3.22.2009
Poor Baby Bree
A 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 text is also appropriated, so the project approaches being Oulipo musical theater, though as with a Harry Mathews novel, it's not necessary to know this ahead of time to understand the performance. The story concerns a young waif experiencing conflicted emotions while running away from home in an attempt to join the circus. Benton channels a child consciousness caught between states of being, with singing as the one recourse truly available to her. The circus always travels just ahead, forever out of reach, an entity perhaps also known as show business. The home she has run away from was dominated by a cruel mother, a cycle of abuse she repeats unknowingly in her relationship with her dolls.
Poor Baby Bree is a strange and riveting hour-and-a-half immersion into the conflicts born not out of a failed individuation, but of a twisted one, manifest in the interstices of cultural time travel, where a dauntingly remote choice of materials and an artificiality of presentation collides with a powerful unbroken chain of affect that you can’t take your eyes off for a second. I never once doubted Benton's tears. She is a serious actress performing totally absurd material. The contours of the resulting content -- strong emotions activating sincerity simultaneously with an alienated distance of communication -- have some surprising shape shifts, including a tender and realistic conversation with a cardboard owl whose only means of expression are his eyelids, lovingly manipulated by Benton herself. The embraced contradictions of the material, message, and presentation were at their most startling when Benton smeared herself with a sticky dirt, releasing the aroma of the chocolate cake icing that the original sign of the "dirt" referenced.
As it turns out, moving only your eyes for expression may be more than enough, just as rooting through musty sheet music and stringing bits of text together to create a meditation on the relation of loneliness and the need for expression may be more than enough. It all seems surprisingly natural coming from a collector's (or art lover's) mind. In fact, a collector's mind might just be a talent for channeling the history of some other kind of speech, or some other era.
A 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 text is also appropriated, so the project approaches being Oulipo musical theater, though as with a Harry Mathews novel, it's not necessary to know this ahead of time to understand the performance. The story concerns a young waif experiencing conflicted emotions while running away from home in an attempt to join the circus. Benton channels a child consciousness caught between states of being, with singing as the one recourse truly available to her. The circus always travels just ahead, forever out of reach, an entity perhaps also known as show business. The home she has run away from was dominated by a cruel mother, a cycle of abuse she repeats unknowingly in her relationship with her dolls.
Poor Baby Bree is a strange and riveting hour-and-a-half immersion into the conflicts born not out of a failed individuation, but of a twisted one, manifest in the interstices of cultural time travel, where a dauntingly remote choice of materials and an artificiality of presentation collides with a powerful unbroken chain of affect that you can’t take your eyes off for a second. I never once doubted Benton's tears. She is a serious actress performing totally absurd material. The contours of the resulting content -- strong emotions activating sincerity simultaneously with an alienated distance of communication -- have some surprising shape shifts, including a tender and realistic conversation with a cardboard owl whose only means of expression are his eyelids, lovingly manipulated by Benton herself. The embraced contradictions of the material, message, and presentation were at their most startling when Benton smeared herself with a sticky dirt, releasing the aroma of the chocolate cake icing that the original sign of the "dirt" referenced.
As it turns out, moving only your eyes for expression may be more than enough, just as rooting through musty sheet music and stringing bits of text together to create a meditation on the relation of loneliness and the need for expression may be more than enough. It all seems surprisingly natural coming from a collector's (or art lover's) mind. In fact, a collector's mind might just be a talent for channeling the history of some other kind of speech, or some other era.
3.20.2009
3.15.2009
Adeena Karasick, Bowery Poetry Club, 3.14.09
Adeena 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 aptitude or interest the poet shows in getting the material over to you. Karasick cares enough to put on a good show and she wants to be loved and is going to damn well prove to you that you should love her, at least for as long as she's on the stage.
Clearly she gives slam poets a run for their money, and I don't consider slam performance anything to sneeze at. She's a sometimes compelling and explosive ham on the same level of talent as say, Edwin Torres, and she has the dangers and challenges that come along with this fact. I could feel her fighting to not fall into a formula, which I've seen her do, and the energy this fight released infused the room with a kind of humming expectant warmth that destroyed any trace of the lingering dread which sometimes creeps upon me at a poetry reading that I might be facing new variations on the old tune of fatigue-inducement as indicator of poetic seriousness and value. Not a bit of it, folks.
