Briefly interacting with Elvin Jones in my dream last night, he had the exact same demeanor -- intense and gracious -- as when I briefly met him for real in the late 80s at a Jazz Machine gig at the Blue Note.
The Jones scene is part of a pattern -- the occasional appearance of sometimes troubling, sometimes caring masculine guide figures in dreams -- Olson is another figure who has made repeat appearances...
12.20.2008
12.05.2008
11.22.2008
11.18.2008
Something I learned today
Never look straight in the sun's rays
Letting all the sunshine in
Can't remember where I've been
For the last few nights the level of detail and the feeling of reality in my dreams has become overwhelming. Awakened at 5:00am with Something I Learned Today blasting in my head as though through an iPod.
Never look straight in the sun's rays
Letting all the sunshine in
Can't remember where I've been
For the last few nights the level of detail and the feeling of reality in my dreams has become overwhelming. Awakened at 5:00am with Something I Learned Today blasting in my head as though through an iPod.
11.04.2008
10.28.2008
10.27.2008
10.20.2008
10.15.2008
I'll be performing at the Bowery Poetry Club this Sat at 4:00:
Drew Gardner -- poetry and guitar
James Ilgenfritz -- bass
with
Ted Pearson
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston
Drew Gardner -- poetry and guitar
James Ilgenfritz -- bass
with
Ted Pearson
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston
10.06.2008
Has someone thought to create a PDF chapbook of all the comment field and blog reaction to Issue 1?. Clearly that's where the poetry is in all this.
Perhaps I have a perverse sense of humor, but the spectacle of poets angrily claiming and defending the value of their intellectual property and brand name in a context where it has no value to the culture at large is funny to me. What does it mean that this concise, wrong-headed group writing might have more energy charge to it than much of the poetry of the comment writers?
The poems in the Issue 1 all do sound like they're from the same poem generating software. So it's really the work of a single author. I see some people are calling this Flarf. The event of Issue 1 is Flarfy in that it's provocative and identity-blurring. Identity-blurring always enrages poets for some reason.
The poetry itself isn't Flarfy, because Flarf poetry is very much a product of the individual poets who write it. You can tell which Flarf poet is the author within a few lines. Flarf poetry is expressive, or more precisely, it is a hybridization of expressiveness and procedure. The work coming out of the Flarf collective is poetry by any means necessary.
Perhaps I have a perverse sense of humor, but the spectacle of poets angrily claiming and defending the value of their intellectual property and brand name in a context where it has no value to the culture at large is funny to me. What does it mean that this concise, wrong-headed group writing might have more energy charge to it than much of the poetry of the comment writers?
The poems in the Issue 1 all do sound like they're from the same poem generating software. So it's really the work of a single author. I see some people are calling this Flarf. The event of Issue 1 is Flarfy in that it's provocative and identity-blurring. Identity-blurring always enrages poets for some reason.
The poetry itself isn't Flarfy, because Flarf poetry is very much a product of the individual poets who write it. You can tell which Flarf poet is the author within a few lines. Flarf poetry is expressive, or more precisely, it is a hybridization of expressiveness and procedure. The work coming out of the Flarf collective is poetry by any means necessary.
9.28.2008
9.27.2008
9.24.2008
9.18.2008
9.13.2008
9.12.2008
9.02.2008
8.18.2008
From Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise:
Born in 1862, the son of a shopkeeper turned civil servant, he studied at the Paris Conservatory, where he struggled for several years to write a cantata sufficiently dull to win the sinecure of the academically oriented Prix de Rome, He finally succeeded with The Prodigal Son.
Stravinsky ... There was a fling with Coco Chanel....
For Stravinsky, as for many other composers, technology became a new kind of folklore, another infusion of the real.
"Why tonality as such should be thrown out for good, I can't see," Ives once wrote. "Why it should always be present, I can't see."
... by shattering these trite associations into fragments, Ives draws closer to the source.
When Duke Elllington set about making his name, he went for advice to Will Marion Cook.... "I'd sing a melody in its simplest form," Ellington recalled, "and he'd stop me and say, "Reverse you figures..."
