some rabbits

2012-02-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

i have been looking at photographs of detroit for two hours.

i feel like going there.

and i've been reading about effigies and writing myself a future letter and drinking water. now to teach.

2012-02-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

here is what happens to donuts in a filmmaker's lodge. other things happen too.

2012-01-31T06:24:00.000-07:00

yesterday was rb's bday

2012-01-30T10:51:00.003-07:00

there is a lot i have to tell you about sundance--the best being that benh's film won the grand jury prize in the us dramatic competition. this film will blow up your mind into one hundred thousand pieces. it was the last award of the night. it got incredibly tense when they were in the process of announcing it. we got back last night. i have a very stiff neck. i will tell you stories in a little while. here is a little of the nyt article:

"The standout of this year’s Sundance and among the best films to play at the festival in two decades, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” isn’t an obvious studio-dependent title. Directed by Benh Zeitlin, who wrote the screenplay with Lucy Alibar, the film is a magical realist tale, as well as a hero’s journey, set in a gloriously mythologized part of southern Louisiana nicknamed the Bathtub"

2012-01-14T16:14:00.001-07:00

this week i have been listening to ukranian pop, having wild dreams about superheroes, and watching this--

which is the most amazing thing.

two weeks ago i bought an airplane ticket to go to ireland. after i did it, i became very emotional.

last night these astonishing poets read in a place with deer on the wall:

: julia

2012-01-09T19:28:00.002-07:00

2012-01-03T12:11:00.001-07:00

the new hlr is out! it has exciting work by all these beautiful people: Lily Ladewig, Carrie Bennett, Karen Lepri, Dawn Pendergast, Mark Lamoureux, Molly Brodak, Jeff Alessandrelli, Linda Russo, Becca Jensen, Deborah Poe, Sarah Mangold, Michael Flatt, Christine Gardiner, Jefferson Navicky, Matthew Johnstone, Monica Mody, Jennifer Stockdale, John Duvernoy, Jane Lewty, Maryrose Larkin, Cori A. Winrock, and Ashley Van Doorn. Cover art by Patrick Costello.

here is an example:

Lily Ladewig

Poem for the Pussy Willows

Marriage is nothing like surrender. When I reach for the shotgun it’s just my way of saying hello stranger. I pretend I’m like the meadowlark. I rip up the garden again. So many acres for so long and I can’t tell where they end or my skirt hem begins. My pockets holding onto my hands. My hands too quick. Working these little traps. You in the field at daybreak. Dressing the buck for its purple meat. Me buttoning this blouse. Up to my neck in it. Autumn came and there I was, eating the most tasteless plums, wearing aprons. My chin like an ax. Every day I get a little older. I get haunted in the pussy willows. I’ve decided to take a delicate turn to the tree line. Pussy willows. Yes. Pussy willows yes please. Come. Somebody needs rescuing.

2011-12-24T17:57:00.001-07:00

i've been in bed all day with drought-like sinuses. i bought a spray that contains aloe vera and sea salt, but it doesn't seem to help much. i've also been diffusing eucalyptus and doing peppermint steams. maybe tomorrow my face will be regular again. this is what i have been reading today:

emily pettit's goat in the snow:

we like to think of shipwrecks
as beautiful fuck-ups
and that goats' eyes are the secret to goats.

anna moschovakis's you and three others are approaching a lake:

because each date must be celebrated somewhere in this world
each moment of courage or loss or revolution
when something pushed something and something fell down

the other things i have been reading are miranda july's new book, it chooses you (it's about the penny saver and has interviews with people who sell objects. there are photographs by brigitte sire) and forest of eyes (selected poems of tada chimako, t. by jeffrey angles).

i hope you're having a nice weekend.

2011-12-22T07:19:00.001-07:00

an example of a good memo (i'm really into the essential clause):

Memo

To                    Denver Campus Faculty, Staff and Students

From                The Denver Campus Emergency Management Team

Date                 Dec. 22, 2011

Re                     Weather-Related Closure for the Denver Campus

Due to the heavy snowfall in the Denver metro area, the Denver Campus will be closed today, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. All personnel who are considered essential must make every effort to report to work, despite weather conditions. Please confirm directly with your immediate supervisor as to whether or not you would be considered essential personnel under such circumstances.

