A Lighter Of Fires

Web Presence(s)

2010-09-21T11:40:00.003-05:00

I don't much like blogging. It's....difficult.

My last.fm is easier because it operates itself.

and my twitter is also easy because i get to pretend i'm pithy by retweeting things funny people wrote to all ten of the people that follow me.

and the Tea & Oranges Family website is down, unfortunately. We never updated it.

NEW T&O SITE

2010-02-26T13:09:00.002-05:00

Yeah, so if you know me, you likely already know about this. If you don't, then you ought to. The Tea and Oranges family has a new, full, non-myspace website. And it's been lovingly designed by Jesse Meunier as well as illustrated by other T&O folks. It's a great place to keep pace with shows and listen to some songs and download pooploads of albums by the T&O musicians. Official web presence: keep an eye on it!

Top 10 Things More Pretentious...

2009-12-06T20:31:00.005-05:00

...than blogging (to no one) about a long-dead poet's marginalia:

1-10: nothing.

oops. guess i miscalculated on that one. I've probably been called pretentious before though, so what the fuck. if you can't laugh at yourself....still, i'm doing a lot of research right now and i re-stumbled upon an old favorite of one of William Blake's odd poems. In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, there are a lot of companion poems (for those not familiar), meant to be read in reference to each other. One in the Innocence section is called "The Divine Image" and is (from what I've read today) very typically Swedenborgian. But basically it's not that interesting, generally saying that these four qualities, Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love are God manifest in humanity, which is pretty typical Blake, at least in Innocence.

Here's where we get to my bit for today. A deleted poem from experience, "A Divine Image" references that poem and tears it a new asshole, very succinctly (in 2 stanzas compared to five).

A Divine Image
Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face;
Terror, the Human Form Dvine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress.

The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

It ended up getting deleted for something a little more subtle, but I think this is a really interesting poem, especially in the context of his Songs, where extremes are everywhere. Time to get back to writing, though. Hope you enjoyed the semi-insane Romantic sidetrack (if you made it this far).

DWS (aftermath)

2009-12-05T11:15:00.002-05:00

I've been ignoring one of Lehigh's gems all semester on this blog! oops. Drown Writers Series wrapped up yesterday with a magnum opus reading that really packed the humanities center full with some really great poetry, fiction, and multimedia readings/presentations. Among the readers were me, Devin Donovan, and a whole bunch of (awesome!) undergrads presenting readings culled from visits to people living with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Really powerful stuff. Plus, there were bitchin' bourbon balls, cookies of all sorts and tasty hot cider. Damn, i love wintertime.

For a while this whole thing has been run by Wes Atkinson who, unfortunately, is now handing it over to Devin. I'm sad that it's done for the semester, but it'll be back in January with the new leadership and i'll be out front of it this time, so that i can hassle all y'all in the Bethlehem area to go see it when it rolls around in January or early February. B-hem can be a little light on the poetry scene sometimes, at least as far as i can tell in my short tenure here, but DWS is a gem because it doesn't do any of that frightening poetry reading stuff. It is and will continue to be an unpretentious, food-based gathering that wouldn't feel weird to someone who's never been to (or liked going to) poetry readings before. In short: there are no turtlenecks, no wine & cheese, and nobody (shudder) snaps after people finish reading. And with a strict time limit, you don't have to worry about that douche kid that always shows up with an epic poem wanting to read all 4 books of 400 lines each. He can fuck off.

Also, there should eventually be youtube videos of the halloween meeting featuring a goat, me playing the Misfits on ukulele and Wes in a labcoat. I'll be previewing and recapping DWS on A Lighter of Fires all next semester so stay tuned and drop by in January.

