The website for the Chinese Poetry Conference at Simmons scheduled for October is fully up and running.

Tony Leung steals the show in Zhang Yimou's newly released film "Hero". Leung plays master calligrapher and swordsman Broken Sword who when faced with an opportunity to assassinate the emperor, chooses the path of compassion and non-violence, and incurs the wrath of his lover, Flying Snow, played by Maggie Cheung. Donnie Yen, son of local Boston Tai Chi master Bow Sim Mark, plays a 3rd assassin, Sky, in a smaller role. Jet Li as "Nameless" narrates most of the story. Zhang Ziyi, who has just been cast to play Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha, plays a minor role, as Moon, a student of Broken Sword. The fight scenes in this film are breathtaking - Nameless attacking Sky in a rain shower, Moon fighting Snow in a field of yellow leaves which turn red when Moon is killed. Broken Sword is the most emotionally complex and spiritually attained character in the narrative, with Nameless a close second. Tan Dun composed the score which is interpreted by Itzhak Perlman. Echoes here in the imagery and music of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The martial arts are likened here to music and calligraphy/language. One unforgettable scene - when the teacher and students at the calligraphy school in Zhao continue to practice drawing characters in sand while thousands of arrows launched by the archers of Qin rain down around them.

Farewell to Boston reading on September 18, 7:30 p.m. at Wordsworth. Thanks to Jim, for hosting. If you'd like to come and read a few poems, email me. So far Chris Rizzo, Ruth Lepson, and Jim will be reading.

Just received final performance dates in Chicago for my poem "Recipe for Paper". Hedwig Dances will be choreographing the piece on November 4, 5, and 6 and I will fly to Chicago to attend the rehearsals and the performances. Also just added, thanks to Chuck Stebelton, a reading at Myopic Books on Sunday, November 7.

We ran around shopping for gifts and sweets for Japanese tea this afternoon and ended up taking a break from running errands to take in "The Exorcist" at Boston Common. Stellan Skarsgaard plays a young Lancaster Merrin investigating an archaeological site in Africa where he encounters the devil and rediscovers his faith in God. This movie was not shown to critics for review pre-release. But the reviews I've read had been rather negative. My one big criticism about the movie - so why is it that it's the female who's always possessed by the devil? Females and small children?

Busy here with preparations for Japanese tea this weekend...

Kort is back from a week long retreat at the Lama Foundationin the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. He lived in a "yurt" with a skylight for a week, studied tea and ate vegetarian communal meals. Lama has a rule that the maximum retreat you can take at Lama is 7 years. So some friends of Kort have made a long-term commitment to Lama and have actually started building a house on the land which in 5 years time they will have to give up. The tea community is apparently alive and thriving in Naropa where the tea house is now being run by 2 young tea practitioners named Mike and Aaron. Lama is pretty rustic as far as retreats go - outhouses, outdoor (and indoor) showers, all manner of wild critters running around. I would like to take a retreat with Kort and some point, but I'm so citified.

Fashionistas:

SECOND TIME AROUND is having a 70 % off Midnight Madness Sale

Wednesday, August 25th-Harvard Square location
Thursday, August 26th-Newbury St. location
4:00 p.m.-12:00 a.m.

All spring and summer items will be 70%* off
"BRAND NEW" items (great labels) just arrived from a local boutique.
All new fall arrivals up to 10% off
We are staying open late to make space on the racks for incoming fall merchandise.
Stay up a little later and take advantage of 70% off savings on our already incredible prices.
Buy Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Armani,Theory, BCBG, Milly, Rebecca Taylor
Diesel,Replay, etc. for 70% off already low prices!
www.secondtimearound.net

My favorite people at Zone Zero are taking submissions for a on-line image gallery project on grafica pop. Submit.

Today I finished the first draft of an article on Asian American poet and editor Victoria Chang. For those of you who don't already know Victoria, she is the brains behind the new anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation.

Browsing the journals section at the Harvard Bookstore this afternoon, I came across a new publication called Daylight Magazine. The current issue features photographs taken by Iraqi civilians. Based out of North Carolina and New York, the magazine is affiliated with the Daylight Community Arts Foundation who's current projects include working with members of the Akwasasne Mohawk Reservation to establish a darkroom and bring photographic equipment and education to local residents. A similar Daylight project is also underway in Appalachia where the foundation hopes to aid in the empowerment of this marginalized community through self-representative documentation. In addition to these domestic projects, Daylight Community Arts Foundation is providing cameras to Buddhist monks in retreat in Laos and Vietnam so that these individuals can share their experience with others.