...there was an element of nature-mysticism to Webern's method. On a hiking trip in 1930 the composer wrote ecstatically of the experience of being lost in a snowstorm, of walking into a whiteness that was like a "completely undifferentiated screen."
...Ludwig Bauer could have been thinking of The Measures Taken when he lamented that political fanaticism on both the right and the left was devaluing the life of the individual. "The I is disappearing..."
Prokofiev had a gift for what .... Bakhtin called the "carnivalesque" - farce, parody, irresponsible merrymaking, mock grandeur.
"The modern composer must change from a parasite into a fighter."
There was a Communist cell within the Group Theatre, but most members understood the project to in largely aesthetic terms, as a corrective to the intellectual flight from society.
In 1935, through Goldbeck, he met Bertolt Brecht, who challenged him to "write a piece about all kinds of prostitution - the press, the church, the courts, the arts, the whole system."
"I was driven into Paradise"
..."Any composing strategy which is wholly 'rational' is irrational in the extreme."
(Stockhausen) took a particular interest in the semi-independent movement of jazz melodies, the way they floated above the beat in changing values.
he began to look at a orchestra the way a scientist looks at a gas cloud.
"Welcome to the Terrordome" is the Rites of Spring of black America.
When in 1999 (Boulez) was asked why so few major works of the fifties and sixties had become repertory pieces, he blandly relied, "Well, perhaps we did not take sufficiently into account the way music is perceived by the listener."
Born in 1862, the son of a shopkeeper turned civil servant, he studied at the Paris Conservatory, where he struggled for several years to write a cantata sufficiently dull to win the sinecure of the academically oriented Prix de Rome, He finally succeeded with The Prodigal Son.
Stravinsky ... There was a fling with Coco Chanel....
For Stravinsky, as for many other composers, technology became a new kind of folklore, another infusion of the real.
"Why tonality as such should be thrown out for good, I can't see," Ives once wrote. "Why it should always be present, I can't see."
... by shattering these trite associations into fragments, Ives draws closer to the source.
When Duke Elllington set about making his name, he went for advice to Will Marion Cook.... "I'd sing a melody in its simplest form," Ellington recalled, "and he'd stop me and say, "Reverse you figures..."
...there was an element of nature-mysticism to Webern's method. On a hiking trip in 1930 the composer wrote ecstatically of the experience of being lost in a snowstorm, of walking into a whiteness that was like a "completely undifferentiated screen."
...Ludwig Bauer could have been thinking of The Measures Taken when he lamented that political fanaticism on both the right and the left was devaluing the life of the individual. "The I is disappearing..."
Prokofiev had a gift for what .... Bakhtin called the "carnivalesque" - farce, parody, irresponsible merrymaking, mock grandeur.
"The modern composer must change from a parasite into a fighter."
There was a Communist cell within the Group Theatre, but most members understood the project to in largely aesthetic terms, as a corrective to the intellectual flight from society.
In 1935, through Goldbeck, he met Bertolt Brecht, who challenged him to "write a piece about all kinds of prostitution - the press, the church, the courts, the arts, the whole system."
"I was driven into Paradise"
..."Any composing strategy which is wholly 'rational' is irrational in the extreme."
(Stockhausen) took a particular interest in the semi-independent movement of jazz melodies, the way they floated above the beat in changing values.
he began to look at a orchestra the way a scientist looks at a gas cloud.
"Welcome to the Terrordome" is the Rites of Spring of black America.
When in 1999 (Boulez) was asked why so few major works of the fifties and sixties had become repertory pieces, he blandly relied, "Well, perhaps we did not take sufficiently into account the way music is perceived by the listener."
5.30.2008
I'll be playing drums this Sunday with Julie Patton's group at The Stone (Ave C and 2nd St.)
Julie Patton's Ghost of a Chance Defense Fun(d) Band
Julie aka Ezelle/Patton (voicesays)
Special Guest Henry Grimes, Poet of the Air (words, instrumental voicing)
Brad Jones (bass)
Drew Gardner (percussion)
Rod Williams (piano)
Paul Van Curen (guitar)
Taiyo de Jong
see you there.