There were two highlights. One a flarfy search and replaced dating advice poetics repurposing of The Rules. So much of Flarfiness is sustainability, cultural repurposing, recycling, and finding alternate poetic energy sources. A kind of eco-poetry. (cue John Latta tantrum!) The prose rhythm of this new piece shows that Karasick can deploy tonal effects keyed directly to placement and shifts in content, even though much of her work is pitched from a place where the performance insists on it's modulations despite or against variations in material the way someone might insist you join them for a drink after work tomorrow and you know they might or might not show up, leaving you with plenty to think about either way. Mixing these approaches broadened the performance horizon considerably. The other high point, and the outro, was also a detournment, this time of the Dance Pop Obama Girl, pulled from the landfill and remade into a hilarious love song "I've got a crush on Osama," as good as anything on John Stewart or the Kootenay channel. It's amazing what one word change can lead to.
Adeena 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 aptitude or interest the poet shows in getting the material over to you. Karasick cares enough to put on a good show and she wants to be loved and is going to damn well prove to you that you should love her, at least for as long as she's on the stage.
Clearly she gives slam poets a run for their money, and I don't consider slam performance anything to sneeze at. She's a sometimes compelling and explosive ham on the same level of talent as say, Edwin Torres, and she has the dangers and challenges that come along with this fact. I could feel her fighting to not fall into a formula, which I've seen her do, and the energy this fight released infused the room with a kind of humming expectant warmth that destroyed any trace of the lingering dread which sometimes creeps upon me at a poetry reading that I might be facing new variations on the old tune of fatigue-inducement as indicator of poetic seriousness and value. Not a bit of it, folks.
There were two highlights. One a flarfy search and replaced dating advice poetics repurposing of The Rules. So much of Flarfiness is sustainability, cultural repurposing, recycling, and finding alternate poetic energy sources. A kind of eco-poetry. (cue John Latta tantrum!) The prose rhythm of this new piece shows that Karasick can deploy tonal effects keyed directly to placement and shifts in content, even though much of her work is pitched from a place where the performance insists on it's modulations despite or against variations in material the way someone might insist you join them for a drink after work tomorrow and you know they might or might not show up, leaving you with plenty to think about either way. Mixing these approaches broadened the performance horizon considerably. The other high point, and the outro, was also a detournment, this time of the Dance Pop Obama Girl, pulled from the landfill and remade into a hilarious love song "I've got a crush on Osama," as good as anything on John Stewart or the Kootenay channel. It's amazing what one word change can lead to.
3.05.2009
CONTROL IS A BEAUTIFUL THING
I sat at my desk today and went out
it’s a disaster
these things appear before night
you have the whole world to yourself
now we hate these little things
I get these flecks of rage
I am very lucky
I thought I’d get down to business
I went to the local place
to get some things
I’ll think about these at a later date
I haven’t experienced them yet
I’m sure there will be
no trace of them tomorrow
The liquid isn’t sticky or confused
I move several times a day
directly toward the problem
I can see this will last a while
I’m sure my other half
will use its hands for this
it’s a good thing
as it makes things change.
You can get a kind of face or head
though it doesn’t
really seem worth it.
I can see how this would be
very useful for people
who need to get there.
I got home and took one out
that was about three hours ago,
I just looked in the mirror
and my head was there again
you are like me
there is a range waiting for me
I would never use
washing my hands and looking
into the future
it was no problem
you can pull
this into the new range that
meets the beautiful sounds,
like a silver shaped cylinder
floating outside your bedroom window
What was that in the mirror?
My face?
like coming home after a training course
just as it’s beginning,
be careful not to shine too brilliantly here
or something important could roll away
the liquid inside yourself
control is a beautiful thing
from Petroleum Hat
originally in Daniel Bouchard's Magazine The Poker
I sat at my desk today and went out
it’s a disaster
these things appear before night
you have the whole world to yourself
now we hate these little things
I get these flecks of rage
I am very lucky
I thought I’d get down to business
I went to the local place
to get some things
I’ll think about these at a later date
I haven’t experienced them yet
I’m sure there will be
no trace of them tomorrow
The liquid isn’t sticky or confused
I move several times a day
directly toward the problem
I can see this will last a while
I’m sure my other half
will use its hands for this
it’s a good thing
as it makes things change.
You can get a kind of face or head
though it doesn’t
really seem worth it.
I can see how this would be
very useful for people
who need to get there.
