Kyphotic Hermit

Brands by Dave Oliphant

2009-06-16T21:10:00.005-05:00

           
                                         
                                         




















Cover design 
by Jim Jacobs                            
after Pancho Villa's 
death's head brand                        


When I last awoke this morning, thunderstorms were blustering thru,
so I spent some of that time reading Dave Oliphant's Brands, a
chapbook published by Road Runner Press in 1972.  In it I noted his   
"Padding" poem had four lines which were obviously too long for the  
page and therefore had their ends tucked under to the far right.     
It could be they are supposed to be that way, but I will be sharing
"Padding" here with the lines full out.  He was in Malta, Illinois,  
at that time.  Ten years later, when I was briefly in Austin, Texas,
I had a short visit with him.  His chapbook's title comes from a    
sequence of six cattle brand poems in it.  He is a native Texan who
for many years was the editor and publisher of Prickly Pear Press.                  
                                                                   
                                                                    
-
PADDING                                                             
                                                                    
                                                                    
anything to make it easier on the mind                                
to keep the real thing out of the crush                            
block passage on the House & Senate floors             
in verse Unamuno justified / found it fitting  
but for none / not one of the reasons above                
                                                 
& o what stoic Spanish tho't would've been his comfort then   
lined / laced with arabesques / Moorish words like almohadas
on hearing me declare verbiage to be the lot / the lonely           
the only stuff for making song / when what he wanted         
was marrow / a little carne along with the bone         
                                                                
just to get free from figuring it out                     
I'd say / well / waste is the American way          
cardboard-box a tree & save a buck eighty                   
but that won't do & neither will asylum walls                
this banging unbruised into devils inside our cells           
                                                        
when everywhere it's plugging up or knocking holes           
in the Giants' / the Rams' / the Jets' defenses           
covering up for the collected poems can't even copy lux fiat 
under the stoop leaves & twigs hibernating the frogs               
string & straw soon to hatch a singing in the eaves               
                                                            
                                                        
                                                        
                                                       
                                                          
                                                       
                                                           
kh00032

Eliot O'Hara Radiohead connection

2009-06-07T16:20:00.001-05:00

           
                                         
                                         
*                                    
                                    
See Adam Fieled's Edgy Emotions post.
                                             
*                                              
                                          
                                               
                                         
                                              
                                                       
                                               
                                             
kh00031

ragged publication list

2009-06-06T15:00:00.005-05:00


                                             
                                                    
Haven't been a conscientious record keeper, but I have some  
informative index cards here from the years when I cared and  
was more actively trying to publish my writings in literary  
journals and elsewhere.  So this is a convenience exercise.  
Most of what I have had published appeared in various issues
of Wisconsin Review.  In the late 1970's and early 1980's  
I was publishing under the pen name of Alden St. Cloud, a       
name derived from a family history fact and a supposed fact.
However, I have used other pen names on occasion, but only    
once was anything legitimately published that way.              
                                                              
* Reviews                                                    
-                                                           
Marvin Bell's The Escape into You                       
              Atheneum, 1969, 1970, 1971)              
in Road Apple Review Vol. III No. 4                 
Winter 1971-1972       pp. 48-50                          
-                                                    
"Keeping Us Mad"                            
Peter Wild's Magical Book of Cranial Effusions         
             New Rivers Press, 1971)                     
in Wisconsin Review Vol. 7 No. 2                    
Spring 1972           p. 32                            
                                                        
* Cover designs                                          
-                                                     
Their Place in the Heat                    
Road Apple Review                  
Spring 1971        Vol. III No. 1                     
-                                          
Road Apple Review                
Winter 1971-1972  Vol. III No. 4                 
                                                   
* poems in anthologies                           
-                                           
"February" and "September" 
 (as by Alden St. Cloud)
Wisconsin Poets' Calendar: 1982
and "Snow" (Alden St. Cloud)           
Wisconsin Poets' Calendar: 1983
Tom & Mary Montag, editors         
Midwestern Writers' Publishing House        
Fairwater, Wisconsin                        
-                                           
"Where Once the Old Mill" 
and "307. November 2nd"              
(as by Alden St. Cloud)           
Poetry Out of Wisconsin V                               
edited by Mardi Fries & Jeri McCormick          
Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, Madison, 1980
-                                               
"The Mind Has Seasons Out of Time"           
"Beauty" and "Being a Poet"                  
Minnesota Poets Anthology—1973       
Vol. 2  No. 1    St. Cloud State College    
-                                      
"Woodland Shades" (sonnet)             
National High School Anthology 1959
                                                                                  
* poems in magazines and newspapers                        
-
"Woodland Shades" (sonnet)            
Marquette Journal                   
-                                                                     
"Into the Marsh" and "Solitudo III"         
Marquette Journal                       
-                                                     
"The Lone Pine Tree"                            
Pursuit Spring 1963 Vol. III No. 2       
-                                               
"To John Keats"                                   
Pursuit Spring 1964 Vol. 4 No. 2                 
-                                                    
"After Almost Five Years"                         
"Rome, 300 A.D."                               
"Sea Shells Are for Hiding"                    
"The Evening Soliloquy of Samuel Portal"
Pursuit Winter 1964 Vol. V No. 1     
-                                                 
"Symphony"                                     
"The Rock Garden"                           
"The Mind Has Seasons Out of Time"                
"The Purple Fox"                                
Pursuit Summer, 1965 Vol. V No. 2     
-                                                
"Cave" and "Swallow Bend"                      
Wisconsin Review Vol. 3 No. 1 Fall, 1967        
-
"Beauty"                                        
(first published as "The Swans of Winnebago")    
Karamu No. 4 June, 1968                      
-                                                   
"Sitting at My Desk"                       
"A Dream of Collaboration with the Muse"           
(Is now simply "Muse Dream" but was              
first published as "A Dream of Collaboration")    
Karamu Vol. II No. 1 April, 1969              
-                                              
"Starting Over"                                   
Road Apple Review Vol. II No. 4         
Winter 1970-1971                                 
-                                                   
"Behind the Garage" and "Transferal"                 
Wisconsin Review Vol. 6 No. 2 Spring, 1971  
-                                                 
"The Mystics"                                       
Small Pond Spring 1971 #22                    
-                                                   
"Notes at the Watershed"                          
         (Christmas Season 1970-1971)              
Wisconsin Review Vol. 6 No. 3 Summer 1971     
-                                                 
"Being a Poet"  "The Maverick" and
"Imagining Myself on a Hill near the         
Old Mill Stream, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin"    
Wisconsin Review Vol. 7 No. 1 Fall 1971         
-                                                     
"Revealing the Source"                             
Yes Vol. Two  No. One  Autumn 1971             
-                                                
"Martha,"                                   
(accepted by Free Debris, 1972)             
-                                               
"After the Funerals of a Friend and an Uncle"        
Sou'wester  Winter 1972                    
-                                                
"Prosody"                                    
(a broadsheet in Oshkosh, 1972)                     
-                                                
"Words for Walt"                                
GPU News  May/June 1973                    
-                                               
"Tonight"                                        
Saltillo  Vol. 2 No. 3  Winter 1974       
-                                                 
"Apology of a Hypocrite"                           
Mouth of the Dragon #6  Sept. 1975              
-                                                   
"20° Breeze"                              
Abbey #20  October, 1976              
-                                              
"82. March 22nd" (for Sandy Troedel)         
"Funeral Words"  "Admonition"         
and "The Administrator"                     
The West Bend News                      
in "Spice of Life" section, Feb. 4, 1977    
-                                              
"61. March 1st"  "69. March 9th"  "137. May 16th"  
(under a pen name I never used again)             
River Bottom Vol. IV No. 2  Summer 1977     
-                                                    
"105. April 14th"  "106. April 15th"                  
 "110. April 19th   "112. April 21st"               
Song #2   1977                             
-                                                  
"Watermelon" and "The Mystery"                     
Wisconsin Review Vol. 8 No. 3               
-                                               
"Child" and "A Wall"                              
Wisconsin Review Vol. 12 No. 4  1978     
-                                               
"Michelangelo," and "Four for John Ashbery"
(as by Alden St. Cloud)         
Wisconsin Review  the fifth season          
Vol. 14, Nos. 2 & 3   1980                          
-                                            
"248. September 4th"                           
Ramada Regular                            
Vol. 6 No. 7  November 1980                     
-                                              
"The Barn Was Cold"                           
RFD       Fall, 1985                           
-                                             
"December 26th"                            
The Sun: A Magazine of Ideas        
issue 124    March 1986                               
-                                              
"Saying Good-bye"  "Pride"                
"Axiom"  "Then Millicent Said"             
Studia Mystica  Poetry and Mysticism  
Volume IX, Number 4    Winter 1986              
              
