Oh, Didn't He Ramble...

2011-03-22T19:20:00.003-05:00

This is my poemscape. Over the course of the last few weeks I've been writing a long poem (made of many interconnected short poems) about complexities. Mike Tyson is a complex figure. He's in the poem. Love is a complex emotion. It's in the poem. Residing is a complex placement. It too is in the poem. All in all, it wound up being as tall as me. Which isn't as tall as I used to be, but still, pretty tall. There are people who do not like this poem, but I've read it too, and I think it's pretty good. Maybe you can hear me read some of it over the course of the next few weeks:

This Sunday, the 27th, you can hear me read it in Chicago at Myopic Books (1564 N. Milwaukee Ave Chicago, IL 60622) sometime between 7 and 8 pm along with Erika Jo Brown, Matthew Klane and Adam Roberts.
The next weekend (April 2) you can hear me read with the Black Ocean crew at Nemesis Tattoo in Iowa City for the Mission Creek Festival Lit Crawl sometime between 5 and 6.
Two days later (April 4) I'll be reading in Newton, Iowa for the Celebration of the Literary Arts with Debra Marquart at the local DMACC campus sometime between 11:15 and 12:15.

This sounds like a lot, I know, but remember, I do have a 6' 2" poem to read. It's a tall drink of water, that poem, and I'd hate to get its shit wrinkly squeezing it into one of these.

Also, Matthew Zapruder will be reading in Iowa City this Thursday, 7pm, @ Prairie Lights. You should probably be there...

2011-03-15T21:20:00.002-05:00

Sometimes cities move at you like lava and you think, briefly, this is a dangerous situation. But then you find yourself sitting just across from New Jersey in a place called, The Poet's House, and you feel glad that such houses have yet to be swallowed by America's flowing glow. And hey, you say to yourself, there are places that take you to Coney Island, and you begin to dream of growing land masses, cyclones and the beautiful uselessness of such things in March. That's when you find yourself in a place called Alphabet City reading poems with people you quickly fall in love with and then spend the rest of your night talking about Indians, Ted Berrigan, seeing billboards unlike anyone else because you made them, and how, regardless of their resistance, you will make Jan and Deb miss you when you leave. The next morning, you will wake up with a flight to catch, a handful of mix cd's for everyone's mother, as well as a mouthful of strawberries, and be glad that the lava hasn't caught you yet. Maybe you will be glad about this tomorrow too, but it's so hard to know such things, what with all that shifting astrology...

2011-03-06T11:58:00.003-06:00

You should totally head over here and get this magazine. Not only am I in it, but I also helped make it. It's totally rad; a great read and not too shabby to look at. Pick one up, it's totally classy and earth toned to boot!

Also, there is a release party in NYC next Sunday. The details are here. I'll be reading along with lots of other folks, so come on out, pick up a magazine and read along as it plays out LIVE right in front of you! Things really shouldn't be this amazing, but sometimes they are...

2011-02-22T21:20:00.003-06:00

I just got done reading Anthony McCann's "I (heart) Your Fate," and, like, whoa.

A few notes: The poems in this book border on being overtaken with naming, with applying meaning, with, well, being overtaken in general, "While all this time the highway poured towards me/ Bringing you and the promise of words..." It's hard to argue that all poetry isn't, in some way, a search for meaning, but McCann simplifies his search to just the language we use, implying maybe, that there can be no greater meaning without recognizing the impossibility of meaning in the first place, "and I wonder what all your things mean..." The book then takes on the responsibility of beginning meaning by giving everything a name. Words have names. You have names. Lives have names.

And McCann pushes this idea by limiting his vocabulary; words, phrases and images are recycled to both limit and expand their respective meanings (brains, hands, teeth, knees, wrists, and birds, feelings, words, names). Sometimes it works by process of elimination, i.e., I don't know what I mean, but I don't mean that. Other times meaning keeps unfolding and expanding as if he were saying, I mean this and that and this and this and that too:

"It's almost as if I were saying these things
To someone--to you--or not even to you
You stood--like the day--by the beach--with you bag
While the birds and the traffic referred to themselves"

This book is a dance that is meant to mesmerize. This book is like Jamie Lee Curtis in "True Lies." Yes, it's entertaining, and in the poem, "The Visitor's Locker Room" (which seems maybe in reference to the U of I's visitor's locker room at Kinnick), it's even pretty erotic, but what you quickly learn, these are just distractions while McCann sneaks in cleans both your palette and palate, sweeps them free of anything we'd call meaning and remakes it right before your eyes. And though this will read as hyperbole, after reading this book it's easy to imagine it like a prism your white light just passed through...

Look at you now, you're all rainbows and shit.

2011-02-20T17:57:00.002-06:00

Whoa. Madison. I went for a reading. I came back totally in love with you. Like, I wanna make love in this club. To your marches. To your placards. To your version of active democracy. Madison, you are so rad. Down at the hotel I was staying at, old people were dressed in revolutionary garb, celebrating George Washington's birthday. Back at the capital, they were just being like George Washington and starting a revolution. Much like the old folks at the hotel, it was coincidence that brought me to you, but isn't that pretty much the deal with love? I think so...Madison, it was nice to meet you. I hope you get yourself figured out in all the best ways. I hope your mean governor tells you he is sorry and runs home embarrassed. I hope all your jobs stay just as they are, but maybe a little better. And I hope you are proud...

Let me know if you ever need me,

BJ

2011-02-14T08:37:00.003-06:00

Hey. Look what I did. I mean, look at what Dan Perry and I did. I really mean, look at what Dan Perry, Joshua Ware, Erika Jo Brown and I did. We made a book. We made a book that's really fucking good. Maybe this is because I've been sewing them for the last few days, but they just feel right. Also, I have a sewing tip for you; if you're fumbling with your needle and it drops from your fingers, don't attempt to keep it from falling to the ground by quickly making your legs into a lap...that needle was in there a ways.

Buy the book here. Please.

Don't forget to come to the Monsters of Poetry reading this Friday in Madison. I'll be there with a poem for you...

At the request of Jim Galvin I've begun reading Robert Walser. I'm only halfway through the short story collection, but I get why he thought it might be helpful. "I am thrilled to writing a report on such a delicate subject as trousers, and thus to be licensed to plunge into meditation upon them; even as I write, a desirous grin, I can feel it, is spreading over my entire face." Walser, much like myself, seems to enjoy the sounds of ideas being formed, the language of formation, maybe? It's like a slow boxstep, you don't really notice the dance, but know something going's on.

Anyway...Happy Balentimes!

2011-02-10T23:32:00.002-06:00

If you could take pictures of cold, this might be what it would look like. But you can't take pictures of cold. Cold is just an idea. A thing that makes us wear coats. An idea that messes up our hair. Cold can also be scary. Like, what if our feet freeze into the ice and no one helps us out? Scary...

You know what else is scary? Monsters. Next Friday I'll be reading with some in Madison. Only, this won't be scary. It will be awesome. More here.

Then, two weeks later I'll be reading at a thing called The Twins of Evil at Cup of Joe in Cedar Falls. I'm in charge of this one. If you're in Cedar Falls or whereabouts, check us out...

Last week I read in Washington DC. It was awesome and a little unexpected, but mostly awesome. Also, I bought these books: Julie Carr's "100 Notes on Violence," Sommer Browning's "Either Way I'm Celebrating," Anthony McCann's "I (heart) Your Fate," CA Conrad's new "Book of Frank," and Dan Boehl's "Kings of the F**cking Sea." I think that was it, though I did trade for some stuff too. BUT, you should defs check out all these books. They're totally rad.

Tonight I was watching a documentary on Philip Glass, scored by Philip Glass and I heard this line: "A new language requires a new technique." I like that, but don't know how well it stands up...because I also wonder if it isn't new techniques that beget new languages, like the internet, or say, the need to fix your car...

2011-01-31T13:30:00.001-06:00

Milwaukee Day...

2011-01-20T20:34:00.002-06:00

Alright. So, I'm in this bookmaking class. I need a poem to design and print and I'm thinking this would be an excellent opportunity for Further Adventures Chapbooks and Pamphlets to actually make a pamphlet...What I'm doing here is opening the submissions up to single poems. At the end of next week I'll sort through what I got and pick my favorite to be letterpressed and brilliantly laid out by me. These pamphlets, well, broadsides really, will be mailed with every chapbook order from now until they run out. Oh, also, the next book is nearing completion and should be ready by AWP. Send my new favorite poem to furtheradventurespress@gmail.com with, "poem submission" in the subject line. You have until Thursday, January 27th at midnight.

Game on...

2011-01-18T13:50:00.002-06:00

This just came up. Someone backed out and I stepped in. I'm really excited to be reading with these folks, though, to be honest, I'm most excited to be reading with Jaswinder Bolina. A few years ago, his "Carrier Wave," forced me to reconsider exactly what "fucking awesome" meant to me. That's a big project, doing something like that.

What I was, and still am, most taken by with this book, is not just the beautiful writing, but how solid the construction is. This isn't just a collection of poems, this is a fucking BOOK! And now, our names are stacked...I'm the cheese to his ham!

Exciting!

2011-01-11T10:48:00.003-06:00

So, over break, I've been reading both Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," and Jay-Z's "DECODED." These, oddly, tell basically the same story. Poor kids from poor neighborhoods locking into an art form just as it explodes; K&C, comics, Jay-Z, hip-hop. Both tell the stories of unsuspecting young men, who are more fans of their art than practitioners, better, seemingly, at idolizing than being idols. Jay-Z felt it important to tell the stories of his streets, K&C, as young Jews, felt compelled to fight the battles no one else was fighting, i.e., going toe-to-toe with Hitler years before the rest of America would.

Both parties, by keeping their art personal, infused it with a passion their audiences could almost hold in their hands, and both make clear, that is where their true talents lie..."how distant is the story of your own life ever going to be?" Moreover, both took art forms considered simple...trashy...uncomplicated, and made them, really, made them impossible to ignore, impossible to not take seriously.

What is, perhaps, the most interesting overlapping in these two books, is how both use personal stories, not just to relay the histories of their respective genres, but also to grow and expand American history, by looking at it through specific windows, by acknowledging its effects on them and their effects on it.

Maybe, though, what I like best about these two books, is that they manage to make relevant today, the things I loved when I was young. That they make serious two things I had, for awhile, stopped being so serious about. I love comics and I love hip-hop, and especially I love the escapism both allowed me when I too was young and poor and often scared, the escapism both are allowing me right now.

In short, I feel like it has been snowing forever...

2011-01-06T09:01:00.003-06:00

I've been going on a lot of late night walks lately, nightly. My therapist says they are probably good for me, as walking is good for most people, but she can't know for certain. She doesn't know anything for certain, but that's why I like her. Iowa City is kind of pretty at night, but also pretty lonely. Everyone else appears to be home. But, oh, the glow! I like being a part of it.

Another thing I've always wanted to be a part of? AWP readings. And guess what? I am. I'll let you know the details when they become more readily available to me. I will also be reading January 29th in Milwaukee at Woodland Pattern's Poetry Marathon. I'm in the 9-10 slot with a few other amazing poets. After that, I think there is something in Chicago in March, then I'm reading at DMACC's Celebration of Literary Arts Festival on April 4. There are few others that are much too tentative to speak of now, but I'll let you know if they solidify at all.

