quite a lot of my poetic nourishment nowadays comes from the net. no surprise, you probably do too. but i do love coming home from work and seeing fat envelopes sitting in the mailbox waiting for me. nothing beats the sensuality of holding books, zines, and chaps in the hand, smelling the paper, flipping thru the pages. nothing can beat that.

this evening oz poet derek motion's diy chapbook escaping over trees was in one such envelope. i was a bit surprised to get it so quickly since last week we agreed to exchange chaps. nevertheless, the poems rock. his texts zoom with great velocity, while at the same time appear almost languid. i mean, they remind me of jimmy schuyler's work, if schuyler listened to avant-garde rock&roll while relaxing on a shady porch with a few friends, talking very fast [which he probably did, the relaxing and talking part; i'm not sure about the rock&roll -- would schuyler be a pixies fan?]. derek's poems are both relaxed and energized at once. formally daring the shape of the texts augments their sound and the visual structure keeps the live current flowing.

check out derek's blog and you'll see what i mean. in short, fucking outstanding poems.

and eileen tabios' latest galatea resurrects is now live. check it out. i have a review, and i'm pleased to find jim mccrary has 2 reviews published. mccrary i think is a tremendous prose writer as well as being a kick-ass poet. i've been saying for some time mccrary would make an excellent blogger. these reviews are, i think, proof that mccrary's got the goods.

and and and there are 3 reviews of tom beckett's selected unprotected texts. that alone is cause for praise.

can
you
dig
      it

below is the first murder sequence from suspiria directed by dario argento. not for the faint of heart. but one of the baddest of the bad set pieces in horror cinema. dig that creepy score by goblin.

good gawd i'm exhausted! don't know why. got close to 4 hrs sleep last night.

the past week got some goodies in the snail mail, including another brilliant fhole. excellent poems, both visual and verbal by, to name just 2 poets, david-baptiste chirot and steve dalachinsky.

and today, got a big package from john tyson. really his generosity nearly brought me to tears. i'll have more to say about these chaps. at the moment i'm holding them, thumbing thru the texts and smelling the ink.

gonna stay up just for a bit longer and try to work a bit on an old sequence called 'negatives in blue'. then it is anchor steam time, holiday brew, and an earlier nighty-night.

after a long, lovely holiday weekend with my family, the rain started today after very clear, bright and cool days. nevertheless, i love winter in california, the best six weeks of the year. i love cold, but hate freezing cold. can't stand snow, i've not seen it in years even tho the sierra nevada are only an hr's drive away. don't ski, and hate to gamble, so when we do go to tahoe, like a couple weeks ago, it is for the land, the scenery, rather than the action from the tables and slots.

watched several movies this weekend. can't seem to link at the moment, but one of my favorites was the post-modern horror outing feast. an aptly titled little film for the thanksgiving holiday.

just finished feast a couple of hrs ago, and it seems the filmmakers decided to go all out for broke. the story concerns various losers trapped in a dive-bar situated in the desert, which desert i've no idea but i'm guessing it is in nevada, where a family of god-knows-what, but they ain't human, try to eat those same losers.

self-conscious, funny and pretty heavy on the gore, the film features henry rollins as a motivational speaker and jason mewes from the clerks films. the plot is not new -- what is? -- but the quick pacing and lightening editing keeps the pulse racing. sure there were a few old horse gags, such as a person popping up behind another and scaring the shit out of each other, but it made me jump. i don't know what those people-eating creatures were, they looked goofy as hell, like the special fx crew knew their exploitation films and modeled their monsters on too many maneaters to name. but the director knew enough about horror films to never extrapolate anything about anything, whether they are zombies, ghosts, or desert-dwelling manimals: they just are.

feast was a rental. i'm gonna buy the dvd and add it to my collection. there ain't no higher praise.

so last night i was bitching about dealing with a pending mid-life crisis. later i went to youtube and looked up thee goth, the guy who hosted a series of crappy troma films i wrote about a couple of weeks ago. turns out he lives in vancouver, has perfected the pitch of his voice and his make-up, and his name is russ. he thinks he is also going thru a mid-life crisis too.

crap! it seems i've lost my dylan image and the html kinda fucked up so my template is all gaga. at least i can't see it but my one line.