I got home and took one out
that was about three hours ago,
I just looked in the mirror
and my head was there again
you are like me
there is a range waiting for me
I would never use
washing my hands and looking
into the future
it was no problem
you can pull
this into the new range that
meets the beautiful sounds,
like a silver shaped cylinder
floating outside your bedroom window
What was that in the mirror?
My face?
like coming home after a training course
just as it’s beginning,
be careful not to shine too brilliantly here
or something important could roll away
the liquid inside yourself
control is a beautiful thing
from Petroleum Hat
originally in Daniel Bouchard's Magazine The Poker
2.21.2009
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.
2.11.2009
Deborah Meadows, Goodbye Tissues, Shearsman Books, 2009
Austere, active defacements, more than the sum of it's juxtapositions and borrowings, biodegradable thoughts...
Austere, active defacements, more than the sum of it's juxtapositions and borrowings, biodegradable thoughts...
convey the stepped day
by horn blast, retinal
2.10.2009
2.09.2009
2.03.2009
I HATE BOTH TIME AND SPACE
think like a man of action, act like a Time-Warner cable repairman
It's the phone company (any phone company), Con Edison, Sears,
indeed any service organization that thinks the world has not moved
beyond the 1950s, when to exist was to change,
to change was to mature, to mature was to go on creating one's time
to provide life with guidelines methods, systems,
and analysis to establish that the eye sees only what the mind
is prepared to disagree with
I spent approximately 36 hours during a 5 day period on hold,
and usually got disconnected when they had to transfer me
to another department... and there's nothing worse than
being dead for a week and continually
being told to go to their website for easy troubleshooting
and there were no computers or software or cell phones that
made it possible to exactly schedule when a doctor
would show up, because of course dead people
had no problem sitting around for four hours wondering
if religion is to popularization what Homo sapiens are
to hating both time and space
Time-Warner has drawn my ire not because of their cable TV service,
which I never have a problem with.
It's because I stupidly fell for the spiel
life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements,
but by dissociation and dreaming up ways to file class action law suits
against the present moment which contains nothing more than the past,
and what is found in the effect is already in the
individual, so there really isn't much competition
except for going to a satellite to get your life back.
We seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns
any phone service I can imagine
because I can switch to my phone.
But now, my connection keeps going down, and that's a huge problem --
and not just because the only cure for vanity is the faculty
of manufacturing artificial sex appeal -- the keynote of Time.
time is the most basic of commodities.
It costs nothing, but its true value fluctuates wildly.
When wasted, it can cause great losses.
When spent wisely, it lets its living people reap uncountable benefits.
Time is not money; however, it can be spent toward the profitable
motive power of democracy as love.
In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant;
all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there,
leaning over the present love which is about to join it,
pressing against the portals of consciousness
that would hate to leave it.
Does anyone know what I'm referring to?
The essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf,
creating, by its very growth, my phone number
twice being put on hold (and told I could leave a message -- yeah, right)
transferred a few times (and each time asked to repeat my major life errors)
I was finally told that a doctor must come to my house,
and the next available appointment would be Friday -- and I was already dead!
True time management is controlling events rather
than minutes and hours.
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a sob story,
but suffice it to say
I didn't pay for my internet for 3 months last year
BECAUSE I HAD NO INTERNET IN MY APARTMENT FOR
3 MONTHS!! I HATE THEM!!!
Urge to kill...fading...fading..RISING ...fading..fading...gone...
I pointed out that since I don't have any service, I
can't really sit around at home in the middle of the day for four hours
waiting for someone who may or may not show up.
The person on the other end sympathized --
she acknowledged that she wouldn't be allowed to take off
four hours and wait for a body by the place which
at each moment it occupies in the universe,
indicates the parts and the aspects of matter
on which I can lay hold:
my perception, which exactly measures my virtual action
on scheduling technology,
and Time-Warner evidently hasn't mastered that
(along with phone and internet technology).
is an absolute only to be given to an intuition,
while all the rest has to do with
the inertia of humanity in regards to laughter the same way the
thousands of successive positions
of a runner are contract into one sole symbolic attitude,
I have had them come out to my place 6 times in the last 8 months...
I hate them with a passion.
These guys have no idea what they are doing and they
lie to your face.
my life keeps going out randomly and then coming back,
and my body has a history of failing.
The problem is the world which can't seem to get me
a strong enough signal.
I will obtain a vision of matter that is fatiguing
for my imagination
but pure and stripped of what the requirements of life
make me add to it in everyday language.
I've never hated something so much as Time Warner Cable.
