and what you read

and where you've have published
both offline and online


2)
how would you define
writing thru regions

how would you define
regional writing now

if movies, linear narration, hollywood fare i mean, are like novels then movie trailers are like poems. trailers are short, episodic bursts of sound, image and emotion. often trailers are the only interesting things about movies. sometimes they surpass in intensity the films they are meant to illuminate. always the moments spent in a movie theater with a sequence of trailers playing onscreen is a rush to the head and senses. like poems these shorts work in an interior logic, they cannot by their nature tell the whole story, only gloss that story. anyway, storytelling is for the full-length feature. trailers are composed of truncated scenes delineated like lines in poems. or short chunks of prose. if it is a comedy then the trailer is a burst of humor. if it is a horror film then the trailer is a series of images and atmosphere to invoke dread.

most often i will watch a film's trailer a hundred times to the one viewing of the film. in my collection i have several discs of just trailers. my favorites are something weird video's sampler and the kung fu trailer show. holy shit, they's good!

when i get a disc of a film the first thing i watch is the trailer. there are two kinds of trailers, the teaser, and the full-length. the teaser is just about 30 seconds to roughly a minute's worth of images to get the viewer salivating for the feature. sometimes the teaser is the most beautiful piece of film made in relation to that feature. anyway, dvds usually now come, as part of the extras portion, with both types of trailer along with tv and radio ads. but it is sometimes the teaser, like the short bursts of fragments by sappho, that have the most vivid memories.

for example, i remember seeing the teaser for ridley scott's gothic horror alien. at least i think i remember it. for the discs i've watched and what i've found online do not corroborate my memories. what the fuck. i recall the strange siren-like music punctuating an empty screen of blackness. then the camera pans down the frame to a leathery-like egg sitting on a dehydrated expanse of soil. the egg splits just a hair and a green light, like a laser, points up out of the frame. while the siren-like track increases its beat. then, in tiny script, are the words 'in space no one can hear you scream'. i've not found that version anywhere. more than likely, my memory elided the teaser past the images of the crew fighting something off-screen. nevertheless, that teaser was the first to royally scare the shit out of me. i don't know who directed it, but it was good, and it had me salivating for the feature film.

i've spent a life living in trailers.

took a long walk with nicholas thru midtown yesterday. he had a great time watching all the various hippies, hipsters and yuppies about. weather couldn't have been nicer, mid-70s F and sunny, so much like spring. anyway, stopped at richard hansen's bookstore for a nice visit. one of hansen's specialties is mimeo-era poets and poetry, poets such as d. a. levy, tom kryss et al. so there was a levy celebration a couple of months ago at hansen's bookstore, the book collector. for the occassion a local poet's press, polymer grove, published two beautifully designed chaps of levy's work. i devoured the collection miniConcrete, which contains some of levy's vispo and concrete work. the pieces here are reproduced as if from a mimeo, so that the images are slightly fuzzy and a bit worn, which, for me, adds to their power. it truly is a shame levy died so young, since i think his poetry would've become more shapely, the craft better hued, without losing its vigour as he aged. i'm thinking of his textual poems here, his vispo, tho i don't know if it was fully developed, to my untrained eyes, sure is disciplined shit.

in other news, found thom donovan's blog, who i think is a powerfully good writer, and takingthebrim is now reactived. and i watched, more like shuddered thru, last night myra breckinridge, and early 70s vehicle starring racquel welch and the movie critic rex reed as the same person, who undergoes a sex-change operation in order to trump gender roles in hollywood. at least i think that's what the film was about. it's a fucking mess, without any direction, shitty editing, and surely an embarrassment to those principals who slummed it in order to collect a check. good concept, it is allegedly based on a novel by gore vidal, but the film is quite simply one the worst i've ever seen. sure i'm a masochist when it comes to films, but shit, you can smell this one coming a mile away.

peace out

don't give a shit about football but did watch the rolling stones strut during the halftime show at the superbowl. i heard many complain that the stones are geriatric, too old, for rock and roll. hell, old mick might be at the age to collect social security checks, but he can move. and i read last weekend in the paper lee renaldo of sonic youth just turned 50. perhaps they should change their name to sonic middle-age. who gives a fuck. sonic youth is still making badass music. and my brother told me nasa has dibs on keith richards' body when he croaks. the eggheads at the space agency want to study his liver, see what indestrucble material it is made of. so they then can smear the substance on their space vehicles for a flawless reentry.

i dare anyone moving up in age, who isn't getting old?, to confess that they're too old to rock, rap, or, you get my meaning, yo.

word

added a few more links. i read a number of blogs and websites so finally got off my duff and linked to some more of my faves. alicia sometimes' website is new, rob walker i've been reading for a couple of years now, tom orange is a fave, while donna kuhn's work i've become a junkie these last few months, the same for k. lorraine graham's blog. and y'all know mister tom beckett.
also been reading the latest coconut. where you'll find some good poems by donna kuhn and a poet i've been reading quite a bit on the net randy prunty. check out prunty's website at the atlanta poets group site here.

word up

jim mccrary experiments with 'chemically-augmented physics' in his histories of lawrence, ks here and here. join the chorus of his peeps in demanding mccrary start a blog of his own!