O'Reilly at FAUX today

Today I am Bill O'Reilly standing alone questioning

Lang Po.  Maybe I've just returned from the White House

Correspondents Dinner with a doggie bag I will take to work

for lunch today. Woof woof! "Maybe Bill O' got himself in so deep

deceiving good men like your dad that he brought the whole context down."

NO, today I would much prefer to be Sheila Murphy, whose prose hybrid

is seriously lovely and factors matter and matterS exactly correctly,

but I worked at FAUX News.  I'd prefer to be Tom Mandel

or Stephen Rodefer, but I attended the WHCD and sat it out

fat and handsome next to newt ginRICH.  Remember RADIO FREE

EUROPE?  I forgot RADIO FREE AMERICA.  I remember

some of the best days of my life when I didn't have television

and lived 1.5 miles from Jack London's house up on the mountain

in Glen Ellen.  I remember when I knew that I was trying

to be funny and when I was telling a joke.  I remember

driving down Central Avenue in Novato and listening

to some Quietist poet on NPR and wishing I could find KPFA

instead.  Do you know that old Quietist tunesy twang when

they hang the pitch at the end of every single line no matter

what the words are THERE [on the page, in clear sight, positioned].

I wrote "a poem" about that called "No Matter" once,

but IT was only about the trope.  IT didn't successfully actualize

so much as a pretense of opacity [although the line breaking tried hard]

or the differance between writing and oral theatrical "Poem Reading."

I remember back when "a poet was a poet" and Quietist feminist poets

were merely females.  That's okay, OK?  But I'd prefer a Sheila Murphy

or an Eileen Tabios or a Carla Harryman or a Cole Swenson

or a Camille Martin or a Chris Murray, quite FRANKLY.  Or

a Stephen Ellis or a Tom Mandel or a Stephen Rodefer or a Catherine Daly,

none of whom I saw at the WHCD.  In fact, I didn't see ANY

good writers there, Thank Heavens!  [I need some filler here, too.]





It was like before TV.  It was like before God.  It was like California.

Labor, us commies day by day, and our "work"

On way to work, most "thought" favors "writing," fantasy

pledges of global allegiance to abstract "Leftist" intellectual stances

disfavoring and dissing "work," real actual physical labor

(typing, installing software from thumbdrives, lifting 21" CRTs)

at "the Plant."  Once arrived, read local newspaper article

about the real and secure jobs my company is creating for skilled labor

and "the stances" backtrack, stumble, reverse to anti-intellectual

[No, of course "a stance" cannot and would not "backtrack" or "stumble"

or reverse or "reverse"; a human would possess the personal

agency to reverse a stance, backtrack, stumble, "reverse"; in fact,

I do it all the time, myself.  How do ya like dem apples, "Reader?"]

and favor "work" that puts food on the table and keeps feelings

in the body (to ONEself), out of the head, which does this dance daily

[if it can be called "a dance" and if a dance can be said TO BE "done"].






In truth, most all "work" sucks and doesn't suck.  That includes most writing

professionally and formally called "his work" and "her work"

the last 20-30 years.  Real work is what most of us outside

of Academia and Entertainment and Art must focus our minds

on for 8+ hours a day, non-stop, and move our bodies and maintain

our health to get paid a so-called living wage for, though the mindless

wearying toil ages us and burns out the "living parts."  Some

professionals would argue that unless a person has the talent

and exerts the energy to land a position in one of the true

professions, he or she should never complain about "choosing"

to work in a factory or at the top of a skyscraper.  They would call

their writing "work" because it's what they do in their leisure

and because they expect to get paid for it.  I've alway had problems

with that -- "getting paid for it," "work," "choosing," "a position in,"

"leisure," "landing a position," "at the top of a skyscraper."

 



Maybe you'd like to Go Fk Yrself, right about now.  Maybe you

would just like for the writer to Go Fk hmself.  Likely.  Likely,

you are one of a couple of hundred good friends who read

Otoliths [today, 04-30-13] and WORK a lot like I do, perhaps

frequently more carefully, and a lot like true others of our silky ilk

who publish their contradictory and quite agreeable writing also in Shampoo

[among a score of others, including score, too]

I would list all of you and all of our Family Matters magazines,

but that would take some heavy ink and better computer programming

and, besides, Kenny Goldsmith's already done it fantastically well.

It's been done already, and it's been done fantastically well.  In our

circles, we try to respect each other by NOT making exact copies

of things that have already been done well and we try to commend

each other by incorporating things we learn from our friends, too.

Round and round the malarkey bushes

You, Steve Tills, cannot meaningfully a-d-d-r-e-s-s politicians

with "poetry" and should not waste bandwidth or paper and

ink pretending...  You, Steve Tills, should a-d-d-r-e-s-s a G.W.

here and a Blair there via, what, open lettters to editors of mainstream

newspapers?  They and the editors would not change or respond.

With direct correspondence to those you would accuse

of "evils" and "sins" and other abstract complaints?  They have agendas

and would not change or respond.  With your silly blog?

It's already been compromised by conflicting desires, writing

poetic matter that doesn't address ANYBODY and writing

pseudo-political rhetoric to people who already share

your political sentiments and want something else entirely.

You, Steve Tills, can pretend to address a G.W. or a Blair

directly and create a fiction envisioning their responses.

So WHAT?  So what does that do exactly?   But little agency

can it possess and enjoy.  And less poetic matter.  Can you prove

that any kind of poetry can possess agency?  Can you

even convince yourself that such so-called agency

in the "world" satisfies your true desires?  You're not sure,

even [handed] that the Language writers manifested any

real agency except in persuading a couple of generations

of avant garde writers that they were on the right track,

and you are on the wrong side of the same track, aren't you,

if you're trying to address new MATTERs with the same readers

in mind.  Look, Dude, and you are definitely a "dude," NOT

a female or a woman, are you or aren't you going to arrive

right back where you started, attempting to do something new,

"trying" to argue again and again that YOUR "a-d-d-r-e-s-s-i-n-g"

points to a very important issue and failing page after page

to demonstrate why or indicate what directions you would go

to locate your resolutions?  Do you really want to conclude

that NO POETRIES TODAY MANIFEST AGENCY and

do you really want to conclude that you, yourself, don't care?





Of course, I cannot conclude any such malarkey as that.  I

do not speak for others, much less the thousands of female others

my doggerel rambling regularly fails to regard with proper authority

and whatever kind of completely different "addressing" that a true

transgender writing would actualize.  I wonder how long this will last.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/24/george-w-bush-wasnt-dumb-but-he-was-still-a-bad-president/

Ezra Klein can get, what, a couple million

"readers" to accept his "lie" [opinion?] that G.W. Bush

was, or is, an intelligent man/U-man.  How

can this BE?  "You," LOOK at the fk-ing name!

Two of the 20th century's greatest thinkers,

one a [if not the] prototypical poet and a male.

The other a prototypical psychoanalyst and a female.

And yet not a single one of U.S. 21st century writers,

Lang Po or "Quietist" or any other in the same sphere

[NOT within the same linear "range"], can get 100

or 1000 readers to accept the "truth" that G.W. Bush

was, and is, like Mrs. Palin and so many of the U.S.

elected RULERS, unequivocally underequipped intellectually

to make ANY decisions affecting Life/Death MATTERs,

particularly any that apply to the entire statistical probability

whether organic life will SURVIVE for our progeny's "World."

How can this BE?  "WE" are not altogether responsible

for this ultimate irony.  We American poets, that is.

The entire education system has failed our country and the world.

Our systemic economic processes have failed our education system.

And our human JOKE of a government has failed our entire species.

And our species has unforgivably failed the other loyal organic life forms

hellishly overdetermined by their poor, headless instinct, and OURS,

except that we U-mans have sacrificed that same instinct for earthly

pleasure and painless delusions of "material paradise."   Umm,

yeah, it's probably about time to revamp ALL religion and politics

that choose Death over Life.  The "fittest" can collectively change

the wealthiest and the most powerful.  Probably.  Maybe.  Who

the heck knows what will be.  This is, of course, just small town doggerel.





This is VERY weird.  Where did I get the "100 or 1000" figure?  What would that even mean? THAT is the kind of "thing" that a good writing would focus on -- how one's mind, or "mind," would have launched such a ludicrous statement.  In fact, OBVIOUSLY, almost ALL good 21st century writers would easily get tens of thousands to accept such a "truth."

Pretty screwy writing, "thinking."  Must concentrate on "something else."