Handclaps & Half-Shut Eyes

2009-11-24T05:02:00.003-05:00

i'm bored of justifying posts only tangentially related to poetry. Suffice it to say that i'm an English grad student: i'll read just about anything and i'm happy to extend that to songs, especially because i <3 cultural texts like that.

i think i could produce a reasonable manifesto on 12:51 (links to video), though i wouldn't bore anyone. It's just that i had always thought it was a sad song masquerading as a bouncy party-rock deal. There's the fast beat, the sooper dooper catchy synthy tone on the guitars, and of course the content: if you don't listen too carefully, it sounds like it's something along the lines of 'hell yeah, i'm around, let's hang out and get drunk & have fun.'

mister Jakob Battick (tea & oranges website coming soon! stay tuned!)first pointed out the references to "stage" to me and reminded me that Room On Fire is their second album, the archetypical underside-of-success album, in some way. All this to say that on seeing the video, Julian Casablancas's bored speaksing and half-closed eyes really take on a new set of meanings. It's not just hipster cool anymore--they made their money on that in the first round--by Room On Fire, what was a laconic coolness has turned into a sadness that really permeates the album...

I think i might teach this song next semester.

Butt Rock pt II

2009-11-17T07:15:00.000-05:00

So ages ago, I bitched about Wikipedia not having a page on Butt Rock. They still don't. This means war, assholes.

But,ah, i didn't mean to star a war with the biggest fucking nitpicker weirdos of all time, wikipedians (god, i'm fucked. they're some vengeful fucks. they'll put up "citation needed" all over my ass if i ever have an entry). Besides those cretins (can't.....stop.....) what i meant to do was crusade pro-butt rock. Not listening to it, jeez, just kind of raising its profile. This Yelp discussion might be one of the most awesome Butt Rock-related things on the internet. My vote probably goes for "Sister Christian" as well, if i had to pick a greatest butt rock song of all time.

And uh, by the way, who the FUCK spells the word genre like so: 'janra'

Really, commenter on yelp? doesn't the wiggly red line under your horrible affront to written communication mean anything to you? Why on earth would you do that?

nablopawhaat?

2009-11-15T07:02:00.002-05:00

So i guess it's November, the month that apparently everyone is supposed to do something significant with. National Novel Writing Month (as if anything decent ever comes out of that), National Blog Posting Month (well i guess it got me to log back on to this thaaang) and of course, No Shave November. Now growing a beard doesn't require the majority of my attention, but this one seems like obviously the most important of the group. Of course, instead of looking manly, I'm looking rather teenagerish with my stalled facegrowth. Still, this is only the halfway point.

NaBloPoMo just seems silly to me because i suck so bad at writing any sort of blog. but it seems like it might be fun to say, and maybe i can even work out a pun with my (incredibly taxing) course on postmodern lit: nablopomothics...mo? national blowing off postmodern ethics....month? ugh. i'm tired.

Happy Bloomsday!

2009-06-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Living in central shoreline Connecticut, I have a feeling there are no James Joyce themed pubcrawls or public readings of Ulysses, but today is Bloomsday nonetheless. So if you have the ability, celebrate it. Hit up Ri-Ra if you're in Portland tonight and maybe i'll go to this creepy diner called McNulty's this afternoon. Somehow, i kind of doubt it. But today marks the oft-celebrated anniversary of the book (even though it was published on a different date), no matter how much of a pain in the ass it is to read, i gotta say the Ulysses is honestly just a gorgeous piece of work that manages not to lose the soul of good writing despite the extensive stylistic experimentation. If you've never read it before, why the hell not pick up a bit of it today? Nobody expects you to handle it all, just give the beginning of an episode a whirl. Might i suggest episodes 1, 6, or 2 for starters?

Celebrate with a pint of beer or a good old venus-in-furs freakout in a red light district or even a a graphic dump followed by a newspaper ass-wiping. i'll be sitting down a bit with a chapter or two this evening. deshil holles eamus. deshil holles eamus. deshil holles eamus.

irony

2009-05-30T19:28:00.003-05:00

i got a netbook so that (among other reasons) i could blog more often. and all i've done is blog infinitely less. with that, i'd like to kick off a brief entry about a poet i really dig, Dennis Johnson. i've recently been reading his KICKASS short story collection "Jesus' Son" (oh yeah lou reed reference) and everyone need to read this book. it's not even an issue of time or effort because the collection is tiny and gorgeous and it flows so delicately and smoothly: his prose is poetry. and for an example of his poetry, take Heat:

Here in the electric dusk your naked lover
tips the glass high and the ice cubes fall against her teeth.
It's beautiful Susan, her hair sticky with gin,
Our Lady of Wet Glass-Rings on the Album Cover,
streaming with hatred in the heat
as the record falls and the snake-band chords begin
to break like terrible news from the Rolling Stones,
and such a last light—full of spheres and zones.
August,
you're just an erotic hallucination,
just so much feverishly produced kazoo music,
are you serious?—this large oven impersonating night,
this exhaustion mutilated to resemble passion,
the bogus moon of tenderness and magic
you hold out to each prisoner like a cup of light?

try reading this poem aloud. it's really musical. that gives you something of an idea about how his short stories sound, and the effect is enhanced by the brevity of it all. i started "Jesus' Son" yesterday and i'm over halfway through it. It moves quickly like a series of snapshots. anyway, mull on that!

Goodbye, Portland!

2009-05-23T18:44:00.002-05:00

A Lighter of Fires is moving on, sadly. I hate to go but it's just time. Portland is a great place to live with a pretty cool little tight-knit community of writers and poets and kickass bookstores and I'm very sad to be leaving it all. I hope to return for more than a visit someday, but who the hell really ever knows about that.

The blog, however, marches on: in the utter abyss that is the local community of bookstores and readings, I'll be pretty dormant this summer. Let's hope Bethlehem, PA has got some great things to talk about and I'll do my best to feast on the juicy cactusmeat of the internet's poetry while i'm living in this desert for a while. You've been great, Portland.

being done

2009-05-20T06:56:00.002-05:00

it's really weird. of course, i'm less done than some of my friends who just graduated and now they're floating about in their various nothingnesses, but maaaaaan am i in limbo. i'm about to relocate and then relocate again within the next three months. the thought of it just blows: spending my whole summer living in various states of discomfort and having my stuff packed away, &c. Still, i guess the payoff is good. New, clean slate in a new city and a great opportunity as far as education and career go... but this summer is going to be almost as weird as the past few days have been: waking up at erratic times and then realizing i have nothing useful to do.

HOLY WOW

2009-05-13T13:44:00.001-05:00

I'm almost done... how fucked up is that?!

(but not actually done)

kay, back to work. THAT MEANS YOU TOO.

youtubes.

2009-05-09T18:27:00.000-05:00

eeeek!

2009-05-06T13:37:00.001-05:00

Come to the Words & Images release party tomorrow, nerds! 7pm. One Longfellow.

Listen Up!

2009-05-04T07:47:00.005-05:00

Words & Images, your neighborly neighborhood literary journal, is being let outta the cat's bag soon. Very soon. Thursday, to be precise. So yourblogs truly is going to the release party at One Longfellow Square on Thursday at 7:30 PM, because it's going to be a spectacular thingy. Importantly, Gibson Fay-Leblanc (my former poetry instructor and head of Portland's own The Telling Room) is going to read some poems as well as a whole bunch of the contributors including Mark Melnicove and Melissa Crowe. AND (unimportantly) i'm reading, too. Eeps. How did that one happen (cue old groucho marx joke about clubs willing to have me as a member)?

OH YEAH and there are going to be three bands playing too. So it's not some nerd-ass nerdparty. It's a nerd-ass realparty. So come and see yourblogstruly (who will write up the whole thing for you assholes who don't come) and buy Words & Images and see Marie Stella, Huak and The Scrapes. This Thursday. 7:30 PM (that's half an hour past the number under the ampersand on your keyb'd).

YEAH YEAH YEAH (UPDATE): no cover, you bums! & One Longfellow is right near the fucking statue of Longfellow at the corner of State & Congress, so if you're on your nightly walk from Video Expo to Treasure Chest & back to Video Expo and you DON'T stop in for this shits, you're a total asshole. But wash your hands first, eh? Nobody needs to catch Video-Booth-Peepshow-Semen Flu.

Yesterday I Saw

2009-05-01T08:38:00.001-05:00

a guy on forest ave. with a big black trashbag that kind of looked like it might be full of body parts.

just sayin'.