                                                                          
*                                         
                              
                                 
                                        
                                     
kh00030

Coteries Categories Individuals

2009-05-30T11:12:00.004-05:00

          
                                    
                                             
See prior Stephen Burt posts: kh00027 and kh00028.     
As strongly as I am against literary packaging,   
which arises from the human need to label things,
I cannot figure out why I consistently allow the    
ruminations of others to draw me into that habit.
Yes it is a memory aid, and yes in the sciences it
is essential, but it tends to limit the scope of 
what a given maker actually makes.  Scientifically,
I am in the category of humans who are less than   
five feet tall.  In the realm of poem-making are  
those who prefer to be members of a coterie and/or   
to be identified as being a maker whose works are  
examples of a specific categorizable nature.  I   
find nothing wrong with that.  But yesterday          
Mark Wallace led me to a post by none other than   
that erudite independent John Latta, a post I had   
already read or at least glanced through.  I read  
it, and realized that my willingness to let Burt  
or whomever have hir say without my trying to be   
confrontational lessens the worth of what I say.  
So this is how on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 
Latta wins.                                             
                                               
                                         
                                               
                                              
kh00029

Regarding Burt's The New Thing

2009-05-29T21:48:00.000-05:00

         
                                             
                                              
essay in The Boston Review, which I read today  
via a link at Silliman's Blog, several thoughts:             
                                                    
Stephen Burt did a lot of research.                    
-                                                    
His essay is therefore historically valuable.               
-                                               
Establishing and supporting the existence of a          
poetic trend requires a node of activity dedicated  
to making poems of a particular kind.  That, as Burt  
recognizes, poems of the kind he discusses have been  
made for years do help to support his position; they   
are not sufficient to establish a trend.             
-                                                     
Anthologies, presses, journals, blogs, poet-to-poet
communications are the means by which trends are   
established.                                        
-                                                    
I and many, many others are among those who for    
years have written poems of The New Thing kind;
but it wasn't until recently that numerous poets    
began writing entire books of such poems.  *         
Stephen Burt notes that the two best books are                 
Mark Levine's Debt and Rae Armantrout's Next Life.
                                                                   
                                                                 
                                                                  
                                                                 
                                                                    
kh00028

Stephen Burt Elliptical

2009-04-24T13:29:00.002-05:00

          
                                     
                                         
For those of you, who like me, are lagging:             
                                               
Joan Houlihan interviews Stephen Burt                                              
-                                                        
Stephen Burt reviews Smokes by Susan Wheeler       
                                                   
                                                                      
                                                          
                                                      
kh00027

John Latta post for today

2009-04-21T21:36:00.002-05:00

  
                                        
                                         
will be of interest to all who hold a view    
similar to mine.  What view?  I think that   
if you read his post you will figure that
out easily enough.  I'm having my usual    
evening breathing difficulties.  So there   
are circles and squiggles and interior    
rattlings, and semi-conscious rockings I/
find hard to stop even though I know that  
they exacerbate my breathing difficulties.       
                                                 
Well, don't just sit there,                  
hop on over to Tuesday, April 21, 2009.
                                          
                                         
Note: his archive information is at the     bottom of his page.                                       
                                              
                                        
                                         
                                           
                                       
kh00026

Post-Industrial World and Poetry

2009-04-15T19:49:00.002-05:00

             
                                          
                                     
Natura naturans (the Coleridgean ongoing) lies outside us;
and yet we are part of it, and more and more are changing it to   
meet our perceived needs.  If we get there, the post-industrial  
world will find us more intimately connected to machines than we
have ever been.  So much so, actually, the industrial world will  
seem ancient to us.  Imagine weather control, an Edenic planet,  
immortal or nearly immortal bodies, brains far superior to even  
the best now.  Homo sapiens will likely be discarded in favor
of a more appropriate name.  Will poem-making disappear?  No.    
Will there be poem-making contests between humans and robots?    
If you have been paying attention to Blogger word verifications,
there already are.  The Flarf, then, and Conceptual modes are  
precursors.  Each, however, while able to accommodate varying
approaches, is specialized.  Practitioners have an affinity for
what they do.                                                 
                                                                  
**                                                                 
                                                              
Had planned to write a lot more, but between my body concerns/   
nothing.                                                       
                                                    
                                             
                                                   
                                                   
kh00025

Cover scans plus five poems

2009-04-11T18:21:00.003-05:00

                 
                                
                                          
2009-04-03:
Yesterday was cloudy windy and later rainy, and 
tomorrow will be clear cool early, then up to 70  
under 100% cloudiness, then rainy late w/temps
moderately cooler.                                 
                                                   
Scanned the covers of 15 books.  Most are books   
of poems.  Among them are Another Song I Know,   
short poems by William Michaelian, Hardwood by
Gary B. Fitzgerald, Instead by David Lunde,  
Perdition's Keepsake by Charles Behlen, and
Making Hay & other poems by Tom Montag.        
                                                      
                                                       

                                                   
See this William Michaelian site.         
                                     
From page 62 of this 2007 Cosmopsis Books book:
                                             
    The Age of Us All                    
                                    
    My father is a boat                 
    no longer fit to sail.             
    He sits in the harbor,           
    rocking in a wooden chair     
    by the fireplace,              
    waiting for the tide       
    to take him out.               
    If both of us survive,          
    come spring, I'll lift him    
    out of the water             
    and scrape the barnacles      
    from his feet.             
    He will like that,
    and I will too.
                       
                                     
                              
                                   
              
       
                                  
                                                                                                         

                                                   
See Tom Montag site.
                                                     
From this 1975 Pentagram Press book:  
                                        
    Rain: an Old Hat                 
                                
    rain: an old          
                          
    hat caught by             
    wind, tossed         
    down the street          
                            
    into the face          
    of an old man.               
                           
    i chase the rain           
    as if my hat               
    & find it fits          
                      
    that old man's brow.     
                                                             
                                                                  
                                                  
                                                
                                                                             
***                                  
                                               
David Lunde

                               
       
                                             
"Fruitful is the Vine":        
cover art by David Lunde                                                 
                                        
                                          
                                    
                                       
                                     
                                       
                                          
                                         
                                         
                                  
                                   
                                    
                                    
                                           
                                                    
  Exit                                     
                                                 
The four red letters, lurid        
in the dark theater,         
the only distraction,         
a subliminal reminder
that every story        
has an end.  And though optimism   
calls each death a birth,        
still there is the disorientation,    
that readjustment to the world        
which exists.  It is not the one   
you lived in; it will not be.    
You try to hold on, imagining perhaps 
a repeat performance,          
but when the time comes    
nonetheless you Exit, determined     
to love the new, asking yourself   
what it was you used to love       
as if you didn't know.
                                              
                                                 
                                                   
                                               
                                               
***                                                
                                             
                                                       
 
                                       
                                           
                                          
Charles Behlen                     

                                                          
                                                        
Dust Storm/Slaton, Texas         
                             
I kick the earth,          
the dust, a ghost,       
leaps at my face,       
reminding me          
with gritty tears    
of lovers, whores,    
friends and kin,         
gone to the ground   
before I was born.
                             
