This Glacier

this glacier was nearly as exciting as a skinned otter... hairs per square inch...trees in the arctic circle...my heart's beating.... blue, blue, blue

It's raining and I should care

but I don't. I just don't.

from Brave Men Press-- Chris Tonelli's "No Theater"

a note from Brian Foley at Brave Men Press

Considering the responsibilities of the social world with a disconnected eye, NO THEATER is a collection of meticulously crafted poems that perform outside of time, but remain intuitively familiar and profound. Chris Tonelli reveals the artificialities of the everyday self with a language stalked by loss yet driven by possibility. Here, these poems come prepared in an armature of many masks and invested with an insight sure to move around the mental furniture of any reader.

Chris Tonelli co-curates The So and So Series and is the author of four chapbooks, most recently For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming). He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife Allison.

Read a sample poem here

Cover is letterpressed with black ink on black paper.
Printed in a limited edition of 123.
25 pages.

$9.50

Seth Abramson - Law & Order

Seth Abramson's posts are always interesting. An interesting insight into a complicated personality. And just interesting.

Lately Seth's been blogging about his time as a public defender (heroes, difficulties, bravery, etc, etc. See here and here.

In the first post Seth, among other things, really goes after Law & Order. His main point, I think, is that the show's given the American Public a completely wrong and silly idea of what the public defense system actually's like--- and I won't argue about that!

I used to watch Law & Order a lot and really enjoyed it. I never, though, believed that it was a reasonable representation of the criminal justice system. For me it's just simply a kind of soap opera. Or perhaps more accurately just a puzzle that falls quite easily into place.

And for me that's the attraction (or was the attraction.) I enjoyed watching things just slide right into place. Like a medieval representation of the world (universe!) unfurled to me over and over. Or like going into Cathedral after Cathedral. Or staring at beautiful and orderly plates in Istanbul. I'm addicted to order. Nice stable systems. And Law & Order delivers. On the other hand Seth's blog is one I often visit because it is just, on so many levels, so damned interesting.

Shane Jones - Big Screen

Congrats to Shane Jones who just sold the movie rights to his novel(la) "Light Boxes." For more info check out his blog

I interviewed Shane about Light Boxes a while back. If interested check it out here.

Ringing - Tall and Dark

Here's a poem from my e-chapbook Ringing

I entered as a God, and now I’m a stranger——all this love in filthy puddles, in jungles, chained together, crumbling. You’re coming towards me. The sun’s behind you. You are tall and dark. I am crying. I want you to fuck me crying.

The chapbook's free, on-line, and there are illustrated pages, as well as audio. If interested please check it out here.

Also, my next e-chapbook, Dreaming, should be out soon !

Tony Hoagland - Again (Genius, Contempt, Vomit,....)

over at his blog today "Nothing to Say and Saying it" John Gallaher has some interesting things to say about Hoagland's APR article

Gallaher quotes extensively from the article.

And sums Hoagland's thrust up as follows:

His thesis: Dean Young is a genius, and all these young male writers out there who are younger than he is are writing in his shadow and are not geniuses.

I'm going to re-read the Gallaher article now (especially the Hoagland quotes) and might say more later. But in the meantime this is a great opportunity to post up the same pictures I used in a post (Goransson going after Hoagland, etc) i put up a while back

To follow's an excerpt from that post

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I saw that hack (Hoagland) at an Austin AWP Panel where he talked about the sort of poetry many young poets are writing. Poetry he's not so excited about. All I remember's him being so damned fucking smug. O, yeah, I remember him reading a poem and then saying something like:

I admire the total contempt this poem has for me
I admire the complete disregard blah blah
I admire blah blah blah

Most of the audience were lapping it up.
I was throwing up.
(chunks of Donkey Gospel, etc, etc)

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Gone to the Moths - (no God)

So, what happens when you're burned out blogging.

Well, here are some moths.

(And, in case you're wondering, this is NOT a religious post.)

Solar Anus wants Readers (for Atlanta)

a note from Solar Anus:


Hi writers!