Time to put the nerd-pants on

2009-04-22T11:02:00.003-05:00

I just found out about the launch of the World Digital Library, a free online library that has crap-tons of books, photographs, drawings, manuscripts, &c. It's not any sort of scam. They haven't even asked for my email address yet. It's just that sort of utopian free-information-for-everyone-for-the-betterment-of-humanity gig. Which is great. I've been poking around it for a while this morning and found The Book of Urizen, one of William Blake's gorgeous engraved books. This isn't just a bunch of jpegs. You get really high quality images that you can zoom in/out with, which is a real treat with the hand-colored plates that make up Urizen. The quality is good enough to read. This might be crazy nerdy, but i am insanely excited about this library. I also found a book of 100 Japanese poems by 100 poets dating from the late 17th century. For anyone who can read it, i'm sure it's fascinating. Anyway, it just launched today, so keep an eye out for expanding holdings. I'm sure they'll be putting stuff up constantly.

Finally, the last things about the WDL i want to mention is the interface. There are a lot of different ways to browse the collection, which lets you stumble upon things in a much more interesting way than having to guess what might be interesting based on title or abstract. It looks like this is going to be a really kickass resource.

AND: reading tomorrow night! Longfellow Books! be there! Betsy Scholl! Should be great! 7PM!

HOW IS THERE NOT A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ABOUT

2009-04-20T17:34:00.000-05:00

BUTT ROCK!? come on, wikipedia.

that's all.

Reading in Portland! 4/23!

2009-04-17T16:29:00.002-05:00

Today was a truly gorgeous day in Portland. Total bikeride weather. I was out on my sweet yellow bike today when i stopped in to Longfellow Books (recently re-named best bookstore in Portland!) to buy Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace. So far, it's incredible. That's a story for another post, probably. Suffice it to say i'm amazed i've been around as long as i have without picking up any of his work.

What I'd like to relate to all Portlanders, however, is that Longfellow Books will be hosting a great poetry reading in 5 days! Betsy Scholl, Maine's Poet Laureate and esteemed faculty of the very English Department i've been learning from for the past four years, will be reading Thursday the 23rd at 7pm. I've got class right up until 7 and that won't stop me from going! So i don't want excuses. April is National Poetry month and Portland is lucky to have some good poets around. Seeing readings is good for you. like doctors and vegetables. You don't hate things that are good for you, do you? see you there, then.

Reading Aloud

2009-04-15T13:03:00.001-05:00

Teachers have always assigned me poems for homework and asked a couple of things that i, of course, never ever did. First there was the task of re-reading. I'm still getting past that. You never read a poem only once, the idea goes, but a whole bunch of times. My attitude has generally been that once is plenty, even though i really totally know that isn't even a little bit true. What i think is really important is putting a poem down and then rereading it. Rereading it immediately always just feels silly.

Then there was the occasional direction to read poems out loud. Depending on the genre and the era of the work, its written form might not have even been the way its audience experienced it. Again, this just feels like a total pain in the ass. Not too long ago, though, i gave it a little try while making dinner. I just stood around and read some of my favorites to the pot of rice on the stove (this is what you get when you're bored & your bookcase is closer to the kitchen than the TV). & honestly, it's not like everyone should read every poem aloud all the time, but i suggest going to your favorite, considering if you've ever bothered to literally hear it & give it a try. And if you don't know where to start, use one of the GMH monday poems. Hopkins is one of the most exceptional aural experiences in all of poetry.

"...Than Even the Night" from T&O show

2009-04-14T20:04:00.001-05:00

It's up! Hooray! Watch it!

Cat in a sink

2009-04-14T16:30:00.000-05:00

Blogger play. Oh boy. Can't ever stop loving that stuff. I saw a cat in a sink recently. and uh, well:

yeah. So half of my reason for posting these is that they're just adorable. and then i'm like: wtf. not just cat in a sink but cat looking fairly happy being brushed in a sink. hunh. Pics come from this blog so if you feel like investigating, feel free. I'm just glad i found something exciting on blogger play instead of more pictures of lame children looking for easter eggs.

It's a Grace (only bodies can impart)

2009-04-13T18:33:00.003-05:00

Yes! Youtube video is up from Saturday's Tea and Oranges Daydream Extravaganza. And I'm not just posting it because I played bass on this song. Watch it. Listen to the words. Watch Cutler rock his ass off over next to Krissy & Milo. Even if i was particularly concerned with keeping this blog in any way on the topic of poetry, i'd still post this because Jakob Battick's lyrics achieve such powerful aesthetic transcendence. In brief, if you weren't there Saturday, you kind of suck but at least there are a couple of videos so that you can see a little of what you missed.