                             
                              
                             
                                              
                                                                                     ***              
                                                         
                                                                   

                                                            
                                                                  
                                                                      
                                                                   
                                                                             
                                                                          
                                                                    
                                                                            
                                                                           
                                                                          
                                                                                   
                                                                                 
                                                                                   
                                                                                                    
                                     
                                                                                                Gary B. Fitzgerald                       
                                                           
                                                 
                Hello                        
                                       
            Hello, everybody.
            I miss you all.              
            I'm sorry I haven't been          
            to see you, but              
            it's not my fault.  After all,
            you're buried all over          
            the damned country.           
            I can't drive that far.     
            But being that you're dead,      
            I figure you can hear me     
            anyway.                        
            Hello, everybody.             
            I miss you.
                                                        
                                                                                
                                                     
                                          
                                                                                     ---                                          
                                               
Please see my comment.                        
                                              
---                                           
                                 
                    
kh00024

Toward morning while

2009-03-29T09:41:00.001-05:00

          
                                           
                                         
still on my bed I began to feel unusually cold;
so I pulled the top fold of the comforter I was           
on/ off to the right and slipped beneath it and
pulled it back over me.                        
                                                
My bed, which is big enough for two sleepers,         
has two comforters on it and the mattress just
beneath them has a white fitted sheet on it.   
The bottom comforter's fold is on the left side
because I'd roast if I tried to sleep under three
comforter flaps.  To be clear, the left side is
the right side when one stands at the foot of  
my bed.  That is the side where, for a number  
of reasons, I get in and get out.             
                                                   
A couple minutes after 7 this morning I pulled
the drape cord--there is only one window in this   
room--and was greeted by patches of snow.  The   
sturdy bush continues to grow, become more green 
and less white since while new blossoms appear   
on it/ its blossoms have for the most part dis-
appeared.  In the distance is a tall tree that
still looks like a winter tree.  At its top was
a single silent crow.  In its silence it said to
me: I am your new Christmas angel.  Given the   
state of this union of states I live in, I was
reluctant to disagree.  In fact, I began to see
that crow as my nation's new national bird.    
Then a second crow alighted at the top about  
two feet to the west.  Together they reminded   
me of a chicken wishbone.  Some minutes later   
three more crows flew in beneath them, but did
not stay long.  Still, I heard no caw.  Then  
after more minutes, the crow that had been    
there when I opened the drapes/ flew off to  
the east, and soon the second crow flew off 
to the north and then to the west.             
                                             
                                               
                                              
                                              
                                                
                                           
kh00023

twenty influences on my writing

2009-03-11T21:12:00.002-05:00

             
                                        
                                       
were not 20 books as such, but were collections   
mostly in the form of anthologies.  Still, I'm  
going to just sputter along here instead doing  
any research to get the details right.         
                                              
01  nursery rhymes, especially "Mary Had . . . ."
      which I've used as a base several times      
      ex.: Mary had a little lamb,               
            and Charlie had some beef.             
                                               
02  In our house was a small print single book    
      edition of Shakespeare's works.  Unlike    
      Mr. Z, I have never read all of what he   
      (the 17th earl(?)) wrote.  I tended to   
      read certain poems and plays over and    
      over.                                     
                                              
03  In our house was a set of E. A. Poe's works.
      Never read all of those either, but I did    
      discover that he wrote humorous stories.               
                                                      
04  I was 11 or 12 when I attempted to write my   
      first poem.  It was about the Milky Way   
      because at that time I thought I wanted    
      to be an astrophysicist.                    
                                                 
05  In high school the desire/need to attempt to   
      write poems grew, but that school was a   
      Roman Catholic one outside a small and    
      mostly conservative Fox River Valley city,
      and I didn't aggressively scour libraries   
      or magazines for poems, but somehow the   
      first poet I tried to learn from through  
      an effort at imitation was Charles Péguy.   
                                                      
06  Did find out about a national high school    
      poetry contest.  Sent in my first sonnet.   
      Got an honorable mention, as I recall, &   
      it was published in that contest's book.   
      Am sure I read most of the poems in that  
      book, but the book at some point wisely   
      disappeared.                                 
                                                 
07  Then for one year/ I studied at the physical   
      Marquette University.  While there, two   
      books by Alan Paton influenced me, and I   
      wrote a freedom poem for Southern Africa   
      which was partly influenced by the drum  
      rhythms Vachel Lindsay used.            
                                                
08  During my second semester I took an English   
      class taught by a Jesuit.  My term paper     
      was on Dante's Divine Comedy.  I wrote  
      a 9-line prologue for my paper, using a      
      difficult rhyme scheme I think I invented.   
                                                   
09  Further, that teacher told us that anyone   
      who had poems accepted by the Marquette  
      Journal, the student magazine, would get  
      an A for the course.  So I got three of   
      mine accepted, but I am here to tell you   
      that a poem by another student, a student
      I am pretty sure was in the dorm wing I  
      was in, is far better than any of mine.   
      "Pride's Offering to the Gods" is its title.
                                                 
10  During my shortened two years in a Jesuit   
      Novitiate near St. Bonafacius, Minnesota,   
      Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Keats.     
                                               
11  Forgot to mention I took Latin in high school  
      and so Arma virumque cano preceded and may  
      have been why I chose to read Dante.             
                                                    
12  Then it was three years at Wisconsin State   
      College–Oshkosh where two of my teachers  
      were Iowa Workshop graduates.  Oddly I      
      don't remember what poets we studied,        
      but my teachers encouraged me to seek       
      admission to the Iowa program.                       
                                                  
13  At Iowa circumstances kept me isolated from   
      other student writers; but George Starbuck,  
      who was my mentor my first year there, was  
      the sole reason I made it through.         
                                                    
14  Marvin Bell was my second year mentor; but   
      W. D. Snodgrass, and fellow students such as  
      Phil Hey and James Tate and Michael Dennis  
      Browne, and hill courses like the one that  
      introduced me to Ben Jonson and highlighted my   
      trauma-caused (due to my being too sensitive)
      lack of self-confidence// held sway.             
                                                   
15  And yes there was Lowell, Bly, Wright, Plath, 
      and numerous anthologies; and I do not know   
      what order all these came in; but T. S. Eliot    
      had been and remained important to me.         
                                                   
16  Dylan Thomas was another early influence, and  
      Auden and his circle, and E. A. Robinson, 
      and Whitman, and Dickinson, and Homer and  
      beyond.  Had taken a Milton course when I  
      was an undergrad.  Even Edith Sitwell.      
                                                 
17  Once had the original Donald Allen anthology,
      and the Rothenberg anthologies, and Kelly  
      and Leary's A Controversy of Poets, and the  
      first edition of The Princeton Encyclopedia 
      of Poetics.  I read far and wide, yet there
      were many I was not aware of.                      
                                                      
18  I did have Ginsberg's Howl.  I do have a  
      selection of Lorca's poems.  Tom Montag    
      gifted me with a copy of Lorine Niedecker
      Collected Works.                          
                                                   
19  Even though I have a poor rote memory, poems 
      and lines from poems are more important to   
      me than books of poems.  Among the poems I     
      have a special feeling for is:   
      "The Ship of Death" by D. H. Lawrence.                       
                                                 
20  Unlike many, I am less attracted to jazz than
      to classical music, and I am not into movies.
      Guess I'm not with it, but I'm not against it
      either.                                       
                                                     
-- So, given that for 20+ years poets and poem-making   
   were incidental interests, I am playing catch-up,
   an endeavor I know is totally futile. --

                       
                                                 
                                                   
                                        a toy ot!
                                                 
                                                 
                                               
                                               
                                             
kh00022

their conversation continues

2009-03-04T10:00:00.002-06:00

       
                                    