I co-run a poetry and fiction reading series in Atlanta called Solar Anus. Past readers include Justin Taylor, Johannes Goransson, Rauan Klassnik, and Bruce Covey. In the interest of future readings that are every bit as fabulous, I thought I'd reach out to all of you in two ways:

First, please let me know if you will be in the Atlanta area...ever. I'd love to discuss the possibility of hosting you to read to us.

Second, pass this along to other writers whom you respect who either live in or near Atlanta or who might be passing through. Encourage them to query me at amymcdaniel@gmail.com with a brief bio and a link to something they've written. We especially love promoting writers who have books or chapbooks to sell.

Very many thanks.
Amy

Swallows - Cold about Death

I made a resolution the other day to be cold about death and harshness. Bad things happen. So, yesterday on the way down to the grocery store to pick up some greenish mangoes (my parrots like them sour, sharp) I checked, as I always do, on the swallows nests built along the beams of the awnings by the school.

From one of the nests a dead swallow was hanging. I looked up at it. And from across the street a baby started shrieking.

Then a live swallow, perhaps the dead one's mate, came down on to the nest. Other swallows were singing all around us. There are lots of nest all close together here. A couple of hatchlings peered down out of their nests. They are so orange.

And I guess the dead swallow got caught on the nest somehow. ????.

Yes. I resolved to be cold about death. And harshness.

Grotesque and Ridiculous -- ??

There are people in this world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem. It's no use trying to invest the end with a little dignity-- you have to be a liar and a hypocrite to discover anything tragic in their going.

I'm wonder what Henry Miller would say about Michael Jackson's life and "going."

The above section (in bold) is an excerpt from Tropic of Cancer where Miller's talking about Peckover, a copy editor who fell to his death in an elevator shaft.

Despite the fact that his legs were broken and his ribs busted, he had managed to rise to all fours and grope about for his false teeth.

Is Russell Edson Great or Just Popular??

Johannes Goransson ponders Russell Edson, pale in the light of Michaux (and more interesting places the prose poem can go. Black Ocean, etc,--- thanks, Johannes).

To read what Johannes (that's my dad's name too) has to say go here


So what's right about Russell Edson?
Well, I do think he wrote many great poems. Especially when he combined the strange with the lyrical. Some of the poems are tender and "deep." Not just bizarre ape story poems.

What's wrong about Russell Edson?
Distinctive poets often have a very bad influence on their followers. Most Edson disciples write lesser and paler versions of Edson's best poems (and perhaps we can count later career Edson among those disciples.) And you can spot these Edson-derivative poems a mile away. If you've read one you've read them all.


I think the best think re Edson is to buy his Collected. Read some of the middle third and then put the book away for a long time. Perhaps even then, for better or for worse, the ape will find its way into your thoughts and poems.

New Ocho (including 6 Ron Silliman Visions) - Edited by Blake Butler

Open publication - Free publishing - More mipoesias

New Ocho (25) is available now. Click here.

(Edited by Blake Butler, who has great and clever taste.)

The issue includes poems and pieces by Rauan Klassnik, Adam Robinson, Claire Donato, Jamie Iredell, Janey Smith, Matthew Simmons, Sam Pink and others.

My contribution's "Six Ron Silliman Visions."

Here's Vision 3

Ron Silliman’s making love. To his wife. His beautiful and dark wife. And Silliman’s so white they look, entwined, like a zebra. A zebra leaning down to drink from a sunset lake. Flamingos—— billions and billions of pinkness flashing——drag up over a monkey’s teeth. Silliman’s biting his wife. And they’re fucking, not making love. Sheets stained with blood. Bones and teeth. Ron Silliman and his wife are smoking.

The Apple Pie Frogs

This morning I nearly stepped on a frog as big as an apple pie. It was crippled. On its back. An extremely unusual and mystical shimmering white stomach. It was beautiful, angelic and it sickens me. Like the insides of a monastery where the monks are practicing Kung Fu as their old master dreams of cockatoos flying away in the dawn. Girls go out to fetch the water. From far away. And love comes to them on these wide and yawning early fields. And they lie down and take it. In a fire of swords and birds made of bamboo suddenly inspired and glittering with falling shards. In the rain. And the streets turning into a reservoir of dying frogs. Thousands of them stacked high and wide. I have to walk over them-- fire and gas spewing up as I go. In the rain. Gas and fire. And the night stink. A dark spring. Blossoms rotted in tree crotches. Discarded hatchlings rotting. Like the bones of rats. You turn away and spit. Beauty's just a way to read this dying evil.

