A few summers ago, I assisted as a teaching fellow for a summer writing conference. A student and friend from that class unearthed this list of quotable nuggets spoken by the workshop instructor:

This poem has extra bits of redundancy.

This sequence is more than you want to dump on a single poem.

Am I explaining places where I am explaining?

This is supine--lying on its back not ready for action.

Pathos looms heavily in the wings.

The architecture goes mushy.

This is an abberant detail--we cannot see and judge.

The hell with readers--they will catch on.

This is self-conscious ornamentation.

Be careful not to cultivate a floating tone.

The lofty diction does not work on your behalf.

Get SAVAGE with yourself.

Where does the poem go on automatic?

Does the frame float free?

3 Lights Gallery is a new online haiku project based out of England. Visit their new site here.

Jade Cabbage, National Palace Museum

The NY Times has a wonderful piece on the renovation of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This jade carving inspired my poem "Brassica Chinensis." To its left, I swear, looks like a piece of pork fat. Carved jade...? Here it is on the Museum's website:


Made from agate and described here in detail.

Meat Stone

in the raw material
of inorganic stone

the artist saw not
mineral but animal

flesh defined by bands
of color, striated quartz

a lattice of atoms in
agate, or chalcedon

the Greek stonecarver
Pygmalion longed

to breathe being into
sculpted ivory

the poet nourishes
language w/ marrow

& meat, the life breath
in each inhalation,

infusing every chisel wrought
by the creator’s hand

the fatty skin & flavor of
a slab of pork served

under glass w/ a side of cabbage
even the herbivore can imagine

A year ago this time I was in Taipei.
Two years ago this time Kort and I were in Marfa.
Three years ago this time Kort and I were in Boston.

This year we are in Dallas.
Next year, the Pacific NW.

Masked Couple, 2004

adhesive and paper collage
3" x 5"

1913: A Journal of Forms

I first heard about 1913 two years ago from Jen Dick. The editrice of this beautifully designed literary journal just sent me a package of 1913 offerings, including their first book-length publication, John Keene and Christopher Stackhouse's Seismosis. More on that visual-verbal project in the future - for now, I am very much enjoying the depth and range of the press's journal which is almost 300 pages in length. The project includes a special section of French poetry in English translation - with translations by Cole Swensen, Keith Waldrop, and Lisa Robertson. Artwork is printed in both full color and black and white, with interior art and text on the inside covers. Some favorite images here include work by Ruth Greisman pulled from the archives of Joseph Cornell and several collages by Theodore Harris. A lot of poetry here utilizing abundant white space...writers in this volume include John Taggart, Hank Lazer, John Yau, and Ben Doyle who includes a sampling of some very Tom Phillips-esque work.

Overlay

Notes from Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory by Lucy Lippard:

"Artists are rebelling against reductive purism and an art-for-art's sake emphasis on form or image alone with a gradual upsurge of mythical and ritual content related to nature and to the origins of life."

"...art has social significance and a social function, which might be defined as the transformation of desire into reality, reality into dreams and change, and back again."

"Some artists fortify their forms or emotional instincts with anthropological information, or superficially graft such information onto currently fashionable styles. Others work from inside, arriving at primal images from their own needs, overlaying personal on historical and perhaps even biological memory."

Curse of the Golden Flower

Curse of the Golden Flower

A lot of critics, including my immediate relatives, are panning Zhang Yimou's latest film Curse of the Golden Flower. The film is a lot darker than the director's recent martial arts offerings, Hero and House of the Flying Daggers. The narrative features family secrets, incest, sibling murder, and suicide. Chow Yun Fat plays a unforgiving and absolute patriarch who beats his third son to death (for murdering his favorite son) and orders his second son to administer poison to his mother in exchange for sparing his life and overlooking the rebellious uprising he has staged against his father. In the end, it's a shock to realize that the root of tragedy is borne from the dysfunction of an ordinary married couple. The costumes worn by the imperial family for the film are ornate and completely stunning, though the costumes of the imperial court reveal far too much cleavage which seems far from the period. Memorable scenes include the palace square filled with millions of yellow chrysanthemum blooms and the emperor's assassins sliding down from the hillsides at night to assassinate the imperial doctor and his family.

SP Spleen

Currently reading David Hadbawnik's SF Spleen. David will be here in Dallas in late March reading for WordSpace at Standard & Pours. SF Spleen is put out by Skanky Possum with w/ a cover design by Scott Pierce of Effing Press. The collection is a sort of daybook/journal that covers July 1997 to March 1999, years in which Hadbawnik lived in San Francisco. The transparent eyeball of the speaker documents eavesdropped conversations, movie shoots, public transportation, the homeless and the multicultural peoples of SF. Not quite prose poems, the book is composed of short descriptive fragments to longer passages of a paragraph or two. At one point, the speaker is accused by a ponytailed Indian of being cop, to be regarded suspiciously for the way in which he looks to hard. And while there is a lot of looking and listening that goes on in this collection, there seems to be a strong detachment of speaker from action, the speaker serving principally as documentarian.

