a non-blogger returns briefly to the blog

I spent most of Friday night watching Youtube video of Husker Du and Billy Bragg. Or was it Saturday afternoon? I don't remember. Weekends are like that these days--distinctly non-distinct. It was pretty odd for me to go from a .5 appointment at my job to about a 1.2 practically overnight. I work 8 to 5 Tuesday - Friday, and 9 am to 9 pm on Mondays. Sometimes, I come in on Sunday. Between the regular job(s) and the freelance stuff, I feel like I never have time to breathe, and Friday evening through Sunday bedtime seems like the same day. Not that it's a bad day--there's usually some cooking, some drinking, some reading, some video-viewing, some time with my lady, but...well, all of this is to say I'm really looking forward to summer.

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I have a 9-month contract, but there is likely going to be funds enough for me to come in 1 or 2 days a week for the first 8 weeks of summer. This is good. If I'm lucky, they'll let me teach the UO Football Composition Bootcamp course again this September, which was taxing but enjoyable last year.

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I note that 2 bloggers today (or I've noted today, I don't remember when the posts were written) have blogged about longing, or as one says, Sehnsucht. It occurs to me that I haven't had this feeling in a very long time. And I haven't been writing. And I'm sure the two must be connected. And it's not a matter of being in or out of or between love--I've experienced this emotion in all phases of relationshipness. It's not specific to a physical desire or desires. It's more of an emotional void that one knows is unfillable and simultaneously strives to fill. That part of me is gone. I don't know where it went. And so I should be content, right? But oddly, I'm not. Maybe that longing somehow defined me in a way that it no longer can. I still get depressed, still have huge waves of sadness, but no Sehnsucht.

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There is dog sleeping under my desk. He looks simultaneously comfortable and put-out.

फ्रिदय surprise

Three people I know, 2 from Eugene, 1 with whom I've read, another I've published, and another who is my boss, are all finalists for the 2008 Tupelo Press Snowbound (snow-something?) chapbook award.

Not that I'm all about the contests all of a sudden, but it was sorta cool to see the harmonic convergence.

Albert Hofmann

Dead today at 102.

Thanks, Al.

NaPoMoJoPo #1

EQUATION
for JMM

Pastrami
on rye

2 hours ago

& this
blue pad:

an algebra,
of sorts

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It hit
the spot

& now

it hits
the spot

Slow Readings

Have a gander at the Canarium books website and check out their new "Slow Readings" feature. You'll find some familiar names there, and once name missing--

Jordan Davis begins his reading of Michael Morse's poem with "A divorce is..." and my absence from Canary-land feels not so much like a divorce but...more like the spouse who steps out to buy cigarettes and doesn't come back. Though, no, not nearly as abrupt as that. One day I noticed that The Canary was no longer and Canarium sprung up in its place with a new masthead. I wish them well and look forward to the books they'll publish this year. Of course I don't know WHO they're publishing, but I'm sure it will be good, interesting work.

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Canary involvement for me began in the Spring of 2002--what became/was my watershed poetry year for a number of reasons--when I received and email from a man I didn't know, a man who was in Honduras, or Nicaragua, a man who was starting a literary journal, a literary journal that was to showcase, in its first issue, local writers. How he got my name or pegged me as a "local writer," I don't know. I never asked. I suggested we meet for coffee--and so we did some weeks later. It was at Espresso Roma, less than two blocks from where I sit and type this, that I first met Josh Edwards. We both had beards. He was wearing a trucker hat and I don't think he was being ironic. He showed me the nearly finished manuscript of what would become The Canary River Review (the one and only number under that guise). He also showed me a manuscript of his own work. That spring I fell in love in a weird impossible sort of way--that's in there too. That summer I wrote most of what would become my first (and still unpublished) book. I was writing every day, reading poems for the Canary, (what would become the Canary), exchanging feverish emails with a person half a continent away. I don't remember anything about graduate school at that time, though I certainly was there--I think I finished my MA that summer. My hair was long then. My beard was long. I was fat. And it was a good year.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2005. Was it really three years ago? I guess my poetry years are spaced three years apart. If that's so, 2008 should be a dandy.

from Salon.com

Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war.

-- Sen. John McCain, March 26, 2008

I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.

It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks.

