05/03/2007

Poetry money



A few years ago Poetry Magazine inherited some two hundred million dollars from heiress Ruth Lilly (Lilly Pharmaceuticals). Ruth was an eccentric recluse, a bit like Howard Hughes, but instead of airplanes she doted on poetry. Over the years she even occasionally, anonymously, submitted some of her own work to the magazine but it was always rejected. Founded by Harriet Monroe at the beginning of the twentieth century, the journal has high standards:

Mission
"The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine—may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! To this end the editors hope to keep free from entangling alliances with any single class or school. They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written. Nor will the magazine promise to limit its editorial comments to one set of opinions."
—Harriet Monroe, 1912

The Poetry Foundation was established in a bit of a scramble when the magazine received its unfettered fortune but they took the flying leap that only money can buy. According to its chairman John Barr, Poetry Foundation has become a proper "bully pulpit". Self-described "real moguls", the Foundation's CEOs decided to invest in themselves first, the trickle down formula favored by most captains of industry. The first thing they're doing is building themselves a glorious headquarters from which to operate.

Men who previously avoided being associated with poetry's riffraff image have decided to spiff it up, monetize it, supersize it, glamorize it, mass market it. I suppose that sooner or later it had to happen. Whether or not I agree with their approach, I agree things are in a sad state. I don't know about you, but personally I can't stand the gassy narcissism that currently passes for poetry.

The moguls have plunked it all down on red. It's a stiff bet. Harriet Moore brought T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound and others to light. The Foundation plans to better that and up the ante. They plan to launch a Renaissance. Naturally skeptics predict the Foundation will merely do the expected ... establish a royal court, anoint an inner circle and reign over it gloriously until the whole scene implodes under the weight of its own vanity. Who knows? I do like their new website. It has some interesting pages such as Dispatches: News. Refreshing. So many writer's circles and publishing houses have their wagons ringed up tight and the only stories they tell around the campfire are about themselves.

When the money arrived, Poetry Magazine's then editor relinquished his post to head up the newly formed Foundation but didn't long survive the surge of bullies like John Barr from Wall Street. Christian Wiman is its new editor. I met him not long after he took the job. He came to Nevada to be the keynote speaker for a writer's conference I peripherally helped put together. I liked him. He seemed very grounded, open and unimpressed with himself. He critiqued one of my poems. I'm not much into things like writer's conferences and don't run around courting people's opinions about my writing so, other than the fact that I am an incurable showoff, I didn't expect much. To my relief, he didn't offer "advice". He simply challenged the need for the final stanza. When I wrote it I knew I had flinched so I very much appreciated his astuteness. I hope he continues to stick to the code. And I hope the Foundation knows what it is. We all know money talks but can it, will it, walk? Guess we'll see. Anyway, they've made some nicely designed broadsides available at Dispatches: Gallery for the Fridge Archive. Go on. Download one. Spread the word. Poetry's baaaaaaaaack.








H.R. 249 - Protection for wild horses and burros




Below is a forwarded letter from the Humane Society of the United States. Just got it. I know I've asked you to call before and collectively we've gotten the bill this far. Wednesday is the next hurdle. Please call again. It takes minutes. Easy number look-up here. There's a little script included below if you want an idea of what to say. Please do it. Video here, if you need more information. Warning: graphic material.

HSUS forward:
On Wednesday, March 7, a federal bill (H.R. 249) to restore protections for wild horses from commercial sale and slaughter will be brought up for a vote in the House Natural Resources Committee. Your U.S. Representative needs to hear from supporters of the bill. Please take action and help this important bill clear its next hurdle.

Call your Representative today and express your support for restoring protection for our wild horses and burros from commercial sale and slaughter. Their lives depend on our success.

Congress originally passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act in 1971 to protect our wild horses, but in 2004 this protection was gutted. In a midnight maneuver by then-Senator Conrad Burns (Mont.). He slipped a few unnoticed lines into a massive spending bill, overturning 30 years of protections for wild horses and burros. Senator Burns was booted from office last November and it's time to win these protections back.

TAKE ACTION!
Please make a brief polite phone call to your Representative today. It's easy. Numbers here. Just say is something like:

"Hello, my name is [your name] and I am a constituent from [your city]. I strongly support H.R. 249, the legislation to restore protection for our wild horses and burros from commercial sale and slaughter. It will be considered this week by the Natural Resources Committee. Please give it you support. We must provide permanent protection for America's wild horses and burros. Thank you."


