Overlap

2012-01-02T20:58:00.007-05:00

Flarf Orchestra CD release party at Le Poisson Rouge, Fri 1/13, 7:00

2011-10-18T14:01:00.004-04:00

Me reading "On Fire" at DC Arts Center, Washington DC, 10/16/2011Buck Downs: guitarMel Nichols: ukuleleMaureen Thorson: ukuleleVideo: Katie Degentesh

2011-10-09T13:20:00.002-04:00

Human mic poetry could be like this:Poets could write poems for the human mic(Poets could write poems for the human mic)short poems with clear sets of information (short poems with clear sets of information)that work well with these delays and repetitions.(that work well with these delays and repetitions)

2011-10-02T22:48:00.004-04:00

I'll be reading in the In Your Ear poetry series at the DC Arts Center Sunday, October 16.2438 18th St. in Adams Morgan, WDC, 3:00pm

2011-10-02T00:34:00.002-04:00

My photos of the march and the arrests today on the Brooklyn Bridge.More photos:Occupy Wall St. 9.30.11Occupy Wall St. 9.25.11

2011-09-05T20:04:00.000-04:00

GETTING OUR FREEDOMS BACK Nurses and teachers, working people and public sector workers, the poor, the elderly and the sick are destroying this country, and harming CEOs, hedge fund managers, and investment bankers, the very people who create non-union jobs in the first place. It's just a fact of life that the tax breaks needed for these job creators generate deficits. Someone has to pay for

2011-08-30T22:56:00.002-04:00

2011-06-08T19:17:00.013-04:00

Nada Gordon, Scented Rushes, Roof Books, 2010Scented Rushes is a series of highly artificed poems of seduction and frustration. It moves from the excited frustration of approach to the bitter frustration of rejection. The book is loosely epistolary, addressed to a distant love object, one who is truly objectified, having little or no presence beyond the engine he creates for the poems. He is a

2011-06-08T13:37:00.005-04:00

Daniel Nester interviews me at WWAATD.Dan's questions are appropriated from various teen magazines. My answers are appropriated from a 1985 interview with Klaus Kinski mixed with various quotations from Bertrand Russell.Two of the answers are "directly" from me, can you guess which? You could certainly argue that all the answers are really from me.

2011-06-02T10:25:00.002-04:00

My interview with Michael Gottlieb is up at Jacket2.

2011-05-27T16:39:00.007-04:00

This Wednesday, June 1st, I'm playing the Poetry Project with arrangements for poetry and electronics.131 E 10th St. @ 2nd Ave.NYC, 8:00pmw/ Mark Yakich

2011-05-11T14:35:00.002-04:00

Download a PDF of the cover art and first twelve poems of Chomp Away here.

2011-04-30T12:56:00.002-04:00

WE ARE BIRTHERSHow did we get here, where we don't belong?We are birthers, racist against ourselves,not wanting someone of our colorto be in charge of our lives.We are showroom birthers. We are standing hereexposing ourselves in the public domain of our friendsand enemies, we go on campaignsto discredit ourselves, to evade thequestion of what we do,and think of credentials, of paper work,notary

2011-04-26T14:55:00.004-04:00

Abraham Lincoln, Issue #6, Edited by K. Silem MohammadSandra Simonds:I am like an elephant mom ready toBang my trunk against a screen. Marie Buck:Tom Cruise suggested in an interview that they had produced a stillborn baby composed entirely of marijuana. Michael Magee:Every act of creation is the self-portrait of a Chia Pet gasping and wobblingIsh Klein:I do not know what the inside of this thing

2011-04-25T16:49:00.021-04:00

Rod Smith’s new poem “What’s The Deal” illustrates how Flarf and conceptual poetry might be the perfect complements of each other, in the sense of complementary colors. They are 180 degrees apart. Where Conceptual poetry is intentionally boring (“If there were an Olympic sport for extreme boredom, I would get a gold medal." --Kenny Goldsmith) and the reader’s engagement is meant to be minimal or

2011-04-21T22:38:00.003-04:00

for the BP oil spill anniversary, #181 from Michael McClure's proto-Flarf book 15 FleasTHE MURRES AND THE PUFFINS BLEW MY MIND I ALWAYS DREAMED THAT I WOULD FIND one covered with oil and save his life and toil to resurrect his beauty and he'd love me and be my pet murre or auk or puffin I loved the feathered crests asweeping from their eyes and their

2011-04-20T12:34:00.007-04:00

New study is the first to extensively evaluate the influence of poetry on the biochemistry and development of the brainThe scientists observed writers lacking normal poetry exposure levels, then compared their behavior, brain chemistry and brain development to writers having elevated poetry exposure levels. The poetry-free writers were more active and, in specific behavioral tests, were less

2011-04-13T13:42:00.007-04:00

The complete recording of my Feb 26th performance at The Bowery Poetry Club is now available on my Pennsound page.This was the book release for Chomp Away, and all the material is from the new book. I'm using a looped monophonic keyboard -- a Casio VL-Tone, made famous by Trio, and a Boss Loop Station.