In the remainders section I came across "The Cosmos Poems", a collection of Frederick Seidel's poetry inspired by the paintings of Anselm Kiefer. Looking through the book, I was less excited by the poems and more excited about the paintings, although this book showed a limited range of Kiefer's body of work. Both copies the bookstore had were pretty badly mangled, so I had to pass. Now that I am looking at on-line reviews of the work, I'm somewhat glad I passed. But the most interesting thing about the collection to me is that the work was commissioned by the National Museum of Natural History. What a wonderful gig that would be writing poems for artwork in museums! Someone please ask me!

"The Cosmos Poems" certainly was beautifully designed (published by FSG), but better examples of books bringing together text and image are 2 books I recently picked up - Douglas Messerli and John Baldessari's "Bow Down", published by an Italian press, and Duane Michals' 1978 "Homage to Cavafy", images and texts that accompany poems by Constantin Cavafy. Michals' has also published an homage to Walt Whitman called, what else, "Salute, Walt Whitman".

Went to a matinee show of "Garden State" this afternoon. Great soundtrack including the Shins and Paul Simon. Some very beautiful visual moments including a scene when Andrew puts on a handmade shirt made by a guest at his mother's funeral which matches the wallpaper in the newly redone hallway. I did think that parts of the script were underwritten - the scene between Andrew and his father is put off for so much of the movie that when it finally does happen, the expectation has been built up and something about the exchange seemed less than credible to me. Call it my own coming of age brand of cynicism - can one's parents ever see us for who we are, let alone listen to what we have to say in a way that feels satisfactory to us or transformative? The ending also felt a bit abrupt and unfinished, though I'm usually a mush heart for girl gets boy.

At my friend's house tonite, I met a woman who's real life story is beyond any fiction. E. was kidnapped a week and a half ago by her 57 year old married neighbor who lives in her condo complex. She was held hostage, literally tied up for about 4 days. As she was walking out her front door one morning, he pepper sprayed her in the eyes and drugged her and kept her in his apartment and didn't feed her or give her water. The man is in jail, but bail has been set at $100,000 which means that if he can put up a bond for $10,000, just 10% of the total sum, he walks. This man befriended himself to E., who is a 1st generation Taiwanese immigrant. When she had just finished school and was out of work, he talked her into starting a business with her with a 50-50 profit split. In the mean time, he insinuated his way into her life - taking on the role of father figure while attempting to seduce this poor girl. He would not only ask her about her dating life, but her sexual life. He would also ask about her sexy good looking Asian girlfriends and ask for her to bring them around. E. being of a different culture, reacted by trying to stay open - after all, this is America and he is American, and god knows what sort of boundaries they keep or don't keep. When she tried to create some distance between them, he must have sensed himself being rejected and retaliated with abducting her, trying to talk her into working together with him again, and accusing her of using him to get business. Apparently, there were other wacked out incidents before E, but according to the detective involved, there was "not enough evidence to convict him". In a panic, E sold her condo in one week for way under what it's worth, feeling that she needed to move out of the neighborhood pronto. The condo was unloaded by a friend of hers who is a realtor, but realtor's have other priorities like commissions, friends or not. So she is taking a huge loss on the property and selling it for half of what it's worth if she's unable to stop the deal. The doctors and social workers and other people she has had to interact with have not had the patience, or the skills to listen to her story or answer her questions - it is not a case of her not having facility with the language so much as a lack of willingness on the end of the receiver to really listen. In very few cases also have interpreter services been provided. She is in desperate need of an advocate but will not approach the Asian resources available to her in Chinatown, b/c the Chinese community in Boston is so very small, she knows people who works at these agencies, and she does not want them to know, and her story must be so exhausting to tell and retell again. Her life has been so disrupted by this monster sociopathic sexual predator. I don't think I've ever been so angry for someone. Fucking fetishizing asshole bastard. I hope they lock him up for the rest of his life and throw away the key.

It's Medal Day at the MacDowell Colony this Sunday. This year's MacDowell Medal goes to Fluxus/video artist Nam June Paik.

Here is a collage poem composed from comments (mostly from teens and middle-aged mothers) from the Bulletin Board at the William Hung fan site. The typos are lifted directly from the site.

WILLIAM HUNG FOREVER!