2011-01-04T13:24:00.002-06:00

Jen Bervin is a pretty amazing poet (and rumor has it, a pretty good sister too), with a pretty amazing ability to package poems...seriously, in 2005 who the fuck published e-chaps? Her work is often sparse and spacey, in a spatial way, and so controlled you feel the tension like you do when someone is making you hit yourself (the act of being "made" is far more immediate than the blows). In short, Bervin's poems are often in the act of being made; you are being made, but you are also doing the making. As textual experiments, you the observer are often made to consider the act of reading/viewing, made to engage yourself, made to see reading as an active rather than, as it often is, a passive experience.
With that, and maybe some of this, you really should read Bervin's new chap, "The Silver Book." Where most of her previous projects seemed intent on witnessing words, this book, like a new kind of mantra, begs you to make them...

write to get lost in the day — get

the time from friends — make them a

memorable meal and forget what you made

— write — we are tasting new peaches

— all the time — write you waste

nothing — write nothing is wasted on

you —

This poem is a love letter that could be for you, but probably isn't, and you feel dirty but also quite beautiful as you read it. While pleading, the poem never loses its power, never seems out of control...it's plainness, it's nakedness driving you toward moments of pure and purposeful awe. You are still being made, but there's a lack of awareness in the poem that bleeds over into you that leaves you feeling surprised, struck, and often delighted (and I mean that). To be made to delight...why isn't that the only thing we try to do in poems?

Look, buy the fucking book, alright? I'm tired.

2011-01-03T20:18:00.002-06:00

Okay, so these eagles have been hanging around outside my apartment, which is cool, but also appears to have another side to it...the sight of an eagle soaring, or sitting, or even snatching fish from the river has become more common place than I ever could have imagined. Also, I've written way more poems about eagles than I am comfortable with and am beginning to feel a certain amount of majesty escaping me. My majesty is a fleeing regularity. Eagles! Please, I need some space from you...

Did you ever read Travis Nichols' new book, "See Me Improving"? It's pretty unbelievable. There is a recklessness to the poems that comes across like man with more power than he knows, who is, nevertheless, letting it all shoot from his fingers. Come what may. The danger is greater than that though. The underlying force to these poems seems to have come on a dare, whether it was one made to himself, or from some outlying source. Each poem is quite goal oriented, but like the kid who spends an entire summer tricking out his bike, nobody is asked to care until you see the thing sitting before you on the first day of school and you can't help but be in awe of not just the bike, but the work and devotion put into it...an example:

On the 730th Day God Made Me Happy

I dreamt we fell in love.

You bought new sheets for the bed

and made dinner from breadcrumbs

and yellow squash. The red-fringed ivy bobbed

as the wind touched it,

stirring the building to feel.

This was before our descent

into winter, when I believed

the world would freeze me

for secretly believing I could be satisfied

forever without fiery ropes

dredging my shoulders nightly.

These are not tricky poems, but they are poems that can do tricks. They are plaintive invitations to sex and the worrisome yarns that come afterward, they are shout outs to friends on pop radio and the realization the next day that no one heard you, but most of all, they are love poems to anything and anyone who looks over the words...the words of a poet who loves simply, but holistically and never apologizes for any of it (but often wonders if he should be).

Travis Nichols could probably make me care about the eagles once more...there's nothing to worry about there.

2011-01-03T11:04:00.002-06:00

This is going to
be rad
This is already
very rad
This can make us
totally rad

Asteroid (trailer) from Zachary Schomburg on Vimeo.

So many great lines. So much going in and out of focus. In a related note, this is how I usually remember poems.

2011-01-02T15:58:00.002-06:00

It's been awhile since I've seen things, but I saw all this today. What I can't share with you is the grumbling the ice was making, the sounds of weight and expanse and immobility. It was terrifying and amazing. It was like a secret. It was like a secret quickly spreading but unable to break free or even be true. And like that kind of secret, I found myself unable to trust the ice, unable to accept its invitation to stand in places I've never before stood. Whatever ice, I see your fissures, I see your cracking, I see the other leaves you've already swallowed. I see. I see. I see.

Jim Lally, I love you.

2010-10-19T15:12:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, your best friends are surprising people. For many years my best friend was a man my father's age named Jim Lally. And I loved him. A few years ago I moved to Chicago and we kind of lost touch. Jim died today. This is a very sad thing to say, and I'm sorry. I'm also sorry for every day that I "meant" to call him, and for all the days I didn't. I think it's important to mention here that I never loved baseball until I loved Jim and that whenever I talk about baseball, or more specifically, the Cardinals, I'm always imagining talking to Jim, wishing, in fact, that that was the case.

Jim had file boxes full of scorecards from every baseball game he ever went to. I looked at them once and wondered what it would be like to keep any kind of history like this.

Also, Jim paid for a few years of my college, not directly, but he sat my bar every shift I worked for 7 years (even switching restaurants when I did) and left me embarrassingly large tips every time. But that money came and went, just like college. I still have baseball, though.

Jim had a big a family and I knew almost all of them, and like Jim, I loved them too. Bob and Gail, I miss you, and I hope to see you soon, really.

2010-10-13T22:27:00.003-05:00

Today I took my class over to the Natural History Museum. They were supposed to write 30 descriptions of one thing, anything, that they could find. And they found everything, which was beautiful, but then they found even more beautiful ways to describe them, which was beautiful too!

What this is, is a list of all the things I've written poems about this semester:

Bears
The Internet
Hurricanes
Lethal Weapon
A single growing season
Benjamins
Van Halen
Data entry

I've also been writing epistolary poems with Lucas and dinosaur poems with Friedrich and a series of ekphrasis based on Norman Rockwell. I've been busy, but good busy.

Tomorrow is now being begrudgingly referred to as Therapy Thursday. How will you celebrate?

I will celebrate by remembering that today Aaron read me Kenneth Koch's, "Permanently," with his new cell phone. It was also quite beautiful, and might I mention, clear?

Maybe that will be enough.

We went to a museum, we saw priceless works of art! We ate pancreas!

2010-10-03T10:31:00.002-05:00

Went to the FIGGE yesterday. It's small, but modern, and they host wedding receptions, which means free drinks on your way out. At this museum they have a special collection based around Hans Holbein's "Dance of Death," which is good, if not slightly frantic. They also had a tiny collection of Wright furniture and glass, but really had no chance to compete with the breadth and size of the collection at the AIC. Still, just seeing one FLlW chair is usually pretty cool. What was, actually, the coolest part of the museum, was that there were only like 6 people in the entire place (aside from the catering company setting up in the lobby), so it felt intimate...so much so, that I kept on accidentally touching the paintings because they looked so touchable.

We also walked down to the river, which was really full of water.

2010-09-14T20:03:00.003-05:00

These are pictures of butterflies and have nothing to do with the fact that I am reading poems in Iowa City tomorrow (Sept 15) at 10pm at the Mill downtown (Iowa City). A picture of a bear would have more to do with this, but I've yet to ever take a picture of a bear and didn't really feel like searching the internet for one. A picture of a bear, though, would be an apt way to tell you that I am reading poems tomorrow (Sept 15) at 10pm at the Mill downtown (Iowa City). That said, I do have pictures of butterflies flirting with big colorful flowers. Big colorful flowers also don't really have much to do with me reading poems tomorrow (Sept 15) at 10pm at the Mill downtown (Iowa City).

Schomburg's new chap, here.

Schomburg and Fry's awesome and beautiful Small Fires chap, here.

The dirtiest thing I read on the internet today, here.

Tomorrow (Sept 15) at 10pm, I'll be reading poems here.

New book ends, and the heart they all share.

2010-09-10T08:04:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, I sat in a park and read Matthew Zapruder's new book, "Come On All You Ghosts," out loud. It looked a little like that picture, but not really. My audience was generous for allowing me this. I felt a little like I was 12 and showing a new friend my room for the first time...

Here's the deal about this book. Frank O'Hara used to write poems about himself in the world he shared with his friends, for his friends. Zapruder writes poems about himself in the world ALL of share with him, capturing all the beautiful and grotesque and heartbreaking and joyful minutiae of our everydays.

It's been a long time since I've read a book that's purpose seemed to be the earnest search for a reader, since I felt a poem was being shared with me, rather than being displayed for me, since I had to stop reading because the experience of doing so became overwhelming.

Here's an extended taste:

Come On All You Ghosts

1.
I heard a little cough
in the room, and turned
but no one was there

except the flowers
Sarah bought me
and my death’s head

glow in the dark key chain
that lights up and moans
when I press the button

on top of its skull
and the ghost
I shyly name Aglow.

Are you there Aglow
I said in my mind,
reader, exactly the way

you just heard it
in yours about four
poem time units ago

unless you have already
put down the paper directly
after the mention

of poetry or ghosts.
Readers I am sorry
for some of you

this is not a novel.
Good-bye. Now it is just
us and the death’s head

and the flowers and the ghost
in San Francisco thinking
together by means

of the ancient transmission device.
I am sorry
but together we are

right now thinking
along by means
of an ancient mechanistic

system no one invented
involving super-microscopic
particles that somehow

(weird!) enter through
your eyes or ears
depending on where

you are right now
reading or listening.
To me it seems

like being together
one body made of light
clanging down through

a metal structure
for pleasure and edification.
Reader when I think of you

you are in a giant purple chair
in a Starbucks gradually leaking power
while Neil Young

eats a campfire then drinks
a glass of tears
on satellite radio.

Hello. I am 40.
I have lived in Maryland,
Amherst, San Francisco,

New York, Ljubljana,
Stonington (house
of the great ornate wooden frame

holding the mirror the dead
saw us in whenever
we walked past),

New Hampshire at the base
of the White Mountains
on clear blue days

full of dark blue jays
beyond emotion jaggedly piercing,
Minneapolis of which

I have spoken
earlier and quite enough,
Paris, and now

San Francisco again.
Reader, you are right now
in what for me is the future

experiencing something
you cannot
without this poem.

I myself am suspicious
and cruel. Sometimes
when I close my eyes

I hear a billion workers
in my skull
hammering nails from which

all the things I see
get hung. But poems
are not museums,

they are machines
made of words,
you pour as best

you can your attention
in and in you the poetic
state of mind is produced

said one of the many
French poets with whom
I feel I must agree.

Another I know
writes his poems on silver
paint in a mirror.

I feel like a president
raising his fist in the sun.

How does one get over this? I mean, the last few books I have really loved have spent most of their time making new places to be, to experience. This book, with seemingly little effort, makes new experiences in the place we've always been. These are poems about walking out your front door and falling in love with sun. These are poems about being lonely and falling in love with the loneliness. These are poems about writing poems and falling in love with your poems. These are poems about being beautiful and terrible because the world around you is beautiful but also terrible.

These are poems that will fucking punch you in the chest and then send you off to write your own poems about being punched in the fucking chest because you love it...so much.

2010-08-31T22:39:00.002-05:00

I do many things compulsively. Like checking my email, for instance. But also, everything else: drinking until its gone, wondering on the time, being careful, being reluctant, etc. Compulsive reluctance...

There is good news though. I read that new Raul Zurita book and I have favorite bits:

Love are the things that happen...
We're going to bleed a bit...
They don't know their puppy is dying from love and blows...
Don't go this is only death...
I saw the true God screaming...
I saw you further down and we are both dead...
We were born here say the dreams...
Oh, the evil of my Peru...