2011-02-23T15:56:00.003-05:00

My new book, Chomp Away, is now available from Combo Books. The book release event is this Saturday, 2.26 at The Bowery Poetry Club, 4:00pmDrew Gardner and Josef KaplanSegue poetry series at the Bowery Poetry Club308 Bowery (Between Houston and Bleecker)F train to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleecker$6

2011-02-07T22:47:00.018-05:00

How much difference could there be between the Egypt NSA briefs that Obama must be hearing and the hysterical Glenn Beck tirades that Americans hear on TV?*There is no broker state (Manning Marable) in Egypt or Tunisia. One thinks of the vanity of well meaning academic socialists in assuming to predict the periodic tempo of crises in the talk of "late Capitalism." The writers who speak of "utopia

2011-01-21T11:30:00.004-05:00

But Dickinson was lonely and weird and obscure; the fact that Warren is one of the most successful songwriters of our time suggests that these sentiments aren’t just hers, they’re ours—this blinding crucible of nuancelessness is our ideal conception of love. And, before I get too carried away, I should point out that the schmaltz-addled, love-crazed speaker/singer that emerges from the songs isn’

2010-12-17T13:06:00.010-05:00

My film with Risa Puno, Sloth Person Shooter, is up at the new issue ofSustainable AircraftRisa did the fantastic Flash animation of the sloth claws and sloth reticule.The material is from appropriated in-game footage of modded 1990s first-person shooter video games, (including Chex Quest) as well as appropriated home movies of baby sloths.

2010-11-05T16:08:00.003-04:00

See you this Sat at the Segue reading series / BPC.

2010-11-03T13:10:00.006-04:00

Good article by Adam Roberts in The Atlantic: "Flarf: poetry meme-surfs with Kanye West and LOLcats." I should add that the poem Pizza Kitty referenced in the article is by the inimitable Rodney Koeneke.

2010-08-27T21:36:00.001-04:00

2010-08-03T17:50:00.007-04:00

I'll be reading poetry in a cattle auction amphitheater at the Wassaic Project Summer Festival Sat, August 14th, 2:00pm.withAnn Lauterbach, Katie Degentesh, Michael GottliebThe Luther Auction Barn, 15 Furnace Bank Rd, Wassaic, NY, 12592

2010-07-25T21:16:00.004-04:00

Eddie Vega writes in Comedy Beat on Flarf, comedy and poetry, and the We-Are-Familia performance.

2010-07-20T13:30:00.005-04:00

I'll be reading this Thursday in Brooklyn with Shanna Compton, Katie Degentesh, Brandon Downing, Nada Gordon, Sharon Mesmer, and Gary Sullivan.We-Are-Familia539 Altantic Ave. Brooklyn6:00pm

2010-06-02T10:16:00.010-04:00

See you tonight at Katie's reading at the Center for Book Arts Broadsides Reading Series Wednesday, June 2nd, 6:30 pm Poets Willie Perdomo, and Katie Degentesh. Organized by Edwin Torres.$10 suggestion donation / $5 CBA members8 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor.

2010-05-01T14:49:00.004-04:00

Here's Guys Like Terrorism, from the second issue of Lana Turner Magazine. This poem will appear in my new book, Chomp Away, out soon from Combo Books. The audio version, featuring James Ilgenfritz on bass, can be heard here.

2010-04-19T15:44:00.001-04:00

Why Flarf is Better Than Conceptualism.

2010-03-10T18:09:00.001-05:00

Don't Worry.

2009-12-16T20:31:00.003-05:00

It seems clear that we need to hear a detailed take on the Stephen Colbert / Alicia Keys duo version of Empire State of Mind from Brandon Brown and/or Harry Allen. I'm thinking a blog collaboration is in order?

2009-11-29T12:49:00.003-05:00

I'll be reading at The Bowery Poetry Club today at 4:00 at the book party for Gerrit Lansing's Heavenly Tree, Northern Earth.

