Tuesday, March 22, 2005

A hot shower and some trauma oil took most of the pain away. I feel pretty good, actually—it's a beautiful spring day, and Bogie and I had a fine hour's walk around noontime. Now to see if I can finish that damn paper. Received courtesy of the Slope prize: Jonah Winter's Maine. I seem to be swimming in what I loosely and inaccurately refer to as "American surrealism"; the Steve Healey book I'm reading also falls into that category. In some ways I think it might constitute the new mainstream: Fence is full of this stuff. Sometimes it's spookily effective, often it's merely tiresome, a tic. Generally the more I feel the poet is tapping into an unconscious larger than his or her own, the more interesting I find the poetry. Also I find I get more impatient more quickly with the male practioners of this mode: the sons of James Tate and Dean Young. When women do it (Arielle Greenberg calls it the gurlesque), there's almost always that social dimension because they are trying to break up the calcified structures of the collective feminine unconscious (which are more visible if not more restrictive than those of the masculine unconscious). I think in my own work now I'm becoming interested in tapping into that "masculine unconscious"—hideous beast that it is—without engaging in the same game of dodge-em that I see other male poets using to partially disguise their aggressivity. But maybe that's actually too unbearable to contemplate. Enjoy your symptom! And choose your sublimation wisely.

1 comment:

Coirí Filíochta said...

Yo tiny town word teasers,
whaazzup with yers?
I tell yer what about me is
that I'm dead busy 'n up to all sorts of daftness
in me own mind.
I'm a full time unemployed penniless poet
and I've just been offered a well paid voluntary position
bein' a global news hound,
reviewin for the World Poetry Council Collective;
but it's a bit tricky at the mo
coz I'm banged up on the secure unit of Ward 11.

However, hope is at hand coz
if youse lot out there in virtual world
can rustle up a snatch squad
and have a do at smuggling me past the nurses
when showtime explodes on the pages of cyberspace,
I'm your number one hack,
firin' on all the ink cylindrical spikes
I can stick in and go to OD heaven on,
you squeeze feelin' trainee corpses.

Just tell me sister about the where's 'n when's
and make sure there's a stash of unmentionables on standby
so I can get in the right frame of mind
as befits a man of the press at such an occassion
of soundual splendid texty whatsathingy,
where the air is usually thick with rants from the great
right through to the giftless of our too few true poetic community.

Doin' it this way youse ole cocksmen and women
at the helm of the next generation,
means we can mix up the writin'.
Not that I'm sayin' your lot's stuff's ever stale
old town ''n new place mates 'n muckers,
no way.
In my humble opinion your life in words represent
the rocktastic tip top nexus of linguistivally innovative
lyrical investigative journalistic bio
which is unafraid to say what it thinks
and offers the discerning reader a real insight into your brains,
in a clicheless non limp style
which is bursting at the brim with the spark 'n fire
betraying an eyefull of the forge
from where the language of the truly gifted emerges,
which leads me to believe,
my sock cooking mothers,
that you have been annointed by the lingo god of cool taste in all matters chat.

I would direct you to Jan Manzwotz blog coz he satirically investigates poetry theft allegations by Ron Sillyman
who as you know
is a good mate of ours

Laters

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