Howdy

2009-04-13T12:46:00.002-05:00

I'm getting a little sparse with the posts here. But these seem to be keeping me going. Another Monday, another poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Today we've got an untitled poem known by its first line, "my own heart let me more have pity on; let"

MY own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
’s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

There is a very important thing to know about my relationship with GMH: half the time i have very foggy grasp of what the hell it is he's on about. But that doesn't bother me because it's at least as much about the way it sounds as it is about the imagery & the existence or lack of any sort of narrative elements. One thing i love about this poem in particular is the enjambment. I don't think i've seen any other poem where the possessive s falls on the other side of the line break from where the word it's attached to is.

And, okay, even with it being so elusive and difficult to grasp, there's something really poignant about the whole second stanza. I love how the speaker goes from this despairing language to a sort of sad hopefulness. And there's something about the idea that you can get pretty low but you just need to try to lay off the nasty thoughts and give yourself a little space, a little root-room, so that some sort of joy can come around. & it's not really up to you when that joy's going to come anyway.

also, how can you not love the phrase "betweenpie mountains" ?? Not because it's so perfect but because the words sound so good and yet don't really semantically mesh. at all. (hoo boy, that was a long one. sorry, folks.)

Edna St. Vincent Millay

2009-04-08T13:11:00.003-05:00

Bringing some Maine flavor to the blog today, I would like to force everyone to read this itsy bitsy little poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It won't take more than a minute, so why not ponder the truly pretty way she puts words together. I'm a big fan of single-image poems. I like how this poem, Ebb, prefigures the imagists that would come by so soon after Millay rose to prominence. That... and it's just pretty.

Ebb

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

(i know i lost the formatting. i don't know how to do anything about it. ugh.)

GMH Monday

2009-04-06T06:50:00.002-05:00

This GMH Monday finds me listening to yakobli's "girlfriend in a coma" cover and thinking about a Hopkins poem that i memorized this fall, called Spring & Fall. Memorizing is one of those things that's actually a really interesting way to get deep into a poem; i strongly suggest giving it a whirl with a favorite poem or few of yours. It's like, in some tiny way, you appropriate a little bit of the poem's magic and it becomes yours a little bit. in that mode of mind, then, i share a poem that's a little tiny bit mine.

Spring and Fall
to a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Tea & Oranges Daydream Extravaganza!

2009-04-03T09:13:00.002-05:00

April 11th, Saturday. Hastings Formal Lounge on the Gorham campus of USM. The Tea & Oranges Daydream Extravaganza. DIY madness, art for sale, beautiful music by wonderful, wonderful people. It's going to be killer. Absolutely everyone should go because it's totally free, anyone of any age, and it promises to be a night of pretty things. Jakob Battick will be selling cds. Stefan Henegar will play, along with Ryan Cutler is a Tree and all sorts of other Tea & Oranges friends. Even if i warn't in Maine, I'd make the trek for this shindig. I hope to see lots of my wonderful readers & friends there.

For more info, click the link above, you turkey.

HOLY WOW! OOPS!

2009-04-01T16:46:00.004-05:00

Some poetry-blog proprietor i am... April is national poetry month and i had no idea! at least i found out at the end of the first day and not like on the 28th. To celebrate...honestly it's just going to be more of the same: cool events, my poems & much better poems by incredible people. One such is Federico García Lorca. His images are absolutely mad at times (in an essay he describes the concept of duende as a giant arsenic lobster about to fall from the sky. let that one sink in a bit) and just incredibly beautiful. So today we've got Song of the Barren Orange Tree, translated by the brilliant W.S. Merwin. He will certainly come up another day. Suffice it to say that he's an untouchable poet in his own right and one of my favorite translators.

And what would an April be without the opening lines to The Waste Land?