These should probably be read as reasons. You've now read 8 reasons to buy the new Zurita book.

I think there is a storm coming on. My reluctance keeps me from saying more.

The Contents of Which are Very, Very Funny

2010-08-29T20:34:00.002-05:00

Went to the used book shop today. Justin Marks, Joyelle McSweeney, Ezra Pound and the book you see above. I'd grabbed more, but these were the only ones I didn't already own. I have a thing about buying used books I have. It makes me sad to think that someone didn't love them like I do...and if I take them home they could see.

I also used to put my favorite toys under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve so I wouldn't forget them the next morning.

Speaking of favorites, have you ever listened to Dylan's "Shot of Love?" You don't hear it too often, but it's real good. People will tell you how bad the lyrics are. About evangelism and what not. You don't listen to these people. You just listen to the harmonic landscape of this record.

Is it bad to say that I've never been a fan of Bob Dylan lyrics? At all? Ever?

Did you see that Action Books has a few new titles out? New Zurita translations and new Abe Smith. It's because of Daniel Borzutzky reading some of his translations at a Series A a few years ago that I fell hard for RZ. Abe Smith is just Abe Smith. I don't know...I ordered them, well, the special actually. I figured, hey, free book. Right?

I'll be reading in Iowa City (at the Mill) on September 15th (I think). I want you to come. Real bad.

2010-08-18T09:02:00.003-05:00

These are a few places I've seen my name lately...besides the dirty side of the internet.

Syllabus...bleghk. Writing syllabi is like making a paint-by-number. Not painting one, but trying to simplify thousands of brush strokes and millions of colors into an 8 color, easily-digested, steady-handed craft.

Are you keeping up with Tony Tost's America? You should be.

I miss writing with Lucas and wish he'd hurry back home from India...but that's selfish of me, I guess.

People refer to the things that I like as, "weird." To that I say, if wolf-hats and glued-together puzzles of JFK are weird then why are they so easy to find.

I have a lot of stuff to do today, but none of it seems that interesting. Meetings and phone calls.

2010-08-16T21:50:00.002-05:00

Back from Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a hard, "whoa." A and I took over 500 pictures, most of which were practice shots. I think I love National Parks...turns out Ken Burns was right about that being America's best idea.

Is it just me, or do mountains always look better in black and white?

Sometimes, I wish I could have been alive when there were still mountains left to name. I think that would have been the best job ever.

Syllabus writing doesn't look good anywhere on the gray scale.

Before we left for Colorado, I made my parents buy me a wolf-hat because I wanted to wear a wolf-hat in Colorado. Then, on our way out to Colorado, I saw wolf-hats everywhere. I saw bear-hats too.

2010-08-12T11:05:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I'm 32 now and also in Colorado. I will only be one of these things next Monday. I have a new philosophy. Photos of mountains are easy to take but hard to appreciate...because, by the time you get home all you got is a bunch of pictures of rocks.

2010-08-02T09:55:00.002-05:00

This past weekend I read poetry with two of my best friends ever, Jon and Aaron. We did this at the Cup of Joe in Cedar Falls. I love all these things very much; Jon, Aaron, poetry, the Cup, et.al. After the reading, I sold eleven books and the three of us split $123 in tips. Sadly, none of that money made it home with me as we did what most people do after reading poems: we got drunk. We also had a few chugging contests (which I won, as I recall) and shots along our way there.

I love poetry readings.

2010-07-29T22:54:00.003-05:00

There's a line in daily bathing that is hard to pass by, but easy to forget once you do. I learned that, amongst other things, this last weekend while camping with some friends. Also, you know how tents say things like, "stays dry in extreme conditions?" We went beyond extreme...

You should probably come to Cup of Joe (in Cedar Falls, IA) this Saturday, say...around 8:00pm. It too will go beyond extreme. You know, I say that, and then I think, "it's a fucking poetry reading, what would need to happen for THAT to go beyond extreme?" And then I have a few ideas...

I've had a pretty eventful summer and I still have a vacation left to go on. I think I may be a pretty lucky dude...

Have you read Dorthea Lasky's new book yet? It's called, "Black Life," and reading it is like falling in love with every girl with you've ever been in love with, only, more rapidly and less intentionally. You fall in love with the weird girl and the next thing you know, you're falling in love with the smart girl, the goth girl, the oddly confident girl, the more-man-than-you girl, some girl, THE girl, another girl...

I guess what I'm saying is that, at the end of the day, I wound up with a pretty big crush on Dorthea Lasky, but I have no idea who that is...

2010-07-23T14:34:00.002-05:00

Are you on vacation? Are you in Iowa? Want to make your vacation a bit more spectacular than it already must be (you are in Iowa, after all)? Then do I have the opportunity for you!

I'm having a sort of official release party for my book, Michigander, in Cedar Falls on July 31st. What...you want more? Then how about poetry readings by Aaron McNally, Jonathan Barrett and B.J. Love. This gonna be the realest shit you ever seen, son! You remember that time The Beastie Boys sampled Slick Rick and then everybody did? This reading is like that...only with poetry, "as we go a little something like this, hit it!" You should get on this train early because it's the ride you don't want to miss.

Hype, hype, hype!

Deets:

Jonathan Barrett, BJ Love, Aaron McNally reading poems at Cup of Joe, 102 Main Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613...8pm, July 31st, 2010, and out for drinks afterward.

Jonathan Barrett works in banking and lives in Kansas City, MO with his wife, Megan, and three sons: Elijah, Gavin, and Brayden.

BJ Love is the author of Michigander (Greying Ghost) and the forthcoming We are Two Bastards (Indivia). Additionally, he is an MFA candidate in the Writer's Workshop at Iowa and edits Further Adventures Chapbooks and Pamphlets.

Aaron McNally is a poet, musician and amateur journalist from Waterloo, Iowa, who now lives in Kansas City, MO. He is one step away from obtaining his master's degree in English at the U of Northern Iowa. His first book, Out of the Blue, is available on Caveworks press. His collaborative poems with Friedrich Kerksieck have appeared as chapbooks on Pilot Books and Further Adventures Press, as well as within magazines such as effing and 6X6. Reviews penned in his hand have appeared in Rain Taxi Review of Books and the Cream City Review.

This is July and this is what happens then

2010-07-19T11:18:00.002-05:00

On July 1st I left home, last night I got back. A lot of really great stuff happened, but it's become hard to remember it all. I know I was at camp for awhile. I think I almost got in a car accident in Minneapolis. I saw the sunrise once. I missed someone's wedding. I downloaded, like, 19 records from emusic. I started a gang fight. I made an 11-year old puke. I made myself puke. I ran out of clean clothes 3 days ago. I had to pull my dog of a dead snake...twice. I'm pretty sure I made many broad claims regarding things I know nothing about. I cried watching Sportcenter. I mourned for Harvey Pekar. I made payments by phone. I forgot to make my phone payment.

Some other stuff happened too, but now it's lunch time.

Have you seen the new penny yet?

Photo Essay: Lunch with Grandma

2010-06-29T21:34:00.005-05:00

I did a lot of that today. Tomorrow, I'm getting ready for this. The day after that, I'll actually be doing it.

p.s. I don't know Flo Rock, but I still might name my kid after her...

Celebrated Artist Dan Perry Celebrates Things Worth Celebrating!

2010-06-26T08:41:00.003-05:00

Further Adventures' own Dan Perry builds monuments to excellence...check it out.

You really should check out all of DP's art. He manages to work within a more formal, established aesthetic while simultaneously singling it out as ridiculous, though not unneeded. I don't know much about the more physical arts, but that sounds right, at least to me.

2010-06-23T21:03:00.002-05:00

My very good and generous friend, Aaron McNally, has blessed me with a very good and generous Michigander review. Read it here.

After much bubbling the skies have settled. Over the last week I've seen rainbows shooting lightning into the earth, a parasol hiding tornadoes and a great goopy rain that hung from trees like towlines. I am happy for each of these.

Next week I'm heading up to Minneapolis to read for the Pocket Lab. This fact makes me nervous to no end. BUT, I will have books to sell, both my own and that of my press, Further Adventures. I'm going to need gas money, so please, please buy some.

After 8 weekday mornings I have managed to trick large groups of youths that writing is the most fun of all the arts...which means I have only 2 more to blow it. Today we read Shane Jones' "Floating Animals," poem and then wrote news stories (after interviewing each other) on what it was like seeing those animals drift through our towns. Half way into one particular interview, a six-year old decided she was a dog named Stripes and would only answer in barks and growls. It was the most awesome thing I've ever seen.

2010-06-17T21:40:00.000-05:00

"Join us at the Rogue Buddha Gallery (357 13th Ave. Northeast) from 7-9 for poetry, conversation, and a celebration of Pocket Lab's first birthday. This little reading series is growing up..."

I'll be there, will you?

Dusty, you are the very definition of precision.

2010-06-16T22:00:00.002-05:00

Today I went on a bike ride. Yesterday I made my own barbecue sauce. Tomorrow I am teaching 40 1st-5th graders narrative. In the end, I've filled my week with things that make me sweaty.

Have you read GC Waldrep's poem, "The Sherpas of Canada" in the last jubilat? It'll bite your head off, man. It's that huge.

Did you ever buy my book? If not NOW is the time. Greying Ghost Summer Sale! Shit, Kristen Orser's book is worth that kind of money and THEN throw in all those others?

Precision as only Dusty can deliver...

2010-06-14T23:16:00.002-05:00

That sunburn is currently falling off in my bed. It's super gross. And super itchy.

This week (and next) I'm teaching writing at an arts camp. Today we rhymed. You know what rhymes with poo? Doo-doo. You know what rhymes with soccer? Soccer. I feel like I made a difference, you know?

Does your girl-dog hug your arm tight, lick your fingers and hump your elbow? Yeah, mine neither.

Secret: I'm reading the entire "Leaves of Grass" for the first time right now. I've had many reasons (read: school) to get this done, but never did. It seemed ridiculous. Was ridiculous. It's getting less and less ridiculous everyday. Like that sunburn.

2010-06-10T08:20:00.003-05:00

This is a picture of my dogs making out. At first it was cute, but lately turned a little raunchy.

I pulled my back. I can't afford specificity so, "pulling" is the best I can do. And ibuprofen. You see, I am medically uninsured. Dentally too. I used to be automotively uninsured, but then I bought a new car. Did you know that GEICO is short for Government Employee Insurance Company? Did you know that writing poems at the University of Iowa makes you an employee of the University of Iowa? Did you know that I had gone 3 years without insurance? Did you know that I did get pulled over twice during that time, but oddly enough, I was driving someone else's car who did have insurance, or proof of it anyhow? Did you know that's not illegal?

Also, I've been eating a lot of pickles and then wiping my hands on a dish towel hanging from my oven. Now, if I wipe my hands for any reason, my hands smell like pickles. It's hard to not want a pickle when your hands already smell like one.

Did you know that you can order your coffee "kid's temp" and they will cool it down for you? I finally get to drink my coffee right when I get it.

New Action, Yes! I highly suggest Mary Hickman's poem "Totem."

Finally, my dog Jojo has been stockpiling my wife's dirty underwear in our living room under a chair...I had no idea until just now.

2010-06-01T22:31:00.002-05:00

We should head out. Go and touch the funeral train. I have a feeling we're going to be talking it the rest of our lives. But for now, all we have to remember is that we are just a couple of boys who have a couple of hands and a need to run after almost anything.