Don't let people tell you
can't sing, look at Bob Dylan,

Lou Reed, Jim Morrison
none of them great singers,

i’d love to sit down
and talk to you about

computers – it was
love at first site

i cried when you didn’t
make it to the finals

i was obsessed
i hope i am not scaring you!

hola amigo quiero ser
your only latin lover

i no the song by heart

when i saw you
on American Idle

i laughed until i cried

you will be a very good singer one day
dancing... i don't know about

an experience; a way of life bottled
into one small Asian male

They call him

HONG KONG RICKY MARTIN
THE HUNG
HUNG HIMSELF
No. 32716

The Asians in America Project (AIA), a national clearinghouse for APA news and information, is launching a "magazine-style" section on its website. It will be a forum for the community, to voice your opinions, share your thoughts, and showcase your work and talents.

We are considering editorials, articles, reviews, letters, art, photography, fiction, poetry, comic strips and anything else that can be displayed on a website.

The only criteria being that the material be of interest to the Asians Pacific American community.

All accepted submissions will include credits and weblinks back to the authors and creators.

AIA currently receives 2500-5000 page hits a day.
Please send all submissions to: forum@asiansinamerica.org

Sincerely,
Ramon Gil
The Asians in America Project
http://www.asiansinamerica.org

I am browsing through a copy of "American Weddings", a very attractively designed poetry mag edited by Boston poets Michael Carr and Dorothea Lasky. 35 pages of poetry and art staple bound together with a disturbing yet comic image of Liza Minnelli's wedding party, with guests MJ and Elizabeth Taylor gracing the cover. Hand stamping decorates the interior covers and the translucent blue end pages are simplified sheet music for a tune called "Richard n' Sandy" by Charles Nolan. Poetry worth mentioning in this compilation - Michael Peters' "Non-Aural Variations for a Notated Score: Tape 2 (who also contributed artwork for this edition, including the mag's endpiece "Cesarean". Also poems by Michael County and Laura Solomon and the editors.

For information, contact american_weddings@yahoo.com

The painter Leon Golub just passed away.

Lightening the load:

assorted clothing

microwave

small desk lamp

2 drawer unfinished wood desk (bottom drawer holds hanging files)

2 decorative embroidered silk throw pillows

Fender stratocaster with soft carrying case

3 in 1 fax/copier/printer unit with extra toner cartridge

scanner and scanner software

Prices and/or bartering negotiable. Email if interested.

Recipe for tofu scramble:

1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. firm tofu, drained and crumbled
1 tomato, diced
1 tsp. turmierc
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
2 green onions minced

Heat oil in skillet. Add onion and garlic and sautee until onions are transparent. Add the tofu, turmeric, and garlic salt and saute for 5 minutes. Add green onions during the last minute of cooking.

As far as I can tell, the turmeric doesn't add any extra taste or flavor so much as it creates the illusion of eating something that more closely resembles the yellow of a scrambled egg.

I helped out my friend Mei of the Chinese Culture Connection answering phones this afternoon at WGBH. I don't actually own a TV, but if I did, I'd watch a whole lot of PBS. Shows taped in the WGBH studios include Masterpiece Theater, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, and Victory Gardens. The station aired excerpts this afternoon from a documentary on unusual buildings (i.e. the "Big Duck" in Long Island" and the corn palace in.. I think it's Minnesota), a John Denver performance, and footage from a Andre Rieu performance who is supposedly very popular with the old ladies.

I hung out with Mei's neighbor, a Chinese woman from the Phillipines who's eldest son is studying English (poetry) at a university in Rochester. "Maybe he'll end up like you," she says, with some amount of concern when I explained what I do (or rather don't do). These days it's harder to explain what I "do for a living" to people I'm meeting for the first time. Like at a dinner party last night, I had to explain the expression "artist in residence" which is NOT equal to school and/or being a student. To a degree, I have given up on explaining - like in the way when people sometimes ask me where I'm from, I have given up on rolling out the long history of where I have been on the way to Boston - Boston is, after all, a kind of home. It is interesting to me that lay people never think of identifying "poetry" with the term "artist". It's always expected that the artist's practice be some visual or performing art - which is a prejudice I've experienced also among the Taiwanese and their prioritization or ranking of the fine and performing arts above the literary arts.

In a 4 hour shift, I got about 4 phone calls in the studio where Julia Childs got her start. Call in and pledge some cash to WGBH - they do top quality programming and the world needs more of it.