                                        
Now into a greatness phase, the conversation   
between Joseph Hutchison and Adam Fieled has       
moved me to share two recent posts            
                                                   
a response from Joseph Hutchison                            
                                                
a response from Adam Fieled                       
                                                 
and to cease making comments beneath their    
posts relating to this conversation.  If I have    
anything to say, I will say it in this blog.   
                                           
                                                     
                                                  
                                                   
                                                
                                               
                                           
                                           
kh00021

Denise Low's blog

2009-03-02T22:05:00.001-06:00

          
                                        
                                        
is next door in Kansas.  She posts about what is
happening there and near there.  She often will   
showcase a particular poet.  A cowboy poet is or  
was the current feature.                          
                                                
Take a look.
                                                           
                                                       
                                                       
                                                     
                                                    
                                                 
                                               
                                           
kh00020

James Wright James Wright Robert Bly

2009-02-22T17:33:00.001-06:00

      
                                        
                                        
In my original Rooted Sky (1972) is a poem written for
the poet James Wright.  Years later it also became for   
a quasi-neighbor named James Wright as the result of a  
conversation between my father and that man's father.
Aware of my poem, the father of that James Wright had  
asked my father if I had written the poem for his son.
In informing me about the conversation, my father said 
he told Mr. Wright that I had.  Softly shocked, I was  
about to ask him why, but the wow of knowing my father   
had a sensitive side moved me to explain to him it was  
for a poet named James Wright but--that's okay--I'll    
just change the dedication.  The Maverick.          
                                                     
Another poem in that book is for the poet Robert Bly.  
Its title is almost longer than the poem, so I won't  
reveal the whole of it.  Imagining Myself on a Hill        
                                                   
                                                     
                                                  
                                                     
                                                    
kh00019

K Silem Mohammad on Flarf

2009-02-21T19:11:00.001-06:00

    
                                       
                                   
In 2005 Tom Beckett conducted an interview with KSM.
A link to the entire interview will be the focus of 
what is in this post, but so that you have an idea  
of what to expect, these excerpts:                 
*                                                 
  "Form makes us feel."                             
  -                                               
  ". . . it just means we all use what we've      
   got in whatever way we can."                
  -
  ". . . curiosity. . . ."                        
  -                                                
  "The first thing I try to do as a writer       
   is surprise myself."                          
*                                                
                                                   
My point is to forward the human behind the artifact.
                                           
I don't care if I have trouble appreciating what results  
from acts of flarfing.  That is for me to deal with over
time.  I do care about the process, about the efforts a   
flarfist makes to create an artifact that communicates,  
that has value for those who can appreciate artifacts   
of that type.  Artistry is artistry, no matter its origin.  
I was 18 or 19 when I first heard music by Stravinsky,
and I thought/ what in the--.  With help from two other   
students, and through listening to it several times, I 
began to understand and feel why it was highly touted.
During my last years in Gainesville, Florida, the San  
Francisco Symphony presented a series of radio pro-  
grams moderated by a woman whose name escapes    
me.  It was about American maverick composers.   
Read the interview.                 
                                                          
                                                      
                                                     
                                                   
                                                   
kh00018

I Cant Stand Being Human

2009-02-14T19:52:00.001-06:00

 
                                    
                                    
anymore: so weak, so stupid, so full of false pride.    
Humans are too adept at fashioning idiotologies:  I-  
am-better-than-you-are power fantasies: globalized  
ickonomies / inhumane religions / suicide deceits.   
If I can not be a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King--
who who-a-who who-a-who-a-whooo                    
 who who-a-who a-who-who                           
who who-a-who who-a-who-a-whooo                 
 who who-a-who a-who-who                            
-                                               
who who-a-who who-a-who-a-whooo                     
 who who-a-who a-who-who                    
who who-a-who who-a-who-a-whooo                     
 who who-a-who a-who-who                       
                                                   
The rings of my life are riddled with errors.  So     
I surmise I am an average human.  Say ah.  Say oh.  
Giants and Dwarfs is a book of essays (1960-1990)   
by Allan Bloom.  A hardbound copy of it has been         
in my meagre library for some years.  Recently I       
began reading it.  Have so far read the Preface    
and Western Civ.  He is a believer in knowledge  
derived from the greatest thinkers of important   
Western civilizations.  Cultural persuasions are    
passing power-oriented missteps.  Promoters of  
such--let's just say he doesn't trust them.  In
turn, of course, they tend to misunderstand him.
Western Civ was an address Bloom gave at Harvard   
University on December 7, 1988.  On page 18 in the    
book, this sentence from it:                     
                                           
    Pascal's formula about our knowing 
    too little to be dogmatists and too    
    much much to be skeptics perfectly   
    describes our human condition as we
    really experience it, although men       
    have powerful temptations to obscure        
    it and often find it intolerable.              
                                         
From page 23:                                  
                                           
    What we are witnessing is the Quarrel       
    of the Canons, the twentieth century's    
    farcical version of the seventeenth   
    century's Quarrel between the Ancients    
    and the Moderns---. . . .                 
                                             
From page 27, however, this caution:           
                                              
      It is a grave error to accept that         
    the books of the dead white Western       
    male canon are essentially Western---    
    or any of those other things.              
                                             
From page 29:                                 
                                              
      Each must ultimately judge for him-   
    self about the important books, but a     
    good beginning would be to see what    
    other thinkers the thinkers who attract
    him turn to.                             
                                           
Allan Bloom wants us neither to be "culture-bound"  
nor to miss the "great dialogue".                
                                                 
So I should read his essays, though I cannot be sure  
I will.                                           
                                                   
                                                
                                                
                                                   
                                                    
kh00017

Theme Variation

2009-01-24T17:07:00.001-06:00

                   
                                           
                                           
The world is. . . .                                            
                                                       
                                                            
Well through ill, the journey of my life has/// been a piece of cake;    
but, I tell you:  You would not want to eat it.  Recently, I have    
found myself often re-imagining incidents in my life based on the    
old saw:  Knowing what I know now, if I could live my life over   
again, I would. . . .  *** Reflecting on this, I have arrived at two   
conclusions:  1) "Knowing what I know now" cannot be substituted   
for knowing what I knew then -- 2) "If I could live my life over  
again, I would" do exactly what I did.  Even if I grant that all my   
choices were made/ selflessly, I could only have made them as the   
wisdom I had at those moments moved me to.  I am a creature    
of a continuum of present moments exiting from and entering into  
present moments, and the excellence of my memory and/or ability   
to devine the future notwithstanding, the best I can do is the   
best I can do at the moment of each choice because I am not a   
perfect being.  "All you who are without sin cast the first stone."
                                                                    
So, the idea that I should not fuss over a choice I have made           
because the past is past is inconsequential.  I am not a Fatalist.
In spite of the barriers against it, I know it is possible for me   
to improve, and to that end/ re-imagining an event which cannot    
be changed is not without value.                                   
                                                                   
About my memory:  My memory tends to be tied to the traumatic,   
to those occurrences which impact my emotions.  I do not have    
a strong rote memory.  Only the first line of the poem linked   
to above remained available to my consciouness.  Therefore,    
when I read the entire poem earlier today, I was shocked by   
a reference to a mythical being in it.  A verse I included in   
my 1982 Alden St. Cloud First Pick, a verse written when I    
was in high school, appears to have been directly influenced   
by that poem.  A mere twenty or twenty-five copies of First  
Pick were printed, and since I no longer had any of those 
copies, I have picked that book apart, placing what is in it   
in other books.  Being a selected and new book, most of what
is in it is from yet other books anyway.                     
                                                             