Thank you

2011-12-20T13:22:00.001-07:00

a conversation between michael glen and i:

me: do you believe in god?
mg: how do you know?

i'm in the writing center. on tuesdays and thursdays i spend six hours here. it's bright and has a wall of windows that looks out onto a hallway. many chefs use the hallway. someone is here drilling the ceiling. someone else is painting the wall. andrea is eating with a long fork.

i wish i were at the roller derby instead

2011-12-14T18:00:00.002-07:00

2011-11-30T12:21:00.001-07:00

2011-11-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

happy thanksgiving from casa libre where we talk about monsoons and dowry linens and listen to pavarotti while eating olive stuffing.

2011-11-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

s and i are reading in tucson on saturday!

today i am gradinggradinggrading this woman's eyes.

2011-11-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

julia has a new chap out with brandon shimoda

dara wier's "a civilian's journal of the war years" is out from the song cave. she read from it in new orleans.

i have an early copy of "the black mariah" by mcj, coming soon from doublecross press

when j was here we went to boulder and spent a little time at innisfree: the poetry bookstore. i bought bhanu kapil's new book, schizophrene, larissa szporluk's dark sky question, which is from 1998 but i'm reading now instead and it is tremendous: "part of the sky is all of the sky. / the rest is wasted", and carrie fountain's "burn lake", which i bought because i fell deeply in love with the first sentence: "when i think of everything i've wanted / i feel sick."

in other news and in a great cowboy moment, i rode on this:

my thighs have been sore for two days. we also went to the castle. it was snowing:

2011-11-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

you should probably buy this or these animals will come to your house and stare at you

2011-11-14T16:50:00.002-07:00

2011-10-31T12:57:00.001-06:00

happy halloween! here is what some people were:

i just ate beets and kale and ginger chews. it's a very nice day in colorado--a very nice halloween day.

2011-10-26T08:01:00.000-06:00

2011-10-26T07:43:00.000-06:00

2011-10-22T07:10:00.001-06:00

there is so much i have to tell you about new orleans but where we live only has one service bar so i can't show you any photographs because it takes too long to load. i will do that later.

thing 1: i never want to leave
thing 2: last night i met an inventor and a survivor
thing 2.5: one makes time machines and is a collector of cosmic debris
thing 4: one was sucked through a wall and hugged a water heater to save his daughter from a tornado
thing 5: in two hours i get to find out about my past lives from a crystal ball
thing 6: jen and i are going to be on a fishing show tomorrow, fishing for sacaliat

2011-10-19T12:56:00.000-06:00

2011-10-16T10:15:00.000-06:00

autumn colorado (snow trees)

there is a new journal! it's called catch up. it is very beautiful. they have this bonus round where you can see a silent movie staring bo mcguire

and joni wallace reads a poem of mine and makes it sound better because she's so good at reading it. and in the movie for it, there is a man that wind blows through and the sky.

2011-10-14T10:15:00.002-06:00

mcj's poem is today's poem on the poem a day website!

here is how it beautifully starts:

After tagging the dust your body is made of 
  

sheets flash ceremoniously on the line, in


the rain, I am a bone and I take a bone's


pleasure around the ball joint, shading


inside the names. When I pass your body in


here is what she looks like full of snow.

here is what snow looks like without jen

2011-10-10T07:34:00.001-06:00

2011-10-09T15:20:00.001-06:00

mad cowboy jen and i are reading with dara wier on october 20th in new orleans.

2011-10-08T17:05:00.001-06:00

elements of the waters: sodium, sulfate, chloride, silica, potassium, calcium, fluoride, magnesium, and lithium.

2011-10-06T01:41:00.000-06:00

2011-09-26T21:14:00.001-06:00

one day i had a rainbow in my hair (no photographic evidence for this).

look at my parallel parking skills. this is the best job i've ever done.

s and i joined the ramones

2011-09-25T08:44:00.000-06:00

kevin sampsell talks about meeting someone very important!

2011-09-23T14:54:00.000-06:00

2011-09-22T10:47:00.001-06:00

2011-09-19T16:04:00.000-06:00

2011-09-14T08:38:00.001-06:00

do you know anyone in ukraine? will you tell me if you do? i need to know someone there now--not well, just a little. it's for an application. i need a contact person. they can just be regular.