2009-11-24T13:57:00.004-05:00

Here's a conduction I did of Nada Gordon, Mel Nichols, and Elizabeth Workman at The Zinc bar.

2009-11-19T17:17:00.002-05:00

A review of Brandon Downing's Lake Antiquity on BookForum.

2009-11-19T15:45:00.001-05:00

Franklin Bruno's Local Currency featured on Pitchfork.

2009-11-02T12:27:00.002-05:00

Two fundamental concepts:1. People are not wearing enough hats.2. Matter is energy.

2009-10-30T14:01:00.001-04:00

Interesting note over at Stan Apps' blog about image and reification in Lukacs. "Image" is actually central to Lukacs' literary criticism, in that the issue of realism and artist reflection, a la Hamlet, is described as an "image." He does embrace that visual metaphor. In his Marxist aesthetics, reification in realism is the result of a certain kind of mirroring,

2009-10-29T22:31:00.000-04:00

Solemnity is a sign of fraud.

2009-10-28T22:48:00.001-04:00

ask the audience / / lynch mob

2009-10-17T11:04:00.001-04:00

World War IV lasted five days....

2009-10-17T00:37:00.001-04:00

Why does the image of Carol Channing fill me with dread?

2009-10-16T18:27:00.002-04:00

The idea that poetry is good for a person & should be choked down like a horse pill is ridiculous.

2009-10-16T16:04:00.003-04:00

Tried to fry an egg, broke the yoke no joke.

2009-10-13T15:38:00.007-04:00

The Ted Williams cryogenic decapitation tuna fish baseball incident is strangely close to the plot of Phillip K. Dick's Ubik... if you could still talk to the frozen head that is.It also brings to mind the ancient tradition of preserving the severed head of the tribe leader in Jullian Jaynes' The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which is closer in some ways to the

2009-10-06T10:26:00.001-04:00

Turns out that Flarf makes you smarter.

2009-09-30T13:18:00.006-04:00

Michael Nicoloff and Mel Nichols at St. Mark'sNicoloff started with material from Bruised Dick, a collaboration with Alli Warren. Deliberate and focused titles like "People in Berkeley Need to Get Down with General Spatial Awareness" make me think things such as: "That's true!" A lot of demotic contouring done in a very alert and engaging manner. Refreshingly different from, say, the kind of

2009-09-25T11:22:00.003-04:00

It's funny, watching the change come over someone's face when they find that something they thought was going to be meaningless is actually the opposite....Farrah Field on Katie Degentesh.

2009-09-22T14:21:00.001-04:00

Nate Chinen on Avram Fefer in the New York Times.

2009-09-09T21:41:00.004-04:00

On New York 1 there's an ad for 1-800-LAWYERS, which features a mustachioed lawyer salesman giving a ridiculous "I'm hypnotizing you with intensity" stare into the camera that is indistinguishable from the affect that can be found on 85% of the author photos gracing the poetry and fiction tomes in this country. Why?

2009-08-06T16:19:00.007-04:00

Stumbling upon Telly Savalas three time in one day: above average?1. Robert Christgau's review of The Best of Ringo Starr, Vol. 2, "Better than Telly Savalas, but no match for George Harrison, or Joe Walsh."2. Sid and Nancy: Tender scene involving a Telly Savales doll. The is the closest the movie comes to explaining the relationship, via a discussion of dolls in an approximated domestic scene.3.

2009-07-16T16:10:00.006-04:00

heard at the Boog / Dug event at The Sidewalk Cafe last night.Arlo Quint:Starfish have no sense of time.Jim Behrle:Don't blame me, I voted for Ahmadinejad.Douglas Rothschild:Shortchange him before he wakes up.

2009-07-09T09:58:00.002-04:00

A Flarf primer, courtesy of Franklin Bruno, is now on Bookforum.

2009-06-26T23:59:00.000-04:00

do do do do do do do kicker of elves, do do do do do do do kicker of elves

2009-06-25T09:54:00.001-04:00

Blake refrigeration.--seen on a van

2009-06-24T12:38:00.001-04:00

American Poetry in the Age of Whitman and Dickinson

2009-06-22T14:57:00.001-04:00

Well, I know what it feels like to chant "join us" to a wall of riot cops when the streets are filled with thousands and you know the election was rigged and some judge / cleric's face on TV is telling you to shut up. I remember wondering what those riot cops were feeling as they put in overtime for the clerical class. Then again I was fairly sure they weren't going to start shooting into the

2009-06-20T13:14:00.009-04:00

A new recording is available on PennSound: A duo with me on guitar and poetry and James Ilgenfritz on bass, recorded last fall at the Segue series at the Bowery Poetry Club.I'm reading poems that will be included in my forthcoming Combo book. 1. The Starry Sky2. So I Guess Wilford Brimley's Got the Big Taco Now3. Cart4. By Whatever Misgivings5. Guys Like Terrorism6. Why do I Hate Flarf so Much?

