When this you see...

Someone else already has a blog dedicated to this (and it's not Ron), but it seems like a good place to start. I've had two dreams involving Ron Silliman (don't worry, that's as creepy as it gets). The first was in 2009, and he wasn't in it, but the dream was about a form of poetry involving a system of shifting colors throughout a text, a mnemonic device that would control a system of permutations. It was clearly inspired by some things he actually said in The Age of Huts. If you write the same sentence in a different pen, is it a different sentence (forgive me, I'm paraphrasing). I began the poem, actually using the strategy (poorly described here, and for good reason), sometime around last January, and am halfway through it.

The second dream, more recent was about catching him read at an arena (and I want to say in Seattle, but, again, it was in my head). A huge event space, and we got good seats. I was excited. I will be excited to finally see him read the first week of November, in New York.

The Age of Huts may be the first book of contemporary poetry I ever picked up (though there was a stack of others to follow it). I must have discovered the blog around the same time, and shortly thereafter met the poets of Portland, and as the dialogues began, here in place, and the web in space, I found myself in awe of the side of poetry that is theory and opinion. The former I think I was predisposed to, though it was mostly private, and before I realized there was a nebulous community simulteneously here and there, it was much for general, for me, than something concerning poetry. Opinion- how can I claim to be unfailiar to its auspices. And yet it seemed to me like a large bat slowly opening its wings before me, or a sad flag sagging at first, and then beginning to beat fiercely.

One of the first things I noticed in this new world was the disdain of the various for the choices Ron made with his spotlight. The opinion of opinion. He certainly has made interesting choices on the light itself he chooses to cast, especially with his reorganization of the hierarchies of those at work into the School of Quietude and the post-avant, with a certain appreciation for the latter, though the connotation of the name is not necessarily positive from a modernist standpoint, and then the School of Quietude, an aggrandizing name to some degree, for the apparent opposition. From this vantage, I believe him to be more diplomatic than he sometimes gets credit for. I have on at least one occasion noted his appreciation for certain Quietists, so the label (basically undefined, again) does not refer to things like 'good' or 'bad' poetry.

As a poet, and critic, I think he is a practitioner of great subtlety. I see his forebear, or a very significant forebear as a writer to Ron being the composer (and writer) John Cage. He at least within his own work seems to be invested in the indeterminacy of experience, his work a chronicle of his rotating and shifting perceptions. Not non-egoic, to be sure, the tradition appears to be in the independence of each sentence or statement as it follows the last, in his long work, The Age of Huts. He at one point thought he would contain all of his work in a single poem called the Alphabet, but it doesn't seem the alphabet was large enough a signifier, as he now places the Alphabet aside Universe, alongside Tjanting and Age of Huts, as Ketjak.

Another thing I can appreciate is one who changes their mind. Creating an arc, and ark. Look forward to seeing you, and remember.

interrupted by your heart

I have proved myself a diurnal incapability. It's because there are only so many things I can do each and every day: sleep, breathe, eat, wish, love. These fundamentals of our existence were once the fundamentals of our writing. At one point, or rather, for some time, poems of being in longing or being in love were the measure. I don't regret that language has become self-aware, in fact I think that is part of the goal, of universal self-realization.

At the same time, I am glad there are poets like Paul G. Maziar, who use their heads to address their hearts.

I asked Paul to edit the new issue of the newsletter, ciel de lit. It will go out in the mail today, or maybe tomorrow, which is a little late by my usual standards, but I had some stuff to do.