Julie Patton's Ghost of a Chance Defense Fun(d) Band
Julie aka Ezelle/Patton (voicesays)
Special Guest Henry Grimes, Poet of the Air (words, instrumental voicing)
Brad Jones (bass)
Drew Gardner (percussion)
Rod Williams (piano)
Paul Van Curen (guitar)
Taiyo de Jong
see you there.
5.12.2008
5.11.2008
5.10.2008
5.09.2008
5.08.2008
5.07.2008
5.05.2008
5.04.2008
4.27.2008
4.24.2008
I'll be conducting the Flarf Orchestra this Sat:
SATURDAY, APR 26, 6:00 P.M., BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 BOWERY, $8
The Flarf Orchestra
Conducted by Drew Gardner
Featuring:
Franklin Bruno - guitar
Ehran Elisha - drums
Francois Grillot - bass
Dave Ross - guitar
with poets:
Shanna Compton
Katie Degentesh
Benjamin Friedlander
Drew Gardner
Nada Gordon
Mitch Highfill
Rodney Koeneke
Michael Magee
Sharon Mesmer
K. Silem Mohammad
Mel Nichols
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
James Sherry
Rod Smith
Christina Strong
See you at the party, Richter!
SATURDAY, APR 26, 6:00 P.M., BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 BOWERY, $8
The Flarf Orchestra
Conducted by Drew Gardner
Featuring:
Franklin Bruno - guitar
Ehran Elisha - drums
Francois Grillot - bass
Dave Ross - guitar
with poets:
Shanna Compton
Katie Degentesh
Benjamin Friedlander
Drew Gardner
Nada Gordon
Mitch Highfill
Rodney Koeneke
Michael Magee
Sharon Mesmer
K. Silem Mohammad
Mel Nichols
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
James Sherry
Rod Smith
Christina Strong
See you at the party, Richter!
4.18.2008
4.14.2008
What if you look at something with a little life in it, Leaves of Grass, for instance, and you decide to do everything in your power to drain the life out of it while appearing to champion it? Maybe you secretly, jealously hate the art and wish to kill it with cliches and platitudes, or dripping sententiousness? Or, maybe, more to the point, you valorize the figure of the author, your one true fixation, while having little or no interest of what the art does in the first place, or why. And it's not just PBS. How many poetry listeners in churches and non-profits continually make the same kinds of mistakes...
3.27.2008
2.29.2008
1.31.2008
John Tchicai in Brooklyn tonight @ 10.
He'll also be at Cornelia St. Cafe Wed Feb 6th.
and @ Zebulon Feb 12th (free!)
He'll also be at Cornelia St. Cafe Wed Feb 6th.
and @ Zebulon Feb 12th (free!)
1.28.2008
MP3s from the readings at the Jackson Mac Low Thing of Beauty book party are posted at PennSound.
Included here is my reading of Still Waldoboro, with a GarageBand arrangement for snare and bass drums.
Also-some snapshots of the readers on Anne's website.
Included here is my reading of Still Waldoboro, with a GarageBand arrangement for snare and bass drums.
Also-some snapshots of the readers on Anne's website.
1.22.2008
My Poetics Orchestra will be playing tonight at The Living Theater with Ty Cumbie's Musetry Project:
The Orchestra features: Gene Cawley (gtr), Ty Cumbie (gtr), Katie Degentesh (poetry) , Francois Grillot (bass), James Ilgenfritz (bass), Sharon Mesmer (poetry), with me conducting.
Ty Cumbie's Musetry Project : 8:00
The Poetics Orchestra goes on at 9:00
21 Clinton St., NYC
See you there.
The Orchestra features: Gene Cawley (gtr), Ty Cumbie (gtr), Katie Degentesh (poetry) , Francois Grillot (bass), James Ilgenfritz (bass), Sharon Mesmer (poetry), with me conducting.
Ty Cumbie's Musetry Project : 8:00
The Poetics Orchestra goes on at 9:00
21 Clinton St., NYC
See you there.
1.05.2008
1.02.2008
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