2011-09-09T15:56:00.000-06:00

my new bicycle is from the nixon era

2011-09-08T11:02:00.001-06:00

2011-09-07T20:22:00.002-06:00

2011-09-05T14:15:00.000-06:00

2011-09-01T09:45:00.000-06:00

hi.

it's september now.

how have you been?

here is something at necessary fiction, which jess is in charge of this month (so go often!).

and here is something at the sonora review.

jules, mathias and i have some poems about country western music stars in the new poor claudia.

it's a great issue.

one part of one of ours goes:

george jones always wears a george jones shaped mask. he washes mirrors with soap. he's not different. sometimes at night he puts the animals in his neck. he wants to see them there. and then he closes their eyelids one by one until they are swimming.

and another poem you may want to read in the journal is by dorthea lasky. here is some of it:

i smelled the roses first
whatever it was, i didn't care anymore
i went home
but there was nothing like that
there is the taking your hair down
in a group of roses
and the little flags the angels adorn
but what legs
and back did you scream into

the rest of it is perfect. you should get the journal now. i have a feeling you will love it.

oh, i want to tell you something. i ate at denny's.

2011-08-31T16:01:00.000-06:00

do you like this song? i do.

2011-08-21T09:35:00.002-06:00

miranda july's new movie finally opened in denver!

i think i will try to watch it today.

2011-08-19T16:01:00.002-06:00

pont is blogging here now

2011-08-19T11:23:00.000-06:00

here is a list of recent events:

1. indian food at taj palace

2. temporary tattoos with sawyer and rhi

3. camping at turquoise lake

4. clouds

2011-08-19T11:01:00.000-06:00

brian kiteley is writer in residence at necessary fiction this month and is posting some really great stuff,

like this beautiful piece by marream krollos

and something magnificent by the king, seth landman.

you should read what he says about questions, too.

2011-08-04T04:19:00.000-06:00

i love miranda july

very much

do you read her blog?

this is something she said:

5. I got a bannana popsicle, thinking it would make the memory of the night seem better. I ate it on the street while talking on the phone to my husband who is in Australia. Standing on the street was like standing inside a person’s body. In terms of the weather.

2011-08-03T18:42:00.000-06:00

have you seen the new issue of bookslut?

there is an interview with the magical andrea rexilius

and

there is an interview with two other beautiful fabulators: brandi homan and becca klaver

today i have been reading ordinary sun by matthew henriksen, also with an interview at bookslut

one thing it says is:

we got out of the car.
we set our bodies in the grass.
stones held our breath.

this phone number keeps calling me: 866-301-7344. i'm sure it has to do with money. i feel like anytime a number like that calls it's always about money. unless it's for sandra. i get a lot of calls for sandra ramirez. she's never here. i don't know where she is. i looked her up on the computer. she's a beautiful woman in a bra.

i think i'll watch miller's crossing now.

2011-08-02T05:33:00.002-06:00

new chapbooks from horse less

2011-08-01T10:09:00.002-06:00

the worst

2011-07-29T02:00:00.000-06:00

mathias svalina talks about a poem. one thing he says is:

I wanted it to be in a rhetoric of "honesty," which doesn’t really have anything to do with "honesty" in the sense of telling the truth, but more like "honesty" in the sense of paving the streets when they need to be paved.

you can buy his new book by clicking on a 12. you should. it has a beautiful hypnotic cover.

2011-07-27T05:21:00.000-06:00

"As I later learned, my brain was contending with the “ventriloquist effect,” first noted in a study in the 1890s but named by a research team in the 1960s. The basic insight, that “visual information biases the spatial localization of auditory events,” is a key finding in behavioral and neurological research. When it comes to spatial processing, human vision is, by dint of evolutionary adaptation, generally stronger than the auditory sense. (Which is perhaps why it’s infuriatingly difficult to locate a cellphone that is ringing two feet away from you if it’s concealed under a couch pillow.) Human perception, which functions by fusing simultaneous streams of sensory information, works on the assumption that if auditory and visual stimuli occur in proximity—close in both space and in time—they must be caused by a single source, the one you see. So when we watch lips moving in sync with an unrelated sound, our brain simply denies the confusion, the strange coincidence of these two events, and instead processes them as though they were one very normal speech act. Thus, a ventriloquist can modulate his voice to make it sound near or far, as though it were muffled in a box, or gurgling up from underwater, but he doesn’t actually “throw his voice” in any particular direction; he just tosses it to the audience and they—their eyes, their brain—place it in the lips of the dummy."