Simultaneous to reading David's book, I pulled Baudelaire's Paris Spleen off of my shelf, curious if I'd find resonances and connections.

Finishing up reading anthropologist Margaret Mead's biography Blackberry Winter. The book is split into three parts - the first section chronicles her childhood, parents, siblings and early education. In the second section, she embarks on field work in Samoa and later, to other countries - interesting that her mentor Franz Boas wanted her to study Native Americans but that she fought hard to pursue research in Polynesia. He relented, but insisted she conduct her study on an island where ships would go back and forth at least once every 3 weeks. She writes of living within various cultures and conducting fieldwork with two different husbands, falling in love with her colleagues. The third part is concerned with her later life - the birth of her only child and the dissolution of her 3rd marriage. A decent introduction to her work in ethnography and primitive cultures, though I skimmed past the passages on her early life and family.

My interview with Texas writer Ben Fountain is now live at Rain Taxi.

Check out Bens' book Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.

Sightings previews:

Wonder Woman, 2004

3 inches x 5 inches
Paper, glue

I had a grueling but good weekend in Houston attending yoga workshops taught by Ana Forrest. The weekend intensive was a lot more yoga than I am accustomed to doing....

On Saturday, I got away from the Houstonian to check out the Menil Collection's Rothko Chapel.



I'd heard great reports about this space and was not disappointed. Rothko's black paintings are housed inside an ecumenical chapel. Wooden benches/pews fill the interior of the space, looking out on huge panels and triptychs by the artist, with undertones of blue and red. The doorways in shadow take on a geometric likeness to the panels and the effects on the eye are subtle. Perfect square stone tiles make up the floor, and the space features rectangular pews and hexagonal ceiling with skylight. Someone had put out two sets of zafus on yoga mats, directly in front of the central panel.

The Menil featured an exhibition on art and chess, Surrealist art, and Klee in America. Housed in separate buildings were Cy Twombly's massive canvases and in Richmond Hall, a Marfa-esque werehouse space (a former grocery store), were Dan Flavin's fluorscent light installations.


ext. Richmond Hall


Dan Flavin installation

Just down the street is the HCP. Great resource room, but not very impressed with the space. Too much sunlight pouring in, bleaching out the space which is one long rectangular gallery broken up by movable walls and partitions. The nonprofit offers opportunities for emerging photographers to have their work exhibited through an open submission policy.

For Immediate Release


a reading for kari edwards
Thursday, December 21, 2006
7 pm
(this is a free and open event)

HIGH ENERGY
CONSTRUCTS
990 N. Hill St., #180
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Please join the Los Angeles poetry community and High Energy Constructs in honoring the life and work of poet, artist, and (trans)gender activist, kari edwards. kari died of heart failure at the age of 52 on Saturday, December 2, 2006. kari's life and work was an ongoing revolution of body and language, as well as a revelation of human potential. Not only a dear friend and supporter of High Energy Constructs, kari was also one of the forty artists included in High Energy Constructs' Fall 2006 exhibition, Many Happy Returns. kari's work as a gender activist, radical writer, and social sculptor was - and will continue to be - some of the most honest, compassionate, and evolved necessary action in today's world.

Friends and poets, Marcus Civin, Jen Hofer, Mary Kite, Eileen Myles, Michael Smoler, Justin Veach, and others gather to read, perform, and speak in memory and tribute to the spirit of kari edwards, on Thursday, December 21, 2006, at 7 pm.

For more information regarding this gathering please call 323.227.7920.

kari's most recent book of writing, have been blue for charity, can be viewed and read at: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-ke.htm

---

kari edwards (1954 - 2006) was a poet ,artist and gender activist , winner of New Langton Art's Bay Area Award in literature (2002); was the author of have been blue for charity , BlazeVox (2006); obedience , Factory School (2005); iduna , O Books (2003); a day in the life of p ., subpress collective (2002); a diary of lies , Belladonna #27 by Belladonna Books (2002); obLiqUE paRt(itON): colLABorationS , xPress(ed) (2002); and post/(pink), Scarlet Press (2000), as well as poetry editor for Transgender Tapestry magazine. edwards' work has appeared in numerous publications, such as anthologies Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard , Painted leaf Press (2000), and Electric Spandex: anthology of writing the queer text , Pyriform Press (2002); as well as been exhibited throughout the United States , including Denver art museum, New Orleans contemporary art museum, University of California -- San Diego , and University of Massachusetts -- Amherst . edwards’ work can also be found in Bombay Gin, Belight Fiction, In Posse, Mirage/Period(ical), Van Gogh’s Ear, PuppyFlower, Vert, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Narrativity, Shampoo, xStream, Rain Taxi, Big Bridge, Nerve Lantern, muse-apprentice-guild, Avoid Strange Men, Bird Dog Magizine, RealPoetik, Raised in a Barn, and The International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies.

XCP: Streetnotes

The Winter 2006/Japan edition of XCP: Streetnotes is now live. Some of the love hotel poems from my Press Lorentz book are reprinted here.

