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.

MMMMMM-HMMMMMMM

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.

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!"

Summer readin' list

Things have been stressful but could be okay in a couple of weeks (god willing). I have formulated a summer reading list in the event things are okay and will be:

Camera Lucida Roland Barthes
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon
Flies Michael Dickman

That's all so far. I've watched some movies and want to talk about them--actually write about them, I am done talking about them.

I will get to that soon.

Also, check out the new Greensboro Review. I am in there with Ted Kooser, better known to his friends as TK.

I need to work on my empathy

1.

Last Christmas my dad stopped me when I was outside, warming up my car, and he stressed that I must "work on my empathy." My relationship with my sister had started to break down and I barely talked to her this past Christmas; I never talk to her now. I'm not sure how to do it either.

I also treated a woman here in Stillwater very poorly and I rarely see her around now. My friend asked me if I have ever been hurt, we were drunk, and I said "fuck yeah, I've been hurt," or something like that. Probably not as funny or visceral. Probably, I just said "yeah."

2.

I kept thinking I've been writing poems from this "character" named Tommy but they all sound the same. I need to ditch the artifice and realize this is just my fucking voice. Every poem I have written since I moved down here has been me and only me. With the exception of a few early ones (I've tried to bring in this feminine voice, but she sounds like me too, or my sister). I don't know what I am doing sometimes.


3.

I tend to get pegged as a "funny guy." This is fine sometimes but most of the time I wish it wasn't, and I know it's partly my fault. Boisseau used to recommend Old Male Poets to me she thought I'd like him. I kind of did, well, I liked half a book, but I finally came to the realization his work lacks ghosts.

Boisseau kind of pointed to this and so did Hadara: poems contain ghosts, or ghost words of the Real Poem you're trying to write. There has been this intangible aspect to people's poems I either like or I don't like and it's because that most the language of most people's work is so polished it is dead--think of the Poet as the big furry thing in those Warner Bros. cartoons strangling the life out of a pretty thing, desiring to name it George. Their poetry lack ghosts. The poem has been busted.

I don't know if I have any right to say this--I can't write for shit most times and my work is fairly clear and accessible.

I guess I try to keep ghosts in it--one way to do this is to stay messy I think, if just a little messy. I don't want to be beautiful all the time; I always think of anti-lyric (not so much prosody as "how would I say this").

When I'd go back to Boisseau and tell her I didn't like the Old Male Poet she recommended, she somtimes would say "I don't either." I liked this a lot: she knows there is something of worth in people's work she doesn't agree with. I miss that right now.


4.

My friend Andrew's daughter Eleni did. She drew Tommy and called it "Tommy is sad."



Andrew asked her why Tommy looks up. She said "most people look up when they are sad."