Then, today, noticed some headline about Tony Blair saying G.W. had/has "genuine integrity," and that drives me crazy, too.  NOT so much because I despair seeing one of the powerful advocating/apologizing for one of the other powerful but because my own despair feeling so ambivalent engaging in the lame rhetoric game in the first place dejects me deeply.  Who would one aim to "persuade?"  One cannot affect the Blair's or Bush's minds and hearts and psyches.  And one needn't preach to the choir (other poets).  And none of that makes any difference about anything.  Why write that kind of crap?  Should withdraw from those impulses to write or notice my own confusion and ambivalence and approach it from some different angle.  Or approach something else altogether.  Perhaps.

Yet to come

They are dead, now.  And the rest of [NOT “us”] you

is, say, “yet to come.”  So what.  So what delays? What

is the wait; the weight is on YOUR shoulders now. Will

“you” shift to “a reader” thus rendering [surrendering] this

to much too much wordage weighing out your options,

weighting the waiting so high that it causes the sky to fall.

Will “you” direct “this” to “readers” or to that which can

only be read for the first time in your own history.  If

it is their history [but of course it is everyone's so-called his-

story, to some considerable and some inconsiderate

and some impossibly considered extents], it is already history

and “your history” automatically comes after the wealthy

Bush and Co. have rewritten everything that they could use

for their own time being.  If “you” are the focus. If "you" is

the focus.  If "You" is "the reader."  If "the reader" is "absent"

at the time of.  If "the reader" is absent-minded

and cannot think his or her own thoughts, must

purchase others' copies of others' thoughts.  If "you"

really think your time being will be included in their time





being, actually, "if you really think that your time being

will be included," actually, if I really think that my time being.

Weak and confused

Yeah, seriously, all of this is really pretty




weak, Steve.  I think that you can do much better.

I think that you could at least be honest with yourself.

[Perls would have tagged me "Topdog" and you "Underdog,"

although I doubt that he ever watched the TV show

we watched in the late 1960s some Saturday mornings

when we weren't reading "Chip Hilton" and Jack London

or playing basketball at the small school's athletic program,

but why does anybody need to know that.  They

were young and had paper routes and loved "Kazan" and "Baree"

before Kennedy was elected once, too, Yes?]

Good, glad we got that out of the way.  For a change.

What had you wanted to plug it in for?  Yourself, anyways?

You can't do anything about that here.  "Why not," you ask.

"I don't know exactly, but I'll tell you why not anyhow."  Oh,

you will, "will" you?  Oh, you will, will you?  Oh, okay, knock

yourself out!  "Yes, the reason that you cannot do anything about

that here is this: I want to write something very real, something

that requires framing of words so that the composition neither

implies that it targets poetry readers nor actually masquerades

as that kind of language game.  I want for IT to break up

all the mould (yes, pun on break the mold) that attaches

to every "object" announcing itself as "poetry" since 1923,

or maybe even 0023, and (here's a kicker) I do not want to FORM

mere cut-up or cut-out post-modern obscurity text.  I don't

know, thus, what to do to produce what I really want or think

that I want (or how to do that or even necessarily why

I want to do that) and I have no desire to slight or ridicule

any of the 100s and 100s of good writers (and friends)

who have done the other things (quite extremely well)

for a long time now."  I'll be honest with you.  I think

that you are flat out crazy and confused and pretentious.

"I know.  And I agree.  I just still want to do that."  Why?

What's your name, anyways, Sisyphus?  I thought

you were calling yourself "Topdog."  I have no idea

why you want to be such a pest, either.  It probably won't matter.

Address Unknowable

Bill Clinton will be with Jimmy ["the Homewrecker," today?] and Precedent

Obama ["0bama," today?] to commemorate Dubya, and I imagine Clinton's cock

was all about the length and circumference of a cigar and looked

and smelled like a bleached white stogie, too.  Why hasn't he or O

got the balls to skip the formalities of the filthy wealthy

just once in their glorious, ridiculous, unanswerable careers?

Our once glorious "Democracy" has regressed that far back?

C'mon, Bill, Obama I can understand, he's a sitting duck,

Old Jimmy is pretty dang old and probably understandably scared of Death

approaching, but you, of all people, so truly smart and almost

sassy, couldn't you just once [NOT more?] show some new wisdom

teeth and make some excuse or another that everybody would have

to understand?  C'mon, Bill, there's a dangling good enough chance that Hil

will get elected either way.  Snub the boy prince and his family's

entire "sociopathic" legacy. (How is he any different from Kim Jong-un?)

Send a message to all of femenity and Umenity that a new day

dream dawns and at least some of the powerful will

no longer bray the fRame anymore.  C'mon, Bill, you can NOT do it!






But of course, who would read this, and how does one pick

one's chattles.  It's a kind of funny papers, a kind of caricature

of the real insanity thing.  We can poke pins at all the smoke

[in the Stacks of needles and hay and tons of the mule's "History" lesions]

and the QUIT CIGS commercials on the TV that "we" don't need anymore

if the Koch brothers buy out the Tribunal news and roll up an industry

to corner the market in 4/20 Colorado, but who do the Libraries

of Regress and Regret fool with the faux-political mess/message you

S. Whatsyourname again, whichimy-recallit, even Code Pink

still functions on fortran mod in the Age of Letters to the Disco Editors.





This is not Language Podiatry.  It's a left foot in the mouth.

It's a linguistic sobriety.  Gee, Cheese Wiz, G.W.'s above

"psychiatry," take a pill and call the foot doctor in the mooring

of your feeble digital metrics, I'm just fleecing my gloss.

Even nonsense Donald trumps such hairless hardee har har.

This could get worse before it gets bitter.  Gits.  Gitmo.  Not Satchmo, too!

Scratch Golfer Moe Howard.  "Where's the meeting of the minds?  Cloud Room 9?"

That should have been Linguini Society, but why insult Pasta.

This is the balm before the Sturm and Drang.  Shit, if it was not real Perfidy,

you'd find a toy in the Ricin Brand that goes Snap, Crackle, Plop.





I'd kind of like a cigarette right about now (for the first time in 5 years).

Something that I ate at McDonald's this morning?   Sausage McMuffin

from the dollar menu and Large coffee at $1.08 ironically a best deal

in the country.  There are so many contradictions.  Or one sees it

that way some days and just has pun with it.  It is not Perfect.  That's

a curse, as Good Fritz frequently shared with us.  Forgive Yourself, already!

What are you stupid?  Everything is NOT ALWAYS ABOUT what

U2 are supposed to think or write.  Relax!  Go away, "Reader!"

"Make them go away!"  NOT a bad mood.  It was supposed to be half-decaf.

It probably WAS half-decaf.  You want to think and write.  I want

to think and write.  There is no law that means one must address politicians





the same way one would address real writers or oneself or real thinking.

You don't have to start any bubbles with your own nuisance.  You

and I, we are just breathing together.  I want to take my bad breath away.

We are just teething together.  I want to bequeath my last cakes today.

I want to fake my crass fleece today.  We are just about to gather seething. 





All a waste of real words, really, after I think about it later on. The sounds,

some of them, are fun.  "Crass fleece," especially, to me...   Okay, too,

if it's just me.  Could easily be "crashed bleach" or "clashed speech," 2-three.

Just as easily. But but but but but but but but head heads ["or tails"

is "an habitual," so this obviously isn't addressed to Barrett Watten,

who would, I believe (perhaps wrongly, but I won't get my weak hopes up),

NEVER pen such trashy chicken scratch, but I, Steve Tills, am not up to it,

writing the real thing, for the moment; nor should a B.W. be imposed upon

ever to write such slop screech, either], today I cannot reach my favorite beaches.

U or yer golf swinging

You don't have a simple "Go To" golf swing, particularly with long irons

from difficult and problematic lies, either.  In fact, I can begin almost any

"writing" unit, declarative sentence or a-grammatical fragment, with the pronoun

you and come out of it okay and at least go into it with self-assurance

and confidence, or at least have a good deal of private FUN and pleasure

and intrigue with "it," but "your" golf swing is a lot like the way David

Feherty describes Jim Furyk's, "an octopus falling out of a tree,"

except in your own case, there are 6 or 7 octopuses and you have no idea

until it's completed which one will make contact with the ball, if any. 