2009-06-17T18:32:00.004-04:00

from the new, beautifully hand-made Cannibal Magazine, issue 4: ...unexploded typeset nine-to-midnight dynamitein the mind's eye the deep fuse and the short boom. --Buck Downsover what one might call the idea of the mouth. Impossible to revisit that muffled exclamation. --Elizabeth Robinson ...a self that is not the

2009-06-13T20:16:00.005-04:00

So, okay.... Food Party...Consulting psychic potatoes when Jay-Z announces he's coming for dinner. Use of a hack saw on eggs that cross international boundaries (I'm you). Casio Gymnopedies. Wait for the laser discs.Violence against birds. Wait for the bologna sushi.Etc....

2009-06-12T10:44:00.003-04:00

The book party for Douglas Rothschild's new Subpress book, Theogony, is this Sunday at The Zinc Bar:Sunday June 14th 6:30pmZinc Bar82 West 3rd Street

2009-06-09T09:41:00.003-04:00

I've seen a lot of unexpected things on the street in New York over the years. One thing I had never seen, until last Sunday, was someone selling ducklings. There were about five of these tiny, mind-bogglingly cute creatures, in an aquarium. I listened in for the sales pitch: "... they'll follow you around..." Which they indeed started to do as I leaned towards the glass.

2009-06-01T10:05:00.002-04:00

Pierre Joris on Douglas Rothschild's Theogony.

2009-05-27T12:49:00.006-04:00

My piece on the Late Night With Jimmy Fallon Roots, vs. The Highline Ballroom Roots, is up at the Brooklyn Rail.

2009-05-26T10:02:00.001-04:00

It's hard to see the writing through the flames.

2009-05-16T11:08:00.005-04:00

Pierre Joris on last night's Spicer extravaganza. Ron Silliman on Douglas Rothschild's Theogony. Gary Sullivan responds to Rothschild. Anne Boyer vs. Ryan Manning. Monica de la Torre's interview with Brandon Downing Bombs.

2009-04-30T13:52:00.004-04:00

My first film, Sloth Person Shooter, a collaboration with artist Risa Puno, will premiere this Saturday at the Dixon Place Movie Nite. It's an exploration of the connections between mid-90s first person shooter video games, sloths, Chex breakfast cereal, and the conflicts between agression and nurturance.

2009-04-23T21:17:00.001-04:00

Does that reflect poorly on me, that I could be made so happy by a single chocolate doughnut?

2009-04-06T21:54:00.003-04:00

So I guess I (everyone?) just need(s) to be hypnotized and have the hypnotherapist die of a heart attack in front of me (us)?

2009-04-06T18:24:00.000-04:00

Movie NiteMay 1 & 2, Dixon Place, NYC.

2009-04-03T16:01:00.002-04:00

The Hat 8, edited by Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar, has just arrived.

2009-04-03T12:26:00.002-04:00

Douglas Rothschild's first full-length collection of poems, Theogony, is now available from subpress.

2009-04-01T15:54:00.003-04:00

Report on a Poem Written in Grape Soda on the D -train FloorOn the D-train, a full can of grape soda slowing rolls by, leaving a long trail of liquid blobs like footprints across the floor of the subway. The shapes slowly morph from the momentum of car, eventually fusing together into a long, expressive set of lines. It is a kind of writing. It seems to be full of meaning, and people look at it,

2009-04-01T15:41:00.003-04:00

We both look like those poor shattered mannequins thrown through the window in the riot.

2009-03-22T21:56:00.002-04:00

Poor Baby BreeA cabaret act / descent into madness, Poor Baby Bree is constructed from recovered vaudeville songs, rescued from the landfill of sheet music stores, dating from as early as the 1850s up to the 1920s and 30s. Bree Benton and Franklin Bruno (piano) have created a kind of one-woman show by building a narrative around the stories in these rescued songs. Apparently, some of the spoken

2009-03-20T14:19:00.001-04:00

I'm feeling like a snail in the ocean.