-- President George W. Bush, March 13, 2008

Lots of poetry these days: Vitiello, Morrison, Maxwell, Patterson, Ammons (as always). Thanks Ahsahta!

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Jenn with two Ns, if you're reading this, please drop me a proper line and let me know what you're up to these days--long time!

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Latest culinary obsession: Ethiopian. It's really hard, though, to cook Ethiopian food for several days in a row and not smell like Ethiopian food for several days in a row.

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Some of the most recent penis-enlargement Spam I've received is obtuse enough as to obscure its "message." This just in: "Summer is near--get the desired proportions." Um, okay.

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Oh, I almost forgot. I'm live this week over at Linebreak. Check it out. I somehow get the feeling that Z. Schomburg doesn't know much about metal. BTW, Dave Mustaine really did change my life.

So,

I really like what Chris Vitiello is trying to do in his new book Irresponsibility.

Do I like it? I think so. I mean, this work is in many ways close to the sort of thing I envisioned back in the New Sincerity days.

The preoccupation with process, the "writing as subject" focus here raises a few issues that I hope to get to soon enough. For the meantime, I'll just say that it's a brave book.

G.E. Patterson's latest, also from Ahsahta, I want to like a LOT more than I do. Preliminary remarks, to be sure, but I'm looking for something concrete to attach myself to, and well, he keeps references vague enough so as to alienate this reader. The "schtick" here would work better if he kept his quotations not only pithy but meaningful. As far as I can tell, dude may be a really good poet, but the only thing that really informs his work here is the rather obvious detail that he really seems to dig on Brenda Hillman.

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Addendum: I really dig on BH too. Her book Loose Sugar is about 95% responsible for my identity as a "poet." That said, Patterson's quotations don't do much here, aside from making me want to read, well, Brenda Hillman. Oh yeah--I don't pay taxes either. You go, girlfriend!

Happy Purim!

Have yourself some hamantaschen!

Somebody shares one of my top grammatical pet peeves:

"based off of"

and here:

Off base

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What's interesting to me about this term is that it really does seem to be fairly recent--about as old as the now-no-longer-odd phenomenon of folks on the street talking on cellphones outnumbering those of us who prefer to simply walk on the street, saving our phonetalking for when we are in the home or office.

I taught my first undergraduate course in 1999. It's only in the last couple of years that I've begun to notice that nearly EVERY undergrad paper I look at contains this gaffe. And I'm not a prescriptivist, per se, but this just seems odd to me. How did it happen? How did it become nearly standard usage (at least among undergrad college students) in such a short time?

Gina's Notes

On some new chapbooky things.

An excerpt:

"Unfortunately I am not able to format for shit in blogger, so I won't attempt to reproduce one of Tony's poems here."

Sunday Heartwarmer

"The sun can shine on a dog's ass once in awhile."

--Sandra Simonds, author of Warsaw Bikini.

"Craig is slim but he likes to make cakes."

--Sandra Simonds, author of The Tar Pit Diatoms.

I must be more offensive than usual today.

I was IMing/Chatting with three of my pals today, JM, AM, and DW. And all, within 10 seconds of each other, signed off without a warning.

Was it something I said/typed?

On A Seven-day Diary

Oh I got up and went to work
and worked and came back home
and ate and talked and went to sleep.
Then I got up and went to work
and worked and came back home
from work and ate and slept.
Then I got up and went to work
and worked and came back home
and ate and watched a show and slept.
Then I got up and went to work
and worked and came back home
and ate steak and went to sleep.
Then I got up and went to work
and worked and came back home
and ate and fucked and went to sleep.
Then it was Saturday, Saturday, Saturday!
Love must be the reason for the week!
We went shopping! I saw clouds!
The children explained everything!
I could talk about the main thing!
What did I drink on Saturday night
that lost the first, best half of Sunday?
The last half wasn't worth this "word."
Then I got up and went to work
and worked and came back home
from work and ate and went to sleep,
refreshed but tired by the weekend.


--Alan Dugan

secret journal: entry 1

Je suis bien. Je suis tres bien.

Je t'aime, Michael Douglas!

Reading: Disgrace, Coetzee.

our "poetry world"

is too fucking petty. Seriously. I'm getting out while I still have some sanity.

Peace, Y'all.