The Sky and River Blanket (and Michael Jackson's Son)

The sky spreads its blankets in the river and after a while the river washes it all away. And itself away. This just happens. In spite of its best intentions. I've always held the sky in awe. A blue and white house of God. A fiction that rubs itself against my fear. Fondles my fear and jerks it off.

But the sky too is afraid, searching. And wants to fall in love and stay in love-- sipping champagne and nibbling cherries for eternity. The sky. The river. Fate. The blue and white condo-block in which the phantom angels sleep. It's all the same. Like a grape squeezed in your fist. A juiceless color-bled fist heavy with the love of dead skies and rivers. And crying out to God and Nothing (God-Nothing) as it dies.

(note: "Blanket" is the nickname of Michael Jackson's youngest son, Prince Michael II. According to his father "blanket" was a word he used with "his employees and family." As in, we should "blanket" him.)

The Gym-God - Albino Medusa

This morning the Gym-God's doing pull ups, a towel hanging from her ass (she looks like a horse clambering up on to an ice berg) and the Gym-God's face is contorted with botox and 4000 pesos worth of creams that "just aren't working."

The whole collection of God-Freaks are here like a retinue of angels fluttering about this filthy emaciated and rippling Gym-God. The horse-face. The monkey-face. And all the other little squawking minions.

On the way over here I saw so many beautiful little orange swallows. They nest in the Gym-God's hair. Poor little beauties. Like brain cells. In her armpits. Her mouth. Her ass and her cunt. In the spaces between her teeth--she speaks and they howl in the disfigured wind.......And still they sing from the wires and bathe in puddles. God bless them.

The worlds revolve around the Gym-God---this anorexic albino Medusa who slumps on the machines and cavorts and drizzles. You can judge the world by studying this sickly sun. Those who approach her are sick, depraved, corrupt and they too will disfigure and implode and leave, like she will, a charred black hole in which nothing and everything rests. Those who flee her are doomed-- lights in their wings flecked in anguish (like swans in harness.) They are doomed.

The Gym-God walks in the cold mist and it surrounds her in fire and the Gym-God bites her nails. And scratches. And scratches. Her skin falls like papyrus porn. Pharaohs and donkeys. She pulls up and up and walks into spinning class. Her eyes are blackening pulled-in blacker and blacker. Filth sticks to her. Light runs. Soon she will be it all though. A disappearing pulsing tombstone.

The Gym-God pedals and pedals and the worlds doomed and frantic ease beneath her. Swallows and dragons and bats mixed like oil in their throats and wings. No time for good and evil. Time like a river. A huge penis stick. No good or evil. It all eases beneath her.

The Gym-God looks in the mirror. And looks in the mirror. And the Gym-God's completely bewitched. Bows down to herself. Hunched and heavy and pale with self-adoring cum.

Parrots Seething - Nose Bleeding

The parrots are seething in the trees across the river. Seething in me and shattering my bones and my blood. I am the moon and all its lying (its zero) shattered on the swirling shattering water.

The bugs I pick from the water just fall apart. Bugs and gecko shit. My nose is bleeding. My wife's red blouse she never lets loose reflected in the swirling waters.

An egret's angelic white-calm on a rock. I want to tear it to bits. Devour it and shit. Turn it black you know.

The water's are swirling. Parrots seething. Bones shattering. My nose bleeding. And the egret's white wholesomeness is an insult. An affront to all this flux. Fuck this flux. And bring me up to God or the the void (the void-god) in calm shining whiteness. (This is why God's the King of Pop)

And please don't ever subject me to Hugh Jackman's ass in x-men wolverine.

But, of course, the milk's sweet and sour.

Flying ants rise up to the light in see-through golds and reds. They are annihilated believing. Believing completely. My nose is bleeding.