New issue up of Admit Two, an online magazine of collaborative writing featuring:

Gail Davis & Eric S. Brown
Djeff Babcock & Aryan Kaganof
Shin Yu Pai & David Lukowski
Natalija Grgorinic & Ognjen Raden

to celebrate the arrival of the Spring visit :
www.admit2.net


 

Check out the new issue of Santa Fe Poetry Broadside featuring poems and watercolor and ink drawings by the lovely and multi-talented Cirrelda Snider-Bryan.

I suspended the comments function about a week ago due to a snarky semi-anonymous comment left on one of my posts by some troll. I think that's what Kort said they are literally called... people who "troll" websites and leave annoying offensive things to say. This blog is not a place for other people's garbage or baggage. It is however a place for occasional neuroses and critical observations on the part of its author. xoxoxo.

Just home from a fantastic reading by Miller Williams and Jo McDougal, MacDowell friend. SMU hosted and co-sponsored the event with the Garret. Despite some tech glitches, Miller and Jo gave wonderful presentations. Jo's latest is "Satisfied with chaos" and Miller's latest is a collected poems. Interesting about both of these poets is that both arrived at poetry later in their lives - Jo came from an agricultural/farming background and Miller came from science. They both have countless accolades and an impressive history of publication, but more than anything their work is filled with compassion, humor, and simple stories of what it is to be human. Miller read a great poem called "Compassion" - forgive that ill-mannered person for you know not what war is close to the bone. Or something like that. Something to chew on...

Less blogging these days. Talk less, say more. I started a new job as a contract writer for a local non-profit that is keeping me busy.

Arrived home to a FEDEX box from the Kavyantra Printshop at Naropa - 105 broadsides of my poem "Stars" printed by Brad O'Sullivan and his students in th printshop. This is part of a big broadside fundraiser project that the college is putting on, as organized by Andrew.

I was told today that I am better looking in person than my photograph [would lead one to believe]. But are there not about a dozen other ways to tell a person that they are lovely or beautiful or that you are struck by their light. But than it is perhaps harder to receive a "compliment" from someone who irritates you to no end and whom you care nothing about.

Dallas Morning News article on this weekend's big event.

Why go to New York to see Christo and Jean Claude's Gates when you can go to Somerville, MA to see Hargo's Gates? Thanks, John, for passing along this link!

Thank you, Nick, for bringing Equivalence into your classroom!

New issue of Michael Rothenberg's Big Bridge is up and running. Check out the elegies sections for a piece from yours truly.. actually Mark and I both have elegies on our grandfathers up.

Check out Jonathan Mayhew's Bemsha Swing blog for more on Unnecessary Roughness.

follow the instructions
on the box but children don't
come with directions

proofing Peterbilt copy
typo on heavy duty trucks
reads:"touch combination"

Seems like a lot has been happening at the Makura No Soshi in the past week - here are some of the things that have been keeping me busy:

- helping K study for his herbal board exam
- applying for a Fulbright to fund the Taiwan residency
- prepping grant application for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
- recovering from accidental medication poisoning
- entertaining visiting curator
- scheduling studio visits
- re-evaluating my teaching strategy
- fine tuning Unnecessary Roughness
- promoting Unnecessary Roughness
- planning new year's hatsugama
- researching hotels for my folks
- planning a wedding
- watching inane movies

Michael Hoerman reminds me on his blog of the upcoming vispo show at Harvard. This exhibition will also feature 2 poems from my forthcoming project Nutritional Feed, "where's my jacket?" and "optometrist". If you are in Boston, check out this exhibition and let me know how the show looks when it opens...

for Tom

over Narathiwat, Thailand
one hundred million
paper cranes

missives of peace -
war is over
if you believe

haiku
not bombs
origami art of war

Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Just in time for Super Bowl...I am pleased to announce the publication of my new chapbook of poems "Unnecessary Roughness", just out from xPress(ed), a publisher of experimental poetry based in Espoo, Finland and run by composer Jukka-Pekka Kervinen. It can be purchased through the press' distributor (lulu.com) for $7 + shipping here:

www.lulu.com/xpressed

If anybody would be interested in reviewing this chap, contact me directly and I can hook you up with the text.

I have just finished reading Natasha Trethewey's Bellocq's Ophelia. This is a slim volume containing 28 poems, a cohesive series that seems just the right length for a chapbook but is presented in a very attractive collection. The book's premise, the poet wrote ekphrastic poems based on the portraits of E.J. Bellocq, a photographer in the early 20th century who photographed the prostitutes working in Storyville, the red light district in New Orleans. One of Bellocq's models was a light-skinned African American who is known in this collection as Ophelia. The poems in this book contemplate Ophelia's life, how she was lured into the house of Countess P and subsequently exploited for her exoticness. There is a section of epistolary poems written from Ophelia's perspective, and a sonnet sequence that closes out the book. The variety of form and narrative, flashbacks into Ophelia's life before Storyville, sustains the book and makes it compelling read.

For more on Bellocq and the Storyville portraits, check out this page. Bellocq's photographs were not known or recognized until well after his death, when the negatives passed into the hands of photographer Lee Friedlander who printed Bellocq's original images and exhibited them.

Now reading Margaret Gibson's Memories of the Future: The Daybooks of Tina Modotti, another interesting collection of ekphrastic meditations on a historical figure.

In the mail yesterday arrived a copy of Andrew Schelling's latest book, Erotic Love Poems from India. This is a beautifully designed hardback book with a painting of an Indian maiden washing her hair against a rich saffron background gracing the cover. The end pages are a deep orange color nicely mirroring the cover image. These poems are translations of the Amarusataka, the "one hundred poems of Amaru", one of India's finest collections of love poetry. The book is laid out one poem per page and includes both an introduction and aferword by the poet. As I opened the book to browse thru the poems, the cloth bookmarker fell open to the following poems:

8

Your lover sits
dejected
scratching figures in the dirt outside.
Your friends won't eat
their eyes are swollen from crying.
There's no silly chatter from the
household parrots
and you're a wreck.
Stubborn girl, isn't it
time to quit
sulking?


9

Women of intrepid
charm
can't be stopped -
they'll even steal what they want.
Why be timid? Tears cannot bring
satisfaction.
You want him,
he's hungry fo sexual pleasure
try some crudely explicit suggestion
and make
him your own.

If you are not already familiar with Andrew's work, check out his earlier work Dropping the Bow and Tea Shack Interior. I can not recommend his work enough.

Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Eduardo has a nice Felix Gonzales-Torres image up on his blog. Here is a photograph of a piece that appears in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago that I took on my November trip. The bulbs burn out reflecting the ephemerality and transience of life.

Thank you Charles Coe and poets for organizing this important effort:

Poetry Fundraiser for Tsunami Disaster Relief
Thursday, January 27, 7 - 8:30 pm
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
138 Tremont Street, Boston
(Across the street from the Park Street "T" Station)

Readers: Bob Buckley, Charles Coe, Danielle Legros Georges, Gail Mazur and Elizabeth McKim.

leafblower at my window
the barking dog next door
my urban artist's "retreat"