Serenity

See more incredible visual poetry by Kaalam at The Renegade

ra

In 2002 I was living on Jefferson Street in Moscow, Idaho. I was playing a major role in the local radio station, I was helping operate KUOI FM 89.3, I was watching bands like Animal Collective and Old Time Relijun play to crowds of 30 in my basement, I was making junk sculptures, I was reading Kerouac and Ginsberg. Every once in a while Brad Watkins would come home with something else to read, Charles Olson or Crag Hill, I would watch him read from a distance, and when he went off to wherever he went off to, I would steal what he was reading and read it to.
Brad's taste in "experimental literature" (is that what he called it?) resonated with me. He had this "procedural" book of writings (did we even call it poetry?) by Jeff Noon called Cobralingus. In addition to being vaguely Oulipean (not that I knew that then) it was riddled with references to European electronic music. The Thermals slept on our couches and passed typewriters around with us. Then I met the folks on the Hobo-a-go-go to tour Patrick, Elkins, Jason Voss and Justin Shay who had a lot of "poetry" and music in them, and a whole lot more that seemed positioned in between.
A year or so later I dropped out of college for a minute, and made a trip across the country to see my family, stopping in Ann Arbor, Michigan to play music with Patrick Elkins and Dustin Krcatovich (Actual Birds). Dustin and I recorded an EP of poetry and noise called "Small Creatures of the Wood Play Well Together." I went back to Idaho. I, at least sort-of, graduated from college. I started doing the odd reading. One was at the 1912 building and Crag Hill read, with one of his kids, I guess it must have been Noemi, one his knee, reading stories they wrote together. The reading was apparently secretly intended to be a pulpit for some evngelical folks, but we did a decent job of underminding that.
I moved from Idaho to Arizona to live with Brad. It was hot and boring but occasionally I went to open mics and read poetry. The poetry "scene" was boring, too but it gave me something to do. Brad and I moved to Portland, Oregon a few months later. I started going to readings at Tony's Talkin' To, and hanging with a guy who called himself Frank Sauce. Frank told me about "Language Poetry" and also that Crag Hill was the torchbearer for concrete and visual poetry in the United States.
I started reading language poetry and the scene in Portland got to seem more and more boring. I started writing letters to Crag, and told him this. He pointed me in the direction of Spare Room. He specifically said "meet David Abel, Mark Owens, Maryrose Larkin and Joseph Bradshaw." I went to one reading, and I don't remember it, but I did chat with Mark and Joseph. Then I moved to Alaska. Or tried to. I sat in a cabin in Fairbanks for a couple weeks and made "poems" with black pens and red markers. I came back to Portland.
The second or maybe third Spare Room reading I went to was their hundredth - a marathon! One hundred poems by one hundred poets from the last hundred years. I even got to participate in it, and as such was introduced to the work of Andrew Joron, Kevin Noonan, and John Taggart.
When Joseph invited me to open for Jim McCrary at a Spare Room reading, Crag came to town. Around this time he introduced me to the work of Nico Vassilakis, and I travelled to Seattle for a Subtext reading with the intent purpose of meeting him. In August 2010 Crag, Nico and I went on a short tour of the midwest, doing readings in Chicago and Madison, and attending the Avant Writing Symposium in Columbus, Ohio, where I met, read, and performed with mIEKAL aND, Camille Bacos, John M. Bennett, MusicMaster, Maria Damon, Matthew Stolte...
I had a birthday last week and Crag was in town. I'm still wearing his performance. Happy birthday to you, Crag.

Reading.Writing.

There is a show up at galleryHOMELAND right now. I am often caught describing it as being visual art that displays "paratactical strategies foe reading and writing." The show of visual art, which must feaqture 25 or so artists, had an incredible response at the opening, and a few good write-ups, b ut in the end, I think that the show is incredible, and the appreciation, in print, has been meek.
I am biased. I have a piece in the show. Which may or may not have been a trigger to Lisa Radon's decision to put the showsw together. I have dabbled in sculpture very little since I focused on it in college, though I feel that so much of my work has nonetheless (since and including then) remained on the same track.
The piece, wnefe by Jackson Mac Low a Concrete Poem set to Doom music is a recereation of Jackson Mac Low's algorithmic reading of Ezra Pound's Cantos, or an 800-page book I layered on line after line of white-out, long after I broke the spine. I do think it was an interesting gesture but it wasn't far from the flashlit gallery reading I gave of Finnegan's Wake in 2006.
There is so much interesting work in this show at galleryHOMELAND and I cannot do it justice. Being interested in visual poetry I am, of course, drawn lake a goth to a flame at Derek Beaulieu's contribution(s), which are his readings of a Calgary newspaper, allowing the suggestions of color in each block of prose to take over any other content. Then there is the case I share with Numita Gupta Wiggers, with her textile homage to John Baldessari's "I will not make any more boring art," and one of R.W's seminal inspiration's Patrick Collier, whose visual poems are conceptual excisions from newspapers and the like.
Lisa Radon's own work, who I am also proud to share space with. Is work to be reckoned with, existing at the border of print the blur. Her Paragraphs on Paragraphs on Sentences on Sentences pitch one conceptual text against the other, for a moment, in the end revealing themselves to be the hand, The Hand, perhaps something neith Gertrude Stein nor Sol Le Witt, her sources, would ever admit.
On September 1st, as a part of the exhibit, David Abel, Rodney Koeneke, Lisa Radon, and I will perform at evening o'clock. And it will be terrific.

