Available through Greying Ghost with the purchase of a chapbook.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Scissortail 2012
I will be reading Friday, April 6, as part of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival.
My fellow OSU buddies are also reading: James Brubaker, Karen Sisk, Andrew Terhune, Haesong Kwon.
I got nothing else.
My fellow OSU buddies are also reading: James Brubaker, Karen Sisk, Andrew Terhune, Haesong Kwon.
I got nothing else.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Yeah Yeah Yeah
I.
I am teaching creative writing for the first time and my students' writing has been good, a little strange--they have taken to flarf, some to short-shorts. My friend, H, said: "you let them weird stuff and they will absorb it." He is teaching too and has had his student's reading confessionalists. Now all their work consists of confessions.
II.
I watched Woman is the Future of Man about a month ago and there's an introduction by Martin Scorsese raving about new Korean film: how it shows him something new and exciting, shows him what cinema can be.
Call it where I live; call it the malaise of the lower-Midwest, where I have been trained, but I never hear old poets talk that way about new poets. That new poets are doing something new and exciting, showing them what poetry can be. They just seem to think new poets make no fucking sense. I think about this all the time, almost too much.
What I just wrote is sort-of bullshit: I've been taught by Robert Stewart and Lisa Lewis don't think that way; I just feel it sometimes--almost all the time--and I hear it from people who don't seem to care about what poetry and art does because they can't figure it out. They suffer from some sort of bumpkinitis.
Why write, or read, or watch when you close yourself to anything that falls outside of your comfortable expectation? Just because you think you speak clear and know how to write a sentence; just because you live in a place where a "handshake" is all you need for a business transaction. Why think you know anything about art and can determine, easily, that other people who make art you don't understand aren't making art? There is no craft, there are no rules. Don't be around me and keep saying "what does that mean?" when a Past-Ronald Reagan gets a time machine and becomes a future Reagan and rides a robotic horse. Or when you hear a Ratatat song instead of an Alice in Chains song at the bar. There are no binaries, just middle-space. Stop fronting, admit you are wrong about everything, everybody. This includes me. I know I'm wrong most of the time; I know I make terrible first decisions. Art isn't a used car. Especially poetry isn't a used car: you won't feel screwed over if you take it on its terms; the lemons don't look like lemons usually.
III.
Maybe I am hypersensitive.
I am teaching creative writing for the first time and my students' writing has been good, a little strange--they have taken to flarf, some to short-shorts. My friend, H, said: "you let them weird stuff and they will absorb it." He is teaching too and has had his student's reading confessionalists. Now all their work consists of confessions.
II.
I watched Woman is the Future of Man about a month ago and there's an introduction by Martin Scorsese raving about new Korean film: how it shows him something new and exciting, shows him what cinema can be.
Call it where I live; call it the malaise of the lower-Midwest, where I have been trained, but I never hear old poets talk that way about new poets. That new poets are doing something new and exciting, showing them what poetry can be. They just seem to think new poets make no fucking sense. I think about this all the time, almost too much.
What I just wrote is sort-of bullshit: I've been taught by Robert Stewart and Lisa Lewis don't think that way; I just feel it sometimes--almost all the time--and I hear it from people who don't seem to care about what poetry and art does because they can't figure it out. They suffer from some sort of bumpkinitis.
Why write, or read, or watch when you close yourself to anything that falls outside of your comfortable expectation? Just because you think you speak clear and know how to write a sentence; just because you live in a place where a "handshake" is all you need for a business transaction. Why think you know anything about art and can determine, easily, that other people who make art you don't understand aren't making art? There is no craft, there are no rules. Don't be around me and keep saying "what does that mean?" when a Past-Ronald Reagan gets a time machine and becomes a future Reagan and rides a robotic horse. Or when you hear a Ratatat song instead of an Alice in Chains song at the bar. There are no binaries, just middle-space. Stop fronting, admit you are wrong about everything, everybody. This includes me. I know I'm wrong most of the time; I know I make terrible first decisions. Art isn't a used car. Especially poetry isn't a used car: you won't feel screwed over if you take it on its terms; the lemons don't look like lemons usually.
III.
Maybe I am hypersensitive.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
New Poems, Films
I.