Today was 86 degrees and my plants are all doing well. I don't know if this is the approval I'm always looking for, but it seems to fit at his hour.

Black Ocean is reading manuscripts. I'm not quite ready, but if you are...

This is why I love Lorine Niedecker:

*

You are my friend--
you bring me peaches
and the high bush cranberry
you carry
my fishpole

you water my worms
you patch my boot
with your mending kit
nothing in it
but my hand

*

So much seems to be happening I can't seem to catch my breath.

2010-05-26T22:18:00.005-05:00

Have you ever eaten strawberry-rhubarb salsa? Goddamn it, I have. Goddamn it...I'm going to go eat some more.

There exists, amongst my people, a tradition known as the summer mix. It's mostly competitive, only, no one else plays. It's mostly naughty, or, at least what you'd want to be hearing while doing naughty things. Dancing, drinking and kissing girls. Real naughty. My summer mix looks like this:
Most of the songs are naughty too, though, only one officially.

I'm digging on you. You're digging on me. We're digging on we...I can't stop how I feel.

This is what I know: I'm reading in Minneapolis on July 1st. Then, I'm reading in Cedar Falls on July 31st. I'd like to read more. Maybe sell some books. Could I read for you? I would be an honest boy...promise.

Jojo eats lightning bugs. Once, she sprang herself from our retaining wall and caught one mid-air. In other words, we have lightning bugs.

I'm reading Lorine Niedecker's Collected right now. I'm not entirely sold; New Goose was not great, but my Midwestern affections and general politeness really hopes it gets better, and believes it will if I just sit quietly and don't fuss. Also, this is exactly how I write poems.

I've got lots of stuff I want to do this summer. Will it get done? Stay tuned...

Unsolicited Michigander Reviews Used Without Permission!

2010-05-17T14:09:00.005-05:00

"Your book is lovely!" -Aaron, Kansas City

"...I thoroughly enjoyed it." -Allison, Chicago

"What is this?" -Scott, Iowa City

"michigander is amazing." -Sasha, New York

"This is really beautiful." -Anne, Coralville

"Yessssssss" -Erika, Iowa City

"You wrote this? Really? You?" -My Grandma, North English

You too can have opinions about things...your journey starts here.

2010-05-13T22:57:00.002-05:00

I feel like, maybe, I take the same pictures all the time.

Do you have dogs? I do. Most of the time we're pretty cool, but right now, I wish they were someplace else...

Last Sunday I helped my sister-in-law move. I've been walking like 70's John Wayne ever since. You know, like I killed a guy and threw out my back disposing of the body.

In the last few weeks I've read Joe Hall's "Pigafetta...," Macgregor Card's "Duties...," and Lyn Hejinian's "Saga." It was an odd amount of travelogue poetry.

I've also been reading Dean Young's "Embryoyo," mostly because it's a beautiful book, but also because Jim Galvin mentioned him practically every time my poems came up for workshop.

"Bee-Stung Aviary" is reviewed in the latest issue of "The Home Video Review Books." Check it here.

Aaron McNally got his copy of "Michigander." Did you? It's something real nice.

2010-05-06T15:23:00.002-05:00

I don't leave the house much. Which is why most (read: all) of these pictures are from around the yard. That could be sad, but look at all the awesome shit I get to see right here! I don't know that this is true, but I am fairly certain that I'm scared to leave the house with the camera, which I am always scared of breaking.

Mid-post happening! The postman just dropped off my author copies for "Michigander!" I have 4 colors of covers, 30 total copies and one super gift for my wife...her name is in there as much as mine is! Would you like one of these? Would I be willing to give you one? There's only one way to find out...

Last week of classes. First year in the can. Met with a local high school student today who wants to be a writer (sigh), but I did get to talk about my self for a real long time, which is always pretty fun. The workshop prom is tonight...yeah, that's right. And I have a few books that I keep forgetting to mail off (I'm a real good business owner).

Macgregor Card is reading with Brandon Downing next Wednesday, 7pm @ Prairie Lights. Ummm, maybe you should go. Card's last book, "Duties of an English Foreign Secretary," is pretty fantastic...you could, um, borrow my copy if you like. Let me know, k?

2010-04-30T17:38:00.002-05:00

It rained today. Hard. The dogs hid underneath the bed. I laid on top of it wishing I was smaller.

We all are somewhat Michigander.

2010-04-29T22:16:00.003-05:00

This is Lake Michigan. It's big. Usually loud. And occasionally full of seagulls.

This is Michigander. It's big. Usually loud. And occasionally full of seagulls.

It is with much pride and great thanks to Greying Ghost Press, that I announce the release of my first chapbook, Michigander. These look great. Really. I never, ever, could have imagined this poem looking this cool.

From GG: "Michigander is a treasure map buried in the backseat of a Lake Michigan Buick. Each line, each word sluices across the page a clue to the next. No trickery for gamesmanship. A phenomenal new voice from the throat of a straight-shooting riser. Quit hitting the snooze and wake up to this already."

From me: This poem is a pleading to Chicago. This poem is a wallowing in unemployment. But most of all this poem is a riverboy wondering where his banks have gone. I wrote this poem in the Fall of 2007 between filling out job applications, and after embarrassingly bad job interviews (actual question fielded from interviewer, "Do you even know what you're doing here?"). It's that kind of poem...

The book is dedicated to my wife, Anne, but here and now I'd like to thank Jon Barrett, for telling two (3?) years ago that this could be something and then for reminding me last fall that I'd once written something that could have been something. AND, thanks to Elizabeth Robinson for taking a peek at a re-worked version a few weeks later and rubbing her shammy cloth of genius across the smudges. And finally to Carl, who accepted the poem as a pamphlet and took it upon himself to see it as a chapbook. Thank you.

I'm gushing, I know. It's geeky, I know. But I don't have 5 books out. I have one. And you can buy it here.

2010-04-20T23:17:00.003-05:00

I feel like the world is a new place since last we discussed it. Like I'm wearing new socks, or maybe it's just that my hair looks really good today. Have you thought of this? Tomorrow, when it rains, I will be comfortably inside. That is a promise I've made to myself before, I know, but if I can't mean it this time...

I'm reading online that my mini-chapbook, "Michigander," should be done soon. Like within a few days soon. This is exciting to a guy like me.

What are your feelings on cats and ascots?

Do you have Diet Mountain Dew in your fountain? I'm so there.

Tomorrow at 7 you should head to Prairie Lights and watch Amanda Nadelberg read. You just should.

I someday hope to x-ray my entire family. Do you suppose that possible?

My kitchen flooded last week and then some friends came over and then we grilled meat. I think that pretty much catches us up.

To Point your camera down and see the clouds!

2010-04-12T22:12:00.001-05:00

2010-04-05T23:11:00.002-05:00

Heading to Denver tomorrow morning. Hoping to get some quality time in with an old friend before the AWP madness sets in. We're going to eat food, drink drinks and watch baseball...just like old times.

Last week, during one of DB-Q's better non sequiturs, he said that AWP was "like Whitman's barbaric yawp, only, there is no why..."

Just below this post I've pre-posted my course description for next Fall. My favorite thing about it is that it says 'stuff' so many times you begin to wonder if 'stuff' is even a word. My second favorite thing about it is that the only sentence that doesn't seem a little off is, "This class will be real hard." My class will be hard...did you see the reading list?

I finished up 20+ Baus chaps today while watching the Cardinals play baseball. In short, the experience was quite fulfilling. If you'd like a Baus book in Denver, just ask Eric whereabouts I was the last place he saw me. I move pretty slow...who knows, I may just still be there. Also, on the chance that any of the 2 people who may read this have a table at the book fair and wouldn't mind a little pink and tan book cluttering up their space, I'd let you keep the money for 1 of every 2 sold...you know, for your trouble.

Has anyone else noticed that there is officially too much stuff to do at AWP? Seriously, there's like 3 off site reading every night...at the same time...all over the city. What's a young man to do?

Regardless, I'm not missing this one:
Possess Nothing: a small press event

Plus Gallery, 2501 Larimer Street (near the conference)

Saturday, April 10th, 7:00-10:00 p.m.

“Watch yourself unfold and close-out the AWP week with five presses that walk the path of dispossession. Fourteen readers; 100 minutes; singular enlightenment. Action Books, Apostrophe Books, Black Ocean, Slope Editions and Tarpaulin Sky Press present: Jessica Baran, Crystal Curry, Julie Doxsee, Sandy Florian, Lara Glenum, Johannes Goransson, Joe Hall, Lucy Ives, Paul Foster Johnson, Gordon Massman, Zachary Schomburg, Abraham Smith, Shelly Taylor, Amy Wright.”

Yeah.

Course Description Fall 2010

2010-04-05T22:59:00.002-05:00

8C:001 Creative Writing Studio Workshop

Sec. 0014 W 12:30-2:20 221 NH

This course is about making stuff. It’s about making stuff from not-stuff. Really, it’s about the work we do to make our not-stuff, stuff. And this course is definitely about finding the best kind of not-stuff/stuff work for you (poetry stuff, fiction stuff, non-fiction stuff). We will read stuff, good stuff, and wonder aloud on how it gained its stuffiness. We will wonder how this stuff could have been other stuff. We will conjure up our own not-stuff and wonder aloud on its stuffiness potential. We will work on all this stuff. Making not-stuff into stuff is hard. Making not-stuff into good stuff is real hard. This class will be real hard. But, you will make good stuff.

Required texts (available at Prairie Lights Books):

Zachary Schomburg, Scary, No Scary, 978-0-9777709-9-1

Kate Greenstreet, The Last 4 Things, 978-1-934103-09-8

12 x 12: Conversations in 21st-Century Poetry and Poetics: 978-1587297915

Michael Chabon: Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son: 978-0061490194

Best American Non-Required Reading: 978-0547241609

James Tate: Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee: 978-1933517353

2010-04-01T15:18:00.003-05:00

I had to run down to Kalona today to buy my father-in-law a birthday present. While this was taking place, something else quite miraculous was taking place as well. Riverside, the official future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. Space...

Taking these picture reminded me of other pictures I've been meaning to take. So I did. Plus I got an ice cream cone. I see that lady everyday on my bus. I real sorry for her. To think, living long enough until your home becomes the parking lot of a Heartland Inn...

I've been marathon reading lately. Ben Lerner's new book is A-mazing. Dorthea Lasky's new book was so great I couldn't keep myself from giving it away to a dear friend. I also finally finished "Killing Kanoko," which you almost need to read over the course of a few months, otherwise you become too adapted and the poems cease to have their [intended] effect. What else...Graham Foust: done. GC Waldrep: done. Allen Grossman: done. (I'm actually cleaning out my book bag right now) MacGregor Card and James Galvin: done. I think that's it...

Tonight, after some delay, is Brandi Homan's reading at the University of Northern Iowa. Baker hall, 8 o'clock...

Are you going to awp? are you one of the unfortunate masses without an Eric Baus chapbook. My name is BJ Love and I can put an end to such sorrow...find me!

2010-03-29T10:27:00.001-05:00

This is Orange Lincoln. I thought you might like meet him.

2010-03-21T22:48:00.002-05:00

One of Jojo's ears popped up yesterday. We took a picture of it. Immediately after this she peed on our comforter. I have a small washer, so laundering was no easy task. The lesson I learned here; standing ears has zero correlation with not peeing on comforters.