Last week, we rented How to Draw a Bunny on the life of artist Ray Johnson, New York's "most famous unknown artist." Another title for this film might as well have been "How to Live a Life." Kort's convinced that Ray Johnson was a reincarnation of a Zen master trickster, and it would be easy to see how and why. Johnson subverts the art establishment by his approach to selling his work and getting it into major museum collections. When an art buyer offers less than what he asks for as his selling price on a work after several back-and-forth negotiations, he sends the buyer the work, with $500 worth of the piece very neatly removed/cut out. When Chuck Close curates a show at the MOMA, he invites Ray Johnson to submit his work for consideration and to donate his work to the Museum which would put the artist in a position of vulnerability in that they would have the power to choose what they thought was his "best" work. As a workaround, he sends a series of pages eventually comprising a book to the librarian of the MOMA. At the time, the library's policy is that anything that is sent to them is kept in their archive, and thus permanently becomes a part of the MOMA's collections. By using some creative ingenuity, Johnson gets his work in the MOMA his own way. The documentary is well made and features interviews with Christo and Jean Claude and a bevy of interesting artists from the NY scene. At the end of his life, Johnson mysteriously drowns - vanished in the night like a Zen master who has decided that his time has come.

Poemeleon

The new issue of Poemeleon is live. This online magazine is edited by Cati Porter who lives in my hometown - Riverside, CA. For the Winter issue, Cati edited together a feature on ekphrastic poetry. She includes three of my poems and three of David Lukowski's paintings from our series Nutritional Feed (which is scheduled for publication by Tupelo Press in Fall 2007) here.

It's been a strange and heavy last few days. Yesterday, after reading news of James Kim's death, I got on a train to go into the city for an appointment. Two stops away from my station at Park Street, the train I was riding went out of service and I was forced to climb on board a bus that would shuttle me to Mockingbird Station. Hundred of angry and disgruntled commuters waited for DART buses to come by and pick us up. When a bus finally came, we stopped at Lovers Lane Station before proceeding on to Mockingbird. The disruption had occured at Lovers Lane. A 61-year-old woman tried to sprint across the tracks to make a southbound train and was struck and killed by the northbound train. When we arrived at Lovers Lane station, the police had yellow taped off the entire area and throngs of people were waiting on the sidewalks for buses. Despite being already very full, more people forced their way on board the bus I was riding. The conversations on board were filled with gossip:

"I heard it was a man."
"No, it was a woman."
"I heard she saw the train coming."
"So then it was suicide!"
"Was she white or black."
"Don't know, but there was a lot of blood.

The new print edition of Rain Taxi is out. My interview with Steve Bradbury appears in this issue. When the online edition goes live, an interview piece I did with author Ben Fountain will be up.

I am just heartbroken by the news of James Kim's death.

Autumn Nijuin Renga

autumn foliage scorches    (SP)
the horizon line forest
fires in Esperanza

       in the withered tomato garden      (AS)
       recalling his aged mother's voice

contemplating sameness     (SP)
the artist silkscreens one
more canister of soup

Upcoming WordSpace reading

Sunday, December 10, 2006, at 7 p.m. FREE
WordSpace presents a program of some of this area’s finest poets: Jerry Kelly, Martha Heimberg, Sharon Bailey, Tim Cloward and Shin Yu Pai.

Jeremiah Kelley holds a BA degree from Harvard University. He has published poetry in The Texas Observer as well as a number of little magazines in North Texas, and has forth-coming fiction in Southwest Review. He lives in old East Dallas with his wife, Patty Turner.

Martha Heimberg is assistant professor of English at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas, creative writing instructor at Richland College and arts critic for Dallas Weekly. Five-time winner of Dallas Press Club's Katie Award for arts criticism, community affairs and business writing, she has also won the Texas Historic Commission Griffin Award and the Sierra Club Award for writing.

Sharon Bailey is a poet who for the last eight years has worked as Director of Education for the Center of Nonprofit Management. She holds an MA from the University of Texas at Dallas and her critical interest has been in the work of Flannery O’Conner, Toni Morrison and Wolfram von Eschenbach.

Tim Cloward teaches history and is assistant principal at Yavneh Academy of Dallas. He is the founder of the poetry/ performance troupe Dancing Tongue, and has worked with Poetry Circus and Question Authority, both acclaimed performance poetry ensembles. His work is included in Three Dallas Poets and he holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Shin Yu Pai is the author of The Love Hotel Poems (Press Lorentz), Unnecessary Roughness (xPress(ed)), Equivalence (La Alameda Press) and Ten Thousand Miles of Mountains and Rivers (Third Ear Books). Forthcoming books include Nutritional Feed (Tupelo Press), Works on Paper (Convivio Bookworks) and Sightings (Ahadada Books). She is the programming chair and curator of Next on Deck for WordSpace.

I was very shocked to read about the news of poet kari edwards' death. I was leaving Naropa just as kari was starting in the MFA program - she had already been at Naropa awhile, studying contemplative buddhist psychology in the same program as Kort's older brother, who was one of kari's classmate.