Sunday, April 26, 2009

New: about to drown, by JKD

After Edward Hirsch’s poem “Commuters” (in “Wild Gratitude”, Knopf, 1985) which was read aloud today on Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac, 26 April 2009”, & online for Prairie Home Productions on NPR via American Public Media and with the support of The Poetry Foundation.

....isn’t blue panic vague green is not me planted stepping off the train, number seven and then the A, me a number dusk thinking it isn’t just now a statistic isn’t blue with a newspaper, with a stained shirt, fat tie, too-greasy napkin crossing past that half-night worrying myself into the letters, coding me, programmable isn’t not the other elsewhere someone stiffly going along the tracks tracing newsprint me printed under his blurred blotchy one-in-a, one-of-a million arm not attached to my hands-full of groceries or should have me no did not delivery after 7 or 8 running late in the charcoal stain dry cleaner pickup, and cracked glasses to boot, on that to-do post-it list me deepening in allotted spots, dumpstersfull, a country of plastic, not me floating against it, heading out with me or that sporty sooty chivalrous “please, after you” certainly not pronounced in my voice by the parking lot, paying the ticket, stamping the yellowed corner of the wishing moment me someone elsewhere on a beach instead or a tunnelled grotto handing me off the pickaxe not with them, not a man in a car turning the engine soundlessly over in the hybrid ecological logic of watching me grind uphill in anywhere but a man looking at himself in a mirror of me from a great distance not starting a fogged-over feeling felled trees of me and of reforestation, replantings of myself as a forestfull suddenly acknowledging the denial the not-me of me with an old wave of nausea calling starboard, ahoy, as if it weren’t already obvious how out of shape, place, body I am elsewhere outside this steel box, turn up the music, ‘80s one-hit-wonders where were you when I was me then, way back then, ominously me as empty and strange drowning in the sealit aquiline air steering me home trying out the idea of me there and then there me and then there as I pass me by the red-brick houses, the white Tudors, me in the cherry-colored mansions of this next district, each one, like me, purring inside, just a little more me unlike me floating under the speed limit, risking nothing when The Economist states the stocks are falling and will continue to follow me a panic not panicky me just heading into the green vague sense of ominous misdemeanours

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

autumn inta by sean s

after Snapsnot by David Barnes

he folds himself
falls
into a

falltime

black payaper
swayddled in knots
(i keep overpouring)

scrape

the pa aper all black
except where writtne
the aier not there
except where flown agint

wax paysage of penpint and black feather
flickerth

and burns tie
the woires to birdfluvf to
nails to thiss

autumn inta

our stone creasing thicker and thi
and

skin all scraps skin

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Ursus (or: I am not a poet for the masses) by Jonathan Regier

After many poems on Hypotheses
Dedicated to poor Nicolai Reymers Baer (Nicolaus Raimarus Ursus)

First, two quotes from the same work:

#1
"A hypothesis or fictitious supposition is a portrayal contrived out of certain imaginary circles of an imaginary form of the world-system, designed to keep track of the celestial motions, and thought up, adopted and introduced for the purpose of keeping track of and saving the motions of the heavenly bodies and forming a method for calculating them."

#2
"For it is the distinguishing characteristic of hypotheses to inquire into, hunt for and elicit the truth sought from feigned or false suppositions. And so it is permitted and granted to astronomers, as a thing required in astronomy, that they should fabricate hypotheses, whether true or false and feigned, of such a kind as may yield the phenomena and appearances of the celestial motions and correctly produce a method for calculating them, and thus achieve the intended purpose and goal of this art."

In quote #1, Ursus identifies hypotheses as fictitious suppositions. A hypothesis is necessarily fictitious. He argues this point for quite some time. So, if you fiddle around with quote #2, you can get:

---Hypotheses, all of which are fictitious, whether true or false and feigned, can hunt for and elicit the truth from feigned or false hypotheses.---

On a night like tonight, that's exactly what I'd call Intellectual Honesty.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Breakfast by Barbara Beck

After JKD's Sleeplessness, fragment by sean s,
First by Michelle Naka Pierce, Twelve first lines by Rufo Q.

how cracked and empty
porcelain the bowl
is what makes beginnings
a naked receptacle
I have not done not tended

say down in the belly's
home body heaven
is squeezed orange versus
a condensation of space
I once saw from the window

border bird crossing
a clear sky curve
the result of have-to
its own hypothesis
reward as if

Snapshot by David Barnes (New)

this bird, this black scrap nailed to the air
only this bird, like fluff caught on barbed wire
that is not there

feathers like burnt leaves, he hangs
battling the wind that textures the air

flickering black paper pegged to nothing
he folds himself into a stone and falls

Sunday, April 19, 2009

A Hauntless Wind by Brandon Shimoda

after A First Hypothesis by Jonathan Wonham


Even so
It was the first hypothesis. Who said
So tramp
The result was once a loss? The tramp said
So
He grew a horn

Of knowing. Now that is impossible
However, But
By shining a sharpened light
Into the daw's bridal hemorrhage, The possible
Came in
Spite of its loss. The creek

