hanging for that dream time

a few nights ago i read a blog post titled CREATIVE PROCRASTINATION where the poet/blogger argues that a kind of a procrastinating indolence is good for the soul and good for creative work. i agree. if i'm good at anything it's procrastinating. i aspire to the laziness as it was ascribed to whitman when a coworker of his said that the good grey poet was so lazy he needed two people to eat, one to open his mouth and throw food in, another to close his mouth and chew it.

since i am a human being and i live among human beings i tend to think that many of my fellow creatures are like me, and i am like them. maybe. the older i get the more i'm wonderfully surprised to learn of our varied habits and our differences that make us unique. so when i think creative indolence is good for the soul i think it'd be good for all souls. not so, i'd guess. if i'm the sort of writer who needs serious downtime, real good dream time, there are other poets who need quite the opposite, bustle and noise.

as the poet said, 'we are the same in different ways/we are different in the same way'. amen, brothers and sisters. for me, i love my daily long walks thru downtown and midtown. i don't have an iphone or ipad. it's just me and the environment. i try to keep pen and paper handy because things do flit in to the brainpan and if i don't write them down i'll lose them forever. often i forget that simple task and have nothing to write with. the words then evaporate like a shallow pool in dry heat. ah well. there are more words to come. more important is to make time to dream.

la luz

hard to explain and harder still to remember

as i watched the opening to the mid-season stunner

walking dead

three things happened simultaneously

the cat screeched

the character on tv screamed

and the light flickered

not that i'm superstitious

it was the lamp flickering that threw me

like i was a character on one of those ghost shows

harbingers of a haunting

let it pass i told myself

and turned out the light

then in the middle of the show

a shadow larger than a cat

bigger even than a man

swept the top of the wall with the tv set

that gave me pause

because there were no lights on to cast a shadow

trained in the arts of the rational

it must be my own neurochemical makeup

how i woke to the blues

been blue all day

but for a long walk with anna and nick

and the attempt to keep the blues at bay

prosody, etc.

after the lovely, large thanksgiving feast, and when everyone went to bed i was up -- the night owl that i am -- fired up the laptop and did my usual thing. which is read blogs, write a little, watch several vids of lush performing live via youtube [great undersung band], and listen to a little internet radio.

but then of my reading i spent some time on a blog i've not clicked on for quite a while, mike snider's formal blog. i found snider's formal rigor a bracing corrective in my own sloppy thinking. after all, how many poets nowadays think of prosody when writing poetry? not that i agree with snider one hundred percent but i think that if you are a free-verse poet the vigor of prosody can set a solid foundation upon the work.

and vice versa. if you are a formal poet then reading someone like ginsberg can be a liberating experience. tho frankly, i think the divisions between formal and free verse might not matter as strongly as they did say 30 years ago. i might be wrong in that regard however i remember reading a survey of contemporary french poetry where the author asked a french poet what is the difference between lineated verse and prose. the poet answered, one is written in lines and the other is not.

i liked that response. ted berrigan told students that there is a little guy inside the office of our heads that took care of things like meter. i liked that too. i don't write for the ear. snider does, i think, so for him meter and rhyme matter a great deal. i'm not bothered by charges that my verse could be chopped up prose. prose-y-ness is what i aspire to.

early in my writing life i counted syllables and tried to get my lines to scan. i'm a bad musician and gave up when i realized that i was reading much translated poetry and that is what i wanted in my own writing, a translatability.

for in my view there is no bad or good. that doesn't mean there are no qualitative measures in my accounting of past, present and even future poetics. there is bad writing and there is incompetent writing. there is a difference between those measures. i don't read with regard for major and minor literatures. i don't write for that regard either.

still my self-proclaimed sloppiness and attempts toward a poetics of the lazy can learn much from poets such as snider. i like his work a lot. my favorite poet, the one i learned the most from, is thom gunn, a writer who lived meter and rhyme. i don't write like gunn. or snider. i don't have to. they don't have to write like me either. poetry is a large universe with room for many persons and styles. i know that. you know that. poetry knows that too.

happy thanksgiving!

being lopez



above is the trailer for the film adaptation of nick flynn's memoir about fathers, homelessness and writing another bullshit night in suck city. i read the book. i thought i didn't like it when i finished it. but then i went and read flynn's second memoir the ticking is the bomb which is about becoming a father, terrorism and writing. i liked the second memoir quite a lot. so i went looking thru my shelves for flynn's first memoir and i can't find it. i must've given it away. i do that. give books away.

flynn is a poet. that's first even if there is not much poetry, or writing about poetry, in both memoirs. why first? because flynn declares a life of writing poetry. not that i'm a guild man, or have a vested interest in the lives of the poets, but okay, sue me. i'm interested.

still the movie looks okay. maybe all the good stuff is in the trailer. which is baldly about fathers and writing, accent on the writing. yet the title is changed to being flynn and not another night in bullshit city which i suspect is a move to enter the market without the controversy of wearing its language on its sleeve. oh, the movie stars robert de niro and paul dano who look to be born for their roles as bohemian fathers and sons.

and there are not many movies about the life of writing. there's plenty of movies about the lives of writers but not living in writing. too boring. i think this trailer is not quite honest because i think the film is ultimately about how a man becomes a writer and not how the writing makes the man. can't quibble i guess. the trailer looks like it is made for writing geeks like me, and you. it looks like the movie is about writing.

why is the title of this post 'being lopez'? well hell. if flynn can have a movie about his life with his name in the title i can at least use my own as a title for a blog post, right? also, both names are pretty damn common, his of the hiberno variety while mine is of the hispano varietal. of course when these names are situated in the same country that makes us, yep, even if i'm still figuring what it means -- america and writing -- american writers.