About my IQ:  My first recollection is 117, but I have    
scored as low as 100 and as high as 150.  Big deal.  The   
only important test of that nature I did well on was the
1984 GRE I took at UF in Gainesville, Florida.  I was 43
then, and had been motivated by a lawyer I knew to seek  
a degree in Accounting.  In preparation I took several  
computer and accounting courses at the local college.  
I also studied rigorously for the exam.  This is not    
the first time I have written about this online, but I
scored 740 on the Verbal section and 630 on the Quant.
I was accepted by the University of Florida's Fisher   
School of Accounting but I couldn't even muster the   
energy to make it through one semester.  So I thought--
since Donald Justice, whom I had missed at Iowa, was
conducting a workshop at UF--I should try to get into
the university's Doctorate in English program.  With
help via a letter from Marvin Bell, I was accepted.
However, unknown to me until after the fact, I chose
to take a course in non-Shakespearean Renaissance    
Drama, a course presided over by that department's  
most difficult professor.  Not that that would have  
made any real difference since even though I did get
through the semester, I knew I would not be able to
muster the energy to continue.  The drama professor
said I should continue writing poems.  My spurt in   
Accounting, alas, had me in the stock market; and   
the GRE preparation had me into heuristic delvings
in mathematics.  I wrote some papers and a tome on 
the latter, and I built a tomb in the former.     
                                                  
Back to the GRE.  Online is a site which shows the IQ    
(using 2 measuring methods: Wechsler and Stanford-Binet)
and also the Percentile a GRE score approximates.   *  
Rather silly, but hey.                 
                                                          
Onward is the only direction: which means/ ever, ever   
closer to being no longer Earth-alive; which is why I say:    
      Death is the only life worth living.              
                                                        
                                                                      
                                                      
                                                     
                                                    
                                                   
                                                  
kh00016

In Remembrance

2009-01-19T10:26:00.001-06:00

Somewhere I heard the voice of a man charge the world; somewhere I heard a voice of might. Somewhere I heard the voice of a man large and deep; somewhere I heard a voice of light. Somewhere I heard the voice of a man word on word well up in me; somewhere I learned how the right words can turn the one who's heard inside out. Somewhere I heard; somewhere yearned. - The above, the octet of "January: Year-day 15" remembering Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was written in 1976 and is in my 1976 Today. ** "I Have a Dream" speech (17 minutes) kh00015

A disheveled life

2009-01-17T19:59:00.004-06:00

          
                                              
is a sad life.  Or is it?  Here at the beginning   
of my 69th year as an Earth-alive human, I have   
set upon this rumination meaning to bemoan many    
of the choices I have made, believing them to be    
deleterious, and yet I know that had I not made   
them I would not be here as I now am: physically
(i.e., bodily), geographically (i.e., in this    
bedroom in this apartment in this city, et, et,   
et), mentally (i.e., the locatable but intangible 
me, the "I am thought" as Rimbaud wrote), and/    
spiritually.  So:  Were my sometimes outright    
hurtful choices necessarily without-redeeming-  
value choices?  This morning while combing my   
hair, I broke my habit of always trying to make   
a straight part, and sought out how my hair     
wanted to part--I have a nasty cowlick.  Voila!
Odd, but: much better.                           
                                                 
A truly wise human--it could be asserted--is   
one who is able to learn quickly and thereby    
structure his/her life diligently.  Were I to    
detail my life journeys/ it would be evident I    
am not a truly wise human.  So what kind of    
human am I?  I am a well,-that-didn't-work;-
so-let's-try-this-approach guy.  Result?  A   
vast unevenness in antithetical disciplines.         
A hiatus of twenty years (approximately 1987   
into 2007) from the realms of poetry.  And   
what of my constant buying and moving and  
general fiscal irresponsibility?  But Brian,
how often must you go over these?  Do you   
think you are a tragic hero?  Were there no   
joys amid your so-called errors?  Get a fife.
                                             
Nonetheless, my major regrets: --  Stop!  I        
just recalled an incident where I should have
raised a question, but didn't; and recalling   
this incident has made me realize I cannot     
have any regrets/ because I would not have    
done anything other than what I did.  I am a   
flawed being, and the flaws I had and have/  
always impact my judgments/ positively, nega-
tively, inconsequentially.  So: where to/ then?
                                                 
There were the many relevance and categorization   
discussions.  Now there are Don Share's
recent posts on a variety of topics in the air;
Joseph Hutchison's openness/closure conversation 
with Adam Fieled; the new multiplicities 
conversation about younger authors between 
Mark Wallace and Joseph Mosconi.
All such--and there are like others--are good
for the communities of poets.  
                                
                                 
                                    
                                   
                                  
                                         
                                    
kh00014

Sometimes I think

2009-01-12T22:12:00.003-06:00


                                       
                                      
an important part of who I am is stuck in my pre-teen       
and teen years.  Why?  As it pertains directly to me    
I am not sure, but as it pertains to others when they
are compared to me by me in particular/ it seems they
are--no matter their age--more serious in their daily
doings than I am.  Strange.  My temperament is not a
sanguine one.  Lonelinesses are my milieux.  Yet I am  
riddled by a playfulness that undercuts my sadnesses.
And I never know when or how it will show.  Most often
it enters spontaneously.  It is in its way a safety   
valve I ought to be grateful for, but I sense others
see me as silly and insincere because of it.  Perhaps
I am wrong as no one has ever said anything more than:   
"That's not funny."  Of course, what I blurt isn't   
supposed to be funny, just goofy.  My humour is of   
the dry British sort.  Sometimes I would say:  "Well,
I got it from the Imp from the Garbage Universe, and
when I die I am going to kill him."  Poor Shakespeare,
or the 17th Earl of ?.  One day a coworker's remark   
led me to say:  "I once read that Hamlet had a weight
problem; so this is what I did with the 'To be or not
to be' soliloquy: Tubby or not tubby, that is the   
question.  Whether 'tis better to go on a diet, or   
build a kite, and fly it."  See what I mean.  Another
day when I was with two coworkers who were talking   
about the movie, Amistad, and one of them said the
main character knew only 5 English words, I immediately
responded: "Yes: 'You stupid.  I go home.'"  It is for
reasons such as these that I have concluded it is best
to read many of my poems with an accent quite unlike
one's own.  The resulting angularity juices them.        
                                                      
                                                    
                                                    
                                                   
                                                
                                                    
kh00013

I cannot be consoled

2008-12-02T22:46:00.002-06:00


                                              
                                                
and so if it seems I have thereby condemned myself to a kind of
eternal hell, then is does.  Why?  Primarily because I have made
too many self-destructive choices, but angers not directed by me
at me but by me at others are also part of the why.  Read this  
vestibular homily which serves as the first page of my Venturings
book.  If you don't, you will not be able to properly understand 
the rest of this rumination.                                     
                                                                 
Today (2008-12-02) over at KSM's Lime Tree I came upon a link to
this.  One sentence in it is: "It's all a question of where you
put the emphasis: on the self or on the poem; on the art product
or on the shared activity of making."  After all the opinions I've
encountered about language these past two years, this is the one  
that broke the proverbial camel's back.  Will get to it later.   
                                                                 
First, me.  In approximately six weeks, birthday 68.  I am a small
human.  A frail human.  My physical back has been broken several
years.  My body has other ailments.  --  I was raised in the small
(30,000+) Fox River Valley town of Fond du Lac, WI, situated at
the southern end of Lake Winnebago.  The Roman Catholicism which
I absorbed made it difficult for me to be honest with myself.    
Being somewhat intelligent, I allowed too much false pride to   
reign and not enough integrity.  So the sources of my/ disruptive
choices: sexual, financial, day-to-day.  From this vantage, some
of them prove that at those moments I was "verifiably" insane.
                                                                 