Became a flood
The daw drew out its losses
Destroyed the lap of potatoes

Would they grow angry? They would grow
Angry
Was the second hypothesis

The creek became distant
The result of which
Was not exactly proof of its disappearance. However

The daw
Wore a wig
In its illness, Breaching the flattened temperature
Of illness
The result of which
Was not knowing, Exactly, But

Result. The tramp put the rubber into his cheek
For the day before he had first kissed
But who, The tramp
Was in a room
With an angular black
Only a hauntless wind in mind

The more the tramp turned, the less
The tramp shone
The less the tramp shone; It said yes

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Red by Sue Chenette

wore red......wed Rod....(owed dower)....deeded ore....woe
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////
redo...........wore red.....drew deer.....worded wood..weeded word
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /
erred.......eroded order.....wore red....rode rodeo.....wowed Ed
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
wooed weed..rowed dew........or...........wore red....dowered Drew
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
reordered door....O.............doer...............do........wear red

Friday, April 17, 2009

Musings2 by Jennifer K Dick

After MUSINGS by Christine H (a.k.a roseconsciousness) 19 March 2009 posting.

To write something into existence (murder)
to be eggshell-solid air except for emptiness: this.
Beginnings begging off (white) (tinted) (tainted) shell to,
as Boully says to begin means,
Locked up outside the same glass.
Window cut to cabinet.
Shift the light, the blare.
I refuse to mean. Be.

**
How to write something into a key is visible nowhere.
Everywhere HER.
Here, a way opened up, an exactitude.
This, she says, is to peek through:
an existence.
How can that be translated into writing?
I or I or…cracked ice, then:
Framing comes to mind.

**
Is the writing making a poem making
a text making closed feeling open
making
what is it (it is) I hold back from making?
You?
To feel
due to belated fees, fried foods, fragments pointing out
this is what juts up out of ME.

**
“The writer withholds
the possibility of touching”
she says, means
“smelling/feeling/imagining/”
Think “language, far from me.”
Scamper away into a woods.
Withhold a space
where I can engage with
this:
death. (Murdered?)
Which culprit is author?
I refuse to be. Mean.

**
The notion of I
versus you.
If I track the fissure in this glass with my eyeball
Will you bleed over the dining room table?
Open-closed, the Venetian
BLIND
Inside.
In both cases it seems up to the viewer,
content
to fill (feel) the beginning.

**
Bookended,
I wander outside of consciousness
consciously
Because I knew endings affected her.
the body never existed before the murder
to mean ‘kill’ is concrete
as that stilled
Body
Language
is still
as something else.
Silence?

Sunday, April 12, 2009

New: Good Taste Can Only Go So Far by Amanda Deutch

Good Taste Can Only Go So Far

Good Taste Corporation and Gertel’s Bakery keep me awake. Grinding steel gates. Bright lights. Slip of a thing. Sleep on sweaty sheets. Remember the louts, the scoundrels? Open your arms. Tell me your beats. All sorts pass in front of the window. That makes it a good window. God only knows, Shirley. Spring is here. The magnolias and cherry blossoms are in bloom. The crocuses push through tough soil. Let's not mention irises. I find them ugly. You want me to take a picture of you as a beetle? Hunched over on all fours. What would a beetle do today?… Suppose it depends on what kind of beetle, how large, and in what climate exactly it's living. Oh beetley beetle, what will your day be like?

Friday, April 10, 2009

NEW BOOKS & CHAPBOOKS OUT BY REWORDERS

Support your fellow REWORDERS by keeping their presses alive!!!
Here are a few announcements of recent publications:

Sandy Florian published "The Tree of No" with Action Books this winter, (http://www.actionbooks.org/ ),
Rufo Quintavalle published his first chapbook, "Make Nothing Happen", from Oystercatcher Press in the UK, (http://www.oystercatcherpress.com/ ),
Nicholas Manning with his first book, "Novaless" (Otoliths Press) & watch his blog for announcements of a soon forthcoming chapbook from another press.
Matt Reeck with "Sieve" (Other Rooms Press) & “Love Songs & Laments” (Goss 183: Casa Menendez/mipoesias)
Jill Darling with "Begin with May" (Fishing Line Press) & the eBook "Solve For" (BazeVox books, at http://www.blazevox.org/ebook.htm) (free online!!!)
Sue Chenette with new chapbooks: “A Transport of Grief” (hand-sewn, hardcover, LyricalMyricalPress, 2007, http://www.lyricalmyricalpress.com/), “Solitude in Cloud and Sun” (Silver Maple Press, 2007), as well as “Weathering, an exchange of poems” (a chapbook length renga, with Maureen Scott Harris, Ruth Roach Pierson, Patria Rivera, and Julie Roorda from Silver Maple Press, 2008: available from Sue1705@gmail.com).
Chris Pusateri with "Anon" (BlazeVox Books, http://www.blazevox.org/ )
Laura Mullen, Sawako Nakayasu & Jennifer K Dick have work in Reworder-coedited (Christina Mengert, with nonreworder Joshua Marie Wilkinson) "12 x 12: Conversations in 21st Century Poetry & Poetics" anthology from University of Iowa Press (http://www.uiowapress.org/books/2009-spring/mengert.htm)
Sawako Nakayasu has two new books: "Hurry Home Honey" (Burning Deck, April 2009) and coming out "Texture Notes" (Letter Machine Editions, November 2009) and recent translations and a dusie chap from 2007 are also out.
Michelle Noteboom & Amanda Deutch have Dusie chapbooks coming out with the dusie kollectiv project, run by reworder Susana Gardner, a very exciting project where 50 poets are making chaps of each others’ works.
Michelle Naka Pierce's most recent collection is "Beloved Integer," (Pub Lush / Bootstrap Press, 2007) http://www.bootstrapproductions.org/imprints/bi.html
Jennifer K. Dick, with nonreworders Susana Sulic (Spanish), Jacques de Longeville (French) and Italian artist Georgio Fidone, have a collaborative artist book with 4 original paintings by Fidone just out “Ondulations”, (Aeneis Editions, France, 2009)
Alistair Noon with "At the Emptying of Dustbins" from Oystercatcher Press http://www.oystercatcherpress.com/)
Virginie Poitrasson has an eChapbook at http://www.publie.net/tnc/spip.php?article208 (free sample online, then purchase for great price!) & her miniBook "Demi-valeurs" (éditions de l'attente)
Alexander Dickow's first collection (bilingual no less), "Caramboles", appeared from Argol Press, France last fall (2008).
Lisa Pasold has a novel forthcoming this summer, so watch for that!!! Her book "A Bad Year for Journalists" also appeared with Frontenac Press in 2006 (http://frontenachouse.com/authors/single/lisa_pasold/)
Beverley Bie Brahic’s translations of Françis Ponge also appeared this year: “Unfinished Ode to Mud” (http://www.cbeditions.com/). See her site, www.redroom.com/author/beverley-bie-brahic for all the info about her books, including a translation of a book by Cixous, Hyperdream, that is in press thus soon forthcoming at Polity, Cambridge, UK.
Brandon Shimoda’s “The Inland Sea”, a long poem, is available through Tarpaulin Sky Press, http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/Shimoda/index.html, as well as “The Alps” (Flim Forum Press, 2008, http://flimforum.blogspot.com/ )
Laura Mullen's most recent publication is "Murmur", (Futurepoem Books, 2006, http://www.futurepoem.com/bookpages/murmur.html)
Jonathan Regier’s first collection, “Three Years from Upstate” is now out from Six Gallery Press, (http://www.sixgallerypress.com/books.html)

Some reworders are also making magazines happen, such as:

Barbara Beck getting the next issue and readings for "Upstairs at Duroc" in Paris together
Lauren Elkin (aka maitresse) who runs "Hitotoki Paris" (and is looking for Paris-based texts for that) http://hitotoki.org/paris/
Sean Standish would like to get a "Hitotoki Madison, WI", together if you have Madison texts for him! sean.standish@gmail.com
Megan Garr at Versal has a new issue forthcoming this spring: http://www.wordsinhere.com/ to pre-order or check in! Or check out the online videopoetics review run by reworder Nicholas Manning: The Continental Review: http://www.thecontinentalreview.com/

Or Book Presses run by Reworders:

Julie Carr co-edits with Tim Roberts, COUNTERPATH PRESS (http://www.counterpathpress.org/), & Susana Gardner runs DUSIE Books(http://www.dusie.org/dusiepress.html)

***Not a definitive listing, so please let JenD know of other publications for next reworders' publications announcement, to be posted this June! ***

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

KNOWLEDGE by G Vance

after A First hypothesis and A Second hypothesis by, successively, J Wonham & J Dick
by g vance


even once
a 1st hypothesis falls
on the 2nd
impossibly flooding microscopic panes
against the snow of results
;;;;tentatively lost in the hard angle of absence
;;;;where floors meet solutions
raining proofs .......examined certainty battered
into a shorn theorem
capricious as a solid/liquid
between-/-cut


^^^^^^

Friday, April 3, 2009

A second hypothesis, by JKD

After Jon Wonham's A First Hypothesis

Even a first
.....................hypothesis
was a lost result
.....................said
knowing impossible
.....................once a creek
flooding panes
....................against glass snow
on the microscope
.....................fall, crystalline

***
Examined
......................this result
not proof
.....................only tentative
as certainty
.....................the result knowing
not rain battered
.....................but the hard angle
of absence

***
As if
.....................I could be
sliced
.....................where the floor met
your pipette solution
.....................result a hauntless wind
known impossible
.....................shorn among that
granular theorem
.....................as capricious as
cut liquid
.....................between solidity

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

A First Hypothesis by Jonathan Wonham

after Fragment 3 by Sean S and First by Michelle Naka Pierce.

Even so, it was a first hypothesis. Who said
the result was a loss? Was knowing
impossible once? The possible came
with its loss. The creek became a flood
against the panes of glass and snow
fell in the microscope. But the result
was not proof. Only a tentative certainty.

And the result of it was not knowing
if rain had an angle, or if absence
could be cut. Where the floor met the pirouette
there could be no impossible result
only a hauntless wind in the mind.
Because the more it turned, the less it shone.
The less it shone, the more it turned.