In order to do something NEW ... you must give up something old.
You are doing something with every minute of your time right now.
You have been using every minute of your available time
since you were born.
You are spending all the time there is.
I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind,
however simple, that does not change
the essential functions of the universe,
which is a machine for
making Time Warner charge me $115 a month.
Other than that, they are pretty good.
my cable went out
about three weeks ago
and they sent out a repairman the next day.
think like a man of action, act like a Time-Warner cable repairman
It's the phone company (any phone company), Con Edison, Sears,
indeed any service organization that thinks the world has not moved
beyond the 1950s, when to exist was to change,
to change was to mature, to mature was to go on creating one's time
to provide life with guidelines methods, systems,
and analysis to establish that the eye sees only what the mind
is prepared to disagree with
I spent approximately 36 hours during a 5 day period on hold,
and usually got disconnected when they had to transfer me
to another department... and there's nothing worse than
being dead for a week and continually
being told to go to their website for easy troubleshooting
and there were no computers or software or cell phones that
made it possible to exactly schedule when a doctor
would show up, because of course dead people
had no problem sitting around for four hours wondering
if religion is to popularization what Homo sapiens are
to hating both time and space
Time-Warner has drawn my ire not because of their cable TV service,
which I never have a problem with.
It's because I stupidly fell for the spiel
life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements,
but by dissociation and dreaming up ways to file class action law suits
against the present moment which contains nothing more than the past,
and what is found in the effect is already in the
individual, so there really isn't much competition
except for going to a satellite to get your life back.
We seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns
any phone service I can imagine
because I can switch to my phone.
But now, my connection keeps going down, and that's a huge problem --
and not just because the only cure for vanity is the faculty
of manufacturing artificial sex appeal -- the keynote of Time.
time is the most basic of commodities.
It costs nothing, but its true value fluctuates wildly.
When wasted, it can cause great losses.
When spent wisely, it lets its living people reap uncountable benefits.
Time is not money; however, it can be spent toward the profitable
motive power of democracy as love.
In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant;
all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there,
leaning over the present love which is about to join it,
pressing against the portals of consciousness
that would hate to leave it.
Does anyone know what I'm referring to?
The essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf,
creating, by its very growth, my phone number
twice being put on hold (and told I could leave a message -- yeah, right)
transferred a few times (and each time asked to repeat my major life errors)
I was finally told that a doctor must come to my house,
and the next available appointment would be Friday -- and I was already dead!
True time management is controlling events rather
than minutes and hours.
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a sob story,
but suffice it to say
I didn't pay for my internet for 3 months last year
BECAUSE I HAD NO INTERNET IN MY APARTMENT FOR
3 MONTHS!! I HATE THEM!!!
Urge to kill...fading...fading..RISING ...fading..fading...gone...
I pointed out that since I don't have any service, I
can't really sit around at home in the middle of the day for four hours
waiting for someone who may or may not show up.
The person on the other end sympathized --
she acknowledged that she wouldn't be allowed to take off
four hours and wait for a body by the place which
at each moment it occupies in the universe,
indicates the parts and the aspects of matter
on which I can lay hold:
my perception, which exactly measures my virtual action
on scheduling technology,
and Time-Warner evidently hasn't mastered that
(along with phone and internet technology).
is an absolute only to be given to an intuition,
while all the rest has to do with
the inertia of humanity in regards to laughter the same way the
thousands of successive positions
of a runner are contract into one sole symbolic attitude,
I have had them come out to my place 6 times in the last 8 months...
I hate them with a passion.
These guys have no idea what they are doing and they
lie to your face.
my life keeps going out randomly and then coming back,
and my body has a history of failing.
The problem is the world which can't seem to get me
a strong enough signal.
I will obtain a vision of matter that is fatiguing
for my imagination
but pure and stripped of what the requirements of life
make me add to it in everyday language.
I've never hated something so much as Time Warner Cable.
In order to do something NEW ... you must give up something old.
You are doing something with every minute of your time right now.
You have been using every minute of your available time
since you were born.
You are spending all the time there is.
I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind,
however simple, that does not change
the essential functions of the universe,
which is a machine for
making Time Warner charge me $115 a month.
Other than that, they are pretty good.
my cable went out
about three weeks ago
and they sent out a repairman the next day.
2.02.2009
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.
2.01.2009
I WANT TO HEAR YOUR VOICE
I want to hear your voice
encouraging someone.