Now that you've done your good deed for the day, here's a fun little video of not-so-wild burros.





04/03/2007

Sunday dreamin'


My grandfather used to talk to himself, a lot. I could never make out what he was saying. All I heard was a steady stream of whispers mixed in with his breath. As a kid I worried that it might be a family trait. I do talk to myself sometimes but I'm still not as bad as Grandpa Chance.

For instance, when I'm writing I often speak the words out loud first. Take the sentence I just wrote, and the one I'm writing now. I said them both out loud as I composed them. I'm quiet now but actually, by the time I typed out the first 3 words of this sentence, they were no longer true. I thought the words "I'm quiet now" decided to write them without speaking them so they would be true in real time, but as I typed them I spontaneously said them out loud and muttered "typed it out" while I typed that. There's a peak into my head, in case you wanted one but were afraid to ask.

And, while I'm on the subject, I might as well admit that I did mutter to myself this morning, something to the effect of, "Humans are a violent, greedy, predator species; carnivores who fancy having a unique, divine nature and personal relationship with a god who likes them better than everybody else and doesn't mind if they torture and/or kill the rest of his family."

It is Sunday morning and I am off to a rocking start. Minutes after I got online I found myself watching a video of soldiers in the Islamic Army inspecting a helicopter they just downed and executing the sole survivor, probably a Blackwater contractor. Then I watched Anna Nicole's funeral procession in the Bahamas, and videos of several other totally unrelated events, although their disparate nature actually underscores just how prone we humans are to self-undoing. My ricochet tour brought me back to the question I pondered aloud in the shower earlier this morning. Can we, as a species, survive our own precocious narcissism long enough to wake the fuck up? Then I found the following gritty view of hope. Now I'm off for second cup of coffee while I've still got a chance of a day. Bon matin, mon ami!









02/03/2007

Jed's Other Poem


Even if you don't like poetry you might like this video poem or, if you've already seen it, might enjoy seeing it again. It's that kind of thing. It was made by a very interesting guy named Stewart. The music is by Grandaddy. Warning. Their site opens with music.

"Jeddy-3 the humanoid was assembled in the kitchen out of spare parts. Before Jed's system died he wrote poems. Poems for no one." more history here.











01/03/2007

Jimmy


Jimmy Mouse stayed at the Hotel Nevada last night. I didn't discover him until late yesterday afternoon, too late in the day to release him, too cold. Temperatures what they are right now, it would be a big drag to suddenly find yourself homeless at the end of the day. It's supposed be sunny through the weekend though so he'll have a running start on finding a nice comfy new home by the meadow pond. We found our last guest at the hotel dead in the corner as though he were trying to dig himself out when he expired. It was very sad. We forgot the lid was down. We're very careful now. Once the trap is set we check it at least once a day. We don't want innocent creatures to suffer. We like happy endings for our guests, like Fatty Leland. Jimmy Mouse did okay too, although he didn't seem all that eager to face the big world. I don't blame him. He's a pretty tiny fellow. I hated to see him go but, as I understand it, field mice don't do well in captivity.









Books I found at the second hand store today.

This one I bought. This one I just photographed the cover.






28/02/2007

Because it's soothing


Ragged Feather did a nice claymation to the Beatles song, Because. It's a 02:45 massage for the frazzled psyche.






25/02/2007

Life without replay

I find the bank of TV monitors in front of the stair steppers at the gym incredibly annoying. We canceled the service and gave our set away a few years ago so I don't have any tolerance for replay after replay after replay, changing only when there's another clip or program to take its place, the endless foie gras for the brain, that is television. The brain drain. Outside the window it was snowing and a couple of cows were standing over a very young calf sheltering it from the storm. It's sad knowing what they don't, that probably by the time summer arrives that calf's loving mother will be hanging by her back legs with a slit throat.

24/02/2007

Holy shit!



Not long ago I started getting forwards from a mystery source but they sent the emails properly (Bcc'd) so I checked out one of the links. To date, they are almost always excellent. I did a little polking around and seems the sender lives nearby. Perhaps we've met, but I don't remember. That remains an open question about which you may hear more later. Anyway, here's one of the links I recently received. It's really impressive. Even though you, being very hip, have undoubtedly encountered some of this information before, it's all put together here in really Big Picture. I highly recommend you watch it. Learn a little bit about the world that does not yet exist because that's the world we are living in.