you can read the rest here

2011-07-23T22:58:00.000-06:00

go here

and here

2011-07-19T07:15:00.000-06:00

how is your summer?

today i'm going to believe everything.

in the other room i saw gun oil.

i've been eating a slice of peanut butter toast and a banana for breakfast.

i've been viewing waterfalls and snow.

there were sunburn fingerprints on my back.

someone said this about galileo: if there is anything that galileo championed it was curiosity--immense, boundless curiosity.

some celan:

you cathedrals.

you unseen cathedrals,

you rivers unheard,

you clocks deep in us.

2011-07-17T12:13:00.002-06:00

2011-07-09T22:47:00.000-06:00

"he asked if he had any money; don quixote replied that he did not have a copper blanca, because he had never read in the histories of knights errant that any of them ever carried money."

i have an idea.

let's go here together and live.

2011-07-06T22:41:00.000-06:00

these are my letters from montana

2011-07-05T09:58:00.002-06:00

2011-06-20T16:54:00.002-06:00

let's go here together

2011-06-17T13:30:00.001-06:00

what i've been doing:

photographing alligators, hydrating, reading creeley, eating blueberry pancakes, thinking about mercury, riding my bicycle, staring, trying to steal c's copy of the sea, the sea, looking at water.

2011-06-15T08:46:00.000-06:00

robert creeley:

everything is water
if you look long enough

2011-06-12T17:24:00.002-06:00

2011-06-09T07:06:00.001-06:00

i finally figured out how to make collards (after many times of eating bitter greens): vegetable broth, apple cider vinegar, onion and garlic:

and then jess came (oh, guess what she sent me from wales. a lamb skull!):

we went to see a georgia bluegrass band and the man who played the slide guitar looked just like broc rossell.

here is what the people sleep like:

2011-06-06T07:04:00.001-06:00

2011-06-03T13:02:00.000-06:00

two things

2011-06-03T07:14:00.000-06:00

how do you feel about hydration? i feel pretty good about it. these last two months it's all i can think about. some of the things i find hydrating are: raisins, electrolyte water, bananas and coconut water (for a long time i would get these severe headaches that would begin in my shoulder and move to my head--i would get sick and have to go to sleep. but. guess what i found out--coconut water makes them go away--i think they are a result of dehydration). now i just keep hydrating all the time. it's basically all i do now.

and the new hlr is out:

here is an example, from rhiannon dickerson, of everything beautiful inside it:

Map of Antarctica

In the world of places, I am a thing. Some days I dress up like myself and talk to hear how I sound.
I narrate my movements to the places I go. I’m in the bathtub being a whale, I say to the bathroom.
I sound official. When things get too real, I pull out a map and memorize place names. I hang the
map on the wall and step into it. I become Antarctica. It is cold there.

the other beautiful people are:

Brian Foley, Chris Hosea, Catherine Meng, Rhiannon Dickerson, Anne Shaw, Carrie Olivia Adams, Kerry Webster, Tony Mancus, TaraShea Nesbit, Adam Reich, Kevin McLellan, Mark DeCarteret, Travis Cebula, Elizabeth Robinson, Megan Burns, Thomas Trudgeon, Erik Anderson, Jennifer H. Fortin and Nate Pritts, Brooklyn Copeland, Maria Getto, Linda Dove, Carrie Bennett, Michael Flatt, James Yeary, Nicole Wilson, and Shawn Huelle. Cover art by Michael Sikkema.

meet keats

2011-05-31T18:37:00.001-06:00

three things that happened in california

2011-05-31T08:52:00.000-06:00

1. we created a band called wolf puzzle (we only have one song. it's a cover.)
2. looked at frozen alligator boudin
3. i learned how to imitate the wind:

2011-05-31T08:46:00.000-06:00

california friday

2011-05-28T09:53:00.000-06:00

california thursday

2011-05-27T12:04:00.000-06:00

california wednesday

2011-05-26T00:45:00.000-06:00

california tuesday

2011-05-25T00:35:00.000-06:00

california monday

2011-05-24T11:00:00.000-06:00

2011-05-13T15:34:00.001-06:00

horse less is accepting full-length manuscripts!

send
send
send

your stuff

2011-05-13T15:31:00.001-06:00

i have four friends here (but they are pretend friends): one guy who sees me in the laundry room and calls me laundry lady if he sees me outside of the laundry room, like at the grocery store, a yoga instructor, and two car salesman, one of whom made me talk to myself while he laughed--i mean he really cracked up.

i have been reading:

heredities by j. michael martinez

adverbs by daniel handler

so much jean valentine, but my favorite is pilgrims

de rerum natura, lucretius

cicero by anthony everitt

2011-05-09T06:09:00.000-06:00

Possibilianism:

Libet’s findings have been hard to replicate (zapping a patient’s exposed brain is frowned upon these days), and they remain controversial. But to Eagleman they make a good deal of sense. Like Kublai Khan, he says, the brain needs time to get its story straight. It gathers up all the evidence of our senses, and only then reveals it to us.

He had spent the past ten years peering at the world through such gaps in our perception, he said. “But sometimes you get so far down deep into reality that you want to pull back. Sometimes, in a great while, I’ll think, What if I find out that this is all an illusion?” He felt this most keenly with his schizophrenic subjects, who tended to do poorly on timing tests. The voices in their heads, he suspected, were no different from anyone else’s internal monologues; their brains just processed them a little out of sequence, so that the thoughts seemed to belong to someone else. “All it takes is this tiny tweak in the brain, this tiny change in perception,” he said, “and what you see as real isn’t real to anyone else.”

rhode island

2011-05-06T06:39:00.000-06:00

h.p. lovecraft's grave

2011-05-04T12:44:00.000-06:00

2011-04-26T08:34:00.002-06:00

do you feel like reading this poem?

2011-04-26T06:48:00.000-06:00

here are some of the things i love:

5am. running.

dani's tofu pumpkin pie, which c and i are basically killing ourselves over:

this yogurt:

bmp's coin library, which includes chaps by lily brown, ben kopel and joshua marie wilkinson, beautifully assembled by e.b. goodale.

this bug, but only a little:

and georgia:

2011-04-25T04:39:00.000-06:00

sai baba

2011-04-21T07:23:00.000-06:00

jen and i are picking back up our cowboy ways and reading:

Saturday, April 30, 6 pm: The Publicly Complex Reading Series @ Ada Books, Providence, RI (Jennifer Denrow, Shanxing Wang, and Jen Tynes)

Monday, May 2, 8 pm: Small Animal Project Reading Series @ Outpost 186, Cambridge, MA

and then later, california!:

May 23rd: Bird and Beckett, San Francisco, CA, 7pm (with Jesse Morse & Richard Froude)

May 27th: Slack Lust (email rdfroudeATgmailDOTcom for directions), Los Angeles, CA (with Jesse Morse & Richard Froude)

do you have richard's book yet?

what about jen's?

2011-04-18T12:52:00.001-06:00

restaurants and poems:

there are four restaurants in portland i've fallen madly in love with:

1. (this is my favorite restaurant) screen door: their vegetables include: lacinato kale & roasted red pepper casserole w/ leeks, parmesan & herbed ricotta cheeses, topped w/ walla walla onion cream sauce and butternut squash bread pudding w/ caramelized onion & fontina cheese topped w/ leek cream.

2. delta: best collard greens i've ever had.