Neoliberal Poetry Broadside.  The authors of this straw clearly
enough indicate what poetics they prefer though they do admit 
that anathema transgressions occur there too.  The problem for 
me is that I am not committed to one way of expressing my It
Poetics.  Therefore, all the labels flitting about and about
strain my tolerance beyond annoyance since their flip existence
undermines the arguments of those who fling them.  Talk about
ego.  Anti-I? anti-capitalist?: with that kind of hegemonic
staging!?  I just don't get it.  Sure, those who are in with
what these authors espouse, generally love what is in their
broadside.  Poets who align themselves with this group or    
that group/ do so because they feel comfortable there.  It 
isn't easy--and scientific studies say, not even healthy--to
be isolated.  One of the finest statements Ron Silliman ever
made was the praise he accorded the late Quietist (yet not 
so quiet) Reginald Shepherd.  That is where we should be.  
Fine poems can be wrought in any style, and every day are.
The more ways found to make great poems, the better.  Is not
each poem an experiment, an innovation.  Have you not noticed
how often the most loved song by a rock band is that band's
quietist one?  Bang, bang, bang / bing, bing, bing / trang,
trang, trang / yangy, yangy.  That's noisy.  Oh huff 'n' puff.
"Revolving door."                                             
                                                             
                                                                
                                                             
                                                            
                                                              
                                                            
kh00012

sullen grey

2008-11-10T23:14:00.002-06:00


                                                      
                                                            
Today began as partly cloudy, and then became mostly clear,
but by early afternoon was overcast.  Yesterday and the day
before were overcast just as large swaths of my life have     
been.  Two minutes ago 9:41 PM passed.  Earlier today I read
through an AOL picture-post about handwriting.  Guess I had
it in my head I might find something there that related to
me.  Nevertheless, when I was quite young I let a sporadic 
question: "Can't you ever do anything right?": traumatize
me; and I now suspect that most of the poor choices I have
made were the result of my stubbornly trying to prove that
indeed I could do things right.  In other words, instead of
allowing reason to guide me, I allowed emotion to, thereby
undermining my efforts to attain certain goals I had set.
Would I have attained those goals had I been willing to view
with a colder eye opportunities I was looking at?  Without
a doubt.  What opportunities?  Not sure I want to say, but
there were at least a dozen of them presented to me, and 
had I recognized them as worthy of a small risk--a risk I
could afford to take--I would have been, if all the other
events of my life had remained as they turned out to be,
a wealthy person before the diseases that forced me into
early retirement impacted me.  As it is, it may be I am poor
beyond repair, which doesn't mean I haven't made good
choices or haven't been inexplicably blessed because of 
certain other efforts of mine.  I have.  I have.  And yes,
I am being blessed right now.                             
                                                         
Do you know who God is?  No.  Nor do I.  But I do not go
with coincidence, or with fate, or with luck; therefore, God
for me is that power which makes possible everything;
is that power which most makes its presence visible when
inexplicable blessings enter one's life at those moments
when one is most in need of them, whether or not they are
recognized for what they are.  Watch God moments is what 
I have come to call them.                                  
                                                         
This is my ruminations den, and I decided tonight to hide
the comments option for this location.                   
                                                           
                                                            
                                                             
-----------                                              
kh00011

Poets are conduits

2008-11-01T18:55:00.003-05:00


                                                     
                                                             
On October 24, 2008, on his not poetry blog, Bill Knott
posted which is too much.  Through an anecdote from the
Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin, the practice of  
Mallarmé initiates what soon becomes a serious discussion
about poets and what to him are the two core esthetics.    
-                                                              
Thus Brecht versus Rilke and their associated ramifications.
See the Selden Rodman quote taken from the Preface for 
his 1949 Anthology: One Hundred Modern Poems.
                                                                 
Reading Mr. Knott's words hit me in the head much as         
(when we were in grade school) Markevich's glove did     
in what was supposed to be a controlled boxing match  
I immediately stopped, knowing I would not be able to 
defend myself against his longer reach.  Honestly, I
do not intend to counter Bill Knott's thinking here
either; but I will be sharing past and present turns
of mine that will include some poems because of the
ideas in them.  Stunningly--to me at least--back in 
the 1960s I wrote this sonnet and in the 1970s this       
for Doug Flaherty poem; but just so you can grasp--
should you prefer to ignore them--why they matter    
now, here are their titles: "The Future Belongs to the
Rilkeans" and "The Marriage of God and Money".  *
I was raised as a Roman Catholic.                            
                                                          
Knott: "The question then as today seems to be, what 
'faith' should one aspire to 'contribute' one's artistic
efforts toward the furtherance of: individual (spiritual)
or collective (socialist)?"  And later: "'Individual
faith' versus 'Collective faith.'  Capitalism (Religion/
Fascism) versus Socialism.  Or: Style versus Content."   
                                                            
What is difficult for me now is that I cannot take one
side over the other.  Further, equating Religion with
Fascism forced me to seek an extended definition of 
the latter.  I found one.  It is at Old Amercian Century.
14 Points are listed.  However, under each point are
numerous links to copyrighted material.  I suggest you
read only the 14 points and what the final link zaps to.           
Humans are humans, and while extensive quality-of-life
changes continue to occur, quality-of-thought changes
have taken on different faces but essentially remained
the same.  Know that I say this, hoping I am wrong.           -                                               
                                                       
Still, poets are conduits.  Some are so of this.  Some
are so of that.  Some consistently/purposely change.
Some are so of whatever, or like to imagine they are.
I am among those.  Accordingly, the aesthetic I support 
is: Write as you are moved to write.                        
                                                      
                                                        
Here are three more Knott statements:                           
-                                                       
"In fact, in this dispensation, in this scale of esthetics,
the more insignificant the ostensible subject is, the better."
-                                                             
"The more boring the content, the more intriguing the style
(theoretically)."                                              
-                                                             
"Content/subject/intent are excrescences that burden the work
with extraneous matter."                                     
                                                                 
                                                            
Finally, as befits him, Bill Knott ends his post with:
-                                                     
"Form is never more than an extension of breakfast.  As
shown in this poem by Jacques Prévert, trans. by the
forgotten poet Selden Rodman:"                
                                                      
The translated title of the poem is: LATE RISING          
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
    
                                                            
          
Kh00010                                                                                              
*

My routine for visiting blogs

2008-09-27T23:40:00.002-05:00


                                        
                                       
got interrupted during the summer.  Tonight,
starting near the bottom of my lengthening  
Blog List, I reinstated that routine.  This
post, however, is not going to be about my
routine or about my being remiss.          
                                             
When I arrived at Mark Wallace's blog     
I encountered an opinion post preceded by a
cartoon that made me laugh.  I paraphrase:
Is making a poem a form of work or a form
of play?  It may not seem so, but to me   
this is a complex question; therefore, my
answer will be complex.                       
-                                             
I make poems, or objects like poems, using
what I will call here an open aesthetics
because any object I am making, or which I 
am participating in making, takes precedence.
I have sometimes called it my It Poetics.
Do I care how good it is?  Yes, but only to 
the extent that it is true to itself.  As a
result of my openness, all manner of objects
occur: ditties, muttobs, multimedia poems,
picture poems, phonetic poems, silly poems,
varing degrees of serious poems.  Further,
I contend that some of those objects are
best read with an accent or in a tone that
is unlike my accent or the tone I would
normally use.  Point: the perceiver of an
object ostensibly from me becomes that
object's judge and jury; so let each such
perceiver interpret it as s/he wills.  I, while
I am Earth-alive, can make known my
insights about it and can change it if I
so desire; but after that it is in stasis
until it is perceived.   
-                                        
So, is my making/ work or play: both.  A
poem may come to me in its final form, or
it may take years for it to attain a form
I am satisfied with, or I may let it out
to be seen even if I'm not satisfied with
it, or even if I am satisfied with it/ I may
never let it out.  Do I ever use a set of
constraints prior to making an object?
Yes I do.  See my alphabet experiment in 
the ghost in the dumpster.                            
                                                
                                          
                                              
                                           
                                          
kh00009

Somewhat likeable but inconsequential

2008-09-14T21:54:00.001-05:00


                                          
                                             