SHIFT HAPPENS.






23/02/2007

Foie Gras, you are what you eat


Here's a little good news. The grocery chain Giant Eagle announced today that it will no longer sell foie gras in any of its 230 stores! They join Whole Foods as well as the state of California, the city of Chicago, and 16 nations worldwide that have already banned this barbaric practice.

Sir Roger Moore volunteered to narrate a documentary for PETA revealing the cruel facts of foie gras production. Give it a watch. It's a lesson in compassion and, as we all know, compassion is food for the soul.


The hidden lives of ducks and geese.










FOX propaganda channel


Fox sucks! It doesn't report news. Fox injects wingnut propaganda into the public debate. That's it. The rest is cover. They don't deserve an FCC license. For starters, this channel should be investigated for fraud, criminal lobbying, and intentionally misleading the public. If you haven't been following their attack on Senator Obama, check out this video. It's a sickening mixture of lies, innuendo and slander disguised as news. The people in front of the camera aren't reporters. In fact, it's even flattery to call them actors. They are media whores. Fox my "campaign headquarters?" In your dreams, assholes...

FOX ATTACKS OBAMA









22/02/2007

Yesterday's news



All the Democratic presidential candidates but Obama were in Carson City yesterday to kick off rutting season. I didn't even hear about it until this morning when I dropped by for a meeting that didn't happen because of the snow but I found the morning paper lying on the bar with this photo and headline. That's June (the owner) dragging Hillary through the room.


Things were considerably calmer there today but still there were plenty of interesting looking people scattered around. Some were probably lobbyists, then there were the edgy guys in suits with strange badges, slick guys wearing designer glasses, watchers, readers, mellow woolly folk, a man quietly playing his guitar, people on laptops, chatty lunchers, a couple of loners besides myself. Anyone from anywhere might show up at the Comma. The legislature building is right across the street and there are two penitentiaries in town. Politicians, crooks, travelers. People with secrets and money to spend. It's that kind of place. It all revolves around June. Even Hillary knew enough to pay respect.


June has all the poetry books out that we, as Ash Canyon, recently donated. She sawed the bookshelves we gave her in half so that the library lines the walls unobtrusively. Very cool. I got a cup of coffee, grabbed a stack of journals and read and worked on a poem for a few hours. Heaven in a snowstorm.



Today June was back to business busy making sandwiches during the lunch hour rush. Another day at the Comma. As for the carpetbaggers, they did their one night stand and are gone. The big news from the Carson Valley today is that Willy the squirrel made his first appearance of the year at the Bird park yesterday. I'd say he's looking pretty fat and happy for mid-winter.














21/02/2007

I will not waste my afternoon blogging.



I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
Or posting on message boards.

20/02/2007

White House Mordor




Patrick Fitzgerald is right.
Cheney and Bush have drawn "a cloud over the White House."
Impeach these bastards!



Dirty Dick Cheney

bushbash.com

Can't Earth host an interplanetary game show and raffle Cheney off to aliens? I suppose not. He could be the booby prize though. This loser would even be the booby prize at a sweetheart box social in Folsom.











Morning

It's morning again in my part of the world. It's a lovely morning although I did miss seeing the new nova in Scorpius at dawn. Here I am again, wondering which way to go. Lots running through my head. So many possibilities. Instead of choosing one, I am circling the event horizon of the day and, as always from the approach point of view, possibilities never appear to cross the horizon. It takes an effort to escape this hypnotic spell. I no longer take freedom for granted.

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” - Jack Kerouac

19/02/2007

Tonight



A flame is quietly wavering above the clear pool of melted wax cupped in the top of the stubby green candle on my desk. A new nova was discovered only a few days ago in the constellation Scorpius. It will be visible to the naked eye tomorrow morning just before dawn.






18/02/2007

Yesteryear's tombstone art




This photo is of an old tombstone in nearby Carson City. I took it a few summer's ago but polished it up today for your viewing pleasure.





15/02/2007

Beat Baby #05 - Magic Carpet

Here's the latest in the adventures of Beat Baby and Hep. This episode took a long winding path to the fourth frame but it's finally done.

Open book



Everybody needs someone to hold a little hope for them. Valentine's day in Reno.
Who do you love?









