Thankfully: Cinq

LBI Sunsets, like this.

Thankfully: Quatre

I am utterly grateful, thankfully, for the so many amazing poems that I have the pleasure of reading. There are many obscure poets out there who are truly truly brilliant. And most days of the week, their work inspires far more than my more famous contemporaries. Here is an amazing poem by Jaimee Hills. When you find a poem that you wish you had written first, well those are the best finds.

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v7n1/poetry/hills_j/lesson.htm

Thankfully: Trois

Today 4 years ago I met this man. I don't care about cliches, I fell in love with immediately. Then two hours later I crashed my car horribly, almost hurting us both. Today, I am thankful I didn't kill him, and that he still chose to talk to me, even though the cops searched him for drugs. Love you so much Bub Bub!

Thankfully: Deux

Not for the burning animal. Not for the removable chest. Not for the cerulean sky. Not for the grief of figures. Not for the head-less, heart-less, waist-ful-ness. But for beauty that is not easy. For beauty that is difficult. For Dali, thankfully.

Thankfully

Over the next 24 hours I will post numerous images/things/texts/videos of things that I have in my life, thankfully. They all, in some way or anyother, instill joy in me. Here is a picture of the greatest pup in the world. Lollipop, aka LP, is pit/shepard mix that my brother's girlfriend rescued and fostered. Over the last year, she has become a steady member of our family. She is the sweetest, most affectionate dog I have ever met. I love her.

New Apartment

So me and my bub are moving into our new apartment a week from today. This will be our third apartment together. Not because we've been in a relationship for all that long, but because we tend to move quit often because someone (moi) has a tendency to not adapt to new things or give them a chance. I am particularly excited about it for a few reasons. But also, nervous for other reasons:

Pros: We are two blocks from the subway and a 10 min ride to 42nd St.
It's a beautiful pre-war building in a very hip little residential area
We have a brand new kitchen.
The apartment IS NOT, I repeat, NOT IN OR NEAR LONG ISLAND
We are in the same building as my good friend Sara. I smell some good times

Cons: Parking will be atmost an atrocious nightmare every single day.
It is the city, which has city noises 24/7
I always have trouble in new places
It's still kind of far from my family

Oh well. I hope it works out because I can't afford to break anymore leases!

Bite my face and I be yr dove for all time

Todays brilliant writer is Nate Slawson I give you three poems from Diagram. His poems are short, striking, and effective. I love his starkness, his cheekiness, his torque of syntax, and his Creeley-like lack of vowels. Enjoy!

http://thediagram.com/9_5/slawson.html

No Forgiveness Ode

There has been a question running through my mind that has been keeping me awake at night. And that question is: How does a man lose absolutely everything he has, and still continue on. Of course, I could make this personal, but I won't. I could say this man is my father, but I won't. Somewhere in the world there is a man who has lost absolutely everything: his family, his houses, his dignity, his mind. Without a care, it seems. I'm thinking, a man in this situation can't understand his loss. Not can't. But must not understand it. There must be some kind of internal denial that rescues you from understanding the literal loss of everything, the ultimate feeling of loneliness. Just you and a full world of emptiness. May God help a man like this. But what allows me to sleep when this question finally settles is Dean Young's poem "No Forgiveness Ode." It beings:

The husband wants to be taken back into the family after behaving terribly

And then all those little, important reminders:

1. but nothing can be taken back

2. some shrapnel remains in the wound, some mud.

3. The heart needs its thorns

4. Just because you've had enough doesn't mean you wanted too much

And the greatest reminder of all:

5. No Forgiveness Owed

Read the poem in its entirety here: http://www.poetry365.com/2008/12.html

Thank you Dean Young, for a brilliant, brilliant poem and for allowing me to get some sleep.

Tolstoy was right

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

- first line from Anna Karenina

I lose you to the fiction of beginnings

Today's brilliant but obscure writer is Sandra Huber. Sandra is the curator of the online literary magazine Dear Sir, (www.dearsir.org). She was gracious enough to include me in the second issue. What I love most about Dear Sir, is that it's one of the few magazines that publishes work in multiple languages ie: English, German, and French. And not just English translations. There is something very worldly and sophisticated being published next to a poem you know is beautiful, but unreadable. So you read it in that language, as if you knew that language, sounding out the words, making them something known to you. Such poetica! Sandra's poem "Himmel säumend" or "Sive Sky" appears in the first issue of Dear Sir, in German. There is also an english translation published in Ditch,. I will attach both versions. Brilliance. Enjoy!

http://www.dearsir.org/sites_current_issue_writers_1/huber_runge.html

http://www.ditchpoetry.com/sandrahuber.htm

I think the stomach means we cannot love one another properly

So I am in the process of starting an online literary magazine for poetry. And by starting, I mean learning the web basics because I'm completely computer dumb. So I wouldn't expect it until maybe this time next year. But in the meanwhile, I've starting blogging because I really want to share some poets i've found that are published online who are somewhat obscure, but extremely brilliant. I'll try to do a poem a day. Today I give you Catie Rosemurgy and 3 poems she has published in Diagram. She's brilliant. Enjoy!

http://thediagram.com/9_5/rosemurgy.html

I've decided to erase you, almost as a lark

Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.