                                           
is how i feel most bloggers regard me,
and i think i know why; but it doesn't
matter/ because the only person i am  
competing against is me: the silence  
in the showy fields.  In an old poem  
of mine i compare my voice to a pale  
blue moth.  It isn't that i can't go  
on at length as so many do, eliciting:
"Oh, oh, that Dragon Cecropia is here
again."  Or maybe it is.  Admittedly
i have been until recently/ away from
the fray.  Admittedly i am not about
promoting a manifest point-of-view.
Admittedly i could never fit in with
certified groups, which does not mean
i am uninterested in what members of
such groups make.  The isolation i've
chosen undermines those urges in me
to complain; and that, actually, is a
good: it frees me.  Still, i know my
long absences (along with my decision
to exit from submitting to editors)
may have cloaked my freedom, made it
impossible for any of my artifacts to 
ever be taken seriously.  Talk about
a game of chance.  Whatever happens,
it will be as it will be.                     
                                              
                                             
                                                
                                        
                                         
kh00008

Reginald Shepherd

2008-09-13T17:50:00.005-05:00


                                   
                                          
and I had scant contacts, and only two of those
(possibly three) were meaningful.              
                                                
However, first go to Ron Silliman's Blog and    
search out his Saturday, September 13, 2008.       
                                              
*                                           
". . . poems are, or should be, experiences          
in themselves, and not just accounts of or   
commentaries on experience; they should be   
additions to the world, not simply annotations
to it."                                      
-                                              
This is a quote from Reginald Shepherd's essay:
On Difficulty in Poetry which is available at
J. J. Gallaher's site here.                    
                                              
*                                               
From Nic Sebastian's site: Reginald Shepherd's   
answers to The Ten Questions 2 here.               
                                                    
*                                              
At www.pshares.org: poems and             
                                       
*                                                   
At Poetry Foundation's Harriet, Emily Warn's 
post and the comments beneath it.         
                                                    
*                                             
From Joseph Hutchison: Sad News                      
                                           
*                                                
From Jasper Bernes: this remembrance     
                                                   
-                                               
                                              
Earlier this year when I was posting on my
Rhodingeedaddee site/ sections of what had
been my Tripod Brian's Brain log from 2000,
Reginald Shepherd (having somehow found it,
and thinking I was writing about 2008 events   
in my life) placed beneath page 4 a comment
which exemplifies his empathetic spirit.
If you wish to, see here.              
                                     
In March of 2008, "Robert Duncan and Me"   
appeared on Reginald Shepherd's Blog.  11
comments are beneath that post.  Do read
his post and the comments beneath it, if
you take this link to there.          
                                          
                                          
                                           
                                         
                                             
kh00007           =

Poem Reading

2008-09-01T17:38:00.003-05:00


                                               
                                                
                                              
A poem is a made object, an artifact, a thing that waits in stasis
until a perceiver comes upon it and favors it with an attention of
one depth or another.  No two persons interpret a particular poem   
the same way unless they have persuaded each other that a specific
view is the correct one.  No/ one person interprets a particular poem
in quite the same way each time that poem is encountered by that
person.  A person is constantly changing.  A poem, unless an event
has altered it, exists/ as it/ last was.  One could argue for an entire
lifetime about how best to read a given poem, and then/ just before
dying see something new in that poem.  And as to whether a poem 
is worthy of one's interest is also up to each perceiver.
o                
                                                                  
o                                                       
Writers often write about reading, and not dogmatically about it
either.  After all, every act of writing is exploratory.  After all,
every act of reading is exploratory.  Whatever language is / or
languages are / being explored, the serious writer is always on
a learning curve as well as on a teaching curve.  Three recent
examples: On Alvin Feinman's "True Night" at Reginald 
Shepherd's Blog; When Four Tribes Go to War at Cahiers de 
Corey; William Shakespeare's Sonnet CXVI at Lime Tree.             
o                                                                 
                                                          
o                                                           
I, as you should know, do not have a staunch aesthetic; and,
therefore, I usually do not like to argue with someone else's
aesthetic, even if I disagree with aspects of it.  At times I
will support a view which differs from mine.  When I do, it is
because I think I understand it well enough to see why it works
for the person who holds it.  Just because it varies from core
leanings in my universe is no reason to argue against it.  I'm
not trying to make others into a shadow copy of me.  What for?
How many schools of poetic thought have there been since 
humans invented structured lingual sounds, sounds that 
codified meaning?  Still, words are malleable.  How words are
manipulated is.  One thing about new that always is true: it is
different.                                                    
o                                                             
                                                              
o                                                            
So I am not going list any rules.                             
-                                                          
If you come across something that doesn't make sense,
that makes you afraid it might invade,                   
that moves you to want to change your font,
then--at least for/ inspection and safety--put up a fence.     
-                                                        
After a while, if all seems okay,
you can roll up the fence, and ________________.
                                                       
                                                          
                                                     
                                                       
                                                     
                                                 
kh00006

Aesthetic openness

2008-08-30T22:41:00.003-05:00


                                          
                                          
                                             
is my  way.  Why?  I prefer variety.  I want the signs 
I use to be partners in what I make.  Do I never force
my will on those signs?  Not never, but wicked wonders
they often are/ that have in them wisdoms I would miss
if I was always constraining them to my designs.  Let
them breathe.  Stanley Kunitz believed poems come as a
kind of blessing.  So do I.  Besides, though I do want my
artifacts to please and enhance, I don't demand praise 
for any of them.                                      
                                                       
I realize I'm taking risks, and that in the end I might
be a lonely and forgotten group of one,  but if that is
the fate of my project I'll still have the satisfaction of
knowing I did not shatter/ my own lights.  Moment-to-
moment each must do as each sees.  Like Jon Anderson
said about his: my poetry is not for everyone.  (But,
Brian, you don't write poems.  Well, shit.  That's
right: that's what it is.  Thank you.)                           
                                                          
So, how does this aesthetic openness play out?  Oddly.
For one thing, lines become more important to me than
whole poems.  I know: that's true for a lot of people.
However, if two people read 25 poems and were asked 
to pick 25 lines, one from each poem, it would be a tad
freaky if their choices were the same.  To begin with,
person 1 might pick a line from poem 4 because it was
hilarious, while person 2 picked a line from poem 4
because it was sonorous.  Have me pick a line from 4
and I might pick one because it had a word in it I
was unfamiliar with.  I'm the same way with popular
songs.  Staggeringly weak rote memory.  When I write
I try to in this noisy world deepen my concentration.
Nonetheless, anything can happen.  There are ways of
making poems I am unlikely to ever try.  During the
last two years though/ I did try several of the less
demanding, especially in my This Day's Poem e-chap
and in my online June 2007 book.  From ditties on
through muttobs, and bad / mediocre / good poems,
most of those I've written and am writing are online.
Muttobs exist in a space between ditties and poems
but it is a fuzzy space.  "Dog On" is an example.
It has six one-word lines, and each word begins with
an "m".  Notice the two conventions I do not follow.
There are others.  There are new ones I've adopted
and new ones I've invented.  I am certain I am not
the only one doing such things.  As an undergrad in
the mid 1960s the professor I took a history of the
English language course under/ predicted that the
apostrophe would fall out use and that eventually
the language would devolve to grunts and groans.  
I have no clue about the language, and "it's" seems
to be the only sticker re the apostrophe.  As to what
happened to the semicolon, I still use it.  I also use
the slash (virgule) as a pause notation.          
                                                     