Why is that, and why is IT that you can take control of a sentence unit

right straight from the "get-go" or that I can take control of "you"

and make excellent contact one way or another, but "you" cannot

make excellent contact with a golf ball REGULARLY unless it's teed up

and you are swinging your driver.  Why is that the most reliable club

in your bag, even more reliable than a pitching wedge or putter?  But the real

question is this:  I can stay centered in almost any golf swing

only by addressing it as "you," and YOU, my golf swing, rarely "work"

to good result separate from the me that is constantly "observing" you,

so how can I somehow flip-switch the habitual frame, BECOME the so-called "you"

that I am observing.  I would bet EVERYTHING that Grenier, who once played

college golf to a remarkably solid 3-handicap, never had the problems I have

with "you," my golf swing, and kept IT short and sweet, like his poming,

which never appears, from one perspective (mine, at the moment) to suffer

from a kind of mind/body split that I love to play with in writing and love

/hate to "play with" when golfing, when swinging a golf club and "trying"

to make good, consistent contact.  Why don't you just SHORTEN your golf

swing, "you?"  Why don't I just ask Bob Grenier for a golf lesson or a series

of lessons?  Why don't you put your fantasy of Mr. G's golf (40 years ago) and scrawl

poming (today) back in the bag and simply shorten your fk-ing swing?

Why don't I use the same Long, Wristy, Driver swing that makes excellent CONTACT

with the #1 club for swinging with the others #3 through wedge?  Because you,

yourself, would like to really play like Furyk, not merely flail at the ball like a tree

full of squids.  Why don't I figure out precisely how to swing a #3 like a #3

and a wedge like a wedge?  Hogan and real pros swing ALL OF THE CLUBS THE SAME.

[They also play and practice every day, whereas you and I only get out there about

once a month these years.  That is the real thing.  To play and practice Every Day.

Then maybe you and I can become one solid swing.  [That's WRITING, Dickhead.]

I'm seriously talking about somehow seriously changing the approach to swinging

my golf clubs, particularly the long irons and fairway woods.  Maybe "YOU" should

be the ball [NOT as in the Caddy Shack joke "Be the ball," either], but as in BEING

the thing that I approach with my swinging of club rather than BEING "the swinging"

separate from my body of which the club is just an extension, as opposed to

an extension of a tangle [with] of mixed metaphors.  The "split" is between the person

swinging and the act of swinging, after all, and NOT between "words" and user of words. 

Golf is a human body CONTACTING an inanimate object.  It's not a human mind

using animated objects to CONTACT purely theoretical and infinitely interpretable

mental experience or impenetrable physical reality.  [And they are NOT really animated

objects, except in the relatively pejorative sense.]  And, as in the fact that golf IS

so very "mental" or para-mental [NOT parenthetical?] or maybe mentally ill, I am just thinking

that completely changing the exact approach to making contact with the golf ball,

itself, instead of "making contact with your fk-ing body/mind experience

before and during swinging" might just change this or that lifelong obsession

and "the results."  I "swing," after all, AS IF I must make a note of every nuance

within those 1.5 seconds, instantly, each and every instance.]  [Umm, yeah, you do,

but you are supposed to be focusing on your so-called "awareness."]  Is there another

way to focus?  What are the means for focusing -- feel of hands, feel of body

and posture and balance, sight of eyes, that's about all..  Your eyes are almost routinely

focused on an imaginary "feeling" that you're looking for, NOT an image

in your mind of "the target," as most better players' eyes are.  Or at least, as Nicklaus' eyes

were, on a target 2-5 feet ahead on your ball-path.  You are constantly "looking for"

"that Feeling."  Shouldn't you be "looking" AT THE TARGET, but visualizing the desirable

flight of the ball, NOT via your peripheral vision the shaft being parallel with the target line

as the hands and arms (and the shoulders?) "take the club away?"  I really don't fk-ing know.]

But it was VERY GOOD out on the lunchtime 1 hour break today swinging with FOCUS

on "the body," particularly noting if not "causing" the left shoulder to wrap [NOT merely

"word-wrap," HA!] under the chin and then the body, NOT just the hands and arms,

unwinding down and through and around "where the ball is, was, and," this resulted

in something very close to the old "connected" coiling swing that I knew once

35 years long ago and ever so briefly, a swing that I have never been able to permanently

re-access since going back to "school" that fall and "chasing girls" or some kind of lust

and "love" and then quitting the golf game "for good" two-three-four years

during the "Commie-period."  A real Zen guru would easily be able to do it better

than a caveman like me, full of words and theories, when ultimately the real

swing is ALWAYS outside the constrictive, abstract world of WORDS

and actually there are very good pros who could easily teach me to JUST DO IT

once again, probably.  But that's all writing, again.  The real swing is always there,

immediately accessible as soon as one loses one's proverbial "mind," that is,

but only Hogan, they say, and maybe the real idiot savant [Ron, your mentioning

the so-called Aspergers distracts, but doesn't detract, from your real beauty and truth --

you never needed to mention that, I said to K.W. in private, but no sweat, R.S., you're always

good enough by me, too, ALWAYS], Moe Norman ever truly "OWNED their golf swings,"

so, Dude, you can only rent it for brief periods and the rates are clear and simple:

Hit balls, Play rounds, Enjoy the moments; that's good enough.  And the key, the change

in FOCUS, the frame of the attention, the different a-d-d-r-e-s-s-i-n-g of "the mind"

with different parts of "the body."  Well, then, what will it be TOMORROW.  Fk-it,

back at the type[of]writer, how about just enjoying what was good enough hours ago.

Some days anyone, even a caveman, can find WHATever puts the mind into the fluid motions.

If I did authentically separate/isolate or isolate and separate

you from "I"/me, Reader [NOT "Dear Reader" at this moment,

although the sentimentality of that IS FELT honestly, at the moment,

this moment that I am handwriting (therefore that moment, as n-o-w

I'm typing/retyping)], then "the poetry" would end

and my psychological health would improve considerably  OR

my psychological health would improve considerably and

"the poetry" would end [what I, Steve Tills, like and wish to call

a "poetry," anyways], and I, myself, would gain a tad more real

agency in my life, not others' lives.  I'd probably even get

a better job (or quit working and "working" altogether).





It occurs to me this morning, Saturday the 20th, that





I cannot finish this, that, sentence at the moment.





The poetry, "a" poetry, word it a zillion different ways

(at any given moment), would end (or would not end)

or it would turn over to some of the other projects

(Helen Keller, Cubicle 22), I suppose.  I don't know.





I do not like "writing poetry," as it were (or as it was)

or as it is (with me).  I like to just plain WRITE.





Even if one follows the lead of the Language Poets, one

slides off into neatherworlds trying (and as Jim November

said back in 1977-1978 [about when they were hitting their stride,

come to think about it], "people who try are trying") to apply

or incorporate [NOT incorporate] some obscure "something"

one "learns" from the great Zukofsky or the great Gertrude Stein

or the great Lorine Niedecker or, closer to my own time and "mind"

or tastes or capacity or wants, the great Larry Eigner or the great Frank O'Hara

or the great Rae Armantrout.   Which is all great.  But...





That's all for this morning.  I, myself, just like to write.  Like the great David Bromige, 2.
















Oh, AGAIN, the very best poetries would NEVER mention, and rarely even allude to, "poetry."  That's my opinion about a VERY MATERIAL poetry, one that foregrounds an extremely dense and opaque materiality. My only example of the moment, my Japanese friend (who knows who he or she es).  It may not be something that can exist.  And then, come to think of it, perhaps Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons approaches IT, too.  I can't say, yet.  I'm not there yet (if in fact I even can get there someday or will continue wanting to).

Even the most astute metaphor and metonymy aims to do

if it merely a-d-d-r-e-s-s-e-s "the poetry community"

or, more narrowly, the U.S. Poetry [Corporation] "Community."

Poetry that "Poetry" in the 21st Century achieves scientific or truly social.

It achieves advancement in personal careers.  Hence, "anti-social,"

actually, "nothing but self-aggrandizement?"  Does an Ashberry

address other/others' matters?  Aesthetic Pleasure.  Nothing wrong

there.  Stylized psycho-social and highly.    Sophistication.

There may or there may not be a truly "material" writing.  [i.e., a writing that  ]




"Directly proportional relationship between interest rates on inheritance tax

[say one inherits the Olson/Duncan/Creeley estate] and incidence of wrongfully imprisoned

minority [writers? NO, c'mon, that's silly here at the moment] down to the penny

on the ground, that coin minted with honest Abe's profile, Mom always used

to pick them up, "a penny earned is a penny saved," so I still do 'til this very day,

to love my mother (and then they are useful at the end of the month).  All of this

kind of beautiful balderdash addressed to readers of poetry -- What's the MATTER?