I am in Oklahoma, so I have had a quiet summer. Some of my friends are out of town so I don't know. I have been watching a lot of movies.
II.
I just watched Gigante; I always want to be a quiet strong guy with empathy, but ain't got shit. The hero is weird, but I rooted for him.
III.
Here are some poems at ACREAGE. I met Bayard, Sara, and George McCormick at Scissortail and they are cool people.
I am in Oklahoma, so I have had a quiet summer. Some of my friends are out of town so I don't know. I have been watching a lot of movies.
II.
I just watched Gigante; I always want to be a quiet strong guy with empathy, but ain't got shit. The hero is weird, but I rooted for him.
III.
Here are some poems at ACREAGE. I met Bayard, Sara, and George McCormick at Scissortail and they are cool people.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
SUMMERRRRR
1.
My friend told me: When people asked James Tate "how to do it (poetry)" Tate refused to say. If you tell everyone how you "figured it out" you lose everything.
2.
It is at this point that I think I've a-HAed the narrative enterprise: you keep explaining yourself, you stay sincere all the time in the work, you become insincere; you become as "elusive" and "frustrating" as a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet.
3.
I can't talk about this stuff too much; then, I think too much; then, I fall apart and revert to watching Steven Segal movies.
My friend told me: When people asked James Tate "how to do it (poetry)" Tate refused to say. If you tell everyone how you "figured it out" you lose everything.
2.
It is at this point that I think I've a-HAed the narrative enterprise: you keep explaining yourself, you stay sincere all the time in the work, you become insincere; you become as "elusive" and "frustrating" as a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet.
3.
I can't talk about this stuff too much; then, I think too much; then, I fall apart and revert to watching Steven Segal movies.
Amazon.com's poetic statement
"It appears that it's National Poetry Month again, and I would be a poor servant of poetry (SOP) indeed, if I did not do my own small part in extolling the virtue and nobility or this ancient and noble art! So, in defense of poetry and of poets:
-Poetry is more efficient than fiction. Why read 500 pages of fiction (Freedom by Jonathan Franzen for example) that belabors a point that a really good poem can make more memorably in one or two pages.
-Poetry is more complex, more difficult than fiction. It is more comprehensively moving than fiction. As an art of sound and rhetoric, it involves you totally.
-Poetry is for adults.
-Poetry doesn't sell. Pardon me, but the bestsellers list doesn't exactly speak to the superiority of fiction! Fiction, when it's not so painfully earnest, is downright silly! That poetry doesn't sell is no - I repeat, no - point of shame to poets or poetry!
-The world of poetry is small and intimate. If reading fiction is like being in a sports stadium, reading poetry is like being in a mid-sized conference room. You can mill around and soon meet everybody.
Let's see... that's about it, I think. Thank you for the chance to discharge of my duty as a SOP, because truly we need a National Poetry Month (as we need a Feline Cancer Awareness Month or a Recycle Your Beer Bottles Month). Pace Frank O'Hara, who said that let the children eat candy, he doesn't give a yam whether people read poetry or not - poetry does continually require institutional promotion and support.
Oh yeah, this book - it's terrible!"
-Poetry is more efficient than fiction. Why read 500 pages of fiction (Freedom by Jonathan Franzen for example) that belabors a point that a really good poem can make more memorably in one or two pages.
-Poetry is more complex, more difficult than fiction. It is more comprehensively moving than fiction. As an art of sound and rhetoric, it involves you totally.
-Poetry is for adults.
-Poetry doesn't sell. Pardon me, but the bestsellers list doesn't exactly speak to the superiority of fiction! Fiction, when it's not so painfully earnest, is downright silly! That poetry doesn't sell is no - I repeat, no - point of shame to poets or poetry!
-The world of poetry is small and intimate. If reading fiction is like being in a sports stadium, reading poetry is like being in a mid-sized conference room. You can mill around and soon meet everybody.
Let's see... that's about it, I think. Thank you for the chance to discharge of my duty as a SOP, because truly we need a National Poetry Month (as we need a Feline Cancer Awareness Month or a Recycle Your Beer Bottles Month). Pace Frank O'Hara, who said that let the children eat candy, he doesn't give a yam whether people read poetry or not - poetry does continually require institutional promotion and support.
Oh yeah, this book - it's terrible!"
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