galleryHOMELAND
SE 11th & SE Division
Sept. 1

Forth then, little blog

So, it's been 5 months since I posted anything. And a lot longer since I posted anything other than events I was to participate in, I have even failed to mention the last half-dozen readings and other events.

What is my excuse? A lot of writing on paper has been done, and a fair amount of publishing. I just got back from the IPRC where I printed most of the covers of the next c_L chapbook "Rotations" by Jesse Morse (don't tell him, please!). I've got to travel a bit, with a recent performance in Seattle alongside Garek Druss, John Teske, whilst tabling for c_L, Peaches & Bats, and Abandoned Bike. Also there have been the Spare Room and the Poetry on the Piazza series, the latter series meta-curated by David Abel, and last night's particular Piazza reading directly curated by him, which was a reading by Seattle's Robert Mittenthal, Vancouver's Donato Mancini, and Windsor, Ontario's Louis Cabri.

Robert is a friend, an influence even. Donato's work I either first encountered through Crag Hill or blown up on the wall of galleryHOMELAND for the Spare Room 100th reading (which was also the first Spare Room event I participated in by reading). I met Donato for the first time last night. Also, a poet I was unfamiliar with prior to the reading Louis Cabri, who Michael Weaver described to me as "the greatest hope for American poetry" (he's Canadian, but we Canadians are Americans to, right Vespucci?). Louis was an incredible performer of a brilliant and inventive poetry that reminded me of Jackson Mac Low but with a simple, bouncing, musical quality. I agree with Michael.

So I'm going to try and come back and write again, there is ernough going on that I should have something to say, but I would appreciate the odd comment, even if it's "stop." I'm obstinate enough to handle that. Even when it seems that comment boxes are where the mind goes to die.

And if you shoot me a line, and let me know what's going on, maybe I'll repost, process, or recant, and you'll get to give me or save me a little work.

Also, if you made it this far: thanks. I'll see you tomorrow.

c_L chapbooks available in 2011

c_L has released it's second chapbook!

Lines on Canvas or What I Know or Have Seen of His Life
by Sam Lohmann

Lohmann's Lines on Canvas are a collection of lines drawn to the end of breath. From the referential object found by Sam in his exploration of the landscape, this time from the vantage of the idea of the painter. Each line is drawn from a singularity in text to its possible extent in the world, as Sam has culled it from one biographer looking at an other. That other being the painter Cézanne, from the eye and mouth of his friend Joachim Gasquet.

From the overbearing sky
He produced atrocious studies
In the attic a canvas of holes

This chapbook is an excerpt from a full-length work that should appear later in the year. Lines on Canvas is available from the publisher for $8 domestic mail.
Send a check or well-concealed cash to

James Yeary
2947 E. Burnside
Portland, OR 97214

also:
Phoebe Wayne's Lovejoy is still available.
c_L's first publication, Lovejoy's several narrative threads each take a different perspective on the construction, presence and decay of Portland's Lovvejoy columns, a series of "outsider" architecture that have been disappeared from the Portland cityscape since the WPA projects of the 1950s that helped bring them into the world.

Both chapbooks feature letterpress printed covers and hand-sewn binding.
Lovejoy is available for $6 domestic mail.