In my time I have lived through many technologies.
During my childhood we had a mimeograph.  We even
got into laminating and wood burning.  My dad set
ads for the local newspaper, but we never explored
the world of fonts and presses at home and nothing
aroused an interest in me about that world.  I have
consistently used basic HTML since coming online in
2000, but I was more into math than poetry at that
time.  There too I went my own way.  So I am out
there, or in here, or somewhere: I am a flutterby.
One day--last year, I think--I got the idea I could
produce a book of 1024 blank pages.  It would be my
collected works.  Invisible Ink would be its title.
I mention this because I don't want K G to one-up 
me on it.  Lawrence Sterne is probably laughing.
Doesn't all this tickle your widgets.  A few years
ago--maybe it was in 2004--I created a new Olympic
sport: Dot Dancing.  There's an explanation of it
in one of my journals.  See my "2 Curious Lines" 
poem (?) in the ghost in the dumpster and read my
comment on it if you happen to read this and have
not yet read that.  Contagious cadenzas.
                                                 
                                                     
                                               
                                              
                                       
                                                 
kh00005

Julia Vinograd

2008-08-29T17:47:00.002-05:00


                                                
                                              
                                               
 was a classmate of mine at Iowa (1965-67).  She had
a limp.  Never did ask her or anyone else why.  Today
I searched her name again as it had been a while since
I last did.  Found out she had had polio as a child.
For many years she has been a Berkeley street poet
and has been honored by that city.  Here is a simple
introduction: Julia Vinograd
and here is the transcript of a 2004 interview by 
Judy Jones: along with several family photos.
Some of her books have unusual covers and titles.  See
www.zeitgeist-press.com/vinograd.cfm                      
                                                 
                                                     
                                              
                                               
                                              
kh00004

Doing Time at Iowa

2008-08-28T19:38:00.002-05:00


                                        
                                               
 or: My Iowa Isolated Freedom                
                                                
(1965-67)                                 
-                                                 
I was 24 going in, having been delayed two years by an errant
yet necessary venture in a Jesuit facility in St. Bonifacius,
Minnesota.  During my junior and senior undergraduate years 
I was the lead editor of Pursuit, a dying literary and arts
journal.  Thankfully, after my departure, Professor Richard  
Lyons changed its focus, and renamed it Wisconsin Review.  
In June of 1965 I married the woman I was most attracted to
when we were in grade school.  Subsequently, by means of a 
ruse, I initiated employment for her at the university, but
we were not able to find living quarters in Iowa City.  In
Solon, about ten miles north, we found an upstairs apartment
in a large house.  All in all, though it kept me away from
other students in the MFA program, it was/ a pleasant place.
Solitude appealed to me.            
                                                            
My first year my mentor was George Starbuck.  For reasons
I do not recall/ I decided to write Onefor, an epic with a
torturous rhyme scheme.  I did manage to complete a draft
of Book I.  However, it was not acceptable, and the efforts
needed to make it acceptable would have been Herculean.  
I was not faring all that well with the hill courses either.
Starbuck could have sent me packing, but an intuition he
had, plain and worn as it was, led him to tell me to: write
about something you are familiar with.  Already nearing the
end of year one, and knowing I had not written enough good
short poems, on a return to my hometown, I walked through
important parts of it.  Thus, Fond du Lac, a loose blank
verse long poem, a lyric narrative, speckled with others 
its protagonist encounters/imagines.  Compared to the epic,
it is like a happening.  By the time the first lines of it appeared
on a worksheet/ Marvin Bell was my mentor; but Starbuck's
intuition, pressuring me as it did, had freed me.  The change
was palpable.  Alas, it perturbed one student so/ he walked
to the front, and--sitting in a chair behind a table--began
reciting from memory a composition of his he was certain
was superior--which indeed it was--but was made comical by 
the juxtaposition of a deeply felt personal truth.  Laughter
erupted.  I, though I may have smiled, was sad.  That student
rushed out; and to this day I wish I had had the strength to
convince him to stay; but childhood traumas prevented me
from helping him heal the trauma/ he was experiencing.      
-                                                           
[ Note:  My memory is fallible, but I am relating all here
    as my memory has retained that all. ]                  
-                                                          
Afterwards, out in the hall, James Tate (god that he was) 
asked me: "How do you write those long poems?"  Stunned   
is the word.  First off, if he actually did use "those
long poems"/ it didn't register.  Had it, I would have
questioned it/ as I didn't think anyone knew about the
epic.  Perhaps it's neither here nor there since I was
stunned.  Not having a clue how to respond, I asked him:
"How do you write your short ones?"  At that point the
word became silence.  Had I known then what I know now:
that he was into jazz, I would have mentioned that and
then told him I prefer symphonies.                       
                                                       
I did have brief conversations with two or three other
students while I was at Iowa.  Here are names of those
I remember, whether or not I ever spoke to them:  Phil
Hey, Michael Dennis Browne, Peter Klappert, Harold Bond,
Peter Cooley, Steve Orlen, Jon Anderson, David Lunde,
Julia Vinograd, Richard Geller, Eric Nightingale.     
                                                      
Some side notes:                                         
-                                                        
During the summer of 1966 I worked in a pallet factory 
in Coralville, Iowa.                                   
-
When I was a child, my parents learned I had allergies
the day I went with my father to help him pick corn on
the land where he was a child.  It was less than four
blocks from our house, but by the time we got back to
there/ my eyes were pasted shut.  One day in Iowa City
when I stopped to get my wife, she told me my face was
all white, scaly white, that I looked like a ghost.
-
Julia Vinograd has written over 50/ books of poems.
                                                          
                                                      
                                                       
                                                       
                                                    
kh00003

sort of an intro

2008-08-23T20:00:00.010-05:00












                                          
                                         
 
                                          
                                          
                                                 
                                              
                                             
 B I R T H

 Still do not have a guiding plan for this.  I have around a dozen notebooks
partially or totally used for diary/journal purposes, but they would be hard
to work with.  There are topics I want to explore, but I am not quite ready.
So even this may take days to complete.  Was just at a page asking: Are you
a left-brain or a right-brain thinker?  There were 10 yes/no questions.  The
point of them was career advice.  Librarian, accountant, hospitality industry
and counsellor were four of the possibilities.  In general, writers tend to be
right-brained and mathematicians left-brained.  I am not a natural genius but
on a GRE I took in June of 1984--I was 43 then--my Verbal score was 740
and my Quantitative score 630.  The Q score put me with the bioengineers.
Another test I took during that decade indicated I should be a librarian.  I've
not been either, but most of my working years I was a Holiday Inn 3rd shift
clerk (a night auditor), a position which requires left-brain and right-brain
abilities.  Ditto for my teaching positions prior to drifting into the hospitality
industry.  Am I now just the hunchback of no name?  Could be.  I am edging
closer to/ being an ash.                                                         
                                                                                 
See brain/career article here.
                                                                                 
 So where is this trekking toward?  Nearly all the information above can be 
found elsewhere in my online posts, but not all in the same place.  If I'm    
allowed to live until I am 80, I may do more in fifteen years than I did in
the first 65.  I'm now a week past 67.7.  Obviously, my health--what there 
is of it--will have to be enabling; and that does not look good from today's
vantage.  Really, I ought to be residing in a place where I can walk to/ the
services I need.  There may not be such a place/ in this city: hospital,
doctors' offices, church, library, university, superstore.  There was a time
when I was a superior runner/ over short distances.  I can still walk fast,
but I doubt I can run.  What I do see a few years out--if I get there--is a
wheelchair.  Who knows, though, since good things are happening every
day.  My mother's body was in bad shape when she passed, but her mind 
was fine.  Meanwhile I am trying to do and learn more, which is why I am  
a reader of comments.  For example, yesterday I learned a new word, a 
word which isn't even in my Collegiate Eleventh.  It is in Silliman's recent
link list, but I didn't notice it.  It was in reading the comments that it got
caught in my thought.  That word is "asemic", and clicking it will take you       
to the perfect site for learning about it.                          
                                                                  
                                                                       
                                                                        
                                                                   
kh00002      2008-08-23

Y

2008-08-20T16:55:00.000-05:00


                                     
                                       
Had I known why                      
I am doing this,                
I wouldn't have.                       
                                    
                                   
                                       
                                          
                                    
kh00001