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Bear with me here

2009-03-31T20:27:00.002-05:00

I'm posting one of my favorite poems ever, which is self-evidently brilliant. It's by Catullus, the Roman poet--who is incredibly funny and irreverent and incredible to hear and experience in Latin--and i'll post it in Latin and English (my translation, though it's not too much to translate). Note to defray looking pompous: it's not like I can just pick up Latin poems and read them like Parade (eww, why did I think of THAT!?) but despite the work they have their particular beauty. A lot of the time it's not nearly as satisfying as reading in English but I encourage you to explore the textures of this poem because frankly it's short and something about it makes it just as visceral in Latin as poetry in my native language tends to be.

85
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and i love. You ask, perhaps, why i do this.
I do not know; but i feel it happening and am tormented.

The online text i used pointed out something i hadn't thought of: the poem has 8 verbs, no nouns, no adjectives. Hadn't thought of it like that. DEAL WITH IT CATE BLANCHETT!

The Decision is Final

2009-03-30T18:43:00.002-05:00

I will be an M.A. student in the English Dept. at Lehigh University in the fall. HOO-RAAAY FOOR MEEEE. I'm pretty excited about it, but I've also got a fancy fancy frozen pizza that needs to be put in an oven, so... Sounds like a fancy celebratory dinner to me.

poem-st (that's poem and post)

2009-03-28T22:17:00.000-05:00

three minutes ago i sent an email
to o sweet flowery roses
and you should, too
because you can get a whole shit ton of bling if you do before april 1st and you make sure you send in a good
poem.

Gee, wasn't that purty? Seriously, there's a literal bag of jewels up fo' grabs at O Sweet Flowery Roses. All you have to do is write about TEMPTATION. Who knows, maybe you could be the winner of the DJANGO (the Dazzlingly Jewel'd And, Naturally, Gloriously Official) award...

Poetry Foundation

2009-03-28T22:15:00.000-05:00

This is pretty basic stuff, but the Poetry Foundation is a kickass place. They've got one of my favorite podcasts, Poetry Off The Shelf as well as some great archives of poetry. They've got a lot of copyrighted work up there, which is pretty cool since chumps like me can't really get away with posting work by Li-Young Lee or Stephen Dobyns since they're both very much alive and very much protected by all sorts of laws. Luckily, I can link to the cool kids like the Poetry Foundation who can do it.

So, enjoy those two links and enjoy the Poetry Foundation website. Rawr!

GMH Mondays

2009-03-23T06:55:00.001-05:00

Every Monday, I'd like to begin sharing with you a poem from one of my all-time favorites, Gerard Manley Hopkins. I'm not even going to start by describing it. If you've read it already, you know, and if you haven't read it, start now.

The Windhover
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

What continually astounds me about Gerard Manley Hopkins is the familiarity of his rhythms; aside from some odd vocabulary, he writes in a way that feels almost natural. It's not that his style matches how anybody talks these days, but there's something nearly contemporary in his writing, in the way that word rhythm and alliteration foreground metrical organization. Speaking of which, to anyone who ever said the sonnet form is restrictive: clearly you just aren't trying hard enough, because THAT was actually a sonnet.

O Sweet Flowery Roses

2009-03-20T18:19:00.000-05:00

I'd like to take a sec to introduce y'all to O Sweet Flowery Roses, a BLORNAL (blog-journal) that is, as they say, dedicated to preserving the fun in poetry. To paint you a picture, this is the sort of wonderful place that is literally giving out a bag of jewels as a special prize for their DJANGO award. Which, by the way, has a submission deadline of April 1st so if you're keen on getting your mitts on those jewels, get your poems in there quickly! OSFR represents a lot of the good things going on outside of the world of extremely selective literary journals. While they have their place, it's good to know that there are also warm & inviting friends of poetry out there looking to find poem from all sorts of people.

Be sure to also have a look through their archives for some real interesting reads!

I'm going to be off on a trip down to CT and then to PA so no updating for a bit. I'll check in when I can.

Local Updatez!

2009-03-18T13:21:00.002-05:00

Two quick bits of Portland news. I don't know anything about either of these authors but this sounds pretty good. Longfellow Books (in Monument Square) is having readings tomorrow (Thursday the 19th) and Friday the 20th. Tomorrow night is John Manderino, whose memoir Crying at the Movies tells his personal tale through the movies he grew up watching. It sounds like a pretty funny way of identifying, especially considering how important public consumption of film and music has become.