The better [perhaps the best] poets will target the form that the best of the past

have advanced to a certain cultural, even political, optimization/improvement,

I suppose.  Some others may target extrapolated endpoints imagined to become

essential in the most statistically likely "futures."  All good aims, I am sure

[I believe], but the underlying target [target] still reduces to "poetic achievement,"

I, full of at least as much feces as anyBODYelse two hours after dinner of Baloney

(money's tight this week, mortgage week 1) and cheese sandwich [on whole grain bread,

but not home baked with recipe from 1970's Laurel's Kitchen book], roasted

Brussels sprouts and steamed broccoli, meatloaf for wife's "entrée" [from Pittsford

Wegman's $6 dollar meal] and Tiramisu dessert, including blackberries and raspberries,

our favorites.  So what's it worth, seriously, on April 18th, 2013?  Bob, you worked hard

as any super-scholar putting together the study of your four most highly accomplished

poets (of course, Stein, Joyce, Pound, and Zukofsky) would and that does cover a lot

of hallowed ground, even if the map is NOT the territory.  Will we ever locate

the fountain of youth in our murderous vocabularies?  I, myself, could never

read into Literary History such a sublime historical revision.  I cannot even, as Hogan did,

"dig it out of the earth," a repeatable swing to maintain a solid sub-3 index (handicap).

But Joyce was a [NOT pardon the chauvinist/homophobic slop, "a pussy"] prude

compared to Miller, who idolized Lawrence, but these are ALL BESIDE THE POINT.

There is no point.  Yet.  I just want to know.  What's the point?





For that [metre] matter, what was Joyce's point.  Um, yeah, yeah, of course, "forge

in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race" or what not.

We are beyond conscience now.  [I do NOT mean that 1-2 million sociopaths

possessing neither "souls" nor "consciences" and controlling the other 7 billion

of us other fellow human citizens [not to even mention, umm, you know which ones]

who DO possess appropriate "collective Unconscious" connection with, umm,

you know which ones, is good or good enough thaeng.  [I mean not humans.]






But the most important thing to take from GS, JJ, EP, and LZ is [umm, NOT

their genius].   [It's their refusal to reduce themselves to a nationality.

And we can ALL do them [proud] one better.  We can, of course, refuse

to reduce ourselves to one species.]  My my, I am one fk-ing boring fk.

Yet again pretending I've got some sort of clue for addressing serious writers.

I don't.  I really truly don't.  My interest is in "following where the egotism goes."

One watches, hears the beginning, "But the most important thing to take from

blah blah blah," and then "let it get on the page," and THEN chew it up.  Really.




And screw it, anyway.  Sure enough, I'm right back where I started: If writing

addressing readers, particularly literary readers [and even more particularly, particular

readers], is WORTHLESS (but the best poets, just to "stay interested," WILL often

ADDRESS high achieving others and friends) how can readerless writing come into being?

Anonymity, of course.  And Extreme Objectivist writing.  And Extreme Collaboration.

And Détournement.  But things cannot be that simple, can they?  Maybe it's the readers
 
who must take control.  There is much more.  There must be.  A bottom to the bottom.














This will need and hopefully soon get a good bit of revision.  The entire first block/section comes from 
very quickly scribbled notes that Ihave not been able to quite transcribe yet.  Thus there are words missing.
In fact, I am not sure what words are missing. 

What is the real matter with you, I?

Back in "the old days" [about 2 months ago], you

would have reached for some book or another

for inspiration right about now, thick in sticky shit you

would prefer to turn into "poetry" or some kinship

with such.  Now, you want to see how far you go

by yourself, don't you, I?  How far away from what

it doesn't matter so much.  Who do you want to satisfy, I?

Your projection of your introjection of the notion

of solipsism?  Or what you find looking into your heart or

your heartlessness or the other infinite issues about HOW

WHAT affects this reader and THUS effects change

in that reader, what is the real matter with you, I?






Actually, I've run this entire thread into the ground.

Probably, mostly, anyway.  But even right there, who

would I have written that to and why?  I'm not quite writing

it to myself.  Actually, you're writing it to the page

and you would like to make a pun [I won't call it "cheap," judge

"it"] that it has run aground.  Okay, you've done that.  Now.







You can write ANYTHING into the page [and frequently will].

I am the good one.  I'm not a child.  I've outlasted several of your/

OUR whiles.  I needn't "write Poetry."   I like to write.  With you

and you and even those "Reader" and "reader" persons, per-

sonifications on their usual June-July-August vacations. "Don't worry

about me, Hoss!   It's alright.  Don't you worry about a thing, Steve."

I guess that "you" would like for me to get serious.  About what,

my friend?  The eight-year-old kid, his mother and sister and father.

The several hundred thousand innocent victims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The carnage year after year.  That misery and insanity has certainly seemed

to me to have multiplied in direct proportion with the redistribution of wealth.







I feel terribly sorry for all of those who cannot stop themselves.  You "feel"

terribly sorry.  Ummm, is that all?  Is that, hmmm, ALL, "Writer" Guy?

Let me ask you a question:  Is T.S.Eliot completely irrelevant TODAY

in the wake of yesterday's marathon in Boston where "some of the 'wealthy'"

have time to study him in depth, in the word wasteland of your feelings

for those who have nothing better to do than debate whether your writing

should address fewer current events or create more current events?  Whippee-Shit! 

You've roughly reiterated some on-going recurring ironies about

whether Mr. Gioia matters, the 8-year boy matters, the relatives in Iraq matter,

Mr. Boener matters, your own clichés of matters matter.  And right about now,

let's see you throw in some current quasi-self-effacement like "Take me out

to the Ballgame!  Batter up!  Matter 0."  In truth, you're just passing time

at your desk as you read a much better essay by Richard Eskow at Campaign

for America's Future reviewing a current event and [NOT dragging in] [NOT padding]

smartly overlaying his thread with stitches of Eliot that are neither

disingenuous nor overwrought, like two of your own most current issues. 

In truth, you're just passing time.  Honestly, I have NO problem with that,

but I'll capitalize the negativity, anyways.  My my hey hey therapist

said I'd have tedious days like this, turning misplaced self-criticism

into a minor attention form until I let go of that craft I practice

all hours into the day job. All you do is complain about things.

Why don't you actually DO SOMETHING!  And immediately I answer

the call, "but that's ALL 'poetry' is, a long history of 'complaints' about

itself."  For Christ's sake, you would have been equally ineffectual

in your life if you had never written a single line or made a linebreak

attempt to resemble "poetic thought."  And "therapy" IS NOT poetry.

Yeah, well poetry ain't therapy, either, Thank Fk-ing Gawd, dammit!





IT isn't physical therapy, either.  Your back is so cramped from sitting

on your word hatcher that you can hardly walk straight or stand up for

yourself.  No, Eliot hasn't got your back bone.  He moved to London

for a career in banking.  Miller wrote Pound a cover letter and resumé

outlining how writing makes money make poetry, but I have to theenk

it landed on Lloyd Blankfein's desk.  You'll have to stop rhyming spine with whine.

I wake up in the middle of the night

I wake up in the middle of the night

and realize that I did not in fact call Andy Warhol

"Butt-Fk," after all.  I had called him "Fk-nut."

The former, sadly, sadly, a homophobic slur,

for which I felt, and still feel, guilt and self-loathing.

Maybe that was the point. It is not funny.  It could

be, I suppose.  Especially if I had the "will" (which

Lowen called an anti-"body" psychological defense)

[or maybe it was Nietzsche or Perls or someone else, doesn't matter]

but I don't have the will (tonight) or even the desire,

either.  Partially because it just seems like very bad taste

and partially because the horrible event at the Boston Marathon

dulls one's spirit and partially because I had already felt enough

shame for the kinds of "class inferiority" that someone like me

must endure for a lifetime, anyhow.  IT will take more "work."

Sheesh, T-A-L-K ABOUT "class"

IT occurs to me, Steve Tills, that I, Steve Tills

[did you get the name, Sheesh!],

used what is, now come to think of it,

several days late, a homophobic slur in referring

to Andy Warhol -- "Butt Fuck" -- Sheesh, T-A-L-K

ABOUT showing a sometimes hopeless lack of class.