Hey! Do you like prose poems? Then check out this new (free) anthology of poets working in that medium. I'm one, and there are others. Hopefully, it will be here.

Also, Carl had this to say about my pamphlet. I still don't have too many details, so I'm looking forward to what it will be. Whatever that is, at least it won't just be a .doc on my computer any more...that will be real nice.

School start back up tomorrow and I'm kind of excited. With no vacation plans, spring break wound up being more work than school could ever be. I did write a review for Heather Christle's book, "The Difficult Farm." Someone actually asked me to do it, so it won't show up here, unless they reject my effort, than it may...if I'm not totally embarrassed by it. AND, I knocked 4 more books of my to-read list which was both fun and functional. But, yeah, school and its routine will be pretty sweet.

I heard once that Brandi Homan (who is also featured in the anthology) was reading this Thursday and UNI, but have not heard much in a while, so I can't say for certain if it is happening, but if it is, you should be there. I'll throw up more details as I discover them.

2010-03-17T15:38:00.002-05:00

This is what it's like to be me today -laundry. Laundry is boring. I don't take pictures of boring things. That's not true, actually.

I wrote some poems with DG last night; 4 poems in just one pitcher of beer. None of them are all good. Most of them are a little good. One is pretty much all good. We have decided it's something. Something, like how Easter is something. It's because of Easter.

Baus book sales have slowed. Stopped, really. Fight the good fight here.

Remember how I said I was going to not buy more books until I'd read all unread, bought books? Yeah...

Yeah.

2010-03-04T00:01:00.003-06:00

This is new puppy (along with old puppy, just to ease you in). Her name is Jojo. She likes sleeping, being super cute and the R&B group Jodeci, though, if you asked her today she'd tell you Salt n' Pepa.

This has nothing to do with puppies, which was nice after the last few days, but tonight I went and watched Joshua Marie Wilkinson and GC Waldrep. It was an outrageous entertainment. I bought GC's book, "Archicembalo." One thing you may not know about GC Waldrep is that he once had an aunt that lived in the town I grew up in. Also, I did not know her.

Have you ever read Max Jacob? He's French. He hung out with Picasso. He wrote funny poems that all have secrets...I didn't tell you, but the secret is that they break your heart. Here is one of them translated by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney:

Poem of the Moon

There are on the night sky three mushrooms, which are the moon. As abruptly as sings the cuckoo from a clock, they rearrange themselves each month at midnight. There are in the garden some rare flowers which are little men at rest that wake up every morning. There is in my dark room a luminous shuttle that roves, then two … phosphorescent aerostats, they’re the reflections of a mirror. There is in my head a bee that talks.

There are also some of new translations of Raul Zurita up at the spankin' new Action Yes. It was at a Daniel Borzutzky reading that I first heard of Zurita. It was at a Daniel Borzutzky reading that I first heard Daniel Borzutzky read these translations. I was smitten during these firsts.

Have gotten the chance to see Zach Schomburg's poem films? They are amazing with a capital a. Get them here. Really.

2010-03-02T14:27:00.002-06:00

It's March. I have a shit-ton of stuff on my plate. I got a new puppy. When you have a shit-ton of stuff on your plate, puppies are like gravy...it gets on everything, but you're always glad it's there. I once ate a gravy-topped omelet. It was pretty great.

Have you heard the Carolina Chocolate Drops? A heard them on the radio yesterday and when she came home we downloaded their new record (Genuine Negro Jig). I know it's almost a right of passage these days for folk bands to cover hip-hop tunes, but CCD's version of "Hit'em Up Style," is sick. Vocals-beatbox-and-violin-only sick...

I've been reading everything Oppen these days, it started as class assignments, but has since become something else...that truth is possible in Language, not necessarily in it's representations, but in that liminal space between speaker and receptor...plus, I'm pretty sure George Oppen would have been the greatest uncle ever.

Don't forget to order the brand-new and totally amazing Eric Baus chapbook, "Bee-Stung Aviary," here.

JMW is reading with GC Waldrep tomorrow night at Prairie Lights (7pm). Did you know Waldrep was Amish? I had no idea...how stoked to you suppose he was to be published in DIAGRAM...or Blackbird, for that matter.

I have 20+ books I must read before I'm allowing myself to buy any more books. Will it get done by AWP...stay tuned.

2010-02-25T00:42:00.003-06:00

These are many copies of Eric Baus' latest chapbook, "Bee-Stung Aviary" (further adventures). Everyone of them are ready for you.

This is how you can order one. This is how you can order another one.

And this is how you can use Eric Baus' latest chapbook, "Bee-Stung Aviary," to remove an actual bee-sting:

These are all handy things to know, I think.

2010-02-19T22:49:00.004-06:00

I read tonight. Then this happened. I don't know for sure what that means, but it looks like my little pamphlet might be next.

I'm drinking Hamm's and watching WWE. What does that say about me? Probably something weird.

Have you ever Nick Flynn? Apparently I did once...and then forgot. He was in town last week reading from a memoir and I had little interest; then I grabbed an old anthology (American Poetry: The Next Generation) and realized that 10 years ago I wrote, what I assume, is a real shitty paper about his 10 year old poems and I got real bummed that I skipped his reading.

According to Jim Galvin his IWW story works like this: he was student a in the non-fiction program and was having a shit time...then he applied to the poetry IWW program based on a few lyric prose pieces and got in. SO, he was accepted here as a poet...having really written no poetry before (but how different is that from so many others). That said, ten years ago, I was totally in love with his poems, and now, I'm totally in love with his poems.

This might be my favorite:

Emptying Town
after Provincetown

Each fall this town empties, leaving me
drained, standing on the dock, waving
bye bye, the white handerkerchief
stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus

rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming & thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid
the way I miss you

will be this obvious. I have

a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides
bloody images of Jesus around my house

for me to find when I come home--Jesus
behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked

into the mirror. He wants to save me

but we disagree from what. My version of Hell
is someone ripping open his
shirt & saying,

look what I did for you.

I think that's pretty rad, don't you?

2010-02-19T15:24:00.003-06:00

I know this has become my standard excuse for not blogging, but we've been without internet...again. And once again, there was nothing I could do because it wasn't my internet. But no more! I'm officially a due-paying member of the internet society.

Anyway, I'm reading tonight (TONIGHT!) as part of the Anthology series here in Iowa City. The whole thing starts at 7pm and will be housed in the Foxhead (402 East Market). You should come, but leave the kids...it's gonna get real.

People of the City:

So Winter Keeps Happening. My Feet Are Frozen. I Have Lost My Mittens. What Are We Going To Do About The Olympics, Rather, Why Aren't We Better Ice Skaters. Who Will Help Me Find My Coat. I Have No Legs. Your Hair is Pretty But I Can't Go On. Children Need Apples The Way A Wall Needs Wallpaper. The Store Is Closed And So Far Away. So We Have To Keep Going And We Will Keep Going We Will Keep Going All The Way To Friday, When You Will Be Wooed And Undone By:

Danthology

Sandra Allen
Callie Garnett
Emmalee Hunnicutt
Lisa Leaverton
BJ Love
Andrea Rosenberg
Colby Somerville
Kayla Soyer-Stein

Friday 2/19 7 pm Foxhead

Of course, I have a shit-ton more to tell you, but no time right now...

2010-02-09T23:01:00.003-06:00

Lots of neat things happened today. This is just a few of them.

2010-02-09T00:56:00.005-06:00

This is me reading. Or maybe fishing. Either way it sounds like this:

I think it's definitely fishing.

Thank you, Joe Fassler. Not only for letting me fish on your show, but for letting me re-fish a few days later.

2010-01-29T00:41:00.004-06:00

Tony Tost's America. The greatest podcast ever? You decide...

I've listened to every episode. They're all great...but really catch fire around 6 and 7.

One thing I've learned; In all my liberal snobbishness, I forgot Toby Keith wrote good songs. Oh, and that I'd love to hear Sam Jackson versions of every song...ever. Can't someone code an iPhone app for that? I'd be willing to spend $18 on it...which is apparently my line between reasonably affordable and ridiculously unnecessary.

Who spends a whole twenty dollars on...anything?

2010-01-27T16:54:00.004-06:00

At what age is it appropriate for you to start telling kids to "rock on?" Is this a conscious decision, or does it just happen once accidentally, and then again, and again? Personally, I'm 31 (going on 32) and I've been telling kids to, "rock on," for some time now. I think for awhile it was generational, but then that first group of kids told to "rock on," grew up and began telling a new wave of kids to "rock on," as though it was a cultural expectation. Can David Essex take all the blame, or does he deserve to share it with others? You decide:

This video reminds of me of "Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise." The nerds were on Spring Break and staying at a hotel called the Coral Essex. After some run-ins with the non-nerds, the nerds threw a party the only way they knew how, and used nerd skill-sets to make the sign say, Oral Sex. I don't remember much else from that movie...actually, that's a total lie, I remember pretty much the whole thing (now that I'm thinking about it).

I wonder if anyone ever told the nerds to "rock on?" Probably their dads.

Greying Ghost is having a winter sale. 4 books for $21. Do it here.

Today only, Wave Books is selling their "State of the Union," for $5. You should read it when there is nothing good on TV...like during the actual State of the Union address.

Black Ocean is practically giving away (reasons to buy their) books. You should do it, then make a necklace out of them and then wear it to some sort of fundraiser, like, say, the one for the U of C Lab School that I used to work for, telling people the whole time, that you've "already donated every cent you could to a much worthier cause." It will get huge laughs.

Trust me.

2010-01-26T22:37:00.004-06:00

Have you ever stopped, just briefly, and realized you were about to pay $100 for used boots? And then, when you try to figure out how you reached this point, found yourself actually doing more to defend the decision?

I did this today. I thought it went really well...then I found out that all people actually heard was cha-cha music. Sadly, cha-cha music is probably more appropriate for noon than poetry, especially poetry about elevators and jack-o-lanterns and stars named Jenny.

My first poetry workshop with James Galvin is in the can. I'm really not a fan of workshop (i.e. I'm blogging instead of poeming), but I think this one will be alright. So far, we're talking a lot more about poetry and not poems; our poems, your poems, my poems. That's much more interesting to me, talking about poetry, that is.

Do you own all Michael Zapruder's records? You prolly should. They contain about 5 of my favorite songs ever.

2010-01-22T13:41:00.004-06:00

Ice storms have knocked out our (neighbors) internet. I don't pay for our (neighbors) internet and thus can't complain to Mediacom about it not working. It's been two days...sigh.

In other, and much cooler news, JMW has hung a new issue of RLM here. Kate Greenstreet is pretty amazing. So is Travis Nichols.

The first week of school has come and gone. The one thing I've learned...Dan Beachy-Quick is the most earnest and adorable lecturer ever.

An old friend of mine, Kim Groninga has a book coming out soon...now, maybe. We've shared many hours digging through each other's poems like laundry. It looks like Kim finally found an outfit...it looks like this.

Everything I've ever promised you should come this week.

2010-01-18T22:46:00.002-06:00

You should do this...and now! Supplies, I'm told, are quite limited.