I want to hear your voice, as an alternative
to competing in the Olympic games.
The federal government has two choices,
it can bail out big banks
and 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 to
come along since some of the Kinks' older stuff that
actually brings the beginnings of tears to these jaded eyes.
I want to hear your voice
so you can talk about why it's important
to be aware of the situation.
I want to hear your voice talk about
creative and meaningful ways to take action,
chances are I will not be smart enough or fast enough
to rescue you if you're struggling.
You need to hold a lovely person in your arms.
The Department of Defense has accumulated
billions of dollars in excess property,
covering the entire range of materials,
equipment, and articles the Department uses,
including vehicles, weapons,
hand tools, lumber, medical equipment, and furniture.
A song that goes from full chorus
and band (that's loud) to a segment that is nearly
oriental in its pristine simplicity -- just wandering
piano, electronic swirlings and the whoosh of an icy wind.
I want to hear your voice
encouraging someone.
I want to hear your voice, as an alternative
to competing in the Olympic games.
The federal government has two choices,
it can bail out big banks
and 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 to
come along since some of the Kinks' older stuff that
actually brings the beginnings of tears to these jaded eyes.
I want to hear your voice
so you can talk about why it's important
to be aware of the situation.
I want to hear your voice talk about
creative and meaningful ways to take action,
chances are I will not be smart enough or fast enough
to rescue you if you're struggling.
You need to hold a lovely person in your arms.
The Department of Defense has accumulated
billions of dollars in excess property,
covering the entire range of materials,
equipment, and articles the Department uses,
including vehicles, weapons,
hand tools, lumber, medical equipment, and furniture.
A song that goes from full chorus
and band (that's loud) to a segment that is nearly
oriental in its pristine simplicity -- just wandering
piano, electronic swirlings and the whoosh of an icy wind.
1.31.2009
1.28.2009
1.26.2009
SAFETY LINE
I need to find out how I can brim over more
but I can barely muster the lock.
criticism wants optical swelling
with the extra things lying around
little pieces of bone
heartbeat with simple rules
we could program a computer with
okay, lame, I know...
toward the end of the song
she was waving her free hand
around my head in a frantic gesture
revolving planet with plants on it
and that way be a playmate
with jars that befriend people
what more do you want?
no sweet vision without horrible mishap
either a dilated keyboard
or jockeying insurance into our hands
the beat of flippered limbs
at the end of rope-like effort
that moment of ability
my kid has been choking on for about a year
what people don't know is
ospreys have no need for this crap
with a finger in a straight splint
for the last four weeks
I swordfight through life
hyper-extended between a farmer and a planted seed,
if he opens his eyes he is feeling the whole world's obstruction
those who contemplate the beauty of teeth
find reserves of strength in paper
the universe is full of parietal space
which explains the softest mouth
that used tongue and knew just when to say something
I the they they know how to feel about
a gentle tug upon the sun
painted a security state
regarding the theft of my friends
and sort of hinted at the time I reached into
we don't know about your life, how can we know?
these growing crystals that grow... on purpose? another day
let the beauty of what you love
be a curved splint
to account for the spelling errors
and plentiful global conspiracies
as flexible
as any wind
I need to find out how I can brim over more
but I can barely muster the lock.
criticism wants optical swelling
with the extra things lying around
little pieces of bone
heartbeat with simple rules
we could program a computer with
okay, lame, I know...
toward the end of the song
she was waving her free hand
around my head in a frantic gesture
revolving planet with plants on it
and that way be a playmate
with jars that befriend people
what more do you want?
no sweet vision without horrible mishap
either a dilated keyboard
or jockeying insurance into our hands
the beat of flippered limbs
at the end of rope-like effort
that moment of ability
my kid has been choking on for about a year
what people don't know is
ospreys have no need for this crap
with a finger in a straight splint
for the last four weeks
I swordfight through life
hyper-extended between a farmer and a planted seed,
if he opens his eyes he is feeling the whole world's obstruction
those who contemplate the beauty of teeth
find reserves of strength in paper
the universe is full of parietal space
which explains the softest mouth
that used tongue and knew just when to say something
I the they they know how to feel about
a gentle tug upon the sun
painted a security state
regarding the theft of my friends
and sort of hinted at the time I reached into
we don't know about your life, how can we know?
these growing crystals that grow... on purpose? another day
let the beauty of what you love
be a curved splint
to account for the spelling errors
and plentiful global conspiracies
as flexible
as any wind
1.25.2009
1.24.2009
1.17.2009
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 you can critically engage beyond a very superficial level about Flarf in general. It's unsatisfying to constantly read smart people doing weak critical thinking because they can't be bothered to confront the primary sources and make up their own minds -- and there is a lot of this! I'm challenging you to be a worthy opponent, which is a valuable thing.