To my friends both LGBT and simply better disciplined

and to any of Andy Warhol's friends, family, and more

sufficiently caring and careful, yet again, I apologize

for my inexcusable bad writing.  Ditto, missing the whole point

of making Art out of everyday American objects.





I guess that if I did have to "share" my writing,

the admission of stupidity would be what I'd prefer

to foreground.  Kind of difficult to "make fun

of anyone" other than MYself after that egregious error.

The rest is bs

Your so-called "thinking" has run out of passion or

perhaps it has run out of "passion," and you are back

to your same "poetry" tricks, laying the responsibility

of the second person in charge on me, the ever resilient

speaker's typist person.  Actually, the so-called "passion"

has slipped into past-time mode out there on the field

where you hit golf balls at lunch and worry worry worry

that Arnold Palmer and Greg Norman will read your blog or,

worse, your family will, as they too LOVE the two workers'

life work advancing themselves from workers' class to owners'

agency, which is far outside the entire class system,

and you do not want to bother any of them or ask them

directly if they could "change" just a little.  Change what?

What would you ever really want to change or "change?"

You don't want them reading this and you don't want to darken

any of the stars that shine, do you?  I do know who you habitually

must imagine reads what [as] you write.  It's NOT Arnie or Greg

or Jack or Phil.  To approach communicating with those

individuals, an individual and direct method, human to human,

would be the most honest and effective.  The rest is bs

and rather annoying.  It's ME.  I am the only one you want

to imagine reading WHAT you write.  You're a very, very private

person.  And that IS Okay.  You DO WANT to write poetries,

several kinds, but NOT HERE.  Here, you want to address ME

and MY small matters of the mind and conscience, temporal "matters"

mostly, and they recur day after day after day, and I don't know why.

If "it" BE only "truth," no bEaUtY, things can get ugly.

If "it" BE only "truth," no bEaUtY, things can get ugly.

Pretty not so pretty ugly.  Bad mouthing Arnie and Jack

and Greg and Phil even though U love that game.  What IS

IT worth?  I could work in a hospital and deliver truth every single day.

Quiet

I have never felt more alive than I do moments like this

quiet in the car parked at the far north corner

of WPGC and hearing my dog Andrew, and myself, breathing

as we look out at the wide spread of golf holes

and, I, "look" back also in time at the memories from this luxurious

paradise in my life.  Why would I be writing this truth

for any other "reader," and who or what poses this question.

Why do I need to ask OR answer that question.  I want

"to share" one of the only truths that I have to share?

IT cannot BE realized without the mirror of human others

present or imagined?  Ratcliffe approaches the SAME place

and space daily, notes only the very slightest modifications

in what he sees and hears each time/instance.  His is TRUTH.

Undeniably.  He cannot speak for others about Kim or Cheney

or Hitler or some other turd-head  "being" "sociopathic."

That is a kind of thing "we" can only direct "them" to debate?

But it isn't a fact; it's more a challenge, and the challenger cannot see

any game time if s/he fails to ever purchase a ticket to the game.  Obviously.

Do I want to write anything that I can chew on.  It would be far more

physical and material.  "It" would, would it?  [I'm writing to a reader.  Again

and again.  Why?  Why the incessant addressing [of pretend interest]?

I know.  I cannot get out of the car and swing my golf clubs and be

alive in that real world.  "Poetry."  What are one's terms?  "It speaks to,"

"It is informed by," "It resonates with," "It embodies," "It instructs," "It

entertains," And it speaks to "power."  Or, say, it "firesides the heroic

wealth of hall and bower."  It does so many different things. I want

to just throw up.  La-di-da, La-di-da, La-di-da. Words and words.]
 




The further I get from "Lit," the closer I approach it,

that which blends me with a/[the] only real world

through which my selves' truths may be contacted.

Private codes last night at 4:30 a.m., Slather, blather

U10:07, tell me the real reason that you would "never" write
or complete a screenplay or a novel!




U10:19, you would never write or complete
a screenplay or a novel, would you?




U10:22, I would never write or complete anything.




U10:23, I am not sure that I would ever write or complete

a screenplay or a novel.  Or that I wouldn't.  Who's asking?





"Would you ever write or complete a screenplay or a novel?"

"Why would I? Why waste the time?"

"Why are you asking such a preposterous question

in the first place?  Who the fk sits down and writes a whole

fk-ing novel?  Novels are written by blokes

who want to make money from their writing;

all I'm interested in is taking care of myself, my

family, and my friends, and writing a few things

that I can enjoy and get some [reward] REWORD for.





Those who have possessed themselves of reasonable fear

of $$$$$$$ but not succumbed to their fear or it --

Ellsberg, Mandela, Thoreau, and millions of women, you

turd habituation.   NOT Gandhi, King, Lennon, and millions

of women [c'mon, YOU, get out of there and join the human race already!]





DDJ on DWjr.  Cocaine, it goes down in a Floridian place.  DDJ's buddy

on the son's yacht did the time.  DWjr's old man got the adult aged

sob off the plank.  NH got sent up for 4 years hard but was likely

protected in there.  Another time, the brat parks the Lamborghini

in the employee's parking lot next to their Chevelles and Dodge Darts.

The old man makes him park his silly babe magnet off the property lines.





You believe that you have enough friends.  You should NEVER recommend

that others young and unempowered take the risks, either.  IMMORAL

and COWARDLY and FLAT OUT WRONG.   DDJ also told the story

about the local $$$$$$$ buying his kid an Excavation Biz to keep him

off the real premises and then the Business thrived.  These fellows KNOW

that money corrupts, too, in their own ways.  Maybe his wearing Republican

Uniform is just a front.  Why do so many people tell me this stuff.

They want me to pass it on?  They tell me "secrets."  They trust me

with them or they [underestimate me] figure I don't know what to do

with certain information.  Or won't.  Am I a truth-teller?  Is that WHAT

they see in me?





Actually, I've been completely WRONG about certain guesses, too.

What is the poet's TRUE CALLING?  To tell/reveal/determine

the Truth?  Or to explain how best to form and frame it?  And then

what is any given pomer's TRUE CALLING?  To tell (reveal)

[unveil], actually determine the truth or to explain (or "update")

how best to form and frame it?  Put IT, this way and some will jump

(with joy) the bones in the old closet: "The Dorn and Beat pack outed

truth and the Lang Pomers focused on 'Form,' perhaps particularly

the forms and frames that expose lying and treachery and injustice

and systemic untruth and deceit in the [mostly American-English

speaking] signifying patterns, habits, compulsions, and power structures."





But is that a false dichotomy?  In fact, it's such an easy one to bulldoze

into a heap of money, stature, and pure shit.  I do believe that some have

much further to go in determining TRUTH and revealing "Truths."

I do believe that too much "money" has been made by those who "master"

style and turn their nose up away from substance.  But how much "substance"

can boys and girls from the Harvards and Yales make themselves privvy to

in the first place?   The "dirt" is, well, "down in the dirt."  The BEATS,

don't they make a pretty panhandler's penny romanticizing "the down

and the dirty," though, too?  What deeds a Dorn does missing the point

about LGBT or a Baraka missing his own bigotry or a Ginsberg taking advantage

of younger "students," and the list goes on and on until the end: they

are all fighting EACH OTHER that they can get their cute little paws on

AS IF it's WrestleMania and "he" who garners the most belts makes

the most Male Anthropological "God" almighty R-E-P-U-T-A-T-I-O-N.





For What?  The object is TRUTH, not "regard."

Oh, the glorious pissing fights of youth, Old Boys?

"Who's keyboard is bigger and more ergonomic,

mine or yours, Ernest?  Don't matter, F. Scott,

I've been going premature, if at all, and Quit Drinking!"





The Lang Pomers ain't got the groceries on DW,

[but I know a guy because I'm Italian].  [Half, dickhead!]

And they couldn't trash the brass like D.E. because D.E. WAS

a member of the band.  And Dorn and Co. cannot

reveal "the Real" if they never cowboyed up

to drop their hardware at the Ok Ok corral.

They say everybody's got a share of the truth,

but what does that mean, we're ALL INVESTED

in it or divested of it?





The Bullshit GUY fears "truth," too, especially

the sort the sordid can buy since the criminals

and the rest of the Tri-lateral crew's coup of 2000-2008.

I must protect the Michael Moores and the Krugmans

and the Jon Stewarts and the Gabby Giffords and

the Rachel Maddows.  That's the truth.  Fk the Pulitzer

Prize Fights.  That's Kidd Rock and Cat Scratch Fever.