and i wouldn't mind being eliot. there are worse fates, such as being joyce kilmer. but if i could be any poet other than myself, well, shit, that is a tuff call. how about something like hartcrane/dante/rimbaud as a start. just off the top of my head. anna asked me what poet i thought she would be. again tuff call. i don't rightly know. i'd have to think about that one.

been thinking of middle-age. i'm 39 which means if a live to 60 then i'm past middle-age, if i live to 100 then i got several years to go still. kinda stupid really since i've felt older than my age for the longest time. when i met anna at the age of 25, she was 23, i felt that i'm getting older and i got to get my act together. now at my current age 25 sounds young.

but we all get older, duh!, and we must die. so i implore you, seriously, if yr older than 50 take care of yrself, and if yr younger than 50 take care of yrself. lately i've had news of acquaintances from up and down the age spectrum that have developed serious health problems, and some that have died from unexpected accidents.

we are here such a short time, so as horace said, carpefuckingdiem!

and as for middle-age, i promise to hold off a mid-life crisis at least until 45. i've been thinking about getting inked again, but that's not quite a mid-life crisis since i have a couple of tats already. and my left ear is piereced, twice. and has been since i was 16, which is the age my brother gnawed into my flesh with a sewing needle and india ink a crappy looking skull on my left ankle.

so no, that doesn't constitute a mid-life crisis. most people around my age i've noticed get harley-davidson bikes and full-on leathers. but that ain't my speed. don't care for the cycles very much. and i feel too young still to go that route.

i used to be skater, a very shitty skater, most people who stood on a skateboard was way better than me. my board was a santa cruz yellow dot that i loved. skate-punk was hand-in-hand with hardcore punk. i still love watching good skaters do their stuff. so i figure 45 is a good age to declare myself middle-aged, and that's when i'm gonna found a skateboard gang of geezers to rip up the streets. why not? i wear still converse chuck taylors, and grey hair never hurt the duct-taped pants look.

so don't be surprised in five years time to find a group of the elderly elbowing out the kids at the local skatepark thumping their motto:

Skate or Die!

and blasting out of their old boombox is the sounds of black flag and the circle jerks.

that would be a sight.

damn! i was shooting for eliot!

well, duh, or as we used to say in elementary school, no doy! every writer is probably addicted to revision. it is at the heart of the endeavor. what i'm trying to do with my eddie wood sonnets, and my writing overall, is break myself from my normative habits and simply write without any restrictions. one thing i've learned from the great jimmy schuyler is that it is not the content of the poem that matters overmuch, but the techniques of the writer. in other words, how the poet approaches the subject, his/her angle of visions, how syntax and grammar are employed are primary to the texts.

i think that is what attracts me to the italian exploitation filmmaker lucio fulci. linear narrative was broken to a series of startling set-pieces that are brutal and beautiful. fulci's films are surreal in a nickel-and-dime fashion, but they are haunting and stay on in the mind's eye as afterimages. you cannot forget what you've just seen. fulci calls to my mind joseph cornell's boxes, so much pop junk, and yet constructed in such a memorable way that they transcend their subjects.

often i feel guilty for not writing more, or get anxious when circumstances prevent me from reading/writing. so it goes i think for all writers. sometimes i get lucky and think that i've just put in a good night's work. then more often than not i go back to what i've written and think, shit, it sucks. then there are those few moments when i think that the work can stand on its own. that feels lucky.

and yet, i read all the time. i never feel anxiety over reading, always reading is one of life's greatest pleasures. books and web. and books downloaded from the web. and blogs, lots of blogs. more than i've linked to here. soon i think to write about a few of my favorites that i regularly read that i've not linked to. also i think to write a list of poet blogs i'd like to read from poets who currently don't have blogs. are there too many poet-bloggers? that is a dumb-ass question. even if every human on earth wrote poetry, there is still room for more. i mean that. the world needs poetry, and poets. at least language does, and since i'm a creature of language, i need poetry and poets.

i'll end this ramble by mentioning a recent favorite poet-blogger jennifer bartlett who i found via gina myer's blog. when i saw her name i thought that she might be the painter jennifer bartlett, but no. bartlett has a tremendous gusto for life, a unique perspective in life and writing and parenting. reading her is another pure pleasure. i think she has a book due out soon. me, i can't wait to read it.

and for poets who don't have blogs. fucking get one!