Friday night they host Patrick Tracey, the author of Stalking Irish Madness:
Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia. This one sounds like some really beautiful, poignant stuff. I'm going to be out of town this weekend, but hopefully I'll still be around Friday night to go see this. Support your bookstores and authors, Portland!

Tea & Oranges

2009-03-17T12:19:00.004-05:00

Tea & Oranges is "a collective of thinkers, poets, painters, singers, and lovers" run out of Gorham, Maine. They have oodles of free downloads by incredible musicians in the Maine/New York/Vermont area as well as fun things like stickers & buttons. All of the members of Tea & Oranges are thoughtful, beautiful, independent musicians making music simply for the love of doing so.

The collective also plans to release two books of poems in the coming months, written by me and Joanna Moyer-Battick and illustrated by the cofounders Milo Moyer-Battick and Jakob Battick.

This music has serious guts & soul and I think great music and great poetry can blur the lines between the two, so I strongly suggest downloading the free EP series "Early Flowers" and having a listen for yourself. The most recent release is by Border Towns, the brother-sister duo Natalie and Kennie Farrigan. Speaking of blurring the lines between song & poem, check out the demo "I'm Nobody" on their Myspace, a beautiful reimagining of the Dickinson poem.

Free music that feeds poetic hunger. What more could you want?

Format Change. New Everything.

2009-03-17T11:41:00.003-05:00

I've gutted all the posts & shifted around the organizing idea: now we're starting fresh. I'd like to start with a tribute to the TBTL 10s metablog which got me motivated enough to dust this behemoth off one more time. The metablog is an aggregator of some pretty spiffy folks writing great blogs all over the country. Thanks for coming up with that shits, Jamie. You can (or soon will be able to) find some of the TBTL bloggers in my blogroll.

For those not familiar, TBTL is a radio show run by the fantastic Luke Burbank and his longtime/#1 friends Jen Andrews & Sean DeTore, out of the Seattle radio station KIRO. Never having been to Seattle--or anywhere near it--I happened upon the show anyway and strongly suggest it if you in any way enjoy Mr. T, funny & mundane stories, dreamfights, Hot Cheetos, or the glory that was Arrested Development. It's too much to explain. Just try it.

I'll be posting now mostly about poetry & authors as well as putting up a few of my poems now & then, but expect to see the insignificant details of my life more or less on display. To new beginnings.

Blogger Play-ery

2008-04-17T20:55:00.000-05:00

Even though nearly every picture on the constant photostream of Blogger Play is of babies, someone's first birthday, or some kid completely covered in snot (actually saw that one last night), the occasional weird picture is totally worth it.
Like the following two (each linked to its respective blog below the photo):

The Budget College Cook

A VIDA É BELA !

That may be the best note i've ever seen in my life. And the dude...I can't help but think that maybe some sorta-drunk guy (you have to at least be somewhat drunk to like that Hugh Hefner hat) stumbling onto a plane and then just being really happy to be there. Inappropriate happy.

Mid-Coast Whatnow?

2008-02-25T21:38:00.002-05:00

Toilets! #2

So the series continues with a fresh find, hot off the uh...presses. This one is excellent, and in fact needs no introduction.

I don't even know what to say. This gem is from the second-floor bathroom in the Gorham academic building, one of the best locales for excellently stupid stuff. I mean, did this dude study Latin? Is he declining it as an ablative or dative plural? Like, "by means of..." ? Hoo boy.

New Series!

2008-02-20T14:02:00.005-05:00

Forever ago, i started taking some great pictures of bathroom graffiti from my school. Now, this isn't really just normal "call 555-7858 for a good time" but truly fucking bizarre stuff. So, i'm still trying to find all of my photos, but i have a few of them. I now present

Toilet Series #1
This was from the stall wall of one of the academic buildings in Portland. I don't even know what to say about it...i simply love this bizarre bit of junk.

Feel free to send me stall wall pictures and that sort of thing, i'll post a Toilet Series entry about them if they rock.

Today In Blogger Play..

2008-02-11T18:29:00.000-05:00

I saw a fat asian baby, a French political cartoon (that i didn't understand) and a disturbing drawing.

nice.