Let me tell ya an old story about "Carlton Cheston,"

a true and secret one from some wise guys who

actually knew him back in the original day...

Want to hear another about the snow in A.P.'s

head covers returning from Mexico in the 1960s?

Listen.  One word, two syllables, LISTEN.

Then "Flip 'em!"  Of course, "Reader," you

needn't wait until Big So&so from "here"

or Big So&so from "there" gives you a scoop.

Both here and there are all kind truths, "they reveal

by WHAT they don't frame and package, too.  You,

"You," read the gift into the package, you can.

Ummm, the bad humans, whatevers

You are here, you know, Steve Tills,

and making more than small talk, as you have

for so many years now I am never sure

who is who anymore.  The talk, as always,

is too, too big to be small poetry and big

poetry is too tall to be raw thought.  What

do you think about that without writing

IT on white space to read your mind, my

mind, a kind mind, G. Gudding re-minds,

a too kind mind [once in youth], mindful,

but none of this is carefully planned by good

chance procedures or logrhythmic restraint

to constrain spontaneity OR "habituation," hence,

a bad risk or a good risk or both.  You know,




Reader, that the corporate prisons here, "they"

are no less corrupt than the ones in the North

and the South Koreas, and throughout Southeast

Asia and South America and not so Far-elsewhere

the inmates of Poverty must sell their organs

or be forced to contribute to the Harvests

that will serve the second cousins and third world

friends of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.  No wonder

that so many of us are scared all the time?  But

seriously, the genes are still the same throughout

the entire species' history, so will the many children

ever really let the older sister or older brother bully

their moms and dads, NO, the fittest will survive

and those modern day Nazis will succumb to OUR

relentless communication and family connections.

In sum, just POINT THEM ALL OUT.  We can watch

and reprimand them together; they cannot stop the whole 99%

of the rest of the gene pool from sticking close to the other

99.9% of organic matters helpless and threatened by the bad humans.

Critical Thinking class issues

Quite frankly, I believe it is immoral

to "teach poetry."  Everybody knows that Mr. Pound

said that there is no money in it and it

may even land one in a kind of Debtors Prison.

Who would want to make a living teaching

the wealthy to go to jail?  [Actually, that's not a bad

idea, but seriously] who thinks it makes perfect sense

to teach ANYTHING other than "Critical Thinking"

and "Argumentative Writing" in order to make good

and useful thought for advancing science and defeating ugly

political behaviors, and leave all the real poetry learning

to the actual practitioners who are willing to get jailed

for what they believe and who take responsibility for their words

and deeds?  Self-study gets the best the furthest in advance

of profit taking and losses of anonymity, therefore losses in matter

and they shall get someplace new with or without the university's financial

assistants, accountants, WHAT the heck forever, is this

a declarative sentence, a rhetorical question [Gestaltists

would turn those into direct demands, not passive-aggressive

poetry play], or a kind of truth that lasts until it arrives at the line-

break.  Why would you, Steve Tills, be telling anybody crap

like that, anyhow?  It's just an old faux-authority tone, couldn't

I hear that coming BEFORE I placed [actually, merely typed]

it onto the page for further regurgitation.  I like the irony and self-

effacement there, I do, it's damn fun, I mean it, I really mean it,

but is it genuinely TRUE?  Again, for about as long as it takes to break

the line [into more Kerouac amphetamine prose]?  No, I don't do

drugs like that, just the nicotine gum overthecounter and over-

priced but cheaper than the brand Nicorette [no, not Humboldt

Skunk, either, although I think there's still some of that tucked

away where my wife won't find it since we got married, and

I quit smoking cigarettes because they were hospitalizing me

and FRANKLY "suffocating" is a TERRIBLE FEELING],

that's another passive-voice sentence, both grammatically and

existentially -- it should be [not "You," but] "I kept hospitalizing

myself with cigarette poisoning," thereby "taking responsibility"

for the action, not assigning blame on/to some other "subject"/agency

in the world, and being a stronger sentence, also, as it thus uses

a strong action verb and not one of those vague  "to be" verbs, but

then, some writing IS about being, not a proposition one likes

to treat with prepositions always.  Fk-it, this is silly, just ENTER-

tainted Meant.  That's fun, though, too.  For me. The writer guy.

Raw slather

I did not cast a vote for Spraylor

when he ran for department chair 20 years ago.

I did correct papers for him once or twice.

They were terrible, at least a letter grade

below what his students should have been writing

at that point in the semester; by any "standard"




his teaching stunk and he could have done a lot better

in "administration," where he was headed and where

he did even greater damage to students of Academia,

like me, who taught Freshman Composition

like R.S.'s professor at Berkeley Frederick Crews

would have had us teaching "it" and who had begun learning

writing that Mr. Crews would not have had scholars learning,

namely Language Poetry, which Spraylor, who got his Ph.D

at Berkeley, NEVER read.  It IS likely that HE was the one

who screened out my application for tenure track there

at the junior college, and that changed just about everything.





At the junior colleges and at most others, "creative writing"

is frequently "administered" by the least creative

and they cannot even write or teach straight,

expository prose writing that would prepare their

younger fellow citizens to compete in the brat race, either.

It is not "worth" or "merit" that advances most

members of American "society."  It is "aggression."

The most "aggressive" succeed and advance.

The most honest meet with indifference and deceit.

The smartest and wisest do NOT play the "poetry game"

at all.  Bob Perelman, along with Barrett Watten,

produced prose that could have been used by Mr. Crews

as examples of flawless, MLA-sanctioned expository writing.

And their poetries ain't got game in the "creative writing"

curriculums pushed and peddled by the Spraylors

who populate the smaller university corporations.  This

IS the way it should be.  You know that.  I know




that I have found the same basic principles to be true

in most other "occupations" American humans occupy

the space to pass on their genes, as they are coded to do,

and they have their families and they raise them

the best they can, as I'm sure Spraylor did.  I'm sure

that he was simply taking care of his genes.  Okay.  Fine.





Who reads the shit taught in "creative writing" classes?

Surely a lot of the folks here at the factory must have

read it; their prose here demonstrates perfect influence

bending the "rules of grammar and mechanics," but

it is definitely NOT the influence of the Language Poets,

who are rightfully renowned for their experimentation

with the universal and the received grammars, as you

know, Reader.  And, as you perhaps do not know, I

could do much worse than Chompsky, Pinker, and Saussure,

whom I've skimmed [perhaps several times, aware of limits].




I 'd rather be a grammarian than a mechanic.  Actually,

I'd rather be a gramma than a singer of hokey ballads.





Seriously, "Reader," I have few, if any, quarrels

with the Lang Pomers.  If it truly mattered

to me, you are the ones I find disgustingly

hypocritical and brutally dishonest.  No big deal...




You are what you are and it is what

something else entirely is.  I am

not the problem with it.  It is

problematic.  For me.  For you

I have little interest.  You, Reader,

wish that this will mean that




will be the last thing or two I have

to say.  I, too, wish to begin writing.




The students in the "creative writing" classes

matriculated through the culturally encoded

morality of randomly opening and closing doors.

Wow!  That's quite a revelation and statement!

No wonder I couldn't find anyplace to put it.

NOT what I planned to write, Seriously.

TO Phil M. (Phil Mickelson) and C. Rice (Condelezza Rice)?

TO those who, like me, "spite them" or, better, want to

persuade them to CHANGE? Ditto Mr. Palmer,

Mr. Nicklaus,  Mr. $70 million dollar yaught Norman,

(conspicuous consumption personified), all staunch

Republicans, apparently permanently BLIND and DEAF

to lies and DENIAL (Paul Ryan and crew)?





TO them directly would be the only way

to begin [ANY] long process of attempting to change

their grandchildren, perhaps, someday

eventually.  FOR other poets ("to" other poets

OBVIOUSLY effects no change).  Therefore,



nothing, really.  Truly committed to any kind

of real change like that, one would neither








The issue, itself, "addressing" may also be just self-

indulgence.  Why not organize a nude takeover

of North Korea, like the femens are doing in Paris

"to change" Islamist (and other monotheistic) misogyny.

What good are hairband-brained poetics theories about

the meaninglessness, hypocrisy, and uselessness

of directing "poetry" at economic (or sociopolitical)

problems.  ALL poetries target poetry consumers, Yes?




Okay, no prob...




None of this is like anything that I truly wanted to say

the last several days (or decades).  I really want

to address "addressing" from an entirely poetic

point-of-view, that is, examine it by example

that shows





"One really did theenk that poetry was supposed to be

something else."




