June 29, 2006

At the end of the German-based news clip (DW) of the Bush-Koizumi press conference, they show Bush shaking Koizumi's hand and saying "good job!"

This'll certianly help retractors at home who view Koizumi as an American puppet.

June 27, 2006

Brain Howe, Guitar Smash (3rdness, 2006). 20 pages. (Available here free as pdf.)

themomentsinthetextiappreciatethemostaretheonesthatrequirethe
actofreadingtobefullyengagedasinthenonspacedtextofscriptiocontinua
whichrunsmuchlikeanearlymedievalmanuscriptwithoutspacesbetween
wordsorsentencesandwithoutpunctuationthetextreadsbutitrequiresa
minimalamountofextraeffortfromthereader

June 25, 2006

Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, trans. Ron Padgett (Da Cappo, 1971).

Duchamp: The Viennese logicians worked out a system wherein everything is, as far as I understood it, a tautology, that is, a repetition of premises. In mathematics, it goes from a very simple theorem to a very complicated one, but it's all in the first theorem. So, metaphysics: tautology; religion: tautology: everything is tautology, except black coffee because the senses are in control! (107)

June 25, 20006

Seriously with the mosquito.

June 25, 2006

June 22, 2006

Norma Cole, un petit a & a (Format Americain, 2005). 27 pages.

I'm not sure where I got this. I was moving my newspaper pile (a three month stack of Oakland Tribunes for work's sake, and no small shakes of a stack) from one end of my writing studio to another and this came falling out the side.

It's in French, but as I've never read A Little A & A in English, it's all new to me (kind of like how I first read 1984 in French and can't shake it out my head that it is originally an English text).

Visually & verbally interesting. I would quote some passages, but as it's a translation of something available in English, I'll just search out the original text, then comment.

June 21, 2006

I just saw Chuck Close with Big Bird on Sesame Street.

June 21, 2006

Check out Sakkis' blog for his friend Daniel Pascual's letter from Iraq.

June 20, 2006

"To Be Free of This Cage: The Poetry of Gauntanamo Bay's Detainees," Bookforum 13.2 (Summer 2006): 26-27.

Many of the the themes are similar to most prison writing: family, isolation & loneliness, religion, hope for a non-prison future... Ustad Badruzzaman Badr's "Lions in the Cage" offers up a more defiant tone:

We are heroes of the time
We are the proud youth
We are the hairy lions

We live in the stories now
We live in the epics
We live in the public hearts (ll.1-6)

He transforms his surroundings by transforming the detainees into the heroes of old who not only challenge "Pharoah of the times" (l.9) but also to whom the stars prophesy the successful turn of events that the world has been waiting for.

Bookforum also runs a short interview with Marc D. Falkoff (who is currently at work on assembling an anthology of Gauntanamo detainee poetry) that explains the process of how the poems come to be considered declassified by the government.

June 18, 2006

Looking over my employing institute of higher learning's stash of videos from their poetry reading series, and man alive! the Anne Tardos/Jackson MacLow tape from October 28, 2003 delivers what a poetry reading should be. Tardos read from her multi-lingual repetoire, then MacLow read from his store of decades worth of material. His readings of the texts breathed a life into them that might be missed if reading them in text form only. His poems are very far from cold & formulaic. The reading ends with Anne & Jackson doing two of Jackson's Free Gathas. Hopefully, we'll be making some of this available soon. It was a good moment in poetry readings.

June 16, 2006

From "A Speech: Dialectics of Liberation," Digger Papers (August 1968).

Who's going to control the language? You know, who's going to control the microphone? As if anybody who controls the microphone controls the language: all they can do is control the sounds that come over the microphone, and they can condition you--but once yoll're deconditioned then you know that you're just hearing sounds, and that those sounds are just sounds.

And are they pretty sounds? Do they make you feel good? Do they lead to any constructive action? Or are they sounds that give off bad vibrations? And are they going to lead you to feel bad? And make other people feel bad? And escalate the booby trap till "the whole fucking shithouse goes up in chunks."

June 16, 2006

There are people who don't like the smell of fresh spray paint?

June 15, 2006

New Yipes This Sunday:

Sunday, June 18 at 21 Grand
416 Twenty-fifth St @ B'way
Oakland, California
7-9 pm | $4

Tanya Brolaski is a love poet, and she dedicates all her verses to Love. She is the author of Letters to Hank Williams (True West Press, 2003), The Daily Usonian (Atticus/Finch 2004), Madame Bovary’s Diary (Cy Press 2005) and the blog Swimming for Dummies.

Brandon Brown is the author of the unpublished books "The Persians By Aeschylus," "Kidnapped," "E Podes & Odes," "Pool" and many others. He is also the author of "My Life As A Lover" (Detumescence 2005) and the forthcoming "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" (Cy Press 2006). He is a relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, and he dedicates all his verses to the San Francisco Giants.

Flag Day, 2006

Slate is running a photo gallery of Che Guevara, who would have turned 78 today.

Here's a short video of Che playing chess.

June 11, 2006

Harvey Schwartz, The March Inland: Origins of the ILWU Warehouse Division 1934-1938 (ILWU, 2000). 282 pages.

The International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union has been a Bay Area presence since the great labor explaosion of the 1930s. Harvey Schwartz, as official historian of the ILWU, has revised the 1978 edition. One of the more remarkable features of this particular effort is the inclusion of so many quotes culled from contemporary sources, interviews, oral histories, etc... from the men who were directly involved in the events portrayed. A good read for those interested in labor, Bay Area history, and the politics of the docks.

June 9, 2006

Jorge Boehringer composes music, plays music, makes zines, makes art, makes movies, & makes art (yes again, he is relentless)...all on a daily basis. He breathes post-everything and avant-everything, all at the same time. Do yourself a favor and turn out for this.

This is a composed piece performance. It promises to be stellar, just stellar.

June 9, 2006

Just when everything seemed to be picking up again downtown. 33 Grand is the most recent rent victim on that block.

June 8, 2006

Lexicographer Grant Barrett has a blog and a book.

Favorite entry so far is scraper. Be sure to read the comments.

June 8, 2006

The turn-out Tuesday in California was low, really low.

June 6, 2006

a poet is a penguin--his wings are to swim with

ee cummings (1951)