Joel: I know.

Clementine: What do we do?

Joel: Enjoy it.

Here is a piece of a second during which a jet is not flying nor is it on the ground

I've been a fan of Bob Hicok for a long time. Ever since I stumbled across his poem "Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem." And I've followed him throughout my growth as a writer. I love many of his poems. Hell, I love many poems for so many different reasons. But lately, the poetry i've been studying and reading has been the kind of poetry that raises a mental desire in me. Meaning, something happens in the poem that pleases my mind, not my heart. Whether it be something intellectual, something enigmatic, something illogical. Think Carson. Think Hejinian. Think Stein. I've been swimming in their work. But recently, I stumbled across Bob Hicok's poem "Her my body." It was the first time in a long time, a poem has done something to me both mentally and emotionally, simultaneously. This poem is a snake, wrapped around my mind and, at the same time, squeezing the hell out of my heart.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179252

Rough Zippers

My reading has gone from A to B in the last year, with the distance between A and B being the largest distance imaginable, like mole, my favorite distance. So I guess the distance between A and B is 6.29 times 10 to the 23 power. And though I love the writers at Point A, the writers at Point B are so challenging and intellectual it is taking my work into a level beyond the realm of normal and anything I could have expected from myself. In the past the name "Gertrude Stein" embodied many things. GS is complex. GS is puzzle. GS is nonsensical. GS is ridiculous. GS is fear. At first try, GS is so strange and offputing, an immediate reaction could be to disregard her work altogether. But because I have faith in myself as an intellectual and a poet, wanting to tackle her work was always a goal of mine through graduate school. For me, reading Stein was never uncomfortable, but intensely logical. And in poetry, the logical is not always present. I started with Tender Buttons, an experiment in meaning and syntax divided into three sections: Objects, Rooms, and Food. I began to think of her work as an equation, began to think of myself as a mathematician. Word A plus word B plus word C plus word D equals something with meaning that has nothing to do with the actual connotation of words A through D. So you look at the words differently and you connect them through sound. Sometimes this link equals meaning. Sometimes not. Sometimes it is the lack of meaning that means something. But you will begin to become startled by the preciseness of each image, the obscurity of each change in syntax. You learn how to pay attention to words in different ways you've ever learned. If a word has properties, most of us have been taught only two of them: connotation and denotation. So Stein's work in a way is the deconstruction of these properties. Words are shaken free of their meaning. Words are detached individuals, containing no definable defintion or name. You must look at what surrounds each word, how each word and the next work as bricks to construct something altogether new to language. And after you do all this, you are just beginning to make sense and understand her desire for meaning. It's challenging but rewarding. My latest project includes dialogues, monologues, and tryptychs involving this sort of deconstruction, adopting Stein and Lyn Hejinian's strange syntax, love of adverbs, and intense description. It is my greatest undertaking so far in my career as a writer and my first book manuscript is hundreds of times better for having studied this type of work. I thinking of having T-shirts made: "Je t'aime Gertrude Stein." Pretentious? Probably. Oh well. Read Stein and you will understand.

Yankees!

The yankees won their 27th world championship tonight!

Thank you Mariano. Thank you Hideki. Thank you Jeter. Thank you A-ROD. Thank you Teixeira. Thank you Damon. Thank you Posada. Thank you CC. Thank you Burnett. Thank you Swisher. Thank you Joba. Thank you Cano. Thank you Melky. Thank you Hughes. Thank you Marte. Thank you Giradi! Thank you Pettitte!

I love the Yankees and I love New York.

Even though I prefer Tuesdays...

Wonderful poem by Sandra Beasley:

Love Poem for Wednesday

http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/online/2008/beasley1.html

Don't go, I'll eat you up

There are so many reasons this movie was amazing, but mostly it's because Carol really really closely resembles my boyfriend. Also, they both make growling noises. Aso, they are both a bit tempermental. And also, I love them so.