love sonnet

love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love

quote unquote

in a dynamic universe
stillness is difficult

--billy mills

[mills' collected poems lares/manes [shearsman books, 2009] arrived in the mail today. the book is over 350 pages. i read half of it in one sitting tonight with utter amazement and delight. mills' poems are simply that good.]

write club

1st rule of write club: don't be boring

2nd rule of write club: don't be boring

3rd rule of write club: you must write

hold on, chuang tzu

i awoke to a room

not knowing if i am a man

dreaming he's a butterfly

or a butterfly dreaming

he's a man

the room was cold

i knew i shouldn't have eaten

those shrooms!

dailies

walk like a man who has a song stuck

a song stuck in the head

a loop

* * *

in the middle of the day

i find my self

stuck in the middle with you

* * *

no harm done

practicing kindness

still that's not enough

* * *

i've learned englishes

i mangle my words

lovingly

* * *

i stumble when i walk

i walk i stumble

i do it again

last chance for elevenses!
for mark

11/11/11 11:11:11

dailies

nerve-wrack commence the walk

* * *

distribution of an unequal share

* * *

i was outside and i stood

* * *

night falls

* * *

big black man before city hall exclaiming to the traffic

* * *

i am the 99% i am here to educate you

should it be, too

our
reading be
forms of writing?

good stuff

the newest edition of otoliths

and

a reading by randy prunty

please read this

via bill keckler's blog i read a very thoughtful piece by adam curtis on the bbc website about the current OCCUPY movements and 1960s revolutionaries titled dream on.

on werner herzog

i came late to herzog's films. didn't watch his brand of cinema until fairly recently. i was aware of him and his work i was just not paying attention. i prefer his non-fiction films to his fiction works. a matter of taste, but i think he's an excellent interviewer and his subjects, his search for what he calls 'ecstatic truth', are an astonishing array of vivid humanity. herzog is interested in the depths of the human heart and our positions in our environment. another pull for me is his call, a war cry really, for poetic vision, not averting our eyes to what is in front of us. when herzog talks about poetry and poets he means actual poetry and poets and takes his examples in the likes of holderlin's wired language. another pull for me is his cautioning younger filmmakers, and older poets [like me!], not to make excuses and get your shit done because there is always a way to get it done. don't make your stay in the classroom permanent as it is necessary to get out of the library. if you have to drive a cab to pay for your film [or support your poetic obsessions] or work in an office in IT or something then there is no excuse at all. that is what you must do. so do it.

american horror story [2011 --]

finally caught an episode of the cable channel fx new tv show american horror story. produced and created by ryan murphy of glee and another fx show nip-tuck i will admit to being a bit weirded out by the program. i'm not sure what the hell is going on. the premise of the show is about, i think, a dysfunctional family that is imploding by allegations of infidelity caused by the husband, played by dylan mcdermott, and who knows what else, who move into a house that was the scene of many murders. the victims haunt the house and torment mom, dad and their daughter.

murphy surely cooked up something on par with david lynch's twin peaks tv show that aired in the early 1990s. lynch's program, at least the first few episodes directed by him, were a kind of goth, hard-line, american surrealism where reality and fantasy blurred without distinction that brewed a special recipe of sinister cynicism. murphy's ahs is more of an internecine family abstract of softer surrealist leanings made more gooey, squishier even, because of the bloody violence of its characters. a body is soft and squishy particularly so when violence is done to it. we the viewers are often off balance because we don't know what, if any, reality the characters inhabit. does everyone see the same ghosts, as it seems to be the case, who disappear at will, or are the forces haunting the house and the family very real, flesh and blood entities?

too soon to tell where murphy will take this show. right now he's on a wild swing. glee is a pretty good show, at times bordering on inspired, and nip-tuck for a while had me spell-bound before that show became simply a violent melodrama. murphy is probably one of the ballsiest producers in television today. he is unafraid to tackle sexualities, gender issues, uncoded violent strategies along with a laundry list of hot topics. i will say this show freaked me good and had me looking over my shoulder in my own house. but then again who knows. i walked into nick's room this afternoon and looked at the fishtank. one of the goldfish was looking back at me. he had, i swear it, this look of malice in his eyes.

ding dong

two ladies dressed in suits are standing on the porch

me: yes?

two ladies: good morning. do you read the bible?

me: no.

two ladies: you don't read the bible? have you read the bible?

me: yes.

two ladies: you've read the bible?

me: yes. i was raised catholic.

two ladies: ah. . . you've read the bible but you don't read it now.

two ladies retrieve a pamphlet and open to an article

me: don't mean to cut you off but i'd rather not discuss the bible this morning.

two ladies: can we come back later?

me: sure. okay. perhaps.

two ladies close the pamphlet and place it back in a leather satchel

two ladies: have a great day.

me: goodbye.

strip down lyrics

i am in my 2nd week of a 2 week vacation. dropped nick off at school. anna's at work. i am doing my best to do nothing. don't know if i'll succeed.

but then anyway, halloween was a blast. kids scored big time. it was wonderful to see the neighborhood light up in orange and red with children in costumes galore.

we had a robo call asking us to support occupy wall street. okay, cool. i can't help but wonder who funded the calls.

tho i've been reading the newspaper i've not been keeping up on the news like i normally do. which is a nice break. i have a question: has there been a time when the world stopped going to shit?

am reading some/watching some/listening some.

i want a writing stripped down and lean, but fat too. i want a poetics of nothing that contains multitudes.

i worry about an emphasis on joy and pleasure while in plain sight of horror and pain.

but i must insist that life is like that, and that too.