2009-03-15T14:11:00.005-04:00

Adeena Karasick, Bowery Poetry Club, 3.14.09Adeena Karasick provided sustained tonal variation and a broad sense of overall contour with more fun, funny, exuberant, "performatively-oriented" giving-a-shit about the audience than I was prepared for. It was the best reading I've seen her give. This is not a situation where you show up to listen and prove you care about poetry despite the lack of

2009-03-11T17:30:00.001-04:00

Something in the Way of Things

2009-03-05T10:42:00.008-05:00

CONTROL IS A BEAUTIFUL THINGI sat at my desk today and went outit’s a disasterthese things appear before nightyou have the whole world to yourselfnow we hate these little thingsI get these flecks of rageI am very luckyI thought I’d get down to businessI went to the local placeto get some thingsI’ll think about these at a later dateI haven’t experienced them yetI’m sure there will beno trace of

2009-02-21T16:11:00.000-05:00

Nada Gordon: On Docu-poetry, a Febrile Meditaion

2009-02-21T11:18:00.003-05:00

Some mornings you just have to get up and immediately put on a couple Richard "Groove" Holmes CDs.Soul Message and Groovin' with Jug to be exact.

2009-02-17T13:28:00.001-05:00

You see three red dots before your brains become lunch...… beauty can go to hell …--Ryan Daly

2009-02-12T09:42:00.002-05:00

Listened to Wilson Pickett's I Found a Love five times in a row on the way to work today.

2009-02-11T11:15:00.006-05:00

Deborah Meadows, Goodbye Tissues, Shearsman Books, 2009Austere, active defacements, more than the sum of it's juxtapositions and borrowings, biodegradable thoughts...convey the stepped dayby horn blast, retinal

2009-02-10T23:12:00.002-05:00

rhetoric mannequinssmeared in poison

2009-02-09T20:49:00.001-05:00

Mary Herron is a bad ass.

2009-02-04T10:52:00.002-05:00

Cosmonauts imitating cormorantsare even more wonderful than cormorants.

2009-02-03T19:09:00.003-05:00

See you at the Anne Boyer / Stephanie Strickland reading tomorrow at the Poetry Project.

2009-02-03T11:53:00.001-05:00

I HATE BOTH TIME AND SPACEthink like a man of action, act like a Time-Warner cable repairmanIt's the phone company (any phone company), Con Edison, Sears,indeed any service organization that thinks the world has not movedbeyond the 1950s, when to exist was to change,to change was to mature, to mature was to go on creating one's timeto provide life with guidelines methods, systems,and analysis to

2009-02-02T11:22:00.000-05:00

Interview with Charlotte Mandell

2009-02-02T09:54:00.004-05:00

The incessant piano part on the The Buzzcocks' Something's Gone Wrong Again sounds exactly like the piano part on The CBS recording of Terry Riley's In C.

2009-02-01T13:08:00.000-05:00

I WANT TO HEAR YOUR VOICEI want to hear your voiceencouraging someone.I want to hear your voice, as an alternativeto competing in the Olympic games.The federal government has two choices,it can bail out big banksand hope help trickles down to homeowners,or it can organize a dictatorship.I want to hear your voice,because it is probably the first music tocome along since some of the Kinks' older

2009-01-31T19:20:00.004-05:00

Jack Kimball and Henry Gould remind me that many poets actually have a sense of humor!

2009-01-28T14:14:00.001-05:00

I like how the continents in gondwannaland snuggle.

2009-01-26T15:35:00.001-05:00

SAFETY LINEI need to find out how I can brim over morebut I can barely muster the lock.criticism wants optical swellingwith the extra things lying aroundlittle pieces of boneheartbeat with simple ruleswe could program a computer withokay, lame, I know...toward the end of the songshe was waving her free handaround my head in a frantic gesturerevolving planet with plants on itand that way be a

2009-01-25T11:48:00.001-05:00

Studio 360 on Flarf

2009-01-24T21:32:00.002-05:00

I Am An Asshole

2009-01-22T11:32:00.000-05:00

Turn your eyes away from the computer and look into my eyes.

2009-01-17T12:49:00.004-05:00

my comments for Joe Safdie over at Limetree:What I'm jonesing for is more critical engagement from people challenging Flarf but who don't actually read the books. What I see here is you asking loaded questions about "Flarf" based on your reading of this review. Your questions read more as opinions than questions. Without having read the books, or at least the book under discussion, there's no way