I don't get it.  How

can anything made of words

and therefore requiring readers

make sense in a marketplace

or outside of a marketplace





Do you WANT to write the screenplay

that shows the world's wealthy HOW

to walk across the borders of North Korea

naked, some on their deathbeds committing

themselves to their last blessed acts on Earth,

loaded with medicine and food, but

essentially COMPLETELY NAKED AND

VULNERABLE, by the millions

forming direct linear thought change

for miles and miles and miles and miles

and days until the regime there quits, gives

up, joins the vulnerable, aids those of the truthful

vulnerable that it has shot and killed and savaged,

including not just the Hollywood and the Congressional

Elites, but [a few at first and then many of] the owners'

children and grandchildren at the same time returning

their wealth from Arms Manufacturing and Walmart

and Wall Street and Wimbledon and Westinghouse

and all the rest of Western Capitalism that neither

feeds nor clothes nor shelters nor heals, as Ben Franklin

put HIS LIFE on the line to believe and commit?




Do you want to describe what George W. Bush

is doing there, naked as a jaybird, close to death

but somehow repentent and THERE, stripped down

for his final human life's moment committed to righting

his wrongs and, not surprisingly, thronged by Meryl Streep,

Kim Kardashion, Reba McKytyre, and Chelsye Clinton

and beautiful beyond words and age and body type

and the four women are also giving him some kind




of massage and he's got an enormous erection and sex

is allowed, too, as it further makes the regime changers

vulnerable and proud and fully human and distracts the soldiers

fully attired in Military profits and other armor, the poor

not knowing what the heck to do, and then there, 8 mile

down the line, there's 14 South American drug cartel czars

and 64 cardinals from that one church and 46 bishops

from that other denomination and they, too, are completely

naked and they are NOT engaging in sexual activities whereby

hetero females please hetero males, but that's alright, too, because

it appears to be working, and because if a lot of good folks

may die doing this, then why not have sexual pleasure

before they die making their point and effecting life

and after 16 weeks almost 60% of the troops from North Korea's

army have put down their arms and taken off

their uniforms and helped carry the medicine

and the food to their brothers and sisters and cousins

and neighbors inside the border-lines and pickled Capitalism

and Militarism and Totalitarianism and Racism and Sexism

and Ageism and Monotheism and Deism and Poopism

with a brand new weapon of courage and love

and sacrifice.  Even I would have been there, Yes?

Dead, already, as thousands of the first poet volunteers

would have been shot down and otherwise killed

by the troops on the same both sides of weapons manufacturing.

But I would have been there, surely?  Who the heck

doesn't know that I didn't want to write like this today.

"You, yourself, would have been there, surely?"




But there's Arnold Palmer there, too, now.  He flew

his jet in and landed his doctors and nurses and heart

transplant equipment immediately upon hearing Phil's

children were run over by a giant bulldozer first used

in the rainforests to make way for more human spoils

and then trucked in by Exx and Boe to remove

the airport where the first waves of naked regime

changers, including the two kids and their dad,

whose own heart had changed two weeks earlier

after I had written him a letter and talked to him

directly to ask him why not go to heaven with BOTH

golf trophies and pure joy and dignity by skipping the

Senior Tour this year and putting his smile on the line

for a real charity, something even more than that, "charity,"

but the lives of people truly oppressed, not white Americans,

white French Structuralists, white Catholic popes, white male

chavinists, and white poets.  And you are what, a white poet

or an idiot who would actually, how do you say, "go after"

another's kids, suggests that Phil's kids got killed, just because

he's a Republican and played golf "lovingly" with Condolezza

Rice, who is, actually, both female and black, so are you saying

that that makes it "okay" for her?  And WHAT is your real

motivation for writing a screenplay or wanting to mention

that you had this idea of getting someday in the future

(although the time is NOW) millions of Volunteers

for America (EVERYBODY here knows the pun

on Jefferson Airplane) to get naked and vulnerable

and CHANGE KOREA before the lastest spoiled creep

gets his lousy 15 minutes and before you read at Huff-Post

about the brave women in Paris baring their breasts,

removing the armor.  The only real question is WHY

write words you know damn well are ADDRESSED

to readers "to do nothing" more than present yourself

as someone who's in the know about some politics

and not in the know about some poetries and poetics

just because you want to write something for the latter

but you can't if ANY READERS are addressed again.




What are you doing, seriously, anyway?  You DO want

to write a true poetry and it WOULD BE something

neither addressed to poets and readers nor pointing

at human experience that can be imagined outside

of the words in the world that the words are USED

to conjure up in a reader's mind.  I mean it?  I

DO want that, and I do want to write like real poets

write  [Yes, I do mean poets like Bob Perelman and Robert

Grenier and Rae Armantrout and so many others, and

I do NOT want to write the kind of raw representational

narrative, quietist "poetry" or "prose" that presumes,

or even can and would presume, "readers."  I want

to think.  "You" don't really care about that and shouldn't;

it is a matter, or clump of matters, including the "addressing"

issue that draws me to WRITING.  Maybe that is IT.

But not only "draws me to," but also dictates and watches

at the same time.  "It" is, at least in part, THAT that I want

to put into words.  Can THAT be put into words?  Some-

thing can.  [At the same time, I don't want to put it into words;

I fear that I will lose it.  If put into words, IT will disappear.  It

seems like, feels like, a/the force or drive, itself, not what it may produce,

but the drive to produce, itself, and it is especially resistant


to being cornered and constrained by separation between itself

and "so-called readers," particularly literally readers, though only those

would possess interest in it and without readers, especially literary

and philosophical readers, I'm not sure that "it" can exist.  Jeepers!]

Reverse this to neutral

Oh, yeah, Baby -- that is fuck-ing Brilliant!

you direct a fucking anti-quietist, anti-academic,

anti-reality political screed to READERS

for a fucking blog (web log) on the internet

primarily focused on the essentially most obscure

anti-poetry in the world and WHAT?  It's nice to have

it tucked away there for safe-keeping, actually.

I've got a problem with that?  Who am I?  Who

was you?  Who WERE you, and who did "you"

think that "you" were talking to, shouting at,

pretending to be, wanting to be?  Writing, I




suppose can be just something that I

enjoy doing.  For myself.  Doesn't have

to even approach Steve Benson's magnificent

output and input back "in the day" after
 
the more commonly termed "day."

Needn't even aspire to extend Rae Armantrout's

silk sense analysis of suburban insouciance.




Except that (1)Those would be worthy poetries

to emulate and extend; (2)I really need to stop talking

and just write; (3)The greatest "poetry" of the next

generations will neither reference the word, itself,

nor present itself as a form that will be automatically

associated with such an [antiquated?] term.   Ummm, perhaps

something like what Stephen Farmer writes but marketed

as a kind of science fiction written by folks from far-elsewhere

with a truly haunting bead on us humans, as our nightmare

landscapes of the planet and our lazy minds are alien to them.



Is the World's [conceptual] landscape, and especially

this country's, truly as "schizoid" as I [habitually

interpret a Farmer as SEEing it in a book like his glowball.]

Well, yes, of course it freaking is, and no less so

than it was "back in Miller's day" or "back in Sappho's

day" all day every day, and there's no real everyday

world other than this one, so I may as well accept it,

except for "the habituation-thing," which is also too real,

and there is no real profit in singling out the U.S.,

either.  ALL of the others TODAY in 2013

are just as troubled, as well as just as good.  Enough

of the pointing out the too obvious contradictions

[and the problematics and the complaints]

and maybe it be time to take out the words

most histrionically insistent and incessant,

wait for the choice few that supply Enough

Good stuff to see things usefully new and listen

for an absence of strife and striving and the hair bands

that got one's boxer briefs in such a twisted knot

in the first place and then again in the second.

Whore and Noise

I [don't] hate to SAY it,

but here's the real issue

The Sinking American Electorate - Young And In Peril

"Millennials – the largest, best educated, and most diverse generation in our nation’s history – have one question for Democrats seeking election in 2014: Do your values really reflect ours? Democrats have reason to worry about what the answer would be from the 80 million people between the ages of 18 and 29 who make up the largest segment of what Democracy Corps calls the 'rising American electorate.' That’s because too many in this group don’t see themselves as 'rising' when it comes to their economic fortunes. Their judgment about not only who is responsible but also who is fighting for their economic future will be key to determining the outcome of the 2014 midterm elections." (Thanks Derek Pugh from Campaign for America's Future)

Not whether this cracker's

got his Polly Whacker &

his pollywogs on.