13/02/2007

Night without candles


White Owl by asha
_________________________________________________

A STORY
by Czeslaw Milosz

Now I will tell Meader's story; I have a moral in view.
He was pestered by a grizzly so bold and malicious
That he used to snatch caribou meat from the eaves of the cabin.
Not only that. He ignored men and was unafraid of fire.
One night he started battering the door
And broke the window with his paw, so they curled up
With their shotguns beside them, and waited for the dawn.
He came back in the evening, and Meader shot him at close range,
Under the left shoulder blade. Then it was jump and run,
And a real storm of a run: a grizzly, Meader says,
Even when he's been hit in the heart, will keep running
Until he falls down. Later, Meader found him
By following the trail—and then he understood
What lay behind the bear's odd behavior:
Half of the beast's jaw was eaten away by an abscess, and caries.
Toothache, for years. An ache without comprehensible reason,
Which often drives us to senseless action
And gives us blind courage. We have nothing to lose,
We come out of the forest, and not always with the hope
That we will be cured by some dentist from heaven.


Berkeley, 1969
_________________________________________________






12/02/2007

Bush Republicans



This story from Huffingtonpost defines tilt. When asked by C-SPAN this morning how "(George W.) Bush Republicans would be defined, and what images the phrase "Bush Republican" might summon for future generations" Howdy Doodie replied, "Compassionate conservatism. I made a name by being compassionate". This guy is a psychopath. It's that simple. America and now the world is being held hostage by a group of psychopaths, Cheney, Rummy, Gonzalez etc. etc., and Bush is their Howdy Doodie star power who thinks he has a hot line to God when actually that "hot" line is ham head Cheney's fist up his ass.








11/02/2007

Invisible Theatre





The Invisible Theatre has new digs. They moved from a shelf onto the new table. It is a tiny island at this point but, with a little luck, will continue to develop. Everyone here is quite excited about it.









Monsieur La Chance and Lucky Pierre have been backstage all afternoon gossiping and watching the goings on. They are quite pleased with these latest developments. All in all, slow as it's been, my office is finally beginning to shape up.

And the rain finally came, days late, but last night it rained the whole night through.





10/02/2007

Cheney's 16 words

"The + British + Government + has + learned + that + Saddam + Hussein  + recently + sought + significant + quantities + of +  uranium + from + Africa." = BIG LIE by Dick Cheney as Vice-President of the United States.



Check out this haunting little video by Margo Guryan called 16 Words. These are the 16 words Republican Vice-President Dick Cheney's used to lie us into an unnecessary, unjust, unstabilizing, unending war with the Middle East. My hat is off to Margo Guryan. The creepy melody and disturbing words have an onomatopoetic quality, mimicking the hypnotic repetition of the macabre nature of Cheney's message, personality, high crimes and treason.





Given that it just came out in the Libby trial that Cheney ordered the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the press, this little video is especially timely. Did Dirty Dick hypnotize Dummy Bush? I agree with Dr. Knight on this one. No need.




09/02/2007

The news and weather


We live always among bewildering contradictions; beginnings/endings, love/hate, life/death, pain/joy, evil/compassion. Too many to name. Try as it will to resolve them, the mind is no match. That path is followed best by the heart. Herbie the calf and Perky the duck lucked out. Both were rescued and loved by the very people who, on another day would, more likely, have killed and eaten them both.



I suppose by now just about everyone has heard about Perky. She's the duck who was shot, dragged by a dog, hung upside down and left for dead in a kitchen refrigerator for two days until the hunter's wife noticed Perky look up at her when she opened the door.




Herbie's story is not as well known...

Part 1 - Wild in Newark

Part 2 - Escape and capture

Part 3 - Herbie's happy ending




And now for the weather...
It's two days late but the rain has finally arrived here in Nevada and the air is hung with the smell of wet, sweet sweet sage.





08/02/2007

Bathtub bass


There's a bass fiddle in my bathtub...
It used to belong to Lee's old bebop beatnik dad. He gave it to us a couple of years ago, keep or sell, after replacing it with a smaller, Chinese bass, easier to play given his advanced arthritis. We took it to LA and got it appraised. That's it. It's been in the bathtub ever since. I tried to interest Roy in buying it the other day. He just purchased a lovely fender deluxe and thought he might like a mellow, old, hand-made German bass to go along with it but he claims he's "lookin' to start smaller -- maybe a fiddle in a sink. Or castanets in a teacup." I wish someone would buy the damn thing. I want to take a bath. Let me know if you're interested. We'll make you a helluva deal. Otherwise I suppose I could try Craig's List.