"The Concher 2 is a hand-stitched, hard-bound journal featuring poems by:

Kristin Abraham * Dan Beachy-Quick * Michelle Brown * Beth Coyote * Kirk Davis * Christopher DeWeese * Rebecca Dunham * Grace Egbert * Rae Gouirand * Matthew Henriksen * Matthew Hittinger * Alex Lemon * B.J. Love * Kristi Maxwell * Karyna McGlynn * Jennifer Metsker *Aimee Nezhukumatathil * Sean Norton * D.A. Powell & Haines Eason * Kate Schapira * Bronwen Tate * Andy Trebing * KC Trommer * Jen Tynes * Joshua Marie Wilkinson

The flavors we’ve chosen to compliment this batch of words are:

spicy cayenne * honey pistachio * lavender vanilla * peanut butter pretzel * pomegranate white chocolate * smoky orange caramel"

It all sounds delicious...no? Plus, you get me and a bunch of way better poets in a kick-ass book.

2010-01-18T13:26:00.002-06:00

You know...besides the cold, winter is pretty awesome.

I finally registered for classes last week (I had to show proof of immunization, which is hard to do when you're 31 and haven't had that to worry about since your freshman year in college), and doing so required that I swing by the Workshop. The folks in the office were sitting amongst 1300 fiction applications and over 900 poetry applications stacked in mail tubs and columned throughout what little space they have in there. 2200 applications for next year. 40 people will get in...I hope you are one.

A quick list of things I'm currently in the market for: a reading chair (preferably broken in), a new portable record player (my old non-portable one didn't survive the last move), a reading lamp, one of those old magazine racks (preferably identical to my grandma's), a large cork board/calendar, and a garbage can.

Did I ever tell you I'm reading in Minneapolis on July 1st? I am.

I've also been asked to write a book review...but what book? Help...

Today is my last day off...I've done a pretty good job of avoiding poetry for the last month, hoping to feel a bit more refreshed this semester.

I'm also hoping to take the new FA chapbook to print this week (now that I'll have a little extra scratch). Keep an ear out for that...

2010-01-12T10:10:00.003-06:00

There is a dead bird outside our backdoor. I am scared my dog will eat it, while also hoping that something else gets to it first. In short, I don't want to touch the dead bird. In the process of avoiding the bird I built a robot. I was lucky because it came with an Android Assembly Manual. I have no idea how to build androids without proper instruction.

Check this out. It's very cool.

Have you eaten hot dogs lately? They are prolly the awesomest meat product ever...

2010-01-07T14:21:00.003-06:00

All these pictures are from my back yard (as far as I've roamed in the last few days). One was taken at 4 o'clock in the morning when my dog (who doesn't like snow and therefore doesn't poop in snow) couldn't hold it any longer. Another one has two suns, or at least the illusion of two suns, as there really is no sun at all. The rest are various spots along the same line.

Yesterday I bought bleach. Using it, the bleach, has been the most thrilling part of my day so far. I mean, how white can the whites be? What if I get bleach on my hands and then touch something else? Where exactly is the line between not enough bleach and too much bleach? I followed the directions, but the washer in our apartment still feels the need to advertise that it is, in fact, AUTOMATIC. Do those directions, therefore, still hold? Is it that bleach is actually scary, or am I wholly under stimulated?

Anyway...

2010-01-06T15:50:00.003-06:00

My skin is pretty dry. It's rough. It's itchy. It's so rough, it manages to itch itself. That, we call, "an upside." It's also cold, my skin, but that is mostly due to it being really cold outside. Really cold. Like, my-dog-won't-even-go-outside cold.

I've been listening to a lot of old French pop and chanson music. I love the rhythm of French, and it's only amplified when it's sung, especially in the chanson tunes, which, I read, are propelled musically by the rhythm of the language. When I first heard them, I was a little like Navin Johnson in, "The Jerk."

Also, my poem, "Michigander," was recently picked up by Greying Ghost Press to be published "sometime this year." I've been a fan of this press for a couple of years now. The aesthetic of the press has always been attractive to me; both in what they print and how they do it. Though it was an open-reading, I've imagined this poem in a GGP dress for quite some time, so it is, literally, a bit of dream come true for me. Anyway, I'll be sure to pass on the exact details as they become available.

A friend of mine, Matthew Klane, is breathing here.

Another friend, David Gorin, is telling you how your breath sounds here.

Also, Letter Machine Editions friends have a couple of new books for you to buy here. Please do think about buying those books. Noah and Joshua have great ears and buying these books is like rubbing the back of your hand against them...it's a win/win.

School starts back up soon, and I couldn't be more ready. Seriously, I'm taking pictures of my own hands...

2010-01-03T09:22:00.003-06:00

This place is real, my friends. We drove past it. All places you drive past must be real in order for you to pass them...that's how we decided time was real. Awesome Corner used to be a gas station and snack shop. Now Awesome Corner is a goat farm that sells goat cheese, so, if you're interested you can buy Awesome Corner goat cheese.

It's things like this that make me miss Iowa when I don't live here.

2009-12-31T16:05:00.005-06:00

Last night I made stew. It's the kind that gives your bones hugs from the inside. I've also been painting Native American figurines. They only give you 4 colors and 2 shades. One guy has a buffalo head. I like that guy the most. Sometimes I wish I had a buffalo head. I'd walk around the mall letting people touch my buffalo horns and then I'd wink at them. I'd be just as interested in the men as I would the ladies. My father would call me his bi-son.

I've been downloading tracks from this website all day today. It's Midwestern, just like me.

Today is the last day of 2009. I have two New Year Resolutions: one, never try to get my oil changed on holidays, and two, never try to get my dog's nails clipped on holidays. I have other days I can do that. Why go when everyone else needs to get it done...jeez.

Now that Christmas is over, I have a BUNCH of books to read. I've already told you what they were...most of them, anyway. I'll let you know how they are later, when I stop playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii obsessively.

2009-12-23T08:33:00.003-06:00

So we (A and I) got a new camera (a Nikon) for Christmas from both our parents. I have sworn it off until the actual holiday is here...with limited success. Mostly, I've taken pictures of my dog. Which is ridiculous, I know, but she's just so f-ing cute (she also threw up on my bed as I was typing that).

I recently submitted a few chapbooks to Greying Ghost. It's one of those eggs in one basket deals. I really don't know who else would be willing to publish this stuff, so it's most likely this, or nothing. So far, they have been the only press willing to bring my work into the physical world in their Corduroy Mtn. journal. So, let's hope I get lucky.

I'm 1/4 of the way through my MFA.

I'm currently reading Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Hiromi Ito. Johannes gave me a copy at his reading a few weeks ago, which was super nice of him. I also loved his reading. Watching Johannes read is like watching someone push words through a working mouth. The product and the process of it being made are hard to distinguish.

My hands used to smell like onion, now they smell like dog puke.

I'm going home for Christmas today. I will be getting a camera box. How about you?

Great Moments in Literary History

2009-12-18T15:24:00.003-06:00

Film Ist. a Girl & a Gun

2009-12-02T11:26:00.003-06:00

Have you heard of this movie? It sounds totally rad, especially in a culture where a good chunk of our entertainment is based on previous entertainment. When you constantly feel the need to properly cite everything? When you're demanded to cite everything? When even our president is basing his presidency on previous presidencies? Why not stop referring and just use the original? If you haven't heard of this movie, it's narrative is entirely based on found footage and it, odd as it sounds, might be the most original movie I've read about in a long time (I don't actually go to a lot of movies, but I read about them maniacally). And at a time when I have a hard time sitting through most movies (graduate school has only multiplied my ADD), this sounds so cool...you should probably look it up yourself.

These are books I've read, and at time loved, over the last few weeks:

An Earth of Time, Jean Grosjean
The Difficult Farm, Heather Christle
40 Watts, CD Wright
The Sonnets, Ted Berrigan
The Last 4 Things, Kate Greenstreet
Pilot, Johannes Goransson
History or Messages from History, Gertrude Stein

These are books I want for Christmas:

A mouth in California, Graham Foust
Destruction Myth, Mathias Svalina
Lots of Gertrude Stein
Archicembalo, GC Waldrep
Anteparadise and Inri, Raul Zurita
Dream Songs, John Berryman

Also, I want a new camera. A and I have one picked out, now we're just hoping that our parents will be willing to work together...

Speaking of Johannes, he is reading here in IC this Thursday. You should probably go. The reading is celebrating a new journal of translation. It could be pretty sweet. Maybe even this sweet:

2009-11-13T08:58:00.003-06:00

These diagrams were on the board when I walked into my classroom the other day. The only thing I added (besides captions) was the ball. Did you ever play tetherball? I did. Like everyday.

I kind of want to play tetherball right now. Though, I may just go watch Superman on TV.

2009-11-12T16:17:00.003-06:00

After class the other day I was walking through buildings and I came across a hallway that has been a part of every nightmare I can remember having...turns out my mom took me here once. It's like walking down the Terminator-animal hall of fame. Oh, and then there were some skulls and then a table of elements.

Ununhexium is elemental mystery.

2009-11-07T18:20:00.003-06:00

Mr. Dan Perry dropped off the covers for Further Adventures next book. With this, we are officially entering the world of single author chapbooks. This will make a great gift to give your loved one(s) during the holidays. That's a promise. What do you think? Are you excited? Excited as I am?

When they are done, I will let out a mighty roar. Wait for it.

2009-11-07T15:14:00.003-06:00

I ordered some 1/2-priced-post-Halloween animal masks early last week, and got them in the mail yesterday. These are pictures of me trying them out. I can say with some certainty that when they make these masks, they don't take into account the human face underneath. The sheep mask touches my eyeballs. The bear's eyes are so far apart you have to walk sideways...bears don't walk sideways and thus the disguise is completely blown. Oddly enough, the wolf fits me perfectly.

So, if anyone is interested in playing out a lover's triangle starring these three, let me know.

2009-10-30T18:34:00.002-05:00

There was a time when I believed my life was YouTube free. That time has passed:

I fell on the bus today. My abilities to walk on or above moving things never matured...

2009-10-30T09:57:00.002-05:00

A GREAT interview, oddly relevant to the previous post, in which I mention CA Conrad's role as parent.

This has been happening a lot lately. Don't know if it's because I'm reading so much right now, and that all things poetic happily dance with each other, or if it's some mystic bullshit, but it seems every thing I read has a direct and noted connection to something else: I read Simone Weil. Then I read T.S. Eliot and he mentions Simone Weil. I read Jabes' "Questions" translated Rosmarie Waldrop. Then I read, "Boris" and it has a blurb by Waldrop.

There are more, but I'm out of time. Ask me about it...I'll be happy to tell you about them.

2009-10-29T09:01:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, instead of reading my students' fiction work, I drew this. It's jowly. I don't think I have that much face above my nose. Though, maybe I've just never paid that much attention.

I finished up with, "Boris by the Sea." I have to admit, it did lag in a few spots. I wasn't as much a fan of the "plays" as I was the prose blocks. That shit got real! Here's a line: "And then he thought and understood that to think and to create something resembles defecating and peeing." Before this book I never would have thought of CA Conrad's "Book of Frank," and Edmond Jabes' "Book of Questions," as long-lost lovers, but when you see their kid standing there, holding each of their hands in his and his logic is a little cyclical and his hair is actually some kind of fire that is more frightening than any fire you've seen before, well...

Hey, did you know that both a new issue of diagram (9.5) and h_ngm_n (9) came this week? They did! Wow!