3. pine state biscuits: second best collard greens

4. the farm: i had the roasted beet salad with beet wedges and toasted pecans tossed with baby greens, walnut oil vinaigrette and garnished with goat cheese and chives.

poems:

emily kendal frey: the grief performance: i am not / as beautiful as that / terrarium

andrea rexilius: to be human is to be a conversation: here will i spell me out / the world / shucked from my own skin

james gendron: money poems: to clean the dirty water: more water. / our low, rough voices drift / over the shacks of millionaires.

pam rehm: small works:

forget me not

i walk from morning
into my ghost

a silent pulling
road to you

is it memory or
wonder

we are reduced to
following

beyond promise

of recognition

2011-04-13T16:38:00.002-06:00

2011-04-12T12:17:00.000-06:00

2011-04-11T10:33:00.000-06:00

2011-03-29T11:04:00.000-06:00

2011-03-28T10:13:00.000-06:00

2011-03-27T12:57:00.000-06:00

2011-03-22T07:27:00.001-06:00

do you know this perfect and beautiful poem by kerri webster?

one part says:

the child outside my door / is not my child, just some random child / explaining the swimming pool.

or this equally perfect and beautiful book?

2011-03-18T06:15:00.000-06:00

hello,

i will be in my favorite city next week. would you like to come? maybe i will sing this cowboy song there.

and the following monday (the 28th) i will be at powell's at 6pm for the smallpressapalooza. you should come.

have you read becoming weather by chris martin:

somehow this coincides
with a faith in
the world as a place

2011-03-14T10:09:00.000-06:00

did you know you can get one poem per day by doing this?

here are some photographs from when i became a cowboy. we drove south from denver on 285, which is stunning.

2011-03-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

do you like this song?

and this book by zach savich called the man who lost his head:

i could not read beckett because it seemed too much
like everything / i could not tell if i had read all of beckett
or merely gone outside

massachusetts

2011-03-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

2011-03-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

2011-02-25T06:44:00.002-07:00

i have been in georgia all these times. and guess what can happen to a person in georgia. she may, be she inclined to love, become a wife. it turns out i am very inclined to love. as is c. so we did it. it was a very happy day. here is what we look like now.

do you have sommer browning's either way i'm celebrating?:

the opposite of love

someone is wrong. light travels slow.
the sun's already dead

for all we know. in fargo, north dakota,
my sister and i think we'll die

on a tilt-a-whirl. the carnie won't
let us off. each time we scream past him

he just grins.

sometimes, it's the world that's inadequate.

i'm worried about how many more times i'll tell the story
about peeing in a cop car before someone loves me.

this book is radical. and it has comics. sommer is a comedic genius. you should buy it now. one of the comics is even about an olive and a finger.

also, do you have joanna ruocco's the mothering coven?:

mr. henderson can't make a lettuce heart now. it's far too daunting. he leaves mrs. borage to her compost heaps and goes inside his drafty colonial. he makes tomato soup on the utility stove. he drinks tomato soup, alone in the dark, big house. his eyes hold no expression. they are big and blank like the eyes of the blue-black herring, like the eyes of abraham lincoln, like the holes in a glass flute, shattering.

joanna likes grapes. sometimes we eat them together. she is one of my favorite writers. we like to write about goats at times. i really think you should have this book.

2011-02-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

this is what georgia feels like

2011-02-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

2011-02-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

i fell asleep at awp. on a couch in a long hallway where no one was. i started dreaming about these voices. as i came to, i realized the voices were from two people sitting across from me doing an interview. they were beautiful voices so i pretended to sleep and kept listening. guess who it was. eileen myles. i could have listened to her talk for a whole day. here is what she was talking about.

2011-02-08T16:38:00.001-07:00

the two books i got at awp that i want you to have and love as well are:

brian foley's the constitution, out from horse less:

i remain unconvinced

these woods
are reversible

as a need is
no real evidence
of absence

and kevin prufer's in a beautiful country, out from four way:

these days, the faucets won't stop dripping,
and i stand in the kitchen dreaming of nurses

who roam the white halls like quiet animals--
and you, in your bed, unable to call them.

another thing is available that you might want to have:

you can order it here.

one other thing:

will you be in amherst on sunday? i will be. do you want to come? at 4pm.

amherst's jones library and jubilat: readings will take place in the trustees room at the jones library, 43 amity street in amherst, and will be followed by a q & a session with the guest poets, during which visitors can meet the poets. all readings are free and open to the public.

the other things that are beautiful

2011-02-06T10:18:00.002-07:00

we lived in this fancy hotel room where robes hang on silk hangers.

our socks lived together, too. they became very close with one another.

bf sat behind this wine glass.

a stood near this wall.

as did jt and i.

s was there!

and ts!

and b!

and the sky. and so many other things.