As for the rain, the icons lied. Second day, nice steely gray sky but not a drop.












07/02/2007

Rain rain and the second-hand queen




Roy has a Word of the Day widget from Free Dictionary on his blog and it included a fantastic image in the usage example for today's word Apiary, second-hand queen. Lovely, innit? And an intriguing subject for a poem.

The weather icons tell me to expect rain for the next few days here in Gardnerville, Nevada. Excellent. We need it. It hasn't rained hard for months and the neighbor's roofs are dotted with bird poop. When I lived in Oregon I came to count on the rain. Spill your coffee on the sidewalk? No problem. Bird poop, vomit, spit. Who cares? The rain will tidy everything up. But not here. Not in the desert. Spit on the sidewalk. Look at it for months. So ... rain, rain come and play / wash the bird poop all away.


41°F
Scattered Clouds
Wind: N at 6 mph
Humidity: 40%

Today
Rain
56° | 30°
Thu
Rain
50° | 33°
Fri
Rain
49° | 33°
Sat
Rain
52° | 33°





06/02/2007

Mid week and half way there


In case you're wondering, my office hasn't devoured me ... yet ... if only because I have been too busy elsewhere. One thing or the another has been requiring my attention every since Friday so I am still stalled half way though the Great Office Intervention of 2007 but it's life as usual outside my window. The birds drop by just after seven for breakfast, take off for a while then return to see what new goodies have magically appeared. This week's special has been blobs of potato mushed with peanut butter and veggie shortening served along with the usual sprinkling of peanuts. Yum. The pigeons don't eat it but they love dawdling in the ice cold bird bath.

As far as my office goes, simply by moving the two file cabinets together and switching a couple of tables around things are much improved. According to a quick search on office Feng Shui, I should probably put my computer in the north or west sector of the room in order to "enhance creativity" but then I wouldn't be able to look out at the Bird Park and even the thought makes me feel trapped and desperate. I'll have to struggle along in the south east corner, although I'm happy to report that my smaller poetry desk is still against the west wall. So much the ancient arts. I'm not going to move any more furniture but I still have a lot of stuff to put away. That will take some doing. I've got to finish up though. The whole point is to make a more efficient work space. Projects languish.

02/02/2007

Office report

I took a first pass at reorganizing my office today and I must say, it went pretty well. I moved the two file cabinets together. That left the drawing table without a place for the night but tomorrow I'll wedge that in somewhere too.

In this mad effort to reclaim myself from the mess I'm in, I thought the following poem by Gregory Corso especially suitable for the evening. I heard him read it in the winter of 1981 at the Fifth Annual Santa Cruz Poetry Festival not long after I left the Krsna Movement. It was a weekend event. Baraka, Acker, Ferlinghetti, Rothenberg, Kaufman, di Prima, Reed, Corso, William Everson, Micheline, John Chance, Wanda Coleman, Country Joe McDonald were there among many others. It was pretty insane but wonderful. I had been in the movement many years so I was still reeling from having just thrown God and Truth and Hope and all the rest of it out my window. Actually, I didn't throw Them out the window. I jumped. Anyway, I always liked that Corso ran downstairs and caught Beauty before she hit the ground. Then sent her on her way.


The Whole Mess ... Almost

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!"
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!" "OUT!"
Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
"You always end up a bummer!"
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty --
As I led her to the window
I told her: "You I loved best in life
... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her: "Move on."

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!" It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life ..."
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left --
All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"

- Gregory Corso








Office space



My office is a train wreck. It has been forever and, at the risk of sounding like a new year resolution, which we all know would automatically be doomed to fail, I am doing an office intervention on myself. But this time it's going to be different. Oh yes. I have a plan. At least I'm starting out with one. Well, not a plan but I have a map and am thinking about it a bit before I lurch into action. That is one of the more underdeveloped aspects of my psyche, planning, looking before I leap. I am usually the fire-ready-aim type, a trait I (romantically) refer to as "spontaneity", "creatively on the wing", but I'm at an impasse here at the Ashabot and it's time to do something differently. As it is, the space is all wrong, impacted, dysfunctional. I've got to break it down, liberate it, streamline it, get the energy moving. Like Roy mentioned, office feng shui.