The other day I saw my first beaver roadkill. It was everywhere. I kept telling myself, "but his tail was already flat." When they came to scoop him up, they realized that he was the perfect beaver-pile. Everyone had a good story to tell their wives. But that was last Friday and ever since we've been chasing beavers across 1st Avenue. Wives will only listen to the same story so many times.

2009-10-26T23:59:00.003-05:00

Iowa, by Travis Nichols, is coming out soon from lettermachine. I was lucky enough to read this book a few years ago when it was put out by braincase. I borrowed it then, but I'll buy it now. This book will change your life...seriously.

Last Saturday I received a shit-ton of Octopus Books books in the mail. Matvei Yankelevich's "Boris by the Sea," will be the book that makes you fall in love with poetry just like you did the first time. You're confused, it hurts a little, you know you probably won't cry, but think you should and yet, you're never anything but elated (which is making it really hard to not cry).

This weekend Jon B. is coming. We're going to the Iowa game. It will be epic.

All this actually happened

2009-10-21T23:27:00.003-05:00

2009-10-21T23:27:00.002-05:00

I did this, you should do it too.

2009-10-20T22:30:00.002-05:00

This blog is the grossest and coolest blog I've ever seen regarding pigs and bugs. The exactness of data collecting language is practically poetic. From Day 11: 27 June 2009:

The carcasses are in the post
decay stage of decomposition,
but are becoming more
leathery on the surface.

Maggot activity
is still present
underneath
the pigs
in the soft
tissues that remain.

Beetles have been collected
from the carcasses as well
as the pitfall traps.

My line breaks, but still, pretty cool, right?

The Strandman Cometh

2009-10-19T21:36:00.004-05:00

I want this to be the cover of my first book when and if that ever happens. Maybe I'll call it, "Poems about bears and sex...and mittens."
Books I've read over the last few weeks:

Kate Greenstreet's "The Last 4 Things." It is the best book I've ever read that came with a dvd. Greenstreet writes poems for the multitasker at the end of long day.
Raul Zurita's "Purgatory." It's a new translation recently out from the U of C press. I've had a tumultuous long-distance relationship with Zurita for about a year now. He writes poems for the revolutionary at the end of a long day.
Edmond Jabes' "The Book of Questions." I'm reading this one for school. Jabes writes poems for the post-Holocaust Jew at the end of long day.
A shit-ton of essays on poetics, namely, "The House that Jack Built," which collects Jack Spicer's Vancouver lectures, but also pieces by Robin Blaser, Louis Zukofsky, Ezra Pound and the rest of that lot. I like to read these essays, but they usually lead to me having a long day.

Mark Strand is coming to read on Thursday. We're going to try to convince the Strandman to grab a beer afterwards...we'll see how that goes. The deets are here.

2009-10-06T10:32:00.002-05:00

Do you feel your books are full of nothing but words? Does your book collection fill you dispair? Are your shelves haunted by bad fonts, ugly design and laser prints? Friedrich Kerksieck is ready to believe you!
__________________________

Dear Friends,

Hello, my name is Friedrich Kerksieck & I operate Small Fires Press. So far the venture of running the press has been wonderful – I’ve put out two issues of Matchbook Magazine & many books, including authors Scott Pierce, Mathias Svalina, Julia Cohen, John Chavez, Megan Gannon, Rachel May, Joshua Ware, MC Hyland & numerous others.

After leaving Tuscaloosa’s MFA program & beautiful studio, I’m asking for your help to set up my own studio so that I can continue my work. I’ve accumulated 8,000 dollars for a Vandercook Press & Photopolymer Plate Maker, but I still need about 3,000 dollars more for all of the various items needed to finish setting up a workspace to print upcoming book projects. Items needed include: a paper cutter, metal type, type-high gauges, inks, tympan paper, challenge key & quoins, press furniture, a boxcar base, etc. etc. etc.

What can you do? Well, there are lots of things – the simplest way to help me out is to donate money or equipment. If you’ve got a print shop with a lot of duplicate equipment you can send it to me with the promise that it will be well-used and cared for. You can purchase a book from the press that you’ve had your eye on. You can pass this note along to friends that might want to help a little press survive. You can show my books to your local special collections library and convince them to purchase my catalog.

In turn I promise to keep working to produce new texts in innovative packages, and to do my own part in supporting our community of artists, printers, readers, and writers.

If you wish to send something, please do so to:

Friedrich Kerksieck

1447 Poplar Ave. Apt. 1

Memphis, TN 38104

Donate through paypal.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=8709059

Or visit the website and make a purchase:

http://www.smallfirespress.com/order.html

Thanks,

Friedrich Kerksieck, Small Fires Press

Poems started this week but as yet unfinished: An Index of first lines

2009-09-28T22:31:00.003-05:00

My bones are not bones but bee swarm...
Since last we spoke I killed two more crickets and a fistful of birds...
When I discover my dinosaur I will name it after you...
I’m still trying to figure out your occasional beard...
It’s Armenian in the most actual way...
I was born a deciduous boy...
Before there was fear, there was the scarecrow...
First and foremost, you will have a heart and it will beat, though, slightly irregularly, you see, your heart will be pumping spiders...
Adventures are non-native speakers of English...
I trained 1000 spiders to kiss you...
He squeezes his his fingers through bird throats, wearing them like rings...
Last Friday, I pulled out all my insides...
In the notes section of my hospital body you wrote, “this boy is not a scarecrow...”
I killed the mouse with my tongue...
And look! where your heart once was...

2009-09-21T22:44:00.003-05:00

Here are a few things I've been doing and/or want to do instead of reading more French poetics:

Nate Slawson has a chapbook and it is the most fun thing I've done today.
Issue #3 of FOU is up, though a little hard to navigate through...there are no names on the lilly pads and you have no idea whose poetry you've just clicked on, which I'll admit is, in turns, both exciting and time consuming (if you'd much rather be reading someone else).
Next Wednesday Kate Greenstreet and Elizabeth Robinson are reading at Prairie Lights, I'm seriously considering canceling class for this one...worth it, totally. What if I gave the students a chance to make-up an absence by going to it? Yea/neigh?
The very next night I'm going to see Wilco, which, currently, is a band I've only heard (they were playing at the Pritzker in Chicago and I sat nearby and listened.

My spider bites have turned scabby and occasionally bloody, but then they usually just go scabby again.

2009-09-20T17:39:00.003-05:00

My blog is old and dusty. I think it may even have swallows living in its rafters. If blog's were children, this blog would probably be in foster-care right now.

These are things that have happened since my last post:

I purchased two copies of "Scary, No Scary." One is a collector's edition. The other, I've read 3 times in the last week. On my uncle's farm there is a pond completely surrounded by corn fields. By this pond there is a small shack with broken windows and a rotting porch. Inside the shack there is the skeleton of a baby crib that my cousin and I were frequently placed in when my family would visit theirs. This book is just like every dream I've had of that place.
The class I'm teaching has turned into a totally awesome example of what I want every class I teach to be like. Seriously, these kids are rad...one of them even hops trains in the summer.
I've seen a black squirrel, but as of yet, have not been able to capture it.
I watched John Koethe read at Prairie Lights and I'm glad I didn't make a special trip to do so. He only read like 5 poems and they were all about famous people/poets he once knew, and were too prosey for my tastes. I was happy to have to catch the bus back home.
I've been readying the new Further Adventures chapbook. Not only is the content totally sweet, but the package will be a major step forward for the press. Pretty psyched.
I've been reading and writing a ton and want to write a long-ish poem titled, "Your New Anatomy," but so far, just have the title typed onto a blank document.
I'm being slowly eaten alive by spiders...it's an itchy process and I look forward to its conclusion.
A and I decided to stop loading up our Netflix queue with every new movie that comes out and just watch what we have on there already...this has led to the viewing of some real shitty movies and may be a factor in why I'm not all that concerned with spiders eating me.

Tonight, I am made to unforget the awesomeness of Squirt.

2009-09-07T21:54:00.004-05:00

So I bought a new computer the other day. It wasn't exactly a necessity, but I think good times to buy computers are when that happens to be the case. Anyway, it's a Mac Book and I haven't yet grown comfortable enough looking into it to believe that poetry will eventually be staring back at me. In the meantime, I've found, or re-found, I guess, writing with pen and paper to be a good time. Like taking your dog to the dog park good time; you just feel better afterwards knowing you made someone really happy by both letting them play and by taking them with you when you went home. I've talked with people extensively about this, me being, primarily, an on-screen composer and a good chunk of folks I know using the pad. Previous computers I've owned had essentially become poetry machines capable of untold evils, meaning, writing on them had become a fluid process in itself...I could type, look up words, research anatomy and reformat virtually all at once. Seriously. Anyway, I'm finding a real genuine pleasure in writing in notebooks or paper scraps again, and though I can't speak to one method being better than the other, the physicality of dragging that pen across the paper has, in turn, added a deeper sense of the physical in my poems.

I am 31 years old and by the time I turn 35 I want to have my first full-length book published. When I'm 32 I want a chapbook.

I realized today that I'm the kid who never wants to be a club that's willing to have him. I lusted after Iowa for years. Now that I'm here, I'm like, "meh." I feel like an asshole. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather be doing this than working, but the reality is that, after 6 months of anticipation, nothing was going to be as awesome as the Iowa I had pieced together in my head. I think feeling a little let-down is natural, I just hope I can control it so that it doesn't deteriorate into distaste or, even worse, angst. I'm far too old to be angst-ridden. It would probably give me shingles or something...

2009-09-07T08:55:00.004-05:00

So today is a day off...for everybody but those of us fortunate enough to be poets at the University of Iowa. Though Labor Day, Monday is also workshop day and thus, far too important to skip, even on the event of a federal holiday. This fact upset my father-in-law yesterday, and he kept coming back to it while we spent a Sunday at his house. "So wait, you're really going to school tomorrow?" And then when I'd nod "yes," he'd look away in disgust. This disgust, though, was focused on many things and not just the fact that I had to go to school; it was also the nail in the coffin for school being a waste of time, it was the fact that we drove all the way up there just for the afternoon, it was that, in no possible-to-imagine way, was poetry more important than a day the man was willing to give you off from work.

A few additional things that happened yesterday:

I realized that reading Oppen in bed is a horrible place to read Oppen.
I fixed a bike.
I ate awesome chicken parmesan with homemade marinara sauce that used garden tomatoes and freshly picked green pepper. Awesome.
I got two phone calls from McNally after 2am. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and believing that he had no idea I would be in bed then...I'm usually not, but as I mentioned, today's a work day.
A friend of my dad's told me how he was going to kick his son's ass, "but maybe I won't...he thinks I will though, so that gives me the advantage, right?"
There was a totally wicked harvest moon in the early evening. Pictures of which turned out looking like nothing more than an orange dot and not at all like this other picture of a harvest moon, which would be okay, this picture looks pretty professional, but c'mon camera, you gotta do better than that if you want to stick around here.

2009-09-06T11:45:00.002-05:00

Our apartment is full of bugs. Crickets, mostly. But also spiders. And flys. There are many things one can do to eliminate bugs from an apartment. I do none of those things. Though, sometimes, I do their opposites. There are open doors. Dishes in the sink. A log of one day old goat cheese. I once woke up with an indiscernible dead bug stuck to my hand. This was yesterday. It was gross.