peace out

back to my wood sonnets. been so hung up on my loops chap that i'd neglected poor eddie. but not now, for i'm up to #13. the only restrictions i've given myself is not to reread them as they are being written, and to bastardize ginsberg's dictum, 1st thought best thought, to write them as fast as i can without, at least for the first draft, any revision. which is damn hard habit to break. revision is addicting, sorta like heroin, one shot and yr hooked. of course you can needle yr texts to death, but i've always found that the more you work on yr poems, the better you are as a poet. the texts may not be that great, what poet writes well all the time?, but rigorous revisions are like training sessions for long marathon runs. you cannot write well without doing them. period.

below are various pics of nicholas in dino costume for halloween
and shots taken at tallac national park and emerald bay at lake tahoe
and finally the fish ladder at nimbus fish hatchery
where chinook are running
to spawn

 

 

 

 

 

 

just come back from watching halloween with some friends
i think it is john carpenter's 2nd film
the first is i think assault on precinct 13
which was remade a couple of years ago
that i have not seen

carpenter is a master
some of the images are so gorgeous
painterly
expertly composed
scenes straight from bava

light and dark
meyers is stolidly evil
he does
there are no reasons
or explanations
but that he is

day
wild
rummy
works
on his
resume

ok
let's
turn
this
mutha
out

we're ramping up to the holiday season. as i type i'm drinking a sierra nevada 2006 celebration ale, which, as the name implies, is brewed and bottled once a year. yet, the weather today was like a warm spring day. fall had disappeared for the moment and even tho my clock tells me it is 20 minutes to midnight i sit with the window open to the warmish air.

trying to find a collorary to today's elections in poetry. if people wanted change so badly then most of the contests would not be so close. the works of thomas mcgrath, an old radical poet blacklisted by mccarthy for communist sympathies, come close.

i was battling a very mild case of the blues last week, topped by moments of extreme stress. no biggie, i worry about my mental state only when i can't laugh at shit. i have an idiot's delight in humor, which means i laugh at dumb sitcoms, commercials, texts, comedies, and so on. i'm talking noisy, big, piss-yr-neighbors-off kind of laughing. so that was still there, if only in a more subdued fashion. and so it goes, late last week i dreamt a sort of movie-narrative where the ending had someone, i can't recall who, say that it was all good. life sucks, but there's so much here in the world you need 20 lifetimes.

you do. so here's a poem by mcgrath because we are all fucked and yet the velocity of living brings out the pulsing rhythms of iggy pop's 'lust for life' cuz lust, love, life is perhaps the fuel that drive the engine.

Last Will and Testament

for Tomasito

Son,
Forgive me:
When you were little,
I made some money,
Once,
And saved it
For what they call
Your "future"
And,
Alas,
I did it without
Robbing a bank.

Forgive me, son.
(And all other children) that,
One time,
I made an agreement with
The enemy.

looking up thurston moore's poetry. he's also a publisher and collector of the mimeo-era poets, and has collaborated with alex gildzen. moore's poetry exhibits a wild, garage-rock ethos. better than one would expect, i think. and i do not mean that as a slight in the least. i just mean that most musicians-cum-poets, such as jewel, tend to suck. not moore. i like his type of garage-rock texts.

who would you think are also garage-rock poets.

coming to the end our 2-week holiday. spent some marvelous time in the home and on the road, and watching nicholas trick-or-treating in his dino costume was pure pleasure. pics, soon as i upload them, are on the way.

oh yeah, hooked up the dsl modem, and youtube becomes an addiction. the other night i found a buttload of drive-in intermission shorts. in effect, nirvana, of a sort.

and but so, ever since my friend b. hooked me up with a couple of books by anthony bourdain a couple of years ago i've become a big fan of his tv shows where the writer-chef travels the globe in search of food and adventure. that bourdain loves smoking, alcohol, rich foods and makes no secret of his drug use i wonder why not use a poet too.

a poet who would travel the globe in search of food and adventure, detailing a city's history, literary scene, architecture and art. i can imagine a poet with a wry sense of the absurd and a finely honed hilarity starting off drinking shitty beer on the plane, then touch down at say l.a. rent a car and begin checking out the tattoo parlours and nightclubs of the sunset strip. afterward, a big meal at some swank beverly hills bistro, more alcohol, then a visit with a local artist or writer, even more alcohol, and end the night face down in the toilet bowl of the hotel room, clutching in a death grip said local artist or writer's latest work.

i'd watch it, for sure. now who would make an ideal host.