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 you can critically engage beyond a very superficial level about Flarf in general. It's unsatisfying to constantly read smart people doing weak critical thinking because they can't be bothered to confront the primary sources and make up their own minds -- and there is a lot of this! I'm challenging you to be a worthy opponent, which is a valuable thing.
1.13.2009
The faux-anomie needle seems to be in the red. In Wristcutters: a Love Story offing oneself results in becoming a Croatian immigrant in a boring northern California afterlife. It winningly fuses the morbid with the cute. In this sprit I feel I should link to Suicide Salaryman.
1.12.2009
Surely different writers have different processes when writing about poetry. But would it be outrageous of me to suggest that actually reading the work that you're expressing opinions about might in fact be an essential element of critical thought?
1.05.2009
12.20.2008
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...
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...
12.05.2008
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
EirÃkur 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
EirÃkur 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
12.30.2007
Look out Steve Evans. Jack Kimball, with late 2007's best essay on poetic ecosytems:
Compare and contrast.
Compare and contrast.
12.27.2007
12.26.2007
12.18.2007
12.17.2007
12.12.2007
12.02.2007
11.30.2007
11.28.2007
Sean Cole on Flarf
And a recording of I'm So Stupid, from Petroleum Hat, with me reading and playing piano, and featuring Adam Lane on bass and John McClellan on Drums.
And a recording of I'm So Stupid, from Petroleum Hat, with me reading and playing piano, and featuring Adam Lane on bass and John McClellan on Drums.
11.19.2007
11.16.2007
11.15.2007
11.12.2007
ICE at The Tank 10.3.07
Claire Chase, flute, Eric Lamb, flute
Nice little black box theater that does a lot of drama so they have good lighting board. Small enough that you could clearly hear the flautists warming up in the back room as the audience filled in. The pre-gig warm-up sounds through the wall just as valid as the actual performance?
Petite, skinny husband and wife (?) duo team with a passionate, dorky stage presence. They looked like wading birds doing a mating dance.
Claire Chase doing Steve Reich, Vermont Counterpoint, solo flute over laptop multi-track flute recording. Solo-over-laptop is rap music style performance, right? Something of that -- a player interacting w/ an invariable source. But I guess the lack of variability is good in both cases -- a grove. Very precise playing from Chase. Amazing how different a flute is from the recording of a flute when they're played side by side. Hearing Vermont Counterpoint loud and live (sort of) I'm reminded of how inevitable the materials and structures sound. Tons of rough, shimmering high end difference tones zipping back and forth between my ear from all the flutes.
Claire Chase, flute, Eric Lamb, flute
Nice little black box theater that does a lot of drama so they have good lighting board. Small enough that you could clearly hear the flautists warming up in the back room as the audience filled in. The pre-gig warm-up sounds through the wall just as valid as the actual performance?
Petite, skinny husband and wife (?) duo team with a passionate, dorky stage presence. They looked like wading birds doing a mating dance.
Claire Chase doing Steve Reich, Vermont Counterpoint, solo flute over laptop multi-track flute recording. Solo-over-laptop is rap music style performance, right? Something of that -- a player interacting w/ an invariable source. But I guess the lack of variability is good in both cases -- a grove. Very precise playing from Chase. Amazing how different a flute is from the recording of a flute when they're played side by side. Hearing Vermont Counterpoint loud and live (sort of) I'm reminded of how inevitable the materials and structures sound. Tons of rough, shimmering high end difference tones zipping back and forth between my ear from all the flutes.
11.06.2007
11.01.2007
See you at the BPC tonight for the Will Alexander benefit, 6:00-8:00.
MARCELLA DURAND
TONYA FOSTER
JOHN HIGH
JOEL KUSZAI
BILL MARSH
JEROME ROTHENBERG
TOD THILLEMAN
RODRIGO TOSCANO
308 Bowery @ Bleeker
MARCELLA DURAND
TONYA FOSTER
JOHN HIGH
JOEL KUSZAI
BILL MARSH
JEROME ROTHENBERG
TOD THILLEMAN
RODRIGO TOSCANO
308 Bowery @ Bleeker
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