I've had two classes now, with Elizabeth Robinson. She is a very rad lady, who writes some very rad poetry. You can listen to some of that here. There's something to be said about a teacher who kicks off class by having her students fill out the Poetry as Magic Questionnaire. Rad.

Workshop is going alright. I feel, but am certain that it's all in my head, that my poetics and ideas about how poems should and can work, are different than all the other kids in my section. Week One was a bit of a disaster. I opened my mouth at completely inopportune times and most of what I said was unfortunate, at best. I am looking forward to this week's poems, though, as my first run-through of the material appeared to be a lot more interesting (which isn't to say, that I believe my poems to be more interesting than anyone else's...in fact, I don't believe that all). A few of the poems have stuck with me for few days now, which I think is a good sign.

In order to celebrate the weekend I'm going to my in-laws house to bbq. While all the other people I interact with became displaced when the moved to Iowa, I came home. That excited my family tremendously and to an extent, me.

2009-08-24T22:12:00.002-05:00

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

Yeah, that's awesome. You wanna know what's not awesome? Missing the first big meeting of the really prestigious writing program that you don't deserve to be in in the first place and then confusing Cole Swensen when you show up for the class you thought you'd registered for, but had actually just place held and were supposed to sign up for at the meeting, but didn't 'cause you weren't there...SUCK!

Have you ever fully realized your situation and then looked around, the whole time thinking, "what the fuck did I get myself into?" Within seconds of my first class starting, every bad feeling I'd ever had towards poetry in academia came rushing back in all its rawness and badness. "What the fuck did I get myself into?" Plus, my feet hurt...I don't own sensible shoes.

You know what I really hate? Not being the guy who knows what's going on. You know what I hate even more? Literary criticism.

Today, we were asked, first thing, to write a sentence on our poetics and then to boil that down to a few words, and then again to one word. This is what I wrote, but was too embarrassed to say in class (thereby, leaving me squirming in my chair blurting out, broad and vague to the point of idiocy, statements that I didn't really believe):

Sentence. Poems should cut open cats and show you their lungs...a revelation.
A few words. Cat lungs.
One word. Meow (sigh).

I started re-reading Noah Eli Gordon's "The Frequencies" today. I haven't read that book in 5 years and think the last time I tried I was too ignorant and not at all literate enough to do so. My notes in the book are trite at best and are clearly clinging to the easiest phrases and images in the poems. Now, it almost seems easy, especially for a Gordon book. It is my opinion, that NEG is very much a language poet, only, with a penchant for odd, occasionally impossible image. "Frequencies" is not that kind of book. To be fair, this was early in his publishing life, but to read this book now and realize that a good chunk of MFA students are now doing exactly this kind of thing makes you see just how ahead of the curve Gordon usually is. He's like the Jay-Z of poetry, by the time you start writing prose blocks, he's "Off That."

Whilst on the subject of hip-hop, beat-boxing is totally rad and I wish I was better at...or at least had a comfortable place to practice. Seriously, where does on practice beat-boxing?

2009-08-21T10:47:00.003-05:00

These are things I bought at Goodwill the other day. If you happened to have dropped off a sweet Sears typewriter or a frog mask in the last few weeks, thank you for totally making my month.

I think the class I'm teaching this Fall is going to totally kick ass. I've given myself all the room I need in my syllabus to change directions, move with the students' interests, and basically make things up as I go...which is really where my best teaching comes from, and I hate being roped in by syllabi that I wrote months before the actual class takes place (just because it interested me on August 16th, doesn't mean it will still interest me on November 21st).

A and I finished unpacking yesterday. The apartment is finally put together (almost) and ready for you to stay, if you are so inclined. You should come. It'll be sweet. I'm an above average host and I make a good pot of coffee. We could sit around the kitchen table and chat...over coffee, of course, and we could talk about how much we miss lightening bugs, or any number of other topical current events. I really miss lightening bugs and enjoy coffee.

2009-08-13T09:08:00.002-05:00

The move to Iowa City is complete. Well, Coralville, actually. They named a street after me, or at least after the French-Canadian me. Everything in Iowa City is 5 min. away. Target, 5 min. Prairie Lights Books, 5 min. Coralville Lake, 5 min. Everything in Chicago was 30-60 min. away. Everything. I think I like it here, at least in a timely way.

I registered for classes yesterday, making this whole thing official. This whole thing officially scares me a bit. I'm taking a scary workshop with Cole Swensen, a scary class on Modernism and Mysticism and another scary class having to do with poets and their respective poetics. I hope this works out like most scary things and wind up not being scary after all...but sometimes things really are scary. That scares me most of all...

My reading back on July twenty-something went pretty well. I was nervous and I think that showed, but afterwards my father-in-law, whose knowledge of poetry extends only as far as that he knows I do it, told me he really liked my poems and even recited a few lines back to me. I'm really tired of the pompous grandeur of poetry readings and I work hard to be the exact opposite of that...but even that has a touch of bullshit in it.

I read Frank Stanford's selected poems last week after having gotten it back from the friend I lent it to the day I got it last October. I think you should read it too. The upside is how totally awesome most of the poems are. The downside is that the section titled, "Unpublished Poems," should have stayed that way. I mean, within the context of a book that is a "selected" previously unpublished poems have no place. Have you ever seen Michelangelo's David? Having those poems in this collection is like the hallway leading up the sculpture that is lined with partially finished statues...when you're expecting the masterpiece, who gives a fuck about the pieces the artist didn't even see all the way through. There was a reason Stanford didn't publish these poems, so why include it with what is supposed to represent his best work? Right?

I also finished James Tate's selected. I love James Tate and thus, I love this book, but it did get me wondering about the validity of "selected's" winning prizes. This book won the Pulitzer of poetry as well as the WCW Award. Though I think Tate deserves these awards, giving them to a book of his selected verse is totally bogus. It would be like giving the Beatles a Grammy every time a re-packaged greatest hits comes out! It just seems bullshit to me is all...

Anyway, there were a few other things I was going to tell you, but I forgot what they were.

2009-07-23T09:41:00.004-05:00

There is only one ethical thing to do this Saturday. And to find out what that is you must meet me at Cup of Joe (102 Main Street, Cedar Falls, IA) on that day at 8:00 in the pm. There you will be instructed. There you can learn to live your life in a manner unlike Sarah Palin. There you will experience poetry.

Aaron McNally. BJ Love. 2 grown men wanting to convince you that they are actually bears from outer space...who write poems...and then read them aloud.

C'mon! That sounds interesting, right? You should come! You should come! You should come!

Addendum: Reading Octopus 12 is also quite ethical.

We are 2 dinosaurs, however fiberglass

2009-07-21T21:56:00.005-05:00

HEY! If you live in Iowa, or the even the greater Midwestern region, I've something for you to do Saturday night. One of my bestest and oldest friends, Aaron McNally and I are reading at Cup of Joe around 8:00 and it would be awesome to see you. You see, Aaron, a bit of legend 'round these parts, is leaving for Kansas City in a few weeks and wants to tell you bye. You should do that for him...it's the nice thing to do (p.s., my nephew Eli and I made that picture together...it's the first of what I hope to be many collaborations).

Also, new H_NGM_N! AND I've got a poem in it! Exclaim? Here's the deets:

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT --->

Like, it's night time & there are these two guys & they're all like, I'm gonna break into this BANK, yo. To steal the MON-ey. And the other guy is like, yo, what about the H_NGM_N? Like for realz? And the first guy is like what - that tired old washed up old guy? Like no one has even SEEN him for like YEARS or something. Guys probably dead.

http://www.h-ngm-n.com

And the second guy is like yo. And so it was that there were guys straight up robbing banks all over the city & when I say bank I mean JOURNALS PUBLISHING BAD POETRY & then there's like this quick cut, right, where you see like SOMEthing on a balcony or some junk, like high up like looking down all bad@$$ & then these two guys are like about the break into the bank still? By which I mean BAD POETRY RUNNING RAMPANT all up in the grill of the fair city? And what?

http://www.h-ngm-n.com

So that's it man. It's like yo - H_NGM_N #8. SWOOP. And like everyone thought he was dead & yo & like that was it? But he's here & cleaning house & by house I mean THE LANDSCAPE OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY & by cleaning I mean like straight up cleaning.

So it's like not only for you but for the city & banks & POETRY & also for yourself that you must needs click yon link & spread the word that, like, if you were afraid to go out at night? Or read poetry? There is no more reason to fear ever now:

http://www.h-ngm-n.com

yrs ever & always -

n8 & crew

2009-07-16T09:51:00.002-05:00

I don't know what it is about summertime sky, but I can't stop taking pictures of it.

Went back to Chicago last weekend to visit some friends and because Anne and I have never been so bored and because it's only a few hours from here. We did some stuff, most of which was this fad called, "hangin'." We almost got caught in a gang war and I slept the best I have in weeks. Do they make white noise machines that sound like buses, kids rapping and drunks yelling at everything? I need one of those.

I also went to the Seminary Co-Op bookstore and picked up Joshua Marie Wilkinson's Tupelo book. I've read it a few times so far and believe it to be totally rad. It sounds weird to say, but the poems feel organic...more so than his previous collections. The flow of the book as whole is dead on and even within the "fragmented" sections the poems are little like walking through a steady rain as opposed to the lightening storms in his Iowa book.

I've had the really odd circumstance, for me, anyway, of having been solicited for work lately. Ultimately, I think this is what every poet hopes for; not having to research journals, painstakingly piece together a submission and spend months hoping for the best. Instead, they contact you asking for poems and you slap a little something together for their project and a few days later...voila! Anyway, it's been really awesome and I've got four more poems coming out and I couldn't be more grateful to the editors who have contacted me.

Things to peep:

dear camera #9

Ekleksographia #2

2009-07-10T11:21:00.002-05:00

A quick post to announce the next Further Adventures title, "Bee-Stung Aviary" by one Mr. Eric Baus. It is so fantastic that I've decided to use it as the first stand alone FA title. No combos this time, my friends. Nope, this time you get page after page after page of Eric Baus.

I'm hoping to have it done (again with artwork by Dan Perry) in about a month, so be on the lookout.

In the meantime, check this out...it was this beaver's dying wish.

2009-07-08T09:06:00.002-05:00

The new issue of Matchbook is out, and that bird wants you to order one, maybe more. I don't know, it's hard to read birds. Well, not that bird, he's got big white letters across his chest, but you know what I mean.

FK has managed to round up a great group of poets: Emily Kendal Frey, Zachary Schomburg, Garth Graeper, Susan Briante, Matt Hart, Fred Schmalz, Brenda Iijima, Kyle Schlesinger, David B. Goldstein, Cherie Weaver, Matvei Yankelevich, Hoa Nguyen, Philip Dacey, Megan Gannon, Miles Waggener, anna olivier, Ana Bozicevic, Paul Killebrew, Nate Pritts, BJ Love, Dale Smith, Farid Matuk, Mathias Svalina, and a scratch and sniff gallery of sensory abstractions.

Wait. Did you see that? I think it said, BJ Love. That's me. That's awesome. I'm really stoked to be involved with this project. In this way. I helped Friedrich with issue one; called for submissions, layedout and threw in my two logistical cents, but because I was so involved I didn't feel comfortable submitting then.

You should buy a few, give them to friends and relatives. Buy a few more, save them for yourself. Do this all here.