TELL ME SOMETHING,

YOU academic poets!  what

ARE you doing for these kids,

in some cases your [very] own, charging

and charging and charging them

them them a zillion dollars

to take your shit classes?




Seriously, you cannot DENY

how much you and the Board(s)

and the administrators have spent

to reproduce that quietist NOISE

"the System" within which you

thrive goes on and on with its payrolls.

Peace and quiet

29 lines, "narrow ruled," this

8 by 5 1/2 Earthwise notebook,

which I like or which I like.

Quite aware that this could make for

all the difference "in the 'World,'"

LOL (or lots of love, but "lots"

should be "a lot" -- my my

it all gets so technical

when one writes just to remark

one's predictable observations).

One does get the point for displaying

one's fancy attention to the medium

particular worlds, okay?  Andrew,

not sleeping there, under the bed,

half barks hearing some other bow wow

outside down the street somewhere.  Some-

where seems the most interesting

concept at the moment and I should

fall asleep soon, as I do have real work

to do tomorrow at my day job some-

place even less relevant now.




The cars' whir, constant in the soft

black night air at 11:45 on nights like this,

has always felt completely reassuring.

To me, that is.  Now that is some-

thing that I would care to share

for some reason or another.  Forgive me,

Donald Hall, for putting that Wikipedia

you together with the soft rocking

duo of the Seventies and Joyce

Carol, and forgive me, Ms. Oates

and Mr. Hall and Mr. Oates for kidding

around at your expense. I'm just




bored and a bit mean some-

times.  It IS quite interesting

how many times that word has

been showing up at the very end

of the lines perfectly positioned

to become cleverly, distinctly hyphen-

ated by these irrelevant line-

breaks this evening, as I

provide a near ingenious work-

shop performance of present-

centered writing imitation.  I

don't want to go to sleep,

quite honestly.  I want to write

a single word tonight that is

not contemporaneously poetic




or "poetic."  Why?  Cat gut my

tongues?  Got a hard-on or whatever?

The cars' whir, or whirs, actually,

seems plenty okay all by itself,

never really in any kind of need

to describe with words or remark

even to myself.  Already, for sure,

don't I know that, for chris-sakes.

The train horns blaring loud

from the other side of the canal

as they, too, adorn the lovely

Quiet, don't need to be mentioned,

either.  I hope nobody is still

reading this an hour or a day from now.

Hall and Oates make more significant

music, to be sure, but "music"

isn't all it's cracked up to sound like

and now the furnace "kicking"

on makes its familiar whir, too,

just before I listen to my wife

in the bathroom run some water.




All of these beautiful sounds, Yes,

"music to my ears," and Yes,

universal, as it were/whir. Grenier

uses unlined paper and there are

29 of the damn things here on these

pages, which, again, I DO like

a lot.  And I also like a lot

the way Grenier could get

ALL of the sound and the tranquility

of the cars and the trains and

the dogs and the furnace

and the running water's peace

and quiet into 1 or 2 or 3

words totaling less than 29 letters

without mentioning a single item

that I've described, so I guess

I've got a lot of "work" to do

tomorrow and the next day

and the day after that if I am

ever going to quite get it right.

Interesting how much (and how little)

one can make of experience,

with words, and word with more

experience, as always, any reader knows.

Apples and Grapes

[I'm sorry, Fellas and Faux-feminist Gals, but "Quietist Po," like the stylized kind of contemporary "country music" they like to rave about on American Idol, simply doesn't do anything for me. Think about country music compared to Classic Rock or, worse, compared to Classic Jazz or Grunge or Punk or Bebel Gilberto or Cesario or the Beatles.  But I think that the better comparison would be Tic Tac Toe (like that game on Hollywood Squares) compared to Tiddlywinks (which is at least more physical) or checkers or Chess.

The great irony here has been obvious for decades.  A great many "Quietists" preach "liberal politics" in the schools and support Blue Dog Democrats, Frances Moore Lappe, and Greenpeace, the latter two of which are genuinely, genuinely cool!  The greater irony, perhaps, is that Mr. Pound got way, way out there off the grid and very, very confused and promoted the WWII Fascists in Europe, but then, we're talking "Poetry," so maybe this is all shiny candy apples and sour rubber grapes.  I'm "just sayin," as they say.  Talking sheet music.]



But if I may interject for a moment, it seems, of late, that Greys Anatomy has turned into The Magnificent Seven or The Dirty Dozen or something.  They seemed more confused tonight than Ezra OR Oates, Sport!  Donald Hall and, ah-h, forgetaboudit.  I'm just messing around.

Enough is enough is enough

Vell, now, here's the rub, Yes?

One wants to know what one

thinks.  And one wants to communicate.

And yet an other wants to engage

in something like a self-absorbed

experimentation of so-called POETRY

writing.  That is, this is, at least

three different impulses, is it

not?  Another kind of poetaster

[probably a much more proficient one]

[but probably also an even phonier one]

would probably break these categories

down and downer [dumb

and you get the six points, "Reader Y"]

into something like seven or 13

ways to make oneself ambiguous.

Make no mistake, even George H.W. Bush

the Elder politician, would argue

that none of this is exactly about

"poetry."  It's about writing

or not fk-ing writing publically, but writing

in a private manner that one finds intrinsically rewarding,

another useful cliche [or laughing

matter?].  Maybe it's about

a predisposition to advance one's blogging

techniques to a hand-written art

of self-revelation the/[a] world

cannot differentiate [or even negotiate].

Alright, well, that's enough and

enough is enough is a good

enough for the moment, this one.

True Confessions and Such (or Personal truths)

       The so-called "thinking" breaks down once one starts to genuinely feel the shame and embarrassment of producing garbage in the guise of "poetry," "truth," "honesty," "theenking," or anything else small self-indulgent.  Ditto the passive voice used in the preceding sentence.  I should write the thought this way: I prefer to neither present my true thoughts in a phony, quasi-"poetry" fashion (including the construction of affected point-of-view "plays" on subjectivity) nor pretend that I can turn (or would even truly want to turn) honest thought into so-called "poetry" by simply using "line-breaking" or various gimmicks learned from fancy "blogging" trickery.
       At some point or another, "play" and "fun" and all the charades of electronic "literary exposition" do not fulfill me.  Here, again, I am not altogether certain that poetry writing nourishes me.  And I am not altogether sure that I enjoy sharing my private thoughts publicly.  A lot of the gibberish and bullshit that I've written in the past 3-4-5 days does seriously embarrass and depress me.  Why should I even wish to share this admission of shame and regret?  I do not welcome such cheaply produced and utterly unwholesome, private self-disgust.
       On some level, I do believe that almost all poetry, and even the brilliant "autobiographical fiction" or what I would call "a form of prose-poetry" that Henry Miller wrote is phony and absurd.  ALL "Literature" sometimes seems to me to be an ugly and pathetic engagement in self-indulgence and narcissistic attention-grab or, in other words, a seeking of attention that a truly "authentic," "honest," "sincere," "healthy," and "wise" human should or would not need, much less engage in.
       I do believe that what a Stephen Ratcliffe engages in is authentic.  I believe the same goes for what Robert Grenier produces in the practice of making what have come to be known as his "scrawl poems," and when a fellow human like Bob Grenier says something like "I have nothing to say," I really fucking believe  what he means by that, that is, his engagement in his mature production of art transcends (or simply precludes) a need to say something to other humans.
       He is also, in my opinion, genuinely committed to a praxis that transcends addiction to the pathetically empty playing of "the poetry game" 99% of the rest of us may never replace with a more authentic writing. That said (and not yet said or written with the refinement and clarity I would like someday in the future to give it), I will likely keep contradicting myself and engaging in the "addiction" a wee bit longer, myself.  Quite seriously, though, I am intent on further developing this on-going conception of "right and wrong," so all of this, too, may be just this early morning's latest nonsense.
       Also, finally, I am quite aware that I need to couch these particular thoughts in straight-forward, albeit raw (first draft) conventional prose form.  There (or here) is another "rub," too.  One feels a need to communicate a truly private thought to both oneself and others in straight-forward prose form.  Why I should need to communicate such thoughts to anyone other than myself is not clear to me. Perhaps I want to challenge myself to make a true commitment to following through on something or another.  I don't know.  For now, the heck with everything...